Tabla de contenidos para No. 215 en iCreate

Please, Sur, can I have some more? Suits you, Sur! We went through all of the clichés when trying to come up with suitable coverlines for Apple’s huge new macOS update. But then we figured we didn’t need to be clever as Big Sur is, er, big enough and totally unsurly enough to grab your attention on its own. This month we have been putting the beta through its paces to pick out all of the neat new features and showcase its slick new look that is eye-poppingly beautiful. So get yourself up to speed with Big Sur now by jumping straight to our in-depth feature, starting on page 14. Also in this issue, we provide 21 handy hints to help preserve your iPhone mobile data and have some great…

A common component of any documentary is a lower third caption that introduces various ‘talking head’ subjects. Final Cut Pro X’s Titles sidebar has a ‘Lower Thirds’ category that offers 72 animated graphics with a customisable name and description text field. But by relying this collection of presets you run the risk of making your programme look similar to the work of other Final Cut users. Fortunately, you can create custom lower third graphics in Photoshop. Final Cut Pro recognises the layered nature of a Photoshop document so you can combine and animate multiple layers in the timeline. Final Cut also recognises a Photoshop layer’s transparency settings, so you can mix your custom lower third graphic with video footage in creative ways. Step-by-step  Animate layered Photoshop documents 1 Choose file…

Ever wondered what it would be like to have the look and feel of iOS on your Mac? Well you can, and it is done using an application that is already present on your Mac, an app you have probably forgotten all about called Launchpad. Accessible via your macOS Dock or via a customisable keyboard shortcut, Launchpad instantly populates the desktop with all of the apps installed on your Mac, making it easy to find and launch them. It is particularly useful if you wish to launch a lesser-used app that isn’t present in your Dock, and you can edit and customise the look of your Launchpad by arranging the icons and creating folders, as we will show here. Step-by-step  Use Launchpad like an iOS Home screen 1 Access via…

Our Apple devices are crammed with options that you may not have known even existed. A good example is the ability to share your Mac screen – and vice versa – with other people through your Messages app. This feature only works between two Macs that are connected to iMessage (not Mac>iOS, for example), but it is a handy way to instantly show the other person what you are looking at on your screen. You can share your own screen or request to share the screen of the other person’s Mac, and you can also request full control too. This means that you can troubleshoot and fix Mac problems that the other person may be experiencing remotely. You may find that there is a slight degree of lag, but it…

Notification Centre was introduced to Macs back in macOS Mountain Lion and has since served as an at-a-glance method of viewing everything that’s going on in your world. And when the ‘Today’ view was added to macOS 10.10 Yosemite it meant that you could add an array of widgets to help you access core information and features from some of your Mac apps quickly and easily. In this tutorial, we will show you how to get the most out of your Notification Centre by finding and adding new widgets and obtaining an order that works for you. It is still a useful feature all these years later in macOS Catalina, so it is worth exploring. Step-by-step  Customise your Today view 1 The basic setup You can access your Mac’s Notification…

If COVID-19 has done one thing, it’s made us more aware of the importance of health. Now, thanks to a new feature introduced with the rollout of iOS 13.6, you can keep track of any symptoms you develop regardless of illness, from acne, nausea, mood changes and chills to lower back pain, dizziness, runny nose and fever. These can be manually inputted via the updated Health app, giving you a more rounded view of your symptoms. By plotting the data on a graph, it’s possible to quickly gain an at-a-glance view of conditions which are worsening or easing and this could help doctors gain a better picture of how you’re suffering. The data can also be shared with third-party apps, again allowing for enhanced analysis and monitoring of your health.…

Do you have a PlayStation 4 console but often find you can’t always jump on it when you like because other members of your family are hogging the television? It’s certainly a predicament many of us will have suffered during the recent lockdown, but thanks to a neat iOS PlayStation companion app, you can game to your heart’s content, whenever you want. The PS4 Remote Play app allows you to stream your PS4 games to an iPhone or iPad on a shared Wi-Fi network and play them on a smaller display. By mirroring what’s being outputted from the console, you can simply pick up where you left off and, thanks to the onscreen controls, you can get stuck in immediately. Even better, you can enjoy other features, such as voice…

