Macworld November 2015

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO TAKE YOUR TECH ON THE ROAD NOVEMBER 201 5 *e = eas 3. Sa — er lig OS F facebookeom/ -~* “© “pusmacvoné 4 fet:com/. 4 butte 74 gle He ofA e REVIEWS | HELP GUIDES | APP REVIEWS | iSNAP OWC ThunderBay 4 OWC ThunderBay 4 mini RAID This is the confidence of up to 32TB & 1346MB, This is the security of a RAID engine designed for Mac. This is transforming progress bars into progress. This is a creative workflow without limitations. This is the capacity to dream. This is OWC. www.macsales.com Storage perfect for every project. The ThunderBay 4 with Thunderbolt 2 technology is where everything changes. The way you view the creative process. The way you address your workflow. Your very expectations of your own potential. Whether in the studio, office, or field, our commitment to excellence in innovation is evident down to the very last detail. But this is just the beginning. From ultra-portables and bus-powered workhorses, to enterprise racks and bleeding edge solid state drives, there is an OWC storage solution perfect for every project, including yours. Rediscover your potential. Discover OWC. i) Features 16 FLYING HIGH TRAVEL WITH YOUR MAC We're getting close to holiday season. How will your tech travel with you? Seasoned traveller David Flynn guides you through getting the most from a trip, so your tech won't let you down 34 1OS 9 AND THE IPHONE 6S Apple’s newest mobile tools represent some big strides forward. We take a look a the new iPhone 6s and iOS 9 to look at what features will make a real difference and whether upgrading is really worthwhile 42 TIME SAVING TIPS FOR OFFICE 2016 FOR MAC Microsoft has been doing some streamlining, so here are 20 nifty tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and One Note users LOZ YIGWIAON ne"wWoo'pjOMeU MMM Regulars 08 10 14 22 24 30 32 40 48 52 56 60 MAIL HOT STUFF iSNAP MAC GEMS BUSINESS GUEST COLUMN: ‘Twitter on the Mac: Do your job or get out of the way GADGET GUIDE iOS APP GUIDE 2 UPGRADING TO EL CAPITAN Reviews SECRETS HELP 62 Belkin Netcam GROUP TEST: 64 Parallels 11 Premium headphones 66 BrydgeAir 6 EDITORIAL Apple 4.0 s | write this, the fourth anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death has just passed. When his illness was first revealed there was great concern in the business and technology world at how Apple might persist without its, arguably, most influential founder. Clearly, the company has not just survived, but has flourished. New products, booming revenues and a burgeoning share price suggest Apple is well into a period of growth. That had me thinking: if Apple were software what version would we be on? Clearly, the Jobs/Wozniak era of the 70s and early 80s was Version 1.0. But then Jobs was out of the company and the next version of Apple was born. Apple 2.0 was not a great release. It became bloated, suffered from a lack of clear direction and was almost withdrawn from the market. It's been written that Apple was only months away from financial collapse. But then, in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple. First as the interim CEO and eventually as the permanent CEO. And so Apple 3.0 was released. Looking at the two reigns, aside from Jobs there was one other common NOVEMBER 2015 / ISSUE NO. 219, Joanne Davies joanne dav mma thony Caruana antha a@niche com ay ‘Subeditor Madoleine Swain madolaine swain@riche.com au ‘National Advertising Manager Lachlan Oak ‘oakley@nich element — counterpoint to his exuberance and often abrasive style. In Apple 1.0, he had Steve Wozniak at his side, acting as a sounding board and someone who could take Jobs’ vision and make it into a tangible product. With Apple 3.0, that balance was maintained by Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru who has been behind almost every piece of Apple hardware of the last decade and much of the software. But now we're in the Tim Cook era — Apple 4.0. Cook is clearly not working in Jobs’ shadow. And perhaps that is Jobs’ greatest legacy. He anointed a successor who understands Apple’s DNA. But he also established processes and systems within Apple to keep that alive. The foundation Jobs laid before his death has not only ensured Apple could thrive with Captain Cook at the rudder, but that a foundation has been laid so that Apple 5.0, 6.0 and beyond could continue with new leaders when the time comes for Cook to step aside. MACWORLD AU PRODUCTION: Production Manager Jamun Ra jarnuna raj@niche.com.au Design and Digital Prepress Monique Blair NICHE MEDIA: Managing Director Paul Li Dsubscrptions@mac Commercial Director Joanne D: STAFF PICKS It's time to get the Christmas lists ready. What tech toy do you most want for Christmas? ANTHONY CARUANA MADELEINE SWAIN JAMUNA ££ RAJ MONIQUE BLAIR G6 facebook.com/ausmacworld ‘witter.com/macworldau ® Content Director Civis Rennie Financial Controller Sonia Justa ode HOM Ready Add professional monitoring and recording to any SDI and HDMI camera with Blackmagic Video Assist is the ultimate on set production monitor and recorder for any SDI or HDMI camera! 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Blackmagic Video Assist Includes DaVinci Resolve 12 A$765 Bova HAVE YOUR SAY LETTER OF THE MONTH GOODBYE TO MY FAVOURITE BIG CAT Well it's finally happened. After six happy years of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, I've finally been forced to update. | don’t consider myself someone who's particularly resistant to change; in fact, I’m usually one of the early adopters of new technology. But I’m self- employed, and my income is directly proportionate to my productivity on the computer, so | tend to shy away from anything that may compromise that. When | hear things like ‘major upgrade’ and ‘some compatibility issues’ or, worse still, ‘a great new way of doing things’, | am more than a little hesitant to partake. My main computer is an early 2008 Mac Pro with 3GHz dual quad core processors, 32Gb of RAM and a solid-state hard drive. The computer may be seven years old, but it still flies. The hardware speed was never a reason for not upgrading the OS. It really came down to having everything working just the way | like it. Nothing about the new OS updates appealed to me enough to warrant the potential disruption. | do like to stay up-to-date, but | need a good reason for doing so. Sometimes an update comes along and it provides new functionality or a new productivity tool that makes it all worthwhile. Other times it’s just pretty colours and no substance. For example, I've been using Adobe Photoshop since version 1.0. With each update we've seen the software mature and improve into the juggernaut it’s become today. But somewhere around version CS4 (v11) | stopped being dazzled with the new tools. In truth, | actually started getting annoyed with some of them. Even though I’ve continued paying for updates, | still go straight to Photoshop CS4 when I’m working. So why did | update from Snow Leopard if | loved it so much? | was nagged into doing so, that’s why. | like to use Safari for my web browsing. | know it’s the underdog, but | like it because it’s fast. But lately I've been getting lots of oh-so-unsubtle messages from websites telling me that my version of Safari is no longer supported. But unfortunately, | had gone as far as the update path for Safari would allow under 10.6. If | wanted a new Safari, | would need a new OS X first. And then there was the iPhone. My iPhone 6 started telling me there was a shiny new iOS 9 ready to download. | sensibly waited until 9.0.1 was released (let someone else be the guinea pig) and then | took the plunge. Unlike my desktop computer, my iPhone is more of a toy than a productivity tool. | don’t mind updating to the latest version of iOS whenever it becomes available. But the next time | plugged my iPhone into the computer after the update, | was rudely informed that | would need to update iTunes in order to sync the phone. Hang on, | thought | was already using the latest version of iTunes! Ah no, it turns out I’m not. I’m using the latest version that will run on 10.6. Oh the humanity! Slowly but surely the nagging took its toll. | realised that | was just postponing the inevitable. Over the past six years, I'd managed to avoid Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks, but | was going to have to get in line at last. | made the mistake of forgetting that Apple is a hardware company. Even though it produces some lovely software to go with it, that’s not how it ended up being worth over US$700 billion. With every software update, your computer becomes a little more obsolete, until eventually it’s running like a Commodore 64, and you're forced into a hardware update. Cha-ching! So last week | bit the bullet and installed OS X Yosemite. | did a clean install (which | like to do every few years, and jumping from 10.6 all the way to 10.10 it seemed like a prudent move). It took me about two days to get everything up and running the way | wanted, but it was a relatively painless process. Almost all of my favourite applications still worked, and the ones that didn’t were easily (and cheaply) updated. Ironically, the one exception was Apple’s own photo management software, Aperture. Having bought it in a physical box, rather than via the App Store, | am yet to figure out a way of upgrading to 3.6 and making it useable again. And given the lukewarm reviews of Apple’s replacement software, Photos, I’m a little hesitant to migrate my 1.4-terabyte photo library to the new application. So what do | think of the new operating system? Well, it runs a little slower on my Mac, but at least | can take advantage of all of that new iCloud stuff. And | can use the new Safari and iTunes. On the whole, it gets a thumbs-up. | know what you're thinking, ‘But what about El Capitan?’ Here we go again... Bruce Rayne = = ia IT’S NOT JUST OS X THAT GETS UPGRADED | have just started reading the virtues of El Capitan in Macworld September and it does seem to have a lot of very desirable elements and fixes. Apple usually does upgrades well (better than others?) As acontinual Mac user since the mid '80s (yes, | am one of the poor buggers who purchased a Newton), | have noticed, and | may not be alone here, that a good upgrade that works is not the whole story. System upgrades usually means some apps no longer working. This may be a minor concern ‘or major, depending on the app and what your workflow requires. I held back upgrading to Yosemite with concerns over Final Cut Pro 7. | have made the switch now to Final Cut Pro X (FCPX), but wanted this switch to be when | was ready, not when Apple upgraded the OS. | understand the difficulties with supporting older apps and have no problems with this. | just would like to have some place where | could go that listed apps with problems in a new OS upgrade. Then | could pace my upgrade strategy to include app and skill upgrade as well. Is this a new column for Macworld? Perhaps a web page where problems (and workarounds could be listed) The OS X upgrade is free, but many of the software upgrades are not. The need to upgrade skill levels for new software is also an issue. It is way more complex than just downloading the OS X. Rod Winning @ Letters should be emailed to editor@macworld.com.au with a subject header of ‘Letter to the Editor’ or by post to: Macworld Australia Mailbox, 142 Dorcas Street, South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205. Please include your full name and address, including state or territory. 1 Comments on stories or Forum posts on www.macworld.com.au are also eligible for the prize. lH We reserve the right to edit letters and probably will. @ Letters of fewer than 200 words are given preference. belkin This month's prize to the Macworld Australia reader who has submitted what we think is the most interesting letter is a WeMo Switch - a home automation device that lets you switch off electronics from your Android and iOS smart device via the free WeMo app. The WeMo switch retails for $69.95 The WeMo Switch lets you turn electronic devices on or off from anywhere. It uses your existing home Wi-Fi network to provide wireless control of TVs, lamps, stereos, heaters, fans and more. www.belkin.com.au ‘TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Leto he month. Instructions on how to enter form pat ot these condone of ent 2. To enter sen lal or medracted ents, pret). 