June 2018 WWDC Notes

At this month’s meeting we are reviewing the announcements from Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference Keynote. As usual, MacMAD is providing links so that you don’t need to take notes in the meeting.

The announcements fell into three subject areas:

The Apple TV and Apple Watch (PDF)

iOS 12 – New system for the iPhone and iPad (Pages document) or (view as PDF)

MacOS Mojave – New system for the Macintosh (RTF Text Edit document)

 

 

Photography Topics with Arnold Dubin May 2018

Arnold gave us a good presentation Tuesday night on various photography topics. He was nice enough to give us a copy of his slides in PDF format.

Take a look to see some of his photos, what cameras he uses, pros and cons of JPEG vs. RAW, backup strategies and some hints on organizing photos in Light Room.

 

 

Christmas Party

A great time was had by all at the 2017 MacMAD Christmas party. We had about 25 people show up. The party was in lieu of a meeting. As usual, there will be no meetings in December. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in January. The January help meeting will be Jan 3rd, and the program meeting will be the 16th.

iOS 11.0.3 Fixes Problem with 3rd Party Replacement Screens

Apple released iOS 11.0.3 on Wednesday, October 11, 2017. The description of the release is as follows:

iOS 11.0.3 includes bug fixes for your iPhone or iPad. This update:

  • Fixes an issue where audio and haptic feedback would not work on some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices
  • Addresses an issue where touch input was unresponsive on some iPhone 6s displays because they were not serviced with genuine Apple parts

It so happens that I repaired my iPhone 6s screen recently with an apparently reputable, but non-Apple replacement screen.

Old screen, miscellaneous tools and the new screen installed.

Since the repair, I had noticed a few times when the touch screen became completely unresponsive. This was disconcerting at first, because an iPhone that doesn’t respond to any tap, touch, drag, etc. is pretty much a useless brick. However I found that just waiting about 1 minute or so with the screen off would bring it back to life. Since it didn’t happen but a few times, and since I knew a workaround, I didn’t complain to anybody.

Apparently, this was happening to enough people to reach the ears of Apple.

I want to give Apple a big thank you for putting in a software fix to work around a hardware problem that was not their fault. They could have done nothing. Some companies have gone so far as to deliberately disable unauthorized 3rd party hardware. Not Apple. Apple stuck by their customers, and this customer intends to stick by Apple.

Apple customers who used 3rd party replacement screens escaped with only a stern talking-to:

Note: Non-genuine replacement displays may have compromised visual quality and may fail to work correctly. Apple-certified screen repairs are performed by trusted experts who use genuine Apple parts.

While we’re on the subject of screen repair. Although I did successfully repair my own iPhone screen, I can’t really recommend doing it yourself. The process involved a jeweler’s magnifier, a guitar pick, a suction cup and six or eight nearly microscopic screws. I came extremely close to letting the magic smoke out of my iPhone. (Smoke must be what makes it work, because if the smoke ever comes out, it doesn’t work any more!)

I got away for about $50, but the folks who install a genuine Apple screen for, say, $150 are earning their money.

Meeting Topic: iTunes 12.7 September 2017

Our MacMAD meeting topic this month is iTunes. There are some interesting changes in the latest version. In particular, Apple has removed the purchase and management of iOS Apps from iTunes. This is a good step in the right direction to make iTunes less complicated and more focused.

Here is tonight’s Keynote presentation.