Inhoudsopgave van March 2023 - MacFormat

iPHONE TO GET CURVED BEZELS EU COMPLAINT SUBMITTED > The screen of the iPhone 15 may curve at its edges, if a rumour posted by leaker ShrimpApplePro turns out to be true. The edge where the iPhone’s front glass meets its frame would become more like the one on the Apple Watch Series 6 and 7, where they seemingly ‘blend’ into one another. The bezels on the iPhone 15 Pro and Plus may also become slimmer. SPOTIFY AND APPLE – AGAIN APPLE WATCH-LIKE LOOKS > Apple is under attack for “harmful” and “anti-competitive behaviour” in a letter submitted to the EU Commission and signed by the CEOs of Spotify, Deezer, Basecamp and others. Back in October 2022, Spotify accused Apple of damaging “Spotify’s and other developers’ abilities to provide a…

APP OF THE MONTH Ulysses is one of the very best writing apps for Mac – and it’s just got even better, thanks to a raft of feature editions and changes in its 29th edition. The biggest of these is its new Projects feature, which – as its name suggests – makes it easier to manage multiple writing tasks by organising them in ways to suit you. Going hand in hand with Projects are new Keyword Favourites, which allows you to keep your top keywords close to hand, and new Export Styles, which enables you to ensure that the documents you’re working on look their best when exporting them as PDFs or Microsoft Word DOCX documents. Available since 2003, and continually improving ever since, Ulysses is also available on iPhone and…

1 Your Music, your way Apple tries to push you towards its Apple Music streaming service by default, but you can stop both it and the iTunes Store from appearing in your Library if you wish. The only catch is that you won’t be able to fetch artwork without them. 2 Add artwork easily To fetch artwork, you’ll need to be logged into the iTunes Store (see Music > Account > Sign In). You should also ensure Music > Settings > Advanced > ‘Automatically update artwork for imported songs’ is checked. 3 Add artwork manually Sometimes Music messes up and either adds the wrong artwork or none at all. You can add it manually by selecting an album or track, clicking ‘….’ then Get Info > Artwork. Deleting any existing…

The Music app for Mac is packed with all kinds of features, which can make it tricky to get your head around. It not only offers multiple ways to view your personal music library, but also includes the iTunes Music Store (where you can make music purchases) and Apple Music; and Apple’s paid-for streaming service also throws a whole range of other options into the mix, from live music stations to Apple Music Sing – Apple’s hot take on karaoke, which enables you to mute or reduce vocals during playback, while you singalong to the real-time lyrics being presented onscreen. Then there’s iCloud Music Library (see p26), which takes almost all the music you’ve imported or purchased and makes it available in the cloud – either as part of an…

While Apple Music gets all the headlines, the iTunes Store remains a core component of Apple’s Music offering. First launched 20 years ago, it remains one of the best places to buy music and music videos online, with tracks available in Apple Lossless and with Spatial Audio, and it’s built into the Music app on Mac, or as a dedicated app on iOS/iPadOS. Alll the things you buy should remain available for you to redownload at any time, but that’s not always true in practice – which is why we recommend making regular backups of your library. Any things you buy from the store are associated with your Apple ID, so if you use multiple Apple IDs or have a family, you might want to investigate Purchase Sharing. Available in…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create a Shared Photo Library for friends and family YOU’LL NEED Photos app, macOS 13, iOS 16, iPadOS 16 or later You’ve long been able to share photos in the Photos app – although this was limited to photos you specifically chose to add to a special shared album, that then got posted to iCloud. While that was useful, shared albums only worked one way – so while you could post photos taken at a shared event (a gig you all went to, or a family gathering, say) none of your friends or family could add pictures they’d taken. iCloud Shared Photo Library changes all that. Available now as part of macOS Ventura, iOS 16.1 or iPadOS 16.1, iCloud Shared…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to extend the reach of your home Wi-Fi network using a Wi-Fi range extender YOU’LL NEED A Mac, iPad or iPhone, a Wi-Fi router, a Wi-Fi range extender A Wi-Fi extender can boost the Wi-Fi from your existing router. That allows your network to reach places it wasn’t able to reach before because of the router’s limited reach, and it can fix dead or weak spots in your area of coverage. Even if you have one of the best wireless routers or Wi-Fi 6 routers money can buy, sometimes you have to deal with its limited range. But, with so many of us now working from home, or just bingeing on streaming services and gaming, dead spots are the last thing…

