Innehållsförteckning för Autumn 2016 från MacFormat

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make use of the new Memories and improved image analysis features to view your photos. YOU’LL NEED macOS Sierra Photos picks out images it believes you’ll want to see again without you needing to find them Genius Tip! While viewing an individual photo, click Details (or scroll down) to reveal memories the app believes are related or somehow similar to it. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a pro, photography is such a popular activity that it’s no wonder that some of Sierra’s biggest changes are in the Photos app. These improvements go further than previous changes, which addressed shortcomings that stemmed from Apple replacing the app’s popular predecessor, iPhoto, and starting from scratch with its photo management tool. One of…

IT WILL TAKE 25 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to export certificates for use in a third-party email client or on iOS. YOU’LL NEED An S/MIME capable email app, or a device with iOS 5 or higher. You’re able to export your self-signed certificate for use in other apps and on other devices Genius Tip! When exporting your certificate to a p12 file and you’re asked to set a password for it, click the key button to have Password Assistant suggest a strong one. Last issue we showed you how to digitally sign and encrypt messages in Mail by creating your own self-signed certificate in Keychain Assistant. However, what if you manage your email in a different app, or want to encrypt emails on your iPhone or iPad too? The…

OS X quick-fire questions Can I revert back to running OS X El Capitan 10.11.3? Yes, although it is complex to say the least, and exposes your Mac to security risks. You’d need to install El Capitan from scratch, and then update it using the Combo installer for 10.11.3 before manually restoring your apps, documents, and so on, from your Time Machine backup. Some current versions of apps might not work even then. Why can’t my iMac sleep without also sleeping its disk? Although the Energy Saver pane offers the ability to prevent hard disks from sleeping during system sleep, this does not work in some recent models of iMac. If you don’t want your disks put to sleep, those models will also then not let the system go to…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 304 OCTOBER 2016 How to get ready for macOS Sierra Broadcast yourself Power up your menu bar Sign and encrypt email Salvage an old hard drive ISSUE 303 SEPTEMBER 2016 Upgrade your Mac apps The ultimate Mac survival guide Refurbish an old Mac for Minecraft Rescue your old audio media ISSUE 302 AUGUST 2016 Say hello to macOS Sierra Easy pro photo editing on iOS Find your way in iTunes 12.4 Rehabilitate an old office iMac To order back issues of the print magazine, go to http://goo.gl/B7aFdk or phone +44 (0)844 848 2852 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto your iOS device at any time and keep them forever in your personal library. bit.ly/macformatipad GET 3 ISSUES FOR…

£200 FROM Netgear, arlo.com/uk FEATURES 135° wide-angle 1080p camera with night vision, seven-day free cloud storage Smart cameras have so many bells and whistles, it can be easy to get seduced. At the end of the day, most people want smart cameras for one thing, and one thing only: security. Strip away all the extras, and many cameras seem to come up short in one way or another. The Arlo Q family is the exception. The Arlo Q Plus is basically the Arlo Q (which we liked back in MF299) with two extras: a Power over Ethernet cable, which provides you with the option of connecting your camera directly to your router or switch (and drawing power from it too), and a MicroSD card slot, which enables it to record…

Sennheiser PXC 550 Wireless Stunning audio quality abounds £330 FROM Sennheiser, en-uk.sennheiser.com FEATURES Adaptive ANC, Bluetooth 4.2, touch controls, NFC Design & comfort Sennheiser has nailed comfort here. The earcups have less room inside the than the QC35’s, but the pads are naturally shaped and very light. The adjustable headband makes up a neat collapsible frame for folding away. Features The PXC 550 can switch between two paired devices, and its battery lasts 22 hours. Its active noise cancellation (ANC) has an auto-adaptive mode and three EQ presets. There are three mics, with a TalkThrough feature to help you hear someone nearby without taking off the cans. Performance Audio is wide, rich and detailed, with more oomph in the bass department than the QC35’s, and the EQ means there's plenty…

