Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i MacLife

> WATCHOS 8 BRINGS new access, connectivity, and mindfulness features to Apple Watch. A new Portraits watch face includes some clever face recognition and cropping options to create a variety of immersive, multi-layered effects. The redesigned Photos app has new ways to view and navigate collections and sync to Apple Watch. The Contacts app comes to Apple Watch, so you can browse, add, edit, and share contacts directly. With new tools in Messages you can combine Scribble, dictation, and emoji within a message. WatchOS 8 introduces new Tai Chi and Pilates workout types, and you can now stop and resume an in–progress workout in the Fitness app. A new Mindfulness app incorporates an enhanced Breathe experience plus a new session type, called Reflect. Apple Watch can now measure your sleeping…

FILMIC FIRSTLIGHT $7.99 filmicpro.com Change exposure more quickly by swiping vertically anywhere in the display, and adjust focus by swiping horizontally. Clipping warnings tell you which areas are over– or under–exposed and focus clipping tells you which areas are sharp or blurred. You can also use Firstlight to capture raw. dng files on older iPhone models. HALIDE MK II Free (IAPs) halide.cam This Camera app uses focus peaking to check that a subject is sharp or summons a focus loupe magnifier to double–check. A histogram display helps you capture detail throughout the tonal range. Haptic feedback and an overlay ensures your horizons are never tilted. It also enables you to save in ProRaw on an iPhone 12 Pro. PS CAMERA Free (IAPs) adobe.com This is well worth a look if…

1 Night mode Night mode automatically chooses an exposure time (such as 10 seconds), but you can drag the countdown slider to choose a different duration. During the shot a Hold Still message appears. Keep the cross–hairs aligned to avoid blur. 2 Change focus In Photo mode the iPhone focuses on the closest foreground subject. However, you can tap on a background object to place the square focus/exposure reticule on that. Drag the sun icon up or down to tweak exposure. 3 AE/AF Lock In contrasting locations the Camera changes exposure to reveal highlight or shadow detail. Hold your finger on the screen to summon the AE/AF Lock. This preserves detail in a bright sky when you reframe the shot. 4 Manual exposure Exposure is set automatically but it may…

YOUR iPHONE DOESN’T just take stills. You can also use it to shoot video clips in up to 4K resolution, “live” photos, slo–mo clips, time–lapses and more. The iPhone 12 models can also shoot video in a High Dynamic Range (HDR) Dolby Vision format. This new 10–bit format enables you to capture clips with a wider contrast range and more detail and color than you’ll see in the 8–bit SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) clips captured by older iPhone models. To activate HDR go to Settings > Camera and tap on Record Video. Toggle on the HDR Video (High Efficiency) option. Choose a size such as 1080p HD. When you switch to the Camera app’s Video mode you’ll see an HD icon at the top–left (when shooting in landscape). Tap on…

1 Wide–angle woes When shooting a time–lapse using the Ultra–Wide lens you may notice perspective distortion that causes vertical lines to converge towards the top of the frame. A tripod–mounted iPhone’s horizon may be tilted too. 2 Straighten horizon Tap the Edit button, then tap the Crop tool icon. This gives you access to a Straighten tool. Drag the Straighten tool’s slider to counteract the tilted horizon. A Rule of Thirds overlay grid will appear to help you get a perfectly straight horizon. 3 Perspective distortion Tap the vertical perspective control icon and swipe to make the building’s converging vertical lines run parallel with the edge of the frame. Drag the clip to make sure that the top of the building remains in shot. 4 Improve exposure If a clip…

1 Favorites The fastest way to sort the wheat from the chaff is to tap the heart–shaped Favorite icon. You can do this in the iPhone or Mac version of Photos. Click on the Favorites category to display all favorited files. 2 Albums Photos mimics the traditional way of storing photos by enabling you to place them in albums. Choose File > New Album. Name the album. You can then drag relevant photos to the album in the My Albums panel. 3 Get smart Choose File > New Smart Album. Label the album. From the drop down choose a property for Photos to look for (such as Keyword or Camera Model.) Photos will automatically gather shots that meet your criteria. 4 Making memories Photos automatically gathers some images into collections…

Luminar AI $89.99, skylum.com Luminar uses machine learning to recommend a suitable template (or file) for each image. It also enables you to creatively enhance a landscape by adding a new sky (without needing to be a compositing master). You can also summon it as a Photos extension. DxO PhotoLab 4 $99.99, dxo.com PhotoLab 4 uses machine learning to remove picture noise and color fringing while preserving important details. A powerful Control Point tool enables you to make selective adjustments to a sampled circular region. The downside is its inability to read Apple ProRAW files. Lightroom Classic $9.99 per month, adobe.com If you have multiple hard drives with thousands of old DSLR photos then Lightroom Classic will help you create a catalog that knows where every file is located (even…

