Hello and welcome to episode one of the Brew and Byte show, sponsored by the London Mac user Group.
So why did we make a podcast you might ask? This year has been rather different
for all of us, thanks to COVID-19 and all of its restrictions on our health. It
has forced us to change the way we would communicate and we’ve also been
discussing for a while now about producing a podcast to help support
and engage with fellow Apple users.
Whether you’re new to Apple and you’ve just bought a new iPad,
or you’ve been using Apple products since the early days of the Apple One,
we wanted to create a podcast for all ages and abilities.
We hope that we can engage with a wider community of Apple users,
as well as other Mac user groups.
As part of the show, we are going to discuss all the latest news, reviews,
Rumours from the Apple community and hopefully answer all your tech questions that you might have
whilst using your Apple products on a daily basis.
Today we’re going to talk about all the recent news from the Apple’s Time Flies event.
The new products that got announced and our predictions for the rest of the year.
My name’s Craig and joining us today we have committee members Martin and our resident
technical expert Alice Stuff. First up, who of us managed to capture the event live?
I did. I thought it was quite interesting what Apple were releasing. Interesting that we didn’t get
an iPhone but we got a new watch. What did you think, Martin? Well, I was quite surprised at the
one of the brevity of the actual broadcast itself. I thought it was going to go on longer.
And obviously this new virtual world that we’re in has given them a time to make the
presentation much slicker. I thought it was quite well done. It was nice to see so many aspects of
Apple Park itself. Definitely a place I want to see on my bucket list to visit. It looks fascinating.
And it was a very slick presentation. They rattled through the products which they did without
the usual first 20 minutes of how well we’ve done. This is our quarter,
were the greatest things in slice spread, all that kind of stuff that goes on at a meeting.
It was all done away with. They moved straight into the two new products.
The presentations were quite clear and precise. I thought the overall show was very enjoyable.
I was just surprised that it lasted just barely over an hour.
Yeah, I was expecting it to go on longer as well. I was wondering if they had cut it short because
they had managed to do all the prep work ahead of time because it’s being recorded virtually,
so they’ve managed the time it better. So no one was overrunning, but I’m not too sure.
Yeah, I got the impression that maybe there was meant to be another item
that they couldn’t get the other item in ready and online. Because you can imagine that
that show will have been put together what over the last two months.
I agree.
So it could have been easily adapted and altered.
Like when he came on and said, we’ve got two new products to talk about tonight, that could
have easily been we’ve got three new products to talk about tonight.
So I think there was something missing.
I think they decided not to go with something.
And that’s why it was so short.
Reminded me of the 2016 presentation they did whereby they released, they had two presentations
was one September one in October,
and the iPhone SE didn’t come out
until the October presentation.
And the reason was, was because the FCC at the time
wouldn’t give them the ratification and clearance
to release it.
So that’s why they had to delay it at the time.
- I just, yeah, I just got the impression
that I think something might have been pulled
at the last minute.
And of course, by doing a recording like that,
easily done. If they say they’ve been at a show they might have been more tempted to
go with some brief news about an item and then say look you know release next month.
But as I said overall it was very slick, very apple, quite interesting and as I said it moved along
pace so much so that Craig Federighi had to dive out the way a couple of times. He was
in a passing shot and that was it. I thought we saw a room so it was a strange turn up. So
So, and lots of new people, lots of new presenters,
they’ve obviously moved away from just having
the same old crowd come out each year
and say what we’ve got to do.
But yeah, it was quite a good show.
- What did you think of those motherboards we saw
on the, when they were talking about the new technology?
‘Cause it looked like on the motherboards,
it looked like they had small iPhones,
my honestly didn’t look quite sort of tempting to say this is what could be happening in our
test room. Yeah, that was down in the bowels of the basement. I was also kind of thinking,
you know, Apple are quite good at being quite shrewd. And I was wondering if some of that was
spoof items that they’ve they’ve put up. I’m sure that we were super zooms looking into see what it
is and all of a sudden they’ll find an Intel chip or a Motorola PowerPC somewhere.
Just do it as a because Apple have always had a reputation for Easter eggs,
haven’t they, in their older product.
So I’m not sure whether I don’t think there was anything in there that was a
secret that was going to be given away.
They’re far too good for that.
But I wouldn’t still surprise if there was some some spoof items in those
background shots.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you zoomed into the motherboard.
It said acne or, you know, made by Road with Runner.
Or something silly like if you can read this, you don’t need glasses.
You know, something very sort of Apple would sort of hubris.
Yeah, they would. They would.
But I have got my SuperZoom settings on yet, so I can’t really have a look in detail yet.
The interesting thing is, I don’t know if you saw
They published some images on their Apple newsroom.
And one of them was actually that room in detail.
It was a high quality picture of the room.
Yeah, yeah, they wouldn’t do that if there was something secret in there that they didn’t.
Either they want, they either want you to know about it.
They want to frighten the other manufacturers or don’t forget Apple have a history of
taking over product and apps from other developers.
If you look at a lot of the improvements in iOS 12, 13 and 14,
some of them were direct competitors
that were either bought up or just squeezed out
by saying, “Well, we’re now doing this app.”
Dart Sky, for example, has now been taken over.
So yeah, Apple have always had a tricks department
and I think it’s still working,
favoring away in the background,
seeing what more they can plot on plan.
- Don’t forget that you’ve got Pixar,
which was part of Apple for many years,
when they bought the company
which Steve Jobs was working for at the time.
And that’s how Disney came onto the board
of being with Apple.
So I get a feeling that there’s some sort of like
Disney feel to some of the presentations they do at times.
There was a lot of green screen, there was a lot of 3D imaging,
as well as some good old-fashioned drone photography.
Yeah, very interesting look, but I don’t think there was any secrets
we’ll really uncover from those pictures.
No, what was the product to which you found most interesting at Apple released?
Well, for me, I’ve got a series three watch and I’ve never felt the need to upgrade at
the time. But the new one they’ve announced now, being an old fogey like me, being at
my great age, you tend to worry more and more about your health. So the heartbeat monitor
or the blood oxygen level meter suddenly starts making sense to a lot of older, more mature
people. And it’s the first time I’ve actually thought, well, maybe it’s time to upgrade the watch.
I haven’t seen anything in four and five to make me do that. But this one has certainly got me
thinking about it, about whether I move from a three to a six.
