Meeting Report

Personal Hotspot

The August meeting was held on Friday the 10th. Ben showed us the iOS Personal hotspot feature which allows you to get a Mac or other device on-line using your phone data plan when away from WiFi. Then Robert presented a number of tips including a useful cross-platform file sharing website.

Personal Hotspot

Ben showed us this handy iOS feature which shares mobile data from an iOS device (usually an iPhone) to other devices such as an iPad or a Mac. This enables you to get on-line when there is no WiFi available or where the WiFi speed is poor.

Personal hotspot can be used when connecting to the iPhone by USB, WiFi or bluetooth, Ben said he finds WiFi the best option in most cases. He showed us that if all your devices are connected to the same iCloud account you can use Instant Hotspot by going to WiFi settings and select your iPhone under “Personal Hotspots” and everything is setup automatically.

Apple have full instructions on using the Personal Hotspot and Instant Hotspot features.

iOS Tips

Robert showed us a number of iOS tips on his iPhone:

  • You can use the Timer in the Clock app as a sleep timer to stop music and videos you leave playing. To do so just set a timer and then set “When Timer Ends” to “Stop Playing” rather than a notification tone.
  • When shooting a panorama in the Camera App you can change the direction you pan to suit your circumstances by tapping the preview image beside the arrow.
  • In Safari, touch and hold on the tabs icon to get a menu of options including the ability to close all the tabs you have open.
  • Also related to tabs in Safari, when you’re on the tabs screen, touch and hold the new tab (+) icon to see a list of recently closed tabs and tap to re-open if you shut one accidentally.

Fileroom.io

Robert showed us the web site fileroom.io which can be used to quicky share files with others no matter what device they are using (it just needs Internet access and a web browser). Going to the fileroom.io web site shows everyone who’s viewing the site and is on the same WiFi network. You can then drag and drop files (or tap and select files on iOS) to send them. The recipient gets the choice to accept or reject the file. There’s no other setup or need to register or make an account. It’s also possible to use the service remotely by sharing a room code.

News

We chatted about the month’s Apple news including: