Содержание выпуска: June 2014 — Macworld

Patrick J. McGovern was initially skeptical about the Mac. The founder and CEO of International Data Group (which in 1983 already owned a rapidly expanding roster of computer-related magazines in the United States and around the world), McGovern had seen Apple launch both the Apple III and the Lisa with little success. So he didn’t know why he should believe that the company’s next new machine would be any more popular, and he didn’t know why anyone would want to start up a magazine about it. But David Bunnell was a believer. The founding editor of both PC Magazine and PC World, Bunnell had wanted to launch an Apple-focused magazine ever since visiting the US Festival (sponsored by Apple’s Steve Wozniak) in 1983. Apple, Bunnell realized at that point, “made…

Jony Ive’s move to the head of software design bore its first fruit last year with the launch of iOS 7, which shook up some established Apple design conventions and broke a long pattern of focused iteration in a company not known for its wild mood swings. What can we expect to see next? We have a few clues. TRANSFORMING iOS From the first iPhone OS, Apple’s mobile design style has been to make digital things look like real things by employing clear lines, friendly gradients, and deep shadows. This overt physicality, or skeuomorphism, had its roots in Mac app design but flourished on the iPhone and iPad, where “pressing a button” meant literally pressing your finger against something. As iOS thrived, many of these embellishments of literalism found their…

THE ADAM AUDIO F5 Active Nearfield Monitor is the smallest model in the F-Series family, which caters to the entry-level pro audio market. Each unit sports Adam’s X-ART tweeter and a 5-inch, glass-fiber/paper woofer. Separate 25-watt amplifiers power each driver. You can switch the power supply between 115 and 220 volts. On the back are an RCA jack and an XLR/TRS jack, as well as knobs for adjusting the volume and for controlling the level of high-shelf (above 5kHz) and low-shelf (below 400Hz) frequency ranges, with each of those adjustable to ±6 dB. You’ll also find a Highpass Filter switch that offers Flat and 80 Hz options. Measuring 7.5 by 9.0 by 11.5 inches and weighing 15 pounds each, two F5 units will dominate a small desk. But if you…

EVERYONE HAS beefs with Apple’s iCloud service. One of my biggest frustrations is that many of iCloud’s most convenient features require you to use Apple’s apps. For instance, take iCloud Tabs, the feature that automatically syncs any open Safari tabs across all of your OS X and iOS devices. The important word here is Safari: iCloud Tabs doesn’t support other browsers. But this is where third-party developers can help you out. The CloudyTabs utility, which requires OS X 10.8.2 or later, lets you liberate a little bit of iCloud. It provides a simple systemwide menu that, at a click, displays all your iCloud Tabs, organized by the device hosting each tab. Each open-tab entry displays the tab’s webpage title and favicon. Choosing any item in the menu opens that tab—and…

IBANK 5 IS A best-of-class app that continues to add features and value. Setup is especially easy with IGG Software’s optional Direct Access service ($5 per month, $13 per quarter, or $40 per year), which connects to your banking institutions and downloads your transactions. You may also enter your data, and import Microsoft Money or Quicken files that you’ve downloaded from your bank. You then have to match your transaction data to expense categories. iBank is a quick study, capable of matching future transactions from the same vendors to the categories you specified. The Library list shows your accounts and gives access to reports and budgeting tools. Transactions show in a ledger to the right. A summary of how much money you have and how much you owe appears at…

What We’re Raving About This Month LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 LaCie’s Little Big Disk has always offered a lot of storage in a compact, portable case, but now it’s equipped with Thunderbolt 2 support to take full advantage of the speed that the latest Thunderbolt specification has to offer. The storage device comes with a 1TB solid-state drive and a three-year limited warranty (lacie.com).—ROMAN LOYOLA SAMSON METEORITE Samson’s new $130 USB condenser microphone connects directly to your Mac (or with an adapter, to your iOS device). Plug-andplay with no drivers required, it works right out of the box, ready to help you make music or create CD-quality audio for your podcasts (samsontech.com).—JOEL MATHIS METEOEARTH 1.1 MeteoGroup’s $5 MeteoEarth app shows you the weather as you’ve never seen it…

