What You Missed May 15, 2018
What You Missed
It was lively crowd tonight, excited that the meeting was on Tuesday night again and raffle sales were brisk with a $25 iTunes gift card, a Wyse camera and an iPad as prizes tonight. There was a larger crowd than last month even with the good weather outside.
Ken greeted us with “Pretty good turnout tonight; probably because we have a great speaker” and member noted “and it’s Tuesday.” Tonight’s speaker is Pete Lozzi. Ken was excited as he knew a member had picked up their Model 3 Tesla (Ken is a great enthusiast) and another member was on the list for one also. Ken held the volunteer raffle and Dick Warner was the winner tonight. He was on a trip to Alaska but fortunately winners do not have to be present for this raffle. It is something the Board has decided to do to recognize volunteer efforts. Meetings will be on the third Tuesday for the rest of the year. World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is happening on June 4-8 in San Jose. This is when Apple announced the next updates to the various operating systems to developers, so their apps are ready when it gets released to the public — usually in the fall. Apple will occasionally announce new hardware at WWDC bit there are no clear indications of what may be announced. Apple stock has hit an all time high and they may become the first company to have a trillion dollar valuation. Warren Buffet has been buying Apple stock — the only tech stock he has in his portfolio. Apple was valued at 916 million dollars as of tonight. Several members are Apple stockholders.
Ken asked if people were cable cutters. Pete Lozzi has been working his way to cutting cable but has discovered it is not easy. He originally thought, as a Comcast customer, he would just drop his TV service and only pay for Internet. Comcast informed him that his Internet bill would go up if he didn’t bundle the services. He then discovered that for channels, like the Food Channel, when you use their app to see their shows, you must show that you receive that channel through your cable provider. He uses only Apple TV to watch non-cable shows and to use the channels that do have apps. He misses some live shows and events, but overall he is happy with using Apple TV. It does let him Airplay stuff from his iPhone or iPad onto his big TV — good for showing pictures to a crowd.
T-Mobile has plans to become a TV provider once 5G has been rolled out in enough places. With 5G service, cell companies could be offering home Internet service as well as cell service. It will take several years for 5G to become widely available. Ken noted that if you have an older security system at your house that uses a phone line to dial out, you currently will need to maintain your hardwired phone line. Ken did suggest calling your Internet provider and or your cell phone provider to see if you can get a better deal. It can’t hurt and with the competition in the market place deals have changed. I was able to save almost a $100 per month by asking when I added one more device to our family plan.
In volunteer announcements tonight: Bob Gouine came up to talk about the class he does at the Saturday workshop. He had been asked to do a class on using the iPhone for photos. He said they aren’t good cameras and I don’t want to teach that. He was asked again and he was still resistant. He was asked once more with a hint of “you will teach this class” and Bob decided he would take his iPhone out and take some pictures. He was then going to print the pictures at increasing sizes so he could show that the iPhone wasn’t a good camera. Bob has an iPhone 6 and he went out and took pictures with it. He explained that he printed some at 4 x6 size and they looked good, then at 5 x 7 and they looked good and he knew when he did them at 8 x 10 they definitely wouldn’t look good, but they did, which got a laugh. So he had a trip planned to a park outside of Las Vegas and he took more photos. He can print photos up to 13 x 19 at home but he decided he would get one photo printed at 24 x 30 to show how bad iPhone photos are. He brought the print with him to the meeting and it actually was really good at 24 x 30. So Bob will be excitedly teaching a class on using your iPhone camera and will give ideas and instruction about the ways to get the best photo possible at the Saturday Workshop. Bob is also a member of the El Dorado Hills Art Society and they are having an Art Studio Tour on June 9th and 10th. Bob’s studio is one of the ones that will be open for visits, so go check out his work and the other artists in the El Dorado Hills area. You can get more information at https://www.eldoradohillsarts.com.
In the Q&A session, both Ken and Pete were ready to answer questions. There were none in the “question Mac” but one member had a question about doing a search on her Mac. When she uses the finder to search, it was frustrating. Pete suggested using Spotlight (the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your Mac) as it usually gives clearer results. Another member asked the difference between Roku and Apple TV. Pete explained that they both do similar things, but the Apple TV may have the more customer friendly and better integrated user interface. Apple TV lets you do AirPlay where you can show something playing on your iPhone or iPad on your big TV through the Apple TV.You can also use Siri with the Apple remote to control home automation that uses Apple HomeKit. With Apple TV, if you miss something that is said on a show you’re watching, you can tell Siri “What did they say?” and Apple TV will rewind the show 10 seconds and turn on closed captioning as it replays the segment.
