Innehållsförteckning för September 2020 från Macworld UK

It’s hard not to find a bright spot in Apple’s third-quarter earnings. Not only did the company beat expectations with revenue of nearly $60 billion and an 11-per cent growth over last year, it also saw a sales bump across every product it sells. The Mac enjoyed the biggest leap, buoyed by work-from-home orders for many businesses around the world. Mac sales topped $7 billion for the first time in third-quarter history, an increase of more than 20 per cent, and the iPad also set a record for a non-holiday quarter. Numbers below are compared to last year’s Q3. iPhone: $26.4 billion versus $25.9 billion Mac: $7.1 billion versus $5.8 billion iPad: $6.6 billion versus $5 billion Wearables: $6.5 billion versus $5.5 billion The only somewhat muted performer was Services.…

Traditionally, Apple sells separate gift cards for its various departments: one for hardware in the Apple Store, one for software in the App Store and one for music and other media in iTunes. But that is all about to change. In the US, Apple has launched a universal gift card and “Apple Account Balance”, writes AppleInsider. It can be purchased and used for hardware products, software, accessories, apps, games, music, movies, TV series, iCloud storage and anything else purchased from or via Apple. If the scheme is a success in the US, the universal gift card may appear in other parts of the world.…

The iMac is a direct descendant of the very first Mac, and it’s often the computer that long-time users think about when they think about the Macintosh. The iMac’s all-in-one design is popular and iconic. The iMac is great for both novices and demanding users. It can handle general-purpose and heavy-duty tasks equally well. It’s ideal for someone who needs to buy a complete computer setup (keyboard, mouse or trackpad and display) and wants to maximize workspace efficiency. If you’re in the market for an iMac, this guide will help you make the right choice. Apple has three versions of the iMac: the standard iMac, the iMac with Retina display and the iMac Pro. The latest: A big refresh for the 27in iMac Apple has updated the 27in iMac with…

RATING: Price: £39.99 (inc VAT) from fave.co/31kDVBM McAfee is a long-time name in the world of PC security, and these days it offers three security products to consumers: McAfee Total Protection, Gamer Security (a suite specific to gamers), and LiveSafe – the latter provides protection for unlimited devices. This review is looking at Total Protection. Total Protection comes at a variety of price points depending on how many devices you want to license. For a single device, you’ll pay £30; add another £5 and you get Total Protection for five devices; and for £40 you’ll get coverage for 10 devices. Those are first-year prices, however. McAfee’s MSRPs after the first year are £80, £100 and £120, respectively. Total Protection’s interface is well designed, but it takes some getting used to.…

I wrote my first story about Apple in 1993, meaning I’ve been covering Apple for 60 per cent of its existence. Lately, I’ve realized that beyond a few major milestones, most people don’t really remember Apple as anything but a technology titan. But the two very different Apples of the 1990s and early 2000s are worth remembering, rather than losing them in a hazy muddle that begins with Steve Jobs leaving Apple and ends with the arrival of the App Store. I’ve tried to categorize the history of Apple into six distinct eras where the company’s approach and position were remarkably different, with special attention paid to the two most undersold eras in company history. The Hobbyist Era (1976-1982) You know the story. Two guys named Steve built a company…

Hey, you Mac old timers (like me). How many times have you said to yourself, “Man, I could use a round of Duke Nukem 3D right now” or wished you could go back to a version of Adobe Photoshop that didn’t have all the tools you need? (Okay, never, but play along with me here.) Well, now you can go back to the old days of the Mac with a Mac OS 8 emulator, written by Felix Rieseberg. He created a JavaScript app which includes a virtual machine that emulates a Macintosh Quadra 900 running Mac OS 8.1. The 261MB compressed download expands into an app that runs that system in a window on your modern Mac. The emulator also includes a few apps, such as Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5, Adobe…

