Innehållsförteckning för No. 200 från iCreate

Welcome to the 200th edition of iCreate, a milestone that everyone who has worked on iCreate throughout the past 16 years is immensely proud to have reached. The unofficial motto of iCreate has always been ‘If Apple made a magazine…’ and we pride ourselves on providing inspirational instruction in using Apple computers and mobile devices to help our dedicated readership get the most out of their tech. As many of us have been using Apple computers for decades and Apple is the number one brand for must-have mobile technology, we have dedicated this special 200th issue to Apple’s 200 greatest apps, tech and innovations. As we have discovered, it is very hard to narrow our favourite Apple product down to one, so we certainly hope that the gadgets that you…

iOS 13 previewed in full The new features coming to your iPhone this autumn have been confirmed with the official announcement of iOS 13. Your iPhone will get a brand new look with Dark Mode, a dark colour scheme that works system-wide and across all native Apple apps, while Sign In with Apple will put an end to using endless social accounts, emails and passwords to log in to apps. “iOS 13 brings new capabilities to the apps you use every day, with rich updates to Photos and Maps, and privacy-protecting features like Sign In with Apple, all while delivering faster performance,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We’re excited for customers to experience what’s coming to iPhone this fall.” Apple introduces iPadOS iPad Apple has…

News channels and corporate video makers sometimes need to buy stock video clips to complement their programmes. By selling your own clips as stock footage through sites such as Shutterstock and Pond5 you can earn around $15 per clip (most stock sites pay in dollars). This can add up to hundreds of dollars each year. However, before you can start earning a passive income from your footage you’ll need to get each clip inspected and approved by the site’s quality control inspectors. Clips can be rejected for a host of reasons, such as being incorrectly exposed or having cold or warm colour casts. Here we’ll show you how to process and export clips so that they’ll be more acceptable for selling as stock footage. Step-by-step  Create suitable stock footage 1…

Adverts are among the most annoying things on the internet and they can ruin your web browsing experience. You visit a site to read a news story and up pops an advert that covers so much of the page you sometimes cannot see the content. An ad blocking extension is a great web page clean-up tool, but there are other options. For example, Reader View in Safari is brilliant and produces even cleaner pages than an ad blocker. You should enable it for all sites. Not everyone uses Safari and Chrome is a popular alternative, so we also take a look at the settings you can tweak to minimise pop-ups and adverts, and the extensions that can completely block them. We also discuss an ad blocking Mac app. Step-by-step  Configure…

Every now and then you’ll hear something on your iPhone that you may wish to save as an audio file. It could be a voice message from a distant friend or loved one. One way of doing this is to record the audio from your iPhone to your Mac and Apple has made this a straightforward process. It entails launching the QuickTime app on your Mac and, after hooking up your devices, putting your iPhone into a setting that is known as System Capture. Once you’re in that mode, it’s then a matter of playing audio on the iPhone and recording it on your Mac before saving it. You can take as much or as little as a piece of audio, too, since you’re in full control of when you…

Sleep the geek way Every sleep function in System Preferences is here at the Terminal. Use ‘pmset displaysleepnow’ to sleep the screen or ‘pmset sleepnow’ to sleep the Mac. Auto turn-off Do you forget to turn off your Mac after work or play? It may not sleep automatically if it is plugged into mains power, so use these settings to force it to sleep at a certain time. Energy Saver Energy Saver in System Preferences has many options and you can choose whether the Mac’s sleep can be interrupted by the Wi-Fi or to enable Power Nap. It’s up to you, but we prefer not. Read the manual Geeks go here! Type ‘man pmset’ and you will see a long description of the many functions available with pmset. It’s a…

Action extensions Extensions can perform actions on the web page content in Safari and some appear here, like AdGuard. Tap the icon to access the extensions features and functions – in this case, to configure blocking options. Sharing extensions Items in the top row share something, like a URL and some extensions appear here, like Pocket and DuckDuckGo. Tap Safari’s share/actions button and then tap the extension icon to use it. Swipe for more. Add more items Extensions are disabled by default and must be enabled before they can be used. Swipe left over the top and bottom rows to reach the More button and tap it to add a new extension to the list. More actions Add actions to this list by tapping the More icon and then tap…

