Table of contents for 1 March 2015 in MacLife

GO For more Apple ebook news, visit: www.maclife.com/tags/ebooks THE SAGA OF APPLE’S ebooks anti-trust case looks set to continue for another few months at least, after an appellate court hearing appeared sympathic to Apple’s appeal. Having originally been found to have colluded with five major book publishers to raise prices by district judge Denise Cote in 2013, the judges in Apple’s appeal hearing criticized the approach by the Department of Justice and appeared to suggest that the case had not been handled correctly. Much of the change came from the question of whether Amazon has a monopoly on the ebook market, and so whether it’s appropriate for new entrants to make similar deals to that between Apple and the book publishers. When Apple entered the ebooks market with the iBookstore,…

There’s one bit of Apple-related news on the horizon that harks back to the good old days of 1997, when Apple was clawing its way back to profitability, and the iPod, iPhone and iPad were still unused ideas scribbled down in some vast notebook somewhere in a back office at 1 Infinite Loop. I am, of course, talking about the long-awaited Steve Jobs movie. No, not the disappointing 2013 one starring Ashton Kutcher, which might as well be subtitled “Dude, Where’s My Mac?”, but rather the official big screen adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s bazillion copy-selling 2011 biography of Apple’s co-founder, written by The Social Network’s Aaron Sorkin. HOWEVER, LIKE THE APPLE products whose creation it depicts, this project isn’t coming together easily – as an intriguing and unexpected series of…

PREVIEW FILES WITHIN MORE FINDER VIEWS Previously only available in Column view, the Preview Pane can now be used in Finder’s Icon and List views by choosing View > Show Preview Pane. In Icon view, it’s useful as a way to browse a folder that contains images. Use the slider (bottom right of the Finder window) to set icon previews to medium, then skim through. Select any file you want to see larger in the Preview Pane – no need to use Quick Look! BATCH RENAME FILES IN FINDER There’s no need to resort to Automator or to use an app to rename a bunch of files any more – it’s all possible from Finder. Select several files, right-click on one and choose the item with the label “Rename [number]…

>>> DISCONNECT FROM THE CURRENT WI-FI NETWORK If you need to disconnect from a particular Wi-Fi network (if you’re in a public hotspot for instance), but want to keep Wi-Fi turned on to continue using AirDrop, å-click the Wi-Fi status icon. You will now find an option to disconnect from the current network. >>> HOTSPOT VS HOTSPOT One benefit of Continuity is you don’t have to type a Wi-Fi password to connect to your iPhone’s hotspot. Another is your iPhone relays extra info to your Mac about its battery, network connection and signal strength, so you don’t have to turn on your iPhone to check its connection quality – click the Wi-Fi icon on your Mac instead. >>> SEARCH PREFERENCES Items relating to search used to be scattered between a…

>>> CHOOSE WHICH CONTACT DETAILS ARE SHARED When sharing your Contacts card with other people, you can choose to limit which information is shared. In Contacts, go to Preferences> vCard then check ‘Enable private me card’. Now go to Card > Go to My Card, and then click the Edit button at the bottom of it. Checkboxes appear next to the items you’ve filled out, enabling you to choose which should be included. Sadly, this ability isn’t available for other contact cards, so you can’t quickly choose which details to provide about, say, someone from your team at work. >>> ASSIGN ALERT TONES TO CONTACTS Here’s another example of OS X now working in closer harmony with iOS. Now that your Mac can receive phone calls, it provides the same…

99c Developer Last Automaton App Supply, rebelsauce.com Platform iPhone, iPod touch Requirements iOS 8 or later Rebelsauce is best known for its film-style presets for Lightroom on the Mac. Now those presets have come to the iPhone, enabling you to give your crisp digital shots a bit of life and character. The 99¢ app includes 36 filters, and you can buy packs of between 10 and 15 additional filters for 99¢ a pop, or the full collection for $5.99 – which as usual is the cheapest way to do things. The filters are stacked at the bottom of the screen and applied with a single tap, where they make an immediate and often marked difference to your image, saving you from a lot of manual tweaking. You’re not restricted to…

