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JANUARY 2020

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JANUARY 2020 CONTENTS MACUSER Why the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a repudiation of the ‘Ive Doctrine’ 7 The new MacBook Pro is nice, but it’s missing a few things 11 Tim Cook and Apple 14 Tech lessons from 72 hours without electricity 19 MacUser Reviews 25 Hot Stuff 31

iOSCENTRAL Apple is making its iPhones last longer 35

16-inch MacBook Pro review 68

iOS 13 and augmented reality 39 6 reasons why the iPad is still the best Apple Arcade device 43 Three places iOS 13 might point to future Apple ambitions 47 How to use Sidecar 50 iOS Central Reviews 55 5 Great Apple Arcade games 62

WORKINGMAC BBEdit 13 review 91 Mullvad review 95 Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac 2020 99

PLAYLIST Is the writing on the wall for the Apple TV? 103 Add multiple accounts to Apple TV 107 AKG Y500 Wireless headphone review 109 Bang & Olufsen Beoplay E6 review 116

HELPDESK

AirPods Pro review 81 COVER IMAGE COURTESY OF APPLE

Mac 911: Using an old Apple display with a new Mac, deleting Apple IDs, how to get a Dafari password to save in yourt password manager 122

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 3

MASTHEAD

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Matt Egan EDITOR IN CHIEF, CONSUMER BRANDS Jon Phillips DESIGN DIRECTOR Robert Schultz SENIOR EDITOR Roman Loyola

Editorial STAFF WRITERS Jason Cross, Michael Simon ASSOCIATE EDITOR Leif Johnson SENIOR CONTRIBUTORS Glenn Fleishman, Rob Griffiths, Joe Kissell, Kirk McElhearn, John Moltz, Dan Moren, Jason Snell

COPY EDITOR Sue Voelkel

Design DESIGNER Rob Woodcock

Advertising SALES INQUIRIES www.idg.com/contact-us/

INTERNATIONAL DATA GROUP CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Walter Boyd IDG COMMUNICATIONS, INC. CEO

Kumaran Ramanathan

4 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

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PUBLICATION INFORMATION January 2020, Volume 37, Issue 1 Macworld is a publication of IDG Communications, Inc., and International Data Group, Inc. Macworld is an independent journal not affiliated with Apple, Inc. Copyright © 2020, IDG Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Create, Playlist, Mac User, Macworld, and the Macworld logo are registered trademarks of International Data Group, Inc., and used under license by IDG Communications, Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc.

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 5

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News and Analysis About Macs, OS X, and Apple

Why the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a repudiation of the ‘Ive Doctrine’ Apple’s latest design shows it’s listening to its customers in a way it hasn’t in recent years.

BY JASON SNELL

I

t’s not the first and it won’t be the last, but the recent announcement of the 16-inch MacBook Pro (see page 74) is probably the clearest sign thus far that Apple has changed its priorities when it comes to the Mac. It’s a process that’s been visible in public for a couple of years now, and it’s not quite done—but here in the latter half of 2019, we’re getting our clearest look at a company that got out of sync with some IMAGE: APPLE

of its most important customers and has realized it needs to change some of its assumptions about product design.

TWEAKING JOBS’S LAW Apple is clearly guided, at least in part, by a design philosophy that considers size and weight to be the enemy of good. I like to call this Jobs’s Law, though it could just as easily be called the Ive Doctrine: Always strive for the next version of your JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 7

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product to be thinner and lighter than the current one.

Most of us would agree that in general, the Ive Doctrine is a good idea. I toted an Apple laptop on my back between home and work (via a long walk to and from a bus stop) every day for nearly two decades. I felt every ounce of it, and rejoiced when I could replace my laptop with a lighter model.

But when Apple shaves off a few millimeters here and a few grams there, it’s also limiting the space available for processors and keyboard travel and cooling systems and batteries. You trade ounces for minutes or hours of battery life; fractions of inches are traded for more throttling of processors when they’re trying to work their hardest.

At some point, though, Apple’s consideration of these trade-offs got too far out of balance. The 2016 MacBook Pro redesign became a flashpoint for unhappiness among the user base of one of Apple’s most important products. The laptop was thinner and lighter—but its cooling system wasn’t up to the task of keeping up with top-of-the-line processors, its keyboard lacked travel and was unreliable, the Touch Bar replaced the Escape key with a virtual version, and its commitment to an entirely USB-C lifestyle was premature.

Look at the 16-inch MacBook Pro. It’s 8 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

wider, deeper, thicker, and heavier than the laptop it is replacing, the 15-inch MacBook Pro. I’ll grant you, the differences are quite small—and the new 16-inch laptop is actually smaller, thinner, and lighter than 2015’s 15-inch MacBook Pro, the last version without a Touch Bar and with an Escape key—but the fact that they exist at all speaks volumes.

The way Apple described the new laptop during press briefings in New York City also said a lot. Repeatedly, we were told that Apple is listening to its professional customers and giving them what they want. This is a subtle shift, but it’s a big deal.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT FASTER HORSES So often, Apple seems to view the world as one in which its customers don’t know what they want until Apple gives it to them.

(This is the point where the cliché of early-20th-century customers wanting faster horses instead of automobiles usually gets carted out.) And yes, Apple didn’t get where it is by designing products based on market research.

But this approach can go too far, and it’s clear that mid-decade Apple product design was too insular. Twice in the last month I’ve heard Apple marketing representatives discuss how they’ve taken a product back to the drawing

its most important products.

But again, what’s the implication there about how the “butterfly” keyboard was designed?

Perhaps that its designers were less concerned with what a diverse range of users wanted, and more concerned with creating The 16-inch MacBook Pro sees the return of the Escape key, and a change in the keyboard mechanism. something new and innovative that fit into the board and redesigned it based on a much Ive Doctrine. Apple’s marketing folks are larger pool of people than was previously never going to say this outright, but even consulted. The AirPods Pro were they admitted this week that the butterfly optimized for fit and comfort based on keyboard just didn’t have the broad measuring the ears of a diverse selection appeal that’s necessary (go.macworld. of people from all over the world—the com/brod) for the keyboard design that will implication being that the original EarPods be used by every single MacBook Pro design was not created while taking into user out there. account such a diverse population.

Add in nerdy features like the return of And the new Magic Keyboard on the the Escape key and the “inverted T” arrow 16-inch MacBook Pro was the result, design—and we all could’ve told you back according to Apple representatives, of a in 2016 that the most enthusiastic MacBook monthslong research project that involved Pro users are exactly the kind of nerds who testing different keyboard styles on a large care about those features—and it’s clear sample of Apple employees, doing that the 16-inch MacBook Pro design is an research into physiology, profiling how apology for the past three years. people reacted to sound and feel while IT’S NOT JUST THIS LAPTOP typing—in other words, exactly what you’d Apple’s change in attitude can be dated expect a major company to undertake back to April 2017 (go.macworld.com/datd), when it was considering a major redesign when it convened a small roundtable of to a vital (and unswappable!) part of one of JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 9

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tech journalists to announce that it was killing the trashcan Mac Pro and recommitting itself to the pro market, including an unprecedented preannouncement of a new Mac Pro model that will end up shipping 32 months later. I have to wonder if the failure of that old Mac Pro design, combined with a hailstorm of criticism of the MacBook Pro models released in the fall of 2016, led to a moment of realization and recalibration on Apple’s part.

(Let’s toss in the ongoing saga of the MacBook Air refusing to die [go.macworld. com/rfdi] despite Apple’s best efforts to kill it and replace it with two more-expensive alternatives—another example where Apple thought it knew what its customers wanted and ended up being sorely mistaken [go.macworld.com/mstk].)

Since that moment, Apple has shipped the iMac Pro, the new Mac mini, a new Retina MacBook Air, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, and will soon release that long-promised Mac Pro. It’s also launched Mac Catalyst to drive iPad apps onto the Mac, and promised SwiftUI as a new way to build apps that can work across all of Apple’s platforms.

I’m not going to argue that Apple has made a massive course correction when it comes to creating products—it’s not that dramatic. But what has happened, somewhere, is that Apple has reordered 10 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

When the Mac Pro ships in December, it’ll be 32 months after Apple revealed it was developing the new machine to replace the cylindrical model.

its priority list. For the MacBook Pro, that means challenging engineers to make a powerful system with a long battery life— and letting them come to a good size and weight for the laptop as a result of that process. Those attributes still matter—of course they do, they matter for any mobile product. But with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, they weren’t the primary driver of design decisions—and it shows.

It’s a shift that encourages me that the future of the Mac, and of Apple’s Mac hardware design, is the brightest it’s been in years. ■

The new MacBook Pro is nice, but it’s missing a few things I still want The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is reactionary, not revolutionary.

BY MICHAEL SIMON

A

pple finally took the wraps off the long-rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro (see page 74), and it ushered in a new era for the highest-end Mac notebook you can buy. Most notably, it brings a muchneeded change to the keyboard, eschewing the maligned butterfly mechanism for more traditional scissor keys that should be quieter and more reliable than recent models.

IMAGE: APPLE

But along with a bigger screen, better speakers, and more battery, the new MacBook Pro still feels like an iterative update rather than a transformative one.

Yes, it introduces a new screen size for the first time in years and retires a model that’s been in existence for more than a decade, but aside from some extra pixels, the new notebook doesn’t really break the mold or offer much in the way of big change.

That’s why I’m holding out on buying JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 11

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one. While I desperately want to replace my beloved and busted 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro with something other than the 13-inch MacBook Pro I’ve been using for three years, I’m not ready to fork over a couple grand just yet. The 16-inch MacBook Pro could have been my dream machine if not for a few key missing features.

Here’s what I’m holding out to get.

Rounded corners and slimmer bezels would make the new MacBook so much better.

FACE ID If the new keyboard on the MacBook Pro is worthy of praise—and it is—then the camera deserves some serious condemnation. Not only is it the same 720p FaceTime HD camera that Apple has been using for years—so FaceTime and Skype calls will be no better than before— it brings nothing new to the table at all.

The bezel is plenty thick enough for the TrueDepth camera array, and a notebook is the perfect place for Face ID, since your face is constantly aligned with the camera, but here we are with another generation that doesn’t have it.

And while we’re at it, I wouldn’t be opposed to a camera kill switch that lets you shut it down when not in use—so 12 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

people could stop putting duct tape on their pretty MacBooks.

A NEXT-GEN DISPLAY Anyone who plunks down $2,500 on a 16-inch MacBook Pro will be plenty pleased with the display. It has a 3072x1920 resolution, a wide color gamut, True Tone technology, and 500 nits of brightness. It should be very easy on the eyes for long stretches of work. However, it’s hardly revolutionary. It’s still an IPS LCD, so that means we’re still waiting for the more efficient and brilliant OLED and micro LED displays. We also aren’t getting the rounded corners or 120Hz ProMotion capabilities in the iPad Pro. But most importantly, Apple is still

stubbornly refusing to allow a touchscreen in a MacBook. The Microsoft Surface and other Windows 10 laptops have long proved that a touch-trackpad hybrid is ideal for ergonomic efficiency, but we’re going to have to keep waiting if we ever want one in the MacBook.

AN A-SERIES ARM PROCESSOR

silicon in a Mac, but it’s hard to not look at the new chip and not feel underwhelmed.

A NEW DESIGN The 16-inch MacBook Pro might slim the bezels around the screen a bit, but for the most part, the new MacBook Pro isn’t the redesign I hoped for. While the laptop makers are standing out with new materials, ultra-thin bezels and funky screens, Apple has opted to stick with its tried-and-true design. Sure, it might be classic and functional, but it’s also a little stale. Heck, we didn’t even get any new colors.

Granted the MacBook design is still one of the best (and most imitated) in the business, but the new laptop feels like a missed opportunity to truly take it to the next level. ■

Don’t get me wrong, the ninth-gen Core i7 and Core i9 processors in the new 16-inch MacBook Pro are plenty powerful, but it’s still stymied by the limitations of Intel. As we can plainly see when comparing the iPhone to any Android phone, Apple is killing it when it comes to chips, but we’ve yet to see what the A Series can truly do when unleashed on macOS. I get it, there are a number of reasons why Apple is holding out on making a Mac with an ARM processor, especially one of its professional notebooks, but it’s hard not to think of the Intel-based Mac as a dinosaur. It might be years before Apple The 16-inch MacBook Pro design is kinda meh. opts for its own

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Tim Cook: Bullish on China and Apple’s holiday prospects The iPad is killing it, and the Mac had a record quarter in the U.S.

BY JASON SNELL

I

’ve been covering Apple’s quarterly financial results—including the obligatory conference call between Apple executives and Wall Street analysts—for years now. And yet I never mention Apple’s head of investor relations, Nancy Paxton, who appears on every call to warn of forward-looking

14 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

statements and introduce the analysts.

Paxton is retiring in December and this was her 93rd and final earnings call, and if anything deserves applause, it’s sitting through 93 of these things.

But I keep listening, because amid the scripted declarations about how great Apple’s latest quarter was—this one was IMAGE: APPLE

Apple’s best fiscal fourth quarter ever (go. macworld.com/bs4q)—Apple’s executives will give you a few tidbits about how they view their business that’s just not available anywhere else. Here’s what we learned this quarter.

HOLIDAY QUARTER, DREAM OR DISASTER? A record for Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter is nice, but let’s be serious: It’s the first quarter, also known as the holiday quarter, that’s the big one. The months of October, November, and December comprise Apple’s largest revenuegenerating period of the year. We’re in it now, and with the release of recent results comes Apple’s forecast for the ever-important holiday quarter.

It’s…perplexing? Apple is forecasting a range of between $85.5 and $89.5 billion.

I’m not going to sniff at eighties of billions of dollars, and what’s four billion between friends? But just to be clear: while the high side of that forecast would be an all-time record quarter for Apple, the $85.5 billion would be only a modest 1.4 percent improvement over last year’s total. And that definitely made some analysts a little bit disappointed, because generally the jump from fourth-quarter revenue to holiday-quarter revenue is larger.

Apple CFO Luca Maestri has a bunch of explanations for it, though. There’s the

ongoing problem of the strength of the dollar, meaning that Apple is getting beaten up by exchange rates to the tune of more than a billion dollars next quarter.

Also, Maestri would like to remind you that last year, Apple had just released the new iPad Pros and the MacBook Air— remember that late-October event the company held in Brooklyn? “So for the iPad and Mac categories, you need to keep in mind that our launch timing is different on a year over year basis,” Maestri said. It’s what they call a “tough compare” to last year.

In any event, there’s also a chance this will be Apple’s biggest quarter ever. We’ll find out in three months.

THE iPAD JUST HAD A REALLY GREAT YEAR The iPad spent a few years face down in the gutter, coming off of a huge sales surge with quarter after quarter of sales declines. But things have really turned around. After some sporadic growth here and there over the past couple of years, this fiscal year the iPad averaged doubledigit growth over last year. This quarter, iPad sales grew 17 percent. According to Maestri, the iPad is a hit the world over— iPad revenue grew in all five of Apple’s geographic segments, and set a quarterly revenue record in Japan.

Here’s a stat that I simply don’t JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 15

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Q2

17%

5%

6%

-16%

17

-5%

-19% Q2

8%

14% -21% 16

-12%

-20% Q4

-22%

-23% Q3

0%

-29%

7%

2%

10% Q2

-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

17%

22%

20%

30%

YEAR-OVER-YEAR iPAD REVENUE CHANGE

Q3

Q4

Q3

Q4

18

Q2

Q3

Q4

19

Q2

Q3

Q4

Source: Apple Disclosures. October 30, 2019

understand, but Apple says is true, and if they lie in these things they face major government penalties, so I’ve got to accept it: “In total, over half of the customers purchasing iPads during the September quarter were new to iPad,” Maestri said. I don’t know how Apple measured this, but it makes this claim regularly about the Mac. I’m sure it’s made this claim about the iPad before, too, but I don’t remember hearing it. It’s a fantastic statistic, though, and goes hand in hand with Apple’s claim that more iPads are in use now than ever before. What is clear is, the iPad is on a roll again.

16 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

THE MAC DID OK, AND IN SOME PLACES IT’S GREAT Mac revenue was down five percent versus the year-ago quarter, but Tim Cook says it’s not really fair to focus on that. “We had a tough comparison to last year’s fourth quarter when we updated both models of MacBook Pro, but for fiscal 2019 overall, we generated the highest annual revenue ever from our Mac business,” Cook said.

For a 35-year-old product to have its best revenue year ever? That’s pretty good.

And Cook is right, last year Apple did roll out new laptops. After a year of solid growth in fiscal 2017, the last two years have shown

19

11%

9%

7%

Q4

-30%

-5%

-5%

-20%

-5%

0%

Q4

-5% Q3

4%

14% 7% Q2

-10%

-3%

-17%

Q4

-13%

4%

Q3

-9%

9%

Q2

0%

2%

10%

20%

25%

30%

YEAR-OVER-YEAR MAC REVENUE CHANGE

16

17

Q2

Q3

Q4

18

Q2

Q3

Q2

Q3

Q4

Source: Apple Disclosures. October 30, 2019

sporadic growth for the Mac—it’s up one quarter, down the next. And according to Maestri, this quarter was an all-time revenue record for the Mac in the U.S. and a fourthquarter revenue record in Japan. In some major markets, the Mac is killing it.

CHINA’S DOING BETTER, BUT LET’S NOT MENTION HONG KONG Apple’s story of 2019 might be how it’s dug itself out of a big hole in China. After a huge year-over-year fall off during the holiday quarter last year, Apple’s year-over-year revenue decline in Greater China has

gotten smaller with every quarter, putting the company on a path to Chinese growth in fiscal 2020. And that, despite some serious currency issues—as Cook pointed out, “if you looked at that constant currency, we actually grew” versus last quarter.

Tim Cook is famously bullish on China and he continues to be. One analyst asked him about Hong Kong, a question he ignored entirely, but he did spend a few minutes talking about how the company has “significantly improved since the beginning of the year” in China, thanks in part to growth of Apple’s trade-in program for iPhones, monthly payments, and pricing JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 17

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18

Q3

16%

Q2

Q4

-2%

Q4

-4%

Q3

-22%

Q2

-27%

17

19%

Q4

-10%

Q3

-14%

-30%

Q2

-12%

-33%

16

21%

99% Q4

-26%

-40%

Q3

11%

Q2

12%

15

14% 14%

Q4

71%

Q3

70% 4%

12% Q2

26%

31% 14

0%

30%

60%

90%

112%

120%

YEAR-OVER-YEAR GREATER CHINA REVENUE CHANGE

19

Q2

Q3

Q4

Source: Apple Disclosures. October 30, 2019

adjustments. (Worldwide, according to Maestri, Apple has been more aggressive with pricing, offering lower prices in many countries than would follow from current exchange rates in order for the products to seem more affordable. And of course, in the U.S. the iPhone 11 costs less than the iPhone XR did.) Services grew in the double digits in China, and the fastgrowing Wearables category grew even faster in China than it did worldwide.

The other issue hanging over China and Apple, beyond the unanswered question about unrest in Hong Kong, is the effect of tariffs and a trade war between 18 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

the U.S. and China. On that front, Cook remains relentlessly upbeat: “We’re paying some tariffs today, as you know, some that went into effect pre-September and some others that went into effect in September,” he said. “But in general, my view is very positive in terms of how things are going….

The tone, I think, has changed significantly.

And I have long thought that it was in both countries’ best interest to get to an agreement that maybe initially doesn’t solve everything, but solves some things that each party may want and get to a better place than where we’re at. And I’m hopeful that that’s where we’re headed.” ■

Tech lessons from 72 hours without electricity Backup batteries, solar charges, and UPS boxes kept me afloat during three days mostly cut off from the world.

BY JASON SNELL

I

n late October, my house lost power and internet for three days, part of a larger story involving nearby fires and poorly maintained electrical infrastructure in California. Over those 72 hours and the ones that directly preceded and followed them, I spent a lot of time thinking about how best to deal with IMAGE: APPLE

technology when faced with a blackout.

