Table of contents for February 2018 in MacFormat

[MOVIE] American Made £11.99 Tom Cruise stars as an American drug smuggler working for both Pablo Escobar and the CIA in one of the largest covert operations in US history. [PODCAST] OUTLIERS FREE Outliers examines the historical figures key to some of the UK’s most famous and wondrous palaces. A fascinating trip into British history’s hidden corners. [TV SHOW] Spielberg £9.99 One of the world’s most famous directors shares the insights and secrets behind his iconic films, supplemented by interviews with the stars he’s worked with.…

LETTER OF THE MONTH! A family legacy Although I appreciate Apple’s march to the future, and generally applaud it moving into 64-bit software only, this has caused a few issues. I was able to use iDVD as an excellent, simple DVD authoring system, as there are a number of home movies that I want to turn into semi-professional looking DVDs with menus. However, this app is incompatible with High Sierra. Is there a DVD authoring tool that’s simple but offers enough features to be able to do this? ‘Free’ options I’ve tried were woefully inadequate. Researching the issue brings up either glowing, badly spelled reviews for what appears to be bloatware that I’m finding difficult to trust, or costly pro solutions like Roxio Toast, which also may not work as…

JOHN SCULLEY rxadvance.com “Steve wanted to make… what he called ‘a bicycle for the mind’.” Former Apple CEO on Jobs’ plans to make computers for creatives GREG JOSWIAK apple.com “This is one of the most densely packed technology areas I think we’ve ever done.” Apple executive is effusive in his praise for the iPhone X’s notch PHIL SCHILLER apple.com “At the beginning, it seemed almost impossible. Not just almost. It seemed impossible.” Marketing chief on the challenges Apple faced making the iPhone X JONY IVE apple.com “Apple to me is… a collection of people who are united with the same set of values and goals.” Head designer says Apple isn’t just an “esoteric brand”…

Explained IFTTT Many of these devices and appliances work with an automation tool called IFTTT – ‘if this, then that’. This allows you to link devices together, perhaps linking your lights to the latest iKettle, so that it starts brewing when you get up in the morning. Old-fashioned devices such as cookers and washing machines haven’t changed much over the years, and some of these trusty old devices have proved to be remarkably resistant to new smart technology. Cookers, in particular, just keep saying ‘no’ to the Internet of Things, as we saw a couple of years ago when LG’s SmartThinQ cooker came and went in the space of about six months. You can, however, pick up some smaller cooking aids to help you out at dinner time. Tefal’s ActiFry…

While the idea of mounting a computer’s components behind its display was ahead of its time in 2001, by 2004 it was much more feasible. Other PC companies had tried it, but none had been successful. Now it was Apple’s turn to shake up the industry again. The G5 took the sleek white design trappings of the G4 and the iPod and took them further. Where the G4’s neck was glossy and reflective, the G5’s stand was matte, creating a more understated, less showy visual style. Indeed, from the side it had a striking resemblance to a large iPod mounted upon a metal stand. There were further iPod connections. The slogan Apple used to promote the G5 was “From the creators of the iPod”, clearly meant to lure in first-time…

IT WILL TAKE About 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to align layers in Photoshop, as well as how its Photomerge feature works. YOU’LL NEED A recent version of Photoshop, and a set of pictures ready to be stitched together If there’s one trick we never get tired of playing with on iPhone, it’s the camera’s ability to automatically stitch together a panorama simply by sweeping your phone across a majestic view. The results are pretty good, too, but you can’t get away from the fact that your DSLR, while more complicated to use, generally shoots better-looking, less noisy images. You’ve also got a wider choice of lenses and the ability to shoot in much worse light – the only question is how to merge your images together seamlessly. Photoshop…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make use manage documents and collaborate on them with other people YOU’LL NEED iOS 11 Genius tip! On the Files app’s Browse screen, tap the location where you want to add a folder. If you want it to be in ‘On My [Device]’, you can’t add it at the top level, only inside an existing folder, so tap into one of those. Drag the screen down slightly and tap the New Folder icon – top left with a plus sign on it. (If you don’t see this or it’s greyed out, the cloud service you’ve chosen doesn’t support new folders.) Name your new folder and tap Done. When the new Files app was announced, it sounded like an iOS equivalent…

