Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2019 från MacLife

A BIG PART of me thinks of the iLife era as the ‘real’ heyday of the Mac. The suite was technology at its best, democratizing tools that were considered pro–only, and making it so that anyone could start using them in seconds. Photo and video editing, DVD production, building rich websites and creating digital music… all in friendly and familiar interfaces. You pointed to them and said “this is why you get a Mac”. Each new release of iLife felt big, with lots of new features that were exciting to explore. A few years — and many killed–off apps — later, iBooks Author brought the tradition back, making it possible to build interactive ebooks. I was so excited to play with it, and made some pretty cool stuff, which both…

1 Philips 499P9H usa.philips.com $TBC This 49-inch curved monitor has an aspect ratio of 32:9, which means it’s basically two normal 16:9 monitors connected end to end, in one seamless vista. We’ve tried it and, you guys, it’s real good. It’s like sitting down in the cockpit of a spaceship, with an epic sweeping screen filling the space, except you’re just at your desk. The resolution of 5120x1440 means everything is pretty sharp, and you’ve got acres of space for some hardcore multitasking. It connects over just a USB–C cable too. If you’re looking for an office update, it doesn’t get more dramatic. 2 NuraLoop nuraphone.com $TBC The original Nuraphones were headphones designed to give you perfect sound, by combining in–ear headphones with over–ear ones for extreme noise cancellation, then…

MOST OF US have various files on our Macs that we no longer need: old apps and installers, email attachments we haven’t needed in years, long-forgotten TV shows and other digital dust. It’s a good idea to get rid of them from time to time, and it’s useful to do so before beginning a backup or a new backup routine: they take up unnecessary space on your chosen media for backups, and they add to the time it takes to back up your data — plus the time it takes to restore, if you’re restoring a full backup. macOS has some tools that can help. First of all, there’s Optimize Storage, which you can bring up by clicking the Apple logo and going to About This Mac > Storage >…

IF RAID IS beyond your budget, consider cloning instead. Cloning is different from backing up: it copies your entire storage drive, and you can use that copy to restore your system to a compatible Mac — useful if you have to send your Mac in for repair or if it’s been damaged or stolen. You can use the clone to get up and running on another Mac in an instant. The best-known Mac cloning apps are Carbon Copy Cloner ($39.99, bombich.com) and SuperDuper (free, shirt-pocket.com). The free version of SuperDuper enables you to clone your drive, and for $27.95 you can add smart features such as scheduled copying, smart updates for incremental updates, and scripting to customize the app. √ Cloning creates a bootable copy of your entire startup disk…

THE ISSUE WITH on-site backups is the risk of something happening to them. Someone could steal your Mac and external drive, or if there’s a fire or other disaster, you could be left without any way to get your data back. An off-site backup provides you with an extra layer of protection, which is why it’s part of the standard backup strategy for many businesses. In the pre-cloud era, off-site backups involved taking backup tapes or drives out of the office and storing them somewhere safe. Today, we’re more likely to use online storage. It’s important to stress the difference between cloud storage and cloud backup, though. The former is designed to be a convenient sync service so you can access your data wherever you are. It’s not meant to…

THE LESS YOU back up, the quicker the backup and the less space your backups will need. That means it’s wise to clean up your Mac before you start. Some of the most common places you’ll find unnecessary files are in your Downloads folder, where app installers and PDF files often linger, and in your iTunes library: do you really need hundreds of so many megabytes of downloaded podcast episodes that you’ll never listen to or watch again? Be careful with downloadable media: as some Apple TV users discovered in 2018, purchases are sometimes only available in particular countries — so if you move to a different one, you might not be able to redownload things you’ve purchased. There’s also the issue of availability: you can’t redownload something if it’s…

