MacFormat的June 2019目录

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! SAVE UP TO 57%! Turn to page 34 We’ve been busy testing the new iMacs, iPad Air, iPad mini and AirPods in recent weeks. Read our verdicts on Apple’s latest kit, along with reviews of other new add-ons and apps, starting on p77. While it’s nice to see new Apple hardware, it’s also good to keep your current Mac in peak condition – so this issue’s cover feature looks at steps to speed up your Mac. After using your Mac for a while, it may seem slower than it was fresh out of its box. We’ll show you ways to investigate recurring issues; relevant tweaks to your preferences; and hardware changes that can get your Mac life back on track. Head to p20. Even four years after Apple…

Future iMacs could wirelessly charge your mouse and keyboard The idea of your Mac wirelessly charging your mouse and keyboard isn’t new, but Apple is still working on it. In a recently released patent, the company lays out its latest ideas for getting your peripherals juiced up. The patent describes a system whereby an iMac or display could have wireless power transmitters embedded in the underside of its housing. These would be used to send power to receivers in the body of the accompanying keyboard and mouse. This would mean that you would no longer need to charge your keyboard and mouse when their batteries run down. Instead, you wouldn’t even have to think about charging them – it would just happen automatically, as long as your devices were within…

Kit out your Mac and iOS devices with this mountain of awesome prizes PRIZE WORTH AROUND £500 Been looking for ways to improve your Apple workspace? This competition is for you. We’ve got a huge bundle of gear for one lucky winner, starting with the HiRise Pro. This adjustable iMac stand has internal storage for your cables and more. Got a MacBook? We’re giving away a HiRise for MacBook stand too. If you travel often, you’ll love PlugBug Duo and AirFly. The former connects to your Mac’s power adapter, adding two USB-A ports; it comes with five adapters that let you use it in over 150 countries. AirFly allows you to use your wireless headphones with any 3.5mm port, such as on an aeroplane. We’ve also got your iOS devices…

One of the most common causes of a slow Mac is an app or process misbehaving and consuming more than its fair share of resources, like memory, processor cycles or network bandwidth. The easiest way to check for this is to use Activity Monitor. Open it from /Applications/Utilities, click its CPU tab, then click the %CPU column so that the arrow is pointing downwards. That will display processes in the order of how many CPU cycles they’re using, with the most active at the top. Scan the list and look for low-hanging fruit, like apps you’re not using that are consuming tens of percent of the CPU, or browser tabs you don’t need doing the same. To stop this, either quit the apps or close the browser tabs, or use…

CleanMyMac X’s primary function is to uninstall apps completely and remove difficult-tofind files from your Mac when you don’t need them. However, it can also help improve the performance of your Mac. For example, it can identify unresponsive apps and quit them, and show you which apps are consuming lots of resources. It can also remove Login Items and Launch Agents, such as autoupdate scripts, which can quicken loading and getting in to macOS. CleanMyMac X has tools to rebuild Spotlight’s index, and databases for Mail and macOS’s Launch Services, all of which can cause slowdown issues. Stay up to date Another useful CleanMyMac X feature is its Updater. We’ve already discussed how keeping apps up to date is important. This feature allows you to compare your app versions with…

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There are many ways we can safeguard our accounts. Apple provides plenty of options, from two-factor authentication to using hard-to-guess security questions. But there’s one thing many of us fail to properly sort out: our passwords. Whether that’s by using passwords that are too easy to guess or using the same ones on every website we visit, it’s all too easy to make yourself and your personal information vulnerable to light-fingered malcontents. Making a change can seem daunting – after all, ‘12345’ is much easier to remember than a string of random numbers and letters. But securing yourself doesn’t have to be arduous. With a few quick steps, you can bring your accounts up to speed and locked down. Thanks to iCloud Keychain, you don’t even have to remember your…

