TechLifeの July 2020 の目次

Quick reminder: by the end of the year Google Play Music will no longer exist. The company has been inching towards the inevitable shutdown day-by-day but, until now, carrying over your purchases to YouTube Music was a pain in the butt. Thankfully, that’s about to change. As Google prepares to close down its long-running Play Music streaming service, the company has enabled a new transfer function inside the YouTube Music app to bring your music, playlists and preferences to their new home on YouTube. According to Google, all Google Play Music subscribers will soon receive an email with detailed instructions on how the migration works, but essentially it’s as simple as downloading the YouTube Music app and clicking the transfer button. The good news is that you’ll be able to…

Some of them were flushed there; one UK insurance company estimates that children flushed some 2.5 million LEGO pieces down the loo between 2006 and 2016. Other bricks arrived there in 1997 when a wave slammed a cargo ship and dumped 62 containers – one containing nearly 4.8 million pieces of LEGO – overboard. Some bricks still wash onto the shore, but most sink to the bottom, and there they will remain for a thousand years or more. In a recent study, researchers compared 50 castaway LEGO bricks trawled from the coastlines of southwest England with 50 matching bricks that never left their boxes. Using X-rays and other analytic tools to measure how much of the marine bricks had weathered away, the team determined that a single LEGO brick can…

With rock bands doing AR sets that you can project into your living room and a new spin art Snapchat filter, it’s clear that the coronavirus lockdown is pushing mixed reality into new creative spaces. That said, AI is probably ahead this month with a bot that’ll file for clients unemployment benefits in the US, an app that teaches kids to read and, perhaps the most important of all, a machine learning algorithm that draws dick doodles. Oh and some Aussie computer scientists are growing neurons in computer processors to make better neural net processors. AI Jukebox AI Rickrolls mankind Free, openai.com/blog/jukebox A new open source AI algorithm that is able to randomly generate music within specific genres has extended some verses of Rick Astley’s 80s hit Never Gonna Give…

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 are getting a modern re-release for PS4, Xbox One, and PC (via Epic Games Store) on September 4. After a string of teases from Tony Hawk himself and Summer Game Fest producer Geoff Keighley, the remastered pair was officially revealed during a livestream today. Vicarious Visions, which has handled other PS1 remakes like the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, has remastered both of the original Tony Hawk’s games, and they really do look stunning in motion. Keighley and Hawk discussed the new and returning features of both games with Vicarious Visions head Jen Oneal. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 supports classic D-pad and modern analogue stick controls, and its Create-A-Park and Create-A-Skater modes have been greatly expanded through new options and…

US19.99, PC , xcom.com Set ten years after the events of XCOM 2, your titular team of supersoldiers in XCOM: Chimera Squad are no longer a blank slate of customisable avatars, but distinct characters made up of humans, hybrids, and aliens, all of whom come with their own pre-rendered traits, specialisations, and personalities. Your mission isn’t to fend off an invasion or lead an underground resistance anymore, either, but to act as peacekeepers for City 31, a model metropolis for the uneasy post-war cohabitation between humankind and their former invaders. While there’s plenty of heavy political subtext that can be drawn from Chimera Squad’s story of former enemies living and fighting side by side, its 18 hour campaign belies XCOM’s sombre tone for something more resemblant of Saturday-morning cartoon, complete…

Sandship: The Last Engineer Free with IAP The recent popularity of games like Satisfaction and Factorio that involve building large and complex factory systems has boomed on PC in the past few years but has not found its way to mobile... until now. In these games, players are encouraged to put their efficiency skills to the test to pump out the most products for the least cost and the most profit. Sandship: TLE takes this concept and instead incorporates it into a deep and wide-ranging story involving a desolate future run by robots and an AI that finds this factory at the core of a much larger moving entity. As you produce items that reinforce and upgrade the mechanical beast you inhabit, it can gradually move across the landscape, picking…

$4,399, www.gigabyte.com The design of the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED (2020) is functional and attractive. As this is primarily a pro laptop, its design is muted enough that you won’t get strange looks if you whip the laptop out at meetings or in the office. It has an all-black design, with an illuminated ‘Aero’ logo on the lid. With dimensions of 355 x 248 x 19.8mm and a weight of 2kg, this is an impressively thin and light laptop considering the powerful specs inside. That’s slightly thicker than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the same weight. However, the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED offers a far better selection of ports than Apple’s Pro laptop. On the left-hand side you get a full-size HDMI port, a mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0, Ethernet, and…

