Tabla de contenidos para November 2020 en Macworld

Whether you’re looking for a cheap companion or just don’t want to pay sky-high prices for a new Apple laptop right now, a Chromebook is an excellent option. With a speedy, touch-friendly UI and a breezy, get-things-done attitude, a Chromebook is an excellent addition to any Apple fan’s gear bag, whether it’s their primary device or not. The only problem: Chromebooks are much closer to a Windows PC than a Mac. From the experience to the interface, Chrome OS is clearly inspired by Windows but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Google offers plenty of customization options to rid your Chromebook of all of its Windows influences. EMBRACE THE SHELF One of the main things that separates macOS from Windows OS is the Dock. But Chromebooks have something similar…

It’s impressive how much ExpressVPN packs into its service. In addition to supporting the usual VPN connections across nearly 100 countries, ExpressVPN supports Smart DNS on consoles and set-top boxes—a great feature for Americans working abroad. It has a built-in speed test to help you make better decisions about which connections to use, if speed is your priority. It also works with Netflix in the U.S.—though you may need to try a few servers before it’ll take. The company is also working on trust with diskless servers, and it underwent a security audit from PwC. ExpressVPN is moving in the right direction, but how does it measure up overall? SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SERVERS, AND SPEED ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands. The company says it’s doing this to remain…

When it comes to dedicated tablet devices, there’s the iPad and there’s everything else. The performance, features, and app ecosystem of Apple’s iPad line make it the tablet to own. The new 8th-generation iPad is still the best tablet you can buy for the price ($329), but it’s hard not to be disappointed by such a small upgrade. The new 8th-gen tablet is exactly the same as the 7th-gen iPad introduced a year ago, except that the A10 processor has been swapped out for the A12. That’s it. That’s the update. A12 VERSUS A10 Last year, Apple updated the iPad with a slightly bigger 10.2-inch display (up from 9.7), making the bezels slimmer. It also added the smart connector to work with the Smart Keyboard. Those were welcome upgrades, though…

During Apple’s “Time Flies” event on September 15, the company made a somewhat controversial announcement. The Apple Watch will no longer come with a USB power adapter in the box. There are rumors that this year’s iPhone 12 release will follow suit. Apple announced the change to Apple Watch during a segment on the company’s environmental advancements, pitching it as a great way to reduce environmental waste. If that’s the company’s position, it would be wrong not to remove the USB power adapter from the iPhone 12 box. And you know what? Apple’s right. It’s time to stop including power adapters in every box. Sure, it stings—these products cost how much and you don’t even give us the plug?—but once you get beyond the seemingly money-grubbing optics of it, it…

With all the emphasis about making high-quality video on mobile devices, it’s a shame so little attention is paid to audio. Slick visuals can do the trick, but without good sound in videos, you’ll only make half the impact. Mauvio is the first mobile app from Accusonus, makers of professional audio plug-ins for Mac and Windows. Fueled by industry-leading algorithms, Mauvio improves sound on iPhone or iPad videos without tweaking dozens of knobs or settings, making it easy for anyone to use. The first step is to select a video from your camera or Photos library, which you can preview (but not trim) before importing. Mauvio automatically improves audio by applying under-the-hood magic while loading, so it’s ready to play with just a tap. There’s a slider to jump to…

Apple has several subscription services available, and now you can save some cash by signing up for Apple One, a pricing plan that bundles Apple’s services together for discounts. In effect, it replaces expensive à la carte pricing with cheaper pricing bundles. Here’s what you need to know about Apple One. WHAT SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE IN APPLE ONE? All of Apple’s services are available for bundled pricing: Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple TV+, and iCloud. (Apple Fitness+ will not be available until late 2020.) If Apple introduces new services, they’ll probably adjust the Apple One plans accordingly. NOTE: AppleCare, Apple’s warranty and support program, is not part of Apple One. HOW MUCH DOES APPLE ONE COST? Apple has three Apple One plans. Each plan offers a…

