Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 164 i iCreate

“We’ve put together the ultimate guide to your new mobile operating system” Your update to iOS 10, Apple’s biggest ever, is available to download right now, or is just days away. To mark the occasion we’ve put together the ultimate guide to your new mobile operating system, giving you everything you need to know about every brilliant new feature. We’ll take you on a guided tour of what’s new in Messages and Photos, show you all-new Apple Music and News, and unveil secret features that Apple hasn’t told you about. It’s a jam-packed cover feature, and one we can’t wait for you to read. macOS Sierra is just around the corner too, and in preparation we’re showing you how to best prepare your Mac for the update. It’s essential reading…

There’s no doubting that Apple has long been heralded as one of, if not the biggest tech company ever. It has had some of the most iconic product launches in history, delivered some of the more memorable marketing campaigns in recent times and pushed the boundaries of technology as we know it. But if we take off our rose-tinted glasses for one second, the picture hasn’t been looking as good in recent times. Apple has recently posted its earnings report for the third quarter of 2016. Despite profits still reaching the multi-billion dollar mark, sales across the board have sunk for the third straight quarter. iPhone sales in particular are worrying, with what’s universally regarded as the world’s best smartphone seeing a 15% slump. There’s been a 27% decrease in…

The lock screen notifications have been improved, letting you deal with them without jumping to the related app. The process is simple and takes seconds to learn. 1 A more informative view When a notification appears, you will see the message and also a ‘Press for more’ option showing you what you need to do. Now 3D Touch or long-press to proceed. 2 Jump a level You’ll be taken to a screen that varies depending on where the notification came from. For example, you can reply to a message in a window and jump back to the home screen. 3 Huge variety The lock screen notifications are informative and many do not even need any further interaction. News apps are a good example to discover how useful the lock screen…

Apps are being developed that add more variety to what you can send in Messages and despite the list being currently small, it is likely to grow exponentially in the future. 1 View the apps Tap the App Store icon in Messages and you will immediately see all of the available options that are installed. Now tap the Store icon to access more messaging apps. 2 Have a browse Take a look at the available apps, make your selection and download the ones you want. Try to be selective so as not to overload the interface with too many messaging apps. 3 Use the apps You can now use each app whenever you want by tapping the App Store icon when creating a new message. The choices you now have…

Real-time previews As you make changes, they will be visible throughout the process so that you can be sure the improvements really are better than the original photo you are editing. Classic tools remain All of the editing features from previous versions remain, with a couple of new features added to complete the feature set. It still feels familiar and easy to use. Better Auto Enhance The improved Auto Enhance feature enables you to tap once for immediate improvement to any photo. It all happens in the background, but works much better now. Under your changes At any point you can revert back to the original and remove any changes you have made. This will give you the confidence to be more daring with your edits. Perfect brilliance The new…

Not only has it been visually improved to be easier to read, Apple News has also been enhanced to offer customised news from the sources you enjoy. 1 Choose your favourites Tap the Favourites icon at the bottom to make sure that the sources you like most are listed. Now tap the bell icon in the top left-hand corner to proceed. 2 Select the notifications Tap the sites that you want to receive breaking news from. Any site that is enabled will send notifications as appropriate. 3 Timely news alerts The alerts appear on your lock screen as soon as an event occurs. They always offer an accurate description of what’s happened, but you can tap each to read the full story.…

Select a scene Scenes can also be added to the home page to let you change the entire mood with just one tap. The Home app conveniently adjusts to each type of accessory. Your accessories All of your favourite accessories can be added to the home page of the Home app to speed up control. Tap and hold each to use the advanced options. Room by room The app is capable of understanding each room in your house based on the choices you have made. You have multiple choices to help you control your smart home. Quick edits You can make necessary changes to the Home app’s list of favoured items at any time to ensure that it mirrors the changing state of the smart technology in your home. Automate…

If your image isn’t too damaged and you just want to give it a bit of a makeover, you can use Photos’ built-in filters to make some quick adjustments to the colour in your image. For example, you can give your photos a much more retro look by simply adding the Instant filter, or you can improve an older, more damaged photo by quickly making the whole thing a more consistent shade using black-and-white filter options. 1 Go retro There are a few different retro-style filters to choose from, so if you want to give your image the classic Seventies look you can choose something like Instant, Transfer or Process from the Filters menu for great results. 2 Go black and white If you don’t want to bother with the…

