appleJAC Macintosh Users

President's Place

by George Kopp

The year has flown by, and here we are at December again. It amazes me how much has changed in the Apple universe since just a year ago. New computers and iOS devices seem like the normal thing now, but just a year ago, the features we take for granted today seemed like just a dream.  

iOS 5 has made our iPads and iPhones much more like computers and Mac OS 10.7 Lion has even made our Macs much more like our iPads. I foresee this trend continuing. But, as in all aspects of life, some things do come to an end, and those include my term serving as your President.

At our December meeting, we will have our annual business meeting and election of 2012 officers. In addition to this, we will be making some long overdue corrections and modifications to the Bylaws of appleJAC. These changes make our group more like the group we have become. They de=emphasize the Macintosh perspective for an emphasis on the Apple prospective. If you attend meetings, you know this has been the way the group has trended for the last few years. In between presentations on the Mac, we often have presentations on other Apple products, primarily the iOS devices that so many of us use on a daily basis.

I want to be clear. We are still a Macintosh users group, but we are modifying our Bylaws to prepare us for the future with a more broad Apple centric approach. These Bylaws are on the website (immediately following the agenda) for you to review (thanks Tom Piper for his efforts in scribing these changes)

The Nominating Committee has also come up with what looks to be a great slate of officers for next year.  Many of our number are continuing to serve in a leadership capacity, but we also have some new people getting involved and some others that are returning to the Board to assist the group as we move forward. Listed below are the nominations so far; we will accept other nominations from the floor also.

appleJAC Officer Nominations 2012

President - Julie Smith
Vice President - Alice Kopp
Secretary - Trish Alexander
Treasurer - Mark Snell
Webmaster - Tom Piper
Librarian - Joe Mertzlufft
Member@Large (room setup and presenters needs) - Greg Breuer
Member@Large (refreshments) - Sue Snell
Member@Large (photos) - Dan Walsh
Member@Large (recruiting) - Peggy Landwehr
Member@Large (past president) - George Kopp

Last month we moved our meeting location to Kennedy Hall in Immaculate Conception Church at 1206 East McCarty St. in Jefferson City. This new location proved to be a fantastic meeting room for us, and we will be discussing our future meeting locations at the business meeting also.

But don't let the thought of a business meeting scare you away. Tom Piper will be filling us in and responding to inquiries on the features of iOS5, and I will be presenting (and yes, answering all your questions) on iCloud, Apple's new cloud service package available to all Lion users at no cost.

This will be another great meeting to get a few details so you can answer your families questions while sitting around the Christmas tree later in December.

I hope to see you all at the meeting this month.

 

Proposed Amendment to aJMUG Bylaws

The appleJAC Macintosh Users Group Board of Directors is considering a series of changes to its corporate Bylaws which it hopes can be approved at the December 6 Annual Meeting.

These changes are intended to achieve the following:

• Eliminate the emphasis on Macintosh and focus on Apple products ( we have been doing this anyway with the iPhone and iPad of late);
• Eliminate the maximum number of Members of the Board of Directors;
• Emphasize that Board Members may be asked to perform a focused function (ie... refreshments, recruitment....); and
• Miscellaneous housekeeping changes for consistency and clarity.

The last changes were made five years ago. The current Bylaws showing highlighted proposed changes (overstrike to delete, underline to add) are shown on the attached document (Download AppleJAC Bylaws 120611).

 

President's Place (and map)

Oct. 4 appleJAC MUG Meeting Follow-up

We learned a great deal at our Cloud Computing meeting. Here is a free ebook on cloud computing found by George Kopp that you might want to link to on the website . . . www.ingrammicro.com/.

Marian Petrides, M.D. also sent a note reminding us that the cool new software for the iPod nanos (large icons, multiple clocks, etc.) works on last year's models just fine (to my delight, I tried it, and it makes my cute little nano even cuter).

Be sure to check out the pictures of the evening captured by Greg Breuer . . . with 45 people present, and lots of new information, it was a fun and educational evening. Be sure to bring your friends to "30 Tools in 60 Minutes" next month.