Here’s what I learned.

BACKUP BATTERIES ARE ESSENTIAL If you don’t own any backup batteries to charge your devices, get some. They’re useful when traveling—I always bring at JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 19

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least one with me fully charged when I go on a trip, so I don’t end up in an unfamiliar city without a fully functional iPhone.

I have two 10,000 mAh batteries with two USB ports, capable of charging an iPhone several times.

Just in case of extended blackouts, I also bought a solar charger (go.macworld.

Charging a battery via solar panels? It works! com/slch) earlier this year. By keeping it in the sun all day, I could almost completely fat power strips with heavy integrated recharge one of those big batteries, batteries that let your devices stay on extending the time before all my devices briefly when the power goes out. Not only would be completely out of power. can they help you ride out momentary I also flipped on Low Power Mode outages during storms, but they give you across all my iPhones. (Apple, how about a time to save or transfer files to other Low Power Mode for the iPad?) In Low devices and then shut down in the case of Power Mode (accessible from the Battery a longer outage. In the case of a power menu in the Settings app), iPhones are outage that doesn’t take down your much more aggressive at putting off tasks internet connection, you can also use the that can drain a battery—and my goal was battery in a UPS to power your cable to ration power as much as possible. I modem and router to keep the Wi-Fi on. even turned off always-on mode on the During the outage, I found another use display of my new Apple Watch, to extend for my UPS (go.macworld.com/upsy). When its battery life. the power went out, I made sure to shut Another smart tech product that you down all of my devices and turn off the should probably own is a UPS, or UPS. What that meant is that the UPS still Uninterruptable Power Supply. These are had power in its battery. I ended up 20 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

dragging a floor lamp into my living room and using the UPS to give us some electric light in the evenings. (I ran an extension cord from another room to do this, because my UPS has the unfortunate “feature” of beeping loudly to warn you that the power has gone off.)

Between the batteries, the solar charger, and the UPS, we managed to keep ourselves in good shape for the three days we were powerless.

LOSING THE INTERNET IS WORSE

to see if it can find something. It just ends up draining the battery.

Depending on where we walked around our neighborhood, we could sometimes get a cellular signal, and sometimes even sporadic access to data.

When we tried to check in on the world (with Airplane Mode off, obviously), I turned on Low Data Mode (go.macworld.com/ ldm), which you can find in the Settings app by tapping on Cellular, then Cellular Data Options. You can also turn on Low Data Mode for Wi-Fi connections by tapping Wi-Fi and then tapping the name of the active Wi-Fi network. If you’re anywhere where there’s a slow data connection, Low Data Mode tells your iPhone to restrict how much data it uses,

While I had planned in advance to lose power, what I hadn’t planned for was the possibility that we’d entirely lose our connection to the internet. My local cable provider’s internet infrastructure went down in the outage, and two-thirds of the cell towers in my county also went down, despite the carriers claiming that they had put generators in place for just this eventuality.

As a result, I had a charged cellphone, a couple of backup batteries—and nothing to connect to. To save on battery life, the first thing you should do when you’re in an area of no cellular service is to go into Airplane Mode. When a phone can’t get a signal, it cranks Low Data Mode can help your iPhone focus on up the power to its radios in order downloading the most important stuff.

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prioritizing the currently open app.

My assumption was that if I managed to find a gateway to the internet, whether it was on Wi-Fi or cellular, I wouldn’t want my phone to try to upload photos or do any other extravagant things with the limited size of the data pipe.

IN PRAISE OF CACHING

afternoon’s reading.

In a situation like this, you learn which apps are your friends, and which apps aren’t. (While still on Wi-Fi, I remembered to copy and paste the text out of an email newsletter so I could read it later— because Apple Mail is simply terrible at working offline.)

I’m also glad that my podcast and music apps had some content stored on my phone rather than streaming exclusively from the cloud, because I was able to keep listening to stuff even when disconnected. (I generally download a few Apple Music playlists to my phone so I have access when I fly, and have Overcast set to automatically download podcasts when on Wi-Fi.)

I did end up finding a reliable location for internet access—the supermarket within walking distance of my house had installed an enormous generator and also had its Wi-Fi network up and running—and popped over there several times a day for an update on what was happening in the wider world.

In doing so, I came to appreciate even more one of the features that I frequently use when I’m about to get on an airplane: content apps that save data locally so you can read or view it later. I saved a bunch of articles from The Athletic’s iPhone app, let the New York Times app cache a day’s worth of content, My 1980s vintage cassette player works with EarPods—but not the Lightning version. and gave myself an 22 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

CAN YOU DO RADIO? Readers of this site are people who generally embrace technology. You probably leaped from cassette to CD to MP3 rapidly, and maybe you’ve also embraced streaming music services and AirPods and all The Kindle will run for a week on a single charge. the rest.

This may also THE KINDLE IS GREAT IN A mean that at some point, perhaps without BLACKOUT even noticing it, you got rid of the last Finally, I want to praise the Kindle e-reader, device in your house capable of receiving on which I read several books during our AM/FM radio stations. It almost happened blackout. The Kindle will run for a week on to me, except I kept my old off-brand a single charge, especially if you put it in cassette player from the 80s around just in Airplane Mode. It lights itself, so you can case I ever found a tape I needed to read it even in the pitch darkness of a digitize. That player is also an AM/FM neighborhood entirely devoid of power. radio, and since it uses AA batteries and a And it’s got enough storage to hold standard headphone jack, I was able to dozens of books. stay up to date on the latest emergency I enjoy my Kindle for lots of reasons, information from local radio stations primarily among them that it’s a more during the outage. If you don’t have a comfortable, less distracting reading way to listen to radio in your house, you environment than my iPhone or iPad. But might want to buy a radio-capable in a low-energy scenario, it also benefits device of some kind. (There’s even a by having very long battery life and generation of iPod nano that will caching everything. ■ receive FM radio signals!)

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 23

MY SHELTER PETS ARE MY BEST FRIENDS

OLIVIA MUNN WITH FRANKIE AND CHANCE: ADOPTED 2016 AND 2014.

They’re a little bit of a lot of things, but they’re all pure love.

THESHELTERPETPROJECT.ORG

MACUSER

The Latest Mac Products Reviewed & Rated

DISC AUTHORING & MEDIA CONVERSION SOFTWARE

ROXIO TOAST 18 PRO: LACKS A COMPELLING REASON TO UPGRADE FROM VERSION 17

BY J.R. BOOKWALTER

REVIEWS

Although we live in a world dominated by streaming media, many consumers still prefer the old-school charm of optical discs for archiving cherished memories.

Whether it’s a wedding video, family vacation, or other life event, it can be handy to create a Blu-ray Disc or DVD you can stash on a shelf or hand off to friends and loved ones.

BURNT TOAST When it comes to burning optical discs, Roxio has catered to Mac users longer than most anyone else. It’s a tradition that

IMAGE: ROXIO

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REVIEW: R OX I O TOAST P R O 18

continues—for better or worse—with the release of Toast 18.

Available in standard ($100) or Pro ($150) editions, the core Toast Titanium app has remained largely unchanged in recent years, aside from much-needed 64-bit compatibility and dark mode support.

Unless you don’t You could mistake Toast 18 for its predecessor—it’s identical. own the previous ONE STEP BACK version and have money to burn (pun Sadly, Roxio has chosen to remove intended), there’s little incentive to buy excellent slideshow app Boinx FotoMagico Toast 18 Pro. Version number aside, from the Toast 18 Pro lineup in favor of a Titanium 18 is identical to last year’s new digital art tool called Akrilic. It’s a release, as are companion apps MyDVD curious addition, because at first glance Pro (for slightly more advanced disc the software appears to duplicate authoring) and MultiCam Capture and functionality found elsewhere in the Editing, which was a highlight of Toast 17. bundle—specifically Painter Essentials, In fact, the only new stuff in the entire owned by parent company Corel.

Toast 18 Pro bundle are archival utility Included in both versions of Toast 18, WinZip 7, Corel Painter Essentials 6 (for Akrilic feels more than a little like an converting photos into painted artwork), aborted smartphone app ported to and powerful RAW photo editor Corel macOS. The app is super basic—import an AfterShot 3. This trio alone would cost existing photo, then step through a variety $120 separately, so the bundle is a decent of different screens where you add value if you want/need them, but keep in different looks and styles, eventually mind WinZip and AfterShot are standard transforming each picture into a work of versions, not the more capable Pro art. The user interface isn’t particularly editions available separately.

26 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

The new kid on the block, Roxio Akrilic, transforms photos into art, but that’s nowhere near enough to justify a paid upgrade to Toast 18.

intuitive and worse yet, HEIF images aren’t supported, so recent iPhone images can’t be imported without first saving as JPEG files.

Although the core Toast Titanium app is 64-bit, the built-in ToastImageMounter component remains 32-bit at this writing. That means disc images won’t open within Toast 17 or 18 when running macOS Catalina, but the situation isn’t as dire as it sounds, since they can still be mounted from the Finder for the time being.

mm Toast 18 Pro PROS

• Pro bundle is an overall good value if you need it.

• Akrilic app provides simple, smartphone-style photo transformation.

• Toast Titanium 18 ready for macOS Catalina.

CONS

• No compelling reason to upgrade if you own Toast 17.

• Boinx FotoMagico slideshow app removed from Pro bundle.

PRICE

$79.99 COMPANY

Roxio

(Presumably this will be addressed in a future update.)

BOTTOM LINE While keeping the discburning torch lit for so long after Apple ejected optical drives from the Mac is admirable, we can’t help but feel Roxio Toast 18 is a cash grab release. Unless you skipped last year’s 64-bit compatibility upgrade and plan to install macOS Catalina soon, save your money and see what the next upgrade brings. ■ JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 27

MACUSER

RSS NEWS READER

NETNEWSWIRE 5: VENERABLE MAC RSS NEWS READER GOES BACK TO BASICS

BY J.R. BOOKWALTER

28 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

I’ve been an ardent fan of RSS news readers for a long time, but lately find it easier to consume information on Twitter in bite-sized chunks; you can browse headlines in near real-time, clicking links to read full articles of interest from a web browser.

A well-designed reader app does the same, but once you add an avalanche of feeds, it becomes time-consuming to slog through the digital noise every day. When I heard Mac reader app NetNewsWire had been resurrected by the original developer, it felt like a good time to dust off my feeds and give RSS another shot.

COMING HOME NetNewsWire 5 (go. macworld.com/ntn5) is the latest incarnation of an application dating back to 2002, when developer Brent Simmons unveiled what would soon become one of the NetNewsWire 5 makes a triumphant return to the Mac, adapting to most popular Mac whichever dark (top) or light (bottom) appearance has been selected news readers. Three in System Preferences. years later, the software was acquired by NewsGator, who was 17 years ago. With a lean, Spartan user kept Simmons on board, adding interface, NNW5 keeps the focus on your synchronization for good measure. favorite content—though getting those That led to an iOS version which feeds into the app was a little more launched in tandem with the App Store, cumbersome than we would have liked. but by 2011 NetNewsWire was packing its STRIPPED DOWN bags for Black Pixel, who took two years to At launch, NetNewsWire 5 supports two release an open beta of version 4.0. For a types of accounts: RSS feeds saved locally short time, the future looked promising on your Mac (with more than a dozen quality (there was even briefly an Apple TV app), sources included to get started) or those but development stagnated. Flash-forward synced via Feedbin (go.macworld.com/fdbn), to last summer, when the owners a paid subscription service. As a Feedly user, generously returned all rights to Simmons, my only recourse was to export existing who just so happened to be working on a subscriptions to an OPML file, which I was new RSS reader dubbed Evergreen. then able to import into NNW5—a quick Coming full circle, Evergreen has been procedure that went off without a hitch. rechristened NetNewsWire 5, a free, If you’re at all familiar with RSS readers, open-source RSS reader for Mac that the UI layout here isn’t much different: remains as solid and reliable today as it JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 29

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REVIEW: N ETN EW SW I R E 5

Subscriptions appear at left, your list of feeds in the middle, and the selected article displayed in the larger portion of the window at right.

Feeds can be organized into folders, and While sharing may be a weakness of NetNewsWire 5 right now, the customizable toolbar includes most everything else you might need.

NNW5 features Smart Feeds, which automatically sorts articles into reader, hide unread count on the Dock Today, All Unread, and Starred views for icon, and an option to open webpages in easier consumption. A toolbar provides the background. But that’s about it. easy access to create new folders, mark As unremarkable as this might sound, whatever is selected as read (including what’s here is done with panache and it the must-have “mark all” option), star all works great. The developer’s goal was favorites, or open links in your to first make NNW5 “stable, preferred browser. fast, and free of bugs,” and mmmm While a solid foundation, that mission has been NetNewsWire 5 NetNewsWire 5 feels lean accomplished in spades.

PROS • Free, open-source RSS compared to modern RSS Additional features are reader for Mac. reader apps, particularly in the planned for the future, and a • Fast, stable, easy to use.

• Smart Feeds for quicker sharing department, which is new iOS companion app is access. limited to native system-wide also in the works.

CONS extensions. (For now, that • Limited sharing options.

• Lacks advanced features of BOTTOM LINE means no one-click sharing to competing apps.

NetNewsWire 5 is a solid Instapaper, Pocket, Twitter, and PRICE $79 comeback, even if it lacks the like.) There are settings to COMPANY many of the conveniences of control how often feeds are Brent Simmons modern RSS reader apps. ■ refreshed, select a default RSS 30 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

Hot Stuff

What We’re Raving About This Month

STICKER-EYE SMART HOME WIRE FREE AI CAMERA eyecloud.ai

Thanks to its magnetic base, the Sticker-Eye camera can be stuck anywhere you have a metal surface. If you don’t have one, a magnetic mount is provided that is easily affixed to wood or masonry with a couple of screws, and you can stick the camera to that. Powered by a built-in 6000mAh rechargeable battery, the camera has a 130-degree field of view and captures 1080p video. The camera wakes only when it detects motion, then its built-in AI analyzes the moving object and, if it identifies it as human, the camera starts recording video and continues until the motions stops. You can watch video clips using the Sticker-Eye mobile app.—MICHAEL ANSALDO

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 31

MACUSER

Hot Stuff ECOVACS DEEBOT OZMO 920 ecovacs.com A robot vacuum/mop hybrid, the Ozmo 920 offers excellent vacuuming and serviceable mopping, but it also includes a wealth of cleaning customization options, including multi-floor mapping and area cleaning that should make it particularly attractive to owners of larger, multiple-story homes.

While the tall profile makes it tough for the Ozmo 920 to get under furniture and cabinets, it did an excellent job along walls and in clear open space, expertly navigating around obstacles. Its smaller dustbin meant more frequent emptying, but fortunately, it pops easily out of the vacuum with a tug of its handle and opens to release a plume of dust and debris.—MICHAEL ANSALDO

32 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

WYZE BULB wyze.com The Wyze Bulb is a tunable-white bulb served in the traditional Edison shape. It connects to your network via Wi-Fi, so it doesn’t need a smart home hub to work. Rated at 800 lumens of brightness, the bulb draws 9.5 watts of power and offers a respectable color temperature range of 2700K to 6500K. In the Wyze mobile app, you can control a dimmer slider, a color temperature slider, and a timer system. The Wyze Buls works with Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can use those systems to set up a schedule, and of course you can also use them to control the bulb via voice.—CHRISTOPHER NULL

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 33

prevent wildfires, for the love of the outdoors.

iOSCENTRAL

The Latest on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and App Store

Apple is making its iPhones last longer. That’s a good thing It might seem counter-intuitive of Apple to prolong the life of its iPhones, but it’s all part of the company’s cunning plan.

BY DAN MOREN

A

cynic might argue that prolonging the lifetime of its smartphones runs counter to Apple’s interests. After all, the sooner iPhones break down, the sooner customers have to pony up the cash for a new one. For years, conspiracy theories of IMAGE: APPLE

“planned obsolescence” have run rampant, full of anecdata of iPhones breaking down just as they run out of warranty.

But that argument flies in the face of reality. For one thing, if your expensive new phone breaks after a year, are you really going to immediately replace it with JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 35

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another phone from the same unreliable manufacturer?

More to the point, Apple has demonstrated that it is dedicated to getting the most life possible out of its smartphones, such as with last year’s iOS 12 update (go.macworld.com/12up), which promised better performance on older devices. And the company has continued the trend this Optimized Battery Charging in iOS 13 will help slow the degradation of your iPhone’s battery. year with the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, offering a number of example, adds an Optimized Battery features that should keep them reliably Charging feature (go.macworld.com/opbt), ticking away longer than ever. which uses machine learning to study your LESS ASSAULT ON BATTERIES battery charging habits and, in theory, Batteries degrade. It’s just a fact of life. stops your battery from degrading over The battery tends to be one of the first the lifetime of your phone. things to go on a phone, which is Likewise, Apple touted the battery inconvenient, since a phone is pretty improvements in both the iPhone 11 and useless without one. especially the iPhone 11 Pro series, But Apple’s done a lot to eke out the thanks to advances like a more efficient best battery life possible from its phones. display in the Pro models and a custom That hasn’t always gone well: the company Apple-designed power management took some hits recently over the chip. Adding additional battery life not “throttling” measures it had implemented only has benefits in the short term, but to preserve battery life over performance, also helps ensure that even when their but that hasn’t stopped Apple from batteries do inevitably degrade, they still building in more measures to try and keep have more life left in them than they batteries as healthy as possible. iOS 13, for might otherwise.

36 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

TOUGH ON GRIME

but the upshot is fewer broken screens, and thus, phones that last longer.

Likewise, Apple described improvements to water and dust resistance, with the iPhone 11 Pro upping its game to being able to survive underwater at 4 meters for 30 minutes.

(The company also specifically called out resistance to non-water liquids, including soda and tea, which can be even more damaging to phones because of additional ingredients like sugar.) I’d hazard that people dropping their devices in water is

Apple devoted some time in this year’s iPhone event to another life-prolonging feature: durability. That makes sense: besides batteries dying, another common reason people have to replace (or repair) their iPhones is because of physical damage. Obviously, there are some challenges inherent in the design of smartphones: glass, for example, is prone to cracking, but swapping it out for plastic—which doesn’t crack as easily— means that you put the devices at risk of much more easier scratching, which is arguably worse.

This time around, Apple says the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are offering the “toughest glass in any smartphone” on both the front and back of the case, thanks in part to a technology called “dual ionexchange.”

Corning, the maker of Gorilla Glass, explains the science behind this technology (go. macworld.com/ionx), Apple says its new phones use the toughest glass in any smartphone.

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AP P LE ’ S MA K I NG I TS PH O NES L AST LO NGE R

probably second only to cracked screens for the most common ways people break them, so combating both fronts is a smart move by Apple.

APPLE CARE Back to my point up top: it’s not only cynical to think that Apple designs its phones to crap out, it’s short-sighted. If there’s one thing that Apple has shown, it’s that it wants to have phones available at a variety of price points, from the iPhone 8 to the iPhone 11 Pro Max. But one of those price points is also $0: the cost of keeping your old phone.

And that’s still a benefit to Apple because it means keeping those users as customers who pay for all those ancillary

services, like Apple Music and Apple TV+; use the App Store; and subscribe to Apple Care—which is now also available as a monthly subscription that can run, seemingly, indefinitely.

And when it does come time for those users to upgrade, their phone will have lasted longer—Apple even specifically mentions how well iPhones hold their value on the iPhone 11 Pro marketing page. That means either a chance for Apple to resell that phone when customers trade it in, or for users to resell the phone themselves— meaning Apple gets a new customer for all those above services. A dead iPhone, by comparison, gets Apple nothing, except for perhaps a dissatisfied customer.

Sure sounds like a no-brainer. ■

Apple has improved the water resistance of its latest iPhones.

38 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

iOS 13: Everything that’s new with augmented reality Apple may or may not still be developing an AR headset, but the latest features in ARKit 3 show it’s still committed to augmented reality.

