MVCUG Meeting Notes

November 9, 2019

Happy Veterans Day to you all. These meeting notes of the last-minute Mike & Barry Show substitution at the November meeting will be brief (John was unable to attend due to being involved in the Cochise College Hall of Fame induction ceremony). Mainly because it’s terribly difficult, if not impossible, to take notes of the meeting while presenting at the meeting. Either way, I didn’t even attempt it. So this will be a link list of resources related to what was presented (and some we didn’t have time to get to) following our show outline.

Q&A

We had some questions, and there were some answers, but since I was not taking notes, I don’t remember them. Sorry.

MVCUG Business

We did have close to a full house with only a couple of empty chairs. Thanks to all who attended and welcome to one new visitor, David. We hope to see you again in the future.

Term of the Month

Computer Fingerprinting

The ability of websites to track individuals by enumerating the unique characteristics of the device being used: OS version and patch level, browser type and version, CPU, screen resolution, and so on.
Mike demonstrated Panopticlick from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is a tool that shows what information is available on and about your device that’s being shared via your web browser.

Tips o’ the Month

Windows:

Nearby Sharing

After the April 2018 update, Windows 10 has the ability to share files with authorized devices on the local network. Both devices must have Nearby Sharing enabled through the File Explorer, and both must have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled and be on the same network. Think of it as Microsoft’s response to Apple AirDrop.

macOS:

Tile or move Catalina windows to the left or right of the screen

Hover over the green button in the upper left of any window and a pop-up menu will appear with three options; Enter Full Screen, Tile Window to Left of Screen, or Tile Window to Right of Screen. Choosing one of the latter two will take you to a full-screen space with the window you were hovering over filling that half of the screen. Any windows you can see in the other half can be clicked on to fill that half for a space limited to those two windows. If you add the option key while you are hovering, then “Tile” changes to “Move” and when chosen you stay in the same space and the window is resized and moved to the half you have chosen. These same commands are available in the Window menu in the menu bar.

iOS:

Apple Mail

Change your “Sent from…” email signature

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to find “Mail” and tap on it.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the Mail settings list and tap on “Signature” (next to the last setting).
4. You can choose if your signature applies to all accounts or make custom signatures per account, if you have more than one email account set up on your device. The field below these controls is a text editing area for you to change or remove the default signature.
5. Tap there to bring up the keyboard and text editing tools.
6. Change it to whatever you’d like.

That’s it.

Bonus iOS tip:

Your iOS device has a name. Apple provides a default name, but that you can also change.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap on “General.”
3. Tap on “About.” The top setting is “Name.”
4. Tap there and you go to a text field where you can change the name of your iOS device to whatever you’d like.

Share a Favorite

Barry

AirPods 2

We skipped over this to save some time, but suffice it to say that Apple’s second-generation AirPods (https://www.apple.com/airpods-2nd-generation/) are my newest favorite tech gadget. I take a walk of between 2 and 2½ miles every day. I almost always listen to podcasts while I walk. It is so nice not to have wires dangling from my ears down to my iPhone in my pants pocket. They also have Siri built in, so I can just say, “Hey, Siri” and tell it to do something like, “Send a message to my wife.” Siri responds, “Okay, I’ll send a message to Lucinda. What would you like it to say?” Then I tell Siri, it confirms and asks me if I want to go ahead and send it. I confirm, and the message is sent. All with no interaction by my hands while I keep on walking. I can also have Siri change the volume, skip ahead or back in the podcast, or even go to the next one in the queue—so cool!

Mike

Adblock Plus and Privacy Badger browser extensions

Following up on the theme of his term of the month, Mike showed these two products that help keep to a minimum the kinds of fingerprinting that ads and other trackers can do on you as a citizen of the web. Adblock Plus (https://adblockplus.org/) is from eyeo GmbH (https://eyeo.com/) and Privacy Badger (https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) is from the EFF. Both are free. They both don’t support all browsers, however—your mileage may vary depending on platform and operating system version.

Apple’s New Operating Systems

Okay, this is where these notes will get even briefer...

Apple released five (well, actually six … sort of) new operating systems for their devices this fall. We tried to cover a few new things in two of them at the meeting. There is a lot to cover and all of it doesn’t actually apply to the majority of the membership, so here are some links that you can follow up on at your leisure as your interest leads.

The five OSes are:

• iOS 13
• macOS 10.15 Catalina)
• iPadOS 13
• watchOS 6
• tvOS 13 There’s not actually a page for the OS, so this link is for the latest TV 4K hardware that runs the tvOS.

The sixth is a special version of iOS 13 for Apple’s HomePod.

New Features

To find out all about what’s new in iOS 13, Apple has a page for that. Also, they have pages for what’s new in macOS 10.15 Catalina.

If you’d like to watch Apple’s presentation of the new operating systems and an overview of features, check out the keynote from WWDC 2019. You can find it on YouTube or on Apple’s website.

To see how Apple’s new hardware take advantage of the new features of the new OSes, watch the September 2019 event presentation on YouTube or Apple’s website.

Finally, for ongoing information about the Apple ecosphere, check out their YouTube channel. They also have a special Apple Support YouTube channel that provides lots of how-to videos for all their products.

And that brings us to the end of these notes. Please join us on Saturday, December 14 for another Mike & Barry Show—this one scheduled. The topic is “Basic OS Operations.” We’ll go over things like file management, searching, file extensions, security features, keyboard shortcuts, how to make screen shots, and more.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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