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macOS Sierra Master all the great new features and install the best on your Mac right now
iCloud drive
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how it’s changing Apple’s cloud sync & storage gets even better in Sierra
How future Wi-Fi makes more of your Apple gear
Share your address book the easy way!
Dashcams: Which is best with a Mac?
Untangle issues with Contacts
6 cameras roadtested for you
Mac
iPhone
iPad
Watch
iCloud
iTunes
Photos
iOpener Game-changing tech from the world of Apple and beyond
Popslate 2 Your iPhone gets a second screen When the original Popslate debuted, it caused quite a stir – here was an iPhone case with an E Ink display on the back to display notifcations, news and more. Popslate 2 builds on that foundation in a number of ways. It has a larger screen – now 4.7-inches at 200dpi – and a Lightning port to simultaneously connect to your iPhone and charge it up. You can also flick through five different apps using the capacitive buttons near the bottom of the screen. Popslate’s maker say this all adds up to saving your iPhone’s battery by keeping the LED display switched off. From $149 (about £115) includes Popslate E Ink battery case website popslate.com works with iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus
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We hope you’ve been enjoying the public beta release of macOS Sierra (already on its fourth update by the time we went to press), and even if you haven’t we show what you’ve been missing in this issue. We guide you through all the big changes and show you exactly how they work in Sierra to date (expect things to have changed a little by the final release in September). If you like a lot of what Sierra has to offer but want to stick with El Capitan for a while, we’ve looked at some brilliant add-ons you can get for your current OS that’ll go someway to replicating what the brand-new macOS can do. As excited as we get about a new OS, we must always remember to back up. But even then disaster can strike, and if you’ve ever had a drive that’s packed up and want to know exactly the right way to retrieve your data, this month’s project will get you on the right track. If you’ve ever mourned the death of Apple’s iWeb and want to get started in web design on your Mac, we’ve often recommended RapidWeaver over the years. Well, now’s your chance to get a free copy with this issue – just head over to page 19 for details.
Meet the team
ChrIStIAn hAll EditOR editor@macformat.com
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Alan Stonebridge Production Editor Alan’s watched too many disappointing summer blockbusters. roll on rogue One: A Star Wars Story in December to erase the bad taste.
Alex Blake Commissioning Editor Alex has been reliving his gaming childhood by playing the rereleases of Disney’s Aladdin and the Jungle Book. he still can’t finish either of them.
Paul Blachford Managing Art Editor Paul is now booking next year’s holiday to see the Sierra nevada mountain range. Apple’s desktop backgrounds in macOS Sierra make the place look incredible.
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAt | 5
Issue 304 October 2016 macformat.com
8
HOw TO geT ReAdy FOR
macOS
Apple CORe 8
RuMOuR & news
Sierra 32
The core Apple news you need to know about
11
Apps & gAMes
Our top picks of the month for Mac and iOS
12
Apple FACTs
Amazing stats from the world of Apple
14
news FeATuRe & OpiniOn
Going deeper into the hot topics of the month
18
spliT view
The team’s views on the latest Apple tech
Apple HOMe 21
Apple HOMe
80
Build the smart home of the future today
22
nexT-gen wi-Fi TeCH
Deal with your demanding networking needs
26
seT yOuR wi-Fi FRequenCy
Ensure your devices get the best connection
28
HOMe gAdgeTs
A smart fridge, a pet monitor and more
6 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
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Issue 304 COnTenTs
genius Tips 67
genius Tips
Howard Oakley solves your Mac and iOS issues
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Apple CHOiCe
Our verdicts on the latest hardware and apps, including a superfast next-gen Wi-Fi router
104 sTORe guide Get help with picking your next piece of Apple hardware and the best add-ons to go with it
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What’s coming in MF305 on 27 September
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Add widgets for any info you need at a glance
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Discover a great replacement for Apple’s app
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Retrieve data or even extend a disk’s lifespan
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 7
What’s inside 8–10 rUMOUr & nEWs The core Apple news you need to know about
11 aPPs & GaMEs
EditEd by
christian hall
Our top picks of the month for Mac and iOS aPPlE rUMOUr
12 aPPlE Facts Amazing stats from the world of Apple
14–15 nEWs FEatUrE What next for chips after the ARM takeover?
16 OPiniOn Adam Banks on the fun and futility of rumours
18 sPlit ViEW The team’s views on the latest Apple tech
Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat
8 | MacFOrMat
Apple Pencil 2 Apple’s stylus could do even more than we thought We’re huge fans of the Apple Pencil. It’s comfortable, accurate and handily charges from the iPad Pro’s Lightning port. It’s a winning combination with the iPad Pro, but it was clear to us that the 2015 launch model wasn’t the beginning and end of Apple styluses. We expect a new 12.9-inch iPad Pro to debut in late 2016, and a new Pencil should be announced with it. However, the changes could be more far-reaching than would at first seem obvious. Sure, there’s bound to be even longer battery life and maybe a choice of colours, but according to a recently uncovered patent, a new Pencil might work with a Mac and possibly support gestures in the air! Apple’s granted patent 9,400,570 was originally filed in late 2014 and was published this July by the US Patent and Trademark Office. It depicts a Pencil working with an updated Magic Trackpad for manipulating 3D objects in a Mac app. Moving the Pencil beyond the iPad makes sense and could see an exciting new market for this accessory. 1
Alan says…
different nibs to better simulate the texture of a pencil on paper is my hope for the next model
GYrOscOPE For an Apple Pencil 2 to work successfully as an ‘in-the-air’ gesture tool, perhaps even for flicking through photos or tabs in Safari, it would need a gyroscope like that found in the iPhone or Apple Watch.
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Rumour aPPlE cOrE
3
BEttEr GriP Pencil 2 is unlikely to change the look that Apple crafted with the original, but some find gripping it a little slippy. Perhaps a rubber grip area would solve this issue without cheapening the look.
1
thE POll WE askED… With the weak pound, will your spending on Apple kit be affected? Yes, I will spend more
Yes, I will spend less
7.5%
32%
2
60.5% My spending won’t change
Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat
4
chanGEaBlE niBs
3
4
The nib in the first Apple Pencil can be unscrewed (the sensor lies behind it), and Apple could introduce a selection of new nibs for different artistic strokes. Yes, iPad apps can already mimic any brush type, but artists may prefer a nib to be much more like a facsimile of the real thing.
rUMOUr Mill
Hot on the heels of the tech giant’s latest moves…
1
WirElEss BUDs
The iPhone 7 is tipped to have Lightning EarPods bundled with it, but wireless versions are anticipated as a separate purchase. Reports say these will feature a new power-saving Bluetooth chip.
2
DatE FOr thE DiarY
2
BattErY liGht With the original Pencil, you can only see its charge as a percentage in the Widgets tab of Notification Centre (or when its battery gets low). Having a visual indicator on the Pencil itself is far more useful.
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Talking of the iPhone, it’s widely expected that Friday, 9 September will be the pre-order date for iPhone 7.
3
tV GUiDE In an effort to expand Apple TV, the Cupertino firm is said to be looking into creating a universal viewing guide for streaming video services.
OCtObER 2016 | MacFOrMat | 9
Apple’s Irish tax scheme a ‘fraud’ $250 Economist: Apple must pay more
CLASSIC APPLE FACTS
the cost of an apple floppy drive in 1992
Apple killed the floppy drive in 1998 with the release of the iMac G3, but in 1992 it was going strong. The PowerBook 100 didn’t have a floppy drive, but you could buy an external one for the sum of $250 – that’s $435 (£333) today.
600,000 total number of ipods sold in 2002 The music player that started a revolution was instantly popular, selling over half a million units just one year after launching. Apple then sold the one millionth iPod in June 2003.
1BN total itunes songs sold by february 2006 That music revolution continued with the launch of the iTunes Music Store in 2003. Apple sold one million songs in the store’s first week, rising to 1 billion in February 2006. By July 2007 that had tripled to 3 billion tracks sold.
nobel prize winner Joseph stiglitz says apple ought to end tax wheeze pple has long battled suggestions that its tax structure is underhand. But that task may be harder now that a Nobel-winning economist has called the firm’s Irish tax arrangements “fraud”. Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and former World Bank chief economist, was talking to Bloomberg TV. He said: “Here we have the largest corporation in capitalisation not only in America, but in the world… and claiming that most of its profits originate from about a few hundred people working in Ireland – that’s a fraud”. Ireland’s corporation tax rate of 12.5% is lower than the 35% in the US. However,
A
€ Apple’s European headquarters is in Cork, Ireland.
Apple is thought to be benefitting from a ‘sweetheart’ deal with the Irish government that sees it paying just 2%. The European Commission is currently investigating whether such a deal would constitute illegal state aid – Apple could owe an estimated $8bn in owed taxes if the commission decides that’s the case. However, Tim Cook has said Apple is the largest taxpayer in the world and pays every cent it owes. He previously described the US tax code as “awful for America” and “made for the industrial age”.
Apple offers cash rewards for bug catchers The computer kind, not the creepy crawly kind hile its rivals have invited hackers to find bugs in their software in return for cash, Apple has long held out. The argument went that it can’t offer the same level of reward as the black market or government, and has an in-house security team anyway, so why bother? That thinking looks to have shifted. Ivan Krstic, Apple’s head of security engineering, announced the change at the annual Black Hat conference for the IT security industry. The ‘bug bounty’ program will launch in September with five tiers of reward, ranging from $25,000 to $200,000 for vulnerabilities in secure boot process components.
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10 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
In an effort to make Mac and iOS software as water tight as possible, Apple's finally welcoming the bug hunters.
At present, the program is invitation-only. To be eligible for a reward, researchers must submit a proof of concept using the most recent iOS and Apple hardware. Apple will encourage people to donate their prize to charity, pledging to match any donation that goes to a charitable cause. Alex Rice, co-founder of bug bounty program HackerOne, says Apple will benefit from its own program: “There isn’t a company yet who has launched a bug bounty program and has not identified new vulnerabilities that they didn’t know about yet”.
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Apps & Games APPLE CORE
APPLE Tv
APP OF ThE MOnTh
Our top picks of what’s worth watching and playing this month
[M Ac GA M E]
Shadow Complex £10.99
[ MOV I E]
CAPTAin AMERiCA: CiviL WAR £13.99
A remaster of an adventure classic hits the Mac App Store The original Shadow Complex was a huge hit when it came out on the Xbox 360 in 2009. Seven years later it’s been remastered, updated and released on the Mac. You play as Jason Fleming, a hiker who stumbles upon a conspiracy to start a second American civil war by a paramilitary group called The Restoration. You must make use of the many high-tech ‘toys’ of The Restoration
to free Jason’s partner through a branching, non-linear story mode. Aside from upscaling character and environmental graphics (up to 4K resolution), the remaster has improved lighting, new melee moves and new achievements. And if you want to try something other than the main story, there’s a bonus Proving Grounds mode where you can test your mettle with challenges and achievements.
Political pressure splits the Avengers in a bitter feud. Frantic action and internecine destruction make for terrific thrills.
[POdcAst]
ThE AudiO guidE TO b5 FREE Like sci-fi meatier than recent Star Trek? Sink your teeth into this talk about a ’90s classic; spoilers are segregated to help out first-timers.
[iO s A PP]
[iOs GAME]
[A PPl E M usIc]
APPLE STORE FREE
COLORCubE £1.49
And ThE AnOnyMOuS nObOdy… (dE LA SOuL)
Apple’s gadget catalogue app has been updated to include recommendations based on your device. You can also scan products at a retail store and it’ll tell you if they’re compatible with your devices. It has a new Account tab too, and better event updates. Why you need it: Buy your Apple kit – and get free apps! What’s it best for: Avoiding the mad rush on launch days.
Deceptively tricky puzzles are the name of the game in Colorcube. Twist and turn shapes so that their colours blend to match the objective given at the top of the screen. It starts off simple but rapidly becomes fiendishly difficult. It looks gorgeous, too. Why you need it: Combines puzzle fun with lovely design. What’s it best for: Brain teasers for the daily commute.
Hip hop trio De La Soul release their ninth album, fresh off funding it on Kickstarter. The album blew right past its target of $110,000 in under 10 hours, raising over $600,000. The tracks are the result of numerous improv sessions, so expect free-flowing creativity. Why you need it: Hear hip hop pioneers in their element. What’s it best for: Quirky lyrics and out-there sampling.
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[t V shOw ]
biLLiOnS SEASOn 1 FREE High tension and high finance collide as a ferocious prosecutor battles a brash tycoon he’s convinced is a crook. Powerful stuff.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 11
APPLE CORE Facts & Figures
MUSIC
1 apple music streams at 256Kbps, but should apple buy tidal (as is rumoured), this could rise to 320Kbps – or even lossless.
in nuMbERS
256 kbps
It’s little over 14 months old, but Apple’s Spotify rival has become very big, very quickly. Let’s take a look at the Apple Music subscription service in detail
2
3 million
The number of tracks available on Apple Music – about the same as Spotify, but fewer than the 43 million in the iTunes Store.
5
3
15 million 60% 4
Apple Music grew to 15 million paying subscribers in its first year. Spotify took about six to get there. $780
THE BANK OF APPLE CORP
million
Apple Music users aged 35+ are more likely to pay for it than younger ones: 67% compared to 38% of younger users.
nExT iSSuE 12 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Three months after launching (when the initial free trial period ended), 60% of Apple Music users went on to pay for the service.
6
App780mus
$780 million Those users (6.5 million people) were worth $780 million to Apple in revenues, according to analyst Richard Windsor.
We explore some of the headline figures behind Apple’s tiny entertainment box, the Apple TV. macformat.com @macformat
APPLE CORE News Feature
For our latest subscription offer see page 30!
investigates
Out of ARM’s way After a £24bn takeover of iPhone chip designer ArM, where now for Apple? writteN by ALEX BLAKE hen the news broke in July that UK processor designer ARM had been taken over by Japanese firm SoftBank for the princely sum of £24bn (yes, billion), a lot of people were left feeling confused. For many, it was the first they had heard of ARM, and it left a lot of pertinent questions to be answered. Why was this unfamiliar British company being bought by an equally unfamiliar Japanese company, and why was it worth such an astronomical sum? One reason is ARM’s reach (so to speak). It designs chips for the vast majority of the world’s smartphones, including every iPhone ever made. That kind of near-universal market penetration is undoubtedly valuable to any potential buyer. But does this takeover mean changes are coming to the iPhone and its A-series processors? SoftBank is no stranger to huge takeover bids. In 2013 it paid $20.1bn for a controlling stake in US telecommunications firm Sprint. It also runs the Japanese operations of UK phone network Vodafone. It took over French robotics company Aldebaran and made it into a global name, and has similarly announced that it plans to expand ARM and double the number of staff working at its UK operations over the next five years (in fact, Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, pledged to make that
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14 | MACFORMAT | OctOber 2016
ARM designs chips for the vast majority of the world’s smartphones
ARM sees its future in smart home devices – Apple may follow suit.
a legally binding commitment that would be enforceable by the UK government’s business takeover panel).
The Internet of Things
The main reason for the takeover lies in the Internet of Things (IoT), a system whereby every appliance and gadget is connected and can share information (so you can control your lighting with your iPhone, for example). A future where every domestic appliance is smart, connected and powered by an ARM chip is one that SoftBank has staked so much money on; with its current global presence in smartphones, the thinking is that ARM will be well placed to integrate itself into the IoT. In fact, it’s ARM’s low-power chips – so essential in smartphones – that make it such a good fit for the IoT, where small, affordable, energy-efficient chips are vital. Not everyone is as confident as SoftBank. According to Marc Einstein of business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, “SoftBank’s acquisition is a huge bet on the future”. SoftBank believes that artificial intelligence will play a massive role in the coming years, and wants to be in pole position when that future becomes the present. Son has even gone so far as to call what he sees as the IoT future “the biggest paradigm shift in human history”. He’s not exactly hesitant, that’s for sure.
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ArM’s takeover APPLE CORE
ARM has grown from a small joint venture involving Acorn Computers and Apple to an industry giant. image creditS: cmglee
And he’s not alone. Commentators have been calling on Apple to enter the Internet of Things marketplace for some time now, either with a smart home app or, somewhat more ambitiously, a connected hub device. Doing so makes sense for Apple, as the smartphone market has been slowing down and even the iPhone – once such a guaranteed grower – has not been able to escape the downturn. These conditions affect ARM as much as they do Apple, and with SoftBank’s professed interest in the IoT so obvious, it’s almost a certainty that ARM will look to expand in this direction. So too, surely, must Apple, if it wants to find a new, profitable revenue stream – something it’s so good at.
What now for Apple?
BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis sees the SoftBank takeover as a missed opportunity for Apple. “Apple acquiring ARM could make so much sense”, he opined at the time of the takeover announcement. “It’s a high-margin business with future growth… It positions Apple for the growing IoT market”. Still, all is not lost for those hoping Apple will enter the world of IoT. Tim Cook will not suddenly switch to a different chip designer now that ARM is owned by SoftBank, and he’s equally unlikely to be turning a blind eye to ARM’s IoT intentions. Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights and Security, summed it up this way: “I’m not expecting any changes because many of their contracts
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This may grant Apple “early access to new tech from ARM”
are long-term, tied to specific architectures and products”. Any IoT plans Apple may have been harbouring will not have been jettisoned because Apple failed to buy ARM, nor will it suddenly switch to a rival chip designer. After all, Son likes Apple. He pitched an iPhone concept to Steve Jobs two years before it came out, and secured exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in Japan. He is reportedly still close to Apple executives. According to tech industry consultant Tim Bajarin, this close relationship may grant Apple “early access to new tech from ARM or any other preferential treatment” – a potentially significant benefit. With that in mind, the closeness between Apple and ARM is likely to continue. The two collaborated on the Apple Newton, and ARM designed the Secure Enclave that’s essential to Touch ID – the partnership is unlikely to simply end there. What does that mean for the iPhone and its ARM-designed chip? Well, just a week before the SoftBank bid, ARM announced it was collaborating with nanoelectronics research group IMEC on a 7nm chip design. As per previous similar improvements, this would likely result in a speedier and more efficient chip, and thus a speedier and more efficient iPhone in the future. Whatever the reality, there are bound to be some serious ramifications for Apple in the future. Whether they manifest themselves sooner rather than later is not yet certain, but we know they’re coming. Watch this space.
OctOber 2016 | MACFORMAT | 15
APPLE CORE Opinion
ADAM BANKS… gOing dEEpER Than a fORCE CliCk wiTh musings On ThE wORld Of applE By the time you read this, we’ll know the real specs of the new iPhone. But it was much more fun trying to work out what Apple was really up to. The Apple rumour mill is a wondrous thing. No product tweak is too small, no speculation too wild to be fine-toothcombed to death by the bloggerati. The company does not comment, as we know, on unannounced products. It almost never comments on announced products either. Nor on things that aren’t products. And it certainly doesn’t comment on its own policy of not commenting. But that doesn’t stop the rumour mill churning. On the contrary, it creates the perfect environment for people who like to make stuff up on the internet. For some, this is a full-time job: they’re called analysts. One of them, Gene Munster, spent years telling everyone that Apple was definitely about to unveil a television set. Everyone told him right back that it probably wasn’t. We were right. He was wrong. In 2015 he finally admitted: “It’s a hard reality to accept, [but] the TV is on hold”. Wait, what? Yes, one of the rumour mill’s favourite tropes is the product that may never have existed, yet is now delayed. This amorphous fate has recently befallen the Apple car, described by Tesla boss Elon Musk as Silicon Valley’s “worst kept secret”. For a badly kept secret, it seems pretty well kept to me, given we know precisely nothing about it – not even if the car will be selfdriving, or whether Apple or a marque will manufacture it, or whether it’ll be a car or a minivan or, as US magazine Motor Trend hilariously illustrated, a golden Judge Dredd helmet on castors. According to tech insider site The Information, however, ‘a person’ claimed it had been pushed back from 2020 to 2021. That person’s sure going to have egg on their face if the Apple
Gene Munster spent years telling us all there’d definitely be an Apple TV set
16 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
car doesn’t come out in exactly five years’ time! If any of us remember any of this, or knew who the person was anyway. This is how the rumour mill works: you can be wrong as many times as you want, as long as… no, actually you can just carry on being wrong. In the run-up to this September’s iPhone launch, we were told it’d be a major redesign, continuing Apple’s two-year development cycle; that it wouldn’t, heralding a new threeyear cycle; that it would ditch the headphone jack; that it wouldn’t; that it would after all; that one model would and the other wouldn’t; that there’d be a third model; that one or two or three of the two or three models would have two cameras; and so on, and so on. What did we learn from all this? Nothing. We might as well have waited for the webcast of the press conference. Or just opened the Apple Store app the next day to check out the officially confirmed line-up. But where would be the fun in that? Silly as it is, the rumour mill gets us all thinking about what we’d like in the next iThing, and what we wouldn’t. And I bet our fellow Apple fans inside Infinite Loop pay some attention to the online debate, too. Of course, I have absolutely nothing in the way of evidence for that…
ABOUT ADAM BANKS Adam is Apple to the core, having reported on the world of Macs since the 1990s. As a writer, designer, art director and print production contractor, he divides his time between the Northern Powerhouse and the Creative Cloud.
macformat.com @macformat
APPLE CORE Split View
APPLE IN QUOTES Eddy CuE apple.com
“We don’t want to tell the world what we want to solve. Why? Because we haven’t solved it.”
sPLiT viEW
SubSCribe tOdAy!
the MacFormat team debates the hot Apple issues of the day, using their iPhones of course!
“WhiCh APPLE APP COuLd yOu nOT LivE WiThOuT?”
Cue digs at Apple’s rivals hyping products too soon
Alex says… BOzOMA sAinT JOhn
sAvE
45%! turn to page 30
christian says…
Apple Store; it’s the less crash-prone method on pre-order day. I’d hate Keynote to be retired.
Reminders. I’m forgetful and used to have a ton of alarms set. Reminders isn’t so obnoxious!
apple.com
“Human curation allows you to have the emotion and feel music.”
Well if we’re considering defaults too, how could anyone live without Photos? I’ve pretty much replaced most defaults on my iPhone 6s (with Fantastical, Chrome, Wunderlist, etc) but there aren’t many good apps to manage all your shots.
Apple Music marketing chief explains why she backs human curation
I know one I could live without: Podcasts. I listen to more podcasts than music these days, but I find Apple’s app dire. I use Overcast instead – I wrote a tutorial about it for this issue, in fact.
CRAig FEdERighi apple.com
“A world where people do not care about the quality of their experience is not a good world for Apple.”
Stop shamelessly self-promoting yourself, Alex. This isn’t BlakeFormat you know!
Apple wants customers to tell it where it went wrong
Having said that, have you remembered that you can get a free copy of RapidWeaver this issue? I know you used to like iWeb back in the day.
OM MALik om.co
“This is just such nonsense. They should be building better products and not stupid TV shows around those products.”
Yep, I’m designing the BlakeFormat website as we speak. Watch this space…
nExT issuE What’s your immediate reaction to iPhone 7?
GigaOM founder is not a fan of Apple’s upcoming Planet of the Apps show
18 | MACFORMAT | OctOber 2016
Siri...ously?
“What does Siri mean” ‘Siri’ has many subtle, metaphorical, and frankly contradictory meanings. None of which I am at liberty to discuss. Sorry about that.
tap to edit
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 19
What’s inside 22–25 NEXT-GEN WI-FI Everything is becoming connected, so where will Wi-Fi take us?
26–27 TUTORIAL Set up your dual-band router the right way with our top tips
28–29 HOME GADGETS Essential kit to elevate your abode from ‘home’ to ‘smart home’
EditEd by
CLIFF jOSEpH
The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today!
your Wi-Fi router is the hub that powers your smart home, and there’s a new generation of Wi-Fi tech coming that is faster than ever e’ve looked at a wide range of home automation kit in the last few months, from smart lighting to security cameras and thermostats, and much more besides. One thing many of these devices have in common is reliance on Wi-Fi to connect them to the Internet of Things (IoT). This explosion of devices means that there’s ever more pressure on our home Wi-Fi networks, whether from streaming
W
Contact us
LIVE SMARTER
video from Netflix, playing games online, or your kids vlogging their teenage angst to the world on YouTube. Wi-Fi tech has to evolve to take the strain of all this digital communication, and we’re currently at a tipping point where the next generation of Wi-Fi is about to arrive. The latest Wi-Fi routers include several new features that can improve both speed and reliability, so here’s our guide to the next-gen Wi-Fi kit you need to power your smart home.
Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com
If your Wi-Fi signal is poor at the far reaches of your home, a new router could improve your experience.
OCtObER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 21
AppLE HOME Future Wi-Fi
Explained...
