Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i MacLife

I thoroughly enjoy making Mac|Life every month, but the only downside is the amount of time between me pressing the print button on deadline to the magazine landing in your hands. It’s a long wait. As a result, occasionally the things we write about aren’t quite as relevant as they were when we put pen to paper, so to speak. Case in point: this month would have been an ideal time to talk about the recent CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, but that was back in January, and although it still is as I write this, for you it’ll now be early March. So, the extensive CES feature that I was planning just wouldn’t make quite as much sense, so instead we’re focusing on some of the interesting…

IN EUROPE, IMPLEMENTATION of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) caused headaches for businesses and confusion for citizens. But the idea of protection for personal data was popular. In October, Tim Cook, speaking in Brussels, floated the idea of a US equivalent, stating: “We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law.” Cook’s theme, reflecting Apple’s aversion to the exploitation of personal data, was that users’ data was being traded for profit without benefit to them. It’s not a position that seemed calculated to win friends in big data, but when Time published an op–ed in January reiterating Cook’s views, data broking giant Acxiom backed his call for legislation. This hints at one reason why giant incumbents may welcome regulation: compliance burdens can pull up the…

I rarely feel compelled to write anyone with my comments, but after reading Matt’s March 2019 rant about the iPad Pro’s keyboard case, I couldn’t help but do so. I couldn’t disagree more with Matt’s opinion. In fact, I find the new keyboard case one of the best features of the new iPad Pro. It is perfectly slim, and the magnetic attachment (with front and back protection) provides a perfect balance of form and function. I find the viewing positions to be ideal and the simplistic design is exactly what I needed. To me, this keyboard case — along with the iPad’s new Face ID, Apple Pencil, improved screen size, and squared edges — makes this iPad Pro an absolute winner! As far as the price and color is concerned,…

FOCUS & EXPOSURE Tap on the viewfinder where you want the camera to focus. Now you can alter exposure: slide a finger up or down on the screen; the sun icon next to the yellow focus box indicates the exposure level. To lock both, hold a finger on the screen till AE/AF LOCK appears at the display’s top. Tap anywhere to unlock. AVOIDING SHAKE Tapping the on–screen shutter button can cause camera shake. To avoid this, you can take a shot by pressing either volume button — or even better, the volume buttons on headphones with inline volume controls. Bluetooth headphones with volume controls can act as a wireless shutter release. PRESERVE SETTINGS By default, the Camera app will reset its mode and other settings. Go to Settings > Camera…

MAIL HAS SOME useful Smart Mailboxes you can enable, such as Today. Tap Edit, put a check mark next to those you want to use, and tap Done. You can filter the contents of the current mailbox. Under the list of messages, tap the circle with three lines of decreasing size in it, then tap the filter description to the right to set criteria for messages, such as being unread or flagged, the account sent to, and with attachments, then tap Done. To turn off the filter, tap the circle. To jump to the top of the current mailbox, tap at the top–center of the column. Not receiving notifications of new messages in certain mailboxes, or are you being bombarded with them for every item. Here’s how to bring your…

STEP BACK IN TIME Accidentally closed a tab? In the tabs overview (or while viewing a page on iPad), hold a finger on the + to access a list of recently closed tabs, then tap the one you want to reopen it. To return to a page previously viewed in the current tab, hold a finger on the back arrow and choose from the list. MANAGE TABS QUICKLY Tap the tabs icon (the two overlapping squares) to see open tabs; tap one to view it. Turn an iPhone sideways to view as non–overlapping thumbnails — great for sifting through a lot of them. Hold a finger on the tabs icon for options to close the current tab or all tabs, or open a new regular or private tab. SEARCH FOR…

