Innehållsförteckning för June 2025 från MacLife

DJAY PRO FOR Mac isn’t just a fun way to perform with music; it actually won an Apple Design Award in 2024. Although it’s easy to use, it has lots of powerful pro features, starting with its ability to hook into all the major streaming services, from Apple Music and Spotify to Tidal, SoundCloud, and more. Moreover, if you have a collection of MP3s on your Mac, it can work with those, too. At the heart of djay Pro is its ability to automatically analyze any track and determine its tempo, then let you sync it to any other track with just one click, crossfading between the two using a classic fader or with a choice of dynamic transitions, like echoes or sweeps. There’s also a choice of cool effects…

APPLE INVITES IS a new app for iOS 18 that makes it a breeze to invite friends and family to those special occasions — including that all–important summer barbecue you have planned. Available from the App Store (and via www.icloud.com/invites), it enables you to create eye–catching invites and use a central hub for your events. You can manage who is and isn’t coming and share any changes. Invites also lets you set up shared photo/video albums and playlists, so guests can upload captured memories of events and help create a curated event soundtrack. Since Invites integrates with Maps and Weather, guests can discover directions and the forecast for the day as well, which is rather useful for forward planning. Yet there are restrictions. To make full use of the app,…

USE SWEEPY, AND your home will be clean and tidy in no time. Not only will this app lets you create a to–do list of chores and remind you to complete them; it offers incentives such as points for completed jobs and an automatically generated cleaning schedule that’s dependent on how much effort you’re willing to put in. Sweepy also seeks to get everyone in your household to do their bit. Select the profile tab, and you can add and manage other members, delegating tasks to share the workload. You’ll find a “work approval” option, which is great if you want to get youngsters to tidy their bedroom. Since completed tasks are awarded points, cleaning becomes incentivized. To get the most out of Sweepy, you will need to pay, although…

$19.99 From https://feralinteractive.com Needs Needs iOS 17 or later LARA CROFT AND the Guardian of Light updates the eponymous 2010 Tomb Raider title with fresh graphics, gamepad support, and all of the levels from the original console release. Its Aztec-inspired story is the classic Tomb Raider premise of dungeon-crawling hero meets legendary creatures. The evil Xolotl has been freed from his tomb, and is hellbent on enveloping the world in everlasting night. Lara Croft must team up with the Mayan warrior Totec to defeat Xolotl and retrieve the Mirror of Smoke. The tale is spread across 14 levels full of puzzles, traps, enemies and collectibles. They’re generally enjoyable, with enough action for you to dip in and out in bursts. There’s plenty of replayability, too, thanks to the goals you’re set…

$69.99 From www.ubisoft.com Needs macOS 15 or later, Mac with Apple M1 chip or later (see review for more info), disk space 115.03GB LET’S START WITH a positive. It’s great to see a high–profile gaming title released on Mac at the same time as the PC instead of two years later. Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is so beset with technical problems that we almost wished it had been delayed to allow more time in development. According to the Mac App Store and Ubisoft’s website, the game requires an Apple silicon Mac and macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. We played it on an M2 MacBook Air with 8GB of memory. After a huge — 115GB — download, we booted it up, and were greeted by a hardware warning saying that our…

$169.99 From https://us.creative.com Features 2x USB–C, 2x optical, 4x 3.5mm, 1x HDMI; Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC; supports 32–bit/384KHz audio; 52x125x91 mm THERE ARE PLENTY of portable DACs (digital to analog converters) now available for use with the iPhone and other mobile devices, but sometimes, a larger desktop DAC can provide additional features that are really useful. Creative’s Sound Blaster G8 is primarily aimed at gamers, but its most impressive feature — the ability to combine and mix two separate audio sources — will appeal to lots of other people. The compact and sturdy design of the G8, and the fact that it can draw power from a USB–C port on a notebook, means that you could easily slip it into a backpack or bag and carry it with you. However,…

