HOMEPOD TIPS, TRICKS AND TUTORIALS THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING APPLE MAGAZINE
APRIL 2018
FROM IDG
VPN Install Windows on a Mac
Create your own apps in Swift 4
CONTENTS
8
NEWS
4
Apple drops iTunes Store access for irst Apple TV
6
iOS 11.2.6 released to ix Telugu ‘text bomb’ bug
BUYING GUIDE
8
Best VPN for Mac
20 Best password managers FEATURE
30 Install Windows on a Mac 52 Make apps with Swift 4 73 Get started with Swift 4
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52
CONTENTS
30
FEATURES
96
HomePod tips and tricks 77 Help Desk 86 ROUND-UP
Latest Mac games 96 HOW TO
Set up a HomePod 107 Reset a HomePod 111 Change Siri’s voice on a HomePod 114 Control a HomePod from a Mac or iOS device 116 Play music on a HomePod without subscribing to Apple Music 121
April 2018 • Macworld 3
NEWS
Apple drops iTunes Store access for irst Apple TV The irst Apple TV’s days are numbered, writes Roman Loyola
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ech companies (especially Apple) want us to use the latest products they have to ofer. They want to make money from the sales, but they also develop and implement new technology that older devices can’t support at all (or can’t support it in a way that’s acceptable to the user). Eventually, each product’s time runs out, as is now the case with the irst-generation Apple TV. Apple has released a support document that states the irst-generation Apple TV will not be able to access the iTunes Store starting on 25 May. This model Apple TV (considered obsolete by Apple) will not be updated to support the new security features will be used with the iTunes
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Store. To access the iTunes Store, you need a second-generation or later Apple TV.
iTunes Store, Windows XP, and Vista The document also says that users of Windows XP and Windows Vista will not be able to use the latest version of iTunes. Older versions of iTunes will still work, but Apple will not ofer any support, and you won’t be able to buy anything, nor will you be able to redownload previous purchases. These changes will come into efect on 25 May. In order to be able to make and redownload purchases, you need a PC running Windows 7 or later, and the latest version of iTunes.
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NEWS
iOS 11.2.6 released to ix Telugu ‘text bomb’ bug A full suite of Apple OS updates ix the text bug that caused Messages and other apps to crash. Leif Johnson reports
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nternet trolls had a great time causing Apple products to freeze recently thanks to a bug involving a speciic character from India’s Telugu language. Fortunately, the party’s over now, as Apple has released a barrage of updates that patch the issue on iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TV boxes. Take our word for it: update your devices now. You’re most likely to encounter the bug on your iPhone and iPad, so be sure to get the iOS 11.2.6 patch on your device straight away.
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NEWS
Apple has had to deal with some high-proile bugs in the past few months, but this one was particularly nasty. All someone had to do was send a message with the speciic character to an app like Messages, and the app would freeze while Apple’s software struggled to interpret the character. In the cases of Messages, the only way to get rid of it was to have a friend send you a new message. As Mashable discovered, if you happened to see the character on the Twitter app, you had little choice but to go to a non-Apple machine and block all instances of the character on your account from there. This isn’t the irst time Apple has had to deal with such ‘text bomb’ bugs. In January, a developer named Abraham Masri managed to achieve similar efects with a line of script he posted on GitHub (which he later deleted). In 2015, a nonsensical string of Arabic characters also achieved similar notoriety for crashing iPhones. But seldom have such bugs afected such a wide range of Apple’s products. The news comes only a few days after a report from Bloomberg described how Apple software chief Craig Federighi plans to focus on fewer “big” software updates in favour of a great commitment to iOS stability. If this quick ix serves as any indication, Apple’s taking that commitment seriously. The iOS 11.2.6 update ixes the issue on iPhones and iPads. On other devices, be sure to download macOS 10.13.3 supplemental update, watchOS 4.2.3, and tvOS 11.2.6.
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BUYING GUIDE
Best VPN for Mac Stay anonymous online and access blocked content with these VPNs for Mac. Ashleigh Macro reveals your diferent options
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f you’re worried about online privacy or looking to access sites that are ordinarily blocked in your country, a VPN (virtual private network) will help. You’ll be able to hide your location online and access blocked content using the services in our round-up of the best VPNs for Mac. Many people, for example, use a VPN in order to access US Netlix while inside the UK or to enjoy the BBC iPlayer’s streaming services while outside
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BUYING GUIDE
of the UK. They are also a great tool to help you keep prying eyes at bay, giving an element of anonymity while browsing the web. There are free networks available, but be aware that some may install unwanted toolbars or third-party applications, and others simply ofer much less advanced features. It’s important to irst read the terms and conditions before using a free VPN, and to make sure you know the free VPN’s limits. Generally, though, even paid-for services are cheap. You can subscribe to many for under £6 per month.
1. NordVPN Price: $2.75 (around £2) from fave.co/2CSqdrT A great VPN option for security, ease-of-use and a variety of useful features is NordVPN. The company tells us that it does not keep any logs of user activity at all, and there are more than 3,200 servers across 60 countries to choose from which is more than most other VPN services available. NordVPN ofers lots of privacy and security features to help it become one of the most attractive VPN services for Internet users looking for privacy online. One handy is Kill Switch, ends the connection if the VPN drops for any reason. It’s easy to set up and it’s quick, too, and there are mobile apps included should you need them, plus you can connect to up to six devices at once. You can get NordVPN for as little as $2.75 (around £2) per month if you take advantage of the
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BUYING GUIDE
NordVPN
three-year deal. Alternative options include a twoyear plan, a one-year plan or a one-month plan.
2. ExpressVPN Price: £5 per month from fave.co/2CSIwNF Among the speediest VPN services out there is ExpressVPN. It’s not the cheapest option at £5 per month, but it does ofer 24/7 live chat customer support and a 30-day money back guarantee, as well as a zero log policy and kill switch. There are more than 1,000 servers available in 95 countries, and a range of
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apps for mobile devices as well as your Mac or PC, in addition to router apps too. ExpressVPN also works with Netlix to allow you to virtually reside in the country of your choice to access additional TV shows and movies. It’s a solid option.
3. PureVPN Price: £1.40 per month from tinyurl.com/yclbhdtg PureVPN is fast and reliable, packed with features at a great price. It is among the biggest services when it comes to the number of countries it ofers. There are more than 750 servers available in 141 countries. It also boasts that there are no third parties involved and no logs of your activities, as it’s a self-managed network owned by the company itself. It does, however, keep a record of connections and bandwidth in order to optimally manage its servers. Like NordVPN it has a Kill Switch feature, and also ofers split tunnelling if you only want to use the VPN connection for speciic apps. PureVPN is compatible with more than 20 devices, including your Mac, and you can log in to ive devices at once with your account. Prices start at £1.40 per month for a three-year plan thanks to a special ofer, but there are also sixand one month options. We did have trouble running PureVPN on older Mac operating systems, so bear this in mind before you subscribe. It does have a seven-day money back guarantee though, so you can always try it.
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BUYING GUIDE
PureVPN
Plus, the support is fantastic thanks to a live chat feature available 24/7.
4. Goose VPN Price: £2.99 per month from fave.co/2F6D4wo This fast and easy-to-use VPN is aimed at home users who want to access media that’s restricted in their region. It ofers few options to maintain a very simple interface, putting it among our favourite VPNs of 2018. There’s a 30-day free trial available, otherwise you can sign up for the one-year plan for £4.99 per month, or a more expensive one month plan. There’s also a limited one month plan that gets you 50GB
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for £2.99, but that won’t be enough for most. You’ll be able to access US Netlix from within the UK, as well as other region-blocked content like BBC iPlayer from outside of the UK. There are less server locations available with Goose VPN, just 77 across 27 countries, and there is no kill switch. However, we found that short connection time and connection quality, as well as the ease of connecting to foreign media, makes up for it.
5. CyberGhost Price: £2.50 per month from fave.co/2Hiwz6t Another of our favourites is CyberGhost ofers one of the safest ways to browse the web, and has
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CyberGhost
managed to build a solid reputation when it comes to security and transparency. There are more than 1,150 servers available across 49 countries, and the list is growing fast. In addition to helping to keep you anonymous online, CyberGhost also boasts military-grade encryption to protect you against hackers trying to steal your data on public Wi-Fi hotspots. It works with most devices including phones and tablets, and there’s also an ad-blocker included in the application to speed up suring. Of course, that does deprive impoverished writers of their hard earned money, so that’s something worth bearing in mind if you want to switch the ad-blocker on. It can cost as little as £2.50 per month if you sign up for two years, but there’s also a one year or one month option.
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BUYING GUIDE
Vy
6. VyprVPN Price: £4.08 per month from fave.co/2CUwd33 This family VPN ofers great value for money. You can connect to ive devices simultaneously for £5.83 per month if you sign up for a year’s subscription. For three devices the price decreases to £4.08 per month. The downside is that we had trouble connecting to Netlix US the irst time, although we have since been more successful and found an easy and fast connection to the service. This is common among VPNs as Netlix is constantly blocking VPN servers while VPNs are creating new ones to get around it. There are more than 700 servers available worldwide, and you’ll ind that you can connect to
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BUYING GUIDE
them quickly and easily. There’s also a kill switch and great mobile apps to boot.
7. Private Internet Access Price: £2.10 per month from fave.co/2CTqevm For an even wider choice of servers, Private Internet Access ofers a whopping 3,340. It’s also cheap at £2.10 per month, and you’ll get ive licences for that small fee that can be used simultaneously on any device, including iOS and macOS. It doesn’t track your IP Private Internet Access address or timestamps, ofers a Kill Switch feature and lets you pay anonymously. It’s also among the fastest VPNs available. There is one big downside, though, and that’s that it is based in the US, which is the very centre of the 5-eyes data swapping collective. For some, that will ring alarm bells, but if you’re not concerned this is a deinite contender.
