Table of contents for March 2021 in MacFormat

As thrilling as a new Mac is, at some point you’re going to have to work out how to move your data over from your old one – and that’s where our lead feature comes in. Starting on p20, you’ll discover the right way to back up all your apps and data and then migrate them over to your new machine – and if you’re coming to the Mac from Windows, we’ve got you covered too. Our second feature this month focuses on the world of widgets – the mini apps that live on your iPhone or iPad Home screen, enabling you to do all kinds of wonderful things before you open the main app itself. Turn to p60 for our top picks. In addition this issue, we’ve got…

WE ASKED… If your MacBook has a Touch Bar, do you use it? Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat iPhone cases to charge AirPods? > Apple is considering iPhone cases that can charge AirPods, according to a recent patent. This shows Apple has a lot of different ideas for how its cases could work, with illustrations showing AirPods slotting into the inside of a folio case flap, in the case hinge, on top of a case, on the back, and more. As well as offering charging capabilities, these cases might display info to the user. For instance, this might show the charging level of your AirPods if they are currently being powered up inside the case. Some of the cases would charge the AirPods using an…

Free-speech app Parler, which became a popular refuge for far-right extremists banned from social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook, could be allowed back on the App Store, says Tim Cook. The app was removed from the App Store and Google’s Play Store after it was used extensively by rioters who advocated violence and then stormed the US Capitol building on 6 January. Amazon also suspended the app from its hosting platform, leaving its users without access. However, Tim Cook has said Parler would be allowed back on the App Store if it enacts stringent moderation policies and removes violent posts. Speaking of Parler’s CEO John Matze Jr, Cook said “All we’re asking is he meet the Terms of Service.” Before adding, “our hope is that they do that…

1 JBL SA750 >$3,000 (about £2,195) >jbl.com > Reaching your 75th year is cause enough for celebration – doubly so when you’re a brand as venerable as JBL. To celebrate, the company has launched the SA750, a gorgeously retro integrated amplifier with a very modern set of capabilities onboard, including support for AirPlay 2. We love its use of milled aluminium and real wood teak veneer, plus those reassuringly chunky switches and dials. As you’d expect from a machine of its calibre, it’s capable of delivering 220W of power per channel into eight ohms, and it has built-in Ethernet, Wi-Fi and USB, as well as more traditional hi-fi connections. Team it with the L100 Classic 75 speakers ($1,000) for added street cred – but hurry, only 750 pairs of these…

According to Apple’s declaration in its September 2020 iPhone advert, privacy was paramount for the iPhone. With its ‘Privacy. That’s iPhone’ line, the campaign emphasized that not only that privacy is important to Apple and a key part of its headline product, but that the company wants everyone to know about it. This has now become an integral part of the company’s messaging, and it has become something of a game to count how many times Apple executives mention the topic during an event. However, to dismiss this approach as a purely business-motivated, PR-drive exercise would be somewhat unfair. There’s a lot more going on, and Apple has put in real, practical, features to give users both increased privacy and a better understanding of how their data is used and…

Welcoming a new family member is always a joy, and there’s nothing quite like the rush of excitment you get from unboxing a brand new Mac. But like all newborns, your brand new Apple machine needs some help with the basics: while every Mac comes fully loaded with Apple apps, it doesn’t come with your stuff or your settings. Don’t worry, though. As we’ll discover, whether this is your very first Apple computer or the latest in a long line of Macs, it’s really easy to get everything just-so. Although our focus here is on data, moving to a new Mac might raise some hardware issues. For example, if you’ve just moved from an iMac to the new MacBook Pro, you will have lost a lot of ports: where the…

Migration Assistant works on Windows too – although unlike Macs, it isn’t already there on your PC. To get it, go to bit.ly/mac362wma on your PC to download the Windows Migration Assistant for Big Sur. This works in much the same way as it does on the Mac. Close everything on your Windows PC (using apps such as Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect Free), run Migration Assistant on your new Mac and run the Windows Migration Assistant on your PC. You can then choose what data you want to carry across from your PC to your new Mac. The biggest difference between the Windows Migration Assistant and the one on your Mac is that it can’t copy your apps across: Windows apps don’t run in macOS. But you’ll usually…

