Table of contents for May 2026 in MacLife

APPLE’S PHOTOS APP offers plenty of tools for typical photo adjustments. You can, for example, adjust grading colors and tones to change a shot’s mood reveal, or sort missing shadow detail in underexposed areas. Acorn 8 ($29.99, https://flyingmeat.com) does all that too, but it also enables you to take more control over photo fixes, thanks to advanced tools such as layers, AI–powered selections, and brush–based adjustments. We’ll show you how to select a subject, pop them onto a separate layer, then blur the background to create a bokeh effect. This helps draw attention to the subject and mimics the look produced by a DSLR camera (or the iPhone Camera’s Portrait mode). Photos uses sliders to adjust specific tones, such as shadows and highlights throughout the shot. We’ll demonstrate how Acorn…

REMINDERS IS ONE of those iOS apps that a lot of us use day in, day out. Its strength lies in how quick and easy it is to use — when you have something on your mind that you don’t want to forget, setting a note to yourself in Reminders is almost entirely frictionless. But what you might not realize is that there’s a lot lurking under the surface. No one-trick pony, Reminders (which is also available on Mac and iPad, of course) is bursting with handy extras and power-user features. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll discover a wealth of hidden tools that transform it from a useful sidekick into an essential productivity app for organizing your daily life. Here, we’ll take you through 12 of the best Reminders…

RIVAL APPS DELIVER forecasts. Carrot Weather laces its offering with snark and threats. High winds? The perfect excuse, it’ll say, to lob a cow through your window. But Carrot is more than a gimmick. The app has become hugely customizable, with the iPad layout being particularly powerful. It can display up to three columns, effectively turning your tablet into a personal weather station. Of course, you might own an actual weather station — or have one nearby. In which case, you can have Carrot Weather draw from its data by going into the app’s settings (gear icon), heading to Source > Personal Weather Stations, and selecting the relevant station. You’ll need a subscription for that feature — and to unlock map layers, notifications, Apple Watch complications, and the layout customization…

From $599 From www.apple.com Features 11–inch Liquid Retina display (2360x1640), Apple M4 chip, 128GB of storage (256GB/512GB/1TB available), Wi–Fi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 6, USB–C, Touch ID, 12MP Wide and Center Stage cameras AVAILABLE IN BLUE, Purple, Starlight, and Space Gray, the iPad Air (2026) looks little changed from the previous generation on the surface, but it’s inside that Apple has made its most meaningful changes. Now sporting an M4 chip with an 8–core CPU and 9–core GPU, the iPad Air (2026) also offers faster Wi–Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 wireless connectivity via its N1 chip, with Wi–Fi + Cellular models also getting the same C1X modem as the latest iPad Pro and iPhone Air. Aside from that, the iPad Air line–up is largely unchanged. Prices start at $599 for a…

THE APPLE CREATOR STUDIO is a $12.99/month suite of professional–level apps that are designed to help you get creative with a wide range of media, from editing photographs and creating posters in Pixelmator Pro to turning a collection of clips into slickly color–graded social media posts in Final Cut Pro. Budding musicians can add a personalized score to their edited footage in Logic Pro, while video editors can enhance their edited Final Cut Pro productions with eye–catching (and customizable) animated title templates designed in Motion. We’ll also explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can speed up tedious tasks, such as making complex selections in clips. In this in–depth feature, we’ll show you how to mine your rich vein of unprocessed video and photo assets and turn them into "like–inducing" social media…

FOR YEARS, Mac window management was stubbornly manual, demanding endless dragging and resizing. Ironically, Microsoft showed Apple how it was done with Windows 7’s Aero Snap, which let you drag a window to a screen edge and have it instantly fill half the display. 15 years later, Apple finally caught up with macOS 15 Sequoia, adding a raft of snapping tools to the Window menu. But app developers had already stepped up. Moom ($15, https://manytricks.com) gave Mac users a better way to position windows exactly how they wanted. And today it’s more flexible and faster than Apple’s implementation, which has gappy layouts and excessive animations. Moom runs as a menu bar item, but you can change that in its settings. And if you want to transfer your configuration between Macs,…

IF YOU TELL yourself you’ve no time to exercise, Streaks Workout would like a word. It urges you to complete a daily workout, even if it only lasts a few minutes. Sessions comprise short exercises, none of which require equipment, so you can get fitter almost anywhere. Better still, Streaks Workout can be customized to suit your personal needs. Like a preset but not keen on a few built–in exercises? You can remove them. Prefer the same structured routine every day rather than randomized surprises? You can build that, too. The walkthrough assumes you’ve installed the app on your iPhone and linked it to Apple Health (the app will sync with its Apple Watch and Apple TV counterparts). Before starting, familiarize yourself with the exercises by tapping the button at…

APPLE WASN’T THE FIRST company to create a Bluetooth item tracker. The likes of Tile and Chipolo got there first. But, following the launch of the AirTag in 2021, Apple now has the lion’s share of the market. According to Parks Associates, 69% of people buying such a device in late 2024 snapped up Apple’s offering, pushing Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag into second place. With a new, second–generation AirTag, Apple’s share is set to rise even further, but how do these devices work? At heart, the technology is relatively simple. AirTags function as Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, sending out a secure signal. To preserve battery life, the signals are transmitted every three to five minutes, although they can be as frequent as every minute. How often they broadcast depends on their…

