Table of contents for September 2019 in MacFormat

One of the best things about owning a Mac, iPhone, iPad or any of the other devices in the Apple ecosystem, is the way they work seamlessly together – and that’s thanks, in part, to iCloud, Apple’s cloud computing service. Log in with your Apple ID on any of your devices and you’re able to sync, access and share your documents, photos and data across them all – or at least that’s the theory. In our superguide, starting on p20, you’ll discover the ways iCloud can help you do all these things, along with some top tips and tricks to help you make the most of the service, while also keeping your precious iCloud data secure. You probably will have heard by now that Jony Ive, legendary Apple designer and…

WE ASKED… Which macOS Catalina feature are you most excited about? Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Apple reports takedowns Apple is big on privacy, but it’s often legally required to provide information or assist in law enforcement. In the second half of 2018, its latest Transparency Report reveals, Apple received 80 requests from government authorities to remove apps from the App Store for alleged violations of local law. It removed 634 apps out of the 770 requested. 56 of the requests came from China, leading to the removal of 517 apps, “the vast majority relating to illegal gambling or pornography.” Russia was a distant second with 10 requests relating to 11 apps, most to do with illegal gambling. Worldwide, government agencies investigating credit card fraud,…

There is a flaw in Gatekeeper in macOS that is reportedly being exploited to deliver malware. Gatekeeper, introduced in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, protects your Mac from malware and rogue apps. When you install apps, plug-ins and installers from outside the Mac App Store, it checks they’re from an identified developer and have not been altered. It also looks for known malware. In May, however, security researcher Filippo Cavallarin disclosed a security hole: if your Mac automounts a shared volume, this is treated differently from an internet download. In certain circumstances, he found, a ’symlink’ (like an alias) to an app hosted on a remote NFS server will not be checked. In June, antivirus company Intego reported it had found the first known attempt to exploit this vulnerability, which…

1 $2.2 million The total number of iOS apps available in the App Store (as of February 2019), one million of which have native iPad versions. 2 88.2% Proportion of free apps in the Store. The average price of a paid game is 49¢ (about 40p), while non-game apps average $1.01 (about 80p). Only a third of games are paid downloads; most make their money through ads and IAPs. 3 $95 billion The cumulative earnings of money made by developers from the App Store as of January 2019. In 2018 alone, App Store users spent around £37.02 billion on IAPs, subs and premium apps. 4 1.57 million Number of jobs in Europe attributable to the App Store ecosystem, of which 291,000 are in the UK. In the US it’s 1.53m…

The keynote that opens Apple’s annual World Wide Developer Conference is streamed live on the web, making it a fixture in the Silicon Valley media calendar. Sessions from the five-day event are also posted (at bit.ly/mfwwdc19vids) for everyone to see. But the real target audience is the 5,000-odd members of Apple’s Developer Programs who win the annual lottery for a $1,599 (£1,265) ticket to attend in person, plus the 350 students awarded Apple scholarships. We asked for some of their reactions to WWDC 2019. Exploding head A long keynote with plenty of technical detail left some members of the public nonplussed, but developers were enthusiastic. Kyle Lee, a self-taught Swift coder who teaches others as Kilo Loco, thought the cartoon graphics set the right tone: “Apple was spot-on with the…

First they called it iTools. Then it was MobileMe. Apple’s online sync, storage and services platform has a long and, let’s say interesting history. It was MobileMe of which Steve Jobs famously asked a room full of engineers: “Can anyone tell me what this is supposed to do?” And after waiting patiently for them to explain, shot back: ‘So why the **** doesn’t it do that?’ Well, now it’s iCloud. And it does that. As well as a bunch of other things. So many things, in fact, that you might overlook a few. In this article, we’ll outline all the main features and how to get them working for you. We’ll clear up a few misconceptions, and unearth a few elements that ended up in places you might not guess.…

Taking photos is easy; finding them later is hard. iCloud solves it by keeping all the photos you take on any of your Apple devices and syncing them to the others. So you can show off the pictures you’ve taken with your iPhone on your iPad, Mac or Apple TV. Albums you create appear everywhere with the same photos in them. You can share photos around your family, too (see page 26). When iCloud Photos (previously iCloud Photo Library) is activated on a device, every item added to All Photos – primarily by shooting stills or video in the Camera app – is copied to iCloud. This happens immediately if the device is online, or next time it connects. The copies sync to all your other devices with iCloud Photos…

