Sommaire pour May 2020 de MacFormat

It’s been just over eight years since Apple delivered iCloud to the world (it launched 12 October 2011, fact fans), and its power and reach has grown exponentially in that time. It enables you to seamlessly sync your data across all of your devices and then access it anywhere, acts as a relatively safe haven for your iPhone photos and videos, and even forms the backbone of other Apple apps and services – from the App Store and the iTunes Store to Reminders, Notes, Keynote, Numbers and Pages. It’s all pretty amazing when you think about it. But… iCloud is such a many-tentacled thing it can sometimes be tricky to a) work out what it does, why and how; and b) a little confusing to use – especially when it…

WE ASKED… What iPhone screen size do you prefer? Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat iPhone survives Disney dunking A magical trip to Disney World turned bad last October when iPhone 11 owner Lisa Troyer accidentally dropped her new toy in the Seven Seas Lagoon. Despite being assured by an employee that the device could be recovered, Lisa was doubtful. She was finally reunited with her iPhone in March after it was rescued by divers – and it still worked. “Besides some sand and a little algae, the phone seems no worse for the wear,” Lisa told MacRumors. The iPhone 11 has an IP68 rating, which means it can officially stand to be submerged in two metres of water for up to 30 minutes. Lisa’s phone…

Planning a family barbecue but not sure how the weather’s going to be? Or worried about a week of rain on a camping trip? Either way, the best way to keep you entertained is some waterproof sounds… Luckily, we’ve partnered with Tribit to give you the chance to win a StormBox speaker. The StormBox weighs in at just 775g and comes with a lanyard, so it’s super portable. Its IPX7 rating means it can be submerged in up to one metre of water for 30 minutes, so you certainly don’t need to worry if the heavens open just as the sausages are ready! And, if you’re planning to be out all day, you’ll be pleased to learn that the 2,600mAh battery provides an impressive 20 hours of continuous playback. The…

1 Encryption All your data is safely encrypted while in transit to and from iCloud and on Apple’s servers. Be aware that Apple has the keys, and could hand them over if it receives a court order. Home, Health, payment, Screen Time, Siri and your Wi-Fi passwords are encrypted end-to-end, keeping Apple out too. 2 Mobile backup only You can automatically keep backups of all your iOS and iPadOS devices in iCloud (within your storage limit), but not your Mac. You’ll need to make Time Machine backups to your own drive or use a third-party online backup service. 3 Sync isn’t backup Everything you put in iCloud is kept in sync between all your Apple devices. That means if you delete a file anywhere, it’s normally deleted everywhere – so…

iCloud Photos can sometimes not work as you expect. The first thing to check is that you’ve correctly understood what it’s meant to do, and the tips elsewhere on these pages should help with that. Turn Photos off and on again in the iCloud settings on each device. If some pics in Photos on your Mac aren’t uploading, select them and go to File > Consolidate: if they’re not in your Photos library (which means they won’t sync), it’ll offer to move them there. Finally, incompatible or corrupted photo or video files may fail to sync and could stop anything else syncing. This shouldn’t happen under Catalina, but look under Library for Unable to Upload, which lists any rogue items. If anything else weird is happening with Photos, or any other…

Notes The Notes app gains a few features in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina, including the ability to create and share folders. Only notes and folders in the iCloud section, not On My Device, can be shared, so make sure this is enabled by turning on Notes in your iCloud settings, then create a folder in iCloud: in iOS or iPadOS, tap New Folder at the bottom right of the Folders view, or in macOS ≈-click the area below iCloud and choose New Folder. Select the folder and tap the People icon at the top to add people, who can then (subject to Share Options) add notes to the folder as well as viewing and editing notes you’ve put in it. Reminders The Reminders app has gained a few features,…

The effortless approach of the macOS has always been the key element that sets the Mac apart from PCs that run Microsoft Windows. It’s a lot more straightforward and easy to use than Windows, but we do still live in a world dominated by Windows, and there are often times when many of us need to fit in and do things the Microsoft way for a while. Fortunately, it is also possible to install Windows on your Mac if you need to run some key Windows apps or games every now and then. And, of course, Apple’s solution is typically elegant – it’s called Boot Camp, and it allows you to install Windows on your Mac alongside the main macOS itself. This gives you the freedom to quickly switch between…

