Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i MacLife

WHEN APPLE FIRST made the iPad, it wasn’t entirely sure what it was for. The answer turns out to be: everything. It’s a music–maker, document–creator, news–reader, sketchbook, photo–editor, and graphic–designer. And we haven’t even mentioned the huge selection of TV apps such as catch–up TV and video streaming, or the many free games and kids’ apps available for iPadOS. The free apps here will make your life easier, more entertaining, or both. PAPER From WeTransfer, paper.bywetransfer.com Also on iPhone Paper is a sketching and journalling app with a difference. In addition to the usual sketching brushes it offers a range of prompts, tips and help to assist you in getting what’s in your head down on Paper with speed and style. FLIPBOARD From Flipboard, flipboard.com Also on iPhone This combines RSS reading,…

THESE DAYS, MANY people are going increasingly digital. What were once huge collections of DVDs, CDs and video games in physical cases can now be ripped to a Mac and served up over the internet to anyone in your house. But to do this, you need a file server. This is a perfect role for an old Mac. File servers have very low system requirements, and even old–school Macs usually have more than enough power to serve your files throughout your house. This method is probably better suited to an old desktop Mac like a Mac mini rather than a MacBook – you need your file server to be turned on pretty much 24 hours a day, which will take a toll on battery life. A desktop Mac need not…

FIRST, GET A stand to hold your iPad in place. As the iPad will be in landscape mode, you will need a separate charging cable unless both your iPad and stand have a Smart Connector. Before starting, enable Do Not Disturb mode from Control Center. You may prefer to enable Airplane Mode to eliminate distracting notifications and preserve battery life (if you’re not using a charger). Open Photos on your iPad, tap the “+” in the top–left corner, then tap New Album. Give it a name and add the photos that you want to display on your iPad. When you’re done, tap the “…” button in the top–right corner when inside the album, then tap Slideshow. Tap the Options button in the bottom–right, then turn on Repeat. If you want…

IF THERE’S ONE thing Apple’s November event showed us, it’s that the company knows how to make amazing processors. But the M1 chip in the latest Macs isn’t the first of its kind — Apple has been outfitting its iPhones and iPads with its own chips ever since they first launched. That’s good news if you want to turn an old iPad into a dedicated gaming machine. Pairing its powerful A–series chip with its spacious display, lightweight portability and numerous handy accessories, the iPad is an ideal games device for portable play. Apple Arcade ($4.99 per month) is a great place to start. Apple has explicitly said that games on the platform must work across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV; that cross–compatibility means even old devices should run them…

$49.99/per year From Ulysses, ulysses.app Needs macOS 10.14.4 or later Ulysses is a writing app that’s useful for all kinds of projects. Your reviewer has been using it every day since version 3 in 2015, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s been used to write millions of words: words pasted as rich text into CMSes, words exported as Word documents to corporate clients, words published in books, words uploaded to blogging platforms and, of course, words printed in quality magazines like the one in your hands. It’s fast because everything is written in plain text files. There are many advantages to that: even years of documents take up tiny amounts of storage space; synchronizing new files between devices is effectively instant; and in the event that something goes terribly…

$19.99 From Intuitibits, intuitibits.com Needs macOS 10.13 or later WiFi Explorer is a network scanner and analysis tool for Wi–Fi. It lists the Wi–Fi networks in the vicinity, including their SSID, MAC address, device manufacturer, signal strength, and more. It also provides a graphical illustration of the networks, so you can see where, for example, signals overlap or channels conflict. Each network is given a signal quality rating based on signal–to–noise ratio. It supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and 20, 40, 60, and 80MHz frequencies. It works with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax networks. You can add your own notes to one column in the table, and give the column a label, as well as adjust timescales and filter results based on criteria such as vendor or signal band. Details can be exported in…

$299.99 From Belkin, belkin.com Features AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, 10W wireless charging pad A speaker with a built–in wireless charging pad might sound a bit gimmicky, but Belkin’s SoundForm Elite was developed in conjunction with the hi–fi experts at Devialet, which means that Belkin is taking sound quality very seriously. Available in black or white, its cylindrical design and fabric covering is reminiscent of Apple’s HomePod, although its top panel has been sliced away at an angle to make room for the 10W charging pad for your smartphone. The SoundForm is just 6.63–inches high and 6.4–inches in diameter, so it’ll sit easily on a shelf or table. It supports AirPlay 2 for streaming from Apple devices but, unlike the HomePod, it also supports Bluetooth for other types of devices, and there’s…

