Índex per Autumn 2022 a MacFormat

IT WILL TAKE ›10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN › How to remotely control your Mac YOU’LL NEED › You’ll need an iPad/ iPhone and your Mac Picture the scene – you’re miles away from your Mac, and you need to access something on it that isn’t stored in iCloud or another cloud storage service. What to do? If you have remote-access software, you can connect via your iPad, iPhone or another Mac to access and edit files remotely. There’s no shortage of remote-access options for Macs, and they range from built-in (but a little techy) SSH access in macOS’s System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login to dedicated remote-access solutions, such as MSP360, Splashtop and others. However, one of the simplest options is completely free: Google Chrome Remote Desktop. Install…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use dynamic background animations in Keynote YOU’LL NEED A Mac (and possibly an iPad), Keynote Dynamic backgrounds are a new feature introduced with Keynote 12.1, which was released in June of this year. If you’re not up to date with the latest version of Keynote, make sure you update before starting this guide. You must be running macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) or later, or iPadOS 14 or later if you’re using an iPad. The new dynamic backgrounds feature lets you add subtle motion to your Keynote slides, which move continuously as you view. If you use the same dynamic background on consecutive slides, the animation continues to play without interruption as you move between them. The animations are generated procedurally,…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to access the useful information Maps provides YOU’LL NEED An Apple Watch, an iPhone, iOS 10 or later Genius tip! iOS 16 and watchOS 9 will enable you to create multi-stop journeys – and change the stop order. Ideal for family drop-offs and pick-ups. Do you remember the first time you used Maps on your Apple Watch? We do, because it made us feel concerned. We were driving, when we first felt the haptic alerts on our wrist – there was panic as we thought something was wrong with our Watch. Today, though, we use Maps all the time and are rarely concerned: rather, it makes our life so much easier. Maps can advise us of the best way to get…

Being able to take hundreds of photos on your iPhone or iPad is a wonderful thing, as is the ability to edit them in Photos or a thirdparty app such as Photoshop CC. You can even share pictures with friends and family via iCloud – but what if you want to share your photos in physical form, printing them out to keep in a frame or real-life photo album? And what can you do about those irreplaceable old analogue slides and negatives – how do you digitise and print them? In this feature we’ll look at all these things and more. We’ll explain how you can prepare your digital photos for printing so that they look their absolute best in terms of colour, tone and detail. We’ll explain what the…

Now that you know how to find, follow and play podcasts, it’s time to learn how to control the way podcasts play back on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. We’ll also show you how to minimise the space podcasts take up on whichever device you save them to, and how to create Stations. You can add any podcast you’re following to a Station. There are also controls in Podcasts that work in a similar way to those in Music. This includes Play Next, which enables you to cue up an episode to listen to after the current one finishes. This can come in particularly useful if you’re exercising, for instance, and don’t want to manually start another podcast but don’t want to create a station either. The most recent addition to…

From £279.99 FROM Insta360.com FEATURES Modular camera system, 360 degree and 6K recording, AI-powered editing, Active HDR Mac FORMAT VERDICT › An incredibly powerful and flexible action camera that delivers truly excellent results. + Beautiful, hi-res footage + Clever AI-powered edits + Stabilisation is excellent - Some bundles get quite pricey The ONE RS action camera is a significant upgrade to its predecessor, although if you own an original ONE, you’ll will be glad to discover that your existing lenses are still good to go and will work with the RS. The camera has a modular system comprising a battery, processor core section and lens, all of which snap together securely. A number of accessories are also available for mounting on bikes, ski helmets and the like. Charging over USB-C…