By the way, DropCopy (a free utility to transfer files from device to device) is available not just for Macs, but also for iPhones (and it works on my iPad too) . . . www.dropcopy.com.

 

President's Place

Lion Presentation Materials for 09/06/11 appleJAC MUG Meeting

 

Download "Presentation for Lion"

Mac OS 10.7 Lion website

Apple's Lion (video introduction)

Apple's Lion (technical specifications)

How to Upgrade to Lion

It’s All About the Apps: Aug. 2 appleJAC MUG meeting

The following iOS device (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) apps were presented:

Productivity Apps - Tom Piper

• Pages                                           ($9.99) 
• Numbers                                       ($9.99) 
• Keynote                                        ($9.99) 
• Navigon                                      ($49.99) 
• DropBox                                         (free)

Social Apps - George Kopp

• Tweetbot                                     ($2.99)
• Facebook                                       (free) 
• Google+                          (invitation only)
• Skype                                             (free) 
• Web Albums . . . a Picasa viewer   ($2.99)

Fun Apps - Alice Kopp

• Solitaire . . . MobilityWare              (free)
• Skee-ball HD                                  (free)
• Bejeweled                                   ($0.99)
• Moonlight lite                                (free)
• Angry Birds                                    (free)

News and Weather Apps - Greg Breuer 

• The Weather Channel                     (free)
• Weather Bug Elite                        ($0.99) 
• Weather HD                                   (free)
• KOMU                                            (free) 
• Pulse                                             (free)

The audience also offered a list of their favorites (transcribed by Ann Lane from Peggy Landwehr's video):

Findmyiphone: free, finds all Mac OS devices

News/Information/Search 

• The Onion: college eclectic newspaper
• Flipboard: free. Search engine w/9 categories, 
• NASA app: great pics and current status

Reading/Documents

• iBook, 
• Kindle: highly recommended; free
• Googlebooks
• Zinio: read multiple magazine subscriptions through single app
• Good Reader: allow you to open various documents, Word, pdf, allows you to store documents
• iAnnotatePDF: Download, annotate, highlight PDF articles

Music/Radio

• Shazam: recognizes music from external source
• Soundhound: similar to Shazam
• Tunein radio: free; battery hog
• Tunein radio pro: allows you to record
• Senuti: computer app; takes ipod music and loads into iTunes  1000 songs free

Entertainment/Games

• Card Shark: 56 different card games; universal app
• WhirlyWord: word game
• Wordflick
• WordBlitz
• Book Worn
• Diablo, Dragon Hunter; Dragon Hunter II: action, role-play games

Travel Helps

• MyLanguage Pro: pronounces translated words, $4.99, free version available 
• Weather Plus

Exercise

• Musichour: $1;  clips songs to 1 minute intervals; great for workout playlists
• PowerMusic Hour
• ImapMywalk: see how far you walk; other versions for hiking, biking, fitness, running

Photography/Photos

• Fotopedia: photos from around the world; will load into your iPhoto
• ColorSplash: special effects for your photos
• Flixlab: make and share movies using iphone

Retail

• Joann’s: coupons
• Hobby Lobby: weekly coupon
• Michaels: good craft hint videos
• CardStar: organizes all store loyalty cards in one app

Texting

• Textfree: free, send pics
• Dragon Dictation: translates voice command into text form & send to contact

How many apps do YOU have? . . . Check settings>General>About

President's Place

by George Kopp

Oh, for the dog days of summer. They seem so wonderful until the thermostat stays above 100 for 5 days in a row! Yuck!! We can only be thankful for air conditioning, and lots of new Apple and Mac stuff to talk about. 

The big story this month is MacOS X Lion. Lion is the 8th version of Mac OS X and looks like it will be the shape of things to come from Apple. Lion integrates much of the interface built in iOS for the iPhone and iPad into the Macintosh user experience. Everything from Launchpad to the use of swiping gestures is now incorporated into the computer operating system we know and love. There is lots new to talk about here so appleJAC will be hosting a Mac OS X Lion demo at our regularly scheduled meeting in September. Plan to kick off the fall with a look into Lion. 

Lion not only brings us new interface, it also leads us to the new method for software delivery that Apple has in it’s plans. A few years back, Apple introduced the MacBook Air without a DVD drive, and we all thought that was crazy. Everyone needs a DVD drive to install software and play movies. Fast forward to today, and we see ourselves downloading a new version of the operating system and getting movies over the Internet from NetFlix. No DVDs need apply for this gig; it is an online-only world. 

Now we see the latest MacBook Air with a fast processor. This time just as fast as a MacBook Pro for all practical sense. And now the Mac Mini looses it’s DVD drive. Get ready folks, my next prediction: DVDs are going the way of the floppy. Some will cry and some will refuse to go, but expect a Mac in your future to be DVD-less. 

The other real story in line is the elimination of Rosetta from Lion. Rosetta was an emulation layer that allowed older software written for a PowerPC processor to run on Intel-based Macs. Apple contracted this software from IBM (who sold it the PowerPC processors), but the PowerPC has run it’s course, and even IBM is moving on. SO must Apple. For about 5 years it maintained this emulation to allow software developers time to bring their products forward into natively running on Intel. Unfortunately, some developers did not listen.

But, the vast majority of software you have issues with in Lion falls into two categories: 

1. Software that has been sunset – this is software the developer chose to end development on; this may be because it was replaced with a new product or it may be the developer just did not want to continue it’s development 
2. Software that has an upgrade - some of these are as simple as downloading a new version, but many, if not most, of them will be products that have a fee for the upgrade; users may not have been aware of this upgrade or chose not to pay; either way, these products will not run in Lion without the upgrade. 

It is funny to watch the complaints on the Internet about these two types of software. Some people believe that, if they purchase a product it should work forever. Others chastise Apple for not maintaining this emulation for 5 more years. Either way, these PowerPC applications join the Mac OS 9 applications that have been orphaned by new technology. 

The key thing for a user here is to be sure the applications you need will run before updating to Lion. If you do the update, and the files need to be exported, you may have just lost all those files to the old ‘bit bucket’ in the sky. Don’t let this happen to you. Remember, while Lion adds a lot to the user experience on the Mac, it is NOT a required upgrade. If what you have works for you, then you can still keep using it. Just don’t expect the world to stay behind with you. 

 

The other big story this month is the August appleJAC meeting. This year we are going back to the Yanis Coffee Zone on August 2 at 7:00 pm for a evening of iOS applications. Bring your iOS device (iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad) and learn about great applications for these devices. Just like the last time, the proprietor of the Coffee Zone will be there keeping the coffee on for you to order your favorite coffee drinks and great sweets.

I hope you can make it this month. Be sure to bring your iOS-using friends too. You don’t need to be a member to come see all the fun. 

Lion is here, but Rosetta is NOT: What no longer works?

by Tom Piper

On July 20, 2011, Mac OS 10.7 Lion became available for $29 as a huge (3.79 GB) install from the App Store. Many have rejoiced at over 250 major and minor improvements over its 10.6 Snow Leopard predecessor, but others have cried over the loss of legacy programs.

A number of previous features not only won’t be updated, they’re being dropped entirely. One of the OS X features getting dropped in Lion is Rosetta, Apple’s PowerPC software compatibility layer which originally shipped with OS X 10.5 Leopard. The simple angle here is that Lion will be native 64-bit and Rosetta supported 32-bit Universal and PPC code.

What programs will be affected? AppleWorks stands out first, and other notables like Quicken 7, Contribute, AOL, FilmLoop, Internet Explorer, MacLink Plus, MacTheRipper, OmniWeb, ReadySetGo, Thunderbird and others. For a complete list of the programs on your computer that would not work in Lion, follow these steps:

• Under the Apple at upper left of screen, click on “About This Mac”,
• Click on the “More Info...” button to get the System Profiler,
• In the left sidebar under “Software”, click on “Applications”, 
• Wait for the report of application titles (could take several minutes),
• In the “Kind” column, look for “Classic” and “PowerPC” designations . . . these programs will NOT work with Mac OS 10.7 Lion!!!

