Beyond the Simple Selfie, by Don Stouder

iPhones have gotten to the point where they can take superb quality and creative photographs and videos. Improvements to the camera, apps, and available accessories have allowed this to happen.

This presentation will explore the capabilities of the current camera in the iPhone and the special capabilities of Apple’s Camera and Photos apps. In addition, selected third party apps and accessories that expand upon those provided by Apple will be addressed.

Our SBAMUG meeting on March 27 will feature a presentation by Allison Sheridan, who will describe a software tool that is handy when you have the occasion to control your Mac or some other person’s Mac remotely. The software application, Jump Desktop, is available for your Mac or IOS device. The application needed for the remotely-controlled Mac is called Jump Desktop Connect, and is free of charge. Allison is one of our favorite presenters and is also a member of SBAMUG. Allison has made this presentation available via Sceencasts Online.

Also, Arnold Silver will demonstrate Air Drop,an Apple feature that lets iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, ) and Macs to share almost anything wirelessly, easily, and securely at almost any time and anywhere.  It is most often used to transfer photos or video clips, but is much more versatile.  This short presentation will demonstrate how to enable AirDrop and transfer photos.

Potential SBAMUG Presentation Topics

1.       Whole home Wi-Fi. How to extend Wi-Fi throughout your larger homes using bridging or mesh networks to achieve good performance throughout your home without dead spots. Emerging standards show promise for greater speed and performance. 41%

2.       Social Networking – the past, current status, and trends. Some of the early social networks have faded (e.g.; myspace), others have died, numerous new ones have emerged. What does the future hold? And all have privacy and security issues which need to be recognized. 27%

3.       Fonts and font management on your Mac. All about font families, Bitmapped fonts, TrueType fonts, OpenType fonts, Postscript fonts, Unicode fonts, etc and the tools to manage them, such as Font Book, FontDoctor, Suitcase Fusion, etc. Discussion regarding using font styles, glyphs, font spacing and kerning. 23%

4.       The Home App and Home Automation. How you can automate your home using automation to view and control your home both at home and away using your iPhone or iPad. You can control and automate lights, heating, air conditioning, sprinklers, locks, surveillance cameras, alarm systems, shades, door locks and much more. 23%

5.       The iPhone camera and photo Apps. The iPhone camera system is very powerful. Some iPhones contain both telephoto and wide angle lenses. You can shoot high resolution photos and even high quality UHD videos. You can shoot time-lapse, slo-mo, video, normal photos, square photos, portraits, and panoramas. And you can shoot live pictures and HDR. You can even access and manipulate the raw photos and control depth of field. Many third party Apps provide additional features.  55%

6.iOS 12 (or whatever Apple decides to call it). The next version of iOS will be      announced in June or July at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.   This presentation would be an overview of upcoming new features. 36%

7.    How to publish and sell your first eBook. What tools are required and how do you do it.  18%

8.    How to block unwanted calls on an iPhone. 41%

9.    The Internet as an Educational Resource. If you want to learn, the internet is a tremendous resource. Khan Academy is a terrific free learning resource for many subjects from Math to Art History. TED has many great educational presentations. Stanford University and MIT, among others, have free college level courses on many subjects. Stanford University even offers the actual video-taped course on iPhone Application Development offered every year, which even Stanford students have a difficult time to enroll in because of its popularity. 32%

Numbers vs Excel

I’ve been using Excel since about 1997. But I haven’t upgraded from Office 2008 since I want to be able to use the program on both my iMac and MacBook without paying for 2 copies. But I have been having occasional problems with Excel under Sierra and I frequently have to do a Force Quit get the program to quit, and performance won’t improve under High Sierra or Mojave.

When I learned that Apple had made its iWork apps free for Sierra OS, I immediately downloaded them and started trying them out. I will show you the similarities and differences in what Numbers and Excel can do in spreadsheets. I’ll also show you some problems that can arise in importing Excel spreadsheet into Numbers and in exporting Numbers spreadsheet into Excel.

Numbers is unique in that acts like a page layout program with tables and charts and also supports interactive manipulation, while Excel is oriented to a large table grid with the ability to add charts.

Joan King

Mojave, the latest Mac OS, will be the subject of a presentation by Jim Pernal. The presentation will include the requirements for using this system, how to upgrade, why you should upgrade, and finally a few of the new features in the system with some demos. Some of the new features are Dark Mode, Stacks, and new supplied apps.

SBAMUG Election

The election of MUG officers for 2019 will be held at the December 12 meeting. The election slate is as follows:

Directors: Dave Nathanson, Arnold Silver, George Wilde, Joan King, Pete Myers

President: Kent McDonald

VP: vacant

Treasurer: CW Mitchell

Secretary: Wayne Inman

SBAMUG depends on its member volunteers to perform the many functions that keep it running.  Currently, the VP and Greeter and two Director positions are not filled. We are trying to find a new Secretary to replace Wayne Inman who has served for so long that nobody can remember when he started. Also, several of the club directors are filling more than one position. Positions that are filled, but in need of new blood are Newsletter Editor and Program Chairman.

It is not too late to volunteer! The descriptions of several of these jobs are listed below. See our web page sbamug.com/volunteers for all job descriptions. If you decide to help out, send an email to info@sbamug.com.

• Vice President – perform all the duties of the president, and when so acting shall have all the powers of, and be subject to all the restrictions upon, the president.
• Secretary – keep a copy of minutes, mail and other forms filed in a big book, available at the office during business hours. Experience with small business management and/or bookkeeping is desirable but not necessary for this position. Secretary must have an office or home office which is accessible 9 – 5, Mon – Fri.
• Directors at large – attend meetings and Core Group meetings, help out with club activities as needed.
• Greeter – attend meetings, greet members as they arrive, make sure nonmembers are welcomed and provided with newsletters and flyers.
• Program Chairman – attend Core Group meetings where topics and presenters are discussed. Make arrangements with presenters.
• Newsletter Editor – gather articles for newsletter, use page layout software (Pages, for example) to produce newsletter, send completed pdf to printer.

The December 12 meeting will consist of an extended beginners Q&A session, beginning at 6:30, with pizza being served at about 7:30.

Oct 31 Meeting

iOS and OSX Tips, by Don McAllister

Kent has selected threeIOS topics from ScreenCastsOnline for the Oct. 31 SBAMUG meeting. The average duration of the Tips is seven minutes each. We can plan on group discussion after each topic. The topics are as follows:

AirDrop 101; a safe and secure way to transfer files between Apple devices that requires virtually zero configuration

Finder Toolbar Customization; how you can make some simple customization to your Finder toolbar to increase your productivity.

All About Screenshots on IOS; taking screenshots, handy annotation features, sharing, syncing screenshots from Apple Watch

Handy Mac Keyboard Shortcuts; gives you some keyboard shortcuts to help navigate the Save and Open actions, as well as change the target location when saving your files.

IOS-12 Stocks App; goes over the revamped Stocks app, now available on iPad as well as iPhone.

Getting Ready for Mojave; gives you some pointers on cleaning your Mac and making a bootable backup to an external drive with SuperDuper.

Sep 26 Meeting

iCloud and More, by Kent McDonald

Kent will spend half of the presentation on understanding and mastering the capabilities of iCloud, something that has forever eluded him. The rest of the time will be spent on reviewing new accessories and announcements regarding Mac and iOS products and on shortcuts and tips for helping users to accomplish their tasks more efficiently on Macs, iPhones and iPads. All of this information will be based on the two most recent issues of MacLife.