An appeals court in California ruled that it is legal for drivers to hold their phone to look at a map application while driving, though they are prohibited from “listening and talking” on the phone unless they use it in a hands-free mode. When stopped in heavy traffic, Steven R. Spriggs held his mobile phone in his hand to use a mapping app. A California Highway Patrol officer gave him a traffic citation for violating Vehicle Code section 23123 (a), which states that a “person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving” (go.macworld.com/dmv). Spriggs contested the citation, and a Fresno County Superior Court traffic…

A FOLLOW-UP to the original Eliss by Steph Thirion, Eliss Infinity is elegant in its own way, though retro in appearance: all raw pixels, plain lines, and flat colors, like a pastel-tinged Asteroids. But restful it’s not. Beyond the first few levels, Eliss Infinity turns into a frenetic multitasking seizure of a game, with your fingers dancing madly across the screen like overworked spiders. You’re sorting and destroying planets. Vividly colored orbs appear from time to time, sometimes slowly, often in a mad rush, and seemingly at random. You can move them around with a finger swipe, bump them into other planets of the same color to meld them, or split them into smaller planetoids with a reverse pinch. If two planets of different colors touch, jagged red isobars appear…

HAVE ENOUGH STRESS in your life? Looking for a way to relax? Thomas Bowker’s Lyne is a puzzle game catering to stressed-out iOS gaming fans. Lyne is a universal app suitable for both iPhone and iPad, although its bite-size, one-thumb gameplay makes more sense on the iPhone’s smaller screen. Each level presents a grid of triangles, diamonds, and squares in pastel colors, plus a few octagonal junction boxes. By tracing your finger across the screen, you draw a line connecting all of the yellow triangles, starting and ending your route with the heavier-bordered end blocks. Then you draw another line connecting all of the red squares, and so on. You can use each connecting line only once and touch each shape only once, and you also have to pass through…

MOST PLASTIC accessories for iOS devices are uninspiring, and the few exciting ones tend to be shoddily made. At this year’s Macworld/iWorld, however, I found an exception: the Pocket Tripod. It’s an impeccably machined plastic contraption the size of a business card that cleverly tilts, swivels, and pivots to turn into a sturdy, secure cradle for your iPhone. It’s a flat piece of plastic 2.3mm thick, with cutouts on the edges. Twist the card 180 degrees and flip the sides up, and you get a tiny portraitorientation iPhone stand. Twist the Tripod 45 degrees and pull its center apart, and you have a landscape stand. In this orientation, it’s slightly flimsier because of the separation of the pieces, but it still holds your iPhone securely. Portrait and landscape orientations are…

For all the talk about cloud this and Web app that, the fact remains that, for many of us, using a Mac at work means using an office suite such as Microsoft Office, iWork, or Google Docs. Some of us like to take pride in our accumulated expertise when it comes to using our spreadsheet, word processor, or presentation program of choice. But many of us also harbor a sneaking suspicion that we don’t know everything we could or should know about those work-critical apps. So we asked three of the smartest office-app users we know— Rob Griffiths (spreadsheets), Jeffery Battersby (word processors), and Franklin N. Tessler (presentations)—to come up with a list of the things they think every savvy user of those apps should know how to do: Not…

Whether you’re a student preparing a class assignment or a rising executive trying to impress your CEO, you’ll have to go beyond the basics if you want your computer-based slideshows to stand out. While teaching people how to use presentation software over the years, I’ve identified seven techniques that I think everyone should have in their arsenal—but that even some experienced presenters often seem to miss. Here’s how those techniques work in Apple’s Keynote 6.2, Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011, or Google Docs. 1. USE MASTER SLIDES You’re on your way to the conference room when you suddenly realize that you used your company’s old logo throughout your 120-slide presentation. If you were using slide masters, you’d be just a few clicks away from fixing them all. Any changes you…

SET UP THE HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, AND WORKFLOW YOU NEED. The practical details include choosing a microphone (at the very least) and selecting recording software. You also need to figure out a workflow, which may include a way to record remote guests. JASON SNELL For the first 150 episodes of his podcast (he’s now up to 185), Snell recorded while sitting in his bed, eventually adding a tripod on the floor so that he didn’t have to cradle the microphone on his stomach. His first mic was a Blue Microphones Snowball, but he switched to a Yeti (bluemic.com/yeti), which has a headphone jack; with it, he can hear not only his own voice but also the audio from his computer with everyone else’s voice. Snell recently set up office space in…