“Samsung’s ‘single-take mode’ helps you answer an everyday question: should I take photos or a video? Take both. Its new ‘single-take mode’ captures a variety of shots over a 10 second span.” $1,999, www.samsung.com The Galaxy S20 Ultra is Samsung’s biggest Android phone, and its most daring sales pitch: you can own the world’s most advanced 5G phone with massive camera specs... if you’re prepared to spend more money than ever on a non-foldable smartphone. The Ultra is designed for early adopters, and three things stand out: it has a massive 6.9-inch display with next-gen fluid-scrolling tech that will stretch your hand; five cameras to capture 108MP photos, 40MP selfies and 8K video, and 5G antennas with peak speeds 66 times as fast as 4G LTE. It’s a nice jump…

$499, www.olympus.com.au Straight out of the box, the E-PL10 will put a smile on your face because it’s a dinky and attractive camera. Looks alone could seal the deal for some. We had the white version with a gold, embossed Olympus logo, but it’s also available in black or tan. The body is covered in a tactile faux leather and sandwiched between top and bottom metal-effect plates. A thumb grip and curved front hand grip provide some extra purchase, although you wouldn’t want to use particularly heavy lenses – those are more suited to cameras in the OM-D range, like the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III. Being an entry-level camera, the E-PL10 has a plastic build, which is more obvious on the top and bottom plates. However, all of the…

1 PICK THE RIGHT CABLE AND PORT After placing your new monitor on your desk, you’ll need to connect it to your PC. This may be a straightforward HDMI-to-HDMI cable, or you may find your PC only has a DVI port – in this case, verify it supports 4K (some lower end graphics adapters don’t support 4K through the DVI port) before purchasing a HDMI-to-DVI cable or adapter – around $10 online. 2 FIRST RUN Switch on your PC and monitor. Consult your monitor’s setup guide to see if you need to use the built-in controls – in most cases, the automatic settings should be in play, so it detects your PC automatically. Log into Windows when promoted: you should find the display has scaled automatically to 4K (3,840 x…

1 SET UP In Finder, go to File > New Smart Folder. A new search window appears; again, as you type in the top-right search bar, the results appear below. You can opt to look on This Mac or in Shared if you’re on a network. 2 DEFINE PARAMETERS The + icon opens a new bar where you can search by over 50 parameters – each with its own set of rules – so you can drill down as much as you want. Matching files are listed, and the bottom bar shows the file path. 3 SAVE SEARCH Double-click a file to open it or press the Space bar to preview it. If you want to save the search, click the Save option (top right). Save the folder to your…

REQUIRES iOS 11 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to find and share cool things in Maps IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes When you’re looking for a place to go, there’s no substitute for local knowledge. And that’s something Apple’s Maps app is absolutely packed with. Whether you’re looking for a big night out, a nice place to stay, or the best food to eat in town, Apple Maps knows exactly where it is. As we’ll discover in this tutorial, it couldn’t be easier to get Maps to share its knowledge. All you need to do is tap on the search bar and you’ll see big bright icons detailing the available categories, such as food and drink, shopping, fun and health. Apple calls the feature Nearby, and it uses your…

Sometimes it just isn’t practical to take a tripod with you everywhere you travel. Even compact models can take up considerable space in a camera bag, which can be costly when utilising budget airlines, for example. Safety and security can also be an issue. This image was taken on the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona – one of the busiest streets in the city – and it was impossible to set up a tripod on the pavement without disrupting the significant flow of people. However, for creative reasons, longer exposures can sometimes be the only way to accurately capture the energy of a location. In some circumstances, we need an approach that will allow us to set a slower shutter speed while maintaining critical sharpness. Here, I knew I wanted…

Apple just took a very real leap in the world of virtual reality and augmented reality, acquiring VR content startup NextVR. It’s also one small step for Apple AR glasses. NextVR should help Apple’s long-suspected efforts to release an AR/VR product, according to Bloomberg. The startup held content-licensing deals with sports leagues, including the NBA as well as Fox Sports, and Apple has recently been keen on expanding its content and services portfolio. NextVR held content-licensing deals with sports leagues, including the NBA as well as Fox Sports. While the startup didn’t have a VR device of its own, its experience broadcasting content in virtual reality to users could help Apple design its own headsets or glasses, which the company has been rumored to be building for years. The first…