7. The Promoter prize occuring between he Pr a3 9048 co00, (ABN 18064612 520 LOZ YIGWIAON ne"wWoo'pjOMIeU MMM H OT ST U FF Aselection of Apple, Mac and iOS news from Macworld.com.au APPLE’S LEADERS PAY TRIBUTE TO STEVE JOBS Monday 5 October marked the fourth year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death He would've been 60 this year. To commemorate Jobs’ life and legacy, several Apple executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, penned personal remembrances that were posted on AppleWeb, Cupertino’s internal news website. “He was unselfish in the face of his own mortality,” wrote Cook, recalling his last days with the iconic Apple co-founder. Cook shared how he had offered Jobs a portion of his own liver for a donor liver transplant, but Jobs refused. “Even when his outlook was bleak and he had every right to accept help, he refused, rather than put a friend's health at risk,” Cook continued. “He put his compassion for me above his own needs, and | will never forget it.” Below is Tim Cook's essay in full, as first posted on BuzzFeed: “In February of 2009, Steve was on a leave of absence from Apple and spending his time at his home. | would drop by after work and discuss many things with him. He was waiting for a liver transplant and his health seemed to be rapidly deteriorating. One day in particular, he seemed especially ill and | left feeling so distraught that | threw up in his yard. | was worried he would not live long enough to reach the top of the waiting list for a cadaver liver. After checking out my own health and researching donor liver transplants, | visited Steve again and told him | wanted to give him a portion of my liver. Despite his condition and the uncertainty of whether he would live long enough to be at the top of the waiting list, he adamantly refused to accept my offer for fear it would place my own health in jeopardy. That was the kind of person he was. He was unselfish in the face of his own mortality. Even when his outlook was bleak and he had every right to accept help, he refused, rather than put a friend's health at risk. He put his compassion for me above his own needs, and | will never forget it.” Other Apple executives also wrote personal remembrances on AppleWeb, which were subsequently transcribed by Mashable. Apple's vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue described Jobs as sometimes a brother, sometimes a father figure. Vice president of software technology Bud Tribble remembered Jobs’ artful vision when he took the original Mac team to a Louis Comfort Tiffany exhibit in San Francisco. Member of Apple's board of directors Andrea Jung called him thoughtful and caring — “a true friend” Senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller recalled how Jobs’ happiness and pride would fuel the entire team backstage during the product events. Cook also sent a company-wide email to all employees on Monday, urging them to remember who Jobs was and what he stood for. The email read: “Team, Today marks four years since Steve passed away. On that day, the world lost a visionary. We at Apple lost a leader, a mentor and many of us lost a dear friend. Steve was a brilliant person, and his priorities were very simple. He loved his family above all, he loved Apple, and he loved the people with whom he worked so closely and achieved so much. Each year since his passing, | have reminded everyone in the Apple community that we share the privilege and responsibility of continuing the work Steve loved so much. What is his legacy? | see it all around us. an incredible team that embodies his spirit of innovation and creativity. The greatest | products on earth, beloved by customers NEWS and empowering hundreds of millions of people around the world. Soaring achievements in technology and architecture. Experiences of surprise and delight. A company that only he could have built. Acompany with an intense determination to change the world for the better. And, of course, the joy he brought his loved ones. He told me several times in his final years that he hoped to live long enough to see some of the milestones in his children’s lives. | was in his office over the summer with Laurene and their youngest daughter. Messages and drawings from his kids to their father are still there on Steve's whiteboard. Ifyou never knew Steve, you probably work with someone who did or who was here when he led Apple. Please stop one of us today and ask what he was really like. Several of us have posted our personal remembrances on AppleWeb, and | encourage you to read them. Thank you for honoring Steve by continuing the work he started, and for remembering both who he was and what he stood for.” The story behind the story: in the wake of several unflattering portrayals of Steve Jobs on the big screen, Apple's top brass is hoping the Apple co-founder is remembered fondly. Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin's long- awaited Steve Jobs movie hits cinemas this Friday 9 October in a limited release (with a full release across the US on 23 October), and early reviews suggest that depictions of Jobs’ personal flaws were not left on the cutting room floor. Movie critic for the New York Post Lou Lumenick wrote: “| came away with the feeling that the filmmakers were practically implying that [Jobs] early death at 56 was some kind of karmic payback.” Ouch. Even those who haven't seen the film and knew Jobs personally expected this harsh treatment from Hollywood. Jobs’ ne“woo"pjomseu MMM LOZ HIG WIAON | OT ST U FF Aselection of Apple, Mac and iOS news from Macworld.com.au widow Laurene Powell Jobs apparently lobbied to have the film killed, according to The Wall Street Journal. When late night TV host Stephen Colbert asked Tim Cook about the movie, Cook called it “opportunistic”, a criticism that screenwriter Sorkin strongly contested. “If you've got a factory full of children in China assembling phones for 17 cents an hour, you've got a lot of nerve calling someone else opportunistic,” Sorkin told The Hollywood Reporter. The screenwriter has since apologised for his jarring response. JACK DORSEY NAMED TWITTER CEO, BAIN APPOINTED COO ‘Twitter has made co-founder Jack Dorsey its new CEO, ending months of speculation and handing him the tough task of turning around the company’s sluggish user growth. Dorsey is also CEO of mobile payments company Square, creating the unusual situation of having one person lead two high-profile Silicon Valley companies at the same time. He's also on the board of The Walt Disney Company. Dorsey has been Twitter's interim CEO. since Dick Costolo stepped down abruptly in June, so the big change, approved by the board on 30 September according to an SEC filing, is to make Dorsey's role permanent. That filling also said, “There are currently no plans to provide Mr Dorsey with direct compensation for his role as chief executive officer.” On a recent conference call, the Twitter executive team sought to convince media and analysts that Dorsey can lead Twitter and fuel new product development while simultaneously running another company. Dorsey “surpassed goals as interim CEO while also running Square,” said Peter Currie, lead independent director of Twitter. ‘Jack not only understands Twitter's culture but is a part of it.” Currie portrayed the CEO search effort as an arduous one that considered a variety of candidates, but ultimately led back to the company's co-founder. He said the company board met 10 times, the executive search committee had 15 separate meetings, and there were more than two dozen meetings between candidates and search committee members in an effort to find a new CEO. “The board ultimately concluded that Jack is that leader,” Currie said. “Between Twitter and Square, Jack has built two great companies from the ground up,” he added. The board also appointed Adam Bain, who has been president, Global Revenue and Partnerships since September 2010, as COO (chief operating officer). Also on 30 September, Costolo resigned his position on Twitter's board. While Dorsey had been Twitter's chairman, the SEC filing made public on in early October said that he would no longer serve in that role although he will remain on the board. Currie said the board would be reaching out to candidates to fill the chairman position The social network is under intense pressure to figure out how to draw new users to its service. Unlike Facebook, which ramped easily to a billion subscribers, Twitter grew quickly at the start, but seems to have hit a plateau. Itreported strong growth in its advertising business last quarter, but the social network isn’t profitable, in part because it's investing in the infrastructure that delivers its service. More worryingly, the number of core users who access Twitter at least once a month increased by only two million last quarter, to 304 million “This is unacceptable and we're not happy about it,” Dorsey said at the time. Dorsey created Twitter in 2005 and 2006 with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. Dorsey became CEO soon after, but lost the role in 2008, because he became a “distracted manager’, according to a profile in The New Yorker. The following year he co-founded Square, known for its technology that lets small merchants take credit card payments on smartphones and tablets. He's chairman and CEO of that company, in addition to now being CEO of Twitter. SPOTIFY EXPECTS TO HAVE CLOSE TO 100 MILLION USERS BY YEAR'S END You may think Spotify would be feeling the heat from Apple's entry into the crowded music-streaming market, but recent comments from a high-ranking Spotity executive suggest the Swedish company remains largely unaffected. In the early part of June, weeks ahead of Apple Music's launch, Spotity announced that its subscriber base had soared to more than 20 million (twice as many as a year ago), while the overall rig M Qa number of users stood at a record 75 million (versus 35 million a year ago) Impressive as the growth of the previous 12 months or so had been, one couldn't help but wonder if it would be able to withstand the mad surge in competition. The message coming out of Spotify seems to be, “Ya sure, you betcha.” Spotify chief revenue officer Jeff Levick told an advertising conference in New York in October that the company is on course to reach the 100 million-user mark by Christmas, according to the International Business Times. He didn’t say how many of these new users are expected to pay for the service, but if historical usage claims are anything to go by we're probably looking at an additional six to seven million subscribers. Spotify isn’t the only one experiencing unprecedented growth. It turns out it's an industry-wide phenomenon from which streaming music services everywhere are benefitting. Take Rhapsody/Napster, apremium-only service, which has seen its popularity explode in the last year or 0, going from two million to three = mn = wn million subscribers at a rate unmatched in its 13-year history. Even artist-owned Tidal, despite its flaws, has managed to almost double its subscriber base in the last six months to more than one million Meanwhile, Apple Music's just ended three- month free trial was able to suck in more than 15 million users (though it's unclear how many of those have stuck around) It would be foolish to assume that all is well with Spotify. Its rapidly surging popularity notwithstanding, the company remains deeply in the red; its revenue is growing, but so are its losses. Many believe the bulk of the company’s financial issues stem from its freemium model, which has long been a source of tension between the firm and the recording artists on which it depends, and is gradually becoming a major cause of concern for music labels and investors. With its licensing agreements with the big three labels - Universal, Sony and Warner - set to come up for renewal soon, the music streamer could face renewed pressure