CapMac December 2002 Meeting Notes

CapMac Meeting Report for December, 2002

The December 12, 2002 meeting of Capitol Macintosh was held in Room 3.106 of the UT Pharmacy Building. President-elect Glenn Chase and current President Midge Kocen opened the meeting welcoming the 60 plus attendees in the audience. Glenn explained that since everyone came to see "Doctor Mac" Bob LeVitus' "State of the Macintosh" address, club business would be kept short to maximize his time. A quick rundown of club business ensued, with everyone encouraged to visit the CapMac web site and participate in the forums. Glenn reminded everyone that even if you don't have an issue to seek help with you can still provide assistance for others. A call for volunteers was made by Glenn, as he reminded everyone that the club depends upon fresh enthusiasm and new volunteers to keep officers and helpers from becoming "burned out" after shouldering the load for several years. A list of open positions will be posted soon on the CapMac web site and Glenn encouraged everyone to consider helping out, even if they are new CapMac members.
Attendees at the CapMac December meeting listen politely to the club business update while waiting to see Bob LeVitus' annual "State of the Macintosh" address.

The author or co-author of over 40 computer books and regular technology columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Bob's latest foray into media is his "Inside Mac" radio show on CNET. Bob will also be hosting no fewer than twelve conferences at the upcoming MacWorld Expo.		Glenn lauded San Marcos Internet and CapMac member Andrew Bateman for providing 100 percent uptime of the CapMac web site since it was moved to their server, and for his assistance in setting up the CapMac blue and white G3 to begin beta testing CapMac online services. 15 members are now involved in beta testing the CapMac server with capmac.org mail accounts and personal web space. Target date for providing these services to all CapMac members is January 1, 2003. Glenn then provided an update on member benefits, explaining that 25 special discounts for CapMac members are now available on the CapMac web site "Special Deals" page. New additions include discounts from audible.com, Atomic Learning, and WiebeTech Storage. It continues to be our goal to save CapMac members their membership fee and more through the many special discounts available to our members.
The next topic of discussion was the upcoming CapMac Spring Cleaning Sale which will be held at the Business Success Center on February 22 from 10 AM to 3 PM. The Business Success Center is located on the ground floor (Suite 130) of the Bank One office building at 7600 Burnet Road, near the intersection of Burnet Road and Anderson Lane. The use of this facility was generously provided by CapMac member Dan Diener. Dan is CFO of the Business Success Center and a strong supporter of CapMac. The sale will provide everyone with an opportunity to sell their no longer needed items and to shop everyone else's stuff for treasures. CapMac will keep a small percentage of the sale price as commission. We also hope to have a table set up where sellers or buyers can have a Mac checked out with a series of short diagnostic tools for a small fee to help raise money for CapMac.		During the club business update Bob was setting up his own video camera to tape his presentation for the Houston Area Apple User's Group (HAAUG) since he would be unable to present at their upcoming Saturday meeting due to a conflict with his new radio show's airtime.
CapMac President-elect Glenn Chase tells Bob LeVitus "You don't have to convince me to go on this MacMania Geek Cruise. Your wife needs to convince my wife we ought to go!"
Glenn requested that anyone interested in helping please contact any CapMac officer since we will need many new volunteers to stage this event successfully. While you are pulling out your Christmas decorations be sure to start gathering your no longer needed Mac-related items for the Spring Cleaning Sale!

