Inhoudsopgave van April 2018 - MacFormat

LET Glass Rose-tinted Siri specs They may look like ordinary spectacles, but you get more than just improved vision with the LET Glass. It’s a pair of glasses that contains a set of bone-conduction headphones that you can control with a touch or through Siri. They work by transmitting sound to your inner ear through your head, leaving your ears free and unblocked. The software learns and adapts to you over time, and works with Siri, Alexa and Google Now so you can make calls and control your smart home devices with your voice. From $259 (about £184) INCLUDES LET Glass frame, blue light filtering lens WEBSITE letglass.com WORKS WITH iPhone…

Apple likes to make a splash when it announces new products, and HomePod was no different. The company’s press release confidently stated ‘HomePod reinvents music in the home’, going on to describe it as a ‘breakthrough wireless speaker’ and ‘the perfect musicologist’. It’s easy to understand the bombast. Apple’s rivals Amazon and Google had already launched smart speakers – Apple had to convince people the wait for its version was worth it. In any case, Apple is not known for being the first to market with a new product. Instead, it waits until the time is right and the technology is mature enough. That was the case with HomePod, which began development in 2014 and finally made it to market earlier this year. But could it be that, rather than…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! Day-to-day user I have just finished reading the February MacFormat issue (#322) and I felt a bit isolated. Having returned with my wife from four months of volunteering in Cambodia, and having used my MacBook Pro every day to produce classroom resources, I realised that MacFormat is now apparently focused on the wealthy and the pro users. My MacBook is a 2011 version, my phone is an iPhone 6. I still keep a desktop iMac running iLife with my all-time favourite, iDVD. I created class resources using ClarisWorks, then AppleWorks, and now Pages, and made movies for class in the untouchable and never-equalled iMovie 6 HD. I can’t afford to upgrade monthly to the newest system, nor the newest model of iPhone. However, we still managed…

GARY GEAVES apple.com “We think we’ve built up the biggest acoustics and audio team on the planet.” Apple audio director says HomePod required some serious research PHIL SCHILLER apple.com “It’s about creating an experience that moves with you throughout the day.” Apple’s marketing chief on what the company aims for with its products TONY FADELL futureshapellc.com “We need to have the tools so that our families… [can] maintain and monitor what’s going on.” ‘Father of the iPod’ says firms like Apple need to prevent digital addiction FAISAL KAWOOSA cmrindia.com “The services offered don’t have flavours that would entice… Indian users.” Apple needs to refine its products for the Indian market, analyst says…

Amazon Echo Spot £119.99 amazon.co.uk Amazon is Apple’s arch-rival in the home automation market, and it’s keeping up the pressure with its latest Echo speaker. The Spot is very cleverly designed – a compact speaker with a 64mm circular screen that’s ideal for a bedside table or in the kitchen. Belkin WeMo Bridge £TBC belkin.com Belkin’s bridge plugs into your Wi-Fi router and adds HomeKit-compatibility to the company’s existing range of smart plugs, switches and motion sensors. It’s already sold out in the US, so UK-based customers might have to wait until spring. LIFX + A60 £79.99 uk.lifx.com The LIFX range of smart-lights starts at just £25, but this high-end model includes HomeKit support – so you can change brightness and colour with Siri voice commands – and an infrared…