When you see the lock icon to the left of a website’s URL in the Address and Search bar in Safari, you assume the site is secure. That may be nice for any site you visit, but it’s particularly critical for ones you use for banking, bill payment, and other financial purposes. You may find, however, that after updating Safari or macOS you can no longer get features on a financial site to work. That appears to be due to poor security practices at some institutions, maybe owing to them licensing the same server software to handle their customers’ needs. The issue here is typically “cross-site tracking,” which relies on passive linking among different sites. That can be as simple as an invisible single-pixel image placed on a webpage that is…

In addition to certifying the performance of commercial cinemas and consumer audio and video products, THX also develops new technologies and licenses them to various manufacturers. Among these new technologies is the company’s ultra-quiet AAA (Achromatic Audio Amplifier) power-amplifier design, which first appeared commercially in the Benchmark AHB2 in 2015. Two years later, THX introduced the second generation of AAA technology, this time intended for headphone amps. I first heard some prototypes at CanJam SoCal 2017, and I was quite impressed. So, when Helm Audio announced at CES 2020 that it was implementing AAA technology in a mobile headphone amp, I immediately requested a review sample. Once the DB12 AAAmp finally arrived, it was well worth the wait. FEATURE SET The DB12 AAAmp is a small unit measuring 2.8 x…

HOW TO BYPASS APPLE’S MULTI-DEVICE TWO-FACTOR SYSTEM WITH MESSAGES AUTOFILL Apple has increasingly required that Apple ID accounts (used for iCloud, purchases, and other purposes) are protected by two-factor authentication (2FA). This two-part system has you enter a password and then enter a code that’s available from all devices associated with the same iCloud account. You know the drill. A pop-up appears on all devices showing a rough map of where Apple believes the request originated. Tap or click Allow on any device and that pop-up disappears from all the others. On the device from which you approved the map, a six-digit code now appears in a special dialog box. Enter that code as your device, service, or browser second factor. But there’s an easier way. Apple lets you set…

Hey, you Mac old timers (like me). How many times have you said to yourself, “Man, I could use a round of Duke Nukem 3D right now!” or wished you could go back to a version of Adobe Photoshop that didn’t have all the tools you need? (Okay, never, but play along with me here.) Well, now you can go back to the old days of the Mac with a Mac OS 8 emulator, written by Felix Rieseberg. He created a JavaScript app that includes a virtual machine that emulates a Macintosh Quadra 900 running Mac OS 8.1. The 261MB compressed download expands into an app that runs that system in a window on your modern Mac. The emulator also includes a few apps, such as Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5, Adobe…

The macOS menu bar is convenient for quickly accessing favorite widgets, but it doesn’t take long for this real estate to become overcrowded. That’s why I love apps that perform multiple tasks while consuming a minimal amount of precious space along the top of my screen. iClock is an alternative to the standard macOS menu-bar clock, offering separate date and time menus that display the current day and hour in any custom format, font, and color you can conjure up, all from one of the most configurable preferences windows I’ve ever seen. The time menu drop-down offers an exhaustive list of related data and productivity shortcuts including favorite international locations, so you’ll always know the current local time at a glance. World clocks can also be opened anywhere on the screen…

Six years in, the Apple Watch is at a bit of a crossroads. After a few years of explosive growth in terms of improving the hardware, Apple seems to have hit a bit of a lull. Last year’s Apple Watch Series 5 only added a single major feature, the always-on display, but it was a huge milestone. This year’s Series 6, though? It’s clear that even Apple knew how incremental this update was. An oxygen sensor is good, but since it’s not approved as a medical device, Apple’s implementation feels a little bit weak. A brighter always-on screen? Great, but the very definition of incremental. You know an update is feeling a little bit lackluster when Apple throws in a bunch of new colors to stir some excitement. In six…

