Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i MacLife

I TRIED TO write this column about Apple’s App Store controversies, but every time I finished a draft, news came out that made it redundant, so I gave up. Here’s my short(ish) view: Apple’s approach to the App Store has barely changed since 2008, but the world has changed drastically. The iPhone used to be a minor software platform, now it’s the world’s most valuable software platform. That makes Apple judge, jury and executioner over what new ideas and services can survive (including those that compete with Apple itself, a clear conflict of interest). And Apple not only has an unbreakable legal and technological power over the App Store, but it’s also the richest company in the world. If this were a company in a story, we’d find it dystopian.…

COMPARED TO THE wow factor of macOS Big Sur, you may think your iPad doesn’t look much different after installing this latest major update. That’s partly because it’s the desktop OS, this time, that’s borrowed ideas — and, via Apple’s Mac Catalyst, quite a lot of code — to catch up with the tablet rather than the other way around. But you’ll soon find plenty that’s new. Freed from the iPhone, iPadOS is finding its way towards the power and flexibility of an all–purpose computer without losing the simplicity and immediacy of multitouch. User interface tweaks make your content more accessible and options more discoverable throughout. And while the spring saw users who wanted something more like a laptop generously served by the Magic Keyboard and trackpad, the latest update…

Scribble is a new core ability of iPadOS. Almost anywhere you’d expect to enter text with the keyboard, you can now write with your Apple Pencil, and your scrawl is recognized as characters. This also works with direct Pencil alternatives like the Logitech Crayon, but may not with other third–party styluses. The Notes app goes further, storing your handwriting both graphically and as text. Scribble analyzes how you make strokes, not just the end result. This helps to make it surprisingly accurate, even with cursive (joined–up) writing. Forming letters idiosyncratically can trip it up, though: if you draw a clear A, but from right to left, it won’t be recognized. So far, Scribble only works for English and Simplified Chinese, and trying to write in another language exposes how heavily…

THE NEW WATCHOS 7 will put you to sleep. Not because it’s boring. Far from it. The new OS introduces something that many Apple Watch users have been wanting for a long time: native sleep tracking. And in typical Apple style, there’s more to the sleep tracker than just sleep tracking. As we’ll discover, it’s part of a whole bedtime production that’s designed to help you relax and sleep soundly. That’s not all watchOS 7 has to offer, though. The improvements to Siri are spectacular, and the way Siri Shortcuts work opens up all kinds of exciting personalization possibilities. There are new features in Maps for cyclists, (although some countries may have to wait a while to get them). There are new faces, new ways to get them, and new…

$239.99 From Brydge, brydge.com Features SD card, USB–C (out), Ethernet, 3x USB–A, Thunderbolt 3 Stone Pro is the most fully featured of Brydge’s multiport Thunderbolt hubs for compatible Macs. There’s a Thunderbolt 3 cable in the box for connection to your Mac, and a corresponding port marked on the hub. This is because it’s able to directly power your laptop, supplying over 87 watts to charge up to four extra USB devices at the same time. This comes via the meaty wall power supply, which is significantly heavier than the hub itself though it means you don’t need to connect your laptop’s own PSU. Most ports are on the rear, barring an SD card slot on the side. The wall power port is small despite the power brick being large,…

$129.99 From Roku, roku.com Features USB, HDMI, Optical audio, Wi–Fi, 4K video and HDR support There have been loads of rumors recently about an update to the Apple TV streaming box, but Apple needs to get a move on because Roku’s new Streambar outguns the Apple TV on both features and value for money. Roku’s streaming devices already allow you to watch the Apple TV+ service, as well as films and TV shows that you buy from iTunes, along with a wide range of streaming services such as Netflix, Shudder, Spotify, and Tidal. The Streambar ups the ante by supporting 4K video and HDR at a much lower price than the Apple TV 4K ($179), but the real killer feature is that it also manages to include a very respectable…

Free From Poolside Worldwide Corporation, poolside.fm Needs OS X 10.11 or later Poolside FM is the app equivalent of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky: it’s sunny, wonderfully retro, and it makes us want to dance. The app began life as a website streaming cheerful music, and if you use the website or the iOS app you can pretend you’re on an ancient Nokia. Stick with the Mac version and it’ll transport you to a pre–OS X, pre–iTunes era of little music players that played music and nothing else. It doesn’t rip. It doesn’t mix. It doesn’t burn. It just plays some great tunes with a distinctly 80s vibe. It’s a lovely little thing, and while it doesn’t do very much, what it does do it does very well. The interface is…

