Innehållsförteckning för July 1, 2015 från MacLife

REMEMBER WHAT YOUR gadget life was like before you had an iPhone? You probably had a (digital) camera, maybe a portable music player, and possibly even a GPS. Today, you have a singular iPhone and I bet you can’t imagine going back… The iPhone saved us quite a bit of gadget room in our pockets and bags, yet now it has spawned entire industries that are gadget-izing everything you could imagine. The only catch is, we would all be better off if many of these companies looked back once in a while. You can now buy “smart” door locks that tie into your home network and automatically unlock once you get close enough (well, once your iPhone gets close enough). You can even unlock them from thousands of miles away…

$1.99 Developer Enrico Angelini, freakyalarm.com Platform iPhone, iPod touch Requirements iOS 7 or later If you treat the snooze button like a game of Whac-A-Mole each and every morning, you need FreakyAlarm to jolt your brain out of slumber with a series of logic games and annoying sounds. To make sure you get up and at ’em, FreakyAlarm can also be configured to “check in” using a barcode or other image. For example, we took a photo of a tube of toothpaste to make sure we had to get up and walk into the bathroom and snap the toothpaste again before the alarm would shut off. You’ll need to surrender Do Not Disturb or silent mode, which isn’t so great for those who receive lots of late-night notifications. It’s not…

$2.99 Developer Sago Sago, sagosago.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later There are plenty of physical toolbox toys around, so a digital one needs to allow kids to explore and imagine in new and exciting ways. Mini Toolbox does the former, but not the latter, and even then it lacks in staying power. Each project starts the same way: a sad or puzzled animal staring at a pile of raw materials. Burnished with cute animations, these characters have vast appeal. Children warm to their plight instantly, desperate to help. They do so by going through a series of steps where they use tools with simple taps and swipes. The tasks are often unrelated to the end product. The steps for what turns out to be an ice-cream machine, for…

$3.99 Developer Chronicle Games, chroniclegames.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later This is not a game for the claustrophobic. Plopped into an underground mine, you’re armed with a drill, which can tunnel through blocks of dirt and cracked rock, as well as kill monsters, all of which drain your energy meter to varying degrees. Once that valuable power-juice is gone, you’re stuck, unable to progress any further than the path you’ve already cleared. Time to hit restart, while filling in the mental blanks on your slow, despairing death down there in the darkness. It means you’re constantly forced to assess your path, making sure you’re going for the most efficient route to your goal (there are a certain number of amulets to be collected per level, and then an…

Learning to program is fun, and there’s never been a better time to get started. The key to programming is learning how to think in the right way – computers will do what you tell them, even if it doesn’t make sense. These apps will teach you how to get your brain into the right mode. In CARGO-BOT (Free, iPad), you instruct a crane to move crates around to a specified arrangement. You give the crane all its instructions in advance (by dragging little icons around), and it follows them one at a time. In this fashion you learn programming concepts such as repeating a shorter sequence of actions, or only performing a sequence when a box is present. HOPSCOTCH (Free, Universal) lets you make your own programs by placing…

For decades, Apple has aspired to make its machines look more than functional, but the way it has focused on the world of fashion with the launch of the Apple Watch takes its aesthetic aims to a new level. 38 possible combinations of case and band, including gold cases and customizable faces, are testament to this. But while Apple loves the world of watches, does the fashion world feel the same way? As ever, opinions are mixed. “Beautiful design has always been a cornerstone of the Apple brand, but the Watch takes this further. It is sleek and elegant but also slightly, yet deliberately, frivolous,” says Jess Carter-Morely, fashion editor at The Guardian. Eliza Brooke, associate editor at Fashionista, was similarly impressed: “The combination of the display’s smooth gradients, the…

SANDISK DUAL USB DRIVE TYPE C $40 sandisk.com Going to need to transfer files from a regular Mac or PC to your MacBook often? This 32GB flash drive has both a normal Type-A USB connector as well as the MacBook’s Type-C connector, so it works on anything. LACIE PORSCHE DESIGN MOBILE DRIVE From $70 lacie.com LaCie’s Porsche Design Mobile Drive comes in 500GB, 1TB or 2TB capacities, and offers a Type-C USB connection (it comes with a Type-C to Type-C cable). The 500GB drive weighs just 6.4 oz. ADAPTER CABLES $Various apple.com, belkin.com, kanex.com Apple, Google, Belkin and Kanex are all offering USB-C adapters. Apple’s are great – especially its multi-port video out options, which offer a USB-C passthrough port for charging – but fairly pricey. Shop around. TWELVE SOUTH…

