Innehållsförteckning för January 2016 från MacFormat

NEW ! MacFormat is changing! Find out how on p24 Another New Year is almost upon us, and with it the prospect of another 12 months of amazing new products and innovations from those enterprising folks in Cupertino. In our ‘What Next For Apple?’ feature, we gaze into our crystal ball and speculate on the year ahead: will we finally see an Apple Watch 2 and an iPhone 7? An iPad Air 3 and a new Mac Pro? And what do the next versions of OS X and iOS have in store? Turn to page 20 to find out. But even with the mouth-watering prospect of new gear on the horizon, there are plenty of ways you can get more from your current Mac, from tips and tricks you’ve forgotten…

Hot gear on the horizon... what’s got us excited? These high end headphones promise the very best sound quality, but at a very hefty price! What is it? “The best headphones in the world”, according to Sennheiser But they should be, as the updated Orpheus headphones cost a whopping €50,000 a pair – although that price does include a high end hi-fi pre-amp housed inside a slab of marble in order to reduce vibrations. When’s it due? Available 2016. Why are we excited? They really do sound wonderful – especially on classical music where you can close your eyes and imagine that you’re sitting in a concert hall with the orchestra right there in front of you. Pulse From about $99 (about £65) www.alpinelaboratories.com What is it? There are some…

Disable SIP El Capitan’s System Integrity Protection feature locks down your Mac’s System folder for better protection. If there’s a time when you need to temporarily disable it, restart your Mac with held down, then choose Utilities > Terminal. Type csrutil disable and press, then restart. When you’re done tweaking, return here and type csrutil enable to switch SIP on. Two-step verification Apple is rolling out two-factor authentication, which basically means you’ll need to enter a verification code the first time you use your Apple ID and password on an unrecognised device. If you want to tighten security on your account further, look to enable two-step verification too, which will require you to enter a four-digit verification code sent to a trusted device each time you sign into key services…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.11, an email account If you look closely you’ll find there are plenty of features in Mail to delight you Mail is the default app you use to receive and read email on a Mac. It’s been around since the start of OS X but has been through many changes. In an age where webmail is king it might seem old-fashioned to use a dedicated email app instead of your web browser to get your mail, but there are several advantages to using Mail. At first glance Mail hasn’t changed much in El Capitan, compared to the previous Yosemite version, but if you look more closely you’ll find that there are plenty of new features…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.10 or higher, Bartender 2, some menu bar status icons Icons at the right end of the menu bar provide quick access to settings and alerts, but OS X has a strange relationship with third-party ones. Those provided with the system – Volume, Clock, AirPort, and so on – can be rearranged, and accessed using the keyboard by pressing However, third-party icons are blocked from both. Enter Bartender (macbartender.com), which enables you to organise all menu bar icons, along with a host of other things. We’ll assume you’ve installed the four-week trial version. You’ll need to access its preferences, which is done by clicking the app’s own menu bar icon, then the cog, then Preferences.…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED An iPhone 6s or 6s Plus When Apple has talked about 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, it has focussed on obvious benefits, such as Quick Actions available from app icons on the Home screen, playing back Live Photos, and taking a peek at emails to decide if they’re worth attention. 3D Touch can do more than this. You can tailor what some apps list among their Quick Actions, so that the things most relevant to you are never more than a press away. Taking a peek at things might seem unnecessary when you could just tap to open an item and then decide whether to respond to it. It’s easy to overlook that…

GET IN TOUCH If you have a technical issue that you need help with, please email us at: sos@macformat.com What’s the next number in series? Q I keep track of my books in a Numbers spreadsheet. In column D is a number for each book, which is the next number in series when the book was added to the sheet. Because the books are in alphabetical order by author, the numbers are not sequential. If I add a book by an author whose name begins with M, say, how can I find the next number in the sequence? Dave Burns A So you’re just using column D as an index number for your collection, yes? There are two very easy solutions. You could use the function ‘MAX(D)+1’ to find the…

