Table of contents for May 2019 in Macworld

Following news of new iPads, Apple revealed upgrades for its iMac lineup, featuring eighth-generation Intel Core processors in the standard configurations, with the option to upgrade to a ninth-generation processor. The price points of the standard configuration models remain unchanged. Apple is currently taking orders from the new iMac, but it won’t ship or be available in the Apple Store until next week. 21.5-INCH iMAC Apple has three standard configurations of the 21.5-inch iMac, and Apple is changing two of the three configurations. The $1,099 iMac stays the same, with a seventh-generation 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, a 1TB hard drive, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640, and a 1920x1080 display. The new $1,299 iMac features an eighth-generation 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of memory, a 1TB hard drive, 2GB…

We’re teetering on the edge of an embarrassment of Apple riches. The company recently officially announced the dates of the 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference, and many eyes are already fixed on that point, which will be here in early June. Apple’s March event, which saw announcements about multiple Apple services like Apple News+, enhancements to Apple Pay, Apple Arcade, and Apple TV+, will almost certainly pale in comparison to WWDC, which is probably the most significant event in Apple’s calendar. Yes, the September launch of new iPhones and attendant devices may get more attention, but WWDC is where the company sets its agenda for the year—or years—to come. Though WWDC is still a month away, it’s never too early to start thinking about where Apple may be looking to focus…

WaterField Designs makes a big deal out of the fact that it crafts its bags here in San Francisco; in fact, you’ll find our fair city’s name subtly stamped on the leather of its new $229 Sutter Slim Backpack. That’s par for the course with WaterField, but I find it’s particularly apt in this case. I like to think that the Sutter’s canvas and leather exterior evokes the foggy city’s rough-and-tumble origins, while its embrace of smart design and utilitarian minimalism characterizes its present. It’s even named for one of the key figures of the Gold Rush. Tech, naturally, lies at the heart, and so WaterField’s latest release has slots for any portable Apple device or accessory you might toss inside. And much like San Francisco, it’s kind of small.…

Samsung just took the wraps off its latest Galaxy S10 phones, along with an intriguing new folding phone/tablet called the Galaxy Fold. They were all the internet could talk about recently, and with good reason: there’s some legitimately cool stuff there. But none of them present the existential threat to Apple. In fact, they probably won’t have a measurable impact on iPhone or iPad sales at all. The greatest threat to continued sales of Apple products is Apple, not the threat of a superior product from Samsung. ‘MUST-HAVE’ FEATURES ARE OFTEN OVERESTIMATED The general thrust of the annual “Apple needs to worry about these new Samsung phones” punditry goes something like this: These Samsung phones have more features for the same money! That’s not wrong. The $750 Galaxy S10e is priced…

Added in iOS 9, Wi-Fi Assist recognizes when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, but have a poor or erratic signal. When this happens, Wi-Fi Assist kicks over automatically to cellular for foreground apps to keep data flowing. This feature is enabled by default. Wi-Fi Assist automatically excludes third-party audio and video streaming, and doesn’t relay data from apps working in the background. Nonetheless, some users wound up with surprising cellular bills when they thought they were on Wi-Fi networks—it turned out Wi-Fi Assist used cellular data because the Wi-Fi connections were marginal. (U.S. carriers have largely switched to a fixed or flexible monthly maximum after which your cellular data rate is throttled to a very slow speed, so surprise bills are less likely.) WHEN A WI-FI NETWORK FAILS But Apple…

THE APPLE TV+ VIDEO STREAMING SERVICE: 8 BURNING QUESTIONS At long last, Apple has taken the wraps off of its new TV service. It’ll be called Apple TV+ and will include a variety of shows from the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Kevin Durant, and Rupert Grint. Several of the major players were on hand at the event to outline their vision, and Apple basically billed the service as the greatest collection of talent ever assembled on television. But after the songs, standing ovations, and flowery rhetoric was complete, we didn’t learn much about Apple’s new service that we didn’t already know. It may be the first time Apple has confirmed that it is indeed working on its own original content, but that was hardly…