With the introduction of iOS 12 came a bunch of improvements and customisations for Siri & Search that improve your iPhone and iPad’s helpfulness. After using iOS 12 for a while, it’ll suggest actions on the Lock screen when you wake your device. Those are the result of on-device intelligence that learns about your usage – not just of Apple’s own software, but third-party apps too. If an app has been updated to work with this, suggestions may be very specific, such as ‘Show my recent contacts’ in Cardhop or ‘Schedule for today’ in Fantastical. Siri takes repetition, the time of day and your location into account for its suggestions. As well as the Lock screen, suggestions can appear in iOS’s search results and in iOS’s Look Up feature. You…

The Apple Watch has come a long way since it was released in 2015. Despite being seen as a bit of a frivolous luxury from the moment it went on sale, it has surged to become the most popular watch in the world. These days it’s known more for its fitness prowess, letting you track your workouts with convenience and ease. But that’s not all it’s good for – from managing your notifications to playing music and taking calls, the Watch is a fantastic companion in your everyday life. Whether you’re a longserving Watch user or a new to the wearable world, it’s likely there are Watch functions and features that can improve your digital life that you may not be aware of. That’s what this feature is about. You…

Certain models of Apple Watch (those with a mobile data plan) can accept phone calls. If you get a call on your Watch but want to take it on your iPhone, accept the call on your wrist, then swipe up to swap it over to your phone. On the other hand, if you receive a call on your Watch but don’t want to talk to your wrist, scroll the Digital Crown to bring up some options. For example, you can send a quick reply to the caller saying you can’t pick up, or pass it over to your iPhone. Find your friends Having a mobile data plan for your Watch has other benefits. For example, there are going to be times when you want to meet up with friends but…

Apple introduced its Fusion Drive tech in 2012 as a way to gain some of the benefits of speedy yet pricey SS Ds, but at a lower cost and without sacrificing the large capacity of affordable (but slow) hard disks. The tech binds one drive of each type and presents them as one. It tries to keep the data you use most often on the SS D. It also keeps a small amount of the SS D free, in which to quickly create new files. Data it thinks you won’t need soon is moved to the hard disk. At first, Apple used a 128GB SS D in Fusion Drives, but has since reduced it to 24GB or 32GB. So, today’s Fusion Drives may have to move data more often. When using…

From £399 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk features 7.9in Retina display with P3 colour gamut, A12 Bionic chip, 64 or 256GB storage, Apple Pencil support, Touch ID Opting for a smaller Apple tablet no longer means there’s a compromise on performance Without an update from Apple since 2015, the internal processing power of the iPad mini had been trailing behind the rest of the iPad and iPad Pro line-up. That lack of upgrade has made it less capable and a poor-value purchase. Thankfully, the new iPad mini is equipped with the same blisteringly fast A12 Bionic processor found in the iPhone XS Max and the new iPad Air. The mini now also supports the first-gen Apple Pencil, so you have a truly pocket-sized tablet that can be used with Apple’s pressure-sensitive stylus,…

Nomad Base Station Hub Edition $99.95 (about £76) FROM Nomad, hellonomad.com FEATURES 20W wireless charging (total), USB-C, USB-A Design The Base Station looks fantastic in all black, and it gets points for creating its own style away from the white Apple look. It has a soft (but admittedly thin) leather mat to place your devices on, and rubber feet to keep it in place. It’s made of aluminium, while the TwoFold is plastic, making the Base Station feel rock solid all over. Ease of use This is a compact charger; it’s just wide enough for two XS Max phones in cases to sit side by side. The Base Station uses smaller charging coils than the TwoFold, which Nomad says is to speed up charging. Yet for us it just made…

$12.95 (about £10)/month FROM ExpressVPN, expressvpn.com Needs Mac OS X 10.6, tvOS or iOS 10 or later There’s a lot of hype about ExpressVPN when it comes to offering a secure, private tunnel to the internet. Based in the British Virgin Islands, it ticks all the boxes for privacy and security. ExpressVPN also offers one of the widest number of servers – over 2,000 spread across 148 locations in 94 countries, making it easy to access all kinds of georestricted content. VPNs inevitably have a performance impact on your internet connection, and can render high-bandwidth activities, like streaming, impractical. In our tests, however, ExpressVPN had a negligible effect on our 30Mbps internet connection. Apps are available for Mac, Apple TV, and iOS – all are easy to use. It’s literally…