When it comes to your health and fitness, sleep is as important as exercise. The average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep every night. A lack of sleep can lead to poor decision making, high blood pressure, low mood, and weight gain, among other issues. Enough of the scaremongering, your iPhone can help you get a good night’s rest! Over the years, Apple has built several tools into iOS, such as Do Not Disturb that can be used to help you sleep. You may also be tempted to use a sleep-tracking app, but did you know Apple has that feature built straight into the Clock app? Even before you try to drift off, Night Shift can help reduce the strain on your eyes by reducing the blue…

Self-preservation is a universal core instinct of every living organism on the planet, from the top of the intellectual tree down to singlecelled bacteria. If you’re building yourself a smart home, that’s something you should absolutely have in mind. A smart home which doesn’t have the sense to understand when there’s something wrong with your living space – is, at least within this somewhat strained analogy, dumber than an amoeba. Such sensing doesn’t even have to be an extra – it could be the core feature of your smart home. You can completely sidestep things like smart assistants or fancy lighting if they’re not your sort of thing, and just use the ever-growing litany of tools available to invisibly make your home safer. And we’re not just talking about security…

Minut adds a strange combination of smarts to your home. It’s a motion-detecting alarm, but it’s also a noise sensor, thermometer, humidity sensor, and it’s smart enough to calculate mould risk too. All of this is squished into a compact (minute, even) Wi-Fi-connected puck which attaches magnetically to its mount and recharges by USB-C. Setup is quick and simple, using the large button that makes up the face of the Minut, and all of the Minuts in your property (or, indeed, in any place you choose, with a monthly Pro subscription) can network themselves together within the extremely well-presented app. Extra points for its alarm detection feature, which alerts you if it hears a suspect beep; we found it more than smart enough to work out when a manual smoke…

Free, offers in-app purchases > FROM Agile Tortoise, getdrafts.com > NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later When we reviewed Drafts last year, we said it was a good note-taking and writing app that lacked the best features from its iOS sibling. Those features have now been added, alongside improvements including Touch Bar support and the ability to post to Medium. Drafts is all about getting ideas down with minimum effort, and to that end it sits in your menu bar ready for action. You can use its icon to create a new draft ready to type, or create one from the contents of the clipboard, and you can add your note hands-free thanks to built-in dictation support. The app syncs with its iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch equivalents so you can…

Free (offers in-app purchases) > FROM Corked Labs, corkulous.com > NEEDS macOS 10.15 or later Corkulous is a virtual corkboard for your Mac that you can use to collect, organise and share ideas. The free version has a 10-item limit; a subscription is £1.99 per month or £14.49 per year. Note that buying a Mac subscription doesn’t cover iOS and vice-versa. Corkulous is based around collections, each of which is a dedicated board to which you can add sticky notes, shapes, web links, note cards, emoji, sketches, and to-do lists. You can also pin PDFs and contacts, and sticky notes and note cards enable you to use Markdown to embed links or code. These items are fully searchable and you can restrict your search to specific item types such as…

Unveiling it at WWDC 2004, Steve Jobs called the 30-inch Cinema Display “the largest desktop canvas ever created”. With a resolution of 2560x 1600, the 16:10 TFT LCD not only boasted an unheard-of four million pixels but also a dramatically imposing physical size. Compared to the regular 23-inch Cinema Display, the 30-inch screen had 70% greater area. From a normal working distance, it could feel overwhelming. Just two inches thick, with a flat slab design mounted on a tilting stand, the aluminium-clad panel seemed impressively slim compared to the cathode-ray tube monitors still lingering in professional use, even if its wide bezels (similar to a modern iMac, but part of the metal case rather than glazed over) look clunky with hindsight. The price of £2,549 didn’t include upwards of £449…

HOT TOPIC! Apple unveils MacBook Air Twice the power, twice the storage Apple’s most popular laptop got an update in March, with Intel quadcore processors available for the first time, plus twice as much solid-state storage than before, and the same Magic Keyboard used on the 16in MacBook Pro. The entry-level MacBook Air now costs just £999 (£100 cheaper than the 2019 model it replaces) and comes with a 10th-generation Intel Core i3 (Ice Lake) processor running at 1.1GHz, plus Intel Iris Plus Graphics, 8GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory and 256GB of SSD storage (up from 128GB before). The £1,299 step-up model boosts the base model spec to a 10th-generation 1.1GHz Intel quadcore i5 CPU and 512GB of SSD storage. However, delve into the build-to-order options and you can also…