Habit forming The standalone apps we’ve highlighted in this section allow you to make best use of your iOS device for monitoring sleep, activity and dietary habits, but many of them rely on you having your iPhone or iPad to hand at all times, which may strike you as inconvenient or simply impractical. If you’re struggling to stay motivated or keep to your fitness goals then consider a dedicated tracker. Some of the wearables covered here offer useful feedback, informing you of upcoming workouts you have scheduled, or pinging you when it’s been a while since you last worked out. But if you’re more interested in an integrated solution for iOS devices, consider an Apple Watch (see page 81). A pple opened up the iPhone’s biometric potential in 2010 with…

£79 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Connectivity Bluetooth Charging Lightning connector Includes ning connector Includes One extra tip Apple isn’t the first company to make a pressure-sensitive iPad stylus, but as is often the case, now it has finally made one, it is probably the best iPad stylus you can buy. Developed specifically for the iPad Pro, the Pencil connects using Bluetooth and transmits a signal back and forth 240 times a second, so there is almost no perceptible lag when drawing. For many digital artists this potentially resolves the issue of latency, which has held back other styluses from being truly exceptional, and when combined with a phenomenal degree of accuracy on the Pro’s supersized screen it means your artwork is able to look better than ever before. The Pencil feels…

£329 Manufacturer Samsung, samsung.co.uk Connectivity Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz) Dimensions 23.2x15.7x15.7cm There are quite a few speakers available that have a circular or cylindrical shape, but the design is often just for show as these speakers still tend to emit sound in a relatively narrow area immediately in front of the speaker. But, for the new R6, Samsung developed a special ‘ring radiator’ that is able to emit sound in a full 360-degree range around the speaker. The result is pretty impressive, as this nine-inch speaker pumps out a firm, full sound that is capable of filling a room for a decent-sized party. It weighs a comfortable 1.8kg and has a rechargeable battery that lasts for about six hours, so it’s ideal if you want to pick it up and blast your…

£160 Manufacturer Logitech, logitech.co.uk Features Smart Filtering recording, 135-degree viewing angle, 8x zoom, Wi-Fi This internet-connected home security camera’s design and companion app are full of engaging features that make filtering through the day’s happenings much easier and, dare we say, much more fun than any other home security camera that’s available. It’s fixed to a stand, which gives it stability and allows it to tilt forward and back with about 90 degrees of freedom. You can sit the Circle on any flat surface, or mount it to a wall. A dock is included, which feeds the Circle with power. You can go dockfree, but the internal battery doesn’t last long and there’s not much reason to, considering that the USB cable is three metres in length. Setting up the camera…

£39.99 Developer The Escapers, emulsionapp.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or higher This Lightroom-a-like organises and nondestructively edits your photos. Images can be imported into Catalogs, which you switch between in the File menu, but it’s simpler to drag folders onto the bar at the left; the app watches for new items to save you manually importing them. Aperture and iPhoto library import is still in beta. For metadata addicts, a lot of the basic EXIF data is editable, and you can build a list of your equipment to populate it in scanned film images. The Adjustments palette enables image editing, although not until you’ve created a version. Sensibly, editing is restricted to a copy, preserving the master, although this surely could have been achieved in the background without prompting you…

£10.99 Developer Untame, untame.com Requires OS X 10.7 or higher Most fungi aren’t known for their intelligence, but Mushroom 11 is pretty smart. What other game is there where a malleable blob of mould seeps across the post-apocalyptic remnants of civilisation? In Mushroom 11 you are that mould – a green splat that can’t actually move but can grow, yet has to maintain the same mass. Your mouse is essentially an eraser; only by destroying part of yourself can you move forwards. It’s a mechanic that sounds incredibly awkward, yet it becomes fluid and natural as more complexity is introduced. As you grow, you learn new ways to sculpt yourself, from being a living ramp for explosive projectiles to wrapping yourself around machinery. Each stage ends with a monstrous Lovecraftian entity,…