PAGES CAN WRAP text around the box an object (such as a shape) is contained in, or around the contour of the object itself. Try it: use the Shape button to add a circle, drag the circle between two columns of text, select the circle, then open the Format inspector’s Arrange tab and toggle the Text Fit item. Spacing is how close text can be to the object before it’s forced to a new line. If the object is an image with transparency data, increase Alpha’s value to allow text to show through nearer the solid parts, or vice versa. You can specify that text shouldn’t wrap around the selected object. Click the Text Wrap pop–up and choose ‘Above and Below’.…

SPRUCE UP YOUR SHAPES Shapes are a type of object. You can either choose one from the shapes library or create your own. Once you’ve chosen or drawn a shape, you can apply an existing style to it from the Format inspector, or edit its attributes manually to make a new style, as for text. Shapes can be filled with solid colors, gradients or images, and can have shadows and reflections applied to them. DRAW AND EDIT POINTS To draw a shape, click on the Shape tool and then the pen icon. Click anywhere in your doc to add a point. To create a curve, click and drag the pen. To add points to a shape, place the pointer on a line or curve, then click when you see +…

$24.95 From Frank Reiff, publicspace.net Needs OS X 10.11 or later, 64–bit processor If you’re familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, you’re halfway to understanding what Vitamin–R is all about. The time management method developed by Francesco Cirillio in the late 80s aims to break down work into manageable chunks. The general idea is to decide on a specific achievable objective, work for 25 minutes, and then take a short break when the timer rings, before resuming the task for another 25 minutes. Working in short time slices like this aims to make it easier to stay motivated and focused, and many swear by the method. Vitamin–R is a means to implement the technique on your Mac desktop, but it’s also so much more, as it integrates several tools that accompany…

$99.99 From Cazoobi, blocsapp.com Needs OS X 10.11 or later Even in 2019, there’s something special about designing your own website rather than relying heavily on hard–to–adapt templates. Blocs helps you design your way to that goal with tools that work visually and are easy to use, without learning to code. Blocs’ toolset is on trend for crafting pages that have a modern feel, letting you animate objects on to or off a page as it scrolls, parallax scrolling to add depth, and ensuring layouts adapt well to different displays. The app’s name comes from the way it asks you to think about page design: splitting it into horizontal blocs. In turn, blocs are made up of arrangements of brics — images, text, and forms. A solid selection is included,…

$14.99 From It’s Anecdotal, itsanecdotal.com Needs OS X 10.8, dual–core 1.7GHz processor Most adventure games are solitary affairs that leave you staring at the screen and patiently pondering the puzzles that you need to solve as you progress through the game. However, 39 Days To Mars is very much a two-player affair. Drawn in an attractive steampunk cartoon style, 39 Days tells the story of Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honorable Clarence Baxter, who decide to build a spaceship and head off on a trip to Mars. But every step along the way is a challenge, from the moment they search for the key to their front door, right through the dangerous trip to Mars itself. Even simple puzzles require both players to work together — preferably using a…

Macs featuring a T2 chip use it as a disk controller for the internal SSD with inline encryption, but it doesn’t encrypt external storage. There’s no option to turn off inline encryption, which happens automatically regardless of FileVault. When you turn on FileVault, your password becomes part of the encryption key. Leave FileVault off and your password isn’t used for encryption, but the built–in secret key still is. All software, including Time Machine and other backup and cloning tools, therefore has full access to internal storage without having to worry that it’s encrypted. If you set Time Machine to back up to an unencrypted volume, macOS asks you to confirm that’s what you want, but it’s happy to do so. As the Mac’s Intel Core processor, T2 chip and SSD…

DOES MY MACBOOK AIR (2018) SUPPORT A 4K DISPLAY? Yes. It can support two 4K or one 5K display. But its graphics card isn’t high performance, and shares some main memory, so apps will then have less memory available to them. For graphically intensive work, consider adding an eGPU (or a MacBook Pro the next time you upgrade). HOW CAN I BOOT MY NEW MAC MINI FROM MY LINUX DISK? The T2 chip prevents this by default. Start up in macOS Recovery and pick Utilities > Startup Security Utility. Set Secure Boot to No Security so other systems can run, and External Boot so external drives are allowed, then restart. There are apps that display battery details, such as Battery Health 2, but all essential figures are shown in System…

