Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i MacLife

I’ve worked in and covered the Apple space for over a decade. But for the first time in a long while, it feels like there’s real, legitimate unrest among the Mac community. In its quest to evolve and simplify the Mac, it feels like Apple has forgotten who wants the Mac, and why. Exhibit A: for the first time in about a decade, Consumer Reports decided it cannot recommend the latest MacBook Pro. While the new Touch Bar is a clever addition, Apple’s latest pro portables suffer from battery performance fluctuations wild enough that Consumer Reports couldn’t sign off on them (Apple has said it’s working with Consumer Reports to work out what happened). Making things more difficult is that the new MacBook Pro lost every kind of port except…

1 Dictate rather than type We’re great fans of Nuance Dragon (nuance.com), but don’t forget macOS has dictation built in, which you can enable in the Keyboard preferences pane. Invoke it by pressing ƒ twice. By default, voice recordings are sent to Apple’s server for transcription, which returns written words to your app; enable Enhanced Dictation if you prefer it to be done on your Mac. 2 Find special characters Holding down certain keys reveals variations on their character, but you need to know which offer this. Turn on “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar” in Keyboard preferences, click the new icon,pick “Show Emoji and Symbols” to reveal a grid of characters,then double-click one to type it in the app you’re using. Choose “Show Keyboard Viewer” to reveal…

One Person $9.99 per month If you haven’t got a partner or kids to share your music collection with, and you’re not a student, this is the Apple Music subscription for you. It provides you with access to all of the features we’ve mentioned already and plenty more that you’ll read about in detail over the next few pages. If the disproportionate cost of an individual subscription compared to a six-person family sub annoys you, read the money-saving advice just below, which can help you save a significant amount on a year’s subscription. Family $14.99 per month Up to six people in a family can get a more affordable rate than by signing up individually. Each member can play different music at the same time (individual subs play only on…

3 like any operating system, OS X and macOS will eventually slow down without the occasional reinstall every few years. Before going any further, if you haven’t upgraded to macOS Sierra, check whether your Mac can handle it – and if it can, upgrade now. MacBooks from late 2009, MacBook Pros from mid-2010, MacBook Airs from late 2010 and anything more recent can upgrade. Check Apple’s requirements at apple.co/2gztXnN. If you’ve already installed Sierra, it’s so new it should still be running at optimum performance, as Apple will have performed some routine housekeeping at the point of installation. Keep our walkthrough on reinstalling it stored for later reference, and follow the advice right for removing other unnecessary data. And always back up first! How to Re-install macOS 1 Recovery mode…

$2.99 Developer Crunchy Bagel, streaksworkout.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.2 or later The idea of this app is that it can help you with basic fitness by giving you simple exercises in a workout tailored to how much time you have available that day. You try to build your “streak” of consecutive workout days, and watch your improvement over time. You can already do the tracking parts of this with other apps (including the original Streaks app), but the convenience here is that the tracking and workout guides are all in one place, so it’s easier to keep up with. In practice, we’re not fans of the way the app actually works. You’re asked aspart of the setup to choose from a library of exercises which ones you’d like the…

Free (with IAP) Developer Henry Lee, patch.photos Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later If you’ve not made the leap to the iPhone 7 Plus yet, but are keen to achieve stunning portrait photos with blurred backgrounds, here’s an app that could help – Patch: Smart Portrait Editor. It’s simple: you open the app, you pick your picture, it helps you select the subject to stand out of the background, and then you can save the result to your Camera Roll. You won’t be able to edit the photo’s colors, crop it down to size, or do any of the things that we normally associate with photography apps, though. The auto-masking algorithm the app uses to detect what is the subjectand what is the background worked pleasantly well and only…

$2.99 Developer Play Pretend, playpretend.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 10 or later We’re jealous of this titular sous chef. Sure, he’s been banished from the kingdom, separated from his one true love and – horror of horrors, as any baker reading will appreciate – lost his recipe for a lighter-than-air meringue. But if he guzzles down macarons in excessive numbers, he’s gifted with an extra life rather than medical problems. Lucky jerk. Le Parker is a relatively simple outing that’s clearly indebted to genre greats such as Mario and Sonic. You gambol and jump through deliberately tricky levels more than slightly reminiscent of the blue hedgehog’s first outing, hooveringup sugary treats and exploring to find the pieces of kitchen equipment that will enable you to rebuild your career. They’re well hidden,…

