Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2022 i MacLife

> Y2K BUG, TAKE 2 Some websites could break when Chrome and Firefox reach version 100 in a couple of months’ time, Mozilla warns in a blog post. According to the post, this is because some sites rely on a string called User–Agent (UA) to identify your browser version and configure the site to suit. However, “without a single specification to follow, different browsers have different formats for the UA string, and site–specific UA parsing. It’s possible that some parsing libraries may have hard–coded assumptions or bugs that don’t take into account three–digit major version numbers.” Sound unlikely? The post reports that testing has found major sites returning problems including T–Mobile, Yahoo, and Daimler, although some are already being fixed. “Many libraries improved the parsing logic when browsers moved to…

The Find My app merged two apps together: Find My Phone and Find My Friends. And today it can find more than just iPhones and Macs. It also works with Apple’s AirTags, which you can attach to pretty much anything and then use the Find My app to locate them when you can’t find them. Attach AirTags to your keys and bag, and you’ll find them invaluable: when an Apple Watch notification tells you that you’ve left your bag in the car, it saves a lot of time, effort, and worry. Find My is incredibly clever. Each of your devices broadcasts an encrypted signal even when it’s offline, and that signal enables nearby Apple devices — including other people’s devices — to locate them and to upload their location to…

FOUR REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE: • Save over 65% on the regular store price. • Free Apple Watch: The Complete Manual digital bookazine. • Never miss an issue. • Get every issue delivered direct to your door. FREE DIGI BOOKAZINE WITH YOUR NEW MAC|LIFE SUBSCRIPTION TO ORDER GO TO www.magazinesdirect.com/mcl/B2EMAG TERMS AND CONDITIONS Digital bookazine only available with a paid one or two-year subscription. Bookazine will be emailed 3-5 days after payment is processed. Savings based on the US newsstand cover price of $8.99 per issue. Your first issue will arrive 4-6 weeks after your payment is processed, please allow additional time for overseas deliveries. Offer expires: July 1, 2022…

$179.99 From kensington.com Features Qi charger for iPhone, AirPods with USB–C (20W) and USB–A (12W), stand for iPad and MacBook Kensington’s StudioCaddy is one of the most versatile multi–charger docks we’ve seen so far — allowing you to charge a number of Apple devices at the same time. The StudioCaddy is a two–piece device, with the main section being a Qi wireless charger that includes a stand for an iPhone and a horizontal pad for an AirPods charging case. There’s also a separate stand that can hold both an iPad and a MacBook in the upright position. That allows you to use your iPad while it charges, although the MacBook will need to remain closed during charging. The clever design of the StudioCaddy means that these two pieces can be…

$109.95 From nuphy.com Features 2.4G wireless connection, AirFeet, PBT keycaps Needs USB–A or USB–C, Bluetooth NuPhy’s Air60 is a wireless mechanical keyboard that at 60% regular size is about as portable as you can currently get, while achieving the tactile response of mechanical keys. Weighing just 1 pound, it is nonetheless well built with an aluminium case and the company’s AirFeet, which allow it to sit atop the existing keyboard on most laptops without touching their keys. It comes with USB–A and USB–C cables and works in wired mode, over Bluetooth 5 and also using 2.4GHz wireless via the included USB–A dongle, for people such as gamers who require ultra–low latency. Charging over USB, it offers up to 48 hours of operation — or a little less if you use…

From $129.95 From lacie.com (Sales via The Apple Store) Features Password protection, 3–year data recovery plan, USB–C interface LaCie’s sturdy solid–state drives are great for keeping your files safe when you’re travelling with your laptop, and its new Mobile SSD Secure goes even further by providing additional security features for your important data. The compact USB–C drive measures just 0.4in long, 3in wide and 3.9in thick, and weighs a mere 1.6oz, so you could easily slip it into your pocket when you’re on the move. The drive feels nice and sturdy, but LaCie also includes a three–year subscription to its specialist data recovery service in case the drive ever gets damaged. The Mobile SSD Secure can be used for Time Machine backups, but LaCie also includes its own ToolKit app,…

