Table of contents for May 2019 in MacFormat

We expect an Apple media event every year around the end of March, and had our ears pricked up waiting for details of an iPad refresh. What we weren’t expecting was Apple to update products for three days back to back in the week leading up to that event. We’ve got a lot of testing to do for next issue! Meanwhile, see page 6 to learn about new iMacs, iPads, AirPods and the 25 March event. Better weather and lighter evenings are here at last, making it easier to indulge your photography hobby. You may be tempted to slap on a filter and share snaps with friends, but you bought a Mac to do great things. What better justification do you need than turning your photos into gorgeous scenes you…

1 Open Image Capture Images imported into your Photos library can be difficult to access from third-party apps. To import assets into folders that are easier to access, go to the Applications folder. Double-click the Image Capture app to open it. 2 Choose the device In the sidebar’s Devices section, select the camera or memory card that you want to access. Use the Import To pop-up menu to choose a destination for your shots (such as Pictures). Tick the ‘Make subfolders per camera’ option. 3 Select and import Select the images you want to import – hold command to add non-consecutive items – and then click the Import button. Alternatively, click Import All. The photos will appear in a subfolder in your chosen destination, named after your camera.…

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With macOS Mojave, Apple added Quick Actions to save you having to open files in an app to perform routine tasks. Common actions are provided for file types like images and PDFs. You can quickly rotate the former, combine multiple of the latter as one, or add markup to either, all from the preview pane (View > Show Preview). That isn’t the only place you can invoke Quick Actions. In fact, they are really a new presentation of items in the [app name] > Services or ctrl-click menus; Mojave’s version of Automator shows a Quick Action document type, previously called Services. Quick Actions still appear in the Services menu so, thankfully, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to them in command > System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts. To illustrate this,…

You probably tend to use macOS’s Preview app as a simple PDF viewer. However, hidden within its simple interface are some very sophisticated features that can boost your productivity. You may have already found its Markup features, which you can use to annotate PDFs and images. But if you’re emailing marked-up documents to colleagues for input, you may be missing a trick; there’s a way to host a document in iCloud and give multiple people access to comment and collaborate. Preview can be used to sign forms without having to print, sign and then scan them back into your Mac. The app can also encrypt PDFs. If you have macOS Mojave running on your Mac and an iPhone running iOS 12, you can use Continuity Camera to scan documents on…

I can’t revert after a Quick Action change. Is there a fix? Q I’ve used Automator to make my own Quick Action for Finder, to scale images, but it can’t undo the changes it makes. Is there a solution to this? by ROB FELLOWS A macOS Mojave’s Quick Actions, and Automator workflows more generally, are best when they don’t irreversibly change file content. They share the problem that they’re one-off lightweight actions that don’t inherently offer any ability to undo actions, as you can in a full-blown app. When creating any kind of workflow in Automator that changes files significantly, you should be offered an initial step to have Finder make copies of the files that will be changed and work on the copies. It’s easily disabled, in which case…

Can I dual-boot two macOS versions? Q My iMac runs El Capitan and I ought to upgrade to Mojave. Can I retain occasional access to El Capitan on an external drive, or will any associated firmware update cause problems? by SIMON SIMPSON A It is possible to set up a ‘dual-boot’ system, but be assiduously careful when using it to ensure that the two versions don’t come into contact. Thankfully, the latest firmware should be compatible with both. You might find it less trouble running El Capitan in a virtual machine (in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion) within Mojave. El Capitan can’t handle Apple’s new APFS file system, so your internal storage shouldn’t be upgraded to that, and you’ll want to avoid it containing a copy of macOS. Keep it…