1 You can’t add widgets to the Home Screen in iPadOS 14 the way you can with iOS 14. However, the widgets in Today View have been improved, with more iOS–like features such as Smart Stacks. 2 Search has been improved too. As you type a search query in, the results are displayed from web searches, apps, and contacts. As you continue to type, the results are refined 3 Calls in FaceTime and other supported apps no longer commandeer the whole screen when you receive them, instead you’ll find them displayed in the same compact view in which phone calls in iOS 14 are shown. 4 The Files app benefits from interface enhancements, including sidebars and pull–down menus. Files is edging closer to being as useful as macOS’ Finder. 5…

1 The sidebar icon at the top–left of the screen is the easiest way to toggle the sidebar on and off. You can also swipe from the left of the screen. When you do that, it slides over what’s on screen rather than pushing everything to the right. 2 Tap Edit in the sidebar and scroll down to the list of albums. Tap the “–” to delete one, or tap and hold on an album then drag it up or down the list to reposition it. Drop it where you want it. 3 Scroll to the bottom of the sidebar and tap “+New Album.” Give it a title. You will be prompted to add photos to the album. You can add photos at any time later by dragging them from…

If you connect a keyboard to your iPad you can access even more new features in iPadOS 14. For example, if you press Cmd+Spacebar you’ll pull up the new Universal Search window. Search for an app in there and, when you find it, you can drag it on to the screen to open it in Split View or Slide Over. Tapping the globe key on a Magic Keyboard or Smart Keyboard allows you to insert an emoji quickly in any text box. And on a Magic Keyboard with a trackpad you can double–tap instead of tapping and dragging to drag items around the screen. These are in addition to the keyboard shortcuts that already exist in iPadOS and which you can see by pressing and holding the Cmd key.…

$399 From drop.com Features Bluetooth audio codec, THX AAA amplifier, and phase–correct planar–ribbon drivers Needs iOS 11 or higher, USB–C Drop has partnered with Sonarworks, developers of professional audio software, to incorporate the company’s SoundID “personalized audio technology” system into its Panda wireless headphones. The best part is that settings made in the SoundID app are stored on the headphones, so you get the same result whatever device you’re listening from. The headphones are lightweight but well built, and in the box there’s a USB–C cable and a 3.5mm audio cable for wired operation. Pairing over Bluetooth is simple and there’s a single joystick button for power, volume, and skipping tracks. They are a closed back model for minimal sound spillage, and though the standard ear pads are perfectly comfortable,…

$349 From bose.com Features AirPlay, IPX4 3 With Bluetooth 4.2 and AirPlay, this has an IPX4 water–resistance rating for protection from splashes and a great build and finish. The app is slick and setup over Bluetooth or Wi–Fi is easy. You can AirPlay any Apple device to the speaker while on the same network or use it in regular Bluetooth mode while away from Wi–Fi. The top surface contains core controls for playback and volume, with a circular light system giving feedback for power and volume. The app lets you configure Alexa or Google Assistant voice services so you can use voice control via the speaker’s microphone array to set timers, play Spotify, and the like. You can also share the speaker with other users of the app on your network.…

Free (IAPs) From kevinreutter.de Needs macOS 11.0 or later Planny combines calendar, reminders, notes and to–do lists in a single app. Version 5 has been rewritten from scratch for iOS, iPadOS, and the macOS version reviewed here, and it has a brand new interface too. Although Planny is free to download, for the best experience you’ll need a $14.99 annual Premium subscription. This unlocks features like the ability to set priorities and pin items, to create subtasks and to create unlimited lists. It also allows you to create and search by tags — a useful feature. The new interface has abandoned the very bright gradients of previous versions for something a bit more sober that makes good use of color without burning your retinas. There’s a color–coded sidebar at the…

In most cases, connecting an iPad to a Mac using Sidecar just works, but when it doesn’t it can prove tricky to fix. Wireless Sidecar connections rely on good Wi–Fi and Bluetooth signals, which limits the distance between the iPad and Mac to a maximum of about 11 yards of uninterrupted sight, and works best when they’re closer. Neither can be sharing their internet connection, and both should be running the latest version of iPadOS/macOS. Anything causing interference or interruption to wireless transmission can break this. Domestic appliances such as microwave ovens, poorly shielded USB, or Thunderbolt cables or hubs are common culprits. Sometimes reconfiguring a Wi–Fi router to use different channels can free others for use by Sidecar’s connection. Monitoring Wi–Fi and Bluetooth signals using an app like iStumbler…

This is a not uncommon problem which can arise with an iCloud Music Library. The most reliable way to tackle it basically comes down to turning it off and back on again. You should do this when your Mac has a good Internet connection, and you should be able to leave your Mac connected and otherwise undisturbed for a while. First turn off iCloud Music Library in the Music app. Once you’ve done that, sign out from your Apple ID in the Overview section of the Apple ID pane. Wait a couple of minutes to allow those changes to propagate through iCloud, then sign back in using the Overview in the Apple ID pane again. Once that has updated the pane, open Music and turn iCloud Music Library back on.…

