Innehållsförteckning för February 2017 från MacLife

We give our full view on the new Touch Bar feature of the latest MacBook Pros in our review on p62, but the CliffsNotes version is: the potential is huge, as long as apps actually use it well. Even Apple’s own apps are a bit inconsistent about this – the iWork apps do it right, but iMovie’s support feels perfunctory. Apple makes it really easy for apps to add Touch Bar support, and so a huge range of developers have already included it in their apps. We’ve picked out some that we think make the best use of it, whether that’s through a smart choice of options, expanding the interface with new options, or just being cool ideas. There are lots more, though – check your favorite apps’ websites! 1Pixelmator…

Every new version of iOS brings with it a host of changes. Sometimes that means headline features such as an entirely new style of interface, though more often than not, the tweaks are more subtle, if just as useful. iOS 10 was a huge update that added a ridiculous number of new options to your iPhone and iPad – we revealed over 100 in our big feature in issue 120, but there are still more to discover, and new features have been added with Apple’s latest updates. So here are more tips and tricks for iOS 10! iOS 10 tips and tricks Get more from your iPhone and iPad 3D Touch in Control Center We’ve mentioned in a previous iOS feature that you can 3D Touch on the flashlight icon…

WHEN APPLE announced that it was going to replace iPhoto and Aperture with Photos, there was naturally some concern. Aperture was aimed at serious enthusiast and professional photographers as a competitor for Adobe Lightroom, whereas iPhoto was designed for more occasional photographers who just wanted to be sure that their images were safely downloaded and easilyaccessible. Could one package really meet both needs? What isn’t immediately obvious in Photos is that, below the surface, there are advanced tools that can help make Aperture users feel at home, enabling them to make complex adjustments to their images. It doesn’t replace a pro-level package like Adobe Photoshop CC, nor if we’re honest does it completely replace Aperture, but there’s plenty for enthusiast photographers toget their teeth into. Unless you were a power-user…

Free Developer Polymail, polymail.io Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.2 or later We’re willing to bet quite a few of our readers have multiple email addresses; one for home, one for work, and maybe even another for school. Juggling all those email addresses can get a little bit tricky, especially if you’re doing it on your phone. Polymail is an app that aims to help take the frustration out of using multiple emails and comes packed with additional goodies. Polymail can be used across platforms, on iPhone as well as Mac, and keeps synchronized with a single Polymail login. You can use Polymail with all sorts of email accounts, including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, and any email provider that uses IMAP, so it should work well with any email your…

Free Developer Graava, graavaapp.com Platform iPhone Requirements iOS 9.1 or later The description for Graava promises to remove the pain of editing video using “a combination of sensors and artificial intelligence.” It is unclear what that means; it seems to be a combination of microphone, accelerometer, location, and, potentially, heart rate – but those aren’t always connected to exciting video. If there’s artificial intelligence in there, it’s not very smart. After picking which videos you want to combine from a badly designed selection menu, the app will suggest a video length seemingly at random. Sometimes it will give you the option of 6-10 seconds, other times 7-23 seconds – even if the videos were longer the first time. You can tweak the videos after Graava shows you its edit, adding…

$9.99 Developer Feral Interactive, feralinteractive.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 9 or later As the name suggests, there’s plenty of spear-togut action in this strategy game. Each fight takes place as a sprawling real-time battle involving hundreds of troops – it can take the better part of 10 minutes simply to maneuver a unit from one side of the battlefield to the other. As well as directing your soldiers’ destination and speed, you decide on whether or not they fire at will, if their ranks are tight or loose, what formation they take. You’ve even got to take terrain and weather into account. As such, victory might feel like a desperate last stab that’s paid off, but it never feels like sheer luck. If you’re more of an armchair general, there’s…

Free/$14.99 Mac App Store Developer Birdfont, birdfont.org Requirements OS X 10.6 or later Birdfont aims to allow anyone with some design skills to draw letterforms and turn them into a font. The app’s single window defaults to a Dark mode. Create a new font, and a character set appears at the right, with tools in a block at the left; there are no menu bar options. Clicking any character shows a blank canvas with guides ready for you to draw. If the drawing tools feel unfamiliar, check out the tutorials online. You can import paths if you prefer: this worked from Adobe Illustrator, but other apps, such as Affinity Designer, don’t export the clipboard the right way. You can also open TrueType .ttf and .otf files, so you can edit…