When people roll out wish lists of things they want Apple to do to its products, they’re often focused on brand-new features. We all like new features, sure, but part of me worries that while the focus is on the shiny, the basics—the software that we’re all using every day—gets ignored. In particular, I’m really ready for Apple to tackle that old standby: Mail. I know: email’s dead, supplanted by a myriad of other means of digital communication. Except, for many of us, email is still something that we’re attached to when it comes to corresponding with people, signing up for accounts, and archiving or doing a to-do list. Apple expended a lot of effort developing tools in iOS 12 that let us spend less time on our devices by…

If you aren’t someone who is part of the podcast business (disclosure: I make the majority of my income from podcasting), you might not realize that Apple is the dominant player in the field. That dominance is driven by two factors: its definitive directory of podcasts, and the built-in iOS Podcasts app, which drives the majority of podcast listening on the planet. The slow shift from radio to on-demand audio continues, and companies are noticing. Investment in podcast companies is up, listening is growing, and the podcast advertising market continues to expand. Yet despite its dominance, Apple seems strangely uninterested in podcasting. IT STARTED WITH THE iPOD Apple reached this point because in 2005 it noticed that people were going to great lengths to load the first podcasts onto its…

STUCK IN MACOS RECOVERY WITH A LANGUAGE YOU DON’T SPEAK? HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO TO FIX THIS When you start up a Mac while holding down Command-R on the keyboard, the Mac boots into macOS Recovery. In this mode, you can run Disk Utility, access the command-line Terminal app, and reinstall the operating system. But what do you do if you restart your Mac into Recovery mode and a language appears other than one you know? This doesn’t seem to happen at random, but it can occur when you’ve purchased a computer from someone who installed the system using another language, which can remain in place in the Recovery partition, a separately organized part of your startup drive. Fortunately, there are a few ways to resolve this. > Choose…

The current iMac design is positively ancient, by computer design standards. The 27-inch Retina iMac, with its slim design and 5K resolution, was launched in the fall of 2014. It was really only a small tweak on the existing “slim unibody” iMac that dates back to 2012, itself only a thinner version of the unibody iMac design that goes back to 2009. The basic look and physical features of the iMac have barely changed in a decade. It’s a testament to the elegance of the design that it’s still desirable after all that time, but it’s well past time for a change. Recently, Apple updated the iMac line (see page 7) with new internal hardware, but the design and features remain fundamentally unchanged. We can’t tell you what a new…

As one of the world’s richest and most admired companies, we expect a lot from Apple. We expect big-thinking innovation and cutting-edge design. Perhaps it is because the company does so many things very well that it stings even more when it drops the ball on something simple. Everyone seems to agree that Siri needs to improve, or that MacBooks should have a totally new and better keyboard. But those are big design and engineering efforts that are not going to happen overnight. Here are a few things Apple could do with minimal effort. Some could happen immediately, others might start with the introduction of the next product in its line, but none would require serious engineering efforts or investment. While some of these ideas may cost Apple a few…

PURO SOUND LABS PUROQUIET Puro Sound Labs develops high-quality headphones for kids that help protect their hearing. Puro Sound claims that the PuroQuiet limits the output level to no more than 85dB Sound Pressure Level (SPL), and our test results found that these headphones performed well below 85dB SPL much of the time. The active noise cancellation works very well at reducing the level of low-frequency ambient noise, and it also significantly improves the sound quality. —SCOTT WILKINSON AMAREY A800 The A800 is a bare-bones budget robot vacuum that delivers a cleaning performance on a par with some of its more expensive competitors. The A800 uses a single roller brush and two spin brushes for cleaning. It has powerful 1400Pa suction power, which pairs with a triple-filter system for ensuring…

Samsung just took the wraps off its latest Galaxy S10 phones. When I first heard that Samsung was making a folding phone, I was excited. The idea that a phone could turn into a tablet intrigued me, and I closely followed the development of Samsung’s display technology leading up to the launch of the Galaxy Fold. Then I saw the Fold, and, well, my excitement waned. After dreams of giant screens opening to gianter screens, the Galaxy Fold has some clear first-gen compromises. The outside display is only 4.6-inches, which is laughably small for a 2019 smartphone (sorry iPhone SE lovers). It opens to a 7.6-inch screen that has a giant notch on the right side for the cameras. And it looks like it’s thicker than two iPhones stacked on top…