With clever features and fresh ideas, several email clients are mounting a serious challenge to Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. But identifying the best email client for your particular needs is harder than ever. We’ve found one strong program that nicely mixes features, usability, and value for a wide range of users—along with several other programs that cater to more-specialized preferences. Our favorite program is Postbox 3, but three alternatives—Inky, Mail Pilot, and Unibox—are also excellent. POSTBOX 3 Admittedly, Postbox 3 (4.0/4.0; $10; go.macworld.com/postbox3) isn’t the newest or sleekest candidate in this roundup. Rather than adopting a slick iOS-like look, it hews more closely to the traditional Mac look and feel. But its combination of reliable performance, smart design, and impressive features makes it the program Apple Mail ought to…

OS X has a set of systemwide text-manipulation tools, but they aren’t necessarily easy to find, and their functions may not be obvious in some instances. Right-click or <Control>-click in an app’s editing window to see the available tools. Some of these settings are also available from the Edit menu. Here’s a look at some of the menu items below the familiar Cut, Copy, and Paste options. Fonts: From the Font menu, you can choose the font for your document (Show Fonts) and set formatting, such as Bold and Italic. You can also use styles—preset combinations of font, size, and formatting—with some text editors. Spelling and Grammar: To toggle OS X’s spelling checker and grammar checker on or off, select the Spelling and Grammar menu and then select the appropriate…

To celebrate the 3000-strip anniversary of his webcomic Diesel Sweeties (dieselsweeties.com), cartoonist Rich Stevens decided to construct a 3300-page ebook using Apple’s iBooks Author (go.macworld.com/ibooksauthor). I asked Stevens about building ebooks, the beauty of the PowerBook 190cs, and the future of Apple touchscreen desktops. Q: So, your first Mac… A: Heh, which one? My first Apple was a IIgs that my mom got us when I was a kid. My first real Mac was a used SE I bought in high school. The first computer in my unbroken chain of Photoshopping Macs was a PowerBook 190cs that I got in college. I worked as a mailman the summer after my freshman year and bought it on clearance with the money. It had 8 megs of RAM! I could run QuarkXPress.…

SEARCH THE WEB FROM AN iOS CONTEXTUAL MENU On the Mac, you can search Google for a given selection of text from almost any app: After selecting the text, you open a contextual menu (by <Control>-clicking or right-clicking) and choosing Search Google for “[Selected Text]”. A similar but lesser-known trick in iOS brings about the same result. Select some text in Safari, for example, and then tap the selection to summon the context menu. Tap Define, which brings up the dictionary panel for the selected text. If you’ve selected a word that’s not in the dictionary, or if you’ve selected multiple words, on the bottom right you should see a Search Web option. Tapping it opens a new browser tab to a search on Google (or whatever search engine you’ve…

Although Apple released its redesigned Mac Pro near the end of last year, high demand quickly pushed the systems’ estimated ship date to February 2014 and beyond. Now, finally, we’ve received the two base machines—the entry-level model and the high-end stock model—in the Macworld Lab. Priced at $2999, the least-expensive Mac Pro has a single quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor running at 3.7GHz, 256GB of PCIe-connected flash storage, 12GB of RAM, and dual AMD D500 graphics with 2GB of VRAM each. The $3999 high-end Mac Pro ships with a single six-core Intel Xeon E5 running at 3.5GHz, 256GB of flash storage, 16GB of RAM, and dual AMD D500 graphics with 3GB of video RAM each. Despite the existence of the two stock configurations, the new Mac Pro is really meant…

Green America, a Washington, D.C.– based nonprofit group, and The Nation magazine launched a campaign in March intended to persuade consumers to boycott Apple products unless the company changes its production and supply-chain operations. A key message of the campaign is that it would cost only $1 for Apple to substitute out benzene and n-hexane, two of the most toxic chemicals used in its supply chain. Green America derived the figure from industry insiders’ “best guess” as to the cost involved, says Elizabeth O’Connell, Green America campaign director. The campaign is asking Apple to create a healthcare fund for workers who have fallen sick while assembling products, allegedly due to poisoning from those two chemicals, as well as to improve conditions in general. The campaign is also asking consumers to…