[MAC APP] SwitchGlass £4.99 An app switcher tailored to your preferences If you are bored of the Dock, why not switch things up with SwitchGlass? The app is an application switcher, replacing the dock on your desktop. You can customise the size and visibility, just like the macOS dock. However, there are a few more nifty features. You can move the switcher to one of eight different positions on screen, and have it set horizontally or vertically. There are also three corner styles – square, circle or squircle. You can also pick from four ‘materials’ for the background of the switcher, which syncs with Dark Mode on your Mac. You can pick what apps appear in the switcher, and hide those you don’t want. There are also three menu bar…

1 5 minutes It took Steve Jobs just five minutes to convince Tim Cook to join Apple in 1998. Until then, Cook dismissed agency calls to join the company. 2 3 times Tim Cook took over as acting CEO three times while Jobs was alive. Once in 2004, once in 2009 and again in 2011 before staying on permanently in 2011. 3 4:30AM Cook is known for being an early riser, and often answers his emails as early as 4:30AM. This includes fan mail sent to his public email ID. 4 $125 MILLION The Apple CEO took home $125 million in 2019. This includes a $3 million salary and a $7.6 million bonus. The rest came from the shares he holds in Apple. 5 #1 Tim Cook is the first…

Most users of Apple’s billion-and-a-half active devices are also users of iCloud, and you’d be missing out if you weren’t. For a start, it’s free – well, mostly. Whether it’s to sync settings and data such as contacts and reminders, to keep all kinds of files in the cloud where you can access them from anywhere, to share docs and photos, or just to keep bits and bobs that you don’t even need to think about matched up between your Mac, iPhone and iPad, iCloud is the oil on the wheels of the finely tuned machine that is your Apple experience At least, that’s the plan. If there are times when it feels more like treacle in the engine, this article is for you. We’ll take a look at how…

Much of iCloud’s work is done behind the scenes. iCloud Drive is the part you get to use actively to store documents. All changes upload from the device you’re using to the cloud and download from there to all your other devices, keeping the document in the same state everywhere. On the Mac, your iCloud Drive appears in the Finder; in iOS, you access it through the Files app (see the iCloud Drive walkthrough opposite), which has grown in sophistication, especially in iPadOS. In iOS and iPadOS, storage is always optimised, so your iCloud Drive files are only downloaded to the hardware when you use them, then revert to online storage after a few days, showing a cloud icon. If you know you’ll be offline for a while, open any…

When macOS Catalina released last October, the biggest of its many changes was the ‘retirement’ of the monolithic iTunes app, in favour of three more discrete ones: Music, Podcasts and TV. Your audiobooks also got moved to the Books app rather than residing in iTunes too. None of this changes how your content syncs, however you will need to rediscover your settings. As we discussed in our macOS Catalina feature (MF #350), the first time you run Music or TV, the existing single iTunes library on your Mac should convert to new Music and TV libraries. This also sorts out your podcasts and audiobooks. Showing your purchases from the iTunes Store is a separate matter. For Books, go to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud, click Options beside iCloud…

Find My, the app that you use to find your Mac or iOS device if it’s lost, is now combined with Find My Friends. Remember – the app you set up that one time you were meeting for a curry and now you occasionally realise you know where Steve is 24 hours a day and you should probably turn that off before it gets creepy. In logical, if dystopian, fashion, there’s one tab for People and one for Devices, likely prompting Douglas Adams fans in AI research to whisper, ‘Some of the people are also devices!’ If you do lose your hardware, it’s more likely than ever to be found, because each updated Apple device now puts out a Bluetooth signal that other Apple devices (but no-one else) can read.…

Networking is one of those things that can really make your head hurt. Fortunately, high-speed Wi-Fi networks are pretty common these days, and the macOS makes it easy to automatically connect to Wi-Fi, whether you’re at home, in your office, or in a public place such as a coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi. Sometimes, though, you might need to take more direct control of the network settings on your Mac – particularly if you use a Mac at work, or have a MacBook laptop that you use in a number of different locations from day to day. Some locations may have multiple Wi-Fi networks available, while many businesses prefer to use wired networks with Ethernet cabling in their offices. There may be times when you want your Mac to…

