Table of contents for 1 June 2015 in MacFormat

NEXT MONTH Apple Watch tips, on sale 11 June For me OS X Yosemite really has been the most exciting Mac experience. Of course, the latest Macs make the most of it, but it’s an OS that I’ve found works very well on the minimum requirements. The system improvements from Apple are welcome, but now we’ve been using the OS (since beta) for nearly a year, we’ve seen plenty of useful third-party tools that can help give OS X 10.10 an extra boost. We’ve spent months looking at the best of them so that this month we can bring you our complete guide to powering up Yosemite. It’s also Apple Watch time (finally), and the team has been hands-on with Sport and Watch varieties. Read our thoughts on this brave…

01 June Apple TV update says WSJ Apple plans to offer a slimmed-down bundle of TV networks starting from later this year. 02 Apple dumps Samsung… again At least 30% of next-generation iPhone chips are to be made by TSMC instead of Samsung, reports claim. 03 iPhone gets quality Apple’s $20 million acquisition of LinX should mean future iPhones will deliver SLR quality pictures even in low light conditions. 04 Force Touch comes to iPhone Apple will put Force Touch inside future iPhones, which may be made using Apple Watch alloys. 05 Apple Pay delayed in UK Reports claim banks are delaying the launch of Apple Pay in the UK as they fail to agree terms with Apple.…

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that many people “need desperately” to receive a message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.” It isn’t always easy to get that message across, or to receive it. Our devices are increasingly toddlerish, demanding all of our attention RIGHT NOW at the top of their lungs. A junk text from your phone provider has the same priority as an iMessage from a loved one, an important email the same weight as endless offers from firms you bought something from years ago, the news that somebody’s tagged you in a Facebook photo arriving with the urgency of news that might actually matter. Like toddlers, our…

PRIVATE SPACEFLIGHT If Virgin can do it (or claim to be able to), Apple certainly can. Things don’t get much more aspirational than getting to experience weightlessness on your very own private space flight, after all. NEW VR HEADSETS With Microsoft demonstrating how Hololens could be used to fix broken appliances around your home, a similar gadget from Apple could tie in well with its exciting new HealthKit framework. WHOLE HOUSE ENTERTAINMENT Apple has a large stake in the music biz with iTunes, Apple TV and Beats under its belt. What better way to link them all up than through a connected in-house entertainment system powered by its very own HomeKit? 3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY 3D printing is a fledgling market still finding its feet, making it a potentially ripe target…

Many Apple fans covet the Retina display found on the iMac and MacBook Pro. What many don’t realise is that the special rendering mode OS X this uses to draw the desktop in finer detail is available on Macs with regular displays, too, and that it can have practical benefits. HiDPI mode is enabled by default on Macs that have a built-in Retina display, and that’s why the desktop is drawn at sensible proportions. You won’t see any reference to HiDPI in System Preferences’ Displays pane on these Macs. Rather, clicking the Scaled option reveals settings similar to ‘Looks like 1440x900’. The display itself has many more pixels than that. The scaling options tell OS X to draw things at the same proportions they would appear on a non-Retina display,…

PHOTO STREAM This old method of getting photos onto other devices (bit.ly/photostr) remains available in case you have devices that can’t run iOS 8 or Yosemite. If you don’t need it, make sure it’s disabled in the iCloud tab in Photo’s preferences. iCloud Photo Library is Apple’s new method for making all your photos available on all of your devices, no matter what camera they’re taken with or which device’s photo library you import them into. To use it, your Mac must have Yosemite and your iOS devices must be running iOS 8. In Photos’ preferences, click iCloud and check the iCloud Photo Library box. It starts uploading photos from its library to iCloud. This can take a while, so if you need bandwidth to, say, more reliably stream online…

SKILL LEVEL Taking things further IT WILL TAKE One hour YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.9 or higher, LastPass for Mac, compatible web browser Just how secure are the passwords you use to protect your online accounts? Chances are that even if you’ve upped your game in recent times, you’re still relying on the same memorable (and therefore easily crackable) password for a number of websites. However secure you think your passwords are, it’s always a good time to test them, just in case. Auditing passwords by hand is time consuming: you’d have to go to each website in turn and write down your details before manually comparing the list for duplicates, assuming you can remember every site. Changing a password is awkward too, as coming up with a secure sequence…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU’LL NEED iPad, Keynote for iPad, Apple TV, television or projector Keynote is an app particularly well suited to iPad. The landscape screen orientation and ease with which you can enter and edit text, pictures and transitions mean it’s perfect for working on presentations even when you’re on the move. Traditionally though, you would have had to take a laptop and hook it up to a projector to show the presentation to a group of people. But with Keynote for iPad, plus an Apple TV, it’s even easier, with no compatibility issues to worry about. The Apple TV itself is very portable, much more so than a projector. The two devices need to be on the same wireless network,…