£2.29 FROM iCoaching, www.wrio-keyboard.com MADE FOR iPhone, iPod touch Many keyboard apps promise to make your typing faster and more accurate. But can they make your typing 70% faster like WRIO claims? WRIO is designed to address four concerns on smartphones: mis-hitting keys, incorrect autocorrect, slow typing, and difficulty reaching special characters and emoji. Its solution uses honeycomb keys and two thumb buttons instead of a space bar, with swipes to capitalise letters or delete. WRIO’s keys are certainly easier to hit, and swiping works well for special characters. While muscle memory means you’re all over the place to begin with, it doesn’t take too long to get used to the layout. For us, though, WRIO is more uncomfortable than QWERTY and we found it quite painful to use at…

Ceramic Edition Gone is the gold Edition version of the Watch – you can’t buy it from Apple any more. Instead, there’s a new ceramic Edition, which comes in a white finish. It’s four times harder than stainless steel, according to Apple, so should be well equipped to resist bumps and scuffs. The Apple Watch Nike+ is aimed at getting you out of the house and out onto the track The Apple Watch was always known to be the best-selling smartwatch, but quite how well it was doing against more traditional timepieces surprised even us. Apple sold so many Watches that it was the second-highest selling watch brand in the world in 2015, second only to Rolex. And the Watch was only on sale for eight months of the year…

PRIZES WORTH AROUND £650 Your Apple kit is valuable stuff, so why risk carrying it around in a low-quality bag? After all, the last thing you want to hear when you put a bag down is the crack of a poorly protected iPad screen. That’s why we’re giving you the chance to win one of three bundles from stmbags.com, each containing four fantastic travelling bags and cases for your MacBook, iPad and other gear. First up is the grey Haven backpack. When we reviewed it in MF303 we were amazed by the number of features you get for £75, including 13 well-protected pockets to safely stash your stuff in. Each bundle also includes a 13-inch Blazer MacBook sleeve to keep your laptop well padded wherever you take it, and a…

Genius Tip! As well as using the Home app and Siri to control your devices, you can also access them in Control Centre on iOS’s Lock screen for near-instant access. 1 The Home app You first set up a new HomeKit device using its manufacturer’s app; the device will then automatically appear in Home. Here we’ve set up smart lights from Philips and Nanoleaf, as well as Elgato’s Eve Door & Window sensor. 2 Device controls You can tap on a device in Home, such as a light, to turn it on or off, or hold a finger on it to fine-tune its settings. You can also use Siri to control your devices, using spoken commands such as: “Hey Siri, dim lounge lights to 50%”. 3 Set the scene As…

In general, OS X is good at clearing up after itself, but it sometimes leaves behind working files After using the same Mac for several years, your drive is almost certainly not as tidy as it could be. Leftover files from apps you no longer use as well as duplicates of your docs and photos consume lots of space, and it’s not always easy to see where the problem lies. Gemini 2 (£15.95, macpaw.com) hunts for and, with your permission, deletes duplicate files on your Mac. Its developer says the app can distinguish between an original file and a copy of it, and that it learns from the actions you take when it throws up a pairing you’re most likely to keep, so it gets more intelligent over time. As…

NEW IDEAS Your new-look guide to getting more from your Apple kit RECLAIM STORAGE SPACE IN SIERRA p44 Understand iOS gestures A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen. To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content. Swipe means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go. A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly. Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out. Touch and hold means lightly rest your finger on an item and wait for a reaction. Master Mac keyboard shortcuts When you see a shortcut like command+option+C, hold all but the last…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create images that can be quickly shared on various social networks. YOU’LL NEED Canva. iOS 8.1 or higher. There is a surprising level of depth and control to the app, and even more on the Canva website Sharing graphics on social networks can be a daunting task, even if you think you know what you’re doing. Whether you’re posting to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, your images need to be different sizes and dimensions to avoid getting cropped and detail getting lost. Knowing which website uses which dimensions can be a nightmare. Canva is a free app that aims to make this process a little easier. With a few taps you can create ready-to-publish, shareable graphics for use on a number…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to genius@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems Why won’t Spotlight index my drive any more? Q Spotlight indexing has stopped working on my Mac’s internal drive. If I remove that drive from under Privacy in Spotlight’s preferences, indexing never completes, and my Mac’s logs are full of repeated errors about mdworker failing. I’ve tried forcing the index to be rebuilt, but the problem recurs. How can I fix this? by SIMON SIMPSON A This usually happens because mdworker, the background service which builds the metadata indexes used by Spotlight, is choking on files or…

