Dorchester — Oct 14th 2014

David M. opened a discussion on IOS 8 by regretting the loss of the camera roll and photo stream but seemed a loan voice. More positively David P. demonstrated the excellent enhancements to the camera and the ability to select the area in picture to focus on first and then to adjust lighting. Mick then demonstrated the much improved editing facilities in the photo app. Both Sheena and John had had problems updating to iOS 8 via iTunes, and John described how he had, with help from Mick, unscrambled the problem: iTunes was getting screwed up! By shear determination and going round in loops Sheena had managed successfully as well. Mick explained why, for devices with little spare local memory, it is necessary to upgrade via iTunes rather than direct via the cloud from Apple’s servers. Mick warned that the iPhone 4S, while able to run IOS 8, was noticeably slower than when running IOS 7.

Tom described a frustrating loss of speed on his new fibre to cabinet TalkTalk broadband. Mick warned against relying too much on broadband speed reading apps and services but also gave good advice on how to deal with a supplier’s warning that, if they come to your house and the problem is in the house, they will make a charge e.g. £120. Just suggest that, if the problem is their’s, you will charge them for the expensive advisor you have had to pay to help you sort the problem!

After the break John proved an excellent auctioneer and Tom sportingly raised the bidding for a copy of Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Steve Jobs donated by Mark. Thanks to Tom, mince pies at the December meeting! Lionel then gave a short and sweet demonstration of AirParrot, a small App which allows older Macs to benefit from AirPlay and had the screen of his MacBook displayed on the big screen via Airplay and the Apple TV connected to the projector; a great little App.

With so much lively discussion David decided his talk on Bitcoin could wait and we moved on to a advice from Euan on upgrading to Yosemite which would be available from Thursday evening. He listed the generations of computers than can be upgraded to Yosemite which includes any machine already running Mavericks. The best method is to install Yosemite on a clean partition and then use migration assistant to transfer your documents, applications and settings. If you decide not to upgrade this way and your machine is running an earlier version of OS X, he emphasised the importance of making a complete cloned backup of your computer drive. Then to upgrade step by step including all updates: Snow Leopard to Lion to Mountain Lion to Mavericks and, finally, Yosemite. Though you can rely on Time Machine, using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper is strongly recommended. Needless to say Euan could not resist emphasising the advantages of partitioning large drives!  Following discussion about the Yosemite upgrade it was decided that the Apple Watch presentation had also been timed out.

Comments

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David Moon said…

Happy to note that the Camera Roll is reinstated in IOS 8.1
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