Macworld

Email started as a way to send a file between early internetworked computers with little checking about who was sending what. Despite the 60-odd years that have passed, that’s more or less what happens between modern mail servers when you send and receive messages. Email is, at its heart, a text file that is transmitted by your email app telling a mail server in plain text who the message is from and to whom it’s going.

The recipient has to be valid for the message to be received, but not so for the sender. Even after decades of work fighting the root causes of spam and impersonation, there’s no centralized and fully supported way to validate that the purported sending email account was actually used to send a message with a given email address. Spammers can forge “From” addresses, and email hosts do what they can do stop that–and that can trip you up.

How sending an email works

When you set up a mail...

Macworld

The next version of the Mac operating system, macOS 15, is expected to make its debut at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off with a keynote on June 10. After a beta period, the official release occurs in the fall.

Rumors of what macOS 15 will entail are scarce as usual–because software development doesn’t rely on third-party production and manufacturing like hardware does, rumors about macOS don’t happen often. But when rumors do leak, they will be tracked in this article. Here’s everything we know so far.

Updated 5/23/24: Apple may tweak the System Settings UI and rename “Apple ID” to “Apple Account.”

macOS 15 release date: When will macOS 15 arrive?...

Brings performance improvements and bug fixes to the spam-filtering utility. ($39.99 new, free update, 49.5 MB, macOS 10.13+)

Macworld

At a glanceExpert's Rating
Pros

• Well built
• Built-in wireless Qi charger
• Can handle larger laptops

Cons

• Slow 7.5-watt charging for iPhones
• No power adapter included

Our Verdict

The Alogic Elite Power Laptop Stand is a well-built and stable stand for your MacBook with a built-in wireless charger that can be used with an iPhone or AirPods.

Price When Reviewed

$69.99

Best Prices Today: Elite Power Laptop Stand with Wireless Charger

Retailer

Price

Alogic

$70

...

Macworld

If you want headphones that are comfortable to wear for long hours, while also offering great sound, Apple’s Beats Solo 4 are an excellent choice. And today they’re on sale for 25 percent off: Amazon is selling the Beats Solo 4 in black, pink, or blue for $150, the best price we’ve ever seen for a product that’s barely been on shelves for a month.

While they don’t have active noise-cancellation, the Beats Solo 4 come with personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking. That’s pretty awesome because it will definitely enhance your listening experience by making it more immersive when you’re watching movies late at night, for instance.

The headphones are light and have an ergonomic design, with a flexible headband and adjustable...

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is working on all-screen foldable devices. Unlike its competitors, however, its focus seems less on foldable smartphones and tablets, and instead on an all-screen foldable laptop. Ming-Chi Kuo has previously reported that Apple was developing a 20.3-inch MacBook device for 2027, but today the analyst has shared several key new details about the futuristic MacBook model. One such detail is that Apple is now eyeing an earlier 2026 launch for the product.

Here are some of the key features Kuo expects to see in the all-screen MacBook:
1. Multiple foldable screen options are still possible, with the rumored 20.3-inch display potentially replaced by an 18.8-inch panel. The former would, when folded, resemble a current 14-15-inch MacBook, while the latter would correspond better to a modern day 13-14-inch model like the smaller MacBook Air.
2. A 2026 debut is now expected for the device, one year earlier than previously...

Macworld

Wireless headphones or earbuds (whatever you call them) are essentially the standard now, with Bluetooth earbuds being convenient and the sound quality difference to wired not being that noticeable to typical people (we realize audiophiles ‘know’).

The market is huge, but here are the best wireless earbuds we’ve tested for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Macs. If you do want a wired connection some of these do offer it in addition to Bluetooth, but we also have a round-up of the best wired headphones and a comparison of over-ear headphones read our comparison of AirPods Max vs other over-ear headphones.

Updated May 2024 with Sennheiser Accentum True Wireless review.

Best headphones and...

Macworld

Apple did an interesting thing when it revealed its new M4 iPad Pro: of the four storage options available, the 1TB and 2TB models come with an M4 chip with 10 CPU cores. The lower-priced 256GB and 512GB iPad Pros have a CPU with nine processing cores, one fewer than the higher-storage models. It’s the first time Apple has offered an M-series CPU with an odd number of cores.

Tying the additional CPU core to higher storage tiers is something of an up-sell. Someone who might not not want to pay Apple’s high storage prices might be swayed by the more powerful chip. It’s an intriguing tactic, but the question is, how much improvement does that single additional core provide?

