Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i MacLife

Hundreds of millions of headphones and earphones are sold annually and, according to Statista, worldwide revenues have reached $18 billion dollars with growth for the next five years projected to be 2.39%. That’s music to the ears of manufacturers who know how much users love to get lost in personalized audio. But, just as the popularity of these devices is also increasing because people are using them in virtual meetings or to cancel out external noise, they’re also set to benefit people living with hearing loss like never before. During Apple’s “Glowtime” event in September, Kate Bergeron, VP of hardware engineering, introduced what is being billed as the “world’s first all–in–one hearing health experience”. Firstly, in taking advantage of AirPods Pro 2’s H2 chip, Apple has developed a feature called…

SOME VERY WELCOME new features have been added to Sequoia’s video conferencing facilities. Presenter Preview shows exactly what you’re about to share before you broadcast it, whether it’s a single app or your entire screen. Naturally, it works with Apple’s own FaceTime app, but it’s also good for third–party video chat software such as Zoom. During a video call, click the green video camera icon then, in the window, the Share Screen button, then choose what to share. There’s also a great new Backgrounds option, which uses Apple’s industry–leading segmentation to cut out your image and place it on a backdrop of your choice instead of broadcasting the room from which you’re calling. You can choose from a range of standard pictures and gradients, and also use your own photographs.…

BITDEFENDER’S REAL–TIME PROTECTION WILL KEEP YOU SAFE THE DAYS OF Macs being virtually invulnerable to malware are long gone, so there’s good reason to install some form of antivirus to protect you. We’re big fans of Bitdefender AntiVirus — visit www.bitdefender.com to cover all the devices in your household. Before splashing the cash, give the program a test run by downloading a free 30–day trial from www.bitdefender.com/solutions/antivirus-for-mac.html — follow the prompts and set up a free Bitdefender Central account when prompted. After purchase, you’ll use this account to download Bitdefender on all your home’s devices if you need to. Once installation completes, the dashboard will appear and you’ll be asked to allow all Bitdefender security modules to run — click “Open System Settings” followed by “Allow” to give permission to…

APPLE FITNESS CAN become an unhealthy obsession — more so if you worry that you’re going to break your streak by not closing your Activity rings. It can mean pushing ahead with exercise even when your body is screaming at you to rest, and that’s why Apple announced that the app in iOS 18 and watchOS 11 is finally going to bring the ability to take a break. Yet Gentler Streak has been doing it for years. Gentler Streak has proven to be a game–changer for many users. It recognizes that recovery is as crucial as intensity and makes rest part of a streak. If you take a break, the Activity Path is also removed so you don’t start feeling guilty. And, when you get back into your workout routines,…

YOU MAY HAVE hours of footage taking up valuable space on devices such as a digital SLR (DSLR) camera, an action camera and of course your ever-present iPhone. Video formats such as an. mp4 file from a GoPro Hero 12 or. movs from a DJI Osmo Action 4 pose no challenge for iMovie. Your iPhone has an advantage over other cameras because it can shoot in modes such as Cinematic. You can then adjust a Cinematic clip’s background blur amount (and even focal point) in iMovie. Whatever the source, iMovie can read most formats, so you can import, edit and share clips regardless of what they were filmed on. Most devices shoot clips in 1080x1920 High Definition (HD) or at the larger 4K resolution. iMovie can deal with either size,…

From $999 From www.apple.com Features 6.3–inch Super Retina XDR Display (2622x1206 pixels), A18 Pro chip, 128/256/512/1TB of storage, Wi–Fi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.3, 5G, USB–C port, up to 27 hours (video playback) BETWEEN THE IPHONE 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the latter seems like a bigger deal because of its enormous 6.9–inch screen. But the iPhone 16 Pro should not be overlooked. We’ve been using both of these new iPhone Pro models, and we think the iPhone 16 Pro is better value. For $999, you get a bigger display than last year (6.3 vs 6.1 inches), the more powerful 5x zoom that used to be a Pro Max exclusive, and a battery life boost. The iPhone 16 Pro has many of the same features as the 16 Pro…

