Содержание выпуска: October 2014 — Macworld

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced—among a great many other things— HomeKit, a suite of tools for controlling devices such as thermostats, furnaces and air conditioners, lights, cameras, smart appliances, garage-door openers, and security systems. You’ll be able to control them all from your iOS device. And it sounds great. Imagine your garage door sliding open and your back door unlocking as your car approaches the driveway, or the lights dimming and the fireplace blazing into action as you near the front door with your date. But imagine this as well: You’re halfway across the country on a business trip, and your kids call and ask if you can flip on the lights downstairs because they’re afraid of the dark. Or a heat wave hits home while you’re…

With rare exceptions, it’s unusual to see non-Apple retailers offer Apple products at significant discounts. And yet, recently, that’s exactly what has happened. For example, Walmart just cut its prices on Apple’s mobile handsets. For $99, the retail giant will sell you a 16GB iPhone 5s and activate the device on AT&T’s network; Apple’s official $199 price for that same phone will set you back twice as much. If you’re in the market for a 16GB iPhone 5c, which normally costs $99, the price drops even more, to a mere $29. Along the same lines, retail warehouse chain Costco, which stopped selling Apple products in 2010, just announced that it has started carrying iPhones, iPads, and iPods again, and at even deeper discounts than Walmart’s. But that’s not all: Apple…

POWER OUTLET PowerCube Is Cute but Lacks Surge Protection Allocacoc’s PowerCube line of power outlets aims to supply all of your AC and USB charging needs in one tidy cube. I’ll discuss the whole lineup, but my rating is for the $25 PowerCube Extended USB. The PowerCube outlets, though neatly designed, lack true surge suppression and offer just a resettable fuse. The company doesn’t provide insurance, so if a power surge damages your devices while they’re plugged into a Power-Cube, you’re out of luck. The PowerCube Original ($13) has AC outlets on five sides, but when plugged in to a wall outlet, the PowerCube itself consumes one AC outlet and blocks the second one. The PowerCube Original USB ($20) offers two USB charging ports along with four AC outlets (you’ll…

The low-priced hits just keep on coming. Apple in late June announced a new $199 version of its 16GB iPod touch and dropped prices on the 32GB and 64GB models by $50 and $100, respectively. If you’ve forgotten “The Strange Case of the 16GB iPod touch,” don’t feel too bad: The $229 model debuted in May 2013 with a few…peculiarities. For one thing, it had no rear-facing camera, just the front-mounted FaceTime HD camera. It also eschewed the iPod touch loop connector that its siblings sported, and came in just a single color, silver. Now Apple has consigned that one-off to the dustbin of history. Debuting in its place is a full-featured 16GB iPod touch that comes in all the colors of the rainbow— well, in the same blue, pink,…

Zach Wallet True Religion’s leather Zach Wallet ($70; go.macworld.com/zachwallet) for the iPhone 5 and 5s provides three pockets for stashing credit cards and cash. You can position its built-in stand at different angles, and its soft microsuede interior helps to keep your phone’s surfaces clean. ENGRAVED WOODEN COVER You can personalize Sophia Victoria Joy’s Wooden Cover (about $71; go. macworld.com/svjwooden) with up to nine words arranged to create an eye-catching pattern. Custom-made from bamboo to fit the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, or 5s, the case offers a tactile feel, and the laser-engraving technique ensures a perfect finish. HOCKEY PHONE CASE The Original Stix Hockey Phone Case ($44; go.macworld.com/originalstix) for the iPhone 5 and 5s consists of a frame in which two fragments of real hockey sticks—previously used in professional or…

Mac software isn’t hard to find. The challenge is finding the right combination of features and price. We downloaded and tested more than 100 apps and collected our top picks in the following pages. Since we’re covering just a small portion here, visit our regular blog (macworld.com/macgems) and our Twitter feed (@macgems) for more great choices, and look for Mac Gems in the MacUser reviews section of the magazine each month. DAY ONE $ 1 0 | BLOOM BUILT | DAYONEAPP.COM The superb Day One 1.9.5 (mmmmm) makes keeping a journal easier than ever, thanks to smart features and a beautiful, welcoming interface. The app offers helpful (if generic) prompts such as “Do you have any favorite pets?” above each new entry window; these little nudges take away some of…