Forget summer: spring is the perfect time to entertain outdoors. Fewer insects, less risk of sunburn, and shorter days means the ideal opportunity to snuggle under a blanket and enjoy some outdoor cinema in your robotically groomed garden. Getting yourself set up with a suitable projection screen isn’t hard; there are reams of adequate collapsible examples on Amazon or eBay for around £50 that work fine once you’ve smoothed them out properly. As for the projector, we would advise against going down the ‘portable’ route – certainly, battery-powered or miniature projectors exist, but they’re rarely as bright as you’ll need to show an outdoor movie as the evening sets in, and also seem to ignore contrast ratio as a selection metric. Instead, brightness should be your main concern, followed by…

£989 FROM Philips, philips.co.uk features 32:9 aspect ratio, 49-inch VA display, 1800r curvature, 109ppi, USB-C, KVM switch Monster panel aside, the screen has significant extras When it comes to a lot of tech products, frankly, we’ve seen it all before. But the new Philips Brilliance 499P9H ultrawide display is so awe-inspiring that it initially brought our office to a standstill. It’s that dramatic. The question is, are the ogling onlookers impressed or amused by the 49 inches of wide-aspect LCD panel? Of course, this Philips beast isn’t the first display with an extreme 32:9 aspect ratio. For instance, Samsung has the C49J89. But Philips moves the game on by addressing the Samsung unit’s most obvious drawback, namely its relatively low 1,080-pixel vertical resolution. This display ups that to 1,440 vertical…

› £332.99 › FROM Asus, asus.com/uk › FEATURES 1920x1080 resolution, 7,800mAh battery, magnetic case It feels both light and sturdy, which is a must given it’s meant to be carried around in a backpack There are times when working out and about with a MacBook that you could benefit from a little extra screen space. Using a document as a reference while you write a letter, for example, or having more room for tool palettes or a full-screen view of a presentation or video. It’s in cases like these that the Asus MB16AP comes in handy. It’s a 15.6in USB-C display with an internal 7,800mAh battery, and there’s a USB-C to USB-C cable in the box. Plug it in to your MacBook and it extends your desktop almost right away.…

› £14.99 › FROM Charlie Monroe, bit.ly/mfpermute › NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later There are times when you really need a media converter. They’re useful if you’ve got a variety of different file formats and want to include them all in one project, for example. Permute is a drag-and-drop media converter that can convert video, audio and images. It includes built-in presets for optimising video for most Apple devices, including Apple TV 4K. Version 3 not only looks better, but also adds a raft of new features, including support for macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode. In addition to performance improvements, this update brings support for hardware acceleration in HEVC encoding, as well as the ability to stitch images together in a single PDF. You can now group audio or video…

› £4.99 › FROM Liquid Information, liquid.info › NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later The Liquid Author writing app is pretty pared down. It’s basically a single-window app that opens multiple files in tabs. Its presentation is simple: it just switches between white and sepia backgrounds to indicate if you’re reading or editing. Likewise, it doesn’t support lots of formatting styles, and you’ll find that a word count is the only reading statistic on offer. Tap to go full screen and you’re in a simple writing environment, with tools for adding references, citations, images, links and YouTube videos. The app has a good clipboard manager that remembers everything you cut, enabling you to select individually cut bits to paste (although if you’ve cut a paragraph, you can’t paste part of it…

› Free, offers in-app purchases › FROM Algoriddim, algoriddim.com › NEEDS iOS 11.2 or later This much-loved DJ app is now universal, free – and great fun. You get the classic two-deck view, and can pull in music from your own library or from Apple Music or Spotify (Premium only). You can then sync the songs so that they play in the same timing, add a few effects, loop sections, or get Automix to act as a robot DJ from your playlist, taking care of the transitions between songs. Cueing and mixing is easy, and adding effects and loops is a one-tap process. You can come to the app with zero experience and feel like a superstar DJ in seconds, and if you know what you’re doing, there are tons…

