While it may not be a full-fledged HDTV, the Apple TV set-top box continues to expand its portfolio. According to a story first reported by Deadline, the CW is bringing its video content to the Apple TV via a dedicated app.

The CW offering would mimic what the network already has on Microsoft’s Xbox; the network confirmed to MacRumors that the app will feature ad-supported full episodes available for streaming the day after they air. And, in a bonus for cord cutters, the app will not require an existing cable subscription to view content. A specific release date for the app has not yet been announced, though it should be sooner rather than later.

This marks the first foray from one of the major broadcast networks onto the Apple TV, though the box already features content from video middlemen like Hulu and Netflix; sports leagues like MLB, NHL, and NBA; video-sharing sites Vimeo and YouTube; and other video sources, like the Wall Street Journal.

Thus far, video content has only gradually trickled onto the Apple TV: Hulu Plus, for example, just appeared last July. But the appearance of a CW app could signal a shift in the winds. With the recent incursion of Aereo into the broadcast space, the networks are sure to be looking for ways to keep control of their content. ABC recently announced that it would begin offering live streaming in its iOS app—but only in certain markets, and only for cable and satellite subscribers. Meanwhile, many of the studios and networks continue to enforce availability windows and device-specific streaming rights.

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Given its stature today, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the iTunes Store launched ten years ago with just a fairly small selection of music. In the intervening time, Apple has added TV shows, movies, podcasts, apps, ebooks, educational content, and much more. But along with those manifold expansions have come problems, too. Here are a few improvements we’d like to see to the iTunes Store as it kicks off its second decade.

Try and try again

App sales have been a huge part of the iTunes Store over the past five years, but one thing that’s still annoying is the lack of demos. Demo software has been a time-honored part of the Mac community since its earliest years—it allows prospective customers try before they buy, letting them determine if the software they’re about to buy will really do what they want. That’s great for consumers, obviously, but it’s also great for developers, since it hopefully avoids dissatisfied customers and the one-star reviews they leave when the app doesn’t do that one thing they needed. Other app marketplaces, like Windows Phone’s, have this capability, so why not the App Store?—Dan Moren

Search and ye shall find (maybe)

There are only a few ways that the iTunes Store has actually gotten worse than it used to be, but one of them is definitely search—particularly on iOS devices. iTunes is never sure what you’re searching for on the Mac, and so, by default, it tries to show a few results across each category of items the store sells. That’s crazy. On iOS, you face the opposite problem when you’re searching for apps: The App Store knows you want an app, but shows you too little in your results: You see just one app at a time. Flick from the first app to the seventh, and decide the first is the best option? Now you have to flick back six times. Search is important, and Apple’s implementation just isn’t good enough right now.—Lex Friedman

Just browsing

As with better search, a better iTunes Store browsing experience seems to be in Apple’s own best interests: The easier it is for customers to shop in the store, the more likely they are to spend money there. High-volume Web surfers make their lives easier by using browser tabs, but the iTunes Stores don’t offer that option on any platform. On the Mac, the Web-based iTunes Store experience within the iTunes app often feels slow and clunky, and surfing the iTunes store in an actual Web browser is worse by far (see below). Here, again, is an area where Apple’s competitors actually do it better: Windows Phone and Android allow customers to purchase apps directly via the Web, and the apps get sent to their devices. It’s a shame the App Store can’t do the same.—Lex Friedman

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The great thing about the iTunes Store is that you can buy just about any song you can imagine, cheaply and easily. And the worst thing about the iTunes Store? Sometimes you can buy those songs a little too easily.

Apple’s retail store for digital downloads has been open for a decade now, and in that time, you’ve probably loaded up on a lot of music. And you don’t have to tell us that some of those downloads probably seemed like a good idea at the time. In honor of the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, I combed through my purchase history to find some of the instances where I could have spent my 99 cents more wisely. Perhaps my confessions of regrettable musical choices will make you feel better about your own iTunes indiscretions over the last 10 years. At the very least, I hope my embarrassing selections serve as a reminder that when it comes to hitting that download button in Tunes, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

More One-Hit Wonders Than I Can Count

Just after the iTunes Store opened its virtual doors, my paymasters at Macworld wanted an article on the depth and breadth of the store’s initial offerings. Among the more hare-brained of my assorted schemes to survey the store’s selection: See how many of VH1’s Top 100 One-Hit Wonders I could download from iTunes. The answer, at the time? 39. The cost to my psyche whenever “It’s Raining Men” has popped up on random shuffle during the ensuing decade? Incalculable.