MACS HAVE ALWAYS been at risk from malware, but until recently those risks were so small — helped in no small part by security features built into macOS itself — you could easily go without extra antivirus protection. But the recent emergence of Mac–specific malware, including the notorious Silver Sparrow malware that targeted both M1 and Intel–based Macs, has changed that. The good news is protecting your Mac is a simple task — and one you can potentially do for free. So why exactly would you want to pay for antivirus protection? The primary reason is to broaden your protection beyond basic malware to cover other existing threats like ransomware and increase your privacy online. Another reason might be to invest in software that is designed primarily for the Mac…

Free (IAPs) From effie.pro Needs macOS 10.13 or later Effie is a minimalist markup editor and mind map app. While stripped back, it has a few handy tools that elevate its abilities. It’s free to download, but some publishing and customization options require a $29.99 yearly subscription. Effie uses a three–column layout, with your folders, files, and workspace ordered left to right. You can hide the first two columns by clicking the << button, and this blank canvas can aid your concentration if you want to minimize distractions. Press / and you’ll see a cheat sheet of markup shortcuts, which is helpful if you’re new to the syntax. You can also add markup stylings from the Markup menu bar entry. While the app is focused on minimalism, it has a…

WHY IS MY MAILBOX FULL WHEN I TRASH MESSAGES? You most probably need to set incoming mail to be automatically deleted from the server. In Settings, tap Mail > Accounts and open the account concerned. In the Incoming Settings section, set Delete from server to “When removed from Inbox”. HOW TO SYNC THE PAGE I’M READING IN BOOKS? Open Settings > [your name] > iCloud and enable iCloud Drive and Books. Then go back to the Books item in Settings and turn on Reading Now. This only works across other iOS/iPadOS devices accessing the same Apple ID, and will now work with Macs running Monterey when signed in to the same iCloud account and set to sync in their Preferences. HOW TO RUN DIAGNOSTICS ON MY M1 MACBOOK PRO? M1…

You should still be able to check your Mac’s internal hard drive by restarting it in Recovery mode, opening Disk Utility there, and running First Aid. However, while that should give you a little time to ensure that it’s backed up, when a hard drive is over eight years old and starts to become unreliable you should be prepared for it to suddenly fail. On this particular iMac, replacing the internal drive isn’t particularly difficult, but does involve separating its display and removing the left speaker. While there are instructions online, you’ll almost certainly want to get this done by an experienced service engineer. There is another danger to consider, particularly if you replace the old hard drive with an SSD. It’s common after this procedure for the firmware to…

If your Mac has a T2 or M1 chip and is running macOS Monterey, this is simple. Back up or copy all the files you need from it, deauthorize the Mac in Music or one of the other Apple media apps, then run the new Erase All Content & Settings command, available in the System Prefs menu. When that eventually prompts you to select the country to personalize the Mac for, force it to shut down and it’ll be ready for its new user. Older versions of macOS and Intel Macs without T2 chips require a longer manual process to accomplish the same. That starts with disabling both Find My Mac and Activation Lock, followed by backing up and deauthorizing. You then have to manually sign out of iCloud and…

REQUIRES Adobe Premiere Elements 2022, macOS 10.15 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to add overlays, tease out tones and make clips fit IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes PREMIERE ELEMENTS 2022 boasts some really fun new features, such as the option to enhance your footage with animated overlays like light leakage effects or floating particles. It also helps you to reveal missing tonal detail courtesy of the new Adjust Shadows & Highlights guided edit. As well as demonstrating these new features, we’ll explore how Premiere Elements 2022 addresses the increasingly common problem of combining different shaped clips in the same project. For example, if you add a horizontal clip to a vertical project, you’ll get annoying black bars above and below the clip. The new Auto Reframe tool crops the…

