Macworld Portable power banks that charge your phone are popular, but wireless battery packs using Apple’s MagSafe technology offer a simpler and smarter cable-free solution for iPhone 12, 13 and 14 users. Phone batteries are prone to run dry just when you’re heading away from a power source, so having a portable charging source is one of today’s necessities. Annoyingly, most power banks require you to carry around a cable, too. Wireless power banks do away with cables but come with their own major limitation–the inefficiency of wireless charging means you need a high-capacity power bank to fully charge a drained iPhone. I use one as a quick bedside iPhone charger so I can charge and use the phone at…

Macworld Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat are well known apps used by creative professionals. There was once a time when all these apps, known collectively as Adobe Creative Suite, were purchased on disc and installed on Macs throughout the creative and publishing industries, but this eventually evolved into the subscription based Adobe Creative Cloud. In this guide we will explain all the ways you can now buy Adobe’s apps. We’ll explain how much Adobe Creative Cloud costs, what the best way to purchase it is (monthly, annually, or another way), whether you can get it for free, and what happens if you cancel your subscription. We’ll also include the best ways to save money, how you can use…

Apple is facing increasing antitrust pushback in the European Union over its tap-to-pay Apple Pay platform. A new report from Bloomberg details that European Union antitrust investigators are ramping up their probe into Apple Pay after soliciting more information from retailers on the usage of and availability of mobile payment platforms. more… The post EU regulators still investigating Apple Pay antitrust concerns, now examining Bluetooth and QR code alternatives appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Macworld At a GlanceExpert's Rating ProsIncludes virus protection, secure browsing, ID monitoring, a VPN, and a password vault in one packageEffective and flexible VPNConsMissing key capabilities such as a quick virus scan and a scheduled scanCertain options unavailable in the Mac version vs the Windows versionNo notification for malware infectionsNo way to view malicious or quarantined filesCharges a hefty annual subscriptionOur VerdictF-Secure Total for Mac includes several useful features but lacks certain key options, especially in the virus scanning. For a product that costs $59.99/£34.99 a year for one device (even with a discount), the Mac version feels lackluster, particularly when compared with its Windows counterpart. Some security products that offer both Windows and macOS versions seem to devote equal…

Macworld When I bought my first iPad at the Apple Store on Regent Street, when it hadn’t yet been released in my home country of Sweden, it seemed an almost magical device. The screen, which at that point offered neither ProMotion nor even a high resolution, nevertheless felt like a window into a digital world. But best of all was the battery life and especially the amazing standby time, which was superior to just about all the alternatives. Today? Not so much. What the heck happened? If I pick up my iPad Pro after leaving it unused for a few days, chances are the battery will be somewhere around 30% at best, or zero at worst. After the same amount…

The Verge Making sense of Apple’s messy MagSafe charging ecosystem, where the first-party options are far from the best ones. Wireless charging is inefficient in many ways. It charges your phone more slowly than using a cable, uses more energy, and requires near-perfect alignment on a charging pad to even work. But inefficiencies aside, it’s just so dang convenient. So when Apple added a ring of magnets to the iPhone 12 and dubbed it “MagSafe,” things got much more interesting. Not only do the magnets guarantee perfect alignment every time but also, with a MagSafe-certified charger, your iPhone can charge at up to 15W — double the 7.5W they get with other wireless chargers. And the magnets also allow for…