Bournemouth — Oct 16th 2012

After the usual Q & A session with discussion about the Safari Bookmarks Bar and one member experiencing slow speed after loading Mountain Lion, Alan used his iPad 2 to give a live demonstration of FaceTime which is an App that comes with iPad 2 and 3, iPhone as well as with Lion and Mountain Lion. You sign in with your Apple ID or create a new account to set it up. This enables you to make video calls over Wi-Fi to someone else's Apple device. Alan was soon speaking and seeing his brother who was in his lounge in his Bournemouth home. After a brief chat together and waves from the attendees at Solutions, Alan dealt with questions. It seems to be a good alternative to Skype, and is used by Alan's brother and his relatives in different parts of Europe.

David Fleetwood followed with a presentation about Parental Controls, included in System Preferences. This is aimed at making it safe for children (and visitors perhaps, as a member suggested) to use your Mac without direct supervision. David described how it works and how to set it up from System Prefs by creating a new account or using an existing account. We were shown that this can control inappropriate Content, hide profanity in Dictionary, limit the websites that can be seen, limit use of Mail and iChat and set time limits on the use of a particular computer. David covered the pro's and con's and stressed that it is not entirely foolproof, especially if the user is 'computer savvy'. However it is simple to set up and will probably be adequate in most situations.

After the coffee break Christopher from Solutions demonstrated the main aspects of iOS 6. This is the operating system used in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch which all have the multi-touch intuitive interface for dealing with Apps at the touch of a finger. Christopher stressed that the new OS is not dramatically different to iOS 5 but there are some useful improvements such as when preparing a travel route to a particular destination. The demonstration of 3D photos was impressive and interesting but evidently not all towns and cities are well covered at present. Some members were disappointed with the new Maps, echoing views in the Wamug forum discussions but it was felt that Apple would be working hard to improve matters asap. Christopher showed us the new iPod Touch and iPod Nano with slimmer designs and larger displays which he passed around the interested audience. Finally there was a look ahead to an Apple event on 23 October when the strong rumours of a new iMac being announced could come about.

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