Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2023 från MacLife

“An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator… An iPod, a phone — are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone.” Ever since 2007, when Steve Jobs got on stage, uttered those words, and changed the history of his company yet again, the iPhone has sat right at the heart of Apple’s now multi–trillion–dollar empire. Year after year, the company rolls out the latest model, and year after year consumers flock to buy it. Or do they? Sixteen years later after the first iPhone launched, and there are certainly a lot of Apple smartphone users in the world. In the statement accompanying Apple’s first earnings report of 2023, which covers the last three months of 2022, chief executive officer…

PRETTY MUCH EVER since Apple announced its own chips, I’ve been hoping for a Mac mini Pro. Producing powerful chips with low power use meant that there was always scope for the Mac mini’s frame to hold something more powerful than the original M1, because it was designed to hold some pretty hot Intel chips. When the M1 Pro chip arrived, I got excited… but instead, we got the Mac Studio. Bigger, even more expensive, and not quite hitting the same niche — it was so clearly designed for real, honest–to–goodness pros, not people like me who might like to buy something with just a bit more power than they need in order to be future–proofed for whatever hare–brained creative scheme I might come up with next. THE MAC MINI…

>>> Photos Using My Photo Stream, iCloud can store your most recent 1,000 photos for up to 30 days. They then sync with all your Photo Stream–enabled Apple gear. iCloud Photos goes further and stores every photo and video you take on the cloud, syncing data and edits as well. You can use the Optimize Storage option to keep low–res versions on your devices and high–res copies on iCloud. >>> Two–Factor Authentication Your Apple ID and iCloud facilitates two–factor authentication (2FA), a security feature that makes it harder for someone to impersonate you online. When you sign in to your Apple ID for the first time on a new device or online, you’re asked for an authentication code. This is delivered on one of your other devices signed in to…

You don’t need to have one of your Apple devices handy to access iCloud services. You can do so from any computer, tablet or smartphone with a web browser and an internet connection, regardless of what operating system it uses. Just go to www.icloud.com and log in with your Apple ID and password. The iCloud website gives access to your files and folders stored on iCloud Drive. It also offers online versions of several key Apple applications. If you need to edit or share a Pages, Numbers or Keynote document, you can. You can check your email in Mail, get a phone number from Contacts, review your Notes, look at and create Calendar events and more. It even has an online version of Find My, so if your Apple device…

REQUIRES macOS 13, iOS 16, iPadOS 16 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to create a Shared Photo Library for friends and family IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU’VE LONG BEEN able to share your snaps in the Photos app, although this was limited to photos that you specifically chose to add to a special shared album, which was then posted to iCloud. While that was useful, Shared Albums does have some further limitations. Though it gives you the freedom to share photos with your friends or family from an event you all went to, and those added to the Shared Album can upload photos too, they can’t edit or delete images. iCloud Shared Photo Library changes that. Available now as part of macOS Ventura, iOS 16.1 or iPadOS 16.1,…

REQUIRES Mac, iPad or iPhone, Wi–Fi router, Wi–Fi range extender YOU WILL LEARN How to extend the reach of your home Wi–Fi network using a Wi–Fi range extender IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes A WI–FI EXTENDER can boost the Wi–Fi signal from your existing router. That allows your network to reach places in your home it wasn’t able to before because of the router’s limited reach, and it can fix dead or weak spots in your area of coverage. Even if you have one of the best wireless or Wi–Fi 6 routers that money can buy, you may still experience frustrating problems with its limited range. With so many of us now working from home, or needing a strong, stable connection for streaming services and gaming, dead spots are the…

> How long will my Mac’s SSD last? How do I discover the remaining life of my Mac’s internal SSD? While a few die prematurely, the main determinant of the working life of an SSD is the amount of data written to it. SSDs have firmware to ensure that wear is distributed evenly, so if you discover how much data has already been written to the disk, and the total bytes written (TBW) when failure is expected, you can estimate how long it should last. Although Apple doesn’t publish the TBW values for its internal SSDs, they should be good for at least 600TB per TB of capacity, probably nearer 1,000TB. Boot disks see most use, and may write 30TB or more per year, giving a 1TB disk a life…

HOW TO DISABLE POWER NAP ON MY iMAC? If yours is an Intel model, you can disable Power Nap in System Settings > Energy Saver; Intel notebooks should have the same control in their Battery settings. However, you can’t disable this behavior on Apple silicon Macs, where it’s always on. HOW TO ENABLE MY MAC AS AN AIRPLAY RECEIVER? A search in System Settings should reveal this is now buried in System Settings > General > AirDrop & Handoff, where there’s a switch to enable AirPlay Receiver. You can also set which devices to allow to connect, requiring a password if you wish. HOW TO STOP SPOTLIGHT INDEXING VIRTUAL MACHINES? You should exclude virtual machines from both Time Machine backups and Spotlight indexing. You have two options for the latter:…

