Table of contents for July 2018 in Macworld

Sometimes it’s fun to think big. Apple as a company usually focuses on products: things that it builds that consumers will end up using. Smartphones, computers, tablets, and so on. While other tech companies sometimes put forth their moonshots—big, costly ideas intended to reshape the world, but which rarely do—Apple generally seems content to operate by pushing the envelope on the here and now. But that doesn’t mean that the company hasn’t got larger ambitions: it just doesn’t talk about them. In many cases, that’s probably because those ideas haven’t yet reached the point of becoming discrete products that the company can create and ship. When you’re taking on a large idea, especially one in an entrenched industry, it can be tough to distill that big idea down to the…

Mounting cloud storage on the desktop is a great idea with a few inherent limitations built in. Bandwidth is the principal concern, because even the speediest internet connections available to consumers aren’t nearly enough to transfer gigabyte-plus sized files as fast as attaching external hard drives to your Mac. Be that as it may, applications like CloudMounter remain a worthwhile utility if you rely on cloud storage. FIRST ONE’S FREE, PAY FOR MORE Plenty has changed since we reviewed the original release of Eltima Software’s promising CloudMounter in 2016. For starters, this ingenious menu bar utility is now free to download and use - as long as you can get by accessing a single Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive account, that is. If you want to access multiple cloud accounts or…

The old Apple adage says it’s never too early to start speculating about the new iPhone. At the time of this writing, we are in May, with a month still to go before Apple’s next major announcements at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and already, the rumors are flying fast and furious about the company’s next unveiling after that. So, as I like to do on occasion, it’s time to round up a few of the most prominent rumors about Apple’s next iPhone and consider how they might affect Apple’s smartphone line. And because every good roundup should have a theme, let’s call this one “Included (or not).” REACH OUT AND 3D TOUCH SOMEONE Cost balancing is always a factor in product design. Yes, Apple may make a big deal…

Anyone who has spent more than a minute in a smart home knows they’re often too smart for their—and your—own good. Elgato wants to bring some simplicity back to our high-tech homes with the Eve Button, a programmable button for controlling smart devices in Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem. Elgato put effort into giving this 2-by-2-by-0.5-inch square an Apple-like appearance with a silver-aluminum-and-black-plastic body with a glossy-black button panel. It’s feather light, and parts of the button panel feel like you could punch through them if you press too hard, but on the whole it’s pretty sturdy. The Eve Button runs on a common CR2032 coin cell battery, and you can track the remaining battery life in the Home app. Oddly, it doesn’t come with any mounting hardware because the Eve Button…

GEOMETRY WARS 3: DIMENSIONS EVOLVED Activision’s Geometry Wars is one of the greatest dual-analog stick showcases ever created, delivering effortlessly (and endlessly) amusing arcade shooting with one stick for movement and the other for firing. Sadly, it doesn’t convert too well to the Siri Remote: Automating firing makes it more manageable, but the tiny touchpad makes movement feel too fidgety. Add in a gamepad, however, and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved ($10) is every bit as brilliant as it is on Xbox and other consoles, with precise and challenging combat that will keep you coming back to improve your high scores. ZEN PINBALL Why would video game pinball need a full gamepad? Zen Pinball (free) is worth experiencing either way, but swiping the Siri Remote’s touchpad just doesn’t give you…

After the writing had been on the wall for years, Apple only recently officially stated that it won’t be producing Wi-Fi base stations anymore. Many of us have relied on the AirPort line as an easy way to handle a number of basic network tasks without learning the vagaries of other hardware. One of those is network file sharing. You can share files from macOS or Windows, but it’s not always convenient or applicable, especially if you (or your family) relies largely on laptops. Another option is network-attached storage (NAS), which are stand-alone file servers that often come with a lot of additional features, and now start in the low hundreds of dollars for “bare” units without any internal drives. Many gateways have just USB 2.0 ports, which supports up to…

Macworld reader Michael Downend is having difficulty ridding his Mac of a utility he no longer desires. He writes: How do I get rid of MacKeeper? I won’t go into why you’d want to, but we get this question frequently. It’s definitely worth going into detail about how to remove MacKeeper completely from your Mac. Versions of MacKeeper made in the last couple of years are actually pretty easy to uninstall, but the process isn’t entirely straightforward. REMOVE MACKEEPER FROM THE MAC MENU BAR If you click on the MacKeeper menu in the Mac’s menu bar you won’t find a Quit command, which might lead you to believe that it can’t be quit. Force-quitting doesn’t seem to work either. To remove the MacKeeper icon from the menu bar: 1. Launch…

From Spotify to Pandora, Amazon Music, Tidal, or any number of other services, there’s no shortage of ways to pipe all the music you could want into your home. Now you have another option, one that doesn’t rely on a smartphone or tablet app. Electric Jukebox’s Roxi is a stand-alone music device that you plug directly into your home theater system or TV. Once installed, the device gives you access to everything from straight-up audio streaming to a sing-along mode. Roxi isn’t Electric Jukebox’s first foray into making a music appliance. The original, eponymous Electric Jukebox was announced in 2015, designed as a Chromecast-like dongle paired with a fancy remote. Three years later, the concept has been revised and revamped as a larger box, with some additional features now sprinkled…

