Tabla de contenidos para No. 238 en iCreate

“We’ll help you get your iPhone as ‘off-grid’ as you are prepared to go” There’s something about a spring clean that is immensely good for the soul. The whole ‘out with the old, in with the new’ ethos in conjunction with mother nature teasing out fresh new flora outside makes us feel ready to tackle anything. Apply the concept of a hearty spring clean to our Mac and iOS devices and the result is the same – our devices become supercharged and ready for anything that we throw at them. Starting on page 14, we’ve got the ultimate guide to spring cleaning all of your Apple tech, in which we show you how to clear out unnecessary clutter, disable labour-intensive processes and maximise the battery capacity of all of your…

IF YOU WANT TO BUY A SMALL PHONE – SOMETHING WITH A DISPLAY UNDER SIX INCHES – YOU GENERALLY HAVE TO TURN TO APPLE.BUT WITH THE iPHONE 14, IT SEEMS LIKE THE END IS NIGH FOR THE MINI MOBILES. We’ve heard plenty of rumours now that insinuate there won’t be an iPhone 14 mini to follow on from the iPhone 13 mini, as reports suggest these smaller handsets haven’t sold well. Apparently, the upcoming range will instead get an iPhone 14 Max, with a big screen but the same specs as the base device. That’s huge if true – literally – because it would show Apple is moving away from the small phone market in a big way. But it’s not the only brand to do so. Tech firms apparently…

Photos Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed When you snap a shot with the Camera app, it’s usually a case of ‘what you see is what you get.’ It automatically adjusts colours and tones to capture a scene’s true colours, such as warmer or cooler colours to avoid blue or orange colour casts. In analog days, different film stocks produced a range of looks, such as warm colours and a high contrast. You can set up your iPhone to be biased towards a particular look before you shoot, courtesy of Photographic Styles. This saves you having to process colours and tones in Photos. Alternatively, you can filter colours and tones in Photos to produce more stylised looks. Photographic Styles Choose a look before you shoot Select a Style In the…

Garage Band Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Guitar effects come in two varieties, the stomp box and the expression pedal. The latter allows for more technique during a performance. GarageBand models several of these within its Pedalboard plugin, including Wham (whammy) and wah-wah (x2) units. The Wham is used to make ‘dive bombs’ or sweeping detune effects, depending on pedal position. The wah pedals alternate rock between treble and bass tone to create a quacklike, vocal guitar effect. However, we must use some automation. Automation curves can be drawn to set the pedal position dynamically across a track and shape the sound. Pedal Automations Picking apart the core controls for controlling pedal FX, both hands and feet-free Wah pedals Alternates between bass (up) and treble (down) tones. Tilting the…

DuckDuckGo Developer Duck Duck Go, Inc Difficulty Time needed DuckDuckGo is well known for (a) having a rather daft name and (b) for being a search engine that doesn’t track you. Now it’s attempting to corner the browser market by offering a privacy-focussed app for macOS 10.15 (or later) that automatically blocks web trackers. It’s available for download at https://duckduckgo.com/mac but, at the time of writing, you need to join a waitlist in order to grab a code which allows you to use it. Download the mobile browser app in iOS, tap the menu button and select ‘Settings’. Scroll down to the section, DuckDuckGo Desktop App and wait a few days. Once you’re in, you can then begin exploring. Step-by-step Make your browsing more secure 1 Set the basics Launch…

Calendar Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed The Calendar app is an essential tool for organising your work and personal events and appointments. It is universal across Mac and iOS/iPadOS and can be viewed with a few clicks or taps on the screen. However, sometimes a hard copy is good to have, right? A printout of your calendar or a list of upcoming events and appointments may very be considered old-school, but is still useful. For example, you could pin it on a noticeboard, stick it to the fridge, or send a PDF of it to someone. There’s no need to switch on your Mac and there is no phone battery to expire. You can also write on a printed calendar. Let’s see the options. Step-by-step How to print a…

During the height of the COVID pandemic, unsubstantiated rumours were flying around that the vaccine contained micro chips that could be used to track us once they were injected into our bodies. This was complete nonsense, of course, but if unscrupulous companies and organisations did want to track us, then they could do it far more effectively through the everyday use of our iPhones, rather than resorting to anything more sinister. We unwittingly beam out vast quantities of information about ourselves simply by using our iPhones, but there are numerous features built into iOS that allow us to limit what data is accessed and how. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you how to lock down your devices virtually to the point of being totally off-grid, to ensure that your…