WHEN YOU HAVE a horde of apps and windows open, it is easy to lose the one you want among the clutter. Luckily, there is a solution in the form of Mission Control. This provides a bird’s–eye view of every open window, instantly obliterating the turmoil. Mission Control also uses Spaces, which are clones of your current desktop, minus all the open windows and apps. Spaces help organize your windows: you could move all your work documents to one desktop and everything else to another, and you can have up to 16 Spaces at once. Windows can be moved between Spaces with a few quick clicks, and you can even run two apps in Split View simply by dragging one on top of another in Mission Control. Aside from all…

WE LOVE GARAGEBAND on our iPad and iPhone: it’s tons of fun, easy to use, and it works brilliantly with GarageBand and Logic Pro X on the Mac. (Check out our Make Music on Your Mac feature in ML182.) That means it’s as happy in a serious music production workflow as it is being poked and prodded by a young kid on the sofa. We use it to demo songs or capture musical ideas before turning them into finished songs in Logic; but it’s as easy for complete novices to experiment with unusual instruments and make beats. There are lots of great music apps for iOS and iPadOS, with faithful reproductions of vintage synths rubbing shoulders with all kinds of beat makers and loopers. You can use many of them…

ON 7 JUNE, 2004, Apple proudly unveiled AirPort Express. It was a 802.11g mobile base station that could be plugged into the wall, providing Internet connections wherever the user went. It’s hard to imagine now, but in 2004 “portable” internet might require all sorts of cables and power supplies — it wasn’t as simple as opening up the hotspot provided by your iPhone. In March 2008, things improved further as Apple updated AirPort Express, introducing the 802.11n wireless standard which it said delivered up to five–times better performance than its predecessor. A second generation of the 802.11n arrived in June 2012. As significant as the mobile internet developments were, there were also analog and digital audio outputs in the base station. This meant users could connect it to a stereo…

THE NEW FEATURES in iOS 15 — including SharePlay, Focus, Safari Tab Groups, and Live Text — are also coming to iPad in iPadOS 15 this fall, plus more. You can now organize and personalize your iPad by placing widgets among app icons on Home Screen pages, including a new larger size widget. A new App Library automatically organizes your apps into categories such as Productivity, Games, and Recently Added for faster access to apps right from the Dock. A new multitasking menu appears at the top of apps, making it easier to go into Split View or Slide Over with just a tap, or with an external keyboard you can use new shortcuts for multitasking. There is quick access to the Home Screen when using Split View, making it…

APPLE’S IDEA THAT augmented reality (AR) is maybe the most important technology of the future continues unabated. In a new interview with The New York Times, Tim Cook talked about how it could be used to improve conversations between two people. “You and I are having a great conversation right now,” he said to interviewer Kara Swisher, “Arguably, it could even be better if we were able to augment our discussion with charts or other things to appear.” Would it, Tim? Are we 100% sure about that? He’s used the word “arguably”, so I guess there’s wriggle room, but honestly there are very few conversations with another human where I’ve just wished there could be charts as part of it. Not just charts — I think if someone started using…

PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES are common subjects for a photo, but it can be a challenge to capture decent pictures of these subjects. When we view a snap of a landscape it is often disappointing as it rarely matches up to our memory of the scene. This can be because our peripheral vision takes in a wider field of view than the iPhone’s lens, especially in a narrow 4:3–shaped photo. To capture more of a landscape you can set the Camera app to the Pano shooting mode. This enables you to pan the iPhone left to right (or right to left by tapping the arrow icon) to include more of the landscape. As you pan, the Camera app stitches the video feed together to produce a wider panoramic image. However, the…

1 Set f–stop Tap to select Portrait mode. Tap the f–stop icon to dial in an aperture value. The lower the number, the blurrier the bokeh will be. Here we’ve gone for f8.0. By default we’re using the Natural Light preset. Take the shot. 2 Adjust blur In Photos tap Edit. Tap the f–stop icon. Drag the aperture slider to a larger number (such as f16) to reveal more background detail. Drag it to a smaller number for more blur. The 12 Pro Max can open to a wide f1.4. 3 Adjust lighting Tap the hexagonal icon to access the Lighting Effects wheel. Drag to experiment with different studio effects such as the face–modelling Contour Light. Here we’ve gone for Studio Light to brighten the face.…

IF YOU CAN’T get to your Mac don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to edit and share your photos and video clips with friends, family and followers directly from your iPhone. Select a photo (or video clip) then tap Edit. Here you have a suite of digital darkroom tools to help you tweak color, tone and composition in a few taps. We’ll cover iOS editing techniques in more detail on the following page. Once you’re happy with the look of your still or clip tap Done. Tap the Share icon at the bottom–left. You can then tap to send the image to contacts via SMS or email. You can also tap a social media app’s icon, compose a post and share the shot. If a friend is close to…

