MacFormatの March 2022 の目次

iCloud is such a fundamental part of the Apple experience that it can be hard to imagine life without it. It’s certainly the easiest way to sync your data across all your devices, and it does so much. From Mail to Photos, Music to Messages, iCloud can handle it all. And it’s incredibly reliable… most of the time. In this month’s lead feature (p20), you’ll discover all the things iCloud can do. Plus, we explore iCloud+, the new ‘added extra’ service that gives iCloud’s paid-for subscribers even more – features like Hide My Email, Private Relay and HomeKit Secure Video. We’re sure you’ll learn some incredible things about iCloud and iCloud+ you’d either forgotten or never knew existed. All of them should make your devices easier and more fun to…

In order to power convincing MR experiences, Apple’s headset is going to need some serious firepower in the chip department. Luckily, the company seems to be going all-in on this, at least according to industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo’s supply chain sources have indicated that Apple’s headset will use the same 96W charger as the 14-inch MacBook Pro, meaning it could be just as powerful. The MacBook Pro can be kitted out with either an M1 Pro or M1 Max chip, two of the beefiest chips Apple has ever made. Kuo also believes the headset will use two chips instead of one, something he previously asserted in November 2021. One chip will be made with a 4nm process and another with a 5nm process, with the higher-end chip handling the…

APP OF THE MONTH [MAC APP] Cloaked £3.49 Protect your data and details Sharing documents that contain sensitive information can be a pain. Normally, you’d need to go into an image-editing app and block out every confidential element one by one. With Cloaked, that’s no longer necessary. This app makes it really easy to pixelate faces, block out addresses, and conceal anything else you want to keep hidden. Just specify what should be obscured, choose the style (such as black bars or crystallisation), then set the app to work. The best part is its automatic detection which, when enabled, detects potentially sensitive text that should be hidden. That can save you the time of selecting each individual area, making the whole process much quicker and easier. Cloaked is simple enough…

800 > Total number of 45ft glass panels (some of the world’s largest) that clad the outside of the building. Some of the panels double as sliding doors, which are opened in good weather. 1.46km > Circumference of the Apple Park building, which was designed by British architects Norman Foster & Partners. The building has four stories above the ground, and three below ground. 30 acres > Size of the central park area, which contains a pond, an apple orchard and The Rainbow – aka the Jony Ive-designed Apple Stage. The entire 175-acre site contains a total of 9,000 trees. 12,000+ > Estimated number of Apple employees who work at Apple Park – although since the advent of the pandemic, many of them have been working from home. 14,200 >…

If you regularly work with a lot of text – be that loose notes, lengthy prose, web code, or anything else really – BBEdit is an absolute godsend. The long-lived text editor is now in its 14th edition, and we think it could be the best yet, as our Editor’s Choice award in MF371 attests. And this issue, we’re giving away 15 copies of BBEdit 14 to a slate of lucky winners. The latest version brings a new Notes feature that helps organise all your loose scraps into more logical, coherent form. All your notes are saved automatically, kept in a notebook, and given relevant titles, making them much easier to find. With this in your toolbox, the days of wearily sifting through dozens of untitled text documents will be…

Apple’s iCloud comes free with every Apple device from Mac mini to iPhone Pro Max, enabling you to share data between devices and store files and photos in the cloud. It’s a place to put your stuff and share it with others. It’s a way to bring all your Apple devices together. It’s a way to share your Apple products with your family, and it can help you find misplaced iPhones and family members. It’s also pretty small if you don’t pay for an upgrade; you get just 5GB of space for free. In 2021, Apple offered an upgrade called iCloud+. iCloud+ is free if you subscribe to one of the paid-for Apple One bundles, or you can buy it separately. iCloud+ gives you more storage and some useful additional…

