Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från MacLife

Ever since Bitcoin captured the public’s interest with its mysterious origin story and wildly fluctuating exchange rate, blockchain–based money — cryptocurrency — has been big news. In a world where nothing attracts capital like the combination of tech jargon and free publicity, that means crypto is metaphorically a license to print money, as well as literally a way to avoid needing a license to print money. In June, Facebook announced its own crypto, Libra, operated by a subsidiary, Calibra, and governed by the Libra Association, which includes payment partners like Visa and PayPal, and potential users including Uber, Vodafone and Spotify. It promises the best of both worlds: independence from banks, but with stability and protection. For Facebook, entering the payments market could be a huge opportunity to build commerce…

1 Turn on 2FA You can enrol in two–factor authentication on your Mac or in iOS. In OS X 10.11 or later, go to System Preferences > iCloud > Account Details and click Security. In iOS, simply open Settings and tap your name, then Password & Security. 2 Check authorized devices Anyone who gets hold of any of your devices is a big step closer to breaching your iCloud security. Use strong passwords (this still matters if you use Touch ID or Face ID!). Which devices are on your account? Check at iCloud.com. 3 Remove unnecessary devices Log in and go to Settings. You’ll see all the Macs and devices associated with your Apple ID. If there are any that you don’t currently use, click one and, after reading the…

AS WELL AS using iCloud services and browsing your iCloud Drive files on your Macs and iOS devices, you can access iCloud in two ways that work with non–Apple products: via iCloud.com and in the iCloud app for Windows. The latter is available for Windows 7 and higher from Apple at bit.ly/mficfw, or from the Microsoft Store in Windows 10. It adds iCloud Drive as a folder to Windows Explorer; syncs your iCloud Photos (see page 20); brings your Mail accounts, Contacts and Reminders (as Tasks) into Microsoft Outlook; and syncs your Safari bookmarks to Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome. You can also check your iCloud storage and change settings. iCloud.com can be accessed with any web browser, so it works on Linux systems and Chromebooks as well as…

September 1992 Jony Ive first joined Apple over 25 years ago, in September 1992. Appropriately, he joined from Tangerine, a design agency based in London, but was reluctant about moving to California due to the toll it might put on his family. Thankfully, he decided to move. 1997 After the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, Ive was appointed Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, giving him responsibility for the firm’s hardware design. October 2012 In late 2012, Ive was put in charge not just of Apple’s hardware, but of its interface design too. One of his first tasks was to overhaul iOS in the form of iOS 7, ditching the previous skeuomorphic touches for flat design elements. Soon after, he was appointed Senior Vice President of Design. June 2019…

Three years after the original iMac G3 changed the world of computing for ever, Apple decided it was time to shake things up again in a somewhat strange way. That revamp came in the form of two new colors for the iMac G3: the blue–and–white spotted Dalmatian, and the gaudy Flower Power. While neither were exactly design masterpieces, it’s the latter that has aged the most spectacularly today. To be fair, the iMac G3 was all about making computers approachable and playful, and was deliberately made to contrast the beige boxes of Apple’s rivals. But we can’t help but feel that perhaps Ive and friends got a little carried away with the idea. While the original iMac G3 colors were fun and unusual, the Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian designs…

$49.99 From Serif, affinity.serif.com Needs OS X 10.9 or later, Intel 64–bit Core 2 Duo or better, 4GB RAM, 1280x768 or larger display It’s hard to express just how significant it is to see a brand new desktop publishing app for the Mac. QuarkXPress has been slugging it out with Adobe InDesign, and before that PageMaker, since the 1980s. Cheaper alternatives have come and gone, all with obvious limitations and little print industry credibility — a crucial factor when a web offset press the size of a house is waiting for your files to process without errors. Even just to put together pages to print yourself, there’s been a lack of good options. While Apple’s Pages offers a page layout mode, its handling of basics like facing pages (spreads) is…

