We arrived at the Colliton Club to find “our room”, the Dorset Room, full of bee keepers. After some delays 12 of us were able to squeeze into the Churchill Room where under Euan’s tuition and guidance we entertained ourselves being creative in iMovie, David Parnell walking away with trophy (a packet of M&Ms) for the best movie.…
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Presentations on Computer Security (Barry) and Monterey (Mick) were given to the group of members and guests, 14 in total. Mick was able to demonstrate in real-time the value of iCloud in enabling the transfer of documentation between computers some miles distant from each other. A lively discussion on how individual members managed password retention and personal security showed that current best practice had not been always adopted. Hopefully, meetings such as this will…
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Before giving a talk on the basics of using Zoom and how to receive help one to one by sharing your screen, Mick chaired a discussion on the balance between physical and online meetings. The overwhelming view in the case of Dorchester was to stay with the monthly physical meetings. In areas where support is insufficient to warrant hiring a hall and organising a meeting then some online meeting is the best substitute. Mick explained…
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Given the uncertainty over what regulations would be in place for a physical meeting, we switched to Zoom for this month. Ten members attended 'virtual Warsash' and David talked us through some of the new and interesting features of iOS 15, including LiveText (built-in OCR), two-factor authentication, FaceTime screen sharing, and on iPad, split view and other new features for multitasking. After physical tea-breaks, the usual broader discussions followed. …
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Mick showed various Christmas communications tips including making a card on line using moonpig.com, one of many providers of similar services, which include postage. He then showed how to make a card on a Mac or iPad using two pages A4 in landscape divided into 4 x A5, advising the need to use thick enough paper/card and the how to manage the layout front and back, suggesting a dummy run on ordinary paper…
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Ten members attended this month- smaller, but still perfectly formed! Mick showed us some of the ways and means to produce Christmas cards on Macs and iPads- from ordering via Moonpig to the full DIY option with Pages (or Word, or Affinity, or...). Next was preparing your round-robin Christmas newsletter together with the use of Instant Alpha (a tool which removes backgrounds - or indeed any colour you choose) so the text more closely flows…
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Prior to the help session over coffee and mince pies Mick showed us various ways to prepare for Christmas with the aid of our Macs or iPads. He showed how to make bespoke Christmas cards using one of the many commercial offerings as well as doing it entirely from scratch yourself (remember to change Document Body to Layout mode when using Pages). Next was preparing your round-robin Christmas newsletter together with the use of…
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The assembled group demonstrated their inability to connect external loudspeakers prior to Euan's latest detailed presentation on the evolution of chip architecture culminating in Apple's M1 designs. Help was provided to one of those attending who was hoping to be able in due course to transfer significant data to a new iPad from an ancient tablet but no longer had the associated Apple ID. A second part of Barry's Favourite Things was also shown. Time…
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A small (8 people) gathering saw David Moon present some of the new features in the latest releases of IOS & iPadOS 15, now at15.1. There are several major new features though depend on having more modern devices.
David demonstrated LiveText, where text from the camera or any photo can be copied as text (using in-built OCR) to be pasted or sent anywhere. Text can also be translated into, or from, a…
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Eleven members came to the Victory Hall to hear Stuart's talk on how Apple found a new operating system for the Mac, and saved itself from collapse- not just because that new OS came complete with Steve Jobs. Back in 1984, the Mac was designed & heavily optimised for a single user to run a single application, which could do a single task at once. But given the pace of hardware and software development, those…
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