REQUIRES macOS Monterey 12.1, iOS 15.2, iPad OS 15.2 YOU WILL LEARN How to use Account Recovery and Digital Legacy IT WILL TAKE 45 minutes THE INTRODUCTION OF Touch ID and Face ID means there is much less need for us to remember passcodes or passwords on Apple devices. But there are still occasions when you will need to rely on memory rather than biometrics. There are numerous occasions when Apple will ask you for your Apple ID password. If you can’t remember it, you can’t just ask Apple to reset it, and could find yourself locked out of your iCloud account. The good news is that you can prevent that happening by setting up an account recovery contact. When you do that and are locked out of a device,…

ONLY A FOOL would try to predict what Apple will do, especially in this time of uncertain supply. Well, as Gomez Addams said in the best film of 1991: “With God as my witness, I am that fool.” I don’t want to look at the whole range, though — I want to narrow down into some things I’m especially looking forward to, starting with the new bigger iMac. It seems obvious this iMac will feature the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips from the new MacBook Pros, and I’d bet that Apple will include the miniLED XDR display too. I think there’s a good chance Apple brings back the iMac Pro name for this one — the new bigger 24–inch size of the smaller one makes me think that’s the…

IT WILL SOON be possible to accept contactless payments on iPhone as well as make them. Apple has announced Tap to Pay on iPhone, coming later this year, which will enable sellers to accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards — including American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa — and other digital wallets on their iPhones, with no additional hardware or payment terminal required. All they’ll need will be a supporting iOS app on an iPhone XS or newer device. Tap to Pay on iPhone will be available for payment platforms and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to their business customers. Stripe will be the first to offer it to their business customers, including the Shopify Point of Sale app…

For many Apple users, iCloud Photos is the iCloud feature they’ll use the most. No matter how much storage you have in your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, using your device’s cameras to take photos or shoot video in high quality will quickly use up your local storage. For example, our iPhone has 128GB of total storage, but our Photos library is 251GB. With iCloud Photos we can store the majority of our photos and videos on Apple’s servers, downloading only the photos we want to look at when we want to look at them. We can still browse through the thumbnails, but the full resolution images are only downloaded on demand. To enable that option on your iCloud account, simply open Photos on your Mac and go into Preferences…

iCloud doesn’t just use Apple’s servers to store information; it also uses third–party servers such as the ones from Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, and of course Apple has no control over other tech firms’ server farms. What Apple can do, though, is make your data impossible for other people to access. Apple encrypts all of its iCloud data transfers and almost all of the data it stores in the cloud. Encryption is a way of scrambling data to make it unreadable unless you have the unique decryption key, and those keys are not shared with anybody. The only data Apple doesn’t currently encrypt is your iCloud mail, but you can add your own encryption certificate in Mail if you have one. In addition to protecting your data…

Designing an operating system that works well for everyone means including features that allow users who find it difficult, or are unable to, interact with it to access as much of it as possible and complete the same tasks, regardless of any additional challenges. Apple hasn’t always been as progressive as it could be in this regard and has come in for criticism in the past. However, recent updates to macOS, iOS, and iPadOS have added many more features and overall accessibility has been vastly improved. Voice Control, for example, introduced on the Mac in macOS Catalina, enables anyone to control their Mac using their voice. Dictation has long been available as an alternative to typing, but Voice Control added a new layer of accessibility. Catalina also saw the introduction…

On the previous pages, we showed you how the Mac’s Accessibility features can help if you have difficulty with your vision. However, there’s much more to Accessibility than that. On this page and the next, we’ll show you how to use its settings to help you if your hearing or motor functions are impaired. HEARING CONTROLS Hearing controls are in System Prefs > Accessibility. There are three groups of settings in the Hearing section — Audio, RTT, and Captions. In Audio, one of the most useful controls is the one that enables you to flash the screen when your Mac plays an alert sound. Thankfully, the flash is very gentle, alternating between the regular display and a whitened version. To enable it, go to System Prefs > Accessibility > Audio…

