Table of contents for Autumn 2019 in MacFormat

It’s here! Yep, your next free iOS upgrade will have hopefully landed by the time you read this and with it some brand new iPhones too (you can read about those on page 6). But it’s iOS 13 and iPadOS that are the big crowdpleasers here – they’re packed with a huge number of new and improved features and are available to almost everyone. And we mean almost everyone – iOS 13 will run on iPhone SE or later and the 7th gen iPod touch or later; while iPadOS will run on the iPad mini 4 or later, iPad Air 2 or later, 5th-gen or later iPads and every model of iPad Pro. That means we all get to benefit from a welter of goodies, including a system-wide Dark Mode,…

Apple’s determined to keep you entertained this autumn with a little help from two new services – Apple Arcade and Apple TV+. Available from 30 September, Apple Arcade enables you and your family to pay a huge selection of games on iPad, iPhone, Mac and Apple TV for just £4.99/month – no in-app purchases required. And Apple TV+ (launching 1 November) plans to do the same for TV, with the company unveiling a roster of original shows, including The Morning Show and sci-fi series See. Again the whole family can join in for just £4.99/month.…

If you’re a regular MacFormat reader, you’ll know we’re huge fans of Serif’s Affinity apps. We recently awarded Affinity Publisher five stars and we’re not alone – Apple has lavished the whole Affinity series with awards, too. That’s why we’re offering the ultimate Affinity bundle to five lucky readers. You could win the complete Affinity line-up on both Mac and iOS, plus two official workbooks to help you learn the ropes. First up is Affinity Photo (Mac/iOS), one of the best photo-editing apps in recent years. It’s stacked with pro-level features wrapped in a beginner-friendly interface, so no matter your level of expertise you’ll feel right at home. Next is Affinity Designer (Mac/iOS), a superb graphic design app that blends both raster and vector tools. Then there’s Affinity Publisher, a…

Apple fans are used to divided, even hostile receptions from the tech press whenever a new Apple product comes along. But even so, the reaction to the Apple Watch in its early days took us by surprise. It was declared a disaster from the moment it went on sale, with the public repeatedly being told by news outlets that no one wanted to buy an Apple Watch. It was too expensive, not innovative enough, lacking a purpose; if you can imagine an accusation, it was probably levelled at the Watch at some point. It was also the first new Apple product category developed under Tim Cook’s leadership, conveniently allowing the people to continue the belated hagiography of Steve Jobs and peddle the idea that Cook was an unworthy successor. Yet…

The beefed up Files app is another improvement that makes even more sense on the iPad than it does on iPhone. iPad Pro users especially will benefit from what is evolving into a desktop-like file system. In addition to connecting to external drives and servers, you can scan documents directly into Files and put them where you want them. Column view allows you to easily dig into nested folders, just like on macOS. Also like macOS, Column view displays metadata below the preview of the file. And Quick Actions enable you to rotate, markup, or create a PDF in Files. Search suggestions, keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to zip and unzip archives round out a feature set in an app that’s sure to become crucial to the development of the…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To combine layers and insert picture-in-picture effects YOU’LL NEED iMovie After you’ve corrected colour and adjusted audio to make your clips look and sound their best, you’re now ready to take your film editing to the next level. Fortunately, iMovie is packed full of postproduction tools that can help make your work look more professional. For example, by combining video clips in layers you can create cinematic montage mixes. Although iMovie only provides two parallel video layers, we’ll demonstrate a workaround that enables you to combine three or more clips to produce complex montage effects. Layers also provide the key to producing a range of looks in your movie – such as inserting a smaller picture into the main screen to add…

IT WILL TAKE 40 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use VLOOKUP and tick boxes to auto-generate a summary sheet YOU’LL NEED iOS 12 or higher and Numbers installed and updated Summary sheets are commonly used to pull together information. In this example, we’re pulling out a subset of data from a table rather than compiling a new table from multiple sources, using a table of scores for a set of participants in a monthly test. How can we show each participant’s personal progress? Creating a separate table or sheet for every participant would mean a lot of manual duplication. Instead, we can make a single summary sheet that will update with the data for any participant we select. We’ve used a separate sheet for two reasons: firstly, it’s something…

