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MasTer iOs PHOTO ediTing Perfect your pictures with pro techniques and app extensions p38

MAC

iPHONE

iPAD

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Customize your Mac to make it look and work your way p22 neW 12-inCh MaCBOOk rEviEw p66

HOW TO : Browse the web better on iOS Make OS X’s Contacts app smarter Easily save online receipts to iCloud Master YouTube’s advanced tools

j u n e 20 1 6 n O.1 1 6

w w w. m ac l i f e .cO m

ultimate OS X tweaks

master iOS photo editing

DiY Time capsule

Organize OS X to work and look the way you want, to make it more personal and productive. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how to customize features, create shortcuts, and more.

Enhance your photos with these easy prolevel techniques that use app extensions, so you can make all your changes from right within the Photos app.

Network-connected drives donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come cheap, but with a Raspberry Pi 2 and an external hard drive, you can build an inexpensive Mac backup solution.

We show you how to extend your iOS photo editing skills with a range of great app extensions.

Check out our latest subscription offers on p54

maclife.com jun 2016 3

>>> Contents

Digital|life

ulysses mobile

Snapseat

Viki

Head over to techradar.com.

consider Matt Bolton on Apple’s photography pride.

Story Tree

Outside

crazyTalk 8 Standard

mountain Duck

Gemini 2

lunafX

composer’s Sketchpad

freeSpeech

What we want to see from iOS 10. Plus, Liam…

winterstate 72

Priime Styles

i Keep Having This Dream

Roadmap Planner

Could a super-slim MacBook swap a keyboard for touch?

caTTcH

Bookmarkable

early access

King Rabbit

fillform

Pre-release software and a look at Apple’s finances.

6 great apps for learning something new

apple Smart Keyboard for 9.7-in iPad Pro

The Shift

apple TV Apps and hardware for your Apple TV.

ask Our Apple experts answer your burning hardware and software questions.

102

Get smart with contacts

Streets 3

apple woven nylon Band

a Tiny Game of Pong

Tile Gen 2

6 times apple…

near lock

Yi action camera Kit

106 Save web receipts to icloud

How to: sync a music playlist to your apple watch

Osmo Starter Kit with numbers

108 make art on your iPhone

Kanex Premium multiSync aluminum Keyboard

Game loop

crave 81

The gear we’re lusting after.

Lifestyle-enhancing gadgets for your home.

Brianna Wu looks at limitations of devices in game development.

Get smart

David Chartier looks at the changeover to app subscriptions.

… totally changed its mind.

Smart gardening gear Let gadgets mow your lawn and water your plants.

Start

why a touch-enabled macBook might work

Share Email: letters@maclife.com.

apple macBook early 2016 1.1GHz

G-Technology G-DRiVe mobile uSB-c

$50 iTunes card What would you buy…?

Osmo Starter Kit with numbers

4 jun 2016 maclife.com

Zhiyun Z1 Smooth-c

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive edition

Hyper light Drifter

104 affinity Photo: create a double exposure

110

Read the web more comfortably on iOS

112

master the YouTube app

114

Random apple memory When Steve Jobs was ousted. Plus, what to expect next issue…

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You’ll get all the latest news and tutorials for Mac, iPhone and iPad, as well as other trusted reviews, news, and how-tos that have made TechRadar one of the world’s top tech sites. We’ll see you there!

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EDITORIAL Editor Matt Bolton opErations Editors Jo Membery, Ed Ricketts ContriBUtors Adam Banks, J.R. Bookwalter, David Chartier, Emma Davies, Ian Evenden, Kane Fulton, Craig Grannell, Kate Gray, Christian Hall, Lucy Hattersley, Kenny Hemphill, Alastair Jennings, Cliff Joseph, Joseph Leray, Gary Marshall, Keith Martin, Angela Nicholson, Howard Oakley, Nick Peers, Nik Rawlinson, Dave Stevenson, Brianna Wu ART art Editor Mat Gartside digital art Editor Seth Singh ContriBUtors Apple, Fabio Bini, Thinkstock BUSINESS viCE prEsidEnt salEs Stacy Gaines, stacy.gaines@futurenet.com viCE prEsidEnt stratEgiC partnErships Isaac Ugay, isaac.ugay@futurenet.com East Coast aCCoUnt dirECtor Brandie Rushing, brandie.rushing@futurenet.com East Coast aCCoUnt dirECtor Michael Plump, michael.plump@futurenet.com mid wEst aCCoUnt dirECtor Jessica Reinert, jessica.reinert@futurenet.com wEst Coast aCCoUnt dirECtor Austin Park, austin.park@futurenet.com wEst Coast aCCoUnt dirECtor Brandon Wong, brandon.wong@futurenet.com wEst Coast aCCoUnt dirECtor Tad Perez, tad.perez@futurenet.com dirECtor of markEting Robbie Montinola dirECtor, CliEnt sErviCEs Tracy Lam dirECtor, rEtail salEs Bill Shewey MANAGEMENT Editorial dirECtor Paul Newman groUp art dirECtor Graham Dalzell PRODUCTION prodUCtion managEr Mark Constance prodUCtion ControllEr Fran Twentyman projECt managEr Clare Scott prodUCtion assistant Emily Wood

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Volume 10, Issue 7

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MAC|LIFE (issn 1935-4010) is published monthly by future Us, inc., one lombard street, suite 200, san francisco, Ca 94111 (650) 872-1642. www.futureus.com. periodicals postage paid at san Bruno, Ca, and at additional mailing offices. newsstand distribution is handled by Curtis Circulation Company. Basic print subscription rates: 13 issues U.s. $24.95, foreign: $39.95. U.s. prepaid funds only. subscriptions do not include newsstand specials. POSTMASTER: send address changes to po Box 2024, langhorne, pa 19047, Usa. ride-along Enclosure in the following editions: none. standard mail Enclosure in the following editions: none. Canadian returns should be sent to imEX global solutions, po Box 25542, london, on n6C 6B2, Canada. future Us, inc. also publishes Maximum PC, Official Xbox Magazine, and PC Gamer. prodUCEd in thE UnitEd statEs of amEriCa. SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE: mac|life Customer Care, po Box 2024, langhorne, pa 19047, Usa. online: www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/youraccount. toll free: 1-844-779-2822 (opening hours: mon- fri 8am to 7pm; sat 10am to 2pm Edt). Email: contact@myfavouritemagazines.com. REPRINTS: future Us, inc., 4000 shoreline Court, suite 400, south san francisco, Ca 94080. phone: (650) 872-1642. fax (650) 872-2207. website: www.futureus.com. AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR LAWYERS: Entire contents copyright 2016, future Us, inc. all rights reserved. reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. future Us, inc. is not affiliated with the companies or products covered in mac|life. all information provided is, as far as future is aware, based on information correct at the time of press. readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to products/ services referred to in this magazine. we welcome reader submissions, but cannot promise that they will be published or returned to you. By submitting materials to us, you agree to give future the royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish and reuse your submission in any form in any and all media and to use your name and other information in connection with the submission.

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photogrAphy’s future Apple is reAlly, really proud of iPhone photography. I realize this sentence probably doesn’t come as a surprise, expecially if you’ve watched the keynotes where Tim Cook and his colleagues talk at length about how the iPhone is the most popular camera in the world, and showing off photos from its “Taken on iPhone” campaign – before going into great depth about the technical details that make its cameras so good. Pretty much only companies like Canon and Nikon dive into as much detail as Apple does about sensors and filters and digital signal processors during product launches. But Apple doesn’t just talk the talk about being proud of iPhone photography; it absolutely walks the walk too. I’m writing this on a journey back from one of Apple’s corporate offices that was recently refurbished, where the walls are covered in huge prints of beautiful photos, all taken on the iPhone 6s. When you first enter, it’s striking portraits, all from different angles and working with different colors, but focusing on people. Round the corner is a gigantic panorama shot of the sea – it must be five feet long, taking up most of the corridor. There are more dotted throughout. These aren’t display pieces in an Apple Store window where they help sell the iPhone. They’re in an office where not many people outside of Apple employees will see them. They’re not there to market; they’re there because Apple is really proud of what people are doing with its products. Our guide to making easy pro-level tweaks to your images on iOS is intended to help ensure that you’re equally proud of the photos you take – using extensions, we’ll show you how to go way beyond what Apple’s default tools can do, to create striking pictures without ever having to leave the Photos app. If want to get less arty and more practical, we’ve also got our in-depth look at how to customize OS X, making it look and work the way you want. And even more practical than that is our guide to creating your own Time Capsule using Raspberry Pi - it’s a really fun project for a quiet weekend. I hope you enjoy the issue!

>>>ThE TEam

Jo Membery operations editor Jo’s changed all her Finder windows to neon colors. She’s also got a headache.

Mat gartside Art editor Mat’s swapped all his app icons for arty new ones. Now he can’t find Safari…

seth singh Digital Art editor Seth added text shortcuts for all his favorite phrases. They’re unrepeatable here.

MAtt Bolton, Editor Twitter: @matthewbbolton

8 Jun 2016 maclife.com

Your opinions, rants & raves

I bought an iPad Pro to use for viewing my sheet music (in Planning Center’s Music Stand). I was using an iPad fourth-generation previously, and would have to try to swipe the screen to the next page while still playing my instrument (bass, guitar, and trombone). With the iPad Pro, if I have more than one page of music to read, I can turn the iPad sideways and view two pages before having to flip to the next page! I really like the iPad Pro. It was pretty spendy for me, pretty much like all of my Mac devices. I forfeited buying an iPhone 6 and got the iPad Pro instead. TErri The big screen size of the iPad Pro is a double-edged sword: it’s obviously a little less portable, and the huge battery required to power it is slow to charge (without the newer 29W power adapter, anyway) – but it enables you to do things you simply couldn’t do as well on a smaller screen, as Terri points out. I actually think we’re not even seeing the larger iPad Pro at its full potential yet – we haven’t seen tools like video editors really use the space to its fullest. I’m excited for its future!

Vestigial app removal How do you get rid of apps such as Watch, Game Center, Health, News, Tips, Podcasts, and Find My Friends which I don’t use, and take up valuable space? JoHn right now, you can’t get rid of them – the best thing you can do is make a new folder by tapping and holding one, then dragging it onto another. Drag and drop the other apps into this folder, then move it away from your Home screen. There are hints in ioS code that apple might make it possible to hide these apps completely in the future…

SE love Hide apps you don’t use in their own folder.

I got an iPhone SE last weekend and for a phone of this size, it’s great! I love the idea that Apple is thinking

SHarE wiTH US!

of those people that like a 4-inch phone. I had an iPhone 5s for two years – I’m glad I didn’t switch to a 6s. Now Apple has a phone for everyone: small, medium, and large. I even traded my old phone for a whole $150 off of the 64GB model. I only paid $399! Another great Apple experience once again! JonaTHan abEr The iPhone SE is great and I love it. Far better than the 6 models. Apple need to make sure they keep this size around. DaViD morriS we’ve heard a lot of love for the iPhone SE from you folks, and you probably saw last issue that we love it too. it’s funny how fresh and exciting the idea of a powerful smaller phone feels! we hope it sticks around for a long time.

Updating an older Mac to the new OS? Clone your drive first!

The upgrade dilemma I am considering upgrading to El Capitan and read in the Ask section (issue 114, p97) about a problem someone had when upgrading an older Mac (Mid 2010). I have an Early 2009 27-inch iMac running OS X 10.7.5. Should I expect the same problem as him (sluggishness)? JoHn PaTTErSon You never know how an individual machine will perform after an update – some struggle, while others have no issues. our advice is much like we gave in that letter: make sure you have plenty of ram (8Gb at least is best), and that your hard drive isn’t totally full. an SSD will help – we have a mid 2010 imac in the office that handles El capitan just fine in almost every task, but the old hard drive causes some tasks to bottleneck. we do advise updating the operating system, though, because you get better protection against malware. Don’t forget: clone your hard drive to an external drive (with an app such as SuperDuper) before upgrading, and if it feels like it was a mistake, you can revert back at will!

Email: letters@maclife.com FacEbook: facebook.com/maclife TwiTTEr: twitter.com/maclife

maclife.com jUn 2016 9

We hope iOS 10 will enable us to compare two “windows” of the same app, and use Siri with our favorite apps.

Check out our latest subscription deals on p54

What we want from iOS 10 As we prepare for WWDC, here’s what we’re hoping to see in Apple’s next update for the iPhone and iPad’s software

In ItS laSt few versions, iOS has had some major changes. It started with the new look in iOS 7, then progressed to huge alterations in its structure to allow for features such as extensions, enabling whole new tools to be created. Then came multitasking in iOS 9, adding yet more power. We’d expect iOS 10 to continue adding big functionality in this way, making iOS devices more and more capable. We don’t know exactly what Apple will reveal at WWDC on June 13, but here are some features we’d like to see.

BY Matt BOltOn

thIrd-partY SIrI IntegratIOn In a development of what Siri can do on the Apple TV, we’d like to see developers be able to tie their apps into Siri’s voice capabilities. This could just mean that Siri can return data from within the apps, but we’d also like to see the ability for apps to launch little widgets in Siri, the way Apple’s own apps currently can.

10 jun 2016 maclife.com

Feed your mind. Feast your eyes.

Meet liam: apple’s recycling robot Apple gets serious about recovering parts from old iPhones BY Matt BOltOn MultItaSkIng IMprOveMentS Split-screen multitasking on the iPad is excellent, but not perfect. We want a better view for choosing which apps you use, as well as the ability for an app to occupy both halves of the split, so you can compare Numbers docs, say. MOre cuStOMIzaBle lOck Screen Being able to add app shortcuts or little widgets to the Lock screen would be a great use of that empty space. MOre keYBOard cOntrOl Apple added some keyboard controls to iPad in iOS 9, but they’re too limited. We want to be able to navigate and select with the keyboard, and use Spotlight. MultI-uSer SuppOrt A version of this for classroom iPad use appeared in iOS 9.3, but we’d love to see it on all iPads, so families can share a device without wading through each others’ apps. change default appS Let us choose which app to use for web or email links (and let us hide Apple’s apps!). SMarter iclOud drIve iCloud Drive has features such as file versioning and restoration of deleted files, but it’s hidden away. Give us more control (and new column views) in the Drive app. IMprOved iMeSSage Apple’s chat app is way behind the communication game. Let’s see stickers, payment options, per-person read receipts, VIPs, better search, and more.

durIng the event at which it unveiled the iPhone SE, Apple had another new creation to reveal: an elaborate robotic disassembly line, named Liam. The first of its kind in the world, Liam is devoted entirely to taking apart iPhone 6s handsets that are no longer wanted, and separating them into different parts and materials in a more precise way than any other sytem, ensuring that everything can be recycled as efficiently as possible. Liam was reportedly kept under wraps from almost everyone at Apple, save for the engineers involved in its creation. It’s a 29-armed hydra, capable of totally disassembling an iPhone 6s in just 11 seconds, and handling many iPhones at once as it transports them between stations on its conveyer belt. It takes up almost the whole width of a warehouselike facility, according to a report by Samantha Kelly Murphy of

the hundreds of millions of iPhones Apple sells every year – and it only works for one single model. So, although Liam is a big step forward for recycling electronics both in terms of efficiency and safety for workers, its impact will be small for now – especially since not all disused phones make their way back to Apple anyway. There are plans for more Liam units, with a second nearly ready for construction in Europe, and Apple will no doubt look at creating new models for its other devices. Even if Liam can’t single-handedly (or 29-armedly) save the world, it’s good to know that years from now, when you are eventually ready to recycle your old iPhone 6s (or if you have one that breaks in the meantime, and you return it to Apple), every part of it will be reused as best it can be.

Mashable, who was given a tour of the secret facility. runnIng 9-5 from Monday to Friday, Liam can dismantle 1.2 million iPhones per year. It’s overseen by humans; if one arm breaks, it can keep running for a while without the load backing up, but people can step in to take over some tasks while an arm is repaired by an engineer. This 1.2 million figure is great, though it’s only a tiny fraction of

just one small part of the iPhonerecycling behemoth that is Liam.

maclife.com jun 2016 11

>>> Start

Removing the MacBook’s keyboard could enable Apple to make it even thinner.

A MacBook with a touchscreen keyboard? It could work… Apple’s new patent hints at a notebook with a iPad-style touchscreen instead of a keyboard, and we think it could be great BY KAne Fulton

Apple FIles MAnY patents that don’t go anywhere, but one recent addition caught our eye. It depicts a MacBook with an iPad-style touchscreen keyboard on the base (rather than on the display), which seems like a totally Apple thing to do. In place of a physical keyboard and trackpad, the new touchscreen’s keys would indicate key presses by triggering haptic feedback (presumably from a unit like the Taptic Engine). They would also light up to display shortcuts that change on the fly, depending on what app is being used at the time. Described as “zero travel,” this keyboard from the future may form the basis for a new breed of wafer-thin MacBook. We know what you’re thinking – a keyboard without physical keys? Why not just use an iPad? Well, for a start

12 jun 2016 maclife.com

Feed your mind. Feast your eyes.

Part of the patent document showing the proposed design.

this proposed computer would run OS X, meaning it would be better suited for certain tasks than a tablet. Second, it would make the current 12-inch MacBook look seriously bloated. With no physical keys, no USB-C port (let’s imagine it’s using next-gen WiGig for data transfer), and wireless charging (maybe), we’re talking one heck of a slimline laptop. Would Apple ever make such a machine? Patents can be merely ideas on paper that companies don’t want other companies to turn into reality, but there are reasonable grounds to believe that it would. You see, the rumor mill thinks that Apple is gearing up to update its MacBook Pro models this year with slim redesigned cases. (Maybe this will even have happened by the time you read this.) If they take a big leap forward in portability, while still catering for a more productivityfocused audience, Apple will have room to take the 12-inch MacBook to its natural conclusion: the thinnest, lightest laptop in existence. Some people call the 2015 model a “Facebook machine”, which is intended as an insult but accurately conveys what the laptop described in Apple’s patent would be used for: namely tablet-like experiences such as checking social media, watching video, checking emails and so on. Would we use one? Over a nextgeneration MacBook Air or Pro, maybe not. But there are millions of people

out there who need a computer for basic tasks who we think would be seriously tempted. Aside from allowing such a MacBook to be razor-thin, the touch-operated keyboard would offer some interesting options for custom configurations and lighting up shortcuts under certain keys. Apple could even embed a touchpad on the right of the keyboard that could be geared toward spreadsheets (for

the touchscreen’s keys would indicate key presses by triggering haptic feedback

triggering formulas), GarageBand (for controlling loops) or even something like Ulysses (to display word counts and progress). We like the idea of replacing function keys that you don’t use with ones that show how many social network or email messages are waiting, for example. Lenovo was the last to try something similar with the 2014 version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Its Adaptive

Keyboard replaced the traditional function keys with a row of capacitive ones that changed their icons according to what program was running. Sadly, the execution was poor and the idea was scrapped, but the prospect of an impossibly thin MacBook with a chameleon keyboard toting an infinite number of configurations is a mouthwatering one – though with one glaring problem: with no physical feedback from keys, the typing experience may be so poor that you’d be no better off than if you were tapping away on a tablet’s on-screen keyboard. There’s a reason why Apple’s iPad Pro and iPad Pro 9.7 tablets come with physical external keyboards: typing on a touchscreen sucks. There is technology out there that could help – Disney Research created a technology that alters the voltage of touchscreens to generate friction with your finger, adding a feeling of texture, so could let you “feel” the edge of keys – but this could be an engineering challenge too far. Still, wouldn’t you love to try the concept anyway? We would.

maclife.com jun 2016 13

>>> Start Feed your mind. Feast your eyes.

early access

Pre-release games and software available now

Faeria $8.99 This plays like Mac/iOS smash hit card battler Hearthstone, but instead of playing cards to a plain board, here you have to build the playing area as you go, then try to control it by summoning minions and attacking your foe. A good tutorial makes it easy to get into, but it feels a little slower than Hearthstone’s pacey fun. Version tested: 0.7.5957.29265

apple revenue declines for first time since ’03 But it’s really not that big a deal By Matt Bolton

Master oF orion $49.99 Explore, build, fight and win in this vast space strategy game. You control one of several races, attempting to become the main power in the galaxy, by peaceful means or war. It’s a huge, complex game, and is already really deep and engrossing, though races and victory options are still being added. Version tested: 43.4

14 jun 2016 maclife.com

apple’s latest set of quarterly financial results show the company recorded a decline in revenue compared to the same period last year, for the first time in 13 years. Its $50.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2016 created $10.6 billion in profit, compared to $58 billion in revenue and $13.6 billion in profit last year. Apple is predicting that next quarter is also going to see a decline in revenue compared to last year. Naturally, this has some pundits predicting Apple’s

imminent doom, but actually these figures really aren’t bad. For a start, $10.5 billion in profit is still $10.5 billion in profit. Apple is a very, very long way from losing money. And even if it did start losing vast sums of money somewhow, its $233 billion cash hoard is enough that it could lose $10 million dollars

every day, and still survive for 63 years. So, why the drop in revenue? There are many reasons, including economic ones over which Apple has no control – described

by Tim Cook on the earnings call as “strong macroeconomic headwinds.” There’s also the issue that iPhone sales in western markets have been slowing for a while as more and more people own one they’re happy with, and new markets such as China aren’t growing as fast as they were. The same is true for the iPad. The rate of growth for these products simply had to end some time, and will settle at a new level. For more big growth, a whole new type of product may be needed.

>the shIft There’s both agony and ecstasy in the transition to app subscriptions. davId chartIer looks at how developers need to handle this new model

bout a year ago, I made the case that a number of business and consumer apps are switching to subscription plans and that, overall, this is a good thing. The trend is picking up now, and we’re seeing both successes and failures. This is uncharted territory, though, and I’ve learned that it’s a significant industry shift on many levels with a number of as-yet open questions. More communication from both sides of the fence could make this a healthier transition. If you use Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft Office, you may have already witnessed first-hand the shift from spending a lot of money up front every couple years for one or more apps, to paying a relatively small amount each month only for as long as you need the apps. The switch has gone incredibly well according to these (and other) companies, and Adobe doesn’t even sell single-purchase apps anymore. Many other apps and services have employed the subscription model

a recent transition attempt by textexpander hit some stumbling blocks

over the years too, from Evernote to Flickr, and more recently apps like 1Password from AgileBits (a previous client of mine) and Blogo for iOS. However, a recent transition attempt by TextExpander – a text-snippet utility from Smile Software – hit some major stumbling blocks, offering a few lessons from which the industry can learn. First, TextExpander was primarily a prosumer utility that was gradually seeing more business interest. For years, you could get it on Mac for a one-time purchase of $35, and on iOS for $5, and it synced just fine using iCloud or Dropbox. With its recent major update, TextExpander dropped iCloud and Dropbox, and became a subscription-based, hosted service starting at $40 per year, or $4.16 billed monthly. Thus business users pay about twice the price per employee to gain a few additions such as sharing groups of snippets between users and departments. users and revIewers were almost universally unhappy. The first key mistake Smile made was pulling the figurative rug out from under existing customers. It offered no communication to prepare them before the switch, and it immediately cut off all standalone sales, offering no transition period. The matter of effective communication is where

companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and AgileBits got things right. They each recognized that subscriptions will be a significant shift for consumers and businesses, both financially and in usage. Each company communicated its plan and started preparing everyone in the lead-up to flipping the switch. The other key mistake was not polishing a strong value proposition for both its previous audience of prosumers and new focus of business

Any dev thinking about switching to a subs model must learn from TextExpander’s case.

users. The price increase was too high for too few (if any) perceived benefits for consumers, and too much of a markup for businesses. I hope more app and service companies take these transitions and lessons into account when setting their own plans. As with most relationships, companies that communicate with their customers about this kind of major change have a great chance of avoiding a lot of misunderstanding.

