May 6, 2008

15 members and guests attended our May meeting. It's great to see so many new faces at our table!
Mike McGrail spoke on Applescript. He demonstrated several simple scripts, showing us the value of the tool for saving time in modifying large numbers of files. He also gave us a brief look at Automator.
Roger also gave a fine presentation on the basics of iWeb.
Thanks, as always, to Donna and Dave, who brought tea and candy for tonight's snacks.

John gave us a taste of next month's program on the upcoming simple laptop meant for schoolchildren in developing countries.

April 1, 2008

About a dozen members convened for an informal meeting which was largely given over to solving members' problems. These ranged from system upgrade installation issues with Bill B.'s new MacBook Pro to John's desire to get a new Skype account functioning.

As always, Donna and Dave graciously provided light refreshment.

Next month, Roger has agreed to give us a rundown on iWeb, and John on the new Bento personal database.

March 4 2008
16 members and guests turned out for the presentation by Tom Morton, the Apple rep. He brought a Mac Book Air, which lived up to its name, lighter than any other computer.He agrees that it's not for everybody, but it saves a lot of weight for frequent travelers. Many professionals are buying it as a second computer. He emphasized the ability of Apple to tightly integrate hardware and software, for example the fan of a Mac Book runs less than a comparable PC, because the hardware isn't working as hard.
He said there are many features in Leopard that have barely been taken advantage of yet, such as the text reader. Apple's Core Animation enables people to use just one simple function of a complicated program, without waiting for a full launch. Speaking of specific programs, he mentioned that pdf files can be combined in Preview, so many people may never need Acrobat. Pages is good simple program for page layout.
He also advised a new guest on best laptop for his needs as a musician.

We were all happy to hear that Apple is really doing well in the portable market. It's now the top brand in laptops among students.

Donna and Dave treated us to a variety of sodas and candy for snacks.

February 5, 2008
A small group of regular members enjoyed a presentation by John of videos featuring some of the latest toys from Apple. Both the MacBook Air and the Apple TV look like fun toys
.Lloyd also demonstrated a photo editing program called Irfan. It's PC only, but it's a cheap way to make simple changes to images.
Dave and Donna provided juice and sweets for refreshment. A tip of the hat to them!

December 4, 2007
The regular members and guests benefited from both Jean Bemis's marvelous holiday treats and Bill's review of a Mac font package. Bill added to the software review with considerable background on typographic design.
We will not meet in January, owing to the holidays. We'll look forward to a good February '08 turnout! Happy Holidays!

November 6, 2007
Owing to a light turnout, Bill's presentation on fonts and typography was postponed 'til the December meeting. The Q&A session centered on cable modems, security, and email anomalies. We concluded with a door prize drawing in which everyone went home a winner.
Also, we decided that we would not meet in January, owing to the fact that the first Tuesday is New Years day.

October 2, 2007
Donna, in addition to providing the usual delicious refreshments, gave a presentation on several Photoshop plug-ins designed to speed up repetitious editing tasks. This was preceded by the usual lively Q&A session.

September 4, 2007

There was no August meeting.

The September meeting featured a presentation by John of the new iLife suite from Apple. iPhoto in particular seems to have very impressive new tools, especially for syncing your web sites with the photos on your home computer.

Thanks to Dave who brought in a tasty assortment of dried fruits and lemonade for our refreshment.

July 3, 2007

The meeting was another round-robin of questions, problems, and even a few solutions.John helped Donna work out some steps in putting a slide show into iMovie and iDVD. We also had a discussion on Skype (VOIP) and Bill's success in using it for videochats.

Donna provided refreshments and has also volunteered to review some plug-ins for Photoshop Elements.

June 5, 2007

Early in the meeting,we established that the university connection only allows 3 users online at once.Roger, Bob and John made an extended attempt at setting up a 3-way iChat connection. To no avail. It's possible that the university connection also interfered with that.

Other discussions in small groups included quick lessons on skype and another on scripting.

Thanks as always to our refreshment czars, Donna and Dave, for cookies and lemonade. She also dispensed another round of Apple goodies from Cupertino in a raffle drawing.

See the Minutes Archive for notes from meetings over a year ago.