ALONGSIDE iOS 12, Apple introduced Shortcuts, an improved version of the Workflow app it acquired in 2017. If you want to learn more about this app, we published a dedicated guide in Mac|Life issue 147. The illustrated examples here are simple and show how this tool can make life with iOS even better. Clean up screenshots 1 RETRIEVE RECENT SCREENSHOTS Search for Get Latest Screenshots (or, if you prefer to explore the action library by browsing it, look in the Photos & Video category). Tap the action to add it to the shortcut. Tell it to get a sensibly low quantity — say, 20. 2 DECIDE ON WHAT TO DELETE Add the Choose from List action. Set its prompt to ‘Choose screenshots to delete’ and turn on its Select Multiple…

We in the magazine trade generally report on technology rather than invent it. But it was a 1753 article in The Scots Magazine (still published today) that proposed an electric telegraph. By 1816, Navy bosses were offered a working message transmit system, which they rejected as ‘wholly unnecessary’. Sadly for fans of sailors waving flags, telegraph makers persisted, and cables made the world a smaller place. Mechanical devices to convert text to and from electrical impulses proved unsatisfactory and were replaced by human Morse code operators, a rare case of workers taking robots’ jobs. Another Scottish invention was close behind: through the 20th century, millions of miles of Alexander Graham Bell’s patented twisted–pair copper wires enabled first the telephone and then, by chance, the internet. Nobody forgets the sound of…

MAKE IT SO Always about to be big, 3D printing is still pretty fiddly, but now quite feasible for plastic objects up to shoebox size with fused filament machines costing just a few hundred dollars. Some proponents, including HP, now see neighborhood print shops as a more likely future than a replicator on every desk, while it’s still unclear whether mass production by moulding and milling will ever be superseded. THE ANTI–SOCIAL NETWORK Familiar with the caption ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’ on social media pics? Predating Facebook, LinkedIn was conceived as a sort of Myspace for businesses, and fittingly ended up being bought by Microsoft. Arguably the most dystopian social network, LinkedIn’s prompts, demanding you rate others who haven’t asked, and the fear…

About $640 From D–Link, dlink.com Features Two cameras, Full HD, central hub, one–year cloud storage CONNECTIVITY D–Link’s cameras talk to a central hub hooked up to your router. This deals with streaming on demand and recording, either to SD card or USB drive, so your evidence is safe even if your internet connection goes down. DESIGN The individual IP65–rated cameras are smaller than Reolink’s whopper, with magnetic mounts that make them easy to remove and recharge. The battery is smaller than the opposition, but it’ll still last you up to six months. IMAGE QUALITY In live view and in recordings, the D–Link cameras do a great job, with a crisp image packed with detail; at night, the built–in infrared LEDs illuminate close surroundings but leave the distance a little dim.…

1 AUTOMATION If you’re a photo–fixing novice then you’ll love an app with automatic image–adjusting tools. If you shoot a series of shots on the same settings they may all suffer the same issue, so batch editing will be a huge timesaver. 2 LAYERS Alternatively, if you plan to composite images from different source photos into a single shot, then an app offering layers and masks is a must. 3 PRESETS Presets can produce a range of looks in one click. You can then get to grips with the app by manually tweaking a preset’s results. 4 FILE FORMATS All of our apps let you edit and share using the popular JPEG file format. However, apps that can edit raw files allow you to experiment with non–destructive editing that preserves…

iPhone $9.99; iPad $19.99 From Cultured Code, culturedcode.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 10.0 or later Things 3.8 is the latest version of one of the most popular productivity tools on iOS. Version 3.8 introduces a new Dark Mode and allows you to swap between light, dark, and black. You can also set it to switch automatically based on the brightness of your device’s screen. Since we last reviewed Things at version 3.4, it has also added support for Siri Shortcuts, allowing Siri to suggest common actions you perform as shortcuts on your Lock screen. You can also create your own, Siri–activated shortcuts for adding new Quick Entries, open lists, or adding a regularly–used to–do. You can also incorporate Things Shortcuts into workflows. Things now also supports…

