Innehållsförteckning för September 2016 från MacLife

THE LAST LEVIATHAN $9.99 Build ships using easy chunky blocks, take them out on the open ocean, and battle other ships (blasting them back into their component blocks) or explore. The game needs to explain itself a lot better, and lacks a story mode currently, but the building is there in a sandbox mode, and is good fun already. VERSION TESTED: 0.1.2 MOMENTO TEMPORIS $9.99 This 2D platforming adventure is based on the style of old Metroid and Castlevania games, giving you a big world with lots of locked-off areas you can only access once you’ve upgraded your abilities. The current version doesn’t have the full world in yet, but what’s there feels ready – it’s polished and controls well. VERSION TESTED: BETA 1.0.3…

AT THE TIME of writing, Pokémon GO is a total sensation, bringing together people in real life to catch small digital creatures – and if it’s continually developed, it could be a long-term hit. But by the time you actually read this, it could equally have already lost its appeal, consigned to the annals of App Store history like so many other trends that spiked and then quickly faded. The big thing about the iPhone, apps, and the App Store is the speed and convenience of grabbing something to try it. Any idea that sounds compelling can pull in millions of users in just a couple of days! But actually keeping them… well, that requires something a bit deeper. Something that these apps ultimately just didn’t have. 1 Draw…

1 ZOOTOPIA Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman $19.99 This is a really funny, brilliantly crafted crime adventure set in a totally adorable animal world. New bunny cop Judy Hopps (Goodwin) gets herself a bigtime disappearance case to solve, with the necessary help of con-artist fox Nick Wilde (Bateman). As the film develops, we see a world where prey and predator animals sharing a space is actually a cause of tension and prejudice. The story leans into these themes, meaning the film isn’t just a fun way to spend an evening – it’s thoughtful about giving kids a (non-cheesy) message about diversity and not judging people fairly. 2 POKÉMON GO Niantic, Inc Free Released shortly before we went to press, Pokémon GO is the biggest mobile game launch ever. It encourages kids…

1 TEST YOUR LEVELS A voiceover helps to link shots. Position the playhead where you want to speak, click the mic under the Viewer, then Voiceover Options (right of the red button). Set the volume so the level is green, with occasional orange peaks. 2 3, 2, 1… GO! Without headphones, the movie’s sound may combine with your speech and create feedback. Turn on Mute Project in the voiceover options to prevent this. Click the red button, then start narrating after the three-second countdown. 3 STOP RECORDING Narrate as you watch the action unfold in the Viewer. A green audio clip appears in the timeline; its orange end indicates you’re still recording. Click the red button to finish, then play back your movie to hear the voiceover in context.…

$4.99 Developer doo GmbH, unfade.io Platform iPhone Requirements iOS 9 or later If you’ve ever inherited an old photo album from a loved one, chances are the photos are still sitting around collecting dust, while you desperately hope for enough free hours in the day to scan and clean up all the images. Now, thanks to a new app from the makers of Scanbot, you can make short work of just such a project. All you have to do is aim your iPhone (the app works with iPhone 5s or later) at each individual photo laid out on a flat, well lit surface. Unfade automatically grabs a scan, performs edge detection, then applies a filter to restore faded colors back to life. Scanned photos can be organized into albums, then…

Free (with In-App Purchases) Developer Moke, moke.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later For a mark-up tool, Annotable is certainly pretty easy to use. But then, in the free version, there’s not an awful lot to master. To create an arrow, you select the arrow tool and drag your finger from start to finish point. Handwritten text is equally simple – just scrawl across the screen (although we found some areas of the screen a little unresponsive). There’s undo and redo, and the option to delete. But the free package really is very limited. If you want any color other than red, you’ll have to buy it, and the text highlighting tool is an extra $1.99 IAP. You also only get one kind of blur effect with the free…