IT WILL TAKE 60 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to identify and fix charging problems with your Apple Watch YOU’LL NEED An Apple Watch, an Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable or a third-party charger O value-adding everyday features to create a wonderful smartwatch companion. However, even the best Apple Watches aren’t impervious to flaws. While we’ve not heard of any specific problems in the newest model, the Apple Watch 8, as with all Apple Watches are a thing of beauty, combining some solid fitness functions with fantastic smartwatches it’s important to remember the device is more like a phone than a mechanical watch when it comes to its battery; if you don’t charge it every day, it soon runs out of power. This means charging problems aren’t just irritating, they’re…

Sharing iPad external storage Q Pro and Ma cBook Pro? by DIANE JAMES A Likeother recent iPads, current iPad Pros have a USB-C port, but theirs supports Thunderbolt/USB 4. You can thus use most USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 external drives. Some hard disks draw more power and may need their own power supply, but SSDs should get theirs from the iPad. You can access multiple drives in a daisy chain, or through a powered USB or Thunderbolt hub or dock. Format the drive in APFS, with a single volume for sharing, as iPadOS only recognises one volume on each disk. You could, though, How c an I use external storage to share files between my new iPad use a macOS bootable disk, as the volume made accessible…

Every version of macOS is stacked with nips, tucks and tweaks that can help making using your Mac easier and faster and more productive, but it can be hard to remember them all – if you’re aware of 1 Find duplicated songs in the Music app The Music app for macOS can find either duplicate songs (songs that appear more than once – on compilations as well as on albums, say) or exact duplicates (where a track has been inadvertently duplicated). To find duplicated songs in your Music library, go to File > Library > Show Duplicate Items, holding Opt on your 2 Share stacks of photos Share several photos at once in a collection, which tiles them together. The Reminders app enables you to delegate tasks in your To…

£75.99 (Caddy only); £261.99 (1TB mag); £392.99 (2TB mag); £719.99 (4TB mag) FROM westerndigital.com FEATURES USB-C, swappable SSD magazines, rugged caddy You have flexibility in P rofessional photographers and videographers tend to favour using fast external SSDs for working on shoots. Small and light, they are a much more cost-effective way of adding storage to your Mac than paying Apple’s premium for a larger internal drive when you first buy your computer. SanDisk has taken this concept a step further with the Pro-Blade system, a rugged caddy paired with removable SSD magazines. The idea is that you can swap magazines in and out as you work without needing to carry multiple regular-sized drives. The caddy itself is relatively inexpensive and comes with a heavy-duty USB-C cable that’s…

£62 FROM novaplus-tech.com FEATURES Magnetic/USB-C charging, replacement tip, battery indicator, tilt sensitivity Can’t afford an Apple Pencil 2? Take a look at the NovaPlus Pencil A8 Duo. It’s the same shape and size, and has the same flat side, making the stylus easier to grip than the original Apple Pencil’s completely round design. The responsiveness of the A8 Duo is on point with no lag. Additionally, the stroke moves exactly as you move and never jumps to another place on the working document. In that way, it’s very reliable and can be counted on for basic stylus functions. The tip is designed to look and feel very much like the Apple Pencil 2’s, and in case you wear it down a second tip is included in the box. Not so…

Each of the SSDs we tested could prove ideal depending on your specific requirements and, of course, deals available, and all deliver good performance. We generally prefer Thunderbolt for its compatibility and superior performance, and OWC’s superb Envoy Pro SX stands out in speed, build quality and ruggedness. Sadly it’s also by far the most expensive, and would be wasted if used just to plod through making Time Machine backups. But if your needs include working with large media files, we recommend it without reservation. For backing up and more general use, more modest USB 3.1 Gen 2 drives still deliver 10 times the speed of a hard disk, with a lifetime of up to 10 years. There the choice is wider but determined more by cost per terabyte. We’re…

