Buying Guide: 10 best iOS apps for saving money
10 best iOS apps for saving money
Nothing is getting any cheaper. The Retail Prices Index, published monthly by the Office for National Statistics, compares a basket of typical products to work out how quickly prices are rising. The latest figures, which cover November 2011, saw the price of those products climb 5.2%.If you didn't get a pay rise of the same amount, you're poorer now than you were back then. Our money has to work harder today than ever before, and we often feel as though we have a duty to save as much as we possibly can.
That's where Tap! can help. We've picked out the top 10 money-saving apps ready for download from the App Store. All but two are free, so you can bag the lot for just less than three quid.
That's your first step on the road to better money management and fighting back against inflation. Of course, to take advantage of them you'll need an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to hand, and there is a certain irony in using so pricey a gadget to save a few pounds here and there. But that's somewhat missing the point.
You already have an iOS device, or you're thinking of buying one, so think of this not as an opportunity to spend more, but to offset the cost of your investment. Make your iPhone pay for itself!
Don't forget, either, that there's a hidden saving to make in the shape of reclaimed time. Apps like RedLaser mean it's no longer necessary to walk the length of the high street looking for something cheaper; MyGas pinpoints the closest petrol station, saving you a drive, while Skyscanner sidesteps frustrating, ultimately wasted, evenings trawling the bucketshop holiday sites.
You'll be free to enjoy yourself on a cheap night out, courtesy of vouchercloud, or a long free chat on Skype.
The savings are there to be made, so follow our guide, pick up these apps, and you'll find the cheaper path!
1. Skype
A real killer money saver - get international calls at local rates thanks to the wonder of making phone calls over the internetPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
Download from iTunes
The internet's best-known phone service was recently snapped up by Microsoft. Not that it makes any difference - it's still one of the best-value ways of keeping in touch with friends and family. That's doubly true if you're travelling, when you can use Skype over a Wi-Fi network to chat for free with any other Skype member, on their smartphone, tablet, Mac or PC.
The Skype client itself is free, and there are no charges to speak to other members, so long as they're using a client app themselves. You can even video chat without resorting to FaceTime, so long as you only want to do one-on-one.
As is often the case, though, by spending a little you can save a lot, through bolting on some optional features. For starters, add some credit to your account and you can call regular landline and mobile phones. Because each call is routed largely over the internet and only hops onto the regular phone network close to its destination wherever possible, you'll pay close to local rates for international calls.
Need to pitch for a job in Australia? It'll be 0.8p a minute on a subscription (1.2 cents for US users), or 1.6p (2.3 cents) a minute on pay as you go. Travelling through Thailand and need to call home? No problem - talk for as long as you like at the same rates and you'll neatly sidestep your mobile operator's eye-watering rates for international roaming.
If you want people to be able to call you from their regular phones then you'll need an Online Number. This service, which assigns you a geographically located landline replacement (previously called SkypeIn), significantly undercuts regular landline rates, at £11.50 per quarter, or £40.25 for the year. Both of those prices include VAT and voicemail. The latter facility can often be an optional extra with regular telecoms providers.
There's a hidden benefit in that while Online Numbers are available in 23 countries - including most of Europe, Japan, South Africa, the US and so on - you're not restricted to choosing a number in the country where you live. So if your job is sending you to Mexico, you can still buy an Online Number back home so friends and family can call you at local rates when you're on the opposite side of the world. Or, if you want to give your business an international flavour, register numbers in one territory and set up office in another.
There are some downsides. If you want to video chat with more than one person you'll need Skype Premium, which costs £4.99 a month (the best deals are 12-month subscriptions). There's no emergency calling either, but since this is free from your iPhone on your regular contract, it's not really an issue. There are other providers of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, of course, but for our money Skype is both the simplest and the most versatile option around.
2. vouchercloud
On-screen codes that deliver real-world discountsPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
Our parents used to cut discount tokens from newspapers, but vouchercloud is the 21st century alternative. Offers are split into categories, so you can quickly filter out cinemas and entertainment if all you want to do is grab a pizza, or zero in on leisure if you want a quick weekend away.
Most of the offers are genuine, worthy savers. At the time of writing, we could have saved ourselves a healthy 10% at Argos, £50 off 10 hours of driving lessons, or landed a free five-day pass to our local gym.
Be wary of what's not offered, though. Alongside the above deals was a 25% discount off food at a Café Rouge restaurant a couple of miles from home, but there was no mention in the terms and conditions of whether drink was included. Buy a couple of beers and some wine and the beverages could be the priciest part of your meal, so if your budget is tight, make sure you check what's really included before you sit down, and consider a jug of tap water.
Cafés and restaurants often use vouchercloud as a way of filling empty tables, restricting offers to less popular nights. That often rules out Friday and Saturday, bank holidays, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and sometimes restaurants in holiday spots, like Center Parcs or airports, since they're always busy.
Fortunately, though, so many big-name brands have signed on with the service that if the one you've chosen is out of bounds as far as the offers go, there's a good chance there's a rival close by with some kind of tempting discount.
3. RedLaser Barcode Scanner
The digital personal shopper that lets you scan to savePrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
The true boon of internet shopping isn't so much that you do it from home and it all arrives at your door: it's the fact you can play off one site against another, comparing nationwide prices and buying from the cheapest.