Welcome to MacFormat’s Store Guide, the place to go to find out about all the Apple kit that matters, whether you’re looking for your next iPhone or a powerful new desktop Mac. We’ve highlighted the model of each product that’s ideally suited to your needs, whether you’re a recent convert or a seasoned Apple user. So be sure to check our handy tables to see which Mac, iPad or iPhone is best for you. We’ve also handpicked the gold standard in audio, storage, monitors, and many other categories, helping you complement your Mac or iOS device with the best accessories. All of these third-party devices have been reviewed in the magazine. UPDATED OCT 2018 EXPECTED LATE 2019 Mac mini From £799 › It was a long wait, but Apple has…

˃ Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Second-gen AirPods with hands-free Siri ˃ AirPods have been updated with minor yet meaningful updates, including a new H1 chip and the long-awaited wireless charging case. The biggest new feature is hands-free Hey Siri, allowing you to adjust volume, change tracks and more with your voice. The new AirPods connect faster to devices, and are said to deliver 50% more talk time compared to the first-gen buds, though music listening remains the same at a quoted five hours. £159 gets you a Lightning charging case. It’s £199 to get the wireless charging version (with a Lightning port too). The wireless charging case alone is £79 and also works with first-gen AirPods.…

Expanding its News offering was far from the only announcement at Apple’s 25 March event. In autumn this year, the company will further capitalise on what it says is the most popular category on the App Store with the launch of a new games subscription service, Apple Arcade. This will include brand-new, original titles from a mix of indie and major developers. Those include a Sonic the Hedgehog game from Sega; a sequel to classic cyberpunk sci-fi adventure Beneath a Steel Sky, with the involvement of graphic novel artist Dave Gibbons (of Watchmen fame); and an as-yet unspecified project from SimCity creator Will Wright. Apple won’t simply act as a sales channel for the games. It is closely involved in the projects, contributing to their development costs and working closely…

APP OF THE MONTH ˃ If you’re looking for a new design app, Sketch is worth a try. Apple provides developers with Sketch templates to use when designing apps, so it has clearly got a good reputation. It’s designed with the Mac in mind, leveraging the power of Apple’s Metal graphics tech. Version 53 brings a raft of changes aimed at speeding up your workflow. Among them is the Fill Popover, which now lets you name colours (no more remembering hex values), and colours will be shared along with your document when you share a library. Overrides allow you to edit and customise elements of symbols, and these have been made much easier to manage. You can choose which symbols can be overridden, and hovering the pointer over an override…

There’s a saying that ‘the best camera is the one you’ve got with you’. Thanks to your ever-present iPhone you can capture a photograph wherever and whenever you like. However, this creates the problem of importing and managing an ever-growing collection of clips and images. On these two pages, we cover a range of methods to import and store your shots. Get to your photos Photographers who use a standalone digital camera can plug its SD memory card in to their Mac and manually import images into Photos (see the opposite page). The easiest way to get photos off your iPhone and safely onto your Mac is to turn on iCloud Photos. Do this across all your devices and, as soon as your iPhone is in range of a Wi-Fi…

Apple’s Camera app can do a good job of capturing decent photos. However, it lags behind some third-party apps when it comes to functionality. For example, Camera+ 2 (£2.99) helps your iPhone perform more like a DSLR camera. Its virtual spirit level ensures that your horizons are straight, so there’s no need to correct post-shoot. You can tap in white balance presets to suit lighting conditions, such as Cloudy or Daylight, ensuring that your shots are free from colour casts. The manual exposure slider in Camera is pretty fiddly, while Camera+ 2 has an easy-to-use, responsive Exposure Value dial. Camera+ 2 also saves a raw sensor data version of shots, ensuring you have the most colour and tonal info to work with when editing. MADE WITH: Camera+ 2 › £2.99…

You could argue that email is no longer the lingua franca of business: startups strategise in Slack, politicians conspire on WhatsApp, and many a deal is done in Twitter direct messages. But there’s still something uniquely civilised about a system that’s baked into the internet, free and universal, and suits communications that can be as formal or casual, as urgent or deferrable as their content and context demand. That open-endedness, however, means that you can also unwittingly make messages easier to miss or misunderstand. A common cause of messy emails is careless quoting Quote, unquote A common cause of messy emails is careless quoting. By default, Mail inserts the text of the message you’re replying to into your reply. This means you can keep track of the whole thread without…