>>> David Chartier is a content strategist and writer with vast experience analyzing the tech world. He runs the website Finer Things in Tech (finerthings.in) and hosts its podcast, The Finer Things In.

maclife.com jun 2016 15

>>> Start Feed your mind. Feast your eyes.

6 times Apple totally changed its mind Steve Jobs was known for his U-turns – here are some of the biggest BY MAtt Bolton

You don’t need a stylus to use the iPad, which is a key point, but the Pencil is an amazing tool.

October 2012 – sans sandpaper, though.

There were several factors in Apple’s decision to switch Google’s Maps app for its own as the default – but it still said Google wasn’t going anywhere!

one of the most famous traits of Steve Jobs as Apple’s leader was his propensity to totally change his mind. Tim Cook has highlighted this in the past, calling it a “gift:” “He would flip on something so fast that you would forget that he was the one taking the 180 degree polar [opposite] position the day before.” In a world where stubbornness or a fear of looking stupid often makes people and companies avoid changing decisions, being able to see mistakes and alter course is a key part of Apple’s success. Here are some of the company’s biggest U-turns.

16 jun 2016 maclife.com

A smaller iPad Jobs once famously railed that high-res 7-inch tablet screens were meaningless “unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of the present size.” The 8-inch iPad mini was introduced in

A bigger iPhone Back in 2010, Jobs talked about 4- or 5-inch phones as being so big “you can’t get your hand around it,” adding “no one’s going to buy that.” But they did, and now the iPhone 6s Plus is a cool 5.5 inches.

said: “I’m not convinced people want to watch movies on a tiny little screen.” In 2005, the fifth-gen iPod played video, and now the capability is everywhere.

Google services When Google and Apple were fighting over Android’s

launch, Jobs was asked if Google services such as Maps would be removed from the iPhone. “No,” he said. That changed.

An iPad stylus “If you see a stylus, they blew it,” said Jobs. Now Apple makes the best art stylus in the world: the Pencil.

the App Store Jobs was against a native App Store for the iPhone originally, in favor of web apps. That changed in just a matter of months, and created a whole new industry.

Video on iPod In 2003, when asked about videoplaying iPods, Jobs

The App Store is a key selling point for the iPhone, but it almost didn’t happen…

>gAme loop BriAnnA wu looks at the sacrifices developers have to make to ensure playability on different devices – at least until more powerful tech arrives

ometime in 2014, after iOS 7 shipped, my engineering team had a frantic meeting. Apple’s radical redesign of iOS was beautiful – but it also ate up 124 more megabytes of RAM. For flagship devices like the iPhone 5s, this was no problem – but older devices like the iPad 3 only had 512MB of RAM. With Unreal Engine loaded, we were left with vapors of memory to deliver four hours of animated gameplay. Revolution 60, the game we’d spent years building, would no longer run. We had two choices: either drop support for millions of devices with 512MB of RAM, some of which were less than a year old; or we could downgrade the visual quality of our game to work within the harsh limitations of iOS 7. We made the best bad choice available – we made the game look drastically worse so more people

could play it. In 2016, iOS devices are much more powerful, and severely constrained RAM is no longer an issue. I want to talk about some of the more powerful technologies we can use just two years later for Revolution 60: Special Edition. It’s hard to stress just how important lighting is to a game. Done correctly, it’s beautiful but computationally expensive. One of the ways developers cheat this is by “baking” all the light in a scene into an extra texture called a lightmap. We have a farm of computers at Giant Spacekat that spend hours calculating light bounces. In 2014, we set up lightmaps, but had to throw them away last minute. Now, iOS devices are powerful enough to allow far more sophisticated lighting. Once you have lightmaps for still lighting, you can do interesting things with character lighting, what

The original Revolution 60 compared (left) comparied to Revolution 60: Special Edition (right).

game developers call “dynamic lighting.” As characters move through the world, their color now shifts with the environment around them. For calm scenes, protagonist Holiday is bathed in blue light. For dangerous scenes, she’s bathed in red. It’s a cinematic trick that communicates emotion to the player on an unconscious level. new Apple devices can even handle slick cinematic techniques such as depth of field. My favorite shot of R60:SE has an epic confrontation on a bridge draped across space. Framed on the character Minuete’s face, the world behind her goes out of focus, spinning 180 degrees behind her head, and coming back into focus on her enemy. We’ve added light blooms, decals for detail, and a thousand small additions that add up to something special. Engineering is about tradeoffs – an iOS device only has so much power, so you have to decide what really matters. Other Unreal games, like Infinity Blade, prioritize frame rate and environments. For R60, we prioritized facial animation and story. Although Revolution 60 was a widely praised game, winning multiple game of the year awards – we did get correctly critiqued for our visuals. I’m happy in 2016 we’ll ship the game we always intended.

>>> Brianna Wu is the head of development at Giant Spacekat, developer of Revolution 60 on iPhone and iPad,

and is a regular speaker at industry events, as well as host on the podcasts Isometric and Rocket.

maclife.com jun 2016 17

>>> Start Feed your mind. Feast your eyes.

CRAVE THE GEAR WE’RE LUSTING AFTER

Chevrolet Bolt EV chevrolet.com $30,000

>>> Electric cars. Less polution, less expense… What’s not to like? Well, there have been concerns about lack of power, both in terms of acceleration and battery performance, but with newer models you can park those fears. Chevrolet’s all-electric Bolt boasts a 200-mile range on one charge, can reach 60 mph from standstill in less than seven seconds, and offers a top speed of 91 mph. As well as a clever motor, there’s plenty of smart tech going on in the cockpit too, with displays for battery levels, climate control, and it plays nicely with CarPlay for calls, navigation, and more.

18 jun 2016 maclife.com

HandScape Handy Case handscape.com From $129

>>> This case promises to “reinvent touch” by adding a touch panel to the back of your iPhone or iPad. You can then tap and use gestures across the rear of the case to control compatible apps. Some even “show” your fingers through the device, making it seem see-through (really, it’s just showing a 3D model of fingers at the points where your real digits are touching it). The developer has launched a number of compatible apps, including a Rubik’s cube sim and a tank shooting game, and a software development kit for any developer to create compatible apps is coming.

Polaroid Snap polaroid.com $100

>>> We have a real soft spot for technology that breathes new life into retro concepts. This reinvention of Polaroid’s “take a quick snap and get a speedy print” (admittedly after some considerable “shake it like a Polaroid picture” arm ache…) principle combines 10-megapixel digital imaging with genuinely fast Zero Ink printing technology, which does exactly what it says – prints photos with no ink required. You can also leave the paper out and save your shots to a microSD card, but where’s the instant image novelty in that?

Immersit immersit.com $TBC

>>> If you enjoy watching movies, but find the act of sitting quietly a little sedate, you might prefer to feel like you’re in the thick of the action. The Immersit turns your humble couch (or actually anything with four legs, like a chair or a bed) into a 4D thrill-seeking rollercoaster ride. The device uses four hydraulic pads, one under each leg of your piece of furniture. A control unit then connects to your console or Mac, which relates the on-screen action to the motion-generating pads, tilting your sofa forwards/backwards, side-to-side and vibrating to gun shots and explosions. It takes the idea of sofa surfing to a new level…

maclife.com jun 2016 19

>>> Start

$50 iTunes Card How would you blow 50 bucks on music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps? BY MATT BOLTOn

The RevenanT

The Gene

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter $14.99

Siddhartha Mukherjee $16.99

This astonishing epic tells the story of an 1820s fur-trapper left to die in the wilderness by his colleagues after an attack by a bear, witnessing the murder of his son as they try to leave him, and vowing revenge on all involved. It won Oscars for its direction, cinematography, and DiCaprio’s performance, and you can’t argue with any of them – it’s one of the most stunning films we’ve ever seen, and Leo’s turn as the protagonist Hugh Glass is uncomfortable, heartbreaking and totally gripping. It’s a film with many hard-towatch moments (including some brutal violence), but also many beautiful ones.

20 Jun 2016 maclife.com

This is referred to by its publisher as a “biography” of the gene – a deep exploration into humankind’s history with its own building blocks. Mukherjee weaves a narrative that threads through our discovery of this complex science, early experiments, and the concept of being able to “read” and “write” our genes, plus the moral questions that having the ability to edit our own code raises. It’s a science book, but one that’s rooted in the human side of its topic, never forgetting the way our genes affect us – both for good and for achingly sad reasons – and so remains both approachable and engrossing throughout.

The niGhT ManaGeR Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman $14.99 season pass This thriller based on a John le Carré spy novel stars Hiddleston as an ex-soldier recruited as a spy and sent to gain the trust of a renowned arms dealer, played by House’s Hugh Laurie. It opens with intrigue, tragedy and violence, but the real meat is the realization that you’re watching an agonizing slow-motion build-up to a huge car crash. Laurie’s affable yet terrifying villain takes Hiddleston under his wing, but suspicion is everywhere – and none of it’s helped by the budding romance between Hiddleston and Laurie’s girlfriend. It’s tense, brilliant viewing.

Bez Juicy Bits Free (with IAP) This iPad drawing app works best with the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro models, but is still fantastic on any device. It’s a vector drawing app that makes it easy to create your own crisp, clean artwork, logos and more. It makes things easy for people with no experience to create cool images, with features such as snapping and easy scaling – but also offers a huge range of more advanced features for pros. And you get most of its functionality for free!

TOTAL spend

$46.97

>>> Feature

Ultimate OS X tweaks Do you want to alter the way your Mac looks or behaves for a smoother experience? Kenny Hemphill shows you how…

HetHer you sit at a desk in front of an iMac, or on a sofa with a MacBook on your lap, using a Mac is an intensely personal experience. We all use our Macs for different things and in different ways, so it’s natural that we like to set up a computer – or at least our user account – in a way that works best for us. How far you go in personalizing your Mac will depend on how often you use it, how organized you are, and the degree to which the standard setup suits, or doesn’t suit, your needs. Some of the ways you can personalize OS X are purely

22 jun 2016 maclife.com

aesthetic – frivolous, even. Others have a significant impact on the way you use your Mac, making you more productive in the process. Whether it’s creating text shortcuts, adding extensions to Safari, or using an app launcher, many of these tips will save you time every day, so you can spend more of it doing really important stuff or reduce the amount of it you spend in front of a screen. The idea behind all these tips is simple: to remove the friction between you and your Mac by adjusting or augmenting OS X so that it gets out the way and lets you get on with what you need to do.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

maclife.com jun 2016 23

>>> Feature

Make multiple user accounts

Pick a new desktop picture one of tHe quickest and most dramatic ways to personalize your Mac is to change the desktop background. Open System Preferences and click the Desktop & Screen Saver icon. On the left, you can choose from one of Apple’s supplied images or a solid color, both of which are filed under “Apple.” To truly personalize the background, choose an image of your own, either from your Photos Library by selecting that option and browsing the pictures, or from any folder (click the + button to add a new folder

24 jun 2016 maclife.com

to the list, then you can select any image you have stored in that folder). Kuvva ($4.99, kuvva.com/mac) is an app that sets a new background for your desktop daily, plucked from a curated online selection. To change your screen saver, click on the Screen Saver tab in the Desktop & Screen Saver pane, then choose a style on the left. Some of them provide customization options on the right, so you can select a particular Photos Event to pull images from in a slideshow, or choose a text message to display.

to create an account for someone to use as their personal workspace, go to System Preferences’ Users & Groups pane. Click the padlock icon (bottom left) and provide an administrator’s name and password. Click the +, then set the account’s type. Administrators can change anything on the Mac, while standard users have fewer privileges. With a managed account, you can restrict access to apps and Apple’s stores, access times, and more. Name the account and either set a password to use only on this Mac, or let the person use their iCloud account to log in. With the account created, select it on the left, then click the account picture further to the right to pick a new image from the standard set, your Photos library, or you can take a new picture using your Mac’s camera.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

Get an alternative view to cHoose How files and folders are displayed in Finder, click its icon in the Dock, then click View in the menu bar. Many people prefer Column view because it lets you easily see and travel through a drive’s folder hierarchy, so is great for organizing and hunting for files. But you might prefer Icon view, which shows a preview of many file types right in the icon for that file; List view, which neatly summarizes the attributes of items in a folder in columns, so you can browse things like the date they

were created, or their size; or even Cover Flow, which is similar to List view in that it shows a big list of a folder’s contents with some extra information, but with large previews of files at the top which you can browse through quickly, making it useful for searching for a particular image or video. Finder supports tabs, enabling you to put views of several folders in one window. Choose View > Show Tab Bar to enable it – then you can just switch between tabs to view the different folders, or drag files between tabs.

Set your login items apps you use regularly can be set to open when you log into your Mac. Some do this automatically when you install them anyway, which you might want to turn off in some cases. Often the option is found in the app’s preferences. If not, go to the Users & Groups pane in System Preferences, select the user whose login items you want to change, then click the Login Items tab. Click the item to remove, followed by the – (minus) button. You can allow an item to open, but hide its window, by putting a check mark in the Hide column, meaning that it runs without getting in the way. To

To set a folder’s background to a color or an image, switch to Icon view and choose View > Arrange By > None. Press ç+J and, in the window that opens, select Color or Picture. It’s great for customizing the folders you use most often.

Use Preferences to tame Safari add something that you want to open on login, click the + button. You get the standard document picker view – if you want to add an app that should open, navigate to your Applications folder and choose the app. But you can also choose any file stored in any folder to open, so you could have a frequent work spreadsheet appear as soon as your Mac is turned on.

under General in Safari’s preferences, you can specify what page, if any, is shown in new windows and tabs (instead of the list of favorites/most-visited sites you see by default). Also in Preferences, click the Search tab to choose a different search engine, or to specify what’s included in the results that appear as you type in the search field. To stop all sites asking to send you desktop notifications, clear the checkbox at the foot of the Notifications tab. You can enhance Safari using extensions, which are managed in the Extensions tab, unsurprisingly. You can

see some of the most useful showcased at safariextensions.apple.com. Under AutoFill, you can separately specify whether Safari should save you time by filling in your bank card or passwords in online forms. To use another installed web browser by default, look under General in System Preferences for “Default web browser” and choose one.

maclife.com jun 2016 25

>>> Feature

Master finder

Using tags > you can attach tags to files and folders to help you find them by keyword, color or both. Colored tags are indicated by up to three colored dots next to a file’s name. Go to Finder > Preferences and click Tags. Click +, type label name, press ®. Click the circle to set its color. Putting a check mark in the box adds the tag to the group in Finder’s sidebar. To tag a file or

Customize the sidebar folder, drag it on to one in Finder’s sidebar, or right-click the item, choose Tags, then select one. You can also type here to filter/create new. To view items with a specific tag, click that one in Finder’s sidebar, or type its name in Finder’s search bar. You can also drag a tag from Finder’s sidebar to the right-hand side of the dividing line in the Dock to turn it into a stack.

Customize the toolbar > by default, the toolbar on Finder windows contains buttons that allow you to change the way you view items, change how they’re arranged, share and tag items, and search for files and folders. Some apps, such as Dropbox, also add their own tools. You can change what’s in the toolbar by rightclicking it and choosing Customize Toolbar. A panel will open below the toolbar. Drag items from

26 jun 2016 maclife.com

the panel onto the toolbar to add them to it. If you want to revert to the default set, drag it from here onto the bar. You can add apps to the bar while this panel is open by dragging them into it from another window, too. The Space tool allows you to insert a fixed space between items, while the Flexible Space tool creates a space which automatically adjusts depending on a window’s width.

> tHe sidebar in a Finder window provides shortcuts to the folders you use most. By default, it contains links to pre-created folders for your user account, such as Documents and Pictures, but you can put almost any folder you like there, including those located on a shared network drive. To add or remove items from the sidebar, choose Finder > Preferences, click the Sidebar tab, and then simply check or uncheck items in the list here. To add items that aren’t in that list, open a Finder window, browse to the folder you want to add, and drag it into Favorites in the sidebar – you can place it between existing items. To remove it again, just drag it out of the sidebar so the cursor shows an X, then let go. To specify which folder is displayed when you open a new Finder window, open Finder’s Preferences, click the General tab, and then select a folder from the pop-up menu.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

Master Mouse, Keyboard & tracKpad settinGs

Mouse > apple’s MaGic Mouse isn’t universally popular, but it has one key advantage over its rivals: support for multi-touch gestures. The Magic Mouse’s smooth surface, free from buttons and wheels, lets you swipe left and right to go back and forward through a document or your browsing history. Many more gestures are available too. In System Preferences, click the Mouse icon. If a Magic Mouse is paired with your Mac, you’ll see two sets of options, denoted by the “Point & Click” and “More Gestures” tabs.

The three gestures under Point & Click allow you to set the direction things scroll in when you swipe up or down, turn on secondary click (which is Apple’s name for right-clicking) to save you reaching for ≈ to access contextual menus , and whether Smart Zoom is enabled so you can take a closer look at web pages. Note that if you enable secondary click, you can set whether it uses the mouse’s left or right side, which is great for left-handed users. Also, the slider here tweaks tracking speed – how quickly the

Trackpad > tHe tracKpad pane in System Preferences has similar options to the Mouse pane, with a few important exceptions. There’s a third tab (Scroll & Zoom) for a start, which includes the same scroll direction and smart zoom options available for a mouse. Alongside are trackpadexclusive options. The familiar pinch gesture that’s used to zoom in and out of images and web pages on iPhone and iPad can also be used on a trackpad, and there’s a Rotate option, which allows you to rotate things in Preview, for example, by placing two fingers on the trackpad and twisting them.

pointer moves as you drag the mouse around the screen. In the More Gestures tab, you can enable gestures for swiping between pages, swiping between desktops and fullscreen apps, and opening Mission Control to quickly reach a window.

Keyboard In the Point & Click tab, you can enable secondary click, and choose whether it’s triggered by a click with two fingers or a click in one of the trackpad’s bottom corners. You can also turn on the ability to tap instead of pressing down to register a click on the trackpad. Perhaps the most interesting option here is “Look up & data detectors,” which enables you to tap with three fingers over a word and display its entries from OS X’s dictionary and thesaurus, as well as from online sources such as Wikipedia and the iTunes Store when relevant. A handy little utility.

> tHere are even more options for controlling how your Mac’s keyboard works than there are for a mouse. In System Preferences’ Keyboard pane, click the Keyboard tab. Here you can set whether the function keys act as normal (handy for certain games) or control things like screen brightness. MacBooks provide options that determine whether the keyboard’s backlight reacts to the ambient light sensor, and how quickly it turns off if there’s no input. With the former turned off, you can manually adjust the backlight using keys in the top row. Under Text, you can define

short phrases that expand into longer ones. So, you might use “;hello” to quickly type “Hello, my name is [your name].” Autocorrect can be disabled here too. The Shortcuts tab provides control over key combinations that trigger menu items. Click App Shortcuts then + to set your own for menu items that don’t already have them.

maclife.com jun 2016 27

>>> Feature

Master spotliGHt and sMart folders

Use Spotlight > spotliGHt, OS X’s search tool, is hugely powerful and flexible, though not all of its capabilities are obvious. To use it, either click the magnifying glass icon at the right end of the menu bar, or press ç+Spacebar. When you type into the search box, Spotlight starts to display results, including apps, documents, email messages and other items stored on your Mac, along with matching results from Wikipedia, the iTunes Store, Vevo and other sources of information on the web. You can

customize what Spotlight searches in System Preferences > Spotlight – you can uncheck boxes to eliminate certain results types, such as dictionary definitions. You can also exclude certain drives or folders from the search in the Privacy tab. If you can’t remember a file’s name or some other key detail of what you’re searching for in Spotlight, you might get hundreds of results. Scroll to the bottom of the results and double-click “Show all in Finder” to see a list of the matching files in

Set filters > to narrow down the responses to your search in Finder, you can add criteria by clicking the + button, just below the window’s search bar. Each criterion you add is shown as a row above the results. Choose a file attribute in a row’s first pop-up, then use the next pop-up along to specify how that attribute is matched. For example, you could choose “Created date” and “after” to filter out old, irrelevant files. Dozens more attributes can be searched for: choose Other from the first pop-up and just put a check mark in the box next to any you want to inspect.

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Finder, where you can further inspect them. In Column view, select a file to preview it on the right of the window. In any view, you can press the Spacebar to take a closer look using Quick Look.

Create a Smart Folder You can apply multiple criteria, but by default a search returns results that match all that you add. You can change that, however: first, hold Alt and the + button changes to an ellipsis. Click it to add a group of criteria that can be matched more flexibly when you choose “any,” or to exclude certain results when you choose “none.”

> if you’re going to use your search criteria just once, close the window once you’ve found the file you’re looking for. However, if you’re likely to need the same search again, particularly if it contains lots of criteria, you can save it as a Smart Folder. To do this, click the Save button near the window’s top right corner. You can now give the search a name and save it. By default, it’s saved in a folder called Saved Searches in your user account’s Library folder, but you can save it anywhere you like. You’ll also see an option, checked by default, to add it to Finder’s sidebar.

Adding a Smart Folder to the sidebar enables you to see the results of the search by clicking it, and the results are continually updated in real time. To tweak a Smart Folder’s search criteria, rightclick the folder in the sidebar (or open the folder and click the cog in the toolbar), then choose Show Search Criteria. Click Save to preserve the changes you make.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

super alternatives to spotliGHt searcH

1. QuicKsilver

2. launcHbar

3. alfred

Rename any file without using Finder

Create reminders and Calendar events

Direct your Mac with the power of words

> Open Quicksilver using the keyboard shortcut you’ve assigned to it. Type the name of a file into the first box, then press † and type “rename” (without quotes) into the second box. Press † again and type the new name for the file, then press ®.

> LaunchBar can create items in these apps. Open it and type the name of one of your calendars, then press the Spacebar. Summarize an event using the format [name]@[Date]@[Time]. Confirm the details and press ® to add the event to Calendar.

> Alfred can perform a variety of system tasks. Type “trash” into its search bar to see the contents of your Trash, or enter “empty trash” to get rid of those items. Alfred also understands “sleep,” “restart” and other commands – see bit.ly/ alfsyscmd for a list.

maclife.com jun 2016 29

>>> Feature

set your preferences

Choose your color

Change the clock

Activate Hot Corners

> Head to System Preferences’ General pane to set the color used to highlight what’s selected – a nice little personal touch. You can also set scroll bar visibility here, so instead of only appearing in certain situations, they’re always visible.

> in tHe Date & Time pane of System Preferences, use the options in the Clock tab to tailor the appearance of the clock in the menu bar. You can add the date, choose a 12- or a 24-hour clock, and show seconds.

> in General Preferences > Mission Control, click Hot Corners at the bottom left. Here, you can make your Mac do certain things when you move the mouse right into the corners. Just choose the actions from the drop-down menus.

Enable dark mode

Regional settings

Tailor the Dock

> you can turn the menu bar, the Dock and Spotlight dark gray by going to the General pane in System Preferences and turning on “Use dark menu bar and Dock.” Some apps have dark modes as well, so they’re easier on the eyes at night.

> in systeM Preferences’ Languages & Region pane, click the + button to add languages. Even if you use just one, click Advanced and check the way time, date, measurements and currencies are formatted suits you.

> in tHe Dock preference pane you can adjust its icon size, whether the area under the pointer magnifies (useful if it’s crammed with items), and set its position and additional behaviors, such as keeping the Dock hidden until it’s needed.

