Los Angeles Portable Users Group (LAPUG)

Arrived early and met Janet who hosted us in (new mtg site) and about a dozen others; about 25 attended the 7pm meeting. This is a small clubhouse rec.rm and seems ideal for LAPUG mtgs.  A screen is set up and there are about 35 chairs. Phil Goodman and Ben Levy lead the monthly meetings.

I greet Phil Goodman and Ben Levy as they set up the projector in two minutes;  Phil Goodman and a few others of us were on the Los Angeles Macintosh Group board of directors, and Phil was VP for a time.  He is now a noted consultant in the Los Angeles region, as is Ben.  Jan Chesne gets a round of applause for hosting.  A few people are taking notes on the back table and Pat is plugged in for power, including her phone and recording set up.  The rest of us are running on battery.

We don’t have WiFi, unless you have iPad with 3G.  Ben does.  Ordering online, Phil had his iPad delivered to his door.  Ben picked his up the first day at the store.  They are in short supply everywhere.   There is a small external keyboard you can buy to go with the iPad.  Toni brought hers and we all held and considered the external keyboard, rather light and nice.   It is wireless.

Phil showed a camera that projected up to the screen showing Ben’s iPad screen.  The 3G model adds data.  (This is rather technical and I plan to not write all details, but leave the best information for other more advanced attendees to add.  My notes give you the topics and questions;  and others can add the best answers and discussion.)

Before you leave on a trip to travel internationally, contact ATT to discuss roaming charges what will be best for you, such as 100meg of data.  Phil showed the preferences that will show you have much you have used, and now to reset to zero when you leave.  One attendee was in India for 19 days and was able to connect and send and receive and stay under $25.  When you download messages, those are data files.  Alternately, you can dial up your msg ctr.

Canada is considered ‘international’ since they are not on the ATT network.  You can add on your plan for voice mail to Canada, but not for data.  There is no charge at hotels for WiFi using ATT.  Phil also uses Skype for free internationally.

Toni is going to Korea in ten days and asks experiences.  Her husband says service in North Korea may not be too good.  [Discussion]  Your phone may not work in some places, but WiFi will. 

There is a $14.95  plan and a $30 unlimited plan to travel.  Phil explained some of the good features.  We are talking about ATT 3G services to iPhone and iPad. 

Q/A/Discussion:   ATT keeps track of the days and the charges, etc.   

New models also have the G3S maps, surprisingly accurate.  It is down to the street corner of where you happen to be.    Most attending were also at last months meeting and saw the demonstration of iPad.

Toni asks about getting documentation from pages and Phil showed creating a new Application.  He uses a Project Proposal.  Goes back to My Documents, the icon at the bottom with curly arrow.  Tap it and it prompts you to 1. send via mail;  2. share via iWork.com website;  (anyone can view it, you can download it as different file types.)   3.  Export (to your iPad, but not synced to go back to your Macintosh.)  

Phil shows ‘Export’ but it doesn’t show where the quick download goes.  It goes to iTunes where you go to ‘Apps’ where you can turn them on and off.  Scroll down and you will see File Sharing items you have brought down.  You don’t have to sync because just now it came to ‘Pages Documents’ which you can drag to your Macintosh desktop. [Did I get that right;  time for experts.]

Toni mentions what others notice also about adding a ‘ruler’.  Phil believes it will be in a later version of iPad soon.  You can edit on your Macintosh and then drag the next version back to the iPad.  There are font issues.  There may also be issues with headers/footers/etc. Do some experimentation. It is done very well as a version one App for $10.  Printing will be lager. 

Phil showed how to send the iPad document as a PDF via eMail.  Word, Excel, and Powerpoint can be opened but not sent from iPad.  Use a PDF for that.  This covers iWork. 

Question about finding restaurants by zip codes.  Phil has a group in his address book ‘restaurants’ that go to his iPad.  He showed sorting by zipcode. There are eight Macintoshes running in the room, and they are all 13” Silver models.