3 Belkin’s elegant BoostCharge Dual 63W GaN wall charger has a slick, precision–moulded feel to it, formed from a single piece of plastic. It has two USB–C ports which provide 60W maximum to a single laptop from the appropriately labelled port, or 50W to the laptop and 18W to the second port when two devices are connected. Helpfully, there is onboard sensing of connections so the charger knows what you’re charging and dynamically allocates power accordingly. That means you can quick–charge your iPhone, for example, up to 50% in around half an hour, then unplug it and the charger will switch the other port back to sending 60W to your laptop. It charged our iPhone 12 fully in 1h 43 and the MacBook Pro in 2h 27m. Connecting both devices…

Free (IAPs) From Moleskine, moleskinestudio.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 13.0 or later Artists have scribbled, scrawled and sketched in Moleskine’s notebooks for decades, and Flow is an attempt to recreate the tactile joy of those products digitally. It’s an artist’s sketchpad with customizable brush presets and gestures, and an endless canvas for images of any width. The phone version is good, but the app really shines when you’ve got it on an iPad screen with an Apple Pencil in your hand. This is the second major version of Flow and it has some key improvements, not least of which is a vastly lower price tag: if you buy the Moleskine Studio Bundle for $19.99 you get Flow plus the Timepage calendar app and Actions to–do app.…

Peering through the mist, we’re always looking for signs of unity in the smart home world. If the fractured smart home landscape could unite itself as a compatible whole, without the need to add rickety bridges to join together its many islands, that would be a good thing. It would mean a wider choice of hardware, stronger platform understanding, widespread compatibility, and (probably) an easier point of entry. One app could, as Apple’s Home app tries to do, manage every smart device in your home — and you could choose the app you wanted to use. Pie in the sky stuff, right? The entire history of computing is one of rival platforms battling it out; today, after 40 years of the home computer, it’s a punch–up between the Mac, the…

Almost certainly not. Open About This Mac at the top of the Apple menu, and click on the System Report button to open System Information. Select Installations at the left, then click twice on the header of the Install Date column. That lists installations in chronological order, with the latest at the top. You will likely see a recent entry for MRTConfigData 1.68, a silent security update which has caused these problems, as it did for many before Apple pulled that update. Fixing this isn’t easy. Restart in Recovery mode, open Terminal there, disable SIP with the command: csrutil disable and restart as normal. Locate MRT.app, which is in/System/Library/CoreServices or/Library/Apple/System/Library/CoreServices in Catalina and Big Sur. With SIP disabled you can rename that to MRT.app.bak. Restart into Recovery mode again and…

You can still run iPhoto on your new iMac, using the free Retroactive from www.bit.ly/mac360rtroactv, and that seems to work with Big Sur too. However, as iPhoto has been unsupported for years and Photos is becoming increasingly incompatible as time goes on, it’s likely to get harder for users to convert old iPhoto libraries to be compatible with Photos in the future. You should also be planning for that. Although there’s no sign of Photos getting the same comparison feature, it does offer before and after picture comparison when editing. When you have made a change in Edit mode, simply press and hold the M key to see the original before that particular edit. To compare the effects of changes such as cropping, use Ctrl+M instead when you’re in Adjust…

Until the release of macOS Sierra in 2016, your Mac’s main keychain was kept in login. keychain in the Keychains folder in your Home folder Library. macOS then changed to using an encrypted database stored in login.keychain-db instead, and that is the keychain which you should copy across. Copying keychains isn’t always a success: it’s a good way to preserve access to the passwords and certificates kept in it, but unless they’re copied from there into the active keychain, you’ll probably have to keep unlocking that old keychain manually. There are two ways around this. One is to migrate from the older system, during which all old entries will be copied across to your new keychain. Or use Keychain in iCloud to share the contents of the old keychain, which…

BIG SUR HAS has enabled the macOS Photos app to catch up with the iOS version, especially in the area of video editing. You can now adjust a clip to fix problems with color and tone directly in the macOS version instead of having to export clips to iMovie for grading purposes. Big Sur’s Photos app also sees an improvement to the Retouch tool. In older versions of Photos, the Retouch tool could struggle to replace unwanted objects with suitable pixels. Retouched areas could look blurry or contain unsuitable pixels. The enhanced Retouch tool benefits from machine learning to help it replace unwanted objects with appropriate adjacent pixels. This helps you remove objects quickly, without having to manually define the sampled area. Photos in Big Sur is now more up…