AT SOME POINT we’ll be able to verbally tell a Mac what we want to work on or with and it’ll quickly serve the respective document or app. In the meantime, we must make do with manual searches via Spotlight, or use a file manager. Finder is an app built into every Mac for rummaging around your drive (and beyond) and it can be customized a little. One area that can be bent to your will, for example, is the sidebar. This is initially populated with shortcuts Apple has determined most Mac users will require, including All My Files, Applications and Documents, but as our walkthrough shows, you can add your own. Also, some applications – such as Dropbox – provide direct integration with Finder and add shortcuts, although these…

THINK OF ONYX as a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. It incorporates a number of tools which allow you to carry out maintenance and cleaning, verify your startup disk and file structure, and access hidden parameters so you can customize how the OS and many of its included applications work. OnyX incorporates two other tools from the company, Maintenance and Deeper, so if you use OnyX, you won’t need these. If you only want customization options, and find the interface of OnyX intimidating, Deeper is more straightforward. The good news is that all three applications are free to download and use. The bad news is that documentation and support is very limited. That’s where we come in. Over the next couple of pages, we’ll show how you can use…

KEYNOTE IS AN app particularly well suited to iPad. The landscape screen orientation and ease with which you can enter and edit text, pictures and transitions mean it’s perfect for working on presentations even when you’re on the move. With Keynote for iPad, plus an Apple TV, it’s even easier, with no compatibility issues to worry about. The Apple TV itself is very portable, much more so than a projector. The two devices need to be on the same wireless network, though you can create an ad hoc one from a laptop or phone if necessary. The Apple TV will need to be connected to a TV or perhaps a projector to work this way. The trick is to activate AirPlay Mirroring on the iPad to the Apple TV. Thanks…

THE APPLE WATCH has been out for a couple months now, and so far, it’s a success. But what happens when supply catches up to demand? Will Apple be able to build momentum behind the device? It could be an uphill battle. I like the Apple Watch. I’ve worn one since launch and have made good use of notifications and health-tracking. I don’t value it as much as my other Apple devices, but I’ll keep wearing it, and I hope it continues to succeed and improve. I’m not yet convinced of its long-term success, though. I go into specifics in my review (see page 56), but in a nutshell, the watch suffers from the lack of a clear identity; a single, defining function. The commercials are a blur of features…

MARCH OF WAR: FACE OFF FREE This is a card battle game, a little like Hearthstone, but where positioning is everything. Each turn, you can either add new units to a grid, or move your current ones forward and attack with them. You damage your opponent just by getting your troops far up the field. It’s buggy, but very clever, with big potential. VERSION TESTED: 2.36971.LMS ROBOCRAFT FREE Build a vehicle out of blocks, add weapons and extra gadgets, then take it into a battle arena and shoot the hell out of other people’s creations! Extra options can be bought as you progress, enabling crazier machines. Vehicles blast into their component pieces satisfyingly – it’s good, destructive fun. VERSION TESTED: 0.9.1021…

MADE IN HIGH-QUALITY gold and rose gold, the Watch Edition models are Apple’s first foray into real luxury fashion goods. The price is enough to make you spit your coffee all over whoever just told you about it for most of us, but for hardcore watch aficionados, it’s nothing special. They’re more concerned about its lack of hand-crafted pieces for that price compared to other watches, rather than the simple number of dollars. Once you get into watches with hundreds of tiny mechanical components, made of materials that put mere gold to shame, you find that $10,000 is just the start. Here are six of these that caught the eye of us at Mac|Life, from the standard but finely finished to the beautiful and bizarre. 1 Cabestan Winch Tourbillon Vertical…