BY LEIF JOHNSON

T

he end goal of Apple’s augmented reality program is currently a mystery, particularly in light of a DigiTimes rumor (go. macworld.com/ardv) claiming that Apple disbanded the team responsible for its AR head-mounted display. This rumor flies in IMAGE: APPLE

the face of a slightly earlier report from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claiming we’d see some kind of Apple AR headset as early as next year.

There’s little doubt, though, that Apple is still championing augmented reality with a zeal we find in few other competitors, JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 39

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I O S 13 : E V ERY TH I NG T HAT ’ S NE W W IT H A R

and the progress in the new ARKit 3 (and so in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13) feels like a great leap forward. That leap is so great, in fact, that many of the features only work with iPhones or iPads running A12 chips or better. (And for that matter, that progress strongly suggests that Apple is designing a headset or glasses that will allow these features to shine, but anyway.)

The slight downside is that current phones can only use this technology with machine learning technology tied to the iPhone’s rear camera, so you won’t always get the fluid captures you’d expect from the front-facing camera’s TrueDepth sensor. As we’d hoped, though, Apple is rumored to be including VCSEL (go. macworld.com/vcsl) time-of-flight sensors in an upcoming iPhone’s rear camera, but we likely won’t see them until 2020. So maybe we won’t have glasses anytime soon, but at least the iPhones and iPads may be better.

PEOPLE OCCLUSION An easy way to understand how occlusion works is to think of an eclipse.

When the moon passes in front of the sun, it’s occluding it. In AR terms, that means a Pokémon you find in Pokémon Go’s AR view might appear to stand behind chairs and other furniture. As iOS currently works with ARKit 2, the illusion of “reality” only works if the Pokémon is 40 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

“sitting” on a flat space.

ARKit 3, though, can “read” the floor and figure how where the digital objects should stand in relation to any real-world people. Apple showed how this could work (with much applause) with footage of a woman walking through a living room littered with large digital chess pieces and a toy soldier. After the keynote, Apple let visitors see it in action with a game featuring two iPad-wielding players who tried to paddle a giant digital ball toward huge bowling pins at the end of the “court.”

Occlusion also allows for “greenscreen” effects much like those used for special effects in modern motion pictures.

MOTION CAPTURE ARKit 3 supports real-time body tracking, which means it’s able to study the movements of a person’s joints and mimic them with an animated avatar. It’s a funlooking feature, and I like to think that refined future versions could allow for something like full-body Memoji. Apple only gave this feature a few seconds, but it could end up being the most influential.

But it needs some refinement. Even Apple’s presentation at WWDC showed an avatar with slightly choppy animations. I’ve little doubt that iOS motion tracking will improve once the iPhone’s rear camera gets proper time-of-flight sensors.

A new spin on “Dancing with Myself.”

COLLABORATIVE SESSIONS Augmented reality as we know it is largely a solitary experience (at least on iPhones), but ARKit 3 changes that by introducing collaborative sessions that let people play (or work) within the same AR spaces.

At WWDC, two representatives from Mojang showed how this would work in the upcoming Minecraft Earth by building a castle together. The demo was also a great way to show how ARKit 3’s other features work in practice, as when the developers illustrated occlusion by walking behind digital flowers.

SIMULTANEOUS USE OF FRONT AND REAR CAMERAS ARKit 3 now lets developers track your environs with both the front and rear

cameras at once. I haven’t had a chance to see this feature in action yet, but it sounds as though it’ll be absolutely devastating for your iPhone’s battery.

In practical terms, this feature would allow iOS users to use their faces to interact with digital objects that have been mapped out with the rear camera, which could lead to games involving other characters reaction to your facial expressions. (It also sounds like it’ll make a great Accessibility feature.)

TRACKING FOR MULTIPLE FACES Apple’s TrueDepth sensors are already impressive when they’re used with one face, but ARKit 3 allows your iPhone or iPad to track up to three faces at once. It’s a cool feature to have, even if it sounds as though using it will require all three people to scrunch in close. Maybe it will be good for some Memoji-based singing sessions?

This feature will only work with devices with at least an A12 chip and a TrueDepth sensor, and right now that means the iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 41

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I O S 13 : E V ERY TH I NG T HAT ’ S NE W W IT H A R

REALITYKIT AND REALITY COMPOSER Apple wants developers to use the cool new features in ARKit 3, and so it’s made the process easier with AR tools that work with Xcode on Mac and a custom iOS app.

RealityKit greatly simplifies the task of incorporating camera effects, animation, physics, and audio into AR projects. Reality Composer aims to help developers who have little experience with 3D modeling by giving them access to a library of AR-optimized 3D assets.

At WWDC, two representatives from Mojang showed how this would work in Minecraft Earth by building a castle together

iPhone XR, and iPad Pro.

SMALLER TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENTS ARKit 3 also benefits from several less headline-grabby features that nevertheless enhance the AR experience on iOS. It now lets your device detect up to 100 images at a time, and in line with the introduction of occlusion, it’s also better at recognizing and guessing the sizes of physical objects. AR experiences should be faster in general, and iPhones and iPads can now detect planes in the environment more swiftly.

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EYE CONTACT CORRECTION IN FACETIME Apple didn’t mention its Attention Correct feature on stage, but it was discovered in the iOS 13 developer beta by developer Mike Rundle (go.macworld.com/rndl; who apparently predicted it in 2017 [go. macworld.com/pd17]). With it on during a FaceTime call—and you can toggle it off through Settings if you wish—your eyes always appear to be looking directly at the other person. Normally, you won’t be making direct eye contact since you’re looking at the display, not the camera. As Observant AI CEO Dan Shukin (go. macworld.com/shkn) pointed out on Twitter, iOS uses ARKit to achieve this magic. Unfortunately, as of the time of writing, it only appears to work for the iPhone XS and XS Max. ■

6 reasons why the iPad is still the best Apple Arcade device The Apple TV and Mac may be better on paper, but they fall short in performance.

BY LEIF JOHNSON

A

pple Arcade, the new gaming subscription service, is now available on the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple TV, and the Mac. After playing Apple Arcade across all those devices, the iPad currently offers the ideal blend of performance, optimization, IMAGE: LEIF JOHNSON

comfort, ease of use, and general gameplay experience.

That may change in the future— hopefully sooner than later—with more games and optimization. But right now, if you want to get the most out of Arcade, reach for Apple’s tablet. Here’s why.

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W HY T H E iPA D I S TH E BE ST A PP L E A RCA DE DE VI C E

1. THE DISPLAYS ARE LARGE ENOUGH TO ENJOY THE GAMES Latter-day iPhones are capable of running every Apple Arcade game, but let’s be real: They’re phones. In the optimal case of the iPhone 11 Pro Max, you’re still playing on a screen that’s only 6.2 inches wide by 3.06 inches high (horizontally), and if you’re not playing with a controller, your fingers end up blocking a good chunk of that real estate. And if you are playing with a controller, you’ll end up looking at the tiny screen from at least a couple of feet away.

The Apple TV 4K is probably the best device for comfort, and an iMac wouldn’t be far behind. But as we’ll see, there are optimization issues with both. iPad screens, though, are large enough to minimize the issues associated with playing with your fingers, and if you play with a controller, they provide a comfortable viewing area. Even the iPad mini has a display size of 8 inches by 5.3 inches, and while that’s not huge, the extra width makes it far easier to enjoy—and see—the action compared to playing with an iPhone.

2. iPADS SUPPORT ALL THE GAMES If you simply want to be sure you can play all the things when new Apple Arcade 44 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

games come out, you can’t go wrong with an iPad. The iPhone gets the same games the iPad does (so far), but right now there are gaps in the libraries for both the Apple TV and Mac. That’s unlikely to change, as some games like Patterned are simply better suited to touchscreen devices.

And at the moment, at least, you can typically fit the entirety of Apple Arcade on any iPad thanks to the games’ relatively small file sizes, so you’ll never want for digital entertainment on, say, flights without Wi-Fi.

3. iPADS ARE PORTABLE Along those lines, iPads may have larger screens than the iPhone, but they’re still pleasantly portable. Apple’s tablets are only about as thick as a legal pad, and if you use a case like Apple’s Smart Folio, your bag should still have plenty of room left over.

With an iPad, you arguably have a gaming device that’s even more portable (and useful) than a Nintendo Switch—with the caveat that a controller will end up taking up a lot more room in your bag. But about that...

4. iPADS WORK REALLY WELL WITH CONTROLLERS You’ve probably heard Apple Arcade referred to as a mobile gaming service, but it’s more complex than that. You can play the majority of Apple Arcade games with a

The DualShock 4 works particularly well.

controller (in part because they’re meant to be played with the Apple TV, as well), and in many cases—if not most—you’ll have more fun if you play with a gamepad.

There’s a chance it won’t even cost you anything extra. If you have a Sony DualShock 4 controller (go.macworld.com/ sncn) or a Bluetooth Xbox One controller (go.macworld.com/x1cn) already sitting around your house, they’re incredibly easy to set them up on Apple’s tablet.

5. MOST APPLE ARCADE GAMES RUN WELL ON iPADS Both the iPhone and the iPad run Apple Arcade games well, but again, you have the advantage of a bigger display and reliable performance on a recent iPad. During a marathon playthrough of all

Apple Arcade games at launch, only one game had a problem—and that cleared up after an update (go.macworld. com/53ac).

Not so with the Apple TV 4K (go. macworld.com/ap4k), which would otherwise be my favorite device for playing Apple Arcade.

Some games struggled to load, and other games were saddled with annoying frame-rate issues.

Dropping the resolution down from 4K to 1080p through the Settings app helped, but that’s not ideal, especially if you watch movies and play games on the Apple TV on a regular basis.

It’s likely partially an optimization issue, as some graphically complex games like Sayonara Wild Hearts run fine. The A10X Fusion chip in the Apple TV 4K is somewhat comparable to what you’ll find in the Nintendo Switch, and that system handles graphically complex games more capably. If Apple wants the Apple TV 4K to take off as a premier Apple Arcade machine—and it’d be wise to do so—it needs to release a new model with a better chip.

As for the Mac? Well, it struggles.

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Granted, Apple’s service has only been live on the Mac for a little over a week, but the Mac is where you’re most likely to encounter poor frame rates or lag. The performance varies greatly depending on which Mac (or game) you’re using, of course, but even some of the simplest Apple Arcade games tend to hog the CPU. Take the city-building sim Mini Here’s Mini Motorways. We’re certainly not talking Motorways. A mere 15 seconds of about Witcher 3 levels of graphical demand here. gameplay passed before my 2017 selling on Amazon for around $250. In 15-inch MacBook Pro started to sound as fact, last year’s model has the same though it were ready to take off. This could processor (but with a gig less of RAM), so it be one of the best arguments for an won’t hobble your performance.

ARM-based MacBook to date.

If you’ve already got a Sony PlayStation You can avoid most of these problems DualShock 4 or recent Xbox One by playing on an iPad. The games typically controller lying around at home, you also run well, they’re usually not taxing the won’t have to buy a controller. And once machine, and heck, if nothing else, it’s you’re done playing, you’ve got a good quieter to play them that way. device for reading, browsing, watching 6. A NEW iPAD IS RELATIVELY movies—and possibly even working.

AFFORDABLE Sure, a more powerful iPad like the If you’re not already part of the Apple iPad Air would be an even better deal, but ecosystem and you just want an Apple Arcade games seem to run fine on inexpensive device for playing Apple the low-end model Arcade—and I’ve heard this a lot over the The second-best option would be the last month—the iPad is one of your best 32GB or 64GB Apple TV 4K, which sells points for entry. The brand-new 10.2-inch for $179 and $199, respectively. Though, model (go.macworld.com/10rv) only costs some games perform relatively poorly on $329 for the 64GB configuration, and you the Apple TV, and it doesn’t have access can often find last year’s 9.7-inch model to the entire library of games. ■ 46 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

Three places iOS 13 might point to future Apple ambitions Reading the tea leaves to see where Apple is interested in taking its technology.

BY DAN MOREN

B

y this time, iOS 13 (go.macworld. com/13fq) has already been installed on iPhones and iPads around the world, though it was poised to be one of the shortest-lived updates of all time, with iOS 13.1 being released just five days later (go.macworld. com/1stu) and iOS 13.2 released a month after that. But now that these initial releases of Apple’s latest mobile OS have arrived, it’s time to once again cast our eyes forward to the inexorable future marching toward us.

IMAGE: APPLE

Apple likes to say that it skates to where the puck is going, so for those who are interested in the company’s future plans, it’s always instructive to look at which direction it’s going. There’s no better way to get that direction than to look at Apple’s biggest software release of the year. As I’ve spent the last few weeks with iOS 13 betas on both my iPad and iPhone, I’ve had a little time to think about what clues of future plans we can pick out of the mix.

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iOSCENTRAL

i O S 13 MI G H T PO I NT TO A P PL E ’S A MBIT IONS

SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE Launching alongside iOS 13, Apple Arcade is the company’s umpteenth attempt to really get serious about gaming—and it appears that the umpteenth time might be the charm. After years of not really “getting it,” Cupertino has landed on a system that seems to benefit developers, customers, and Apple alike. So why stop there?

The App Store is insanely popular, but it’s not without its share of challenges, ranging from ineffective search algorithms to a pricing race to the bottom. Developers have become wary of investing time and energy in developing complicated apps that would boast a large price tag, since it’s hard to recoup on that investment when you can’t guarantee people will find your software, much less be willing to pay for it. More recently, many apps have started to roll out their own subscription options as a better way to fund the continued development of those apps.

Which raises the question of whether Apple might expand the Apple Arcade model to all apps. Could it offer a selection of curated apps for one monthly fee, sharing proceeds out amongst developers? While many developers would probably prefer to have direct revenue from subscribers, the high profile of an Apple-backed option could certainly help bring in customers—plus, Apple’s already taking its percentage no matter 48 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

what. It seems unlikely Apple hasn’t at least considered the idea of an app subscription service, though it may very well wait to see how a year or two of Apple Arcade shake out first.

LEAVE THE APPLE WATCH ALONE Though it’s not strictly an iOS 13 feature, the arrival of watchOS 6 heralds a first for the smartwatch, which now has its very own App Store. You can search for, buy, and download apps directly onto the watch without having to make a pit stop on your phone. That removes a significant hurdle, moving the Apple Watch one step closer to becoming a self-sufficient device.

It’s not hard to track the progression of the Watch along the same lines as the iPhone itself: For the first several years,

The Apple Watch App Store in watchOS 6.

setting up an iPhone still meant having a computer to connect it to, but as it got more powerful and complex—and became the main device for many people—the iPhone was eventually let off its tether. Today, there are plenty of people who never connect their smartphone to a computer.

The Apple Watch seems likely to go the same route. With its own LTE connection, there’s no reason it couldn’t eventually become an independent device that doesn’t even require one to own a smartphone.

There are challenges left to overcome, to be sure, but who predicted that we would all be carrying supercomputers in our pocket?

Having them on our wrist hardly seems that much more outlandish.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION? We already know Apple’s making a big push in location with iOS 13. The new Find My app combines features of Find My iPhone and Find My Friends, bringing those features front and center. In addition, Apple is adding a complex system that helps users find devices even when they’re not online, using Bluetooth on the massive numbers of Apple devices available. On top of all of that, the U1 chip in the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 promises to make location directional and hyperaccurate (go.macworld.com/acrt).

There are a bunch of possible

Could Maps benefit from Apple’s efforts in location-based features?

implementations for this, everything from smart home tech that knows what room you’re in to cars that you can unlock using your Apple Watch or iPhone to hyperlocal weather. But one other place where you might see this location tech leveraged that might seem like a no-brainer is Maps.

Apple made big strides with Maps in iOS 13, but the amount of time and money that it’s invested in building out the infrastructure for it isn’t what you spend on a single upgrade for just one release. Location is everything, and the ability to see (anonymously of course) where there are large numbers of devices could help things like traffic monitoring, routing, and even how crowded a business or restaurant is. One thing’s for sure: we’ve only just scraped the surface of Apple’s location ambitions. ■ JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 49

iOSCENTRAL

How to use Sidecar to make your iPad a secondary Mac display in macOS Catalina and iPadOS Been wanting a secondary monitor for a Mac? It’s possible you already have one.

BY LEIF JOHNSON

I

f your Mac is running macOS Catalina, you can now use your iPad as a secondary monitor with the new Sidecar feature. It’s ridiculously easy to set up wirelessly through AirPlay.

First, a few notes. Unlike with some

50 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

existing third-party screen-sharing apps such as Air Display 3 (go.macworld.com/ ads3), you can really only use your fingers on the display for simple actions such as scrolling through text.

The Apple Pencil works as a “mouse,” IMAGE: LEIF JOHNSON

though—and that includes using it to alter and create images through the full version of Adobe Photoshop while we’re waiting on the proper iPad version to appear.

Apart from the Apple Pencil, interaction involves a number of shortcuts on the borders of the interface—and you can press these with your fingers. Notably, Apple also includes relevant Touch Bar actions when someone is using an app on the iPad through Sidecar, so in Safari, for instance, you’ll see the visual toggle for the different tabs.

We’ll map all that out in a bit. First, here’s how to set it up.

Your iPad should immediately start working as a secondary display. You’ll see an empty desktop pop up on your iPad, and the AirPlay icon on your Mac’s main menu bar will turn into a light blue rectangle.

You can also send an app to Sidecar at any time (even if it’s not turned on yet) by holding your mouse over the green expansion button that you find on the top bar of a Mac app. A menu will pop up, and pressing Move To [iPad] will immediately send it over to the iPad and activate Sidecar.

HOW TO SET UP SIDECAR THROUGH AIRPLAY Make sure your Mac is running macOS Catalina and that your iPad is running iPadOS. You do not need to unlock the iPad for Sidecar to work.

1. Select the AirPlay icon on your Mac’s Menu Bar. It looks like a rectangle with a solid triangle pointing upward at the bottom.

2. Find the iPad you want to use as a secondary monitor and select it. In the example shown here, it’s “Leif’s iPad.”

To stop using your iPad as a secondary display, press the blue rectangle again.

You’ll see a menu pop up. Press Disconnect and the iPad will go back to being a normal iPad. You can also mirror your Mac’s display instead of using the iPad as a secondary monitor by pressing the AirPlay icon—the blue rectangle—and selecting Mirror Display.

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iOSCENTRAL

U SE SI D ECA R TO MA K E A N iPA D A SE CO NDARY M AC DI SPL AY

HOW TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR iPAD’S SIDECAR INTERFACE By default, your iPad running Sidecar has a two-bar interface border around the display area that you can interact with using your fingers. If you find these bars distracting, you can turn off both of them by clicking AirPlay’s blue rectangle in the Mac’s menu bar and clicking Open Sidecar Preferences at the bottom. (You can also access this by going to your Mac’s System Preferences and selecting Sidecar.) In the menu that pops up, you can disable the left sidebar and the Touch Bar interface (or change their positions). You’ll also see options to enable double taps when using your Apple Pencil or whether you see a pointer when using the Pencil.

But you also might find these shortcuts useful. Here’s a description of everything you’ll find.

1. Dock alignment. Press one of these to easily bring your macOS dock over from the Mac itself (and tap it again to send it back).

2. Command (Hold down to set the modifier key, such as Command-K to open a new window. You can also double-tap it to lock it in place.)

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3. Option 4. Control 5. Shift 6. Undo 7. Show keyboard 8. Disconnect Sidecar 9. Touch Bar. Much like the Touch Bar on your MacBook, this interface changes depending on which app you have open.

HOW TO ARRANGE YOUR iPAD’S DISPLAY IN RELATION TO YOUR MAC’S DISPLAY The easiest way to arrange your displays is to click on the blue rectangle in your Mac’s menu bar once your iPad is connected and then clicking Open Display Preferences in the menu that pops up.

You’ll then want to go to Arrangement in the menu that appears.

In this example, I’ve positioned the iPad to the left of my MacBook (which is below my Cinema Display).

