MacFormat 1 July 2015

£780 Manufacturer Parrot,parrot.com Connectivity 802.11ac, MIMO dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz) Camera 1920x1080 at 30fps (video), 4096x3072 Memory 8GB Dimensions 80x320x36mm Weight 400g Parrot drones have finally grown up. We’re used to slightly childlike toys such as the Rolling Spider topping Christmas lists, but the Bebop drone is about to claim that spot. It’s a diminutive drone, but it’s got some serious kit on board. In a body section that’s just a few inches long you get a substantial battery and an HD (1080p) video camera that shoots 14 megapixel stills. It can be bought just as a drone (£430), but the Skycontroller bundle gives you a traditional twin-stick remote control unit capable of generating its own Wi-Fi hotspot, enabling you to fly up to a claimed 2km (it went well beyond our sight!) The…

£99 Manufacturer Fitbit, fitbit.com Measures Weight, body fat, body mass index Dimensions 5.84x3.3x31.24cm Features Wi-Fi, smartphone/online app integration, auto power on/off Fitbit is one of the big ‘wearable’ companies, but with the Aria Smart Scale it confines your stats monitoring to indoors, thanks to its built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Powered by four AA batteries and sporting an LED screen and sleek glass top, it looks much like traditional bathroom scales. But turn it on and the first thing it does is connect to your wireless network. Once the connection is made you can create a profile for yourself, which is linked to your Fitbit account. Stepping on the scales, it identifies you by name and proceeds to take your weight, body mass index (BMI) and body fat percentage – useful if you’re out to build…

When we’ve spent hours, days, months working on our Macs the last thing we want to do is redo it all because it’s been lost. Neither do we want to put our photos at risk, see our music go up in digital smoke or trash the first draft of a book by accident. Fortunately, none of these unfortunate scenarios need to happen if you take daily care of your data. Implementing a structured, mutliple-location backup system isn’t difficult. And a few hours spent setting it up can save you days or months in the long run, when you neatly sidestep having to recover – or recreate – your lost work. Quite apart from the practical benefits of a back-up routine, putting one in place now will save you the heartache of…

REVIEW MANIFESTO Our ratings explained Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. You can trust us. Prices we quote for products are correct at the time of writing and are the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery. Rarely given; a brilliant thing that’s as good as you can get in its class right now A strong recommendation to buy; any concerns are comfortably outweighed by its strengths A good product you should consider buying, but there may be better options for you Fundamentally flawed either in concept or execution; there are almost certainly better options for you A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy! Given solely at the discretion of the Editor only to truly exceptional products. Our group…

£6.99 Developer Secret Base Design, musicioapp.com Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 1.2 As virtual instruments and audio effects running on iOS improve, musicians increasingly need a way to integrate iPads and iPhones into their Mac-based recording setup. Music IO is a really clever app that lets you stream four stereo audio channels from iOS to your Mac in 32-bit resolution and at low latency, as well as sending MIDI back and forth between the devices. Install the bridge app and AU (Audio Unit) or VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plug-in on your Mac, and then you can specify any Inter-App Audiocompatible iOS apps, like synths or drum machines, into your digital audio workstation, such as Logic or GarageBand, and record it. The MIDI side of Music IO enables you to play iOS instruments…

Time Machine is simple and effective to use, but if you have more than one Mac, you’ll want to keep them all secure. However, buying an external drive to host each Time Machine archive can quickly get expensive. The solution is to use OS X Server’s built-in Time Machine Server to share a single drive across your whole network. Granted, you’ll need to devote at least one Mac to run the server application, but as this is a background process that takes up few resources, you can simply pick the most powerful Mac in your home to act as the server and make sure it’s left switched on 24/7. Server costs £14.99 from the Mac App Store and requires that the host machine is running the latest version of OS X. Once…