December's meeting will be the "Annual Business Meeting and aJ Q&A" hosted at Kennedy Hall at IC School, Jefferson City, at 7:00pm on Tuesday, December 4, 2018. Please bring your friends who are MacOS or iOS users to our meetings.
Feel free to email your webmaster if you have ideas for improvements or changes to this website. Greg Breuer 2019 appleJAC Officers
December 2018 Giveaways
By Joe Kissell, Publisher, Take Control Books
Dear MUG member:
Jason Snell has been writing about Apple and the Mac since 1994. He was formerly the lead editor of Macworld, and now runs the Six Colors site and hosts a bunch of podcasts. In other words, he’s pretty much a celebrity in the Mac community, and we couldn’t be more delighted that he has applied his considerable expertise to a new book that explores Apple’s Photos app in Mojave and iOS 12. Take Control of Photos updates and expands on Jason’s earlier book, Photos: A Take Control Crash Course. At 156 pages, the new book is more than twice as long as its predecessor, and it tells you everything you need to know about using Photos.
Photos, of course, replaces both iPhoto and Aperture, and if you’re still using one of those older apps, this book will help you migrate to Photos effectively. But even if you’ve already been using Photos for years, you may not have tapped into all of its powerful features for organizing, editing, and sharing photos and videos. Jason takes you in depth with this thoroughly illustrated guide. He also highlights changes in Photos under iOS 12, including searching for multiple items at once, a For You tab, and an updated Import tab; plus changes in Mojave, including new keyboard shortcuts and the removal of built-in features for making printed materials like calendars and books (and alternative means of obtaining them)
This book tells you how to:
…and much more. You can:
This is an excellent, detailed book that will help anyone who uses Photos, and I recommend it to you!
One more thing… I’ve also updated Take Control of Apple Mail, my complete guide to Apple’s built-in email app, for Mojave and iOS 12. If you use Mail, I’m sure you’ll find it helpful!
With warm wishes for a happy Thanksgiving
by Tom Piper
Macstock 2018 on July 21-22, 2018, was the fourth annual gathering of Apple faithful in McHenry, IL (near Woodstock, an hour northwest of Chicago). It had the best attendance with people from California to New York to England.
There is much that I could say, but the information is all available at https://macstockconferenceandexpo.com where you can see the schedule, the speakers, news items and much much more, including the great film "Love Notes to Newton".
If you would like to see pictures and videos that I captured while there, just go to https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0a5aDWbra3ldw. It was so good, that many people stayed the evening afterward to continue our friendly gathering (see below).
Letha and I are going back again next year (July 27-28, 2019), and you are welcome to join us.
October Give-A-Way Winners:
September 2018 Give-A-Ways
a review by Tom Piper
The quest for faster and more reliable digital storage is a continual challenge as new computers and processors become more powerful and robust. Other World Computing (OWC) has proven to be a leader in meeting this challenge.
The OWC Envoy Pro EX is a bus-powered portable solid-state drive with 1.0TB of storage and Thunderbolt 3 connection in a solid aluminum case. It is a fast and durable unit with an integrated Thunderbolt 3 cable making it a perfect travel companion. It is the ideal solution for on-location photo editing or simply taking your photo, video, and music libraries with you; and it can do everything from daily tasks such as storing family photos, videos, and documents to professional audio or photography importing.
From a techie standpoint, this drive offers Thunderbolt 3 which provides 40Gbs bandwidth, 8x more than USB 3.1 (Gen 1), and is paired with an M.2 (NVMe) SSD to provide transfer speeds up to 1800MB/s. The Envoy Pro EX is the perfect storage companion for your Thunderbolt 3 equipped Mac (or Windows) computer by blending the latest technologies with multiple model and capacity options, to push the envelope on performance while maintaining affordability.
Envoy Pro EX is built tough to withstand the bumps, jolts and drops life may put it through. With no moving parts and MIL-STD810G drop test compliance, it's ready to handle being tossed around in a backpack or accidentally knocked off the table. Meticulously engineered to run cool and silent, it also looks great in matte black (with a handy felt pouch).
This unit looks great and performs wonderfully when connected to my 15" MacBook Pro TouchBar laptop. Upon arrival, it was already formatted MS-DOS (FAT32), but comes with OWC Drive Guide (an necessary step) which features easy setup and reformatting for my Mac (or custom partitioning too). There was also additional OWC software including InTech SpeedTools and Prosoft Data Backup (also Windows utilities). As an extra bonus, shareware was also included for Fun & Games, Productivity & Organization, Audio & Video, Internet & Utilities, System Enhancements and Other Goodies . . . over 25 complete software packages (and many more for Windows).
You can learn more about the Envoy Pro EX at macsales.com/envoy and purchase 1.0TB version for only $499.99 (also available in 250GB, 500GB, and 2.0TB for $249.99, $349.99, or $1,094.99). This unit has happily joined my family of OWC devices that are high quality and very reliable. This is a great company with products which I highly recommend, particularly at very reasonable prices!
Apple Technology of past, present and future was discussed on Open Air Saturday, hosted by Hal Dulle, with guests Peggy Landwehr, George Kopp, and Tom Piper.
To listen to this 26 minute segment on your computer, just click on OpenAirSat KWOS 080418
President's Corner-August 2018
by Dick Dalton with Tom Piper.
