Table of contents for November 2017 in Macworld Australia

Autoplay video: The bane of the web. You either hate them, or are completely disgusted by them. Fortunately, with Safari 11 in macOS High Sierra (Safari 11 is also available for macOS Sierra), you can easily disable autoplay video and surf the web in relative peace. Here’s how to stop autoplay videos in Safari 11. THE QUICK WAY 1. When you’re on a website with autoplay videos, you can change how those video behave. Click on Safari Settings For This Website or right-click the URL box and select Settings For This Website. 2. A pop-up will appear underneath the URL box. There is a listing that says Auto-Play. If you move your cursor over the phrase next to Auto-Play, you will see that it turns into a pop-up menu with…

The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus might be overshadowed by the iPhone X, but there are plenty of reasons to skip the hype and buy one: wireless charging, the A11 Bionic chip, True Tone display, that all-glass design. But according to DxOMark, the best reason to pick an iPhone 8 is the camera. The camera experts put the iPhone 8 ( go.macworld.com/e8 ) and iPhone 8 Plus ( go.macworld.com/8p ) through their paces and found that they are the two best cameras they have ever tested, leapfrogging the previous No. 1 picks, Google’s Pixel ( go.macworld.com/gpx ) and the HTC U11 ( go.macworld.com/htc11 ), both of which have single cameras. The iPhone 8 received a score of 92 and the iPhone 8 Plus got a 94 in DxOMark’s smartphone ranking.…

Build really cool Lego robots, and then control them with your tablet? Yes, please. Lego Boost ( go.macworld.com/lbo ; $160 on Amazon, go.macworld.com/lba1 ) is aimed at kids ages 7 to 12, so I was a little worried that it would be too hard to enjoy with my son—he’s 5 (and a half!) and just started kindergarten. But while I had to direct the complicated builds, controlling the finished robots and vehicles with the iPad app was well within his grasp—and so much fun for both of us. Lego Boost teaches kids in two ways: The builds themselves are a lesson in mechanics, showing how the motor, gears, and pieces fit together to make a moving robot. Plus, the tablet app is full of programming challenges to direct the robot…

AUDM Audm (free with in-app subscription, iPhone) takes your favorite pieces of long-form journalism—from magazines like The Atlantic, Esquire, Foreign Policy and more—and converts them into short podcasts, with each story “performed” by a “world-class narrator.” Convoz Convoz ( go. macworld.com/con1 , free, iPhone and iPad) is like Snap-Chat for pundits: Have an opinion about something? Make a recording of yourself spouting off, then share it with the world. BeatMaker 3 When the original BeatMaker app launched in 2008, we called it “a killer iPhone app that any beat maker would be proud to own.” Beat-Maker3 ( go.macworld.com/bm3 , $20 download with additional in-app purchases available; iPad) has arrived for the tablet now, but it’s still tricked out with an amazing array of tools that let you “record and chop…

Operating system updates can be an exciting time for users. There’s the potential to be more productive with new apps, interface enhancements that make your computer easier to use, and flashy new features that remind you how much of an impact technology can have on your life. If you want to get caught up in the excitement of an OS update, you should read Jason Snell’s iOS 11 review ( go. macworld.com/11r ). iOS 11 is where all the action is right now. But waitagoshdarnminute, this is the macOS High Sierra review. You want to know all about Apple’s upgrade for the Mac. Well, you’ve come to the right place, but if you are expecting fireworks, you won’t find them here—though you might find them in High Sierra eventually. (I’ll…

Ff you use Microsoft Excel on your Mac, you can save the spreadsheets you create and open them in Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet app. It’s a handy feature to use in case you can’t access Microsoft’s apps. Every Mac comes with Apple’s iWork apps: Pages (word processor), Numbers (spreadsheet), and Keynote (presentations). And these apps can import Office documents. Here’s how you can open Excel spreadsheets in Numbers, as well as export Numbers spreadsheets for use in Excel. HOW TO IMPORT MICROSOFT EXCEL SPREADSHEETS INTO APPLE NUMBERS This procedure works with .xlsx and .xls file formats. You can also import .csv and tab-delimited files. 1. Launch Numbers (it’s in the Applications folder of your Mac). 2. In the window that automatically opens when you launch the app, navigate to the location…

Remember the original Sonos Controller, a dedicated tablet for the high-end music system that sat on a dock in your living room? When you wanted to turn on the music, you didn’t reach for your phone, you reached for the Controller. Never mind the speakers, the Controller was a sexy showpiece that predated by years the smart home as we’ve come to know it. The Sonos Controller was discontinued four years ago for what must seem like obvious reasons: The hardware was expensive, required a lot of maintenance on Sonos’ side, and, of course, was rapidly made irrelevant after the smartphone took hold. Today, the Sonos Controller is back, at least in concept, courtesy of Oomi, an Indiegogo-launched newcomer to the smart home hub space that, unlike most competitors, is…