Once you have upgraded to Lion, it will show you which files no longer work by placing a white “circle slash” over the icon. If you double-click on one of these applications, it will report “You can’t open the application _________ because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.” I’ve grouped all of my old Classic and PowerPC applications into a single “Incompatible” folder for easy identification (and to avoid unnecessary errors).

What to do if you still need these old programs? Some would suggest dividing your hard drive into two partitions, one of which would boot from Snow Leopard, and the other from Lion. Another quick solution is to duplicate your old hard drive using a free program like Carbon Copy Cloner to a new external hard drive from which you could boot whenever needed, then upgrade the internal hard drive to Lion. It is even possible to install Snow Leopard to a bootable USB flash drive as a convenient alternative.

As for AppleWork 6, the word processing files will easily import into Pages, and spreadsheet files into Numbers. The draw files will easily import into EasyDraw 4. AppleWorks database files cannot be imported into anything else which retains their format; the only solution is to export the contents as an ASCII text file, then import into Bento, FileMakerPro, Numbers or something else.

Progress oftentimes comes at a price, so it is best to be prepared before you take the next step. We will discuss this much more at our September 6 meeting when we focus on Lion. We will even do a poll to see if a special class will be needed.

Prosoft Data Rescue: Do-It-Yourself Data Recovery Software

a review by Tom Piper

Your computer won’t boot -- all you see is a flashing question mark -- you did not back up your hard drive -- what, oh what, do you do? There are products to help you recover from this awful situation.

Data Rescue 3 is the best digital data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive or that have been previously deleted. It is specifically designed for computer data recovery and works where other tools often fail.

As described on their website (http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php), Data Rescue 3 is completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive it's scanning. It is the same software used by many data recovery services, law enforcement, all major branches of the U.S. Military and major intelligence agencies.

As I experienced when I recently worked on a 160 GB damaged hard drive, you will need to save your recovered files to either an internal or external hard drive (USB or FireWire), removable media device, or a networked drive. It comes with a bootable Emergency DVD, so there is no need to disassemble your computer, and you can even get free technical support via phone or email.

Data Rescue 3 focuses on data recovery, instead of hard drive repair, so it will work in more cases, recover more effectively, and deliver your files in better condition than other utilities you may have tried in the past. Data Rescue 3 analyzes your entire hard drive looking for your data, then it meticulously re-assembles your files and stores them to a different location. This is very time-consuming (over 8 hours in my cases), but very effective.

If a drive is reformatted, usually the original file catalog is permanently lost and thus recovering files by their original name and directory location is not possible and thus files are recovered by content. If the file types you are looking for are among the supported types, there is a good chance that Data Rescue 3 will be able to find it. In addition to all of this is FileIQ which allows you to add your own file type to Data Rescue 3 to further increase it's capacity to recover your important files. 

Data Rescue 3 will recover pictures from a digital camera media card, that have been deleted, reformatted or a corrupt media card, as well as hard drives. It also allows you to preview a single file before recovering it, and you can select the individual files without recovering the whole drive. In the worst case of a physically-damaged hard drive, Prosoft has a new Data Rescue Center that can provide you with a free diagnosis (including free shipping to our facility). This is their full-service drive recovery service where they can do hard drive failure recovery (find out more at www.TheDataRescueCenter.com).

Prosoft Data Rescue 3 is a $99 investment that is well worth it if you need to recover lost data, and most technical professionals keep it in their tool chest. A special Data Rescue 3 LE version is also available for $59.99 at http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data-rescue-le.php. It is important to backup your precious hard drives, but even backups will occasionally fail, so it is good to be prepared. This is an excellent tool in the hands of an experienced computer user.

 

End of July 2011 appleJAC Digest/Blog

President's Place

by George Kopp

Back to School . . . a Different School this time

With summer comes our appleJAC Meetings hitting the road from our normal home base of Lewis and Clark Middle School. This month we will be heading to Calvary Lutheran High School in Jefferson City. Calvary Lutheran is located at 2525 Route B just south of Jefferson City (see map at right). The easiest way to get there is to continue through Jefferson City toward the Lake of the Ozarks on Highway 54, then take the exit onto Rte 179 toward Wardsville. Continue south onto Rte B (at the Tanner Bridge Road stop light), and on to the school a half mile beyond. The school is marked on the map with the letter "A".

This month's theme will be computer and hardware maintenance. We will cover some good tips for maintaining your Mac including routine service and backup. We will also address the options when it comes to backup, and why you may need more than a single backup method to ensure you are safe. We are also planning to touch on printer maintenance and maintaining your iPhone and iPad devices. It definitely promises to be a great set of presentations.

Traditionally at this meeting, we also offer to assist people with minor Mac upgrades. So, if you have an interest in adding memory, replacing a harddisk, or just adding software to your machine, feel free to email us at applejac@mac.com, and we will talk with you about parts you may need to bring with you to ensure you have what is necessary to accomplish your goal.

iPad Class a Great Success

This last month, appleJAC held it's first ever iPad class with a full house of over 30 participants. This class covered the basics of iPad use and delved into the settings of the device to help users customize their iPad's to meet their needs.  

The class continues a long line of appleJAC classes. As your Board of Directors plans for the fall, we would like some input on what additional classes might be worthwhile to offer. Feel free to send us your interests and ideas at applejac@mac.com, and we will see what topics have a critical mass.

Upcoming Meetings

In August we continue with our coverage of iOS devices when we address iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch applications. This regular meeting will be held August 2 at 7:00 pm at Yanis Coffee Zone in Jefferson City. Since many of our Mac-Challenged (ie... windows users) friends use iOS devices, so feel free to bring them along to this meeting. We promise to be "operating system agnostic" and only talk about our handheld devices that evening.

Then in September . . . hold on to your hats . . . MacOS 10.7 Lion will be featured. Learn about the new possibilities in Lion, and if Lion is your next step in Macintosh nirvana.

And, one last thought . . . those of you running AppleWorks may want to reconsider Lion seriously before an update. Lion is reported to finally kill Appleworks (it won't work anymore without Rosetta), so a move forward may be a setback to you. But, your appleJAC leadership warned you of Appleworks demise over 2 years ago . . .

Be sure to join us for a skyrocketing time on July 5 at 7:00pm.

 

 

Presidents Place

by George Kopp

On the Road Again....

This month, appleJAC hits the road for a meeting in Columbia as we will enjoy the Annual appleJAC MUG Picnic (that's right, in warm June, NOT hot August). Friends and family are all invited to attend (bring a beverage, side dish and lawn chair) this opportunity to relax at the lakeside home of Kathy and Joe Mertzlufft, and enjoy food, fun and friends. RSVP is requested (if you haven't already). Directions to their house (just north and east of Ashland) show that they are less than 20 minutes away from most of where our members live (see map at right).

appleJAC Classes

Each year, appleJAC holds a number of classes for the membership that allow you to make better use of the tools you have. The iPad is a mobile device that you can use to watch movies, create documents, surf the Web, check e-mail, use as an eReader and more! This class will introduce you to the basic features and functions of iPad.

'Getting the Most from your iPad"
This class will cover the iPad and iPad2.
Tuesday, June 14, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Learfield Communications
505 Hobbs Road, Jefferson City, MO 65109
Sponsored by the appleJAC Macintosh Users Group . . . Cost - $20

Signup your friends. Class is open to everyone.
Sign up to attend by emailing us at applejac@mac.com
appleJAC Members that preregister receive a $5 discount
Payment can be made the night of the class.

Hope to see you in Columbia at the picnic. If you would like to carpool from Jefferson City to Columbia that evening, you should plan on meeting at 5:30pm in the North Jefferson City commuter parking lot just northeast of the Jefferson City airport exit off Highway 54.  

