Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i MacLife

There is a story, well established in Apple folklore, that tells of Steve Jobs being presented with an iPod prototype. Jobs inspected it… before proceeding to plop it into a nearby fish tank. He then asked the — presumably rather shocked — engineers if they could see the air bubbles coming out of the now ruined device that they had spent untold hours developing. When they conceded they could, Jobs told them rather bluntly that this meant the iPod could be smaller. This story isn’t just revealing of the often–brutal way Jobs ran his company, but it shows how his design aesthetic drove Apple’s technological development and decision making. The impact of this can be seen in all manner of ways, one of which is, perhaps surprisingly, batteries. The batteries…

WHAT DO YOU use your Apple gear for? Is your tech mainly for productivity, whether for your job or your household? Are you a keen photographer or video editor who likes to edit your creations on your devices? Are you a professional — or even a keen amateur — designer who creates great layouts on your Mac and iPad? Perhaps you like to go traveling or on vacation, and need to keep an eye on the weather? Is it lifestyle apps you’re looking for, or maybe you like to use your computer and mobile devices purely for entertainment? Or maybe — and let’s be honest, this is the most likely option — you use them for a combination of most or even all these things? This feature is all about…

Live Home 3D Standard $59.99; Pro $149.99 > FROM www.livehome3d.com > AVAILABLE ON Mac, iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro If you want to rework your home using 3D designs, BeLight Software’s Live Home 3D is the perfect app for you. Intuitive and feature–rich, you can design floor plans as two–dimensional creations, then switch to the 3D view. It gives professional results, but doesn’t demand pro–level skills. The end results are highly realistic. You can work with furniture, plants, wallpaper and decoration, floor coverings and more, then walk around your virtual house and see what it would be like to live in. With the Pro version, you can add terrain editing, elevation view, material editor, light editor and more. There’s also a free version to get you started. Whether you’re a professional interior…

IINA Free > FROM https://iina.io > AVAILABLE ON Mac A comprehensive media player, IINA can play almost any file you throw at it. The user interface is modern and Mac–like, and it can play local files, online streams and YouTube playlists. It’s available in 20 languages, is free and open source, and is in active development. It’s a great addition to your Mac’s library of entertainment apps. Apple TV Free (IAPs) > FROM App Store > AVAILABLE ON Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4K, Vision Pro Apple’s TV app is not only the best place to watch iTunes movie and TV purchases across your devices, it’s also home to Apple TV+. Available for $9.99/month it’s packed with a fast–growing catalog of original shows and movies — from Ridley Scott’s historic epic…

BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY CUTS the cord on many devices, enabling you to enjoy a whole host of gear from keyboards, games controllers, speakers, headphones, mice and trackpads without the need for trailing wires. So long as your devices are within around 10 meters (33 feet) of your Mac, you can quickly connect and use your accessories. But, for some reason, it’s not always easy to connect. So how can you make working with them a little easier? Here we look at ways of making the most of your Bluetooth devices, whether you’re sticking with macOS’s excellent built–in options or looking a bit further afield. For the most part, you shouldn’t encounter too many problems — Bluetooth tends to work well these days. But, if you do, try turning Bluetooth on and…

FILMING MOVIES ON your iPhone can be fun and exciting, and video clips are more likely to catch the eye on a social media feed than still images. As it’s ever–present, you can whip out your iPhone and press the Action button (on iPhone 15 Pro) to instantly open the Camera app. If you then press and hold the Action button you’ll start recording video. This enables you to capture clips of spontaneous events such as your child’s first steps. However, the best movies should start with a bit of planning ahead (which professional movie makers refer to as the pre–production stage). For example, if you’re going to shoot a wedding then you might want to consider packing some helpful accessories into a kit bag, such as an iPhone handheld…