The iCloud concept started off as a way to sync settings between devices, and that’s still one of its most useful abilities. The less you notice it, the more useful it’s probably being. On a Mac, check what iCloud is managing in System Preferences > iCloud. In iOS, open Settings and tap your name, then iCloud. Your Contacts, Calendars and Reminders will all appear the same everywhere if you turn on their switches on all your devices. For Safari, iCloud syncs your bookmarks and enables Safari Tabs, which shows web pages currently open on other devices. In iOS, scroll to the bottom of the Tabs view (bottom right icon on iPhone, top right on iPad) or in macOS, click the Tabs icon at the top right. It’s also meant to…

As well as using iCloud services and browsing your iCloud Drive files on your Macs and iOS devices, you can access iCloud in two ways that work with non-Apple products: via iCloud.com and in the iCloud app for Windows. The latter is available for Windows 7 and higher from Apple at bit.ly/mficfw or from the Microsoft Store in Windows 10. It adds iCloud Drive as a folder to Windows Explorer; syncs your iCloud Photos (see page 24); brings your Mail accounts, Contacts and Reminders (as Tasks) into Microsoft Outlook; and syncs your Safari bookmarks to Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome. You can also check your iCloud storage and change settings. iCloud.com can be accessed with any web browser; it works in Linux, on Chromebooks and in Windows iCloud.com can…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to identify audio weaknesses and fix them YOU’LL NEED iMovie Gadgets such as GoPro cameras and the iPhone can do an excellent job of capturing high-quality video footage for your iMovie projects. However, the audio content you end up with may not the match the quality of the visuals. For example, sound levels can be weak because of the distance between the camera’s microphone and the subject. Background noise, such as a passing car or plane, may also drown out your subject’s voice. Luckily, iMovie boasts a collection of audio post-production tools that can boost weak sound levels in a click, automatically ensure that music doesn’t drown out speech, and even reduce background noise. We’ll show you how to use those…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to find and use hidden features in iOS YOU’LL NEED An iOS 12 device (some features work on older versions) 12 No matter how frequently you use your iPhone or iPad, it’s likely that you’ve developed habitual ways of interacting with it. And while there’s nothing wrong with strengthening muscle memory or instinctively doing what comes naturally, if you never move beyond your comfort zone, you risk missing out on slicker, faster and more productive ways of working. Many of these features are things you may never have thought of, while others are possibly things you wish you could do with your iPhone, but never thought possible, because the interface has concealed them just well enough that you don’t stumble on…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to generate and insert a table of contents in a Pages document YOU’LL NEED iOS 12, Pages A table of contents (TOC) itemises the parts of a document so the reader can jump to the page they want. It could just be a list of chapters, or might include several levels, from sections to individual subheadings. Pages for Mac can generate a TOC automatically, and the iWork update in March brought this to the iPad. The TOC is based on paragraph styles: apply the same style to each chapter title, heading and so on, and they’re collated. You can then choose which to include; the list is limited, so delete unused styles to avoid confusion. If you want some headings to…

Should you shut down daily? Q I use my Mac most days in my home office. Is it better to leave it running overnight, or should I shut it down every evening? by GEOFF BRIDGES A Ultimately this is a personal choice, and depends on several factors. It was originally recommended to leave computers running so as to minimise mechanical wear on their hard drives, which definitely do last longer when left spinning in constant conditions for many days or weeks at a time. Now that many Macs have no moving components, that’s a less common concern, but it still affects Fusion Drives. There are credible claims that leaving electronics running at a steady temperature makes failure in its soldered joints less likely, but this is more difficult to verify.…

Q Shortly after updating macOS to 10.14.5, I tried to install Oracle VirtualBox 6.0.8, but couldn’t. Why not, and what can I do? by LUKE WILLIAMS A macOS 10.14.5 update brought a major internal change in the security of kernel extensions, which are used by several products including VirtualBox. New and updated kernel extensions have to be approved by Apple’s Notary Service, and macOS now accepts older extensions only when they’re on a new whitelist. This update to VirtualBox was released the day after these new rules came into force, and may be the first product to fall foul of them. You should see a dialog at the end of installation which invites you to add the extension using the Security & Privacy pane. After doing so, run the installer…