Next-Gen
Wi-Fi
We have more and more devices hooked up to our networks, but the latest Wi-Fi routers are designed to take the strain Will my old devices continue to work with a new router? Each new version of Wi-Fi is backwardscompatible. So, a Mac or iPhone with 802.11n Wi-Fi will work with an 802.11ac router, but at 802.11n speeds. That’s still enough for most home broadband services, so you don’t need a new Mac too.
What is meant by ‘dual-band’? Dual-band routers can transmit data on two frequency bands: 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The former has longer range, but is prone to interference from other devices in your home. 5GHz improves reliability, but it may not reach every room.
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here’s a great deal of jargon surrounding Wi-Fi and routers, which can be quite confusing when you’re looking at upgrading to the latest and greatest networking tech. However, there are a few key features you should look out for if you want to improve the speed and reliability of your home’s Wi-Fi network. The current version of Wi-Fi used by most recent home routers is called 802.11ac, although there are still many people using routers based on the older 802.11n standard. Routers that use 802.11n have a maximum speed of 450Mbps (megabits per second), whereas 802.11ac steps right up to 1.3Gbps (gigabits per second) – an obvious improvement that makes it worth upgrading. All 802.11ac routers also provide ‘dual-band’ features that allow them to transmit data on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies. That’s important, as the 2.4GHz bandwidth has become
T
increasingly crowded in recent years, so using the 5GHz band can help to reduce the interference that comes from that. Mind you, 802.11ac itself is still a work in progress, and routers such as BT’s Home Hub 5 and Apple’s AirPort Extreme are actually known as ‘802.11ac Wave 1’. These Wave 1 routers can use multiple antennas to transmit multiple signals simultaneously in order to improve the overall rate of data transfer. This technique is called SU-MIMO, meaning ‘single-user, multi-in/multi-out’. The ‘single-user’ bit means that the router can only transmit data to a single device at a time – which might sound a bit odd as most of us tend to have multiple devices online at once.
Grandma vs gaming Suppose you’re watching Netflix on your laptop, while the kids are talking to grandma using Skype on their iPad. A router with SU-MIMO will send a few seconds of Netflix video over to Wi-Fi technology has moved on a bit since Apple introduced the 802.11accapable AirPort Extreme in June 2013.
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Future Wi-Fi AppLE HOME
Even if you upgrade to a router with more advanced Wi-Fi, older Macs and iOS devices will still work with it
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Explained QoS
Look out for routers that provide an option called QoS (Quality of Service). This feature enables the router to recognise apps, such as games or Netflix streaming, that need a fast connection, causing it to prioritise their network traffic to ensure the best possible performance.
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AppLE HOME Future Wi-Fi
demanding applications such as gaming and streaming video that demand really high performance. However, the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing new device types into our homes, often with different requirements.
Halow, Halow
WiGig will provide very fast speeds, making it suited to data-intensive applications such as 4K video streaming.
How fast is my router?
your MacBook, then turn its attention to grandma on Skype, and then quickly back to Netflix again. You might not have too much trouble if you’re just using those two devices on their own, but throw a couple of smartphones and a games console into the mix and everything will start to slow down as your router struggles to juggle data between all those different devices. Wave 2 routers, including the new BT Smart Hub, use more advanced MU-MIMO, or ‘multi-user, multi-in/multi-out’. This lets the router transmit separate signals to multiple devices simultaneously, for better performance and reliability when several devices are competing for a slice of Wi-Fi. Wave 2 routers can provide greater speed, too. The fastest we’ve seen so far is Netgear’s R7800 router, which can reach up to 2.53Gbps, although its forthcoming R8500 claims to go as fast as 5.3Gbps. These high-end routers are designed for
Many 802.11ac routers have a label that indicates their maximum speed. A basic router might say ‘AC750’, which indicates a speed of just 750Mbps, while a high-speed gaming router might say ‘AC2600’, which means 2.6Gbps.
Devices such as security cameras and thermostats don’t require superfast speeds, but they need to be power-efficient as they generally run 24 hours a day, and often off batteries. With that in mind, the next step in Wi-Fi evolution is 802.11ah, or Wi-Fi Halow. Instead of higher speeds, 802.11ah adds the ability to transmit on frequencies below 1GHz, which don’t need very much power. These lower frequencies also provide longer range, so you can use your smart devices all around your home, or in larger buildings such as schools and offices. 802.11ah isn’t due until early 2017, and it already faces competition for control of the Internet of Things. Some devices opt for rival technologies known as ZigBee and Z-Wave. TP-Link has announced a router, the SR20, designed for home automation that’ll combine standard 802.11ac Wi-Fi with support for both of these. Meanwhile, there’s a more specialised form of Wi-Fi in the works: WiGig, or 802.11ad. This will operate at 60GHz, and is fairly short range but very fast, making it useful for 4K video services and virtual reality games, which need really high speeds but only need to stream to one or two nearby devices, such as a games console or some future Apple TV. We’ve already heard of a WiGig router from TP-Link, the Talon AD7200. More interesting are rumours the iPhone 7 will include WiGig for streaming your 4K video recordings.
Modem or router? A router connects multiple computers and other devices in order to create a network within your home. To connect your network to the internet, you also need a modem. Many routers combine both of these within a single device. Some – notably Apple’s AirPort range – don’t include a modem, so you have to connect them to an existing one to get online.
802.11ac Wave 2 routers will better support multiple family members being able to do different stuff online at the same time.
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Future Wi-Fi AppLE HOME
iFacts… 25Mbps The connection speed that’s needed to stream 4K video from Netflix.
8.3 Internet-connected devices in the average UK home, according to a YouGov poll.
As more of your family indulges in intensive online activities, limitations of your router will become apparent
15 billion Wi-Fi-connected devices in use worldwide by the end of 2016, says the Wi-Fi Alliance.
50% Half the world’s connected devices are smartphones or tablets, Gartner reckons.
FIVE OF THE bEST the best gadgets for improving your home network
AirPort Extreme £169
BT Smart Hub £50
Devolo dLAN 500 duo £35
D-Link EXO AC1750 £125
Nighthawk X4S R7800 £220
apple.com/uk
bt.com
devolo.co.uk
dlink.com/uk
netgear.co.uk
The AirPort Extreme is very easy to use, but it’s only an 802.11ac Wave 1 router, so it’s due for a Wave 2 update soon. It doesn’t include a modem, either, so you need to hang on to your existing modem or router in order to connect the AirPort to the internet.
> The new Smart Hub costs just £50 for existing BT customers, so it’s a good upgrade for people who have one of BT’s older Home Hubs. The hub includes dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and no less than seven antennas hidden inside it to ensure a strong, reliable signal.
> The dLAN 500 duo is an affordable PowerLine starter kit for the tricky spots that your Wi-Fi network can’t reach. The pair of adaptors provides speeds of up to 500Mbps, and each adaptor has two Ethernet ports so you can take two wired devices online.
> The EXO AC1750’s big, fat antennas look really clunky, but they have special signal amplifiers to ensure max range and speed for your Wi-Fi. It has dual-band 802.11ac too, and features such as QoS to prioritise gaming and video, and a guest network for visitors.
> This router looks as cumbersome as its name sounds, but it’s seriously fast, designed for gaming and streaming video. It’s a bit pricey, but it crams in all the latest ‘Wave 2’ features, including dual-band 802.11ac, MU-MIMO and speeds up to 2.53Gbps.
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AppLE HOME Future Wi-Fi
1
INSIDE, OUTSIDE
Explained
2
bEAMFORMING Older routers used to transmit data in all directions in the hope that the signal would reach any devices within range. The latest 802.11ac routers use beamforming to aim it at individual devices more accurately.
Routers with 802.11ac use multiple antennas to boost signal strength. Netgear’s R7800 has four large antennas on the outside, but rivals such as the BT Smart Hub hide them neatly inside.
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2
INTERNET ACCCESS
MU-MiMO allows a router to transmit separate signals to multiple devices simultaneously
Remember that a router such as the R7800 can connect your devices together, but it doesn’t include a modem for connecting to the internet. You’ll need a separate modem or a combined modem-router for internet access.
HOW TO Select Wi-Fi frequency bands Genius Tip! The name of your network is called its SSID (Service Set Identifier). You can change this name if you want to make it easier to remember.
1 Unified, dual-band broadcast 2 Open your router’s settings A dual-band router creates two separate Wi-Fi networks, using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Many routers give them the same name, such as ‘BTHub 5 PW59’, which can make it tricky to switch between the two bands.
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Your router’s manual will tell you how to view the device’s settings in a web browser. They will look very similar for most routers. By default, the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks use the same name and password.
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Future Wi-Fi AppLE HOME
WHAT ELSE SHOULD I CONSIDER?
pOWERLINE GETS TO THE SpOTS WI-FI CAN’T REACH When Wi-Fi isn’t an option, use the cables already running through your home to compensate i-Fi is a really quick and convenient way of connecting devices to your home network. Even so, many of us find ‘dead spots’ in our homes that the signal can’t reach, such as an upstairs bedroom.
W
This is where powerline kit can be a lifesaver. Powerline adaptors connect devices to your network via your existing electrical sockets. You need one adaptor to connect your router to a nearby mains socket, and an additional adaptor that plugs into a socket in the room where you have that pesky dead spot. You then connect your device to the powerline adaptor using an Ethernet cable. Prices start at around £35 for a two-adaptor kit, such as Devolo’s dLAN 500 duo. This particular kit provides speeds of up to 500Mbps, but other dLAN kits go up to 1.2Gbps for gaming and video streaming. You can also purchase powerline ‘range extenders’, such as the dLAN 1200+ WiFi, that extend your existing Wi-Fi network beyond its normal reach.
Jargon Buster
3 Split into discrete networks 4 Connect to the best one If you select ‘No’ to desync the two bands, a text box appears where you can enter a new name for the 5GHz network. If you’re worried about security, you can also create a separate password (wireless key) for this network, too.
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Within the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, there are a number of channels that can carry your network’s data. Most routers select one automatically, but you can pick one manually in your router’s admin tool to reduce interference.
We can still see our original ‘BTHub5PW59’ network on the 2.4GHz band, but our new ‘MacFormat 5GHz’ one now shows up as a separate network. Remember, only 802.11n and 802.11ac devices can use the 5GHz band.
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AppLE HOME Gadgets
WHAT yOU NEED NEXT…
HOME GADGETS indoors or outdoors, here’s the latest clever tech you need to create your new smart home
devialet Gold Phantom £2,190 en.devialet.com Devialet is going for gold with the latest version of its Phantom speaker. It launched its Phantom and Silver Phantom speakers last year, priced at £1,390 and £1,690 respectively, and has now added the top-of-the-range Gold Phantom for £2,190. That’s seriously expensive, of course, but the Gold Phantom is unlike any of the compact home speakers we’ve seen in the past. The speaker starts off with 22-carat tinted gold panels that will be a great match for your Rose Gold iPhone, iPad or MacBook. Beneath its gilded exterior, the Gold Phantom boosts its volume levels to a thunderous 108dB – about the same level as a pneumatic drill. It’s not just about power, though. The Gold Phantom sounds terrific too, thanks to a custom-designed audio chip that includes both a high-quality DAC (digital-to-analogue converter) and a hybrid analogue/digital
1
devialet’s dialog adaptor can create a multiroom speaker system made of up to 24 Phantoms amplifier. There’s no subwoofer, but Devialet came up with a special design for the bass drivers that allows them to withstand very high air pressure in order to enhance bass output. In fact, Devialet refers to this as its
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The tint of the Gold Phantom goes great with Apple’s Rose Gold Macs and iOS devices.
‘bass implosion’ design, as some of Devialet’s early prototypes imploded under the pressure they were subjected to.
Manifestly massive sound All three Phantom models include Bluetooth and dual-band Wi-Fi for streaming music, as well as Gigabit Ethernet and a Toslink optical connector. The Gold Phantom adds Apple’s AirPlay tech for streaming from Macs and iOS over Wi-Fi. Devialet also provides its own app, called Spark, which lets several people share their music libraries and create shared playlists. If you buy two Phantoms together you’ll save a couple of hundred pounds and get Devialet’s Dialog adaptor thrown in, which pairs the speakers for two-channel stereo. And, if you’re seriously loaded, it can create a multiroom system of up to 24 Phantoms spread through the wings of your mansion.
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Gadgets AppLE HOME
Pawbo Camera £180 pawbo.com We’ve seen plenty of security cameras and baby monitors in Apple Home in recent months, but the Pawbo is the first one we’ve seen that’s specifically designed for keeping an eye on your pets. It’s expensive, but along with a 720p video camera the Pawbo Camera has a speaker and a microphone so you can talk to your pets when you’re away from home. You can also play games using its built-in laser pointer, and there’s even a little tray that dispenses treats to keep your furry friends happy.
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Whirlpool Supreme NoFrost £999 whirlpool.com It’s not as over-the-top as Samsung’s Family Hub superfridge, but Whirlpool’s NoFrost uses an iPhone app to provide useful remote control of your fridge-freezer. As well as adjusting temperature settings on the move, Whirlpool’s 6th Sense app enables you to create a food inventory that can remind you when items are close to their best-by date. It also has a ‘party mode’ that can quickly chill drinks and ping you a message when they reach the desired temperature. Whirlpool plans to extend its 6th Sense tech to other devices, such as a washing machine with remote control, adjustable wash settings, and scheduling options.
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bellabeat Leaf $119 (about £90) bellabeat.com Some smart trackers have masqueraded as pieces of jewellery for a while now, but the female-focussed Bellabeat Leaf is actually aimed at women’s health as well. Bellabeat has built the Leaf to complement women’s lifestyles, making the device wearable as a bracelet or a pendant, tracking sleep, steps, calories and periods either way. Leaf has no screen, like many other fitness bands, so all the data gathered is displayed in its iPhone app, which offers a chance to see your goals and stats, but don’t expect the kind of depth seen in a Fitbit.
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4
iOS 10 is here, and now you have the perfect app for exploring HomeKit
Smart ideas MAGIC INkS
Colour-changing T-shirts have been around since the psychedelic ’60s, but fashion designer Lauren Bowker has taken the idea a step further with her design company, TheUnseen (theunseenemporium. co.uk). She’s developed special inks that change colour in response to ‘unseen’ environmental factors, such as heat and air pressure. Her website sells high-end couture items, such as a £750 scarf that changes colour with the movements of your body, and the £200, touch-sensitive Artefact iPhone case. Bowker is also exploring more useful applications of this tech. One of her inks responds to carbon emissions so that you can monitor pollution levels during the day. She’s also working on chromogenic materials that react to biological data, perhaps warning an athlete of impending injury or monitoring the health of a diabetic. As Bowker says: “why make just a pretty dress when you could make a pretty dress that saves your life?”
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OCTOBER 2016 | MAcFORMAt | 31
HOW TO GeT ReAdy FOR
macOS
Sierra Contributors: Christian Hall, Craig Grannell, Alan Stonebridge
A
pple’s latest, and hopefully greatest, operating system is almost upon us, and as has become the norm you can try it out now thanks to Apple’s Beta Software Program. We’ve already shown how to safely install the public beta version (see MF303, p50) and poke around the new features, but in this feature we’re taking you into exactly how those features work and what you can do with them.
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We’ll begin with the new Universal Clipboard feature, which takes Apple’s initiative for easier cross-device working even further, and show how Auto Unlock works with watchOS 3 – sadly, there’s no public beta of that system, but we’ll show you how to mimic Auto Unlock today. We’ll also look at how iCloud Drive, Photos and Messages have changed, and the capabilities of Siri on the Mac desktop. Finally, we’ll talk about APFS, Apple’s new file system, expected in an update in 2017.
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Your Mac’s new look The beautiful new vista and powerful features of macOS Sierra
2
3
1
4
do more with your photos…
Spruce up messages…
Ask Siri to find things…
Make more of the desktop…
Photos arrived 1 in Yosemite, but it’s taken until now to become really intelligent. The brand new Memories feature collects groups of related images to create a movie, while improved search makes large libraries more manageable.
Messages on 2 the desktop will reflect the big changes in iOS 10. You can now interact with messages (similar to a like on Facebook), add stickers, new emoji and animations, and see Digital Touch drawings, just like on Watch.
Siri is getting 3 more powerful with every iOS and tvOS release, and now it’s the turn of the Mac. Its beta is rather limited at the moment, but expect to be able to get more than just a list of files you’ve worked on or nearby recommendations.
macOS Sierra 4 is transforming the concept of the desktop workspace. Essentially, your desktop will become available in iCloud Drive so you can get to its contents from another device. “Never lose another file” just became a reality!
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 33
FEATURE macOS Sierra
Universal Clipboard Copy and paste between your Mac, iPhone and iPad
R
ather than create what Tim Cook once memorably called ‘toaster fridges’, Apple offers distinct devices that communicate effectively as a single, coherent ecosystem. Its Continuity features enable you to make and receive phone calls on your Mac, or start an email on one device and continue it on another. With the release of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Universal Clipboard is added to Continuity’s capabilities. With all your devices signed in to the same Apple ID, you can copy text or an image, photo or video on your iPad, for example, then switch to your Mac or iPhone and paste it in a there. What you copy is sent over a peer-to-peer connection, Universal Clipboard uses the familiar Copy and Paste commands, so you won’t need to adjust. so nothing’s uploaded to iCloud.
Useful third-party Clipboard apps COpiEd
pAsTE
AlFREd + pOwERpACk
The basics of Copied more or less mirror what you find in Universal Clipboard, albeit with support for older versions of Apple’s operating systems (starting with iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite). Once you enable Copied’s iCloud Sync feature, you can copy and paste things between your Macs and iOS devices. However, Copied goes beyond the capabilities of Apple’s system by providing access to a much richer range of features: a Clipboard history to access things copied in the past; editable clippings, templates enable clippings to be pasted with specific formatting; and batch operations, which enable you to select and merge clippings, or add them to stored lists.
At its core, this app is a smart Clipboard history and clippings manager. It claims to store “everything you’ve ever copied”, and enables you to later search for and retrieve important clippings so you can reuse them. Paste enables you to define rules that exclude specific apps, and create pinboards for regularly required clippings. Often, pinboard slots offer a suitably chunky preview, so you can quickly pick out a particular clipping at a glance; Quick Look is always available for a closer look. At the time of writing, clipboards can be shared with friends and sent over AirDrop; cross-device support is in the works, with Paste for iOS coming soon.
Although it isn’t technically a Clipboard manager, this app, once its £17 Powerpack add-on is installed and activated, has a Clipboard history feature. Alfred’s settings are usefully granular: you can define how long it should keep various kinds of clipping, such as plain text, images and file lists, with durations going from 24 hours to three months. When you open Alfred’s Clipboard History viewer, you can scroll through clippings, or filter its contents by typing a word or phrase. Alfred’s more advanced features include the ability to append the currently selected item to previously copied text in Clipboard History, and automatic pasting of your selection into an app upon pressing ®.
£5.99 ● COpiEdApp.COM
34 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
£7.99 ● pAsTEApp.ME
£17 ● AlFREdApp.COM
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macOS Sierra FEATURE
Using Sierra’s Auto Unlock You can unlock a Mac when your Apple Watch running watchOS 3 is nearby. Assuming your Watch has a passcode set and two-factor authentication is enabled for your Apple ID, you can turn on Auto Unlock in System Preferences’ Security & Privacy pane. Try to unlock your Mac; it’ll say it’s doing so with your Watch. If the Watch is absent, you’ll get the standard password screen. Sadly, there’s no automatic locking based on proximity, but MacID can do that (see below).
HOW TO Unlock your Mac using your iPhone and MacID
1 Install the Mac app
2 Get MacID for iOS
3 Pair your iOS device
4 Secure your Mac
5 Unlock your Mac
6 Take it further
Download, install and then open the Mac component of MacID from macid.co. It requires OS X 10.10 and a Mac that supports Bluetooth 4.0.
In Security & Privacy > General in System Preferences, set your Mac to require a password to wake from sleep or after its screen saver starts.
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Install MacID (£2.99) on an iOS device with Bluetooth active. If you also have an Apple Watch, you can install MacID using the Watch app.
Try to unlock your Mac; MacID sends notifications to your devices. Unlock it with a tap (Watch), or a swipe or using Touch ID (iPhone).
On your Mac, MacID should list your iOS device. Select it and click Continue, type your user account’s password, then click Continue again.
On iOS, you can use MacID to lock your Mac from afar. On Mac, use the app’s menu to set up Sierra-like proximity-based locking and waking.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 35
FEATURE macOS Sierra
iCloud Drive Access your Mac’s Desktop and Documents folders from anywhere
F
or a long while, Apple pushed back against traditional file systems. On iOS, documents only lived ‘inside’ apps. With iCloud, cross-device syncing worked well when using the same app on iPad, iPhone and Mac. However, when using multiple apps, you had to copy documents between them; this often resulted in many part-finished files strewn across devices. With iCloud Drive’s introduction, Apple added a more typical file system to the core iOS experience, and made it accessible on Macs and iOS devices. You can delve into app-specific folders, but also add folders of your own, just like in Finder on a Mac. Now, with the release of macOS Sierra, Apple is making a particularly audacious move regarding iCloud Drive, enabling you to keep your Mac’s Desktop and Documents folders on iCloud Drive. The option to do this is provided when you first set up macOS Sierra, but you can turn it on later in System Preferences’ iCloud pane: click on Options next to iCloud Drive, and in the Documents tab put a check mark next to ‘Desktop & Documents Folders’. When this feature is active, Desktop and Documents appear in the iCloud section of Finder’s sidebar (you can move them back to Favorites if you want), and the documents stored in those places will be available everywhere. And we mean everywhere. On an iOS device, you can open iCloud Drive (which in some versions may require an app that includes its own Document
Picker, or going to Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive and switching on ‘Show on Home Screen’). Among Macs using the same Apple ID and with the same settings, your documents will sync in the background. On a Mac running an older operating system, you’ll find your files in the Desktop and Documents folders within iCloud Drive. When using a non-Apple device, access them in the iCloud Drive web app at iCloud.com.
Will it fit you well? Regarding the specific folders that sync, Apple reasons they’re the most common places for saving files; also, images and other media are already catered for by existing iCloud services. There are, however, some snags to be mindful of before jumping in. First, there’s no granularity whatsoever at this time. The feature is either on or off. If you like the idea of syncing your Desktop but not Documents, tough. Secondly, if you regularly work with massive media files (such as Photoshop documents, audio recordings or video), be wary of slowing down your internet connection to a crawl as your devices try to sync huge documents with iCloud Drive. Finally, whatever you store in iCloud Drive eats into your iCloud storage plan. By default, Apple gives you just 5GB for free, which disappears rapidly with a couple of iOS device backups, let alone when syncing all manner of documents from your Mac. That said, the convenience of more easily accessing files will for many be worth a few quid each month.
It’s an audacious move of Apple to put these crucial folders in iCloud
36 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
iCloud pricing What it costs for more iCloud space 5GB FREE
50GB 79p/month
200GB £2.49/month
1TB £6.99/month
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Access your Mac anywhere There are other ways of getting at a Mac’s desktop from another Mac, by making use of OS X’s File Sharing and Screen Sharing features. These can be enabled in the Sharing pane in System Preferences. Macs that are configured to use them appear in Finder’s sidebar, under the Shared heading. Select one there and click Connect As to access the Mac’s files and folders. Click Share Screen and then enter login credentials for the remote Mac to view its desktop in
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a window. Drag files in Finder to copy them between the two computers. These options require the Macs to be on the same network, but you can also access a Mac over the internet. In System Preferences, choose which users should have access to Screen Sharing, then turn on Back to My Mac in the iCloud pane. In Finder’s Sidebar preferences, ensure Back to My Mac is checked. You should then be able to see the remote Mac in the sidebar and share its screen.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 37
FEATURE macOS Sierra
Photos
Clever tech and artistic features are a click away
A
pple says it brought the new Memories feature to macoS to turn your shots into unforgettable experiences. Well, it’s a little overdue. Photos on the Mac has been a little underwhelming to date. Most of us use it, but we hardly ever think it’s the complete experience it should be. Photos in Sierra at least takes two steps towards making us feel like it’s more like the app you may have expected to get in the first place. Photos becomes more useful for the most common tasks of searching and displaying your pictures in creative ways. With its ‘machine learning’ tech, not only does Photos have better face recognition – remember how hit and miss it used to be? – but it can also identify places and pets! What that boils
down to is a much improved way to search your ever-expanding library. We take a lot of shots on iPhone, each containing lots of information. Photos in Sierra puts that data to much better use to automatically group your shots from a certain location or with particular subjects in Albums. Then there’s Memories, a way for the app to assemble related images in short movies. You pick a style, choose some music, and then let an algorithm go to work on making a slideshow with no effort from your side.