Whether you’ve just moved to a new city, you’re looking to branch out of your usual social group, or you’re just shy about meeting strangers, there are some great socializing apps for kindling strictly platonic relationships. If you want to invite your neighbors to a house party or need a local bar recommendation, meet your virtual community bulletin board, Nextdoor (Free, iPhone). It’s like your Facebook feed, but only with people living around you. Your neighborhood is verified by comparing your bank card billing address, and every user is required to use full names when joining. The team behind Patook (Free, Universal) is so committed to platonic friendships that they’ve developed an Automatic Flirt Detection (AFD) algorithm that parses basic sentence structures, differentiating between “you are hot” and “the weather…

99¢ Developer Alexandre Minard, arwatchexperience.com Platform watchOS Requirements iOS 10 or later Marble Watchness is one of the latest mobile games that exclusively play on Apple Watch, and it’s unusual mostly because the game lacks support for the Digital Crown, which is the controller most used to date. Instead, players must tap on-screen arrows to direct a 3D marble around a free-floating maze, collecting colored balls along the way. The graphics are undeniably nice, and the game is appropriately challenging, especially for those withpudgier digits. We’re also giving bonus points to the developer for making the required iPhone app have some real utility – when launched, players can enter a nickname, reset game progress, or view rankings for others around the world. There’s even a catchy music score, which is…

$9.99 Developer Michael Fogleman, primitive.lol Requirements OS X 10.10 or later When talking in computer graphics terms, “primitives” are the simplest shapes a system can draw – circles, cubes, spheres and so on – from which more complex designs are constructed. 3D artists will be familiar with the concept, but photographers don’t usually think this way: our primitives are square pixels, and we just throw enough of them at the job for an acceptable level of dumb accuracy. Over the years, a lot of work has been done on how photographic images could be represented by primitives, not least for the purposes of file compression. Michael Fogleman, the science software engineer who wrote this app, has applied that kind of thinking to a new take on automatic painting. Import a…

99¢ Developer Alexander Zats, zats.io Requirements macOS 10.12 or later Photos is a great app, but we’ve all got a favorite editing package that doesn’t work as a Photos extension. However, with Photo Wormhole you can open just about any editing software from within Photos. Download it via the Mac App Store and install it via System Preferences > Extensions > Photos. The interface is uncomplicated, but it isn’t immediately obvious how to access the external editors; right-click or secondary-click with two fingers (weirdly, ≈+click doesn’t work) to see “Open with.” Hovering over this reveals the compatible software. Photo Wormhole recons > Photos. The interface is uncomplicated, but it isn’t immediately obvious how to access the external editors; right-click or secondary-click with two fingers (weirdly, ≈+click doesn’t work) to see “Open…

Apple’s airpods were introduced alongside the iPhone 7, and at first, they looked like just an accessory to soften the removal of the audio jack. Apple went to lengths to say they’re a particularly smart pair of wireless headphones, but they still looked like an answer to a practical question, rather than an amazing new appliance. Certainly, that’s what I thought. But I’m starting to change my mind. You can read our review of the AirPods on p64, though that’s a review of what they’re like now, and what I’ve come to realize is that they’re an important step on the road of things to come. The complete lack of wires and all-day battery life (with a bit of charging from their smart case) makes them an interface for your…

In January, Intel revealed models of its latest generation of processors, codenamed Kaby Lake, including models that will almost certainly find their way into future MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac minis (possibly even by the time you read this in the case of the desktops, though we expect it to take a little longer). Many of Intel’s recent releases have focused on battery life improvements, but Kaby Lake will offer similar battery life to existing chips in most cases. In terms of performance, it will be optimized for some specific tasks (including working with and viewing 4K video), but mostly you’re looking at a slightly faster version of what we have now. The biggest gains will probably be in Intel’s integrated graphics chips, which Apple relies on heavily in many…