30 jun 2016 maclife.com

Ultimate OS X tweaks

accessibility features

Talk this way

Take a closer look > tHe ZooM feature in System Preferences > Accessibility enlarges the whole desktop so that you see just the area near the pointer. This makes it less of a strain on your eyes to read numbers on a spreadsheet, say. Turning on “Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom” allows you to toggle the effect by pressing Alt+ç+8, and to zoom in and out in increments using Alt+ç+= and Alt+ç+-. You can set the maximum and minimum zoom levels by clicking the More Options… button at the bottom. If you turn on “Use scroll gesture with modifier keys…” you can zoom in by holding one of the modifier keys and then scrolling up or down (corresponding to zoom in and zoom out) using your trackpad or mouse. The “Smooth images” option hides the pixelation artefacts that come from zooming in, and Zoom Style lets you choose whether to zoom in on the screen as a whole, or in a floating window that’s like a magnifying glass. Click More Options… for ways to refine the effect, such as whether the fullscreen zoom tracks the pointer’s position or only moves when the pointer reaches the screen’s edge.

> Go to the Dictation & Speech pane in System Preferences to turn it on. You have two options for converting what you say to text. The first is to have your Mac record your voice and send this to Apple’s server, which performs the conversion and returns text to your Mac. This is reasonably quick on a good internet connection. To use Dictation when you’re offline, or if you have privacy concerns about sending recordings to

Apple, turn on Enhanced Dictation. This downloads about 400MB of data, after which the process runs locally and provides live feedback. Ensure the mic and language you want are selected. With the focus somewhere that’s ready to accept text input, press ƒ twice and speak when an input meter appears. Return to Accessibility, select Dictation, then click Dictation Commands to see phrases you can say to perform specific tasks.

Get additional clarity > clicK display (left of the Accessibility pane) for options that adjust OS X’s visuals. The “Invert colors” and “Use grayscale” items are self-explanatory, but the effect of “Differentiate without color” is subtler. With this turned on, OS X additionally uses shapes to convey meaning. So, where a messaging app denotes statuses with a green or a red circle, say, those become green circles and red squares.

“Increase contrast” makes parts of the interface stand out, in part by adding dark strokes to them, and “Reduce transparency” can aid legibility by turning window elements opaque. Further down are sliders to adjust contrast by showing fewer colors, and to change the cursor’s size. There’s also a button that takes you to the Displays pane, where you can turn off automatic screenbrightness adjustment.

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Go furtHer witH os X

Icon Box icon boX ($14.99, iconboxapp.com) allows you to browse all the icons on your Mac cataloguestyle – much like Photos does with your photographs – and replace them with alternatives. Icon Box features a built-in search engine for finding new icons online, which you can import into the app and organize into boxes (similar to albums in Photos) and smart boxes, which contain any icons you’ve imported that match your criteria, such as the site that they came from,

keywords you’ve attached, or what they are named. It’s Icon Box’s ability to customize icons we’re interested in here, because you can change all the system and app icons to give your Mac a fresh new look in minutes. (It’s just as easy to restore the originals later on.) Click one of the Customize options in the toolbar, browse to the app or system icon to replace, then drag a replacement icon from the bottom pane (which shows your selected box or smart box) and simply drop it over the existing one.

Commander One

TinkerTool

tHere are a number of apps that provide an alternative to the Finder; Commander One (Free, mac.eltima.com) is a strong choice. It works like any other app, rather than as an outright replacement, so you can run it alongside Finder. If you’ve ever used an FTP tool such as Transmit or Forklift, its interface will be familiar. The chief benefit of Commander One is that you can view two folders side by side, a bit like having two Finder windows open next to each other, except both panes are active in this case. Within each pane, you can have as

tinKertool (Free, bresink. com) allows changes to preferences for OS X and apps that would otherwise be tricky, either because they are hidden or because you need to type a Terminal command. You can use it to alter the appearance and behavior of the Dock: you can turn on a highlight effect for whatever item is under the pointer when you click a stack in the right side of the Dock, or add a stack for recent items. TinkerTool’s Dock tab also enables you to disable Launchpad’s animations. Under General, you can

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many tabs open as you want. You can drag and drop files just like in Finder, but Commander One’s power lies in its use of the keyboard. So, for example, press ^ with a file selected and a window pops up to display the full path to that file. From this window, you can type a new file path to simultaneously move it and rename the file.

change the file format of screenshots and the folder where they’re saved, and turn off the animation of opening windows. Usefully, you can increase the active area around the edge of windows that’s used to resize them. Other tweaks allow you to use ∫ to navigate back a page in Safari, and to toggle dark mode via the keyboard.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

boost productivity

Conserve energy with Amphetamine aMpHetaMine is a free utility that overrides the Energy Saver settings on your Mac. After you’ve downloaded it for free from the Mac App Store, it lives at the right end of the menu bar. From there, you can specify how long you want your Mac to stay awake, whether to allow the display to sleep or a screen saver to activate, and set a custom schedule for staying awake. intelliGent beHaviors Click Amphetamine in the menu bar and choose Preferences to access dozens more options, including the ability to specify that your Mac should stay awake when it’s connected to a specific Wi-Fi network or when specific apps are running. You can also define keyboard shortcuts to start and finish Amphetamine sessions, allow the app to alert you when it’s running, and ensure it stops running when your battery drops below your chosen level. On a more frivolous note, Amphetamine’s preferences also allow you to change its icon and what it displays, such as how much session time remains.

HyperDock one of the best features of this Dock enhancer is the ability to bring forward a single window rather than a whole app when you click a Dock icon. Put the pointer over an app’s icon, wait for its windows, then click the one you want. Put the pointer over Calendar’s Dock icon, and HyperDock displays upcoming

events. Put it over iTunes and you’ll see what’s playing. You can specify how previews are displayed. The app also enables you to move or resize windows by putting the pointer over one, holding a modifier key combo and moving the pointer. HyperDock is $9.99 from the Mac App Store, or about $5 from the developer, and you can get a trial version.

Launchpad Manager Many of us are only aware of Launchpad when it bounces in the Dock to signify that a download from the Mac App Store has completed. It is quite inflexible – apps can be rearranged by dragging them around, but you can’t do a great deal else. Launchpad Manager (launchpadmanager. com) fixes that. The free download allows you to hide apps in Launchpad without uninstalling them. A full license costs $7.99. The tool’s window presents a

graphical preview of Launchpad, in which you can group apps in folders, rename them, hide them, and add any that are missing. You only need to drag apps to reorder them, as you would in Launchpad, but grouping them is easier: click on the ones you want (which marks them with a highlight), then click Group in the toolbar. Alternatively, click Sort in the toolbar to rearrange icons in alphabetical order. When you’re happy with the layout, preserve it by clicking Save Layout.

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>>> Feature

siMplify itunes

wHetHer you subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match, or only ever use iTunes to listen to CDs you’ve ripped, there’s no doubt it has grown into something of a monster. Fortunately, though, there are ways you can strip it back, ridding you of features you don’t need, enabling you to focus on the ones you actually want. By doing so, iTunes should become a little more pleasant to use.

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turn off connect

turn off apple Music

Hide Media types

Hide itunes store

> Apple Music Connect is iTunes’ social media component. You can disable it if you don’t care what artists have to say beyond the music. This is separate to other Apple Music features, so look under Restrictions in iTunes’ preferences.

> To remove For You and new tabs from the Music view, choose iTunes > Preferences, click General and clear the check mark next to “Show Apple Music.” note that this disables almost all features of Apple Music, including iCloud Music Library.

> near the top left corner of iTunes, click More (three dots) and choose Edit. In the pop-up, clear any check marks next to categories you don’t want to appear. The media types you’ve hidden remain accessible by clicking More.

> You can disable access to the iTunes Store under Restrictions in iTunes’ preferences. Turning off the iTunes Store hides Apple Music features, but you retain access to your music in iCloud Music Library.

Ultimate OS X tweaks

set custoM sound effects

Creating custom sounds > you can instruct your Mac to use an external mic or speakers in the Sound pane of System Preferences. If you select an external speaker or headphones in the Output tab and then adjust the volume level, it’s for that device only; disconnect the device and output returns to your Mac’s internal speakers and its previous volume level. Go to the Input tab to adjust the input level for your mic, turn on ambient noise reduction, and adjust the stereo balance – useful if you have a hearing impairment in one ear. To change alert sound effects, click the Sound Effects tab, choose the one you want and set the alert volume, which is separate to your Mac’s overall output. If you can’t find an alert sound to suit, you can create your own.

create a custoM sound Open QuickTime Player, choose File > New Audio Recording, then record a sound using your Mac’s mic. When done, choose Edit > Trim, drag the sliders to the part you want to use, then click Trim.

create a coMpatible file Choose File > Export > Audio Only, give your custom alert a name, then save it to the desktop. Select it there, then choose File > Get Info (or press ç+I) to open a window that summarizes the file.

cHanGe tHe eXtension Look down the Get Info window for the Name and Extension section. There, remove the check mark from the Hide Extension box, and replace “m4a” with “aiff”so the file will work as an alert.

put tHe file in place In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder and enter ~/Library/Sounds to open the folder where effects are stored. Put your file there, then go to System Preferences’ Sound pane and select your effect.

When using a Mac’s built-in mic, you can choose to filter out some of the ambient noise

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>>> Feature

custoMiZe your loGin screen

Make more of your login screen > your Mac’s login window is a familiar sight, but it’s also a bit boring. After all, most of the screen is taken up with a blurred image of the desktop background, with user accounts listed in a row across the middle of it. The good news is that you can change the background image to anything you want. Just make sure your chosen image is the same size, in pixels, as your screen, and that it doesn’t have anything in the middle that will clash with the user icons. Here we also show you ways to uncover more of your background, improve security a little bit, and leave a note for anyone who finds your Mac in case you misplace it.

set a new bacKGround Find a picture you want to use and scale and crop it to fit your screen. Save it as a PnG file with the name com.apple.desktop.admin.png, then place it in /Library/Caches. (That’s the Library at the top of your startup disk.)

add a custoM MessaGe In case your Mac gets lost, go to the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences and click its General tab. Turn on “Show a message…” click “Set Lock message” and type something; including contact details may be useful.

reMove soMe clutter To hide the buttons at the bottom of the login window, go to the users & Groups pane in System Preferences, click the padlock and authenticate. Click Login Options and turn off “Show Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons.”

cHanGe tHe proMpt Still in the users & Groups pane, and authenticated to make changes, click Login Options. next to “Display login window as” select “name and password.” By doing this, you no longer give away some of your credentials.

Putting contact details on the login screen can help someone return a MacBook

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Ultimate OS X tweaks

MaKe tHe Most of systeM eXtensions

Add features with extensions > eXtensions allow you to add features to various parts of OS X and any apps that support them. Go to System Preferences, then click the Extensions pane to find out which are already installed. (Some are installed with parent apps, while others can be added on their own.) You’ll see the extensions available are split into five distinct categories: Actions provide features in supported apps, such as Preview; Finder extensions augment OS X’s file manager; Photos extensions add editing tools to apps such as Apple’s Photos; Share Menu extensions add locations like social networks; and Today extensions are widgets that you can add to the Today view in Notification Center.

pHoto-editinG eXtensions If you’ve installed Affinity Photo or Pixelmator, go to System Preferences’ Extensions pane, click Photos on the left, and put a check mark next to their extensions to enable you to use their editing tools in Apple’s Photos app.

sHare tHinGs easily If you use Dropbox, select Finder in the Extensions pane and turn on its extension. In Finder, choose View > Customize Toolbar and add Dropbox’s button, which is a shortcut for making sharable links and to version histories.

today view widGets Go to Notification Center’s Today view and click the button at the bottom of it, which is labelled Edit or with the number of new widgets installed. Drag items from the list of unused ones on the right to where you want them.

tHe sHare Menu If this menu is getting clogged up, click Share Menu in the Extensions pane and clear the check mark next to items you don’t need. Remember, you can drag items up or down this list to change their order in the Share menu.

Extensions enable you to add shortcuts so that it’s easier to get things done

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Edit iOS photos like a pro >>> Feature

Easy

pro photo editing on ios by angela nicholson

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>>> Feature

improve your photos with these brilliant extensions egardless of whether you take photos on your iPhone or on a professional-level DSLR, the camera isn’t psychic, and it can’t always produce exactly what you had in mind – so there are times when you need to do a little editing. There are also times when you need to fix errors such as a sloping horizon, or to brighten a shot that’s too dark. Or perhaps you want to get a bit more creative, turn the image black and white and boost the contrast to inject a little atmosphere? There are plenty of really great apps for doing the job, with some offering one-click fix-alls or a selection of retro-style filters, and others that allow you to take manual control and make carefully measured adjustments. A problem with many tools, however, is that you have to check the shot in Photos and decide

what you want to do with it, then close it and track down the appropriate app before locating the image again and making the edits. If you use apps that offer iOS Photos extensions, you can access their tools within Photos and start editing straight away, making it easier to use them, or mix their effects. Read on to discover more. > list of apps Here are the six extension apps we’re using in this guide… > Fhotoroom > LUCiD by Perfectly Clear > MaxCurve – Curve image editor > ProCam 3 - Manual Camera and Photo Editor > Quick Mask – Easy Bluring [sic] > sKEW

free $2.99 $2.99 $4.99 free $1.99

h ow to | u s e e x t e n s i o n s i n t h e P h otos a P P

download the app First, grab the app you’re going to use from the app store. once you’ve downloaded a particular app, you may need to open it and allow it to connect to Photos. Then, if Photos is open, you’ll need to close it (double-press the Home button and swipe up on the Photos thumbnail) and reopen it before you can access the new extension. 1

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you want more? In Photos, locate and select the photo that you want to adjust, then tap the edit option in the top-right corner of the screen. once you’re in the editing view, tap the icon in the that looks like three dots in a circle (in the lower-right corner) to reveal and select any activated extensions. Tap the “More” icon on the right end of the list. 2

switch ’em on 3 you can now see the list of installed apps that offer extensions. simply scroll down, switching on any that you want to be able to access from the list in the previous step. Drag the three-line icon on the right of one to reorder it in the list, to reach your favorite ones quickly. Tap any of the editors to access their controls.

Easy pro photo editing on iOS

h ow to | u s e Lu c i d to c r e at e P e r f ect P o rt ra i ts

tweak the basics open LUCiD’s extension. Before you adjust specific parts of the image, get the general exposure, contrast and saturation looking good. The easy way is to tap the Fix! icon to apply automatic adjustments, but to take more control, select the Control icon at the bottom right of the screen and then select Corrections to access the options.

take a look We all want to look good in photographs, but it’s best to be subtle with adjustments to avoid making skin look artificial. Take a good look at the photo and decide which areas need work. If necessary, tap the Beautify button to reveal the Control icon, then tap this to access the Portrait Enhancements panel.

smoothly does it 3 LUCiD detects subject “flaws” and adjusts them automatically, but it’s worth tweaking each of the settings individually. The key controls for getting skin looking good are Perfectly smooth, Blemish Removal and shine Removal. Wrinkles and laughter lines becomes softer and skin starts to glow. Don’t overdo it, though.

adjusting shape The Face Contouring control can make your subject look slimmer by morphing the sides of their face inwards to make the cheekbones more defined. adjust the slider to give the level of effect that you want. It can be helpful to tap the option at the bottom of the screen to turn the effect off so you can see the scale of the impact.

make teeth gleam now to save a fortune in dentist fees and use the Teeth Whitening feature. adjust the sliding control until the teeth look good. Frustratingly, tooth-detection is automatic, so it won’t always apply the effect where you want it. When it does detect teeth, take care not to push the slider too far and create teeth that glow unnaturally.

the eyes have it 6 The Eye enhancements are fairly self-explanatory. Take particular care with the Eye Enlarge option to avoid making your subject look like Gollum. The Catchlights control gives eyes a little sparkle that can really lift a portrait, while the Dark Circles feature brightens the area under the eyes.

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>>> Feature

h ow to | u s e s k e w to Ba n i s h d i sto rt i o n & st ra i g h t e n B u i L d i n g s

what’s the problem? When a camera is held at an angle to a building – tipped up or down, rather than perfectly straight-on – a phenomenon known as “converging verticals” occurs in the image. This is where the top of the building looks smaller than the bottom. Unless you’re using it for effect, images look better when it’s corrected.

reach for the skew although it can’t work in fullresolution mode as an extension, sKEW is useful for correcting converging verticals, flipping images, leveling horizons and so on. To stop a building looking like it’s toppling over, the first step after opening sKEW’s tools is to tap the icon third from the right at the bottom of the screen.

select the corners 3 your image will now be surrounded by a frame with dots at the corners. The dot at the top-left corner will be blue to indicate it’s selected. simply tap another corner once to select it. To select an edge, tap the small box at the center of the edge line. Tapping the box at the center of the image selects all four corners together.

and… stretch To correct converging verticals, select the top corners one at a time and drag them outwards so that the top of the building looks the correct size relative to the bottom. In many cases you’ll want to move the corners out without moving them up or down, so it can be useful to use the arrows at the bottom of the screen.

drag it into shape you may want to select the side edges and drag them up or down to correct other issues. Here we’ve made the roof of the cathedral level by dragging the right side down – this couldn’t be achieved satisfactorily with the level tool, because it rotates the whole image. once you’re happy, tap the green check mark at the top right.

crop to finish 6 Tap done (top right) to confirm the adjustments and then use Photos’ Crop tool to crop out any blank areas at the edge of the image. Drag the corners or the edges of the Crop selection box to exclude the blank spaces and create a composition that you like. Tapping the box in the corner reveals a selection of aspect ratios that can be used.

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Easy pro photo editing on iOS

h ow to | a d d P u n c h By B o ost i n g i m ag e co n t rast i n f h oto ro o m

everything is flat and dull sometimes images look dull and washed out because they lack contrast and the areas that should be black or white are actually gray. this can be improved dramatically using fhotoroom to set black and white points and boost contrast. open its extension, and tap the icon in the bottom-left corner. 1

create some white swipe the controls left to reach whitepoint and tap to open the sliding control. By default the value is set to 100; slide the dot left to reduce the value and lighten the image until the brightest areas are white. then tap the check mark to reveal the main controls and tap the Blackpoint icon. 2

make some blacks this time the default setting is zero and as you slide the control dot to the right the image will get darker. if you want you can tap the check mark to apply the edit and open the whitepoint control again to give it another tweak, going back to the Blackpoint again if necessary. soon, your image will be full of depth and contrast. 3

h ow to | m a k e w h i t es w h i t e a n d co Lo r s r i g h t i n P ro ca m 3

white balance some lighting conditions create a color cast, which can be corrected using the white Balance controls in Procam 3. open its extension, and tap the control icon at the bottom left of the screen. wB denotes white Balance while the droplet icon accesses color Balance, which is useful for more dramatic changes. 1

drag to adjust with the white Balance option selected, drag right on the scale to apply a negative value and make the image look cooler, or drag left to apply a positive number and make the image look warmer. as soon as you make an adjustment, a circular undo icon appears in place of the white Balance icon. 2

color adjustments when color Balance is selected, tapping on the red, green or blue dots allows you to adjust the color channels. a positive number for any of those colors increases their visibility in the image while a negative number increases the amount of their opposite colors: cyan, magenta and yellow respectively. 3

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>>> Feature

h ow to | m a k e P ro - Lo o k i n g B L ac k a n d w h i t e i n m a xcu rv e

make a duplicate although you can undo edits in Photos by tapping Edit followed by Revert, it’s a good idea to create a duplicate before making dramatic changes to an image. To do this, select the image in Photos and tap the share icon at the top of the screen before tapping the duplicate option at the bottom of the screen.

why use a curve? There are lots of apps that convert a color image to monochrome, but few give you any control over how the conversion is made. MaxCurve gives you the type of control that professional photographers demand, allowing you to adjust the brightness and mix of the colors that make up the scene.

make it mono 3 after opening MaxCurve, tap the sun icon to access the “Lightness Kit.” scroll down to the bottom of the column of graphs on the left and tap on the Black&White graph to make a basic conversion and turn the shot monochrome. The larger graph will now show colored peaks that represent the colors that make up the original scene.

bend the line you now have control over the brightness of the areas of each color. To darken the reds as we have here, just tap the line near the red peak in the histogram and drag it down. areas in cyan (red’s opposite color) will stay at their original brightness but areas in-between will be adjusted a little.

shape the curve Wherever you tap on the line (aka curve) of the graph, you create a new control point that you can drag up to brighten corresponding colors, or down to darken them. Experiment with adding points and dragging them. To delete a point, tap it and hit the Trash icon. Use the Undo button to cancel unwanted adjustments.

tweak the contrast 6 If the image needs an adjustment to the contrast, scroll up in the graph column (on iPhone, tap the grid icon for the graph list) and select Contrast. Unlike most contrast controls, this lets you target areas of specific brightness. Raising the right end of the curve increases the contrast of the highlights; the left end increases shadows.

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Easy pro photo editing on iOS

h ow to | s o f t e n m essy Bac kg ro u n ds w i t h Q u i c k m as k

deselect any faces Busy backgrounds can be very distracting in an image, but you can make them less obvious by applying blur using Quick mask. as it opens, Quick mask automatically detects and selects faces in an image – this is shown as a red square around the face. simply tap the deselect all option followed by next. 1

paint in your selection with the Blur effect selected, paint in the areas you want to blur using your finger on the screen. don’t go too close to your main subject – vary the brush size using the slider as necessary to avoid this. increase the strength of the blur until it becomes visible just before the edge of the effect’s quick mask. 2

save and repeat hit done. Quick mask saves a copy of the image with the effect applied. if you want to apply more blur, open the new image and edit again, concentrating on the areas further away from the subject. repeated treatments allow you to build up the blur without having a harsh leading edge where the mask ends. 3

h ow to | m a k e yo u r s u B j ect sta n d o u t w i t h f h oto ro o m

flaws can be good technically, vignetting – also known as corner shading – is created by a flaw in lenses and it’s often corrected automatically, but it can also be very attractive, helping to draw attention to your subject. after opening fhotoroom, tap the control icon in the bottom left of the screen to see the available options. 1

darken the corners tap vignette to open the control and drag the slider right to darken the corners of the image. the amount you need to apply depends upon the image and the location of the subject, if it’s over to one side you’ll probably need to apply a little less than if it’s in the center. hit the check mark to apply. 2

now add a frame tap the frame icon at the bottom of the screen to see the options available. there are lots of different shapes on offer, but it’s usually best to keep things simple and go for a rectangle. choose whether to create a white or black border and drag the slider right to increase the size until you are happy. 3

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>>> Feature

h ow to | c u sto m i z e a c ross- P ro c ess e d Lo o k w i t h m a xcu rv e

cross what? at one point it was popular to process print film as if it was slide film, and slide film like it was print film, to give images an alternative appearance. These days it’s easy to recreate the same effect digitally by manipulating an image’s color curves. In Photos, you can achieve this with the MaxCurve extension.

use the curves Tap the overlapping circles icon to access the RGB Kit, then select the Red graph. The histogram under the curve represents the brightness of the pixels that make up the image, with the brightest at the right end and the darkest at left. If you add a point on the curve and drag it up, you increase the amount of red in the image.

work the reds 3 Tap the curve near the top and drag it to the very top so the brightest areas go white and the highlights have a pink note. Then drag the point at the bottom of the curve up a little, injecting a little red to the darkest areas. now add a couple of points in between the end points and drag them in opposite directions to create a shallow “s.”

get the blues Find the Blue graph and tap to select it. Then drag the point at the far right of the curve down a little to take some blue out of the highlights. Doing this also injects some yellow into the highlights, because yellow is opposite blue in the spectrum. now drag the point at the other end of the curve up to put some blue in the shadows.

adjust the greens next select the Green graph and add a few points to drag up and down to create a shallow “s” shape, similar to the one you created for the reds. Dragging up will increase the amount of green in pixels of that brightness, while dragging down removes green and adds magenta. Revisit each of the color graphs in turn and tweak.

finalize the contrast 6 as a final touch, tap the sun icon to access the Lightness Kit and select the Contrast graph. add points to the curve and drag them up to increase contrast and give the image a punchier appearance. Experiment with different points until you find a look that you like – this is your creation, after all!

