Table of contents for October 2018 in MacFormat

Much has been made of recent attempts to bypass iOS security. Apple has attempted to thwart these efforts with a new feature in iOS 11.4.1. The feature is called USB Restricted Mode and it disables USB accessories’ access to the Lightning port if your device hasn’t been unlocked for several days. In the imminent iOS 12 update, that’ll be reduced to an hour. That should block access for devices like the GrayKey, which has made the news for its apparent ability to hack iOS security measures and unlock an iPhone or iPad that’s been plugged into the device. In iOS 12, GrayKey users will need to enter the correct passcode first – which defeats the whole point of using the tool.…

[MOVIE] Solo: A Star Wars Story £13.99 Follow Han Solo across the galaxy as he teams up with Chewbacca to navigate the murky criminal underworld and pull off a daring heist. [PODCAST] Clear+Vivid FREE M*A*S*H veteran Alan Alda and guests discuss making connections in the modern world. We liked Sarah Silverman’s take on building bridges in the social media age. [TV SHOW] Modern Family (Season 9) £14.99 The long-running show continues to impress and amuse in equal measure. The family members deal with the inevitabilities of ageing.…

1 $5,000 In 2010, a prototype iPhone 4 was found in a bar; Gizmodo paid $5,000 for the device. It made headlines as Apple desperately tried to get it back and safeguard its secrets. 2 29 Apple claimed that it discovered and dealt with 29 employees who leaked sensitive information in 2017. Ironically, this number was to be found in a memo that was itself leaked from Apple. 3 60% Former Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang has been accused of stealing information on Apple’s autonomous car project. Apple’s investigation found 60% of the data he downloaded was highly problematic”. 4 90 Images of the first unibody MacBook Pro were leaked online a full 90 days >Z in ca 6 “h before the device was unveiled – a record for an Apple…

Computers are complex things and though you’ll have heard the phrase ‘it just works’ in relation to Apple kit many times, it – like any hardware or software – will surely run into trouble at some point. When something goes wrong, it’s tempting to book an appointment at a Genius Bar to get it sorted out, but that’s not always feasible. The good news is that many Mac problems can be fixed yourself. Apple even provides software tools to help you diagnose them and in this Genius Handbook we’ll take you on a tour of them. Next time you run into a problem, you’ll know exactly which tool you need for assessing it and how to proceed with your investigation. Your Mac may be running like a dream right now,…

1 Open Activity Monitor Activity Monitor is included with macOS. It’s in Utilities in the Applications folder. The quickest way to open it is using Spotlight: press command+[spacebar], start typing ‘activity’ and when the app is listed, select it and press return. 2 See what’s going on All the currently running processes are listed at the left. Some of these are app names that you’ll recognise (with their icons), others are system functions that you won’t. To see only apps, choose View > Windowed Processes. 3 Check resource usage The tabs across the top show which processes are using which resources. If the hard disk is constantly chuntering, for example, see Disk. Click the Process Name column to alphabetise processes, or another to rank by usage. 4 It’s down to…

Your Mac’s network connections are managed in the Network pane of System Preferences. You can get to that pane very quickly from the Wi-Fi status icon that appears in the menu bar. On the left of the pane is a list of your Mac’s network interfaces, including esoteric options like connecting via Bluetooth. To see the Wi-Fi networks your Mac has remembered, select Wi-Fi, then click Advanced. In the Wi-Fi tab you can drag router/hotspot names into order of preference, which is helpful if there are multiple networks in your home or office. If you need different network settings temporarily – say, at a particular office you visit – click the Location pop-up menu at the top of the Network pane (it’s set to Automatic by default) and pick Edit…

To get help from Apple, at no initial cost, see the options at getsupport.apple.com. You can sign in with your Apple ID to bring up details of products you own. If you specify that you have a hardware issue, Apple can phone you or start an online chat to establish what can be done. If you have an Apple Store nearby, you can make a Genius Bar appointment at apple.com/uk/retail/geniusbar (or search for an outlet in the Apple Store app for iOS), to take your Mac or device in for examination, or, after discussing the problem online, send it in by post. Alternatively, Apple can put you in touch with a local Authorised Service Provider, but it doesn’t offer a list until you go through a few questions about your…

