Innehållsförteckning för March 2024 från MacFormat

Rabbit R1 rabbit.tech Artificial Intelligence (AI) was one of the bigger draws at CES, with the Rabbit R1 getting particular attention. Designed to work as a virtual assistant, its big idea is simplicity, being equipped with only a combined scroll wheel/push-to-talk button plus a rotatable camera. Instead of using apps to perform tasks, you simply ask the Rabbit to do them instead. It’s a neat idea that goes way beyond Siri. For tech watchers, January means one thing and one thing only: the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and a trip to Las Vegas. Once there, attendees can discover all kinds of weird and wonderful gadgets, spot emerging tech trends and discover what some of the world’s biggest companies plan to waggle under our noses over the year ahead. As…

Keyboard shortcuts > Cut Highlight what it is you want to cut and press Cmd+X > Copy Highlight what it is you want to copy and press Cmd+C > Paste After cutting or copying, press Cmd+V > Print With the file you’re printing active, press Cmd+P > Save Press Cmd+S > Save As Press Shift+Cmd+S > Open a document Press Cmd+O > Create a new document In Finder, press Cmd+N > Create a new folder In Finder, press Shift+Cmd+N > Hide the active app Press Cmd+H > Hide all apps except the active app Press Opt+Cmd+H > Change Finder View Press Cmd+1, Cmd+2, Cmd+3 or Cmd+4 > Activate/ deactivate Stacks In Finder, press Ctrl+Cmd+0 > Open Settings In an app or Finder, press Cmd+’,’ There’s a number of ways you…

The Shortcuts app is bundled with recent versions of macOS, including the current release macOS 14 Sonoma. It’s designed for creating macros. In computing, a macro is a set of instructions executed with a single action. For example, if you were have a folder full of pictures you need to process, your routine might be as follows. Open a picture; resize it to specified dimensions; add a watermark; save it as a specific image format in another folder; close the original file without saving it; move on to the next picture. With a macro, you can automate these actions so all you have to do is make sure the folders are in place and activate the macro. Practice makes perfect Apple’s Shortcuts app launched on the iPhone in September 2018,…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add, edit and remove file tags in Finder YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.9 or later As soon as you start building a collection of files on your computer, you run into the problem of organisation. Sure, you can divide things into folders and endless subfolders, but shouldn’t there be a quicker, more visual way to find what you want? As it turns out, there is. Tags, a built-in feature in macOS, lets you add small coloured dots to your files in Finder. They give you an instantly recognisable way to organise items, add labels, and find them with just a click. You can use tags to denote file progress: to do, completed, etc. Or you can label files as belonging…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to share your location and check in with family or friends YOU’LL NEED iOS 17.2 or later Your iPhone and iPad make it easy for you to let other people to know where you are. In the Me tab of Find My, turning on Share My Location will enable selected contacts to see where you are in the Find My app or to share your Live Location in Messages. And there are two other great location features too: Send ETA, and Check In. Send ETA enables you to inform someone else of your expected arrival time, and as we’ll discover it couldn’t be simpler; all you need to do is set your route in Maps and then use Send ETA to…

Do you really need an M3 Max? Q I’m considering trading in my MacBook Pro 16-inch M1 Max for its M3 equivalent. Do I need an M3 Max, or would a Pro suffice? by MARK GALVIN A Depending on model and option, you’d pay £400-£700 more for an M3 Max. With its extra cores it’s also likely to use significantly more power, resulting in shorter endurance between recharging. As you’re already using an Apple silicon Mac, one good way to check whether your new Mac would make good use of those additional cores is to monitor their use with Activity Monitor’s CPU History window while doing your normal work on that Mac. Most user tasks are run preferentially on the Performance (P) cores; an M1 Max has eight, in two…

Do you need ahousekeeping utility? Q I’ve had a lot of trouble getting my Mac’s housekeeping utility to work on my new MacBook Air. Do I really need it? by TIM JONES A Almost certainly not. It’s an attractive idea to have the housekeeping done for you, but finding and deleting duplicate files and rummaging through your private documents goes a lot further than any real housekeeper should. Unfortunately, their claims are seldom realised, for instance in terms of the amount of storage space they could free by deleting duplicate files. This is because APFS tries to avoid making complete copies of files when they’re on the same volume, and uses clone files instead, where it can. Duplicate a file in the Finder using Cmd+D and the copy doesn’t take…