£14.49 FROM flateye-game.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later F lat Eye is a narrative management game, which means its management aspects get equal billing with the story, rather than being the main focal point. As a remote manager controlling a petrol station clerk from afar, you have to outfit and upgrade your store, decide what the clerk does and says, and generally keep your customers happy. Every now and then, a ‘premium customer’ will enter your station, keen to talk. The conversations you have – and how you conduct them – influence the story. Flat Eye might be set in Iceland in the year 2022, but it’s a decidedly alternate universe… or is it? The toilets produce ‘biomatter’ that’s used for food and drinks. You can install medical machines that…

Free (full version £9.99/year, £16.99 lifetime licence) FROM sticklets.co NEEDS macOS 12 or later A pple’s Stickies app is a great way to keep reminders and pertinent information close to hand on your Mac, but it has one main problem – use too many sticky notes and your Desktop becomes a cluttered mess. Use the Sticklets app, on the other hand, and things become much neater. This is a sticky notes app that stores your notes in the menu bar. Click the app icon at the top of your screen and your most recent note is shown. It’s simple but effective and provides quick access to the information you need at a glance. But what makes Sticklets more impressive is its extra functionality. For instance, you can access a list…

T he new M2 Pro and M2 Max have been hotly anticipated since last summer when the M2 made its debut in the MacBook Pro 13-inch and MacBook Air. While it’s taken longer than expected, the new chips have certainly lived up to expectations. Apple says the M2 Pro is up to 20% faster than the M1 Pro that preceded it, while graphics performance is up to 30% faster. It also has twice the memory bandwidth of the standard M2 at 200GB/sec. The M2 Max offers 20% faster processor performance and 30% greater graphics performance than its direct predecessor, the M1 Max, but its memory bandwidth is even greater at 400GB/sec. Apple says you should see no decrease in performance when running solely on battery power too, arguably making the…

Six years after its debut, and almost two years since it was dumped, the is back – and now it’s HomePod better than ever. First announced in June 2017, the original HomePod was one of the best wireless smart speakers around, thanks to its stunning sound quality, AirPlay support and the inclusion of Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. Costing £319, it was considered expensive at launch, however, and never gained much traction beyond a few devoted Apple fans – not helped by Amazon swamping the market with its much cheaper Echo speaker range. To counter that, it was joined in 2020 by the HomePod mini, a smart speaker that improved on the HomePod experience and remains, at £99, considerably cheaper. Despite rumours of a revamp, the original HomePod was discontinued in March…

With vinyl records now outsellingCDs, and streaming services thrashing both, your optical disc based music collection might feel like it’s time has come and gone. Apple is partly to blame, of course. While it didn’t invent the digital audio player (DAP), it certainly popularised it, with various flavours of iPod selling in their millions since the very first model promised ‘1,000 songs in your pocket’ when it launched in 2001. With the iPhone, iPad, Mac and even the Apple Watch capable of storing more songs than entire music collections, it’s no surprise that old media formats have largely fallen out of favour. Audio streaming services account for the majority of music listening now – Apple Music gives you access to hundreds of thousands of songs in an instant from almost…

While having your music collection on your Mac is great, it can be a little limited. Sure, you can sit at your Mac to listen to music or even stream it from that Mac to any AirPlay speakers you have at home – but what if you want to listen to your music on your iPhone, iPad or Watch, or on another computer when you’re away? Now you could connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac and sync your music collection that way. Or you could use iCloud Music Library. Subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match and your music is available everywhere. Here’s how… iCLOUD MUSIC LIBRARY LIIMITS 2 Unlimited may have sung “No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there’s no limit”…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to undo send, schedule and attach YOU’LL NEED macOS 13 or later rich links, and set reminders For many years, Apple’s Mail app has struggled to compete with the best email apps for features and ease of use, (including our group test winner, Spark – see MF375), but things have improved markedly with the revamped version of Mail that arrived with the release of iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura last autumn. With Apple’s latest OS updates, Mail has finally received features that bring it right up to date, including the ability to unsend recently sent messages, send scheduled messages and receive a handy prompt when you’ve forgotten to add a message attachment. You can even see rich previews of…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To boost your privacy online using this secure web browser for Mac YOU’LL NEED DuckDuckGo for Mac, macOS 10.15 or later Wherever you go on the web, someone somewhere is tracking your every move. Not all of this activity is bad – sometimes it’s to check which device or web browser you’re using to help websites give you the best online experience. Sometimes it’s to make relevant suggestions, But other times, such tracking verges on a kind of virtual stalking, with you being tracked from website to website, with little control over what information is being shared about you, where, when and how. Apple has focused its efforts (and its marketing) in recent years on the steps it takes to protect your…

