Innehållsförteckning för May 2021 från TechLife

I just want to say this up front – there is no link between this issue’s SuperGuide and the fact that I’ve just chosen to switch back to an iPhone after years of using an Android handset. Promise! That said, it’s certainly handy to learn what I can do with iCloud, as you can never have too many storage options in this crazy, data-driven world we live in. Speaking of which, I’ve been pondering something rather existential of late, and I’ve been asking myself: what is TechLife all about. What are we for? And I think the answer is right there on the cover – TechLife exists to help you Live Life Smarter. It’s a broad mission statement, but I think one that fits perfectly beside our sister title, APC.…

The second Android 12 Developer Preview – the Android 12 developer beta, as it were – is here, bringing smoother picture-in-picture transitions, additional privacy settings for notifications on lockscreen, and other perks. While this preview does, as the name suggests, have a ton of things that only concern app developers, some perks should excite every Android user, as laid out in an Android Developers Blog post. When swiping up-to-home while watching media, the transition to picture-in-picture mode happens while you’re making the gesture, for instance. Users also get expanded privacy and security controls for which notifications show up on lockscreen, and should expect better UX experiences on round-edged phones as devs get better tools to adapt their apps. Other perks are strictly behind-the-scenes, like letting developers make sure their apps…

Windows 10’s next feature update, due in the first half of 2021, will fix several long-running problems with File Explorer, including one which can negatively impact on system performance. For the uninitiated, File Explorer is simply the fancy name for the windows which you use to browse files and folders on the desktop, and some Windows 10 users have found that it’s mysteriously eating up a large amount of system resources, and slowing their PC down at times. Fortunately, Microsoft has implemented a fix for this issue with the latest preview build of the 21H1 update. In the release notes, the software giant says: “We fixed an issue with a heap leak that might cause explorer. exe [File Explorer] to consume high amounts of memory.” In other words, this is…

Typically, conservationists do this from low-flying planes in order to count and monitor African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), a method that takes many hours. With the new technique, which combines satellite imagery with artificial intelligence, up to 1,930 square miles can be surveyed on a single blue-sky day in minutes. Next, the researchers’ deep-learning computer algorithms analyse those images and pick out individual elephants. The results of this new proof-of-concept study showed the AI was as accurate as the human eye at spotting each elephant. “While this is a proof of concept, it’s ready to go,” said Isla Duporge, a zoologist at the University of Oxford, said. “And conservation organisations are already interested in using this to replace surveys using aircraft.” The new technique is a key part of ensuring…

Apart from a VR controlled robot and Panasonic’s new steampunk HDR VR-goggles, the entire ET segment is dominated again by AI. It’s for good reason when you consider that AI is helping researchers discover illegal logging roads in the Amazon, and Google built a large language model four times faster than its current AI algorithm. Sadly there’s more negative AI development than ever this month with the instatement of a puppet AI oversight authority in the US, racially discriminatory facial recognition tech developed by Huawei and a news article condenser that means Facebook users don’t have to read more than bullet points anymore. XR Quest 2 120Hz patch Oculus is going to see how it goes. Free | developer.oculus.com Facebook’s AR and VR VP Andrew Bosworth confirmed with PC Gamer…

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been upscaled to 8K with ray-tracing enabled by a YouTube channel that specialises in applying next-gen graphics and photorealistic visuals to modern games. The channel responsible for making Hyrule look so beautiful is Digital Dreams (tinyurl.com/ TLA115DD), who have also upscaled other games including Immortals Fenix Rising at 8K, and Star Wars Battlefront 2 with photo-realistic visuals.…

US$19.99, PlayStation, PC maquettegame.com Maquette, the first game from studio Grateful Decay, wants to put an emotional pulse into the staid, first-person puzzler. Classics of the genre – Myst, Riven, The Witness – are heavy on the deceptive, occasionally ingenious tests of perception and reasoning, but unless you are one of the rare souls who pores over D’ni lore, there’s little chance you felt any significant investment in those lonely shores, or the stranger that washed up on them. Maquette takes the opposite approach. The setting is still surreal, hallucinogenic, and very Myst-y, but it cloaks all of its strangeness in a very ordinary narrative about two artists in San Francisco who fell in and out of love. There are no shocking twists or aching ambiguities or hair-raising stakes. No, this…

