Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Essential Apple User Magazine

James Gale Managing Editor How about a games subscription service for quality, big-name franchise games like GTA, CoD and FIFA? Games people actually want to play? Martin Smith Group Senior Designer How about a solar-powered MacBook Pro, or at least one that has solar charging capability? It would be pretty good environmentally. Alan Hulme Staff Writer A rocket to take Tim Cook into space. Jeff Bezos has done it, Richard Branson has done it, Elon Musk has done it; why doesn’t Apple do it too? David Hayward Staff Writer I want some smart glasses with a built-in camera. It’s not a new concept, but no one’s got it right yet. Could Apple be the first? I honestly think that it could. Ian Osborne Editor A roof-mounted wind turbine for Domestic…

Make sure your Chromebook and the NAS drive are on the same network. In the Files app, click the three-dots icon and go to Services > SMB file share. You’re shown a list of servers that are connected to your network. Scroll up and down and find the one you want to add, and then click on it. Enter a username and password if necessary, and the drive appears in the sidebar. It stays until you remove it – you don’t need to repeat these steps.…

iiMazing is a device management tool for all iOS and iPadOS devices. Open iMazing on your Mac and connect an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV or even a classic iPod, and you can explore and organise its contents with a far greater degree of control than macOS natively allows. Various price points are available, depending on how many mobile devices you wish to use with it. The app can back up your device to your computer, without deleting previous backups. These backups are encrypted, and unlike regular backups, they can be stored on any connected hard drive or NAS drive – it doesn’t have to be your boot drive. Backups can be scheduled and carried out automatically, and you can review and restore their contents just like you can…

Info// Uppercut Games Pty Limited www.uppercut-games.com £0.99, $0.99, 0,49 € Compatibility: iOS 7 or later The cover shooter has become the go-to genre for developers of action games. Long gone is the both barrels blazing method of bringing the lead-covered pain. That focus is now on the need to use the environment to your advantage. There’s a lot of skill involved in this style of game, as success depends not only on how accurately you can shoot, but how well you can read the enemy and pick your moment to act. They could almost be called puzzle shooters. EPOCH from Uppercut Games falls very firmly into this style, mixing action, timing and puzzle elements with a good deal of success. It sees you controlling a robot soldier, battling against waves…

Managing and Maintaining Contacts 1 This guide shows you to how to add new contacts to your Contacts address book, edit existing ones and share a completed contact card with other people. To create a new contact card, click on the plus button in the bottom left of the current card. Select New Contact from the window that pops up and you’re given a blank card to fill in. 2 To add details, click on the field and then type in the information. After entering a phone number or address, another blank is offered, in case you want to add a second one. Click on the name of the detail (in blue) for a pop-up window that lets you change it. When you’re finished, click Done. To change or add information to…

1 Before you can make use of the Home app, you have to add HomeKit compatible devices. You can only do this from an iOS device, you can’t use your Mac. There’s a list of HomeKit compatible devices online at www.apple.co/2MFjhb3. 2 When you’ve added one or more devices using your iOS device, you can access them through Home on the Mac. Right-click on a device’s window and select Settings and you can change the room they’re assigned to. 3 Click the Automation tab and you can set timers, actions and more. What they do depends on what kit you’ve incorporated into your Home app. Click the + icon to add automations or groups of automations (scenes). 4 For example, you can use the Home app to control and configure speakers that are compatible…

Calendar in Focus 1 Tap this link to go back to the month view, showing the whole of the month. 2 Here you see the days ofthe month, with the currently displayed day highlighted. So here we’re looking at 12th November. 3 This icon gives you a list of upcoming events, displayed according to their date and time. 4 Tap here to search the Calendar app, looking at titles and content in your calendar entries. 5 Tap here to create a new calendar event, setting the date, time and title, as well as whether it repeats (for example, with birthdays and anniversaries), which calendar it’s in, when it starts and ends and more. 6 The day, date, month and year currently open are shown here for easy reference. 7 All-day events such as public holidays and birthdays…

Contacts in Focus 1 Search your contacts by typing a name or part name here. Suggestions are offered. You can also search for other things on a contact card, like your notes. 2 Tap here to cancel a search and list all your contacts once more. 3 The name and picture of your currently open contact. If you don’t have a picture added, the person’s initials are shown here in a grey circle. 4 Tap Edit to add, remove or change information on the contact card. You can add things like birthdays, social media addresses and more, as well as further phone numbers, street addresses, etc. 5 These icons let you communicate with your contact directly from the Contacts app. Tap an icon to send a message, make a call, make a video call or…

Do you need a Chromebook? At first glance, it’s a stupid question. If you already have a Mac notebook, why on Earth would you need a far less powerful Chrome OS laptop? But how many times have you left your expensive MacBook at home because you didn’t want to risk taking it with you? Maybe you were going camping, and felt uncomfortable about leaving it in your tent. Or you wanted to use it on the beach, but couldn’t risk getting sand in the keys. Or maybe… you get the idea. There’s any number of situations where you don’t want to risk your MacBook, but wouldn’t mind using a much cheaper Chromebook. In this issue’s cover feature, we take a look at how a Chrome OS-powered Chromebook might stand in…

