Innehållsförteckning för September 2024 från MacFormat

Apple Intelligence may be getting all the attention, but there are plenty of other reasons to be excited by the next round of OS updates arriving this autumn. Whether AI floats your boat or not, macOS Sequoia, iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 all come with great new features, tweaks and enhancements that’ll make using your devices easier and more productive than before. And your Apple Watch and Apple TV needn’t miss out either as there some significant changes coming to those devices too. You can read all about them starting on p20. As always with Apple, there are some caveats: some of the most ground-breaking (and therefore complicated) features of Apple Intelligence will roll out over the next year or so rather than be available on day one. And all…

Philips Evnia 49M2C8900L > £869.99 > From philips.co.uk > Hankering after a dual monitor set-up? Then you might want to consider this 48.9-inch ultra-wide display. Ostensibly aimed at gamers, it’s packed with exactly the kind of tech that’ll make you drool – from a quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) 1800R curved screen with support for up to 99% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut to a resolution of 5120x1440 pixels. Plus, it also has a 0.3 millisecond response time for slick movie viewing as well as game playing. The icing on the cake, though, are the 49M2C8900L’s added extras. For not only does it boast Ambiglow, the Philips ambient lighting technology that splashes colours on the wall behind the monitor to create a more immersive viewing experience, it also has DTS Sound…

So the next version of the Mac’s operating system, macOS 15, is to be called Sequoia. Found in northern California and southern Oregon, the sequoia is a giant redwood tree, the tallest trees on Earth. Before logging took its toll, they covered most of California, but many that remain today are protected in the Sequoia National Park. macOS Sequoia has some great new features. As well as benefitting from Apple Intelligence, a new AI platform integrated into the next releases of Apple’s operating systems, it offers iPhone Mirroring, Image Playground and a new Passwords app. But what are these exciting tools? Let’s take a look. Passwords app The Passwords app is coming to Apple mobile devices, Vision Pro and even Windows as part of the iCloud for Windows app as…

Naturally, there’s some great features coming to Apple’s other key operating systems, such as tvOS, watchOS and visionOS. For example, in tvOS 18, you can enhance the dialogue in a movie, so it doesn’t get drowned out when things get noisy, and you'll be able to see more on-screen info about your favourite Apple TV+ shows. There are some great new Home & Audio features on the way, and Siri has had a boost, thanks to Apple Intelligence. Let’s look at some more great treats we have coming in the autumn. Canon STM DUAL Lens It’s already easy to create spatial videos on your Vision Pro using the iPhone 15 Pro. For a real pro touch, however, Canon is to release a dedicated spatial lens for its EOS R7 digital camera…

With macOS Sequoia, navigating the web in Safari is going to be easier than ever before. It’s going to highlight key details on a web page and point you towards more information. It’s going to put video front and centre, and it’ll help to make sites far less distracting and more practical thanks to a designed Reader. But that’s not to say you can’t make improvements to your browsing habits right now. By using Safari in macOS 14 (Sonoma), you already have the potential to take browsing to another level. Throw in some extensions and it’s also possible to take greater control. You don’t have to be beholden to the whims of a website developer. So let’s take a look at the nifty things you can achieve in Safari to…

For a couple of years, Apple silicon Macs have been able to run Windows 11 on a virtual machine (VM), although at a price. Fortunately, VMware has now made its highly respected Fusion Pro virtualiser free for personal use, giving you the opportunity to run games and other Windows apps on your M-series Mac. Getting an ISO disk image can be difficult, as Windows for ARM achitecture still isn’t available in a retail version. It’s simplest to download it using the rival Parallels Desktop; it should also be available to those in Microsoft’s Insider Programme, or on a PC through the UUP Dump app. The trickiest part is working around the need for additional drivers. The initial set-up and installation are run without a network connection, following a little PowerShell magic.…

We love the Notes app on our iPhone, but we can’t quite stop ourselves from putting our pen to Post-It notes or scribbling on the backs of envelopes. And that’s why the scanning features in the Notes app are so useful. Whether it’s an important letter, a receipt that you need to keep or a scrawled shopping list, you can use your iPhone camera to capture it – and you can turn it into text that you can then tick off, edit or share. It’s then available wherever you have a phone, tablet or computer using your Apple ID. Clearer the better As you might expect, the clearer the text the better the results will be. A crisp laser-printed document with decent text sizes will be recognised much more accurately…