The best solution for collaborating on photo info is to use iCloud Photo Sharing From shared album to print Q What’s the best way to let my partner, who also has an iPhone but not a Mac, add information to my photos so that we can put them into a printed album? BY MHAIRI MCLEOD A So long as you both have iCloud accounts, the best solution is to share them using iCloud Photo Sharing. It helps if you’re both using the current version of iOS 11, although this should still work acceptably with older versions too, even with iCloud for Windows if you wish. On your iPhone, turn on iCloud Photo Sharing in Settings > [your name] > iCloud. (On a Mac, it’s in Photos’ preferences, under iCloud.) Then…

CHECK OUT OUR LONG-TERM iPHONE X DIARY p14 Whether you’ve bought iPhone X already, plan to do so in the next few months, or will wait at least a generation, one thing’s for sure: the new model marks a change in the ways you interact with Apple’s smartphone. That’s due to the latest iPhone dispensing with the Home button, a staple feature since Apple’s smartphone burst onto the scene in 2007. Here you’ll learn how to start migrating your apps and data from an existing phone, whether it’s an older iPhone running iOS 11 or an Android device. We’ll walk you through the fluid new gestures for accessing features you’ll use often, new shortcuts and settings that make iPhone X even more delightful to use, and provide you with compatibility…

ISSUE 321 JANUARY 2018 Your Mac reborn: boost performance Make your iPad your main machine Get fit with smart gym kit in 2018 Phone X: protect your investment ISSUE 320 DECEMBER 2017 iPhone X: the definitive verdict Detox your Mac and claim back space The best cloud storage for your needs Get more from iOS 11 with our guide ISSUE 319 NOVEMBER 2017 macOS High Sierra: 50 essential tips The ultimate iPhone X buyer’s guide Apple Watch Series 3 goes phone-free The best Mac writing tools 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…

£330 FROM Sony, sony.co.uk FEATURES LDAC Bluetooth, adaptive noise cancellation, NFC, high-res audio, iOS companion app These are the best noise-cancelling headphones on the planet. Yes, even better than the Bose QuietComfort 35. The WH-1000XM2 sound better, are built better and offer features you won’t find anywhere else. The headphones boast three tricks: an Ambient Mode that only lets in mid-to-high frequency tones; Quick Attention mode that allows you to let in outside noise; and the LDAC codec – alongside the widely adopted aptX HD standard, LDAC enables high-res audio playback. Neither is currently supported on iPhones, but these headphones also support DSEE HX and S-Master HX, Sony-specific technologies that take lossy audio from any source and convert it to near high-resolution. Quality control But why are they so expensive?…

DESKTOP SPEAKER Kef Egg £350 kef.com With rich, warm sound that works with pretty much any genre, the KEF Egg speakers are ideal partners for your Mac. They support high-quality aptX Bluetooth too, making them perfect for wireless playback. Quirky design, solid build quality and support for external subwoofers makes them a great choice. IN-EAR HEADPHON Pioneer Rayz Plus £149 pioneerrayz.com If you own an iPhone 7, you’ll know the struggle of trying to listen to music and charge your phone at the same time. These in-ear Lightning headphones solve that, thanks to their built-in charging port. They’ve also got great audio quality, excellent noise cancellation and will pause your tunes when removed from your ears. DASH CAM Transcend DrivePro 230 £150 transcend-info.com Dash cams help record what happens when…

WE ASKED… What’s your favourite iMac? Log on and see next issue’s big question! twitter.com/macformat facebook.com/macformat Apple buys music app Shazam In a move that is likely to strengthen its machine learning efforts, Apple has bought music-recognition app Shazam for a reported $400 million. Shazam is used to identify songs, films, TV shows and adverts from short audio clips. In a statement to The Verge, Apple described how Shazam’s technology is a ‘natural fit’ for Apple Music thanks to its music discovery potential. Additionally, its tech might be further integrated into Siri in the future. Shazam’s app also has augmented reality features, letting users scan QR-like codes in order to access special content.…