£2.99 Developer Lab Like, magicflutebymozart.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 1.2 A puzzle game based on a Mozart opera doesn’t seem the most obvious subject, but perhaps it’s not that different to mushroom-gobbling plumbers or hyperactive hedgehogs. You don’t need to be an opera buff to enjoy Magic Flute, but you’ll certainly need your wits about you to succeed. Although it’s billed as a ‘casual puzzle game’, Magic Flute is rather challenging. Simple sliding puzzles give way to convoluted mazes across multiple axes, buttoncontrolled elevators, and character-swapping. The range of puzzles is almost overwhelming, but it makes them satisfying to solve. If you’re unfamiliar with opera, you could be disappointed by the lack of narrative and musical detail. Though the game might not make the most of its source…

Duet Display (£11.99, duetdisplay.com) turns your iOS device into a secondary display for your Mac. You only have to install its Mac and iOS apps and then connect the two devices using a USB cable. We’ve tried it out before with a 9.7-inch iPad, but it’s only since we got our hands on the iPad Pro that we’ve really fallen in love with it. That particular iPad’s screen size gives you a fairly large secondary display on which to place some windows, rather than having to depend on Mission Control to juggle apps on a MacBook’s screen when you’re away from your desk. Rather than using the iPad Pro’s screen resolution to its full effect, we’ve set Duet Display to render at the non-Retina resolution of 1366x1024 pixels (half as…

APPLE: "Surveillance is not security" “If you halt or weaken encryption, the people you hurt are not the folks who want to do bad things” A battle is taking place between governments and technology companies over encryption. Governments want technology firms to build backdoors into their software, arguing the strong encryption used in mobile devices makes it hard for security agencies to monitor against terrorist attack. Technology firms argue that encryption is essential to protect enterprise and consumer users against ID theft and other online threats. “I don’t know a way to protect people without encrypting”, Apple CEO, Tim Cook said. “You can’t have a backdoor that’s only for the good guys… Any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone”. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and others are at present opposing these…

I asked to cancel the repair and have the iPad returned – that was a week ago In nature, every animal has a predator. It’s the same with technology, whose predator is the human toddler. My son’s reign of technological terror has claimed an Xbox and a PlayStation, various remote controls and more iPad screens than I care to count. In most cases I can fix the problems myself. So, for example, a PlayStation 4 is pretty straightforward to mess around with. Apple stuff is more complicated, and with each new version it gets a little bit harder for mere mortals to fix. Recent iMacs and MacBook Pros are “nearly impossible” for ordinary people to repair, according to everybody’s favourite Mac dismantlers, iFixit. I wouldn’t know where to start with…

1. Souped-up Notes Notes has been reinvented in El Capitan, enabling you to incorporate data from other apps into your notes, from selected text and photos to maps and web page links. When you’ve found something you want to note, look for a Share button in its app; if it exists, click it and choose Notes to transfer that content to a note. If you want to add a specific object or passage of text to a note, select it, then click and choose Share > Notes (again, not all apps have this). From the Share sheet that pops up, you can add the selection to a new note, or you can tack it onto the end of an existing note (you can then change its position by editing the…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU’LL NEED Garageband and a suitable tune GarageBand isn’t just for people who want to record music: it’s a handy app for making ringtones too. Making a new tone is really simple. All you need to do is choose the audio you want to use, cut it down to size and export it to iTunes. (Technically it should be a track you own the copyright for, but nobody’s ever been arrested for making their favourite song into a ringtone.) As you’ll see, the process is really quick and straightforward. You can also compose your own ringtones using Apple Loops, GarageBand’s Smart Instruments, or any real musical instruments you have handy. The trick to making loops is to take advantage…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it. IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED A Mac running OS X 10.11 El Capitan, or an iOS device running iOS 9 Calendar considers traffic and transit reports when letting you know when to leave for a meeting Apple’s Maps app has come a long way since it debuted in 2012. As well as improved data about points of interest, the version of Maps in El Capitan and iOS 9 has access to accurate information about public transport routes and timetables – though in the UK, this is currently limited to London. Maps is even able to figure out travel times to help you plan your journey. This capability extends to Calendar, which combines information you add to events with travel times from Maps,…

