Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2014 i MacLife

JOYOUS UNCERTAINTY AS I WRITE THIS, the next iPhone and iPad have yet to be announced. They’re coming, though, as surely as Jony Ive loves his Home buttons laser-cut from sapphire crystal. Both devices will likely hit in September or October, and launch alongside iOS 8. I know this because Apple has become very predictable these past few years, eschewing new game-changing gadgets in favor of annual updates to existing items. But might change be immiment? Apple execs said to expect products in new categories this year, and time is running out to fulfill those promises. Plus, the next iPhone and iPad may yet surprise us. I don’t recall the lead-ups to past iPhones having this many twists and turns. Larger 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes seem locked in -…

BROADWELL IS THE codename for the next generation of Intel Core CPUs. It will power most of the laptops and desktop computers we’ll see in 2015, including new iMacs and MacBooks. Intel upgrades its core processor range every year to 18 months, and follows a ’tick tock’ upgrade path. If one year’s processor upgrade offers a new architecture, the next will shrink that architecture down, making it more efficient. The Haswell chips inside current Apple hardware were a ’tock’ upgrade - a new architecture. So the forthcoming Broadwell platform is a ’tick’, shrinking Haswell down from 22-nanometer transistors to 14nm. If you’re wondering how big a nanometer is, a normal human hair is about 90,000 nanometers thick. Modern transistors are incredibly tiny. The big claim about Broadwell is that its…

WITH ALL THE RECENT talk of scratch-resistant sapphire glass screens for the iPhone 6, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a new material. It isn’t. Synthetic sapphire is regularly used in watches from Omega and Tag Heuer, while luxury smartphone manufacturer Vertu has been developing and using Sapphire screens for 15 years. Apple is also a fan. The Touch ID fingerprint sensor and the camera lens on the iPhone 5S both use sapphire glass. Of course, sapphire glass isn’t technically "glass" at all. It’s a crystallized form of aluminum oxide, which sports a natural blue hue thanks to traces of elements such as iron and titanium. Calling it "glass" refers to its transparency, rather than its form. In fact, it’s nothing like glass. It is common knowledge that there…

1 THE BROKEN EYE Brent Weeks $9.99 Brent Weeks is one of the biggest fantasy authors around, having sold over two million books. Released on August 26, The Broken Eye is the third book in the author’s acclaimed Lightbringer series, which started with The Black Prism and The Blinding Knife. The series follows the story of powerful magician Gavin Guile, unfurling a pure high-fantasy tale with a complex color-based magic system and a plot that twists through an extraordinarily detailed world. 2 TROUBLE IN PARADISE La Roux $7.99 La Roux hit the big time in 2009 with synth-poppy tracks "In For The Kill" and "Bulletproof", both taken from the artist’s self-titled debut LP, which won a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. It’s been a long wait for this…

EVERYONE LIKES GETTING something for nothing, especially when it comes to software. And it’s even sweeter when the free app is almost as good as paid-for tools which cost hundreds of dollars. The App Store is chock full of free apps, but while there are many good free tools to be had there, and despite Apple’s best attempts at quality control, many of them aren’t very useful, and yet there are lots of good free software tools both on and off the Store. We’ve carefully road-tested each app featured here (with one special exception) to ensure that they’re stable, reasonably easy to use, and have the basic features you’d expect. We’ve pointed out where there are limitations and how you might get around them. We’ve also avoided shareware, demo versions,…

$2.99 Developer Terry Cavanagh, terrycavanaghgames.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 4.3 or later VVVVVV is a fairly simple platformer, but one crafted and refined to mechanical perfection. The controls are as basic as the visuals – go left, go right, and flip gravity. But this game is full of things that complicate matters. The aim is to rescue your scattered crew members by exploring VVVVV’s gridbased world. It’s effectively made up of single-screen platform puzzles, each one offering a test of dexterity, brain-power or both (though some stretch across more than one screen). Solving the harder ones is both supremely satisfying and rarely frustrating, thanks to generous restart points. It does get very hard – platform veterans will find their skills tested. But the ability to quickly try sections over and over…

$5.99 Developer Amaury Hazan www.vidibox.net Platform iPad Vidibox turns your iPad’s screen into a drum-pad-like instrument that controls the playback of up to 16 video and audio clips. You assign media to parts of the screen, and choose whether it plays once or loops when tapped, and whether audio, video or both play, in full or in part. The feature tour and project examples are invaluable in understanding how it works before you start composing. Performances can be output to a second screen, which doesn’t show the app’s interface, and exported to iTunes and Dropbox. Your own media can be recorded within the app, and imported from the Camera Roll and iTunes on a computer. It’s fairly easy to learn, though you need some raw talent to get good results. However,…