$173.99 From www.belkin.com Features 360º movement tracking, 90º auto tilt, 15W MagSafe wireless charging with 30W power supply, NFC pairing WHEN USING FACETIME we tend to hold our iPhone, but by attaching your iPhone to the Belkin Stand Pro (via its MagSafe compatible pad) you can chat hands–free. The stand rotates the attached iPhone through 360º to follow you while you chat. It will also tilt up or down (90º) to keep you in the frame at all times, giving you the freedom to walk and talk without having to hold your iPhone. The beauty of the Belkin Stand Pro is that it doesn’t require a third-party app. It tracks while you’re recording video in Apple’s native Camera app or when talking via FaceTime. It’s very easy to set up.…

Andrew Cottle Art Editor WFH with the sausage dog is great, but Andrew needs to upgrade his dining table setup ergonomically – “Kit out your home office” (p61) will do wonders for his posture. Ian Evenden Production Editor Ian’s movie-making career stalled after an incident with an expensive camera in a swimming pool, but this month’s iMovie masterclass (p52) could restart it. Howard Oakley Contributor Problems with your Mac, iPhone or iPad? Luckily, Howard’s waiting on p46 to answer all your hardware and software questions.…

You don’t necessarily need AirPods Pro to take care of hearing health. With Apple Watch and the Noise app (for Series 4 devices onwards running watchOS 6 or later), you can receive alerts if the average environmental sound level reaches or exceeds a set decibel threshold. Adjust the level at which you’ll be notified via Settings > Noise and consider using the Noise complication to view current noise levels from your wrist. The Hearing category of the Health app on your iPhone also lets you monitor environmental sound levels and headphone audio levels over a seven–day period to help prevent permanent hearing damage. AirPods Pro 2 (and AirPods Max) are particularly beneficial here. Studies show high levels of noise can increase blood pressure and the risk of heart disease, and…

YOUR NEXT FREE Mac operating system upgrade is here. To help you make the most of it, we walk you through its major new features, tweaks and enhancements and show you how to make the most of them. We also look at some of the features that haven’t quite arrived yet, and take a deep dive into the more minor changes that help make your Mac easier, more fun and more productive to use. macOS Sequoia was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2024. Once again, the name is taken from a geographical feature found in Apple’s homeland, California. This time it’s the Sequoia National Park, named after its giant, world–famous trees. The operating system is a similarly giant update, with Apple Intelligence features integrated throughout; improvements…

SEQUOIA BRINGS US a great new Mac app for storing passwords and login data. Called simply ‘Passwords”, it’s built on the foundations of Apple’s Keychain which has benefitted from a quarter–century of development. A handy password and login manager, Passwords can store information such as Wi–Fi, app and website passwords, verification codes, shared passwords, “Sign in with Apple” information and passkeys. It’s well organized, with an outward appearance that closely resembles the Reminders app. Categories of codes are indexed in the left–hand sidebar, along with options to view all your data and recently deleted codes, which are kept for 30 days before disappearing entirely. Shared groups are accessible in this sidebar too. If a password has been compromised by a data leak, you get an in–app notification urging you to…

With macOS Sequoia, the Notes app is even more capable. If you find yourself writing a very long, text–heavy note, you can divide it into sections with collapsible section headers. Just identify a line as a subheading in the formatting menu and, when you hover your pointer over it, you’ll see that a chevron appears. Click this to collapse and expand that section of text. Math Notes allows you to work out mathematical equations in the Notes app. Just type it in, and as soon as you enter the “=” symbol, the answer appears. It’s not just for the basic four functions either. The Math Notes feature offers the same capabilities as a scientific calculator, which is great news for those who need more advanced mathematical capabilities. You can assign variables…

FRUSTRATED THAT SOME games aren’t available for your Mac? Just because a native Mac build hasn’t been released doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t play that game — why not run the Windows version instead? There are two ways to run Windows software on your Mac: one is to use virtualization software such as VirtualBox or Parallels Desktop, but while this produces a complete Windows environment to work in, there can be a performance penalty that makes many games unplayable. The alternative is to try a form of emulation known as a “compatibility layer”. This attempts to run software using your Mac’s native hardware, ensuring it runs at maximum performance. The best–known example of this kind of emulation is Wine (www.winehq.org), but while it’s free, Wine is difficult to use. If…

