Reviews

Printers

Epson Stylus NX430 Small-in-One All-in-One printer offers great output, no frills

by Jon L. Jacobi and Melissa Riofrio, PCWorld,

A small inkjet multifunction printer with an overly long name, the $100 (as of January 24, 2012) Epson Stylus NX430 Small-in-One All-in-One Printer is well suited to tight spaces, and it offers excellent output quality and ease of use. The unit's main drawbacks are merely average ink costs, pedestrian speeds at the default settings, and no automatic duplexing.

Overall, the Stylus NX430 is easy to set up (via either USB or Wi-Fi) and use. The main installation is a breeze, and the touch-panel controls for the 2.5-inch LCD are easy to use (and rare on a $100 printer). Epson includes its mature and competent Epson Scan software, though the company seems unable to manipulate the Windows firewall so as to enable scanning to a Wi-Fi-attached PC from the printer control panel. You may have to add the exception for the Epson event manager yourself. Many users might never realize that push-scanning (where the MFP uses a network protocol to transmit or push a scanned document to a destination) is an option. Mac users must download the event manager software and install it to add this capability. Push-scans via USB don't suffer from this problem.

Read more »

• See all Printers reviews »

Software » Mobile » Business

Nag for iPhone

by Brendan Wilhide, Macworld.com,

Are you the type of person who struggles to get things done each day? If so, working in short, focused bursts may change that—I’ve certainly found that doing so helps me be more productive. Nag, an iPhone iPod touch app from Electric Pocket, offers multiple timers to help you stay on task. After putting the app through its paces, I found that this interesting productivity tool works well.

The Time Has Come: Nag uses timers and alarms to remind you of when tasks are to be done.

Read more »

Macs » Mac Accessories

Marshall Bergman Tahlia Clutch Bag

by Lauren Crabbe, Macworld.com,

Fashion-forward geek girls have it hard. Most laptop-bag vendors either try to pass off an ugly, bulky briefcase as a purse alternative, or they over-design and slap a floral print on a normally inoffensive backpack and call it “feminine.” Leave it to the Brits to bring us a classy, stylish, and sturdy alternative to the bulky and loud reality of women’s laptop bags.

Available, oddly, from non-U.S. online and retail Apple Stores (such as the U.K. Apple Store) but not the U.S. Apple Store, Marshall Bergman’s £175 Tahlia Leather Clutch Bag is made of Italian leather with a jacquard interior lining. It’s available in either stone leather, dusty rose leather, or black patent leather, and it’s designed to fit the 11-inch MacBook Air, the iPad, and the iPad 2. Like most beautiful, designer handbags—especially imported ones—the Tahlia doesn’t come cheap. At roughly $277 at current exchange rates, the bag is pricey, but it’s sturdy enough to protect your 11-inch Macbook Air while being chic enough to carry as your main purse—you can justify the cost as paying for two stylish bags in one.

Read more »

• See all Mac Accessories reviews »

Software » Mobile » Books

Numberlys and The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore for iOS

by Philip Michaels, Macworld.com,

Spend any time with some of the iOS apps created by Moonbot Studios, and you get the sense that the developer really has a passion for words and stories. From The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore to the more recent release Numberlys, Moonbot’s visually striking apps convey a love for language and an appreciation for how story-telling can add color to our lives.

Take Morris Lessmore, a masterpiece of an iPad app that we recognized with an App Gem award last year. Morris Lessmore tells the story of a Buster Keaton-esque young man whose life gets upended, only for him to find comfort in a world of books.

Read more »

Software » Publishing Software

iBooks Author fashions multimedia books for the iPad

by Serenity Caldwell, Macworld.com,

Anyone who’s tried to create a multi­media-based ebook can tell you that it’s not easy. While many popular applications offer export capabilities—which more or less corral text and images into an ePub document—proceeding from there is a challenge. Often, creators encounter troublesome CSS fragments, mismatched formats, and limited creative options within the apps.

Apple’s new desktop app, iBook Author, is designed to build beautifully crafted multimedia books solely for the company’s iBookstore and iPad tablet. Conceived as a tool for creating Multi-Touch textbooks featuring visually stimulating elements such as photo galleries, video, interactive diagrams, and 3D objects, iBooks Author can be used to construct an ebook in any genre. There’s no support for the iPhone, the iPod touch, or any other ebook platform.

