Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i MacFormat

$3m THE COST OF iPHONE PARTS IN 1991 PRICES Think the iPhone 6s Plus is expensive? If you went back to 1991 and assembled the components in an iPhone, it would cost over $3m. Back then, 1GB of memory would set you back roughly $45,000; today, it’s worth about 55 cents. 14,000 TOTAL PEOPLE WORKING FOR APPLE IN 2007 Today Apple is a gigantic global company with over 100,000 employees, but before the launch of the first iPhone it was much more modest, with a ‘mere’ 14,000 workers. 2,700 THE NUMBER OF LISA COMPUTERS IN LANDFILL Apple’s Lisa computer was not a success. Launching at $9,995 ($23,700 today), it was discontinued in 1986, after just three years of availability. In fact, up to 2,700 of them are buried in a…

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! SAVE 45%! Turn to page 44 “WHAT DO YOU WANT IN THE MACBOOK PRO?” Paul says… Alan says… My is from Late 2013, and the bit that really lets it down is its ageing GPU. Yeah, Apple’s graphics processors look a bit long in the tooth! I doubt I’d notice a difference in CPU and storage. It’d be great is the 15-inch model could shed some of its 2kg weight. The Pro was slim for 2012, but last year’s MacBook, well… Thunderbolt 3’s USB-C ports might help shed a bit of bulk, too. I wonder if Thunderbolt 3 and Skylake would help with slimming down. Will we even get a 15-inch model with a discrete GPU? Pro models tend to get hotter. Don’t forget Apple’s terraced tech, either!…

Genius Tip! If you’re feeling clever, you can set up your own FTP server – online, or by using OS X Server – to store video from Netatmo Welcome without any extra fees 1On the cards In many ways, Netatmo’s Welcome is a typical security camera, but it has appealing extras, including both Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, and an 8GB memory card to store video without paying a fee for online storage. 2In motion Like any security camera, Welcome can detect movement in its field of vision and send a warning to your phone. Its app lets you adjust settings to decide on conditions that cause Welcome to record a video or send a warning. 3 Face time If you can get your kids to stand still long enough, you…

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference takes place in June, and we expect to see major updates for both iOS and OS X. However, an important addition to iOS already arrived in March with CareKit. It’s an extension of the health and fitness features available in Apple’s Health app, but it goes a lot deeper than just monitoring the distance you run, or the number of calories you consume each day. CareKit includes a number of software modules that allow people to monitor the symptoms of various illnesses, to keep track of their medication and treatment plans, and to share information with their GP or hospital. Developers can use those modules to make apps that focus on specific illnesses, such as diabetes or asthma, and that information can then be compiled in…

SMC Your Mac’s system management controller (SMC) is a key component that manages power usage, monitors temperature, and controls its fans. The SMC is also responsible for status indicators, the keyboard backlight and other core features. Occasionally the SMC goes rogue — one symptom is the fan kicking in so hard that it sounds like a jet getting ready for take off — and needs to be reset. Others are apps taking an age to launch and MacBooks not charging properly. Resetting it should be a last resort. Press these keys to reset the SMC: NVRAM If you’re a Mac user of a certain vintage you’ll remember PRAM (parameter RAM), and that resetting it was staple advice for a problematic Mac. On Intel Macs, PRAM has been replaced with NVRAM…

Most of us sit at our Macs and start working without giving much thought to the way we actually work. Too often, the result is a desktop cluttered with files and folders, windows all over the place, and a rather disorganised working environment. Thankfully, there’s a great deal you can do to improve things by using built-in features and third-party tools. First, make use of full-screen apps and Spaces. Many modern apps can operate in full-screen mode, introduced in Yosemite, whereby clicking the green button at the top-left corner of a window makes it take over the whole screen. You can swipe three fingers left or right on a trackpad, or two on a Magic Mouse, to easily move between apps, or swipe up with three fingers on a trackpad,…

Terminal. It’s a word to strike fear into many Mac users. Most of us think of it as being a complex and terrifying beast that we’re best keeping well away from. But nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, Terminal is just an app like any other. It does allow access to things deep inside OS X, which is perhaps where some of the fear comes from – the deeper we can go, the more likely we are to do something that causes serious problems. The other aspect of Terminal that causes trepidation in otherwise confident Mac users is that to use it you have to type special commands. But by learning those commands Terminal is tamed. You do plenty of genuinely useful stuff with Terminal, of course. It…

