The Chicago Apple User Group
March 4, 2009, Top Ten iPod apps, big Q&A
03/07/2009 04:26 PM
We were originally scheduled to have a presenter from Wacom, who was not able to attend. Moiri from the Apple Store stepped in and helped by doing a demo of many of her favorite apps on the iPhone. She showed us how to find apps on the iTunes App Store, and a lot of her favorites, which were games.
This was followed by a big Q&A session. Some of the Q&A:
• One member pointed out the “Upgrade to iTunes Plus”, which allows a person to access the music they bought on iTunes, and purchase it at the highest bitrate and DRM-free, directly from Apple.
• One member reminded us of the product called Pulsar from rogue amoeba software. It allows people to listen to XM or Cirius radio on their Mac. The app is free for people who own other software by rogue amoeba, and the free offer ends later this month.
• The question of the Amazon Kindle came up, and it was noted that Kindle on the iPhone app was released the day before. The limitations were also noted, such as newspapers and magazines which will not be available on the Kindle for the iPhone.
• Related to this was a larger discussion of searching for information online. In particular one user mentioned using www.questia.com as an invaluable online library. There was a brief demo showing how it could be used to do research on a large number of topics.
• A person had a G5 Mac that was in a flood and had several LaCie hard drives which were now failing, and problems with ghosting on the video display. The group advised getting Apple to look at the Mac to be certain that it was fixed correctly, and to talk to LaCie about the hard drives. It might be something as simple as an enclosure or a power supply, and some people said that LaCie gave them very good customer service.
• We had a look at the software 1Password which some people use to store passwords, and others even use it to store the personal information, such as credit card numbers.
We held a game which was won by a guest from the Chicago Mac Meetup group, and adjourned the meeting. Some of headed off to Elephant and Castle for fun and food and much more conversation about all things tech and Apple.
This was followed by a big Q&A session. Some of the Q&A:
• One member pointed out the “Upgrade to iTunes Plus”, which allows a person to access the music they bought on iTunes, and purchase it at the highest bitrate and DRM-free, directly from Apple.
• One member reminded us of the product called Pulsar from rogue amoeba software. It allows people to listen to XM or Cirius radio on their Mac. The app is free for people who own other software by rogue amoeba, and the free offer ends later this month.
• The question of the Amazon Kindle came up, and it was noted that Kindle on the iPhone app was released the day before. The limitations were also noted, such as newspapers and magazines which will not be available on the Kindle for the iPhone.
• Related to this was a larger discussion of searching for information online. In particular one user mentioned using www.questia.com as an invaluable online library. There was a brief demo showing how it could be used to do research on a large number of topics.
• A person had a G5 Mac that was in a flood and had several LaCie hard drives which were now failing, and problems with ghosting on the video display. The group advised getting Apple to look at the Mac to be certain that it was fixed correctly, and to talk to LaCie about the hard drives. It might be something as simple as an enclosure or a power supply, and some people said that LaCie gave them very good customer service.
• We had a look at the software 1Password which some people use to store passwords, and others even use it to store the personal information, such as credit card numbers.
We held a game which was won by a guest from the Chicago Mac Meetup group, and adjourned the meeting. Some of headed off to Elephant and Castle for fun and food and much more conversation about all things tech and Apple.
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