to severely limit or altogether abandon its free, ad-supported tier. &% LOZ YIGWIAON ne"woo"poMoeU MMM 14 SN Busy Bee A busy bee brings spring into focus Larry Hermann is a regular contributor to iSnap and his submission this month, titled Busy Bee, captivated us, as spring is well and truly upon us Hermann says, ‘I've enjoyed photography as a hobby for years, but since the iPhones have come about I've found I've always got a camera on me, so opportunities just seem to be more so for random pics. The bees | was watching as | was just walking down the street and the lovely violet colour of those flowers caught my eye. | like nature and have taken many pics of flowers and trees over the years.” The photo was shot on an iPhone 6 and wasn't edited at all — it's straight from the camera. “This pic is exactly as it remains on the camera roll on the iPhone,” says Hermann. In iSnap we're on the lookout for some of the best photographs being taken with iOS devices. Submit your favourite original shots to macworld@macworld.com.au for your chance to be featured in the online iSnap gallery www.macworld.com.au/isnap. Each month’s winner will win a prize and appear on this page! “lused the app called Camera + as it has a very good macro feature to take these kinds of close-ups. It also simulates a low f-stop just like using a DSLR, which gives that nice depth of field look with the non- focused background in a blur.” This highlights one of the great features of the iPhone. Although Apple’s camera app does a competent job, by allowing developers to access the hardware, it has created opportunities for developers to add to Apple's already powerful functions. Hermann has experimented with many camera apps. “Other photo apps I've sometimes experimented with have been Photosynth, Time Exposure, SnapBack, Pixir-o-matic and PhotoFusion,” he says. Hermann isn’t a professional This month’s prize is a Selfie Tripod and Extension Pack by PADACS. photographer. He's a psychiatrist who doesn't like to prescribe medications much, if at all, preferring to help patients through careful listening and problem solving. “lam a Macworld magazine subscriber and | admit I’m an incurable Apple obsessive-compulsive. My longstanding interest in photography has fused with admiration for Apple’s attention to detail in its iPhones, as well as Mac computers, of which | use a few, both to run my practice and for everything else including photography. I've just upgraded to the iPhone 6s Plus and am looking forward to taking even better photos with the dramatically improved camera.” And we're looking forward to seeing many more happy snaps from Hermann and our other iSnap contributors. tu PADACS specialises in the design and development of accessories for the iPad and iPhone. Many of us love taking selfies, but it can be awkward trying to pose, hold the phone and press the button all at the same time. The new Keep Calm and Selfie On Remote by PADACS iPhone mobile accessories, makes easy work of taking the perfect selfie or group photo. It uses Bluetooth technology to pair with your iPhone, allowing you to remotely trigger the camera and capture your selfie with ease. To see the full range of products visit www.padacs.com (2) High-powered USB 3.0 Audio out FireWire (2) Thunderbolt ports (3) USB 3.0 Audio in Gigabit Ethernet HDMI SIMPLICITY. THE ENGINE OF POSSIBILITY. The OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock is the unmatched connectivity platform for your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. Redefining what’s possible in the absence of complication, Thunderbolt 2 Dock is the catalyst for tremendous expansion. 12 ports united with one cable, from $229. aNernnminerecurts DOCK www.macsales.com | + 1-815-338-8685 | Free 24/7 customer service at Brn ELS WITH | YOUR MAC - assport. MacBook. iPhone. iPad. If you're anything like me, this is how your packing list begins. It could be yet another business trip, a well-earned overseas holiday or even a long weekend away. But it's a safe bet that for Macworld Australia readers, a clutch of Apple tech is always your travelling companion. In this month's feature, we've pulled together a stack of real-world tips for travelling with your Mac and assorted iDevices that'll get you ready to roam. Now all you need to do is book your ticket... PREP YOUR TECH TRAVEL KIT One of those fancy business class or first class amenity kit bags, emptied of its moisturisers and what-nots, makes a perfectly-sized pouch for odds and ends such as USB cables, adapter plugs, SD cards and a thumb-drive. Bulkier items such as an Airport Express can go into your checked luggage, but the stuff you'll most likely want to use at the airport or during the flight should stay in this kit, which in turn slips into your carry-on bag. INTERNATIONAL AC TRAVEL ADAPTER A multi-country adapter is a must-have for the frequent flyer, but lean towards models that also include USB ports so you can also charge your iDevices from the same wall socket. Some models have a clip-on USB cap, which covers the AC socket, but I suggest you get an adapter with inbuilt USB sockets so you can connect AC and USB gear at the same time. BE PREPARED Always pop a universal AC adapter into your carry-on bag instead of your checked luggage. If you're doing a flight with a stop-over, the adapter may be needed to plug your MacBook into that transit airport's AC sockets. At Hong Kong International Airport, for example, local regulations insist that only the local HK-style AC socket (which is identical to the British one) can be installed in terminals and lounges. Stuck at an airport business class or first class lounge without the necessary adapter? Ask nicely at the reception desk, where they'll often have a handful of adapter plugs to loan out to passengers. Another reason to keep that AC adapter in your hand luggage is that some at-seat power sockets favour the AC plug configuration from the airline's home country rather than use a multi-plug international socket. There is a caveat here: some of the larger adapters, when coupled to the MacBook's little power brickette, will lean out of the AC socket far enough to lose an electrical connection to the actual AC supply. The quick and not always reliable fix is to wedge the adapter into place, using your carry-on bag for example. If you've been using MacBooks for many years, however, you may have a collection of the removable AC plug-heads for countries other than Australia. US plug-heads were often included in the box with Aussie MacBooks, and you'll find plenty of these plus the European and UK versions on eBay. If you're regularly flying to and travelling within those countries, grab the relevant plug-head and add this to your travel kit. FEATURE BYO POWERBOARD Travelling with several bits of gear that'll need recharging? Instead of buying a handful of travel adapters, buy one adapter and bring along a compact powerboard with four Aussie AC sockets. Plug the powerboard into the universal adapter and then plug your own gear straight into the powerboard. Don't just grab the cheapest board you can find at Bunnings, however. If some of your gear uses rather large power bricks, choose a board with well-spaced power points - otherwise one chunky adapter will claim two spots on the board. A costlier but more compact solution is the Allocacoc PowerCube (pictured above), which gives you four AC sockets and two USB sockets for around $30. PROTECTING YOUR MACBOOK Your MacBook is your travelling companion through thick and thin, so give it a little TLC. This could be a simple sleeve or a snug- fitting case that wraps around it. Tuse an Impact Snap Case from Tech21. This consists of two skinny halves made -absorbing material, with what feels like a semi-firm from a somewhat flexible shocl gel sandwiched between the layers. It protects my MacBook Air from scratches, knocks and even drops, while — nq S102 HIGW3AON ne"woo"poMaeUMMM FEATURE my choice of the purple case (it's actually more of a subdued violet than flashy ‘pimp purple’) adds a touch of personalisation when airport lounges and press conferences are flooded with look-alike aluminium MacBooks. AT THE AIRPORT Different countries and indeed airports have different requirements about which tech must come out of your carry-on bag and which can stay in. As a tule it’s ‘laptops out, tablets in’, but there are enough exceptions to this maxim that I haul out both my MacBook Air and iPad Air to avoid having my bag make a time-consuming second trip through the scanner. If you've got access to an airport lounge, settle in and enjoy! But if you're planning to use your MacBook in the lounge, make a point of plugging in to an AC socket - even if you'll soon be flying in business class with your very own AC plug at hand. More than once I've been caught out by losing a few hours’ charge on my MacBook Air, doing pre-flight work on battery alone, only to find that the AC socket next to my business class seat wasn't working. This robbed me of a few hours’ inflight use of the MacBook Air, be it for working or watching my BYO videos (I love a good inflight binge viewing session. Eight hours of uninterrupted Downton Abbey? Bring it on, Carson!). CAN'T GET INTO AN AIRPORT LOUNGE? Modern airports increasingly make provision for the connected generation with dedicated and clearly signposted recharge stations in terminals and near boarding gates. If that’s not the case, there are still a few places where you can plug in to top up your laptop or tablet: Check the support columns throughout the passenger waiting areas (more often than not you'll already see some laptop users clustered around these anyway). The AC outlets won't be on every column but there are usually enough to go around. Sometimes the AC outlets are hidden out of sight under a bank of payphones (especially in US airports). If it's outside peak hours, watch for the cleaning crews: those vacuum cleaners and floor polishing machines have to be plugged in somewhere! Most airport cafés will have a few power points, typically on the wall or sometimes on a support column. So grab a coffee, plug in your laptop and relax. You may, however, need to manoeuvre your table into the best position and be sure no one can trip over your AC cord. I’ve even heard of travellers perching themselves at the end of an airport bar and, with the blessing of a friendly bartender (and provisional of course on ordering a ‘real’ drink or two, not dawdling over a glass of tap water) plugging into an AC socket on the other side of the bar. If you're going to be travelling through a lot of domestic airports without lounge access, consider packing a slim-line double adapter that's compatible with the local AC socket design. Even if all the available power points are already being used by fellow travellers, they'll be fine to let you share ‘their’ power point using your double adapter. UP IN THE AIR All seats at the pointy end of the plane have AC sockets, usually in a universal design so they can accommodate any type of AC plug. Premium economy seats may also have one AC socket for each passenger or a socket shared between every two seats. For economy travel it’s a mixed bag: newer aircraft and modern seat designs will often see shared AC sockets, but the bulk of airlines make no such concessions. USB ports, on the other hand, are becoming an increasingly popular fitting on every seat from tip to tail. These won't always have sufficient current to charge an iPad, but at least it should keep the battery at the same level rather than seeing it run down. BEING PRODUCTIVE INFLIGHT At this point you're happily settled into your seat (hopefully, business class), with your MacBook and iDevices plugged into their respective power outlets. If there’s work to be done during your flight, here are some strategies to make the most of your time. If your status or the flight's passenger load allows it, request an empty seat next to yours so you can spread out your work using that spare seat as well as its tray table. You'll also be able to wedge your laptop bag under that seat during flight, to keep everything within reach without compromising your own precious legroom. Set realistic