Table of contents for November 2016 in Macworld

With macOS Sierra, Apple, as with previous desktop OS versions, integrates even more features that were introduced in iOS, the operating system for the company’s mobile devices. But Sierra doesn’t just add features found in iOS, it also does more to make your Mac and your iOS devices work together. Considering that nowadays, most people’s primary computers are iOS devices, it’s fitting that macOS Sierra does more to cater to those users’ needs. Before we dive into Sierra, let’s address the main question: Should you upgrade? First, you need to determine how compatible your Mac is. The older the Mac, the more likely a feature won’t work. You can check a list of Macs compatible with macOS Sierra (go.macworld.com/sierracompatible). (Apple also has information on what features are available based on…

CRITICS AND USERS alike love to throw shade at those built-in macOS and iOS apps—Mail is often panned for being out of date, most of us don’t want (or need) Stocks, and Maps still can’t hold a candle to Google Maps, four years after the latter was unceremoniously evicted from iOS 6. For me, Calendar is the weakest of Apple’s built-in apps (with Reminders a close second). While the Mac version is passable enough, the iPhone app is borderline useless, even with the month and list split-screen view enabled. GET BUSY After initially cozying up to the iOS-only Calendars 5 ($7 on the iTunes Store), I eventually settled on Fantastical 2 ($3 on the iTunes Store), despite initial reservations about the lack of a good month view on the iPhone.…

ULTIMATE EARS SLAMMED down the gauntlet with its Megaboom portable Bluetooth speaker. This loud-and-proud, thoroughly weatherized speaker produces enough sound to fill the average backyard, and it comes with a richly featured app that will make it the life of any party. A pair of 2-inch full-range drivers and dual 2-by-4-inch passive radiators in a cylindrical enclosure create a near 360-degree sound field. The 1.93-pound speaker comes with a plastic carrying case that makes it easy to take just about anywhere, and its built-in rechargeable battery is rated to last up to 20 hours. Large plus and minus buttons on the Megaboom’s face let you raise or lower in the volume manually. Its cap ends are rubberized, with the top end carrying the unit’s power and Bluetooth-pairing buttons. Remove the waterproof…

Thanks to iOS 10, your Messages app is way more than a texting app. Way, way more. Now that the official release of iOS 10 is out, here’s your guide to using all the new features in Messages, from sending full-screen effects to installing your third-party iMessage apps from your favorite services like Venmo, ESPN, and OpenTable. The first thing you should know is that the recipient of your messages will need an iPhone, iPod, or iPad running iOS 10, an Apple Watch running watchOS 3, or a Mac running macOS Sierra in order to view them in their full visual glory. Furthermore, these features are exclusively linked to iMessage, so Android users will have a hard time deciphering the animations as well. For users on Android or running a…

Every year, Apple releases the best iPhone ever, but the iPhone 7 feels different somehow. All of its major details leaked ahead of time, not to mention a good handful of rumors about next fall’s iPhone, which could be a major redesign with an OLED screen and no Home button. For now, the iPhone 7 makes minor changes to the phone’s form and bigger improvements to its function. But it adds a couple new annoyances at the same time, which makes the iPhone 7 feel a bit like a beta version of what’s to come. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xzEbATPSy9Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> To watch video above, an internet connection is required. A10 FUSION The biggest advancement is under the hood. At the September event, Apple explained that the A10 Fusion chip…

When you are using Messages, Read Receipts let the person you are communicating with know when you have received and read their message. If, for whatever reason, you want to change this so that you are not sending a read receipt, you can modify it in the Messages app. It’s important to note that this works only if both users on the chat are using Messages, either on the Mac or on an iOS device. Read receipts are not available when you are using Messages and the person you are chatting with is using another platform like Android. HAVE READ RECEIPTS ON ALL THE TIME If you always want to send a read receipt, here’s how to set it in the Messages app. 1. In the Messages app, go to…

Apple Music was heavily criticized for just about everything when it launched last summer, and rightfully so—the app was needlessly complicated to use and handled your purchased songs and streaming library in an opaque, confusing way. So Apple redesigned the Music app in iOS 10, taking all of those critiques to heart. Apple Music cleaned up the clutter, reconsidered the navigation tools, put your library front and center, and added algorithmically created playlists to rival Spotify’s. It’s still not perfect, but the streaming service’s 17 million paying subscribers will have an easier time finding and saving the music they love. BIGGER, BOLDER, BRIGHTER After installing iOS 10, the first thing you’ll notice when you open Apple Music is how much bigger everything is. The fonts are larger and so is…