For those who have used Migration Assistant to transfer some or all of your things, happy days! Logging in and using your new Mac should be just like the old one, but even faster and more efficient. But while Migration Assistant does a great job of copying from one Mac to another, there are some things it can’t do. That’s one reason why you shouldn’t erase or get rid of your existing Mac until you’re sure you have absolutely everything you need – something we learned the hard way. As with any Apple device, when you use your new Mac you’ll be asked to sign into iCloud. If you’re coming from another Mac or have other Apple devices using iCloud it will take care of the essential stuff such as…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to import, adjust and share your shots with the help from AI YOU’LL NEED Luminar AI (from £59), macOS 10.13.6 or later Luminar AI is designed to analyse a shot and suggest a collection of one-click templates that will change colours and tones to produce a particular mood or look that suits the subject. Luminar AI has a collection of creative image adjusting templates that are designed to make your ordinary snaps stand out in a saturated social media feed. Perhaps you need to give your headshots a polish. Luminar AI will recognise a portrait and then suggest a range of suitable enhancing templates. If you import a landscape into Luminar it will analyse the differences between people, hills and skies…

Q Since upgrading to Big Sur, every time I insert a blank DVD in my external player, it opens up in Toast instead of appearing on my Desktop. How can I change that? A Big Sur still provides controls over what to do when optical discs are inserted in internal and external drives. What’s potentially confusing is that the CDs & DVDs pane only appears in System Preferences when the drive is connected and powered up. Trying to open the DigiHubDiscs pane from the PreferencePanes folder on Big Sur’s System volume fails similarly. Connect your optical drive and once it’s been recognised open that pane and set the action you want when a blank disc is inserted. If the pane doesn’t appear it’s because your drive isn’t fully supported by…

Q My iMac 2015 has an internal 2TB Fusion Drive. When I upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur, would it make sense to start it up from an external SSD and move my apps to the SSD inside its Fusion Drive? A Big Sur can start up perfectly well from an existing Fusion Drive and runs from there much as Catalina does, although it will change the layout of the startup volume group to use its new Sealed System Volume. That doesn’t seem to have any perceptible effect on performance. If your external SSD is a Thunderbolt model, then it could prove a better choice for its startup disk, but it’s not as clear-cut if it’s a regular SATA disk which connects to a USB port. Running your apps from…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 361 FEBRUARY 2021 Best ever free apps – for Mac and iOS Step-by-step Apple Shortcuts guide First look: AirPods Max headphones Easy upgrades for a home cinema ISSUE 360 JANUARY 2021 Apple’s best ever laptop: MacBook Air MacBook Pro 13-inch powerhouse iPhone 12 Pro Max and 12 mini The Great Mac Refresh – Big Sur tips ISSUE 359 DECEMBER 2020 Why you need iPhone 12 iPad Air on test + iPadOS 14 tips 2020’s gear of the year – our top picks Our analysis of smart home speakers 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 your iOS device at any time and…

> £170 FROM Marshall, marshallheadphones.com > FEATURES AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast or Amazon Alexa, Bluetooth 4.2; 168x128x123mm, 1.4kg The little cabinet delivers the goods on sound quality The Marshall amp is a classic design, well known to rock fans with its sturdy wooden cabinet and distinctive front-panel grille. And, in recent years, the company has used that same design to add a touch of retro charm to its range of wireless smart speakers, with the Uxbridge Voice being the latest addition to the range. Available in either black or white, the Uxbridge Voice is also available in two different versions that are designed for use with either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant and Chromecast. However, both versions also support AirPlay 2, as well as Bluetooth, so they’re well suited for…

> £49.99 FROM JLab Audio, jlabaudio.com > FEATURES Bluetooth 5.0, AAC support, IP66 water-resistance Ordinary wireless earbuds might be fine for sitting at home during Zoom calls. But they’re not ideal for more vigorous activity, so many people prefer earbuds such as JLabs’ Air Sport for exercise and outdoor use. Like many sports earbuds, the Air Sport are held in place by a large ‘hook’ that wraps right around the back of your ear. We found that they stayed comfortably in place during chilly dashes around our local park, and their IP66 rating for water-resistance is ideal for exercise and outdoor use. Battery life is a healthy six hours on a full charge, and the included charging case can take that up to a full 34 hours as well. Sound…

