Table of contents for June 2015 in Macworld Australia

Legacy. Continuity. Respect. Future. These are words that have been at the front of my mind as I take the reins at Macworld Australia. As I write this, I’m sitting on a plane tapping away on a number of stories for the website and this issue of our magazine. I say ‘our’ magazine because I’m not just the editor. I’ve been a long time reader. In fact, it was as a reader that I first approached Matthew JC Powell, who was the editor when I first subscribed to Macworld Australia. He took a chance on me, publishing my first story in April 2005. Since then, there have been three other editors and I’ve contributed to all but one issue of the magazine. And while I’ve seen a lot of changes,…

IN-APP PURCHASE PAIN Having an almost five-year-old daughter, the search is often on for suitable games, entertainment and educational material for her to use on our iPad. Lots of things look to be good until you really look under the hood and into the in-app purchases that are on offer. One example that I saw today, Angry Birds Transformers, a ‘free’ game with the following in app purchases (in $NZ): • Handful of Gems $6.49 • Box of Gems $24.99 • Chest of Gems $64.99 • Crate of Gems $124.99 Good grief... $124.99 for an in-app purchase for some gems! The thing that really annoys me about this is not the in-app purchase system, nor really the exorbitant price, but the fact that without actually downloading and installing the software…

Regular Macworld Australia subscriber Emanuel Raniolo normally uses his Sony DSC-HX60V travel zoom camera to shoot pictures through a 30x zoom lens, which is capable of GPS tagging. Raniolo is a medical scientist who performs specialised analysis of blood, bone marrow and other body tissues and fluids, providing diagnostic information on haematological blood disorders. He has also been involved in the provision and manufacture of stem cells that are used to treat leukaemia and lymphoma. On Good Friday this year, during an annual visit to his friends Gary and Faye at their rural property, he used his iPhone 5 to shoot this wind turbine. It’s one of 90 that form the Snowtown II extension to the Snowtown wind farm in the mid-north of South Australia, around 150 kilometres north of…

PAPER PRODUCTIVITY FiftyThree iPAD FREE There are times when the trusty old paper and pencil are the best tool for quickly capturing an idea. Paper emulates the paper and pencil, but adds some smarts. Draw a shape in a continuous stroke and it fixes the shape, so your circles and squares are perfect. In short, it makes your FILLR PRODUCTIVITY Pop Tech iPHONE FREE It can be a real hassle to fill forms in on your iPhone. Between the small screen and some poorly designed sites, entering your information can be a pain. Fillr automates the process by storing your personal information and letting you use iOS’s Sharing feature to populate fields automatically. Fillr is locally developed and well worth a look. DARK HORSE BOOKS Dark Horse Comics iPAD FREE…

iTunes, like most software, requires that you do things in a certain way. It isn’t very flexible for users who think differently. For example, why would anyone want to get rid of iTunes Radio? Why would iTunes users wish to sort their music by artists’ last names, then first names? And why would you want to use a more capable Info window to tag files? Because that’s the way you prefer to work? Let’s explore. DELETING iTUNES RADIO Q: Is there a way to disable iTunes Radio? I don’t use it and I sometimes click it by accident. It also pops up every time I launch iTunes, asking me for my iTunes password, which is driving me mad. A: There is a way to hide iTunes Radio, but to do…

There’s more to the recently revamped Gmail app for iOS than pretty Material Design. It also comes with some new features that will make Google App users’ lives much easier. You can respond to a message straight from Notification Center, open attachments in other apps and more. Read on for four Gmail tricks – some new, some old, all awesomely helpful. SET AN OUT OF OFFICE RESPONDER You can set an out of office reminder directly from the Gmail app – perfect for letting friends, loved ones, associates and co-workers know that you won’t be replying for awhile. Tap the menu button in the top-left corner of the page, then tap the Settings button (the one shaped like a gear) next to your email address. Flip the Vacation Responder switch,…