Catcher Technology, the company that manufacturers the chassis for Apple’s laptops, is apparently working on a new product category. The news, confirmed by Catcher chairman Allen Horng, has led to speculation that it could be working on an augmented reality (AR) headset. Since Apple is one of Catcher’s major clients, there has also been some speculation that if Catcher is indeed working on an AR headset, it could be for Apple. It is no secret that Apple is very interested in AR, although it has remained tight-lipped about any sort of headset that it may or may not be working on. Quanta, a second Apple supplier, has signed a deal to produce lenses to be used in AR parts for Lumus. However, the deal also lets it manufacture these parts…

18 cores The iMac Pro can be configured to have an 18-core processor. The most cores an iMac has ever had before is a mere four. 40Gbps You get four Thunderbolt 3 ports on the iMac Pro, with transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps. 3.3GB/sec Macs have always had speedy flash storage, but the iMac Pro ups that with 3.3GB/sec write speeds on its SSD, which can be configured to 4TB in size. 44,236,800 In addition to the iMac Pro’s 5K display, you can attach two more 5K displays to the machine, giving you 44.2 million pixels to work with. 43% The iMac Pro’s 5K display has a brightness of 500 nits, 43% brighter than the previous iMac display. 5,000 You can use an iMac Pro at up to 5,000…

I really hope Apple has plans for a relaunch of the Mac mini Last year proved to be a hardware bonanza for Apple. We got a new desktop pro machine in the iMac Pro, improvements to the new-look MacBook Pro, and much stronger 4K and 5K iMacs. Even the MacBook Air – which keeps limping along like the character in an action movie who hasn’t told the others they’ve been shot, smiling and wistfully saying “Yeah, we’ll all make it to Retina together one day, friends”, while stifling a bloody cough – got updated with new processors. Everything except the poor Mac mini. I really hope Apple has plans for a huge relaunch of the mini (Tim Cook says it’ll be an “important part” of Apple’s product line-up going forward,…

Drop Scale £80 apple.com/uk A practical kitchen tool, the Drop Scale is Bluetooth-enabled, and its app includes a database of recipes. The app can adjust weights and ingredients for different numbers of people, and suggest substitute ingredients. Nest Protect £109 store.nest.com Nest’s smoke alarm can work in any room, but it’s a really good option for the kitchen. It can detect CO2 as well as smoke, and its voice alerts can tell you to check the burning toast in the kitchen before going crazy with its blaring siren. Samsung Family Hub From £2,000 samsung.com/uk Samsung’s ‘super-fridge’ includes Wi-Fi and an LCD display for music, web browsing, or recipe searching. The cameras also allow you to check the fridge’s contents on your iPhone to see if you need to restock. Smarter…

iMac G3 278,000 The iMac G3 was an instant success, selling 278,000 units in its first six weeks. iMac G5 0.3MP In October 2005, the iMac G5 was updated with a built-in iSight camera, with a resolution of 640x480 – 0.3 megapixels. iMac G3 $309 million The iMac G3 helped bring Apple’s profit for the 1998 financial year to $309 million. Compare that to the $2 billion the company had lost over the previous two years. iMac G4 9.7kg The 15-inch iMac G4 weighed 9.7kg, more than half the iMac G3’s 18.1kg heft. iMac 2012 5mm The slimline iMac, debuted in 2012, is just 5mm thick at its thinnest point. iMac Retina 5K 14,745,600 The Retina 5K iMac features the most detailed display available in any iMac, with 14,745,600 pixels.…