Hook up any latter-day iPhone to the Gamevice and you’ll wind up with a device that looks a lot like a Nintendo Switch. An iPhone XS Max in particular does a good job of masquerading as the Switch’s expansive central touchscreen. The Gamevice controllers themselves hug the phone’s edges like Joy-Cons. So fully does the Gamevice pull off the illusion that I spent the week before its arrival envisioning a future where we wouldn’t even need devices like the Switch. With the help of peripherals like these, I was ready to proclaim, the iPhone alone would suffice. Naturally, the truth is a bit more complicated, which is probably why we haven’t heard about a Gamevice revolution in the six years since it launched. But let’s start out with the good things.…

Samsung announced its new Galaxy Buds true wireless earphones recently, and they’re obviously designed for Samsung’s own Galaxy phones. (As a neat trick, you can even use the upcoming Galaxy S10 to charge the Galaxy Buds.) In design and price, though, Samsung is clearly attempting to make these little guys an attractive alternative to Apple’s AirPods—perhaps even for iPhone users. So are they? We managed to get our hands on a pair of Galaxy Buds ahead of the March 7 release date, and I formed a few impressions of how well they work with an iPhone XS Max. In some cases, yes, they actually come out ahead. In others, they’re a reminder that the AirPods are a far greater value than we often give them credit for. PRICE The…

SSDs (solid-state drives) offer extremely reliable, fast, and consistent performance over many, many years. They aren’t subject to problems that can harm even the best-designed modern hard-disk drives (HDDs): exposure to magnetic fields or the failure of moving parts inside the drives. But SSDs remain expensive many years after they first appeared. Nearly all other aspects of computation—from processors to RAM to LCDs—have dropped dramatically in price while improving in quality and performance year after year. SSDs initially followed that curve, especially for lower-capacity drives, but tapered way off. The cost of manufacturing higher-capacity memory chips used in SSDs hasn’t dropped much in recent years. That means a 1TB SSD for a laptop can still cost $300 to $400, while a similar HDD can be bought for under $100. In…

Not everyone wants to spend $100 or more on a pair of Bluetooth earphones. Perhaps you’d rather save that cash for dinner with your partner, or maybe you’re hard on your belongings and lose track of them. For that matter, you may not see the point in spending so much coin for an accessory that you’ll maybe use, at best, for a few hours a week at the gym. For you, “good enough” may be good enough. If any of this sounds familiar, Aukey’s EP-B40 Latitude Wireless Earbuds might be a good fit. While they suffer from a number of irritating shortcomings, they sound far better than a pair of $28 earphones have any right to. DESIGN Bluetooth earphones sold for under $60 often look cheap because, well, they are cheap.…

Did Google just save Mac gaming? The Mountain View company never mentioned Apple during the reveal of its Stadia game streaming service at the Game Developers Conference, but Stadia sounds all but tailor-made for Mac users. A service that lets you stream games from a remote server straight to your browser! The ability to play the latest games without needing to invest in fancy eGPUs, graphics cards, and yes—even PCs! Even in 2019, so much of this still sounds like science fiction. I love my Mac, but necessity compels me to keep a massive PC running at home so I can play graphically intensive games like The Division 2 or Devil May Cry 5 when they release. As we all know, many of these games never come to the Mac at…

HDR is a specialized form of photography designed to expose details in both the highlights and shadows of a scene by merging multiple versions of the same image shot at different exposures. It’s hard to do HDR right without overdoing it, especially if your aim is a photorealistic image. The brain sees what the camera sensor cannot capture, and HDR techniques compensate by creating the image you saw in your mind’s eye. The 2019 version of Aurora HDR features a new Quantum HDR engine with artificial intelligence–based tone mapping technology. This facilitates more efficient photo merging to produce natural results that don’t look contrived—unless you want them to. A New Smart HDR Structure feature delivers more precise details and realistic sharpness without artifacts, noise, or halos. The software runs as a…