Whether you’ve just bought your first Mac or are looking for an app for a specific task, deciding which one to invest your time and money in can be tricky. Apple has tried to help with the App Store, showcasing apps, and publishing user reviews. But, of course, not all apps for the Mac are on the Mac App Store and user reviews aren’t always, well, helpful. So, here, we present our guide to the best apps in 13 categories for Mac, iPhone and iPad.…

Smart home advocates are spoiled for choice, in both a good and a bad way. Good because the market is exploding – more and more products are rolling out with smart support, there’s a long list of kit getting a smart upgrade, and the protocols which drive our kit in the background are only getting smarter. But it’s that latter plural – ‘protocols’ – which continues to be frustrating, and will remain so perhaps forever more: there are multiple platforms, with multiple levels of support. One device may never talk to another, at least without some serious (and potentially flaky) middleware. And there’s even some smart kit that does its own thing entirely, using its own protocols that play with nothing else. Let’s draw a quick comparison between today’s smart…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 343 OCTOBER 2019 New MacBooks put to the test Get ready: Catalina is nearly here Plus: Why 5G will change the world Group test: iPad photo editors ISSUE 342 SEPTEMBER 2019 iCloud superguide New – ultra-thin iPod touch iOS 12: Hidden features revealed Group test: Writing apps rated ISSUE 341 AUGUST 2019 New! iPadOS, macOS Catalina, iOS 13 Plus: Mac Pro & MacBook Pro Boost productivity: 43 Mighty Mac tips Group test: HomePod alternatives To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_back or phone +44 (0)844 848 2852 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto your iOS device at any time and keep them forever in your personal library. bit.ly/macformatipad NEVER MISS AN ISSUE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!…

£119.95 FROM Cambridge Audio, cambridgeaudio.com FEATURES Graphene 5.8mm drivers, Bluetooth 5.0, AAC and aptX, IPX5 water resistance, active noise cancelling, up to 45 hours battery attery life If you’re after a pair of audiophile true wireless earbuds you can’t go wrong Cambridge Audio is known for its hi-fi audio equipment, but until now, hasn’t ventured into the world of true wireless earbuds. Enter the Melomania 1s: with an outstanding 45 hours of battery life, they combine the brand's award-winning engineering with the convenience of truly wireless listening. The Melomania 1s look very sleek indeed, with a compact, bullet-like shape and slim charging case that fits easily into your pocket. The outer housing of each bud features an LED band that indicates charging and pairing status; a design that’s echoed in…

£39.99 FROM Moshi, moshi.com FEATURES Magnetic car mount for iPhone (needs Moshi Altra or iGlaze case), dash/air vent mounting options Most car mounts for iPhone can be attached to your car’s dash, air vents or windscreen when driving around, but often the ways they keep your iPhone in place are both fiddly and inconvenient. No so the Moshi SnapTo car mount. This black-and-grey plastic lump uses a magnet to hold your iPhone in place at one end and a 3M adhesive strip to mount to your car dash at the other. Pull firmly on the mount and the top comes away, revealing another option: a spring-loaded clamp for air vent mounting. The quality of materials is high. Securing your iPhone is easy – inside the box you’ll find two magnetic…

Full version £359.99, Upgrade £179.99 FROM Corel, painterartist.com NEEDS macOS 10.13 or later Further empowers digital artists of all levels to create stunning designs Corel has been bringing digital graphics software to the world since 1989, making it one of the longest-established developers offering these packages to the consumer and professional markets. With its Corel Painter 2020 suite, the company has refined the software and added smart new tools, further empowering digital artists of all levels to create stunning designs and blurring the lines between physical and digital artworks. On first boot, the application can run a performance optimisation process to automatically adjust its settings to suit your hardware. The base requirements are quite modest – a Core 2 Duo CPU running macOS 10.13 or later, and 2GB RAM. There’s…

£44.99 FROM Feral Interactive, store.feralinteractive.com NEEDS macOS 10.14.2 or later There are two main types of driving games: some attempt to realistically reproduce the mechanics and handling of your car, while others are just about high-speed fun. The Dirt series has generally fallen into the second category in the past, but Dirt 4 combines the best of both with two distinct driving modes to choose between. There’s plenty of variety as well, with the Career mode giving you dozens of different cars and races to pick from. The races cover three main disciplines: multi-stage rallies; high-speed races strewn with obstacles; and rally-cross events in large arenas. If you want to let your hair down, though, there’s a Freeplay mode that lets you compete without affecting your career progress, and a…