“Wait, you went ahead and actually downloaded all those songs?” you may be asking. “Why not just keep a running tally and leave it at that?”

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Occasionally, my 1080p Apple TV (ATV) loses interest in connecting to my local network. More specifically, if I go to the Network setting I find no IP address listed. That’s right. The IP address listing is empty. There isn’t even an invalid self-assigned (169.x.x.x) address. Not surprisingly, when this vanishing act occurs, the ATV can no longer access my iTunes Library or any of the ATV’s Internet-based services.

The Apple TV is hooked up to my network via a wired (Ethernet) connection. I had thought this would make for a more reliable connection. Apparently, not in this case.

Some quick diagnostic checks determined that the source of the problem was almost certainly the ATV itself. All the other networked devices—whether connected by Wi-Fi or Ethernet—were functioning as expected. My AirPort Base Station and Internet modem both showed all-systems-go. Even my second ATV, connected to another television, was working just fine.

Even the now troublesome Apple TV had been working for over a year without incident. The network loss popped up only in the last month or two. This made me wonder if the cause might be a bug in a recent ATV firmware update.

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As I write this paragraph, I’m enjoying a playlist that I created from among the thousands of songs on my iPhone, and it’s no big deal. It wasn’t always so simple: Once upon a time, crafting the perfect playlist for your MP3 player felt like an epic project. You had to rip the songs from a CD onto your computer, find sources—legitimate and otherwise—for tracks you didn’t own, and then hope everything was in the right format to play on your portable device. Apple changed all that, thanks to a series of musical moves right at the dawn of the 21st century—not the least of which was the launch of the iTunes Music Store.

It was only ten years ago—on April 28, 2003—that Apple opened the iTunes Store (then called the iTunes Music Store) and changed the way we buy music. The store arrived with just 200,000 tracks; in the ensuing decade, that library has grown to more than 35 million songs, from the Beatles to Jay-Z. You can even download those tracks over your phone if you want—no computer needed. That was not possible before the iTunes Store opened.

Apple’s not fond of reminiscing, but even the company has taken note of iTunes’s anniversary. The store “revolutionized the distribution of digital content,” Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts when announcing Apple’s quarterly earnings earlier this week. In addition to those 35 million songs, which are available in 119 countries, the store sells 60,000 movies in 109 countries, and 1.75 million books in 155 countries. By Oppenheimer’s math, the $4 billion in quarterly billings recorded by iTunes in the most recent quarter makes it the largest digital content store in the world.

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Part of Apple’s campus is delayed until after a spaceship launch, iTunes sales aren’t on the grow, and German iPhone users may once again be notified of their email schnell! The remainders for Thursday, April 25, 2013 speak a dozen languages, know every local custom—they’ll blend in, disappear, you'll never see them again.

Apple Campus 2: Project Description (Apple)

Apple’s updated the plans for its “spaceship” campus, adding information about parking, bicycle and pedestrian paths, and public art. But it also signals the delay of building the so-called “Tantau Development,” a series of buildings on the edge of the campus, until after the main building is opened. Perhaps most interesting of all is Apple’s report that its current campus contains 4,506 trees. So, well, at least we know what they’ve got Scott Forstall doing until he’s free to leave.

iTunes Sales Are Huge! But Growth May Be Slowing. (AllThingsD)

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From the moment it debuted for iOS, the free Netflix video-streaming app has been a must-have for nearly all owners of Apple’s tablet. The streaming and DVD rental service offers a large library that can be streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G, in addition to several original programs financed and produced by the company itself.

The concept behind the app is fairly simple: those with Netflix accounts (which start at $8 a month) can stream any of the company’s movies, television shows, or documentaries available via its Watch Instantly service to an iOS device. (Depending on your country, available programming varies.) The iPhone and iPad versions differ slightly in their implementation and extra features, but if you’re looking to watch a Netflix television show on the fly, this app will allow you to do it on either device.

You can stream films or shows on your iPhone’s Wi-Fi or cellular network. Wi-Fi is—without argument—the easiest way to watch a program; I rarely ran into glitches when watching over that connection. In contrast, cellular is decidedly trickier: the videos take a longer time to load, image and sound quality can suffer, and weaker signals can cause the feed to cut out.

