Índex per November 2017 a MacFormat

NanoPad Stick your device to almost anything If you’ve ever looked at a wall and thought ‘Hmm, I wish I could stick my iPhone to that’, you’re in luck. NanoPads are, as the name suggests, small pads that you fix to the back of your iPhone or iPad, enabling you to fasten it to any vertical surface securely. It works with glass, wood, metal, tiles and more, so you can fix it to your kitchen wall and have your iPhone display recipes, for example. We’re not sure it’s an essential purchase, for sure, but anything that can hold a large iPad Pro safely to a wall has us impressed. From €14 (about £12 – Early Bird crowdfunding price) INCLUDES NanoPad suction mount WEBSITE protect-pax.de WORKS WITH Any iPhone or iPad…

For our latest subscription offer see page 40! Apple doesn’t usually spill the beans on its future plans, but there’s one topic that Tim Cook just can’t help gushing about. That topic is augmented reality, also known as AR. It’s “a big idea like the smartphone,” he says. “When I think about the big things, I think about AR,” he muses, somewhat philosophically. And he’s so excited by it that he just wants to “yell out and scream.” Having a CEO so enamoured with AR augurs well for its future on iPhone. But there are plenty of other reasons why Apple’s iOS platform could be the ideal springboard for the tech. Huge opportunity There’s a huge appetite for AR among consumers. AR game Pokémon Go caused a worldwide sensation when…

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! GREAT NEW XMAS DEAL Turn to page 40 Jo says… “WELL, THAT’S WHAT I CALL AN APPLE KEYNOTE!” Alex says… Having felt a little ‘meh’ after the last few Apple Events, I felt that September’s Keynote actually delivered on the excitement factor. It was great! From the mystery of the MIA iPhone 9 to Craig Federighi’s Face ID ‘Fail ID’ – talk about entertaining! Actually, I was talking more about all the GOOD stuff! The Apple Watch Series 3? True. We all knew the Watch had to move forward and to free itself from its iPhone shackles, but I don’t think I expected to see that just yet. Plus Siri and Apple Music support – now that is awesome! Er, I seem to remember something about phones too……

Explained... Clear comms 1 Split view In macOS Sierra, Mail in fullscreen mode wouldn’t easily let you compose an email and refer to your inbox. macOS High Sierra instead utilises its own Split View, with a tabbed compose area alongside your existing email. 2 Space saver This isn’t an improvement you can easily see, but changes to the way macOS deals with files means that your email should now take up less space. If you’ve tons of email and are lacking in storage, this could be a godsend. 3 Top hits Search in Mail is now faster, but also – more importantly – a bit smarter. The most relevant messages Mail finds are placed at the top of the list, as Top Hits. And the more you search, the smarter…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit RECOMPOSE SHOTS IN PHOTOSHOP p44 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 C, hold all but the last key,…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make use of automatic or manual offloading of apps to reclaim an app’s storage space YOU’LL NEED iOS 11 You can allow iOS to automatically offload apps, or do it manually instead Genius tip! If you want to manage your iCloud storage in iOS 11, open Settings and tap your name/ Apple ID at the top of the first page, then iCloud, followed by Manage Storage. iOS 11 includes a storage management improvement that offloads unused apps, and there are two ways to use it. Offloading an app removes it from your device, but leaves behind data associated with it. If you want to use that app again in future, you just tap its icon on the Home screen to…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to enable Type to Siri for silent interaction, and fall back on voice control when you prefer it YOU’LL NEED macOS High Sierra In macOS High Sierra, you can give instructions to Siri without having to talk Genius tip! If you’ve managed to remove Siri’s icon from the Touch Bar, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > Customise Control Strip, then drag the icon from your Mac’s main display down to the Touch Bar. When Apple’s personal assistant made its way from iOS to the Mac in macOS Sierra, it lacked a capability that you might think essential if you work in a shared space such as a café, office, or library: the ability to ask questions or give…

EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems Contact us Email your queries and your questions to genius@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com Are my backups at risk? Q My Mac backs up to four places: a local Time Machine backup, a NAS, Dropbox, and each month to an external disk. If attacked by ransomware, would those be at risk? by JOHN VARCOE A Much depends on how well written the ransomware is, and what vulnerabilities it exploits. Ransomware typically starts encrypting local storage. Because macOS has System Integrity Protection (SIP), system files and bundled apps can’t normally be encrypted because of that. It’s thus most likely to start…