Identify and remove unwanted devices from your Apple ID From MacBooks to HomePods, Apple knows every device that you connect to your Apple ID, so it’s important to check the list in Settings or System Preferences > Apple ID from time to time and remove any devices that you no longer have: many of Apple’s products are limited to a maximum number of authorised devices. There’s another reason to check your connected devices, and that’s to ensure no mystery devices have access to your account. If there’s a device you don’t recognise, kick it out and change your passwords immediately. The Find My app merged two apps together: Find My Phone and Find My Friends. And today it can find more than just iPhones and Macs. It also works with…

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IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To mix landscape properties, and create convincing composites YOU’LL NEED Adobe Photoshop 2022, macOS 10.14 or later The recent release of Photoshop 2022 has provided subscribers with useful new (and upgraded) tools to speed up their image-editing workflow. The Object selection tool already did a good job of selecting complicated subjects when you dragged a rectangular marquee around them. The enhanced version of that tool lets you select multiple objects in a few clicks, enabling you to produce creative composites in seconds instead of minutes. New Neural Filters, such as Landscape Mixer, uses Adobe Sensei machine learning (ML) to augment your location with more interesting features (such as turning an arid desert into a lush green vista). You can even change the…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN You will learn how to make electronic music with Groovebox YOU’LL NEED Groovebox, iPadOS/iOS 13 or later, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch If you’ve ever wanted to make electronic music but worried you didn’t have the ability, Groovebox (Free, with IAPs) is here to help. It’s one of the simplest, fastest and most fun ways to create exciting tracks on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and it’s fun for serious musicians too. Although you can use Groovebox like any other electronic music workstation, what makes this particular app so good is its use of presets. Simply pick the instrument you want to use, find a preset you like and add it to your song. Choose another instrument, pick another preset and…

IT WILL TAKE 45 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Account Recovery and Digital Legacy YOU’LL NEED macOS Monterey 12.1, iOS 15.2, iPad OS 15.2 Genius tip! In addition to creating a Recovery Contact, you can generate a Recovery Key that you have to enter if you forget your password. The introduction of Touch ID and Face ID means there is much less need for us to remember passcodes or passwords on Apple devices. But there are still occasions when you will need to rely on memory rather than biometrics. There are numerous occasions when Apple will ask you for your Apple ID password. If you can’t remember it, you can’t just ask Apple to reset it, and could find yourself locked out of your iCloud account. The good…

Designing an operating system that works well for everyone means including features that allow users who find it difficult, or are unable to, interact with it to access as much of it as possible and complete the same tasks, regardless of any additional challenges. Apple hasn’t always been as progressive as it could be in this regard and has come in for criticism in the past. However, recent updates to macOS, iOS and iPadOS have added many more features and overall accessibility has been vastly improved. Voice Control, for example, introduced on the Mac in macOS Catalina, enables anyone to control their Mac using their voice. Dictation has long been available as an alternative to typing, but Voice Control added a new layer of accessibility. Catalina also saw the introduction…

On the previous pages, we showed you how the Mac’s Accessibility features can help if you have difficulty with your vision. However, there’s much more to Accessibility than that. On this page and the next, we’ll show you how to use its settings to help you if your hearing or motor functions are impaired. Hearing controls As with controls to control text, display, and VoiceOver, hearing controls are in System Preferences > Accessibility. There are three groups of settings in the Hearing section – Audio, RTT, and Captions. In Audio, one of the most useful controls is the one that enables you to flash the screen when your Mac plays an alert sound. Thankfully, the flash is very gentle, alternating between the regular display and a whitened version rather than…

Passwords and other sensitive information should be stored safely inside a secure database known as a container or vault, locked with an encrypted key. This key should be difficult – if not impossible – to break: AES 256 is one of the most trusted forms of encryption out there, used by Apple’s own password manager (known as Keychain) as well as most of the third-party tools we feature here. Your secure password container’s encryption key can only be unlocked using your master password (see below for tips on creating a strong one). This is the only password you need to remember, so you can update all your passwords with stronger ones. A strong password should be long – 14 characters minimum – and either a collection of random letters, numbers…