Yeah, it did look very interesting. I did find the science behind it quite interesting,
because if Apple’s research is going to come out from it, because they managed to get a number of
universities to look at different parts of the data. It might actually produce a knock-on effect
in other applications as well. So you may find that the NHS maybe in future years will be getting
information from not only Apple Watches but maybe Google or Samsung because Samsung traditionally
copies whatever Apple does. And so it’d be interesting to see what comes out from it. I also
was particularly interested by the fact that they chose navy blue for the first time.
when I don’t think Apple have released a navy blue
iPhone or Apple Watch in the past in that particular colorway.
So I thought that was quite an interesting step from their point of view.
What would be interesting is to see what the battery life is on this new watch,
because every time they release a new Apple Watch,
they traditionally get better in battery life.
Well, it’s surprising with the watch being always on,
that it actually lasts more than a full day.
And the other thing, to measure your sleep, obviously the watch needs to be on.
So how and when do you go about charging it? I know with my own watch, I tend to wear it all the time
and then when I’m going to jump in the shower in the morning, throw it on the charger for
what, maybe 15, 20, 30 minutes. And it seems to keep going. Sometimes as I do, I’ll take it off
off a night and give it a full charge overnight.
So it depends on the new watch, how the battery is going
to support both all day–
sorry, always on.
And secondly, if you’re going to be checking your blood oxygen
levels, is that done on a routine basis?
So you have a problem.
So you have a medical condition that
needs you to have your blood levels checked regular.
how will that impact on the watch and its battery life?
- It will be interesting, yeah, definitely.
I was wondering if they were running on some low energy power
because didn’t they announce last year
that they can have a watch face
which just goes to minimal amount of display
and it just has like the time.
And I’m wondering if when it goes to sleep mode,
it literally shuts down as much as possible,
almost goes into like aeroplane mode
just shuts down like they do not disturb times and does literally does focuses on what it needs to do.
Because Tim’s opening remarks about how much he uses his watch. If you used it for all that sort
of usage, looking at pictures, listening to music, answering phone calls, taking notes,
doing emails, you know, that would have a substantial impact on the battery life. You’d
you’d have to almost charge it every day,
which then negates some of the sleep aspects
and the health aspects of not wearing the watch at night.
- The other idea I had was that you’d have maybe two watches.
So you’d have the old generation and the new generation.
So as one, you take one off and you put it on the charge
and then you alternate it and then move to the new one.
And because they’ve got the same Apple ID,
it doesn’t lose any data.
So that might affect it.
It’s an interesting one.
It could feed the information back to your phone, for example,
or an iPad or something like that, or even up to the cloud
for when you’re not being used.
But no, I think for people coming onto Apple Watches
for the first time, I think it’s a pretty good effort.
The thing that did catch my eye, you said about what was
not seeing Craig, was this thing about
the family watch construct.
That all your family can have watches on one one plan and you can keep track of all your little darlings wherever they may be
I’m sure that’ll go down really well with all my little darling saying oh by the way
I’m gonna be tracking you everywhere you go from now on
And the other thing that the one thing that worried me was um, are you making them a target?
You know, I was having the little kids wet wearing $200 watches 200 quid watches
You know, are you opening up another area where?
You know the downside it could be be more attacks on children. So hmm interesting the SC watch again was another
Surprise I I didn’t see that coming at all and no I don’t even think I’ve seen a rumor about it
So Craig, what do you think about upgrading your watch are you ready to do that jump? I
Think I am I’ve been with the series three watch now for
over two years
To be honest, I didn’t see much point upgrading to the 4. There wasn’t too much of a speed bump
I think I’m quite intrigued by the new features that
Series 6 has and to be honest, I quite like the blue one
That’s something quite different about it
To be honest in regards to battery health that we was discussing
I don’t know if you’ve checked Martin, but you can actually see the battery health similar to what you can on the phone and
After two years, I’m still on 97% battery health and I’ve worn my watch maybe
363 days of the year
Yes, that’s a good point. I got my watch as a Christmas present in
2017
So that’s what come out for three years on the same battery. So that’s pretty impressive
Bachelors, I haven’t checked it’s it’s it’s health status
You say you can do that in is that the watch app on the phone that you can check that in you can that’s right
Can’t have a look at that later, but yeah, that’s that’s pretty good going for a for any lithium battery to last that amount of time three years
Mostly had have you had much play with the new OS?
For the watch? No, not yet. I downloaded a couple of bits and pieces
and we’re playing around but
No, I haven’t had too much of the look to the new items. I decided to I decided to change my watch
face from I had it looking like a
Chronograph I thought well if I want to look like a chronograph I go and buy a Rolex or something like that if this is a
digital watch. So I went for one of the more minimalistic numerals. Just so at a glance,
I can look, it’s 845. And I’ve suddenly decided that, yeah, it’s a digital watch. Why are we
trying to make it look like an old watch? So I’m interested in some of the new faces that they’ve
shown up, some of the more, what do I call it? It’s almost a throwback to the 70s,
psychedelia with some of them. But yeah, why make a digital watch look like a conventional watch?
It’s not the same at all. I actually, one of the first things I did when I did the update was to
try and download some of the new faces to discover that I’d hit the maximum of new faces, which I
didn’t know was 30. So I had to sit and delete a few before I installed some new watch faces.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
I’ll have to go to some of the other ones.
Yeah.
I wonder if that’s different based on the model.
Because the internal memory has changed as well, hasn’t it?
As we’ve gone further and further down the line.
Also, more and more powerful chips these time
can show different, I presume, can show more and more complex watch faces.
Yeah.
I agree. It could be something as simple as that certain
certain watches have a capacity limit. So they don’t want to sort of use up all the
internal space with watch faces, which you may not use. Whereas you’ve got reminders and other
things which may need space on there. So each part of the watch has got limited space allocated to
based upon the model that you currently have. Yeah, true. So moving on then, what about the iPad
Who had thoughts on the iPad?
The iPad look quite interesting.
Because the iPads now are competing with the MacBook Airs and the lower end
sort of Apple laptop range.
The I like the idea of them having a bezel less smaller iPad because that can come in very useful for a lot of people who use iPads for just viewing
Netflix or other TV shows. Also, it’s very good for people who want to use the iPad as
like a big screen so they can read their newspaper and other things like that. And I think a
lot of the good features which are on the iPad Pro are definitely needed on the mid-range
iPads and slightly lower-down models. They do look very tempting. What’s your opinion
on that, Martin?