> £269.99 FROM Corsair, corsair.com FEATURES 2x HDMI, 2x USB-A, 2x USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, Gigabit Ethernet, 85W charging The Corsair TBT100 multi-port dock can supply up to 85W of power to your laptop as well as up to 15W to its USB-C ports and 7.5W to its USB-A ports. It manages this thanks to the inclusion of a hefty 100W power supply, which plugs into the rear panel and can live a little way apart from the dock, reducing clutter. The dock itself is well built and low profile, with slip-proof rubber feet. The front features a power button, an SDXC memory card reader, a USB-C port and a combo headphone and mic jack. The Thunderbolt port on the rear panel carries both data and power to your Mac (a…

Belkin’s BoostCharge Dual 63W is well made though it’s marginally pricier than comparable models. That said, the over-current and over-voltage protection is certainly a reassuring feature and may sway your final decision. Chargeasap’s charger is supremely powerful with laptop power priority but, at £110, the 200W Omega USB-C is also the most costly unit on test. The PowerPort Atom III from Anker is neat and petite with reasonable charging times but, for us, the lack of smart power switching takes the edge off its capabilities. With all these things taken into consideration, RAVPower’s PD Pioneer 65W 2-Port seems to hit the sweet spot. It’s sensibly priced and offers intelligent power distribution, has USB-C and USB-A ports, as well as a solid overall power rating which will charge all but the…

> £8.99 FROM Sports Interactive, footballmanager.com > NEEDS iOS 9 or later Tactics have had a revamp, with new templates and new player roles added Sports Interactive bills Football Manager 2021 Mobile as ‘the fastest way to football glory’, but any thoughts of winning the treble in your first short sitting should be put to one side. Such an addictive game, with so many players to scout, tactics to tweak and matches to win, takes time to perfect. What new content do you get for your money? Tactics have had a revamp, with new tactical templates tweaked and new player roles added to the game. You now have more control over set pieces and can define routines at both ends of the pitch. Elsewhere, player dynamics and interactions finally make…

No matter how hard we try, we all accumulate far too much fluff on our iOS devices. That’s compounded the longer we use them, with duplicate photos, incomplete contacts, and tons of unwanted emails flooding our devices and eating up storage space. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Add a few handy apps to your arsenal and you can quickly reclaim the space and declutter your device for good. Here, we have rounded up six apps that do just that – and best of all, most are free. Set them loose on your iPhone or iPad, and your digital life will be the most ordered and organised it has ever been. Clean Email > Free (IAPs) NEEDS iOS 11 or later We all amass email newsletters, spam and…

From £149 Apple’s media streamer has been around since 2007, when it ran Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Four generations later and it’s a different beast entirely, running its own OS (tvOS) and available in Apple TV HD (£149) and Apple TV 4K (from £179) guises. Both enable you to rent and buy movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store. Plus you also get Apple TV+, as well as access to third-party content using apps such as BBC iPlayer. You can also use it to play Apple Arcade games, stream photos and your music library, and more.…

Contact us Email your queries to letters@macformat.com Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat or on Twitter @macformat The upcoming year could be a huge one for the Mac, with numerous reports suggesting new products and features across almost the entire range of Apple’s computers. If they come to fruition, 2021 could be a watershed year for Mac users. The first report comes from noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He asserts that Apple will overhaul the MacBook Pro this year, offering both 16-inch and 14-inch sizes, with the latter replacing the 13-inch MacBook Pro by thinning the bezels and increasing the screen size. As well as that, Kuo claims that the MacBook Pro will come with a new chassis. This body will have squared-off sides, much like the current iPhone and iPad…

If you are a digital artist, you know how important it is to work with an app that makes your work really pop. That is especially so if you want to give the appearance of traditional media like paint and canvasses in your art. Escape Motion’s Rebelle app seeks to do just that. Version 4 brings several new features aimed at replicating traditional materials as accurately as possible, giving your digital art a realistic effect not previously possible. Chief among the new features is the introduction of ‘hyper-realistic’ oils and acrylics, which use Rebelle’s Impasto Engine to create dynamic brush strokes that react and mix with each other. Rebelle 4 comes with colour management tools, layer groups, new fill and clone tools, plus brush improvements. If you make art on…

This is paramount. If you want to make a perfect copy of your old Mac on your brand new one, the best option is to clone it. That means copying some or all of your existing Mac to a fast external disk or SSD and then copying the clone to the new computer. There are three key apps that can help you to do that: Apple’s own Time Machine and the third-party apps SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner. Each of these apps can copy your entire system to an external drive, then transfer that copied data to your new Mac. Although both SuperDuper! (shirtpocket.com) and Carbon Copy Cloner (bombich.com) are paid apps, they both have trial versions you can use to do a simple clone; as they’re both very good…

