Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2016 in Macworld Australia

Longtime Mac users remember how software was distributed before the introduction of the Mac App Store five years ago. You could buy boxed software in retail stores, and you could download shareware that you could try out and pay for if you liked. There was also freeware that developers gave away. Some developers still practice the shareware model, but the Mac App Store has become the sole provider for much of the software people use on their Macs. This has its advantages: users are protected, since Apple validates the software; they don’t have to trust their credit card numbers to potentially dodgy websites; and it’s easy to redownload apps and get updates, all through a single app that serves as a storefront. Developers pay Apple a 30 percent commission, but…

Dropbox has a futuristic vision for how its users will be able to share massive files and have quick access to them on their computers, without their hard drives overflowing. The cloud storage company recently announced a new initiative at its Open conference in London called Project Infinite. It’s a push to create a new Dropbox interface that allows users to see all of the files they’ve stored in the cloud in their computer’s file explorer without requiring them to keep local copies of each document, image, spreadsheet, or other file. With Project Infinite, users will be able to manage their files in the cloud by moving them around inside the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer, just like they would any local files that are taking up…

AS APPLE’S CALENDAR apps for iOS and Mac OS X moved across recent releases from inconsistent, inadequate, and irritating to more or less just fine, the market for replacements grew and matured. Fantastical for iOS (flexibits.com/fantastical), now in its second release, filled a gap there by not just presenting a clean list and having strong support for different calendar systems, but also offering natural-language processing. Type in a semblance of an event, and Fantastical would parse it and place it for you without fuss. Fantastical’s makers, Flexibits, brought a kind of snippet of Fantastical to OS X in its 1.0 release: a drop-down day view closely reminiscent of the iOS version. Its 2.0 release in March 2015 was a full-fledged replacement for Apple’s Calendar and a strong competitor to similar…

More new cars are shipping with CarPlay every year, including the Chevy Volt. GM loaned us one to try the new features Apple just added to CarPlay in iOS 9.3, namely the For You and New sections in Apple Music, and the ultra-handy Nearby feature in Maps. In the video below, you can see both features in action, but what you can’t see is how much more responsive the Chevy Volt’s touchscreen is than the aftermarket CarPlay stereo from Pioneer (go.macworld.com/carplaypioneeravic) that I tested a year and a half ago. That one had a capacative touchscreen that just didn’t register all of my touches, but the Volt’s built-in touchscreen worked perfectly every time. iOS 9.3 brought the New and For You sections to Apple Music in CarPlay, which is great…

If you have more than one Mac, you probably need to exchange files between the two computers from time to time. There are lots of ways to do this, and the method you choose may depend on the type of file you need to share or the way you manage your workflow. Here are 9 ways you can exchange files between two Macs. FILE SHARING The basic way to share files between Macs is to use File Sharing. To use this feature, you must activate it in the Sharing pane of System Preferences—select File Sharing. If you want to only share specific folders, or allow certain users to access them, add folders to the Shared Folders list, and then select a folder and add users in the Users list. If…

Color trends come and go, though when it comes to photographic treatments, some color effects are here to stay. For example, adding a brown tint to a black and white image produces a sepia tone that evokes a vintage or romantic feel. Likewise, adding pastel pink or blue—Pantone’s colors of the year are rose quartz (13-1520) and serenity (15-3919)—to a black and white image evokes a soft, dreamy feel. These ageless and classy techniques limit the photo’s color palette, which puts focus on the image content. Similarly, cross processed looks are wildly popular, though with this effect you keep the image’s color yet shift it in interesting ways (the term refers to dark room days where the color shift was produced by processing the image using the wrong chemicals). While…

THE TOOL MONITORS USERS’ HOME DIRECTORIESAND DETECTS WHEN ENCRYPTED FILES ARE RAPIDLY CREATED INSIDE THEM—A TELLTALE SIGN OF RANSOMWARE ACTIVITY. A security researcher has created a free security tool that can detect attempts by ransomware programs to encrypt files on users’ Macs and then block them before they do a lot of damage. Called RansomWhere? (go.macworld.com/ransomwheretool), the application is the creation of Patrick Wardle, director of research and development at security firm Synack. It’s meant to detect and block the encryption of files by untrusted processes. The tool monitors users’ home directories and detects when encrypted files are rapidly created inside them—a telltale sign of ransomware activity. When such activity is detected, RansomWhere? determines the process responsible and suspends it. To limit false positives—legitimate encryption programs being detected as ransomware—the…