Well, that’s what benchmark tools are for. Using Geekbench 6, we gathered numbers for the 9- and 10-core M4 and compared the...

Macworld

Whether you want to improve your cybersecurity or change how your user interface looks, upgrading your operating system is a great way to change how you use your computer. Normally, getting Windows 11 Pro can cost up to $199, but this Memorial Day sale is a chance to get it for just $24.97. 

The 11 Pro version comes with upgrades to basic operations, security, and more. Between the snap layouts, desktops, seamless redocking, and improved voice typing, you can fully customize how you use your computer. 

When it comes to security...

To celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple revealed a slew of new accessibility features slated for the next versions of its operating systems.

Read original article

Macworld

If you’re looking to buy a phone for under $500 right now, it’s hard to recommend an iPhone. The only iPhone priced under $500, the $429 iPhone SE, is more than three years old and has an outdated design and an old camera. The iPhone 13, which is a better phone, starts at $599.

But that could be changing. Rumors have been swirling for months that Apple is preparing a new SE that will be a radical departure from previous SEs in that it won’t have a Home button or an outdated display. Now a new report from since-deleted X account Revengnus (via...

Macworld

There are two main reasons why someone might want to install a VPN on an iPhone. One important reason is to protect their privacy and increase their security. Another key reason is that a VPN can be used to make it look like you are based in a different country, which can unlock content, such as movies and TV shows, that wouldn’t be available where you are.

If you are concerned about how secure the data on you iPhone is a VPN may be a solution that could give you peace of mind. We have a selection of VPNs for iPhone that we recommend below. But first we’ll quickly address why you might, or might not, need a VPN to protect the data on your iPhone.

Do I need a VPN on my iPhone?

Whether you need a VPN on your iPhone depends on your reasons for wanting one. If you were looking for the added security and privacy of a VPN, then Apple covers much of that with iCloud Private Relay. This feature of iCloud+ (which...

Macworld

SD cards are lightweight and portable, making them popular storage devices. They are commonly used in cameras, car recorders, security doorbells and more. Suppose you are a photography enthusiast who uses SD cards to store your precious memories: you need to be aware that the opposite of their ease of use is their fragility, which means data loss on an SD card may happen suddenly.

This post will provide five effective ways to recover deleted files from an SD card on a Mac, providing step-by-step guides on SD card recovery on a Mac, including using data recovery software, Terminal command lines, recovering from the trash bin folder, and restoring from advanced backups.

Where do deleted files go on an SD card?

If your SD card is...

The next-gen iPhone Pro could arrive with some significant improvements to its camera system, according to one leaker. Per a post from leaker “Baby Sauce” on Weibo, the iPhone 16 Pro lineup could feature an ultra-wide sensor update as well as an update for the telephoto’s zoom. As of now, the Tetraprism lens on the […]

Source

Macworld

SuperMusic AI is an app that can turn any music enthusiast into a music creator — no music skills needed! In a matter of minutes, you can be creating full studio quality songs in any genre you choose, from pop and hip-hop to rock, pop, country, and more.

With SuperMusic AI, you feed some basic AI prompts into the app, like asking it to create the greatest love ballad ever. You can even pen your own lyrics and feed those in too. Armed with your prompts, the algorithm kicks into gear, creating a complete,...

Macworld

Unfortunately in recent years, the number of great games for Mac has declined because many are no longer supported. Every new version of macOS tends to break a few games, but macOS Catalina in 2019 meant that lot of games that used 32-bit code were no longer Mac compatible.

At the same time that Apple went 64-bit only it also introduced Metal for 3D graphics, which left a lot of games developers with a decision: make new Mac versions of their games or stop making them. Unfortunately many chose the latter.

This will hopefully change now that macOS Sonoma is here. With Sonoma, Apple provides two things: a new Game Porting Toolkit to make it easier for game developers to bring their games to the Mac, and...

Macworld

At least once a year (and frequently twice) Apple shakes up the colors of its iPhone range. This is the subject of surprisingly feverish speculation: Is yellow going to face the axe in 2024? Will white make the cut? What’s the fate of green?

The latest word, in fact, is that white is in and yellow is out, at least on the standard iPhone models. On the Pro and Pro Max for 2024, meanwhile, we’re believed to be getting a new “rose” finish. This is all according to Ming-Chi Kuo, a reputable analyst with a long history of decently accurate predictions.