You can also do this the long way: 1. Open your Mac’s System Preferences.

2. Press Displays.

3. In the menu that pops up, select the heading that says Arrangement.

From here you can arrange your displays as needed. If you want to be able to access your iPad’s display by moving your cursor off the left of the Mac’s screen, for instance, arrange the blue screen representing your iPad so it’s to the left of the Mac’s icon in the interface. (By default, the Mac’s interface should have a white bar across the top.)

When you move the icon representing the display, the actual display should light up with a red outline that lets you know you’ve selected the right one. Once you’re done, simply close System Preferences

and get to work.

Note: Apple will even let you use your iPad as a tertiary display if you’ve already got a second monitor hooked up.

You can also keep it connected to your Mac with a cable for charging, although you’ll need the proper cable.

In the case of the 2018 iPad Pro and a MacBook, for instance, this requires a USB-C-to-USB-C cable.

WHICH APPLE DEVICES CAN USE SIDECAR? We currently have no concrete information regarding which Macs can support Sidecar, but developer Steve Troughton-Smith found code (go.macworld.com/stve) suggesting that the feature is roughly limited to Macs made since 2016. (One exception is the 2015 27-inch iMac.) As for the iPad, you can safely assume that Sidecar will work on any iPad that can run iPadOS 13. We tested it with three different models, and they all worked fine.

The following devices are capable of running iPadOS 13: > iPad Pro (all generations) > iPad (5th and 6th generation) > iPad mini (4th and 5th generation) > iPad Air (3rd generation) > iPad Air 2 ■ JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 53

LOGAN RYAN WITH LEO AND JULIUS: ADOPTED 2014 AND 2018.

They’re a little bit of a lot of things, but they’re all pure love.

THESHELTERPETPROJECT.ORG

iOSCENTRAL

The Latest iOS Products Reviewed & Rated

PHOTO & VIDEO TRANSFER APP

PHOTOSYNC 4: BETTER AIRDROP FOR iOS DEVICES, AND A WHOLE LOT MORE

BY J.R. BOOKWALTER

IMAGE: TOUCHBYTE

REVIEWS

Months before the introduction of AirDrop in iOS 7 and Mac OS X Lion 10.7, a clever little mobile app debuted that allowed iPhone and iPad owners to transfer photos and videos between devices using what can only be described as magic. And it continues to be better than what Apple has done.

PhotoSync 4.0 is a nifty little universal iOS app for transferring photos and videos between mobile devices, desktop computers (via web browser or free Mac/ Windows companion app), networkattached or cloud storage, and more. I’ve used this app for years when transferring JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 55

iOSCENTRAL

REVIEW: P H OTO SY N C 4

iOS review screenshots to the Mac, because it has several advantages over AirDrop.

CROSS-PLATFORM SYNC For starters, PhotoSync offers an option to delete images once they’ve been successfully transferred to reduce unwanted camera roll clutter. The app can also be configured on a per-target basis to

resize images, and on iOS devices convert HEIF and HEVC to more universal JPEG and H.264 files on the fly. This last feature comes in particularly handy when sharing photos shot on late-model iPhones with others who use devices that lack HEIF or HEVC support.

The voluminous list of potential destinations ranges from other iOS or Android devices to cloud storage (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box), photo services Flickr, SmugMug, and Google Photos (sadly, there’s no support for Shutterfly), FTP, WebDAV, or SMB servers (with version 4.0 adding support for faster SMB 2/3), as well as wirelessly equipped SD cards from Toshiba or Transcend.

PREMIUM FEATURES

Where do you want your photos and videos? PhotoSync 4 makes it easy to transfer them to almost anywhere.

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After years as a paid app, PhotoSync 4.0 is now free, with transfers sent at lower quality unless you purchase a one-time $5 Pro upgrade. Only senders are required to be Pro, so everyone can install the app and still receive full-quality photos and videos.

For the first time, there’s now a Premium tier available as a $23 lifetime upgrade or

The Mac companion menu bar makes it a snap to transfer images or videos straight to any album on devices running PhotoSync.

Another new Premium feature is PhotoSync Camera under the Receive tab, PhotoSync does AirDrop one better with an which provides an easy way to shoot video, option to delete selected photos and videos after they’ve been transferred. photos, or Live Photos saved directly to a remote target, with or without the option to ongoing subscription ($1 monthly, also save to your iOS device— $6.49 annually). This option adds mmmmh handy when privacy is a concern support for Canon EOS Wi-Fi or to save space on the camera PhotoSync 4 PROS cameras, iXpand Lighting/USB roll. Camera is a fairly basic affair • Wirelessly transfer photos, Flash Drives, and advanced Siri with no Portrait, Square, or other videos to wide range of targets.

Shortcuts, as well as modes. You can switch between • Easy to use, yet highly Autotransfer, a slick feature front/back lenses or toggle flash configurable.

• Previous customers retain which allows users to start and location. paid features like Autotransfer. transferring content automatically CONS BOTTOM LINE as soon as you arrive at a • Basic features with built-in An indispensable iOS utility for specific location. (This and other Camera.

• Free version limited to transferring photos and videos formerly paid features remain sending at lower quality. between mobile devices and available to previous customers PRICE Free (in-app purchases) computers, to cloud providers, without going Premium, with COMPANY network-attached storage, generous upgrade discounts touchbyte GmbH and more. ■ available for those who do.)

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iOSCENTRAL

VIDEO APP

4XCAMERA MAKER: MULTI-CAM VIDEO APP THWARTED

BY CLUNKY EDITING TOOLS

BY J.R. BOOKWALTER

58 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

For video makers, the highlight of this year’s September Apple keynote was undoubtedly the slick demo of Filmic Pro taking advantage of all four iPhone 11 cameras to record multiple angles at the same time. Multi-cam is a great way to quickly create dynamic videos without the time-consuming task of shooting a performance multiple times from different views.

Although Filmic Pro’s multi-cam update isn’t expected until later in the year, there are other ways to shoot and edit multicamera video right now, using as many as four iOS devices you already own.

IMAGE: ROLAND CORPORATION

Unfortunately, the app in question turns out to be cooler in concept than execution.

MULTI-CAM SHOOTING 4XCamera Maker (go.macworld.com/4xcm) is a video app from Roland Corporation, the Japanese company dating back to the early seventies best known for electronic musical instruments like synthesizers and drum machines. In recent years the firm has diversified, porting some of its legendary technology to mobile platforms.

One such app is 4XCamera (go. macworld.com/4xcr), which allows musicians on a budget to create splitscreen music videos from up to four different performances using audio captured from the built-in mic or other connected hardware. 4XCamera Maker goes one step further by enabling users to wirelessly capture video and audio from up to four iPhone or iPad devices at once, then assemble them while keeping everything in sync.

Shooting is pretty simple thanks to an on-screen launch guide that walks users through the procedure. Place devices at the desired angles, selecting one to act as the master, which is also where you’ll later edit the project. (Tripods or mounts are recommended for best results, but you can shoot handheld too, assuming you have enough people to operate those cameras.) Launch the app on each device

Have access to four iPhones or iPads? With 4XCamera Maker installed, you can turn them into a multi-camera video recording studio.

(it’s free to install and shoot without limitations), then tap Link on the master to connect each device. Tap record on the designated master, and all slave devices start recording at the same time.

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iOSCENTRAL

REVIEW: 4 XCA ME RA MA K ER

TAKE TWO Prior to shooting, you can take a quick peek at the live image coming into each of your connected devices by tapping Link Preview from the master camera. Sadly, 4XCamera Maker offers no such preview during actual recording, but this is still a convenient way to double-check framing before the cameras roll.

If the first attempt wasn’t the awardwinning performance you were hoping for, simply tap the TAKE-1 button to shoot up to four more takes; you can also delete the current take by tapping the one already used. Once finished, tap the Editor button, which will wirelessly transfer footage saved on the slave devices back to the master, then create a new project with everything synced and ready to edit.

It’s worth noting that you’ll need to enable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and AirDrop on each device prior to launching 4XCamera Maker. I had no problems connecting, shooting, or transferring footage, and acquiring our test footage worked as expected, although the overall user interface isn’t particularly intuitive.

Thankfully a help option is just a tap away, complete with pop-up tool tips that explain what each button does.

CHOP SHOP In terms of actual editing, 4XCamera Maker leaves a lot to be desired. Although 60 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

4XCamera Maker offers multi-camera splitscreen editing with transitions, but the user interface isn’t exactly intuitive.

you can cut between angles, add transitions, create split screens, trim the start/end point of an entire project, and add new media from the Photos library, it’s not entirely obvious at first how to do any

of these things. Worse yet, there’s no built-in tutorial that walks you through the editing process, like there was for shooting.

Aside from the aforementioned pop-up tool tips, editors are left to awkwardly tap around the UI before finally stumbling across the Edit Mode button on the left side of the screen, just under the preview window. That’s what enables selecting different angles and choosing where to make cuts or add dissolves, wipes, and split-screen compositions. Swiping through the timeline displays a quick preview of edits, but there are also basic transport controls for play/pause, rewind to the previous edit point, or jump to the beginning of a project.

4XCamera Maker doesn’t offer much in the Of course, since recorded footage is way of settings outside of fade in/out control and the ability to save projects. saved directly to the camera roll of each device, you could always import it directly into a more robust editing app but we couldn’t tell the like LumaFusion, but that defeats difference either way in our tests. mmh the purpose of using something (Pro tip: Roland Go: Mixer Pro PhotoSync 4 like 4XCamera Maker in the first owners can skip the upgrade PROS place. cost by connecting their existing • Shoot multi-cam video using up to four iPhones or There are a few basic hardware to the app.) iPads.

• Free app, can be installed settings for fade in/out options on all devices.

BOTTOM LINE and saving projects, otherwise CONS 4XCamera Maker eases the task the only other feature is a vague • Unintuitive user interface.

• Basic, cumbersome editing of acquiring multi-camera in-app “upgrade” promising to tools. footage from iOS devices, but unlock “full editing functionality.”

PRICE Free (in-app purchases) clunky editing tools keep this There’s no indication what that COMPANY app from reaching its full $3 purchase actually gets you Roland Corporation potential. ■ (presumably unlimited editing), JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 61

iOSCENTRAL

5 EXCELLENT GAMES ON APPLE ARCADE

As with most things, some games are better than others. If you’re just getting into Apple Arcade, here’s a list of 5 quality games you can start with. They weren’t necessarily made with the biggest budgets or by the biggest studios, but they’re endlessly replayable and stick in your head. By Leif Johnson

SPEK go.macworld.com/spek The iPhone has long been a particularly good platform for puzzle games, and Spek slips easily into that tradition. Like Apple’s packaging, this creative brain-teaser has a lot of white space and subtle black lines (at least at first), and it’s all about moving around shapes so that they blend into other shapes, which in turn allows you to use an endlessly moving circle to grab squares along the lines.

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THE PINBALL WIZARD go.macworld.com/tpw If you look at a screenshot of The Pinball Wizard, you might think you’re looking at a fairly rote RPG about a grubby little wizard working their way through a dungeon. It’s decidedly different in action. Think of the wizard as a pinball, and then imagine using the doors at the beginning of each round to knock them around. In the process, you’ll have to knock out enemies in order to advance to the next round, although you can level up and unlock new abilities that make progressions a little easier. You’ll also have to knock the wizard into barrels in order to restore their health or magic.

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iOSCENTRAL

5 G R EAT A PP L E A R CA DE GA ME S

CAT QUEST II go.macworld.com/cat Apple Arcade is basically a family-friendly gaming service, and that’s why it’s hardly surprising that one of its best fantasy RPGs is a corny adventure that takes place in a kingdom of cats. Let’s get this out of the way now: If your fur bristles at puns about how cats are being “purrsecuted,” then you might want to steer clear of Cat Quest II. The puns get far, far worse.

64 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

PATTERNED go.macworld.com/pat Patterned is yet more proof that great games don’t need to be x-treme or designed to push your device’s processor to its limits. Indeed, this is probably the most relaxing game on Apple Arcade. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find colored jigsaw-like puzzle pieces, and you drag them up to the matching sections of the complex black-and-white image that takes up much of your device’s screen.

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iOSCENTRAL

5 G RE AT A P P L E A R CA D E GA ME S

GRINDSTONE go.macworld.com/gst Grindstone is a variation on the endless Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga clones on the regular App Store. So why is it on this list? Because, dang it, it’s just so fun. And, of course—this being Apple Arcade—you don’t have to worry about all these microtransactions that tarnish other games in this genre. It’s deliciously gory, too (in a cartoony way). Grindstone puts you in the boots of a blue-skinned berserker who cuts a path through beasts of the same type with his sword. You’ll decide which path he should take before each turn, press Go, and then watch as all the monsters explode as his sword storms through them.

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1 in 7 children faces hunger.

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Join us at FeedingAmerica.org

FEATURE

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N OF O I T BINA M O NCE A C M T R A E ERFO A GR P & ILITY B A S U

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REVIE

z H G 4 .

2 H C N I 16 K O O B C A M O R P C

A M E TH P O T LAP GETS THAT HT G I R IT LOY O N A M

BY R O

IMAGE: APPLE

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FEATURE

REVIEW: 16 - I N C H MAC BO O K PR O

With the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the company set out to create a laptop that would satisfy user demand—and that’s a little different way of doing things for Apple. Most users are used to Apple setting the tone and direction, and expecting users to just go with the flow. But it finally got to a breaking point, and users started to loudly complain about the things they didn’t like about the MacBook Pro. So, Apple corrected course.

With the prior 15-inch model, there was always a “Yeah, but….” However, with the 16-inch MacBook Pro that replaces it, there

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are fewer chances for users to say, “Yeah, but….” The new laptop is a great combination of usability and performance, and it fixes the biggest issues that plagued its predecessor.

BYE-BYE BUTTERFLY, HELLO MAGIC KEYBOARD Of all the features offered and promoted on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the one that steals the spotlight is the new Magic Keyboard. The butterfly-mechanism keyboard, introduced in the MacBook Pro in 2016, is gone—and with it, Apple hopes, are the scores of user complaints and

you had sore fingers after a long typing session on the butterfly keyboard (like me), you won’t have that experience on the Magic Keyboard.

It’s a lot quieter, too.

The butterfly keyboard has a distinct, deepsounding hammer to it that fills a room. It’s noisy.

The new scissor keyboard is a lot quieter, and its You wanted it, you got it: A dedicated Escape key. lighter, crisper tapping problems. It’s not hard to find users who sound easily drifts into the background as hated the butterfly keyboard; I did, and the you work. It’s a sound that doesn’t demand internet is filled with articles and forum your attention. posts deriding it.

The Touch Bar is still a part of the Apple used its iMac Magic Keyboard as MacBook Pro, whether you want it to be or the basis for the keyboard in the 16-inch not. Except this time, Apple changed it so MacBook Pro. It uses a scissor mechanism and it feels a lot different than the previous keyboard, with keys that have a bit more give and travel (1 mm versus 0.5 mm). The butterfly keyboard, despite its soft-sounding name, feels hard and uncomfortable, and typing on it is like pounding your fingers against rocks.

That’s not the case with the new scissor keyboard. It’s The full-sized right- and left-arrow keys are gone. It’s back to the half-height keys. softer on the fingers, and if JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 71

FEATURE

REVIEW: 16 - I N C H MAC BO O K PR O

that the Escape key is no longer integrated in the Touch Bar and is its own button. The Touch ID button, on the opposite side of the Touch Bar, is also its own button. The arrow keys on the lower right of the keyboard have reverted back to the inverted-T layout, with the right and left arrow keys now half-height buttons. These are welcome changes and bring back a good amount of intuitiveness.

All that being said about the The 16-inch MacBook Pro allows users to adjust the refresh rate of the built-in display. keyboard—they’re all changes for the better—I can’t help but think about the absurdity of it all. The butterfly laptops thinner and thinner, but it got to a keyboard was introduced because the point where usability was sacrificed to company became obsessed with making its achieve those goals. And the decisions about the Escape and arrow keys were seemingly made without studying the user base. The keyboard is the most vital of input devices, so how could these changes not be carefully considered in the first place?

Apple has been making metal Mac laptops for over 18 The bezel on the 16-inch MacBook Pro (right) is noticeably smaller than the bezel on the 15-inch MacBook Pro (left). years; maybe this was 72 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

a case of taking the keyboard for granted.

Apple said that with this laptop, the company studied the human factors involved to determine what makes a good keyboard. So the company deserves kudos for doing the research to get it right, and for finally fixing these issues. But the butterfly keyboard is still on all the other Mac laptops, and the company has not officially said if the scissor keyboard will be implemented in the 13-inch MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Let’s hope it will be, eventually.

BIG, GREAT-LOOKING DISPLAY Until 2012, Apple made a 17-inch MacBook Pro, and I was a big fan of it. Sure, it was

heavy and its size made it a little unwieldy, but I loved the big screen, which predated Apple’s Retina display and had a native 1920x1200 resolution. Nowadays, there isn’t a 17-inch laptop in the lineup, but Retina displays offer higher resolutions, and you can use a utility like Display Menu (go.macworld.com/dsmn) to go beyond the maximum scaled resolution offered in the Displays system preference and get more screen space.

Still, Apple’s research showed that users want a display larger than 15 inches, so it seems like moving up to a 16-inch display is a good compromise. It’s bigger, but it doesn’t move the footprint into the 17-inch realm, where it creates an overall JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 73

FEATURE

REVIEW: 16 - I N C H MAC BO O K PR O

laptop size that’s too big for a lot of folks.

With a native 3072x1920 resolution, the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s Retina display has smaller bezels than the 15-inch model—the top bezel is 25 percent smaller, and the side bezels are 34 percent smaller. Like other MacBook Pros in the lineup, the 16-inch model has a brightness of 500 nits, and supports the P3 color gamut (go. macworld.com/p3gm). Video editors will appreciate a new feature that allows the user to adjust the refresh rate in the Displays system preferences.

The MacBook Pro has always had great-looking displays, and the 16-inch version doesn’t disappoint. Images look fantastic, text is clean, and there wasn’t any noticeable unevenness in the backlighting.

CPU, GPU, AND PERFORMANCE The ninth-generation (codenamed Coffee Lake) Intel processors in the 16-inch MacBook Pro are the same as the ones found in the recent 15-inch MacBook Pro. The model in this review was configured with high-end parts, so the processor in our test unit is a 2.4GHz 8-core Intel Core i9. In the standard configurations, the $2,399 model has a 2.6GHz 6-core Core i7 processor, and the $2,799 model has a 2.3GHz 8-core Core i9.

The graphics subsystem, however, gets 74 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

GEEKBENCH 5 SINGLE-CORE CPU 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

1,277

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

1,244 0

500

1,000

1,500

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

GEEKBENCH 5 MULTI-CORE CPU 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

7,383

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

7,332 0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

GEEKBENCH 5 COMPUTE OPENCL 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

27,594

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

24,091 0

10,000

20,000

30,000

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

GEEKBENCH 5 COMPUTE METAL 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

25,395

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

24,210 0

10,000

20,000

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

30,000

CINEBENCH R20 CPU 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

3,504

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

3,149 0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

UNIGINE HEAVEN 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

105

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

85 0

30

60

90

120

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

UNIGINE VALLEY 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

98

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

85 0

25

50

75

100

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

HANDBRAKE

4K TO 1080P VIDEO ENCODE 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

470

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

486 0

100

200

300

400

SHORTER SCORES ARE BETTER

500

an upgrade for its discrete GPU. Our review unit comes with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 video memory. A 4GB version is include in $2,799 standard configuration, while the $2,399 model has a 4GB AMD Radeon Pro 5300M. The older 15-inch MacBook Pro that we used in this review for comparison’s sake has a 4GB AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 GPU. Both laptops also come with the Intel UHD Graphics 630 integrated GPU. Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro models come standard with 16GB of memory, upgradeable at the time of purchase to 64GB. Apple uses 2666MHz DDR4 RAM that’s part of the motherboard, so you can’t upgrade the RAM later. Our review unit came with 32GB of memory.