expectations of how much work you'll do on the flight. Rarely will a 10-hour trip mean 10 solid hours of work. It may not even be five hours. It’s all too easy in that rushed day before you travel to tell yourself that you'll catch up during the flight, you'll bash out that report or presentation uninterrupted. But you never feel as chirpy in flight as on the ground. There's less oxygen circulating in the cabin, along with higher cabin pressure and lower humidity levels, all of which contribute to you feeling a bit tired and not nearly as productive. And that’s before that glass or two of wine. That said, some people get into ‘the zone’ and can work all the way through a long flight. But this can be the fast track to jetlag, especially on flights to the US that touch down early in the morning. If your body clock is still set to Australian time when you land in the US early in the day, you're in for one of the most unproductive days you can imagine ~ and one which could easily negate the benefits of working all the way through your flight. So pace yourself, and plan what duration of the flight you'll work through, and when you'll grab some shut-eye. Of course, don’t short-change yourself on sleep. You're guaranteed to have a less restful sleep on the plane than you would at home, and you'll probably end up waking hours before landing, as breakfast is being served. In fact, meals add another complication to the puzzle. Most flights departing Australia tend to serve a meal within two hours of take-off, which can be just when you're firing on all cylinders with that report or presentation. After dinner and a glass of wine you're well into the flight and tiredness is starting to settle in. I tend to attack the largest and most urgent slabs of work as my priority. Luse some time in the airport lounge to start getting them into shape, and keep working on them for the 20 minutes between boarding and when we're ready for take-off. By the time my meal arrives I'm usually ready for a break. If not, I opt for the ‘express meal’ to save time, or ask that my meal be held back and served when I'm ready (naturally, these aren't options in economy class). Post-dinner is when I can hammer away at small tasks such as emails, invoices and shorter documents, and basically nibble at the workload for another two hours. But I know that at pretty much any time I can switch off, yet have still knocked over the bulk of my work. And that's close to the first half of a long flight spoken for. Settle back with a movie and maybe a glass of wine, or just listen to some music on your iPad and relax. SKY-HIGH SURFING An increasing number of airlines offer internet access on flights to and from Australia, as well as around the globe, although Qantas has yet to add its name to this list. Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Etihad, United Airlines and even low-cost carrier Scoot all serve up sky-high surfing on flights into and out of Australia. On recent flights with each those of those airlines I've become increasingly used to the convenience of logging on at 40,000 feet. At the same time, it can be a frustrating experience. There’s only a limited amount of bandwidth to be shared among hundreds of passengers and, in most cases, the signal is not exactly blazingly fast to begin with. Here are some strategies I adopt to make the most of my connection: Lower your expectations: we've generally become used to moderately high- speed connections at work and home, but the satellite speeds available on flights will time-warp you back a decade with a top rate of around 3Mbps. It's still sufficient for email, social media and browsing the FEATURE web, but you'll find most modern, image- laden websites are slow to load. You'll also want to keep focused on the task at hand rather than allowing yourself to be distracted viewing non-essential sites that can chew up a limited data allowance. Limit your browsing windows: change your browsing habits from opening a dozen sites simultaneously, each in its own tabbed window. It's a key plank for efficient working when on a fast connection, but each open tab demands a certain amount of data to keep it refreshed. With a slower inflight connection, you're better off focusing all the bandwidth on a single site to begin with. Let's say you're dialling up a news site to read the latest stories: once that site's open and you've clicked a story to read, then you can open a second tab to load another site or page in the background. Beware of attachments: poorly- configured desktop clients will download bulky attachments and even large signature logos that slow your connection to a barely usable crawl and easily chew through your inflight data allowance. Temporarily disable the automatic downloading of attachments in your MacBook's email software: use the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad, or use any web-based interface to your email account so that you can choose to read the body of a message without also having unsolicited attachments shoved down the pipeline. Disable Cloud backups: this one caught me out the very first time I connected to inflight internet. My online backup software, CrashPlan, diligently copies all important files to a secure ‘Cloud’ storage system: great over a fast connection at work, not so much when you're using inflight Wi-Fi. Within a matter of minutes those backups had gobbled all the data I'd bought to use during the flight. I quickly wised up and temporarily switched off the Cloud backup app before a second swipe of my credit card got me online again. iDEVICES ON THE ROAD I find my iPhone's battery cops a real hammering when I'm out and about overseas. S102 HIGW3AON newoo'pjOMaeU MMM Using Google Maps or Apple Maps to find my way around, snapping photos and sometimes videos, social media posts, web browsing and bursts of email all take their toll. Well before the day is done, and often just when I need it the most, my iPhone's battery gauge moves into the red zone. An iPhone battery case or stand-alone external battery is the obvious solution. Because the demands of my job can also see my iPhone used as a voice recorder, Wi-Fi hotspot and for filing stories and Facebook photo galleries, I've opted for a belt-and-braces approach, with a Mophie Juice Pack case for my iPhone 6 as well as lipstick-sized Ankar PowerCore+ Mini battery recharger for an end-of-day top-up to get my iPhone through a night out. It doesn’t hurt to pop your iPhone charger and universal AC adapter into your backpack, either. If you drop into a café for a break or lunch and spy an AC plug nearby, take the opportunity to top up your iPhone or iPad. KEEPING CONNECTED Through a combination of travel packs and reduced casual roaming rates, Aussie telcos have made significant strides in reducing the cost of global roaming compared to a handful of years back. I rate Vodafone's ‘Red Roaming’ as the pick of the bunch, with a flat $5 per day to use your Australian plan’s data, text and call allowance in almost 50 countries. That includes unlimited standard calls back to Australia as well as within the country you're currently in, plus free text messaging. But buying a local prepaid SIM card for the country you're visiting is always the best value, especially when it comes to data. You can usually pick up a local SIM card on arrival at the airport, as long as you're not in a rush to get to the hotel or your first meeting. Phone stores in the city also sell these cards, but that means taking extra time to find and visit the store (don't forget to bring your passport, which is often needed as a form of ID). The longer you'll be in that city and the more often you'll be returning, the better this gets. On each return visit you can buy a ‘recharge’ card at the airport ~ and often sold at convenience stores ~ and you're back on the air. There's also been increased uptake of data-only SIMs designed for the iPad, as FEATURE well as pocket-sized 3G or 4G hotspots. Apple is also selling its own Apple SIM to Australian iPad owners, so you can sign up for a prepaid data roaming plan directly from your iPad as soon as you step off the plane; however, the costs are typically much higher than buying your own prepaid SIM. A time-saving tip on getting a prepaid SIM card for the country you're visiting is to buy it right here at home. For this reason I often recommend Aussie company SimComer to colleagues. SimCorner sells overseas SIM cards online, but also has shops at the international terminals of Sydney and Melbourne Airports, where it will install and set up your card on the spot. There's a range of plans for New Zealand, Asia, the US, Europe and the UK at prices that are generally comparable to what you'd pay overseas. AT THE HOTEL Most large hotel chains now offer free in-room internet if you're a member of their loyalty program and, given that those schemes are free to join, there's really no reason not to sign up before your next trip. But there’s always the chance you'll be staying at a hotel that asks $25 per day, and often per device, for Wi-Fi. That's when you'll be glad you added an Airport Express to your travel kit, at least when it comes to sharing that in-room internet connection across a few devices. Sometimes a local SIM card can prove faster and cheaper than a hotel's own internet. Many regular travellers have invested in a pocket Wi-Fi hotspot, into which they pop a prepaid data-only SIM card ~ with a generous data allowance - and use that both in the room as well as when they're out and about. It also pays to be a bit of a stickybeak. Sometimes there's an Ethernet port sitting behind the in-room telly, which will be wide open for internet access. The latest large-screen ‘smart’ TVs found in upscale hotels sport a USB port, which can, in a pinch, be used to top up the battery on your iPhone or iPad (although it's slow, and you may need to leave the TV switched on during the process). % S102 H3IGW3AON ne"woo'pjOMeU MMM A) srruications MAC GEMS BARTENDER 2 UTILITY Surtees Studios $21.94 (UPGRADE $10.97) Early in OS X's evolution, only a handful of system items appeared by default or by choice in the menu bar at the far right. Over time, Apple has added more options as monitors have stretched. At the same time, third-party developers have found endless reasons to stick sometimes quite sophisticated controls up there as well. It can be a mess. Bartender appeared a few years ago to provide a way to reduce the clutter with a lot of control. It seemed imperilled when El Capitan’s technical features were announced, as it relied on modified system settings in a way that the new System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode, turned on by default, wouldn't allow. Fortunately for Surtees Studios, it had a revamped version 2 already well underway, which works entirely within the new SIP guidelines for El Capitan. It also works with Yosemite. With Bartender 2, you exercise control over your menu bar items, though it may require a restart or disabling and re-enabling each control to let the app take charge; after that initial setup, it manages them from then on. That one-time setup is a small price to pay for El Capitan compatibility. Bartender’s icon can trigger one of three behaviours: dropping down its own bar (which can be repositioned as you like), its oe fe ee es € Bluetooth ‘ear ham Sn arte rt Me ar D trememert AR Arot tonmes BW overcome Open men mente ver ote, Doras race x meer 1 ee GF owe Ong rte tame 1G rrewvene ve Q wets © Wer Dncey em « 1 ee een te mete ee te ones NEW SOFTWARE FROM THE MAC APP STORE default behaviour or hide application menus. so that you can see all menu-bar items or just those you haven't marked as hidden in per-item preferences. Hot keys can be set to bring those modes up regardless of your preference, and to use the keyboard to move through each item. For each menu item, you can choose where and whether it appears: each menu item can be displayed normally, moved to Bartender’s bar or hidden. This helps with some system items that otherwise lack a display control, like Spotlight, and some third- party apps that show a menu-bar item whether you like it or not. Anice sub-option for each item is that, with it hidden or in the Bartender bar, you can check Show Item in Menu Bar for Item Updates. Whenever there’s an update to the display of the icon or text, Bartender will promote it to the main system menu bar for a selectable period of time from five seconds to 10 minutes. You can also Command-drag to rearrange all menu bar items, something that isn’t possible without Bartender: third-party apps have to bypass Apple’s restrictions to allow re-ordering and only some do, while certain system items are fixed in place. With a truly enormous number of items in the menu bar, Bartender 2 added a search feature: display the bar by clicking its icon or using a keyboard shortcut, start typing, and matches that have been felegated to the bar appear, and can be selected by pressing Enter. If you have a wide-enough screen —|'m typing this on a 1920 by 1080 (1080p) display — you may find Bartender unnecessary, as few applications display so many text menus at the left that they march across such a wide expense to block dropdowns at the right. But certain software has an inordinate set of menus. Or you may like to have the options there to avoid a trip into System Preferences or a software launch, keeping options handy but out of sight. 