Q Recently I have seen a lot of connection attempts to port 44642 being blocked by Norton. Is there a way of finding out where the connection attempt is coming from? Also is it safe to trust the address? If you take a look at the export log the host is host86-168-61-113.range86-168.btcentralplus.com – is this BT Internet? I’m glad to see the firewall is doing a job of blocking attempts to access ports on my Mac, but I’m concerned about the amount that are coming from this address. A This is just your firewall doing its job. The btcentralplus.com domain is indeed owned by BT and used to route traffic for its customers. If you use a tool such as ip-tracker.org, you can see that this host is located in…

Q In MF285 you advised Martin Tuck he doesn’t need security software. For someone writing for an international magazine to be naïve and blinkered enough to believe security software isn’t needed is utterly deplorable. Macs are just as prone to attacks from viruses, malware and security holes as PCs. Have you forgotten the recently exploited NTP, OpenSSL, WebKit, RSA (FREAK) and numerous others? How about the increasingly large number of malicious viruses and malware being developed and deployed for OS X? Security is NOT sticking one’s head in the sand! A It’s definitely good to be vigilant about security for our Macs. However, thirdparty security software wouldn’t have protected OS X from any of those vulnerabilities you mention. All of them were security flaws discovered by researchers and patched soon…

Q I have 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. It’s doing everything I need here: VMware 3 using Windoze XP, SQL Server and Crystal Reports all work perfectly, sharing Mac folders. So why upgrade? VMware 7 won’t go on 10.6.8, I don’t think. Is it easy to go to Yosemite (and keep using VMware 3 or does it need an upgrade to 7?) Will I lose my apps or files? Will XP still be usable? I have a 2008 Mac Pro 2x 2.8GHz Quad Xeon model. A There’s certainly a strong argument for not fixing things that ain’t broke. But both Snow Leopard and Windows XP are no longer supported by Apple and Microsoft respectively. That means no new security updates and, for XP especially, that may be a concern if your Mac…

GET IN TOUCH If you have a technical query with your iOS device that you need answering, please email us at sos@macformat.com Drifting drone Q I was recently treated to the Parrot AR Drone for my birthday by my wife. I have flown RC planes before but this is my first quadcopter and I’m still getting to grips with the FreeFlight app. I have the drone in ‘flat trim’ mode, but I find it often drifts quite badly in one direction – and not always the same one! I’ve tried compensating with the manual trim settings but I have to adjust the values on each flight. Is this a bug or is my drone faulty? A I haven’t played with the AR Drone myself, but from the manual and the…

Q I’m planning to go to the US on holiday in a few weeks. I want to use my iPhone 6 as a camera while I’m away but I don’t want to risk running up roaming charges if I receive calls or texts. Is there a way of avoiding this? I can turn off cellular data, but I can’t find a setting to turn off phone calls and texts. A Turning on Airplane Mode disables all wireless communication systems in your iPhone. Counter intuitively, you can then switch on Wi-Fi in isolation, keeping all other systems off. (This also works for Bluetooth, should you need to use, say, headphones.) You’ll be able to get online over Wi-Fi and the camera will work just fine.…

Apple has got itself into a position where it’s expected to release new hardware like clockwork, and with that comes the demand for new and improved software. Every year, OS X and iOS are refreshed, but there’s a widespread feeling stability suffers and that bugs are commonplace. As much as we enjoy new features in Apple’s operating systems, we’d be happier if things didn’t crash so much. Apple could slow down a bit, or offer more updates that concentrate on bug fixes.…

THE MISSING PIECES OF OS X AND iOS NO MORE iTUNES Apple’s media manager is big, bulky, complex and buggy. It’s time for Apple to break up iTunes It’s funny to think that iTunes was once a highly regarded, industry-leading music player. But time hasn’t been kind to Apple’s jukebox. It has been saddled with far too many tasks, resulting in it becoming a complex, buggy behemoth. The most recent major update attempted to simplify things, mostly by hiding stuff that was previously more readily accessible. It was a great example of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, although we suspect if iTunes was confronted with a massive iceberg, it would smash right through. There’s just no getting rid of it. The app blunders on, despite syncing being broken for…