Be comprehensive If you plan to use Time Machine to back up your Mac, it’s worth taking a little time to plan your strategy. Firstly, Time Machine shouldn’t be your only backup – it’s good and rarely fails, but it would be foolish to rely on it alone. Supplement it either with regular cloning to a removable drive or by backing up to an online service like CrashPlan (code42.com) or BackBlaze (backblaze.com). Ideally, you would do all three. Pick a drive Choose your destination drive carefully. Apple recommends AirPort Time Capsule for Time Machine, but you can use any direct-attached storage, and there are lots of network-attached storage (NAS) drives that work too. If you want to use a NAS make sure Time Machine compatibility is in its specs. Network…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make sophisticated video animations using Keynote. YOU’LL NEED Keynote 6 The powerful Magic Move transition is Keynote’s pièce de résistance Keynote is a great tool for making presentations; clever, intuitive and full of nifty tricks. In fact, it’s too good to be used only for staid business presentations. Here, we’ll explore the app’s animation tools, which you can use for infographics and similar projects to get across your message. The trick to not making something too cheesy and distracting is to ignore practically all of the options available in Keynote’s list of animations. If you use ‘Fireworks’ or ‘Comet’ more than once in your life it’ll probably be too often! We’ll look at three different effects: drawing lines, creating magical…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to take control of a number of different projects or assignments that require compiling various elements. YOU’LL NEED An iPad, iOS 9 or higher, and Outline+ (£7.99). You can adapt Outline+ to fit just about any project you like Your iPad is the perfect device for creating, managing and sharing notes, and you’ll find that Outline+ (£7.99 from the App Store) offers a handy one-stop shop for all your digital notebook needs. It’s similar to Microsoft’s OneNote tool (and your notes can be synced to and from OneNote via OneDrive), which makes it incredibly flexible. You can adapt the app to just about any task you want, whether that’s project-managing your next work assignment, planning your next holiday itinerary, or simply…

Bluetooth’s broken on my iMac Q I’ve just replaced my old Mac mini with a brand new 27-inch iMac Late 2015 model, which is running OS X 10.11.4. Whenever I’ve started it up, Bluetooth is unavailable in System Preferences, which stops me using my new Magic Keyboard and Mouse, and I’m stuck with using my old USB peripherals. I’ve tried resetting the SMC and trashing the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file, but neither of these actions has helped. Apple Diagnostics reports the hardware is fine, and the only fix which does work – at least until I shut the iMac down – is to start up in safe mode. Is my new iMac a dud? A It may sound suspiciously like your iMac’s logic board is defective, particularly after all that you’ve tried.…

IN PRINT ISSUE 300 JUNE 2016 300 greatest ever Mac tips Discover HomeKit Get smart with privacy Create a personal cloud Revitalise an old MacBook Air ISSUE 299 MAY 2016 Put your Wi-Fi network to better use Do more with Photos Make your home smarter Rescue low-quality videos Build an iPad arcade cabinet ISSUE 298 APRIL 2016 Secrets of iCloud 40 ways Apple changed the world Extend your Mac’s desktop Work smarter in El Capitan Build an AirPlay receiver GET 3 ISSUES FOR £5! SUBSCRIBE TODAY! IN PRINT & ON iOS Our print and digital bundle gets you the real magazine and our brand-new digital edition for iPad and iPhone. myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/macformat ON YOUR MAC Read on the big screen, too! If you prefer to read MacFormat magazine on a Mac,…

MOVIE STAR TIPO STAR TIP Get started As a novice, start by choosing File > New Trailer to get a handy storyboard with placeholders for shots (landscapes, closeups, and so on). Drag an appropriate clip onto each one. Whether you’re new to video editing or you’ve been using a different app for it, prompted by memories of iMovie’s interface being clunky and its toolset being limited, it’s well worth taking a fresh look at the latest, more sophisticated incarnation of Apple’s video editing and sharing app. It has all the tools you need to import, organise, edit and share your footage as eye-catching and professionallooking projects, with bells and whistles such as music, animated transitions, and captions. Indeed, you can even turn your holiday clips into a slick, Hollywood-style trailer…