8. IPVanish Price: £5 per month from fave.co/2oTjJ7Y IPVanish is good-looking and easy to use, so is one of the best VPN options for beginners. It won’t help
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BUYING GUIDE
IPVanish
you watch US Netlix, but it is a popular option that is well-worth considering if you have a diferent priority such as torrents or security/privacy. It’ll appeal to home users thanks to access to Netlix US. However, it’s also based in the US, which is a distinct turn-of for those worried about online privacy, but it doesn’t keep any traic logs at all so it’s unlikely any data will be available to share with the government anyway. The good news is that it has a whopping 700 servers across 60 countries, and you’ll be able to connect via ive diferent devices at once with the same account. If you do want to use the service for torrents you can reduce the encryption to hide your IP address without sacriicing download and upload speeds. Better yet, IPVanish owns and operates the entire internal infrastructure (its private network,
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BUYING GUIDE
physical points of presence and servers), which is unlike most other VPN services available today. IPVanish ofers a Kill Switch, and ofers apps for iOS, Android and Windows in addition to Mac. You’ll get a seven-day money back guarantee, and prices start at around £5 per month.
9. Hidden24 Price: £3.33 per month from fave.co/2F7IbwA Hidden24 focuses completely on privacy and anonymity, after starting life in 2005 as a reaction to Sweden’s snooping laws. It now has a UK-based server farm that means you can protect yourself online by connecting to another UK server. It uses the operating system’s own VPN capability, so there’s no app to download, and setup is simple thanks to complete, detailed guides.
Hidden24
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We found the service to be speedy and stable, but there’s no kill switch option and you can only connect to UK servers for now, so no US Netlix. It is useful for ex-pats or those travelling outside of the UK though, as it means you can access UK content including BBC iPlayer even when you’re not in the country.
10. SpyOFF VPN Price: £6.99 per month from fave.co/2oSHIE5 SpyOFF is fast and easy-to-use, with unlimited connections available for £6.99 per month. That’s a little on the pricey side, but it is good for families that need to connect via multiple devices at once. The number of servers is quite low, at 395 across 25 countries, but you will get a kill switch and there are mobile apps available. If you’re worried about committing right away, you can sign up to the 15-day trial.
SpyOFF
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BUYING GUIDE
Best password managers Being hacked can have disastrous results. A password manager is a great way to stay safe. Martyn Casserly reports
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asswords are a pain. With so much of our modern lives based online, it’s now a necessary evil to create passwords for our email, media streaming, gaming, inancial, and other services. But because conventions difer from site to site (this one demands at least two symbols and no capitals, while this one requires a mixture of cases and a minimum length), it’s important to
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use original passwords for each account, and they need to be updated on a regular basis, it can be a Herculean task trying to remember them all. That’s where password manager apps come in. These allow users to create one master password, after which the app takes care of logging into all other accounts. Only having to remember one combination of letters, numbers, and weird symbols? That sounds good to us.
How password managers work The idea of password managers is to simplify the way you access your various accounts. This is done by the manager generating a master password, which you then use to access its dashboard area where all of your login details are stored. Here you can enter far more complex passwords for each service, knowing that the manager will automatically ill in the details via plug-ins in your browser or through apps on your smartphone and tablet apps. The managers can also create random passwords for your accounts. These will often be harder to hack than your own eforts, as they are not designed to be easily remembered by humans. Obviously, security is a high priority – as the manager apps have the virtual keys to your kingdom – which is why all of the ones listed below use high-grade encryption to protect your details. Many also feature digital wallets, so your bank details can be safely stored and then used to make purchases online without having to
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root around in your pocket or bag for the card number and expiry date. These services don’t usually come for free, but many ofer trials so you can see if it’s the solution for you. After that you’ll need to pay a small monthly fee, but we think that’s a price worth paying for only having to keep one password in your brain.
1. Dashlane Price: Free (one device), £38.99 per year (multiple devices) from fave.co/2CQuPOZ Here’s a password manager that’s been growing in popularity over the past year or so. A potential reason for this is the free tier on ofer, which gets you up and running in a matter of minutes. Once installed Dashlane can pull any stored account details you might have in your browsers, making them available in the dashboard area where they can be viewed and managed. The app analyses your current passwords to see how secure they are, and gives you an overall rating based on how often you reuse login details on multiple sites. There’s also a feature to autoreplace passwords instantly with ones generated by Dashlane. Plug-ins and extensions are available for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, all of which will auto-ill forms and login details when you visit a website. Credit card and PayPal details can be stored in the digital wallet section of the app, alongside digital versions of your passport and other IDs. There’s also a section for any secure notes you
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Dashlane
wish to keep safe. The clean, clear interface for Dashlane means it’s easy to setup and use. The fact that it also features AES 256-bit encryption, and has apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, makes it a very good option if you’re new to password managers. The free tier allows the service to be used on one device, but if you want to sync your passwords to your phone and tablet too then the Premium tier will set you back £38.99 per year.
2. LastPass Price: £22.99 per year from fave.co/2F5v5Qr LastPass is probably the best-known password manager, thanks to it being one of the original
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pioneers in the ield. The company places a strong emphasis on security, trumpeting the use of “AES 256-bit encryption with PBKDF2 SHA-256 and salted hashes to ensure complete security in the cloud”. The app does all of its encryption locally, so LastPass never knows your master password, and the Premium tier also supports two-factor authentication for another layer of security. There are plug-ins and extensions available for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, all of which allow you to automatically access login details for sites and accounts. Mobile apps for iOS and Android can also be found in the relevant app store. LastPass seem to have given its interface a lick of paint recently, as it’s simple and straightforward to use, which is something that wasn’t always the case. Just like with other managers you have access to a vault where all of your passwords are stored, and these can be changed to more complex
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alternatives at the touch of a button. LastPass will also advise you on how secure your passwords are for your existing accounts. The app ofers a digital wallet to store your card details, plus another area for oicial ID such as passports and driving licenses. Alongside the free version you can sign up to a Premium plan for £22.99 per year. Those wanting more scope can opt for the family plan which includes six user accounts and only costs $48 per year on the LastPass website, which is about £35. One of the advantages of a paid plan is an Emergency backup which means that should you sufer an accident, or even pass away, then your family will be given access to your account. It should be mentioned that, due to its size and popularity, LastPass has been the target for hackers over the last few years, leading to a few vulnerabilities being found in the code. But LastPass has responded very quickly to ix each instance and made public statements about the nature of the problems. To date, it seems that no user information has ever been obtained, thanks in a large part to the encryption and security protocols used by the company.
3. 1Password Price: £3.99 per month or £34.99 per year from fave.co/2CUt6bu Another long-standing favourite is 1Password. Much like the other oferings on this list the app
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1Password
comes with the standard vault that you access via a master password, and in which you can see and update your various account login details. A free 30-day trial is available, but after that you’ll need to move onto a paid subscription that currently costs £3.99 per month or £34.99 per year. For this you’ll be able to use the software on as many devices as you like, including the accompanying iPhone and Android apps, the former of which also supports Touch ID to log in. Security is again front and centre, with 1Password boasting end-to-end encryption so only you will hold the key to your account. AES 256-bit is the order of the day, and 1Password monitors the activity on your account so it can send you warnings if any odd behaviour is spotted. One interesting new feature is Travel mode. This allows you to completely remove certain
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information from your device when going abroad. In these strange times, this could prove very useful if you’re passing through some of the rather aggressive customs checkpoints that now demand access to your devices. The best part is when you get home again everything can be restored by licking a switch in the settings. 1Password has won numerous awards, and is always an easy service to recommend. Based in Canada too, so you know they’re nice.
4. Keeper Price: £22.99 per year from fave.co/2F7XVzG Keeper claims to be “the world’s #1 most downloaded password manager & secure digital vault”, providing its services to millions of customers around the world.
Keeper
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This doesn’t come as a surprise when you see the feature list and general polish that the app contains. You can store unlimited passwords, have Keeper auto-generate strong new ones and sync passwords across multiple devices, all while holding credit card details and other important documents in its secure vault. There’s also support for Touch ID on the Mac and iPhone, Apple Watch compatibility, and the option of using two-step authentication. Perhaps one of the reasons for its popularity is the reasonable pricing structure. An individual account costs £22.99 per year and can be used on all of your devices (macOS, iOS, Windows and Android). That seems like a bargain to us.
5. EnPass Price: Free from fave.co/2CSodje Those looking for a simple, secure solution that doesn’t break the bank would do well to consider EnPass. It works on a device by device basis, with the macOS client being free and mobiles costing £9.99 each for a lifetime licence. This is achieved due to the fact that EnPass doesn’t store any of your information on its servers. Instead, everything is encrypted and kept on your personal device. Details can be synced securely via iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, or ownCloud/ WebDAV, to keep all of your devices in step. You still have the classic features of other password managers, such as auto-ill forms,
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EnPass
security analysis of your passwords and generating complex replacements easily, secure storage for sensitive information and AES 256-bit encryption, plus support for iOS, Android and Apple Watch devices. It’s a little more hands-on than some of the others in this list, but we like the no-nonsense approach and the fact that your data never leaves your device.
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Install Windows on a Mac Clif Joseph reveals how to install Windows on a Mac, using Boot Camp, VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox
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ne of the beneits of using a Mac is that it gives you the choice of either running the macOS on its own, or installing Windows for those occasions when you need to run speciic Windows app or games that might not normally be available for the Mac. In this article we explain how to install Windows on your Mac, irst with Apple’s own dual-booting Boot Camp Assistant and then with third-party virtualization software. We also discuss the pros and cons of each approach. One last thing before we plunge in: did you know that you don’t need to have a copy of Windows on
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your Mac in order to run Windows apps? Here’s how to run Windows apps on your Mac without Windows.
Which Macs can run Windows? This depends on the version of Windows you’re trying to install, but any recent Mac should be able to run Windows 10. In fact, most Macs since late 2012 support it. There’s a complete list here.