US$199, myteracube.com A phone that looks as boring as the Teracube 2e has no right to be this interesting. This US$199 phone is sold on the idea that you can use it for four years or more, not just a couple. It comes with a four-year warranty and has a replaceable battery just like phones from the old days (and the similarly positioned Fairphone range). You get an unusually tough case in the box too. And while the Teracube 2e’s warranty doesn’t cover you for cracked screens, there is a reasonable US$59 cost for such repairs. There’s a question mark over whether Teracube will actually exist in several years’ time to honor the warranty and provide the “3 years of Android and security updates” it promises. But that is always…

$2,999, store.steampowered.com Valve has played a huge and important part in pushing virtual reality forwards over the years with its tracking system and SteamVR platform. But it didn’t launch its own VR headset until 2019, the Valve Index. Even today, nearly two years after it launched, the Valve Index is one of the best virtual reality headsets money can buy. It has an ultra-crisp display that runs fairly well even with older GPUs, a wide field of view, a high refresh rate and Valve’s ‘knuckle’ controllers, which can track the movement of each and everyone one of your fingers. It’s easy to write off the Valve Index as another nondescript VR headset in the same vein as any Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset – but the devil’s all in…

$329, www.razer.com The Razer Kiyo Pro is the latest product targeted towards streamers and content creators, with a fresh injection of modern technology that hasn’t been seen in the high-end webcam market for some time. Razer has already placed itself firmly within the webcam market with the Kiyo Pro’s older brother, the original Razer Kiyo, that featured an inbuilt ring light. The original Kiyo webcam has been a fixed product on our list of the best webcams since release thanks to its sharp video and innovative design. The latest offering from Razer promises that it’s perfect for streamers and professionals alike, with ultra-sensitive light sensors for low light conditions, HDR capability and incredibly smooth 60FPS recording capabilities. Many of the popular choices for webcams are significantly older than you’d expect…

$4,999, www.nordictrackfitness.com.au The iFit NordicTrack S22i Studio Cycle is an impressive exercise bike that’ll give you a full-body workout, while also supporting your mental health. The bike is delivered in one piece – all you need to do is to set up your iFit account on the 21in screen that’s going to be your trusted companion, then make sure that the pedals are adjusted accordingly and the seat is at a manageable height. Creating an account is an easy affair, and can be done through the iFit website or app (available for iPhone or Android). Once it’s downloaded, you can validate your membership through the straightforward steps provided, and you only need to log in through the bike once it’s connected to Wi-Fi. The bike uses Google’s Android operating system,…

Free, www.brave.com We’re big fans of Firefox here at TLA Towers. In a world dominated by Chrome and Safari, it can more than hold its own while at the same time respect privacy and freedom. Combined with its containers (for isolating groups of websites) and uBlock origin, it makes the web much more palatable. But Firefox isn’t the only fruit, and the Chromium-based Brave browser has over its five-year lifespan attracted a considerable following. Brave is licenced under the permissive Mozilla Public License (MPL). Brave Software is open source and we’re writing about the company because it has a Linux build, and a fine one at that. Installation is a simple matter of adding a repo (options are available for Debian derivatives, Fedora and openSUSE) or, if you want to…

1 TAILS INSTALLATION ASSISTANT Visit the main page for the Tails installer at https://tails. boum.org/install/index.en.html. Click on ‘Let’s start the journey’ to continue. Make sure you have both a blank DVD and a USB stick (ideally at least 8GB but 4GB will do at a pinch) inserted into your computer. 2 CHOOSE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM For the purposes of this guide, we’re assuming you’re using a Debian/Ubuntu based system, but if you’re using another flavour of Linux feel free to click and follow the instructions there. Click ‘Let’s go” at the bottom of the next page to proceed to the next step. 3 VERIFY AND INSTALL TAILS Use your favourite Bittorrent client to do this by clicking ‘Download Torrent file’. You may verify the download at this stage if you…

“We’ll show you how to record, import and edit speech and music in Audacity. The app looks a bit scary but it’s really very easy to use.” SKILL LEVEL Tricky in parts SUITABLE FOR… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Jargon buster! GAIN Gain enables you to increase or decrease the power of an audio signal to make it louder or quieter. PAN Most of us hear with two ears. Panning adjusts how much of the sound goes to each ear, giving the impression that it’s nearer one side than the other. AMBIENT NOISE Ambient noise is the noise occurring in the background: the hum of lights, the sound of cars or trains going past and anything else you can hear in a recording. Best tip! If your podcast is…