WDC 2019 has come and gone and while the main keynote address all but avoided the existence of HomeKit (justifiably, given the sheer amount of high-level advancements there were to talk about), Apple’s automation platform did get one big mention, and it’s a significant one: WWDC saw the debut of HomeKit Secure Video. Secure Video answers a lot of major concerns about security cameras. Most importantly, it goes some way to countering accusations that cloud-based cameras could potentially leave you less secure than before. Think about object analysis; when certain camera systems use their algorithms to detect people and faces, they do this by sending images from your camera online where they’re acted on before triggering your camera to record. That’s a privacy risk – who knows what is being…

£1,299 FROM Naim, naimaudio.com FEATURES Multiroom, comprehensive audio format and streaming support The top dial now boasts 15 touch-sensitive buttons and a proximity sensor The Mu-so 2nd Generation might seem, at a glance, like a minor evolution of the all-conquering (in the £900 wireless speaker market) original Mu-so. But it actually beats its predecessor to a pulp in terms of audio quality, while adding new connectivity options. The first Naim Mu-so pretty much redefined the wireless speaker market. This new model upgrades it in every way, but the price tag’s gone up too. It looks a lot like the first Mu-so – if it ain’t broke, why fix it? However, enough has changed with the colour of the metal, the design of the over-sized volume/control dial and the remote control…

Writers can be a picky bunch. Some have special pens; others demand a particular kind of notebook or a certain writing location. And on Macs, writers definitely have their favourite apps. Like pens and places, those favourites differ from person to person. Some prize the beauty of the writing environment; others, the speed of the search engine. Some want to use the same app for scripts, scribbles and shopping lists; others want an app that focuses purely on paid-for projects. There is one thing many can agree on, though, and that’s Markdown. Markdown was created by John Gruber, aka Daring Fireball, and it’s designed to make it really easy to create structured text without sacrificing readability. That structure makes it easy to output the same document in multiple formats, something…

£4.99 FROM Electronic Team, electronic.us NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later There are vast amounts of audio and video content available on the internet. However, macOS is quite fussy when it comes to file formats that come from non-Apple devices such as WMV and AVI video files from Windows PCs. And iTunes just ignores albums in the popular FLAC format. There are other media players, such as the free VLC, that can play many of these files. However, VLC can be a bit intimidating for people who aren’t already familiar with all these different file formats. One alternative that doesn’t cost too much is JustPlay. The app plays pretty much every file format you’re likely to need, such as FLACs, AVI, and other Windows video formats. The app is easy…

There was an air of unreality pervading Apple’s keynote at Macworld Expo New York on July 21 1999. Proceedings began as usual with Steve Jobs striding on to the stage, dressed in his now familiar jeans and black turtleneck; except it wasn’t Steve Jobs at all, but Noah Wyle, star of the TV hospital drama ER, who’d recently played Jobs in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley. Steve himself soon arrived to mock Wyle’s actually surprisingly passable imitation of his physical and vocal tics, a rather rare acknowledgement of the interim CEO’s cult of personality. Things looked set to get even weirder when he invited Ozzie Osbourne on stage to demonstrate IBM’s ViaVoice speech recognition software, but it turned out that he was actually referring to the similarly named general…

[MAC APP] The Mac’s history is intertwined with desktop publishing. The snag is if you want to get on board, the cost can be terrifying. No longer, though, as Serif unleashes the latest Affinity app. Joining Photo and Designer, Publisher’s all about crafting anything from posters and flyers to full books and magazines. The big draw, bar the kind of affordable price tag that’s sure to raise an eyebrow or three in the pro and consumer space alike, is the flexible workflow. With StudioLink, you can edit images and graphics in situ, without heading to another app, thereby dramatically boosting efficiency. And when working on the move, you’ll even be able to open, edit and export Publisher documents using Photo or Designer for iPad. That said, we’re champing at the…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! APPLE WATCH SOS One selling point for me (as a septuagenarian, living on my own) when I bought my Apple Watch Series 4 last autumn, was the fact that it could automatically send an alarm to the emergency services, if the wearer should fall and lose consciousness. The Apple Store salesperson assured me that this facility should soon be available in the UK but, to the best of my knowledge, this has not happened yet. Do you know if and when this might be available? BY FBREED ROB SAYS… Apple UK says the Fall Detection feature has been available in this country since its inception. However, you need to enable it on your devices for it to be triggered. To do that, head to the Apple…