$329 From dji.com Features Dual–channel recording, 250m wireless transmission, touch screen, 8GB memory The DJI Mic consists of a pair of wireless mics, a wireless receiver, adapters for plugging the receiver into an iPhone, powerful magnets for clipping the mics to a shirt, and a DSLR hot–shoe adapter for the receiver. It’s all neatly housed inside a portable and attractive charging box. Due to a lack of wires, the mics are a bit big, and can look awkward on your shirt, but they can be hidden under clothing too. Each mic only has a few buttons for power: linking to the receiver, and starting a recording. The mics have 3.5mm jacks for connection to additional external mics, and there’s just enough room to attach the included fur windsock. The receiver,…

$799 From thestandingdesk.com Features Adjustable height, 30–inch x 60–inch work surface, 40–50lbs weight capacity A standing desk is a great way to improve your health, wherever you work. The Lüften is a manual standing desk, and is built by hand by The Standing Desk, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s designed by expert furniture makers in Germany, and made with the highest tolerance steel from Switzerland. It’s expensive, but you get free shipping and a 5–year warranty. You can also purchase the Lüften Base by itself for $549 if you already have a tabletop, as well as a cable management kit for $29.95. You can even get lockable castors for only $8.95, to roll it around. Right off the bat, this desk sets itself apart from other manual standing desks…

When Spotlight indexes your Mac’s storage it examines the contents of all accessible files. Among those are Apple’s Numbers, Pages and Keynote documents, which are incorporated into that volume’s indexes, and accessible through Spotlight search. If you can remember some distinctive words contained in a Numbers spreadsheet, Spotlight should be able to find it, so long as you haven’t added that volume to its Privacy list. You should also check that the Spreadsheets category is enabled in the Search Results list in the Spotlight pane. When searching, it’s probably better to use the Finder interface, opening a new window and selecting Find in the File menu. Without entering anything into the Search box at the top, set the Kind to Document, add another criterion with the “+” button and set…

Before looking for software solutions, ensure you’ve got ample free storage space and run hardware diagnostics to check your Fusion Drive in particular. Third–party utilities such as DriveDx from bit.ly/ml192drivedx or TechTool Pro also look at “wear” in the SSD component of a Fusion Drive. Memory used in that has a fixed number of times it can be erased and rewritten before it stops working. Fusion Drives with small SSDs, less than 100 GB, which are used intensively can wear out in less than their anticipated 10–year life, then require replacement. If both components in your Fusion Drive appear healthy and not worn out, and there’s plenty of free space, you can turn your attention to software which could be doing this. Traditionally, the next step would be to clean…

While you can change the Mac’s settings in the Language & Region pane, that install hasn’t run correctly, and it’s worth repeating it to ensure that you do get that initial step in its personalization process right. The most reliable way to do that is in Recovery mode, where you can format the internal storage first. Before doing that it’s worth erasing the NVRAM, by starting up with the Cmd+Opt+P+R keys held until it restarts a second time, which is more easily told if its startup chime is enabled. Another option is to prepare an external bootable installer containing the version of macOS you want to install, starting up from that, formatting the internal storage and installing macOS from that external drive. If that still doesn’t work, you can get…

REQUIRES Equinox – Create Wallpaper (Free), macOS 10.14 or later, suitable images YOU WILL LEARN How to create dynamic wallpaper IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes EVER WATCHED WITH envy as a friend’s wallpaper magically changes throughout the day? This “miracle” can be achieved with little fuss thanks to a brilliant free app called Equinox (equinoxmac.com). The app enables you to select multiple background images and then create dynamic wallpaper from them, with images that change with dark and light modes, to a set schedule, or based on the sun’s position in the sky (or indeed when it’s beneath the horizon). You’ll need to source your own images though — you could take the time to shoot the same landscape at different times on the same day, or cheat as we’ve…

