SVMUG - March 19, 2007

7:00 - Introduction

Dave Strom - moderating.

New members — Joy - long time graphical Mac user. Also uses PC. Adobe CS and ADC Canvas. Pat - long time Mac user. Works with seniors, and uses Reunion.

7:08 - News

Apple iPhone commercial - played during the Academy Awards - very low key. A series of movie clips, showing famous actors answering the phone (“hello”), e.g. Bogart in The Matese Falcon, Lucille Ball from her TV series, going on for about half of a minute of clips. The week afterward, a popular past time on Mac forums was to guess the movie titles.

10.4.9 update has been released - there is a claim that there is a bug in the system optimizer. It is said to be best to allow the optimizer work with no other applications running.

Daylight Saving Time - appears to be relatively issue free for Macintosh computers.

NAB (National Association of Broadcasters — Television) is coming up during April 16-19. Rumor: Final Cut Pro HD to be upgraded.

Apple TV ships tomorrow! (As rumor has it.) [Rumor was right.]

MS Office has been updated - in particular for dealing with Daylight Saving Time.

Clinton Forbes in his Blog reports that 50% of Windows Vista is written in INTERCAL. The blog entry is a joke. Half a dozen Mac news sites picked up the story and ran it as being true. INTERCAL is a satirical programming language, as many older programmers will recognize. See http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/

The Onion reports that iLaunch is a new Apple product for unveiling new Apple products. Apparently it is a program that emulates Steve Jobs. It is the application that has unveiled a whole new perspective on how to unveil applications.

Where is iLife ‘07? We do not know.

The backlight in Mac Books might be changed to an LED mechanism, rather than the currently used plasma panel. This would lower power costs.

It is possible that Leopard will be released on May 11. Or June 4. Or June 21. Or tomorrow. Maybe it happened yesterday.

Additional rumors hold that iPhone components will ship in April.

New processors coming for laptops? It does appear a solid state laptop might be released soon. (That’s a laptop that uses flash memory for the storage, rather than a hard disk drive. Such a device is still called a “drive”, except it has no moving components.)

Disney clears Steve Jobs in options backdating probe.

A member reports that Apple provided an iPod to replace his badly damaged original purchase, even though it was almost — with a few days to go — out of warranty.

A member recommends taking advantage of over-the-air digital broadcasting. It’s free!!! iTV 500 will allow you to receive these broadcasts.

Drive Genius upgrades are FREE if you call Prosoft and they find your registration as having come from a purchase at a user group.

7:40 - Presentation: Roxio, Toast 8 Titanium

Dave: I used Toast to back up large files to multiple DVD’s, so that the pieces can be automatically rejoined from the backup discs.

Patrick - product manager for Roxio Toast — who is Canadian.

What is Toast?

Disc burning — and everything else — for the Mac.

The Toast Way: drag and burn.

Bundled with Motion Pictures HD (with Ken Burns Effect), Disc Cataloger Maker, Disc Cover for making CD labels.

How is it different from the Finder browser? Data Spanning allows you to take as much data as you like, and have it burned onto multiple CD-ROMs.

Toast Audio CD — can not burn iTMS songs. But can burn other music, to either audio CD or MP3 CD, with crossfades, and normalization. Audio Unit support is also included — these are audio effects plug-ins.

Toast Disk Catalog — keeps a record of all files burned to a disc. The cataloger will help you find a given file from the collection of back up discs.

Exclusice source of “TiVo” to go, for the Macintosh. This allows for putting Tivo captured video onto DVD.

$99.95 on web site — user group specials are available via a special URL. Check with the presenter for the URL.

e-mail: toastfeedback@roxio.com

8:52 - Break - Dave Strom

9:10 - Group Q & A

1. Best OCR software?

   • OmniPage Pro, ReadIris,

2. In a URL, the string %20 is used to represented a space.

3. Warning: do not “manually” move files around inside the iPhoto library folder. Such an action will destroy the iPhoto library.

4. Recommend replacement hard drives.

   • buy Seagate only, in the opinion of the membership.

5. iWorks is freezing. What to do? Use force quit from the finder, under the Apple menu. Also try the keystoke combination apple-option-esc. Also try to control-click the application icon in the dock.

6. Can I use OS 9 applications with OS X?

Yes, provided you install OS X as an upgrade to OS 9. Then the OS 9 system files will be retained, and the Classic utility will allow the launching the applications. Warning: Classic will NOT run on an Intel machine, and will NOT run under the forthcoming Leopard OS X. [Time to respectfully bury the old Classic applications and move on.]

1. Parallels is requesting that a network cable be connected to a “virtual” network adapter. What to do?

We do not have an answer. Obviously, you can plug a cable into a virtual connector. Maybe the Parallels needs to be reconfigured or even re-installed.

1. A DVD from Germany is not reading, though I have the region code set correctly. Another DVD from the same source works fine.

The DVD itself may be damaged. Try using a ripper tool to grab the content, and burn a new disc. Also, try to clean the drive. The tool is “VLC”.

1. I had to use 53 hours to back up files (25.6 GB) over a USB 1.1 port. Is that normal?

Yes, that is reasonable. You should consider using Firewire or USB 2.0. Also be aware of power limitations.

1. CD is not accessible, and after a couple attempts, all CD and DVD reading ceased.

Likely, a hardware repair is called for. Moving parts do wear out.

1. The battery on an older Powerbook (Lombard) slides into a left side bay. The battery connection seems to be failing. The right side bay works fine. Can some one do this repair?

Look on line at “I fix it”. You can find instructions for a do it yourself project.

Sadly though, the cost of the fix exceeds the resell value of this old Powerbook.

1. An iMac G5 has a high temperature warning, from Disk Warrior 4 hardware test.

There are several temperature sensors. You need to determine which one is the problem.

9:30 - Finish up and raffle

9:45 Post-meeting at BJ’s