iOS software quick-fire questions How do I stop tracking in Safari and others apps? Safari has specific control over this: in Settings > Safari, you can turn on Do Not Track (under the Privacy & Security heading). Apple’s iAd is controlled in Settings > Privacy > Advertising. Here you can limit ad tracking. Also check third-party apps’ pages in Settings. Can I limit apps from eating my data allowance? In Settings > Mobile Data, you’ll find a list of all your apps that use mobile data, and you can disable its use by individual apps if they are using it to excess. You can also turn off Wi-Fi Assist at the bottom of the page, and some individual apps have their own controls in Settings. Stop iCloud Photo Library from…

What’s inside 74–75 GIVE AN OLD MAC A NEW PURPOSE Add a touch of classic Apple design to another part of your life 76 STRIP DOWN A POWER MAC G4 Learn how to gut it of electronics so you can use it to store stuff Contact us Email your queries and your questions to lovemac@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com REUSE OLD KIT Inspiring ideas for revamping your old Apple devices Secure offline storage Last issue I talked myself into using a 22-year-old PowerBook 520 to do serious writing work. I was pleasantly surprised by how usable it still was, but I’ll be honest; the marvel was not how well it worked, but…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices RAZER MECHANICAL KEYBOARD CASE FOR iPAD PRO p94 Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. You can trust us to give an honest assessment of a product’s worth. The prices quoted for products are correct at the time of writing and are the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery. A brilliant thing in all regards, and worth every penny Strongly recommended; any flaws are only minor concerns Worth considering, though…

PLAYERS ON TEST… Astell&Kern AK70 FiiO X7 Onkyo DP-X1 Pioneer XDP-100R thebit Opus#1 Technology and music make odd bedfellows. While digital music and Macs make music creation easier than ever, the quality of our music is going backwards: many people think vinyl to CD was a backwards step, and there’s no doubt that a compressed MP3 or AAC is far inferior to a CD, never mind a higher quality master recording. And let’s not talk about YouTube clips on laptop speakers. For many people that’s fine – Apple’s iPhone and earbud combination isn’t great, but it isn’t truly terrible either – but not everybody puts portability first. For them, sound quality is what really matters, and they’re willing to pay serious money to get it. High-Resolution Audio (HRA) is for…

Welcome to MacFormat’s Store Guide, the place to go to find out about all the Apple kit that matters, whether you’re looking for your next iPhone or a powerful new desktop Mac. We’ve chosen our top products from Apple’s product line-up, plus the best third-party kit that meets our quality standard. Whether you’re a recent convert or a seasoned Apple user, we highlight a model of each product that’s ideally suited to your needs. So, check our handy tables to see which Mac, iPad or iPhone is best for you. We’ve also highlighted the gold standard in audio, storage, cameras, and many other categories to complement your Mac or iOS device with the best accessories. Who’s it for? ENTRY LEVEL You’re just getting started in the world of Apple and…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! VYING FOR VINYL Many years ago I owned a substantial vinyl record collection. I sold this and replaced many of my discs with CDs, which were then just appearing on the market. Over time I’ve moved almost everything to iTunes. Recently it was my daughter’s birthday and she asked for a turntable as a present. I bought one and when she played one or two of the few albums she had it was a real pleasure to hear them. This set me thinking and, although my turntable was still connected to my system, it had not been used for at least 15 years. I found that, with a new drive belt, it played as well as ever. I had kept back one or two top-quality vinyl…