$2.99 Developer Patrick Cook, badpotion.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later Space travel is meant to be exciting. High speeds; beautiful, otherworldly vistas; a constant, edge-of-your-seat thrill. Hyperburner gets two out of three nailed. And, as Meat Loaf’s inimitable wisdom goes, two outta three ain’t bad. You pilot a spaceship in third-person view through a range of levels, using a single digit dragged across the screen to steer. Acceleration is automatic; if there’s a brake, we certainly didn’t find it. Of course, as is the way of these things, there are obstacles. Scores of them, in fact. Your ship is equipped with a shield, but it takes time to regenerate – and only protects you from the briefest of grazes. Any knock more substantial? Kaboom. You’re MISA (missing in…

You can get a million weird things on the App Store, but not all of them are wonderful. Take a break from the mundane stuff, and download something a little more special for your daily commute. If a game designed by Radiohead that relies on experimental looping beats and haunting Thom Yorkian chanting is an idea that excites, then you are the right kind of person for POLYFAUNA (Free, Universal). It’s like a modern version of a music player’s visualizations, where you can influence trippy, evolving patterns by poking, swiping, and tilting the screen. Of course it’s weird, because it’s Radiohead, but it’s wonderful in the same sort of mesmerizing way experimental early screensavers were. For something a bit wackier, try DADDY LONG LEGS (Free, Universal) – a game that…

$2.99 Developer CraftyApps, apps.dinglisch.net Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 8 or later Kids say the darndest things, but it’s not always easy to whip out the iPhone or grab an iPad to record them. That’s where Crafty Family Recorder comes in – it’s like Apple’s built-in Voice Memos app, but designed with convenience and sharing in mind. You can record and play back right on Apple Watch – even when an iPhone isn’t connected. Or use Watch as a remote control to initiate recording on the iPhone, so there’s no need to fumble in your pocket and miss baby’s first words. Back on the iPhone or iPad, you’ll be able to rename and trim all of your recordings, view timestamp information recorded at the same time, and share directly via…

€29.99 (about $33) Developer Ergonis Software, ergonis.com Requirements OS X 10.6 or later PopChar’s most obvious function is inserting obscure text characters into your writing – something that’s built into OS X. Here, you can search for characters by name or hexadecimal number, and it’s clever enough to show variations – enter “number” and you’ll be given fractions as well as integers, and if you search for “e” you’ll get è, é, ê, and so on. If you don’t know how to search for a character or you’re looking for an icon, you can draw it, then click through the various fonts on your Mac to find one you like. Clicking on a character drops it at the insertion point, or put the pointer over it and the key combo…

1 DROP KITCHEN SCALE $99 getdrop.com > As well as working as a straightforward set of kitchen scales, the Bluetoothenabled Drop scale can link up with a database of recipes in its iOS app to make sure you get all your ingredients just right. It can even suggest alternatives, in case you run out of anything in the middle of prep. 2 iDEVICES iGRILL MINI $39 weber.com > This single-probe smart thermometer costs just $40, but is really useful for cooking meat on the BBQ. You can put your feet up and have a beer while your burgers and steaks are cooking, and the Bluetooth connectivity will buzz a message to your iPhone when the meat is ready. 3 PANTELLIGENT SMART FRYING PAN $199 pantelligent.com > Sensors in the Pantelligent…

1 Starry starry.com $349 >>> We all love Wi-Fi. But we all shout and curse at Wi-Fi when it goes inexplicably wrong. Say goodbye to staring at the non-communicative blinking lights on your router, because Starry is a router that makes everything you need to know clear and simple. Which obviously means it’s a lot more user-friendly. You can check how your Wi-Fi’s performing with displays for rating speed and connected devices. If there’s a problem with a device, the information will flash up in red, and you simply tap on it to find out what the issue is, and you get tips on how to resolve the problem. You can request help from the Starry team directly from the unit itself (this free “support on demand” service runs for…

Free The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (y’know… NASA) has had an iPhone app forever, but this year we get lovely Apple TV support. It was worth the wait – if you’re the least bit interested in science or outer space, this deserves a prominent position on your Home screen. For starters, we have a live streaming view of Earth from the International Space Station, as well as NASA TV’s public and media channels. There’s also a library of ondemand videos with more than 10,000 different clips, another 14,000 high-res still images (and counting), plus a special category called Earth as Art. Although NASA missions may not be as thrilling now that the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned, enthusiasts can still keep tabs on current events with images, 3D views,…