WHILE YOU CAN perform edits on your iPhone’s version of Photos, the Photos app for Mac gives you greater control due to a more powerful set of tools (such as the Retouch tool for removing unwanted objects). You can also check the quality of a shot more effectively when viewing it on your Mac’s larger display (especially if you need to smooth out noise caused by a high ISO speed, for example). One way to get iPhone–sourced videos and stills onto your Mac is to automatically upload them to your iCloud account. They will then be ready to edit and share in the Photos app on any iCloud connected device such as an iMac or an iPad. To set up iCloud syncing go to your iPhone’s Settings, then scroll down…

Ahead of the curve, and endlessly entertaining… Choose your perfect package GET THE DIGITAL EDITION Instant digital access on your iPad, iPhone, and Android device. Only $18 Every Year GET THE PRINT EDITION Can't get out of the house? Get every issue delivered to your door. Only $36 Every Year GET THE COMPLETE PRINT & DIGITAL BUNDLE Get both the Print & Digital editions for only $41 Every Year REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE > 13 issues a year delivered direct to your door, plus instant access on your iPad, iPhone, or Android device > A massive saving of over 75% on the regular price of the magazine > Expert advice on how to get more from all your Apple devices! Subscribe online today… http://bit.ly/maclifesub2021 TERMS AND CONDITIONS Offer closes 08/16/2021. Offer…

ONE OF THE things that really differentiates using an iPad from using an iPhone is keyboard shortcuts. If you connect an external keyboard to your iPad, then it makes the experience much more like using a Mac. For example, to search for something, instead of swiping down on the Home Screen and typing a search query on the on–screen keyboard then tapping a result, you can press Cmd+Spacebar, the same as Spotlight on the Mac, type the query, then press Return on the keyboard. In iPadOS 14, you can now even handwrite the search query with an Apple Pencil. 1 ADD A SMART STACK TO THE TODAY VIEW Tap and hold on any free space on the Home Screen. Tap “+” in the top–left corner. The widgets drawer will appear,…

THE CAMERA AND Photos apps don’t get the big upgrade in iPadOS 14 that they did in the previous version. However, there are some very handy additions and improvements. The most immediately noticeable enhancement is in Photos, which has been redesigned to take advantage of the new sidebar that has been introduced across iPadOS 14. Photos also now allows you to filter photos in collections by favorites, edited, photos, and videos. And you can add captions to both photos and video. In the Camera app, you can now take a mirrored selfie that looks exactly as the image in the camera does on screen when you press the shutter. 1 TAKE A MIRRORED SELFIE Talking of taking a selfie that looks like the mirror image you see on the screen……

THE BUILT–IN APPS in iPadOS 14 are full of improvements and new features. Reminders has been overhauled, we’ve already shown you some great new additions in Mail, and Safari has been greatly improved, too. Shortcuts is now installed by default and is much more powerful. And both Siri and Voice Control are much improved. 1 ASSIGN A REMINDER In addition to sharing lists in Reminders, you can now assign individual reminders to people you share the list with. Tap a reminder in a shared list, then tap the people icon, and choose a contact to assign the reminder to. 2 ENHANCE VOICE MEMOS Voice Memos is a great app for recording everything from short voice notes to podcasts or narration for videos. Until now, your options for editing them within…

> GEEKBENCH 5 SINGLE–CORE TEST We use this cross–platform benchmarking tool to measure a device’s performance, with a single–core processor baseline of 1,000. Higher scores are better. Index score > 3DMARK WILD LIFE (2560X1440) This cross–platform benchmarking app measures a device’s graphics performance, running a one–minute test at 2560x1440 resolution. Higher frame rates are better. Frames per second > PERFORMANCETEST MOBILE (PASSMARK) Another cross–platform benchmarking tool for mobile devices, this one provides individual scores. Here we’re measuring storage read/write speeds — the higher the better. Storage read/write speed…

$99.99 From anker.com Features 30W, IPX7, aptX 1 This solid speaker has IPX7 water–resistance, making it essentially waterproof in everyday situations with its USB–C charging port and an aux input sealed behind a thick rubber flap. It’s Bluetooth only but pairing is simple and the companion app provides various EQ modes. On the top of the speaker are playback controls as well as a Bass Up button, which boosts the low end. Pushing up to 30W of power through its multiple drivers, it uses active crossovers and DSP for better sound separation as well as Bluetooth 5 and the aptX high–quality streaming codec. Playback is impressive, with a pleasing soundstage and lots of volume available. A rear port combined with the Bass Up mode adds significant heft to the low end,…