Mac software quick-fire questions How can I run an unsigned app in Sierra? The simplest way is to select the app in Finder, and use Finder’s Open command to open it. The first time you do this after downloading the app, you’ll have to opt to open the app despite its missing signature, but once it has been run, full Gatekeeper checks are not repeated. How much free space do I need for High Sierra? In addition to that required for a major macOS update, if you start up from an SSD, the installer will need extra free space to convert that to AFPS. That’s not readily predictable, but most who upgrade will find 10GB an absolute minimum, and 50GB more comfortable. Why the extra passwords? Q When I start…

IN PRINT ISSUE 318 AUTUMN 2017 iOS 11: 75 tips and tricks Install macOS High Sierra Face to face with the iPhone X! Apple Watch Series 3 and Apple TV 4K ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 317 OCTOBER 2017 Make iCloud work for you New 5K iMac: Apple’s brightest display Sierra’s hidden features revealed iPhone 8: we look behind the rumours ISSUE 316 SEPTEMBER 2017 New iMac: faster, brighter, better Install the macOS High Sierra beta iOS 11: we look at the best new features Discover the hidden secrets of iTunes To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_back or phone +44 (0)844 848 2852 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto your iOS device at any time and keep them forever in…

From £699 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES 4.7-inch Retina HD display with True Tone, A11 Bionic chip, 12MP camera, wireless charging Alex says… I’m trying to guesstimate sales of the iPhone 8. The iPhone X will appeal to the ‘must have the latest and greatest’ and the iPhone 8 Plus will attract the ‘would like the latest and greatest’. But I’m not sure where the 8 fits in – the ‘petite hands and more storage than the 7’ crew, maybe. The iPhone 8 is here, and, it’s more or less exactly what you’d expect a new iPhone to be. Apple has improved the camera, tweaked the design, and extended the battery life, as well as introducing useful new features. The iPhone 8 measures 13.8x6.7x0.7cm – fractionally larger than the iPhone 7.…

£249.99 FROM Acoustic Energy, acoustic-energy.co.uk FEATURES Stereo Mini-jack, Optical, Bluetooth VERDICT The Aego is a great solution if you use an iMac, and it sounds exceptionally good. Superb sound quality HomePod is coming The Aego Sound3ar is styled with the same brushed aluminium look as a Mac, and occupies that ‘dead’ space between an iMac’s screen and its keyboard nicely. It’s angled to direct the sound upwards for optimum clarity. A soundbar’s design is obviously going to create some compromise on acoustic performance, compared to the usual two satellite speaker setup, which helps separate the left and right channels more but, saying that, the Aego presents an absolutely lovely depth of sound for the money. This is largely thanks to the huge 65W RMS subwoofer, which sits on the floor…

£190 FROM Samsung, samsung.com FEATURES USB-C port (USB 3.1 Gen 2), optional AES-256 encryption VERDICT Excellent if you want fast file portability for high-end Macs. + Lightweight and neat - Not the outright fastest SSD S amsung’s latest portable SSD looks a lot like the T3 that came before it, and comes in black or ‘alluring blue', the latter being quite apt, but it’s a shame there are no rubber feet on one side to help keep it that way. Cables are provided for Macs with USB-C or USB-A ports, and the former enables transfer rates of up to 540MB/ sec, says Samsung. That’s a big improvement over the peak of 437.4MB/sec the T3 managed, but behind our current best drive’s peak of 908MB/sec, that being Freecom’s (also USB 3.1…

Focal Listen £179 FROM Focal, focal.com FEATURES 15Hz-22kHz response, microphone, in-line controls Design The Listen headphones are the over-ear variety with a closed back to the headphone cups, which produces great noise isolation. The cable features a microphone and in-line clicker for play/pause and skipping tracks. Portability The Listen headphones fold up nicely for carrying in a soft neoprene carry case that protects them from scratches, but it won’t protect them from drops. The headphones are pretty chunky though, which makes them cumbersome. Sound quality The Listen headphones have nice clear mids and top end, but don’t offer as much bass as we’d like. Having your ears completely encircled produces a strange sense of isolation, but helps you focus entirely on the music. Value For the price, these are great…