$9.99 (IAPs) From Kunal Sood, lireapp.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 14.0; iPadOS 14.0 Is it just us, or is reading things on the internet getting worse? If you’re fed up trying to read articles on pages that beep and bark and fill the screen with advertising, there’s never been a better time to rediscover RSS feeds and embrace an app such as Lire. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it’s short for Rich Site Syndication and is used by stacks of big–name sites, blogs and other publishing platforms to deliver articles to you. Instead of visiting the site, you subscribe to the appropriate RSS feed and when you open your RSS app all the things you want to read are there for you. Lire is a winning…

Winter usually means more nights at home, and that’s truer than ever this year. Still, for bookworms at least that means even more time for settling down with a good book. Here, we’ve chosen some apps to help you get the most out of your literary habits, from finding new books to discussing them with a like–minded community. You’ll notice that we haven’t chosen Apple Books or Amazon Kindle here — it seems like a waste of space since these are already the go–to ebook store/reading apps. We’re looking at the less well-known options, giving book lovers new options and ideas for how to engage with one of the oldest and most comforting pastimes. AUDIBLE: AUDIOBOOKS & PODCASTS $14.95/month Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Okay, this might not be…

August Smart Lock Pro $229.99 august.com Use this to convert a pre–installed single–cylinder deadbolt into a smart one. The August bridge (sold separately) is required for Wi–Fi connectivity, but it’ll connect to HomeKit via Bluetooth. Danalock V3 Around $208 danalock.com You’ll typically need to install the V3 on your own cylinder lock, unless you can find a bundle. And make sure you opt for the HomeKit version as there are non–HomeKit versions available. Ultraloq UL3 BT $169.99 u-tec.com The UL3 is a seriously cool fingerprint–reading smart lock, and you can even open it with a secret knock. U–Tec assures us that HomeKit compatibility is on its technology roadmap.…

HOW CAN I MAKE MY iPHONE’S RINGTONE SOUND LOUDER? Use separate controls for the ringer and alerts, which you can then turn up to maximum. In Settings, tap Sounds & Haptics > Ringer and Alerts, disable Change with Buttons, then drag the volume control to maximum. That will keep its volume on full unless you switch to Silent mode. WHICH APP IS BEST TO CHECK MY WI–FI SIGNAL? Apple’s free AirPort Utility has an excellent hidden scanner: in Settings > Airport Utility, turn on Wi–Fi Scanner, then in the app tap Wi–Fi Scan (top–right), and tap Scan. Turn it off after use to save battery charge. For general diagnostics try using one of the free Wi–Fi checkers available. WHY DO I SEE A PROHIBITED SIGN WHEN STARTING UP? Your Mac…

APPLE HAS ROLLED out its Apple One subscription plans, offering substantial savings on bundles of Apple’s paid–for services, as well as the convenience of a single monthly bill. Ironically, considering the name, there are three Apple One plans: INDIVIDUAL includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud storage for $14.95 per month, saving $6 a month off the cost of subscribing to these services separately. FAMILY includes the same services and 200GB of iCloud storage for $19.95 per month, saving $8 a month, and all these can be shared with up to five other people. PREMIER includes the same services plus Apple News+, Apple Fitness+ (when it becomes available — it’s due before the end of 2020), and 2TB of iCloud storage, all for $29.95 per month,…

Your Home screen remains similar to iPadOS 13. Unlike in iOS 14, widgets can’t be mixed in with your app icons, and there’s no App Library view when you swipe all the way to the left. On the first Home screen, swiping right squishes up the icons to reveal Today View, where you will start to see the differences: widgets appear in a new format, and no longer show titles. By default, the top widget is a stack: swipe up or down on it to rotate between widgets. To rearrange your Today View, press a widget and drag. To change widgets, simply press one and hold — ignoring the pop–up menu that appears — until the Home screen goes into “jiggly mode.” Then tap “–” to remove a widget, or…

Many of iPadOS 14’s default apps now have sidebars that visibly organize your content. Like the earlier introduction of the Files app, this acknowledges a need resisted in early versions of iOS for fear of complicating things. The Files app itself showcases new desktop–style pull–down menus, reminiscent of macOS Big Sur. These complement the now ubiquitous options menus, which pop down from an icon showing three dots in a circle. More thought has also gone into the pickers that pop up to let you set a calendar date or select a photo from outside the Photos app. INTERACTION PLAN iPadOS 13 had already brought the ability to control a cursor with a connected mouse or the Magic Keyboard’s trackpad, which is compromised only by a scarcity of full support in…

