Table of contents for Vol 1 2022 in Mac & MacBook User

DID YOU KNOW? The Origins of Apple Ever wondered why Steve Jobs and Bill Wozniak called their company ‘Apple’? In honour of The Beatles’ Apple Corps, perhaps? Were they eating Apples as they filed the paperwork? In honour of computer pioneer Alan Turing, who died after biting a poisoned apple? None of these are true. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography, Jobs was on a fruitarian diet at the time, and had just visited an Apple farm. It was there he came up with the name, which he found “fun, spirited and not intimidating.” Apple grew out of the garage at Steve Jobs’ childhood home. It’s a myth that the company’s first computer, the Apple 1, was designed there, but the garage did provide a hangout for the two Steves as…

Basic Training Using Touch ID On the Latest Macs Touch ID has long been a stalwart on the iPhone and iPad, but it recently came to the Mac, with the latest notebook and iMac releases; look for a Touch ID sensor on the keyboard. You can use Touch ID to unlock your Mac, input passwords and make purchases, all by using your fingerprint. Setting Up Touch ID 1 First of all, open the System Preferences window. Click on Touch ID. If this option isn’t there, your Mac doesn’t have Touch ID as it’s a feature on newer Macs. 2 If your Mac does have Touch ID, to get started, click on the + icon captioned ‘Add Fingerprint’. You can add more than one print; here, this is our second. 3 Type…

Basic Training Customising the Monterey Desktop Although macOS Monterey’s default desktop image is very attractive, if you’d prefer something different, you can personalise your experience by customising the appearance of your Monterey Desktop. You can choose a new wallpaper for the desktop image, and even set up a slideshow of your favourite pictures. Choose New Wallpaper 1 To open the Desktop preferences window, click the Apple menu, select System Preferences and select the Desktop & Screen Saver option. Select the genre of picture required from the left column. 2 Click on the image you’d like to use for your wallpaper. If there’s a cloud in the corner, click on it first to download the image. The desktop is updated immediately. Keep it or choose another one. Use an Image from Your…

Basic Training Dark Mode And Night Shift If your screen’s too bright, there’s a couple of great desktop features that help. Dark Mode inverts the Mac’s colour scheme, making it much darker, and Night Shift Mode changes the colour hue, reducing blue light that can keep you awake if you use your Mac before going to bed. Dark Mode 1 From the Apple menu, open System Preferences. Click on the General pane in the top left corner of the window. At the top, under ‘Appearance’, are the Light, Dark, and Auto buttons. Dark and Light buttons switch to those modes, and Auto lets you schedule the changes. 2 With Dark Mode on, the colours are subdued in Finder, windows, the Mac’s built-in apps and more. Third-party apps can be updated to…

On The Menus? Monterey’s Menus A Key Mac Feature Whether it’s a pull-down menu accessed by clicking on the top bar of your desktop or a contextual menu found by right-clicking or ctrl-clicking on a file or folder, you need to know how to use your menus if you are to get the most out of your Mac and Monterey. Here’s a guide to your Mac’s menus. The Apple Menu 1 The Apple menu is found in the top left corner of the desktop. To open it, click on the Apple icon once, then choose an option. It’s always there, whatever it is that you’re doing on your Mac. 2 About This Mac shows you technical information about your computer. Tabs at the top of this window let you delve…

DID YOU KNOW? Why QWERTY? It’s extremely counter-intuitive, but the standard keyboard layout, known as the QWERTY keyboard after the first row of keys, was designed to slow down your typing. Yes, you read that correctly; not to speed you up, but to slow you down. Back in the day, typewriters were mechanical devices that worked by hitting a ‘hammer’ embossed with letters and symbols onto an ink ribbon, which in turn transferred its ink to a piece of paper. If a typist went too fast, these hammers could collide with each other and jam. The QWERTY keyboard layout, allegedly, is designed to keep the most commonly used letters apart to minimise these jams. This theory has been questioned recently. In a 2011 paper, Kyoto University Researchers Koichi Yasuoka and…

