SAN FRANCISCO – It’s just about time to close the books on 2011 and move on to the promise of a brand new year. But we wanted to take a few final glances back at the year that was, starting with a round-up of our top stories of 2011, based on page views.

It was a busy year on the product front, and our 20 most read stories reflect that, with many of the entries here representing our efforts to help you make sense of the latest Macs, iPhones, and other products unveiled by Apple. And this list doesn’t even include our blow-by-blow coverage of Apple product announcements, which we track using a different metric. Suffice it to say, our readers want to read everything they can about the latest products out of Cupertino.

One other note about this list: It contains a few stories that came out in 2010 (and in some instances, even earlier.) But their place in our Top 20 is entirely determined by how much traffic they got in 2011.

Let’s take a closer look at what you were reading in 2011:

1. iCloud: What You Need to Know

You had questions about Apple’s replacement for MobileMe, and we provided the answers. First posted in June when Apple previewed its cloud-based services, the article was updated throughout the year, as more information became available following iCloud’s October launch.

(Image Caption: Macworld.com readers wanted the scoop on Apple’s Web-based iCloud offering.)

2. Review: The iPad 2

Apple’s follow-up to its original iPad was faster, smaller, and lighter than its predecessor. And Macworld readers wanted to know just how well the iPad 2 performed.

3. Lab report: 2011 MacBook Pro benchmark results

You could argue that this wasn’t the most significant update to Apple’s portable lineup in 2011–that’d probably be the Eddy Award-winning MacBook Air. Still, this was the model that introduced the Thunderbolt connection technology to Apple’s laptops, and people were interested to see how that addition along with processor improvements boosted performance.
4. How to make a bootable Lion install disc or drive

Senior editor Dan Frakes compiled a massive guide on installing Mac OS X Lion, and this section on creating a bootable Lion installer proved most popular–not surprising, given that OS X 10.7 was the first version of Mac OS X that didn’t ship as a bootable disk.
5. Drawing on the iPad: 12 touchscreen styluses reviewed

If ever you asked yourself “Which stylus should I use when I want to sketch or draw with my iPad?” we hope that this in-depth guide to a dozen such accessories provided some insight.

6. Quickly lock your screen

Step back in time to 2006, a simpler era when Mac users just wanted to block access to their unattended computer. And five years later, they’re still interested in this comprehensive guide from Rob Griffiths on the many methods for locking down your Mac.

7. Move an iTunes library from a Windows PC to a Mac

Another oldie but a goodie: In 2010, Kirk McElhearn walked everyone through the finer points of getting their music on to a Mac from a PC. Maybe this story’s ongoing popularity is a sign that Windows users continue to make the jump to the Mac platform.

8. Show all files in the Finder

It’s another visit from the Ghost of Mac OS X Hints Past, as this 2006 article explains how to make Unix files and folders show up in Finder.

9. AT&T and Verizon iPhone plans compared

Back in the present day, would-be iPhone owners began considering their carrier options, as AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone came to an end in February. And that was before the iPhone 4S came along to the fall and added Sprint to the carrier mix, requiring us to update our look at iPhone service plans.

10. Get your Mac ready for Lion

Lion was the first major overhaul to Mac OS X since 2009′s Snow Leopard–and really, one of the most significant Mac OS X updates in years. It stands to reason, then, that Mac users would be especially interested in getting their machines ready before taking the plunge.

11. The Week in iPad Cases: The iPad 2 has landed

When a new version of Apple’s tablet comes out, suddenly our weekly look at third-party cases seems especially timely.

12. AT&T, Verizon iPad 2 data plans compared

As with the iPhone 4, the iPad 2 gave users a choice among wireless carriers for anyone who opted for the 3G-capable version of Apple’s tablet. And Macworld readers were eager to see how the iPad plans from AT&T and Verizon measured up to one another.

(Image Caption: AT&T Navigator was the top-rated app in our look at iPhone GPS offerings.)