1 Portrait mode Open an image snapped using an iPhone’s Portrait mode. Click the Edit button. Toggle open the new Portrait option in the Adjust panel. In this shot, the background truck is visible. We can make it less distracting. 2 Aperture value The current depth setting is f/16. For a shallower depth of field drag the Depth slider left to a smaller aperture value such as f3.2. This creates a blurrier, more abstract background that helps us focus on the subject 3 Adjust lighting Click on the Studio Light icon at the bottom of the window. This mimics the effect of a soft wash of studio flash light that flatters the subject’s skin. Increase the value of the Light slider for a smoother skin complexion.…

1 Pick a note In Notes, create a new note or open an existing one. Place the cursor where you’d like to insert your image, then go to File > Insert from iPhone or iPad. You should now see the options Take Photo and Scan Documents. 2 Choose your document Take Photo does what you’d expect: it takes a photo. For documents, though, Scan Documents is a better option. With both, you’ll see a message telling you to use your chosen device to take a photo or scan. 3 Scan a document Scans and photos then appear in the note. If you double–click on them, they’ll open in a separate window. For scans, you’ll see a Filter icon that you can use to switch between color, photo, grayscale, and B&W.…

1 First launch Open System Prefs > Security & Privacy > General. Now open CopyQ via Applications — when it tells you it can’t be opened, click Cancel. Switch back to System Prefs, and click Open Anyway followed by Open. 2 Capture clipboard items CopyQ appears in the menu bar when running. The clipboard functions as before, with Cmd+V pasting the most recent item. Any items you copy to the clipboard are added to CopyQ’s library. 3 View clips Click the CopyQ menu bar icon to open the program’s window listing all your clips. To prevent it vanishing when you select another app or window, choose File > Prefs > General and deselect Close When Unfocused.…

CopyQ has a hidden feature that makes it easy to paste items and access other features via a universally accessible pop–up menu. First, select File > Commands/Global Shortcuts. Click Add, select “Show the tray menu,” and click OK. Click the Global Shortcut to set a shortcut — such as Cmd+Ctrl+C. Click OK. Now press the key combo and the menu will pop up at the cursor point, complete with easy access to the last five items copied to the currently selected tab. Choose File > Preferences > Tray to configure the feature further.…

APPLE’S iOS AND iPadOS apps are great, but they’re not always the best choice for everyone. That’s why the App Store is filled with alternatives: Carrot Weather (and until Apple bought it, Dark Sky) as alternatives to Apple’s own Weather; Fantastical instead of Calendar; Firefox instead of Safari; and so on. But while Apple was happy to let you install alternatives, it kept its own apps as the default — so if you clicked a link, it’d open in Safari; if you clicked an “email us” button, it’d launch Mail. That has changed in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. It’s only changed a little bit, though. For now, you can only change the defaults for two kinds of app: your web browser and your email app. In the longer term,…

1 Samsung Smart Monitor M7 samsung.com $399 Samsung has basically combined its TVs and monitors in one here, making this perfect for an office you might also want to use as a chill–out room. On the one hand, it’s a 32–inch 4K monitor with USB–C connectivity and 65W of power, making it great for MacBooks. But it also has Samsung’s Smart Hub built in, which makes it easy to access streaming services, such as Netflix, without needing a computer connected or turned on. Even better, it supports video streaming over AirPlay 2, and can even show Microsoft 365 docs with no PC attached. 2 Belkin Boost Charge TrueFreedom Pro belkin.com $129.99 Remember AirPower, Apple’s wireless charging mat that you could place two devices on at any point and it would…

BBEDIT From Bare Bones Software, barebones.com BBEdit is the leading HTML and text editor for Macs. It isn’t free, but after the 30–day trial period you can continue to use its basic features forever. And those features aren’t so basic: they include multiple clipboards and multiple undo, transparent editing inside compressed files, multi–file search and replace, easy text extraction, and more. CYBERDUCK From Cyberduck Team, cyberduck.io We sometimes describe Cyberduck as an FTP app but it’s much more than that. It’s a cloud browser with support not just for FTP and SFTP but also cloud storage, WebDAV, Amazon S3, BackBlaze B2, and more. If you find it useful, the full version it isn’t expensive. THE UNARCHIVER From MacPaw, theunarchiver.com This app is a kind of silicon box cutter: if you…