Our ratings Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. A truly exceptional product. Award given solely at the discretion of the editor. The best example of its kind when pitted against comparable products. A brilliant thing Strongly recommended Worth considering Notable flaws A waste of your money HARDWARE 78 Beats Fit Pro 80 Logitech MX Keys Mini keyboard 81 Nanoleaf Lines Starter Kit 82 Loupedeck CT 83 Joby MagSafe GorillaPod, AOC I1601P 15.6-inch monitor 84 Round up: Mac and iOS DACs SOFTWARE 86 Group test: Email apps for Mac 92 ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac 8 94 1Password 8 95 Kaleidoscope 3, Usage: System Activity Monitor 96 6 of the best iOS camera apps BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative…

£179.99 FROM Nanoleaf, nanoleaf.me FEATURES 9x lights, 9x connectors and caps, 1x controller, 10x mounting plates and tape, 1x processor and power connector, Bluetooth, 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, HomeKit and Thread support You have an almost infinite number of patterns and shapes – with a possible 100 billion layouts Thanks to the wonders of LED lighting, you can now create an incredible number of looks for your home – and helping you stay at the forefront of that is Nanoleaf, whose smart light innovations have given us everything from multicolour bulbs (from £17.99) to the shades-ofbeige Elements (£199, MF369) and, of course, our favourite, the Shapes Hexagon (£119, MF359). The Nanoleaf Lines are different again. Available in Starter Kits comprising nine Lines (£179.99, on test here), 15 Lines (£279.99) and as…

Before 2001, nobody cared about earphones. Really, they were mere afterthoughts compared to whatever device they were plugged into. The prevailing logic of the time was that earphones should be heard, but not seen. All that changed however when Apple introduced the iPod. It decided to make the bundled earphone the same bold ‘Apple white’ colour as the iPod itself and it’s quite possible that this simple design decision was the key to the iPod’s success. After all, the device itself was just another portable MP3 player when it was released. Yes, it was beautifully designed by Sir Jony Ive, taking inspiration from Dieter Rams’ 1953 Braun T3 pocket radio, but out in the real world, the iPod wasn’t visible; it was hidden in people’s pockets. And it only worked…

Much like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook loves unveiling “one more thing” that he claims will turn the tech world upside down. Listening to the chatter in the rumour mill, it sounds like Apple’s next big project is a mixed reality (MR) headset – and there’s been a flurry of interesting news surrounding it in recent weeks. Let’s start off with what we know already. Previously, various leaks and rumours have fleshed out what we can expect. That includes a lightweight design that doesn’t strain your neck, high-resolution 8K displays for each eye, and at least a dozen camera sensors. As well as that, it’s expected to blend augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) so that you can switch between them at will. That last point is important for a…

Apple has found itself in a dispute with mobile network providers that could result in its iCloud Private Relay service being banned. The service protects user privacy by encrypting Safari web traffic and routing it through several servers to remove identifying details. The saga first emerged in January when US customers of T-Mobile noticed they were unable to access Private Relay. T-Mobile responded that a bug in iOS 15.2 had disabled the feature for some, but this was swiftly shot down by Apple. It then emerged the problem was likely caused by content filtering (like parental controls) used by T-Mobile. At the same time, it was revealed that several mobile networks, including T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange, had sent a letter to the European Commission (EC) claiming Private Relay would…

People play lots of games on Apple products, particularly their iPhones, but serious gamers don’t use a Mac, right? While to a great extent that still holds true, and you’re unlikely to see an esports star competing using an Apple device any time soon, the Mac is becoming a more important part of the gaming ecosystem for players who want both high-end and casual offerings. EVE Online goes native One good example of this is the decision by CCP Games to make their sci-fi mega-hit EVE Online available natively on Apple computers. This Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMPORG) has been played by some 24 million people since it first launched back in 2003. “Bringing EVE Online to Mac has been a core goal for us at CCP Games,” Bergur…