£5.99 FROM Good.iWare, goodreader.com NEEDS iOS 9 or later GoodReader is one of the most popular PDF apps for iOS. The latest upgrade brings an overhauled interface, better security and improved performance. The core app is £5.99, plus £5.99 for the Pro pack. This adds split-screen PDF viewing on iPad, secure email/export of PDFs and extracts and a feature called Secure Photocopy, which removes all traces of hidden or redacted info in a PDF. Both versions let you crop, annotate and rearrange pages, and the PDF Reflow feature works like Safari’s reading mode, pulling out text for easier reading. When you’re in this mode, you can copy the entire page’s text to the clipboard. The app supports PDF, docx, HTML and text files. It can handle embedded audio and video…

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

AirPower, Apple’s long-awaited and much-discussed wireless charging mat, has been cancelled. Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, said in a statement to TechCrunch that development was ended because it “will not achieve our high standards”. AirPower has long been plagued by rumours that Apple was struggling to make it work. Whispers from the supply chain claimed the design – which would let you place your devices anywhere on the mat – would overheat to unacceptable levels. Still, the feeling was that this was a mere delay, not a terminal problem, making the cancellation all the more surprising. The packaging for the second-generation AirPods – released just days before AirPower’s fate was disclosed – mentioned the wireless charging pad by name, suggesting the move was made quite late…

1 4 lifewith colours The Mac started life with 1-bit colour depth, so each pixel was simply on or off, meaning it had a truly monochromatic display. Later this increased to 2-bit colour, giving four shades. It wasn’t until 1987’s Macintosh II that colour displays and graphics cards added the ability to output 256 colours at once. 2 Over 2x density It’s easy to scoff at the original iPhone’s 320x480-pixel display as lo-res, but it had a higher pixel density than Macs of the time (164 versus 72ppi). Even the iPod managed 102ppi. There’s good reason you recall both having chunky pixels, though… 3 35.1 cm The meaning of ‘Retina display’ varies based on a device’s typical viewing distance. Take London’s Piccadilly Lights, for example: if it were flat, the…

The thought of a speedier, more responsive Mac that feels almost like a new machine is an exciting one. But don’t get too carried away and jump straight into the tips for giving your beloved Mac a boost. It’s crucial that you prepare your computer for the performance leap ahead. Just as you wouldn’t try to sprint 100m without warming up first, nor should you go straight to the meat of how to speed up your Mac. Here’s what to do first… Back up your Mac! Yeah, we know. Boring. But backing up is essential. Many of the tips here involve burrowing fairly deep into your Mac’s software innards. And although the tips are safe, there’s always the chance that you could lose data along the way. So, back up…

There are a number of fairly simple tweaks you can make to optimise the performance of your Mac without making too many compromises to the way you work. These include things like turning off automatic startup at login for apps and processes you rarely use, as well as making sure all your apps and browser extensions are up to date, and keeping open browser tabs to a minimum. Icon previews macOS shows the contents of some files in their icon. Redrawing those previews each time you open and scroll through a folder takes up resources. To turn off the previews, switch to Finder and go to View > Show View Options. Untick ‘Show icon preview’ and click ‘Use as Defaults’ to apply this change to all folders that are set…

By making a black and white conversion of a colour image, you can help the viewer focus on contrasting shapes in a pic. This works particularly well with the lines and patterns produced by architectural subjects such as our Scottish viaduct here. A monochrome image harks back to the days of analog film photography, adding a touch of retro class and atmosphere to your shot. Black and white images also stand out from the colour crowd, which helps them get noticed on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram. While it’s a simple matter to desaturate a colour shot using Affinity Photo, this can simply result in a photo that suffers from a muddy wash of greyscale tones. An effective black and white conversion should have a high contrast…