One of the main benefits of the iPad is its portability, and that makes it ideal for turning into a media streaming device. Once set up, you will be able to consume your media without needing to store it on your iPad. For this, you’re going to need Plex, a media server app that’s free to download (but we recommend unlocking it to avoid its playback limits). Once you have set up your server following our steps on the left, install the Plex Media Server app on your server Mac. Once installed, this will scan your Mac for media files; you can add more from the Libraries section in the sidebar. Make sure to create an account. On your iPad, install the separate Plex app from the App Store. When…

If you want to part ways with your old device, there are lots of options. For one thing, Apple offers its own trade–in service, which allows you to hand over an old device and get credit towards a new one. Apple’s valuations generally are not the best on the market, so you’ll probably be able to get a better price elsewhere. But if you know you’re going to buy something new from Apple, it can be a more convenient option than trying to sell your device separately. An alternative is to sell your device on eBay. To ensure you do not go in blind, always check to see how much similar devices go for before listing your item. To do this, search for your device on eBay, but only display…

$1,299 From Apple, apple.com Features 13.3–inch Retina display (2560x1600 resolution), Apple M1 chip, 8GB unified memory (16GB available), 256GB storage (512GB/1TB/2TB available), 802.11ax Wi–Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, headphone socket While there’s a huge difference in performance between the late–2020 MacBook Air and its Intel–driven forebear, the difference between the Air and the new 13–inch MacBook Pro feels more nuanced, chiefly because the two laptops have much in common — at least on paper. With a starting price of $1,299, the new 13–inch MacBook Pro also comes with an M1 system on a chip (SoC), complete with eight CPU cores and a 16–core Neural Engine, although this time the GPU boasts eight–cores as standard rather than the entry–level Air’s seven. Like the MacBook Air, the entry–level 13–inch Pro…

$259.99 From Corsair, corsair.com Features 2x HDMI, 2x USB–A, 2x USB–C, Thunderbolt 3, Gigabit Ethernet, 85W charging The Corsair TBT100 is a multi–port dock that can also 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 unit 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 on the underside. The front edge features a power button, an SDXC memory card reader, a USB–C port and a combo headphone and mic jack, all of which are ports to which you usually need…

$99.99 From Adobe, www.adobe.com Needs macOS 10.14 or later Like iMovie, Adobe Premiere Elements 2021 is a non–linear video editing app that’s designed to help video makers trim, fix and share their video footage as polished programs, complete with titles and transitions. However, compared to iMovie, Premiere Elements 2021 boasts a more sophisticated set of post–production tools, such as the ability to make selective adjustments to the colors and tones of a sky without changing the foreground exposure. iMovie only lets you apply one effect filter at a time; Premiere Elements 2021 enables you to apply multiple effects as non-destructive adjustment layers, giving you more freedom to experiment with a range of creative looks. STAY ORGANIZED These days we may shoot as many clips as we do stills, thanks to…

1 With a detachable wall cable this well–built model has more reach than most others so is a little easier to use on a desktop. With 65W of total power it has two USB–C PD and two USB–A ports so up to four devices are supported, with the available power allocated accordingly. Plug in one USB–C cable to get the full 65W and a second to send 45W to the first and 18W to the second. Other combinations of USB–C and USB–A affect power allocation differently. It was able to charge the MacBook Pro in just over two hours and the iPhone 12 in 1h 38m. With both connected at once the phone charged slightly slower, but in a comparable time, and the laptop in 2h 53m. This model is…

Many good Mac apps are built using Electron, Catalyst, or another framework to make development quicker, and support multiple platforms. Judge the final products rather than how they’ve got there. These frameworks can have drawbacks: Electron apps have been vulnerable to security attacks, and Catalyst apps are prone to design shortcomings, which are easily assessed. Working out whether an app uses a framework requires deep insights into its code and structure which even the most advanced user can’t hope to achieve. Helge Heß of ZeeZide has built a free app to distinguish these and other types such as apps built using AppleScript. His 5GUIs tool is available free from the App Store, and its source code is at bit.ly/mac360zeezide.…

