Apple revealed the next version of OS X 10.11 which has been named El Capitan. Apple has posted a page describing the new features and improvements that are coming. Apple also showed off iOS 9. You can see what’s coming next here.
Mini’app’les Meeting, Tuesday May 19 at 7:00 p.m., Q&A at 6:30 p.m.
All of us like pictures of family and friends, whether we take the pictures or the pictures are sent to us. We are going to talk about how we organize, catalog, edit, and store our pictures at this month’s Mini’app’les meeting (Tuesday, May 19th, the third Tuesday of the month, at the Hackfactory 3119 E. 26th Street Minneapolis, MN 55406). Several people have volunteered to talk about how they handle pictures. If you use an app or apps to help you catalog and/or edit your photos, we hope you will share your workflow with the group.
And I have no doubt we will have some new Apple Watch users who can share their experiences of using their new devices.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Meeting Notes & Links
- The Feature Thief: Apple taketh away, sometimes giveth back
- The Feature Thief, part one: Pages
- The Feature Thief, part two: Final Cut Pro, iMovie, iDVD
- The Feature Thief, part three: iWeb
- The Feature Thief, part four: iPhoto and Aperture
- The Feature Thief, conclusion: AppleWorks and the lessons learned
- What is my Screen Resolution
- Intel’s Gordon Moore talks about the genesis, legacy, and end of Moore’s law
- Duet: the first app that allows you to use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac using the Lightning or 30-pin cable.
- The Evolution of the Web
- Google World Wonders
- Tim Cook on the fight for equality
- Truth Facts: Photography Now and Then
- iPhone Lightning Dock
- New MacBook Pro with Force Touch trackpad
- How to create good queries in Yosemite’s Spotlight
Apple Repair Program for 2011-2013 MacBook Pros With Video Issues
Just a reminder about the repair program for some 2011-2013 MacBook Pros.
https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/
An affected MacBook Pro may display one or more of the following symptoms:
- Distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen
- No video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on
- Computer restarts unexpectedly
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The last year or so, I have been experiencing weird graphics glitches on my MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011). I have seen many others on the web with the same issues with their graphics cards. Once Apple started this repair program, I saw that I had been experiencing all these symptoms. I figured I would need to eventually bring my Mac in and get this fixed before the program ended. However, I was not looking forward to this because I knew they would need to send it out to the repair depot and I would be without my Mac for 3-5 days.
The last couple weeks it had seemed to be getting worse. My Mac’s screen would completely go black for a second and then come back on. I would also come to my Mac in the morning to find that it had crashed overnight. Earlier this week it also crashed during the day when I was working. Then it got considerably worse. I was working on it and suddenly the song in iTunes I was playing started skipping non-stop and then the screen filled with vertical lines.
I forced a shut down and tried to get it restarted, but it was no use. After several attempts at starting from my SuperDuper! clone, SMC reset, NVRAM reset, single user, verbose mode, and safe mode… nothing worked. So off to the genius bar I went.
The genius ran MRI (Mac Resource Inspector) and immediately it failed the graphics test. The Video System Test also confirmed that my Mac had the logic board/video problem.
Luckily this is the problem covered under the aforementioned repair program, so normally a $310 logic board replacement will cost me nothing.
Just a reminder if you have any of these MacBook Pro models and have experienced any graphics problems and/or unexpected restarts, it doesn’t hurt to take it in and have them run the tests to see if you have this problem as well.
The program covers affected MacBook Pro models until February 27, 2016 or three years from its original date of sale, whichever provides longer coverage for you.
Mini’app’les Meeting, Tuesday Apr. 21 at 7:00 p.m., Q&A at 6:30 p.m.
Imagine you are traveling for work or for a specific task that you need to accomplish and your Mac laptop is damaged or lost. You get a new Mac, but you only have time to install 8 apps to complete your work. What apps would you install?
At the next Mini’app’les meeting (Tuesday, April 21st, the third Tuesday of the month, at the Hackfactory 3119 E. 26th Street Minneapolis, MN 55406) several people have volunteered to answer that question. We will hear what task they need to finish, what 8 apps they choose, and a brief reason why they picked those 8. The list doesn’t include apps that come with OS X, such as Mail and Pages. And suites of apps, such as Office and Adobe CC, need to be counted as individual apps, such as Word and Photoshop.
There will be time for anyone who wants to share what apps they would pick so you can come and share what apps would be important to you.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Meeting Notes & Links
- Your Stuff Really Is Breaking Faster Than It Used To
- Relive the 1990’s World Wide Web
- Plugging a 1986 Mac Plus into the modern Web
- Amazon Cloud Drive offers Unlimited Photos or Unlimited Everything
- 16 Smartphones That Were Deemed ‘iPhone Killer,’ 2008-2011
- A fantastic hidden iPhone design detail you’ll be shocked you never noticed
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC
- Increase Interface Contrast in OS X Yosemite to Improve Usability
- Photos app floods broadband while seeding the cloud
- iPhoto Library Manager
- Allows you to organize your photos among multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having to store all of your photos in one giant library.
- PowerPhotos
- When using the Photos app to organize photos on your Mac, PowerPhotos allows you to break your photos up among multiple Photos libraries, rather than having to store all of your photos in one giant library.
- The (hard) link between Photos and iPhoto
- An explanation on how the new Photos app links all your photos from iPhoto without duplicating everything.
- How to use Photos for OS X with multiple Macs
- Microsoft PowerPoint for iOS
- Control your slide show on iPhone with PowerPoint Remote for Apple Watch
- OneDrive for iOS
- If you have a new Apple Watch, you can enjoy your OneDrive photos right from your wrist!
- 1,500 iOS apps have HTTPS-crippling bug. Is one of them on your device?
OS X 10.10.3 and Photos
Apple released the update for Yosemite, 10.10.3, yesterday. You can get it through the Mac App Store if it doesn’t show up as an update or you can download the combo updater if you didn’t updated to 10.10.2.
With 10.10.3, comes the new Photos app. iMore.com has a good post about using Photos with multiple Macs. The post assumes that the different Macs are using the same iCloud account, however. If you are using different iCloud accounts on the different Macs, you would use the Shared tab and create a Shared Album.