£14.99 (£9.99 upgrade from v4; free upgrade from v5) FROM IdeasOnCanvas, mindnode.com NEEDS iOS 11 or later Mind maps are great when you need to get down ideas quickly. You start with a central thought (‘node’), and branch related ones from there. On paper, though, iteration is messy; and even mind-mapping software can be clunky. Not so MindNode 6, which is superb. You kick things off with a blank canvas, or Quick Entry mode. The latter has you create a bullet-point list, which is then converted to a mind-map with a single tap. Either way, you then get a flexible touchscreen interface for further developing ideas. You can go free-form, or MindNode can keep things tidy by sorting nodes and branches. Additionally, elements can be set as tasks, transforming a…

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 and supports 10-bit colour. Throw in a host of ports, an IPS display and a great price, and you have a seriously good screen. IN-EAR HEADPHONES Beats Powerbeats Pro £220 apple.com We think these are the best fitness headphones money can buy. The in-ear fit is solid, and won’t loosen no matter how much you run or how sweaty you get. They look stylish, audio quality is top notch, while pairing has the AirPods’ signature simplicity. Whether you’re pounding the pavement or lifting weights, these are the ‘phones to beat. PRINTER Brother MFC-J5330DW £191 brother.co.uk If you want an…

Following a review of how it handles users’ interactions with Siri, Apple is making a number of changes to enhance privacy and data security. The review was in response to a report that contractors at Apple were listening to Siri audio recordings as part of the process of evaluating Siri’s performance, a process Apple calls “grading”. A whistleblower claimed that the contractors weren’t thoroughly vetted, and that the recordings included “extremely sensitive personal information” – a doctor and patient talking about the patient’s medical history, a possible drug deal and sexual encounters, for example. Apple suspended human grading and investigated. It explained that the process involved reviewing a small sample of audio Siri requests – less than 0.2% – and their computer-generated transcripts, to evaluate performance. Was there an intentional…

How green is Apple? 1 100% Since early 2018, 100% of Apple’s facilities globally – all its offices, retail stores and data centres in 43 countries – are 100% powered by clean, renewable electricity. Two-thirds of this energy comes from Apple-created projects. 2 Apple currently has 28 operational renewable energy projects across nine countries on four continents, totalling 629 megawatts of generation capacity, plus 15 more projects under construction. Once they’re built, it will have over 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy generation across 12 countries and five continents. 3 200 Daisy, Apple’s custom disassembly robot, can take apart up to 200 iPhones per hour, removing and sorting components for recycling or reuse. That’s 1.2 million a year. 4 100% recycled The casings of the latest MacBook Air and new Mac…

iPadOS allows you to connect an external drive to your iPad, whether it’s an iPad Pro with USB-C or a Lightning iPad (with an adaptor). We tested it using an iPad Pro and a powered USB-C hub. We were able to connect USB sticks, memory cards and USB hard drives. They appear in the Files app under Locations. Tap on a file and you can drag it to another location, even to a different external drive. Tap and hold a file, and a contextual menu appears, allowing you to Quick Look, tag and rename files, among other options. Sadly, Apple’s apps can’t see the external storage, so you can’t add a thumb drive full of MP3 files to Music, for example.…