We imagine this is the one wish list entry we will see in some way, given that Yosemite feels much like OS X 10.0 once did – an extreme change that’s unfinished. It needs – and might get – refinement, such as more contrast and improved app icons. But there’s a specific change we’d appreciate: bring back old-style Finder labels. They were far more prominent (and so more useful) than Yosemite’s tiny tag circles that lurk at the end of filenames.…

We love Continuity and the manner in which Apple is thoughtfully increasing integration between devices, but we wish the system would be a bit more intelligent. If you’re busy working on your Mac and a message comes in, you might welcome a notification on your screen. Chances are you won’t be thrilled by all of your nearby iPads and iPhones blaring out the same notification over the next few seconds. We’d like devices to be more aware of their proximity to each other, intelligently feeding notifications and actionable alerts to the device you’re working with, not all of them. (Again, this could be optional should you thrive on cacophony.)…

With iCloud Drive, Apple finally gave users access to a file system on iOS, no longer forcing you to access documents solely from the app that created them. The downside is Apple didn’t twin this with an iOS version of Finder. The file system is only accessible in apps that support iCloud Drive and include the Document Picker. We suspect Apple’s attempting to hide complexity from users, but the horse has bolted. For those people who need the means to manage files, not having a ‘Files’ app seems like a major oversight. In the meantime, we’re left with workarounds, such as using Readdle’s Documents (pictured), to access and manage files on iCloud Drive and elsewhere, but we’d sooner see an official Apple solution on our devices.…

￡270 Manufacturer Sennheiser, sennheiser.com Frequency 16Hz - 2200Hz Connectivity 1.4m detachable cable with 3.5mm plug Weight 240g Impedance 18 Ω Now that the smartphone is ubiquitous and you always have your music library with you, headphones have moved from afterthought to big business. The advantage of using bigger cans rather than earbuds is that, in general, they offer a more accurate and detailed sound reproduction thanks to their far larger diaphragms. A larger surface area means fewer compromises and tricks are required to generate a solid bass end. They’re also arguably less damaging to your hearing as they don’t fire sound right into your ear canals. Sennheiser has an excellent track record both in the pro and consumer audio worlds, and makes a wide range of headphones to suit different…

From ￡42 (16GB) Manufacturer SanDisk, sandisk.co.uk 4 At first glance the iXpand looks like an ordinary memory stick, but as well as having a USB port for use with a Mac it also has a Lightning connector for an iPhone or iPad too. SanDisk’s Sync app lets you quickly copy files to or from your iOS devices, and the iXpand even has its own rechargeable battery so that it doesn’t drain the battery on your iPhone or iPad. It’s available from 16GB to 128GB, and is a really handy option for adding extra storage to your iOS kit. Our only complaint is that it has a USB 2.0 interface rather than USB 3.0. It’s a shame about the USB 2.0 interface, but the iXpand is still a really useful way…

We round-up the Apple stories that matter to you THE BIG STORY Apple isn’t just the iPhone company. It continues to invest lots of energy into its Mac platform, as seen in the innovative new battery packs for its all-new MacBook range and new Final Cut Pro X. The new MacBook is remarkable in several ways, not least for the decision to adopt a single USB-C port on the device, but hidden inside the computer is evidence that Apple has a hand in the design of the SSD controller used in the Mac. Apple purchased flash memory-controller developer Anobit for $390 million in 2011, but little evidence of components created using that company’s technology have been seen, until the MacBook. iFixit reports the flash controllers used in previous SSD Macs…

WWDC set for June Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) starts on 8 June. Tickets are available on a lottery basis, though the company intends streaming more sessions from the show than before. Marketing VP Phil Schiller promised, “Incredible new technologies for iOS and OS X to share with developers at WWDC and around the world”. Such new technologies will include new evolutions of the operating systems along with app development tracks for Apple Watch and – as MacFormat goes to press – increasing weight of speculation claiming Apple will reveal more on its plans for TV at the show. Apple and IBM in health data push Apple has teamed up with IBM in a deal that means HealthKit data may transform health research, thanks to big data analysis and IBM’s…

Home screen Your home for apps was never going to work in a static fashion like iOS devices. So, Apple’s quickly scrollable Home screen is the perfect solution. Although tiny, those round app icons are easy to press individually. Digital Crown With such a small screen space, the Digital Crown not only fixes the problem of covering the screen with a finger, it also enhances apps. In Maps it’s better than pinch-tozoom, and the Contacts wheel is a joy to use. Glances With the clock as your main screen, you don’t want to always press one of the buttons to bring up info or an app. Swiping up from the bottom of the clock screen gives you quick access to Settings and up to 20 apps. Activity Workout is the…