8 — — BY GLENN FLEISHMAN IDEA KNOT PRODUCTIVITY Hugo Diaz $1.29 Ideas rarely flow through our minds in a linear way. They tend to arrive in a jumbled way that we need to synthesise and process to make them into useful information we can use and share. Idea Knot is a tool that’s designed to help capture, process, refine and share our ideas. It lets you capture ideas and make notes against them as they occur to you. The app layout is simple, but that's a good thing — you don't want this sort of app getting in the way of you capturing your ideas. TONALITY PHOTOGRAPHY Macphun $22.99 Tonality is a black and white image editor that works either stand alone or as a plug-in for the latest version of Photos. It lets you edit images, apply filters and use over 150 different presets to give your images some extra zing. Black and white doesn't have to be boring. M PRODUCTIVITY Flexbits Inc $49.99 Fantastical 2.1 is a calendar app that presents upcoming events in a list view, keeping that view active no matter whether you're looking at a graphical layout of a day, week, month or year. Fantastical can pick up existing accounts and calendars set in the Accounts system preferences pane or stored locally or via Exchange, as well as let you manually add other iCloud, APPLICATIONS ERM FUSION PRO 8 PRODUCTIVITY VMware $238.95 Fusion Pro 8 lets you run over 200 different operating systems ‘on your Mac — including Windows 10, allowing you to use Cortana (think of it as being like Siri for Windows) and Windows applications. As well as being handy for running the occasional Windows session, Fusion Pro is great for developers and those who like to experiment. You can even run beta versions and older versions of OS X in virtual machines. NTFS FOR MAC UTILITY Paragon US$19.95 Now in its 14th version, NTFS for Mac is a very mature product. For those who work with Windows users, the ability to edit data on drives formatted using NTFS is essential. Although OS X can read data from those drives, NTFS makes it possible to edit and write data. Google, Yahoo! and Fruux accounts, or any CalDAV-compatible calendar link. Fantastical lets you use the natural-language aspect to add events and appointments. You can type a sentence like, ‘Meet Fred at 10.15 am at 123 Every Street, Fitzroy, for two hours on Tuesday and set an alarm an hour before’, press return and you're done. ne‘woo"poMaeW MMM GLOZ UIEWIAON BE} susiness OUTLOOK 2016 FOR MAC BY NATHAN ALDERMAN The more things change, the more they stay the same. The new Outlook 2016 for Mac is the same solid, dependable, occasionally cluttered app it's always been, for good or ill. If you're looking for must-have reasons to upgrade to the new Office suite in order to get the new Outlook, you won't find them here. Unless you rely heavily on Outlook's still superb integration of mail and calendars, you can probably find nimbler, more innovative email alternatives. THE NOT-SO-BIG THREE Microsoft's Office blog excitedly touts three major new features of Outlook 2016. First, push email support means that new mail shows up in your inbox as it arrives, without requiring you to check for it. This is definitely convenient, especially for business users who can't afford to miss a message even by a few minutes. But it only brings the app version of Outlook up to par with its web-based Outlook 365 version, not to mention rival web clients such as Gmail. Second, the first sentence of a given email now shows up beneath its subject in the message list, giving you a better sense of whether it's worth reading without previewing it. Again, undeniably handy, but Apple Mail and other clients have offered an identical feature for a while now. Third, a new conversation view gives you the option to group messages by thread, keeping every back-and-forth in a particular email exchange close at hand for easier reading. This idea's also nothing new, but it makes good sense. However, its implementation in Outlook 2016 leaves something to be desired. You have to choose to sort messages by conversation ~ rather than a host of other filters, from date sent or received to the account they came from ~ in order to see them displayed this way. Outlook basically apes Apple Mail's practice of showing a list of subject headers within the thread underneath the thread itself. To its credit, it also lets you delete or flag individual messages in the thread by rolling over those headers in the list. If you don’t sort by conversation, you'll only know a message is part of a thread if, after clicking on it, you see a speech-bubble button in the top left corner of the right-hand reading pane. Whether you click that button or use the dedicated conversation view, you're still only shown a list of message headers and ~ in the former case ~ first-sentence previews. You'll still have to click through each one at a time to follow the thread, which robs this feature of a lot of its time-saving usefulness. In Apple Mail and other clients, you simply click once to open an entire thread and scroll through its contents in chronological order. Outlook 2016 also adds the long overdue capability to create custom email signatures, although I liked its option to designate different signatures for different Tasks Calendar People aoe 3 Onmy cone feo peer ote +0 owe ov Kama °3 soctone ove > Ovens tome ko ona vou Gem Ps My Croce Panel Syncicare UNIVERSE’ #3 is fnaby here and with, the long awarted answer to one of mankind's grestest ‘quemons: “What do we know about Tavr-777".. Okay, s0 maybe thats not exactly nagpne most of ‘Us but we can atiure you the answer's much more entertaining! Fd out in tht newest story ofthe sens rom what we're starting to Believe can ony be the wer mind of Albert Morteys! Insue 3 pow sealable for immeciate download a oxneavndcatt com accounts, and for new messages or replies within those accounts. In addition, it now syncs your category names and colours across its Mac, PC and web versions, and lets you archive messages online to free up space in your mail account. DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN Minor adjustments aside, you'll find all of Outlook's usual strengths and shortcomings in its newest version. Its best qualities include the smart and highly usable way that the program ties together email, tasks and calendars. New features here include side-by-side displays of multiple calendars, weather forecasts for your area and the ability to propose a new time when invited to a meeting. I also have nothing but praise for Outlook's account setup skills. Adding both my Office 365 account from work and my personal Gmail account took mere seconds, and required nothing more than my email address and password. Outlook 2016's savvy configuration tools did the rest and, after some initial loading, all my mail popped into view. Most of the Outlook's modest 2016 facelift is perfectly pleasant. Navigating between Outlook's different abilities - Mail, Calendar, People, Tasks and Notes ~ is as simple as clicking those words at the bottom of the main window and, within each view, the information you need is laid out clearly and conveniently. I liked the calming, easy-on-the-eye interface colours, too. However, the ribbon running across the top of the window still has yet to meet an icon it didn’t like, cramming them together in inconsistent sizes and configurations. Outlook 2016 can also occasionally take its sweet time launching, or checking for new mail when it first opens. Bottom line. It's Microsoft Outlook: you almost certainly know what to expect from it. It does its job well, but brings nothing new to the table. If you need Exchange-based mail for work, or want a desktop alternative to the very good Outlook 365 web client, it won't let you down. pusiness GER ie 3 < SS ese Game Merce Mee Lite ve ene te mmm ‘Yet Congress to Protect Met Neutraity 9 the Funding Bit ena ae enn ee ne te eee a Anweney sem ene teem. 1% exes . meneame Commer = — —> ne“woo"pjomseu' MMM LOZ H3GWIAON BED cusiness EXCEL 2016 FOR MAC BY ROB GRIFFITHS One of the advantages of doing the last Office 2016 product review is that I can leverage work others have done to save you, the reader, from some redundant explanation. So, if you haven't yet, check out the reviews of Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. Much of what you'll read about in those apps applies to Excel 2016 for Mac, too: Mac-specific features like multi- touch gestures, full screen support, Retina graphics, a cleaned-up and easily-hidden ribbon, a fixed task pane that replaces floating palettes for formatting, integrated support for OneDrive and excellent cross- platform file compatibility. You can read more about these features in the above mentioned reviews; they work just the same way in the new Excel. (As with the other apps, you can only presently get Excel 2016 if you're an Office 365 subscriber) WHAT ELSE IS NEW? When you launch Excel 2016, you'll be greeted by Excel's clean new appearance. You can choose from a coloured header (new in 2016) or the usual grey header from previous releases. Workbooks with multiple tabs get a much cleaner tab bar, losing the fake 3D appearance. Coloured tabs are now coloured with a thin bar, instead of a gradated fill on the entire tab, making it easier to read tab names. Overall, I found the new interface pleasant and easier to use than in older versions of Excel. Excel includes the Smart Lookup feature found in other Office apps. Smart Lookup uses Bing to show contextual information for a highlighted word - 4 > Eapenees Summary Projects Wink Lint while this is undoubtedly useful in Word, I didn’t really find myself using it much while working on spreadsheets. So what's new and unique to Excel 2016? Quite a few things, starting with the removal of the Standard and Formatting toolbars. While you could hide these in Excel 2011, they're completely gone - replaced by the task pane - in Excel 2016. I don’t miss them at all, as they were redundant and took up screen space. Also new is greatly improved sharing. Save your file to OneDrive, and you can then use a sharing button to invite people via their email address, copy a link you can then email to others or send the workbook as either a PDF or native workbook attachment. Recipients can (assuming you grant permission) edit your file, even if they don’t own Excel, through Microsoft's web-hosted Excel app. Fans of pivot tables will find a new slicer tool that greatly increases the usability of pivot tables. A slicer is a way to limit the data you see in a pivot table. Ina pivot table that shows years of sales by salesperson, for example, you can use slicers to restrict the table to one or more years, or to one or more salespeople. Another ‘new’ feature is the inclusion of the Analysis ToolPak add-on. I say new in quotes because, while new to Summary (ony + Eis -— + 100m Excel 2016, long-time Excel vets will remember the Analysis ToolPak from the pre-OS X days. If you need to