Performance has improved significantly in iPadOS. Apple claims that apps launch twice as fast and that FaceID unlocking on the 11in iPad Pro and the latest 12.9in iPad Pro are 30% faster. App downloads are half the size they were, and updates 60% smaller. iPadOS also gets the privacy and security features that are in iOS, like controlling location data that’s passed to apps, and the anti-fingerprinting protection in Safari. And Sign in with Apple is available in iPadOS, allowing you to sign into apps and websites with your AppleID, and set up a unique email address for confirmation messages. Text editing is one area where iPadOS users may not benefit as much as iPhone users. Many iPad Pro users use hardware keyboards and so won’t benefit from the easier…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to fix common exposure-related problems YOU’LL NEED Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019 On Auto mode most cameras will adjust their settings to try to capture detail throughout a scene’s entire tonal range. However, sometimes a photo may be underexposed, losing detail in the shadows and midtones – or occasionally you may find the highlights are overexposed. We’ll show you how Photoshop Elements enables you to make tonal adjustments to fix exposure problems. In high-contrast lighting scenarios your camera may struggle to create a balanced exposure. If it captures highlight detail then the shadows can look too dark, while in contrast when exposing for shadows your camera may overexpose the highlights. Fortunately, Photoshop Elements can selectively adjust specific tonal ranges so that you…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to manage Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, switch audio outputs and share passwords with AirDrop YOU’LL NEED iOS 11 or later The release of iOS 11 in 2017 made some changes to the way Wi-Fi and Bluetooth worked on iOS devices, and it led to some confusion. When is off really off? How does it affect AirDrop and AirPlay? Why did they switch back on when I went for a walk? A simple rule of thumb is that using Control Centre to turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off is enough to drop any existing connections for the rest of the day, but the system remains available. If you want to turn them off more permanently, you’ll need to use Settings, or put the…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To share files between Apple devices YOU’LL NEED A 2012 or later Mac running OS X Yosemite or later; an iOS device running iOS 7 or later AirDrop is easy to miss, but it’s a great example of the strength of the Apple ecosystem. It allows you to quickly share files with another Apple device – no need to litter inboxes with unnecessary emails or waste your time uploading and downloading to file sharing services. Just a few taps and the file is sent. Easy. To get started, make sure that both devices have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on (and that they’re within Bluetooth range of each other; they don’t need to be on the same Wi-Fi network, though) and have Personal…

Password-free login Q We keep iMacs in a secure area which we want to give free access to without using a password. How can we do this in Mojave? by JIM UTTERBACK A Normally, configuring a Mac to start up into a user account without using a password is a seriously bad idea. Apart from a complete lack of security, it also means that every user of that Mac would have access to the same account, none could do anything in privacy, and key features like iCloud wouldn’t be possible. It’s often simpler to set each Mac up with a simple password which users can type in from a note placed on that Mac. However, if physical access to the Macs is strictly controlled and users are in full agreement,…

Affinity Photo macOS £48.99; iPad £19.99 FROM affinity.serif.com + App Store FEATURES Hardware acceleration + RAW edits + Apple Photos extensions Taking on an app as popular and as embedded in the Mac world as Adobe Photoshop is ambitious to say the least. But Serif’s Affinity Photo has done that and built itself a loyal following in the process, thanks to a combination of features and performance. The latest version, 1.7 added support for Apple’s Metal API and hardware acceleration on discrete GPUs. It also brought support for HDR displays. Version 1.7 also brought a beefed up RAW processing engine, rewritten brush engine, and better batch processing with a new assets panel allowing you to quickly drag and drop commonly used elements. It also overhauled the Layers panel. Affinity Photo…

£700 FROM Canon, canon.co.uk FEATURES 20.1MP CMOS sensor; 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8 (35mm equiv.) lens; 4K (UHD) video to 30p, Full HD video to 120p; 3in touchscreen A 30fps Raw Burst shooting mode lets you capture images more speedily Enthusiast compact cameras have come some way since Canon’s PowerShot G7 X was launched back in 2014. That model, together with its G7 X Mark II successor, was initially aimed at photographers looking to travel light without compromising on image quality, although both cameras came to be well regarded by amateur videographers too. Capitalising on this, the G7 X Mark III gets a handful of video-centric technologies, although there have been plenty of other changes elsewhere. Highlights include a new 20.1MP 1-inch stacked sensor, together with a DIGIC 8 processing engine. The lens…

From £29.40 (single Mac) FROM Eltima Labs, mac.eltima.com NEEDS OS X 10.10 or later; 64-bit processor Shortcuts are at the heart of what Commander One does The Finder has improved greatly in macOS, starting with the introduction of tabs, and continuing in Mojave with the ability to perform Quick Actions on files. But it still lacks a few features, and that’s where Commander One comes in. It’s available in two versions: free and Pro. The free version provides access to your Mac’s startup drive, as well as any directly attached or network storage. The Pro version adds the ability to manage files on FTP, SFTP, and cloud storage services, making it akin to a tool like Forklift or Transmit. Version two of Commander One Pro can open and edit files…