SKILL LEVEL Taking things further IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED Remoter VNC, a Wi-Fi network Many of us have more than one Apple device these days. A laptop or desktop computer tends to be at the heart of where you manage and store most of your stuff. However, your Mac may not be the device you have on your person most of the time, so it can be very useful to be able to control your Mac when you’re not actually in front of it – to see if a download has completed or to open or quit an app, for example. You can do this from your iPad or iPhone. There are a number of apps that make this possible, and they work over VNC (Virtual Network…

Self-tracking is nothing new. Professional athletes and trainers have monitored personal metrics for decades in an effort to improve performance, while doctors and clinicians have studied medical data for longer to improve patient health. But in the last few years, interest in biometrics has increased exponentially. Over the next few pages, we’ll look at why tracking health and fitness data has really taken off – and how Apple has innovated the field, broadening accessibility and democratising data in the process. We’ll also look at the best tracking apps available for Mac, Apple Watch and iOS devices, and introduce you to the third-party wearables and accessories that promise to help you lead a healthier, happier, and more active lifestyle.…

The’res a separate Workout app for running, cycling, rowing and elliptical machine routines Apple Watch is billed as a multifunction smartwatch that augments your iPhone, but look beyond its Siri, message and call features, and Apple’s timepiece also has plenty of health and fitness smarts. It comes with an accelerometer, gyroscope and optical heart rate sensors, which feed data into its native Activity app (as well as the iOS Health app) and combine to track your movement through the day. Activity divides this data into three metrics called Move, Exercise and Stand, shown on-screen as three concentric rings that extend as you close in on an adjustable calorie burn goal (1,000 a day, say). The Stand ring shows how often you’ve stood up to take a break from sitting; the…

£139 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Dimensions 30.6x2.3x0.7cm Weight 335g Connectivity Smart Connector Apple hasn’t made an official keyboard since the first iPad, leaving it to third-parties to do so for its smaller tablets, and there are many good buys. The iPad Pro, by Apple’s own admission, sets out a clear vision for how the company sees the future of computing, and as a tablet/laptop hybrid the need for a physical keyboard has never been more pressing. When you see the iPad Pro docked in the Smart Keyboard you begin to understand that this is an iPad with serious computing potential, and we doubt any other manufacturer could make a keyboard case that’s so in keeping with the style of the iPad Pro. It fits perfectly with Apple’s Silicone Case, which protects…

£499 Manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins, bowers-wilkins.co.uk Physical connections Ethernet, 3.5mm aux input Streaming sources AirPlay, Bluetooth (with aptX support), Spotify Connect Dimensions 19x66x18cm Back when iPod docks were often a cheap charging station with the same acoustic power as dropping your phone into a plastic cup, the original Zeppelin arrived. The airship-shaped speaker has evolved over the last eight years, and this new model is more focussed than ever on wireless streaming and audio quality. It’s built from the same studioquality DNA as B&W’s flagship 800 Series speakers, even using the same Fixed Suspension Transducer (FST) tech in its mid-range drivers. The idea is to make the unit invisible from an acoustic standpoint by holding the speaker cones in suspension for more controlled sound, ensuring the chassis doesn’t colour the sound…

£19.99 Developer Introversion, introversion.co.uk Requires OS X 10.6 or higher, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, see site for graphics cards A prison is a place as complicated as a city, but where all of the ‘civilians’ are stashing weapons in their beds. As the architect of their incarceration, it’s your fault when they kill each other, escape, or arrange for drugs to be thrown over the fence. Prison Architect is not, in short, a cheery experience. It is a surprisingly enthralling one though, taking on such a seemingly limited subject and drilling into it all the way. You design every building and every cell block, wire up every light and add every toilet. Your power stretches from controlling inmates’ schedules to setting up support groups; not just putting down cameras,…

£2.29 Developer Simogo, simogo.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 1.0 This strippedback puzzle lets you interact in a single way, yet it’s one of the most complex App Store games in ages. You tap the screen to split it into two boxes, then tap one of them to split it. This continues with you alternately splitting boxes vertically or horizontally. When you make a set of matching smaller ones, numbers appear inside them, counting down to zero, at which point those boxes disappear to make room for new ones. You simply keep splitting until you run out of places you can do so. You can just fiddle about to get a personal high score, but by learning SPL-T’s intricacies over time you can use them cleverly – say, by…

