Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i MacLife

THE STREAMING MARKET is facing a shakeup as Netflix slumps while Apple TV+ grows. At the 94th annual Academy Awards in March, CODA won the Oscar for Best Picture — the first time this award has ever gone to a movie released by a streaming service, not in theaters. (Afterwards, however, Apple rereleased CODA for a limited run in over 600 US movie theaters, no doubt to help recoup the record $25m it paid for worldwide streaming rights to the movie.) Since the launch of Apple TV+ in November 2019, Apple’s original series and feature films have won many awards — 953 nominations and 240 wins, to be exact — but the milestone Oscar win gave Apple TV+ a significant boost. Variety reported that views of the movie were up…

> iWORK APPS UPDATED Apple has released Pages 12.0, Numbers 12.0, and Keynote 12.0 for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. All are free updates. Even though this is a new whole–number version, there are nowhere near as many new features as in version 11.2 of these apps six months ago. > On Mac, you can now use Shortcuts on macOS Monterey to create or open documents in all three apps, and to add rows to a table in Numbers or start presenting in Keynote. > On iOS and iPadOS, you can now edit font size more precisely (up to two decimal places) in all three apps. > On all platforms, you can use VoiceOver to read comments and track changes in Pages 12.0, or create formulas and autofill cells in Numbers…

GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE Save money Never miss an issue Get every issue delivered to your door To order go to www.magazinesdirect.com/mcl/B2GMAG or call 1-844-779-2822 and mention code B2GMAG TERMS AND CONDITIONS Savings based off the US newsstand cover price of $8.99 per issue for 13 issues, and the retail price of Book of Amazing Technology digital edition of $6.99. Offer only valid on 1 or 2 year print or print + digital subscriptions. Book of Amazing Technology will be emailed 3-5 days after payment is processed. Visit us at magazinesdirect.com or call 1-844-779-2822 for other subscription options. Your first issue will arrive 4-6 weeks after your payment is processed, please allow additional time for overseas deliveries. Offer valid until December 30, 2022.…

When it comes to travel, chances are you’re looking for equipment that can make life a little easier when you’re away from home. After all, it’s not like you can take your usual desk set–up wherever you go, regardless of whether it’s for work or pleasure. When you have to travel light, you need to make sacrifices to your normal tech operations. But fear not, as we’ve found the perfect gadgets for every road warrior. There are protective cases, battery packs, USB hubs, and portable monitors — all great for working on the go. And we’re not just focusing on work. We’ve included a dash cam, a nifty travel mug, and more, all of which are made for the gadget lover with itchy feet. Ember Travel Mug 2 $199.95 From…

There aren’t a lot of security cameras that support HomeKit, but Aqara’s new indoor camera, the G2H Pro, does, and it costs just $69.99. The compact camera is neatly designed, standing just 3.26 inches high, with a magnetic tilt–and–swivel base, and there’s a wall–mount kit included as well, so it’s easy to set the camera up. Despite the low cost, the G2H Pro provides 1080p resolution, and produces a clear, sharp image with an impressive 146–degree viewing angle. There’s a bit of “fish–eye” distortion in the image, but many people will accept that in order to get that wide viewing angle. The low–light mode isn’t perfect — making out facial features at night is still a bit tricky — but it’s clearer and sharper than we’ve seen on several more…

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of productivity apps on the Mac. But that can make choosing the best one all the more difficult. They range in complexity from the simplest, text–based to do list apps, to full–blown “getting things done” (GTD) task managers that while extremely powerful, require an investment of time in learning how to use them and a commitment to use them regularly. So, the first question to ask yourself when you’re trying decide which is right for you, is “what do you want to do with it?” Do you want an app where you can make the occasional to–do list and check things off when they are done, or do you want a tool you will use daily that will manage everything you have to do and allow you…

Free (Personal); $49.95 (Pro) From emclient.com Needs macOS 10.14 or later It’s not the most well–known email program, but eM Client has been around for 15 years, and was recently updated to version 9.0 for both Mac and Windows. The program has quite a dense interface, so it’s possibly not the best email app for complete beginners, but its all–in–one approach makes it a good option for people who want to organize their email, calendar, and notes. After installing eM Client, it runs its New Account assistant, which works with several different types of email account, including Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, GMail, and POP and IMAP. We had no trouble setting up a couple of old non–Apple email accounts but, oddly, there’s no option in the New Account assistant for…