If there’s a segment of Apple’s business that seems to fly in the face of the company’s philosophy – not just in terms of making a product that is substandard or lacklustre – but in terms of actually being at odds with the way it otherwise does business, you couldn’t put forth a more prominent example than the App Store. The discussion, always at a constant simmer in the Apple community, bubbled up once again last month even as Apple CEO Tim Cook was grilled by lawmakers over antitrust concerns. Developers, regularly dissatisfied with the company’s lack of transparency and equality over rules, took the opportunity to renew criticism of not only that, but the hefty 30-per cent cut of proceeds. The App Store has been a profitable business for…

Over recent months, pundits and analysts have gone back and forth on the question of when this autumn’s new iPhone models will be launched. But now – extremely unusually – we have confirmation from Apple itself that the iPhone 12 will be delayed. During the quarterly earnings report, Apple CFO Luca Maestri announced that the late-2020 iPhone will be released a couple of weeks later than usual. In other words, the new phones won’t be available in shops until October. The announcement comes as no major surprise, especially as Qualcomm’s chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala announced as recently as 29 July that the “delay of a flagship mobile” will have a negative effect on results for the current quarter. We even suspected that this quarter’s report could contain hints about…

Apple unveiled an ambitious plan to make its entire business carbon neutral by 2030. Apple’s ‘corporate emissions’ are already carbon neutral, but the impact of its offices and data centres are small compared to all the products it makes and sells. This new goal encompasses the entire business, including the manufacturing and sale of all of its products, the supply chain for them and even product end of life. Given all the global companies involved in the supply of parts for Apple’s products, it’s a very ambitious goal to achieve in just a decade. However, it’s worth noting that carbon neutral is not the same thing as zero carbon. Carbon may be produced somewhere in Apple’s business, as long as the company makes up for it elsewhere. For example, if…

If you’ve been holding out for a brand-new 27in iMac, the big day has arrived. While you’ll need to wait a little longer for that rumoured Pro Display XDR-inspired redesign and Apple silicon inside, Apple has announced a ‘major update’ to the 27in iMac, and it is more than just a summer speed bump. It changes just about everything about Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer and brings several compelling reasons to upgrade. Here are five reasons why you might want to take the plunge now and delay a switch to Apple silicon. 1. They’re crazy fast The iMac has always been underrated for its speed, but the latest update brings a major boost over the previous model. The Intel 8th-gen processors have been replaced with 10th-gen chips that max out…

RATING: Price: £29.99 (inc VAT) from fave.co/31jxRty Most companies that are primarily PC antivirus vendors treat their Mac software as an afterthought. They cover the basics for security, but extra features are few and far between. That’s not the case with NortonLifeLock (formerly Symantec). It offers a lot of value for Norton 360’s £30 per year for new subscribers or £100 per year for returning customers. For that money, Norton 360 Deluxe covers up to five devices including Macs, PCs, smartphones, and tablets. And it offers a lot more to Mac users than just malware protection. It also brings with it a password manager, free VPN access, parental controls, 50GB of cloud backup and so-called dark web monitoring. On top of that there’s the Clean function for getting rid of…

The arrival of Macs running Apple silicon isn’t just about faster, more power efficient processors. It’s also an opportunity for Apple to reinvent Mac hardware using lessons learned from the iPhone and iPad. Apple can take this time to also reconsider some Mac hardware decisions of the past decade, most notably the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro. While some users swear by it, the Touch Bar generally seems to have been received with indifference or scorn. Updates over the years have done almost nothing to improve it, making me wonder if even Apple has truly embraced the thing. By the end of this year, Apple will begin rolling out those new Macs. Sooner or later, the Intel MacBook Pro will be replaced with a model running on Apple silicon.…

Over the next two years, we’re going to hear a lot about Apple’s next transition. The move from Intel to Apple’s silicon is one of the biggest moves the company has ever made, one that’s sure to impact the rest of the industry as much as the Mac itself. But that’s not the only transition that Apple is embarking on. It might not have had its own segment during the WWDC keynote, but Apple laid down the tracks for a major shift away from traditional apps over the next several years. It won’t be as sudden or even as quick as the move to Apple’s silicon, but before long apps aren’t going to be something we need to download before we can use them. Rather they’re going to be ever-present,…