LG ELECTRONICS OLED55C6P $2,999.99 LG.COM HDR OLED, you’ve never looked so good – LG’s latest Ultra HD 55-inch panel is a curved wonder with unprecedented black levels in an ultra-thin design. It also happens to be an excellent webOS-powered smart TV with 4K content from Netflix and Amazon Video. And did we mention spectacularly rich colors? Those are hard to miss. NEOFIT CASE FOR SIRI REMOTE $14.99 ACT-LABS.COM Not digging the silver back of your Siri Remote, or want to protect it from scratches? Act Labs have answered the call with a range of stylish, colorful (pink, orange, blue, white, black, or green) NeoFit Cases available direct from Amazon. There’s even an adjustable wrist strap, perfect for intense Apple TV motion-based gaming.…

HOW TO DO ANYTHING ON YOUR MAC, iPHONE & iPAD REQUIRES > iTunes 12.4 or later, an iPod or iOS device (optional) LEVEL > Medium IT WILL TAKE > 20 minutes APPLE REORGANIZED iTUNES’ menus in version 12, but iTunes 12.4 has a bunch more improvements – or, if we were to be uncharitable, rolls back one of the most questionable amendments Apple’s ever made to the app… From iTunes 11, the sidebar was hidden until you started to drag an item from your library, at which point it would slide into view. It’s understandable if the sidebar’s apparent absence made you think you had to start using the three dots buttons next to items to manage your media. Fortunately, though, the sidebar is once again persistently open, making it…

ONE OF THE most magical things about the iPhone and iPad has always been that they could “become” anything – the responsive touchscreen means that you could make an app or tool not just look like a real-world equivalent (or something that exists only in fantasy), but respond like it too, making it easy for anyone with experience to try. From the record decks of djay to the replication of a board game like Carcasonne, you don’t use an app that simulates how you use the physical versions of these things: you just… use the things. On the touchscreen. But for all the possibilities this opened up, it also brings into the focus the limitations of the devices. You can make a camera app that looks like a DSLR’s controls,…

THE BIG NEW feature of macOS Sierra is Siri, and Apple’s personal assistant is arguably even more useful on the Mac than it is on the company’s mobile platforms, because you can drag and drop Siri’s search results from the Notifications pane into other apps. Its voice recognition engine worked flawlessly for us, picking up even strong accents brilliantly. You can get a list of things that Siri can do by asking, “What can you do?” Some are simple, such as asking Siri to open a folder on the Mac or launch an app. It’s also possible to start a FaceTime call, set up a meeting in Calendar, find photos from a particular date, and more. Other changes include the use of tabs in most apps now, including the likes…

WHILE POKÉMON GO was the biggest launch in mobile gaming history, many questions remain about privacy problems it had early on. If you signed in with your Google account, developer Niantic, originally a Google startup, was granted near complete access to your Google account. Every contact, every email, nearly everything Google knows about you was available to it to download, modify, or delete. Initially news reports were quick to blame Apple, which were found to be completely unfounded. The bottom line is Niantic asked your Google account for complete access and Google said “Sure!” While it was quick to change the app, it makes me wonder how many apps asking for that level of access go unnoticed. I’m not an Apple developer that has a knee-jerk dislike of Google. At…

1 CREATE A NEW MOVIE Choose File > New Movie. You’ll see themed templates that automatically add graphics, titles and transitions as you add clips to the timeline. This is great for a novice, but if you want freedom to add those manually, select No Theme. 2 ADJUST THUMBNAIL SIZE To make your imported footage easier to browse, click the cog in the My Media panel. Drag the Clip Size slider right to enlarge thumbnails. Fit more clips in the panel by dragging the Zoom slider left, or right to show more frames from each. 3 ADD CLIPS TO THE TIMELINE Move the pointer over clips in My Media to see their content. Drag across one to select a section of it, then click the + to add that to…

