Tabla de contenidos para February 2016 en Macworld Australia

I recall as a kid ruminating about what life would be like in the year 2000. I was born in the 1960s and I remember saying to my parents that I’d be in my 30s and so old! Back then, TV was black and white, I played outside a lot more than kids today and my father, who worked for the PMG/Telecom/Telstra from the time he arrived in Australia in the 1950s, had a phone installed in our house. That house was recently bulldozed, along with a few of the places my neighbours lived in, and was replaced by a hideous, characterless apartment block. Apparently that’s a sign of progress. But along the way we’ve also gained a lot. The world is a much smaller place and, by and large,…

UPGRADE BLUES I have just had the most disappointing couple of weeks with my Mac since I started using them many years ago, and it all seems to have been as a result of upgrading to El Capitan recently. Apart from having to adjust (reluctantly) to the photos software and other visual changes, my computer seems to no longer want to recognise some external devices. First, I did some filming – video and still – recently and, as I had done prior to the upgrade, tried to load the data onto my Mac. No go. It didn’t happen; neither iMovie nor Premiere Pro would recognise either movie camera even though they had done with Yosemite. The cameras are a Panasonic DV tape and a Sony Handycam. I then plugged my…

We don’t want to be accused of stealing slogans from previous governments, but we are going through an education revolution. If you look carefully at education from the 1800s through to the 1980s, not a lot changed. Sure, we went from blackboards to whiteboards and introduced overhead projectors in the time, but all of those were basically forms of the same educational system, or pedagogy. Essentially, the teacher was the font from which knowledge would spout. They would control which books students had available to them and when they could access them. Even when the internet first appeared in tertiary institutions in the 1980s it was largely used as a tool for academics. But a number of things happened during the 1980s that created a perfect storm – such as…

Over the coming months we’ll be taking an in-depth look at Profile Manager, the mobile device management (MDM) service built-in to Apple’s Server app. Profile Manager is a tool you can use to take control of all the Mac OS, iOS and Apple TV devices you own or are responsible for. It can also help you provide your employees with access to company resources, such as VPNs, file servers and email, using their own devices, while still requiring those employees to secure their devices in ways that comply with your company security policies. WHY USE A MDM SERVICE? Whether you’re a small business owner with just a few users and devices to manage or an IT manager with hundreds, you’re faced with similar challenges. How do you provide users with…

The new 4K iMac isn’t the cheapest Retina Mac you can buy – both the MacBook and the 13in Retina MacBook Pro come cheaper – but it offers a much larger screen. Measuring 4096 by 2304 pixels, that’s 9.4 million pixels, providing a vastly broader work area than a 12in, 13in or even 15in laptop screen. The main feature of the 4K iMac is its beautiful display, powered by all sorts of amazing technologies that allow Apple to drive those 9.4 million pixels. If you’ve been through the Retina transition on an iPad or iPhone or MacBook, you know how much nicer a screen can be when you can’t see the pixels at all. There’s also a whole lot of flexibility with a Retina display. Because the pixel count is…

WD My Cloud Mirror A jack-of-all-trades, WD’s My Cloud Mirror aims to keep your data safe and sound. Like all the units in this bunch, this two-bay NAS gives you the choice of combining its two drives as RAID0 to use its full capacity, or else mirroring the drives as RAID1 – which halves your storage capacity but saves your files should one drive fail. The My Cloud Mirror supports MacOS’ Time Machine feature for backing up your Mac, or you can use WD’s SmartWare Pro for Windows. Meanwhile the WD My Cloud app can automatically upload your photos and videos from your iGadgets. The ability to upload files from iGadgets is becoming common as network drives aim to be your ‘personal cloud’, but you’ll want some form of off-site/cloud…

ANTHONY CARUANA Trying to control everything from my iPad – sometimes it’s just easier to get off the couch and do things the old-fashioned way. MADELEINE SWAIN Anyone’s who’s read my contributions to this column before can probably guess this: my new year’s resolution would be to break my children’s bad tech habits… JAMUNA RAJ Keeping the phone away and having real-life conversations with real people. MONIQUE BLAIR I would like to put my phone AWAY when I go to bed, as it currently resides beside my head on charge (I’m sure there is something very wrong with this).…

FITBIT BLAZE TAKES ON APPLE WATCH Fitbit’s activity trackers are some of the most popular around, but the chunky bracelets aren’t exactly easy on the eyes. Fitbit is changing that with Blaze, a new fitness-tracking watch with colour touchscreen display that takes aim directly at Apple Watch. The US$200 Blaze packs in a heart rate sensor for continuous heart rate tracking, automatic exercise recognition, multi-sport mode and free personal trainer-guided workouts viewable directly on the watch’s screen. Like Apple Watch, Fitbit Blaze requires your phone to be nearby to connect to GPS and offer real-time distance and pace data. Unlike Apple Watch, Blaze lasts five days on a single charge, even with constant heart rate monitoring, and it works with Android as well as iOS. Fitbit is clearly focusing on…

Old Macs, Newtons, iPods – whatever floats your boat is on eBay, and Christopher Phin has the tips that will get it into your hands. It was only after I’d written the first few instalments of Think Retro, which started about a year ago, that I was hit by a blinding realisation: not only could I use this regular column as an excuse to buy more vintage Apple stuff on eBay, but I could legitimately write these purchases off against tax. Fun and legal; hot damn! The resulting uptick in my eBay shopping since then has meant I’ve got better and better at picking out and picking up bargains, since for me there’s infinitely more joy to be had in rescuing a lovely old Newton or LC or G5 from…

If you do much typing at all – especially if you dabble in graphic design or publishing – you’ll eventually need hidden typographic characters such as ®, ©, ™, ° and maybe even € and £. Back in 1984, the geniuses at Apple predicted you’d need easy access to these characters, so they built them right into your Mac’s keyboard. But how do you find them until you know where to look? In this column, you’ll learn keyboard shortcuts for the handiest hidden characters, as well as how to locate even more using OS X’s Keyboard and Character Viewers. KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS FOR POPULAR HIDDEN CHARACTERS Whether you’re watermarking photos, writing an essay, or handcrafting a cookbook, the following keyboard shortcuts are well-worth memorising: These keyboard shortcuts work in any application…

Normally, when we select our iSnap winner each month for Macworld Australia, we conduct a short interview with the winner where we learn the story behind the picture and the photographer. This month’s winner, a stunning sunset by Janet Lewis, is a special one as it’s the last winner of this great competition. Over the competition’s duration, We’ve seen some stunning images that have really captured our eyes and imaginations. Whether they’ve been shots of wonderful scenery, people doing exciting or funny things, or stunning architecture, they’ve highlighted the incredible creativity of the Macworld Australia community. One of the things I’ve personally found most interesting is the range of different techniques people have used. Whether it’s being pointed to an app I’ve never heard of before or using some good…

MACID SECURITY Kane Cheshire FREE FOR MAC, $5.99 FOR iOS AND APPLE WATCH Over the course of a day, I’ll enter the password on my Mac many times. Whether it’s after my computer is resuming from sleep or I’m installing an application or changing a setting that’s locked down in System Preferences, I’ll type my password in over and over. As we all know, a good password needs to be hard to guess and made up of a variety of characters including letters, numbers and symbols. That can make tapping your password in hard work. On iOS devices, with a limited keyboard, Apple’s answer to that was Touch ID. But what if I could use Touch ID on my Mac? This is MacID’s raison d’être. Using an iOS app, or…

INSTAPAPER 7 PRODUCTIVITY InstapaperiPHONE, iPAD FREE There was a time when reading web-based content required patience while sifting through pop-ups, inline ads and poorly formatted HTML. While things have improved in recent years nothing beats cosying up with a good ‘read later’ app that makes everything look neat, clean and, most importantly, ad-free. When I think of ‘read later’, Instapaper is the first app that springs to mind. That’s not just because it was one of the first such services to save web content from browsers back in early 2008, but also because it continues to offer the best experience without the unnecessary bells and whistles of its rivals. CLUTTER-FREE READING Instapaper 7.1 doesn’t deviate much from the established playbook, but rather refines what already makes it a favourite. For…

! From Macaulay ‘Mike’ Connor For ages, I’ve used the Undo button in apps to fix mistakes I’ve made while using my Mac. At some point, I started using the Command-Z shortcut for this, as it was quicker than finding the icon on a toolbar. But I recently discovered the Undo command works in places I never expected. Quite by accident, by reflex, I used Command-Z when I closed a browser tab in Safari by mistake. Without any thought, I used the undo keyboard shortcut and the tab reappeared. It took a moment or two before I even realised what had happened. I’m sure there are other more stunning revelations out there, but as someone who’s been known to make the occasional mistake this seemed like a handy discovery. Thanks…