Each week, we’re faced with an impossible task when we try to round up the best Macworld stories of the week gone by—because everything we publish is, as you’d expect, pretty great. But we’ve made a series of Sophie’s choices, and we’re proud to offer you this roundup of articles worth clicking on, if you missed them earlier this week. And heck, if you already read them once, they’re even better the second time around.
Thunderbolt strikes!
Our big story of the week was probably our review of the snazzy new Thunderbolt display from Apple. It’s especially awesome if your main axe is a MacBook Air, says Macworld Lab director James Galbraith. I mean, unless you carry your Air with you wherever you go. That 27-inch display will not fit in most laptop bags.
Things we want you to do
We want you to back up your iPad, so if iTunes has been giving you errors in that regard, read Ted Landau’s fix. We also want you to move data between your Macs as painlessly as possible; hence, Chris Breen’s guide to using Migration Assistant.
We want you to read more books without spending a dime, and that’s why we’re so darn excited about Amazon’s new Kindle integration with 11,000 local libraries across the country. We also want you to use AirDrop, one of Lion’s coolest features, which is why we revealed this week that you can actually use AirDrop on any Lion Mac.
Fear itself
Speaking of things we want you to do: We want you to keep your Mac safe. So read this Mac Gems review of Padlock, a utility that makes sure your Mac stays locked up tight. Then study Glenn Fleishman’s explanation of how to protect your Mac from SSL security breaches like the ones we’ve been reporting on this year.
In other scary news, Dan Moren warns that a Lion vulnerability could let an attacker change your password; I swear, however, that his password was “I love Lex!” long before I got to his Mac. And Serenity Caldwell keeps fear alive with her report on a Trojan horse masquerading as a PDF, further proving that you should never turn your computer on and should instead run screaming for the hills. That’s what I’m doing, anyway.
You ought to be in pictures
It was a busy week for video- and photo-related news. Apple released an update to its universally-beloved Final Cut Pro X, for one. (Note that I’m using the term “universally beloved” in the sense of “ not universally beloved.”) The company updated Compressor and Motion, too.
On the still photo side—or perhaps, the one-frame movie side—Adobe released Premiere Elements 10 and Photoshop Elements 10, furthering Adobe’s long-fought battle with Apple over whether or not to use Roman numerals in representing the number ten in software names.
Meanwhile, Instagram 2.0 makes it even easier (and, perhaps, less distressing) to share distressed photos. When it’s time to share all your photos, we have some suggestions if you’re looking for some MobileMe gallery alternatives before that service goes away. And did you know that you can import photos from your iPad without using iPhoto?
And, of course, if you’re more interested in watching Hollywood’s movies than creating your own, you should know that Netflix is splitting itself into two companies, and that some of us—namely, me— aren’t that happy about it.
Miscellaneous M
Elsewhere around the site, we offered up some thoughts on Facebook and the future of music—although, to our shame, we missed an opportunity to make a poke-a/polka joke. We also noted how Facebook’s CEO tried to pull a Steve Jobs this week… and didn’t really carry it off.
Apple topped some more customer experience and satisfaction surveys. Philip Michaels found that iOS game Cowboy Guns isn’t really worth a shot. And Jon Seff reports on a new app (plus Logitech hardware accessory) for turning your iPad into a universal remote. And yet the App Store still lacks a single entry that can make French fries. Developers: We’re waiting.