1 Polarr-ise it! Shaun’s a real fan of Polarr – and it’s easy to see why. First, choose a filter from the Filters menu (three circles icon). As this is a black-and-white image, Polarr shows you colour casts suitable for noir shots. 2 Enhance the vignette This steam traction engine image already had a vignette added in Camera+. Polarr gives you more control: tap the Adjustments icon (dial), choose Vignette and you’ll get five values you can change. 3 Add a gradient mask We want to add an aged photo feel by overexposing part of the image. Go to Masks on the left, pick Gradient Mask and position and rotate the three lines, then close them together for a denser fade.…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat Apple has introduced several input innovations since the iPhone in 2007, from multitouch capacitive touchscreens to trackpads that seem to click when they don’t move at all. It seems likely some of these technologies will converge in a dynamic input device that will replace your keyboard and better adapt to whatever task is at hand. This device is likely to be an entirely flat surface, and we think it’ll expand on the way the iPhone 7’s Home button has a motor behind it, which vibrates in response to enough pressure. The first step on the path to this full keyboard replacement is likely to be…

There’s no doubt Tim Cook is a different kind of boss than Steve Jobs. But Apple’s fortunes may now depend on what is outside of it, not inside. Nobody was sure if Tim Cook could establish himself as a true leader It’s five years since Steve Jobs, the most legendary figure in the history of mass-market electronics, left his globally dominant company in the hands of Tim Cook, who, after a decade patiently refining its manufacturing supply chain, was known to almost everyone as ‘Tim who?’ Back in 2011, nobody was sure if the man described by Fortune as an “operations whiz” and by Jobs as “not a product person” could establish himself as a true leader. Today, it’s clear that he has; less by being an operations whiz –…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Regular readers of these pages will be familiar with HomeKit, the centrepiece of Apple’s plans for home automation. It’s a piece of software built into Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, that allows products from different manufacturers to work together, perhaps turning on a thermostat such as Elgato’s Eve Thermo when you leave work, and turning on your Philips Hue lights when the Eve Door & Window sensor detects you enter your home after sunset. HomeKit got off to a fairly slow start until Apple unveiled…

Fusion Drive is the friendly name Apple came up with for a flash storage and hard disk arrangement that behaves as though it’s just one drive. OS X decides what data should be stored on each. Data that’s accessed frequently and will make the biggest difference to your Mac’s performance – system files and anything used at startup, say – is stored on the flash drive, along with anything OS X notices you use often. As its free space dwindles, data you use less often is moved to the hard disk. Installing an SSD inside suitable Macs is involved work, so the easiest way to set up a Fusion Drive is to add the SSD externally over Thunderbolt or USB 3 – you’ll need the speed of those interfaces to…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use macOS’s Optimized Storage feature to reclaim space and take away much of the bother of storage management as time goes by. YOU’LL NEED macOS Sierra. An iCloud account. You can set preferences for several built-in apps in one place One of the conveniences Apple has added in macOS Sierra is Optimized Storage, which helps you to keep plenty of space free for whatever task you take on next. The feature is tucked away in the About This Mac dialog’s Storage tab, where there’s a new button labelled Manage next to the breakdown of how your startup disk is being used. Clicking this button opens a new storage management window (which is actually part of the System Information app, located…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to set up and use the Apple TV Remote app for navigation and to play games. YOU’LL NEED A device running iOS 9.3.2 or higher. A 2nd-generation or newer Apple TV. iOS devices’ sensors allow those devices to serve as a substitute for the Siri Remote Not long after Apple released the fourth-gen Apple TV, the company promised that a new remote control app would be introduced for the device. That app is now available from the App Store for free. If you’re using Apple’s latest set-top box (the one that runs tvOS and comes with a Siri Remote), you should seriously consider using it instead of the old Remote app – now renamed iTunes Remote, and still available on the…