For years, Apple had packed its iMacs with PowerPC processors, developed with IBM and Motorola. First debuting in the Power Macintosh and Performa models of 1994, the PowerPC chip was a mainstay of Apple desktop computers for 12 years before being phased out. Apple had long been railing against what it called the ‘megahertz myth’ that it said led to inaccurate assessments of its computers. While PowerPC chips often came with slower clock speeds than their rivals, they just as often matched or outperformed them, since calculating a processor’s power is about far more than just its megahertz count. However, Apple was clearly thinking about moving beyond PowerPC. Indeed, Apple’s press release announcing the Intel-based iMac seemed to admit that PowerPC chips weren’t up to scratch. It promoted the 2006…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to work with content caching YOU’LL NEED At least one Mac running macOS High Sierra, preferably with an Ethernet connection Content caching is, to quote Apple, ‘a macOS service that helps reduce bandwidth and speed up software installation’ across all your core Apple devices: Macs, iOS and Apple TV. Content is stored – or cached – on one of your Macs, and other devices can pull that content quickly from the local network instead of downloading a fresh copy from the internet. By default, all system updates and App and iBooks Store content are cached, plus there’s an option to include your iCloud content too. Content caching works best on a Mac that’s connected to your network via Ethernet rather than…

Your Mac comes with a built-in backup system called Time Machine that’s very easy to use. It only takes a minute or two to get started with it, and it then backs up any changes made to the files on your Mac roughly once an hour. It’s easy to overlook some of this feature’s capabilities, so this cheat sheet gives an overview of the various ways to recover changed words, files you’ve trashed by mistake, or even your whole setup if a big problem occurs or you buy a new Mac. If you use a portable Mac, you may notice different coloured notches in Time Machine’s timeline. Bright red represents local snapshots, which are explained opposite. By upgrading to High Sierra, you stand to benefit from an important improvement to…

IT WILL TAKE 45 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Workflow to send the same email to a list of people, but with a personal touch YOU’LL NEED An iPad or iPhone, Workflow 1.7 or later Whether you’re announcing an engagement or the birth of a child, or you just want to send a family photo round to everyone without using Facebook, copying and pasting a templated email and filling in the blanks is a chore on a Mac, never mind on iOS. There is a better way. If you’ve used the free Automator utility that’s been included with macOS for years, you’ll find the basic principles of Workflow for iOS are similar. If not, here’s a summary of how it works: you assemble actions in an order that…

With iOS 11, moving to a new iPhone is simpler than ever: just place your old and new phones near each other. That’s all that’s required to initiate the migration process. You‘ll also need to be using iCloud to back up the older iPhone (Settings > [Your name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup); though proximity is enough to start the process, your apps, settings and other data are retrieved from the internet, just like in previous versions of iOS. You’ll also need to prove you own the old phone – and the information on it – by entering your Apple ID’s password. 1 Kick-start migration Turn on your iPhone X, and Bluetooth on the old phone, which must be running iOS 11. Place the phones near each other. The older…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices 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 Fundamentally flawed; look at alternatives as a priority A waste of your money and everyone’s time; do not buy! What’s inside 82-87 HARDWARE An action cam, a supervector router, cloud…

£629 (16TB) FROM Western Digital, wdc.com FEATURES Storage from 4TB to 16TB, 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, companion iOS app The My Cloud Home Duo houses a pair of hard drives in a relatively compact package, with capacities ranging from 4TB to a huge 16TB. The Duo is configured as RAID1 by default, which cuts storage in half but offers data protection when one drive fails; you can also reformat and trade security for maximum storage capacity. The unit gets a bit noisy during read/write activity, so you’ll want to place it away from your desk. It takes only a few minutes to set up, and with WD Discovery for macOS installed, mounts on the desktop like other volumes. There’s a mobile app for automatic backup of photos and videos…

Enriched Notes Apple’s Notes app on iPhone and iPad has some additional features in iOS 11 that make it far more useful than the basic notepad it started life as. Notes can be stored on your iOS device or in iCloud, and you can insert tables, use formatting such as bold/italics and bullets and numbering, add handwritten notes or doodles with the pen tool, and you can even scan documents. The scanning feature is more useful than simply taking a photo of a document, as the app will intelligently correct the angle and crop the image. To scan a document, tap the + icon, then tap Scan Documents. Point your device’s rear-facing camera at a document; the app will detect it, highlighting it with a yellow box and take a…