REQUIRES Apple Music YOU WILL LEARN How to edit album artwork, metadata, and create Smart Playlists IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes IN PART 1 of our series on cleaning up your Apple Music library, we showed you how to remove duplicates and sort tracks. In part 2, we’ll tackle metadata, Smart Playlists, and album artwork. The latter is probably the most important in terms of making your Music library neat and visually appealing. Album artwork also makes it easier to identify tracks and, importantly, different versions of tracks. That in turn makes it easier to add them to manual playlists or just to play them. The importance of metadata depends on how much of a completist you are. Some of us only care about the title, artist, and, at a…

REQUIRES iPad (excluding iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4), iPadOS 15 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to make the most of Quick Notes in iPadOS IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes ONE OF THE standout features in macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15 is Quick Notes, a handy tool that enables you to quickly capture ideas or information and add it to the Notes app. Quick Notes is ideal for capturing fleeting moments of inspiration, or jotting down notes. You can create a Quick Note from within an app like Safari, in which case they can incorporate a link to the page from where you made the note and a thumbnail of its content. Or you can create them from the Home Screen and start with a blank note. However…

I migrated to macOS from Linux and Windows. There are things to like about Macs: Finder, Photos, Notes, and sharing between devices. However, I don’t like the 13GB updates. I bought my computer when it was installed with macOS Catalina; less than three years later it’s been updated to Big Sur and now Monterey, and there’s no doubt something else is on the horizon. I’ve grown used to industry standards. A delete key that actually deletes. A restart command sequence that doesn’t require two hands. Instead of making it new, how about making it better? No operating system is perfect, but sometimes manufacturers get it right. For example, why can’t I click on an application to maximize it and click on the same application to minimize it? Why not make…

Apple’s iCloud comes free with every Apple device from Mac mini to iPhone Pro Max, enabling you to share data between devices and store files and photos in the cloud. It’s a place to put your stuff and share it with others. It’s a way to bring all your Apple devices together. It’s a way to share your Apple products with your family, and it can help you find misplaced iPhones and family members. It’s also pretty small if you don’t pay for an upgrade; you get just 5GB of space for free. In 2021, Apple offered an upgrade called iCloud+. iCloud+ is free if you subscribe to one of the paid–for Apple One bundles, or you can choose to buy it separately. iCloud+ gives you more storage and some…

iCloud Drive is a wonderful thing, especially if you use multiple Apple devices. It works like an external drive, but instead of connecting to a USB, Lightning, or Thunderbolt port it connects via the internet. To your device it looks like a drive, works like a drive, and responds like a drive, but everything is stored on Apple’s servers. The only limits are the amount of storage in your iCloud account and a 50GB maximum for each individual file. You can use iCloud Drive in two key ways. iCloud–enabled apps use it to store documents automatically, so for example your Pages docs save to the cloud so you can open iPad documents on your Mac and vice versa. GarageBand does it too, so you can come up with tunes on…

Family Sharing makes it easy to share your Apple purchases and subscriptions with other family members, so you can share your iTunes purchases with your partner or your Apple Arcade subscription with the kids. Family Sharing enables you to share your iCloud package with up to five other people, all of whom must also have Apple IDs. You can create new accounts on behalf of any under–13s in your family. The ability to share your subscription is brilliant, not least because you don’t need to pay for each family member. You can also use SharePlay to set up shared viewing or listening sessions using Apple Music or Apple TV+ in FaceTime if everybody’s devices have iOS 15 or macOS Monterey. You can’t share Apple Music unless you have a Family…

Accessibility settings on the Mac are controlled from the Accessibility pane in System Preferences. It is split into four sections to make it easier to find each setting — Vision, Hearing, Motor, and General. You can also choose to show Accessibility status in your Mac’s menu bar. If you choose that option, the Accessibility icon (a human figure inside a circle) will appear in the menu bar. If you click it, you will be able to choose any Accessibility setting. In addition, if you tap the Touch ID button three times, you will see a menu of Accessibility items that you can specify. Press the Tab key to move from one to the next and the Spacebar to select one. Your Mac will read them to you as you select…