Maps Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed One of the new features in iOS 15 is a user account in the Maps app. This is designed to make it easier to configure most of the settings by putting them all in one place. Many features and settings are now customised through your account instead of being spread over the Maps app and Maps in the Settings app. Your Maps user account enables access to four things in the app: Favourites, Guides, Reports and Preferences. Although it is still possible to get to some of these things through other routes in the app, putting every one in your account makes it one central location where you can access everything. Here we take a close look at the account feature in Maps.…

Twitter Developer Twitter, Inc Difficulty Time needed GIFs have long proven to be a popular way to engage with others on social media. They let you convey all manner of emotions, from anger to laughter, and they’ve become something of a creative artform, since they were invented 35 years ago by Stephen Wilhite, who sadly passed away in March. But what if you want to create your own? Well, Twitter has added a feature to its iOS app that allows you to do just that. Just tap a few buttons, record a short video and share, to quickly show off something you’ve done. Or, create a GIF that’s more personalised. It’s a nice feature to have in the Twitter toolkit. Step-by-step Record a GIF and share 1 Compose a tweet…

Settings Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed There are numerous reasons for wanting Siri to read out text on your iPad’s screen. Although the feature was created by Apple to help people with a visual impairment, it also comes in handy if you’re trying to follow a recipe and don’t want to touch the screen or if you’re simply tired of reading and want to give your peepers a rest by listening instead. Whatever your reason, it’s very easy to set up, with the feature baked into iPadOS (as well as iOS), allowing you to switch it on and off at will. Here, we show you just how to do that while exploring the different ways you can get Siri to speak a screen’s content. It’s also possible to hear…

Hive Developer Centrica Hive Limited Difficulty Time needed You likely already know that your Apple Watch can be used for a huge number of day-to-day tasks, but the reality is that most owners stick to the default apps with only the occasional third-party app installed. If, however, you are using the Hive system to control the heating, water and other essentials in your home, the Hive app would be a must-install offering. Its simplicity is only surpassed by its usefulness and so understanding how it works will take a mere minute, but the benefits you will get from the app are immense. Whether you use it via a complication or only dive in occasionally, we are certain that you will be more than happy with the end results and the…

£299/$349 Key features Active Noise Cancelling • Bluetooth 5.2 with LDAC compatibility Learn more technics.com Available from amazon.co.uk THERE’S A TIME AND A PLACE FOR BREAKING NEW DESIGN GROUND, and it’s emphatically not when designing a pair of over-ear headphones. If you thought Technics was about to tear up the rulebook, think again – the A800 headphones look, feel and (to a lesser extent) even smell like we all expect a reasonably expensive pair of headphones to look, feel and (to a lesser extent) smell. They’re available in silver or black finishes and are built and finished with the sort of thoroughness Technics is renowned for. At 298g, they’re just about light enough for extended listening sessions, and they fold up sufficiently to fit into a quite compact, egg-shaped semi-hard…

£529/$720 Key features 20Hz – 20KHz • AirPlay • Bluetooth 4.2 • HDMI ARC Learn more harmankardon.co.uk Available from richersounds.com THE CITATION AMP IS A SLEEK, compact amplifier that is designed to power bookshelf, floor-standing, in-ceiling and in-wall speakers, as well as wireless speakers to create a cable-free, multi-channel surround sound system. Joan of ARC It comes with 125W of Class D amplification per channel and a frequency response of 20Hz – 20KHz. Connections include coaxial, optical, RCA and HDMI ARC – which means you can use it to power a soundbar and use your TV’s regular remote to control the volume. For wireless music streaming, you’re covered by built-in Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay. In order to connect to your other wireless speakers, the Citation Amp can be hooked…

