Inhaltsverzeichnis für March 2020 in APC

On page 28 we have a review of the Surface Pro X, which some say is sort of the unpopular stepchild of the Surface family. I’ve been using one for the last month myself so wanted to chuck in some personal perspective of what this device is – and isn’t. This machine is fighting a perception and viable use-case war on several fronts. It’s up against the iPad Pro in many ways, and with that comes fiery fanboy arguments in comments sections and forums as it’s discussed. Secondly, it’s also being stacked up against the ‘proper’ Surface machines running a 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU. Meanwhile it’s fending of a flanking attack from the ‘small-Surface’ – the Go – which offers competing portability. Its Venn diagram also overlaps with Chromebooks.…

Raspberry Pi, the popular single-board computers for makers, is getting an open-source version of the Vulkan graphics driver, The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced. Vulkan is a cross-platform API that’s supposed to enable improved graphics performance no matter what hardware it’s running on. Companies like AMD, ARM, Intel and Nvidia have all released drivers that support the API; now the Raspberry Pi Foundation will follow in those companies’ footsteps.…

Not long ago I stumbled across Google Photos in my web browser. When I dared click on it, what unfolded was an archive of thousands of my smartphone photos – all ‘online’ and not, as I had thought, secured on my smartphone. My initial shock soon gave way to a kind of fatefulness – I must have volunteered to use Google Photos at some point in the past, whether deliberately or otherwise. And yet, I couldn’t remember when. Given my general antipathy towards cloud services, and especially Google cloud services, I couldn’t imagine ever willingly sending pictures of my kids into the clutches of Google. And yet... Google Photos is a cloud service that, once opted into (whether deliberately or not!), will automatically pull smartphone photos into the cloud. The…

A beloved old feature returns to the MacBook Pro: It starts with M-a-g. If you guessed MagSafe, we have disappointing news, but if you said “Magic Keyboard,” we have the teardown for you. It’s the all-new, butterfly-less, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and we’re here to turn it inside-out. MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 16-inch LED-backlit IPS Retina display with True Tone, 3072x1920 resolution (226 ppi) ■ 2.6GHz six-core Intel Core i7 and AMD Radeon Pro 5300M ■ 16GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 SDRAM, plus 512GB SSD ■ 100Wh battery, six-speaker sound system, and high-performance microphone array KEY FINDINGS ■ Remember the iMac’s Magic Keyboard? It’s a well-liked, reliable design that Apple calls the “core technology” for the redesigned keyboard in this new machine; side by side, we’re hard-pressed to spot any differences. Scissor…

Dell has taken the All-in-One PC concept a step further with a new Dell Optiplex 7070, a PC that takes the shape of a monitor stand. Offering the option to pair the computer with whatever monitor you want without increasing the overall footprint, this PC is an awesome solution for the space conscious amongst us. But while it’s conveniently compact, is it actually too small to be broadly useful as a desktop PC? Before we get into the guts of it, it’s worth taking a quick look at how it all fits together. Basically you have a 26 x 10 x 2.6 centimetre PC brick that can either be slotted into an accompanying VESA compatible monitor stand or attached to the back of an existing display using a seperate, included…

The external hard drive market isn’t the fastest developing area of tech, so when something like a new USB specification comes along it can entirely change the landscape. The USB 3.2 spec was announced back in February 2019, but WD’s Black P50 Game Drive is the first external SSD we’ve seen to actually make use of it, so it’s kind of a big deal. There are a couple of things that stop today’s external hard drives from reaching the 2,000MB/s plus read and write speeds you see internal SSDs getting, but the main bottleneck is the type of connection. External SSDs generally use a SATA 3 (6Gbps) connection to communicate with your computer, which means you aren’t able to get much above 500MB/s read and write speeds. Samsung took a…

Gamers have had a lot of reading to do to help them determine the best graphics cards to buy in the midrange market. The last few months have seen the release of Nvidia’s 1600-series Super cards, AMD’s RX 5500 XT and now we have another disruptive entry to add to the mix, the RX 5600 XT. The 5600 XT is a very interesting card indeed, and one that AMD believes is the one that can cause arguably the biggest mid-range realignment of this generation. Let’s see if it holds up to this promise. The RX 5600 XT is equipped with the Navi 10 GPU, with clock speeds and memory spec being the primary differences between it and the more expensive RX 5700. Both cards include 2,304 shader processors. Strangely, AMD…

Since very early in the history of Linux, people who wanted access to both Linux and Windows had the option of installing both OSes on a single drive. This dual boot arrangement would start with a Windows install, resize the main Windows partition, install Linux, and then GRUB (Linux’s Grand Unified Bootloader) would give you a nice menu where you could choose Windows or Linux. In theory this should still work well nowadays, but since Windows 8, Microsoft’s boot manager and recovery partition structure have become much more complicated. And sometimes it all goes wrong. This might be GRUB failing to install correctly (which could deny the user access to both Linux and Windows), or it could be GRUB failing to get the parameters correct for Windows, making it unbootable.…

Once you’ve rebooted into your new OS, you’ll be prompted to connect any online accounts to your Pop!_OS desktop. This can, for example, allow you to access your Google Drive documents from the file manager, receive Facebook and Instagram notifications on the desktop (we don’t know why anyone would want to do this), or connect your email accounts. Pop!_OS uses the Gnome desktop (albeit with its own stylings and flourishes), which is quite different to Windows, or indeed many other desktops. However, it’s still pretty easy to find your way around once you get used to things such as the lack of taskbar (and also no minimise window buttons) and maybe learn some keyboard shortcuts. It’s also thoroughly customisable through extensions, but we recommend getting used to things before trying…