13. Apps with Maps: 11 iPhone GPS apps compared

A lot of iOS apps offer turn-by-turn directions and GPS-based navigation. Senior contributor Glenn Fleishman set out to find which one does the best job, in an update to a round-up we first conducted the prior year.

14. iOS 5 Review: Ambitious update rings in the changes

A major update to Apple’s mobile operating system deserves a thorough review, and that’s preciously what senior associate editor Dan Moren gave us in his feature-by-feature look at iOS 5. Start reading the review now, as a matter of fact, and you might be finished by the time we’re ringing in 2013.

15. iOS 5: What you need to know

Before we can review an iOS update, though, we have to wait for Apple to release it. And that’s what we did with iOS 5–though we did field your questions on the new version based on Apple’s June preview, updating the article after iOS 5′s early October release.

(Image Caption: The Verizon iPhone arrived in February, ending AT&T’s hold on the iPhone in the U.S.)

16. Review: The Verizon iPhone 4

It may have been nearly identical to its AT&T counterpart, save for its compatibility with Verizon’s CDMA-based network, but people sure wanted to get the scoop on this new iPhone when it arrived in February.

17. Mac OS X Lion: What you need to know

This year’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote really was action-packed: Not only did it include previews for iOS 5 and iCloud as we’ve already mentioned, it gave Apple another chance to show off Mac OS X Lion, before the updated operating system arrived in July.

18. Using the Personal Hotspot on your AT&T iPhone

iOS 4.3 introduced a Personal Hotspot feature that allowed the iPhone 4 to share its Internet connection with other devices. The feature actually debuted on the Verizon iPhone 4 first–this article was a follow-up to our look at Personal Hotspot on the Verizon iPhone 4.
19. How to install Lion over Leopard

When Lion is only available through the Mac App Store, and the Mac App Store only runs on Mac OS X 10.6, users still running Leopard had a bit of a challenge if they wanted to upgrade to 10.7. Fortunately, Dan Frakes was on the case as part of his upgrade guide.

20. How to upgrade your iOS device to iOS 5

We close out our top 20 list with yet another upgrade guide–this one for getting iOS 5 on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple iPhone 4S users can easily annoy people around them by talking to their handset when using the built-in assistant feature known as Siri.

The nuisance can be even more of a problem than listening to someone have a regular phone conversation. That’s because when using Siri, you often need to speak unnaturally — adding punctuation, for example, when sending messages.
The New York Times recently highlighted a slew of examples of people engaging in annoying behavior using the 4S.
But fear not. You can enjoy Siri and practice good etiquette at the same time. Here are five tips.

Hold the phone up to your ear. While YouTube is littered with people playing around with Siri using speakerphone, they do it because of recording for video. In real life, you don’t need to use the speaker to talk to Siri.

Use the standard 10-foot rule. Don’t talk to your phone if you’re within 10 feet of strangers in a quieter locale such as a restaurant or standing in line. This is the same for a regular cell phone conversation. Obviously, if you’re in Grand Central Station nobody’s going to care what you’re doing. Once you sit down in the train, however, it’s a different story.

Be mindful of your audience when playing around with Siri. The 10-foot rule flies out the window if you’re in the company of friends who want to hear what your awesome new phone can do, or hear some of its funny quips. Ask it how much wood a wood chuck could chuck, for example, and it’ll respond, “42 cords of wood, to be exact. Everyone knows that.” So, yes, Siri can be fun. Maybe just don’t play around like this while alone in your cube at work to the distraction of co-workers.

Don’t be a showoff. Even Bluetooth headset users still get pegged for trying to be lofty when communicating hands free in a shopping aisle, when they could use their phone in the usual way like everybody else.

By David Daw
November 4, 2011

Apple today verified that there are bugs causing the battery problems many iPhone 4S users have recently reported.

In a phone call to Macworld on the battery life issues, Apple’s Natalie Harrison said the problems were with iOS 5 itself and affect more devices than just the iPhone 4S. “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Harrison said. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life, and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

SAN FRANCISCO – Email providers such as Gmail and iCloud make it easy to store your old messages by the thousands, but finding one of those messages in your desktop email program is sometimes tricky. The Lion version of Apple Mail includes useful new search features, but also adds complexity and confusion to the process of finding messages. You can locate the messages you want, quickly and easily, by following some simple steps and learning a few pro tricks.