Music can enhance your iMovie productions by adding a particular mood, and it can also help link a series of clips together. iMovie comes with a Jingles folder that’s packed full of copyright-free music that you can use to improve your video productions. You can upload programmes that feature iMovie’s Jingles to your YouTube channel without breaking any copyright rules. However, you might feel that iMovie’s collection of royalty-free jingles are overused. Alternatively, you may want to add a favourite pop song to a wedding video but are worried about infringing the artist’s copyright. In this walkthrough we’ll show you how to use popular music tracks in your YouTube shows without breaching copyright. Step-by-step Enhance programmes with royalty-free music 1 Use a jingle The quickest and easiest way to…

No matter how good your video recording device is, the sound that it captures is likely to be inferior to the picture quality. If you record an interview using an on-camera mic then it may not be close enough to the subject, leading to a recording that suffers from distracting background noise. Fortunately, iMovie enables you to take control over your clip’s audio tracks. We’ll show you how to replace an interviewee’s inferior camera-recorded audio with sound captured from a separate (but closer) audio recorder. You’ll learn how to zoom in to a track’s audio waveform to see its peaks and troughs and then move it frame by frame so that the sound syncs perfectly with the interviewee’s mouth. Step-by-step Split, detach and sync sound tracks 1 Import assets…

Once you’ve spent time and effort shooting and editing your clips into a polished video production, you’ll be keen to share your work with family, friends or clients. You could export a high-quality Master File onto your desktop and send it to a friend via free file-sharing services such as WeTransfer, but this involves lots of time-consuming uploading and downloading for you (and the intended viewers of your movie). Alternatively you can set up Final Cut Pro X to export your movie to a size and codec that’s compatible with an Apple device such as an iPhone or iPad, so that it can be enjoyed on the move. We’ll show you how to export a movie in a mobile-friendly format so that you can sync it with your device via…

Customising your Mac’s operating system seems to be getting harder with each release. To its credit, Apple is beginning to open up more features to tweaking, but at the same time, it’s closing a lot of the back doors that third-party developers used to make their system add-ons and enhancements work. For anyone still not entirely satisfied with their Mac’s Dock though, there’s a solution that fortunately still works wonderfully. The uBar app ($20/£15 approx) is a one-stop solution for a Dock replacement and better window management. If you’re a Mac power user and you’re regularly running a lot of apps, each with a good few windows, this app might just make your life easier. Step-by-step Replace and enhance your Dock 1 Grab the app Fire up Safari and head…

Do you get along with your Mac’s trackpad? Does it do everything you want? Do you know all the tricks it is capable of performing? The default settings for the Mac’s trackpad might suit some people, but not everyone. Some users simply like their Mac set up one way, whereas others like it slightly different. If you head to the Trackpad settings in System Preferences there are numerous options and three tabs of gestures. Configuring them is easy – the hard part is remembering them! You might want to disable some gestures if there are too many, and you may find that a simpler trackpad is more useable. Some options are turned off by default and turning them on can be useful too. Step-by-step Choose the best trackpad gestures…

Most of the time you don’t need to be concerned about the sizes of files and folders on the disk. However, there are occasions when it does become important, such as when sharing things on the web, like files or photos, emailing them, or trying to copy them to a USB drive. If you drag a file or folder to a thumb drive, will it fit? If you share a photo online, will it be too large? It is useful to be able to see the sizes of files and folders in Finder windows, and it only takes a minute to configure it to show them. There are different ways to do this and we will look at them here. Configuring Finder to showcase the information you want is nice…

Siri is an extremely clever personal assistant and if you take the time to use it fully, you will benefit in a variety of ways. There are times, however, when Siri starts to lose the recognition of your voice and, if we are honest, the reasons for this are unclear. This will not be the end of the world though because there is an easy way to retrain Siri to understand your voice again by resetting what it has learnt so far in order to improve your usage in the future. There are many other ways to improve Siri recognition, but it is fair to say that it will improve the more you use it for the vast majority of people, and you should be able to speak naturally every…

