MacFormatの June 2025 の目次

The summer’s finally here and with it, the chance to get outside and take some great photos with your iPhone – and you’ll discover 52 amazing techniques to help your shots look their best, whether you’re taking portraits, landscapes or extreme close-ups of fauna and flora on p62. Then, when you’re back inside, you can add all those photos you’ve taken to your documents. On p20, we’ll walk you through all the great things you can do, like adding images, to really make your docs stand out – whether you’re crafting a newsletter in Pages, getting funky with sums in Numbers or sharing your latest adventure with friends and family in Keynote. And that’s just the start. You’ll also discover how Apple may be changing the next versions of macOS,…

A pple’s AirPods Max headphones haven’t received a significant update in a few years (notwithstanding new colours and USB-C support in September 2024). Apple has, however, recently brought lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio to the headphones with the iOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 updates. You’ll need to connect your AirPods Max to a device using a USB-C cable to get these features. When you do, you’ll be able to listen to 24-bit, 48kHz lossless audio for much higher-quality output. And Apple said that with lower latency sounds, gamers and livestreamers will benefit through “reliably smooth” audio that is “even more immersive.” As well as that, Apple said that the update means “AirPods Max will become the only headphones that enable musicians to both create and mix in Personalised Spatial…

Apple Intelligence has just landed on the Vision Pro headset, with Apple saying it will bring “the first set of powerful Apple Intelligence features that help users communicate, write, and express themselves on Apple Vision Pro.” Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) system arrived with the visionOS 2.4 update in March. It includes Writing Tools to let people rewrite text and generate new copy, the Image Playground app to whip up pictures based on prompts, custom Memory Movies based on your stored photos, and more. As well as that, there’s a new app for the Vision Pro called Spatial Gallery. This features spatial photos, videos, and panoramas that have been curated by Apple. There are also branded videos from large companies, behind-the-scenes extras for Apple TV shows like Severance, and interviews with…

Apple’s famous iWork applications are powerful, userfriendly and free. Available on Mac, iPad and iPhone, and across all platforms online via iCloud.com, the three iWork apps offer an excellent suite of productivity software. The individual iWork apps are Pages, a word processor and desktop publisher; Numbers, a powerful spreadsheet; and Keynote, for presentations. They can open their equivalent Microsoft Office apps, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and even export documents to MS Office formats. Each app has a huge range of exciting templates so you can get started quickly and easily, and when you’re ready to take things further they have powerful tools to help you create dynamic and informative documents. They’re great for collaboration too. You can invite others to work on an iWork document with you, and changes are…

Hot corners are the unsung heroes of macOS, enabling you to quickly and easily access all kinds of options by dragging the pointer to a corner of your display. You actually may have come across it if you accidentally slid the pointer too far into the bottom-right corner and activated the Quick Notes feature. But there are many other options available and they’re worth exploring because many of them can speed up various tasks and help to make you more productive. In this tutorial, we explain exactly what you can do with Hot Corners and what the available options are. We’ll also demonstrate how you can prevent yourself from accidentally launching a hot corner when you’re moving the pointer which, as you can imagine, is easy to do – especially in…

Remember when the web used to be fun? You could visit websites and not be continually assaulted by an array of annoying distractions while trying to read stuff. Fortunately, help is at hand from the StopTheMadness Pro web extension (£14.99, underpassapp.com). Once the extension has been enabled in Safari, or another web browser on your Mac (it’s also available for iPhone and iPad), it can be used to tailor your web browsing experience while also boosting your privacy by stopping link trackers. Those annoying autoplaying videos can be stopped in their tracks too, web page elements hidden, and disabled interface options (such as contextual menus) re-enabled. It will even fast-forward through YouTube adverts at lightning speed so you can get straight to watching the videos you want. A pull-down menu…

Breathable adds widgets that display air pollution cleanly and clearly One of the many unfortunate consequences of climate change and environmental degradation is an increase in air pollution. This can have serious health impacts, especially if you’re young, elderly, or have existing health problems. But there are ways to measure your local air quality so you can take action, such as the Breathable app. It adds widgets that display air pollution cleanly and clearly either in your local area or at a place of your choosing. Armed with that knowledge, you then know whether to stay inside, stock up on masks, or avoid the area. Air quality control The app works across a range of Apple products, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, so you can get read-outs…

