The offcial journal of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc Volume 37.07 – July 2020 Come to one of Establishing a New Normal for Meetings our meetings Online and Lower Hutt Monday 27 July 7:00 pm for 7:30 until 9:30 pm Subject: Meeting formats utilising Zoom Kapiti Group Monday 3 August 7:00 pm for 7:15 until 9.00 pm Subject: What did you do? What did you learn? iPad Group TBA Help Desk TBA WelMac has been using Zoom for remote meetings during the lockdown and subsequent alert levels, but it is time to work out where we go next for our physical and online meetings. Where to find us For July’s Wellington meeting we are trying a small scale physical meeting at our VP’s house (by invitation and registration only) which will be live streamed via Zoom, so those unable to attend in person can participate online. If non-members or former members would like to attend a meeting on a trial basis, please email [email protected]. Our Kapiti physical meetings are resuming from early August, at our previous venue: Kapit Uniting Parish, 10 Weka Rd, Raumati. Wellington Macintosh Society p9 INSIDE The President Writes p2 David’s Tech Guide p3 WelMac Publicity for Kapiti Meeting on Macintosh Word Processing S/Ware p6 August 3 p11 Committee Contact Details p11 CAPITAL APPLE – JULY 2020 PAGE 1 The president writes ... the meeting at his residence as an experiment to see how holding meetings in less expensive environment will work. There will be room for a limited number of members at his place where we will be discussing via Zoom how we can alter our meeting format to have more meetings such as this one plus larger meetings combined with our help desks on a Graeme Moffatt Saturday afternoon. [email protected] Nothing has yet been decided on this proposal as we will be seeking to have members provide Hi folks their thoughts as to how this may work Following on fro my comment in last month’s successfully in the future so please register for this Capital Apple regarding the future direction of our meeting when you receive the email promoting it. society, given the changes we have been required As for the Kapiti members, they have indicated to implement, there have been some suggestions that they would like to resume their normal made. physical meetings and there is a note on page At our last committee meeting a couple of weeks twelve by Humphrey Babbage on what is intended ago, we discussed our future meeting format now for the August meeting. that we have had a major disruption to how we I would also like to remind members that we have done things prior to the Covid situation. have set up a Facebook page that you can post Now that we are able to resume our physical notes that may interest others or questions that you meetings, we also have the opportunity to may have. investigate whether there may be other solutions This is another method that we can extend the that may provide a better experience for our scope of our activities for our group and will be diverse membership. controlled so that only current members will be We have a number of members who live on the entitled to access it. outskirts of our region plus a number of former I recognise that not all members utilise Facebook members who have shifted to other parts of the however it has now become a bit ubiquitous and country and have maintained their membership. easy to set up an account and does give us a facility These members are only able to participate in that was not available at the time the group was our activities through receiving our monthly first founded. magazine and the use of the Zoom application has The original reasons for setting up the group in given us the opportunity to allow them and other 1984 were to provide a forum that new computer outlying members a greater level of participation. users could assist one another and physical Now that we are one of two Macintosh User meetings were the only game in town at that time. Groups left existing in New Zealand, we have the This has obviously now improved through the opportunity to extend our membership to a much use of new and better technology and is just larger geographical area with a greater emphasis to another area that we must investigate if we are to online meetings. remain viable in the foreseeable future. We have a great level of expertise within our The link to our Facebook group is https:// membership and as we are now have an increasing www.facebook.com/WelMacNZ and it would be reliance on the more senior Mac users, there must good to see more of you there on a regular basis. be others who do not have the opportunity to That’s all, folks! Graeme Moffatt access this expertise easily. In this respect, for our meeting at the end of this To contact me, email [email protected], or you can ring me at home (027 660-3094) month, our vice-president Shane will be hosting CAPITAL APPLE – JULY 2020 PAGE 2 The presidentDavid’s Tech Guide writes ... by David Empson [email protected] bugs, and many applications needing time to catch 04 976 9755 up with compatibility fixes for the new OS. If you only use Apple standard software which comes with the Mac, the compatibility problem goes away but there could still be early bugs. At a minimum, wait a few days to give early adopters time to try the new OS and report any New Apple releases coming soon issues they have found. Waiting about a month for The COVID-19 pandemic may affect timing of the “.1” release is a reasonable option. some product launches this year, but we can be Last year’s new OS releases were a mess, with reasonably confident of the starting point. several quick updates and many early bugs. Signs As usual this has implications for those planning are good that this year’s releases will be better. to buy new Apple products in the near future. The usual pattern is that it is OK to upgrade Some “minor” product updates could be quickly to major new iOS or iPadOS versions, but it released any time from now up to the first week of is better to wait a bit longer for macOS upgrades. September. A possibility in this timeframe is a Upgrading iOS reasonably quickly is also minor revision of the iMac, with newer Intel important because it is the only way to get the latest processors and graphics hardware. security updates for devices which are able to run Apple is most likely to hold a media event in the the new OS. Mac users can afford to wait longer second week of September, probably Wednesday because Apple keeps supplying security updates 9th or Thursday 10th (NZ time). This event will for the previous two macOS versions. include announcements of new iPhone and Apple Watch models, possibly new iPads, and other new Buying an Apple product soon? or updated products deemed worthy of stage time. In most years we see a similar pattern so it pays New Macs are unlikely. to plan ahead if you want to buy a new Apple The media event will also announce release device around the August to October timeframe. timing for the upcoming new operating systems. If 1. Apple products purchased in August the usual pattern holds, we should expect iOS 14 (including any new releases) will come with the and iPadOS 14 to become available for existing existing OS, e.g. iOS 13 or macOS 10.15 Catalina. devices from about a week after the September You can keep using that OS until ready to media event, probably by Friday 18th September. upgrade to a later major version. macOS is typically delayed a bit longer, but 2. From the September media event, newly macOS 11.0 Big Sur could be released before the introduced products come with and require the end of September. major new OS version. To reduce the risk of There are likely to be multiple new iPhone early bugs or application compatibility issues, models, and some may be available later than you might want to delay buying newly others. The first new models could be available as introduced products for a few weeks. soon as Saturday 19th September. 3. In the September timeframe, older models Apple will start releasing new Mac models with might be supplied with the new OS but are Apple Silicon instead of Intel processors “before likely to still have the old OS. the end of 2020”. The most likely timing would be 4. By about mid to late October, the worst bugs to start with another media event in late October should have been fixed, and more applications for the initial round of Apple Silicon Macs. will have had time to catch up with supporting the OS. From this point it gets easier to run the When to upgrade to the latest OS? new OS. Around this time, it becomes more I recommend avoiding early releases of major likely that Apple will supply older products new OS versions, due to the higher risk of serious with the new OS already installed. continued over page CAPITAL APPLE – JULY 2020 PAGE 3 Updates for existing OS versions for these devices. As this was new for iOS 12, we Apple has released macOS Catalina 10.15.6, don’t yet know yet whether security updates will iOS/iPadOS 13.6, plus corresponding minor continue for a second year.