Move new apps before running Download an app in a Zip archive, expand it, and run it where it is. Although you may not notice, macOS won’t run the app from there, but launches a copy from a semi-random folder buried deep, a process known as app translocation. Introduced in macOS 10.12 (Sierra), it defends against malware taking advantage of that app’s location. To avoid this, move the app from its original folder to somewhere different, such as the main Applications folder. Rules determining whether translocation occurs are subtle, but it shouldn’t happen if you move the app individually so it’s enclosed by a different folder before running it for the first time. Move it within its original folder, though, and every time the app is run, it will be translocated.…

Imagine if you had your own personal chef. Imagine someone was on hand to prep all of your food, cook it and even clean up afterwards, leaving you with nothing to do but sit at the table grab your knife and fork and tuck in, mouth salivating. Imagine if that someone was able to rustle up a delicious drink too – a lovely beer to accompany your meal, perhaps, or a fine coffee to finish off. Well, imagine a little longer because that’s not going to happen! But let’s not entirely burst that bubble. Thanks to smart kitchen tech, the processes of prepping, cooking and cleaning can be so much easier and far less tiresome. For starters, food can be kept fresher for longer, reducing those trips to the grocery…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 406 AUGUST 2024 Introducing Apple Intelligence 101 ways to make iCloud truly great On test: M4 iPad Pro, M2 iPad Air Take amazing holiday photos ISSUE 405 JULY 2024 The best apps for everything Meet the new iPad Pro and iPad Air Apple’s incredible new M4 chip 6 best Safari alternatives ISSUE 404 JUNE 2024 M3 MacBook Air: in-depth review Discover fast fixes for your Mac Apple’s new focus on AI robots 6 best Mac keyboards on test To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_backissues or phone +44 (0)330 333 1113 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 NEVER MISS…

> £199 > FROM ifi-audio.com > FEATURES 3.5mm/4.4mm outputs, PowerMatch, XBass, IEMatch, USB-C, up to 12 hours’ battery It can handle even the highest quality audio formats available on Apple Music The Hip DAC from iFi has been one of the most popular portable DACs (digital-to-analogue converters) of recent years, thanks to its attractive and compact design that looks like an old-fashioned hip flask. It’s not the cheapest DAC you can buy, but this updated Hip DAC 3 boasts a few extra features that will particularly appeal to audiophiles who own more than just one pair of headphones. Priced at £199, the Hip DAC 3 looks very similar to its predecessor – which is still on sale for £159 – but its sturdy aluminium casing is now finished in a…

> £109.99 > FROM belkin.com > FEATURES iPhone MagSafe charger, Apple Watch charger, 15W fast charging, 30W USB-C charging plug included, 1.5m non-removable USB-C cable, adjustable viewing angle (0-70°); 500g weight (575g including plug) The build quality is undeniable… the device is great to look at as well as to use Belkin is well known for the top-notch accessories it builds for Apple products. One of the latest is the wordily named BoostCharge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock with MagSafe, a nightstand charger for your iPhone and Apple Watch that’s thankfully a lot more compact than its lengthy name. The build quality of Belkin’s charger is undeniable. At 570g, it’s impressively weighty and solid, with plenty of metal to be found throughout – no flimsy, bendy plastic here. Its rubberised…

> €59 (about £50) > FROM obdev.at > NEEDS macOS 14 Support for blocklists alone makes this an excellent replacement for other ad blockers Little runs on your Mac without an internet connection, and in this hidden world of connections, there’s ample scope for bad behaviour. You’ll find apps compromising your privacy by sending your data to their servers, as well as the truly malicious wanting to cause you pain and grief. Little Snitch opens a window on that world, providing insight into what’s making all those connections, and giving you the choice to block what you don’t trust using its powerful software firewall. Version 6 takes advantage of changes in macOS 14 (Sonoma) that make its installation quick and simple despite its two system extensions. The firewall then works…