Fix Spotlight indexing slowdowns Q Montereyoften slows my Mac mini to a crawl. When I look in Activity Monitor mds_stores is hogging the CPU. How can I stop this? by PAUL TILBURY A mds_storesis a common cause of poor performance. It’s a background service that maintains Spotlight’s hidden metadata indexes on each volume. Although some recommend killing the process, as it’s an essential service macOS restarts it, and problems can come back later. One quick and simple panacea is to start your Mac up in Safe mode, with the Shift key held on Intel models, or via Recovery on Apple silicon. Leave it five minutes or so, then restart it in regular mode. If that doesn’t fix it, shut your Mac down and disconnect all external When adding your Mac’s…

Your Mac should work perfectly well, even after installing a major system update such as macOS Ventura. Occasionally though things can go wrong – bugs get missed, updates can go awry, but most of the time the fixes are quick and easy. Here you’ll discover handy tips for some of the most common issues. Let’s get started… 1 Missing OS updates Restart your Mac, give it a couple of minutes, then open System Settings > General > Software Update again. 2 Can’t install updates Start up your Mac in Safe Mode (you can see how to do this on the page opposite), then use System Settings > General > Software Update there instead. 3 a macOS update Problems after Go to Apple menu > App Store and open the Discover…

£149.99 FROM logitech.com FEATURES Low-profile mechanical keys, backlighting, ‘Tactile Quiet’ switches, Bluetooth LE, USB-C, Bluetooth L ogitech has added this compact mechanical keyboard to its MX line-up for users who prefer a more tactile typing experience, be it for long-form writing, gaming, coding or similar pursuits. It’s lightweight at just 612g and a little thicker than non-mechanical keyboards at 26.1mm, a result of using keycaps with much greater travel. The base is made of aluminium and plastic but feels sturdy. The Mac version does of course have a Mac keyboard layout, but the keycaps aren’t swappable like they are on some rival models. It does however let you pair up to three devices and then switch between them using shortcut keys rather than having to re-pair. These and other assignments…

£117.70 FROM kensington.com FEATURES Integrated USB-C cable, 1x USB-C port (Up 85W PD), 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports (5Gbps), 1x 3.5mm headphone jack, 1x microSD card slot, 1x SD card slot, 1x Gb Ethernet port, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 1.4 port, 1x VGA port, 137x75x17mm The next time you hit the road with your MacBook or USB-C iPad, you might want to stick one of these in your bag. For with it you gain a slew of ports and connectivity options that iPads and many laptop Macs lack – namely three USB-A 3.2 ports, plus a Gigabit Ethernet port and the ability to support up to two external displays at 1080p via DisplayPort, HDMI or old-school VGA. Compact and made of metal rather than plastic, the UH1440P USB-C…

£89.99 FROM hypershop.com FEATURES 6x ports, passthrough charging, colour faceplates 2 1 1 This hub is designed to 1 blend in with the iMac 24-inch, with soft curves to the corners, and a white bezel. It also comes with colour-matched faceplates so you can choose the one that suits your iMac. We tried the silver faceplate on our silver iMac – the colour didn’t quite match, but still looked great. Installation is simple: loosen the rear screw to allow you to pull away the rear casing from the chassis, then attach it to your iMac and tighten the screw to secure it in place. The HyperDrive features six ports: SD, microSD, 2x USB-A and a single USB-C (all the fast 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 variety), and unlike any other…