$1.99 Developer Garmin International www.garmin.com Platform iPhone or iPod touch Garmin has steered an interesting course with its latest navigation app, víago: Spend 99 cents for the basics, or upwards of $75 via in-app purchases to unlock the full complement of features. Unfortunately, the core functionality doesn’t live up to even Apple Maps, which is at least capable of speaking street names. By comparison, víago requires IAP to accomplish anything more than "turn left" or "stay on the route." (Street names are still presented on screen, thankfully.) Without a $9.99 "Maps to Go" package, cellular data is also required, although víago occasionally choked, even with a strong signal. Otherwise, the map graphics and overall UI were comparable to rival apps. Our favorite feature was Where Am I?, which calls up handy…

FREE Developer Rovio Entertainment www.rovio.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6.0 or later If you have children of a certain age, you could be forgiven for thinking Angry ^Lffr Birds are everywhere. Rovio’s hit franchise has dominated the App Store in its four-and-a-half year, eight game run, and has branched out successfully into toys, a cartoon, and even soft drinks. And now Angry Birds Epic continues the trend of branching out from its humble slingshot-firing origins. This time it’s into RPG territory. All the usual suspects from the cartoon series and the prior games show their face at some point in this free-to-play game, which is light on depth (and story) and big on character and art-driven comedy and charm. Fights are all turn-based, with one defensive, one offensive, and one special…

FREE (8GB Individual Plan) Developer Picturelife, Inc. www.picturelife.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.0 or later Apple is eyeing a digital photo revolution with iOS 8, but Picturelife managed to stake out similar turf two years earlier, and plans to give iCloud a run for its money with the latest incarnation. Picturelife 3.0 offers 8GB of storage free for individuals and tops out with an unlimited shared plan ($15 per month) for you and three immediate family members. The universal iOS app has been overhauled top to bottom, adding new Places (maps) and Faces (photos with faces, not people tags) view options. Picturelife’s most ambitious new feature is the ability to ’flip’ an open image to Favorite, Share, Add to Album, Edit, Delete or Hide in as little as two taps. It’s…

$19.99 Developer PearlMountain Technology Co Ltd www.pearlmountainsoft.com/publisherplus Requirements OS X 10.6.8 or later, 64-bit processor, at least 304MB hard drive space Publisher Plus is a curious app. It’s seemingly laboring under the misapprehension that Apple’s Pages does not exist. It’s like someone’s grabbed Pages, pulled off some of the complicated bits, and glued some clip art and templates onto what remains. Oddly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Pages has a lot going on, and a more focused product that provides a wider variety of starting points could have added value. As it is, we were certainly impressed by the range of templates on offer - everything from menus to magazine covers - although the actual design is variable in quality and broadly less stylish than the smaller selection in…

$399 (Import only for now) Manufacturer Lenco www.lenco.com Requirements USB port (for ripping) La enco earned audiophile status building high-end turntables with Swiss precision from i as far back as 1946. Now Dutch-owned, the legend lives on in the Lenco L-175, a handsome glass-topped deck that brings with it some very useful modern comforts. The USB port and built-in pre-amplifier are there to ensure it will interface with any new-fangled hi-fi and it even ships with a copy of Audacity, so you can rip your discs to a hard drive. With its glass top and a pickup arm, platter and moving magnet headshell of aluminum, the Lenco L-175 has the look and initial feel of a premium product. It’s a sleek and minimal design with the switches out of sight at…

$180 Developer Reallusion www.reallusion.com Requirements OS X 10.7 or later, three-button mouse or touch panel, dual-core CPU or better As its name suggests, CrazyTalk Animator 2 Pro began life as a piece of software that synchronizes recorded audio to a character’s mouth, and this still forms a big part of it. It works well enough, recognizing our "ooh" and "aah" sounds and translating them into the appropriate mouth shapes. CrazyTalk is designed primarily for 2D animations, but there are a few faux-3D options. The character models include 10 different perspectives, but you have to set their direction at the start of each sequence; it would be far better if they aligned themselves automatically. It also includes more advanced features such as HumanIK animation and puppeteering adjustment. Annoyingly, the Mac version misses…

$3.99 Developer AwesomeBlade Software www.awesomeblade.com Requirements OS X 10.8.1 or above, Core 2 Duo or better, 2GB RAM, GeForce 9400M/Intel HD 3000 or better As its name suggests, 8BitBoy is a homage to the types of two-dimensional platform games that dominated the home console market of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Created by one-man development studio AwesomeBlade Software, both 8BitBoy’s story and design trade in nostalgia. Unfortunately, that’s ultimately not enough to support an entire game. The titular Boy will run and hop his way through 50 levels grouped into five worlds, each of which holds a boss creature in its final stage. Each level is populated by enemy crows, snakes, bugs, and rigged with spike traps, disappearing platforms, and conveyor belts. You’ll also have access to fireball and shield…