The easiest way to find something is to type one or more words in the Search box and see what shows up in the message list–you need not even press Return. By default, Mail looks for whatever you typed in the contents of all your messages. However, you can narrow down your searches in several ways.

Suggestions, tokens, and scope

The first thing you may notice is that as you type in the Search field, Mail displays a list of suggestions–things it guesses you might be searching for. You’re free to ignore these, but if you see what you’re searching for in this list, you can select it (with your mouse, or by pressing the arrow keys followed by Return) to quickly narrow the search.

Let Mail help For example, if you type a portion of someone’s name or email address, Mail may display the full name under a “People” heading. Select that name and Mail encapsulates it in a blue bubble it calls a search token, which enables you to read it or change its attributes more easily and with fewer errors than using old-fashioned search terms such as from:name@example.com. Similarly, if you type something resembling a date (such as October 2011 or yesterday,), Mail offers to create a token that matches messages from that date.

By default, tokens match your search term in message headers or metadata, such as To, From, Subject, Date, Status (for example, unread or flagged), Attachments, or a mailbox name–whichever seems the most likely match. If you want to search in a different location, click the arrow next to the token’s category and choose a different one from the pop-up menu. For example, if you select a person and the token says From:Dan Frakes, you can click From and change it to To. One of the options on this menu is always Entire Message, which expands the search to include the contents of messages, in addition to their headers and metadata.

Narrow your search Your search isn’t limited to just one token. If you use two or more in combination, Mail looks for messages that match all of them–for example: messages from a single sender about a particular topic (From:John Smith Subject:Curling); messages in a date range with some attribute (Date:January 2006 Status:Flagged); or unread messages with attachments containing a certain word (Status:Unread Attach.:grapefruit). Your search can also include plain text in addition to one or more tokens, allowing you to search for things like From:Dan Frakes, Date:Last Week, Subject:Mac gems, and utility all at once. If you change your mind about a part of your search, select it and press Delete.

Choose where to search In addition to determining which part(s) of a message to search, you can determine which mailbox(es) to search. As soon as you begin typing your search term, Mail displays additional options on the left of the Favorites bar (below the toolbar), which contains shortcuts to frequently accessed mailboxes.

The first option is All, meaning all mailboxes, in all accounts; that’s followed by either the name of the currently selected mailbox, if any, or Selected Mailboxes, if more than one mailbox is selected. So, to specify which mailboxes Mail should search, click All or one of the other options in the Favorites bar.

Be aware of Mail’s logic The suggestions Mail offers for creating search tokens depends on the search scope you choose. For example, if you’re searching for a person’s name, but your search currently includes only your Inbox and you don’t happen to have any email from that person in your Inbox, the name won’t be suggested as a token. But if you click All, suddenly Mail has a broader scope in which to search for the person’s name, and it’s much more likely to show up as a suggestion.

Mail tries to be clever when matching names. If I use From:Dan Frakes as my search token and my Address Book or Previous Recipients List has more than one address for Dan (say, a work and home address), Mail displays matches from any of those addresses. In fact, that’s true even if I expressly search for dfrakes@macworld.com–regardless of the fact that the search token shows a specific address, Mail actually returns messages from any of Dan’s addresses! (This may or may not be the behavior you want, but to avoid frustration, it’s best to be aware of how Mail works.)

Advanced search tips

Although simple searches can get you pretty far, you can perform more sophisticated searches if you know a few tips:

Take advantage of defaults If you choose All as the scope for a search, Mail defaults to All next time too. If you search in a single mailbox, Mail defaults to searching the selected mailbox next time.

Put phrases in quotes To search for a phrase, put it in quotation marks. A search for “apple pie” will find that entire phrase, but not messages with just “apple” or “pie” independently.

