Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2023 i MacFormat

Scan here to get the latest tech news in your inbox! For months, rumours circulated that this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference would be one of Apple’s biggest – and so it proved to be. Not only did the company unveil brand new versions of its major operating systems – step forward macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and watchOS 10 – but it also had a few hardware surprises up its sleeve. Of these, the most popular is likely to be the new MacBook Air. Now available with a 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, it finally puts Apple’s big screen laptops back within reach of the rest of us – which is fantastic news given that the 16-inch MacBook Pro has become increasingly expensive over the last few years. The new…

T this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was packed with incredible hardware – but you don’t have to spend a fortune to get some great new features. In fact almost all of them will be coming your way for free! That’s because alongside the flashy new Vision Pro, super-powerful Mac Studio and Mac Pro and the ever so delicious 15-inch MacBook Air, Apple also unveiled its next big operating system updates: namely macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and watchOS 10. Plus a ton of Audio and Home improvements, all of which will be available later this year. One of the biggest additions across the board is Journal, a new journalling app which enables you to log your favourite moments from your day with supporting photos, videos and music…

For decades, Apple’s business model was almost exclusively based on one-off sales of high-cost products. Firstly Macs, then later iPods, iPhones, iPads and so on. Sure, the company wanted you to come back and upgrade your Mac, but that might only happen a few years down the line. Similarly, most people did not, and still do not, buy a new iPhone annually. In addition, Apple’s software products tended to require a significant one-off payment. It wasn’t that long ago they even charged users to upgrade to the latest Mac operating system! Services have become an increasingly important part of Apple’s business in recent years, enabling the company to keeps generating revenue from customers who are not buying new Macs or iPhones. We’ve seen the introduction of Apple Music, Apple TV+…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add useful Actions to Finder YOU’LL NEED macOS 12 or later macOS is full of useful things, but it’s not always obvious where they are. For example, one of the really cool features in Finder is tucked away in the Ctrl-click menu under Quick Actions. Here you’ll find automations to turn photos into PDFs, to open PDFs in Markup mode and to change photos from one format to another, and you can also add your own. Creating automations used to be the job of Automator, which was brilliant but pretty intimidating to newcomers. The Shortcuts app, introduced in macOS Monterey, is much friendlier – but, as we’ll discover, it’s still more than capable of doing some clever and useful things.…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use The Magic Highlighter to emphasise words on a web page YOU’LL NEED The Magic Highlighter (£1.99), macOS 10.14 or later It’s so good that you could end up ditching the familiar Cmd+F shortcut When you use a search engine, it’s easy enough to find web pages that purport to contain your search terms. But actually locating those terms within the page you’ve opened? That can be trickier, and often has you desperately reaching for the Cmd+F keyboard shortcut after a bunch of fruitless scrolling. It’s extra hassle when things really should be easier. Cue The Magic Highlighter. This Safari extension automatically highlights your search terms on any page found through search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, making it…

With the weekly shop costing more than a car and everything from energy to entertainment suppliers charging eye-watering prices, many of us are choosing to hang on to our Macs for a little bit longer. And that’s a wise choice, because with a little bit of TLC, Macs can last for a very long time. With some Macs, inexpensive hardware upgrades can deliver a serious speed boost – and with all Macs, a bit of tinkering and a few alternative apps can make a massive difference too. It’s important to be realistic, of course. macOS Ventura won’t run on a Power Mac G4 and you won’t get M2-beating performance from the 667MHz processor of a 2006 aluminium MacBook Pro. But pretty much any Mac of relatively recent vintage can be…

You can easily switch between different Macs on the fly VERDICT Nearly half the price of Apple’s full-size Magic Keyboard, and nearly just as good. ★★★★★ ✚ Great typing feel ✚ Switchable wireless ✚ Fantastic battery life ✚ A bit of a steal Apple’s Magic Keyboard is a brilliant wireless option for typists wanting the best feel possible, but at £99 for even the entry-level model, it’s far from affordable. Cherry’s KW 9100 Slim for Mac offers much the same package, for £39 less. On paper, it doesn’t feel like anything obvious has been sacrificed, either. If anything, you get more bang for your buck. A full-size keyboard, the KW 9100 Slim for Mac features 13 extra function keys along the top, there’s a magnetic support bar included, which allows…