Photos becomes more useful for the most common tasks of searching and displaying
How To Relive your Memories
1 Magic moments
In your Photos library, click Memories and then Get Started. Photos will get to work gathering your images into groups it thinks belong together. It’ll automatically name the memories using metadata and tags from the images it’s aggregated.
38 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
2 Stylise your memories
Everything is auto-generated by Photos, so you only have rudimentary choices over the visual theme and music. There are seven choices of theme, but on the Music tab you can pick anything from your iTunes library for a more personal feel.
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With so many of Sierra’s compelling features using iCloud, you may need more space!
3 Explore your memories
with a theme and music chosen, before you click on Play Slideshow, you can scroll down to see the photos that the app has chosen for the memory. Images are displayed in a grid, just like in the Activity view in the Shared tab.
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4 Enjoy the show!
Scroll to the bottom to see Photo’s new facial recognition at work. It finds all the faces from your photos – in this case it included Thomas the Tank Engine! Photos are also plotted on the Places map. Now go back and play the slideshow.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 39
FEATURE macOS Sierra
“Hey, Siri” Siri comes to the Mac – now you’re talking!
H
aving been a cornerstone of the iOS experience for several years, Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is now baked into macOS. As long as you have a way to talk to your Mac (using a built-in or external mic), you can give it commands, such as to display weather reports, locate documents, or add events to Calendar. On macOS, Siri lives in the Dock and the menu bar and is triggered with a click, or you can activate it by holding ç+[spacebar] for a moment. That’s the same combo that opens Spotlight when pressed and released quickly, so Siri’s System Preferences pane offers a couple of alternative shortcuts that you can simply press in order to avoid confusion, or you can define your own shortcut. However, make sure it doesn’t clash with one you use elsewhere. Barking “Hey, Siri!” at your Mac is absent, but there is a workaround.
First, this requires you to be using a normal shortcut – one you press for an instant response, rather than hold down – so make that change first. Next, turn on Dictation in Keyboard prefs, and Use Enhanced Dictation (which may require a download).
By your command Open the Accessibility pane, select Dictation on the left, enable the use of a dictation keyword phrase, and use “Hey” for said phrase. Next, click Dictation Commands, turn on ‘Enable advanced commands’, and click + to create a new one. In the top field, type ‘Siri’ (without quotes). In the Perform pop-up menu, choose Press Keyboard Shortcut, then press the Siri shortcut you set earlier, and finally click Done. The Dictation icon will appear in the menu bar, and you can now say “Hey, Siri” to activate the feature, rather than having to press keys like some kind of tech caveman.
HOW TO Use Siri in Sierra
1 Search the web
Ask Siri to search the web for a topic. It also knows about sports and weather; ask how a major team fared recently (“Did Liverpool win?”), or for today’s or tomorrow’s forecast.
42 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
2 Get organised
Rather than laboriously typing out Calendar events, have Siri “set a meeting with Craig on Friday at 9”, move existing events, or tell you what’s scheduled for a given day.
3 Find and open stuff
Open apps, access preference panes, and change things like screen brightness. Have Siri open specific files in certain folders: “Show all the JPEGs in my Downloads folder”.
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Siri has its own preferences pane, where you can even assign it a specific mic.
4 Stash your searches
After finding some files using Siri, click the + to save the search in Notification Centre as a Finder Search widget; it’ll update as other relevant files are later added.
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5 Get directions
Have Siri give you “directions from home to Dundee”, or “show a map of New York”. An evening out? Easy. “Show me local restaurants”, or “What films are showing locally?”
6 Get more ideas
Siri has many more capabilities. To discover some of them, ask it: “What can you do?” – Siri will bring up a scrollable list. Click an item to see use-case examples for it.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 43
FEATURE macOS Sierra
Messages Conversations are about to get a whole lot more fun!
A
the iOS 10 version, enabling you to send a quick reaction to a message in two clicks and without any typing. Share a web page’s address from Safari and Messages presents it more attractively than before, with the page’s title and a picture to make it a little clearer where
pple’s instant messaging service is about to get a lot more interesting, with a mix of fun and practical features that make it more engaging. Messages in Sierra supports many of the same tools that are found in
clicking will take the recipient. The app also deals with media better than before. However, the beta version lacks some stuff from iOS 10; naturally, full-screen effects such as balloon animations, but also the message bubble animations, such as slamming down on the window.
1 2
3
S u p e rsize yo u r e m o j i
S e n d a q u i c k re a c ti o n to a m ess a g e
Messages already allows 1 you to increase the overall font size for conversations, helping a little to distinguish emoji, but confronting you with large text. In Sierra, messages that contain emoji but no text are presented at a superlarge size. At last, no more struggling to identify an expression! Mix them with text, though, and they’re shown at the normal size.
Position the pointer over a 2 message bubble and then hold down the mouse or trackpad button. After a moment, Messages will display a thought bubble with a range of common reactions you might want to send back: a heart, a thumbs up or down, “ha ha”, a double exclamation mark, or a question mark. Click one to send it and the other person will see it attached to the message you clicked.
44 | MACFORMAT | OctOber 2016
S p r u ce i t u p w i t h D i g i ta l To u c h In the latest public beta of 3 Sierra, Messages doesn’t allow you to use your Mac’s trackpad to doodle quick sketches, like you can on an Apple Watch or iOS 10 device. Naturally, though, it’s able to show Digital Touch drawings sent to you from those devices, and you can copy and paste them just like you can with text, images and website links in conversations.
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macOS Sierra FEATURE
App organisation Keep tabs on your windows with this instant app enhancement
K
eeping your desktop tidy is easier in Sierra because any app that can create multiple documents is automatically enhanced with the ability to gather them in one window. Sierra gives such apps a tab bar just like the one you’re used to in Safari, without them needing to be updated to a newer version, and you can drag any tab off the bar to split it out into its own window. It also makes Mission Control look less cluttered, with each app’s thumbnail being larger and easier to distinguish. By default, tabs are enabled only for full-screen apps (so you will no longer end up with many desktops for one such app), but they can be disabled entirely or added to windowed apps too.
OS X El Capitan
macOS Sierra You can manually or automatically merge document windows, decluttering Mission Control in the process.
A ground-up storage redesign Upcoming technical changes with positive benefits for you
A
pple Filing System (APFS) is the new storage format that all four of Apple’s operating systems will eventually use. While it won’t be included in Sierra when the full release happens, Apple has provided an early version to developers to test; APFS supports almost all the same features as HFS+, the Mac’s file system since the late ’90s, but Apple explicitly warns that disk utilities will need to be updated for APFS. So, if you depend on anything of that nature to maintain your storage, start budgeting for an upgraded version. The reason for APFS’s development stems from technical attributes of HFS+ that are a clue to its age; HFS+ comes from when magnetic media was the dominant type, whereas APFS will
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be optimised for flash storage that’s used in most Apple devices today.
The nitty gritty Apple says that security and privacy are fundamental in APFS’s design. A disk can be formatted either without encryption, or using a single key for the whole of it, or with a different key for each file. APFS’s cloning feature means duplicates take up no extra space until you change one version, at which point
Duplicated files only use up additional space for the parts you actually change
only modified blocks are stored, rather than a copy of the whole file, which could save you a lot of space. Then there are snapshots, which are read-only copies of files that enable rolling back to an older version. APFS itself doesn’t implement RAID (a method of pooling physical disks for better performance or redundancy), but Apple says you can combine it with macOS’s software RAID implementation. Also, where Disk Utility lost graphical RAID management in El Capitan, Sierra brings it back. But, Apple’s deprecated the AFP protocol used for network file sharing, so using APFS on your NAS will need the drive to support SMB or NFS.
OctOber 2016 | MACFORMAT | 45
COMPETITION Netgear Arlo Q camera
PrIzeS WOrTH ArOUND
£510
Win one of three Arlo Q IP cameras
In association with
Complete your smart home setup with Netgear’s 1080p camera, with two-way audio and night vision Our homes are getting smarter, and key to any tech-centred abode is a good home security system. Webcams and IP cameras have been around for years, of course, but they are finally becoming sophisticated with high-resolution video recording. Netgear’s Arlo Q has become one of MacFormat’s favourites. Arlo Q is an indoor security camera that lets you watch over your home 24/7 in full HD (1080p) quality from anywhere in the world. With a 130° wide-angle view, motion and sound detection, and two-way audio capability that lets you listen in and talk back,
hOW TO ENTER... 46 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Arlo Q is the ideal smart home security camera. What’s more, you can add it to Netgear’s Arlo Wire-Free system as an extra camera to make it part of your complete home security system. You don’t need a base station to use the Arlo Q though, as it’s fully functional as a standalone camera that connects directly to your Wi-Fi network and is managed through the handy companion app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch (which can manage up to 15 cameras). Also included is free cloud storage, which stores the last seven days’ worth of Arlo Q footage.
ThE QuEsTION For a chance to win one of three Netgear Arlo Q security cameras, just answer the following question: Arlo Q records video in hD, but at what resolution? A) 480p B) 720p C) 1080p For more information about Netgear’s range of Arlo smart home products (Arlo Q, Arlo Q Plus and Arlo Wire-Free), visit arlo.com/uk and watch the videos.
To enter, you can visit our website at futurecomps.co.uk/arlo. For full terms and conditions, go to futurecomps.co.uk/arlo. By sending your entry, you agree to these competition rules and confirm you are happy to receive details of future offers and promotions from Future Publishing Limited and carefully selected third parties. This competition closes on 26 September 2016. Over 18, GB residents only.
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What’s inside 48–49 sign And encrypt emAil Prove your identity to known contacts and keep discussions private
EditEd by
new ideAs
AlAn stonebridge
50–51 mAke websites the eAsy wAy
Your new-look guide to getting more from your Apple kit
The first in our fivepart series to help you master RapidWeaver
52–54 Add film grAin to your photos
get A better App for podcAsts p60
Give high-contrast digital photos more of a classical look
56–57 power up your menu bAr Enhance your menu with widgets that show info you need at a glance
59 shAre your Address book Maintain details of your family’s shared contacts in one place
60–61 overhAul your podcAsts Swap Apple’s app for a superior way to manage and listen to shows
Understand iOS gestures A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen.
Swipe means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go.
Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out.
To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content.
A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly.
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 ç+å+C, hold all but the last key, then press that one.
≈ means the Control key, labelled ctrl, and shown as ^ in shortcuts in the menu bar.
62–65 sAlvAge An old hArd drive
ç is the Command key, which is also labelled cmd.
ß is the Shift key, which is typically just labelled shift.
Learn how you can try to salvage data or even extend a disk’s life
å means the Option key, labelled alt or opt.
∫ means the Delete key, which deletes to the left of the
insertion point. Press ƒ+ ∫ to delete to the right. † is the Tab key, which shifts the focus between some controls in windows and web forms. Turn on Full Keyboard Access in System Preferences to jump between all controls.
OctObEr 2016 | mAcformAt | 47
APPLE SKILLS Mac Software
Sign and encrypt your email Add extra layers of security and privacy to your email conversations iT will TAke 30 minutes yOu will leARn How to sign and encrypt email with the help of an SSL certificate. yOu’ll need Keychain Access. An account in Mail.
All the tools you need to create a digital signature are available in the Keychain Access tool
Genius Tip!
it’s one of the internet’s worstkept secrets that email is an inherently insecure medium. Security and privacy weren’t part of its original design, and no matter how careful you and your recipient are to ensure no one is peeking when you read messages, the fact is it’s still vulnerable. One of the easiest ways in which email is hijacked is through email spoofing. It’s very easy to fake an email address when sending a message, which is used to trick people into thinking a message is genuine when it’s not. One way to counter this problem is to digitally sign your emails. If your recipients are forewarned – why not put a warning in your email signature? – they’ll know to treat any unsigned emails purporting to be from you with a suitable level of suspicion. It’s possible to go further and digitally encrypt email using a signature too – but this requires cooperation between you and each individual contact. Both you and your email partner require digital signatures configured to encrypt as well as digitally sign messages.
Make use of Keychain Access While it’s possible to provide digital signatures through third parties, these either cost money or come with strings attached – typically a single year’s use before the certificate expires. Luckily, the tools to create a signature that can identify you and encrypt mail are built in to OS X’s Keychain Access utility. The process involves setting up your own self-signed Certificate Authority (CA), which
It’s possible to export your certificates for use in other email clients such as Thunderbird too. Consult the app’s help file for info.
After exchanging certificates, messages can be encrypted.
48 | MACFORMAT | OctOber 2016
You and your recipient will need to follow a few easy steps to tell Mail that a received certificate should be trusted.
acts like a master certificate maker. Once created, you use this to generate a single certificate designed specifically for a single email address. If you have multiple email addresses, you can set up separate certificates for each of them. The walkthrough opposite details the process you need to follow.
Use your certificates The first time you open Mail and compose a new message from the email address you’ve digitally signed, you’ll see a blue check mark alongside a dimmed padlock. The first task is to send an email to your recipient informing them you’ve set up a digital signature. As your certificate is a self-signed one, it requires manual verification by the recipient; this process varies from app to app, but in the case of fellow Mail users, they’ll need to click the Show Details button next to the warning, then Show Certificate. At this point it’s a case of putting a check mark next to ‘Messages from <email> are valid if signed by <certificate name>’ and clicking OK. This places your certificate in their keychain – open Keychain Access to review it – and future signed messages from you are marked as such. If they then reply to the message with their own signed certificate, and you verify it, future messages between the two of you should see the padlock become available – just click this to lock it and future conversations will be encrypted and private. Also keep an eye out for incoming messages, which should also clearly be labelled as signed and/or encrypted when appropriate. nick Peers
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Prove your email identity APPLE SKILLS
How to Set up your certificate
1 Create an authority
Open Keychain Access (it shows up in Spotlight) and pick Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Create a Certificate Authority. Put a check mark next to ‘Let me override defaults’, enter your address under ‘Email from’, then click Continue.
2 Set an expiry date
Your CA is set to expire after a year. Extend its life by entering a higher value next to Validity Period. Clear the check mark next to ‘Sign your invitation’, click Continue to enter some personal details, then click Continue again.
4 Complete the assistant 5 Set up a certificate
3 Set key usage info
The key pair info (2048 bits long and using the RSA algorithm) is fine as is, so click Continue twice. At the Key Usage Extension page, put a check next to ‘Key Encipherment’, ‘Certificate Signing’ and ‘Signature’, then click Continue.
6 Tweak settings
On the next page, put a check next to ‘Key Encipherment’ and ‘Signature’, then click Continue until you reach the ‘Specify a Location For The Certificate’. Enable ‘On this machine, trust certificates signed by this CA’, then click Create.
Close Certificate Assistant, then choose Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Create a Certificate. Set Identity Type to Leaf, put a check mark next to ‘Let me override defaults’, and then click the Continue button.
7 Choose an issuer
8 Complete the assistant 9 Send your message
Make sure the Certificate Authority you created is selected (it’ll probably be the only one listed), then click Continue. Run through the rest of the assistant, ensuring you enable Key Encipherment on the Key Usage Extension page.
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Verify your email address is listed under ‘rfc822Name’ and finally click Create. The certificate should be listed as valid, meaning it’s ready to use. Click Done to add it to your keychain, quit Keychain Access and open the Mail app.
Specify how long you want your certificate to last before it expires, then click Continue. Enter some personal details (an email address is mandatory, buy the rest is optional) and then click Continue once again.
Open a new message window and compose an email. You should see a blue button with a check mark in it next to the Subject field, which indicates the digital signature will be sent with your message to prove your identify to the recipient.
OctOber 2016 | MACFORMAT | 49
APPLE SKILLS Mac Software
1
3
The Media Browser Drag folders to the top pane here for quick access to images and photos you want to use.
The Inspector 4 2
3
1
2
Buttons in the toolbar open this as a sidebar or a window. Use it to adjust item properties and override defaults. 4
The main pane
Health Check
The magic happens here, in two different modes: Edit and Preview. Use the buttons above to switch mode.
Don’t publish any web pages without clicking Health Check in the toolbar to spot potential issues in them.
Make websites the easy way Get off to a running start with your website by using RapidWeaver 7 IT wILL TAKE 30 minutes yOU wILL LEARN How to build a website from a template. yOU’LL NEEd RapidWeaver 7
TUTORIAL SERIES PART 1 OF 5
NEXT MONTH! Learn how to tweak a template’s design.
Until a few years ago, you needed a website if you wanted to post blogs, share pictures of your dogs, or promote a club or business. Today, social networks such as Facebook and Instagram handle most of the blogs and dogs, but websites remain crucial for clubs, campaigners and businesses alike. Sites are like any other kind of promotional material: to do a really good job you need to have design talent or the money to hire that talent. However, if you aren’t a Photoshop whizz and don’t have stacks of cash to spend, there’s another good option: templates. Templates help you to make a professional website without spending a fortune. You don’t need to understand the HTML code they generate or how everything hangs together; it’s just a matter of deciding which template you want to use and tweaking it so that it suits your particular requirements. In the walkthrough opposite we’ll build a website for a local community group, but you can apply the same tips to any kind of site you want to build. But before we get started, we need to ask you to do something: get away from your Mac!
50 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Imagine you want a garage. You wouldn’t just hire a builder, order a bunch of bricks and hope for the best. You’d work out exactly what you wanted, how much you were willing to spend and then make plans accordingly. Websites work in much the same way: if you plan what you want to do first and only then start building, you’re much more likely to end up with a happy result.
Set your objective The most important thing you need to decide is what you want your website to do. Is it an information resource, or are you encouraging people to buy your products or services? Is it a shopfront for your art, an online CV, or a guide to your local area? Once you’ve identified the purpose of your site, you can then decide what pages it needs to have and what you want to put on those pages. It’s also a very good idea to have any media – photographs, audio clips, PDFs or anything else you plan to include on it – organised before you start putting your website together. That means your approach will be “ready, aim, fire!”, not “ready, fire, aim!” Gary Marshall
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Learn to use RapidWeaver APPLE SKILLS
How to Start building your site
Jargon Buster
1 Pick a project
RapidWeaver’s welcome screen provides quick access to the most common tasks you’ll perform in the app. In this case we’re starting from scratch, so we’ll pick a template under Examples on the right. Let’s go for Tesla.
A template is a page or site somebody else has already designed in such a way that you can personalise it without doing anything difficult.
2 Say hello
RapidWeaver creates a basic website that you can then edit. The list of the site’s pages is at the top of the sidebar, while the options below that and in the main pane are where the content is located. We’ll replace that soon.
Get RapidWeaver for FREE! See page 19
3 See your site
RapidWeaver isn’t a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor; it keeps editing distraction-free and generates a preview as required. To see what the Tesla theme looks like, click Preview near the top of the window.
4 Make your mark
Don’t worry about photos and colours – we’ll change those things later. For now, let’s rename the site’s pages. Click Edit at the top of the window, double-click on a page name in the sidebar, then type a new name for it.
Genius Tip! RapidWeaver enables you to drag and drop images from Finder and blocks of text from apps such as Pages into the page you’re editing.
5 Change global settings
Some content, such as the site title, is set once and then automatically used throughout the site. To alter it, click General under Settings in the sidebar and set a title to the right. You can change other placeholder text here, too.
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6 Remove the overrides
Click Preview. Notice the slogan from the Settings page isn’t used; some sample pages override things. Open the inspector, click the leftmost icon at the top of it, then clear the relevant box under Override Default Settings.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 51
Apple SkillS Mac Software
Add film grain to images
Make a high-contrast picture more photogenic with a touch of grain iT will TAke 20 minutes yOu will leARn How to use Affinity Photo to add a filmic layer of grain, and use its channel mixer to add an evocative black and white affect. yOu’ll need Affinity Photo. A high-contrast image.
Grain can be undesirable, yet it’s also a hallmark of vintage photos
Speak to any dedicated photographer and they’ll spell out, possibly in tedious detail, the importance of taking clean, grain-free images. The problem: as cameras shoot in dimmer and dimmer light – indoors, say, or after the sun has gone down – they increase their sensitivity to light, with a concomitant increase in the amount of noise, or grain, present in an image. Grainy images are a bugbear for photographers because they make photographs appear less sharp. However, grainy images are a hallmark of vintage photography. Flick through any coffee table book produced until the late ’90s and every image will have plenty of film grain. This can be evocative, giving photos a sense of time that sterile, uber-clean images can lack. Creating effective, grainy black-and-white images requires a few different skills. An understanding of how Affinity Photo’s filters works will get the grainy effect done, and knowing how to use the channel mixer can create black and white images much better
52 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
than simply choosing Document > Colour Format > Greyscale. Being able to work with layers will also help – we’ll aim, by the end of the process, to have produced an Affinity Photo file that can be reverted to its original state, or edited further if you want to. The critical place to start, though, is with a strong image that will work well with a monochromatic, grainy finish. This is by no means all images: some portraits will look distinctly unflattering in black and white, while some landscapes will lose all their pizazz the moment you knock the colour out of them. For decent black-and-white images, look for shots in your catalogue (or, better yet, go and take new ones) that have high contrast; that is, areas of dark shadow as well as areas of bright highlights. Cameras often struggle with this type of image, and using black and white as a treatment can make the most of images shot in poor light. It’s also worth thinking about the fact that grainy black-andwhite shots are evocative of a particular time in photographic history – think reportage
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A vintage photo treatment Apple SkillS
explaiNed… Live filter layers 1
3
The parts of your image All the layers that make up your image, whether pixel, adjustment or live filter layers, are listed here.
2
Add a live filter layer
3 1 4
Switch layers on or off
Non-destructive editing All of our changes are going to be executed as layer adjustments, meaning each change will be overlaid on top of the original, untouched picture, which will stay available in its unedited form at the bottom of the layer stack. There are multiple benefits to this, not least of which is that you can return to your original image at any time. You can also try creating multiple adjustments that do similar things, toggling different ones to see which effect you prefer. For this kind of work, it’s best to first save your image in Affinity Photo’s native format. These files, while very large, preserve your image’s layers and its history of edits, which enables you to go back and forth as you wish. You should only create a JPEG file, for sharing or printing, once you’ve finished editing.
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2
4
Adjust a live filter layer
These check marks denote whether or not a layer is visible. Clear one to disable a layer.
photographs from the ’70s, or architectural photography from the ’30s. With that in mind, a person in period clothes or an art deco building could make for interesting subjects. Once you’ve got a photo you think will work well, open the unedited version in Affinity Photo. If it’s a raw file, the Develop Persona will open – resist doing anything here and just click the Develop button towards the top-left corner of the window to switch to Affinity Photo’s default Photo Persona.
Many filters in Affinity Photo are available only as pixel filters, but some can be used as live filter layers.
Live filter layers let you change their settings when you double-click on their icon.
Affinity Photo provides plenty of suitable tools for black and white photography, and, as with many photo editing techniques, there are several ways to get the job done. Here, we’ll use Affinity Photo’s dedicated black and white adjustment layer. Click the Adjustment tab, which is the one next to Layers, and then click Black & White to bring up the channel mixer. Here you can choose from Affinity Photo’s Default, Cold or Warm settings. It may be that one of them is perfect for you, but getting to grips with the channel mixer could mean great things for your black and white photography. The colour image you opened is composed of a handful of colours – Photoshop uses RGB (red, green and blue) channels, but Affinity Photo adds CMY (cyan, magenta and yellow) channels for good measure when you open its dedicated black and white channel mixer. Put simply, the mixer boosts or reduces the brightness of each colour channel when you drag the relevant slider. When you work on your image in full-colour mode, this produces pronounced colour casts; in monochrome mode this can enable you to boost the brightness of specific areas of your image without resorting to tone curve tools or simply changing shadow and highlight settings. When you’re happy with your changes, close the mixer. You’ll see that your image
Jargon Buster Noise refers to random speckles in high-ISO photographs. To avoid noisy images, use your camera at a low ISO.
Genius Tip! Use Affinity Photo’s native file format until you’ve finished, and keep the native file to work on in future.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 53
Apple SkillS Mac Software
Jargon Buster In Affinity Photo, layers can change how an image looks by building on top of it without affecting the original data.
has gained a new layer called ‘(Black & White Adjustment)’. Clear the check mark to its right and the adjustment will be disabled. You can create multiple adjustment layers and either blend them for new effects, or make different treatments for the image within one file. Next, add some grain. We’ll use a live filter layer to create a layer of grain that can be infinitely adjusted. Pick Layer > New Live Filter Layer > Add Noise Filter. To keep things photogenic, ensure gaussian noise, rather than uniform, is selected. This looks at the brightness values in your image and adds noise in sympathy with them, while uniform simply adds random speckles. Also ensure the ‘Monochromatic’ box is checked.