Adjust search terms according to scope When you search in headers (To, From, Subject, Date), Mail matches the strings you type anywhere in a word. For example, a search for cat matches “bobcat” as well as “catch.” However, when you search message contents using the Entire Message option, Mail matches only the beginnings of words–cat matches “catch” but not “scat.” This applies to multiple words, too: In a header, press ring will match a message whose subject is “exploring impressionism” whereas a search of message contents would only match if the message contains words beginning with both “press” and “ring.”

Try Boolean searches for message contents The Lion version of Mail now supports Boolean searches for message contents (though not for headers). You can use the terms AND, OR, and NOT, along with parentheses, to search for combinations of terms within a message body. For example, if the Search field says pineapple AND (peppers OR broccoli), Mail returns messages that contain the word “pineapple” along with either the word “peppers” or “broccoli” (or both)–omitting messages with “pineapple” but not one of the other words. Be sure to put the words AND, OR, and NOT in all caps so they’re not treated as ordinary words; you can use a hyphen (-), with no following space, as a shortcut for NOT, as in pineapple -eggs.

Specify date ranges You can search for messages from a range of dates as long as you enter the dates in the form “M/D/Y-M/D/Y” (as in 3/28/11-4/14/11). Ranges don’t create tokens, however, which means you must enter them carefully; a small typo can throw off everything.

You can’t search invisible headers Whether you search in headers or Entire Message, you can’t search headers that are ordinarily invisible (such as Content-Type, Message-ID, or Return-Path). That’s inconvenient when you want to look for messages sent by a certain email program, that have been processed by a server-based spam filter, or that have other special attributes that aren’t part of the message headers and body.

Save a search as a Smart Mailbox You can click the Save button below the Search field to save any search as a Smart Mailbox (Mailbox -> New Smart Mailbox), which then appears in Mail’s sidebar. This is a good idea when you have a search you perform frequently, especially if it’s a complex one. Smart mailboxes are updated dynamically as messages are added, deleted, and moved. To edit a smart mailbox, double-click it; you can modify it just as you would a Mail rule. (See “Use Mail’s smarts” for more information.)

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s new voice input-based digital assistant, Siri for the iPhone 4S pits the iPhone against Android’s Voice Actions, a popular feature for Android phones running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or higher. Both Siri and Voice Actions promise to make your life easier by letting you speak–rather than type–your messages, web searches, notes, and navigation.

Toe-to-toe

There are a number of features in which Siri and Voice Actions can do the same thing–such as dictating text messages and emails, playing music, calling contacts from your address book, searching the web, and dictating notes. You can also open webpages using both services, though Siri first routes you through a web search and makes you select a result. Android can open a webpage directly using commands such as “Go to Wikipedia.”

Some of these voice command features, such as calling a contact or playing music, were also part of the iPhone’s previous voice control features. However, in my experience, the iPhone’s pre-Siri voice control wasn’t particularly reliable. My iPhone 3GS, for example, is obsessed with playing Radiohead, no matter what I ask it to play. Apple appears to have improved its voice command features with Siri, at least for iPhone 4S owners.

There is one obvious advantage that Voice Actions has over Siri and that’s turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation. Voice Actions is integrated with Android’s Google Maps app that includes free turn-by-turn directions (U.S. only). All you have to say is something like “Navigate to 501 Second Street in San Francisco,” and as long as your phone understands you, you’ll be on your way with Android’s voice-guided navigation.

Google’s Got The 411

Apple says Siri can draw local business information from sources such as Yelp, but Siri can’t call a business directly unless you have the number in your contacts database. Voice Actions, on the other hand, can go online for you, do a business search, extract the phone number, and automatically dial it for you.

Open Mic

Perhaps the most novel new voice-command feature in Ice Cream Sandwich is the “open microphone experience,” which lets you activate voice input just by talking to your phone–instead of pushing a button. Siri lacks this feature, which is also present in other voice-input services such as Sensory’s Trulyhandsfree technology. ICS also has a new voice input engine that Google says will let users employ a more natural language approach to voice commands. The new Android OS also has a spell checker that will gray out possible dictation errors as you speak so you can go back through your SMS, email or note and quickly correct any problems.
Languages

Apple is offering Siri in English, French, and German, and plans to add more languages in 2012 including Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Voice Actions for Android is available only in English at the moment, but Google is suggesting Ice Cream Sandwich’s new voice input engine will be able to accept almost any language. That’s a big claim, however, and it’s not clear just how many new languages ICS’ voice command features will be able to recognize.