Hardware quick-fire questions Can I upgrade the memory in my Mac mini (Late 2014)? Sadly not. There are no memory slots, and the modules fitted in your mini are soldered in. Even if you could find someone to try to desolder those chips, the maximum memory that model supports is 16GB, unless Apple was to release a firmware update to support more. Can I upgrade the SSD in my iMac’s Fusion Drive? SSDs in Apple’s Fusion Drives are replaceable, but upgrading that part would require the skills of an Apple-trained engineer. It would also require some software surgery afterwards. One solution, using a USB 3 or Thunderbolt drive instead of making internal changes, is detailed in our Apple Skills Project in MF296. Black screen iMac lockout Q At seemingly random…

In association with “Extending the useful life of your technology has been a core belief of OWC since 1988.” We’re now in an age where our tech has become increasingly disposable and falls victim to ‘planned obsolescence’. Many users are fighting this trend, however, by looking for ways to extend the life of their tech rather than trading it in for the ‘latest and greatest’. After all, if you’re going to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds on a single device, you should expect that you’ll be able to not only use it for years, but that it will still perform at a high level during that timespan. Extending the useful life of your technology has been a core belief of OWC since the company’s inception in 1988. The…

Hardware quick-fire questions What should I do with all the bits? You can take Apple devices and parts into any Apple Store and it’ll take care of the recycling for you. However, it’s also worth selling them on eBay. You may recoil at the thought of the effort that’s required in listing them all individually and dealing with the postage costs, but the combined auction value of all the working components is often more than the resale value of the Mac itself. How do I remove the hard disk? There is one obvious screw at the top of the drive bay, but even when you’ve removed that, the drive still won’t come free. To release it, you must pull the white plastic bracket on the side. This disengages the lug…

£299 FROM Philips, philips.co.uk FEATURES Multi-function USB-C dock, DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and VGA ports, adjustable stand Alex says… This display is a great way to get both a highquality second screen for your MacBook, and a handy way to gain extra expansion from the MacBook’s USB-C port. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re feeling like one USB port isn’t enough, this may be the display for you. Bigger isn’t always better, which is why we wanted to check out the new Philips 25-inch monitor in its Brilliance range. It’s known as the 258B6QUEB, though Philips also refers to it as the “Brilliance LCD monitor with USB-C dock”, and this 25-inch display has got an awful lot going for it. First of all, as that longer name indicates, this device…

Onkyo’s DP-X1 has something extra: an X factor that makes it sound warmer and more inviting than the other HRA players in our group test We didn’t read spec sheets or price lists before playing our music: as George Michael put it, we wanted to listen without prejudice. And when we listened, we kept coming back to the Onkyo DP-X1. It’s not the prettiest of players, and we’re not huge fans of its Android OS. But the sound it delivers is so good we’ll forgive it almost anything. While all the players here deliver very good sound quality across genres, the Onkyo has something extra – an X factor that makes its sound warmer and more inviting than the others. We can’t quite put our finger on it, but it…

iOS 10! Get to know your way around the new-look Lock Screen, notifications and the all-new Music app ALSO INSIDE… Discover Apple Pay on your Mac Revive a set of old Mac speakers Easily master curves in Affinity Photo iPhone 7, 7 Plus and Watch 2 reviewed! ISSUE 306 ON SALE 25 OCT 2016 DON’T MISS IT – SUBSCRIBE TODAY! IN PRINT & ON YOUR iPAD Our print and digital bundle gets you the paper magazine as well as our iPad edition myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/macformat ON YOUR MAC Read on the big screen: subscribe with Zinio at zinio.com/macformat Zinio subscriptions do not include a print copy of the magazine.…

GET INVOLVED! The iPhone is the world’s most popular camera, but it takes a bit of work to get a truly excellent shot. Why not show us your creations? Simply email us at photos@macformat.com and your work could be showcased on these pages! Summer Sun by SHAUN GAL LAGHER EQUIPMENT iPhone 6s I tapped the screen on my iPhone 6s to lock focus on the car before taking this shot. I used to use Aperture for editing and learnt so much from the Aperture expert, Joseph Linaschke. Lately, I came across Polarr for iOS, which interestingly is now also available for the Mac. I used curves to adjust the highlights and shadows, creating a slight S curve. Then, once back in Photos on my iPhone, I went to Edit >…