DACS General Meeting
January 2014
Meeting Review:
Apple Ecosystem—with Richard Corzo

By Frank Kromer

How appropriate the name for the January presentation.  Apple Ecosystem, as presented by Richard Corzo, says it all.

Richard began with the Apple TV ($99) and the Apple feature known as Airplay.  This device, when connected to an HDTV, can share content through iTunes between a computer and your HDTV.  iTunes is available for both Macs and PC's running Windows.  Through Airplay your Apple TV can also play content from an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. In addition, it has built-in apps for playing content direct from the internet, for example from Netflix.  Recently iTunes radio was added to the Apple ecosystem.  Richard provided a demo of iTunes radio in action.  Apple TV also works for displaying games on your HDTV.  If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iTunes on your computer, consider acquiring the Apple TV.

Apple's lineup of computers begins with the $599 Mac mini and includes the Macbook air, Macbook pro, iMac 21", iMac 27", and the just-released Mac Pro.  The Mac mini comes without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse.  In all other respects it is a complete computer.  MacBooks now come with retina displays.  Richard commented that once you have the retina display, you won't go back to a standard display.  The current lineup of Apple computers has eliminated optical drives and hard drives on its notebooks.  On desktop computers, you can currently buy either a hard drive or the newer flash storage, or a combination of the two (Apple uses the term "fusion drive").  The Mac Pro is a very high end computer, starting at $2,999.  Unless you are in publishing or a very serious computer user, other Macs should meet your needs.

All Macs, iPhones, and iPads include many built-in apps, such as the iLife suite (iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band).  Richard talked about iPhoto as a great way to organize your photos by faces, places, or events, with the ability to tag photos.  iWork (pages, numbers and keynote) apps are for word processing, spreadsheet calculations, and creating presentations, such as the one Richard gave at the meeting.  All in all, the App Store has 1 million apps available for the iPhone and 475,000 for the iPad.  iBooks and Maps have been mainstays of iPhones and iPads and they are now included on Apple's computers as part of the latest operating system (Mavericks).  iBooks uses the epub format, in contrast to the mobi format used by Amazon.

Richard referred to Time Machine as the "killer app" on Mac computers.  Time Machine backs up the entire Mac computer to a backup drive such as a Time Capsule, and does it seamlessly.  In talking about backups, Richard commented that the backup drive should normally be 2 or 3 times larger than the computer hard drive.  He also talked about restoring from the backup drive using Time Machine.  We all know how important it is to back up but a straightforward method of restoring is equally important.

Mavericks became available in fall 2013.  It is available at no charge from the Mac App Store, and it includes all of the apps referred to herein, as well as the ability (among other things) to display multiple pages and prevent malware.  If you want more information on Mavericks, the Apple web page is the place.

The latest versions of iPhone are 5s and 5c.  The 5s is a 64-bit processor with touch ID for security.  The 5c is basically the same as the version 5, but with several colors to choose from in selecting your model.  The latest versions of iPad are the iPad Air (because it is significantly thinner than previous versions) and the iPad mini, with retina display.  Both versions come with a 64-bit processor and up to 128 GB of storage.

iOS 7 is the latest operating system for iPhones and iPads.  Richard talked about why Apple apps are the most customer oriented apps, and mentioned that apps are easier to make for Apple devices (than for Android).

iCloud was the final part of the Apple ecosystem in Richard's presentation for the evening.  The Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV are all tied together through iCloud.   iCloud syncs calendars, notes, reminders, email, bookmarks, and reading lists, and if you choose, will backup your iPhone and iPad (or you can back them up to your computer).  Other features of iCloud are photo streaming, keychain, and Find My iPhone.  Richard demonstrated the Find My iPhone app (which includes the iPod Touch).

Apple ecosystem - I think it was better understood as a result of Richard's presentation.  I know it helped me.