Following a few years of tweaking OS X, Apple seems to have hit fast forward with the move to macOS Sierra. It’s been heavily influenced by iOS, with Siri, Apple Pay, and a clipboard across macOS and iOS devices, all of which look set to make us more productive than ever. It’s even got a new name, which adopts the conventions of Apple’s other operating systems. Many of the built-in tools, including Photos, Messages, and iTunes have been redesigned or blessed withpowerful new features, and there’s a new file system on the horizon, too. Back in issue 122 we looked at tips and tricks that help you get the most out of these new features – and plenty more besides – and this month we’re going to zero in on…

The latest operating system comes with an ever-evolving collection of apps that greatly add to your Mac’s total value. Many of them have gained helpful enhancements in Sierra, and new features, such as Siri, offer you fresh ways to work. Though the bundled apps and built-in features can each be used in isolation, some interact to save you time. Sierra detects new people and events in more apps than just Mail, and adds them to Calendar and Contacts if that behavior is enabled in the latter two apps’ General prefs. Let’s look at other fun and practical things it offers. Tweak the menu bar Previously you could move only some of the icons at the right end of the menu bar. In Sierra, by holding c you can drag almost…

The new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar puts contextual shortcuts at your fingertips without you having to recall key combos that trigger menu items. In the Keyboard prefs pane you can set the bar to display app-specific controls on the left and an initially collapsed Control Strip of system features on the right, or devote the bar to one orthe other; based on that setting, the next one down sets the bar to show app controls, the full Control Strip or numbered function keys when ƒ is held down. Click Customize Control Strip to set the shortcuts the strip contains. Tap the arrow button on the strip to switch between editing its short and expanded states. In the Keyboard pane’s Text tab, you can stop typing suggestions appearing in the bar…

Apple has made efforts to tidy iTunes’ interface, but you may notice the absence of useful features such as star ratings. Check out these ways to take control and make iTunes work better for you. 1 Buy Apple Music tracks Access to Apple Music tracks only lasts for as long as you pay, and only work in Apple software. To buy a track for ongoing access or to play it on another device that can use AAC-encoded tracks, put the pointer over the status area, click the ellipsis then choose Go To > Song in iTunes Store. On iOS, tap the Now Playing bar (or press firmly on it if your iPhone has 3D Touch), tap the ellipsis, Share Song, and then Copy. Switch to Safari, hold your finger on…

1 Before spending cash on upgrades, you need to know it’ll be money well spent. Slow-running Macs aren’t always hampered by overloaded processors – something you can’t upgrade, in any case. More often they have insufficient memory, or a hard drive that’s so full macOS can’t write cached files to disk. The exact reason for any slowdown will almost always be specific to your machine, so this is one occasion when turning to Google isn’t the best solution. Instead, use the tools we recommend here, or fire up Activity Manager (in the Utilities folder) and work through the various tabs until you’ve identified the bottleneck. Click the column headings to sort your active apps according to how many resources they’re using; for example, if any are hogging the CPU, check…

Reclaim disk space using Sierra’s built-in tools >>> Open About this Mac, click the Storage tab and then Manage… Click Review Files in the Reduce Clutter section and organize the results by Last Accessed date. Archive the oldest files to external media by clicking the magnifier that appears beside their names to reveal them in the Finder, andyou’ll be able to reclaim the space they occupied. If you no longer need them, click the x to delete them. (Don’t forget to empty the Trash afterwards.) The more free space you have, the better, as macOS needs to use some of it to cache data that it can’t store in RAM. Uninstall apps completely >>> Deleting an app from the Applications folder removes the executable, but can leave extra data and…

A flashcard app that’s worth remembering Free Developer Duolingo, tinycards.duolingo.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.2 or later Tinycards is the latest release from the team behind the popular (and also free) language learning app, Duolingo. Those familiar with Duolingo will find the interface reassuringly similar – colorful and easy to navigate. Tinycards is based on the age-old flashcard system of learning. Pick a subject (choose from trending, your own favorites or search), and you’ll be invited to level one. You’re presented with a visual icon card, tap to turn the card and reveal its description. You can turn the card repeatedly to commit the image and name to memory. Swipe the card away tomove on. After two or three cards, Tinycards will test you. You get a mix of multiple…

