The future home is the smart home, with homeowners exercising control over every aspect of a home’s functionality, such as lighting, heating, music, and when your coffee gets prepared in the morning. However, a growing worry in our ever-increasing reliance on smart devices is vulnerability to hacking, which jeopardizes not only our home’s functionality, but also our safety.

A security camera can add an extra layer of security to your smart home setup, but its functionality is immediately compromised if a hacker taps into its security feed. Luckily, hackers will find it next to impossible to hack into this iPM World HD 360 Degree 1080p Wireless IP Camera, which you can find here for $49.99.

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If you’re a fan of Apple’s photo printing service, you won’t like this news one bit. According to a new message popping up in the Photos app, Apple appears to be discontinuing its Photo Print Products service. First launched in 2002, Photo Prints Products grew from supporting simple prints to producing albums, calendars, and photo books.

The message, first spotted by 9to5Mac, instructs users of macOS 10.13.6 to make their “final purchases” by September 30 of this year. MacOS Mojave’s Photo app has already scrapped any mention of the service.

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If you’re a college student who’s thinking of getting one of the new MacBooks for the fall semester, the Apple Store probably isn’t the best place to buy it. And as has been the case for the past several years, Apple’s 2018 Back to School promotion isn’t going to be much help, though it is slightly better than last year’s offer.

Students buying the new MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, iMac or iMac Pro, or Mac Pro will get to choose from a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless ($300), Powerbeats 3 Wireless ($200), or Beats X ($150) headphones. Of note, the offer includes the new Apple Store-exclusive Pop Collection colors.

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A good fast wireless charger can add speed and convenience to your battery boost. Right now, RAVPower has several wireless chargers on sale at steep discounts as a one-day Amazon Prime deal of the day—and the company supplied us with codes to make them even cheaper.

First up, RAVPower’s $38 10W Qi fast wireless charger can be yours for $23 with the code RAVPC066. It normally costs $38. This flat charger’s LED battery indicator helps you know the charging status of your device. It also features a non-slip coating so your phone won’t slide around.

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There’s a lot to talk about in regards to Apple products. There are new MacBook Pro laptops, and there are plenty of rumors. Join us with your comments and questions for Jason Cross, Leif Johnson, Roman Loyola, and Dan Masaoka in the Macworld Podcast, episode 613.

Watch us live

This show will be live on Thursday, July 12, at 8:30 a.m. Pacific. Due to scheduling conflicts, this week’s show strays from our usual broadcast time. The regular time for the live broadcast of the Macworld Podcast is on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Pacific. You can watch on Twitter via Periscope or on the Macworld YouTube channel.

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This past April, when all the high-performance Windows laptops transitioned to Intel’s new 8th-generation “Coffee Lake” processors, Apple fans were left scratching their heads. If it offers such a huge boost in performance...why isn’t Apple upgrading the MacBook Pro?

Well better late than never, as they say. Apple’s bumping up the specs of the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) to the 8th-generation Intel chips, plus adding a few other goodies that should help make them tear through your Final Cut and Photoshop tasks.

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Apple on Thursday officially unveiled its latest upgrade to its MacBook Pro line of laptop computers. While the design hasn’t changed, the new MacBook Pro promises to reach new performance heights that video editors, audio producers, animators, developers, and other professionals will truly appreciate.

That performance boost is supplied by Intel’s eighth-generation of Core processors, along with a change in the RAM being used, and new graphics processors. The heart of the new laptops, Intel’s “Coffee Lake” processors, actually became available last April, and Coffee Lake PC laptops have been on the market for a couple of months. Now Apple users get a taste of what Coffee Lake can do for the Mac: Apple claims a boost of up to 70 percent for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro offer 2x performance.

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Thinking about buying a new MacBook Pro? You also might want to consider protecting your new investment with one of Apple’s new leather sleeves for the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro.

The new leather sleeves come in three colors: Black, Midnight Blue, and Saddle Brown. The sleeves are made of high-quality leather, and inside feature a microfiber lining so your laptop is cradled in comfort.

The sleeves are now available at the Apple Store:

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Blackmagic on Thursday released a new external graphics processing unit (eGPU) targeted at users looking for a simple-to-integrate device over Thunderbolt 3. The new $699 device was introduced to the media during Apple’s showcase of its new MacBook Pro laptops.