Free (IAPs) From Meaningful Things, meaningful-things.com Needs macOS 10.15 or later; 64–bit processor Filter aims to help you focus by allowing you to block websites and applications that may be a distraction. You can create different lists — or groups of websites and apps — to block. So, if you’re working but need to keep tabs on Twitter, you can exclude that from a work list but include it in another list for when you’re supposed to be writing, for example. Creating lists and adding URLs is easy — there’s even a Safari extension so you can add sites from the browser. Filter supports blocking sites in Safari, Chrome, Edge and Opera, but not Firefox. It automatically adds regular expressions to URLs to block subdomains, and you can customize these.…

From $39.99/year From Stellar, stellarinfo.com Needs OS X 10.7 or later Photos and videos capture unique moments in time. However, we can occasionally lose some of our precious digital assets. We might drop a folder of photos into Trash and empty it (or format a memory card to create space for a new shoot) before realizing that we hadn’t imported all of our assets into Photos. In both of these scenarios there is hope of recovering the deleted shots. When you format a camera’s SD card you remove the index of its contents, freeing the camera to write over the existing data. Stellar Photo Recovery can trawl through the formatted card (or an external hard drive) to identify and recover “erased” clips and stills. It’s easy to use. After launching…

$49/year From Canvas GFX, canvasgfx.com Needs macOS 10.14 or later The Mac has always been a popular tool for graphics and design work, with programs such as Adobe Illustrator leading the way ever since the desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s. However, graphics software on the Mac has always tended to focus on the “creative” side of design work, creating eye–catching illustrations and magazine layouts. But there are plenty of Mac users who work in more technical fields, such as architecture, engineering and product design, who need a slightly different set of tools. If your work requires precise and accurate drawing tools for technical illustrations and documents, then a more specialised drawing tool such as Canvas X Draw provides an affordable solution. Like many professional programs these days, Canvas X…

The earliest known lock and key was found in the ruins of ancient Assyria, the idea was further developed by the ancient Egyptians, and all–metal locks arrived around 900 CE. The lock has, it’s fair to say, been around. And while there have been subtle changes over time, particularly an increase in complexity after the late–18th century, the principle and general construction of locks has remained relatively static. This is particularly true in the home. Pins and tumblers may have changed over time, but most locking mechanisms still involve matching one piece of metal against a prearranged set of pins or wafers. Warding may have improved, making gaining illicit access to the internals of locks more difficult, but it’s not foolproof. Locks are a constant game of cat and mouse…

Worrying Mac panics early in the morning I leave my iMac Pro running overnight, but since getting macOS 10.15.6, on several mornings it’s shut down by itself. It shows a report about a panic — is its power supply failing? Although the root cause could be a hardware problem, it’s unlikely to be in its power supply. These are kernel panics, and the explanation should be in the panic logs which you see when it starts up again. The Catalina 10.15.6 update introduced a serious bug, with a memory leak occurring in kernel “zone” memory. This is most obvious when running a VMware or VirtualBox virtual machine, but has affected many other systems. Over a few days, the kernel runs out of memory in these special allocation zones, causing it…

APPLE MUSIC AND TV may get all the girls (or boys or pets), but the Dictionary app is like that clever kid who’s always hanging out in the kitchen at parties — smart, brilliant, and much cuter than you think. How? Whenever you come across a word or phrase that you don’t understand, a simple Ctrl–click pops up a menu that enables you to see what that word means — and it’s the Dictionary app that does the heavy lifting. Now the Dictionary app usually chooses your System Language as its default (see System Preferences > Language & Region) — but you can change that to a multitude of other languages, find alternative words and phrases using the Thesaurus, look up techie terms in the Dictionary, and find out what’s…

THE 45 INCREDIBLY useful tools in Parallels Toolbox work with both your Mac and in any virtual machine (VM) you’re running in Parallels Desktop. You can use its Record Screen and Take Screenshots tools for any window, including those in an active VM. These are particularly helpful when copying and pasting between an app in a VM and one running native in macOS, or an iPad connected using Handoff. Even if you only run a VM occasionally, you’ll find these tools more generally valuable. If you run a full–screen Windows VM, try Toolbox for Windows, otherwise use the Mac version. Many of them are simple, single–shot items which just do what they say, like the World Time clocks and Unit Converter. Several require you to give that tool access to…

1 Nikon Z 6II nikonusa.com $1,999.95 (body only) Two years after the Z 6 brought full–frame photography at a price that was at least remotely affordable, the Z 6II is here to right some wrongs. There’s still a 24.5–megapixel sensor, but now it takes 4K videos at 60fps. A second image processor has been added for double the pixel crunching, meaning it now shoots stills at 14fps, while low–light and autofocus performance have been improved. And instead of using expensive CFexpress/XQD memory cards, you can use an SD card… or both for an in–camera backup! 2 KEF LS50 Wireless II us.kef.com $2,499.99 Want the convenience of AirPlay 2 music streaming, but a more classic hi–fi set up? KEF dips its stereo bookshelf speaker chocolate into the AirPlay 2 peanut butter…