£7.99 (or 99p/month) FROM Super Useful, getmagpie.app NEEDS iOS 11 or later When you see something you want to remember or share, simply snap it Magpie is a variation on the Notes app, but instead of text notes or audio notes, it’s designed with photographs in mind. That means it’s best on your iPhone; it’s fine on iPad but the more portable your device, the more convenient Magpie becomes. Magpie describes itself as a digital scrapbook, ‘the beautiful lovechild of Apple Photos and Notes’, although we think it’s closer to Pinterest as a notes app for visual content. It’s ideal for those of us who tend to use the Photos app as an ongoing collection of interesting things, only to wonder what on earth those things are and where they…

Discover the incredible new features of the Mac’s latest, greatest OS PLUS: Must-try tips, tricks & secrets Augmented Reality The best apps, the best tech and Apple’s AR plans revealed PLUS: Affinity Publisher takes on its rivals ALSO INSIDE… How to run 32-bit apps in macOS Catalina Customise the Home screen in iPadOS Get started with Apple Arcade … and more! Contents subject to change ISSUE 345 ON SALE 22 OCT 2019 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…

Blink and you’d have missed the launch of the first MacBook. Too late for the winter Expo and too early for the summer’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the plastic-cased laptop was unveiled on 16 May 2006 in a press release. Steve Jobs was otherwise engaged with the opening of the new flagship Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, under a glass pyramid he’d designed himself with architect IM Pei. Rumours suggested the model had been due earlier. Apple’s transition from PowerPC to Intel processors caused a number of delays that year, resulting in WWDC being pushed back to August from its regular June slot. Arriving four months after Intel updates to the iMac and MacBook Pro, the MacBook left only the Mac Pro tower and Xserve rack-mount to make the…

Apple’s notebook computers have been criticised in recent months for their reportedly unreliable butterfly keyboard switches. To the extent that rumours say the forthcoming 16-inch model will revert to the older, bulkier but proven scissor mechanism. If a new Apple patent is any guide, however, future MacBook keyboards might not have mechanical key switches at all but optical switches. The patent describes a keyboard that uses a light sensor to detect key presses – and potentially even the difference between fully-depressed and partially-depressed. The mechanism might work by the foot of each key cutting a beam of light when it is pressed down, or the key might have a built-in LED that functions as a backlight in addition to triggering a light sensor, meaning a separate backlight system is not…

If you’re a Mac user of a certain vintage, the name NetNewsWire will get your chin wobbling. This was once the king of RSS readers – the way in which smart people got their news. Now it’s back, in free open-source form. Load up an RSS feed, and you instantly get access to that site’s recent articles. Keep checking in and you need never miss an important headline again – but you’ll also avoid website cruft, since articles show only text and images, not entire website layouts. There’s Feedbin support for sync, a Safari extension, OPML feed list import/export, and more. And although this might not be the most feature-packed RSS reader – lacking, for example, Reeder’s view customisation, and the means to pull down articles from synopsis-only feeds –…

Apple has tried to encourage professional athletes to use the Watch as a tool to help them improve. In July 2019, for example, Apple highlighted its use by the Australia Women’s Cricket Team, which combined the Watch with a custom-built app to “optimise team training, reduce injury risk and enhance performance.” But Apple has been careful not to position the Watch as something exclusively for elite athletes. In fact, at the Series 3 launch Apple unveiled a video comprising letters sent in by happy users, including a 99-year-old woman and a “country boy from small-town Mississippi”. By positioning it as a device for both fitness fanatics and ordinary people who want to be a bit more active or just like the way it looks, Apple has been able to appeal…

Apple has been trying to turn the iPad into a computer for serious work ever since the launch of the first iPad pro. It has been hindered though by decisions it took early on with iOS, like the lack of a ‘proper’ file system and the inability to connect external storage. iPadOS doesn’t fix all those problems but it is a big step in that direction, and represents the biggest change to the software on which Apple’s tablet runs since we first saw the iPad in 2010. The most obvious difference is the new Home screen. Whereas in iOS 12 and earlier, it was just a bigger version of the iPhone Home screen, it now, at last, makes good use of the additional screen space. Whereas in iOS 12, the…