£11.99 FROM Fardini Media, switchem.co NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later VERDICT A neat app for defining multiple workspaces on a single desktop. + Group Switcher - No fullscreen/Spaces support Desktop window management is something of a holy grail on Mac. While macOS includes Spaces for grouping apps across multiple desktops, the feature lacks granular control and feels limited. Switchem takes a different tack – it lets you set up multiple grouped app workspaces for different tasks and flip between them in an effort to boost your productivity using a mechanism similar to the native App Switcher. Once you’ve organised all your task-related app windows, simply create a New Group, give it a name, and Switchem assigns a number to the workspace, allowing you to switch to it at any…

Free FROM The Rocket Science Group, mailchimp.com NEEDS iOS 9.3 or later VERDICT A powerful, popular mailing list service finally and fully arrives on iOS. + Flexible design options - Missing some features MailChimp is mighty big in mailing list services. If you have something to say or sell, it’s a great choice. That is, unless you’ve wanted to create email campaigns on iOS. Until now, the MailChimp app has mostly been a place to view details about subscriber activity and sent campaigns. New in MailChimp 4 is the ability to create and edit new campaigns (the industry name for the emails you send). You can add nearly every kind of supported content, reorder your content ‘blocks’, change most formatting details, preview your work, and press the red button to…

Free up space If you have an iPhone 5s or above, you can upgrade to iOS 11. One of the more useful new features can be found under Settings > General > iPhone Storage. From here you will find storage tips specific to your device. Although this may not be the most exciting of new features, it can help you manage your storage more effectively. If you have an old iPhone full of clutter, or are planning on getting a new iPhone and transferring your old data across, this feature could save you a lot of space. Even better, you can delete recommended files directly from this section. You may see the Review Large Attachments category. This contains photos, videos and attachments which are often stored in messages. If you…

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) and @MacFormatUK (Instagram). Now that’s a lighthouse! Beacon of the beach Lighthouses are so symbolic as beacons of our rugged coastline, and Ian Carnew has given this Grade II listed one at Burnham-on-Sea the kind of atmospheric photography it deserves. We’re loving the choice of moody mono for the shot, with the different glints of light on the water, the building itself and its visitors. Hmm. Anyone fancy bunking off for a trip to the seaside this afternoon…? Share your pics with us using the hashtag #MacFormat on Instagram. In each issue we’ll pick our favourites to feature on this page. WHAT…

At September’s Apple Event which saw the launch of the iPhone X, Apple CEO Tim Cook described the Apple Watch as “the number one watch in the world” after it overtook Rolex. Apple hasn’t released any sales figures for Apple Watch, but the estimates assume about 33 million units sold since launch, and it has a 97% customer satisfaction rating. Here’s the story of Apple Watch. The Bling Edition The Apple Watch Edition originally came with an 18 carat gold option that retailed for between $10,000 and $17,000, putting Apple into the premium watch market. It caused quite a stir when it was first released but was taken off sale in September 2016, and the Edition name now only refers to a ceramic version of the Apple Watch, which retails…

Contact us Email your queries to letters@macformat.com Join the conversation at facebook.com/macformat or on Twitter @macformat With macOS High Sierra adding support for external GPUs and virtual reality headsets, like Valve’s SteamVR and the HTC Vive VR headset, many are speculating that Apple is in the process of developing its own virtual realty headset. Virtual reality creates a whole world to occupy, in contrast to augmented reality which overlays information on top of the world around us. It’s rumoured that Apple has a team of developers working on the project in secret. The fact that Apple has been hiring more virtual reality engineers and keeps acquiring AR/VR companies is fuelling speculation further. Another popular rumour is that Apple is developing a set of AR glasses that augment the iPhone in…

[ MOVIE] IT £13.99 The archetypal clown of your nightmares returns after a long hiatus, set to stalk the town of Derry every 27 years. It fuses a coming-of-age tale with supernatural terror. [ PODCAST] THE ADVENTURE ZONE FREE Three brothers and their dad play Dungeons & Dragons and kill unknown numbers of ‘gerblins’. It’s very silly and great fun to hear. [ TV SHOW] GAME OF THRONES £16.99 Season 7 unfolds as the show’s penultimate chapter. Human battles fade to insignificance in the face of the looming White Walker threat.…

Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com LETTER OF THE MONTH! Give a mouse a tail The Apple Magic Keyboard is great. It works beautifully. Previously, the only issues with wireless keyboard were: a) The batteries ran out quickly. b) You could not start up into recovery mode, etc, as they would require a full boot before the Bluetooth was active. The latest keyboard, however is fantastic. Plug a Lightning cable in the back and the keyboard charges up – and also becomes a wired keyboard – thus rectifying both the issues above. Full marks to Apple for a great piece of design! So, what happened when Apple started the design process on the mouse? Who on earth decided the best place to put the charging cable…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @macformat Join the conversation at facebook.com/ macformat Get the latest subscription offers at macformat.com The iPhone X may have grabbed all the headlines recently, but here at Apple Home it’s the new 4K update for the Apple TV that has us rubbing our hands with glee. It’s been a long time coming – and, to be honest, Apple has some catching up to do – but now that it’s here the prospect of 4K films and TV shows from Netflix and the iTunes Store has us eagerly eyeing up shiny new 4K televisions. But new technology can bring…

1 Family members Click in the iCloud pane in System Preferences, and then click Manage Family. In the Family Members tab, you can add other members of your family to a sharing account. Once their details are entered you’ll all be able to share (most) purchased apps, games, books and music. 2 iCloud storage In the Apps & Services tab, click on iCloud Storage. Under macOS High Sierra, you can now share a plan with your entire family. This makes the 200GB and 2TB tiers a good bet – one of those should be enough space for everyone’s back-ups and documents. 3 Location sharing It’s been possible for a long while to share location information with others on iOS, using the likes of Find My Friends. Now on the Mac,…

1 Spotlight categories Search results in Spotlight are a mix of content from the web, and whatever macOS High Sierra finds on your Mac’s drive (and in iCloud Drive). If you don’t find certain categories useful, you can disable them in the Spotlight pane of System Preferences. 2 News sources It’s not going to replace a newspaper, but Spotlight now includes a news section for articles related to your search term. You get a synopsis for each article, and a link to the original online. It works pretty well for getting the latest on sports teams. 3 Location maps You can of course fire up Maps (or visit Google Maps in Safari) to find out where a place is. But type a location into Spotlight and it’ll bring up a…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN What Content-Aware Fill is and how best to use it YOU’LL NEED A picture that you want to recompose, Photoshop CC It used to be that cropping an image only went one way – smaller. Cropping in on an image usually means making the subject of your shot bigger, and discarding pixels around the edge of the frame. This is a useful skill – not only does it mean you can draw attention to your subject, which is particularly helpful if your subject is small, but you can also reposition the subject of your shot in the frame if it’s strangely placed to begin with. With Photoshop CC, cropping doesn’t necessarily mean zooming into your image. Take rotating a shot, for instance.…

HIGH SIERRA We focus on getting more from macOS High Sierra Genius tip! Live Photo loops Live Photos are great fun, and High Sierra allows you to create a repeating loop of a Live Photo, so that it continues to play like an animated GIF. You’ll find lots of other effects and new tools in Photos too, like easier colour adjustments and new filters. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT APFS p54 macOS High Sierra requirements You need MacBook or iMac going back to 2009, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini’s from 2010. You need to be running Mac OS X 10.8 or later. You need 5GB of available storage. Back up your Mac before upgrading; go to support. apple.com/en-gb/HT201250 for advice on using Time Machine. Go to the Mac App Store…

IT WILL TAKE 25 minutes YOU WILL LEARN When to expect a Mac to use APFS, how to use APFS on external drives, and the new file system’s impact on other Apple products and features YOU’LL NEED macOS High Sierra Normally you don’t have to concern yourself with the file system that’s used to store data on drives, whether internal or external. In fact, the only time you may ever have thought about this in the past is when setting up new storage, such as an external hard drive or a USB flash drive. In the past, the choice was easy: you would use Mac OS Extended (also known as Hierarchical File System Plus, or HFS+) if a drive would only be used with Macs, or FAT or ExFAT if…

iOS software quick-fire questions What’s the best iPhone protection from mud? A sealed case cover like the Griffin Survivor Extreme seals controls and ports and provides water resistance. Mud is often quite abrasive, so inspect the case when in use. When soiled, rinse the case clean and use an old soft toothbrush to gently remove debris. How to extend battery life in patchy coverage? In areas with patchy coverage, searching for a signal is a substantial drain on your iPhone’s battery. Low Power Mode does little to help, though. The only way to get significantly better battery life is to switch on Airplane mode until you’re back in better reception conditions. Handoff won’t connect Q I’m trying to connect my new iPad and iPhone 7 with my MacBook Air using…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you BUYING ADVICE helpyou make more informed choices APPLE TV 4K 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…