A Chromebook is capable and versatile, but there are plenty of things it can’t do. As mentioned earlier, it can’t run specialist software that’s only available on Macs or PCs. If you’re an engineer that needs to run AutoCAD, a novelist or playwright who works in Scrivener or a graphic designer who can’t do without Photoshop and InDesign, a Chromebook is not for you. Serious photo and video editing is beyond a low-cost Chromebook too; it simply doesn’t have the processing power needed for the job. But could you work away from home taking your shots and footage, review them on site using your Chrome OS notebook and bring them back home for processing? It might be an option. As discussed earlier, the Chromebook is not a great gaming platform.…

Info// https://akvis.com AKVIS £59.00, $49.00, 44.00 € Compatibility: Mac OSX 10.10-10.11, macOS 10.12-12.0, 64-bit OilPaint turns your photographs into oil paintings, and does it well. Art editing apps with an oil painting filter aren’t exactly thin on the ground, but as OilPaint is designed specifically for this task, it’s far more capable and configurable. You can turn any photo into an artwork with OilPaint. Instead of simply laying a texture over the image, the app accurately reproduces the artist’s brush strokes, giving a much better impression of an oil painting. We’re told it’s ‘widely used by design and animation studios, media and video games creators, professional artists and illustrators’, which we can quite believe. The app has had an impressive overhaul with Version 10. There’s an all-new photo-to-painting algorithm, which…

Info// Eternal Storms Software https://eternalstorms.at £17.99, $23.99, 19,99 € Compatibility: macOS 10.10 or later You know that effect you sometimes see in movies, TV shows or YouTube videos, where a series of photos are shown in very quick succession to give the impression of a place or a narrative without taking too much time over it? They’re called Still Motion Videos, and with Glimpses, you can create them on your Mac. Glimpses makes it easy to import your photographs, and also the soundtrack that plays behind them. In a Still Motion Video each image is typically shown for a fraction of a second, so you need a decent amount of them for even a short video. Photos with a similar theme or content work best. A series of ‘burst’ photos…

Before we even get into the review, it’s worth noting Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, is in one of the higher price brackets of the App Store; very much the trend with its franchise kin. Straight away, it’s pitching itself pretty high. Can it live up to the price tag? Well that all depends on your point of view. Mobile gaming is mostly quick-fix games, casual arcade-style romps that you can dip into for a few minutes at a time. In keeping with the Final Fantasy series, Tactics is a vast and deep game, full of stats, complex stories and a myriad of characters. Not only that, but it’s also a complicated strategy game; don’t let the cuddly cartoon graphics fool you. Each character class has different…

Changing the View 1 There are several different ways to view your calendars. To move between Day, Week, Month and Year views, you can 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 its Month view. Double-click a specific day in either Year, Week or Month view to open its page in the Day view. 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 you mute or reveal individual calendars and more. 4 Click the Today button in the top…

Contacts in Focus 1 Tap this link to go back to your list of contacts, arranged in alphabetical order. 2 The name and picture of your currently open contact. If you don’t yet have a picture here, the person’s initials are shown on a grey background. 3 Tap Edit to add, remove or change information on the contact card. You can add things like birthdays and social media addresses as well phone numbers, street addresses and more. 4 These icons let you communicate with your contact directly from the Contacts app. Tap to send a message, make a call, make a video call or send an email. A greyed icon means the feature is unavailable. 5 Phone numbers for the contact. You can add numbers for home, work, mobile and more. Tap a number to…

Reminders in Focus 1 Use the Search field to search your reminders. Titles, notes, people, locations and more are searched. 2 Tap this link and you can edit your lists; delete them with the minus sign, reorder by dragging the Three-line icon up and down and tap the ‘i’ icon to rename a list, change its colour and choose a new icon. 3 These are your smart lists. ‘Today’ is all your reminders scheduled for that day, ‘Scheduled’ shows reminders that are scheduled for any day, ‘All’ lists all of your reminders, and ‘Flagged’ shows reminders to which you’ve added a flag. 4 These are your lists. Theycan be called anything you like. Tap one to open it and see the individual reminders you’ve added, mark reminders you’ve done as complete, and add new…

Calendar in Focus 1 Tap here to open and close a sidebar showing a list of all the calendars you have set up in the Calendar app. 2 Invitations you’ve been sent by other people are stored in your inbox. From there you can accept or decline the invitation. Tap here to open this inbox. 3 Tap here for a sidebar showing today’s entries in your Calendar app. When exploring your calendars, it’s a useful way to look at today’s events without moving from the currently selected page. 4 Tap here to add a new Calendar event. You can then add details such as a title, start and finish time, location, alerts and which calendar you wish to add it to. 5 Tap these tabs to switch between looking at one day, one week, one…