The most reliable sources for usage info are Finder and Disk Utility. In Finder, select a folder and choose File > Get Info. About This Mac’s Storage tab tries to be cleverer, but seems easily fooled by Finder aliases and the like. For example, if the Documents folder contains an alias to files on an external drive, say, the tab includes the files in its figure for the ‘Documents’ category on the storage disk. We’ve even seen the total of used and free space exceed a disk’s size. One reason for discrepancies is the Documents category includes certain kinds of files even if stored outside the Documents folder. Leaving the tab open can allow the figures to update to be more reasonable. If they look suspicious, see if Finder’s output…

REQUIRES Affinity Photo YOU WILL LEARN How to shoot source photos suitable for focus merging; how to import, align and combine focused areas IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes AS OUR EYES dart between a foreground and background subject, they tend to refocus instantly and perceive everything to be nice and sharp. When taking a photograph of a scene, it can be a challenge to get both the foreground and background subjects in focus at the same time. If you use a wide aperture setting on your camera (such as f/2.8), you’ll be shooting with a shallow depth of field. This means that if you focus on a foreground object, the background will be blurred (or vice versa). Many photographers prefer to have a nice background blur (or bokeh effect) because…

REQUIRES Launch Center Pro 3 ($24.99, or $9.99 per year sub), Shortcuts YOU WILL LEARN How to use near–field comms (NFC) on iPhone to start tasks IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOUR iPHONE MAKES many tasks easier, whether that’s planning a route, recording workouts, managing your calendar, or something else entirely. But some tasks are naturally repetitive, and so best done with tools like Launch Center Pro and Shortcuts. Contrast’s Launch Center Pro was updated to version 3 at the end of 2018. It shows you a grid of large tiles — tap one and it begins your assigned action. There are many iOS apps that work with this; compatibility requires apps to provide a ‘URL scheme’ — but don’t worry, as Launch Center Pro abstracts this for ease. Version…

LATE LAST YEAR, we saw a raft of new products from Apple — new iPhones and Apple Watch Series 4 in September, then new iPad Pro, Mac mini, and MacBook Air models in October. Apple is famously secretive, so we usually can’t be sure what’s coming until it’s announced, but there are always hints and rumors… At Apple’s annual shareholders’ meeting on March 1, CEO Tim Cook said Apple is set to “roll the dice” with some upcoming products that will “blow you away.” Did he mean AR glasses? Self-driving vehicles? He didn’t say, except to indicate there’s “a long, great roadmap” for the Watch and AirPod product lines. Cook said that Apple bought 18 companies in 2018 and is in the market for more, but all this tells us…

1 Actual Apple TV Beyond the little black box, Apple is ramping up to launch its own streaming service with Netflix–style in–house productions. How it’ll work price–wise is one question; another is how the famously prudish company competes with HBO… 2 Self–driving vehicles We know Apple’s autonomous vehicle division, Project Titan, is real because it, uh, laid off 200 people. No big deal, says Tim Cook! Speculation on what it’ll make, someday, ranges from just software to, like, a van, maybe? We‘re not holding our breath. 3 ARM–based Macs Rumors reckon new Macs as soon as 2020 could have iOS–style ARM processors in place of the Intel chips they switched to a decade ago. iPad apps on your desktop? Cool. A Mac that no Mac apps work on yet? Hmm.…

THE SIMPLEST FORM of backup storage is a USB hard drive. It’s tempting to use a USB flash drive, but, as mentioned earlier, they are easily lost and have very limited space — most models top out at 128GB, while a Photos library can easily be 200GB; the larger capacities really aren’t cost effective. An external USB hard drive represents better value for money and has more space. That’s important for apps such as Time Machine and for backing up Macs that use larger amounts of storage. Using an external drive with Time Machine is easy. Simply plug it in, tell Time Machine to use it and let it get on with the job of backing up your Mac: the first backup is the big one, so it takes a…