Free From Studio Amplify, studioamplify.com Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 10.0 or later Meditation has taken off in a big way in recent years, with recent scientific research backing up claims that it cannot only help people improve their concentration skills, but also reduce stress levels. ChillScape plays on the latter theme by combining AI–generated music with soothing graphics in order to induce a calming state in the user. Each chill session starts out with womb–like low pitched tones, and these begin to merge with subtle melodies generated as you pop bubbles that emerge out of a solar–like center in space. Underneath the layers of sound is a soft ‘pulse’ that gradually slows from 60 to 50 beats per minute through the session. Inspired by a field of cognitive…

REDDIT CALLS ITSELF “the front page of the internet”, and there’s certainly no shortage of stuff to read on the website. The site is divided into sections (‘subreddits’), each of which works as a forum full of threads and topics. From Apple discussion to adorable dog videos; if you can imagine it, there’s probably a subreddit for it. Despite that, reading Reddit topics in Safari or the Reddit app on your iPhone can be less than satisfactory — and that’s where Apollo comes in. Developed by a former Apple engineer, Apollo is a fantastic way to read about subjects you love on your iOS device. Apollo combines ease of use with lots of excellent features. It’s quick and painless to add your favorite subreddits to the app, and Apollo gives…

LAST ISSUE, I talked about a piece of Apple design I loathe. This time, I want to readdress the balance by talking about one that I think deserves more kudos than it gets, and not for the obvious reasons. Well, actually it is for the reasons of obviousness. As AirPods have become more popular, I’ve heard more and more people to whom I’ve recommended them say that they wouldn’t want to wear them because they’d feel that they look silly. Which I get — imagine a queue of people with them on, and you’re basically envisioning a scene from the first 10 minutes of a Doctor Who or Black Mirror episode. But the more I think about it, the more strange this opinion seems, even though it has also been…

YOU KNOW YOU can apply filters by tapping the three–circles icon in the Camera app or later in the Photos app. Remember, filters are non–destructive — you can open an image in Photos, tap Edit, then the three–circle icon and remove the filter’s effects (by tapping Original or the active filter’s thumbnail), swap it for another, or reapply it, at any time, whether it was originally applied in the Camera app or Photos. Want even more filters to play with? If you have another photo–editing or effects app installed, you can use its filters too, within the Photos app. Open a picture in Photos, tap Edit, then tap the three–dot More icon. The first time you do this, tap More on the sheet that pops up (at the far right),…

MESSAGES HAS HAD an overhaul in iOS 12. On iPhone X and newer, you not only get custom Memoji and four new Animoji to choose from, but all these now detect subtle details. On all iPhones with iOS 12, when composing a message, the different kinds of content you can include are available via buttons below the message area. Tap the camera icon to take a selfie and as well as filters you can also add various text bubbles and animated shapes. Note that these ‘attach’ to the face in the frame, so a speech bubble will follow you if you move around, for example. Long–press on a message or inline content to copy it, save it, or delete it. 1 Conversation options Tap the person’s picture/name at the top…

TELLING YOUR iPHONE or iPad apart when a notification sound plays can be challenging. But you can turn any project you’ve composed in the free GarageBand app into a new ringtone or useful alert sound. Ringtones can be 40 seconds max. If longer, GarageBand will trim from the track’s start on export. At the Project Chooser, hold a finger on one and choose Share from the options bar when it appears. Choose Ringtone, set a name, then tap Export. In the confirmation pop–up, tap Use Sound As, or tap OK to finish; the tone is added to the list you can choose from in Settings > Sounds & Haptics later. The Use Sound As option lets you set the tone as your new standard ringtone or standard text tone, also…

1 INITIAL PREPARATION First you’ll need to add the ‘Continue Shortcut in App’ and Wait actions, which are needed for the shortcut to run successfully by saying “Hey Siri”. Set the latter action to a couple of seconds. 2 GET THE DATE AND TIME Add the Date action and set it to return the current date. It’s really the current time we want, but it’s wrapped up as part of this action’s output. You’ll see how to get at it in a little while. 3 RETRIEVE WEATHER INFO Add the Get Weather Forecast action and set it to use your current location and return the daily forecast. After it, add ‘Get Item from List’ and tell it to retrieve the first item from the forecast, which is today’s weather. 4…