Balancing the need for adequate mobile data and the costs such usage incurs is not easy, but there is an app that can help you check your data usage in real-time and extremely accurately. DataMan Next has been designed to offer a simple interface in which you can monitor all of the numbers you need to see, and it ensures that you do not fall victim of the charges that networks levy when you jump past your limit. Some providers will provide warnings when you get close to your limit, but others will still charge for extra usage and these charges can be excessively high. If you can monitor your usage without having to waste lots of time doing so, you will avoid any nasty surprising costs. Step-by-step Monitor your…

Presets If you are not confident in fully editing your image yourself with the various filters and effects that are on offer, Hypocam has a set of preset filters that you can easily apply to your image instead. The board On the board you can see what other users post, including other photographer’s black-and-white captures with stories and explanations. You’ll also find Hypocam updates too. Your own gallery Hypocam displays every image that you import and edit in one gallery, and from here you can export these creations to either your Camera Roll or share them straight to your social media accounts.…

Is it possible to disable the spell-check function across all of the apps in OS X on my Mac? Launch System Preferences by clicking on the Apple logo and selecting System Preferences. Click on the Keyboard icon. Select the Text tab and locate the Correct Spelling Automatically option. Uncheck this option and restart your Mac. I’m using a Windows keyboard with my Mac. How can I modify the keys so that pressing the Ctrl key is equal to pressing the Cmd key? Head into System Preferences and click on the Keyboard icon. Inside Keyboard preferences, select the Keyboard tab and then click on the Modifier Keys button. Use the pop-up menu to change the key shortcuts for your keyboard. My MacBook Pro wakes up around five seconds after being set…

Key features HD streaming • Two-way control • 300-degree tilt and pan motion • Cloud video storage Learn more motorolastore.co.uk Available from motorolastore.co.uk Home security is no laughing matter, and when it comes to leaving your home for any amount of time, truth be told, you need to know your stuff is safe. With a security monitor such as the Motorola Focus85 you aren’t limited to simply placing your camera in a static position and having that one viewpoint. Instead, you have a 300-degree, appoperated, pan-and-tilt functioning room monitor that will provide you with an overview of the room, as well as two-way audio communication and even a room temperature monitor. Getting started with the Focus85 is a bit of an arduous task. Plug in to the mains and connect…

Roland Waddilove Mac expert Roland is patiently waiting for macOS Sierra to officially drop, and in the meantime wrote our Get ready for macOS Sierra feature on page 44. Dave Clews This month Dave gives you part two of this mixing in Logic Pro X masterclass. Dave has worked on records by some of the world’s biggest artists, so a trip to page 38 is a must. Freddie Harrison Ex iCreate staff member Freddie shows you how to build your first website in 15 minutes using RapidWeaver. Sign up for the free trial and head to page 58 to get started! Facebook iCreateMagazine Twitter @iCreateMagazine Web icreatemagazine.com Email icreate@imagine-publishing.co.uk…

Apple expands Health portfolio with Gliimpse Apple’s commitment to growing its Health portfolio has gained even more traction with the acquisition of Gliimpse. The startup won’t be known to many, but it offers a credible way for users to generate a full picture of their health, which can then be shared with any medical professionals. In an interview with Fast Company, founder Anil Sethi has said he formed Gliimpse out of frustration of existing health records: “There’s no single Electronic Health Record that all physicians use. Worse, there isn’t even a common file format across a thousand plus systems.” From just that alone, Gliimpse seems to be a great fit for Apple’s Health app, especially considering the company’s intent on making users’ health and fitness data easily accessible. It’s…

Apple has made concerted efforts to make iOS 10 feel like a new experience, while continuing to concentrate on the stability and familiarity that has made it such as essential tool for so many people. Messages has received the most obvious updates, and in a world where rival messaging platforms offer stickers and a variety of personal features, this makes a lot of sense. We will detail all that is new in iOS 10, but it is fair to say that Messages now builds upon the hugely popular iMessage platform to keep kids and adults happy in equal measure. Siri, which has improved greatly in recent times, can now be leveraged by third-party apps, thus offering the potential to make it your preferred way to manage your phone when your…