Around $84.66 From Steinberg.net Needs macOS 10.15 or later, minimum 4GB RAM, and 4GB free storage space Steinberg is best known as the developer of professional music production software including Cubase and WaveLab. With WaveLab Cast, it brings its decades of experience to a product that’s aimed at podcasters, radio, or video producers. Anyone who has used the company’s other apps will recognize its look and feel, inherited from the flagship WaveLab suite. Fire it up and you are presented with a helpful list of project templates, which create the relevant number of audio tracks in a new project. You can import audio files of course, and also record directly into WaveLab Cast in up to 96KHz, 32–bit quality. It can record from any connected microphone or for multi–mic recordings,…

The App Store is teeming with Apple Watch apps, but some are better than others. While some cover the bare minimum, others are the total opposite, offering tailored experiences that take advantage of the Watch’s form factor and make the most of everything it offers. We want to highlight those apps here. Whether you are dashing to catch a train or checking off items on your grocery list, these apps understand the ways you use your Watch and what you need from an excellent wrist–based app. Their companion iPhone apps may be good, but these Watch apps are truly great, and will simplify your life. JUST PRESS RECORD JUST PRESS RECORD $4.99 From openplanetsoftware.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch Sometimes you might want to record something but it…

SO FAR, WE’VE learned how to set up a Pages document using a template and adapt it to our needs. However, Pages has a lot more than that to offer. By using some of its more advanced features, like text wrapping, you can make your newsletters and brochures look very professional. And by using masking and transparency, images can be made to look exactly as you want them to. On these pages, we’ll show you how to anchor an object to text so that if you add more text or move it around, you don’t have to worry about manually moving the object each time, which can be a big time–saver in longer documents. There is a great deal more to explore in Pages, but hopefully we’ve shown enough to…

AirPrint shouldn’t require you to keep initializing your printer, but should find it easily when in Wi-Fi range. Problems like this are most likely when your local wireless network is misconfigured, resulting in your printer and devices looking for one another on different networks. Sometimes this can be solved by enabling support for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz connections in your Wi-Fi router. Or check the IP address in each device including the printer. On your iPhone and iPad this is in Settings > Wi–Fi, in the Info symbol next to the checked network. Configure IP should be Automatic. Write down the IP Address details, they have your Wi-Fi router’s address. All four should be on the same sub–net, with the first three figures in the IP address the same. If…

Of all the hardware built into Apple’s M1 chips, the Thunderbolt sections are the newest, and can give the greatest problems in use. Some docks work reliably, others seem to result in impaired performance of connected devices such as disks connected via USB–C. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t produce a list of known compatible docks, and that’s changing rapidly in any case as the drivers in M1 Macs improve. Most problems come from connecting a dock which doesn’t fully support Thunderbolt 3 but a variant of USB–C 3 instead. Those aren’t going to achieve the full potential of any fast SSD which you connect to them. Full Thunderbolt 3 docks from brands, such as CalDigit, Belkin and OWC, which are claimed to be compatible with M1 Macs are usually most likely to…

If you’ve got a lot of private files, it may be worth creating an encrypted APFS volume, but most prefer instead to use an encrypted disk image, which can either be a single DMG file or a sparse bundle. DMG files are best if you want a fixed size which is easy to move around; they can be created in Disk Utility or DropDMG from bit.ly/ml183dropdmg. Sparse bundles consist of a whole folder, within which are “band” files. These allow a sparse bundle to grow by adding more bands. They too can be created using Disk Utility or DropDMG, and Spundle from bit.ly/ml183spundle. In High Sierra and later you can opt for either the traditional HFS+ format, or the latest APFS instead. Double–click it to open the image and mount…

KEEPING YOUR FILES organized on your Mac can be a laborious process, and the longer you leave it, the harder it is to do. Locations like your Downloads folder and your desktop can quickly become overwhelmed with loose files bursting to get out. Even getting started can feel intimidating when there is so much to do. At that point, you start to question whether there’s any hope… Fortunately, there is. Folder Tidy is a lightweight Mac app ($4.99) that can automatically sort all your files into neatly ordered folders — one for your images, one for your video files, and more. Just tell it where to start and where to put everything, click Tidy, and it gets to work organizing your files. Even better, the app is highly customizable with…

THERE ARE TWO ways to back up the data on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can back up to iCloud, or you can back up locally to your Mac. With an iCloud backup, your backups can be accessed from anywhere you can get a Wi–Fi connection. The backups are always encrypted to keep your data secure, and you don’t need to remember to repeatedly back up your stuff: it can all happen automatically. Unfortunately, the 5GB you get free with your iCloud account is hilariously small, so you’ll need a paid iCloud storage plan — especially if you have multiple devices to back up. Local backups are stored on your Mac, so you’re only limited by the size of its hard drive or SSD. Transfers are usually much…