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The premier source for everything video games, TV, films, and more.

www.gamesradar.com

>>> Feature

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN

Time Capsule Learn to build an inexpensive networkconnected drive to back up your Macs using Time Machine words: luCy HaTTersley

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Make your own Time Capsule

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>>> Feature

Combining a Raspberry Pi with a hard drive is much cheaper than buying a Time Capsule.

JARGON BUSTER fstab is a system configuration file that tells Raspbian about connected disks, whether to auto-mount them, and who should be able to write to them.

GENiUS Tip The apt-get command used in this project is a key part of Raspbian that’s used to upgrade its components, and to install new packages.

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>>> raspberry pi is a tiny, flexible, and inexpensive computer that can be used for many fun and practical projects. We’re going to make a Time Capsule equivalent using a Raspberry Pi 2 and an external hard drive. You’ll need to download and install some extra software for the Pi cso it can use a Mac-formatted drive and talk to Time Machine on your Mac. (Note, because this is an unofficial Time Capsule system, you shouldn’t rely on it as your only backup.) If you’ve only just got a Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to put an OS on it; follow the steps on p53, then return here. With your hardware ready and Raspbian’s desktop in front of you, choose Menu > Accessories > Terminal (similar to the Mac app of the same name). At its command line, enter sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade to make sure your installation is up to date. You’ll see lines of text filling Terminal’s window. When the process finishes and the scrolling stops, you’ll see another colored line of text that

ends with a $. Now we can get down to business with the various bits of software. Portions of what follows are based on Caleb Woods’ tutorial at bit.ly/mlcwtc. GeT THe pi To read a maC disk First, download the tools Raspbian needs to work with Apple-formatted drives. Still in Terminal on the Pi, enter sudo apt-get --assume-yes install hfsprogs hfsutils hfsplus to download them. To check where the drive is connected in the system, enter sudo /sbin/parted then, at this tool’s own command line, enter print to get info about your external drive. The command’s output will include a line that starts with “Disk /dev/sda” followed by the drive’s capacity. Below that, a table should have two rows: find the one that refers to the partition named “Time Machine” on the external drive – all being well it should be 2. This tells us /dev/sda2 is the location of the Time Machine partition. Enter quit.

Make your own Time Capsule

We need Raspbian to mount the drive so we can use it. First, create a folder by entering sudo mkdir -p /media/time_ machine. The last parameter there represents where the partition’s file system will be mounted, much like the /Volumes folder in OS X. Next we’ll use a text editor, Nano, to edit a file that contains a list of all file systems we want the system to mount at startup. Enter sudo nano /etc/fstab. This file will contains several entries already. Below them (but above the lines starting with a # symbol), add the following text as a single line. (Where you see a gap in the text below, press the † key exactly once, rather than the Spacebar.) /dev/sda2 /media/time_machine hfsplus force,rw,user,auto 0 0 Press ≈+o and then ® to save your changes to the file, then press ≈+x to quit Nano. Now you’re back at the command line, enter sudo mount -a to ensure the partition is mounted.

this, it’s safest to install one at a time. For each of the required packages, type sudo apt-get --assume-yes install into Terminal, followed by a space, then the the name of a package, then ®. Enter cd ~/downloads/netatalk-3.1.8 To configure Netatalk’s installer, enter the following text – every double hyphen should be preceded by a space, and every line that ends with a hyphen below has no space after it. ./configure --with-init-style=debiansystemd --without-libevent --without-tdb --with-cracklib --enable-krbV-uam --withpam-confdir=/etc/pam.d --with-dbussysconf-dir=/etc/dbus-1/system.d --withtracker-pkgconfig-version=1.0 You’ll see a summary when this process completes. The next few commands take a while to complete. Enter sudo make. When it’s done, enter sudo make install to run the installer. When this finishes, verify Netatalk installed correctly by entering afpd -V.

besT b u ys Our Time Capsule project is based on inexpensive hardware. Your Time Capsule will need a USB hard drive and a power adapter, of course. In addition to that, here’s what we recommend.

raspberry pi 2 You can use any model of Raspberry Pi to create a Time Capsule. However, the Pi 2 has four uSB ports, which makes life a lot easier.

T H e T i n y, i n e x p e n s i V e r a s p b e r ry p i C o m p u T e r pa C k Can be used for many projeCTs GeT THe maC and THe pi TalkinG Next we’ll install Netatalk. We need version 3.0 or higher, which we’ll build from source code. Open the Epiphany web browser from the left end of Raspbian’s Task Bar and go to netatalk. sourceforge.net. Under “current releases” on the left, click the link to download the latest stable version (3.1.8 at the time of writing) in gzip format. It will be saved to your Downloads folder, and the Xarchiver app will open to show you its contents. Right-click the file within and choose Extract (if rightclicking doesn’t work with your mouse, select the file, then choose Action > Extract). Put it in your Downloads folder (it should already be chosen for you). We need to install the packages listed at bit.ly/mlntpackages. If you’re new to

The first line of the response should be “afpd 3.1.8 - Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) daemon of Netatalk” To start the software, enter sudo service avahi-daemon start, followed by sudo service netatalk start. Neither command should return output, but you should see “raspberrypi” appear under Shared in Finder’s sidebar on your Mac. You’ll want Netatalk to start at login on the Pi. Enter sudo nano ~/.bashrc and add the two commands from the previous paragraph on new lines at the end of the file. Press ≈+o and then ® to save the file, then ≈+x to quit Nano. Enter sudo nano /etc/nsswitch.conf. Look for the line starting “hosts: files mdns4_minimal” Add a space to its end, then append mdns4 mdns. Save changes and quit Nano with ≈+x.

miCrosd Card You’ll need to install the Raspbian OS on a microSD card. An 8GB one will do, but 16GB is more versatile and will cost you under $10.

raspberry pi offiCial Case The official case is modular, and its sides can be removed to gain access to the board’s ports and pins.

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>>> Feature

3 4

e x p l a i n e d … | T H E H A R D WA R E YO U ’ L L N E E D

1. neTwork We’re using the Pi’s Ethernet port to connect to a network, but you can use a Wi-Fi dongle to make it wireless.

JARGON BUSTER The file .bashrc is used to set environmental preferences. Here we use it to ensure the software that powers our homemade Time Capsule runs whenever the Pi starts up.

GENiUS Tip The afp.conf file contains Netatalk’s settings. The changes we make to it tell the Pi to fake its identity as being a Time Capsule.

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2. sToraGe You can use any USB drive; how much space you need depends on your Mac’s drive. 1TB is a good starting point.

3. miCrosd Card On the bottom of the Pi 2 is microSD card slot. You’ll store the Pi’s OS and software on one of these. You’ll need an 8GB card.

Now enter sudo nano /etc/avahi/ services/afpd.service, and add the following into that file: <?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>< !--*-nxml-*--> <!doCType service-group sysTem "avahi-service.dtd"> <service-group> <name replacewildcards="yes">%h</name> <service> <type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type> <port>548</port> </service> <service> <type>_device-info._tcp</type> <port>0</port> <txt-record>model=TimeCapsule </txt-record>

4. raspberry pi The Pi runs the Raspbian OS on an ARM processor. Raspbian is based on Linux, which makes Pi’s official OS free.

</service> </service-group> Save and quit, then enter sudo nano /usr/local/etc/afp.conf and under [Global] in that file add mimic model = TimeCapsule6,106. Also, append this to the end of the file: [Time machine 3Tb] path = /media/time_machine time machine = yes Save and quit, then restart your Pi. In Finder on your Mac, under Shared in the sidebar, connect to the Time Machine partition on the Pi using “pi” as the username and “raspberry” as the password. Finally, connect Time Machine to your Pi within the app on your Mac.

Make your own Time Capsule

H o w T o | P R E PA R E YO U R R A S P B E R R Y P I

Format the hard drive

Connect the hard drive for your Time Machine to your Mac. In Disk Utility, select it, click Erase, name it Time Machine, select OS X Extended (Journaled) and GUID. Click Erase. In Terminal, enter sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/Time\ machine && ls -l /Volumes. In the results, check that the row “formatted volume” starts drwxrwxrwx.

Assemble the hardware

Eject the hard drive and SD card from your Mac and connect them to the Pi. Also connect a USB keyboard and mouse, an HDMI cable and a display, and connect the power supply. Using NOOBS to install Raspbian is simple, though a full guide is at bit.ly/runnoobs.

Format the SD card

Download and open SD Formatter 4.0 from bit.ly/1T4Ufgs. Connect an 8GB or larger microSD card to your Mac (using an adapter), and select it in the app’s Select Card pop-up menu. Next, select Overwrite Format and enter “boot” (without quotes) in the Name field, then click Format. This prepares the card to hold your Pi’s OS.

Connect the Pi to your network

When you reach Raspbian’s desktop, ensure that your Pi is connected to your network. Put the pointer over the icon of two networked computers at the right end of the Task Bar and a tooltip should appear with a line like “eth0: connected” followed by an IP address.

Install nOOBS

Download the offline version of NOOBS in Zip format from bit.ly/ getnoobs. Unpack and copy the contents of the Zip to your microSD card. When you start up your Pi in a moment, you’ll need to follow on-screen instructions from NOOBS to put a working installation of Raspbian on the card.

Connect to the internet

On top of Raspbian, you’ll need to download some additional software from the internet. Open the Epiphany web browser, which you’ll find at the left end of the Task Bar, and direct it to a website to ensure your Pi can reach the outside world. If it’s all working, head back to page 50.

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maclife.com jun 2016 55

APP LIFE THIS MONTH’S MOST INTERESTING iPHONE & iPAD APPS

Ulysses Mobile If you like words, you’ll love this app $24.99 Developer The Soulmen, ulyssesapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later

Ulysses is particularly good on iPads, where it has even more room to breathe.

56 jUn 2016 maclife.com

Ulysses is one of our favorite Mac writing apps for all kinds of work: reviews, features, novels, broadcast scripts… you get the idea. It’s a very fast and flexible text editor based around Markdown, which enables you to format documents or add links and other code with a few simple keystrokes. It started off on the Mac, made its way to the iPad and now it’s on the Phone too. Nobody’s going to pick the iPhone over a Mac for prolonged writing, but Ulysses makes it as pleasant as possible. Your formatting and code options are just a tap away from the keyboard, and it’s equally easy

to access tags, file attachments, notes and writing goals. It’s much more fun on the iPad, but the iPhone app makes good use of the space – and if you have an iPhone 6s, of the bigger screen. Ulysses’ file management feels more like Mail than Finder: you create folders and subfolders, and then your documents are “sheets.” Those sheets can be dragged around from folder to folder, and they automatically sync over iCloud as you work on them. Sheets can be exported as text, PDF, ePUB, HTML, DOCX files or email attachments, and you can copy to the clipboard in those formats – copying in HTML is a boon for anybody who needs to write for a web content system based around HTML tags. If you’re exporting in PDF, ePUB or DOCX you can also choose from different templates. Writing in Markdown takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s worth it; it’s much faster than working in HTML and the ability to write in one simple way and then export in whatever format the client or destination app/ CMS wants is exceptionally useful. You can customize the

Ulysses makes full use of the iPhone 6s and iPad Pro’s larger displays.

markup on the desktop app and have that customization available on mobile. For example, if you’d rather not have Ulysses interpret square brackets as a hyperlink you can change the shortcut in the desktop app and the change will be applied to your iPad or iPhone too. The closest equivalent to Ulysses we can think of is Scrivener, but Ulysses does things in a more minimalist way. There are lots of apps we like, but Ulysses is an app we love. the bottom line. Ulysses’ publicity has focused on novels and journalism, but it’s great for scripts, blogs, and note-taking too. GaRy maRshall

ULYSSES MOBILE It’s very, very fast iCloud syncing across iOS and OS X Customizable markup and shortcuts Doesn’t upload directly to WordPress ExcELLEnt

Tough testing, trusted ratings

Snapseat Don’t be in the dark about sitting in the dark $1.99 Developer Mads Jensen, snapse.at Platform iPhone Requirements iOS 9 or later

When the urge strikes to go to the movies, there are plenty of mobile apps capable of giving you local theater show times – but few do it with the simplicity and lavish good looks of Snapseat. Powered by community-based TMDB data and featuring reviews (called “reactions” here) from trak.tv users, this is the quickest way to browse what’s playing at local cinemas. Snapseat has two main views, selected using a horizontal swipe or with a pair of buttons at the bottom of the screen. The first uses device geolocation to display a list of what’s playing nearby, with gorgeous artwork, synopsis, rating, and credits

information, as well as the ability to watch high-definition trailers inside the app. There’s also a second view for upcoming movies, with the option to follow and be notified when they’re released. The list of upcoming films isn’t as comprehensive as rivals such as Flixster, but it’s also free of the clutter, corporate partnerships, and advertising that typically accompany such free apps. Once you’ve found something to watch, tap a show time to tell friends about your plans using the iOS 9 share extension, or book tickets through the web-based version of Fandango. It’s great for spur-of-themoment movie going, but you can’t

Snapseat can give you the lowdown on films, and provide you with local theater information.

manually override the current location, or search for show times in the future; both features are planned for future updates. The boTTom line. Snapseat is perfect for finding out what’s playing today at a theater near you, and one of the cleanest, best-looking apps of its kind. j.R. bookwalTeR good

Viki • A Nice Reader for Wikipedia A lovely way to read, but it could be more than that $2.99 Developer Raureif, raureif.net Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later

Viki does exactly what it says: presents Wikipedia articles in a “nicer” view than you get from the website directly. It offers a new layout for the text in a lovely font, presents images differently (usually larger), and includes some extra functionality, including the ability to bookmark articles, look through your search history, look through an article’s list of contents easily, and find articles based on your location, so you can find out more about what’s around you on

vacation, for instance (there’s an Apple Watch app included for this too). In terms of the basic aim of offering an easy search of Wikipedia and presenting the results beautifully, it works. But it misses out on the obvious opportunity to do so much more. Bookmarked articles, for example, don’t save information offline, so the app is reliant on always having an internet connection. There’s also no way to bookmark, or open in the background, links from articles you’re currently in that you want to read later within Viki. You can save

Viki certainly makes Wikipedia more attractive. But that’s pretty much all there is to it.

articles to Safari Reading List, which kind of gets around both these problems, but isn’t not using Safari the point? It does support Split View on iPad and Handoff, though. The boTTom line. An attractive way to read articles from Wikipedia, but lacking useful power features. maTT bolTon Solid

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LumaFX offers several ways effects can be tweaked and adjusted, and an easy way to control them using layers.

LumaFX Easy video effects for iOS $3.99 Developer Luma Touch LLC, luma-touch.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later

The color control options are pretty good, but could be even better.

58 Jun 2016 maclife.com

Apple’s iMovie video editor for iOS is a great way to cut clips together into a movie, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of effects or other ways to customize your footage. That’s where LumaFX comes in. This app skips over iMovie’s editing options to just offer a wide range of effects and adjustments for video, which

can be applied in layers, so you can have multiple effects built up for some striking looks. The options range from speed controls for slo-mo footage, to color corrections, to weird and wonderful effects that go from subtle vignettes to pixelation and comic-book looks. It’s got some simple tools for cropping, and trimming the start and end of a clip – the trimming tool is actually notably useful (despite most video apps offering similar functionality) because LumaFX lets you scrub through a video frame-by-frame using a wheel, and then you can set the start or end point to the frame you’ve chosen. The color controls are fairly powerful, but aren’t as comprehensive as similar app VideoGrade’s, and lack easy white balance fix options in the presets.

The effects tab is where LumaFX shines, though. You’ve got tools for adding different types of blur, cool distortions, weird styles… and it can all be adjusted quite finely using controls right on the video (as well as within the layers view) with real-time results. Layers can be made invisible with a single tap, and their order adjusted, changing how some effects stack. It’s powerful and easy. Effects aren’t something you’ll want to use all the time, but you can do some really good stuff here. It’s not the prettiest interface in the world, but it gets the job done, especially on iPad. LumaFX does have some intermittent performance issues, though: some adjustments (even just color effects) had a delay before they took effect even on our iPad Pro 9.7-inch. It’s not that big a problem, but it can be a pain when you’re trying to find the sweet spot on a slider. We also had a couple of moments where it failed to show the full controls for an effect on a video, and just left a spinning wheel in the center until we restarted it. the bottom line. A good app for iOS video makers to have in their toolbox – VideoGrade is better for basic image correction, though. matt bolton

LumaFX Good range of effects Great, easy layers system Lacks some color options A few performance issues Good

Tough testing, trusted ratings >>> App

Life

Composer’s Sketchpad A pad for musical ideas that isn’t helpful enough $2.99 Developer Alexei Baboulevitch, composerssketchpad.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 8.2 or later

Let’s state the obvious: this isn’t an app for composing entire musical scores, although you probably guessed that from the price. The name is a pretty good description of what the app does – it’s a place for you to mess around and experiment with musical ideas, which you can then export as MIDI or JSON when you’ve got something solid to work with. Composer’s Sketchpad looks rather like a kids’ version of pro app Ableton, with big buttons and pastel colors. It’s designed to be used two-handed, with your right hand sliding and zooming. When you want to add a note, you press down with your left hand

and then place the note with your right hand, either by tapping for a single note or sliding for a move from one note to another (you can reverse the hands if you’re left-handed). There are more than 100 instruments to choose from including drums and percussion, guitars, basses, exotic instruments and sawtooth synths, and the toolbox gives you options to snap to time or snap to pitch. It’s an odd thing, though. Creating music in Composer’s Sketchpad isn’t immediate; instead of playing along, you stop the music, place your note(s) and then play them back. If you’re trying to find a happy musical accident, apps such as SoundPrism

Each instrument has simple customizations such as volume, octave and vibrato.

are more serendipitous. If you’re trying to get the tune in your head into an app, GarageBand’s smart instruments and Drummer deliver the instant gratification that Composer’s Sketchpad lacks. the bottom line. Composer’s Sketchpad does things differently to other music creation apps, but we didn’t find it very intuitive. GaRy maRshall weak

FreeSpeech If a picture paints a thousand words… $19.99 Developer Avaz Inc, freespeechapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later

What if there were a way to use visual imagery to assist with the development of language? That’s the aim of FreeSpeech, a progressive new app designed to help students learn about the structure of the English language. Starting from a range of typical pronouns, you then choose from a range of common verbs. At any time, you can hit More Words to find an extensive list of categories, such as Most Used, Actions, People, Food and Drink, Places – the list goes on. The app then creates a kind of “mind map” of a sentence, placing words and images you choose in the correct

position and suggesting what other elements are required to make a complete sentence, such as asking “when,” “how,” or “who,” and also flagging up tense changes. One 10-year-old tester quickly came across a bit of a flaw – the ability to really sense check. We managed to create this sentence: “The dirty dog and the true and good team cat eat the spicy and worn and messy hot dog in the messy state during the kid’s different game vacation.” Strictly speaking, this sentence is grammatically correct, but in a real-world classroom stituation, a child would be encouraged to both break up the sentence and also think about how much sense they were making.

The range of categories, and listings within, is nothing if not extensive.

That said, this is an easy app for any age or ability to understand and use, and it’s also well-suited to learning English as a second language. the bottom line. The visual representation of words makes this a very accessible language-learning app for a range of ages and abilities. Jo membeRy good

maclife.com jun 2016 59

We almost certainly had a hand in causing those explosions. Sorry, guys.

Winterstate There’s a long, cold road ahead of us Free (with IAPs) Developer PlayRaven, playraven.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later

Firebombing is an understandably efficient special attack. When in doubt, firebomb.

60 jun 2016 maclife.com

Come the long winter, your carefully stocked bunker will protect you from nothing. In case you’ve forgotten what Mad Max taught you – aside from the fact that playing a flaming guitar while strapped to the front of a speeding truck will make you the coolest person on the entire irradiated planet – it’s diesel that will provide salvation.

Who needs bottled water and bacon when you could have tons of armored metal? Fools, that’s who. And you, friend, are not a fool. Instead, you’re the leader of a ragtag band of drivers, using steel and wheels and unholy amounts of ammo to overthrow bandits (who’ve also seen a few too many episodes of Top Gear). Each encounter is a selfcontained skirmish selected from the menu map. Your units range from vulnerable yet snappy roadsters through to hulking, lumbering tanks. To move each, you draw a line on the screen. You automatically attack any vehicle within your range, and certain marked zones unlock special abilities such as firebombs, mines and special shields. You can plan out your strategy before you engage, but with little aesthetic difference between enemy units, it often

descends into barely managed chaos in the field, with victory or defeat sometimes occurring suddenly and with little in your actions to differentiate. You start off with just one speedy reinforced vehicle, and build up your arsenal – with added flamethrowers. Well, in theory, anyway. Building or upgrading requires resources, in fairly large amounts. You can collect them, sure, but waiting for a plant or factory to dole out a consignment of loot can take hours, literally. Frankly, if we risk life, limb and a chunk of an afternoon to liberate an area from Very Bad People, we hope their gratitude would maybe speed them up a bit. Your initial supply of diamonds is soon burnt through (especially when they’re also used to unlock missions, speed up repairs and so on) – which means that getting more is a case of opening your wallet. 100 diamonds for 99¢ – which will give you another couple of hours, say – isn’t too steep, but it soon adds up. Cold comfort indeed. the bottom lIne. Fun, if haphazard, combat that plays like real-time strategy for those with short attention spans. Sadly, the IAPs frustrate and slow progress. emmA DAvIes

Winterstate Fights are snappy and immediate Combat is easy to get to grips with Microtransactions make progress pricey No offline mode so you can’t play on the go solid

Tough testing, trusted ratings >>> App

Life

CATTCH Thankfully this cat has more than nine lives $1.99 Developer MildMania, mildmania.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.1 or later

Like all good platformers, this game’s cheery looks (full of cute cats) hide a core of steel. Mistime the second portion of a double-jump by even a fraction of a second and your feline avatar is off to the great catnip store in the sky. CATTCH feels like a Rayman game put through an Adventure Time filter (with a hint of Super Meat Boy in how the site of each death is marked with a stamp). You have to collect stars, save friendly creatures from cages, and make it to the end of a level intact and ideally before the timer runs out. As well as the standard platforming arsenal of double-jumps, punches and

pickups (including limited-use projectiles and precious extra seconds for your timer), you can also cling to most vertical surfaces. As such, it’s often necessary to think in terms of hand-holds you’re able to make a daring leap from, or use as temporary stopping points before they revolve away – usually into some form of pointy block that wants to take a chunk out of your toes. The occasional blue portal, too, makes the world’s orientation change. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. With precision so key to the fun, the onscreen button controls are sometimes a bit too murky. The occasional seemingly impassable section, too, had us closer to

While there are arrows to vaguely guide you, exploration is always a temptation.

smashing our iPad than perhaps ever before. Still, persevere and you’re in for a deftly designed treat. the bottom line. A surprisingly old-school platformer that will occasionally challenge you to the point of extreme frustration. (But that won’t stop you coming back for more.) emma Davies great

I Keep Having this Dream Freud would have a field day with this chase sequence $1.99 Developer Fireflame Games, keephavingthisdream.blogspot.co.uk Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later

Do you remember Pipe Dream? That preinstalled ’90s Windows game in which you played a besieged plumber desperately laying pieces of pipe to stem an encroaching tide of green goop? Well so, it seems, does Fireflame Games – except here the goop is a nebulous “Nemesis” and the sewers are your actual nightmares. You start down in the dark, with only a general compass direction to steer you to your escape route. At the bottom of the screen, you have a collection of tiles to choose from – each with the next part of a pathway on it. Laying some tiles boosts your attack stat, while others bolster your

defense, replenish your health or inch you towards a level-up. Worse, though, are “Snags.” These tiles act as halting points for the Nemesis on its periodic advances (which is good, because nothing pleasant happens when it catches up to you), they also briefly attack you. When your options narrow down to solely comprise Snags and their variants (even nastier and far more persistent), you’re essentially forced to lay your own downfall. As you might have guessed, given that it’s a game centered around a nightmare, it’s not the most relaxing, nor is it visually a stunner. Playing is absorbing but rarely surprising, despite the cat-and-mouse

It’s not pleasant, but no matter how hard you try, battle is sometimes unavoidable.

element – your demise tends to be visible from several moves ahead. That said, we’d recommend this for those who enjoy strategy puzzle games… or have a bunch of nightmare trauma to work through. the bottom line. A tense game of path creation in which your demise is instrumented by yourself. emma Davies good

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It’s not entirely clear what the lady rabbit has been locked up for. Perjury? Treason? Library fines?