We have to admit we’re a little bit addicted to fitness equipment. Apps, fitness bands, smart scales – you name it, we want them. So, when the Skulpt caught our eye, we really wanted to try it. The Skulpt is a device that measures your body fat percentage and muscle quality. It does this via a sensor device that you hold against various parts of your body – sensors that employ electrical impedance myography (EIM). A very weak high-frequency and alternating electrical current is passed between the outer two electrodes. As the current moves through the skin, the subcutaneous fat and the muscle, it loses energy due to the resistance of the tissue. This change is then measured by the two inner electrodes. Muscle fibres briefly store and release the…

ANTHONY CARUANA I want a single app that pulls together all of my activity, nutrition and other health metrics – one app to rule my health! MADELEINE SWAIN I need an app that works across all of the devices for both of my children to kill everything dead at 9pm on the dot, unless a parent puts in an override. JAMUNA RAJ I wish there was an app that is a reverse of eBay. Buyers post what they want and sellers compete by bidding with the lowest prices they can offer. I’d be glued to that app all the time. MONIQUE BLAIR I wish someone would invent an x-ray app, so I could scan the room for my keys and wallet whenever I misplace them.…

Innovation – it’s a word that conjures up myriad images of cool products, disruptive companies and flamboyant personalities who inspire us to ‘think different’ as Apple used to say. The reality is far different. The perceived overnight success of companies like our own Cochlear with its bionic ear, or Uber and Airbnb with what they’ve done for travel and accommodation, or Elon Musk’s Tesla for the use of renewable energy, comes from many years of hard work and even failure. What many companies call innovation is often little more than incremental improvement on something we already have. Although Apple’s original iPhone was certainly an innovation – a marked leap from other products of its ilk – subsequent versions have taken what the original iPhone delivered and built on it. That’s…

ELIMINATING PAPER FROM YOUR OFFICE BY ANTHONY CARUANA The paperless office is the mythical place to which the computer revolution was meant to deliver us once computers became mainstream. Or when the iPad transformed the computing landscape. While printer sales are declining, according to a recent report by Gartner, we’re still years away from becoming paperless. But you can start moving towards a paperless office. Going paperless requires three key elements in order to succeed: people, process and systems. PEOPLE In order for your business to become paperless, you need to get your people on board. That means teaching them how to effectively use the alternatives you put in place, listening to their concerns and addressing them. Engaging your staff in change is the best way to ensure they will…

Do you like the aluminium look? Do you want your Watch band to match your Watch case? Do you have $14,000? These are just a few things to consider when selecting your first Apple Watch. Picking an Apple Watch isn’t like picking out your next iPhone – forget about focusing on specs and storage size. Instead, you’ll be looking at alloys and metals (aluminium, stainless steel or solid gold?), style (sporty, classic or blingbling?) and price ($449, $799 or the cost of iPad Air 2s for you and 19 friends?) The Apple Watch is unchartered territory, but we’re here to help you navigate. Here are some things to consider before you buy your Apple Watch. THE WATCH ITSELF Under the hood, the Apple Watch hardware is exactly the same. The…

Important for blind or vision impaired people – accessing audio described DVDs on a Mac computer! I was recently very excited to discover that I could play audio described DVDs on my Apple computer. After inserting a DVD into my MacBook Pro and expecting my wife to have to help me turn on the audio description, I was shocked to find that I was actually able to do this independently, without having to rely on sighted assistance. I sat back and waited until the computer loaded the DVD, which in this case was a film called Valentine’s Day. The film loaded through the program DVD player that comes with all Apple computers. After the DVD began to play, I pushed the space bar while having VoiceOver on. This paused the…

APPLE WATCH APPS – TIPPED FOR RAPID GROWTH It’s early days, but some interesting data is coming out regarding apps for the Apple Watch. Apple already dominates the smartwatch market. IDC expects Apple Watch shipments to exceed 15 million this year – accounting for over 60 percent of the overall smartwatch market. App Annie reports that there are already over 3000 Apple Watch apps in the App Store. “For a device that most developers don’t even own yet, that’s indicative of an enthusiastic developer base,” says the site. Despite Apple making a big deal of the Apple Watch’s potential as a fitness device, App Annie says just seven percent of the apps it has counted appear in the Health and Fitness category – a marked difference from what it sees…