Ensure you haven’t modified your System, for example by disabling SIP. If you can’t get Software Update to work, try a standalone installer from www.bit.ly/mac360downlo. If necessary, download and run the Combo updater. If none of those methods work, you may need to perform a clean reinstall. Make at least one complete backup and ensure that all your important files have been saved to it, then restart your Mac with the Opt+ Cmd+R keys held down on a wired keyboard, or from a bootable external copy of macOS 10.15.7. Open Disk Utility, select your startup System volume, by default named Macintosh HD, and click on the Erase tool. Format it in APFS with a GUID Partition Map, and enter your Apple ID if prompted. Once the volume has been erased,…

1 Unwanted details This shot features some distracting graffiti. The challenge is to remove the lettering while preserving the underlying brick pattern. We also want to remove the logo on the guitar to make the image sellable as stock. 2 Let us spray Zoom in to work on the problem area and open the Retouch tool. Set the tip’s size so it’s just large enough to cover the graffiti strokes. Spray over each stroke. The tool will replace the graffiti with brickwork. 3 Finishing touch Spray the Retouch tool over the guitar’s logo. It should replace the text with suitable wood patterns. You may need to spray the area a couple of times to mop up any remaining traces of unwanted objects.…

DSLR users can manually open or close their camera’s iris (or aperture) to let in more or less light. A narrow aperture value such as f/22 causes both foreground and background details to look sharp. A wider aperture value such as f/2.0 makes the background become blurred. This blur (or bokeh) helps reduce background distractions. The iPhone Camera app’s Portrait mode simulates this bokeh effect using software, so you can use the Photos app to manually adjust the strength. The iPhone 12 Pro Max’s aperture can open to a very wide f/1.4.…

THE MENU BAR at the top of the Mac screen has been a fixture of the macOS for decades. It provides a convenient set of tools in the top–right corner of the screen, allowing you to quickly access and control key features on your Mac such as Wi-Fi settings, Bluetooth, and sound. But, over the years, that little corner of the menu bar has become rather cluttered, so Big Sur’s introduction of the new Control Center — borrowed, of course, from the iPhone and iPad — represents one of the biggest changes to the Mac’s interface in years. By default, there’s a fixed set of nine specific features that will always be visible in Control Center. This means you can now tidy up the menu bar by moving those particular…

1 Add a pre–made Smart Stack Tap and hold a blank area of the Home screen, tap the “+” button (top–left corner), then scroll down and tap Smart Stack. Choose one of the three available sizes, then tap Add Widget. 2 Reorder the widgets If you want to edit a Smart Stack, tap and hold it until a contextual menu appears, then tap Edit Stack. You can use the handles on the right–hand side to rearrange widgets to your liking. When you’re done, tap the cross. 3 Add a widget to a stack To add another widget to a Smart Stack, open the widgets menu from step 1, then drag and drop a new widget over an existing stack. All widgets must be the same size — you can’t combine…

1 Paste from CopyQ To copy a specific item to the clipboard, double–click it or select it, and press Return. The first time you do this, you will be asked to grant CopyQ control of Accessibility features. Once done, paste it as normal with Cmd+V. 2 Edit clips Ctrl–click a clip containing text and choose Edit to make changes using CopyQ’s text editor. You can also apply some simple formatting to the clip. Click the disk button on the far left to save your changes. 3 Add a label Ctrl–click any clip — text, image, or otherwise — and choose Edit Notes to add a title or description to your clip. After clicking Save, the label will be displayed above the clip’s content to help you identify it in future.…

IT’S NO SECRET that Apple’s own apps are hardly the most elegant way to manage your media on your devices. Even though iTunes is no longer with us, its legacy of clunky media management lives on in the form of Music, Podcasts, and TV. The Photos app is marginally better, but it’s still far from perfect. If you’re looking for an alternative, iMazing should be top of your list (and a free trial is available). It makes transferring media between devices a real breeze, with a smooth workflow that’s super–easy to navigate. And besides moving your files and keeping them organized, it’s a great app for viewing files. The recent update to the photo browser puts EXIF data at your fingertips, lets you quickly swipe through an image carousel to…

1 Find the alternative The App Store is full of alternatives to Apple’s default email and web browsing apps, so the first step is to choose the one you want. The App Store provides some useful round–ups of apps so that’s a good place to start. 2 Change your email app Once you’ve set up the email app and connected it to your email account(s), the next step is to go into the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down until you see the name of the new email app and tap on it. 3 Change the default In the app’s Settings page, you should now see an option that says Default Mail App. If you haven’t already changed it, it’ll be set to Mail. Tap on this…

