NVMUG eNews 1/22/2005
Last updated 1/28/2005
Macworld Trip and Highlights
Hartley Jim Jackson presented a slide show and described their trip to San Francisisco and highlights of Macworld with help from Richard Lubot and funded by the Apple Specialists Marketing Coop including Small Dog and Crywolf, Inc. in San Diago.
1. Trip to Macworld and Highlights as Reported in the Caledonian
Midge Lubot presents an award to Hartley Jackson at the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday
Macworld Trip Described by Hartley "Jim" Jackson Computer Correspondent
ST. JOHNSBURY - At the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday, Hartley Jackson presented a slide show of his trip to Macworld in San Francisco, and described some of the highlights.
Jackson won the five day trip by registering when he was shopping at Small Dog Electronics in Waitsfield.
He was aided in his presentation by Richard Lubot who accompanied him to Macworld.
The highlight at Macworld is always the initial keynote where Steve Jobs announces the latest Apple innovations, and this time there were several. Lubot and Jackson were among about 500 people who were assured of VIP seats.
Jobs began by saying 2005 would be the year of HD, high definition video. Jobs announced new software to edit high definition video, and showed a video he had taken at the beech using a $3,500 Sony HD video camera for the home. He edited it with his new software of course. Afterward, Jobs introduced the President of Sony.
Jobs announced the IPod Shuffle. Some Shuffles were available to try at the show, but not for sale. Jobs said there might be a few available at the nearby Apple Store. The store's initial supply of 2,000 was sold in minutes. People who had them were wearing them on a lanyard around their necks, without the earphones, like jewelry. The Shuffle is smaller than a package of gum, weighs less than an ounce, with the ease of use for which Apple is famous. It is called the Shuffle because it can play tunes randomly, and "Life is random and sequential is boring."
Jobs created similar excitement when he announced the Mac Mini, the first under $500 Macintosh ever. Jobs called it a BYOMKM computer - bring your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It is only 6.5 inches square and two inches high, not much bigger than the CD-RW/DVD drive that is in it. Lubot said it has that panache which makes Macintosh products stand out.
Then Jobs demonstrated new improvements in each segment if iLife.
Among other new features, iPhoto has new editing power to easily improve the quality of your images, new formats for photo books including double side printing, and the ability to order prints for 19 cents each.
iMovie is now iMovie HD and can handle high definition video and a new Magic iMovie feature to turn your video into a movie automatically if you want to.
Jobs received applause when he announced that iDVD now supports other DVD standards so you can burn DVDs with a third party DVD burner in addition to the Apple SuperDrive.
What impressed Jackson the most about iLife, however, was GarageBand, which can now record and edit eight tracks. It also can display the notes, in actual music notation, of the music. You can change the sound by clicking-on and moving the notes. Also, pretty amazing, if you are singing off key, it can correct the sound to put you on key. Jobs invited a band on stage to record, and then replayed the music using GarageBand to loud applause.
Then, when we thought there couldn't be another great announcement, Jobs demonstrated iWork. If I heard right, Jobs called it a replacement for AppleWorks, and many AppleWorks users hope it will eventually evolve into that. For now it does not include database, spreadsheet, drawing, or painting abilities. iWork includes an improved Keynote presentation program, and Pages a new word processing and page layout program.
When Jackson could get to one of the iWork demonstration computers, he asked if Pages could create two and three columns on the same page. The demonstrator pulled up a template that had everything in one column, highlighted a paragraph and clicked an icon to change it to two columns. Then he highlighted another paragraph, clicked on another icon, and it changed to three columns. The text flowed around illustrations where ever they were moved, and the size of illustrations could be adjusted dynamically.
There were many other highlights of the trip and Macworld, but the biggest of them was at the end of Macworld.
At Small Dog, Jackson won a Mini iPod, and his name was put in a drawing with a chance to win the trip to Macworld. He was then selected as the winner among all the Apple store winners. This entitled him to the trip to Macworld, other prizes, and a chance to win a BMW Mini Cooper.
At the end of Macworld, Jackson was given a list of 200 songs from which to select one to win a BMW Mini Cooper. When the paper was drawn from the envelope with that song's name on it, it said "Sorry you are not a winner." Lubot made the award presented to Jackson during the NVMUG meeting which says, Sorry you are not a winner
but adds Hartley, to us you're always a winner!
The Apple Specialists Marketing Co-op, a group of Apple dealers including Small Dog, awarded Jackson the PowerBook, the iPod Mini and other prizes he had won in the drawing
2. More From The Meeting
Richard arranged for Steve Jobs to attend our meeting the same way that David Pogue arranged for Jobs to attend the last Boston Macworld - he put a black T shirt and blue jeans on a chair on stage.
The slide show included a bit about the flight out, some sightseeing in San Francisco, and the flight back, as well as pictures at Macworld. Most scenes relied upon natural lighting because the flash only reaches about 8 feet. Richard Smith provided the projector. for the slide show.
The slide show was created using Photoshop CS. Dragged to Adobe Reader it displays a full page pdf slide show whith scene changes every two seconds. Dragged to Preview it displays a pdf document so that clicking on any thumbnail page displays that page so you can advance the slides as you talk.
