Dorchester — Oct 13th 2015

Mark opened the evening with an entertaining Keynote presentation about Calendar, starting with a look back at earlier Personal Information Manager apps — he even turned up an entry dated Jan 20th 1995 from Claris Organiser an early PIM app. He showed how to create, share and subscribe to calendars on both Mac and IOS and how in recent OSX and iOS versions you can click on a date entry within the text of an email and have it saved direct to Calendar.

David showed the use of the split screen feature in El Capitan both on a single desk top and via Mission Control, and examined the totally revised Notes App on both El Capitan and IOS 9. It is now possible to include photos, video, URL links. maps etc. He showed how, by using the Share feature in Apps, it is now possible to share with Notes. The IOS 9 version even includes a simple drawing screen.

After the break Georgia explained why she prefers to use Calendars by Readdle mainly due to its more attractive and informative interface and simpler ways to enter dates etc. She showed how the App shares the same database as Calendar and can therefore work across devices via iCloud.

Very squeezed for time, Euan introduced us to three new photo editing Apps. Acorn 5 is a relatively simple photo editing App which offers features the next level up from those built into Photos such as layers and more filters. Acorn 5 integrates into Photos very neatly, you just click on the Share icon in Photos and the option to Open in Acorn 5 is available. Once editing is complete the photo is saved back into Photos. While Acorn is an excellent little App for £29.99, Euan emphasised that the much more sophisticated Affinity Photo is irresistible at £39.99. It has won the coveted Apple Software Award for 2015, and is rated 5 Stars and Editors Choice on the App Store. When accessed from within Apple’s Photos, Affinity Photo offers a subset of extensions to Apple’s software. Affinity Photo is designed for the Mac from the ground up and looks likely to become an able alternative to Adobe’s definitive but costly software. Serif Software, who make the Affinity suite, supports their apps with an excellent range of tutorial videos hosted by Vimeo showing individual features and techniques. Euan showed an introductory video and a couple of the how-to videos, very impressive. He ended by giving us a quick preview of Affinity Designer which is to Adobe Illustrator as Affinity Photo is to Adobe Photoshop. The third member of the suite, Affinity Publisher is due in 2016.

Apologies to Sheena for failing to give her a moment to her show the excellent and attractive Twisted Powerbank Phone backup battery still available for £6 at https://shar.es/17eXN1.

Comments

Page 1