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Essential Apple Podcast 285: Seafarers & The Wizard of Woke

This week Simon and Nick are joined by the Revd Canon Andrew Dotchin, Suffolk MUG member, longtime Mac user and Vicar of Felixstowe (Britain’s busiest port), to talk about Apple, 40 years of the Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro and lots of other stuff which may (or may not) be related to tech…

MISSION TO SEAFARERS APPEAL

  • The Mission to Seafarers provides help and support to the 1.89 million crewmen and women who face danger every day to keep our global economy afloat, transporting over 90% of the world’s goods and fuels.
    Being able to contact home when making shore half way round the world from home is something priceless to these merchant matelots.
    The Mission to Seafarers is looking for donations of old, but working, smartphones and internet capable tablets to give seafarers far from home a way to talk to friends and family
  • If you have any old smartphones or tablets cluttering your cupboard and drawers why not donate them to this worthy cause? If you are in the UK contact Rev. Andrew Dotchin Vicar@felixparish.com or your nearest Mission to Seafarers Centre, or if you live outside the UK and would like to help, simply visit missiontoseafarers.org and make a donation.

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

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Essential Apple Podcast 191: Time’s flown by…

Nick, Jim, and Donny join me to talk about new watches, iPads, AppleOne bundles, and a few other bits and pieces…

Image courtesy of Alan Cleaver

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here and now he has also released Take Control of Zoom Essentials free as well.
  • Steve at Geeks Corner has restarted his podcast which is a 5-15 min show of his thoughts on tech. Also keep an eye on his site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk to watch for regular giveaways.

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 191: Time’s flown by…

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Essential Apple Podcast 149: “Let’s Talk” … to Bart Busschots

After a couple of weeks or more of guests and not bothering to look at the news Simon is joined by Bart Busschots of the Let’s Talk podcasts, Taming the Terminal, Programming by Stealth, Nosillacast and more, to poke a stick at a few things that caught their interest over the last couple of weeks. Including the Checkm8 vulnerability, and a video from the Apple archive that is an absolute gem.
Also in case you missed it last time BeLight Software kindly gifted us four licences for Amadine to give away last week so get your entries in for your chance to win a copy!

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • We have four licences for BeLight’s new vector application Amadine to give away. Email the show on essentialapple@sudomail.com to put your name in the hat. Winners will be announced in 3 weeks time!
  • Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount!
  • Get Donny Yankellow’s 2FunDads iMessage stickers for FREE

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has started up a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 149: “Let’s Talk” … to Bart Busschots

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A personal take on Apple’s September event

By Slacker @MacJim (James Ormiston)

The following is a personal take on what was announced during the Apple iPhone keynote, one that is not a full microscopic rundown of all that was covered as there was simply too much to do full justice to…

I watched the latest keynote from Apple where they were constantly ’thrilled’, ’excited’, or both at every item announced. We soon discovered what the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and Pro Max will be like: not that we didn’t know already. Due to leaked images on the internet, I was left feeling a little underwhelmed by it all!

Read on to see what I made of the event’s major announcements.

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Essential Apple Podcast Extra: Simon’s event reactions

So the event has been and gone. Everyone is having their say so why shouldn’t Simon get his tuppence worth in too? After a rant about the “prognosticators” he gets straight on with his first impressions of the event

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount!
  • Get Donny Yankellow’s 2FunDads iMessage stickers for FREE
  • Donny’s drawing app offer _Buy the app now at the 2 category price and 1/3 off! When the third category is added the price will go up!_ App Store

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has started up a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast Extra: Simon’s event reactions

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19 Cool things you can do with your Watch

An infographic by Ellie Summers

from her original at
thewatchstrap.co/apple-watch-infographic 

by kind permission of www.thewebsitegroup.co.uk

Creators of Pay monthly websites with no setup costs. As a leading UK provider of affordable web design, The Website Group offer more than just pay monthly websites.
From web development to expert SEO, with prices starting from just £39.00 per month. They’ve got you covered!

See the full infographic below the fold!