Release date: October 2004 Capacity: 20 GB Connection: FireWire or USB Minimum OS to sync: 10.1.5 Supported audio: MP3, AAC and Apple Lossless Extras: Exclusive U2 poster, iTunes Music Store coupon for $50 off The Complete U2 digital box-set, earbud headphones Original price: £249/$349 Price now: £440/$555 Apple’s collaborative relationship with the rock band, U2, began a decade before they thrust a digital copy of the band’s Songs of Innocence album into every unsuspecting user’s iTunes library back in 2014. The iPod U2, a special edition of the fourth-generation iPod Classic, was released in 2004 and was internally identical to the standard 20 GB iPod, but with several noticeable cosmetic differences. The device featured a black front with a distinctive red Click Wheel and laser-etched signatures of the U2 band…

David Crookes Our iOS expert will show you how to turn your handwritten messages into notes and create unique GIFs in Twitter. He’ll also show you how to make your own games on Mac. Shaun McGill Our tech expert will help you power-up all of your Apple devices by clearing out the clutter, disabling unnecessary processes and maximising the battery capacity. George Cairns Our creative genius will show you how to master your iPhone’s Photographic Styles, create a slick sequence in iMovie, and get that Hollywood look in your Final Cut projects.…

iMovie Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Download available Thanks to your ever-present iPhone, you can capture and share family activities via social media sites. One way to make your videos generate more of those endorphin-inducing likes is to present them as a professional looking mini documentary complete with titles, music and cutaways. We’ve provided you with a range of iPhone 13 Pro Max clips to work with in iMovie. To capture high-quality audio from a distance, we popped wireless Saramonic Blink500 Pro B2 transmitters onto our ‘actors’. We’ll also show you how to reduce our edited 4K clips to a smaller and more web-friendly HD resolution. Shoot to edit Cut clips into a slick sequence Establishing shot When filming a family day out, capture a wide shot to introduce…

Logic Pro Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed As well as shipping with dozens of fantastic software instruments, Logic comes complete with a library of nearly 15,000 Apple Loops to use in your tracks. Apple Loops are pre-recorded MIDI or audio files that can be dragged straight from the library browser onto a track in your project – and they can be anything from drum breaks to vocal hooks. What makes them brilliant is that, not only do they automatically adjust to fit your project tempo, Apple Loops are also royalty-free, which means you can use them in as many projects as you like without fear of a visit from the copyright police. In the loop Get professionally-played parts in your projects with Apple Loops In the family Certain Apple…

Keychain Access Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed One of the new features in the latest version of macOS is the ability to store notes with passwords. This means that if you have stored the login details for online banking, for example, you could store credit card numbers with it. Some websites require security questions and you might need a PIN. It depends on the service, but there are many times when you need to store extra information with login details. Now you can. Using Keychain Access on the Mac, you can browse websites and services, and add extra information. You can even create and store notes in a secure area of Keychain Access that only you can see. Keychain notes Store notes securely in iCloud Keychain Secure Notes Select…

Safari Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed How long have you been using an Apple Mac? If you are a long-time user, do you remesmber running System 7.5 on an Apple Mac II? Maybe you used even older hardware and software, like System 7.0 on a high-resolution 640 x 480 black and white screen? Well, we thought it was high-resolution back then. You can relive the past or if you are a more recent Mac user, you can see what it was like to use a Mac back in the early 1990s. No hardware or software is required and you can run a Mac emulator in a Safari web browser. Just go to the Internet Archive at archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_mac. Let’s do the time warp Computing 1990s style with Internet Archive Safari…

Photos Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed The Photos app on the iPhone is more powerful than you think. It can analyse a photo and determine what the subject is and what objects it contains. That feature has been around for some time – you can search for ‘beach’ for example, and see all your photos taken at beaches. Photos now goes even further and Visual Lookup shows additional information about the subject or objects in photos. For example, it can tell your dog or cat’s breed, common names of plants, a building’s name, and so on. It can show Wikipedia articles about objects in photos, too. It is a wonderfully clever and helpful feature. Use Visual Lookup See Siri Knowledge information in Photos Object icons View a photo in…

Notes Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed One of the best new features introduced in iOS 15.4 makes it easier than ever before to scan your documents. Called ‘Scan Text’, it lets you capture handwritten or printed text from your iPhone’s camera and save it into Notes or Reminders. What’s more, you can also extract text from your scans if all you need is a small portion of a larger document. The feature is available on a wide number of iPhone models including the iPhone SE second generation and later, as well as models from iPhone XR onwards. Of course, accuracy is going to depend on the source – if your handwriting is scruffy, then you may struggle to get an accurate scan. But it’s generally great at picking up…