My Mac mini keeps running hot! Q When using my Mac mini 2014, its fans spin up and it feels hot. Activity Monitor shows kernel_task is taking 100% of the CPU. How can I kill that and let my Mac cool down? by JEFF JAME A Although this is counter-intuitive, these are symptoms of a single underlying problem, and not its cause. When your Mac’s processor is heavily loaded with an intensive task, it generates more heat, which is managed by the Mac’s cooling system. That includes both raising fan speeds and reducing the work being done by the processor. The way that it achieves the latter, when it can’t reduce the processor’s clock speed, is to lock your intensive task out using the kernel, which shows up in Activity…

There are more than a few of us who grew up wishing to own a James Bond-style spy watch. While we’re not quite at that stage yet, using Siri on your Apple Watch can get you pretty close. You won’t be saving the world with Siri, but you’ll be the most organised you’ve ever been. And much like a 1960s spy thriller, the Apple Watch (Series 3 or later and watchOS 5 required) lets you raise your Watch and bark orders to Siri, without first having to say “Hey Siri”. To adjust this, open the Settings app on your Watch, then go to General > Siri and switch on ‘Raise to Speak’. If you’re using an older Watch, raise your wrist in the same way, then say “Hey Siri” and…

You may find yourself just using your Watch to check the time and get the odd notification. If you do that’s fine, but you’re missing out on a whole world of extras. Even seasoned Apple veterans like us still find new features when we dig through the Watch’s menus. For example, the Apple ecosystem can help if you’ve lost your iPhone. Swipe up from the bottom of your Watch’s screen to bring up Control Centre, then tap the icon showing a vibrating iPhone. This ‘pings’ your phone so it’ll emit a brief ringing sound, helping you locate it. If you hold the vibrating iPhone button, your phone’s flash will blink – useful in the dark or if your phone’s speaker is covered. That’s why it’s always worth exploring the little-known…

Apple has greatly improved the battery life of the Watch. Still, we can all benefit from cutting down on processes that hog the battery in order to get even more help from the wrist-worn assistant. Follow the three tips below and you should notice a real difference in how long your Watch lasts each day. 1 Background drain Background app refresh lets apps periodically check for updated data. This can drain the battery. To turn it off or choose which apps can use it, go to My Watch > General > Background App Refresh. 2 Brightness As with your iPhone, your Watch’s battery can benefit from lowering the brightness. On your iPhone, go to My Watch > Brightness & Text Size and adjust the brightness slider to your preferred level.…

$39.95 (about £30) FROM Ten One Design, wifiporter.com features Tap-to-connect, printable QR code for setup Ever wanted to tap into a Wi-Fi network with, well, a tap? No complex passwords to enter, so no fuss. That’s what Wifi Porter promises with its puckshaped Porter. It works – really well, in fact. Setup is simple: just scan the QR code on the base of the Wifi Porter. If you have a 2018 iPhone, tap the device to get the configuration app; if you don’t, you’ll need to head over to wifiporter.com/setup. To join a network, just tap the body again. On pre-2018 devices this won’t work, but a printable QR code that attaches to the back of the Wifi Porter allows these older devices to connect to your Wi-Fi with a…

£23.99 FROM Frank Reiff, publicspace.net needs OS X 10.11 or later Readers who are familiar with the Pomodoro Technique are halfway to understanding what Vitamin-R is all about. The time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 80s aims to break down work into manageable chunks. The general idea is to decide on a specific achievable objective, work for 25 minutes, and then take a short break when the timer rings, before resuming the task for another 25 minutes. Working in short time slices like this aims to make it easier to stay motivated and focused, and many swear by the method. Vitamin-R is a means to implement the technique on your Mac desktop, but it’s also so much more, as it integrates several tools that accompany you…

$119 (about £90) FROM Rogue Amoeba, rogueamoeba.com needs OS X 10.11 or later Loopback makes it easy to bring audio from anything into anything else. For example, you can use it to pull the audio from something playing in Safari so that you can record it in GarageBand. You can use multiple USB mics in a FaceTime call where you need to mic up more than just you. Or you can use it in podcasting, combining audio from multiple sources such as iTunes, FaceTime, and Skype. In addition to getting audio in, you can also get audio out again by using the Pass-Thru feature. This enables you to use the audio in another app; recording your podcast in GarageBand, for example, or sharing audio from a Skype call with people…