1 KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson, Taron Egerton $14.99 Director Matthew Vaughn’s aim with this suave spy film was to emulate the likes of The Prisoner or the Roger Moore-era Bonds – a time of gentlemanly espionage, where a villain’s demise arrived in an immaculate suit armed with improbable gadgets. Vaughn’s take is more bloody than the films and shows it’s inspired by, but is lots of fun, and filled with cool performances. Newcomer Egerton is great as a rough recruit learning to be a gentleman, while Colin Firth’s role smartly plays on the actor’s meek, calm image before letting him loose in brutal, spectacular fights. 2 DARTH VADER Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larocca $4.99 for issue #1 Available as an In-App Purchase through the Marvel Comics…

Free Developer Martians Talk, martianstalk.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 8 or later Apple’s iPad has become a loyal companion for on-the-go presenters who need to show off slides to an audience in style – but not everyone requires the complexity and features offered by Keynote or PowerPoint. That’s where Ruri comes in. Named after the Japanese word for a semi-precious deep blue stone, this iPad app is an alternative to more popular, feature-rich presentation software favored by business and educational users. The basic premise remains the same: Choose from a number of built-in templates (including six free options like Sakura, Kanji, and Night Café), add a title page, and flesh out the presentation with text, photos, or graphs. Aside from a streamlined user interface, what sets Ruri apart from better-known…

FREE Developer SubscriptMe, subscript.me Platform iPhone, iPod touch Requirements iOS 7 or later Like it or not, services are increasingly moving toward subscription-based business models, giving us the burden of juggling all those fees. SubscriptMe offers a heads-up before charges hit your credit card, but the experience remains a work in progress. SubscriptMe scans your iPhone, presenting a list of installed subscription apps. The impulse is to select those you actually pay for with a tap, but here a counter-intuitive swipe to the right is required. Many popular services like iTunes Match and Dreamhost don’t make the cut, although they can be added manually. Others like Office 365 are curiously listed by each relevant app. Otherwise, SubscriptMe provides a nice overview of how much you’re spending annually, with push notifications…

$14.99 Developer Avatron Software, avatron.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later, OS X 10.8 or later, Wi-Fi or USB cable Air Display 3 and its free Mac-based host turn your iOS devices into additional screens, expanding your workspace. Installation on the Mac requires a reboot, but connection is simple. The host didn’t see our devices, but typing in an IP address was enough for an iPad to become a second display for our Mac. Attached displays can be zoomed and rotated; we found the latter switched the setup to mirror mode, but this was easily fixed in System Preferences. Usefully, Air Display 3 has Retina and HiDPI options. The former usually makes for small, fiddly interfaces, but the latter provides a pin-sharp second display. On Wi-Fi, though, responsiveness is…

$1.99 Developer Adriaan de Jongh, gameovenstudios.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later The premise here is simple: there is a smack of baby jellyfish (why, yes, that is one of the correct collective nouns, thanks for asking) and you – taking on the role of a helpful water current – have to guide them to safety. You swipe to create a current in whichever direction; long, slow ones or short, fast, more forceful ones. Sounds serene, right? Like being in control of a lazy river ride. As if… When you fail, you’re sent back to the start of the world. Each portion of the world is procedurally generated, which keeps things from being predictable, and has multiple exits – the world map is a grid of hexagons, so veering…

$349-$17,000 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Models Watch, Watch Sport, Watch Edition Sizes 38mm, 42mm Let’s start at the end. After using the Apple Watch for quite a while, exploring its usefulness and ins and outs, we really enjoy using it, and will continue wearing it. And yet, this is one of the hardest reviews we’ve ever written, because the value of the Watch is so subjective. Will it be right for you? Well, we’ll tell you what we think, and hopefully you’ll start to know. Apple has called the Watch its most personal device yet, and we think that’s true. “Your mileage may vary” definitely applies to this particular lifestyle gadget. That might sound critical, but we don’t mean it to be. It’s just that, while the Watch has a wide…

CALCBOT Free This is a slick “intelligent calculator” and unit converter. The Watch app adds a new mode to calculate tips and split a check among multiple people. The unit converter also includes key options through a deep press, with the option to customize what appears from the iPhone. DARK SKY $3.99 Dark Sky’s impossibly accurate forecasts help you to make sure you’re always dressed for the weather, and it will give you notifications warning you shortly before it’s about to rain, so you have time to dash into a coffee shop or head back to your car (or buy an umbrella). TWITTERRIFIC Free (with IAP) Featuring a glance that offers real-time stats and a rich notification experience, Twitterrific displays the actual name and avatar for new followers and even…