FORTUNATELY, EVERY MAC comes with Time Machine, Apple’s own convenient backup software. It works with any connected hard drive or SSD (and some wireless storage too; see the previous pages) or another Mac shared as a backup destination. Time Machine works by taking ‘snapshots’ of your Mac’s contents, usually hourly. When the backup drive gets full, Time Machine deletes older backups to make room for more. Time Machine isn’t just good for checking the organizational box of backing up your Mac, it’s good for undoing mistakes too; you can easily restore a messedup or deleted file. Apple’s backup system also has a clever feature called Local Snapshots that’s particularly useful for portable Macs. This uses your Mac’s internal storage for its backups if Time Machine’s usual backup drive isn’t available.…

UNLESS IT’S MASSIVE, your backup drive will eventually fill up. That might be because your Mac is storing more than when you started out, or you’re backing up multiple Macs. Or it may be because you’re using incremental backups, so versions of files that change over time add to the total backup size. The latter isn’t an issue for Time Machine, as it removes old versions as a drive fills up. In the other scenarios, it’s time for a bigger drive. 1 Add the drive To add a new, bigger drive, just connect it and then go to Apple > System Preferences > Time Machine. Click Select Disk and you’ll see a list of available drives. Select the new one you just connected, then click Use Disk. 2 Perform a…

BACKING UP YOUR Photos library is easy. But you’ll potentially need lots of storage on the Mac that you want to back up from. Depending on how you’ve set things up, most of your library might be in the cloud — or you may have lower resolution images on your Mac, with originals stored online. To see if your Mac is storing full-quality versions of your Photos library, go to Photos Preferences > iCloud. If Optimize Mac Storage is checked, your originals are stored online, but not necessarily on your Mac. It’s the full quality originals you want to back up, so you’ll need to download those first. That’s best done on a fast, unlimited broadband connection while your Mac is connected to mains power. You may also need to…

IN PROFESSIONAL PAGE layout tools, objects can either standalone on a page, in which case they remain in place regardless of what you do to the text, or they can be anchored to text and move with it. The latter is useful if, for example, you want to associate a headshot of a writer with a story’s byline. You can do it in Pages too, but only for documents that are set to the word processing type, not page layout — it’s one of those oddities we mentioned earlier. To check what kind you’re working with, click the Document icon in the toolbar and look at the Document Body checkbox. If it’s checked, you’re in a word processing doc. (You can convert between types in the File menu — see…

NUMBERS IS iWORK’S spreadsheet tool and could be described as a spreadsheet app for people who don’t like spreadsheets. That’s because the app does its best to make creating and using them as straightforward as possible. Even so, there are a few things about it that are less than obvious. MAKE SMART CATEGORIES Smart categories let you temporarily reorganize the data in tables. So, if you have a spreadsheet that logs household expenditure, for example, you could create categories for different types of spending. it even enables you to create subcategories and summarize the data contained within them. Click in a table and then click the rightmost button in Numbers’ toolbar to open the Organize inspector. In the Categories tab, open the ‘Add a Category’ pop–up menu and pick the…

$119 From Rogue Amoeba, rogueamoeba.com Needs OS X 10.11 or later Loopback makes it easy to bring audio from anything into anything else. For example, you can use it to pull the audio from something playing in Safari so that you can record it in GarageBand. You can use multiple USB mics in a FaceTime call where you need to mic more than just you. Or you can use it in podcasting, combining audio from multiple sources such as iTunes, FaceTime, and Skype. In addition to getting audio in, you can also get audio out again by using the Pass–Thru feature. This enables you to use the audio in another app: recording your podcast in GarageBand, for example, or sharing audio from a Skype call with people on FaceTime. Loopback…