do complex statistical and/or engineering analysis — think Anova, Fourier analysis, Regression ete - you'll find the Analysis ToolPak invaluable. Also included are a number of formulas that were previously found only in Excel 2013 for Windows, improving cross-platform compatibility. Again in the interest of cross-platform compatibility, many Excel for Windows shortcuts now work on the Mac, which is quite useful if you regularly work on both platforms. Excel also makes charting easier by analysing your data and letting you select a recommended chart from a convenient dropdown menu. Select the data you want graphed, click the Recommended Charts button, and then browse the mini chart previews to find the one that best matches. what you're trying to say. WHAT'S GONE If you're a serious user of Excel’s macro facilities, you are in for a big letdown: Excel’s 2016 support for macros is basically missing. While you can create and record macros, the macro editor is crippled. There’s no way to insert procedures, modules etc. About all you can do is hand-edit a recorded macro. Further, ies] cS 2 2 m n “a you can't create custom menu commands, as you could in prior versions of Excel. In short, if you need macros, stick to Excel 2011. After the great progress made with macros in the 2011 release, this is a real letdown. Assuming the macro issue doesn't affect you, the only other real problem Ihave with Excel 2016 is the loss of customisability of keyboard shortcuts and menus. In older Excel versions, you could easily customise which commands show on which menus, and even create entirely ; new menus containing just the commands Hs you specify. a | You could also assign one or more % | 0 ll keyboard shortcuts to any Excel command, including commands that you can’t comet Ce program via OS X's keyboard shortcut interface. The dialogue that handles all of FB this customisation is missing from Excel : aa 2016; if you don’t like what Microsoft bas <> ee + gave you for menus and certain shortcuts, you're stuck with them, faa eT Coma tome a -—~——+ wow A related issue is that some familiar ~ and useful ~ shortcuts are now changed or gone. Control-I and Control-K used to insert and delete rows or columns; now you must use three fingers (Shift- Command-Equals) to add a row, and Systornize Jophvera snc Menus Command-Minus to remove a row. You Teober ond Merve ETN also used to be able to Option-click a row or column to quickly add a new blank Drag 8 commend into @ toolber or menu ber. row or column; this no longer works. If Commands. {Drag to tootbars and menus) [= Bato Dobie Barge BS Buddie chat 1 Caicuate Now | & Camera ‘F Cance! Retresh you use the keyboard a lot, you'll want to open Excel's help and search ‘keyboard shortcuts’, where you'll find a huge list “T of shortcuts. iF i Bottom line. If you're an Excel user who doesn’t rely on macros, and doesn’t need to customise your menus and commands, Excel 2016 has a lot going for it. The new interface is pleasant, the cross-platform ji if features are a welcome addition, the | picture of a inaed or embedded object performance is very good and the Mac- specific features make Excel feel as native as any other Mac app. But if you do need macros and customisability, then you're going to have Keyboard. (a to stick to Excel 2011... and that's too bad, because Excel 2016 is a solid release in tll every other regard. & SS hne“woo"pjomseuw' MMM LOZ H3GWIAON BES) susiness XCODEGHOST: APP STORE MALWARE SHOWS THE WEAKEST LINKS AND APPLE’S ADVANTAGE BY GLENN FLEISHMANN ‘As malware goes, XcodeGhost is unimpressive. Bundled into versions of Apple's Xcode development environment for iOS, OS X and watchOS, XcodeGhost was distributed within China, but not from Apple's own servers. When apps were built using the infected Xcode, XcodeGhost hitched a lift It's instructive to look at how this happened, how it may be prevented in the future, and how minimal the impact was, despite the potential. Apple and its customers were lucky by chance and by design. CHINA'S RESTRICTIONS The government in China makes it hard for average citizens and businesses to interact outside its borders. Over time, the Great Firewall of China has become even more stringent, frequently blocking virtual private network (VPN) connections and other encrypted sessions. Academics and Y FileMaker. An Apple Subsidiary scientists are kept from having access to up-to-date information in their field, and there’s concern it will lead to long-term expatriate living by those who can work in less restrictive countries, as well as causing non-Chinese companies to shift or consider shifting operations. Piracy has also been rampant in China since the dawn of personal computers. At one time, this was largely due to the inequitable pricing of software between China's developing economy and the US, Europe and other so-called developed nations. As that gap has narrowed ~ significantly so for the growing Chinese middle cl: s and elite - piracy remains entrenched, in part because the government rarely enforces penalties, where they exist. The inserted code could have been far worse, but still highly limited, due to how Apple sandboxes each app and the restrictions on information access. As is well established, even in the face of China's current slowdown in growth, the iPhone is exceedingly popular there. Developers want to make software to feed this market, which they do both through the authorised Apple App Store and through stores that work with jailbroken iPhones. This combination of factors means that developers in China are used to downloading sketchy software, jailbreaking phones and developing software both for the App Store and knock-offs. It also means they have huge problems retrieving large files. SKETCHY SITUATIONS ARE THE NORM All this may help explain to those outside China's market why developers would download Xcode from in-country servers, disable security warnings and fail to check whether a distribution had been tampered with. It’s just part of the routine: errors and warnings are ignored because they're so common. Apple released a FAQ for its customers about XcodeGhost (Why would a developer put customers at risk by downloading counterfeit software?’) and another gently reminded developers to look for the seal of authenticity. This is despite dozens and possibly hundreds of apps being infected with a malicious procedure, and despite the software affected being on tens of millions of i0S devices. Some reporting indicated that hundreds of millions of users could be affected, but it conflated the total installed base of software popular in China, like WeChat, and the number of iOS devices on which those packages were installed. 413324 Apple has pulled dozens of apps infected with XcodeGhost, and the impact of the particular exploit was very slight. XcodeGhost can communicate with remote servers, which have been shut down, and was thought initially to be able to phish passwords. Fortunately, it could not. The inserted code could have been far worse, but still limited, due to how Apple sandboxes each app and the restrictions on information access. WeChat, among a few others, had the biggest hole, because of access to contact lists, which would allow the malware’s designers potentially to harvest that data and then use it for customised phishing and other attacks. WAKE-UP CALL This should be yet another wake-up call for developers and Apple, despite the contained fallout. Why isn’t Apple FOLLOW US twitercom/MacworldAU —_facebook.com/AusMacworld pinterast.cor thefancy.com/macworldau. WWW.MACWORLD.COM.AU actively monitoring Xcode downloads in other countries? Given that the modified version has been kicking around since March, you'd think this would be a routine part of its integrity procedures ~ and one hopes it is now. We can also imagine more automated checks for previously unseen modules appearing across multiple submitted apps that engage in internet communication. Apple may be in the middle of a tug of war with China over being able to host full, code-signed downloads of Xcode on content-distribution network servers within China for all we know, But it's possible for local servers to host valid, signed copies of Xcode - if against Apple's rules ~ as long as developers check. The odd reaction comes from the anti- malware world, which still doesn’t get why Apple puts the locks in place that it BUSINESS does to minimise the reach of a malware insertion like this one. Lookout, which makes mobile safety apps, posted a blog entry about XcodeGhost that contained this remarkable statement: “Unfortunately, due to limitations Apple has placed on apps on the iOS platform, Lookout Mobile Security for consumers is not able to detect whether you have an infected app installed in i0S 9. Apple has made recent changes to i0S that make it more difficult for one app to understand which other apps are present on the device.” This is a good thing, folks. While it’s inconvenient in some ways for certain utilities, the less each app is allowed to know about all others except through tightly defined parameters, the more likely integrity and privacy remain preserved. 24/7 news, reviews, secrets, help & more! hne“woo"pjomseuw' MMM LOZ H3GWIAON BET) cuest cowMw... JASON SNELL Twitter on the Mac: do your job or get out of the way hree years ago, Twitter broke ‘i its covenant with the third-party developers who helped fuel its initial growth and create some of its most innovative features. The message was Clear: Twitter was in charge of its own platform and, while other Twitter apps would be tolerated, they would only be so in limited fashion and for a limited time. Today Twitter is a company in turmoil, with investors such as Chris Sacca clamouring for change after the exit of former CEO Dick Costolo and the interim takeover by co-founder Jack Dorsey. What can’t be disputed is that Twitter's Mac app — introduced in 2011 —is an extreme example of how ‘Twitter has squandered the past few years. It drove third-party developers off its platform in order to exert control, and then proceeded to bungle its app. development. ‘Twitter for iOS, while it has its issues, is generally considered to be competent app. (| don’t use it - I'm still clinging to Twitterrific. And, of course, So many people love Tweetbot for iPhone.) Unfortunately, Twitter has withheld most of its new innovations (such as the contents of the Notifications tab, including a list of who follows, retweets and favourites you) from third-party apps, so even the most impressive third-party app is hobbled out of the starting gate. On the Mac, though, it's been a disaster. | use Twitter for Mac every day because | rely on the contents of that Notifications tab, and because ‘Tweetbot has never really appealed to me. (Unfortunately, the Mac version of Twitterrific is so old that it's essentially unusable.) How bad is Twitter for Mac? So bad that it fails to support numerous features introduced with fanfare by Twitter itself. The new Mute feature, which lets you block out communications from people you don’t want to hear from without blocking them entirely? Not only can you not initiate a mute from Twitter for Mac, but I've also found that when I mute someone from ‘Twitter's web interface, many of their tweets still appear in my timeline. weet quoting, rolled out earlier this year, is still not supported on the Mac version of Twitter. Tweetbot (Mac and iPhone) and Twitterrific (OS) were both updated to support it almost immediately, and are the richer for it. Then there are the bugs. Too frequently | click on a tweet in Twitter for Mac, only to have it display the contents of an entirely different Tweet in my timeline. I've seen this bug consistently for months, if not years. | also find the app will often bog down and become unusable until | quit, but then again, sometimes it just quits on its own. But perhaps Twitter's just given up on the Mac. The tweet announcing tweet-quoting specifically didn’t mention the Mac version, and the app itself hasn’t been updated since October 2014. | use Twitter on the desktop all the time, but | understand how mobile should probably be Twitter's focus. WHOSE APP IS IT ANYWAY? Still, couldn't this