FOR AS LONG as the Mac has existed, there has been a way to output from it to paper. For a while, Apple even made its own printers, connected by the now long–forgotten serial and SCSI ports, depending on the device in question. Now, you’re much more likely to connect to a printer wirelessly, or over an Ethernet network. You can even print to a printer on the other side of the world, thanks to the internet. Nevertheless, and despite all the advances in other areas of computing, the simple act of printing a document or image can be a frustrating, hair–tearing experience. Whether it’s a printer that your Mac just won’t connect to, or one that refuses to print within the boundaries and parameters you set, there seems to…

If you see this or a similar error when trying to install an older version of macOS, it means one or both of two things. If you downloaded the installer before the end of October 2019, its Intermediate security certificate will have expired, making it unusable. You’ll need to download a newer copy from Apple. In any case, recent versions of macOS take exception to you wanting to install most older versions, and the only way to do that is when started up from an external bootable installer, such as a USB flash drive or a partition on an SSD. In Disk Utility, format it in HFS+, which is essential if it’s to work. Follow the instructions given by Apple at bit.ly/ml194macosinstall to turn that into a bootable installer disk.…

WHY IS MY iPHONE 13 PERSONAL HOTSPOT UNRELIABLE? Older devices may not support its 5GHz Wi–Fi frequency, or there could be interference. iPhone 12 and later models offer optional 2.4GHz Wi–Fi compatibility in Settings > Personal Hotspot, although Apple warns internet performance and Wi–Fi security may not be as good. KEEP GLASSES ON FOR FACE ID? That depends on whether their glass blocks infra–red, required by Face ID cameras for recognition to work. If they do, remove your glasses before setting up your appearance, or add an alternative appearance if you prefer. Otherwise they should make little difference, so use whichever is more likely when you’re unlocking your device. WHY DO I NEED WI–FI WHEN MY MAC HAS ETHERNET? Macs use Wi–Fi and Bluetooth for connections with Handoff and Continuity.…

NetworkQuality is a new command tool in Monterey which measures the speed and quality of transfers with Apple’s test service at apple.com. If your Mac can’t upload to or download from that server, its results will be zeroes, but you then have the troublesome and confusing task of discovering where exactly that failure has occurred. If you can reach other sites such as apple.com/us, it’s likely Apple’s test server is down; try again later. If other sites are unreachable, use troubleshooting drills such as checking your router’s configuration and restarting it. One quick fix that sometimes works is simply restarting your Mac, which initializes network hardware and loads the drivers afresh.…

If you don’t want to move files to volumes which aren’t backed up at all, it’s simplest to add them or their enclosing folders to the exclusion list accessed using the Options button in the Time Machine pane. There’s another method available in Terminal using the command tmutil addexclusion That has three variations: option -v excludes whole volumes referenced by their UUID; option -p excludes folders and files by their path, and no option (the default) excludes individual files and folders by marking them with an extended attribute. macOS also has its own standard list containing mostly hidden folders such as Spotlight indexes and Trash folders, but you can’t alter that. Those are now listed in the hidden file .exclusions.plist in each backup. SHARE WITH US! EMAIL: ask@maclife.com FACEBOOK: facebook.com/maclife…

AS CONVENIENT AS macOS is, sometimes it could be a bit more convenient: who wants to look down at the keyboard to remember which key fires up Launchpad or shows the Desktop or app windows? And what if you’d rather activate the Notification Center from the top left of your screen rather than the top right? Luckily, Hot Corners is here to help by making it even faster to access useful system features. In this tutorial we’re using macOS Monterey, but Hot Corners is available in older versions of macOS too; the feature was introduced more than 10 years ago and it’s been a staple of macOS ever since. Hot Corners lives in System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver or in System Preferences > Mission Control…

OVER THE TIME I’ve been following Apple, it’s always (ish) been skating to where the digital platform puck is going, even in ways that were controversial. Take its refusal to support Flash. It was a drawn–out battle of wills, but Apple not only prevailed, it was proved to have taken the more forward–thinking stance all along. In less controversial examples, it always wanted to remove DRM from the iTunes music store, and was one of the first stores to do so. It stood firm that its iTunes movies store should give free upgrades to higher qualities, which reportedly caused a rift between it and Disney — but Disney now offers its movies the way Apple wanted them. Even MobileMe was really a precursor to Google Suite and other cloud–connected ecosystems.…

