At this meeting, held on 21st March, DaveK showed us how he’s been using Procreate and previewed the next version of this photo privacy app Discretion. We talked about Apple’s recent hardware announcements and members also raised a number of interesting topics.
Procreate
DaveK showed us the digital illustration app Procreate on his iPad with Apple Pencil. He’s been finding the app useful for making hand written notes with the built-in brushes keeping handwriting and sketches smooth.
He walked us through the process of creating a sketch/blueprint style icon, based on a tutorial from Charlie Chapman.
Discretion
DaveK then went on to show us the new features he’s adding to Discretion, his photo privacy app.
- Emoji keyboard access on iOS allows any system emoji to be selected to mask faces in the photo. This includes Memoji, stickers and Genmoji on supported devices.
- A new Feature Roadmap allows users to see proposed features and vote on those they’d like to see added.
This new version is in development and will be released in the future.
Apple News
We discussed Apple’s recent hardware announcements:
- Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips.
- MacBook Air with M4.
- iPad Air M3.
- iPad with A16.
And other Apple new stories:
- The European Commission details interoperability standards Apple must meet in future iOS versions.
- Apple Intelligence features for Siri are delayed.
- The King’s Music Room comes to Apple Music.
- Web based phishing attacks target Mac users.
Member Topics
- Robert mentioned using Microsoft’s CoPilot AI and how he had found it useful as a starting point for technical questions, while noting that it’s accuracy had to be checked.
- DavidB mentioned the iOS 18 feature to hide apps. Hidden apps are then available in the Hidden folder in the app library that can only be opened with Face/Touch ID authentication.
- DavidB talked about General Motors in the US not supporting Apple CarPlay in their electric vehicles and refusing to let a dealer fit third party upgrade kits.
- Alan asked about a CD that he could not successfully load into the Music app, it took a long time and the resulting music was distorted. DaveK mentioned that CDs can have copy protection applied but as this violates the CD standard those discs won’t have the official Compact Disc Digital Audio logo.
- Ben mentioned the XQD and later CFexpress memory card formats used on professional cameras.