Boot Camp versus virtualization There are two main options if you need to install Windows on your Mac, and the option you choose will generally depend on the type of software that you need to run. The irst option, provided by Apple itself with the Boot Camp Assistant that is installed on every Mac, is called ‘dual-booting’, as it gives you the ability to start up (or ‘boot’) your Mac using either Windows or the macOS. The Boot Camp Assistant can split your Mac’s hard drive (or solid-state drive) into two sections – called ‘partitions’. It leaves the macOS on one partition, and then installs Windows on the second partition, and then you simply choose which operating system you want to run by pressing the Alt key on your keyboard when you ‘boot’ your Mac. Installing Windows on a Boot Camp partition with this method efectively turns your Mac into a straightforward Windows PC, and devotes all of your Mac’s processor power and memory – and its graphics card if it has one – to running Windows alone. That’s the best option if you want to play Windows games, or run high-end graphics and
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design software that needs all the power it can get. The only disadvantage of Boot Camp is that you lose access to all your normal Mac apps while you’re running Windows, which means that you have to shut down Windows and boot back into the macOS if you want to use Mac apps such as Apple Mail or Photos. This is where the other option – known as ‘virtualization’ – can come in handy. Instead of splitting your hard drive into separate partitions for macOS and Windows, you use a virtualization program – such as Parallels Desktop (fave. co/2H4Bzvd) or VMWare Fusion (fave.co/2H7jrkf). The virtual machine (VM) is simply an app that runs on the Mac just like any other Mac app.
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However, the virtual machine mimics the workings of a PC, allowing you to install Windows on the virtual machine, and then install any Windows apps that you need to run as well. This is deinitely the most convenient option, as it means that you can run your Windows apps on the Mac desktop right alongside all your normal Mac apps, so there’s no need to dual-boot back and forth between the macOS and Windows as you do when running Boot Camp. But virtualization has disadvantages too. Running Windows within a virtual machine means that you’re efectively running two operating systems at the same time, so you’re going to need plenty of processor power and memory to get decent performance when running your Windows apps. Even so, most recent Macs can still provide good performance when running Windows in a virtual machine, and it’s only 3D games and highend graphics apps that need the extra power you can get from dual-booting with Boot Camp.
What you’ll need for Boot Camp The Boot Camp Assistant is an app provided by Apple that helps you to install Windows on your Mac. You’ll ind the Assistant located in the Utilities folder within the main Applications folder on your Mac – but before you run the Assistant there are a few things that you should check irst. Apple recommends that you have a minimum of 55GB of free storage available on your Mac’s internal hard drive (or solid-state drive) for installing
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Windows, along with a USB memory stick with at least 16GB of storage for the additional ‘driver’ software that Windows needs in order to control components such as your Mac’s monitor and camera, as well as your Mac keyboard and mouse (which, of course, are diferent from conventional Windows mice and keyboards). And, of course, you’ll need a fully paid-for copy of Windows, along with the licence number. Some recent Mac models will only work with Windows 10, although older models may also work with Windows 7, or Windows 8.1. You can check which versions of Windows your Mac can run on Apple’s website (fave.co/2oJGhaX). The installation process will also vary, depending on which version of Windows you’re using. If you’re using Windows 10 then you’ll need to download it as a ‘disk image’ ile – sometimes also called an ‘ISO ile’ – from Microsoft’s website (fave.co/2oI617M). You can download ISO iles for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 also. However, these versions of Windows were originally sold on disk, so if you still have the original disk then it’s probably quicker to create the ISO ile using the installer program on the disk. This is actually quite straightforward, and Apple covers this option on its website too (fave. co/2H4W8rk).
Running Boot Camp Once you’ve completed those preparations you’ll be ready to run the Boot Camp Assistant and install Windows on your Mac.
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When you run the Boot Camp Assistant for the irst time, it will prompt you with a number of options. The irst option is simply to conirm that you want to ‘Create a Windows 7 or later install disk’. This will copy your Windows ISO ile on to the USB memory stick so that you can install Windows. When you select this option, the Boot Camp Assistant also tells you that it will download the driver software for Windows on to the USB memory stick as well. However, it will only download the drivers for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, so if you want to install Windows 7 – which is still used by millions of people around the world – then you’ll have to head back to the compatibility tables on Apple’s website (fave.co/2th42Mn) in order to
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locate the driver software that you need for your Mac and then follow the instructions to copy the drivers on to your USB memory stick. If this is your irst time using Boot Camp then, of course, you’ll also need to select the option to ‘Install Windows 7 or later’. This will allow you to split – or ‘partition’ – your Mac’s hard drive into two separate sections, known as ‘partitions’. The normal macOS is left on one partition, while the second partition is used to install Windows and any other Windows software and apps that you want to use. By default, the Boot Camp Assistant ofers to create a small Windows partition that is only 32GB in size, but you can use the slider control to adjust the size of the two partitions as required. There’s
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also a simple button that will simply split the drive into two partitions of equal size. If your Mac has more than one internal hard drive or SSD then it is possible to devote one of those drives exclusively to Windows. However, Boot Camp doesn’t play well with external drives connected via USB or Thunderbolt, so it’s best to use your normal internal drive wherever possible. And if you have an external drive connected to your Mac for Time Machine backups then it’s a good idea to remove it as Boot Camp can get a bit confused if it detects an external drive during installation. Once you’ve partitioned your Mac drive, Boot Camp will shut down your Mac and launch the
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Windows installer program from the USB memory stick. You can just follow the prompts to install Windows. As soon as Windows starts up you will also be prompted to install the additional Boot Camp drivers from the memory stick as well. Once that’s done you can simply ‘dual-boot’ between the macOS and Windows by pressing Alt on your keyboard when you turn the Mac on. You’ll see the two partitions with the macOS and Windows displayed on screen as the Mac starts up, and you can simply select whichever operating system you need.
Getting started with Parallels and VMWare Virtualization programmes such as Parallels Desktop (fave.co/2H4Bzvd) and VMware Fusion (fave.co/2H7jrkf) provide an ingenious and lexible alternative to the dual-boot approach of Boot
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Camp. Instead of splitting your Mac’s hard drive into separate partitions, and then installing Windows on to the Boot Camp partition, these programs create a ‘virtual machine’ – or VM – which is simply an app that runs on the Mac and acts like a PC. You can then install Windows on the VM, along with whatever Windows apps and software that you need to run. The VM can run alongside other Mac apps, such as Safari or Apple Mail, so there’s no need to switch back and forth between the two operating systems, as you are forced to do with Boot Camp. These programs aren’t free, so you’ll need to buy a copy of the program you prefer, as well as providing your own copy of Windows (although both Parallels and VMWare do provide trial versions that
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you can look at to see which one you prefer). There is a free virtualization program, called VirtualBox (fave.co/2oIFpTY), but it’s complex and diicult to use, so we’ll focus irst on using Parallels and VMWare to install Windows. Go to the VirtualBox section if you feel ready for the challenge. Parallels Desktop 13 has a more colourful graphical interface than VMWare Fusion 10, but the two programs take the same basic approach. They provide several options for creating a new VM on your Mac, using an installer disk, or ISO ile. It’s also possible to connect an existing Windows PC to your Mac and create a VM on the Mac that is an exact copy of the PC, complete with Windows and all the Windows apps that you need. And, if
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you’re already using Boot Camp, you can even create a VM that duplicates your Boot Camp partition – which is a handy option for quickly checking a few iles, or running apps that don’t need top performance, without having to shut the Mac down and boot into Windows. Once you’ve decided how you want to install Windows, both programs allow you to adjust a number of important settings. VMWare is a little more complicated here, as it displays a window with a lot of settings that might seem a bit daunting to irst time users. Parallels makes things a bit easier for beginners, by providing a number of predeined options that are suitable for productivity software such as Microsoft Oice, or running heavy-duty 3D games, or design software.
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Virtual hardware Both programs also let you change the ‘hardware’ coniguration of your VMs if you need to – just as though you were choosing the physical hardware for a real Mac or PC. If your Mac has a multi-core processor – such as the new iMac Pro, which has up to 18 processor cores – then you can devote multiple cores to your VM in order to improve performance. You can also allocate extra memory and disk space, and even increase the amount of video memory that your VM can use for handling 3D graphics in games and other graphics software. Other options provided by both Parallels and VMWare include the ability to connect external devices, such as a hard drive or even Bluetooth
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speakers to your Windows VM. You can also determine how your VM interacts with the macOS on your Mac, perhaps sharing speciic folders and iles that you need for a work project, or sharing your music or photo libraries. A key aspect of how your VM runs on your Mac is the way it appears when it’s running on the Mac desktop. By default, both Parallels and VMWare run their VMs in a window – so you get a kind of ‘Windows window’ that displays the Windows desktop loating in its own window on top of the Mac desktop. However, it’s also possible to expand the Windows desktop so that it ills the entire screen, making your Mac look just like a normal PC (whilst still allowing you to switch into Mac apps by using Command-Tab).
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But a better option for many people is the ability to hide the Windows desktop altogether, so that individual Windows apps appear all on their own on the Mac desktop, just like ordinary Mac apps. The number of diferent options available here can be a bit intimidating, but the great thing about virtualization technology is that you can’t break a VM. You can save diferent versions of your VM – just like saving diferent versions of a document in Microsoft Word. That allows you to experiment with diferent settings to see which options work best for you, and then simply revert back to a previous version of the VM whenever you want.
Oracle VirtualBox Here’s an alternative method of running Windows on your Mac: use Oracle VirtualBox to run Windows as a virtual machine.
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Download and install VirtualBox VirtualBox is a free download from fave. co/2oIFpTY. Opt for the latest edition by clicking the ‘amd64’ link beside VirtualBox 5.0 for OS X Hosts in the VirtualBox binaries section at the top of the page. Once the disk image has downloaded, locate it on your Mac, mount it and double-click the VirtualBox.pkg ile to install the application. You’ll need 175MB of free space on your computer to accommodate it, in addition to the space required by Windows (up to 32GB). When the installation completes, launch VirtualBox from your Applications folder. Download your copy of Windows 10 as explained above, and put it somewhere convenient so you can access it from within the VirtualBox installer. Click the New button on the VirtualBox toolbar and give your new virtual machine a name (‘Windows 10’ in our instance) and select the operating system you’re installing from the Version drop-down menu. Click Continue.
Devote suicient resources When Windows is up and running it will behave like a separate computer from the rest of your Mac, which will continue to run macOS. To do this it needs to ‘borrow’ resources from your Mac, which your Mac won’t be able to touch while the virtual machine is running. The most important of these is memory. VirtualBox suggests 2GB (2048MB) on our machine (a Mac mini with 16GB RAM), but we’re going to increase this to 4GB (4096MB) to give
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Windows some room to breathe. If you want to do the same, use the slider and then click Continue.