No matter how much space you have on your iPhone or iPad, it never seems to be enough. You may well find that you’re a serial app downloader – because, let’s face it – you just have to find out if that new one is better than the one you’ve been using for years, or you might frequently swap messages with attachments, or download podcasts and then never listen to them… There are endless ways to fill up precious storage space. Fortunately, there are also lots of ways that you can free up space without compromising the way you use your device. Whether you make better use of cloud storage to store documents and photos, are more disciplined about offloading or deleting apps, or break the habit of downloading every…

Apple’s Shortcuts app is a powerhouse of automation and customisation. With it, you can do everything from asking Siri to take notes you dictate, to creating complex routines that are triggered when you arrive home from work. There are a number of different ways to create shortcuts, from responding to suggestions from Siri to choosing from the Gallery in the Shortcuts app, to building your own from scratch. And there are numerous resources online with ideas, along with details of how to create them. There are also apps that allow you to build and organise shortcuts. Some shortcuts rely on third-party apps that support them and have pre-created routines. And when it comes to invoking shortcuts, you can choose from recording a command for Siri, adding a button to the…

The introduction of iOS 13 in 2019 was a landmark one for Apple because it split the operating system into two versions, one for iPhone and one for iPad. As usual, there were plenty of headline new features, like Dark Mode, improvements to Siri, the new Find My app, and beefed up security and privacy. However, there were also a raft of features that didn’t make the headlines but which all help make both operating systems easier to user, more powerful, and more reliable, as well as, importantly, more fun. Some are under the hood and you may never know they’re there, others more visible but tucked away in settings or menus, waiting to be discovered. Despite the split into two operating systems, many features, including the new ones in…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 350 APRIL 2020 97 fast fixes for macOS Catalina Hidden gems: 33 amazing apps Manage your smart home remotely 5 of the best VPNs for Mac ISSUE 349 MARCH 2020 Detox your Mac – and iOS devices! Best free apps for iPhone and iPad Super-fast portable SSDs Tested: USB-C docks ISSUE 348 FEBRUARY 2020 Be an Apple Genius – 58 top tips! iPhone photography superguide Master the Podcasts app Tested: AirPods Pro vs rivals 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 your personal library. bit.ly/macformatipad NEVER MISS AN ISSUE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!…

£81 FROM Skylum, skylum.com/luminar > NEEDS macOS 10.12 Skylum specialises in photoediting applications and Luminar 4 is its flagship suite, running as a standalone app or as a plug-in for Photos, Photoshop or Lightroom. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline the process of identifying areas of images for enhancement, and offers a powerful set of tools without requiring a person to have advanced knowledge of graphical concepts. With all major image formats supported, including RAW, you load either a single file or a folder of files. There’s support for layering and adjustment layers like in Photoshop, and AI-powered ‘essential’ adjustments like white balance, colour, exposure and detail, among others. Many of these have a Mask option that lets you draw in free-form, radial or gradient masks under which adjustments…

£4.99 (offers in-app purchases) > FROM Bjango, bjango.com > NEEDS iOS 11 or later; watchOS 5 or later Do we need another weather app? Well, to answer that we need to look at how this the app differentiates itself from the likes of Carrot Weather and Dark Sky… For the most part, the answer is ‘information density’. You get the feeling Snowflake’s creators really love data. Whether you’re in the Home tab or the details view, figures are hurled your way. Fortunately, Snowflake largely succeeds in making everything meaningful and digestible. A huge icon and number sit at the top of the Home tab screen, so you can take in the current conditions and temperature at a glance. Below that, a graph outlines what’s coming over the next few days,…

MONITOR Dell P2219HC £170 dell.com Dell’s monitor offers great colour accuracy and impressive performance at a very affordable price. The monitor packs four USB-A ports, one USB-C, two DisplayPorts and an HDMI input, all with a 21.5-inch 1920x1080 resolution screen. It’s also lightweight and easy to move. IN-EAR EARPHONES M&D MW07 Plus £299 masterdynamic.com Master & Dynamic’s MW07 Plus offer 10 hours of listening time, and the charging case holds an additional three charges (so you get 40 hours in total). These greatsounding earbuds are IPX5 rated, so they’re excellent for workouts and commuting. The marble-effect finish gives them a premium aesthetic, as does the stainless steel charging case. PRINTER Canon Pixma G6050 £319.99 canon.co.uk With a refillable ink tank, the Canon Pixma is both economical and environmental friendly. With…