$1.99 Developer DigitalMasterpieces, digitalmasterpieces.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later You may not be a digital artist, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t experiment with the fun of digital art. There are tons of apps on the App Store that are geared toward turning your iPhone photography into pieces of digital artwork. One of the options we’re most impressed with is BeCasso. BeCasso is a neat app. It’s designed to create startlingly realistic digital art from any pictures you take or save on your iPhone. Using BeCasso couldn’t be easier. You choose an image, you select a couple of filters, and the app does all the heavy lifting. You can simulate watercolor, oil,or acrylic painting styles with BeCasso, and we had fun trying out all of them. We do…

$1.99 Developer Hyper Hippo Productions, hyperhippo.ca Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later For those that love them, words can be a truly joyful playground. Whether that’s a hard-fought game of Scrabble in which you manage to land “quixotic” just right across a triple-word multiplier, or cramming a crossword together so that your most audacious guess fits, word games are addictive. Phrase Shift tries to leverage this vowel-mangling obsession; essentially, it’s a crossword puzzle with just one clue. Each puzzle provides you with a set of words, which act as both clue and answer. You slide these words so that letters line up in a column to form the correctsolution. “Freezing cold water?” Time to line up the I, C, and E. Next. And that’s it. While there are 120…

Daily Habits Keep yourself in check Free Developer Denys Yevenko, xwavesoft.com Platform watchOS, Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Few things are harder to overcome than human nature, which is what often makes some of us lazy and prone to avoid work at any cost. While there is no shortage of apps to help overcome these kind of challenges, Daily Habits is one of the few with real potential to get a handle on your routines. This Universal app helps users organize, maintain, and track good habits, while kicking negative, more harmful ones to the curb. From the main iPhone and iPad app, you can create groups of users with similar interests, invite family and friends, share your progress, and keep in touch with in-app chat; there’s also Today view…

RESTA URANT PAL The free Calcbot app is great for calculations, but also makes a perfect meal companion. From your wrist, launch the app and tap option three, Tip Calc. CHECK PLEASE Next, use your finger to type the total amount of your breakfast, lunch, or dinner using the large numeric keypad; tap the red C key to clear. BIG TIPPER Use the Digital Crown to scroll down, add a generous tip in five-percent increments, split the bill with friends, and quickly see how much each person owes.…

$19.99 Developer It’s About Time Products, helloiat.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later One of the reasons that Instagram is so popular is that it makes editing images incredibly easy. You don’t have to go on a course or spend hours on YouTube learning how to use it; you just scroll through a few options, give your image a tweak and it’s ready to share. Artistry Photo Pro tries to achieve the same thing in a desktop package with a little extra control. The first step is easy, after you’ve opened an image, you scroll through the options at the bottom of the screen until you find one that you like the look of. Once you’ve made your treatment selection, the controls for all the adjustments that have been applied to…

$19 Manufacturer Griffin, griffintechnology.com Features Bluetooth, playback controls, mic, USB The obvious audience for this accessory is iPhone 7 users with old headphones that they love: plug any headphones into the jack on this unit and they become Bluetooth cans. The iTrip Clip pairs with your iPhone (or any Bluetooth audio device) and then plays sound to whatever’s plugged into it. It has its own playback controls – including play/ pause, skip, and volume – and is powered by an internal battery that charges over micro-USB (an extra charger to carry, but it comes with a short cable). Sound quality is good, it’s really cheap, and even includes a mic for calls or Siri (you can clip it near your mouth). It’s also good for home audio or car stereo systems…

$99 Manufacturer Netatmo, netatmo.com Features 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz) Wi-Fi, iOS 8.1 or higher (iOS 9 for HomeKit integration) This unit monitors air quality, CO2 (but not carbon monoxide), temperature, noise, and humidity in a single room in your home. It connects to Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz band and is set up, controlled and measured using an iOS app. After the simple set-up process, you can get a quick reading from the device by touching the top of the cylinder – a pulsating light from red (bad) to green (excellent), will give you a “mood” reading. For exact measurements, use the app, which will also alert you should it record any unusual figures, such as high CO2 levels or low temperatures. The app is flexible and versatile – there are options for keeping…

jargon buster The Home app gives you the ability to define scenes, in which you specify settings for multiple accessories, enabling you to tap once to activate preset choices in an instant. You can even set a scene to activate as part of an automation. all together Once you’ve got an iPad or Apple TV set up as your Home Hub, you can invite other family members to share control of your devices too. 1 HomeKit apps Devices that support HomeKit can work together – and even show up in each other’s apps. This is Elgato’s Eve app, which we’re using to set up an Eve door sensor. However, the Elgato app can also see and control our Philips Hue lights as well. 2 Room to room Apple’s Home app…

