Apple has announced a special event on 25 March 2019, likely to introduce a new video service, but Adam Engst is hoping it will also feature a few improvements to Apple Music. Siri takes a lot of flak, but Apple’s voice assistant is increasingly powerful, so if you’ve wished you could use Siri better, check out “Take Control of Siri” author Scholle McFarland’s tips. Finally, a warning. We set out to review the feature-rich CloudBerry Backup for macOS but discovered that it has fatal flaws, such as reporting success while not actually backing up all the files it should. Notable Mac app releases this week include Little Snitch 4.3, TextExpander 6.5, Rumpus 8.2, ChronoSync 4.9.2, BBEdit 12.6.1, and Ulysses 15.
Apple Music hasn’t changed much at all since Apple introduced it back in 2015, but Adam Engst has a few suggestions—some extremely easy—that could make listening to music through the service more enjoyable.
Siri takes a lot of flak, but it’s a lot more powerful than many people realize. If you haven’t been using Siri for much, these tips from “Take Control of Siri” author Scholle McFarland will expand your conversations with Apple’s digital assistant—and hopefully get Siri to do more for you.
CloudBerry Backup is a powerful and elegant desktop backup product for the Mac, but it suffers from troubling performance and reliability issues that will make you want to look elsewhere to protect your data.
Watchlist
Network traffic management utility improves detection of program modification and overall performance. ($45 new, free update, 41.7 MB)
Improved snippet editor replaces text-based macro notation with simple visual blocks. ($40 annual subscription, free update, 18.7 MB)
Adds the Rumpus Tether client application for quick access to content on the Rumpus file transfer server. ($295 new, free update, 24.3 MB)
Maintenance release for the synchronization and backup app. ($49.99 new for ChronoSync, free updates; 66.8 MB)
Maintenance release focused on bug fixes for the long-standing text editor. ($49.99 new, free update, 13.9 MB)
Introduces a split-view editor, plus a new keyword manager and search capability. ($39.99 annual subscription, free update, 23.4 MB)