£2.29 Developer Vito Technology, vitotechnology.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 1.0.1 Solar Walk 2 is a touchscreen take on an orrery. You drag your finger around to reorient the solar system, pinching to zoom in and out, and then tap celestial bodies to focus on them. A button provides you with access to infographics, relevant space missions, visuals of a body’s internal structure, important dates, photos, and the relevant Wikipedia entry. The app offers options to switch between an exaggerated view (larger planets that are closer together) or a more realistically proportioned take on the heavens. You can also toggle visual effects and an ambient soundtrack. Using the calendar, you can jump to important celestial dates. Alternatively, you can just hit play and muck about with time, running it…

On our APPLE TV What we’re watching on the iTunes movie store FILM Ant-Man £13.99 (HD) Small-time crook Scott Lang becomes an even smaller superhero in this enjoyable Marvel movie caper, where Ant-Man has to protect the secrets of his super-suit against the forces of evil. TV SHOW Peep Show Series 9 £11.99 (HD), £2.49 per episode The very last series of this Channel 4 comedy reaches new levels of cringe-inducing hilarity as Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) prove growing older doesn’t make you wiser. GRAPHIC £22.99 Developer Autodesk, autodesk.com Requires OS X 10.6 or higher, 64-bit processor Graphic is the new name for iDraw, a vector drawing and illustration app originally created by US developer Indeeo, before it was taken over by Autodesk late last year. The good…

Apple would much rather have Skylake processors in every iMac, but it’s waiting for Intel… iMacs, MacBooks and Mac Pros The current iMacs and MacBooks are great, but better things are coming Apple’s most recent Mac update was to the iMac, which now has Intel Skylake processors and 5K displays in the 27-inch models and Intel Broadwell processors in 21.5-inch models, one of which now has a 4K display. Those Broadwell processors are a compromise: Apple would much rather have the more powerful Skylake architecture in every iMac, but it’s waiting for Intel to add integrated graphics. Once it does, you can expect Skylake to appear across the Mac range – including the MacBook Pro sometime in 2016. There are several key benefits to Skylake processors beyond the usual speed…

1. Ways to reach Mission Control It can be difficult to keep track of things when you’ve got too many windows, which is why the Mission Control key is useful (that’s the one that has several rectangles inside a larger one, and labelled F3). This spreads out your windows so that each is fully visible, and you can quickly switch between them – or the different virtual desktops (spaces) across which they’re organised. However, it’s often quicker to use a trackpad gesture; lay three fingertips on the trackpad and swipe up to achieve the same thing. Swiping three fingers left or right moves you through the virtual desktops you’ve created (shown at the top of Mission Control), including Dashboard if you’ve enabled it (see p29). 2. Push everything aside Place…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU’LL NEED Pages, a compatible web browser Recent changes to the iCloud version of Pages enable it to be used collaboratively Pages’ collaboration and commenting features are very good and very useful, but they haven’t been much cop if you’re working with people who don’t have the app, or who don’t have a Mac. That can be a problem, because commenting and editing plays a key role in many teams; several people might need to look over a press release, contribute to a newsletter, or review a document to ensure it isn’t going to land anyone in legal hot water. We can’t be alone in keeping a copy of Word handy for documents that require other people’s input. Things…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.7 or higher, the Viivo app and a free account With online security breaches on the rise, can you trust your cloud storage will remain private? Just how secure is your data in the cloud? Services like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive encrypt your files, but the all-important key that’s used to decrypt those files is stored online, out of your control. With online security breaches on the increase, can you trust your cloud storage provider to keep your most sensitive files private? Viivo is one of a growing number of tools that provide greater protection for your data by adding a second level of encryption to your files while keeping the decryption key firmly…