$19.99 From Lucas Pope, obradinn.com Needs macOS 10.12, 2GHz Core i5 processor with discrete GPU Don’t be put off by the fuzzy and colorless screenshot here, this is an atmospheric and unusual adventure game. The Obra Dinn is a merchant ship that goes missing in 1803, and then reappears five years later carrying just the corpses of its original crew. You play an insurance investigator sent to examine the ship, and you complete the game by uncovering the fate of each crew member listed in the ship’s log. As you examine each corpse, you can use a magical stopwatch to turn the clock back and reveal animated flashbacks of the dying man’s last moments. This is where the unusual style of visuals actually works really well. What may initially look dull…

$12.99/month From ExpressVPN, expressvpn.com Needs OS X 10.6 or later, iOS 10.0 or later, Apple TV 4th gen or later There’s a lot of hype about ExpressVPN when it comes to offering a secure, private tunnel to the internet. Scratch the surface, though, and you discover most of it is justified. It ticks all the boxes for privacy and security — based in the British Virgin Islands, the service is out of the reach of the so–called “14–eyes” surveillance alliance, and independent tests back up the fact it keeps no personally identifiable logs of what you do with the service once connected to it. ExpressVPN also offers one of the widest number of servers — over 2,000 spread across 148 locations in 94 countries, making it easy to access all…

$349 From iZotope, izotope.com Needs iOS 10.0 or later It used to be a lot harder to make music than it is now. Musicians and producers often had to rely on specialized equipment, and were tied to recording studios. These days, most computers or an iPad can act as an audio workstation for recording tracks. And iZotope hopes to make the process even easier by packing multi-track recording into this portable, user-friendly gadget. The Spire Studio records up to eight tracks, one after another, with a few button presses. The interface is stripped to the bone, making it simple to navigate. There are only five buttons to contend with: New Song, Volume, Soundcheck, and two giant record and play buttons. The buttons are easy to hit even when you’ve a…

There are still brand–new iMac Pro systems in the supply chain that were made before the release of High Sierra 10.13.3 in January 2018. There’s nothing wrong with them, they just haven’t been sold yet, so come with their original, non–updated iteration of macOS. Provided that they’ve been kept in a proper climate storage over that time, easily told by the condition of their packaging, they should still be as good as new. The only problem you face is that migrating from an existing Mac to them gets messy: if your old Mac is already running a later version of High Sierra or Mojave, then you won’t be able to migrate from it during the iMac Pro’s initial setup process. Instead, you’ll have to go through that process, which includes…

Version numbers listed in Installations in System Information are taken from the installer packages themselves. For the recent updates to the iWork apps, the installers gave incorrect versions. The correct version numbers installed last fall were 7.3, 5.3 and 8.3 respectively, which should be the ones you see when you select the apps in Finder, and in their About dialogs. At the moment, Apple’s version numbering can be even more confusing. In macOS 10.14.1, when Messages received its delayed update to support group messaging, the app’s version number remained at 12.0. However, Mail, for which the release notes for macOS 10.14.1 and 10.14.2 disclosed no changes, has increased by a minor version in each update and is now 12.2.…

REQUIRES A Mac or iOS device YOU WILL LEARN How to use text replacement shortcuts to save typing time IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes MANY OF US spend a lot of time typing on our Macs and iOS devices. All that typing can be tiresome if you find yourself repeatedly writing out the same things. To save time and effort, it’s a good idea to get acquainted with text replacement. This lets your Mac or iOS device automatically replace certain character combinations with longer phrases. To set it up on your Mac, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text. Click the + button, then enter your shortcut under ‘Replace’ and the text you want it to trigger under ‘With’. On iOS, go to Settings > General > Keyboard >…