£129 FROM uk.eufy.com FEATURES 2K telephoto and 4K wide-angle lenses, 8x hybrid zoom, Night Vision f/1.6 aperture sensor and eight infrared lights, 360° pan and 75° tilt, AI-powered tracking, miniSD card slot for local video storage (32GB card supplied), Wi-Fi 6, mains powered You’re able to store video locally, with up to 128GB of storage available Security cameras aren’t normally thought of as cute – but that’s S definitely the case with the Eufy Indoor Cam S350, which looks a lot like a little robot your kids might play with, right down to its huge endearing eyes. Those eyes in fact turn out to be the twin lenses for the cameras – one with a wide-angle lens offering 4K (3840x2160) resolution, and the other a 2K (2048x1080) telephoto lens. Together…

£86.56 FROM adobe.com NEEDS macOS 12 or later Elements uses AI as a springboard to creativity but it’s not a replacement for human decisions Adobe Premiere Elements has looked the same for many years, so its neutral light grey workspace was beginning to look rather dated. Fortunately in its 2024 incarnation you can now access a Dark mode in the Settings > General UI Mode menu. This creates a darker grey and black interface that echoes the look of other contemporary non-linear editing (NLE) apps and helps give Premiere Elements 2024 a fresher, more modern look. Premiere Elements 2024 does have some interesting new features to offer, as we’ll explore, but are they useful enough to motivate owners of older versions of Premiere Elements to pay for an upgrade?We’ll answer…

By the time you read this, the first US customers for Apple’s new Vision Pro will be getting their hands on the headset – arguably the most revolutionary product the company has launched since the iPhone arrived in 2007 and the Mac made its debut 40 years ago. While the jury’s still out on whether the Vision Pro will prove successful, it heralds the arrival of ‘spatial computing’ – Apple’s term for anew way of using devices that’s fully immersive, while also delivering the familiarity and intuitiveness that we’ve come to expect from the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Central to the Vision Pro’s way of doing things is anew OS: visionOS, which takes everything you know about macOS, iOS and iPadOS and then cunningly places it inside in a threedimensional…

Writing app iA Writer has attempted to find a middle ground between shunning AI and fully embracing it with its latest update. The app has added a new feature that allows you to mark pasted text as coming from AI. Doing so colours that text in grey and, as you add your own wording to the text, new words are typed in black. That lets you demarcate your own writing from what has come from the AI source. The idea is you will be able to use AIgenerated content as a starting point, before editing it to fit your style and voice. If AI is here to stay, this compromise will help you use tools like ChatGPT as a foundation for your own inspiration. You don’t have to assign text…

You know how it is. When you first bought it, your Mac was satisfyingly speedy, but after a while it begins to slow down. Apps don’t open as quickly, the Finder seems sluggish and booting up takes longer and longer. Why is this? In a nutshell, it’s because, over time, your Mac gets clogged up with all the extra apps and data you’ve put on it. Its storage fills up, meaning there’s less room for macOS to use as virtual memory. You’ve added far too many apps as login items, meaning they have to launch when your Mac first boots, slowing down the process. And maybe it’s been a while since you updated your apps and the operating system. Thankfully, none of these problems are insurmountable. There’s plenty of ways…

With a little foresight and planning, you can save time and effort when working on your Mac. These handy helpers will make things run more smoothly. File and folder naming and organisation When you create a new file or folder, take care to name it something that makes sense when you view it later or send it to someone else. For example, the screenshot at the top of this page was called ‘Page 7_top shot.PNG’. When we passed it to the designer, they then knew it was for the top of the seventh page in this article. If we’d left the title as ‘Screenshot 2024-01-02 at 1.13.37pm’, it would’ve been much harder to place. Likewise, if you have a folder with a huge number of files in it, think whether…

There are plenty more ways to speed up your workflow and your Mac. Adding a second and even a third screen gives you more workspace, making you more efficient. After doing so, open System Settings and click Displays. Click the Arrange button, and you can relocate the menu bar, and also drag the secondary screen around the main one, setting their relative positions. Harness accessibility There’s a wealth of features in System Settings > Accessibility. If you have any kind of disability – or even if you don’t – features such as inverting the screen colours, flashing the screen when an alert occurs or Voice Control might greatly assist your use of the Mac. Explore them and try them out. You can always turn them off again if they don’t…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create and customise charts and graphs in Numbers (as well as Pages and Keynote) YOU’LL NEED Numbers (or Pages or Keynote) Regardless of the Microsoft Excel World Championship, spreadsheets are generally considered boring. But your reams of data can spring into life if presented in the right way. Step forward trusty column, bar, line, area, pie, bubble, radar and doughnut charts which can easily be created within Apple’s own spreadsheet app, Numbers (as well as in Pages and Keynote). With 2D, 3D and interactive options, you’re sure to find something that will work perfectly for the information you’re trying to get across. Here we show you how to create those various charts and graphs before looking at how you can…

