Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i MacLife

FOR THE LAST few years, there have been lots of rumors of Apple getting into producing original content, in the same way that Netflix has. And indeed, Apple has started to fund video content – but in a kind of piecemeal way. As so many things do these days, it started with Taylor Swift. Apple released a documentary about Swift’s world tour for her album 1989 exclusively on Apple Music, available to subscribers of the service. In the last few months, Apple has bought the planned spin-off series of Carpool Karaoke, a popular segment from The Late Late Show with James Corden. This will also be available to Apple Music subscribers. In late 2016 and early 2017, the first show created by Apple will film: Planet of the Apps, a…

THE LOCK SCREEN 1 The Lock screen has been revised in iOS 10, and you don’t even need to press a button to show it if you leave Settings > Display & Brightness > Raise to Wake on (this needs an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus). Unlocking your device now requires you to press the Home button, rather than swiping. 2 Raise to Wake is complemented by a setting that unlocks a device with Touch ID without even needing to press Home: Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button > Rest Finger to Open. This is helpful on large iPhones. Note it only works on devices with Touch ID. 3 Notification Center and Control Center are still accessed with swipes inwards from the top and bottom screen edges, respectively,…

$3.99 Developer Gambrinous, guildofdungeoneering.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later Fantasy gaming can seem to take itself too seriously. All those armored shoulder plates, stat counts and weirdly named wizards can seem a bit… po-faced to outsiders. Guild of Dungeoneering is aware of this perception, and does all it can to undermine it. You don’t have any friends, so you’ve decided to set up your own adventurers guild – that’ll show them. And you’re going to do so while accompanied by a number of entertainingly snide, bard-esque tunes. Rather than steering your characters through a dungeon with a certain number of moves per turn, you instead lay out the dungeon for them, placing down cards down to create corridors, position enemies and stash loot conveniently in their paths. You can…

$6.99 Developer Drinkbox Studios, drinkboxstudios.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.0 or later You awake in a strange, colorful world. You progress through the trees to a house. Your house. Your family is gone. Your arm is gone. You stare at the unfamiliar reflection in the mirror, and see behind you the silhouette of some eldritch creature. It informs you that you must save your family, and gives you a sword. Severed begins… Progressing through puzzlefilled temples is the main game, and various monsters attempt to hinder your adventure on a fairly regular basis. The concept behind Severed is perfect for touchscreens - you use your sword with directional swipes, and each monster can usually be defeated by taking advantage of their directional weaknesses The monsters change, level up and become stronger…

$49.99 Developer BusyMac, busymac.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later We actually really like most of Apple’s built-in apps. They’re easy to use, get the job done, and work largely the same across iOS or Mac. But there are some, such as Calendar and Reminders, that we’ve shunned in favor of superior third-party alternatives. BusyCal 3 looks and feels a lot like Apple’s Calendar, right down to the nearly identical icons, but the former offers a number of improvements. Among them is a redesigned menu bar app which now includes a mini-month calendar and a scrolling event list similar to Fantastical; plus a detailed info panel in the lower-right corner of the main app, which can optionally be displayed in a floating window. Reminders are integrated into BusyCal 3 as to-dos,…

$199 per year for personal/education use, $699 per year for commercial Developer Boinx Software, boinx.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later BOINX MIMOLIVE Trigger and combine a wide range of assets on the fly Customize template layers to create sophisticatedlooking shows Produce and share live content quickly Too expensive for an individual domestic user This app is like a TV studio that enables you to create and broadcast shows directly from your Mac. It helps you gather assets (such as photographs, graphics, and video clips) and then trigger them as and when needed. For example, you might want to create a short video sequence that showcases the highlights of your recent vacation. You could record the live feed from your Mac’s FaceTime HD camera and host your show as its presenter,…

$399 Manufacturer Corel, corel.com Requirements OS X 10.9.5 or later The last few years have seen Painter keep its place at the top of the naturalmedia painting app pile, but it’s been hard to see where it could go forward. Fortunately, in the 2017 edition the developer has innovated with new tools, as well as improving existing ones. The app itself hasn’t changed much in feel or operation, which is a good thing and ultimately allows the new features to feel less like bolt-ons for the purposes of upgrades, and more like integral parts of the software. The toolset is pretty comprehensive, as well as very realistic. It’s very easy to get to grips with, especially if used with a tablet. Many tools respond to stylus angle and rotation, as…