It looks basic at first glance, but the Phone app has a lot of useful extras hidden under the hood. Far from simply enabling one-to-one calls and nothing else, you can customise your calls with all sorts of handy options on the fly. For one thing, the Phone app isn’t selfish. By that, we mean you can easily switch to another app midway through a call – perfect if you need to look up some information that your caller needs, for example. There are handy controls to quickly mute your call or put it on loudspeaker. Your iPhone will even play nice with connected devices like AirPods or a HomePod, making it ideal if you can’t raise the phone to your ear – or simply don’t want to. It’s also…

Apple’s Secure Enclave appeared as a hardware feature in 2013’s iPhone 5s, but the technologies behind it first surfaced in 2008. In that year, Apple filed a patent application for user authentication by fingerprint recognition, illustrating an iPhone unlock screen as an example. Around the same time, ARM, the British chip designer, published a white paper outlining what would become TrustZone, a feature that allows sensitive data to be stored securely within a processor chip, protected by hardware-level encryption. These would form the two key ingredients of Touch ID, and then Face ID. Both companies knew this stuff was going to be important, and by 2012 ARM went on to form partnerships to build online payment systems into mobile devices, while Apple acquired AuthenTec, a fingerprint scanning specialist. The iPhone…

Location sharing offers two key benefits for parents. First of all, it enables you to use the Find My Friends app to see where your offspring are. That’s really useful if you’ve been hanging on before starting dinner, or if they haven’t turned up at an arranged meeting point. The feature also makes it possible to track down a missing iOS device by using the Find My iPhone app (or Find iPhone at iCloud.com). We use this often to ping misplaced iPhones and iPads that we know are somewhere in the house, but it’s also useful for remotely locking and even wiping a device that’s been lost or stolen. Why Screen Time is great for parents The parental controls on iPhone and iPad will improve in iOS 12 with the…

£69 FROM OnePlus, oneplus.com FEATURES Compatible with Google Assistant, Bluetooth 4.1 The OnePlus Bullets Wireless offer great value. The earbuds attach together magnetically when not in use; this automatically turns them off, and they turn back on again when separated. That’s a great feature for convenience – although if they come apart in your bag, the headphones turn on (they time out after a few minutes if no music is playing, however). The Bullets’ fit and finish are good, and the silicone neckband is lightweight and comfortable for long periods. OnePlus includes three sets of eartips and three sets of wings to keep the earbuds steady, but we found the earbuds stayed in place without them. Volume and playback controls are located on the inline remote, and there’s an integrated…

1 Compatibility is key Make sure your preferred office suite has support for Microsoft’s .docx and .xlsx formats at least. RTF (Rich Text Format) is also desirable. Spreadsheets should be able to import and export platform-agnostic CSV (Comma Separated Values). 2 Multimedia matters Documents really come alive when they’re illustrated. Consider how easy it is to incorporate images, graphs and, where relevant, audio and video in your work. Does your preferred office suite have the tools you need to manipulate non-text assets? 3 Should you pay? Apple’s iWork is a first-class office suite and, for anyone with a recent Mac, it’s free. Along with LibreOffice and Google Docs (also free), it makes Microsoft Office look really rather expensive at £59.99 a year or £119 one-off if you’re not going to…

Free FROM Agile Tortoise, getdrafts.com NEEDS iOS 11 or later While not designed for long-form writing, Drafts 5 is very capable of that. It’s also good for to-do lists, quick thoughts, or jotting down ideas. Drafts is now free, and has an updated editor, tagging, Siri integration, tappable task check marks and improvements to the arrange mode, which lets you reorganise blocks of text using drag and drop. A Pro subscription (£1.79 monthly or £17.49 annually) unlocks advanced features such as themes, custom icons, editing actions and more. Our favourite new feature has to be tags; rather than organise content by folders, Drafts 5 lets you add custom tags to notes, making it a snap to find something. (You can also do this in bulk by selecting multiple notes.) Drafts…