$9.99 Manufacturer Bjango Pty, bjango.com Requirements 64-bit Mac, OS X 10.10 or later You might be familiar with the iStat Menus utility in the menu bar, providing readouts about Mac activity. iStat for Mac is in similar territory, but for remote-monitoring. Install the server app on the target machine, then add server details (name, address, port). If you’re on the same network as the target, iStat will likely pick up the machine automatically. Such user-friendliness is welcome – just as well, given that “iStat Help” throws you at a support page stating: Help is on the way. Fortunately, the app is elsewhere more impressive. The main view displays graphs detailing CPU and network usages, and readouts for disk usage and activity, sensors, memory, load, and uptime. You can delve into…

$1.99 Developer Judhajit Ray, appease.work Requirements OS X 10.10 or later ProForecast for The Weather Channel is really a web app not-so-cleverly disguised as a native Mac app. The developer appears to have done little work, short of adding a navigation header that confusingly replicates existing website functionality, such as search and settings. This might be tolerable if ProForecast at least saved preferences when quitting, instead reverting to the default location (New York, NY) and metric Celsius unit of temperature, even after selecting Fahrenheit. The app also becomes unstable when viewing five- or 10-day forecasts. ProForecast does at least faithfully reproduce weather.com, with a few nice touches of its own such as push notification weather alerts and a menu bar widget, but settings from the main app aren’t carried over…

$249 Developer Seagate, seagate.com Features 8TB, USB 3.0, 7.8x1.6x4.6 in, 2.3 lbs Seagate has managed to produce a competitively priced 8TB drive that includes a welcome bonus in the form of a two-port USB 3.0 hub. These are positioned on the front of the drive, and because the drive requires its own power adapter, won’t draw additional juice from your Mac. The white Mac version should be pre-formatted; if you end up with the black PC/Mac version it’s a simple task to reformat it as HFS+ using Disk Utility. Performance is middle of the road – around 131MB/s for standard read/writes, increasing to 187MB/s (extended) and 176-219MB/s (large files). Random read/writes are less impressive at 26-30MB/s. The hub ultimately sets this drive apart – while the drive’s bulk makes it…

$39 Manufacturer Belkin, belkin.com Features Lightning connector, 2x Lightning ports Apple has always thought differently, and the arguments over the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack still rage on. We think most people will have forgotten about that clumsy old port before too long, but we accept the difficulties presented by having just one port for charging and audio output. Up steps Belkin with one solution to that conundrum. It looks just like an official Apple cable, which is nice, but it’s also a little inelegant by that very design. Lightning ports are tiny, yet this white block is 1.4x3.9 inches to fit in two Lightning ports side by side horizontally. Something a little less Apple-like might have yielded a more efficient, better-looking design, as it does look pretty odd…

$44.99 Developer Obsidian Entertainment, tyrannygame.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later, 2.9GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 6GB RAM, Radeon HD 6950M graphics with 1GB VRAM, 15GB storage In most role-playing games, you’re saving the oppressed, hunting down the big bad, and vanquishing evil. Get rid of those notions before playing Tyranny, which places you squarely on the side of the realm’s malevolent overlord Kyros – a mysterious being who nonetheless instills fear into the hearts of all in its path. Character creation is fairly deep, and not just cosmetically – you’ll be able to choose your character’s gender and hairstyle, of course, but also background and combat style. You’ll have a chance to play through a brief intro outlining the events prior to the game, and your choices affect how…

I have a new 12-inch MacBook (Early 2016). Although I’ve entered my username and password in order to make calls using FaceTime, the app gets stuck on its loading screen and does not work. What’s wrong? Ensure you have a good internet connection, and that the Apple ID you’re attempting to sign in with is valid. To make a FaceTime connection, you must have verified your email address; check your Apple ID’s status by going to appleid.apple.com, where you can also create an Apple ID, change its password, and more. Next, in FaceTime choose FaceTime > Preferences. If it shows your email status as “verifying,” follow the instructions in the email to verify the address, and allow the process to complete. If FaceTime is still being awkward, under Apple…

Apple’s strength has always been making its computers easy to understand… but only in one sense of the word. They’re easy to use, but as they’ve become smaller and lighter, the way they work has become more sealed off and impenetrable. Take Apple’s A10 chip at the heart of the iPhone, for example; very few people know this processor’s exact details, and unlike programming, you can’t just tinker around to learn, or join many easy learning courses to get started. But we need people to have these skills and knowledge, and we need more people to become interested in the future. That’s where the Megaprocessor comes in. Like a microprocessor, it’s made up of transistors, which are built into certain modules so that they’recapable of processing logic and running programs.…