WAY BACK, when I was in the sixth grade, my family couldn’t afford a computer, but my teachers started to assign papers that students would have to type on a typewriter or neatly write by hand. Both were painful processes that led to sheet after sheet of paper weighed down with dried correction fluid. Then my best friend Ed got a word processor—not a full computer, but a machine built for typing documents. Ed let me use that word processor. The 9-inch CRT display had green, pixelated text on a black background. To me it seemed heaven-sent. Blinky reminds me of that good ol’ word processor. This bare-bones text editor has no writing features, such as a spelling checker or find-andreplace. Rather, it’s all about writing as if you were…

GETTING STUFF from your iPhone or iPad over to your Mac—and vice versa—is a pain. Sure, you have plenty of ways to sync or share files, but each of those approaches works for just one type of data. (Apple’s AirDrop handles many kinds of data, but it doesn’t work between OS X and iOS.) DeskConnect seeks to solve that problem, and by and large it does a good job. Once you install the free DeskConnect apps for Mac and iOS on your devices and set up a free account, you can share photos, webpages, document files, Contacts phone numbers, and clipboard contents between the two platforms. (DeskConnect also has some Automator and AppleScript support for advanced uses.) On the Mac, for instance, you can drag a file from the Finder…

THE TOMB RAIDER games have long shown off the acrobatics and survival skills of Lara Croft. But how did she get that way? In the new Tomb Raider, Square Enix reboots the series to give us an origin story for Lara, an eager adventurer thrust into extraordinary circumstances. (The game was released last year for Windows PCs and consoles. Feral Interactive is behind the Mac version.) Her journey is emotional and engaging throughout the 18 to 20 hours it may take you to finish. Gameplay is a mix of exploring, combat, and puzzle solving. Part of the appeal comes from how well Lara is animated; the rest is due to good level design. Lara has a few weapons at her disposal, the most versatile of which is her longbow; she…

In the grand scheme of things, iOS 7.1 isn’t an earth-shattering update (go.macworld.com/ios71), especially coming on the heels of iOS 7’s massive redesign. That’s not to say the latest upgrade to Apple’s mobile operating system is uninteresting, however. Here are a few changes that have our staff applauding—or griping. GOOD-BYE, FREQUENT CRASHES If there’s one thing about iOS 7 that I came to detest over the past few months, it was the random crashes on my iPhone 5s. It crashed on websites. It crashed on the multitasking screen. It crashed when I was scrolling through tweets, turning on Bluetooth, and playing music. But my iPhone 5s has been speedier and happier since I installed the update, humming along with nary a hitch.—SERENITY CALDWELL FACETIME NOTIFICATIONS A tweak to FaceTime notifications…

Bellabeat With the $129 Bellabeat system (go.macworld.com/bellabeat), you can monitor the heartbeat of your unborn child. Plug the sensor into a phone and put it on the mother-to-be’s belly, and the device will relay the information to your phone, where you can track the heartbeat, keep a record of your baby’s kicks, and maintain a prenatal diary. ROAR The Roar (go.macworld.com/roar) is a Bluetooth-enabled five-driver speaker system for the home. Creative says it has designed the device to offer the sound quality of a home stereo system in a light and portable package. The Roar includes a microphone for use as a speakerphone when paired with your iOS device. Creative plans to price the Roar below $200. It should ship by the time you read this. FLIPSTAND 2 Priced at…

I’VE HAD A Google Voice account for several years. In pre-iMessage days, I found the free texting handy, and I like to make calls from my computer as well as to have incoming calls routed to multiple places. Though Google offers an iOS app for managing a Voice account, I swear by Sean Kovacs’s superior GV Mobile +. GV Mobile + is $3, while Google’s own Voice app is free; if low cost is what floats your boat, then off you go to Google’s app. But if you’re looking for a more pleasant experience when using Google Voice on your iPhone or iPod touch, GV Mobile + is just the ticket. The interface is the major reason to shell out the money. Whereas Google Voice’s design seemingly hasn’t been updated…