Tailor the Dock The Dock is the row of icons (usually) located at the bottom of your Mac’s screen. Some people love to have shortcuts to all their apps there, but others prefer a minimal Dock. There are various ways to tailor it, including some that aren’t shown in System Preferences but are useful if the number of apps in the Dock gets out of hand. To access these, you’ll need to open Terminal and enter the following commands. (Note: they’re case-sensitive.) To remove all apps from the Dock, type defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps-array; killall Dock and press return. (This will get rid of all the icons but it doesn’t uninstall the apps.) To reset the Dock to its defaults, type defaults delete com.apple. dock; killall Dock, then return. To…

PHOTO EDITOR (MAC) Affinity Photo £48.99 serif.com It’s hard not to love Affinity Photo. Whether you fancy yourself as a seasoned pro or a photo novice, you’ll find this image editor powerful and easy to use. Its interface offers the perfect blend of ease of use and quick access to powerful features, and its useful batch processing is a great addition. An app that packs both power and practicality for less than £50? We’re in! WRITING APP (MAC) Scrivener About £34 literatureandlatte.com It’s not often that a sequel is even better than its predecessor, but Scrivener 3 is a great example. Version 2 was already good, winning MF319’s group test, but version 3 adds so much. Its revamped interface is hugely customisable, its templates are fantastic, managing footnotes is a…

Jo Membery Operations Editor Jo has been biding her time to nab a discount on last year’s iPhones when new ones are introduced. She desperately needs more space for photos! Alex Blake Commissioning Editor With Apple hardware announcements just around the corner, Alex is excited about a new round of futuristic iPhones – the new screens especially. Paul Blachford Art Editor Paul is hoping that the yet-to-be-revealed Mac Pro doesn’t cost £4,000, is upgradeable and uses off-the-shelf parts, to give us all more choice.…

Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Apple merges AI and Machine Learning teams Apple made a real statement when it hired Google’s head of artificial intelligence (AI) John Giannandrea. It’s now followed that up by deciding to merge his AI division with its machine learning (ML) team. Giannandrea worked at Google for eight years and led its machine learning efforts. Placing him at the head of Apple’s machine learning efforts suggests that the company wants to drive its work forward in this developing area. Apple’s machine learning division houses its Siri team, and this structure will remain the same despite the merger. Combining machine learning with AI may help bring improvements from one to the other more quickly, thus helping Siri to better compete with its…

With wild car-based rumours having gone quieter than the electric motor that would supposedly power such a thing, the rumblings about Apple’s next big skunkworks project have focused on augmented reality and virtual reality. We know that Tim Cook thinks AR is going to be big in the future (and Apple is making big strides in iOS), even bigger than VR. But we still have VR support arriving in high-end Macs, and it’s interesting to note that Facebook seems to be much more into what VR can do than AR. The thing is, the two often get conflated as a joint development, because they share many technologies, particularly motion sensing. But as we get further into the development of both, it’s becoming clearer that Apple should have very different teams…

My Mac won’t start Is it asleep? Your Mac may have crashed while it was sleeping. Hold the power button until it shuts down with a faint clunk. After a few seconds, power it on again. Check power When you press the power button, is there a start-up chime, whirring, lights, a faint glow on the screen? If not, is the power cable securely connected? Is the mains socket switched on? Swap sockets. If you have another compatible power cable, try it. If not, swap the fuse in the plug. No display If the Mac shows life but the screen stays dark, is it a separate monitor? Check its power and data cables. Check its menu options, including input selection. If you haven’t used it before, use Google to check…

