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Meeting Report: 13th November 2009
Posted: November 15th, 2009
 
Following our new meeting format we kicked off with a discussion of this month’s Apple related news which concentrated on the new Magic Mouse which a couple of SEAL members had purchased. Robert demonstrated the Alpha version of Google’s Chrome browser which has recently become available.
This month’s workshop session was very busy. Several members helped Alan organise backup on his eMac with two external hard drives. Nigel assisted Graham with his Mac Classic II which had developed a hard drive problem. Nigel was able to get the hard drive working and retrieve Graham’s data.
Nigel gave this month’s presentation which was an introduction to Mac security. He covered some of the security features built into Mac OS X and discussed whether virus protection is a necessity. The general concensus was that it is not required with the very limited number of threats “in the wild”. However antivirus can be useful if you commonly share files with PC users and want to avoid spreading in infected file, for this Nigel recommended the open source ClamXAV. Apple have a section on their site dedicated to Mac security.
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New Meeting Format
Posted: November 8th, 2009
From the November meeting (to be held on Friday the 13th) we will be trialing a new meeting format with the aim of making meetings more interesting for everyone:
19:45 – 20:15 News – discussion of the latest Apple and Mac news.
20:15 – 21:00 Workshop – An opportunity for members to help each other with any problems they may be having and also to demonstrate any new hardware or software.
21:00 – 22:00 Presentation – A planned presentation on a pre-announced topic. This might be from a SEAL member but we also hope to arrange some guest speakers next year. At the November meeting Nigel will be giving a presentation on keeping your Mac secure.
Times are approximate and this format is not set in stone, let us know what you think of the changes.
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Meeting Report: 9th October 2009
Posted: October 11th, 2009
The hot topic at this months meeting was Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Robert demonstrated the new OS running on his Mac mini and showed off some of his favourite new features which included the improved Stacks, showing the date next to the clock in the menu bar and the new features of the WiFi menu. Snow Leopard has many new “hidden” features that you might not notice straight away, Robert recommended Mac Life’s article 100 Snow Leopard Tips, Tricks, and Features as a good list of features to try out.
We also discussed one member’s options with dealing with an eMac with limited hard drive space including how he could make best use of external drives and different methods for getting Album art in iTunes.
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Meeting Report: 11th September 2009
Posted: September 12th, 2009
SEAL met as normal in September but we don’t have a report from this meeting, sorry!
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Meeting Report: 14th August 2009
Posted: August 16th, 2009
Nigel brought along several classic Macs from his collection to show members, these included a Mac Classic II, a PowerBook 190cs and a Newton Message Pad 2100 with a selection of accessories and expansions. New member Graham also brought along his Classic II, Nigel helped him investigate a boot problem.
Dave demonstrated Spotify, a streaming music application with a huge range of Music available. Spotify allows you to search for music from many popular and more obscure artists and listen for free, occasional audio adverts are played in between songs to support the service. A paid account is available which removes the adverts.
Finally Nigel gave a presentation on backup strategies which covered the use of Time Machine and a multi-computer, multi-site back up system Nigel is working on using rsync.
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