Yosemite adds a huge range of new features and functionality to your Mac and it’s important to get the most out of them. After all, getting more out the software also means getting better value out of your hardware investment. Just upgrading to the latest version of OS X is to give your Mac a power boost. Each new version of the operating system introduces new features designed to make the Mac a more productive, useful and graceful experience. Yosemite is no exception to this, and new features such as Continuity, Handoff and Instant Hotspot bring a sense of delight to those who use them. These features enable a Mac to tap into your iPhone and make phone calls, send SMS texts and use a mobile internet connection without even…

SKILL LEVEL Could be tricky IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.10, OnyX 2.95 Think of OnyX as a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. It incorporates a number of tools which allow you to carry out maintenance and cleaning, verify your startup disk and file structure, and access hidden parameters so you can customise how the OS and many of its included applications work. OnyX incorporates two other tools from the same company, Maintenance and Deeper. So if you use it, you won’t need either of those. Though, for example, if you only want the customisation options, and find the interface of OnyX a little intimidating, Deeper is more straightforward to use. OnyX may produce unexpected results. So before you start, be sure to back up…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED OS X 10.10 (although most steps work with previous versions) At some point we’ll be able to verbally tell a Mac what we want to work on or with and it’ll quickly serve the respective document or app. In the meantime, we must make do with manual searches via Spotlight, or use a file manager. Finder is an app built into every Mac for rummaging around your drive (and beyond) and it can be customised a little, helping you work faster and more efficiently. Finder can be customised a little, helping you work faster and more efficiently too One area that can be bent to your will is the sidebar. This is initially populated with shortcuts Apple…

GET IN TOUCH If you have a technical issue that you need help with, please email us at: sos@macformat.com What does memory pressure actually mean? Q I use a 2009, 27-inch iMac, with a 4GB memory. It’s been rather slow since installing Mavericks. The 1TB hard drive was only 20% full, so I suspected memory. Sure enough, Activity Monitor showed that memory used was usually about 3.95GB of the 4GB available, despite Memory Pressure being in the low green. I upgraded to 8GB and find that memory used has gone up to around 7.95GB, with Memory Pressure still a low green. Can you explain please? A When you open an application in OS X it’s loaded into free RAM. The other open apps are left in memory, even if they…

Q In MF285, Susan Platter couldn’t download OS X. One possibility could be that she has a BT modem/router. All their models more than two years old block downloads exceeding 4GB. I experienced this and resolved it with a new modem. However the new one had no VoIP facility, so I now have to swap between two models! A That’s a good point, John. Some older modems, especially the BT Home Hub have had problems with Internet Recovery in the past. Some of them actually stall after just 53MB. Most of us stick with the same broadband provider for years and years, through sheer inertia. There’s really no excuse for this. Once you have a Gmail or iCloud email address that isn’t tied to a specific broadband company, you can…

Q I’ve tried connecting a number of devices to my MacBook Pro but have found if I try to connect two or more, using either USB ports or a USB hub, the computer reports ‘disk not ejected properly’. Sometimes it fails to recognise the device and removes it from the desktop, or it stalls operation and I have to turn the computer off at the power button. I’ve tried erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the OS. I contacted Apple Support and they suggested a SMC and NVRAM reset, and restarting in recovery mode. None of these have helped. The computer has been to an Apple dealer who tested the hardware but found nothing. Could a virus be present on the USB devices I’m trying to connect? A This has…

Q What is the purpose of the Nike + iPod setting on my iPhone? Does it only work if I have a pedometer? I have no intention of suddenly taking up running and I’d like to clear some space. Can I get rid of it? A Yes, it only does anything if you have the Nike + sensor kit to measure your strides. It’s only bundled with the iPhone and iPod, not the iPad (who goes jogging with an iPad?). But it’s a core app, so you can’t remove it. If you swipe the Nike + iPod setting off in Settings, the corresponding app will disappear from your home screen. But this doesn’t actually save you any storage space because the app is still there – it just doesn’t show…

During the next few months we’re likely to see major updates to OS X and iOS (Apple’s WWDC is June 8). It’s operating system upgrade cycle in recent years has been almost like clockwork, providing us with new features, along with the occasional interface overhaul. These things have kept our Macs and iOS devices fresh and made them more versatile. However, as well as Apple does, there are some missing pieces we hope will one day arrive. In this feature, we explore those features we hope are waiting in the wings. Some are rough edges that need polishing, while others are what we consider fairly major omissions we feel Apple needs to deal with quickly, before the Apple faithful rises up and marches on Cupertino (well, writes a fairly sternly…

