Indice dei contenuti per February 2015 in Macworld Australia

APPLE’S DIRECTION With regards to Marg B’s letter, ‘The Direction Apple Is Taking’ (November 2014), I have to agree entirely. I, too, have expressed similar sentiments in previous letters. I also only use iCloud minimally for syncing Contacts, Mail, Calendar and Find my Phone/Mac. All my data is on my Macs and my local backups, including an off-site SuperDuper clone. I have been a Mac user since 1998 and the current OS is the least Mac like yet, the last ‘proper’ Mac OS was Snow Leopard. I was most disappointed when Apple even dropped the word ‘Mac’ from OS X! I also feel that the same thing could be said about most ‘Mac’ magazines. I think they should change their name to ‘Appleworld’, why not dump the name Mac altogether?…

Snapped in the gardens surrounding Damien’s house, these two St Andrew’s Cross spiders were busy putting the finishing touches on their distinctive cross web when Damien took his shot. Re-mulching at the time, Damien snapped his photo on an iPhone 6 around 15cm away from the pair without any zoom and it turned out really well. “I’ve taken a few photos of these spiders and others over the years, but this is the first time I’ve seen two on the same web, and they appear to be mother and son. Being a parent myself, I couldn’t resist getting a closer look,” Damien says. After often seeing the amazing spiders when gardening, Damien did a little research and now can’t seem to stop seeing them all over the place. “They are…

Family Sharing is a new feature introduced alongside iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. With Family Sharing, you can share apps, music, movies, books and more with all members of your family. Once you’ve set up Family Sharing, you no longer have to buy items individually. When one person in the family buys an app, book or content from the iTunes Store, it is immediately available to all other members of the family to download for free. (Usually… App developers/content makers need to activate Family Sharing for their digital media. If they don’t, you won’t be able to share it.) Up to six people can use Family Sharing, and you all pay on the same credit card, so Family Sharing is ideal for families that want to combine their purchases.…

Switch Do Not Disturb on! Looking for a quick way to turn Do Not Disturb on or off on your Mac? It’s very simple: just head to the Notification icon in the top-right hand side of your menu bar, hold the Option key and click on the icon. It will change to a grey-out version and Do Not Disturb will be activated. Ian • EACH MONTH, STM gives a prize to the Macworld Australia reader who submits the best and most useful tip (undocumented tips preferred). This month’s prize is a comfortable and portable STM sequel small laptop shoulder bag worth $99.95. Your daily gear travels in sleek protective style. The sequel is the perfect, just the essentials bag for your 13in laptop, tablet, a couple of files, cords and…

The Nikon D3300 offers a pleasing set of features for newbies as well as power users, especially given its relatively low price and compact size. Right out of the box, the D3300 distinguishes itself by feeling like a premium product. This is especially evident in the D3300’s buttons, power switch, scroll wheel and 360-degree dial. Everything moves smoothly, like butter. Even the shutter mechanism sounds comparatively quiet and smooth. The D3300’s design is easy to learn and pleasant to use. My fingers could easily, almost blindly, find their way around the camera, with a comfy spot for my thumb to rest at the upper-right corner. On top of the camera sits a 360-degree dial with the usual settings (program, shutter priority, aperture priority, auto and manual modes) as well as…

The Last Tinker hasn’t received the attention it deserves. And it deserves quite a bit of attention, because this is a great (if simple) game. The Last Tinker looks like a kid’s game and it could be a kid’s game. It’s definitely pretty simple as far as ‘platformers’ go. In fact, I almost hate to strap that genre onto it because it’s not really a platformer. Jumping occurs more like Assassin’s Creed‘s free-running or Zelda‘s auto-jump – there’s no dedicated button for it. You just sort of reach the end of a platform and then leap off it onto the next one, or fall off if there’s nothing waiting. This lends itself to very fluid, fast-paced animations and some clever grinding sections reminiscent of Jet Set Radio or some of…