MONITOR Philips 328P6AUBREB £400 philips.co.uk Getting a colour-accurate display used to cost a pretty penny, but this monitor is both impressive and affordable. It hits 99% of the Adobe RGB gamut – great for colour-critical work – and supports 10-bit colour. Throw in a host of ports (including USB-C), an IPS display and a great price, and you have a seriously good screen. DESKTOP STORAGE Drobo 5D3 £749 drobo.co.uk With two blazing fast Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 5Gbps USB-C port to boot, the Drobo 5D3 can provide you with rapid file transfers to and from your Mac. You can load it up with up to five HDDs or SSDs of differing capacities, giving you plenty of flexibility for storage options. It’s pricey, but a worthy investment. PRINTER Brother MFC-J5330DW…

Rumours have been swirling that Apple is set to release triple-lens iPhones later in 2019. This would follow rival phones like the Huawei P30, which has two wide-angle lenses and one telephoto lens in its camera system. The lenses on the iPhones would supposedly be arranged in a triangular shape though, leading to a rather large camera cut-out on the back. A new take on the rumour has now come from Japanese website Mac Otakara, which reports that this triple-lens system would be exclusive to two entirely new iPhones to be launched this year, alongside refreshed versions of the XS, XS Max and XR, which would not feature the new cameras. Previous reports from other outlets have suggested that the successor to the XS Max would come with a triple-lens…

After an 18-year absence, CorelDRAW is back on the Mac with a dedicated app for 2019. The app features a number of interesting features, including LiveSketch. This is a vector graphic tool that uses neural networks to improve your work. For example, if you hand draw an imperfect circle and enable LiveSketch, it can automatically correct your disc-shaped sketch into a perfect circle. Elsewhere there are tools to help graphic design, illustration, page layout and photo editing. Corel has also launched a website called CorelDRAW.app, which is a web-based version of the app that lets you pick up your work when you’re not at home. Although CorelDraw has been associated with Windows for years, this version feels like it really belongs on macOS, with familiar controls, plus support for Dark…

For our latest subscription offer see page 34! It was back in 2014 that iOS 8 introduced the Health app, the visible manifestation of a new HealthKit API that enabled third-party hardware and software makers to gather, process and share information. The initial focus was on fitness, with the iPhone’s built-in sensors and GPS allowing users to track exercise such as running. But with the arrival of the Apple Watch and its heart rate sensor the following year, Apple’s attention shifted to more advanced medical applications. And it’s here that the measurements collected begin to stray into the area of sensitive personal data. Apple, known for its strong stance on user privacy, stresses that “You decide which information is placed in Health and which apps can access [it].” Data is…

Getting around your Mac faster isn’t just about relieving it of an excessive number of tasks. There are great gains to be made by limiting how much burden you place on your own shoulders too. Here we’ll show you methods to achieve this, including shutting out distractions and moving around your Mac’s storage faster than digging down through folders every time you need something. All of these methods are built in to macOS, so they’re free. 1 Turn off notifications Unless you really need them, turn off notifications that you don’t need popping up on the Desktop. They’re a distraction. Go to command > System Prefs > Notifications and go through each app, choosing None as the alert style for those you don’t want. 2 Shortcuts in the Dock Folders…

Applications folder Some apps use only a few megabytes of disk space, others much more. Check the Applications folder to see what’s no longer needed. Remove using Launchpad (if from the Mac App Store – see p41), the app’s uninstaller, or CleanMyMac X (opposite). Library folder Your Mac’s main Library folder houses system settings, third-party panes for System Prefs, fonts and much more, which are shared by all users. You shouldn’t need to touch it. If you do, use a specialist app to work out what can be removed. System folder The System folder contains files that are essential for macOS to function. Never tamper with files in it. If your Mac reports system files are damaged, you can start up in Recovery (see bit.ly/mfrcvry) and reinstall macOS over itself…

