May 10th, 2022


The meeting was called to order by John Walker at 6:10 pm.
Board members present: John Walker, Donna Pikl, Richard Milewski, Ron Dixon, Ty Davison, Henry
Neugass, Donita Zwolak. A quorum was present.

Minutes review:

A motion to accept the minutes of the April 12, 2022 meeting as e-mailed was made, seconded and
carried.


Treasurer’s report:

There were no expenditures and the account balance remains at $371.84.


Old Business:


Action items:

• John reported on his Center 50+ discussions.
• Currently, there are no limitations on the number of attendees at a meeting
• They sanitize before and after each meeting
• Masks are optional and free ones are available
• Air is exchanged on a regular basis. Ty inquired about the frequency and John did not know. He will
ask next time he speaks with someone from Center 50+
• Richard reported that he had delivered a “large stack” of information cards to Center 50+ over a week
ago. He asked that Board members report back to him when more are needed.


Other:

After a short discussion, the members agreed that we will continue to meet via Zoom given that the
number of Covid cases are rising again.
The number of attendees at the April Zoom general meeting was 11.
After discussion, June’s general meeting will be changed to a report on WWDC by Ty. The presentation
on Maps will be moved to July. September’s topic will be syncing information between a user’ different
devices.


New Business:

Donna asked about re-establishing a mentoring activity for new users of Apple equipment. The program
has been dormant for a number of years. The general consensus was that this is a good idea. Details will
be flushed out in future meetings. Richard stated that he would be willing to participate after we begin in-
person meetings again.

Action items:

1. John will follow up on the question about frequency of air exchange at Center 50+.

Adjournment:

John closed the Board Meeting @ 6:46 pm.


Ron Dixon
Interim Secretary

Charging Changes

The European Union has just issued a requirement that electronic devices standardize their charging connectors and they’ve chosen the USB-C connector as the new standard. Because the EU is such a large market for electronic devices this means that manufacturers will be adopting the standard world-wide, including in the US.

This means that laptops, phones and other devices that use external chargers must migrate to USB-C connections over the next couple of years.

The current M1 apple notebooks already use USB-C as their charging connector, but even so, Apple isn’t happy that they will be forced to abandon the current lightning connector used on iPhones and iPads, at least for the European market. It remains to be seen if they will ultimately produce devices with different connectors for the European market than they sell here in the U.S.

Europe already requires all phones to be able to be charged with a USB-micro connector, but there’s a loophole in the rule that enables Apple to comply by including a USB-micro to lightning adapter with each iPhone sold to customers in Europe. The new rule appears written to foreclose that possibility.

EU studies show that EU residents currently dispose of 11,000 metric tons of charging cables each year and the rule is expected to dramatically reduce that number. Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president for a Digital Europe, said in a press release, “European consumers have been annoyed for long enough by the accumulation of incompatible chargers in their drawers. We have given the industry plenty of time to come up with its own solutions, but now the time has come for legislative action in favor of a universal charger. This is a significant gain for our consumers and our environment, in line with our ecological and digital ambitions.”

But there may be a loophole Apple can slip through in the new rule too. The rule only seems to apply to devices with charging connectors. If Apple switches to wireless charging as used on the Apple Watch then they can build a phone with no connectors at all.

April 12, 2022

The meeting was called to order by John Walker at 6:12 pm.

Board members present: John Walker, Donna Pikl, Richard Milewski, Ron Dixon, Ty Davison, Henry Neugass, Donita Zwolak. A quorum was present.

Minutes review:

A motion to accept the minutes of the March 8, 2022 meeting as emailed was made, seconded and carried.

Treasurer’s report:

There were no expenditures and the account balance remains at $371.84.

Old Business:

Action items:

John reported that he had not yet contacted Center 50+ but planned to do so in the near future.
Richard reported that the web problems that had been identified have been corrected.

May’s general meeting topic will be the Monterey operating system. Ty will be presenting. He hopes to be able to recommend upgrading to Monterey by that time. It looks promising. This month’s presentation will be on Apple Keynote.

The return to in-person meetings was discussed. The Board agreed that it was still too early to return to in-person meetings and we will continue with Zoom meetings for the near term.

The number of attendees at the March Zoom general meeting was 14.

The discussion on how dues will be handled when we return to in-person meetings was discussed. Ron’s proposal from last meeting seemed to be favored. It was moved (by Ty) that, beginning at the second in-person meeting, that we will transition to once a year collection of dues with the amount remaining at $30 per year and that new members will pay a pro-rated amount when they join. The motion was seconded (by Richard) and carried.

New Business:

Richard asked whether he could email all members regarding completing the registration form. The members of the board felt that it was okay to do so. Richard also noted that he had recently added a webmaster’s blog feature to the web site and asked others to contribute. Henry indicated that he was interested.