King Rabbit Furdemption’s sequel is a bit too fluffy 99¢ Developer RareSloth, raresloth.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later

Keep an eye out for secrets in each level - even if you don’t know what they mean.

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A while back, RareSloth released a game called Furdemption – a fast-paced puzzle game that had you, the royal rabbit, trying to escape Hell. It was difficult, tense, and adorable – but now the bunny’s out of Hell and back where he belongs, what’s he to do? The answer comes in RareSloth’s new game, which we can only assume is a sequel, in which your quest is to save a lady rabbit from capture. Given that Furdemption had you saving rabbit souls from the depths of the underworld, it doesn’t feel quite as noble to just be saving some lady bunny from a cage –

and does it have to be a lady, anyway? Saving princesses is so last year. The game itself is very similar – it’s a turn-based puzzle, which means swiping once in any direction will hop your little bunny-butt one square. Items you can interact with, by hopping into them, include levers, TNT, bombs, and crowns that give you special powers like, uh, being on fire. We never said it was scientifically accurate. Please don’t set your pets on fire. Each level takes strategy and smarts to complete, and if that’s not enough of a challenge, there are various collectibles for the sharp-eyed player that add an extra level of difficulty. Unfortunately, King Rabbit – while it does contain some interesting puzzle mechanics feels incredibly generic in

comparison to Furdemption. It has In-App Purchases, hence being cheaper than Furdemption, but the things you can buy are far too easy to come across by just playing the game. Although, is it a bad thing if microtransactions are badly implemented and not worth paying for? Hm. At times, the game also feels a little rushed. Some levels are tightly designed, with one solution that you have to search for; others seem to have multiple solutions that feel wrong, but get you to the end either way. A puzzle game – especially one as simple and quick as this – should have one solution, and the level design should lead you toward it like a garden path. There’s not a lot of that, leaving some levels feeling more like a messy yard than a landscaped park. But for the kind of casual player who cares more about getting to the end than perfect level design, it shouldn’t be a huge problem. the bottom line. Occasionally unexciting level design and pressure to buy IAPs can be frustrating, but ultimately King Rabbit is pretty satisfying. Kate GRay

King Rabbit Simple enough to play one-handed Loads of levels to play Not as tense as Furdemption Rushed level design gReat

Tough testing, trusted ratings

roUndUp

6 great apps for learning something new Use your iOS device to improve your mind by david charTier

Whether you’ve had your fill of refreshing Facebook or helping disgruntled birds right the wrongs in their lives, it’s time to put your iOS devices to work by helping you learn something new. Here are some of the App Store’s best apps for gaining new knowledge and skills. Whether you’re looking to further your current career, work your way into a new one, or dive into a hobby, Udemy (Free with IAPs, Universal) has over 32,000 courses for learning everything from programming in various languages to yoga, and photography to business development. There are even courses for personal development and learning languages, and many start at $10. All courses can be downloaded for offline use, and you can even message instructors for help. If you’re looking for an academic topic to get into, try Khan academy (Free, Universal). Khan Academy is supported through donations from a variety of philanthropic

Learn How To Draw Everything… or at least your favorite animated character.

Khan Academy: it’s like an Amazon for educational topics and learning.

organizations ranging from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Google and others. You’ll find over 10,000 videos across math, science, economics, history, and more, including 150,000 interactive, Common-Core-aligned math exercises, and it’s all free. Of course a language app has to make this list, and dUolingo (Free, Universal) has a unique approach. Through a series of mini-games and tests, you’ll learn any of 10 languages in an engaging environment that practically game-ifies the process. In fact, you earn points as you progress so you can quantify how far you’ve come, and you can compete with friends to keep each other motivated. All classes are free, with some In-App Purchases for minor perks. iTUnes U (Free, Universal) contains a wealth of free knowledge and interactive courses from some of the greatest institutions and organizations around the world. Apple boasts over 1 million downloadable lectures, videos, and other educational content from greats such as Stanford, Oxford, MIT, and Smithsonian Libraries.

No list about resources for learning new skills is complete without yoUTUbe (Free, Universal). Sure, it’s home to cat videos, but it’s also the world’s largest peoplepowered platform for teaching and learning how to do virtually anything. From makeup tutorials to video game walkthroughs, home improvement to tutorial videos about how to make tutorial videos… Of course, YouTube is free, though it recently launched a YouTube Red subscription – for $10 per month you can get rid of ads, easily download videos for offline playback, and play videos in the background on iPhone and iPad. As the name suggests, how To draw everyThing (Free, Universal) has simple step-by-step tutorials for learning how to draw a variety of things ranging from fruit, to anime characters, to band logos. It isn’t the best-designed app, but the sheer volume of tutorials is at least a great place to start.

The courses available through Udemy aren’t free, but they are extremely well curated.

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>>> App Life

watch apps and guides to get more from your watch

Streets 3 Bringing the streets to life $1.99 Developer FutureTap, futuretap.com Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 8.3 or later

If the idea of displaying 360-degree Street View panoramas on a wristwatch sounds like some kind of crazy fever dream, guess again. Streets 3 is the only app to date that has risen to the challenge, but it sets the bar so high, it’s hard to imagine future contenders doing it much better. Naturally, the first hurdle for developer FutureTap is convincing folks to pay good money for something they can already get free with Google Maps – but even ignoring Apple

watch tiP

Opening apps Tapping tiny app icons on the Apple Watch screen can be an exercise in frustration. Siri to the rescue! Summon the virtual assistant by pressing on the Digital Crown, then say “Open”

64 jun 2016 maclife.com

followed by the name of the app.

Watch support, Streets 3 is well worth the money, because it’s dedicated entirely to Street View. For starters, on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Streets 3 can be summoned directly from Apple Maps by tapping Share > Routing Apps, then selecting the Streets app. This is great for those who miss the days when Google’s service powered the default version of iOS’s Maps, and want Street View back. You can also search, view detailed information, save favorites, and select from more than 1,000 hand-picked Gallery Places, including airports, city sights, entertainment and nature venues, monuments, museums, parks and gardens, science and technology, sports arenas, zoos, and more. The Watch version of Streets 3 is exceptionally well thoughtout, with easy access to Search, Favorites, Recents, and Gallery. Select a location, and its Street View loads in seconds, filling as much of the Watch face as possible. Best of all, you can tap on the thumbnail, then turn the Digital Crown to turn left or right across the panoramic view

without needing an iPhone. Streets 3 on Apple Watch also proves remarkably fast, with Favorites and recent searches being synced from the iPhone. the bottom line. Against all the odds, Streets 3 impressively delivers Street View – most of it, anyway – to Apple Watch. J.R. bookwalteR

StreetS 3 Google Street View on your Apple Watch Favorites and Recents sync with iPhone No vertical panning Can’t shift current view excellent

Tough testing, trusted ratings

A Tiny Game of Pong Test your retro response rate $1.99 Developer Matt Weichec, atinygame.com

How to Sync a music playlist

Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later

Apple Watch gaming may never become a big thing, but if there’s one title suited for such a device, it’s this small-screen port of Atari’s pioneering home arcade classic. In A Tiny Game of Pong, the action all happens on your wrist, where a paddle at the bottom of the screen is controlled with the digital crown. The endless gameplay takes some getting used to for modern sensibilities, but is surprisingly good. Share with a friend on Facebook or Twitter to unlock the Classic Upgrade, which adds a “best of

three” option and nine color themes in addition to the default white, which some may consider sacrilege. The frame rate does lag occasionally, but this is a fun distraction while waiting for an appointment. The iPhone app maintains leaderboards and Game Center rankings, but unsurprisingly there’s no two-player mode (a split-screen view on the Watch would not be a good thing). the bottom line. A Tiny Game of Pong is great nostalgic fun, and a decent Watch-based diversion. J.R. bookwalteR good

Near Lock A comprehensive “key” for your Mac Free Developer Filip Duvnjak, nearlock.me Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 7 or later

Just when you thought Knock had all the bases covered for unlocking a Bluetooth LE-equipped Mac with your iPhone or Apple Watch, here comes Near Lock, which automatically locks and unlocks your computer whenever you step outside a minimum user-defined radius of 39 inches (maximum 32 feet). There are two methods for controlling from Apple Watch: a simple lock/unlock button, and a second screen for changing the required distance or disabling the app entirely. An optional Glance displays

PlaYliSt PReP On your iPhone, create or edit a music playlist, assign it a name, then add the desired songs, artists, or albums from your library.

current distance in the upper left corner, along with a reminder of how far away you need to be in order to trigger the app. Near Lock works with multiple computers connected to a single iPhone, but we’d like to see more core features incorporated into the actual watchOS app, such as the proprietary “find my iPhone”-style facility for pinging your missing handsets. the bottom line. Knock, with all that unnecessary movement involved, is so last month – try Near Lock instead. J.R. bookwalteR great

Pick one With Apple Watch on its charger, open Watch app on iPhone, tap the My Watch tab, select Music > Synced Playlist, and choose the playlist.

Get in SYnc The Watch app displays “Sync Pending” as the playlist is prepared; any cloud-based Apple Music or iTunes Match content will be downloaded.

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Apple MacBook Early 2016 1.1GHz Apple’s tiny notebook gets faster $1,299 manufacturer Apple, apple.com Features 1.1GHz Intel Core M processor, Intel HD Graphics 515, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM

Apple MAcBook eArly 2016 1.1GHz Super-thin and light Great usability, with improved battery life Very slick and fast using OS X Limited performance and single USB/power port GreAt

66 JUN 2016 maclife.com

he new MacBook was something of a revelation for us last year. With its low-power (and therefore low-performance) Intel processor, single port for power and data, and ridiculously thin and light profile, we thought it might turn out to be like the first-generation MacBook Air: a stunning concept that would need time to mature. But we’d underestimated it: not only was it plenty powerful enough for light use, but its fanless operation, Retina screen, and smart new keyboard and trackpad made us totally fall in love with its usability. Now we’ve got a second version, with a more powerful processor, faster storage, and longer battery life. First, the processor. Intel’s new chip is between 10% and 20% faster, depending on the benchmark. This isn’t a huge leap forward, but it’s combined with speed improvements to reading and writing its flash storage (in our tests, write speeds went up by 40% to 633MB/s, while read speeds improved by about 20% to 930MB/s), and faster RAM. These add up to make it feel more responsive than last year’s model, together with a better graphic card for smoother animations. Okay, it’s still a poor advanced Photoshop or high-end video editing machine, but for making tweaks in Photos or simple iMovie projects, it’s plenty fast enough. This is a lightweight machine for lightweight computing. The 2304x1440 12-inch Retina display is sharp and vibrant. The battery life is improved over last year’s model, by an hour – and it was already excellent. The Force Touch trackpad is great to use, and we’re big fans of the new keyboard. The large keys are easy to type with accurately, and we find their clicky feedback pleasant to type with, once you get used to it. And with no fan, it’s utterly silent – great for using in front of the TV. There’s still the matter of it having a single USB Type-C port, though (plus a headphone jack). If it had one USB port and a power connection, we wouldn’t have a problem. As it is, taking it on the road probably means carrying adapters, which makes it a less portable package – and portability is kind of its point. the bottom line. An excellent, fun, lightweight machine, now with added speed and longevity – but its issues haven’t changed. matt bolton

maclife.com JUN 2016 67

>>> Reviews

Story Tree Once upon a time there was a new writing app… $9.99 Developer Jana Shepard, jalesha.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later, 64-bit Mac

Prompts are designed to give you ideas, but vanish the second you start writing.

Story tree Prompts feature helps you with ideas Tools window is great for forcing fast writing The actual writing experience isn’t that good Weird bugs and quirks that hamper efficiency okay

68 jun 2016 maclife.com

Story Tree aims to rethink minimal writing tools for creative writers, primarily by taking a two-pane interface and welding clever features to it. The basics are familiar: project windows have a writing area where you knock out words, and a sidebar for storing chapters and scenes that can be reordered. At first glance, it resembles a basic version of Scrivener, but there’s also a focused single-pane “writing mode” and four alternate color schemes if you’re not a fan of “desert” (read: beige). Story Tree’s interesting bits are the Tools and Prompt buttons. The former opens a window used to define a timer and word count, while the latter throws up words to trigger ideas, offering over a billion combinations. Two clicks while writing this review gave us “monk/doctor’s office/garbage can/winter/joy” and “zoo keeper/movie theater/Halloween costume/1972/facial tics.” Throw in cutesy animation for the former or a bucket of gore for the latter and you’ve the basis for a Disney animation script or throwback horror.

Some seasoned creative writers maintain you should regularly write as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter whether you end up using whatever you create – instead, this keyboard hammering should be considered exercise for your writing muscles. For the Tools and Prompt features alone, we really wanted to fall in love with Story Tree, but the execution is lacking. The app’s release follows a year of testing, but it nonetheless feels unfinished. You can’t select and view multiple scenes or chapters, making Story Tree horribly limited for writing stories when compared to Scrivener or Ulysses. The Tools and Fonts windows have annoying backgrounds, and prompts vanish the second you start writing, forcing you to juggle them in your head. Bizarrely, the app also blocks access to OS X’s spelling and substitution features. There’s simply a single “Check Spelling” option lurking in the Tools menu. We suspect this is to force the writer to focus and write quickly rather than tidily, but it backfires to stop OS X helping when your fingers are at full pace. What you’re left with is an undercooked writing app with two superb features for creative writers, one of which is a bit broken. This might still be enough for some to take the plunge, and we hope the story doesn’t end here, because Story Tree definitely has potential. the bottom line. There are some great ideas within Story Tree, but the basics of the app need work. CRaig gRannell

The Tools window enables you to set a word count and timer, forcing you to write quickly.

Tough testing, trusted ratings

Outside

Outside is a faithful OS X port of the popular iPhone app.

Why glance out the window when you can look at the desktop? 99¢ Developer Jonathan Wukitsch Requirements OS X 10.11 or later

What’s the weather like outside? If you’re stuck indoors on a Mac, like we are for much of the day, it’s handy to have a great OS X application to answer this question. The aptly named Outside delivers current and upcoming weather conditions straight to your Mac, using accurate Wi-Fi geolocation so you’ll know exactly what to expect when it’s time to head outdoors. In addition to present and “feels like” temperature, Outside displays humidity, wind speed, chance of rain, and a brief summary of what’s ahead for the next hour and day. We’ve always preferred weather apps that display the temperature in the menu bar. Outside curiously bucks this popular trend, instead opting for a setting to show the

current temperature on the Dock icon whenever the app is open. It’s actually the only available preference, aside from an option to switch between Celsius or Fahrenheit in the lower right corner of the window, which is fixed at 480x500 pixels. Text was sharp and clean on the mid-2012 MacBook Pro with Retina Display we used for this review, but the background image – an attractive seaside cliff – doesn’t update based on your location or the time of day. Outside automatically updates data when launched, but after that you’ll need to perform a manual refresh to get up-tothe-minute results. the bottom line. Outside leaps from iPhone to Mac, but doesn’t yet feel completely at home. J.R. bookwalteR

Outside Attractive, Retina-ready interface Accurate Wi-Fi location discovery No automatic data refresh No option to search or save locations Okay

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>>> Reviews

CrazyTalk 8 Standard Turn yourself – or any other face – into an animated talking head $49 Developer Reallusion, reallusion.com/crazytalk Requirements OS X 10.9 or later, 4GB RAM, 1280x768 display, 2.4GB HDD space

CrazyTalk comes with some templates you can aspire to.

CrazyTalk 8 STandard Plenty of features, settings and templates Impressively easy to get started with Interface doesn’t feel very Mac-like at times Demands many hours to get properly good results good

70 juN 2016 maclife.com

If you’ve not encountered CrazyTalk before, it’s facial animation software. You import images of a face, or work with pre-defined templates, gradually adding to and refining a 3D talking head that dynamically responds to scripts. Once you’re happy with your creation – be it an angry painting, jovial talking pumpkin, or cartoonish superhero – you export the results as a movie to entertain and/or horrify your friends. The software comes in three different versions. Pipeline ($199) and PRO ($149) are aimed at professionals. We’re reviewing Standard ($49) here. It’s a more limited, consumer-oriented tool, but very much not a toy. Although CrazyTalk is relatively simple to work with, it’s a long way from those iPhone apps where you superimpose another head onto your own. CrazyTalk is comparatively involved, with a tools- and palette-heavy interface more reminiscent of an Adobe product. That all said, work through the online documentation and you should get up to speed

relatively quickly – and the basics of the app are accessible by way of friendly walkthroughs. To get started, snap a photo of yourself, import it into the app, drag some lines and dots about so CrazyTalk knows where various bits of your face are located, and then stare aghast at the digital monster you’ve created. Within 15 minutes or so, you too can have a kind of zombie mirrorimage of yourself, lip-syncing to dialog. The effect somewhat resembles videogame characters from a few years back, but then you’re not going to get Pixar-level “realism” with 50 bucks and dragging some handles around. On that basis, CrazyTalk is impressive in its abilities to automate motion in a lifelike manner, and it provides plenty of tools for further refining the virtual you. These range from masking and replacing the background to a kind of terrifying “teeth settings” panel. Of course, you don’t have to use a photo. You can start with a reasonably high-res image of anyone or anything with a face. The app also bundles templates, such as a clanky robot, a cat, and a couple of almost-humans (the overly polished Anne and rugged but dead-eyed Jack), to urge you in other creative directions. CrazyTalk is entertaining and intriguing, but be mindful of the time investment it needs. the bottom line. Somewhat awkwardly sits between consumer fun and professional tool, but worth investing time and money in if you’re interested in animation. CRaig gRannell

Record or import audio to make the virtual “you” talk. Now you know what you’d look like as a droid…

Tough testing, trusted ratings

Gemini 2 No more seeing double $9.99 Developer MacPaw, macpaw.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later

Mountain Duck 1.1 Access pro cloud storage using Finder $39.99 Developer iterate, mountainduck.io Requirements OS X 10.7 or later, a supported online storage account

Mountain Duck is a tool with limited appeal – web developers will get more from it than anyone else, we suspect – but what it does, it does pretty well. It’s designed to integrate FTP, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure (and more) online servers and storage into OS X itself, by mounting them as virtual drives in Finder and providing systemwide access. Mountain Duck is from the makers of Cyberduck, and while this new app works independently of that, they’re best as a pair: create a connection using Cyberduck’s user-friendly front end, then bookmark it – this is shared with Mountain Duck, so you can easily connect to your online storage through its menu bar icon. Once connected, your online storage is mounted as a virtual drive, and you’ll see this appear under Favorites in Finder’s sidebar. Annoyingly, a glitch occurs if you set the app to run at startup but don’t close it before restarting; it creates copies of your shortcuts in Favorites. Performance depends on the speed of your connection, but the app is simple and pretty stable. It’s overpriced for what it does and there are things to fix, but it’s a good start. the bottom line. An effective, if expensive, tool for connecting to online storage in Finder. niCK PeeRS

Internal storage is at a premium, especially on skimpy solid-state drives, so it’s more important than ever to eliminate unwanted duplicate files. With a fresh new look, Gemini makes short work of this thankless task, including finding files lurking within OS X Photos or iTunes libraries. Although Gemini has always been easy to use, MacPaw has further streamlined the interface, reducing it to a single plus button where folders are added or dropped. We took Gemini 2 first for a spin on our Photos library, which turned up 4.12GB worth of potential duplicates. Only 102.1MB of those wound up being exact duplicates, with the remainder classified as similar images with slightly different framing or poses – an option that can be disabled to speed up the initial scan. Files are never automatically deleted; Smart Cleanup automates the process somewhat, but users review the results and determine for themselves what stays or goes. the bottom line. Gemini makes a great app even better, but the new achievements “feature” is a needless distraction. J.R. booKwalteR

geMini 2 Gorgeous, simple user interface Separates exact duplicates from similar matches Works with OS X Photos, iTunes libraries Unnecessary new goals, achievements feature great

Mountain Duck 1.1 Great with CyberDuck Simple to use Fairly expensive Still some fixes required soliD

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>>> Reviews Tough testing, trusted ratings

Priime Styles A photo filter app that plugs into editing programs $29 developer Priime, inc priime.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later

Priime StyleS Good stock of filters Works well as extension App needs work Seems expensive Solid

72 jUn 2016 maclife.com

his set of photo filters can be used as a standalone app, or as an extension or plugin for both Photos and Lightroom, taking images on a “round trip” that returns them to the original app with changes intact. Don’t go expecting a full-fledged photo editor like the developer’s similarly-named iOS app, however. This is strictly about the filters. There’s more than 100 of them, and they’ve been developed with the aid of working photographers. And while a few fall into the “stick a vignette on it and desaturate the colors” trap that we’ve seen so many times before, filters such as the bright Americana or Tamil Pais are all about blue skies and punchy colors. An Explore button (top left) opens up a grid that shows you the effect of every filter on your selected image, a split view gives a before and after comparison, and there’s a slider that affects the intensity with which the filter is applied. There’s no way to edit filters or create your own. Clicking on the Show Details button takes you to a web page detailing the photographer behind the filter and the thinking behind their creation, and a short biography, but sadly not a link to more of their work. The filters are displayed alphabetically, with no way to sort them. Priime Styles will edit any photo format you’ve got imported into Photos or Lightroom, including TIFF and raw image files from all major camera manufacturers. There’s no reduction in resolution as you take it through the filtering process, and it handled a 20MP image file with ease. It’s also possible to edit several photos as a batch, as long as you don’t mind the same effects being applied to each one. Curiously, when using the standalone app, a loaded image shrinks down to about half of the app’s window when you apply a filter to it – something that needs to be fixed. If you like one-shot filters, there are some pleasing effects to be discovered in Priime Styles. Unfortunately, the app has some quirks (although it works quite well as a Photos extension) and has the feeling of something that’s not quite finished, especially as you’re being asked to pay $29 for it. With a few patches and some downloadable packs of additional filters, perhaps some created with big-name photographers, Priime Styles could grow into a very interesting app. the bottom line. A strong set of filters, but there are areas that could be improved and the app, as a whole, feels unfinished. ian evenden

maclife.com jUn 2016 73

>>> Reviews

Roadmap Planner Road to nowhere or stairway to heaven? Plan your journey $24.99 Developer KeepSolid, keepsolid.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later

Roadmap Planner’s collapsible panel includes an option to backlog pending items prior to dragging them into a new project.