Well, the only thing I thought it’s going to kill the smallest iPad Pro that it competes at such a
high level now. I can’t see the justification for a small iPad Pro. If you want the biggest green
size then fine. The iPad Pro 12.9 would make sense. But it’s now got a more powerful chip in the iPad
air than it has in the iPad Pro unless they’re going to do sneak out a further update to the iPad
Pros later this year or very early next year. It just seems to be a there’s a crossover point there
about the cost of the iPad Pro. Is it a 10.5 inch iPad Pro? I believe so. I’m just checking them.
that compared to the new iPad itself, it just seems to be a conflict there.
They’ve made the iPad Pro such a machine now, they’ll have to do some more work on the iPad Pro
to justify the price. What did you think of the move away from the Lightning connector?
I think that’s a that’s a very good idea in a way if you are trying to get a worldwide model because
more people have adopted USB-C
And USB-C is more commonly found on a lot of laptops
So if you want to connect a laptop to your iPad that comes in quite useful
It’s not a thought it’s not a thunderbolt port though, is it it’s an it’s an USB-C
Whereas the ones on my iPad here that my MacBook Pro that I’ve got, these are Thunderbolt ports.
So there’s a slight difference in their transfer speeds and the power that they can transfer as regards USB-C.
Well, the European Union will be happy because it’s one unified port.
The other theory I had was I was wondering if it was to try and help out the education market
and the education market and you want to have one sort of cable or connector and it makes it cheaper
from their point of view. Because I’m looking at the prices of the UK prices for the new
mid-range iPad Air. It’s like $5.79. It’s not bad. That’s quite good in the sort of
education market. If you look at the smaller iPad Pro, which
which feature for feature I think is going to struggle against the iPad Air.
So I like the form factor.
I like the the square
rim to the to the pro itself.
I quite like that.
That’s sort of reminiscent of the was it the iPad, the iPhone four, wasn’t it?
I brought that kind of look in first off with with these
diamond chisel bevels.
I did think that that looks better than the previous version.
Will I be getting one?
I’m still on an iPad Pro 1, the first ones that came out.
Still got that. Will I update that yet?
I think I think I kind of look my look now is that I upgrade one piece of kit per year.
I can’t do all of it. I’ve got an iMac.
I’ve got a MacBook Pro. I’ve got an iPad.
I’ve got the watch. I’ve got the phone.
I can’t afford to upgrade those all of those every year.
So I think my way forward will be to to upgrade one of them each year to the
to the latest spec.
So that’s a kind of that’s a four year turnaround then on all my kit, you know.
So yeah, maybe I might give the iPad this iPad Pro or this iPad Air amiss
and see what happens with the iPad Pro next year.
Did anyone notice with the release of iOS 14 if Apple dropped support for any of its older devices?
I haven’t checked the background specs on that, but yes, they get into points where they can’t
continue to support some of the older ones because physically they don’t have access to
multi-core and dual-core chips, so there’s going to be an issue with that.
But our technical expert, Alistair, will be able to tell us which ones it is.
Yes, so it’s currently going for iPad 11. The iPad X series, so it’s the XS6s, are the
X8s, 8 plus 7, 7 plus 6s, 6s plus SE first generation, SE second generation and iPod touch.
So that’s all the, so that’s pretty much most of the phones from about 2016, 2015 onwards,
because you’re, you’ve got the sixes in there. So if you’ve got an iPhone 6, that’s no longer
supported, but the 6S is supported. And the SEs are supported. So it’s pretty much most of the
line up at the moment. So anyone who’s got an iPhone 6 would be wanting to upgrade anyway
because their phone is what now, six years old? Yeah, yeah, iPhone 6 came in what out in 2013,
was it 2012, 2013? So it’s on that cluster of what they call their legacy period and after five years
They classify them as, you know, so but even so going back that far
It’s still pretty pretty decent on most if you’ve got usually it’s usually the kids that get the hand me downs
Don’t know so you’re passing on older older machines that are still using bang up to date software
That’s still a pretty good deal
So getting a life a lot of life out of your bucks for for paying the so-called apple tax in the first place
Yeah, so you agree
And again, I think therein lies the rub and the problem for Apple. They make good products that last.
We don’t have to upgrade the machines each year or every other year. My last app, I had a 17-inch
2010 iMacBook Pro and I only changed that last year. So it was nine years old that laptop. It was
only starting to run out of puff on Final Cut Pro and ARCHICAD and some of the really heavy hitting
software apps. But I said nine years out of a laptop, which is cheap money, cheap laptop.
That’s good, I agree with you. I think that it’s good that they kept ESE because that was the first
generation to have the slightly faster power chip, so it allowed it to longer life. Anything below
the SE had the older motherboard and the other features which limited it from being able to
upgrade to different operating systems because since they changed the way they install the operating
system it’s now made the downloads not as heavy on the actual phone which is a good improvement.
So you can an SE came out 2016, March 2016 if I remember correctly. So we’re still doing quite
Well, four years for a phone is still a very good value for money.
Yeah. And I think, do you remember there was a big issue a year or so back about Apple throttling back the performance of the chip to so called save your battery life when batteries don’t fail.
I presume that kind of technology can still be used on older machines to throttle back some of the
more advanced features of iOS S14 to make these older machines more compatible.
You may not get all of the features that are on the new iOS 14.
I think Barthes recently dropped a lot of the other ones, because the SE and the S6S have the
fingerprint recognition on the front. And so if you don’t have that, you can’t do the
secure enclave, which means a lot of the security features can’t be put into it.
That was intriguing that they’ve now put the security touch sensor on the power button.
Yes, on the new iPad, that was quite interesting with the T2 chip. It’s quite a clever advancement.
because it means…
Sorry, Craig, go ahead.
I was going to say, do you think part of the reason behind that
is more integration into Apple Pay?
Well, obviously Apple Pay, the Securities form is through Face ID.
And if that’s not on these lower spec machines,
then having a touch center on the on/off button,
obviously it’s got rid of the home button on the screen,
which helps screen bezel.
And it could be technologically used on other pieces of kit, maybe onto phones and stuff
like that, the SE phone, where you don’t want to have a face recognition, but you have a
touch sensor on the on/off button.