Create a virtual disk When you set up a virtual machine, not only the operating system but also the applications running on it and the iles created and edited in it are stored in a bundle, which your Mac will see as a virtual hard drive. This is convenient as it means you won’t get your Windows and macOS assets mixed up, but it also means that you’ll put a large chunk of your disk out of reach of macOS. For this reason we’re going to stick with VirtualBox’s fairly conservative recommendation of a 32GB virtual disk for Windows. When you click Continue you’ll be asked what kind of drive you want to create. Stick with
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VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) unless you’re going to use this installation of Windows with a diferent virtualization app, such as Parallels Desktop.
Put of the inevitable VirtualBox can either take away the 32GB immediately or take it piecemeal as and when required by increasing the size of the Windows drive over time as your iles and range of installed applications grows. It makes sense to opt for the latter, so unless you have any particular reason for giving up the full amount right away, leave the storage option set to Dynamically allocated and click Continue.
Install Windows You’ve now created your new virtual machine – all you need to do now is install Windows on
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it. VirtualBox new shows you a summary of the composition of your virtual machine, and allows you to switch between diferent virtualized environments in the sidebar if you’ve set up more than one. Click Start to begin the Windows installation process.
Locate your installation ile We’ve stored our installation download on an SD card in the slot on the back of our Mac mini. We need to tell VirtualBox where this is, so we click the folder icon on the screen that popped up when we clicked Start and select the ISO ile on the card. Clicking Open returns us to the set-up screen where we click Start to open the disk image and use it as the installation media.
Walk through Windows Once you’ve selected your language the installer needs to know whether you’re upgrading an old version or opting for a Custom install. Pick Custom, as you’re setting up a brand new virtual machine and then, on the following screen, make sure Drive 0 is selected as the installation drive (this should be the only option).
Sign into Windows The virtual machine will reboot a couple of times during the installation before asking you to set up your preferences. You can opt for Express Settings, which accepts all of Microsoft’s defaults, including using Bing as your search engine, automatically
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installing updates when they become available, and sending your browsing history to Microsoft. If you don’t want to do this, click the Customise button and tweak the settings by hand. Next, you need to tell Windows whether the machine belongs to yourself or your organization. Only you know the right answer here, but if you’re a home or small business user, the chances are the second option is the most appropriate. Click Next, then enter your Microsoft account details to log in. If you don’t already have a Microsoft account, click Create one.
Finish up The inal two steps ask if you’d rather use a PIN that in place of a password, and whether you want to store your iles on OneDrive or the local virtual machine. When you’ve decided what you want to
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do in each instance, Windows reboots one last time before presenting your with the desktop.
Running macOS on a Windows PC What about the opposite scenario? Is it possible to run macOS on a PC? In a word: no. It is one of those ironies that although Microsoft is famed for its aggressive commercial practices, Apple is responsible for this particular impasse. Although you can run Windows on any X86 computer, Apple makes its own macOS
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software available only on Mac software. Overtly the reasoning is laudable: macOS is designed to run on Apple’s own hardware, and the experience wouldn’t be as good on any old computer. This is one reason why you will never run an underpowered Mac. But it is also fair to say that Apple creates software in order to sell hardware. The excellence of macOS is a killer app when it comes to selling Macs, and it doesn’t want to share. So if you want to experience the best of all worlds, you need to run Windows on your Mac.
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Make apps with Swift 4 Darryl Bartlett explains all you need to know about writing apps with Apple’s Swift 4 developer language
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wift is a programming language used to write apps and games for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and more; Apple designed Swift explicitly to get the fastest and most eicient performance from devices, and Swift 4 expands upon its already impressive feature set. Here we show how to use Swift 4, explain why you should, and outline all the new features.
Overview of Swift 4 Swift 4 is a new version of the Swift programming language developed by Apple for iOS and
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macOS development, adopting the best of C and Objective-C without the constraints of C compatibility. It uses the same runtime as the existing Obj-C system on macOS and iOS, which enables Swift programs to run on many existing iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 platforms. • Swift 4 makes use of safe programming patterns • Swift 4 provides modern programming features • Swift 4 provides seamless access to existing Cocoa frameworks • Swift 4 uniies the procedural and object-oriented portions of the language
New features in Swift 4 Let’s look at the new elements in more detail.
Strings String now conforms to Collection protocol, and you can iterate over String directly. This also means you can use any Collection methods and properties on String, like count, isEmpty, map(), ilter(), index(of:), and so on.
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Swift 4 takes a diferent approach for multiple line strings by using triple quotes instead, so you don’t have to escape double quotes any more:
JSON Encoding and Decoding Swift 4 simpliies the whole JSON archival and serialisation process you were used to in Swift 3. Now you only have to make your custom types implement the Codable protocol – which combines both the Encodable and Decodable ones.
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Smarter Key Paths Swift 4 makes it easier to access an object’s properties with key paths.
Mixing Classes with Protocols You can combine protocols together in Swift 3 when creating constants and variables. Swift 4 goes one step further and lets you add classes to the mix using the same syntax. You may constrain a certain object to a class and a protocol in just one go the same way as in Objective-C.
swap versus swapAt The swap(_:_:) mutating method in Swift 3 takes two elements of a certain array and swaps them on the spot. This solution has one major drawback: the swapped elements are passed to the function as input parameters so that it can access them directly. Swift 4 takes a totally diferent approach by replacing the method with a swapAt(_:_:), which takes the two elements’ corresponding indices and swaps them just as before.
Dictionaries and Sets You can use the dictionary’s init(uniqueKeysWithValues:) initialiser to create a brand-new dictionary from a tuples array.
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Why you should code in Swift 4 1. Swift is open source. Open source typically means that the source code behind a program, or programming language, is made available to the general public. Coders can then inspect, modify and deploy the program wherever they want. Apple’s Open Source page says: “Apple believes that using Open Source methodology makes macOS a more robust, secure operating system, as its core components have been subjected to the crucible of peer review for decades.” 2. Swift is easy to learn. Apple built its language to be easy to use and with syntactic simplicity to match Python. The formatting does not require semi-colons at the end of each line, and functions are easier to understand. 3. Swift is fast. Apple claims search algorithms in Swift complete up to 2.6 times faster than Objective-C and up to 8.4 times faster than Python 2.7. 4. Swift is safe. When you work with the language, you shouldn’t come across any unsafe code and modern programming conventions help keep required security in your apps.
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5. Swift is familiar. If you’ve developed software before, you’ll ind Swift’s syntax and concepts closely resemble those you already use. 6. Playgrounds. Swift 4 comes with a feature called Playgrounds, where Swift 4 programmers can write their code and execute it to see the results immediately. 7. Swift is the future of Apple development. 8. Swift is enterprise-ready. You can use Swift’s code on Linux (Apple provides pre-built Ubuntu binaries) and Android. That’s great for developers creating client/server solutions. 9. Swift is constantly improving. Swift has been in use for more than three years, and it continues to evolve with every update. We’re likely to hear more developments at WWDC 2018. Since Swift 4 has come into play, the compiled binary iles size has been changed, which has resulted in the decrease of app sizes; a mobile application used to weigh 20 MB, for example, and in the newest Swift version it will take around 17MB. And there has been bug ixing, and the language has become faster. 10. Swift’s memory is managed. Developers do not have to manage memory allocations: variables are initialised before use, arrays and integers are checked for overlow and memory is managed
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automatically. This makes the Swift programming language safer to use for developers who aren’t quite as experienced.
How to get started with Swift 4 In order to develop apps for iOS, you will need a Mac and a piece of software called Xcode. Follow the steps below to get started: • Open the Mac App Store on your Desktop • Search for ‘Xcode’ in the search bar • Click ‘Get’ next to the Xcode icon
Online compilers: There are lots of online compilers available that will help you learn and execute Swift code, but most of them are still geared towards Swift 3. The only compiler that supports Swift 4 can be found at fave.co/2tkfk2x.
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How to write a simple App in Swift Open Xcode, and select File > New > Project. Then choose a suitable template: in our case we will be using a Single View App.
Fill in the details as required (just put your own name for Organization Name if you don’t work for a company). The Organization Identiier is usually your company’s URL in reverse order. Select the Language as Swift and tap Next. Select the location where you want to create your project and you’re done. Xcode will create a project for you at your desired location. Upon creation of the project you will be presented with the screen at the top of the next page. We will be developing an app to show the text “Hello world” on the screen along with the current date, with the background colour set to grey.
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Go to the ‘Main.storyboard’ ile in the left pane. Drag and drop a label from the bottom-right corner on to the view and set its text to ‘Hello World’ in the top-right corner. Now select View in the left pane and set the background colour to light grey. Run the app by clicking the play button in the top-left corner. (And make sure an appropriate choice of iPhone simulator is selected to the right of the play button: in our case it’s iPhone 8 Plus. See opposite screen.) Now double-click ‘viewcontroller.m’. It will open in a separate window. Now select the Label in the storyboard by right-clicking and drag to ‘viewcontroller.m’ to create an outlet for the label. Outlets are used to access the controls in storyboard in our code. When the user drag and drops an outlet, it will ask for the outlet name. Enter ‘label’.
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Now copy and paste the following code in the viewDidLoad() method of ‘viewcontroller.m’. let date = Date() let formatter = DateFormatter() formatter.dateFormat = “dd.MM.yyyy” // setting the date format let result = formatter.string(from: date) self.label.text = “Hello World “ + result Your code should look like the screenshot at the top of the following page. When you tap the run (play) button the app builds, the simulator is launched and our app is installed on the simulator, after which the app opens and it shows us the screen below with “Hello World!” and the current date. We have successfully created our irst iOS app using Swift.
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(If the text inside the label crops, increase the width of the label by dragging the edges.)
More advanced Swift 4 methods We’ve made a simple app. Now let’s move on to some methods and code snippets you can use in your own app projects.
Printing ‘Hello World’ in Swift print(“Hello, world!”)