THE TEXTEXPANDER UTILITY (textexpander.com) saves keystrokes by letting you type a short sequence that’s replaced by a longer one. That’s the heart of the app, which has expanded (sorry) its repertoire of replacement types over time to include form letters with fill-in and drop-down elements, a library of emoji, and a host of placeholders for date, time, the contents of the clipboard, and other elements. The previous updates for OS X and iOS are less than a year old; we reviewed version 5 (go.macworld.com/textexpander5) of TextExpander for OS X last June, and our high opinion of the core software remains unchanged. However, the reason for this new review is a significant change in how its maker, Smile, prices its new version, which is coupled with mandatory cloud-based synchronization through its…

LAST FALL, ADOBE released a new version of its consumer-level photo-organizing and -editing application, Photoshop Elements 14 (adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html). A mature and uniquely user-friendly application, the latest version has a host of welcome improvements for beginners and advanced users alike. For example, the Organizer has better facial recognition and it’s easy to find images that you haven’t yet organized with tags and events. The Editor sports an effects collection of 2,500 different looks; Guided edit mode has a new interface and two new tutorials for resizing images and simulating speed; plus the Enhance menu sports two new commands that fix both hazy and blurry photos. For beginners and hobbyist-level photographers, there’s very little here not to love. ELEMENTS ORGANIZER Organizer 14, the database portion of the application, is the most usable…

Released in fall 2014, iOS 8 brought with it a truckload of new features—one of which was the ability to swap out Apple’s built-in keyboard with one of your choosing supplied by a third-party developer. After all, the stock keyboard isn’t for everyone, and it has its fair share of shortcomings. If you’ve never tried a new keyboard, now’s a good time to explore your options, and making the switch is a fairly easy process. Here’s how to go about it. BEFORE WE BEGIN, A NOTE ABOUT PRIVACY Since third-party keyboards can access anything you type in, there are some privacy risks inherent to using such a piece of software. As Apple notes in a privacy disclaimer nestled in the Settings app, third-party keyboards may be able to send anything…

SERVICES OFFERING VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS (VPNs) have become a booming business, and with good reason. Corporations depend on them for the additional layer of security they provide, and world travelers benefit by being able to take many of their favorite streaming video subscriptions abroad with them. But there’s another use for VPN you might not be aware of, one that can make any available Internet connection faster and more reliable in just a few taps. If you’re VPN-curious and looking to squeeze the most out of your mobile connectivity, it’s as easy as downloading an app. THE NAME’S BOND Speedify (speedify.com/mobile; go.macworld.com/speedifyitunes) isn’t a VPN in the traditional sense, but rather a free, universal iOS app used to bond available Wi-Fi and cellular connections. Rather than focus strictly on security,…

In the preceding story, I wrote about 9 ways you can transfer files from one Mac to another, which is useful if you have, say, an iMac and a laptop, and need to pass files back and forth. But you may also need to transfer files from your Mac to your iOS device, which isn’t as simple: iOS isn’t designed to accept just any file, and you don’t have the same options to open files with different apps. In this article, I’m going to show you 6 ways you can move files of various types to your iOS devices. AIRDROP AirDrop is Apple’s technology for sharing files across devices. You can use it to transfer files from one Mac to another, and also use it to transfer files from a…

MY DATA-JUGGLING ACT WOULD GET A LOT EASIER WITH A TERABYTE OF STORAGE, BUT THAT’S HARD TO FIND IN A MAC LAPTOP. The new MacBooks (go.macworld.com/rosegoldmac book) announced in April aren’t very upgradeable: You can bump up the processor in either model to a 1.3GHz Intel Core m7 for a $150 upcharge, and they both come with 8GB of RAM. But you can’t upgrade the storage. The $1,299 model has 256GB, and that’s all it will ever have. The $1,599 model has 512GB, and that’s as high as it goes. I love portable Macs, but I also have a lot of files, and managing them on my 256GB MacBook Air is a chore. The biggest offender is my local Dropbox folder, which I use to back up my iPhone’s Camera…

NO 12-INCH MacBook is an island; every portable of this line requires some kind of main connection. That’s at least a USB-C power adapter supplied by Apple, but more options have started to appear in the form of mini-hubs and full-fledged ones. I’ve been particularly waiting for affordable, portable alternatives to Apple’s $80 Digital AV Multiport Adapter (go.macworld.com/digitalavmultiport). The $60 Anker Premium USB-C Hub (go.macworld.com/ ankersuperspeedspec) with HDMI and Power Delivery fits the bill nicely with more ports, better flexibility, and a lower price. The Anker hub has built-in pass-through power over USB-C, HDMI support up to the 4K resolution supported by a 12-inch MacBook (via DisplayPort 1.2/HDMI 1.4b), and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports. With a longer cord than Apple’s similar adapter, a brushed aluminum styling, and a better…