If you look on the shortcut bar you’ll see a launcher for the Terminal application. This emulates an old-school computer terminal, where in days of yore you’d interface with the machine using abstruse commands typed on a monochrome screen. This way of operating continues to this day, and with good reason – pretty much anything you can do through a graphical program can be done via the terminal, and, if you know the commands, can often be done far more efficiently or automated with scripts. There was a time when it would be foolhardy to attempt to use Linux without some knowledge of command line incantations, but for regular desktop usage it’s no longer a requirement. Still, if you’ve ever played around with Command Prompt, Powershell or have fond memories…

Where are we with laptop GPUs? The Max-Q variants of GTX and RTX cards mean that Nvidia has the market cornered for discrete laptop graphics, retooling existing GPUs with lower thermal power design and quieter operating volumes, typically in exchange for slightly lower clock speeds. Max-Q models of the newer Super GPUs are nowhere to be seen, although the technology is there. The Super GPUs use existing architecture, which means that adapting them for laptops should be straightforward, but they’ve yet to be ratified at the time of writing. There’s a small chance that Nvidia will skip the Super generation for laptops, going straight for Max-Q versions of its next-generation chips. There’s no news on Intel GPUs in compact formats for laptops, and we’re not prepared to speculate; news on…

Will 2020 be the year OLED tech finally makes the leap from HDTVs to the PC? Save for one exception, very likely not. OLED technology is already becoming more available in laptops, and that trend will continue. But desktop PC monitors? Not so much. In fact, we’re not totally convinced that’s ever going to happen on a significant scale. Instead, we suspect the desktop PC monitor market may skip OLED and jump straight to micro LED, whose superior stability lends itself far better to PC apps, which tend to have persistent interface elements, like the Windows taskbar. Problem is, micro LED is still in the R&D and very early commercialisation phase. It’s not coming to mainstream TVs in 2020, let alone monitors. What you can expect is improvement of LCD…

1 OPEN ACTIVITY MONITOR Activity Monitor is provided as part of macOS and lives in the Utilities folder inside Applications. To open it quickly, just press command-Space bar to launch Spotlight, type ‘activity’ and, when it comes up, press return. 2 LOOK AROUND THE SYSTEM On the left, you’ll see all the processes running on your Mac. You’ll recognise some of these as apps, with their icons. Others will be more obscure. Pick Windowed Processes from the View menu to see only apps. 3 BROWSE FOR INFO Click the Process Name column header to put everything in alphabetical order, or another heading to sort by what resources each process is using. Click the Disk tab at the top to see what’s accessing storage. 4 SPOT THE SLOWCOACH Click the CPU…

WHAT DOES A FLASHING QUESTION MARK ON STARTUP MEAN? Your Mac can’t find a drive to boot macOS from. The first thing to do is wait, because occasionally a minor problem causes this to happen as a one-off. If the Mac eventually starts up, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and select your startup drive. If not, try Recovery (see ‘How do I use Recovery to get my Mac working again’, below right). COULD RESETTING THE NVRAM OR SMC HELP TO SOLVE MY PROBLEM? Inside every Mac made since 2006 are two components that manage system settings: NVRAM and the SMC. Nonvolatile RAM (along with PRAM, parameter RAM) stores things like your startup disk selection, screen resolution, time zone and sound volume. The system management controller (SMC) deals with…

IS THERE A WAY TO CHECK MY MAC FOR HARDWARE PROBLEMS? Hardware faults are relatively rare, but if you can’t find the cause of a problem elsewhere, use the built-in Apple Diagnostics. First shut the Mac down (don’t just put it to sleep) and disconnect everything except power, keyboard, mouse, display and internet. Turn it on and immediately hold the D key until you’re asked to choose a language. Apple Diagnostics then takes a couple of minutes to do its work, and lets you know the verdict. HOW CAN I REPAIR ERRORS ON MY STARTUP DRIVE, SINCE DISK UTILITY CAN’T? It can’t carry out repairs on the drive you’re running macOS from, so start up from Recovery and select Disk Utility. You can now look at your startup drive. If…

WHAT CAN I DO IF MY MACBOOK’S BATTERY IS GIVING UP THE GHOST? It’s obvious when your MacBook’s battery starts to struggle: it runs down faster, then might charge erratically. These symptoms can have other causes, so try resetting the SMC. To check the battery, option-click the Apple menu and go to System Information > Power. Compare the cycle count to bit.ly/ apple-battcycnote , which lists the design life for each model. If it’s well under its limit, suspect something else is up; but if you’ve eliminated other problems and the battery is failing early, Apple will normally replace it free, in line with your consumer rights. If the battery is at the end of its natural life, it’ll cost $189-$289 to swap it out: see support. apple.com/en-au/mac/repair/service. Other repair…

500GB Sabrent Rocket M.2 PCIe SSD $275, SABRENT.COM Sabrent’s Rocket SSD is one of the more affordable Gen4 M.2 drives available on the market at the moment. Right at the moment it’s a part you need to order from overseas, but it’s readily available on amazon.com.au. We hope local distribution kicks in soon, though. The overall performance is as crazy-fast as we’ve come to expect from Gen4 SSDs, topping out at around 5,000MB/s in sequential write speeds. With 500GB capacity and a Phison memory controller, this drive is a steal right now.…

