MacworldApril 2018的目錄

Months ago, Apple boldly asserted that the holiday quarter of 2017, its first financial quarter of this fiscal year, would be the company’s biggest in history. It wasn’t wrong. Apple’s holiday quarter generated $88.3 billion in revenue, blowing past even the high side of Apple’s estimates. By just about any way you measure it, this was a great quarter for Apple. But of course, the devil’s in the details, whether it’s line items in the corporate reports or in tidbits revealed during the company’s regular phone call with analysts. So here’s a look at four tidbits we learned about Apple’s big quarter. THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT Apple’s previous holiday quarter (which was in fiscal year 2017, but calendar year 2016) saw solid results, with slight sales growth. But as…

The next time you’re editing photos in Lightroom Classic CC, pay attention to how often your gaze darts to the Develop controls at the right edge of the screen. Nearly every adjustment is a slider, so it’s like watching a tennis match: move the mouse pointer to a specific control, change the value, look back at the image to see the effect you made, repeat hundreds of times. What if you could retrain your muscle memory and keep your eyes on the photo? The Loupedeck is a physical control panel, roughly the size of a keyboard, studded with dials and buttons that correspond to Lightroom controls. It plugs into a Mac or PC via USB, and works with Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom 6 under macOS 10.10 and later and Windows…

SnapPower is back with yet another clever outlet cover. This time, the company comes full circle with an updated version of its USB charger, the SnapPower USB Charger 2. What’s new about it? It’s a 2.1-amp charger this time, and it’s outfitted with two USB ports—one on each side of the plate. Before you get too excited, though, know that both USB ports share that 2.1 amps. That’s not enough juice to fast-charge any single device, and when you plug in two devices, each will only be able to draw around 1 amp each. I plugged in my Samsung Galaxy S6 Active smartphone into the left-hand of charger with a good-quality Belkin USB cable and used the Android app Ampere to measure the net current flowing into the phone’s battery (some…

All forms of Siri are not created equal. While Apple’s AI assistant is available on no less than six different devices—iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Macs, and now, HomePod—its capabilities aren’t the same on each. Rather than give Siri the same brain everywhere, Apple has tailored Siri’s smarts to the device you’re using, so the answers you get will be different depending on what device you’re using—and in some cases there are surprising and frustrating limitations. I tested Siri across Apple’s whole family of devices with scads of queries. Here are some topline takeaways on what I found: > The iPhone and iPad are the kings of Siri. Every request I made was answered best by these two devices, and the responses always matched up (though the language often…

Augmented reality got a nice jump-start from Apple’s ARKit in iOS 11, which increased the visual quality and responsiveness of digital objects placed into your real-world view. But how about a physical object—one that you can hold, feel, and rotate—that can be transformed into almost anything via your iPhone’s camera? That’s what the Merge Cube has to offer. As high-tech as that might sound, the actual Merge Cube itself looks and feels like a squeezable stress reliever, making it both durable and kid-safe. It’s also impressively cheap—retailers like Walmart and Amazon have it for less than the $15 MSRP as of this writing. The Merge Cube is covered on all sides with shiny silver symbols, which help your phone track its position as you hold it in view of the back camera. Once…

CASE-MATE EDITION FOLIO Case-Mate makes its stylish Edition Folio case in multiple sizes—including for the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro. This chic, clutch-like folio case comes in two colors (black and rose gold) and features a plush faux-leather exterior and a microfiber interior with a built-in document pocket (but no Pencil holder). The case also offers dual viewing angles and a camera hole, so you can snap photos without removing the tablet. SPECK BALANCE FOLIO If you’re looking for something a little less flashy than the Edition Folio, Speck’s Balance Folio for the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro is simple, sleek, and practical. This slim folio-style case comes in five dual-tone colors (blue, pink/purple, gray, red, and black/gray) and has an easy-to-clean faux-leather exterior and a soft, lined interior. The Balance Folio…

A young girl asks “What’s a computer?” in Apple’s latest change-the-world TV spot for the iPad. Toss aside your cynicism, and it’s easy to buy into Apple’s vision as she types stories, scribbles handwritten drafts, and produces precocious paintings on her eminently portable iPad Pro. A computer? The girl might as well be asking about Betamax or beepers. And it’s a vision that fits well with the lazy Sunday afternoon Apple presents as the girl totes the device around parks and diners. But for work? Were the young girl a few years older and taking notes in college—or for a big meeting at work—she probably would have tossed her beloved iPad Pro aside by now. I should know: I’ve used the tablet as my primary work device since 2015, and while it’s…

