Tabla de contenidos para March 2020 en Macworld

Tech companies are still investing huge amounts of time and energy in smart-home products, as the recent Consumer Electronics Show displayed. A year ago, Apple hired a new head of home products—but it hasn’t yet resulted in a lot of visible changes to Apple’s strategy. The biggest move so far is Apple’s joining forces with its competitors to form an alliance to encourage smart-home interoperability. That’s a good start, and I’m hopeful that Apple can begin to push HomeKit forward in 2020. Last year, I suggested that Apple make a new version of the Apple TV and HomePod that works as a TV soundbar. I’d still like to see that product. But now, for 2020, here’s another hardware suggestion: Apple can contribute to the smart-home industry and its own bottom line…

Just like the iPod, the critics got it wrong. Apple might not have won the coveted best drama award for The Morning Show at the Golden Globes, but the first season was nothing less than one of the best I’ve ever seen, streaming or otherwise. That’s despite a barely-fresh Rotten Tomatoes score and some truly scathing reviews that nearly convinced me to write it off altogether. Slate’s Inkoo Kang called it “a giant, faultlessly tasteful gift box filled mostly with packing peanuts.” Ian Thomas Malone labeled it “an elaborate disaster.” Even our own Leif Johnson wrote that the first few episodes had him “wanting to hit the snooze button.” Between that, the humdrum trailer, and my general disinterest in behind-the-scenes dramas, I didn’t rush to see The Morning Show. In fact, I only…

NAD MASTERS SERIES M10 The NAD Masters Series M10 media streamer is an integrated amplifier and media consolidator of wide scope and ability that produces pristine sound. It’s also easy to set up and use and will look great nestled amid your other equipment or on its own. The amp is rated for 100 watts continuous into an 8-ohm load with less than 0.1 percent distortion. An onboard DAC handles MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, WMA-Lossless, ALAC, OPUS, MQA, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, up to 32-bit/192 kHz PCM, as well as converted DSD playback. The M10 sounds very good; musical and distortion-free on both 4-ohm and 8-ohm.—JON L. JACOBI BOSCH CONNECTED CONTROL BCC50 The Bosch BCC50 should be compatible with most conventional heating and cooling systems, including two-stage heat pumps and dehumidifiers.…

Reports of bugs have plagued many of Apple’s software releases this past fall, from iOS 13 to iPadOS to macOS Catalina. Even the HomePod received an update that resulted in some of the smart speakers becoming unresponsive, causing Apple to temporarily pull the release while it fixed the problem. Bugs, of course, are not the sole province of the folks from Cupertino, but this year has seemed particularly bad, especially when compared with the relatively stable release of iOS 12 in the fall of 2018. It’s led to many calls for Apple to rethink its software strategies and to spend more time squashing bugs than implementing new features. This week, a report from Bloomberg suggests that Apple is taking steps in that direction, making changes to its software development practices that…

If you want to breathe new life into static photos with minimal effort, there’s no better method than FotoMagico 5 for macOS, which we hailed as “more impressive than pulling rabbits out of a magic hat” in our May, 2016, review. For nearly 15 years, this slideshow-creation software has been the go-to solution for casual shutterbugs and professional photographers alike. Fortunately, FotoMagico is now available for iPad, providing a way to assemble great slideshows from anywhere. Best of all, Mac project files are interchangeable with the iPad version, so you can start a project on one device and finish on another. The iPad app is a faithful transition, offering the same intuitive Storyboard layout for building slideshows via drag and drop with multiple layers, adjusting start and finish animation, adding titles,…

When you make a screen capture in macOS in Mojave or Catalina, a tiny thumbnail appears in the bottom right corner of the screen for a few seconds. Click it, and a small editing suite appears that lets you modify what you captured or delete the image or images before they’re saved. (We have a complete guide to using this markup tool.) If you don’t want that thumbnail, however, you have to know exactly where to change the setting. It’s not found in any System Preferences pane, and Mojave did away with Grab, the former standalone screen-capture utility built into macOS. Instead, you have to invoke a screen-capture mode to change associated settings. You can either press Command-Shift-5 or launch Applications → Utilities → Screenshot, the not-quite-an-app that replaced Grab.…

TIME MACHINE: NO FAT OR EXFAT DRIVES, ONLY HFS+ AND APFS To judge by a recent spate of email, Mac users are using Windows and Unix/Linux compatible drives more than ever. Many people have asked why their external drive appears and is grayed-out in the Time Machine preference pane’s excluded list. (Open the Time Machine preference pane and click Options to see that list.) That’s because the drive isn’t formatted in a way that Time Machine can back up files from. While I’ve covered this in previous columns, it’s worth a quick refresher, given how many people are apparently currently dealing with this. > Time Machine volumes must be HFS+ formatted, listed in Disk Utility as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. > Time Machine can only back up volumes formatted either…