For some, an iPhone or an iPad is as important as a Mac – hyper-portable computers for almost every task. If you do nothing to safeguard your data, it will be gone if a device is lost or damaged beyond repair. Elsewhere in this feature, we look at safeguarding photos and videos, mostly through iCloud. That system caters for other apps – first-and third-party – as well. For example, iCloud can sync the likes of Notes, Contacts, Calendar, and Safari (bookmarks and website account details) across your devices. Many third-party apps and games also utilise iCloud. This means should you get a new device, this data should be fully recoverable. The problem is everything else. If you’ve created amazing art in a painting app, or cracked level 50 in a…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit GET FROM A TO B WITH APPLE MAPS p50 Understand iOS gestures A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen. To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content. Swipe means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go. A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly. Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out. Touch and hold means lightly rest your finger on an item and wait for a reaction. Master Mac keyboard shortcuts When you see a shortcut like hold all but…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to more easily pinpoint messages in ongoing conversations YOU’LL NEED An iOS 11 device, Mail Threading is a helpful feature of Mail that enables you to better see the flow of a conversation. Instead of you having to tap back and forth between messages, or even search for previous ones from the same conversation, you can view all the messages that belong together on a single page. Each email appears in its own easily identifiable block, and you simply have to scroll up and down to view the complete conversation. You can customise the look of message threads in several ways to ensure that their presentation of items is best suited to you. Here, we’ll show you how to do that…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to set timers and alarms on Apple Watch, look to the future, and monitor traffic delays YOU’LL NEED An Apple Watch, an iPhone The aural and haptic feedback from Watch makes it difficult to miss an alert The point of having a watch is to make sure that we do whatever we need to in a timely manner. The Apple Watch is changing how we do that – expanding from ‘telling you the time’ to add things like letting you know when your next calendar appointment is, or buzzing you with an alarm when it’s time to do something, or even letting you know that the traffic is bad so you don’t wind up late through no fault of your own.…

You’re probably already aware that iOS works differently to the Mac when it comes to power management. Apps can’t just run in the background eating up battery power – if they’re not visible on screen, they can only operate in very limited ways in the background. This means you don’t have to worry about quitting all apps to save battery life in quite the same way – but some apps still tend to hog energy more than others, and you’ll want to identify them. In Settings, tap the Battery option (in the third group down). The Battery Usage section will tell you exactly which apps are responsible for running down your charge. Apps are listed in descending order of culpability, showing what percentage of your total power expenditure each is…

Apple Smart Battery Case £99 > apple.com/uk Apple’s own battery case works great with iPhone 6/6S/7 and (unofficially) 8. The lumpy back is weird, but it keeps the phone edges easy to grip, and it’s pretty good for protection. (There aren’t any Apple-certified battery cases for the iPhone X yet.) Mophie Powerstation USB-C XXL £119.95 > uk.mophie.com It’s not cheap, but this 19,500mAh battery can output power at 30W. Not only can it charge your iPhone and iPad, it carries enough power for a full charge of a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Native Union Jump Cable £39.99 > nativeunion.com A compact charging cable and battery pack in one neat, portable piece. It has USB-A and Lightning plugs built in; you charge the battery over USB, and plug in your iPhone for…

Although there’s not a massive amount to choose between ProCamera and ProCam, the former edges over the line on the strength of its great balance of features and usability. Everything is easy to find and clearly laid out, yet the app feels slick and professional, without blinding you with science. It provides you with shortcuts and presets if you’re a less experienced user, but also detailed manual control over all aspects of taking a picture if you happen to be a more advanced photographer. In terms of image editing, ProCamera provides plenty of tools to work with. RAW Power is particularly capable in this area, but it doesn’t take pictures, only edits them. ProCamera is also sensibly priced at just over a fiver, so it’s a safe investment whether you’re…

> Free FROM Stephen Morris, stephenmorr.is > NEEDS iOS 10.3 or later AudioFile is a cross between Apple’s own Voice Memos and Notes apps. It enables you to record audio, tag the recordings and include text and images. That makes it particularly useful if you’re a musician, say, as you can record a musical idea and then take a shot of a tricky chord, a pedal setting or keyboard patch, or scribbled lyrics. And you can use the text field to record info such as key, tuning and tempo. The app isn’t just for musicmakers; it’s good for anybody who wants to add an image or text to a spoken note. Recorded audio files are classified in three ways: by name, project and tags. For example, you may create a…

twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Apple patents haptic-enabled Watch band Apple has recently been granted a slate of patents covering all sorts of potential new inventions. The 61 patents in total were granted in early February 2018. Notable is a patent filed in 2013 for ‘pattern projection using micro-lenses’, which has already made its way into the iPhone X’s Face ID. As for other concepts, there’s a patent for a ‘band with haptic actuators’ – an Apple Watch band with embedded haptic sensors that can interact with you in much the same way as the Watch itself currently does. As these are just patents, it’s unclear if they will all make it into finished Apple products. We’ll update you on developments.…