FaceTime is incredibly easy to use, assuming you want to talk to someone else who has a piece of Apple kit that’s equipped with a suitable camera. Where it falls down really badly is if you want to talk to two or more people at once, and they don’t all happen to be in the same room. (Even if they are, things get a bit cosy.) Skype has group video calling, entirely for free, and Google Hangouts can do something similar. It’s time Apple caught up and made FaceTime a bit more magical.…

When Apple revealed OS X’s ‘dark mode’ at WWDC, quite a few developers made very happy noises. A built-in alternative OS X theme has been a long time coming, and much requested by people who use pro apps with dark interfaces. The standard OS X theme’s menu bar and Dock can be a distraction from the blacks and dark greys in such software. The problem is Apple seemingly did the least it could with its implementation. Beyond the menu bar and Dock, only Spotlight seems to be affected. We’d like Apple to go further, replacing ‘Use dark menu bar and Dock’ with a full alternative OS X visual theme. On changing modes, your desktop background would optionally automatically be switched to something more suitable. More importantly, a much wider range…

The long-rumoured iPad Pro is supposed to boast a larger display than the iPad Air, along with a means to simultaneously display two apps. The hardware might be elusive, but developers have confirmed code exists for two-up app display in iOS, splitting the screen in half and other ratios. Full-screen apps can be beneficial by forcing you to focus on a single task. You can easily switch between apps using a four-finger swipe. But there are times when it’s frustrating not to see two apps at once, such as reference material alongside what you’re writing, or even just to browse the web and keep a messaging app open alongside it. Should a split-screen option come to pass, it’ll need careful consideration from Apple, because it has the potential to add…

Apple clearly believes iPhones and iPads are inherently personal devices, owned and managed by a single person. That’s all well and good if you happen to be well off, but it’s not realistic for many people. Additionally, there are times when you want to temporarily hand over your device to someone, but don’t want them to have access to your data. This is why we want to see multiple user accounts come to iOS. We doubt Apple would ever budge to the degree of providing Mac-like user accounts, but perhaps some kind of compromise would be possible. For example, we’d be happy with a stripped-back ‘child’ account, to minimise ‘damage’ when a young person wants to have a go on your device. Alternatively, a guest account that wipes itself clean…

￡210 Manufacturer Philips, philips.co.uk Display 23-inch IPS panel Resolution 1920x1080 Video interface VGA/USB Connectivity 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 On paper, the 231P4QUPES looks good for anyone that needs an affordable monitor for use with a Mac Mini or a MacBook. Its 1920x1080 resolution isn’t in the same league as some of the 4K monitors now available, and the plastic casing does have a rather cheap feel to it. However, its 23-inch IPS panel produces a crisp, colourful image with wide viewing angles and will be more than adequate for office work or watching Netflix. You can adjust the height of the screen and rotate it into the upright portrait position. However, the real selling point is the built-in USB hub. As well as providing three USB ports for…

￡39.99 Developer BusyMac, busymac.com Requires OS X 10.9 or higher, iCloud or other contacts service The maker of BusyCal is back, this time with its souped-up take on OS X’s lacklustre Contacts app. BusyContacts cleverly takes Contacts as its starting point, then adds the features you’ve been crying out for. For starters, it employs a similar multi-paned window, but adds a new Activity pane to provide a handy summary of your interaction with the selected contact, from your goings-on in BusyCal to conversations in Mail and Messages, as well as their Facebook and Twitter activity. BusyContacts also allows you to tag and apply smart filters to contacts to help sort your list in different ways, and provides tools to quickly combine people’s different entries across multiple accounts, too. There are…

We approached all of these apps with the same scenario: we wanted to make our own website, we wanted it to look good even if we had no design smarts of our own, and we wanted to get it done with the minimum of fuss and without having to consult a basic web design manual. That meant using the apps’ supplied templates for our designs but bringing in our own images and text, editing things to get them just-so and then publishing them to our own web space. The thing about web design is that like many creative endeavours, the more you do the more you want to do. To reflect that we looked at the programs’ abilities to handle more ambitious projects, and how much tinkering they were willing…

Tim Cook www.apple.com “Apple is open for everyone. We are deeply disappointed in Indiana’s new law.” Apple boss rejects Indiana’s prejudiced ‘anti-gays’ law Steve Wozniak www.woz.org “I’m gonna try out the [Apple] Watch and see if it changes my life.” Apple co-founder Woz admits he’s not sure if he needs a new timepiece Romasha Roy Choudhury www.cynapse.com “We believe software is going to be more about intelligence than interfaces.” The numerics developer on the connected potential of Apple Watch, iOS and everything John Thurso www.parliament.uk “The Apple iPad – and its supporting software – was the most suitable tablet device available.” All 650 UK MPs will be given iPads – presumably so they can play Angry Birds when PM’s Question Time gets too dull…