Being a consumer–based society, one of the most profound ways to change the way we live is in how we shop. For the entire 20th century, ‘mail order’ meant poring over catalogues of magazine ads, then posting a coupon (or, later, phoning) to receive your goods ‘within 28 days’. In 1995, both Amazon and eBay began, and now we take the joy of instant browsing and next–day delivery for granted. Technology provided both the medium for this rapid innovation and the means to build it. Jeff Bezos’ first start-up idea was based on the fax machine, but it was the growth of the World Wide Web, conceived by Tim Berners–Lee on Steve Jobs’ NeXT hardware, that convinced Bezos to chuck in his Wall Street job and to focus on selling…

Back in the mid–1990s, little black boxes began to appear in cars, displaying live maps on small color LCD screens. The US government had opened its Global Positioning System (GPS) network to public use, and satellite navigation took off. Because it only had to listen for signals, not transmit, GPS required fairly simple electronics. The hard part was the maps. First supplied on CD–ROM, then memory cards, data gradually improved in detail, while location accuracy was boosted in 2000 by the removal of a quality cap favoring the US military. But updates remained an issue, requiring a computer connection. In 2008, Apple built GPS into the iPhone 3G. Google Maps and later Apple Maps (as well as other third–party rivals) added turn–by–turn navigation, with regular updates and real–time traffic information…

HERE AT MAC|LIFE we believe you should only buy the things that you really need, which is why our Reviews section is so important to us, and you. We don’t want you to waste time and money on inferior products, and while we aim to include only the best hardware and apps, occasionally we like to include products that look promising, even if they don’t always deliver. We only use carefully selected experts, with specialist knowledge in their respective field, so no matter which review you’re reading, you can be confident the person who’s tested it knows their stuff, allowing you to make an informed purchase. Each review is rated using a five–star system, with half stars, which is easy to understand because we give an explanation next to each…

$249.99 From Reolink, reolink.com Features One camera, Full HD, G–LTE connection, mic and speaker CONNECTIVITY Reolink’s 4G–only radio means you’ll need to secure and pay for a micro–SIM with a data plan, as well as supply a MicroSD card for the camera to record motion events. Reolink’s cloud service is only available in the US. DESIGN The egg–shaped Go is rugged as is but also comes with a silicone cover. The stiff mount ensures you can put it back in position after taking it down for a battery charge. It also includes a mic and speaker for whenever you need to chat to visitors. IMAGE QUALITY There’s a little compression applied when streaming 1080p video over 4G, and the video is a tad oversaturated, but the starlight CMOS sensor means…

From $9.99 From Simulation Curriculum, skysafariastronomy.com Needs OS X 10.10 or later SkySafari for Mac is an application that provides practically everything you could ever want to know abut astronomy. Available in basic, Plus, and Pro editions, each offers a different level of access to the celestial database — we looked at Pro. SkySafari lets you simulate the sky on your Mac, up to 10,000 years into the past or future, as well as viewing events like eclipses and conjunctions. You have access to encyclopedic entries describing constellations, images from NASA, and data on up to 100 million galaxies. This version of the app is now able to back up all your data to the company’s secure cloud storage, sharing it to your iOS versions of the app if you…

We subjected each app to a thorough investigation, looking for how easy each was to use, as well as how long it took to get up to speed. We carried out a few common tasks on the same image, looking for performance, ease of use, and the quality of the final result. We also considered how easy it was to automate tasks and how many useful features each app had. ▴ HIGHER… Adobe CC Photography adobe.com/us $9.99 per month For $10 per month, you can enjoy the creative toolset of Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC. You won’t own the apps outright, but you will benefit from updates. ▾ …OR LOWER? FREE APPS Various sites Free Camera manufacturers such as Canon and Nikon provide free image–editing apps that are optimized for…