APPLE STRONGLY OUTPACED the market in the first three months of 2025. According to Canalys Research, worldwide iPhone sales were a huge 13% higher than in the same quarter last year, compared to just 0.2% growth in the global smartphone market year–on–year. Apple’s global market share in the quarter rose to 19%, up from 16% a year earlier. Some analysts attributed the rise to the launch of the new iPhone 16e in February, giving Apple a boost in the usually slow post–holiday quarter. However, the new model accounted for just 7% of US iPhone sales in the quarter, analyst CIRP reports. What was new was a shift to non–Pro models. In Q1 2024, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max represented 45% of US iPhone sales, but in Q1 2025, iPhone…

SINCE IT REPLACED MobileMe in 2013, iCloud has proved immensely popular. With iCloud, you can sync data across all your Apple devices, and access it through a web browser using the iCloud website, www.iCloud.com. An Apple account comes with 5GB of free storage on your iCloud Drive, and you can buy more space with a monthly subscription. You can even keep track of your Apple gear in case it’s lost or stolen through the Find My app. iCloud is built into all Apple’s operating systems; macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It’s available for Microsoft Windows, too, by downloading an app from the Microsoft Store at bit.ly/4jxEe32. iCloud is what this feature is all about: what it can do, how to use it, accessing iCloud through www.iCloud.com, and more.…

SOMETIMES, EVEN A humble word processor can be overspecified for the job in hand, with a multitude of toolbars and options to distract you. That’s where an app like Bike Outliner comes in handy. It’s a simple outline editor for jotting down your ideas in a structured way, using keyboard shortcuts to indent rows, nest them, and move them around. It also doubles as a text editor with basic formatting and a spelling/grammar checker. A few extra features help to make Bike Outliner a more versatile tool. For instance, you can add links to rows in your outline document, and even paste them into other apps so you can integrate it fully into your workflow. Since Bike Outliner is scriptable, you can automate and integrate it with other apps, using…

PICKING UP ANOTHER language is a great way to gain a useful new ability, learn about different cultures, and embark on a fun challenge. Whether you want to use the basics to order food on vacation, or go more advanced and move to a new country, it’s a valuable skill to have. If that’s something you want to try, EF Hello is a great place to start. Apple awarded this app its App Store Cultural Impact award in 2024, saying it provides “a systematic learning approach to support language learners of all levels”. Part of the way it does this is through artificial intelligence (AI), which whips up custom courses based on your skills and interests, then provides feedback to help you improve. In this tutorial, we’ll show you the…

SLAP AND FLOP may sound like kids’ entertainers, but they’re actually data attacks that more recent Macs are susceptible to. Let’s take a look behind the scenes. With Macs having to handle more demanding tasks, like artificial intelligence (AI) and processing live high–def video, there’s a limit to the rate at which they can complete instructions, so Apple’s chip designers are using other tricks. Many aim to speed up the use of data that is accessed from memory. High–speed caches help, but the cores in your Mac’s CPU can spend much of their time unproductively waiting for data from memory. That can take hundreds of core cycles and put a process on pause. CPU cores have turned to making intelligent guesses as to what instructions to run next, and what…

CHATGPT, DEEPSEEK AI, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Google Gemini, and of course, Apple Intelligence, may be what the world is making a fuss about now, but Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is looming on the horizon, and its capabilities either look amazing, very scary indeed, or a mixture of both. As a cut above regular artificial intelligence (AI), AGI is set to be revolutionary, and play a key part in what many — including the World Economic Forum — are calling the Intelligence Age. But just what can it achieve, and when can we expect it? More to the point, what might humanity look like once the technology is unleashed upon the world? Could it be our savior, an existential threat, or something in between? Over the following pages, we’re going to…

