MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Adobe this week recommended customers using its Illustrator and InDesign software hold off from updating to the new macOS High Sierra operating system. Illustrator and InDesign have not been updated for High Sierra and there are some incompatibility issues that prevent the apps from working properly. With Illustrator, users are seeing errors after upgrading to the new Apple File System....

Apple has shared a new page for its upcoming Michigan Avenue store along the Chicago River, set to open Friday, October 20. Apple Michigan Avenue via Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts Apple starts out with a tribute to the city:Chicago's creative roots run deep. It's where house music and rock and roll first took the stage. Where world-famous architecture lives. And where contemporary art...

Earlier this week Firefox announced its upcoming "Quantum" browser that will bring twice the internet browsing speeds when it launches on November 14. Ahead of that major update, the company is now releasing a few minor additions to Firefox on desktop that will let you save screenshots, share content more easily between your computer and smartphone, and more. Screenshots allow you to capture...

Following yesterday's news of the death of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Cult of Mac chose to highlight the magazine's 1985 Steve Jobs interview, which still remains one of the most insightful reads about the early life and influences of the late Apple co-founder. Quite apart from its centerfolds, Playboy magazine built an enviable literary legacy and earned a reputation for serious...

Apple appears to have resolved long-running iCloud sync issues linked to its text replacement feature with the release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. Originally introduced in Snow Leopard and iOS 5, text replacements let users create shortcut text that, when typed, expands to something longer, thus saving input time. The feature can be found on iOS devices in Settings -> General ->...

Following the release of macOS High Sierra, Mac users have discovered that Apple is no longer listing previous operating system updates in a user's Purchased tab in the Mac App Store. Neither macOS Sierra nor macOS High Sierra show up in the Purchased list, suggesting the updates are no longer tied to an Apple ID account. Previous Mac software updates were linked to an Apple ID account and...

Apple was named the world's most valuable brand in Interbrand's 2017 Best Global Brands ranking this week, marking Apple's fifth consecutive year in the position. Apple's Interbrand valuation was up three percent, coming in at $184.15 billion to beat out Google ($141.7B), Microsoft ($80B), Coca-Cola ($69.7B), Amazon ($64.8B), and Samsung ($59.3B). Apple and Google together have held the top...

Some Mac owners who have replaced their machine's storage with Aura SSDs from OWC are not able to install macOS High Sierra at this time due to an incompatibility issue that prevents the update from successfully converting the drives to the new APFS format. The Aura SSDs show up as "Rotational" drives instead of Solid State, and when attempting to install macOS High Sierra, users are seeing an ...

Firefox today announced that the latest version of its web browsing software -- which it's calling "Firefox Quantum" instead of "Firefox 57" -- will be available as an update for users beginning November 14, with a beta of the browser hitting iOS, Android, and desktop today. The company said that the biggest advantage of Quantum is its speed, which is twice as fast as Firefox 52 when measure...

With the public release of macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced some additional features to its native Safari web browser. Here we'll cover just what they are and how you can customize them to make your web browsing experience a more enjoyable one. Individual Website Settings One of the most welcome new changes in Safari 11 is the ability to customize a range of settings for individual...

Following this morning's public release of macOS High Sierra, Apple has updated its iMovie for Mac app with support for High Efficiency Video Coding, aka HEVC or H.265. As outlined in our in-depth post on HEVC, HEVC is a next-generation video compression standard that's been introduced in both macOS High Sierra and iOS 11. HEVC brings high-quality video with better compression rates, for files ...

Apple's native Photos application got an update with the release of macOS High Sierra, including new library browsing features, a reorganized editing window, enhanced image recognition, and some additional tools to help make your photos look even better. Keep reading to find out what's new in the Photos app. Browsing the Photos Library Apple has tweaked the main Library interface in Photos....

A major new version of iStat Menus, a popular Mac system monitor for power users, has been released today for macOS High Sierra. One of the biggest new features in iStat Menus 6 is configurable notifications for a wide range of events, based on CPU, GPU, memory, storage disks, networking, sensors, battery, power, and weather. iStat Menus now has a Notification Center widget for CPU usage, ...

With the official release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced support for a new image format called HEIF, which uses the file extension HEIC. Apple sees HEIF as a worthy successor to the JPEG format. So what makes it so good that it can replace an industry standard that's been in use for almost 25 years? What is HEIF? HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image Format and can be...

With the arrival of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, Apple is supporting a new video format called HEVC, which replaces the previous standard most commonly used on Mac and iOS devices, namely H.264 / AVC. So why has Apple adopted the HEVC format, and what difference will it make to the end user? What is HEVC? High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265, is a next-generation video...

Mac users who upgrade to macOS High Sierra will benefit from a significant new security feature that works in the background. macOS High Sierra automatically checks a Mac's EFI firmware against Apple's database of "known good" data to ensure it hasn't been tampered with, according to a series of tweets from an Apple engineer. The tweets have since been deleted, but a summary remains...

OWC has launched a new USB-C travel dock suitable for Apple's latest MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks. The dock connects to a Mac or PC with a single USB-C cable and provides access to the following five ports: 2× USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports 1× USB-C port for power 1× HDMI 2.0 port 1× SD card reader The USB-C port provides up to 60W of pass-through charging, while the HDMI 2.0 port can drive a ...

Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced one year ago in March of 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari. Safari Technology Preview release 40 includes fixes and improvements for JavaScript, FileSystem Entry API, Fetch API,...