TechLife January 2022

This is a great time of year for pottering about the house. You’ve got some holidays and spare time, so you can catch up on a lot of stuff that may have slipped during the year... especially this last year! For a lot of us, that might mean some handy home upgrades, and that’s what this issue is all about. We’ve got great gear to help you enjoy entertainment in your living room, relax with a book or a game, get creative in the kitchen, and a whole mess more. I don’t know if I’ll be dropping thousands on a coffee machine (though I know folk who would!), but that automatic pot stirrer looks mighty handy. Don’t judge! But it’s not all gadgets. After the rush of Windows 11 last issue, we take…

Audials Music 2022 Special Edition Find and save songs from streaming services and video portals as private copies. Millions of pieces of music without loss of quality, just like the original you can enjoy permanently in mp3? Got hundreds of songs or the complete discography of a range of musicians? Audials saves everything in parallel and super fast, and even invisible from Spotify and in real time. Finding and recording pieces of music from every streaming service and in many versions becomes child’s play, whether as a playlist, album or individual songs. From now on it is easier than ever to get playlists from video portals and Spotify displayed in Audials, download them and export any playlists if you wish. Immerse yourself in the infinite expanse of music! Get them from Audible,…

From $3,749, www.apple.com/au The MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021) is Apple’s flagship professional laptop, launched alongside the MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) in October 2021. As a follow-up to 2019’s 16-inch MacBook Pro, this new model brings some fantastic new features and an overhauled design. It also offers a level of performance that is no doubt highly impressive, but which not everyone will need. Apart from the screen size, resolution and battery life, the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021) is incredibly similar to the smaller MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021), offering the same hardware (a choice of Apple’s new M1 Pro or M1 Max chips) which results in pretty similar performance. Being the larger of the two, and Apple’s flagship MacBook, it’ll come as little surprise to learn that the MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021) is a…

Microsoft is rolling out a new security policy that it says will automatically enable a curated set of recommended settings and policies to ensure that all Office 365 users get at least a basic level of protection. Dubbed Built-In-Protection, the preset joins the Standard and Strict presets. However, unlike the two existing presets, the new preset is enabled by default for all new and existing users and requires no action from the administrator. Fujifilm X-H2 tipped to have smartphone-style computational photography The sweet spot between phones and full-frame powerhouses? “The goal is to provide organisations with an immediate bump in protection across The best phone cameras are now capable of aping the photographic effects of larger cameras, thanks to computational photography. So why can’t mirrorless cameras use similar tricks to beat smartphones at…

This free repair is available worldwide for two years from the purchase of the device, but Apple may restrict repairs to the country or region that it was purchased from – so that could be a stumbling block. No phone is immune to issues, and one issue that might be affecting your iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 Pro is a lack of sound from the receiver when you make or receive a call. Apple has determined that a small number of iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro handsets may have this issue, as a result of a component that might have failed on the receiver module. The good news is that Apple has also announced that it will repair affected phones for free. So if it’s a problem your iPhone is suffering,…

$TBC, www.asus.com The Asus Chromebook Flip C536 is an absolutely gorgeous Chromebook that you’ll be proud to show off (until the scuff and dirt starts to add up, anyway). It is hands-down one of the best Chromebooks on the market today and even though it feels like a premium device, its price still keeps it in the realm of affordability. Chromebooks have a reputation for being strictly utilitarian devices running low-powered hardware and usually squeezed into a plastic chassis that looks like it was painted silver by a kindergarten class. Design The Asus Chromebook Flip C536 shows us just how far we’ve come in recent years. We can’t talk about the Chromebook Flip C536 without getting the design discussion out of the way. This is the best looking Chromebook we’ve ever seen, and it’s…