SKILL LEVEL Could be tricky IT WILL TAKE At least 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED Disk Utility Disk Utility can encrypt a disk and protect access to it with a password in the process When you buy a new hard drive, when you want to encrypt some files to carry around on portable storage, or when files are corrupt or apps exhibit unexpected behaviour such as crashing, the first tool you should turn to is Disk Utility. This isn’t the sort of app you’ll use every day, which is why it’s stored in the Utilities folder (found within your Mac’s Applications folder) – though that’s only one of the places you can run it from. In the event of a serious problem that stops you getting into OS X in the…

Welcome... There’s always plenty to say about Apple, whether it’s good or bad. And we’d particularly love to hear what you think? Write to us at letters@macformat.com and the remember, the Star Letter wins a prize! GET INVOLVED Apple Mail 64 Photo Stream 66 Mac User Groups 67 Ask the Experts 69 JOIN US ONLINE Emailing your questions to letters@macformat.com Visit macformat.com for more great Mac news Join the conversation with our Facebook page Keep up to date by following us on Twitter at @MacFormat Are you on App.net? So are we! We’re @MacFormat there too Subscribe to our videos at youtube.com/MacFormatUK YOU’RE A WINNER! Drop us an email at letters@macformat.com. If yours gets picked as the MacFormat Star Letter, you win a Just Mobile AluCable Flat for connecting iOS…

In 2008, the iPhone 3G added GPS; meanwhile social media caught on and sharing everything, became the norm We track our activities all the time. Whether we’re calculating our monthly outgoings or stepping on a weighing scale, we seek validation in numbers because we can measure and compare them against each other, gleaning insights that we can then use to steer our behaviour in targeted ways. This habit of quantification has been amplified by recent advances in electronic sensors, which have gotten smaller and better at recording biometric data. One of the first breakthroughs came in the mid-90s, when University of Alabama engineering professor Ken Fyfe developed a runner’s speedometer for his own personal use. Fyfe designed accelerometers to fit into a plastic insert in his shoe, and which wirelessly…

From £679 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Available capacities 32GB, 128GB Display 12.9-inch, 2732x2048 pixels Colour options Silver, Gold, Space Grey Other 8MP camera (rear), 1.2MP camera (front), 4G on the top-end model, Touch ID, A9X processor iOS 9’s split-screen multitasking stuff is genuinely of huge benefit here, even more so on the Pro’s bigger canvas The way some creationists see it, evolution is bunk because they cannot imagine how useful adaptations come around if not all at once. Throw a gerbil off a cliff, they think and, if those scientists are right, it’ll evolve wings on the way down. The thing is, that’s not an entirely ridiculous analogy for the tech industry, and if it’s true then with this newest iPad we’ve caught the process halfway down; the result, while impressive and…

€200 (about £140) Manufacturer IK Multimedia Features 24-bit/48kHz operation, phantom power, MIDI in and out iRig Pro Duo is IK’s first stab at cramming a lot of functionality into a single box. It’s an audio and MIDI interface designed to work with iOS, Macs or PCs and, remarkably, with Android. It can be powered over USB, by two AA batteries or an optional external power supply, and comes with a selection of cables for each of the different ways you may want to use it. There’s regular and micro-USB, as well as a Lightning cable for connecting to iPhones or iPads. No real setting up is required because the device simply appears as a source and destination for audio and MIDI inside your software. Recording is done using the two…

£370 Manufacturer Epson, epson.co.uk Paper handling 15-sheet A4 paper tray with duplex printing Print resolution 4800x1200dpi Scanner resolution 400x1200dpi Inkjet printers are quite cheap to buy, but they can run out of ink quickly and then really sting you when it’s time to buy replacement cartridges. Epson’s EcoTank printers turn that approach on its head. They’re more expensive up front, but the large ink tank bolted onto the side of the printers holds enough ink to print thousands of pages. The EcoTank ET-4550 ups the ante even further. Its £370 price tag does seem expensive at first, but it includes enough ink to print a full 11,000 pages in colour (using all four coloured inks). That works out at just under 3.5p per page for colour, far lower than a conventional…