Less noise is more. If you’re viewing the whole image and add noise until you can see it, you run the risk of adding more than you need. Instead, zoom in to at least 50% and add enough noise that the sharpest edges are just slightly blunted. You’re aiming to soften your image ever so slightly and add a hint of texture, not obscure fine detail entirely. Once you’re happy with the look, close the Live Add Noise window. You’ll see your image now has three filters. Double-click the Add Noise layer’s icon if you want to amend things. When you’re finished, remember that File > Save As doesn’t let you change the file type. Instead, pick File > Export, which offers a panoply of formats. dave Stevenson
How to Create an evocative and grainy photo
1 Choose carefully
2 Can the colour
3 Change the channel
4 Be selective
5 Bring on the noise
6 Keep tinkering
This photograph is a great candidate for a monochromatic finish. The subject’s pose as well as the strong contrast that’s resulted from the rather harsh light in which the person was photographed make it a good choice.
If, once you’ve converted to black and white, you lose track of which parts of your image are which colour, click Picker in the mixer, then click the area of your image to change. This will change the value of that colour throughout.
54 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
The first step is to convert the photo to black and white. Click the Adjustment tab and then click Black & White to open the monochromatic channel mixer. Because this is added as an adjustment layer, all your changes are undoable.
Happy with your mono shot? Select your main image layer, then pick Layer > New Live Filter Layer > Add Noise Filter. Use ç++ to zoom in to your image, and make sure you’re not adding too much noise as you drag the Intensity slider.
Here, the subject isn’t the main issue, rather it’s the background that is. It isn’t too distracting because of the panned exposure, but by pulling back the mixer’s cyan and blue sliders we’re able to darken it somewhat.
Close the Live Add Noise window when you’re done. Note that your image now has extra layers for the black and white treatment and the live filter layer. You can double-click either of them to change its settings in the future.
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The perfect storage for Thunderbolt 2 Looking for the perfect NAS device? QNAP’s TVS-x82T series is just the thing for Macs hoosing the right network storage isn’t always easy, especially if your creative demands are high, like 4K video or 3D modelling. Perhaps you are a creative professional such as a designer, photographer or filmmaker that needs high storage capacity. Well, QNAP’s new TVS-x82T series NAS is a perfect match for Thunderbolt 2-capable Macs like the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro or iMac. Up to 2 Thunderbolt devices can connect to the NAS to process real-time video editing simultaneously without sacrificing the performance, while 4K videos can be directly displayed through the HDMI ports.
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Easily share files with created links, just like Dropbox. The TVS-x82T series supports storage tiering by using QNAP’s Qtier Technology, this helps optimise storage efficiency across M.2 SSD, SSD and SATA drives. They also support hot-swappable drives, which means users don’t have to suffer from downtime in the event of drive failure. Away from work, these NAS devices are great as multimedia players by using HD Station to enjoy rich apps including Kodi, HD Player, Plex Home Theater, YouTube, Spotify, JRiver, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and more. Give your media the storage it deserves by choosing a QNAP TVS-x82T.
“The new TVS-x82T series NAS provides an ideal storage solution for Mac users”
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 55
APPLE SKILLS Mac Software
Power up your menu bar Add loads of handy widgets to your Mac’s menu bar with BitBar iT will TAke 15 minutes yOu will leARn How to install and configure BitBar, add plug-ins to it, and how to tailor their output. yOu’ll need BitBar. A plain text editor.
BitBar enables you to add extra items to the menu bar to track info and perform simple tasks
The lofty claim made by BitBar is that you can use it to put anything in the menu bar. Before your imagination runs amok, what this refers to is installing scripts that output to the menu bar. So, alongside the clock and your Mac’s Wi-Fi status, you can add additional widgets to track important info and quickly perform basic system tasks. In our walkthrough, we show you how to get started with BitBar, and run through a few of the plug-ins we’ve found useful: an iTunes track rater; a Clipboard history; a Pomodoro timer (for tracking work/break cycles); and displays for currently playing music and currency rates. However, those are just our favourites, and we encourage you to explore BitBar’s website (getbitbar.com) for other plug-ins to suit your own setup. Examples you might find useful include bandwidth testers, sports scores, an amusingly morbid ‘death timer’, and even a plug-in that enables you to install additional BitBar plug-ins right from the menu bar! However, we’ve gone resolutely manual in this tutorial, so you can get to grips with BitBar and how it works. In part, this is because the app is very much the brainchild of scripting
people. It’s therefore lacking some of the elegance usually associated with Mac utilities. A few plug-ins we tried didn’t work at all. Others had strange default setups, but didn’t have a settings window for changing them.
Tailored to fit your needs Fortunately, BitBar makes it possible to deal with such issues, if you’re willing to get your hands a bit dirty. For any plug-in you find needs a tweak, you can open its script in a plain text editor – for a couple of the examples opposite, we’ve used BBEdit (barebones.com), which has a free trial version that simply disables some features after 30 days. Elsewhere, if something doesn’t really work at all, just open BitBar’s plug-ins folder, drag the offending item to the Trash, and refresh BitBar by selecting ‘Refresh all’ from the Preferences menu of any installed plug-in. Although this is more effort than some utilities we cover, BitBar’s extensibility and usefulness make it worth that little bit of extra hassle. And if you get really into BitBar and also fancy yourself a dab hand at scripting, you can always write your own plug-ins, as outlined at github.com/matryer/bitbar. Craig Grannell
How to Get started with BitBar
1 Create a folder
On first starting up BitBar, it’ll display a dialog box so you can decide where its plug-ins will be stored. Create a new folder in your chosen location (perhaps one called BitBar in your Documents folder) and click Use as Plugins Directory.
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2 Activate BitBar
You should now see BitBar in the menu bar. Right now, it doesn’t do an awful lot — you can click to open its menu and change the plug-ins folder, set the app to open at login, or quit it entirely. We need to install some plug-ins!
3 Check out plug-ins
In BitBar’s menu, click Get Plugins. You’ll be sent back to the website you downloaded the app from. Let’s start with a plug-in for quickly rating iTunes tracks. In the Music section (on the left), find iTunes Rating.
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Enhance the menu bar APPLE SKILLS
CoNtINUED… Install, use and edit plug-ins
4 Install the plug-in
Click Add to BitBar under the plug-in and a confirmation dialog will appear. Click Install. In the menu bar, the ‘BitBar’ text will be replaced by the plug-in’s icon. If iTunes isn’t open, this will be a musical note — click it and choose Launch iTunes.
5 Use the plug-in
Prior to iTunes playing, the widget might register an error, but as soon as you play a track, the widget should show the corresponding star rating. You can update this by clicking the stars in the menu bar and choosing a new rating.
6 Install a timer
From the Time section of BitBar’s website, install the Pomodoro Timer plug-in. When activated by choosing Work from its menu, it starts a 25-minute countdown that cycles with three-minute breaks to keep you focussed.
7 Power up the Clipboard 8 A ‘Now playing’ widget 9 Edit a plug-in From the System section, install Clipboard History. This places a clipboard icon in the menu bar. Click it and you can access the last ten pieces of text or links you copied. To send an item back to the Clipboard, just choose it from the menu.
From Music, install Adam Kenyon’s ‘Now playing’ plug-in. When music’s playing, this displays the track name, making it a handy companion to the rating plug-in. Open its menu to access playback controls and artist info.
Open BitBar’s plug-ins folder (pick Preferences > Open Plugin Folder from any BitBar plug-in’s menu) and then open the nowplaying.sh script in a text editor. In the output section, find the part that starts echo "$track | length=40".
10 Make some changes 11 Get a currency tracker 12 Edit currency settings After the opening quote, add $artist: and save the file. You should now see the artist and track name in the menu bar, to a maximum of 40 characters as stipulated in the script — you can change that too, if you like.
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In Finance, install Currency Tracker. By default, this cycles through how many US and Canadian dollars you get for a Euro. In BitBar’s plug-ins folder, open currency-tracker.py in your text editor and find the currFrom and currTo values.
To set a new base comparison currency, change currFrom’s EUR to something else (say, GBP). Then update the currTo list as you like. Save, then pick Preferences > Refresh all from BitBar’s menu. Your new settings will be applied.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 57
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Share contacts with family APPLE SKILLS
Share your address book
Overcome Family Sharing’s lack of a way to share contact information iT will TAke 5 minutes yOu will leARn How to share contacts using a secondary Apple ID. yOu’ll need An email account not already associated with an Apple ID.
You can make a secondary Apple ID to share contacts with family
Apple’s Family Sharing service lets you share a calendar, photos, media bought from its download stores and more with your immediate family, but it doesn’t enable you to maintain a shared address book. Sharing your main Apple ID with your family isn’t advisable – it should only be used by you; you can, though, create a secondary Apple ID purely to share contact information with them. Create your new, secondary Apple ID in the Internet Accounts pane in System Preferences by clicking the iCloud logo on the right. Click Create Apple ID and follow the instructions, either entering an email address from another provider or clicking the option to create a free iCloud address. Write down the details of this account carefully to give to others who will share it. Apple will then send an email to the address for you to verify it. Your new account will be added to the list on the left of the Internet Accounts pane. Select it, which results in a warning that this isn’t your primary Apple ID – ignore this. In the list of items to be shared, enable Contacts and disable the other features. To add this secondary account to other Macs, go to the same pane, click the iCloud
logo, enter the account’s credentials, and again select only the Contacts item. In iOS, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account. Tap iCloud, then enter the secondary account’s details. At the last step, leave Contacts enabled and turn off the other features. Finally, tap Save to add the account to your device.
Do your share In Contacts on a Mac, when the secondary account is selected in the Groups pane (pick View > Show Groups), any card you create is added to that account. Under General in the app’s preferences, you can set this account to be the default for new cards, if you want. In iOS, you’ll need to override the default location (specified in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars) to add a new contact to the shared account. In the Contacts app, tap Groups, then Hide All Contacts, tap the shared account to reveal it, then tap Done. Now when you add a contact, it’ll be added to the shared account. If you can, avoid having duplicate entries in your two accounts. As you copy cards to the shared account, delete them from the other to avoid the confusion that might come from the wrong one being updated. Howard Oakley
How to Share your address book
1 Create a new Apple ID
In the Internet Accounts preferences pane, click the iCloud logo then Create Apple ID to make a secondary account. Follow the instructions to use an existing email address or make an iCloud.com one for your Apple ID. Write down its details.
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2 Share its contacts
With the account created, select it on the left. Enable the services you want to share; for this tutorial, you only need to put a check mark next to Contacts. You might do so for other items if you don’t want to set up Family Sharing.
3 Make it the default
When you select the new account in Contacts, it’ll be empty. Copy cards from your main account to it, then delete the originals to avoid confusion. If you share most contacts, make the new account the default in the app’s General preferences.
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APPLE SKILLS iOS Software
1
3
Browse for new episodes
Extra-special audio effects
You can show all new episodes, or just unplayed ones you have downloaded to your device.
Use Smart Speed and Voice Boost to reduce silent stretches or tweak volume on the fly.
1
2
4
Tap to download
Raising the speed limit
3 2
Greyed-out episodes have not yet been downloaded. Tap one to start downloading it.
Overcast lets you speed up playback so you can fit more podcast goodness into your commute.
4
Overhaul your podcasts
Shove aside Apple’s subpar app in favour of a superior podcast manager IT wILL TAKE 15 minutes yOu wILL LEARn How to get a better podcast experience with Overcast. yOu’LL nEEd iOS 9.0 or higher. Overcast.
Overcast gives more granular control over the playback, sorting and organisation of episodes
Let’s be completely honest: the Podcasts app is not exactly a priority for Apple. Sure, it does the job, but we can’t help feeling that it could be so much better if Apple only devoted a little more time to it. In the absence of that, we’re going to take a look at Overcast. It’s a free app that offers a far superior podcast experience to Apple’s own offering, giving you much more granular control over how episodes are played, sorted and organised on your device. We particularly like the Nitpicky Details section of the app’s settings. Here, you can enable remote episode skip, which lets you play, pause, fast forward and skip podcasts simply by using your headphone’s inline remote or your car’s steering wheel control buttons. There’s even an option to show the number of unfinished episodes on the app’s iOS icon, “to add stress to your life”. Some of Overcast’s best features lie in its Effects flyout menu, accessible when you’re playing an episode. There’s the standard play speed adjustment (as found in Apple’s app) – useful if you want to cram in a few more episodes on your daily commute – but that’s
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where the similarities end, as Overcast has some clever extras. First up is Smart Speed, which shortens silent stretches so you’re left with less dead air and snappier podcasts. The second one is Voice Boost, which strengthens and equalises podcasters’ voices. That means quieter voices are brought up to the same level as louder ones, even in the same episode, which is a great feature for noisy car journeys.
Sharing is caring There are plenty more things – even just small touches – that make Overcast an excellent app. While viewing show notes for podcasts you’ve subscribed to is easy enough in Apple’s app, it’s all but impossible for those you haven’t subscribed to. Not so in Overcast, which makes it easy to find this info for any episode. You get useful sharing options in Overcast, too. For instance, you can share an episode with friends and have it start playing at a specific point. Also, you can link your Twitter account to get recommendations from people you follow and the Overcast community. Then there are smart playlists – one of Overcast’s strongest assets. We’ll describe them in more detail opposite. Alex Blake
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Get a better podcast app APPLE SKILLS
How to Create a podcast playlist
1 Get started
2 What’s in a name?
3 Add podcasts
4 Additional episodes
The home screen of Overcast displays all your podcast subscriptions. To create a new playlist, tap the icon that’s second from the right at the top of the screen. It looks a bit like a page with a plus in its top-left corner.
Scroll through the list and pick podcasts. Or, tap Exclude and select the podcasts you don’t want to make it onto your playlist – this may be quicker if you want to include lots of different podcasts rather than just one or two.
Jargon Buster Show notes are the text and other info podcasters include with each episode. This may include a link to their website, a description of the episode and the date it was published.
This takes you to the Create Playlist screen. Give your playlist a title, choose how you want episodes to be sorted, then tap the Add Podcasts row to choose which podcasts will be included in your playlist.
You can add single episodes without adding the associated podcast. Simply tap Additional Episodes and choose which to include. This is useful if an unrelated podcast produces an episode relevant to your playlist.
Genius Tip! Tap the ‘i’ next to an episode to bring up the show notes, then tap ‘Recommend’ to show it to Overcast users who follow you on Twitter.
5 Refine your selection
Your playlist is now populated with your chosen podcasts and episodes; new episodes are added automatically as they are published. You can remove episodes by tapping Excluded Episodes and picking which ones to leave out.
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6 Change play order
You can display episodes chronologically, or tap Edit and drag them into your desired play order. To choose shows that should play first, tap Select Priority Podcasts and it will put the most important ones at the top.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 61
APPLE SKILLS Project
Salvage an old hard drive
Discover how to retrieve a disk and its data from a malfunctioning drive IT wILL TAKE 45 minutes yOu wILL LEARn How to recover a working hard disk from a failed drive enclosure. yOu’LL nEEd A new external drive enclosure. Data Rescue for possible recovery.
3TB disks may be unusually formatted to be usable with older PCs
The unthinkable has happened: your external hard drive has suddenly stopped working. You’ve checked the cables and power adaptor – perhaps using a tool like the LAP Non-Contact AC Voltage Detector (£5.99, screwfix.com) to verify it still works, but your Mac can no longer see it. In this project we’ll look at how you can rescue your disk from a failed drive enclosure, recover data from it if necessary, and then continue to use the internal disk going forward. The project relies on one key element still working: the disk itself. If the disk still whirrs into life, but gives off an ominous clicking sound, it’s possible it has physically failed (or is failing). In this case, you can still follow the tutorial, but chances are you’ll need to use a third-party data recovery specialist such as Kroll Ontrack (krollontrack.co.uk) to get data off the disk before recycling it. External drives connect the disk inside to your Mac via circuitry that translates the disk’s physical SATA interface (unless it’s very
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old) to your Mac via one of its ports – typically USB or Thunderbolt, but sometimes Firewire. If this fails, the disk can’t communicate and you’ll need to liberate it from the case. Simply replacing the enclosure should suffice more often than not, but if the disk is larger than 2TB or has come from a network drive, there are added complications that we’ll cover in due course. For now, though, let’s focus on getting the drive out of its case.
Physical removal You’ll need to source a new enclosure to house the disk in. See Best Buys (page 65) for some advice on models to choose. Prices range from as little as £10 for a no-frills portable USB enclosure to over £100 for a Thunderbolt one. As USB is the most ubiquitous choice, we’ve highlighted three solid USB models that are designed to make it relatively easy to insert and remove disks – but that’s not true of your existing drive enclosure. Prepopulated external hard drives aren’t designed to be user-serviceable, so you’ll
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Rescue a hard disk APPLE SKILLS
Network drives often use the ext4 format; data can be recovered using a Linux virtual machine in something like VirtualBox.
rarely find convenient screws holding them together; instead, a series of plastic tabs click the chassis’s various elements into place. Thankfully, others have boldly gone before you and documented the dismantling process on YouTube and other websites. So, your first task is to track down one of these and use it, in conjunction with our step-by-step guide, to transfer your disk from its old case to a shiny new enclosure. Enter the name of your drive’s make and model in Google, such as Seagate Backup Plus 4TB, plus the words “open case”, which should find you a suitable video. We suggest you watch the whole video before reaching for tools. It’s a good idea to avoid using sharp or metallic objects to prise open the caddy as these can damage it – some experts use guitar picks, but you don’t need to rush out and buy a job lot. Instead, cut up an expired credit card, and then use a rounded corner as the end of your ‘pick’ to prise open the drive case firmly, but carefully.
The moment of truth Once fitted in its new enclosure, connect the drive to a power source (if applicable) and your Mac, then wait while it’s detected. If it’s
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a straightforward swap, and the disk isn’t damaged, it should appear in Finder with all your data intact. Congratulations, job done! However, you may see a message telling you the disk is not readable, inviting you to ignore, eject or initialise it. This means the disk is physically okay, but is formatted in a way your Mac can’t read. Initialising the disk will wipe it, so if there’s data on the drive, you’ll want to recover that first – click ‘Ignore’ if this is the case. Most disks from network drives use the ext4 format favoured by Linux. If you have a virtualisation app, such as Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion or VirtualBox, you can create a virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux (ubuntu.com), then connect the drive through that. It’ll show up as readable, and you can then copy data off it to another drive. Alternatively, you can install a virtual driver that will allow you to read the disk directly in OS X. Start by installing FUSE for OS X from osxfuse.github.io – during installation, make sure you enable ‘MacFUSE Compatibility Layer’ when prompted. After installation, return to the Fuse for OS X website, open the Wiki and select your target
Jargon Buster SATA stands for Serial ATA (and, in turn, Serial AT Attachment). It is the most common interface that’s currently used for connecting internal storage to computers.
Genius Tip! Make use of Data Rescue’s Clone feature to create an exact copy of a physically failing drive, then scan the copy to try finding recoverable files.
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APPLE SKILLS Project
explAined… Inside an external drive 1
4
Drive mechanics Seagate’s drive circuitry is found in this plug-in attachment; other drives integrate it into the chassis.
2
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Drive casing Screws are rarely used with external hard drives. Instead, they use a series of tabs you need to prise open.
1
3 4
3
Hard disk The internal disk is like any other, but you’ll need to remove any attached extras.
Jargon Buster A file system is the way storage is formatted to store data. Examples include HFS+ (Mac), ext4 (Linux), and FAT32 (universal).
file system from the list – ‘EXT’ is a likely candidate for disks pulled from network drives. You then need to follow the instructions to install the latest version (which is compatible with El Capitan, so ignore the warning) – we recommend installing Homebrew (brew.sh) and following that set of instructions. Although the process completed with errors for us, our ext4-formatted drive was readable in El Capitan afterwards. From here, transfer your data off the drive, then format it in a Mac-friendly format and transfer the files back. Job done.
Recover your data
Genius Tip! Some drives are held together with star-shaped screws. These require a Torx screwdriver – the T6 type typically, but get a full set to be safe.
If your drive is 3TB or larger, it may have been formatted in an unusual way in order to make it readable on older machines. The downside is that its disk can’t be accessed in any other enclosure without first wiping it. Don’t do that just yet; instead, employ the services of the Mac’s best data recovery tool, Data Rescue. Download the free edition from prosofteng. com/freedatarescue and perform a Deep Scan on the entire disk (as opposed to the only visible partition on it) to provide you with a list of recoverable files. Note that the initial scan can take up to a day to complete, so you may want to start it running overnight and leave it to its own
64 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Replacement caddy Thankfully, installing or removing a disk from replacement drive enclosures is a much simpler process. devices. You can click Cancel at any time to suspend the scan, or end it early to see what’s been found on the portion already scanned. However, it’s best to let the scan complete to ensure it finds all recoverable files. Once analysed, you’ll be able to preview the recovered files before choosing whether or not to pay to recover them. The cheapest method is Data Rescue’s new ‘Paperbyte’ method, where you pay to recover a set amount of data ($49, about £38, for the first 250GB). However, on larger drives, it’s more cost-effective to splash out $99 (£76) for the standard edition, which offers unlimited recovery on up to five drives.
After recovery Once you’ve recovered data from an uncooperative disk, you can then reformat it, which enables you to keep using it in its new enclosure going forward. Open Disk Utility (from /Applications/Utilities, or use Spotlight) and select the disk in question – you should find no partitions have been listed on it, making it easy to identify. Click Info to verify this – check ‘File system’, which should say ‘Unknown’. With the disk selected, click Erase to turn it into a HFS+-formatted disk that your Mac should have no problems reading from or writing to going forward. nick Peers
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Rescue a hard disk APPLE SKILLS
How To Switch to a new drive enclosure Best Buys!
1 Follow a video guide
Use Google to find a teardown video for your hard drive model on the web, and have it playing on your iPad or Mac within sight of your external drive as you work through the process. Start following it to remove the first piece of the enclosure. Be firm, but gentle.
When picking a new enclosure, the correct size (2.5 or 3.5-inch) and interface (almost always SATA) is crucial, but the connection to your Mac can vary. USB offers the best value. Here are three options.
2 Pop-up tabs
Most drive enclosures aren’t conveniently held together by screws; instead you’ll need to ‘pop’ plastic tabs using a combination of skill, force and luck – using plastic tools like guitar picks helps to minimise the damage you can cause while doing this.
StarTech S3510WMU33T This smart enclosure is for 3.5-inch disks, is trayless and so it’s easy to fit, has its own power switch, and includes UASP support to help boost SSD performance.
3 Identify and remove disk
Make a note of the disk’s markers: its size (3.5 inches in this example) and the interface (SATA in most cases), if you don’t already know these details. Then lever the disk out of the chassis and remove any additional housing that the maker may have used to hold it in place.
5 Fit a portable enclosure
2.5-inch disk enclosures are less sophisticated. Unscrew the main housing to pull out a small circuit board. Slot the disk into this, then screw it in place before sliding the whole thing back into the main chassis and securing it in place.
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4 Fit to new enclosure
Once you’ve got a bare disk, you can fit it into its new enclosure. This should be a much easier job. In some cases, you simply slide the disk into the enclosure’s bay and click it into place – no screws required – then seal the enclosure, sometimes just by closing a door.
6 Attach to Mac
Now comes the moment of truth. Connect your new drive enclosure to a spare port – USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt, as appropriate – on your Mac, plug it into mains power (desktop drives only) and wait for the disk to spin up. Hopefully it will appear in Finder soon after.
Inateck FE2007 A smart choice for 2.5-inch disks, this USB 3.0 enclosure (with UASP support) also has an on/off switch, and it has a handy three-port USB 3.0 hub, too.
Freecom Hard Drive Dock Pro This USB 2.0 docking station makes it easy to copy data from 2.5- and 3.5-inch disks with SATA or an old IDE interface.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 65
macOS
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What’s inside 67 Mac Software How to overcome iTunes’ limitations to make better CD inserts
68–69 NetworkiNg Trace a route back to the internet with this plain connection advice
70–71 PeriPheralS Enlightening answers to your questions about external devices
72 ioS Software Swipe away your touchscreen troubles and love iOS once again
EditEd by
Creating better inserts for Cds than itunes allows When I create a CD jewel box insert for a playlist that I’m burning to CD, iTunes crops titles and other entries for tracks to fit the space available. How can I change the font size to fit?
Q
by C a t h a l M C l a u g h l i n
iTunes offers no options to alter the font or its size, so entries in the track list are always cropped to fit available space. Other apps, such as Revolver CD Cover (£25.99, Mac App Store) and Disc Cover 3 (£18.99, Mac App Store), can print CD inserts, and most will import iTunes playlist data. If you already have an app that can edit the
A
Contact us Email your queries and your questions to genius@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com
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howard oakley
CD insert options in iTunes are basic. To get better results, save as a PDF and edit it in another app.
Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems
content of PDF files, you can create a PDF of an insert using iTunes, and edit that to fit the text to your requirements. In iTunes, select the playlist for which you want to print an insert, then choose File > Print. Select ‘CD jewel case insert’ and the theme you wish. Click Print, then in the Print dialog use the lower-left pop-up menu to save as a PDF file. Export the playlist as Unicode text by choosing File > Library > Export Playlist. Open the PDF using your editor, such as Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, and the playlist in a text editor. Copy, paste and format full track titles and other text into the insert before saving and printing it.
geNiUS tiPS Networking
Networking trace a route back to the internet with plain advice that’ll help you stay connected Networking quick-fire questions Can I keep a fibre connection open in a power cut? > Most fibre modemrouters have to be placed where the line enters the property, which may be some distance away from your computer, for which you should already have a UPS. To cover the modemrouter you'll need to power it from a small UPS that’s sufficient to keep it running without mains power.
A UPS can keep kit running when mains power cuts out.
Getting the best Wi-Fi connection We use a couple of Wi-Fi access points to deliver good signal coverage throughout our house and garden. How should we configure them to ensure our Macs and iOS devices always get the best wireless connections?
Q
by R a C h e l S t e l M a C h
In theory, you should set up each with a unique name and password, so that in the event of problems they are easier to identify. However, Apple devices don’t simply connect according to the best signal, but first and foremost according to the priority list of access points, and so may well opt for a weaker signal if that connection happens to be at the top of the list. You can use this to your advantage by giving your access points identical names and passwords. They’ll still have unique IP addresses, and will automatically configure themselves to operate on different wireless channels. When your Mac or another device then tries to connect, it’ll give both the access points equal priority,
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and should choose the one with the better signal. This should in turn ensure you get the fastest speed and a more reliable connection. If you then have a wireless problem and need to work out which access point is causing
Use the way Apple kit picks a network to your advantage to ensure it gets the best signal the problems, you’ll have to rename it until that’s fixed. One other important matter is that you must ensure the common password is long, impossible to guess, and robust. Unless you’re in a remote location, it’s wise to turn off guest access to reduce the risk of anyone breaking into your network. Your Wi-Fi signal may broadcast beyond your home’s boundary, so ensure its password is a strong one.
Why are internet uploads slower than downloads? > The bandwidth is split disproportionately so that downloading large files is given priority, and less of the total is available for uploads. This is usually reversed for internet servers, which deliver content.
68 | MacforMat | OCtObEr 2016
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Networking geNiUS tiPS
Sharing between Snow Leopard and El Capitan
Why does my Mac get a self-assigned IP address?
Although both my iMac and MacBook Air run El Capitan and share via Wi-Fi, my wife’s Mac mini is still on OS X 10.6.8. We can’t establish a network connection between her mini and either of my Macs. Is that possible?
Q
by a l a n D e R k a C S
It’s often tricky to share access across such a range of versions of OS X. It may be easier to connect the more recent version to the older one, rather than the other way around. If you can upgrade the mini to run El Capitan too, you should be able to connect either way. Debugging networks starts by setting all your devices to use fixed IP addresses (such as 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2, and so on) on the same subnet. Open Network Utility on each – enter its name in Spotlight to find it – and select its
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bluetooth blues Thanks for bringing to light current problems with El Capitan and Bluetooth. My problems started when I upgraded my 2010 iMac to El Capitan, and I’m concerned that when I replace it later this year, I won’t only have problems with wireless peripherals, but with Bluetooth networking too. Should I insist on seeing it working before I buy?
Q
by l a R R y R o b i n S o n
There’s no evidence that current Mac models have underlying problems in their Bluetooth hardware, which consists of well proven chips and, as you’ve found, can work properly for both peripherals and networking in older versions of OS X. These issues are far more likely the result of kernel or driver bugs. In normal use, the latest iMacs seem fairly reliable, and dropouts are infrequent, making their use with wireless peripherals largely trouble-free. Networking may be a little more prone to problems, but those should only be an occasional irritant.
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With network connection issues, first prove each device can see all the others by pinging them in Network Utility.
Ping tab. Prove connections between the various Macs are possible by pinging each Mac’s IP address from all your other Macs. Next, turn on file sharing, ensuring that a useful folder, such as Documents, is being shared. In Finder, choose Go > Connect to Server, and in the dialog that opens enter the IP address of the other Mac. Enter the admin user name and password for the other Mac that you’re trying to connect to, not the one you’re connecting from.
There’s no way for users to alleviate or fix these issues: they await revisions to the drivers in El Capitan or, if not there, in Sierra. Always keep a wired mouse and keyboard to hand to help with entering Apple Hardware Test or Diagnostics at startup when needed. Apple supplies USB cables with its latest wireless devices for charging them as wired USB devices, although their purpose isn’t to work around Bluetooth problems like this. Hopefully Bluetooth problems will be fixed, both with updates to El Capitan and in the macOS Sierra upgrade.
> If your Mac gets an IP address of around 169.254.18.44, it means you haven’t assigned it a fixed address, and it can’t find a DHCP server in your router or access point. Check those, its network connections, and run Network Diagnostics in /System/ Library/CoreServices, and Network Utility and Wireless Diagnostics in Applications there.
What’s fastest for moving huge files between iMacs? > Target disk mode over a Thunderbolt cable is quickest: connect their Thunderbolt ports, and restart one, holding T. If you want to continue using both Macs, try Thunderbolt networking: connect as before, then enable the Thunderbolt bridge in their Network panes, assigning a pair of IP addresses on the same subnet.
How can I analyse network traffic? > Wireshark (free from wireshark.org) is the standard tool of choice. Its interface is crossplatform, and many prefer the familiarity of Cocoa Packet Analyzer; bizarrely, limitations of OS X’s sandboxing mean the Mac App Store version can’t capture packets, so get the fully functional version from tastycocoabytes.com.
2016 | MacforMat | 69
geNiUS tiPS Peripherals
Peripherals Untangle your FireWire cables from your thunderbolt with our help for external devices Software quick-fire questions Do any affordable Thunderbolt SSD cases exist? > Not at the moment. The cheapest costs just under £100, to which you must add the cost of a Thunderbolt cable and possibly an external power supply as well. USB 3 cases for SSDs work out to around a tenth of that total amount, and should achieve almost as good performance.
My USb audio system disconnects from my Mac Since upgrading it to El Capitan, my iMac switches its audio output spontaneously, from the Bose Companion 5 speakers connected to its USB port back to its internal speakers. I have to restart the Mac or disconnect and reconnect the USB cable in order to continue using the external speakers, although sometimes they reconnect later. My Mac’s hardware has been checked, and is healthy. How can I keep my sound system working?
Q
by l l o y D t o R R e n C e
Does the Magic Keyboard use USB when plugged in? > Yes, when connected using a Lightning to USB cable to a USB port on your Mac, the Magic Keyboard functions as a wired device. It can then be used in situations where a Bluetooth keyboard may not work, such as when starting up your Mac in the Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics by holding down d when you power on the Mac.
Some people find their USB-connected audio devices, like these Bose speakers, spontaneously disconnect every so often under El Capitan.
Similar problems have been reported with several other USB audio devices in El Capitan, so it seems to be a bug that hasn’t yet been fixed. It appears to occur because the Mac loses contact with the speakers, assumes that they have been disconnected, and then reverts to normal internal audio output.
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The Audio MIDI Setup app, which is bundled with OS X in /Applications/Utilities, may be able to overcome glitches in which external audio devices spontaneously disconnect.
70 | MacforMat | OCtObEr 2016
As soon as this happens, open Console and look for a recent error about iOUSbHostHiddevice You might notice a log entry when this occurs. As soon as it happens, open Console and look for a recent error message involving IOUSBHostHIDDevice, which would confirm it. The best workaround at present seems to be to open Audio MIDI Setup tool, check your USB audio codec, which is responsible for this output, and set it to ‘44100.0 Hz’ and ‘2ch16bit Integer’ output. Some users report that it helps to leave this app open all the time. It’s worth combing through your Library folders to root out any old extensions or audio plug-ins that may have been migrated from older software, as one could be cutting in and messing up settings. These can be blocked for testing by using safe mode: hold ß at the startup sound till you see the Apple logo.
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Peripherals geNiUS tiPS
Lost Canon scanner with El Capitan I’ve just updated my iMac to El Capitan. Although I can still print normally to my Canon Pixma MG4250, I can’t use its scanner, despite that feature working normally from a laptop running Windows 7. Does El Capitan not support this model’s scanning capability?
Q
Is it possible to get a 5K display with self-calibration?
by t o n y g l u C k
El Capitan does support your device, both as a printer and a scanner. Sometimes it takes a If your scanner is no longer accessible after an OS X upgrade, try little cajoling to get this going, though. removing it from the Printers & Scanners pane and adding it again. To begin, uninstall all Canon software for it, particularly any which has been migrated When it’s ready to use, open Printers & from previous versions of OS X. Next up, Scanners, and install the device there again, disconnect the printer: open the Printers & both as a printer and a scanner. Check again Scanners pane in System Preferences, select for any App Store updates, as installation the currently installed printer and click the sometimes triggers additional updates. – (minus) button below the list of devices to If that still doesn’t get the scanner working remove it. Repeat this for it as a scanner. properly, visit Canon’s support site, download Next, open the App Store app and install its software for El Capitan, then remove the any OS X updates that it offers. Reconnect printer as described above, reconnect the your printer to the Mac and power it up. hardware and install Canon’s software instead.
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Faster or shared storage, but not both I create and edit architectural files typically of 25MB or larger, and am a keen photographer with a large Photos library. The former files are stored on a WD MyCloud Mirror so I can access them from other systems, but they take a long time to save. My Photos library is eating space on the 512GB SSD in my MacBook Pro. How can I reduce the time it takes to save files and keep my photos to hand?
Q
storage; you could do that using a folder-syncing app, perhaps. An SSD or even a hard drive in a Thunderbolt enclosure would also perform very well, although again you’d need to synchronise over your network. USB 3 models are often significantly cheaper. For your Photos library, a cost-effective and neat answer might be to add a fast 128GB or larger card to your Mac’s SDXC slot (which will cost upwards of £60). Otherwise, keeping it on an external drive would mean the library would only be accessible while that drive is connected to your MacBook Pro.
by R i C h a R D J a g g e R
A faster hardware-based RAID NAS would improve performance a bit, but you would need to go up to much more expensive network systems to match the performance of internal storage. Your fastest option would be to fit a larger internal SSD, but architectural files stored there would need to be synchronised over your network to the NAS or other shared
How can I tell what speed USB ports are operating at? > In /Applications/ Utilities, open System Information and select the USB entry in the Hardware section in its left pane. This gives the speed of each device’s current connection.
Add a Thunderbolt dock to a 2011 Mac to get USB 3.0 ports.
Why is a USB 3 drive slow with a 2011 MacBook Air?
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> Not at the moment. Eizo’s ColorEdge displays top out at 4K. The most practical 5K solution would be an iMac with an X-Rite or Datacolor calibration kit.
It’s easy to forget that the SDXC slot in a MacBook Pro can be used to conveniently boost storage capacity.
> MacBook Air models from that year only have USB 2.0 ports, not USB 3. You can connect a Thunderbolt dock with USB 3 ports to achieve better performance.
2016 | MacforMat | 71
geNiUS tiPS iOS Software
iOS Software Swipe away your touchscreen troubles and rekindle your love of Apple’s mobile devices iOS software quick-fire questions Can I print only odd or even pages from my iPhone? > Not at present. This seems to be a fundamental limitation imposed by iOS 9 and earlier, both in AirPrint and in third-party tools like handyPrintPro. The only solution that supports printing just odd or even pages is to transfer the document to your Mac and then print it from there.
Can I swap around two event alerts? > In Calendar’s built-in reminders, the first alert will always be the alert which is timed to occur nearer the event (later in time), and the second is that further from it (earlier). In any case, their on-screen order makes no functional difference, but is a matter of terminology.
Calendar alerts are always in reverse order of occurrence.
Email reminders of appointments and events I’m looking for a simple calendar that’ll send me email reminders of appointments and events, and will run on both my iPad and my iMac. Apple’s own Calendar app doesn’t seem able to send emails, so unless I were to carry my iPad around with me all the time, I’d most likely miss its reminders. Can you suggest something that will do what I want?
Q
by C o l i n e y R e
Due of the widespread use of Macs in conjunction with iOS devices, Apple has integrated all reminders of this type into notifications, which are accessible by swiping down from the top edge of your iPad’s screen, and through the icon at the far right of your Mac’s menu bar. Sadly, neither platform offers the facility to divert those notifications to email messages.
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to receive emails about your events, you’ll need to switch to a calendar other than Apple’s The closest you can get to it in Calendar is a crude solution that’s only available in the Mac version, which requires you to set an alarm that sends an email on each event you create. This will only work when your iMac is running and connected to the internet, though. To receive email notifications more easily, you’ll need to switch to a different calendar system. Probably the most popular and
72 | MacforMat | OCtObEr 2016
Calendar alerts you to events using notifications, which are flexible but don’t support sending emails instead.
capable is Google Calendar (calendar.google. com), which includes the ability to send email notifications, as detailed at bit.ly/2aH3ZfJ. Because Google Calendar’s so widely used, several third-party iOS and OS X apps make access to it simpler and more productive, although you may be perfectly happy to use its web interface. Google’s own iOS app is designed to fit iPhone screens but not iPad, though it does run on Apple’s tablets.
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ReUSe OLd KIT
What’s inside
Inspiring ideas for revamping your old Apple devices
84–85 LeARN TO LIVe wITh OUTdATed CONNeCTIVITy Discover ways around inherent difficulties with Macs from the mid-’90s
86 CUSTOMISe The CONTROL STRIp How to work with System 7’s equivalent of menu bar icons
EdiTEd By
LUIS VILLAZON
A different kind of unboxing ack in 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected president, the Channel Tunnel opened, and China got its first connection to the internet. The web and MacFormat were in their infancy, I was a software developer, and my first child was just a blue line on a pregnancy test. In May of that year, Apple released the PowerBook 520. It would be a stretch to call this an all-time classic, but it did break some new ground. It was the first laptop to use a trackpad – we’d made do with a trackball before that! It was also the first with stereo speakers, which seems even more incredible, until you remember that computer sounds had only just got past the beep-beep-boop stage by then. Someone bought a 520, used it and loved it, stopped using it, then boxed it up. Eventually, they had a clear out and sold this ancient laptop for £55 on eBay. And that, dear reader, is where I come in…
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Contact us Email your queries and your questions to lovemac@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com
LUIS’S APPLE CLASSIC! The Macintosh Plus had the longest production run of any Mac ever. Introduced at the start of 1986, you could still buy one at the end of 1990. The case was the same all-in-one box as the original Macintosh, but this model’s memory was measured in megabytes, not kilobytes. It was the first Mac to use double-sided floppy disks, it’s the oldest that can run System 7, and it marked the switch from hitherto dominant beige computer cases to Apple’s distinctive ‘Platinum’ grey.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 75
LOVe yOUR MAC PowerBook 520
Hardware quick-fire questions How do I pick a keyboard layout? > The keyboard mapping is set in the Keyboard control panel, which is located in the menu in System 7. If you need to type a pound (£) sign, you can set the layout to British. However, this does jumble up all the other shifted number keys as well. In fact, on my PowerBook 520, none of the keyboard layouts correspond precisely with the symbols printed on the keyboard itself!
Still going strong
This chunky little laptop remains surprisingly capable after two decades 1
1
2
68LC040 processor
The PowerBook’s screen is dark when I start it up!
2
This runs at 25MHz and is theoretically upgradeable to the PowerPC M3081LL/A, though it’s hardly worth it. 3
4
Memory and storage image creditS: iFiXit.com
> The screen contrast and brightness controls are buttons rather than on-screen sliders, and the current values are stored in PRAM. On an old PowerBook, the PRAM battery has usually run flat, so the settings are lost when the laptop shuts down for more than a few minutes. You’ll need to readjust the contrast each time you start up.
9.5-inch screen Slightly larger than an iPad mini, but not quite as big as an iPad Air 2, with a mono 640x480-pixel display.
The PowerBook 520 comes with 4MB RAM and a 160MB SCSI hard disk – yes, megabytes, not gigabytes!
3
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77-key keyboard The Backspace key doubles up as the power key. There are Å and Æ keys, but no square brackets. 5
Dual battery slots 6
This lets you hot-swap batteries without being connected to the mains. Each gives two hours’ use. 6
3.2kg weight 5
76 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
With both batteries, this PowerBook weighs about twice as much as a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.
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Use an ancient PowerBook LOVe yOUR MAC
et’s start with the good points. The powerBook 520 is actually surprisingly compact - it has a smaller footprint than a MacBook Air, although it’s about 10 times thicker. It’s also acceptably light and sits comfortably on my lap. The screen is monochrome but it’s quite sharp, once you’ve adjusted the brightness and contrast for the current screen angle. And it starts up very quickly too, beating my 2012 Mac mini to the desktop by over two minutes. On the downside, it runs System 7.5, an operating system from before Apple had even coined the term Mac OS. This was the first version of the operating system to feature proper multitasking or virtual memory. The ability to run several applications at once was a big deal in 1994, but it’s moot now because this PowerBook doesn’t really have any bundled software. I’ve got a jigsaw puzzle game, a sticky notes app, SimpleText, and that’s about it. I have occasionally seen some System 7 software for sale on eBay, but it’s mainly just very basic games and drawing apps. Even worse, this Mac is from a time when most computer users didn’t know or care about the internet. It doesn’t have a modem port, it certainly doesn’t have Wi-Fi, and its only LAN (Local Area Network) connection is the long-obsolete Apple Attachment Unit Interface port. This Mac is essentially cut off from any source of software upgrades.
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Concentration aid However, maybe I could still use it to write. After all, I wrote my first novel in 1997 on a Windows 3.1 laptop, a computer with essentially the same hardware specification as this one. The keyboard action on the PowerBook 520 has a pleasing retro clackiness and, with no
internet to distract me, perhaps this will be a good machine for those ‘curtains drawn’, non-stop writing weekends. SimpleText is very aptly named and lacks lots of the features that writers have come to take for granted, such as word count and inline (or indeed any form of) spell checking. But, it has a choice of fonts and automatic word wrapping, and I can type on it
This Mac is from a time when most computer users didn’t know or care about the internet quicker than I can write by hand on a pad. I tried it for an afternoon and was pleasantly surprised by how much I got done. The challenge, though, was how to get my words off the PowerBook onto another Mac afterwards. Connecting to a network is out, and so is printing unless I want to find a ’90s printer that has an RS-422 serial port. I was all set to take photos of each screen’s worth of words
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The PowerBook 520’s monochrome display features both brightness and contrast controls!
Overlooking its thickness and weight, this portable’s footprint enables it to be used in pretty tight spaces.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 77
LOVe yOUR MAC PowerBook 520
How To Use the Control Strip
1 What is the Control Strip? 2 Adjust its position Introduced with System 7, the Control Strip provides quick access to some of the more common system settings, such as turning AppleTalk networking on or off, checking battery status, or adjusting the system volume. It sits at the bottom of the screen, like the Dock, but functions more like the menu bar icons in OS X.
You can reposition the Control Strip by å-dragging it up or down the left- or right-hand side of the screen. If you want to hide it, you can click the little square icon at the left of the strip, but this leaves behind the bevelled handle as a reminder. To get rid of it completely, choose > Control Panels > Control Strip.
3 Customise its controls
On a PowerBook, the two most useful Control Strip functions are the one that puts the laptop to sleep and the one that spins down the very noisy hard disk. You can customise the Control Strip to show just these by å-dragging the icons to the far left of the list, then dragging the sizing handle back to hide the others.
another novel set in the ’90s. In any case, I’m going to hang on to the PowerBook for another important reason: one day it might be collectible. Right now, the price of the 520 has
in a decade, a working laptop from when Apple was between Jobs will be even more of a marvel
Next Issue! Luis cracks open the case of a slightly more modern computer: the Power Mac G4.
with my phone and print them out from there, but amazingly you can still buy blank floppy disks on Amazon. Coupled with a USB floppy drive (£7.50, again from Amazon), I was able to transfer files from the PowerBook to my desktop Mac, and from there to my printer, Time Machine and iCloud.
Collector’s item I don’t honestly know how often I’ll choose to isolate myself in this retro writing retreat, but it might help to put me in the mood if I ever write
78 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
bottomed out; it’s old enough to be completely obsolete, but not quite old enough to be a museum piece – but in a few years it might be! A working Macintosh Classic II or 128K can sell for several hundred on eBay. The market for vintage computers partly depends on how iconic they are, and the PowerBook 520 scores fairly poorly there. However, it also depends on their rarity. In another decade, a working laptop from the era when Apple was between Jobs will be even more of a marvel than it is now. I’m not kidding myself that the 520’s going to fund my retirement, but it’s definitely not going to lose me money. It’s currently on display in my sitting room, where it makes a fun conversation piece, and as long as there’s room for it in the house, it’s probably a better investment than that £55 would have been in my savings account!
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 79
uploading...
Showreel 2016
[ Broadcast yourself
From practical kit to promotional tips for your videos, Hollin Jones has all the help you need here has never been a better time to explore the world of digital video. Technology that would’ve cost tens of thousands of pounds a decade ago is now available for a few hundred, and in some cases offers levels of quality that have never before been available to consumers. From portability and resolution to crystal-clear sound, we’ve come on leaps and bounds from the home video that many of us grew up with. Whether you’re making a holiday video or a commercial project, the tools you need are more accessible than ever.
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80 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
[
However, that’s not to say that just having the gear will make you the next Martin Scorsese. As well as knowing what kit is suitable for your needs, you also need a grasp of techniques such as lighting, framing and sound recording, and a feel for what makes a good edit. Don’t let this put you off, though: it’s not as difficult as you might think it is. With a relatively modest setup, you can get great results if you go about things correctly. We’ll jump-start your project with great advice about how to plan your shoot, the kit you’ll need, and strategies for editing and marketing your video.
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[ Plan your shoot ] Take control of your shooting schedule by compiling a kit list ith any creative project, planning is essential. That goes double for shooting, when you’re likely to be constrained by time, money and location. Turn up without enough batteries and your whole day could be ruined. You’ll want to have a good idea of exactly what you’re going to need to capture before you arrive to avoid getting caught out. Write a shot list if it helps, at least as a guide. A fundamental thing to consider is how many cameras you’re going to need. If you’re sure it’s just one, that’s great. For any kind of interview footage it’s common practice to shoot two angles of the subject and then cut between them in the edit to keep things interesting. If the interviewer is to be in shot as well, a third camera may be needed. When choosing your cameras, it’s important to use models that will output footage of similar quality. If your A and B camera footage looks very different, it’s going to create an uneven end product. If you need to shoot using a DSLR as
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Much like going on holiday, methodically listing things you’ll need can save a day’s shooting.
your main camera and an iPhone as your secondary camera for budgetary reasons, factor this in to the way you shoot, perhaps saving the iPhone footage for cutaways or B-roll. Make a
list of everything you need to take – even boring stuff like tripods, lights, power equipment and batteries – and get it all ready the night before. This way you’re less likely to forget something vital.
[ E s sentia l K i t ] [ led light ]
[ rode ]
Portable LED lighting can be inexpensive, and many models can be stand-mounted or fitted to the accessory shoe of a camera.
A gun mic such as Rode’s VideoMic Pro can be mounted on your camera and provides far superior audio quality to most cameras’ built-in mics.
[ iklip A/V ] IK Multimedia’s iKlip A/V is a clever grip mount for smartphones that helps to eliminate camera shake and provides a pro mic input.
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[ eos 700d ] DSLR cameras like Canon’s EOS 700D can shoot HD video as well as great stills, and are more affordable than pro-level video cameras.
[ tripod ] Tripods aren’t exciting but they are indispensable when shooting many types of video. You can get away with a moderately priced one.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 81
FeATuRe Broadcast yourself
[ Lighting & angles ] Illuminating advice on how to ensure you capture the right mood ighting and framing are crucial to capturing great-looking footage. Our eyes see things differently to a camera lens, so it’s vital to spend time with your cameras to get things right. Lighting should be even and flattering to your subject. Frame the subject correctly for the situation; in interviews this often means placing them in the left or right third of the frame. Make sure your camera is level, as off-axis footage is of limited use. Don’t be afraid to tweak the white balance of your camera to compensate for lighting conditions – it’ll save time when editing.
L
take some time to set up your lighting equipment so that your subject is shown at their best.
[ sh o otin g I nsi d e ]
[ sh o otin g O u t si d e ]
Use multiple lights placed off-camera to achieve flattering lighting conditions in the shot.
Record at least two different but complementary angles of any interview footage.