RedLaser lets you do the same in the real world by scanning the barcode on the back of the book, game or other tagged product that's caught your eye. So long as you've got a Wi-Fi or mobile internet connection, it can search eBay and Google for cheaper deals. The results are comprehensive, encompassing supermarkets, high-street stores and pharmacies.
The latest update added local search, which uses your location to find nearby shops selling the same product at a lower price. Unfortunately, in our tests it failed to find any shops in our area, despite the fact we were testing it in a county town of 150,000 people and a thriving high street. However, in a larger town or city, you shouldn't have problems finding a suitable store.
Try though we might, we had great difficulty finding any products it couldn't identify, unless we resorted to obscure, out-of-date items. Scanning outdated magazines brought up current subscription prices, and when we fed it the code on the back of a book it pulled up the number, address and website of our two closest libraries. It couldn't tell us there and then whether they had any copies in stock, but it did plot a route to each one, in the Maps app.
Few apps are as determined to be helpful, and it really can help. On the rare occasion when you can't find a barcode on the product, or it's been covered over by an offer sticker, you can tap in a title or keyword for the item and just search for that. This helped us dig out 19 current prices for an out of print novel published in 1972, ranging from 50p to £10.82.
RedLaser adds a new dimension to online shopping, letting your browse products on the high-street environment and make real-world savings online. Might it be another nail in the high street's coffin? Perhaps, but the same could be said of most of the apps here. In the meantime, let it help you spend your money more wisely and spread those pennies just a little further.
4. 08 Saver
Avoid pricey support calls with this handy list of inclusive alternativesPrice: £1.99
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
It's a well-known fact that 0800 numbers are rarely included in mobile contracts. Even local-rate 0845 lines are usually charged at far more than the customary 1p per minute. And then there's premium rate…
What's less well known is that most of these numbers are just fronts, which forward your call to a regular landline phone. If you know which number they're forwarded to, you really can call them for free, because the call would be deducted from your bundled minutes.
08 Saver is a comprehensive directory of the numbers that these 'free', local and premium rate lines obscure. It's organised by category, with broadband providers, breakdown services and agencies like your local council neatly corralled into their own sections.
The companies themselves are sorted by name, with the various departments set out in each record. So, if you need to call BT, there are separately indexed numbers for broadband, billing and customer services. This app will quickly repay its 69p price.
5. Supermarket
Use weights and prices to work out the best deal, whatever you're buyingPrice: 69p
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
What's cheaper: three packs of value beans for 80p, or seven packs for £1.27? Quickly - there's a queue! The answer, of course, is that three for 80p is cheaper immediately, but £1.27 for seven is the better option in terms of overall value (it works out at 18.1p versus 26.7p).
The question, though, is less whether you could afford to spend the money on the more expensive beans, and more whether you could afford the time it would take you to complete the weekly shop if you had to do this kind of calculation for every item you bought. So why not just let Supermarket do it instead?
The app supports six currencies (euro, dollar, pound, kronor, franc and rouble), although in truth, since all currencies have 100 divisions in each major denomination (pennies in the pound/cents in the dollar and so on), you can use it worldwide. You can also pick between metric and imperial units and compare mismatched quantities, such as 2lb costing £9.99, with 200g at £1.70 - in which case it advised us to take the 200g option.
In the real world, it may well save you more time than money, but this app is nonetheless a quick, convenient converter to keep to hand.
6. Groupon
Harness the power of group buying in your local areaPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
Groupon offers are time-limited deals that expire at the end of each day. Its name comes from GROUP coupON, which gives you an idea how it works. So long as a specified number of people buy into each deal, everyone benefits. If they don't, nobody gets to enjoy it.
So keep your eyes peeled and check in daily. Not only are deals limited by time, but they're also limited by location, so what's available in Lincoln probably won't be in London. The only exceptions to these rules are selected travel deals that offer discounts on hotels and complete packages - including flights - which run for several days and are offered nationwide.
There won't be something for everyone every day on Groupon, but it's one of those apps you ought to tap as part of your morning routine, particularly if you like eating out, nights away or trips to the spa, each of which are among the most common deals on offer.
7. Skyscanner
Find cheap flights for even less… but it pays to be flexiblePrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
Download from iTunes
For those times when you want to get away but don't really care where you go, Skyscanner can prove a wonderful source of inspiration. Grant it access to your location, tell it when you'd like to travel and it'll pick out the best flight deals from your local airport.
We tested it on a Monday afternoon, opting for flights from London that Friday, and it offered up - among others - Stockholm for £30, Berlin for £34, Derry for £25, Gdansk for £27 and New York for £440. Considering how late we were booking, they were all bargains.
If you can be flexible, you can make bigger savings: a bar chart shows how the price fluctuates from day to day, so you can move your journey back or forward, depending on when you can make the best savings. Postponing for a couple of days would have got us a New York flight for £300, and clipped the price for Berlin to just £21.
8. Free App Tracker
See which apps have had their prices pruned, or removed altogetherPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
Download from iTunes
Want to get something for nothing? Free App Tracker monitors the App Store and picks out paid-for applications with prices that have dropped to zero. Often this is something app developers do temporarily to earn their wares some cheap publicity, so this is by far the simplest way to find them before they shoot back to full price.
It works by tracking the US App Store, which means that very occasionally you may find an app hasn't been reduced in all stores worldwide. Nevertheless, we've found it consistently reliable when hunting for premium apps that have temporarily scuttled their prices on the UK store.