 IPhone 4.0 will have groupings for APPs in ‘folders’. 

Pat has a client that pays to advertise on Yelp and doesn’t like treatment.  Three times now the good reviews have disappeared.  When you create an entry in the Macintosh address group, it goes in.  But on the iPhone or iPad, it does not.  However, (undocumented) it you are in the group when you create a new entry, it goes into the group.  Phil wrote a utility that finds items not in a group.  He did this with ‘Smart Group’ feature of the Address Book. It got fixed in 10.6.2 of Snow Leopard. 

The iPhone and the iPad do not eMail to groups;  may be groups will be in Version 4.

Ben reads via web that today ATT has iPhone exclusively until 2012. 

Toni:  When is the new iPhone coming out?    In bars only?  

Phil:   If Apple follows a pattern, sometime this summer. 

Ben:   The announcement could be June 7th, at WWDC.

It is five days and $1,500 per person to attend Dev.Conf.

Apple developer relations used to call Phil and Ben to beg them to attend and accept discount rates.  Now, they sell out with 4,000 attendees.  Last year they sold about again with 5,000 attendees within a few weeks of announcing the date.  Now, they sold out in eight days.  This year will be exclusively iPhone and iPad.  Apple internal developers have been assigned to iPad and iPhone. We may be a while with Snow Leopard op.sys. 

Toni asks about cloud computing.  Phil answers about company decisions.  Cloud computing is handy for the time being but not as ‘group aware’ as it could be.  More development is needed.  Phil personally sees no immediate impact on companies.  Another sees Google Apps being adopted at City L.A.

There is a security concern (one said) with Google Apps.  They prefer to answer via eMail but we also have some contacts. 

Snow Leopard is very reliable and Apple mgrs sit back now and think what they want to do next.  The new operating system is a ways away [much later].  What they come up with next will be a complete surprise.  IPhone and iPad now dominate the stage.

We also discussed Microsoft pre-announcements and their reasons.

Ben:  What are you most enjoying about your iPad?  Toni:  Reading on the coach.  What is your favorite pdf.reader?  She would like to read on iBook reader.  Calibre and Stanza can translate to read on your iBook Macintosh.  It was shown at MacWorld but it is dense (meaning a lot to it).  You put the icon on your desktop, and then drag the Calibre doc into your iTune ‘books’.  Toni says she is now in Heaven with Joy. 

Ben showed us his ‘bookshelf’ and the book on the shelves.  ‘Good Reader’ is liked by Phil and Ben, but Toni finds it annoying.  It is $0.99 and they pay attention to reader requests for upgrades.  Phil showed tapping on the iPad on display to the mtg screen.  Ben showed reader preference options.

Phil and Ben both have their iPads going and can put either one under the meeting viewing camera.  Toni is scheduled for ‘one-to-one’ teaching at her favorite Apple/Macintosh store.

Phil showed how to group using iTunes and iPad.  Tap the WiFi icon and get the IP-address;   then go to your Mac and type in the address, via http://etc. and go in as ‘guest’  and create folders to drag pdf from desktop into the folder.  Ben notes you can also eMail yourself to put the pdf into Good Reader.  

If you know the URL then you can download from the web to Good Reader and store it on your iPad.  If it is compressed, it will unzip automatically.  There is another application that allows markup but isn’t preferred. 

Dropbox for iPad was shown.  They sync automatically.  Dropbox send a pdf to your Good Reader area.  New with iPad is the communication.   IPhone has a feature to allow you to decide pulling out just the text or allowing ‘pinch’ as needed. 

Other APPs:  What are apps that you like that have worked?  “One Password” has existed on the Mac for a while.  It installs a plug-in and makes the browsers aware of your password.  Keychain is for Safari only.  Covers also Firefox, and Mobile Me.   You never actually see your password since a strong password is created and stored for you.  You just need to know your master password.