$299.95 From www.caldigit.com Features Nine ports, Thunderbolt 5, USB–C and USB–A, USB4 v2; up to 8K video support; 180W power supply/90W continuous power to host THUNDERBOLT 5 IS the most significant update to the Thunderbolt protocol in a decade. The new capabilities are doubling of the standard data transfer speed to 80Gbps, with a “Bandwidth Boost” mode for video up to 120Gbps and power delivery of 240W. This is backward compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and earlier and USB–C, but if you own a Mac mini with M4 Pro, a MacBook Pro (2024), or a Mac with M4 Max, you’ll benefit. A 180W external power supply provides 90W of power to your notebook through its “To Host” port, enough to fast–charge everything except a 16–inch MacBook Pro. It has nine ports,…

HOT CORNERS ARE the unsung heroes of macOS, enabling you to quickly and easily access all kinds of options by dragging the pointer to a corner of your display. You actually may have come across it if you’ve ever accidentally slid the pointer too far into the bottom–right corner and activated the Quick Notes feature. But there are many other options, and they’re worth exploring, because many of them can speed up various tasks and help to make you more productive. In this tutorial, we explain what you can do with hot corners and what the options are. We’ll also demonstrate how you can prevent yourself from accidentally launching a hot corner when you’re moving the pointer, which as you can imagine, is easy to do — especially in the…

REMEMBER WHEN THE web used to be fun? You could visit websites and not be continually assaulted by an array of annoying distractions while trying to read stuff. Fortunately, help is at hand from the StopTheMadness Pro web extension ($14.99, https://underpassapp.com). Once the extension has been enabled in Safari, or another web browser on your Mac (it’s also available for iPhone and iPad), it can be used to tailor your web browsing experience while also boosting your privacy by stopping link trackers. Those annoying autoplaying videos can be stopped in their tracks, web page elements hidden, and disabled interface options (such as contextual menus) re–enabled. It will even fast–forward through YouTube adverts at lightning speed, so you can get straight to watching the videos you want. A pull–down menu can…

ONE OF THE many unfortunate consequences of climate change and environmental degradation is an increase in air pollution. This can have serious health impacts, especially if you’re young, elderly, or have existing health problems. But there are ways to measure your local air quality so you can take action, such as the Breathable app. It adds widgets that display air pollution cleanly and clearly either in your local area or at a place of your choosing. Armed with that knowledge, you then know whether to stay inside, stock up on masks, or avoid the area. BREATHABLE ADDS WIDGETS THAT DISPLAY AIR POLLUTION CLEANLY AND CLEARLY AIR QUALITY CONTROL The app works across a range of Apple products, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, so you can get read–outs wherever…

$199 From www.razer.com Features 1x USB–C, 2x USB–A, 1x HDMI, 19.7x8.27x3.09 inches, 5.51 lbs A COUPLE OF years ago, Anker released a monitor stand that also included a built–in dock with a wide selection of USB ports. Razer’s new Monitor Stand Chroma takes a more modest approach, but it’s well made, and could still prove useful for Mac users. It’s fairly compact, standing at 19.7 inches wide, 8.27 inches deep, and 3.09 inches tall, but is made from anodized aluminum — it can support monitors weighing up to 44 lbs, so it’s ideal for a 32–inch display. On the back of the stand, you’ll find a USB–C port, along with an HDMI port that allows you to connect one 4K display (3840x2160 with 60Hz refresh). On the right–hand side, there’s…

$109.99 From www.ugreen.com Features Fast charging for three devices, 2x USB–C, 1x USB–A, 240W power delivery (PD) cable, PD 3.1 protocol THE ADVENT OF GaN chargers, which allow higher power ratings in a smaller unit, has seen ever–more capable power supplies while prices have fallen. Ugreen’s 140W GaN wall charger has two USB–C ports and one USB–A, reflecting the fact that though USB–C is now standard, many USB–A devices remain in use. It comes with a USB–C cable rated at up to 240W; the same as Apple’s most powerful model, which costs more and only has a single port. This can send 140W down its first USB–C port and 100W in the second, as well as 22.5W down the USB–A port. Mix things up, and the charger allocates power dynamically.…