July 11, 2018, was my conversation with Tom Piper. We met at an appleJAC meeting in the early 80s and recently started seeing each other at Capital City Productions. Tom's experiences as a director at DHSS, a MacQuest consultant (macquest.com), a photographer, and much more made it fun and informative.
You can listen in by clicking on . . .
by Joe Kissell Publisher, Take Control Books
Dear MUG member,
We have a new book to tell you about today, and I’m especially excited about it because it’s all about solving problems I know many of you are having. Quite a few people have expressed an interest in a book that will help them deal with the many questions involved in storing their data and managing their disks—concerns that have become more frequent as the volume of data we have (photos, videos, music, and more) has grown. I’m pleased to announce that our good friend Jeff Carlson has written a book that addresses these questions, and it’s available now: Take Control of Your Digital Storage.
I can’t tell you how many email messages I’ve received that involve storage puzzles. People want to know if they should use a NAS (network-attached storage) device or not, and if so, what they can do with it. How to partition and format a disk. Whether a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a good idea. How to decide whether something should be stored on their Mac, on an external or network disk, or in the cloud. How to make sense of Apple’s new APFS filesystem. What really happens when they use iCloud’s Optimized Mac Storage feature. And so on. Jeff and I decided it was time to research all these questions and more, and the result is Take Control of Your Digital Storage.
Here’s just a taste of the topics Jeff covers in this Mac-specific book:
And, there’s much more packed into this 124-page ebook. If you’re frustrated because you’re running low on disk space…confused about what storage options you should use…struggling with questions about volumes, formats, or partitions…trying to wrap your head around a new NAS…or just wanting to have a better understanding of how storage works on a Mac, you need this book!
Buy Take Control of Your Digital Storage for $9.09 with your MUG discount OR
Get more information about this book
I hope you’re as enthusiastic about this book as I am! I’ve been wanting a title like this in our catalog for a long time, and I couldn’t be happier that it’s finally here. Get to the bottom of your Mac storage issues today!
President's Corner-July 2018
June's meeting will be appleJAC's annual picnic hosted at Cole County Park Pavilion at 6:00pm. Address 4301 County Park Rd behind the Cole County fairgrounds in Jefferson City, MO.
Please bring along your folding chairs if you have them to ensure we have plenty of seating.
appleJAC will provide hamburgers and hot dogs, buns, table service and condiments . . . you bring your favorite beverage to share along with your choice below of something additional.
by Joe Kissell
, Publisher, Take Control Books
Running a publishing company, as I’ve been doing for the last year, has been an interesting and exciting challenge. One thing I wasn’t entirely prepared for was how little time it would leave me to actually write books, which is still pretty important given how many Take Control titles have my name on the cover. Today, however, I’m happy to say I’ve crossed one more off my to do list. And if you use Apple Mail on macOS or iOS, I think you’ll find this book incredibly useful.
We’ve just published Take Control of Apple Mail, Fourth Edition. This is a complete guide to handling your email with Apple Mail, and it now covers Mail in High Sierra, Sierra, and iOS 11. Among the hundreds of changes in the new edition are descriptions of the current workings of gestures, addressing, Markup, Handoff, and many other recently updated features. It contains extensive recommendations for third-party plugins; helpful hints for filtering and finding messages; instructions for backing up, restoring, and importing email; suggestions for making attachments work better (both as sender and recipient); and numerous troubleshooting tips. And it has greatly expanded coverage of using Apple Mail on an iPhone or iPad.
In addition, we’ve lowered the cover price of this 221-page book from $20 to $14.99, making it an even better value than before. And, with your 30% MUG discount, it’s only $10.49.
Buy Take Control of Apple Mail, Fourth Edition for $10.49 with your MUG discount OR Get more information about this book
Note: You may have heard about a new encryption issue called EFAIL that can affect Apple Mail. This issue was discovered too late to cover it in the book, but we have an article with complete details here: What You Need to Know About the EFAIL Vulnerability. (Short version: it’s not as big of a deal as the press is making it out to be.)
This update has been in the works for a long time, and I’m delighted that it’s available at last. If you use Apple Mail on a Mac or iOS device, I hope you’ll consider purchasing a copy so that you can have the best possible email experience.
• Q&A introduction (https://www.facebook.com/appleJAC.org/videos/1851322228498488/)• Q&A before break (https://www.facebook.com/appleJAC.org/videos/1851328378497873/)• Q&A after break (https://www.facebook.com/appleJAC.org/videos/1851345228496188/)
Mark your Calendars! appleJAC Users Group in Jefferson City is hosting a Question and Answer meeting at 7:00pm on May 1 at Immaculate Conception School, Kennedy Hall.
This is a golden opportunity to get your nagging questions answered on Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, or anything Apple-related. This group, that meets monthly, has a wealth of knowledge relating to all things Apple. If it was made by Apple, or connects to an Apple device, we will do our best to answer your questions.
Feel free to bring you computer, phone or tablet along and get those questions you have answered. Since many people will have questions, you will likely learn about many things you were afraid to ask about. You can ask questions from the floor or write them down and submit them. There are no dumb questions!
You don’t have to be a member to attend, so mark May 1 on your calender and plan to learn more about your Mac, iPhone to iPad.
by Jason Piper