To gauge the performance of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, we ran a series of benchmark tests. We also ran the tests on the 15-inch 2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 MacBook Pro, the predecessor to the 16-inch model. Both laptops are using the same processor and have 32GB of memory, but the 16-inch model has the Radeon Pro 550M GPU, while the 15-inch model has the Radeon Pro Vega 20.

Not surprisingly, the two laptops have similar scores in both the Geekbench 5 Single CPU and Multi CPU benchmarks. The same happens when running the Geekbench 5’s Compute JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 75

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benchmark on the integrated Intel GPU: In OpenCL and Metal testing, the 16-inch MacBook Pro posted scores of 5231 and 4889, respectively, while the 15-inch MacBook Pro had scores of 5243 and 4882.

The performance change becomes more apparent when testing the discrete GPU. In the Geekbench 5 Compute benchmark, the Radeon Pro 5500M GPU in the 16-inch MacBook Pro gives that laptop about a 15 percent boost over the Radeon Pro Vega 20 in the 15-inch MacBook Pro in OpenCL, and about a 5 percent increase in Metal.

The Cinebench R2 benchmark is a CPU multi-thread stress test that is more intensive than Geekbench 5’s MultiCore CPU test. Here, we see that the 16-inch MacBook Pro is about 12 percent faster than the 15-inch MacBook Pro, even though both laptops have the same processors. The main difference: Apple redesigned the thermal architecture in the 16-inch MacBook Pro to allow for better airflow and a larger heat sink. This allows the CPU to perform at higher speeds for longer periods of time.

The Unigine Heaven and Valley benchmarks are graphics intensive and focus on the discrete GPU performance.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro outperformed the 15-inch model significantly in this test; it 76 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

BLENDER QUICK 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

1,159

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

1,215 0

500

1,000

1,500

SHORTER SCORES ARE BETTER

BLENDER COMPLETE 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

4,232

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

4,369 0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

SHORTER SCORES ARE BETTER

V-RAY CPU 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

10,672

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

10,090 0

3,000

6,000

9,000

12,000

LONGER SCORES ARE BETTER

was 24 percent faster in Heaven, and 15 percent faster in Valley.

In our HandBrake test, we took the 4K video Tears of Steel (go.macworld.com/ tear) and converted it using the Fast 1080p30 preset. This is a test that gets the laptop’s fans running, and based on the result, the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s new thermal design helps it outperform the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

V-RAY GPU 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

70

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

67 0

20

40

60

80

LONGER SCORES ARE BETTER

CORONA 16-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-coreCorei9(2019)

3,713,693

15-inchMacBookPro2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (2019)

3,513,550 0

2,000,000

4,000,000

LONGER SCORES ARE BETTER

A BIGGER LAPTOP AND A BIGGER BATTERY As the name implies, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is bigger than the 15-inch model. The 16-inch model is 14.09 by 9.68 by 0.64 inches, while the 15-inch model measures 13.75 by 9.48 by 0.61 inches. The 4.3-pound 16-inch MacBook Pro is also heavier by about 0.3 pounds.

If you have accessories designed to fit the

15-inch MacBook Pro, they may not fit the new 16-inch model. And if you have a smaller bag or backpack that snugly fits the 15-inch MacBook Pro, the 16-inch model may be too big. As for the heavier weight, I didn’t notice it while lugging the new laptop during my work commute, but I’m also bigger than the average person and probably not as sensitive as someone who is smaller than me.

Fortunately, Apple took advantage of the extra space to make the battery bigger—the company said that more battery life was another top demand by customers. This laptop has a 100Wh battery, which hits the limit allowed by the FAA (go.macworld.com/lfaa). Apple states a battery life of 11 hours (based on wireless web browsing and video playback), which is an hour longer than the 15-inch

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REVIEW: 16 - I N C H MAC BO O K PR O

MacBook Pro. To go along with the new battery is a new power adapter that’s bundled with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The adapter is rated at 96 watts, which is more than the 87-watt adapter that came with the 15-inch model, and is available for purchase separately for $79 (go. macworld.com/96wt).

The 16-inch MacBook Pro still has a headphone jack, as well as four USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports (two on each side).

(Even though Apple showed a willingness laptops, it’s fuller, and the woofers create in the 16-inch MacBook Pro to reinstate a rich bass effect that gives the sound a features that worked in the past, you’re not lot of depth. going to see the revival of the cable wrap You might be one of those users who prongs on the MacBook power adapter. don’t really care about the speaker Since the cable is now removable, the output quality of a laptop. After all, wrap prongs are deemed unnecessary.) laptops are mostly used while on-the-go, SIX SPEAKERS AND so most of the time, people plug in THREE MICS headphones. A lot of Mac users, though, Recent MacBook Pro models have do use a MacBook with an external sounded very good compared to most display at their work or home office, and PC laptops. With the 16-inch MacBook that setup could also include connecting Pro, Apple goes a few steps further, an external set of speakers. Depending outfitting the laptop with a six-speaker on the size of the room and how loud sound system and dual “force you like your sound, you may not need cancelling” woofers. The sound from this those external speakers anymore with laptop isn’t just louder than most other the 16-inch MacBook Pro. 78 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

Also consider that Apple thinks of the better image quality than what you get with 16-inch MacBook Pro as a media the 720p FaceTime HD camera? production machine. A great set of BOTTOM LINE speakers can help a producer make the Apple aimed to satisfy its user demands video or audio that they are striving for. with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it has Speaking of production, Apple thinks produced a laptop with a lot to like. Most the 16-inch MacBook Pro is capable of people won’t mind the overall size recording studio-quality audio. Both the increase, especially since it pays off with 15- and 16-inch models have threea bigger screen and a larger battery that microphone arrays, but the 16-inch model’s provides a longer run time. I don’t think array is an improvement. The person I’m exaggerating when I say that no one speaking sounds much more in focus, and will miss the butterfly keyboard, especially background hiss isn’t as prominent. It’s not since the new scissor keyboard is so quite on a par with a proper microphone satisfying. The performance boosts, while setup that a professional would use, but not overwhelming, are still impactful— the quality is good enough to be used if you’ll notice them more if you’re into such a setup can’t be done. media production.

With the new mic setup, it Where the 16-inch MacBook seems like it would be a good mmmmh Pro might disappoint is with opportunity to update the built-in 16-inch MacBook Pro people who are ready for camera. Nope. We’re still stuck PROS Apple’s next big thing. There’s a with a 720p FaceTime HD rig. So • Scissor keyboard more comfortable than previous growing sentiment with longtime while Apple thinks you can create butterfly keyboard. users that the upgrades Apple professional-quality audio with this • Bigger screen with adjustable refresh rate. releases are too iterative. They laptop, you’ll still need an external • Longer battery life than 15-inch model. are ready for a new design, ARM camera if you want to make a CONS processors, a next-generation high-quality video. Granted, even if • Reliance on USB-C/ Thunderbolt 3 ports will display, Face ID, and more. While there was a better camera, you’re require adapters for many no one outside of Apple really not going to shoot video with it external devices.

• No update to FaceTime knows the company’s plans, you like you would with a handheld camera. can bet that they’re working on camera. It would primarily be used PRICE From $2,399 the next big thing and it’s just a for talking head videos or making COMPANY matter of time. The waiting is the FaceTime calls. But wouldn’t it be Apple hardest part. ■ nice if even those videos had JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 79

Discover the unsearchable Discover the forest

Find a trail near you at DiscoverTheForest.org

FEATURE

REVIEW

NOT THE BEST-SOUNDING WIRELESS EARBUDS YOU CAN BUY, JUST THE MOST EFFORTLESS AND DELIGHTFUL.

AIRPODS

PRO

BY JASON CROSS

APPLE AT ITS BEST IMAGE: APPLE

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REVIEW: AI R P O D S P R O

Apple is at its best when it takes something that people find fiddly or annoying and then makes it effortless. And the new AirPods Pro (go.macworld.com/ apro) are a perfect example.

They’re not the first wireless earbuds with noise cancelling, and they’re not the best-sounding wireless earbuds you can buy, but they do sound quite good and they’re just so easy that it’s just hard to go back to anything else.

MAKING WIRELESS EASY

and turn off when you put them back. They know when you’ve taken one out of your ear and pause the music automatically.

The AirPods case is tiny enough to fit in any pocket, it opens and closes with a satisfying magnetic snap, and the earbuds drop right into their carefully-fitted slots.

With AirPods, Apple took the annoying rough spots around using wireless earbuds and made them simple and delightful.

So what does Apple do for an encore?

It tweaks the design, improves sound quality, adds active noise cancelling, and calls them the AirPods Pro.

The original AirPods (go.macworld.com/ orap) have been a smash success, and it’s not because Apple invented the first truly wireless earbuds. Nor is it because they sound better than anything else in their price range.

AirPods made wireless effortless.

While next to your iPhone, AirPods pair with your device just by opening its case. The connection is rock solid. They turn on and connect when you take The AirPods Pro case is just as compact and delightful as that of the original AirPods. them out of the case 82 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

AirPods Pro are absolutely peak Apple. Just as with the original AirPods, they are not a new invention. They don’t outperform the best wireless headphones in the price range. But AirPods Pro are so thoughtfully designed, so effortless and easy, that it’s kind of annoying to go back to using other wireless earbuds.

A DESIGN THAT’S HARD TO BEAT

The shorter stems make AirPods Pro more comfortable and a bit less goofy-looking.

Let’s start with the case. It’s a shorter, wider version of the case for the regular AirPods, and includes wireless charging—there’s no way to buy a nonwireless charging case. It’s just slightly bigger overall, and just as easy to slip into any pocket. Beyond that, it’s just like the AirPods case, and that’s a good thing. It snaps open and shut with that same satisfying magnetic latch, and the earbuds drop right into the fitted slots.

Why haven’t Apple’s competitors been able to replicate this experience? Ever since the release of the AirPods, Apple’s cases are still smaller, easier to pocket, easier to get your earbuds in and out of, just easier to use than everyone else’s.

Good on Apple for updating AirPods with noise cancelling and silicone tips without sacrificing the ultra-compact and easy-to-

use nature of the case.

The earbuds themselves look familiar, just tweaked a bit. They’re still visibly AirPods, and for better or worse they only come in glossy white. As much as I would love matte black, or Product(RED), or space grey, Apple seems to have decided that Apple headphones are glossy white. Period.

The stems are shorter now, which I really appreciate. They don’t look quite so goofy and the shorter stem makes for better balance that helps keep them in place in your ear.

The most obvious difference is the silicone tips on the front. Anyone who has used a bunch of different earbuds will tell you: rubberized or foam tips create a seal in your ear canal that helps improve bass response and blocks outside noise.

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REVIEW: AI R P O D S P R O

Apple gives you three pairs of tips— small, medium, and large—and there’s even a little “fit test” feature in Settings to help make sure you have a good seal. I had no problem passing that test with both the medium and small tips, but the small ones are a lot more comfortable. You should try out the different sizes.

Regular AirPods aren’t uncomfortable, but they don’t stay put very well. When moving around a lot, they need to be re-adjusted. When working out, they’re likely to fall out. AirPods Pro solves both problems—they’re light and supremely comfortable, and they stay in their proper place even when running or working out. Just pop them in and forget

about them, with no feeling of pressure or discomfort, and no need to frequently re-adjust their placement. There aren’t many earbuds I could say that about.

The AirPods Pro also have new controls on the earbuds themselves.

Instead of tapping them like on the old AirPods, there’s a pressure-sensitive area on the stem. To use it, you have to sort of “pinch” the stem—one pinch to play or pause, two to skip forward, three to skip back, or a long squeeze to toggle noise cancelling and transparency mode.

If you want, you can change the long squeeze to trigger Siri instead, and you can even have different settings for the left and right earbuds.

The squeezing thing is a little weird.

It’s not a button, nothing moves at all.

But Apple made it feel like a button by making the speakers emit a little “click” sound in just the earbud you’re squeezing. So it kind of feels like clicking a button, even though there’s no button. It’s totally gratuitous and totally Apple.

AirPods Pro come with three pairs of eartips (replacements are only $4) and a USB-C-to-Lightning cable.

It took a little 84 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

macworld.com/mw07).

These are “pro” earbuds only in the sense that they’re the best version that Apple offers—actual audio professionals would never use these for real production work.

Still, they sound good enough, and quite a bit better than regular AirPods.

With silicone tips to block outside noise and create better bass, Apple doesn’t have to overload the sound The new pressure-sensitive area on the stems is hard to see, but you don’t really have to. Just give the stem a pinch. spectrum to overcompensate for the getting used to, but now I find the pinch loose, open-ear design of the original to be easier than tapping on regular AirPods. AirPods Pro aren’t so “mid-heavy” AirPods. It doesn’t make the earbuds fall and don’t muddy up the high-frequency out of my ears like the tapping sometimes sounds so much. does, and I can do it when I’m working in Whether it was hip hop, R&B, classical, the yard with work gloves on. rock, pop, or podcasts, everything sounded appropriately balanced. I never BETTER SOUND, BUT NOT felt like I needed to break out an equalizer QUITE ENOUGH to make the music sound as it should.

Apple talks a big game about the Most users would not be disappointed improved sound quality of the AirPods Pro, with the AirPods Pro sound quality, and it definitely is better, but it’s still far especially if you’re used to regular AirPods. from “pro” quality.

But at $250, the AirPods Pro should These are definitely not the bestprobably sound just a little bit better. The sounding wireless earbuds I’ve heard. bass isn’t quite as punchy as I’d like, and They don’t hold a candle to something like the highs don’t have that sharp crisp sound the MW07s from Master & Dynamic (go. that makes cymbals sound great.

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REVIEW: AI R P O D S P R O

ACTIVE NOISE CANCELLING FOR THE MASSES Then there’s the big-ticket item, the active noise cancelling. Apple is not the first to do this in wireless earbuds—Sony has a couple different models that do it—but the popularity of AirPods means that these are likely to be the first wireless earbuds—maybe the first headphones of any kind—with which many people experience noise cancelling.

Fortunately, Apple’s implementation isn’t half bad. The AirPods Pro do an excellent job at eliminating the noises that most active noise-cancelling systems excel at: mid-to-low frequency continuous noise like air conditioners, dishwashers, trains, traffic, and airplane noise. They struggle a little bit on less regular, higher-frequency sounds like kids screaming or certain kinds of power tools.

A good pair of over-the-ear noisecancelling headphones from Bose or Sony will almost certainly do a better job of eliminating background sounds, but for in-ear wireless earbuds, Apple has done a fairly impressive job.

86 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

While most noise-cancelling headphones give you some control over the strength of the feature, Apple instead relies on an automatic adjustment feature that continuously adjusts the sound up to 200 times a second. I was worried about this autoadjusting thing, but in practice it really works great. Moving around between environments, the noise cancelling always sounds even and natural. And the feature just makes that much easier to use. Audiophiles want precise control over the level and nature of the noise cancelling, but average users just want to put their earbuds in and go.

In any case, between the silicone tips and the noise cancelling, most background noise will be dramatically reduced, if not completely eliminated.

This means you don’t have to crank your music way up in order to hear it clearly. When using these at my desk or

walking around my neighborhood in the suburbs, they isolate me so well that I just sort of drift off into my own little world, focused entirely on the music. If you’ve never used a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones before, the feeling is really sort of magical.

THE BEST TRANSPARENCY MODE AROUND Of course, eliminating all that background noise can be dangerous in some situations, and that’s where transparency mode comes in. All modern noise-cancelling headphones have something like this, albeit with different names. There’s a mode where they

leave noise-cancelling on, but use the microphones to pipe in some outside noise, focusing on the frequency ranges you most need to hear like cars and human voices.

Apple’s transparency mode is one of the best I’ve ever used. With other headphones, this feature tends to make everything sound distant and fake, while your own voice is loud and inside your head. It’s a bit like you’re hearing the world over a phone line.

On the AirPods Pro it sounds really natural and makes it really easy to hold a conversation with someone. It’s not at all annoying to leave it enabled when you go for a walk or a bike ride, and that’s not

Apple gives you lots of ways to toggle noise cancelling, and even a “fit test” for the eartips.

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REVIEW: AI R P O D S P R O

something that can be said about most noise-cancelling headphones.

Apple gives you a lot of ways (go. macworld.com/tgle) to toggle between noise cancelling on, transparency mode, and noise cancelling off. You can go to Bluetooth settings, or use the volume control in Control Center, or your Apple

Watch, or even just ask Siri. And yes, these work with Siri totally hands-free, just like the second-generation AirPods (go. macworld.com/2ndg) and the Powerbeats Pro (go.macworld.com/pwrb).

THE MOST COMFORTABLE EARBUDS EVER The real genius of the AirPods Pro, the reason you’re going to want these over some other wireless earbuds that might sound better or have better noise cancelling, is that they’re just so damn comfortable.

They’re so light, and fit so well, and stay in place so well, that it’s easy to forget you have them in at all. Regular AirPods are jostled out of place too easily, so even when they don’t fall out, I find myself occasionally adjusting their placement. It’s not a problem, per se, but it means that I’m thinking about my AirPods.

These stay put even when going for a run in a way that would make regular AirPods fall out of alignment, or out of my ear entirely. The better balance from the shorter stem and the silicone tips keep everything in

88 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

place. I never find myself thinking about the AirPods Pro, until someone is waving their arms at me trying to get my attention because I’m off in my own little musical world and they’re trying to talk to me.

VIDEO: AIRPODS PRO REVIEW Watch now at go.macworld.com/ppro

don’t offer the best noise-cancelling performance. They don’t have the longest BOTTOM LINE battery life. They’re not “the best,” and yet, Just like regular AirPods, the AirPods Pro they are hands-down the best wireless are easier to set up than any other earbuds an iPhone user can get. They wireless headphones, and have a super perform well enough, and are so small case that’s delightful to use. They comfortable and convenient and reliable, maintain a rock-solid connection, pause that I find myself constantly annoyed by the automatically when you take them out of minor drawbacks of competing earbuds. your ears, and turn off automatically when At $249, they cost $50 more than you put them in their case. They’re simply regular AirPods with the Wireless Charging the easiest wireless headphones an Case, or $90 more with the regular iPhone user can get. charging case. The improvements here AirPods Pro are everything you like more than justify the price difference, even about AirPods, but better. They’re more though I think the sound quality should be comfortable. They stay put in your ears just a little better for the price. better. They sound better, and There’s basically no reason have pretty good active noise anyone should buy regular mmmmh cancelling with an excellent AirPods anymore, unless you AirPods Pro transparency mode. just want a less expensive thing PROS • Excellent fit and comfort.

The only thing Apple didn’t you can quickly pop into your • Compact wireless charging improve is battery life, which is still ear to take phone calls. case. just O.K. You get around five hours • Good active noise AirPods Pro are a perfect reduction. without noise cancelling, and four example of what Apple does CONS and a half with noise cancelling. best. They take cutting-edge • Sound quality is a little bland for the price.

The case holds 24 hours worth of technology and make something • Battery life is just okay. charge time and can recharge the PRICE that may not quite outperform its $234 earbuds pretty quickly. rivals, but still performs quite COMPANY The AirPods Pro are not the well, while being much easier Apple best-sounding earbuds. They and more delightful to use. ■ JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 89

WORKINGMAC

Tips, Tricks, and Tools to Make You and Your Mac More Productive

BBEdit 13: A lucky number indeed for revered macOS text editors The leading professional text editor for macOS.

BY J.R. BOOKWALTER

Pop quiz for longtime Mac users: How many applications currently installed on your system have been there for close to 30 years? If you have a list, it’s likely to be short. But there’s a good chance BBEdit will be on it. The venerable BBEdit is a text editor that has long held a place of honor among wordsmiths and coders, and IMAGE: MOMENTA B.V.

with good reason. Although few will ever take advantage of everything it offers, we’re all better for having such a gleefully comprehensive arsenal of features at our fingertips.