[MOVIE] Only the Brave £9.99 The harrowing true story of a team of elite firefighters that battle an out-of-control wildfire, heading towards danger as most people retreat. [PODCAST] Stuff You Should Know FREE This show answers the questions you didn’t know you had. How do you run a landfill? How do genes work? And what’s up with orchids? [TV SHOW] The Path, Season 3 £16.99 Eddie Lane performs a miracle and his religious group spreads. Can he help it grow in the face of outside pressure and accusations it’s a cult?…

Both Amazon and Google initially launched just one speaker each. First released in November 2014 (but not in the UK until September 2016), the Amazon Echo was followed in March 2016 by the smaller Echo Dot. Since then, Amazon’s Echo range has expanded to include the Echo Look, Show, Spot and Plus, as well as the Amazon Tap. Likewise, Google has developed the Home range beyond its first Home device, which launched in the US in November 2016, and April 2017 in the UK. Next came the Home Mini, a smaller version of the Home, which hit the shelves in November 2017. Google then launched a high-end speaker, the Home Max, in the US in December 2017; at the time of writing, there’s no UK launch date. Google has announced…

Every new year, we hear in Apple’s financial results about the latest giant cheque it wrote to developers (given the state of the American banking system, this might even be literally true). Billions paid out! The gold rush continues! Meanwhile, talk to a developer working at a company that doesn’t have huge private funding, or doesn’t make a game that starts with ‘Clash’, and the story is different. The biggest free apps or games with in-app purchases eat up the vast majority of that money, crowning a few app oligarchs while everyone else battles for scraps. You’ll have heard the phrase ‘race to the bottom’ a lot, with the blame often laid at the feet of Apple itself for not cultivating an ecosystem that values software (because it benefits too…

THE QUESTION We’ve got one Drobo 5D3 to give away. For your chance to win, just answer this question: How many hard disk bays does the 5D3 have? A) 3 B) 5 C) 6 For more information about the Drobo 5D3, plus other clever and flexible storage products in the range, visit the company’s website at drobo.com. Managing a big storage drive can be tricky, but not with this fantastic, hot-swappable drive! Whether you need to safely back up your data or just want masses of storage space, the Drobo 5D3 is ideal. It’s a five-bay storage drive that can intelligently manage multiple hard disks in an array, making the whole process a breeze. When you want to add more space, simply pop off the front panel and swap an…

Lighting was one of the first product categories to get the smart-home treatment. That’s hardly surprising, as we all have plenty of lights in our homes – and it’s kind of cool to say “Hey Siri, turn the lights on!” when you walk into a room. So here are some of the smart lighting highlights of CES 2018… Let’s go outside Philips was one of the first companies ever to support HomeKit with its Hue lights, and it announced a new range of Hue outdoor lights at CES. Due this summer, with prices yet to be announced, the new lights will be weather resistant, and are designed to help set the mood in the garden on those balmy summer evenings. Light at night Philips has got plenty of competition, though,…

It may seem like a fairly simple app, but Apple’s Maps is full of nifty little extras. Successive versions of macOS have introduced a number of useful features to make planning a journey easier and faster. Thanks to Apple’s tight integration of the Mac and iOS platforms, you can send journey and map info from your Mac to your iPhone. The app will indicate the weather and temperature wherever the centre of the map sits, and you can even take a flying tour of several cities around the world. Let’s dive in and discover the useful features of Maps that are easily overlooked. EXPLAINED The interface 1 Search for a place The search bar at the top of the window will automatically suggest places as you type. You can enter…

EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems Trouble with Launch Services Q Why, when I double-click a Photoshop document, does the CC 2017 version of Photoshop always open, and not the more recent CC 2018? by SIMON SIMPSON A This appears to be a general problem if you have both of these apps installed, regardless of the version of macOS that is running. In macOS, it’s the Launch Services interface which is responsible for determining which app kicks in when you open any file from Finder. If you don’t like the default, you would select a file in Finder, choose File > Get Info, expand the ‘Open with’ section of the window that appears, choose your preferred app from the pop-up menu, then click Change All…

1 Screens LCD screens have to be powered themselves, but need a backlight too. The result is that they draw a lot of power, especially at brighter settings. OLED screens (used on iPhone X and Apple Watch) don’t require a backlight, so are kinder on batteries. 2 Mobile internet Streaming data at high speeds between your phone and the nearest tower requires a lot of energy. More modern versions are more efficient, but are still major battery killers. 3 Intensive applications Processors are a bit like car engines, in that they use more fuel the harder you push them. Any task that requires a lot of processing power over a long time – such as converting a video, or the way a game is constantly using a graphics chip –…

This option, which you’ll find at the top of the Settings > Battery page, is an easy way to increase your iPhone’s battery life. Turn it on and it immediately lowers the brightness of the screen, turns off apps’ ability to refresh data in the background, stops the phone listening for “Hey Siri” all the time if you have that turned on, and limits swish animations. Add all these up and it will result in hours of extra battery life. When it’s turned on, the battery status icon is yellow. It automatically turns off when the battery hits 80% full during charging. You can make it really easy to turn on Low Power Mode by adding an item to Control Centre. Go to Settings > Control Centre > Customise Controls,…

REUSE OLD KIT Inspiring ideas for revamping old Apple kit Connecting to other operating systems The other day I treated myself to a Raspberry Pi Zero. You might ask why. Well, I’ve been doing some programming in Python, and I wanted a sandboxed environment so I can fiddle around with different libraries without accidentally messing up the Python install that comes bundled with macOS. There are lots of ways I could have achieved this, but this one involved buying a new gadget, so it was a clear favourite from the start. The Pi Zero is a circuit board the size of a shortbread finger. Like an Arduino, it has GPIO pins for you to connect electronics to, but unlike the Arduino it isn’t just a microcontroller. It’s a self-contained computer…

>£329.95> FROM Bose, bose.co.uk >FEATURES Google Assistant, noise cancellation, Bluetooth, 20-hour battery life, companion app Bose already has a pair of wireless headphones that come with active noise cancellation. They’re the impressive QuietComfort 35, but it has now updated its flagship headphones with support for Google Assistant. You can press and hold a button to interact with Google without yelling, “OK Google”. The headphones will also read notifications to you so you don’t have to dig out your phone. Unfortunately, other useful features like autoplay/pause and instant mute are absent. The use of plastic is disappointing, but the headphones feel solid. They also come with a hard case for packing away, which is nicer than the pouches many headphone makers opt to include. The lightweight plastic also helps to keep…

> £129.99> FROM Reolink, reolink.com > FEATURES Two-megapixel 1080p video camera, 130° field of view, weatherproofing, night vision, motion detection, wireless operation The Argus 2 can capture 1080p footage with a 130° field of view Smartphones have made a big impact on every industry, but few have benefitted as much as security products. Surveillance cameras are no longer chained to expensive video recorders, and can now stream live video in real time right to the palm of your hand. The Argus 2 is a compact, entirely wireless indoor/outdoor smart security camera capable of capturing 1080p footage with a 130-degree field of view. (‘Fluent’ mode reduces resolution to 720p to save bandwidth.) Much like its predecessor, the Argus 2 works in conjunction with mobile and desktop apps, which can be configured…