Does anyone still blog? Twitter, Facebook, and even Tumblr may have swallowed much of blogging’s oomph, but it’s still out there. It’s probably more accurate to say that blogging morphed into different kinds of things that seemed less blog-like. Many publications use WordPress or other “blog” engines to power their sites. This explains the persistence of MarsEdit, a blog composing, previewing, and posting tool that was recently upgraded to version 4. This version comes nearly eight years after the previous one, but it will delight existing users and should attract folks dissatisfied with web-based posting. At its core, MarsEdit is a way to easily compose entries and store local drafts as you work, while bringing in media and managing rich formatting. This all happens in a word-processing–style environment that’s native-app-fast,…

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal claimed that Apple Music was on pace to surpass Spotify in subscribers. That sounds amazing! But it’s not quite so simple. The calculation was made by looking at Apple Music’s current number of paying subscribers (about 36 million), comparing it to Spotify’s paid subscribers (about 70 million), and noting that with Apple Music’s current 5 percent growth rate it will overtake Spotify, which has a 2 percent growth rate, this summer. There are a couple of important catches. First, it ignores Spotify’s free tier, which stands at over 140 million. Apple Music doesn’t have a free tier. Second, it assumes that the growth rate of these two services doesn’t change. As Apple Music gets bigger, its growth rate is likely to taper off,…

On the hunt for a fresh and exciting game to play this month? Luckily, there’s always something new worth checking out in the world of Mac games, and we’ve put together our picks for the 10 biggest and most interesting-looking titles recently released. Survival smash Rust recently exited Early Access, while Descenders is a frenetic new downhill biking game, Never Stop Sneakin’ is a speedy take on stealtha-ction classics, and Sailaway lets you explore the world’s oceans on a digital dinghy. Find out more about those games and others here, and don’t miss our earlier picks as well if you’re looking for further recent gaming options. 1. RUST ($35) Rust is easily this month’s biggest full release, and it’s one that has already been available via Steam Early Access for more than…

Before the USB Power Delivery 2.0 spec became reality, battery packs maxed out at a charge of about 15 watts (5 volts at 3 amps). PD 2.0 increased the max to 100W, but most of the batteries implementing PD 2.0 strike a balance of performance, heat, cost, and compactness by outputting about 30W. Some recharge at the same rate while others are much slower. However, the PD 2.0–based ZMI PowerPack 20000 ($80) offers 40 watts of power over USB-C to charge laptops while they’re in active use. And the 72 watt-hour/20,000 milliampere-hour PowerPack 20000 recharges itself at 45W. It’s faster in both directions than nearly every USB-C battery pack on the market. TESTING THE POWERPACK 20000 I used the PowerPack 20000 to charge a drained battery in a 2015 12-inch…

APPTION LABS MEATER Like a conventional meat thermometer, Meater monitors the internal temperature of meat while it’s being cooked. The smarts come from the app, which has a series of pre-programmed cooks that take the guesswork out of cooking. You select the meat you’re cooking, the cut of meat, and how you want to cook it. At the precise moment your meat reaches the correct temperature, an alarm sounds to signal it needs to be removed from the heat. The app continues monitoring the meat while it rests and will give you another signal a few minutes later when it’s done. When you’re done, you can also see a graph of exactly how the cook progressed, perhaps to take away hints for a subsequent try.—MARTYN WILLIAMS LIBRATONE TOO The Libratone…

February might be the shortest month of the year, but it had no shortage whatsoever of huge, exciting iOS game releases. Long-awaited games like snowboarding (well, sandboarding) sequel Alto’s Odyssey and epic role-player Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition were the biggest releases of this past month, but they’re hardly alone on this list. Other games like the heartbreaking Florence, hilarious Run Gun Sports, and super-charming Bring You Home might not have quite the same stature as those aforementioned games, but they’re all well worth a look. Read on to find out more about our picks for the 10 most notable iOS game releases this month, and don’t miss January’s list if you’re seeking other options. 1. ALTO’S ODYSSEY ($5) Even three years after its debut, Alto’s Adventure remains one of our go-to…