The Blackmagic eGPU houses an AMD Radeon Pro 580 graphics card with 8GB of GDDR memory. The integrated design means that, according to a Blackmagic representative, the card inside the device is not upgradeable. The eGPU can provide a 2.8x increase in performance over the stock graphics in the new 15-inch MacBook Pro and its discrete Radeon graphics. With the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, the jump is more dramatic: 8x over the integrated Intel Iris Pro.

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Apple is rumored to be adding a new feature to certain iPhones this fall which is just another sign of how much of a failure the iPhone is.

Writing for the Forbes contributor network and GIF warehouse where all the GIFs are of an old man getting punched in the crotch by a monkey, Ewan Spence says the “New iPhone X Leaks Reveal Apple’s Competitive Failure To Match Android.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Tibor, Zach, Daniel and Alex.)

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On Wednesday, Sonos released support for Apple’s AirPlay 2, giving a dramatic boost in functionality to certain Sonos smart speakers via a software update. If you’ve got a Sonos One, Beam, Playbase, or second-generation Play:5, you’ll need to update your Sonos iOS app and then use the new app to install the software update.

This is a big step forward in flexibility for Sonos products—keep in mind that Sonos speakers don’t do Bluetooth or AirPlay 1, so they’ve been pretty firmly locked in their own universe unless you added a dongle or ran a software bridge. But once a Sonos speaker gets AirPlay 2, you can do a lot more than just play audio directly to that speaker from a Mac or iOS device.

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It’s time to get excited, Mac fans. As reported by 9to5Mac, oft-accurate Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities is back with another report on Apple’s ambitions for 2018. In addition to the new iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches we all know are coming, Kuo says, Apple is reportedly planning to update one of the most beloved and forgotten members of the Mac lineup: the Mac mini.

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If you don't mind buying refurbished units, it's a good day to get your ears on some AirPods. As one of its Deals of the Day, Best Buy is currently selling a refurbished set of Apple's beloved true wireless earbuds for just $135.99, down from the usual price of $159.99. They're Geek Squad refurbished rather than Apple refurbished, but on the bright side, Best Buy's generous return and exchange policy still applies.

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Updated 07/11/18: A new report claims the Watch OS Series 4 will come with larger displays—1.57 inches and 1.78 inches.

Apple has released a new version of the Apple Watch every year since its debut in 2015, and the company seems to show no signs of slowing down. Here we have compiled all the latest rumors, leaks, and reasonably well-informed speculation about Apple Watch Series 4.

Significantly larger displays

A new report from Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities claims that the new Apple Watch introduced this fall—which we assume will be the Series 4—will come with significantly larger displays. Kuo says the small watch will be 1.57 inches (or 39.9mm), up from 1.33 inches (34mm). The larger model will be 1.78 inches (or 45.2mm), up from 1.53 inches (39mm).

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Updated 7/11/18: Uncommonly accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple is preparing 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros with no home button and Face ID.

When it comes to the tablet market, there’s the iPad and there’s everybody else. Apple dominates the market, especially in the premium price range. To hold on to its position, Apple has been kept things fresh with new models like the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and new technologies like Apple Pencil and ProMotion.

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Amazon is continuing its week of pre-Prime Day sales with a killer deal on an awesome car charger. Anker's Alexa-enabled 2-port USB Roav VIVA is on sale on Amazon today for $34 for Prime members, down from a list price of $60 and the lowest price we've ever seen.

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Back in the pre-Mac OS X and macOS days, Apple’s System 9 and earlier relied on hidden metadata to associate files with apps. File extensions, those bits of text that follow a period at the end of a file (like .doc, .html, or .jpg) were optional, although often used for compatibility with other platforms and with web. On the web, file extensions are effectively mandatory so a browser knows how to handle a file appropriately.

Macworld reader Rick would like to monkey with that. He has a number of HTML templates, but to differentiate them from his production .html files, he puts the suffix .tt on them instead. Browsers don’t recognize these files by default. There’s a way to force an association between a file type and an application, but that application still has to recognize the extension.

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