Resources for Apple User Group Presentations and Newsletters

Sims2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (Mac)

Send your Sims packing for a vacation with the sixth expansion pack Bon Voyage. It's time to get away from it all and go to three exotic locations. Choose from a tropical island, a mountaintop, or the Far East. Transform them into sophisticated international travelers as they learn new customs including local greetings, dances, local cuisines and more while making this the trip of a lifetime.

The graphics are stunning on my Apple 23-inch Cinema HD and using a Mac Pro. I took my Sims to a luxury hotel in Twikki Island's South End Beach to meet new friends and to learn new customs. They swim, shop, enjoy room service and a spa, and gather around a bonfire at night to exchange experiences and stories about the day's events.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

iWork 08

The new iWork 08 is a good deal for $79 if you need an affordable office suite. While the features in the package are not as rich as in Microsoft Office, it covers much more than just basic tasks. iWork applications can read Microsoft files and can save files in older formats. Installation is easy. The addition of Numbers added a spreadsheet to the suite, making it a fully rounded out suite. The suite offers attractive and intuitive interfaces, new features for image editing, page layout and printing and the applications integrate will with each other, with iWeb, and with iLife.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

iLife 08

The new iLife suite of applications consists of iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and Garage Band and it comes pre-installed, at no additional charge, on every new Mac. iLife buyers receive 90 days of unlimited free telephone support for installation, launch, or reinstallation. New users especially will appreciate the video tutorials and downloadable "getting started" documents available on the Apple website. They make it look easy, and in most cases, it is.

Upgraders, however, are likely to have a more mixed reaction.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

Popcorn

When I first received my copy of Popcorn from Roxio to review I was expecting software that copies DVDs. It's interesting software because, at first glance, it almost seems illegal. Roxio imports DVDs, VIDEO_TS, MPEG 2 and other formats and copies them to a DVD. That would seem to infer that you could take a DVD that you'd rented from a video store and copy it. That's not the case. Roxio is careful to note that Popcorn only works with unprotected DVDs. Most commercial DVDs are encrypted. Except in rare cases your personal DVDs aren't.

So with a few clicks you can take an unprotected DVD such as one made with iDVD of your vacation along the Yuba River and quickly back it up or make an extra DVD for a friend. To be honest, until I made my first copy, I didn't see the advantage of using Popcorn over burning another disk in iDVD. Afterwards, the difference was plain: time and ease.

Read the review from the North Coast Macintosh Users Group.

Bento

Bento, Filemaker, Inc's database for the rest of us, has made quite a ripple amongst the Mac community. Many were interested by Filemaker's approach. Bento was released as a public beta and feedback was solicited before the final release. Others were just pleased by its ease of use and affordability.

Although Bento isn't as powerful as Filemaker, its ease makes is enticing. Using Bento feels like an iWork or iLife applications rather than a database. In fact, in many ways the interface reminds me of iTunes. When you choose New Library from the File menu, you're met with a chooser that allows you to select from 24 templates. From there you can add, delete and arrange fields as you see fit.

Read the review from the North Coast Macintosh Users Group.

Contour Design Rollermouse

They say there is no such thing as love at first sight, unless of course you are watching a Hollywood movie. On the big screen, you see your life partner from across the room and you both know you’ll end up together, though it may take years.

I saw the Contour Design Rollermouse at Macworld ‘07 and instantly fell in love. I’m in that tiny minority that actually like track pads. I type pretty darn fast and hate having to stop typing and remove a hand from the keyboard to control the mouse. Also, it’s an awkward strain to reach over all the time, and I have particular shoulder problems on that side of my body from repetitive mousing over.

Read the review from the Lawrence Apple Users Group.

Futura Laptop Desk

My laptop tends to be my best friend ..tagging along with me places I wouldn’t ask my worst enemy to follow. Unfortunately, using a laptop in these conditions take their toll. Balancing a latte and a $2,000 laptop is a recipe for destruction. That is, if you don’t have a Futura Laptop Desk. The Futura combines elegant design and world-class ergonomics to provide a ‘body-friendly” workspace at almost any location.

Read the review from the Lawrence Apple Users Group.

PDF2Office

It is so easy in the Mac world to convert almost anything you can print into a Portable Document Format (PDF) . . . BUT, what about when you have a PDF from which you need the text and graphics, not to mention maintaining fonts and formatting? Fortunately, there is a wonderful solution that I started using last year, and was recently updated to version 4.

PDF2Office from Recosoft is reliable, powerful and ease to use, a perfect tool for your Mac if you do a lot of work with PDFs. I’m using the Professional version (Personal, Standard and InDesign versions also available). Fundamentally, this is a conversion tool from PDFs to Microsoft Office formats including fully editable Word, PowerPoint, and RTF, plus a bonus of AppleWorks, HTML and other files, which recreate the original construction and layout of the document. It has tremendous support from the company.

