Table of contents for August 2015 in Macworld Australia

Over the last few weeks I’ve been following the changes Apple is delivering with the new Music app and Apple Music service, beta versions of El Capitan and iOS 9, and the new MacBook. At the same time, Microsoft has released the latest version of its Office suite for the Mac – a marked improvement on the previous version in my view. That’s a lot of change in a very short time. I wrote about some of this at macworld.com.au and received many comments – some of which we have shared in this month’s mail section starting on page 8. But the letter that really caught my eye came from Robert George and it’s had me thinking. How long should companies maintain reliable software? Is making useful and fun applications…

CLEANMYMAC 3.0 UTILITY MacPaw US$40; US$20 UPGRADE CleanMyMac 3 is the new version of MacPaw’s catch-all utility to scan your Mac and remove gigabytes of assorted kerfuffle and gunk that builds up over time. Like previous versions, CleanMyMac 3 wraps itself around a series of tests and services, and works to remove generally unused, developer-oriented, extraneous and backup files associated with your most commonly used applications that take up available disk space. CleanMyMac 3’s selection of tests has grown to add an uninstaller, general maintenance, online privacy functions and file shredder to its previous suite of tests. All of these tests can be customised and configured as needed with a better preference layout than CleanMyMac 2. Where a given test may tell you that you can save a certain number…

A big part of evaluating laptops is battery life. As the tests take so long, our reviews of the new MacBook, 13in MacBook Air and 13in Retina MacBook Pro appear without hard data for battery life. Battery life is one of the most common concerns readers have when Apple releases new laptops. It’s an important data point; no one wants to be stuck with a dry battery, and Apple uses batteries that are not user-replaceable. I ran two different battery tests on the new MacBook, 13in MacBook Air and 13in Retina MacBook Pro. The first test I ran produced results that jibed with Apple’s specification. The second test produced results that fell quite short, but there are a lot of factors that influence how long a battery can last. In…

! Avoiding the use of Flash Many web users hate the way Flash can either take over the way a web page works or start playing videos automatically. And there are the many security fixes that are issued adding another maintenance task for Mac users. David Turk wrote in with these solutions that use Safari’s settings rather than relying on the installation of a Flash-blocking plug-in. Option #1: Under Safari Preferences > Advanced you can stop plug-ins from automatically running to save power and create exemptions for sites you’re happy to use Flash by clicking the Details button. Option #2: Under Safari Preferences > Security we get deadly serious. Enable internet plug-ins and then fine-tune the settings for each site’s use of…

Not all technology is helpful. With Disney banning selfie sticks in its parks, citing safety concerns, what technology do you want to see banned? ANTHONY CARUANA I love art galleries but one thing that kills the experience is people holding up iPads to take photos, obscuring the view for everyone else. So – no iPad photography in museums. MADELEINE SWAIN Outright banning anything seems a little harsh, but Google Glass’ failure to achieve world domination certainly didn’t see me shed any tears. JAMUNA RAJ I’d like mobile phones banned at the dining table. MONIQUE BLAIR I would like to ban those power adapters that take up the space of two power point sockets, although only require one.…

VoIP IS READY FOR BUSINESS ANTHONY CARUANA Last month, in our feature on Setting Up a Business, we didn’t quite fit everything we wanted in. One of our readers pointed that out so we’ve added a special business feature in this month’s issue, covering VoIP services and what they mean for business. It’s little wonder telecommunications companies have been worried about their core business over recent years. Although the internet was a boon for launching new opportunities, it has become a threat to their existing business of landline phone calls. The upside of the internet, other than increasing our access to information and helping businesses connect to clients and suppliers, is that the landline telephone is no longer a business essential. It’s been replaced by VoIP. VoIP, or Voice over…