After more than 30 years at Apple, Phil Schiller is transitioning his role from Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing to Apple Fellow. Greg Joswiak will be promoted to fill that position. Phil Schiller has been a mainstay of Apple events for as long as anyone can remember. Apple’s press release quotes him as saying: “I first started at Apple when I was 27, this year I turned 60 and it is time for some planned changes in my life. I’ll keep working here as long as they will have me, I bleed six colours, but I also want to make some time in the years ahead for my family, friends and a few personal projects I care deeply about.” Schiller’s words make it sound as though he is getting ready…

One of these quarters, Apple’s going to announce financial results that don’t result in some sort of record. Perhaps as soon as next quarter, even. But last month, Apple announced the results of its financial third quarter of 2020 – and they were an all-time third quarter record. Literally every measurable category went up, year over year. It was so sunny a set of results that Apple CEO Tim Cook seemed almost embarrassed to be reporting such huge growth amid a global pandemic and some powerful social upheaval in the United States. In any event, here’s what I gleaned from the results and Apple’s regular post-results conference call with analysts that might provide some insight about where Apple is and where it might be going next. Topsy turvy: Mac and…

With the announcement of the new 27in iMac, Apple seems to be clearing out some of the final major Intel Mac releases in its product pipeline. The big question is, what’s next for the iMac? While this new revision makes the current iMac a bit faster and a bit nicer, it’s a fairly modest upgrade. With the move to Apple silicon on the horizon, it’s worth pondering where the iMac goes from here – and how soon we might see truly big changes when it comes to Apple’s most popular desktop computer. Big iMac: Resetting the clock The 27in iMac’s update has bought Apple some time. With this update, it feels like Apple could wait somewhere between 12 and 18 months before needing to update the larger of the two…

RATING: Price: £59.99 (inc VAT) from fave.co/33D2bSP We heaped praise on Avast’s top tier product in 2018, then called Avast Security Pro, for its solid malware fighting capabilities and a modern interface. In the two years since then, Avast renamed the product Avast Premium Security, but its protection is as strong as ever. On the privacy front Avast has had a rougher time. In early 2020, the company suffered a huge privacy black eye related to data collection that has since been ameliorated. AV-Test most recently tested Avast’s malware capabilities in March 2020. The suite earned a 100 per cent detection rate from 58 samples in its widespread and prevalent malware test. In December 2019, it also had a 100 per cent detection rate from 145 samples. AV-Comparatives tests Mac…

Apple’s in a strange position vis-à-vis many of its biggest rivals. While the company has in the past counted many of the most prominent tech companies in the world – IBM, Microsoft, Intel – as rivals, in more recent years, it’s been strategically savvy about turning those erstwhile competitors into allies. Which isn’t to say that the company doesn’t still have powerful foes. But the nature of the technology industry today is that none of these companies exist in a vacuum; there are so few at the highest of levels that ultimately all of them exist in a liminal state between ally and enemy. And for Apple, no company is more prominent in that frenemy zone than Google. But with the latest updates to its software platforms unveiled at this…

Software-based headphones are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a software update can worsen an otherwise perfectly-functioning accessory – some AirPods Pro firmware updates have had users complain of reduced noise reduction or battery life issues. On the other hand, your accessory can get better over time with new features and improved functionality. That’s exactly what’s happening with AirPods in iOS 14 (and Apple’s other autumn operating system updates like macOS Big Sur, tvOS 14 and watchOS 7). If you own AirPods or AirPods Pro, you’ll find they work better with your other Apple gear. Here are the five big improvements coming this autumn to the way AirPods work your other Apple products. 1. Automatic device switching One of the nice things about AirPods is that they automatically…