Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2019 i Essential Apple User Magazine

D-Link Mini Wi-Fi Smart Plug URL: www.dlink.com Price: £19.99, $19.99, 32,90 € This smart and portable plug connects to your home Wi-Fi. Simply plug in any home appliance and control it using the free mydlink app on your phone or tablet, whether you’re at home or on the go. MiHome Smart Thermostat URL: https://energenie4u.co.uk Price: £89.99, $115.99, 104,99 € The MiHome Thermostat lets you control your household heating from your phone, so you no longer have to get off your seat to adjust the temperature; just the thing for cold winter nights. LAMPCHARGEQI URL: https://macally-europe.com Price: £66.95, $69.99, 79,95 € This lamp doubles as a charger. Charge your Qi-certified smartphone wirelessly by placing it on the wireless charging pad on the wide base of the lamp, or use the USB…

Gear4 Glass Elite VisionGuard+ URL: www.zagg.com/Gear4/Official Price: £29.99, $27.99, 34,99 € This screen protector does more than guard against scratches. It kills 99.9% of harmful bacteria found on screens, reduces fingerprints and protects your eyes from overexposure to blue light. Hot Wheels id Darth Vader Racer URL: www.apple.com Price: $6.95 Hot Wheels id takes toy cars online. The cars have an NFR chip that tracks your performance, which you can compare with others using the iPhone or iPad app. The Darth Vader Racer is an Apple Store exclusive; American online store only. STM Wireless Powerbank URL: www.stmgoods.com Price: £49.95, $59.95, 59.95 € This wireless charger is compatible with your iPhone, or any Qi enabled device. It has a standard USB-A port to charge other digital devices and suction cups mean…

CleanMyMac X MacPaw’s own maintenance suite is a force to be reckoned with. It can uninstall unwanted apps, erase system junk and keep your Mac running in tiptop condition. iStat Menus This extremely popular Mac monitoring tool is great for checking on the health of your battery, its CPU load, your local connected and networked drives and more. Bartender 3 Is your menu bar overcrowded? Do you have too many apps to fit them all in? With Bartender 3, you can organise, search and make best possible use of all of them. Ulysses This multi-award-winning word processor is built for long-form writing. It’s available on the iPad and iPhone too, and you can sync your work between them using iCloud. RapidWeaver Widely regarded as the best web-design app for the…

Computing has become more mobile in the last decade or so, with email and web browsing on smartphones alongside light, portable notebooks with all-day batteries. Printing on the go is less well served, but this portable printer from Epson is a notable exception. It measures just 30.9 x 15.4 x 6.1cm and weighs 1.6 kg, so it’s not too bulky or heavy to carry around and, as opposed to plugging it into the mains, it’s powered through either USB or an in-built rechargeable battery. The printer is well built, small enough to carry around in a decent-sized notebook bag and can manage 20 sheets at a time. However, at seven pages a minute it’s far from speedy. Clearly designed for business travellers, it does a great job of printing text,…

For iPhone An Introduction to iCloud Drive and the Files App 1 In the Settings app, tap your name at the top of the screen, tap iCloud and scroll down to iCloud Drive. If it isn’t on already, turn it on. You can now save your files in the cloud and access them from any Internet device. 2 Open the Files app and under Locations, tap iCloud Drive. Here you see the files stored on your iCloud Drive, arranged by their apps. iCloud Drive is also accessible through other Apple devices, and www.icloud.com. 3 You can open an iCloud document on your iPhone, if you have the iPhone version of the app that created it. Just open the folder for the app in question (here we’re looking at Pages) and…

Recording and Sharing a New Voice Memo The Voice Memo app may at first seem a little awkward, but if you spend a little time getting to know it, you soon appreciate its full potential. It’s a very useful thing to have in your pocket – you never know when it will come in handy. 1 Open the app, holding your iPhone around 30cm/12 inches from your mouth, and tap the red button to start your recording. When you have finished tap the red button for a second time. To edit your recording tap the blue icon to the right and select the clip you want using the sliders, then tap Done. 2 You can rename your voice memo by tapping the title, then, using the keyboard, enter the new…

For Mac Creating, Editing and Searching Notes 1 To create a new note, first of all, click on the pen-and-paper symbol found in the toolbar at the top of the Notes window. A new blank note appears. Start typing your note. The first line of a new note is used as its title in the notes list, so bear this in mind. 2 Your notes are listed in the left-hand pane. Click on a note to open it. To change the font, or use bold, underline or italicise, select the text and right-click or CTRL-click for a menu; these options are found under Fonts. To attach an image, simply drag it onto the note. 3 To search notes, use the search field in the top left. Searches cover all your…