Surprise! Apple has announced updated models of the iPad Air and the iPad mini. Some of us gave up on seeing new versions of these models, but suddenly they’re available for purchase. We should have our hands on the new tablets soon, but we wanted to give you a quick rundown on what’s new and what remains the same for both iPads. iPAD AIR: WHAT’S NEW Let’s kick off with what’s new with the iPad Air, which we thought was effectively replaced with the 10.5-inch iPad Pro in 2017. In essence, this is the iPad Air 3, but much as with the iPad mini, Apple’s dropping the numerals. It’s now just the iPad Air. The price sees a welcome change, as Apple now sells it for a starting price of…

Oftentimes, new technologies can seem like solutions in search of problems. And while Apple isn’t above those kinds of moves, it also often finds itself ahead of the curve, pushing technologies with a lot of potential before the world at large is ready for them. Apple Pay has, since its introduction, tended toward the latter. It’s a system that offers real tangible advantages over the status quo; the ability to pay with your iPhone or your Apple Watch offers not only more convenience than paying with a physical card but also bestows much needed security on every transaction. It’s become more and more popular, but there are still lots of places where you can’t yet use it. Of course, much of Apple Pay’s adoption isn’t entirely under Apple’s control. Some…

So you want to do your part to help improve the environment without giving up the luxuries technology affords you? So does Nimble. Nimble is a relatively new company whose approach is to design high-quality, well-designed, eco-friendly battery packs and wireless chargers. Each product comes in eco-friendly packaging and includes a bag to recycle old electronics through Nimble for free. The Nimble Stand is covered in fabric made from recycled water bottles & hemp. The fabric face is interrupted by only a small plastic strip toward the bottom, that when pressed from the back pops out to serve as a ledge for your phone. A kickstand folds out from the back, holding your phone at a fairly steep angle. Alternatively, you can lay the stand flat on a surface—a rubber…

USB4 is coming soon, and while it probably won’t mean a whole lot to Mac users, it could have a big impact on the iOS ecosystem. Here’s what we know about the forthcoming spec and what it could mean for Apple’s devices. WHAT IS USB4? Currently, USB4 is just an agreed-upon idea. The USB Promoter Group recently announced the specification, which hasn’t been finalized or published yet. That spec should get published around the middle of this year, and then USB4 devices can start being built, tested, and brought to market. From the announcement, we can get a good sense of what USB4 will be, and it sounds like it’s just USB 3.2 with Thunderbolt 3 and the USB-C connector. The announcement claims: “The USB4 architecture is based on the…

Mid-March this year marked the 30th anniversary of the web, or at least the date that Tim Berners-Lee made a proposal at the Swiss particle physics lab CERN involving the creation of a hypertextual system that would end up becoming the web as we know it today. The history of web browsers on Apple devices takes a lot of twists and turns. Fortunately, I’ve been around for most of them. In fact, my first magazine cover story ever was in July 1996 about the first big browser war. You might be surprised just how much impact Apple has had on the development of the web itself. PREHISTORY: THE FIRST ERA Perhaps most importantly, the first web browser was created on a product that, while not labeled with an Apple logo,…

If you’re looking to block unwanted noise on the plane or in other loud environments so you can concentrate on the tunes, normal headphones won’t cut it—you often have to crank the volume up so loud it becomes unpleasant (and could damage your hearing). What you want are active noise-canceling (ANC) headphones, such as the TaoTronics TT-BH060 ($70 at Amazon). They’re super comfortable, affordable, and, while they don’t eliminate noise entirely, they do reduce the most tiring portions of the spectrum. But these aren’t the best choice for great sound in addition to active noise cancellation. HOW ACTIVE NOISE CANCELING WORKS If you’re not familiar with noise cancellation, here’s how it works. The headphones record ambient noise, reverse its phase, and then play that sound back along with the original…