A common problem to have with a file on your Mac is forgetting where you put it. You can use Spotlight (command+[spacebar]) to locate it, or, in Finder, go to the drive the file should be on and type any part of the file’s name, or even text within the document, into the search box at the top right. In the options bar, start by searching only within the location you opened for focused results, and try This Mac if that doesn’t turn up the file. If a file won’t open or doesn’t contain what you expected, check Time Machine for a recent backup. Not using Time Machine (or a similar tool)? Start now! A USB 3 hard drive costs under £100 for 4TB, and Time Machine makes it effortless…

Battery If your MacBook’s battery is failing, hold option and choose command > System Information, then click Power in the list on the left of the new window. Compare the battery’s cycle count to what’s stated for your model at bit.ly/mbcycles: if lower, Apple may replace the battery for free. Older models have batteries a nimble-fingered user can replace; try duracelldirect.co.uk. Apple charges £129 to £199 to replace a MacBook battery: see bit.ly/macsrvrep. Storage If Disk Utility can’t get a drive working reliably, replace it. You’ve got a Time Machine backup, right? Internal drives are fiddly to replace in most Macs (if possible at all), but straightforward for pros with the right tools, whether Apple or independent. No repairer will promise to save your data, but ask if they’ll transfer…

Whether you have an important speech to give, a talk to record, or just want to pretend you’re a newsreader, a teleprompter is an essential piece of kit. It makes text big, clear and distraction-free, and you can either swipe it up with one hand on your iPhone, or have it scroll automatically on an iPad next to your camera for you to read aloud as you film. Indeed, professionals will use a one-way mirror at 45° with the iPad laying flat beneath the camera, so they’re looking right down the barrel of the lens as they read. There are plenty of mounts that enable you to do this, but you need to be able to flip the screen for that, which Pages (currently) can’t do. Check the App Store…

My backups are infected! Q Out of the blue, my antivirus software has started informing me that two old documents in my Time Machine backup contain W97M viruses. As they can’t be modified, what can I do? by JOHN CRADDOCK A They’re almost certainly spurious false positives. But before assuming they are, ensure that all other storage connected to your Mac is as clean as a whistle. If any viruses are detected there, that could indicate a genuine problem. Most antivirus products look for files with suspicious signatures. When their definitions are updated, they sometimes gain new signatures that trigger warnings incorrectly in this way. Check with the vendor’s support site and forums to see if other users are reporting similar problems. Use the app’s settings to exclude the files…

Family Sharing asks you to enter details of your credit or debit card so that Apple can bill you for any purchases made by your family. If that fills your mind with tabloid stories about toddlers running up massive bills on apps or in-app purchases, don’t worry – you can use the Ask To Buy feature to stop them running amok with your bank card in apps and Apple’s download stores. Ask To Buy is on by default for any family member aged under 13 and can be turned on for anyone under 18. Any purchase attempt requires approval from the family organiser or an appointed parent/guardian (as the family organiser, select someone in the list of family members and you’ll see an option to grant this status). You can…

There’s a big, obvious clue in the name: creating a smart home is all about making your home smarter. And that doesn’t just mean scattering chatty speakers or app-controlled routers around. Sometimes, it’s important to emphasise the ‘home’ portion of the equation – a true smart home is one that keeps close tabs on itself, feeds that information back to you, and adjusts your environment either automatically or on demand. This isn’t about being lazy, although that’s a fun side effect of most smart kit. You’ll still need to be involved, in some small way, since the majority of climate-focused devices don’t yet know how to open or close a window by themselves. But going smart can help you to spot things you might not have known about, and fix…

RAZER CORE X p84 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 to give an honest assessment of a product’s worth. The prices quoted for products are correct at the time of writing and are the best we can find from a reputable online dealer, excluding delivery. A brilliant thing in all regards, and worth every penny Strongly recommended; any flaws are only minor concerns Worth considering, though there may be better options Notable flaws; look at alternatives as a priority A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy! The MACFORMAT Awards Awarded to a five-star product we believe is truly exceptional in its category. Given solely…