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Essential Apple Podcast 115: GPS – “From obscurity to ubiquity” with David Acklam

This week a slightly different show as I am deeply privileged to have as my special guest David Acklam, not a name you may know, but he was part of the development team for the Global Positioning System. Something that we now take forgranted but, as one of the team described it, a technology that went “from obscurity to ubiquity” and started out at what became known as “The Lonely Halls Meeting” which sounds more like a Peter Jackson fantasy epic than a world changing technology meeting! You can watch the documentary featuring David and many more of the team and telling the story of GPS on Amazon Prime here

GIVEAWAYS

Skylum has gifted us 5x of Luminar 2019 and Aurora 2019 to give away! Send an email to essentialapple@sudomail.com mentioning Luminar or Aurora and the phrase I give in the show to enter.
PLUS Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HDR 2019 with discount code EssentialApple (If you buy Luminar 2018 you’ll get all the 2019 updates for free. Learn more.)
Also we have a two Licenses for BeLight Live Home 3D to give away… 1x iOS and 1x Mac. Email the show on essentialapple@sudomail.com mentioning Live Home 3D and the phrase I give out in the show.
Winners for both will be announced on the Christmas Party Podcast which is recording on the 23rd December.

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!
We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 115: GPS – “From obscurity to ubiquity” with David Acklam

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Essential Apple Podcast 105: The Shiny Objects Edition

Well this week was of course the Apple event… 3 new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. I think many of us were a touch disappointed that was “all” there was. Does this mean another event later for some iPads and/or Macs? Who knows? I am joined once again by Donny and we talk about what we made of it… and a few other stories. Meanwhile Hurricane Florence flooded parts of the US, a Category 5 Typhoon hammered the Philippines and is bearing down on Hong Kong and China…
Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter! We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

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Essential Apple Podcast 104: Curse you 9 to 5 Mac!

This week I am joined by regular co-host Donny Yankellow to yet again try and avoid all the rumours and leakers as we approach the big event. But of course no one can have missed the 9to5 Mac “scoop” that has revealed at least two iPhones and the look of the new Apple watch. With speculation rife we try to find some other stories to talk about. A shorter than usual show unsurprisingly as we all await the big reveals (and hope 9 to 5 Mac haven’t ruined all the fun).
Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter! We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 104: Curse you 9 to 5 Mac!

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Essential Apple Podcast 87: A Pot Pourri of Tech with @Spligosh

This week while Microsoft had its Build Conference and Google hosted their I/O bash; other news, some of it even about Apple, did manage to get a look in… Nick Riley (aka @spligosh) joins me to take the typically Essential Apple wander around a pot pourri of Apple and other tech stories…
You don’t need a special invite to join our Slack community any more, you can now just click on this Slackroom Link to join up instead!

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Essential Apple Podcast 51: Madden, Madness, Microsoft Paint, $4m an Hour and the Most Expensive Watch in the World!

Karl Madden, host of the Mac & Forth Show and the Here ‘N’ There Show, founding member of this podcast AND one of the biggest reasons Simon ended up getting into podcasting and becoming co-host, joins Simon while Mark is off “enjoying” a 100 mile cycle ride in London.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 51: Madden, Madness, Microsoft Paint, $4m an Hour and the Most Expensive Watch in the World!

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IDC: Smartwatches See YOY Decline in 2Q2016. Apple Watch Still Going Strong

IDC is out with some fairly useless smartwatch numbers for Q2 2016. Useless, because companies tend to not actually say how many smartwatches they’ve sold, yet there’s IDC saying it for them. Still it does give us an idea of where the industry analysts think smartwatches are or where they think they’re going. Engadget and MacRumors both ran reports on the IDC release, They say Apple is leagues ahead of runner-up Samsung, though Samsung is believed by the firm to have played a bit of catch-up.

The MacRumors piece says Samsung did close the gap with strong 51% year-over-year growth and a nine-point rise in market share. Big as that sounds, Samsung only sold 600,000 smartwatches in the June quarter, according to the firm.

Apple on the other hand sold nearly three times as many of its watches, yet still managed to lose market share. IDC says the Cupertino company sold 1.6 million of its wearables last quarter. Think back and we will remember that comparing Apple Watch sales for Q2 2016 to sales for Q2 2015 is sort of silly. That’s because Q2 2015 was the first quarter of Apple Watch availability, landing on the heels of over a year of rumor and over six months of hype. The Engadget piece says the lack of updated hardware is a key reason for the drop in numbers for smart watches overall. It’s unclear though whether that’s IDC’s supposition or Engadget’s.