If you’ve always dreamed of being a guitar hero but couldn’t be bothered with the tedium and sore fingers of actually practising, GarageBand is here to help. Apple’s app enables you to play guitar even if you can’t play it for real, and the results can be really impressive: not only does GarageBand create the chords for you, but it can even do the actual playing. You can use a classic acoustic guitar, or choose from three electric offerings. Classic Clean emulates the warmth of big-bodied electrics, Roots Rock is bluesy, and Hard Rock adds some fun distortion. Each electric guitar also includes a pair of effects pedals to colour the sound. For example, Classic Clean has an echo and a chorus pedal, while Hard Rock has an overdrive and…

Apple has always been as concerned about the insides as the outsides of its products. A Telling his biographer, Walter Isaacson, how his adoptive father taught him woodwork, Steve Jobs recalled that he’d use good timber even on the back of a cabinet: “For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” It would be a stretch to claim this high standard was met by the rushed design of the first Macintosh, although the signatures of its engineers were embossed on the inside of the case – a touch that would have been appreciated only by users who dismantled the first computer made for the kind of users who didn’t dismantle computers. Today’s Macs, iPhones and iPads mostly aren’t made…

Admittedly, I can see why they’re staring. My grass has got to the point where I fully expect to find an explorer in a pith helmet hacking away at it with a machete. Honestly, I’d welcome that – dragging the mower out isn’t exactly my favourite hobby, and my kids aren’t quite old enough that they can be safely bribed to push a spinning blade around the back garden. I think my wife would notice if they were missing any toes. I’m not quite ready to invest in a robot mower yet, but the time will come, particularly as prices keep tumbling down. Really, though, what I’d like is a robotic version of my father-in-law, a tireless gardening machine who has never seen a weed and let it live. Perhaps…

› £1,000 › FROM KEF, kef.com › FEATURES Built-in Spotify and Tidal support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth For those of us in the market for a wireless speaker system at around the grand mark, there’s only really been one name in town: Naim’s Mu-so. Well, now there’s a new kid on the block. KEF’s LSX delivers great sound with excellent integration of Spotify and Tidal, plus a selection of inputs to add wired audio kit. On the back of the master speaker you’ll find an optical digital socket, which is probably going to be of most use for connecting your TV. There’s also a 3.5mm analogue audio input, Ethernet – potentially useful if your Wi-Fi isn’t up to much – as well as a subwoofer output should you want to boost the…

› $49.95 (about £40) › FROM ExpanDrive, expandrive.com › NEEDS OS X 10.9 or later When it comes to cloud storage, to make the most of services like Dropbox and OneDrive, you have to install each service’s app. ExpanDrive does away with that need, allowing you to mount cloud storage services in Finder with just one app and access them from anywhere on your Mac. In addition, ExpanDrive supports FTP and SFTP services, as well as Amazon S3, removing the need for a separate FTP or file management app. You can copy files to and from each mounted volume, as well as save to and open from them in any application. Version 6 adds support for Google Team Drives and Backblaze B2, rounding out an impressive roster of supported services…

› £7.99 › FROM MyScript, myscript.com › Needs iOS 11 or later Handwriting recognition apps need to be accurate. We found that Nebo 2 delivered near-100% accuracy no matter how poor our scrawls. And it was fast to respond, too. This new version is optimised for the 2018 iPad Pro’s edge-to-edge display and adds support for the second-gen Apple Pencil and Logitech Crayon. The app makes excellent use of gestures for quick corrections and formatting, and you can quickly convert text into a machine-readable format. It also makes good use of styles for effective formatting, and you can add equations, illustrations and editable diagrams. Entries are stored in a notebook, with a sidebar organising docs into categories. You can now drag and drop pages across notebooks, and you can move…