Ilived in Paris for five years before moving to San Diego at the end of 2012. During that time, I got used to the idea of having half a dozen choices for home broadband service, most offering up to 100 megabits per second of bandwidth and costing perhaps $30 a month for a combination of Internet, phone, and TV. So it was a rude shock to return to California, where one can easily pay five times as much for equivalent service, and where many people are lucky to have two providers to choose between. In my neighborhood, the only options were Cox (cable modem service) and AT&T (DSL and U-verse fiber-optic service). Research the maximum download and upload speeds each provider claims, and then test your own actual speeds. Still,…

When most companies kill off a neglected product, the damage is usually limited to the few remaining customers who have stuck by it. In the case of Apple retiring the popular iPhoto and Aperture, however, the disruption is much more broad: With iPhoto being the included image-management application on the Mac for years, millions of customers actively use the software. And although Aperture never made as many inroads into the professional community as Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom did, it was still the Apple-supplied pro option. Apple is replacing both programs with the upcoming Photos for OS X application, which at this point remains a mystery: Will it incorporate the various advanced features of Aperture? Will it be a stripped-down, limited clone of the Photos app under iOS 8? Or will it…

WHAT DO YOU DO? I work at Google on the Google Search App for iOS, and my “20 percent project” is iTerm2 (iterm2.com). I’m also into woodworking, and my goal is to build all my home furniture from scratch. I love making stuff, whether physical or virtual. Helping others to be more productive is how I accumulate karma. WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE? My setup at work is pretty cool: I sit in a zero-gravity recliner. My monitor is a Dell 4K display. It’s on a pole-mounted monitor arm so I can position it exactly where I need it when lying almost horizontally. I use an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, which is the greatest thing since oxygen. And I use a Mac Pro. When I’m at home, I…

WWhen recommending (or sometimes not recommending) computers for purchase, I tend to focus on system performance. But the truth is, many people buy computers based largely on price. After all, it doesn’t take the horsepower of a high-end Mac to surf the Internet, run office applications, send email, and take care of other basic computing chores. Some buyers simply don’t need to invest in the latest PCIe-connected flash storage, quad-core i7 processors, and discrete GPUs capable of supporting 4K video. Apple is focusing on such budget-minded users with its latest, lower-priced iMac. Until recently, the standard iMac lineup consisted of two 27-inch models and two 21.5-inch models. A third 21.5-inch iMac is joining the team. Priced at just $1099—$200 less than the previous low-end iMac model—this new system is externally…

Ihave seen the future of desktop computing, and it is very small. Imagine a Macintosh the size and shape of a smartphone. Pull the unit out of your pocket, and it works like an iPhone with a touchscreen interface. Connect it to a wireless mouse, keyboard, and AirPlay monitor, and it provides a full-blown OS X desktop experience. And all this comes for the low, low price of $699 unlocked. It’s the MacBook Pocket, and I just made it up. So far, Apple has strongly resisted the concept of merging touchscreen devices and desktop machines, choosing instead to keep its OS X and iOS platforms distinct. Apple’s position makes sense: The hardware that’s required to cram a satisfying OS X desktop experience into your pocket is not ready for prime…

iMouse G3 Illuminated Gaming Mouse Adesso’s $20 six-button USB mouse lights up in three colors: blue, green, or red. It offers four optical settings: 800, 1200, 1600, or 2400 dpi (adesso.com). COMPLEMENT MCE Technologies’ $299 USB storage device contains a 2TB hard drive, an optical drive that can read Blu-ray discs and burn DVDs and CDs, an SD card reader, and a USB hub with two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port (mcetech.com) MAC PRO SECURITY LOCK ADAPTER Apple’s $49 attachment isn’t itself a lock; it merely adds a standard Kensington lock port to the Mac Pro. Apple says the adapter is compatible with most standard Kensington locks, as well as locks from third parties that use the same system (apple.com).…