Presidents Place

by George Kopp

On the Road Again....

This month, appleJAC hits the road for a meeting in Columbia. A few times a year we try to have a meeting in Columbia to make attendance easier for our members from the north. This time, it was not easy to find a location, but long-time member, Larry Garvin, found a location we could use to meet at no cost to the club. Our next meeting will be held on May 3, 2011, at 7:00 pm at:

Air & Water Solutions, Inc.
1400 Heriford Rd, Suite 101
Columbia, MO 65202
(see map below)

Join us that evening to learn about Jazzing your Photos. The main part of the presentation will be performed by Dan Walsh, who is a professional at using Photoshop tools and doing layout design. He plans on showing how to work with colors, removing objects or people out of photos, along with replacing and adding items into photos. Dan knows quite a bit about Photoshop, so he shouldn't have a problem answering all your questions.

Images do not always come exactly as you wish to use them. You may need to do some cropping, adjust their colors or luminosity (brightness), change their size (resolution), or modify their content (delete an ex-husband). Dan will be showing us some techniques he uses to make photographs really sing. While all of you may not be up to a high-end program such as Photoshop, Adobe also has a lower-end image software called Photoshop Elements for a much lower cost that is in reach of nearly all of us.

appleJAC Classes

Each year, appleJAC holds a number of classes for the membership that allow you to make better use of the tools you have. We are in the process of planning a class on Apple's newest and most popular product to date: the iPad. This class will cover setting up and customizing your original iPad or iPad 2 to do the things you want to with it. It will also include an array of iPad applications that make your iPad experience even better. Look for more details on this class coming soon.

appleJAC also has videos of past classes for sale. These disks have the video of the screen from the presentations and the audio of the presenter to follow along, all in QuickTime format that you can play on your screen. Available classes on DVD include:

• MacOS X Leopard/Snow Leopard - $15
• iPhoto '09 - $15
• iMovie '09 - $15
• iWork '09 including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote - $25

If you are interested in one of these disks, email us at applejac@mac.com, and we can make a copy of it for you and have it at the next meeting.

I hope to see you in Columbia in May. If you live in the Jefferson City area and would like to carpool to Columbia that evening, you should meet at 6:20 pm in the North Jefferson City commuter parking lot.

From Vandiver, turn South on Westfall, just East of River Mist Spa.
From Westfall, turn Right, or West on Heriford
Air and Water is in the same building as Bright City Lights.

Fix Mac Defender Malware Problem

MAC Defender shows fake virus infection alerts in an effort to convince users to give up money and credit card numbers to an insecure server.

Security firm Intego announced Monday that a fake antivirus program for Mac OS X has been discovered in the wild. The fake antivirus software calls itself "MAC Defender," perhaps the first hint that it should not be trusted (Apple makes "Macs," not "MACs").

LINK TO READ MORE . . .

The best solution to remove Mac Defender appears to be:

• Boot to safe boot (hold Shift on startup)
• Remove from login items and start up items
• Removed from downloads
• Remove from Applications folder
• Restart computer.

Presidents Place

by George Kopp

Apple's iPad 2 event didn't disappoint. While there were no real surprises for people following the iPad 2 rumor mill, iPad 2 looks like a great upgrade over the original iPad. It is thinner, lighter, and faster than the original iPad. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that it was available in just 9 days after the announcement.  But, "available" is another story.

Thinner - 33% thinner. The iPad has gone from 13.4 mm to just 8.8 mm. The iPad 2 is now even skinnier than the iPhone 4 which is 9.3 mm thick.

Lighter - Up to 15% lighter claims Apple. This should come as a relief to those who felt the original iPad was too heavy.

Faster - The iPad 2 is getting a new dual core processor dubbed the A5. Apple says the new processor is twice as fast as the old one, and claims the graphics performance is 9 times faster.