1 DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL TO DO The Microsoft To Do app is available for free download in the Microsoft Store. Launch the Store app from the Start menu or taskbar shortcut, search for “Microsoft To Do” and click the Install button. You should be automatically signed into your Microsoft account the first time you launch the app, but if not you can do it manually – this helps with synchronisation between devices. 2 CREATING LISTS Lists are at the heart of To Do, and you can create one by clicking the New list button label in the left-hand panel. Type a name for the list to make it easier to identify when you later create more. Click the ‘…’ button to the upper right, and you can choose a colour…

With the soaring popularity of the Linux CLI – with even new users willing to embrace what was once considered the exclusive domain of power users – it is perhaps time to create a list of rules of the terminal. The next two pages will convince you why the most obvious first rule must be: If it exists, it’s possible to do it from the terminal. No exceptions! You occasionally need to take a break from news and work and check in with your peers and friends on one of the popular social media services. But can you do that from the confines of a terminal, so as to not reveal your lack of decorum to your boss and colleagues? TERMINAL REDDIT The self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” is…

The Raspberry Pi has disrupted many markets, and one of those is home media. The way we watch media has changed, with online streaming being a key market, that is enjoying explosive growth at the moment, largely thanks to investment in programmes by services such as Netflix. But humble optical media (DVD and Blu-ray) is still popular among home users. Why? Because it means we can have a physical copy that can never be taken from us – unlike streaming services, that can drop content based on licence agreements or just because no one’s watching it or they simply go out of business and you lose all access to the content you have paid for. For the home cinema enthusiast a central repository for all of their content can be…

Actor Peter Cushing passed away in 1994, yet his return as Governor Tarkin in the 2016 Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One showed just how far CGI (computer-generated imagery) had come over the last few decades. However, it also shows how far machine-learning has advanced in the last few years that you no longer need Hollywood-levels of cash to create fictional videos that so convincingly manipulate their subjects into saying or doing things they haven’t. The ramifications for society could be huge – and ‘deepfakes’ have captured the attention of everyone from governments to ‘big tech’. THE RISE OF ‘DEEPFAKES’ Deepfakes are fictional videos created using a form of machine learning called ‘deep learning’ that place and manipulate the face of one person as if it belongs to another. But…

$19.35 | PC, SWITCH | VERTEXPOP.COM It was pretty much love at first sight with Super Crush KO, which reminded me of Steven Universe and Scott Pilgrim and Sayonara Wild Hearts. But this is all surface-level attraction, based on appearance and assumption – the kind that quickly fades. Sorry to say, this isn’t going to be a love story. Peel back the impeccable presentation and underneath you’ll find a straightforward 2D brawler. Armed with the laser gun and a selection of punches, kicks and dashes, you move left to right, clearing screen after screen of robotic nasties. But Super Crush KO’s action lacks zest. As gorgeous as the art is, in motion it’s never quite as smooth as you’d hope. Your character feels a little like one of those paper…

FREE | PC, MAC, LINUX | SECURAS.ITCH.IO/ SEALEDBITE After being bitten by a werewolf, you, a mute traveller, gains the ability to ping through the air, providing there happens to be an enemy nearby. Hold the attack button down and time slows to a crawl, as you select your victim, and then you teleport to their position. You generally use the power to clear large gaps, or to ascend to distant platforms, but it was so satisfying to execute that I found myself using it on pretty much every enemy I came across. Sealed Bite nails its platforming movement, providing you with plenty of tough jumping puzzles as you explore, and backtrack, around its compact world. But where a game like Celeste has been engineered to perfection, this is a…

I placed hotdog stands too close to the entrance of my rollercoaster and now people are puking on the sidewalk. My janitors are threatening to strike because they can’t clean the puke up fast enough, but I chose to install bathroom security cameras to stop kids from setting off stink bombs instead. My janitors strike. The puke festers on the ground. People puke from the puke. No one ever said running a theme park was easy. SimCoaster (known outside Australia and the United States as Theme Park Inc) tests your ability to play PR, HR, marketer, and designer at the same time. You not only have to manage a robust employee roster of gardeners, security guards, janitors, engineers, and entertainers, but you also have to monitor guest satisfaction with every…

ISSUE 478, MARCH 2020 Please note that these exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 24/02/2020 to 12/4/2020 ELIMINATE PESKY STORAGE HOGS REMOVE WITH NO TRACE, WITH ASHAMPOO UNINSTALLER 7. FULL VERSION WORTH $40 Ashampoo UnInstaller 7 makes it easy to install, test and uninstall applications. Unwanted software, browser extensions and toolbars are gone from your hard disk in just a few clicks! Never before has installation monitoring for leftover-free uninstallations been so extensive and easy to use. Even legacy applications installed prior to UnInstaller can be completely removed thanks to in-depth cleaning! Finally, the innovative super-fast snapshot feature helps you track all system modifications with ease and clarity. DOWNLOAD LINK: www.ashampoo.com/lpa/apc WEED OUT THE SPIES REMOVE TRACKERS WITH ABELSSOFT GCLEAN. FULL VERSION WORTH $26 GClean…

The company has invited “gamers, security researchers, and others around the world to help identify security vulnerabilities in the Xbox Live network and services and share them with the Xbox team.” Microsoft will pay between US$500 and US$20,000 via the program based on the severity of a reported vulnerability. It’s believed Microsoft is looking for high quality reports on critical vulnerabilities that enable remote code execution attacks.…