£499.99 FROM airpulseaudio.com FEATURES 2x10W A-blade tweeters, 1x40W 4.5in long-throw mid-woofer, Class D amplifier, 50Hz-20kHz frequency response, Bluetooth 5.0, 1x RCA phono inputs, remote control, 300x200x180mm, 5.1kg It works best with podcasts and the easy-listening stylings of Frank Sinatra Mac FORMAT VERDICT › The Airpulse P100X is a pleasingly retro speaker with sound quality to match. + Retro styling + Decent sound + Bass could be stronger - Only a few connectivity options The Airpulse P100X is a modern desktop speaker system with a retro twist – thanks to a roundedcorner MDF cabinet covered in real-wood walnut veneer and old-school speaker grille that echoes 1940s and 1950s radiograms. Inside, the tech is mostly all-modern. You get a pair of 10W patented A-blade tweeters, a 4.5-inch long-throw mid-woofer capable of handling…

£4.99/month (Apple Arcade) FROM littleorpheus.com NEEDS macOS 10.15.0 or later The game really excels in its visuals, and each world shows care and artistry in its creation Comparisons let you see how your changes are altering the original shot. Little Orpheus is a tribute to science fiction and its capacity for great storytelling. While it takes its inspiration from the classics, it produces an enjoyable romp of a sidescrolling platformer. In 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich – by this point missing for three years – returns after being sent on a mission to the Earth’s core. He emerges claiming to have saved the world from the clutches of an evil baron, having explored lost civilisations, been swallowed by a whale, and explored the outer reaches of space (all while deep…

EXPECTED OCT 2022 UPDATED APR 2021 iMacFrom £1,249 Ever since the Bondi Blue iMac debuted in 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards for design and performance. The current 24in model is certainly Apple’s finest yet – thanks to its 4.5K (4480x2520) Retina display and the Apple-designed M1 chip, which is available with either an 8-core CPU/7-core GPU at the entry-level, or an 8-core CPU/8-core GPU on the mid-range and top-tier versions. All models come with 8GB of memory as standard (upgradeable to 16GB), with solid-state drive (SSD) storage ranging from 256GB on the entry-level and mid-range versions to 512GB on the top tier, although you can add more – up to 1TB on the entry-level and up to 2TB on the mid-range and top-tier models if you…

From £1,999 Launched in March 2022, the Mac Studio is the best expression of Apple’s silicon’s superpowers yet. Looking like an oversized Mac mini, its capacious aluminium body is still remarkably compact for a desktop Mac, measuring 197x197x95mm, but it’s what’s inside that really counts. The £1,999 entry-level model packs the same M1 Max chip as the MacBook Pro, with a 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU and 32GB of memory, but it’s the step‐up models that are the most interesting. EXPECTED OCT 2023 LAUNCHED MAR 2022 That’s because you can also buy a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra – apowerhouse piece of Apple silicon with a 20-core CPU, and up to 64 graphics cores, as well as up to 128GB of unified memory. Storage options also scale up to 8TB. With…

VIDEO EDITOR (IOS/IPADOS) LumaFusion 3 £25.99 luma-touch.com A powerful and reasonably priced video-editing suite. Existing users can upgrade for free. ★★★★★ MF372 NOTE-TAKING (IOS/IPADOS) Notability 10 £8.99 notability.com Notability is asuperb note-taking app with lots of flexibility. It’s ideal for avariety of projects. ★★★★★ MF360 SCANNING/OCR (IOS/IPADOS) GeniusScan+ £7.99 grizzlylabs.com Fast, flexible and useful scanning with good optical character recognition (OCR). ★★★★★ MF368 WEATHER (IOS/IPADOS) CARROT Weather £4.99/month meetcarrot.com Feature-packed forecasts and asnarky sense of humour mean the outlook for this app is verybright indeed. ★★★★★ MF367 PHOTO EDITOR (IOS/IPADOS) Pixelmator Photo £4.99 pixelmator.com Slick, powerful, easy to use and affordable, Pixelmator Photo is the best iOS/iPadOS photo editor around. ★★★★★ MF348 RSS READER (IOS) Reeder 5 £4.99 reederapp.com Version 5 brings minor, but welcome improvements to an already…