If you encounter a stall, Netflix does provide a recall button within the viewer for moving the feed 30 seconds back, so you can theoretically catch up with the stream. You can also pause and scrub through video, toggle between full and widescreen modes, enable captions, and exit back to the Netflix browser at any point. The Netflix app also supports Video-Out and AirPlay, so if you happen to have an Apple TV or one of Apple’s AV cables on hand, you can send video from your iPhone to your television.

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The third-generation Apple TV wasn’t a huge update from the generation prior: Its major addition was support for 1080p video. But reports suggest the one other significant add-on included in that third-gen Apple TV is the introduction of Wi-Fi networking issues—at least for a small subset of the set-top boxes sold.

9to5 Mac published what it says is official Apple retail correspondence, indicating that “a very small number of Apple TV (3rd generation) products might experience one of these Wi-Fi related connectivity issues,” which include an inability to see networks, connect to them, or stay connected to them.

The screenshot provided by 9to5Mac also states that Apple will replace affected Apple TV units for up to two years from the original date of purchase, free of charge.

According to the document, affected units will have a serial number ending in DRHN, and the third and fourth characters of the serial number must contain one of these pairs: H9, HC, HD, HF, HG, HH, HJ, HK, HL, HM, HN, HP, HQ, HR, HT, HV, HW, HX, J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7, J8, J9.

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If it’s an alternative Netflix or iTunes app you’re looking for, the free Amazon Instant Video for iOS provides you with lots of great streaming content over Wi-Fi—provided you have an Amazon Prime membership or you have already purchased content from Amazon.com.

The account conundrum

Like Netflix, you need an account with the company in question to use Amazon Instant Video. Amazon offers two options: Sign in with your normal Amazon.com purchasing account and have access to any online video content you’ve purchased, or sign up for Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime is the company’s $79 per year two-day shipping and streaming video service. Sign up, and you’ll gain access to the entirety of Amazon’s Prime streaming library, which includes a large number of videos and TV shows. You’ll also receive free two-day shipping on a large number of Amazon.com catalog items. It’s comparable to Netflix’s similar streaming plan, which at $8 per month shakes out to $96 per year.

Unfortunately, if you don’t sign up for a Prime account, you’ll need to make all your TV show and movie purchases outside of the app: Due to Apple’s terms and conditions, Amazon can’t let you purchase TV and movie content without it being set up as an in-app purchase, and the company can’t even list or link to the Amazon.com URL to send you out to Safari.

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Hulu Plus lovers, rejoice: Apple’s Apple TV 5.2.1 software update, released on Tuesday, brings a redesigned interface for the premium TV and movie streaming service. The update also patches a number of bugs involving the execution of unsigned code and security holes in the Apple TV’s kernel.

According to a blog post from Hulu senior product manager Dave Herman, the new app was redesigned, ground-up, by the company’s in-house engineering team. Its interface provides a list of content categories and links along the top of the screen, with several carousels below that offer new releases, shows you watch, and recently popular items.

Hulu’s also thrown in a bonus for its hearing-impaired customers: Hold down the Select button on your Apple TV remote while a show is playing, and you can activate closed-captioning for that video. (Netflix implemented the same functionality in its Apple TV offering late last year.)

You can download the update by turning on your Apple TV, then going to Settings > General > Update Software.

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Marvel Comics was an innovator when it launched its Digital Comics Unlimited subscription service in 2007. But sometimes being an innovator can burn: The company built that initiative on top of Adobe Flash just as the iPhone arrived on the scene and made Flash irrelevant to a new generation of mobile devices.

With Saturday’s release of the new Marvel Unlimited iOS app (an Android app is forthcoming), Marvel’s subscription service has a new name and a home on mobile devices at last.

Marvel Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital, Peter Phillips, admits that his team has been anxious to get the service off of Flash for some time. “We wish we could’ve done it a little bit faster,” Phillips said. “This app offers a much better user experience and provides access to a lot more digital comics.”

Marvel, like most comics publishers, has been selling a la carte issues via its own app and Comixology’s Comics app. But the new Marvel Unlimited app gives fans of the publisher of such characters as Spider-Man, X-Men, and Avengers access to a Netflix-style library of more than 13,000 comics. Like Netflix, subscribers to Marvel’s service (it’s $10 per month or $60 for a year) can read as many comics as they want—but also like Netflix, the offerings don’t include the latest issues. Instead, Marvel Unlimited offers a catalog of classic issues (dating back as far as the 1960s) as well as issues from the recent past, roughly six months to a year ago. For example, in early March Marvel posted the first issue of AvX, which was originally published in April 2012.