>Mac cloning apps and Time Machine can also do regular system backups, but if your backup is in the same place as your Mac and there’s a break-in or other disaster you can lose your valuable data. That’s why it’s wise to also have an external, off-site backup. Cloud services are great for that. Apple’s iCloud is the obvious choice for many, but you’ll need to pay for a decent amount of storage: 50GB or 200GB isn’t enough for our Photos library, let alone the rest of our data. iCloud is great but it’s important to remember that it’s a synchronisation service, not a backup service: if a file is accidentally deleted, replaced or corrupted that change will be copied to all devices when they next connect. A better option…

> You’ve successfully moved in! Now what? The first thing you should do when you’ve got your new Mac just-so is to make a complete backup of everything that’s on it, ideally in a different place or on a different device to the clone or backup you used to migrate to it. If you’re using Time Machine, you can import the previous backups from your old Mac and just update them each time, but with a new Mac we think it’s best to start a brand new backup from scratch. That means the first one will take a while to complete, but it won’t be full of things left over from your previous Mac. There’s no right or wrong app for making a backup: some people like Time Machine, others…

If your photos were stored on your old Mac’s drive and you used Migration Assistant, they should be in the same location on your new Mac: usually Macintosh HD/users/[Your user name]/pictures. Your photos don’t appear as individual pictures in that folder, but as a package called Photos Library. Not there? Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and see if there is more than one account set up on your Mac. If you’re logged in on a different account to the one you migrated to, your photos will be in the other account’s Pictures folder.…

Luminar AI is designed to help you create and share striking looking shots with the minimum of effort. However, the one-click results produced by a template’s image-adjusting settings can be enhanced by clicking on the Edit button. Here we’ve used the tools in the Edit panel’s Creative section to add atmospheric haze and some sun rays to our scenic landscape. We’ll take a look at Luminar AI’s image-editing abilities in more detail in part two of our series. For more information and to purchase Luminar AI go to skylum.com.…

IT WILL TAKE 30+ minutes YOU WILL LEARN To draw using traditional media YOU’LL NEED iOS 12 or later, SketchAR Create Art Draw Paint (free with IAPs) Use one sheet of A5 paper with a dark background on an easel or clipboard SketchAR uses the power of an iPhone or iPad to guide your pencil to create lifelike drawings. It’s not as easy as the promos show, though – until you’re used to drawing with AR, it is quite a tricky thing to master. You’ll need the right conditions; we placed our cartridge paper on an artist’s table easel and used our favourite drawing pencils. If you’re not comfortable using your setup without AR, it’ll only make using this kind of technology tougher. Drawing with AR doesn’t work for everyone.…

Q When typing on my Apple Bluetooth keyboard, some letters are slow to appear and others are repeated. This happens at random, and connecting the keyboard to a USB port fixes the problem. How can I stop this annoying behaviour? A This is a long-standing problem which has troubled Apple’s Bluetooth keyboards since at least macOS Sierra. In older versions of macOS, it’s accompanied by an even more annoying problem in which the keyboard spontaneously disconnects then reconnects every so often; thankfully the issue has almost completely stopped since the Mojave release of macOS. One important change you can make which should improve this to the point where stuttering is infrequent and far less obtrusive, is to disable lower frequency Wi-Fi options, particularly on all wireless routers and any extenders…

Q I’ve previously used the tmutil command to migrate my backups, but that returned an error when I upgraded to Big Sur. How can I continue using my existing backups? A Big Sur offers two different forms of Time Machine backup: it can continue using the old format with backups stored in Mac Extended (HFS+) format, or you can start making a new backup set to a volume in APFS format. Whichever you choose, you’re better off archiving existing backups and starting a new set. Apple recommends those running Big Sur should back up to APFS, which is free from many of the troubles which have afflicted Time Machine in the past. It’s also noticeably quicker, and more efficient in its use of storage space. Unlike Time Machine backing up…