As soon as I turned 50, my vision seemed to fall off a cliff. I started noticing it on my iPhone first – I was having to hold it further and further away from me to read text messages comfortably, but it wasn’t long before even my MacBook screen was blurring before my eyes. My optician said there was nothing to worry about, it was quite normal for my age, and I just needed reading glasses. Apple hasn’t turned 50 yet (nearly – it was founded in 1976), but I’m starting to wonder if its vision for 2024’s hot new thing, the Vision Pro, is starting to get equally blurry. Spatial computing, spearheaded by the Vision Pro, was supposed to be the next step in the evolution of the home…

APP OF THE MONTH There are a variety of ways to open apps in macOS – Launchpad, the Dock, Spotlight and more – but if none of them quite cut it for you, try Start. This app organises everything into a list view for easy access, giving you a quick visual way to locate and launch your desired apps. There’s more to it than just that. You can add tags, comments and colours to your apps to make everything easier to find. Start also lets you add web addresses, folders and more, enabling you to customise the app to help you get the most out of it. You can even launch apps with just a hotkey, speeding things up considerably. Version 8 adds contextual menus and a Recent Files section,…

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Universal Control can also control multiple Macs from the same keyboard, mouse and trackpad With Universal Control and Sidecar, you can combine your Mac and iPad (or your iPhone) into one super device, turning your MacBook or Mac into a dual-display device or controlling multiple Apple devices from the same keyboard, mouse or trackpad. Sidecar enables you to use your iPad or Apple TV as a second display for your Mac. It can do that either as a second monitor or by mirroring your Mac’s screen. If you mirror your Mac to your iPad in an app such as Photoshop, you can then navigate and draw using your Apple Pencil as if your iPad were a graphics tablet. Cross-platform control Universal Control unites Mac and iPad in a slightly different…

Siri, the voice assistant found on all of Apple’s products often gets a bad rep for being ineffective and a little outdated compared to its competition. Although things look set to change dramatically with the imminent release of Apple Intelligence. But even now, Siri is far more than just an afterthought on your device, it’s capable of loads of nifty tricks that can help you get the most from your iPad. Think of Siri as your personal assistant and it quickly becomes one of the most used features on anyone’s device. You can access Siri from anywhere on your iPad, making it the most efficient way to get information when typing is tricky. From telling jokes to setting alarms or translating sentences, Siri is an incredibly powerful tool we shouldn’t…

Everywhere you turn, it seems like someone is out to scam you. Online ads promoting deals too good to be true, dodgy web links lurking in prominent paid-for search engine slots – even people at the end of the phone trying to trick you into thinking your Mac is infested with malware. Since 2010, the amount of money lost to fraud has ballooned, with one reporting estimating UK individuals may have lost nearly £9 billion to scammers in 2023 alone. Thanks to a growing number of online security breaches, hackers have gained access to millions of people’s personal information and are using it in increasingly sophisticated scams. But the good news is that there’s plenty you can do to fight back, and that’s where we come in. In this feature…

Food doesn’t just magically appear on your plate. It needs to be prepared which typically means keeping raw ingredients fresh before weighing, chopping and mixing them. It often requires accuracy and patience, as well as a watchful eye should something go wrong. But, as laborious as prepping can be, it can also be fun, relaxing and efficient – with the right tech. Here we look at smart gadgets to help reduce waste, keep food fresher for longer, prevent you from setting it alight and enjoy time in the kitchen. We’ll show you devices that make light work of the most boring of tasks and allow greater control thanks to apps that let you set up and monitor key processes. 1 Vitesy Shelfy £149 From vitesy.com Shelfy uses WO3 photocatalytic technology to…

Our ratings Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. A truly exceptional product. Award given solely at the discretion of the editor. The best example of its kind when pitted against comparable products. A brilliant thing Strongly recommended Worth considering Notable flaws A waste of your money BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com…

