Soundbyte 299 – January 2020

ChristopherNews, SoundByte

Mac Pro

Stop Press – Meeting Date Change

Our next meeting is 7pm, Monday January 20. This is due to room availability.

In this issue:

  • January Meeting
  • The New Mac Pro
  • Catalina News
  • Running hardware diagnostics on your Mac
  • iPhone Tips
  • Selling your iPhone or iPad

January Meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday January 20. Our topic this month is Special Interest Groups. Join a table and discuss Photos, WordPress tips and tricks or join our regular Technical Corner.

We will start the meeting with Newsbyte and end with a raffle. This month we are raffling a triple wireless charging mat. Useful for someone with all of Apple’s recent smart devices. A picture will explain it better than words. These are the devices it will charge, three at a time.

The New Mac Pro

The new Mac Pro and XDR display were finally released in December. YouTubers unboxed it, professionals started testing it and geeks tore it apart to learn how well it works and how it is put together. If you do buy a new Mac Pro and XDR display, make sure you only use the included cloth to clean the screen. No joke, this is to avoid damaging the screen. Here is the Apple Support article.

How good is the Mac Pro? Well, in this video, two music professionals put the Mac Pro through its paces to create a pop song. They find the new Mac to be greatly improved on its predecessors.

In this video, the music video for the song above is processed on the Mac Pro. The video editor is amazed.

Finally, Lunar animation, a British animation studio, was given a Mac Pro and XDR display to work on the new Jumanji movie end credits. The Mac Pro and XDR display in particular enabled them to deliver faster and higher quality work than possible before. Read more by clicking this image.

Animation work on the Mac Pro

Catalina news

Regular readers will know that 32 bit apps are no longer working in the latest version of macOS: Catalina. This means Apple’s photo management app, Aperture will stop working. There are some workarounds mentioned in earlier issues, but Apple has produced a guide to migrate your photos from Aperture into Adobe Lightroom Classic or the Photos app. Read it here.

Running hardware diagnostics on your Mac

Read on to learn everything you needed to know about running a hardware test on your Mac. You might want to do this if your Mac starts behaving strangely. See here.

iPhone Tips

Let’s start with 5 features of the iPhone you might not know about. Find out what they are here.

Next, as we know, the iPhone 11 has improved its cameras again. This year adding a wide angle lens. This is great but how do you get the best from it? Let’s start with the basics. This blog has 25 tips on how to take pictures with a smart phone.

Finally, the tutorial below looks at the iPhone 11 and what tips and tricks to use to get the best from it.

Selling you iPhone or iPad

Many people sell their iPhone when they come to the end of their phone contract. Some keep it for 3 or 4 years, but at the end, we should make sure it is securely wiped before being disposed, given away or sold. Read here for some tips on what to do.

Thanks for reading Soundbyte this month, we hope to see you on January 20th for SIGS!