A leaked Chromebook spotted by Chrome Unboxed and codenamed “Mushu” may fall into Intel’s Project Athena program, and it seems that device includes its own dedicated graphics processor. It’s not clear at present which chipmaker is behind the GPU, although AMD and Nvidia are obviously the likely candidates. This would be a first for Chromebooks, and could deliver a new level of performance that the form factor has yet to see – particularly when it comes to gaming. Existing Chromebooks, even on the premium end of the spectrum, will only be able to handle running a small number of games from the already reduced library of Steam games readily supported on Linux. That equation will change with a dedicated graphics processor. And, depending on how well Valve and Google get…

Although not yet available in Australia, Nvidia’s GeForce Now game-streaming platform recently landed in other global markets. It’s the first service that allows you to stream your own games from Steam, Epic and other services, and play them with ray tracing and at a locked 60fps. What that means is you’ll be able to stream games on their highest settings on relatively low-powered hardware.…

INSTA360 ONE R A moddable 360 action camera that can be a straight shooter if you want. $750 | INSTA360.COM Insta360’s new One R is an appealing proposition for anyone looking to get into 360 video, since it works well as both a regular 4K action camera and a 360 degree shooter. It does this by having separate lens and battery modules that can be swapped out for different 2D or 3D video capture. The Insta360 One R comes with water resistance to five meters and includes a new screen that is small, but can be flipped to face you while shooting. In 2D the One R can shoot up to 4K 60fps and for 360 degree shots you’ll get a pre-stitched 5.7K spherical video that you can import and…

In the first days of 2020, following the death of Iranian military commander General Qassem Solemani in an airstrike near Bhagdad, it became obvious that Donald Trump’s campaign was working closely with Facebook to manage the narrative around the assassination. In addition to running 590 new advertisements to praise the President’s actions regarding the airstrike, Facebook also seemingly helped promote Trump’s native content, with the POTUS taking out the top five spots for the most interacted with content containing the word ‘Iran’ on the site. With a collective total of 4.1 million interactions, the President’s direct commentary on the event overshadowed all the major news outlet’s posts on the situation, meaning that Trump’s unvetted words were the primary source of information for large portions of the population. While this might…

Last month we looked at affordable APUs; this time, we’re going in the opposite direction, and pitting the biggest and baddest CPUs around against each other. These are the high-end desktop parts, the big boys, the costly but high-powered processors that many of us will never even hold in our hands. These CPUs have more cores, higher clock speeds, and monstrous power draws compared to your average desktop processor, making short work of CPU-heavy tasks and benchmarks. But which one is best? Let’s take a look. 1 Value Which of these HEDT processors is the best value? Well, it’s not the new Threadripper. Yes, the 3970X has some entertainingly over-the-top specs and tends to top most benchmarking tables, but if you thought the second-gen Threadrippers were pricey, the 3980X commands…

Microsoft’s newest attempt at an ARM-based Surface Pro device could have been impressive as well. It even boasts Microsoft’s first-ever original processor, the SQ1, which it co-developed with Qualcomm. However, it unfortunately falls short of expectations. We’re more than a little let down by a few key Pro X design choices. Particularly, this tablet/laptop hybrid doesn’t have an audio jack, and its battery life, while decent, is subpar compared to predecessors and contemporaries. And, that’s without getting into the pricing. $1,699 gets you 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. You can double the storage, which brings the price to $2,149, and up the RAM to 16GB with a 512GB SSD, which costs $2,899. It’s simply too pricey for this level of performance. All Surface Pro X models include Microsoft’s…

We were very impressed with the SN550’s predecessor. It offered tremendous value for money, though it wasn’t the fastest drive around. The new SN550 we have for review here is faster on paper, while offering the same value. That alone makes it a worthy contender in a highly competitive marketplace. The WD Blue SN500 is a standard form factor M.2 2280 (80mm length) NVMe drive that makes use of a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. A look at the PCB reveals a distinct lack of components, an indicator that modern SSDs are becoming cheaper than ever to manufacture. It would be very easy for WD to release a 2242 size drive if it chose to. The SN550 makes use of Western Digital’s latest 96 layer TLC NAND. The use of TLC,…

Back in the January issue of APC we took a look at how faster monitors have been shown to significantly improve response times in fast paced games like competitive first person shooters. In addition to displaying opponents changing positions on the screen more quickly, it also helps players track targets and reduces distracting artefacts like ghosting and screen tearing, in what adds up to a better kill-to-death ratio for anyone using screens faster than 180fps. Improving your performance is a metric that any serious gamer is likely to take note of, so Samsung’s new 27-inch curved gaming monitor is worth consideration for anyone looking to improve their gaming performance. Obviously the most notable feature of this screen is the 240Hz refresh rate – a speed that means there’s only a…

FREE (OFFERS IN-APP PURCHASES) | BAREBONES.COM | NEEDS MACOS 10.14.2 OR LATER 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 and code in a variety of languages. It’s packed with features, and its preferences pane has so many options it has a search field. BBEdit 13, though, follows BBEdit 12.5 in emphasising accessibility – in the sense of unlocking the app’s power. The older release debuted a Lorem Ipsum generator and the Commands command – effectively a BBEditspecific Spotlight that gives keyboard-based access to menu commands like clippings and open files. The latest update further boosts productivity by way of entry points into powerful find-and-replace functions, and the grep system used to pattern…

There was a time when just using Linux required a superhuman intellect and possibly alliances with dark wizards in order to avoid catastrophe – and installing it even more so. If you didn’t have these, it wasn’t all that much use as a desktop operating system because there wasn’t much in the way of desktop software (in the sense of fully featured apps), and it broke all the time. Windows wasn’t much better, of course, but for some reason people accepted it. Perhaps because it ran Microsoft Office. Fast forward 20 years and things couldn’t be more different. Okay, there’s still no Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop (more on running Windows apps later), and you still can’t lay out a premium-quality magazine that stands the test of time with Linux…