MONITOR ViewSonic VP2772 £702 viewsonic.com If you’re not fussed about 4K but still want exceptional image quality, this IPS display is truly superb. It offers 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB colour space, 10-bit colour and a 2560x1440-pixel resolution. It has HDMI 1.4, DVI and Mini DisplayPort connections, and four USB 3.0 ports for expansion. ULTRA HD MONITOR Philips 328P6VJEB £551 philips.co.uk We love this display. At 32 inches diagonally it’s big enough to make its 4K resolution worthwhile, and its colour rendering is excellent – 100% of sRGB, 93% of Adobe RGB and 97% of the P3 gamut that Apple’s new MacBook Pro uses. It’s big, bold, beautiful and superb for productivity and colour work alike. EXTERNAL SSD Freecom mSSD MAXX 512GB £247 freecom.com This drive is the fastest…

Pics of Clydeport We’ve gone north of the border with this great shot from sunny Scotland. Douglas Cooper has caught the disused Stobcross Crane against the blue sky and wispy clouds of Glasgow. The strange UFO-style building just behind, is the SSE Hydro arena – the largest entertainment venue in Scotland. We’ve seen great shots of this area at night, and recommend you pop back for a shot in the dark, Douglas, to capture the light on the water. Share your pics with us using the hashtag #MacFormat on Instagram. In each issue, we’ll pick our favourite to feature on this page. GET ON INSTAGRAM Share your images with us by using the hashtag #MacFormat and we’ll print the best here in the magazine. While you’re there, follow @MacFormat (Twitter)…

Jo Membery Operations Editor HomePod sounds great, but the current lack of multiroom and stereo support is disappointing. I’ll continue to save while I wait for these features!. Alex Blake Commissioning Editor HomePod’s earth-shaking volume both impressed and scared me. Prepare for your world to be rocked – but don’t wake the neighbours! Paul Blachford Art Editor HomePod’s build and sound quality blew me away. But I can’t justify buying one when the inability to stream from Android locks out several of my family members.…

APPLE TO TALK ARKIT AT GDC REACHING OUT TO GAMES DEVELOPERS Apple doesn’t usually host talks for developers at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), but this year’s show marks a change of heart. Apple will be presenting a talk on ARKit and its use in games, and will be keen to get more developers on board with its augmented reality framework. The show starts on 19 March in San Francisco. APPLE WORKING ON VR HEADSET? RECENT PATENT SUGGESTS VR INTENTIONS There has been much talk of Apple’s ambitions in augmented reality, and that talk has been boosted by a recent Apple patent covering optical systems in an augmented or virtual reality headset. While the patent mentions the invention’s use with augmented reality (AR), it is apparently designed with virtual reality…

1 $8.5 billion According to Apple’s Q1 2018 results, services made the company $8.5 billion, up from $7.2 billion in Q1 2017 (although down very slightly on Q4 2017). 2 240 million Apple’s services are racking up the subscribers, with 240 million people paying for Apple services in the first quarter (Q1) of 2018. 3 100% All of Apple’s data centres run on 100% renewable energy. 4 $890 million The App Store raked in a huge $890 million in the seven days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve 2017. 5 50% Apple Pay grew 50% year-on-year in Q1 2018, the best ever quarter for the payment service. 6 36,000,000 Apple Music now has 36 million paying subscribers worldwide. It’s on track to overtake Spotify in the US by the…

Like Apple’s ARKit framework, Amazon has created resources for Skills creators in the form of Amazon Skills Kit. This is a range of APIs (building blocks for making software), tools, code samples and documentation that developers can use to build their Skills. Amazon also provides cloud hosting that can handle a Skill’s first million requests per month, and offers credits for developers who exceed this amount. According to Amazon, there are now tens of thousands of Skills in existence, ranging from games to services allowing you to order pizza or call a cab. While most Skills are free, some allow developers to make money (such as the food-ordering Skills). You can also pay for subscription-based Skills.…