From £399 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES Cellular connectivity, Apple Music (coming soon), W2 wireless chip, dual core S3 chip, water resistant Jo says… Talk about introducing game changers! Being able to make calls from your watch is still a futuristic concept in my mind. Already the smartwatch to go for – certainly for fitness fanatics – the cellular connectivity (and imminent Apple Music) makes the Series 3 a truly desirable bit of kit. The Apple Watch Series 3 follows last year’s Series 2 by adding cellular connectivity to an already-successful recipe. The Apple Watch is the best smartwatch by a country mile and so it was going to require some effort to improve on the Series 2. There was no visual difference between the first and second versions of Apple…

£289 FROM Loupedeck Ltd, loupedeck.com NEEDS Adobe Lightroom 6 or later, OS X 10.10 or later VERDICT Well made, good fun, and effective. It costs a pretty penny, though. + Satisfyingly built - The price Lightroom’s Develop module can feel a bit awkward to use. Rows of sliders make for a complicated feel. Even pros find getting a picture right often involves a combination of memorised shortcuts and speedy mouse skills. Loupedeck distills hundreds of shortcuts and sliders into one customisable USB keyboard. Contrast, Clarity, Highlights and more are reduced to satisfying knobs, while rotating and cropping gets its own large control. Colour channels get their own wheels, and those sorting images will appreciate the colour and numerical rating buttons. Made a change you don’t like? Click the relevant dial…

£84.99 FROM Denon, denon.co.uk FEATURES 6-40,000Hz, three-button remote with mic, carry case, four sets of spare ear tips VERDICT Affordable earphones that reach beyond their price range. + Comfortable to wear - Controls too plasticky For a pair of buds to stand out in this price range, they have to balance decent features with solid sound. These earphones are a great exercise in subtlety. They aren’t flashy, but everything has a purpose. On the left earphone cable is the mic, volume and play/ pause controls, which actually feels a bit cheap. The cable is long enough at 1.3m and Denon has added its Radial Cascade Damper system to the cable. This means that you won’t get cable noise. The buds can handle frequencies of between 6-40,000Hz. At this price point,…

MAC WRITING TOOLS ON TEST… Bear Pro £13.99/year Byword £5.99 iA Writer £19.99 Scrivener £43.99 Ulysses £35.99/year Microsoft Word £59.99/year* There are so many writing tools now available on the Mac that you can split them into several different categories and still fill each with several apps. There are tools for taking notes, minimalist apps for helping you focus on just the words on the page, there are some designed to write blog posts and others aimed at novelists, academics, or anyone else who needs to put together long documents. While there are still several apps that work on a document-by-document basis, where each piece of work is self-contained in a single file, there are others that allow you to create and manage projects consisting of as many separate documents…

£64 FROM Macphun, macphun.com NEEDS OS X 10.10.5 or later Accent AI uses artificial intelligence to fix everything it identifies as needing fixing VERDICT This update makes Luminar an ideal app for making quick and dirty photo edits. + Speedy image analysis and editing + New AI filter + Big range of presets - Can be daunting Macphun’s ‘Neptune’ update to its impressive Luminar image editing app brings new tools, new filters and tweaks to the back end for increased performance with large image files. The headline new feature is Accent AI, something that Macphun dubs ‘the future of photo editing’. What is it? It’s a filter in the new Quick & Awesome workspace that claims to analyse your image using artificial intelligence and fix everything it identifies as needing…

The premier iOS diagramming app just got better Free; Standard £48.99, Pro £99.99 FROM The Omni Group, omnigroup.com NEEDS iOS 10.3 or later The unified navigation bar gathers document objects, layers and canvases VERDICT OmniGraffle is powerful and easy to use. The best iOS diagramming app. + Interface upgrades + Try-before-you-buy - Lacks Bezier tools - Missing an outlining feature Testament to OmniGraffle’s versatility is the software's incongruous collection of fans. Website wireframers, illustrators and process flow junkies all praise its unfussy approach to diagram creation. OmniGraffle 3 for iOS remains delightfully straightforward. You drag elements to its canvas from a built-in collection of shapes and objects called stencils. The choice is extended through a link to Omni’s online stencil repository. The obvious change is a fresh, panelled look. A…

MONITOR ViewSonic VP2772 £682 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. NETWORK STORAGE Drobo 5D3 £620 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 a worthy investment. PRINTER Epson Eco-Tank ET-2600 £193 epson.co.uk The Eco-Tank ET-2600 has a…