Read the review from the appleJAC Macintosh Users Group.

WD Scorpio 320GB 2.5-inch SATA hard drive

If you are a laptop owner, then you’ve enjoyed the portability, but probably complained that the hard drives are always about a third of the size of a comparable desktop computer. As I’ve migrated from mostly desktop units at home to mostly laptops for everyday use, this frustration has been very annoying because I want to take everything with me. I could acquire an external auxiliary USB drive, but its that much more to lug around.

Western Digital has recently produced a new WD Scorpio 2.5-inch SATA hard drive that was a major performance upgrade for my two-year old MacBook Pro 17”. Their promise became a reality on my laptop with 320 gigabytes of capacity, an 8 megabyte cache, 5400 rpm spin speed and 12 millisecond access time. The heat of my laptop now is only from recharging it, not from drive access . . . not even when I’m doing a 4-hour continuous backup!

Read the review from the appleJAC Macintosh Users Group.

TightJacket

As soon as I got my new iPhone and my new MacBook Air I wanted to dress them up. I like to keep them cozy, protected from scratches and dirt, and looking cool. I went to tightjacket.com and looked over the many fabric patterns available to suit my personality. I chose the animal print for my iPhone and Midnight Flowers for my MacBook Air. They are beautiful.

I got a first-hand demo on how to apply my TightJacket for the best possible result from the owner extraordinaire Miss Terry Wilson. What I like most about the TightJacket is that it does not add bulk or weight to my iPhone nor my MacBook Air as other covers tend to do. They are made of a spandex material and my earbuds and cleaning cloth for the iPhone fit nicely inside.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

Prima Select Premium Leather Flip Style Case

The first pleasant surprise about this beautiful case was the red color. The shade of red on the real case is a very elegant darker, smoky red. The red shown on the website is brighter and not as pleasing as the real one. The case is also available in black. The Slate Grey case has been discontinued, and the Red case is only available without the belt clip. At this point they only offer the black color with and without clip. The second surprise was the plush leather. It did not disappoint.

The Prima Select Premium Leather Flip Style Case fits my 16-GB iPhone perfectly. The openings around all the ports are exact and do not interfere with connectivity of cables, or accessibility to the buttons or volume controls. The case has perforations over the microphone and the speakers at the bottom of the iPhone. I was concerned they might block the sound but found the case amplified the volume instead. This was another pleasant surprise.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh User Group.

EyeTV Hybrid

The EyeTV Hybrid is an Analog/Digital TV Receiver and with EyeTV 3 you can watch, record, edit, and enjoy analog and HDTV on your computer. The tuner allows you to get free over-the-air HDTV and analog together in a small USB stick. New to the EyeTV Hybrid is the ability to also receive unencrypted digital cable (QAM). The clear local QAM stations are a joy to watch in Full Screen view on my LCD display and even the analog channels are improved. And it's all-free.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

iLife 08

The new iLife suite of applications consists of iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and Garage Band and it comes pre-installed, at no additional charge, on every new Mac. iLife buyers receive 90 days of unlimited free telephone support for installation, launch, or reinstallation. New users especially will appreciate the video tutorials and downloadable "getting started" documents available on the Apple website. They make it look easy, and in most cases, it is.

Upgraders, however, are likely to have a more mixed reaction.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

World Book 2008

On a recent visit to the Apple Store, I saw the World Book 2008 electronic encyclopedia. An idea occurred to me. I asked Maria Arguello, MLMUG's Vendor Liaison to try to get me a free copy to review. Maria came through for me!

I figured that I would see if my 78-year-old dad would enjoy using this electronic encyclopedia. Since my dad knows little about computers, I installed the World Book software for him. Installation was easy. I just slid the DVD in the G4 Cube's optical drive. I double-clicked on "World Book 2008 installer" icon and it installed.

Read the review from the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

iListen 1.8

iListen 1.8 from MacSpeech is software that creates text from ordinary speech and interprets voice commands to be executed by the computer. It allows the user to enter text into most applications (such as word processors, email clients, etc.), navigate documents, and control the computer (i.e., open and close applications, execute functions within applications, etc.), without the keyboard or mouse, using the individual's ordinary voice for text, and simple vocal commands to control the computer and its applications. The setup and training required is quite extensive, and the results (at least for dictation) can be spotty. Since the vendor, MacSpeech, is in the process of revamping the software to use an entirely new voice transcription engine, I would recommend that potential users wait to see how this new program performs. The name of the program is "Dictate", and should be available by the time this review is posted. iListen 1.8 has great potential, but there are serious problems with the Leopard version. Hopefully these problems will not carry over to the next iteration of the software.

Click here to read the detailed review by The Macintosh Guild.