How to resurrect a Fusion Drive from a destroyed Mac Q: A very long story short, but I’ve an iMac that suffered catastrophic damage in shipment. I’ve extracted the 1TB hard drive and the 128GB SSD from the carcass of the machine, but the rest of it (save the RAM and processor) is rubbish. In the end, I simply want to pull the files off the hard drive, but none of the local computer-repair shops seem to know what to do. Any suggestions? — Christoper Bender A: Apple’s Fusion system is a combination of a high-capacity hard disk drive and a low-capacity but superfast SSD. You can uncouple them and reformat them, but this problem was new to me. He tried mounting the hard drive, but it’s unrecoverable separate from…

When people ask me for the single best reason to upgrade to macOS Sierra, the answer I give them doesn’t involve Siri or Auto Unlock or iCloud Drive. It’s version 2.0 of Photos, the biggest update to Apple’s photo-management utility app since it debuted in the spring of 2015. I’ve been using Photos 2.0 extensively all summer as a part of my testing of macOS Sierra. My six favorite features make Photos almost singlehandedly worth the upgrade to Sierra. IT CAN FIND A ZEBRA IN A HAYSTACK Apple spent a lot of time at its Worldwide Developer Conference this summer promoting the machine-learning algorithm that sits at the heart of Photos for Mac and iOS 10. But you know what? It’s awesome. Apple’s not the first to go down this path—Google…

RAPIDWEAVER 7 ($100, $60 upgrade) offers several smart upgrades to its website-building toolkit. Unfortunately, it also inherits the central limitations of its predecessor. Between the increased price and the features that either aren’t present or cost extra, RapidWeaver 7 still lags the competition. WHAT’S NEW WORKS WELL I truly liked the new features in RapidWeaver 7, particularly the SEO Health Check, which scans your site and then guides you through a checklist of steps that will help your site get noticed by search engines more effectively. (One of those steps involves another new feature: the ability to automatically shrink your site’s CSS and JavaScript files for faster loading.) Each step is clearly explained, and bringing my sample site up to snuff only took a few minutes. RapidWeaver’s publishing engine was…

Apple made the Apple Watch faster with the September release of two new models, the Series 1 and Series 2, which both have powerful dual-core processors. But if you bought an Apple Watch when it launched last year and don’t feel like buying a new one, installing watchOS 3 will go a long way toward making your old device feel new. There are big changes like a brand-new function for the side button, which now pulls up an app dock that launches your most-used apps seven times faster than in watchOS 2. This will completely change the way you interact with your watch. Then there are small tweaks, like automatic run-pausing for workouts, a new way to send messages in the form of Scribble, and activity-focused watch faces to keep…

SwiftGift SwiftGift (free, iPhone only; swiftgift.me) has also updated with an iMessage app. The makers have partnered with an array of brands, including Amazon, Apple, Beats by Dre (so, Apple), and more. You can select a gift, and the recipient will immediately receive a message to “unwrap” it virtually. Once they’ve done that, they can select the time and place to take physical delivery of the item. Now? The entire process can be conducted in iMessage. Cosmic Watch Cosmic Watch ($4, iPhone and iPad; cosmic-watch.com) helps users understand the relationship between time and the apparent movement of stars in the sky. You can use the app to know the current real time of any location on the planet, or to determine planetary positions in the past, present, or future. It’s…

Apple’s Disk Utility is usually the go-to app for reformatting, partitioning, and diagnosing storage devices on your Mac. For many years, the Disk Utility app stayed the same in terms of features and user interface. But that changed (go.macworld.com/ch) with OS X El Capitan; Disk Utility got a major facelift, and it also had its feature set modified. One of the major changes was that Apple removed any ability to set up and configure a redundant array of independent disks (RAID). You had to turn to a third-party app to do so. In macOS Sierra’s Disk Utility (version 16.0, if you’re keeping track), the RAID features are back. Here’s how to set up and configure a software RAID using macOS Sierra’s Disk Utility. You can use Disk Utility if you,…