Another string to the iCloud bow is Cloud Drive – an all-purpose file repository within your iCloud storage. Every relevant app has its own folder there to store documents, and you can add folders of your own. Your iCloud Drive appears in macOS, when ticked in System Preferences > iCloud, as a sidebar item in Finder windows, under Favourites. In iOS, when turned on in iCloud after opening Settings and tapping your name, it’s accessed through the Files app. You’ll see the same folder structure everywhere, with the same files synced. As with photos, ‘synced’ by default means the files are stored on Apple’s servers and copies are automatically downloaded to each device’s own storage. Storage options But there may not be room on your devices for copies of all…

Apple explains, at bit.ly/mficsecov, the levels of security that apply to iCloud data. It makes a distinction between ‘encryption’ and ‘end-to-end encryption’. The latter means your information can be accessed ‘only on devices where you’re signed into iCloud. No one else, not even Apple’ can read it. Even if a court ordered Apple to decrypt your data, it couldn’t. The list of information stored using end-to-end encryption is short: Messages, your iCloud Keychain (which syncs all your saved passwords and logins), payment details, Home and Health data, Siri records and a few more bits and bobs. Still, everything else – including your photos, backups, and everything in iCloud Drive (Files) – is encrypted in transit and on the server, so it should be safe if someone hacked Apple’s servers or…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Time Machine YOU’LL NEED External storage disk Backing up your Mac is essential. We know it. You know it. Apple knows it too, which is why it created the Time Machine application to make it as easy as it could possibly be to back up your Mac. Sadly, Time Machine’s hardware buddy Time Capsule is no longer with us. However, several NAS boxes do support Time Machine, albeit with varying degrees of success and difficulty in setting them up. (Check out MF #332 for our group test on four network drives.) The other option is to use a regular external hard drive – fine if you have a desktop Mac, not so convenient otherwise. Once you’ve set up Time…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to transform a layer to create a mirror image; add effects to the ‘watery’ surface YOU’LL NEED A landscape shot, Affinity Photo Lakes can enhance a landscape, especially if the weather conditions are right. The absence of a breeze can turn a body of water into a giant mirror that adds a pleasing symmetry to your landscape photographs. However it can be a challenge to find a suitable location that juxtaposes both mountains and water. You’ll also have to hope that the location is not too windy to capture a clean reflection in the lake’s rippling surface. Thanks to Affinity Photo’s pixel pushing tools, you can turn on the taps and add a watery surface to any landscape shot. In this…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add new fonts to your iPad apps YOU’LL NEED AnyFont plus some font files Every iPad comes with a great range of fonts, but sometimes the style you want just isn’t there. That’s where AnyFont (£1.99) comes in. It enables you to add new fonts to your iPad, and those fonts are then available to any app that uses the system’s library of typefaces: Pages, Keynote, drawing apps and many others. You can add fonts to AnyFont in two ways: first by installing font files you’ve already downloaded, such as fonts you’ve bought from a font library website; or by unlocking the bundled fonts that come with the AnyFont app. If you’re installing font files, the app supports TrueType, OpenTypeFont…

Q When I tried to turn my MacBook Pro on, it wouldn’t respond, so I put it on charge for half an hour. When I tried to start it up, it showed a screen full of filled circles, and eventually asked for my password. I shut it down, and five minutes later it worked fine again. What did I do wrong? by COLIN HEATON A Any laptop Mac which is reluctant to start up should be left on mains power for half an hour or so before trying again, just in case its battery needs that boost. Display problems may then reflect that your MacBook Pro's SMC needs resetting, or it could be an early indication that its graphics card is starting to fail. It’s worth resetting your MacBook's SMC…