£86.56 FROM adobe.com NEEDS macOS 11, macOS 12 (12.4 or later) A sasimplified version of Adobe’s Premiere Pro software, Premiere Elements 2023 is an entry-level non-linear (NLE) editing app that’s designed to help video makers edit, fix and share their video footage as polished programmes, complete with post-production assets such as titles and transitions. It also enables you to add creative effects to your clips to make them look more eye-catching, which should make the app attractive to creators of social media content. Premiere Elements 2023 has many social-media friendly properties. For example, if you shoot video with your iPhone held horizontally, you’ll capture a horizontal 16:9 clip. However, if you want to add the footage to a vertically-oriented Instagram Story, the edges of the clip will be cropped and…

£127.49 (Player), £169.16 (Pro) FROM vmware.com NEEDS macOS 12 or later A pple doesn’t support Boot Camp on Macs running Apple silicon, and even for those with Intel Macs it’s almost always more convenient to run Windows under emulation than booting natively into the Microsoft OS. Fusion 13 brings support for running Windows 11 virtual machines on either architecture, and though M1 or M2 Mac users will need an ARMcompatible version of Windows, they will be able to run Win32 or X86 versions of apps, as emulation is available. The set-up process is very straightforward, and even users without much experience shouldn’t be fazed at all with the app guiding you through the process. You can create a new virtual machine by dragging a disk image, importing from Boot Camp…

iMacFrom£1,249 EXPECTED APR 2023 UPDATED APR 2021 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 wish…

Apple’s MacBook Pro 14- and 16-inch weren’t the only Macs to get a makeover in January, so too did its most affordable Mac: the Mac mini. Now £50 cheaper than the M1 model preceding it, at £649, the new entry-level Mac mini now comes with an M2 System on a Chip (SoC) with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores/4 efficiency cores), 10-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine and up to 24GB of memory – the same as on last year’s MacBook Pro 13-inch. But, in a surprising move, it also introduced a new M2 Pro-powered Mac mini while showing the old Intel version the Exit door. The M2 Pro inside the Mac mini has the same 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine and 16GB of memory (with 200GB/sec…

Apple looks set to launch its AR/MR (augmented reality/mixed reality) headset in 2023, with the device expected to go into production in March – if the latest rumours are to be believed. Apple watchers say long-time supplier Pegatron is in the frame to make the headset, which could make it debut as soon as Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, although analyst Ming-Chi Kuo argues it may arrive even earlier – potentially at a spring launch event. It is likely, though, that Apple’s first AR/MR headset will be expensive (costing around $3,000) with the device being primarily aimed at developers. That makes sense given that Apple will need to get developers on board, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reporting in January that some developers have already seen the device (codenamed…

Pimax Portal > From $399 (around £395) > From pimax.com > There are companies that make handheld games consoles, and there are companies that make virtual reality (VR) headsets. Pimax, though, is combining both into a single device: the Pimax Portal. It’s the definition of all-in-one. In its standard mode, you get a handheld games console much like the Steam Deck, only with a 144Hz 4K display. The sides can be detached and used as standalone controllers for living room gaming, just as you’d do with the Nintendo Switch. And you can combine it with Pimax’s Mini Station to stream PC games right to the Portal. Plus, added to that is the Portal’s VR mode – load it into a headset, attach the side controllers to Pimax’s hand-tracking…

When Apple finally did away with iTunes with the release of macOS Catalina in 2019, it replaced it instead with Music – which was iTunes, but with the movie, podcasting and syncing bits hived off into TV, Podcasts and Finder instead. While that’s been great news in some ways – iTunes became an increasingly bloated mess – it’s sown confusion in others, especially since Apple has shifted its focus away from simply enabling you to manage your personal music collection (including purchases bought from the built-in iTunes Store), and towards subscription-based streaming, with launch of Apple Music. This can mean that despite the removal of the movie and podcasting elements from the old iTunes that the Music app for Mac still feels like it’s trying to do too much and…