The more we learn about the Apple Watch, the less it seems like a revolutionary departure from the existing wearable market. In particular, it has a lot of overlap with Android Wear, Google’s own wearable platform. That much became clear when Apple released its design guidelines for third-party apps. Parsing the guidelines alongside those for Android Wear reveals two like-minded approaches: quick, contextual interactions are paired with data collection from sensors. The two companies even use similar language at times: “A Watch app complements your iOS app; it does not replace it,” Apple writes. “If you measure interactions with your iOS app in minutes, you can expect interactions with your Watch app to be measured in seconds. So interactions need to be brief and interfaces need to be simple.” “A…

APPLE AND IBM REVEAL 10 iOS APPS THAT AIM TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU WORK BY CAITLIN MCGARRY The way banks, airlines, wireless carriers and even governments do business could soon change if Apple and IBM have anything to say about it. The two companies released 10 apps in December designed to streamline business operations behind the scenes, which may lead to better service for the rest of us. The new apps are the first wave in a lineup that’s expected to include up to 100 iOS apps for business. IBM is firmly entrenched in enterprise, while Apple’s presence in the halls of giant corporations has been largely unofficial, in the form of employees using their personal iPhones to send company emails. So the two companies partnered up in July…

I’m somewhat paranoid about backing up my data files. And by ‘somewhat paranoid’, I mean ‘petrified’. If you’re not of a similar mindset, you should be. Consider what it would mean to lose some irreplaceable photos, for instance. Or the please-let-me-keep-my-job presentation that you’ve been pulling together for months. Or your financial data. Being paranoid in every waking hour isn’t a great way to get through life, but when it comes to backing up your data it’s nearly impossible to go too far. Here’s the multi-level plan I use to keep my paranoia at bay. LEVEL 0: SYSTEM SETUP My backup plan begins with my basic system setup, which may be different from yours. I keep very little data on the internal boot drive. My user’s folder is on that…

Browsing the App Store for new photo-editing software can be overwhelming. There are dozens of image editors and it’s difficult to tell which is the right one for your needs. If you’re already using iPhoto or Aperture, stick with those programs until Photos is released – it may be all you need. If, however, you’re willing to pay for more features, here are all the big (and subtle) differences between today’s top image editors to help you choose the software that’s best for you. iPHOTO This image database and nondestructive editor will be replaced by a new app named Photos in 2015, though it’s still one of the easiest places to import, manage, correct and share your photos. Instead of editing your originals, it stores your edit requests in a…

The Logitech Keys-to-Go is compact, covered in a spill-resistant fabric, boasts three months' battery life and most intriguingly lacks any method for connecting itself to your iPad. Up until this point, I have only ever used a keyboard that doubled as a stand, or completely enclosed my iPad in a folio-type housing, but I appreciate how Keys-To-Go lets me use any case I want – or no case at all. As with the rest of Logitech’s lineup, the top row of the Keys-To-Go keyboard offers shortcut keys for common iOS tasks. With the press of a button you can return to the home screen, open Spotlight, launch Siri, activate the fast app-switching view, take a screenshot, control media playback and adjust your iPad’s volume. In the top-right corner of the…

There’s a war going on and you control a group of civilians stranded in the middle of it, the city crumbling around you. All you have to do is survive until it’s over. This War of Mine is split into a day/ night cycle. ‘Days’ are spent playing what amounts to a post-apocalyptic version of The Sims. You’re shown a side view of your entire base, which is full of random supply caches to loot and debris to clear when you stumble upon it on Day 1 – a valuable start to your survival effort. Supplies are then used to craft other, more advanced items, many of which are placed around your base. Wood, for instance, can be converted into boards for the windows, into beds, into fuel for a…

