NJMUG Meeting Archive:

January 2026 - December 2026
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January 20, 2026
Updates on NJMUG as a Corporation and Election Process, Tribute to NJMUG's Founding Member, Artistry, Interesting and Unusual Web Sites and Canva Affinity Studio Interface

We have long known that our December meeting is our best attended meeting of the year. One of the reasons we believe is that we serve food at this meeting. To help keep up our attendance we will served pizza and soda for all members at our January meeting.


At the Decmeber meeting we talked about how NJMUG will continue and whether or not we still need to be a corporation. At the January meeting we updated everyone on what’s going on.




NJMUG will hold elections at the March meeting and we will talked about the process necessary to elect board members, a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer.






NJMUG has been meeting monthly for 40 years and at the January meeting Rich Wolfson, one our founding members shared a short video and story about Sharon Zardetto Aker, our club’s founder. TidBITS, the oldest continuing Mac newsletter said in May about Sharon;

“Sharon started writing professionally about the Macintosh at its inception in 1984, with articles in the earliest issues of Macworld and the premiere issue of MacUser. She contributed to The Macintosh Bible for its second edition in 1989, served as the lead author/editor for the third edition in 1991, and reprised that role for the 1,000-page seventh edition in 1998. In between, she also wrote The Macintosh Companion: The Basics and Beyond, collaborated on two editions of The PowerBook Companion with her husband Rich Wolfson, edited The Macintosh Dictionary, and penned The Mac Almanac. Throughout the 2000s, she continued as a columnist for Mac magazines, ultimately writing nearly a thousand articles, including one in the final print issue of Macworld.”

Re-visiting our roots will be very helpful in planning our future and we look forward to hearing from Rich.

Catherine Mascis has picked up the AI ball and walked us through Artistly which promises to "Produce Stunning Images, Logos and Art With Just A Keyword Using AI".


Mark did an overview of Canva's all new Affinity Studio app which just may be the answer to your Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign needs. Besides the linked training resources built into the app you can learn more about using Affinity Studio by following these recommended YouTube Channels.

  • Elaine Giles - Long form, terrific teacher
  • Affinity for Beginners with Greg - In depth walk through of workspaces and tools
  • Affinity with Dansky - Mostly short form showing how to use a specific tool, create something or use the program
  • GRAPHICXTRAS - For designers, each episode about 30 minutes and provides in depth knowledge of how to use tools, filters, masks, selections, etc…

February 17, 2026
Official NJMUG Election Announcement, Find you iPhone by Text, Interesting and Unusual Web Sites and Creating a Trifold Brochure in Affinity Studio

Alert!

Thanks to our successful January meeting with food, we brought pizza to the February meeting. We asked attendees to bring their own beverages. We held our Q&A session while we were eating, then Mark shared the latest in Apple News.

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be electing new board members at our April meeting! Voting for the new board is open to all members of the NJMUG who have paid their annual dues and attend the March meeting. If you’re interested in joining the board, please reach out to Mark as soon as you can. We're hoping to have anywhere from 3 to 11 board members. To be eligible, you’ll need to be current on your dues, be available to meet regularly with the other board members to discuss club matters, and attend at least 75% of the general meetings. Once the board is elected, they’ll help select the club’s new officers. Any member who meets the same criteria needed for board members is eligible to be an officer in NJMUG. We’re looking for a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, and fundraiser. If you’re willing to serve in any of these positions, please let Mark know as soon as you can. Contact Agnes if you have questions about your dues.

Our own Nora Aion walked us through how to create an Apple shortcut to help you find your missing iPhone.

Louis Perez presented Interesting and Unusual Websites including:



Mark did the second in his series on Affinity Studio. This time Mark spent most of the time inside the Layout module of Affinity Studio showing how to design a trifold brochure for a resturant. In this session we learned:

  • Sizing concerns & fold types
  • The new way of creating a trifold brochure
  • Page Setup
  • Adding and adjusting spread size
  • Doing math in Affinity Studio
  • Guides and snapping
  • Using shapes
  • Layers
  • Picture frames
  • Stock images
  • Global colors
  • Text frames vs display text
  • Importing text
  • Assigning and creating text styles
  • Search and replace
  • Exporting for print
  • Exporting a digital version - spreads
  • Exporting a digital version - pages
  • Exporting as images - pages
  • Making a mock-up
March 17, 2026
What’s Happling, NJMUG Trustee Candidates Announced, Option Key Secrets, Using AI to Create Comics, Highlights of CES 2026, LiDAR Scanner: 3D Room Measure and Magic School.com

Food again at March meeting!

