SVMUG - June 16, 2008

Introduction

Host: Charles Gousha Starting a little late — SOP

The Apple Campus WiFi is now powered by Cisco. As before, you may receive but may not send mail. Except by web clients.

News and Events (and Rumors)

The World Wide Developers Conference was last week. (AKA “The World Wide iPhone Developers Conference”. The number of sessions were increased, as was attendance. The Keynote is available via iTunes.

Snow Leopard was announced.

iPhone 3G: “twice as fast” and “half the cost” (up front - but with the data plan going from $60 per month to $70 per month, you pay an extra $240 over a two year contract). GPS chip has been added. The contract is transferable from older phones.

Release date is July 11 for the iPhone 3G. The new iPhone OS is expected on June 22, prior to the new hardware release. This is a free OS upgrade for all existing iPhone owners.

AT&T will not allow “tethering”, e.g. using the iPhone as a modem for a laptop.

Previously, the iPhone was purchased separately from the AT&T contract, but now the purchase of the iPhone is tied to taking out a contract. The phone must be activated at time of purchase.

The customer is charged $199, but AT&T pays more to Apple for the iPhone. Essentially AT&T is subsidizing the customer’s purchase of the iPhone.

Apple gets 30% of the purchase of iPhone applications via the iTunes Store. But Apple says this is not a profit stream, the amount Apple receives covers hosting costs.

The cost of manufacture of the 3G iPhone is actually less than that of the older iPhone.

Developers are very happy about getting 70% of application sales. Usually, for Palm and Windows Mobile devices, developers only get 30%.

The iPhone applications shown at WWDC are “stunning” [CG].

The SIM card can be swapped (as in the current phone) for using a prepaid international account, should you be traveling internationally.

You can get the phone contract without the 3G data connection. In that case the monthly fee is only $40, but you must use WiFi for all data communications.

You may be able to order a contract that is EDGE only, no 3G, but we are not sure.

Mobile Me to be the rebranding of dot-Mac. And it is Leopard only. iSync is only supported down to OS 10.4. The major new features are the “push” technology for mail, contacts, calendar. The web based calendar and contacts are closely integrated with your desktop applications.

Putting applications on the “cloud”.

The Mobile Me is priced the same as the older dot-Mac.

This will hopefully work better than the old syncing system. All instantaneous.

Full functionality is via Leopard.

Concerning Snow Leopard (10.6): due about January 1st, this will not have significant new features, but will be faster and more stable. Quicktime X (ten) will be part of the new system. A server version is also expected. Multi core support for all applications. A new language “openCL” is being introduced, that enables the use of video processor chips for mathematical operations.

Hotmail plug-ins with the 10.5.3 upgrade do not function. Apparently Microsoft is dropping webDAV access.

MacHeist bundle is back, bringing a package of fourteen applications for $49, a $451 value if purchased separately. See www.macheist.com

Is Steve Jobs too thin? Well, maybe, but not a fatal indication. It is common for patients after the Whipple procedure.

Firefox 3.0 will be released tomorrow. Free, downloadable, and they are looking for a World record of downloads. www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox

Apple is building its Paris street across the street from the Louvre.

A USB dongle is being released that will enable installation of the Mac OS X on a PC. We not certain of how this relates to the Mac OS X license terms.

MetroFi is shutting down on June 20. City wide WiFi appears to be dead. Coverage was a problem, yielding poor signals.

Vendor Presentation

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Macintosh demonstrated by Nadyne Mielke, User Experience Research of the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit. nmielke@microsoft.com

Universal binary, and cross platform file format compatibility.

Word: new “elements gallery” appears above the page, to allow choosing templates and elements to insert into the document.

An office task list (My Day) helps you focus on the priority tasks.

The templates have been prepared by professional designers, much superior to the previous template choices. And of course, you can create your own templates and style elements.

The clipart has been improved, with more realistic art. iPhoto is integrated, with drag and drop.

The publishing layout view is a new feature. This is a palette based document designer, for graphics heavy documents. Newsletters, postcards, brochures, etc.

You may open and/or save to “doc” and “docx” formats.

Smart art diagrams are available to choose various types of data displays. Also charts, graphs, etc.

Text boxes can be linked, for text flow.

Dynamic guidelines pop up as elements (e.g. a picture) are moved, so that you can align elements easily.

Wrap around text is supported.

An integrated scrapbook is provided, as well as a thesaurus, dictionary.

The notebook layout view is designed like a ring bound lined notebook, with indexing tabs. Audio media can be embedded.

Entourage: a lot of improvements. The calendar design has been completely revised, to be more pleasing. Events can be created using drag and drop. A little bar shows whether you are free or busy for each event. Flagging can mark events for priority, attention, etc.

Excel: new friendly version. For business use, various accounting predefined worksheets are available. These are available for accounts, invoices, investment portfolios, etc.

The grid now supports 16K columns and a million rows.

The formula builder provides pop up help and auto completion.

The chart wizard works from the elements gallery. Just select a data grid, and then click on a chart template.

Powerpoint: the elements gallery really shines. All of the templates have been redesigned by professional designers. Smart Art can take a simple bullet list and convert it to many interesting presentation styles, e.g. a circular wheel, a flow diagram, etc.

The slide background is easily altered.

PowerPoint can be converted to jpeg stacks, sent to iPhoto. From there it can be synced to iPhone or iPod for in-your-pocket presentations.

Presenter tools show the speaker a clock and a slide matrix, which allows jumping to any slide. The Apple remote works with the slide show.

While Visual Basic has been removed from the applications, Applescript support is much improved, and can do much of what Visual Basic used to perform.

$149.95 for home and student edition - 3 licenses.

$399.95 ($239.95 upgrade) standard edition, with server support and automator actions.

$499.95 ($299.95 upgrade) special media edition

Break

Q&A

1. Videos stop and go, when streaming from web or when playing from a file. This is on a G4. Any thoughts? How can I copy a video from the player when streaming from the web?

The processor may simply be too slow. Nothing to do. Maybe try shutting down all other applications.

Some movies, once completely loaded, can be saved using cntl-click. You will need Quicktime Pro.

1. HP jet printer stops just at the last page of a document.

It just happens — we do not know why.

1. Excel formula window is displayed by using the “view formula bar” menu item under the view menu.

2. Display resolution choices seem to have mysteriously disappeared. How can I reset it or display non-recommended choices?

Try the detect displays button. Also use option-open when opening the display selection window. Also try Switch Res X application.

1. Should I upgrade to 10.4.11?

No issues that we know of.

1. My WiFi at home times out after entering password. Lynksys Router G.

The router may need a firmware update. The radio drivers in routers are often overdriven, and have a short lifespan.

You might try turning off the firewall just to see if that is a problem. Unlikely though.

1. My Safari bookmarks folders suddenly disappeared, after the screen blinked.

We have no idea what might have happened. Backup your bookmarks.plist, and then rebuild.

1. ADB to USB adapter.

A member has offered one.

1. dot-mac backup is failing at home, even though it worked at the store. It failed after I upgraded from 10.3 to 10.5. Also, my dot-mac account had expired but the Apple people restored my account for me. I am using an ATT dial-up connection.

We will have to examine your log files to determine the cause. Also make sure you have the right version of the backup application.

1. DSL Extreme is a good low cost provider.

2. How long to charge an iPhone battery?

From total exhaustion, takes an hour or two to get to 90% full, four hours to get to 100%.

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