There are a number of things you can do to your Mac’s hardware to speed it up. We’ll cover the various storage options on the following pages, including swapping a mechanical hard drive for an SSD or making a Fusion Drive. That leaves two main areas: memory and graphics. (Unless you own a Mac Pro, you won’t be able to upgrade the Intel processor.) Adding more memory should boost your Mac’s performance across a whole range of apps, because it will have to resort to paging the contents of memory to disk less often. If your investigations with Activity Monitor regularly reveal a lot of red on the Memory Pressure chart, adding more memory will definitely help. Whether you can upgrade your Mac’s memory depends on its kind and vintage.…

Buying a 500GB or larger SSD can cost upwards of £100, but making your own Fusion Drive remains an option on a tight budget. We suggest using a StarTech USB enclosure (£19, bit.ly/mffdus) and no smaller than a 120GB SSD (£18, bit.ly/mffdssd). Follow the steps at bit.ly/macindsk, using an 8GB USB thumb drive that you’re happy to erase to create a macOS install disk. You may need this as a fallback to reinstall macOS or restore a Time Machine backup of your complete system. Hold option option at startup if you need to boot from it. 1 Prepare your Mac Don’t proceed until you’ve got a complete backup of your Mac’s internal storage, Back up macOS and your files using Time Machine for ease at the end of this process.…

Apple discontinued its photo printing product service back in September last year, but you can still print beautiful photo books using the Photos app, thanks to the Motif extension. RR Donnelley – the company behind the Motif app – was responsible for physically printing Apple’s photo books (as far back as 2005), so the printed books from Motif are very high quality, which is good news as this was one of the main strengths of Apple’s old photo printing service. Creating a great-looking photo book is just as easy as it used to be, too, and you can tailor the exact look and feel; if you’ve got a particular budget in mind, Motif will adjust its length and complexity to suit. You can’t just go to your Mac and start…

When you sell your Mac, it’s wise to back up everything from it so that you don’t lose important documents or apps. You should also clean it to ensure its new owner doesn’t get handed any sensitive information, such as your passwords and data. Before following these steps, remove any firmware password you may have set (see bit.ly/mffwpwd), re-enable System Integrity Protection if you turned it off (bit.ly/mfsipen), and remember to make that backup! Then check through any apps which are licensed by serial numbers or authorisation schemes, and deauthorise the copy on that Mac. You may need to consult the vendor’s support site for info. This is now simpler with products from Adobe and Microsoft, which normally only require you to log out of your online account. Apps from…

Hopefully, you’ve been following (and benefitting from) our monthly ‘Improve Yourself’ tutorials. We’ve looked at a number of ways in which you can harness Apple technology to track various aspects of your life, and then use that data to optimise your health and overall wellbeing. In this concluding piece in the series, we introduce you to Gyroscope, a unique wellness tracking app that corrals data points from a range of sources into a unified dashboard and makes it easier to interpret facts and figures by giving you the benefit of context. Indeed, Gyroscope is unlike other apps, since it delivers trends and correlations based on data you already provide to other apps and services. All you need to do is link them to Gyroscope to gain insights into a host…

One of the best things about the Watch is being able to keep your phone in your pocket. Nowhere is that clearer than when you’re controlling music from your wrist. A few quick taps and swipes is all it takes to easily make adjustments, while your iPhone stays safely tucked away. 1 Music control To control playback, raise your wrist to wake the Watch and tap the Now Playing complication – add it in the Watch app – or use the Side button to open it via the Dock. 2 Change library On Series 3 or later, open the Music app, scroll up, then tap Library. Here you can choose to play music from your iPhone or from what’s been synced to your Watch. 3 Output options To switch between…

The Watch tracks your fitness data and sends you notifications; it has access to a lot of your detailed information. That’s the kind of stuff that you’re going to want to keep private. Luckily, Apple is in charge here, and it has a great track record for keeping your data under lock and key. The Watch is no different. For example, to stop unwanted people gaining access to your Watch, you can have it automatically lock when you’re not wearing it. On the Watch’s iPhone companion app, Go to My Watch > Passcode and turn on Wrist Detection. That way, even if you end up misplacing your Watch, it won’t be open to anyone and everyone who finds it. Disabling Wrist Detection means your Watch can’t track your background heart…