$29.99 Developer Feral Interactive www.feralinteractive.com Requirements OS X 10.8.5, 1.8GHz Processor, 4GB RAM, 512MB VRAM, 7.0GB hard drive space The LEGO games continue to actually deliver entertainment over disappointment. As a result, other heavyweight property licenses are gatecrashing the block party, eager to piggyback on the success. This time it’s the turn of Marvel and an incredible cast of iconic superheroes, 150 in fact, to assemble inside a world full of typical TT Games humor. Doctor Doom leads a band of comic-book villains on the quest for "Cosmic Bricks" -the powerful remnants of the Silver Surfer’s shattered board. Thwarting his plans rests on guiding Iron Man, Wolverine, Thor and friends through armies of foes, bashing and crashing through detailed environments. Chaotic and cartoonish the action may be, but the real joy…

$79.99 Developer River SRL www.sparkle.cx Requirements OS X 10.9 or later Sparkle calls itself a "vector drawing tool, uniquely tailored" for creating websites. In use, we found it most reminiscent of Pages, with a workflowbased around drag-and-drop and free layout. Web pages are constructed from containers - standard boxes, "wide boxes" that span the entire screen width, and text blocks - as well as embedded elements such as images, videos and components from third-partywebsites, where you copy and paste code into a Sparkle sheet. There are no themes to give you a head start, but Sparkle provides useful page templates to work with - or you can start from scratch with a blank page. Given that mobile accounts for plenty of online traffic, it’sgood to see Sparkle tackle responsive design. At…

$249.99 Manufacturer AOC www.aoc.com Specifications 5ms response time, VGA, 2x HDMI, 3.5mm audio in and out We love IPS displays. The viewing angles are stunning, and the colors and clarity of text is terrific. Enter AOC’s latest 23.8-inch i2473Pwm display: it boasts IPS technology behind an LED-backlit HD screen with a 5ms response time, while its base houses a 2.1 Onkyo speaker system. AOC clearly hopes this display will be bought as a one-stop-shop for those with limited space. The speakers are only seven watts each, so are clearly no match for a dedicated speaker system, but while the audio quality is adequate in a small area, it’s weak in a larger space. It was also a little annoying that we had to turn the speakers on in the on-screen menu…

Once you have all of your important messages corralled into a mailbox (smart or otherwise), then it’s very easy in the OS X Mail application to export the enclosed messages 01. Select the mailbox in the sidebar of OS X Mail 02. Right-click on the selected mailbox 03. Choose "Export Mailbox" 04. Choose a location to export the mailbox in the destination chooser 05. Click Choose Once you’ve done this, all of the messages, attachments, and directory structure will be exported to your chosen location. The export will happen to an industry-standard .mbox format that almost all modern email clients can read. The entire exported directory can be copied over to an external drive, disk, or Dropbox folder, and the originals in Mail can be removed. When you decide that…

WHEN SHOOTING SUBJECTS such as wildlife, it can be a challenge to position an animal in the most aesthetically pleasing parts of the frame. In our example image shown here, the house and cow are to the left of the frame, with lots of empty space at the right. This produces an unbalanced composition. On the actual shoot, we could have waited for the cow to wander into the right of the frame, or we could have tried repositioning the camera to put more space between the cow and the house, which would have been the ideal situation. With Photoshop Elements, there are effective post-production solutions to creating a more balanced composition and countering this sort of problem - including Photoshop Elements 12’s new, intelligent Content-Aware Move tool (which is…

1 iPHONE 6 As we approach September, all the signs point to the unveiling of the iPhone 6. If the Internet rumors and leaks prove to be anywhere near half-true, iOS 8 will debut on 4.7- and phablet-sized 5.5-inch models and sport a beautifully-machined chassis even thinner than the iPhone 5S, thanks to an improvement in LED backlighting technology. We expect a higher resolution display too (perhaps 1,704 x 960 pixels and maybe with a slight curve), a nimbler A8 processor with a higher clock speed, an improved camera, and the option to buy a roomy 128GB model, alongside the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants. We don’t know about you, but we can’t wait. 2 CHOOSING SIDES With Blackberry squashed and the long-term future of Windows Phone unclear, the battle…

LETTER OF THE MONTH So the big complaint/concern is that developers can’t just put out mediocre apps and make a fortune on it? [See "Rush to the Bottom" in the February 2014 issue.] It’s a shame they’ll have to invest time and real effort in their product development if they want to compete. Sorry, but no crocodile tears here for those guys. The legitimate concern is how to market updated apps. Outside of the mobile world, no one gives away free updates forever, and I think it’s reasonable to bring that practice over. If a dev creates a major update to their app that fundamentally changes its functions with dramatic new capability, I think it’s fair for them to be compensated for their work by releasing it as a separate…

IF YOU HADN’T heard of the Internet of Things at the start of 2014, chances are you have now. Also known as M2M, or machine-to-machine, it refers to an ever-expanding network of interconnected, Internet-enabled devices. Aided by miniaturization, a new level of affordability for components such as Bluetooth sensors, and the increased ubiquity of technologies such as Wi-Fi, it is possible to connect devices in ways we wouldn’t have previously thought possible. And, wouldn’t you know it, Apple wants to be in on the act? Over the past few years we’ve seen plenty of gadgets jump on this bandwagon. Take Kolibree for example: an electric toothbrush unlike any you’ve seen before. Rather than just tracking how long you brush, Kolibree uses accelerometer and magnetometer sensors to gauge which direction you’re…