The savings offered by Apple One are based on comparing paying full price for each subscription, but you don’t always need to do that. Various offers often mean you can access much the same content as Apple One without paying the same figure. Apple TV+ is $4.99 a month — but it’s free if you buy a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, or Mac. That’s a saving of $4.99 a month. If you haven’t already signed up for Apple Music, you can get your first three months free — a saving of between $4.99 a month for students and $14.99 a month for families. Apple News+ doesn’t officially have a free trial, but see if your cellphone network offers a deal.…

FOR JUST ABOUT the entire life of the iPhone, there’s been some feature that nerds on the internet consider to be essential for inclusion in the next model, otherwise it should be considered behind the times and unbuyable, except for rubes who don’t know better. Frequently, that feature has then not been included in the next model, yet 20 million rubes will buy the supposedly unbuyable iPhone and love it, and then everyone will discover that the next model will include it. The list of so–called essentials has included 4G, OLED screens, 4K video recording, 5G, and in 2020 it was high–refresh displays. In the last year or so, 90Hz or 120Hz screens have become table stakes among Android flagships, meaning that the screen updates 90 or 120 times per…

WE’RE LIVING IN a golden age of affordable apps: software that used to cost many hundreds of dollars is now available for a fraction of that, while subscriptions make it easy to spread the cost of even the priciest pro software. But if you’re on a tight budget then spending any amount of money on an app can be a problem. Hurrah, then, for the developers who give away their apps for free. There are lots of reasons to consider using free apps. Some are philosophical — many of the apps here are open source, made by and for the community — and some practical: there’s no point spending lots on an app for a one-off task. And, of course, there’s the best reason of all — it can save…

THE MORE TECHNOLOGY we accrue, the more obsolete devices we end up with filling our drawers and cupboards. Those ancient iPhones and iPads we keep despite them being well past their sell–by date? They may come in handy one day, we reason. That old MacBook in the corner that never gets used? It just needs a new battery and it will be right as rain, we convince ourselves. We know these stories are not true — and all the while the devices go on collecting dust and losing value. But just because a device is old, doesn’t mean it’s useless. There are many ways your old Apple stuff can be repurposed, from safeguarding your valuables as a home security camera to keeping you entertained as a dedicated eBook reader or…

WITH GOOD LENSES and plentiful storage, old iPhones make great home security cams. Firstly, you’ll want a stand for your iPhone. Ideally it will be a charging stand to keep it juiced up, but you could use an ordinary stand and plug in a cable. You might want to disguise your phone in some way, perhaps behind other objects, so it’s not immediately obvious to an intruder. Finally, a wide–angle lens attachment is a good way to enlarge the field of view and ensure more coverage. Next, you will need a recording app. Alfred Home Security Camera is a good choice — it offers motion detection, a siren, a low–light filter, and more. Download the app on your current iPhone and create an account, then do the same on your…

MACS ARE GREAT, but their webcams leave a lot to be desired — even an old iPhone likely has a better set of lenses than your Mac. In issue 176 we showed you how to turn an old iPhone into a Mac webcam using the free Camo app. Not only is it a great way to improve your video call quality, but it can help put an old device to good use instead of just throwing it away. To get started, download Camo from reincubate.com on your Mac and the App Store on your iPhone. Connect your phone to your Mac with a cable, then launch Camo on both devices. You should see Camo working as a camera app on your iPhone. Now all that is left is to mount…

The M1-powered desktop that’s much faster than you think $699 From Apple, apple.com Features M1 chip, 8GB of memory (16GB option), 256GB SSD (512GB/1TB/2TB options), 802.11ax Wi–Fi, 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4 Apple’s third M1 Mac is the new Silver-clad Mac mini, which at $699 is the cheapest way for anyone to jump on the Apple silicon bandwagon. The new model is $100 less than its entry–level Intel predecessor and there’s an obvious reason for that. While the previous Intel–powered Mac mini came with four Thunderbolt/USB 3 ports, the M1 Mac mini makes do with two (albeit Thunderbolt/USB 4). It also eschews the optional 10GB Ethernet upgrade available in the Intel model in favor of plain old Gigabit Ethernet. And like the MacBook Air and 13–inch MacBook Pro, the Mac mini offers…