I’ve been using iPads for so long that my hands automatically expect to do some things when I see one, even when I’m using one as an external display for my MacBook with Apple’s new Sidecar feature. But Apple only indulges this muscle memory so far. When I’m “running” macOS on my 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Sidecar, I can reach over to the iPad’s display and use my fingers to scroll through websites in Safari or documents in Pages. I can even use some iPadOS multi-touch gestures, and Sidecar performs these fluidly when the Mac and iPad are on the same network. If I’m just scrolling, it’s wonderfully convenient. But if I use my finger to try to click a link on that same page? Nothing. I have to waste…

Over three decades, the revolutionary Adobe Photoshop has become an industry standard synonymous with image editing and manipulation. Even if you’ve never used it, you know what it is. But the full potential of the Photoshop app isn’t for everyone. Despite being more affordable in a monthly Creative Cloud subscription, the feature-packed user interface and advanced tools can overwhelm novice users. That’s why Adobe offers a pared-down version earmarked for regular folks, which steps out of big brother’s shadow this year with several impressive new tricks. IMAGE SENSEI Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 marks the sixteenth Mac release (technically 18.0, versions five and seven were Windows-only) of the annual consumer-focused edition, stripping away most of the complexity in favor of a hand-holding approach to image manipulation. If you’ve been vexed trying to…

It’s hard to believe that January 27 marked the tenth anniversary of the announcement of the iPad. As impressive as that first iPad was in terms of hardware, a decade later it’s clear that the iPad succeeded because of Apple’s focus on native iPad apps from the very first day. SIT DOWN AND LEAN BACK If you go back and watch Steve Jobs’s keynote introducing the iPad, you’ll see the brilliance of Apple’s roll-out strategy. To start it all off, there’s a big comfy chair on stage, something you never see at Apple keynotes. That chair allowed Jobs and other presenters to show that the iPad was a comfortable device meant to be used casually. After revealing the iPad itself, Jobs sits down and spends a very long time walking the…

The new iPhone 11 series of phones brings a new way to frame and shoot photos that gives you flexibility after you’ve snapped that shot. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max all bring in detail outside your framed preview from the next widest lens as you point at a scene in both portrait and landscape. First, you have to turn the feature on in Settings → Camera under the Composition section. Tap Photos Capture Outside The Frame to turn this over-capture mode on. By default, Apple has left the feature off, though the same option for video is enabled. (There’s a potential reason for this, which I’ll get to at the end of this article.) A related option works in concert with Capture Outside The Frame. Auto…

It took Apple nearly a decade to bring proper file management to the iPhone and iPad with the arrival of the Files app in iOS 11. Over the same period of time, an enterprising third-party developer based in Odessa, Ukraine, was busy refining its own file manager app, which outshines Apple’s in almost every conceivable way. Documents 7 is the latest incarnation of the versatile iOS utility that started as clever web app ReaddleDocs, named for the up-and-coming startup who created it. The mobile equivalent of macOS Finder, this jack-of-all-trades allows iPhone and iPad owners to browse, view, and manage files with ease, all from an intuitive user interface that puts Apple’s own Files to shame. Although there was little to dislike about the look and feel of prior releases, Documents…

Last year, after the debut of iOS 12, I put together a list of features I hoped to see in iOS 13. And Apple listened! Okay, it’s not likely that anybody at Apple read my article and altered a single plan based on it, but the company did give several of the things I’ve been asking for. There’s still a lot left on the table, though. So many more features and significant changes that seem easy to identify (if not easy to develop) that would make iPhones more useful. I want about a million things for iOS 14 (multiple timers, for example) but many are small tweaks not worth getting worked up about. Here’s a list of the ten biggest and most far-reaching features I hope to see in…

Apple introduced fast user switching years ago to allow easier shared use of a single Mac by multiple people. After logging in to an account and switching away from it, all the activities that were underway continue on their merry progress even while another user has logged in or switched to the foreground. This includes iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and other sync apps that carry out their operations in the background during a normal session. This can be useful if multiple people rely on synchronized files, preventing them from having to log in and wait for updates to occur. Apple assures its third-party developers in fast user switching documentation that background accounts have no keyboard or mouse input, and apps that check on screen activity will receive a response as if…

We’ve heard plenty of middle-of-the-road Bluetooth speakers that try to juice your tunes with brassy, boomy sound. The Anker Soundcore Motion+ isn’t one of them, but this compact, $100 speaker could do with a little more high-end detail. Its attention to midrange frequencies, on the other hand, pays dividends when it comes to delivering rich, robust sound, with an impressive (but not overbearing, provided a certain feature is turned off) foundation of bass response. The Motion+’s weatherized design, app-based EQ settings, and aptX support sweeten the deal. DESIGN Measuring a little shy of a foot wide, about three inches high and thick, the 2.3-pound Soundcore Motion+ feels heavy given its size. Encased in a virtually waterproof shell (Anker claims an ingress protection rating of IPX7, meaning the speaker can withstand…