Use your camera’s auto white balance when moving around as it helps with changes in light.
Keep your camera at the correct level for the kind of footage you’re shooting – often eye level.
Use your camera’s white balance control to tweak the light level and colour temperature that the camera records.
Over-light a shot as this can bleach the results and fixing in postproduction can adversely affect picture quality.
Use a camera cage or grip when moving around to help mitigate camera shake and keep your footage level.
Use zany angles unless you have a good reason. Shaky, flying camera footage makes audiences dizzy.
Frame shots to include everything you want and exclude that which doesn’t serve to improve the shot.
Place a subject dead centre in the frame unless there’s a good reason to do so. Instead, use the left or right third.
Make use of a camera-mounted light if the available natural light is low, but try to avoid harsh lighting effects.
Shoot in low light unless your camera is set up to deal with it. Low light makes autofocus much harder for a camera.
✓
✓
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[ sound ] Your camera will have a built-in mic, but it’s far better to use a dedicated external mic for sound recording. Such mics are batterypowered and can cost around £100. Usually they will mount on top of your camera, provided it has an audio input, and send
82 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
sound directly to the video being recorded. Alternatively, you can connect the mic to an iPhone or a portable recorder. If you need to record sound to a device other than the camera, sync it with your video later in software – though this can take time and patience.
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Broadcast yourself FeATuRe
[ shooting ]
[ tIPs fOr gEttIng PErfEct shOts ]
Shake off bad habits and learn good techniques ith your shoot planned and your gear set up, you can get to work. Before your first take, it’s crucial to do a dry run to check everything is working. This means shooting 10 to 20 seconds of test footage and sound and then playing it back to confirm video and audio are being captured as you intended. Also check for things like focus and eyeline. Is your subject in focus, and do they appear to be looking at the right target in the footage? If you’re filming yourself, this stage will involve switching between
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software much more easily than trying to correct jerky zooms or other errors that stem from trying to be too clever during shooting. Shoot more B-roll footage (cutaways, detail shots and ambient shots) than you think you need, because you’ll inevitably need all of it when it comes to editing. Shoot as much footage as you can, as it’s better to have more than you need than not enough. B-roll is brilliant for covering up edits in your main footage. If possible, shoot the same scene from multiple angles to give yourself choices later. If something
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Keep it smooth
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Focus your attention
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Think cinematically
Don’t move a camera left to right or up and down quickly as the footage will be disorienting for the viewer and focus and lighting will also suffer because of the rapid movement.
shoot as much footage as you can, as it’s better to have more than you need than to discover you haven’t got enough being behind and in front of the camera until the setup is correct. It’s good to shoot ‘clean’ footage, unless you’re an expert focus puller. Clever effects can be added later in
Improve on the iPhone’s video stabilisation with an accessory like Zhiyun’s Z1 Smooth-C.
is wrong, shoot it again rather than assuming it can be fixed during editing. If you move locations, recheck all your kit before resuming filming as settings can get accidentally changed in transit.
While you shoot, watch your viewfinder rather than looking directly at your subject. What’s important is what the camera sees, so you should focus on prioritising that.
Frame your subject – whatever it is – sympathetically. For an interview, for example, this could mean using depth of field to blur the background while enhancing the subject.
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 83
FeATuRe Broadcast yourself
[ Editing ] Post-production techniques to achieve a perfectly polished end result diting is where your video project really takes shape. Whatever the nature of your film, there are some basic rules to follow. Pacing is vital to any video and creating a snappy edit can be the key to success. Viewers will quickly tire of a video in which there are boring segments where nothing really happens. Scenes that linger too long also feel odd, so be ruthless, cutting anything that slows down the narrative while also
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allowing shots just enough time to create the impact the story needs. Basically, keep it interesting and be sure it makes sense. You might understand what’s going on, but will your viewers? Besides the importance of creating a coherent timeline where things happen at the right time and viewers are given the information they need, you can also create visual interest with cutaways. A core technique of any editing, cutting to alternative views or images while
someone continues to speak, say, prevents the camera lingering endlessly on one person. Also use the editing stage to alter the appearance of footage, perhaps adjusting colour or light levels, cropping or zooming in on shots, and adding transitions where appropriate. Editing is also the point at which you balance and mix the different audio tracks in a project – such as a voiceover, music and ambient sound – to create a polished final product.
[ Ed i tin g t ips ]
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Zoom in post
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Cut for effect
You can use cropping and zooming tools in your editing software to focus attention or remove certain elements. Don’t zoom in too far, however, or you risk degrading the image quality.
Make cuts to maintain interest and dynamism. Cuts are used much more frequently than transitions, which tend to give a piece a slower pace. Transitions are used in film much more than on TV.
84 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
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Get close up
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Pay attention to sound
By zooming in on your timelime you can get all the way down to the level of individual frames. This makes cuts and edits much more precise, especially when you have snapping switched on.
Sound is also important. Make use of multiple audio tracks where necessary to create the desired effect. and keep an eye on levels. Some video editors include a dedicated audio mixer to help with this.
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Play with colour
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Use in and out points
You can use presets or custom colour controls to easily ‘grade’ your footage, making it warmer or colder, or even tinting it however you like to make it look more cinematic.
Many editing apps let you choose in and out points of a clip and then drag just that bit to your timeline. This is much quicker than dragging the whole clip and chopping it up to get the part you want.
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Broadcast yourself FeATuRe
[ Marketing your video ] Know your audience and make sure your promotional efforts match it our finished video will ideally have been recorded and edited at 720p HD as a minimum, or preferably 1080p. When it comes time to export it from your software, it’s a good idea to export a full-quality version as well as a high-quality MP4 file. When you upload to a site like YouTube or Vimeo, the site will automatically create different quality
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allows you lots of options for how your video is tagged, shared and streamed. YouTube also offers a fair few ways to customise your content, and it’s free, which is probably why it’s the go-to video hosting site for most people. Promotional videos need to be snappy, to the point, professionally produced, and to strongly convey their message. Remember that attention
Promotional videos need to be snappy, to the point, professionally produced, and to strongly convey their message versions for streaming over lower bandwidth connections, but it can’t boost the resolution of your video any higher than the original upload. Your choice of destination for a video will depend very much on its content and what you hope it will achieve. Sites like YouTube and Vimeo are the best-known video hosting sites, and Vimeo’s paid tier
spans are very short, so get to the point quickly. More creative projects like films obviously have a different audience, and are more concerned with telling a story over time than selling you something. If you’re promoting a video, pick places where it’ll likely get the largest audience: Facebook, YouTube, and maybe Linkedin, if the project is business-related.
[ social Media ] [ Twitter ] Keep it snappy for Twitter users, who are used to videos of no longer than 20 seconds.
[ LinkedIn ] High production values will impress business-focussed users on this site.
[ YouTube ] Upload to YouTube for the widest possible audience across all devices, worldwide.
[ Facebook ] Make your video publicly available so it can be shared among users with no restrictions.
[ Google+ ]
Vimeo has a wealth of options for organising, downloading and even replacing videos you’ve uploaded.
Google Plus and YouTube are part of the same company, so you can tie your accounts on the two services together.
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OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 85
The home of technology techradar.com
What’s inside 88–95 MAC HARDWARE A blazing-fast 802.11ac router, a splashproof speaker, and other kit
96–99 GROuP TEST Six dashboard cameras compete to help out in the event of an accident
EditEd by
ALEX BLAKE
100–102 MAC SOFTWARE
BuYING ADVICE
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AOC Q2781PQ p91
103 iOS SOFTWARE Make digital photos look better, and scan in old printed ones
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contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com
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
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the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery.
Worth considering, though there may be better options
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A brilliant thing in all regards, and worth every penny
Fundamentally flawed; look at alternatives as a priority
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Strongly recommended; any flaws are only minor concerns
A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy!
the MACFORMAT Awards Awarded to a five-star product we believe is truly exceptional in its category. Given solely at the discretion of the Editor.
Given to a hardware or software product that might not be the very best in its category, but is a noted for affordability.
Our group test winner gets this award for being the best of its kind when pitted against other comparable products.
OctObEr 2016 | MACFORMAT | 87
APPLE CHOICE Mac Hardware
Olympus TG-Tracker A solid first foray into the action cam market Reviewed by Ali Jennings £280 from Olympus, olympus.co.uk feAtures 4K video at 30fps, 8MP still images, 204° ultra-wide lens, rugged case he TG-Tracker is Olympus’s first venture into the action camera market, and its camcorder-like design stands in stark contrast to the box designs of its rivals. It certainly stands out visually, and follows the company’s Tough compact camera range in styling. At 3.5x5.7x9.3cm it’s relatively small, but its 180g weight makes it a little heavier than the GoPro Hero4 Black. This extra weight can cause a bit of wobble when it’s mounted on a bike’s handlebar. Helpfully, the built-in image stabiliser can be enabled in the menu system, and does a good job of reducing, although not totally eliminating, vibrations. The TG-Tracker has a small LED lamp to illuminate night-time filming, something we haven’t seen on an action cam before. It’s also waterproof out of the box to 30m, and can operate in temperatures down to -10°C, survive being dropped from up to 2.1m, and is crushproof up to 100kg – so you don’t have to worry about accidentally sitting on it. The small camera packs built-in Wi-Fi, GPS, motion sensors and 4K video capability. It looks like Olympus is serious about making an impact in a market that has recently seen a slowdown in innovation. Aside from the GPS, other sensors include a compass, barometer, thermometer, and an accelerometer – these make it a serious rival to the Garmin Virb XE and TomTom Bandit. Inside the TG-Tracker is a 7.2-millionpixel, 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor, fronted by an ultra-wide 204-degree lens. In addition to 4K at 30 frames per second (fps), you can record at other resolutions, such as 1080p and 720p at 60fps and 30fps. There’s also a high-speed recording option, which raises the frame rate of 720p and 480p video to 240fps, enabling slow motion playback once edited. Stills can also be shot at 8MP, and all your footage is captured on a MicroSD card that slots into the back of the camera.
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The TG-Tracker comes with a steady grip attachment to help you shoot smooth handheld footage.
Alex says… Had it been in MF298’s group test, this may well have come home with the gold. It’s striking all right, and you won’t miss a thing with that ultra-wide angle lens. Having the option to shoot both 4K and high frame rates for slow motion gives you great flexibility as well.
88 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
The camera’s comfortable to use, with the 3.8-inch flip-out screen making handheld filming very easy; however, the screen merely flips out, rather than flipping and rotating. The TG-Tracker comes supplied with a range of accessories, including a steady grip that bolts on to the bottom of the body, giving it an almost Super 8 cine camera look and feel.
Easy action The TG-Tracker’s 30fps, 4K video footage is well balanced for exposure, with plenty of fine detail. Contrast is a bit high, and as with the majority of action cameras it struggles with dynamic range, losing some shadow and highlight detail in high-contrast situations. When you’re filming while moving between bright and shaded areas, however, the exposure adjusts quickly, and automatic white balance works well. Unusually, the TG-Tracker manages to adjust both exposure and colour balance at the same time. Dropping the resolution down to 1080p at 30fps results in well balanced footage with a good level of detail. Filming at 60fps captures smooth motion, but a the cost of a slight drop in the quality of the detail and tonal rendition when compared with footage shot at 30fps.
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Olympus TG-Tracker APPLE CHOICE
ALTERnATIVE CHOICEs
TomTom Bandit £240 specificAtions from tomtom.com 4K video recording at 15fps 720p at 120fps for slo-mo 16MP still photos GPS tracking Waterproof up to 40m
The len’s 204-degree viewing angle captures a very distinctive fish-eye perspective. Footage is sharp at the center of the frame, but as you’d expect the sharpness falls off considerably towards the edges, and there are signs of blue chromatic aberration. In bright conditions there’s a slight flare at the edges of the frame, but it’s not very noticeable. All the settings and controls are accessed via four of the five buttons on top of the body; the fifth button is the shutter release, which is mounted conveniently forward of the others. The buttons’ positions are easy to reach, and their layout is intuitive. In fact, this is the easiest action camera to use that we’ve seen. The screen is bright and easy to view in all conditions, with the live view giving you a good overall impression of the colour and exposure of captured footage. The companion OI.Track app is quick and easy to set up. Once connected, video and log files can be downloaded to your iPhone and viewed alongside any sensor data recorded.
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Garmin Virb XE £350 specificAtions from garmin.com 1440p video recording at 30fps 480p at 240fps for slo-mo 12MP still photos GPS tracking Waterproof up to 50m
Unfortunately it only enables the viewing and sharing of footage; it doesn’t enable overlays or any auto-editing features. The software has a long way to go before it’s as fully featured as the competition.
Lights, camera… Mounting is an important factor with action cams, and Olympus has taken this on board. The steady grip makes the TG-Tracker easy to hold, and the included mount coupling makes it simple to attach the camera to just about anything, including a standard GoPro mount. The TG-Tracker is a break from the usual action cam fare, with a very appealing design. Its specs are impressive too, with 4K video at 30fps enabling you to capture high-quality footage to set the scene, then 1080p at 60fps to capture the action. The 720p at 240fps option is a big benefit for shooting sports in slo-mo. Image quality’s good, and capturing location and motion data is a huge selling point. The software doesn’t match the quality of the camera itself, but at least the hardware is in place, and hopefully the software will be updated to make full use of its capabilities.
VERDICT
Superb features and performance make the TG-Tracker one of the best action cams currently available.
HHHHH Easy to use Great performance Rugged case Can be somewhat awkward to mount
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 89
APPLE CHOICE Mac/iOS Hardware
Netgear R7800 Nighthawk X4S Super-speedy performance £177 from Netgear, netgear.co.uk features 802.11ac (Wave 2) Wi-Fi, MU-MIMO, traffic prioritisation ny router that approaches the £200 mark has to be a premium choice. This one is intended for large homes with many devices. It’s a replacement router for anyone fed up with the free one from their ISP, or if you want to upgrade to the latest, speedy 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. It doesn’t have a built-in modem; the more expensive D7800 version is available if you need that. As with many (but not all)
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VERDICT Not a cheap router, but it's great for highperformance gaming and media streaming.
HHHHH Fast connectivity Expensive
routers around its price, the R8700 features MU-MIMO and beamforming, which enable it to broadcast to multiple devices at once and ‘sense’ where your wireless devices are located to direct wireless signals accordingly. Its wireless throughput speeds are some of the best we’ve seen. We clocked it at over 400Mbps between two Macs in the same room. The R7800’s particularly geared towards gamers and streamers; it’s designed to
There are two USB ports for connecting devices such as a printer.
prioritise gaming and media traffic, and boasts a 1.7GHz processor to ensure there’s no traffic lag. The other main benefit of the tech inside it is that it will provide complete home coverage; we had no problems picking up signal pretty much everywhere, even in our garden. So, if you are looking for a high-speed router, albeit at a hefty price, this is a great choice.
Dan Grabham
Libratone One Click Splashproof sound to take outside £139 from libratone.com features Bluetooth, 3.5mm line-in, speakerphone Dimensions 12x20.5x4.1cm ibratone’s new One Click is a sturdy portable speaker that is well suited to the rainy UK summer. It's roughly the size of a chunky paperback book and weighs just 900g, so will be easy to slip into a backpack when you’re travelling. There’s a protective rubber bumper around the speaker’s edges, and the One Click is water-resistant (IPx4 splashproof) too, so it can cope with a bit of rain or some splashing around on a beach. Libratone includes a simple carrying handle and
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VERDICT
Pricey, but its sturdy design makes the One Click good for outdoor listening.
HHHHH Splashproof casing No USB charging
90 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
The One Click has rear and front drivers that fire sound all around.
a more rugged, padlock-style hook that clicks into place – hence the name – to attach the speaker to a backpack or a bike’s handlebar. There’s Bluetooth for wireless streaming, along with a speakerphone option, and a 3.5mm audio connector behind a protective rubber flap for a wired connection. You can pair two One Clicks together for stereo sound using the Libratone app.
The One Click’s sound quality is good – nice and detailed, with respectable bass for such a compact speaker. When it’s standing upright, the One Click fires sound out from both back and front, creating a strong, spacious sound that works well outdoors. And, with 12 hours of battery life, it’ll last until the wee small hours when you’re partying.
Cliff Joseph
macformat.com @macformat
AOC Q2781PQ A slim and stylish display with multiple inputs Reviewed by Keith MaRtin £299 FROM AOC, aoc-europe.com FeatuRes DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA inputs
A good-looking display that’s faintly retro and pleasingly futuristic at the same time
OC’s latest 27-inch monitor is a good-looking display with a native resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. First impressions are of an unfussy, quietly stylish display; slim, metal-framed, and with a strong stand that’s a single leg of aluminium bent into a half-closed rectangle. It looks faintly retro and pleasingly futuristic at the same time. There are downsides to this voguish appearance; it has a tilt range of no more than 14 degrees, and – like many displays today – there’s no height adjustment option, so if you want it to be higher you'll need to get a stand (but not a VESA mount – there’s no fitting on the back for one of those). Most of this monitor is a simple slim rectangle, with a slightly chunkier section on the back where the circuitry and ports live. This is where you’ll find a DisplayPort, two HDMI sockets, and a VGA socket for any embarrassingly old tech. It can auto-switch to an active port or let you pick your preference, making this a good choice if you want to use it with, say, a Mac, a PC and a PlayStation.
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Framelessly chic?
VERDICT An attractive monitor with a stylish frame and impressive picture quality. It will satisfy anyone this side of obsessive colour proofing.
HHHHH Attractively styled Multiple inputs Crisp resolution Minimal tilt range
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AOC describes this as a ‘four-sided frameless’ display, possibly aiming to tap into the gamer passion for treating displays like tile-friendly panels to be butted up together. In truth it has more of a micro-bezel; a couple of millimetres of aluminium wrapped around perhaps 5mm of black surround, but the reality is more interesting than this technical description makes it sound. The product does an excellent good job of being physically unobtrusive in your workspace, letting the active display area itself do the talking. The backlit LED panel handles colour pretty well, although if you want a high-end proofing display this isn’t quite it. Our
It’s not actually frameless, but the slim bezel and angled support give it a sense of minimalist style.
Datacolor Spyder colorimeter clocked it at over 100% sRGB, but 79% of Adobe RGB; that's very good, but it’s imperfect for use in pro-level design proofing. It’s no 4K screen, but the 2560x1440 pixel resolution looks sharp. The 16:9 ratio is just a little more widescreen than a MacBook display’s 16:10 shape; at this size it’s a sensible width-height ratio, and the resolution doesn’t demand more GPU horsepower than, say, a modest MacBook can manage.
Button bashing Next to a tiny power light there’s an all-butinvisible row of icons that run along the bottom of the slim black bezel. Fortunately this doesn’t use touch-sensitive triggers – we've had plenty of problems with those before. Instead, there are physical buttons to press, hidden along the bottom and lined up with those subtle icons. They produce a satisfyingly audible ‘click’ when used, but the placement of the power button is annoying; it’s easy to accidentally turn it off when making on-screen display adjustments. At £299, this display’s priced pretty well for its class, its styling is far better than most, and it has multiple inputs. On the downside, it has respectable but not industry-leading colour reproduction, and somewhat limited physical adjustment options; there's not much else to dislike. We would happily use it as a day-to-day monitor, but critical proofing work would be better done elsewhere.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 91
APPLE CHOICE Mac Hardware
Buffalo LinkStation LS520DE A network drive that fails to impress £123 from Buffalo, buffalo-technology.com features 1GHz dual-core CPU, 256MB memory, 2x SATA II bays his is a no-frills, two-bay network drive with RAID (0 or 1) support. The base model is diskless – we tested it with a 3TB Seagate drive. It’s much smaller and lighter than other two-bay drives we’ve tried, and while the plastic casing seems durable, the drive caddies are a bit flimsy. It’s rounded out by a USB 3.0 port at the back for adding more storage. Functionality is similarly stripped back. Highlights are
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VERDICT Lacking features, underspecced and overpriced, this is a NAS drive to avoid.
HHHHH Small, light chassis Sluggish performer
a private cloud and BitTorrent, along with AFP, Time Machine, DLNA and an iTunes audio server. The drive is mostly easy to set up, with a Mac app that takes you to its web interface, though we had a weird blip with needing to disable then re-enable AFP for SMB file sharing to work correctly. The drive’s performance is disappointing. Tests drew attention to its old SATA II interface: using SMB, it managed 49 and 30MB/sec
in sequential read andwrite operations for standard (small) transfers, 13 and 30MB/sec for random ones, 98 and 73MB/sec for large transfers, and 93 and 76MB/sec for very large ones, making it the slowest NAS we’ve tried in a while. Ultimately, the LS520DE is too expensive, given the Zyxel NAS520 goes for about the same and outclasses it in features, connectivity, power and, large transfers aside, drive speed. nick Peers
Freecom mHDD Slim Attractive storage at an unattractive price £125 from Freecom, freecom.com features 2TB (tested, 1TB available), USB-A and USB-C cables igh-capacity 2.5inch hard drives can feel thick, but this one is just 9mm tall. It weighs only 150g too, even though its body is metal. Press on its largest sides and you can feel a little bit of flex, so we suggest transporting it in a padded pocket. It’s also emblazoned with Freecom’s logo, though in a manner that’s fairly inoffensive, even though the line underneath makes the drive look a bit like a large Zippo lighter. It’s clear Freecom has thought where the Mac’s connectivity is likely to go,
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VERDICT
A solid performer that’s attractive and forward-thinking, but at a premium price.
HHHHH Physically lovely Far too expensive
92 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
This attractive drive is available in hues that match 12-inch MacBooks, except for Rose Gold.
as it bundles two USB cables: one to connect to a USB-A port, found on most Macs, and a USB-C one for 12-inch MacBooks and any future Macs with it – though that’s only fair at this price! As for performance, the drive is what we’d expect from a 2.5-inch hard disk, though a few things stood out. While minimum rates for sequential transfers on drives of this kind aren’t
stellar, the mHDD managed respectable 30.4MB/sec and 27.8MB/sec rates for reading and writing, respectively. Its mean sequential rates of 120.4 and 121.6MB/sec are typical, and its peak rate of 167.7MB/sec when writing is solid, even if not the best. In random reads and writes, the drive’s a little behind others we’ve tried, but not by enough that it’s a drawback.
alan stonebridge
macformat.com @macformat
iOS Hardware APPLE CHOICE
Meem Charge and back up without a Mac Plug in and charge: Meem’s a normal Lightning cable except your data gets backed up at the same time!
£60 from Meem, meemmemory.com features Lightning connector, 32GB capacity his is an Apple security solution that Apple would never make. iCloud is the back-up solution for your iOS devices and Apple wants to keep it that way. Yes, you can still use iTunes and your Mac, but that’s become a bit of a manual chore in the days of the cloud. So why on earth would you want another offline solution to backing up your data? Well, the designers of Meem think there’s a gap in the market for a travel back-up solution while you’re away from Wi-Fi or a mobile
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VERDICT For peace of mind it’s useful, and for travel, but it’s costly and the software’s a bit crazy!
HHHHH Another back-up option Do you need it?
Withings Body Cardio
network signal. We can see the point, and as you need to charge your iPhone every couple of days it’s good to know there’s a cable out there that backs up while you’re doing so. As you charge, Meem backs up your contacts, calendars, messages, photos, videos and music. You do, of course, need to use its app to do this, and that’s where the trouble begins. Meem’s designers have taken the ‘mirroring’ metaphor a bit
too far with a split-screen interface where the ‘copied’ side is in reversed text! It’s overkill and then some. The app also has a horrid progress bar, and it’s all rather confusing. Even the gestures seem like too much effort for something that’s supposed to be hassle-free. Backing up and restoring did work without fault, but currently there’s only a 32GB version for iPhone; which won't be enough for some.
CHristian HaLL
The Body Cardio’s height is only slightly reduced, but it barely registers when you step on to it.
A wave of extra data for fitness fans £140 from Withings, withings.com/uk measures Weight, fat, muscle, bone and water mass, pulse wave velocity, air quality
he successor to the WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer sports a leaner physique of its own, and measures more about yours. It also retains the WS-50’s clear display that warns if you’re leaning during a weigh-in. The Body Cardio (and the £100 Body introduced with it) check your water percentage (a disappointing omission on the WS-50), plus muscle and bone mass.
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VERDICT
Excellent, though justifying the extra £40 depends on your depth of commitment.
HHHHH Extra measurements Integrated battery
macformat.com @macformat
Results appeared consistent and reliable, and we saw only 0.1kg variation between the Cardio and the WS-50 – the smallest amount they log. Fat mass always showed as a few percent less on the Cardio. Exclusive to the Cardio is Pulse Wave Velocity, which tracks the vibration along your arteries when your heart beats, as an indication of arterial elasticity; rigid might mean you’re at risk.
