Apple News and More

At this meeting, held on 2nd August, we talked about recent Apple News and members shared tips and other topics.

Apple News

We talked about recent Apple news including:

Apple Inteligence features are reportedly delayed to iOS 18.1 due in October.
AltStore brings previously unavailable apps to iPhones in the EU including Torrent apps and Fortnight.
X (Twitter) users are automatically opted into AI training (and how to opt out).
Apple Maps is now available on the web in Beta.
Interesting details emerge as to why Apple devices weren’t affected by the CrowdStrike outage which affected Windows. DavidB mentioned this recent torjan horse advert for CrowdStrike.

Robert had a couple of tips to share:

Adding Siri suggested apps to your home screen using the Siri Suggestions widget.
Adding PDFs of books and longer texts to the Books app for more comfortable reading that syncs between devices. This suggestion came from this Apple Insider article which also has other suggestions for managing and organising PDFs.
- When discussing books in PDF format, DaveK mentioned Straight and Crooked Thinking by Robert H. Thouless (PDF linked).

Ben demonstrated connecting a new Sandisk SSD extreme portable to his iPhone 15 Pro via USB-C.
We discussed using external SSDs on iOS including exporting directly from Photos to the SSD and using the Files app for file management.
Ben also mentioned Lacie D2 external drives using HDDs.
DavidB talked about using lookup formulas in Numbers including CountIF, VLookup and XLookup functions. Numbers formulas and functions help is available on the Apple web site.
DaveK showed us how iPad apps can have keyboard shortcuts when using a physical keyboard. Pressing and holding the command key shows the available shortcuts.
To demonstrate this, DaveK used the Universal Control feature to use his Mac keyboard and mouse to control his iPad.
We also discussed the Sidecar feature that uses an iPad as an extra Mac display.
DaveK also mentioned the social media app Tribel.