Each speaker was set up side by side, first on a coffee table in the middle of a large room; secondly at the back of a desk abutting a wall, with appropriate environment settings triggered if available. As well as using a range of music, we also ran Audiolab’s Audio Test Tones album, in order to test each speaker’s ability to handle high–and low–end tones. HIGHER… NAIM MU-SO 2ND GEN naimaudio.com Around $1,599 The latest version of the Mu–so (p47) is a huge AirPlay 2–supporting sound machine that’ll blow you away time after time. Amazing audio, at a cost. …OR LOWER? AIRPORT EXPRESS ebay.com Around $40 It’s been discontinued, but if you can find the 2012 model on eBay or through a second–hand retailer, it received an AirPlay 2 update…

$0.99/month or $7.99 outright From Super Useful Ltd, getmagpie.app Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 11.0 or later This is a variation on the Notes app, but instead of text notes or audio notes, it’s designed with photographs in mind. That means it’s best on your iPhone; it’s fine on iPad but the more portable your device, the more convenient Magpie becomes. Magpie describes itself as a digital scrapbook, “the beautiful lovechild of Apple Photos and Notes”, although we think it’s closer to Pinterest as a notes app for visual content. It’s ideal for those of us who tend to use the Photos app as an ongoing collection of interesting things, only to wonder what on earth those things are and where they came from. With Magpie, when…

Smartphones have opened up some pretty clever new ways for vulnerable people to stay safe, whether that’s kids, elderly relatives, or anyone travelling on risky streets during a night out. The iPhone has some safety tools built in: the Find My Friends app means you can share your location with friends, and if you press the side button on your iPhone five times, it triggers Emergency SOS and calls 911, while sharing your location with your emergency contacts. The Watch also has Emergency SOS, by long–pressing the side button. But there are plenty of other ways to stay safe that are useful before things get to that stage. BSAFE Free (IAPs) Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch With this app you can share your location with friends and ask them…

1 IKEA Trådfri blinds $129 — $179, ikea.com After something of a nail–biting delay, IKEA’s Kadrilj and Fyrtur HomeKit–enabled automated blinds (which require a Trådfri hub to work, it seems) are set to hit stores in October. 2 Savant Pro Remote $TBC, savant.com Control Apple TV, your cable box, and even your network of HomeKit devices with this Siri–packing super–remote from the high–end home automation specialists at Savant. 3 Yeelight Bulbs From $17.99, yeelight.com Yeelight, a division of Xiaomi, has recently added HomeKit support to its budget smart bulbs — and also announced a new range of Bluetooth bulbs with a HomeKit–happy hub.…

Email Mac|Life at ask@maclife.com Get an accurate breakdown of your old 32–bit Mac software I’ve just upgraded a major app using its custom installer. Its publisher claims the app is now fully 64–bit, and should be compatible when macOS drops 32–bit support, but Legacy Software still lists it as 32–bit. Who’s right? When you first open any upgraded app, note the time and whether the normal Gatekeeper dialog appears, asking if you really want to open it. Then look at the Legacy Software section in Apple > About This Mac > System Report. If you don’t see the dialog, the upgrade probably hasn’t triggered the mechanism to update its entry there, and the app’s time of last open will be prior to upgrading. Confirm this by looking in the Applications…

The timeline can begin to look cluttered once you’ve added a few clips to it. By dragging the slider next to Settings (top right of the timeline) to the left, you can zoom out to reveal more of the timeline’s content. Drag it right to zoom in for a closer look at your edit. To see the entire timeline in an instant, press Shift+Z. By default, each transition runs for one second. Double–click on a transition in the timeline and type in a longer duration for a slower mix between the clips. Click “Apply to All” to adjust every transition in the current timeline.…

IF YOU’VE BEEN keeping up with recent issues, you’ll know that Affinity Photo is a digital darkroom that’s packed with tools to help you fix common problems with color, tone, and composition. The software can help you overcome the results of incorrect camera settings to make a subject look as good in print as it did to the naked eye. Affinity Photo is also packed with tools that can produce more creative–looking results, such as adding a sunset to an image captured much earlier in the day. A sunset (or sunrise) will enhance any landscape with a romantic golden glow and vibrant colors, but it takes skill and effort (and a bit of luck with weather conditions) to capture one effectively. If you meter the camera to ensure you capture…