In iOS 10, the Photos app has been improved in a variety of ways, but one of the most useful new features is the ability to find photos based on almost any search phrase you use. The only limit to the system is your imagination, and if you can throw off the limits you have been used to in the past, you should be able to find any photo you want no matter how old it is. We shall now give some examples of it in use. Be patient When you first upgrade to iOS 10, you will need to give the system some time to analyse all of your photo library so they can be searched accurately and instantly in the future using almost any phrase or term you…

Big text Apple has greatly increased the size of the text in the Apple Music app to make every function more obvious than previously. The interface is very clean and works perfectly. Your tracks Your downloaded tracks are now separated more obviously so that you can easily avoid costly data charges when playing music on the move. It serves locally stored tracks very well. Just for you The For You tab is designed to remove much of the complexity from the previous version and is designed to bring you closer to musicians you want to follow. The visuals remain Despite the larger-than-average text, album art is used where appropriate to add a splash of much-needed colour. The balance has been struck very well here. Stream any track Many of the…

Apple Pay has proved to be incredibly quick, highly secure and potentially a much better payment solution in physical stores than any other. It’s a sign of just how much thought Apple put into the system, and the way it works with the fingerprint sensor shows that the long-term plan has worked to perfection. The only omission, however, has been the ability to make payments on the web using Apple Pay, so to date we have had to put up with inputting a lot of personal information into multiple websites and sending card details to unknown servers. This has all changed in iOS 10. 1 The old system Historically you have had to check out in a fashion that takes time and will always require an account to make a…

In the modern day, digital photos have taken over – you probably have multiple backups of all your photos, including some that are printed, some that are stored on hard drives and some in the cloud. Keeping your photos safe and secure is really important… but what about those ancient snaps of family members that only exist as a hard copy? They’ve been battered, folded, scratched and damaged over the many years since they were developed. But don’t worry – all is not lost. Using Photos’ editing tools, we’ll be able to restore those old shots to their former glory, so that they can be backed up like your other shots in the best condition they’ve seen for years. Step-by-step Restore old images in Photos 1 Black & White control…

Pixelmator is one of the best creative tools available for the Mac, but thanks to the support for extensions that Apple has added to OS X in recent years, you no longer have to be inside the Pixelmator app to access the tools that the app provides. Photos now has two separate extensions from Pixelmator, including the Distort tool which has been available for a little while. Here, though, we are going to focus on the Retouch tool, which brings some of the powerful editing techniques of Pixelmator into Photos for the first time. While Photos already has a Retouch tool, which even features a basic version of the Clone tool, this extension makes the process much easier and more user-friendly. Step-by-step Retouch photos with Pixelmator’s extension 1 Enable Retouch…

Last issue, we explored the basics of mixing a track in Logic’s Mixer. Having covered the fundamentals of the mixer layout, volume and pan controls, mute and solo buttons and compression and EQ effects last time round, this month we’re concentrating on the various ways you can add effects to the tracks in your project. We’ll be looking at how to create sends and returns, use busses and add insert effects. If you missed last month’s issue, don’t worry – you’ll find a full Logic project file available from FileSilo (LPX Mixer Pt2). Otherwise we continue where we left off, with the rhythm track mixed, ready to add some effects to the guitar and keyboard tracks. Step-by-step Working with Logic’s Mixer 1 Unmute guitar At the end of Part…

Select the disk There may be one or more disk drives. Select the Mac’s internal disk drive, because that is where macOS will be installed, not an external USB disk. Click First Aid. Pick a partition The disk drive may have one partition, but it could have several. Select each OS X partition and click First Aid. Ignore the BOOTCAMP partition if you have one. View the results If you want to see detailed information about the checkup, click Show Details. The result of the scan is shown near the bottom and it says OK. Apply First Aid After selecting a disk or partition, click the First Aid button to scan it and check that everything is okay. If disk faults are found, they will be repaired. Check the space…

Old software might not be fully compatible with macOS, but many developers have been working on their software to ensure the latest version is fine. Update your apps to ensure that they will run without problems. 1 App updates Software downloaded from the Mac App Store can be updated by it. Your first task is to check for updates, so load the App Store and select the Updates tab. Click Update All. 2 Check your apps Check for updates for apps downloaded outside of the Mac App Store. There are different ways of doing this, and with SuperDuper! for example, there is an option on the menu. 3 Check the website For any apps not from the Mac App Store that do not check for updates, go to the developer’s…