Sitting On The Dock Notifications See What’s Going On Apps and functions on your Mac can send you notifications, which let you know what’s going on. When you receive a message or an email, for example, you can get a notification telling you that it’s arrived. You can customise them too. Moving notifications to the Date and Time and combining them with widgets is a clever move on the part of Apple. All you need to do to view your notifications is to click on the Date and Time in the top-right of the desktop. If there are any, they appear at the top of the slide-in area that appears from the right-side of the screen. Notifications are grouped together depending on the app they’re coming from. For example, the News…

TECH ROUND-UP HaloLock Adjustable Wireless Charging Stand One-touch mounting, convenient charging… To no one’s great surprise, third-party manufacturers have been quick to release MagSafe-compatible gear for the newest iPhones. If you have an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to chargers, cases and more that fit to your phone magnetically; for pop-on, pop-off convenience. This adjustable wireless charging stand is just such a product. With four pivot joints on a 20cm stand, you can bend the HaloLock into any position you choose. It’s ideal for your desk, where you can place your iPhone, to glance at incoming notifications as it charges. You can rotate it into portrait or landscape mode, and powerful built-in magnets securely hold it in place, even when it vibrates. It…

TECH ROUND-UP AKVIS Magnifier AI 11.0 Who says ’size doesn’t matter’? Finding the digital image you need can be a frustrating exercise, especially if you come across a picture that’s perfect for your project, but too small to use. That’s where AKVIS Magnifier AI 11.0 comes in. Available as a stand-alone app or a Photoshop plug-in, Magnifier AI uses trained neural networks for image upscaling to increase the size of digital pictures without the annoying pixelation associated with zooming in too far. New features for version 11.0 include colour processing improvements, a redesigned user interface, support for more RAW files, and better program stability. It’s easy to use. Import a photo or other such image into the app, and use a slider to blow it up in size; to up…

TECH ROUND-UP Motif Photo: Canvas Prints Wall mount your memories… Remember when Apple sold prints, photo books, calendars and cards, all made from your own photographs? The printing and distribution back in the day was handled by Motif, and although Apple no longer sells printed works, its one-time partner has stepped into the gap and now sells them directly. Just download the app for your Mac (a plug-in that works with Photos), your iPhone or your iPad, and get started. Motif has recently added canvas prints to its range of products. It’s a simple process. You choose a size from 20x25cm (24.99) to 61x91cm (79.99). Then choose a photograph from the device you’re placing your order on, which can be in portrait or landscape orientation. Choose from a few options,…

TECH ROUND-UP Pokémon UNITE Gotta beat ‘em all! We’ve seen a slew of really quite decent multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA)-style mobile games over the past few years. Each offers its own unique spin on the genre, and while some shine throughout the various app stores, others let the side down considerably. It’s like any other gaming genre, really, but MOBA games tend to get the brunt of the negativity from the popular media. Taking some of the better aspects of a MOBA game, Pokemon UNITE lets you engage in five-on-five battles on Aeos Island, against NPC trainers and human ones alike. As with the other Pokémon titles, you get to tackle the creatures in the wild, level up and evolve. Then you face off against another trainer and see…

Basic Training Set Up Your Mac For the First Time If you have a new Mac but have not yet set it up, follow this guide. It’s nothing to be afraid of; follow the guide and the on-screen instructions, and step by step, you get to set your Mac’s language, take it onto the Internet with your local Wi-Fi network, sign in with your all-important Apple ID and more. 1 Your first step is to choose your territory, that is, where you live and will be using your Mac. You can scroll the list of countries up and down to find your own, or start to type it to get there quicker. Click your country to highlight your choice, then click Continue. 2 Now select your language and input source. The…