$149 or $9.99/month (Creative Cloud) Developer Adobe, adobe.com Requirements OS X 10.8 or later, 64-bit processor Lightroom is Adobe’s professional photo enhancing and cataloging program and it’s designed to be used alongside a regular image-editor like Photoshop. Indeed, if you buy it using the Creative Cloud subscription option instead of a one-off fee, you’ll get Photoshop included. Lightroom’s editing tools don’t reach the same depths as Photoshop’s, but it’s aimed with a slightly different intention – simpler non-destructive improvements to photos, rather than full editing of images with lots of layers. Adobe has introduced new tools for organizing photos in Lightroom 6, but the main additions are to the editing tools. There are also exciting new panorama and HDR tools, and it’s now possible to “brush out” areas adjusted with…

A The menu bar The menu bar is split by type of job. The customization functions are all in Parameters. B Tabbed sections Each group is further divided into tabbed sections. Tabs denote the application or OS function being customized. The number of options in each section varies widely. C Restore Defaults The Restore Defaults button is your friend. If your Mac starts to behave unexpectedly, press it to put things back the way they were and problems should hopefully disappear. D Finder reboot? Depending on what you ask it to do, OnyX will either make any changes immediately, need to restart Finder, or even take over your Mac for a few minutes.…

BLOGSY ($4.99) is a blog-writing app that you can use to write, format and post articles to one or several blogs at once. Unlike word processing documents and apps, Blogsy’s interface is specifically geared towards blogging. It even turns your iPad keyboard into one with HTML tags. Blogsy has rich text, HTML and text-based formatting tools and a preview button to check posts before publishing. If you have several blogs – even on different blog-publishing platforms – you can create a post and publish it with ease. Blogsy works with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Movable Type, Joomla, Drupal and Squarespace. As well as publishing posts to any of these, you can upload photos to Facebook, Flickr and Instagram. Blogsy takes a drag-and-drop approach to adding photos, videos and links. Just drag…

BECAUSE IT’S DESIGNED to accommodate multiple users, easy networking and always-on connections, OS X is generally very secure. Other users (and outsiders) have only the level of access that you grant them. However, this can be both a strength and a vulnerability, in that you could be fooled into giving a rogue user or application access privileges. This is what happened with the Flashback Trojan in early 2012. To stop this kind of thing happening again, Apple introduced an extra layer of security called Gatekeeper, which authenticates apps and stops software from unknown sources running. You can set Gatekeeper to one of three levels. The most secure permits only software that’s been downloaded from the Mac App Store to install and run. The next level includes software from known sources…

1 Security and privacy Gatekeeper enables you to keep your Mac more secure by restricting what software can run on it. To configure Gatekeeper, go to System Preferences and then select Security & Privacy. When the pane opens, click the General tab. 2 Unlock changes Before you can make any changes to the security options on your Mac, you need to unlock them. Click the padlock in the bottom left of the window and enter an administrator username and password when prompted. This removes the lock. 3 Pick and choose You can now pick what types of apps are allowed to install and run. For the utmost safety, allow Mac App Store apps only. For greatest flexibility but least security, choose Anywhere. Click the padlock to lock these changes.…

Your opinions, rants & raves I’m not sure that the answer to the letter “Temperamental printing” (Mac|Life #101, page 84) was fully correct. I had an identical problem with two printers on my network suddenly not working, but after some troubleshooting, I got everything back to normal. The problems started about the time of the upgrade to OS X 10.10.2. One night while trying (and failing) to print some documents for my wife, in frustration I got out her MacBook Pro, opened the documents from Dropbox, and started printing with no problems. The MacBook Pro was connected to the network via Wi-Fi, so I connected the iMac to the network via Wi-Fi and had no more problems. I changed out the Ethernet cable from the iMac to the Time Capsule…

JUDGING THE WAVE of Apple Watch games, they have a long way to go before they’re fun – or even worthy of a passing grade. I know it’s a critical statement, but it’s true one. There’s a central question any Apple Watch game needs to solve: why is this a better experience than my iPhone, which I already have with me? Unfortunately, none of the games I’ve seen so far has an answer. Runeblade, a painfully generic RPG that was featured by Apple, is a fantastic example of the biggest problem facing most Apple Watch games – there simply aren’t meaningful game mechanics. In Runeblade, the gameplay has been simplified to the point of requiring no real strategy. Push a button, fight creatures, level your weapons, repeat, beat a boss.…