REQUIRES Hazel 4 you will learn How to build rules in Hazel, in order to automate tidying up your Mac’s files IT WILL TAK E 30 minutes quick tip Hazel performs actions within seconds of files appearing in monitored folders. You can turn Hazel off, though, to temporarily revert to manually sorting the contents of folders. Apple’s trying quite hard to nudge everyone towards storing their data on iCloud Drive. The problem is that you only get 5GB of iCloud storage for free, which is shared among many of its services, not just iCloud Drive. So managing the files you keep on your Mac – and in cloud storage services generally – is definitely a smart idea. There are, of course, pieces of software that will check through your Mac’s…

REQUIRES RapidWeaver 7, your own website hosting space you will learn How to publish your site to the web IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes part 5 of 5 missed an issue? Visit myfavorite magazines.com to order! ru le your domain It’s sensible to buy a domain and hosting space; cats.com looks better than somedomain.com/ users/21414/files/cats. Since Apple canned the MobileMe service and its website hosting capability a few years ago, RapidWeaver’s publishing options have centered around FTP (File Transfer Protocol), which is a way to quickly transfer files. To use FTP, you’ll need to get the appropriate login FTP server type details (FTP, SFTP or FTPS) from your web hosting provider. FTP access to your website’s storage is protected with a username and a password. You don’t need a separate…

REQUIRES Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint you will learn How to use file storage options in Microsoft’s iOS Office apps IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes One of the key requirements of an office package is that it’s flexible with document organization. Apple’s iWork iOS apps technically allow you to edit and move documents between cloud storage providers, but it’s not that flexible. If you want easy access to documents, you’re driven towards storing them all in iCloud Drive. In contrast, Microsoft’s Office apps – Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – are far more forgiving. All three apps enable you to link into a wide range of cloud-based solutions, putting you in charge when it comes to choosing where to store documents. You can also easily choose to store documents offline on…

REQUIRES iMovie, some fun and active clips you will learn How to add cutaways, split screen and picture-inpicture effects IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes When using iMovie on an iPad it’s a simple matter to drag-and-drop the best parts of your raw footage into the timeline and then trim them for a tighter cut. You can easily swap the running order of each clip in the non-linear timeline to tell a story more clearly. This results in a series of consecutive clips that you can share easily with family and friends to a range of social media sites. deploying iMovie’s more advanced editing features you can make your iPad-edited movie stand out from the crowd. Here we’ll demonstrate how iMovie’s advanced editing tools and techniques enable you to apply more…

I read with much interest your article on email encryption in issues #121 and #122. The step-bystep instructions are very useful for those who never set up email encryption or know about digital certificates. I would like to recommend that in a future issue, you also write an article on how to do this with a CA (certificate authority) such as Comodo. They provide free certificates, and the benefit is that the recipient of digitally signed email can see that the certificate is valid the first time they received such email – i.e. no need to trust a self-signed certificate beforehand. Charles S. Thanks for the suggestion, Charles! There are big conveniences in using a certificate authority for signing your emails, but they also introduce risk: they’re vulnerable to “man-in-the-middle”…

More thaN any other tech company, Apple is not afraid to break up legacy formats and face public blowback. It helped kill Flash, the CD-ROM drive, and with the new Retina MacBook having only USB-C, it’s only a matter of time before old USB inputs disappear. For its next magic trick, I’d like to see Apple make our old email protocol disappear. As a public figure, every day I worry that my email will be hacked. And with good reason – email is a shockingly unsafe way to send a message to someone. Although it’s usually encrypted in transit through TLS, you can’t count on it – and it’s still vulnerable while stored on a server. If you use a webmailbased service like Gmail, that information can be subpoenaed by…