Jo says… “SO, APPLE’S GOING TO FOCUS ON IMPROVEMENTS NOT FEATURES?” It would certainly be a change of approach for Apple after years of big annual updates. In a way, I’d be disappointed – I like new stuff! Me too. I was dismayed that HomePod was released without AirPlay 2, but I’d rather see Apple take the time to perfect its software than make the kind of mistakes we’ve been seeing in High Sierra. Fair point. Audio crackling on iPhone 8 really wound me up, and more serious issues such as macOS security have been pretty alarming. A relentless churn out of new features isn’t particularly healthy for Apple’s engineers. Tying themselves to creating headline features every autumn can’t be easy to achieve. iPhone’s pretty mature now, so I suppose…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Smart toilets and dumb robots might have grabbed the headlines, but there were smarter devices to be found at CES this year… This year’s CES in Las Vegas was a mixed bag. There was a big focus on artificial intelligence (AI), and using that AI in smart devices in the home. But, as often happens with new tech, you sometimes get the impression that nobody quite knows what to do with it all just yet. There was the hideous embarrassment of Cloi, the not-sosmart robot from LG, which refused to do what it was told. And as for the voice-controlled toilet – well, we’ll just leave that to your imagination. But there were more practical products on…

The idea of the personal cloud is increasingly taking hold. For consumers, it usually comes in the form of a hard drive you connect to your router. Such hardware is typically straightforward to set up, and subsequently enables you to access the content stored on it from any device, wherever you happen to have an internet connection. Conceptually, it’s not a million miles away from iCloud Drive, although personal cloud devices tend to be geared towards dumping huge amounts of content on to multi-terabyte drives. But like iCloud Drive, they are not a substitute for backups. Personal cloud hardware of this sort is still on-site, meaning key files should still be backed up to the likes of Backblaze – and to another local drive, too.…

We’ve talked about the importance of backing up iOS devices you’re actively using. It’s also worth retaining backups of old devices, as apps can be used to extract data from them. If you once had an iPhone that housed a sole copy of a snap and you still have its iTunes backup, chances are you can use iMazing (£34.99, imazing.com) to recover the photo. Open iMazing and it’ll locate iOS backups stored on your Mac. Select a backup from the sidebar, then Photos. You may need to type in your admin password for the app to access your keychain and your data. iMazing will then load thumbnails for images it finds (which can take several minutes). When it’s done, photos and videos found in the backup will be browsable in…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to ignore pesky intrusions and focus on the here and now YOU’LL NEED An iOS 11 device (most features work on earlier versions) Do you crave even a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle of daily life? Phones and tablets enable us to be always online, and always connected to the wider world, but the boundaries between our digital, work and personal lives are becoming ever increasingly blurred. That means we get fewer opportunities to simply ‘switch off’ from the distractions that our devices bring, short of simply shutting them down. Apple’s solution to this is Do Not Disturb – a feature which, when activated, silences all notifications, alerts, incoming phone calls and messages for a set period of…

Short-life emails in iOS Q My wife and I each have an iPhone, plus an iPad and iMac between us. Why do our iPhones and iPad only retain emails for seven days on one account, but the iMac keeps them for much longer? by PHIL PEARCE A This reflects the different ways in which your iMac and iOS devices are set up to access that email account. When you connect an email account to Mail on either platform, it should check with your mail server whether it’s able to use the IMAP protocol; these days, this is preferable to POP, as it makes email easier to manage when an account is accessed from multiple devices. Your iOS devices are set to collect new messages using the IMAP protocol, which leaves…

We could all do with a few extra hours of juice from our portable products sometimes. Maybe you’re on a long journey with no charger, or maybe your device is old and the battery life isn’t what it used to be. Either way, the result is the same – you need a bit of magic to keep it going. Well, magic is exactly what we’ve got here. Using the tips and tricks on these pages, you’ll know which power-hungry features you can do without on your iOS devices or Mac to eke out every drop of electricity. And we’ll show you how to check up on your battery, and stay topped up with power on the go!…