Each transmitter has on-board storage for up to seven hours of audio VERDICT An elegant and userfriendly way to capture high-quality sound for video, podcasts and more. ★★★★★ ✚ Simple setup ✚ Superb results ✚ Great connectivity options ✚ Useful accessories While the video capabilities of iPhones and digital cameras have improved dramatically in recent years, their audio performance remains a distant second. With so many people creating and broadcasting video content, a dedicated wireless microphone is an essential tool for creating a high-quality end product. AnkerWork’s M650 is designed to work with essentially all your devices and take the hassle out of recording sound, mainly though not exclusively, for video. It bears a passing resemblance to a beefed-up pair of earbuds, with a USB-C charging case that houses two…

You know how some people want to bake in the sun, others want to splash about in the rain, and still more are only truly happy when their locale looks like it would suit penguins? Weather apps are like that – personal things, designed to suit individuals. Every app on test is objectively good. We liked Tomorrow’s activities, the Met Office’s live forecast, WeatherPro’s geekiness, and Hello Weather’s vibrant design. Apple deserves praise, too, for iterating on its built-in Weather and creating something that now feels like an app you’d want to use, rather than just because it’s there and free. CARROT Weather, though, sits above every other app in almost every way. It’s better designed. There are loads of settings. You can make custom layouts. And it’s fun –…

Free, offers IAPs (requires £4.99/month Netflix subscription) FROM layashorizon.com NEEDS iOS 15 or later; device needs A12 Bionic chip or later VERDICT Laya’s Horizon is a gorgeous, soothing game that’s quick to learn and easy to love. ★★★★★ +Fast, fluid gameplay +So much to explore +Easy to learn +Relaxing and easygoing Laya’s Horizon comes from the same developer as Alto’s Adventure, and the effervescent momentum that made that title such a hit courses through the veins of its latest effort. It’s swift, fun, and beautiful to behold, and a welcome antidote if you’re sick of high-pressure, high-intensity mobile games. Laya’s Horizon requires a Netflix subscription but is included in the membership price. Any paid Netflix account (even the cheapest £4.99 per month option) includes the game. Obviously, that makes it…

EXPECTED NOV 2023 UPDATED APR 2021 iMac From £1,399 Ever since the Bondi Blue iMac debuted in 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards for design and performance. The current 24in model is certainly Apple’s finest yet – thanks to its 4.5K (4480x2520) Retina display and the Apple-designed M1 chip, which is available with either an 8-core CPU/7-core GPU at the entry-level, or an 8-core CPU/8-core GPU on the mid-range and top-tier versions. All models come with 8GB of memory as standard (upgradeable to 16GB), with solid-state drive (SSD) storage ranging from 256GB on the entry-level and mid-range versions to 512GB on the top tier, although you can add more – up to 1TB on the entry-level and up to 2TB on the mid-range and top-tier models if…

There was speculation before Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that this year’s event could be the biggest in years, and so it proved to be. In a jam-packed show, Apple revealed an enormous range of new products, from updated Macs and a ground-breaking mixed reality headset, dubbed the Vision Pro, to major updates of the company’s operating systems as well an all-new one: visionOS. But it was the Vision Pro that generated the biggest buzz. Combing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (AR) experiences in a single device, it marks Apple’s first major new entry into a product category since it introduced the Apple Watch in 2014 and could yet usher in an era of what Apple calls ‘spatial computing’. Its demo showed the headset being put to all kinds…

Reality check The final piece of the puzzle is the Vision Pro’s Digital Crown. Like an oversized version of the one found on the Apple Watch, the Digital Crown enables you to adjust the level of immersion offered by the Vision Pro – enabling you to switch between augmented reality (where you can see the real world overlaid with the 3D visionOS interface and the apps you’re using) to full virtual reality where the outside world fades away – for more info, see ‘Our first impressions’ on the right. During its presentation, Apple showed off all kinds of use cases – from productivity to gaming to FaceTime calls (where visionOS creates an uncanny valley-like Digital Persona of you), to 3D photo and video recording – adding a whole new sense…