We brought in food to the March 17, 2026 meeting again. We held our Q&A session while we were eating.



March 2nd, 3rd and 4th saw Apple releasing the iPhone 17e with the A19 chip, iPad Air with M4 chip, high end M5 MacBook Pro’s, new versions of their Studio Displays and the brand-new MacBook Neo that squeezes into Apple’s laptop lineup just below the MacBook Air. In our latest What’s hAppling section, Mark went into all these devices and who they’re perfect for.

Candidates for NJMUG trustee’s were be officially announced at our March meeting! However there is still time and places open on the board for more trustees. If you want to help keep this club going and can spare the time please reach out to Mark as soon as you can. Voting for the new board is open to all members of the NJMUG who have paid their annual dues and attend the April meeting. After the new board is elected at our April meeting, the newly selected board will select the club’s new officers. According to our club’s by-laws, only board members (trustees) can be club officers. We’re looking for a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, fundraiser and webmaster. If you’re willing to serve in any of these positions, please let Mark know as soon as you can. Contact Agnes if you have questions about your dues.

Mark Astmann showed us how we can get more from our Mac’s using the Option key with these 10 great tips.


Alan Walter showed us how he used AI to create a comic strip.

Scott Alenick presented how to build 3D floor plans using LiDAR Scanner: 3D Room Measure on your iPhone.



Catherine Mascis showed us some things from Magic School which bills itself as “The #1 AI Platform for Students, Schools and Education.

Louis Perez presented Highlight of CES 2026. Included in his presenation were:

  • Television

    • April 21, 2026
    What’s Happling, NJMUG Trustee Elections, David Pogue Talk’s about Apple’s First 50 Years, Mark's AI Built Club Membership Manager App

    NJMUG April Meeting Was One of the Best Meetings in Years!

    April was a very exciting meeting! Besides the usual “What’s Happening” update, we had our first trustee elections in decades. Our new board met after the general meeting to decide on the new officers for NJMUG.



    The results are in for NJMUG Board of Trustee elections 2026 and your new trustees are listed below.

    1 George Ajjan * 2 Scott Alenick *
    3 Mark Astmann * 4 Jay Green
    5 Anne Gherardi * 6 Jerry Gherardi *
    7 Bob Helmond * 8 Catherine Mascis *
    9 Louis Perez * 10 Alan Walter
    11 Rich Wolfson * 12  
    * Have served on board in the past


    After the April meeting our board of trustees met to elect our new officiers. As we haven't had an acting VP in years and we lost our president last year it was time to put new officers in place. Congradulation to all of our trustees and officers. Here are your NJMUG officers for 2026.

    Mark Astmann President
    Scott Alenick Vice President
    Catherine Mascis Treasurer
    Alan N. Walter Corporate Secretary
    Catherine Mascis Recording Secretary
    Mark Astmann Webmaster


    David Pogue Joined us via Zoom to Promote his new book; "Apple, the First 50 Years"

    David Pogue joined us via Zoom and took us through an interesting journey of Apple history. He shared his thoughts on Apple and the people surrounding both the success and failures of the company. His personal stories about the important decisions Apple made along the way, both good and bad were fascinating. The images from the book he shared with us were nostalgic and alluring. We planened for 45 minutes, but David gratciously held in there for a bunch of a questions from the group. All in all we had David for an astounding 60 minutes.

    During his talk David blessed us with two of his song parodies. If you've never heard them, you can look them up on YouTube. As Apple fans, David parodies strike home. Check out David's Clap Along parady he sang for us over Zoom.

    David told us this was his first time using Zoom to play piano and sing. If you watch the video we are sure you'll agree.

    I wrote to David to thank him the day after the meeting. He wrote back to us:

    "Thank you again for last night. Honestly, it was one of the very best, most joyous moments of this entire book tour! You did such a beautiful job of organizing and promoting it… thank you!!"

    Mark Astmann has been working on and demoed a cool system using AI and his experience as a product manager to help clubs and associations manage their member lists and dues. Imagine groups like our Mac group, civic or neighborhood associations, sports and recreation leagues, garden and hobby clubs, Non-Profit chapters or professional and fraternal societies. This system was designed to avoid the hassle of messy spreadsheets or costly monthly subscriptions many clubs currently rely on. It’s a Zero Installation, Privacy First, Low Cost system.

    Club Membership Manager is an elegantly crafted HTML file that works on any operating system that supports a Chrome-based browser. All of CMM’s data is stored in a small .club file, so you can easily store both the Club Membership Manager HTML file and 500 members in under 8MB of space, making it your Portable Command Center. CMM’s Interactive Dashboard presents all the critical information about your club at a glance, so you can quickly see how your club is doing. Using a green, amber and red color scheme you can easily spot which members have paid their dues, which have dues due in the next 30 days, and which are overdue.