Free App Tracker also picks out apps that have recently seen a price drop, but still charge something, and lets you track full-price apps that you'd consider should they be discounted in the future.
9. Kayak
Save your holiday money by spending less on flights and hotelsPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
Download from iTunes
The best time to book a flight or hotel is often the very last minute, when airlines and chains are looking to offload unsold seats and beds. Kayak, like Lastminute and Expedia Hotels, plays on this, and has the potential to handily save you some spondoolicks in the process.
Tap in where you're going, and when, and it'll pull up the best deals that match your criteria. It's almost always cheaper booking this way than rolling your suitcase up to a desk and asking about availability - after all, they don't need to know that you cheekily just booked it on their doorstep.
There's also an airline directory, comprehensive airport information (so you know where to find the closest gift shop if you're pushed for time), a currency converter and packing list, which combine to make this a very handy all-round travel assistant.
10. MyGas
Quickly locate the cheapest option each time you need to fill your carPrice: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Download from iTunes
It's all very well knowing where to find your local petrol station, but what if your dial is in the red when you're far from home? You don't want to refuel by paying exorbitant motorway prices if you can help it, so turn to MyGas, which uses location services to find the closest options for wherever you happen to be.
It plots them on a map using branded pushpins, so you can easily find a particular chain if you're collecting points, have a fuel card that isn't universally accepted, or have an addiction to a particular brand of doughnut or cookie.
Tapping a pin calls up the prices for the various fuel types the station sells, with the option to confirm or correct it if you find it doesn't match the forecourt board. You can also specify which fuel your vehicle uses, to slim down the number of stations shown.
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Tutorial: Watch movies on iOS: rip, convert and sync
Watch movies on iOS
Who needs the silver screen? With an iPad or iPhone, you get not only the world's sleekest window on Hollywood, but instant access to almost every major film ever made.The bright lights of a première are nothing compared to the vibrant colours pouring out of the shiny display. And you always get the best seat in the house, no matter where you happen to be.
Getting a hot new movie onto your iPad isn't difficult. You just need to launch iTunes on it, tap Films, find one you want, and the magic little button marked 'Buy' will do the rest. That may even be all you ever need, and if so, that's fine.
It's only scratching the surface of what you can do though, and throughout this feature, we'll show you all the tools and tips you need to watch absolutely anything, from big-name films to your own home videos. We'll go from ripping your own DVDs - a much easier process than it sounds, we promise - to legally streaming films live over the internet with services such as Netflix and LOVEFiLM.
We'll even show you how to send a movie from your iPad to your TV for times when you want the convenience of having your library portable, but the more social experience of actually watching it on a nice big television.
Preparing the ground
The iPad itself is all that you'll actually need - at least if you don't mind buying all your movies from iTunes. In most cases though, you'll also want your computer on-hand, if only to copy the files across to be played.Movies can be transferred across in two ways: directly, by plugging it into your PC or Mac; or using Wi-Fi. You can safely forget 3G - while it's technically possible, video files are much too big.
Though we're focussing on the iPad here, pretty much everything we say will work on the iPhone and iPod touch too. The only thing that will make a difference is how much storage space you have to play with. We can't say something as simple as 'you'll get 10 movies on a 16GB model', since every movie is different in terms of length, quality and encoding - though obviously, the more space you have, the better.
As a rough guide, though, you can assume that a good-quality copy of a movie purchased from the iTunes store will need between 1GB and 1.5GB of space, with that doubling if you opt for the high-definition (HD) version of the film. Movies from other stores and other sources can vary a lot though, and that's before we get to converting movies specifically for the iPad, where you get to control how much space the final film takes up.
Even in a worst-case scenario though, the basic 16GB iPad can hold more than enough to get you through even the longest journey, so you shouldn't have too much trouble.
As a side note, it's on these long trips where you watch a lot of video that the iPad's battery really comes into its own. Assuming that it's fully charged at the start of the journey and that you have Airplane Mode switched on, you can safely expect between eight and 10 hours of video playback from the iPad before it runs out of juice - and we only say that to err on the side of caution. As several members of the Tap! team can attest, you can easily cross the Atlantic with charge to spare.
Over the next few pages, you'll see us using the Mac version of iTunes. Don't worry if you're on a PC - everything you see applies to both. Where there are differences between platforms, such as when ripping your home movies and converting them into new formats, we'll be offering advice on both individually. In every case, the process is effectively the same, but with slightly different software doing the work.
Chances are you already have iTunes installed. If not, install it now, if only for copying files across to your iPad faster than your Wi-Fi network will be able to handle. Download it from apple.com/itunes.
Format wars
As you may have found out for yourself already, the iPad's one real flaw as a video device is its support for video formats. Anything purchased or rented in iTunes should just work, no questions asked.The default iPad video player is, however, less than welcoming to movies not provided in the exact format it wants. We'll show you two ways of getting around this, which boil down to converting your videos to a format it can handle, or installing a third-party app capable of playing them. In most cases, we recommend the latter, but the choice is yours.
Needless to say, you'll find both advice on this and pointers to apps that can handle anything you can throw their way in just a few pages. And with that, our pre-movie preparation is finished. Turn down the lights, turn up the sound, and if you have any irritating kids sitting behind you throwing popcorn, since you're not in a cinema you can tell them to go to their room. It's time to jump into the wonderful world of movies on your iPad!