1 Which 1999 film pitted personal computer rivals Steve Jobs against Bill Gates? 2 What device was Jony Ive responsible for designing when he first joined Apple? 3 What breed of dog adorned a special edition blue iMac G3 in 2001? 4 What’s the biggest amount of storage space to ever feature on an iPad, and on which model is this? 5 During the Macworld Expo in 1997, what grammatically–incorrect Apple slogan did Steve Jobs reveal? 6 WHAT IS THIS APPLE DEVICE? 7 How many followers does Tim Cook have on Twitter, at the time of writing? (To the nearest million.) 1 Pirates of the Silicon Valley 2 Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh 3 Dalmation 4 1TB, iPad Pro 12.9–inch (3rd gen) 5 “Think different” 6 Macintosh TV 7 11 million 8…

Apple has revised its entry–level MacBook Air and MacBook Pro line–up, and is aiming these models at students as part of its Back to School promotion (this promotion applies to other Macs and iPads too). The base–model MacBook Air with 13–inch Retina screen gains a True Tone display — meaning that colors are automatically adjusted for the ambient lighting — but is otherwise unchanged from its predecessor. It also gets a $100 price cut: the base configuration is now $1,099 (or $999 for students and others eligible for Apple’s education pricing). This is now the cheapest Apple laptop — Apple has quietly discontinued the 12–inch MacBook and non–Retina MacBook Air. The entry–level 13–inch MacBook Pro receives more significant updates, including the latest 8th–generation quad–core processors (with eDRAM increased from 64MB…

I must confess, not for the first time on this page, to underestimating Apple’s ambition. When it said it was making a new modular Mac Pro that would blow people away, I struggled to imagine what could be more modular than the old cheese grater Mac Pro given the nature of computer parts. It had not occurred to me that the mind–blowing thing might be new kinds of modules, not the connections that plug them into the computer. Or that it would still come in a cheese grater case. The new Mac Pro is just as much a wonder of engineering as the ill–fated 2013 “trash can” model, but in a less obvious way. I still remember Phil Schiller yelling, ass!” But the latest model doesn’t need anyone to shout…

1 Samsung The Wall Luxury samsung.com $TBC Samsung has been teasing this weird and wonderful TV product for a few years, but it’s now ready to buy… for a big and currently unspecified price. This is the first TV to use Micro LED tech — it’s similar to OLED, in that each pixel generates its own light, but it can go much brighter and more dramatic than OLED. The smartest part is that it’s modular, so you can order your TV any size or shape you want (you could have it in cinema widescreen, for example) just by bolting on more panels. You can add frames to match your decor, too. 2 Panasonic Lumix S1H panasonic.com Around $4,000 (body only) For video pros, the hot thing right now is 6K.…

TAKING PHOTOS IS easy, finding them later is hard. iCloud solves it by keeping all the photos you take on any of your Apple devices and syncing them to the others. So you can show off the pictures you’ve taken with your iPhone on your iPad, Mac, or Apple TV. Albums you create appear everywhere with the same photos in them. And you can share your photos around your family, too (see page 23). When iCloud Photos (previously iCloud Photo Library) is activated on a device, every item added to All Photos — primarily by shooting stills or video in the Camera app — is copied to iCloud. This happens immediately if the device is online, or the next time it connects. The copies sync to all your other devices…

THE ICLOUD CONCEPT started off as a way to sync settings between devices, and that’s still one of its most useful abilities. The less you notice it, the more useful it’s probably being. On a Mac, check what iCloud is managing in System Preferences > iCloud. In iOS, open Settings and tap your name, then iCloud. Your Contacts, Calendars and Reminders will all appear the same everywhere if you turn on their switches on all your devices. For Safari, iCloud syncs your bookmarks and enables Safari Tabs, which shows web pages currently open on other devices. In iOS, scroll to the bottom of the Tabs view (bottom right icon on iPhone, top right on iPad) or in macOS, click the Tabs icon at the top right. It’s also meant to…