Photos Photos boasts clever facial recognition, plus object and scene detection and the ability to search by name. Memories revisits photos based on criteria such as event, location or people, and can play them as slideshows. There are new albums for special photo types taken on iOS devices, including depth-effect portraits from iPhone 7 Plus. Siri Access Siri through the menu bar, its Dock icon, or by holding c+Spacebar. It doesn’t work with the “Hey Siri” command like iOS because, as Phil Schiller commented, Macs go to sleep and don’t feature the hardware they’d need to hear you while snoozing. It goes beyond answering simple weather queries, too, to find files, send messages, navigate your notifications, and more. Optimized Storage If you’re running out of storage, this feature suggests settings…

Enable secondary click Though there’s only one discernible button on Apple’s trackpads and mice, you can perform a right-click (known as a secondary click) to access contextual menus – enable it in System Preferences. You can turn it on for both kinds of device separately in the Mouse and Trackpad panes. Trackpads offer an alternative option of pressing either their bottomleft or bottom-right corner for a secondary click. Desktop navigation Swipe left or right between desktops and fullscreen apps using four fingers on a trackpador two fingers on a Magic Mouse. Double-tap (lightly) with two fingers on a Magic Mouse or swipe upwards with four fingers on a trackpad to open Mission Control and switch to another window. Turn on App Exposé in the Trackpad pane and you’ll find that…

For all the changes Apple has made in Sierra, there are still plenty of ways you can enhance the system and its bundled apps. A dedicated army of thirdparty app developers tirelessly works on utilities and tools that either plug the gaps in macOS’s feature list, or improve upon what it already offers. Here’s our pick of four essential utilities, as well as a walkthrough showing you how you can define your own keyboard shortcuts to invoke menu items; this technique also enables you to change key combos that an app’s developer has picked if you find them difficult to remember. HyperDock $9.99 bahoom.com This tool brings one of Windows 10’s best features to macOS: window previews when you place the pointer over an app’s Dock icon. HyperDock shows a…

T he time when you had to decide which music to spend your hardearned cash on are a thing of the past. Apple Music gives you access to so many options that you’ll always have something fresh and exciting to play, for no more each month than you mighthave paid for each album in the past. Apple Music provides recommendations tailored to your individual tastes, and you can search its millions of tracks manually too, add them to playlists, and download them to play offline. Not everything available from the iTunes Store or rival services is on Apple Music – some artists have resisted streaming services. Nevertheless, new releases are often available on day one or soon after. Even Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, initially said to “never be…

Notion Email Intelligence Terrible name, pretty good app Free Developer Notion AI, notion.ai Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Email is a pain in the apps. It’s hard to find something that suits your specifications – perhaps you use it for keeping in touch with family, or for your job, or for running a business, but whatever you use it for, it always feels like the app is optimized for someone else. Notion Email Intelligence apparently “learns your behavior” to tailor its service to you. It certainly works pretty damn well, especially for something that’s free. The main draw of the app is that it uses artificial intelligence to figure out who and what is important to you. It’s not entirely obvious how it does it, but after 25-60…

99¢ Developer Performance Audio, performanceaudio.com Platform watchOS, Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Watch apps can be a bit on the gimmicky side, often with little utility. For musicians or audio engineers, the latest 3.1 update to Performance Audio’s Decibel Meter Pro could very well offer enough function. In addition to being able to measure sound levels on your iPhone or iPad, Decibel Meter Pro now includes Apple Watch support, allowing smartwatch owners to view the average sensitivity of nearby audio right from the wrist. The app features the same slickgraphics found in the main app, which faithfully replicates real audio meters. Unfortunately, the microphone built into Apple Watch isn’t the one used to measure surrounding audio levels – you’ll need to pull out the connected iPhone and unlock the…

$159 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Features Lightning cable for charging, beamforming microphones, optical sensors and motion accelerometers Apple’s previous forays into headphones managed to elicit mockery from many people, so let’s make a couple of things clear about its new wireless AirPods right away: they sound great, and they’re surprisingly comfortable to wear for a lengthy duration, even if their visual similarity to cabled EarPods may make you think otherwise. Unlike EarPods, though, they didn’t fall out of our ears even once in weeks of testing, though we can’t account for variations in ear shapes. The EarPods that come with the iPhone sound too muffled and lack clarity, so we use them only as a last resort. AirPods, however, are delightful, giving good output with our iPhone set to 50 percent…