$19.99 Manufacturer Tayasui, tayasui.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later SKETCHES PRO Slick and unobtrusive user interface Excellent tool selection and quality Photoshop compliant Limited blending styles for layers Tayasui’s Sketches Pro is a popular iOS art app, and the fact that it’s made its way to the Mac App Store is a welcome one. But can it deliver on the same streamlined yet versatile experience the mobile version offers? In a word, yes. This is one of the cleanest, slickest, and most intuitive painting applications you will find, and does away with the need to break from your creativity to figure out how to achieve something. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the layout, though; the selection of tools cater for just about everything you could need. Each…

143 Manufacturer Freecom, freecom.com Features 1TB/2TB (tested), USB-A and USB-C cables High-capacity 2.5-inch hard drives can feel thick, but this one is just a third of an inch tall. It weighs only 5 oz too, even though its body is metal. Two USB cables are bundled with it: one to connect to a USB-A port, found on most Macs, and a USB-C for 12-inch MacBooks and any future Macs with it – though that’s only expected at this price. As for performance, the drive is what we’d expect from a 2.5-inch hard disk, though a few things stood out. While minimum rates for sequential transfers on drives of this kind aren’t stellar, the mHDD managed respectable 30.4MB/s and 27.8MB/s rates for reading and writing, respectively. Its mean sequential rates of…

$250 Manufacturer Bang & Olufsen, beoplay.com Features Bluetooth 4.2, magnetic clasp, USB charging cube These days, audio companies see wireless buds as a fertile market. Bang & Olufsen has thrown its hat into the ring with the H5 earphones, delivering on its premium mandate for top-notch design and sound, but with a few caveats. The plastic, solidly made earpieces come with a thick braided cable, four pairs of silicone tips and three sets of anti-wax foam tips. In our tests, the standard silicone tips had the comfiest fit and seal, and delivered the best treble and bass response. Design-wise, the most attractive features of the H5 are its magnetized buds, which click together around the neck and turn off when not in use. The inline, three-button remote is thin and…

$39.99 Developer TT Fusion/Feral Interactive, feralinteractive.com Requirements OS X 10.10.5 or later, 1.8GHz Intel processor, 4GB RAM, Intel HD 5000/AMD 4850/NVIDIA 130 graphics, 18GB storage At this point, there could be a LEGO video game of any franchise and people would play it. Of course, not all sagas are Star Wars, and the latest LEGO adaptation has been treated with special care. LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens adds a few new elements to the tried-and-true formula, but it’s the extra story content and humorous Easter eggs that make it a special treat. The main beats of the story follow the film’s plot, though some events have been fudged to fit LEGO’s quirky brand of storytelling. Jakku, the Millennium Falcon, and even Endor have been bricked, with players taking the…

Wi-Fi is a really quick and convenient way of connecting devices to your home network. Even so, many of us find “dead spots” in our homes that the signal can’t reach, away from the router. This is where powerline gear can be a lifesaver. Powerline adapters connect devices to your network via your existing electrical sockets. You need one adapter to connect your router to a nearby power socket, and an additional adapter that plugs into a socket in the room where you have that pesky dead spot. You then connect your device to the powerline adapter using an Ethernet cable. Prices start at around $60 for a two-adapter set that provides theoretical speeds of up to 500Mbps, but for a little more, you can get models that achieve speeds of…

1 Star Wars Battle Quads propelsw.com Pre-order from $200 >>> Okay, this new Millennium Falcon from won’t help you send Darth Vader spinning off into the depths of space, but it can fly at a speed of 50 mph (the Speeder Bike, X-wing and TIE Fighter versions will be a little slower, with an average speed of 35 mph), do 360-degree tricks and have laser fights with up to 24 other pilots. Yep, with other pilots. Each of these drones is a quad-copter with translucent plastics used to hide the propellers fixed beneath each vehicle, and uses on-board sensors for an aerial game of laser tag. Pre-order now to feel the Force in the fall. 2 i.dime idime.us From $48 >>> We were disappointed when Apple persisted with a 16GB…