iCloud and iMessage Messages in iCloud doesn’t just keep your messages in sync across your devices. It also stores your entire message history in iCloud, including any photos or file attachments – so if you’re running low on storage space it’s a good idea to go into Settings > iCloud > iCloud Storage and have a clear-out from time to time: if you’re an avid Messages user, your months of reaction GIFs and cat videos can end up using a lot of your iCloud storage. For many Apple users, iCloud Photos is the iCloud feature they’ll use the most. No matter how much storage you have in your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, using your device’s cameras to take photos or shoot video in high quality will quickly use up…

iCloud doesn’t just use Apple’s servers to store information; it also uses third-party servers such as the ones from Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, and of course Apple has no control over other tech firms’ server farms. What Apple can do, though, is make your data impossible for other people to access. Apple encrypts all of its iCloud data transfers and almost all of the data it stores in the cloud. Encryption is a way of scrambling data to make it unreadable unless you have the unique decryption key, and those keys are not shared with anybody. The only data Apple doesn’t currently encrypt is your iCloud mail, but you can add your own encryption certificate in Mail if you have one. In addition to protecting your data…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add overlays, tease out tones and make clips fit YOU’LL NEED Adobe Premiere Elements 2022, macOS 10.15 or later Premiere Elements 2022 boasts some fun new features, such as the option to enhance your footage with animated overlays like light leakage effects or floating particles. It also helps you to reveal missing tonal detail courtesy of the new Adjust Shadows & Highlights guided edit. As well demonstrating these new features, we’ll explore how Premiere Elements 2022 addresses the increasingly common problem of combining different shaped clips in the same project. For example, if you add a horizontal clip to a vertical project, you’ll get annoying black bars above and below the clip. The new Auto Reframe tool crops the horizontal…

iMac grinding to a halt Q My iMac 2012 has a 3TB Fusion Drive, and has recently slowed to a crawl, taking seconds to respond to a mouse click. What’s wrong with it? by JACK BARNARD A Before looking for software solutions, ensure you’ve got ample free storage space and run hardware diagnostics to check your Fusion Drive in particular. Third-party utilities such as DriveDx from bit.ly/mac375drivedx or TechTool Pro also look at ‘wear’ in the SSD component of a Fusion Drive. Memory used in that has a fixed number of times it can be erased and rewritten before it stops working. Fusion Drives with small SSDs, less than 100 GB, which are used intensively can wear out in less than their anticipated 10-year life, then requiring replacement. If both…

Accessibility settings on the Mac are controlled from the Accessibility pane in System Preferences. It is split into four sections to make it easier to find the setting you need – Vision, Hearing, Motor, and General. You can also choose to show Accessibility status in your Mac’s menu bar. If you choose that option, the Accessibility icon – a human figure inside a circle – will appear in the menu bar. If you click it, you will be able to choose any Accessibility setting. In addition, if you tap the Touch ID button (on Macs that have one) three times in quick succession, you will see a menu of Accessibility items that you can specify. Press ⇥ to move from one to the next and the Spacebar to select one.…

£199.99 FROM Beats by Dre, beatsbydre.com/uk FEATURES True wireless earbuds, Class 1 Bluetooth, Apple H1 chip, Active Noise Cancelling (ANC), water- and sweat-proof to IPX4, Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking, Hey Siri and Find My support; up to 7 hours’ battery life (headphones, ANC off)/up to 25 hours with charging case (ANC off), USB-C charging port; silicone eartips in small, medium and large sizes The Beats Fit Pro deliver beautifully balanced and transparent audio For a little while last year, there were rumours that Apple was going to quietly kick its Beats branded audio products into the long grass. It answered those rumours with first the Beats Studio Buds (MF369) and now the Beats Fit Pro – arguably the best earbuds Beats has ever made. Costing £39 and a…