It is approaching 8:30pm and it is said that 90 minutes is ideal for meetings: shorter than that and people hang around; longer than that, and they want to leave.  Phil is talking about encrypted notes.  He showed his Amazon acct and his Blue Cross account.  Etc.   Sitting behind Ben and Phil, I can see Ben playing on a chess board, just one piece; maybe he will show it next.  I am still learning names, and the person sitting by Janet says he exports to a text file his passwords and then protects them in a File Maker document. 

What else do you like?    Baseball for $10.   And ‘Ratio’.   What about books?  The Kindle has 400,000.  The iBooks from Apple will grow in time, some the same as Guttenburg Press.  There is NoteTaker that is similar to NoteBook.

Phil mentions EverNote app that is web bases.  You can sync to your Mac and iPhone, iPad.  It is free up to a limit.  Mobile Me can or cannot sync to iTunes?  Some do and some say you can’t.  You need a USB cable between.  There is a free app called Notational Velocity on the Mac works with ‘simple note’ service on the web.  Linda says it works for her, who also uses ‘Jot’ for $9/yr. 

The rumor that Apple might make Mobile Me might be made free.  They want to keep your documents in their cloud.  Add-on would be there also. Their $99/yr goes against free Google mail.  The new iAd (for ads) revenue from OS 4 will offset and far exceed it.  ‘Find my Mac’ and ‘extra eMail’ etc. could be still cost.  You can find your iPhone also, if it is not in your pocket all the time (like mine.)  Even in silent mode it will ping you. 

These friendly folks are really into it with a passion and will go to 9pm, obviously.  There are school districts considering iPads instead of MacBooks for every student.  About a million and a half have been sold already.  Ben knows a board meeting that each attendee is given an iPad to follow and contribute.  They don’t see a projector-screen, but the presentation on the iPads.  Go To Meeting and WebEX and other commercial services are popular.  Phil showed his Go To Meeting control panel.  It is for the iPad and not the iPhone currently. 

Phil did a live demo with some here joining his ‘meeting presentation’.  He can have meetings attended from around the world, speaking over the iPad microphone.  Lakers are wining over Jazz, 58 to 41, someone announces.   “Air Video” is very cool and used by Phil Goodman, a free app.  On your iPad it feeds to your network.  You can share folders from your Macintosh that can open and convert (on the fly) streaming to your video. 

“Newsfeed Free” was described by Birdie as she took the projector for a moment with her iPhone.   It has groups you can reorder and customize.  It has default categories such as sports, entertainment, world news, US news, etc.  You can close down those you do not want to get to the others quickly. 

ATT now has have ‘booster’ for better coverage.  You can off-load from their towers to bridge over to your own home tower via the internet.  There are two prices:  buy it for $150 or you can pay $100 refundable if you sign up for $20/month with all your minutes for free.  “3G micro-cell” is what to ask for. 

MacWorld had a review and they loved it.  Phil has one.  It only works with ATT phones.  You can associate ten in your plan.  It has a power-cord and an ether-net cable.  It can be placed by a window.  Remember that your airport extreme is also another router.  Two leave and some start packing up at 9:10pm, not interrupting those that are talking.  “How do you get it on the plane to Japan?”  It is using real GPS, but is for areas of ‘weak’ signal and not for ‘no’ signal areas.

One here got the second to last one. Sign up for the free service for four weeks and . . .  (secret here).   If you use a far region, it emulates a door stop.   You can unlink and sell it, or take it when you move. 

Another app that is handy with iPad and travel is a web browser called “Offline Pages”.  Phil asks for a site to demo, and CNN.com was suggested because of just three letters.  You can have your selections to read during the flight since the page is saved.  You don’t need the connectivity in the air as you travel.  Can you use Good Reader also?   Another app is InstaPaper for $5 and Offline Pages is free.  “News Addict” is also good and includes the Drudge Report. 

For closing the meeting, Ben showed some special creations, with humor, entertainment and music.  Janet brought in some gourmet cookies.