Rip a DVD
Turn your DVDs into portable video files by ripping them. You're not legally allowed to do this to commercial DVDs, but your home movies are your own businessOn a PC
1. Introducing Handbrake
Handbrake is a free video transcoder capable of ripping your DVDs and producing iPad-ready versions. Download it from handbrake.fr, then install and run it.
The main screen will pop up, and don't worry if it looks complicated - we're barely going to touch any of these options. To begin, insert your non-copy protected DVD, click the Source button, and select the option with the DVD icon next to it which should say something like 'D:\VIDEO_TS'.
2. Set the presets
Handbrake will go quiet for a while to read the DVD and all the options will turn grey. To make sure it hasn't crashed, look for a message at the top that says 'Source: Processing Title'.
When it finishes, move your cursor over to the right and click on the iPad preset. This will configure everything for you. Finally, click the Start button, and prepare for a long wait. If you don't see it reporting much progress after half an hour, clean the disc and try again.
3. Troubleshooting
Import the finished video to your iPad and check it out. Everything should be fine, but there's a chance you'll need to do some tweaks. The most likely candidates for trouble are the Audio and Subtitles tabs, where you can specify which ones should be used rather than just going with the defaults.
As far as the image is concerned, you can get an idea of how it will look by downloading VLC (videolan.com) and clicking the Preview button.
On a Mac
1. The RipIt alternative
Handbrake is also available for Mac, and you can follow the steps above to rip your movies here too. If you don't mind spending a little money, though, we highly recommend RipIt.
This works alongside Handbrake to convert your videos into iPad formats, but also offers the handy option to create a virtual DVD containing everything from subtitles to extra audio tracks. You can't play this on your iPad, but DVD Player will handle it.
2. Easy compression
Insert your DVD, closing any players that pop up. RipIt will guess at the title, but you can type your own. Next, go to the RipIt menu and enter the Preferences screen. Click on the Compress tab, and make sure that the Video target is set to 'iPad'.
Close the window and click the Compress button. When RipIt asks if you want it to guess which titles you want to use, select 'Automatically Compress'. Sit back for a while - transcoding video is a slow process on any platform.
3. Straight into iTunes
Once RipIt has finished, it deposits the video file into iTunes, ready to be synced across to the iPad. In the event that it doesn't come out right, though, you'll have to head back to Handbrake or use Elgato's system - RipIt focuses on one-click ripping rather than offering options, and short of manually choosing the titles if it created a version of the movie with the wrong audio track, there's not a lot you can customise.
Convert a movie
If you already have a movie on your computer, and don't want to use a third-party player on your device, here's how to make it iOS-friendly in (almost) no time at allOn a PC
1. Back to Handbrake
The process of converting an existing movie file is almost identical to that of ripping a DVD. If you didn't do so on the previous page, download Handbrake from handbrake.fr, install and run it. Click the Source button in the top left.
This time, though, instead of selecting a DVD, click the Video File option. Navigate to the one you want to convert in Explorer and click OK. Finally, click the iPad preset on the right, and the Start button to begin the process.
2. Taking control
In most cases, the default video settings will be fine. Click the Video tab, though, and you can adjust the quality of the converted video in a couple of ways - setting a target size and an average bitrate. The higher you set these (up to a point), the better your final video will look, but the larger the file sizes will be.
Unless you're absolutely desperate for space, or want to put literally everything you own onto your iPad, let Handbrake use its defaults.
3. Troubleshooting
Depending on the original video you convert, you may find that your final video doesn't look quite right on the iPad screen. If so, open the Picture tab, where you can have the image cropped down to size, or the Video Filters screen to make it less blocky/noisy. You can safely avoid the Advanced tab though, unless you're comfortable with terms like 'Psychovisual Trellis' and 'CABAC Entropy Coding'. For that side of things, just assume Handbrake knows what it's doing…
On a Mac
1. The Elgato alternative
Again, everything above works in the same way on the Mac version of Handbrake. If you find converting slow going though, you can get a big speed boost with the Elgato Turbo.264 HD - a USB dongle that you can plug in and have handle the heavy lifting.
It's geared specifically towards converting videos to the iPad-friendly (but not very snappily named) h.264 format. At £77, it's not a cheap bit of kit, but it is one that can save you a lot of time.
2. Unleash the speed
Install the software by slipping in the disc and dragging the Turbo.264 HD icon into your Applications folder. Run it, update it to the latest version if necessary, and check the speedometer icon in the top right to make sure it's ready to go.
If the pointer is set to 'On', you're all set. Drag and drop a movie file into the window to begin converting. If you get an error message about a missing codec, Google for the one you need, and restart the application.
3. Starting the process
There aren't many options you need to play with, and the only one you really need is 'Format'. Choose 'iPad' from the list, then start. During the conversion process, you'll see a thumbnail of the movie's progress, along with an FPS count and estimate of how much is left.
The speed difference? On our test system, converting went from needing 35 minutes to just 15. One warning though: if you haven't seen the movie yet, hide the window. Even thumbnails can spoil!
Sync movies
You've ripped, converted or downloaded your movies, and now it's time to get them onto your iOS device. Here are the four ways you can make it happenSyncing everything
At first glance, this seems like the obvious choice - especially if you're going to be on the road a lot. In practice, it's best avoided unless you either have a tiny movie collection, or almost always have an empty iPad. After all, it's not just for movies, and you'll want to leave some space for apps, photos and the other things it can do.