The main new accessibility feature in iPadOS, like iOS, is Voice Control, but there is another that Apple hasn’t highlighted – the ability to connect a USB or Bluetooth mouse. You need to switch it on, and to do that you’ll need to dig deep into the Touch section of Accessibility in Settings. But once it’s activated, and you’ve chosen the device you want to use (and paired it if it’s a Bluetooth mouse) you’ll see a cursor on the screen that you’ll be able to move using the mouse. It’s currently set up to be used with the Assistive Touch menu, which allows you to do things you’d normally do with gestures, like go to the Home screen or see Control Centre. In short, not a mainstream feature, but…

It’s easy to subscribe… SUBSCRIBE TODAY AND SAVE! www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/mac/eclipse19/ Or call: 0344 848 2852 and quote ‘eclipse19’ 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 22% on the cover price Get our print and digital bundle and save up to 53% on the normal price The 12-month print and digital bundle costs just ?7 more than print alone, and enables you to read on your iPhone and iPad Choose your package! *Terms and conditions: This offer is only available for new UK subscribers. Gift is subject to availability. Product pricing stated is RRP at original print date. Please allow up to 60 days for the delivery of your gift. In the…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make sure you back up all your photos YOU’LL NEED Your Photos library and external storage Problems on iCloud could be synced across all your devices Storing photos in iCloud is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t a backup. That’s because of two things. One, if someone else gets your login details you’re stuffed; and two, it’s a single point of failure: if something goes wrong on iCloud, the problem could then be synced across all your devices. Not great when you’re talking about priceless photos and videos. Backups should be separate from your Mac, there should be more than one and you should back up regularly. If you’re happy to back up manually, stick a recurring reminder in Calendar…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to quickly spot and remove large files to free up internal drive space YOU’LL NEED GrandPerspective, some folders to scan Modern Macs come with limited storage that typically cannot be upgraded. If you have a 128GB drive, you’re likely stuck with it for the life of the machine. Run low on space and you may be able to work with external drives or the cloud, but those rely on extra hardware or internet access. You may therefore periodically need to take a look at what you’ve got and refine what you store locally. The quickest free, safe and manual way to make more space on your Mac is to identify large files you no longer require, and then get rid of…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to choose and configure a VPN YOU’LL NEED An iPhone or iPad There are several VPN services with iOS apps, and many of them have free tiers Hooking up your iPhone or iPad to a public Wi-Fi network, whether on a train, in a shopping centre, or in a city centre, is a great way to save data and improve connection speed. However, it also presents security issues. Your data passes through routers and servers owned by whoever is providing the Wi-Fi, and that means it’s at risk of being intercepted. At the very least, the Wi-Fi operator knows what sites you visit and services you use, and can target you with marketing and advertising on that basis. Protect your privacy…

Printers have gone missing Q My Canon and Epson printers, which connect through my Apple Time Capsule, have stopped working wirelessly out of the blue. How can I work out what’s gone wrong? by HARVEY BEAUDETTE A First, using AirPort Utility, check your Time Capsule’s Wi-Fi setup and ensure that its firmware is fully up to date. Apple details this at bit.ly/mf344airpfw. if everything there seems fine, make a note of its IP address on your local network, and compare that with the address set on your Mac. For devices to connect, they need to be on the same subnet, with the same numbers in the first three groups, such as 192.168.1.3 and 192.168.1.12. Next, quit all open apps and run Wireless Diagnostics on your Mac. The easiest way to…

Final Cut Pro £299.99 FROM apple.com/uk + Mac App Store FEATURES Magnetic timeline + audio roles + multi-camera editing Final Cut Pro has come a long way since its redesign and the addition of ‘X’ to its name left many professional users cold. It’s now the go-to video editor for thousands of Mac-using video professionals. Features like Magnetic Timeline, which automatically adjusts clips when you move or remove other clips, and Audio Roles, which displays audio content visually in the timeline and allows you to assign ‘roles’ such as sound effects, voiceover and soundtrack, are a boon. The app supports 360? video, multi-camera editing, and closed captions. You can combine clips in a Compound Clip to reduce clutter, and cycle through different shots, graphics and effects using the Auditions feature.…

There is no magic smart home tree. You cannot pluck a do-it-all controller from a branch, because we’re not all living in the same smart home; everyone’s doing something different. Even when you’ve got everything talking to everything else, refining that link between your devices so that they do exactly what you want is essential. Take the evening automation I set up at home recently. At 10pm, when I’m inevitably trying to wean myself away from my screens for the night and settle down with a book, the lights are set to drop to 50% and the TV is set to turn off. Instead, the TV inevitably toggles itself back on, and the lights dim so much I can’t see the page. I have to reach for the phone to…

