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Apple Watch
Monitoring your Mac
Rescue your Mac
Now that the Apple Watch is something you’ll be able to buy, we consider its potential to shake up the smartwatch and traditional watch markets.
Discover seven apps and utilities that will monitor your Mac’s status, help you to keep a watchful eye on emerging problems, and then deal with them.
When your Mac and iOS devices work fine day to day, it's easy to get caught out. Find out how to fix cracked screens, unexpected coffee spills, Wi-Fi issues, and much more.
Monitor your Mac’s vital stats to identify (and fix) problems before they get worse.
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iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
GRID 2 Reloaded Edition
Are Apple’s latest iPhones just too big for comfort?
A visually stunning racer with plenty of cars and tracks
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App Life
Reviews
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Digital|Life
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BioShock
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iPhone 6
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Head on over to maclife.com for the very latest news.
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Disney Story Central
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iPhone 6 Plus
Consider
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SwiftKey Keyboard
64
Toast 12 Titanium
Editor-in-chief Chris Slate on Apple’s recent blunders.
52
CounterSpy
65
AKVIS SmartMask 5
84
Edit your videos online
Share
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HarmonyWiz
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Harmon Kardon Onyx
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Email us your thoughts at: letters@maclife.com.
Power up your note-taking
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Traps n’ Gemstones
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Mail Designer 2 90
Errors of judgment?
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Revolution 60
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ESD400 Portable SSD 512GB
Run Windows apps for free
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Where To? 7.0
92 69
Flux V
Give tech support over Skype
70
GRID 2 Reloaded Edition
94
Dictate to your Mac
71
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
96
06
08
10
From Bendgate to iOS 8.0.1.
11
Pay your way with Apple 54
Fuzel Collage 3.1
12
Is it time to buy a 4K display?
55
Mikey Boots
Stat me up
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The Nightmare Cooperative
56
Star Walk 2
56
Doug Dug.
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They Need To Be Fed 3
13
The month in numbers.
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Hands on with Mailbox Closer to “inbox zero”.
15
No sapphire here The collapse of GT Advanced.
16
Crave The gear we’re lusting after.
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The Lifer Is anybody else worried that Apple has control over our lives? Anyone?
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$50 iTunes card What would you buy with a $50 iTunes gift card?
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Datacolor Spyder4ELITE
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LG UltraWide 34UM95
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SaasPass
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Ask Our Apple-loving experts answer your burning hardware and software questions.
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EDITORIAL EDITOR-In-Chief Chris Slate MANAGING EDITOR Chris Hoffman contributing EDITORS Dean Evans, Christopher Phin copy EDITORs Alan Stonebridge CONTRIBUTORS Gareth Beavis, Mark Billen, Matt Bolton, J.R. Bookwalter, Christopher Brennan, Laurence Cable, Luke Dormehl, Anthony Duffy, Jasmine France, Kane Fulton, Craig Grannell, Christian Hall, Joseph Leray, Jim McCauley, Rob Mead-Green, Richard Moss, Nick Peers, Alan Stonebridge, Alex Thomas ART ART DIRECTOR Paul Blachford ART editor Mat Gartside Contributors Thinkstock BUSINESS director of sales Stacy Gaines, sgaines@futureus.com Vice President Strategic Partnerships Isaac Ugay, isaac.ugay@futurenet.com REGIONAL SALES manager Michael Plump, mplump@futureus.com REGIONAL SALES manager Tad Perez, tperez@futureus.com REGIONAL SALES manager Austin Park, apark@futureus.com REGIONAL SALES manager Jessica Reinert, jreinert@futureus.com MANAGEMENT Content & marketing director Nial Ferguson HEAD OF CONTENT & MARKETING, TECHNOLOGY Nick Merritt CREATIVE DIRECTOR Robin Abbott GROUP EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Paul Newman GROUP ART DIRECTOR Steve Gotobed PRODUCTION PRODUCTION MANAGER Mark Constance PRODUCTION controller Frances Twentyman Project Manager Clare Scott PRoduction assistant Emily Wood
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CONSIDER A Month to Remember
>>>CONTRIBUTORS
In the long, legendary history of Apple, there has never been a month quite like September 2014. Those 30 days were filled with tremendous highs and lows, and for fans of Apple or tech in general, it was fascinating to watch. The month started with “Celebgate,” when nude selfies of Hollywood actresses were stolen from their iCloud accounts and shamelessly spread across the Internet. The situation might’ve been a crippling blow to Apple — could we not trust the company with our data? But as it
J.R. Bookwalter
turned out, the service hadn’t been hacked; the
is a recovering independent filmmaker whose tech credentials include daily news, product reviews and feature articles. He can frequently be found lining up first to buy the latest Apple products, but also enjoys a trip to the dark side with Android or Windows Phone every now and again.
thieves simply cracked poorly chosen passwords and usernames. Apple received an unfair amount of heat, in my opinion, but rightfully took on the responsibility of preventing such a thing from happening again. Next, Apple held an event to unveil the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and — finally! — Apple Watch. While they were at it, Tim Cook and co. took a moment to break music distribution records by giving every iTunes user a new U2 album for free. Not everyone appreciated having an album put in their personal music library without consent, however, and Apple had to provide a way to remove it. On the plus side, when the new iPhones launched on September 19th, they sold over 10 million units in just three days, shattering another record. Then someone, somewhere sat on their new iPhone and “Bendgate” began. Honestly, this whole “scandal” mystified me. Phones aren’t expected to be indestructible, are they? But once people started bending phones for fun on YouTube, Apple had another PR disaster to manage. Apple really couldn’t afford another slip-up when it launched iOS 8.0.1 on September 21st, but the update caused cellular connection problems and broke Touch ID. September also saw the discovery of the Shellshock bug, a vulnerability in the underlying Unix code of OS X that could potentially leave Macs open to attack. Apple security was again called into question, but was there ever any real danger? According to Apple’s official statement, Macs were safe by default unless users configured advanced Unix services. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from September is just how passionate people are about Apple, one way or the other. I found some of the company’s supposed blunders to be trumped-up clickbait while others were genuine goofs, but in every case I was impressed by how decisively Apple responded. Hopefully there will be no more missteps, and we can all go back to mocking Android malware.