$2,999, www.dji.com Whether you’re looking for a camera, car or coffee machine, there is always a ‘sweet spot’ all-rounder that becomes the best choice for most people – and the DJI Mavic Air 2 is that model for drones. This successor to the DJI Mavic Air from 2018 takes its predecessor’s overall concept – an easy-to-fly drone with pro-level features – and completely redesigns it from the ground up. The result is a smaller, more affordable version of the DJI Mavic 2 Pro that equals, and in some areas even trumps, its pricier sibling. The Mavic Air 2’s completely new design looks like someone blasted the Mavic 2 series with a shrink ray, and it comes with a new controller too. But with a host of new features and technologies,…

$3,399, www.samsung.com The Samsung Q80T QLED TV is the new jumping-on point if you want the cheapest full array backlight QLED TV in the brand’s 2020 line-up. Strategically positioned just below the Q90T, with which it shares a number of advanced features, and above the edge-lit Q70T, the Q80T is the very definition of middle ground, but its performance is far from middling. And for its $3,339 price tag, you’d certainly hope so. We tested the QE65Q80T size – though it’s also available in 49-inch, 55-inch, 75-inch and 85-inch models – and found it had bright peaky HDR, beautiful definition and wide colours. Make no mistake: the Samsung Q80T QLED TV looks every bit as pretty as you’d hope – while packing some surprises to boot. Design It’s inevitable that…

$79, PS4, ffvii-remake.square-enix-games.com Final Fantasy VII Remake really lives up to its “Remake” title. It truly is a reinterpretation of the classic 1997 release in every sense of the word. Meticulously rebuilt, Final Fantasy VII Remake succeeds at hitting the difficult balance between staying faithful to the original story and introducing elements that make it feel so fresh and new. Playing Remake is like returning to a place I once knew and reuniting with old friends I haven’t seen in years, but everything is so much more impressively detailed and fleshed out than I remember it. As someone who played the original in my formative years, plenty of moments bring a big goofy grin to my face and make plenty of feelings swirl around my heart, but there’s so much…

For me, System Shock 2 is one of the all-time greats. Tying together sharp storytelling, taut gunplay and RPG character development, all set on a claustrophobic spaceship that drips with horror-inflected tension, it was the gateway to the immersive sim classics to come, such as BioShock, Dishonored, and Prey. For its makers, though, System Shock 2 was a test. It was the first project by a new studio called Irrational Games, a chance to prove it could deliver a game that matched the calibre of Looking Glass, the developer of the original System Shock, Thief, and other PC classics. “It was probably the most pressure I’ve felt in my life,” says Jonathan Chey, one of its three lead developers. “My strongest motivation was not wanting to look like a fool,…

US$1,399, www.samsung.com A beautiful 2-in-1 laptop like the Galaxy Book Flex seems like a natural thing to expect from a company like Samsung. Its phones are renowned around the world for having big, beautiful screens that are a joy to consume content through – not to mention their fantastic 4K TVs. The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex does retain some of that legacy in its gorgeous 15.6-inch 1080p QLED display with some of the smallest bezels we’ve seen in this kind of device – short of something like the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. However there are some strange design choices that really hold this laptop back from living up to that Samsung potential. If you want to get your hands on this device, there’s only one model, which changes depending on…

$1,599, consumer.huawei.com This is the best-looking phone Huawei has ever released. It feels premium in the hand, and it uses similar materials to other top-end phones you can buy right now. The P40 Pro features what Huawei calls a ‘Quad-curve Overflow Display’, which essentially means it has curved glass at all four edges. We’ve seen a few phones with curved sides – it’s a design feature that dates all the way back to the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge – but with the Huawei P40 Pro you also get curved top and bottom edges. However, the display itself only curves at the sides, not at the top or bottom of the phone, where it’s just the glass on top that’s curved. This gives the handset a unique feel, but it doesn’t…

At 1046 and 1038MBps on read and write respectively, it is faster than the Samsung T7 Touch, an editor’s choice winner. $465, biwintech.com We have seen HP (inc) popping up here and there on Amazon listings for storage product lists and we reached out to the company. Turns out that a Chinese company, BIWIN Storage, owns the license for HP in the storage vertical and has produced a number of products that, on paper, appear particularly enticing. The P700 is unlike anything we have seen yet; and it is a compliment. Open the box and you won’t find any loose cable around, only a black box, similar to a jewel box, with slightly rounded edges and measuring around 92 x 65 x 20mm. The top lid is actually the drive…

