Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2016 i MacFormat

ioLight A high-quality microscope for your iPhone The ioLight is a device that claims to solve a problem you hadn’t even thought of. High-end laboratory microscopes cost upwards of £3,000 and are fiddly to use, while cheap options simply aren’t good enough for the pros, so ioLight claims to be the mid-range solution that promises the best of both worlds. Okay, it’s not for everyone, but it’s great for people who need a portable microscope for fieldwork or teaching. It displays the resultant images on your iPad, so you can view them in even greater detail and back them up to iCloud for safekeeping. £840 includes ioLight microscope website iolight.co.uk works with iPads running iOS 8.1 or higher…

CLASSIC APPLE FACTS $10.9bn VALUE OF ALL 2015 APPLE PAY TRANSACTIONS The analysts might be claiming that Apple Pay is on the rocks, but $10.9 billion sounds like a lot to us! It’s the total value of all Apple Pay transactions carried out in 2015; we’d expect it to go from strength to strength hereafter. $6.56 THE PRICE OF AN APPLE SHARE IN 2003 Today an Apple share will set you back about $100, but it wasn’t always so pricey. After the slump of the ’90s and the devastation of the dotcom bubble, it hit this low in April 2003. $782m APPLE’S TOTAL R&D EXPENDITURE IN 2007 A decade ago, Apple spent less than $1 billion on research and development (although that’s still a princely sum). These days it spends…

1 60GB If you reckon your MacBook could do with more storage, it could be worse. The original base model only had a 60GB, 5,400rpm hard drive. 2 30% The 2015 MacBook’s display uses 30% less energy than previous MacBook screens. 3 220PPi The first MacBook Pro with Retina display (the Mid 2012 model) had a resolution of 2880x1800 pixels, twice as many each way as its non-Retina equivalent. 4 2010 First made standard in the 2010 MacBook Air, flash storage is now used in all new MacBooks. Like today, the 13-inch model started at 128GB, but the 11-inch had 64GB! 5 17% The 12-inch MacBook’s keyboard, which debuted a new ‘butterfly’ mechanism, features keys that are 17% larger than those on other MacBook models. NEXT ISSUE With Apple’s wearable…

APPLE IN QUOTES KEN SEGALL kensegall.com “There is serious work to be done in rebuilding the perception of simplicity.” Apple must make its products less confusing, says Steve Jobs’ former ad agency chief ELON MUSK tesla.com “I think they’ll probably make a good car and probably be successful.” Tesla chief says Apple would do well in the electric car industry… ANDREW UERKWITZ opco.com “My big worry is do they actually have the experience to enter that market?” …but Oppenheimer analyst Uerkwitz isn’t so sure TIM BAJARIN creativestrategies.com “[Apple] will create the gold standard for a smartphone-based VR headset” Apple will apply its usual formula to dominate VR, says the famed tech commentator “ WHAT WAS YOUR WWDC 2016 HIGHLIGHT?” Alex says… Christian says… iOS 10 has been given a major…

Sengled Pulse Flex £100 sengled.com For even more smart home advice subscribe today! See page 42 1 The original Pulse was a bit of a head-scratcher – a bulky LED light bulb controlled by an iPhone app over Bluetooth and with a built-in speaker. And, to be honest, the speaker wasn’t all that great either. Undeterred, Sengled has refined the idea with this latest addition to the Pulse range. Available with either silver or gold casing, the Flex uses a power-efficient LED bulb that’s rated at 470 lumens. That’s roughly equivalent to an old 50W light bulb, so it should be bright enough for use in most rooms around your home. You can use it out in the garden too, as Sengled says the Flex has an IP43 water-resistance rating…

A pple added Continuity to the Mac and iOS two years ago. It’s a set of features rather than a single one, revolving around the theme of reducing the friction you feel as you switch from one device to another. It‘s already easy to switch to your iPhone to finish writing something on the go, take phone calls on your iPad, or send text messages from your Mac. In macOS Sierra and iOS 10, a few new tricks have been added to Continuity’s repertoire. Jargon buster Continuity features make use of Bluetooth to discover all of your devices that are nearby and signed in to your iCloud account; some use a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection to transfer things between devices without them having to be connected to a network. Auto Unlock…