Problem is, this year a teensy barrier got in the way (ahem) and the whole thing happened on an awkwardly-designed Microsoft website instead. Yuck. Not so bad for those of us firmly ensconced in our smart home setups, and admittedly it did allow me to poke at all of the many offerings without either wearing through a pair of shoes or having to drop all my other work, but the level of Microsoft Teams use was far too high. If I’m totally honest, the major players in the smart home world didn’t offer much up, mainly because companies like Google, Amazon and Apple tend to hold their own bespoke events outside of CES. But there was a vast selection of third-party smart hardware and peripheral kit, along with some customarily…

Lockly Guard > $500 (around £368), lockly.com > Filling that tricky space on sliding doors with narrow frames, Lockly’s super-thin smart lock can be unlocked with voice commands, with your phone, or by using its clever randomising PIN pad which thwarts shoulder surfing. eufy Security Smart Lock Touch & Wi-Fi > £TBC, anker.com > An upgrade to Eufy’s previous weatherproof smart lock, but one which vastly expands its possibilities by adding Wi-Fi to the Bluetooth, passcode and 3D fingerprint recognition options. Den SmartStrike > £TBC, densmarthome.com > Den’s approach is not to create a smart lock, since these can be bulky and not suit all doors. Instead it has concocted a smart lock strike, which releases standard locks via an app - and you can still use your key.…

> £319.99 FROM Linksys, linksys.com/gb/ > FEATURES 802.11ax Wi-Fi (aka Wi-Fi 6), dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz, 1.8GHz quad-core CPU, 2.4GHz and 5GHz beamforming, 1x Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, 4x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, 2x USB 3.0; 60x280x170mm, 0.94kg As well as acting as a conventional router, the MR9600 includes mesh networking technology Linksys provides a number of Wi-Fi 6 routers and mesh systems, and its new MR9600 is its top-of-therange router. Like all Wi-Fi 6 routers, the MR9600 is compatible with devices that use the older 802.11ac, but you will need newer devices with Wi-Fi 6 to get the full speed and benefits. At £299.99, the MR9600 is on the pricey side. We’ve seen rival Wi-Fi 6 routers offering similar performance for less but, as well as acting as a…

£115 FROM dxo.com NEEDS DeepPRIME AI, selective adjustment tools, watermarking feature, support for multiple Raw formats AI enables auto features but more experienced pic editors can choose less automation When shooting in low light, your camera can use a high ISO setting to make it more sensitive to light. However, this can increase the presence of luminance and colour noise in the captured photo. Photo-fixing apps such as Photoshop and Lightroom use lens profiles to help smooth out noise and counteract distortion. What gives PhotoLab 4 the edge is the application of DxO DeepPRIME AI tech. The app’s AI has been exposed to millions of images produced by different camera and lens models. This enables PhotoLab to learn how to smooth out noise without sacrificing detail, reduce the presence of…

> £9 FROM Guilherme Rambo, v2.airbuddy.app > NEEDS macOS 10.14.6 or later Apple’s wireless earphones and Beats-branded headphones work well with iPhone or iPad. Their integration with macOS, on the other hand, is more basic. AirBuddy 2 runs mostly from your Menu Bar, providing a comprehensive way to monitor your Apple peripherals. The headline feature is the ability to show the status of your AirPods, AirPods Pro or Beats headphones when near your Mac. Once paired, the charging status of the case and earphones both appear in the status window when you open the case near your Mac. You can also change the listening mode for AirPods using the status bar menu, a custom key command that you can set up, or a swipe on the trackpad for AirPods Pro.…

> Free (IAPs) FROM Eric Welander, bestphotosapp.com > NEEDS iOS 14 Eric Welander’s BestPhotos – Library Manager app allows easy organisation of photos. You can browse the Photos library on your iPhone or iPad to locate duplicate photos, or photos that are very similar, then delete them so you just keep your ‘best photos’. Version 3.0 has just been released and, like earlier versions, is available as a free app with basic features for browsing through your Photos library, as well as IAPs that provide additional features. The free version is pretty handy, and gains a helpful new Calendar view that displays just the photos from a particular month or day. As you scroll through your photos, you swipe right to mark each one as a ‘favourite’ or left to…