Apple makes it easy to monitor your health and fitness. The latest operating systems – watchOS 10, iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 – focus on 18 different areas relating to your wellbeing, while the Health app can store more than 150 types of data. The aim is to allow everyone regardless of age, size or fitness level to work towards a healthier lifestyle. As such, there’s a strong emphasis on exercise along with motivational tools to help you achieve your goals. Exercise of any kind is important. It aids weight management, strengthens muscles and bones and reduces the risk of major illnesses. Experts agree it gives you more energy, reduces stress and improves mood, with the UK’s Alzheimer’s Society pointing to a 28% reduction in dementia development if you regularly…

£16.99 FROM uk.store.tapo.com FEATURES 2.4GHz WiFi, Matter certified, Voice Control, Remote Control (via app), Energy Monitor/Schedule/Away Mode; max load 13A; 72.5x51.5x30.6mm It’s a convenient size, packed with features, and available at an excellent price Mac Format VERDICT An excellent, featurepacked smart plug at a very good price. Definitely recommended. ★★★★★ + Packed with features + Excellent app + Comprehensive platform support - EV charging not supported This is no ordinary smart plug. TP-Link’s Tapo P110M Mini Smart WiFi Plug is similar to the well received Tapo P110, but it also supports Matter. This new connectivity standard means you can integrate a Mattercompatible device such as this into your existing connected home ecosystem. Whether you prefer Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri or Google Assistant, the P110M works with your platform of choice…

Group test Reviewed by HOLLIN JONES ON TEST… > ArtRage Vitae > Art Set 4 > ArtStudio Pro > Clip Studio Paint > iPastels > Sketchbook The iPad has always been the ideal platform for creating digital artwork, replacing a larger graphics tablet and computer setup with something much more elegant. Since the introduction of the Apple Pencil and other third-party styluses you have been able to paint digitally for just a fraction of what it would have previously cost. For artists the advantages are many, from a near-infinite selection of brushes, pencils, textures and colours to support for layers, filters and other creative tools that are not available when using physical paints. And there are other benefits of working digitally such as unlimited levels of undo, versioning of…

$39.99 (about £40) FROM c-command.com/spamsieve NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later SpamSieve never stops learning, and training it is both quick and simple MAC FORMET VERDICT Already established as the best, version 3 brings extensive improvements to this essential tool. ★★★★★ +Outstanding accuracy +Easily trained +Mail and Outlook support +Extensive customisation Unfortunately, if you’ve got email, you’ve got spam. Although Apple’s Mail and Microsoft Outlook both have a go at filtering junk and unwanted messages, it isn’t their strong suit.   That’s where you turn to SpamSieve, an app and extension to both, and train it to sort wanted messages from ads and phishing attacks. SpamSieve goes back almost as far as Mac OS X, and was first released for 10.2 Jaguar, 21 years ago. Over that time it has established itself…

If your Mac is slow to boot up when you first switch it on, there’s several things you can do to get started with more haste. To begin with, make sure your apps and OS are up to date; then, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner to see if updates are available. Then try these tricks. Declutter your startup drive Open a new Finder window (click on the desktop and press Cmd+N). Click on the Applications folder in the left-hand sidebar. If you now click on the Size column, you can show your apps in order of size, with the smallest or the largest at the top; if it’s the smallest, click Size again. With your apps arranged in size order, it’s easy to spot what’s taking up…