Roadmap planneR Drag-and-drop user interface Quick Look support No support for US date format Limited export options solid

74 jun 2016 maclife.com

Visualizing the road ahead is crucial for the success of any business or project, no matter if it’s a Fortune 500 corporation or a singleperson small business being run from the home. The most popular way to do this is with Gantt charts, which illustrate the schedule for a project or entire organization using bar charts spread across a scrolling timeline. Roadmap Planner is a Mac application guided by the same principle, but goes a step further in an effort to make the results more visually appealing. The software includes a handful of prebuilt templates to get you started quickly, each with their own color scheme and font selection so you’re not stuck with the same old plain-looking bar charts. At the top of the window is a Zoom tool; the handles at both ends are used to jump into a closer look at the project, at which point you can scroll horizontally by grabbing the scrubber in between, or by using two-finger swipe gestures on a trackpad. The collapsible panel

at right provides tabs for Item and Project settings, but otherwise there are no application preferences to be found. But it could use at least one of them: the first thing US-based users will notice after zooming in all the way is that dates are displayed only in day before month, rather than the expected month/day/year format. This won’t be an issue for customers in most of the rest of the world, but to not have a preference setting for overriding this is downright unacceptable for a productivity app in this price range. There’s also little in the way of documentation available, although a demo video on the company’s website is serviceable for getting up to speed. One convenient feature we did like was the ability to Quick Look documents saved from Roadmap Planner in the Finder, making it easy to confirm you’ve got the right file before sharing it or launching the application for it. Otherwise, the software does a pretty bang-up job with its drag-and-drop simplicity. Users can create a backlog of items in the Project tab, then click and drag to move them onto the timeline as needed. Items can include a description as well as notes, with custom color-coding for each project; adding dependencies to link related projects is also a snap, thankfully. the bottom line. Roadmap Planner nails most of the big picture stuff, but leaves a few of the small details in the rear-view mirror. Maybe the 2017 model will do better. J.R. bookwalteR

Roadmap Planner uses the day/month/year format when displaying dates on the timeline, with no option to change.

Tough testing, trusted ratings

FillForm Better than OS X Preview? $5.99 Developer Vu Tien Thinh, bit.ly/1NBc41d requirements OS X 10.8 or later, 64-bit processor

BookMarkable Link to and from almost anything $5.99 Developer Ondrej Florian requirements OS X 10.9 or later

Wouldn’t it be great if you could link to files the way you link to web pages? OS X can do that to some extent using aliases, but to link a document to various disparate files usually requires a heavyweight writing app such as Word or Scrivener. Enter BookMarkable, which is designed to add file or folder hyperlinks to any app that supports embeddable links. BookMarkable gives you a floating panel and a menu bar icon. The former is for bookmark creation, and the latter for creating and managing your bookmark collection. Simply drag a file or folder into the floating panel, change any details - the link text, the app it should open with, a screenshot if the destination app supports rich text – and you can then drag the bookmark into a document. When it works, it works very well, but some features expect you to use the default Apple apps and accounts – so for example we couldn’t bookmark Gmail emails in the Mail app or drag calendar events from Fantastical. One group of people who might like BookMarkable is Evernote users; Evernote’s ability to link to files on your Mac was removed for security reasons back in 2014. the bottom line. BookMarkable is a useful app for Evernote users and for linking some document types. Gary marshall

As you’ve guessed from the name, FillForm is designed to fill out forms. The app enables you import them in PDF, multi-page TIFF, JPG or PNG form to complete on screen. You can add text or numbers, shapes or symbols and import an image of your signature, and when you’re finished you can export the completed form as a PDF or as an image. If you’re thinking “That sounds awfully like what OS X Preview does for free with its Markup toolbar,” you’re right. Not only that, but Preview can automatically generate emails and does the formfilling in a less frightening manner: to say that the interface for FillForm is a little cluttered is rather like saying that Vegas casinos are quite fond of money. From grouping objects to line fills and alpha transparency, every available feature is on screen at once. The vast expanse of icon-studded grey feels very Windows XP and makes FillForm look more complex and less user-friendly than it actually is. It’s not that FillForm is a bad app, but we can’t work out who should spend money on it. the bottom line. OS X already offers formfilling. OS X Preview is free. So… Gary marshall

FillForM It’s a drawing app for form-filling Six bucks is cheap for a time-saver Doesn’t automatically export to email Interface clutter is Windows circa 1994 weak

BookMarkaBle Gives Evernote local hyperlinking again Create bookmarks by drag and drop Doesn’t like Gmail or Fantastical Bookmarks only, not sync or storage solid

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>>> Reviews

Apple Smart Keyboard for 9.7-inch iPad Pro The smaller iPad Pro gets a smaller Smart Keyboard $149 manufacturer Apple, apple.com Features Apple Smart Connector Weight 7.9 oz

A Apple smArt KeyboArd for ipAd pro 9.7-inch Thin and light Accurate typing Keys feel a little bit dead So expensive Good

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pple’s new smaller iPad Pro has almost all the features of its bigger sibling, including a matching Smart Keyboard from Apple, which acts as a cover for the screen and connects to the iPad using the Smart Connector, rather than Bluetooth. It draws power from the iPad, so doesn’t include the weight of an additional battery. It folds closed into basically a thicker Smart Cover, complete with fiber lining on the inside for cleaning your screen. Compared to the big iPad Pro’s keyboard, it’s… the same, but smaller. (There’s really a theme there, isn’t there?) So you get the main letters at a good key size, with the most common punctuation at the edges, and modifier keys at the bottom. Typing is not the best

experience, due to a combination of deadness in the thin fabric keys and lack of travel (the MacBook’s thin keyboard handles this better, with a firmer click when pressed), but we found it highly accurate anyway, which is the most important thing – and it’s far from the worst out there. It has other issues, though: the lack of media control and iOS function keys is disappointing, and it’s surprising that there’s no indicator for whether Caps Lock is on. Plus, while it holds the iPad sturdily for typing, its separate “watching” position is too vertical, and doesn’t hold firm. the bottom line. A good keyboard cover that’s easy to type on, but not perfect, and it’s eye-wateringly expensive. matt bolton

Tough testing, trusted ratings

Tile Track down your stuff $25 manufacturer Tile, thetileapp.com Features Bluetooth Low Energy tracker, 90dB alert

Apple Woven Nylon band Apple’s new band offers budget style $49 manufacturer Apple, apple.com size One size, available in 38mm or 42mm

This new range of Watch bands seems designed to give the Watch Sport models more of a fashion angle than they have now, and they do a good job – the funky range of colors has something for everyone, and go well with the newer gold and rose gold models. The contrast of the colored ends of the band’s two pieces against the metal where they attach to the Watch looks nice too, especially on the plain aluminum Sport model. Most importantly, though, it’s a great band to wear. It’s very comfortable, and the secure clasp gives it a solid overall feeling. In fact, with the stiff, hardened finish to the nylon, it almost feels like wearing a metal band, but far lighter. That stiffness can be a problem if you use a Watch charging stand that requires the band to wrap around it, though. You can also get an odd sensation occasionally where the material catches on clothing and the friction feels just like a notification, but that’s not a big deal. It only comes in one wrist size, but there’s an ample number of adjustment holes available. If you’re planning to exercise, you’ll really want a Sport band as well as one of these, though. the bottom line. A great looking, nice to wear, low-cost new band option for Watch owners. matt bolton

Tile, as you might expect from the name, is a simple white square that you can stick to a device or attach to your keys. But the Tile also happens to be a Bluetooth tracker. The “e” of its logo can be doubletapped to find your iPad or iPhone by making it ring, but it works the other way around, too. Attach a Tile to something like your wallet or a camera, and should you lose that item, just tap the app to make the Tile emit a hearty roar. The Tile and iPhone need to be in Bluetooth range of each other (although that still gives you a pretty generous 100ft to play with), and the Tile’s musical alert hits 90 decibels, so it’s still audible even when the missing article is buried at the bottom of your purse. A Tile runs for a year with no need to recharge, and if $25 seems a little steep for finding just one device, you can buy packs of Tiles at a discount rate. The app features a “last seen” facility, showing a map of where your tile-attached possession, was last recorded. This facility extends to using the entire Tile community – totally anonymously – to search for your device, too. the bottom line. This is a neat little unit, with an audible alarm and an easy-to-use app. christian hall

tile Does what it sets out to do Well-designed app Alarm is audible yet pleasant Bluetooth range is good GreAt

Apple Woven nylon bAnd Cheaper fashion option Comfortable and solid One size (but should be fine for almost everyone) Stiffness can be awkward with some charger stands GreAt

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>>> Reviews

78 jun 2016 maclife.com

Tough testing, trusted ratings

YI Action Camera Kit A supercharged GoPro rival, for peanuts $100 manufacturer Yi Technology, yitechnology.com Dimensions 2.3x1.6x0.8 in Weight 2.7 oz Features 16MP Sony EXMOR sensor, 155 degree lens

Yi Action cAmerA Kit Exceptional video quality Software app is well thought-out Uses standard GoPro-style mount No screen or GPS excellent

his small action camera is comparable to the GoPro Hero3 Silver when it comes to video options, yet it can be purchased for as little as a third of the price. Yi Technology’s approach is different to most: the camera is supplied on its own, and all the usual extras – including the waterproof housing, memory card and mounts – need to be purchased separately. Even taking the purchase of accessories into consideration, the outlay for a fully equipped YI is still less than the majority of other budget kits. We looked at the YI Action Camera Kit, which includes the camera, a very nice selfie stick and a simple Bluetooth remote for not much more than the standalone price. There’s no screen – you control the camera entirely from the companion iOS app. The only direct controls on the camera are the shutter button to start and stop recording, a button for power and to switch between stills and video, and a Wi-Fi activation button. Top resolution is now 2K at 30fps (thanks to a recent firmware update) and the lowest 480p at 240fps. There are, of course, many more usable options, including 1080p at 60fps and 720p at 120fps. Switching between resolutions and frame rates shows that the camera really does have the potential to shoot strong footage at 2K, and even 480p if you feel the need.

All other modes, such as time-lapse recording, are accessed through the app. Press record and there’s a noticeable delay of about two seconds before it shows a clear live view of the scene. But video quality is where the YI really stands out, and it’s exceptionally close to that of the GoPro range. Colors are wellbalanced, without the over-saturation and excessive contrast that is a common issue with many of the most recent budget small video cameras. The 155-degree field of view also gives the typically pronounced fish-eye distortion, which is part of these cameras’ style. Motion reproduction is an important factor for any action camera, and here it again provides smooth, clean footage that can be slowed down easily to create good-quality slow motion clips. Low-light performance is an issue, but then that’s a common problem with all action cameras. The YI just about manages to control the noise, and footage shot indoors and in low light – within reason – is perfectly usable. Changes in exposure are handled well and the camera quickly balances exposures without too much of an issue. the bottom line. In the field of budget action cameras the YI really stands out as something solid, backed by exceptional video quality. Ali Jennings

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>>> Reviews

Osmo Starter Kit with Numbers Turning the FaceTime camera into a smart toy $79 manufacturer Osmo, playosmo.com Features Base unit and mirror, five games (three using physical items)

T OSMO STARTER KIT Kids really engage with it Not too precise in terms of placement to avoid frustration Longevity is an issue Fairly pricey gREAT

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he iPad has become a de facto tool for children’s entertainment and early years education, but if you fear your little ones are getting too into virtual worlds alone, this is a worthwhile addition to their fun. Osmo regains what your child may have been lacking through overuse of the touchscreen – real-world interaction. Here, a small mirror is placed over the front-facing camera of theiPad, while the iPad sits in a base unit, slightly tilted back. The area immediately in front of the iPad becomes the “playing field,” and through word, number and creative games, a child can play with real objects that are recognized by the game using the iPad’s camera.

You soon realize that it’s because of the speedy camera recognition that this device works well – it’s also pretty forgiving in terms of accuracy of toy placement (something that’d quickly frustrate a child if it were too fussy). In the Numbers game, for example, it takes just a fraction of a second to add up the total of the tiles that a child has arranged, and they don’t need to be at all straight or neatly arranged, Osmo just “sees” it (as long as they aren’t out of camera range). the bottom line. Osmo is simple, fast, and generally has good quality games. But, many App Store learning apps go deeper for less cost. Christian hall

Tough testing, trusted ratings

G-Tech G-DRIVE Mobile USB-C High-performing portable drive $129 manufacturer G-Technology, g-technology.com Capacity 1TB hard drive (7,200rpm) Connectivity USB Type-C Dimensions 5.08x3.23x0.51 in

Kanex Premium MultiSync Aluminum Keyboard A keyboard for all your devices $84 manufacturer Kanex, kanex.com Requirements Some function keys require OS X 10.0/iOS 7.0.4 or later

This keyboard for Mac and iOS is not only the extended kind, with extra keys including a numberpad, but can also support being paired with four different Bluetooth devices. You can switch between which device it controls with buttons above the numberpad, easily flitting between multiple Macs, PCs, and iOS devices. It’s not the first keyboard to offer this feature, but with the extended layout, media controls, and various Mac and iOS controls, it’s one of the most feature-packed, and comes in a smart aluminum body to boot (a cheaper, non-metal option is also available). All those features would be pointless if it didn’t work well, but happily, it’s a great keyboard. The keys have a springy, responsive action, giving good feedback – pretty much equivalent to Apple’s chiclet-style keyboards (though a tiny bit softer). Our only issue is that the Bluetooth switching buttons have to be pressed much harder than all the other keys, and could be in a more convenient spot. the bottom line. Want a wireless keyboard for multiple devices, with comprehensive features? Get this. matt bolton

Apple’s MacBook is, of course, equipped with just a solitary USB Type-C port, so if you want a speedy back-up drive for your MacBook then a USB-C drive such as this is your best option. The G-DRIVE Mobile USB-C is available in a number of different colors to match the MacBook. It only weighs 6oz, and is half an inch thick, so it’s easy to carry around. There’s only one capacity available, with 1TB storage, but it’s reasonably priced at just under $110 and the 7,200rpm hard drive is fast. G-Tech provides two cables with the drive – one for USB Type-C on the MacBook, and another for the conventional USB ports on older Macs and PCs. When connected to the USB-C port on a MacBook the G-DRIVE Mobile recorded a write speed of around 113.6MB/s – what we’d expect from a normal USB 3.0 port. However, the read speed surprised us, leaping right up to 200MB/s. That sort of speed proves that USB Type-C is certainly the way forward for mobile storage and other accessories in the future. the bottom line. Fairly conventional design, but USB Type-C performance makes it a great option for owners of the MacBook. Cliff Joseph

G-technoloGy G-drive mobile uSb-c 1TB of storage High-speed, 7200rpm drive Case doesn’t feel very sturdy No other capacities available Great

Kanex Premium multiSync aluminum Keyboard Comprehensive set of Mac and iOS controls Comfortable, responsive keys Easy setup for up to four different devices Bluetooth switching keys could be more convenient excellent

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>>> Reviews

Zhiyun Z1 Smooth-C Anyone can make pro-quality movies with this iPhone stabilizer $230 manufacturer Zhiyun, zhiyun-tech.com Features Three-axis gimbal camera mount with counterweight and electronic gyroscope

Zhiyun Z1 Smooth-C Amazing smooth video Two modes Confusing recalibration Fairly expensive great

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hough the iPhone is capable of taking extremely high quality video, that doesn’t mean everything you take with it will look beautiful. Even if you know how to compose and capture light well in a shot, if you’re holding your iPhone in your hands, you’re likely to produce slightly shaky and jerky footage. The iPhone stabilizes video as best it can (and the optical image stabilizer in the iPhone 6s Plus works with video, which helps a lot), but you’ll still never get it looking really professional. That’s where the Smooth-C comes in. This is an iPhone holder with a built-in gimbal, meaning that it keeps the iPhone stable no matter how your hand moves when gripping the handle. You just slot the iPhone into the cradle and turn it on, and the iPhone locks into a position pointing forward, after which you can pretty much rotate your hand around almost any way you want without upsetting your footage. It has two modes: one that keeps the iPhone always pointing forward, even if you rotate the Smooth-C left or right; and one that will turn the iPhone left or right with your hand (but with a delay, so it can even out jerkiness in the movement). Two buttons enable you to tilt the iPhone up or down. The results are just brilliant. You can hold the iPhone out and walk forward, producing stunning

4K smooth video, as if using a professional Steadicam. You can walk forward to zoom without shaking all over the place, and swoop around a subject in an even motion. When your control over movement is increased, the iPhone really shows off what it can do with picture quality, too – it seems to focus faster than making the same moves handheld. It’s especially great if you like to record at 4K and then crop in for zoomed 1080p exports, since that method is especially vulnerable to the downsides of camera shake. It’s not perfect, admittedly. Getting it set up is slightly confusing, not helped by the fact that there’s almost no labeling on the device (including its buttons), and the manual being hard to work through. Once you know what you’re doing, it’s fine. Our unit came with its horizontal angle slightly off, though, and recalibration – even using the companion Mac app, which we highly recommend as the easiest option – was a hazy process. It’s very hard to do in a way that you can be sure you’re improving things rather than throwing them further off. the bottom line. Turns your iPhone into a truly amazing video camera, whether you want to film a short movie or just your family vacation. It has its confusing moments, though, and certainly isn’t cheap. matt bolton

Tough testing, trusted ratings

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>>> Reviews

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition Big Trouble in the Big City $29.99 Developer United Front Games, unitedfrontgames.com Requirements OS X 10.10.5, 2GHz processor, 4GB RAM, 1GB graphics card

Welcome to the Night Market: pork buns, counterfeit DVDs, and the Water Street Gang’s violently enforced protection racket.

Sleeping DogS: Definitive eDition Hong Kong is busy, active, and evocative Hand-to-hand combat is always fun Definitive Edition is loaded with extra content First half-hour is dreary and disorienting excellent

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“I wish I could live your life. Just for one day,” laments the clerk as Wei Shen speeds out of the parking garage near his apartment in a sleek white coupe. The clerk doesn’t know the danger, though: Wei is an undercover detective tasked with infiltrating the Sun On Yee, Hong Kong’s most powerful and dangerous triad. Sleeping Dogs is a third-person shooter that takes place in a lovingly realized Hong Kong, its colonial history on full display. You can prowl the wharves in Aberdeen and street vendors hawk pork buns and fish skewers in Cantonese and English, tinged with a variety of accents: Chinese, Indian, American, Thai. Hong Kong’s multiculturalism sets the stage for Wei’s own inner struggle: as an undercover cop and a Chinese-American immigrant, Wei’s divided loyalties drive Sleeping Dogs forward. This digital Hong Kong is bustling with activity – side quests abound. Wei’s status grants access to new neighborhoods and allows him to persuade, bully, and bribe suspicious

guards and rival triad lieutenants. Gangsters and cops alike seek him out by name to enforce territory and resolve disputes. Speaking of combat, Sleeping Dogs’ fascination with kung-fu films pays dividends every time Wei squares off against a group of thugs or a squad of beat cops. Wei has an arsenal of strikes, counters, and grapples that can be chained together in acrobatic combos. Wei’s reputation precedes him even in combat: one shattered tibia is sometimes enough to convince foes that discretion is the better part of valor. Fighting is simple to grasp, but with multiple enemy and weapon types and various upgradeable skill trees, options abound. In a genre that typically focuses on guns, Sleeping Dogs’ rhythmic parries and efficient takedowns are both stylish and refreshing. Sleeping Dogs inherits the open-world genre’s most common niggles – a finicky camera, repetitive missions, re-used art, some loose driving and shooting – but these rough edges tend to be smoothed out by the variety and expansiveness of the game itself. Even the most routine street race or drug busts guide Wei toward new and interesting areas. the bottom line. Smartly written, judiciously paced, and never as crude as its genre contemporaries, Sleeping Dogs combines visual flair, entertaining combat, and a vibrant city in one of the Mac’s best open-world games. Joseph leRay

The Sun On Yee use a buddy system: one buddy drives while the other shoots the tires out of any pursuing car.

Tough testing, trusted ratings

Hyper Light Drifter

You can take a small comfort in knowing there are other Drifters plumbing the depths, protecting the few townspeople that remain.

What’s old is new again $19.99 Developer Heart Machine, heart-machine.com requirements OS X 10.7 or later, 1.2GHz processor, 4GB RAM, 512MB graphics card

There is almost no human communication in this top-down action and exploration game, but a few things are clear: drifters inhabit a desolate world; ancient libraries and desecrated temples stand empty while a creeping black sickness spreads through what remains. There’s evidence of more recent conflict: a race of lagomorphs driven from their city by barbarous frogmen. Hyper Light Drifter’s ruined majesty, delicate pixel art, and haunting score deftly establish its fantasy and melancholy, but the game depends on a player’s sense of wonder and curiosity. There are four regions, each with four glowing “modules” to activate and capped by a manageably difficult boss fight. The structure is complicated by the labyrinthine dungeon design – full of looping routes, secret rooms, and hidden glyphs. There’s little guidance and only a marginally useful

map. The hands-off approach to exploration often flirts with aimless, impotent wandering. Another impediment: the merciless enemies that stalk the corridors and laboratories. Combat requires tight command of a finicky dash mechanic. Thankfully, an arsenal of light-swords, firearms, and grenades is at your disposal. Weaving in and out of enemy fire, and finishing with a flurry of slashes and a point-blank shotgun blast is thrilling enough to offset most lingering frustration. the bottom line. Serene and mysterious, Hyper Light Drifter is content to drop players in a hostile world and cut them loose. For some, the thrill of exploration and combat will be enough to propel them through; for others, Hyper Light Drifter will seem needlessly obtuse and unnecessarily punitive. Joseph leray

Hyper LigHt Drifter Tight, precise combat rewards mastery and creativity Freedom to explore, interpret, and customize your experience Little guidance, no hints, and more than a few false starts The dash mechanic is too testy, making demanding combat more difficult great

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home liFe Better living through smarter technology

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> get started with…

smart garden gear Spring is here, so here’s our guide to the smart garden accessories that can help you tackle the lawn and other outdoor chores By cliFF JosePh

pring is in the air, and summer’s arriving soon… it’s time to get control of the yard, if you haven’t already. The back yard is an oasis of peace and quiet for many, a place where you can relax, or an absorbing hobby for people who enjoy cultivating plants and vegetables. However, it can also be hard work, whether it’s mowing and watering the lawn, eliminating weeds, or keeping an eye on plants that need just the right conditions to flourish. Fortunately, there’s a wide variety of smart products now available that can help out with many of these tasks and ensure that your home looks its best all year round.

the lawn ranger One of the most tedious and time-consuming chores for any gardener is mowing the lawn. Robotic lawnmowers promise to do all the hard work for you. None of them is cheap, unfortunately, but they’ll earn their keep if they save you time year after year – and perhaps prevent you from putting your back out as well. If you want to be king of the lawn, take a look at the LawnBott range. Prices start at over $1,700 for a machine that can handle around a third of an acre, while the top of the range LB300EL model, suitable for two-acre lots, retails at a cool $4,999. That kind of

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so that it doesn’t spoil the look of your pots, Parrot’s Flower Power sensor is designed to blend in with plants.

money gets you quieter and more reliable motors, adaptive automatic programming (so it modifies its schedule according to how your grass is growing), advanced direction control from the mower’s Cube 3D compass, and the ability to set up four separate mowing zones. Note that the compatible app is actually called Ambrogio Remote. The Robomow range is also pretty expensive, with the top-of-the-range RS630 model trimming your bank balance by more than $2,000, but it’s also built like a tank and includes features such as the ability to divide larger gardens into separate zones. It offers a

w at e r i n g i s a k e y P a r t o F m a i n ta i n i n g P l a n t s , a n d s m a r t w at e r i n g s y s t e m s c a n h e l P 88 jun 2016 maclife.com

Smart gardening gear >>> Home

Life

robot lawnmowers have sensors to avoid obstacles, and, for safety, the blades will stop if anything raises them off the ground.

setting up a smart watering system can be as simple as just connecting a new control unit to your existing hardware.

app. It works with Melno’s Automatic Rain Delay feature (which is fairly self-explanatory), but you’ll need to buy the additional AquaSentry sensor ($40).

