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What You Missed - September 23, 2020

Ken Spencer was helping everyone get ready for the meeting, — making sure that all the members had their proper names displayed for the raffle tonight. We had 45 participants as the meeting started at 7:05 pm. Pete Lozzi is tonight’s speaker.


Next month is the MacNexus elections. During the coming week, Bob White will send out email with instructions on how to vote.


Current News: Apple announced a new Apple Watch, a new iPad Air in addition to iOS 14 updates for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. It is rumored that the iPhone 12 will be announced October 13th, with the possibility that the various models of the iPhone may have new names. Pete’s talk tonight will be on iOS 14 and all the changes it brings. Messages allows you to “pin” people you message a lot, and adds a search bar. Control Center will allow you to pick Home Kit devices now. The Apple Watch Series 6 adds an oxygen sensor, has a larger battery and always on display. Pages, Numbers and Keynote have been updated to allow them to work with iOS 14. They work with Scribble that lets you handwrite with an Apple Pencil and have it converted to editable text. iMore has a good overall article on most of the changes in iOS14 and iPadOS14. See the links below. Apple has added a translate app with the iOS14 update. iOS14 has widgets that you can put on your homepage. Widgetsmith is an app that lets you work with widgets. Al Trivett posted a bunch of links in tonight’s Zoom chat (see the end of the article) (Ed. note: One can save the Zoom chat by clicking on the ellipse and choosing the Save option.)


Tech Q&A: Any news on the rumored iPhone SE+? No news yet, but rumor is that Apple will be renaming the various models of iPhone12. A member had the computer “ring” everything a call was made to their iPhone and wanted to know how to turn that off. Their iPhone was running iOS10.3, so Ken had to do some research on where the setting was to change this. (Ed, note: In more current iOS, go to Settings > Phone > Calls on Other Devices to find the On/Off switch.) He suggested doing a search on how to turn on calls on other devices and reverse the steps. A question was asked about the wireless charging stations that were in the latest Costco flyer. They should be OK, but Ken prefers an easel type stand as it lets you see the phone easily. Anker makes one and Ken gave us a link to a new one he just got that folds up for travel and has both wireless charging and lightening ports for charging the 1st generation Apple Pencil and a set of Air Pods.


A question was asked about shared photo albums. A member had sent out invitations, which were accepted, but they could to see the photos the other people had posted. Ken suggested that they turn off then on the album and then resend the invitations. (Ed. Note: When setting up a shared album, there are three choices. Number 2 is “Allow people who don’t have a Mac, iPhone, or iPad to view the album: Select Public Website. Anyone with the website URL can view and download the shared album’s contents.” Very likely, said member did not check this box.)


Someone asked about the Xfinity pods which are WiFi extenders. Several people had used them and said they worked fine. Ken suggested that if you have your router at above counter height you would get a better WiFi signal. Extenders can help if you are in an older house or a house that has problems with WiFi. Someone asked about how to get rid of two safari windows open on an iPad. You can touch the vertical division between them and swipe it to the side to make one go away. A member had hooked up their iPhone to their computer to transfer about 3000 photos to the computer. They started the process and walked away. When they came back there were 3000 images on their desktop. Both Ken and Pete said they would need to do some hands on investigation to find out what had happened. Someone was looking for a charger for a MacBook Air that they could take when they traveled. They were wondering if the Apple charger ($70) was a good choice or one of the cheaper ones on Amazon ($30) was OK. Ken suggested getting the Apple charger as you know it would be of good quality.


Pete Lozzi was up after a short break to talk about iOS 14. His favorite thing is when new iOS updates come out. He has been known to set his alarm for 12:01 so he can check if the update is out first thing. Pete really loves the year that Apple spends learning from beta testers before Apple releases an upgrade. Apple does do intermediate updates, mostly to deal with security items. Many people don’t update right away, waiting until there is a “.1” revision. Apple has increased the number of people that do beta testing and this results in the final release being more stable and with less problems when released. The risk of updating has gone down each year. You can check out some of the features at the Apple iOS page (apple.com/ios/ios-14/ ).