    The program keeps track of when each member’s dues are due, and with just three clicks, it sends an automated email to remind them to send in their checks. Click the dues reminder button, review the list then click to Open in Mail finnally click your send button. Staying in touch with your members couldn't be easier. CMM also allows you to create custom email templates using all the fields from a member’s record as merge fields. The app tracks and records all emails sent it sends to each member. CMM can generate PDF reports of your club’s data and lets you output CSV files of your member’s data, which can be useful for performing more in depth spreadsheet data analysis. What to play with it yourself. While it is still in beta Mark has made a Free Demo version of Club Membership Manager that includes all features but is limited to a maximum of 20 members, If you are interested check out Club Member Manager v.85 Demo.

    Finnally, Mark Astmann’s wife, Sherry, was curious about the nutritional content of different fruits and asked Alexa about each one, jotting down the answers. Mark thought this was a task for AI. He tried the same question with several AI tools, and these two stood out. ChatGPT whipped up a lovely infographic, and ClaudeAI created a colorful interactive webpage showing the information. Mark's daughter asked him to do the same for vegetable and and ClaudeAI created an interactive webpage showing all the information.

    May 19, 2026
    What’s hAppling, Predictive Market Apps Summer Tech 2026, Mark's AI Built Membership Manager Revenue Module and Promo Websites

    Pizza at May meeting!

    We had a great April meeting and elected our new trustees who then elected our new club officers. Congratulations to all trustees and officers and thank you all for you efforts to keep NJMUG going strong after 43 years of operation. The results are in for NJMUG Board of Trustee elections 2026 and your new trustees are listed below.

    1 George Ajjan * 2 Scott Alenick *
    3 Mark Astmann * 4 Jay Green
    5 Anne Gherardi * 6 Jerry Gherardi *
    7 Bob Helmond * 8 Catherine Mascis *
    9 Louis Perez * 10 Alan Walter
    11 Rich Wolfson * 12  
    * Have served on board in the past

    Here are you new NJMUG Club officers for 2026.

    Mark Astmann President
    Scott Alenick Vice President
    Catherine Mascis Treasurer
    Alan N. Walter Corporate Secretary
    Catherine Mascis Recording Secretary
    Mark Astmann Webmaster

    Predictive market apps, also known as prediction market platforms, are apps or websites where people wager on what might happen in the future, and the prices show what everyone thinks will occur. Recently, a US soldier was arrested for allegedly earning $400,000 from insider information while betting using one of these apps. A few weeks ago, a group of customers took another app maker to court for not fulfilling their bet that Nicolas Maduro would lose his presidency. NPR reported this morning that 76% of the profits from predictive platforms come from just 1% of the customers, and many of those customers are bots. With predictive platforms being a hot topic, Alan N. Walter thought it was a good opportunity to explain what they are and how they are used. See Minnesota Becomes First State to Ban Prediction Markets

    In April Mark walked us through parts of his Club Membership Manager app an elegantly crafted HTML file that works on any operating system that supports a Chrome-based browser. CMM was created to give small clubs, associations, and community groups a simple, powerful, and inexpensive way to manage their membership rolls — without subscriptions, accounts, or cloud services. Everything you need lives in a single HTML file already on your computer. Your confidential club data stays on your desk, not on a corporate server. Once it’s complete, Mark is thinking of offering to sell it for a one-time fee of $24.95. As there is no limitation on the number of clubs you can run with it and it’s yours forever this is an excellent price. While CMM is in the final stages of development, Mark has started work on a new app.

    Club Membership Revenue (CMR) is a self-contained, single-file web application designed to help you get a thorough understanding of the revenue generated from club or associatIon members. It seamlessly integrates with Club Membership Manager (CMM) to provide an in-depth analysis of your club’s finances. If you’re seeking a comprehensive understanding of your club’s revenue streams, CMR is your go-to solution. Unlike exportIng your club data for complex analysis in spreadsheets, CMR offers a visual representatIon of the data and the ability to generate on-screen and printed reports. Just like CMM, CMR was designed by Mark and created using AI to write the code of the app. Mark walked us through how this app works.

    Mark also used AI to help create two single page websites that promote CMM and CMR and showed those as well.