WHEN IT COMES to battery life, we’re living in a golden age of Apple hardware: while the processors in our Apple devices have become ever more powerful and capable of doing ever more things, that doesn’t mean we’ve had to sacrifice the all–day battery life we’ve got used to over the last decade. Whether it’s an Apple Watch, a pair of AirPods or a MacBook Pro, the batteries in your Apple kit have serious stamina for even the toughest tasks. But while tech has improved dramatically in recent years, even Apple can’t change the laws of chemistry — and those laws say that over time, every battery will lose capacity. Eventually so much you need to replace it. The good news is that Apple has taken steps to prolong those batteries’…

YOUR IPHONE DOES a great job of capturing a scene’s colors and tones, but occasionally a shaded location may look under-exposed and cold (blue). We’ll show you how to “grade” a clip to counteract color casts and reveal more shadow detail, without blowing out brighter highlights. As well as being a non-linear editor (where you can swap the running order of clips to tell a story), iMovie enables you to edit in layers, opening up a host of creative effects. In this video sequence the girl mounts her iPhone on a gimbal to film. Using iMovie’s layer-based “Picture in Picture” (PiP) effect we can see the girl filming, plus view the footage from her iPhone in the same shot. These layer-based effects enable us to tell a more visually interesting…

Desks IF YOU’RE WORKING from home, you’re more likely to be organized and focussed if you have a desk. Aside from providing ample space for your Mac, monitor, iPad and the various accessories and piles of paper needed for your day–to–day work, a quality desk should provide you with a comfortable working environment and allow you to immediately get down to business. Since many desks can be height adjusted, they can also improve your posture and even let you work standing up. But if space is at a premium and you really do need to work on a standard table, don’t worry. You can still boost your productivity and avoid strain on your body, as we’re about to discover. 1 Oakywood Standing Desk Touch > From $990 > https://oakywood.shop For flexibility…

AFTER THE INTRODUCTION of the iPhone 16 line, Apple Watch Series 10, and AirPods 4 in September (see Mac|Life’s reviews later in this issue), here’s what’s expected to follow from Apple in the next few months or so. > Apple Intelligence. Apple has confirmed it is on track for the public release of its take on AI this year, although some features will be rolled out over time. On supported devices, Apple Intelligence will deliver new system–wide writing and proofreading tools, Priority Notifications and Priority Messages with summaries, Safari web page summaries, unwanted object removal in Photos, the ability to record, transcribe, and summarize audio in Notes and the Phones app, and more. A smarter Siri with ChatGPT integration is promised, with better understanding of spoken queries, but it is unclear…

The Apple Hearing Study, a partnership with the University of Michigan, has been looking at sound exposure and its impact on hearing since 2020. By letting users contribute long–term hearing health data from their Apple Watch and iPhone, the study has found that more than 50% of participants have worked in a loud environment and a quarter have been exposed to environmental sound such as traffic and public transport which exceeds the World Health Organization’s recommended limit. More recently, it found 15% of participants experience tinnitus daily and 77.6% have experienced tinnitus in their life — those aged 55 and over are three times more likely to suffer than those between 18 and 34. A greater awareness of hearing health is perhaps why other tech companies have sought ways to…

ALTHOUGH ARGUABLY THE most important announcement to come out of this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple Intelligence won’t be released in its entirety with macOS Sequoia. The new artificial intelligence platform that powers a series of new features and is integrated system–wide into the iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro and Mac, is to be released with later OS updates over the next year. So let’s look at what we can expect to arrive over the next few months… Apple Intelligence is very focused on the user and what they need from their Apple devices. Drawing on your personal context, it’s customized to be relevant to you and your wishes, and is privacy protected at every stage. Writing Tools can not only proofread your writing, but can also rewrite it to make…