have all been avoided? This is Twitter's platform. It could've placed stricter rules on the third-party apps favoured by geeks like me while allowing them to continue innovating on the platform and growing their own businesses, but the rules were too onerous and development is slowly grinding to a halt If Twitter doesn’t have the resources or inclination to properly support platforms like the Mac (or, quite frankly, iOS and Android), perhaps it should rethink the decisions made by the prior regime and find a way to let other developers apply their expertise to the problem. Alternatively, maybe Twitter should figure out how to use its huge team of app developers to create first- class native apps for not just iOS and Android, but the Mac and Windows too. Finally, there's the nuclear option force everyone on the desktop to use Twitter's website. After all, there's no native Facebook app for the Mac. This is true, and yet | use Twitter far more than | use Facebook for just this reason! With a dedicated Twitter app | can dip in and out of the social stream as it suits me. | never remember to look at Facebook when I'm sitting at my desk It's a tumultuous time for Twitter. It needs new leadership and the overall Twitter product needs to get a lot better. | agree with Chris Sacca’s argument that Twitter could truly become our water cooler when it comes to live events, from TV shows to sports to breaking news. There's a lot of work to. be done. But as Twitter gets its house in order, maybe it can consider giving a litle love to its apps? They sure could use it, especially Twitter for Mac. And if you can't bother making a good Mac app, could you consider handing the keys to competent Mac developers and stepping out of the way? GUEST COLUMN 102 W3GW3AON LifeProof NuUd for iPad Air 2 Your iPad Air packs in some pretty sophisticated tech in a very compact body. While Apple uses some of the best materials of any technology maker, there are situations your iPad just isn't made for. The LifeProof Nitid cocoons your iPad Air 2 — there are versions for almost every other iOS device — so that it's protected from water, snow and dust, as well as falls. The Nitid offers plenty of protection. Rather than covering the iPad's touchscreen, the Nid forms a waterproof and dustproof seal around the edge of the display. This ensures no contaminants can get into the iPad’s inner workings while ensuring you can still use the touchscreen easily. Every port is still accessible courtesy of well-sealed flaps and other covers. Even Touch ID can still be used, although | did find the top edge of the sensor was slightly covered, so | needed to modify how we used the sensor. The headphone port is protected from the elements by a small screw-in cover. When the cover is removed, you need to use a short cable extender that’s supplied in the box. Otherwise my standard headphones struggled to reach the port. However, this is a minor inconvenience as | leave the external on the end of headphones permanently. If you want to mount your iPad in the car or boat, the Nitid for iPad Air is compatible with LifeProof’s QuickMount accessory system. I've been using this system with the Nui case for the iPhone 6 on a bicycle and it works very well. LifeProof says the Niilid is waterproof to over two metres for one hour and drop proof to about 1.3 metres. | dropped my iPad a couple of times without any ill effects. The LifeProof Nii for iPad 2 weighs about 270g and adds about 1.5cm to the height and width of the iPad with about 0.8cm to the thickness. LifeProof / $169.95 / www.lifeproof.com ~ BY ANTHONY CARUANA Twelve South HiRise Like the iPod, iPhone and iPad before it, the Apple Watch is spawning an ecosystem of accessories and extras that make it as much a commercial platform as a piece of serious tech. The Twelve South HiRise is an elegant addition to your bedside table. Out of the box, the HiRise comes in two parts: a base and the stand. Once we removed the plastic cover on the base we threaded the Apple Watch's charging cable through a channel. The cable could then be locked into a channel on the vertical stand (which we screwed in place using the tool and screws provided), where there's a rubber-edged ring in which the Apple Watch’s inductive charger can sit. Although that all sounds a little complicated, the construction process took just a couple of minutes. As all the cables are neatly tucked away, the HiRise actually declutters the bedside table or desk. Andrew Green, Twelve South's creative director, says, “HiRise makes overnight charging routine by providing a fixture that is far easier — and habit- forming — than a charging cable that falls to the floor and requires fumbling with at night. The easier and more convenient the charging stand, the better.” One of the challenges of creating accessories for a new device is keeping up with change. Unfortunately, the design of the HiRise pre-dates the arrival of watchOS 2 and the new Night Stand feature. The HiRise is designed to hold the Apple Watch in place with the watch band draped over the top of the HiRise and in a cut-out about halfway down the stand. However, nightstand mode works when the Apple Watch is on its side. With our Apple Watch Sport, equipped with the lighter, fluoroelastomer sport band, the watch stayed in place with the charger's magnets. However, this may be more challenging with some of the heavier, metal Apple Watch bands. TwelveSouth $69.00 www.twelvesouth.com . @B Incipio Feather Case The Incipio Feather Case adds a layer of protection to the body of the 12in MacBook — there are also versions for other portable Macs. Although it’s not a fuggedised case, the Feather offers a light layer of high density Plextonium polycarbonate that ensures dents and scratches are a thing of the past. Incipio $59.95 www.incipio.com Lightning cables Cables don't have to be single colour, pieces of rubber and wire that look boring. Eastern Collective has a range of cables, variously named Cosmic, Timber and Confetti etc. The braided casings add some colour and zing to a product rarely given a second glance by most of us. Eastern Collective US$25.95 www.easterncollective.com prooucts @&i ne"woo"pjomaeurMmMm GLOZ U3GWIAON SPK-WFQ10 Wireless Wi-Fi multiroom speaker The SPK-WFQ10 is an All-Play multi-room speaker ~ All-Play is an open system used by several manufacturers. The dual band SPK-WFQ10 Wi-Fi speaker connects to Wi-Fi without a bridging device, and can be controlled on the ‘Qualcomm AllPlay Jukebox’ app. It supports wireless music streaming from services such as Spotify and AllPlay Radio, internet radio or music from a user's own library. LASER $179.95 www.laserco.com.au Synology router RT1900ac If you've been hanging on to your router for a while, it may be time to update to an 802.1 1ac unit, now that all of Apple’s products are there. The Synology RT1900ac is one of the easiest to use routers we've seen and its USB 3 port can be used to share storage or even connect a 3G/4G modem as a backup connection. Synology $199 www.synology.com LIFE IN THE FEATURE ne“woo"poMaeUMMM S102 HIGW3AON NEW IOS WORLD hen we plan each issue of Macworld Australia we take a look at what has being going on in the Apple universe and come up with some ideas for the different stories, reviews and features. Originally, the plan was to have a story on the recently released iOS 9 (which has already seen two updates as we're writing this), another on the new iPhone 6s and, possibly, how i0S 9 runs on older devices. But like the German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke once said, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” In our case, the article plan fell over at the first paragraph because it’s difficult, when looking at new hardware and software at the same time, to separate the two. That's Apple's ‘secret sauce’ or ‘11 secret herbs and spices’. It's not that the software is designed to fit the hardware or the hardware is made to match the software. It's that the two are designed together as a single entity. THE iPHONE 6S Sit an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 6s next to each other and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the devices. Other than the fine print and the addition of an ‘s’ on the back, the two are identical in every other way. When Apple said, during the iPhone 6s announcement, “The only thing that’s changed is everything”, the company didn’t mean how the iPhone looks. Other than the addition of rose gold (most of us call that pink) as a new colour option, the iPhone 6s looks exactly the same as its predecessor. What we did notice after a couple of weeks of using the iPhone 6s (we BY ANTHONY CARUANA pre-ordered and purchased a gold 64GB iPhone 6s) were some significant enhancements. These aren't the kinds of things that will make it to a flashy ad, but they have made a great deal of difference to us. For starters, the iPhone 6s is significantly faster than the iPhone 6. When we swapped to the newer phone, we took a backup of our old phone and restored that to the new one. In almost every activity, the iPhone 6s felt faster than the iPhone 6. Typically, manufacturer claims of improved performance can be taken with a pinch of salt. Many of the benchmarks we've seen used over the years are skewed towards very specific use scenarios that don't reflect reality. Apple boasts that the new A9 chip has a 70 percent faster CPU and 90 percent faster GPU than the A8 it supersedes (and that has landed in the iPad mini). After a couple of weeks, we can tell this is a far faster device than the iPhone 6. We often flick back and forth between Safari and other apps. With the iPhone 6, we often found pages needed to reload every time we switched back to Safari as, it seemed, the iPhone 6 didn't have enough system memory to hold a web page. The iPhone 6s has twice the system memory of the iPhone 6 - jumping from 1GB to 2GB. Although that may not seem huge, it makes a mountain of difference for us. Being able to quickly toggle between Mail and Safari without having to wait for pages to reload is a significant improvement. There's little doubt in our minds the combination of a faster processor and increased memory has delivered in spades. According to Apple, iOS 9 is meant to add at least an hour of battery run time to older iPhones, iPads and iPods. Our upgraded iPhone 6 certainly has a little more juice in the tank at the end of the day and the iPhone 6s is lasting longer as well. One more thing... the new Touch ID 2 is significantly faster than the original hardware. We typically use a thumb for unlocking the iPhone and the responsiveness of the new sensor is faster. 