$299 From www.apple.com Features Spatial Audio, AirPlay, 802.11n Wi–Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, Thread THE NEW HOMEPOD is here, and with it an aesthetic that might seem all too familiar, though there are some major changes under the hood — including Matter support and improved audio. The HomePod (2nd gen) comes in black or white — unlike the colorful HomePod mini — and the $299 price tag makes it the most expensive smart speaker around. If you were expecting a visual revamp over the original, you won’t get it here. It shares the same fabric–covered cylindrical design, with the only obvious change being the touch interface on the top, which is slightly recessed. The entire surface now also illuminates. Controls have been improved, with the ability to play, pause, go back or…

In Ventura, a lot of us have noticed that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has broken the way Photos, and iPhoto before it, has always worked when it came to uploading photos to the internet… or to any other program for that matter. Starting the upload and navigating to the Photos item in the Finder–style window no longer takes you to Photos, where you can navigate through your nicely organized albums to the photo(s) you want. Now it seems to want to make you search through every photo on your computer, which is totally contrary to the way it works on iPad and iPhone. Apple says this isn’t a mistake, and that this is the way to do it. You’re meant to either use drag and drop (cumbersome), export the…

The iCloud Photos service is heavily integrated into the Photos app on Macs and Apple mobile gear. With iCloud Photos active, every photo you take is automatically uploaded to your iCloud account and synced with other Apple devices signed in to your Apple ID. You can thus enjoy your photos and videos on all your Apple tech, regardless of which device they were taken on. Features such as Memories, People and edits you’ve made are synced between your Apple devices. Edit a photo on your Mac, and the edited version also appears on your iPad and iPhone. When you access your photos on the iCloud website, they’re organized according to the date and time taken, and your albums — self created and automatically generated — from your Photos app are…

Using the iCloud service to back up your iPad and iPhone is easy. First of all, open the Settings app. At the top of the list (iPhone, iPod touch) or in the sidebar (iPad, plus–sized iPhones) tap your name to get to the Apple ID screen. Tap iCloud, then iCloud Backup. On this screen, you can turn on iCloud backups using the switch. If your device has cellular connectivity, you can choose whether to use it for backups, or restrict yourself to backing up over Wi–Fi to save mobile data. You can also tap an option to back up there and then, instead of waiting for a regular backup time. Tap one of the backups to see a list of apps that are taking up space. You can switch off…

REQUIRES DuckDuckGo for Mac, macOS 10.15 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to boost your privacy online using this secure web browser for Mac IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes WHEREVER YOU GO on the web, someone somewhere is tracking your every move. Not all of this activity is bad — sometimes it’s to check which device or web browser you’re using to help websites give you the best online experience. Sometimes it’s to make relevant suggestions, but other times, such tracking verges on a kind of virtual stalking, with you being tracked from website to website, with little control over what information is being shared about you, where, when and how. Apple has focused its efforts (and its marketing) in recent years on the steps it takes to protect your…

COULD I RUN MY OWN MAIL SERVER ON A MAC MINI? Yes, but… commercial products like CommuniGate Pro are sophisticated and support telephony and more, while open–source servers like Dovecot are complex to configure. You’ll need to arrange a fallback service to store email when your server is offline. DOES VENTURA STILL SUPPORT NETWORK LOCATIONS? If you created locations in a previous macOS and upgraded, they should be listed in the Apple menu’s Location item. You can use that to switch to and modify an existing location, but it can’t create new ones. Update to Ventura 13.1 as the “…” (more) button at the foot of System Settings > Network now restores control over creating new Locations. HOW TO CHECK THE HEALTH OF MY MAC’S WI–FI? Enable the Wi–Fi menu…

AS MAC USERS, Apple’s Safari internet browser is a staple of our everyday lives. Whether it’s for checking Gmail, catching up on the latest news or watching YouTube videos, Safari is a simple and robust app for enjoying the best that the worldwide web has to offer. However, as is the case with most Apple apps, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. For example, did you know that you can bump up the size of the website text outside of Reader mode? And did you know that you can watch videos in an entirely separate window free from the usual clutter? We’ve dug deep into Safari’s vast array of options and lesser known features to provide a fun insight into how far you can take…

$199.99 From https://satechi.net Features Three Thunderbolt 4/USB–C ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, 60W pass–through charging to host, supports daisy chaining up to six Thunderbolt devices, fast transfer rates of up to 40Gbps Needs Any Mac or iPad with a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port, macOS 11 or later IT TOOK FOUR years of waiting before we could add a hub to increase the number of Thunderbolt ports on our Macs. Satechi’s Slim Hub is one of the first of the second–generation hubs, designed to deliver more from Thunderbolt 4, as provided by the ports on newer Apple silicon Macs, while remaining compatible with Intel models. Although still solid and requiring a power supply as big as the hub itself, it’s slimline and more suitable for those wanting to…