Lockscreen controls When your iPhone enters the lockscreen, the currently playing tune will be on display, allowing you to control it. Check the output device Although you should be able to hear where the sound is coming from, the iPhone verifies the output device by displaying it on the screen. Change output If the audio is playing on your iPhone, you can tap the AirPlay button for a list of options, among them being the HomePod if it is active. When AirPlaying the button turns blue. Control your music Use the buttons on the screen to control your currently playing song and move to other ones. Tapping this control window will take you to the Spotify app. Knowledge base Using the Control Centre Don’t say Apple leaves you short of…

Planning a trip sounds tedious at the best of times, but if you do so you will potentially give yourself much more time to actually enjoy the experience. You don’t need to have definite plans for every single day, but Google Trips will help you create the maximum amount of free time and crucially, it will help you understand where you are going and what you can do. From ensuring that every reservation is noted to discovering interesting attractions, the app offers a perfect balance between necessary administration and fun exploration. It automates some of the crucial trip planning areas and is possibly the most complete mobile solution available today. Even better, it looks inviting and colourful throughout and is exceptionally easy to use. Step-by-step  Manage every part of a…

Browse locations Locations are the online drives that can be accessed by the Files app. You must install the apps for the drives before they can be accessed; for example, install OneDrive or Dropbox apps. Current location What drive is this? Look at the top of the screen and the current drive is listed. The full location name is not always listed – Google Drive for example, appears as Drive. Choose an action Long-press a file to display this toolbar with Copy/Move actions. Sometimes Move will move a file and sometimes it will copy it. It depends on the destination of the action. Browse online storage Here the Apple Files app is being used to browse and perform actions on files on Google Drive. Once drives are set up, most…

Accessibility Your Mac and iOS device have a section in System Preferences or Settings dedicated to special needs, such as poor vision or hearing. Often these settings can be exploited to access useful features quickly and easily on your device and are well worth checking out. ECG The Series 4 Apple Watches feature technology to monitor your heart rate and the ECG (electrocardiogram) app has recently been made available across the world to help users detect any problems with their tickers. Screenshot Utility tool A new addition to macOS Mojave, the screenshot utility tool can be accessed by pressing Cmd+Shift+5 and will provide an array of options for taking screenshots and capturing video footage of what’s on your Mac’s screen.…

David Crookes Pinned down to one favourite Apple device, our iOS expert chose the iPhone – any iPhone! He also rates the GUI, iTunes and Mac OS X as pivotal Apple products. Shaun McGill Our tech expert cites the iMac G3 as his all-time favourite – the first non-beige box computer that helped Apple really kick down the doors to our homes! George Cairns Our creative expert champions the current crop of engaging apps that have evolved from Apple’s iLife suite. These include Photos (previously iPhoto) and iMovie. Facebook iCreateMagazine Twitter @iCreateMagazine Instagram icreate_mag Email icreate@futurenet.com…

Thanks to our ever-present iPhones we’re more likely to document daily events as stills and video clips. These recordings of friends and family are useful assets when it comes to celebrating keys events such as birthdays or anniversaries. Thanks to iMovie’s post-production tools we can combine our video clips and stills into a montage sequence that showcases the highlights of an occasion or presents key moments in a friend or family member’s life. We’ll show you how to bring static photos to life by adding movement to them courtesy of keyframes. Keyframes enable you to animate an overlapping picture’s size and position so that it complements the contents of the video layer below. You can then share your creative montage via social media sites so that friends and family can…

Audio recordings often contain long passages where nothing much happens – a section of a guitar track where the guitarist isn’t playing, for example, or pauses between phrases in a dialogue track. While it’s possible to tame unwanted sections of hiss, hum and buzz with a noise gate plugin, it’s often preferable to isolate the bits of the track you want into individual regions and then delete the unwanted stuff in between. This can free up system resources that might be better used elsewhere, and also give a better visual indication of where the action is happening on each track. Luckily, there’s no need to do this manually with the scissors tool – Logic has a handy Remove Silence feature that can do it for you in just a few…

Play, pause and rewind These familiar icons do what they suggest: you can play, pause, rewind and forward your way through your recordings. Check the audio’s progress You can instantly see how long the audio lasts. You can also save and name your audio by clicking the top-left red button. AirPlay your audio Select this AirPlay icon and it will list the Apple devices that you can stream your recorded audio to such as Apple TV. Pump up the volume By default, QuickTime has the volume down so crank it up by using the slider in the app’s playback window. Knowledge base What format is AIFC? QuickTime will save your audio as an AIFC file. This is a compressed version of an AIFF file developed by Apple some 30 years…