Personalization

Where Apple starts to really pull away from Voice Actions is with Siri’s personalization features. For example, Siri is able to process a lot of natural language requests to give you the information you need. You can ask Siri if you will need an umbrella on Monday and it will understand that you are looking for weather information. Android’s Voice Actions currently requires direct commands such as “navigate to…” or “note to self,” and it’s not clear if Voice Actions will be able to process such natural language commands in Android 4.0.

There are many other personalized features in Siri, including the ability to set reminders based on your location. You can ask Siri to remind you to pick up milk once you leave work, or to buy donuts for the office as you’re leaving home. Location-based reminder functionality can also be used in non-Siri devices running iOS 5 through the Reminders app.
Siri can also process and store your personal relationships. You can tell Siri who your mother is, who your siblings are and so on. And, as long as those people are in your address book, Siri will call them upon request. So you can say, for example, “Call Mom” instead of “Call Joan Smith” (or whatever you mother’s name happens to be).

Siri also offers a number of extras that Voice Actions currently doesn’t have, such as the ability to schedule calendar events, get stock info, retrieve basic facts and figures from Wolfram Alpha, and set alarms and timers.

To overcome these deficiencies, Android users can augment Voice Actions with a number of third-party apps such as Vlingo (free), Speaktoit Assistant (free) and Voice Actions Plus ($2.99) by Pannous. These apps claim to add more Siri-like functionality including the aforementioned alarm settings, adding calendar events, and asking for basic facts and figures. Vlingo even lets you open other apps on your phone with your voice, update your Twitter and Facebook statuses or check-in on Foursquare (a version of Vlingo is also available in the iPhone App Store). Speaktoit Assistant claims it can process natural language similar to Siri.

SAN FRANCISCO – Reader Harlan Lachman finds his Mac too cluttered for his liking. He writes:

Is there any application auto hider (something that always automatically invokes “Hide Others”) that works with Mac OSX Lion?

I will indicate the waffling nature of the following answer with the addition of several consonants and an ellipsis. Yyyyyes….

I waffle for a couple of reasons. The first is that Lion has a built-in method for doing this, but you’re going to have to rethink the way you use your Mac. The other is that full-screen applications can make things more complicated. Let’s take these in order.

The built-in method is Mission Control. If you want to hide one application while working in another, invoke Mission Control, move your cursor to the top-right of the screen, click on the plus (+) button to create a new desktop environment, switch to that environment, and open the application you want to work with. Repeat for other environments and applications. When you’re ready to move to another application, just switch environments.

Another option is to use the Dock and when switching applications, hold down the Option key while clicking on the application you want to launch or switch to. When you do this, the previous application is hidden. However, it doesn’t hide all other applications if some are open. To do this, press Command-Option-H.

Now, about those full-screen applications. When you make an application run in full screen, the Dock is no longer available to you nor do the Hide commands work. Lion demands that the application is everything and it does this by placing that full-screen application in an environment all its own. If you want to switch applications, you must use the Command-Tab shortcut to bring up the application switcher, use Mission Control, or pull the application out of full-screen mode and switch as you normally would. Of course you could simply avoid throwing applications into full-screen mode. Photo Booth launches in that view by default, but other applications launch in the normal view.

I’m quite keen on auto-hiding applications I’m not actively working with, but I find Mission Control cumbersome. You have a few options here. My colleague Dan Frakes recommended Ben Willmore’s Isolator ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) to me and it’s very slick. With it you can automatically hide inactive applications as well as completely hide the Desktop. Ben requests a donation for his work.