Apple promised that its 7 September event would be something special – and it was, as we’ll reveal over the next five pages. Predominately prerecorded, the ‘Far Out’ event, held at Apple Park in Cupertino, gave us a whip-smart tour through all the new Apple products, starting with the new second-generation AirPods Pro and finishing with the range-topping iPhone 14 Pro, and with plenty of exciting reveals in between. The takeaway: Apple appears to have lost none of its capacity for surprise and invention, despite global events ranging from the pandemic to worldwide chip shortages. While Apple’s September events tend to focus on new iPhones, it’s arguably the Apple Watch that stole the show this time. That’s because, not only did Apple reveal an updated Apple Watch SE and the…

The world’s best-selling smart watch doesn’t have too much to prove – but it’s doubling down anyway with a new rugged version that’s ready for the rough stuff. Designed to meet the needs of mountaineers, triathletes and scuba divers, it’s likely to be as equally as home on a trip to Waitrose – and that’s because it’s packed with all the features you expect, and quite a few you don’t. First up is the design. While the Apple Watch has always been relatively chunky, the Apple Watch Ultra makes that vice into a virtue, with a big, bold, titanium case that comes with a rough-hewn Digital Crown on its prominent right side and an ‘international orange’ Action button on the left. On the top is a fully flat sapphire display…

APP OF THE MONTH After decades of development, Apple still hasn’t truly nailed app management in macOS. Mission Control can get messy, while ç+† leaves a lot to be desired… However, Charmstone aims to put things right with a simple solution. Install the app, hold down a modifier key of your choice and up pops a wheel of apps, folders and more. You can choose which apps appear on the wheel, before you release the modifier key to launch them, and the app is extendable, too. For instance, you can drop AppleScripts onto its wheel, letting you do things such as toggle Dark Mode with a swipe. You can add up to 16 shortcuts, giving you plenty of room for customisation. It’s a simple app, but one that’s exceptionally effective…

Live Activities Live Activities are part of the new Lock Screen and are a little like Widgets. The difference is they are designed to update in real time and present information that can be read easily at a glance on the screen (perhaps in preparation for always-on screens on iPhone). Use Live Activities to keep track of sports scores and see updates as they happen, track a Deliveroo delivery, or monitor an Uber journey, for instance. Widgets 1 Lock Screen widgets are similar to the widgets already available on the Home Screen. They pull data from apps and display it in a predefined space on the Lock Screen. You can choose which apps to display when you customise the Lock Screen. Developers can make widgets for their own apps, just…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com ➤ Master Apple shortcuts macOS iOS ➤ A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen. ➤ To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content. ➤ means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go. ➤ A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly. ➤ Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out. ➤ Touch and hold means lightly rest your finger on an item and wait for a reaction.…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to learn more about your photos YOU’LL NEED Mac, iPhone or iPad Live Text is a technically impressive feature when it comes to retrieving information from or about the photos in your Library. However, Visual Look Up is potentially the most useful. Visual Look Up enables you to tap a photo and find out what the subject is, where it is, and access information from the web on, say, Wikipedia. For instance, if you have a photograph of a bridge, previously its metadata would enable you to pinpoint it on a map and you could probably name it. However, with Visual Look Up, you can find out more information about it and see photos others have taken, as well as locate…

Printing photos can often lead to disappointing results. The vibrant colours and rich contrast of a photo viewed on your iPhone or Mac’s display can often look dull and flat when the image is printed out physically. This is due to a variety of factors. For starters, your Mac or iPhone’s screen displays millions of colours by mixing reds, greens and blues. In general, printers create colour by mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black) inks (CMYK), which results in thousands rather than millions of colours (though some printers use extra inks for more faithful results – see page 65). As a result a printer’s dots of colour may not match the rich colour palette of the original digital photo’s pixels. Sometimes colours such as blue in a digital photo…