One of the key features of Intel’s upcoming “Tiger Lake” processor, the next-gen Thunderbolt 4, may not be as evolutionary as the name implies. To begin with, Intel didn’t reveal all that much about the new “Tiger Lake” chip, due to ship sometime “this year.” The new chip will deliver “double-digit” performance gains—though over exactly what, we don’t know—as well as a “huge leap” in graphics performance. Tiger Lake is also characterized as a “10nm+” chip. The other feature, Thunderbolt 4, was characterized as “4x the performance of USB 3” in a promotional slide. But it appears that the new I/O spec isn’t as fresh as its title would imply. Part of the confusion should be assigned to the USB Implementor’s Forum, which last spring released a nearly inscrutable branding…

Apple makes some darn fine displays, but the company doesn’t offer an ultra wide model. If you want extra horizontal screen space for productivity or gaming, or just a panoramic viewing experience, you need something like Samsung’s $800, curved, ultra wide CJ791. Quantum dots make colors super-accurate, and it has enough ports to function nicely as docking station. DESIGN AND FEATURES With a resolution of 3440 by 1440 spread over 34 inches of width and approximately 14.5 inches of height (21:9 ratio), the CJ791 doesn’t offer quite the pixel density of most Apple displays, but it’s close enough that you likely won’t care. Put another way, it’s not quite Retina—you can see the pixels if you sit too close, but it didn’t take long to get over that and appreciate…

Recently, Brydge, the company that makes my favorite add-on keyboard for the iPad, announced a new iPad Pro accessory that includes both a keyboard and a trackpad. Adding external pointing devices to the iPad wasn’t possible until iOS 13 added support for Bluetooth mice as a part of the Assistive Touch suite of accessibility features. While some will consider the mere possibility of adding a mouse or trackpad to an iPad to be sacrilege, I prefer to see it as an additional option that can improve the iPad’s flexibility in certain circumstances. However, Apple’s support for external pointing devices is very much a first draft. It needs to continue pushing this feature forward in iPadOS 14—and in doing so, the platform could reap some surprising rewards. MOUSING IN iPADOS 13 In…

In 2018, when Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 4, I was surprised that the company didn’t bother to update most of its watch faces, and expressed some hope that the company would place more emphasis on faces in the Series 5. Thanks to the new always-on display, Apple has definitely made watch faces the center of attention in a way they weren’t before. There’s never been a more on-the-nose Apple marketing campaign than the “This Watch Tells Time” video that Apple unveiled during its special event on September 10. And yet, while I want to report that as of 2019 Apple has prioritized the faces of the Apple Watch, I can’t. Instead, it’s given us a few encouraging new faces—and left a mess everywhere else. LAUNCHED A THOUSAND WATCHES Let’s…

ORDIA Ordia plays a lot like Angry Birds: Pull back on your avatar with your finger, and it fires off in the direction you aimed in. But that’s about where the similarities end. Here you’re a gloopy eye-like blob ascending through the primordial ooze, so you do your platforming vertically rather than horizontally. Along the way, you plop over to other gloopy blobs for support and calculate catapults over spikes, until at last you break through the surface at the end of the stage—and, perhaps, to the next stage of evolution. HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER Hyper Light Drifter is an action RPG that’s only three years old, although its pixel art style makes it look like a relic from my childhood. It’s almost as timeless as those digital ’80s adventures, and…

Sometimes it’s useful to have an email address that’s not your primary one. You might want to sign up with a service or use it to subscribe to an email list, and not trust that it won’t be reused and deluged with unwanted mail you can’t unsubscribe from. Apple lets you set up to three additional email-only identities with iCloud.com, called aliases. That lets you preserve your primary iCloud.com address for whatever purpose you like while having these three alternative identities that you can use to filter email and even delete if you want to abandon the address altogether—not an option with your primary iCloud.com address, which is often the account name for your Apple ID. I wrote in April 2019 about setting up aliases, which is handled only at…

Apple now makes three sets of wireless earbuds that use its H1 chip: The AirPods, the AirPods Pro, and the Powerbeats Pro from its Beats division. That H1 chip means easy pairing to your iPhone, hands-free Siri, automatic pairing with all your Apple devices through iCloud, and better power management. If you have an iPhone, you probably want earbuds with it. Which of the three is best? That answer is, overall, the AirPods Pro. But maybe the better question is: which of the three is the best one for your needs? AIRPODS: THE CHEAPER OPTION FOR CALLS AND PODCASTS AirPods are now on their second generation, with slightly improved battery life and hands-free Siri support. And now that the AirPods Pro are out there, I don’t think there’s much reason for…

Headphones with active noise cancelling (ANC) are nothing new. They include microphones that sample the ambient noise around you and then reproduce that sound after shifting its phase by 180 degrees and mixing it with the original. The two out-of-phase sounds cancel each other out, reducing the level that reaches your ears. This works best on steady-state, low-frequency sounds, such as the constant din of engines inside an airplane. The Audeara A-01 is just such a headphone, and it offers a very interesting additional benefit—custom equalization tailored to your specific hearing profile. It’s a brilliant idea, and it works fairly well, at least with ANC turned on. FEATURES The Audeara A-01 is a circumaural (over-ear) headphone that features active noise cancelling. In addition, the built-in microphone used for ANC also…