Another method to see the size of files and folders is to use the Preview panel in Finder. You can also use Get Info to find folder sizes. 1 Preview items Go to the View menu and select Show Preview. A panel opens on the right and a thumbnail of the file or folder is displayed. Below is the size of the selected file or folder. 2 Get Info Folders can contain thousands of items. To find out how many and how big they are, select a folder in the Finder window and press Cmd+I. The information is in the panel.…

It seems like everything needs a username and password these days and remembering them for all the websites and services you use is impossible. Thankfully OS X can remember passwords for you and this is a useful feature, but it does not go far enough. If you want more features than the basic facilities that come with OS X, Dashlane offers many useful extras. Here we take a look at its ability to store usernames and passwords, and take a peak at just a few of the extra features you get that go beyond basic password storing. Download this free app from dashlane.com and install it. There are many installation screens and tutorials, so work through them and then you will be ready to try this guide. Step-by-step Save your…

Knowledge base Check your connections If you purchase the Monitor Network Connections add-on, you will be able to see exactly what is using your data on a daily basis. This is a must-have purchase if you believe that you should not be using as much data as the app is displaying, and it could solve many potential security problems as well. The percentage Dominating the main interface is a large percentage indicator that lets you know exactly how much of your allowance you have used. It’s always kept bang up to date. How long left? This indicator shows how long is left in the billing period, which is useful for judging if you will make it to the end of the month without extra charges. Wi-Fi usage The amount of…

The Calendar app enables us to remain organised in our day-to-day lives whether it’s at work, at home or in our spare time. But a calendar isn’t effective if it doesn’t work well for you. Maybe your working week starts on a Saturday and runs through to Wednesday or perhaps you’re flying from one place to the next all the time and you need a calendar that reflects your next destination. Did you know that Calendar in iOS is highly customisable? Whatever your needs, Calendar should have an option to cater for it. It will allow you to use colour coding, for instance, and will let you work using week numbers as well as by month. One thing’s for sure, a small amount of time delving into the Settings app…

Libratone Q Adapt £219/$TBC www.libratone.com These headphones aren’t available to buy until mid October, but we’ve had a sneak listen and couldn’t wait to include them. As part of Libratone’s aim of becoming more than just a Bluetooth speaker company, the Q Adapt range (which also includes a pair of Lightning-connected in-ears) was launched at IFA in early September. The wireless on-ears, priced enticingly at £219 – cheaper than other premium options – are built with quality materials yet still weigh only 200g and give you 20 hours of playback. The killer feature is adjustable noise cancellation, which you control via the Libratone app and decide how much noise you want to let in. Sound is powered by two 40mm neodymium drivers, which create a luxurious and well-rounded sound signature.…

In iOS 10, widgets have become much more accessible and can now even be viewed from the lock screen in an instant. The process for adding new widgets, viewing them and changing the order in which they are displayed is easier than ever. 1 A simple swipe When in the lock screen, swipe to the right to instantly display all of your active widgets. Now you don’t need to physically press the home button to access your apps. 2 The Today screen Swipe right on your first page of apps to access widgets. Any settings you change will be shown in both screens as they are effectively identical to each other. 3 More or less Some widgets offer a Show More or Show Less option in the top right-hand corner,…

Messages is now about much more than mere words thanks to a variety of animations and effects you can add to your outgoing communications. Apple has cleverly incorporated personal features that take over the entire screen when the message is received, but then disappear to leave you to deal with the important stuff. The system retains a sense of simplicity throughout while integrating these exciting new features, and it takes no time at all to learn how to use them. It’s great fun, intuitive and highly effective. 1 Activate the effects Tap in the text box and start typing to activate the blue up arrow icon. Now tap and hold it and a new screen will appear with a variety of animation options to choose from. 2 Use text effects…