IKEA Tradfri Blinds £TBC, ikea.com After something of a nail-biting delay, IKEA’s Kadrilj and Fourtur HomeKit-enabled automated blinds (which require a Tradfri hub to work, it seems) are set to hit Swedish stores in August. Savant Pro Remote £TBC, savant.com Control Apple TV, your cable box, and even your network of HomeKit devices with this Siri-packing super-remote from the high-end home automation specialists at Savant. Yeelight Bulbs From £21, yeelight.com Yeelight, a division of Xiaomi, has recently added HomeKit support to its budget smart bulbs – and also announced a new range of Bluetooth bulbs with a HomeKit-happy hub.…

£3,799 FROM Samsung, samsung.co.uk FEATURES 65-inch QLED display with 4K Ultra HD (3,840x 2,160 pixels) and HDR, Smart TV features inc. Apple TV and AirPlay 2 It pretty much looks and works exactly like it does on Apple’s own hardware When Apple revealed the new Apple TV app in May, it did so with a flourish. Not only would the app appear on Mac, iOS and Apple TV hardware – but also on smart TVs made by LG, Samsung and Sony. That list looks set to grow. One of the first Apple TV-enabled sets you can buy is this: the Samsung QE65Q90R, a 65-inch 4K HDR QLED flagship that has AirPlay 2 onboard too. It’s also achingly expensive at £3,799 – but that’s a small price to pay given its picture…

£9.98/month FROM Adobe, adobe.com needs macOS 10.12 or higher The developer has been steadily reintroducing features Back in 2017, Adobe rewrote its professional photo editing and cataloguing software, Lightroom, to bring feature parity to its desktop and mobile versions. In doing so they dropped a lot of features and functionality users had enjoyed in the much more mature Lightroom Classic CC (which is still on sale), but the developer has been steadily reintroducing features via updates since then. The reason this is important to mention is that Lightroom Classic CC is still a more ‘professional’ app – and still gets updates – but will invariably be discontinued, while Lightroom CC (the new version) will live on. Priced at £9.98 a month, Lightroom CC is both slick and streamlined, while providing…

£28.99 FROM Tinrocket, tinrocket.com Needs macOS 10.14 or later Waterlogue for Mac (and iOS) is a dedicated app for turning a photo image into a simulated watercolour artwork. Running on any Mac that supports Metal 2 (most 2012 or later models), you simply import one image at a time, choose a preset, make modifications, and save your image out. You can also save projects to revisit them. The results are good. There’s some fairly heavy analysis and processing going on, and it taxed the dedicated graphics card in our 2013 MacBook Pro while making changes. When you tweak a setting in a tool panel, the app recalculates and takes a few seconds to re-render the image. This will be a quicker on a higher spec machine, but if you tweak…

£9.99 FROM Savage Interactive, procreate.art needs iOS 12 or later There’s a clever layering system, which is beautifully implemented Procreate for iPad has won an Apple Design Award, and it’s very easy to see why. Slick and powerful, the art that users can create with it is absolutely stunning. You are presented with a clear, simple and well-designed interface, with a range of pro tools. The Gallery section is where you manage your library of images and projects, the rest of the uppermost toolbar concerns itself with the tools you need to access to create and edit your art. You get 136 brushes, with over 50 customisable settings per brush, as well as the ability not only to create your own brushes and sets, but also import and export custom…

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…

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…

Apple Watch Series 5, or a later version, might be the first smartwatch with a camera, if a recent Apple patent is any indication. Unexpectedly, the patent shows the camera at the end of a long watch strap, which can wrap around to point in any direction. This could be easier than a camera in the watch face – that would be fine for selfies, but how would you frame a scene as you twist your arm around to point your watch face away from you? Apple already has a patent (granted September 2018) for a watchband with one or two cameras near the bezel, suitable for Face ID and FaceTime. There already seems to be a third-party version available in the US (see getcmra.com). Adding a camera seems to…

An iiyama ProLite X3272UHS 4K display to enhance your desk Expand your Mac desktop in high-res style Love working on your Mac but lament its lack of screen space? Or perhaps you’re looking for a second screen to extend your desktop. Whatever the case, you’ll love this issue’s prize: a whopping 32in 4K display from iiyama. The monitor’s high resolution and dimensions make it ideal for editing large photos, where you’ll be able to fit more of the picture onto the screen while tweaking it to your liking. It’s also a great help if you regularly use apps with busy workspaces or lots of toolbars, as the high pixel count will give you more room to breathe. As well as that, it has an impressive 3,000:1 contrast ratio and a…