BACK TO MY MAC? iCloud’s Back to My Mac remote access tool was removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave. The alternative, Apple Remote Desktop, costs $79.99. Instead, try Google Chrome Remote Desktop, installed as an extension to the Chrome browser. WITH BUILT–IN GPS, your iPhone always knows where it is, to the nearest 10ft or so. iPad and Apple Watch models with Cellular also have GPS. Macs and iPod touch don’t, but can guess their position surprisingly accurately based on nearby Wi–Fi. iCloud’s Find My… can use this location data to show you where all your devices are. For this to work, Find My… must be enabled on each device. In macOS, go to System Prefs > iCloud and tick Find My Mac. In iOS, open Settings, tap your name, tap…

Did we mention that if you delete a photo or file from iCloud on one device, it’s deleted everywhere? It’s easy to forget this, especially when your storage is getting full. Fortunately, iCloud doesn’t instantly erase files that you delete, but keeps them for 30 days. Photos you’ve trashed can be found in the Recently Deleted album; choose Recover to bring them back. Files deleted from iCloud Drive or within apps can be recovered via iCloud.com: go to iCloud Drive and click Recently Deleted (bottom right), or go to Settings and click Restore Files.…

The iMac G3 was undoubtedly a design breakthrough in the world of computers. Nothing before it had allowed you to gaze into the guts of the machine. Nothing before it had appeared so friendly and pulled back the veil of mystery that had previously obscured PCs. But that radical approach didn’t translate quite so successfully to the iMac G3’s mouse. Designed to be fully circular, it became known as the “hockey puck” mouse. Sadly, it wasn’t as beloved as the Mac it came with. Its circular shape made it difficult to orient in your hand. If you were looking at your screen and placed your hand on the mouse, there was no tactile feedback telling you that you were holding it correctly. Though Ive defended it, deep down we think…

THE CREATOR OF ICONIC DESIGNS BECOMES AN ICON IN HIS OWN RIGHT As Jony Ive started to gain fame, he also started to appear in Apple videos, explaining how his latest work expressed the inner beauty that is produced when form meets function. Even these videos took on their own aesthetic: white backgrounds, products tumbling through the air in slow–motion, Ive’s soothing voice. They demonstrated just how seriously he took design, although they received their fair share of parodies, too.…

$19.99 From BeLight Software, amadine.com Needs macOS 10.12 or higher Amadine is a vector graphics creation app that’s been built from the ground up for macOS — an iOS version is also in development — and aims to simplify the process of creating art, while also having tools suitable for professionals. If you’ve ever tried something like Adobe Illustrator but found it completely overwhelming, Amadine is more user–friendly and significantly more affordable. Its layout is easy to get to grips with and you’ll find tools on the left, layers and contextual controls on the right. Various views are available, including Outline and Retina, to see your projects as wireframes, or rendered in full. Drawing is done using shapes, pens, or paths. The path tools are the most flexible and easy…

From $29.99 From River SRL, sparkleapp.com Needs OS X 10.9 or later If you can make a document in Pages, you can make a website in Sparkle. It’s a flexible and useful web design tool for people who want something other than a WordPress site. There are three versions: Basic, for one site of up to 10 pages; One, which removes the page limit; and Pro, which adds Instagram and multi–site support. The app opens with a blank page and an open toolbar with common items such as text areas and images, but the simplest way to use Sparkle is to download one of the free templates and mess around with it. The library contains some genuinely useable contemporary designs, something that lets down some other web creation apps, and…

Free (IAPs) From Running with Crayons, alfredapp.com Needs macOS 10.11 or later Much of the Finder is about searching: wouldn’t you like a perfect English butler to assist that for free? It’s what Alfred aims to do, and version 4 brings many improvements, above all to suit Catalina’s new security. At its most basic, Alfred replaces Spotlight for local and web searches, acting as a better Finder driven largely from your keyboard. This now has dynamic sorting of items by name or date at the click of a pop–up, and fine thumbnails. Like other powerful assistants, Alfred has extensive preferences and options, now redesigned and searchable — there’s also full Dark Mode support. It brings some amazing shortcuts. To open your last–used image in Preview, type P for the app…