With new iPhone and iPad hardware likely waiting in the wings for this fall, word on the street is that Apple has added headphones to the list of “Made for iPhone” (go.macworld.com/mfi) accessories that can plug into an iOS device via Lightning. Such a development could mean that the venerable headphone jack is finally on its way out. Yes, the jack’s disappearance would render many accessories obsolete. But the removal of the jack may, in the long run, be a change for the better. Although its existence makes sense in an analog world, the standard jack adds little to the listening experience on today’s mobile devices, which generate all audio digitally. In fact, its presence has interfered with Apple’s design goals in the past. The original iPhone, for example, had…

iPAD STYLUS AND RULER Ink and Slide: Adobe Revitalizes the Stylus Market Adobe bundles its Ink stylus and Slide ruler together instead of selling them separately. And that’s a shame: While the Slide is the kind of unique accessory many people will want, the Ink is just a pretty good iOS pen. That’s not to say the package isn’t worth picking up, though. The Ink’s tricorner aluminum design is as functional as it is fabulous, and the curves make for a surprisingly comfortable grip. Its 3mm Adonit Pixelpoint plastic nib glides easily on an iPad screen, yet it provides excellent resistance and feedback. It works in any app, but to dig into its features, you have to use it insideAdobe’s Sketch and Line apps (see the review below). The Ink’s…

I’ve always struggled to use filetagging systems. My tendency is to overapply Finder tags, so I wind up with hundreds of different ones, a result that barely provides more retrieval value than just searching by the files’ contents. Since modern operating systems constantly index everything, I see tags as more of an organizational and categorization system. Over time I’ve found a simple tagging system that seems to work for me, and I thought I’d share it with you. WHAT I WANT IN A TAGGING SYSTEM I have a few prerequisites for any type of tagging system: » I don’t want to use tags in place of hierarchical folder organization. I can’t get out of the habit of using folders and subfolders, and I’m not comfortable with the concept of using…

You probably know by now that you should never use the same password twice, and that your passwords should be strong enough to resist an automated attack. Perhaps you use iCloud Keychain, or a third-party password manager to generate, store, and fill in random passwords automatically. But all of those precautions may not be enough if a site suffers a security breach that reveals its users’ passwords. At the moment, the best defense is two-factor authentication, in which you need more than just a username and password to log in. You also need a second element, which often takes the form of a numeric string sent by SMS. Most major Internet companies offer two-factor authentication as an option. The problem, however, is that it’s a bother, requiring an extra, manual…

If you have a craving to shoot black-and-white photos, you don’t need a special app. I’d like to suggest the iPhone’s very own Camera app. The iOS 7 update added nine filters to it, including a lovely monochrome one called Noir. You can apply the filters at any time while you’re in either the Photo or Square mode of the Camera app. Just tap the filters icon (the Venn diagram of circles in the lower-right corner of the screen), and select the filter you’d like to use. You can also make your Camera app shoot only in black and white. Because the Camera app has two modes—Photo, which shoots a full-size version of the scene, and Square, which crops your photo to that particular shape—you can enable the filter for…

With every iteration of OS X, iOS, and iCloud, we see Apple increasing privacy protections for its users. The company has consistently striven to empower its customers to protect their data from advertisers, government agencies, third-party developers, and even Apple itself. Take a look at the fine print in Apple’s official privacy policy (apple.com/legal/privacy), and you’ll find that the company goes to enormous lengths to keep your personal information just that—personal, rather than fodder for marketing. THE USER RULES Even beyond that policy, Apple clearly indicated in the 2014 WWDC keynote that it intends to protect your privacy at every level. It has designed the extensions in iOS 8 so that they can’t circumvent a user’s privacy settings. In both HealthKit and HomeKit—Apple’s new iOS frameworks for managing health and…