First of all, open the website you want to save as a Shortcut. Click the vertical threedots icon in the top-right corner, and in the menu that appears, select More Tools > Create Shortcut Choose what to call your new Shortcut. There’s already a title in there, but you can delete it and type something different if you wish. Choose whether the shortcut opens in a new window too. Your Shortcut appears on the Shelf. Drag it onto another shortcut to make a folder, or drag it into an existing folder to move it there, just like on the Mac’s App Launcher and iOS Home Page…

Info// Rogue Amoeba Software, Inc. https://rogueamoeba.com £32.00, $42.00, 38.00 € Compatibility: macOS 10.14 or later For fans of streaming audio, this app’s a wee gem. Airfoil expands on macOS’ music streaming capabilities, allowing you to send your tunes to any or all speakers connected to your home network, and to target groups of speakers as well as individual devices. As well as your Music app library, you can stream services like Spotify, Pandora or Apple Music, or websites like YouTube, and have it received by thousands of supported devices including HomePod, Google Chromecast, Sonos devices, AirPlay speakers and Bluetooth speakers. You can have music all over your home, and control it on your Mac. A complementary app called Airfoil Satellite can be installed on Macs, Windows PCs, iPhones, iPads, Android…

Info// Rockstar Games www.rockstargames.com £5.99, $5.99, 5.99 € Compatibility: iOS 8 or later It’s hard to believe Grand Theft Auto III is well over 20 years old. It’s also hard to imagine how the games industry would look without this iconic brand that transcends video gaming. Even non-gamers are familiar with the title, although often for the wrong reasons. Controversy! Violence! Adult content! Yet GTA didn’t become an institution because of its controversial storylines. It invented the ‘sand box’ genre which has changed the face of gaming in subsequent years, with the growth and development of the franchise to the levels one would once question possible with the masterful GTA 5 and the devastating badness of the much anticipated and much savaged Grand Theft Auto Collection. Despite the fantastic ports…

Info// Rovio Entertainment Oyj www.rovio.com Free Compatibility: iOS 13 or later My initial reaction towards the Angry Birds Journey was far from favourable. It felt too familiar, too predictable and ultimately nothing different to what we’ve been playing for over a decade. Yet strangely, the more time I kept playing, the more the game’s genuine appeal started to shine; much to my confusion! Why did I keep playing? This is nothing new? Same birds, same abilities, same level design and the same gameplay, but I kept coming back? This is very much Angry Birds as we all knew and loved it. But in all honesty, Angry Birds across its many spin-offs and sequels has changed to such a degree, the franchise shamefully lost its focus on the core gameplay. Instead,…

1 This is your search field. Use it to search your reminders, regardless of which list they’re organised in. 2 This is the Reminders app’s front page, showing smart lists as well as the lists you’ve created yourself. A ‘list’ is a group of reminders you’ve set up and can be titled anything you like. 3 Click the plus sign to add a reminder to the open list. You can call it anything you like. When added, it appears in that list until you mark it as done. 4 These boxes at the top of the sidebar are your smart lists. Click on one to open it. ‘Today’ is all reminders scheduled for that day, ‘Scheduled’ shows reminders due in the future, ‘All’ lists all your reminders and ‘Flagged’ shows…

Assign a ringtone You can assign an individual ringtone or text alert to a specific contact, so you always know when that person calls or texts. Open their contact card, tap Edit (top right) and scroll to Ringtone and Text Tone. If you haven’t changed them already, they’re set at ‘Default’. Tap the one you want to change and select a new one. This tone is now used for incoming calls or messages from that contact. You can also turn on Emergency Bypass, which lets that contact get through to you even when your phone is on Do Not Disturb.…

How to store credit and debit card information 1 To use Apple Pay, you need at least an iPhone 6, 6 Plus or SE; or an Apple Watch connected to a compatible iOS device. Apple Watches are compatible with the iPhone 5 or later, including the iPhone SE and require at least iOS 8. You can make Apple Pay payments online with an iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 or an iPad Mini 3. 2 Credit or debit cards are added to Apple Pay through the Wallet app. To add a new card, use your iSight camera to take a photograph of the card in question. Just keep it in the frame as advised on screen, and the card is photographed and its information stored. Or type the information in manually. 3 Your credit…

Reminders in Focus 1 Use the improved search field to search the app for people, locations and notes, individual lists and reminders. 2 Tap this link to edit your lists. Delete them with the minus sign, reorder by dragging their three-line icons up and down and tap the ‘i’ icon to rename a list, change its colour or choose a new icon. You can rearrange or hide smart lists too. 3 This is the Reminders app’s front page, showing smart lists as well as the lists you’ve created yourself. A ‘list’ is a group of reminders you’ve set up and can be called anything you like. 4 Tap the three-dots icon to select reminders so you can edit, flag or complete them at the same time and show completed tasks. When…