Our November MacLearn features two Mac 101 must haves – iPhoto and your operating system.

10:30 – 12 p.m. iPhoto – Gifts from the Heart with Gregg Kamei. Learn to import photos from your camera or device, organize and edit them, and create books or cards to give for Christmas. This is a hands-on session so bring photos to create with.

12:30 – 2:30 pm Your operating system basics -
OS 10.7 Lion for iMacs and Macbooks boasts 250 new features. iOS5 for iPad, iPhone and iPod boasts 200. Which ones might you want to take advantage of right off? Should you or even can can you update? Ross Rasmussen and Jerome Koehler present.

Come to this unique session and find out. We will first have a shotgun lecture presentation of the top features of Lion and iOS5. Then you can choose to go to a hands-on session to use the features of either Lion for laptop or iMac, or iOS 5 for mobile devices.

Register and pick your operating system, Lion or iOS 5 by clicking here.

Cost: $5 including a beverage and handouts. HMAUS member get a frequent flyer stamp for this workshop or may use 3 frequent flyer stamps to come to a hands-on workshop for free!

Lion, Apple’s latest operating system, was released this July.  This month Jerome Koehler, Apple Solutions Consultant presented some of its best features for HMAUS.  Here are a few:

• Finger swipe gestures can be used on your laptop trackpad or an attached Magic Trackpad ($69) on a compatible iMac.
• Launch Pad displays all of your applications as icons on your Desktop, just like an iPhone or iPod.  Drag one to the Dock to make a shortcut. Drag one over another to create folder. Delete it by clicking and holding until it wiggles, then click the “X”. 
• Mission Control displays your open documents and multiple Desktops you can create to open different sets of documents or applications instead of having them all in one window.
• Resume lets you leave windows and documents open when you Quit. Restart, and everything is just as it was.
• Double-click a word and the dictionary and its meaning displays.

Here are more features from the lifehacker.com blog  ”Top 10 Secret Features in Mac OS X Lion” Watch the Apple Lion video here

Should you update to Lion? Perhaps you should, perhaps not.  As with any new OS there are bugs to be handled before maximal performance can be achieved. Lion 10.7.1 update has already been released. (Scroll to the bottom of the list on the downloads page).  Here are some built-in changes that also “bug” people.

• Not all applications are Lion compatible. Jerome recommended checking with Roaringapps.com, which has a fairly well updated compatibility table.
• Lion has a few default settings that irritate some people. For example, scroll bar on the right is hidden. Here is a fix.  Unhide Scrollbars
• “Natural Scrolling”:  Scrolling with your mouse is now the opposite of what you’re used to, unless you’re used  to an iPhone or iPad.  To move up on the screen you scroll up, just as you would with a piece of paper on your physical desk.  When you get used to it, it’s said to be more intuitive. If you do want to stop “reverse scrolling” anyway, click the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.  In the Hardware section click the Mouse icon. Uncheck “Scroll Direction: Natural”.  Do the same for the trackpad if you wish.

Can you update to Lion? Perhaps.

• It depends on your computer processor and available space.  Power Macs are no longer compatible, and perhaps some early Intel Macs. http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/ Make sure you backup in Time Machine and/or an external drive or in cloud storage first. Jerome shared the backup 3-2-1 recommendation: 3 places, 2 kinds of media and 1 location in a different location (building) from your computer.
• Lion must be installed on top of Snow Leopard, which is also $29.  Lion is purchased from the App Store for $29.  Just search for Lion then click Buy.  If you can’t or don’t want to go online you can purchase a thumb drive with Lion on it, for $69.   The good news is you can install it on all of your computers.  Just login to the App Store with your Apple ID, locate Lion and click to download and install it again. .

So it seems Lion is well worth considering, and although it comes on all new Macs, your choice to upgrade depends on a lot of things.

Come to a first hand presentation on iOS 4.2, the latest mobile device operating system for iPad, iPhone and iPod.  Jerome Koehler, Apple Solutions Consultant at Best Buy will present its new features, the biggest being multitasking on an iPad, folders, air print and air play.  Then it’s sharing time.  Bring your favorite iapp and share around the table.  Share a good iapp for productivity, art, music, games, or something totally off the wall.  It’s all fun.  FREE.

Date/time: December 7, 2010 Tuesday  6 pm – 7:45 pm
Location:  ING Direct Café 2^nd floor Ali’i Room.  1958 Kalakaua Avenue
Parking:  Behind the Café or in the employee lot on Niu Street (adjoining lot close to Kalakaua Avenue).

In the May “I’ve Got Photos!” MacLearn session on May 22 we went on a wild ride through 5 different free programs you can use to organize, edit and share your 1000s of photos.  It was fun but a mental challenge to remember everything.  So, here are some tutorials to help you!  Handout at http://drop.io/hmaus_maclearn

iPhoto - Jerome Koehler, Apple Solutions Consultant from Best Buy Aiea stepped us through the interface, keywording, faces, places, albums and web galleries. He also demo’d the cool editing tools you have for free in your iPhoto app.   The very best tutorials for this are at the Apple site.  http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iphoto

Flickr is for storing, tagging, organizing and sharing pictures.  The free version works find but the paid version is very inexpensive and gives you unlimited space and uploading bandwidth.  Here is a YouTube tutorials to get you started. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaaS56QCkoU

Picnik is a free online photoediting site.  Do adjustments, add Photoshop styles effects, add frames and text, resize and save.  Very intuitive but if you want to see an overview click the link below. The paid version gives you more effects, frames and clipart etc.  But try the free version first.  No storage – work on one image at a time and save it.   http://web.me.com/joanmats/HMAUS/Picnik/Entries/2008/12/16_What%CA%BBs_Picnik.html

Tabblo.com is a cool photosharing site with drag and drop layouts and one click uploading.  Owned by HP, it brings comments from all over the world.  Very cool.  http://screencast.com/t/NThhMWYyMmEt

Smilebox is an e-card site made for Macs.  Again, drag and drop photos and videos into hundreds of animated card, collage, album template.  http://screencast.com/t/OTc2ZmE3ZjUt View the videos and let us know if they’re helpful.  If so, we’ll make more.  If not we’ll do something else.  Make suggestion so we can all learn better and faster.  SMTLSLT   So much to learn, so little time!  Mahalo! http://www.hmaus.org/meetings-workshops/maclearn/maclearn-registration/

ING Direct Cafe Ali’i Room  10 am – 12 pm

Seating is limited, so please sign up to reserve your seat, using the link below. Please indicate you’re interested in the iPad presentation and include any questions you already have so Jerome can be sure to address them.   http://www.hmaus.org/meetings-workshops/maclearn/maclearn-registration/

Driving directions here http://hmaus.org/INGDirectCafe