1 Nikon D810 www.nikonusa.com $3,299,95(body only) Nikon claims that the 36.3-megapixel sensor and EXPEED 4 image-processing engine inside the new D810 produce the best image quality ever from a Nikon camera. A new ultra-wide native ISO range is perhaps the key headline feature, though. For the first time, the range starts at 64 for cleaner images in bright light, and stretches all the way up to ISO 12800. 2 Lomo’Instant camera www.lomography.com L- $119 >>>The Lomo’Instant harks back to the days of Polaroid cameras and developing photos by sticking them under your armpit. Instead of taking a photo with your phone and leaving it in your Camera Roll, the Lomo’Instant can snap with its wide angle lens, shoot long exposures, colorize your images, print out, and develop photos on the…

APPLE’S iOS TEAM has been hard at work. The eighth version of its mobile operating system is nothing short of magical, bringing an array of marquee features that we’ve wanted for years. But iOS 8 is much more than the sum of its parts. Major features such as interactive notifications and Continuity may grab all of the headlines. But if you dive in a little deeper, you’ll find many ways that Apple has improved on the foundation it built with last year’s overhaul. Right off the bat, you might notice a few new apps on your Home screen. If you haven’t already downloaded iBooks and Podcasts, they will be automatically installed on your device, along with Health and a new Tips app to help newcomers get acclimated. While bundling these…

Photoshop Mix FREE(requires Creative Cloud membership) Developer Adobe Systems, Inc. www.adobe.com Platform iPad Requirements iPad 4 or newer running iOS 7.0 or later Adobe Photoshop Touch is a wonderfully creative tool for the iPad, but let’s face it: Even the iPad Air’s 64-bit A7 processor can’t fully replicate some of the more powerful features found in the Mac or PC version of Photoshop-until now. Launched as part of the 2014 Creative Cloud lineup, Photoshop Mix brings three of the most processor-intensive features from desktop to iPad: Upright (for straightening objects), Shake Reduction (for removing blur) and Content-Aware Fill. The app also makes it ridiculously simple to cut out portions of an image with a smart selection tool, and then composite them onto an entirely new background. How did Adobe manage to pull…

$9.99 Developer Double Fine Productions www.brokenagegame.com Platform iPad Requirements iPad 2 or later iOS 5.0 or later Shay lives a coddled life, alone on a spaceship, watched over by some exceedingly parental computer programs. His days consist of saving his adorable toy-like shipmates from equally cutesy "disasters". Vella lives in a sweet (literally) baking village, with a supportive family. Her days, however, are numbered - she’s due to be sacrificed to a great beast, to keep her village safe from its wrath. Broken Age is the story of these two breaking away from their respective destinies and fighting back against their oppressor, whether it’s a huge monster or a restricting environment. You play as them both in this point-and-tap adventure, switching between their stories as you see fit until you reach…

$2.99 Developer Sago Sago Toys www.sagosago.com Platform iPad, iPhone, iPod touch This is a kind of interactive play app for very young kids, letting them explore an area of space filled with sweet little creatures and things to do They play as a spacesuited puppy, dragging across the screen to move around and finding everything that’s going on - from snoozing on a moon, to playing catch with a cat in a hot-air balloon, to getting food from an alien hot-dog vendor. There are no games or anything to take part in as such - it’s all about just exploring and seeing what happens. The idea is it’s a chance for kids to make up their own stories: today, we’ll visit the space disco, have a picnic on an asteroid,…

$4.99 Developer Nice Boy LLC www.jaredsinclair.com/unread/ Platform iPad Proving there’s life left in RSS after Google Reader, Unread for iPhone debuted to rave reviews earlier this year, and is finally joined by a native, tablet-only edition. Unread for iPad takes what worked on iPhone and expands it to a larger canvas. Rather than utilize extra pixels for flashy new features, the app allows text proper space to breathe, and remarkably, the UI actually works better here. That’s not to say everything is perfect: when diving into a feed category, it’s impossible to tell one source apart from another, aside from small red text denoting where the article originally came from. There’s also still no ad-free reader mode to be found, but full-screen view, fun themes and rich sharing options make…

$0.99 Developer tap tap tap LLC www.taptaptap.com/magicam Platform iPhone or iPod touch Requirements iOS 7.0 or later The latest iPhones take pretty amazing pictures, but a new app from the creators of Camera+ aims to improve upon that experience by transforming images into perfection within seconds. You’ll hear the sound of a bell and, before your very eyes, the app magically improves contrast and color saturation to make almost any photo look great. We say "almost" because MagiCam isn’t perfect for every situation. The app occasionally overexposed correctly lit shots, or excessively boosted grain in darker images. In other apps we could hit undo, but with MagiCam there’s no way to revert - users can toggle a before and after view, but you’re stuck with the end results. There are…