If this is what you want though, it's easily done. Plug your iPad into your PC or Mac (with movies, it's best to do this rather than use Wi-Fi syncing, purely for speed reasons), click its name under Devices, and choose the Movies tab. Click the button next to 'Sync Movies', and underneath that, the box next to the words 'Automatically include'. If the box after those words doesn't say 'all', click on that next and make it do so.
Finally, click Apply. As long as you have space on your iPad to hold it all, iTunes will now push over everything you've got every time you sync. There's really nothing more to it than that.
One important caveat here is that while this will sync everything in iTunes' Movie library, that isn't necessarily the same as syncing everything you might want on the iPad. There's no way to have iTunes automatically copy over anything you play in a third-party tool such as AVPlayer HD, for example. You also have to manually transfer any rentals using an option that appears on the Movies page.
Even being hands-off, do make a point of keeping an eye on the Capacity bar at the bottom of the sync screen. Video is represented by the colour purple, and it doesn't take many movies to completely fill the free space of even a top-level 64GB iPad. Use this full sync if you simply can't be bothered with space concerns, but be ready to shift to one of the other options here in due course.
Using iTunes playlists, for example, is little more effort, but gives you far more control as your library swells beyond your iPad's capabilities.
Leave it to iTunes
There are two ways to tell iTunes what kind of movies you want on your iPad. The simplest is to plug it into your Mac or PC, click its name under Devices, and click on the Movies tab. At the top of this screen, make sure that Sync Movies is checked (otherwise iTunes won't copy anything across), along with the box next to 'Automatically include'.
Click the box in the middle of the line and you get several options - the very simple 'all movies', the more precise 'all unwatched movies', and up to 10 recent or unwatched movies. Click Apply, and iTunes will sync the current contenders and remember what you want every time it's synced. Set it to 'unwatched', and it'll sync new movies and remove anything you've seen since you last connected it.
With a small collection, this might be enough. Playlists offer far more control, and there are two kinds available. A normal playlist is a list of movies, nothing more, nothing less.
Click the + button at the bottom left of the window to create one, give it a name, and drag and drop any movies onto it. Rename it something like 'iPad Movies'. Go back to the Sync screen and uncheck 'Automatically include'. Scroll to the box labelled 'Include Movies from Playlists' and click the box next to your new playlist. Click Apply, and now anything in it will be synced across.
Smart Playlists are capable of filling themselves by looking at your whole library and adding anything that meets their criteria. Click File > New Smart Playlist to create one.
For the first rule, click the boxes that are there to make it say 'Media Kind' 'is' 'Movies'. Make sure Live Updating is ticked, and that 'Limit to' isn't, for now. As it stands, this will include every movie in your collection. By pressing the + button by the first rule though, you can add others and filter by criteria such as Rating, Genre and Year. Add this Smart Playlist to your iPad's sync options exactly as you did the regular Playlist.
Hand-pick your collection
Your final option when it comes to syncing is to pick and choose everything that goes onto your iPad. As with the other methods we've covered, the first step is to go to the Sync Movies screen, accessed by plugging your device into either your PC or Mac, clicking its name, and finally the Movies tab.
Make sure that Sync Movies is checked, but that the box next to 'Automatically include' remains unchecked. All the movies on your PC or Mac will be listed in the main box.
To add them to the sync list, simply click the box by their name. Whichever movies you've checked the box for will be added to your iPad as soon as you click Apply. This is a tedious way to handle lots of movies, though, especially since you can't group-select movies or filter the view.
A far easier way is to set up a new Playlist. Click the + symbol in the bottom-left corner of the screen and type in an appropriate name. Return to the Movies section of iTunes and you can either drag and drop your films into it directly, or select them (hold down the mouse button and drag a box around them, or hold down the Shift key to add items into a group), right-click, and choose Add To Playlist from the menu that pops up, followed by the name of the playlist you just created.
You aren't restricted to one single playlist here. Return to the Movies section of the Sync screen and you'll see that you can create as many as you like. Playlists don't even have to be all-movies. In most cases, it makes sense to stick with one media type, such as music or videos, to avoid your evening's soundtrack suddenly being interrupted by a movie, for example.
Here, iTunes is smart enough to know what files are what. A single 'iPad' playlist can hold absolutely everything you want to take on the road. Alternatively, there's nothing to stop you breaking your library down to the nth degree and having a full set of separate, specific playlists synced over instead.
Great movie apps
Lovefilm
Price: FreeWorks with: iPad
Download from iTunes
Lovefilm is the best of the movie streaming services currently available in the UK. It offers many more big-name recent films than any of the competition, and streaming is thrown in as a freebie with most of its packages. You can also subscribe to just online video for £4.99.
There's a catch, though. The iPad app doesn't give you everything that you can stream via the website on your Mac or PC. You still get a wide selection, though, and it includes the best quality stuff.
For the moment, it's only here that you'll routinely open the app to be offered movies such as The Dark Knight or the complete The Girl Who… series, and the films the service gets are often impressive.
In addition, while the video quality on the website varies from 'about acceptable' to 'shockingly bad', everything looks great on iPad. The curation in 'collections' is brilliant too, so it's easy to find something good.
Netflix
Price: FreeWorks with: Everything
Download from iTunes
This recently launched, streaming-only service is an impressive offering. Its app works extremely well, with several excellent touches - one of the best being that you can pick up a movie where you left off on another device.
Unlike LOVEFiLM, its approach to curation is a personalised one. You tell it what kind of films you like, and it combines that with what you watch to suggest others of interest.