Apple’s Podcasts app had a difficult start to its life. Its first incarnation was around a decade ago and demonstrated the worst excesses of Apple’s dalliance with skeuomorphism, where an interface’s visual design replicates real-world switches and buttons regardless of how well or badly that works on a screen. Thankfully, the new (ish) Podcasts is nothing like the old Podcasts. On Mac, iPhone and iPad, the interface is devoid of gimmicks and will be reasonably familiar to anyone who has used Apple’s Music, TV or Books apps. Like Music and Books, Podcasts is largely about discovery. One of its aims is to help you discover new podcasts, and then keep track of them across all your devices. While Podcasts can’t lay claim to hosting every single podcast on the planet…

£129.99 FROM tp-link.com FEATURES Dual-band Wi-Fi 6, 3.0Gbps; 5x Gigabit Ethernet ports, 1x USB 3.0 port, 41 x 261 x 160mm dimensions Includes content filters to block adult content and other types of unsuitable material, at no extra charge Mac FORMAT VERDICT › Good Wi-Fi 6 performance, and useful features at a competitive price. +Great price +Easy to use +Good parental controls - Dual-band only It’s taken a while, but routers that use the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology (aka 802.11ax) are finally coming down in price, and at just £129.99, the Archer AX55 from TP-Link is one of the most affordable we’ve seen so far. The AX55 only provides dual-band Wi-Fi, using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, but its top speed of 3Gbps is more than fast enough to…

Each of the apps in our round-up has something to commend it and you won’t go far wrong if you choose any of them. The fact that Google Calendar is free and hooks into the rest of its services is a big plus, and BusyCal’s natural-language support and customisation options make it worth a look. Readdle Calendars’ focus on positive habits could be helpful for some, too. Moleskine’s Timepage is lovely and a pleasure to use. Its Today card is particularly good. And Week Calendar’s Mini Month view is a good way to get an overview of a month’s worth of appointments. However, all of these apps had negatives, whether that was a lack of support for naturallanguage input, a cramped interface, or missing features. Only Fantastical came through our…

From £699 Apple’s most affordable desktop may not come with a mouse, a trackpad or keyboard, but it’s also great value starting at just £699. Like the 24in iMac and MacBook Air, it comes with Apple’s M1 chip, boasting an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine for fast performance. It also starts with 8GB of memory that can be boosted to 16GB, while its SSD storage options range from 256GB all the way up to 2TB. The Mac mini also benefits from 802.11ax Wi-Fi (aka Wi-Fi 6) and Bluetooth 5.0, and includes two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. For fans of the older machine, a 3.0GHz Intel Core i5 version is still available (for now at least) at…

EXPECTED JUNE 2023 UPDATED JUNE 2022 From £1,349 June 2022 also saw the MacBook Pro 13-inch get the M2 treatment. It features a next-gen 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, making it 1.4 times faster than its M1 predecessor. Like the MacBook Air, its base level of 8GB of unified memory is also upgradeable to either 16 or 24GB, while its 256GB of SSD storage can be upgraded to 2TB. Just like the new M2-powered MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro 13-inch also gets two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack, while its battery offers up to 17 hours of web surfing power. The M2 MacBook Pro joins the existing 14in and 16in models, which offer a choice of M1 Pro or M1 Max chips, with the top-end M1 Max…

Who can forget the British government’s famously unclear message about staying at home during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic? Stay home if you can, or go to work if you need to go to work, but stay home if you can. Well, what happened was that most people started working from home and they liked it. And study after study seemed to demonstrate that they got more done and were happier without the daily commute. Apple faced the same challenges during the pandemic. Its staff worked from home for most of the year and Apple found itself faced with a problem when it tried to get its workforce to return to the office in June 2021. Not all of them wanted to go back. Initially Apple insisted they return, but after…