> Collecting what you’re watching The new TV app in iOS 10.2 is designed to bring together what you might be watching from a bunch of different sources. Partly, it acts as a replacement for the Videos app, so your iTunes TV shows and movies will be available here. But app developers can also work with it, so shows from the HBO GO app can appear alongside titles from the SHOWTIME app. One company that isn’t currently supporting it is Netflix, however. > Watch now The TV app is cross-platform between iOS (on iPhone and iPad) and Apple TV. It remembers your progress in shows, so in the app’s Watch Now section, you can start watching on your iPad and pick up where you left off on Apple TV –…

T HE FIRST STEP in using Photos to organize your images is to import them. Photos can import the images to your computer automatically if you like, but we don’t recommend this if you also want to be able to access your images with other software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, or Lightroom, or if you like the comfort of having images in a standard folder structure. We recommend that you transfer images from your camera to a folder on your hard drive and then import them to Photos from there. You might also want, for example, to let Photoshandle the importing and storage of the images on your iPhone, but deal with the images that you take on your dedicated camera yourself. That’s also possible. When your iPhone or…

EXTENSIONS ARE third-party plugins that broaden the range of things Photos can do. They’re a great way for experienced photographers to access more advanced controls without leaving Photos, but others can give you a wider range of easy-to-use filter effects or borders, and are useful to photographers of all experience levels. Many Photos’ Extensions are available from the Mac App store: you can find a growing list by searching for “Photos Extension.” However, not all developers have tagged their plugins to make them easy to find, so you need to keep your ear to the ground to discover new apps. If you have a favorite image editor, it’s worth searching to see if there’s an Extension version available, either at the Mac App Store, or at its website – apps…

$2,799 Manufacturer Apple, apple.com Features 2.7GHz quad-core processor, AMD Radeon Pro 455 2GB graphics, 16GB RAM, 512GB storage, 4x Thunderbolt 3 ports, Touch Bar When it comes to choosing the right MacBook Pro model, it’s not just size that usually differentiates the 15-inch models from the 13-inch models. If what you need is high performance, the bigger Pro is where you get it. This is the top-end MacBook Pro 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar model, which costs $2,799. For that, you get a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, AMD Radeon 455 Pro dedicated graphics card, 512GB of flash storage, and 16GB of RAM. With the exception of RAM, all these elements are improved over those of the $2,399 base-level 15-inch model, which has a 2.6GHz quad-core processor, AMD…

$199 Developer TechSmith, techsmith.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later, 2GB RAM CAMTASIA 3 +Animate quickly using presets +Share up to 4K in size +Cross-platform compatible -Expensive for an app Camtasia enables you to record, edit, and share your Mac’s display as a movie. It’s a popular tool with educators in particular, because they can show their audience how to fix a picture in Lightroom, for example. Version 3 has a more polished look, though because the key panels are in the same relative positions to version 2, there’s no need to re-learn the app if you’re an old hand. But while the basic cake may not look too different, there’s a lot more icing to work with. The new Behaviors panel lets you drag and drop eye-catching animation presets…

$39.95 ($19.95 upgrade) Developer Softorino Inc, softorino.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or later WALTR is a simple utility for converting and transferring videos, music, and ringtones to iPod or iOS devices without iTunes. WALTR 2 is better in every way, from the ability to perform wireless transfers at nearly wired connection speeds (up to 5MB/s) to automatic content recognition for adding artwork and metadata to movies, TV shows, or music, together with iBooks support for EPUB or PDF files. WALTR 2 is the first and only utility that allows ringtones longer than 30 seconds – rename an M4A file with the M4R extension, drag-and-drop to a connected device, and the entire song works as a ringtone. You can even mix-and-match file types – WALTR 2 will determine what goes where…

$59 Manufacturer Satechi, satechi.net Features 3x USB 3 Type-A ports, USB Type-C A docking station can be really useful for MacBook users; you can plug the notebook into power, a monitor, and other peripherals through a cable or two. The USB Type-C ports on the 12-inch MacBook and new MacBook Pros do this over a single cable, because they transfer power as well as data and video. Satechi’s adapter provides two standard USB 3.0 ports, as well as HDMI 1.4 connectivity. It also has a USB Type-C connection to pass through power. Use it for a larger monitor and power at your desk, or it’s light enough to carry around. The bad news: if you have a 4K display, the HDMI can only output at 30Hz, which isn’t totally smooth.…