Protecting your home with a lot of gear can get expensive, but with the following apps, your iOS device can provide peace of mind without breaking the bank. Closed-circuit television cameras are the most widely known video-monitoring system, but it’s a pricey setup. Since you already own your iOS device, why not use it as your camera? MANYTHING (Free, Universal) turns your iPhone or iPad into a security camera that can record or stream live footage viewable on another iOS device. With PRESENCE (Free, Universal), you can turn old iPhones or iPads into a security system that features motion-triggered alerts and video and audio streams. It’s a great way to reuse abandoned devices Sometimes you get a sense that something isn’t quite right, even when you’re in the house and…

Manufacturer StarTech www.startech.com Includes 1m (3.28ft) Thunderbolt cable Ports Dual Thunderbolt (10Gbps) Cooling Active using fan; passive through aluminum body This Thunderbolt drive enclosure has space for two 2.5-inch disks of your choosing; install a couple of SSDs and you can build a very fast external drive. The disks can be used as independent volumes, or you can combine them into a striped RAID array. Remove thumbscrews from the back panel and it flips down to reveal the disk bays and a fan — the only tool you need is a screwdriver to secure a disk in its tray. We fitted two 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSDs. No software is provided to adjust the fan’s speed or allow SSDs to be cooled entirely passively through the aluminum body and vents. From…

$29.95 Developer WinZip www.winzip.com Requirements OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor It’s rare to find an archiving toolworth paying for these days. WinZip makes a better case than most, though, with an excellent interface and some handy features. The main interface fills a gap that the built-in OS X archiver and its many alternatives miss, allowing ZIPs to be updated by dragging and dropping files, rather than treating the archive as a fixed thing to simply be created or extracted. WinZip is able to extract from ZIP, LHA, RAR and 7Z files and archive as ZIP, ZIPX and LHA, though it prefers its own format. One-click unzipping is available from the context menu, though the default is to open the ZIP in something approximating OS X’s standard folder views. The…

From $99 Manufacturer Connected Data, Inc www.filetransporter.com Features Gigabit Ethernet connection; USB 2.0 device support; Mac, iOS, Android and Windows support GREAT oing through the minor problems with Transporter Sync would be I mean of us; but we’re not here to be nice, we’re here to be honest. We didn’t like the UI graphics, and we’d prefer USB 3.0 support. But apart from that, Transporter Sync turns out to be a no-brainer addition to the gear-that-pays-for-itself list. The appliance itself is a small, black, conical frustum, with a wrap-around Cylonesque LED. You plug it in to an external USB hard drive (which alas, gets reformatted) and your ADSL router or Ethernet network, and then wait ten minutes while it sets itself up. During this time, you can visit the website, create…

$3.99 Developer AwesomeBlade Software www.awesomeblade.com Requirements OS X 10.8.1 or above, Core 2 Duo or better, 2GB RAM, GeForce 9400M/Intel HD 3000 or better As its name suggests, 8BitBoy is a homage to the types of two-dimensional platform games that dominated the home console market of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Created by one-man development studio AwesomeBlade Software, both 8BitBoy’s story and design trade in nostalgia. Unfortunately, that’s ultimately not enough to support an entire game. The titular Boy will run and hop his way through 50 levels grouped into five worlds, each of which holds a boss creature in its final stage. Each level is populated by enemy crows, snakes, bugs, and rigged with spike traps, disappearing platforms, and conveyor belts. You’ll also have access to fireball and shield…

Manufacturer Dell www.dell.com Requirements MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013) or Mac Pro (Late 2013) Call it 4K. Call it Ultra HD. Either way, massive pixel counts are the next big thing in display technology, and with Mavericks 10.9.3 capable of outputting resolutions of 3840 x 2160 (at 30Hz) and 4096 x 2160 (at 24Hz), all you need is a compatible TV or monitor. Enter the Dell UP2414Q and its bigger brother the Dell UP3214Q. For anyone who doesn’t know, 4K essentially gives you four times the pixels of 1080p. So that’s four times the workload for your Mac’s GPU. Dell’s new UltraSharp UP2414Q sports the same 3,840 x 2,160 resolution as the groundbreaking ASUS PQ321. This monitor is certainly cheaper than the ASUS screen but, measuring 24 inches, it’s also smaller.…

$79.99 Developer River SRL www.sparkle.cx Requirements OS X 10.9 or later Sparkle calls itself a "vector drawing tool, uniquely tailored" for creating websites. In use, we found it most reminiscent of Pages, with a workflowbased around drag-and-drop and free layout. Web pages are constructed from containers - standard boxes, "wide boxes" that span the entire screen width, and text blocks - as well as embedded elements such as images, videos and components from third-partywebsites, where you copy and paste code into a Sparkle sheet. There are no themes to give you a head start, but Sparkle provides useful page templates to work with - or you can start from scratch with a blank page. Given that mobile accounts for plenty of online traffic, it’sgood to see Sparkle tackle responsive design. At…