£29.99 Developer Synium Software, syniumsoftware.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or higher iFinance 4 goes a long way toward smoothing the bumpy road that Mac users have had with personal finance management software, not least due to its ability to sync using iCloud or locally using Wi-Fi (though not both at the same time). Its iOS companion app works with iPad and iPhone, and Touch ID can be used to secure your data. On Apple Watch you can peek at your finances and add transactions. Otherwise, both versions are nearly identical in features, including support for multiple databases, charts, reports, and budget analysis. Data in CSV, OFX, or QIF format can also be imported in either version. Though iFinance is more powerful than Quicken 2015, and at least on par with popular…

£139.99 Developer Nuance, nuance.com Requires OS X 10.9 or higher, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or better Dragon 5 is like a text expander on steroids – the longer you work with it, the more accurate it will get Dictation is built into OS X and iOS, so why would you want to buy a third-party app on top? If you spend at least a little time each day dictating, the convenience of having almost complete vocal control over your Mac – not just dictation – makes Dragon well worth the money. It’s not simply a transcription device; it can launch and close apps, move the pointer, and interact with OS X itself. Just about anything you can do with your hands on the keyboard and mouse can be done just…

£2.29 Developer GHI Media, downwellgame.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 1.0.2 Downwell starts as a fun but tough game as you blast enemies with your gunboots, inching a little further down the well each time before the demons get you. Then you realise your gunboots aren’t just weapons, but explosive air brakes. You shoot less, bounce more, and chain together increasingly audacious combos. Downwell is a masterclass in design, crisp aesthetics and crunchy feedback. Like Spelunky – with which it also shares a composer – it’s full of discoveries and choices, where every weapon is potentially doubleedged. Will you sacrifice your laser beam for health? Feast on enemy corpses? Turn bullet casings back into bullets? The randomised level design and distribution of power-ups forces you to master every weapon…

£3.99 Developer Tapbots, tapbots.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 4.0.2 Twitter’s own app is… okay, yet iOS isn’t short of alternatives to it. Tweetbot is on the very short list of those that can be called excellent. Now Tapbots has refined it in ways big and small, and unified its iPhone and iPad editions. A longstanding complaint about third-party Twitter clients, Tweetbot included, is that they don’t have an aggregate view of who retweeted you, who favourited your tweets, new followers, and so on. Twitter keeps much of this data close to its chest, leaving third parties’ hands tied. Tweetbot 4’s Activity view solves this complaint, and it’s better than Twitter’s own take. It shows your day’s accomplishments and a list of when tweets get attention. If an old…

£3.99 Developer Contrast, contrast.co Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 2.6.1 This app lets you create your own shortcuts for doing things on iOS – it can simply launch apps for you, but it can also perform complex actions within those apps, queueing up common tasks for you, essentially. (Compatible apps and actions are listed at http://actions.contrast.co) You can access these shortcuts either within the app itself, where they’re presented in a grid; or you can trigger them through the app’s widget in Today view; or using 3D Touch on compatible iPhones. Some can also be activated by location or through other triggers. Launch Center Pro is also massively expandable thanks to integration with IFTTT (http://bit.ly/MFLCPro). Basically, it’s there to make certain tasks easier to do on iOS. At least,…

The iPad mini and iPad Air 2 have a Split View mode, so you can work in two apps side by side SPOTLIGHT The Apple kit we’re most excited about The introduction of the iPad Pro has seen Apple change its stance somewhat on input devices for its tablets: witness the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard (reviewed on page 87). The key difference between Apple and its rivals is that where companies like Microsoft see a stylus as an integral part of the user experience, Apple’s take is that the Pencil is an enhancement of, not a replacement for, other types of user input. iPad Pro This incredible 12.9-inch tablet answered a lot of prayers when Apple launched it last autumn, and now we’ve got our hands on one it’s…

You can’t accuse Tim Cook of inconsistency. In 2012, he pooh-poohed talk of a converged iPad/Mac device by saying that “products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left doesn’t please anyone”. He came back to the subject in November 2015, saying that “we feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad… what we’re worried would happen is that neither experience would be as good as the customer wants”. So why is Apple patenting just such a device? We can discount Cook’s comments about customers, because Apple isn’t fond of focus grouping; Steve Jobs was fond of quoting Henry Ford’s comment that if he’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster…