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Summary of October 2011 Meeting

We started off the meeting with a brief retrospective of Steve Jobs.

The Folklore website was a point of interest, along with some “failed products”.

We had a brief discussion on the iPhone 4S, and looked at the different plans being offered.

For Show & Tell we took a look the Jambox Speaker from Jawbone.

And as usual we had our help on troubleshooting issues, hands-on time, refreshments, and a good time.

Summary of September 2011 Meeting

We started off the meeting renewing our acquaintances after taking a couple months off this summer.

We had a good Q&A session and finished up the meeting talking about getting prepared for upgrading to 10.7 Lion. Here are some links you may find helpful…

1. Getting Ready for the Leap

2. What’s best about Lion

Lion Roars

Today I downloaded Lion. That took quite a while and completed over the lunch hour while I was gone. When I came home it was done and confused! I finally found out what I needed to do to get it going again so that it would Install. Got that done and all is operational again. Sort of different! Scrolling works different – before two fingers moved downward on the trackpad made the screen scroll up (as in the viewing point moved down the screen) now two fingers must move upward on the trackpad to cause the screen to scroll up (as in the “paper” is moving up under your view). Haven’t moved onward much more that to read email.

At first, on the APP Store I could not find what to do to get started in downloading Lion. Then by elimination of ideas, I hit upon the clever idea of clicking on the Price icon. Viola! There under was the word “download”!

Malware Alert

You may have read about this latest malware threat somewhere, here are a couple articles to catch you up in case you have not…

Apple released Security Update 2011-003 for Mac OS X Tuesday, an update designed to defend Mac users from the MacDefender malware currently circulating on the Internet. The patch adds Mac Defender to the list the company maintains of known malware, and introduces a new daily check for updates to that list. It will also look for Mac Defender on your system when you install the patch.

Link to the MacObserver article …

And here is an article from ZD-Net, included are some videos.

Link to the ZD-Net article …

And a link to an Apple KB article.

Link to the the Apple Support article …

iWork now available for iPhone and iTouch

Apple today announced that its groundbreaking iWork productivity apps — Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — are now available for iPhone and iPod touch, as well as iPad. Created for the Mac and then completely redesigned for iOS and the Multi-Touch interface, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers allow you to create and share stunning presentations, beautifully formatted documents, and powerful spreadsheets on the go. iWork apps are available on the App Store for $9.99 each to new users and as a free update for existing iWork for iPad customers.

George Lambro’s guitar solo on the iPad.

Guitar solo on iPad shreds By Michel Grothaus

Back in my generation, we would use a real to real tape recorder and record  music built up using tracks. Now you can do it on an iPad, with touch instruments.  The iPad becomes “magical,” as Apple likes to put it. It’s not so much what the device can do, but what people can do with the device.

Newbie with an iPhone

Current iPhone Apps

I was given a new iPhone from my company and though I would share what apps I have been playing around with.  The iPhone is like having a second MAC with you. You have your desktop or laptop MAC and now this new handy 2nd MAC called an iPhone.  It can do so much for you while you are out and about, not having to lug a laptop around.

One of the most liberating things was when a friend gave me a $15 Apple Gift card, I bought a few apps that I would not of spent the money on.  I have been reviewing the free apps but ended up purchasing a few apps with the gift card money.  How liberating!  I have now started to buy apps on my MAC too. The App store is changing how we purchase and update software.  So nice to have one central place – especially when the software updates.

I hope to take some time and share apps with this user’s group in the future, to do a more in depth review of the better ones.

Excitement over Lion

It looks like we have an upgrade coming – from Snow Leopard to Lion – and I am excited to see it come. This upgrade will have a few things in it that make it special.
1) Full OS – Including the Server components. No need to spend extra $ to get the server version.
2) The ability to have more than one user logged in. You may have one user logged in to the console and at least one other user logging in remotely. Both with full and different Graphic sessions. Maybe more than one user can log in remotely,  Apple has not told us.
3) iPad2 may be gaining Spaces – the ability to have multiple screens run on it’s display. Allowing a person with an iPad to log into a session on a Lion Mac. This would be awesome in my mind as you could carry around your iPad and log into your powerful Lion Mac, giving you the best of both worlds. Kent Unruh mention in a meeting last year, how he could see Apple bringing touch feature to the Mac, he was very prophetic. I’m starting to save my $ for the upgrade. I will do a fresh install on a usb external hard drive and run that way until I find out that Lion is good enough to install permanently on my hard drive.

Summary of March 2011 Meeting

We started the meeting off discussing the new iPad2. Some links that were part of that discussion…

iPad Tech Specs

iPad Data Plans compared

Should I buy an iPad2

iPad vs iPad2 – What’s changed?

Accessory compatibility

Next up was a presentation on the latest version of iMovie for OS X. We looked at getting video into iMovie and some basic editing options.

And as usual we had our help on troubleshooting issues, hands-on time, refreshments, and a good time.

Mac App Store Restrictions

At the March meeting we started a discussion on downloading software from the Mac App store or buying the “box” version. Here is an article from “The MacObserver” you may find interesting…

Understanding Mac App Store App Restrictions