PHOTO EDITOR (MAC) Affinity Photo £48.99 serif.com It’s hard not to love Affinity Photo. Whether you’re fancy yourself a seasoned pro or a photo novice, you will find it powerful and easy to use. Its interface has 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! NEW! WRITING APP (MAC) Scrivener £43.99 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 breeze, and…

Jo Membery Operations Editor Jo’s saving up for new smart fitness tracking gear as she’s still suffering from a bit of post- Christmas indulging and ‘chillaxing’! Alex Blake Commissioning Editor Alex is competing with his friends to book the cheapest holiday possible. The amount to beat is £10 for a return to Romania. This could be tricky. Paul Blachford Art Editor Paul’s getting to grips with smart tech to keep tabs on his growing brood. Whether it’s screen time at home to tracking location elsewhere, he is now Omniscient Dad.…

SMS HITS A QUARTER OF A CENTURY The first text message was sent on 3 December 1992, when engineer Neil Papworth typed out ‘Merry Christmas’ on his computer and sent it to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. A lot has changed since then, with iMessage, memes and even Animojis playing their part. And by June 2017, 781 billion texts were sent every month in the US alone. APP STORE PRE-ORDERS NEW WAY OF PURCHASING iOS APPS Apple has long held off from letting developers offer apps as pre-orders on the App Store, but that’s now set to change. Apps can be made available to pre-order if their release date is between two and 90 days in the future. When the app is pre-ordered, it will be downloaded to your device once it…

We reset Face ID to start over and found maybe our original scan was suboptimal Having used iPhone X since launch day, we wanted to relay longer term experiences of what it’s like to use, and dispel some myths around how apps and media look on its unusual screen ratio. Much of what’s explained here comes from use over the days, weeks and months that follow a device launch, as developers update apps to better use the hardware and take into account features unique to iPhone X, in particular the notch and rounded corners. The adjustment period for getting used to accessing the Home screen and the app switcher with on-screen gestures passed quickly for us. Swiping up to reach the Home screen or app switcher so soon feels natural…

Alex says… “WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE iMAC MEMORIES?” The first iMac I can remember using was an aluminium one… I came along too late to get to use a G3 or G4 in their heyday! I remember when the G3 first came out. It was a lot like the first iPhone in that it blew away your ideas of what a computer was. It was certainly different. But I bet the ‘hockey puck’ mouse must have been a pain. I got a third-party mouse! Not much fun designing magazine pages with that thing. I can imagine. The one that really blew me away was actually the most recent iMac. The thinnest edge was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen on a computer. It felt impossible that Apple had squeezed…

LIVE SMARTER The smart home is here – live the Apple dream today! Smart tech is all about making life easier, and one of the most labour-intensive rooms in any home is the kitchen. There’s always something to do there, whether it’s cooking, cleaning, or unpacking your shopping into the fridge. And while we may have washing machines and dishwashers to help us out, there’s no smart tech currently available that can put your socks in pairs or cook the perfect soufflé while you play Pokémon Go on your iPhone. But we’re finally starting to see some progress in the kitchen. Samsung made waves with its super-expensive super-fridge, but there are more down-to-earth devices too, such as Tefal’s smart frying pan and the iKettle – yes, that is a real…

7,300,000 tonnes The amount of food wasted by UK households in 2015. (UK Environment, Food And Rural Affairs Committee) £13 billion The value of all that wasted food – around £470 per household. 2/3 Almost two-thirds of all domestic fires start in the kitchen. £0 The amount charged for electricity usage during select hours on British Gas’s HomeEnergy FreeTime tariff.…

Jobs wasn’t happy. Each component had to be true to itself, he insisted How exactly to follow the revolutionary success of the iMac G3 was something of a problem for Apple. After all, the G3 was the device that saved Apple. The G4 had to be something even more special. Apple was stabilising; its next computer had to make it successful. Expectations across the industry were high. Ive and Jobs were keenly aware of this. After all, they’d experienced it before – as soon as the original iMac was announced, the press was already ramping up the pressure on the forthcoming iBook, Apple’s consumer laptop that followed the G3. “It’s a bit scary,” said Ive at the time. At the turn of the 21st century, flat-panel display technology was finally…