$2.99 Developer Ironhide Games, kingdomrushorigins.com Platform iPad (also on iPhone and iPod touch) Requirements 7 or later iOS is rich with tower defense games, and the Kingdom Rush series has always been one of its best, offering lush cartoony graphics and accessible, manic action. Enemies come down set paths to the point you’re defending; you need to build towers to attack them and stop them. The game might tout new tower abilities over other Kingdom Rush entries, but it’s all pretty standard – the tower types have different strengths, such as the fast-paced archers or area-affecting boulder-throwing druids. There’s little new here, but it’s all highly polished in presentation. The biggest issue is that some of the levels feel needlessly long, especially at Normal difficulty. Why do we have to…

Free Developer FileThis, filethis.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later FileThis is a cloud-based repository for paperless documents, including bank statements, credit card and utility bills. The free service can add up to six connections, automatically downloading online statements and parsing them into text-searchable PDF files which are then uploaded to your choice of providers, including FileThis Cloud. The iOS app is far more nimble than the Adobe Flash-powered web app, although the UI gets crowded on iPhone, especially as landscape mode is only supported on iPad. Documents can be viewed as Accounts or Cabinets, the latter sorted via tags into categories such as Home, Work or Utilities. Tags are automatic and generally quite accurate, but can also be manually edited individually or by Cabinet with a somewhat obscured…

$4.99 Developer Junecloud, junecloud.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later Mac Life EDITOR;S CHOICE Few apps benefit from the great new iOS 8 features like Deliveries (formerly Delivery Status touch), already the Mercedes of apps for tracking packages from a dizzying assortment of shipping providers. Version 6.0 adds Notification Center support courtesy of a Today widget for keeping tabs even when the app is closed, a more refined UI and slick new iPhone 6 landscape view. But it’s the little conveniences that make this update rock: Passwords can now be filled from iCloud Keychain or 1Password (rejoice!), and Deliveries remembers most-used services, presenting them in descending order when adding new entries. Likewise, tapping in a new tracking number intelligently predicts the correct service for you, the kind of timesaving…

$9.99 Developer Kazuhiro Kawana, topoftree.jp Requirements OS X 10.9 or later; 64-bit processor Tree is a lightweight outline tool that can tackle plain or rich text from a variety of document formats including OPML and Word, and allows tree views to be expanded vertically or horizontally – a feature unique to this application. Version 2.0.1 retains what’s already great, including a minimalist UI and multi document access from Safari-style tabs – you can now add new tabs with a double-click on the tab bar or using the + button; the adjacent button also makes it easy to move a selected family into a new tab in one click. Tree rewards users who learn keyboard shortcuts, and this version adds support for applying color labels without taking your fingers off the…

$49.99 Developer Aspyr/Firaxis, aspyr.com Requirements OS X 10.9.5 or later, 2.2GHz Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 8GB disk space, AMD Radeon HD 4850/NVIDIA GeForce 640M/Intel HD 4000 graphics card Beyond Earth is largely similar to Firaxis’ strategy behemoth Civilization 5, but set against a backdrop of colonizing an alien world. It retains the familiar turn-based mechanics, with units spread over a world map divided into hexagons. Your micromanagement skills will be put to task, from outpost building, to researching technologies of the future, managing trade routes, and terraforming the alien soil to improve human survivability. It feels more than just a polished mod for Civilization though; Beyond Earth keeps thing fresh by adding new elements to the formula. Progress along the enormous technology web leads to humanity’s future evolving…

YOU MIGHT HAVE had a bit of a shock on attempting to launch iPhoto on an iPhone or iPad after upgrading to iOS 8. The app was abruptly dead and inaccessible, superseded by Photos, which gained filters and more editing capabilities. In 2015, Apple will bring similar thinking to the Mac, replacing iPhoto with an OS X version of Photos. Generally, when a desktop app is retired, it doesn’t suddenly stop working and force you to migrate to an alternative product. Chances are, you’ll still be able to continue using iPhoto for a while – although that’s not guaranteed. However, it’s clear that if you’re an iPhoto user on OS X Yosemite, you should start planning for the future, because Apple’s made it clear iPhoto has no future. Although we…

THERE’S BEEN A lot of hand-wringing lately with regard to the iPad and how it seems to be losing steam. Back in November, the analysts at IDC reported that 2014 iPad shipments would reach 64.9 million units, down 12.7% from the previous year and marking the first sales decline in the product’s history. It wasn’t a banner year for other tablet manufacturers, either: while the overall market grew 7.2%, the increase pales in comparison to the 52.5% jump seen between 2012 and 2013. Are people tiring of tablets? Was the iPad just a fad? Should Apple be scrambling to stick on a second screen or something in a desperate bid to spark fresh excitement? Absolutely not. No fix is necessary, because there isn’t a problem. The IDC’s common-sense conclusion was…