> £149.99 > FROM elgato.com > FEATURES HDR support, 1080p resolution at 60Hz, f/2.4 aperture, 84° field of view, 30-120cm focus range, 24mm focal length, Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor, USB-C to USB-A cable Elgato has corrected one of the Facecam’s most glaring errors by dropping its price to £150 Three years ago, Elgato brought out the Facecam, a £200 webcam with great software but an uncomfortably high price. Now, Elgato has gone back to the drawing board and revised its camera, which now comes with HDR support, a redesigned body and a lower price. But is it enough to find a way into our good books? Let’s start with the positives. Right off the bat, Elgato has corrected one of the original Facecam’s most glaring errors by dropping its price…

> £149.99 > FROM razer.com > FEATURES 15W passthrough charging, 3.5mm audio socket, clickable thumb sticks, six shoulder buttons, four action buttons; eight-way D-pad; works with iPhone 15 series, iPad mini (sixth-gen) Kishi Ultra is Razer’s new top-of-the-range smartphone controller. It makes significant advances over the Kishi V2 and Kishi V2 Pro. As well as smartphones, it can also hold an iPad mini. The gaming controls have been improved, as have the ergonomics, and as well as passthrough charging for your mobile device, it also adds a 3.5mm audio socket. Although this Kishi fits the iPad mini as well as standard and large-sized iPhones, it’s only compatible with devices equipped with USB-C ports – the iPhone 15 series or iPad mini (sixth gen). No accommodation has been made for Lightning…

> £16.75 > FROM papertrailgame.com > NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later A beautiful brainteaser that’ll leave you stratching your head Paper Trail is a puzzle game with a twist – or with a fold, we should say. Its unusual mechanic makes for some ingenious puzzle solutions, but you might also be left tearing your hair out. At the game’s opening, the protagonist leaves home to study at university against her parents’ wishes. You make your way through varied worlds – caves, swamps, forests – in order to get there. Each top-down level presents a set of challenges, from locked doors to broken bridges, that block your progress. But these objects are not as insurmountable as they may seem – folding the edges of your paper world can reveal the…

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There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) was the main focus of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, with the company’s own Apple Intelligence system receiving significant airtime. Yet despite its high profile, many of Apple Intelligence’s features likely won’t be rolled out until well into 2025, meaning a long wait for anyone who wants to try out Apple’s all-singing, all-dancing AI tools. We know that Apple Intelligence won’t be available until later this summer, and once it does launch, it will only work with US English language settings. That was explained by Apple at WWDC, but Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has shed more light on some of the other features that could be delayed. For instance, Gurman says the ability to summarise your notifications and use AI to…

28 billion > Number of transistors inside the M4, helping make it 1.5x faster than the M2 inside the previous iPad Pro. 38 trillion > Number of operations per second performed by the M4’s 16-core Neural Engine, making it 60x faster than the first Neural Engine used in the iPhone 8’s A11 Bionic chip. 5 > Maximum number of simultaneous 4K ProRes video streams supported by the M4’s Media Engine, making it ideal for creative pros. 3 nanometres (nm) > Second-generation process used by the new M4 chip, making it incredibly power efficient. The M2 found inside the 2024 iPad Air, current Mac mini and iMac uses a 5nm process. 120GB/sec > Memory bandwidth of the M4, making it 1.2x faster than the M2 chip inside the previous iPad Pro.…

Clipping on a pair of goggles, and a suitably coiffured helmet, Apple’s Craig Federighi declared “It’s showtime!”, before promptly jumping out of an aeroplane and parachuting into Apple Park to the sound of Mötley Crüe’s Kickstart My Heart. We wonder if anyone at Apple knew that song is about the band’s bass player overdosing on drugs, forcing medics to literally restart his heart with an adrenaline injection? Adrenaline was certainly the order of the day as the Apple team opened their parachutes, which were emblazoned with the names of the operating systems being discussed in the keynote. This wasn’t a real stunt, of course, but it was a great bit of theatre and it set the scene for the presentation well. Naturally, artificial intelligence (AI) played a big part. Apple…

