MacLife

Apple has just released the new AirPods Pro and we’re impressed. See our full review on page 42. When Apple launched the AirPods people initially dismissed them as a somewhat expensive joke. Who would pay that much money for a set of Apple EarPods wi

Apple has reported its best–ever July–September fiscal quarter, with revenue of $64bn, up 2% from the corresponding quarter last year. Revenue from iPhone was down 9% from the year–ago quarter, but other segments more than compensated. Services, whic

RECENTLY, I ATTENDED a launch event for Microsoft’s newest range of hardware — its laptops, hybrid tablets, new headphones and more. The company held a panel discussion with some of its lead hardware engineers, including Panos Panay, Chief Product Of

Who needs an expensive VR helmet when you can strap your Android into a set of felted goggles? Turned out most of us needed neither. Cancelling Daydream View and a planned standalone version in October, Google said it would focus on AR. Now that’s wh

fujifilm.com $1,699 >>> Rolling analog charm into new high–tech gear is all the rage, and Fujifilm does it better than anyone. The new X–Pro3 mirrorless has the style of classic rangefinders, and includes a new shooting mode that simulates film. That

You’ve got 255 characters to play with when naming things, so give images, documents, and everything else names that make it clear what they are: “Karen attacked by furious monkey” is easier to identify and find than “IMG1698.png”. If you have an iCl

Catalina adds Siri Suggestions to your favorite apps. In Safari, Siri can suggest websites you might want to visit; in Contacts it focuses on the people it thinks you’re most likely to contact; in Mail it recognizes events in emails and adds them to

MACS ARE FAMED for their ease of use: “it just works” was always so much more than a marketing slogan. Macs are made to do things elegantly and efficiently, and the more time you spend discovering what yours can do, the more you’ll be able to get thi

CREATE YOUR OWN tags in Finder’s Preferences to make it easy to classify and find related files. To change how Finder displays a folder, open any folder in Finder and then click on View > Show View Options. Choose how the contents should be grouped a

Mission Control makes great use of trackpad gestures. You can open it with a three–fingered swipe upwards, and close it by doing the same thing downwards. Swipe left or right with the same three fingers and you can move between open windows. You can

Well, it’s that time of year again. The festive season, where there’ll be lots of food and fun to be shared with family and friends. And, of course, Christmas is a time for giving and receiving! Make your Christmas shopping easy, fast and fun with Ma

CONTACTS YOU MARK as VIPs get a special Smart Mailbox so you can focus on your most important contacts. You simply click on the sender name in the main message window and select Add to VIPs. VIPs are shared on iOS too. We love Smart Mailboxes too. Go

INSTEAD OF LISTING every website from your favorites, Safari in macOS Catalina shows your most frequently used sites plus Siri Suggestions, which are based on things you’ve searched for or been sent recently. You can re–order icons, and use Show More

$44.99 lifx.com A color–changing bulb compatible with Siri, Alexa and Google, the LIFX Mini allows you to select from hundreds of color options from the app. There’s no bridge needed, and you can control them with your voice. $19.99 amazon.com Comman

$49.99 kingston.com The Nucleum is the perfect partner for your MacBook. The USB–C hub can host up to seven connections with two USB–C ports, two USB–A ports, SD and microSD slots, and an HDMI connector. Around $175 verbatim.com Verbatim’s Fingerprin

$49 defunc.com With 14 hours of playtime, great audio and touch control, the True Go earbuds represent an affordable alternative to Apple’s AirPods. The earbuds feature Bluetooth 5.0, offer really powerful sound, and come in a choice of colors. $249.

$35.99 amazon.com Improve your mobile gaming skills with this iPhone gizmo. It lets you combine your touchscreen prowess with an analogue controller that comes with 10 configurable buttons and a joypad. $39 classicbot.com If you owned the iMac G3, wh

$249 From Apple, apple.com Features Active noise cancellation, 4.5 hours listening time, 3.5 hours talk time, Wireless charging case, Sweat and water resistant (IPX4), Height: 1.22–inches, Width: 0.86–inches, Depth: 0.94–inches, Weight: 0.19 ounces A

$15.99 From Mografi, jennyleclue.com Needs Mac OS X 10.8, Intel i5 Quad–Core, 2 GB RAM, Intel HD 4000, 2GB available space Jenny LeClue is a young detective with a knack for solving crimes, even if her mom would rather she did her chores first. Jenny

From $79.99 From Parallels, parallels.com Needs macOS 10.12.6 or later There are now even more good reasons for running a different operating system within a virtualisation environment like Parallels Desktop. You may need access to Windows apps, want

$99.99 From Adobe, adobe.com Features Auto Creations, one–click selections tools, and new guided edit modes to replace backgrounds and remove unwanted objects Apple’s Photos app does a great job of enabling you to fix common problems with color, tone

Free (IAPs) From Bare Bones, barebones.com Needs mac OS 10.14.2 or later, 64–bit processor Do some word association about BBEdit, and terms like “powerful” and “flexible” spring to mind. After all, this is a hugely capable app for manipulating text a

$399 From Sonos, sonos.com Features Voice control, weather–proof, drop–resistant, indoor charging base The Sonos Move is everything you’d expect from Sonos, but it ventures outdoors too. It sits on a barely noticeable charging pad, and you can also c