Dark Mode & Desktop Stacks Desktop Stacks For Organisation If your Mac’s desktop regularly gets cluttered with folders, file icons and other such material that you’re currently working on, there’s a solution at hand in macOS. With a click of your mouse or trackpad, you can organise them into stacks, grouped according to their file type. Here’s how to do it. 1 Your Mac’s desktop often fills with files and folders you know you need regularly but that can mean a very cluttered workspace. To use Desktop Stacks, first click on the desktop to make sure Finder is active, then click on the View menu in the top bar. 2 From the View menu, select the Use Stacks option. Your files are stacked on the right-hand side of your desktop,…

Safe Surfing Setting Up Email For the Mail App With email, you can send mails and attachments anywhere in the world, at the push of a button. It’s there instantly too. Here we take a look at what email is, how you can get yourself an email address and how you can use your email accounts on your Mac, with Apple’s bundled email client, the Mail app. Setting Up Your iCloud Email 1 If you set up your Apple ID during your Mac’s initial setup, or if you signed in with an existing Apple ID, your iCloud email account is already in place. But if not, or if you want to add another iCloud email account to your Mail client, follow these instructions. 2 Open the Mail application from the Dock…

On The Menus? Using Finder Files, Folders & Apps Finder is the main app that underpins everything you do in macOS, so it’s worth taking the time to discover its features and functions. On these pages you’ll see how Finder works and how you can use the Finder window; including its navigation controls, viewing tabs and more, to get the most from it. 1 Window Control Options: Use the gumdrops to close or minimise the window or open it in full-screen mode. We’ll cover this on the next page. 2 Navigation Controls: The chevron buttons in the top left corner of the window take you forwards or backwards through your navigation history. 3 View Options: These four buttons let you set-up how you view the files and folders in the Finder…

Sitting On The Dock Monterey’s Dock For Most-used Apps The macOS Dock is a feature that greatly speeds your workflow. It’s perfect for gaining quick access to the most relevant and frequently used applications, documents and folders. It’s customisable too, which means you’ll come to personalise your Dock to best fit your own unique needs. Here’s how it works. Accessing Your Applications from the Dock Add or Remove an Application To add an app, first click the icon filled with multicoloured boxes on the left-hand side of the Dock to bring up Launchpad. Then, click and drag the item you want onto the Dock. To remove it, just drag it out. Open an Application To open an application that’s in your Dock, simply move the mouse pointer onto the Dock and…

Sitting On The Dock The Spotlight Feature Search Your Mac Spotlight Search is Apple’s unique and ultra-powerful search system that can find almost anything on your Mac. There’s a whole raft of great features, making it a really powerful and useful tool that’s integrated into the apps that you use every day. Here’s how to get the most from the Spotlight feature. Using Spotlight’s Features 1 To start using Spotlight, press cmd and the space bar or click the magnifying glass in the top menu and the Spotlight Search window appears. In Big Sur, as with macOS Catalina, you can drag this window to wherever you want on the screen; it’s not fixed in position. 2 Start typing your search query into Spotlight and immediately answers appear, with suggestions based on…

TECH ROUND-UP Jazz Buds Bluetooth Earbuds Can affordable earbuds impress in the audio department? Not everyone wants or needs to spend three figures on a set of Bluetooth earbuds. Thankfully, the quality of lower-priced buds is improving all the time. This sub-30 pair from Groov-e might not be a match for top of the range models, but their performance belies the price. Jazz Buds closely resemble Apple’s own AirPods in appearance; a speaker unit placed in the ear, with an aerial extending downwards from it. They have a four-hour battery life, which isn’t great, but there’s another 21 hours of power in the charging capsule. As long as you don’t need to listen to them all day without a recharge, they should be fine. They don’t isolate well, so you…

TECH ROUND-UP DxO PhotoLab 5 Significant improvements, but should you upgrade? DxO is back with this year’s annual update of its flagship PhotoLab high-end photo editing suite. Version 5 offers a small but significant update from last year’s release, is available in Standard and Elite versions and there’s a discount if you’ve already bought PhotoLab 3 or 4. There’s also a launch discount available, so if you buy before 14th November 2021, you get a substantial knockdown on the prices listed here. As regular readers know, DxO PhotoLab is an image editor designed specifically for photographers. It’s a high-end suite of tools that takes a while to master, but can produce excellent results. During set up you can choose between three levels of difficulty, depending on your skills and experience,…