From $1,609 From www.apple.com Features Apple M5 Pro chip (18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine), 64GB memory (24/48/128GB available), 14.2in Liquid Retina XDR display (3024x1964), 4TB storage (1TB/2TB/8TB available) Wi-Fi 7 (aka 802.11be), Bluetooth 6, 3x Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, 1x HDMI port, MagSafe 3, 3.5mm headphone jack ALL THE THINGS THAT MAKE THE MACBOOK PRO THE KING OF APPLE LAPTOPS REMAIN WHEN APPLE UPDATED the MacBook Pro in October 2025, it did so only partially – the entry-level 14in was upgraded to the new M5 chip, leaving the M4 Pro and M4 Max versions in place. Now that’s changed. As of March 2026, you can now kit out a MacBook Pro 14in with a choice of M5, M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, or a 16in model with M5…

$4,999 From www.soundcore.com Features Triple laser DLP 4K projector (3840x 2160 resolution), 3,500 ANSI lumens brightness, 0.9:1–1.51: throw ratio, 1.2–7m screen size, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, 7.1.4–channel speaker system, Wi–Fi, Bluetooth EVERY COMPONENT IS STORED INSIDE THE CASE, INCLUDING A MULTI–SPEAKER SOUND SYSTEM SOUNDCORE’S LATEST PROJECTOR is by far the largest the company has made to date. A 72lb all–in–one system that aims to cover the audio and video needs not just of home users but also those showing to larger groups of people. At a shade under $5,000, it’s a serious investment, but it has an extensive and unique feature set to match — a heavyweight in more ways than one. As well as weighing in at 72.4 lbs, the Nebula X1 Pro is physically large at 30x17x13.5 inches,…

In 2008, Steve Jobs said that Apple would never enter the netbook market with a low–cost, portable Mac. “We don’t know how to build a sub–$500 computer that’s not a piece of junk,” he argued, and for years the company stuck to that position. But in March this year, it tore up its internal “rule book” to launch the MacBook Neo, and it’s already threatening to turn the budget laptop PC industry on its head. Adjusted for inflation, $500 equates to just over $750 today. The MacBook Neo retails from $599, and if you’re eligible for an education discount, the price tumbles to just $499. By positioning a Mac at this price point, Apple is entering a market that has for some time been dominated by economy Windows laptops, as…

WOULDN’T IT BE great if you could digitize your records? You’d save wear and tear on your precious vinyl collection, and you’d get all the convenience of AirPlay and more. The good news is you can, and you can do it with GarageBand. To get your records into GarageBand, you’ll need something that can translate the analog signal from your stylus into digital data that your Mac can understand. The simplest way to do that is to use a record player with a USB output — something that’s very common on modern turntables — but, if your player doesn’t support that, you’ll need to get hold of a phono preamp with a USB output. That takes the white and red RCA cables from your turntable, increases the signal level so…

UNDER MY ROOF is a home inventory app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that makes it easy to catalog all of the items in your home while allowing you to keep on top of day–to–day maintenance. It lets you go into great detail, adding images and descriptions along with prices and warranty information. You can also attach documents, manuals and receipts. By entering information about your property, policies, and details of repairs and modifications, you’ll begin to produce a comprehensive overview of your home. This will help with general management and any future insurance claims. All of your entries are synced via iCloud and a single subscription ($4.99/month) covers you across all devices. Without a sub, you’re limited to 10 entries. With the iPhone or iPad app, if your device…

From $1,099 From www.apple.com Features Apple M5 chip (10–core CPU, 8–core GPU, 16–core Neural Engine), 16GB unified memory (24/32GB available), 13.6in Liquid Retina display (2560x1664), 512GB storage (1TB/2TB/4TB available), Wi–Fi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 6, 2x Thunderbolt 4/USB–C ports, MagSafe 3 port, 3.5mm headphone jack THE LIQUID RETINA DISPLAY LOOKS GORGEOUS, AND BATTERY LIFE IS LEGENDARILY LONG TOO WITH THE ARRIVAL of the new MacBook Neo in March, the MacBook Air’s status as “the world’s most popular laptop” may not remain true for much longer. Luckily, there are still plenty of great reasons to choose this now mid–tier MacBook over Apple’s budget model — even if the changes here are relatively minor this time around. The MacBook Air (2026) now comes with Apple’s M5 chip, the same one as in the…

$6.99 From www.inklestudios.com Needs iOS/iPadOS 14 or later, iPhone or iPad with A12 Bionic chip or later IN TR–49, YOU are faced with a very old–fashioned computer, which has access to a dataset made up of books and journals. Enter a code using the charmingly clunky interface and, if there’s a record assigned, you’ll be taken there, as if using a microfiche machine. What you see may be only half readable, but there’s a chance you’ll pick up a trail to another code. Your notebook will fill with codes; the eventual aim is to track down and potentially destroy one particular book, though the game is about the journey, the piecing together of clues and the eureka moments along the way. THROUGH AN EYE FOR DETAIL AND LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS, YOU…

LIKE MANY APPLE fans, I’ve always felt that owning a Mac is as much about announcing that you own a Mac as it is about actually owning one. That’s part of the attraction, and the reason the Apple logo on a MacBook is designed to be the right way up for a person looking at you using it when it’s open. Even now, 50 years after the company was founded in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage in 1976, owning a Mac can still make you feel like you’re taking a more unique path. Like you’re one of the rebels Jobs spoke about in Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” campaign. “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes…” he famously remarked. Those words…