While it’s tempting to use iTunes Plus (AAC) when importing songs into the Music app, we think you should use Apple Lossless instead. Why? Apple Lossless delivers CD-level sound quality without taking up huge amounts of storage (like uncompressed WAV can) and it’s also the format that the Apple Music streaming service and even the iTunes Store supports. This means you no longer have to sacrifice sound quality for convenience – unless for some reason, one of your devices (your car’s audio system, say) prefers AAC or MP3 formats. Both options are still available in Music> Preferences > Import Settings.…

Apple Music is a brilliant wayto get millions of songs on tap – right on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. And it comes with two unique features: Apple Lossless and Spatial Audio. Apple Lossless gives you CD-quality streaming, enabling you to listen your favourite tracks in the very best sound quality; while Spatial Audio delivers three-dimensional versions of your favourite tracks, putting you right at the heart of the music. And it sounds particularly good on AirPods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. And with the arrival of Apple Music Sing last December, you now have another option: you can now sing along to any song that has live lyrics, while also being able to adjust (or even completely mute) the vocal track, enabling you to set your karaoke free! There’s…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to easily change your Mac’s display resolution, use external displays and manage multiple desktops YOU’LL NEED macOS 13 or later There are all kinds of reasons why you might need to change your Mac’s display resolution – from increasing the text size so that things are easier to read, to increasing that resolution so you can fit more items on screen at once. Both options can be really handy when you’re on a Mac laptop where the physical display size is limited (especially on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13in), but you can also use the options in System Settings > Displays to manage both the displays of desktop Macs (an iMac, say) and those of external monitors. Using System…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED macOS 13 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to use the new Weather app on macOS Ventura Apple’s Weather app has been around since the very first iPhone in 2007, but only on iOS. It’s been curiously absent on iPad until this year’s iPadOS 16 release, and it’s been the same story on the Mac. Until now. Yes, the Weather app has finally arrived on Mac in macOS Ventura, and if it seems familiar that’s because Apple has used its Mac Catalyst framework to bring the iPadOS version of Weather to the Mac – both versions of the app are essentially the same. Luckily, the Weather app has also been massively improved in recent years, and it’s packed with great features that not…

Deleted messages don’t sync Q WhenI send Messages they sync promptly across my Mac and each of my devices, but when I delete a message it doesn’t get removed from them all. How can I get deletions to sync properly? by GA RY M AW BY A Normally,Messages transferred using Apple’s iMessage service sync well between Macs and devices connected to the same iCloud account, and this issue doesn’t appear to be commonly reported. The significant exceptions to this are with text messages, which have to be explicitly enabled When deleting messages or conversations, you’re warned they’ll be deleted from all your devices, and so they should. on the device connected to your mobile phone service, in Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding. Provided they’re all connected to the…

iCloud+ Private Relay or VPN? Q Is iC loud+ Private Relay good enough to use instead of VPN by CHRISTOPHER BRENNEN A Theprimary purpose of iCloud+ Private Relay is more limited than that of a full Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. It aims to anonymise your IP address within a given area. This prevents others from identifying you or your location without losing access to services that are geographically restricted. Private Relay works through two relay servers, only the first knowing your IP address, but that doesn’t know the IP address of the server you’re trying to connect to. The second server only knows you through the proxy IP address assigned by the first relay server, which can be allocated from an area containing millions of IP addresses. With Private…

V entura is the Mac’s second major macOS update since it was given a whole new look with the arrival of Big Sur in 2020. While Ventura (aka macOS 13) isn’t as radical a departure as macOS 11 Big Sur was, it still enhances the Mac experience in all kinds of ways, most notably with Stage Manager which has given us a whole new way to interact with both the apps we use every day and the Finder. macOS Ventura, of course, also contains a slew of other changes from new apps (hello Weather, hello Clock) to the redesigned System Settings, which has cast the old System Preferences aside in favour of something that’ll be both instantly familiar to iPadOS users, and a little befuddling too. As ever, these changes…