Apple’s decision to introduce the Voice Memo app for watchOS 6 in 2019 was certainly a welcome move. Suddenly, you were able to simply lift your arm, tap the app icon and start recording your voice and that of others before having those files sync with your iPhone, iPad and Mac. As such, any memos recorded on your Apple Watch can be listened to on other devices as well as via your wrist through the wearable’s tiny speaker. But don’t think that you have to go elsewhere to perform basic management tasks such as changing a recording’s name or checking all the memos you have recorded on your Apple products: these tasks can be done in the Watch’s Voice Memo app, too. Here we’re going to look at those features,…

Accessibility This refers to a group of settings on Mac and iOS that allow you to customise your device to suit your needs. There are settings that relate to physical and motor impairments as well as hearing or sight problems. Go to Settings or System Preferences to find them. Markup Tools Both macOS and iOS feature a built-in toolset that enables you to quickly mark up certain files, such as PDFs and photos. Through these tools you can add useful annotations, signatures, shapes and more. Offload This is a macOS and iOS space-saving term. The way it works is your respective device highlights the apps that haven’t been used in a long time and invites you to delete them to free up storage space. All app data is kept and…

Ekster Parliament Smart Wallet £99/$99 ekster.com Constructed out of PVB (polyvinyl butyral) from recycled car windscreens to create a vegan leather that is indistinguishable from real cowhide, Ekster’s Parliament wallets look and smell incredible. Inside, you will find a durable money strap and a built-in cardholder that fans out your cards at the click of a button. If you also add in the Tracker Card (sold separately at £49/$49), then you can make this wallet unlosable, too, thanks to GPS tracking. Shure MV5 Microphone £105/$115 shure.com If you like to record on the move then Shure’s petite MV5 mic is designed to connect and record via Lightning or USB directly to your device without distortion. You can use vocal, instrument or flat settings to customise your recordings, and grab the…

Price Arcade subscription Requirements macOS 10.15 or later • 220.4 MB Learn more 1simplegame.com Available from Mac App Store CHILL-OUT GAMES ARE TEN-A-PENNY IN APPLE ARCADE, but The Lullaby of Life definitely has something about it. Combining relaxation, dexterity and agility, you traverse a very colourful world collecting musical notes in order to create a gentle symphony to stir the creatures around you into life. It doesn’t really require much thought and is pitched at anyone aged four and above, although some sections will require the sort of sharp reflexes that are absent in infants barely able to string a sentence together. Its garish appearance is mesmerising though, and although it soon gets very repetitive, spend a few minutes in its company and your mood will be instantly uplifted. Probably…

David Crookes This month, our iOS expert shows you how to track and share symptoms in the Health app and keep on top of your iPhone’s location tracking settings. Shaun McGill Our tech specialist gets hands-on with macOS Big Sur, the most monumental system update in 20 years, to walk you through all of the best new features. George Cairns Our creative genius will show you how to make the most of monochrome in Photos, master classic camera techniques in iMovie and work with layers in Final Cut Pro. Facebook iCreateMagazine Twitter @iCreateMagazine Instagram icreate_mag Email icreate@futurenet.com…

When documenting daily events – such as a walk in the woods – you can create a more interesting sequence by wearing your Hollywood director’s hat. Instead of capturing the action in one boring long clip, you can break it up into a sequence of shorter shots that can be cut together to tell a story. By using classic camera moves you can add visual variety to your edited sequence. We’ve captured a range of shots using classic moves such as pan, tilt, track and even a crane shot, so you can practise cutting moving clips together in iMovie. You can then recreate these common camera techniques when shooting your own subjects. We shot our clips on a gimbal-mounted GoPro camera, but you can also perform most classic cinematography moves…

Loops, a new step sequencer and two new samplers just for starters. Hidden amongst all this, however, are some radical tweaks to the existing workflows for creating new tracks, quickly making new Sampler tracks from audio files, choosing plug-ins, changing sounds and adding samples to the revamped Drum Machine Designer plug-in. Involving the use of drag-and-drop functionality, these new workflows can significantly speed up the way you work with your Logic projects – for instance, quickly creating a new Drum Machine Designer instrument in a single drag–and–drop motion. In the steps below, we’ll be showing how these new drag–and–drop implementations can really turbo-charge the way you work with Logic. Step-by-step  Create tracks with drag and drop 1 Import audio file Drag the audio file ‘DragDropDrums.wav’ from a Finder window into…