Blackmagic Design’s new high performance mini converters switch instantly between all SD, HD and Ultra HD video formats so they’re ready for Ultra HD when you are! Mini Converters are available in regular or heavy duty models that are machined from solid aluminum so they look beautiful and are super tough! Choose from models with 6G-SDI, HDMI, analog, optical fiber connections and more. Auto Switching SD, HD and Ultra HD Mini Converters instantly switch between Ultra HD and all SD or HD formats, including NTSC, PAL, 1080PsF23.98, 1080PsF24, 1080PsF25, 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080i60, 720p50, 720p59.94 and 720p60. Updates can be loaded via USB. Redundant SDI Input Mini Converters feature a redundant input and loop through SDI output. Connect a redundant SDI cable to the second input, and if the main SDI…

iOS 8 RUNNING ON 68 PERCENT OF iPHONES AND iPADS Apple shared its latest data on iOS 8 adoption in January, showing that 68 percent of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches were running the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. Apple tracks iOS adoption by looking at devices that access the App Store, and marking which version of iOS is running on each of those devices. The latest App Store Distribution data was collected on 5 January. Besides iOS 8 data, it shows that 29 percent of devices are still running iOS 7 and four percent are still clutching on for dear life to iOS 6 or earlier. Apple’s last iOS adoption data was from November 2014, which showed 60 percent of devices had upgraded to iOS 8. An…

Twelve South BookArc for Mac Pro The Twelve South BookArc for Mac Pro is a chrome metal stand for the latest generation Mac Pro, holding the tubular computer horizontally and reducing its operating height requirement. Soft silicone-lined inserts cushion the computer, and padded feet protect the desktop surface beneath the stand. It even comes with a polishing cloth! Twelve South / US$59.99 + shipping / www.twelvesouth.com Soffio MacBook Sleeve Backpack The MacBook Sleeve Backpack is handmade in Italy from 100 percent natural leather. The Soffio backpack features a main sleeve capable of holding a 15in laptop and the front sleeve is big enough to fit an iPad mini and assorted other objects such as a charger, iPhone, earphones, etc. It can be worn as a backpack, shoulder bag…

There’s no shortage of choices for cloud storage, but that leads to another problem: how do you decide which services you truly need, and which files to put where? If you’ve signed up for as many cloud providers as you have files, it’s time for an intervention (or at least a moment of clear-headed contemplation). I’ll admit it: I’m an online storage junkie. At one time or another I’ve synced files to the cloud using Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon S3, Bitcasa, Box, DollyDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, SpiderOak, SugarSync, Wuala and probably a few others I’m forgetting – not to mention using online backups from Backblaze, CrashPlan and Mozy, and storing photos with services such as Flickr and SmugMug. Some of these services are free (at least…

Apple’s Preview app, preinstalled on every Mac for years, is one of the most underused programs ever. Far from being an image preview app, as its name implies, you can use it to convert file formats, grab a frame from a movie, learn the size of a web-based image, sort a folder of images, remove backgrounds and more. CONVERT FILE FORMATS To get a handle on Preview’s abilities, consider the file formats it can open and manipulate. How is this exciting? Let us count the ways. You can convert a PDF file to a pixel-based format for printing (say, if you’ve got a PDF that refuses to print) or for posting on the web (say, a JPEG, GIF or PNG). You can convert image files to PDF (say, for emailing…

Tile was crowdfunded back in 2013 by thousands of backers who felt that this was the kind of device that could properly track their stuff. Tile costs US$25 a piece (with discounts for multi-tile packs) and is about as big as a matchbook. You will have to buy more than one Tile if you plan to track multiple things. It has a keyring hole so you can easily attach it to your keys or you can stick it to things with the included adhesive square. It's a tad on the thick side and though it isn’t bulky, it’s still a significant addition to your keychain, or wherever you put it. It’s also water resistant and constructed out of durable material, so you don’t have to worry about it falling apart.…

The PlayStation TV is a palm-sized box that acts as an extender box for Sony’s PlayStation 4 games console. Inside the PlayStation TV lives the guts of a PlayStation Vita handheld console, squished into a tiny set-top box that connects to any television via HDMI. It doesn’t feature television tuners and it’s not designed to replace the Play TV tuner box available for the PlayStation 3. When someone else wants to use the main television in the lounge room you can pause your game on the PS4, move to the PlayStation TV in another room and pick up playing where you left off. Of course, that’s assuming both devices are connected to your home network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. You’ll need to take your DualShock controller with you, unless you…