July’s SEAL meeting kicked off with our usual discussion of the month’s news. A few highlights were:
- Apple’s digital dashboard patents which point to greater integration of iOS devices with cars.
- The iTunes Radio service and the terms with music publishers that were revealed.
- Apple’s statement on customer privacy following the PRISM revelations.
SEAL member John then gave us a very interesting presentation on screencasting with the Mac. This involves recording a video of your Mac’s screen as you preform actions, you can add a commentary if you wish. John started by showing how you can make a basic recording using Quicktime X which is included with Mac OS X.
He then went on the demonstrate Screenflow, an application which captures video from your screen and audio from your microphone and then allows you to edit together a complex screen cast. Screenflow includes features such as zooming in on certain areas, editing to remove mistakes or slows sections, the ability to highlight the mouse pointer and show key presses. The end result can look really professional.
In the Q&A section we discussed whether anti-virus and other security software is required on the Mac and what performance should be expected from an iMac hard disk. A summary of the answers to these questions are on the Q&A July 2013 page.