Apple puts in a lot of effort to give its laptops all-day battery life, despite them being thinner and lighter than ever. But it’s always trying to strike a balance between power, convenience and longevity. If you want to prioritise keeping your laptop going for as long as possible, or trying to get an older MacBook with a struggling battery a bit closer to the running time it used to offer, there are some especially effective things you can do to save power. Each of these will have a small effect on their own but, in combination, you could easily eke out an extra hour or two of battery life, which could be just what you need on a train journey if you’ve left your charger behind. It’s all about…

As we mentioned earlier, Lithium-ion batteries degrade over time – or sometimes, earlier than they should. If you’re seeing really low battery life, it’s useful to check the physical health of your battery, so you know whether age has caught up with it, or – if it’s fairly new – whether you need to take a trip to the Genius Bar. On your iOS device, in Settings > Battery, a message should show at the top of the page saying that your battery needs to be serviced, if that’s the case. But that’s a bit vague – we want more information! CoconutBattery is a free Mac app (coconut-flavour.com) that tells you the maximum charge your battery can currently hold, and how that compares to when it was new, immediately indicating…

In 1993, the Quadra 800 was one of the first Macs to move away from the boot floppy in favour of the bootable CD-ROM. Although the processor ran at a hundredth of today’s speeds and it shipped with one thousandth of the memory, this was a fast machine for its time, intended as a professional workstation. The SCSI bus, video chip and memory performance were all high-performance versions, and this model could outperform the Quadra 950. This was a great computer let down by a terrible case design. Adding extra memory required you to almost completely dismantle the computer.…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices YI TECHNOLOGY 4K+ ACT ION CAMERA p84 Manifesto – our ratings explained Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. You can trust us to give an honest assessment of a product’s worth. The prices quoted for products are correct at the time of writing and are the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery. A brilliant thing in all regards, and worth every penny Strongly recommended; any flaws are only minor concerns Worth considering, though there may be better options Fundamentally flawed; look at alternatives as a priority A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy! The MACFORMAT Awards Awarded…

>£309.99> FROM Yi Technology, yitechnology.com >FEATURES 4K at 60fps, image stabilisation, touchscreen and voice control, raw format images Alex says… It takes a lot to knock GoPro down from its lofty perch, but this fantastic camera puts up an excellent fight. We love its ease of use and extensive feature set, while its price is something to behold in a crowded market full of cameras that’ll cost you a great deal more. The Yi 4K+ isn’t hugely different to the original Yi 4K, apart from the ability to shoot 4K video at 60fps. Filming at that resolution means a maximum bitrate of 120Mbps, which is double what the previous Yi 4K offered. Bear in mind that although the Yi 4K+ does have electronic image stabilisation onboard, that only works when…

PHOTO EDITOR (MAC) Affinity Photo £48.99 serif.com It’s hard not to love Affinity Photo. Whether you’re fancy yourself a seasoned pro or a photo novice, you will find it powerful and easy to use. Its interface has the perfect blend of ease of use and quick access to powerful features, and its useful batch processing is a great addition. An app that packs both power and practicality for less than £50? We’re in! VIDEO EDITOR (MAC) Final Cut Pro X 10.3 £299.99 apple.com/uk Apple’s Final Cut Pro has always been a good option for video editors, but the latest version makes it even better. It introduces ‘roles’, which can be colour-coded to make your timeline’s components easier to navigate, something that’s further boosted by the streamlined interface. It supports the…

Audio has long been a core part of Apple innovation. From iPod speakers to a store that revolutionised how we buy music, Apple has had its fingers in many musical pies. This issue, we explore the more notable melodic merchandise that has waltzed out of Cupertino over the years. Autumn 2000 By the start of the new millennium, SoundJam MP was one of the best music players on the market. Apple snapped it up in 2000 and renamed it iTunes, acquiring its top developer to lead further development. October 2001 In a move that turned the music player world on its head and revitalised Apple, the iPod made its debut in October 2001. It was a huge hit, dominating its rivals and taking 70% of the media player market in…