MANY OF US probably do not worry too much about throwing away the odd bit of food now and then, what with everything else going on in our lives. Especially if it goes in the food waste bin. Sometimes you buy too much — these things happen, right? Once you start adding up all the food you throw away, though — and all the money you end up wasting on all this unneeded food — you might be shocked at how much you go through. The wasted energy in growing and shipping the food, and the wasted money you spent on it, is now a serious concern. Surely something should be done about it? Well, as you would expect, there is an app for that: it is called Kitche, and…

AS APPLE’S PLATFORMS continue to converge, the hot new features in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are also coming to the Mac in macOS Monterey this fall. The Focus feature helps you stay in the moment by filtering out notifications unrelated to your current activity. FaceTime includes spatial audio, optional voice isolation, Portrait mode video, and SharePlay. Safari has a new, compact tab design with Tab Groups to organize tabs, and these sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Quick Notes make it easy to jot down ideas or links, and Notes gains tags, tag–based Smart Folders, and mentions. In addition, Shortcuts arrives on the Mac, enabling you to automate many tasks, with a range of pre–built actions designed just for Mac and a Shortcuts Editor to customize and create more.…

YOUR iPHONE’S CAMERA app works hard to capture correctly exposed colors and details in different parts of the frame, but you can give it a helping hand to avoid common mistakes. Be aware of how you’re holding the iPhone. Your finger may inadvertently appear in shot if it obscures one of the three lenses. For example, the frame can be finger–free when you shoot using the Telephoto (2.5x) and Wide angle (1x) lenses, only appearing in shot when you tap to access the Ultra Wide angle. If you do capture an obscuring finger then the only cure is to crop it out using the Photos app’s Crop tool. A blast of flash can cause a subject’s eyes to glow with a case of “red eye.” Fortunately the latest iPhones work…

LOW–LIGHT LOCATIONS can be a challenge for photographers. The built–in flash only has a short range and tends to create washed–out foreground subjects against jet–black backgrounds. The 12 Pro’s LiDAR scanner helps the camera focus in low light without having to zap a blast of flash on your subject. Flash photography is often forbidden in locations such as museums and churches. Fortunately the 12 Pro’s Wide lens can open the aperture to f/1.6, which lets in more light than its other lenses. By letting in more light a lower ISO speed will be required to expose the subject, resulting in less noisy (grainy) images. 11 and 12 Pro iPhones can automatically activate Night mode in low–light locations. This causes the camera app to use a slower shutter speed, again letting…

1 Go Live In the Camera app’s Photo mode tap the Live icon to activate Live Photo. Hold the iPhone steady and tap the shutter button to record a three–second clip of a moving object such as a train. Snap a couple of shots to be sure. 2 Choose effect Choose effect In the iOS Photos app tap Albums. Swipe down to media Types and tap on Live Photos. Tap to view your shot. Swipe up to view Effects such as Loop and Bounce. Swipe left then tap on the Long Exposure effect. 3 Motion blur After applying the Long Exposure effect swipe up to see the edited image. Only the moving subject (such as a train) should appear motion–blurred. Static objects like the background should remain nice and sharp.…

The Photos app can use AI to tag your people pictures automatically, but it sometimes gets it wrong. Fortunately, you can give Photos a helping hand to identify important people (and remove strangers). Tap on the People category in the Photos panel on the left. A collection of faces will appear. Tap the heart icon to favorite a face. Favorites will appear in larger thumbnails at the top of the People panel. If a face is un-named click in the text field below the thumbnail to identify them. You’ll be shown thumbnails of that person’s face. Check to confirm their identity (or uncheck a thumbnail if Photos is in error.) Click Done. Double–click on a named thumbnail to view more shots of that person. You may be asked to review…

1 High contrast In a high–contrast scene that lacks shadow and highlight detail, use the Brilliance slider to simultaneously lighten shadows and darken highlights. Fine–tune Shadows and Highlights independently to claw back more detail. 2 Composition To tackle a tilted horizon, click Crop. Drag the rotate wheel to counteract the tilt. A grid will appear to help you get a straight horizon. Select a value in the Aspect panel to crop your shot to a common print size and shape. 3 Color casts In mixed lighting some skin tones can look too cold (blue) or warm (orange). In the White Balance panel set the drop down to Skin Tone. Click the eyedropper on skin to automatically counteract cold or warm casts. 4 Noise reduction In low light the iPhone may…

THE LAUNCH OF iPadOS 14 in 2020 wasn’t the seismic shift we saw the previous year when the iPad got its own operating system for the first time. However, there are plenty of new features, tweaks, and improvements in this version. Today View widgets have evolved and now feature many of the same options as the Home Screen widgets introduced in iOS 14. So, you can now add Stacks and choose between large, medium and small widgets, for example. Lots of apps look different now too, thanks to the addition of sidebars and pull–down menus. App Clips make an appearance in iPadOS with this version, and you can now use an Apple Pencil to write in any text box and have your handwriting converted to text. And in the Notes…

