Thankfully,

the days of having to shuttle simple information between devices using floppy disks or even USB memory sticks are a thing of the past. Online services like Apple’s iCloud save you a lot of hassle.

However, iCloud has many uses, some of which you might’ve missed entirely because they’re tucked away, or maybe you know of a feature but find its behaviour hard to fathom. In this issue you’ll learn: the difference between how your Mac and iOS devices make your files in iCloud Drive available; how to have iCloud’s email server deal with new messages so you truly see the same inbox on all your devices; a way to coordinate family life more easily, and much more.

Also in this issue, save yourself even more time and stress by improving the way your Mac, iPhone and iPad work with our pick of 33 essential power apps. Whether your trouble is an unmanageable number of menu bar icons on your Mac, difficulty in assembling an archive of files on iPad to send to someone, Calendar for iPhone just doesn’t cut it, or some other fight with your kit repeatedly brings your productivity to a halt, you can’t afford to miss these gems.

Before you get stuck in, make sure you don’t skip the news section, where you’ll get the lowdown on a bump to MacBook Pro specs, announced just as we were sending this issue.

Alan Sto nebrid ge Editor editor@macformat.com