Pete Lozzi was introduces by Ken ”for the few of us who didn’t know who he was.” Pete was there to do his talk on 10 things we should be doing with technology. Being Pete the list had grown to 12 things. He started with
Shoot using your iPhone camera. There is easy access to the camera from the lock screen, either by swiping left or pressing the camera icon on an iPhone X. You can lend your phone to someone and they will only be able to see the pictures they have taken until you unlock the phone. If you have a iPhone 6S or newer, you can force touch the camera icon to get a menu with four options: Take Portrait, Record Slo-mo, Record Video and Take Selfie. The camera has a magnifier option that lets you enlarge items using the camera on your phone. It is good for seeing small serial numbers and other fine print. You can find Magnifier by going to Settings and searching for it. (Swipe down to have the search show up.) It is under Accessibility and you can turn it on there. Pete has set his so pressing the sleep button three times turns it on. You can take a picture when using magnifier, handy when you can’t easily see your screen.
Text: There is a store for messages, but mostly it is fun stuff. When using Messages, there will be blue and green text bubbles. The green text is from someone who isn’t using iMessage (doesn’t have an iPhone). If you are on a plan where you pay for texting you will pay for the green texts. There are two microphones on the text screen, the one in the text bubble is to allow you to send a voice mail to the person you are texting with. The other microphone at the bottom right is for transcribing your voice to text. When you do the transcription, if Siri is not sure what you said, it will show a guess of what you said with a blue underline. If you hold down the blue arrow at the right side of the text bubble, you will get an effects menu with two tabs. One is for the text itself and the other is for the screen
Reminders: This is built into the phone. Siri can be used for location based reminders, you can say “Siri remind me when I get home to call Bill.” Or you can say “Siri when I leave work, remind me to get milk on the way home.” You can set up reoccurring items and you can remind yourself to reply to texts or voicemails. Reminders also allows you to create lists. You can use the + button at the right side of the reminder bubble to create a new list. Once you have a list, you can manually add to it or use Siri. You can share a list and the people you share it with an add to the list. Pete uses this for his shopping list and when he gets to the store he knows that everyone he shares the list with has added what they want to the list on his phone.
Apple Pay: Pete wants everyone to use Apple Pay whenever they can so that it gets used in more places. It is a fraud resistant method of payment. Merchants never see your credit card number. It generates a one time number for your transaction. You still get all the benefits of using your card. ApplePay is being installed on vending machines which is dangerous for Pete as he travels a lot and doesn’t carry cash. Vending machines were not much of a temptation as he couldn’t buy anything, but now with ApplePay….(enuff said!). Note: Apple Maps app can show you places that use Apple Pay near you.
Recipes: Pete uses an app called Paprika (https://www.paprikaapp.com ) on his iPhone to get recipes off the web. Many times recipes are split up by ads or other tidbits on a webpage or the webpage will not let you print it. Paprika uses software tools to gather all the recipe information into a simple form and organizes it. You can print the recipe, which is formatted to fit on an 8 1/2 x 11 page. You can share the recipes you collect with other people who have the app and Paprika can generate a shopping list from the recipe for you.
Yelp: Pete uses Yelp all the time. It has evolved into something useful for finding new places to eat or a business or service that you need. The app is free and you don’t need an account to use the app. You can look for restaurants near by you sorted by distance at first, then you can apply filters to the search to narrow things down. Yelp does not remove bad reviews unless they are libelist or slanderous. They use algorithms to check for cheats or paid reviews. If an item is an ad (the business has paid to be higher up in the search results), they are clearly labeled as are any pictures that come from the business owners. You can bookmark items if you have an account. You can check in at places listed in Yelp if you have an account and there will sometimes be special offers for you for doing it. Yelp ingrates with Apple Maps so directions are easy.
Travel: Pete uses an app called Kayak (https://www.kayak.com/mobile) for his travel plans. You forward your confirmation emails to Kayak and the app puts together your itinerary with all the details for you. You can also manually add information.
Maps: Pete asked how many people use something other than Apple Maps for navigation. About one fourth of the people at the meeting indicated that they use another app or their car’s GPS. Maps has improved and will show you where you are and have icons of businesses near you. You can click on an icon to get more information. You can also use Siri with Maps to find out what is near you. If you hold you finger down on a place in Maps, you will set a pin. The pin has an edit option so you can add your own notes. Placing a pin at a place in Maps marks it as favorite which you can search for on the Maps app. You can place pins on your Mac and it will show up on your iPhone — a good way to plan places to stop on a trip.
Pete had gotten through eight of his twelve items and said “we can go till 11:00 pm, right?” But he stopped there and we all gave him a round of applause.
It was time for the raffle. Pete had his daughter come up and read the numbers. Since we only had three prizes, Pete had us stand up for each ticket, sitting down once our number had been eliminated. Ken had eliminated himself from drawing the tickets as he had bought many. It paid off for him tonight as he won the iPad.
I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. Don’t forget to invite someone to come check us out. I can be reached at donob.macnexus@gmail.com.