Fifteen months ago, Apple launched Apple Music, and more than 17 million subscribers are now using the service. But it hasn’t been without problems. The interface Apple offered in iTunes and in the iOS Music app was confusing, and it turned music listening into a chore. Apple paid attention to users’ complaints, and has now released version 2 of Apple Music, to coincide with the release of iOS 10 and its updated Music app (see story on page 141), and iTunes 12.5 (go.macworld.com/it125), which offers a number of tweaks and changes. I’ve been using the new Apple Music for several weeks now, since it was made available to beta testers of Apple’s operating systems. It’s a solid upgrade, with lots of improvements to make the service easier to use, and…

Siri, Universal Clipboard, Auto Unlock with Apple Watch—these are just three of the features that Apple showcases for macOS Sierra, the latest version of the company’s Macintosh operating system that made its debut recently. We go over the marquee features in our review, but there are a few features that go unheralded. We’ll shine a little bit of the spotlight on them in this slideshow. These are less glamourous, but they make your Mac a lot easier to use. MESSAGES: PER-CONVERSATION READ RECEIPTS Instead of having Messages send a read receipt for every conversation, you can do it on a per conversation basis. During a chat session, click on the Details link at the top right of the window. You’ll see information on your chat partner, and below you will…

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER upgrade to Nuance’s Dragon ($300; $150 upgrade), their speech recognition solution. I reviewed version 5 last year, pointing out that “Dragon offers some of the biggest changes since this software was first introduced, both under the hood and on the screen.” Building on the changes made to the speech recognition engine in Dragon 5, Nuance has improved Dragon’s performance across the board. Boasting improvements in accuracy of either 15 or 24 percent (the company has cited both of these numbers), Nuance claims that Dragon offers “up to 99% recognition accuracy.” Naturally, “up to” covers a wide range of results, but this version of Dragon does seem more accurate than version 5. Nuance claims that this version of Dragon leverages “deep learning” to improve accuracy. Reading about this technology,…

When you use the built-in Camera app, the iPhone 7 Plus doesn’t act like it has two distinct cameras each with its own lens. Rather, it shows you a single virtual camera that combines input from two lenses. This is abundantly clear when you use the clever method (suggested by colleague Aurélien Chevaleyrias) of holding your finger over one lens or the other to see what’s really going on. It may surprise you! I performed a number of tests, some of which you can see in this article, in labeled comparisons. And I found that iOS makes a lot of decisions on your behalf to obtain the best-lit photo that has the least blurriness and the least sensor noise, rather than the highest resolution. In other words, it favors a…

PAD & QUILL Currently available for pre-order, the Luxury Pocket Book (iPhone 7 and 7 Plus; $99.95 to $109.95 MSRP; padandquill.com) secures your iPhone 7 in a birch cradle, nestled in a full-grain leather enclosure. With its gorgeous bookbound design, the folio case sports room for up to six credit cards, a photo ID pocket, and an elastic closure that prevents the cover from opening accidentally. The Pocket Book features a thick camera cutout in the back that protects your camera while still allowing you to take photos, and it comes in five color combinations for a personal touch. BOOQ The waterproof Pack Pro (all iPad models; $295 MSRP, same price on Amazon; booqbags.com) is a sleek, rugged backpack that keeps all your gear dry and neatly organized. Made…

Recently I was hiking in the Adirondacks with my iPhone in my pocket when I got caught in a torrential rain storm. I’m not a crazy case guy, so, as is always the, uh, case, my iPhone was naked. I didn’t think it was a problem. I had on a killer Patagonia rain jacket that was supposed to be completely waterproof, including the zippered front pockets, which is where I put my phone when the rains arrived. As it happens, they weren’t waterproof enough (Yeah, Patagonia, I’m looking at you) and my phone took on more than a couple drops of rain. I won’t go into the details of the damage, but I wasn’t worried because I have AppleCare+ (go.macworld.com/acplus) and this was the first time in all my years…

With macOS Sierra, iCloud Drive has the ability to automatically save files saved on your Desktop and in your Documents folder to the cloud. Apple says these are the places where most files are saved, so this feature will be very useful for anyone who uses multiple devices. If you want to rely on this feature, make sure you have enough iCloud Drive storage space. All files saved to Desktop and Documents count against your iCloud Drive storage allocation. For example, if you have 1GB worth of files in your Mac’s Documents folder and you want to save it to iCloud Drive, your allocated storage will take a 1GB hit. Apple provides 5GB of free iCloud Drive storage per Apple ID, and it may not be enough. Here are the…