The forecast comes from the Met Office, the national meteorological service for the UK, which used data collected at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Even though there was a slight decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current La Niña event – a weather pattern in the Pacific that usually lowers global carbon emissions – it wasn’t enough to offset previous increases. “Since CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time, each year’s emissions add to those from previous years and cause the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to keep increasing,” said Richard Betts, head of the climate impacts group at the Met Office. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere follows predictable seasonal variations. Levels peak in May…

Presuming we’re leaving out ear buds and on-ear headphones here, both for reasons of space and because each category is a subjective minefield, GaGu will limit this selection to only over-ear kit. There are a couple of key kinds of cans, both of which tend to have a very different feel: closed-backed and open-backed. The former is a completely sealed enclosure. Sound goes one way, towards your ears. This means the majority of outside noise can’t make it in to ruin your tunes, and is the logical reason that you’ll only find noise cancelling cleverness in closed-back cans. They’re close, warm, and keep the real world away – they’re core to the patented Guru family-avoidance technique. GaGu’s top pick doesn’t stray far from the meta, as he’ll suggest the Sony…

$69, Switch, www.nintendo.com In true Bravely fashion, we open with four unlikely heroes brought together by equally unlikely circumstances that compel them to gather four elemental crystals and save the world. It’s a classic, if well-tread setup, but Bravely Default 2 delivers it with a sense of winking self-awareness that makes all the difference. This is not a game about heroes of light being awesome. It’s a startlingly grim story about corruption, obsession, and sacrifice, and it’s elevated by the diversity of societies within it and the strength of its main cast. The core party is introduced very quickly: Seth (or whatever you name him), a former sailor who makes a fresh start after his past is severed; Gloria, the princess and sole survivor of the lost kingdom of Musa;…

Skull Girls MOBILE FIGHTING DONE RIGHT. Free (Requires Signup, Android Only) As phone power increases, so does the ability for them to replicate more mainstream console experiences. Fighting games have always been difficult, namely due to the complex control systems and reliance on split second input. Skull Girls is an interesting take on the genre, fusing it with traditional RPG/Hero games that allow for skill paths and upgrades. As a package, Skull Girls is slick – there is an incredibly detailed and retro-cartoonesque animation system with dozens of characters, move sets and combos. The original switch version of the game is the basis for this port, and it shows. The sound and music are wonderful, and there are plenty of daily events, various modes and coop/ team battles to play…

$999, www.netgear.com We’re looking at one of Netgear’s most expensive - if not the most expensive - routers. No, it is not a souped up, top of the range gaming router nor a ridiculously complex, mindboggingly plain enterprise router. Instead, it is a puck-sized, handheld portable router (that doubles as a mobile hotspot) called the Nighthawk MR5200 (or M5 depending how you search for it), a device that promises wireless freedom infused with Wi-Fi 6 and a big dollop of 5G goodness. Design The MR5200 is similar in shape and size to its predecessor, the Nighthawk M1 (AKA MR1100). It is a square device with rounded corners, with a fair amount of glossy plastic on top, ridged sides and a soft rubber plate on the bottom that can be removed.…

$714, onyxboox.com If you’re using way too much paper and soaking up too much blue light at night, then the Onyx Boox Note Air offers the ideal solution. Despite the concept of the ‘paperless office’ being around for decades, a surge in home-working and homeschooling has resulted in a spike in sales of printers. However, you won’t need a printer if you can afford the Onyx Boox Note Air. While this 10.3-inch E Ink tablet is expensive, it’s a unique product that in some ways goes beyond LCD tablets like the iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. We already know that E Ink is a wonder of modern electronics, but it hasn’t been as revolutionary as maybe it should have beyond its use in the Kindle e-reader. In…

$349, www.eposaudio.com The EPOS GTW 270 Hybrid Earbuds demonstrate EPOS tentatively exploring new ground with audio hardware. It was probably inevitable that we’d see a gaming brand reach out and test the waters with earbuds, especially after Apple launched the dinky little wireless accessories into the mainstream in 2016. Leveraging the research and development that partner brand Sennheiser has been tinkering with over the years, the EPOS GTW 270 Hybrid wireless gaming earbuds are a surprisingly decent first attempt at luring gamers away from the now-standard over-the-head design that’s become the industry norm. There are absolutely no complaints from us when it comes to design. The POS GTW 270 Hybrid wireless gaming earbuds are solidly built, expensive-feeling products through-and-through. From the second you unbox the anodised aluminum charging case that…

