John Mitchell began a conversation regarding MacWorld. Terry Higgins indicated that a lot of software will work on Mac Intel machines including Microsoft Office. Discussion ensued regarding the ability to run OS 9.2 with Tiger 10.4.
John talked about hard drive defragging and optimizing. Defragging gets all parts of a file together. It takes quite a while to defrag, but your Mac will run faster. Probably should defrag once or twice a year. Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro will do the job. Optimizing Apple style moves files to outer part of the HD disk so that things go faster (In the process the file may be fragmented.) Disk Warrior optimizes the directory only. Should run Disk Warrior once a month (and before and after installing a new OS or software).
Terry Higgins shared information on iLife 06. iWeb is the newest addition to iLife. You can use iWeb to create websites and blogs complete with podcasts, photos, and movies. Start with a template, add your content via the iLife Media Browser, customize your pages, and build a great website in minutes. Then publish live to .Mac with a single click. Terry then talked about iPhoto 6. iPhoto 6 offers support for up to 250,000 digital photos. New book templates, Photocasting, photo blogs, and custom calendars and cards are now available. One can now do full screen editing, scroll while seeing the date and title, sort by title, by word, etc, and iPhoto’s performance is overall much faster. In full screen mode you still have access to editing tools (top and bottom). You can have up to 8 photos displayed together. A new feature lets you compare two photos (it is best to duplicate and work with a copy). There are some new effects available, as well as a new navigation tool (don’t have to use the scroll bar). It is easy to move to full screen and back. You can create photo books, greeting cards and postcards. Terry went through the options available as he demonstrated making a greeting card which can be printed on premium card stock. A new feature in iPhoto is the ability to create professional-looking calendars. You can import information from iCal and birthdays from the address book. The auto flow feature can be used or the drag and drop process. Another new feature is Photocasting. Terry demonstrated creating a Photocast. He published his photos to his .Mac account and then emailed his Photocast to Bob Shayler who received it in seconds. Wow! Terry then briefly reviewed iMovie HD 6, iDVD 6 (3rd party DVD burners now work) and Garageband 3.
Bob Shayler demonstrated iWeb. (Before doing so, Bob expressed his concerns about myspace.com.) iWeb allows the publishing of web pages easily! He showed eSteve’s web page created with iWeb. He showed a .Mac web page and lifted up the pluses and minuses. iWeb is not integrated with a .Mac home page. iWeb has six templates. Bob showed one of his classroom blogs created with iWeb. He stated that it is easy to set up and briefly demonstrated iWeb and the ease of publishing to a .Mac account. He then showed the software program Butler, a free program included on this month’s DOM. He used it to find his iWeb app. Bob then used Butler to find his Google Earth app (a free download and on the DOM) and demonstrated it.
Ed Matlock then shared information about the contents of this month’s DOM. Included: App Zapper (deletes an app and all its files); Butler; FilmLoop (uploads photos); Flip4Mac (can see Windows media); iClip (multiple clipboards); iClip lite (a widget); OSX 10.4.4 Combo Updater; LittleSnitch; NeoOffice (no need to install X11 to use it); QT 7.0.1 Reinstaller and Safari Update for Panther.
Thanks to our presenters!
Many went to the board meeting at Bakers Square following the meeting.
Dayle Scott, Secretary