The Apple Watch SE isn’t quite the iPhone SE of Apple’s wearable line. While it does have a starting price tag that’s about 30 percent lower than the flagship Series 6 watch, the Apple Watch SE doesn’t have the latest processor or an updated design, nor is it the cheapest Apple Watch you can buy. That puts it kind of in no man’s land for now, an unenviable position for a product expected to move the needle. But you’ll be very happy with the Apple Watch SE if it is your first smartwatch. It has all of the features you want in a modern smartwatch—a big screen, next-gen sensors, swappable bands, good battery life—at a price that probably won’t break your budget. Aside from the new exclusive red and blue…

Spam remains a problem decades after its unfortunate debut on the internet. Spam, loosely defined, is any message you don’t want to receive of a commercial or misleading nature. Millions of person-hours have been spent to try to identify automatically and correctly unsolicited commercial email (UCE), phishing email, and other malicious or offensive messages. No one has fully succeeded. Apple’s iCloud mail hosting and Mail apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS try to provide an interconnected set of tools to block or mark spam. Apple employs many techniques to identify and block messages that we never see. A ne’er-do-well sending a billion identical emails to iCloud users will likely see all billion blocked. As a Mail user on any Apple operating system—including via icloud.com—you are likely aware that you can…

Audio quality via a Bluetooth device can be a great mystery, partly because Bluetooth only mandates in its basic audio standard, A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), a low-quality audio encoding algorithm. An audio encoder takes a data stream and transforms it into whatever the best or agreed-upon quality both sides can take, often limited by the particular chips on each device and bandwidth available. That means that the lowest common denominator may prevail, even when both the sending and receiving devices have a variety of higher-quality options available that don’t match up or aren’t correctly invoked. Depending on a host of factors, both a Bluetooth streaming device (sending or receiving audio) and a Mac may agree on an encoder that makes music sound like it’s playing over a landline telephone…

The mantra with sound systems today seems to be that they should be heard, not seen. If you’re a vinyl enthusiast, downsizing a turntable setup isn’t so simple. Minimalist turntable setups are typically comprised of a pair of bookshelf speakers and an integrated amplifier. And, let’s not forget the vibrational havoc speakers can pose to your precious and sensitive setup. If you’re looking for a truly compact and near vibration-free experience for your record player, then look no further than Andover Audio’s Spinbase. It’s an ingenious, all-in-one, plug-n-play speaker system designed specifically for turntables. It’s a near perfect solution for apartment dwellers or rooms that can’t accommodate larger systems. The Spinbase’s simplicity, performance, and sheer bang for the buck left me awe-struck. Read on to see why I liked the…

Apple recently announced a major change to its gift card offerings. Instead of separate cards for iTunes and Apple Store purchases, Apple is now selling a single card for “everything Apple” that can be used online and in stores to purchase “products, accessories, apps, games, music, movies, TV shows, iCloud, and more.” While the new cards will make it easier to buy things, they could also mean the end of the standard iTunes gift card deals that regularly pop up. Best Buy, PayPal, and others often offer 15 or 20 percent off $50 or $100 cards, but those deals rarely surface for Apple Store cards. It’s unclear when or if these new cards will make their way to retailers. Now that the two stores are merged, however, that could mean…

AURA CARVER A smart, elegant digital photo frame that you can set up and enjoy within minutes, the Aura Carver makes for an easy and handsome way to show off your snapshots, provided you have a steady Wi-Fi connection, you’re comfortable with cloud storage, and you’re okay with its landscape-only position. The 10.1-inch IPS display has a 1920 x 1200 resolution, with colors looked vivid yet natural, and viewing angles were excellent. You can copy over photo albums from your phone or Mac, or sync albums in your iCloud Photo Library or Google Photos account. —BEN PATTERSON CUBO AI PLUS Featuring safety detection alerts that notify parents of a covered face, stomach sleeping, and other sleep risks the Cubo AI Plus is also chock full of the wish-list items…

Apple’s “Time Flies” event in September might as well have been called “All in the Family.” And I’m not just talking about the new watches. Alongside the new Apple Watch and iPad hardware, Apple unveiled two initiatives designed to connect families and keep them within the Apple ecosystem. The first is Family Setup. A feature strictly for LTE Apple Watches (Series 3 and later), it brings Apple’s wearable ever closer to full independence. Instead of needing to have every watch paired to a specific iPhone to work, you’ll be able to set up watches for family members without iPhones and they’ll still have full calling, texting, and app independence. Family Setup essentially turns every Apple Watch into a mini iPhone with its own account. It’s geared toward “children and older family members,”…

For decades, major software versions were guaranteed to debut new features and fresh eye candy in the form of user interface enhancements. With the current subscription trend, developers have less incentive to wait for the next big release, instead choosing to roll out incremental updates as they’re ready. But what happens when an app works so well that UI improvements are unnecessary? Such is the conundrum with Unread, an attractive RSS news reader client for iPhone and iPad. After changing hands in 2017, developer Golden Hill Software has finally debuted the long-awaited sequel with almost no changes to the sultry, gesture-based look and feel that made it a hit in the first place. MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS Despite lacking visual alterations, Unread 2 has plenty going on under the hood, such as…

For the first time since its launch in 2016, there are three Apple Watch models to choose from that all look very similar at first glance. But upon closer inspection, you’ll find that there are very distinct differences between them that go much deeper than their price differences. Here’s how they stack up. DESIGN AND DISPLAY Apple hasn’t strayed very far from its original square design over the seven generations of the Apple Watch, so there’s not a huge difference between the three watches. Series 3: 38.6 x 33.3 x 11.4mm SE: 44 x 38 x 10.4mm Series 6: 40 x 34 x 10.4mm (40mm); 44 x 38 x 10.4mm (44mm) But your wrist won’t notice the difference. Apple has the best and most recognizable watch design in the smartwatch…

The Safari browser in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS can automatically retain information entered in fields on websites you visit and then automatically complete it on your next visit. This can be great! You don’t have to re-enter the same information, like an account name or email address. However, it’s tedious when you don’t want the same information re-entered each time. There’s a simple way to disable this, but since it’s not available on a site-by-site basis, it’s a nuclear option. You can disable it always or not at all. (AutoFill is typically used to mean filling forms by selecting a profile or items from a list; autocomplete usually results from starting to type into a field, and having previously entered matches appear among which you can select.) In macOS, choose…

The Apple TV: perhaps the most unloved of Apple’s major platforms? Even though the Apple TV has been around about as long as the iPhone—it was actually shown off by Steve Jobs before the iPhone’s announcement, though it was then called the “iTV”—the set-top box has long seemed an afterthought for the company. That’s only increased more recently as Apple has embarked upon partnerships with third-party makers of televisions and set-top competitors to expand the footprint of its Apple TV+ service, bringing those devices features like the Apple TV app and AirPlay 2. Still, recent rumors suggest that an updated Apple TV may be waiting in the wings, though what enhancements it might feature are largely anybody’s guess. But with all of the changes in the streaming world and Apple’s…

DALI (Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries) was founded in 1983 to create “loudspeakers with outstanding performance and natural sound at competitive prices.” Since then, the company has upheld that mandate with many wonderful-sounding speakers, including the recently reviewed Rubicon 6. Now, DALI has entered the headphone arena with its IO-4 and IO-6 models. When I tried on the IO-6 at CES 2020, I was impressed with what I heard, so I requested a review sample. After more extended listening, I’m even more impressed than I was in Vegas. (Editor’s note: In case you find our font confusing, DALI’s IO branding is “eye-oh,” not “one-zero.”) FEATURES The IO-4 and IO-6 are both Bluetooth-enabled wireless headphones available in two colors: Iron Black and Caramel White. Their over-ear, closed-back design uses replaceable memory-foam earpads covered…