$499, www.projectaudio.com.au The Pro-Ject T1 is classic Pro-Ject design with clean lines and no frills. The turntable houses a built-in belt drive motor and spindle, which should help with isolating some vibration from the motor. There is no speed selection on the T1, so switching from 33 ⅓ rpm to 45 RPM will require removing the platter and moving the belt to the appropriate pulley on the motor. This is a bit cumbersome, especially when lower-priced turntables like the Fluance RT81 include a speed selection/power knob. To start the turntable, there is a switch on the bottom left. The switch itself is big and easy to use, but requires a bit more force than expected for such a light turntable. The platter is made from medium density fiberboard and a…

GRAN TURISMO  Though Gran Turismo Gran Turismo felt like a 2 window would take into things the future to another . To modern one level of in eyes the terms , pioneers it might of its graphics seem in the stupid chase , to talk about how realistic it looked, but it’s arguably for photorealistic graphics. FINAL FANTACY VII The some incredible of its best detail -looking of pre and -rendered most iconic backgrounds games. We used could on of have the Midgar PlayStation also loom opted largest gave for the us Resident when it comes Evil series to our , but collective the dark memory and grimy of the environments era. METAL GEAR SOLID  With Solid great set a new cinematics high bar and for clever production use of…

The term ‘creative photography’ is used so often now that it’s not only a cliché, but it’s become hard to know what creative actually is or means. Some photographers might call a blurred ‘abstract’ shot creative, while others might simply see it as a badly exposed image. Before we delve into any techniques, then, let’s decide what a creative image is. We’d define it as a shot that intentionally uses or adds extra elements – such as light trails, layered exposures or editing effects – to change the image from what was originally shown in the scene. We see it as adapting or enhancing reality in a scene, if you like. Sometimes feeling or being creative is anything but straightforward. It’s not a state that we can will ourselves into,…

REQUIRES macOS 11 YOU WILL LEARN How to use the new features in Big Sur Messages IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes The Messages app in Big Sur is a major improvement on the version in Catalina. It’s now on a par with most of its rival messaging apps and has features that bring it much more into line with Messages on the iPhone and iPad. Among those useful new features are the ability to pin up to nine messages to the top of the messages list and the option to reply directly to a message in a group conversation, thus creating a separate thread. You can now also create a custom image for group conversations and “mention” others by typing their name. Messages now allows you to configure notifications so…

Photographers have the power to control time by using both the settings on their camera and additional kit such as filters. By slowing down time and artificially extending the exposure, you can introduce movement into frames and transform everyday scenes into abstract art. A great example of this technique is by harnessing the flow of a stream to fill the frame with a milky blur, which brings artistic merit to the picture and forces the viewer to stop and reassess the picture. Perhaps the best thing about trying this project is that you really don’t need that much equipment. Most streams benefit from the cover of a tree canopy. This results in lower light levels, making it easier to slow the shutter speed down without the use of an ND…

Sitting alongside Clarity in the Basic Panel, the Texture slider is another useful tool for enhancing details. Each slider works in slightly different ways. Texture has a stronger effect on fine details in an image – sometimes called high-frequency detail. Clarity, on the other hand, works more on lower-frequency details. Applying negative Texture is a very effective way to soften skin when the effect is painted in with the Adjustment Brush: it results in a general smoothing of tones and colours, while retaining fine detail in the skin pores.…

Leela Quantum Jacket Proprietary quantum energy jacket to recharge your chakra and block 5G. US$219 | kck.st/3bDWtUl TechLife loves the 5G, but we also love the relentless pursuit of naive cynicism that leads people to continue to believe that short bandwidth radio waves are really bad for us in small doses. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to show you glorious products like the Leela Quantum Jacket. This “quantum energy-charged 99.9 purity [sic] silver lining that stops 99% of EMF from impacting the body [apparently] blocks all negative frequencies around the upper body and harmonises them with the rest of the body.” Smell inspector: E-Nose This nosy tech can quantify orange blossom. €289 | smell-inspector.com If you saw Macaulie Caulkin’s Richie Rich in the 90s then this one is likely to…

From $899, www.apple.com The iPad Air 4 (2020) doesn’t bring anything revolutionary to Apple’s tablet range, but a lot of the features that were previously exclusive to the iPad Pro have trickled down to this far more affordable, and therefore more attractive, device, While this is a tablet that’s unlikely to tempt power-hungry users away from the iPad Pro, it brings a lot of what makes that series of tablets great to a cheaper device, albeit one that isn’t as cheap as the standard iPad. Finally, the iPad Air 4 (2020) is the middle choice between both extremes of Apple’s tablet lineup. Design The design of the iPad Air has a lot in common with the iPad Pro range. The home button has been dropped in favor of an all-screen…

