Soundbyte 325 – March 2022

ChristopherNews, SoundByte

In this issue

  • March Meeting: Special Interest Groups
  • Peek-a-boo! March Apple Event
  • Has Intel caught up with Apple Silicon?
  • What to buy – check here first!
  • A dock for your MacBook Pro
  • A tip for checking dodgy email
  • Secret screen saver on your Mac!
  • Capture the stars with your camera
  • Offers for members

March Meeting: Special Interest Groups

Join LMUG on Monday, March 14th at 7pm for our March meeting. We will be resident in our new location, the The Calthorpe Arms, which is just 10 minutes walk east from Russell Square tube station. Please come along! We will host a raffle for those in attendance!

It will be a hybrid meeting. This means members who cannot join in person can still take part over Zoom. Details will be in the email that this Soundbyte came with.

This month we will start with Newsbyte as usual and then split into Special Interest Groups! Join a group of your choice to discuss a topic of interest and share our knoweldge. These are the groups:

  • Troubleshooting your Mac
  • Final Cut Pro/iMovie
  • iOS questions
  • Photography

Don’t forget to follow LMUG on twitter and in our podcast Brew & Byte.

Peek-a-boo! March Apple Event

Peek Performance

Apple is holding a special event on Tuesday March 8. The title of the event is Peek Performance. Speculation circles around the word Peek and if that means Peak. Is it just a new iPad or the long awaited Apple Silicon professional desktop Mac? We don’t have long to wait!

If you want to watch the event live with your friends at LMUG, look for the Zoom link in the email that came with this email. The event starts at 6pm, London time.

Has Intel caught up with Apple Silicon?

Intel was knocked for six, when Apple released the first Apple Silicon Macs. Apple promised similar or better performance with much lower power draw (meaning better battery life and much quieter fans). Intel’s latest chips have caught up in speed, and we will need to see what Apple can do next to stay ahead with the next wave of Macs. One thing hasn’t changed. If you want a laptop for serious work on-the-move without needing to keep it plugged-in to power, nothing yet can match the MacBook Pro.

As mentioned in previous SoundBytes, the performance coming from the new Macs has been tempting for many professionals. But it is not all plain sailing. For those switching over from Windows, the Mac OS may seem alien or un-intuitive and the loss of Bootcamp might rule out come serious edge cases like some Windows-only 3D design work, until the program developer updates their apps (and in some cases they might not). To get the best performance, you might have to switch to a different App as well, which can be confusing. Have a look at the issues faced by this video producer below. Remember, some of these types of questions can be answered in our monthly meetings!

He later dives in to Final Cut…

What to buy – check here first!

Apple Buying Advice

With the Apple Silicon transition in full swing with a slew of Apple products to be announced this year, many of us will be thinking about the right time to upgrade and what to upgrade to. You could do worse than scrolling through TidBits buying guide, to help figure out what’s the best for what you need.

A dock for your MacBook Pro

Last month I wrote about USB 4. This month, lets have a look at its brother: ThunderBolt 4. The difference can be set out simply:

  • Intel requires USB4 devices to support 20Gbps speeds, single 4K display, and 7.5W power output.
  • Thunderbolt 4 devices must support 40Gbps and drive dual 4K displays or a single 8K display

There are some more complications, which you can read about in this article, but in essence, ThunderBolt 4 has double the speed of USB4 (and is much more expensive). It is also compatible with USB 4 and they use the same connector plug. So Thunderbolt is typically for professionals who are happy to pay for the fastest speeds and connect to a wide array of devices. [Get on with it-ED]

And so we come this new dock, which might be perfect for pro Mac users with MacBook Pros which have Thunderbolt 4 ports. Have a look at this review below from Apple Insider.

A tip for checking dodgy email

Cyber crime is a huge business worth billions of dollars. Most of it works by something called social engineering. Essentially, rather than hacking into your wallet, you are tricked into willingly handing over your cash. How? Imagine you receive an email telling you your account is suspended. If the email is realistic, and it is from your bank with your name in the message, maybe you need to act on it? That is the scenario cyber thieves are focusing on.

We need to be alert and suspicious of anything unexpected. If we have ordered a gift online, we might expect a receipt to arrive by email, but we need to be alert, if we didn’t expect it, especially if it concerns your money or paying for something like a missed delivery. I received this from PayPal.

A phishing email

My first thought was, “Oh no, not again, what’s happened to my account!”

But do you see at the top of the email, it is showing the sender as paypal.com and me (Chris Mahon) as the recipient? This is what happened when I tapped on paypal.com.

Mail shows who the email actually came from. Nothing to do with Pay Pal, this is a fraudulent email! If I had fallen for this I would have happily typed my PayPal password into their website. These thieves would have used my password to log-in to my real PayPal and start stealing money! Make sure you use this tip (tap the email address to see who really sent it) to stop that happening to you!

Secret screen saver on your Mac!

After all that stress, how about something nice. If you have a recent version of Mac OS installed, there is a screen saver that you might want to try. Have look here.

Capture the stars with your camera

As spring arrives, you might want to go out and take some more photos with your digital camera. With night mode on the lastest Android and iPhones, some new attention has been drawn to photographing the night sky. The iPhone takes a long exposure that can help some stars appear in your photo, but with a digital camera, you can take multiple long exposures and combine them together on your mac to get a clearer and brighter image. This is called stacking, and can be done in a mac app called Starry Landscape Stacker. Have a look at how this ’astrophotographer’ did it below to get some amazing results:

Offers for Members

Find below the special offers available to our paying members. Access these from our website in the members section.

  • LoveHandle PRO – Magnetic Kickstand + Phone Gripz: 20% Discount
  • G-Hold Devices: 30% Discount
  • AirTamer Air Cleaner: 30% Discount
  • AgileBits 1Password 7: 25% Discount
  • Eve Products: 25% Discount ? Updated
  • EverWeb by RAGE Software: 50% Discount 
  • Opus ][ Complete Collection: 25% Discount
  • Que Publishing Products: 35-45% Discount
  • Take Control Books: 30% Discount on All eBooks
  • Teams ID, a Password Manager for Teams: 33% Discount
  • TechTool Pro: 50% Discount ? Updated
  • TidBITS Content Network for Apple professionals: Get a free month of tips and articles!