GRIFFIN BREAKSAFE BREAKAWAY POWER CABLE Do you have a new USB-C MacBook, or are planning on buying one? You need this breakaway power cable. USB-C may be a versatile connector, but it’s not a breakaway connector, and it makes me miss the cleverness of Apple’s MagSafe connector on its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. Fortunately, there’s Griffin’s $40 BreakSafe Breakaway Power Cable (griffintechnology.com). It brings breakaway power cable connectivity to the Mac-Book and it could save your laptop from a mishap—like the time my dog tried to jump over my legs and tripped on my power cable. —ROMAN LOYOLA SUGR CUBE WIRELESS SPEAKER The $229 Cube by Sugr (sugrsugr.com) is billed as the world’s first portable Wi-Fi speaker with Spotify. That may be the case, but I found the…

LUCKILY, YOU DON’T EVER HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT EVER AGAIN AS LONG AS YOU HAVE AN EXTERNAL BATTERY CASE FOR YOUR iPHONE. We’ve all had this collective freakout: You need a get a hold of someone or find directions back home but then your iPhone dies. Luckily, you don’t have to go through that ever again as long as you have an external battery case for your iPhone. But which one is right for you? This time on The iPhone Show (go.macworld.com/iphoneshow), we test three of the latest iPhone battery cases: Apple’s Smart Battery Case, Mophie’s Juice Pack Reserve, and Kuke’s Smart Case. If you have an iPhone 6 or 6s, Apple makes a premium battery case for $99 (go.macworld.com/ applebatterycase). Apple’s Smart Battery Case has enough juice to…

WHY APPLE CONTINUES to sell iOS devices with a meager 16GB of storage is a question only executives in Cupertino know the answer to. If you’re stuck with a low-capacity iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Transcend has a new accessory that offers some much-needed room to breathe. DUAL CONNECTIVITY Measuring 2.22 x 0.79 x 0.31 inches and weighing barely a quarter-ounce, the JetDrive Go 300 ($45 to $95 on go.macworld.com/transcendjetdriveamz) is a diminutive flash drive that works equally well with iOS devices, Macs or PCs. One end is an MFi-certified (Made For iDevice) Lightning connector, while the opposite end is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A connector. Sandwiched between the connectors in a metallic black or silver chassis are 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB of flash storage (my review unit…

When it comes to hardware, Apple isn’t afraid to force its users to adapt, to change habits. Longtime Mac users remember when Apple stopped including floppy and optical drives, or when FireWire was discontinued. More recently, Mac users have had to accept the inability to upgrade hard drives and RAM, or that the Magic Trackpad 2 is the preferred input device, with its support for gestures that can’t be performed on a Magic Mouse 2. The MacBook (go.macworld.com/macbook2016) is one of those game changers. When it was released last year, it was pretty obvious that Apple wanted to push its users in a certain direction, to a place where there are no wires, where you depend on the cloud, where you can carry a laptop effortlessly and never worry about…

Awhile back we looked at several hacks for getting more out of your Gmail (go.macworld.com/moregmail) account. But as with all of Google’s services, there are always more tricks and features to uncover. Here are five that will help you better manage your messages. HIT THE ‘MUTE’ Who hasn’t wanted to run screaming from their monitor after the thirteenth “Welcome aboard!” message to the new hire? Gmail provides a means to tune out distracting email conversations like these: muting. Muted conversations bypass your inbox and go straight to your archive. They only return to your inbox if a new message is addressed solely to you or you’re added to the To or Cc line in a new message. To silence the noise, select the conversation and click the More button above…

Your iPhone videos don’t have to be boring just because you shot them with iOS. With a little help from Apple’s iMovie, you can add quite a bit of polish to your clips, spiffing them up with titles, transitions, slow and fast motion, and even background music. (Note: iMovie is available as a free download for all iOS devices purchased since September 2013; for everyone else, it’s a $5 download.) We’ve collected a few pointers that’ll help you make sense of iMovie’s (go.macworld.com/imovie) overall workflow. We’ll also decipher the app’s simple (if occasionally head-scratching) interface as well as try out some basic editing tools. With a little practice, you’ll be splicing together video like a pro in no time. GETTING STARTED The first step to making a movie in iMovie…

What happens when you can’t control the album sort order in Photos when synced Q: I just edited my albums on my Mac. The photos are in a specific order in certain albums, but this hasn’t synced to the iPhone or iPad. The photos are still in random order on those two devices. — Simone Nixon A: I haven’t been able to replicate this: All photos in my albums (tested under iOS 9.3 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan) retain their order synced using iCloud Photo Library. It’s possible there’s corrupt data. You can repair the library by quitting Photos, then holding down the Command and Option keys while launching Photos. You’ll be prompted to repair. This can take a while for libraries with thousands of images. Because you intentionally…