1 BACK UP AND BOOT This won’t be touching your Windows install, but backing up is a good call. Write the Pop!_OS ISO file to a USB stick and boot that. Your BIOS may require some persuasion to boot from another device – often pressing F10 or F12 will give you a handy boot menu. 2 LOCALISE Choose your language, keyboard layout and location. Select the Clean install option if you’re following our sage advice and installing Pop!_OS on its own device (or use the Custom option if you want to sort out your own partitioning arrangement). Select the drive that you’re going to wipe and hit the big red Erase And Install button. 3 INSTALL If you want drive encryption, enter a passphrase now. The install should be swift…

1 ACTIVITIES Click here, press the Super (Windows) key, or just send the cursor purposefully to the top-left to bring up the activities view. From here you can see open applications and switch between them. 2 SHORTCUTS This shows frequently used and currently open (denoted by a dot) applications. You can pin an open application to the shortcut bar by right-clicking and selecting Add To Favourites. 3 SHOW APPLICATIONS Click here to see all of the applications that you currently have installed. You can create folders to group any applications together simply by dragging icons on top of one another. 4 SETTINGS Clicking here will open a menu where you can control audio volumes, select networks (including VPNs), as well as log out of and shut down the machine. 5…

DDR5: Where did it go? The original blueprints for the next stage of RAM were published by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council way back in 2017, and while JEDEC had hoped to have the standard for DDR5 released for public use by 2018, as of the time of writing, the details are still being finalised. The potential performance increases offered by DDR5 are significant. Lower voltage requirements and increased memory speed are some of the improvements here, along with the addition of onboard voltage regulators within each DIMM stick. This would mean that motherboards would no longer require their own voltage regulators for the memory subsystem, although what this means for motherboard and RAM pricing is unclear right now. Some manufacturers have been eager to show off their early…

The great thing about Apple products is that they just work, right? Well, most of the time, yes, that’s right (thankfully). But what happens if your Mac simply doesn’t want to play ball? Is your Mac refusing to start up? Has the display gone all stripey? Or is it switching on okay but being really slow to respond? Your first thought may be to go online (on another device, of course) and book an appointment with an Apple Genius. Or arrange for an Apple Support call. Obviously, these guys are the experts – and it’s fantastic that us Apple fans have these reassuring services to hand. But you could spend a while on the phone explaining the issue or you may not be able to book a Genius Bar appointment…

I CREATED A FILE, BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? When you lose track of something, just press command-Space bar to launch Spotlight and type all or part of the sensible file name you gave it… or failing that, any text you think would be in the document. Scroll through the results and double-click the one you want, or press the down arrow key down to it and press return. WHAT IF I STILL CAN’T SEEM TO FIND THAT PESKY FILE? In a Finder window, go to the drive the file should be on, or ideally the folder it should be in. In the search box (command-F), enter part of the file name or content. In the bar below, select the drive or folder (not This Mac). Too many results…

1 START UP IN SAFE MODE To start your Mac in safe mode, restart or turn it on and immediately hold up arrow until the Apple logo appears, then a login window (try a wired keyboard if necessary). Release the up arrow key and log in to the Finder. 2 CHECK AND RESTART You can run Disk Utility from here, or check your kexts in Terminal (see above). Restart normally. If you still get the problem, restart in safe mode and go to your user account in System Preferences > Users & Groups. 3 EXCLUDE LOGIN ITEMS On the Login Items tab, make a note of the items, then select each and click ‘–’ to remove it. Restart. If it’s fixed, you can add back login items one at a…

WHAT DOES ICLOUD PHOTOS DO, AND SHOULD I USE IT? In iOS’ Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos and in macOS Catalina’s Photos > Preferences, what used to be iCloud Photo Library is now just called iCloud Photos. If you activate iCloud Photos in iOS, all your photos are kept online until your iCloud storage fills up. To buy more, go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Manage Storage > Change Storage Plan, or in macOS’ System Preferences go to Apple ID (or iCloud) and click Manage. On your Mac, tick iCloud Photos to upload all photos from your Mac in the same way (tick ‘Copy items to the Photos library’ in Photos > Preferences > General to include newly imported pics) and display all iCloud…

With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) over for another year it’s always fascinating to see what new products and technologies companies are coming up with to sell to us. And despite the show being focused on mainstream consumer products, it’s always good to see what new products get snuck in and shown off for the PC industry. This year it didn’t disappoint. SAMSUNG FINALLY DOES PCIE 4.0 The most exciting thing from Samsung’s booth was a first look at its upcoming 980 Pro SSD. While Samsung is not the first to get on the PCIe 4.0 bandwagon, it’s instantly the biggest player in the segment. To this point, all PCIe 4.0 SSDs have shipped with a controller from a company called Phison, which did a quick and simplistic job of…

HARDWARE LAPTOP FAN TOO LOUD Yesterday, I left my laptop running while on charge while I went for dinner. When I came back around 90 minutes later its fan was running extremely fast and loud, while the bottom of the laptop was very hot. I shut down my PC, and today it’s working fine. Is it due to overcharging? Fros Vonex The fan will run hard and the laptop feel hot whenever it’s running under load – in other words, some intensive process in running in the background. Should the problem reappear, open Task Manager and use the Processes tab to review the CPU and Memory scores – if either is over 50% then click the column header to see which app or process is responsible for the problem. Closing…