With built-in GPS, your iPhone always knows where it is, to the nearest three metres or so. iPad and Apple Watch models with Cellular also have GPS. Macs and iPod touch don’t, but can guess their position surprisingly accurately based on nearby Wi-Fi. iCloud’s Find My… can use this location data to show you where all your devices are. For this to work, Find My… must be enabled on each device. In macOS, go to System Prefs > iCloud and tick Find My Mac. In iOS, open Settings, tap your name, tap iCloud then Find My iPhone. Switch on Find My iPhone and opt to Send Last Location, so that whenever your battery is low, the device will automatically send its location to iCloud, which remembers it for 24 hours.…

It’s easy to subscribe… SUBSCRIBE TODAY AND SAVE! www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/mac/ankert Or call: 0344 848 2852 and quote ‘anker’ Other benefits of subscribing to the UK’s best-selling Apple magazine… Our print subscription delivers 13 print issues of MacFormat a year to your door, saving up to 21% on the cover price Get our print and digital bundle and save up to 51% on the normal price The 12-month print and digital bundle costs just £4 more than print alone, and enables you to read on your iPhone and iPad Choose your package! PRINT EDITION only £32 every 6 months or £65 every 12 months 13 issues of MacFormat in print, plus your Anker PowerWave charger PRINT & DIGITAL BUNDLE only £45 every 6 months or £69 every 12 months 13 issues of…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEAR macOS 10.14, an Apple ID, Apple’s iWork apps YOU’LL NEED How to export iWork files to Microsoftcompatible formats Compatibility is a big concern for people who switch to macOS. Files you create in Apple’s own iWork office suite (Pages, Numbers & Keynote) won’t automatically open in Microsoft Office, so documents, spreadsheets and presentations created within macOS may not display correctly in Windows. Apple have an extensive list of which features are supported in each of its own productivity apps and Microsoft Office, which you can find at bit.ly/mfpagescomp. For instance, Numbers doesn’t support page breaks but Microsoft Excel does. In this guide, you’ll discover how to prepare docs for sending to Windows users. You’ll also learn how to use the Export feature,…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to share your screen using VNC YOU’LL NEED Your own Mac and another macOS or iOS device Back in 2007 Apple introduced its own Screen Sharing feature for OS X 10.5 (Leopard) to provide an easy way to share your desktop with other users. Although this is a fantastic feature, it has its drawbacks: for instance, if you want to share your screen with someone else, they need a valid user account password. Fortunately, macOS also supports VNC (Virtual Network Computing). This is a slightly older system for screen sharing across networks and is supported on all platforms. This means you can access your Mac from a non-Apple machine or even a mobile device like an iPhone. Easy sharing VNC works…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To make Shortcuts that create QR codes that contain useful info YOU’LL NEED iOS 12, the Shortcuts app Shortcuts is a new app in iOS 12, and its handy uses are nearly infinite. Every shortcut is built around actions. An action is a single step. For example you might get a URL from Safari or an image from Photos, a location from Maps, or text from the clipboard. This is your input, and once you’ve got it you can then tell Shortcuts what to do with it: email the URL, upload the image, etc. In recent versions of iOS, Apple added the ability to scan QR codes in the Camera app. These bitty images encode text information, so someone who scans them…

Sharing a Photos library Q I don’t keep my Photos library in iCloud, and have ended up with different libraries on my iMac and MacBook Pro. What’s the best way to keep them in sync? by John Franci s A If you were only ever to use your Macs when they’re connected to one local network, and never at the same time, you could possibly keep your images in a single Photos library on a shared disk, such as on networked storage. However, the moment that you wanted to access Photos away from that, on your MacBook Pro, you’d end up having to create another Photos library for it, and then face problems keeping them in sync. The simplest solution is to merge your existing libraries into one, then set…

While my home is kitted out with a fair bit of smart equipment, surprisingly little of it consists of HomeKit accessories. This is isn’t for lack of trying. Apple controls, in all, a relatively small portion of the smart home market, mainly because its range is so condensed. As I understand it, Apple doesn’t make it easy behind the scenes to add HomeKit compatibility. If my inbox full of press releases is anything to go by there’s definitely growth happening, but it’s nowhere near the pace of Google-and Alexa-supporting devices. Apple is at least partly to blame here. While there were some big smart tech-based announcements at the WWDC keynote, they were talked about and skimmed over. Just because home security and device interoperability doesn’t get the same kind of…