The Messages app is getting a huge boost in iOS 10, turning it into a truly modern chat app. Here we highlight all the great additions, but the key thing to know is that the app is getting much more fun and interactive. Conversations shown as simple, coloured speech bubbles decorated with emoji will be a thing of the past. Sadly, at the time of writing, Messages for macOS is only able to view these new features, not create them – though that may well change by Sierra’s release. Interaction You can now ‘Like’ a message with a little ‘thumbs up’ icon (or pick from a few others, including a heart) to acknowledge it without typing. You can also send messages that are obfuscated with a blur effect, which the…

One big feature we wanted to see in iOS 10 is a more useful Lock screen, and that’s exactly what we’re getting. The big news is that you’ll be able to 3D Touch notifications to access much richer instant options for them – so you can press on one from Messages to see the larger conversation and reply, or press on an event invitation to see your calendar for the proposed day and accept or decline, all without unlocking your phone or opening the full version of the notifying app. Having this extra information and quick options to hand can really help you get meaningful things done fast. These capabilities only work with 3D Touch devices in the developer beta, but they’ll come to other devices too. Apple’s changing a…

EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems Help, my Mac won’t wake up properly! Q My 21.5-inch iMac 21.5 (Late 2012) running OS X 10.11.4 has started freezing when I try to wake it from sleep. On entering the start of my password, that repeats until I force the Mac to shut down. The Console app’s logs have several entries complaining of problems with com. taoeffect.ispy.kext. Is that responsible? by BOB ASPINALL A That kernel extension may well be to blame. It’s an old part of Espionage 2, probably migrated from a previous Mac. Ensure you have no more encrypted files, as removing this will prevent their decryption. In Finder, hold option and choose Go > Library, then remove files with Espionage or iSpy in their…

Q I’ve been using Safari on my old PowerPC iMac running OS X 10.4.11 for many years, with few problems. Just recently it has started refusing to open several secure websites using the HTTPS protocol, which always worked in the past. Why is this, and how can I fix it? by MARK HOH ENADEL A To connect to an HTTPS site, your Mac uses Transport Layer Security (TLS, which was preceded by the Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL). This requires a complex sequence of negotiation, conducted according to standard protocols. Older standards supported by your version of OS X and Safari are no longer considered secure, and sites are progressively stopping their support for them. Instead your browser must now negotiate using more recent protocols, but it isn’t equipped to…

£849 (128GB); £999 (256GB) FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor, Intel HD 6000 graphics, 8GB RAM Christian says… It’s good to see Apple finally turn its attention to the MacBook Air’s memory – 4GB just isn’t enough in my eyes. But without an upgrade to the non-Retina display, the Air range is looking increasingly outdated. We’d love to see Apple give the Air the display it deserves and help keep it relevant. We’ve been saying for a while that we think the MacBook Air’s clock is ticking, and Apple’s tiny update to the line this year hasn’t exactly changed our minds. While the super-thin MacBook got faster, new-generation Intel processors, the 13-inch MacBook Air got… some more memory. And that’s it. Still, that’s better than the 11-inch…

£157 FROM Zhiyun, zhiyun-tech.com FEATURES Three-axis gimbal camera mount with counterweight and electronic gyroscope The Smooth-C’s built-in gimbal keeps your iPhone camera stable no matter how your hand moves around T hough the iPhone is capable of taking extremely high quality video, that doesn’t mean everything you record with it will look beautiful. Even if you know how to compose and capture light well in a shot, if you’re holding your iPhone in your hands, you’re likely to produce slightly shaky and jerky footage. The iPhone stabilises video as best it can (and the optical image stabiliser in the iPhone 6s Plus works with video, which helps a lot), but you’ll still never get it looking really professional. That’s where the Smooth-C comes into play. This device is an iPhone…

A powerful and flexible solution where you can provide the disks From £260 FROM Netgear, netgear.co.uk FEATURES 2 drive bays, 2x Gigabit Ethernet, 3x USB 3.0 Ease of use This drive can be bought with two 2TB or 3TB disks, or empty for your own (up to 12TB per bay). Beware the caddy, which needs to be pushed in firmly. Browser-based setup is straightforward, but not as easy as the EX2 Ultra. Connectivity You get twin Gigabit Ethernet ports with support for link aggregation, but make sure your switch supports the 802.3ad protocol (ours didn’t). There are three USB 3.0 ports (one on the front) and a legacy eSATA port, too. Features There’s support forApple Filing Protocol (AFP) and Time Machine (with individual user quotas), cloud access and a repository…