1More is making serious waves in personal audio. Its Bluetooth earbuds have been very well received, and the Dual Driver BT ANC Headphones are no exception. With one dynamic driver and a separate balanced armature with a proprietary acoustic design, these earbuds deliver an extremely accurate listening experience with unsurpassed power and clarity. 1More’s own TiinLab A2 chip achieves superior ANC (active noise cancelling) by using a wider frequency range EQ adjustment to counteract bandwidth, keeping out unnecessary background noise and allowing you to fully immerse yourself in your sounds. However, if you’re on a train, or other place where you need to hear announcements, these can be allowed through. The neckband is flexible, ergonomic and easy to wrap up for storage. Its battery charges at three times the usual…

James Gale Managing Editor Dear Santa, can I please have Disney+ now! 4K Star Wars! All of the Marvel movies, The Mandalorian and all of the Pixar movies! Err, for my son of course! Martin Smith Group Senior Designer Dear Santa, can you please send me a Skydio 2 Autonomous Drone please with the Beacon controller! The way it tracks and follows you is incredible. Bob Canning Staff Writer My new year’s resolution is to improve my golf, so I’d love one of those gloves with swing-improving sensors. I could see how I’m doing on an iOS app. Alison Drew Sub Editor I’d like a smart greenhouse monitor, which could alert me when I need to water my plants. This would contribute greatly to reducing the seedling massacre! Ian Osborne…

There are several ways you can send us your letters. You can tweet it, send us a Facebook message, drop us a line on our web page, email the editor or write it out and send it by post. And don’t forget, our Star Letter wins a prize. Find us online at: @BDMpubs BDM Publications www.bdmpublications.com iosmag@bdmpublications.com Essential AppleUser Magazine 12 Torquay Road, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 1AH What’s on TV? What’s on TV? I don’t understand what Apple TV+ is. I thought it was going to be like Netflix and Amazon Prime, where you had a lot of films and TV programmes that you could stream on demand. Are there going to be films on there, or is it just the TV shows that Apple have listed on their…

As the sun sets on regular USB-A ports as a Mac standard, and USB-C becomes the norm, carry-around storage like the WD My Passport for Mac has to work with both. That’s why this latest model comes with two cables: a USB-C lead for the latest Macs, and USB 3.0 if yours is a little older. At 105x75x10mm, this particular portable drive is small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. It comes in four sizes: 2TB (the one tested here), 4TB and 5TB. As you’d expect, My Passport for Mac is Mac-formatted out of the box, so there’s no need to fiddle around with Disk Utility. In our tests, it gave a read speed of 83.2 MB/s and write speed of 10.9 MB/s, which is very reasonable. The bundled…

For iPhone Reminders in Focus Reminders on the Web. If you sync your Reminders with iCloud, you can look at them from any computer with a web browser. Just go to www.icloud.com and enter your Apple ID, and tap the Reminders icon to get to them. Creating and Using Reminders 1 To create a new list, on the home page tap the Add List link in the bottom right. Add a title for your list (anything you like), and tap one of the coloured circles to give it a colour. Scroll up and pick an icon for the list too. Tap Done when you’ve finished. 2 To add a reminder to a list, tap the list and tap New Reminder. Add a name and, if you wish, tap the ‘i’…

For iPhone FaceTime in Focus Signing In. Before you can use FaceTime, you have to sign into it. Open the app and sign in with your Apple ID and password where asked. You only have to do this once; after that, you remain signed in. Using a Stand. You can use either camera in FaceTime but most of the time you’ll be using the front camera, so both you and the caller can see each other. Try putting your iPad on a stand so you can sit back a little from the screen. Initiating a FaceTime Call 1 To initiate a FaceTime call, open the app. In the sidebar is a list of recent people with whom you’ve FaceTimed, whether as a video or audio-only chat. Tap a name for…

For Mac Changing the View 1 There are several ways to view your calendars and switching between these viewing options is simple. To move between Day, Week, Month and Year views, you use the corresponding buttons that appear in the top bar of the Calendar application. 2 The Year view shows you a complete year in a single window. Clicking on the title bar for any month takes you to the Month view for that month. Double-click on a specific day in either Year, Week or Month view to open that day’s page in the Calendar app. 3 Click the Calendars button (top left) to open and close the sidebar, as shown here. This sidebar is visible regardless of whether you’re in Day, Week, Month or Year view, and lets…

What are you hoping for this Christmas? Connected home security cameras, a set of Bluetooth speakers or perhaps a new monitor? Whatever it is you want, our gadgets guide helps you get to grips with what’s out there. We round up some of the best accessories for your Apple gear in our cover story, All we Want for Christmas! Read all about them on Page 22. And if you’re hoping Santa will bring you a new Mac or an iPhone 11 Pro, you’d better have been very, very good. Over in the tutorials section, we take a look at ways of using your Mac, iPad and iPhone for productivity tasks. They’re great for organising your life, with apps like Maps, Notes, Calendar, Contacts and Reminders. Check them out starting on…