Measurements appear only in the Health Mate iOS app. Our results were as expected from our diabetes check-ups and stats that are trivial to judge. Advice that a weight loss programme might help our condition seemed basic, but the app details directly related lifestyle factors. We’re not so keen on the use of an integrated battery, though it matters little day to day. aLan stonebridge
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 93
APPLE CHOICE iOS Hardware
Twelve South Compass 2 Stylish looks, but a bit wobbly The Compass 2 is at its most stable when used with an iPad mini.
£35 from Twelve South, twelvesouth.com features Rubberised soles, travel case ure, this may be ‘just’ an iPad stand, but don't dismiss it just yet. It folds up into a compact peg shape, making it easy to stow away in a travel bag. Its three legs come with rubberised soles, as do the two small platforms on which your iPad rests. These keep it well grounded so it won’t slide about. When in its more upright mode (as in the image above), the Compass 2 is intended for more passive uses – making
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VERDICT Good for watching movies, but not so strong when it comes to typing.
HHHHH Stable for iPad mini Larger iPads wobble
Skype calls or watching TV. You shouldn’t notice much wobbling with everyday use. However, we had to be a bit careful when tapping in the top corners of the screen with the iPad in portrait orientation – prod too hard and your device could fall or get shaken loose. Portrait mode’s better if you’re not interacting with the iPad much, but it’s not really at a comfortable angle for your wrists when typing. If you want to type away,
Twelve South says you’re better off switching to the low-profile mode by pushing in the rear leg and extending the mini support – that’s the theory, anyway. While this puts the iPad in a flatter position, it’s actually far less stable, wobbling alarmingly as you type. It’s much better with an iPad mini, though. This is still a good stand for watching the odd video, but not for typing out emails and messages if you have a 9.7-inch iPad. aLex BLake
Nomad Leather Wallet Cash in on more battery power From £91 from Nomad, hellonomad.com features Lightning connector, 2,400mAh battery, Bi-Fold or Slim he iPhone is a power-hungry thing, and no matter where you are, if you haven’t thought about charging up before you leave, it’s easy to find that you’re low on juice. There are countless battery packs and battery cases out there for the iPhone, but bulk has always been a problem and you have to remember to take one with you. As you need to take a wallet with you most of the time anyway, having an integrated battery to top up your iPhone is a great idea.
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VERDICT
Carry your cash, credit cards and charge your iPhone. Clever, but it’s weighty.
HHHHH Charge on the go! Rather heavy
94 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Nomad has managed to make a stylish leather product that does just that, either in its classic Bi-Fold wallet style or the more purse-like Slim design. Both versions feature the same 2,400mAh battery, which gave us 100% charge in 2.5 hours on an iPhone SE. We had a faulty sample first time around, with the battery unable to discharge,
Pull out the short Lightning cable, attach, then press the On button.
but Nomad sent us a second one that worked just as it was supposed to. We like the feel of the wallet, but you can’t get away from the extra weight; so unless you’re used to a wallet that’s stuffed to the rafters with notes and coins, you’d want to leave this in a bag or jacket. CHrIstIaN HaLL
macformat.com @macformat
reviewed by Nick PEERS
Head to Head APPLE CHOICE
Nest cam Indoor A slick offering that’s let down by its expensive subscription model £159 FROM Nest, nest.com/uk FEATURES 130° panoramic lens, 1080p HD camera
Ease of use HHHHH There is no drama with setting up the Nest Cam. Its small footprint means it can be placed anywhere, and the app is easy to navigate and use – some features require logging in through your web browser to operate, though.
Features HHHHH The camera is Full HD (1080p), but doesn’t provide as wide an angle as the D-Link. You can at least set up your camera to monitor to a schedule or based on your location, but other features are locked into a pricey subscription.
Connectivity HHHHH Like D-Link, there’s no SmartThings or HomeKit support. There is a trigger-only IFTTT channel for running actions based on motion detection. The kit can be integrated with Wink, and used to control Philips Hue or LIFX bulbs.
Running costs HHHHH This is the huge kicker – you can’t record (and therefore review) video unless you pay for Nest Aware, an expensive ongoing subscription that starts at £8 per month. Nest Aware provides extras such as motion detection zones, but we really feel these should be included as standard.
the Nest cam is slickly built and works well, but is crippled by that expensive subscription – without it you’ve got no recording capability.
D-Link DcS-8200LH A decent camera that records everything locally for no cost > £160 > FROM D-Link, dlink.com/uk > FEATURES 180° panoramic lens, 720p HD camera
Ease of use HHHHH Setting up is simple enough, and made easier by an option to pair directly with your router via WPS, if supported. The app itself is reasonably easy to navigate, but some options, such as reviewing footage, can be tricky to find.
Features HHHHH The wide-angle, 720p HD lens is good quality with no warping. It’s got night vision up to five metres, and the ability to set custom detection zones and tweak sensitivity. However, there’s no scheduling or location-based controls.
Connectivity HHHHH The camera integrates into the mydlink Home ecosystem, and the addition of IFTTT support through a trigger- and action-based channel widens support to other apps and services. Shame it can’t provide those missing controls…
Running costs HHHHH You have to provide your own (formatted) MicroSD card for storing your recorded footage, but that’s the only additional cost involved – there’s no expensive monthly subscription to factor in, giving you full control over your recordings. This is how it should be done.
the lack of scheduling and location options is a major niggle, but this cam scores highly in other areas, including local recording facilities.
HHHHH VERDICT HHHHH macformat.com @macformat
OctOber 2016 | MACFORMAT | 95
APPLE CHOICE Group Test
DAsHCAMs Reviewed by DAN GRABHAM
Fast becoming an essential for regular drivers, more dashcams now work with your Apple devices
DAsHCAMs ON TEsT… Asus Reco Smart Garmin Dash Cam 35 Nextbase 512g Ultra RAC05 Super HD Snooper DVR-4HD Transcend DrivePro 520
ot so long ago, dashcams were the preserve of the backstreet cab driver, but now they’re an essential tool for anybody who spends a reasonable amount of time in a car. In the age of bogus insurance claims, uninsured drivers and less-than-desirable automotive skills, dashcams have really come into their own. And, what’s more, a growing number now work with Macs and iOS devices, too. We’ve gathered together a bunch of the best dashcams you can buy around the £100 to £150 price range. Less expensive dashcams are available, but our picks come with various features (depending on the model) such as Wi-Fi, accompanying iOS apps, and even a second lens for recording to the rear. None of these cameras are designed for long periods of use outside your car, although they can be used for basic still shots of an accident or something else you need to record. The model from Asus does brand itself as a ‘portable cam’ as well as a dashcam, though we doubt you’d use it for that unless your phone is out of power.
N
96 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Most of the time, these cameras will just sit there recording in a continuous loop while you’re driving. Incident detection (using a G sensor to detect ‘g-forces’) means that when you have an accident, the incident will be ‘marked’ (write-protected) so it isn’t recorded over. Anecdotally, you can keep driving once this has happened, but if you’ve been involved in an incident we reckon you’ll want to get the footage backed up to your Mac or iOS device as soon as possible. Asus’s camera is probably
When you have an accident, the incident will be marked so it isn’t recorded over cleverest in this regard, as it immediately backs up footage of any incidents to cloud storage via any Wi-Fi network it recognises – so, probably when you get home. Dashcams increasingly feature motion detection, so even when parked they’ll start recording if someone approaches your car. Clever stuff. Let’s see which camera’s best!
How we tested We drove! We used each dashcam on a relatively long journey and made sure to simulate an ‘incident’, whereby the camera was shaken and the incident protected. We also used the apps and tested the Wi-Fi connectivity, where appropriate, in order to download clips from the cameras. We also tried to configure the cameras in our car, although not while driving – after all, when they’re set up you shouldn’t need to spend time configuring your device when you are on the move.
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Dashcams APPLE CHOICE
Things to consider…
Higher…
A few advanced features to look out for
1
Companion apps
The iOS and Mac apps vary in quality, but they all enable you to perform the crucial task of getting the footage you need off the camera. Most enable you to select a segment of footage and download it to your iOS device.
2
Forward collision warning
Some of the cameras, such as those from Garmin and the RAC, feature forward collision detection. This will warn you if you’re too close to the car in front. It’s not designed to be relied upon, but it’s a nice feature to have.
3
Speed camera info
Another extra on some of the cameras, such as the ones from Snooper and Garmin, is warnings about red lights and speed cameras. The speed cameras warn you depending on
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your GPS location. The Snooper DVR-4HD even warns you if there might be a temporary speed camera present.
4
Lane diversion warnings
5
Video quality
These are available on the RAC and Snooper cameras to tell you if you move out of position on the road. Again, you should use them as a backup – one recent car we tested had it and it was so annoying that we had to disable it completely.
All of the front-facing cameras here shoot at Full HD (1080p) except the one from the RAC, which has an even higher resolution. Beware of cheap cameras shooting at much lower resolutions, as often they aren’t good enough to read number plates.
Road Angel’s £199 Halo features a separate two-camera system for recording behind you. Look out for more two-camera systems later this year.
…or lower? Nextbase’s 101 is a basic 720p HD camera that costs about £50. With a little 2-inch screen, it’s perfect if you want a smaller camera.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 97
APPLE CHOICE Group Test
Test 1 Features
Test 2 Connectivity
Time to check the specs!
Ways to get at your footage
All of our dashcams have a single camera apart from one: Transcend’s DrivePro 520, which adds to the standard front-facing camera with a further 720p HD lens that can be angled to the side (at a passenger, perhaps) or toward the rear seats. This is a great feature, although it means the device has a slightly smaller screen as a result. All the cams will protect the appropriate part of the recording if you’re involved in an incident. The cameras from Asus and Garmin are probably the best looking, if that interests you, though we have a soft spot for Transcend’s too, which is pretty smart. We like the RAC05’s ability to mute its mic at the touch of a button in case of a sensitive in-car conversation. For video quality, the RAC05 leads the way with Super HD (1296p). Transcend’s rear camera is 720p, but its front one is 1080p.
As well as all featuring GPS so your camera can pinpoint your location at any point, a growing number of dashcams – the Asus, Transcend and Snooper ones here – feature Wi-Fi connectivity that you can enable at will (Asus has a dedicated button for this). This is primarily designed for easy downloading of footage, normally to an iOS or Android app; you’ll need to connect your iOS device to the camera’s built-in Wi-Fi network. This is great if you’re involved in an incident as you can immediately back up the appropriate video segment. The police often want dashcam footage submitted to them, or will want your MicroSD card. All the cameras feature Mini- or Micro-USB connectors that plug in to your Mac using a standard cable (included). Equally, you can put the MicroSD card in a card reader, as it works just like a digital camera.
TEsT REsuLTs
TEsT REsuLTs
Asus Reco Smart Garmin Dash Cam 35 Nextbase 512g Ultra
HHHHH HHHHH HHHHH
RAC05 Super HD HHHHH Snooper DVR-4HD HHHHH Transcend DrivePro 520 HHHHH
Asus Reco Smart Garmin Dash Cam 35 Nextbase 512g Ultra
HHHHH HHHHH HHHHH
RAC05 Super HD HHHHH Snooper DVR-4HD HHHHH Transcend DrivePro 520 HHHHH
Test 3 Ease of use
Test 4 Accessories
Checking out the menu systems
What extra bits of kit are provided?
Asus’s Reco Smart is unusual in that it doesn’t have a screen. Instead, it just sits there recording and you can view the footage, if you want to, in its iOS app. This makes quite a bit of sense, since most of the time you don’t need to see what’s happening unless it’s to download a particular segment of footage. You can also use the app as a controller to do things like burst shots or time-lapses, or change the video settings. It’s the ideal camera if you just want to set and forget. Like the Nextbase camera, the RAC’s device has controls either side of its screen, and these two cameras are probably the easiest to use in-car. Mind you, the Snooper cam’s touchscreen (the only one here) is fairly straightforward. Garmin’s interface is also a piece of cake to operate, with clear and simple menus, helped by it having the largest screen among the group.
All of the cameras come with either an adhesive or suction mount and an in-car charger – usually in the form of a car charger with a USB port and a separate cable, rather than a single cable. You’ll need to have the power plugged in pretty much all of the time as a dashcam isn’t something you can charge at home and take in and out of your car; it just won’t last. Like Nextbase, the RAC cam also features a Mini-HDMI to full-size HDMI port for hooking up to a TV or monitor, but no cable is included (Nextbase provides one, which is a nice extra). You get short and long USB ones, though. In terms of value, Transcend stands out for its Wi-Fi capability and second camera, with Snooper a close second, again due to Wi-Fi, and both have a capacious MicroSD card. Nextbase is alone in not including a card, though Garmin’s 4GB one is pretty limited.
TEsT REsuLTs
TEsT REsuLTs
Asus Reco Smart Garmin Dash Cam 35 Nextbase 512g Ultra
HHHHH HHHHH HHHHH
RAC05 Super HD HHHHH Snooper DVR-4HD HHHHH Transcend DrivePro 520 HHHHH
98 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Asus Reco Smart Garmin Dash Cam 35 Nextbase 512g Ultra
HHHHH HHHHH HHHHH
RAC05 Super HD HHHHH Snooper DVR-4HD HHHHH Transcend DrivePro 520 HHHHH
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Dashcams APPLE CHOICE
The Winner Transcend Fantastic value – and a second camera, too! oodness, this was a tough choice, but in the end we had to look towards two factors that make the Transcend DrivePro 520 such a great buy. Firstly, its price; it’s the second-cheapest dashcam here. The other reason is it’s great value because it’s got a second, rear-facing camera with LEDs for night work, in addition to a 32GB MicroSD card, Wi-Fi and a display (even though it’s the smallest one here).
G
The capabilities of all the cameras in this test are really quite remarkable If your intention is to set and forget, and you want the whizziest iOS app, look at the Asus camera. If you want a large screen and crystal-clear menus, go for the Garmin. If you want the highest resolution, go for the RAC model. Indeed, each and every camera here has something to offer, and all are brilliant
Alex says…
value for money. But there’s really no reason you shouldn’t plump for Transcend, unless you really have no interest in having that secondary camera. There are far cheaper dashcams available, but it’s around this price point that the feature set and quality really stand out. The capabilities of all the cameras featured here are really quite remarkable.
I must confess I’ve never really thought of getting myself a dashcam before, but now it seems like a very sensible idea. You never know when you might be in an accident, and it’s better to have an incident recorded in case you need to absolve yourself.
How do they compare? > THE SPECS
> Asus
> Garmin
> Nextbase
> RAC
> Snooper
> Transcend
Price
£160
£123
£150
£150
£137
£129
Video quality
Up to 1080p (Full HD)
Up to 1080p (Full HD)
Up to 1080p (Full HD)
1296p (Super HD)
Up to 1080p (Full HD)
Front: Up to 1080p, Rear/side: 720p
connectiVity
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, NFC, GPS GPS via external sensor
GPS
GPS
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, GPS
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, GPS
cloud storage
500GB for one year
No
No
No
No
No
microsd card
16GB
4GB
None included
8GB
16GB
32GB
camera
F/1.8 aperture, 150°-wide angle
Aperture unspecified, 140°-wide angle
F/1.6 aperture, 140°-wide angle
Aperture unspecified, 150°-wide angle
Aperture unspecified, 140°-wide angle
F/1.8 (front), F/2.8 (inside), 130°-wide angle
disPlay
None
3.0-inch
2.7-inch
2.7-inch
2.7-inch
2.4-inch
accessories and extras included
Dual-USB car charger, USB cable, filter, GPS receiver, iOS app
Mount, charger, cable, Mac app
Mount, charger, cable, Mac app, Mini-HDMI to full-size HDMI cable
Mount, charger, cable, Mac app
Mount, charger, cable, iOS app
Mount, charger, cable, iOS app
FEATuRES
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HHHHH
CoNNECTiviTy
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HHHHH
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HHHHH
EASE oF uSE
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ACCESSoRiES
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HHHHH
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FiNAl vERdiCT
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macformat.com @macformat
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 99
APPLE CHOICE Mac Software
Sketches Pro Does the popular iOS app live up to its reputation on the Mac? Reviewed by ROb RedMan £14.99 FROM Tayasui, tayasui.com needs OS X 10.10 or higher
Don’t be fooled by Sketches’ simple layout – its tools cater for just about everything you could need
ayasui’s Sketches is a popular art app – but can this version deliver on the streamlined, versatile experience the iOS app offers? In a word, yes. This is one of the cleanest, slickest and most intuitive apps you’ll find, and eliminates the need to break from your creativity to wonder how to do something. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of its layout – the selection of tools caters for just about everything you could need. Each has a variety of options, such as a round or square tip. The app is smart, too. Select a watercolour brush but don’t have a watercolour layer active? Sketches prompts you to create one. Wet layers act as they do in real life, enabling you to blend strokes together for a very realistic result. Even smarter, if you’re using one of the app’s watercolour papers, you can paint a stroke and then click inside that stroke to add extra details. This constrains to the initial stroke, unlike a normal paper, where a single click would add a random splat or daub (which, incidentally, is also very useable). Each tool has some element that makes it feel special, from the thickness and opacity controlled by pressure to the wonderful fill tool, which opens a pop-up library of useful
T
VERDICT In use, Sketches Pro is a dream – every digital artist should give this app a try.
HHHHH Unobtrusive interface Excellent tool quality Photoshop shortcuts Limited blend modes
Illustrations for kids’ books are a natural fit for the app, but Sketches Pro covers every style with ease.
100 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
patterns, all of which have a handcrafted look to them. Choose one and then draw a shape, and that shape is instantly filled with the chosen pattern, for beautiful cross-hatching and print effects. The selection of patterns has been well thought out, and if you want to use one to fill an entire layer, then a quick drag with ≈ held does it for you.
Preset perfection Essential to any art app is colour control, and Sketches Pro doesn’t disappoint here. A thin menu of swatches lives in its own tool palette (all palettes can be moved around to suit) with a selection of presets, to which it’s a simple job of adding more. The standard Photoshop å-click combination for on-the-fly colourpicking works here, too. These days, having a good layer system is almost as essential as colour controls, and Sketches offers an elegant solution. It has a simple palette, with controls for adding layers, and adjusting layer opacity and visibility, but ≈ click and you’ll see a few less-used options, including a (small) range of blend modes. In use, every tool is responsive, smooth and ultimately fun and productive. You can ≈-click to access pop-up size and opacity sliders for each tool, plus simple zooming controls, and you use standard Photoshop shortcuts for just about everything. Sketches is simple but powerful and very easy to use. The only criticism that can be aimed at the developer is the occasionally buggy save dialog, which crashed now and then for us. Otherwise it’s stable, no matter how complex your drawing, and huge fun. That’s without even mentioning the brilliant smart ruler, the knife tool or the excellent blender brush. If you’re a digital artist, this is definitely an app to check out. Adding a tablet to work on the go makes it even more indispensable.
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Mac Software APPLE CHOICE
Mail Designer Pro 3 Make email more attractive £76 FROM Equinux, equinux.com NEEDS OS X 10.9 or higher ail Designer Pro provides you with the power to create good-looking and effective email newsletters. You don’t need to be a graphic designer or an HTML expert, making it great for small businesses, individuals, clubs and groups. It’s like using the world’s friendliest desktop publishing app. You can choose one of 72 design ideas and then tweak it using text blocks, photos, videos, banners, buttons and textures. The results are truly impressive – you’d have to try very hard to make something ugly – and you can export to
M
VERDICT
Great if you make email newsletters but don’t have lots of money to spend.
HHHHH Really easy to use Purely a design tool
Forget HTML coding, using Mail Designer Pro is like using Pages.
MailChimp or Campaign Monitor if you use them; if you don’t, you can export to Apple Mail or HTML. Of course, there’s no point in creating a beautiful design if it won’t work on the recipients’ devices – so it’s good to see previews not just for Mac, PC and tablets, but for Android, iPhone and Apple Watch too. The Inbox snippet is particularly handy, giving you control
over what will appear in the recipients’ inboxes. You can also see which elements only apply to the current mode, so for example in mobile mode you’ll see notes indicating which elements will only appear on mobile devices. We like Mail Designer Pro a lot. If you fancy bigbudget email marketing but don’t have a big budget, it’s well worth checking out.
GaRy MaRShall
Proud Task lists brought back to the Mac £7.99 FROM Peter Szwach, useproud.com NEEDS OS X 10.10 or higher, iCloud account for syncing roud for iOS gave us a new take on iPhone-based list-making. Sure, its main tab is conventional, with you creating tasks, breaking them down into subtasks, reordering, and swiping items on completion. But you can also assign deadlines in a human manner (“later today”, “tomorrow”), and the app has useful mini-apps and a few ‘superpowers’: a de-stress breathing tool, a Pomodoro-style timer, and a completed tasks graph; there’s even a ‘Give me more time’ option in there, too.
P
VERDICT
An interesting iPhone to-do manager comes to the Mac in rather too faithful a manner.
HHHHH Nice ideas throughout Fiddly interface
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There’s something highly amusing about an all-caps ‘de-stress’ menu item.
You might think that all sounds great, but what about the Mac version of the app? Well, it more or less is the iPhone version. On the plus side, it syncs nicely over iCloud, and has the same great features as the iPhone release. But the iPhone-like interface (which can be switched to a comical full-screen mode) is less intuitive. Robbed of the touchscreen, the enjoyably
tactile and exploratory nature of Proud is gone. Instead, you hunt through a menu, and must rely on remembering keyboard shortcuts to trigger actions. As a way to get Proud lists on your Mac, the app is fine (although twice the iOS version’s price); but as a standalone app, it needs to be more Mac-like for us to wholeheartedly recommend it. CRaiG GRaNNEll
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 101
APPLE CHOICE Mac Software
Painter 2017 Paint the town red with this excellent art app reviewed by ROb RedMan £314 FROM corel, corel.com needs OS X 10.9.5 or higher
the interactive gradient tool’s new options include edit nodes, to help apply gradients to existing art
VERDICT
he last few years have seen Painter keep its place at the top of the natural media painting pile, but it’s been hard to see where it could go forward. However, the 2017 edition sees its developer innovating with new tools, as well as improving on existing ones. The app itself hasn’t changed much in feel or operation, which is a good thing and ultimately allows the new features to feel less like bolt-ons for the purposes of upgrades, and more like integral parts of the software. The toolset is pretty comprehensive, as well as very realistic. It’s very easy to get to grips with, especially if used with a graphics tablet. Many tools respond to stylus angle and rotation, as well as position, allowing you to angle them to create broader shading with a 2B pencil, or work with shaped-tip ink pens. Painter 2017 adds a number of new tools, the most notable being the texture and glazing ones. The former enables you to intelligently add textures to your work based on the underlying imagery. It has several presets, and it’s simple to add your own. You could take a photo of a concrete wall, define that in Painter, and use it to add texture in a variety of ways. There are many uses for this, but probably the most obvious is for fast-working concept artists who need to define a look, or even 3D artists painting maps for use in CG.
t
this is an innovative update to a great art app, with plenty of interesting new tools.
HHHHH comprehensive tools Gradient options Great performance Interface a bit dated
Painter 2017 introduces the useful glaze and texture tools.
102 | MACFORMAT | OctOber 2016
The glazing tools are a set of transparent brushes that build up as a real-world glaze would, enhancing depth and colour. Painter comes with a number of preset brushes and, as with all Painter brushes, there is a huge amount of control and customisability available. This continues with the interface as a whole, with palettes that can be moved, collapsed, stacked or hidden, and layouts that can be saved for specific tasks.
Great gradient control Painter 2017 doesn’t stop there. Any good software upgrade should be indicative of the developer listening to its users, fixing issues or changing tools so they better fit their uses. In this release, the interactive gradient tool has been tweaked to give better performance, plus new options, such as edit nodes, which help you apply gradients to existing art. Sticking with the gradient theme, there is also a new Gradient Express tool, which is aimed at relieving the problem of staring at a fresh document and not knowing how to start. The gradients can have brush styles applied for rapidly working out a colour theme or background, to kick-start your creative thinking when you need it. This, in conjunction with the texture tool, is a great way to start any piece. It’s hard to criticise what is an excellent bit of software. However, Painter can be a little bit too comprehensive; it’s easy to forget some of the options that are available as there are just so many, especially once you set the interface to your preferred working method (the app provides presets for photo art, concept work and more). Painter’s interface isn’t as modern those found in some other apps, but it does its job well, and the app’s ease of navigation surpasses any thoughts about dated button shapes.
macformat.com @macformat
iOS Software APPLE CHOICE
Maxcurve Powerful image editing for iOS £2.99 FROM Xiaodong Wang, maxcurve.net Made FOR iPhone, iPod touch, iPad his is a tempting alternative to the complexity of Photoshop. Curves give you the ability to alter brightness and saturation in an image’s range of tones and brightness. Normally the preserve of high-end apps like Lightroom Mobile or Photoshop on the desktop, MaxCurve gives you the ability to edit images using curves for a mere three quid. It packs some surprisingly big punches. You can connect to Remote Connections in Photoshop and open raw files on iOS over a network. The tools on offer are gratifyingly
t
VERDICT
Maxcurve gives you plenty of tools and high-quality results for an appealing price.