FOR YEARS, APPLE resisted. Back in 2011, when Samsung launched the 5.3–inch Galaxy Note, iPhones all had 3.5–inch screens. A year later, the iPhone 5 added half an inch. But when 2014’s iPhone 6 Plus arrived with 5.5–inches, it was time to admit resistance was futile. With the 6.5–inch iPhone XS Max and the 6.4–inch Galaxy S10+, we’ve come about as far as hands will go. Nobody wants to pull out an iPad mini to ’gram a selfie. Yet Samsung and Huawei have unveiled phones with a comparable screen area, at 7.3–inch and 8–inch respectively. When you look at it this way, ‘foldables’ are a logical solution to a looming limitation. Looked at any other way… oh my. Would anyone bet on the Mate X’s unprotected wraparound plastic AMOLED versus…

THERE ARE LOTS of ways to back up files, but they aren’t always the best ways possible. Backing up to a USB flash drive is easy, but it’s even easier to lose the flash drive and subsequently your backup. Backing up to DVD is relatively cheap if you have a Mac with a SuperDrive, but the process is slow, the discs are easily damaged and even the most expensive DVD-Rs can deteriorate if they aren’t properly looked after. So let’s look at the factors behind securing your files. A good backup is convenient — ideally, it’ll be automated so that you never need to remember to do it in the first place. It will be reliable, so it’ll be on a storage medium you can trust to be available and…

WIRELESS BACKUP IS more convenient than cabled, not least for a MacBook, so it’s a shame that Apple’s AirPort hardware was discontinued. Time Capsule may have been expensive, but it was also a really useful wireless backup solution. If you have a Time Capsule or the finalgeneration AirPort Extreme, you can still back up wirelessly, but if not, don’t give up hope. Many NAS (network-attached storage) devices are compatible with Time Machine, and so are some routers. If your router is one of them — check with the manufacturer’s website — you can connect a storage device, typically a USB hard drive, and back up wirelessly to that. Once Time Machine is aware of the networked drive, it will back up to it just like one that’s directly attached to…

RAID (REDUNDANT ARRAY of Independent Disks) technology uses multiple disks that your Mac sees as one drive. If one disk fails, the data still exists on the other disks in the array. You can create an array using a software tool such as Disk Utility or SoftRAID ($49, softraid.com) and multiple hard drives, or you can buy an array that manages its contents using dedicated hardware. It’s wise to use disks from different batches in case of a production fault. RAID uses two key methods: ‘Striping’ combines the capacity of all disks and spreads data among them; the other mode, ‘mirroring’, is good for backups. It copies the same data to each disk. A mirrored array’s capacity, is the same as the smallest disk in it. The benefit is that…

You can back up your iOS device to iCloud automatically: go to Settings > iCloud and turn it on (if not on already). Your device will back up to iCloud when connected to a power source and Wi-Fi, and its screen is locked. WILL I NEED MORE SPACE? Apple only gives you 5GB of free storage (unless you’re in education), and that’s shared across all your devices. If 5GB isn’t enough — and it probably isn’t — you can pay for more iCloud storage or you can back up to iTunes on your Mac. For the latter, make sure you have the most recent version of the app, then connect your device. You may be asked for the device passcode. Then, select your device in iTunes: in iTunes 12 it’ll…

BACKING UP THE contents of Apple’s media library and player can present a few hurdles. It’s simple if music on your Mac has only ever been imported from physical formats, though. Still, consider whether you’ve ever dragged tracks from Finder into iTunes. If you’ve only ever used iTunes’ CD importing feature, all your music should be in the app’s library folder (usually /[username]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media). Audio recorded with other apps or from third-party web stores may be in other locations, which you might have excluded from your backups. To ensure everything is within the proper folder, choose File > Library > Organize Library, tick Consolidate Files and click OK. This copies files to the iTunes Media folder and updates database entries to point there. Media bought from the iTunes Store may…