Ever since Apple debuted Siri as a virtual assistant with the release of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4s, folks have been asking her all manner of questions, serious and frivolous, in an effort to test just how smart Cupertino’s artificial intelligence technology really is. One of the more notorious examples was made public last year during the murder trial of a 20-year-old Florida man who reportedly told Siri, “I need to hide my roommate” and in return was given a list of potential places to get rid of a body, such as swamps, reservoirs, metal foundries and dumps. (The same inquiry now returns the cheeky response, “I used to be able to answer this question.”) I decided to sit down and put Siri through a battery of our own…

When you search in the Finder, you’re actually searching the Spotlight index on your disk; you just perform your searches from the Finder’s search field instead of the Spotlight menu. And when you move to the Finder, you have even more power to search. START A FINDER SEARCH There are several ways to access Spotlight in the Finder. You can open a Finder window and click in the search field at the top, or you can press Command-F to convert any open Finder window into a search window. You can also access the Finder window search after you’ve started a query in the Spotlight menu (useful if you’ve got too many results). Simply scroll down in the results list until you get to the bottom and click Show All in…

Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock Portable Macs, when compared to other notebook computers on the market, tend to have fewer ports. And, if you shift between working in an office with a screen, mouse and keyboard and travelling, then having a way to quickly connect all those peripherals can be a great convenience. Enter Elgato’s Thunderbolt 2 Dock. Like the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD on the next page, Elgato has created a device that can expand your Mac’s capability significantly with three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI connection, a pair of Thunderbolt 2 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet jack as well as audio connectivity. One of the USB ports, the separate audio connectors for speakers and a microphone are on the front of the unit. Connectivity to your Mac…

TOO MUCH ‘PROGRESS’ I was wondering if you could suggest what we may need to solve some current problems we are having with some websites and a situation whereby we are being informed that our OS X 10.6.8 is no longer supported. I am 78 and my partner is 85 years old and we both, like many in our generation, have limited knowledge with today’s high tech gizmos. However, in May 2011 we purchased a new 15in MacBook Pro and 21.5in iMac desktop. Our new computers were set up with OS Snow Leopard 10.6 and we have been very happy with this OS. At that time, we also purchased a game called Burning Monkey Solitaire 4. A few months later, Apple released the Lion OS, but we were advised that…

Apple gear tends to be pretty reliable, so it’s easy to become lulled into a false sense of security. But if you’re not regularly backing up important files from your computers, smartphones and tablets, then you could lose everything in a heartbeat. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that disasters only happen to other people. Between fire, flood, theft, natural disaster, virus, ransomware and plain old clumsiness, there’s no shortage of threats waiting to strike your computing devices and the precious files they hold. Even something as simple as a burst water pipe or power surge could see a house full of gadgets decimated, along with all your precious data. Think of a backup and recovery plan as an insurance policy for irreplaceable files like family photos and tax records,…

AMPLITUBE 4 FOR iPAD MUSIC IK Multimedia $12.99 I’ve just finished my first session with AmpliTube 4, IK Multimedia’s guitar modelling app and I’m impressed. The sound quality has improved, there’s a whole range of new gear available and some great new features. The redesigned interface, with crystal clear graphics, makes it easier to believe I’m using the real thing. AmpliTube 4 comes with five amplifier styles and 11 stomp box effects. I can customise my sound even further by choosing from five speaker cabinet setups and two microphones, which I can position to suit. A redesigned signal chain lets me place up to four effects prior to the amp stage, which then runs through the cabinet and mic setup. I can finish off with two more effects. If I…

A strange thing has happened with our storage. Despite the plummeting cost per gigabyte of most types of storage, the amount of disk space we have built-in to our devices has diminished. At first, this was driven by the rise of SSD (solid state drive) with its faster performance but price premium. But the availability of cloud-based storage means we are no longer reliant on keeping all our data locally. The trouble is, we often need lots of secure, on-site storage that can be easily accessed by a number of people in the office. We also need an easily accessed backup location. That’s where a NAS (network attached storage) device comes into play. The Western Digital EX1200 is part of the company’s My Cloud Expert series range of networked storage…