TECH ROUND-UP Roxio Toast 12: Titanium Time for another slice… Toast is the Mac’s premiere disk burner, but it’s not without its detractors. In the past, Roxio has been criticised for releasing paid-for updates with minimal changes and leaving sometimes-major bugs unsquashed until the next paid-for release. Thankfully this, the 20th edition of the disk-burning stalwart, suffers no such problems. It’s slick, accessible and boasts significant changes that are genuinely worth having. On booting up the app, you see it has an attractive new interface. Minimalist icons and a clean, user-friendly look give access to the application’s editing, conversion and burning tools. Toast can convert a wide range of video and audio file formats, and can also rip audio CDs and DVD videos (as long as they’re not copy-protected) and…

TECH ROUND-UP SpongeBob:Patty Pursuit Save the Krabby Patty Formula. I have to admit, I never saw the appeal of SpongeBob SquarePants. I’m probably too old, and my kids were never into it either, so it kind of passed me by and as such I never got into it. I was shocked to discover that SpongeBob first appeared on our screens in 1999, and has made over $13 billion in merchandising revenue as of 2019. More fool me, then. In this Apple Arcade exclusive, Sheldon J. Plankton is trying to steal the secret Krabby Patty formula and along the way he has also kidnapped SpongeBob’s friends. Your task is to steer SpongeBob along a platform, undersea world in order to stop Plankton, get the formula back and rescue your friends. Not…

TECH ROUND-UP Zombie Night Terror Braiiiiins… Developer, Plug In Digital, has taken a classic Lemmings-like concept and introduced it to the zombie culture in a gory, blood-soaked 2D strategy game. And it all works rather well. Set in a semi-monochromatic, film-noir, 16-bit pixel art world, you are the mastermind behind this zombie invasion and your goal is as simple as trying to infect as many people as possible. Doing so, though, is quite tricky. You have a set number of zombie DNA points in which to infect the on-screen non-zombie population. The more people you infect, and in turn which they bite and infect, the more DNA points you have available. The DNA points you gain unlock zombie mutations, which can then be used to direct, explode, speed up or…

Basic Training Welcome to the Monterey Desktop The desktop is at the heart of your Mac. Everything you do takes place on the desktop, including opening apps, interacting with files and folders and using the Dock. Here we show you how to use your desktop, app and folder windows, the top bar menu and other key features. 1 From the Apple menu you can log out, shut down, restart or put the computer into sleep mode, get comprehensive information on the computer’s hardware and software, access the System Preferences and open items you’ve recently closed. 2 The menu bar running along the top of the desktop gives access to functions and controls for the app you currently have open at the time. The app currently in use is shown to the…

Basic Training Gesture Controls On Your Trackpad You can navigate your Mac using gesture controls, just like you do on your iPhone or iPad. These gesture controls can be performed on a Mac notebook’s trackpad or on the Apple Magic Trackpad, which is available for desktop Macs. You can even do a few of them on a Magic Mouse. One of the things that makes the Mac such a pleasure to use is its large and responsive MacBook multi-touch trackpad or the desktop Mac’s Magic Trackpad. You can use the trackpad in much the same way as you would use the touchscreen of an iPhone or iPad: to quickly and easily access menus, sort through stacks of pictures or documents, scroll through documents and to zoom in and out of…

Safe Surfing Getting Online With Wi-Fi or Ethernet As is the case with any modern operating system, access to the Internet is a vital component for upgrading and getting hold of new apps that will help you get the most from your Mac. Getting online in Monterey is remarkably easy and here’s how to do it both wirelessly and with a cabled connection. Connecting with Wi-Fi 1 Make sure that your Mac is within range of your wireless router’s Wi-Fi signal, then click on the Wi-Fi icon in the top menu bar. You’ll see a list of Wi-Fi networks. If your Wi-Fi is off click the switch to turn it on. 2 You’ll see a list of Wi-Fi networks available in your area. A lock to the right shows a password…

