Dorchester — Nov 27th 2007

This was our last meeting before Christmas in Dorchester, and we also wanted to celebrate the arrival of the iPhone and iTouch.

We were able to prevail upon the kindness of our Dorchester O2 shop (7 South Street) to stay open between 6pm and 7pm leaving us just a short half hour to set up the Colliton Club meeting for 7.30.

The O2 iPhone and iTouch "pre-meeting" went extremely well, with plenty of hands-on experience to be had with staff who knew their stuff. This attracted ten Wags members and family, the youngest (for a short visit) being just six, and one new Wags member, welcome David!

The staff had laid on mince pies and lemonade, and it was a very convivial meeting. Those present were given goody bags which, apart for sales literature, included a warm scarf and hat, an O2 keyring, two biros, and a chemical handwarmer sachet for emergencies in the winter.

The potential for diplomatic disaster at our main meeting was averted when the O2 Manageress brought out an armful of further bags, and announced discounts -- for those present (and friends) who present official signed cards to the shop Manageress -- of £69 off the physical iPhone (not the essential O2 contract) and £20 off the iTouch -- one week only from Weds 28th Nov. to next Tuesday, and a limit of two per person.

We are very grateful to O2 staff for their warm, knowledgeable and generous welcome which was fully in the best traditions of the Apple-Mac tribe.

The main meeting at the Colliton Club started with a presentation by Nigel Coke-Woods of "LaunchBar". This is a chocolate coated fruit and nut, mayan orange chocolate truffle version of the old OS9 Launcher for OSX building on Spotlight and scripting which learns your working ways to produce the most amazing confection of options (especially if you are good at remembering shortcut keystrokes). Just $11 (£6 -ish) on the net, dazzling and highly recommended software -- all for the price of a few bars of Cadbury's finest.

Steve Ryder then introduced us to all the undiscovered behind-the-scenes capabilities of Appleā€™s "Preview" in photo edits, .pdf annotations, notes, and other useful delights.

The demo of VM Ware's virtualisation software for running Linux (and certain other less savoury software) on the Mac within OSX has had to be held over until January due to our speaker's close and immediate involvement with Handel's Messiah.

After the break, we had questions and discussions followed by a brief and unsophisticated foray into the new delights of Filemaker's "Bento" database public beta (Net, free, valid until 14th Feb 08). This promises well as the family/small business database of choice to join Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

And so we wandered off into the night, clutching our Macs and goody bags, hats, scarves and warming sachets...

Happy Christmas to all,
Euan Williams
Organiser, WaMug (west)

Comments

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Mark Ford said…

IMPORTANT CORRECTION:
THE DISCOUNT ON iPhone MENTIONED ABOVE IS £69 AND NOT £100.
Sorry for the error.
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