1 Choose your image Select an image in your doc, go to the Format inspector’s Image tab and click the Instant Alpha button. Move the pointer over the image and it’ll change to crosshairs. 2 Identify areas Put them over a color you want to be transparent and click and drag over any contiguous areas you want to include. Let go. For discontiguous areas, Opt–click and drag over them. 3 Apply the mask To add a masked color back in, Shift–click it. Keep going, Opt–clicking to add or Shift–clicking to subtract. Click Done when you are ready to apply the mask.…

1 Choose your chart Click the Chart button in the toolbar and choose between 2D, 3D and interactive types, then pick a pie, doughnut, bar, line or scatter chart style. Your chosen chart will appear on the page, where you can drag it into position and resize it. 2 Select the cells With the chart selected, click Add Chart Data and select the cells you want to use to plot it. Use the menu at the bottom left of the window to specify whether you want to use rows or columns as the data series. Click Done. 3 Changing and editing To restyle a chart, select it and use the Format inspector to apply a preset or make and save a new style. Explore the tabs to edit settings like…

From $899.99 From Sony, sony.com Features 24.2MP APS–C CMOS sensor, 4K video recording, tilt–angle touchscreen and electric viewfinder The Alpha A6400 is Sony’s new APS–C mirrorless camera, slotting in below the Alpha A6500 in the range, and replacing the Alpha A6300. However, with Sony equipping the Alpha A6400 with some of its latest tech, most notably the advanced autofocus (AF) system, it could be a more tempting proposition than the two–year old, top–of–the–range A6500. The Alpha A6400 features a 24.2MP APS–C Exmor CMOS sensor, and thanks to a front–end LSI and the latest BIONZ X image processor, Sony reckons processing speeds are 1.8x faster than the A6300 can manage. One big omission from the A6400 is in–body image stabilization, something the A6500 enjoys with its 5–axis system. A6400 users will…

$5 per month per computer From Backblaze, backblaze.com Needs macOS 10.8 or later (Mac); iOS 10 (iPhone and iPad client) If something happens to your Mac, you may lose documents and data if you don’t back up. But local backups alone aren’t enough to protect against loss or severe damage, hence online/offsite solutions like Backblaze. The best thing about Backblaze is you can forget about it. By which we mean: install the app, and it quietly gets on backing up all your documents to Backblaze’s servers. Bar the logo (optionally) sitting in the menu bar, you’ll never notice this happening — but will be glad it did should you later need to restore those files. This seamlessness is not typical. Some Backblaze rivals chew through resources, and have Java nightmares…

$378 From Nest, nest.com Features 1600x1200 video with HDR, 160–degree field of view, 3MP (2K) color sensor, 8x digital zoom Hello provides serious competition for Ring 2 in the smart doorbell sector, with a stylish design, high–resolution and HDR video, face recognition and an easy–to–use app. The smart doorbell needs to be hardwired to your home’s electrics, so you may need an electrician to install it. Ring 2 has the upper hand here as it’s battery powered, meaning it can be easily installed. That said, once Hello is installed there’s no need to worry about changing batteries. Setting up with the Nest app is painless thanks to the clear instructions. With someone ringing at the door, we received an immediate notification and, by tapping it, we were able to view…

$399 From Sonos, sonos.com Features Siri and Amazon Alexa voice control, AirPlay 2, HDMI ARC, Ethernet port, Wi–Fi button The emergence of Amazon, Google, and Apple in the smart speaker market has forced leading manufacturer Sonos to up its game. So it has launched the Beam, a soundbar with AirPlay 2 functionality. It’s pared down enough to be affordable, without any corners being cut. Setup is simple: a four–dot square on the left for volume down, the same on the right for up and a play/pause button in the middle. Above this is the ability to turn the speaker mic on and off. That mic works with Amazon Alexa, and Siri, but Sonos is promising future Google Assistant functionality. The Beam is designed for three channels, but it can almost…