T hereare so many useful things you can do in Ventura that’ll make using your Mac easier and more fun. Whether it’s adding tags to notes and reminders or quickly converting images in Preview for sharing with friends, family and on social media. Collected here are even more tips and tricks you might find useful and, even if you own an older Mac (or haven’t upgraded to Ventura yet), you’ll still find the majority of them useful, since many of them work on other versions of macOS too. For more cool things you can do on your Mac, check out our how-tos on p33. 1 Hashtag your Notes Tag any note with ‘#’ followed by a keyword, and use the Tag Browser to find for custom Smart Folders. all notes…

£69.99 FROM uk.creative.com FEATURES Two-channel desktop computer speaker system, each speaker contains 1x 2.25-inch full-range driver and 1x bass reflex radiator, 10W (RMS) total power output, USB audio and power, Bluetooth 5.3, 1x 3.5 mm aux-in, 1x headset port, 1x microphone port; 123x123x118mm per speaker, RGB LEDs Sitting at the top of Creative’s Pebble desktop speaker line, the new Pebble Pro is a great way to amp up the sound from your Mac, especially if you own a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. The system comprises two semi-spherical speakers, each containing a 2.25-inch full-range driver on the front and a passive bass radiator on the rear. The right-hand speaker includes the system’s 10W (RMS) amplifier, plus a volume dial, source button (Bluetooth, aux-in, USB-in) and a button to switch between…

£99.99 FROM razer.com FEATURES Lightning passthrough port, 2x multifunction buttons; 180.7x92.2x33.9mm, 123g Mobile gaming is serious business, and a dedicated controller can give you an edge - which is where Razer says its Kishi v2 iPhone controller comes in. Loading in an iPhone is simple, with the Kishi’s springs feeling soft and pliable. There’s a Lightning port that draws power from your device, and a passthrough charging port to keep your iPhone powered up. The Kishi v2 feels fantastically premium. Each button is satisfyingly clicky and responsive thanks to the addition of switches under the buttons in place of the membranes used on the old Kishi. Elsewhere, there’s a subtle hatched pattern on the rear side that The M1 and M2 buttons can be programmed within the Razer Nexus app.…

Group test Reviewed by HOWARD OAKLEY ON TEST… > CalDigit Tuff nano Plus > Crucial X8 > OWC Envoy Pro SX > Samsung T7 Shield > SanDisk Extreme > Seagate One Touch An external solid-state drive (SSD) isn’t just faster than a hard disk, it also works better with the Apple File System (APFS). Storing your Time Machine backups and large Photos or Music libraries on an SSD ensures access stays fast, instead of grinding to a halt as happens on a hard disk. Going solid-state also changes the drive’s life expectancy: few hard disks last five years, and many die earlier. Invest in an SSD and it should last as long as 10 years. Each SSD tested was connected using the cable supplied to a Thunderbolt 4 port on…

£49.23/year, £68.94/2 years, £78.79 perpetual plan FROM wondershare.com NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later Wondershare makes a range of video and graphics apps for the Mac, and UniConverter incorporates core technologies from across its products into one do-everything media converter. In truth it’s more than just a converter, offering recording, basic editing and DVD burning among many other things. It’s also adept at audio-only conversion, for those ripping or working with music collections. Where some converter apps can mire you in technical detail, UniConverter presents a friendly face, with simple one-click options for converting between almost every conceivable video or audio format. Choose any parameter like screen size, bit rate or frame rate and customise these easily. Conversion is fairly efficient though, as ever, depends on your material. The more…

Fancy getting fit for the new year? Apple is on hand to help… Kicking off January with new additions to its Apple Fitness+ subscription service, offering a brand new kickboxing workout, a meditation sleep theme, new Time to Walk guests (including Jamie Lee Curtis) to listen to as you take a walk and three new trainers for other workouts. The Fitness+ workouts are all delivered in 4K ultra-high definition video so you can see every glistening bead of sweat drop from the trainer’s highly toned bodies. It all sounds great. I mean, who doesn’t want to get in shape, get more sleep and go for a walk with Dolly Parton or Jamie Lee Curtis? But Apple’s subscription services are getting a bit out of control. Apple Fitness costs £9.99 a…