SVMUG Meeting — February 19, 2007

Introduction

— Kodak, Winds of Change — An amusing corporate video, suggesting how Kodak plans to address the digital landscape.

New Kodak printers with CHEAP ink cartridges.

Many new people tonight

— Richard — long time Mac user — SRI former employee — has purchased about 15 Macs over the years. — SMUG sent him.

— Christopher — purchased first Mac in 1993 — likes it as a secure development platform.

— Carol — Lynda brought her here — classical artist

— John — retiree — uses a Mac in his volunteer work — started with a Mac Plus — has an iMac now.

— Mike — since 1985 Mac user — just switched to Mac OS X.

News and Events

1. Apple TV — shipping real soon now — end of February.
2. New Base Station — available now
3. iPhone — shipping in June?
4. Leopard — due in the Spring — by June 22nd? But WWDC is June 15th.
5. New ads — security — Vista users come to a sad realization
6. Bill Gates interview — has he lost it? He seems to gotten his facts backwards during a Steve Levy interview. He claimed that Windows has only one security flaw per month or less, whereas the Mac is being cracked EVERY SINGLE DAY. Huh? What is he smoking. Also Ballmer now claims that MS does not expect to make much money on Vista. Forbes has panned Vista as having no wow.
7. Mossberg and Pogue are advocating getting a Mac rather than upgrading to Vista.
8. Parallels is offering a new release that allows Windows applications to run as if native Macintosh applications. Version 3.x will be released in a couple of months.
9. VMware, the king of virtual software, has released a competitive virtualization tool.
10. Apple and the Beatles have at long last reached an accord. Basically Apple Corporation has purchased the (Beatles) Apple Corp, and licensed the trademark back to the record company. Will the Beatles catalog appear on the iTS?
11. The options backdating problems are fading, though executives are still at risk. No evidence has been advanced that Steve Jobs is culpable. Also it is not clear that it was illegal to back date options, at the time that Apple did this.
12. The problem has however raised the question of who might succeed Steve if necessary.
13. “Thoughts on Music” by Steve Jobs, an essay, calls for removal of DRM altogether. The music industry has responded strongly, supporting DRM. 25 to 50 cents of a CD sale goes to the artist, the rest goes to the record company, with very large profits. The cultural attitude of the entertainment industry has always been “screw over anyone you can.” Record company claim that CDs are pirated at a rate of ten times the legal sales.
14. rumor: Apple is going replace backlighting fluorescent panels with LEDs. The power will drop to 10% of current usage, and will maintain the brightness with age.
15. rumor: 15 inch Mac Book
16. rumor: sub notebook?
17. The original standalone iSight cameras are out of production. However a new monitor is expected with an iSight built in. A third party camera will work just fine.
18. What did Apple do right and Dell do wrong? The quality of the Dell product has decreased. The tech support people read from scripts and do not have sufficient knowledge. Only the high end support group is worthwhile. How does this impact the SOHO as compared to corporate customers. A 30% return rate of the low end computers has been reported. Furthermore, bad bookkeeping has attracted federal attention.
19. What is Apple’s market share? World wide 3%, USA notebooks 12%. However, Apple share is growing. Year over year, Macs grow at 30%, compared to only 10% for the PC market.
20. For security, many corporations are running Active Directory on Mac servers, rather than PC servers.
21. What does Apple do right? Deliver value to the customer.
22. Straw poll - a fair number of members present tonight have purchased Macintosh models via the retail stores.

URL for Apple market share: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=5

Speck Products

“Best Case Scenario” “Products don’t need to be boring” “Our cases have more personality” Cases for iPods, cell phones, satellite radios. Electronic accessories.

Tuff skin case has been a success. Such designs are generated at Speck by brainstorming sessions where the stakeholders kick around variations.

ToughSkin - 2tough — a very rugged iPod case.

SeeThru - Lucid — hardshell of clear plastic.

ActiveSport - Lite — arm band cases.

TechStyle - Cargo — tough canvas, with D ring

TechStyle - Video

TechStyle - Classic — leather

Shuffle puck, to hold cables and the shuffle, tangle free.

The SeeThru line protects the laptops from scratches, and adds neat colors.

Speck reports a million dollar revenue in just three months, for Mac Book cases.

The laptop cases feature feet rubber.

Members are invited to submit an iPhone case design, for a drawing.