Sonoma, named after a city in California’s wine-making region, isn’t a radical overhaul of macOS. Instead, it brings new features to the Finder and existing apps. There are new reactions in video chats that can be triggered with a gesture, you can share Safari passwords and passkeys with a family group and, for privacy, Safari locks Private Browsing windows when you’re not using them, and prevents known trackers from loading and removes URL trackers. You can also websites in Safari to the Dock. When opened from there they look more app-like, with a simplified toolbar. But what else is new? Let’s take a look… Widgets on desktop The way macOS uses Widgets is to change. Instead of being restricted to the Notifications Centre, you can now drag them onto your…

WatchOS 10 adds many new features but also rethinks how you should engage with your Apple Watch. There’s now a greater emphasis on sharing info as quickly and conveniently as possible, letting you perform multiple tasks without spending lots of time scrolling, tapping and squinting at a small screen. That said, much of the redesign takes into account the larger displays of more recent models, notably the Apple Watch Ultra. Apple is also ditching age-old features such as the Dock in favour of fresh offerings such as relevant widgets. The result is a device more useful and usable than before. New ways to navigate Navigation has been simplified. Rotate the Digital Crown to move through Home Screen apps, cycle between multiple, clearly defined tabs and access the new Smart Stacks.…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Outlook for Mac to manage your email YOU’LL NEED Outlook for Mac, macOS 11 or later Microsoft’s Outlook has had something of a chequered history on the Mac. At various times it’s been a useful option for business users who rely on Microsoft’s Office suite, a reasonable alternative to Apple’s Mail, and an application that felt like the very poor relation of its Windows version and was best avoided. Since its overhaul a few years ago, however, it’s been a serious contender for the best email application for both business and personal use. And that position was bolstered earlier this year when Microsoft announced Outlook for Mac could be downloaded and used completely free of charge and would no…

Prepare an internal drive for recycling Q Howshould a friend dispose of his old iMac, to ensure that there’s no data available from it when it goes for recycling? by ROY MILLINGTON A Beforehe starts cleaning its internal storage, there’s a list of essential tasks to work through once that Mac has been thoroughly backed up and its contents preserved reliably. Apple silicon Macs and those with T2 chips can do those quickly and cleanly using the Erase All Content and Settings feature in System Settings > General > Transfer or Reset, but they have to be performed manually on older models. First disable Find My Mac and Activation Lock, and deauthorise it for iTunes. Next sign out of iCloud and iMessage. Disable any firmware password, reset the NVRAM, unpair…

Apple first launched Time Machine15 years ago in an attempt to make it as easy as possible for Mac users to back up regularly, and be able to restore anything from a single file to their entire Mac with the minimum of fuss. Time Machine was launched alongside a neat piece of Apple hardware known as Time Capsule, which combined an AirPort router and a hard drive. The idea was that you would use the networked hard drive with Time Machine to back up portable Macs wirelessly. Time Capsule was discontinued in 2018, but Time Machine lives on and was overhauled following the introduction of the Apple File System (APFS) in macOS Sierra. You can use any locally connected hard drive or SSD as a destination for Time Machine backups. You…

Handwriting can be turned into editable text using OCR VERDICT It does everything it claims to do, but is there enough here to justify the price? ★★★✩✩ ✚ Reusable paper ✚ Scan notes to cloud - Can do most of this with a biro, jotter and iPhone camera/scanner - Notepads are far cheaper The paperless office hasn’t arrived. Sure, lots of documents have gone digital. We can fill in and even sign PDF forms, keep digital diaries, calendars and address books, access instruction manuals online instead of getting printed versions and more. But we all need to make handwritten notes every now and then. That’s where Rocketbook Pro comes in. Available in A5 and A4 sizes and Sage Green, Black and Coast Blue colours, this refillable vegan leather scratch-resistant hardcover…

Both front and rear cameras can be easily attached using the sticky pads supplied VERDICT A high-quality dash cam let down by some odd design choices, particularly when it comes to usability. ★★★★★ ✚ Quad HD+ video recording quality ✚ Safety camera alerts - Always-on display can be distracting - Iffy implementation Now that roads are busier than ever, an extra pair of eyes is always useful, especially when those eyes can alert you to incoming hazards while also recording real-time video – just in case the worst should happen. Those are good reasons for buying any dash cam, but Cobra’s SC 200D throws in some extras: iPhone connectivity via the free Drive Smarter app, plus safety camera alerts via a second iRadar app, though you may prefer to use…