$10 Manufacturer EZ Electronics, ildock.com Features 3.5mm audio jack, Lightning connection One option for fixing the problem of the single port for audio and charging in the iPhone is the Belkin cable on the left – though if you want to connect headphones that use a 3.5mm jack, it’s not the ideal solution. The iLDOCK is more likely to be what you need in that case: this add-on includes a Lightning port and a 3.5mm jack, so you can listen to your old headphones and charge through just one adapter. It seems well-made, but its price comes with trade-offs. It provides power through its Lightning port (which is not certified by Apple), but not data; and its headphone port doesn’t support microphone or in-line controls. Depending on your exact setup,…

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY has transformed travel in recent years. Simply being able to plug in your headphones and listen to some soothing music can make a long flight or train journey a lot more pleasant, and now you can even fly halfway around the world binge-watching Game of Thrones on your iPad to while away the hours. But mobile tech has some really straightforward, practical uses too, from simple battery packs that can charge up your iPhone or iPad, through to smart baggage that can help you to keep track of your belongings when you’re on the road. Losing a case is the nightmare scenario for every traveler – and we’ve probably all spent unnecessary hours waiting for luggage simply because our bags have been knocked off the baggage carousel and…

JARGON BUSTER Nodes Anyone who has the Tile app on their smartphone becomes a “node” – part of a worldwide network of Tile users who are connected over the internet. GENIUS TIP The Tile tracker works both ways. If you misplace your iPhone, you can press a button on the Tile, and the Tile app will sound an alarm on your iPhone. 1 The finder The Tile tracker is primarily designed for use with personal items such as your keys, wallet, or purse. However, you can easily slip one into a backpack or suitcase when you’re traveling, and then track your belongings with the Tile app on your iPhone. 2 Close at hand The Tile uses Bluetooth to talk to your iPhone. Bluetooth only has a maximum range of around…

iBooks StoryTime Read aloud in the living room Free iBooks is great for snuggling up with the kids when it’s story time, but if you have a larger family, not even the biggest iPad is roomy enough for everyone to get a good view. With iBooks StoryTime, the entire living room can enjoy the experience on the big screen. Parents can save their voices and let iBooks do the talking thanks to Read-Aloud narration that pipes the sound through your speakers, with automatic page flipping so adults can sit back and be as entertained as the youngsters (maybe). Naturally, you can turn off both features if you prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, while still being able to enjoy a modern story time on your HDTV. Children’s iBooks already…

REQUIRES RapidWeaver 7 YOU WILL LEARN How to add images and embed content from elsewhere IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes The internet may have started life as a text-only medium, but today it’s capable of all kinds of wonders. You can add photos or videos, music or maps – the range of available content is massive. So in this guide, we’ll use RapidWeaver to create a multimedia marvel. We’ll look at two kinds of content. The first is content you provide, such as images you use to illustrate your pages. The second is content you embed from another site. Here, we use a map from Google Maps, yet you can embed all kinds of things: Twitter feeds, Facebook videos, YouTube clips, SoundCloud and Bandcamp music, and much more. The advantage…

In october , Apple revealed two new displays that pretty much matched what we expected from an update to its Thunderbolt display line: 4K and 5K displays that connect to the machine via a single cable, which provides power to the MacBook and video out to the dispay, with the screen acting as a hub for USB Type-C devices. It absolutely seemed to be an update to the Thunderbolt display… except for the fact that it was made by LG, not Apple. Shortly after, Apple confirmed that it was no longer going to make standalone displays. Just a few weeks later came a story that Apple was ceasing production of its AirPort products, including the AirPort Extreme router, AirPort Express Wi-Fi extender and AirPlay receiver, and its Time Capsule router…

> Browsing the News app The redesigned News app is kind of like the Music app, with categories across the bottom that give you different ways to view media. The For You section recommends stories chosen by Apple’s editors, while also bringing your favorite news channels and popular stories. Favorites takes you to just your favorites. Explore lets you browse for new outlets. Search lets you search for new channels or topics, and Saved shows articles you’ve saved. > Add Favorites If want to see more from a particular channel, go to itsmain page (if you’re in a story, tap its name at the top of the story), then tap the + at the top-right. > Control your notifications In the Favorites screen, tap the bell in the topleft corner…