Apple has published the names and images of the winners of its Night mode photography competition, which it launched in January to promote the camera smarts in the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. Thousands of people worldwide took part in the competition, but only six images from China, India, Russia and Spain made the final cut. The winners – Konstantin Chalabov, Andrei Manuilov, Mitsun Soni, Rubén P Bescós, Rustam Shagimordanov and Yu ‘Eric’ Zhang – will have their photos featured in a gallery on Apple’s website, on its Instagram page and on billboards globally. Crucially, each photographer will also receive a licence fee for their work – something Apple was upfront about this time after being criticised by professional photographers over its 2019 ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign.…

Apple has finally given the iPad Pro a 2020 makeover, boosting its power and capabilities. At the heart of the new model is the A12Z Bionic chip, which combines an 8-core CPU with an 8-core graphics processor to deliver “the highest ever performance in an iPad”. Apple says the 2020 iPad Pro is powerful enough to edit 4K video and create 3D models> Plus there are new augmented reality features too, thanks to the inclusion of a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanner that uses lasers to measure distances between objects. Apple has supplemented the current 12MP wide-angle camera with a second 10MP Ultra-Wide version. The new iPad Pro also gets five new studio-quality microphones for pro-level sound recording. Perhaps the most exciting addition though is the new Magic Keyboard,…

1 Samsung Q950TS > £TBC > samsung.com Samsung’s new 8K TV is a little bit mind-blowing. The bezels are practically non-existent; being just 2.3mm in width, they’re effectively invisible from 10 feet or more away. The 33–million–pixel screen just melts away into the wall. It’s surprisingly thin too, for a TV with a full-array backlight – that’s tech that means there’s a full panel of LED lights behind the LCD screen, giving brighter highs than OLED screens can manage, but the LEDs can selectively dim or turn off to give rich, dark blacks. This is the TV to watch out for this year. 2 Technics EAH–AZ70W > From £190 > technics.com Japanese audio specialist Technics has always been at the forefront of new tech. Now it has its own true…

If you own a Mac or Apple device, it’s ready to use iCloud as soon as you’re logged in with your Apple ID. (Go to bit.ly/mac351appid for Apple ID setup instructions.) You can then choose which of its services to use. In iOS or iPadOS, open Settings, tap your name and tap iCloud. You’ll see a chart of your iCloud storage – the space on Apple’s remote servers allocated to your Apple ID – and options for the apps and features that use iCloud. The options for your Mac look similar in macOS Catalina. (In previous versions of macOS, click the iCloud icon in System Preferences.) Where there’s an on/off switch for an app, this gives it permission to use iCloud; exactly what it does with that will vary. Mail,…

When you upgrade to macOS Catalina and launch Photos, it’ll import your existing photo library, normally in Pictures in your user account’s home folder in Users on Macintosh HD. If you’re using Optimise Mac Storage to keep low-res copies on your Mac, that’ll stay the same; opening a photo will download the full version. (Everything referring to managing photos here also applies to videos.) All photos that you shoot, or import into your Camera Roll from sources such as Apple’s Camera Connection Kits, on devices on which iCloud is enabled with your Apple ID will upload to iCloud Photos, and will therefore appear in the Photos app on your Mac as long as iCloud Photos is enabled. You can also manually import photos from other sources, such as your digital…

The Parental Controls pane in System Preferences has now gone in macOS Catalina. Similar options are in the new Screen Time pane. Items above the dividing line provide statistics on your recent use; if you want this to reflect all your devices, click Options at the bottom and tick Share across devices. The options below the line let you set limits for yourself or whoever uses this account. Previously, Parental Controls applied to a Mac user account. Screen Time attaches to an Apple ID instead. The intention is that you create a separate Apple ID for each of your kids, as well as their own user account, in Users & Groups, if they share a Mac. Just as in your user account, you’re logged in to your Apple ID in…

Since iOS 12 and macOS Catalina, the iWork apps – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – have offered extensive collaboration features, enabled by iCloud. Make sure these apps are enabled in your iCloud Drive settings (see pages 24-25). While editing a document, you’ll see an Add People icon (top right). Tap this and invite people via Messages, Mail or, by copying the link, any other channel. If you allow them to make changes, you can all work on the document from your own devices at the same time; you’ll see changes as others make them. From Share Options, you can even turn off the ability for a specific colleague to make changes using the View Only option.…