$24.99 Developer Astropad, astropad.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 8 or later Is Wacom looking over its shoulder asking who the new kid right on its heels is? Or is the race over before it has begun? Astropad offers the ability to use your iPad as a graphics tablet, so we wanted to know if it’s as good as it sounds. Before starting, you must ensure you have up-to-date operating systems on both devices. The next important thing to do is ensure your stylus is calibrated with the software. You do this via a rather smart box that prompts you to touch your stylus against the iPad. As you do so, you are told the sync is successful. There is a fair bit of tweaking required by specifying which area of…

I’LL MAKE this quick for you: the Apple Watch isn’t great for running. Yet. While there’s lots that’s wrong with it right now that prevents me from recommending it becoming your jogging buddy if you’re a serious runner, there’s actually still enough potential to not label it a complete fitness fan failure. Let’s start with the juicy bit: what the Apple Watch fails on for runners. The first one is glaringly obvious, and well documented. It doesn’t have GPS and therefore is nearly useless as a true running watch. It can work without a connection to an iPhone, but only with Apple’s own Workout app. All third-party apps need the phone to function. Perhaps you don’t mind that – maybe you always run with a phone anyway. However, start running…

$1,299 (1.1GHz); $1,599 (1.2GHz) Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Key features 1.1GHz Intel Core M processor, 8GB memory, Intel HD Graphics 5300, 256GB SSD Apple’s quest for ever thinner and lighter devices is unrelenting, and while we’re all for things being more portable, the question is whether the company sometimes goes a bit too far, or a little too fast. The new MacBook is just 13 millimeters thick, weighing two pounds – easily its thinnest and lightest notebook yet. It fits a 12-inch screen and a full-size keyboard into a smaller footprint than the 11-inch MacBook Air. But it’s also Apple’s slowest notebook, and it comes with just a single data port, which also doubles as the charging plug. So the question is whether these compromises are worth it – whether you…

$4.99 Developer Stiefel Digital, stiefeldigital.com/curvature Requirements OS X 10.10 or higher, 64-bit processor With its simple, minimalist interface and its emphasis on what you’re drawing, not how you’re drawing it, Curvature aims to get back to basics and create a simple unfussy sketching app for the Mac. It’s optimized for use with a graphics tablet (although can work with a mouse too), and so has a pared-down menu to help increase screen real estate and minimize fuss. The app supports both stylus pressure sensitivity and multi-touch gestures from your drawing tablet, without any kind of setup required, so you can quickly and easily get drawing, Its Infinite Canvas feature gives you a limitless working space to draw in and key functions such as brush size, style and color are available…

1 Understand basics Firstly, the sidebar can be hidden. App install windows often hide the sidebar, for example. View > Hide/Show sidebar (+⌘+S) toggles its visibility. Select a sidebar item and it loads relevant items into the window. 2 Show groups Go to Finder > Preferences and choose Sidebar. You’ll see items grouped into Favorites, Shared, Devices and Tags. Checking an item adds it to Finder sidebars; deselect an item and it will, unsurprisingly, be removed. 3 Add/remove items For quick access to a folder not shown in Finder’s preferences, select it and use File > Add to Sidebar (ctrl+⌘+T), or drag the folder into Favorites until a horizontal line appears. To remove it, right-click and click Remove from Sidebar. 4 Access hidden folder Your user Library folder is hidden…

1 Dashboard Remember Dashboard and its widgets? It’s still here, but it’s switched off by default. To switch it back on, click Parameters, then the Mission Control tab. Now click on the box next to Dashboard. Click Continue; OnyX restarts the dock. 2 Quick text selection Want to select text directly when performing a Quick Look on a text file? Go to Parameters, then Finder and look down the list for “Misc. Options.” Check the “Turn on Text Selection in Quick Look” box. 3 Hide any folder/file If you share your Mac, you may want to hide a file or folder from view. Go to Utilities and click the Visibility tab. Now click “Hide File” or “Hide Folder,” then Continue, then select the file or folder. You can always make…