Just like the Mac, your iPhone and iPad have Accessibility features that enable you to change how you navigate and control them. Helpfully, most of them have the same names and work in a similar way to their Mac counterparts. In iOS and iPadOS, Accessibility controls are accessed from the Accessibility section of the Settings app. Just like their Mac counterparts, the settings are split into several different categories. These are: Vision; Physical and Motor; Hearing; and General. VISION CONTROLS The settings in the Vision section are designed to make the iPhone and iPad easier to use for anyone with a vision impairment. Like the Mac, they also enable you to reduce motion in the interface — in the Motion section — so that if you suffer from motion sickness,…

$359.99 From monoprice.com Features 28–inch, 4K @ 60Hz IPS panel, 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x USB–C input, 2–port USB hub Monoprice’s CrystalPro 4K is aimed at those looking for a business monitor to increase productivity when working from home, at an affordable price. It has a wide variety of features that help it to achieve this. The 28–inch 4K IPS display has a matte surface, which is great for highly lit office environments, and the bezel surround is reasonably thin except for the lower edge, where the controls are located. Oddly, other than a power icon, there’s nothing to denote the remaining four control buttons, so you’ll need the manual to learn these. A number of ports are located at the rear of the monitor: two HDMI, one…

$1,499.99 From netgear.com Features 9,000 sq. ft Wi–Fi, 12 internet antennas, 1x 10Gbps Multi–Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, 1x 2.5Gbps Multi–Gigabit Ethernet LAN port, 3x 10/100/1000Mpbs Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports The new Orbi Quad–Band WiFi 6E is the first mesh Wi–Fi system that supports the new 6E technoloy, where the “E” bit stands for “extended”, as Wi–Fi 6E adds a new 6.0GHz frequency band. As a fledgling piece of tech, it’s eye–wateringly expensive. This latest version of the Orbi sticks with Netgear’s familiar obelisk design, as found in the Tri–Band version. The Orbi 6E is larger, reflecting that this new Wi–Fi tech requires 12 internal antennas within each unit to provide extended range and speed. The use of Wi–Fi 6E means that this mesh system can offer quad–band Wi–Fi, using the…

You can’t beat the versatility of a sleeve for your MacBook — they slip on in seconds, and offer plentiful protection, whether you’re just carrying it under an arm, throwing it in a bag (perhaps not literally), or placing it within your existing luggage without needing a laptop pocket. Though there are many different varieties of protective shell for MacBooks, here we’re focusing on the soft slip sleeve. This kind usually offers the best level of impact protection, though unlike the hard shell variety, you usually — though not always — have to remove it to use your machine. Here we test four of our favorite MacBook sleeves. > Mous MacBook Pro Sleeve From $99.99 From mous.co Features For 13–inch or 16–inch MacBook Pro (2019), AiroFoam impact protection, water resistant,…

$2,499 From us.xgimi.com Features 4K resolution, ultra–short throw, HDR 10, 2400 ANSI lumens, Harmon Kardon sound system, 3x HDMI 2.0, 3x USB 2.0, headphone, optical, LAN, Wi–Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 The AURA is a home theater in a box. It’s an ultra–short throw laser projector, capable of outputting a picture up to 150 inches big, at just 17.3 inches from a wall, or with less room — a minimum 80–inch picture at just 4.3 inches away. There’s 4K image resolution and a sound system built in, so you don’t need to add a separate soundbar. Out of the box, two things hit you: the AURA is rather large, but it also looks stylish in the way that a high–end audio amplifier might look. Despite its size, it still takes up far…

$99.99 (upgrade for $79.99) From adobe.com Needs macOS 10.15 or later PREMIERE ELEMENTS IS DESIGNED TO HELP VIDEO MAKERS TRIM, FIX, AND SHARE THEIR VIDEO FOOTAGE AS EYE–CATCHING SEQUENCES Thanks to our ever–present iPhone and its superb camera, we’re likely to record more video clips than ever before, leading to the problem of organizing and sharing our favorite footage. As a simplified version of Adobe’s Premiere Pro, Premier Elements 2022 is an entry–level non–linear editor (NLE) that’s designed to help video makers trim, fix, and share their video footage as eye–catching clips and sequences that will generate those endorphin–inducing “likes” on sites such as Twitter and Instagram. If Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are brother and sister apps, Elements Organizer is the parent. The Organizer enables you to view clips…