You can send us your technical troubles and perplexing problems in many different ways. You can tweet it, send us a Facebook message, drop us a line on our web page, email the editor or even write it out and send it by post. Yes, some people do still use snail mail. Find us online at: @BDMpubs BDM Publications www.bdmpublications.com iosmag@bdmpublications.com Essential AppleUser Magazine 12 Torquay Road, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 1AH Too Crusty for Catalina? Q: I was really disappointed that my 2012 Mac Pro doesn’t run Catalina. I understand it’s a bit old, but I upgraded the graphics card so it could run Mojave and now it doesn’t seem to make any sense that it doesn’t work with Catalina too. Is this just Apple wanting me to spend…

Oxford Eco Case URL: www.zagg.com/Gear4/Official Price: £34.99, $49.99, 39,99 € Not only does this folio case feature card slots, an integrated stand and 360-degree protection from up to 13-foot drops, it’s constructed using an eco-material screen cover made using two recycled plastic water bottles. Otter + Pop URL: www.otterbox.co.uk Price: £34.99, $60.95, 39.99 € This fashionable phone case has a built-in extendible widget that makes it easier to hold and serves as a stand. BookBook vol. 2 for iPhone URL: www.twelvesouth.com Price: £54.99, $69.99, 64,99 € Is this the classiest iPhone case ever? Made from premium leather, it holds both your phone and your cards and incorporates a magnetic clasp to keep it shut in your pocket or handbag. Native Union Stow Sleeve for Mac Notebooks URL: www.nativeunion.com Price: £69.95,…

Info// AOC http://www.aoc.com £299, $389, 349 € Compatibility: HDMI, DisplayPort Verdict// PROS AND CONS: + Great colour reproduction+ Excellent design and build+ Awesome value- No HDR or USB-C LAST WORD An excellent budget display that’s perfect for the home office or general computing. Great value at the price too. RATING: ⅘ Why do monitors have such boring names? U2790PQU works as a serial number, but couldn’t they at least try to give it a moniker you can actually remember and ask for? Thankfully, the name is the only thing that’s boring about this 27-inch, 4K screen. There’s certainly nothing dull about its performance. Given the price, the U2790PQU is clearly a budget monitor. Don’t expect a full USB-C hub around the back, just a couple of USB 3.0 ports and…

Click To Pray eRosary URL: https://bit.ly/2JOuKSx Price: £99, $110, 99 € This is real. Honest. It’s not April, and we’re not fooling. This Vatican-endorsed rosary doubles as a health tracker and is compatible with the Click To Pray app. It keeps track of your prayers as well as your exercise. SMART Voice Egg Steamer URL: www.smartworldwidefun.com Price: £54.99, $69.99, 62,99 € Here’s one for the hi-tech kitchen. Instead of dropping an egg into a saucepan of boiling water, let the Voice Egg Steamer do the work. It can cook your eggs hard, medium, or soft-boiled and it lets you know when they’re done with a spoken alert. SMART Retro USB Mini Jet Fan URL: www.smartworldwidefun.com Price: £39.99, $49.99, 45,99 € USB desk fans are nothing new, but this curiously retro design…

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For iPhone Contacts in Focus Active Contacts. The Contacts app does more than display contact details. You can use these details directly from the app. Tap an email address to send an email, or a message icon to send a message. Adding New Contacts 1 To add a new contact, press the Plus icon in the top right corner. Enter details such as the name, phone number and address by tapping the green plus links in the contact card. Tap the silhouette to add a photo, or emoji if you prefer. If you want to enter something that isn’t on the card, scroll to the bottom and tap Add Field. 2 You can also assign individual ringtones and text tones, by tapping these fields and choosing one. When you’re finished,…

For iPhone & iPad Maps in Focus A Word of Warning. Maps is not infallible. It’s up to you to make sure you follow the road signs and drive legally according to the vehicle you’re driving in. Follow Maps, but don’t neglect your road skills. Using Route Planning 1 Enter the name of the place you want to go in the Search field and, in the sidebar, tap Get Directions. If your starting point isn’t your current whereabouts, tap My Location at the top of the sidebar and change it. You can change your intended mode of transport using the icons at the foot of the sidebar. 2 The Maps app quickly calculates the best route for you to follow, based on the mode of transport you chose, and displays…

For Mac 1 You can get PDFpen from https://smilesoftware.com. It costs $74.95, but you can download a free trial version. It’s also available through the excellent Setapp subscription service, which grants you unlimited use of over 160 apps for a set monthly fee. 2 Launch the PDFpen application and, in the File menu, select Open. Now navigate to the PDF you wish to open, click on it and then click the Open button in the bottom right corner of the window. Your PDF is opened in the application. 3 Thumbnails of the pages from your PDF are shown in the left-hand column, with the currently viewed page in the right-hand section of the window. To zoom in and out you can use your trackpad to pinch and spread, or use…