£469 FROM Loupedeck Ltd, loupedeck.com/uk FEATURES Native plugins, touchscreen, LED backlighting, USB-C, 8GB storage NEEDS iOS 10.14 or later Drag and drop alternative commands to change the behaviour of the buttons This compact gadget boasts plenty of dials, touchscreens and buttons to twiddle and tap in order to interact with a wide range of macOS apps. And, as it’s preconfigured to control professional apps such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Capture One Pro, you can be up and running in no time. It is the most expensive gadget in the Loupedeck range… enabling more customisability and control than the lower priced Loupedeck Live and the Loupedeck+. The Loupedeck CT also looks cooler than its colleagues thanks to its souped-up control wheel. You can rotate the wheel’s rim to fast forward…

£77.99 FROM ACD Systems International, acdsee.com NEEDS macOS 10.15 or later The latest version of Photo Studio is now even more like Lightroom Classic thanks to the addition of new tools Most photographers reading this will probably have thousands of images scattered across a range of locations, from the Mac’s Pictures folder to random external storage drives. Thanks to your ever present iPhone you may also have thousands of shots in your Photos Library. This can make it a challenge to find, edit and share specific files, especially if you can’t remember when a particular shot was captured or where it is being stored. Fortunately, apps such as Photo Studio for Mac 8 help you take the tedium out of digital asset management thanks to tools such as ratings, colour…

£129.99 FROM Letter Opener GmbH, kaleidoscope.app NEEDS macOS 11.1 or later Kaleidoscope 3 is a file comparison app for Mac that aims to help you stay on top of different versions of all kinds of files. At the technical end, you can compare versions of code documents worked on by different people, quickly highlighting changes and letting you copy lines of code between docs. For everyday users, the same can be done with text, say if you are an editor dealing with Word, text, or PDF documents that have been updated or changed by a writer. It’s not just text that you can compare. Drop two folders into the app and you’ll see their contents compared, with equal items shown in green and unequal ones – that exist in one…

DESKTOP SPEAKER Ruark MR1 £329.99 ruarkaudio.com Winner of MF357’s head to head, the MR1 speaker set looks and sounds the business. The dome tweeter and longthrow woofer can handle a variety of audio styles with aplomb. You get a good variety of connectivity options, and we love the chunky function/volume dial too. IN-EAR WIRLESS EARPHONES Beats Fit Pro £199.99 beatsbydre.com/uk The Beats Fit Pro are compact and sporty in design with integrated silicone ear hooks. The earbuds match Apple AirPods Pro almost feature for feature. And cost nearly £40 less. You get Apple’s H1 chip, Active Noise Cancelling (ANC), Find My, Siri support, and Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking. What’s more, these Beats boast longer battery life than the AirPods Pro. KEYBOARD (MAC/iOS) Logitech MX Keys Mini £99.99 logitech.com…

Looking for an Apple-branded monitor? These days, your only choice is the £4,599 Pro Display XDR. That could change soon, with up to three monitors with more affordable price tags. Numerous sources have claimed Apple is planning a new, cheaper external display to go with its Pro Display XDR. According to leaker Dylandkt on Twitter, Apple is working on 24-, 27-, and 32-inch monitors, although there was no release date. The leak sheds some light on the device specifics. Allegedly, the 27- and 32-inch displays will feature miniLED panels and Apple’s ProMotion variable refresh rate tech, much like the latest MacBook Pro. The 32-inch model could also include a custom chip – perhaps an update to the timing controller chip found in the Pro Display XDR. Shortly after Dylandkt’s claims,…

1 NINM Lab Long Time No See > HK$918 (about £105) > ninmlab.com Nostalgia for the 1990s is all the rage right now, and what better way to go back in time than this achingly retro Bluetooth CD player? Clad in translucent plastic like a Game Boy of yesteryear, NINM Lab’s Long Time No See spins your discs while using Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to your speakers, iPhone, or wireless headphones. Or you can simply use the built-in speaker on the device. The Long Time No See even comes with an internal magnet, which lets you stick it to a fridge or a bookshelf, making it something you can listen to anywhere. If you’re hankering for the days of Friends and the original PlayStation, then you’re going to absolutely love this.…