Your Apple gear wasn’t cheap. And if you drop your iPhone, your iPad stops turning on one day, or your Mac’s hard drive just ups and dies on you, getting it repaired probably won’t be cheap either. Apple includes a one-year limited warranty with all hardware so if there’s a manufacturing defect, you’ll be covered. To also protect against accidental damage, plus extend the original warranty for longer and enjoy free tech support, you can opt to purchase AppleCare+. Here’s what it is, what it covers, and what you can expect to pay. Is AppleCare+ worth it? Only you can decide for your own situation, but this should be everything you need to know to make a smart choice. GENERAL APPLECARE+ INFORMATION If you’ve never even heard of AppleCare, start…

The upcoming iPhone X ( go.macworld.com/ipx ) will use Face ID, technology that unlocks your iPhone X by using infrared and visible light scans to uniquely identify your face. The company says it will work in a variety of conditions and is extremely secure. Though no one outside Apple has yet been able to confirm how well it works. This brings up a lot of questions about Face ID. We’ll work to get answers to you as you ponder whether you want to buy an iPhone X when it starts shipping November 3. FACE ID WHITE PAPER AND SUPPORT DOCUMENT FROM APPLE Apple has released a Face ID white paper ( go.macworld.com/fid ; PDF) that provides a bit of detail on how it works. There’s also a Face ID support…

Apple’s never been a company to dwell on the past. In the past year alone, it’s killed off the ability to sync apps to your iOS device via iTunes, the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, and the Home button on the iPhone X. Even the venerable iPod line has (mostly) been put out to pasture. These all come from a place of ambition: the company isn’t shy about kicking convention to the curb if it thinks it can replace the old with something new and better. (Admittedly, not everyone always agrees that what’s new is better, but Apple doesn’t spend a lot of time soliciting opinions.) So in the spirit of Apple’s merciless machete, I started thinking: what other long-running conventions of the firm’s mobile platform might be due…

Apple has finally integrated wireless charging into this year’s iPhone, but owners of older devices aren’t completely out of luck. With the right case, Qi-compatible charging accessories can work with recent iPhones. Bezalel’s Omnia ($59.90 on Amazon: go.macworld.com/boa1 ) wireless car charger is a handsome 2.75-by-3.75-inch plate that clamps onto an automobile air vent. It uses an included 2.5-foot USB-C cable to connect to a dual-port, 5V/3A adapter capable of charging a second wired device at the same time. The rubberized hardware has a premium look and feel, with blue illumination under the logo built into the base as well as the rim of the power adapter for nighttime use. I’m not usually a fan of air vent mounts, but this one incorporates a steel-tightened spring for a firmer grip,…

FLOWER go.macworld.com/fl First released for PlayStation 3 in 2009, Flower is one of my all-time favorite video games—so imagine my surprise when it popped up on the App Store last week. It’s a quiet, almost meditative experience in which you control actual flower petals, beginning with one and then guiding it around open spaces with the breeze to activate other flowers and re-beautify the surroundings. THE WITNESS go.macworld.com/tw Six months after its Mac debut, The Witness is now also available on iOS, and it’s surely one of the meatiest and most engrossing puzzle games found on the App Store. This first-person experience finds you on a vibrant, deserted island filled with hundreds of puzzles, and you’ll wander about the world and try and solve them to figure out the mystery…

Microsoft would really like you to sign up for one of its productivity subscriptions: Office 365, or better yet, the new Microsoft 365 ( go.macworld.com/ m365 ). But for those old fogies who prefer standalone software, Microsoft announced Office 2019 recently. Office 2019 will ship in the second half of 2018, Microsoft said, with a preview version scheduled for mid-2018. The Office 2019 suite will include the standard complement of Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, plus server apps like Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business. Presumably, Microsoft will offer different versions of Office 2019 (including a version for the Apple Mac), but executives didn’t say. Microsoft calls Office 2019 a suite of “perpetual” apps, because customers will pay for them with a one-time fee, rather than a recurring subscription.…

The Internet is a terrifying place, and Objective Development’s Little Snitch 4 ( go.macworld.com/ ls4 ; $45) has tried for many years to help keep your Mac locked down by monitoring connections and letting you control inbound and outbound traffic. Version 4 refines and extends this friendly firewall, and if you’ve used it or looked at it in the past, you’ll find it mostly familiar. But the app has significant updates for visualizing connections and improves how it explains what apps are trying to do. It’s bizarre that this many decades into the net’s evolution, Apple still doesn’t include strong tools enabled by default that restrict access to your Mac or examine connections from macOS or apps you’re running out to the Internet. The firewall option in the Security &…

Anyone who’s invested in great-sounding wired headphones and wants the opportunity to add high-res streaming capabilities to those cans should take a serious look at Astell&Kern’s AK XB10 Bluetooth DAC and headphone amp. A DESIGN THAT’S ALL ASTELL&KERN The AK XB10 comes in the shape of a small puck, measuring just shy of 2 inches in diameter. The DAC is rated for about five hours of active use and 300 hours of standby. The five-hour run-time is a disappointment. In today’s day and competitive landscape, users expect more out from their portable devices. Battery life is an area I hope Astell&Kern can address in a revised model. The circular face sports volume, play/ pause, and Bluetooth buttons divided by a slightly elevated pyramidal protrusion. I inferred that the protrusion is…