Screen Time, Apple’s tool for checking the amount of hours you spend staring at a screen has been around since iOS 12, and it’s now made its way to the Mac. That means you can not only configure it from your Mac, but can include usage of the Mac, and any other Mac running macOS Catalina that’s linked to your Apple ID, in the calculation of total screen time. In addition to monitoring how much time you spend in different apps, you can schedule downtime; set limits for apps, groups of apps, and websites; and use Family Sharing to set these limits up for your children. By grouping certain apps, you can ensure that you or your children can only use a device to work or study, say, rather than…

Ninja allegedly made US$20-30 million by moving to Mixer That should keep him stocked up on hair dye for decades. Last year, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins ditched Twitch for Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer. In 2018, he was making US$500,000 a month on Twitch. According to CNN Business, that sum amounts to between US$20 and US$30 million to move to Mixer. His wealth has grown to the point where he can be pretty dismissive about losing tens of thousands of dollars, which he apparently does whenever he spends time doing interviews or events instead of streaming to his subscribers. When he participated in the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am in 2018, more than 40,000 subscribers left him, simply because he was away for two days. According to Justin Warden, CEO of a talent management…

FREE | PC | THELADYVICTORIA.ITCH.IO/ TORIPON Your home has been invaded by birds. The upbeat music, jaunty colour scheme, and general cuteness of the birds suggests you’ve invited them here on purpose, and that they’re perfectly happy to flap about inside your flat. Naturally, you take pictures of your feathered friends and post them on social media. There are three phases to this laid-back photography game. The first is exploration, as you search for birds that are doing interesting things. You might find a duck taking a bath, or a cute bird hitching a ride on a roving Roomba hoover. You’ll want to whip out your phone and take a photo of these adorable scenes, and luckily that’s the entire point of the game. The next step is to mine…

Atari themed hotels to open across the US There’s a new kind of gaming tower in town. Atari has long since been a cherished relic of gaming history and while it had a crack at revitalisation in 2018 with a successful crowdfunding campaign for a retro-looking console that should begin shipping this year, the company and its aesthetic has largely remained frozen in the 80s. This seems to be a big part of the appeal for one hospitality developer, who bought a licence to build eight Atari-themed hotels across the USA. In addition to all the usual things hotels contain, each of the Atari buildings will be designed with a dedicated eSports arena and a retro gaming arcade. Qanon supporters accuse Bill Gates of masterminding coronavirus outbreak CORONAVIRUS NOMENCLATURE IS…

After Windows 7 entered its End of Life phase on January 14, 2020, Microsoft was clearly hoping that people would ditch its old operating system and upgrade to Windows 10 en masse, and the latest report by NetMarketShare does suggest some movement — but perhaps not in the numbers Microsoft was banking on. The report shows a slight dip in Windows 7 market share, dropping from 29.57% from December to 25.60% in January, and Windows 10 has seen a proportionate increase, climbing from 53.36% to 57.08%. The fact that there was such a modest shift is a bit concerning for Microsoft, plus, as we move away from the date of Windows 7’s End of Life, publicity around it will fade, which means we could see fewer people being persuaded to…

Adata’s Chairman Simon Chen hopes that growing demand for memory products will resume by June if the latest health scare is contained. That’s despite concerns about Coronavirus impacting Q1 demand. According to DigiTimes, Chen said that although he expects the outbreak to hurt Q1 numbers for physical retailers, large growth from online retailers will drive higher prices. NAND prices have climbed 30-40% since Q4 2019, DigiTimes said.…

If you’ve already flicked through this issue, you may have seen our Radeon RX 5600 XT review on page 34. It’s a good card, and it’s very competitive in its price range. You might also have heard how AMD released a BIOS update just prior to the launch in order to boost performance. From a reviewer’s point of view, this kind of last minute change is not ideal, but what matters is how such a change is received by end users. Some reviewers decided to really blast AMD for the late change, something I feel was overblown. As the reviewer of the card for APC, I wasn’t thrilled with the late change but my concerns were based around how such changes appear to the public. Is it AMD being shady?…

The Spectre x360 is HP’s long standing ultrabook convertible, pitched at professionals who want all the pro perks that you can fit into a 13-inch foldable form factor. This year’s update undoubtedly delivers on the same ethos... even if it does cut a couple of corners. Literally. Both the x360’s hinge edge corners have been lopped off so the power button and USB-C charging port sit at a more convenient 45-degree angle from all edges. It also features a new 13.3-inch 4K AMOLED touchscreen that can turn pixels off entirely to produce deeper blacks and a much more vibrant picture. The OLED panel makes it look amazing when playing media and the screen has a Delta E colour variation of less than two, so you’ll be able to use the…

AMD has thrown down the gauntlet with the third round of Threadripper, delivering many of the fastest benchmark results I’ve ever seen. Intel’s response is telling. It slashed prices on its 10th-gen Cascade Lake-X parts. It’s still not enough – at least, not if you’re after maximum multithreaded performance. AMD and Intel have now swapped positions in terms of pricing, with the Threadripper 3970X occupying Intel’s former three-grand slot. At least the platform and hardware justify the cost. At times, the performance of the 3970X is mind-blowing. Anyone dabbling in 3D rendering will love how fast it is. Cinebench completes its baseline test in a matter of seconds – we remember waiting several minutes just a few years ago on some PCs. The same goes for other tools, such as…