Creating videos on a mobile has historically been time-consuming and complex at best, but in iOS 10 you can have your memories set in motion with no effort at all. 1 Create new folder Select some photos and then use the sharing icon at the top to add to an album. Select New Album and then give it a name of your choosing. Now open the album. 2 Add to Memories At the top of the Albums screen, tap the date line and then scroll down below the photos. Now tap Add to Memories and then hit the Memories icon at the bottom of the screen. 3 A created video When you tap the memory that relates to your album, you will see a video at the top. Tap play,…

Maps has undergone a raft of changes that makes it a seamless tool for getting anywhere in double-quick time, but it is the elegance of the in-route features that stands out and that will likely prove the most useful. You can now search for coffee, petrol and anything else you need during a journey and turn any emergency into a problem solved almost instantly. Maps just took another step towards competing with other solutions on level terms. We’ll show how the new features work here. 1 A planned route With the navigation screen displayed, you can tap the numbers at the bottom of the screen to bring up a variety of useful options. The entire system is built for ease of use. 3 Use the results The search results are…

The new Unsubscribe feature will save a huge amount of time if you regularly receive emails that get in the way of what you need to do. 1 A new option When you receive an email from a mail list, you will see a message at the top with a blue Unsubscribe link. Tap the link to deal with future messages. 2 One more step A small pane appears giving you the choice to Unsubscribe or Cancel. Tap Unsubscribe one more time to no longer receive mail from the source. 3 The email confirmation Go to All Mail and you should see a message included that shows your unsubscribe request. It will give all the details you need to be sure it was sent to the right place. 4 A…

When you watch a YouTube video you may have to sit through an advert first. Advert banners may also pop up during the programme. These appear because the videomaker has chosen to monetise their video, earning them a few pennies if someone clicks on a banner or watches an advert. Your video doesn’t have to be popular – you can add adverts as soon as it’s uploaded. 1 Monetise your video After uploading a video to YouTube, click on your user icon at the top right and choose Creator Studio. Go to the Video Manager link on the left and click on Videos. Click on the $ icon to the right of a video. 2 Choose advert type Click the Monetization label. Click the Monetize with ads switch. Tick the…

As most music makers will testify, there’s a real art to two very important areas of composition. Giving songs an effective introduction to kick things off and an equally effective outro to close things out isn’t easy, and is something even seasoned professionals wrestle with. For tracks that would seemingly jam on into infinity, a technique that became fashionable was to simply finish a song by turning the volume down. Although some might label it lazy, this trick is often the best fit for certain instances and GarageBand obliges with volume automation tools that are simple to master. We’ll look at how the perfect fade-out might be applied to a project, using techniques for making things sound less abrupt. Step-by-step Add a fade-out to a project 1 Begin at…

Once you’ve set up Final Cut Pro X to share a programme to iTunes using a mobile-compatible resolution and codec, you’ll then need to pop it onto your desired device. You can manually attach an iPhone to your Mac to transfer the movie via USB cable when you sync iTunes with your gadget. For a much faster and easier drag-and-drop sharing option, turn on the AirDrop feature in your mobile device’s Control Centre and activate AirDrop in your Mac’s Finder. 1 Find your exported file Open iTunes and go to Movies. Click the Home Videos option. Click My Movies and scroll down to find your mobile-friendly movie. Double-click to view the movie full screen and check its content. You’re now ready to transfer it. 2 Sync to mobile Plug your…

The First Aid function in Disk Utility checks the disk for certain types of errors and then fixes them. There used to be a Verify Disk Permissions button in the app, but now you must use a command in a Terminal window. 1 Open Terminal Open the Applications folder, select the Utilities sub-folder and double-click the Terminal app. This opens a window on the desktop into which you can type advanced commands. 2 Scan the disk At the command prompt, enter ‘sudo /usr/libexec/repair_ packages --repair --standardpkgs /’ and then enter your admin password. Nothing seems to happen, but wait a minute. 3 View the results If errors are displayed and repaired, run the command again. Sometimes it takes another run to clear all the permissions problems. If the disk is…

Whether you want to reinstall a fresh copy of OS X El Capitan or clean-install macOS Sierra, the method is exactly the same. Download it, clone the disk, boot from the clone, then run the installer. There are other ways, but this is both the simplest and the safest. A fresh install breathes life back into an old Mac and boosts the performance. It will run like new, which is great if you then want to upgrade El Capitan to Sierra or fresh-install Sierra. 1 Download the OS The current version of the Mac operating system is in the App Store. Click the Apps Made by Apple link. Right now that’s El Capitan, but soon it will be Sierra. Download it. 2 Quit the installer Whichever version of the OS…