The other thing which is quite interesting, as one of the reasons they didn’t want to
put it on the screen, was because if you look at the problems that Samsung and some of the
other manufacturers have been having with having sensors under the screen, you get false
recognition and the cost of the screen panel goes up. So maybe they’re trying to reduce the cost of
the iPads and saying well we can do it because it’s quite a common occurrence for people to break
screens on phones and stuff so maybe they put it at the top so it’s a more secure system. The other
idea which occurred to me was those who have disabilities it’s probably maybe easier for
them to touch the top of the screen where the button is so we’re thinking maybe the older
generation as well, those who may be stuck in wheelchairs or other areas which Apple have
been highlighting with the voice control features of accessibility of iPhone.
So it’s a whole range of interesting features that could come from that.
The other aspect of the show that really caught my eye and it was almost for me,
you know, I would have signed up on the spot was Apple One.
I thought that was I’m surprised it’s taken so long.
I thought they would have brought it out earlier.
But now that they’ve got an even larger suite of services,
including now this new eye fitness, which I’m definitely,
that’s definitely for me.
I can just see me doing eye fitness now with all these wonderful new
videos and music and everything.
Yes, I’ll have to get out of my armchair a bit more often now.
But I think the Apple One was, for me, seem to be a good move.
If I’m looking what I’m already paying for storage and music and those bits and pieces,
for the extra, I think it’s going to cost me an extra couple of quid.
All of a sudden I get news, I get arcade, I get Apple TV, Apple Fitness.
That to me seemed to be a pretty smart move service wise to get us off the ground.
It’s also one way to get TV running better because that’s not picked up as fast as they wanted.
I don’t know if you noticed a lot of the mobile phone providers have now also started to integrate Apple services into their bills.
I think EE is advertising a bundle that includes the television, the music and Apple Arcade.
As you say, the other thing as well, a lot of the Apple TV subscriptions,
which were free last year, will be coming to an end over the next few months.
So they’ll want to try and save them and maybe from talk I heard
between other people and other podcasters that a lot of them weren’t
considering I’m not going to carry on paying for Apple TV.
So by bundling it all up into a package which contains your music and your
storage, then that starts to make a lot of sense from a
marketing point of view.
Yeah, I’ve just looked at the prices. The individual plan is
14.95 a month. The family plan is 19.95 a month. And primary is
29.95 a month. So family plan is with 200 gigs of storage,
doesn’t work out that badly if you get five people in your
family. So for 20 quid a month, it’s quite competitive.
because you get music, TV, arcade and iCloud. It’s quite good value if you are a family because you divide that by five and you’ve done quite well from that.
Yeah, no, I said I think it’s going to cost me if it works out that the premium family packages 30 pound a month, then that’s going to be too quick a month extra from what I’m paying now for all the bits that we don’t have.
that we don’t have. So I think that was a that was quite that was a that was a that was the one
item for me which is which was yeah give me the number and here’s the credit card let’s go I
would have done that on the spot. Do you think they’ll eliminate some of the iCloud payment structures
and replace it with the Apple one? Currently I can see there’s a 50 gig plan 200 gig plan a
a two terabyte plan. So maybe they’re trying to keep it simple because currently a vast
majority of people are on the 79 pence plan where you get a fixed amount of storage and
that’s adequate for most people because most people exceed five gigs if you’ve got two
devices. And I think that works for most people. I think what we’re trying to do is trying
to get people who are interested in maybe watching TV and some of the music to sort of upgrade.
There was some interesting talk from Spotify, from Spotify saying
is Apple being anti-competitive because they’re trying to have a locking system.
So it’d be interesting to see what comes out on that side.
Yeah, this whole situation with Spotify and is echo or edge?
The gamesmen are people saying that there’s unfair.
Well, quite soon if you don’t have to go online, you don’t have to join Apple.
They want all the customers, you know,
they can either stand up on their own two feet and say,
“Well, fine, come to Spotify, come to us to buy your stuff.”
the you know I don’t I don’t as a matter of course buy apps other than through the store.
I know they’re safe, I know they’re secure, I don’t have any problems with them.
They’ve got better at giving refunds as well if you don’t like the software or something’s not
right with it you can it’s much easier to get a refund on your purchase.
Well I think the difference comes this Spotify saying that they have a different selection than
Apple. And Apple have more new music and Spotify has more general music. But I think it was trying
to say that you can only stay within the wall garden approach. So they was of arguing, well,
if Microsoft can’t have Internet Explorer bundled automatically into their program,
how can Apple get away with doing their thing? So I think it’s more in the European ground
rather than the American market. But it’d be interesting to see what does happen from this.
It does seem strange because Apple have only got less than 20% of the market
in for phones and less than 10% for PCs. So it’s not like they were as with Microsoft,
you know, they had 95% of the market. So then decided you had to use Internet Explorer.
Yes, that was very monopolistic. But, you know, Apple don’t have a monopoly. They are a choice.
and as they love to say on the TV, there are other manufacturers available.
I said I don’t understand, it just seems to be get Apple because the other fact that they boast
about is that Apple takes 60% of all the profits from phones and the like, whereas the other companies,
although they’ve got huge market share, they’re practically giving the stuff away to get people to buy.
interesting. I’m intrigued. I don’t know if you’ve seen as well. Amazon are now heavily
advertising the fact that they are doing pay for access to particular podcasts.
Interesting. Well, they aren’t part of the Prime package anymore. You’ve got to pay on top of the
You have to join the Amazon Audible Books to then have access to, I think, its three
high quality podcasts series once a month.
I know I just got my bill through from Amazon saying they want me to pay for my next year
of Prime, so I’ve got to look at that.
But yeah, wrapping up the show was, I think overall it was quite a clear statement from
Apple and I think we can expect something similar in a few weeks time and they’ll
they’ll there may be upgrades to the iMac possibly certainly there’ll be phones
what do you think will be the the likelihood of the iPhone iPhone 12 yes so what could happen is
what they’ve done with the Mac Pro in the past they can announce it and they may come out in March
because it could be that they may not be able to get with a manufacturing done quick enough.
The other thing which is very interesting is they may drop the 5G chip off the iPhone 12 because
it’s not necessarily going to be cost effective in a lot of countries around the world.