$35.99 From Feral Interactive, store.feralinteractive.com NEEDS macOS 10.14.2, 1.8GHz Core i5 processor, 8GB memory, 32GB hard drive, nVidia 650M with 1GB memory, AMD R9 M290 with 2GB, Intel Iris Pro 5200 with 1.5GB There are two main types of driving games, with the more serious ones attempting to realistically reproduce the mechanics and handling of your racing car with different tracks, terrain, and weather conditions. The other approach is just about high–speed fun, letting you hit the gas and screech around bends in defiance of the laws of physics. The Dirt series has generally fallen into the second category in the past, but Dirt 4 combines the best of both worlds in its selection of globe–trotting, off–road racing events. The first race, on Australia’s dusty Fitzroy circuit, acts as a…

Mac Life Head to head Mac Life Best on test GoodTask $19.99 From Haha Interactive, goodtaskapp.com Needs iOS 12 or later Ease of use GoodTask is easy when it needs to be, but more powerful options are available without being in your face. The view options let you see your upcoming tasks on a calendar or in a list, making it easy to get a quick overview. Quick entry When you add a task you get a matrix of quick actions to choose from, such as due dates and times, tags and context–aware options (like location), and these can be customized. Swipe right and you get more fine–grained control; swipe right again to add a subtask. Apple integration GoodTask automatically imports anything added in Reminders. It has apps for Mac…

WWDC didn’t leave CarPlay spinning its wheels. In fact (and this will please you if you’re suffering through using your car manufacturer’s default entertainment front end, which is almost certainly terrible), Apple’s in–car interface for iOS looks set to receive a major upgrade, which will make it an even more essential on–the–move tool. Among the massive changes announced are a newly refined dashboard which better utilizes your car’s screen space, and a major update to Siri which allows you to control third–party apps like Waze without taking your hands off the wheel. That’s a real plus both to CarPlay’s usefulness and to your safety — and may hint at increased third–party app support making its way to Siri outside of CarPlay too. No word yet, though, on whether Apple has…

STORE A LOAD of folders in the Dock and you hit a snag: they almost all look identical. Outside of Apple’s special folders, like Applications and Downloads, you’ll see a row of blue. Telling folders apart requires you hold the cursor over them to see name pop–ups. Even when browsing in Finder, the problem persists to some degree, because it’s easier to spot something visually unique than to scan possibly dozens of names in tiny text. The way around this is to customize your icons — something that Image2Icon (img2icnsapp.com) makes extremely simple. This tutorial outlines how the app works. Do be mindful of one pitfall, though — click the top-left arrow button at any point and Image2Icon will return to its initial state, wiping out your work. Similarly, if…

1 USB 1998’s iMac was first to ditch the old serial and parallel ports entirely. But other PCs had offered USB before this, developed at Intel with partners not including Apple. 2 The iPod Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, the name was new, but portable digital MP3 players were already common. The iPod’s innovation was its tiny hard disk — later dropped for the same flash memory everyone else used. 3 The App Store By 2008, Windows Mobile had a store with 18,000 apps; PDA maker Palm claimed 30,000. So the iPhone wasn’t first. But hitting 250,000 apps within two years was something very new. 4 Touchscreens The iPhone’s capacitive multi–touch display beat monochrome stylus screens such as the Newton MessagePad’s. Even color PDAs such as Sharp’s EM–ONE, launched…

First they called it iTools. Then it was MobileMe. Apple’s online sync, storage and services platform has a long and, let’s say interesting history. It was MobileMe of which Steve Jobs infamously asked a room full of engineers: “Can anyone tell me what this is supposed to do?” And after waiting patiently for them to explain, shot back: “So why the **** doesn’t it do that?” Well, now it’s iCloud. And it does that. As well as a bunch of other things. So many things, in fact, you might overlook a few. Here, we’ll outline the main features and how to get them working for you. We’ll clear up a few misconceptions, and unearth elements that ended up in places you might not guess. All right, definitely wouldn’t guess. In…