INTEL’S NEXT-GENERATION processor line, known as Broadwell, held a lot of promise when it was first announced. After Haswell (Intel’s current processor line) introduced a new architecture for processors and powerful new graphics options, Broadwell is due to refine that architecture, making it smaller and less power-hungry, while again introducing more powerful graphics chips. (This strategy is known as Intel’s “Tick Tock” system, where each big revision to its products alternates between being a redesign of the chips or an improvement in how the chips are produced.) Broadwell was due to give us better Iris graphics in the MacBook Pro and iMac lines, as well as – most excitingly – finally a chip powerful enough while being low power to launch a Retina MacBook Air. The problem is that Broadwell…

1 Hope to Die James Patterson $9.99 The perennial James Patterson drops yet another brutal psychological mystery on Detective Alex Cross, this time putting the police psychologist’s family under threat. How far will he go to save them? What will he be prepared to sacrifice to ensure the safety of his wife and children? How many clichéd thriller questions will be answered? We kid, we kid – it’s a great, gripping read. Though it does make us wish they would make some more films starring Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross. Better yet, how about a David Fincher-directed cable show? Now you’re talking… 2 Boyhood Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane $14.99 HD Director Richard Linklater pulls off something truly astonishing here. Filmed with the same actors over a period of…

FIND OUT HOW MANY UPDATES ARE PENDING If you don’t keep the App Store in the Dock, click the Apple menu and look at the App Store… item. It displays a badge if there are software updates pending. CHOOSE WHETHER OSX UPDATES ITSELF There’s a new checkbox in the App Store pane in System Preferences that controls whether OS X updates are automatically installed. Disable this if you need to postpone installation until you’ve had a chance to ensure an update won’t cause problems with apps you depend upon.…

THIS YEAR WILL BE ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN JUST APPLE WATCH – JUST FEAST YOUR EYES ON THESE… ON A SCALE of difficulty from one to 10, getting information out of Apple scores a billion: the world’s most-watched and most-copied company knows the power of secrecy as a marketing tool and as a way to keep rivals’ photocopiers powered down. Predicting what Apple might be doing 10 years from now is near impossible. One year, though? That’s different. By combing through Apple’s own statements, APIs and patents, checking its suppliers’ product roadmaps and subjecting the rumor mill to our patented Fact-o-Matic™, you can divine a surprising amount about Apple’s future plans – and when you can’t, you can always make an informed guess based on Apple’s track record and its…

IF YOU’RE WONDERING where the long-rumored Retina MacBook Air is, you can blame Intel: ongoing manufacturing problems with its next-generation Broadwell processors mean that the low-power chips have been plagued with massive delays. It’s not a good situation. And it leaves Apple with three choices: use the current Core M processors, wait for Broadwell, or wait slightly longer for Broadwell’s replacement, Skylake. Using the current processors is the worst option. We’d have a situation like the iPad 3, which had to be bigger, heavier and slower to charge than its predecessor in order to cope with its Retina display. Compromises like this are hardly ideal for a laptop whose key selling points are lightness, thinness and battery life, and they don’t chime with rumors of a super-thin new fan-free design.…

$3.99 Developer Engine Software, engine-software.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later Inspired by the artwork of Mondrian and Kandinsky (welcome to the Mac|Life art club…), Proun+ resembles a breakneck dash through the synapses of a painter’s brain. Rejecting the gritty realism or cartoonish Nintendo-style fare found in almost every other 3D racer, ever, Proun+ is instead an explosion of color, with you wrestling a little ball along tube-like rollercoaster tracks — albeit rollercoasters covered in colorful barriers that stop you dead. Your aim, first and foremost, is to spin left and right around the tube, avoiding obstacles, in order to keep your speed up and place in the top three; manage this and new track or challenge is unlocked. Open up all of a level’s tracks and you get…

$2.99 Developer WapleStuff, waplestuff.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later Stacks is a currency converter app, and quite a smart one. There’s a huge range of currencies, and you can update to the latest rates with just a swipe, as well as see historical data. There are some hidden functions in it (such as a calculator you can swipe sideways to reveal) and we find its layout a little confusing (we’d expect typing to fill in the green currency at the top of the screen, not the white one underneath, but it’s the other way around) – but once you get used to its quirks, it’s very slick. The magic of this new version is in its Safari extension, though. When browsing a site in Safari, you can use…