In terms of media library, Netflix easily bests Lovefilm in terms of television content, but falls far behind as far as big-name, recent movies go. Its back catalogue is very respectable, though, and browsing through it you're likely to find plenty that you want to watch.
It remains to be seen if Netflix can make the deals that will give it the best recent releases - though it's openly said that the cost of doing so means this isn't going to be its focus. It also has the disadvantage of having to split its attention and purchasing power across continents, while Lovefilm gets to focus all its time on the UK.
They're stacking up to be very worthy competitors though, and it should be an excellent fight.
BBC iPlayer
Price: FreeWorks with: Everything Download from iTunes
iPlayer remains the video service to point media companies to and say, 'There. Do it like that.' They simply don't come much sleeker or easier to use, and it's completely free (well, covered by the licence fee for UK users).
This app doesn't let the side down. Specifically looking at its movies, you'll quickly spot the possible problem - a distinct lack of regular film content. At the time of writing, it offered… four. This tends to change around holidays, though, with Christmas especially featuring much more choice, and there's always plenty of TV to enjoy.
Not everything that appears on the BBC makes its way to streaming, but the majority of films do make the jump. iPlayer supports subtitles and the ability to stop watching a film and resume it later.
Beyond that, there are no real extra features for movie watching. As a pure film-watching tool, its not a vital download. It's worth getting hold of anyway, though, both for your TV catch-up needs, and because some great films do pop up on it.
AVPlayerHD
Price: £1.99Works with: iPad (also on iPhone)
Download from iTunes
The main reason to move away from Apple's default video app is to be able to play a wider range of files without having to convert them, and AVPlayer will handle just about anything you throw at it - short of files protected with DRM, of course.
In addition to that, you get support for all the major subtitling formats and password protection for your movie library in the event that it contains things that are, um, unsuitable for prying eyes, shall we say.
One excellent touch you don't usually see is a set of app-specific gestures. Need to go back 10 seconds? Just swipe left. Want to switch to 1.5x playback mode? Swipe up.
While the easiest way to add movies to the AVPlayer library is to use iTunes, you can download them over Wi-Fi if you have access to an FTP server. Unfortunately, DLNA support isn't provided, which means no streaming from the average NAS. That's one of very few downsides, though.
Air Video
Price: £1.99Works with: Everything
Download from iTunes
The Air Video app works alongside an app installed on your Mac or PC to stream your movies through the air. The server can convert them into an iPad-friendly format in advance (which is good if your machine isn't especially powerful) or on the fly as you request them. Either way, you're never more than a few seconds away from starting playback.
The server side is easy to set up. You can add any shared folder you like, as well as iTunes Playlists. Air Video can't convert protected files, but anything else is fair game.
Once configured, it loads up automatically when you switch on your computer and sits silently in the background, waiting to be summoned. Most of the time, the conversion process is automatic, but you can tweak a little.
Advanced users with a fast connection can even stream their whole library over the internet and access it anywhere.
IMDB
Price: FreeWorks with: Everything
Download from iTunes
IMDB is already the best place to find out everything you need to know about your favourite movies, finding who was in what, or dazzling your friends with your grasp of trivia like 'Star Trek's Scotty had a missing finger' or '39 vehicles crash during The Dark Knight'.
This official app brings you all this in a tap-friendly environment, along with charts, recent best-sellers, critics' reviews, and user comments that make you weep for humanity. Give it access to your location information, though, and it immediately becomes a much more personalised source of information.
Tap the name of a new film for example and it gives you the current showtimes at your local cinema. Tap its name, and you can bring up a map, phone number, what else is showing that day (you can't order tickets, though).
Zeebox
Price: FreeWorks with: Everything
Download from iTunes
Don't let the television branding fool you - zeebox works just as well for watching movies as your favourite programs. Tell it where you live and who provides your TV, and it gives you a complete list of every channel you have access to.
In the UK, the biggest selection at any one time is going to be found on Sky, which would monopolise the Films genre if not for Film4. Tap any film and you bring up its full information, including info and credits, related links, and a selection of Zeetags (no, really) related to the movie - typically actors' names and very broad subject areas. You can also open a chat with anyone else you know who's watching it.
The idea is solid, though can't help but feel slightly antiquated in an era of DVRs and time-shifting, and films with vague names can get some of their information wrong. If you have friends using it, it's not a bad way to make the experience of sitting alone in your living room at least a little more social, even if IMDB is a better source of information.
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In Depth: Need for speed: speed up your Linux machine
Speed up your Linux machine
Linux brings with it many benefits, and we all have our favourites. For some, it's freedom from viruses, or virii, or even virus, if you're declining your Latin properly.For others, it's the knowledge that no outside agent will be able to control the way you use your computer; software freedom can sound like a concern only for tin-foil-hat wearers, but, as Apple users found last year, if you need to pay to upgrade your operating system in order to listen to your music (that you've paid for) on your computer (that you've paid for), software freedom matters to you.
But, for anyone who has ever double-clicked on an icon in Windows and had to wait as the computer makes up its mind about what it's going to do, the general speed and snappiness of the Linux desktop is a winning advantage.
