MacFormat 1 August 2015

Whatever Mac you’ve chosen, you’ve opted to make a serious investment. It will, of course, pay off because your Mac is reliable, stable and stands the test of time far better than most other computers. We could all do with some things to be cheaper though. Better still, free! The software world can be a hard thing to keep track of, and expensive if your interests are wide-ranging. It’s not for us to quibble over seemingly expensive programs – that’s a matter for their developers – but the notion that free stuff is less good is just nonsense. So in this issue we’ve compiled the latest and greatest free apps for OS X, from the Mac App Store and further afield, and explain why you should try them. We’ve also…

We round-up the Apple stories that matter to you Chip giant Intel has confirmed that its latest high-speed data transfer standard, Thunderbolt 3, will use the same USB-C connector as used by USB 3.1, but will be much, much faster. “For the first time, one computer port connects to Thunderbolt devices, every display and billions of USB devices,” Jason Ziller, Intel’s director of Thunderbolt marketing, said. Thunderbolt 3 can transfer data at a whopping 40Gbps (gigabits per second), twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2, which was introduced in 2014 and eight times faster than the MacBook’s sole first-gen USB 3.1 port. This means you can transfer a 4K movie in just 30 seconds using Thunderbolt 3. The ports also incorporate support for cheaper ‘passive’ Thunderbolt cables that operate at a…

AFFINITY DESIGNER £29.99 Developer Seriflabs, affinity.serif.com Requires OS X 10.7 or higher Winner of an Apple Design Award at WWDC 2015, Affinity Designer is a beautifully powerful graphics design app for the Mac that’s mainly for creating and editing vector graphics but can open pixel-based images too. “This is an excellent example of what a state-of-the-art Mac app should be,” Apple explains, pointing out that the 64-bit software takes full advantage of OS X technologies like OpenGL, Grand Central Dispatch and Core Graphics. The application also supports tablets and the Force Touch trackpad, so you can use it to draw and paint with a degree of pressure sensitivity. The user interface is highly intuitive and contextual, which means that not only are the tools you need are easy to find,…

WE’RE MOST EXCITED ABOUT... NINEBOT ONE E+ $950 (about £625) ninebot.com It’s what Segway could have been, if it hadn’t been adopted by the socks-andsandals crowd What is it? With its fancy blue, black and white styling, the Ninebot One E+ looks like something straight out of I, Robot (minus the overbearing product placements). But no, apparently it’s actually a ‘selfbalancing scooter’, a single-wheeled transport device that can reach a decent 22km/h and travel up to an impressive 35km on a single charge. When’s it due? It’s scooting around now Why are we excited? It looks über-futuristic and the tech inside seems pretty impressive too. In theory, it’s a superb way to make short, traffic jamdodging, urban journeys and one video even shows a rider using it while balancing on…

Jonathan Ive’s promotion to Chief Design Officer has got Appleologists in a tizzy. Is the newly created position the beginning of the end of Ive’s time at Apple, or has he become the spiritual successor to Steve Jobs, the new keeper of the Apple flame? Will he move to England and try to do everything via iCloud? Is he going to give up on designing things and swan about in gold-plated Bentleys with his designer pals, listening to Pitbull and quaffing Courvoisier? Me, I think Ive wants to be a fireman again. Imagine. You’ve been fascinated by fire your whole life. You understand its power, its terrible beauty. You know its secrets, can hear its beats, can predict its movements in a way no other firefighter can. And because of…

Welcome to OS X El Capitan The next version of OS X shares its name with a famous rock formation within Yosemite national park. Think of El Capitan being to Yosemite as Snow Leopard was to Leopard: similar on the surface, but with a strong focus on improving the performance of your Mac (El Capitan will run on the same hardware as its predecessor). However, performance hasn’t been Apple’s sole focus for this version. It also says that your experience of using a Mac to get things done will improve. In fact, there’s much cause for excitement, especially if your Mac is more than three years old at this point, in which case you might have been disappointed that major features of Yosemite – Handoff and cross-platform AirDrop with iOS…