Like its bigger brother the KC2000, Kingston’s new A2000 uses a Silicon Motion controller and Micron’s 96L TLC flash. However, the SSD’s controller limits performance to about 2.2/2.0GB/s read/write, which results in lower pricing. The drive still performs well, has a long warranty, and also features heavy-duty hardware encryption options that also offset the more conservative performance specifications. The combination of features makes Kingston’s A2000 a formidable entry-level M.2 NVMe SSD. With a four-channel Silicon Motion SM2263EN PCIe NVMe controller and Micron’s latest 96L TLC powering it, it has got a lot of fight in it. Need to load up your favorite games fast? Easy. Want to host multiple virtual machines? Not a problem. Edit high bit-rate video? It should be a piece of cake with the A2000. The A2000…

I›n 2020 ray tracing is going to be huge in games. Already we’re seeing PC games like Control, Battlefield V, and Metro Exodus making phenomenal use of this technique, which allows developers to render objects and environments in near-photorealistic quality in real time, dramatically increasing the fidelity of modern games. Shadows, reflections, refractions – thanks to ray tracing, artists can now display game worlds with a level of fidelity that was previously not possible. Ray tracing is the new holy grail for game graphics, and the results speak for themselves. Even Minecraft’s blocky voxel style is being updated for ray tracing, and it looks amazing – soon all the major AAA PC releases are going to embrace this technology. ASUS is making ray tracing possible for PC gamers with its…

FREE (IN-APP PURCHASES) | AGENDA.COM NEEDS IOS 11 OR LATER Agenda for iOS takes Notes, Calendar and Reminders, and makes them even better. Like its desktop sibling it enables you to organise your notes into categories and projects; to assign them to dates in the past, present, or future; and to see what’s coming up on your agenda. And like the desktop version, almost all of its key features are free. The premium version beefs up the Calendar and Reminders integration, adds more export options, and gives you some more customisation options. This eighth incarnation of the iOS app boasts three key new features: drawing tools, document scanning, and Dark Mode support – with an additional black theme for OLED displays. The first of the three brings you the same drawing…

We heartily recommend playing in the live environment before installing Pop!_OS. Your starting point is the official site at https://system76.com/pop for downloads. Try Demo Mode from the installer (this option appears after you’ve selected your language, etc.). You can get a feel for how Pop!_OS works and can even add software to it. There’s a small caveat though: you may run into boot problems if you have very new Nvidia graphics hardware, or very obscure Nvidia graphics. In this case you’ll want to grab the Nvidia flavoured Pop!_OS ISO from https://system76. com/pop. The vanilla version includes the open source Nouveau driver (as well as FOSS drivers for AMD and Intel hardware), which is fine for desktop usage and has great hardware support. For gaming though, you’ll want Nvidia’s proprietary driver.…

For a long time, Ubuntu was the gold standard for beginner distros. It’s still a great choice, but over the years there have been decisions (some of which have been undone) that have caused consternation among the community. Pop, while still being an Ubuntu-based OS, differs from its progenitor in a few key areas. Perhaps the most relevant today is that it doesn’t use Wayland, the new graphics protocol the Gnome desktop environment has been championing. Pop sticks with the tried and tested X.org display server for now. The people at Pop are “evaluating [Wayland’s] readiness” and will offer it when they feel it’s worthy of their users. “Pop comes with the cutely named Popsicle, which is a graphical tool that makes it much more difficult to write images to…

2019 was a great year for desktop processors. That was mainly thanks to advances in AMD’s Ryzen line, not down to anything that Intel was up to, but to be fair, there were some headline-grabbing releases for Big Blue, too (we’ll come back to that shortly). The problem for Intel is that 2020 looks like more of the same, with the company playing catch-up to what AMD has already done. Can it compete? Let’s dig a little deeper to find out. Intel’s 10th-gen Comet Lake chips are the core of its desktop release strategy this year. These are expected to drop in April, essentially still based on the Skylake architecture, and using the 14nm++ production process. This means that we won’t be seeing any revolutionary performance increases due to reworked…

Whither Z-NAND and Optane? This will be a key question in 2020 for solid-state storage. Z-NAND and Optane are respectively Samsung and Intel’s next-gen persistent memory technologies, intended to improve upon conventional flash memory. Both are already available, but they’re expensive, and arguably don’t quite deliver on the lofty expectations created by marketing pitches. Intel will release its second-gen Optane tech in 2020 and it looks like a zinger. Code-named Alder Stream when applied to SSDs, as opposed to memory DIMMs, where Optane is also implemented, Intel claims three times the IOPs performance for its second-gen Optane tech, and slightly lower latency. Arguably, it’s IOPs performance and latency, rather than peak data throughput, that make the biggest difference to how fast PCs feel on a day-to-day basis. So, improvements in…

WHERE IS THE POWER BUTTON, ANYWAY? A desktop Mac will have a physical power button, usually on the back, marked with the ‘standby’ symbol, a circle broken by a line. MacBooks have a button at the top right of the keyboard; this includes Touch ID models, but to start from cold you’ll need to press the button down, not just touch it. WHY DOESN’T THE POWER BUTTON RESPOND? A common reason for not being able to power up your Mac is that it’s already powered up but failing to wake from sleep. It’s similar to when macOS hangs while you’re working, usually because an app or Finder has crashed – it’s just less obvious because you can’t see what’s happening. Hold down the power button until the power cuts out,…

1 LAUNCH DISK UTILITY Like Activity Monitor, the Disk Utility app can be found in Applications/Utilities, but it’s easiest to open it via Spotlight (command-Space bar). It opens showing you all the drives inside or attached to your Mac on the left. 2 VOLUMES AND DEVICES By default, Disk Utility shows ‘volumes’, partitions within drives that are visible to macOS. To see which drives they’re on, choose Show All Devices from the View menu (or press command-2; command-1 shows volumes). 3 STARTUP DRIVE You can select any drive or volume, but if it’s the one where macOS lives, Erase, Restore and Unmount are greyed out. You can run First Aid to check the drive, but repairs may need Recovery mode. 4 FIRST AID When you run First Aid on any…