The first thing you should think about is what you actually want your build to do. Is it a beefy 4K gaming machine? A video-editing platform? A plain old work PC? If you’re reading this magazine, you probably know a thing or two about computers, or at least want to learn something. When it comes to building your own PC, there are numerous pitfalls to avoid and tricks to bear in mind. You need the right tools, the right knowledge, and the right level of emotional resilience to keep on trying when something inevitably goes wrong. Building your own computer won’t necessarily be cheaper and will definitely be harder than buying a complete system, but it affords you more control over the capabilities of your hardware. There are numerous issues…

Higher… THE FIRST MILLION More than 1m iPads sold in less than a month after release. iPhone took around three months to sell its first million. MARKET PEAK At the start of 2012, iPad accounted for nearly 60% of global tablet shipments. 3 MILLION IN 3 DAYS In November 2012, at the launch of iPad mini and 4th-gen iPad, 3m sold in three days – double the previous first-weekend record. …or lower? APPLE PENCIL CHARGING To charge, the original Apple Pencil plugged into iPad’s Lighting port end–on, sticking out awkwardly and perilously. WHO WANTS TO READ? Digital newspapers and magazines never quite took off on iPad. The Newsstand app was quietly killed off in 2015 in iOS 9. “BENDGATE” Buyers complained some costly 2018 iPad Pro units are warped out–of–the–box.…

THIS MONTH Q&A Your questions answered WINDOWS Set up a 4K display MAC Mastering search on MacOS iOS Find local info with Maps ANDROID How to get the best from Dual SIMs on Android SECURITY & PRIVACY The dangers of video chat HOME NETWORKING Skilling up your router FITNESS Take control of your diet PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS Shoot handheld long exposure DIGITAL DARKROOM Master the adjustment brush Which VPN Option? I’m considering ditching my monthly-fee VPN service for my own home-brewed VPN. While I have no doubt there are internet how-to guides and APC tutorials, what is the short answer? I have a TP-Link Safestream VPN router collecting dust, or my current router supports easy setup using OpenVPN, so are these two relatively easy viable alternatives? Does a secure VPN require…

“Siri and Spotlight are simple and straightforward to use – if you know what exactly you’re looking for.” REQUIRES macOS 10.14 or later (most tips work in earlier versions) YOU WILL LEARN How to simplify search on macOS IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes Forgotten where you saved that important file six months ago? Sometimes you may not even remember the name of a file. If you don’t use a filing or naming system, things can be tough. However, with the variety of tools built in to macOS, finding it doesn’t have to be stressful. Siri and Spotlight are simple and straightforward to use – if you know what exactly you’re looking for. Entering the file name, format, date (week, month or even the exact date) will bring up all the…

1 SET UP SIRI If Siri is already set up, move to step 2. If not, go to System Preferences > Siri. Tick the check-box next to “Enable Ask Siri”. You can specify Siri’s language, enable voice feedback, and customise the keyboard shortcut. 2 ASK SIRI Invoke Siri and ask it to find a file by format, name, or date. You can also add more specific details, such as the name of a sender. Siri searches your entire Mac. This allows you to get results from all installed apps. 3 SAVE RESULTS Once Siri locates all the files corresponding to your search, you can pin the results to Notification Centre using the + icon, so you don’t have to repeat the process. You can also drag an item out to…

1 CHOOSE YOUR THING When you open Maps you’ll see the search bar and some useful icons below it. These are the ones we want to use to find stuff in different categories. Let’s select Food and Drinks so we can find a nearby restaurant – just tap it. 2 SEE THE RESULTS By default, the Food and Drink category shows you all kinds of restaurants, cafes and bars nearby, but you can refine the selection with the icons at the top of the search panel. Tap one of the results to see more. 3 PICK A PLACE When you tap a result, you’ll see its location in the main Maps screen, and you’ll also see the information panel at the left. This brings you photos of the place and…

One of the topics we revisit every now and then is third-party router firmware. That is, firmware that replaces the factory software on a router with a new operating system, potentially adding new features and capabilities. There was a time when third-party firmwares like DD-WRT and Tomato were the bee’s knees, turning cheap off-the-shelf routers into much more capable security routers that would normally retail for hundreds of dollars more. But are these third-party firmwares still worth upgrading to in 2020? That’s actually a difficult question. Commercial firmware has come a long way and has become much easier to use and configure. At the same time, the third-party firmwares have been somewhat stagnant. DD-WRT doesn’t do much now that it didn’t do ten years ago. So that gap has closed.…