In Messages, Pete is very happy with the ability to “pin” the favorite people you message, so you don’t have to search for them when you have a lot of people you text with. You can also filter your texts, hiding unknown senders if you want. You go to Settings > Messages > Filter Unknown Senders and turn it on. If you turn on the filter, you still get an indication when you do have a hidden message. If you do turn on filtering be sure to check for filtered messages occasionally, so you don’t miss a message. To “pin” someone, find them in your messages, swipe right and tap on the thumbtack icon. You can unpin someone when you want. A pinned person will have a speech bubble show on their picture when they send you a text. You can go to an individual message in a string and reply only to that message by holding down on it. The message and its reply will show up at the bottom of the text string. You can pin a group text to make it easy to find. The speech bubble at the pinned person may be bigger for the last person to send a text or that has contributed more to the group text. You can directly chat with an individual in a group chat. Once you turn on filtering, there will be a search bar. Tapping on it will bring up any media that has been shared with you in messages and you can search for a word or a term. Pete asked how many people were using Memoji’s, — the animated icons you can customize to look like you. A few people said they did, Pete likes the fact that you can change the age of your Memoji now.


Maps now has electric vehicle directions with charging station locations and biking directions that use bike trails where they exist. Apple offers guides in Maps now for certain cities, showing items of interest. Pete hasn’t been to a city with a guide yet so he can’t say how useful they are.


Translate app comes with iOS14, because of Siri it will know what language you are speaking in when you use the open mike function. You can type or say a phrase, picking the language you want to translate to and from. It will show the translation and you can tap on any individual word to call up a definition. If you turn your phone horizontal, conversation mode opens with what you say on one side and what the person you are talking to says on the other side, so you both can look at the iPhone and have a conversation. It will give you the option to download a language, handy if you may be without an Internet connection. A member asked how to clear the screen when you were done in conversation mode; you swipe up in the “Enter Text” field to clear the screen.


Siri has changed a little. It is now a little ball at the foot of your screen. It no longer takes over the entire screen when you use it. Phone calls do not take the whole screen also. When you get a call you can swipe up on the notification to dismiss the call or swipe down on the notification to get the usual full screen with all the options.


Home Kit has gotten a few minor improvements. Pete noted that phone calls can handed off to a Home Pod allowing you to answer hands free. If you have more than one Home Pod, you choose them under the Audio tab on the phone screen. Pete often does phone calls this way when cooking. You can initiate the call with “Hey Siri, call …” If you have a Home Kit compatible camera (the only kind Pete buys now) and an Apple Tv hooked up, you can see a view of what the camera see on your TV. Pete noted that Best Buy now has 6 aisles of home automation items and only one aisle of mice and keyboards now.


In Safari, if you tap on the letter “A’s” icon to the right of the search bar, you will get several options including Reader View (eliminates ads) Hide Toolbar, request Desktop Website, Website settings and Privacy report. You can also change the text size if you want. Safari will warn you if your password is not secure or if you use the same one on multiple websites. You can check if your car is compatible with Car Play. It has a new look and makes using your iPhone hands-free a much better experience. App Clips is a way to use some aspects of an app without having to download the entire app. Pete showed examples of ones from a scooter rental and parking garage.


Your iPhone will have a visual indication of when you microphone or camera are being used and Apple has said that developers will not be able to turn off the indication. (Ed. Note: To the right of the “notch,” small dots light up; green for camera and orange for microphone.)


App Library is new in iOS 14. It shows up after the last page of your home screen and displays all your apps organized into folders (organization by Apple). Swiping down will give you an alphabetical list of your apps and a search bar. If you are editing your home screen (by holding down on an app until it wiggles), you can long press on the dots at the bottom of the screen to get a view that shows all pages of apps you have. You can check or uncheck pages to show or hide them. The pages are hidden but the apps are still there. In the App Library, the folders display four icons, three of them are apps while the fourth is an index of the other apps in the folder. Pete has now organized the apps he uses frequently onto his main screen and has the rest in the App Library where he can search for an app if he needs it. When you are on your home screen, you can swipe right to get a widget page. At the bottom is an edit button and at the top is a + sign which lets you add widgets. There will probably be more widgets as Apple sort of sprang the release of iOS 14 on developers faster than they expected. If you pick a widget, you can swipe to change the size of the widget. Widgets are not limited to the widget page, you can have them on any screen. If you choose the Photo widget and have identified family member in Photos, the widget will display different pictures of those family members in the widget. You can stack widgets to show a few different items all in the same space on your screen.


After thanking Pete both verbally and with the applause icons in Zoom, it was time for the raffle. As usual, we had four $25 Amazon gift cards, two $100 Amazon gift cards for those members attending the meeting and one $100 Amazon gift card for any member. Ken asked Siri for random numbers between one and 52 ( the number of members attending) and got #1 as an answer and #52 as an answer. For the first time, we had a random number show up twice! But, all the prizes where handled out.


Feel free to contact me at donob.macnexus@gmail.org and invite someone to sit in on a Zoom setting to check us out.


Al Trivett Links:


Kens Iphone/Apple Watch Stand

and another stand





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