Now that blazing-fast routers based on the IEEE 802.11ac wireless networking standard are finally entering the mainstream, intrepid engineers are busily cooking up all-new hardware that will make the current gear’s performance seem downright poky. The truth is, most of the first 802.11ac routers were based on draft versions of the standard. Although some newer Wave 1 models, such as Netgear’s six-antenna Nighthawk X6, are implementing cool tricks to squeeze more performance from that technology, Wave 2 802.11ac routers will hit in early 2015—and they will be a lot faster. The next standard, 802.11ax, is not far behind. There’s no point in trying to cheat obsolescence by putting off your next router purchase, because the industry is always hard at work developing the current standard’s successor. NEW-WAVE TECHNOLOGY What’s so…

Amid the busy presentation of new technologies at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple’s Metal graphics tech probably had the most attractive demo, even if its exact benefits were difficult to understand. In short, Metal is Apple’s new method of programming its graphics processors. The company claims that Metal offers performance gains without hardware changes, and also says that games will be more detailed while still rendering at 60 frames per second. It sounds like magic—but it’s the real deal. THE OLD STATE OF THE ART Metal, as its name suggests, unlocks the hardware, the “metal,” of the A7 processor. Think of graphics processors as “state machines”: Imagine a board filled with 1970s-style switches and dials, each labeled with a feature. The machine doesn’t support all feature combinations, but you…

It’s not every day that we get to witness dramatic change happening quietly at Apple, but that’s what occurred in mid-July as the Swift team launched its own official blog (developer.apple.com/swift/blog). The Swift programming language, announced at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, is meant to modernize the way developers build their apps by adopting paradigms that other languages have supported for a long time. The new blog is notable for two reasons. The first is that it’s unprecedented. Although Apple’s Developer Connection website has had a blog for many years, its contents are generally limited to formal communications. Outside of WWDC and the occasional Tech Talk tour, Apple’s relationship with developers has been so sterile that something as informal as a blog seems almost like a little prank. The second…

For a few years there, it felt like major changes in OS X’s look and behavior were imminent. The conventional wisdom was that Apple had placed OS X on a collision course with iOS, and inevitably the two would come together to form, if not a single operating system, then two variations on a single theme. In the past year, though, it’s become clear that Apple no longer believes in that approach, if it ever truly did. After spending more than a month running a prerelease version of OS X Yosemite (on a Retina MacBook Pro provided to me by Apple), I can see that Apple has a clear future in mind for the Mac—one where OS X and iOS work in tandem, but don’t ape one another. DESIGNED FOR…

Setting up a printer in OS X is usually as simple as plugging it in to your Mac or connecting to a shared printer on the local network. But OS X also offers some advanced options for connecting and managing printers. Here’s a rundown. ADD SHARED PRINTERS ON THE FLY While you can add a shared printer available to your system using the Printers & Scanners pane in System Preferences, you can also do the same from the Print dialog box in any document. In the Printer drop-down menu under the standard Print dialog box, you will see a submenu labeled Nearby Printers. Choosing a printer from that list will let OS X automatically install its driver and set it up for use. In this way, you can quickly print…

Hthere! I’m Lucy Bellwood, a cartoonist working out of Periscope Studio in Portland, Oregon. Last year I switched to a Cintiq 12WX for my digital work. For the most part, I love it, but there are a few things I might not have discovered without a helping hand. So here, for your benefit, is a list of the top ten tips. 1 Switch up your nibs Although Wacom’s standard nibs are okay, using the felt nib made a big difference in my drawing experience. Unfortunately, you can’t use it on any of Wacom’s touch-sensitive devices—the tip will mess up the surface. 2 Care for your adapter Using a Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter? Arrange the cable so that it doesn’t come under a lot of strain. These parts are often the first…

Devices Disconnecting? It’s About the Hub, Bub Q: I recently purchased a powered ten-port USB hub because I have a lot of peripherals. I’ve used nearly all the ports for external devices—a webcam, some external drives, and so on. But when I plug in my camera, I see a message indicating that one of my hard drives has been disconnected, even though I haven’t touched the cable or powered down the drive. Is the hub or the drive broken? Micha Warwick A: USB hubs are designed to provide a limited amount of power—say, 250 milliamps (mA) on average to ten devices. As long as the power requirements of all the devices you jack into the hub fall under that total limit, all ten of them should work fine. However, if…