$9.99 From lnk.bio/AssembleEntertainment Made for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Needs iOS/iPadOS 11.0 or later Encodya is a cyberpunk point–and–click adventure set in a dystopian Neo–Berlin 40 years in the future. And just like its host city’s rain–soaked streets, this game is damp, drab, and dispiriting. The game centers around Tina, a nine–year–old orphan, and SAM–53, her lumbering robot protector. You control both individuals, each of whom has a (limited) palette of different skills. Some human characters will only speak to Tina, for example, while SAM can reach places Tina cannot. First, though, a warning. When we initially opened the game, it required a 2GB update that took three hours to download, and the process crashed several times, requiring us to start the download again. Quite why this couldn’t be…

This is a hardware failure that requires a repair by an Authorized Apple Service Provider for certain. If you have access to an external display, you might be able to get it to start up using that, sufficient to run its hardware diagnostics at least. If that works, it may give you the ideal opportunity to make a backup of everything that’s important on its internal storage before it goes for repair. The fault could be in the display itself, or more likely in the cable connecting the display to the rest of the MacBook’s internals, a known Achilles heel. Although Apple designs those to minimize the chance of failure, with repeated opening over the years they will eventually fail. Checking and replacing them is a lengthy and intricate process…

These are hidden Desktop Services Stores, used by the Finder to keep custom attributes for each folder, including icon positions and, in more recent versions of macOS, settings for the display of file metadata. Most importantly, they contain any added Finder/Spotlight comments. While these files can’t be removed altogether, when you’re sending archives of folders, they get in the way. They’re also hidden when you show hidden files in the Finder, and are only readily seen in Terminal. Some compression utilities have an option to exclude them when making archives, but the best tool for dealing with them is BlueHarvest (App Store). While your Mac still needs them to make the Finder work, that app should tame them. Or, if you’re okay using Terminal, the command find . -name .DS_Store…

REQUIRES Adobe Photoshop 2022, macOS 10.14 or later YOU WILL LEARN To mix landscape properties, and create convincing composites IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes THE RECENT RELEASE of Photoshop 2022 has provided subscribers with useful new (and upgraded) tools to speed up their image–editing workflow. The Object selection tool already did a good job of selecting complicated subjects when you dragged a rectangular marquee around them. The enhanced version of that tool lets you select multiple objects in a few clicks, enabling you to produce creative composites in mere seconds instead of minutes. New Neural Filters, such as Landscape Mixer, use Adobe Sensei machine learning (ML) to augment your location with more interesting features (such as turning an arid desert into a lush green vista). You can even change the…

REQUIRES Groovebox, iPadOS/iOS 13 or later, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch YOU WILL LEARN You will learn how to make electronic music with Groovebox IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes IF YOU’VE EVER wanted to make electronic music but worried you didn’t have the ability, Groovebox (Free, with IAPs) is here to help. It’s one of the simplest, fastest and most fun ways to create exciting tracks on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and it’s fun for serious musicians too. Although you can use Groovebox like any other electronic music workstation, what makes this particular app so good is its use of presets. Simply pick the instrument you want to use, find a preset you like and add it to your song. Choose another instrument, pick another preset and you’ve…

A mesh networking system typically provides two or three mesh routers that you can place in different rooms throughout your home. Each mesh router creates its own Wi–Fi signal, but you can then use the manufacturer’s app to combine the routers so that their signals “mesh” together to create a single network that covers a much wider area than your old broadband router on its own. As well as reaching further than a conventional router, a good mesh system will also include features such as beamforming, which enables the Wi–Fi signal to follow you as you wander from room to room with your devices. As you move around, you’ll automatically be connected to the router that is closest to you, ensuring that you maintain a fast, reliable Wi–Fi signal at…