Connected toys and games leverage the power of your iPhone or iPad to empower new kinds of physical-meets-digital experiences—but even so, the concept behind DropMix sounds a bit absurd. It’s a game that finds you placing cardboard playing cards onto a Bluetooth-connected board, and by doing so, you’ll mix and match the beats, harmonies, and vocals from various popular songs into one surprisingly cohesive track. Playing cards and remixes? DropMix might seem convoluted, sure, but it totally works. And that is Harmonix’s specialty. This is the same studio that created the plastic instrument craze with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and reinvented dance games with the Kinect motion-sensing Dance Central on Xbox. They are the masters of exciting, music-driven play experiences, and that’s seen yet again with DropMix. Described as a…

With the HomePod, Apple is entering a big race after its competitors have already completed several laps. Amazon and Google have been iterating on their smart speaker hardware and software solutions for a couple years and have already sold tens of millions of Echo and Home devices. After missing its initial “late 2017” release date, the HomePod has landed with glaring omissions and limited functionality. Apple’s smart speaker avails itself well with superior audio, but it’s a little startling to see a new product ship late, into a highly competitive market, in such an obviously unfinished and uncompetitive state.   The HomePod is tough to recommend, even to Apple enthusiasts, in its current state. Fortunately, its woes are related to software and services, so there’s nothing wrong with it that…

With the appearance of the fancy new iMac Pro, Apple has also added some startup options available exclusively on this model. If you’re a new owner, here’s how the new Startup Security Utility works at providing enhanced protection against people who might gain physical access to your computer. It’s available only through macOS Recovery, Apple’s current name for the mini-operating system on a separate partition on your startup macOS volume that you can start up from in order to fix problems on your main partition. It’s been a huge help since it was added way back in Lion, and it’s become more advanced and reliable over time. To launch macOS Recovery, you restart (or start up) your Mac, and hold down Command-R. A window appears on all Macs with a set…

With the addition of the HomePod to my arsenal of smart speakers, we’ve reached a dangerous tipping point in my household: there are roughly double the number of smart speakers as people. The past couple weeks of living with the HomePod has given me a bit of time not only to see what the device has to offer right now, but has also helped me sketch out some ideas about where the future might be able to take it. In many ways, the HomePod reminds me a lot of the Apple Watch. But whereas the chief criticism of the latter upon its release was that it tried to do too much, the HomePod follows more of a tried-and-true Apple pattern: it starts small. But perhaps it starts too small. As the…

We love our AirPods, and if the millions of sales are any indication, you love them, too. But they’re sort of…plain. Plain white case, plain white buds. Fortunately, there’s a whole cottage industry of AirPod accessories to improve the look—and performance—of your wireless headphones. Here are some of the fun and useful ways to beef up your ‘buds. AIRPOD STRAPS Yeah, the whole point of the AirPods is that they are true wireless headphones, not like the many dozens of Bluetooth earbuds sold over the years with a short cable stretching behind your head. But what if you want that cable sometimes? What if you’re worried that your workout is going to jostle one out of your ear and it’ll drop and be gone forever? While we have never experienced…

Someday far in the future, Apple will have settled fully into using its new macOS filesystem, APFS, and Macworld readers will stop being nervous and confused about it. Until then, I continue to receive queries in our inbox. APFS is a robust, more efficient, and futureproofed filesystem that has a lot of advantages. But the transition isn’t complete by any means. Reader Bill emailed wondering about the safety of upgrading his iMacs to macOS High Sierra, since each has a Fusion Drive, Apple’s hybrid of SSD and hard drive. He notes that he’d read Apple’s software engineering chief, Craig Federighi, had said at some point that APFS would come to Fusion Drives. (Federighi replied to a Mac user’s query via email, which that user then publicized.) While you can manually…

According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting behind a desk for as little as four hours a day increases your risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as 125 percent. And spending a few hours at the gym every week doesn’t significantly offset that risk. One of the clinic’s first recommendations: Use a sit/stand desk. I work in a home office in my smart home on a near full-time basis and was reluctant to make that investment. The customizable Evodesk XE Pro changed my mind, but not all its options are good values. Unlike some low-cost solutions that rest on top of your conventional work surface—mine is a six-foot-wide, 30-inch-deep sheet of ½-inch finished plywood sitting atop a pair of 27-inch-tall file cabinets—the Evodesk XE has a silky smooth motorized lift…