$24.99 Developer Mischief, madewithmischief.com Requirements OS X 10.8 or higher, 64-bit processor, OpenGL 2.0 or greater Mischief may not be as well known in digital-painting circles as Adobe or Corel, but that is about to change. What sets it apart from similar apps such as Painter or Sketchbook Pro is its infinite canvas. Artwork is no longer restricted to a landscape or portrait orientation, or set size and resolution. You can work at any size and zoom in/out with its “trillion times zoom” without your artwork losing quality or lines becoming pixellated. Artwork is rendered on-screen in a new way, offering not just the subtlety and softness of pixels, but also the hard edges of vector. As such, Mischief can be quite processor heavy, but during testing on our 2012…

$9.95 Developer ChungwaSoft, chungwasoft.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or later, Mail, an Evernote account Evernote already lets you create notes from email, but can be a little clunky. EverMail is an Apple Mail plug-in that simplifies this process with two keyboard shortcuts that enable you to quickly generate notes from a selected mail: choose Quick to specify a notebook and add tags, and Full to edit the note before sending. EverMail also provides more control over what you include in the note, such as header information or the email itself as a .eml attachment – and, like Evernote’s email feature, file attachments are transferred and existing formatting preserved. The user interface is straightforward, and the app has other time-saving features too, such as remembering the last notebook selected. Notes also…

AUTOMATOR IS ONE of those apps that, for most Mac users, lurks in Applications and never gets used. It has a cool robot icon, but as soon as you launch the app, it immediately asks you which type of document you want to start with (from a selection of eight). Whatever you click, you’re then faced with a column featuring dozens of actions, from a variety of categories. It’s not got that intuitive, welcoming feel of the rather more popular Apple apps. The thing is, Automator is as cool as its icon promises it to be. Once you get the hang of it, you can use the app for creating workflows and miniature apps, which can save you time when performing repetitive tasks. In this walkthrough we’ll show you how…

THE WEB IS A marvelous research tool for study and work, to solve a problem with a piece of equipment or software, or just because you’re curious about a subject. Part of the challenge in using search engines such as Google is in choosing appropriate keywords that actually yield good results. Even if your words are well-chosen, a broader context than the one you intended may share keywords – burying the pages you’re looking for deep in search results, leading you to refine your search. This is when you might benefit from switching to Google’s Advanced Search, by clicking the cog at the top-right of a search results page. It provides a form that enables you to explicitly state how Google should treat particular keywords and phrases. You can also…

I predict that Apple will be out of the computer market in a few short years. I say this because they are making Macs too much like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. There are no upgradeable options anymore; what they put in is all you have. On the other hand, Windows-based PCs can be customized to a buyer’s likes, or for those of us who know how, we can build whatever we want to put Windows or Linux on. Bottom line: I love OS X, but unless Apple gets back to basics, they will be like Microsoft and only make the OS, or be out of the computer market altogether. TIM Wow, that’s harsh! I understand that the inflexible nature of Apple hardware can be a hassle sometimes, but…

WITH MORE THAN 14 million downloads in its native country, it’s fair to say that Monster Strike – an iOS/mobile title from Mixi Inc in which creatures fight each other via billiards-like play – has taken Japan by storm. One of the game’s designers is Yoshiki Okamoto, who got his start creating arcade classics such as Street Fighter II and Final Fight. Switching to iOS gaming seems like a big departure… “When making Monster Strike, I relied more on my arcade experience than my console-game experience; I wanted to make a game that was closer to the arcade experience in that it was exciting in short bursts and people wanted to continue. Like if you lost? You wanted to give that extra quarter and continue playing.” Of course, free-to-play games…

1 Autodesk Ember spark.autodesk.com $5995 >>> As one of the heavyweights of 3D, it’s great to see Autodesk getting into the 3D-printing game with this cool-looking unit – though it’s far from affordable. It still might change the world, though; the point of Ember is that it’s the first unit based on Autodesk’s free and open Spark platform. This new ecosystem promises better interoperability between 3D tech, and Ember’s designs files are available for all to study – maybe leading to a cheaper, more flexible system in the future. 2 Satechi 10-port Aluminum Hub www.satechi.net $64.99 >>> Designed to sit comfortably alongside Apple’s Magic Trackpad and Wireless Keyboard on your desk, Satechi’s premium aluminum hub pretty much solves the problem of not having enough USB hubs once and for all…