Free (offers IAPs) FROM reincubate.com NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later/iOS 12 or later Camo Studio 2’s strongest feature is undoubtedly its focus on customisation When Camo Studio first launched, it showed you could get top-notch video output from your iPhone without the help of a webcam. Now that Apple has followed suit with Continuity Camera, is there any need to use Camo? Well, the app’s developer Reincubate believes there is, and it’s just launched Camo Studio 2 with a slate of new features to prove it. Let’s not beat around the bush: Camo Studio 2 is a superb webcam app that offers far more than Apple bundles into Continuity Camera. For one thing, Camo Studio 2 now works with any camera you can connect to your Mac, not just your…

And just like that, Apple is back! With a classic “One more thing” from Tim Cook at WWDC 2023, Apple is once again revolutionising personal computing. The Vision Pro has reignited the buzz about Apple that had died off of late. Not that it ever went anywhere really, but once Vision Pro was announced the Apple share price instantly jumped $3 (before settling back down a few days later) and the media couldn’t stop shouting about it. Clever Apple You can tell that the Vision Pro has been a long time in development simply by looking at how well it’s made and what it can do. It has emerged showing the sort of finesse and quality that you’d usually associate with the third version of a product. It does look…

The world’s biggest-selling laptop is now available in a whole new size with Apple revealing the MacBook Air 15-inch at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. While rumours before the event made all kind of rash claims about what a new MacBook Air might contain (M2 Pro, anyone?) in the end everyone got exactly what they were probably expecting, which is a MacBook Air 13-inch. But bigger. Luckily, the MacBook Air is the world’s biggest seller for a reason – and those reasons persist in the 15-inch model. The MacBook Air 15in has a six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio That means you get an Apple silicon M2 chip with an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU and up to 24GB of unified memory. Plus, a range of super-fast solid-state storage options…

Apple’s Vision Pro is easily the best piece of VR hardware I’ve ever worn, yet it still might fail. The key to tech success is not innovation alone. It needs to be: 1) attainable; 2) easy to use; 3) make sense to the average person; 4) have a purpose or solve a problem; and 5) innovate on what already exists. The Vision Pro wins on innovation. There has never been a mixed-reality headset like it. It takes the state of the art in AR and VR and, with a mix of bleeding-edge components and a surprisingly well-thought-out software platform, pushes it to new frontiers. It’s rare to find new, cutting-edge technology that works as effortlessly as the Vision Pro. It wins on ease of use for the same reason. Thanks…

6 > Maximum number of Pro Display XDRs the M2 Ultra’s display engine can support, enabling it to drive up to 100 million pixels. 22 > Number of streams of 8K ProRes 422 video that the M2 Ultra can play back at the same time. 30% > Increase in graphics performance in the M2 Ultra over the M1 Ultra – that’s because the new chip can be configured with up to 76 GPU cores – 12 more than before. 24 > Number of processor cores inside the M2 Ultra, comprising 16 high-performance cores and eight highefficiency cores. 134 billion > Number of transistors in the M2 Ultra – that’s 20 billion more than the M1 Ultra. 800GB/sec > Memory bandwidth of the M2 Ultra, which is twice that of the…

Apple and audio go together like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John! From the iPod and iTunes to AirPods and Apple Music, the company has proven revolutionary and shows no signs of slowing down. At WWDC, Apple unveiled features that take listening to another level. Aside from adding Collaborative Playlists and comprehensive info about the artists behind your favourite songs to Apple Music, there are goodies for AirPods, HomePod and CarPlay. Your viewing pleasure is being given a boost as well. Adaptive audio Adaptive Audio dynamically blends active noise cancellation (which removes unwanted background noise) with the transparency mode (the one that still allows you to hear outside sound). When on the go, your AirPods Pro will analyse your environment, reduce annoying sounds and adapt the audio to ensure you enjoy…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit Contact us › Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Master Apple shortcuts macOS › Cmd isthe Command key. › Alt orOpt isthe Option key. › Ctrl isthe Control key, also shown as ‘^’ in shortcuts in the menu bar. › The thick, outlined up arrow is the Shift key. › The thin, left arrow or outlined pointer with ‘X’ inside is the Delete key, which deletes to the left. Pressing the Function key (Fn) and the Delete key deletes to the right. ›The thin, right arrow key with a small vertical line at the end is the Tab key, which shifts the focus between some controls. iOS › A tap is a brief contact of (usually)…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to find music guides and set lists for your favourite artists and venues YOU’LL NEED Apple Music and Apple Maps Whether you fancy finding out who’s playing at your local music hotspot, or seeing when one of your favourite artists is on tour, Apple Music and Apple Maps can help – thanks to some handy new feature additions in macOS Ventura 13.4, iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5. Apple Music now comes with Set Lists, which are curated playlists of songs of currently touring artists, with links to venues and dates on their current tour. And Apple Maps contains Apple Music Guides (currently 44 in total), showcasing music genres and venues in major cities around the world, with links to relevant playlists,…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add musical Lock Screen widgets to iOS YOU’LL NEED LockPod (Free, offers IAPs), iOS 16 or later It just takes a few quick taps to create your first widget and load it on to your Lock Screen When iOS 16 debuted, it introduced a feature that let you add widgets to your device’s Lock Screen. But if you want to add anything more than a Now Playing widget for your music, you’re pretty stumped. Stumped, that is, unless you use LockPod. This handy little app lets you add your favourite tracks to your Lock Screen, whether that’s in the form of playlists, albums, radio stations or local content stored on your device. Getting started is extremely easy, and it just…