Deining Variables Use ‘let’ to make a constant and ‘var’ to deine a variable. The value of a constant cannot be changed
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once assigned; the value of a variable will change. User don’t always have to write the type explicitly. Providing a value when you create a constant or variable lets the compiler infer its type. let constVar = 42 var numberVar = 27 User can also specify the type: var numberVar: Int = 27
Comments in Swift Comments in Swift can be of two types. Single line: //This is a comment Multiple-line comments: /* This is a Multiline comment */
Decision-making in Swift The syntax of an if statement in Swift 4 is as follows: if boolean_expression { /* statement(s) will execute if the boolean expression is true */ }
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For example:
The syntax of an if...else statement in Swift 4 is as follows: if boolean_expression { /* statement(s) will execute if the boolean expression is true */ } else { /* statement(s) will execute if the boolean expression is false */ } For example:
The syntax of an if...else if...else statement in Swift 4 is as follows:
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if boolean_expression_1 { /* Executes when the boolean expression 1 is true */ } else if boolean_expression_2 { /* Executes when the boolean expression 2 is true */ } else if boolean_expression_3 { /* Executes when the boolean expression 3 is true */ } else { /* Executes when the none of the above condition is true */ } For example:
Switch statement Following is generic syntax of a switch statement in Swift 4. Here if fall through is used then it will continue with the execution of the next case and then come out of the Switch statement.
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Switch expression { case expression1 : statement(s) fallthrough /* optional */ case expression2, expression3 : statement(s) fallthrough /* optional */ default : /* Optional */ statement(s); } For example:
Arrays Create arrays and dictionaries using square brackets, and access their elements by writing the index or key inside the brackets. The following line creates an array. var arrayList = [“Apple”, “Mango”, “Banana”, “Grapes”]
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To access and modify the second element of an array we can directly write: arrayList[1] = “Watermelon” To create an empty array, use the initialiser syntax. var emptyArray = [String]() emptyArray = []
Dictionaries var occupations = [“Steve”: “Captain”, “Kate”: “Mechanic”,] To access and modify any value for a dictionary we can directly write: occupations[“Steve”] = “Engineer” To create an empty dictionary, use the initialiser syntax. occupations = [:]
Sets Sets in Swift are similar to array but they only contain unique values. ar a : Set = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0] Swift also introduces the Optionals type, which handles the absence of a value. Optionals say
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either “there is a value, and it equals x” or “there isn’t a value at all”. You can deine an Optional with ‘?’ or ‘!’ var myString: String? ‘?’ means the value can be present or absent. ‘!’ means the value can be nil initially, but in future it has to have a value, or it will throw a compiler error. No sign means the variable is not optional and it has to be assigned a value, or it will throw a compiler error.
Functions Following is the syntax to create a function in Swift: the inputNum is the parameter name followed by the DataType, ‘createStr’ is the name of the function. ‘-> String’ denotes the return type. The function takes Integer as input and converts it into String and returns it. func createStr(Number inputNum : Int) -> String { return “\(inputNum)” } The function can be called using the below syntax: createStr(Number: 345)
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Classes Following is the syntax to create a Class Car. It has an optional member variable numOfPersons and a function displayDetails() class Car { var numOfPersons : Int? func displayDetails() { } } The class instance can be created using the line below: var myCar : Car = Car() The ‘numOfPersons’ variable can be initialised as below: myCar.numOfPersons = 5
Closures in Swift Closures are anonymous functions organized as blocks and called anywhere like C and Objective-C languages. Closures can be assigned to variables. Following is the syntax of a closure in Swift. { SDUDPHWHUV î! UHWXUQ W\SH LQ statements }
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Below is a simple example. Here we are assigning a closure to the variable scname. Then on the next line we are calling the closure by calling the variable name.
Here’s another example of closure which takes two variables as input and divides them.
Extensions In Swift we can extend the functionality of an existing class, structure or enumeration type with the help of extensions. Type functionality can be added with extensions but overriding the functionality is not possible this way. In the below example we have a class car and we are adding an extension to the car to add another property to it. While accessing the speed property, it can be accessed directly as if it belongs to the class.
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Tuples The tuple type is used to group multiple values in a single compound value. Here’s the syntax of Tuple declaration: var TupleName = (Value1, value2,… any number of values) Here’s a Tuple declaration: var error501 = (501, “Not implemented”)
Best places to learn more about Swift 4 There are a number of resources out there to help you start building apps using Swift 4. Some of the best options are listed below:
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Apple Documentation: The best place to learn Swift 4 is Apple’s oicial documentation for Swift at fave.co/2oHZlpY. eBook: Apple has released an up-to-date eBook which is extremely useful when learning Swift 4: The Swift Programming Language (Swift 4.0.3). It’s available at fave.co/2oIMZho. Udemy: The biggest online learning resource has several courses on iOS development with Swift 4. I have listed a couple of the best ones below: • iOS 11 & Swift 4: The Complete iOS App Development Bootcamp. Available at fave.co/2H67viG. • iOS 11 & Swift 4: From Beginner to Paid Professional. Available at fave.co/2H3N3PA. Swift Programming in Easy Steps: This book, by the author of this article, will teach you how to build iOS apps from scratch and it’s fully illustrated too. You can get a copy at fave.co/2tka8vz. We’ve got more resources in the next article.
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Get started with Swift 4 Want to learn Apple’s Swift development language? Help is at hand with these handy online resources. Nik Rawlinson reports
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pple’s Swift is billed by the tech giant as a programming language that “lets everyone build amazing apps”. Now, that may be true, but don’t expect to dive into Swift coding today and write the next Candy Crush tomorrow. As with any language, spoken or coded, learning it takes both time and efort. Help is at hand, though, with both free and commercial resources available online covering the
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language in depth. Whatever your ability, you’ll ind plenty here to advance your skills. Before you get started, Swift 4.0.3 is available to download at fave.co/2tkLOto, and you can get it along with Xcode 9.2 and start learning the new language straight away. You should be careful to check which version of Swift and Xcode your training materials are using, because there may be some variations.
Getting started Then you’ll want to start at the source with Apple’s dedicated Swift documentation (fave.co/2oHZlpY). You don’t need a Developer account to access the iles or to download Xcode from the Mac App Store (fave.co/1OW6T1K), so you can get started.
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The Developer documentation includes sample code, links to the reference material and, most useful for anyone switching from another language, videos from the Swift 4.0 update at 2017’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Apple’s iBooks Put your commute to good use by working your way through Apple’s free Swift programming materials available from the iBooks Store. There you will ind books including The Swift Programming Language, which ofers a tour of the language, a details guide to each feature and a formal reference for the language. The Everyone Can Code is available for free there too. Apple has said that the curriculum, which is primarily designed for high school and college students but is accessible to all, will teach students to “code and design fully functional apps, gaining critical job skills in software development and information technology.”
Try an online course Lynda If you need to get started with Swift as quickly as possible, check out Lynda.com’s Swift 4 Essential Training at fave.co/2oIoFwg. There are plenty of other Swift courses available at Lynda.com too, and the diference between this site and Udemy is that, with Udemy you pay to download individual courses, whereas Lynda.com
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ofers a monthly subscription that gives you access to unlimited courses, so you can try lots of them. Lynda.com charges between £12.95 a month and £18.95 per month depending on the level of service you want, and once you’ve paid you can access all of its courses, whatever the subject, alongside this series of Swift lessons. If you’re not sure whether you’d suit this kind of tutoring, try out a free preview account irst.
Tutsplus If the Lynda courses are too expensive, check out Tutsplus (fave.co/2H7E0NL), where you can buy courses for $9 (around £6.50).
Podcasts If all of this solo study is sending you stir crazy, sign up to a programming podcast. iDeveloper focuses entirely on iOS and macOS development, discussing tools and techniques, and ofering tips and advice. If you’re serious about making some money from your work, it also concerns itself with the business side of selling your apps. The content is chatty and engaging, but can get technical at times, so if you ind it going above your head, hang in there and assimilate as much as you can – at least you’ll be getting familiar with terms and phrases used within the realm of programming. You can preview individual episodes and read a synopsis of each one at the podcast home page.
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HomePod tips and tricks Your HomePod can do more than pump out music. More than you may realize. Michael Simon and Jason Cross report
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pple’s HomePod is primarily a music playback machine. And it’s got Siri, which means it can do obvious things like set timers, take notes, and tell you what the weather is going to be tomorrow. But it can do more. It’s no Echo or Google Home in its lexibility, but HomePod has a few neat tricks up its... um... power cord. Here are some of the things you might not know it can do.
1. Precisely control the volume You know you can say “turn the volume up” or “volume down”, but you can be exact if you want to. Try saying “turn the volume to 65 percent”.
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The same principle applies to music tracks. “Skip forward” and “next track” are obvious commands, but to can also say, “Skip forward 42 seconds” to get past the boring intro or zoom straight to the chorus.
2. Remember a tune you’ve forgotten Don’t remember One Foot in the Grave is the name of Beck’s irst album? No problem, you can simply say, “Play Beck’s irst album” to hear it. Or if you want to hear a song that escapes you, try being generic. For example, “Play that Run DMC song with Aerosmith” will cue up Walk This Way.
3. Listen by Activity, Mood, or Genre Apple Music maintains curated playlists organized by activities and moods. It’s a great way to discover new music and queue up tracks that it what you’re doing in your home. Try saying, “Play some cardio music” or “Play chill music”. Okay, so maybe you knew you could do that. But did you know you could use these in combination? Try “Play lively indie music,” for example. Here’s a list of activities and moods to get you started:
Activities • Bedtime • Break Up • Cardio • Cooking • Dancing • Dinner Party
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• Meditating • Party • Studying • Waking Up
Moods • Afectionate • Blue • Chill • Lively • Safe for Kids • Soothing • Unwind • Upbeat • Warm • Whimsical
Genres • Alternative • Blues • Classic Rock • Classical • Country • Dance • Electronic • Hard Rock • Hip-Hop • Indie • Jazz • Kids • Latino • Metal
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• Oldies • Pop • R&B • Reggae • Rock • Soul • World There are lots of subgenres of music, too, such as k-pop, Chicago blues, smooth jazz, and zydeco.