Ever wondered if there’s something better than Apple’s Mail, more capable than Calendar, or superior to Safari? This feature looks at the most-used Mac apps and shows you how to power up OS X with better third-party alternatives. Some are free, but we don’t shy away from those with a price; our choices are genuine enhancements for your Mac. Preinstalled software has existed as long as there have been home computers, but the truth is that many people today rarely venture further. That’s not surprising when you think about it – after all, the modern Mac comes supplied with all the basics you need to perform all manner of tasks, from organizing your day to navigating files. However, as much as Apple has improved its apps over the years through…

$29.95 Developer WinZip, winzip.com Requirements OS X 10.8 or later, 64-bit processor For many Mac owners, OS X’s built-in Archive Utility is perfectly suitable for tackling occasional downloads from the internet. But WinZip offers a more comprehensive arsenal of tools for crunching or extracting content from ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, LHA, 7Z, JAR, and WAR archives. The previous version integrated cloud services iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and Google Drive while introducing ZipShare, a free service for files up to 500MB. Version 5 builds upon that foundation by automatically generating links when uploading to connected cloud services. Paste the resulting URL into another app and you’re ready to share in seconds. Our favorite new feature is the Actions pane, where you can add frequently used features, such as encryption or link sharing, prior to…

$39 Developer Houdah Software, houdah.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later; active internet connection HoudahGeo 5 imports images from cameras or SD cards as well as the folders and photo libraries already on your computer, uses a variety of methods to determine where pictures were taken, then adds the appropriate EXIF, XMP, and IPTC metadata to JPEG or RAW files. It’s ideal for photos taken with a DSLR. Geotagging works automatically when used in conjunction with supported GPS track loggers, but there’s another method if you don’t want to invest in such accessories. Simply take a photo at each location as you travel with your iPhone or cellular-equipped iPad, then load those images into the same HoudahGeo project as your DSLR files. Click the “Geocode from Reference Photos” button on…

$89.99 Developer Equinux AG, maildesigner.equinux.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or later MAIL DESIGNER PRO 3 Really easy to use Templates are great Purely a design tool Apple Mail doesn’t support mobile designs Email marketing can be very effective, but it can also be very expensive: crafting something that looks good not just on a Mac but on Windows and on every conceivable kind of mobile device can be a big job with big bills attached. If you’re a small business or organization without in-house designers, Mail Designer Pro could be a better option. Mail Designer Pro is designed for small businesses, individuals, clubs, and groups who need to create good-looking and effective emails such as promotional emails or newsletters. It’s a template-based system offering 72 different designs that you can…

$199 Manufacturer ASWY, aswyshop.com Features 360-degree sound, wireless charging, LED touch controls ASWY ONDO AIR SPEAKER V2 A conversation piece… Impressive looks Cumbersome plastic holder Underwhelming sound Floating speakers are a sure sign that we’re finally living in The Jetsons – either that, or manufacturers are running out of ideas to cram into their equipment. Sure, when you see the Air Speaker in action for the first time, you can’t help but be mesmerized by how it hovers above its base unit (powered not by The Future, but simple repelling magnets). In fact, it’s quite easy to become distracted by the speaker’s constant rotation. However, we never warmed to the Air Speaker beyond it being anything other than a conversation piece. It isn’t meant to be just for show, however.…

$1,498 Manufacturer Sony, sony.com Features 24-600mm (25x) zoom lens, 20.1 megapixels, 4K video, 2.95-inch LCD, 4.41 lbs SONY DSC-RX10 III Excellent and fast 24-600mm lens Superb stills and video quality Poor autofocus at longer focal lengths Large and heavy Like its predecessor the Mk II, the Sony RX10 III is aimed at the serious enthusiast end of the photography market: anyone looking for ultimate image quality and telephoto reach in a bridge-style package. The RX10 III has the same 20.1-million-pixel Exmor CMOS sensor, and offers the same excellent 4K video functionality, as the Mk II. In fact most features and functions are identical, so the main talking point is the large and impressive Zeiss 24-600mm lens. There’s no getting around the bulk of the Sony RX10 III. It’s very well…