Well I think the 5G has suffered from rollout because of the COVID, obviously it’s not
installed as quickly as possible. And I don’t think I think I saw a 5g map of Britain and it’s
very limited, very limited indeed. So yeah, it wouldn’t I don’t I don’t have any desire for 5g
chip at the moment, it doesn’t really bother me whether it’s it’s there or not. And don’t forget
that Apple have never been the pioneers in this field. They’ve been more interested in reliability
in battery life than being the market leaders. They leave that to other manufacturers to do that for
them because they’ve always said that they prefer if they had a choice of having the latest and
greatest or better battery life, their consumers will always say better battery life.
True. And I think also the other aspect is the Apple bashers love it. If the new iPhone 12 with
5G comes out and you’re not getting good 5G use from the phone because of there’s not much signal.
The emphasis won’t be on the fact that there’s poor 5G, it’ll be always poor Apple. The Apple can’t
get their phones to work and Apple are very aware now of that, that they get blamed for an awful lot
of problems unrelated to their phone but it’s considered to be an Apple problem. So yeah,
Yeah, you’re right.
That’s why they may be hanging back,
wait for the rollout of 3G, 4G, 5G was the same
until there was sufficient coverage and usage
that the phones actually work pretty well.
- Yeah, the other thing which is interesting
is that they were saying that if the phone is good enough,
would you necessarily want to upgrade?
So we said that one of the things
that’s been leading people upgrading to the latest iPhone 11
was the very high definition videos.
So in places where you can’t take an SLR camera,
you can take an iPhone.
And so that’s been sort of quite an interesting topic
which some people brought up is that the camera
on the iPhones now is superior than a lot
of old fashioned cameras.
- You’re right, I don’t know.
You might have seen there’s also been a huge explosion
in camera accessories since the iPhone 11.
There’s far more accessories in terms of audio connectors,
especially as well as camera rigs
to mount other camera equipment to it.
- And then they’ve got that Filmic Pro
is splitting off into two different divisions.
So they got one specifically for the iPhone 11
and then they’ve got another one
which they hope to release a bit later.
The other theory which is quite interesting
is that they were talking about the idea
of being able to record a lot for news presenters,
you know, for small areas and then upload that up.
The other thing which is interesting with the new iPhones
is the fact that because you’ve got more lenses,
you’ve got better light coming into the camera
so it gets around the problem
of not having big enough lenses.
And I thought what was also really interesting
was the fact that you’ve got the neural engine inside
so it doesn’t have to use battery life sending it
over a weak connection so it can do a lot of thinking
inside the phone to make the photos look better.
All of those look pretty interesting.
And it will depend again, I suppose they will they will split
it that the the iPhone, the iPhone 12 Pro will get all four
sensors on the back, including the LiDAR, as well as the two
different three different lenses itself, as opposed to, I think
the iPhone 12 model will just have the three, they’ll just have
a normal and a telephoto and maybe the widescreen,
but they won’t get all four that the pros versions
will contain.
- One of the interesting things is that they’re thinking
of doing is having a small pro version.
So they’re looking at keeping the same form factors,
the SE Mark II, and putting a pro into that model.
So you have an iPhone 12 Pro in a small factor
and then the big iPhone 12 Pro.
So you end up with two Pro models
and you drop the non-12 number
because when they’ve looked at the numbers of uptakes
around the world, they’ve discovered
that people really like the Pro features
but they didn’t like the bigger size phone.
- Yeah, wasn’t there a rumor today
about them possibly releasing an iPhone mini
and that they were registering the name.
- Yes, ’cause in some parts of the world,
they need to have smaller phones, I was reading.
So if you’re in a corporate environment,
you don’t want a big phone because that’s a higher chance
of cost of replacing the glass on it.
So you want small phones that should cheap to replace
and see how well that you can do from that.
I also am a fan of smaller phones myself
because they’re easier to put in clothing
and sort of mount inside the car.
Because if you have big screens, it takes up a lot of space.
- Yeah, I think we could almost start
a Byte and Brew Bingo card
for what the name of the new iPhone 12 will be.
iPhone 12 plus Max size, big, nano, mini.
You name it, we could put it on the car.
We could welcome any suggestions, anyone wants to send in their suggestions of what the new smaller phone might be called.
That would be interesting.
What would also be interesting is to see with those five big American universities taking an interest in the data coming in from the new iPhone,
from the new iPhones and also the new Apple Watch,
will that result in other European or worldwide
universities being able to access that data?
So you end up with the university saying,
well, what actually would like is a watch or a phone
with these features because from the data we’re reading,
this would be coming quite effectively.
Because if you remember, it was two years ago,
Apple changed one of the features of how they record,
movement because what they discovered is that people in wheelchairs do like an
sort of elongated O for when they’re moving and it wasn’t recording the
distance they move because of the way in which the phone measures the sensors.
So it may be that we might end up with more effective Apple technology coming
out in the future. Well they’re always always working on the on the next big
thing aren’t they? Yes.
We caught up with Martin to find out why he joined the Mac News Group and what’s
it all about. Thank You Craig. The reason I joined was I joined a new company
back in 1995 who were all Mac based. They didn’t have such a thing as a PC
which I’d never come across Mac before. It was all new fresh to me.
Unfortunately, the boss said, “Oh, I believe you’ve got a laptop, a PC at home.
Therefore, you can be our IT guy.”
Which was quite a shock, since I knew nothing about Macs at all.
So, the first portal call was to try and start finding out something.
And I heard about Mac user groups, and then found out about the London Mac user groups.
So, I joined back in year dot 1995, ’96, something like that.
basically because I knew nothing about Macs.
Now thanks to the guys there and the support I got
and the help I got was really, really useful.
And I started to learn my way around the Mac
and how it works and the difference was
there was no such thing as control or delete.
I couldn’t understand that.
That was a whole new concept
that you didn’t have this way of turning the computer
off and on again, it all worked.
It just was very strange.
So the Mac group I joined then, it’s a very social group.
We’ve always met in pubs, large rooms above pubs
or in the pubs themselves.
So it’s very convivial, good chance to meet up
and chat and talk, have a few beers.
Usually there’s some food around,
the pubs normally have some good food.
It’s still nice to be able to have a chat and talk
and eat and drink with your friends and colleagues
and talk over the issues that affect you
in your daily use of a Mac.
It’s all well seen, all these lovely glossy adverts
and everything that you see on the TV
about being able to design a whole record album
on your iPhone.
It’s not really like that in practice, is it?