Another string to the iCloud bow is Cloud Drive — an all–purpose file repository within your iCloud storage. Every relevant app has its own folder there, and you can add folders of your own. Your iCloud Drive appears in macOS, when checked in System Preferences > iCloud, as a sidebar item in Finder windows, under Favorites. In iOS, when turned on in iCloud after opening Settings and tapping your name, it’s accessed through the Files app. You’ll see the same folder structure everywhere, with the same files synced. As with photos, “synced” means the files are stored on Apple’s servers and copies are downloaded to a device’s storage. Storage options There may not be room on your devices for copies of all the files you have in iCloud. So in…

$2.99/month (annual sub), $3.99/month (monthly sub) From AgileBits, 1password.com Needs macOS 10.12 or later Bad news: 1Password’s fundamentals haven’t changed since the last time we looked at it. Good news: that’s the right approach. It remains a logical, secure password manager with a great interface and functions which go way beyond simple credential storage. If there’s sensitive info you might need, you can lock it away here and get at it in a snap. AgileBits has refined 1Password’s many tendrils. Most notably, 7.3 sees a complete refresh of 1Password mini, the status bar app, and it’s a winner. It runs faster, and its AI-powered “filling brain”, which digs through your vaults to find the info it thinks a form needs, extends beyond the browser to detect login fields in a much…

About $1,599 From Naim, naimaudio.com Features HDMI ARC in with CEC Streaming, Apple AirPlay 2, Chromecast Built–in, UPnPTM, Spotify Connect, TIDAL, Roon Ready, Bluetooth, Internet Radio Analogue input, 3.5mm jack, Bluetooth, ethernet, Audio formats WAV, FLAC, AIFF, MP3, AAC, OGG, DSD Oh boy, is this speaker good! The design appears nearly identical to the previous model, but there are changes in the color of the metal, the design of the over–sized volume/control knob and the remote control. The big dial now boasts 15 touch-sensitive buttons and a proximity sensor that wakes it as you approach. Placement is made easy with the Room Compensation settings, where algorithms compensate for placement in corners or near walls to make sure the sound’s right. An HDMI ARC input has been added so it can…

$79.99 From Anker, anker.com Features Bluetooth 5.0, IPX5 waterproof, charging case Resembling the AirPods, Anker’s take on the true wireless theme isn’t as smart, but it’s cheaper. They’re a little larger too, but are lightweight and comfortable in the ear. When not in use, they sit in the pill box–shaped battery case, which itself is rechargeable, re–juicing the buds between sessions. The pairing process is simple — once the initial setup is complete, they’ll automatically reconnect to each other, and your device, when taken out of their box. The buds themselves have the capacity for five hours of playback, while the case stores enough power for a further three charges, for a maximum playback time of 20 hours. With an IPX5 rating, the Liberty Air Buds are protected on a…

AMAZINGLY, AIRPLAY HAS been with us in one form or another for some 15 years. As AirTunes, its first incarnation, it was primarily there to send music from iTunes to an Airport Express; when the transition to AirPlay came in 2010, its support extended to third–party apps and devices. It’s clearly a very capable streaming protocol, and one which has grown beyond audio to support video streaming, screen mirroring and more. Harnessing Wi–Fi rather than Bluetooth increases both the potential range and the streaming resolution, while also making setup a breeze. AirPlay 2, which came to us with the release of HomePod last year, truly cemented that reputation. AirPlay 2 adds a host of extra controls, putting devices into Apple’s Home app and allowing Siri to boss them around. It…