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Tablets, led by the iPad, have the potential to shake up the comic-book industry even more than ebook readers have begun to change the world of prose books. Large, portable color screens are perfect for reading comics. They’ve got a portability that desktop and laptop PCs can’t match, and of course they show off the source material in a way that small black-and-white Kindle screens can’t.

The original iPad started the revolution, and the Retina display on both the third- and fourth-generation iPad provided dramatically improved image quality. Larger Android tablets such as Google’s Nexus 10 have also joined the party. And tablets running Windows 8 offer some distinct size advantages of their own.

When the iPad was first released, I found it to be an excellent (albeit imperfect) comic-book reader. A few years of hardware and software iteration later, it’s a lot harder to spot imperfections. The only problem I have is that I’m now buying several comics a week on my iPad, with the credit card bill to prove it.

Flimsy “funnybooks”

There are a few different options when it comes to reading comics on the iPad or other tablets, and in some ways they parallel the choices that comic readers face in the printed comic market.

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The HBO Go app for iPhone and iPad scored a long-overdue update on Tuesday. As HBO’s co-president Eric Kessler promised at the Dive Into D conference, the app—along with Cinemax’s Max Go app—can now stream video wirelessly to the Apple TV.

HBO Go is a free offering included with a paid subscription to HBO, though it’s not available in all cable markets. When your cable company does support it, you can use the service to stream HBO’s catalog of television shows, including its current lineup, along with a selection of movies. The iOS app works great for watching HBO content, but up until now, it has blocked the use of AirPlay or AirPlay mirroring to send that premium content to your Apple TV-connected television.

That changes with version 2.0 of the app, which makes good sense. Mountain Lion users could already use AirPlay mirroring on recent Macs to get HBO Go content on their televisions, and HBO also offers an HBO Go app on the TV-connected Roku.

One wonders whether an official Apple TV channel for HBO Go may be in the offing—“We will get on Apple TV, as we’ve said all along,” Kessler said at the Dive Into D event—but maybe one shouldn’t get too greedy, either.

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The Macworld/iWorld show never wants for cool products—just a glance at the winners of our 2013 Best of Show awards will prove that. But there are cool products that didn’t appear on the show floor at Moscone West this month, and that’s what this Macworld Live session focused on.

In this four-minute clip from our Cool Products session, senior editors Christopher Breen and Dan Frakes talk speakers—specifically the B&W MM-1 speakers and Audioengine’s 5+ speakers. You can also read Chris’s review of both the MM-1 and 5+ speakers elsewhere at Macworld.com.

Chris and Dan are joined by Macworld senior writer Lex Friedman and TechHive editor Jason Cross to talk about some of their favorite products. You can watch the full Cool Products session on Macworld’s YouTube channel.

Apple has sold its 25 billionth song through the iTunes Music Store, the company announced Wednesday.

The record-setting track, “Monkey Drums” (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch, was bought by Germany’s Phillip Lüpke—a display of Apple’s dominance in the worldwide music download market: The iTunes music store is available in 119 countries, while rival companies Google, Microsoft, and Amazon make tunes available in a fraction of those markets.

Lüpke will receive a €10,000 iTunes gift card. At current exchange rates, the price works out to roughly $13,525—enough to keep him in music downloads for a very long time.

The iTunes Store originally opened in April 2003, meaning the company is on pace to sell more than 2.5 billion tracks per year during the service’s first year in existence. But that once-disruptive service increasingly faces challenges from streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, and a music industry still struggling to deal with the changes that Apple wrought may find itself in further turmoil as a result.

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I had it all planned out. Inspired by Macworld contributor Joel Mathis’s recent piece on the subject, I was finally motivated and ready to cancel my cable television subscription. It didn’t work.

The research phase

I’d done my homework. I’d calculated that I was paying $60 per month for a relatively basic cable package. Once I canceled cable, I’d still need the same company for my VoIP phone service and my Internet. Because my cable provider, Optimum Cablevision, employs a “triple play” bundle, I knew that I’d lose the $5 monthly discount that subscribing to all three services afforded me. So, by canceling cable, I’d save $55 per month on my bill.