APPLE HAS RELEASED iMovie 3.0 for iPhone and iPad with new beginner–friendly features: Storyboards and Magic Movie. Storyboards help novice creators get started. Instead of starting with a blank timeline, they can choose from 20 templates for popular video types including cooking tutorials, Q&As, news reports, and more. Each storyboard has a guide shot list and step–by–step advice on which clips to capture for each video type. Shots can be added, reordered, and deleted as needed. Titles, transitions, and filters can be added and customized. Music tracks dynamically adjust to fit the length of a project, and users can refine each clip with intuitive editing tools like trim, split, clip speed, and clip volume. For even faster results, Magic Movie instantly creates a polished video for you — simply select…

1 Sonus Faber Omnia $1,999 From sonusfaber.com >>> A great speaker doesn’t just sound incredible, it looks so good that it becomes the centerpiece of any room it occupies. That’s the case with the Sonus Faber Omnia, a sleekly gorgeous speaker that exudes class from every angle. Its audio performance is simply sensational, with superb clarity, satisfying bass, and a wide soundstage all on offer. Never mind stereo speakers, the Omnia proves you don’t have to sacrifice quality if you want the convenience of a single–speaker setup. We also love its flexibility. There are heaps of wireless options, from AirPlay to Chromecast, plus built–in support for Spotify and Tidal. And if you prefer a wired connection, you’re well served there too. In other words, the Sonus Faber Omnia is an…

A lot of planning goes into jetting off on holiday, but there are some things you might not have thought of: how will you capture the memories you make? How will you ensure you don’t lose or damage anything valuable? And how will you keep your devices powered up when you can’t get to a wall plug? Luckily, there are tech products that can help. Here, we’ve rounded up our favorite devices that can guarantee your trip is one to remember. Whatever you want to do, from hiking in the mountains off the beaten track to taking in the sights at a spectacular viewpoint, the products here are the perfect way to ensure your next vacation is your best yet. DJI Air 2S $999 From dji.com A drone can help…

Ever since Apple introduced its first Apple silicon Mac in 2020, its direction of travel has been crystal clear. First to arrive were the M1–powered MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13–inch MacBook Pro in 2020, followed by the gorgeous 24–inch iMac in April last year. Last October, Apple moved things on again with the new 14–inch and 16–inch MacBook Pro offering up new members of the M1 family, the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Now there’s this, the new Mac Studio — a Mac mini on steroids, armed with a choice of either an M1 Max or the new M1 Ultra, making it the most powerful desktop Mac ever made — or at least until the new Apple silicon–sporting Mac Pro arrives sometime in the coming months. Thanks to the…

$99.99 From hypershop.com Features 6 essential ports, media shortcut keys Needs USB–C Compatible with any iPad that has a USB–C port, this hub fits snugly to the body and is sturdy when attached. To the iPad’s meagre single port it adds six extra interfaces plus media control buttons for music and movies on the device. There’s a USB–C port with 5Gbps data and 60W of power delivery for charging, and even though the largest iPad can only accept around 20W of power for charging, this is handy when using the hub via its extension cable with a Mac. There’s a USB–A port also rated at 5Gbps which is the same as the smaller iPads, though the Pro’s USB–C allows 10Gbps data transfer and more for the M1 model. An HDMI…

Not everyone wants or needs a wireless mouse — for some, the convenience of never having to recharge and also the weight saving from not having a battery are preferable. Keychron’s M1 is a stylish and ultra–lightweight wired mouse that uses the supplied 6 ft USB–C cable for data and power. It also comes with a USB–A adapter and you can use a longer cable should you wish. The body itself is incredibly lightweight at just 2.4 oz and is semi–open, with its internal circuitry partly visible. This also reveals the animated RGB lights. Its sensitivity, important for gamers who wish to customize behavior, can be set from 1200–5000 in steps of 100 via a button underneath or the MacOS app which also lets you customize its seven top buttons.…

SETTING UP A printer is so much easier than it used to be… not so long ago, connecting a printer to your Mac for the first time was a pain. You had to install drivers from a disk or download them from the web and then hope that your Mac recognized the printer. Nowadays, thanks partly to the wonders of AirPrint, it’s simple. Once you’ve connected your printer to your wireless network, which often means no more than pushing a button labelled “WPS” on the printer and your router, your Mac will recognize its presence then download and install the drivers. Of course, you can still connect a USB printer to your Mac and use that, and your Mac will install the correct drivers. And you can use a wired…

iCloud isn’t suitable for making proper backups of your Mac, but is valuable for keeping off–site copies of files provided you don’t rely on always having instant access. It isn’t guaranteed to be available. When you put files in iCloud Drive, they’re copied up to the iCloud servers, but the original also remains on your Mac. If the copy in iCloud changes, by editing it using a different Mac or device, that’s synced back to your Mac, keeping it up to date. Behavior changes if you enable Optimize Mac Storage in System Preferences > Apple ID. That lets macOS decide when to “evict” files from local storage, leaving only a stub on your Mac. The Finder then marks those with a cloud and downward arrow icon. So long as there’s…