$9.99 Manufacturer Regular SIA, laterapp.co Requirements iOS 10.10 or later, 64-bit processor Later is a Mac reminders app that lives in the menu bar and strips away complexity. Instead of requiring users to choose a specific day and time to be reminded about each new entry, Later offers nine one-click presets. There are choices such as 3 Hours Later, This Afternoon, This Evening, This Weekend, and Next Week, as well as the option to choose a specific date. There’s the option to use ç shortcuts to select presets, and record a shortcut to add new reminders without the mouse. Reminders automatically sync to other Macs via iCloud, as well as a free iPhone app that offers the same simplicity. The first preset can be configured so “later today” means anywhere…

$20 Developer Realmac Software, realmacsoftware.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later Squash is designed to optimize, convert and/or rename image files for emailing or uploading to websites and social media, and it does so exceptionally well. And it’s fun to use, too. Using Squash is simple. Just drag the file or files you want to optimize over the app window and it’ll start crunching. It can compress JPEG and PNG images to make them dramatically smaller with no loss of visual quality, and you can adjust the level of compression to make it more or less aggressive in the app preferences or in your Mac’s Touch Bar. There’s an option to strip metadata from JPEGs. Squash can convert files too: PSD, RAW, CR2, and TIFFs become compressed JPEGs without you…

1 Belkin WeMo Switch $40 belkin.com Belkin’s WeMo is one of the most popular smart plugs currently available, and there’s a second model for $50 that can monitor and analyze your energy usage too. The WeMo is compatible with the Nest thermostat and Amazon Echo – but, sadly, there’s no support for Apple’s HomeKit yet. 2 Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit $250 samsung.com 2 This Starter Pack includes a smart outlet, a motion sensor, and two multipurpose sensors, along with a central hub that links them. The hub also enables you to add compatible cameras, locks, alarms, and more from the likes of Yale and Honeywell. 3 D-Link Wi-Fi Smart Motion Sensor $35 dlink.com The Wi-Fi Motion Sensor is a simple and affordable way to monitor a single room, or…

REQUIRES macOS Sierra, internet connection, Apple ID, third-party widgets you will learn How to add and manage widgets using macOS’s Today view settings IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes Screen Corner If you find it hard to hit Notification Center’s menu-bar icon, try dragging your pointer to a hot corner. Open Mission Control in System Prefs, click Hot Corners, choose a corner menu and select Notification Center. The big revamp to Notification Center in iOS 8 proved very popular, enabling users to use the Today view to see regularly accessed information, and add widgets to customize the experience. The Today view made its way into OS X (now macOS) in 10.10 Yosemite in 2014, providing at-a-glance views of calendar events, reminders, weather forecasts, stock prices, and more. Although developers have been…

REQUIRES A text editor or a Markdownfriendly app you will learn How Markdown speeds up all kinds of writing IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes MArkdown’s creation Everything you need to know about Markdown’s origins and syntax is at Daring Fireball – see bit.ly/2eWCGSG. If you’ve ever looked at, written, or edited HTML, you’ll know that while it’s fairly straightforward it can also get horribly messy-looking, even when you’ve created a style sheet to separate out the formatting for its content. For example, for a numbered list you’d have something like this: Best Macs ever MacBook Pro with Retina display New MacBook Power Macintosh Wouldn’t it be better if you could just type this: Best Macs Ever 1. MacBook Pro with Retina display 2. New MacBook 3. Power Macintosh for the…

REQUIRES iPhone, iTunes (optional) you will learn How to use storage settings in iOS itself, as well as in iTunes IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes No matter what capacity iPhone you have, there will come a time when you’ll find it’s running out of storage space. The good news is that you can clear apps, photos, videos, and other items off your device at any time. Deleting an app Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage and tap Manage Storage (under Storage heading). Your installed apps are listed in descending order of size. Tap one to see how much space the app itself takes up and how much is being used to store its data and documents; tap Delete App if you wish to remove it. You…