This month we do some housecleaning. We’ll look at some of those indispensable small and often overlooked programs, widgets and utilities for your Mac and your iPhone. To start with, we’ll spend some quality time with Preview and TextEdit.

We’ll also look at programs that have outlived their usefulness such as OS 9, MS Word and MS Office.

We’re open to member requests and favorites. Use the Contact page to suggest inclusions. We plan to produce a disk of shareware around this theme.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

Safari 4 Beta is out. It contains a number of features that will probably make their way into OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. There are some incompatibilities with 3rd party plug-ins but these problems will iron themselves out rather quickly. We’ll explore Safari 4 and some notable small shareware applications & plug-ins.

We’ll also touch on some Mac-related help sites and reference videos.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

We continue our exploration of the latest versions of iLife and iWork. Now that iLife is on the street we can illustrate the new stuff directly. We ran long last month and we still had lots to say and do. We expect the same this month. We’ll cover as much as we can squeeze into the meeting.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

This month we’ll take a first look at the latest versions of iLife and iWork. A few highlights…

• iPhoto has Faces & Places and can share photos to Facebook. It also has themed slide shows and travel books.
• iMovie spots new editing tools, titles and themes. I was particularly impresed with image stabilizaton and travel maps.
• GarageBand has basic and big-name artist lessons available.

We’ll cover as much as we can squeeze into the meeting.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

The Mac Store in Eugene has a host of special prices on Apple Brand and related goodies.

In addition, Jeff Scoble says the following special prices are offered only to EMUG members. If you’re not sure of your membership status we’ll be happy to check it for you.

Griffin TuneBuds blue or red: retail – $14.95 EMUG price – $9.95

Kingston 4GB DataTraveler: retail – $49.95 EMUG price – $34.95 (Jeff says, “I know I said a $10 discount, but what the heck…”)

Also don’t forget the 500GB LaCie Hard Drive free with trade-in of a qualifying Mac! This offer also includes migration of your files from the trade-in to your new Mac (There are some restrictions. The trade in value must be at least $100.). This is a great way to get credit toward your new Mac and you’ll end up with your Time Machine backup drive as well.

We thank The Mac Store for these offers and for their support through the years. We’ll see you in January for discussion and follow-up to the events at MacWorld.

This month we’ll revel in the cornucopia of goodies offered to Mac users this holiday season. Jeff Scoble from The Mac Store will show his picks for the coolest, most useful, and best designed items for your Mac, iPod, iPhone, camera and your life. It’s always a fun show. He will have fliers for the special packages and prices the store has for you. Check out their migration special for your old Mac. It involves a 500GB LaCie hard drive and the migration of your files to your new Mac!

We meet a week early (this month only) in order to even the load on the Veterans Building during December. We’re upstairs in the Green Room (the old Chess Room). There’s a dance group using the space until 6:30 so we’ll want to respect their space. We’ll be ready to move tables and chairs in immediately after they finish.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

We got thoroughly involved with the new Mac laptops last month because of the high level of audience interest. Web security was the planned topic but it didn’t even take a back seat. This month we’ll actually explore the topic. Despite the perception that there are no serious viruses or trojans for the Mac OS there are still plenty of opportunities for mischief to occur.

Also, we want to emphasize the availability of tutorials and educational podcasts through iTunes university and other sources. We’ll try to point out specific ones that have impressed us. You can help. Be prepared with path data so we can point out your favorite educational podcasts.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

We plan to discuss basic web security. MacWorld has an article on this that Dick wants to reprise and expand upon. We’ll point out some tools and tricks to use to keep your Mac and your data safe and secure.

Clearwire recently switched their in-house email system over to Google’s Gmail. This has not been without its share of “opportunities to learn.”.

Then there’s Guy Kawasaki! His latest big thing is Alltop. It’s a different taqke on a news aggregation site. Check it out!

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

The September meeting will highlight the latest incarnation of iTunes. We’ll take a look at the new features and the revisions of old features. We’ll also check out the iPhone software upgrade.

The Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

Our August picnic was rained out so we met back at the Veterans building. We had a smaller than normal turnout but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

The Macintosh Mystery Hour was lively and wide ranging as usual. We had no main meeting topic but that didn’t seem to slow us down. Rodney Jensen stepped in with a presentation on Spaces – Apple’s multiple-desktop organizer. This was his first real presentation before the group and he did well and handed the inevitable glitch quite well. Good job, Rod!

Dick Lennox showed a large number of iPhone Applications. Some of these demonstrated extension of features from the Mac OS to iPhone Apps. Check out iGraffiti, Jott, Evernote, Pandora, Sketches, MagicPad, Picoli, Face Melter, and SpeakEasy. Then there are iPint and iBeer which have no redeeming value – but I want them both!

Thanks to all who braved the elements!