From $29.99 From River SRL, sparkleapp.com Needs OS X 10.9 or later, 64–bit processor Building websites is something many of us don’t do any more: we’ll use something template-based for business, blog on WordPress or Medium, and hire a designer for anything more complex. Sparkle would like to offer an alternative option: professional website creation that’s as simple as creating something in Pages or Keynote. Version 3 introduces an improved, Big Sur–friendly interface. There’s a straightforward blog module, new built–in fonts, EXIF data extraction for images and galleries, buttons for key payment services such as PayPal and Stripe, and good audio and video embedding features. With Sparkle it’s easy to produce impressive results, but it’s designed to make serious websites and offers ecommerce functions, visitor analysis, and advertising. Just make…

$9.99; upgrade from 2019 purchase $4.99; upgrade from 2020 purchase is free From Guilherme Rambo, v2.airbuddy.app Needs macOS 10.14.6 or later Apple’s wireless earphones and Beats–branded headphones contain hardware that enables, among other things, their easy discovery and management from your iPhone or iPad. Their integration with macOS, on the other hand, is a little more basic — and that’s where AirBuddy 2 comes in. A lightweight app that runs mostly from your Menu Bar, it provides a much more comprehensive way to monitor your Apple peripherals from your desktop than Apple currently allows. The headline feature is the ability to show the status of your AirPods, AirPods Pro or Beats headphones when they’re near your Mac. Once paired using the quick setup procedure, the charging status of the case…

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 chargers are smaller and more power–efficient than traditional silicon–based 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, especially compared to Apple’s own chargers. As our devices move inexorably towards all–USB–C ports, a GaN charger can be a more portable and efficient way of powering all your gear. Many also feature the Power Delivery (PD)…

2 With a total power output of 60W, the PowerPort Atom III splits this across 45W to its USB–C port and 15W to the USB–A. But it’s not able to output the full 60W if you just connect a single device to the USB–C port, so charging larger laptops is a little slower. It’s 15% smaller than Apple’s 60W MacBook Pro charger and claims to be 2.5 times faster than the stock iPhone charger. It supports fast iPhone charging with a compatible cable like most of the others on test. It charged the iPhone 12 in 1h 44m and the MacBook Pro in 2h 37m. Since there’s no dynamic power reallocation, charging both devices at the same time resulted in identical times to charging separately. It has a max amount…

Smartphones and tablets have become such a vital part of our lives that most of us would now feel lost without them. But there are also risks in relying on our mobile devices so much. The advertising “trackers” that follow us around the web are just the start. Even more dangerous are the online scams that try to con money out of us, and malware–ridden websites that try to get hold of personal or financial data. And, of course, there’s insecure public Wi–Fi networks and hackers who attempt to break into your home or office network. So check out some of these top apps that can protect your privacy and security online. AVAST SECURITY & PRIVACY Free (Full version $4.99/month) Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Avast is a regular…

HOW TO RESTORE BATTERY LIFE AFTER iOS 14 UPGRADES? This should settle when iOS has been brought up to date and your phone’s been running it for a while. Some do a full factory reset, but that seldom does much. Check which apps are using most power at the foot of Settings > Battery and limit wasteful apps. HOW TO TURN OFF MY iPHONE’S PERSONAL HOTSPOT? In iOS and iPadOS 13.1 or later, you can’t turn off Personal Hotspot unless you disable your mobile connection or turn Airplane Mode on. It’s always available to other devices on the same iCloud account and through Family Sharing, but you control whether to allow others to join. WHAT IS CUH? IT’S SLOWING MY MAC? CUH is a process which can appear in Activity…

If you want instant access to live tweets, particularly if you use Direct Messages, Twitter is the best choice, as it uses the service’s live feed to bring immediate updates. You also get promoted and other tweets which the service decides you might like. You can choose whether these are “interest–based” in your settings: in Personalization and data settings, change Personalize ads. That won’t remove advertising, but the process will only use information which Twitter considers non–personal, including the content of your tweets and which other users you follow. Two excellent alternatives are Tweetbot and Twitterific, which use different Twitter feeds so don’t include promoted content. They also give you full control over notifications, which you can adjust using the Notifications pane. The disadvantage of third–party Twitter clients is that…

In High Sierra and earlier, it may be possible to recover old images from a startup disk even when the original has been lost or damaged. QuickLook, which is responsible for creating Finder thumbnails and previews, generates these and stores them as files inside a cache. By inspecting the contents of that folder, you may be lucky enough to find the image that’s gone missing. The cache is located in the hidden folder/var/folders/t9/[long ID]/C/com.apple. QuickLook.thumbnailcache where [long ID] is a seemingly random jumble of characters, but only on a startup disk. There are two problems which make this of limited value. It was recognized as a security vulnerability over two years ago, and Apple responded by locking it down to make the cache essentially inaccessible in Mojave. So if that…