>>> THE ACRONYM GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) certainly applies to an iMovie project’s sound. If a source clip’s audio input levels are weak then it’s never going to sound professional even if you boost the levels. If you interview someone in a noisy location, try clicking the Noise Reduction icon above the Viewer and putting a check mark in the Reduce Background noise box. However, this won’t sound as good as interviewing in a quiet location. Flat and weak audio tracks can be given a bit more impact by using the Equalizer’s Voice Enhance preset. When it comes to recording voiceovers, your Mac’s built-in mic will capture lots of room echo as well as your narration. To capture more professional-sounding voiceovers, buy an external USB mic. This enables you…

$1.99 Developer The Iconfactory, exify-app.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later With the explosion of social media platforms like Flickr, Instagram, and Facebook, everyone seems to be looking for a way to improve their digital photography. Exify proves itself worthy of a spot on your iPhone or iPad if you’re getting serious about your photography. If you’re a budding photographer, Exify can help by relaying information about your photos that generally isn’t accessible. This information is known as EXIF (exchangeable image file format) which is similar to the way that iTunes can quickly relay important information about music and video files. At a glance, Exify shows you the spectrum of colors in your image, shows you the lens and exposure information, and allows you to sample colors. This is…

From $40 per year Developer SmileOnMyMac, textexpander.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later When an update to an app is released, people usually focus on what’s new. With TextExpander 4 (named TextExpander + Keyboard on the App Store), the focus has been on what’s missing. SmileOnMyMac now has its own cloud-based syncing platform for TextExpander, which replaces the use of Dropbox and iCloud, and enables group sharing of snippets. The subscription model introduced for version 4 costs about $40 a year, compared to the $4.99 that TextExpander 3 cost outright. After an outcry, upgrade pricing of $20 is available for existing customers, and version 3 has returned for people who want to stick with other cloud services for syncing or don’t want subscription software. TextExpander remains a wonderful app.…

$1.99 Developer Perchang, perchang.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later There are two types of childhood in Western civilization: those that involved repeated games of Tomy’s Screwball Scramble… and miserable ones. Thankfully, Perchang is here to redress the balance – giving you a similar aim in a digital fashion. Each level tasks you with an exit (or exits, plural), and a steady stream of ball bearings to guide towards it by means of a miniature Rube Goldberg machine. These stages contain various elements – platforms, fans, flippers and so on – that can be manipulated using the buttons in the bottom corner of the screen, one red and one blue. You can change the color of an element (and thus which of these two buttons controls it) with a…

Free Developer Vicinno Soft, new.vicinno.com Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later Thanks to HomeKit, the dream of a true connected household inches closer to reality. But until iOS 10 arrives this fall, there’s no central app for controlling all of your HomeKit accessories from a single place – and if you also happen to have Nest or WeMo devices, you’ll wind up having even more apps on your screen. myHome Plus promises to bring sanity to this madness with a free app that allows an entire home to be controlled from a central hub, with your most important accessories controlled via Notification Center or the Apple Watch on your wrist. Many official apps from manufacturers of HomeKit-compliant hardware lack this crucial piece of the puzzle, but this app…

$499 (with EF-S 18-55mm lens) Manufacturer Canon, canon.com Features 18 megapixels, Wi-Fi, 1080p video, 3-inch screen, nine-point AF system The EOS Rebel T6 is Canon’s latest entry-level digital SLR, and it’s available at a great price for those new to high-end photography. The T6 doesn’t represent a major upgrade from its predecessor, the EOS Rebel T5i. The sensor is similar to the T5i’s at 18 million pixels, while the image processor gets a modest upgrade to the Digic 4+ (the T5i had a standard Digic 4). It has the same 9-point autofocusing system, with one central cross-type (more sensitive) point. There’s also a 95% coverage optical viewfinder. Native sensitivity remains at ISO 100-6,400, expandable up to 12,800, but given the slightly better processor, a modest improvement in low-light performance is…