Chris Slate, Editor-in-Chief Twitter: @ChrisSlate
6 holiday 2014 maclife.com
Richard Moss Richard is a freelance writer and journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. He’s contributed to Edge Magazine, Eurogamer, Mac|Life, Polygon, and loads of other publications. When not writing or trying to read the entire Internet, you’ll find him dancing, playing games, or creating stuff.
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The thing I find most lacking on any iOS device is the keyboard and its lack of arrow keys, a Tab key, Esc, and a few others. The arrow keys are by far the most important item left off the keyboard. I’ve had to retype long URLs or sentences many times when the simple addition of arrow keys would have helped me remedy each instance in microseconds. Perhaps I am holding on to ancient ways, but this is what I prefer and if Apple does not include the arrow keys and others, my next phone will be an Android. I have given this feedback to Apple for years but, of course, in their eyes the customer is never right. MARK HILES
Last issue I answered your previous letter with the news that iOS 8 supports alternative system-wide keyboards from third-party developers, some of which may incorporate the changes folks like you have been asking for. But since then even bigger news has broken: Apple added arrow keys to iOS! They only appear on the larger screens of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and then only when the phones are held in landscape mode, so the addition won’t help everyone. But those who do have the new phones also get an undo button and top-level period and comma keys. Maybe Apple is listening to you, Mark!
U2, Huh? Tonight while listening to music, I noticed that an album was somehow put on my iPhone that I didn’t download, that I hadn’t even searched for. How is this possible when, every time I’ve purchased songs in the past, I’ve had to put in my password to pay? Don’t worry, you haven’t been shopping on iTunes while you sleep.
MICHELLE SIMPSON
Your letter reminded me that not everybody checks Apple news sites like MacLife.com every day, and might’ve missed an important piece of information. I’m assuming the album you’re referring to is U2’s Songs of Innocence, which Apple gave away for free to anyone who uses iTunes. Although the album is in your music library, the payment method on your iTunes account hasn’t been charged for it. If you have no interest in the album
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and would rather not have it in your library and account, delete the tracks from your device, and then remove it from your account by following Apple’s instructions at http://bit.ly/1pNB5Jn.
Big is Not Better! Am I the only one who feels that Apple went the wrong way with the new iPhones? The iPhone 5 was already large enough. The only people I see flashing bigger phones at the moment are also sporting wallet chains, galoshes-sized basketball shoes, and pants worn at half-mast. If you really need a big screen, there’s the iPad and iPad mini. If small screens are too hard to read, how do we explain the Apple Watch? It seems to me that phones should be smaller and lighter. Why not use the new curved screen
Why is Apple targeting the cargo pants crowd with the iPhone 6 Plus?
technology to extend an iPhone 5’s active display into the top and bottom black borders, with the Home button, microphone, and camera embedded in it? Better yet, why not do all that on a phone the size of the 4s, but make it as thin as the 6 and as light as the 5? You’d have something better balanced for one-handed use. Apple is following rather than leading on this one. If the company gets its act together in time for the iPhone 7, I predict that one will attract the millions of women in tight tops and skinny jeans, and we’ll start seeing bras with phonesized pockets in the cleavage. DOUG BALE
Now that I’m used to carrying around the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, I can’t say that I agree with you, Doug. I love the larger screen, and the older phones seem positively tiny now. However, I do think it’s shortsighted for Apple to not support the old size as an option going forward — it’s still the clear winner when it comes to one-handed operation and portability. But for web browsing, games, etc., a bigger screen makes all that much better.
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Errors of judgment? Putting “Bendgate”, U2 album spam, and a broken iOS update into perspective BY Luke Dormehl
The problem? Not everyone likes U2, and the fact that Song of Innocence appeared in the “Purchased” section of individuals’ iTunes libraries caused quite the backlash on social media. The U2 debacle had barely subsided when Apple was hit with its second scandal of the month: the so-called “Bendgate” incident, in which it was reported that the iPhone 6 Plus bends in users’ pockets during normal everyday use. After keeping silent on the issue for a few days, Apple eventually spoke out about the phenomenon, noting that the issue was “extremely rare” and that only 9 people had actually complained about bent iPhone
A month when you sell 10 million+ iPhones in a single weekend
6 frames. This was later backed up by a study from Consumer
can never be classed as bad, but September definitely saw Apple
Reports, which stress-tested the iPhone 6 against several of its
take a bit of a pounding in some corners of the press. First up
marketplace rivals. Their conclusion? “While not the strongest
was the apparent U2 “debacle,” in which Apple handed out
phones on the market, fears of a serious structural design flaw in
free copies of U2’s latest album, Song of Innocence, to iTunes
the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus seem overblown.”
users. Costing Apple a reported $100 million, the U2 giveaway resulted in 33 million users downloading the album free of charge.
10 holiday 2014 maclife.com
Apple’s final September challenge was its over-the-air iOS 8.0.1 update, which fixed problems related to HealthKit and