4. Turn Explicit Content on or of Have children in the house? Maybe you don’t want them to be able to play songs with a bunch of inappropriate words in them. You can turn explicit content on or of in the Home app. Here’s how: • Open the Home app • Select your HomePod in the Favourite Accessories list • Long-press or 3D touch on it • Tap Details • Scroll down to Music & Podcasts • Toggle Allow Explicit Content
5. Rescue your music recommendations It’s annoying that HomePod doesn’t recognize diferent voices. Even if you turned of Personal Requests, your family members can still inadvertently mess up your music recommendations. Fortunately, you can turn of music recommendations on your HomePod, so
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the songs played there won’t afect the ‘For You’ recommendations on your Apple Music account. It’s not ideal, but it may be your best option. • Open the Home app • Select your HomePod in the Favourite Accessories list • Long-press or 3D touch on it • Tap Details • Scroll down to Music & Podcasts • Toggle Use Listening History
6. Use HomePod as a speakerphone You can’t use Siri to start a phone call with HomePod. That’s annoying. But you can use
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HomePod as a very sophisticated speakerphone. It’s not the most elegant solution, but when you’re in a call or about to accept one, simply tap the ‘audio’ button and choose HomePod as the source. It’s the same as you would do to use a Bluetooth headset.
7. Change Siri’s voice Siri’s voice is female by default, but you can change the accent and the gender inside the Home app. Just head over to the Siri Voice tab and you can select a new accent (American, Australian, British)
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or change the gender from female to male. For further details see page 114.
8. Find a good place to eat Siri on HomePod is missing a lot of what makes Alexa and Google Assistant so good on those other home speakers. But it’s surprisingly helpful in one area: restaurant reviews. Just ask Siri to “Find a good pizza place near me”, or “What’s the best sushi restaurant in Tunbridge Wells”, and it will oblige, even telling you far away it is from your home and how many starts it gets in Yelp.
9. Add a song to a playlist While you can’t create new playlists on HomePod, you can add songs to ones that already exist. Just ask Siri to “Add this song to my Running playlist”, and it will appear on all of your devices. However, if you want to delete a song you’ll need to head to Apple Music on your device to do it.
10. Check on the timer One of the few tasks Siri does well on HomePod (aside from playing music) is setting timers. But after you set it, you don’t have to wait until it goes of. Just ask, “Hey Siri, how much time is left on my timer”, and it will tell you.
11. Turn on VoiceOver and Touch Accommodations Just like iOS, HomePod has built-in features that will read the touchpad controls aloud for people
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with impaired vision or tweak the sensitivity. To turn it on, head over to the Home app and select the Accessibility tab. Inside you’ll two options for Voice Over and Touch Accommodations. There are a few settings inside each, including speaking rate, hold duration, and tap assistance.
12. Limit the volume Just like iTunes and Apple Music, HomePod includes a feature that will normalize the volume across songs to avoid inconsistent levels when listening to a playlist. Just go to the HomePod settings in the Home app and turn the Sound Check toggle green.
13. Pick up where you left of Whenever you stop playing a song on HomePod it’s not actually of, it’s just paused. So when you want to start playing music again, just say, “Hey Siri, play,” and it will begin playing from the point where you stopped it last time.
14. Find out what’s playing on the radio When you ask Siri to the name of the song that’s playing, it will tell you, as well as the artists, album, release date, and lots of other information about it. However, when you ask it to identify a song that’s playing on another source, it’ll tell you that it’s only able to ID songs it’s playing. That’s not entirely true. Instead of asking, “Hey Siri, what song is this”, say, “Hey Siri, Shazam this”, and it will listen to whatever’s playing and tell its name.
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15. Add a tone to Siri Siri on HomePod is remarkable good at hearing commands, but if you want to know that Siri has responded, you can add an audible tone just like on your iPhone. Inside the Home app there’s a toggle for ‘Sound when using Siri’, which will play a bass note when it starts listening.
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Help Desk Glenn Fleishman answers your most vexing Mac problems
IS iCLOUD REQUIRED WHEN YOU UPGRADE TO IOS 11? Safari for macOS lets you view the kind of data cached locally by websites in your browser. Select Safari > Preferences >Privacy, and then click M to remove them, or even go nuclear and click Remove All. Apple encourages iOS and macOS users to take advantage of its iCloud services, which vary in cost. A lot of the services rely on iCloud storage, and they’re free…until you exceed the paltry 5GB of included service, at which point you pay monthly from 79p for 50GB to £6.99 for 2TB.
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That’s not a terrible lot, but 5GB doesn’t even cover the capacity of any of the iOS devices Apple sells. Other services, like iTunes Match (£21.99 per year) are not quite iCloud features, but rely on it. Macworld reader Susan is still running iOS 10 and has apprehensions about upgrading to 11. She writes, “The information I ind on iOS 11 suggests that it will automatically log me in to various things I do not use. Apple seems to be pushing a lot of features I am leery about, especially too much storage of things in iCloud.” Fortunately, you’re not forced to use anything. Apple doesn’t turn on iCloud features by default, even though it ofers them. You may be thinking of a feature new to iOS 11, Quick Start, which is often called automatic setup. With that feature, you bring two iOS devices close together, one you’re using as the template and one you’re setting up. With a combination of Bluetooth to exchange some information and a visual pattern that requires the camera to complete, the transfer process starts. It’s much more streamlined than other methods, and it brings most or all of your settings, including iCloud. You can always review your iCloud service settings in iOS via Settings > account name > iCloud, and make sure there’s nothing switched on that you didn’t mean to enable.
HOW TO SET OFFLINE ACCESS FOR SAFARI’S READING LIST FEATURE Macworld reader Gavin, was on a cruise with his wife when she asked him, an IT professional, for
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help getting Safari’s Reading List to work offline, as they had no internet connectivity. She’d saved articles to it to read later. She wasn’t missing anything. Despite seemingly having all the right settings enabled to sync her Reading List across all the devices connected to her iCloud account, her marked items didn’t show up and weren’t available. What gives? Turns out, Safari for both macOS and iOS have a setting you may never have noticed, since we so often have internet access (and perhaps so rarely consult Reading List). In Safari for macOS, choose Safari > Preferences and then click Advanced. You can then check next to the Reading List label Save Articles for Offline Reading. If that option isn’t checked, you can also view the Reading List in the sidebar, right-click an item, and choose Save Offline. With iOS Safari, you navigate to Settings > Safari and
Safari in macOS lets you mark a preference or select articles one at a time for offline reading
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swipe down to the bottom, and then tap the switch to on for Automatically Save Offline. If you have that option disabled, which it is by default, you’re prompted the irst time you choose Add to Reading List from the Sharing sheet whether or not to save items from then for offline reading automatically.
HOW TO SIMULATE THE MAC’S DESKTOP FOLDER TO GET AROUND iCLOUD CONTINUOUS SYNC With macOS 10.12 Sierra, Apple introduced a way to offload some of your Mac’s storage dynamically using iCloud. The Documents & Desktop option had the most impact, in that it could not just sync your home folder’s Documents and Desktop folders to iCloud and make them available through iOS, iCloud.com, and other Macs, but also delete the least-used and oldest documents from your Mac if local storage was under pressure. The copy kept in iCloud would be available on demand, so accessing an infrequent document retrieves it. Macworld reader Chris is running up against this feature, because they use their Desktop for their active working documents. “Files I’m working on go there until inished, and then are moved to their various folders,” he writes. However, he often works with large Photoshop iles. This leads to excessive syncing. Chris would prefer to only sync his Documents folder, and wonders if there’s a way to do so. Unfortunately, Apple pairs Documents and the Desktop together. Even if you use the Finder spaces
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Create a faux Desktop folder to avoid syncing with iCloud
feature to create multiple desktops, macOS still stores the actual items in the same Desktop folder. You could switch to another syncing service, like Dropbox, which only syncs the Dropbox folder, and store your documents there. You could also use a regular folder to simulate what you rely on with the Desktop through these steps: 1. Create a new folder and place it anywhere. 2. Name it something identiiable, like ‘Working Desktop’. 3. Select View > Icons for a Desktop-like icon view. 4. Select Show > Show View Options, and set a background colour or picture.
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5. Add the folder to your sidebar so it can be reached from any open or save dialog. 6. Click the green full-screen button on the folder’s window in the Finder. This might be close enough to what you need to let you keep using Desktop & Documents for synchronization without the constant Internet ile updates to iCloud.
ANOTHER WARNING: DON’T CONVERT YOUR TIME MACHINE VOLUME FROM HFS+ TO APFS Months after the release of macOS 10.13 High Sierra, folks are still having problems with limitations of the new Apple File System (APFS) format required for SSDs that run High Sierra, and which you can optionally upgrade other drives to use. That includes your columnist, who bifed a Time Machine question that’s now updated for accuracy. Time Machine can work with APFS volumes, but the shape looks like this: • Time Machine can archive iles from both HFS+ and APFS volumes • Time Machine volumes must be HFS+ • You can use Disk Utility to upgrade a Time Machine HFS+ volume to APFS without a warning. You’d think Disk Utility would detect the Time Machine backup and stop you, but it doesn’t • Once upgraded to APFS, the Time Machine
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backup archive is mostly useless, even though iles aren’t destroyed The archive becomes useless, because APFS doesn’t support hard links. These are a special kind of alias. A soft link is a pointer to a destination ile that looks to the operating system like a pointer. A hard link looks to the operating system like an actual ile, even though it’s just a pointer. This allows a single copy of a ile to be in a ile system, but have many pointers that reference it, and they can be manipulated and copied as if they exist in multiple places. Time Machine backups start with a full backup of a drive for every ile, and then in subsequent backups it creates folder-based snapshots that use a mix of hard links for iles that haven’t changed and new iles for ones that have. This makes Time Machine accessible through the
A Time Machine HFS+ volume is rendered efectively useless when converted to APFS
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Finder as well as through the Time Machine app’s graphical interface. Because APFS lacks hard link support, converting an HFS+ volume to APFS destroys those links and replaces them with broken softlink aliases. Thus, Macworld reader Yousif noted to me on Twitter that he’d upgraded his HFS+ Time Machine volume to APFS, but he couldn’t copy the backups.backupdb folder, because the aliases were broken. He received a “the operation can’t be completed because it isn’t supported” error. I tried this with individual iles that existed on the APFS volume and were not aliases, and received the same error. It appears that all the individual copies of iles that Time Machine made are intact, so you could manually browse folders to ind older versions. That’s better than entirely losing those archives, but it’s not fun, and being unable to copy them directly make them near useless. There doesn’t appear to be any way yet (and possibly ever) to copy that folder to another drive or to restore the hard links, though I would think a developer might be able to write a utility that could handle it. You can reformat an APFS drive back to HFS+, but it requires erasing the drive completely. Time Machine will ofer to handle the erasure and formatting if you try to use an APFS drive for Time Machine. But that, of course, doesn’t restore your archives, either. There’s no advantage to using APFS on hard drives, and the ile system isn’t ready for (or maybe
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will never come to?) Fusion drives that pair an SSD and hard drive for afordability, so I reiterate my advice: don’t upgrade drives manually to APFS.
