Inhoudsopgave van April 2023 - MacFormat

Scan here to get the latest tech news in your inbox! There are so many things that iCloud can do, and does, that it can be easy to take it for granted. Yet it’s a cornerstone of the whole Apple experience; from making it easy to access your data across your devices to sharing and collaborating with others on all kinds of projects. To help you make the most of Apple’s cloud service, turn to p16 where you’ll discover 108 iCloud tips. Among them we’ll reveal some of iCloud’s best-kept secrets, how and why you’ll want to use iCloud+ to boost your privacy and security, and how iCloud can help you share everything from photos to movie and music purchases with your family. Sticking close to home, our second feature…

Right now, the largest and most expensive phone in the iPhone line-up is the Pro Max. That could change this year, as a new report claims Apple could soon bring out an iPhone Ultra. The idea is that Apple will try to further differentiate its top-end model in order to encourage people to spend an extra fistful of cash and buy it. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that might mean a periscopic camera lens, a faster chip, and perhaps a larger display compared to other phones in the roster. It could even drop the charging port to rely entirely on wireless charging. All that tech would come in a new iPhone Ultra that would sit above the Pro Max. Apple has been discussing the idea internally, Gurman claims, and could…

APP OF THE MONTH MarsEdit is undoubtedly one of the most popular blogging apps available on the Mac. Now updated to version 5, it comes with a slate of new features that help get your thoughts online more quickly and easily than ever. Inspired by sites like Twitter and Mastodon, there’s a new microblogging feature that lets you compose short, simple messages and instantly upload them to your website with a click. And if you like using Markdown syntax, MarsEdit now automatically styles your copy appropriately so you know exactly how everything will look before publication. There are plenty of other changes, including a rebuilt rich text editor, improved HTML highlighting, a more modern search and replace function, alongside much more. These enhancements should help make your blogging even more…

Apple’s iCloud was launched in June 2011, replacing the unsuccessful MobileMe service. As well as an iCloud email address and 5GB of free online storage, it brings a range of free services such as syncing your Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes and Messages apps between your Apple devices, storing and syncing documents and data on iCloud Drive, real-time collaboration on Pages, Numbers and Keynote projects and the ability to locate your Apple gear, items such as AirPods and AirTags and even other people. The service also powers a lot of features offered by macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Your passes and cards stored in Apple Wallet, for example, are kept in sync across your devices using iCloud, with no user intervention needed. This is also the case for your Apple Home settings…

What about Shared with You? If someone shares something with you in the Messages app, you can access it using its native application. A web link, for example, appears in Safari and a news item in News. Other Shared with You apps are Music, TV, Photos and Podcasts. Open one and in its sidebar, you see an option called Shared with You. Tap it to see shared items. W hether you have the 5GB you get free when you sign up for an Apple ID or pay a monthly subscription for more space, iCloud Drive is like having an external hard drive that’s accessed through the internet. But it’s so much more too. When a document or file is on iCloud Drive, it’s synced with all your other Apple devices,…

What is Apple One? Apple offers a bundle of its subscription services available at a single monthly price. It’s called Apple One, and it’s available in three tiers. Individual offers Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and iCloud+ with 50GB of storage. Subscribers can share all except Apple Music with a family group. Family offers 200GB of iCloud+ storage and all services can be shared. Premier throws in News+ and Fitness+ and 2TB of storage. Again, it can all be shared with your family. W ith Family Sharing, you can set up a family unit of up to six people. Your family then get to share media, apps and more. If, for example, the kids all want the same game, you only have to buy it once. Everyone in your…

IT WILL TAKE > 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to create and manage pages and databases in Notion YOU’LL NEED > Notion (Free, with IAPs), macOS 10.12 or later Tired of trying to manage your work and personal projects in a multitude of different apps? Instead of juggling the likes of Dropbox, Airtable and Trello, try Notion. It can handle anything you throw at it, from simple text documents to sprawling databases with countless contributors, and is super-simple to use no matter what you want to do. Notion’s key strength is its ease of use. It comes with a friendly interface that lets you drag and drop items, create databases and tables with just a click, and collaborate using tags and comments. That means you can plan your…

