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Mac Interest Group

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The Mac Interest Group meets on the second Friday of the month at 2 pm. All welcome! We ask for a $5 contribution toward overheads. No enrolment is required - just drop in if you are a financial member of SeniorNet Nelson.

For SeniorNet Nelson Mac communications, you should use this email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

At your request we can update your personal details, including the Mac version you have, as the version of OS X has some bearing on suitable courses. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Group recently undertook some serious iMac repairs, by Roger Pittman and Rod Lewis.

mac repairs

SeniorNet received a donation of a very dead iMac computer recently. Local service shops wrote it off, but SeniorNet members, Roger Pittman and Rod Lewis, decided to try to revive the beast. They would “give it their best shot”, and … undertake the repair in front of an audience!

First step – diagnosis. Tests pointed to a faulty hard drive.

Roger had tinkered with IBM PCs, but never a very compact Macintosh computer. Rod’s online research came up with a do-it-yourself repair video. They bought specialist screwdrivers and duct tape. To open the 24” iMac, the screen, held in place by magnets, had to be removed to reach the inner workings. The duct tape allowed them to easily grip and pull off the display.

Rod created a detailed drawing of which screw went where, as there were many to remove and of various sizes. Reassembly with bits left over was undesirable. At home, following the step-by-step video, they disassembled the machine, removing screws, pieces of foam and sticky tape, and then gently prised apart miniature plugs and sockets deep in the bowels. They surgically removed the dead hard disk from the patient.

Instead of buying a replacement hard drive from a computer store, costs would be halved by buying an external USB “expansion” hard drive from Warehouse Stationery.

In front of an expectant audience, the surgeons arrived with the numerous body parts of the machine in a cardboard box. Could our doctors save the patient?

Roger opened the new USB hard drive’s box and extracted the SATA hard disk. Then Rod ran the reassembly part of the video, so that our audience could see what we were attempting … and Roger would know what should go where!

Finally, the machine was back in one piece along with its new 2 terabite hard drive. They powered up the old Mac and loaded the operating system. It burst into life, with a round of applause from the audience and a few litres of perspiration on the surgeons’ faces. Total cost, about $150.

Club Open Source Recommended List

The list is of open source software suitable for the Apple Mac versions from 10.6 onwards. Some are labelled with the particular versions of Mac and OS X (Ten) they will run on. In each case, the applications are ready to install, and do not require unpacking.

Once installed, run the application from the Finder/Applications folder where it will be waiting for you and listed by name. Double click on it and you are in business. Installations will be covered in more detail in courses.

Find them using Google and download them:

Libre Office (Office Suite)

Bean (Word Processor)

GIMP (Image Editing)

Scribus (Desktop publishing)

Thunderbird (Email client)

Firefox A (Web Browser)

Audacity (sound recorder and editor)

Handbrake (DVD ripper and HD encoding)

VLC (a very capable video player)

More is listed at http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Knowing what version of the Mac you have is necessary if you are to instal software because in some cases, the software is suitable for only a narrow range of Macs.

Courses

The Introductory Course (run on either members' own computers and Learning Centre computers). We have several tutors, and we are on the look out for more from amongst our graduates. The courses start with basic and proceed to Advanced at the members' own pace.