Your Mac is about to change. We report on all the major updates coming in OS X 10.12, unveiled at Apple’s WWDC event in June ALSO INSIDE… Which is the best home NAS drive? Control your home with cool iOS tricks iTunes 12.4: what’s new and how to use it The complete guide to pro iOS photography ISSUE 302 ON SALE 5 JULY 2016 DON’T MISS IT – SUBSCRIBE TODAY! IN PRINT & ON YOUR iPAD Our print and digital bundle gets you the paper magazine as well as our iPad edition myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/macformat ON YOUR MAC Read on the big screen: subscribe with Zinio at zinio.com/macformat Zinio subscriptions do not include a print copy of the magazine.…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com LETTER OF THE MONTH! CLOUD AUTOMATION I have followed your article in issue 299 on ‘Save Web Receipts To iCloud’ and successfully created the Automator workflow for the Print Plugin. This inspired me to create my own Automator workflows for a number of other activities, including those for Photos using actions from the Photos automation website as described in your article. However, I cannot get the Service workflows to work as intended in the Photos application. I can successfully execute workflows from the Script menu – for ‘Show Location In Maps’, for example – but the Service workflows do not appear in the contextual menu when a photo is selected and ‘right-click’ is performed. The Workflows are correctly located in…

[MOVIE] HAIL, CAESAR! £13.99 This comedy set at the end of the golden age of Hollywood is suitably star-studded, including the man who’ll play young Han Solo in 2018. [TV SHOW] 12 MONKEYS £16.99 It’s not quite as clever as the 1995 film, but the second season is off to a fine start by messing with characters in great time-travelling fashion. [APP] STORAGE ANALYZER 79p Get a graphical look at your Apple TV’s storage space, CPU and memory usage with this rather swish-looking app.…

For our latest subscription offer see page 44! Liam, Apple’s “pretty cool R&D project”, in the words of VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson, was front and centre at the company’s March event. Kicking off a product launch with an environmental initiative may seem odd for a technology firm, but not Apple. And it isn’t afraid to tout other aspects of its environmental efforts, either. Its 2016 Environmental Responsibility Report is a stat attack that the most ardent treehugger would be proud of. 93% of the electricity Apple facilities use worldwide is renewable (and it’s at 100% in 23 countries). In 2015, Apple had helped prevent 335,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. And by March 2016, it had announced 521 megawatts of solar…

1 Find your login items In System Preferences, click the Users & Groups icon. Select your account, then click the padlock (bottom left) and enter your password. Click the Login items tab. 2 Remove items Hold c and select any login items you don’t need or use, then click the – (minus) below to remove them. If you’re not sure you need an item, leave it alone. 3 Avoid typing a password Though you can set your Mac to log in automatically, that’s a security risk. Use your iPhone’s Touch ID sensor or its proximity to log in to your Mac by adding MacID (£2.99, macid.co).…

1Group and sort files Think of View > Arrange By as ‘Group By’ – picking an attribute groups items under relevant headings. Sort the items within groups in View Options ((command)+J). 2 Change Finder’s toolbar Pick View > Customize Toolbar and drag tools from the panel to the toolbar. Use Space to add a fixed-width gap; the Flexible Space adjusts with window size. 3 Streamline the view Memorising the shortcuts in the Go menu and for major features will enable you to hide the sidebar and the toolbar (look in the View menu) to free up space. 4 Set folder view options Open a folder, choose View > Show View Options, and pick settings for this folder only. Click Use as Defaults to apply to all folders when using the…

Reinstalling the operating system is a last resort, and in recent versions of OS X it’s very rarely necessary. However, there may be occasions when things go so badly wrong that you decide a complete reinstallation is your best option. A single backup is okay, but you should make more than one, and at least one should be a complete clone of your Mac in its current state. That way, you’ll capture all the preference files, app data and other settings you use. Once you’ve cloned your Mac (see opposite), you’re ready to start the process of reinstalling OS X. You’ll need to do what’s called a ‘clean installation’. That is, one that wipes your startup disk completely first. For this, you’ll need bootable installer for the system you want…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use AirPlay to stream audio from a single Mac app to multiple speakers. YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.9 or higher, an AirPlay receiver. Airfoil fixes AirPlay’s flaws by enabling you to beam audio from an individual app that isn’t iTunes One of the biggest benefits of Apple’s ecosystem is that the ability to stream music to speakers on your local network is baked in. AirPlay enables you to send your Mac’s audio output to an AirPlay-compatible device. This can be an Apple TV – whether the latest version (which starts at £129) or the £59 third-generation model; an AirPort Express router, which includes a 3.5mm mini-jack that can output an optical or analogue signal; or various third-party AirPort-compatible devices costing…