Slouching, we can all agree, is one of the most common pursuits known to humankind. Everyone loves to drop on the couch after a long day, and that’s fine, but spending the rest of that day hunched over a computer keyboard isn’t the best for your health. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost an inch or two in height over the years because of my bad sitting habits, which is why we’re exploring ergonomics this issue. It was when I first sat down (and stood up) to start testing out smart working tools that I realised just how arduous the process of breaking out of that mould was going to be – and it’s a mental fight, as much as it is a physical one. Just know that if you happen…

£10.99 FROM Sandberg, sandberg.it FEATURES 5000mAh battery, 2x USB-A ports, 9.8x6.3x1.4cm This handy battery pack is both small and affordable. At only £11, powering up your device on the go doesn’t mean breaking the bank. In fact, it’s less than half the price of Belkin’s Pocket Power 5K; it’s cheaper than Anker’s tube-like PowerCore 5000, though not as portable. Still, it’s easily small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. The USB-A ports mean you can juice up two devices at once, but you’re not likely to get them both fully charged from zero without having to recharge the Saver first. It took 3 hours 12 minutes to fully charge an iPhone XR from 0%. When we had to recharge the XR a couple of days later, the Sandberg got…

£159 or £199 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk features Charging case with Lightning or charging case with Lightning and Qi wireless, Bluetooth When we reviewed the original AirPods (see MF #309), we said they were “the first Apple-branded headphones you’ll want to wear”, yet awarded them 3 stars out of 5. A software update remedied our complaint that you couldn’t assign different double-tap gestures to each wireless bud, which would’ve been enough to warrant a 4-star rating. If you’re glancing at our score for the updated hardware, which delivers other meaningful improvements, you’re probably wondering why we still haven’t awarded full marks. After all, the new AirPods support hands-free control, deliver an hour’s worth of extra talk time, and there’s an optional wireless charging case if you pay £40 more than the…

$6 (about £5)/month per computer FROM Backblaze, backblaze.com NEEDS OS X 10.8 or later, iOS 10 or later Backblaze offers an online solution to backing up. The Mac app is easy to use and gets the balance right regarding flexibility. You can have the system email you if it can’t reach your Mac after several days. You can back up multiple drives, and set scheduling and exclusion options. The app initially ignores DMG and ISO disk images, as well as the Applications, Library and System folders, but settings can be amended to back those up if you want. Version 6 comes with a performance boost, plus the means to pause Backblaze to avoid disruption or eating into a limited data allowance. We initially experienced connection issues when using the iOS…

Free, offers in-app purchases FROM Leonard Pospichal, bit.ly/fuzionapp needs iOS 12 Filters on apps like Instagram modify colours and light in images to make them appear more vivid. At the other end of the scale are more advanced apps like Photoshop for iOS. Fuzion is a different kind of app, providing a set of tools for customising images in a very specific way. The app takes portraits and lets you ‘cut them out’, applying images and textures as masks and overlays. It’s the kind of thing you can do in Photoshop on the desktop, but here it’s much easier to achieve. The app itself is free to download, with a £2.99 one-off purchase unlocking the full set of textures and picture overlays. Although the App Store compatibility text says otherwise,…

News that Apple was to acquire Beats Electronics, the speaker and headphone marketing juggernaut helmed by Dr Dre, was confirmed on 8 May 2014. Not in one of Apple’s stage-managed keynotes, but in a video posted to Instagram and Facebook of Dr Dre and R&B artist Tyrese, who hailed Dre as “rap’s first billionaire”. While that may have slightly overstated his share of the $3.2bn price tag, nobody could deny that it was a big deal. Nor could analysts figure out what a company known for its restrained style and technical mastery saw in a loudly hyped brand regularly panned by audio reviewers. A clue came four months later, when Tim Cook told veteran PBS host Charlie Rose that he’d been listening to Beats Music – the company’s streaming service…