YOU WILL LEARN How solid-state drives store data, and the things to look out for when buying and using one SSDs offer a quieter, more reliable and faster way to read and write your data When you buy a new Mac, you can choose how much storage you want. Our advice? Don’t rush your decision. While opting for a higher capacity drive is going to cost you hundreds or, in some cases, thousands, making the correct, upfront choice will determine how useful your Mac will be in the future. One thing’s for sure, don’t bank on going larger later down the line! Not too long ago, the situation weighed less heavily on your wallet. The choice of high-capacity internal computer storage was generally limited to hard drives (highlymechanised devices which…

How much space is really free? Q My M1 Mac mini is running short of internal storage. With free space at a premium, the Finder and Disk Utility often differ on what they claim is available. Which should I believe? by DON PHILLIPS A If you need to know accurate figures for free or used disk space, trust those provided by Disk Utility, not the Finder, because of the way they obtain them. Select any disk or volume in Disk Utility, and the app gets a fresh estimate from macOS for each of the figures it displays. The Finder, on the other hand, merely tells you the last figures it was updated with, which could be from 10 or more minutes ago, and there’s no way you can force it…

Philips’ 16B1P3302D does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does so brilliantly VERDICT A superb external screen for notebooks. Plug and play simplicity, decent quality and a fair price. ★★★★✩ ✚ Plug and play ✚ Clear and well defined - No touchscreen - Could be brighter Philips’ 16B1P3302D isn’t a huge revision from the similar model we reviewed back in MF387. The only major change is that the new version has twin USB-C ports instead of the single socket offered by its predecessor. But as the older monitor was very well received, not much needed to change. Having a notebook to take away with you and use on the go is very convenient, but you might miss the screen space offered by your desktop’s two-monitor setup. Portable…

The sun is shining. You bound outside with glee. 20 minutes later, you’re soaked to the bone, having been surprised by a sneak attack from massive grey clouds full of unexpected rain. Honestly, you’ve only got yourself to blame: after all, your phone has a weather app. But is it the best one? That’s what we’re testing here: the finest the App Store has to offer in this field, to help you plan the day and figure out whether you’ll need to slap on the sunscreen, pick up your brolly, don some snowshoes, or grab your scarf and woolly hat. Notably, many weather apps go beyond forecasting. So we’ll also explore features such as activity recommendations, air quality data and customisation. One app here even lets you chat with an…

£49.99 FROM pixelmator.com NEEDS macOS 11 or later VERDICT Slick and highly capable, Pixelmator Pro is a user-friendly graphics powerhouse for the Mac. ★★★★★ +ML-powered tools +Slick and friendly interface +Templates genuinely useful +Affordably priced Pixelmator Pro has always positioned itself as a more userfriendly alternative to Photoshop and, since the release of version 3, that’s a more apt description than ever. In fact, while it lacks some of the Adobe app’s very advanced features that are of interest mainly to pro designers, it has some tools that Photoshop does not. Priced at £49.99 as a one-off purchase – something Adobe no longer offers – it’s remarkable value too. The app is slick and well designed, making use of your Mac’s GPU to keep things nice and snappy. As you’d…