WHY YOU CAN’T USE THE IMAGE CAPTURE MAC APP TO DELETE PHOTOS ON YOUR IOS DEVICES I often recommend the not-quite-hidden app Image Capture to people having trouble getting images transferred or sync from iOS devices, especially if they’re using iTunes sync. It’s a way to peer into photo storage on an iOS device, as well as camera cards and other places. (It handles scanners, too, but some readers have found in High Sierra that they had to use Preview with their scanner.) However, Macworld reader Larry wrote in asking about an article from July 2017 in which we noted that Image Capture also let you delete images directly from an iOS device. (Actually, it was another publication that wrote that article, but we’re happy to answer the question.) Larry asks, “There is no delete button and delete in the Edit menu is greyed out. What am I doing wrong?” If you’re using iCloud Photo Library on your iOS device, Image Capture disables the Delete button, as iCloud manages all the images and videos stored on that iOS device. If you could delete from Image Capture, it would have to prompt you about deleting from all other devices connected to iCloud Photo Library and from iCloud.com, and that goes beyond the task level assigned to Image Capture.
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Image Capture won’t let you delete photos or videos for devices using iCloud Photo Library
With iCloud Photo Library enabled, you have to use iCloud.com, or an iOS device or Mac with the feature enabled to delete images. Those images will then be deleted of every connected device and iCloud.com.
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Latest Mac games Andrew Hayward looks at this month’s best new releases
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n the hunt for a fresh and exciting game to play this month? Luckily, there’s always something new worth checking out in the world of Mac games, and we’ve put together our picks for the 10 best new titles. Survival smash Rust recently exited Early Access, while Descenders is a frenetic new downhill biking game, Never Stop Sneakin’ is a speedy take on stealth-action classics, and Sailaway lets you explore the world’s oceans on a digital dinghy.
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1. Rust Price: £27.79 from Steam (fave.co/2oM3cSZ) Rust is easily this month’s biggest full release, and it’s one that has already been available via Steam Early Access for more than four years now, and has sold several million copies along the way. Facepunch Studios’ game is all about survival: from the moment you emerge into the world, naked and alone, you’ll have to fend for yourself. And you’ll have to do so while playing on online servers, as you harvest resources from the world, build tools, craft weapons, battle (or cooperate) with other players, and hunt animals for food. It’s a big, rough, yet seemingly appealing experience that has drawn in loads of players up until now.
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2. Descenders Price: £19.49 from Steam (fave.co/2oLVNTI) Descenders ills a gaming void by delivering a freestyle downhill mountain biking game, and it looks thoroughly intense, linging you through forests and down steep slopes as you try to stay upright and zipping ahead. And you’ll never run out of new terrain to ride across, as the game is fully procedurally generated. You can also ride at night and across snow, which should only make the highspeed antics even more exhilarating. Descenders has launched in Steam Early Access, so it’s not fully complete, but even so, the initial user reviews are strongly positive, praising the game for its impressively realistic trick and handling systems as well as the polished physics.
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3. Never Stop Sneakin’ Price: £9.29 from Steam (fave.co/2oRsL5t) Konami’s beloved Metal Gear Solid stealth-action series may never make its way over to Mac, but Never Stop Sneakin’ looks like an admirable substitute. It’s the latest game from the creator of Dust: An Elysian Tail, and it’s built in the mold of the original Metal Gear Solid from the irst PlayStation, albeit much simpler, much faster, and somehow even wackier. For example, one of the main bosses you’ll face is Vice President Helicopter, an actual helicopter, while another is Dr. Acula. This is a super-streamlined take on stealth action, tasking you with speedily rushing through levels while avoiding guards and surveillance cameras… and probably enjoying a few laughs along the way.
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4. Dungreed Price: £7.19 from Steam (fave.co/2H7zuik) What happens when a peaceful village and all of its inhabitants are sucked into a mysterious dungeon? Well, you dive in and rescue them. Dungreed puts you into the tiny pixel shoes of the adventurer tasked with that unfortunate objective, and you’ll need to ight your way through the dungeon and restore the town and its people to their former glory. It resembles an old-school, side-scrolling action game, and the dungeon takes a new form every time you jump in. And you’ll do that often, since your hero dies for good each time he falls, plus there are no checkpoints in the mix. Luckily, you can improve your hero’s stats over time and employ a wide array of weapons to keep things interesting.
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5. Farm Together Price: £11.39 from Steam (fave.co/2oLgYWa) Farming games are surprisingly popular, and they come in varying shapes and sizes, but Farm Together seems to ind its own niche in the space: it’s colourful, cartoonish, and targeted at casual players, plus it’s best enjoyed cooperatively with pals. As the name suggests, you can play Farm Together online with friends and plant crops, raise animals, and expand your farmstead alongside allies. And it seems pretty chilled: Steam reviewers suggest that it feels like a casual-minded, almost FarmVille-esque mobile game, albeit without freemium annoyances in the mix. It’s in Steam Early Access now, as well, so it still could see deeper gameplay and larger features added in the future.
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6. Sailaway Price: £29.99 from Steam (fave.co/2oNb4E1) Sailing isn’t easy, cheap, or accessible to everyone, but if you have a capable-enough Mac, you can hit the waves any time you please with Sailaway. This simulation ofers up painstaking recreations of the world’s oceans, with varying waves and water colour, plus wind and weather conditions pulled in real time from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You can sail solo, chat with fellow sailors, invite them on board to help run the ship, or even take part in boat races. Sailaway includes an array of customizable boats, and the game claims to ease in newcomers while allowing more serious sailing aicionados some tougher conditions to contend with.
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7. Delver Price: £11.39 from Steam (fave.co/2HcAXUC) As with Rust, you might have encountered Delver before now – that’s because it has been available in Steam Early Access for more than four years, plus it started life on Android before that. But this dungeon-crawling role-player only just hit a full 1.0 version on Mac, which means it’s worth putting fresh eyes on whether or not it’s already been on your radar. It might be tough to tell from a still screenshot, but Delver is a 3D game made with crisp, pixel-packed 2D graphics – almost Minecraftesque, but with more detail and personality. Despite the colourful look, Delver promises to be tough as nails, dropping you into a newly-generated dungeon with each attempt, plus death is permanent.
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8. Orwell: Ignorance is Strength Price: £7.19 from Steam (fave.co/2oM4CNj) Modern technology has us plugged in and sharing our lives in new and seemingly exciting ways, but our social network feeds and Internet activity only add to the amount of ongoing surveillance on us. Orwell: Ignorance is Strength turns that modern surveillance state into a game, as you use and even manipulate data to protect a ictional nation. As a top-secret agent, you’ll investigate a journalist who is inciting riots and unrest in a neighbouring country. That includes reading his private communications and stories, as well as spying on his family and allies and fabricating information as needed. It’s a sequel, so check out the original irst (£7.19 from fave.co/2H948HT).
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9. Stellaris: Apocalypse Price: £15.49 from Steam (fave.co/2oMeS8z) Stellaris was one of the biggest Mac game releases of 2016, and if you’ve been itching for more reason to set sail across the stars, then here’s a good excuse. The game’s Apocalypse expansion adds some signiicant new elements to the core experience. The 4X real-time grand strategy afair sees additions like a Colossus planet-killer unit, which can wipe out entire worlds, as well as Titan ship units and nomad Marauders that can be either friend or foe. Ascension Perks and Civics bring some non-combat enhancements, as well, plus the Apocalypse expansion has been timed alongside the game’s 2.0 version release, which itself is surely worth exploring if you haven’t played in a while.
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10. Exiled Kingdoms Price: £5.79 from Steam (fave.co/2oLi8Rw) We’ve seen newer games like Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity update the old-school, isometric computer role-playing game (CRPG) format, but Exiled Kingdoms is a new game that looks as old as its inspirations. There’s no modern gloss here: it has the look and feel of a game like Blizzard’s original Diablo, as if it was 1996 all over again. On the other hand, it’s £5.79, and Steam reviewers have been pretty positive about Exiled Kingdoms so far. It ofers up a huge fantasy world to explore as you battle, take on quests, and chat up the locals, promising 120+ hours of content to take in. It’s like a blast from the past, albeit one that was just released on Mac.
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How to: Set up a HomePod Jason Cross explains how to get started
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ompared to most smart speakers, getting started with the HomePod is easy. There are no extra apps to install, no calibration steps to undertake. Before you get started, you’ll want to make sure you meet the requirements: the HomePod requires an iPhone (5s or newer) or iPad (mini 2 or Air or newer) to complete the setup process. A 6th generation iPod touch will work, too.
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Preparing for setup 1. Make sure your iOS device is running iOS 11.2.5 or newer. 2. Your HomePod will be attached to your iCloud account, so you should make sure that is set up, too (and turn on two-factor authentication).
Setting up HomePod 1. Plug in HomePod and wait for the light on top to glow. 2. Bring your iOS setup device (iPhone or iPad) near the HomePod. You’ll see a small window pop up near the bottom of the screen, with an image of the HomePod. It’s similar to the setup for AirPods or the latest Apple TV. 3. Tap Set Up. 4. You’ll be asked what room the HomePod is in. Pick one.