Chances are that you have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos stored on your iPhone. It is also likely that you rarely look back at those taken historically, but with this clever and simple-to-use app you can bring to life photos that have sat in a box or photo album for many years. There are multiple tools included to help enhance older images, but the main premise of the app is to let you capture your historic photos with the minimum of effort. We will take you through the process of scanning photos, building them into albums and using tools to make them feel as vibrant today as they did when they were first taken. Your iPhone will quickly become a repository for all of your most precious memories and…

Your reservations If you have confirmations of your reservations stored in Gmail they will automatically be imported into the app so that all of the information you need is readily available. Use it anywhere Once you have built a full trip you can download it so that all of the details you need will be available even if you have no valid internet connection. Things to do The app comprehensively covers all of the local attractions and interesting things you can do on your trip. The amount of information available is immense. Plan every day You can save interesting places and then use the detail to build up an itinerary of your trip. It can be highly detailed or as loose as you require. Knowledge base Location is everything There…

The one-stop column for Genius advice Sometimes, the photos that I take on my iPhone are slow to sync to my Mac. Why is this? It may just be a slow Wi-Fi connection, but make sure you are signed into the same iCloud account on both devices and ensure that iCloud Photos option is enabled on your iPhone (Settings>Photos). The photos may not be syncing because Mobile Data is disabled and there is no Wi-Fi. Go to Settings>Photos>Mobile Data and then turn this option on to speed things up. Be aware that this can eat into your data, though. How do I set my Mac up so that no password is needed to download free apps from the App Store? Go to System Preferences> App Store and then click on…

Key features 360-degree sound • IP66 weatherproof • 24 hours playtime Learn more kitsound.co.uk Available from amazon.co.uk WE LOVED KITSOUND’S original Diggit speakers. Designed for outdoor use, they had a punchy sound and could be paired together for true stereo sound in the comfort of your own garden. Well here comes big bro! The Diggit XL is a larger unit consisting of twin 45mm drivers and dual passive radiators with built-in digital signal processing for an enhanced bass boost. It uses Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to your Mac or iOS device and, as it too is designed to brave the elements outdoors, comes with an IP66 weatherproof rating and a detachable stake to plant it in the ground. Like its smaller siblings, the Diggit XL provides full 360-degree sound for…

Shooting a location at night can create a dramatic and atmospheric photo. However night photography can be a challenge, especially when there’s no strong light source such as a full moon or street lamps. Photos captured at night can also suffer from ugly picture noise caused by a fast ISO setting. You could use a slow shutter speed to let in more light but then you run the risk of adding shake-induced picture blur unless you use a tripod. To avoid these nocturnal shooting constraints, snap your subject during the day and grade the photo’s colours and tones to create a night-time scene. Here we demonstrate how to use Photos to manually adjust a daytime picture’s colour temperature and tweak its tones. Step-by-step  Turn day into night 1 Import photo…

There are some musicians who pour scorn at the notion of needing assistance with their innate sense of timing. While they probably have a point, the technique of performing to a ‘click track’ needn’t always be a dirty concept and especially in GarageBand. While real drummers aren’t fond of the practice, it can be hugely useful for adhering to a strict tempo and capturing a tighter performance. Most basically, GarageBand’s click track is its digital metronome that can simply be toggled to hear beat ticks signifying the project’s time signature and master tempo. However, you may also prefer to use a basic percussion loop, Drummer or even your own MIDI region that can have its click sounds changed. Step-by-step  Using a click track 1 Setting tempo The first step is…

BBEdit has received many revisions in its time, totalling more than 50 since 2011, but the big story is the constant attention to detail and laser-eyed focus on what the developer’s users require. It is a text editor that includes features for both coders and writers, and within the preferences you will find options that can be enabled for your specific requirements. The number of features is almost limitless and we would advise you to spend a lot of time understanding how it works to get the most out of it. The app is not easy to understand, but when you consider the advanced solutions it offers, and there are many, this is an understandable trade-off. It’s one of the oldest Mac apps and still one of the very best.…