WHEN FACED WITH a high–contrast scene, your camera will struggle to reveal detail in the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows. On Auto mode it may meter the scene to reveal sky detail, plunging a backlit subject into silhouette. If the camera meters to reveal detail in the shadows, the sky will be overexposed. To try to capture detail in both the shadows and the highlights, your iPhone’s Camera app has an HDR mode. This snaps three separate shots — one shot captures an average exposure, revealing detail in both the shadows and highlights. A second shot brightens the scene to reveal more shadow details. A third shot darkens the scene to capture extra detail in the brightest highlights. Your iPhone merges the correctly exposed areas of the three shots…

1 DJI Osmo Mobile 2 Handheld video gets even smoother with the second edition of drone maker DJI’s lightweight three–axis gimbal, much cheaper at only $139 and with tripled 15–hour battery life. Works with any iPhone, landscape or portrait. 2 HyperDrive Wireless Charger Hub Launching on Kickstarter for March–April delivery, this will retail later for $159. Designed for MacBooks, it can charge compatible iPhones and adds in 4K HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, SD card reader, and USB–A ports alongside standard USB–C. 3 Speck Case–E iPads are great for kids, until they fumble them onto a tile floor. For $40, Case–E not only provides six–foot drop protection but easy–to–grip gooseneck arms. A tie is supplied for car seat headrests. Fits recent mid–sized models. 4 Otter + Pop PopSockets attach your iPhone to…

THESE DAYS, iOS is more transparent about what’s affecting your device's battery life and offers greater control over it. Go to Settings > Battery to see charts of power usage and identify thirsty apps. If you spot a big fall on the 24–hour chart, tap on that time period. The app list below then shows the greediest apps in that period only. Tap Show Activity to see if that app was in use (shown as Screen On). If an app is greedy when the screen is off, it may help to turn off its switch in Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Also go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and switch problem apps to While Using only. The biggest power drain is a device’s screen. Auto–Brightness (in…

THE ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES present in iOS 12 aren’t just for users with disabilities. Among them are great options for customizing your device and getting more from it. Start by going to Settings > General > Accessibility. The Magnifier is fantastic any time you want a closer look at something, such as reading serial numbers or tiny labels. It’s much better than using the Camera app and zooming in, because it can zoom in further than 10x and includes built–in filters, brightness, and contrast controls to help make text and fine detail easier to decipher. Once turned on, call up the Magnifier by triple–clicking the side button (formerly called the sleep/wake button) on iPhones and iPads without a Home button, or triple–clicking the Home button on older models. If you like…

YOU’VE SEEN HOW to assign your new custom ringtone to a specific contact, which you can use to assign each contact its own ringtone, so you can tell who’s calling even without looking at your iPhone. Open the Contacts app, tap a contact, then Edit (top right). Tap Ringtone and choose the tone you want for that contact’s calls. Want to be able to tell who’s calling even if the ringer is off? You can assign different vibrations from Apple’s presets to your contacts, or even create your own vibration patterns — you might set The Imperial March from Star Wars as a ringtone for your boss, as well as a particularly insistent vibration. On the page where you assign a contact’s ringtone, tap Vibration, then Create New Vibration at…

WE COVERED iOS 12’S headline features in issue 147 of Mac|Life, but behind them are some very cool extras, tricks and options… PEEK AT HYPERLINKS In many apps, you can press and hold on a website link to preview its destination. Then, swipe up slightly to find four useful options. Open in Background sends the link to Safari without leaving your current app, so it’s ready when you go there. Add to Reading List makes the page available to catch up on later through that browser feature and, if Settings > Safari > Automatically Save Offline is turned on, even if you find yourself without an internet connection. Copy, perhaps unsurprisingly, puts the link on the Clipboard ready for you to paste, while the final option, Share, opens the Share…