CATCHING UP Before jumping into BBEdit 13, let’s recap what was new with version 12, a significant JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 91

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REVIEW: B BED I T 13

overhaul launched in late 2017. That release was the first to run entirely as a 64-bit application, allowing BBEdit to not only open larger text files than ever before, but also process them faster and more efficiently.

Subsequent updates added built-in support for Apple’s new Swift coding language, menu command shortcuts, and a super fun Lorem Ipsum generator that spits out dummy text in not one but three flavors: Standard, Startup, and personal favorite Bacon, which creates words,

sentences, or paragraphs with a meatcentric flair.

After tweaking nearly every line of code for the previous version, what could possibly be left to do? As it turns out, quite a lot. Sporting over 100 new features, BBEdit 13 fully embraces Dark Mode, adopting system-wide appearance or manual switching between Light and Dark at the click of a button. The new BBEdit Dark scheme nicely complements Dark Mode, but you can always customize specific elements to the desired color, as well as apply lighter schemes while the overall UI remains dimmed.

BBEdit 13 is a must-have upgrade for non-coders like me. Although dependent upon this software for years to modify or clean up lengthy text documents with the exceptionally robust find and replace functionality, I’ve historically shied away from advanced tools I knew little The BBEdit Dark scheme is a great companion for macOS systemabout, like Grep— wide Dark Mode, but you can tweak individual colors and save as a custom theme as well. until now.

92 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

before actually applying them. Here you can search using preconfigured Grep patterns, add and manage your own saved entries, or browse from a history of previous items. This feature greatly reduces the amount of trial and error required when creating patterns.

There’s also Grep Cheat Sheet, a shortcut menu Can’t remember a particular Grep pattern? BBEdit 13 now includes a cheat sheet that makes it easy to look up and insert more than 40 of containing more than the most common patterns.

40 of the most commonly used PATTERN PLAYTIME patterns which can be quickly inserted to A command-line utility for extracting create a query preview. Once the search matching lines from plain-text data using and replace patterns work the way you regular expressions, Grep has long been a want, clicking Use for Find transfers them powerful feature in BBEdit. However, straight to the Find window, ready to apply. unless you live and breathe code, using it Although my brain will probably never be required something of a steep learning wired for anything more than casual Grep, curve. Thankfully, BBEdit 13 makes I found this a fantastic addition which embracing Grep a whole lot easier in allowed me to experiment and learn a bit several ways. more about how it all works.

First is Pattern Playground, a new Best of all, Grep pattern shortcut buttons Search menu command providing an now appear in the Find window as well, which interactive way to become familiar with has also been enhanced with live search how Grep patterns work on a document results. Type a search query, and results JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 93

WORKINGMAC

REVIEW: B BED I T 13

appear highlighted throughout your document. Live search doesn’t work for previewing replacement text, something I’d love to see added in a future update. (And how about a mobile version of the app?)

BBEdit 13 arrives not a moment too soon. Users of the company’s free, discontinued TextWrangler have discovered the 32-bit application no longer runs after updating to macOS Catalina. Thankfully, BBEdit comes to the rescue with a generous 30-day evaluation period, after which most

mmmmm BBEdit 13 PROS

• First-class text editor for macOS, now with Dark Mode.

• Pattern Playground, Grep Cheat Sheet make regular expressions easier.

• Most features remain unlocked after 30-day evaluation, free of charge.

CONS

• Live search doesn’t work for previewing replacement text.

• No iOS equivalent.

• Not compatible with macOS versions before 10.14.2.

PRICE

$49 COMPANY

Bare Bones Software

advanced features are disabled, but everything else continues working free of charge. That’s the kind of classy, user-friendly policy which has rewarded Bare Bones Software with a loyal following for nearly three decades.

BOTTOM LINE If you work with text in any way, your arsenal of Mac apps will never be complete without BBEdit 13, an exceptional upgrade that proves the number 13 doesn’t always have to be unlucky. ■

Live search makes it a snap to highlight results quickly even in large files but stops short of previewing replacement text.

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Mullvad: VPN that’ s all about privacy Mullvad for Mac is easy to use, and it makes privacy and anonymity its top priority.

BY IAN PAUL

W

hen it comes to a VPN that protects your privacy, Sweden-based Mullvad is the best we’ve ever seen.

The company wants to know as little about you as possible and doesn’t require an email address or even a password.

Instead, the company randomly generates a unique code for your username. This IMAGE: MULLVAD

username sans password is what you use to top off the credits on your account, and log in to the desktop apps.

If you’re worried about not having a password, Mullvad says it’s statistically very safe. “A newly created Mullvad account number is a 16-digit decimal...

This allows for a total of 8.99 quadrilion possible account numbers,” the JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 95

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company said in a 2017 blog post (go. macworld.com/17bp). “Assuming our customers are actively using 100,000 different accounts with us, one would need to guess on average 45 billion times in order to find a working account.

This is practically impossible.”

Besides, any risk inherent in that trade-off is probably worth it to those who want to

Mullvad for Mac with a live connection.

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stay as anonymous as possible. That is the key advantage of this VPN. Mullvad even lets you send cash through the mail to pay for your account, making it one of the best options for anonymity online.

MULLVAD FOR MAC WITH A LIVE CONNECTION. Mullvad is run by Amagicom AB and is based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company was founded by Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson who, according to the Mullvad about page (go. macworld.com/mlpr), “are actively involved in the company.” The rest of the team is also listed on this page.

Mullvad’s privacy policy is written in very clear language. Nearly all logs from the servers are sent to dev → null, a nonexistent directory in Linux systems, and a common way to stop unwanted data from being saved. The no-logging policy extends to your IP address, the VPN IP address used, browsing activity, bandwidth, connections, session duration, timestamps, and DNS requests.

During a session Mullvad says it has to store your account number, your account’s paid time remaining, and how many simultaneous connections are being used per account. This is all kept in temporary memory that is purged after you log off.

Mullvad allows up to five simultaneous connections per account. Other than that

Mullvad logs the total number of current connections for a given server, the CPU load per core on each server, and the total bandwidth used per server. All of these items are in the name of network maintenance and do not contain any personalized data.

Mullvad on Mac uses OpenVPN by default with the following settings: > Data encryption: AES-256-GCM (default) > Data authentication: SHA384 > Handshake: 4096-bit RSA On Mac, Mullvad also supports WireGuard, and the latest version of the app makes it simple to use the protocol by going to Settings → Advanced → Tunnel Protocol → WireGuard.

Overall, the Mullvad app is very simple and easy to understand. It has two buttons at the bottom of the primary view. Click the first one to choose your location, with some countries such as the UK and U.S. having multiple options if you’d like to drill down to a specific region. Then you simply click the Secure my connection button to activate the VPN. It would be nice to see the country list support ping times or report the load of each server, but currently it does not.

The Settings area doesn’t have much in the way of options, but Mullvad makes some excellent choices in terms of defaults. There are options to launch the

Mullvad’s Preferences screen.

app on startup and use local network sharing, but both of these are off by default. That leaves it to the user to decide whether to use them or not. There’s also an auto-connect option that automatically connects to the VPN when the app is launched. That, in my opinion, is annoying, but you can turn it off in the settings.

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On Windows, Mullvad was very fast, and our first day of Mac testing was no different with the VPN maintaining nearly 32 percent of the base speed.

here, but if speeds are your top priority, perhaps commit to a single month at first to see how it performs for you.

We tested Mullvad using OpenVPN, though we intend to test WireGuard in the near future.

countries with 315 servers that are all PRICING owned or rented, and operated by the Mullvad’s pricing is very simple. The company. Mullvad says it does not use company charges €5 per month, which any virtual servers, which enable a single at this writing was about $5.55. There physical device to operate as if it were are no discounts for prepaying for multiple devices. Virtual servers are not additional months or anything like that. uncommon in cloud-based services, Still, at around $67 per year you’re including VPNs. But with Mullvad, all VPN getting good value. connections are running on physical hardware in the stated location.

BOTTOM LINE As for speed, Mullvad surprised us with Mullvad is excellent. Speeds are good for some mixed results. On Windows, Mullvad the most part, and privacy and anonymity was very fast, and our first day of Mac are top-notch. You’d be hard testing was no different with the pressed to find anything better for VPN maintaining nearly 32 mmmm privacy short of running your own percent of the base speed. The Mullvad server at a secret location following days the speeds PROS guarded by a three-headed dog. dropped dramatically, with the • Higher level of anonymity possible than with most It doesn’t have all the extra VPN retaining around 22 VPN services.

• WireGuard support. features that other services do percent of the base speed after CONS such as guaranteed compatibility three days of testing. The results • Not guaranteed to work with Netflix, double-hop VPNs, were brought down by poor with Netflix.

• No password protection for Onion over VPN connections, and performance in Australia and your account. other features. Still, for a simple Asia, while European and North PRICE and solid VPN connection with a American speeds were generally $5.72 COMPANY trustworthy company backing it, good. We’re going to give Amagicom AB Mullvad is hard to beat. ■ Mullvad the benefit of the doubt 98 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac 2020: Top-notch security at a good price Kaspersky security has always been good, and with Internet Security 2020 we get top protection with some extra privacy features.

BY IAN PAUL

K

aspersky security products may not be welcome on U.S. government computers, but the company is doing its best to overcome that black eye by iterating on its top-rated home security offerings.

One of its most recent releases is

Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac 2020.

KIS is the company’s second-tier security product right before Kaspersky Anti-Virus, but with fewer features than Kaspersky Total Security. It’s a mid-range product with a few extra features including several nice privacy options.

JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 99 IMAGE: KASPERSKY

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REVIEW: K ASP ER SKY I NT E RNE T SEC UR ITY FOR M AC 2 0 20

PERFORMANCE Kaspersky has always been a top performer in terms of malware protection and that is still the case. The most current tests from AV-Test (go.macworld.com/avte) and AV Comparatives (go.macworld.com/ avco) used Kaspersky version 19 instead of Kaspersky 20, but we don’t expect there to be any drops in quality between these two versions of the detection engine.

In June, Kaspersky scored 100 percent in AV-Test’s widespread and prevalent malware test using 557 samples. AV Comparatives, meanwhile, also gave Kaspersky a 100 percent rating on its malware protection and detection. For its tests, AV Comparatives used 585 Mac malware samples, as well as 500 Windows malware since Macs can also become unwitting vehicles for Windows malware distribution.

For our in-house spot tests, we downloaded content from the Objective See malware library. Kaspersky didn’t prevent us from downloading the malware or from unzipping it. As soon as we tried to run it, however, (and sometimes before) Kaspersky detected the malware immediately and quarantined the relevant files. It also added a lion’s roar each time it did it, which was a fun touch. For the Wicar web tests, Kaspersky had no trouble detecting this malware and preventing us from viewing the page, after we ignored Safari’s own built-in warnings.

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Kaspersky’s Safari extension helps protect you from online threats.

INTERFACE AND FEATURES KIS 2020 has a very simple interface. At the top of the window KIS displays the current status of your Mac. Usually you’ll see a green checkmark and confirmation that your Mac is protected.

Under that are four tiles: Scan, Update, Privacy, and Safe Kids (formerly Parental Control). The interface will also show notifications from time to time when it wants you to do something such as enable the Kaspersky Security browser extension or download the VPN. From the dashboard you can also launch the Kaspersky Protection Center where the app houses its recommendations and your Mac’s protection status.

For scans you can run the usual full and quick scans, and KIS 20 now automatically offers to scan any USB drives you connect to your Mac.

Kaspersky Internet Security’s Privacy options.

offer some kind of special deal for subscription renewal.

Anyone with KIS looking for the Safe Kids parental control and the password manager would need to pay an extra $15 per year for each service. The VPN provides 200MB of data for free per day, and the VPN server location is automatically chosen. If you need more than that, it costs an extra $30 per year for the full service.

Anyone interested in all of these features would be better off looking at Security Cloud Family, which costs $150 for up to 20 devices and includes Safe Kids, the password manager, and offers a higher VPN limit per day of 500MB.

The Privacy section lets you block webcam access unless you authorize it, and automatically block website tracking.

There are also links to download the Kaspersky password manager and VPN. In the KIS preferences window there are BOTTOM LINE a few features to enable or adjust such as If all you need is a capable security suite Safe Money, which creates a sandbox for a single device that protects both your virtualized environment whenever you login computer and keeps you safe while to your bank or other site with sensitive browsing then Kaspersky is a financial information. If your bank good choice. Its pricing is very or investment site isn’t part of mmmm good for the features you get, Safe Money you can manually Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac and protection is top notch. add it. To use safe money you 2020 The only question is how you must have the Kaspersky PROS • Top-rated antivirus engine. feel about Kaspersky as a browser extension installed.

• Good pricing. company following the allegations CONS PRICING against it. It’s not likely we’ll ever • Several suggested tools in the suite are upsells.

New customers can get have verifiable proof one way or • VPN limits are very low.

Kaspersky Internet Security for the other, but if you need some PRICE $20 Mac for $24, while returning guidance our colleagues at COMPANY customers will pay $40– PCWorld (go.macworld.com/anhk) Kaspersky assuming the company doesn’t wrote about it back in 2017. ■

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Discover the unsearchable Discover the forest

Find a trail near you at DiscoverTheForest.org

PLAYLIST

Everything You Need to Know About iOS, iTunes, and Mac-Based Entertainment

Is the writing on the wall for the Apple TV? Does the pricey set-top box still have something to offer?

BY DAN MOREN

O

f all of Apple’s platforms, tvOS seems to have gotten the least attention in this year’s annual round of updates.

When you think about it, that’s a little surprising. After all, Apple has launched a

IMAGE: APPLE

major new video streaming service, and the Apple TV hardware doesn’t seem to be a part of that. Where’s the love?

But look a little closer and the big picture starts to come into focus. Even with the launch of Apple TV+, the Apple TV set-top JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 103

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box, once Apple’s beachhead in the living room, is simply not nearly as critical to the company’s mission as it used to be.

THE FUTURE OF TV IS APP Apple’s TV platform has long been a thirdclass citizen in the company’s ecosystem, after both macOS and iOS. These days, I’d argue it even falls behind the Apple Watch as a significant product. Updates to tvOS are few and far between, and tend to bring very small adjustments or modest new features. Updates to the Apple TV set-top box are even less common, especially since 4K HDR and Dolby Vision arrived on the scene. After all, when you support the latest and greatest video and audio formats, what more is there to add?

It’s also clear that Apple’s attention in the streaming arena has shifted targets from tvOS to the TV app. Apple’s own original content is due to arrive in a little less than a month, and the TV app will be its home, making it arguably more important than the whole of the tvOS platform. In fact, go over to Apple’s TV 104 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

product page (go.macworld.com/prdt) and you’ll notice something missing along that top navigation bar: any mention of tvOS. Instead, the top spots are occupied by the Apple TV app (whose icon looks remarkably similar to the top-down view of the set-top box) and the Apple TV+ service, followed by the 4K and HD versions of the set-top box.

That’s because the TV app has broader aspirations. It’s no longer something you find on only the Apple TV, or even just on Apple’s own platforms. No, the app is coming to third-party streaming sticks, set-top boxes, and even smart TVs. Getting eyeballs on its original content is more important to Apple, and that means having its service everywhere anybody could want to watch it. Suddenly tvOS is merely one option among many— sure, it might be the best way to watch Apple TV+, as I’m sure Apple would put it, but it’s not going to be the most common.

WEB SLINGING And Apple is not only competing amongst its own platform and third-party platforms

Beta of the Apple Music website.

for views here. No, the company’s also going to be streaming its shows via a web app (go.macworld.com/tvwb). Which means that anybody whose device can run a reasonably modern web browser can also probably be an Apple TV customer, all without buying any additional hardware.

Suddenly, shelling out at least $150 for an Apple-branded set-top box seems even less appealing than it used to be.

Apple’s never been bullish on web services—it just hasn’t been in the company’s DNA. But the TV+ venture is clearly important enough that Cupertino’s willing to change up

its playbook in the hopes of casting as wide a net as possible. And if it no longer needs to drive hardware sales for revenue but rather wants to grow the TV+ service itself, well, that may not bode particularly well for the Apple TV set-top box.

THE GAME’S THE THING But wait! There’s a saving grace for the Apple TV and tvOS here, and its name is Arcade.

Apple’s recently launched game subscription service has been surprisingly well received, given the company’s mixed relationship with gaming. And while most players are probably JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 105

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playing Arcade titles on their iPhones and iPads, the Apple TV provides a big-screen, collective gaming experience not easily duplicated by those other devices.

Arcade’s debut, combined with new support for gaming controllers from Sony and Microsoft, makes the Apple TV something that the company’s never had before: a viable game console. No, it may not be competing head-to-head with the Xbox One or PlayStation 4, much less the upcoming next-generation of consoles, but it might pose a challenge to something like the Nintendo Switch. Yes, the Switch may have more to offer—primarily Nintendo’s legendary first-party game catalog—but it’s also more expensive than the Apple TV and doesn’t offer the same breadth of

other functionality, such as a broad assortment of streaming services.

Moreover, for households that already have an iPad or iPhone in them, Apple’s gaming ecosystem competes favorably with not only the Switch’s portability aspect—since most Apple Arcade games sync across all devices—but also Nintendo’s innovative motion-control game mechanics. That could easily make it a compelling addition, especially for parents who loath to spend money on a dedicated gaming device.

Is it enough to save the Apple TV set-top box? Maybe. But it also raises a larger question for Cupertino and its customer base: given all the other devices and platforms available, is the Apple TV even really worth saving? ■

Apple Arcade is on iOS. Coming soon to Apple TV.

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How to add multiple accounts to your Apple TV Enjoy a little more personalization on the Apple TV with one of the biggest new features.

BY LEIF JOHNSON

W

e may not yet have support for multiple accounts on the iPad (go.macworld. com/mlac), but by gosh, we’ll have it on the Apple TV once tvOS 13 drops. The new feature lets you easily switch between two or more Apple IDs on IMAGE: APPLE

Apple’s set-top box, which means it’ll be easier to keep your recommendations from getting muddled with the viewing histories of family members and friends who share the device.

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stays in place when you switch between profiles, and you usually won’t see any differences in the account management of apps like Netflix. (Fortunately, Netflix comes with its own support for multiple accounts.)

Instead, you’ll see the differences in the libraries, recommendations, and purchase histories in the Movies, TV Shows, and Music apps. Meanwhile, services like iCloud, Game Center, and Home will each stay tied to a specific Apple ID regardless of which account is active.

You also can’t restrict access to your account with a passcode, which means anyone else who uses the Apple TV will still be able to see your purchase histories and iCloud photos (if you’ve set up the latter as the device owner).

Ah, well, it’s a start. Here’s what you need to do.

HOW TO SET UP MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS ON APPLE TV 1. Open the Settings app.

2. Press Users And Accounts.

3. Under Users, select Add New User.

4. You’ll see a screen entitled PreviouslyUsed Emails. Press Enter New. 5. For the next two steps, enter your Apple ID and password and then press Sign In. If you have two-factor authentication enabled (and you totally 108 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

should), you’ll need to have your iPhone or Mac handy so you can enter the code.

6. You’re done!

HOW TO SWITCH BETWEEN ACCOUNTS ON APPLE TV Apple makes it easy to switch between accounts if you’re using the modern Siri remote with the touch surface. Once you’ve got the remote in your hand: 1. Hold down the Apple TV App button for around two seconds. (It’s the one that looks like a stylized TV set.) This opens the Control Center, which will slide over from the right side of the screen and display circular icons for each registered user toward the top.

2. Using your thumb on the touch surface, select and press the account you’d like to activate. The Apple TV should immediately switch over to that account. A checkmark next to the right of the profile icon shows which one is active.

If you’re using the earlier aluminum Apple TV remote—and I know some of you still prefer it—you’ll have to switch accounts the long way.

To do this, go to Settings → Users And Accounts and then select Current User.