HHHHH Advanced tools Scary for beginners
Tone curves are useful for pulling detail out of images that have dark shadows.
high-end – you won’t find Instagram-style filters here, just the ability to change an image’s tone curves to alter its tone, saturation and hue, among other things. MaxCurve provides you with complete and precise control over how your image looks – to a far greater degree than most apps. You can also create presets once you’ve found a look that works. Images can be exported to
your device’s Camera Roll, to Photoshop, or sent straight to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Built-in tutorials would be appreciated: if you don’t know what a luminosity curve is, MaxCurve doesn’t enlighten you. MaxCurve is capable of producing the kind of refined results that you'd expect from Photoshop. As such, its low price makes it a real steal.
photo library or sent to other apps and cloud services using the iOS 9 sharing extension. Unfade does an admirable job with automatic crop: edges magnetically snap against the sides and can be manually adjusted, with the option to fine-tune using a magnifier for precise corner selection. If you desire a bit of a different look, 25 Instagram-style filters are included, which can be applied with just a tap.
Overall we found Unfade quite useful – results were fast and remarkably good quality, although occasionally the default filter didn’t go quite far enough when restoring some images. The app lacks manual contrast, brightness, and colour controls, and it would also benefit from an option to exclude borders, which currently have to be manually cropped out.
daVe STeVeNSON
Unfade bring old photos back to life £3.99 FROM doo, unfade.io Made FOR iPhone, iPod touch, iPad ld family photo albums are often inherited with a bonus layer of dust. Finding enough free hours in the day to scan and clean up all the images is hard, but with Unfade you can make short work of just such a project. All you have to do is aim your iPhone (5s or later) at each individual photo laid out on a flat, well lit surface. Unfade automatically grabs a scan, performs edge detection, then applies a filter to restore faded colours to life. Scanned photos can be organised into albums, then saved to your
O
VERDICT
Unfade works magic on old photos, though needs some additional manual controls.
HHHHH Impressive tools Lacks manual control
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J.R. BOOKWaLTeR
OctOber 2016 | MACFORMAT | 103
STORE GUIDE Apple Kit
UpDATED OCT 2015 ExpECTED lATE 2016
EdiTEd BY
AlEx BlAkE
Your complete guide to the best Apple hardware and third-party accessories elcome to MacFormat’s Store Guide, the place to go to find out about all the Apple kit that matters, whether you’re looking for your next iPhone or a powerful new desktop Mac. 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.
W
Who’s it for? ENTRY LEVEL
UPGRADER
HIGH END
you’re just getting started in the world of Apple and need to know where to begin.
A firm Apple user, you’re ready to move on and get even more from your tech.
Apple is your life. you prize quality and want the best that money can buy.
iMac Ever since the famous Bondi Blue iMac debuted way back in August 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards in gorgeous design and powerful performance. Apple’s spirit of innovation was as clear back then as it is today – the iMac was the first Macintosh to abandon the floppy disk in favour of USB ports, and its bright, colourful aesthetic set it apart as a playful pretender in a world of staid beige boxes. These days Apple is again pushing boundaries with the iMac, blessing all of its 27-inch models with the world’s best display, which has a massive 5K (5120x2880) resolution. Add in a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor (configurable from 3.2GHz up to 4.0GHz), 8GB of RAM, a fast and capacious Fusion Drive, and a powerful AMD Radeon R9 graphics processor – and the large iMac is the desktop system to own. In 2015, Apple lowered the price of the top-spec 27-inch model by £150 and introduced the first 21.5-inch iMac with a Retina 4K display. All iMacs (except the entry-level, 21.5-inch model) have a quad-core processor.
Choose an iMac
= Retina display
Monitor.........................................107 Ultra HD monitor..............107 Portable storage...............107 network storage...............107 Wireless router....................107 Thunderbolt dock............107 Printer............................................107 IP camera...................................107 MacBook bag.........................107
104 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Wireless speaker..............108 Portable speaker..............108 On-ear headphones......108 In-ear headphones.........108 Portable battery................108 Action camera.....................108 Camera stabiliser.............108 iPhone stand..........................108 Apple Watch stand.........108
EnTRy LEVEL
iMac..................................................104 MacBook....................................105 MacBook Pro.........................105 Mac Pro........................................105 Mac mini......................................105 iPhone...........................................106 iPad....................................................106 iPad Pro........................................106 Apple Watch...........................106
price
21.5-inch 2.8GHz quad-core intel core i5
RAM 8GB of 1867MHz lpddr3 GRAphics intel iris pro Graphics 6200 sTORAGE 1tB (5,400rpm) DispLAY 1920x1080 (ips, srGB gamut) ALsO Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard
£1,049
UPGRADER
Inside your buying guide…
Key specifications
21.5-inch 3.1GHz dual-core intel core i5
RAM 8GB of 1867MHz lpddr3 GRAphics intel iris pro Graphics 6200 sTORAGE 1tB (5,400rpm) DispLAY retina 4K (ips, p3 gamut) ALsO Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard
£1,199
HIGH EnD
Model
27-inch 3.3GHz quad-core intel core i5
RAM 8GB of 1867MHz ddr3 GRAphics aMd radeon r9 M395 sTORAGE 2tB fusion drive DispLAY retina 5K (ips, p3 gamut) ALsO Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard
£1,849
macformat.com @macformat
Apple Kit STORE GUIDE
UpDATED ApR 2016 ExpECTED 2017
UpDATED MAy 2015 ExpECTED SOOn
UpDATED DEC 2013 ExpECTED SOOn
MacBook
MacBook Pro
Mac Pro
The baby of Apple’s laptop family, the MacBook was recently updated with slightly improved specs and a new Rose Gold colour. Weighing in at just 0.92kg, it’s Apple’s most lightweight laptop but still packs in a 226ppi pixel density in its 12-inch Retina display. The MacBook is powered by an Intel Core M processor (at 1.1GHz, 1.2GHz or 1.3GHz), which doesn’t require a fan to keep cool, so the MacBook runs silently. It also features a Force Touch trackpad, which can trigger different responses as you apply more pressure. All models of the MacBook come with 8GB of 1866MHz memory, with no option to add more, and Intel HD Graphics 515 – that’s 25% faster than the previous iteration – and there are 256GB or 512GB flash storage options. There are four colour options: Silver, Space Grey, Gold, and the new Rose Gold.
Following hot on the heels of the MacBook, the MacBook Pro recently gained a Force Touch trackpad. At the same time, the MacBook Pro range saw small boosts to its Intel and graphics processors. The top-of-the-line model is currently the only one to offer a discrete graphics processor, in the form of the AMD Radeon R9 M370X – the other models have an integrated Intel Iris or Iris Pro graphics processor. All except the entry-level MacBook Pro are equipped with a Retina display, in either 13-inch or 15-inch sizes. They also have two Thunderbolt 2 and two USB 3.0 ports, an SDXC card reader, and their flash storage ranges from 128GB to 1TB, depending on the model you pick as a starting point. Battery life is also improved, with the 13-inch model lasting 10 hours and the 15-inch model going strong for nine hours.
If you need power – and we mean serious power – this is the computer for you. Even the entry-level model comes with 12GB of RAM, a quad-core 3.7GHz processor, 256GB of speedy PCIe flash storage and dual AMD FIrePro D300 graphics cards. However, with a price point to match, it last being updated in 2013, and Thunderbolt 3 just around the corner, consider holding out for the next version.
£1,049
12-inch 1.2GHz RAM 8GB of 1866MHz dual-core lpddr3 intel core m5 GRAphics intel Hd Graphics 515 ssD 512GB
£1,299
12-inch 1.3GHz RAM 8GB of 1866MHz dual-core lpddr3 intel core m7 GRAphics intel Hd Graphics 515 ssD 256GB or 512GB
£1,249 or £1,419
macformat.com @macformat
Key specifications
price
EnTRy LEVEL
EnTRy LEVEL
12-inch 1.1GHz RAM 8GB of 1866MHz dual-core lpddr3 intel core m3 GRAphics intel Hd Graphics 515 ssD 256GB
Model 13-inch 2.7GHz dual-core intel core i5
RAM 8GB of 1866MHz lpddr3 GRAphics intel iris Graphics 6100 ssD 256GB
£1,199
UPGRADER
price
UPGRADER
Model
Choose a MacBook Pro
15-inch 2.2GHz quad-core intel core i7
RAM 16GB of 1600MHz ddr3l GRAphics intel iris pro Graphics ssD 256GB
£1,599
HIGH EnD
Key specifications
HIGH EnD
Choose a MacBook
15-inch 2.5GHz quad-core intel core i7
RAM 16GB of 1600MHz £1,999 ddr3l GRAphics aMd radeon r9 M370X ssD 512GB
From £2,499
UpDATED OCT 2014 ExpECTED lATE 2016
Mac mini
From £399
A welcome update in 2014 brought a £100 price drop to the most affordable Mac. The mini has some interesting talking points: the entry-level model has a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, making it akin to the entry-level MacBook Air but with a 500GB hard drive and no display. Higher end models come with 1TB storage (a Fusion Drive option is available), 8GB of RAM, a better graphics processor and either a 2.6GHz or 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 for £569 and £799, respectively. Those models can be upgraded to Core i7 processors, though there are no quad-core options available – you’ll need an iMac for that.
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 105
STORE GUIDE Apple Kit
UpDATED SEpT 2015 ExpECTED q3 2016
UpDATED MAR 2016 ExpECTED SEpT 2016
UpDATED MAR 2016 ExpECTED q3 2016
iPhone
iPad
iPad Pro
Apple brought 3D Touch to the iPhone with the 6s and 6s Plus, providing extra interactions depending on the level of pressure you apply to the screen. For example, a light press on an email lets you ‘peek’ at its contents, so you can decide whether to delete it or, with a firmer press, ‘pop’ it open to reply to it. While the new iPhone SE lacks 3D Touch, it matches many features of the iPhone 6s, from a 12MP rear camera and 4K video recording to an A9 chip and M9 motion coprocessor. All that comes in a compact 4-inch case, so it has plenty of power and is perfect for anyone put off by the larger iPhones. All models have front-facing cameras for video calls. There’s also Live Photos, which capture the moments before and after you take a photo to make a short video, plus all feature high-quality Retina displays.
Aside from the beautifully gargantuan 12.9-inch iPad Pro (see right), there was a small but very welcome change to Apple’s tablet line-up last September with the addition of the iPad mini 4, which is essentially an iPad Air 2 in a smaller chassis. The Air 2 hasn’t changed since late 2014, though. On the software side, iOS 9 has brought multitasking features, which are a boon for productivity. you can slide a second app over the right side of the one you’re working in (great for quickly checking email), then dismiss it to get back to work. Picture in Picture enables you to watch video in a corner of the screen – but it may be a bit too small on the mini. Those two features work on the Air 2, mini 2 and Pro and newer models. There’s also Split View, on the Air 2, mini 4 and Pro, which lets you work on two apps side by side.
The iPad Pro now comes in 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch sizes, packed with either 32GB, 128GB or 256GB of storage. All models except the 32GB, 12.9-inch one are available with the option of mobile network connectivity. The Pro’s A9X chip is the most powerful in any iOS device, and it has an impressive four-speaker sound system, too. Adding the pressure-sensitive Apple Pencil makes it an accomplished drawing tool.
iphone se (4-inch display)
cApAciTY: 64GB pROcEssOR: a9 3D TOUch no cAMERA 12Mp photos, 4K video recording
£439
iphone 6s (4.7-inch display)
cApAciTY: 128GB pROcEssOR: a9 3D TOUch yes cAMERA 12Mp photos, 4K video recording
£619
iphone 6s plus (5.5-inch display)
cApAciTY: 128GB pROcEssOR: a9 3D TOUch yes cAMERA 12Mp photos, 4K video recording
£789
106 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
Model
Key specifications
price
EnTRy LEVEL
EnTRy LEVEL
price
ipad mini 4
cApAciTY 64GB pROcEssOR a8 cONNEcTiViTY Wi-fi cAMERA 8Mp TOUch iD yes
£399
UPGRADER
Key specifications
ipad air 2
cApAciTY 64GB pROcEssOR a8X cONNEcTiViTY Wi-fi cAMERA 8Mp TOUch iD yes
£429
HIGH EnD
Model
UPGRADER
Choose an iPad
HIGH EnD
Choose an iPhone
12.9-inch ipad pro
cApAciTY 128GB pROcEssOR a9X cONNEcTiViTY Wi-fi cAMERA 8Mp TOUch iD yes
£799
From £499
UpDATED SEpT 2015 ExpECTED q3 2016
Watch
From £259
Apple’s first foray into the world of high fashion certainly turned heads when it arrived on the scene. Apple has since released a slew of updates in the form of watchOS 2, which expands the capabilities of third-party apps, as well as a range of new case colours and strap options (although hardware specifications are unchanged). Among the new straps are several Woven nylon models in various vibrant colours, plus a snappy yellow Sport Band made of comfy fluoroelastomer. The Watch comes in aluminium, stainless steel or 18-carat gold cases, the first of which now has Gold and Rose Gold colour options.
macformat.com @macformat
Accessories STORE GUIDE
bEsT bUYs… curated picks of third-party kit MOnITOR
UlTRA hD MOnITOR
pORTABlE STORAGE
ViewSonic VP2772 £570
AOC U3277PQU £611
Transcend JetDrive Lite 360 £138
viewsonic.com
aoc.com
uk.transcend-info.com
If you’re not fussed about 4K but still want exceptional image quality, this IPS display is truly superb. It offers 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB colour space, 10-bit colour and a 2560x1440-pixel resolution. It has HDMI 1.4, DVI and Mini DisplayPort connections, and four USB 3.0 ports for expansion.
The recent winner of our 4K displays group test, this 32-inch screen is a joy to work with, and a monitor of this size is the perfect setting for 4K to really come into its own. From stunning picture quality and top-notch contrast ratio to the reasonable price for such a wide display, it’s a winner all round.
This drive fits into your MacBook Pro’s SDXC slot to instantly increase your storage by up to 256GB. We were very impressed with its transfer speeds, clocking 88.4MB/sec for sequential reads and 62.6MB/sec in our write tests. The drive comes with storage included, unlike some rivals that require you to supply one.
nETwORk STORAGE
wIRElESS ROUTER
ThUnDERBOlT DOCk
QnAP TS-251+ £442
netgear nighthawk D7000 £148
CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 £202
qnap.com
netgear.co.uk
caldigit.com/uk
We know a good nAS drive when we see one, which is why the 6TB TS-251+ won MF302’s group test. It’s one of the quickest nAS drives we’ve seen lately, with transfer rates of over 105MB/sec for large files. It has an HDMI port and a remote control for watching your media directly on your TV set. Four USB ports top it off.
This is one of the best 802.11ac routers you can get. It was one of the fastest models in MF301 ’s group test, and it can connect to ADSL, fibre and cable equipment, so it’s not stymied if you change your broadband setup. Its iOS app is great, and it’s hugely affordable for what it offers. A winner all round.
Our MF297 group test winner got the nod for its beautifully compact form and superb menu bar tool, which lets you eject individual drives as you please (something its rivals failed to offer). It’s not the most laden with ports, but has everything that most people will need, and comes in at a great price point.
pRInTER
Ip CAMERA
MACBOOk BAG
Brother HL-3150CDW £155
Logi Circle £158
Knomo Hanson £129
brother.co.uk
logitech.com
knomobags.com
This versatile laser printer got the nod in MF300’s group test. Its light design, feature list, and impressive print quality make it a great choice for home office users. AirPrint and Wi-Fi connectivity means it plays nice with your iOS devices. It’s not great for printing photos, but is a winner at everything else.
Winner of MF299’s group test, the Logi Circle is packed with features. It’s so easy to use and can be powered by batteries, making it highly portable. With a wide 135° field of vision, it captures plenty of detail, and is very affordable. The Logi Circle is a barnstorming all-rounder, and looks great on your mantlepiece.
Deceptively spacious inside, the Hanson is full of well-padded pockets to protect your precious portables. It’s extremely comfortable, distributing weight well so your shoulders don’t feel the strain, and is rather good looking, but remains subtle enough not to attract the attention of light-fingered thieves.
macformat.com @macformat
OCTOBER 2016 | MACFORMAT | 107
STORE GUIDE Accessories
bEsT bUYs… curated picks of third-party kit wIRElESS SpEAkER
pORTABlE SpEAkER
On-EAR hEADphOnES
Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Wireless £499
Braven BRV-XXL £330
Plantronics Backbeat Pro £128
bowers-wilkins.co.uk
braven.com
plantronics.com
This airship-inspired speaker is certainly striking, but it’s more than just a looker, with crisp, clear treble and refined bass output over previous Zeppelin models. Support for Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and AirPlay makes for plenty of connectivity, and dynamic EQ ensures controlled bass at all volumes.
If you want big, booming sound then your best bet is the hulking BRV-XXL. With Bluetooth, separate bass and treble controls, plus incredibly rich, deep sound thanks to its included subwoofer, it’s got you covered whether you take it to the beach or a DJ party. A 14-hour battery and IPX5 splashproof rating seal the deal.
Wireless headphones are often blighted by meagre battery life, but not so with these cans, which run for more than 25 hours. They offer active noise-cancelling, brilliant wireless range, superb comfort and a huge range of intuitive touch controls, making these the wireless headphones to beat.
In-EAR hEADphOnES
pORTABlE BATTERy pACk
ACTIOn CAMERA
RHA MA 750i £90
Apple iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case £79
GoPro Hero4 Session
rha-audio.com
apple.com/uk
gopro.com
These in-ear buds impress on nearly every level. They come with easy-to-use inline controls and a steel-reinforced cable, while faultless low and mid range reproduction and a crafted, premium feel make them earphones of distinction. They are a world away from Apple’s cheap earbuds.
Despite that silly-looking hump on its back, the official battery case for the iPhone 6 and 6s is impressive. It’s easy to fit, the buttons feel great, and the soft inner lining protects against scratches. It isn’t the largest capacity case, yet it has more than enough juice for busy days, and the bump is surprisingly comfy.
CAMERA STABIlISER
iphOnE STAnD
£164
GoPro has built a truly formidable reputation for itself as an action cam champ, and rightly so. The Hero4 Session may be compact, but it’s a great all-rounder. Internal waterproofing, an outstanding app and impressive video quality, combined with an affordable price tag, make it a firm favourite at MacFormat. ApplE wATCh STAnD
Zhiyun Z1 Smooth-C £157
Just Mobile AluBolt £32
nomad Stand for Apple Watch £40
zhiyun-tech.com
just-mobile.eu
hellonomad.com
The iPhone may take amazing videos, but if you’ve got shaky hands then your phone will still struggle. If that sounds like you, try the Zhiyun Z1 Smooth-C. It’s an iPhone holder with a built-in gimbal, so you can move your hand around and your footage will stay smooth with nary a bump or wobble.
Charge your iPhone in style with this simple yet elegant stand. From the curved backstop to the rounded aluminium base, it oozes Apple-esque design chops and will fit right in among your other Apple kit. The Lightning connector can be tilted to help mount your iPhone on it, which is a nice touch.
nomad’s stand is an absolutely gorgeous Apple Watch charging dock – carved from a single piece of curved aluminium, it looks like it could have been designed by Apple. Its weighty base keeps everything in place and the cable management is so tidy that it looks like there’s no cable there at all.
108 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
macformat.com @macformat
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Have your say on all things Apple! LETTER OF THE MONTH! READY OR NOT My name is Fernando and I’ve been a subscriber of MacFormat for many years now (perhaps 20 or 25). I’m referring to the latest issue, 302 – well, the latest to me here in Spain. In your Apple Choice section, page 95, you refer to the ReadyNAS 212 as “up to 12TB capacity per bay”, and my question is to reaffirm that if I buy that NAS box I’ll be able to put in it two hard disks of 10TB each (Seagate Enterprise Capacity 10TB SATA He6, 7,200rpm), giving me a total combined capacity of 20TB? You see, those new disks are quite expensive and the NAS box itself is not cheap either, so I have to be very careful before I decide to make the purchase, and hope you’ll help with my decision. by F E R N A N D O
CHRIsTIAN sAYs… Hi Fernando. We must apologise for a mistake in that review regarding the drive’s capacity. The ReadyNAS 212 in fact goes up to 12TB in total, based on installing 6TB disks. Netgear introduced the four-bay ReadyNAS 214 alongside that model, with support for 24TB of storage (giving 12TB of usable space if you set it up as a mirrored array; a sensible precaution to take with that much data). Our reviewer offers this reassurance to anyone still interested in the RN212: “This doesn’t change my verdict, as the RN212 is £75 less than a 10TB-perbay drive such as the QNAP TS-251+”. In contrast, the Buffalo NAS reviewed this issue (page 93) is disappointing; I’ve used other ReadyNAS products since 2007 and found they do their job well, but bear in mind we haven’t tested the RN214.
LOVE YOUR MAC When I received MacFormat issue 302, I was delighted to read about rehabilitating an old iMac. I have a 2.4GHz, mid-2007 iMac with a 20-inch display, a 1TB hard drive (which is less than half full) and 4GB memory, and running OS X 10.6.8. For some time now it has been overheating, and when asked to do anything it freezes up with the spinning beach ball. It can take several minutes to open apps, and frequently the grey screen appears saying to power down. I have repaired permissions and the drive using Disk Utility with no noticeable improvement. None of the permissions are what they should be. Over the last
112 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
few years I’ve been a regular customer at different Apple repairers. Results are only temporary, slight improvements, and the problems are just getting worse. Like me, the machine is old and tired. But do I need to pension it off, or can it be given a reprieve? I didn’t really want to go for a new Mac as I like the amount of ports available on this one. by P E T E R W H I C K M A N
ALAN sAYs… First, check your drive’s SMART status in Disk Utiilty; something other than ‘Verified’ means the drive’s on its way out. SMART only senses some types of trouble, though. The recurring grey screen could be due to a memory
Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com
fault. Run Apple Hardware Test (refer to apple.co/2b3FhpK). Overheating may be due to clogged-up fans, or even a faulty power supply unit; part of the front of my old 2008 iMac got exceptionally hot due to that. If you go for service again, ask whether the PSU is explicitly tested.
THE GOOD sTUFF A significant part of my interest revolves around app and product tests, but I am getting increasingly fed up. What I am looking for is a carefully curated selection of brilliant four- and five-star apps and products. I’m not interested in the numerous one-, two- or possibly three-star items that reach your pages. For example, the ASWY Ondo speaker and Ummo in issue 303. As far as I’m concerned – and I’m sure I am not alone in this – I want you guys to weed out the rubbish and present me with the best! by S I M O N M I L L E R
ALEX sAYs… I’m sorry to hear you are disappointed with our reviews coverage. Every month we try to select a range of hardware and apps that we feel will be of interest to our readers. We review them with absolute honesty – if this means giving an item a poor score, we will do this because we feel our readers deserve to know which products are worth spending on, and which are not. Unfortunately, we don’t have the budget to review a huge number of products and only print the high-scoring ones, leaving the rest unpublished and the money spent on reviewing them essentially wasted (we have to pay our reviewers, after all). We do include a curated section of high-scoring products at the back of the magazine, though, in the Store Guide section. This is where you’ll find all of our most recommended products.
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TIME MACHINE Classic Apple kit given a unique makeover
Above: Geiger created benches, shelving and even storage cupboards from old Power Mac cases. Left: The cases were gutted so that their internal space could be put to practical use.
Power Mac G5 furniture Putting gorgeous kit that’s sitting around to good use Apple products are invariably well designed, which can make consigning old kit to the rubbish heap feel wrong somehow. To avoid the dilemma, one German designer opted to extend the ‘shelf life’ of his advertising agency’s ageing Power Mac G5s quite literally. Klaus Geiger found a second life for the distinctive computer cases by emptying their innards and turning them into functional components in an inspired furniture project called ‘Benchmarc’. The idea resulted in a series of bespoke benches and cabinets, along with innovative concept designs for mobile office desks, shelves and conference tables. “This kind of product design and material quality couldn’t end up on the garbage”, says Klaus. “Someone had to do something with them before they got lost, and that’s when the upcycling furniture concept came to me”.
NExT IssuE ON sALE Tuesday 27 September 2016 114 | MACFORMAT | OCTOBER 2016
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9000
9012