Apple AR Credit Card $NA, youtu.be/Fm-4GPSnj94 So you’re probably already aware that Black Amexes are pretty passe these days and that the real flex is in flashing your Apple Card, but one artist has flagged in a concept video just why you need this particular money icon in order to be a truly successful ‘entrepreneur’. The concept shows off how AR can be used to check how much of your limitless bank account you haven’t used yet just by flashing the card in front of your face. We suspect the potential future tech will use NFC to sync to the account and you can seemingly check transactions and change credit limits using just the card and your AR glasses. ATMOBLUE: wearable air purifyer $230, igg.me/at/atmoblue/x#/ If you need to protect…

Chronicled in the rings of an ancient timekeeper is a story of days half an hour shorter and years a week longer than they are today. That ancient timekeeper is an extinct rudist clam, one of a group of molluscs that once dominated the role that corals fill today in building reefs. The clam belonged to the species Torreites sanchezi and lived 70 million years ago in a shallow tropical seabed that is now dry land in the mountains of Oman in the Middle East. This ancient clam grew extremely fast from its home in a dense reef, creating a growth ring on its shell for every day of the nine years that it lived. A group of researchers analysed the clam’s shell to get a snapshot of what time…

$249, wwwfitbit.com The Fitbit Charge 4 might look almost identical to its predecessor, but it has two important new features that help it bridge the gap between smart watches and fitness trackers, and allows you to leave your phone at home on runs and walks: built-in GPS, Spotify support and Fitbit Pay. The Fitbit Charge 4 is slim, measuring 35.8mm x 22.7mm x 12.5mm, and so light you’ll easily forget you’re wearing it – a real plus for a device that’s designed to be worn both day and night, with only the occasional break to give your skin a rest. The watch saves detailed activity data for the past week, and your total steps, distance, steps climbed and calories burned for the last 30 days. Older figures won’t be lost,…

In response to a question asking about the status of the game on Twitter, Bethesda’s SVP of global marketing Pete Hines firmly ruled out offering any further reveals about The Elder Scrolls 6 anytime soon, stressing that fans need to temper their expectations for any new information about the upcoming RPG sequel, slated to hit next-gen consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X, sometime in the distant future.…

“Raiding is about getting to a specific place, stealing riches, and creating chaos.” The next in Ubisoft’s stealth and slaughter series is Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, set in the world of Vikings and Norse mythology. Leaks suggested that a working title for the game was Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok, so fans have been excited about living out their berserker dreams even before this official announcement. Players will take the role of Eivor, leading their clan to greatness. “We can’t wait for players to experience the incredible Viking journey ahead of them,” said Ashraf Ismail, creative director on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. “Being in Eivor’s boots as both a Viking raider and a clan leader, players will face the conflicts of establishing a new home while in the midst of a power struggle for…

$49.95 Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox www.team17.com Moving Out is the latest game from publisher Team17, a team who I have come to refer to as the ‘Architects of Arguments’, as its newest title seems set to instigate the breakdown of relationships even more so than previously published games Overcooked 1 and 2. Moving Out is another fun and frenetic co-op experience, this time from developer SMG Studios, that on this occasion sees you become the new recruits of the Smooth Moves Family, a moving company run by an anthropomorphic box with a face drawn on. Within minutes of loading up the game, it was clear this was going to be more stressful than our previous co-op experiences. This is thanks, in part, to a dedicated slap button. So as well…

“It wasn’t designed as a power fantasy game,” says Chey. You spent the game always coveting a better weapon or upgrade. It feels great to play, but as with so much about System Shock 2, it was really about keeping things under budget. “It’s quite easy to create a desire for stuff by rationing things rather than constantly giving the player shiny new toys. Every shiny new toy has to be developed to be exciting and interesting for the player. It’s not going to be that cheap to make, probably.”…

$1,999, www.mi-store.com.au Xiaomi has gained a reputation for releasing impressive phones with affordable price tags; however, it seems to have dropped one of those adjectives for its Mi 10 series in 2020, as the phones – and especially the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro – aren’t what most of us would consider ‘affordable’. The Pro’s high price tag does come with plenty of features phone fans will love. Its camera array consists of a 108MP main snapper, and there are also two telephoto zoom lenses (one for long-distance shots, another for the portrait mode), and an ultra-wide snapper. On paper, and indeed in real life, the camera is pretty great. It’s hard to talk about all this, though, without mentioning the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 from 2019, which came with many…