In Apple land, rose generally means a pinkish gold. It was highly popular back in the days of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 7, but has been scarce since then.

2H24 iPhone 16系列機殼顏色預測

iPhone 16 Pro & Pro Max：黑色、白色 (或銀色)、灰色 (...

A new lawsuit filed against gyroscope and accelerometer supplier for Apple, InvenSense, accuses the company of failing to tell investors about the concessions it made to secure a recent deal. InvenSense parts are used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus; executives should have warned investors, the suit alleges, that Apple was given a "sweetheart deal" that would hurt profits. "Instead of revealing the true condition of the company and its prospects, defendants hid those facts from investors and chose to issue strong guidance and paint a picture of a bright future with a new mega-customer," the complai...

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A new port of AllCast, a popular Android app, has just been released for iOS. The title lets users stream personal photo, video, and music libraries to a variety of platforms, not just the Apple TV, the only format natively supported by Apple. Some compatible targets include Chrome, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku, WDTV, Xbox One/Xbox 360, and various platforms compatible with DLNA....

Taiwan-based supplier Quanta Computer has entered into "volume" production of Apple's upcoming 12-inch MacBook Air, according to supply chain sources. The laptop is reportedly on track to ship in the first quarter of the year, despite other rumors pointing to the second quarter. The new sources say that Quanta has escalated recruitment efforts in order to speed up production....

Facebook will start to post into its users News Feed alerts about missing children in the future, in an effort to locate them. A partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will involve the social network showing Amber Alerts to Facebook users located in specific search areas, both on mobile devices and desktops....

Apple appears to have ended its Single of the Week promotion on iTunes, visitors note. No tracks have been offered in the first two weeks of 2015, and a person on Apple's support forums claims to have been told by iTunes Support that the company has officially dropped the initiative. It's missing from iTunes Stores across the globe....

It's a fact that Spanish is the world's fourth most spoken language, with over 350 million native speakers across 21 countries. It's also a fact that people who are bilingual tend to do better in both academic pursuits as well as their career. If you've ever been curious about learning another language, Learn Spanish by Brainscape offers a solution for those who are trying to learn Spanish on the go....

Flickr has updated statistics for 2014 in its "Most Popular Camera" and "Most Popular Mobile Camera" categories, with the combined models of iPhone taking second place in the general "camera" category -- beating out DSLR maker Nikon and popular point-and-shoot maker Sony for second place. While Canon remains the most popular overall camera, the built-in cameras on smartphones from Apple and Samsung have -- despite inherent limitations -- steadily risen in popularity....

New information has been revealed on the specifications Apple has in mind for its planned licensing of the female Lightning port for third-party accessories. Manufacturers have reportedly been briefed on details and objectives, which include spreading Lightning to as many different accessories as possible in place of micro-USB. Possibilities include not just things like docks and headphones, but battery cases, gamepads, and Bluetooth speakers....

Word games are fairly numerous at this point. You've got your Boggle-style games, your Scrabble-style games, your crosswords and word searches. There are a lot of duplicates out there -- so when we find a fresh, new game, we tend to get pretty excited. One such app is Word of the Rings, by James Porter, a game that quite literally puts an interesting twist on the genre....

Marsh Supermarkets and inMarket have announced a new iBeacon platform, the first to emphasize the Apple Watch. The plan is to use iBeacons at Marsh's 75 locations to push ads, shopping lists, and other content to both Watches and iPhones. Initially, the platform will support the official Marsh app and inMarket's List Ease, but other apps should follow as long as they support inMarket's Proximity SDK. All apps will have to update with Watch support, but the platform itself is Watch-ready....

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People wanting to control HomeKit-enabled devices remotely through Apple's Siri must have an Apple TV at home to serve as a hub, according to Verge sources, including two launch partners and a person said to be "close to HomeKit's development." Siri controls will always work while an iPhone or iPad is on the same network as a HomeKit device, but until now it wasn't fully clear how remote operation might work. The Apple TV must also be a third-generation model running at least v7.0 firmware or newer. Notably, remote operation without Siri -- using the vendor app for a HomeKit product directly -...

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You could just look out of your window, of course, but Weather Wall aims to set your wallpaper to an image that's right for the weather where you are. But if you ever had views like these from your office window, you would not stay sitting at your desk. These wallpaper shots are simply beautiful....