And this goes for everyone: whether you're using an eight-core flying machine or chugging along with a laptop from the golden age of steam, you're better off with Linux. And if you want even more speed? Just follow these tips…
VirtualBox is your friend
Some of these tips involve the modification of system files, as root. When you're editing configuration files, there's always the chance that you'll accidentally break something and make your machine unusable, so we always recommend that you make a backup of whatever file it is you're working on, so you can restore the old values at a later date if something goes wrong.Even better, though, is to experiment first with a virtual machine. That way, you can mess around to your heart's content, then simply revert to a working snapshot if you break the system. Check out our handy tutorial on how to run Linux in a virtual machine.
1. Boost your bootloader
If you have a dual-booting set-up, you'll be familiar with the menu screen that Grub gives you when you fire up your machine. But what you might not have noticed is the countdown underneath the menu entry area, which tells you how long the system will wait until it boots the default distro for you.
By default on Linux Mint, this is 10 seconds. You could press Enter, but if you're away from your machine and want it to boot more quickly, you can cut this time to something more sensible - three seconds, say, which is still long enough to give you time to make a choice if you want to.
To make unattended bootups faster, go in to etc/default and open the file grub (as root). Change the value that reads GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 to 3, then run update-grub to make the changes take effect.
2. Disable services
When you start up your machine, there's a huge lag between the kernel booting and your desktop appearing, in which time the distro is frantically loading all the background services it needs to run smoothly. Except you don't need all these services at all.
In most distros, the services live in /etc/init.d, and you can stop the ones you don't need from starting up by right-clicking (in Nautilus) and going to Properties > Permissions and unticking the box marked Execute: Allow Executing File As Program.
What's that? You don't know what you need, so you don't know what to turn off? Trial and error is one option, or, if you use SUSE or Mandriva, you're better off using Yast or the Mandriva Contro Centre.
In Yast, go to System > System Services and you'll see a long list of all the services that are available to you. Highlight any one of these to get a description of what that service does, and you should have a pretty good idea of what you can disable.
3. Unburden the login manager
One of the criticisms people used to level at Linux is that it didn't look very nice. So developers set to work on attractive ways to log in, which would present a lovely shiny face to the public right from the moment they fired up their machine.
Sadly, these login managers consume so much power that they end up slowing things down - which is bad. To save time at login (and to make your machine feel as if it's stuck in the nineties), replace your current login manager (this is most probably GDM or KDM, for Gnome and KDE respectively).
In Mint, go to /etc/X11 and look for the file default-displaymanager; in OpenSUSE go to /etc/sysconfig and look for displaymanager. In either distro, you should change the entry that reads gdm or kdm to xdm.
4. Speed up Nautilus
Nautilus, the file manager in Gnome, performs a quick scan of all the files it encounters in a folder once you open it up, to show you a thumbnail image of photos and videos, and the first few lines of text files. Well, we say "a quick scan", but in a folder that's packed with large files, this process can be anything but quick.
To stop wasting your machine's time on this helpful but non-essential task, go to Edit > Preview in Nautilus and change the options from Always, or Local Files Only, to Never. You should find that this gives Nautilus a much snappier, more responsive feel.
5. Lighten the load
In your quest for high-performance computing you may have dismissed distributions for older hardware as irrelevant. Stop. Think again.
The reason that Puppy, VectorLinux et al are so good for older hardware is that they don't demand much in the way of system resources. That's exactly the attribute that makes them run extremely quickly on modern hardware.
If you have a machine made in the last couple of years, with 2GB or more of RAM, you can tweak its performance with all the other tips in this feature, or you could achieve a similar result simply by installing VectorLinux. If you're willing to experiment with a new distribution, this is the single most convenient step towards a faster computer.
6. Use a faster window manager
If you're not in the mood for a complete distribution switch, then you can still make some big improvements by integrating some of their features into your current configuration. The window manager, for example, can usually be transplanted from one desktop to another, and if you're using a feature-heavy desktop such as KDE, this can give you a significant boost.
It's the window manager's job to look after those windows you've got open and give you enough control over them to make you productive. But they can also offer far more features than you need. If you right-click on a window's top bar in KDE and count the options, you'll see what we mean, which is why a different window manager should be both faster and less of a distraction.
Perhaps the most popular is Openbox, and it's common enough to be packaged with most distributions. Just install it from your favourite package manager.
After installation, from whichever desktop you may favour, open the command line and type 'openbox --replace'. This will generate some output, and some running applications may even complain, but we're forcing the system to replace the current window manager with a new one.
Within a few moments, you should find that the style of your window borders has changed. This is Openbox. Using the right-click Context menu from the top bar, you can still move windows to another desktop, or force them to hover over other windows, but you can't do anything else. Your windows should now move faster.
7. Boost KDE performance
KDE is pretty fast if you've got a modern machine, but it's a complicated stack of software. And each component can usually be configured more effectively for performance.
The best place to start is in the background, with the process that manages everything else. This process is called plasma-desktop, in reference to the new paradigm shift in usability that KDE now offers. This is also a process that can be launched with different options, one of which can improve performance on older and slower machines, and especially netbooks.
First, though, you need to kill off the old process. This is going to cause some disruption, so make sure you've closed down anything important and that your data is saved.
Now open the command line and type killall plasma-desktop. This will plunge KDE's functionality into the dark ages. Rekindle hope with another command, plasma-desktop-graphicssystem raster. This restarts the desktop and forces Qt to use the software rendering system it has always had. The latter is faster, but not on older hardware.
You can make the change permanent by locating the plasma-desktop.desktop file used to launch your desktop (usually in /usr/share/autostart, or /.kde4/share/autostart) and modifying the Exec line within that file to include the -graphicssystem raster argument.
