At the August SEAL meeting, held on Friday the 14th, we had two excellent presentations the first, by Ben, giving tips and tricks on capturing video with the iPhone and the second, from Denesh, on his experiences with his Apple watch.
iPhone Video
In his presentation, Ben covered how to shoot video on the iPhone (and other iOS devices) and many of the features of the video mode. Some of these, like pinching to bring up the zoom controls, are somewhat hidden. Members were encouraged to experiment with the features on their own devices during the demo and ask questions.
Ben gave a number of helpful tips, tricks and suggestions during the presentation based on his experience as a professional photographer. He also mentioned a number of useful accessories including the Joby GripTight mount and Olloclip supplementary lenses.
Apple Watch
Denesh gave the first full demo of the Apple Watch at a SEAL meeting. We were able to rig up a camera so the watch could be shown on our projector for all to see during the demo. Denesh has had an Apple Watch since the launch over 3 months ago and in his presentation was able to tell us how useful he’s found it. In particular he mentioned how the watch’s subtle notifications (which tap your wrist) and the ability to choose which apps notify the watch free him from constantly looking at his phone but also mean he never misses an important notification.
Denesh showed us a number of watch features including Siri, navigation, responding to messages and a number of apps. He also covered how watch faces can be customised. Interestingly he reported getting well over 1 day’s battery life in normal use and this was confirmed by Mick who also has an Apple Watch.
News
Our news discussion included Apple’s release of the upgraded iPod touch, members’ experiences with Apple Pay which launched in the UK in July and the recent changes to the Apple web site which now integrates the store.
Q&A
Our Q&A section covered:
Find my iPhone does not work when airplane mode is enabled. This is because all communications are turned off by airplane mode and an Internet connection is required by Find my iPhone. During our discussions it was concluded that, while this may be annoying and hinder you finding a lost device, it is not actually a security risk because Activation Lock will prevent a thief from using the device.
After repairing a hard disk problem, a lost+found folder appeared on my Mac, what is it? We found a TechRadar article explaining that this folder can be generated when a disk operation fails due to an error.