$59.99 From www.logitech.com Features Multi–device pairing, customizable middle button and 10 Fn shortcut keys, Silent Touch Technology for silent clicks, connects via Bluetooth Low Energy or Logi Bolt USB receiver (included), compatible with Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android YOU CAN ALWAYS rely on Logitech to deliver excellent input peripherals at affordable prices, and this keyboard and mouse pack, currently selling at less than $60, is no exception. Available in “tonal rose” (pink), “tonal white” (white) and “tonal graphite” (black), the pack consists of a compact keyboard and a three–button mouse. Both offer Bluetooth connectivity, and can be paired with three different devices at once so you can switch between them at the touch of a button. Alternatively, plug the supplied Logi Bolt USB receiver into your Mac via a…

$89.99 From www.anker.com Features Qi2, 15W wireless MagSafe charging, 10,000 mAh capacity, USB–C in/out, up to 27W wired charging Needs iPhone 12 or later for MagSafe wireless charging THE LATEST ADDITION to Anker’s extensive lineup of chargers is the MagGo Power Bank 10K, a portable unit that weighs only 8.82 oz. It comes with a USB–C cable and has a single USB–C port which handles power in and out, charging itself from empty in a little over two and a half hours. This increases moderately if you wirelessly charge your phone at the same time the power bank is recharging, but it can do both things at once. iPhone models 12 and later have MagSafe capability, which means you can snap the charger magnetically to the back of the phone to…

From $119.99 From www.owc.com Features Install an M.2 NVMe SSD of your choice and connect it to an Apple silicon Mac for top–speed USB4, and a fallback of USB 3.1 Gen 2 with Intel Macs Needs Any Mac with USB–C HIGH–PERFORMANCE SSDS can be a gamble, involving unknown brands, suspect speed claims, and varying build quality. Stick to certified Thunderbolt and you won’t see its headline 40 Gbps, or roll the dice with whatever USB4 might deliver. OWC offers Envoy Pro SSDs delivering up to 2.8 GB/s over Thunderbolt 3, but its Envoy Express enclosure achieves half that, hence its new Express 1M2. Fitting an M.2 SSD is straightforward. The endpost can be moved to accommodate 2242 and 2230 as well as standard 2280 modules without heat sinks; a conductive thermal…

Andrew Cottle Art Editor After canceling recent outdoor games because of predicted rain (which didn’t materialize), Andy is now eager to read all about accurate weather apps on p20. Rachel Terzian Production Editor So many apps to check out over on p12; another one that Rachel has been using is Rain Rain, which provides a huge range of relaxing sounds and is great for concentration. Howard Oakley Contributor If you want to upgrade your Mac’s external SSD storage situation, then Howard’s review of the OWC Express 1M2 (p74) is an essential read.…

ACCOMPANYING THE NEW iPad Pro models is an all–new Magic Keyboard ($299 for the 11–inch version, $349 for the 13–inch) with a row of function keys along the top and a larger trackpad with haptic feedback. A new Apple Pencil Pro ($129) delivers new features: a sensor in the barrel can sense a squeeze, bringing up a tool palette to quickly switch tools, line weights, and colors, all without interrupting the creative process. A custom haptic engine responds when you squeeze, double–tap, or snap to a Smart Shape. Also, a new gyroscope detects barrel roll, so you can rotate the pencil to change the orientation of shaped pen and brush tools. The new Pencil Pro supports hover and also adds support for Find My for the first time. It pairs, charges,…

WHILE I AM far from the first person to suggest that swappable batteries should become a part of gadget design again, it came to my mind again recently thanks to the launch of Fairphone’s Fairbuds. These are true wireless earbuds (like AirPods), but the user can replace the battery in both the buds and case. They aren’t hot–swappable batteries to provide longer, nearly unbroken listening time — they take a little too much effort for that — but they can be swapped in a matter of minutes. This core issue being addressed here isn’t convenience (though there’s no question that if you could pop a fully charged battery straight into your iPhone or Apple Watch when needed, that would be really handy), but sustainability. AirPods, along with all the other…