By John P. Mello Jr.
October 11, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Among the features of the new iPhone 4S, which should start reaching consumers’ hands this week, is a baked-in personal assistant app called Siri. The software uses speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and tight integration to the phone’s built-in apps to create a “personal assistant” to perform a multitude of tasks for you. As powerful as Siri is, however, a speech recognition product made by a company called Sensory, Inc. may outshine Apple’s offering in the long run.

“It’s amazing,” Michael Morgan, a mobile devices analyst with ABI Research in New York City, tells PC World. “They’ve used some kind of black magic so you can have your phone in your pocket in a noisy environment and issue voice commands.”

Better yet, the software is “always on.” You don’t have to punch any buttons to activate it, as you do with Siri.

Ordinarily, an “always on” speech recognition application is asking for trouble. That’s because the software can’t determine when you’re speaking to it or talking to someone else. Sensory’s speaker-independent software appears to address that problem with highly accurate recognition and the capability to recognize commands, even when they’re embedded in sentences, surrounded by ambient sound, and spoken as far as 20 feet from a phone.

“You can leave it on and talk for two hours, and it will not misfire, and it will pick up the second you say a command,” Morgan says. “It does an excellent job.”

Of course, you can do many more things with Siri than you can do with Sensory’s software, which is currently made for Android phones. For example, before you walk out the door for work in the morning, you can ask Siri if you’ll need a raincoat. It will do all the work of checking the weather forecast for your geographical location and returning with an answer based on that forecast.

But if you have to repeat a question five times before you can get a response from an app or instead of answering your raincoat question, it displays a calendar item with the word “rain check” in it, then that app is likely to lose its luster pretty fast.

That could be the case with Siri, according to Morgan. “Apple’s gateway into the iPhone’s voice commands doesn’t work that well,” he asserts.

“Apple did a great job of making sure that the speech recognition is contextually aware,” he adds. “At this point though, as usual, it’s going to be speech recognition making promises that it can’t deliver on at the moment.”

Sensory, located in Santa Clara, California, has been around since 1994, and its speech recognition technology has been used in products produced by Plantronics, Motorola, Hasbro, Mattel, Kensington, and Samsung, as well as others.

By Jared Newman
October 5, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday is about more than just new hardware. The company is at a crossroads, with Steve Jobs out as CEO and with big changes coming to iOS via iCloud. Apple watchers will want to pay close attention, because whatever happens on Tuesday will have greater implications beyond the iPhone 5.

Here’s what to look for as Apple reveals its next iPhone:

Tim Cook as Pitchman

New CEO Tim Cook is rumored to lead the iPhone event on Tuesday, filling the role of pitchman for which Steve Jobs was famous.
Jobs has a knack for making new features seem revolutionary, even when the competition got there first. Cook hasn’t led a major product keynote before — in Jobs’ absence, that role has previously gone to Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller — but this is his company now. It’s his job to capture some of Jobs’ charisma.

Hardware vs. Software

For the last four years, Apple has announced its new iPhone hardware and the next version of its iOS software at the same time.

This year was different, with iOS 5 revealed in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference.
With rumors conflicting on whether the iPhone 5 will be a major update or a minor refresh, and iOS 5 already revealed, it’ll be interesting to see how Apple spends its time on Tuesday. The company may have some new software features up its sleeve that’ll make up much of its presentation.

Facebook Friendship

Tech pundit Robert Scoble says Apple will announce a “deal with Facebook that will be stunning in its depth.”
The two companies have a rough history, with Facebook reportedly yanked out of Apple’s Ping social network for iTunes at the last minute. But sooner or later, the world’s biggest social network and most profitable smartphone maker were bound to resolve their differences. A rumored iPad app could be the start of a beautiful friendship that sees Facebook woven into iOS.

The Importance of iCloud

Although Apple demonstrated iCloud in June, the company needs to remind users why this service is important. Expect Apple to make iCloud a big part of whatever products it demonstrates on Tuesday.

The Fate of the iPod

By breaking the tradition of announcing new portable music players in September, Apple left tech pundits wondering about the fate of the iPod. Apple could use the iPhone event to address the matter, or the company could let its silence do all the talking.