8. Block advertising
When browsing the web, you often find that a site doesn't load immediately because it's waiting to be furnished with advertising from a different server. Combine this with the increasingly common Flash ads and annoying animations, and you have several good reasons for blocking them.
Both Firefox and Chromium offer an extension called AdBlock that uses a database to stop the most common offenders. In Chrome, for example, use the new chrome web store to search for and install AdBlock Plus. Then make sure it's enabled in the Extensions Preferences pane. You should no longer be bothered by the majority of ads, or held back by their loading times.
9. Use shortcuts
This might seem obvious, but moving your hand from the keyboard to the mouse to perform a function takes more time than doing the same function through the keyboard. Very few of us use the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit menu, for example.
For that reason, it's worth learning a handful of shortcuts for doing things such as switching between applications, and desktops. You can take this idea further without switching your life to Emacs.
Launching applications from the Run prompt that appears when you press Alt+F2 saves navigating through the launch menu. KDE's Run Command interface can do a great deal more, too. Type shutdown to turn off your system, or lock to lock the display.
Simple calculations can be performed by starting your line with an =, and there are dozens of other functions that come from the plugin structure. Use the ? button on the right to see a list of what's available and how to use it.
The ultimate shortcut command tool is Gnome Do, which is like KDE's Run interface on steroids. Through a series of plugins, you can augment almost every aspect of your desktop, from common SSH commands to quick access to popular websites, through a hotkey and a simple command. A few hours spent with Gnome Do will save you time.
10. Patch your kernel
If you're looking for the ultimate software performance upgrade, and perhaps the ultimate challenge, there are plenty of patches that can be applied to the kernel. If you're happy, roll your own - this can be done piece by piece.But there's a better way. One of the most popular alternatives to the standard kernel is one that has been compiled by Con Koliva from lots of different performance patches. The kernel patchset is called -ck, and it has been built with an emphasis on desktop performance.
To install it, you'll need to download the kernel source for the version the patches apply to (through your package manager), along with all the tools for building your kernel. Then download the patch from http://users.on.net/ ckolivas/kernel/ and use the patch command (patch -p1 < patch-3.*-ck1) in the kernel source folder to apply the changes.
Now build the kernel according to your distribution's instructions. That last step is easier said than done, but there are plenty of guides.
11. Overclock your Nvidia graphics card
If you're using an older Nvidia graphics card - this trick doesn't work with the latest models - with the proprietary drivers, you also have the option of pushing more performance out of your device by overclocking the hardware.
Rather than using the BIOS, though, you can use Nvidia's own control panel. But before the option appears, you need to add a new option to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. This file is no longer created by most distributions, but the nvidia-settings utility can generate one from your current set-up.
Just load the tool, switch to the X Server Configuration tab and click on Save to X Configuration File. After the file has been generated, open it with your favourite text editor (you'll need administrator credentials), and look for the Device section that lists your card. Within this, add the line Option "Coolbits" "5" and restart your graphical display.
Now, when you run the nvidia-settings utility, you'll see an extra page labelled Clock Frequencies. Click on the Enable Overclocking button, accept the disclaimer, and try adjusting the clock and memory frequencies up in small steps. You can do this for both 3D and 2D rendering, and we'd advise adjusting them both at the same time.
Each time you apply a change, switch to the Thermal Settings view and make sure the temperature stays within reasonable limits. You can also adjust the fan speed manually from this page if you need to. When you've found a faster, stable configuration, save the settings and make sure the Nvidia tool loads these settings when your system next starts.
12. Overclock your system
First, a disclaimer: overclocking, the trick of pushing components past their recommended speeds and tolerance, can be expensive. It can break your hardware and cause data loss. But many components today are designed to withstand much greater temperatures and capacity than their stock configuration allows, and that leaves plenty of room for experimentation.
Many modern motherboards, for example, even include simple options for boosting the speed of your system, without needing any further knowledge on your behalf.
The best place to look for a quick fix is within your BIOS. This is accessed when you launch your machine, usually through the F2 or Del keys. Within the BIOS menus, there's a good chance you'll find the options to increase the memory speed, configure your system automatically for performance rather than stability, and adjust the speed of your CPU, usually by adjusting the bus and multiplier values.
Some or none of these things might work, but you must make sure you make only one small change per boot, and that you monitor those changes using Lm-sensors from your desktop.
13. Improve network performance
Linux has supported IPv6 for some time, but if you're not using it, disabling it can speed up some network activities. The easiest way of making this configuration change is through the network manager daemon.
If you use Gnome, open the network manager applet and edit the connection you're using. On the IPv6 tab, select Ignore as the Method.
If you're using the latest version of KDE, without the network manager daemon, set the KDE_NO_IPV6 environmental variable (export KDE_NO_ IPV6=1), either from the command line, or within your desktop's startup script.
Taking this to extremes, you can stop the IPv6 kernel module being loaded by adding blacklist IPv6 to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. You don't need to mess around with your network configuration if you don't want to.
Firefox gives you the option to disable IPv6 from its configuration registry. Type about:config as a URL, and disable \network.dns.disableIPv6.
If you run a small network, you can shave away some network delays by disabling arp in the DHCP daemon and set up static IPs. Add noarp to the /etc/dhcpd.conf configuration file and restart your system or the daemon. Addresses should now be assigned quicker.
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