Tomb Raider Trilogy > Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Rise of the Tomb Raider from the popular Lara Croft-starring, series are available to buy on the Mac App Store. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive > This popular first-person shooter works on M1 Macs thanks to Rosetta 2. NBA 2K22 Arcade Edition This basketball simulator is included in Apple Arcade and available on the Mac. Angry Birds Reloaded The classic iPhone game is playable on the Mac via Apple Arcade.…

Access your files everywhere iCloud Drive is also available on Windows: the official iCloud app makes iCloud Drive available on Windows PCs and works much like it does in your Mac’s Finder, adding iCloud as a network drive in File Explorer. You can access files on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with Apple’s Files app, and you can also access iCloud.com from pretty much any modern computer that has an up-to-date web browser. Once logged in you can then access, interact with and download your files or photos. iCloud Drive is a wonderful thing, especially if you use multiple Apple devices. It works like an external drive, but instead of connecting to a USB, Lightning or Thunderbolt port it connects via the internet. To your device it looks like a…

Apple One explained Apple One bundles Apple’s online services in a single package that works out cheaper than individual subscriptions. The Individual plan gives you Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and 50GB of iCloud storage for £14.95 a month; Family ups the storage to 200GB and enables you to share with five others for £19.95 per month; and the £29.95 Premier adds News+ and Fitness+ and ups the iCloud storage to 2TB. You can buy additional storage separately. Family Sharing makes it easy to share your Apple purchases and subscriptions with other family members, so for example you can share your iTunes purchases with your partner or your Apple Arcade subscription with the kids. Family Sharing enables you to share your iCloud package with up to five other people,…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create dynamic wallpaper YOU’LL NEED Equinox – Create Wallpaper (Free), macOS 10.14 or later, suitable images Genius tip! Add additional images at any time to your wallpaper by dragging them on to the main window. Ever watched with envy as a friend’s wallpaper magically changes throughout the day? This ‘miracle’ can be achieved with little fuss thanks to a brilliant free app called Equinox (equinoxmac.com). The app enables you to select multiple background images and then create dynamic wallpaper from them, with images that change with dark and light modes, to a set schedule, or based on the sun’s position in the sky (or indeed when it’s beneath the horizon). You’ll need to source your own images – you could…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to edit album artwork, metadata and create Smart Playlists YOU’LL NEED Apple Music In part 1 of our series on cleaning up your Apple Music library, we showed you how to remove duplicates and sort tracks. In part 2, we’ll tackle metadata, Smart Playlists and album artwork. The latter is probably the most important in terms of making your Music library neat and visually appealing. Album artwork also makes it easier to identify tracks and, importantly, different versions of tracks. That in turn makes it easier to add them to manual playlists or just to play them. The importance of metadata depends on how much of a completist you are. Some of us only care about the title, artist, and, at…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make the most of Quick Notes in iPadOS YOU’LL NEED iPad (excluding iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4), iPadOS 15 or later Genius tip! If you just want to create a Quick Note with a link, navigate to the page in Safari, swipe up from the bottomright corner and tap the URL in the note. Jargon buster When Quick Notes saves a thumbnail of a web page, it shows a preview of the page in a frame inside the note to give you a visual reminder. Genius tip! If you already have a Quick Note open and tap Add to Note in a text selection, it will be added to the current note. One of the standout features in…

Wipe a Mac for its new owner Q How should I prepare my old Mac before passing it on for my daughter to ‘inherit’? by ETHAN GRANT A If your Mac has a T2 or M1 chip and is running macOS Monterey, this is simple. Back up or copy all the files you need from it, deauthorise the Mac in Music or one of the other Apple media apps, then run the new Erase All Content & Settings command, available in the System Prefs menu. When that eventually prompts you to select the country to personalise the Mac for, force it to shut down and it’ll be ready for its new user. Older versions of macOS and Intel Macs without T2 chips require a longer manual process to accomplish the…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 374 FEBRUARY 2022 Power up your Mac – we show you how! 82 of the best apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Watch Take better pics in low-light conditions ISSUE 373 JANUARY 2022 Mac secrets revealed: 71 must-try tips New MacBook Pro and AirPods tested AirPlay everything for easy streaming What next for Apple in 2022 ISSUE 372 DECEMBER 2021 New MacBook Pro: M1 Pro and M1 Max! 55 Apple essentials – all the best kit iPadOS 15 superguide: tips and tricks Streaming soundbar group test To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_backissues or phone +44 (0)330 333 1113 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto your iOS device at any time and keep them…