From £999 Apple’s thinnest, lightest laptop now also gets the M1 treatment. But without a price hike! Prices still start at just £999. The next step model (with increased SSD storage and eight-core GPU) even costs £50 less at £1,249. Like the MBP, Apple’s own unified memory silicon enables faster performance and better graphic speeds. And the 16-core Neural Engine results in nine times faster machine learning. It may be Apple’s most affordable laptop, but the MacBook Air certainly doesn’t feel like a budget machine, thanks to its 100% recycled aluminium unibody, and 13.3-inch LED-backlit Retina display, which has a resolution of 2560x1600 (227ppi) and True Tone, which automatically adjusts the display’s colour temperature depending on the ambient light. The inclusion of the M1 chip has changed none of the…

Security researcher Matthew Green has said his team were “shocked” by the vulnerabilities they discovered in both iOS and Android. Green, a cryptographer at John Hopkins University, said, “I came into this project thinking that these phones are really protecting user data well. Now I’ve come out of the project thinking almost nothing is protected as much as it could be.” According to Green, the problems begin as soon as you unlock your iOS device, which puts it into After First Unlock mode. This stores the device’s encryption keys in quick access memory, which makes them relatively easy to extract if you have the right tools. Before the device is first unlocked after a reboot it is in Protected Until First User Authentication mode, which offers far more robust defences.…

PRIZES WORTH £795 Tired of sluggish internet and constantly buffering videos? If so, you could do with Speedify. The handy app offers ‘channel bonding’, which merges your connections – be that Wi-Fi, cellular data, or Ethernet – to provide a stable, consistent connection that banishes lag and packet loss. If one connection drops, Speedify switches to another without a second’s hesitation. That, combined with its prioritising of audio and video streams, makes it perfect for video calls and streaming. That is not all it does. Speedify also offers an unlimited virtual private network (VPN) to protect your privacy and encrypt your data. Despite VPNs often slowing down your internet connection, Speedify performed admirably in our review (MF359), surging ahead of rival NordVPN in our tests. Who says you must choose…

>Time Machine has a bit of a reputation; in its early days, it often slowed down your Mac in everyday use and took forever to restore anything from a backup. Today, though, it’s very solid and reliable: for many users we think it’s by far the simplest and most effective way to transfer everything from one Mac to another. Time Machine can be a pain when you want to do something such as copying one folder from an attached USB drive. It uses exclusion, not inclusion, so to include that folder you need to un-exclude the external drive and then exclude the top-level folders you don’t want backed up. For example, if you want to back up an external Pictures folder but not Applications, Documents, Movies, Music and so on,…

1 Migration Assistant When you boot your new Mac for the very first time, you’ll see Apple’s Migration Assistant. This app can move all your data, apps and settings from your old Mac to your new one, or move documents and other personal files from a PC. It works simply and effecively, but there are a few things to be aware of… If you’re migrating from another Mac, that Mac needs to have a name: check yours in System Prefs > Sharing. Migration Assistant needs both Macs to have the same version of macOS down to the decimal point, so you may need to update the new Mac before you start. Migration Assistant can use a peer-to-peer connection where your two Macs are connected by a cable (Thunderbolt/USB 3 is…

Why won’t the TV app recognise any of my downloaded shows? You may need to re-download them. In the TV app, click on Account > Family Purchases and you’ll see a list of the shows and movies you’ve bought. You might also find that you’ve fallen foul of Apple’s authorisation limits, which limit your purchases to five computers. You can authorise your new Mac in the TV app with Accounts > Authorise This Computer. Remember to de-authorise your old one. Two-factor authentication won’t let me in… Two-factor authentication (2FA) supplements the usual password with an extra layer of security, usually in the form of a code sent to another device or generated in an authenticator app. The first and simplest thing to do is to make sure that it has…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create custom playlists in Apple Music using rules-based criteria YOU’LL NEED macOS 10.15 or later For people of a certain age, the mixtape was a rite of a passage – a carefully curated compilation of your favourite sounds shared with friends, lovers, workmates and more. They took hours to make and were created with love and care. The arrival of iTunes changed all that – playlists did the heavy lifting, freeing up your time; Shuffle mode allowed your Mac, iPhone or iPad to serve up an endless stream of tracks, turning music into a commodity. But it doesn’t have to be that way. On the one hand, an Apple Music subscription (£9.99/month) can serve up human-curated stations that will feed…