It’s a sign of getting old when numbers start seeming too large to be sensible. As a child, newspaper headlines had numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Then it took millions to make it as headline news. Then billions were the order of significant significance. Finally the dial has turned towards trillions. Many expect Apple to be the first US trillion dollar enterprise. Apple only needs to rise another third for its market capitalisation to hit the 12 zero scale – up to $165-175 a share from its current $125. The trouble is, that’s about half the price of the Apple Watch for every man, woman and child on Earth. So Apple really does have an astronomical valuation – to compare it you have to be thinking on a planetary…

Hot gear on the horizon... what’s got us excited? The world is full of cases and stands of a distinctly average flavour, which is why the Phorm caught our eye so much What is it? Slide the built-in button on the back of the case and a tactile keyboard emerges right there in front of you on the screen – raised bumps to guide your fingers to the correct keys. This lets you type in a much more natural way, pounding out your next masterpiece of prose by touch, rather than having to stare pointedly at your iPad’s graphical keyboard. When’s it due? Pre-order now (ships to the USA in summer 2015, UK release TBC). Why are we excited? Seeing those little bumps pop up out of nowhere is almost…

MAPS STREET VIEW Although Rob Enderle disagrees, those cameras mounted on the alleged Apple Car could suggest that Apple is working on a Google Street View rival, or perhaps crafting improvements to Maps. ROUND WATCH The Apple Watch hadn’t even been officially unveiled before the first rumours of a platinum version that could be circular surfaced. With Apple targeting the elite circles of the fashion world, it’s not a bad call. IPAD PRO iPad sales have been stagnating due to competition from larger iPhones and other tablet makers, so a larger 12.9-inch device could potentially help turn things around for Cupertino’s finest. APPLLE TV SET This one has been talked about for just about eternity, and analyst Gene Munster is sure it’ll be out within two years. Perhaps the Apple…

Cocktail Cocktail ($29 – about ￡19, maintain.se) is a generalpurpose optimisation utility for OS X that runs maintenance scripts. Many of its features are similar to OnyX, but it has a much friendlier interface. It has a mode called Pilot that enables you to schedule when maintenance scripts run. Network administrators can use it to tweak network performance, including capping the speed at which interfaces connect. Cocktail also enables one-click fixes of databases used by Spotlight, Mail and Time Machine, making it a quick way to overcome problems you might encounter with those features. TotalFinder If you miss the coloured folders from earlier editions of OS X then check out TotalFinder ($18 – about ￡12, totalfinder.binaryage.com). Yosemite’s coloured tags appear as small circles. TotalFinder enables you to change the colour…

LOOSE FILES Photos that are stored outside of the library package can be copied into it. Select them and then choose File > Consolidate. The app tells you if none of the selection is stored externally, otherwise it asks you to confirm before it proceeds. If you’ve already amassed a library of photos in either iPhoto or Aperture, Photos can import its contents. For most people this is a straightforward process. If you have just one library on your Mac, you only need to open Photos and click Get Started. The app will copy the contents of the existing library into a new one that’s used only by the Photos app, and the old one will remain so that you can continue to use iPhoto or Aperture. (That said, making…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU’LL NEED Final Cut Pro X 10.1, a second external hard drive or space on a network drive Even a simple video can involve a significant amount of effort, and the idea of losing that work due to a hardware failure, or having to reconstruct a previous film because you’ve lost the original project, is a worrying prospect. The majority of the effort lies in your editing decisions. Final Cut provides a way to preserve the database part of a Library periodically – though more frequently than Time Machine, which only preserves changes to files once every hour. Your Library’s database is what contains details of your edits, but it doesn’t include the associated media, so this isn’t a…