Recover a deleted file Q How can I recover a file that I accidentally deleted when I emptied the Bin? by ANDY STEWART A If you don’t have a recent backup of that file and it’s sufficiently valuable to you, contact a specialist data recovery service that supports Macs. Professional recovery is expensive, but the most reliable. In the meantime, don’t use that drive at all; if it’s the internal storage in your Mac, shut it down and don’t start it up unless advised to by the recovery specialist. If you can’t stretch to professional recovery, the chances are slim if not remote. If it’s on an SSD, the next time that is mounted, the data blocks that were used to store the file’s contents are likely to be returned…

As well as shooting wide angle panoramic pictures, your iPhone is geared up to capture close encounters with flora and fauna. Plants and animals open up a whole new range of fabulous subjects to shoot so, on this spread, we’ll explore suitable photographic techniques, plus shooting modes and third-party accessories that will ensure that you don’t miss your next wildlife photo opportunity. 1 Marvellous macro Your iPhone’s Ultra Wide 0.5x (13mm) camera produces a wide-angle landscape view, but it can also capture super close subjects due to its short focal distance. When you move your iPhone a handspan away from a subject, a yellow flower icon appears, indicating the Camera app has switched to using the 0.5x camera as a Macro lens. This automatic switch happens regardless of whatever lens was selected…

The term Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) was coined by a physicist called Mark Gubrud in an article about military technologies back in 1997. Since then, it’s been defined in many different ways but, broadly speaking, it describes a generally intelligent machine possessing cognitive capabilities rivalling those of humans across a wide range of tasks. In other words, AGI is super smart and cleverer than the AI we’re using today by quite some distance. So while you can get AI to perform specific tasks – often dubbed ‘narrow’ or ‘weak’ – such as playing chess, creating an image, aiding a healthcare diagnosis or finding information online based on large volumes of training data, AGI is capable of thinking for itself. “AGI is ‘strong artificial intelligence’, as opposed to the ‘weak AI’ we…

› From £2,099 (model tested £8,299) FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES M4 Max or M3 Ultra chip, up to 148GB of memory (M4 Max with 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU); up to 512GB of memory (M3 Ultra with 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU), up to 16TB of storage (M3 Ultra) It’s the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra that will really take your breath away For most of us an iMac, Mac mini or one of Apple’s notebook Macs is all the computer we’ll ever need, but if you spend your days flinging photos, videos and large language models (LLMs) around, then the new Mac Studio is the obvious choice – even if it’ll cost you a pretty penny to do so. While superficially, the Mac Studio and Mac mini share a similar aesthetic, in…

› £169.99 › FROM razer.com FEATURES 1x USB-C, 2x USB-A, 1x HDMI; 500x210x78.5mm; 20kg Like most Razer products, the Monitor Stand provides a selection of lighting effects A couple of years ago, Anker released an impressive monitor stand that also includes a built-in dock with a wide selection of USB ports that you can use with your Mac. Razer’s new Monitor Stand Chroma takes a more modest approach, but it’s really well made and could still prove useful for many Mac users. It’s fairly compact, standing 500mm wide, 210mm deep and 78.5mm tall, but is made out of smart and sturdy anodised aluminium – it can support monitors weighing up to 20kg, so it’s ideal for a big 32-inch display or even larger. On the back of the stand you’ll…

You might think that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) is a good thing – after all, it lets you stop apps picking up personal data across apps and websites. The French government disagrees and has fined Apple €150 million due to its contention that Apple has abused its dominant position to harm rivals. The decision was prompted by a complaint from online advertisers that blocking their hoovering up of private data was harming their businesses. The French government sided with them. Fortunately, it hasn’t demanded that Apple change or remove ATT, so you can continue to block trackers as before.…

You might remember that both the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro were rumoured to be getting a set of haptic side buttons that would simulate movement when touched without actually moving. That never came to fruition, and the feature – supposedly codenamed Project Bongo – was said to be shelved indefinitely. Yet now there are murmurings that it could be making a comeback. Posting on Chinese social media website Weibo, tech leaker Instant Digital claimed that Apple is still working on the technology. Right now, the main issue appears to be related to “mistouches,” Instant Digital stated, adding that Apple cannot guarantee a perfect response every time you press the haptic buttons. Instant Digital believes that Apple is working on the “tactile design” and long-term reliability of…