There’s nothing more frustrating to anyone recording sound on a Mac than to plug in, play and hear nothing. You check the connections multiple times and all appears to be fine, to be met only with a wall of silence. Specifically, we’re talking about MIDI-based input to your Mac, so it could be from a myriad of USB/FireWire instruments. Typically, you might be using a keyboard, MIDI drums or even a MIDI guitar – with a built-in or external interface. The point being, as long as you are getting a valid signal into macOS, there are always ways of tinkering with MIDI settings and ensuring you’re set up for apps like GarageBand and Logic. Step-by-step  Put an end to your MIDI misery 1 Launch MIDI app The Audio MIDI Setup…

Go to data settings Go to Settings>Mobile Data. The stat called ‘Current Period’ is the one you need to keep an eye on – but it will keep rising if you don’t reset it. Select one and then click on ‘Delete all Files’ to remove all documents and data. Reset your stats At the start of the month when the mobile data on your current contract is refreshed, go to Settings>Mobile Data and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. Here you will see the ‘Reset Statistics’ option; tap it. Monitor over months It is good to monitor your data usage over several months to get a fair reflection of exactly how much you use/need. We recommend that you set yourself a reminder at the start of every…

Some apps, by their very nature, need to know your whereabouts. A map app, for example, would not be as effective if it couldn’t figure your location. The same goes for some shopping, food and news apps. But that doesn’t mean you should allow all apps to have the same permission. Indeed, when iOS 13 was introduced, Apple replaced the option to ‘Always Allow’ location tracking with one that would simply ‘Allow Once’. This means you can have greater control over when an app grabs such data. In this tutorial, we look at how you can make sure that you’re always asked how an app should access your location when you launch it. We also examine how you can control any potential location gathering for use in relation to COVID-19…

As of iPadOS 13, it’s been possible to download files from the internet to your iPad or iCloud Drive straight from within Safari. This means you can grab PDFs, audio, video, compressed folders, images, games and more by tapping links on webpages just as you would on a computer. These files can be saved on your device or within iCloud Drive and your choice will determine how flexible working with them will prove to be. Choose iCloud Drive and it’ll be easier to use the files on other computers, since anything stored in the cloud is synced with your other devices. But even if you’d prefer to keep the files purely on the iPad, you can manage your files both as they’re downloading and once they are saved. Here we…

I heard that it is possible to create a Siri shortcut for searching on Google, is this even possible? Yes, Google has added Siri shortcuts to all of its apps and services on iOS. To see it in action, start off by downloading the Google app from the App Store and then launch it. Now, tap ‘More’ at the bottom of the interface and go to Settings>General>Siri Shortcuts. Here you will see a suggested shortcut called ‘Search With Google’, tap on the ‘+’ icon and then, if you are happy with the suggested phrase (you can change it if you want), tap ‘Add to Siri’. Once that has been done, test it out by saying, “Hey Siri, search with Google,” and the shortcut will begin. How can I stop shared…

APPLE HAS ANNOUNCED THE WINNERS OF ITS 2020 APPLE DESIGN AWARDS. The annual Apple Design Awards showcase the very best apps and games released each year for the iPhone, iPad and Mac platforms. The awards are open to all developers, large and small, and winners can come from any country in the world. Four apps and four games are selected as winners, and these awards are eagerly awaited as they can strongly boost an app’s profile. “Every year, app and game developers demonstrate exceptional craftsmanship and we’re honouring the best of the best,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. “Receiving an Apple Design Award is a special and laudable accomplishment. Past honourees have made some of the most noteworthy apps and games of all time. Through their…

There is more to the art of creating striking black-and-white photographs than simply removing colour from an image. An effective monochromatic photograph should have some strong blacks and pure whites. The high contrast and absence of distracting colours helps bring out the shape and form of objects in the scene. You can also lighten or darken objects based on their original colour to help them stand out more effectively against their surroundings. We’ll show you how to convert a photo to mono in the iOS and MacOS versions of Photos to help your monochrome shots stand out from the colour crowd. We’ll also alter the mood of a mono shot by adding a hint of colour. Step-by-step  Make a mono conversion 1 Desaturate shot Import mono_start.dng into Photos. Click Edit.…