$99 Manufacturer Realmac Software, realmacsoftware.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later RapidWeaver may be the most Apple-y app that Apple doesn’t actually make. This website-creation tool is much more powerful than Apple’s long-defunct iWeb, but it shares that app’s approachability and ease of use. Version 7 doesn’t mess with the formula too much, bringing some welcome improvements without radically changing how the app works. The app is built around professionally designed themes, with four new ones added to the collection in this release. You use the sidebar to create the structure of your site, the Edit panel to modify pages, the Preview pane to see what it looks like, and there’s a Keynote-esque Master Style for making global changes to your chosen template. You can also add custom code such…

$8.99 Manufacturer Trollin, trollin.loos.li/iconStiX Requirements OS X 10.10 or later iconStiX aims to bring individuality to your desktop, by way of adding text, images, and shapes to icons. You drag items from Finder or select objects from a Favorites window (that oddly sits above every other app window until it’s closed). Elements can be tweaked, and icons are then exported or applied to existing items in Finder. Granted, the likes of Image2icon offer much the same (and in that case in a more friendly design). But what puts iconStiX into the recommendation pile is its flexibility. Although you can just dump a shape on a folder and add an effect, this app offers far more. There’s support for multiple layers and objects. You can adjust any item’s position, skew, angle,…

$169 Manufacturer Knomo, knomobags.com Dimensions 16.25x12.25x4.75 in (fits 15-inch MacBook Pro) The Hanson is part of Knomo’s Brompton Collection, a simple backpack that is neither particularly rugged nor “computery” in appearance. It’s very compact and disguises well the many internal spaces for your MacBook and iOS devices. The bag, which is made from a lightweight but hardwearing PET canvas (woven from recycled plastic), distributes the weight of its contents superbly, and the straps are comfortable for lengthy periods. It’s available in black or “Army” (greeny-brown, basically), and sports a smart leather trim. The Hanson boasts a decent number of internal pockets, with plenty of space for smaller items, although the depths of some of the pouches are frustratingly shallow, so objects such as memory cards, earbuds, or batteries can easily…

Your kitchen can smell wonderful sometimes. Fresh coffee, sizzling bacon, or the irresistable tang of Chinese takeout: these are the sorts of smells that can really make you feel at home. But there are other kitchen smells that aren’t so great. Food that’s gone bad can smell gross, and there are some smells that can actually be dangerous – such as gas leaks, or an unwatched stove that sets something to burning. There are several air-quality sensors available that can monitor the levels of carbon dioxide pollution in the air, but there are also more specialized models that specifically monitor indoor air quality (IAQ). Elgato’s Eve Room sensor ($80) can monitor levels of many organic chemicals and pollutants in the air, and the Withings Home security camera ($200) has a…

>>> DO YOU have a best worst gadget? Or a worst best gadget? You know; something so badly designed or quirky that you curse its existence, yet without it you’d be bereft? It’s like being stuck in a terrible relationship that you can’t bear to leave. My “boyfriend-from-hell” is a set of AcousticSheep Wireless SleepPhones. I hate them, I love them, I threaten to kick them to the kerb on a regular basis, yet when they disappear, I am frantic. The SleepPhones were a gift; I like falling asleep listening to Bill Bryson audiobooks (edgy stuff, right?), but our new baby had no interest in learning about how likely she is to be killed by a bear on the Appalachian Trail. So I got these clever headphones – low profile,…

Free All-you-can-eat subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are fine for most folks, but some of us have more specific (dare we say cultured) tastes. That’s what makes outlets like VHX so interesting – it’s a platform where video content providers can create their own Netflix, and rent or sell copies. While VHX has had a player app for some time on the iPhone, the upstart company only recently upgraded it with native iPad support and now, at long last, it’s on Apple TV as well. There’s not a whole lot to it – log in with your VHX account credentials and there’s all of your library content, ready to stream – but for the more than 5,000 sellers and 1.25 million customers, it’s a godsend. VHX is really…