In the 1950s, when amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland first fixed his telescope lens on a distant galaxy in Virgo, he saw an eerie spiral shrouded in dust. Copeland, a poet fond of writing about the cosmos, dubbed the spiral the ‘Lost Galaxy’, a name that stuck. Scientists know this galaxy as NGC 4535, one of the largest of the 2,000 or so galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, located about 50 million light years from Earth. When recently viewed through Hubble, the haze that clouded Copeland’s Lost Galaxy vanished to reveal a vibrant sea of stars not so different from the Milky Way. Like our home galaxy, the Lost Galaxy is a barred spiral: a vast swirl of stars with a distinct bar structure at its centre. The colours of…

The next round of free PlayStation Play at Home titles are on the way, including your chance to nab Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition. Before Aloy joins the program this month, you’ll be able to claim nine free games. The selection represents indie favorites from across PS4 and PSVR, and they’re all live now. Here are the regular PS4 games, all of which are playable on PS5 as well through backwards compatibility: Abzû, Enter the Gungeon, Rez Infinite, Subnautica, The Witness. And here are the free PSVR titles, which are also playable on PS4 and PS5 - though you will, of course, need a PSVR headset. Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Moss, Thumper, Paper Beast. This slate of games will be available to claim through April 22, and they’ll overlap just…

US$39.99, PC, www.strongholdwarlords.com I tend to think that the series’ decades-long endurance despite often lukewarm player and critical reception speaks to an enduring hope that it one day goes back to that simple principle of building and protecting your castle against relentless waves of attackers – that maybe the next Stronghold will finally be the one to both take us back and move us forward. Stronghold: Warlords isn’t that game. In fact, it’s the most sprawling entry in the series yet – largely abandoning the principle of building a feudal gauntlet for waves of enemies in favour of a more traditional RTS setup featuring larger maps and symmetrically placed enemy bases. In other words, it’s more Age of Empires than Stronghold, but without the technological progression, or scouting, or distinct…

$99, store.google.com Google’s Chromecast with Google TV (2020) is a revelation – it fixes something that wasn’t broken, and improves a nearly perfect technology in a tangible way. And it’s all thanks to the remote and Google’s ‘new’ software, Google TV. Combined, the two offer a massive uptick in usability over previous Chromecasts that required you to use your phone or tablet to Cast content rather than giving you an on-screen interface to interact with. But now that Google has added a dedicated TV interface that you control with a remote, you have instant access to most of the major streaming services, including Disney Plus, HBO Max and even the streaming app of its biggest competitor, Amazon Prime Video. On top of that, there are a number of apps that…

$399, www.amazon.com.au The latest Amazon Echo Show 10 smart display has finally arrived, some four months after it was first announced at the Amazon 2020 event. Unlike any other Amazon smart display it can follow you around the room when you move so that the screen and camera are always within your gaze, whether you’re following a recipe, making a video call or watching Netflix. The Echo Show 10’s 13MP camera pans with the screen, and also zooms automatically when you’re on a video call, making sure you’re front and center of the picture at all times. The camera can also be used for home security, with its live feed available through the Alexa app any time you want to check in on your abode. The Amazon Echo Show 10…

$2,099, www.dji.com The DJI FPV is an intriguing new breed of drone. FPV (or First-Person View) drones are fast, fun and offer the most immersive flying experience possible, thanks to the inclusion of video goggles that give you a bird’s-eye view from the sky. Thanks to DJI, anyone with a fair amount of pocket money to spend can now experience the exciting world of FPV drones with the DJI FPV. It’s a huge amount of fun to fly, but how long will the novelty last? And is it as compelling as other drones like the DJI Mavic series? While the DJI FPV comes pretty close to bringing the user-friendliness of the Mavic series to a new category of flying machine, it doesn’t quite match their polish, convenience or value for…

$259, www.saucony.com.au The Endorphin Speed is a motion control shoe with a highly cushioned sole unit, and a nylon plate for motion control. This is a little less stiff than carbon, but still delivers a fast, springy ride that’s a lot of fun once you’re used to it. It’s super light (220g for men) thanks to Saucony’s PWRRUN PB cushioning, which has a popcorn-like appearance, but is surprisingly tough (as we discovered in our runs). The laces are flat, which will suit you well if you like a secure fit, but bear in mind that there’s very little padding on the tongue, so you may need to allow a little more give than usual. The upper is also very thin, but again proved surprisingly robust. The Endorphin Speed is available…