Popular music has embraced a technique called ‘auto-tune’ with much success. Love it or hate it, the effect is applied to vocals to produce a synthesised sound that forces it into a set melody. What’s happening here is pitch shifting, or something known as ‘transposing’, between musical keys. This trick can be simulated within GarageBand, using its Transpose tools to not only nudge singers into line but also MIDI or audio Apple Loops. What this allows us to do is change the melody of a region without editing the sound wave, and this is particularly useful in genres like EDM. Here, we show how the Transposition track can be used ‘move’ a synth-based melody between pitch points to develop new melodic hooks. Step-by-step  Change loop melodies by Transposing 1 Loop…

Your Mac’s Activity Monitor app looks complicated, but it is a utility that you should get to know because it can be very useful. Apps like Mail and Calendar open windows on your desktop and you can clearly see what apps are running, but behind the scenes macOS runs much more. Some things never display windows and we are unaware that they are running at all. Activity Monitor can show just the apps with windows (go to View>Windowed Processes), or it can show everything (View>All Processes). It enables you to see apps that use the most CPU, memory or battery, apps that prevent your Mac from entering sleep mode and apps that may have problems. Whenever your Mac is misbehaving, launch Activity Monitor. Step-by-step  Get to know Activity Monitor 1…

Your iPhone is a pocket powerhouse that can be used for tapping into the internet on the move, checking for important emails when you are away from the office and even streaming movies when you’re in the middle of nowhere – but it all comes at a price. Anything that you do on your iPhone will often require an internet connection, and when you aren’t connected to a Wi-Fi network your phone will tap into your mobile data, which is handled by your phone provider. Depending on the type of contract that you have with your provider, you will be allocated a certain amount of mobile data per month. Unless you are careful, you will find you can eat through your allowance in no time, forcing you to either go…

While browsing through the Mobile Data settings on your iPhone you may be alarmed by one statistic at the bottom of the list of apps that use mobile data – ‘Uninstalled Apps’. What does this mean? Are apps that you have deleted coming back from beyond the grave to steal your data? No, thank goodness! This just means that if you don’t reset your data usage statistics regularly (Settings>Mobile Data>Reset Statistics), then any apps that you have deleted since you last reset your statistics which used data while they were installed on your iPhone will be added to this total. This is so that there are no discrepancies when you add up the amount of data used by your currently installed apps against the total data used in the period.…

Listening to audio at too high a level for a prolonged period of time can damage your hearing. Indeed, the World Health Organisation says long-term exposure to sound at or above 80 decibels (dB) can lead to permanent problems so, to protect you, iOS 13 monitors your headphone volume level, telling you if it’s ‘OK’ – below 80dB – or ‘Loud’ in which case you should take action. The data is contained within the Health app where, if you press the info button, you can see how long you ought to limit yourself to certain levels. You also get a personal ongoing chart of exposure that’ll build up as time goes by. To get going, you simply need to connect some headphones or earphones with iOS 13 automatically doing the…

Chances are you’ve signed up to the public beta of iOS 14 and you’re already getting to grips with its many enhancements. If you haven’t, then you’ll find there’s much to look forward to – and even those who are playing around with this fantastic new release are likely to be making new discoveries each day. For as well as the flagship additions which Apple promoted at the recent WWDC, there are also a good number of under-the-radar extras and refinements that have been much less publicised. Here we look at both, rounding up the ten features that we’re really looking forward to using, whether they are well-reported or lesser known. We’re looking forward to having the final release of iOS 14 nestled nicely on our iPhones by September. 1…

Copying to Mac You can also copy selected music files to your Mac rather than straight to the Music app. Click ‘Copy to Mac’ and TouchCopy will create a folder on your desktop to copy the files to. If you want to choose a different destination, go to TouchCopy>Preferences>Copy to Mac and then click on ‘Browse’. Terminal command You will need to enter the following command into your Terminal app: sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia--volume/ Volumes/[insert the name of your boot disk here]. If it doesn’t work, check the spacing of the command and try again.…

Macintosh SE Release date March 1987 • Processor: Motorola 68000 @ 7.8MHz • Memory: 1MB RAM • Hard drive: 20MB • Display: nine-inch monochrome 512x342 Original price: £2,300/$3,900 Price now: £110/$125 Arriving at the same time as the Macintosh II, the SE introduced several new and unique features to Apple’s growing user base. It was the first Macintosh to include space for an internal hard drive, or if the user preferred, a second floppy drive. It also included an expansion slot, which could be used to help increase both the RAM and processing power of what already was a nifty desktop for the time. Before being discontinued in late 1990, the SE enjoyed moderate sales, but still ended up being greatly outsold by the Macintosh II.…