Cameras - The new iPad comes into line with the rest of the iOS family by getting front- and rear-facing cameras. The front camera is a VGA camera that can be used for FaceTime chats with other iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Mac users. The rear camera can shoot 720p HD video.

iOS 4.3 - The new iPad will come with the newest version of Apple's mobile operating system iOS 4.3. This update enables better performance while using the Safari Internet browser, iTunes home sharing, Airplay improvements, and you can now turn the iPad mute switch back into the rotation lock if you so wish.

Other stuff - The iPad 2 also gets a gyroscope and will now be available in black or white. Apple demonstrated new apps for iMovie and GarageBand for iPad. Both apps looked very impressive and both are available now. Finally, Apple announced new ‚ "smart covers" for the iPad which act as a screen protector/case. The new cover is very interesting in that it attaches to the iPad with magnets. It really shows that it was designed alongside the iPad 2, and works like a charm,

Read more: http://www.theipadfan.com/ipad-2-thinner-lighter-faster-march-11/#ixzz1HBbGkVrb

While the iPad was available for order (delivery started in 3 to 5 days, but is now at 3 to 5 weeks), it was also available at Best Buy, Walmart, and Target. I went to all the stores in Jefferson CIty and found that in total, there were only about 30 iPads in Jeff CIty for sale, and they all sold immediately.

Our next meeting will be held on April 5, 2011, at 7:00 pm in our regular meeting room at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Jefferson City. Join us that evening to learn about Chatting with Video. Part of the presentations will also cover Apple's new Macintosh Apps Store and, of course, the iPad 2.

While we all hope the bulk of winter is over, I will once again give a reminder: if the Jefferson City Public Schools are closed on our meeting day due to inclement weather, we will not hold the appleJAC meeting that night.

Have a great month and join us for the presentation on Chatting with Video at the April meeting.  

 

Macworld Treasures: A Collection of Expo Gadgets

a review by Tom Piper

It is a well-known fact that I am a collector of gadgets . . . some cool, some odd, some exciting, and some just downright strange! This year is no exception as I open my suitcase of treasures brought home from Macworld 2011. Some of these I purchased, like Apple-logoed items from the Apple mothership in San Francisco, but most from cheerful and generous vendors who want their products reviewed.

At the March 1 meeting, I presented two dozen of these gadgets showing a variety including iPad accessories, iPhone chargers, and many other things. I have also have provided a review below of some of the most interesting of these items to help you see some of the newest goodies, and perhaps get a few of your own.

President's Place

by George Kopp

Sometimes things don't work out as planned! Who would have thought that we would get a blizzard in Missouri? 

Unfortunately, for the first time in many years, we were forced to cancel the appleJAC meeting due to Lewis and Clark Middle School being closed. 

The planned program to talk about the sights and sounds of Macworld 2011 will be held over for the March Meeting. There were many new things that were released at the expo, and we will be prepared to show and talk about many of the most exciting things.  

Macworld Expo was different than the last time that we attended. This year's expo was a much smaller event, but that didn't mean it wasn't exciting. Unlike years past when the sheer size of the event caused us to keep moving the entire week, this year's smaller show provided for plenty of time to roam the isles and really look at some of the products. appleJAC's gadget guru, Tom Piper took full advantage of the smaller size to sample some truly interesting products. At the March meeting, he will be showing many of these, and we will show some of the photos we took at the show. All in all, this was a great trip that left some time for sight seeing too.  

In addition to Macworld, we took a morning and visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. What a great place to relive some of the great events of the computer.

Our next meeting will be held on March 1, 2011, at 7:00pm in our regular meeting room at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Jefferson City. Join us that evening to learn about exciting new trends and products from Macworld Expo. Part of the presentations will also cover Apple's new Macintosh Apps Store.

Just a reminder: if the Jefferson City Public Schools are again closed on our meeting day due to inclement weather, we will not hold the appleJAC meeting that night.

Have a great month and join us for the presentation on Macworld Expo at the March meeting. I believe it will be worth waiting for it an additional month.

January 2011 Meeting Agenda

December 2010 Meeting Agenda