We all know the benefits of a good night’s sleep, so after sorting out your own sleep problems, perhaps you should turn your attention to your Mac’s. Sleep is good for your Mac and among the benefits are reduced power consumption, which is useful when MacBooks are running on the battery, powering down components like the screen and disks to reduce wear and tear, and increased security by requiring a password on resuming from sleep. You are probably not using the Mac’s sleep facilities to the max and here we take a look at all the configuration options for enabling automatic and manual sleep – from automatically entering sleep mode every night to manually setting a countdown timer to sleep mode. Step-by-step  Configure macOS sleep mode controls 1 Set battery…

Extensions have been available for desktop web browsers for a decade or more, but they have been poorly supported by mobile browsers like Safari on the iPhone and iPad. In fact, it wasn’t until fairly recently that they were supported at all. However, extensions are becoming more common for mobile Safari these days and they can be found by searching the App Store if you know what to look for. Some extensions are excellent and they add great features to the browser, such as the ever-popular ad-blocking extensions. Here we look at two different types of Safari extension and see how to find, install and use them. A few useful extensions can boost the power and capabilities of Apple’s mobile browser. Step-by-step  Find, install and use Safari extensions 1 Search…

The HomePod is a market-leading smart speaker and its audio quality is fantastic but Apple does like to tie you into using its own Music service which you may find restrictive. At a basic level, it means you can’t simply ask Siri to play songs from a rival such as Spotify but that doesn’t mean you have to make the switch to Apple Music if you don’t wish to. Instead, you can make use of AirPlay. So long as your HomePod is on the same Wi-Fi network as your iDevice and Bluetooth is enabled, you can fire up Spotify and select the HomePod as the output device. You will need to keep your iPhone or iPad handy if you want to skip songs (you can still ask Siri to toggle…

Import photos You can import photos that are already stored on your iPhone by tapping this icon. The image will be handled in the same way as a scanned image. Alignment is key The app is very clever and will enhance any photo, but we would advise you to try to align the photo horizontally and vertically when scanning. Just three seconds Tap and hold the capture icon for three seconds to scan a photo. Keep the iPhone steady to ensure the best possible digital capture. Thumbnail previews As soon as a scan is completed you will see a small thumbnail previewing it. It will remain blank until the first photo is scanned and saved. Knowledge base Saving limitations Photo Scanner Plus does not by default save your photos to…

At first sight, the Files app on the iPhone and iPad is a straightforward file manager for moving, copying and deleting files stored on iCloud. However, it can do more than this and it can be used to manage all your online cloud storage services. Using the Files app you can connect to Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and other online drives. Using nothing more than your iPhone, you can manage the files on all your online storage: check files, copy them from one cloud service to another, move them, delete them, and so on. Using iOS Files puts online drives at your fingertips. Let’s take a look at how to move files from one service to another. We will be using the iPhone, but it works just as well…

Simon Blackman Apple’s Maps app now includes the Air Quality Index, which presents itself as a number in the bottom-right of the screen, along with the weather and temperature. To see this new feature you must first ensure that you are running iOS 12.2 or later, so go to Settings> General>Software Update and double-check before launching the Maps app. Check location Different countries have their own air quality indices. You can check Wikipedia for the scales countries work to: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quality_index Weather update Handily, you can also get the flavour of the weather and temperature at any location you search for in Maps. This data is presented in real time and you can test this by seeing how the figures change as you move around the map. Understanding the numbers…

Release date June 2003 • Features: Design your own DVD, Set up a Mac Creative Studio • Tutorials: iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iCal, Safari, Mail, Mac OS X, Photoshop Elements, Software Updates • On the CD: Photoshop Elements, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Medal of Honor: Spearhead, Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab 2.0, Sigma Chess Lite 6.0.3, Pocket Tanks 1.0, Bubble Trouble 1.0.0, MacSolitaire 1.6, CandyBar, Internet Explorer 5.2.2, DockFun 4.0, Limewire 2.98 Original price: £6/$10 Price now: Priceless! Sixteen years ago this month, iCreate first hit the newsstands and it was a 132-page love letter to Apple. Born from a desire to make a magazine that celebrated the Apple brand and clearly showed Mac owners how to use iLife and OSX software creatively, iCreate was produced under the unofficial mottos,…