To make up for the loss of cable television, my plan was to keep my family’s Netflix streaming subscription and add in two other services: We’d pay $79 a year for Amazon Prime, which includes instant streaming of many TV shows and movies, including a variety of kids shows that Netflix doesn’t yet offer. And we’d pay another $8 per month for Hulu Plus so that we could continue to watch current-season television programming from the major networks.

Because I concurred with Joel’s argument in his piece a few weeks back, I’d also invested about $90 in a new Roku box, since—to Joel’s point—the Apple TV just doesn’t offer support for enough services. Having a single set-top box to stream Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus struck me as a superior offering to the Apple TV, especially when you factor in other channels you can add to the Roku for live 24/7 news programming and the like.

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iOS 6.1’s Monday release may capture most of day’s attention, but Apple’s favorite hobby got a little love as well with the release of Apple TV Software Update 5.2. The set-top box gains a variety of new features related to iTunes in the Cloud, Bluetooth keyboard support, AirPlay sending, and more.

The new iTunes in the Cloud support means that you can browse and stream iTunes-purchased music from iCloud, without needing to stream it from another computer on your network. And this feature works even for customers without iTunes Match.

The new Bluetooth keyboard support allows you to pair your wireless keyboard with the Apple TV, thereby simplifying the process of entering text into search boxes, password fields, and the like. You can pair the keyboard under Settings > General > Bluetooth, as Apple explains in this new support document.

Though Apple TV has long been able to receive AirPlay audio and video, it now gains the ability to send AirPlay audio as well. You can send the audio from movies, TV shows, and other content you play back on Apple TV to AirPlay-enabled speakers and devices including the AirPort Express and other Apple TVs. You can insert your own Apple TV singularity or Inception joke here, as desired.

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Apple TV was until now considered a “hobby,” by Apple’s own admission, but the product has taken on more importance for CEO Tim Cook.

Shipments for the Apple TV video-streaming box totaled 2 million units during the first quarter of 2013, growing by more than 60 percent year over year.

“We sold more last quarter than we did ever before,” Cook said during a conference call on Wednesday to discuss quarterly earnings.

The Apple TV set-top box streams movies and music from the cloud and from other devices such as the iPhone and iPad. There have been rumors surrounding Apple’s development of a TV set. The speculation gained steam after a mention in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs that Jobs had discussed making an easy-to-use TV set that could sync with other devices and Apple’s iCloud service.

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A key to Apple’s success is the company’s insistence on reducing options in the name of reducing complexity. Those who decry Apple customers as fanboys attack us and the company alike, saying that because Apple chooses to focus on simplicity, we and it must also be simple. That’s the wrong interpretation of the facts. Instead, Apple’s focus on simplicity isn’t about reducing choices to make computing idiot-proof; it’s about focusing on the important bits instead.

In the 1990s, Macs were for old people and hipsters (back when “hipster” wasn’t a catch-all term for anyone under thirty). They were fine if you were the artsy type, or if you couldn’t use a real computer, but for folks who needed to get real work done, Windows was the only real solution.

Unless, of course, you wanted to control your computer instead of letting it control you. In that case, you wanted Linux and its infinite configurability. What started as a server operating system became a staple of the hacker elite, many of whom saw fit to clone the functionality of their favorite Windows programs and give away the source code. And let me tell you, 1998 is so going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.

Meanwhile, the Mac had its own devoted following, but most outside of it refused to take Apple seriously.

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If we can predict just one thing for Apple in 2013, it's this: The company will continue to release products. But we're going to predict more than one thing (because we're crazy like that): Apple won't close down the business and give its money back to its shareholders, and it won't stop developing its major product lines. Here's how we think that development could go this year.

The iPad mini 2

History shows that Apple likes to update its flagship iOS products at least once per year. So we both fully expect Apple to unveil an updated iPad mini this year, and probably an updated full-size iPad, as well. However, we don't agree on the specifics:

Lex: I'm convinced by AnandTech that 2013 isn't the iPad mini's year to go Retina. I'm confident we'll see a Retina iPad mini one day—and that I will instantly covet one. But if you look at the history of the iPhone and the full-sized iPad, Apple waits until the third iteration of an iOS device to bring that glorious screen into play.