It’s not entirely fair to directly compare the performance of all six drives, because they connect using a variety of interfaces, but we can pick out clear winners in each category. It’s unsurprising that the fastest drives are the Thunderbolt models. Thanks to a combo of Thunderbolt 2 and their RAID 0 setup, the G-Tech and LaCie drives leave the competition far behind. Their transfer rates were much faster, working at over 200MB/sec for standard read/write times, and 330MB/sec (G-Tech) and 400MB/sec (LaCie) for larger files. A strange observation: random read/write times were on par with the other drives tested, while both Thunderbolt 2 drives performed almost as well (and better in some tests) when connected via the supposedly slower USB 3.0 port – something we’ve seen in portable, dual-interface…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! RECIPE FOR A GOOD PI Your AirPrint receiver article (MF300) was really interesting, and it’s exactly what I need to get my excellent but rather old Canon MP610 working wirelessly. There are Windows and Mac drivers available, but it isn’t listed on the openprinting.org/printers site. Does this mean it can’t be used with the Raspberry Pi device? Assuming it can, I have a few questions. I have a Microsoft cordless keyboard and mouse that use a single USB port: will they be compatible for setting up the Raspberry Pi? It’s not quite clear to me which commands are input to the Raspberry Pi through the attached keyboard, and which are input to my MacBook. Are all the sudo commands on page 67 input on the Pi?…

For our latest subscription offer see page 42! Business Insider recently shed light on what it’s like to work in an Apple Store. It didn’t look like the best job in the world, but it certainly has its perks. But how does Apple stack up when it comes to taking care of the employees further down its supply chain? Is it pulling its weight in protecting their rights? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. In its Supplier Responsibility 2015 Progress Report, Apple says it mandates a 60-hour maximum working week for workers in its supply chain, and that 92% of the 1.1 million workers it tracked did not exceed that level. It also claimed that the average number of hours worked per week was 49, and that 94% of all…

Genius Tip! The Health Mate app can also work with your iPhone’s accelerometer, allowing it to act as a basic fitness tracker. You could also use one of Withing’s own fitness trackers and combine all your data in one app. 1 Weight watchers When you stand on the scales, the display shows your weight, then other readings such as fat, muscle and bone mass, and more on the Body Cardio model. The data is then sent via Wi-Fi to the Health Mate app on your iPhone. 2 On target You can set up personal profiles for each family member, and if you want to lose weight you can set a target that helps the app to track your progress. The app also shows your BMI to indicate the sort of…

Though the cost of flash storage looks destined to drop further given time, most MacBooks still come with a paltry amount of it as standard. The prices Apple asks you to pay for more are expensive when you get into the realms of a hard-drive-rivalling 1TB capacity. The result, on portable Macs in particular, can feel like stepping back in time about a decade because it puts a burden on you to clear out old files to reclaim space – a wall we often run into at an inconvenient time. Sierra can take on the burden of manually archiving or trashing old files, which should avoid the situation where free storage space runs very low. Its Optimised Storage feature puts documents you haven’t touched in a while, Mail attachments and…

Apple’s changes to the Photos app in iOS and macOS this year are focussed around organisation, but without you having to put in any effort. Expanding on the facial recognition technology that’s been available for a while on the Mac, the Photos app on both platforms will now scan your photos, using ‘machine learning’ (the same kind of rudimentary AI Google uses for its Google Photos platform) to automatically identify not just who is in your photos, but what else is: objects and animals can be identified, and even types of places, such as a beach. This will make your library searchable in amazing new ways: by location (the type of scene), people, dates, or anything vague you remember from it. Want to find that nice photo of you, your…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to work your way around iTunes’s amended layout. YOU’LL NEED iTunes 12.4 or higher. An iPod or iOS device (optional). Version 12.4 rolls back one of the most questionable amendments Apple’s ever made to iTunes Apple is often criticised for the way iTunes has evolved. From the sheer number of things the app does, changes to long-standing presentation and navigation, and the way the company’s cloud-based subscription services, iTunes Match and Apple Music, have been grafted on, you don’t have to look hard online to find someone who is confused by what was once a simple, effective digital music jukebox. Apple already cleaned up iTunes a little by reorganising menus in version 12. Now, after a few more minor updates with…