While iMacs and MacBooks have a green LED to show their built–in cameras are active, iPads don’t. But iPadOS 14 displays a green dot when any app is accessing the camera, or orange when the mic alone is in use. The dot normally appears to the left of the icons at the top right; in views that hide these, such as the Camera preview or a FaceTime call, the dot’s in the corner. When you allow an app to access your photos, you can now select which ones. It’s reassuring to know it won’t automatically see new pics, but we’d like to be able to select an album. In Settings > Privacy > Location Services, when you allow location access for an app, you can turn off Precise Location to…

Free (IAPs) From Andres Canella, magnetic.do Needs macOS 10.15 or later Magnetic aims to allow you to manage large numbers of tasks quickly and easily, mostly using the keyboard. You can create multiple lists of tasks and easily move tasks from one to the other. The magnet that gives the app its name is a device at the right of the interface that holds tasks you add to it so you can perform actions on batches of tasks at the same time. Actions include marking tasks as done, moving them to a different list, scheduling, or deleting them. You can navigate between tasks in a list with the up and down arrows, and between lists using the left and right arrows. The interface is clear and easy to navigate. Paying…

$24.99 From Funselektor Labs, artofrally.com Needs macOS 10.13 or later, 64–bit processor Art Of Rally is tough to review. While it does so many things well, it falls down when it comes to the most important element for most people: gameplay. Visually and musically, it’s superb. Its low-poly style is vibrant and bursting with color, and every track is a treat for the eyes, from the autumnal forests of Finland to the sun-baked shores of Sardinia. There is a wealth of customization options, including bloom, shadow detail, motion blur, and more. Coupled with its high–tempo synthwave soundtrack, Art Of Rally is beautifully created. That is, until you try to drive the cars. Early vehicles feel incredibly heavy and unresponsive. Lowering the counter-steering in the settings helps, and later cars reduce…

1 Igloohome Smart Padlock $109.98 igloohome.co Igloohome’s excellent padlock allows you to send people one–time passcodes from afar and unlock via Bluetooth. It’s fully weatherproof, too. 2 Master Lock Bluetooth Smart Padlock $149.01 masterlock.com With a strong boron shackle, this lock isn’t easily forced open. But its unlock method (which involves inputting codes videogame–style on a pad) is easily bypassed. 3 Master Lock Heavy Duty Biometric Padlock $164.20 masterlock.com Unlockable with a fingerprint, you can store up to 10 individual fingerprints. It also includes the same four–way keypad as Master Lock’s Bluetooth lock.…

ONLINE SECURITY IS more important than ever, especially now that we’re all spending so much time shopping online, making Zoom calls, and binge–watching Baby Yoda on Disney+. But staying safe online can be a confusing business. There are many different types of threat, from malware that tries to hijack your Mac to online fraud and identity theft. There are things you can do to protect yourself, of course, such as using a VPN to hide your identity, or anti–malware software to protect your Mac from viruses and other threats. However, these apps and tools can be confusing for anyone that hasn’t used them before, so Clario has launched a new service that’s designed to provide a simple, all–in–one solution for your online security. The Clario app is available for Macs,…

KEEPING ON TOP of your files can be a hassle on iOS and Mac. Apple splits all things into separate apps, which is great for using them day–to–day but a little bit fiddly if you want to deal with them in one place. That’s where iMazing 2 comes in. This app lets you manage all your files in one central location, saving you time and effort. You can view, adjust, export, and import your documents right from your Mac. It’s quicker and easier than trying to do so in each app on your iOS device, or on the iCloud website. Most features are free, but transferring unlimited data between devices, restoring backups, and updating iOS on your devices all require the paid–for version of iMazing. Before getting started, make sure…

ARRIVING FOUR YEARS after the iPad, the Watch was Apple’s first new product line under Tim Cook as CEO. Steve Jobs’ company had begun, as every Apple press release reminded us, by “igniting the personal computer revolution.” Now it announced its “most personal device ever.” Having poached Angela Ahrendts, CEO of British fashion house Burberry, to run Apple’s retail operations, Cook added more luxury market veterans to shape the Watch’s appeal and former Nike employees to hone its fitness credentials. Meanwhile Jony Ive, promoted to oversee both hardware and software, formed his own partnership with longtime friend and collaborator Marc Newson. Among other projects from chairs to cars, the celebrated Australian industrial designer had founded Ikepod, known for futuristic watches like the Solaris, with its minimalist rounded–rectangle case and precision–engineered…