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For decades, the film and TV industry has used compositing techniques to tell stories in creative ways. After filming an actor against a green background, editors can key out (remove) the green colour and replace it with footage from a different location. Thanks to Adobe Premiere Elements 2020, you can use this compositing technique to enhance your own productions. We shot the footage for this special effects tutorial against a green curtain, but you can buy a large sheet of card from a stationer that will provide a usable green background for Premiere Elements to work with. You could shoot against a blue background, but an actor’s blue eyes would also become transparent when the blue colour is keyed out from their video clip. Evenly lit footage To produce a…

Fancy connecting your Apple TV to a 292-inch display? At this year’s CES, Samsung displayed its massive screen, which it calls The Wall. LG also had a 145-inch microLED display. But the same microLED tech is coming to smaller screens. One day, you might even have it in your Apple Watch. Repeated rumours say Apple plans to begin switching from standard LED displays to miniLED ones in the coming year, and Apple has been granted multiple patents involving even more impressive microLED displays. Apple’s laptops, iMacs, iPads and Cinema Displays use LED displays, just like most of the big TVs you’ll find in your local audio-visual emporium. It’s a mature technology and it’s absolutely everywhere, but it’s not perfect. In a normal LED display, the pixels don’t emit their own…

While some smart gadgets might seem superfluous (not everyone needs the Quirky Egg Minder for example), some devices make a real difference. I’m someone who genuinely needs an air quality monitor. Living in a dated house means we’re lacking ventilation; there’s no extractor fan in the bathroom, and the kitchen hood has not worked in the decade we’ve lived here. When my Awair kicks up one of its regular alerts I can generally pinpoint the culprit, and do something about it. And if you’re sceptical, I can tell you that using this kind of kit has had a genuinely positive effect on my health, too. Since I’ve been tracking and dealing with the CO2 levels in my home I’ve had fewer headaches and I’ve become less lethargic. Given the little…

Radon monitoring isn’t exactly common, especially in the smart space, but it should be a home essential. Airthings says the gas, responsible for lung cancer, kills six times as many people as house fires and carbon monoxide combined. Levels fluctuate, and it could turn up anywhere, so the Wave Plus – which adds monitoring for CO2, barometric pressure and volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) to the radon, humidity and temperature sensors of the non-Plus model – is a great choice. The Wave Plus isn't cheap (though there’s not really a price you can put on your family’s safety) and it’s not quick to get its initial bearings; it’s also not the most connected device, sticking to low-power Bluetooth for its communication, meaning you’ll need to be in the vicinity of an…

£3,299 > FROM Optoma, optoma.co.uk > FEATURES 4K Ultra HD DLP, 3,500 lumens, 2,500,000:1 contrast ratio, 2.16-3.05m screen size, 3x HDMI 2.0 ports, 1x USB-A reader, 1x S/PDIF output, 1x USB-A output, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port Optoma calls this ultra short throw projector its “TV killer”, but we think your telly can rest easy for a little while yet. At £3,299, the UHZ65UST is certainly towards the upper end of the price range for home cinema projectors. The centrepiece of the large, angular design is the laser projector lens. At the back, you’ll find an Ethernet connection (you can also connect over Wi-Fi), a USB port, an auxiliary audio port for a soundbar or surround sound setup, S/PDIF, and two HDMI 2.0 ports. An additional USB and HDMI are found…

£48.99 > FROM Culture Code, culturedcode.com > NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later Things is one of the most popular productivity apps on the Mac for a simple reason – it works really well. Now version 3.11 adds to that by beefing up the Quick Find feature. Quick Find allows you to start typing anywhere in the app and, without doing anything else, call up a search box to search for the text string you’re typing. Version 3.11 adds several new lists to the groups you can search for. For example, start typing ‘deadline’ and you’ll see a list of tasks with upcoming deadlines. Other lists include ‘repeating’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘all projects’, and ‘logged projects’. Starting to type any of those will display its name in the search suggestions list. Choose the…

Ever since the days of CAD, computers have been a useful helper for renovating your home. In the last few years, things have taken a real step up, though (and we don’t just mean because we had some new stairs put in). The arrival of augmented reality (AR) apps, which can basically overlay virtual objects onto video streams of the real world, means you can now alter your home without actually touching a thing. You can try new furniture and then just magic it away, or create a layout of your home by scanning its walls. Forget ‘measure twice, cut once’ – now you can triple check what you’re doing before you even think about getting your overalls on. Pinterest Pinterest Free NEEDS iOS 9 or later Step 1: inspiration.…