Local snapshots made by Time Machine as part of backing up are different from its backups. That’s because snapshots include every file and folder on the volume, thus can’t and don’t exclude those items which you or macOS exclude from backups. A snapshot consists of a complete copy of the file system for an APFS volume at an instant in time. That includes many files which Time Machine’s defaults don’t include in its backups, such as the hidden database of document versions and what’s in the Trash. After that snapshot is made, when the data for any of those files changes, or a file is deleted, the old data is kept so that you can restore the whole volume or any file from it. Snapshots therefore grow over time, as…

IT’S VERY EASY TO SET UP UNIVERSAL CONTROL AND IT WORKS BRILLIANTLY THE MUCH–DELAYED Universal Control finally rocked up in March 2022. It builds on Sidecar, which can turn your iPad into an extra Mac display, but this time it keeps the iPad as an iPad: it enables you to connect an iPad or Mac and control them with the same keyboard and mouse, and you can also drag and drop between them. It feels a bit like magic. In order to use Universal Control, you’ll need to take care of a few things first. The iPad or Mac you’re adding must be running the latest iPadOS or macOS, which at the time of writing is iPadOS 15.4 or macOS 12.3. Your devices all need to be logged into the…

APPLE DOESN’T JUST give you great tools to make creative masterpieces. It gives you lots of ways to share your creations too, and in the case of ebooks you can also sell them on Apple Books. All you need is a copy of Pages. It’ll take care of the publishing so you can concentrate on making your book as great as it can possibly be. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to publish your own novel, but Apple Books is open to all kinds of genres — educational books, children’s books, history books… if you can imagine it, there’s a place for it in Apple Books. We’re going to show you how to publish a book that you want to give away for free. The process for selling books…

APPLE NEWS ON iPhone, iPad, and Mac is designed to be a one–stop shop for news and magazine–style content. It has two elements to it: the standard News service which is free and enables you access to content from publishers like the The New Yorker, who allow content to be distributed at no cost, and the News+ services which costs $9.99/month and provides access to absolutely everything. Aside from a greater choice of publications, Apple News+ enables you to read magazines cover to cover and download them for offline reading. You can share an Apple News+ subscription with up to six family members. Both the standard News service and News+ offer stories that are hand–picked by Apple’s editors and pushed to your feed based on your reading habits and preferences…

I found the DAC article in the April issue (191) quite interesting, but one topic wasn’t addressed. I play music from my MacBook Pro via an HDMI cable to one of the HDMI ports on my AV receiver. I do this either from my older MacBook Pro, via a USB–C to HDMI adapter; or from my M1 MacBook Pro via its HDMI port. Would a DAC device make the sound better, or does my AV receiver take care of that? And are there DAC devices that take a signal from USB–C and output HDMI? Should I use an alternative input on the receiver? Thanks. STEVE JOHGART Thank you for your letter on this, Steve — others may be pondering similar questions, too. Cliff Joseph wrote this one for us, so…

You might think the world of technology stops at your front door, but there’s no reason for that to be the case. Once you get out into the garden, there are all sorts of ways your gear can enhance your green–fingered experience. Whether that’s a high–tech take on your favorite outdoor tools or simply a device that can stand up to the elements, there’s a lot that gadgets can do for your outdoor space. Over the next two pages, we’ve put together a selection of devices that will step up your garden experience, from lights and speakers that make social gatherings more fun to cameras and weather stations that help you keep a closer eye on things. Eve Flare $99.95 From evehome.com Ambient lighting can be perfect for a relaxing…

Now that the 27–inch iMac has joined the Power Mac G4 Cube and the original MacBook in the great big Apple resting place in the sky, the new Studio Display could be the next best thing. Maybe. Released alongside the new Mac Studio, the Studio Display sports a 27–inch 5K Retina display and even bears a passing resemblance to the 24-inch iMac. It is also only Apple’s second display of the modern era, joining the 32–inch Pro Display XDR ($4,999), but at a more reasonable $1,599. We say “reasonable”, but there’s a catch. The $1,599 price either gets you a Studio Display with a fixed height but tilt–adjustable stand or a VESA mount. For a height–adjustable stand you’ll need to spend an extra $400. Where rival monitors often include a…

