November 2012 Meeting Report

The November SEAL meeting went off with a bang, can’t say it was fireworks but nevertheless a very interesting meeting.

As usual we talked about the past month’s Apple news that included the new iPad mini, there were some thoughts about it’s size and weight stating with the WiFI version Weight: 308 g (0.68 pounds) with the Wi-Fi + Cellular version weighing in at 312 g (0.69 pounds) Height: 200 mm (7.87 inches) Width: 134.7 mm (5.3 inches) Depth: 7.2 mm (0.28 inches). The look and feel of the iPad Mini is great but it does show how good the Retina display is on the current iPad. It remains to be seen if the iPad mini will be a winner with Apple consumers, although for those of you that like to read books in the digital format the iPad mini would be ideal.

The ultra-thin design of the new iMac starts off with a price tag of £1099.00 for the 21.5 inch 2.7GHz available in November, with the 27 inch 2.9GHz starting at £1,499.00 available in December. The widescreen display has been reengineered reducing reflection by 75%.

As always we had the popular workshop where club members can discuss any issues they are having with their devices. One such member was having problems with WiFi and connecting to other devices, as always our club members were on-board, all issues were resolved with complete satisfaction.

Club member David made a recommendation for a free battery management app available from the App Store, called Battery Doctor (Battery Saver, Battery Life) by Beijing Kingsoft Internet Security software Co.Ltd. The App is compatable with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

David did say that the App had strong words with him for fully charging (With Trickle Charge) more than once in 30 days, whereas he should only be charging as and when needed, then once a month do a thorough charge with trickle.

Some other comments from David said that he is somewhat suprised at the number of Mac users that logon with their Admin password to do their everyday tasks. There were some comments on this, like “What’s wrong with that” and “I always do,” David said that it is something that he would never do, because he believes it may be possible to circumvent the Admin logon, from outside and gain access to data. In a similar vein (Security), he said that someone on the Apple Support Communities website asked if there is a way to automatically open a file embedded in an Email, his answer to that question was, Bad Idea! If there is a way, don’t do it!

It is hoped that one of our SEAL members will be able to put together a demonstration of Aperture for Mac, in the near not to distant future, we look forward to that.