IT WILL TAKE Up to a few hours YOU WILL LEARN How to control and sync music using your iPhone and Apple Watch. YOU’LL NEED Apple Watch. iPhone 5 or later, with music on it. A pair of Bluetooth headphones (optional). With Bluetooth headphones, you can play music from your Watch without your iPhone around A key reason to own an Apple Watch is to make it less necessary to fish your iPhone out of a pocket — or, in some cases, to remove the need for an iPhone. One area in which this works well is music, where Apple Watch can act as a remote to control playback on other devices, or as a standalone music player. In the former case, controlling playback using Apple Watch is about convenience,…

Peripherals quick-fire questions Can I use a Magic Trackpad 2 with a mid-2011 iMac? > Although the Magic Trackpad 2’s specs say it needs Bluetooth 4.0, which your iMac doesn’t have, many people have reported that the device still works fine with many Mac models back to 2007, provided they have been updated to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Can I use a Smart Keyboard and Pencil on a Mac? > There’s no way to directly connect these iPad Pro accessories to a Mac. The keyboard must be hooked up to a Smart Connector, and the Apple Pencil only works with an iPad Pro’s display. However, you can use them indirectly in iOS apps that turn your iPad into an input device for your Mac, such as Astropad (£22.99, astropad.com).…

Software quick-fire questions How can we enlarge Calendar’s fonts for printing? > There’s an option to increase the font size in Calendar’s Print dialog, which should help. If that is insufficient, you’ll need to use an alternative app, such as BusyCal 2 (£39.99, Mac App Store). Although this isn’t cheap, it can use your existing calendar data, and is richer in features than Apple’s app. Can Calendar print limited times in its Week view? > No. Calendar is restricted in its print and other options, and it’ll only print out a week view with the entire day shown on it; there’s no way to limit the time range shown there. You’ll need to switch to a third-party app such as BusyCal 2 or similar. Mend an interminably bounced email Q…

iOS software quick-fire questions Why will iMessage not send to one of my contacts? > Check the recipient still has an iOS device, and edit their card in Contacts so that their number is labelled ‘iPhone’. In Settings > Messages, ensure that Send as SMS and MMS Messaging are enabled. It sometimes helps to turn off the iMessage switch at the top of this page, then tap it again to turn it back on. How can I correct my email address for AutoFill? > Check your card from Contacts is selected in Settings > Safari > AutoFill > My Info, then go to that card in the Contacts app, tap Edit and put the address to use in forms first. You can’t just drag addresses to reorder them, so a…

Hardware quick-fire questions Why are apps still in the Dock after being uninstalled? > The Dock icons are just shortcuts to the apps. When you drag an app from a folder in Finder to the Trash, its Dock icon updates to point to its new location (though you can’t run apps or open files from there). If you empty the Trash, the link is broken but the Dock icon stays behind – with a question mark on it to show the app’s missing. You need to drag each unwanted app’s icon upwards, off the Dock, to remove it. Why won’t the office Mac connect to my home Wi-Fi? > Try connecting it to your network using an Ethernet connection first, to make sure your router isn’t blocking the Mac itself.…

Both USB drives are simply plug and play. Seagate’s Innov8 draws power from your MacBook’s USB-C port, while Transcend’s StoreJet has a one-click backup button that triggers its bundled back-up software. The two Thunderbolt drives differ in that G-Tech’s drive uses a software RAID implementation, while LaCie’s utilises its own hardware RAID, controlled by buttons inside its rear panel. Both NAS drives are designed as more than mere storage. The EX2100 offers practically identical functionality to other WD MyCloud drives we’ve looked at recently, while QNAP offers one of the most comprehensive sets of features we’ve seen in a NAS, including an HDMI port and remote control for watching media direct from the box on your TV. It’s a shame it’s hidden behind such a complicated and fussy interface. TEST…

Your complete guide to the best Apple hardware and third-party accessories 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…