EU TO SUE IRELAND SAYS APPLE TAX BACKLOG NOT RECOVERED The European Commission is taking the Irish government to the European Court of Justice in a bid to recover £11.3 billion in back taxes it says Apple owes. The Commission ruled in August 2016 that Apple had received illegal state aid from the Irish government, but says the government has yet to fully recover the owed taxes or act in a timely fashion. APPLE EXECS HIT JACKPOT $19 MILLION EACH FOR EIGHT APPLE BIGWIGS Last month we reported that Tim Cook had received a princely $89.2 million in stock options from Apple. Now, eight other Apple execs have received 125,494 shares of stock each, equivalent to $19 million per executive. The lucky execs awarded the shares were Bruce Sewell, Angela…

5.8 1 The iPhone X is a whopping 5.8 inches across, making it Apple’s largest phone. And you thought the iPhone 8 Plus was big. 30,000 2 Face ID is clever – very clever. It scans your face and builds a map made up of 30,000 dots to create an accurate, unique picture. 458 3 With 458 pixels per inch, the iPhone X’s display has the highest pixel density of any iPhone – perfect for enjoying high resolution photos and videos. 50 4 Ever fancied being an emoji? The iPhone X’s Animoji feature scans your face and analyses more than 50 muscle movements to turn your smile into a smiley. 600 billion 5 The A11 Bionic chip powering the iPhone X is a super sturdy slice of silicon, and can…

Since the release of the new Apple Watch, I’ve become freshly obsessed with the idea of the Watch as the new iPhone. I mentioned the idea of the phone becoming the modern laptop and the Watch becoming the modern phone briefly in my column last month, but since then I’ve also become a semantic bore about it; I came to realise that to kids today, ‘phone’ means small computer, and so there’s a non-zero chance that even if the laptop form-factor stays around for the next 15 years, current under-fives will wind up calling any portable computer a ‘phone’. I’m fine with that – who among us hasn’t referred to buying ‘a hi-fi’ or something that equally mangles an originally meaningful term – though I admit that using a print…

Explained... The Photos interface 1 The new sidebar The sidebar in macOS Sierra was optional (View > Show Sidebar), but now it’s persistent. If you always want it in fullscreen, too, turn on View > Always Show Toolbar and Sidebar in fullscreen. 2 Your library Key custom albums that were previously scattered around the sidebar are now housed under Library. Here, you find the likes of Memories and Favourites, along with the Recently Deleted album. 3 Revamped imports Click on Imports for a chronological feed of photos and images you’ve added to Photos. Note these are grouped by import and not date, and so the likes of Photo Stream entries show up individually. 4 New media types Under Albums in the sidebar you’ll find a Media Types folder, which provides…

Explained... New in Notes 1 Notes tables Click the Table button in the Notes toolbar – or use Format > Table – and a table will be added to your note at the cursor’s current location. You can add multiple tables to a single note – you needn’t stick at one. 2 Table formatting Tables in Notes start off two cells tall and two cells wide. To change the setup, ctrl-click the column or row widget, and use the Add and Delete options accordingly. Note you don’t get headers – just standard cells. 3 Columns and rows Columns and rows in Notes can be rearranged. Click inside a cell and then click-drag the relevant column or row widget. Be aware that you can only move columns or rows to a…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN What to look out for when something attempts to install a kernel extension on your Mac, and how to respond to it YOU’LL NEED macOS High Sierra There’s a change to how kernel extensions are handled in macOS High Sierra, for which Apple has published advice for system administrators, yet this change may have a small impact on you even as a regular Mac user. Basically, kernel extensions added to your Mac after you install High Sierra require user approval. After installing High Sierra, we ran into this scenario two times in as many days. The action that’s consequently required on your part is trivial, but we recommend paying closer attention than you might normally do when installing software. For example, we…

Peripherals quick-fire questions How do I get my Mac to remember its volume setting? If it forgets the sound volume setting when starting up, it’s because it isn’t being stored in NVRAM, formerly PRAM. Reset that by starting with the command, shift, P and R keys held until the second startup chime (or more than 20 seconds on a new MacBook Pro), then release them and let it start up normally. Does keeping my hard disk awake help it last? Yes. Spinning up a hard disk increases its mechanical wear. Hard drives last longer if you set Energy Saver to not put them to sleep, and by leaving your Mac running at all times rather than shutting it down at the end of each day. Wiping data from an old…