WWDC didn’t leave CarPlay spinning its wheels. In fact (and this will please you if you’re suffering through using your car manufacturer’s default entertainment front end, which is almost certainly terrible), Apple’s in-car interface for iOS looks set to receive a major upgrade, which will make it an even more essential on-the-move tool. Amongst the massive changes announced are a newly refined dashboard which better utilises your car’s screen space, and a major update to Siri which allows you to control third-party apps like Waze without taking your hands off the wheel. That’s a real plus both to CarPlay’s usefulness and to your safety – and may hint at increased thirdparty app support making its way to Siri outside of CarPlay too. No word yet, though, on whether Apple has…

£109-£119 FROM Logitech, logitech.com FEATURES Backlit keys, Type/Sketch/Read modes, charge and stow Apple Pencil Logitech’s Slim Folio Pro cases for the thirdgeneration 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro are functionally identical. Well built, they offer excellent protection for your iPad, but also add some heft. There’s no Smart Connector, so you pair over Bluetooth low energy, with the keyboard waking and sleeping depending on whether your iPad’s positioned for typing. The internal battery lasts three months on a single charge based on two hours’ use per day, and charges over USB-C. Since these iPad Pro models are the first iPads that can output power themselves, this means you can charge the Slim Folio keyboard from the iPad itself. There are three stand positions: typing, viewing, and read/sketch modes – all of which…

The way you use an Apple TV has stayed more or less the same ever since it first launched. With the box itself and Siri Remote, that’s pretty much all you really need to get going. But that’s not to say you can’t get a better Apple TV setup with a few extras here and there. A high-quality speaker for your TV, a keyboard to aid with navigation or a case to protect your Siri Remote can all improve your home entertainment system, helping you get more from your Apple TV. We’ve rounded up a range of products that each improve the Apple TV experience in a different way. Let’s see what we’ve got. Logitech K380 £39.99 FROM Logitech, logitech.com FEATURES Bluetooth, connects up to three devices simultaneously This keyboard…

£68.95 FROM Smile Software, smilesoftware.com needs OS X 10.7 or later Works well with Split View, with real-time updates and effective navigation While every Mac can make simple PDFs, editing and interacting with complex PDF documents can be an expensive exercise. Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC is £15.17 a month; if you’re working in an environment that subscribes to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, you’ll have Acrobat already, but if not give the PDFpen trial period a go. At £68.95 it’s packed with powerful editing features. It can extract and edit text, digitally sign documents, adjust images, scan and OCR documents, and redact sensitive information. There’s also a Pro version at £99.95 that adds form creation, website conversion, Portfolio document creation, and the ability to correct typos in the OCR text layer. PDFpen…

£25.99 FROM BTF, trueberbrook.com needs OS X 10.11 or later The scene often gently rotates to create a sense of movement Trüberbrook is described by its developers as ‘Twin Peaks meets the The X–Files’. It’s a stylish adventure game that casts you in the role of Hans Tannhauser, a student visiting the German town of Trüberbrook during the Cold War era of the 1960s. After checking in to his hotel, Hans discovers that some of his notes have been stolen, so he begins to explore Trüberbrook and starts chatting to the locals. Along the way he encounters some eccentric characters, such as the inventor Lazarus Taft, and another student, called Gretchen, who joins Hans. Needless to say, the crazy inventor guy does what crazy inventors always do, and introduces Hans…

5G: What you need to know Why you’ll want the latest in mobile tech. PLUS: How to get it & what to buy ALSO INSIDE … Create beautiful images with Pixelmator Photo Easily find local info with the Apple Maps app Track down missing files with smart searches … and more! Contents subject to change DON’T MISS IT – SUBSCRIBE TODAY! IN PRINT & ON YOUR IPAD Our print and digital bundle gets you the paper magazine as well as our iPad edition myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/macformat ON YOUR MAC Read digitally on your Mac: subscribe with Zinio at bit.ly/ziniomacf ISSUE 343 ON SALE 27 AUG 2019…