It’s been a long time coming, but having your Mac tell you that some of your apps will stop working brings some immediacy to the issue: If there’s a 32-bit Mac app you rely on to get work done, and it’s no longer being updated, on forthcoming versions of macOS it will only work with compromises, and ultimately it won’t work at all. Don’t fear the death of your old software, my friends. Your current long-in-the-tooth favorites, and old friends you said goodbye to years ago, can live on and still be useful, thanks to the miraculous digital afterlife known as virtualization. A LEGAL HEDGE AGAINST OBSOLESCENCE When you think about emulation (if you think about it at all), it’s probably in the context of downloading software that lets you play…

There’s nothing on the market like the Omni 20 USB-C, a sturdy and well-designed charging pack that has a 73 watt-hour (Wh)/20100 millampere-hour (mAh) capacity. Unfortunately, its particular set of features mean it works best for a specific set of users instead of most laptop owners with USB-C charging ports. Its feature list is quite long. The Omni pack has two USB-C and two USB Type-A ports. It can output 100 watts total from its two USB-C ports simultaneously (max 60W from each one) via Power Delivery (PD) 2.0 support, and recharge its internal batteries at a maximum of 45W total from either port or both ports at once. It also can push up to 15W from both its Type-A ports and at the same time. That high rate of…

Believe it or not, Apple still does not support the iPad with its basic Calculator app. And as much as nerds love their calculator watches, there’s no support for Apple Watch, either. If you want advanced features like graphing or unit conversion, you’re going to need to look elsewhere, too. There are certainly plenty of good reasons to grab a third-party calculator app that supports your iPhone, iPad, and maybe even Apple Watch. Fortunately, there are dozens of calculator apps in the App Store. Unfortunately, there are dozens of calculator apps to consider. We’ve spent some time with the most popular calculator apps to narrow it down to a few choice options. These are our favorite calculator apps for iOS. We’ve spent some time with the most popular calculator apps…

So I’m reaching in my pockets for my AirPods on a train stuffed with grumpy San Francisco commuters, and in the process my keys jostle against my iPhone. The horror, I know. Thing is, my iPhone X is encased in the Wanle Gamers Console For iPhone, which makes my handset look as though it’s cosplaying the Nintendo Game Boy from 1989. The keys accidentally hit the on/off switch. That makes the first 30 tinny, electronic notes of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” burst from the case, even above the clacking rails and roaring echoes. Around 20 pairs of eyes swivel to me as I fight to turn it off, and when I do, I accidentally make it play the startup jingle again. I admit I picked up the Wanle case seeking…

Plenty has already been said (see page 64) about the 20th anniversary of the iMac, the computer that played an instrumental role in bringing Apple back from the brink. But the legacy of the Bondi Blue iMac is still with us in many ways today—not just in the computer that shares its name, but in an overriding philosophy that Apple continues to exemplify across its product line. If you wanted an indication of how Apple would be doing business in 2018, you could do worse than cast back two decades and look at the decisions that it made when it produced that first iMac. (A machine that itself took a page directly out of Apple’s own playbook for the original Macintosh back in 1984.) The line is anything but subtle.…

As I write this, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is right around the corner, and we all have our lists of things we’re hoping to see: better Siri, a modular Mac, a cheaper HomePod, Face ID on the iPad Pro. But there’s one product in desperate need of an update that would instantly generate an extended applause break from the keynote crowd. No, I’m not talking about the Mac mini. I’m talking about iCloud. iCloud has been a bone of contention for Apple users ever since its debut at WWDC 2011. A replacement for the MobileMe paid service—which replaced .Mac, which replaced iTools—iCloud was supposed to be the free online storage we all wanted. Like the services of yore, it included backup, email, and online storage starting at 5GB and going up…

Google announced in mid-May that its long-rumored new YouTube Premium streaming service would begin rolling out on May 22, bringing music and video together under one roof. But as with all things Google, it might not be music (or video) to everyone’s ears. There are actually two new services at play here: YouTube Music Premium for $10 a month, which is basically Google Play Music, and YouTube Premium for $12 a month, which is basically YouTube Red, but the more expensive option is the main appeal. But is it worth switching over from Apple Music? Here are 4 reasons why YouTube Premium is a worthy competitor to Apple Music (and four reasons why it’s not): 4 REASONS WHY YOUTUBE PREMIUM IS A BETTER ALTERNATIVE TO APPLE MUSIC 1. It will have…

HOW TO GET RID OF A PERSISTENT MACOS MESSAGES BADGE ICON The badge that can appear on selected apps in the macOS Dock is a helpful reminder that you’ve got something that requires attention. But when the badge “sticks” and continues to remain in place even after you’ve carried out your task? It’s a persistent itch you want to scratch. This can happen in the Messages app, as I discovered recently after texting myself a link when I couldn’t get the oh-so-reliable AirDrop to work between my phone and computer. The link arrived, but the badge wouldn’t disappear. Closing the conversation in the list in the left of the Messages window didn’t help. Nor did quitting the app. I tried a suggestion many forum posters around the Apple universe of…