You’ll then see a list of available accounts. Press the one you want, and it will immediately switch over. ■

AKG Y500 Wireless headphone: Ultra-compact on-ear headphones for audiophiles These on-ear wireless headphones sport an ultra-compact, folding form factor and good wireless features, but their wired performance is where they really shine.

BY THEO NICOLAKIS

If you’re looking for an ultra-compact, sleek, and great-sounding on-ear headphone then look no further than AKG’s Y500 Wireless. While AKG might not be a household name to some, this Harman International subsidiary (and sister company to Harman Kardon, IMAGE: AKG

JBL, Mark Levinson, and Revel) is well known in audiophile and recording circles.

AKG also has a rich legacy in the recording studio world.

I’ve reviewed several AGK headphones over the years, including the AKG N60 NC Wireless (go.macworld.com/60nc) and N700 NC Wireless (go.macworld.com/700n), and JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 109

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have always had a great experience. The AKG Y500 Wireless is no exception.

you an hour’s worth of play time with a just five-minute charge. A full charge takes about two and a half hours.

DESIGN AND FIRST Thanks to multi-point connectivity, you IMPRESSIONS can connect two Bluetooth sources at the The AKG Y500 Wireless come beautifully same time. It’s perfect for folks who travel packaged. The headphones themselves with both a mobile device and a laptop, or were awarded an iF Design Award in 2018 who listen to music from a high-res DAP (go.macworld.com/if18). The headphone (go.macworld.com/hrdp) and need to take box proudly displays the iF Design Award a call on their smartphone. logo on its cover.

The Y500 supports Bluetooth 4.2 and The Y500 come in your choice of blue, the AAC codec. You won’t find aptX, aptX green, pink, and black finishes with HD, or LDAC codec support here, and chrome accents. My review pair came in when using the headphones wirelessly, I black. did notice higher than average hiss.

The Y500 are a road warrior’s best Under the hood, the Y500 features friend. With a 900mAh polymer li-ion 40mm drivers with a rated frequency battery, you’ll get up to 33 hours of battery response of 16Hz - 22kHz. The life for talk and music playback on a single headphones are very easy to drive with charge. The fast-charging feature gives just about any device. Their impedance is 32 ohms and sensitivity measures 117dBSPL/V@1kHz. When I first unpacked the AKG Y500, the headband reminded me of a kid’s headphone. The arms are located closer to the top of the headband, as you can see in the photo below. This makes the headphone seem smaller than it really is, and the arms initially felt The Y500 come beautifully boxed and sport the iF Design award logo on the cover. awkward to extend.

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and play/ pause. Just like the AKG N60, the buttons are perfectly placed and contour to your natural hand placement on the ear cup.

While placing my hand on the right ear cup my thumb fell perfectly— The Y500’s (pictured right) headband arms extend further up from the top when compared to other headphones such as AKG’s N60 NC wireless (left). almost every time—on the I was initially concerned that my hair ambient aware button. The same was true would get pinched in the headband, but of the play/pause toggle button on the left. that never happened during the review Discerning buttons by touch was a piece period, and I grew accustomed to the of cake. shortened headband quickly.

SNUG, CUSTOMIZABLE FIT The ear pads are well padded with The headband’s arms are metal and memory foam. They sat comfortably on my plastic. At this modest price, headbands ears—even after long listening sessions. are often just plastic. AKG deserves a The ear pads also did a surprisingly good nod for making that solid design choice. job of passively isolating me from the The metal part of the headband has outside world—that’s a feature you click-markers from 1 to 10 if you want to typically don’t associate with on-ear cans. make sure that both arms are evenly Let me commend AKG on their extended. industrial design. I absolutely loved the For on-ear headphones to stay on well, Y500’s simple and functional ergonomics. they need a snug fit. The Y500 are no The right ear cup has power and ambient exception. The ear cups pivot forward, aware, while the left ear cup has volume JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 111

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backward, up, and down, allowing you to fine-tune their fit. I think that depending on your head size, you might find the Y500 a bit too snug at first—especially during long listening sessions.

There’s a trick I noticed while wearing these headphones that I thought I’d pass on for those who find that the Y500 are too snug (or too loose): Pivoting the ear cups up relieved pressure on AKG’s Y500 Wireless headphones fold to an ultra-compact form. the top of my head. Pivoting the ear cups down made the performed some non-scientific fit firmer but also increased the pressure measurement using pink noise and an SPL on the top of my head. As with any (sound pressure level) meter. Ambient headphone, be sure to try them out and aware reduced the headphone’s output by see how they fit you.

-18dB when I was measuring 71dB on the HEAR YOUR SURROUNDINGS SPL meter. Ambient aware, however, only WITH AMBIENT AWARE attenuated the volume by -8dB if I had the I liked the fact that AKG included an music playing at 59dB. Ambient aware ambient-aware feature with the Y500. seems to lower the music down to around Ambient aware attenuates your music 52dB or 53dB. volume so you can year your surroundings.

What bothered me about ambient On over-the-ear-headphones, this feature aware is that when you activate/deactivate will play sounds from the outside through the feature, the headphones emit a the headphones. The Y500 simply lowers piercing arcade sound. There’s no need the sound with a simple press of the button for the sound to be so loud. Even worse, on the right ear cup. there’s no way to reduce the volume. I’d The louder your playback volume, the like to see AKG address this with a more ambient aware attenuates. I firmware update and at the very least, 112 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

Detail view of the Y500 Wireless’s ear cups.

lower the piercing sound on new models coming off the factory line.

MUSIC PAUSES AUTOMATICALLY

the time. I found it to be finicky, as I’ll explain below.

First off, there’s a one- to two-second delay before the headphones start and stop playback. The AKG Y500 seems to have a longer delay than the B&W PX or the B&O H9i.

Secondly, and perhaps more bothersome, was that the auto play/pause feature didn’t always work. If I opened the headphones wide and let them spring back on my head, the feature worked fine.

But if I was gentle putting the headphones on, they wouldn’t start back up. I’d have to take them off and let them spring back on my ears. The B&W PX have a companion mobile app to fine-tune this feature’s sensitivity, while the AKG Y500 doesn’t.

You simply need to be aware of this quirk.

AKG touts the Y500’s play and pause automation. This feature automatically pauses the music if you take the headphone off, and resumes your tunes when you put it back on. This is a great feature that saves battery life and ensures you don’t miss a beat. Many premium headphones, such as the Bang & Olufsen H9i (go.macworld.com/bp9i) and the Bowers and Wilkins PX (go.macworld.com/pxbw), have this feature. Play/pause automation worked as The AKG Y500 headphones have memory foam ear-pads with a perforation pattern that forms a subtle letter Y. advertised—at least most of

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If you don’t want this feature, you can disable/enable it by pressing the voiceassistant and ambient-aware buttons on either ear cup for about five seconds. The user manual says auto play/pause is enabled every time you power up the headphones.

I tested disabling the feature (which was easy enough), but then couldn’t re-enable it after several tries. Powering the headphones down didn’t work either. What made matters more perplexing was that there was no sound or visual indicator to let me know if the feature was turned on or off.

After several tries and powering the headphones on and off, I finally got the feature re-enabled (don’t ask me how).

Those minor quirks aside, it was time to take the headphones for some extended

listening sessions, and this is where they really sparkled.

GREAT PERFORMANCES, ESPECIALLY WHEN WIRED

I tested the AKG Y500 in both wireless and wired modes with an iPhone XS with the Periodic Audio Nickel headphone amp (go.macworld.com/nikl) and an Astell&Kern SR15 hi-res digital audio player (review forthcoming). I used Tidal as my streamingmusic source for both units, and a mix of high-res tracks and ripped CDs on the Astell&Kern.

Bluetooth performance is solid, but the Y500 really shines as a wired headphone.

Moreover, while the Y500 will play just fine on a mobile device or a computer, you’d do well to pair this seemingly modest priced headphone with outstanding electronics.

Played on the Astell&Kern, the Y500 were transformed into an other-worldly experience. I noted that the headphones came alive more with the Astell&Kern DAP, delivering greater dynamics and a sense of musical involvement.

The moral of the story is Standard accessories include a soft pouch, a USB charging cable, and a 3.5mm audio cable for wired connections. that I noticed a pretty 114 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

headphones were at home with jazz, R&B, rock, and classical. Generally speaking, the Y500’s tonal balance was excellent.

On some tracks, a bump in the upper bass tended to overpower artists’ vocals. A good example was on Dido’s “Hell After This” from her new album, Still on my Mind, and on Detail of the AKG Y500 Wireless’s memory-foam ear cup.

Sarah Barielles “Saint Honestly.”

But at this price point, the drastic change in the headphone’s AKG Y500 headphones are stellar performance based on the source that performers and significant overachievers. was feeding it.

I’d have no qualmes pitting them The AKG Y500 Wireless up against headphones costing mmmm deliver a superb, detailed, and twice the price.

AKG Y500 Wireless clean musical presentation. For headphones PROS BOTTOM LINE an on-ear headphone, it was • Folds to an ultra-compact AKG has another winner with the uncanny how the Y500 created shape that’s ideal for traveling.

Y500 Wireless For the price, such a deep, layered sound • Great sound for an on-ear these cans are sure to be a stage. Whether it was Eric headphone.

• Light and comfortable for sweet-sounding, no-frills, Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Ariana long listening sessions. audiophile favorite. The folding, Grande, Adele, Daft Punk, or CONS • Quirky play/pause compact footprint makes it an Diana Krall, the Y500’s musical automation. ideal travel companion. The reproduction was exhilarating.

• Wireless performance is inferior to wired ambient-aware and play/pause The only area that jumped performance. automation are good features, out at me as a slight shortcoming • Ambient-aware’s enable/ disable notification sound though the latter can be quirky. If was the vocal range. Depending is loud and annoying. you’re looking for a compact, on the track being played, I PRICE $80 on-ear headphone for less than sometimes longed for a tad bit COMPANY $200, you urgently need to give more warmth.

AKG the AKG Y500 a listen. ■ Nevertheless, the Y500 JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 115

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Bang & Olufsen Beoplay E6: B&O’s signature sound in an in-ear monitor The Beoplay E6 is a wireless in-ear-headphone in a sweat- and dust-resistant package that’s just the ticket for active lifestyles.

BY THEO NICOLAKIS

I

f you like Bang & Olufsen’s signature sound and have longed to capture it in a wireless in-ear monitor, look no further than B&O’s Beoplay E6.

This in-ear-headphone is beautiful to behold. The headphone’s main housing is encased in a textured rubber and polymer that B&O says is designed to resist sweat and moisture. The headphones have that 116 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

tangible heft and feel that tells you there’s no cheap plastic here.

Form and function have always been hallmarks of B&O audio gear. You can choose from three colors: Sky, sand, or black. My review pair were the last.

The headphone’s color-matched cable sports a braided pattern that elevates the headphone’s styling and premium feel.

IMAGE: BANG & OLUFSEN

aren’t in your ears. I loved this feature. And clicking the magnets together has another feature: the headphones automatically shut down to save battery power.

BATTERY LIFE

The Beoplay E6 come in three different color styles, including Sky, shown above.

During my review period, the braided cable resisted tangles and kinks no matter how many times I shoved the headphones into pockets of all sizes. Unfortunately, the braided cable also had a tendency to transfer the noise of it rubbing against my clothing. For a $300 headphone, that’s something that needs to be corrected.

A three-button inline remote control handles basic functions, and this component is fabricated from aluminum, further highlighting the E6’s premium look and feel.

Look closely and you’ll see a flat side on each earpiece. Those surfaces are magnetic, so if you touch one to the other, they’ll cling together. B&O implemented this slick design feature so you can wear the Beoplay E6 around your neck and reduce the risk of losing them when they

Speaking of power, the B&O Beoplay E6 are rated to deliver about five hours of playtime at moderate volume. If you haven’t used the headphones in 15 minutes, they’ll automatically shut down to further save power. There’s no way to use the headphones in a passive mode if the battery runs out, however, and it takes

The Beoplay E6 has magnets that clasp together to keep the headphone around your neck when not in use.

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REVIEW: B AN G & O LU F SEN BE OP L AY E 6

about two hours to recharge the headphones fully. I should also note that the Beoplay E6 comes with a proprietary charger. Lose the charger and you can’t power your headphones until you buy a $55 replacement.

BLUETOOTH AND COMPANION APP Bluetooth 4.2 is onboard. As with B&O’s other wireless headphones, you’ll find support for the AAC audio codec, but you won’t find support for alternative highquality codecs such as aptX, aptX HD, or LDAC. I had no troubles pairing the Beoplay E6 with my iPhone XS. I did notice, however, that once in a blue moon, Bluetooth connectivity would get finicky.

After speaking with representatives at B&O, I determined the pattern was being in areas with a high density of Bluetooth interference (Midtown Manhattan for example) while also keeping my iPhone in my back pocket.

These headphones are designed to mate with Bang & Olufsen’s companion app. Once paired, the Bang & Olufsen app will show all your paired B&O wireless headphones at a glance. From there, you can see current battery life and apply DSP settings, called “Tonetouch,” to tailor the sound of the headphone. Unlike some products that give you multi-band EQ, 118 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

which can be daunting for the non-technical user to suss out, the Beoplay app gives you four quadrants that will nudge the sound to “warmer” or “brighter” as well as “relaxed” or “excited.”

As in my review of the Beoplay H9i over-the-ear headphones (go.macworld. com/bp9i), I found Tonetouch to be highly effective. The bullseye motif is easy to understand, and any changes are immediately audible. I think many users will prefer to nudge the sound toward “warm.” I didn’t like shifting the headphone’s EQ toward “bright” or any of the other options. I left Tonetouch off (in neutral) for purposes of this review.

INCLUDED ACCESSORIES The Beoplay E6 comes with a solid set of accessories. There are four silicone tips, ranging from extra small

A side view of the B&O E6, with its charging.cable attached.

to large. Three of these come with silicone wings (B&O calls them “fins”) to increase the headphone’s grip during active workouts. B&O provides a beautiful cinch sack for you to carry your headphones.

POTENTIALLY FUSSY FIT Getting a good seal with an in-earheadphone is the key to getting the best sound. If you don’t get a solid seal with the ear tips, in-ear headphones will sound thin and anemic. Bass response in particular will suffer, and the headphones might even slide out of your ears.

Many IEMs—thanks to their design, size, and collection of included tips—will fit just about any ear. Others, like the B&O E6, are a bit fussier. Some consumers will get a great, trouble-free fit, while others (like me) might encounter challenges.

I tried all the included silicon tips and none would give me a good, stable seal.

Even the included silicone fins failed to add the stability I needed to keep the headphones in place. They would initially fit, but then tilting my head or turning it (producing micro tugs on the cable) would pull them out a tiny bit at a time. It was death by a thousand cuts. My recommendations to the B&O team are: 1. Include an even larger sized silicone tip.

2. Add better grip to all the silicone tips.

3. Include a curved fin option. The included fins didn’t provide enough hold

for my ear shape.

But all is not lost. Thankfully (and smartly), B&O includes a medium pair of Comply premium foam tips (go.macworld. com/cmpf with the packaging. The Comply tips, which I’ve referenced many times in other reviews, are a memory foam-based product that conforms to the shape of your ear canal at body temperature. The Comply tips gave me a solid seal and did a much better job of keeping the B&O E6 in place.

To get the best fit and seal, however, I had to go into my own Comply foam collection and choose a larger, more rounded tip. Once I did that, the Beoplay E6 made a perfect seal. The drawback of Comply memory foam ear tips is that their seal is so good that they will elevate the

The Beoplay E6 come with a braided cable. The headphone itself is sweat and sand resistant.

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A detailed view of the Beoplay E6, with a small fin attached.

bass response of the headphones you are listening to—although that’s something many consumers will find euphonious with the E6.

STUNNING, SIGNATURE B&O SOUND I conducted my review of the B&O Beoplay E6 with an iPhone XS with Tidal as my source. I played Tidal Master tracks when I could.

If you’re in the market for a greatsounding in-ear-headphone, take heart: the B&O E6 sound stunningly good. They excelled at conjuring up a deep, threedimensional sound stage on tracks such as Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ 1967 classic, “Nowhere to Run.” Orchestral works jumped to life. Hymns to the Mother 120 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

of God, by Lycourgos Angelopoulos’ acclaimed Greek Byzantine Choir basked in the stage the E6 afforded.

The Beoplay E6 also have an uncanny knack for reproducing music with presence and dynamism. These headphones reveled in extracting the emotional energy from Elaine Paige’s classic, “Memory,” from Cats. The same was true of Loren Allred’s “Never Enough,” and “The Greatest Show” from the The Greatest Showman soundtrack. Both of those latter tracks were intoxicating through the E6.

The Beoplay E6 excelled at delivering audiophile-quality bass, too. Low frequencies were controlled and refined without being boomy. I noted all these

traits on Khalid’s “Young Dumb & seal—try different ear tips. mmmm Broke,” Shaed’s “Trampoline,” & Olufsen BOTTOM LINE and Imagine Dragon’s “Bad Liar.” Bang Beoplay E6 PROS Bang and Olufsen has managed But the E6 couldn’t quite muster • Singature B&O sound in a to deliver the best elements of the the deepest bass notes with wireless in-ear-headphone. company’s signature sound with impact and presence. On • Beautiful styling and high-end build quality. all its emotional impact in a Imagine Dragon’s “Believer” and • Excellent companion app with effective EQ settings. wireless in-ear-monitor. That’s not Holly Cole’s “Train Song,” for CONS a small feat by any means. With example, this headphone • These in-ear monitors AAC codec support, they sounded couldn’t quite muster the oomph won’t fit all ear shapes perfectly. really good over Bluetooth of the extreme bottom end that • Proprietary charging cable and no fast-charging connected to my iPhone XS. high-performance headphones feature.

Unfortunately, they don’t support and speakers can deliver.

• Above-average cable noise transfer. aptX, aptX HD, or LDAC. That said, I’d like to PRICE The Beoplay E6 have two emphasize that these $194 shortcomings: First, some folks headphones are capable of solid COMPANY Bang & Olufsen will be unable to find a tip in the bass response. If you’re using box that delivers a perfect seal. these headphones and the bass If you’re in that number, I encourage you sounds anemic, you don’t have the proper to order a larger set of Comply memory foam ear to find one that fits just right.

Second, The E6 depend on a proprietary charging cable and dongle, and a replacement costs $55. As long as neither of those two issues are deal breakers and you’re looking for an emotionally engaging, dynamic, and toe-tapping set of in-ear monitors, give these an urgent audition. ■

The Beoplay E6 has the charging module on one side and the inline remote on the other for a balanced feel.

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Answering Your Questions and Sharing Your Tips About Getting the Most From Your Mac

Mac 911 Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems.

BY GLENN FLEISHMAN

TRYING TO MAKE AN OLD APPLE DISPLAY WORK WITH YOUR NEW MAC ? IT’S NO LONGER WORTH IT “I have an old Apple monitor,� several readers write each week. “How can I hook it up?� Here we reveal everything you need to know.

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How to connect an old DVI monitor to newer Mac with USB-C One problem that Mac 911 can always count on: The complexities of using old Apple monitors to work with new USB-Cequipped Macs.

The 2015 and later MacBook uses USB-C for USB 3 and DisplayPort. The IMA(& "11-&

newer MacBook Pro and iMac models pass Thunderbolt 3 over USB-C, along with DisplayPort and other standards.

I recently updated our best advice and knowledge for Apple’s Mini DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 2 displays (go.macworld.com/ t3mp). For older Apple monitors that relied on DVI—sometimes requiring a dual-link DVI The adapter and dock and power supply arrangement. setup for its largest displays—I had yet to find a solution in a single product, with which retailed for $100, or its much adapters, or from readers who had solved it. cheaper standard DVI to Mini DisplayPort That’s changed! Macworld reader adapter. However, you can find it in new Michael linked together an adapter and a and used condition on Amazon (go. dock for his 30-inch dual-link DVI Cinema macworld.com/dpdl), and some other Display. And it works! companies still make similar adapters, He relied on Apple’s existing dual-link including Monoprice, which offers one for DVI adapter that connected monitors with $60 (go.macworld.com/mn60). those video outputs, to a Mini DisplayPort I knew this existed, but in some tests connector for earlier Macs, which is colleagues conducted in 2017 and in compatible with Macs that rely on reports from readers over the last two DisplayPort video over Mini DisplayPortyears, it seemed like there wasn’t only Macs as well as those that pass compatibility via this adapter to any of the DisplayPort video over Thunderbolt and existing USB-C docks that offered Mini Thunderbolt 2.