Ty updated the Board on the status of personnel at MacAtoZ. Kelly Robison, who has vast amount of Apple experience, has joined the firm.

The topic of Zoom etiquette was discussed. Several members commented that the extraneous noises that occur during the topic presentation was distracting and annoying. Ty suggested that he could mute everyone at the beginning of the presentation. Attendees could still ask questions by using Zoom capabilities. It was agreed this was a good approach. Ty will make an announcement at the beginning of his presentation tonight.

Center50+ personnel have made comments that members of the community have asked about SMUG. Richard will draft a short information sheet that Center 50+ can hand out.

Action items:

John will follow up on questions and concerns about Center 50+.
Richard & Henry will work on additional content for the Webmaster’s Blog.
Richard will contact Center 50+ about information sheet.

Adjournment:

John Walker closed the Board Meeting @ 6:44 pm.

Ron Dixon
Interim Secretary

March 8th 2022

The meeting was called to order by John Walker at 6:08 pm.

Board members present: John Walker, Donna Pikl, Richard Milewski, Ron Dixon, Ty Davison, Henry Neugass, Donita Zwolak. A quorum was present.

Minutes review:

A motion to accept the minutes of the February 8, 2022 meeting as emailed was made, seconded and carried.

Treasurer’s report:

There were no expenditures and the account balance remains at $371.84.

Old Business:

General meeting topics were reviewed and discussed and it was agreed to continue with current plans. Tonight’s presentation will be Numbers and Ty will be the presenter. Ty will also give a quick update on today’s announcement from Apple. April’s topic will be Keynote.

The return to in-person meetings was discussed. Ty felt the current infection rate was still too high and, in addition, had questions and concerns about air handling and other safety practices at the Center 50+. Others had similar questions and concerns. John will contact Center 50+ to answer our questions and concerns and to clarify their requirements for holding in-person meetings. The Board agreed that it was too early to return to in-person meetings and we will continue with Zoom meetings for the near term.

Richard asked John to ask Center 50+ about early access to the meeting room. He is working on developing the technology for us to have hybrid in-person/Zoom meetings. He will need a minimum of 20 minutes to setup the system before each meeting. Richard also asked John to inquire about a contact for adding SMUG information to various Center 50+ monitors.

New Business:

Donna has resigned as the group’s secretary but has agreed to remain as treasurer for the time being. Ron volunteered to replace her. A motion to appoint Ron as Interim Secretary for the remainder of Donna’s term was made, seconded and carried.

Ron asked if the Secretary was responsible for maintaining an archive of Board minutes. It was decided there was no need since the minutes are kept on the web site.

Ty reported finding some problems with the group’s web site (spelling and password processing). Richard will investigate.

There was a discussion of how to handle the renewal of membership dues once we return to in-person meetings. Ron suggested that we change to yearly dues based upon an even monthly amount with a fixed renewal date for all members. For example: $36 dollars per year due on January 1st. Then new members joining during the dues year would pay a prorated amount (annual dues/12 * number of months remaining until the new dues year). He believes that this would simplify the Treasure’s job. This item will be discussed at a future Board meeting.

Ty updated the Board on the status of personnel at MacAtoZ.

Action items:

  1. Richard will follow up on reported web site problems.
  2. John will follow up on questions and concerns about Center 50+.

Adjournment:

John Walker closed the Board Meeting @ 6:48 pm.

Ron Dixon
Interim Secretary

Processor Progression

Apple recently completed the shift from Intel X86 processors to their new family of M1 RISC chips. RISC is an acronym for Reduced Instruction Set Computer.

This is the third time Apple has switched the Macintosh to a new instruction set architecture. The first was from the Motorola 68000 series to PowerPC chips in 1994 and the second from PowerPC to Intel processors using the x86 architecture in 2005–2006.

With the shift from the Motorola 68000 series to the PowerPC, Apple introduced a new Macintosh O/S, System 7 (Later renamed MacOS 7).

On the last day of March this year, Mihai Parparita released two utterly spectacular web-based emulation systems that can run System 7 and it’s successor MacOS 8 in a browser. There’s a demo on YouTube, and you can try them yourself at https://system7.app and https://macos8.app. Each has some pre-installed apps, including Adobe’s Photoshop 3. You can drag and drop files from your desktop to the browser and edit them in the emulation. Uploading and downloading files is supported as well as session-to-session persistent storage.

Read details about the current state of the project, and the work on which it is based in Mihai’s blog.

February 8th 2022

Minutes of Board Meeting February 8th, 2022.

Board Members: John Walker, President; Warren King, V. President; Donna Pikl, Secretary/Treasurer; Richard Milewski, Webmaster; Donita Zwolak, Ty Davison, Ron Dixon and Henry Neugass, Board Members at Large.

