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CONTENTS
Features HEADING BACK TO SCHOOL
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Summer is almost over and that means a new school year. That used to be a school bag loaded with heavy new books but times are changing. Apps have entered the classroom and we have put together the best.
LISTEN UP
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Among all the headphones and speaker systems out there, how do you find the right one? To help you narrow down your choice, we tell you the key issues to consider as you shop and explain what your options are.
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Regulars
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MAIL HOT STUFF iSNAP MAC GEMS GUEST COLUMN: The I’s Have It: Apple and Innovation GADGET GUIDE APP GUIDE SECRETS HELP GROUP TEST TruGlide Duo Adonit Jot Pro Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus Pogo Connect
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5 FEBRUARY 2014 www.macworld.com.au
Reviews 56 60 60 61 62 64
Mac Pro Logitech Bluetooth Speakers Z600 Angelbird SSD2go Brother MFC J6920DW Belkin WeMo Home Automation FileMaker 13
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FEATURE
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FEATURE
25 FEBRUARY 2014 www.macworld.com.au
LISTEN UP BY DAN FRAKES
The iPhone comes with a pretty good set of earbuds (as earbuds go), but you can get much better sound quality, and likely better comfort, by upgrading to a set of third-party headphones. And for occasions when you want to listen to your audio out loud, a speaker system is what you need. But among all the headphones and speaker systems out there, how do you find the right ones? To help you narrow down your choices, we tell you the key issues to consider as you shop, and explain what your options are. And if you’d rather not do the legwork, we offer up our recommendations for great products in each category.
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REVIEWS 57
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FirePro D700 GPUs, will set you back a cool $12,029.) MULTI-CORE IS WHERE IT’S AT In our first benchmark test of our review model, the results were in some ways surprising. The eight-core 2013 Mac Pro was only eight percent faster in our Speedmark 9 benchmark suite than a CTO 2013 iMac maxed out with a quad-core 3.5GHz Core i7 processor, a 3TB Fusion Drive, 8GB of RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics (a $3329 configuration). In the individual tests that make up our Speedmark benchmark, the iMac actually beat the new Mac Pro in a Finder test, the iMovie test, the iTunes test, the Aperture test, the Parallels test and the Cinebench OpenGL test. It also beat the Mac Pro in GeekBench 3’s single-core benchmark. However, the new Mac Pro handily beat the iMac – and every other Mac we’ve ever tested – in our Final Cut Pro X test, the iPhoto test, the HandBrake test, the Photoshop tests, the Cinebench CPU test, the Mathematica test, and several
graphics-engine tests. It also crushed most other Macs in GeekBench 3’s multi-core benchmark. Head to www.macworld. com.au/?p=116090 for the full performance breakdown.
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processors (each with 2GB of GDDR5 video RAM), and 256GB of PCIebased flash storage. The other, the $5299 model, uses a 3.5GHz six-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with 12MB of level 3 cache, plus 16GB of RAM, dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics processors (each with 3GB of VRAM), and the same 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage. Each model also includes 802.11ac Wi-Fi (compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0 and a built-in speaker; you also get copies of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, along with the standard OS X apps. Apple offers a slew of configureto-order (CTO) options for each. For starters, you can upgrade the $3999 Mac Pro to match the $5299 model’s processor ($650), RAM ($120), or GPUs ($530) – do all three, and you’ve got the $5299 model. (The $5299 Mac Pro is simply the $3999 model with standard upgrades.) But you can keep going: another $2450 gets you a 3.0GHz, 8-core CPU with 25MB of L3 cache, and $4250 gets you a 2.7GHz, 12-core CPU with 30MB of L3 cache. On either model, once you get to 16GB of RAM, another $600 bumps you up to 32GB, and an additional $1560 takes you to 64GB. A $360 premium gets you 512GB of PCIebased flash storage; tack on $960 and you get 1TB. Finally, a $1260 premium over the dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs gets you dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs (each with 6GB of VRAM). Neither model includes a display, keyboard or any other input device. If this all sounds a bit confusing, think of it this way: Apple essentially offers a base Mac Pro model for $3999, along with options for upgrading its processor, GPUs, RAM and flash storage. (If you’re curious, a maxed-out 2013 Mac Pro, complete with a 12-core processor, 64GB of RAM, 1TB of flash storage, and dual
PERFORMANCE EXPLAINED You may find our overall results confusing, but in many ways they confirm what we’ve found with other Macs in recent years. When it comes to apps and tasks that can take advantage of multiple processor cores, GHz matters, but multi-core matters just as much – or more. For apps and tasks that don’t benefit from multiple cores, the processor’s clock speed becomes more important. Thus, a 3.5GHz quad-core iMac beats a 3.0GHz eight-core Mac Pro at things like Finder and iTunes tasks; the Mac Pro, on the other hand, easily bests the iMac in Final Cut Pro X, HandBrake, Mathematica and Photoshop. Indeed, if you look at Apple’s webpage on performance, the company touts the new Mac Pro for video editing, 3D modelling and
Redesign. The Mac Pro's unified thermal core.
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