Microsoft 365 $6.99/month > FROM www.microsoft.com > AVAILABLE ON Mac, iPad, iPhone If you have professional dealings with PC users who use Microsoft apps, you might want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. What you get depends on which subscription you take out, but for the basic $6.99 a month/$69.99 a year service you get Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as Microsoft Teams for video conferencing, Outlook for email and OneNote for digital note taking. You receive 1TB of cloud storage for Microsoft OneDrive, and you are able to use the suite on up to five devices at once. If you dislike taking out subscriptions and only need Word, Excel and PowerPoint anyway, you can buy Microsoft Office Home & Student for a one–off fee of $149.99, though you can only…

DOCUMENTS ARE OFTEN made for sharing. This is certainly true if you’re producing a report for work or writing an article for a top–notch magazine such as this one. It’s why Apple makes it easy to allow others to access your documents in Pages. Whether you want to collaborate on a document in real time, allowing other people to make changes, or you wish to finish your work and share the end result, Pages has you covered. You can also password–protect a document so that unwanted eyes can’t catch a glimpse. Here we’re going to walk you through your various options — all of which are on top of the more traditional method of simply saving a document on your Mac before finding and attaching it to an email! In doing…

YOU MIGHT HAVE heard of Apple Arcade, the gaming subscription service from Apple, without ever really giving it a shot. Well, now is a great time to get stuck in, as it’s chock–full of excellent titles that’ll have you battling, puzzling and adventuring away for hours on end. Apple Arcade tries to do things a little differently to most gaming platforms. For one thing, it works across almost the entirety of Apple’s product ecosystem. If you start playing a game on your Mac, you can pick up your progress on your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or even a Vision Pro, with all your saved games and achievement progress carrying over from one device to the next. It’s all made to be simple and completely seamless. GREEN LIGHT FOR GAMING There are…

WHEN APPLE LAUNCHED its amazing Vision Pro spatial computing headset, one of the features that immediately went viral wasn’t its immersive video or its head tracking, or any of its other cutting–edge cleverness. What made the web users go “ooh!” was when a reviewer put timers above multiple pots and pans to keep an eye on their cooking. But you don’t need to buy a $3,499 headset to get some Apple–assisted cooking in your own kitchen. Your iPhone, your iPad, and your Apple Watch can provide you with multiple timers too. If you’re surprised, we’re not surprised; until recently, your iPhone wasn’t able to run multiple timers concurrently. It’s taken a very long time for multiple timers to make it to the iPhone, and until iOS 17 you were limited to…

YOUR iPHONE WILL soon become full of video clips that you can find quickly in the iPhone Photos app by tapping on Albums and scrolling down to Videos. Tap to view a clip. You can then tap Edit to apply the same editing tools that you’d use to adjust a photo’s colors and tones to a clip. In addition, Photo’s video–editing tools enable you to drag trim handles at the start and end of a clip to cut to the best bit. This process also makes the clip shorter and easier to upload if you want to share it to social media. After editing a single clip, tap Done, choose “Save Video as New Clip”, then tap Share to share it via Mail, Instagram, and so on. Sharing a single…

ALONG WITH MANY other life hacks, it’s no surprise that there are loads of health and fitness apps for your Apple Watch. As you’re likely aware, the Watch has heaps of features that will enable you to track your activity, workouts and well–being and, depending on the model, can also measure your blood oxygen, generate an ECG (electrocardiogram), track how well you sleep, and also check for high, low or irregular heart rhythms. Data can be checked within the Health app, but you can make better use of it by installing a bunch of third–party options. Some are designed to motivate you, others seek to inspire, while many allow you to better analyze info so that you can make more informed choices. Streaks > $5.99 > FROM https://streaks.app > NEEDS watchOS 9…