FANTASTICAL 2 FOR OS X UTILITY FLEXBITS $50 As Apple’s calendar app for iOS and Mac OS X moved across recent releases from inconsistent, inadequate and irritating to more or less just fine, the market for replacements grew and matured. Fantastical for iOS has filled a gap. Fantastical’s maker, Flexibits, brought snippets of the iOS version of Fantastical to OS X in version 1. Fantastical 2 for OS X is a full-fledged replacement for Apple’s Calendar. The previous version now appears as the Mini-Window, an optional system menu bar pop-down. Fantastical uses existing accounts and calendars from the Accounts system preferences pane. You can also manually add iCloud, Google, Yahoo, Fruux or any CalDAV-compatible calendar. SPEAK FREELY Flexibits has always stressed Fantastical’s natural-language ability. You can type a sentence like,…

To make the new MacBook so thin, Apple had to shrink the keyboard’s height and remove the trackpad’s up-and-down click. So far, we like it that way. The latest MacBook update has given people who follow Apple news plenty to talk about. But, for Mac users, the biggest news has to do with all the ways the new MacBook diverges from what we’ve been used to. No MagSafe, Thunderbolt or standard USB ports, which have all been replaced by a single USB-C port – that’s big news, undoubtedly. But I’m just as interested in the different approach Apple is taking with input devices. After all, the new MacBook’s keyboard and trackpad are unlike any of those currently found in the Mac line. THE MAC STANDARD In the past few years,…

If we were in Tim Cook’s shoes right now, we wouldn’t be worrying about the Apple Watch’s sales potential. Oh, it will sell. The new TV spot is inspiring, and the stainless steel polish on these watches looks fan-frigging-amazing. Add in Apple’s trademark surprise-and-delight, and all signs point to record sales for months to come. We’d be more concerned about people using a Watch packed silly with features – far too many of them borrowed from the catalogue of smartwatch failures. Perhaps that’s why we’ve seen Apple take a more circumspect stance with apps, only allowing Watch OS apps into the App Store if they actually add real functionality. Unlike Pebble, which allows ‘developers’ to publish fancy watch faces (there are even websites that automate this process, so you can…

OUTSTANDING VERY GOOD GOOD FLAWED UNACCEPTABLE Netflix High-def streaming and a slick Apple TV app make Netflix the pick of the bunch for Apple fans. Unlike its local rivals, Netflix doesn’t limit your number of registered devices, just the number of simultaneous streams. The $8.99 per month plan allows a single SD stream, while $11.99 lets two people watch HD streams simultaneously. The $14.99 plan supports four Ultra HD streams – but you’ll need a new Netflix Ultra HD-compatible television and 15 Mbps download speeds to make the most of this. Regardless of your download speeds, Netflix offers impressive results. Its adaptive streaming delivers the best possible picture and sound for your connection, with surprisingly good HD results even on sub-5 Mbps broadband. Netflix streaming doesn’t count towards your monthly…

I’ve just taken a test drive with the newly released BIAS FX, the latest offering from San Diego outfit Positive Grid. This is a state-of-the-art guitar amp and effects processor, which builds on the company’s previous products JamUp Pro and BIAS (now known as BIAS Amp). I’ve been rapt with the way these two have added a full range of professional sounds to my live gigs. The first thing that hit me with BIAS FX was the look. The graphics of amp heads, effect pedals and racks have a stunning level of reality I haven’t seen before in a guitar app. And I’ve reviewed quite a few. To access the 32 factory presets I’m using the Live View function, which shows me the rigs four at a time with comfortably…

With the Apple Watch now released, is there still a place in the market for another smartwatch? Garmin’s latest entry into the field, the Vivosmart differentiates itself from Apple’s offering by being a fitness tracker with smartphone features, rather than a smartwatch that also happens to track your activity. The Vivosmart keeps tabs on your activity by covering the number of steps you take, steps remaining to your daily goal, distance covered, calories burned and time spent inactive. The Vivosmart looks like a traditional fitness band too, a slim, soft rubberised band with smooth, rounded edges. I easily slept while wearing the Vivosmart – it’s unobtrusive and extremely comfortable, and I usually forgot I was wearing it. I’ve worn it pretty much nonstop for several weeks and have never found…