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5. The next screen asks you whether to enable Personal Requests or not. Enabling this will allow HomePod to access your account’s reminders, messages, notes, and calendar appointments. You should consider not enabling this right now; see the next section for more details. 6. The Terms and Conditions screen will pop up. Read them (or don’t) and agree to continue. 7. Finally, a screen will pop up prompting you to transfer settings from your iOS device to your HomePod. This will transfer over the necessary iCloud account info, Wi-Fi password, and so on. 8. That’s it. You’ll be prompted to go through a couple of example Siri questions, but your HomePod is now set up.
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Disabling Personal Requests HomePod cannot yet distinguish between diferent voices. Literally anyone can walk up to it and command it. If you have Personal Requests turned on, that includes setting reminders, sending messages, or adding notes for whichever iCloud account was on the iPhone or iPad used in setup. The HomePod is supposed to use your phone’s location to determine when you are not home, but it’s still a huge security and privacy risk to leave this enabled while other people are around. Unless you live alone and never have guests over, we strongly recommend turning of Personal Requests until the HomePod gets a software update that lets it distinguish between your voice and others. If you turned this on during setup, you can easily disable it in the Home app. Just follow these steps. 1. Open the Home app. 2. Tap on the location button in the upper left. It looks like an arrowhead. 3. You’ll see the name for your home and some other settings. Tap on your proile picture in the People section. 4. You’ll see a Siri on HomePod section, with one entry: Personal Requests. Tap that. 5. You’ll see a toggle at the top to turn Personal Requests on or of, and a setting to require authentication on your iPhone or iPad for secure requests (like sending a message).
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How to: Reset a HomePod If you want to go through setup again or use a diferent Apple ID, you’ll have to reset your HomePod. Jason Cross shows how
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urrently, HomePod works with only one Apple ID. If you want to switch to someone else’s account, you have to reset your HomePod and set it up with a diferent iOS device. You’ll also want to reset your HomePod if you plan to give it away or sell it, if you need to send it to be serviced, or if some technical problem is preventing it from responding. You can reset HomePod using the Home app on an iOS device with the same Apple ID, or on the HomePod itself.
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Using the Home app You can reset HomePod using the iOS Home app that’s attached to the same Apple account as the HomePod. Just follow these steps. 1. Open the Home app. 2. Find your HomePod in Favourite Accessories or it its assigned Room. 3. Long-press or 3D-touch on it. 4. Tap Details. 5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the HomePod details screen and tap Remove Accessory. Your HomePod will automatically reset itself and return to its out-of-the-box state. This will take a couple minutes.
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Using the HomePod If you don’t have access to an iOS device with the same account as the HomePod, or you just don’t want to go digging into the Home app, you can reset the HomePod on the unit itself. 1. Unplug your HomePod, then plug it back in. 2. Press and hold the top of the HomePod, in the centre where the Siri light is. 3. Keep holding. Just keep your inger pressing there until the light turns red and Siri says the HomePod is about to reset. 4. Don’t let go yet. Keep your inger on there until you hear three beeps. After the three beeps, you can let go. It will take a couple minutes, but your HomePod will reset and be soon be ready for setup again.
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How to: Change Siri’s voice on a HomePod Want to give Siri an Australian accent or swap its gender? It’s easy, writes Jason Cross
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ou already know you can change Siri’s voice on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. So it stands to reason that you can make Siri sound diferent on HomePod, too. You have similar voice options, but you ind the settings in a diferent place. If you want to give Siri on HomePod a man’s voice or an Australian accent, here’s what you do:
1. Open the Home app and look for your HomePod in the Favourite Accessories list.
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2. Long-press (or 3D touch) on the HomePod you wish you change. 3. Tap Details at the bottom of the screen. 4. Scroll down to the Siri section. Here you’ll ind Siri’s Language and the Siri Voice menu. 5. Tap Siri Voice and choose the accent and gender you wish to use. When you change Siri’s voice on HomePod, you aren’t changing it anywhere else – you can have HomePod speak in a diferent accent on HomePod than on your phone. You can even set diferent HomePods top their own individual voice settings. Note that Siri on HomePod is restricted to fewer Language options than it is on iOS or macOS. As HomePod starts being sold in more countries and goes through a few software updates, the list of supported languages should increase.
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How to: Control a HomePod from a Mac Don’t feel like talking to your HomePod? You don’t have to, reveals Jason Cross
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he HomePod doesn’t behave like most other Apple devices. Unlike the Apple Watch, there’s no dedicated app. It supports AirPlay, so it shows up in the list of audio sources – but it’s also remote-controllable like an Apple TV. And to conigure it, you don’t visit the Settings app, but the Home app. Here’s a quick guide to where and how you can control the HomePod from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
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Controlling from Control Centre in iOS Soon after I got home with my HomePod, I found myself sitting on my sofa while the HomePod played music from a few feet away. I realized that while I could call out a command to make the HomePod slightly louder, that would make a noise and disturb everyone else in the living room. I had my iPad with me; surely I could adjust the HomePod’s volume with that? The answer is yes, but it took me a while to ind it. Perhaps the fastest way to remotely control the HomePod from an iOS device (running iOS 11.2.5 or later) is by using Control Centre, where you need to tap on the top right corner of the audio controller tile (or 3D Touch anywhere on the tile). Once you do this, you’ll see several diferent tiles. (You can also get to this same view by opening the Music app and, in the Now Playing sheet, tapping on the AirPlay icon at the bottom of the screen.) At the top is a tile for your iOS device, showing what’s currently playing (if anything) as well as a list of all the available AirPlay devices on your network and a volume slider. One of the AirPlay devices you’ll see will be your HomePod, since it supports AirPlay 1. Other tiles on this screen are Apple devices you can control remotely – Apple TV models as well as HomePod. Tap on any of these tiles and you’ll get a set of controls that let you scrub, change volume, play/pause, and change tracks on that device. This is the quickest way to control a HomePod from an iPhone or iPad without using Siri.
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If you select the tile representing your HomePod in this interface and don’t tap back to the tile representing your iOS device, your device will remain in a mode that controls the HomePod. If you open the Music app, you’ll see that it’s displaying the currently playing track on the HomePod, and the controls in the Music app will control the HomePod. This isn’t AirPlay – the music is still being streamed by the HomePod – but a remote-control interface. In fact, if you select your iPhone or iPad using this interface, you’ll ind that you can play music on your device completely independently from your HomePod.
Controlling from iTunes on a Mac On the Mac, the interface is similar (but slightly diferent). From the AirPlay pop-up menu just to the
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right of the volume slider in iTunes (version 12.7.3 and later), you can see available AirPlay devices (including the HomePod) in the Computer section. But below that you’ll ind a Switch To section that lists all the devices eligible for remote control, namely Apple TVs and HomePods. If you click on the HomePod, you’ll ind that iTunes is now remote controlling the HomePod, with its volume and navigation buttons acting directly on that device. The Up Next and History lists in the player will relect what’s happening on the HomePod, and you can add tracks to the Up Next list from Apple Music. Even the iTunes mini player relects what’s happening on the HomePod, and your media-key shortcuts will now control the HomePod directly.
HomePod as an AirPlay device Even before AirPlay 2 arrives, HomePod already works as an AirPlay 1 device. It shows up in the standard AirPlay source list on both Mac and iOS. You can select it as you would any other AirPlay speaker, and it will play whatever audio you send to it, from any app that supports AirPlay. Keep in mind, though, that when you’re using AirPlay, the device that’s sending audio is in complete control of the HomePod. Audio is streaming from your device to the HomePod directly, and that means that if you do something to upset the audio playing – like tapping on a video on Twitter or Facebook – it’ll stop the music and play the audio that came with the video,
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just as it would if it were coming out of your own device’s speaker. (AirPlay 2 will ofer the ability to play diferent sounds on diferent devices, but we’re not there yet.) What AirPlay will let you do is stream Spotify tracks, Overcast podcasts, or just about anything else you can think of from your iPhone to your HomePod. And on the Mac, don’t forget that all AirPlay devices show up in the Sound pane of the System Preferences app as outputs, so you can also route sound from any Mac app to your HomePod. It’s still early days for the HomePod. The arrival of AirPlay 2 will make it an even more lexible device in terms of controlling and streaming audio remotely. But even now, you can take control of your HomePod not just via your voice, but with any Apple device running the most current versions of iOS or macOS.
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How to: Play music on a HomePod without subscribing to Apple Music Karen Khan explains how to play Spotify, Amazon Music and iTunes tracks from your iPhone via the HomePod
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f you have an Apple Music subscription already you will have access to 45 million songs that can be played from your HomePod. You don’t have to have a subscription to use the HomePod, though. You could stream your iTunes library (as long as
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you have a subscription to iTunes Match and have turned on iTunes in the Cloud). You don’t have to pay for any subscription though: you can also use AirPlay to stream music directly from your iPhone to the HomePod, from iTunes, Spotify, Tidal or Amazon Music, for example. Follow the steps below to stream music from your iPhone or iPad straight to the HomePod via AirPlay.
Stream music using AirPlay It should be simple to stream music to your HomePod from any app, not just iTunes. 1. Swipe up to access Control Centre on your iOS device. 2. Press and hold on the audio card icon. 3. Tap the icon that looks like a triangle with loops. 4. You should see the HomePod appear in the list below.
Stream music from Spotify 1. Open Spotify on your iPhone or iPad. If you don’t have the app you can download it from the App Store. 2. Find the track you want to play. (If you aren’t all that familiar with Spotify we have some tips below this section which should help you ind music). 3. Tap on Devices Available at the bottom of the screen.
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4. Tap on More Devices. 5. Now Choose the HomePod, which should appear with a name based on the room it is located in You won’t have access to all the Siri features if you are using AirPlay, but the HomePod will still use the built in technology to play the music as the artist intended, according to Apple.
Stream music from Amazon Music 1. Open Amazon Music on your iPhone. 2. Find the track you want to play. 3. Tap on the AirPlay icon at the bottom of the screen. 4. Tap on the HomePod, which should appear with a name based on the room it is located in. You won’t have access to all the Siri features if you are using AirPlay, but the HomePod will still use the built in technology to play the music as the artist intended, according to Apple.
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