1 Edit the sidebar Tap Files to launch it. Tap the sidebar icon in the top–left to view it, then tap More and choose Edit Sidebar. Use the toggle switches to add or remove items from Locations, or tap “–” to remove items from Favorites or Tags. 2 Change the sidebar order To change the order of items in the sidebar, tap and hold on the item you want to move, then drag it up or down and drop it in its new location. Tap Done when you’re finished. 3 Add a folder to Favorites To add a folder to the Favorites section of the sidebar, navigate to the folder you want to add then tap and hold on it. Choose Favorite. You can create new tags by choosing Tags…

1 View a memory In the sidebar, tap For You, then tap See All next to Memories. Swipe up to scroll through memories and tap the one you want to view. Tap the play button at the bottom–right of the main image for the slideshow of the Memory. 2 Choose music style Locate the Memory you want to edit and tap it. When it starts playing, either wait for it to end or tap Pause. Choose a style of music from the list — dreamy, sentimental, uplifting, etc — and press play to preview it. 3 Edit the music If you don’t like any of the music available in the list of styles, tap Edit. Tap Music, then either tap on a Mood to choose a different track for it,…

1 Pin a conversation If you struggle to find important messages, you can now pin favorite conversations to the top of the list. Find the conversation you want to pin, swipe right over it, and tap the pin. To unpin it, tap and hold on it and choose Unpin. 2 Specific message reply In a group conversation, you can reply to a specific message. Tap and hold the message you want to respond to and tap Reply. Your reply will appear under that message. 3 Mention someone Messages has gained the ability to “mention” conversation participants. Start typing the name of the person. When their name turns gray, tap it and tap the contact preview. The name will now turn blue and they will be notified. 4 New Memoji stickers…

$179 (32GB), $199 (64GB) From apple.com Features A12 Bionic, 4K HDR, Siri Remote (2nd gen), HDMI, Bluetooth, 802.11ax Wi–Fi 6 with MIMO Already got an Apple TV 4K (2017)? Then you’d be hard pressed to see much of a difference in the upgraded version for 2021. So, what’s actually changed? Well, it’s faster, with a more powerful A12 Bionic chip versus the 2017 model’s aging and dated A10X Fusion chip. The performance leap from A10X Fusion to A12 Bionic isn’t major, but apps are snappier to load, not that the old model was slow. The speed boost also enables the new Apple TV 4K to play back high–frame–rate 60fps HDR videos more smoothly. The 2021 version also comes with Thread, which is Apple’s new smart home protocol which allows smart…

ON TEST… > Anker Soundcore Motion + > AudioPro C3 > Bose Portable Smart Speaker > JBL Link Portable > Sonos Move > Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 AS LISTENING HABITS have changed in recent years, more of our music than ever is streamed from the cloud or a portable device. Being able to play your music outdoors, be it in the garden for a party or in the park while working out, no longer requires the kinds of trade–offs it used to. Ranging from ultra–portable to more audiophile–friendly, modern Bluetooth speakers have really upped their game when it comes to things like battery life, volume, audio fidelity, and even waterproofing. A portable speaker connects to your iPhone or iPad and Macs directly over Bluetooth, and in some cases Wi–Fi: AirPlay…

$329 From audiopro.com Features 25W, AirPlay, Ethernet 2 Built more like a bookshelf speaker, the C3 uses wall power, which also charges its internal battery for up to 15 hours of playback. Its rear panel has Ethernet and aux–in ports, and for wireless there’s Bluetooth and AirPlay. The gorgeous metal top panel has playback controls and an input selector for Wi–Fi, Bluetooth or aux–in, plus four preset buttons. In the app you can assign these to store any of a multitude of online streams including Spotify, TIDAL, Amazon Music and a host of online radio stations. The app also provides basic EQ controls as well as an alarm clock function and the option to set up Amazon Alexa for voice commands. The 25W amp pushes two tweeters and a woofer and…

Free (IAPs) From onmail.com Made for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Needs iOS/iPadOS 10.0 or later OnMail’s app is billed as “email built for today”. It comes with a host of thoughtful features but it really needs a little refinement going forward. Starting on the inbox view, you will find a few neat tricks. Swiping from left to right on a message gives the usual options to mark it as unread or trash it. Swipe the other way, though, and you can move it to the “Done” folder, which is a repository for mail you have dealt with but do not want to delete. It’s a great way to keep your inbox tidy without viciously purging it. There are other nifty inbox features. You can approve unknown senders before their…