The Worldwide Developers Conference 2019 came and went quite some time ago, and while the keynote address all but avoided the existence of HomeKit (justifiably, given the sheer amount of high–level advancements there were to talk about), Apple’s automation platform did get one big mention, and it’s a significant one: WWDC saw the debut of HomeKit Secure Video. Secure Video answers a lot of major concerns about security cameras. Most importantly, it goes some way to countering accusations that cloud–based cameras could potentially leave you less secure than before. Think about object analysis: when certain camera systems use their algorithms to detect people and faces, they do this by sending images from your camera online, where they’re acted on before triggering your camera to record. That’s a privacy risk —…

HOW CAN I ACCESS ICLOUD DRIVE IN IOS 9.3.5? You can access iCloud Drive from iOS 8 (and macOS 10.10) or later, but Apple recommends using the latest version. Apps may need to be more recent: Pages, Numbers and Keynote should be 2.5 or later. Open one of those apps and it should show documents stored in your iCloud Drive. CAN I SET ALARMS FOR IRREGULAR SHIFTS? The Clock app only sets alarms by day of the week. Events in Calendar trigger notifications not alarms, and though you can pick an alert tone in Settings, it’s applied to all events. Some third–party apps can sound an alarm for Calendar events: It’s Time can, but only a couple of days in advance. ARE THERE STILL USB AUDIO ISSUES IN MACOS 10.14.4? Some…

THANKS TO EVER–PRESENT gadgets such as your iPhone, you’re likely to have gathered a large collection of video clips. They can be trimmed and shared to social media sites directly from the Photos app, for example, but you could do so much more with them. iMovie enables you to cut a series of clips together into a longer, more sophisticated story that gives your programme higher production values. For example, if you’re producing content for a YouTube channel, then people will be attracted by the video editing assets that iMovie can provide, such as titles, fades, and transitions. We’ll start this five–part look at iMovie with a guide to importing and editing, then explore more advanced post–production tools in later issues. By following our ongoing iMovie guide your Twitter followers,…

You may have noticed that macOS–style folder icons are absent here. This is because they sit behind a one–off $9.99 in–app purchase. However, you can preview how your work would look by selecting a locked template. For image–based icons, you get three folder options: full, centre, or dark. Text–based icons replace full with “engrave” — a setting that doesn’t work well with emoji, since only its shape is retained. The in–app purchase also gives you more shape options (documents, media cases) and extra export settings.…

ABOUT 16 YEARS after the final release of Internet Explorer for Mac, Microsoft returns to Apple computers with a new web browser: Microsoft Edge. Let’s take a look at features that distinguish it from Safari. Like Google’s Chrome, Edge offers the ability to create multiple user profiles — for work and personal uses, say. This saves you signing in and out of sites, or using macOS’s Fast User Switching feature to segregate browsing histories and other data. You’ll need to get used to keeping track of which profile any given window is using, though. Your browsing data from Safari is probably synced between devices via iCloud. With Edge, you’ll need to connect a Microsoft account (bit.ly/mfmsacct) to Edge for Mac and iOS. At the time of writing, only Edge’s “Canary…

APPLE’S DEFAULT CAMERA app is good, but it could be better. With the hardware on iOS devices becoming ever higher-resolution, and the computational capability of devices themselves on the rise, Apple’s simple, point-and-click app means keen photographers generally have to look elsewhere if they want to wrest some control back from devices that are sometimes a little too “helpful”. Luckily, here at Mac|Life, we regularly test and review apps that allow far more control over what your phone does when you press the shutter button. Spectre Camera ($2.99) is one of our favorite such apps. One of the key benefits of a “proper” camera is the ability to blur motion by using a slow shutter speed. This is complicated: knowing just how long to open the shutter for, and having…

THE UPDATES TO Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS that were announced at the end of March added the ability to save templates, plus more related features. You still can’t create the text placeholders that you find in Apple’s own templates — which can be tapped once to type over — but you can now set images as placeholders. You can already tap any image, tap the brush icon in the toolbar at the top right, go to the Image tab, and tap Replace to place a new image file in the same box. When you set an image as a Placeholder, it gets a little + icon in the bottom right corner that does the same, but faster. You can now switch Pages word processor documents to page layout…