Dan: People have been overwhelmingly positive about the iPad mini—but, to a person, almost everybody says a Retina display is the one thing it's missing. Sure, no other device has gone Retina this early in its life cycle, but when you have such a clear improvement that could be made, I wonder if Apple can resist?

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I knew that cord-cutting’s time had come when I visited my wife’s parents in Arkansas over the New Year’s holiday. My father-in-law has always been one of the techiest people I know—he’s got a giant flat-screen high-definition television connected to a killer stereo system, making his home theater experience feel quite a bit like an actual theater.

On this visit, however, his cable box was gone: It had been replaced by a Roku, and the cable service replaced by subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime. That works out to a savings of at least $30 a month—well worth it, my father-in-law says, even though he can’t watch CBS shows or live golf anymore. Instead, he’s been exploring the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus.

“The quality is as good as cable and satellite and in some programming areas better,” he told me last week. He gushed: “Hulu Criterion is a treasure vault.”

So it was no surprise, then, when Paid Content ran this chart last week, revealing that the number of cable subscribers declined for the “first time in history,” down from 100.9 million in 2011 to 100.8 million in 2012. That’s a minor dip, in the scheme of things, but also portentous.

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Forbes has really been on a tear as 2012 gasped its last breath and 2013 stepped in, wondering what it had done to deserve this. Having foisted on us not one, but two “I’m leaving the iPhone!” pieces by pundits who haven’t actually decided that they’re leaving the iPhone, the publisher of “Information for the World’s Business Leaders” would now like us to enjoy some more delicious tripe.

Kelly Clay brings Forbes readers the amazing tale of “Why Intel’s New IPTV Service Will Do What Google, Apple, and Microsoft Can’t” (no link, but tip o’ the antlers to Lessien).

Spoiler: it’s because Intel is made of hopes and dreams and magical candy canes!

And an elf. A crazy, crazy elf.

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Though Apple’s 2012 might have seemed dominated by Mac, iPhone, and iPad news, other big stories for the company cropped up throughout the year. This was Tim Cook’s first full year as Apple’s CEO, and Apple faced challenges in the realm of security, made transitions in its online services, and updated one of its flagship applications. We’ve already recounted the year in iOS news and the year in Mac news. Here are highlights from Apple’s 2012 in terms of, well, everything else.

This is Tim

This year marked Tim Cook’s first full calendar year as CEO. And he wasn’t quiet. Despite his promise that Apple would double down on secrecy, Cook spent a surprising amount of time in 2012 talking publicly about Apple’s plans and strategies.

He followed in Steve Jobs’s footsteps by speaking at the annual D10 conference. He reassured unhappy customers that a new professional Mac would arrive in 2013. He coined the term “toaster fridge” in describing why Apple isn't looking to make a hybrid Mac/tablet, and he explained his vision of the post-PC world.

Cook also made a public statement about iOS 6’s Maps app—specifically, saying that Apple was “extremely sorry” for the frustration the app had caused. He even took the step of suggesting that customers disappointed with Maps try mapping options from other companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Motorola. That, moment, dear Mayans, is when the world as we knew it drew to a close.

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This week's roundup of iOS accessories brings you new ways to dock your new phone, as well as batteries galore.

We’re still waiting for iPhone 5 docks that have Apple’s new Lightning connector built in. Instead, Belkin’s $30 Charge + Sync Dock with Audio Port uses your iPhone's own Lightning-connector cable: Just thread the cable through the Charge + Sync’s base, and it plugs into your phone’s Lightning-connector port whenever you dock the phone, letting you charge the handset and sync it with your Mac. (The dock also works with the latest iPod touch.)

A pass-through headphone plug lets you listen to headphones (or powered speakers) while your phone is docked, and you can easily remove your Lightning cable when you need to take it with you. The dock is made of plastic, but it still matches Apple’s aluminum products well.

Hundreds and hundreds of products are released for the Mac each year. A few products truly stand out as impressive examples of quality, value, and innovation. These are the products that we recognize with an Editors’ Choice Award.

When it comes to the Eddys (as we affectionately call them), Macworld editors start with a list of candidates; this year, the list included well over 200 products (eligible products must have been released between November 1, 2011, and November 1, 2012). We take a close look at all of the candidates, debate the pros and cons of each, and determine whether a product meets our stringent standards for quality, utility, innovation, value, and excellence. After weeks of deliberation, we assembled a final list.

Ladies and gentlemen, Macworld presents the winners of the Eddy Awards.

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