People just struggle, “How do I send an email?
“How do I work pages or numbers or Excel or anything?”
So that was what was very useful about a mug,
that you could actually sit down
and ask the dumb stupid question that you had
and get nice answers and not be treated like
it was a dumb stupid question.
So that was Elmug, and also there’s other mugs
all around the country.
But we have seen a serious decline in the last 10 years
of numbers attending the meetings.
It’s partly down to the availability of help from Apple
in so many different sources now.
Obviously you have all the stores open now, the Genius bars.
You have Apple support on the web.
And so the ability to be able to ask questions
and get answers has spread far and wide.
So yes, I think in all mugs all around the country,
I thought we’ve lost some of the mugs.
I don’t think there’s a single mug left in Scotland.
There’s a couple in the Midlands.
We’ve got some Westsex down in the South West of the country,
Southeast is covered by one or two groups.
So this podcast hopefully will be for people
who maybe don’t have access to a mug,
don’t have a local mug group that they could contact or join
and they can feel a bit more welcome into the Apple world
by hopefully listening into the Byte & Brew podcast
and we’ll also be able to help out
with maybe some questions and answers
for some of the things they’ve got
or even be able to point them in the direction
of a mug group that they may wanna join.
So all other Mug groups who listen to this, if you listen in,
please get in contact with us, you know, we’re all here.
Tell us what you think, how you experience
your Mugs all around the country.
And let’s try and get a strong community of Apple users
and lovers right the way around the country.
- If I, let’s just say, for example,
I’ve just bought a new Mac
and I’ve literally just opened it up out of the box
and stumbled my way across MAC user groups.
How would I go about joining one?
Or where would I find out some more information about them?
- Well, there is, obviously,
ELMUG is based in the London area
and we cover quite a large part of the Southeast.
We’ve got members scattered far and wide
through at least, what, 60 or 70 miles from London.
The other one is there is a UK mug website
which I’ll put a link into the L mug page
of how you can go about finding
where the mugs in your area are.
There’s also if you go to the apple.com site as well,
there is a page there for mugs
and there are also some details
of the mug groups around the UK.
No Mac user groups do anything other than just meeting up in a pub.
Oh yes, there’s a lot of groups who only have an internet presence, for example.
They only operate through internet bases.
But other groups meet in various different locales.
It can be a library or it can be a sports hall or it can be a municipal building.
So there are opportunities to get to see other groups.
Whether they are as welcoming as,
well, no, they’re all sort of wrong.
They’re all welcoming.
It’s whether or not they can get the facilities
to have one-on-one group meetings.
(upbeat music)
- The London Mac User Group is a voluntary organization
of users and enthusiasts for all things Apple in the London area.
As well as our podcast, we normally hold monthly meetings
in central London on every second Monday of the month,
as well as other events from photo walks to Christmas parties.
To become a member of the Mac user group,
you can sign up online via our website
at www.elmug.org.uk/membership.
Memberships start from as little as 15 pounds a year,
entitling you access to our monthly meetings,
exclusive access to our soundbite newsletter,
and our own membership-only area
where you can find discounts to your favorite Apple software,
as well as one-to-one meetups
from our summer and winter buffet parties.
Why not visit our website
or send us an email for more information?
In this part of the show we try to answer all your tech questions from our members and listeners.
If you have any questions for the team you can always leave us a voice message at anchor.fm/mug/message
or if you’re like me and you prefer a more traditional method you can always send us an email at podcast@elmug.org.uk
First up we have a question from Peter.
He says he’s just recently bought a new MacBook Pro and wanted to find the best way to transfer
all of his data across to the new machine.
So if you have a time machine from your previous machine you can do a time machine backup but
what I would normally recommend is if you’ve got a new machine the first thing I would
normally do is set up a test account,
just to test the machine is all working,
put in all the updates from Apple,
and then go into applications and then utilities,
and look for migration assistant,
and then use that to transfer the data in.
And the reason I do that is I learned this
from an Apple genius, is that you want to test
the brand new hardware to see it’s all working carefully
and correctly without any data on it.
So if there is any problems and you have to contact Apple support,
you don’t lose any time transferring data and then discover there’s a folk with it.
If you have a older Mac, which doesn’t have migration assistant,
the next way you can do data transfer,
which I’ve done on quite a few occasions,
is if you have it on an external drive or even if it’s a drive that you pulled
from another Mac, you can connect that up via USB,
or USB-C to your current Mac.
And then if you look in the user folder,
you’ll see your profile,
and then you transfer each of the folders independently over.
So you transfer your photo folder, the document folder,
and move them across.
A useful tip also is that if you are looking
for the address book in the older versions of the Mac OS,
you’ll find it in libraries under application support
and you’ll say address book
and that’s where your address book is stored.
So this is pre-iCloud.
So those who are transferring from say a SNOLA put across.
The other small thing I’ve discovered
is if you are transferring from iPhoto to Photos,
you will find that you can transfer all the photographs
but you can’t transfer the albums
if you’re just doing a drag and drop
because sometimes what can happen is a corruption of data
and so you don’t get all the information,
so you just have to transfer the photos independently.
Most of that is fairly easy to do.
Once you’ve transferred in your data,
then you log into your new account
and then you have to go through to system preferences
and log into iCloud and then put in your Apple email address
and your password and that all authenticates
all the data you have on your iCloud backup.
So it may ask you for what is the password for your iPhone,
what is the password for your iPad,
if you have backups of that in your iCloud.
So you go through that process and sign in all correctly.
If you find at any point that the iCloud is not working
or it doesn’t seem to communicate,
what I normally would recommend is you sign out,
restart the Mac and then try signing back in again,
because sometimes when you put so much data back
into a new Mac, it does get a bit confused.
So it’s quite common for the iCloud not to work sometimes.
Do you have any other recommendations, Martin or Craig?
- I agree with what you said though.
The only thing I would suggest to people
is that when they set their Mac up,
normally you go through the process of your name,
address, and where you live and all that sort of stuff.
And that creates an administrator account,
which is the base level account on the machine,
which has total access to all the aspects of the computer.
But for day-to-day use, I would set up a separate account,
a user account under your name or nickname,
and only assign that user privileges.
So it’s not a user account.
