Eleven members came to Warsash for a general Q&A session. Topics included passwords, how to connect a Bluetooth speaker, a somewhat unusual case where an attendee's friend had a problem with email on his iPad (said friend being unwilling to attend in person), a continuation of the audio-related questions of last month, the Health app in iOS, and preserving battery health on portable devices. As per usual with Q&A, everyone…
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After a bit of trouble with the projector we discovered how to mirror a phone to a laptop so as to project the phone screen (direct projection of the phone had eluded us). The group then shared details of frivolous, time-filling, grandchildren amusing apps they had on their devices. We learned that dominos has hidden depths, that mancala, versions of which date back past the 3rd century and evidence suggests the game existed in…
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This first meeting of 2023 was attended by thirteen members and two guests, and most availed themselves downstairs of either the dinner menu or light refreshments prior to the main business upstairs.
Barry opened the meeting by paying tribute to Helen, who died suddenly at the end of last year. She had been a valued member, had helped on several occasions with the distribution of promotional material, and had made her garden available…
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Eight members endured the wet & windy weather and came to this meeting. Stuart talked on 'Teaching an old Mac new tricks'. His Mac Pro dates from 2010. Official Mac OS support ceased with Mojave. It has one-seventh the CPU power of a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and it's slower in every way. You might think it's only good for running old software, and…you'd be wrong. It can, with a few…
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David M gave an explanation and demonstration of Apple’s new Freeform App. As this is designed to be used for collaborative brainstorming with more that one participant David P joined in adding items to and writing on the board via his iPad. As well as writing and sketching with an Apple Pencil you can add pictures, videos, sound tracks, links , clip art etc. across an almost limitless area, zooming in and out and…
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Mac's come with many applications some of which many people are unaware. David P highlighted several of them including: chess, dictionary, image capture, stickies, digital color meter, disk utilities and voice memo. During and after the break there were lively 1:1 discussions to solve members issues with their own devices.…
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Following the AGM, 18 members present, Euan gave a talk on Stage Manager, the new way of organising working files, introduced with Ventura and iPad OS 16.1 requiring modern hardware. Euan reminded us of prior, still current, options, Mission Control, multiple desktops, split screen and stacks. He showed a brief section from Craig Federighi’s Apple event presentation of Stage Manager before showing greater detail of how to use it on both the…
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With Stuart having a transport problem, we had to cope without him, but decided to stick with the subject of backups with Mick in the chair. We opted to have each member tell us what they do regarding backing up. There was excellent participation by everyone and overall a pretty reassuring standard, ranging from relying on Apple’s built in backups via the cloud and IMAP for email accounts, Time Machine, a home file…
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Having explained the virtues of Apple Notes last month David P demonstrated how to access and use some of these features. The final slide asked 'How can you live without it?' Beaminster members departed fired up to give it a go. But before they left there were mince pies and hot chocolate served while people worked in small groups to answer questions and solve problems.…
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This last meeting on the year was well attended with 13 regular members and 2 guests present. David Moon gave a full review of the many enhancements present in iOS 16 and showed examples of selecting in a photo the main image and removing it from the background, thus making it available for posting elsewhere. He also showed how Apple's use of artificial intelligence was able to accurately identify a plant from a photo. How…
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