Apple ID passwords and email addresses Q A friend forgot the password for her Apple ID. She used to live in France, and when she initiated Apple’s Forgot Password procedure, instructions were sent to her old French email address. She can still access that, but not for much longer, so she now uses a Gmail address instead. Can she change her Apple ID’s registered email address so that, should she need a password reset in the future, she’ll still be able to receive the message? A She can change her registered email address, and she must do so as a matter of urgency, before her French one shuts down. Apple provides detailed instructions for changing an Apple ID’s email address at bit.ly/AppleIDaddy. Many Apple ID accounts are associated with an…

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. Capture clean voiceovers 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…

The slick animated titles provided by Apple will help to make your movie look more professional. Position the playhead on a suitable shot in the timeline and then click the Titles browser. If your project has no theme, you’ll have 48 different title styles to play with. Many titles are animated, so move the pointer over one’s thumbnail to preview it in the Viewer. When you see a title that suits your subject matter, doubleclick its thumbnail and a title clip will be added to the timeline. You can drag the purple bar to change the timing of the title’s appearance, or drag the end or start of the bar to trim its duration. To customise properties such as font and colour, click the Title Settings icon above the Viewer.…

£908 FROM Philips, philips.co.uk FEATURES 5120x2880-pixel resolution, 2x DisplayPort, USB, audio If you need a 5K display with accurate colour, this is the display to get – if it works with your Mac After an agonising wait, the new Philips 5K monitor is finally with us. This display has a massive 5120x2880 resolution, which equates to 14.7 megapixels. The result is more space for tool palettes, multiple documents side by side, or the ability to show 4K video plus editing tools on a single screen. In typical fashion Philips has named this the 275P4VYKEB, but we’ll call it the ‘5K display’. Physically, this is a well-designed screen. The display is substantial, unsurprisingly, and the stand allows tilt, swivel and height adjustments with more-or-less fingertip control. Philips calls it the ‘SmartErgoBase’, and…

Welcome to MacFormat’s Store Guide, the place to go to find out about all the Apple kit that matters – updated this issue to include the revamped 12-inch MacBook with speedier specs. We’ve chosen our top products from Apple’s product line-up, plus the best third-party kit that meets our quality standard. Whether you’re a recent convert or a seasoned Apple user, we highlight a model of each product that’s ideally suited to your needs. So, check our handy tables to see which Mac, iPad or iPhone is best for you. We’ve also highlighted the gold standard in audio, storage, cameras, and many other categories to complement your Mac or iOS device with the best accessories. Who’s it for? ENTRY LEVEL You’re just getting started in the world of Apple and…

For all its noteworthy design chops, the iPad Pro has one rather glaring omission: 3D Touch. Sure, the Apple Pencil is a superb drawing tool and helps you produce amazing artwork, but its pressure sensitivity isn’t used to replicate the functionality of the iPhone’s 3D Touch tech. Besides, we’d rather see those features in the form of 3D Touch on the larger screen, so that you don’t have to spend an additional £79 on Pencil to use them. Will 3D Touch make it into the next-gen iPad Pro? KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doesn’t believe so, citing production issues in Apple’s supply chain as the main obstacle. Apple may not be able to scale up the tech to iPad Pro screen sizes, and it may not be able to meet…

Sales of Apple laptops have fallen 40.4% since Q4 2015, twice the market rate of 19%. That puts Apple in sixth place in the laptop market with estimated sales of 2.53 million in Q1 2016, down from 3.4 million in the last quarter of 2015. Its market share now sits at 7.1%, which is a big drop from the 9.7% that it controlled in late 2015. While Apple remains well ahead of rivals Samsung and Toshiba, Lenovo swept to the top spot with 22.2% market share, slightly ahead of HP on 20.4%. TrendForce, which conducted the research, blamed the drop on Apple’s inactivity in the laptop market for its declining sales. While its PC rivals were offering consumer laptops equipped with Intel’s Skylake architecture, Apple didn’t bring any new MacBooks…