So it adds an extra layer of security
so that if you’re unfortunately caught up in a trawl bar
or a drive by attack on your machine,
if you’re an administrator and something crops up
and it says, oh, please allow this application to work,
if you’re an administrator and you type yes,
All of a sudden, you could have given away root control
to a hacker.
Whereas if you’re in user, you would get a warning saying,
you’re about to change something in the base settings,
which only an administrator can do.
And it might give you that second chance to say,
hang on, I don’t want to do this.
There’s an awful lot of sophisticated spamware out there
trying to attack your computer.
So I would just, as a matter of course,
create a second account on your machine just for you to use.
And the set of options of the OSX for a standard account,
isn’t it? So you have an administrator account and
a standard account and then your day-to-day basis,
you use the standard account for what you want.
And one of the new features you just reminded me of is,
when you transfer into the newer operating systems,
it asks you to create a new password
when you’re doing migration assistance.
So try and choose a good level password
if it’s an administrator account,
not something like welcome or hello
or something less than seven letters.
You probably want to go in sort of eight characters
or more, I would recommend.
- The, I have a simple rule with my passwords,
which means I have separate passwords
for every account I have, every website I go to.
And all I have is I have a familiar term or number
and to that I put a prefix of the first three or four letters
of the event.
So if it’s say Microsoft, for example, it would be MICR,
then I would put my name, Martin Kelly,
and then add a number at the end.
And that way you can quickly generate passwords
for almost every different site you go to.
But with a simple format, you are able to remember them
without having to go into key change actors all the time.
I do find sometimes with key chain,
one password can also be the same
is that you don’t have your computer with you
or your phone if you’re in a strange environment
or a different office block.
All of a sudden you can’t remember these very complex
passwords that are created by one password and an Apple.
So simple method, give yourself a key word, key phrase
and then add a prefix to it
as a wire making simple.
- One good piece of advice I would say is
if you can’t remember what your email password is
because you’ve been using it forever,
if you go into Keychain on your old Mac,
you will find a listing of your email address
and then you just have to put your ministry to password in
and you can find out what the password was
because the amount of times I’ve gone around to clients
or friends of mine and they say,
my email doesn’t need a password
because they can’t remember they put the password in five,
six years ago.
And so they have no idea what that password is.
And of course, it’s not in a easy, ready-to-bool format.
So the key chain is brilliant for finding passwords
or for things.
- Yep, very good.
- In regards to moving over to a new machine,
say I’ve got some apps where I’ve customized the layout
or I’ve bought a plugin,
what would you say is the best way to transfer those over?
- Migration assistant is excellent
because migration assistant not only copies over
your preferences, it copies over your cache files,
it also copies the state of where the application was.
So the only exception to the rule
are the two absolutely huge applications
which don’t copy over nicely.
One is the entire Microsoft Suite,
which has to be downloaded
if you’ve got the Office 365 and put in as fresh.
Or you have to put in the serial number
if you bought it as in perpetuity license.
And the other one, which doesn’t copy over nicely,
is Adobe’s Creative Cloud.
Adobe Creative Cloud, it will copy over the application,
but it won’t authenticate.
You have to log into the Creative Cloud application,
and then it will download what it has at store
because it has its own backup separate.
- My advice to that would be,
if you’re someone that uses lots of plugins,
I would, once you’ve purchased the make a backup copy
of that in your iCloud drive,
so that you’ve always got a reference point
to go back to if you do need to reinstall it.
And another thing I found is you can put in key chain,
you can make notes.
And so if you buy any software,
you can just say the name of the software
and then put the serial number underneath it
and the date and the time that you bought it
because the amount of times you use a plugin,
you forget you used it and then what’s the serial number?
So for example, I use iStats
and it’s probably the first app I always put into any Mac.
But can I remember what that long digit serial number is?
So I just go into Keynote and find out what the serial number is and then put it straight in.
We could do a whole show on backups at some point. If you want to go through that,
if someone wants to know more about that, please write in and as I said,
we could actually do a whole podcast about backups and how you should go about that.
That’s for another show, Craig. We’ll bring that on next time.
Certainly. If we’d like to move on to the next question,
We’ve had a question in from Chris in central London.
Hi there, Bruin Bike.
This is the chairman.
So unusually, I use my iPad as my main computer.
I don’t have a Mac anymore.
And I think I need to take it into Apple support
because I’m getting some random touches on the digitizer
on the touchscreen.
What’s your advice and why should do?
Because I’ve got all my personal data on there.
Should I– do I need to wipe it?
What will those Apple technicians have access to?
Or should I take any precautions?
What do you think?
- So what I would do is I would always make a backup
to iCloud and then go onto the iCloud website
to verify that the data has actually been transferred.
Second, if I had used a passcode or password,
I would maybe set it to something very simple
so that when I had it over to the genius, it’s easy.
The other thing to remember is that it is not uncommon for Apple to do a race and restore.
So if you’re taking an iPad in, they will say, do you mind if we erase everything on
this iPad and restore it?
Or if it’s worst case scenario, it turns out it’s a manufacturing fault, but I’ll actually
give you a brand new iPad or a nearly new iPad, so you lose everything.
So make sure you’ve got a backup for certain.
Second thing, if you work for a company whereby you’re not allowed to share the data with
If anyone makes sure you delete that particular application
or any notes you have, maybe with that company,
so you comply with any legal requirements.
But traditionally, Apple employees
don’t have any interest in looking at the applications.
They don’t really have enough time to look at anything.
What we’re looking for is how quickly can I get you
to the point of giving you a working iPad
and get you out of the store again?
Would you have any other advice, Martin,
Yes, I would recommend ensuring that you have a backup of your device not only on iocloud,
but also on a local machine, just in case, as Martin said, you can never have too many
backups.
Okay, so the next question is something more generalized, more about a piece of hardware.
I’ve recently had problems with my home Wi-Fi network
and I’m considering buying a mesh network.
Could you explain what exactly is a mesh network?
How does it work?
And are there benefits or disadvantages to using one?
- So mesh networks are very good.
I currently use NETGIS Orbit mesh network
and I’ve also used Google’s mesh network.
So mesh networks came out of the 1980s
when the military were doing experiments
with the testing of high-end availability,
but didn’t it really come available until around about 2015?
There are convenient way to provide better
and higher grade Wi-Fi for an existing
or inadequate network.
So if you imagine a conventional route
to deliver this limited Wi-Fi,
unless you can hardwire it to another router,
a mesh network is designed to provide a very easy way
to transmit data between two or three different nodes.