I’M A BIG FAN of FiftyThree’s Paper app for freeform sketching, drawing, and even note-taking. It offers a series of digital notebooks in landscape orientation, with remarkably real brush and pen simulations. Each brush costs $2, though you can buy the Essentials pack for $7. The app has a few annoying quirks, however, such as mechanics that use speed to simulate pressure, forcing you to zip across the page with some brushes, and fixed brush sizes, which make the Color tool difficult to use at a small scale. Version 1.6.1 attempts to address those issues and gives Paper a slight redesign for iOS 7. The tweaks consist mostly of small adjustments: flatter menus, smootherlooking tools, and the like. This update also adds automatic brush size adjustments for the Eraser, Color,…

WHEN I’M NOT writing about apps, I play roller derby with Boston’s all-star travel team. We practice and scrimmage three to four days a week— and as anyone who has played a contact sport can attest, it beats your body up. I started doing yoga at a studio last year in hopes of fending off the aches. While it helped greatly, I didn’t always have the time or the cash to go. Enter Pocket Yoga. Pocket Yoga offers three vinyasa-based sessions (Ocean, Desert, and Mountain) in 30-, 45-, and 60-minute variations, and two Sun Salutation routines that you can lengthen or shorten. The app splits each session into beginner, intermediate, and expert levels. The illustrated sequences are set in your choice of locale, with a soothing female narrator. The poses…

If your job requires you to do anything substantial with numbers, chances are good that you use a spreadsheet app to do it. For most of us the choice comes down to Microsoft’s Excel 2011, Apple’s Numbers (version 3.2), or the browserbased Sheets portion of Google Docs. Whichever app you use, the question is: How well do you know how to use it, really? I came up with the following list of things that I think every savvy spreadsheet jockey— not beginners, but people who’ve been using one of these apps for a while—should know. I’m not talking about any specific task. Rather, these are the general techniques and concepts that you should know in order to graduate from casual to serious user. (As of this writing, Google was publicly…

Everyone, it seems, has a podcast these days. The iTunes Store alone lists “hundreds of thousands” of them. To produce one yourself and become an online radio star, all you need is a microphone, some software, and a bit of know-how. We asked four veteran podcasters to tell us how they handle podcasting, from preparation to audio capture to editing to sharing. Two are Macworld staffers: Senior Editor Christopher Breen, who produces Macworld’s regular podcast (go.macworld.com/mwpodcast); and Editorial Director Jason Snell, who produces a personal podcast, The Incomparable (5by5.tv/incomparable). We also approached two other experts who, strictly by chance, devote their podcasts to the British sci-fi series Doctor Who: Erika Ensign, of Verity (veritypodcast.com); and Chip Sudderth, of Two-minute Time Lord (twominutetimelord.com). Each podcaster has worked out a method that…

CLEAN UP YOUR PODCAST WITH THE APPROPRIATE SOFTWARE. Once you have captured the audio for your podcast, it’s time to trim it down to size and splice it together. Depending on the kind of podcast you want to produce, you may need to incorporate other audio files into the mix—music, say, or ambient sounds or other effects. JASON SNELL Originally, Snell used GarageBand for editing. But eventually he switched to Logic Pro X (go.macworld.com/logicproxpod), an audio-editing app for music pros that lets him edit the podcast “two to three times faster.” After receiving recorded files from the podcast participants, he uses Call Recorder’s conversion tools to render the files as an uncompressed audio file (AIFF). He then brings each file into Logic as its own track, and uses the Call…

Mail might not be a perfect email client, but it’s the one most of us use. Fortunately, there are things you can do to make it work better. Here are five of my favorite tricks for making Mail more efficient. SWAP THE FIND SHORTCUTS Mail lets you search in either of two ways: through your list of messages (“Where’s that note from my lawyer?”) or inside the current message (“Did he say ‘nolo contendere’?”). The program permits you to use keyboard shortcuts for either type of search, but it assigns the easy (and standard) two-key 1-F combination to the less-common search inside the currently selected message, while using the three-key 1-<Option>-F combination to handle the more common search through the message list. Fortunately, swapping the assigned keystroke combos is easy.…