Koubachi’s plant sensor is less discreet than rivals, adding a clear technological presence to your plants.

superpowered TurboMow option for that tricky “first cut of the year,” and boasts an impressive companion app that provides remote control and status reports. water world Watering is another key part of maintaining your plants, and many people already have simple sprinkler systems to help with this, of course. Many of these are fairly basic, but there are several smart watering systems that give you many more options, such as the Blossom Smart Watering Controller ($199), which provides precise control over multiple watering zones within your yard. If you just tend to use a faucet attachment for watering, you can still go smart with the Melnor Wi-Fi Aquatimer ($150). This unit fits onto your existing garden faucet, and provides four separate water outlets that you can control individually from the companion

Plant liFe If you really want to take a close interest in the well-being of your plants, you could also invest in a plant sensor. One of the best known models is the Flower Power sensor from Parrot, the company behind those headline-grabbing minidrones. Flower Power is a pretty simple option, costing about $60 and consisting of a little plastic sensor that’s designed to look a bit like a twig. You stick it into the soil by your plants and it uses Bluetooth to report back to your iPhone app with information on temperature, moisture, and fertilizer levels. Also popular is the Koubachi range of Wi-Fi Plant Sensors (between $109 and $229), which include features such as infrared sensors and thermometers for both soil and air temperature. However, Koubachi was recently taken over by the German company Gardena, and has announced that it will end support for its existing products by the end of 2018, so that’s definitely something to bear in mind. There are other sensors available, such as PlantLink from Oso Technologies, for $79 for a base station and sensor, and additional sensors can be purchased at $35 each. Plants aren’t the only things that grow in gardens, of course. You can even get smart sensors for your pond, to help care for the wildlife within, such as Seneye’s range of water monitors, which come in Home ($149), Pond ($169) and Reef ($199) versions for indoor and outdoor use. These monitor temperature, pH levels for acidity and alkalinity, and ammonia levels, and can send warnings to their iPhone app if they detect anything that might harm your fish or other pond life.

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>>> Home Life Smart gardening gear

Five o F the Best We recommend the best smart gardening gear to get you started

Blossom smart watering controller $199/$99 (12/8 ZOnes) myblossom.com

Parrot Flower Power $60 parrot.com

roBomow rs630 $2,099 robomow.com

melnor wi-Fi aquatimer $150 melnor.com

> Parrot’s Flower Power is one of the less costly plant sensors on the market, partly because it only uses Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, so you need to be nearby with your iPhone to get information from it. However, it’s a quick and easy way to check the water, temperature and fertilizer levels of precious plants.

> The Robomow is a real beast, with a price to match, but it can cover more than 30,000 sq ft, and will last around an hour from charge. Its TurboMow option can tackle even the toughest lawns, and its app lets you divide your garden into zones, with separate schedules for each, to better manage your greenery.

> This Wi-Fi connected box hooks up to your existing watering system and accesses real-time weather analytics to produce the perfect watering schedule for your garden’s individual areas, controlled via an app. The 12-zone version is also rated for outdoor installation, if necessary.

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> Like the Flower Power, this is garden technology on a slightly more affordable scale… While this isn’t an all-ecompassing smart sprinker system, the AquaTimer fits onto your existing faucet to offer four watering outlets, and you can control the unit from your iOS device.

> what else shOuld i cOnsider?

Fi nal touches For a relaxing outdoors When all the hard work’s done, it’s time to kick back, relax and enjoy your smart yard he whole point of doing all that work in the yard is so that you can kick back and relax in your personal paradise. There are some nice gadgets that can help out here too. A Bluetooth speaker is a great start! There are also smart lighting systems designed specifically for the garden. Osram’s app-controlled Lightify range includes special mini-spotlights. These are around $70 for nine lights, but you’ll need the additional bridge ($35) for your router. The lights have a spiked base so you can stick them in the ground around the edge of a flower bed or a pond. Philips’ Hue range isn’t quite so garden-friendly, but it does include portable options such as the Hue Go lamp ($100), which has a rechargeable battery, so you can use it outdoors occasionally. Philips supports Apple’s HomeKit, so you can impress your neighbors by using Siri voice commands to control your lights, though this requires the latest Hue Bridge ($60).

5 seneye Pond monitor $169 seneye.com > Seneye makes sensors for small fish tanks and large aquaria, plus this floating pond monitor for outdoor use, which checks water temperature, acidity and ammonia levels. It can send notifications to your iPhone if conditions in your pond seem likely to harm your fish, or other wildlife you like to attract.

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>>> Home Life Smart gardening gear

> hOw tO

m a n age P l ants with kou Bachi TAKE CONTROL The Koubachi app is free to download, so you can use its database to identify thousands of plants, and find out about the soil conditions they need, even if you don’t own one of the Koubachi plant sensors.

tap to plant it’s easy to organize and cultivate plants with a device like Koubachi’s plant sensor. its app starts with a garden plan with a strictly rectangular layout on the screen, but the main thing is to identify your plants. tap to add one.

the name of the rose if you know which plants you’ll be growing, you can use the app’s search tool to quickly look them up. there are photos of thousands of plants, with info such as the latin name and the moisture and fertilizer levels each one needs.

JARGON BUSTER NPK refers to the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium found in garden fertilizers. Different fertilizers contain different levels of each substance, indicated by numbers such as 10-20-10 on the label. Plant sensors can monitor fertilizer levels and warn you if a plant needs a bit of a top-up.

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leaf it to me the Koubachi app can also help if you come across a plant you don’t recognize. the app will ask a series of questions about the leaf shape, the stalk, and other relevant details, and then suggest the type of plant it thinks you have.

early warning Once you’ve identified all of your plants, the sensor will know what conditions it needs to look out for. You can then set up the app to notify you over wi-Fi of any major changes to water, light, temperature and fertilizer levels.

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>>> Home Life Better living through smarter tech

get smart ConneCted gadgets to enhanCe your lifestyle

Smanos W100 Wi-Fi/Phone Alarm smanos.com $199

>>> This home security system includes a sensor that can be attached to a door or window to let you when they’ve been opened, along with a separate motion sensor that can scan a room for movement. Both sensors are controlled by this 1960s-style space-pod device, which also houses a powerful 110dB siren that’ll probably scare any intruders to death, as well as waking your neighbors. The W100 has a touch-sensitive control panel that lets you create a PIN, and you can connect it to your home Wi-Fi so that it can send alarms to the Smanos app on your iPhone.

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You can link six different iPhones, so that each member of your family has the ability to control the alarm. The set also includes two handheld remotes that you can use at home to quickly turn the alarm on or off. You can buy additional sensors for other rooms, and the W100 can link up with other Smanos devices, such as security cameras and video doorbells. To provide an extra security backup, you can also connect the device to your home phone, which enables it to make a voice call to your phone if you’re in a location where you don’t have internet access.

Juicero juicero.com $699

>>> We all know the benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables, but who wants all the mess of a juicer? What you need is a smart, clean juicer, like the Juicero, which uses pre-prepared packs of fruit to make its drinks. Get the app and order your pack flavors, such as Spicy Greens and Sweet Roots. Once you’ve received your pouches, insert one into the Juicero and, at the touch of a button, enjoy a mess-free glass of cold-pressed juice packed with vitamins and minerals. Press without the mess.

> Alexa’s extra skills Does Amazon’s Alexa skillset have the edge on Siri Cheero Sleepion cheero.net/usa/lp/sleepion/ $TBC

>>> Yawn. Just the name of this weird boomerang-shaped device makes us feel positively chillaxed. Sleepion is preset with 12 “healing” sounds, includes a light that simulates moonlight to regulate your biological rhythms, and can fill your room with relaxing scents from aromatherapy oils. It’s designed to be the all-in-one solution to achieving deep REM sleep, and a good night’s rest.

PillDrill pilldrill.com $199 (launch price)

>>> This device aims to make it easier to track and maintain your medication routine. The base unit reminds you when it’s time for a pill, and you scan your pill over the unit when you take it, quickly recording what you’ve done. You can also use a provided cube to record your mood or pain level, adding extra information. The unit can then let family members know how your regimen is going, and the data could be really useful for physicians, too.

It’S beComIng clear that Siri has serious competition in the form of the constantly-evolving Alexa from Amazon. Like Siri, Alexa is a personal assistant technology that can be controlled by voice commands. It’s currently only built into Amazon’s Echo speakers – and more recently the Echo Dot satellite speaker/control. The iPhone app lets you connect Alexa to the internet so it can look up information and answer questions for you, just like Siri. In some ways, Alexa goes even further than Siri, because thirdparty developers can add “skills” to it, enabling it to link up with other apps and perform tasks such as ordering a pizza or booking a ride. Alexa can work with other smart gadgets, which is something Apple’s HomeKit is still only starting to do. Alexa isn’t perfect – one user reported that it reset his thermostat after hearing its name on TV – but it’s another sign Apple needs to think about widening how HomeKit is used to maintain its lead in the world of home automation.

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>>> Home Life

apple Tv The laTesT tvOs apps and The hOTTesT hardware

Binge Binge on this Plex alternative $4.99

Not sure what’s going on inside that little box? Storage Analyzer provides feedback on the internals of your Apple TV.

Storage Analyzer Apple TV turned inside out $1.99

Depending upon which Apple TV model you purchased, that little black box has either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage – but Apple provides no way of knowing how much is actually being used. That’s where Storage Analyzer comes into play. This simple, inexpensive app from the folks at Everyday Tools allows Apple TV owners to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Featuring attractive graphical views of storage, RAM, and CPU usage, Apple TV owners will never again be left in the dark. Whether it’s total, free, or used space, you’ll be able to monitor the most vital aspects of the streaming box with the push of a button. In addition to analyzing the three key usage areas, Storage Analyzer also provides detailed (as comprehensive as Apple will allow, anyway) specifications on the tvOS operating system version, device name, processor speed, and number of cores being used. Oh, and all of this data looks pretty great on your HDTV, too. J.R. BookwalteR

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We’re big fans of Plex, the home media server/ client software that offers movie, TV shows, and music lovers the opportunity to build their own library of digital content free from the shackles of iTunes. While Plex offers its own native Apple TV client, a new app called Binge (formerly Prime) aims to do it one better by reducing the user interface to a simple list of content. While that may sound like a backwards approach to some viewers, some of us just want to dive in and start watching without all the fancy cover art

and glitz. That’s not to say Binge doesn’t offer this, but viewers have to scroll through the list of content on the right half of the screen first in order to preview a title. For now, Binge is limited to only movies and TV shows, but the app can be configured to display only the libraries you want to watch. For TV junkies, there are even options to avoid potential spoilers by hiding episode summaries, along with displaying recently-aired shows at the top of the list. If you’re in search of a minimalist Plex experience, look no further. J.R. BookwalteR

Binge goes big on TV and movies, but keeps things clear and simple. It’s a minimalist approach that lets you get right to the content you want.

Better living through smarter tech

Mr. Potato Head: School Rush Adventure spud on a mission

Home tHeateR

$3.99

If you thought mr. Potato head was just a plastic toy, think again! A new interactive storybook called mr. Potato head: school rush brings the character to life as he attempts to get viewers to school on time with hilarious consequences. mrs. Potato head has also come along for the ride, adding to the on-screen mayhem with story-driven costume and part changes as kids try to keep both members of the potato family in one piece. The app includes great cinematic animation and interactive moments, and features eight different locations including the Parts emporium where the Potato

make the most of home entertainment

The rare game where losing body parts is actually okay for kids to view.

heads can grab a new hat or switch body parts before embarking on misadventures in the ocean, outer space, a junkyard, construction site, pirate ship, and more! A single purchase also delivers the fun to any iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad connected to your Apple ID. J.R. BookwalteR

SpaceRip

Sony XBR-X930D 4k HDR From $2,199 sony.com Sony is back to dominate the living room with a trio of new XBR-X930D models (55-, 65-, or 75-inch) offering unprecedented high dynamic range (HDR) 4K clarity, an innovative Slim Backlight Drive, Android TV, and a convenient recessed rear panel to hide all those unsightly cables dangling off the back of this slim, stylish panel.

explore the cosmos Free (subscription required)

If space is the final frontier as captain James T. Kirk prognosticated during the opening of every star Trek episode, then spacerip is our best shot at visiting those strange new worlds on the television screen in Full hD. Whether you want to watch stars explode or space-time rip at the seams, this is the place to find the best space and astronomy videos. Among the selection of science and space documentaries featured on spacerip are “how a Black hole Would Kill you,” “The Things that live on mars,” “Day of the Asteroid,” and “supermassive Black hole in the milky Way Galaxy.” While those titles sound like something out of a

To boldly watch… the wonders of the universe from the comfort of your own couch.

’50s-era B-movie, this is the real thing. There’s only one catch: While the app is free, a recurring subscription of $3.99 per month or $35.99 annually is required – but you can opt for either a seven-day or one-month free trial to get acquainted. J.R. BookwalteR

HiRiSe DeluXe $59 TWelVesouTh.com Although designed for iPhone or iPad, Twelve South’s HiRise Deluxe can also be used to put your Apple TV Siri Remote on a pedestal – in this case, one powered by a Lightning connector available in four stylish colors, including black. When you’re watching TV, you can even use it to charge a Bluetooth game controller.

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TECH SUPPORT & TECHSPLANATIONS

make sure you get the best quality scans possible, ensuring every page is straight. Experiment with one page to begin with, optimizing resolution and format to minimize errors, then use those settings for the rest of the pages. When you come to checking and correcting the spreadsheet files, set aside plenty of time and do not rush it and miss errors. If possible, perform a second pass of corrections, as there are usually one or two that escape the first.

Java again?

It’s crucial to check there are no mistakes in scanned docs that would affect analysis.

SCAn ItemIzed bIllIng to SpreAdSheetS I received 30 printed pages of itemized billing, which I want to enter into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis. Asking for this to be sent in electronic form would incur further and substantial charges. Do I have to type in all the figures myself, or is there some way of scanning them in? You can use optical character recognition (OCR) software on scanned images, which should save you a lot of time, but the results must be checked meticulously against the original documents. Several different apps in the Mac App Store and elsewhere could do this well, but a sound choice would be FineReader

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Pro for Mac (around $100, abbyy.com). Although this app is not cheap, it will save you a lot of time in the long run, and it’s able to export directly to Microsoft Excel’s XSLX fileformat, or to CSV if you prefer that. OCR software can be quite accurate these days, but to get the best from it,

I keep seeing an alert that I need to install Java, although I’m sure it’s already installed and up to date. All web content seems to work properly, so I cannot understand what is wrong, and cannot make this annoying alert stay away. Can you suggest a solution? Oddly, Macs can require either of two quite different versions of Java. This is because older versions of the Java runtime environment were maintained and distributed by Apple, and some apps and tools still depend on them. However, Oracle has assumed responsibility for all more recent versions, which may be required by other apps and tools. So if something does decide that it needs Java, you should have both versions available, otherwise you may encounter these irritating warnings, as you say. Apple’s legacy version of the Java 6 runtime environment is officially known as Java for OS X 2015-001, and is available from bit.ly/applejava. Meanwhile, Oracle’s latest Java 8 is available from bit.ly/java8mac. Software

Some Java apps require Apple’s Java 6, while others require Oracle’s latest, version 8. You can install both on your Mac.

Tech Support & Techsplanations

that requires Java 8 needs to be run on OS X 10.7.3 or higher as a consequence of that version of Java using APIs (application programming interfaces) that aren’t available in older versions of OS X. Thankfully, both Java versions seem to work fine alongside one another. This should put an end to those unhelpful alerts at last.

OS X 10.11.3 update brings backup woes I recently upgraded my 15-inch retina macbook pro (late 2013) to oS X 10.11.3, which has caused serious problems with iCloud and time machine. the latter has been unable to make any backups since that update in January. looking in the logs, backups start correctly, but still seem to be running an hour or two later, forcing me to restart the mac. Why are they not completing properly?

Low-level issues on a drive may get in the way of Time Machine making a successful backup to it.

Having checked through your logs, these backups appear to be running normally, and do not encounter or report any errors. They are also intended to be very large: over 20GB, which could easily take several hours, particularly if run over Wi-Fi to an already well-used set of old backups. It may be that your update didn’t install properly, leaving some parts of OS X – particularly Time Machine and iCloud – not fully functional. The best way to fix that is to download the 10.11.3 Combo updater from apple.co/1Qglsze and install it on your existing system. Once that’s complete, let your MacBook

> Problems with the Share menu When I tried to share an Adobe photoshop CC document, Finder’s Share menu was a shadow of its usual self, lacking all the options such as Airdrop. I also noticed that photoshop was no longer offered as an app capable of opening the document. What has happened? The Share menu is surprisingly complex, and some component it depends on has probably “broken.” When working out which methods of sharing to include in that menu, Finder first has to identify the file type, so that OS X can establish how such a document could be shared. The fact that Finder’s Open With menu didn’t offer Photoshop to open a document in its own format points the finger at that part of the mechanism. If this happens again, try opening the same Share menu on a plain JPEG

image. If that shows a similar problem, all you can do is restart Finder, log out and back in again, or even restart your Mac, to restore normal functionality. If the problem recurs, then it’s likely caused by a thirdparty extension conflicting with this mechanism, which restarting in safe mode should clarify (see apple. co/1p1IQrm). The difficulty then lies in identifying the extension that’s

Pro run its next backup, which may require that you leave it running overnight to complete. If that doesn’t work, your backups may have become damaged, so it may be worth checking and repairing the drive using Disk Utility before attempting another backup. Errors in Console may give better clues.

Messages deleted from iPhone and Mac I have an iphone 5 running ioS 9.2.1 and have bought a new imac running

responsible, and updating or removing it. If things are fine with a JPEG image, the problem results from something interfering specifically with Photoshop files, making Adobe products the most likely suspects. It’s also worth checking your Mac’s logs in the Console app, around the time the Share menu produced unexpected results, to see if they contain any better clues.

oS X 10.11.3. When I perform any actions in mail on messages in my Yahoo mailbox – such as deleting one – it’s replicated on the other system. I often read and delete emails on my phone, only to find that they have also been deleted on my mac. What’s going on and how can I fix this? The behavior you describe is correct for IMAP, the protocol you are using to connect to your Yahoo Mail account. IMAP servers store messages on the server, enabling you to access the same

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You don’t have permission to do that… how can I check the permissions of a property list? Select the file in Finder, then choose File > Get Info. At the foot of the window that opens you’ll see Sharing & Permissions, which lists access rights for what you selected. Click the padlock at the bottom right corner of the window, provide your password, then edit the permissions as you like.

POP vs IMAP

Moving messages to a local mailbox on your Mac lets you keep copies while getting rid of them from other devices.

>>>

mailboxes from any device you’ve configured to access your account, such as your iPhone and your Mac. When one mail client, such as Mail on your iPhone, tells the server to delete a message, all devices which access the same account see the change and the message is deleted on all of them. For anything different to happen would require each device to see the mailbox differently, which would rapidly become too complex to understand: you might have to delete a message several times before it would finally disappear from all of your devices. If you want to retain a message for access later using a different device, you have two options: you can leave it where it is, and deal with it on that other device later on, deleting it when you’re finished with it; or you can move the message to another mailbox, from which it’ll be accessible on the other device. You can also create local mailboxes to store messages, which removes them from your IMAP mail server and so hides them from your iPhone.

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unusual accents I often need to type quite a few different “unusual” accented characters. I know you can hold down a key to access common accented forms of a letter, but this is pretty slow and tedious after a while – is there a better way of doing this? Go to System Preferences > Keyboard and enable the option that says “Show keyboard and character viewers in menu bar.” From that new icon in the menu bar, choose Show Emoji & Symbols. Now, say you’re looking for the character S and its other forms. Click in the viewer’s search box and press S. The Related Characters pane will show a more complete range of different accented versions available in Unicode, including the one that you want. To enter it into your text, place the insertion point where you want the letter to go in your document, then double-click on the desired character in the viewer. The character is also added to the Frequently Used list so it’s simple to find it again.

Is pop better than ImAp when using two or more email clients? POP would be worse. POP delivery services automatically delete messages from the server once delivered to a client. So, a message downloaded onto your iPhone would be removed from the server, and your Mac wouldn’t see it at all. It’s worth noting that some email services provide an option to keep messages on the server, though. Running your own server wouldn’t really sort out these issues either, as the server would still have to run the standard IMAP protocol. OS X Server is inexpensive, but it’s not trivial to set up as a mail server – plus you would have to keep your Mac running and connected to the internet at all times for it to work.

Backing up while avoiding the cloud how can I back up my iphone fully without iCloud? The official alternative is to connect your iPhone to a Mac or PC over USB, then use iTunes’ backup feature. There are third-party tools, such as the free Syncios (syncios.com), but these only work with certain models, and their backups may not be as complete.

Tech Support & Techsplanations

Making El Capitan less moving how can I turn off the irritating animations in el Capitan? There’s no general control to reduce motion effects and other animations throughout OS X, despite there being an option to do this in iOS. A small number of apps, including Photos, provide their own control to eliminate these effects, but these remain the exception, not the rule. In Photos’ case, you’ll find this setting in the app’s General preferences.

Dealing with PDFs What’s the best way to sync and read pdFs on ioS? To read PDFs using the iBooks app, load them into the OS X version of iBooks and sync them using iTunes. For more temporary use, there are many apps which will read PDFs loaded via iCloud, including the official reader from Adobe, GoodReader and PDF Expert. With iOS 9.3 and OS X 10.11.4, PDFs and ebooks can be synced to iBooks on all your devices via iCloud.

Changing the standard template for new contacts I have an iphone 6 running ioS 9.2.1. Whenever I add a new contact to it, the default phone number label that appears is for “home fax,” which is the most obscure of all the options. each time I do this I have to manually select “mobile,” which is my most common choice. I cannot see how to change the defaults. Is there a way? Yes, but you will need to do this using a Mac running a recent version of OS X, such as El Capitan, as iOS does not currently offer any more direct solution for reasons best known to Apple. Instead you must edit the default template using Contacts for Mac. This also assumes you synchronize your contacts between your

ShAre WIth US!

> Store my 73GB photo library in iCloud? I have started using photos and iCloud photo library for my 73gb collection of pictures. photos does not let me keep my old folder structure, so I’m having to create albums in its library, but they appear in the order in which they were scanned, rather than by the year of the original image. Can I change that?

Photos is unlikely to be a good platform for your library, which is large even by professional standards, and remote storage will be expensive; you’d need iCloud’s 1TB storage plan, which will set you back $9.99 per month. Since Apple killed Aperture, the most popular equivalent is Adobe

Mac and iPhone using iCloud. In Contacts on your Mac, open the app’s preferences, click the Template tab, then edit the template, which is used as the default both on your Mac and your iPhone. In your case, select “mobile” to make that the default label for the contact’s telephone number. While you’re here, also check the address format given at the foot of the template: click its label, place the pointer over Change Address Format, and ensure that United States is chosen so that details are presented correctly. Close the Preferences window to save your changes, quit the app, and allow iCloud a few minutes to catch up with this. You should then find the field choices you made on your Mac have become the default on your iPhone. However, we’ve had mixed results among the team, with some people’s iOS 9 devices not picking up the change, though it has worked fine for others. Let us know how you get on.