And so I’ll explain what a node is.
So on most particular routers nowadays,
you have like a 2.4 gigahertz and a 5 gigahertz radio.
And what these modern-day mesh networks do
is they transmit the signal over between the two
different routers so that they are always talking to them
and relaying them.
So highly capable mesh networks, which are network devices,
use wireless radios that contain software
that allows them to configure themselves
into overlapping network without a central coordination,
i.e. yourself.
So you can get blanket coverage in a house
without having to work out exactly which heavy piece
of energy you have to move in order to put the Wi-Fi
in a different place.
In a mesh network, the fundamental unit
is not the access point of the gateway, but the node.
A node is typical two or three radio systems
or firmware that talks to nearby.
So you could have a smartphone and a laptop,
both talking to slightly different routers
or access points because you’re in between two of them.
And as soon as you move up and down your house
or your office, it immediately switches you
to the strongest signal.
So you don’t have to sort of change signals.
So it’s a very common occurrence if you are in a house
with multiple floors and you are going from the ground floor
to the first floor, you don’t want to lose connection
as you’re going through the house.
The mesh network will automatically move you
to the strongest signal without losing any connection.
Also, a mesh network is brilliant
if you’ve got a lot of people on your network
and they’re doing lots of different things.
So I had at Christmas, I had, I think we counted it,
17 different Apple or iOS devices on our network.
We had four people on laptops, two people watching television,
one watching Netflix, one watching Amazon,
the rest looking at social media,
and someone was talking to Australia.
And the mesh network was working out
who needed which bit of information
without having to have anyone managing it
because it was working out where everyone was in the house
and was working out the bandwidth quite easily.
The downside with a mesh network is that these routers
in comparison to the average one that you get
from your internet service provider
can be anywhere between two and five times as expensive.
So for example, when I bought my Netgear Orbit,
that was 180 pounds.
Now compare that to about 30 or 40 pounds
that you buy an average router.
It is quite a considerable difference,
but the massive difference is you don’t have to worry
about any of the setup, it provides a better throughput
of signal, and it provides a faster system.
Now, one of the cool things I’ve discovered
about mesh networks is if a node goes down,
or powers down, and crashes, or the cat gets too interested
and knocks one of them off the shelf,
the network doesn’t go down.
Each of the nodes can continue to communicate
with one of the other nodes,
and will can keep on functioning.
It automatically works its way around.
So if you think of what a big mesh network is,
that’s what the internet is.
It immediately works out how to transmit the data.
So if one particular connection goes down,
it reroutes the signal a different way.
And the best way to think of data
is if you imagine you had a jigsaw puzzle
and you broke down a letter that you were sending
into a series of little jigsaw puzzles
and put them into envelopes
and put them into a postbox,
the postman would deliver them in slightly different ways
because they would all come and be sent
or received slightly different ear.
and when it receives the other end, it’s all assembled.
That’s the same with your mesh network at home.
I find them very good in areas
whereby you have poor coverage
or you have jittery video streams on your current network
and you want to improve it.
You do not have the ability to run eFnet wiring
through your house or your office.
You do not want to be the person
who’s always doing the firmware updates
or manually organizing stuff.
You just want to sort of turn it on,
let it work and not have to think about it.
Or be a administrator and log into something
and say, okay, I’m going to set this up
and deal with other things.
So it’s probably the way forward,
especially if you are wanting to connect multiple devices
in a building which is not essentially placed
because it doesn’t matter how many antennas
you add to a router,
you will not cover a very large house
because houses traditionally on multiple floors
and you traditionally put the router on the ground floor
and if you’re two floors up,
you can’t go through there as layer or concrete
because it’s just too high.
And that’s where mission network comes into its own.
Do you have anything to add to that, Martin?
- Yes, Alistair, I agree with what you said.
That’s a fairly comprehensive description of what mesh is.
It’s basically to help you to get
more consistent signal for you to use on the machine.
I’ve mentioned my house because the one supply sky was a pretty basic affair.
Yes, I would recommend ensuring that you have a backup of your device, not only on I/O Cloud,
but also on a local machine, just in case.
As Martin said, you can never have too many backups.
I can now go to the back of the garden, get it upstairs,
And it’s a solution to a problem if you are finding
that you’re getting a fall off and you’re losing signal,
you’re not able to get everything you want,
then you may look at investing in a mesh system.
- All right, that’s good.
Do you have any suggestions, Craig, yourself?
- I was just gonna say, personally,
I’ve been using a mesh network for about two,
two and a half years.
Yes, it was an expensive investment, as you said, Alistair,
but it does make a huge difference.
In my home, the walls are about 12 inches thick
and always had patchy Wi-Fi until I invested in a mesh.
- I think the thing to remember with a mesh network
is that unlike a conventional router
where you have a central point
and then you’re connecting things out,
maybe in a star configuration
or you’re joining things together like in a daisy chain
where you’re running one cable from one router
to another box through a dev-allow system
or something like that.
A mesh network tries to connect
as many ways as possible back to the device.
So you may get, so for example,
on some of the more modern routers,
you now get two different radio frequencies only.
So you get a 2.4 and five gigahertz
to connect your devices and then have a second channel
which is purpose is just to connect
the different nodes together.
So you’re running different channels to provide you
the fastest possible way to get the connection on
and off the network so someone else can use the network.
Now, the other advantage which a lot of people don’t realise
is that if you’re getting people on and off a network,
that means you’re not using vast amounts of electricity
to try and push out greater and greater signal.
So your neighbours will be grateful as well
because you’re not sort of blanketing the entire area
with your wifi.
(upbeat music)
- I just wanted to say a big thank you to Martin and Alistair
for joining us on our first Brew and Bite show.
And thank you to the Mac user group for sponsoring us.
and of course not forgetting an even bigger thank you
to our members and listeners for tuning in.
We hope that you have enjoyed the show
and we would love to hear your feedback
and suggestions for our next one.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
you can always drop us a tweet @londonmacgroup
or send us an email at podcast@lmug.org.uk.
I think we’ve come to the end of our first episode,
but now you can join us next time
where we’ll be speaking to a very special guest
and we’d be answering more of your questions.
In the meantime, you can join us
on various social media channels, including Twitter,
Facebook, have a good week, stay safe,
and until next time, goodbye.
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