The new iPhone 14 isn’t a massively radical departure for Apple, but it’s arguably done enough to still make it the most popular iPhone for most people. The biggest surprise is that last year’s 5.4in iPhone mini has been ditched in favour of the iPhone 14 Plus, which comes in the same 6.7in screen size as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, Apple’s biggest and most expensive iPhone. Inside, the iPhone 14 also retains the A15 Bionic chip of the previous model, although Apple says it now performs better and has longer battery life than before, with the iPhone 14 lasting for up to 20 hours between recharges, and the iPhone 14 Plus lasting for up to 26 hours between recharges. Both iPhone 14 models also benefit from an improved camera…

> Thanks to the new S8 chip, the new Apple Watch SE is up to 20% faster than the original SE, and now boasts a 30% larger Retina OLED display screen. The new SE retains the optical heart rate sensor, Fall Detection, Emergency SOS, and water resistance up to 50 metres of the first generation. These similarities aside, two new motion sensors – an improved gyroscope and new accelerometer – enable the new Crash Detection feature that’s also included in the iPhone 14 and other new Apple Watches, that can automatically notify the emergency services and your emergency contacts. It also features a revised back plate made from composite nylon material, which Apple says makes the Watch SE lighter than before.  Like the new Apple Watch Ultra and Series 8,…

For our latest subscription offer see page 34! The WWDC 2022 keynote speech was, as usual, full of details about upcoming changes to Apple’s various operating systems, including the unveiling of iOS 16. Among all the new features laid out was a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) service called Apple Pay Later. Apple Pay Later will enable you to buy something via Apple Pay and split the total into four equal payments paid over six weeks. No interest or fees are applied to the purchase and Apple Pay Later is fully integrated into the Wallet app. You simply decide whether to pay in full or split the payments when making the purchase. Payments can be tracked in the app too. Apple Pay Later uses the Mastercard network, which means vendors…

IT WILL TAKE ➤ 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN ➤ How to use Bumpr to select which apps open when you click links YOU’LL NEED ➤ Bumpr, macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or later When you click web or email links on your Mac, they’ll open with your default apps. But what if you want to temporarily open a web link in Firefox now, then go back to Safari later? You could change macOS’s default apps, but that will soon become a hassle when you have to keep switching. Instead, you could use an app like Bumpr, which lets you choose each time. That’s useful if you use different apps for separate email addresses, or want to test web links in different browsers. Bumpr’s settings let you add or remove web…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Slapdash to control cloud apps YOU’LL NEED macOS 11 or later, 8GB of memory (16GB recommended), Slapdash (slapdash.com) Genius tip! Slapdash’s actions can often be given a shortcut. Find the app in Slapdash’s Connected section, click the cog, then assign a shortcut. Spotlight is one of the key tools of macOS, and you probably use it so much you don’t even think about it. But while we love it, it has some limitations. For one thing, you can’t use it to send commands directly to apps such as Notion or Zoom – instead, you have to open those apps individually. And that’s where Slapdash comes in. Slapdash adds a Command Bar that works a bit like Spotlight. Once you…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to slow your rate of ageing and live a healthier lifestyle YOU’LL NEED The Humanity app, iOS 14.0 or later We’re all ageing, but the rate at which that happens can be faster or slower for each person. If you want to help slow down your body’s ageing and feel sprightly for longer, there are steps you can take. However, doing that alone can be tricky and it can be hard to know where to start. That’s where an app called Humanity comes in. Humanity analyses your lifestyle – how much sleep you get, how often you exercise, and more – to work out your biological age and give you tips on how to lower it. The app is free to…

The problem with shooting digitally on your iPhone is that great shots can often get lost as your photo Library increases in size day by day. You may take the time to create themed albums in Apple’s Photos app and even share these albums with other iCloud users, but many digital images will barely be glanced at for more than a few seconds. A more effective way to give a particular picture more prominence is to print it in a professionally bound photo book, which you can showcase on a coffee table for visitors to flick through. By viewing prints as physical items they are more tangible than pixels on a screen and are therefore deemed to be more valuable and important. However, as physical photo books can still end…