Subscribe online… www.magazinesdirect.com/mac/DH44A Or call 0330 333 1113 and quote ‘DH44A’ Great reasons to subscribe • NEW! Digital access to 130+ issues when you subscribe to print!** • Enjoy the MacFormat print edition for just £21.09 every six months! • Or enjoy six months of MacFormat digital edition for just £16.87! • Delivered direct to your door and device • For more than 25 years, we’ve been helping Apple fans get the most from their kit Keep your subscription rolling today! PLUS ACCESS TO 130 DIGITAL BACK ISSUES! Terms and conditions: Offer closes 19 May 2025. Please allow up to six weeks for the delivery of your first subscription issue (up to eight weeks overseas). The full subscription rate includes postage and packaging. *Savings are based on the print cover…

djay Pro for Mac isn’t just a fun way to perform with music, it actually won an Apple Design Award in 2024. Although it’s easy to use it has lots of powerful pro features, starting with its ability to hook into all the major streaming services from Apple Music and Spotify to Tidal, SoundCloud and more. And if you have a collection of MP3s on your Mac it can work with those too. At the heart of djay Pro is its ability to automatically analyse any track and determine its tempo then let you sync it to any other track with just one click, crossfading between the two using a classic fader or with a choice of dynamic transitions like echoes or sweeps. There’s also a choice of cool effects…

Like a DSLR camera with its various shooting modes, your iPhone Camera app’s shooting modes and settings can produce a variety of looks and moods. DSLR users can manually choose a slower shutter speed to turn moving water into ephemeral paint-like streaks. You can’t dial in a specific shutter speed on your iPhone’s Camera app, but we’ll show you a hack that enables you to produce DSLR style slow-shutter motion blur effects, plus we’ll demonstrate other cool techniques to try out. 1 Portrait mode On page 66, we explored how the iPhone’s Macro mode enables you to draw attention to the main subject (such as a flower or bug) by adding a soft blur (bokeh) to the shot’s background. When you step away from close proximity with a flower, the…

While there’s much excitement, it’s fair to say there’s also a great deal of apprehension surrounding AGI, even among those working in the field. In 2023, OpenAI set out some of the benefits of AGI including the ability to aid humans in the discovery of new scientific knowledge. But it admitted: “AGI would also come with serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents and societal disruption.” It’s important, then, that it is rolled out responsibly. There’s certainly a lot at stake which is why there are questions surrounding how far we dare let AGI go. Francesca Rossi, an AI researcher at IBM and president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), is unsure whether we really ought to be aiming for human-level intelligence. “AI should support human growth, learning…

The iPad is the perfect platform for creating digital art. With the computing power of a notebook but the surface area of a graphics tablet it combines the best of both worlds, especially when paired with an Apple Pencil. And though some may prefer to work with real paints, the sheer breadth of options you get with an iPad art app are hard to beat. Want to switch from charcoal to pencil to spray can to oil paint? Or have a hundred documents on the go? It’s a breeze with software. Though some of the apps on test lean heavily towards traditional brush-based painting, others incorporate more modern graphic design tools as well, enabling you to create up-to-the minute masterpieces as well as blending old and new techniques. Unlike a…

› From £599 › FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES 11-inch Liquid Retina display (2360x1640), Apple M3 chip, 128GB of storage (256GB/512GB/1TB available), Wi-Fi 6E (aka 802.11ax Wi-Fi), Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Touch ID, 12MP Wide and Centre Stage cameras The iPad Air continues to be iPad most of us will want to own, thanks to its careful balance of price and performance, which makes it feel neither as ‘barebones’ as the entry-level iPad (which starts at £329) or as expensive as the iPad Pro (which starts at £999 for the 11-inch version with an M4 chip onboard). For upgraders, Apple has kitted out this year’s iPad Air with an 8-core CPU/9-core GPU M3 chip and offers it in four different colours: Blue, Purple, Space Grey and Starlight, and in two different sizes: the…

› £459.99 (2TB, as tested), £1,199.99 (4TB) FROM seagate.com › FEATURES Full-speed Thunderbolt 5, 3 and USB4 with recent Macs, IP68, 9.8x6.5x1.7cm, Thunderbolt 5 cable The Pro 5’s peak read speed of 6GB/sec makes it the fastest external SSD we’ve tested Thunderbolt 5 is coming of age, and not just for the few who can afford the latest high-end Macs. LaCie’s new go-anywhere SSD claims compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 on Intel Macs, USB4 on most Apple silicon models, and Thunderbolt 5 on the elite with M4 Pro or Max chips. Is it the best performer, or just a compromise? This latest addition to LaCie’s well-proven range of rugged SSDs comes in a distinctive deep ultramarine rubber-covered enclosure designed by Neil Poulton. This brings significant improvements on previous models, as it’s…