IT WILL TAKE > 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > You will learn what Mastodon is and how to use it YOU’LL NEED > A browser, and a bit of patience Mastodon has been a big beneficiary of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover; with Twitter in apparent chaos and lots of previously banned users being allowed back on, many people have been looking for a more pleasant alternative. For many, Mastodon is that alternative. It has very strong anti-abuse rules, and with a bit of effort you can make it just as easy to use as Twitter. Mastodon works a bit like email; in much the same way you can have yourname@iCloud.com or yourname@gmail.com, there are different Mastodon servers for different people. Mastodon calls them ‘instances’, and there are instances for…

Our Apple Watch sometimes makes us feel that we’re living in the future; at last, we have the wrist-based communicators our comics promised us as kids. When someone calls, your Watch shows their name if they’re in your contacts. Tap the green button to talk, the red button to send the call to voicemail, or the ‘…’ (More) button to send the call to your phone or reply with a text message. You can adjust the volume with the Digital Crown and switch from Watch to Phone by unlocking your iPhone and tapping the green bar at the top of the screen. And of course, you can phone people too. Simply tell Siri to call the person, or open the Phone app, scroll to the appropriate contact and choose whether…

Matter is a communications protocol enabling a variety of smart home devices to talk to each other. At the moment, Apple uses HomeKit as its communication standard for smart devices, while Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home use their own technologies. Having to support three different technologies makes life very difficult for the manufacturers of smart devices – which is one reason why so few manufacturers support HomeKit. So, in the future, Matter will provide one single communications technology that allows all sorts of smart devices to work with Siri and the Home app on Apple devices, but also with millions of other devices that use Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Matter commands can be transmitted from one device to another using conventional Wi-Fi networks, Ethernet, or Bluetooth. There’s a problem…

HomeKit may still be trailing behind Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant in the home-automation market, but there are still enough HomeKitcompatible devices available to create a pretty impressive smart home setup. The three top product categories in the smart home market are speakers, lights and security cameras. Apple does have a list of HomeKit-compatible devices on its website (apple.co/3WeNNrX). The list includes lots of other devices such as thermostats, controls for fans and air conditioning systems, smart locks for your front door, and even remote controls for garage doors. However, many of these more complex devices require professional installation – the last thing you want to do in the winter is screw up your heating by trying to wire up a HomeKit thermostat by yourself! AIRPLAY & HOMEKIT That…

From £2,699 (model tested £3,699) FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES M2 Pro chip (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU), 512GB storage (2TB tested), 16GB of unified memory (32GB tested), 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display (3456x 2234), MagSafe 3, 3x Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports, 1x HDMI port, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.3 M2 Pro offers impressive performance without draining the battery Launched alongside its 14-inch sibling in January, the MacBook Pro 16-inch doesn’t so much reinvent what Apple’s laptops can do as refines it, making it slicker and quicker than ever, while retaining all the things about the Apple silicon era we love – incredible performance and battery life, wrapped in a sophisticated and elegant portable package. Before we explore the performance of the MacBook Pro 16-inch, let’s look at the line-up in the…

S erif’s Affinity suite rivals Adobe in bringing pro-grade image editing without a subscription to Macs and iPads. The latest releases of the three Affinity apps, released as version 2 rather than a free update, may mean you have to pay once more, but a universal licence – which gets you all apps on all platforms with no extra costs – is about the same as one year of equivalent Adobe apps. There’s a 30-day free trial too. The iPad version of Affinity Photo 2 is probably the most interesting of the updates, as it has the broadest appeal and is cheaper than the Mac app (which costs £69.99 if you buy it separately). And while the both Mac and iPad versions takes on Adobe Photoshop, the Mac version lacks…

Apple surprised everybody in January this year with the release of a new home speaker, the second incarnation of the HomePod. Undercut by much cheaper Alexa rivals, the original 2018 HomePod model had disappeared from Apple’s product line-up by 2021, with only the cheaper HomePod mini still available for anybody who wanted to buy an Apple speaker. But now the new full-size HomePod (2nd gen) is back to reclaim its rightful throne from Alexa. At £299, the HomePod (2nd gen) is still an expensive investment, and it’s a whole £200 more than the HomePod mini, which is only £99. It also looks pretty similar to the original model. So, what are Apple banking on to make the new HomePod a success this time around? If a powerful high-excursion woofer and…

Apple has some major projects in the works, and a consensus is forming A that the company is going to host a blockbuster event in the spring to reveal its latest projects. If the rumours are correct, we could see some of the most important new Apple products in years. First and foremost is a mixed-reality headset, apparently dubbed Reality Pro. For a while now we’ve had small, scattered leaks surrounding the device, but that all changed in January when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman released a report containing a huge number of claims of what the headset would offer. Gurman believes the Reality Pro will offer hand- and eye-tracking, which Apple wants to make a “major selling point”. That will let each user select items and apps by looking at them,…