$149.95 From www.evehome.com Features AirPlay 2 streaming via dual–band Wi–Fi, Ethernet; Output — RCA, optical, coaxial EVE SYSTEMS HAS just made its first steps into the audio market with the new Eve Play. Like Belkin’s SoundForm Connect, the Eve Play is an AirPlay adapter that can be used to stream music and audio via AirPlay to an existing set of wired speakers. The Eve Play is more ambitious, though, providing more advanced audio features for hi–fi buffs who own high–end speakers or amps. The Eve Play supports dual–band Wi–Fi (2.4GHz/5.0GHz) for streaming audio via AirPlay, but there’s also an Ethernet port to provide a wired connection as well. Those sets of connectors should work with most good speaker systems, although it’s a shame that there’s not a 3.5mm connector as well.…

$289.95 From https://plugable.com Features 40Gbps with Thunderbolt 4, 100W of power, two 4K monitors or one 8K where supported, USB–C to HDMI adapter Needs Mac with Thunderbolt 4 for full performance, Thunderbolt 3 or USB–C port, macOS 11.2 or later PLUGABLE’S LATEST FLAGSHIP docking station adds 11 extra ports to your Mac while also supplying up to 100W (96W certified) of power to your laptop, enough to keep even the largest models topped up. It’s impressively compact, and very well built with a slim horizontal form factor that means it’s easy to transport. It’s designed for Thunderbolt 4 M–powered Macs and Plugable bafflingly makes no mention at all of Intel models on its pages, though the dock does work with them too. Drilling down a little, owners of Thunderbolt 4 Macs…

AFTER 18 MONTHS without an iPad update — and a slump in tablet sales as a result — Apple has introduced a new iPad Pro lineup, the first devices with Apple’s next–gen M4 processor and a first–of–its–kind Tandem OLED screen technology. Available in silver or space black, the new iPad Pro comes in two sizes. The 11–inch model starts at $999, and the 13–inch $1,299. (Both of these are more than the previous generation, but both new models start with 256GB of storage, double the 128GB in the previous generation.) Both sizes use the new screen tech, which sandwiches two OLED panels together to achieve 1,000 nits of full–screen brightness for both SDR and HDR content, and 1,600 nits peak for HDR. Apple says the Tandem OLED tech enables sub–millisecond control…

APPLE HAS UPDATED its pro creative apps for iPad and Mac. Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, available later this spring, introduces Live Multicam, a new feature that transforms the iPad into a mobile production studio, enabling you to view and control up to four iPhone and iPad devices wirelessly. To support this, an all–new capture app, Final Cut Camera, also comes to iPad and iPhone, with control over options like white balance, ISO, and shutter speed, plus monitoring tools such as overexposure indicators and focus peaking. It works as a stand–alone capture app or with Live Multicam. Using iPad Pro’s fast Thunderbolt connection, Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 also allows users to create or open projects from external storage. On the new iPad Pro with M4, editors can take…

In the Spring 2024 issue of Mac|Life (#218) you had a section on productivity boosters for macOS. I saw Alfred in the list but was disappointed not to see Raycast make the cut. I switched to this app from Alfred a while back and have never looked back. Raycast has been supercharging its app recently with multiple AI (artificial intelligence)/ML (machine learning) offerings and it has really become my go–to productivity booster. I’d recommend taking a look as a solid Alfred replacement that can actually do so much more! CHUCK HAINES Chuck, that’s a great recommendation. Alfred tends to be our go–to when we’re recommending a productivity enhancement app to someone, but looking at Raycast it appears to be a worthy counterpart. We’ve not reviewed it before, so we’ll definitely…

Clips Free > FROM www.apple.com > AVAILABLE ON iPhone, iPad It’s from Apple, it’s free and it’s fun. Clips is a video editor that’s built for simplicity. With a few well–placed taps you can add spectacular effects to your flicks, add stickers and emojis, include automatically generated captions and more. Add a soundtrack from the 100+ on offer or from your music library too. Affinity Photo Mac $69.99; iPad $18.49; Universal license $164.99 > FROM https://affinity.serif.com > AVAILABLE ON Mac, iPad If you need a powerful and pro–standard photo editor, but balk at paying the subscription fees for Adobe Photoshop, then you need Serif’s Affinity Photo. Available for a one–off fee on both the Mac and the iPad, Affinity Photo is packed with all the features you’d expect from a professional image…