Google Arts & Culture Developer Google Difficulty Time needed Manga is a comic style, which developed in Japan in the late 19th century. It is hugely popular across the world, with sales of manga books and magazines running into billions. But have you thought about creating your own character? With Giga Manga, you can do that. Created by Google, it makes use of machine learning and it’ll make sense of even the messiest of scribbles, having being trained on more than 140,000 hi-res images that enable it to predict where your sketches may go. Find Giga Manga at artsandculture.google.com/experiment/UAHzM-yZUdUpNA or in the Google Arts and Culture app (search Giga Manga) and tap ‘Launch Experiment’ to start. Step-by-step Bring your sketches to life 1 Start to sketch You ll see a…

A The term ‘best’ is obvious in most situations, but for widgets on an iPad it is more a case of balance that is needed. Some widgets offer lots of detail in a small space while others are designed to bring real-time information, with others purely aimed at making your iPad Home Screen nicer to look at. Using a combination of all of these can help to make your iPad Home Screen more productive, more immersive and easier to understand at a glance than just using rows and rows of icons. If you get the balance right you have the ability to make your iPad feel and work more like a MacBook, but without the clutter and with all of the benefits iPadOS brings. We will highlight some of the…

tvOS 15.4 Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed So you’re settling down to watch a movie or you’re about to play a game, but you want to ensure you catch the postman, watch over your property or look out for friends approaching your house. Rather than get up to look outside, you could simply run live video from a HomeKit compatible camera in a Picture in Picture window. Assuming the camera is pointing where you want it to be, you can then continue being entertained while having one eye on the corner of the screen. Here, we show you how you can do this with any cameras set up in the Home app, making use of a feature introduced in tvOS 15.4. We also look at positioning the footage so…

£299.99/$299.99 Key features Works with Apple HomeKit • 32 light panels • 16M+ colours Learn more nanoleaf.me Available from currys.co.uk TO CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2, Nanoleaf has devised an altogether classier type of movie tie-in in the form of special edition Nanoleaf Shapes starter kits that let you recreate Sonic and his friends in stunning wall-mounted light panels. Shape-shifters Comprising of 32 Nanoleaf Shapes light panels, the kits allow you to recreate one of the three main characters from the film: Sonic, Knuckles or Tails, using the same panels in different formations to bring the likeness of your favourite character to your wall. Then it is just a case of choosing Sonic blue, Knuckles red or Tails yellow from the ‘Sonic 2’ playlist in the Nanoleaf…

Download available Tutorial project files All the assets you’ll need to get creative with our projects. Look out for the above icon to see if there are downloads available. Exclusive video tutorials Discover how to get more out of your devices with a selection of iOS and macOS video guides from MacMost. Loads of other cool stuff! Customise your Mac with stunning wallpapers, grab some royalty-free fonts and watch more how-to guides. Log in to www.filesilo.co.uk/icreate Register to get instant access to this pack of must-have creative resources, how-to videos and tutorial assets Free for digital readers too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer FileSilo The home of great downloads – exclusive to your favourite magazines from Future Publishing Secure and safe online access, from anywhere Free access…

The notion of spring cleaning is a term that has been in use for hundreds of years and it is not merely a practical activity. It is seen as a way to cleanse the mind as well as a space, and to this day it is seen as purely beneficial around the world. For tech, the idea of spring cleaning does not tally at first, but when you consider that we all hoard files, data, media and much more that we rarely interact with, it makes perfect sense to spring clean as many of your devices as you can. The practical advantages are that your devices will likely last longer and that you will be able to use your devices more efficiently, but ultimately you should consider a hefty spring…

Final Cut Pro Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Download available Devices such as the iPhone 13 Pro range are powerful movie cameras – capable of capturing 4K footage with a High Dynamic Range (HDR). We’ll show you how to make HDR footage viewable on a Mac’s standard dynamic range (SDR) display. Due to in-camera stabilisation, you can perform smooth camera moves like tilts and pans without requiring tripods or gimbals. The Camera app’s Cinematic mode enables you to add blur to your footage, mimicking the look produced by Hollywood cameras. We’ll explain how to change a Cinematic clip’s focal points and depth of field blur using Final Cut Pro’s tools. Adjust properties Change focus and apply effects Vignette The Effects browser’s Vignette effect darkens the corners of a clip…