I was over the moon about the Apple Watch when it was first announced. At the time, I was feeling intense jealousy over Android Wear watches that couldn’t work with my iPhone (back then, at least), and had picked up a cheap Pebble to help fill the void. And despite some initial shellshock over the price levels and version differences, I bought the Apple Watch Sport on day one and was excited for its future. Nearly three years later, that same watch spends more time in my desk drawer than on my wrist. The Apple Watch never felt truly transformative to me, and while I’ve enjoyed it as a style accessory and for quickly viewing notifications, I eventually fell out of my steady routine of charging it, wearing it, and…

Traveling is a great chance to put technology through the wringer. It’s a time when you have to be economical about the gear you carry, when your environments challenge you, and when you start seeing places where your devices could go further and do more than they already do. Last week, my girlfriend and I spent nine days in Iceland (it was supposed to be seven, but a blizzard stranded us for an extra forty-eight hours). During that time we covered roughly half the country, from snowy lava fields in the west to black sand beaches—also with their share of snow—in the south. We carried more than a few pieces of tech with us, which gave us ample time to see what worked well and where we could use some…

Jydge If you can get past that terrible title, JYDGE is actually a pretty entertaining shoot-’em-up. You take the role of a judge in this futuristic world, but instead of sitting in a chair and listening to arguments, you’ll wield a rifle as you blast bad guys to bits and save hostages. Your gun is even referred to as a gavel. Slime Pizza There’s little more distressing in life than spilling a pizza all over the place, and that seems especially true if you’re the delivery blob working for Slime Pizza, an intergalactic restaurant. You’ve crash-landed on a strange planet, and all of the slices have been scattered around the locale. What can you do? You get the pizza back, of course. Cytus II Looking for a more traditional rhythm game than Thumper?…

The HomePod is here, and with it, even more attention is being paid to Siri, Apple’s voice assistant that serves as its primary interface. The early HomePod reviews are in, and most of them suggest the device is an excellent speaker that’s hampered by Siri’s limitations. I haven’t used a HomePod yet, so I can’t speak to that, but as someone with a constellation of Apple devices, it does seem to me that Siri could stand to use some improvement. (Couldn’t we all?) So let’s leave the details of the HomePod aside for the moment and think bigger. Where does Siri need to go from here? FIX THE ANNOYANCES When I asked a bunch of dedicated Apple users what they’d like to see changed in Siri, I (unsurprisingly) stepped into…

Apple may have embraced the pro market on the Mac hardware side with the recent release of the iMac Pro and forthcoming Mac Pro, but the software side, well, that’s a slightly different story. A quiet post on Apple’s support site last month revealed that the company is significantly dialing back the capabilities of its macOS Server package, the $20 add-on software that turns your Mac into a full-featured piece of server hardware. Gone are features like web and mail hosting, VPNs, and more. Instead, Apple says it is re-focusing macOS Server on “management of computers, devices, and storage on your network.” Or, in other words, on managing all your other Apple devices. Still, that’s a shame for a number of reasons, not least of which that macOS has long been a powerful…

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is on track to overtake Spotify in U.S. paid subscribers, a sign that the three-year-old music service is making serious inroads in a highly competitive landscape. The report states that Apple Music has been gaining U.S. subscribers at a 3 percent higher clip than Spotify, a trend that would give Apple’s music service a higher subscriber rate by the summer, assuming it continues. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. While it’s hard to know for sure how many subscribers Apple Music has in the U.S., it trails Spotify mightily across the rest of the globe. At last count, Apple had around 36 million subscribers worldwide, compared to Spotify’s 70 million. And that’s with a built-in marketing tool that Spotify doesn’t have: premier…

IS iCLOUD REQUIRED WHEN YOU UPGRADE TO iOS 11? Safari for macOS lets you view the kind of data cached locally by websites in your browser. Select Safari → Preferences → Privacy, and then click M to remove them, or even go nuclear and click Remove All. Apple certainly encourages iOS and macOS users to take advantage of its iCloud services, which vary in cost. A lot of the services rely on iCloud storage, and they’re free…until you exceed the paltry 5GB of included service, at which point you pay monthly from $1 for 50GB to $10 for 1TB. That’s not a terrible lot, but 5GB doesn’t even cover the capacity of any of the iOS devices Apple sells. Other services, like iTunes Match ($25 per year) are not quite…