April 15 may have passed, but there will always be another one—and the financial pain of this year’s recent filing may have served as a fresh reminder of how valuable reliable records of how and where you spent your money over the preceding 12 months can be. Automator can help you create such records. GO WITH THE WORKFLOW With this Automator workflow and the click of a single button, you can create an Excel worksheet containing a record of every 2013 event in the calendar(s) of your choosing. For this to work you must have Microsoft Office 2008 or 2011 Home & Business edition. (The Home & Student edition doesn’t include the Automator actions you need.) Launch Automator. In the resulting chooser window, select Workflow and click Choose. In the…

It’s easy to take silly photos or screenshots on your iPhone, but what happens if you want to get rid of them without having to select each one manually? As a Macworld editor, I take a lot of screenshots on my iPhone for reviews and news articles, and using my Mac and the Image Capture app makes it easy to delete the images I no longer want and to instantly download the ones I do. Plug in your iPhone and open Image Capture. Although Image Capture isn’t flashy, the app quickly recognizes your phone and loads the photos it contains, so you don’t have to depend on a slower app like iPhoto. First and foremost, the program lets you download recently taken images: Just sort by ‘Date taken’ and select…

Filter Your Email Like a Pro Q: On Twitter you recently mentioned a technique you use for automatically filtering email messages with Outlook. Would you mind sharing it? Jason Verly A: The two key components are Outlook and Stairways Software’s $36 Keyboard Maestro 6 (4.5/5.0; go.macworld.com/keyboardmaestro). The latter is an outstanding macro program that I use to fire off a series of Outlook commands. This technique, which helps me handle the scads of PR releases I receive each day, lets me add a sender to Outlook’s contacts and then assign a category of my choosing to that contact. When future messages from that sender arrive, they move to a specific folder according to a rule I’ve created within Outlook. The Category feature is critical here, and it’s the reason why…

Laptops frequently serve as desktop computers, with external displays, hard drives, and printers plugged into the ports. When you need to pack up your laptop and use it as a mobile machine, however, you have to expend some effort unplugging all of those devices first—a task that’s simple but annoying and time-consuming. With a Thunderbolt dock, you can plug all of your devices into the dock and then connect the dock to the laptop, usually using just a cable or two—no more unplugging, untangling, and reinserting a bunch of cables. (You can also use one of these docks with a Thunderbolt-enabled desktop Mac—our testing with desktop Macs went without a hitch. But desktops tend to already have the connectivity you need.) Macworld Lab evaluated several Thunderbolt docks, and all worked…

Apple’s annual shareholder meeting is one of its most un-Applelike gatherings. Attendance is limited to company shareholders and press, CEO Tim Cook and other executives often take questions, and attendees are asked not to bring electronic devices with them. For this year’s meeting, held in late February, all of that added up to an interesting trickle of information from various sources around the Web. TURN ON THE APPLE TV By all accounts, Cook spent a good chunk of time at the meeting discussing the Apple TV, telling shareholders that the company had sold more than $1 billion worth of the set-top boxes and related content in the past year. “It’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days,” he told the crowd, according to Reuters (go.macworld.com/appletvhobby). Analyst…

SHAY IS STUCK on a spaceship that’s smothering him in cozy, childish comfort. Vella is not wild about her family’s plans to sacrifice her to a monster to save their village. Though they live in different worlds, both characters are growing up and rebelling against the expectations set for them. But neither suspects what’s really going on. That’s the inspired premise for Broken Age, born from one of gaming’s most successful Kickstarter campaigns. Production delays mean that only its first half is available now, with the guarantee of a free update adding the rest of the story later this year. But even incomplete, Broken Age relates a fantastic, funny, thought-provoking story. Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions promised backers an old-fashioned adventure game like the classics he designed or codesigned…

THE HP Z DISPLAY Z27I is a 27-inch professional desktop monitor with a native resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels, a high-quality IPS screen, LED backlighting, and an appealing antiglare surface. The Z27i also offers far greater ergonomic flexibility than most monitors do, supporting height adjustment, tilt, and the ability to rotate the screen into portrait orientation. Among other niceties are four downstream USB 3.0 ports and plenty of connections, including VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. However, although the Z27i supports DisplayPort, it does not come with the DisplayPort-out connection necessary for that specification’s multistreaming feature, which allows you to daisy-chain monitors. A wide viewing angle of 178 degrees ensures that coworkers collaborating at your screen see the same colors as you do. The display’s IPS Gen 2 panel blocks less…