APPLE INTELLIGENCE IS set to work its magic over Apple Mail, making it easier to organize your emails in the much–loved client. Like most Apple Intelligence features, it isn’t available in the first release of macOS Sequoia, but we look forward to getting it with a later update. The big new feature, known as On Device Categorization, was demoed on the iPhone during the June’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote, but it’s expected on the Mac, iPad and Vision Pro too. It organizes your emails into categories. The Primary section consists of emails from people you know and time–sensitive messages. The Transactions section is for receipts, order confirmations and so on, while the Updates section stores newsletters, social media alerts and Promotions is for marketing and sales circulars. A new…

MUSIC, MOVIES AND TV shows are often more fun when they’re a shared experience — but we can’t always be in the same room as all of the people we want to listen or watch with. That’s where SharePlay comes in. It enables you to share the same tracks from Apple Music or movies and shows from Apple TV with other people, and to chat while you listen or watch. As we’ll discover, it’s very easy to set up and just as easy to use. WHAT SHAREPLAY DOESN’T DO SharePlay doesn’t transmit the audio and video from your Mac over FaceTime. Instead, it synchronizes your Mac, iPhone or iPad with everybody else so that their Music or TV app plays the same thing at the same time, including any pauses, fast–forwards…

FREEFORM MAY WELL be one of the most entertaining apps Apple has ever created. Released in late 2022 for iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 and updated several times since, it’s now also available on Vision Pro, and whatever device you use it on it delivers instant, effortless sharing. Altogether that makes it a great tool for brainstorming, for collaborative projects and for trip planning for multiple people because not only can you all share images, diagrams, annotations and text, but you can also share links to external sites and apps. In this tutorial we’ll explore how to create and edit a new board using Freeform’s intuitive tools, how to add things from other apps, and how to share what you’re doing with friends, colleagues or family members. We’ll stick…

WHILE YOU COULD stick with the default wallpapers available on your iPad, iPadOS includes plenty of customization options to help make your iPad feel truly yours. Head to Settings > Wallpaper, tap “+ Add New Wallpaper” and you’ll be shown the Wallpaper Gallery. There you can choose from a huge range of colorful options, from Collections to Kaleidoscope, Astronomy to Weather, each of which can be customized in various ways to suit the look that you want to achieve. Better still, you can turn your favorite images from your Photos library into a wallpaper that can be shown on your iPad’s Home and Lock Screens, and if you use Photo Shuffle you’ll see a different image every day, every hour or when you tap or lock the screen. While Photo…

YOU’LL FIND IMOVIE can do so much more than just trimming and re-ordering your clips. It can also make the story flow by adding one of 24 transitions that mix, wipe or slide from one clip to another. A movie without titles and captions is like a cake without icing! We’ll show you how to customize the title’s font and color to complement your video’s subject and add information to get social media followers up to speed on what they’re watching. Audio tends to be the weakest part of most video productions, so we’ll also demonstrate how to replace your clip’s unwanted sound with music that helps link the collection of clips into a unified story. You’ll also learn how to add a voiceover to add narration to your story,…

MOST USERS DON’T need anything more than an Apple Mac or iPad to work effectively from home. With the right software, you should be able to complete the vast majority of tasks with ease — but that doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from investing in any number of accessories. Find a comfortable keyboard or mouse that best suits your needs and you may find yourself working faster and more efficiently. Switch to a top microphone and you might feel more confident in projecting yourself in online meetings. A tidy desk can lead to clearer thinking while a decent printer can make reports more professional. So let’s take a look at the add–ons that can make a real difference. 1 Lofree Flow100 keyboard > $169 > www.lofree.co For smooth, comfortable, quiet typing…

$129.99 From aoc.com Features 15.6–inch, 1920x1080, IPS panel, 60Hz refresh rate, 1x USB–C 3.2, 1.8m cable PORTABLE MONITORS ARE great for travel. Slip one into your bag with your MacBook and you can enjoy two screens when on a work trip, just like you might do at home. The AOC 16T3EA has a 15.6in screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and comes with a carry case. The unit is barely larger than its screen — it’s a mere half-inch thick and weighs less than 2lbs, so sits neatly in your bag along with your MacBook. The fold–out stand lets you use it in landscape or portrait, and if you want to wall mount it, a VESA bracket is supplied. The monitor is a plug–and–play affair. Just connect it to your MacBook’s…