› MONITOR Philips 328P6AUBREB › £400 philips.co.uk › Getting a colour-accurate display used to cost a pretty penny, but this monitor is both impressive and affordable. It hits 99% of the Adobe RGB gamut – great for colour-critical work – and supports 10-bit colour. Throw in a host of ports (including USB-C), an IPS display and a great price, and you have a seriously good screen. › DESKTOP STORAGE Drobo 5D3 › £749 drobo.co.uk › With two blazing fast Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 5Gbps USB-C port to boot, the Drobo 5D3 can provide you with rapid file transfers to and from your Mac. You can load it up with up to five HDDs or SSDs of differing capacities, giving you plenty of flexibility for storage options. It’s pricey, but…

Back at the start of the 1990s, electronic non-linear editing (NLE) systems were in use for TV and had begun to be adopted in Hollywood, but the final cut still had to be done by cutting and splicing film. Avid brought NLE to the Macintosh II in 1988, using add-on hardware to handle video. Meanwhile, a company called SuperMac was working on a more affordable video card. After developer Randy Ubillos wrote an editing program to demonstrate its potential, the company sold it to Adobe, which Ubillos soon moved to as well. In less than a year, he completed Premiere 1.0, which was released at the end of 1991 By 1995, Premiere was expanding rapidly, and Adobe’s major competitor, Macromedia, poached Ubillos to create a rival NLE. While Premiere was…

Apple has updated its all-in-one desktop Mac with 8th and 9thgeneration Intel Core processors, having previously updated most other Macs near the end of 2018. So, in Apple’s 21.5in iMac offerings, there’s a quad-core i3 processor in the £1,249 model and a six-core i5 in the £1,449 version. (Apple still offers an older 21.5in iMac, sans Retina display, for £1,049.) Either of the new models can be upgraded to a six-core i7, which adds £270 to the former and £180 to the latter. On the 27in iMac line-up, all three options come with a six-core i5 processor by default. There’s an eight-core i9 option for an extra £450 on the £1,949 mid-range model, and £360 at £2,249. Ninth-gen processors are available only on those two versions. It’s in the graphics…

The first thing announced during Apple’s event on 25 March was a new digital magazine service, Apple News+. The service is available immediately in the US and Canada, and is coming to the UK and Australia later in 2019. Subscribers in North America will gain access to content from over 300 popular magazines, well-known newspapers and online publishers. Canadian subscribers get some additional local publications as well. Titles available in those countries include Vogue, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Magazines can include striking animated covers, and articles can use design elements that reflect their publication’s brand values. The News+ tab shows recommendations of issues and individual articles, based on a mix of curation by Apple’s editorial teams and personalised suggestions that maintain your privacy.…

Apple resurrected not one but two iPads in the form of the iPad Air and iPad mini in mid-March. Both come with a range of new features and improvements. The third-generation iPad Air is a big step up from the 2014 model – so much so that it’s more akin to an updated 10.5in iPad Pro than a simple Air 2 successor, mainly thanks to the introduction of the A12 Bionic chip. This uses machine learning to improve the way you use the device, and results in a 70% increase in performance compared to the 9.7in iPad. The graphics power of the iPad has also been stepped up due to the A12 – Apple says it has twice the graphics capability of the 9.7in iPad. The iPad Air now has…

Apple has at last spilled the details of the streaming TV service it has been cooking up for some time. Called Apple TV+, it’ll arrive in autumn and is pitched as “the new home for the world’s most creative storytellers”. The roster of programmes will include a new series of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, based on the the classic sci-fi anthology mag. US media giant Oprah Winfrey has a documentary about workplace harrassment, tentatively titled Toxic Labour, plus an unnamed multipart series about mental health. The makers of Sesame Street are working on a show that’ll help preschool minds develop an affinity for coding. Apple has contributions from many other famous names lined up. Shows will be available for offline playback as well as streaming, and in more than 100…