$49.95 single user ($19.95 upgrade) Developer Circus Ponies Software, Inc. www.circusponies.com Requirements Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or higher, 64-bit processor It may seem hard to believe, but the last major update to NoteBook for Mac was all the way back in 2009 — more than a year before the first-generation iPad made the dream of a truly mobile digital notebook a reality. OS X still has the upper hand, however, especially after the more than 100 new features and improvements introduced in version.4.0. To recap: NoteBook faithfully recreates the experience of using traditional ruled notebook paper in electronic form, but goes far beyond what physical pen and pulp alone are capable of. Although NoteBook offers plenty of convenient formatting shortcuts, the venerable Mac application remains flexible enough to…

WITH SUMMER ALMOST OVER, there’s every chance you’ll have hundreds of photos on your Mac that need editing and tweaking at some point. But if iPhoto doesn’t seem to be up to the daunting job, give the ’GNU Image Manipulation Program’ (or GIMP, for short) a try. This free image-editing software has many of the high-end features you would expect to find in pro-level apps such as Photoshop. These include tools and elements such as paths, lassos, alpha channels and layers. However, unlike the Adobe apps, which can be expensive, GIMP is totally free to download from gimp.org. Plus, because it’s an open-source program, GIMP is constantly being updated with new features and plug-ins developed by enthusiasts to help it keep pace with its high-end competitors - all free of…

AS MORE AND MORE people start to use their iPad as a real work machine and their iPhone as a primary way of managing emails on the move, we need iOS devices to be able to view a huge range of file types - from simple text documents to complex design layouts, 3D models, high-quality sound recordings and fun videos. The iPad and iPhone can view many file types out of the boxwith no extra software, but in some cases, they need a bit of help from the App Store. Of course, app developers have stepped up here and created a huge range of apps for handling lots of different files, from the common to the specialist. Using the Open In... option in iOS, you can send files to apps…

WHETHER YOU BELIEVE that wearable technology is the future of mobile devices or that it’s another passing gadget fad, there’s a great deal of interest in fitness gear and smartwatches. While we wait for an iWatch or iBand, Google is blazing a trail with Android Wear. The first devices based on this new platform have arrived in the chunky shape of the Galaxy Gear Live, the LG G Watch, and the round-faced Moto 360. The question is: can Apple do better? In terms of hardware, there’s certainly room for improvement. While little is known about the innards of the Moto 360, the Gear Live and G Watch have similar specifications. Both sport unimaginatively squarish faces, feature 1.6-inch displays, measure around 3.5 inches in thickness, and weigh around 2.4 ounces. These…

15 The15TH OF SEPTEMBER to be exact, the date that industry watchers suggest Apple will announce the iPHONE 6 with the release of iOS 8 not far behind. Or it could be the 9th. 19th. Or the 25th... BRYANT 24 The shirt number of LA LAKERS shooting guard KOBE BRYANT, who has apparently been one of the few lucky athletes to test APPLE’S iWATCH, which could get an October release. 2002 The year that iPHOTO was released. The photo editing software has been included in every version of OS X since 10.1 (Puma), but will be phased out, along with APERTURE, in favour of a new APPLE PHOTOS app in Yosemite and future OS releases.…

AT MANY RESTAURANTS you never see the cook. They’re there behind the scenes, chopping ingredients, whipping up recipes, and generally making sure that everything runs properly. For years, the same was true for Tim Cook at Apple. From the moment he was hired to the time Stevejobs officiallypassed the reins to him in 2011, Cook was the "operations guy", streamlining Apple from backstage, while Jobs stood in the spotlight. In my 2012 book, The Apple Revolution, I speculated that Cook’s biggest change to Apple culture as CEO would be tweaking it to make it more open and more relaxed than it had been under its micromanaging co-founder. Could it be that Apple under Cook will become that most countercultural of paradoxes: the friendly corporation? Don’t get me wrong: Apple was…

PART OF THE WONDER of ancient documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they’ve survived for so many centuries. I Today’s digital files, by contrast, are in danger of being lost to us within a matter of decades - or even years. It seems counterintuitive: how can we talk of a fragile, physical object such as a papyrus scroll being robust, while modern virtual documents, which can be endlessly duplicated, are threatened with extinction? The problem is twofold. The first and more obvious issue is that the media we store these files on might become physically unreadable. But the second problem is even more pernicious; the software that created those files might no longer exist or (more likely) not run on later hardware. So even ifyou’ve managed to…

FREE (requires $19.99 per year subscription for up to five computers) Developer Parallels, Inc. www.parallels.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.0 or later In 2013, Parallels Access wowed us by making remote desktop access usable from an iPad — although it was saddled with an expensive annual subscription. What a difference a year makes, as the sequel offers more bang for fewer bucks, and serves the fun to more devices. Parallels Access 2.0 improves on what made the original release great, while adding nice touches including an iOS file browser and the ability to use the iOS device microphone with remote applications. The update also adds Wake-on-LAN functionality. Access is now a universal build with iPhone support, while Android smartphones and tablets can also get in on the action. The bigger news:…