Photos > Using Photo Stream, iCloud can store your most recent 1,000 photos for up to 30 days. They then sync with all your Photo Stream-enabled Apple gear. iCloud Photos goes further and stores every photo and video you take on the cloud, syncing data and edits as well as the pics themselves. You can use the Optimise Storage option to keep low-res versions on your devices and high-res copies on iCloud. iCloud Drive/Files > On a Mac, you can access iCloud Drive storage space by using the link in a Finder window’s sidebar, or by selecting iCloud Drive from the Finder’s Go menu. On an iPad or iPhone, you open the Files app and select iCloud Drive in the Locations section of the sidebar. Either way, you see the…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit Contact us Email your queries and your questions to etters@macformat.com Master Apple shortcuts 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. > Swipe 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 > 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to adjust your PDFs with a host of tools in PDF Expert YOU’LL NEED > PDF Expert (£72.99/ year), macOS 10.13 or later Whether we like it or not, most of us regularly work with PDFs. Editing these files can be fiddly and unwieldy, provoking more frustration than anything – unless you have an app called PDF Expert at your disposal. This app has an array of tools designed to help make managing your PDFs much easier. You can edit text, fill out forms and sign documents, banish blotches and unwanted imperfections, and rearrange pages with a quick click and a swipe. There are various reading modes (including Split View) designed to ease the burden on your eyes, while…

More memory or larger storage? Q My current Mac mini has 16GB of memory, but sometimes struggles when it’s running major tasks. Should the Mac Studio I’m getting to replace it come with 32GB RAM and a larger internal SSD, or will I need 64GB? by PAUL MASLIN A Working out how much memory you need in a new Mac is never easy, but one of the best indicators is how much swap space your current Mac uses when working on larger and more challenging tasks. macOS manages memory very efficiently, and makes the most of all the physical RAM available to it. Activity Monitor’s Memory view provides colour-coded Memory Pressure and a figure for the amount of Swap Used, that’s the space on its hidden VM volume used as…

The HomeKit software is built into macOS, iOS, T iPadOS and even tvOS on the Apple TV. However, you control your HomeKit-compatible lights and other devices using the Home app, which is primarily focused on iPhone and iPad. There are versions of the app on Mac and Apple TV as well, but these don’t allow you to add new HomeKit devices. Of course, any device set up in the Home app can also be controlled using Siri voice commands – such as “turn on the kitchen light” or “lower the volume” on some music playing on a speaker. HOW TO Get started with Home 1 Welcome Home The Home app automatically creates My Home as the default location for all the devices. It can detect the HomePod, and it…

As we’ve mentioned, Philips has dozens of different lights in its Hue range. But, if you want to use your Hue lights with HomeKit and the Home app, then it’s best to start with one of the Hue Starter Kits. There are several Starter Kit options, costing as little as £69.99 for a basic kit with two plain white bulbs, going up to £169.99 with three colour-changing bulbs. However, all the Starter Kits also include the Hue Bridge, a small box that connects to your home Wi-Fi router with an Ethernet cable. The Hue lights will work on their own, but it’s the Hue Bridge that provides HomeKit compatibility, so you need the Bridge in order to use your Hue lights with HomeKit and the Home App (and make sure…

Choosing a winner among the apps here was difficult. The four ‘smart’ banking apps – Emma, HyperJar, Plum and Snoop – offer variations on the same features, while Banktivity and MoneyWiz give you something very different. Plum supports significantly fewer banks than the others and so we felt we couldn’t make it a winner. HyperJar is a great idea and for some people will work very well. Snoop has some good analysis features, but we found the way it urged us to upgrade or cut bills by switching provider to be a little annoying. Banktivity has a long history on the Mac (thanks to its predecessor iBank), and has iPhone and iPad apps. But we found the set-up process laborious, while its interface is not as friendly as the others…

£299 FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES 4-inch high-excursion woofer, 5x horn-loaded tweeters, 4x microphones for far-field Siri, multi-room audio with AirPlay, Spatial Audio, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), Thread, Ultra Wideband chip, 168x142mm, 2.3kg The HomePod delivers your tunes with real gusto, sounding loud and punchy Llike the follow-up to the first Stone Roses album, HomePod aficionados had almost given up on its second coming following Apple’s ditching of it in 2021; its focus shifting to the HomePod mini instead. Only now we have this; the all-new second-gen HomePod and, boy, was it worth the wait. While outwardly little seems to have changed, in reality everything has – from the design of the mesh fabric outer (available in black or white) to the Siri window on the top, the 2023 HomePod is…