The printing press was a disruptive technology, and industrial advances have driven mass media ever since. Through the 1960s and 70s, phototypesetting replaced 19th century hot metal systems that cast lines of type as operators entered them from a mechanical keyboard. Instead of lining up glyphs (cut or cast characters) and pressing them onto ink, then paper, to print pages, photosetting machines created columns of text by projecting glyphs from glass masters. In magazine production, copy was sent out to be photoset, returned, marked with corrections, reset, and pasted onto an art board with line graphics and halftoned pictures to complete a camera–ready copy of the page layout, from which a printing plate was made. Adding electronics produced machines like the Linotype CRTronic 360, resembling the early suitcase–style PCs, with…

$349 From Marshall, marshallheadphones.com Features Bluetooth 4.2, 40W combined amplifiers Despite its small size, the Acton Multi–Room looks every bit like a Marshall speaker. Oddly though, for a speaker measuring just 26.5x16x15cm, the Acton requires a plug outlet and there’s no carry handle. What the diminutive little speaker lacks in stature, it makes up for in volume. There’s a 30W Class D amplifier for the woofer and two 10W Class D amplifiers for the tweeters — arguably overkill for a bedside table–style speaker. Music sounds superb, with depth and detail making up for a lack of stereo separation. The volume goes high without distortion, and the bass is great. The speaker is capable of AirPlay, Chromecast, and Spotify Connect. However, we encountered dropouts and streaming stalls numerous times. There’s no…

$14.99 From Charlie Monroe, bit.ly/ml152perm Needs OS X 10.11 or later Permute is a drag and drop media converter that has built–in presets for optimizing video for most Apple devices, including Apple TV 4K. Version 3 has been completely rewritten and adds a raft of new features, including support for macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode. In addition to performance improvements, version 3 brings support for hardware acceleration in HEVC encoding, and the ability to stitch images together in a single PDF. You can also now group audio or video files and apply the same preset to them. Conversions can be scheduled for a time when you’re not likely to be using your Mac. Performance on our aging MacBook Pro was fine. We liked how stitching images together in a PDF left…

$59.99 From Satechi, satechi.net Made for iPad Pro 2018 The redesigned 2018 iPad Pro models, in 11 and 12.9–inch sizes, are Apple’s first to use the USB–C interface format. In Silver or Space Gray to match your model, Satechi’s Mobile Pro Hub is designed to take advantage of the iPad Pro’s power and bandwidth by letting you connect several devices. Power is first up, with a USB–C port that charges the iPad even with other devices connected, and acts as a power output to charge other devices from the iPad — the 2018 Pros are the first that can do this. Next is 4K video output via an HDMI port at 30Hz, and you can go up to 60Hz at 2K. Both worked perfectly, and this feature is great for…

FINDING THE RIGHT photo–editing app for you can be a challenge, as different photographers will have different requirements. You may want to quickly boost an iPhone snap’s colors and tweak its tones before sharing on social media. Alternatively, you might capture photos on a high–end camera like a digital SLR and need to counteract lens–induced distortions, remove color fringing, and smooth out luminance noise before selling your shots as prints or on stock photo sites. If you’re a pro photographer, you may need an app that lets you edit in raw format so you can squeeze more detail from over– or under–exposed areas. Or you may be happy to shoot, edit, and share in compressed JPEG format and not need to worry about working with raw files. Whatever the case,…

LOOKING FOR A photo–editing app to hold you by the hand? Then Photoshop Elements 2019 could be worth the expense. Its simple interface is easy for beginners to navigate. Aurora HDR stands out for fixing raw files — it produced the best results when working on our test raw file, revealing more overexposed details than any of the other apps on test. However, the specialist Aurora HDR is much more expensive than the all–rounder that is our winner, Affinity Photo. It may take longer to get up and running with Affinity Photo, but you’ll be able to run faster and further once up to speed. It boasts many of the tools found in the full Photoshop CC, so you can perform common fixes to color and tone, or use layer–based…