Many people baulk at the idea of using the Mac’s Terminal but, as long as you’re careful, it’s nothing to be afraid of. Open Terminal – it’s in Applications > Utilities, or open App Launcher and find it in the Other folder. The Terminal window shows your username and a cursor. To use one of the Terminal commands in this section, type it in exactly as it is here, with no spaces at the end, and press Enter. If you’ve used a Wi-Fi password before but can’t find it on your Mac, in Terminal, type security find-generic-password -wa “Wifi” changing ‘Wifi’ to the name of the Wi-Fi SSID in question. You then have to type in your administrator’s name and password. You’re shown the password in question, provided it’s been…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add text, transitions, a cinematic look, and to crop clips YOU’LL NEED iMovie, iOS 16 or later, a social media account Video clips (or reels) seem as popular as photos when it comes to sharing stories on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram. To help your clips stand out from the crowd you can use iMovie’s post-production tools to add ‘bells and whistles’ such as titles and transitions to help catch the eye. We’ll also show you how to use filters to give your footage a Hollywood makeover that will encourage followers to stop, watch and ‘like’ instead of scrolling on by. By adding iMovie’s copyright-free music, you can knit a project’s separate elements into a seamless sequence…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN Shazam can recognise songs and add them to Apple Music playlists YOU’LL NEED iOS 15 or later Genius tip! If you’re in a noisy place, you can improve your Shazamming chances by holding your phone closer to the speakers that are playing the song. We love Shazam almost as much as pub quizmasters hate it; it can automagically tell you what song is playing after listening to just a few seconds of it. That makes it a menace if your rival quiz team is using it to cheat during a music round, but it’s helped us discover and fall in love with some of our favourite artists. If you can hear it clearly, Shazam can usually tell you exactly what it is.…

YOU WILL LEARN How unified memory works in comparison to Random Access Memory (RAM) Key fact How much unified memory you need depends very much on how you intend to use your Mac. For anyone performing general everyday tasks, 8GB is going to be sufficient but opt for 16GB if you want your Mac to take on a heavier workload and intend to keep your computer for a good number of years. Tasks involving image and video editing would benefit from 32GB. Between 1997 and 2002, Apple used the advertising slogan “think different”. Fast forward to today and that long-running campaign is a distant memory yet the sentiment behind it is very much alive. You can see the difference when looking at how Apple has set modern Macs apart from…

Journalling may sound like a chore – yet another task to add to your already busy life. But if you change your mindset on that, it could literally help your mindset! Keeping a diary has been scientifically proven to be hugely beneficial. By regularly thinking about the moments and events that shape your days, you can become more reflective and self-aware. Writing regular entries in a journal can prove inspiring and help you to maintain positive mental health. Understanding this, Apple has rolled out the Journal app for your iPhone (it’s not yet known if or when it will make an appearance on the iPad or Mac). You will see the app when you upgrade your device to iOS 17.2 or later and, when you launch it, you’ll quickly discover…

£79.99 FROM zappar.com FEATURES 1x headset, 2x Bluetooth controllers, 3x World anchors (for device calibration), 1x small lens clip, 1x large lens clip, 1x wide-angle lens, 1x calibration cap You use the Bluetooth controllers to manipulate the objects that ‘appear’ in front of you Mac Format VERDICT The Zapbox may be affordable, but it’s of curiosity value only. ★★★★★ + Cheaper than a Vision Pro - Cheap build - Half-baked apps - Ties up your iPhone While Apple is attempting to kickstart the ‘spatial computing’ era with its $3,499 Vision Pro, British company Zappar has much more modest ambitions. Taking the now-defunct Google Cardboard as its cue, Zappar has come up with the Zapbox – a mixed reality headset costing just £79.99. The Zapbox is made up of a…

T here are a couple of very capable runners-up here.ArtRage Vitae has a great feature set and is fun to use but its interface could use a little sprucing up. ArtStudio Pro is also powerful enough for most users and adds a degree of photo-editing support into its modern if slightly clinical interface. iPastels is fun but suffers from a basic feel, despite having a solid toolset. Clip Studio Pro is almost in a different category given its focus on heavyweight design tasks and, despite its art capabilities, would probably be overkill for many users. Art Set 4 strikes the perfect balance of feeling like you are using real brushes and pens while also providing advanced digital functionality in a modern interface. The synergy of sticky oil paints and a…

£12.49 FROM feralinteractive.com NEEDS iPad/iOS 16 or later You get sandbox-like levels, filled with multiple ways to bump off your target Mac Format VERDICT Ablast from the past thoughtfully updated, and another major gaming series making a home for itself on iOS. ★★★★★ + Lots of control options + Well updated + Areally good game - PS2-era roots can show Nimbly avoiding the dreaded doublecolon title with the tactical N deployment of a dash, Reprisal reprises IO Interactive’s 2006 stealth assassination game in a way that will quash any doubts you might have about playing a PS2-era game in 2024. Blood Money was the Hitman series entry that introduced many of the interactions that have made the more recent games great. You get the sandbox-like levels, filled with multiple, improvised…