Requires subscription (£2.79/month or £10.49/year) FROM MacPaw, macpaw.com NEEDS iOS 11 or later Burst mode on an iPhone takes 10 pictures a second. That lets you get at least one good photo (probably) of your trampolining child, but all these unwanted extra shots soon mount up. To help remove them, Gemini Photos scans your iOS device’s photo library, identifying similar photos or pictures that it thinks are clutter – like obviously bad shots – then gives you the option to easily delete them with a tap. Deleted shots go to your Recently Deleted folder for 30 days before they are actually removed, so it’s not a final action, but you might want to take a backup of your photo library before savaging it with Gemini. Our test run resulted in…

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. NETWORK 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 Epson EcoTank…

Travel man He’s got a ticket to ride BY STEVEWSM If you get chatting with stevewsm about his holidays, it’s probably best to ask where he hasn’t been, rather than where he has been. We’ve gone for a collective again this month, and what a collective it is! stevewsm has ticked off the Grand Canal in Venice, Firenze in Tuscany, Manarola and Riomaggiore in northern Italy, St Nicholas Church and Karluv in Prague, and Westerpark in Amsterdam. Jealous? Us? No, no. We love staring out of the office window… Share your pics with us using the hashtag #MacFormat on Instagram. In each issue, we’ll pick our favourite to feature on this page. GET ON INSTAGRAM Share your images with us by using the hashtag #MacFormat and we’ll print the best…

PLACE CALLS ON HOMEPOD NEW FEATURE SAID TO DEBUT WITH iOS 12 In a move that will put it more on par with rival products from Google and Amazon, HomePod will soon let you make calls. The change is coming in iOS 12, reports iGeneration, and means you’ll be able to link your iPhone to the speaker and place calls to mobiles and landlines. Both Google and Amazon’s smart speakers can already place calls. ALL OUT OF IDEAS? SEGALL: PHONE INNOVATION NEARING END Author Ken Segall, who helped to make Apple’s Think Different campaign, believes that smartphone innovation is nearing its end. “I think phones are very mature products right now,” he explained in an interview, adding that consumers should “not necessarily expect huge leaps”. Instead, he feels that wearable…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! GENIUS SERVICE My MacBook keyboard had an issue with the space bar, which got stuck. I removed it and tried to get it working, all to no avail. I took it to an Apple Store and they said it needed a new keyboard and it would be fixed for free. By law, they said they have to for up to five years after purchase Two days later, happy customer with a new keyboard. Then the screen’s reflective coating started peeling, so I went back to the store. The same bloke served me and said the same thing about the law. Two days later, happy customer with a new screen. Problems aside, the testimony to any company is what they do after the sale. Given the construction…

PRIZES WORTH £675 Macs are great for getting things done, but there are some times when a second display is invaluable. If you find your desktop is cluttered with windows and apps, offloading some onto another monitor can help you maintain some semblance of order. That’s why AOC’s I1601FWUX is an excellent addition to your setup. It’s a 15.6in 1080p display that connects over a USB-C cable, making it ideal for Apple’s latest MacBooks. The display offers an adjustable viewing angle and, in our review last issue, we were impressed by how sharp and fast it is. Setting it up is a piece of cake – just plug it in and a few seconds later it’ll be detected by your Mac and activated. It comes equipped with a magnetic cover that…

With a 15in MacBook Pro (2011-2013), graphics processor failure is a known problem. Apple may repair later models (see bit.ly/mbpvidiss) but otherwise workarounds (such as bit.ly/gpuwkrnd) are poor/impractical. For other models, try Apple Diagnostics (see page 25). If your Mac starts up with a flashing question mark icon, it means it can’t find a drive with a macOS installation. Let it try: if it does eventually start up, go to command > System Preferences > Startup Disk and select the correct drive. If not, try macOS Recovery (see page 25). If your Mac starts up with the screen overlaid with ugly text, it’s a kernel panic. Restarting again may work. If not, restart in safe mode (see page 24) and install any software updates. No? Unplug all peripherals, then try…