Apple released macOS High Sierra recently, so it should be a nice way to spotlight the Mac soon after the iOS 11 ( go.macworld.com/ios11 ) and iPhone 8 releases. But a report by a security researcher at Synack puts a bit of a damper on the High Sierra release. Patrick Wardle, Synack’s head of research, posted a video that shows how code he wrote can be used to get passwords from macOS’s Keychain. Keychain is the password manger built into macOS, and it usually requires a master password to access it. But Wardle’s code was able to access Keychain and collect passwords. The above screenshot is from a video demonstration posted by Wardle (see go.macworld.com/vim ). Wardle has not publicized the exploit he used, so it’s probably not being put…

The Verbatim USB-C Pocket Card Reader ( go.macworld.com/pcr ) supports UHS-II speeds, is fairly compact, and costs just $17 from Amazon ( go.macworld.com/17fa ). That makes for a winning combination. When we compared a host of USB-C memory card readers, the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-II USB-C Reader ( go.macworld.com/sdep ) came out as the fastest choice. It supports UHS-II SD cards, which incorporate two rows of contacts to read data at a theoretical maximum of 312 MBps. (See our SD Card Explainer [ go.macworld.com/sdce ] for details on the many acronyms and specifications of these tiny little memory cards.) The downside is that it’s $47. Our runner up, the Cable Matters USB 3.1 Type-C Dual Slot Card Reader for Micro SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Cards ( go.macworld.com/sdxc ), costs $12, but doesn’t…

Control Center in iOS 11 ( go. macworld.com/i11x ) is different. Really different. And when you upgrade from iOS 10, it will take some getting used to. But as someone who has been using it for a few months now, let me declare: It’s better. The new Control Center is simpler and more powerful. And best of all, you can customize it to do what you want—and hide most of what you don’t care about. In iOS 10, Control Center was a three-page set of quick-access controls that you could summon with the flip of a finger from the bottom of the screen. In iOS 11, it’s been condensed back into a single view. While that view is indisputably much more densely packed than the old version, I’d argue that…

With iOS 11 comes a raft of new features and enhancements to iPhones and iPads, but the update also does something a bit less pleasant: it makes older, 32-bit apps and games incompatible. Developers have had plenty of time to plan for the firm shift to 64-bit, but loads of older games haven’t been updated and will no longer be playable on iOS 11 devices. That’s a shame—but thankfully, not every older game has been abandoned. Many have been updated over the past few months to shift the code to 64-bit and ensure they continue to have a long lifespan on Apple devices. Here are 10 of the best older iOS games you can still play, whether they’re new to you or you’re tempted to reinstall a former favorite. 1.…

Unless you work in search and rescue or as a cinematographer, you probably don’t need a drone. But they’re cool, so you likely want one. You can buy a cheap one that’ll break, underperform, and eventually bore you. You can get one that costs as much as a second-hand car. Or you can grab a DJI Spark ( go.macworld.com/dji ): Priced at $499 MSRP (same price on Amazon [ go.macworld.com/djia ] and Drone World [ go.macworld.com/dw ]), it’s the Goldilocks of the drone world—it’s not too expensive, yet well-built and capable. In other words, just right. DESIGN AND SETUP The first thing you’ll notice about the Spark when you go to take it out if its protective case is its size and heft. It weighs just under 11 ounces, has…

Some hosts, like Fastmail, plug in a well-known system called SpamAssassin, which uses a large set of rules to guess whether email is legitimate or not, or unwanted or not. Spam—phishing, marketing, and scam emails—is annoying, that we can all agree on. One Macworld reader wants to take the ultimate step is stopping these emails. Is it possible to set one’s iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPad to ensure scam, phishing, and marketing emails are blocked? I’d be grateful for any information you can provide. Would it were so! Would it were so. Unfortunately, the basis of Internet email is that every part of the system more or less mostly trusts every other part. It used to be that every part completely trusted every other part. That’s one problem, because…

go.macworld.com/sopa Following Apple’s slate of product announcements ( go.macworld.com/i127 ), iTunes 12.7 was released ( go.macworld.com/ sopa ), and its version number hides just how much has disappeared and changed in this release. The iOS App Store is wiped out, as are ringtones. iTunes U and Internet Radio have moved locations. And iTunes for Windows lost its ability to manage books in iOS. While many people have argued iTunes’ feature creep over the years had made it an increasingly odd sack of unrelated items, this shift doesn’t come with commensurate improvements or additions elsewhere in macOS, and may cause some difficulties for people with modest Internet throughput or low bandwidth caps, which can affect people across both the developed world (more the U.S. than elsewhere) and the developing one. The…

Apple’s two-step verification goes away with iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a method of protecting an online account. The two factors—things that identify you—in 2FA: Something you yourself know, like a password; and something you have that can receive a token to confirm who you are, such as a smartphone. Apple’s original two-step system relied on its Apple ID site for set up and management, and could only send codes to iOS devices and via SMS. Its update in September 2015 left two-step in place for those who continued to want to use it, but the 2FA revision was far better. Enrollment happens via iOS and macOS. Apple’s system isn’t as robust as some security experts would like, but it’s definitely better than a password-only…