$4.99 Developer Amanita Design www.amanita-design.net Platform iPad Botanicula takes place in the world of plants, and stars a group of flora friends. When nasty creatures start draining the life out of plants, they set out to escape, but this game isn’t really about the plot. Each part of it is filled with increasingly surreal puzzles and gently maze-like environments to explore, which vary from tree branches to root systems to villages inhabited by sentient chestnuts. To complete an area, you might have to rescue chestnut babies, collect keys or find chickens to power up... well, we wouldn’t want to spoil the moment. Finding these things might mean outsmarting a territorial scorpion, directing water jets to make plants grow, beating a chestnut at volleyball or bouncing off raspberry-like bugs. It’s all…

$14.99 Developer 2K China www.civilization.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.0 or later It’s not easy to critique Civilization Revolution 2. Like fy its five-year-old predecessor, •** it beautifully distills the essence of Civilization on PC and Mac down to an enjoyable pick-up-and-play package that allows you to get through full campaigns in just a few hours. But the problem is that it’s too like its predecessor. What you get here for the unusually high price of entry amounts to little more than a facelift. Civ Rev 2 does away with the last game’s simple 2D graphics and instead serves up splendid 3D visuals not unlike the original Civ Rev’s console counterparts. Battles, diplomacy, and movement are lightly animated, too, and the controls have been optimized for mobile — although the results…

$1.99 (iOS) $6.99 (Mac) Developer d3i Ltd www.getstache.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.0 or later (iOS); OS X 10.9 or later (Mac) The makers of Stache market the software as "simple visual bookmarking," and that’s as good a description as any for this pair of apps which act as a central repository for web pages saved via bookmarklet or copied URL (the Mac version also offers Safari and Chrome extensions). Like Apple’s Safari, Stache bookmarks sync via iCloud, but come complete with a snapshot thumbnail of the actual web page. Sync is fast and requires no additional account setup to use, while a content search field makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, Stache winds up being a little too basic in use, lacking any kind of list…

FREE Developer Wargaming.net www.wotblitz.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.0 or later Tank warfare penetrates iOS with a fine adaptation of Wargaming’s massively multiplayer online mega-hit World of Tanks. Battling it out online in teams of seven, you spend most of your time in World of Tanks Blitz driving 20th century tank replicas — split into German, Soviet, and American models — around eight battle arenas. You only get one game mode, unfortunately — a kind of capture the flag deathmatch wherein the aim is to either destroy all enemies or capture and defend the flag until a timer ticks up to 100. But it’s a good one, which provides You only get one game mode, unfortunately — a kind of capture the flag deathmatch wherein the aim is to either destroy…

$1,099 Manufacturer Apple www.apple.com RAM 8GB, 1600MHz Storage 500GB Processor 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 The concept of a less expensive iMac for those on a budget, perhaps I students, is great. However, this is not cheap. Cheaper than the rest of the range, sure, but if you consider more than a thousand bucks to be "cheap", your financial status likely means you could afford to disregard what is very much an entry-level computer anyway. The processor is a dual-core Intel Core i5, running at 1.4GHz — basically the same CPU found in the current MacBook Air range. It seems woefully underpowered compared to the quad-core, 2.7GHz CPU offered by the nextcheapest iMac in the current range. Similarly, the HD Graphics 5000 chip in this model is much weaker than…

7.99 Developer Pictional www.pictional.com Requirements OS X 10.8 or later The high dynamic range craze that saw every image plastered in a weird array of oversaturated tones a few years ago may be over, replaced by faux-vintage filters, but HDR is still with us thanks to iOS 7’s camera app. HDR merges multiple versions of the same image to ensure correct exposure in the highlights, midtones and shadows. While using three images is traditional, TrueHDR can align and merge up to 100. It’s a completely automatic process; the only option is whether you want the app to align the images or not. Afterwards, an Edit palette allows tweaks to contrast, exposure, sharpness and the like, along with filters. The app accepts raw files from a DSLR as well as JPEGs, and…

$180 Developer Reallusion www.reallusion.com Requirements OS X 10.7 or later, three-button mouse or touch panel, dual-core CPU or better As its name suggests, CrazyTalk Animator 2 Pro began life as a piece of software that synchronizes recorded audio to a character’s mouth, and this still forms a big part of it. It works well enough, recognizing our "ooh" and "aah" sounds and translating them into the appropriate mouth shapes. CrazyTalk is designed primarily for 2D animations, but there are a few faux-3D options. The character models include 10 different perspectives, but you have to set their direction at the start of each sequence; it would be far better if they aligned themselves automatically. It also includes more advanced features such as HumanIK animation and puppeteering adjustment. Annoyingly, the Mac version misses…