“As with most mesh systems, set-up is simple and revolves around downloading TP-Link’s Deco app which locates and automatically configures your primary node.” $749, www.tp-link.com/au/ Over the past few years, TP-Link has greatly impressed us with its well-designed, well-built products, that are simple to set-up and use, come with reasonable price tags and often showcase the latest Wi-Fi technology before the competition. The kit can either be used as a standalone router or access point that boosts coverage from your existing router. As with most mesh systems, set-up is simple and revolves around downloading TP-Link’s Deco app which locates and automatically configures your primary node. We found that simply turning on the other nodes was enough for them to be automatically added to the mesh but you can add them…

The introduction of iOS 13 in 2019 was a landmark moment for Apple because it split the operating system into two versions, one for iPhone and one for iPad. As usual, there were plenty of headline new features, like Dark Mode, improvements to Siri, the new FindMy app, and beefed up security and privacy. However, there was also a raft of features that didn’t make the headlines but which all help make both operating systems easier to use, more powerful, and more reliable, as well as, importantly, more fun. Some are hidden under the hood, others more visible but still tucked away in settings or menus, waiting to be discovered. Despite the split into two operating systems, many features, including the new ones in iOS/iPadOS 13 remain common to both.…

There have been 23 iPad models in all, in four “families” – iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro. The current range includes one of each and an extra size of iPad Pro (11–inch as well as 12.9–inch). IPAD 3RD–GEN March 2012 The landmark “new iPad” had a 264ppi Retina display (2048x1536 pixels), 5–Megapixel camera, 4G, Siri, and the Apple A5X chip, the first designed specifically for iPad. IPAD AIR Oct 2013 Thinner, lighter, with the same gorgeous 9.7–inch 2048x1536 Retina display… all for $499. The iPad Air hit a sweet spot, and iPad shipments peaked at their highest level ever. IPAD PRO 11–INCH Oct 2018 The one that really meant business – up to 1TB of storage, sweet 2388x1668 Liquid Retina display, USB–C connectivity, Face ID, A12X Bionic…

Ultra HD – also known as 4K – displays aren’t just for gamers, media enthusiasts or graphics professionals. The ability to have three or four non-overlapping windows on-screen at once is beneficial even if you’re just surfing the web or editing documents. And with prices now around $500 for entry level models, there’s never been a better time to upgrade your monitor to 4K. Viewing such a high resolution - particularly on smaller (24 or 27-inch) monitors – can result in tiny text and icons, making things difficult to read. Thankfully, both Windows and your monitor manufacturer (we’ve used LG in this tutorial as an example) provide tools to help alleviate these issues, which is where we come in. Read on to discover how to set up your display to…

1 INVOKE SPOTLIGHT To start a Spotlight search, press Cmd-Space bar and it’ll appear on top of any other open apps. If it’s in your way, click and drag it to a new location. Spotlight will reappear in that new location when it’s next invoked. 2 SEARCH YOUR MAC Type in your file name or extension; results appear as you type. Spotlight shows the results in category groups, helping you locate the file type you’re looking for. A preview will also be shown, so you can see the contents. 3 OPEN OR DIG FURTHER If you see your file, double-click to open. If not, click “Show all in Finder” at the bottom to open a smart folder with the results. The folder will show the path of the file, so…

Often, searches can bring up everything from bookmarks to Safari history and iTunes content. If that’s not what you need, go to System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results to narrow down your search. Here you can select the categories that Siri and Spotlight search with. Turn off unwanted categories. You can also restrict where Spotlight searches using the Privacy tab. Click the + icon, and select the folder/s you don’t want Spotlight to include. Searching networked drives is turned off by default, but can be enabled if required.…

A while back we wrote an introductory article on Dual SIM Android smartphones, which are becoming increasingly popular in Australia. Having recently acquired a dual SIM Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro, it’s time to get serious about it. The first step in setting up the new phone was transferring data from two phones to the one new phone. All three smartphones used the same Google account, so contacts synced as soon as the Xiaomi logged in. But we also wanted two lots of past SMS and MMS messages, and call histories, to transfer to the new phone. In a previous article we found that the free Backup Your Mobile app (available from the Google Play Store) was a versatile tool, so we installed it on the new phone. In addition…