From £99.99 FROM Logitech, logitech.com/en-gb FEATURES Wireless compact keyboard, Bluetooth and Logi Bolt wireless connectivity, 79 backlit keys, customisable Function keys, connect up to three different devices, Li-Po rechargeable battery (up to 10 days’ battery life between charges), USB-C port (USB-C to USB-A charging cable supplied); 29.6x13.2x2.1cm, 506.4g This angled keyboard looks great on your desk and feels even better under your fingers You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to Mac keyboards these days with Apple selling three versions of its Magic Keyboard. The standard, compact wireless design at £99.99, a version with Numeric Keypad at £129.99 and a Touch ID version at £149.99. Much as we love the various shades of Magic Keyboard, they’re not perfect – their shallow key travel giving a distinct lack of feedback for…

£199.99 FROM AOC, eu.aoc.com FEATURES 15.6-inch IPS WLED backlit LCD display (1920x1080), 1x USB-C port (DP Alt mode), 5ms response time, 700:1 contrast ratio, 300 lumens (nits) brightness, smart cover; 800g Messy desktop or not, we could all do with a little extra screen real estate. This is especially true if your main Mac is a portable like the 13.3-inch MacBook Air. Enter AOC’s I1601P, a 15.6-inch 1080p display that’s been designed to be used as a second screen either on the go or at your desk. Drawing its power through its single USB-C connection to your Mac, it can be successfully teamed with any fairly modern Mac including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro or the iMac. You could even use it as a display for a headless Mac like…

ON TEST… Airmail AppleMail Email– Edison Mail HEYEmail Spark– Email App by Readdle SpikeEmail – Mail & Team Chat Despite repeated warnings of its imminent demise, email is still very much alive – in fact, it’s almost ubiquitous in most of our daily lives. Plenty of us still need a good app that manages our multitudinous mail messages, whether we’re aiming for inbox zero or just want to make it through another day of spam. Fortunately, there’s a battery of excellent email clients all battling for a spot on your Mac. While some focus on nailing the basics, others are experimenting with new ideas and unusual additions. With so many to choose from, finding your way is not always easy. To sort the wheat from the chaff, we’ve put six…

£3.49 per month (unlimited devices) FROM 1password, 1password.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later The easy-to-grasp app has been offered a clean visual refresh Even after 15 years, 1Password’s defences have never been breached. While there’s a lot about 1Password’s eighth iteration that’s new, including an entirely restructured codebase which builds all of its extant apps on top of a central security core, its proven track record with regards to security is the most important thing about it – the key reason to pick it up, and everything you need to take away from our review of it. But there’s more to love. Thankfully, 1Password’s slick interface has not been thrown out as part of the overhaul, though the easy-to-grasp app has been offered a clean visual refresh. It also gets…

From Free FROM Oleh Stasula, usage.pro NEEDS macOS 11 or later Keeping track of your Mac’s resource usage can be tricky. Apple’s Activity Monitor is suited to a deep background dive, but Usage aims to provide a view of key hardware stats. Information covers CPU, memory, network, system hard drive and battery, plus a device component that’s unique to the floating widget. The free version gives access to menu bar items, plus a selection of widgets for more detail via a popover window. You can access up to four components that monitor CPU, network, and system disk in real-time only. If you’d like to add history graphs or monitor memory and battery, you’ll need a Pro licence (from £4.99 yearly/£7.99 lifetime). The configuration screen is split in two; on the…