Glenn introduced "Doctor Mac" Bob LeVitus as CapMac's very first presenter back in July of 1993 at the first CapMac meeting held in the MCC auditorium. Glenn found Bob's AOL email address in a book that he had written and sent him an invitation, which he graciously accepted, and Bob has been an ardent supporter and frequent presenter for CapMac ever since. Bob set up his TiBook and then surveyed the audience first to find out "about ya'll." He asked how many members were new to the Mac (several), how many were former Windows users (several), how many had broadband internet connections (most), and which users have already upgraded to Jaguar (many). He asked how many members of the audience have visited an Apple Store (many), and exclaimed "Now THAT'S that way to sell Macintoshes!" Finally, he asked how many thought Bill Gates is the spawn of Satan, which brought a lot of raised hands and chuckles.		During the meeting Glenn asked the audience what topics they are interested in for future monthly meeting presentations, citing the difficulties in persuading vendors to travel to Austin with the expenses involved. Bob Levitus advised that there are several Mac experts who are willing to speak for just the price of travel and lodging and promised to help us in approaching them. Bob mentioned Robin Williams and Andy Ihnatko as possibilities.
Why run Mac OS 9? Bob advised CapMac members there is no reason to stay with Mac OS 9 if your machine can run Mac OS X, declaring that Classic is better than Mac OS 9 "because when Classic crashes you can still surf the web in X!"		Bob then went on to discuss what Apple has done lately since the topic of his presentation was "The State of the Macintosh" address for 2002. He started off discussing the 17 inch flat panel iMac, which he praised, but admitted that he initially had worries that it would "look dorky" but "it works and looks good." Bob then described the machines he uses and explained that his personal desktop machine is a dual processor 1 GB G4 tower with an Apple Cinema Display and 22 inch CRT, but he also tests products on a 500 MHz G4 Cube since many people don't have machines as fast as his desktop. He said the theme of his address was "Things that weren't possible in Mac OS 9 are trivial to us now," and how things have improved dramatically in Macintosh price/performance citing as an example the 999.00 iBook recently released by Apple that has better video than the previous model but needs more RAM.
He predicted that the upcoming Macworld Expo in San Francisco "is going to be one of the most exciting in a long time" and said that the secrecy of what will be announced "is a Cupertino Kool-Aid thing - they [Apple] like to start the buzz and hope to live up to it." He said that Apple likes to do the unexpected, and predicted that "even though the titanium PowerBook should be end-of-life, Apple won't announce a new once since we expect that." He said there is a rumor Apple is working with Cingular or someone besides Sony-Ericsson for a cell phone related product. Bob proudly showed off his Sony-Ericsson T68i which had an Apple logo on the screen, proclaiming it as "the beta version" before confessing that you can put anything you want on the screen and he had customized this phone himself, but that it made for great conversation when people saw it. "Bluetooth rocks!" said Bob, describing it as "wireless USB," then demonstrating his bluetooth wireless headset and explaining how he can use his T68i to make a wireless internet connection as a 19.2k modem to his TiBook. He briefly talked about iSync (still in beta), describing it as the "greatest program I don't recommend to use because it's not worth messing with unless you backup all your data."		Bob mentioned that Apple stock is now trading at 15.00 or so, and since the company is worth 12.00 cash per share it's like buying stock for 3.00 and speculated that he would be buying some more soon. When asked if this was a conflict of interest for him, he responded by saying the "I am not a journalist, I am an opinion columnist. There are no rules!"
Bob LeVitus displays a stylish "Dr. Mac" t-shirt be brought to be included in our monthly meeting raffle. Many members had Bob autograph copies of his books after the meeting.		Bob briefly advised that he makes a point of backing up his home directory to CD regularly as a precaution in case he needs to restore his system after a data loss or instability after an upgrade. Bob then discussed Apple's acquisitions during 2002 (ie, Nothing Real, Emagic, Silicon Grail, Zayante), and how they are not talking about them. He hypothesized that Apple is trying to become the defacto computer choice for people who want to create media.

On the topic of .mac, Bob asked the audience if they thought it was worth 100.00 per year (no clear response). He said that he thinks it's worth 50.00 and that it is great to easily share media like movies and photos, and said "Apple's made it so easy your grandmother's grandmonther could do it." To illustrate his point Bob showed us his .mac homepage featuring an iMovie he created and now shares with anyone around the world. During his presentation Bob lauded Schlotsky's Deli for providing free wireless internet access and wondered why anyone would go to Starbucks and pay for the same service, predicting that it would not be long before free wireless access would become the norm.		Thanks to Robert Fletcher for videotaping the meeting and providing the pictures for this report. We hope to have a streaming audio version of this meeting online soon!

Bob always loves to share tips about favorite software he has discovered and this meeting was no exception as he demonstrated "Mac OS X Software that has won a place in my heart." As a brief aside, Bob recommended VersionTracker as an excellent source of software updates and cautioned that you "sometimes need to ignore comments that are childish prattle." Unsanity's WindowShade X, which he proclaimed "better than the old WindowShade!" LaunchBar, opens anything on your disk by just typing a few letters StickyBrain, a utility to save clippings and remembers where they came from so you can easily return to their source. Bob demonstrated Sticky Brain by showing how he keeps standard text bits for sending as replies to the enormous amount of mail he receives and said that his standard reply to hecklers now is "you may very well be right" which leaves them speechless. MacReporter lets you keep up with multiple Mac-related news sites which publish their content as an RSS feed. For games, Bob's favorites include the tetris sytle game iColumns, Bejeweled, and VideoPoker. Early in his presentation Bob raved about Serene Screen's Aquarium screen saver. Before coming to the meeting Bob created an iMovie using Still Life, which pans and zooms across still images to create moving pictures. Bob's movie subject was the recently announced "celebrity signature iPod's" featuring iPods with engraved autographs of stars like Madonna.

Finally, Bob promoted the upcoming MacMania II Geek Cruise, where he will be a faculty member. (Note that if you are a CapMac member you qualify for a discount on this cruise - see our Special Deals page for details). Bob generously donated copies of several books he has authored, plus t-shirts for our raffle, and pulled the winning tickets from the fishbowl. Also raffled were an Apple logo lunchbox, and Apple logo keyring, both from the Apple Company Store.		Bob provided flyers about the cruise and reminded us that if we decide to go we should mention his name when booking the trip. "It won't get you a discount, but if I get enough referrals I can get cabin upgrades all the way to the President's Suite, and I'll invite all of you up for drinks!" he promised.
Glenn presents Bob with a stainless steel Apple logo luggage tag to use on his upcoming cruise in appreciation for his support of CapMac over the past nine years.
The meeting adjourned with a reminder that our next meeting is January 9. Our featured presentation will be videotaped highlights of Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo keynote address. We hope to have a live report via telephone from Nancy Gravley, CapMac member and columnist for "The Mac Observer" who will be hosting a session on "Helping your parents and grandparents get Online."
Mark your calendar now, and be sure to bring a friend!