1 $233.7 billon Apple’s revenues in 2015. That’s about the GDP of Sri Lanka, and more than most of the world’s nations, in fact. 2 115,000 The number of people directly employed by Apple. If you were to include Apple’s supply chains and jobs created through its systems, such as third-party iOS developers, the number rises to 1.9 million in the US alone. 3 $ 53.4 billion How much Apple made as profit in 2015. That’s over $1bn per week. It made $10.5bn in its most recently reported quarter (Q1 2016), 22.8% down on that period of 2015! 4 $1,693.11 The profit Apple made every second in 2015. 5 231.1 million Apple sold more than 230 million iPhones in 2015. It’s sold 125.9 million in the first two quarters of…

Smarter than a robot butler, bots are the new answer to everything. Or maybe they’re not. First, they need to really understand the question Hey Siri: you’ve got competition. Dag Kittlaus, the Norwegian developer who created the voice-controlled assistant before selling it to Apple, has demonstrated a more advanced version, Viv. The name is supposed to refer to the Latin for ‘life’. To anyone in the UK, it sounds like a capable but stressed woman who works for the council at the desk next to Roz. Which, as a model for thinking machines, makes a lot more sense than ‘evil genius’. Viv would just be a curiosity except that ‘bots’, software agents that interpret users’ intentions and carry them out, are Silicon Valley’s new favourite buzzword, overtaking ‘3D printing’, ‘virtual…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! There are so many products now available in the home automation field, and many more on the way, that it’s hard to keep track of them all. In recent months we’ve seen everything from voice-controlled lighting systems to smart fridges that can tell you when you’re out of milk. But one thing that will appeal to everyone is the possibility of using affordable smart technology to improve their home’s security. Whether you live in student digs or a David Beckham megamansion, we all need to protect our belongings and our families, and the tech industry has responded with an almost bewildering selection of security products for the modern smart home. However, there are a few key security…

Explained Z-Wave Most security sensors run on batteries, but they save power by using Z-Wave tech. This is a low-power wireless system that requires less power, and is less prone to interference, than conventional Wi-Fi networks. A contact sensor is a more affordable way to detect intrusion that you can use in several rooms 1 Making Contact A contact sensor consists of two separate parts. One is attached to the door or window itself, while the other sensor sits right next to it on the door or window frame. 2 Separation anxiety As soon as the two parts are separated, indicating that the door or window has been opened, the sensor sends a signal to its control hub, which then sends a warning notification to your iPhone.…

1 Cocoon £299 cocoon.life We weren’t able to include the Cocoon in our security feature this issue, as it’s only just emerging from its own crowdfunding cover on IndieGogo. It’s not due to go into full-scale production until this summer, but if this unremarkable-looking gadget lives up to its claims it could be a real game changer for home security products. Developed by Leeds-based Cocoon Labs, the device looks like a fairly straightforward security camera. It ticks all the usual boxes with a high-definition 1080p camera for video, night-vision mode, motion detection, microphone and a roof-rattling 90dB siren. Of course, there’s an app for iOS and Android devices to keep you in touch with it when you’re away from home. Smart sounds There are plenty of other security cameras that…

Fear not if your Mac’s running slowly, as there’s plenty you can do to speed it up. Even if it’s running relatively well, there’s always room for a little optimisation. As with any improvement, start with the low-hanging fruit – the stuff that’s causing the biggest impediment to performance and is easiest to fix. Here, Activity Monitor is your friend. Open it from /Applications/Utilities (or enter its name in Spotlight) and click on the Memory and CPU tabs to find out which processes are hogging the most processor cycles and RAM. Perhaps some belong to a tool you no longer use, in which case quit it. You’d be surprised by how many CPU cycles an open, but hidden, Firefox tab can use. Close any apps you’re not using. These days…

Apple has built dozens of options into OS X that control things like the way the Finder displays files and folders, the Dock’s behaviour, and how animation works in features like Launchpad. However, it has hidden these settings from us mere mortals and made sure they can only be controlled using Terminal. Thankfully, enterprising developers have taken it upon themselves to put a friendly user interface on those options so you can control them at the click of a mouse button. TinkerTool is one such app that provides a battery of customisable preferences so you can make your Mac work the way you want it to. Nine sets of options are displayed along the top of TinkerTool’s window, along with a tenth option that enables you to undo any changes…