    Finally, Mark Astmann’s wife, Sherry, was curious about the nutritional content of different fruits and asked Alexa about each one, jotting down the answers. Mark thought this was a task for AI. He tried the same question with several AI tools, and these two stood out. ChatGPT whipped up a lovely infographic, and ClaudeAI created an interactive webpage showing all the information. Mark's daughter asked him to do the same for vegetable and and ClaudeAI created an interactive webpage showing all the information.

    June 17, 2026
    What’s hAppling, WWDC Keynote, 10 Hidden iPhone Tricks, Mark's Ai Built Membership Manager Attendance Module, Trump Phone

    This month our meeting was held on Wednesday instead of Tuesday due to a conflict with]a World Cup game at Meadowlands Stadium.

    Wel started our June meeting with Questions and Answers followed by our Monthly What’s hAppleing section.

    Apple held their World Wide Developer Conference June 8 - 12th and from Siri improvements to automation of Shortcuts there was a lot to take in. Mark shared a video recap of keynote speech highlighting the key points.

    Did you know that there is a secret button on the back of your iPhone? Were you aware that Apple Maps has a history you can explore? Mark shared a video showing 10 hidden iPhone tricks. Most people didn't know more the 5 of these.

    If you were curious about the new Trump Phone, Alan N. Walter took us on an in-depth look at this highly publicized smartphone and wireless service. He separated marketing claims from reality and explored its features, specifications, and potential impact on the mobile industry.





    Mark walked us through his latest tool for small clubs, associations, sports teams and civic organizations; Taking Attendance. Club Membership Attendance (CMA) is designed to help clubs, civic organizations, hobby groups, nonprofits, and member-driven organizations track attendance, participation, engagement, events, committees, volunteer activity, and member involvement. CMA works especially well alongside Club Membership Manager (CMM). While CMM manages member records, dues, contact information, and membership status, CMA focuses on:

  • Event management
  • Attendance tracking
  • Meeting participation
  • Volunteer hours
  • Committee involvement
  • Member engagement trends
  • Guest follow-up
  • QR code check-in
  • Reporting and analytics

    • Mark will show you how CMA’s dashboard and reports turn raw attendance into actionable insight.


    July 21, 2026
    Due to inclement weather July's meeting was cancelled.
    August 18, 2026
    What’s hAppling, Hands on with Mac and iPad OS 27, Websites for Entertainment, Mark's AI Built Membership Manager Campaign Module, Apple’s Siri Legal Issues and Carbon Copy Cloner

    As always July meeting started off with Questions and Answers followed by our monthly What’s hAppleing section.

    Have a first look at the Mac and iPad OS 27 and see the biggest changes coming to these platforms this fall.

    Instead of diving into a specific software module, Mark walked us through the process he used to develop his software products. How he approach the process? How he kept track of everything during creation and testing? Mark shared some of the time-saving steps he discovered along the way, which could help others succeed if they ever decide to create their own app using AI. Plus, members got to see how Mark plans to bring his product to market and his initial marketing ideas. Finally, Mark showed how all the apps in the Club Membership Suite (CMS) work together to offer a complete solution for small clubs.

    We welcomed Louis Perez back who discussed Websites for Entertainment.

    Did Apple Intelligence live up to the hype? Alan N. Walter took a clear-eyed look at what Apple promised at WWDC 2024 versus what actually shipped, Siri's long road from breakthrough to bottleneck, the ChatGPT deal and its privacy tradeoffs, and what's realistically coming next. Plus some practical tips for getting the most out of the AI features on your Mac right now.

    Scott Alenick walked us through Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, one of the market leading Mac backup software around since 2002.

    Note for NJ Seniors:

    If you own or rent a home in New Jersey, especially if you’re 65 or older, don’t overlook the state’s property tax relief programs. ANCHOR, Senior Freeze, and Stay NJ can provide thousands of dollars in annual savings, but you must file the combined PAS-1 application by November 2, 2026. NJMUG’s own Alan N. Walter explains the updated eligibility rules, benefits, deadlines, and application process in plain English:

    Older Archives

    New Jersey Macintosh Users Group

    "Sharing Knowledge and Building Friendships Since 1984"
    NJMUG Group Photo

    Own a Mac? iPhone? iPad? iPod?

    Then the New Jersey Macintosh Users Group is for you! By attending our monthly meetings, you'll:

    • Learn how to use your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod to their full potential.
    • Get the latest information on the newest Apple technologies.
    • Learn the tips and tricks of experienced Apple users.
    • Get to interact with fellow Mac enthusiasts.
    • Get to share your own knowledge with others.
    • Cultivate wonderful long lasting friendships.

    Become an NJMUG Member

    Membership application form

    Download our membership application and mail in with your membership dues or bring it with you to any monthly meeting.