Read more »

• See all Publishing Software reviews »

Software » Mobile » Weather

Weathermob for iPhone

by Karissa Bell, Macworld.com,

Talking about the weather is so mundane it’s almost a cliche. But Weathermob is looking to change that with Weathermob, the company’s namesake app that’s taken weather small-talk to the next level by creating a network of weather-minded users around the globe.

Launch the app, and you’re greeted with a graphic showing the current forecast for your area. The graphic depicts the current temperature, weather conditions—sunshine, fog, rain, and so forth—and an emoticon meant to correspond with those conditions.

Read more »

Printers

Canon Pixma MG8220 wireless inkjet photo all-in-one review: Pricey photo printer with perks

by Jon L. Jacobi and Melissa Riofrio, PCWorld,

The Canon Pixma MG8220 wireless inkjet photo all-in-one is the company’s flagship consumer color inkjet multifunction (print/copy/scan), with a flagship price ($300 as of January 24, 2012). High-end perquisites include integrated slide and film scanning, CD/DVD printing, and a six-tank ink cartridge system (CMYK plus photo gray and black) that produces excellent glossy photo prints. For the price, however, we expect better than the subpar plain-paper color graphics it produced in tests. And unfortunately, its space-agey touch control panel leaves no room for an automatic document feeder, a feature that is becoming common among its competitors.

The Pixma MG8220 uses Canon's Intelligent Touch system, which consists of a 3.5-inch, tiltable color LCD driven by contextually lit touch controls integrated into the scanner lid. When you need a function, the appropriate touch buttons light up; otherwise, they stay dark. The system looks great and works well, but perhaps more intelligent on a printer this pricey would be a front touchscreen display, which would allow space for an automatic document feeder (ADF) for the letter/A4 scanner. One of the Pixma MG8220’s main rivals, the Epson Artisan 837, comes with an ADF.

Read more »

• See all Printers reviews »

Software » Mobile » Games

Shadowgun for iPhone and iPad

by Chris Holt, Macworld.com,

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: In Shadowgun, you play as a wise-cracking, bald-headed space mercenary who saves the universe from a mutated cyborg army.

Yes, the third-person shooter genre is well-worn territory, but Shadowgun for the Phone and iPad has the benefit of being one of the first truly great-looking and easy-to-control shooters on the platform—ever. Sadly, while Shadowgun has the engine of a Ferrari, it’s a shame that developer Madfinger Games gave it the body of an AMC Gremlin. That is to say, Shadowgun may look and handle well, but there are too other bland design choices that weigh Shadowgun down from being the first truly great shooter on the iOS platform.

Read more »

Software » Utilities

Clarify makes it easy to create annotated images and how-to documents

by Dan Frakes, Macworld.com,

I’ve covered a good number of screenshot-related utilities in Mac Gems. Part of the reason is that we take a lot of screenshots here at Macworld. But the other part is that our readers are really interested in the topic—for example, my video on screenshot tips was one of our most popular.

I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. After all, screenshots are widely useful, whether you’re sending an image of an error message to a developer, sharing something interesting with friends on Twitter or Facebook, or explaining to someone how to perform a particular task. But the last of these examples can be a hassle, because in addition to sending an image, or multiple images, you often need to include text instructions, and possibly even annotations or other markings to make your instructions clear. You might even need to create a basic how-to document that you can distribute more widely.

Read more »

• See all Utilities reviews »

Software » Mobile » Games

Dr. Seuss Band for iPhone and iPad

by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com,

Dr. Seuss’s books endure because of Theodor Geisel’s penchant for crafting pitch-perfect, brilliantly-metered, and endearingly silly rhymes. That his most famous books are the ones that also include his own whimsical artwork is no coincidence. Many of his best books are available in iOS app form, and they’re consistently ranked well in the App Store.

The company behind those successful book apps, Oceanhouse Media, is expanding the Seuss brand by bringing out the band: Dr. Seuss Band draws clear inspiration from Seuss’s oeuvre, and certainly inherits some of the late artistic wordsmith’s whimsy. At the same time, however, most of the app’s connections to the good doctor are tenuous at best. The app is best considered independently of Dr. Seuss and his books, evaluated instead on its own merits as a kid-oriented musical instrument and rhythm game.

Read more »