From $99 Manufacturer Connected Data, Inc www.filetransporter.com Features Gigabit Ethernet connection; USB 2.0 device support; Mac, iOS, Android and Windows support GREAT oing through the minor problems with Transporter Sync would be I mean of us; but we’re not here to be nice, we’re here to be honest. We didn’t like the UI graphics, and we’d prefer USB 3.0 support. But apart from that, Transporter Sync turns out to be a no-brainer addition to the gear-that-pays-for-itself list. The appliance itself is a small, black, conical frustum, with a wrap-around Cylonesque LED. You plug it in to an external USB hard drive (which alas, gets reformatted) and your ADSL router or Ethernet network, and then wait ten minutes while it sets itself up. During this time, you can visit the website, create…

$29.99 Developer Feral Interactive www.feralinteractive.com Requirements OS X 10.8.5, 1.8GHz Processor, 4GB RAM, 512MB VRAM, 7.0GB hard drive space The LEGO games continue to actually deliver entertainment over disappointment. As a result, other heavyweight property licenses are gatecrashing the block party, eager to piggyback on the success. This time it’s the turn of Marvel and an incredible cast of iconic superheroes, 150 in fact, to assemble inside a world full of typical TT Games humor. Doctor Doom leads a band of comic-book villains on the quest for "Cosmic Bricks" -the powerful remnants of the Silver Surfer’s shattered board. Thwarting his plans rests on guiding Iron Man, Wolverine, Thor and friends through armies of foes, bashing and crashing through detailed environments. Chaotic and cartoonish the action may be, but the real joy…

Manufacturer Dell www.dell.com Requirements MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013) or Mac Pro (Late 2013) Call it 4K. Call it Ultra HD. Either way, massive pixel counts are the next big thing in display technology, and with Mavericks 10.9.3 capable of outputting resolutions of 3840 x 2160 (at 30Hz) and 4096 x 2160 (at 24Hz), all you need is a compatible TV or monitor. Enter the Dell UP2414Q and its bigger brother the Dell UP3214Q. For anyone who doesn’t know, 4K essentially gives you four times the pixels of 1080p. So that’s four times the workload for your Mac’s GPU. Dell’s new UltraSharp UP2414Q sports the same 3,840 x 2,160 resolution as the groundbreaking ASUS PQ321. This monitor is certainly cheaper than the ASUS screen but, measuring 24 inches, it’s also smaller.…

$249.99 Developer Cricut www.cricut.com Requirements Mac OS X 10.6 or later, 1.83GHz or faster, Firefox 17, Google Chrome 20 or Safari 5.1 or later, Adobe Flash, broadband This might look like a printer, but it’s actually quite different: it cuts designs out of paper, vinyl, fabric, and more, feeding the material back and forth, while a blade mounted on a shaft moves left and right cutting out very detailed shapes. Setup takes minutes. It connects using USB, and its software runs in a web browser (though you have to install a plug-in). Despite this, it’s powerful and quite easy to use. You can buy designs from Cricut (or subscribe to access the entire library at once), plug in existing Cricut cartridges, or upload your own images. It likes vector images (in…

$199.99 Manufacturer Adobe Systems, Inc. www.adobe.com Requirements iPad (4th gen or newer); Adobe Line or Sketch; iOS 7.0 or later; USB port (for charging) Sold only as a set with the Slide ruler, Adobe Ink is a 5.67-inch digital pen manufactured by the Photoshop maker’s hardware partner Adonit. With an aluminum shell and weighing less than an ounce, Ink communicates via Bluetooth 4.0 LE with recent iPad models, and is capable of writing or drawing on the screen and making menu selections from any app (the stylus even works on iPhone). When coupled with one of two new apps, however, Ink delivers fine-tip precision with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. Once linked to a Creative Cloud account, artists can copy and paste artwork, sync assets or Kuler themes, and share…

IMPROVING YOUR NUMBERS skillset can be tiresome, but with this tutorial we can have a little fun at the same time. We’re going to design an interactive quiz you can share with friends and family, plus brush up on some spreadsheet techniques at the same time. Our basic quiz lets you ask a series of questions - some with accompanying sounds, photos or even movie clips - so you can invite players to select the correct answer from a drop-down menu. If they answer correctly they score a point, and a final tally (along with a rating) is kept at the bottom. All that leaves you with is the job of populating the Welcome sheet with your quiz’s title, plus some introductory text. GET STARTED Create a blank workbook in…

Sign a PDF form and send it back, all for free with Adobe Reader THESE DAYS, YOU’RE often sent forms or contracts to sign as PDFs - so why not do it digitally? This is easy on your iPad, using the free Adobe Reader app. When you receive a PDF to sign, open it in Reader using the ’Open In...’ command, then choose Adobe Reader. Look in the toolbar at the top for the icon that looks like a speech bubble with a pen. Tap it, then at the bottom, tap the fountain pen icon on the right. Now tap the signature area on the form, and follow the steps below. Sealed and delivered How to sign and return a PDF digitally 1 Sign your life away Once you’ve tapped…