$3.99 From Cornfox & Brothers, bikebaron2.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS/iPadOS 14.0 or later ICornfox & Brothers Ltd is the studio behind the Oceanhorn RPGs, but this slice of pure fun couldn’t be more different from the rather serious fantasy games. Similar to Joe Danger in many ways, the titular two–wheeled aristocrat moves forward over increasingly intricate courses. Controls consist of Stop and Go buttons, and a pair of arrows that control the rider’s rotation. Roar over the top of everything, doing loop–de–loops and pushing blocks into explosives, and all is well. Bang into the wrong thing, and it’s a floppy ragdoll death. And this is where one of the game’s minor flaws resides: it’s not entirely clear what will kill you. Sometimes an encounter with a…

$9.99 From filmagepro.com Needs OS X 10.11 or later If you have ever tried to play back or convert movies in anything other than Apple’s preferred MP4 and MOV formats on a Mac, you’ll have found it tricky. You need a third–party app like VLC for playback or Filmage Converter to change legacy or unusual formats such as WMV, AVI, or MKV into Mac–friendly movies. These might be your old camcorder movies, movies you ripped from DVDs or any other video files. Priced at just $9.99, Filmage Converter puts a simple interface onto video codecs and libraries. You drag any movies for conversion onto the app and choose an output format or device type. Pretty much everything is available here from iPad or Apple TV formats through Apple ProRes, WMV,…

WHEN IT COMES to all the free apps that Apple makes available for macOS, Pages probably gets the least love. It doesn’t have the wow factor of iMovie or GarageBand, nor is at as close to its competitors in capability as Keynote and Numbers. However, it has a great deal going for it and is a very capable tool when it comes to laying out small documents such as leaflets, posters, and flyers. It does have its quirks. The distinction between a word processing and a layout document remains, and how to choose which of the two to create is not obvious. That matters because some features are only available in one type of document, and which one you choose will substantially affect how Pages works. Many of us wouldn’t…

HOW DO I SHOW A 12–HOUR CLOCK INSTEAD OF 24–HOUR? In Settings > Date & Time, turn off 24–Hour Time. But beware: this extends far beyond what’s shown by the clock. You’ll find every time on your device now works using AM and PM, which can become tedious when setting times. There’s no simple control which alters only what’s shown in the clock display. HOW TO GET URGENT TEXTS IF DO NOT DISTURB IS ON? This normally silences all incoming messages, but you can add the phone number of each specific sender as an Emergency Bypass. Open their card in Contacts, tap Text Tone. At the top, turn on Emergency Bypass and set the alert tone. Tap Done when finished. HOW TO DEEP CLEAN KEYBOARDS, MICE AND TRACKPADS? It’s wise…

The simple answer might appear to be connecting it using Apple’s Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adaptor, but alas that usually doesn’t work as it can’t deliver the power that a compact external SSD normally needs. Equally, buying a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 compact SSD would suffer the same problem when you came to connect it to a current or future Mac. In light of these issues, you can either buy a more expensive powered external SSD or enclosure, or a dock to provide the power that a compact unit needs. If you get a Thunderbolt 2 dock now, you should still be able to use it via an adaptor when your Mac has Thunderbolt 3 ports. Another option would be to mount an M.2 NVMe SSD in a compact Thunderbolt…

One of the smaller casualties with the loss of 32–bit software support in Catalina and Big Sur is that QuickTime codecs used to record and play back certain video and audio formats no longer work. Although most Mac apps have been updated, some older or cross–platform software hasn’t caught up. You’ll notice this if you’ve recently upgraded macOS from Mojave or earlier to Catalina or Big Sur. Apple has a list of formats which lost support when those old QuickTime codecs were lost, at bit.ly/ml183QTmedia. Among them are Flash Video, RealVideo, WMV, and Perian codecs. MacOS provides support for the conversion of those retired formats in Mojave, but not in subsequent 64–bit versions of macOS such as Big Sur. If you want to convert or access movies in those formats,…

EVEN IF YOUR Mac isn’t suffering from beach balls, crashes or kernel panics, you’ll still want it to run faster. EtreCheckPro (etrecheck.com) gives it an excellent all–round check which highlights any problems, and draws your attention to practical measures you can apply to fix or improve them. Once it has run its checks, it lists major and minor issues which need to be addressed. Its free version provides a thorough analysis of security protection, and a long text report with full details. Coupled with utilities which are bundled with macOS, you should then be able to fix many of the problems it can detect. If you get out of your depth and seek help from Apple Support Communities, EtreCheck Pro’s report enables experts there to hone in quickly on a…

IF YOU’VE ONLY ever considered AirPlay as a tool for streaming music to compatible speakers, think again. AirPlay allows you to stream audio and video, and that can be done from a Mac, to extend your desktop. You can even use it with non–AirPlay speakers, with the help of software like AudioBridge (free with IAPs, audiobridge.com), which turns Sonos speakers into AirPlay devices. You don’t even need an Apple TV box for video streaming — many smart TVs now support AirPlay 2, allowing you to stream directly to them. If you add an Apple TV or compatible smart TV to the Home app and assign it to a room, you can even use Siri to control playback of video from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Apple advises you should…