Photoshop Lightroom, available in a range of packages, most based on a monthly subscription. However, even that app can struggle with very large libraries, for which a full-blown digital asset management (DAM) system such as Extensis Portfolio (extensis. com) is better, although it isn’t cheap.

Currently, iPhones and iPads cannot edit the template used for new contacts. That has to be done on a Mac.

emAIl: letters@maclife.com FACebook: facebook.com/maclife tWItter: twitter.com/maclife

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Get smart with Contacts Use contact information more effectively

REQUIRES > OS X 10.11, details in Contacts, iCloud account LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes

SMart GroupS are an incredibly useful feature of the Contacts app. Rather than manually adding people to a group of contacts, they are populated according to which of your contacts match conditions you specify. Their contents even update as you change details stored about people, so they’re essentially automatic. In fact, Smart Groups can contain multiple conditions, each looking at different bits of information attached to your contacts. So, as well as someone’s name, a Smart Group might check company names, the domain name of company websites, cities and much more.

In this walkthrough, we provide ideas for Smart Groups that can save you time. In some cases, we’ll be working with the app’s Note field, which allows you to add arbitrary information. When doing so, try to be consistent. If you use this field to list people’s children, say, don’t prefix it with “Children:” in some contacts and “Kids:” in others, because you’ll have to search for both in a Smart Group’s conditions. Also, to differentiate Smart Groups from normal ones, and to speed things along in Mail, consider adding a character to the start of every Smart Group’s name, such as “@Surname” rather than plain old “Surname.” CraiG Grannell

How to Make your first Smart Group

Get started Ensure that the Groups sidebar is open (if it isn’t, choose View > Show Groups or press ç+1). You’ll see existing groups from your iCloud account, below which will be the Smart Groups section (only if you’ve already defined a Smart Group).

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Create a Smart Group Choose File > New Smart Group. In the sheet that appears, name the group, then use the controls below to select an attribute and specify a value, and how contacts must match the two in order to be included in the group.

Complex matches Click the + to the right of the rule to add an extra criterion. On doing so, a new pop-up menu appears above the list of criteria. Use it to determine whether the Smart Group should match all or any (at least one) of your specified conditions.

How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

How to use notes with Smart Groups

Think of an attribute Select a contact and click the + under its details on the right. Note the extra fields that are available to add to it. Think of a way you’d like to group people that isn’t addressed by these fields, then click inside your contact’s Note field.

Add it to note field We’re going to create a group for Mac|Life magazine. For each contact we want to include, we add to the Note field “Magazine: Mac|Life” (without quotes). You can type anything, but be consistent with wording and grammar.

Group by notes Make a Smart Group, set it to check that the Note field contains the same text you used in step 2, then click OK. You could group friends who also have children to make the task of sending out party invitations easier, for example.

How to Be more organized

A birthday list Calendar can provide birthday alerts, but a Smart Group in Contacts provides a potentially longer overview of what’s coming up. Create one that checks for “Birthday is in the next” with a duration of how much warning you need!

Missing details It’s easy to end up with an address book that isn’t that useful. Create Smart Groups to list contacts lacking important details (email addresses, phone numbers, or both), then get going with filling in the missing information.

Where did I meet…? If you acquire contacts at speed, use the Note field to state where, when and why you met someone. Periodically create a Smart Group that finds contacts that lack this information and use it to prune your records accordingly.

> What about ioS? Frustratingly, Smart Groups don’t sync to iOS, and you can’t create Smart Groups on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, either. A workaround for the former problem is to copy items from a Smart Group into a regular one on your Mac, which will sync to iCloud and be accessible on iOS. However, there is a way to make and edit Smart Groups on iOS: go to iCloud.com in Safari, tap the Share icon, choose Request Desktop Site, then sign in and tap Contacts. Your iPhone must be in portrait orientation to see the + at the bottom of the sidebar.

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Create a double exposure Continuing our series on Apple’s Mac App of the Year, Affinity Photo

REQUIRES > Affinity Photo, images to work with LEVEL > Medium IT WILL TAKE > At least an hour

The double exposure takes its name from film: a frame of film would be exposed, then exposed again, instead of being wound on. The result: a merging of the two frames, often with unpredictable and beautiful results. In the age of digital, merging two frames is easier than ever, and with care you can produce provocative images that blend subjects, places and more. At its most basic, a digital double exposure requires two images. Add both to one Affinity Photo document as separate layers and reduce the opacity of one of the layers (see previous issues for guides to this). The result will be cluttered and lacking contrast, so we’ll get rid of your subject’s background and experiment with blending two layers. The first thing to do is isolate your subject. Often, the best results will come if you can shoot

a subject against a plain white background. This is often impractical, so use paths and selection refinement tools to cut your subject out (see last issue). Creating a new layer with a mask when you’ve finished will give the best effect. One useful approach is to vary which parts of your subject are transparent. If a double exposure has a human subject, say, you’ll often want your subject’s face unadulterated by your background layer. Create a layer mask and drag the gradient tool from the top to the bottom of your image. Make the point nearest your subject’s face transparent by setting its opacity to zero, and the background will gently fade away, leaving things pleasingly uncluttered. Otherwise, all that’s left is for you to carefully select your images; if any digital photography technique rewards experimentation and creativity, it’s this one. dAVe sTeVeNsoN

Quick look Tools Masks Creating a mask allows you to make parts of your image invisible without permanently deleting data.

Layers Make extensive use of layers to experiment with different mask types and blending modes.

History This may end up your best friend: you can undo a vast number of steps, letting you roll back and correct mistakes.

Image choices Use images that complement each other. Here, the landscape works with its urban-dwelling subject.

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How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

How to Combine two images to striking effect

Outline your subject Using the path tool and the ability to refine your selection – as seen in last issue’s tutorial – to isolate your subject. Create a new layer with a mask rather than deleting your background. The mask should sit at the top of all your layers.

Graduated masks Select your subject’s layer, then click the Mask Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel. Press g to select the gradient tool. Drag from the area of your subject you want to be more opaque to where it should be fully transparent.

A plain background If you save your image as a JPEG, the app will automatically apply a white background to your image. If you save to a format that supports transparency, such as PNG, first add a new layer, filled with white, at the bottom of the stack.

Find a background Find a complementary image for your main subject: open it, press ç+A to select it, then ç+C to copy it to the Clipboard. Switch to your main image and press ß+ç+n to create a new layer, then ç+v to paste your background.

Tweak the gradient Click the gradient in the toolbar. Select the left point and set its opacity to zero. Set the right point’s color to white. You can drag the points at the end of the gradient’s line to change its length, and the bar in the middle can be moved too.

Turn layers on/off Affinity Photo facilitates further experimentation. You can create as many alternative backgrounds, using different gradient masks, as you like. Uncheck the box next to a background layer to make it invisible so you can try something else.

Layer up Drag your background to the bottom of the list of layers to put it behind your subject. You should now be looking at your subject, isolated on a checkerboard background. Next is to make your background show through.

Move the background Now that your background shows, you can move it around to create the most pleasing composition. Select background in the Layers panel and press v. Drag your background around, or resize it.

Export When you save as a JPEG, all your layers will be merged, so it’s worth first saving a layered version in the app’s own file format. Be warned that this may take up hundreds of megabytes. For all other uses, choose File > Export.

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Save web receipts to iCloud Keep track of your online orders across all of your Apple devices

REQUIRES > OS X 10.10 or higher LEVEL > Medium IT WILL TAKE > 20 minutes

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The PDF PoP-uP menu in OS X’s Print dialog provides you with a way to save a PDF of a web page, an email or any other printable document to a dedicated Web Receipts folder. The trouble with this is that it gives you no control over the location of the Web Receipts folder, which is automatically placed within Documents in your user account, out of reach of your iOS devices and, typically, of your other Macs, too. So we’re going to create a new tool from scratch, which will appear as a new command in the Print dialog’s PDF menu. This route gives you full control over how your saved PDFs are named and where they are saved. For example, you may want to create separate commands that save your business and personal receipts in different folders, using this guide as a basis. We’ll do this using an Automator workflow, specifically in the app’s Print Plugin template.

Of course, you can use this to process many more things than just web receipts – you could adapt the technique shown here to save any other kind of printable document, encrypt your PDF file, email it, and so on. inTroDuCing auTomaTor Technically, working with Automator is programming – just not in the traditional sense of writing code. While Apple has a dedicated method for writing apps for iOS and OS X, called Xcode, Automator is its programming tool for the rest of us. Think of it like building up LEGO from instructions, putting pre-made pieces into the right place in the right way, with each brick providing an important function to ensure that the overall shape is correct. Like a LEGO build, though, get one action wrong and the whole workflow will fail to produce your intended result. Think of each action as a macro, just like the step-by-step routines you

How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

Visual guide how to use automator

Categories Actions are grouped by app or by category. Switch between the two using View > Arrange Actions By.

Actions

Workflow

When an action is selected in the second column, a description of what it does is given below.

Drag actions into this area to build your workflow. Each action automatically feeds its output to the next.

Record Add manual interactions to your workflow, such as clicking menus and pressing keys, by clicking this.

may have used to accomplish the same task on multiple occasions in Photoshop or Word. Automator workflows are smarter than regular macros, as they’re not restricted to running inside particular apps. Although we’ll build one that processes output from OS X’s printing system, turning it into a PDF and then performing additional tasks on the resultant file, you can also create workflows that act like a standalone

instruction to OS X’s dictation system, or run when a calendar event’s alarm goes off. Apple has already done a lot of the hard work for you by providing a library of useful actions. Each one calls upon the services of an app, such as Finder, Calendar or Mail, to give you direct access to its core features, such as renaming a file, setting up an event, or sending a new message. Each action in your workflow takes some input

app, or that keep an eye on a particular folder and perform actions on any files dropped into it. Workflows can also process images imported

– which could be a web address, a name or, in our case, a PDF of a receipt you’ve received – performs some actions on it, and then either gives you the

from a camera using the Image Capture utility, perform a task when you give a particular

result or passes it to the next action in the chain for further work.

JARGON BUSTER Portable Document Format (PDF) preserves a document’s original formatting and layout even when it’s moved between platforms, such as OS X and iOS.

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QUIcK TIp If you’re running low on storage in iCloud, you can upgrade to a larger capacity in the iCloud pane in System Preferences, starting at 99¢ a month for 50GB.

When creating an original workflow, you pick the actions that will accomplish your overall task and add them to a workflow in the appropriate order. You can have as many actions as you like, but each must understand the output of the preceding one. For example, you couldn’t get an event from your calendar in one action and perform color correction on it in the next, as there’d be no colors to work with. Automator will alert you when this sort of error occurs, though. In the six steps that follow we’re going to create a Print Plugin workflow that’s accessed when you choose File > Print or press ç+p. It will use the message that’s selected in Mail or the web page

displayed in the browser as its input, but, rather than sending it straight to the printer, it’ll first convert it into a PDF, give it a unique name so it doesn’t overwrite any other stored documents, and put it on iCloud Drive for safekeeping. Our workflow doesn’t need any third‑party actions, only those provided with Yosemite and El Capitan. These systems are required to access iCloud Drive; if you’re running an earlier version of OS X, you could amend the closing steps to save the file to a folder that syncs with a service such as Dropbox or OneDrive, or to a NAS (network attached storage) drive in your home or office. nik rawlinSon

How to Send receipts to a folder on iCloud Drive

Make a print plug-in In Automator, choose File > New, select Print Plugin, then click Choose. This workflow type extends OS X’s Print dialog; if you use Chrome as your web browser, press Alt+ç+p when printing to use that dialog instead of Chrome’s custom one.

Add the date Add another Rename Finder Items action below the existing one and again click Don’t Add. This time set Format to “Year Month Day,” and the other options as you did in step 3. Your receipts will be uniquely named down to the second.

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use a unique filename By default, when our workflow saves a PDF to a folder, it’ll overwrite any file of the same name already there. To avoid this, select Files & Folders or Finder in the first column, then drag Rename Finder Items action from the second to the third.

Create a folder In Finder, press ß+ç+I to go to iCloud Drive. Create a folder called Web Receipts, then return to Automator, drag the Move Finder Items action into your workflow, and use the pop-up menu to select the folder you just created.

Add the time Click Don’t Add when asked if you’d like to add a Copy Finder Items action as well. In the Rename Finder Items action, set Format to “Hour Minute Second,” Separator to “Dash,” and Where to “Before Name.” Also turn on “Use Leading Zeros.”

Save and test Save the workflow, calling it Save to iCloud Receipts. In Mail, find a receipt and press ç+p. Click PDF at the dialog’s bottom-left corner, then your workflow’s name. A PDF of the receipt will be saved to the folder you created on iCloud Drive.

How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

Make art on your iPhone Unleash your creative side by using 3D Touch to vary your strokes

REQUIRES > iPhone 6s, Canvas LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes

the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are equipped with a 3D Touch display that’s able to detect the pressure you apply to the screen and relay that information to apps. Apple designed 3D Touch to allow new gestures, but clever developers have taken advantage of the pressure sensitivity to create apps that use 3D Touch in novel ways. Canvas (Free, appsto.re/ i6S57ZS) is one such app. In some ways it’s like many other drawing apps: you sketch on the screen using your finger or a stylus and the app recreates the effect of brush strokes. What makes this app special is that it uses 3D Touch to measure how firmly you are pressing on the screen, and responds accordingly: firmer pushes produce thicker brush strokes. 3D Touch doesn’t offer all the features of an Apple Pencil; you can’t use the side of a stylus to shade in your drawings, for example. But it’s a better experience than painting without pressuresensitive response. Canvas is a fantastic way to create drawings when you don’t have more

capable tools to hand, and 3D Touch offers an extra level of interaction that makes it more believable as digital paint and a canvas. Setting up the app to make use of 3D Touch is remarkably easy because you don’t actually need to do anything – you can just open the app and start painting, pushing gently for a light stroke or more deeply for a dark one. Canvas includes four brushes as standard. A $2.99 In-App Purchase unlocks five more brushes and the ability to paint on up to 10 layers. Canvas has a comprehensive color picker that provides you with the ability to pick out schemes, such as analogous, triad and complementary groups of colors. The picker makes it easy to find colors that work well together. Tap the Themes option and you’ll find dozens of premade color schemes, too. You can also adjust the size and opacity of your brushes, and your creations can be exported as layered Photoshop files, or as flat PNG or JPG files. You can even record video of your work as you draw. LuCy hattersLey

How to Draw with Canvas

Get ready Tap the + icon to create a new project. Each starts with five blank canvasses: tap one. Tap the black circle, then drag the small circle in the color wheel to pick a color. Tap the icon at the top-right of the wheel to pick a scheme.

Start to sketch Tap the paintbrush icon to choose from the app’s selection of nine brushes. Now drag your finger on the canvas to paint a stroke. Press more firmly for thicker strokes. The sliders at the bottom of the screen adjust width and opacity.

Layer it up As you create more complex images, add layers on which to paint by tapping the rightmost of the four tool icons, then tap + to add another layer. You can lock, hide and adjust the opacity of layers, much as in Photoshop.

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Read the web more comfortably Discover Safari’s Reader and Reading List features on iOS

REQUIRES > An iPad and something to read online LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 5 minutes

The WeB iS littered with difficultto-read pages with disjointed text surrounded by flashing adverts. Articles are also split up over several pages (requiring you to click through to read them) and you often pinball past pages without fully catching them. Safari Reader mode strips a webpage of all its extraneous content, leaving you with just the article’s text and images to read. It also stitches multiple pages together into a single article, turning rapid-fire web pages into an iBooks-like experience. Discovering Reader is a joyful experience among the chaotic din that is the general internet. Reading List sits alongside Reader (and your bookmarks) and gives you the ability to save a page for later. Reading List is perfect for when

you’re flicking around the internet and find an article you want to look at, but just don’t have the time there and then. Add it to Reading List and you can view it later. These two features sit together, and you use Reading List to save truly interesting articles, and Reader mode to strip away the web grime and focus on pure text. Another way to make websites easier to read is to get rid of troublesome content using a Content Blocker. Download an app such as Crystal from the App Store. Once it has downloaded, open Settings > Safari and choose Content Blockers. Ensure that Crystal (or your chosen blocker) is set to On. Now when you use Safari, the more troublesome ads will be removed, allowing you to focus on the content. Don’t forget to turn Crystal off for sites you like, though (the ads keep these publications alive). Lucy haTTeRSLey

How to Switch to Reader Mode

Browsing multi-page web articles Here we have a typical web page on the internet. The article is interesting but, to make it easier to read on desktop browsers, it’s split over more than one page – on iPad, we prefer one long page.

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Switch to Reader Go to the Smart Search Field (top of the page) and tap the Reader icon (four horizontal lines). Reader removes all of the clutter from the page and presents you with just the main text and images, clearly presented.

Reading through Reader also stitches together the article’s multiple pages. As you read through the story, images and even videos will appear as normal (tap videos to play them). Individual pages are split with a horizontal line.

How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

How to adjust Reader settings

Change text size To adjust Reader’s text settings, while in Reader mode tap the “aA” icon on the right of the Smart Search Field to reveal its options. Use the small and large “A” icons to adjust the font size up or down, until it’s a comfortable size.

Pick a font The default font in Reader is San Francisco, Apple’s main font in iOS. You can change it from this, though. As you pick a font, you’ll see it update in Reader mode (it doesn’t affect the font selected by the non-Reader web page).

Background You can change the background color of Reader’s view to white, vellum, gray or black, to make it more comfortable to read. Picking one changes the background color but does not affect the background color of images.

How to use Reading List

Add to Reading List If you find a good article in Safari but don’t have time to read it, tap Share. Now pick Add to Reading List. You’ll still be able to read the article there and then, but you’ll also have it saved for later should you want it.

View Reading List The Reading List sits alongside your bookmarks. Tap the Bookmarks icon (top left of Safari) to open the sidebar. Now tap Reading List (spectacles icon). Here you’ll see the article that you just read and added.

Show All When you read an item, it’ll be removed from your Reading List (unlike, say, bookmarks). If you want to read it again, click Show All at the bottom to see all the items you’ve added to Reading List to date.

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>>> Create

Master the YouTube app Discover how to watch videos, subscribe to channels, and more

REQUIRES > The YouTube app, a Google account, an iPad, iOS 7 or later, and a web connection LEVEL > Easy IT WILL TAKE > 15 minutes

There are apps, there are popular apps, and then there is YouTube. YouTube is a true giant of the internet. It’s estimated that hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to the service every minute of the day. Although much of the content it hosts is throwaway, YouTube has plenty to offer as a TV replacement. There are countless music videos, clips from TV shows, movies, tutorials, and, most importantly, people playing Kraftwerk covers on the ukulele. Although it’s not mandatory, having a Google account is a smart move when using YouTube, because this personalizes the experience, enabling you to create playlists and subscribe to channels you enjoy. It also gives you access to content you’ve bought on Google Play, which you can find lurking in the Purchases section of the Account tab in the app. When it comes to using the app itself, you’ll find YouTube friendly, but it’s also a very “Google” product. The company has a tendency to do its own thing, and also to hide important functionality.

On the former, you’ll see that the player is proprietary, and so doesn’t support iOS picture-in-picture on iPad. (YouTube’s own equivalent works only within the app.) It does now support Split View, though. Regarding hidden options, tap a video and then the vertical threedot icon to access settings for playback quality, closed captions (when available), and the means to report a video for rights infringement, abuse, spam, or playback issues. Note, though, that YouTube does support AirPlay. Simply tap the AirPlay button to the right of the video’s playback bar, and then where you want the video to be sent. Having said that, if you have a compatible television, you can use the TV connect button to the left of the playlist button. We tried this on a Samsung TV with standard YouTube videos and also with purchased content, and it’s somewhat quicker than firing up an Apple TV and sending a movie to your big screen using AirPlay. It also supports Chromecast – again, just tap the Cast icon to use it. Craig grannell

Quick look YouTube for ipad’s interface Toolbar buttons The four main toolbar buttons are, from left, Home, Trending, Subscriptions, and Account.

Search… These three buttons (right of the toolbar) are for connecting to TVs, search, and accessing settings.

Thumbnails Stills of videos are used throughout as big buttons for accessing playback screens.

Menus Google’s a big fan of the vertical ellipses. When you see one, tap for additional options.

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How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad

How to Watch videos and manage subscriptions

Get started The Home screen attempts to make recommendations for you, based on viewing habits. If you initially don’t find anything interesting there, try the Trending tab for popular videos, or search for something specific.

Create a playlist Tap the + button to bring up the Playlist menu. Here, you can add a video to “Watch Later” or to a specific playlist. Any new playlists created need a name and privacy setting. Access them later from the Account tab.

Access your subscriptions Scroll up and tap back arrows until you see the main toolbar. Tap the Subscriptions toolbar button. Here, you’ll see the channels you’ve subscribed to, along with lists of featured channels.

Play a video Tap any thumbnail and YouTube will load the video’s page and begin playback. This screen also houses related videos and information about what you’re watching. Tap the downward-facing arrows to expand text sections.

Make it bigger Use the button at the bottom right of the overlay to toggle fullscreen mode. Alternatively, tap the downwardfacing arrow (top left) to activate picture-in-picture. Swipe the minimized video rightward to close it.

Manage subs Change the sort order of subscriptions by using the sidebar menu. Selecting any channel loads its videos, ready for playback. To unsubscribe, simply tap the Subscribed button (with a check mark) at the top right.

use video controls Tap the video to view its controls overlay. Play/pause by using the central button, and drag the red timeline bar button to jump to a specific point. (Note that it may take a few seconds for playback to resume.)

Subscribe If you enjoy someone’s videos, tap Subscribe (next to the channel’s name). At the foot of the screen, you’ll be asked if you want channel notifications. If so, Tap Turn On. Tap Settings to further refine notifications.

Explore a channel To further explore a channel, tap its icon/”view channel.” You’ll see the channel’s home page, and tabs for uploaded videos and playlists. Select a playlist and tap the + button to add it to your own saved playlists.

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Jobs with the team he formed at NeXT, after his removal from Apple.

>>> RAM

RaNdOM applE MEMORy

Steve jobs’ ousting It may have been twisted in the telling, says Adam Banks, but Steve Jobs’ exit was Apple’s biggest drama

establish order; Jobs preferred to work random hours and shout at people – they ended up vying for the loyalties of the board, a battle Jobs lost. But, as both Sculley and Wozniak confirmed in interviews after his death, he was never fired, merely stripped of his responsibility for the Macintosh. It was a humiliation that must have felt like déjà vu. Today we think of Jobs as a consummate businessman, but in the early days of Apple, his inexperience and impetuosity were anything but reassuring to investors. Jobs had persuaded Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike Markkula to join Apple

as employee #3 in 1977. Markkula in turn hired Michael Scott as CEO. When, in 1982, Jobs’ micro-management of his beloved Lisa project threatened to unbalance the company, Markkula and Scott simply took it out of his hands. Adrift within Apple, Jobs latched on to the Macintosh team, which he would end up leaving the same way he arrived: in a squabble over control. By the time he returned, over a decade later, he’d proved enough never to have to fight for that again.

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114 JuN 2016 maclife.com

>>> iCloud secrets revealed!

>>> Mac productivity tips and tricks

>>> How to open any file on iOS

juNE 28

Contents subject to change

WHEN THE “1984” TV commercial aired during the Super Bowl in January 1984, it made Apple a household name. The company founded six years earlier by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was about to launch one of the most influential computers ever. Yet Wozniak, after a plane crash in 1981, had already withdrawn from his role, and little more than a year later Jobs would be gone too, ousted by John Sculley, the Pepsi marketing man he’d brought in to help them “change the world.” At least, that’s how the story is usually told. Disagreeing both on sales strategy and management style – Sculley wanted to

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