While there was much to whet our appetites at Apple’s WWDC event on 13 June, we still can’t help but feel a little disappointed there was no mention of an updated MacBook Pro. Sure, we can’t wait to get stuck in with macOS Sierra, and Apple Music is getting an overhaul, but what about Apple’s well-loved workhorse notebooks? Given the recent updates meted out to the 12-inch MacBook and the MacBook Air range, the Pro is sticking out like a sore, neglected thumb. But it’s not all bad, if you believe the rumour mill. There has been a barrage of news, opinions and ‘leaks’ regarding the MacBook Pro, so much so that it’s hard not to feel that something is just around the corner. We’ve seen shots of the alleged…

Swift Playgrounds looked like the most revolutionary announcement of WWDC: a way for anyone to get coding. But don’t get too excited just yet Learning to code is a big deal nowadays. Everyone from Martha Lane Fox to Obama reckons it’s a vital skill for the next generation, and everyone from journalists to designers has an annoyingly competent colleague that can do it. So Swift Playgrounds for iPad, announced at WWDC, should be important. Pitched at kids but with obvious appeal to the rest of us, this app, says Apple, “makes learning to code easy and fun”. It certainly looked fun in the demo, with a little character hopping around a 3D world – a classic programming tutorial updated for the Angry Birds era. And it’s far more than just…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Back in 2015, Apple unveiled its HealthKit API as a way for developers to record and share health and fitness data tracked by accessories or even entered manually by you. In March of this year, it announced CareKit to assist with the development of apps that help you to manage medical conditions, tracking your symptoms and medications and optionally feeding that data back to your doctor. Built-in features of Apple’s devices can help save lives, too. One Massachusetts teenager’s Watch drew attention to a serious injury by showing his heart rate was abnormally high for a sustained time. Apple’s initiatives here go back years, to motivational iPod workout playlists and 2006’s Nike + iPod Sports Kit. The…

NEW IDEAS Your new-look guide to getting more from your Apple kit LEARN iTUNES 12.4 p48 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+option+C, hold all but the last key, then…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to more easily position windows by using Magnet. YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.8 or higher. Magnet 1.8. Make window management in OS X more efficent with this terrific tool The Mac’s long been flexible regarding using multiple windows, enabling you to compare different apps and drag content between documents. However, moving and resizing windows can be fiddly. The idea behind Magnet (magnet.crowdcafe.com) is to get rid of the drudgery, thereby providing you with a far more efficient means of organising your windows. Once the app is installed, you’ll need to authorise it with control of your Mac. Go to the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences and click the Privacy tab. Unlock the pane by clicking the padlock and typing…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to better manage tabs, monitor pages in Web Panels, and use powerful search capabilities. YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.9 or higher. Vivaldi. Vivaldi goes beyond the core features found in rivals with extensive customisation opportunities Does the world really need another web browser? Vivaldi certainly thinks so – at least for power users who need to tame lots of tabs, find things fast and make their browser’s interface just so. It’s built on Chromium, the open-source project that’s also the foundation of Google Chrome, and it has attracted a million users in just six months. Vivaldi offers the same core features as other browsers – private browsing, extensions, page zoom, and so on – but it beats its rivals with extensive…

Improve your photos with these brilliant extensions Regardless of whether you take photos on your iPhone or with a pro-level DSLR, the camera isn’t psychic, and it can’t always produce exactly what you had in mind, so there are times when you need to do a little editing. There are also times when you need to fix errors, such as rotating to adjust a sloping horizon or brightening a shot that’s too dark. Or, perhaps you want to get a bit more creative by turning your image black and white and boosting its contrast to add atmosphere? There are plenty of really great apps for doing the job, with some offering one-click fixes or a selection of retro-style filters, and others that allow you to take manual control and make…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices 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 believe is…

There are only so many ways you can dress up a hard drive. That said, Seagate’s Innov8 looks striking – but don’t mistake its bus-powered nature as meaning it’s portable. Elsewhere, it’s practicality over looks. The RAID and NAS drives are chunkier owing to their two-disk nature, but all make it easy to access and swap out their disks. A bonus point goes to WD’s MyCloud EX2100 for its screwless drive bays, while LaCie’s 2big hides its ports and hardware RAID controls behind a fiddly removable back panel. QNAP wins hands down for connectivity: four USB ports (two of which are USB 3.0) and an HDMI port. Both NAS drives offer twin Ethernet ports, enabling link aggregation with a compatible switch, but this had no effect on their performance in…