1 Straighten horizons To counteract a tilted horizon, click on the Crop button at the top. Click and drag near the crop rotation dial at the right of the photo to rotate the shot. A grid will be shown to help you make the horizon look truly horizontal. 2 Clobber colour casts If a shot is too cold (blue), click Adjust, open the White Balance tool and select the eyedropper tool. Click on an area that should be a more neutral grey. Photos will adjust the sampled cold blue area to create warmer colours. 3 Reveal missing tones The Light tool enables you to make selective tonal adjustments to reveal detail where it’s been lost in shadow. Here we need to brighten up the backlit subject’s underexposed areas to reveal…

Does it feel disproportionately onerous to get things done in Finder? Features like Spotlight can help to a degree, but what can you do in scenarios where it’s unavailable or irrelevant? That’s why you can tailor Finder and make use of some of its less obvious features to speed up working with files. The items in Finder’s sidebar, for example, aren’t set in stone. If you don’t need a shortcut to the Applications folder there – Spotlight and Launchpad may be good enough for you – why keep it around? You can pick Go > Applications to see that folder’s full contents instead. What if you’re not fussed about filing in folders? Tags can help you find things later. You can add them when you first save a file, by…

Siri on the Mac feels a little bit underappreciated, but if you know the right commands it can be a powerful tool. For one thing, using Siri can save you time. Sure, you could type “Pages files created in the last week” into Spotlight, but it’s a lot quicker to just ask Siri to show them to you. You can fire up Siri in one of several ways. Click its icon in the Dock, or tap its button on the Touch Bar (if your Mac has one). You can also hold command+[spacebar] until Siri appears. Or just say “Hey Siri” if you have a compatible device (see bitly.com/mfheysiri). Siri isn’t just for Apple’s own apps. A lot of third-party apps support it too. For example, if you have OmniFocus, you…

A good night’s sleep doesn’t just recharge your batteries, it helps your brain and body self-repair. It even plays a role in memory consolidation, which is why how well you slept often defines your day. Sleep-tracking apps can provide valuable insights about your sleep, identifying poor sleeping habits and zeroing in on small changes you can make to improve your kip. Most of these apps ask you to take your iPhone to bed, as they use the device’s accelerometer to detect your movements as you sleep, and this is enough for them to gather data throughout your sleep cycle. But some also support Apple Watch; many owners find the digital timepiece can last two full days or more on a single charge, which allows them to wear it to bed.…

The shining eyes of an inquisitive child are a wonder to behold. A marvel when a youngster is finding a recipe for silly putty, but not so endearing when they are hacking your router or looking at the wrong sites to broaden their biology knowledge. Apple is one step ahead of enquiring minds and has created excellent controls for parents to invoke. It’s relatively straightforward to lock strangers out of an iOS device, but there’s a broader variety of options at your disposal to restrict what your kids can do. There’s a variety of options to restrict what your kids can do in iOS Own phone restrictions While smartphone ownership is increasingly a rite of passage for youngsters, prior to that they’ll be using a parent’s device. A temporary restriction…

I can’t connect to reconfigured Wi-Fi Q I changed the Wi-Fi configuration on my router recently, and can’t get my Mac to connect to the network now, although iOS devices cope fine. How can I reset its settings on my Mac? BY TOM DAWES A The best way to clear old Wi-Fi settings like this is in the Network pane in System Preferences. Before you do so, if you’ve turned on iCloud Keychain, you should turn that off first (in System Prefs’ iCloud pane), as the changes made to your Mac’s network configuration would otherwise propagate immediately to all other devices also connected to your iCloud Keychain. In the Network pane, select the Wi-Fi item on the left. Click the Advanced button and the Wi-Fi tab of the panel that…