If there’s one complaint about how the Mac’s OS handles productivity, it’s through window management. Running multiple windows and switching between them all quickly and accurately can be a pain. That’s where uBar can help, though. It groups similar windows together in the taskbar and even displays a preview of what they look like. With these two features, you’ll soon be managing multiple windows with ease. The only limit is how many different apps and windows your Mac can handle. 1 Group windows If an app you have running has more than two windows open, uBar will display the number of windows next to the app’s name. Clicking on the name will give you a choice of which window you want to show. 2 Hover to preview Instead of clicking…

When you need to change system settings, remember the search box in System Preferences. It is useful for finding the location of settings and for finding those you weren’t aware of. Enter ‘trackpad’ into the search box and the obvious item, Trackpad, is highlighted. However, Accessibility is also highlighted and there are additional settings to be found in that section. You might not have thought to look in there, but the search facility has found them. 1 Hidden trackpad settings Open System Preferences and click in the search box. Enter ‘trackpad’ and two items are highlighted – Trackpad and Accessibility. Click the feature you want in the menu below the search box, such as ‘Shake mouse pointer to locate’. 2 Accessibility settings There are two useful settings here and if…

We reviewed RapidWeaver 7 back in iCreate 162, but in case you missed it, here’s what you need to know. RapidWeaver picks up exactly where iWeb left off, giving you all the tools you need to make your own website, wrapped in a Mac app that’s easy to use but infinitely powerful. RapidWeaver has been around for some time now and the latest version – RapidWeaver 7 – keeps the app right at the cutting edge of modern web development. If you’ve ever wanted to make your own website but haven’t been sure where to start, now is your chance. Grab the app from realmacsoftware.com (it’ll set you back £75/$99, but a free trial is available) and follow along with the steps below. Step-by-step Create a website from scratch…

Facebook has changed the way its news feed algorithm works, which means you will now see more posts from friends and family and fewer from any pages you have Liked. This may suit a lot of people who want to use Facebook primarily to keep in touch with others, but it does make it harder to keep abreast of any important posts created by the services you follow. Thankfully, you can take back control and manually select whether or not you want a particular page to have priority. You can also delve a little deeper and be notified when something you want to see pops into a site’s feed. If you prefer to see what your pals are up to however, you may want to leave things as they are.…

Black-and-white images can sometimes be more striking than colour shots. Although it is possible to simply convert iPhone pictures into black and white in just a few editing clicks directly from the Camera Roll, Hypocam offers more control and accuracy for far more professional and artistic-looking images. It’s a completely free download too, so we think there’s no excuse not to give it a go. Hypocam either enables you to capture the image live in black and white or select an image from your iPhone’s Camera Roll to quickly convert it. Once you have your basic black-and-white conversion you can then edit the Exposure, Brightness, Shadows, Contrast and more for an impressively beautiful and dramatic picture. We’ll guide you through the process across the next two pages. Step-by-step Create impressive…

It’s likely that you will have a lot of entertainment sitting in iTunes but did you know that you can free it from the confines of your Mac and make use of your movies, TV shows, music and even photos on Apple TV? To do this, you need to use a feature called Home Sharing, which allows you to connect your devices on your own network without needing to be connected to iCloud. In order for it to work, you need your computer turned on and awake, the latest version of iTunes and the same Apple ID account across all of the devices. But from then on, it’s all rather straightforward as you’ll see over these pages when we walk you through the steps to enhanced viewing and listening pleasure.…

Sync Having the same set of data in two locations by copying the data from one device to another. Terminal The equivalent to the command line on a PC. Allows the Mac to run system commands, which alter how the system runs. Storage A measurement of the number of files you can store on a hard drive or on the cloud. Time Machine An Apple app that automatically backs up your data to an external hard drive every day. Memory RAM is the technical term for memory. It dictates how many applications and tasks that you can run simultaneously. Target Disk Mode A way of connecting two Macs together to transfer information, with one being treated as an external hard drive.…