Calculator and Math Notes At long last, the Calculator app is coming to the iPad, and it’s gaining a few new features that take advantage of the tablet’s larger screen. It’s gained a few new tricks like a history sidebar and unit conversions, but its main advance is its ability to do mathematical formulae. A new feature called Math Notes lets you write a sum or expression with your Apple Pencil, and have it calculated for you. Change a variable and the calculation is automatically updated. New in Freeform The new iPad 18 version of Freeform adds Scenes, an all-new way to select sections of a virtual whiteboard. This makes it much easier to navigate your way around a board when things get full. The Scenes menu is available from…

PART 1 OF 2 Thanks to our ever-present iPhones, we are spoiled when it comes to shooting, editing and sharing thousands of photographs. However, in pre-digital days we were limited to shooting up to 36 photos on a roll of analogue film. Some of our prints might have been placed in photo albums or given pride of place in a picture frame, but the majority are probably still stacked in their original envelopes and hidden in a dark corner of a cupboard, attic or basement. In part one of this two-part tutorial, we’ll show you how to rescue these irreplaceable moments in time and give them a new lease of life, to the delight of friends and family. The process of turning analogue prints, slides and negatives into digital copies…

Clips is a fantastic video-capture and editing app that launched right after TikTok in 2017, as a response from Apple to the super-popular and ever-changing world of short-form video content. Clips is part of the native applications present from the very first time you turn on your iPhone and iPad, it’s fully free to use, and like many Apple native apps, extremely intuitive. The app is based on the concept of recording or importing little snippets of video footage to then edit them with filters or enrich them with stickers and emojis. Subtitles can be added in different styles and colours to make your videos more accessible, all while volume levels can be adjusted to choose between louder music or clearer voiceover. The clips can be cut and trimmed ad…

With the prep out of the way, it’s time to cook – heating your food to perfection so that it draws out the flavours and maximises nutritional value. But while we’re all used to appliances that make cooking possible such as ovens, hobs, microwaves, grills and the like, smart kitchen tech can free up your time, make guesswork a thing of the past and, who knows, even help turn you into a Michelin-star chef. Maybe. Of course, once you’ve made your awesome meal, you’re then going to be faced with lots of dirty pots, pans, plates and cutlery and a potentially messy floor. Do you relish the task of cleaning up or can smart tech rush to the rescue once again? 1 Stirr £29.99 From uutensil.com Bored of standing over pots…

> £449 > FROM sonos.com > FEATURES Bluetooth 5.4, up to 30hr battery life, Dolby Atmos, spatial audio, active noise cancellation, lossless audio support, wear detection, dynamic head tracking, wireless or wired, USB-C (USB-C to USB-C, USB-C to 3.5mm cables), eight microphones, travel case The noise cancelling is among the best we’ve heard, with eight mics also enabling great call quality Best known for its home cinema and portable and smart speaker systems, it was perhaps inevitable that Sonos would eventually produce its own pair of headphones. The Ace headphones are aimed more at the Apple AirPods Max end of the market than at mid-range models, costing around £50 less than Apple’s flagship cans, but they’re still fairly pricey. Available in black or white, the Ace headphones are more compact…

Your iPhone’s Camera app is capable of capturing beautiful footage. And although you can choose a wide range of shooting modes – from Cinematic to SloMo – the Camera app doesn’t provide all the manual controls that a professional video maker might require. For example, the Camera app enables you to change focus by tapping on a subject, but you can’t change the speed of the focal change. You can tap and hold the 0.5x-5x icons to zoom in or out, but you can’t easily control the zoom speed. As well as manual zoom and focus control, some of the third-party apps that we’ve tested here add pro features such as histograms and zebra warnings, so you can diagnose and fix areas that are over or underexposed. Some apps feature…

> £54.99 one-time purchase for three devices/£34.99 a year for five devices > FROM imazing.com > NEEDS macOS 10.11 or later For those who want to go further with their device management, it’s a worthy purchase Launched in 2008 (as DiskAid), DigiDNA’s iMazing for Macs and Windows PCs puts you in control of your iPhone, iPad, iPod and even Vision Pro. The mobile device manager is packed with tools that go far beyond those offered by Apple. These include incremental backups, browsing and exporting text and voicemail messages, app management, easy migration from an old device to a new one; it can also reinstall iOS, and allow you to use your mobile device as an external hard drive. It can even detect spyware by looking for known malicious file names,…