1 Starting Safari The new Start page is a key part of Safari 14, but your Mac may not show it automatically as this depends on how you have Safari set up. Open Safari Prefs > General, and set “New windows open with” to the Start Page. 2 Options menu You can customize your Start page by using the new Options menu, located down in the bottom–right corner of the window. There are several options, but let’s start by looking at the ones for faster browsing. 3 Faster browsing To speed things up, you can set the Start page to display your Favorites and Reading List, as well as pages you often visit. Selecting Siri Suggestions, makes the page look a bit cluttered, so let’s turn that off for now.…

1 Tweak tone Double–click on a clip and click Edit. Use the Trim handles to shorten it. In our example, the swan’s highlights are over–exposed. By dragging the Exposure and Highlights sliders to the left, we can reveal missing detail. 2 Boost vibrance Big Sur’s Photos app now has a Vibrance slider that works on clips and stills alike. Vibrance selectively boosts the saturation of landscape colors, such as blues and greens, without over–saturating skin tones. 3 Fab filters As with the iOS version of Photos, the Big Sur version enables you to quickly grade your footage with a one–click filter. You can then drag an adjacent slider to reduce the strength of the filter for a more subtle look.…

ONE OF OUR favorite Apple innovations is Continuity, which makes all your Apple devices work together. Sidecar uses your iPad as a second display; Handoff enables you to start work on one device and continue on another; Universal Clipboard can copy from one device and paste to another; and Sketch enables you to draw on your touchscreen device and save it on your Mac. Of all the Continuity features, we think Continuity Camera is one of the most useful. It enables you to use your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch as a camera and scanner for your Mac. It’s a fast and effective way of getting documents into your desktop or laptop Mac and, as we’ll discover in this tutorial, it also enables you to do useful things with the…

1 Menu bar The menu bar in Big Sur still works the way it always has, with icons representing features such as battery power and Wi–Fi. Click on any icon for a pull–down menu with additional settings for that particular feature. 2 Control Center There is one new icon in the menu bar, though, which looks like a little set of switches. Click on this icon and you’ll see the new iOS–style Control Center, which contains a much larger group of controls and features. 3 Changing Settings You can click on any of these features to see more detailed settings. Clicking on Display will show options, such as Dark Mode and Night Shift, and there will also be an option to open System Preferences for that feature. 4 Drag and…

THE CLIPBOARD IS one of computing’s oldest time–saving tools, but it has never evolved to keep up with the times. The main shortcoming is that you can only store one item on the clipboard at any time. CopyQ is a free, open source app that bypasses this restriction by enabling you to build a library of frequently used clips that you can then place in the clipboard on–demand, or place your favorite clips at your fingertips via a universally accessible menu. The guides opposite will show you how to get up and running with CopyQ. As your clip library grows, you’ll be able to explore its many features to help you find them quickly: add tags, pin favorite clips, and make good use of the search tool (press Cmd+G) to…

1 Set up tabs CopyQ’s default tab view isn’t the best: choose File > Prefs > Layout to select Tab Tree and Show Item Count options. Click OK. Press Cmd+T to create your first tab. Replace “&clipboard” with its name. Click OK. 2 Create sub–tabs Choose Tabs > New Tab to create as many tabs as you need. To nest a tab inside another tab, Ctrl–click on an existing tab and choose New Tab, then append “/Newtabname” to the existing name as shown above. 3 File your clips Drag a clip from the original “clipboard” tab to another tab to move it — you’ll see the item count number update. Select a tab to view and rearrange its contents. Choose Tab > Change Tab Icon to personalize further.…

1 Import from Music Click Music in the left–hand column, then click Import from Music. Choose individual songs (you can sort by genre, artist, and album), or pick Select All. Then click Copy to Device and wait for the transfer to finish. 2 Export to your Mac To move music to your Mac, click Export to Music. Choose whether to export just music or your entire device library, then click Next. Choose whether to include metadata (like play counts), click Next, then click Done. 3 Add custom playlist Create a new music playlist on your device by clicking the “+” button near the bottom–left of iMazing’s Music menu. Give it a name, click OK, then drag and drop tracks from the Music tab over to the new playlist. 4 Drag…