1 Open Disk Utility Disk Utility lives in Utilities within the Applications folder. As usual, the quickest way to reach it is to press command+[spacebar] to open Spotlight and start typing its name. Its sidebar shows all the drives connected to your Mac, inside and out. 2 View devices/volumes By default, you see ‘volumes’, logical spaces for storing files (like Macintosh HD). If you want to see which physical drives they’re on and those drives’ structures, pick View > Show All Devices (or press command+2; command+1 shows volumes). 3 Your startup disk Whether your startup disk is an internal or external drive, selecting it on the left dims out the Erase, Restore and Unmount options. You can run First Aid, but repairs may need you to use Disk Utility in…

An annoying scenario is where your mouse or keyboard isn’t working, so you can’t operate macOS to fix the problem. Fortunately, any USB keyboard or mouse should work. If you have just one, you can still manage. (Apple’s Magic Keyboard works over USB using its Lightning cable.) Most features are accessible with a mouse. To type, go to System Prefs’ Keyboard pane, turn on the keyboard and character viewers, and use the menu bar to open the former and start typing. If you have only a keyboard, press command+[spacebar] to access things by name. Type ‘keyboard’ to open that preferences pane, then look up navigation shortcuts. ctrl+F2 moves to the menus; ctrl+F8 to the icons; the arrow keys navigate; and return chooses an item. You may need to hold fn…

GREAT WAYS TO USE SIRI p42 Understand iOS gestures A tap is a brief contact of (usually) one finger on your device’s screen. To drag is to move a finger across the screen to scroll or pan around content. Swipe means move one or more fingers across an item or the screen, then let go. A flick is like swiping, but it’s quicker, and is often used to scroll content more quickly. Pinch means move two fingers together or apart, usually to zoom in or out. Touch and hold means lightly rest your finger on an item and wait for a reaction. Master Mac keyboard shortcuts When you see a shortcut like command+option+C, hold all but the last key, then press that one. command is the Command key, which is…

As we discovered earlier, Family Sharing pools your storage space, but not your whole family’s photo libraries. To do that, you need to use iCloud Photo Sharing. You can share with anybody who has an iCloud account, not just family members, and each album can be shared with up to 100 people. To start sharing, you first need to switch on the iCloud Photo Sharing feature. On an iOS device it’s in Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos. On a Mac, go to command > System Preferences > iCloud > Options. On Apple TV, look in Settings > iCloud > iCloud Photos Settings. Once that’s done, you can start sharing photos and videos. In iOS, open the Photos app, tap the Shared tab, then tap the + symbol…

Eve Degree £59.95 FROM evehome.com FEATURES Bluetooth Low Energy Eve Degree’s ultracompact size and unassuming (but typically Eve-pretty) looks belie its range of abilities: it’s both a temperature and a humidity sensor, and it can measure air pressure too, either in- or outdoors. IPX3 water resistance ensures it’ll survive more than a few drops of rain, and since it’s battery powered there’s no need for an external power source. Its app is neat and tidy, with comprehensive tracking of all three sensors. All good so far – but we definitely rated it more highly when testing indoors. Left out in direct sunlight, the Degree threw up some highly spurious readings, and creating triggers for HomeKit automations demands some convoluted wrangling between the Eve and Home apps. Weather Station £139.99 FROM…

SUITES ON TEST… Google Docs iWork LibreOffice Microsoft Office Your choice of office suite used to be a no-brainer. Anyone who strayed from Microsoft Office was at risk of their spreadsheets and documents being unreadable by anyone but themselves. That is no longer the case. Microsoft’s own formats are as close to an industry standard as we’re going to get, so even if you’re not working with them natively – you’re using iWork or Google Docs, perhaps – you can at least import, export and share with confidence. Microsoft is still the default choice in the workplace, but when iWork is so good and, like LibreOffice, completely free, it makes sense for Mac users to consider the alternatives. Conversely, as iWork ships with every new iPad and Mac, it’s almost…