Console Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed When a problem occurs on the Mac, a message on the screen may notify you of the fault. However, only the most critical errors are displayed. Many minor errors are ignored or dealt with by macOS. There could be errors on your Mac you’re unaware of because they aren’t serious enough for a notification. Console is an app in the Utilities folder that enables you to browse log files written by apps and by macOS. Logs contain descriptions of every action and event that occurs. By browsing the logs, you can track down problems. Fixing them may require searching the web, but Console is the best place to start. Step-by-step Check logs for faults and errors 1 Start Console Open the Console app…

Calendar Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed The Calendar app is essential for organising your work or personal appointments, holidays and so on. It is hard to imagine life without its helpful reminders. However, calendars are also great for groups of people, such as work teams, clubs, families and so on. Create a public calendar, send the link to others and they can subscribe to it in their own Calendar app. They can immediately see when events are scheduled to take place and if events change, they can be updated within minutes. So, they will not miss out on a rescheduled event. Let’s see how to create a calendar and make it public on the Mac. They are accessible on the iPhone too. Public calendars Make them, share them, subscribe…

RichCast Developer Panivox Limited Difficulty Time needed Have you ever played a text adventure game – “get bread”, “give to rat”, etc? With RichCast, you can produce similar experiences but instead of typing commands, you can have players click buttons or interact with the narrative using their voice! What’s more, the words are read out by AI voice actors and you can do all of this by dragging and dropping tiles. It’s hard to do justice to a program as rich as this: it can also be used to produce quizzes, training apps, tours, surveys, educational titles and much more. Here, we’re getting you started with a basic puzzle. Just download RichCast for free via the Mac App Store. Get to grips with the RichCast interface Edit with the action…

Notes Developer Ale Inc Difficulty Time needed First, the iPhone could recognise objects and scenes in photographs and we could search for ‘dog’ or ‘beach’. Then, we were given the ability to recognise text from in photos and copy and paste it into other apps. Now, we can read subsections of text from printed material and copy and paste them into apps. A good example of this is creating shopping lists from printed recipes. If you have a cookbook or magazine with a recipe, you can point your phone at it and, in a tap, create a shopping list of ingredients. Here, we use Notes and recipes because it works best, but this is an iOS feature and it can be used in other apps. Scan printed text Copy lists…

Apple TV Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Are you seeing the best quality video that the iPhone can show? The settings for popular video apps like Apple TV and YouTube may not be set to the maximum and you might be able to tweak the settings to improve the picture and sound. It would be nice to always have the best quality video possible, but it does require the most mobile data and the fastest internet connection. If you are watching on mobile you might want to limit the amount of data used and if storage space is getting low on the iPhone, you might want to reduce the quality to avoid running out. Deciding whether to choose quality or data and storage saving is up to you. Let’s…

iOS 15 Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Apple bought the Shazam music recognition app back in 2017 and now it has been built into iOS, making it easy to quickly identify a song and the artist. All you have to do is add the Music Recognition button to your Control Centre and tap it whenever you need to identify a track. To make use of this function, you will need to have at least iOS 14.2 installed on your device, but it works without the standalone Shazam app. It is discreet, easy to access and handy for identifying songs in a film soundtrack, for example, or for making you seem more knowledgeable than you are at dinner parties. Step-by-step Add Shazam to your Control Centre 1 Open the Settings…

iTranslate Converse Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed Summer is here and that means holidays For many people, it also means going where English isn’t the first language and where you may struggle to make yourself understood. But with an Apple Watch on your wrist, you can say “adiós”, “au revoir” and “auf Wiedersehen” to all of that. There are two ways of turning your Apple Watch into a digital translator. The first is to download a free app and, in our case we’ve selected iTranslate Converse because it’s so easy to use. After all, the last thing you want when trying to chat in a foreign language is something cumbersome. The task is hard enough as it is. The other method is to go through Siri. It’s not quite…