E VEN PROFESSIONAL photographers using top-end cameras don’t produce exactly what they want “in camera” every time, so an image-editing package is essential. For the vast majority of people, Photos’ editing tools will be sufficient. Starting at the top of the tools column, Enhance offers a one-click solution to brighten gloomy images, boost contrast, and improve colors. It’s often worth trying it to see if it does what you want; after all, you can always revert to the original image and move on to the other tools if not. Next is Rotate, another one-click option that lets you change image orientation from portrait to landscape and vice versa. Each click rotates the image through 90 degrees. Below that, the Crop tool enables you to isolate a particular area of the…

REALIZING A dream project once required you save up a pile of money or find someone with deep pockets. Even then, there were risks. Crowdfunding on sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Patreon now offers a viable alternative, where interest and payment can go hand in hand. Elan Lee masterminded card game Exploding Kittens (explodingkittens.com) – the most successful Kickstarter to date. He thinks the model does two really helpful things: “You connectdirectly to your audience, so you can get feedback and understand who they are, to make your product as good as possible. And you can gauge interest, without putting massive amounts of investment on the line.” This is particularly useful for hardware. It’s one thing to make, say, a small videogame that fails to set the App Store…

$299 Developer Apple, apple.com Requirements OS X 10.11.4 or later FINAL CUT PRO X 10.3 +Workspace is easier to navigate +Color-coded roles keep track of multiple assets -Repositioning browsers into sidebars makes tools harder to find -Possibility of messedup sound mixes when upgrading old Libraries Apple has made key changes to the form and function of Final Cut Pro in this release. Indeed, it recommends you back up your old Final Cut Pro Library before you upgrade it to be compatible with version 10.3, due to the new “roles” feature. All components of a project are assigned roles (titles, sound, video, and effects). When an old projects’s multi-channel audio clips are given a role in 10.3 it may change the way that they are mixed. For this reason it’s a…

$7.99 Manufacturer Matthew Leeper, bit.ly/2fzjBqq Requirements OS X 10.11 or later Siri finally arrived on the desktop with macOS Sierra, but if you’re on an older system and can’t upgrade beyond OS X 10.11 El Capitan, tough luck. A mashup of “Siri” and “query,” Quiri works with the Mac’s dictation functionality to perform most of Siri’s tricks on older machines. With the click of a button or a spoken “Hey Quiri” command, the app looks up contacts, plays music, schedules appointments, and more. Quiri also responds to the type of commands typed into Spotlight, like weather conditions, the score for a game, or directions. The app isn’t as sleek or integrated as Siri, but it’s responsive and customizable, with light and dark modes, and the ability to change text and…

$19.99 Developer Simplest Ways, simplestways.com Requirements OS X 10.8 or later MEMBRANE PRO +Very easy to use +Surprisingly good feature set -It’s a little too focused -Pixelmator is only $10 more Record covers aren’t what they used to be. Most of us are more likely to buy from iTunes or stream Apple Music than comb through record sleeves for hours. But covers still matter. They’re what you see in your music app, and more importantly what your potential listeners see in the iTunes Store, on Spotify, or on whichever platform musicians are trying to make a living. With Membrane Pro, you can make very effective album or track covers with the very minimum of effort. Membrane comes in two versions: a free taster, which is ad-supported, adds a watermark, and…

Free Developer Counterplay Games, duelyst.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or later, 2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, Open GL 3.1+ compliant graphics card Counterplay Games’ debut is the latest in a nascent and exciting genre: like its forebears Card Hunter and Scrolls, Duelyst blends the strategic deck-building of collectible card games and the turn-based, tactical possibilities of a tabletop skirmish. The goal of each match is to whittle down your opponent’s “General,” a special unit commanding an army of pint-sized knights and golems across a gridded battlefield, drawn from a deck of 40 cards. There are six factions, each with two generals wielding unique “Bloodborn” spells: powerful, re-usable effects that define each class. The Songhai Empire, for instance, can build decks full of powerful spells or focus on teleportation to maneuver around…

Although macOS makes the best use of physical memory, it shouldn’t be going into the red like this, and you are rightly suspicious of any periodic process consuming lots of memory. A good way to identify what’s responsible and check if it’s bona fide is to inspect it using TaskExplorer (free, objective-see.com). This links pg96]] into the VirusTotal database to determine whether a task might be malware, which seems highly likely in your case. Anything running periodically is probably doing so by means of an installed LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon – possibly located in “LaunchAgents” or “LaunchDaemons” in the Library folder at the root of your[[ startup disk, or in your Home folder, or hidden somewhere else. If the task isn’t malware, identify the culprit and uninstall it if you can,…