appleJAC Users Group

President's Place: August 2014

by Tom Piper

Here we are, squarely in the middle of summer, when the heat has returned (loved that spring-like weather for awhile), and its time to think about our club activities. If you are like me, its hard to stay indoors when there is so much to enjoy outside (okay, there are some choirs there too).

Our last meeting was great fun with information about new operating systems to be released in the Fall, a variety of tips and tricks, how to prepare to resell your technology, all types of storage devices, and the dimensions of data clouds. Winners of the doorprize drawing included:

    Rosalind Moulton    $10 iTunes card
    Bonnie Culley         Caribiner appleJAC pen
    Ken Zindle              appleJAC pen
    Dustin Stark            Caribiner appleJAC pen
    Julie Smith             appleJAC keyring
    Ann Lane                Apple card holder

Our next meeting promises to be new and different with its focus on Apple@Work: How Technology is Used in Education at the Jefferson City Public Schools (JCPS). With a host of Macs, over 3,500 iPads and much more, this will be an interesting display and discussion of how kids are benefitting from technology (see agenda below). Their Technology Instruction Coordinator will be our principal presenter, with the Director of Technology also available for questions.

The meeting location has moved to the JCPS Dix Education Center, located at 204 Dix Road in Jefferson City (see map at bottom for easy directions to get there).

 

Stellar Image Converter: Mac’s Premier Picture Transformer

by Tom Piper

I often find myself converting PDF files into JPG files for a website, or for business publications, and sometimes JPG to PDF. Adobe Acrobat and Apple Preview have worked great for this. But, when I consider other image formats, the task becomes much more difficult. But, now I have a great new solution.

Stellar Image Converter for Mac is the new tool of choice that helps me easily convert my image files from one format to another. It converts image files across multiple platforms supporting conversion of 34 different file types, such as JPG, JPEG, BMP, PSD, PBM, and others into up to 14 file formats like JPEG, JP2, BMP, PSD, PNG, PPM, PDF, TIFF, GIF, and more. This program is compatible with Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.7 Lion, and 10.6 Snow Leopard.  

Stellar Image Converter supports conversion of multiple images of the same file types to one image type. Doing so saves a lot of time. Specifically, the 34 image file formats include JPEG, JPG, JP2, BMP, PSD, PNG, XPM, XBM, PPM, PBM, PGM, TIFF, GIF, TGA, 3FR, ARW, SRF, SR2, NEF, NRW, ORF, PEF, RAF, RAW, MOS, MRW, DCR, K25, KDC, DNG, ERF, CRW, CR2, and MEF. Output image formats include the following 14 formats: JPEG, JP2, BMP, PSD, PNG, XPM, XBM, PPM, PICT, PDF, ICNS, TIFF, GIF, and TGA.

The interface is simple and straight-forward (see right) with the ability to quickly see the sources of my files and folders, viewed as a list, or in Apple’s flip-view. The Quick View works great to preview a larger version, while Convert (when selected) will yield a drop-down list of file formats from which to select the desired type. It is quick, easy and intuitive to use with results that are accurate and predicable. This is a convenient tool for image conversions.

Stellar Image Converter for Mac is available at stellarinfo.com/media-tools/image-converter-mac for $19.99 (reduced from former $29). You can also try-before-you-buy with a free download from their website. This product is just one of many quality products and services from Stellar including disk and password recovery, Mac tools, email tools and repair, database and file repair, and media tools. They have been around since 1993 serving the USA, Europe and Asia with a helpful customer-orientation that I first discovered at Macworld many years ago.

Mac Maintenance Presentations from 07/01/14 Meeting

Just double-click on the title of your choice of any of the following three presentations (contents shown below the title) to download that PDF version to your computer:

 

Download AppleJAC Prep for Resale (by Joe Mertzlufft)

 

Download External Storage presentation (by Tom Piper)

 

Download Cloud Storage Presentation (by George Kopp)

President's Place: July 2014

by Tom Piper

We had a terrific annual picnic this past month at the Landwehr's residence (many thanks to Peggy and John) with over 40 people in attendance. Special thanks also go to Mark Snell and George Kopp for cooking again this year (and their wives, Sue and Alice, for gathering all the supplies necessary to support this effort).

Our next meeting is titled "Mac Maintenance: Prepping for Resale, External Storage and Clouds" (in the future, we will undoubtedly change this to "Apple Maintenance" since we discuss iOS and MacOS devices). The meeting will actually kickoff with a quick overview of the cool announcements about the new features of MaOS 10.10 Yosemite and iOS 8 described at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference including iCloud Photos, Continuity, Health, iCloud Drive, and much more, albeit briefly. This will be followed by interesting presentations about Prepping for Resale (cleaning your devices inside and out), External Storage (including Backup, RAIDs, SSDs, iOS/MacOS devices), and Clouds (iCloud, DropBox, Transporter, SkyDrive, more).

The agenda for this meeting is shown below and will be emailed to members. This will be the last meeting at which we handout a printed paper copy. More and more, we are going all electronic . . .