P odcasts’interface is similar to the one in Music, which is no surprise, on the Mac at least, as they both evolved from iTunes. So, for example, both have sections called Listen Now and Browse that work in exactly the same way. Listen Now is Apple’s curated content that pushes music or podcasts it thinks will interest you based on what you’ve listend to in the past. Browse, on the other hand, enables you to browse podcasts by category. Podcasts also includes charts so you can see what is popular with other listeners. Where Music enables you to create playlists of songs, Podcasts has Stations, where you can curate podcasts based on genre, favourites, or whatever you like. You can also subscribe (or ‘follow’ in Podcasts’ parlance) to podcasts, which is…

£699 FROM Samsung, www.samsung.com/uk FEATURES 32in, 16:9 aspect ratio, 4K resolution, HDR10+ support, Tizen operating system, Alexa, Bluetooth, SmartThings app, remote control, screen mirroring, USB-C, micro HDMI, height adjustable The range of features makes the M8 a versatile display for your Mac and other devices A pple’s new Studio Display provides an attractive 27-inch monitor with 5K resolution, but it’s seriously expensive at £1,449, and has also suffered a series of technical problems, including to both its webcam and speaker system since its launch. But, if you’re looking for a display to use with a Mac mini or MacBook, then there’s a more affordable option in the form of Samsung’s new M8 (or M80B to use the full model number). Available in a variety of colours, the M8 costs just…

£166.66 FROM nanoleaf.me/en-GB FEATURES 80 lumens, dimmable, apps for Mac, iOS and iPadOS, touch-sensitive, Wi-Fi compatible, pairs with Apple HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, Nanoleaf Remote, Razer Synapse, SmartThings There are millions of shades to choose from on the colour picker in the Nanoleaf app Mac FORMAT VERDICT › Nanoleaf Ultra Black Smarter Kit is fun, colourful and easy to use. We love it! +Colourful, configurable smart lights +Huge range of downloadable scenes -Works beautifully with HomeKit -Screen Mirror on Mac has limited utility S mart home lighting creator Nanoleaf is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and to mark the occasion its launched an Ultra Black Triangles Smarter Kit. The kit comprises nine all-black triangular smart lighting panels, which can be connected using the supplied linkers and attached to your wall…

From £89.99; upgrades £54.99 FROM parallels.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later, 4GB of memory Without Apple ID support, Apple silicon Macs can’t run most App Store apps in macOS virtual machines Ayear ago, Parallels delivered the first virtualisation app to make full use of Apple silicon Macs, including Monterey virtual machines (VMs). Five new Mac models later, including the first M2 Macs, Parallels Desktop 18 remains the only commercial app to run macOS as a guest on those Macs. Unlike open-source rival UTM, Parallels can’t emulate different architectures: it runs ARM guests on Apple silicon Macs, and Intel x86 guests on Intel Macs. On Apple silicon Macs, this new version continues to virtualise Windows 10 and 11 for ARM, four Linux distros for 64-bit ARM processors, and macOS from…

EXPECTED NOV 2022 UPDATED NOV 2020 EXPECTED JUNE 2023 UPDATED JUNE 2022 Updated in June 2022, Apple’s thinnest, lightest laptop now comes with Apple’s new M2 chip. The M2 features a next-gen 8-core CPU (offering 18% more CPU performance), along with Apple’s next-generation GPU, which now has up to 10 cores (providing a 35% boost in GPU performance), and up to 50% more memory bandwidth. The base model comes with 8GB of memory as standard but this is configurable to 16 or 24GB. The redesigned Air is now thinner at 11.3mm and weighs just 1.24kg. Apple has also managed to reduce overall volume by 20%. Despite its slimline profile, it now also comes with a 13.6in Liquid Retina display. Boasting a resolution of 2560x1664, the display is bigger and 25%…