Notes

The Speck flyer has a 20% off code, for web purchases, for the next two months.

Next Month

Roxio Toast Ti. — with disk spanning, so very large projects can be archived on several DVD’s in one operation. These DVD’s can be un-archived to any Mac or Windows storage, with an embedded decompressor! Toast is not needed to un-archive the DVD.

Speck Raffle

Big selection of cases and accessories.

Vern Anderson Mike Murray Nice lady who did the deco design Louise Mrs. Janice Wyatt Pat Peter Susanne Walker O’Brian Dave Strom Kat Austin

SVMUG Raffle

Copies of Make and of Craft Toast Ti version 8 Google Hacks Yahoo! Hacks Excel Hacks iPod, the Missing Manual

Q&A

1. When I upgrade Adobe or other players, do I need to delete the old versions? Where are these hidden?

Many people do not bother to throw away the old versions — it does not seen to hurt. Adobe updates the existing Acrobat reader.

1. How can I make a compendium DVD from clips taken from DVDs I own? I can use MacTheRipper. How do I use this with iMovie? Should I use DV quality? How do I transfer to iDVD?

Use Toast to convert DVD vom files to DV. Another application is DVDxDV version 1.3x which is shareware. This allows you to select clips to pull from the DVD and save as a Quicktime movie. Yet another application is Cinematize, which is an expensive commercial product ($130).

1. Finder shortcuts do not show up in the keyboard shortcuts of the keyboard perference panel. Why? When first created, the shortcuts show, but disappear over time.

We have no idea what is happening. Try eliminating the plist.

1. Can I transfer from a Mac 6100 PowerMac (OS 7.5.3) to an PowerPC (G3) iMac (Mac OS X)?

These programs might run under the Classic mode of your iMac —- but that is not certain. If you do not have Classic, you are out of luck. Also, OS 9.1 may not run on your iMac, you may need OS 9.2.

1. Whqt is a good programming development environment? Where can I attend classes or get training?

Xcode is a reasonable IDE, and is shipped with Mac OS X. You should consider joining the Apple Developer Connection. The basic level of ADC is free.

1. Will Mac users need to worry about viruses, as the platform becomes more popular?

Theoretically, yes, but practically, no. Look out for MS office script worms, and passing along PC viruses. Keep your firewall on! The vast majority of anti-virus software is useless on a Mac, and maybe even damaging. ClamXav is open source and does a good job.

Deep Freeze preserves baseline computer settings, and can be useful recovery from attacks.

1. How do I control the ordering of tracks, so as to match the original LP, when manually importing tracks from vinyl into iTunes? I wish the CD to match the original record.

In iTunes, you can edit the track number of each song, using the “Get Info” command.

1. Can I transfer “Boot Camp” Windows settings and files into Parallels?

When you do a fresh install of Windows XP, it will offer the ability to import another Windows partition.

1. What are the best brands of memory upgrade boards?

Do not buy from Fry’s (so says one member).

One member suggests “RAM Direct”.

Also “dealram”, “crucial”.

Avoid “Viking”, “Consair”

1. When transferring photos from HD into iPhoto, the image window is initially blank, until I double click it. Why? What to do? It seems the thumbnail version is missing or was not created.

Other members have seen this same problem, but do not remember how it was fixed.

1. Frequently my Airport connection drops out, and a reboot or sleep/wake-up is required to bring it back. Why? What to do?

It seems that relays have this problem. Cordless phones on 2.4 GHz will cause problems. One member notes this also happens with Linksys wireless routers. Dealing with WiFi is frankly a “dark art.” We wait patiently for some one to smooth all the kinks out.

1. How do I add an Automator action (application) to the Finder menu and/or keyboard shortcuts?

Use the Applescript utility to enable the Applescript menu, and add the desired action to the scripts in the library.

1. In Airport client settings, what does “Use Interference Robustness” actually do? How does it work? When should I use it?

One member feels it does not do much of anything. Supposably it is only necessary if there is a LOT of noise. Minor noise situations likely are not improved by this feature. Noise by the way affects data transfer speed, not so much the range of WiFi. Use MacStumbler to check your neighbor.

1. When the “login Items” are loaded, the focus stays on the last item that is loaded (which is NOT necessarily the last item in the list). I would like the focus to be on the Finder after all login items have been started. How can this be done?

We do not know.