The new look might take you a while to get used to, but once you do we think you’ll love Yosemite. But it’s not all about the looks, of course. Over the next few pages we’ll look beyond Yosemite’s skin – and even beyond the headline features – to appreciate the little things. There are small tweaks and extra options all over the new OS that can help to make it even better. To make things easier to follow, we’ve categorized the tips around key parts of OS X – from system tips and Finder to iTunes, dictation and Safari. Delve into these tips to get a sense of what has changed, and where to find the best new enhancements in OS X 10.10.…

LET SLEEPING MACS LIE Do Not Disturb has a new setting to prevent notifications coming through if your Mac’s display has gone to sleep (on purpose or after a period of inactivity). VOICEOVER FOR VIDEOS Speaking of accessibility, Apple has added a cool new feature to make OS X even more useful for blind users. QuickTime and iTunes now support video descriptions – so if you’re watching a video with embedded descriptions of what’s happening, VoiceOver adds a spoken voice to what’s happening on-screen. SEND TO RECENT RECIPIENTS OS X takes note of who you share with and by what methods, and maintains a list of recent contacts so that those recipients are immediately available when you next press the Share button. This also comes into play when you open…

> iPhone and iPad AS FAR AS THE iPhone is concerned, 2015 is likely to be a ’tweener year: if Apple follows its usual pattern we’ll see “s” models, such as an “iPhone 6s”. So… same design, a few minor spec bumps and at least one headline feature – maybe the inductive charging we’ve seen in the Apple Watch, or the sapphire glass we all expected in the 6. We’re hoping that Apple doesn’t bin fourinch iPhones now it has the 6 and 6 Plus: iPhone 6C, anyone? We’re not expecting massive changes to the iPad (apart from a massive version), and the non-Retina iPad mini probably won’t last long. Reports suggest Apple plans to scale back all mini production, partly because of the success of the more profitable iPhone…

THE RUMORED 2014 Apple TV box didn’t appear. There’s still no sign of an Apple TV set, either. Are they coming in 2015? Let’s start with the TV. We don’t think it’s likely yet: while Steve Jobs famously said that Apple had cracked the TV interface, he also said that it’s a “terrible” business to be in. People don’t replace TVs very often, the margins are awful and global sales are in decline. A set-top box is a much better idea, which is why so many firms have copied the Apple TV, which is already a billion-dollar business for Apple. An update is overdue, though what Apple does with it is up for debate. Would it add 4K support? Turn it into a games console with an A8 processor? We’d…

$2.99 Developer DeNA Co, manicgamestudios.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later Mix a standard color-matching block game with a Rubik’s cube and you get Polyform. There’s a 3D shape made up of cubes of different colors, which you can view from all angles. You drop more cubes on the shape, and if you connect four or more cubes of the same color, they vanish. Clear the whole thing as quick as you can! Simple. You can play just by spamming cubes of the same color, but the game rewards you for building up to eliminate, say, seven or eight in one go instead of just four. Neither is explicitly the right approach, so it means the game can be as complex as you make it for yourself, which is…

$2.99 Developer Ngoc Luu, 1writerapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.0 or later W Throw a digital stone in the App Store and it’ll bounce off at least a half-dozen distraction-free Markdown/text editors. Fortunately, 1Writer does enough to stand out from the crowd. The basics are all in there: a straightforward interface; Markdown support and previews; an extended keyboard for adding headings, links and image references. But this app goes further than most. From a purely visual standpoint, 1Writer is stripped back, but provides theme options (toolbar color changes, essentially), a dark mode and the means to tweak line height and font size. While writing, you can add hashtags to link documents in local searches. Full support for iOS 8’s Document Picker makes it simple to grab files from, and save…

$19.99 Developer Smile On My Mac, smilesoftware.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later There are so many PDF creation and annotation apps for iOS, it’s hard to imagine how Adobe can still justify charging $449 for the desktop version of Acrobat Pro when solutions like PDFpen can perform most of the tricks from the comfort of a smartphone or tablet for under $20. With the arrival of PDFpen 2, this feature-to-price ratio becomes even more glaring, thanks to the addition of a stamp library, automatic page numbering, and the ability to add password protection (with optional encryption) to documents. Annotations can also now be flattened upon export, and a new easy-to-use form signature widget makes signing documents effortless while on the go. The all-new release also delivers an iOS…