Daniel Hollister had watched the replay of Job's Keynote more than once, and contributed to the description of the keynote presentation.
David Pogue hosted the Second Keynote on Wednesday. This Second Keynote opened with an animation like the famous Macintosh 1984, but with David Pogue as the character on the stage. One of his guests was the animator.
David's guests included the author of America 24/7, a book of photographs, with the unique feature that if you send in a photograph when you order the book, it will come with a book cover with your photograph on it. The author asked people with laptops to Wi-Fi a picture. Many people had trouble connecting, but he got enough pictures. Later in the program he showed the winning pictures and awarded copies of his book to the winners.
Another guest had set up large Wi-Fi connection areas in the Alaska wilderness and in Hawaii which are used for nature studies and school programs. If he can cover 45 square miles in Alaska, why not in the Northeast Kingdom?
Pogue said that he is really not a Mac bigot, he is an elegance bigot.
We saw David Pogue twice at the O'Reilly booth. The first time the equipment was not working so he created an entertaining program including magic, humor, and hints for using Panther. David is now writing The Missing Manual for Tiger.
One of his hints had to do with hot laptops in the summer that can be uncomfortable on your legs. He suggested using the Energy Saver preferences to slow down the CPU chip which will make your laptop run cooler. You will not notice that it is slower on programs like word processing.
About every six weeks, Emmy Award Winning David Pogue appears on a Sunday morning show on CBS. I don't know if that show is how he won theEmmy. One of the makeup people remarked that he was the only one who never used makeup. David told the makeup person that sometimes he is up late at night before the show and has bags under his eyes. He was told he should try some Preparation H. That got a laugh.
Richard went shopping, and at the end of another O'Reilly presentation when David was autographing books, Richard brought him a present. When Pogue opened it and saw Preparation-H, he roared.
I saw Derrick Story speaking at the O'Reilly booth. He says in digital cameras, pixel wise, bigger really is better. If you have a 5 MB pixels, but a 1 gig card in your camera, and shoot at 5 MB. Then you can crop with no visible quality loss. The extra pixels can effectively double your telephoto length.
We had a great time at Macworld. Richard brought some things for Midge and looked for things for other people. I bought an Italian designed bag for the 12" PowerBook from the Italian designer, and the MacDraft PE program for Dona. The Macworld sale price for MacDraft was higher than the Small Dog price.
There were many smaller lectures and demonstrations, and there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions. Some, but not all, of the people in the booths were experts.
I asked one of the Apple technicians and learned that the show version of Tiger included only the parts thoroughly tested to be trouble free. It will be out in the first half of this year.
Richard brought home information about a general purpose "Portable Sola Power Pack" called Solio. It charges iPods, cell-phones, PDA's and more, from built in solar panels or a wall socket which is stored in an internal rechargeable battery for when you need it. For further details, log onto:
I asked an Apple representative if iWork could have two columns and 3 columns on the same page. He brought up a one column template on the demonstration Macintosh. He highlighted the first paragraph and clicked an icon breaking it into two columns. He highlighted the second paragraph and clicked a different icon breaking it into three columns. Then he dragged in an image, moved it around, and resized it in less time than it is taking me to write this.
When I got home, I ordered a copy and it arrived on January 21, one day ahead of the January 22 release date. It came with two small books documenting the Keynote and Pages portions. It seemed so simple when demonstrated that I had not expected instructions. I still have not had a chance to read the instructions, but I used it to develop a House for Sale by Owner poster starting from one of the templates.
After the Macworld slide show, there was another hour of the friendly questions, answers, and discussions after the Macworld slide show.
Some service providers have different instructions/requirements to use their service when you are on the road. You can usually connect with your server on Wi-Fi, but you will need your password to make any changes - so be sure to take your password when you travel, or better yet - check with your provider before you go. I was able to e-mail within SoverNet from my San Francisco Wi-Fi, but was not able to e-mail elsewhere because I had not arranged for it or taken my password with me.
Several people discussed when they should turn off their Macintosh computers, and when they should leave them on. Some, with power problems, do not trust leaving their computers on. Others just want to do whatever will keep their computers from wearing out. Geof will research this and I will send you what he finds out.
Chip Troiano had researched a device for color synching a computer. He said it can make a great improvement in color results and it costs under $300. He wondered if there was interest in buying it for the club library so everyone could use it, since a person would probably not need to use it more than once a month at the most. If you would be interested in sharing in this purchase and use, let me know and I will get the information to Chip.
Dawn D'Angelillo wondered if people would attend a special event on a Tuesday or Thursday night in February at Small Dog to demonstrate the new equipment and software released at Macworld. They would offer some discounts and give-aways to"ease the pain of having to travel." We surveyed the members at the meeting, and between 2 and 5 said they would probably attend if the weather was OK. When Richard asked how many would attend if it was on a Saturday, at least a dozen raised their hands.
I passed this information on to Dawn, and asked her to let me know when they schedule any user group gatherings so that I can pass the information on to you.
I asked Daniel Hollister if he would do a GarageBand program, and he said he would see if he could prepare a program for our February meeting. I am looking forward to it.
