Dorchester — Dec 11th 2012
Euan commenced by telling us of his positive experience with his Mac Goody "Shop"
CK IT Computers Poole - Mac repairs and sales [undisclosed telephone].
It's not really a shop, so you have to contact them before making a visit.
Tom demonstrated the slide scanner which the Group has purchased.
4 members have borrowed it so far. It is a fairly simple device costing around £100. The distributors' (Ion) helpline has been found to be useful and knowledgeable. Tom demonstrated the scanner in operation, and showed how quickly a number of slides can be transferred to the Mac. He is keeping a list of members who wish to use the scanner, and arranging a schedule.
Martin talked about, and showed, each iPad that had been on sale, plus one or two related pieces of equipment.
First was the pioneering Newton (1993). This was notable for its handwriting recognition, amongst other features.
iPad 1 The first iPad. Relatively heavy and bulky, and won't take ios5 - therefore obsolete.
iPad 2 selling for around £349 on eBay - still worth buying.
iPad 3 actually heavier than 2.
ipad 4 for his pattern of usage not much faster than 3 in practice. Can buy a Wireless keyboard (£90) which acts as a cover.
Android £179. Good for maps, widgets, shortage of useful apps. Good for Google apps, mysterious and frustrating lack of compatibilities. Difficult to transfer material from iTunes.
iPad mini spec as iPad 2. Good, light, but picture small, if used to larger iPad.
Q&A
Mark showed his new iMac with very thin profile and no DVD drive - Mark commented on very good and responsive service in replacing faulty machine
Martin commented that Apple maps are still very poor. A Google Maps app is uncertain, because of conflicting commercial interests.
Michael spoke on Pages - some small things you can do
- Drawing attention to sections of text - draw colour background object to fit text - and send this to background
- Instant alpha in pictures - click and drag to e.g. remove background
- Use Reflections to add interest
- Create Organisation charts
- There is a range of formats available for exporting.
- To make booklet can reorder pages in Preview by dragging, or CocoaBooklet / Createbooklet
- He also demonstrated Templates, Styles, Mailmerge, and Services (incl find and replace).
There were two additional apps which he recommended_
Xtrafinder, a free app which produces tabbed finder, and
Speedy.app, which shows list of recently opened applications, and documents.
SR
Comments
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Mark Ford said…
Michael Corgan said…
It will produce a list of Documents showing your favourite files, if any and separately a list of applications in which recent files have been opened. Move the cursor to the appropriate application and a sub-list of rlast opened files appears. It is only necessary to click on the file for the application to lai=unch and the file to open. It has the same format for Recent Folders, which it opens in a Finder window, and also for Applications. Then it has a Clipboard which shows Plain text clippings, Rich Text ditto, Imagesand Links. The last are recently used email addresses. Then it has a list of Workflows such as Open a New Folder, and Eject a Disk, to which you can add your own creations. Finally it has a list of Open Applications and Open Wndows. Not sure why you would need these, certainly in Snow Leopard. Oh and also, Xtrafinder allows you to click on a file in one tab of the folder move it to another tab and drop it into the appropriate folder - quite handy.
Eleanor Spenceley said…
iPad 1 won't take ios6 and limited RAM makes it slow down with just a few running Apps. It therefore is not recommended to buy secondhand.
Wireless keyboard/cover for iPad is from Logitech is called 'Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover'. It's compatible with iPad 2,3 and 4.
The Google Maps app is now out for iPhone and it looks really good, there's even a developers API available! An iPad version is still promised sometime soon.
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