SVMUG April 21, 2008

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Introductions

Host: Charles Gousha We are in the Beatles Room tonight. In the future, we will be using the Garage Rooms. The Town Hall room is now into the future restricted to Apple corporate events.

First timers: visitor from DVMUG. DVMUG is also concerned about the aging of the membership, and they are having to rethink their annual dues of $35 which pays for meetings and printed newsletter, and office space and internet connection.

We have a handout explaining the process for member presentations.

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News and Events

Everybody pay their taxes? Use TurboTax without crashing the servers?

Apple stock is up on analyst remarks. Earnings will be reported on this coming Wednesday. Generally Apple goes up on the rumor, and down on the news, as Apple guidance is usually very conservative. A good quarter is expected.

Three different commentators have promoted Apple in the enterprise, and have characterized Windows as broken. IBM has a pilot project at their research center of installing Macintosh computers. 80% of the users in the pilot project indicated that they wish to continue using Mac. IBM is making applications to be three-platform-compatible.

Windows 7 is said to be shipping in a year, and many users may leapfrog, skipping Vista.

Popular Mechanics has compared Macs to Dell (running Windows). The study concluded that Mac running OS X is faster than PC running Vista. In fact, Mac running Vista are faster than PC running Vista. And for comparable features, the Mac is $300 cheaper.

Psystar claims to be offering an Apple clone, for $400. Is this vaporware? The box ships with Leopard, purchased from Apple. You are not supposed to install Mac OS X on non-Apple machines, but is it actually possible? Updates may fail and may brick the system. The firmware must somehow be emulated — there are underground open source emulators. The firmware EFI is not exclusive to Apple, after all. It is used by Sun and others.

But there are some suspicious things about Psystar - the office address seems to be fake, as is the shipping address. They have been taking orders (and money).

The box does fill a real need - that of a cheap Mac, like the Mac Mini but with more power.

Online applications, such as Google documents, are becoming more interesting. Adobe is offering Photoshop Express as a web enabled application. It is free, for now, and includes hosting space for the pictures. It is beta.

Web 2.0 conference is underway in San Francisco.

A large number of Apple software updates are out: Quicktime, iTunes, Safari, Time Machine.

For Windows users, the iTunes application pushed Safari, causing much cries of foul from Windows fanboys.

Tidbits “Take Control” books are heavily discounted by 50%.

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Main Presentation - iPlayMusic

Quincy Carol founded his music software company - he comes from a strong musical family background. His academic training is in music, with a speciality in guitar. He came to Silicon Valley looking for music software developers. He was the project manager for the first version of Garageband. His current project is a system for learning to play guitar.

There are a number of guitar tutorial web sites. These are basically text file distributions of scores. For iPlayMusic, the extension is to bring in video to the tutorial experience.

The iPlayMusic web site features demos of DVD tutorials. The videos show fingering with scrolling chords and words.

From this base, he created an application that uses self paced videos and video topic management. You can choose from many different song lessons, of various genres, with e-books, Garageband project files, and follow along videos.

Videos have multiple angles to view the guitar fingering and strumming. The video playback can be slowed while maintaining pitch.

Songs are provided in full versions, guitar only versions, and karaoka versions.

Individual tracks are broken out in Garageband. The videos are all formatted for the iPod screen.

A second product is for young children - using puppets in the videos - and a lot less serious approach.

The DVD has won a Parent’s Choice Award.

Future products will provide for other instruments and a download version, that acts like iTunes, only for instructional videos. For example, you might choose a $35 lesson from a given instructor on some level of instrument play.

Concerning the reason for a boxed product as well as a web application, is that only in locally running version could features like variable speed play be accommodated, with the pitch maintenance.

The box version comes with 26 songs, with a few more available from the online store.

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Break

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Member Presentation

Google Documents

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Q&A

1. iPhone is able to receive email at remote sites, but only sends from home. What is the situation? We are using Earthlink.

Some email servers block relaying unless you are connected through the DSL or dial-up connection. Essentially the service is using the connection authentication to ensure that only valid accounts can send email via the server.

Earthlink will set up customers with an especially designated server for remote email relay.

You might consider gmail, dot-mac, etc.

1. 15 inch MacProBook — I wish a file synchronization that can be configured to sync in just one direction.

SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner.

1. comment on PayPal Safari controversy?

Paypal has no plans to block Safari, though Paypal did complain that Safari does not have sufficient anti-phishing features.

1. Airport menu icon has a delay when being activated.

It is searching for wireless networks. In 10.5, the menu will drop down while the scan is in progress.

1. ATT Yahoo DSL complains that SSL needs to be enabled, but the ATT support people are of no help in setting this up.

You will need to find the help document online. However, the setup is really easy.

1. Wells Fargo web site will not show my banking statements - all I see is a black screen under Safari. Firefox seems to work.

Safari may not be rendering the CSS properly, and Safari updates are coming out frequently.

1. SBCGLOBAL keeps rejecting my password.

The Apple mail application treats failed connections as a bad password response. This is a bug.

1. I have three Jaz disks but no drive. Is one available?

We will post this request.

1. Will iPhone wide screen mode work with mail?

No.

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