EVERYONE’S CRAZY FOR ChatGPT, the AI–powered chatbot developed by OpenAI in San Francisco. But OpenAI itself warns against trusting the accuracy of anything the chatbot says, and services using the same or similar technologies, such as Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard, have been plagued with problems ranging from factual errors to “unhinged” responses. ChatGPT is an AI–based natural language processing tool capable of giving text responses to questions or prompts and keeping up its side of a conversation (although after a lengthy back–and–forth, it may reportedly go off the rails). It can write credible–sounding essays, summarize long documents, and compose emails, verse, and even code. ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022, and after just two months had an estimated 100m active users, making it the fastest growing app of all…

APPLE’S iCLOUD WAS launched in October 2011, replacing the unsuccessful MobileMe service. As well as an iCloud email address and 5GB of free online storage, it brings a range of services such as syncing your Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes and Messages apps between your Apple devices, storing and syncing documents and data on iCloud Drive, real–time collaboration on Pages, Numbers and Keynote projects, and the ability to locate your Apple gear, items such as AirPods and AirTags, and even other people. The service also powers a lot of features offered by macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Your passes and cards stored in Apple Wallet, for example, are kept in sync across your devices using iCloud, with no user intervention needed. This is also the case for your Apple Home settings and…

Whether you have the 5GB you get free when you sign up for an Apple ID, or pay a monthly subscription for more space, iCloud Drive is like having an external hard drive that’s accessed through the internet. But it’s so much more too. When a document or file is on iCloud Drive, it’s synced with all your other Apple devices, so you can (for example) create a document on your Mac, leave the house and edit it on your iPad on the train to work. You can even share it with other people directly from the cloud, or work together on collaborative projects with all edits synced between all users. Because your contents on iCloud Drive are stored online, they’re accessible wherever you are in the world. You can…

With Family Sharing, you can set up a family unit of up to six people. Your family then get to share media, apps and more. If, for example, the kids all want the same game, you only have to buy it once; everyone in your family group can download and enjoy it. If you purchase an app, the rest of your family can install it on their own devices. If you all want to read the same book or listen to the same album, no problem — just buy it once. You can also set up a shared family photo album so all your family members can view, add to and edit family photos. If you pay for extra iCloud storage space, you can share it with your family group,…

REQUIRES macOS 13 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to undo send, schedule and attach rich links, and set reminders IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes FOR MANY YEARS, Apple’s Mail has struggled to compete with the best email apps for features and ease of use (including our group test winner, Spark — see Issue 190), but things have improved markedly with the revamped version of Mail that arrived with iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura. With Apple’s latest OS updates, Mail has finally received features that bring it right up to date, including the ability to unsend recently sent messages, send scheduled emails, and receive a helpful prompt when you’ve forgotten to add a message attachment. You can even see rich previews of any web links you plan to…

REQUIRES macOS 13 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to use the new Weather app on macOS Ventura IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes APPLE’S WEATHER APP has been around since the very first iPhone in 2007, but only on iOS. It’s been curiously absent on iPad until this year’s iPadOS 16 release, and it’s been the same story on the Mac. Until now. Yes, the Weather app has finally arrived on Mac in macOS Ventura, and if it seems familiar that’s because Apple has used its Mac Catalyst framework to bring the iPadOS version of Weather to the Mac — both versions of the app are essentially the same. The Weather app has also massively improved in recent years, and it’s packed with great features that enable you to keep…

REQUIRES Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable or a third–party charger YOU WILL LEARN How to identify and fix charging problems with your Apple Watch IT WILL TAKE 60 minutes APPLE WATCHES ARE a thing of beauty, combining some solid fitness functions with fantastic, value–adding everyday features to create a wonderful smart watch companion. However, even the best Apple Watches aren’t impervious to flaws. While we’ve not heard of any specific problems in the newest model, the Apple Watch 8, as with all smart watches it’s important to remember the device is more like a phone than a mechanical watch when it comes to its battery; if you don’t charge it every day, it soon runs out of power. This means that any charging problems aren’t just irritating, they’re disruptive. Luckily,…

STAYING FOCUSED ON any device that can do many different tasks is far from easy. With messages coming in from a host of apps and networks, it is likely that you have experienced an inability to work for more than a few minutes countless times, but there are tools in macOS, and in particular in Ventura, that can help. macOS has always been about bringing the app you are working on to the forefront while leaving the others ready to be opened up from the Dock, but this can have the adverse effect of taking too long to switch between apps when you are working on projects or tasks that include text and multiple types of media creation. Stage Manager is ideal for helping you to jump between a selection…