$2.99 From Fox and Sheep, shine-game.com Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 9 or later Shine — Journey of Light is not a hard game, but it’s still absolutely worth your time. It begins with a mystical story of sorts: the stars in the night sky are given their gleam by Moonies. One day the Moonies disappear; as the last remaining one, you have to find them and restore light to the inky blackness. The gameplay is simple. Your Moonie moves forward by itself; tap the screen and it floats higher. You must traverse tunnels, caves, and underwater paths, collecting other Moonies as you go. Shine is a joy to behold. The effect of your Moonie’s light illuminating the pitch darkness is magnificent, and each world is studded with fine…

$7.99 From MyScript, myscript.com Made for iPad Needs iOS 11 or later If you have an iPad and an Apple Pencil or stylus, you’ve likely given handwriting recognition apps a go before. Nebo is different, because it actually works. Handwriting recognition must have high accuracy or you’ll spend more time correcting mistakes than you save from using it. That’s where many apps fall down, but not Nebo. Nebo 2’s recognition is very good, fast, and accurate. Despite our bad handwriting, it delivered near–100 per cent accuracy no matter how poor our scrawls. One of the main upgrades in this version 2.0 update is smarter writing recognition. The new version adds support for the second generation Apple Pencil and the Logitech Crayon, now optimized for the 2018 iPad Pro’s edge–to–edge display.…

$24.99 (or $9.99/year subscription) From Contrast, contrast.co Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 11.2 or later Launch Center Pro presents a grid of large icons, each of which you can set to perform an action. To carry out actions, the app makes use of ‘URL schemes’, a mechanism that can send instructions and even data to other iOS apps. Actions range from simply opening an app to a particular page, to using various pieces of data to, say, add a to–do with a deadline, notes, and tags to a list in Things 3. Apple’s apps mostly offer the first kind, but many third–party apps offer more opportunities. Don’t be put off by how URLs can look (see below), as you can set them up from an indexed and searchable list…

REGARDLESS OF WHICH Mac you have, you always want to make sure that three specific areas are given your personal touch: the Dock, the desktop, and the menu bar. While the first two are relatively easy to organize, it’s a slightly more complicated affair to keep the icons at the right end of the menu bar under control. That area can get crowded pretty quickly, making things hard to find or notice. This is where Bartender 3 ($15, macbartender.com) is useful. Its purpose is to declutter and rearrange the menu bar icons to your needs, providing you with the option to hide and reveal icons as and when you want. Let’s get down to giving your menu bar a slightly early spring clean! After you install the app, you’ll eventually…

IN THE PRE–DIGITAL days of tape–to–tape video editing, an editor had to press multiple buttons on a controller to set the In and Out points on a video player before copying the clip onto a recorder. This way of stitching shots together in a linear fashion was a slow process. Today’s non–linear desktop editing apps can construct a program much more quickly. The added bonus of editing video on your iPad is that you can interact with your media in a way that is both natural and organic. For example, in LumaFusion you can set an In point simply by swiping downwards on the Preview pane. Play the clip and then swipe upwards on the pane to set the Out point. This method enables you to work surprisingly quickly. If…

1 When did Mac OS become free to upgrade, and with which version? 2 What is the most expensive off–the–shelf Apple product ever produced (before adding any upgrades)? 3 On which iPhone did Apple mark the death of the headphone jack? 4 True or false: the first Apple computer, the Apple I, didn’t have a case, screen, or keyboard, and could be built up in whatever way the owner preferred. 5 What’s the shortcut to open Spotlight? 6 Steve Jobs described the computer as “a… (what?) for our minds.” 7 WHAT IS THIS APPLE DEVICE? 8 WHO IS APPLE’S CHIEF DESIGNER? 1 Mavericks, October 22, 2013. 2 The 18–karat gold Watch Edition at $10,000, though arguably Apple’s first computer in 1983, the Lisa, which retailed for $9,995, would be the…