John Walker opened the meeting at 6:10 PM, and all board members were present except Ty Davison and Warren King.

Ron Dixon felt that the Board members should all be listed at the top of the minutes.

Ron Dixon moved and Richard seconded the acceptance of the January minutes as amended, and they passed unanimously.

Treasurers Report: $371.84 balance ending Jan. 31.

The March meeting topic will be Numbers, the April meeting Keynote and the May meeting MacOS Monterey 12.1. The June meeting topic is scheduled to be Maps.

Dynee suggested accessibility features possibly be presented in July or sooner. All agreed it would be a great topic.

It was decided to keep meetings on Zoom until all felt more comfortable meeting in person.   A hybrid meeting was discussed when we did meet in person.

There were 7 board members and 2 general members present for the board meeting.

John Walker adjourned the meeting at 6:37 PM.

There were 14 members present for the general meeting.

Dynee Medlock presented in place of Ty Davison.


Donna Pikl, Secretary/Treasurer


January 11th, 2022

John Walker opened the meeting at 6:07 pm.

Ty made the motion to accept the minutes as emailed and Henry 2nd the motion and it passed unanimously.

Treasurers report was a balance of $371.84.

Ty was to talk present on Mail program.

John Walker asked if the entire slate of officers was accepted, and it accepted John Walker as President, Warren King as Vice President, Donna Pikl as Sec./Treasurer, Richard Milewski as Web Master, Ty Davison, Donita Zwolak, Ron Dixon and Henry Neugass as board members at large.

There was no desire for in person meeting since the Covid numbers were climbing again.  We will continue with Zoom for the near future.

February meeting will be on Pages, March meeting on Numbers, April meeting on Keynote, and May on Montery 12.1, and June possibly on Maps (which might be fun).

We will ask for suggestions at the General Meeting.

John Walker closed the board meeting at 6:32pm

Donna Pikl
Secretary/Treasurer

December 14th, 2021

Ty Davison called the meeting to order at 6:04 P.M.
Ty moved to approve the minutes of November board meeting as emailed  and Richard 2nd, they were unanimously approved.
Treasures report was the same at $371.84 as bank balance.  I, Donna Pikl, is to check with the bank to make sure no fees are not taken out while no activity is on account.
John Walker took care of the 50+ Center inquiring as to delay of meeting in public due to more Covid outbreaks.
December meeting will have a slate of officers, Q&A untimed, Apps of interest, and Ty will give Apple update & Monterey information.
January of 2022 will be on Pages. 
We will present at meeting to accept the slate of officers as a whole.
New Business, much discussion on upcoming meetings and advanced Covid variants.
Ty closed the meeting at 6:43 P.M. 

November 9th, 2021

The meeting was called to order by John Walker November 9, 2021 at 6:11 pm.  Board members present were John Walker, Ty Davison, Richard Milewski, Donna Pikl, and Donita Zwolak.

Ty moved to accept minutes as emailed, Richard 2nd and they were unanimously approved.

Discussion on the possibility of Bank Charges if no activity was shown on the account.  Donna Pikl was to talk to the bank.

Ty will speak tonight on various Apple Products.

Ron Dixon offered to be a Board member where needed.  Ron Dixon was nominated for a Member-At-Large position.

It was suggested that we Draft Henry Neugass for a Board-Member-At-Large position also.

December meeting will be the presenting of officers, voting, and unlimited Q & A.  Also, Apps. of interest.

There was discussion on Monterey testing and it’s flaws.  

January 2022 meeting is on Mail.  It was suggested that maybe we could do Pages, Numbers, Key Note, and more taking one a month. They will still need to make the final cut.

John Hammil asked if someone would take the Center 50+ questions for Apple Products?

Questions arose on when to return to Center 50+ for in person meetings.

John Walker closed the Board Meeting @ 6:45 pm.

Donna PIkl
Secretary

October 12th, 2021

SMUG Minutes 10/12/21

John Walker opened the meeting at 6:06 P.M.

Ty Davison moved that we accept the minutes from Sept. and Richard Milewski seconded and they were approved.

Treasurers report had a balance of $371.84, with a 4 months credit at Center 50+.

The meeting was to be on mail alternatives on varied devices, but instead Ty spoke to us on new products.

November meeting Ty will speak on various products.  We are encouraged to bring Turkey recipes.  Officier Candidates will be presented to be voted on in December.

Richard Milewski moved that we add additional new member’s at large, Ty seconded and it was approved.

December meeting will be election of candidates presented, unlimited Q & A and new Apps. & Websites people have found.

Ty gave some comments on spam.

Board meeting closed at 6:43 pm by John Walker.


Donna Pikl,
Secretary