REQUIRES > OS X 10.8 or later, Magnet 1.8 LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 10 minutes WE LOVE THE flexibility of moving and resizing windows on our Macs, but it can be fiddly. Magnet ($4.99 Mac App Store) makes it easy. Once installed, you need to authorize it: go to Security & Privacy in System Preferences and click Privacy. Click the padlock and type your admin password, then select Accessibility and put a check mark next to Magnet. App windows can then be resized and positioned by dragging them to a screen edge or corner. Doing the latter resizes a window to the relevant quarter of the screen; dragging to the left or right edge resizes a window to that screen half. Dragging a window to the screen’s…

REQUIRES > iOS 7 or later, Slow Shutter Cam LEVEL > Medium IT WILL TAKE > 1 hour IN CONVENTIONAL CAMERAS, the shutter is the bit that opens and closes to let light hit the sensor. The longer the shutter is open, the brighter and blurrier an image. In iOS’s built-in Camera app, the device sets a shutter speed automatically. This works out great most of the time, but in challenging environments, such as at night, it can be a struggle to get the desired result. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to photographing light trails. Long exposures at night record moving light sources as beautiful light trails – but only if you’re able to set your camera to shoot an exposure that lasts for a few…

REQUIRES > An iCloud account. A Mac, or an iOS device running iOS LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 15 minutes WHEN APPLE INTRODUCED iCloud Drive, it integrated it into OS X’s Finder, making it simple to add files to and retrieve them from your online storage. The iCloud Drive app added in iOS 9 allows for file management on iPhone or iPad. When it comes to working with files, there’s a handful of tips and tricks that are worth knowing. Moving them to iCloud Drive on your Mac is easy: drag and drop them onto its row in Finder’s sidebar, or click that row and then drag and drop items onto a folder within. The iCloud Drive app for iOS is straightforward, yet it provides several ways to…

REQUIRES > iOS 8 or later LEVEL > Medium IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes ACCESSIBILITY IS one of the greatest features in iOS. Apple spends a lot of time and effort making sure that everybody can use its devices. An iPad or iPhone device has a huge range of features designed to make it usable for people with various disabilities. From blindness and deafness, through to various motor control and muscular disorders. Some of these features can be life-changing for those with disabilities, but they are incredibly useful for everybody. The Reduce Motion mode can increase battery life, and help older devices run more smoothly. Guided Access is often used by stores and exhibition rooms to lock down iPad devices. And anyone might prefer to make the text on…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Thank you for the reviews of home security units in your July issue (#117). One device you did not review is the Piper. I presently have two Pipers at two different locations: each monitors inside and outside temperatures, inside humidity, sound, and motion. It can record video, has a high-decibel siren, enables two-way conversations, and the “NV” version has very good night monitoring capabilities. There is no monthly monitoring fee, plus it can link with other devices. I’ve found the support to be excellent. However, there is a downside which I’ve raised with Piper and hopefully it - and other manufacturers - will address. If the Piper loses its connection, there is no way to fix it remotely, meaning you have to physically go where it…

AS TECH continues its steady march into our homes with smart doorbells and an entire Internet of Things, we encounter more and more privacy issues. But as similar technology also assimilates into nearly every facet of our world, we are facing even deeper conundrums of responsibility and sheer common sense. We have myriad problems to solve when it comes to our smart door locks failing to let us in, or our iPhone-powered home security cameras storing our most private moments on cloud-connected servers. But millions of Pokémon GO players now use augmented reality (AR) with their smartphones to chase fctional creatures in the real world. An early form of self-driving car is also here, now, as car maker Tesla advertises that some models can drive themselves on the highway. These…

Free Developer My Social Stream, mysocialstream.com Platform iPhone Requirements iOS 9 or later THIS MONTH’S MOST INTERESTING iPHONE & iPAD APPS Social Stream is an app that promises to suck up all your social media accounts and spit out an aggregated feed, tailored to what you want to see. No more will you have to scroll through endless posts about Minions from your distant relatives to get to the stuff about your childhood friend’s messy divorce; no more will you have to piece together the day’s news from what people are angry about on Twitter. Social Stream, as its name implies, wants to streamline your social media experience in one app. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for one of our team. Not just that it didn’t match up to what it…

