Innehållsförteckning för January 2015 från Macworld Australia

It has been 12 months since I sat in front of my MacBook Pro and started to reflect on 2013. It was a nice way to move into the new year, examine the changes to the tech industry and mull over my time with Macworld Australia. The months since that reflection have seen Apple evolve its landscape, where iOS and OS X have taken a few strides towards each other, Beats by Dr. Dre took up residency in Cupertino and the company took aim at the wearables market. As I did 12 months ago, I think it is time to go down memory lane and look at the five biggest releases of 2014. 5. iPad Air 2. The larger of the two iPads Apple launched in October, the iPad Air…

iTUNES ISSUES iTunes 12 is a ridiculous, confusing and, as a result, time wasting change for change sake makeover. Who has time to learn how to navigate through Apple’s latest idiotic rearrangement of controls? Paul Every version of iTunes becomes less intuitive and a bigger ergonomic disaster. Less intuitive drag and drop, buttons everywhere, changing buttons that vary with context, it’s a surprisingly poor effort from Apple for what is a flagship program. Michael I, too, find the interface confusing, but it’s a hell of a lot prettier than MS Outlook on Windows. They’ve embraced the ‘flat’ icon look, but the layout is a dog’s breakfast. Bob Have to agree. Tinkering with the user interface for no real benefit is just annoying. And there is no real benefit. In fact…

There was a time when all your precious data resided on a physical disc in your hand or else tucked away on your hard drive. These days it’s more likely to reside in the ‘cloud’ – the trendy name for online servers hidden away in giant data centres. The shift to the cloud has freed us from the shackles of the physical world – letting you access your digital belongings anywhere, anytime and on any device. It’s also creating new business models and redefining the concept of ownership in the digital age. Apple has gradually embraced the cloud, but it certainly isn’t leading the way – Cupertino’s approach to new areas is usually to sit back and see how a new technology pans out before jumping in with a slick…

PIXELMATOR PHOTO & VIDEO Pixelmator Team iPAD $6.49 From cropping and straightening to colour correcting, retouching and painting; from creating selections to combining imagery; from blending layers to adding slick effects, shapes, layer styles and highly customisable text, Pixelmator for iPad truly does it all… for a mere $6.49. The whole program is layer-based (think stackable transparencies) so you can resize, reposition, retouch, paint or add an effect to something on one layer without affecting the content of other layers. This makes for an extremely forgiving editing environment that gives you truly creative compositing and photo painting or tracing opportunities. All files can be saved to iCloud Drive or your Photo Library and can easily be read using Pixelmator 3.3 for the Mac. You’d be hard pressed to find a…

Apple’s software ecosystem suffers from no shortage of apps dedicated to password management; among these, AgileBits’ 1Password has always occupied a genre-defining role as one of the most comprehensive solutions available. Its latest release, 1Password 5.0, is no exception. IN WITH THE NEW One of the hardest feats to pull off in software development is designing a user experience that feels familiar and yet conforms to new paradigms. On one hand, you don’t want the app to look dated or out of place in its intended running environment; on the other, you don’t want to introduce changes so drastic that existing users will suddenly find themselves disoriented and incapable of performing tasks that were hitherto second nature to them. Launched to coincide with the release of OS X Yosemite, 1Password…

JONATHAN STEWART APPLE/BEATS EARPHONES Apple's EarPods are acceptable, but with the Beats By Dr. Dre acquisition I'm looking forward to what will ship with the next-gen of iOS devices. MADELEINE SWAIN APPLE WATCH I haven’t worn a watch for about 25 years, but with a certain little device due next year, could I be tempted… could I? TYNAN McCARTHY HOMEKIT Rumoured to be launching in early 2015, I can’t wait to see all the crazy products that will be released at CES for HomeKit. MONIQUE BLAIR 4K APPLE TV My highlight of 2015 will be the arrival of a 4K Apple TV, if it indeed gets created.…

TOO THIN? I know it’s a marvel how thin these devices keep getting, but that is a kind of marketing sleight of hand. My partner got a new iPad Air the day it came out. It was so much thinner and lighter than her original iPad. She loved it. Two days later, she was a little careless setting it down on the table and the screen cracked. At the Apple store a few hours after that, she was telling the shop assistant that the device was far too delicate for the purpose for which it was made. He was arguing that it was her fault, until two other people arrived with similar issues. One said that it cracked when they weren’t even next to it. The iPad was replaced, but…