AirPort Time Capsule From £249 apple.com/uk If you need a Wi-Fi router and a drive for Time Machine, Time Capsule fits the bill. It’s not cheap but the router’s good and it’s easy to set up. Or, use an AirPort Extreme (£169) with a USB hard drive. Seagate Backup Plus Slim £70 amazon.co.uk At £70 for the 2TB version, this drive is excellent value. It’s small and light, and it comes with back-up software for the Mac. There’s also an app that allows you to backup from an iOS device. WD MyCloud Mirror From £239 amazon.co.uk This NAS drive has a built-in safety net in the form of two mirrored disks. Starting at 4TB, there’s loads of room for family backups, and it supports Time Machine.…

NEW IDEAS Your new-look guide to getting more from your Apple kit MAKE CREATIVE TEXT EFFECTS p52 Understand iOS gestures A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen. To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content. Swipe means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go. A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly. Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out. Touch and hold means lightly rest your finger on an item and wait for a reaction. Master Mac keyboard shortcuts When you see a shortcut like (command)++C, hold all but the last key,…

IT WILL TAKE An hour YOU WILL LEARN The basics of long exposures, and how to use Slow Shutter Cam. YOU’LL NEED iOS 7.0 or higher. Slow Shutter Cam. Used at night, this technique shows moving light sources in your picture as beautiful trails One of the vital things to understand for photographers is shutter speed. Simply put, the shutter is the bit in a camera that opens and closes to let light hit the sensor so a photograph can be taken. The longer the shutter is open, the brighter and blurrier an image. The problem is this: in iOS’s built-in Camera app, things are kept simple and the device sets a shutter speed automatically. This works out great most of the time, but in challenging environments, such as at…

EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems How do I back up a 3TB iTunes library? I keep my iTunes library on a 6TB WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo, which is set up as a mirrored RAID array that gives me 3TB of actual storage capacity, but the drive is running low on free space. I also have a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt drive with two 3TB disks set up as a RAID mirror. How should I use these to ensure my library is properly backed up? A To implement a solution, you need a strategy that meets your need to be able to restore the contents of a failed drive containing your whole library. If the library’s contents were bought from the iTunes Store, they could…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices MACBOOK p90 Manifesto – our ratings explained Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. You can trust us to give an honest assessment of a product’s worth. The prices quoted for products are correct at the time of writing and are the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery. A brilliant thing in all regards, and worth every penny Strongly recommended; any flaws are only minor concerns Worth considering, though there may be better options Fundamentally flawed; look at alternatives as a priority A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy! The MACFORMAT Awards Awarded to a five-star product we…

£288 FROM Samsung, samsung.com/uk REQUIRES OS X 10.7 or higher FEATURES USB-C port, USB-C to USB-A cable, AES 256-bit hardware encryption WEIGHT 51g The USB 3 solidstate drives we’ve tested lately all perform pretty similarly. Transfer rates on most peak around 430–440MB/sec, so we were unsurprised that Samsung’s new portable SSD followed suit with 437.4MB/sec large transfers. Its overall performance was also what we expected. The T3’s metal enclosure feels more suitably premium than the plastic body of its predecessor, the T1, though there’s no major practical difference between them. Capacities start at 250GB for only a little more than the T1 would have cost you before the new drive was announced, and the top capacity is now 2TB, which will cost you about £581 – about £100 more than building…

MONITOR ViewSonic VP2772 £569 viewsonic.com If you’re not fussed about 4K but still want exceptional image quality, this IPS display is truly superb. It offers 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB colour space, 10-bit colour and a 2560x1440-pixel resolution. It has HDMI 1.4, DVI and Mini DisplayPort connections, and four USB 3.0 ports for expansion. ULTRA HD MONITOR AOC U3277PQU £574 aoc.com The recent winner of our 4K displays group test, this 32-inch screen is a joy to work with, and a monitor of this size is the perfect setting for 4K to really come into its own. From stunning picture quality and top-notch contrast ratio to the reasonable price for such a wide display, it’s a winner all round. NEW! PORTABLE STORAGE Samsung T3 SSD From £95 samsung.com/uk This…