User Groups Find fellow Mac enthusiasts near you! Bracknell Forest MUG, Bracknell, Berks bfmugoffice@gmail.com bfmug.org Bristol and Bath MUG robert@bbmug.co.uk bbmug.co.uk ClubMac Ireland, Dublin secretary@clubmac.ie clubmac.ie Cork University College, Cork d.murphy@cs.ucc.ie ucc.ie/mug Cotswold MUG paul@cotsmug.org cotsmug.org Cumbria Mac Enthusiasts, Barrow-in-Furness contact@macenthusiasts.co.uk macenthusiasts.co.uk Edinburgh MUG, Edinburgh Twitter: @edmug edmug.org.uk Exeter MUG, Exeter examug@mac.com examug.org.uk, Twitter: @examug London MUG, London secretary@lmug.org lmug.org.uk, @londonmacgroup Facebook: facebook.com/groups/35108081221 Midlands MUG, Birmingham mmug.org.uk OxMUG, Oxford oxmug.org South Essex MUG, Wickford, Essex seal-apple.co.uk Suffolk Mac User Group, Ipswich mikekwasniak@me.com suffolkmacusergroup.co.uk Sussex MUG adamfield@gmail.com sussexmug.org Three Counties MUG Luton, Bedfordshire chris@3cmug.org.uk 3cmug.co.uk Wessex MUGs Fareham, Dorchester, Bournemouth & Salisbury info@wamug.org.uk wamug.org.uk…

Q I bought a LaCie D2 Quadra hard drive in 2007, for use with Time Machine. There have been no problems until a couple of weeks ago when the icon was suddenly not visible on my desktop. I’ve restarted the iMac, switched off the LaCie drive, unplugged it and restarted it, changing from FireWire to USB, trying it with another iMac – nothing. The drive doesn’t show up in Disk Utility. LaCie has offered to attempt a data recovery but it’s expensive. Do you know how I might retrieve some items from Time Machine which I can no longer find on the iMac? A Does the front panel LED come on? This could be a fault with the USB enclosure, rather than the drive itself. As you’ve nothing to lose,…

Q My pop-up message says something about something not being supported and will end soon. As this is a rare popup message, I don’t ever get time to finish reading it. It’s worrying – I don’t know who it is sent by and I never know what to do. A In all likelihood, you don’t need to worry about this. It’s probably just a warning from an app that you are using an old version of something and the developers will soon no longer be offering technical support for problems with that version. Pop-up messages normally wait for you to click OK before they close, but you can always hit to capture a screenshot (which is saved to your desktop). Try to do this the next time your mysterious message…

Let’s be clear: £9,500 is a ridiculous amount to pay for a watch. It’s a ridiculous amount, even for a handmade, one-of-a-kind watch that will last your lifetime and beyond. But for the rose-gold Apple Watch Edition with the white sport band – mass produced in a factory – it goes beyond ridiculous and into the realm of delusion. This is a first-generation product so in two years it will be obsolete. No, the Apple Watch Edition will be bought by just a handful of rappers and children of Russian oligarchs. The Apple Watch Sport looks more promising. £340 is still too much to interest me right now, but with the right app I could be swayed. Ingress players already have the Moto 360 watch and Android Wear. The Apple…

Q I’ve just ordered a new 27-inch iMac to replace my Mac mini. My current mini is loaded with all my apps and content. Where do I stand with apps I’ve paid for such as Word, Excel and Parallels? Will they be transferred via Migration Assistant? I’m worried I’ll have to purchase more product keys if I start moving these across? A Relax, you’re fine. When you turn on your new Mac, the first thing you’ll see is the Setup Assistant wizard that will walk you through the process of transferring everything from the old Mac or a Time Machine backup. Paid-for apps will transfer just fine and so will everything else, unless you have some weird app that ties its licence to the Mac address of your network card…

Some sneaky tricks and fixes that we’ve stumbled across this month. If you find one yourself, send it in! 1 Spotlight normally closes as soon as you click the search window. If you are using it as a calculator, it can be annoying to have to remember the result when you switch back to the email you were writing. Right-clicking the magnifying glass icon on Yosemite’s menu bar will make Spotlight stay on top. 2 If another application is using the microphone then FaceTime won’t be able to open the device and won’t transmit audio (or warn you that it failed to open the mic). This happens even if the other app is running on another user account. 3 If you close the lid on a MacBook Air without shutting…

Q My iPhone 5c regularly gets stuck in a loop of insisting on my Apple ID and password. I’m sure I’m entering the right details but the login pop-up just comes back again. Is this the fault of iOS 8.1? A This can occasionally happen if your phone can’t connect to Wi-Fi. iOS notices it isn’t logged into iCloud and assumes that’s your fault. Unfortunately the constant pop-ups prevent you from manually connecting. Powering off the phone and on again will give you a few pop-free seconds for you to jump to Settings > Wi-Fi and join a network. If that’s not enough time, back it up in iTunes, dismiss the pop-up, and it shouldn’t return until the backup completes, which gives you time to sort out the Wi-Fi. If…

iCLOUD STORAGE As online storage becomes essential, it’s time for Apple to stop being so miserly The first time you ever use iCloud, you’re probably quite happy to see that Apple has given you 5GB of space entirely for free. That seems pretty generous, but any joy rapidly evaporates when you realise just how fast that space fills up. The problem is that Apple wants you to use iCloud for everything. It’s where your iOS backups live. It’s where all of your photographs are supposed to be stored. And it’s increasingly where iOS and even OS X apps default to when you try to save anything. Naturally, when you blaze through 5GB, that’s not the end. Apple provides four monthly payment options for upgrading your storage: 20GB for 79p; 200GB…