WHAT SHOULD I DO WHEN MY MAC WON’T CONNECT TO THE INTERNET? If your Wi-Fi stops working, click the Wi-Fi symbol in the menu bar at the top right of the screen (if it’s not there, go to Network in System Preferences, select Wi-Fi on the left and tick ‘Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar’). Check that the correct network is selected and showing plenty of bars. Choose Turn Wi-Fi Off, wait a few seconds, then go back and Turn Wi-Fi On. It should connect automatically, but again, pick your network if necessary. If it’s a wired connection that’s playing up, such as an Ethernet cable to your broadband router, go to System Preferences > Network and select the connection on the left. Switch ‘Configure IPv4’ from ‘Using DHCP’ to…

WHY CAN’T I ACCESS MY IPHONE IN THE FINDER WHEN I CONNECT IT VIA USB? You’re right in thinking that, in macOS 10.15 Catalina, desktop file exchange with iOS and iPadOS devices is now done in Finder. Connect your iPhone or iPad with a suitable USB cable and it should appear in the sidebar of a Finder window; select it to see options similar to those previously found in iTunes. To make this happen, you need to unlock your iPhone (with your passcode, Touch ID or Face ID), then select it in the sidebar, click the Trust button, and finally tap the Trust option on your device. You can tick ‘Show this [device] when on Wi-Fi’ to see it listed in the sidebar in future without a cable, whenever it’s…

Budget In a post-sale world, keeping the prices low for this issue was difficult. There wasn’t much to update in the budget build this time around, merely tweaking the setup in an effort to keep the price low, but maintain standards. To that end, we’ve swapped over to an EVGA GPU, more specifically the GTX 1660 Super Black. Really, though, any 1660 Super (or a 1660 Ti if you can grab one on sale) is a good choice for an affordable PC build. The only other thing we changed was the memory, sticking with Patriot, but changing over from Viper 4 to the Viper Elite Series to keep our costs down. Despite that, the overall price for this build has risen by a few dollars; most of the components here…

Whether a simple shopping list or the complex steps for a project you are working on, just about everyone can make use of a to-do app. Being able to make a list and tick things off as you go is an effective way to keep track of what you’re doing, so you can better manage your time. Microsoft has its own to-do app, appropriately named Microsoft To Do. It is free for Windows, Android, iOS and macOS, as well as online. You can create checklists so you can tick things off as you do them, and cross-platform synchronisation means you can access them from different devices – such as your computer and your phone. Microsoft To Do is about more than just simple lists, however. You can also use it…

$5.95 | PC, MAC, ANDROID | RUSTYLAKE.COM An absence of colour can be wielded in media with all sorts of intentions, but the most profound effect monochrome has is to make you notice what isn’t there. There’s an implication that something’s thematically missing when you watch a world in black and white, so we tend to look at monochrome game worlds as a stylistic shorthand for grief, loss, depression, and other such subject matter that can really mess up your Sunday. That’s certainly true of Rusty Lake’s The White Door, but in this point-and-click-meets ayahuasca journey you’re asking the question literally, not just figuratively: what’s missing? Small changes to the daily routine imposed by the white coats behind the white door; an empty white plate instead of the meals you’re…

$51 | PC, PS4, XBONE | BIGBEN-INTERACTIVE.CO.UK Happiness is Mandatory is based on the tabletop RPG, and goes meta by parodying that satire. It’s witty and brimming with maddening bureaucracy and obfuscating double-speak that’s part Joseph Heller, part Aldous Huxley. You are a clone, born into adulthood in a futuristic underground society called Alpha Complex. It’s a rigidly hierarchical place, run by an all-seeing AI called Friend Computer, and filled with subservient people wearing colour-coded jumpsuits that denote their social standing. One small step out of line, and your treason will begin to accrue. Treason is all too easy to commit in Paranoia, and you’ll need to quickly learn how to tow the line lest your treason level reaches 100 per cent and you’re summoned for incineration by Friend Computer.…

$28.95 | PC, XBONE, PS4 | INVECTORGAME.COM This isn’t your average rhythm-action game. The project that aimed to enhance Tim ‘Avicii’ Bergling’s brand of electronic dance and house music by combining it with interactive and mesmeric environments commenced in 2015, but the Swedish club sensation passed away in April 2018 before the game’s release. Hello There Games and Bergling’s team subsequently finished what had been left off, with a percentage of the proceeds going to the Tim Bergling Foundation, which supports those with mental health problems. It imbues the final experience with profound poignancy beneath the upbeat sheen of the Swedish DJ’s party anthems. That final experience is 25 of Avicii’s biggest hits grouped into five distinct, ravishing worlds, and each song plays in a way reminiscent of Amplitude and…

FREE | PC | 23EDSA.ITCH. IO There’s a cat on your desk. It’s got tentacles and it’s purple so it’s technically a space cat, but there are no meaningful differences otherwise. Like all cats, probably, the space cat can’t resist chasing after a laser dot, and you use this to… ruin all your stuff? Over two stages, you’ll frantically wave the dot around, making the cat knock your possessions off the edge of a table. But – and here’s the rub – you have to do it without injuring the cat in the destructive process. Is this a game? A physics experiment? Yes. But those physics feel fantastic, with a satisfying, horrific heft as, say, your monitor tumbles to the floor. Throw it Down is that, as a game, but…