› £9.99 › FROM feralinteractive.com NEEDS iOS/iPadOS 17 or later, at least 11GB of storage, HD textures require 14GB of free space and 8GB of memory, iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max or later/iPhone 14 or later, iPad mini 7th gen, iPad Air and iPad Pro with M1 chip or later Definitely worth buying – if you have a device that can run it This game has fearsomely high system requirements, and takes a lot of space on your mobile device too. After a 4.03GB download on the App Store, there’s another download of just shy of 10GB before you can play; even more if you want the high-def vehicle textures (only available on devices with more than 8GB of memory). To run it on an iPhone, you need the Pro/Pro Max…

iMac › From £1,299 › In October 2024, Apple updated its 24in iMac with the M4 chip, and the iMac now has the wonders of Apple Intelligence built in. You can choose between an 8-core CPU/8-core GPU at entry-level, or an 10-core CPU/10-core GPU on the mid-range and top-tier versions. The entry model now comes with 16GB of memory as standard, configurable to 24GB; the mid - and toptier versions are configurable to 24 or 32GB (32GB only available with 512GB or more of storage). The solid-state drive (SSD) storage starts at 256GB on entry-level and mid-range versions, and 512GB on the top-tier iMac, although you can add up to 1TB on the entry-level model and up to 2TB on mid-range and top-tier models. You still get a 4.5K (4480x2520)…

Looking forward to the next Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in the summer? Well, we’ve got some good news, as Apple has announced the dates for the show. The event will kick off on Monday 9 June, with five days of workshops and talks following after the keynote talk at the start of the week. Posting via a press release on its website, Apple said that “the conference will provide [developers] with unique access to Apple experts, as well as insight into new tools, frameworks, and features.” As usual, there will be “video sessions and opportunities to connect with Apple engineers and designers in online labs,” Apple said. But WWDC is about much more than developer sessions – it’s also about new hardware and software. Here, we’ve rounded up everything we’re…

How many times have you discovered duplicate files hidden in separate folders on your Mac? It’s by no means an uncommon occurrence, but tracking down all those doubles can be a thankless task. Get Hyperspace, though, and things become a lot more straightforward. This handy utility scans specified folders for files with identical content, then reclaims the storage occupied by the duplicates. But there’s a key twist – it gets your drive space back without removing or deleting any files. It does this by using macOS’s space-saving clones feature (incidentally, this is used whenever you duplicate a file on your Mac). Hyperspace’s process keeps one copy of the actual data while preserving the original metadata and file placeholders in their locations, meaning files will never disappear when the app finds…

Big changes are afoot for B the iPhone, iPad and Mac and we’re not talking about the hardware. Instead, the look of the operating systems for these devices will be undergoing something of a revolution. In the case of the iPhone, it’ll be the first major alteration for a whopping 12 years. News of the changes were revealed by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s highly respected tech journalist. He said they will part of “one of the most dramatic software overhauls in the company’s history” and he added that it will fundamentally change the look and feel of these devices’ operating systems in order to bring greater consistency across the platforms. What’s becoming clear is visionOS’ influence. It would seem the operating system for Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset has been…

› Master Apple macOS › Cmd is the Command key. › Alt or Opt is the Option key. › Ctrl is the Control key, also shown as ‘^’ in shortcuts in the menu bar. › The thick, outlined up arrow is the Shift key. › The thin, left arrow or outlined pointer with ‘X’ inside is the Delete key, which deletes to the left. Pressing the Function key (Fn) and the Delete key deletes to the right. › The thin, right arrow key with a small vertical line at the end is the Tab key, which shifts the focus between some controls. 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…

Sometimes even a humble word processor can be overspecified for the job in hand, with a multitude of toolbars and options to distract you. That’s where an app like Bike Outliner comes in handy. It’s a simple outline editor for jotting down your ideas in a structured way, using keyboard shortcuts to indent rows, nest them and move them around. It also doubles as a text editor with basic formatting and a spelling/grammar checker. A few extra features help to make Bike Outliner a more versatile tool. For instance, you can add links to rows in your outline document and even paste them into other apps so you can integrate it fully into your workflow. Since Bike Outliner is scriptable, you can automate and integrate it with other apps, using…