$849, www.insta360.com Your first reaction to the Insta360 One R 1-inch Edition may be the same as ours: wow, that’s a big lens. However, it’s the lens protector that makes it appear huge. This can be unscrewed, revealing the lens glass underneath, which isn’t much bigger than the Insta360 One R’s 360-degree mod. Why so big? The protective glass needs to extend beyond the lens itself thanks to its wide angle field of view, and the gap between lens glass and lens protector. And Insta360 probably wants it to look very serious and professional, too. Insta360’s stabilisation is called FlowState and is the company’s equivalent of GoPro’s HyperSmooth. It’s great, as we found in the Insta360 One R 4K and Insta360 Go. Use the near-native ultra-wide field of view and…

The idea of new games emulating the style of titles from bygone eras is far from rare in the modern gaming landscape. Pixel-art platformers from Fez to Shovel Knight, SNES-inspired Metroidvanias like Axiom Verge and Owlboy, and many more besides, have established the indie-driven revival of the 16-bit era as a mainstream aesthetic that sits happily alongside the 3D photorealism that tends to be favoured by the big studios. We know it is possible for styles associated with the past to make a triumphant return. Why is it, then, that the iconic polygonal style associated with the original PlayStation hasn’t yet enjoyed a similar moment? The revival of the low-fi 3D aesthetic associated with that console has been far more low-key. Rather than gracing Game of the Year lists and…

HAUNTED PSI DEMO DISC 2020 Collecting work from a host of developers, this fake PlayStation demo disc features the likes of Heartworm (which looks like a cross between Tomb Raider and Silent Hill), Dead Heat (where zombies live alongside humans) and Dread Delusion (a fantasy horror RPG), all looking like they come straight from the Nineties. NIGHT OF THE CONSUMERS Part comedy, part horror, Night Of The Consumers sees you working in a supermarket desperately trying to stock the shelves while dealing with near psychopathic customers who refuse to leave you alone. Seeing those weirdly stretched low-texture faces hurtling towards you is horrifying. CONCLUSE With a story and setting reminiscent of Silent Hill, Concluse similarly goes about constructing an oppressive sense of dread. Its low-res graphics aim to make it…

Update Windows Media In the February issue story on virtual machines, it mentioned that we can get images for old Windows boot disks at www.allbootdisks. com – do these images contain the original Windows version, or do they include all the updates to these older versions that were supplied before MSFT support ended? It wasn’t clear in the article. Phil West TechLife responds: These boot disk images aren’t suitable for installing Windows – they basically provide boot and repair functions only. If you read the article again, you’ll see that Neil has directed you to the website to obtain a boot floppy disk image for Windows 95, because the Windows 95 CD-ROM itself wasn’t bootable, and requires this to run. When it comes to updating older machines, you’ll find that…

REQUIRES Clips 3.0 YOU WILL LEARN How to use Clips 3.0 to make shareable videos IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes Clips 3.0 is the latest version of Apple’s video editing tool for social media. If you love posting Instagram stories, or uploading video clips to TikTok, SnapChat or Twitter, it’s designed for you. And if you haven’t yet given it a try, now is the perfect time. Clips 3.0 is free to download and great fun, and if you follow our guide here you’ll be posting videos in no time. The most significant new feature of Clips 3.0 is that it now enables you to create videos in landscape mode on iPad and vertical mode on iPhone, instead of just square. You will find that Clips defaults to 16:9 vertical…

While you wait for Google’s Stadia and Microsoft’s Project xCloud to become viable and available in Australia, did you know it’s already possible to stream games you own to devices around your house, including mobiles and TV screens? You can play your Xbox or Playstation games on your PC, for example; or beam your PC games from your study to your loungeroom TV over your home network; or play your PC games on an Android phone. You don’t actually need much to make this happen – a wired home network helps but is not strictly necessary, and the rest is really just software and possibly controllers. We’re not going to look at every permutation and device here (there are a lot), but we thought we’d walk through some of the…

There are lots of tools that can help your images pop out of the screen or from a print, but few have as instant an effect as Clarity. Available in Camera Raw and Lightroom, Clarity works by increasing the contrast in midtones, the range of tones that sit either side of the middle grey point in an image. By increasing midtone contrast, the brighter parts of the midtone range become brighter, and the darker parts go even darker. Understanding how it works isn’t all that important. All you need do is open an image and experiment with Clarity to get a feel for the amazing effect it has on details. Above, for instance, a bold increase in Clarity boosts the contrast around the dog’s hairs, making each wet strand stand…