DisplayPort as an output device.

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that allow easy returns if your arrangement doesn’t work

Connecting an Apple LED Cinema Display to a USB-C MacBook or MacBook Pro? Here are the adapters you need Apple has rarely released sales figures on particular models of products they offer, but I have to imagine they shipped at least hundreds of thousands of its two Apple LED Cinema Displays (24-inch and 27-inch) based on the number of people who want to connect them via USB-C to a 12-inch MacBook (go. macworld.com/mb16) or a 2016 MacBook Pro (go.macworld.com/ tbmb).

A 30-inch Cinema Display in use with a MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3.

I purchased several adapters and cables that can take the LED Cinema ($190) (go.macworld.com/stdk), and it’s Display’s Mini-DisplayPort (not Thunderbolt) been working for him. This AC-powered and convert it into something that passes dock, which I haven’t reviewed, includes a over USB-C in a compatible chain that nice array of ports that includes Mini allows you to connect to the USB-C DisplayPort but not HDMI, so it’s a great equipped MacBook and 2016 MacBook backwards-compatible one.

Pro. My testing shows three affordable and This could wind up costing nearly viable options, plus a reasonable option for $300. But given that the 30-inch Apple a full-featured USB-C dock that requires just Cinema Display ran $3,000 retail at its a simple adapter. introduction, it may feel like a small price Apple made multiple generations of its to pay to keep a working monitor in use. displays: the first used DVI (in single-link Your mileage may always vary, so make and dual-link flavors); the second, Minisure you purchase adapters from stores DisplayPort; the third, Thunderbolt 2. I’m 124 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

interested here in the second connector type, Mini-DisplayPort, which is distinct from Thunderbolt 2, even though both standards use the same connector type. (You can find some options for DVI, but we opted to not test them given the smaller number, display quality, and age of those that remain usable.)

With a 2016 MacBook Pro, you can connect an Apple Thunderbolt Display with Apple’s Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter (go.macworld.com/t2t3), and you’re all set. But Apple doesn’t make an adapter that works with Mini-DisplayPort, and it took a few weeks between the new MacBook Pros shipping and third parties to fill the gap.

What made matters worse is that while there were already a variety of USB-C docks on the market that accept external video, nearly all of them only have an HDMI jack, and there wasn’t, say, a female Mini-DisplayPort to male HDMI adapter available. (There still isn’t! Don’t make a mistake and order one of the male MiniDisplayPort to female HDMI adapters on the market.)

Late last year, mostly tiny companies started releasing Mini-DisplayPort to USB-C adapters, some of which were

made in such small quantities they were immediately backordered on Amazon. As January approached, more adapters appeared in greater variety, and seemingly in greater quantities, too.

I searched across Amazon, product manufacturers’ sites, and other retailers for potential adapters, read reviews, and settled on four adapters to test. A fifth is backordered into February, and I’ll test it when it is available and update this story.

Some of the adapters tested go in and out of stock rapidly, which is why I provide a few alternatives.

To cut to the chase, the clear winner on features is the UPTab USB-C to MiniDisplayPort adapter ($35) (go.macworld. com/uptb). Its secret weapon? A passthrough USB-C power jack.

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For a less-expensive option without power passthrough, useful for the MacBook Pro, pick the Itanda USB-C to Mini-DisplayPort adapter ($20) (go. macworld.com/itnd).

If you’re looking for a full-scale USB-C dock, you can’t currently do better than the CalDigit USB-C Dock (go.macworld. com/cldg) ($150; available on Amazon [go. macworld.com/clds]). I discuss it below and in a separate review (go.macworld.com/ cdrv), but it has both HDMI and full-sized DisplayPort jacks, and requires just a sub-$10 Mini-DisplayPort female to fullsized DisplayPort male adapter to work with an LED Cinema Display.

THE LIMITATIONS Not everything works perfectly over USB-C in macOS 10.12 Sierra with the Apple LED Cinema Display, but it’s a pretty close match. I tested on a 27-inch model (go. macworld.com/ld27).

Plugging in just a Mini-DisplayPort adapter gets you the following with all the products tested: > External 1440p (2560x1440 pixel resolution) display for a 12-inch MacBook or 2016 MacBook Pro > External audio via the display’s speakers and control of audio volume from the laptop > Power (but not data) to the USB 2.0 ports in the display’s back 126 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

The only glitch seems to be a small line of missing pixels in the upper right corner of the display when connected through the CalDigit dock, but that’s nearly unnoticeable.

The missing piece, however, is brightness and USB 2.0 data passthrough.

I didn’t find the default brightness level distracting or glaring, but that’s a very individual judgment.

You need to use a USB-C to Type-A adapter to connect the monitor’s USB Type-A plug, and then you can control brightness via a keyboard, Touch Bar, or Displays system preference pane, as well as plug in a keyboard, mouse, and other low-data-speed devices.

Plugging in USB also enables a built-in iSight (640x480 pixel resolution) camera and microphone, which are redundant to a

UPTab’s USB-C to female Mini-DisplayPort adapter with pass-through USB-C power.

Mac laptop’s mic and FaceTime support.

For a MacBook Pro, using USB 2.0 means giving up two ports to get brightness and other features: one for the MiniDisplayPort adapter and one to connect a USB plug. However, if you’re using a USB-C hub or dock with multiple Type-A ports, that can take care of that problem.

On a MacBook, however, you’ve just got the one port, so you won’t be able to control brightness without using a dock. I tested the CalDigit USB-C Dock and because it has a DisplayPort jack, it seemed like the right pairing for a MacBook, with which it worked perfectly.

WHAT TO BUY I found four distinct options that worked perfectly well on both a 2015 MacBook and a 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. UPTab USB-C to Mini-DisplayPort adapter. This UPTab adapter (go. macworld.com/uptb). has great advantage of supporting pass-through USB-C power. It’s attractively made and seems solidly constructed. The $35 price tag may seem excessive compared to adapters and cables that cost $10 to $15, but the engineering and components for power pass-through of the wattage level used to charge a Mac laptop comes with a cost.

For a MacBook owner, the power port is supremely useful, letting you use the

Itanda’s USB-C to female Mini-DisplayPort adapter.

adapter without draining power. However, with the laptop’s single USB-C jack in use, you’re stuck if you need to connect other USB devices, like a wired keyboard or mouse, an external drive, or SD Card reader.

Itanda Type-C adapter. The robustly made, attractive, $20 Itanda (go.macworld. com/itndis probably the best choice for a MacBook Pro owner. It’s inexpensive and occupies a port compactly.

A pair of adapters. If a direct adapter, like the Itanda, isn’t available and you want an alternative that works just as well in my testing, you can pair two adapters.

I tried both the Cable Matters DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort Male to Female Adapter (go.macworld.com/mlfm; $9) and the StarTech DisplayPort to MiniDisplayPort adapter (go.macworld.com/ stch; $6.50) with the Benfei USB-C to DisplayPort 4K Adapter (go.macworld.com/ bnfi; $15 when I purchased it). The Cable Matters and StarTech adapters both accept the male Mini-DisplayPort connector from JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 127

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Cable Matters DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort Male to Female Adapter.

StarTech’s female Mini-DisplayPort to male DisplayPort adapter.

Benfei’s USB-C to female DisplayPort adapter.

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the Apple display, and have a male fullsized DisplayPort plug. That plugs into the Benfei’s female DisplayPort jack, and then the Benfei plugs into a MacBook or MacBook Pro via USB-C. At $21.50 or $24 together, both are more expensive than the Itanda, but I had no trouble getting the same crisp performance and support.

Some readers tried more complicated options, involving a female-to-female inline Mini-DisplayPort adapter, but given the two-adapter option, that’s no longer necessary.

CalDigit USB-C Dock. Paired with a DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort Male to Female Adapter (either the Cable Matters or StarTech noted above), the $150 CalDigit dock’s DisplayPort jack offers full compatibility (go.macworld.com/cldg). That price tag is high for just plugging in an Apple LED Cinema Display, but the dock is one of the best and most fully featured you can purchase, and offers the right solution for a MacBook or MacBook Pro. You can read my full review at go. macworld.com/cldr.

Why not HDMI? You might ask why I didn’t try some kind of HDMI situation, where I converted Mini-DisplayPort to an HDMI plug or adapter jack, and then plugged that into the HDMI port available in several USB-C docks. I tried a few variations of this, and it didn’t work,

CalDigit’s USB-C dock

although others have had different luck.

DisplayPort is a video standard that works over its own proprietary connector styles (DisplayPort and Mini-DisplayPort), and can be embedded as a data standard inside of Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 3, and USB-C. Although DisplayPort can also be routed via an HDMI cable—HDMI being its own set of standards—it doesn’t seem to survive the passage with multiple adapters and an Apple LED Cinema Display.

The only reason to want this option is if you have a dock without a spare USB-C data port that might allow DisplayPort passage and that has an HDMI jack.

More options These options are affordable, but sometimes unavailable, whether due to high demand or short supply. We’ll be updating this article with new adapters as necessary, but based on testing, any of the above options should be all you need for the life of the monitor to connect it via USB-C.

Why the Apple LED Cinema Display doesn’t work with a Thunderbolt 3 adapter Ross Mclauchlan writes in with a display problem: I recently purchased a MacBook Pro and have an Apple LED Cinema Display, and am perplexed that I can’t get the display to work.

Ross is using an Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter (go.macworld.com/byt2), but the trouble is the Apple LED Cinema Display models don’t use Thunderbolt 2.

We’ve written about this before (go. macworld.com/cncd) but it’s truly nonobvious, even when you’re paying close attention.

The LED Cinema Display series relies on DisplayPort for both the physical connection and the logical one—the way in which video is encoded as data and sent across the physical wiring. The MiniDisplayPort connector is identical to a Thunderbolt 2 in appearance (go.macworld.

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com/idnt), except for a tiny logo. The MiniDisplayPort logo that appears on a cable jack and an adapter port looks like a monitor holding its hands up in surrender (a rectangle with a vertical line on either side).

Thunderbolt 2 jacks and ports have a lightning bolt. (Ironically, Apple’s Lightning standard doesn’t use a lightning bolt.)

Plugging a Mini-DisplayPort monitor’s jack into a Thunderbolt 2 port on a Mac or at the end of a chain of Thunderbolt 2 devices was supported through clever backwards compatibility that fails with Thunderbolt 3, including a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter. Instead, you need one of the adapters or docks I reviewed earlier this year and mentioned earlier in this article.

There are more options now and varied ones, so read product reviews carefully if you purchase one I didn’t test.

And just to be more confusing, the MiniDisplayPort converters I reviewed don’t output Thunderbolt 3. Rather, they send DisplayPort video signals over USB-C in a way that Thunderbolt 3 allows for with backwards compatibility. Those adapters can thus be used with a 12-inch MacBook, which primarily supports USB 3 and DisplayPort over the USB-C connector, as well as with 2016 MacBook Pro models, 130 MACWORLD JANUARY 2020

which support Thunderbolt 3, USB 3, and a host of other standards over USB-C. No, it’s not just you. It’s confusing to have a single connector style (USB-C or Mini-DisplayPort) with incompatible standards that work over it.

Apple’s Thunderbolt Display doesn’t work with a 12-inch MacBook’s USB-C port While the USB-C connector type has a lot of advantages and it’s now guaranteed with Intel’s full support at being the dominant peripheral format for the next many years, there’s still a lot of confusion about the difference between USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.

That comes up in an email from Simon Shaw, who can connect his 24-inch Apple Cinema Display to a 12-inch MacBook (2016 release) using a Mini DisplayPort to USB-C, but finds his 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display doesn’t have a solution. It probably seems even more arbitrary when MacBook Air models dating to 2011, including the ones still on sale, can work with both Cinema Displays and Thunderbolt Displays with no problem.

No solution is forthcoming, but it’s not surprising that this remains a puzzle. First

the summary, and then the details: > A DisplayPort-only monitor can work with the proper adapter with any USB-C Mac. > A Thunderbolt-only monitor can only work with a Mac with Thunderbolt built in, no matter the kind of port on the Mac. > A DisplayPort-only monitor can work through backwards compatibility, which might require an adapter, with a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac of any vintage.

Now the gory bits.

DisplayPort is a video standard that also has a couple of connector types: full-sized DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort.

You can also typically use an HDMI-toDisplayPort cable for connections as well.

The Apple Cinema displays push DisplayPort (the video data specification) natively over DisplayPort (the hardware port specification).

Thunderbolt is a general data-transfer standard that used the Mini DisplayPort style jack for its first two versions, and can carry DisplayPort video data along with other kinds of data.

DisplayPort is packaged as an alternate data mode within the larger Thunderbolt specification. (The DisplayPort-only Cinema Displays also work over older flavors of

Thunderbolt, which is how the MacBook Air and other Macs provide compatibility.)

Finally, USB-C is a general hardware port type for peripherals, which is designed to work with bus controllers— the hardware that handles traffic over the port—that can have varying capabilities. Some computers and phones will only support USB 2 and 3 and DisplayPort. That’s true of the 2015 and later 12-inch MacBooks.

Other computers will sport 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 in their controllers, alongside backwards compatibility and interoperability with Thunderbolt 2, USB 2 and 3, DisplayPort, ethernet, and other standards. That’s the case with 2016 MacBook Pros and 2017 iMacs.

Because the MacBook only handles USB and DisplayPort over its USB-C port, it can’t interact with a Thunderbolt-only

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monitor, because that monitor requires a Thunderbolt controller to unpack the DisplayPort video data.

However, because the MacBook Pro and Two generations of MagSafe connectors. iMac models with 2016 and later MacBook Pro models can Thunderbolt 3 can read Thunderbolt 2 pass power bidirectionally, an awesome signals, the use of a simple Thunderbolt 2 to feature for flexibility, and which allows using Thunderbolt 3 adapter allows these Macs to USB battery packs to charge your laptop. push video to a Thunderbolt Display.

(Sadly, no battery pack has gone into Why a Thunderbolt Display can’t production yet that can send enough power a new Thunderbolt 3 MacBook power to charge your Mac while it’s awake.) or MacBook Pro The Thunderbolt Display comes Steve Dvorak writes in with a question equipped with a MagSafe power connector, about the 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt which can power Apple laptops made for Display and the new MacBook Pro: many years—until the latest series. Apple could have created a MagSafe-to-USB-C While I can do the Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter, but my suspicion is that there simply adapter for video and Thunderbolt isn’t a large enough market for it. And the cost accessories, I can’t use the power that would likely be only slightly less expensive comes from the display. There appears than an additional USB-C power brick. to be no adapter created that provides A third-party wanting to create an power from MagSafe 1/2 connectors to adapter would run aground on Apple’s USB-C. Am I missing something?

MagSafe patents, unless it suddenly chose to license those, which seems unlikely.

Unfortunately not. The USB-C port(s) Apple sells spare adapters for $49 to $79, found in the 2015 and later MacBook and depending on the laptop.

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MAKE SURE YOU SAVE YOUR DATA BEFORE DELETING AN APPLE ID ACCOUNT Apparently, one piece of online folk wisdom goes as follows: If you’re having trouble with your Apple ID, just create a new one and abandon the old one. This actually isn’t a good idea in most circumstances. It usually makes a bad situation worse.

Apple IDs can be a problem, especially if you have legacy accounts from preiCloud Apple cloud services. Apple has made it easier over the years to use one Apple ID for purchases and another for iCloud, which was a big help. The upcoming macOS 10.15 Catalina rejiggers account management so your various Apple IDs are consolidated into a preference pane that replaces the iCloud one, very similar to iOS’s Settings app.

If you’ve wound up with multiple Apple IDs because of this advice, you can simply stop using those accounts or use Apple’s process to delete them (go.macworld.com/ delt). Any associated purchases will be lost, and Apple still lacks any way to transfer or merge purchases with another Apple ID account.

Before deleting, if you have contact information, iCloud Photos’s synced images, or other information, your best path is to use a separately created macOS account to download and export all the information to

merge in your primary account.

1. On a Mac, create a new account to handle downloads. Open the Users & Groups preference pane to add an account.

2. Log into that account.

3. In the iCloud preference pane, log into the first of the Apple ID accounts you want to delete.

4. Enable synchronization for services from which you might need to extract data: iCloud Drive, Photos, Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari (for bookmarks), and Notes.

5. Follow the instructions below for exporting synced contact.

6. In the iCloud preference pane, click Sign Out and opt to delete your local copy of material instead of retaining it.

Repeat steps 1 to 6 for each Apple ID you want to be rid of.

Here’s how you export data from each of the synchronization types: iCloud Drive. Open iCloud Drive in the Finder (Go → iCloud Drive) and copy any documents to a locally stored location.

Photos. Enable iCloud Photos in the Photos app and set Photos → Preferences → iCloud to Download Originals to This Mac. When all media is downloaded (scroll to the bottom of the Photos view to check on progress), you can export any images or videos you want to retain via File → Export → Export Unmodified Original for X JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 133

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Photos/Videos or Export X Photos/Videos.

Use the unmodified option if you’ve made no changes, such as adding keywords or editing photos.

Mail. Drag any downloaded messages from the online account to a folder in the On My Mac section in the sidebar. (See this column for more details [go.macworld. com/onmc].)

In Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders, use the export feature in each in the File menu to extract those sets of data.

Safari: Select File → Export Bookmarks.

Notes: Apple offers no built-in export method, but a developer created a simple, free exporter (go.macworld.com/rtap).

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access outside this special macOS account; the Users → Shared Folder is a great location, as any macOS user can retrieve and modify data there.

You can later import all the data extracted above into the same apps in your main macOS account that’s connected with the right Apple ID.

HOW TO RESTORE ITEMS FOR AN EXTERNAL DRIVE THAT’S BACKED UP USING TIME MACHINE Time Machine’s main purpose is to back up an internal startup volume, but it can also archive the contents of other volumes on an internal drive and volumes on externally attached drives. Check the Time Machine preference pane to make sure those other volumes aren’t excluded if you want them backed up. (But you can’t include the Time Machine volume itself! [go.macworld.com/tmvl]) However, once Time Machine has

started to archive those other volumes, you might wonder how to find their contents to restore older versions or the entire set of files. Apple doesn’t provide the same ease of navigation backwards nor full restore with volumes other than the one set to start up the Mac, but the data is all there.

You can access external volumes through any of the following means: > In the Finder, open a window from the external volume and then select Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine system menu. This should take you to a view that lets you browse the contents of that volume. > Select Enter Time Machine and then use the sidebar to select a volume. > Find the Backups. backupdb folder

on the Time Machine volume (connected directly or as a network shared volume) and open it. Inside, you’ll find each computer backed up by name. Open the correct name and then open the Latest folder. All volumes appear there.

These external volumes aren’t readily

available when using Migration Assistant or recovering a computer via Disk Utility’s restore operation in macOS Recovery, but can be copied later from the Time Machine backup after you’ve set the Mac up again with its startup volume.

HOW TO GET A SAFARI PASSWORD TO SAVE IT IN A PASSWORD MANAGER Apple has been a fantastic promoter of better password security by suggesting strong passwords and auto-filling them in Safari for macOS and iOS. These passwords are long, complex, automatically stored, stored securely, and—if you have iCloud Keychain—synchronized across all your devices linked to the same iCloud account that also have iCloud Keychain enabled.

However, there’s one small flaw: Third-party password managers in Safari for macOS won’t pick up the entered password and offer to store it for you in their database. I rely on 1Password, and there are a few other highly regarded password-management systems that have features that stretch JANUARY 2020 MACWORLD 135