THE SIMPLE UTILITY Unclutter offers just three tools: a clipboard history, a place to stash files, and an area for typing notes, all accessible from your Mac’s menu bar. The Clipboard panel lists up to 50 pieces of text and images in your recent clipboard history. Select any text item, and you can copy it for pasting elsewhere. The panel could be more useful, though: For example, when you copy a URL from your browser, it appears in the Clipboard panel, but nothing happens when you simply click the link there—you must rightclick the link and choose Open URL from the menu. Likewise, you can see copied images in the panel, but you can’t do anything with them. Of the three panels in Unclutter, Files is the most useful. You…

Iblithely ignore all kinds of email spam, and I take it in stride when I get a sales pitch from a mystery phone number. But spam my iPhone’s home screen, and I will delete your app pronto. Because it’s actually easier to trash an app than to go to Settings Notification Center, find it in the list, and tweak its preferences. "gThe smartphone home screen is the most valuable real estate on the planet," says Brent Hieggelke, chief marketing officer for Urban Airship. I think he’s right. And it’s real estate I keep a jealous guard on. DON’T BE PUSHY The fact is, a lot of app makers just suck at managing notifications—they end up annoying or alienating users with an ill-planned push. That’s exactly the problem Hieggelke’s team is…

WHEN I WAS IN middle school, there were only two pieces of jewelry anyone cared about: Chinese bead bracelets and slap bands. Schools quickly outlawed the latter when young mischief-makers figured out that you could smack your friends with the bands, but they remain etched in my memory as a crazy childhood obsession I never expected to see again. And yet here I am, wearing one right now. And…it’s a stylus. That’s right: Mobile accessory maker Chil has not only brought back the slap band, but made it a navigation tool for your phone or tablet. And it’s not half-bad as either. The $15 Slap stylus looks like a wrist-based fitness tracker: silicone, about half an inch thick, with a belted arrow pattern. (A longer band in a wavy crisscross…

iHOME’S $150 iDL100 is cooler in concept than in practice. It’s a good clock and a fine charging station, and it has decent speakers. But as an alarm clock, it’s lackluster. The iDL100’s standout feature is the capability to charge three devices simultaneously. The top surface hosts two Lightning-connector docks—one for an iPhone or iPod, the other for an iPad (full size or mini). On the back is a USB port for charging a third device, as well as an auxiliaryinput audio jack and a connector for the included universal AC adapter. You can listen to a connected iOS device on the speakers. The display offers half a dozen brightness settings. The system weighs just shy of 3 pounds and measures 10.3 inches wide, 5.2 inches tall, and 5.9 inches…

IF YOU NEED a full-featured scientific calculator—or a great calculator for your iPad, which inexplicably doesn’t include one—TLA Systems’ $10 PCalc fits the bill. It’s overflowing with features, including scientific operations, conversions, constants, and user-defined functions, all presented in a highly customizable interface. PCalc 3 adds many new features and an iOS 7–friendly design. It has the standard fare: inverse, root, exponent, and trigonometric functions; nested operations; decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary modes; RPN; and more. It has a time-stamped virtual tape for revisiting calculations, as well as a register that displays the memory’s contents. PCalc provides preset conversions in a slew of categories, such as angles, area, bytes, cooking, currency, density, and energy. The most recently used conversions appear at the top of each list. If you don’t find…

I GREW UP IN Los Angeles, a city more famous for its hazy skies than for its stargazing. But in the summer, my family would drive to the mountains above Lake Tahoe, far from the smog. It was there I learned to love the stars. I’ve forgotten much of what my father taught me about constellations and moonrises, but I still take pleasure in stargazing. Fifth Star Labs’ $2 Sky Guide is a beautifully constructed app that helps you identify stars, satellites, planets, and constellations. Sky Guide uses your device’s compass and other sensors to orient your screen with the sky above. You can turn the compass off to pan around the app’s stunning high-definition 360-degree rendering. By default, Sky Guide presents the cosmos at its densest, with nebulae and…

Admit it: You probably don’t use half the tools in your word processing app—whether that app happens to be Google Docs, Apple’s own Pages, or Microsoft Word. But unless you take advantage of some of those bells and whistles, your word processing app is little more than a glorified text editor. A big part of owning a tool is using it effectively. So if you ever use Google Docs, Pages, or Word, you owe it to yourself to know how to do a few essential things with it. Here are ten things that you should be able to do. 1. USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS When I’m in the flow of writing, there’s nothing worse than having to lift my fingers from the keyboard, grab the mouse, and click to select, copy,…

SETTLE ON A FOCUS, A FORMAT, AND A REGIMEN FOR THE PODCAST. The first step is to decide on a focus for your show. (One central topic? Whatever you feel like talking about?) Then you need to choose a format. (Solo? Two or more regulars chatting? Interviews with guests?) And you have to settle the question of how much preparation to do for each episode. (Script the whole thing? Or just go with the flow?) CHRISTOPHER BREEN At one time, the Macworld podcast followed a traditional host/interview format. Lately, however, Breen has been playing with another format: “a couple of people yapping about events.” The format doesn’t preclude having guests, but they cease to be the only attraction, which makes the podcast more flexible. As for length, “if we exceed…

POST AND PROMOTE YOUR FINISHED PODCAST TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD. At last your edited files are in hand, and it’s time to share them with the rest of the world. That means finding a hosting service for your collection of podcasts and coming up with a strategy for letting people know that your podcast is there, eagerly awaiting their downloading. JASON SNELL Because the 5by5 network (5by5.tv) hosts The Incomparable, Snell uses that network’s tools to upload it to the site. For Total Party Kill (go.macworld.com/tpk), a spinoff podcast, he uploads the files to another server for direct downloading by listeners. iTunes carries the Incomparable RSS feed. To publicize new episodes of his podcast, Snell initially “just promoted the heck out of it on Twitter.” Joining 5by5 exposed the show…

You’re doing research on the Web, with ten or more tabs open, along with your webmail tab, your Google Drive tab, your Twitter tab, and your Facebook tab. But at some point, trying to keep all of those open tabs organized becomes an exercise in utter futility. Pinned tabs to the rescue! If you use Chrome or Firefox, you can keep your more essential tabs organized to the far left of your browser, out of the way but accessible. If you use Safari, sorry: No pinned tabs for you. They’re not a perfect organizational tool, but pinned tabs are the best and simplest option available on many modern Mac browsers. HERE’S HOW THEY WORK Open a tab in your browser and then navigate to whatever website you want to keep…

The Internet and smartphones are perfect for tasks like messaging. They’re also ideal for sharing pictures. When I bought my first digital camera in 2001, sharing photos wasn’t a simple process. I had to capture the images, connect the camera to my Mac via USB, download the photos, open them in a photo editor, resize them, and run a script to insert them on a website I had built. These days, you just take the picture on your smartphone or camera and press a button—and all your friends can see it. Sharing photos is easy and fun, and that’s why Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. Yahoo revived Flickr and made storing a terabyte of pictures there free. Dropbox has added photo importing and sharing to its feature set. And…

Evidently, people are fed up with the blurry photos they get from mobile devices. One possible fix is Emulsio (go.macworld.com/emulsio), a free mobile app that smooths out bumps in video footage that you shoot on your iPhone. Another option is the Grip&Shoot (gripandshoot.com), a hardware trigger that attaches to your phone. Pull the Grip&Shoot’s trigger when you want to take a photo. Since you don’t tap the screen, there’s less chance of a wobble at the instant you snap the shot. The Grip&Shoot trigger also has buttons for zooming in and out on your subject. Best of all, when you detach the trigger from the accompanying case, it stays connected to your phone over Bluetooth to act as a remote control. The era of the blurry selfie may soon be…

WHAT DO YOU DO? I spent my formative years at the University of Michigan, hacking on operating systems and other projects. Since then, I’ve worked on infrastructure at Google and Twitter. WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE? I use a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. At work, I hook it up to a 27-inch Dell display and use a wireless Evoluent VerticalMouse and an Apple Wireless Keyboard. I also have a Linux box running Ubuntu. It mostly does builds, benchmarking, and other periodic tasks. I use an iPhone 5 and an iPad. At work, I listen to music with Beyerdynamic DT 1350 headphones, when it’s quiet enough, or with Bose QuietComfort 15’s. AND WHAT SOFTWARE? I used to be quite exacting about my software environment. I even wrote a window manager—cwm, which…