$90 Manufacturer Meem, meemmemory.com Features Lightning connector, 32GB capacity iCloud is the backup solution for your iOS devices and Apple wants to keep it that way. Yes, you can still use iTunes and your Mac, but that’s become a bit of a manual chore in the days of the cloud. So why on Earth would you want another offline solution for backing up your data? Well, the designers of Meem think there’s a gap in the market for a travel backup solution while you’re away from Wi-Fi or a mobile network signal. We can see the point, and as you need to charge your iPhone every couple of days, it’s good to know there’s a cable out there that backs up while you’re doing so. As you charge, Meem backs…

HOW DID BITDEFENDER GET ON MY IMAC? I erroneously opened an email that appeared to be from a friend. In it was a link to a site promoting a weight loss product. A little later, I inadvertently ran an app called Bitdefender that had appeared on my Mac. Does this mean my Mac is now infected? Bitdefender is intended to clear out iffy software, rather than being malware itself, but it’s controversial and designed to extract money from you. We strongly recommend you remove it, and avoid doing anything that could bring you to install other unwanted apps on your Mac: the next one could be malicious. Mercifully, Bitdefender has its own removal tool, which you should use as soon as you can. If you are looking for tools that…

IF YOU’RE A MUSIC fan, you’ve probably amassed all kinds of music on various formats over the years – vinyl records, CDs, MiniDiscs, and cassette tapes being the most popular. While much of your music has probably ended up on services such as Apple Music or Spotify, and can easily be bought on or streamed to your Apple devices, there are bound to be some tracks that have never appeared on any download store – maybe because your tastes are a little obscure, the label or artist hasn’t reissued them digitally, or you have some stuff you want to keep listening to for sentimental reasons – treasured mix tapes, recordings of your kids, and so on. Perhaps you’re just enjoying the vogue for all things retro and have been refreshing…

In 2006, Apple made a huge change to its Macs, one few people would have anticipated just a few years before – it switched from using Motorola’s PowerPC processors to Intel chips. Apple and the PowerPC chips were a long-term pairing, and seemed inseparable. Sadly (for nostalgics, at least), expectations of what a processor would do were moving on, and Motorola’s silicon was struggling to keep up. When it came to single-core processors, the PowerPC units were brutes, and Apple made blisteringly fast machines with the G4 and G5 at the helm. But the PowerPC architecture was starting to look like a dead end. The G5 chip was hugely powerful, but it was also large and power-hungry, and getting it into an inch-thick notebook (because a notebook being an inch…

Last issue, we wondered if Pokémon GO was going to be a continued big hit, or just a short-term fad. Well, weeks after its release, it’s still going strong, with Pokémon hunters congregating in parks and key locations around towns and cities to catch the cute critters as they appear, while the developer has dropped hints about future updates. Though it appears to be quite a simple game, there’s a lot of hidden complexity you can take advantage of – tricks that make it easier to find and catch Pokémon, or to level up and gain the great rewards (and rare Pokémon) available to higher-level players. So whether you’re thinking of trying the game for the first time, or you’ve been hunting for a while, be sure to try out…

Assuming you’ve got younger children – say, from around the ages of 6 to 12 – or nieces, nephews, godchildren, or any combination of the above… well, chances are they’re into Minecraft. And by “into,” we mean “obsessed to the point of playing for hours or maybe days at a time.” That usually means a Mac or iPad being commandeered for the purposes of block-busting, usually at the most inconvenient times. Now obviously, you’re not going to want to shell out on a new Mac just to indulge the little one’s whims, no matter how much you love them. But an entire Saturday frittered away on video games is every child’s birthright, and playing Minecraft might set them up for a lucrative future career of 3D modeling or tree punching.…