The Mac Mini is pretty powerful considering it’s Apple’s most affordable Mac, but it is limited in terms of its ports and storage upgrade options, topping out at 2TB, an upgrade that adds significantly to the cost. OWC’s miniStack STX is an external drive and Thunderbolt expansion hub that’s the same size as the Mini and designed to sit underneath it. It has one 2.5 / 3.5 inch SATA and one NVMe M.2 SSD slot inside and you can supply your own drives or choose from one of the many available pre–filled configurations. These go as high as a massive 26TB for $1959. Powering from the mains and connecting to your Mac Mini or indeed other USB–C–capable device like an iPad Pro via a dedicated Thunderbolt port, the three additional…

One–off purchase $79, One–year subscription $59 From skylum.com Needs Intel Core i5 or better, 8 GB RAM or more (16+ GB RAM is recommended), macOS 10.14.6 or higher Luminar Neo is the latest and most fully featured member of Skylum’s image editing family to date. Making extensive use of AI, it aims to simplify the process of removing or adding elements in an image, editing the look and feel of pictures and advanced things like relighting scenes or adding different skies. Though a lot of this is available in one–click modes, there’s also a good depth of fine tuning and manual control available as well. It’s not a photo management app in the same way as Lightroom is, but fortunately you can work with catalogs, folders, and albums. Load up…

ONCE YOU’VE MASTERED the basics of printing from your Mac, there is plenty more you can do. From printing lots of documents from lots of applications without having to manually open each one, to customizing presets so that you don’t have to configure each print every time. Depending on the printer you’re using, there are plenty of tools and options for getting more out of it. For example, most printers these days allow you to check how much ink is left from the Printers & Scanners pane in System Prefs. Just choose your printer and then click on a button labelled Options & Supplies. And most have a built–in web page you can visit to find out more information about their status. In this section, we’ll show you how to…

Network Utility, which has been tucked away in the CoreServices folder of the macOS System volume, is now a shadow of its former self. When you run the app it just tells you that Apple has removed its functionality in Monterey. To “ping” other sites, use the ping command in Terminal, or a substitute app. Commands like ping aren’t hard to use: to ping Apple’s main web servers, use the command ping apple.com for example. Other easily used commands include netstat, whois and traceroute, each of which has many options. Those are fine if you’re happy using Terminal, but most will want a proper app, like the donationware WhatRoute from whatroute.net. Its latest version now incorporates ready access to the networkQuality command, saving you from having to use Terminal. Even…

Try rebuilding the Spotlight indexes on that drive. With the disk connected and mounted, go to System Prefs > Spotlight > Privacy. Using the “+” tool add the whole drive to the list and close the pane. After a few moments, open System Prefs’ Spotlight pane again, select the disk or volumes and use the “–” tool to remove them. Leave the drive connected for two hours at least, during which you can observe the reindexing taking place in the CPU tab of Activity Monitor. Processes whose names start with md like mds_stores and mdsworker should then use plenty of CPU until their task is complete and the new indexes are ready to use. In versions of Monterey prior to 12.3, the Finder’s Find command, but not Spotlight itself, also…

THERE ARE MANY reasons why you might find yourself needing to rename lots of files at the same time. Perhaps you’ve transferred photographs or videos from a memory card and want to be able to identify them better, or organize them by date, location, or occasion. Or perhaps you’ve used a disk recovery tool to retrieve data from a failed drive and want to quickly organize the files that you’ve saved from permanent deletion. Whatever the reason, until a few years ago, there was no way to do it without using a third–party tool or writing your own script or Automator action. In OS X Yosemite, however, that changed with the introduction of a renaming tool in the Finder. But it’s one of those features that gets little attention, so…

OF ALL THE built–in apps on iPhone, Measure is the one that gets the least attention. And yet, it’s one of the most impressive. It’s also a good illustration of how augmented reality (AR) can be put to practical use on a mobile device. The Measure app enables you to measure real–life objects around you using the iPhone or iPad’s camera sensors to detect edges and corners and then do some clever maths to determine the distance between them. On more recent iPads and iPhones, Measure also uses the built–in LiDAR scanner to more quickly and accurately determine distances. As well as measuring the distance between two points, Measure can take multiple measurements and even calculate the area of a rectangle. You can use it to work out someone’s height…