If you’re thinking ‘hang on, isn’t unified memory the same as the integrated graphics you get in laptops?’, you’re almost right. But there are some key differences between, say, the Intel UHD Graphics 630 in the current 16-inch MacBook Pro and the unified memory architecture (UMA) of the M1 MacBook and MacBook Pro. With integrated graphics processors, such as Intel’s ones, the GPU and CPU are combined on the same chip and share memory. That memory is system memory, not the faster memory you get in high-end graphics cards, and it’s still separate from the CPU and GPU – so it suffers from the same bottlenecks. There are also limits to how much system memory an integrated graphics system can access. In practice, that means integrated graphics have typically been…

Q My Mac mini 2014 has several external disks for Time Machine and other storage. When my M1 Mac mini arrives, will they work with it? A In general, M1 Macs should work with all existing disks as long as they can be connected to its Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB ports. There are some catches when upgrading from older models, though. Your old Mac mini has two Thunderbolt 2 ports, but the M1 version has USB-C sockets for Thunderbolt 3/4. External disks with their own power supplies work fine with Apple’s Thunderbolt 3 to 2/1 adapter, but that can’t supply power to compact drives which draw instead from the Thunderbolt cable: those need to be connected to a powered dock to work. Where you can change their enclosure to USB…

Q Although my Mac mini running Catalina only has one user, Time Machine backups and its Users folder contain a Home folder for another user bearing my full name, which isn’t listed in Users & Groups. How can get rid of it? A Deleting an unwanted user’s Home folder is best done when removing that user from the Users & Groups pane, as that offers the option to Delete the home folder at the same time. The quickest solution is to delete that folder in Terminal, but make sure you use the correct command. In Terminal, type cd /Users then sudo rm -rf shortusername where shortusername is the name of that user’s Home folder. Authenticate with your admin password. There is a more roundabout route which starts by creating a…

When Apple unveiled iOS 14 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2020, one of the standout features was the introduction of widgets for your iOS Home screen. These widgets promised to give you far more control over how your device looks and feels, with added functionality from both Apple apps and third-party developers alike. Several months on from that WWDC, the iOS widget ecosystem is truly thriving, with tons of developers getting creative and offering exceptional widgets with their apps. That leaves you spoiled for choice if you want to enhance your Home screen to maximum effect. In this guide, we aim to help you pick the perfect widgets for whatever you want to do. We have top choices to help you get healthy, improve your work, enjoy…

CES 2021 was not short of excitement, even if the year’s biggest tech show did happen on a website rather than in Las Vegas. Some big hitters revealed some very big hardware, and it gave a lot of smaller companies and startups a chance to show off their wares. When it comes to smart, CES showed that connected devices are bigger than ever, and we managed to find some particularly weird and wonderful devices amongst the noise. So this issue, we take a look at what’s going to make waves in the not-toodistant future, the kit you might otherwise have missed, and a little that’s more pie-in-the-sky thinking. Bear in mind that the latter designation applies to a whole lot of the hardware from this year’s CES, even more so…

> Kohler did as Kohler does, using CES as a vehicle to announce everything new from its extensive smart bathroom range. This means it coughed up everything from a $16,000 (about £11,800) spa bath equipped with a fog machine and mood lighting to touchless taps and toilet handles, as well the Innate Intelligent Toilet, which promises to bring the luxury of Japanese toilets to DIY installers. Depending on your definition of smart, you may find Kohler’s partnership with Phyn slightly more relevant than a convenience which can clean you off with an integrated bidet; the companies are working together on a self-installable water monitor, which can detect leaks in your home water supply and (if you pony up for the slightly more expensive version) automatically shut off your water to…

ON TEST… > Anker PowerPort Atom III > Chargeasap 200W Omega USB-C > Belkin BoostCharge Dual 68W > RAVPower PD Pioneer 65W 2-Port Many people now own several mobile devices, often some combination of laptop, smartphone, and tablet. So charging is more important than ever, but many of us are stuck with one higher-powered charger that came with a MacBook, and other, lower-powered models for our phones. GaN (Gallium nitride) chargers are smaller and more power efficient than traditional siliconbased models. Gallium nitride is able to conduct far higher voltages than silicon while generating much less heat. This means that GaN chargers can be smaller, since fewer components like heat sinks are required. They are also relatively inexpensive. As our devices move inexorably towards all USB-C ports, a GaN charger…