Like Maps, Siri gets a bit of a bad rep on iOS, mostly from people who used the feature when it first appeared, decided (with some justification) that it was a bit rubbish, and haven’t tried it since. Today, Siri’s still a long way from an artificial intelligence, but can nonetheless quite gracefully perform certain tasks and grab bits of info, thereby saving you time and energy. The Mac’s always been quite good at talking and listening, even if most of the options for doing so are buried in its Accessibility preferences, but it’s never had anything quite like Siri. You can dictate to your Mac, and even control the entire thing with your voice, but ask it what the weather’s going to be like on Wednesday or how QPR…

It’s a pain when you’re working away and music starts blaring from… somewhere. A web browser’s often the culprit, although not always. Regardless, it’s annoying that you can’t mute specific apps – only your entire Mac. Yet there’s a logical place for greater audio control: the menu bar’s volume icon. -click it and you get output and input settings. A new submenu, listing noisy apps and enabling you to silence them, would be heaven.…

We’ve never been impressed by Apple’s ’scorched earth’ policy regarding iOS app deletion. No matter how long you’ve used an app for, removal takes your data with it. Reinstall and you then start from scratch, whether you were weeks into an adventure game or had set up a utility just how you liked it. In theory, iCloud should seamlessly deal with this – and sometimes it does; but relatively few developers utilise it. Apple should take the lead here, automating the process and enabling you to optionally restore settings and data on any app reinstall. Further app management improvements would also be welcome. It can take a long time to delete an app. Icons will wiggle, you’ll tap the cross, but it’ll be ages before the confirmation dialog appears, during…

Apple rightly gets praised for doubling down on simplicity, but sometimes this approach can get in the way. A good example is Do Not Disturb, the feature that ensures your device doesn’t blare out notifications during certain hours of the day (or night). The problem is that the settings you define are active every day, but people’s lives are seldom so regimented. At the very least, you should be able to separately fine-tune Do Not Disturb for weekdays and weekends.…

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…

￡209 Manufacturer LaCie, www.lacie.com Capacity 1TB Connectivity USB 3.0 Weight 230g Dimensions 8x12.8x1.3cm Hard disks are never the most exciting devices, but LaCie works hard to come up with unusual designs that make their hard drives a bit more interesting. In the past they’ve produced hard drives that look like silvery spheres and metallic sculptures, and now they’ve come up with the eye-catching Mirror. It’s entirely covered on all sides with gleaming, reflective glass and is relatively chunky when compared to some of the latest portable drives. However, it only weighs 230g, so it’s still slim and light enough to slip into a backpack with no trouble at all. You don’t have to worry about dropping it, as LaCie has used tough Corning Gorilla Glass to protect the screen. The…

$25 (about ￡17) Manufacturer Doppler Labs, getdubs.com 3 Many things in modern life have become pretty loud: concerts, living in cities, travelling on planes and so on. Regular earplugs block sound but also muffle it heavily. These specially designed tech earplugs target only the higher frequencies (the most damaging) and so allow you to hear relatively clearly but still protect your hearing from the loudest sounds. Tiny but comfortable, they are a especially good for gigs, where high frequency levels can be far more dangerous than most people realise if they’re having a good time! Not a bad price either. A way to protect your hearing from damaging frequencies while allowing most other sounds through.…

$37 (about £25) Developer Nicky Hajal, actionally.com Requires OS X 10.8 or higher Effective time management is ActionAlly’s aim, helping you plan and execute tasks. At a set time each day, it’ll prompt you to plan what you’re doing the following day, including how and why tasks should be done. When the time comes, you fire up work sessions to define how long you’ll focus on a given task, and you can block a userdefined list of ‘distracting’ websites (although this didn’t seem to work during testing). The interface is a floating window that covers the screen. Setting up tasks is easy enough, although it has a lack of keyboard-only control, which doesn’t feel efficient. The workflow model is at least interesting, and you get handy emails during your initial…