Month: January 2014

On the 22nd of January 2014 MacMad started a new initiative, presenting a series of classes directed at new Mac users. There were 19 people in the first class taking advantage of the opportunity for the free education.

In the first class Dennis Crowley, the instructor, showed how to navigate the OS X interface; use modifier keys for shortcuts; open and organize files and applications with Finder, the Macintosh “filing cabinet”.

Future classes will cover setting up your Apple ID and iCloud accounts and syncing your data with multiple computers and iOS devices; using the Dock and Mission Control; gestures on the Trackpad; Dashboard widgets; saving and searching files. He will also show how to run the most popular Mac OS X applications, including Calendar, Address Book, iChat, Maps, Safari, Notifications, Reminders and iTunes, and how install new ones from the App Store. The course will end with learning how to share files and back up your Mac to ensure you don’t lose a single bit of data.

The education is being conducted at One Senior Place in Viera. The remaining four classes will be held 6:30 to 8:30 PM on 12 February, 26 February, 12 March and 26 March, 2014

If you want to learn more about Mavericks come join us for this free education at�One Senior Place, 8085 Spyglass Hill Road, Viera, FL.�

MacMAD elections are coming up in March, with nominations in February.

The cloud storage company Box.com is upgrading free accounts from 10 to 50 Gigabytes of online storage for those users who download the free iOS app for Box. We’re not sure when this offer ends — maybe through January or February 2014. When you sign in to your account using the iOS app, you’ll automatically get the extra storage. I did it. Nice.

We also announced a 50% off deal from Take Control Ebooks. They were on sale thru Jan 25th. You missed it now, but they are not expensive, and they are well-written bargains at the regular price.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh and the 30th anniversary of MacMAD. Apple has some nice retrospective material on their site now. Also see The Mothership�and www.macworld.co.uk for some old apple “adverts”. You can also now watch a video of Steve Jobs’ first demo of the Macintosh at the Boston Computer Society in 1984. This video has apparently been unavailable for decades. When watching this, you’ve got to remember that back in those days IBM was so big and threatening that they were about as popular with many computer enthusiasts as the death star. Now, they’re completely out of the personal computer business.

Dennis Crowley gave a presentation this month on using iCloud. I always learn something at our meetings. This month it was that you can turn off iCloud as the default storage location for Text Edit. The �option is buried in the iCloud system preferences.

By the way, �did �you know that the keyboard shortcut�?-, (Command-comma) opens the preference pane in most applications?