Sitting On The Dock Working with Monterey’s Widgets Widgets are a useful way of getting quick and easy access to an app’s functionality, without having to open the app itself. You can, for example, see today’s calendar events or weather, or check the latest news stories from the Apple News app. You can edit your widgets to suit your needs too. First Steps with Widgets 1 To access your widgets, click on the clock and date in the top-right corner of the screen. The widgets are found underneath the notifications. You can scroll the notifications and widgets up and down with two fingers on a trackpad. 2 Click on a widget to open the app that created it, or in some cases, the website from where its information is drawn. Here…

Sitting On The Dock Launching Apps And Quitting Them There are several ways of launching an app on your Mac. You can: use the Launchpad, which is found in the Dock; you can open a Finder window and navigate your way to the application you wish to use; or you can click on the Spotlight feature and simply type its name. Here’s how to do it. Using Launchpad 1 To open the Launchpad, go to the Dock and click on it, or place four fingers on your trackpad and bring them together. The screen darkens and your apps are shown as icons. To launch an app from this screen, click on it. To close Launchpad, press Esc or click on the desktop. 2 If you have more than one page of…

HaloLock Kickstand by ESR Gear Is this the MagSafe device you’ve been looking for? This disc-shaped MagSafe charger connects to the mains through USB-C (adapter not included), and fastens to your iPhone using the magnets built in to the last two models. It’s a small, pocket-sized device that’s pretty handy when you’re out and about, as long as you’ve access to a USB-C mains adapter. It’s well built, with an aluminium body and stand, and a black or white charging surface. With the leg folded away it can function as a flat charging mat, and when used as a stand you can prop up your iPhone in landscape orientation (but not portrait) and watch a movie or a YouTube video. As a product, the HaloLock Kickstand falls between two stools;…

TECH ROUND-UP DxO FilmPack Give your pics an old-school make over. While few would like to go back to analogue film processing, there’s no denying old school development processes had a style and character of their own. FilmPack is designed to bring the look and feel of photographs from eras gone by, to your modern digital pictures. It’s less intense, less ‘geeky’ than DxO’s flagship PhotoLab application. The sweet science is there, but it’s more of an everyman’s suite of tools; very capable, but a good deal less scary. DxO FilmPack reproduces the grain and colours of legendary analogue films as closely as possible. The software recreates the hues, saturation, contrast and grain of 84 authentic analogue films, including the Kodak Tri-X 400, Polaroid 690, Ilford HPS, and Fujifilm Superia.…

TECH ROUND-UP HUMANITY app Stay younger for longer. HUMANITY is aimed at slowing down the ageing process and keeping you healthier for longer. You can download a limited-function version for free, but to get the benefit of the premium app requires an in-app purchase costing £29.99/$29.99/29.99 €. The app continuously monitors your actions, rate of ageing and your ‘biological age’ (premium version only) using data gleaned from your iPhone and any health-orientated wearables or accessories you might use. This information is analysed, and the app reports back with advice and guidelines personalised specifically for you. According to the developers, benefits of using the HUMANITY app include a reduced biological age, a slower rate of ageing, staying healthy and happy for many more years, managing stress and more. Definitely worth the…

TECH ROUND-UP Double Dragon Trilogy A knee to the face, then get thrown over the shoulder. Beautiful. I blooming love Double Dragon. Back in the late Eighties, at the local arcade a dingy, dishevelled dive, complete with sticky carpet and drenched in eye-watering neon my mate Daz and I would force-feed ten pence pieces into the Double Dragon arcade machine and settle in for an afternoon of cooperative digital violence. It was superb. Imagine how happy I was to get my hands on the complete trilogy on the iPad. Sadly, Daz and I have parted ways in the years since 1987, but these days I have a couple of children who can help me take on the bosses and finally rescue poor old Marian from the clutches of the Black…