Free Developer Daniel Motta, watchaware.com Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 9.3 or later Sure, Pokémon GO is all the rage, but if you’ve been playing the classic card-based Pokémon game, this app will help you keep track of that collection. Note: Despite the word “Go” in the name, PokeGoDex has nothing to do with the insanely popular mobile version of the insanely popular Nintendo characters. Instead, PokeGoDex is an on-the-go database where you can capture and view detailed info about all the Pokémon you can actually see and touch in the real world (or on thin card, at any rate). Hand-crafted for Apple Watch, Pokefans can capture new characters using Force Touch, list by type or generation, or simply view a list of what’s been collected so far. There’s even…

$3,499 Manufacturer Formlabs, formlabs.com Info Bold SLA 3D printer, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB connections, self-heating tank Formlabs is established as the leading manufacturer of Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers. These printers use a resin, rather than a filament, that hardens when exposed to ultraviolet light. The main build platform of an SLA printer is suspended over a resin tank, so as the print is mapped out by the laser, the print is built upside-down, and looks like it’s being pulled (albeit very slowly) right out of the resin. The resin itself arrives in a specially shaped bottle that is dropped into the back of the printer. Once in place, the resin automatically pours into the tank as the printer is primed before use. The Form 2 is fully Wi-Fi compatible so…

$59 Manufacturer AKG, akg.com Features Closed back, 40mm drivers, 16Hz-22kHz range Weight 7 oz When it comes to headphones, the general consensus is that you very much get what you pay for. Opt for the cheap earbuds packed in with your phone and your music is going to sound tinny, flat, and lacking in any kind of musical excitement. AKG, though, has always been a company willing to thumb its nose at the idea of “getting what you pay for.” The K92s are a very reasonably priced set of headphones that in some ways match the features of cans double their price, but in other ways fall prey to many of the problems of budget sets. The K92s are also a big pair of headphones. Their size means you’re unlikely…

$155 Manufacturer Transcend, transcend-info.com Features MLC flash memory We’ve seen devices before that slot into a MacBook Pro’s SD card reader to boost onboard storage, though some are just adapters for microSD cards. The JetDrive Lite brings its own 256GB of storage, meaning it’s both bigger and faster. The JetDrive Lite 360 is designed for Late 2013 and newer 15-inch models of MacBook Pro. Transfers are claimed to reach 95MB/s when sequentially reading data and 60MB/s when writing it. In our tests, performance peaked close enough to those numbers at 88.4MB/s and 62.6MB/s respectively, and held up well in averages of all our tests at 75.4MB/s and 53.8MB/s. The cheaper, lower-quality 128GB card we use in our Nifty MiniDrive peaks at 44.2MB/s and 21.1MB/s, respectively. So while the JetDrive Lite…

? LOCATION TRACKING The Smarter app can use the GPS features on your iPhone to monitor your location and start brewing when it sees that you’re coming home from work. JARGON BUSTER Cheaper coffee machines use blades to chop up the coffee beans. More expensive machines, including the Smarter Coffee, use burr grinders that crush the beans and produce a more uniform size of coffee particle for a better taste. 1 As you like it The first thing you’ll want to do with the Smarter Coffee machine is to tell it how you like your coffee. You can choose your personal preference and set it as the automatic default, or change it manually if you need an extra strong shot. 2 The daily grind You can set other preferences too,…

99¢ Apple TV is great for consuming video content, playing games, and even learning, but sometimes all you really want to do is vegetate on the couch and stare at something. That’s pretty much exactly what Perfect Storm HD was designed for – a single dollar gets you all of the rough ocean, thunder, lightning, and rain visuals your eyeballs can take, accompanied by the requisite sound effects and cinematic, royalty-free background music score provided by the folks at Incompetech.com. There are only two storm scenes to choose from with a swipe across the Siri Remote: Being immersed right in the middle of a rough sea, or buffeted about in choppy waters with a lighthouse just off in the distance. Perfect Storm HD includes separate volume controls for sound effects…