$4 From Rony Fadel, fadel.io Needs macOS 10.13 or later Mission Control divides users into two groups: those who swear by it and those who never use it. But for users with lots of apps running and windows open it makes it easy to cut through the clut

PAGE LAYOUT IS a task we all attempt from time to time, yet desktop publishing software is a relatively neglected category. If you’ve never delved into Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, you should see what you’re missing. And if you have used the high–e

Free (IAPs) From Adobe, adobe.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch Needs iOS 11 or later Adobe continues to flesh out its arsenal of iOS apps with Capture, at its heart an analysis tool that allows you to create looks, brushes, settings, shapes and

Free (IAPs) From Majid Jabrayilov, napbotapp.com Made for iPhone, iPod touch Needs iOS 13.0 / watchOS 6.0 or later The App Store is hardly short of sleep tracking apps for your Watch, but few of them are as polished as NapBot. It’s designed to do thr

$3.99 From Beyondthosehills, rekygame.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 10.0 or later The key to success in Reky lies in using color to your advantage. Each level starts with one or more colored blocks; you control a blob that can absor

$7.99 From Playdigious, playdigious.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 11.0 or later Where once pixelated games represented simple design borne out of necessity, these days the handheld style has evolved into art. Nowhere is that more ev

$4.99 From Pixelmator, pixelmator.com Made for iPad Air 3rd generation or later, iPad Pro, iPad 5th generaiton or later Needs iOS 11 or later Pixelmator made its name with slick and powerful graphics apps for the Mac and iOS, and now it’s brought its

Free (IAPs) From iCandi Apps, icandiapps.com Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 11.0 or later There’s no shortage of iOS apps for stargazers, but Night Sky is one of the oldest and one of the most impressive. Version 7 adds a host of new fea

Free (IAPs) From Lightricks Ltd, pixaloopapp.com Made for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Needs iOS 11 or later Enlight Pixaloop is an app for your iOS device that can animate parts of a digital photograph. Why would you want to do that? Because when don

$1.99 From Jonathan Wilson, podcastalarm.app Made for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Needs iOS 12.0 or later If you’ve ever wished you could wake up to something more interesting than the chirp of your iPhone alarm, Podcast Alarm has you covered. It ena

The media streaming market has been growing steadily in recent years. With faster internet connections and ubiquitous wireless making it a feasible proposition in just about any situation, streaming has completely changed the way we consume media — a

When the days are darker and colder, it’s just an opportunity to have more fun indoors – especially with holiday season approaching. We’ve got apps here that can help you get family, friends and neighbors around for a shindig, or that can help you wh

Email Mac|Life at ask@maclife.com Before upgrading to Catalina, I’d like to merge a couple of photo libraries from Aperture. Can you tell me what’s the best way to do this? Apple’s Aperture isn’t fully 64–bit compatible and won’t run in Catalina. Bef

Recent versions of iOS show this in the Battery section in Settings. Tap Battery Health to get an instant diagnosis. If you haven’t fully recharged your phone recently, it’s worth doing so and checking this again to confirm that it’s capable of reach

A NEW APPLE Watch with an always-on display and some iPhones weren’t the only highlights of Apple’s September event: it meant the launch of watchOS 6 too, which brings some useful new features to every Apple Watch. Some of the latest additions are re

YOU CAN UPGRADE to macOS Catalina even when you still need to run apps which are 32-bit or incompatible with 10.15. If you don’t need to run both versions of macOS at the same time, you can install Catalina into a separate volume or partition, then s

IF YOU WANT to place your subject against a different scene, it’s surprisingly easy. By shooting them against a green (or blue) backdrop, you can use iMovie’s layer–based keying tools to replace the colored background with a different video clip from

TO THE HUMAN eye, colors look natural when viewed in different lighting conditions. But digital cameras are prone to capturing color casts due to variations in the color temperature of light. For example, noon daylight produces a color temperature of

APPLE ARCADE MIGHT just be the best tech bargain around! If, like us, you’ve despaired of freemium games with their invasive advertising or demands for money, the prospect of more than 100 ad–free games for $4.99 per month sounds like heaven. And tha

TAKING, EDITING AND sharing photos is one of the most common groups of activities on the iPhone. So, it’s no surprise that Apple ups the ante in terms of the features of both the camera hardware and the software with every new iPhone and version of i

WE LOVE IPADOS. It keeps everything we like about iOS but takes advantage of the iPad’s power and much bigger screen. That’s true of the interface, which now lets you to do a lot more in the same space: where iOS on iPad sometimes felt like a phone o

IPADOS, THE IPAD’S own operating system, has a boatload of new productivity features built into it. So much so that this year may well be the year when the iPad, especially its Pro version, becomes a serious work computer for the masses, replacing a

[3] From which university did Steve Wozniak drop out when he met Steve jobs? [7] At which 1978 event did Apple show off the Apple disc ii? [8] Apple has partnered up with Tiffany to source which element more responsibly? [9] What is the name of the g

RATHER THAN GOING through several apps, the Apple TV app on iOS, iPadOS, macOS and tvOS provides a single place for you to discover and watch films and television shows. The Apple TV app syncs across your devices, so you can start watching on one dev