SLAP and FLOP may sound like kids’ entertainers, but they’re actually data attacks that more recent Macs are susceptible to. Let’s take a look behind the scenes. With Macs having to handle more demanding tasks like artificial intelligence (AI) and processing live high-def video, there’s a limit to the rate at which they can complete instructions, so Apple’s chip designers are using other tricks. Many aim to speed up the use of data that has to be accessed from memory. High-speed caches help, but the cores in your Mac’s CPU can spend much of their time unproductively waiting for data from memory. That can take hundreds of core cycles and put a process on pause. CPU cores have turned to making intelligent guesses as to what instructions to run next,…

Sync photos with iCloud Q I’ve been unable to sync my photos with iCloud since upgrading to a new Mac. How can I fix that? by MARK WHITE A Ensure your Mac is running the current release of macOS 15 Sequoia, then open System Settings, select your Apple Account (in the top-left corner), and open iCloud. Check its master control to ‘Sync this Mac’ is turned on. Then open Settings in the Photos app, select the iCloud tool and check that iCloud Photos is ticked. (Other options are your choice here.) Quit all apps and shut your Mac down. Take a photo or screenshot on your iPhone or iPad and save it to iCloud Drive. Allow a couple of minutes for that to sync up, then start your Mac up…

Traditionally, DSLR photographers have been able to capture amazing wildlife shots using telephoto lenses, but if they then want to take a panoramic view, they need to unscrew the lens from the camera, fumble around in a kit bag for a wide-angle one, and then attach that to the camera. iPhone photographers on the other hand are spoiled when it comes to capturing a wide range of landscape subjects quickly and easily thanks to the built-in cameras and the Camera app’s shooting modes. 1 Lenses On iPhone models such as the iPhone 16, you can tap to summon the 0.5x Ultra Wide camera which is the equivalent to a DSLR’s 13mm wide-angle lens. This is effective for capturing sprawling scenic vistas, such as a mountain range. If you spot a…

ChatGPT, DeepSeek AI, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Google Gemini and, of course, Apple Intelligence may be what the world is making a fuss about now but Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is looming on the horizon and its capabilities either look amazing, very scary indeed or a mixture of both. As a cut above regular artificial intelligence (AI), AGI is set to be revolutionary and play a key part in what many – including the World Economic Forum – are calling the Intelligence Age. But just what can it achieve and when can we expect it? More to the point, what might humanity look like once the technology is unleashed upon the world? Could it be our saviour, an existential threat or something in between? Over the following pages, we’re going to be…

IN PRINT ISSUE 416  MAY 2025 › 85 amazing Mac hacks revealed! › On test: MacBook Air & iPhone 16e › NEW! Mac Studio & iPad Air › 6 backup drives reviewed and rated ISSUE 415 APRIL 2025 › Boost your Mac with easy upgrades! › Create great music with GarageBand › 6 best AI writing apps for Mac › What’s next for Apple silicon? ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 414 MARCH 2025 › Detox your Mac: 85 essential tips › 21 amazing apps for Mac and iPad! › Accessibility tricks for any Mac › 6 smart ways to faster Wi-Fi To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_ backissues or phone +44 (0)330 333 1113 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto…

Most of the apps on test here are in the ‘very affordable’ category. Adobe Illustrator is an outlier in having a hefty subscription price which counts against it despite its obvious talents and Adobe Suite integration. Artstudio Pro is a very decent allrounder, putting a friendly interface on an app that works almost as well with photos as with painting. Art Set 4 skews more towards replicating a realworld canvas and materials and makes an excellent job of it, somehow providing an experience that is pleasingly tactile despite being entirely digital. ArtRage Vitae and Inspire Pro are fun but let down by clunky interfaces. Procreate feels the most Apple-like app here; slick and powerful and with a deep set of features yet also beautifully designed to the point the learning…

› £129.99 › FROM uk.creative.com FEATURES 2x USB-C, 2x optical, 4x 3.5mm, 1x HDMI; Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC; supports 32-bit/384KHz audio; 52x125x91mm Its most impressive feature is the ability to combine and mix two separate audio sources There are plenty of portable DACs (digital to analogue converters) now available for use with the iPhone and other mobile devices, but sometimes a larger desktop DAC can provide additional features that are really useful. Creative’s Sound Blaster G8 is primarily aimed at gamers, but its most impressive feature – the ability to combine and mix two separate audio sources - will appeal to lots of other people too. The compact and sturdy design of the G8, and the fact that it can draw power from a USB-C port on a notebook, means…

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