3D TOUCH When Apple introduced multi-touch with the original iPhone, from a usability point of view it was a revolution. We suddenly went from being able to only tap on a single spot on a display to being able to pinch and wipe, and use multi- finger gestures. When we first saw 3D Touch in action we though it would kick off a similar wave of innovation. It's early days though, so not many app developers have updated their apps although some have. Most of Apple's apps have been given a 3D Touch makeover. For example, pressing on the iBooks icon provides a list of the books you're currently reading. In our case, we've been listening to audiobooks in the car, so we're able to quickly open the book and pick up from where we left off without having to launch the app. This may not sound like a big deal, but it reduces the number of screen taps and brings what we're doing to the fore. Similarly, the Camera app makes it easy to record videos and take photos with fewer taps. 36 Bae At the time of writing, not many third party apps had added 3D Touch, although Evernote had ~ the ability to create notes, take photos and set reminders have been added to a new menu that launches when you 3DTouch the app icon. We expect popular social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram to add similar options soon. Apple's communication apps ~ FaceTime, Mail, Messages and Phone ~ all make it easy to call or message recent contacts using a 3D Touch menu. Tapping on names or other items in lists within 3D Touch-enabled apps opens context menus as well. 3D Touch is a perfect example of the fusion between hardware and software that allows Apple to pioneer new user interfaces. The new display technology Apple uses allows the screen to be pressure sensitive. Combined with the Taptic Engine, your screen presses receive haptic feedback. When you 3D Touch an icon for an app that is 3D Touch enabled, the screen ‘responds’ by tapping back once. Doing the same on an app that doesn’t support 3D Touch there's a short vibration. The differences are subtle, but deliver enough information for you to know the difference between a positive and negative response from an app. F ND M S For a long time, the battle of which smartphone had the best camera was measured by just one metric: megapixels. Apple took a different road, focusing on image quality rather than image size. In the meantime, the world has moved on. We have seen 4K video become commonplace - at least on TVs. And Apple's Retina Display has upped the ante on what we can see on a screen. When the new iPhone was announced back in September, much was made of a new technical innovation called ‘deep trench isolation: In simple terms, as a camera sensor becomes denser, it becomes more difficult to stop the light hitting one sensor element interfering with adjacent sensor elements. Apple has developed a technique and hardware that prevents light from interfering with adjacent sensors. The result is high resolution images are less ‘noisy’ In practice this means, if Apple's claims are to be believed, its 12MP offers superior image quality to that of other 12MP cameras. In a week of shooting photos and the odd video, we've been impressed. Being able to quickly jump into video mode, using 3D Touch on the Camera app icon, makes it easy to capture moments spontaneously. At such high resolutions, a solid image stabiliser and auto-focus are pretty important. We tried pretty hard to take a blurry picture. Even panning across a scene quickly and hitting the button resulted in clear images. This is a very forgiving camera. Anyone trying to snap a child doing something funny or interesting will lament the number of blurry images they've taken trying to get one decent shot. With the iPhone 65, finishing with a blurry image is a challenge. The new Live Photos feature is neat, but we're not sure it's as big a deal as Apple made out during the iPhone 6s and iOS 9 introduction. Essentially, Live Photos captures a short segment of video just before the shutter closes on the camera. It's a nice novelty, but that’s about it. Video is quite incredible and is another example of how Apple’s control of everything works well. The ability to shoot 4K video and edit it directly - using the newest version of iMovie ~ on the iPhone is something unimaginable not so long ago. The quality of the video is stunning. I'm sure that professional videographers will stick to their professional cameras, but an iPhone 6s delivers image quality that's at least as good as professional gear from just a year or two ago. Apple’s biggest challenge in delivering great still and moving images is not in the sensor and processing hardware. The challenge remains in the optics, which is where DSLR and professional video cameras have the advantage. FEATURE In the same way that Kodak missed the digital photography boat, sticking to its guns with film, the consumer camera business is facing difficult times, as the iPhone 6s and all the smartphones that follow it are rendering compact consumer cameras obsolete. The ultimate question is: “Which is the best camera?” The answer is simple - it's the one you have with you. The iPhone 6s means I rarely see the need to carry a compact camera. Incidentally, there is a cost with capturing all those high-res photos and movies; you'll churn through your iPhone's storage quickly. Each minute of 4K video captured at 30 frames per second will consumer about 375MB of space. If you drop the resolution back to 1080p HD at 60fps (frames per second), that drops to 200MB per minute. The lowest video capture resolution is 720p at 30fps, which uses just 60MB per minute. RETIN. LASH We're not sure whether it’s progress or narcissism, but selfies are a big part of the personal photography scene. The trouble is putting a flash on the front of an iPhone makes it look a little ugly. Apple’s solution to this is Retina Flash. This uses the iPhone’s display and an ambient light sensor to determine the lighting level as you shoot your selfie with the 5MP FaceTime camera and uses the iPhone's display as the flash. It’s a nifty trick that looks simple, but highlights how Apple's control of the hardware and software comes together to create an innovative solution to a problem. HE IRI With all the tweaks made to battery life and some heavy-duty engineering changes to Siri, the Hey Siri feature is now available all the time. Previously, it only worked when you were connected to mains power. When we first farted our iPhone 6s, the setup process asked us to say “Hey Siri” a few times in order to train the voice recognition. Once that was done, our iPhone responded promptly whenever we said “Hey Siri’. wo x S102 HIGW3AON newoo'pjOMaeU MMM FEATURE We asked Siri a number of different questions ~ for a laugh, ask Siri, “What nd it (she?) responded promptly. We asked it for the is zero divided by zero” weather at various locales across the world, exchange rates and for directions. Although most answers were delivered as expected, there were a few quirks. For example, we asked Siri, “What's the exchange rate between US dollars and Australian dollars.” Rather than delivering a response, it pointed to a number of search results from the web. We also asked Siri what the travel time was to a contact. Siri didn’t answer the question. Instead, it lanched Maps and got me directions. Siri can read messages back as well. We asked Siri to read back our most recent text message, which it did and then gave the opportunity to dictate a reply. The natural language engine used by Siri was also able to respond to queries such as “Where is the nearest burger place?” As well as reading out the name and distance to the restaurant, Siri could, if we asked, call the restaurant to make a reservation. After a couple of weeks of using the final release of 0S 9 on our new iPhone 6s and beta versions on our iPad Air 2, we've come to the conclusion that we like most of the changes that have been made. The new San Francisco typeface has irked some users, but after the initial jarring of the change it hasn't made a difference in our i0S devices’ usability. Alerts now have rounded corners. It’s an aesthetic change and it’s arguable that it's not a big deal, but we like the new look. On the iPad, the new Split View and Picture in Picture capability are really handy. We use FaceTime almost daily for meetings. Being able to keep FaceTime on the screen while looking at a document is incredibly handy. And being able to keep our Inbox, Messages or other app open at the same time as our main task is very handy. Most of the enhancements delivered through iOS 9 represent subtle tweaks or respond to usability limitations. Our suspicion is it’s taken until the arrival of the A8 and A9 processors for Apple to feel confident multi-tasking could work smoothly. Our biggest dislike comes from the Search screen and changes made to task switching. Double-pressing the Home button brings up the task switching interface. Under iOS 8, you could see a complete snapshot of the screen with the app icon under each window. With i0S 9, things have been rearranged slightly so that each of the open apps overlaps the others. We also used to have a list of recently accessed contents on the screen. That's now been moved to Search screen. However, depending on how you access the Search screen you see different things. Scrolling to the right from the first page of your home screen brings up a screen with a Search bar, your last four recent contacts, the last four applications you have used and some recent news. Dragging down from the centre of the Home screen brings up a search screen with a Search bar at the top and four ‘Siri app suggestions’ We can't fathom a logical reason why these would be different. As well as being inconsistent, we much preferred the i0S 8 task switcher as it was easier to navigate and provided a clearer view of what was open. However, we accept that this is a subjective view and your opinion may be different. We also hit a snag with the new Wallet app that replaces Passbook. In the past, we could easily get a boarding pass from our preferred airline into Passbook by simply pressing the ‘Add to Passbook’ button at the end of the online check-in process on our iPhone. At the time of writing that didn’t work although we expect the airlines to modify their systems to fall into Apple’s line. We've also heard reports of some apps no longer working correctly. As we always recommend when a new operating system becomes available, check for app updates and if there's an app you absolutely rely on, check with the developers. This is particularly important as home automation and health apps become more intertwined with the iPhone ecosystem. It would be easy, just looking at the outside of the iPhone 6s to conclude it’s a minor point upgrade. Outwardly, there's very little to distinguish it from the iPhone 6. But under the covers, a new CPU, integration of the M7 motion sensor, the new Taptic Engine, enhanced Touch ID, significantly improved camera and changes to the Retina Display to enable 3D Touch mean that this is a substantially different piece of hardware. In practice, everything the iPhone 6 did the iPhone 6s does... significantly faster. But it adds 3D Touch, which changes the way we use smartphones. As for dislikes, there are some people who simply don’t want a smartphone that’s as large as the iPhone 6s or its big brother, the iPhone 6s Plus. We know a few people who are holding on to their iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s because the newer models are too large for them to handle comfortably. It would be great if Apple released a 4in iPhone 6s mini that delivered all the new features in a form factor that suited the smaller-handed members of the population. ll IN MOTION THERE EXISTS GREAT POTENTIAL. UP TO 433MB/s UP TO 240GB DESKTOP-CLASS SSD ~Gue), en vov PRO MINI www.macsales.com | +1-815-338-8685 | Free 24/7 customer service Br) sPruications AP P G U | D E Cool software for the iOS & Apple Watch. TWEETBOT SOCIAL MEDIA Tapbots iPAD AND iPHONE $6.49 You'll find few enmities so fierce and opinions as strong as those discussing which Twitter client is the best. Tweetbot has been my client of choice for years, for both iOS and OS X. Tweetbot 4 for iOS is now out, and shows why my trust is well-placed. The product continues to mature and deepen incorporating a lot of small, welcome changes and building in new features made available by Twitter, as well as adding some large ones. Notably, a new statistics and activity view gives you quick and easy insight into how people are reacting to what you tweet. The biggest improvement is landscape support, while the iPad and iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus receive a new column view, allowing side-by-side displays within the app. The image picker is much faster and better as well The biggest question for any Twitter client is: why not just choose the free software provided by Twitter or use its mobile- optimised website? Twitter's software immediately adds any new features the social network deploys, letting third parties wait for an official developer release. But it’s kind of a mess. Tweetbot better reflects how | use Twitter, keeping categories © icine === Rees... Ses... Ogee and kinds of things separate. Most critically, it incorporates a sophisticated set of mute options, which can be used effectively to avoid unfollowing or blocking people or groups during periods of time (or even forever) that you don’t want in your timeline. When launching Tweetbot for the first time, you'll find that it has already picked up the Twitter accounts you've entered in iOS. You can also add other accounts manually. For those who manage mu