This teardown by iFixit.com reveals the many components inside the iPhone XR – at least, those that are visible to the naked eye. The biggest is the battery. Apple is one of the world’s largest buyers of cobalt, at £25,000 a tonne the most exotic ingredient of lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells. It’s combined with lithium in the cathode, where electrons flow out during charging and in use. The most complex part is the A12 Bionic chip, less than a centimetre square yet containing 6.9 billion transistors. Silicon is abundant all over the Earth, but only a few companies produce the high-purity wafers required. Aluminium for the XR’s frame is smelted from bauxite, a process that accounts for nearly a quarter of Apple’s total carbon emissions. The priciest component is the Liquid…

The smart home sphere has been steadily growing over the past year, and it will continue to grow further this year as networks roll out 5G, enabling even cleverer smart devices. It’s growing out: beyond the router, beyond your walls, and making more and more inroads into your car and, most interestingly, your garden. Perhaps the most obvious choice for outdoor smarts is a security camera, and it’s certainly a growing market. In last issue’s CES report we dug up a few likely candidates – the newly HomeKit-enabled Arlo Pro and the Netatmo Presence – but they’re far from alone. It’s probably the biggest growing sector of the smart home right now; app-connected cameras are everywhere, and while not all of them offer HomeKit compatibility (very few do, in fact,…

› £27.99 › FROM Tribit, tribitaudio.com› FEATURES 12W (dual 6W drivers), Bluetooth 4.2 You’re getting great sound, a rugged design and impressive playing time When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, prices range wildly from the £40 mark to well into the thousands. At less than £30, the Tribit XSound Go falls firmly in the fomer camp. For that bargain price, you’re getting expansive sound, excellent battery life and a rugged IPX7 water-resistant body. If you don’t want to spend too much on a portable Bluetooth speaker, this little bargain should be at the top of your list. Admittedly, the design isn’t anything to write home about: the generic, pill-shaped speaker would fit in at any electronics section at the supermarket. On the front, you’ll find a grille with the Tribit…

The note-taking app is a joy to use thanks to its speed and simplicity › £2.99 › FROM Oleksander Glushchenko, fsnot.es› NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later When it comes to apps for notetaking on the Mac, there’s no shortage of choice. But if you don’t need the seemingly endless features of Evernote, and can’t get on with the cute presentation of Bear despite its power, there’s still a gap to be filled. Once, that slot was occupied by Notational Velocity, a speedy notes manager that was optimised for keyboard shortcuts. FSNotes now claims that space. Like Notational Velocity, FSNotes is built around open formats like RTF and is keyboard-centric. The app also supports Markdown and RTF markup, and you can access individual notes in Finder and edit them in…

› £28.99 FROM Flying Meat, flyingmeat.com› NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later There’s plenty to work with and excellent support for file types Making waves is harder than ever when it comes to Mac-based photo editing, not least because of constant improvements to Photoshop and its close rival Affinity Photo. It’s been years since we’ve reviewed a new version of Acorn, a low-cost, lightweight image editor that sadly still manages to fly somewhat under the radar. So what does Acorn 6, with its cut-back price and design, bring to the party? At first glance, the answer is a steep learning curve. We’re used to pared-back editors being a little easier to use – look at Photoshop Elements for a good example. When Acorn springs to life, you get a panel…

› Free, offers in-app purchases › FROM Bergen, darkroom.co › NEEDS iOS 11 or later Darkroom’s minimalist design is easy to navigate The evolution of the iPad means that it’s become more and more suitable for digital image work. Darkroom 4 is the first version of this iOS photo-editing app to come to the iPad, which is a platform much better suited to these tasks than even the largest iPhone. The app is free to download, with its core functionality fully accessible. More advanced tools and some pre-created filters can also be added with extra in-app purchases. Even without adding these, Darkroom is more powerful than the iOS Photos app. Its sleek, minimalist design is easy to navigate and it reads your Photos library complete with albums, downloading photos from…