7:30pm – 10pm
Interesting take on the reason for Apple’s ongoing success:
We often hear that Apple “plays the game” better than Sony, HP, Dell, etc – that’s not quite right. Apple is playing an entirely different game. What’s most amazing about this? Nobody else seems to want to play with them, they just keep playing the “other” game, and poorly.
First, the photo albums are working again. Flickr had made some changes that broke them. One plug-in update later they’re back.
Second, Twitter updates for comment posts on the ACMUG site are currently broken. Twitter has made changes to their site that break the updates and unfortunately it’s going to take a bit of code hacking to get them working again. I’m working on it and it should be back “shortly”.
Lastly, I’n still looking for members interested in posting news items to the site. It’s easy and surprisingly fun, you can do it all from your web browser. Just send an email to webmaster AT acamug DOT org and I’ll create your very own site login and point you at the URL where you can start posting. Seriously, give it a try. I guarantee you’ll enjoy the experience.
Apple has opened a new problem troubleshooting web site called Express Lane to help your with problems on all of their products.
It’s very easy to use, walking you through the steps from choosing the product to hopefully getting your answer. Sign in with an Apple ID to see a list of all the hardware devices you’ve registered with associated troubleshooting information.
Looks like this will be a great resource and might save you a trip to the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store.
Stu is working on using the Mac for a Virtual Meeting through Video Conferencing with the goal of not one, not two, not three individuals in conference but a whopping sixteen! Let?s hope he is successful – it could serve us well in future of our meetings from home if the weather is bad outside.
Presentation topics may change so be sure to verify on the day of the meeting. Got questions you’d like to have answered? Feel free to post them as comments before the meeting so the presenters have a chance to prepare.
Today’s Apple Special Event was indeed very eventful with updates to all of the iPod families (except the venerable hard drive version) and announcement of Apple TV version 2 as well as updates on iOS 4.1 and 4.2. You can watch the full Steve Jobs keynote here:
Here are some the highlights:
Physically it’s reverting from the last buttonless incarnation to the previous button-ful look while retaining the VoiceOver features [$49]
Radical new design that’s looks like an oversized iPod shuffle with the front being a touch screen. NOTE: he new nano appears to lose the previous model’s camera and video playback support [8GB/$149, 16GB/$179]
Bill’s wishes appear to have come true as the new iPod touch gains all the goodies he was hoping to see:
In other words, it’s exactly an iPhone 4 without the phone part [8GB/$229, 32GB/$299, 64GB/$399]
The Apple TV loses the internal hard drive, the ability to sync with your computer, the ability to buy movies and video rather than just rent, and significant size and weight while gaining Netflix support and a huge price cut ($99!) I’m a tad bit annoyed by the loss of on-board storage but the Netflix support alone is a big win.
You can also now stream video from your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone to the Apple TV using AirPlay, an expanded version of the old Air Tunes remote speakers feature. No announced support for doing the same from your iMac or MacBook but hopefully that will be coming in a future Mac OS X update.
The new big revision of iTunes brings more interface tweaks and Ping which brings social networking to the iTunes Store (“Ah, I see you have the machine that goes PING!”) FaceBook fans will probably rejoice while everyone else will just say “Meh”.
Oh, and Apple is replacing the venerable old CD based iTunes logo with a new stylized one that didn’t seem to impress Collin very much.
This is supposed to be available today but at the moment the Apple iTunes page just says it’s coming soon.
Coming next week, iOS 4.1 is mainly a bug fix for the issues created in iOS 4.0. It does however add potentially very useful features: High Dynamic Range photos, HD video uploads to YouTube and Game Center. This will be a free update for all iPhone and iPod touch owners.
iPad owners will really appreciate this one. Coming in November, iOS 4.2 beings all the cool 4.0 features (multi-tasking, folders, etc.) to the iPad. It also brings something that we’ve all been clamoring for: PRINTING. Yes, Apple will finally provide support for printing from iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. This will be another free update for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users.
And that’s about it. Follow the links for more details and leave your comments below.