ON TEST… > Agenda. > Bear > Evernote > Notability > Notes > Simplenote Why bother looking for another note-taking app when there’s a perfectly good one built into macOS? For the same reason you might use a different email client or web browser. While Apple’s Notes has become a very good note-taking app, it’s not perfect. Take a look at the others here and you’ll see that Bear isn’t just beautiful, but has so many of the features you’d find in a writing tool, you can use it as one. Agenda organises notes by date and enables you to create and share projects, while Evernote’s web clipping tool is a class apart from the one in Notes. Notability takes a different approach in that it focuses on creating…

T here will always be apps, mostly games, whose publishers won’t port them to the Mac for financial or contractual reasons. CodeWeavers’ CrossOver offers a simple, convenient way to run many of those apps. The result isn’t as reliable or universal as other solutions, but it’s a lot cheaper and easier, and with CrossOver’s helpful database of app functionality and generous try-before-you-buy period, you can see whether it’ll run the apps you want to use before you commit your hard-earned cash. CrossOver translates Windows commands into Mac ones on the fly. It’s based on the open-source WINE project, but its improvements to standard WINE make it a lot easier for everyday users to successfully run. CrossOver 22 is only available from CodeWeavers’ website. The latest improvements make it a lot…

iMac From £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 wish via Apple’s build-to-order…

Apple’s mixed-reality headset is one of the worst-kept secrets in Silicon Valley right now, and more details have recently leaked out about the upcoming device. According to a pair of freshly granted patents, Apple could have some interesting ideas on how you’ll interact with its Reality Pro headset (see p6). The first patent describes how an Apple Pencil could be used as a controller for use in virtual reality (VR). For example, the patent suggests you could see your hand holding the Pencil in VR, and that swiping or drawing gestures could result in marks being made in the virtual world. In other words, you could be come a veritable VR Bob Ross with the help of the digital pen. In the second, Apple explains that its headset could learn…

“An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator… An iPod, a phone – are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone.” Ever since 2007, when Steve Jobs got on stage, uttered those words, and changed the history of his company yet again, the iPhone has sat right at the heart of Apple’s now multi-trillion-dollar empire. Year after year, the company rolls out the latest model offering various feature improvements. Year after year consumers flock to buy it. Or do they? Sixteen years after the iPhone launched, there are certainly a lot of Apple smartphones in the world. In the statement accompanying Apple’s first earnings report of 2023, which covers the last three months of 2022, chief executive officer (CEO)…

iCloud Photos on Apple TV To view iCloud Photos on your Apple TV, first open the Settings app. Go to Users and Accounts > [your name] > Photos and turn on iCloud Photos. You can then review your photos and videos by opening the Photos app, navigating to the picture, video or album you wish to view with the remote and then clicking. T he iCloud Photos service is heavily integrated into the Photos app on Macs and Apple mobile gear. With iCloud Photos active, every photo you take is automatically uploaded to your iCloud account and synced with other Apple devices signed into your Apple ID. You can thus enjoy your photos and videos on all your Apple gear, regardless of which device they were taken on. Features such…

What is Cloud+? An Apple ID gives you 5GB of iCloud storage, which includes all the backup and syncing features discussed in this article. But if you pay for more storage through a monthly subscription (including an Apple One subscription), you get extra features, collectively known as iCloud+. Obviously, one of the benefits of an iCloud subscription is more storage. You can get up to 2TB, depending on your plan. Other benefits are iCloud Private Relay, the Hide My Email service, a Custom Email Domain, HomeKit Secure Video support and Family Sharing. U sing the iCloud service to back up your iPad and iPhone is easy. First of all, open the Settings app. At the top of the list (iPhone, iPod touch) or in the sidebar (iPad, plus-sized iPhones) tap…

IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > To use collaboration features in Freeform and beyond YOU’LL NEED > macOS 13 or later, iOS 16 or later Apple has been adding collaboration and sharing features to macOS, iOS and iPadOS for several years now, including allowing you to work with others in applications like Pages, Numbers, and even Notes. But it’s a new Apple application, Freeform, where some of the most interesting opportunities to work with others lie. In some ways, it’s a surprise that Apple, a company whose roots are in making products for creative professionals, took as long as it has to release software that provides tools to help kick-start the creative process – essentially creating the digital equivalent of a meeting room and a whiteboard.…

IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to use Continuity Camera YOU’LL NEED > macOS 13 or later, iOS 16 or later (some features require a recent iPhone) Genius tip! If you tap Disconnect on the iPhone screen, you will have to connect it to your Mac with a cable to use it as a webcam again. Apple’s Continuity suite of features has been around for years. It’s this feature that enables you to use your iPhone as a scanner for your Mac, for example. The latest addition to the feature set, Continuity Camera (confusingly, it has the same name as the scanning and photo features), enables you to use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac when making FaceTime, Zoom or Teams calls. In…

One of our favourite things about the latest iPads is their USB-C port, which enables you to connect all kinds of devices. USB-C is the most recent and fastest version of the standard, and it enables you to connect more demanding devices such as fast external storage. It also enables you to charge your iPhone, AirPods or Apple Watch; just connect the appropriate cable to your iPad and it’ll share its battery. That’s not all your iPad can do. It can move files to and from external drives and memory cards; connect to DisplayPort external displays; connect to external keyboards and mice; connect to USB interfaces for microphones and musical instruments; and you can use it with adapters as an HDMI output or an Ethernet connector. Some limits apply With…

Trying to delete a locked folder containing a write-only folder generates warnings, but won’t stop you. Q Istore sensitive documents in a folder with privileges set for write only access, as a drop box. Why then could I almost delete it by mistake? How should I protect it? by ANDY S A Thisis a common misunderstanding that often gives rise to problems and accidents. If you want to prevent a folder from being deleted using permissions, you have to change the permissions on the folder containing that folder, rather than the folder itself. This is because a folder or directory is essentially a list of its contents. If permissions allow you to change the contents of that folder, as here by adding new files to it, then they also allow…

There’s an old saying in the computer industry: ‘the great thing about standards is that there’s so many of them’. That’s certainly true when it comes to home automation and smart devices. There are several technologies now available that attempt to provide a control system for all the smart devices in your home, including Samsung’s SmartThings, the oddly named Zigbee, and the do-it-yourself programming approach of IFTTT. But, of course, the big three in the home automation field are Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. HomeKit does work well on Apple devices, enabling you to control all your HomeKit-compatible devices using either the Home app or Siri voice commands. Unfortunately, Apple’s failure to promote HomeKit in its early days allowed Amazon and Google to gain far more support from…

Apple’s Shortcuts app is a pretty daunting prospect for nonprogrammers, but there are other options for people who want to delve deeper into HomeKit. Controller For HomeKit is a popular app for Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the free version provides a more straightforward interface for creating automations and scenes. There’s also a Pro version with advanced features, such as the ability to respond to notifications from the Home app, which costs £24.99 per year (with one week free trial) or £54.99 for a lifetime licence. Another user-friendly option for going beyond the Home app is Home+, which costs £12.99 from Matthias Hochgatterer. This again provides a more streamlined interface that helps you to create automations, along with a wider range of predefined automation controls than the Home app. However,…

From £649 (model tested £1,899) FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES M2 chip with 8–core CPU, 10–core GPU, 8GB unified memory (16GB/24GB available), 256GB storage (512GB/1TB/2TB available), two Thunderbolt 4 ports, M2 Pro chip with 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU available), 16GB of unified memory (32GB available), 512GB storage (1TB/2TB/4TB/8TB available), four Thunderbolt 4 ports; HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet port (10Gb Ethernet available), 3.5mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.3, built-in speaker, 3.58x19.7x19.7cm Not only does the M2 Pro Mac mini have more power, it also gets more memory, more storage and more ports With prices starting at £649, the new Mac mini is an even more affordable way to buy into the Mac – whether you’re looking to make a first-time purchase, buy a second computer for…

We could make a case for at least four of the apps featured here to be the winner of our group test. Bear is not just visually beautiful, but has a powerful set of features that make it both simple and very capable. Notability is unique in allowing you to record audio and sync it with typed or handwritten notes, and then deliver them as a presentation. And Simplenote provides everything you need in a basic, easy-to-use note-taking app at no cost. However, there can be only one winner and, in this case, that’s Agenda. The datebased approach and On the Agenda view are a powerful way to keep you focused on what needs to be done, and the integration with Reminders and Calendar are excellent. Add to that the…