Inspired by a Bloomberg report that Apple may introduce a way for iOS apps to be converted to run more easily on macOS, I recently came up with a list of iOS apps that I’d like to see on the Mac. After Apple’s Chicago event in March to launch the new iPad, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to an Australian writer and told him that rumors of merging the Mac and iOS weren’t true. I was maybe ten feet away from them when this happened, and it was a media scrum—not the kind of place where a CEO does anything but restate the existing company line. (In the same conversation Tim Cook literally said “I use everything and I love everything.”) I’m not entirely convinced that Apple’s long-term approach to its…

NAIM AUDIO UNITI ATOM Naim Audio has built support for almost every music source you can think into its glorious Uniti Atom all-in-one music streamer, which houses a high-end Burr-Brown DAC and a 40-watt Class AB amplifier. It can stream music from a network server, pull music from an attached USB storage device, receive music from Bluetooth sources, connect to internet radio stations, Spotify, and Tidal Hi-Fi, and it supports Apple AirPlay. And the the Atom sounds every bit as wonderful as you’d hope a $3,000 audio streamer would.— MICHAEL BROWN TRIPP LITE TLP1008TEL SURGE PROTECTOR The Tripp Lite TLP1008TEL is the best and affordable 10-outlet option for a surge protector that cuts off power when its internal protection has failed across any of the electrical paths that provide power.…

Steve Jobs wanted the iMac G3 to look “good enough to lick,” so there’s good reason to believe that he’d like the deliciously cool limited edition Classic C1 cases Spigen made for the iPhone X. All five cases riff off the “flavored” colors of the late ’90s rig that reinvigorated Apple—right down to Bondi Blue—and they’re the subject of a 30-day Indiegogo campaign that launched in mid-May. Prefer your nostalgia served a little more freshly? The popular case maker is also introducing a similarly designed “Classic One” case for the iPhone X that resembles the first-generation iPhone from 2007. So far, they’re the best way to celebrate the iMac G3’s 20th anniversary that I’ve seen apart from reading articles or temporarily swapping out your newfangled aluminum iMac for the colorful rig of…

Tiny Bubbles There’s no shortage of cute, color-matching puzzle games on the App Store, but Tiny Bubbles still finds a unique hook in a very familiar genre. Here, you’ll manipulate clusters of soap bubbles, which carry different colors and must be paired up in bundles of four or more before they can be popped. Luckily, Tiny Bubbles doesn’t stop there. Homo Machina The human body is an incredible machine comprised of interconnected systems, which work in harmony to perform so many vital tasks. But what if that machine wasn’t built of bones and tissue and guts, but instead of levers, gears, and an army of microscopic people trying to keep everything in check? That’s the premise behind the brain-tickling Homo Machina. Eden Obscura Here’s another game with a chill, easygoing vibe, albeit in…

I was working at home when I got the message: The entire Macworld editorial staff needed to gather in a conference room in a couple of hours. Apple had announced something huge and we needed to react immediately. STOP THE PRESSES! It was May 1998 and I was working as a features editor at Macworld magazine—and in those days, magazines were superheroes and websites were their plucky sidekicks. Monthly magazines had a relatively leisurely schedule, but the day the iMac was announced, Macworld was in the midst of “close”—the one week where we finalized every single page in the magazine, back to front, and transmitted them to our printing press in the Midwest. We needed to get the iMac in that issue. Back in those days, far more people would get…

Somewhere in my basement I have an original graphite AirPort Base Station. It’s one of the few non-working Apple products I couldn’t bring myself to recycle, and the reason is two-fold. One, it’s one of Apple’s best designs. In an age where routers were ugly boxes with giant antennas, Apple’s curved base station really did look like a UFO. Even after it stopped working, I kept it on my shelf for years. The other reason is its history. Even more than the iPhone, iMac, iPad, and iPod, the AirPort Base Station is, to me, the greatest example of Steve Jobs’s genius. The original AirPort wasn’t a product for Apple’s power users, it was made for consumers at a time when wireless networking in homes was a foreign concept. It boiled…

Creative Technology’s Aurvana Trio balanced-armature, in-ear monitors are a strong value, offering features you typically won’t find in a pair of headphones selling for $150. Creative bills them as audiophile quality with a hybrid triple-driver system. A pair of balanced-armature drivers handle the midrange and high frequencies, while a bio-cellulose dynamic driver handles the bass. Creative rates the Aurvana Trio’s frequency response as going down as low as 5Hz and all the way up to 40kHz; however, these headphones’ average dynamics won’t reproduce the full musical excitement and engagement those numbers imply. If you’re not familiar with balanced-armature architecture, it relies on an electrical signal to vibrate a small reed or paddle thousands of times per second. The reed is “balanced” between two magnets, hence the name “balanced armature.” Armature…