Strides Free (IAPs) > FROM https://stridesapp.com > AVAILABLE ON Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch Gather your personal habits, goals and routines in one place, and turn them into a simple to–do list. Strides sends reminders to make sure you stay on track, and uses graphs to display how you’re doing. There’s over 150 templates to choose from, and you can make your own trackers as well. Calm: Sleep & Meditation Free (IAPs) > FROM www.calm.com > AVAILABLE ON iPhone, iPad, Watch, Mac through browser Calm is designed to help you manage stress, sleep better and live a happier, healthier life, offering hundreds of hours of audio content in seven different languages. A ten–minute program added every day helps you start your day or unwind before bedtime, there are mindfulness programs for beginners and…

WHILE IT’S EASY to try to imagine you have no possessions, in reality most of us have far too many. And that can make it tricky to keep track of them all — especially when you need a list of them for insurance purposes, when moving home, when writing a will, or for those increasingly frequent occasions when Next Door Norman pops round to borrow the lawn mower. Again. The solution is to create a home inventory: a detailed catalog of all the things you own. While you could use a spreadsheet to do that, it’s a bit unwieldy, so here we’re going to show you how to use Home Inventory 4 from Blue Plum Software (https://theblueplum.com). It costs $24.99 and there’s a 14–day trial if you download the app…

WE LOVE THE Apple Watch, but sometimes we wish that there was more customization than Apple allows. While we can change the colors and complications of a face, the choice can feel limited. The App Store can help. Two apps in particular, Watchsmith and Facer (aka Watch Faces by Facer on the App Store), can design new complications and supply you with entirely new watch faces too. Both apps focus on different customization options. Watchsmith is designed primarily around complications — the handy little nuggets of information, such as weather data, activity circles and calendar events. And Facer is more about changing up entire watch faces, with collections of original designs available from both leading artists and well–known brands. In this tutorial, we’ll discover how you can use these apps…

ONCE YOU’VE EDITED your raw footage into a short, slick sequence — complete with titles and transitions — you can add an extra level of post–production polish to make your show stand out from the social media crowd. Due to different lighting scenarios, such as sun and shade, some clips might suffer from color casts (such as a cold blue or green tint appearing in certain shots). You may even notice a finger partially obscuring a corner of the frame (a common occurrence when holding your iPhone!). Fortunately, iMovie has all the tools you need to counteract problems with composition, color and tone, as we’ll demonstrate. You can also take your picture adjustments a step further and change the look of a clip more creatively using grading tools such as…

YOUR APPLE WATCH is effectively a mini–computer, so you can harness its ever–present nature to remove some of the stresses and strains of life. You can take the sting out of your daily chores through better organization, or speed up laborious processes and even make use of the Watch to aid you with your work. Of course, all work and no play will make anyone a bit dull but, thankfully, your Watch can also be used to engage in a bit of fun to help you unwind. Admittedly, the screen is a bit too small for a truly satisfying gaming experience — despite gems such as Ping Pong: Watch Retro Game (Free, IAPs) and Star Duster ($1.99) — but there are plenty of other entertaining apps to be found. Cloud…

$59.99 From https://baldursgate3.game Needs macOS 12 or later YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD a lot of good things about Baldur’s Gate 3. Well, after more than 200 hours of gameplay, we can tell you that the hype is entirely justified. It may well be the best game ever released on the Mac. The story begins with your character held captive on a mind flayer ship. These monstrous creatures capture innocents of all races and insert a carnivorous “tadpole” into their heads, which eventually consumes their brains and transforms them into other mind flayers. After you make a dramatic escape, you team up with other infected unfortunates on a quest to free yourselves from the parasites. It’s a journey that takes you across three incredible acts, each of which could easily be its own…