From £799 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES 5.5-inch Retina HD display with True Tone, A11 Bionic chip, 12MP camera, wireless charging Graham says… Apart from the glass back, not much has changed with the design of the iPhone 8 Plus, which is a little disappointing, but I love all the upgrades. The new Portrait Lighting feature is really nice, and finally we get wireless charging on an iPhone! It’s about time. We’ll start with the elephant in the room – the new iPhone 8 Plus looks a bit dated compared to Android rivals, which is a shame. The large bezels look simply ridiculous up against the Galaxy Note 8 and S8+. There are three colour options; slate grey, silver and gold – although the new gold colour is a bit rosier…

From £179 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES 4K Ultra HD & HDR, Dolby Vision, Siri, A10X Fusion chip, 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO, 32 or 64GB storage Jo says… I can’t quite believe it’s taken Apple so long to get to this stage with the Apple TV. That said, it’s got enough power to handle 4K very well indeed, and considering the added HomeKit support and beefier storage, I’m impressed that the 4K model has been pitched at a pretty reasonable price point. Have you been tempted to invest in a 4K HDR TV recently? If you have, the new Apple TV 4K will be an excellent complementary purchase. This latest model can handle all 4K content, with HDR10 and Dolby Vision supported – and (depending on the TV you’ve connected it…

£681.98 (enclosure only) FROM Drobo, drobo.com FEATURES 2x Thunderbolt 3, 1x USB-C (5Gbps) ports, mSATA bay VERDICT Now works over Thunderbolt 3, but getting the best speeds can get costly. + Expansion flexibility - Even bare unit’s costly D robo makes flexible storage arrays that enable you to add more disks to boost capacity. Swap out a failed or low-capacity disk and it adjusts to the change. The 5D3 is equipped with two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Our unit came with five 3.5-inch Toshiba DT Desktop Series disks, from 500GB to 2TB. We got mean average transfer rates of 547.1 and 325.8MB/sec when reading and writing sequentially, and 180.4 and 124.8MB/sec when reading and writing random locations. Good, though unspectacular. The peak sequential read speed was 1027.9MB/sec – far below Thunderbolt…

£149.99 FROM JBL, uk.jbl.com FEATURES 2x 2.25-inch woofers, 2x 15W power rating, Google Cast, Bluetooth VERDICT Impressive smarts, but those looking for refined sound should look elsewhere. + Chunky bass - Sound lacks nuance Rather than a simple Bluetoothequipped, battery powered speaker, the JBL Playlist is mains-powered and equipped with Google Cast. You can still use Bluetooth if you’d prefer, but Google Cast allows the speaker to become part of a multi-room setup. Much like AirPlay, you stream music over Wi-Fi and you can even pair the speaker with others to fill your house with music. A full set of playback controls can be found on the top, while the front of the device is given over to its bulbous speaker grill. At the back is a two-pronged power port…

£69.99 FROM Parallels International, parallels.com NEEDS OS X 10.10.5 or later VERDICT Flexible and powerful but there are only incremental updates for existing users. + Touch Bar works well - Upgrade (£34.99) hard to justify When it comes to running virtual versions of Windows, Linux and even older iterations of OS X, Parallels Desktop is king. It’s well engineered and blends virtual machines (VMs) into your Mac desktop with features like Coherence, where you can run Windows apps in their own window as if native. Version 13 – like its immediate predecessors – feels more of a point release than a major new version. Its main highlight is support for the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar inside Windows VMs. It’s context-sensitive, supporting major apps as well as replicating shortcut icons on…

£3.99 (optional IAPs) FROM Grailr, meetcarrot.com/weather NEEDS iOS 10 or later VERDICT A smart weather app with character; both entertaining and informative. + Top-notch design - Radar maps are unimpressive Marrying accurate forecasting with a twisted AI, CARROT Weather is an anomaly: a fun weather app. Select a location and you get current conditions, rainfall warnings, hourly and daily outlooks. But it adds a layer of twisted snark. It’ll merrily ‘LOL’ if it’s about to rain, call you a ‘meatbag’, and note that it hopes you get ‘embarrassing tan lines’ when the sun appears. Beyond the oddball commentary, CARROT is a usable, colourful, data-rich app. On iPhone and iPad alike, the interface makes it easy to glance at an overview or delve into details by tapping on any given hour…