> Free FROM Ginger Labs, twobird.com NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later Email rules all. It’s so important, in fact, that it’s no longer merely about messaging. These days your email encompasses your calendar, to-do list, reminders, and more. It’s that ever-expanding list of capabilities that the gorgeous, minimalist Twobird wants to get under control without stripping out any of the core useful functionality. Right from the start you see this philosophy in action. The left-hand column is as minimal as it gets: links for your inbox, low-priority emails (like newsletters and promotions), notes, and the calendar; everything else is hidden under a ‘More’ expander. That puts the focus squarely on the main window, which houses your mail. Unread emails are clearly marked with only their title in bold, which avoids…

> Free (Premium plan £4.99/month) FROM Evernote, evernote.com NEEDS iOS 13.2 or later Evernote has changed in three key areas – its interface, editor function, and search Evernote is a do-everything app that you can use to organise notes, to-do lists, web links, and documents. Version 10 moves it to a new codebase that promises improved stability, but it seems there are still some bugs to iron out – while Evernote was really fast on iPad we encountered some performance problems and crashes on iPhone (iOS 14.2.1). In addition to the new engine, Evernote 10 has changed in three key areas: its user interface, which is more consistent across different platforms; its editor function; and its search features. The multifunction New Note button gives quick access to note creation, images,…

> £5.99 FROM Plug In Digital, unmemory.info > NEEDS iOS 13 or later Unmemory marries a crime thriller with a mystery game, and it’s a match made in heaven. As you scroll, the story unfolds, revealing a dark plot of murder and revenge. It begins with your character trapped in a room, bloodied and bandaged, with no idea where they are or how they got there. In the bathtub is the body of a young woman. You must find out what happened. Unsurprisingly, the game revolves around memory and the protagonist’s struggles to remember. Puzzles are placed throughout the text; some are small and trivial, others are true headscratchers, and many rely on your ability to recall previous details (notetaking is essential). Some things – pain, voices, smells – help…

From £699 Despite a near two-year wait for the last update to the Mac mini, within just eight months, Apple released it again in November 2020 with the homegrown M1 chip. The processor boasts far superior processing and graphics performance to the Intel innards of the previous incarnation. Like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, the base model starts with 8GB of memory that can be boosted to 16GB. The SSD options go from 256GB all the way up to 2TB. The Mac mini now supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0. You get two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, as well as two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The entry level Mac mini is available for £699. Taking it to its max memory and SSD capacity…

From £329 In September 2020, Apple brought out the eighth-gen iPad featuring a new six-core A12 Bionic chip. The processor update allows for a Neural Engine to support image processing and Augmented Reality experiences. Built for iPadOS, the iPad is great at multitasking. You can slide a second app over the right side of the one you’re working on. Picture in Picture enables you to watch video in a corner of the screen. There’s also Split View, which lets you work on two apps side by side. iPad also supports external drives, as well as the Xbox Wireless Controller and the PlayStation DualShock 4 for a more immersive gaming experience. The iPad comes in Gold, Silver and Space Grey with 32GB or 128GB options. At 490g, it is light yet…

DESKTOP SPEAKER Ruark MR1 £329.99 ruarkaudio.com Winner of MF357’s head to head, the MR1 speaker set looks and sounds the business. The dome tweeter and longthrow woofer can handle a variety of audio styles with aplomb. You get a good variety of connectivity options, and we love the chunky function/volume dial too. IN-EAR EARPHONES M&D MW07 Plus £279 masterdynamic.com Master & Dynamic’s MW07 Plus offer 10 hours of listening time, and the charging case holds an additional three charges (so you get 40 hours in total). These greatsounding earbuds are IPX5 rated, so they’re excellent for workouts and commuting. The marble-effect finish gives them a premium aesthetic, as does the stainless steel charging case. USB FLASH DRIVE SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe 1TB £243.99 shop.westerndigital.com Yes, this flash drive is…

Corporate successions happen fairly regularly and are usually pretty uninteresting. However, the task of succeeding Steve Jobs as Apple CEO (the second time around…) was never going to be a straightforward one. After all, Jobs wasn’t just his company’s boss, he was its heartbeat – the man that demanded the seemingly impossible from staff and introduced iconic products to the world in compelling presentations. But with his health an ongoing and growing concern, Jobs needed to pick the next in line. And so, on Sunday, 11 August, 2011, whilst recovering from his latest round of treatment for pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant, he called Tim Cook and asked the then Apple COO to come to his Palo Alto home, “now”. There, Leander Kahney’s biography of Cook recounts, the two…