Most home owners will admit to starting at least one do–it–yourself project that they never quite managed to finish, but it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Dwindling enthusiasm for a DIY job can have many causes — perhaps initial ambition obscured the reality of the task at hand, or some missing piece of technical know–how put a stop to progress. If you count yourself among these ranks, don’t give up all hope just yet. Whether you’re looking for DIY guides, color matching help, or inspirational design ideas, these six apps will get you back on the home improvement bandwagon. WIKIHOW Free Made for iPhone, iPad WikiHow offers thousands of guides on everything from quick repairs and tech hacks to DIY and craft projects. Ever wanted to learn how to get…

Apple typically shies away from major events like CES. The company prefers to run its own dedicated showcases, but there was no avoiding its smart presence at this year’s show. CES 2019 may well have marked the turning point for HomeKit: the number of new devices latching on to Apple’s smart home system grew massively, and many more companies offered promises of forthcoming compatibility in 2019. AirPlay, too, saw a big boost in support, and much of that was in a new direction… Namely, TVs. Sony’s forthcoming Z9G, A9G and X950G Series TVs, for example, feature AirPlay 2 integration, making sending content from iOS and macOS devices seamless and easy. The same screens also support HomeKit, though quite what this will involve at this point is vague — Sony says…

HOW CAN I SYNC MESSAGES ACROSS ALL MY DEVICES? The best way to keep iMessages in sync is to set all of your Macs and iOS devices to use iMessages in iCloud. In iOS, go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud and turn on Messages there. On Mac, go to the Messages app’s preferences and look in the iMessage tab. AIRDROP FAILING IN iOS 12 AND MOJAVE? On both devices, ensure Bluetooth and Wi–Fi are on. Then turn off Personal Hotspot on iOS, as that will block AirDrop. On the iOS device, go to Settings > General > AirDrop and ensure Everyone is selected, and in Settings > Screen Time > Content and Privacy > Allowed Apps that AirDrop is allowed.…

Third–party utilities don’t always interpret drive health indicators correctly, and when looking at either the hard disk or SSD that form a Fusion Drive, mistakes are always more frequent. Make an appointment at a Genius Bar or authorized service provider and ask them to run Apple’s in–house hardware tests. Until the iMac can be assessed, use it as little as possible, so as not to make drive failure any more likely. As the hard disk in your Fusion Drive is now five years old, failure is increasingly likely. Even if it turns out not to be failing right now, replacing it could be a wise move if you intend to continue using your iMac. Before doing anything else, ensure that you have its contents backed up (using Time Machine, for…

In many apps, including Keychain Access’ secure notes, text views contain rich text that can have their style and color customized. Prior to Mojave, all styled text set the foreground color to black. For Mojave, Apple introduced a special foreground color setting for apps to use, named textColor, which renders in black against white in the light system appearance, and in white against dark gray in Dark Mode. However, some apps still don’t set the default color of styled text to textColor. In those cases, text remains black regardless of the chosen appearance in System Prefs > General. In other cases, saved rich text may already set the default color of text to black. The result is almost unreadable in Dark Mode. Although the latest version of TextEdit (version 1.14…

1 How many Thunderbolt 3 (USB–C) ports on a MacBook Pro 13–inch without Touch Bar? 2THE iTUNES MUSIC STORE WENT LIVE IN 2003, BUT HOW MANY SONGS DID IT SELL IN ITS FIRST WEEK? Was it (a) under 50,000, (b) 500,000 — 1,000,000 or (c) over 1,000,000? 3 What is this Apple device? Bonus point: What feature made it so unique when it was released? 4 By default, is the macOS Dock always on screen or hidden? 5 AFTER HE WAS FIRED BY APPLE, STEVE JOBS SET UP A NEW COMPANY. WHAT WAS ITS NAME? 6 True or false, the Apple Watch Series 4 can detect if you take a fall and automatically call the emergency services for you. 7 What is the model name of the only iPod still…