$339 Manufacturer AOC, aoc.com Features 27-inch, 2560x1440, DisplayPort, 2x HDMI, VGA AOC’s latest monitor is a good-looking display with a native resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. First impressions are of an unfussy, quietly stylish display; slim, metal-framed, and with a strong stand that’s a single leg of aluminum, bent into a half-closed rectangle. There are downsides to this voguish appearance, though: it has a tilt range of no more than 14 degrees, and – like many displays today – there’s no height adjustment option, so if you want it to be higher, get a stand. (Not a VESA mount, sorry; there’s no fitting for that.) Most of this monitor is a simple slim rectangle, with a slightly thicker section on the back where the circuitry and ports live. This is where you’ll…

From $79.90 Developer Anthropics Technology, landscapepro.pics Requirements OS X 10.7 or later This is a tempting alternative to the complexity of Photoshop for landscape enthusiasts. Click areas of your image to define grass, sky, water, people, and so on, then refine your masks by dragging the pointer. Next, choose your effects. The app’s presets – which have intuitive names such as Morning, Storm, and Sunset – offer instant, impactful results, and you can apply different effects to each area – warming up your foreground but not your sky, for instance. You can even drop in entirely new skies from the app’s built-in library. LandscapePro applies effects intelligently, so a fiery new sunset will cast a new color on the ground below. Getting good results often proves tricky, though – LandscapePro…

$100 Manufacturer Buffalo, buffalo-technology.com Features 1GHz dual-core CPU, 256MB memory, 2x SATA II bays This is a no-frills, two-bay network drive with RAID (0 or 1) support. The base model is diskless – we tested it with Seagate drives. It’s much smaller and lighter than other two-bay drives we’ve tried, and while the plastic casing seems durable, the drive caddies are a tad flimsy. It’s rounded out by a USB 3.0 port at the back for adding more storage. Functionality is similarly stripped back. Highlights are a private cloud and BitTorrent, along with AFP, Time Machine, DLNA, and an iTunes audio server. The drive is mostly easy to set up, with a Mac app that takes you to its web interface. The drive’s performance is disappointing. Tests drew attention to…

$180 Manufacturer Withings, withings.com Features Measures weight, fat, muscle, bone and water mass, Pulse Wave Velocity WITHINGS BODY CARDIO   Extra measurements over its predecessor Good all-round health checking Good integration with app Integrated battery Withings’ new scale (replacing the WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer) sports a leaner physique of its own, and measures more about yours. It also retains the WS-50’s clear display, which warns if you’re leaning during a weigh-in. The Body Cardio, and the cheaper $130 Body scale introduced alongside it, checks your water percentage (a disappointing omission on the WS-50), together with muscle and bone mass. Results appeared consistent and reliable, and we saw only 0.2 lb variation between the Cardio and the WS-50 – which is the smallest amount they log. For whatever reason, fat mass…

$14.99 Developer Chucklefish Games, chucklefish.org Requirements OS X 10.9 or later, 64-bit Intel CPU, 2GB RAM, internet connection STARBOUND Randomly generated worlds are consistently surprising and fun Deep crafting and building systems Combat is rudimentary and side quests samey Mechanics can be overwhelming and not always explained well For a game called Starbound, you spend a lot of time planetside – underground, exploring labyrinthine corridors and mining coal, copper and gold. This is a terraforming game of surprising ambition, wonder, and charm. Procedural generation provides Starbound’s heft: dozens of solar systems created uniqely for you, ripe for plunder, each with unique flora, fauna, and inhabitants. There are forest planets and desert worlds, of course, but also horrifying biomes of fleshy tentacles and neon slime. You’ll find cannibal tribes living in…

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Big-screen photos Free (Creative Cloud subscription required) One of the benefits of subscriptionbased software is that new features can be rolled out at any time. If you happen to be a photographer or designer with a Creative Cloud membership, there’s now one more reason to be happy, with the arrival of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Apple TV. Unlike the desktop and mobile versions of Lightroom CC, the Apple TV app isn’t about editing photos, but rather sitting back and enjoying them in all their big-screen glory, either one at a time or as a slideshow. Thanks to cloud sync, edits and new uploads made on one device will appear on the Apple TV app as well, always in the best quality. It’s easy to navigate collections and…