NEW IDEAS Your in-depth guide to getting more from your Apple kit Recover lost work p52 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 , hold all but the last key, then…

EXPERT ADVICE Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems Q If I leave the latest version of Pages running without open windows, the moment I switch to another app, it quits. Why, and how can I stop it? by JACK FOLEY A This is a behaviour which you may have already noticed in bundled apps like TextEdit and Preview, and is set by the developer with a flag named NSSupportsAutomaticTermination in the Info.plist file inside the app’s bundle. You can’t change that directly, as that breaks the app’s signature, which is used as a security measure. You can alter this behaviour using the ‘defaults’ command in Terminal. Type in: defaults write -app Pages NSDisable AutomaticTermination -bool TRUE Or, you can stop all apps from quitting automatically in this…

Lock screen shortcuts The Lock screen includes shortcuts to the torch and camera features, which saves you opening Control Centre or swiping left. To avoid accidental invocation, these buttons require you to press firmly. Accessibility shortcuts Accessibility features are available by quickly pressing the side button three times. What you get depends on your choices in Settings > General > Accessibility and the Accessibility Shortcut item at the bottom of that page. Call upon Siri Many functions that used the Home button use the sleep/wake button on iPhone X. To call upon Siri, you can still say “Hey Siri”, but if it doesn’t respond, or speaking is inappropriate and you prefer to use the Type to Siri accessibility setting, hold the side button for a moment. Apple Pay To make…

£499.99 FROM GoPro, shop.gopro.com FEATURES 4K video at 60fps, 1080p video at 240fps, 12MP still image capture, waterproof up to 10m/33ft The new GoPro Hero6 Black can capture super-slow-motion video at a high resolution, output a stabilised image in 4K, and transfer everything to your phone at fast speeds. The biggest update is the arrival of the GP1 processor. This allows the Hero6 Black to offer 4K video capture at a smooth 60fps. It can also capture 1080p Full HD footage at 240fps. Between these extremes, it’s possible to shoot 2.7K footage at 120fps. GoPro hasn’t just concentrated on boosting its frame rate. Thanks to the GP1 processing engine, it’s possible to have image stabilisation active while shooting 4K footage. Stabilisation is capped at 30fps (for 4K), but it’s available at…

MONITOR ViewSonic VP2772 £702 viewsonic.com If you’re not fussed about 4K but still want exceptional image quality, this IPS display is truly superb. It offers 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB colour space, 10-bit colour and a 2560x1440-pixel resolution. It has HDMI 1.4, DVI and Mini DisplayPort connections, and four USB 3.0 ports for expansion. NETWORK STORAGE Drobo 5D3 £601 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 ET-2600 £179 epson.co.uk The Eco-Tank ET-2600 has a…

GET ON INSTAGRAM Share your images with us by using the hashtag #MacFormat and we’ll print the best here in the magazine. While you’re there, follow @MacFormat (Twitter) and @MacFormatUK (Instagram). Happy new year… Full of fantastic fountains Let’s kick off our first issue to go on sale in 2018 with a huge thank you – we’ve been inundated with amazing shots from you lovely readers! It was a tough call picking this month, but touristinresidence has captured the New Year feel for us with this colourful fountain in Columbia, Missouri. There’s no filter applied; the lighting is as you see it. So, if you’re traveling Stateside soon, you might want to check this out and maybe cheer on the Mizzou Tigers! Share your pics with us using the hashtag…

Few companies have had as much retail success as Apple. Far from the plain, boring computer stores of old, Apple Stores have vibrant, exciting shopfronts and offer the complete Apple experience to legions of loyal fans. How did Apple get to such a strong position in the retail environment? Let’s take a look. The ‘store within a store’ Apple didn’t always run its own standalone stores. For years it had operated like many other computer makers and had its products sold through third-party stores. However, their employees were often poorly trained and did not help to improve Apple’s brand image or loyalty with customers. When Steve Jobs returned to the helm, he slashed the number of stores Apple computers were sold in and focused efforts on running a ‘store within…