$499 (6TB drive); $299 (128GB SSD add-on) Manufacturer LaCie, lacie.com Requirements OS X 10.8.5 or later This drive pairs a Thunderbolt 2 connection with a 3.5-inch hard disk that can’t come close to using all of that interface’s 20Gbps bandwidth. However, the drive has two such ports, so you can daisy-chain other devices or a 4K display, while keeping USB ports free. The disk’s sequential transfer rates are good, peaking at 223MB/sec and 227.2MB/sec, and averaging 186.9MB/sec and 178.7MB/sec when reading and writing, respectively – but, like any single hard disk, rates are significantly lower for the random transfer of small amounts of data. However, LaCie offers an optional SSD upgrade for this drive, which you install in addition to the 6TB drive. You buy it separately, and it replaces…

Bamboo Stylus Fineline $59; Creative Stylus 2 $79 Manufacturer Wacom, wacom.com Requirements iPad 3 or later, iPad mini or later Pressure levels Bamboo Stylus Fineline: 1,024, Creative Stylus 2: 2,048 The Wacom name is synonymous with quality stylus and pen-tablet solutions. For decades the company has been connecting computer users to their screens and, more recently, created desktop-class touchscreens with the Cintiq and Companion lines. The first Wacom pressure sensitive stylus for iOS – the Intuos Creative – quickly became a firm favorite. Fast forward two years and the company has released not one but two sequels: the Fineline (for note makers) and the Creative 2 (for artists). On paper (ahem) the obvious difference lies within the levels of sensitivity: the Fineline has 1,024 pressure levels and the Creative 2…

$49 Manufacturer Atama, atama.io Requirements Macs with Bluetooth 4.0 This key fob acts as a locking device for a Mac or MacBook. Just walk away with it and your Mac will lock at a defined distance and then unlock when you return. You can set two ranges for locking – whether there should be a time delay in locking your Mac and the method to unlock when you return. It works flawlessly (but is only for newer Macs with Bluetooth 4.0). Sesame can also suspend certain applications (using AppleScript), including pausing iTunes/Spotify and setting you Messenger/Skype status to “Away”, so the device can easily be tailored to suit your own particular requirements. In terms of being a truly portable solution, the Sesame 2 is spot-on, measuring just 0.26x2.36in and less…

THE DOCK HAS been a mainstay of OS X since the start, a place to stash apps and documents as well as easily see what’s running on your Mac. Visually, the Dock has seen big changes over the years. Initially it was a semi-transparent white rectangle with subtle pinstripes, which were eradicated as of OS X 10.2 Jaguar, while in OS X 10.5 Leopard the Dock turned into a 3D glass “shelf” when at the bottom of the screen, which gradually got frosted as the operating system was upgraded further. In OS X 10.10 Yosemite, we’ve almost come full circle, with the Dock reverting to a simpler semitransparent rectangle. If you’re not thrilled with the new Dock, you can use the free cDock (sourceforge.net/projects/cdock) to make changes. The app is…

FORMULAS PLAY A key role in every Numbers spreadsheet. They allow you to perform both simple (“2+2”) and more complex calculations, such as one based on the content of specific cells that meet a certain condition. Either way, they transform Numbers into something very powerful and versatile. The key rule to entering formulas in any spreadsheet is to make sure you precede it with an equals sign, so Numbers knows to interpret it as such. In the iPad version, tap the gray = button in the entry box and Numbers will reveal the formulas and functions keyboard, split into three: operators, numeric keypad and advanced options. It’s worth noting that formulas based on the content of specific cells automatically update when you make changes to any of the cells they…

5 minutes WAVE GOODBYE TO emailing photos, documents and other files, because there’s now a better way: AirDrop. It sends files between nearby Macs and iOS devices over the air using an encrypted connection. What’s great is that unlike traditional methods of sharing files there’s no tricky setup – the devices involved in a transfer don’t need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network (though AirDrop still works if they are), as it establishes a direct connection. They just have to be close. When you select AirDrop in a Finder window sidebar or choose Go > AirDrop, you’ll see a window with icons for nearby people who can receive files. Control your own visibility at the foot of the window. When you drag files and folders and drop them…