Notes for the March 4th, 2012 ByMUG Meeting
Covering Mountain Lion by Thomas “Tom” Leroux
First off, for those of you who don’t know, Apple announced that it will be releasing a new version of its operating system once per year, and most likely around the end of the summer.
Tom went through the new announced key features of Mountain Lon. Many of which are current iOS features.
iCloud: Hard drive space over the Internet, accessible via any of your iOS and MacOS devices, as long as you have access to the Internet. It now includes the ability to back up and store your video library, as long as it can be loaded and played via iTunes, then streamed to any of your Mac devices. Expect better integration with the operating system.
Messages: The cell phone’s capabilities to “text” with others in your address book on your Mac. A beta version can already be downloaded for Lion, but it’s expected that the full version will be released in Mountain Lion.
Reminders: Allows you to enter and sync your reminders between your devices.
Notes: Brings the iOS Notes to the Mac in a nice looking application.
Notification Centre: If you’ve never heard of Growl, imagine a means of being notified whenever a message or e-mail arrives, or a file is done downloading or unarchiving, and more.
Share Sheets: If you’ve used the option on your iOS device, it now comes to Mountain Lion. You will be able to share anything from any app location, providing it supports this feature.
Twitter: Full Twitter integration for those of you who love using Twitter.
Game Center: A gaming network where you sign up, others find you (or you find others) and play games with/against them. Instead of it only working on iOS devices, it’ll now includes Macs as well.
AirPlay Mirroring: The ability to stream your computer screen onto a High Definition Television via an Apple TV.
Gatekeeper: Turns your Mac into Fort Knox. The problem is, you might not appreciate how secure your computer may become. The idea is that Apple would rather you download items from their Mac App Store, where there is almost no chance of getting malicious software.
Quickly Previewing the March 7th Apple Event by Jonathan Fingas
Days before the March 7th Apple Event, Jonathan was asked what he thought would be covered at the upcoming event. While a new iPad was obvious, Jon added that he wouldn’t be surprised to see an update to the Apple TV, and with the ever-increasing word of an Apple Television, he said he wouldn’t be surprised to have one announced.
[Edit: Since then, indeed a new iPad has been announced. The new iPad is simply a 3rd generation iPad. There is no “3” or “HD” at the end. A new 1080p Apple TV was also announced. Updates to the iLife and iWork groups of software to run on the new iOS 5.1, iPhoto for iOS, and some nifty games that will take advantage of the new iPad’s enhancements.]
To view the March 7th Apple Event, look up and subscribe to the Apple Keynotes/Apple Keynotes HD podcasts. The non-HD version is about 900 megabytes in size.
Covering Equinux’s SongGenie and CoverScout 3 by Mark Bell
SongGenie: Helps you identify unknown titles, fill in empty fields, and even help you find a song’s lyrics. It works in sync with iTunes and iTunes Match. You can try it for free, or you can buy it for $29.99 US
CoverScout: Helps you to add album covers to your music albums in iTunes. If the database does not have it, you can look the album up on a site like Amazon’s and drag and drop the album image to CoverScout. Mark claims an 80% accuracy rate. It works in sync with iTunes and iTunes Match. You can try it for free, or you can buy it for $29.99.
You can also get both SongGenie and CoverScout for $49.99 US.
Covering Hotspot Shield by Mark Bell
Hotspot Shield has a lot of uses. The main one covered at the meeting by Mark was its ability to mask your country of origin to allow you to view videos in other countries.
Hotspot Shield also protects you against malware, secures your web sessions, protects you from ID theft online, hides your IP address, bypasses firewalls, and protects you from snoopers.
There is a free edition, as well as a paid elite edition for MacOS, and it’s also available for your iOS devices. The free edition comes with ad support. The elite edition costs $36.92 CDN. [Edit: Price varies based on CDN vs. US Dollar]
You can find out more about Hotspot Shield at http://www.hotspotshield.com
We closed off the meeting with a few questions from the group.