£355 FROM Datacolor, datacolor.com FEATURES Camera, lens and DSLR calibration, white balance and raw conversion tool, next-level camera colour calibration, professional monitor calibration The SpyderX Elite is fitted with a fresh lens-based colour engine The Datacolor SpyderX Capture Pro bundle consolidates four popular products and delivers them in a smart carry case, providing photographers with everything they need to ensure accuracy across exposure, colour and cameras/lens performance. This package contains the Spyder LensCal, Spyder Cube, Spyder Checkr and SpyderX Elite. Spyder LensCal allows you to check whether your lenses are focusing at the correct point, so that you can make minor adjustments to compensate for any bias. This is particularly important if you frequently use wide-aperture lenses, as these can sometime miss the mark – and with a shallow depth…

£99 FROM InvizBox, invizbox.com FEATURES Multiple VPN hotspots, ad blocking, parental controls There’s no complicated setup process, and no need to install and learn assorted apps The InvizBox 2 is a simple VPN router which makes it easy to protect every device in your home. There’s no complicated setup process. No need to install and learn assorted apps. You don’t even have to buy a VPN subscription, or enter any account details – the InvizBox 2 is powered by the excellent IPVanish VPN, and comes ready with everything it needs to access 30+ locations across 20 countries. Setup is about as simple as you’ll get. Plug in the InvizBox 2, connect any device to one of its two Wi-Fi hotspots and traffic is automatically directed through the VPN. In a…

£39.99 FROM Rapoo, rapoo.com FEATURES Multi-mode Bluetooth 3.0/4.0/2.4GHz keyboard, up to 10m operating range, chiclet keys with scissor mechanism, 1300dpi optical mouse with 4 mouse buttons, 2D scroll wheel Enables you to switch seamlessly between up to four different devices Multi-tasking is something all of us need to do sometimes – and this 9300M super-slim keyboard and mouse from Chinese peripherals maker Rapoo appear to fit the bill perfectly. They enable you to switch seamlessly between up to four different connected devices simply by pressing the appropriate key combination – so you can flit between your Mac, iPad, iPhone and even an Apple TV without skipping a beat. Or at least that’s the theory. The 9300M’s keyboard (dubbed the E9100M if bought separately) is a 4.9mm aluminium-framed typing deck with…

From £28.99 FROM River, sparkleapp.com NEEDS OS X 10.9 or later A flexible and useful tool for people who want something other than a WordPress site Good news – if you can make a document in Pages, you can make a website in Sparkle. It’s a flexible and useful web design tool for people who want something other than a WordPress site. There are three versions: Basic, for one site of up to 10 pages; One, which removes the page limit; and Pro, which adds both Instagram and multi-site support. The app opens with a blank page and an open toolbar with common items such as text areas and images, but the simplest way to use Sparkle is just to download one of the free templates and mess around with…

Free (Powerpack from £23.99) FROM Running with Crayons, alfredapp.com NEEDS macOS 10.11 or later Much Finder use is about searching: wouldn’t you like a perfect English butler to assist? This is what Alfred aims to do. At its most basic, Alfred replaces Spotlight for local and web searches, acting as a better Finder driven largely from your keyboard. This now has dynamic sorting of items by name or date at the click of a pop-up. It brings some amazing shortcuts. To open your last-used image in Preview, type ‘P’ for the app to appear as the top hit, Play for Recent Documents, Play again to list them, and a third Play opens the most recently accessed file: just four keystrokes. Web searches are similarly instant. Alfred updates search results according…

£4.99 FROM Silvio Rizzi, reederapp.com NEEDS iOS 12 or later For reading online publications, RSS is the best tech you’re probably not using. With an RSS client, you can subscribe to website feeds, so you’ll never miss a headline, and articles can be browsed and read in-app. Reeder has long been a premium RSS client for iOS, and the latest release is no exception. You can choose to keep your account on-device only, or use a range of sync services. The reading view offers content cruft-free – text and images only – and one button pulls down entire articles from feeds that otherwise only offer synopses. Some new features are hit and miss. The shift to iOS’s Share sheet will irk some, but opens up Reeder to more services. Its…