Like a lot of us, I miss the classic, rainbow Apple logo – the real Apple logo. Actually, what I miss even more than the abstract idea of the rainbow Apple logo are the little badges that used to be affixed onto Apple hardware, stuck into a perfect, slight recess in the plastic. There was something intensely pleasing, wasn’t there, about how it was glossy and smooth, nestled in that sea of roughly textured black plastic – a wave-polished pebble on a sandy beach? Of course, for most of its life, following its introduction on the Apple II in 1977, it adorned not black computers but beige, such as the Macintosh Classic II. I don’t think I’ve ever quite got over the childlike excitement I get from seeing that logo,…

EXTENSIS SUITCASE FUSION 6 GRAPHICS & DESIGN Extensis  US$119.95; US$59.95 (UPGRADE) Suitcase Fusion 6 lets users organise their entire font collection, making it easy to find and preview fonts and create uniform designs across applications. In addition to creating font sets for projects, clients or any other organisational use, Suitcase Fusion lets you create Application Sets that open a group of fonts when a specific application launches. The Extensis font panel, which is automatically added to Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator, allows you to explore and apply any of the fonts that Suitcase knows about, including your desktop fonts, Adobe’s Typekit fonts, Google’s free fonts and Extensis’s own WebINK web fonts. The font management software’s interface looks and feels similar to OS X Yosemite, with flatter-looking controls and fewer colour…

iTunes 12 has changed the Info window, which appears when you select one or more items and press • -I. The old window had an Artwork well, where you could either drag or paste graphics to add album art to your files. In iTunes 12, the Info window is different. Note that the window you see above displays information about files that already have album art, but it doesn’t show that album art when you select multiple items. (The iTunes 11 Info window didn’t show graphics in the Artwork well either.) There are now three ways to add album art to your files: • Click the artwork square at the top-left of the window – the one with the musical notes – and it becomes highlighted. You can paste a graphic…

“THE BEST WAY I CAN DESCRIBE IT IS THIS: UNBOXING IT IS KIND OF LIKE SETTING UP YOUR FIRST HDTV. I DIDN’T WANT TO DO ANYTHING FOR THE FIRST FEW MINUTES; I JUST WANTED TO SWAP IN NEW DESKTOP BACKGROUNDS, EACH SHARPER THAN THE LAST, AND SEE HOW MANY DETAILS I COULD PICK OUT. EVEN THE FLAT NEW ICONS IN OS X YOSEMITE LOOK GREAT.” – Engadget’s Dana Wollman. “IN PERSON, THAT 5120 X 2880 DISPLAY IS SIMPLY STUNNING, ESPECIALLY WHEN DISPLAYING HIGH-RES FULL-SCREEN PHOTOS AND VIDEO. THE PREVIOUS 27IN iMAC HAD A 2560 X 1440 DISPLAY, MAKING THIS 2X JUMP ESPECIALLY IMPRESSIVE… THIS IS THE THIRD YEAR FOR THIS BODY SHAPE, AND THE DESIGN HAS MADE ITS WAY ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE BASE 21.5IN iMAC (OR, AS…

iOS 8 doesn’t radically change the look and feel of your iPhone and iPad, like iOS 7 did. A lot of the improvements in iOS 8 are aimed at developers, who can now trick out their apps with support for Touch ID, extensions, widgets and HealthKit. But there are still plenty of goodies for users like us, too. CHANGES IN THE SETTINGS APP BY SERENITY CALDWELL & LEAH YAMSHON. With every new version of iOS, Apple loves to add, tweak and change settings; unsurprisingly, iOS 8 is no different. Here’s a comprehensive list of just about everything the company has changed in iOS 8 within the Settings app. MOBILE The Mobile section used to be hidden in iOS’ General section in previous versions, but was moved to the main screen…

Jabra SPORT Stereo Headset Jabra’s SPORT Stereo Headset looks the part. With its bright yellow trim and rubberised casing it has a sporty feel. We paired the headset to an iPhone 6 and took it out for a run. Although it was reasonably comfortable to wear, we found that the headset kept slipping and falling out of our ears despite trying all three different earpieces. We also had another person try them, to ensure that our ears weren’t the problem, and they had the same issue. The controls on the SPORT Stereo Headset were difficult to operate as well. The buttons were hard to find while wearing the device and we found that pressing the buttons required a firm enough push that we ended up dislodging the headset. So, while…

The GoPro Hero4 Black is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and only weighs 87g, or 152g with the protective case. Don’t be deceived by its tiny size, this little camera captures amazingly vivid and sharp video. The lens has a fixed f2.8 aperture, doing a great job in mixed lighting conditions and not blowing out when pointed directly at the sun. It also shoots time-lapse videos and long exposures with a night lapse mode for budding astrophotographers. GoPro’s top-of-the-line model, the Hero4 Black handles up to 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD video capture at 30 frames per second, along with 12-megapixel still photos with a 30fps burst mode. There are cheaper GoPro models, like the Hero4 Silver, which only captures Ultra HD at 15fps, or…