¶ QT-Changing iOS Wallpaper to “Shuffle” Photos
It's time for Mac Geek Gab and Sandwich Girl brings us our quick tip of the week with have your lock screen wallpaper change daily, hourly, or whenever you choose. When you lock your phone or when you tap the lock screen, that sort of thing. In iOS, you go to Settings, tap Add New Wallpaper, choose Photo Shuffle, and you can choose the photos you want by search by word, favorites, any album that's in there, that sort of thing.
Choose up to 50 different photos, and then you select the frequency on tap, unlock, hourly, or daily. More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab1086 for Monday, April 21st, 2025.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Cab, the show where you send in quick tips like that. You send in cool stuff found. You send in questions. We share all of them. And then with your questions, hopefully we answer them or at least provide a discussion on the troubleshooting path so that we can each learn at least five new things every single time we get together.
barebones.com with bb edit is our sponsor for today and yes bb edit is open on my mac as i speak as it always is we'll talk more about why that is in a little bit for now here on big word day also world creativity and innovation day i wonder if those two go together, in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton.
And in New Hampshire also is Pilot Pete Big Word Day. You know, if you need a big word, you got to go get the thesaurus. I'm just wondering, Dave, can you tell me what another word for thesaurus is?
I cannot. A big book with lots of words.
Yeah. Big Word Day when use becomes utilized and nobody stops you.
That's right.
Me becomes myself. That's right.
That's right. Right. And we're not just talking today. I'm articulating multi-syllabically.
Oh, that's right. That's right.
All right. I'll stop now.
As long as there's no defenestration happening, Pete, everything's okay.
Well, there's that. It's sesquipedalian jubilation day.
We need to stop now because otherwise it won't end.
Please, God, make it stop.
Because Adam is not here to stop us today. So we're on our own, Pete. And I don't know.
We are. We are indeed. So I think I could be wrong. See, now I've hidden the top of the agenda for myself. I know it's your quick tip to move back into.
It is. Here on.
Because I opened with Sandwich Girl.
The police code today for 1086 is officer on duty. So Adam is off duty. So I don't know.
Yeah. I don't know what that means. But yeah, Adam had a last minute schedule conflict, unfortunately.
And for those wondering, Sandwich Girl is indeed my bride. And she had a passenger call hire that once on a flight. So she made the mistake of telling me and it's been her call sign for 25 years.
That was the mistake indeed. Yep.
¶ Andrew-QT-Type >> in Notes to link to recent notes
All right. Andrew has our next quick tip that he read about 9to5Mac. He says, In notes, type on your Mac, in notes on your Mac, type greater than, greater than twice. This now opens up a link to recent notes, or it opens up a list of recent notes. And then whatever note you choose, it puts a link to that in your note at that point. And Andrew mentioned this in our Discord. And he says, and R. Stanley followed up and said, I think I heard about this on Mac Power users.
along with a follow-up tip that you can create a menu or favorites note, which is pinned to the top, which contains the links to those notes that you want to frequently access. So you can kind of use this in sort of a double-stacked way there. That's pretty cool. I'll link to the discussion in Discord because there's some ideas in there about even more to do with notes with this. So I love quick tips that just open up functionality that I didn't even realize existed.
Right.
And it's all just sitting there waiting to be discovered.
That's why we do what we do.
Yeah. So this is one that was there, had long since been discovered, and then it disappeared in an iOS update. And Ben found the answer. This was also in our Discord help desk. So that's a great resource, by the way, is go to our Discord help desk chat and ask a question. It's like people are always on duty waiting to help you there.
¶ Ben-QT-Force Sync to iCloud Photos
Brian asked, you know, how do you force iOS photos to sync in iCloud? Because I'm on iOS 18 and the button at the bottom of the camera roll that was there in previous iterations is no longer there. And Ben points out, oh, it's there. It's been moved into your profile in photos. So you look for your iCloud profile icon or photo at the top right of the photo screen. Click on that or tap on that and you can force your photos to sync there. I don't know.
Off the top of my head, whether you need to go in and set it to do it or not do it on cellular, that kind of thing. Do you know off the top of your head?
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I do know that I go there all the time to tell it to sync because it'll say, oh, yeah, I've paused my syncing because I'm on battery or, you know, whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm looking in cellular here.
I don't know where the right place to look would be.
So I'm looking in iCloud photos and it doesn't say anything about where, where it's using it, but it might be in the cellular settings, which is the next place I'm going to check.
For us while we're, while we're chit-chatting here.
But yes, so you can turn on, if you go into setting cellular, you can turn on or off photos for.
Having access to cellular.
So, yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
It does i have it on for mine and it's pretty um what's the right word there's probably a really big word that i could use here on big word day pete but uh but but it's pretty intelligent about not using cellular data unnecessarily so but but i also in setting cellular i if i go to my you.
Know my mint
Thing uh i turn on uh low data mode for my cellular connection as an overall thing so yeah if you go into cellular uh and then it's either if you have multiple e-sims it's it's there as as you know inside whichever e-sim you are using but um but otherwise it's just in your cellular settings and you get a low data mode, um, or a data mode option. And you can say, allow more data on shot 5g standard or low data mode.
And I've always left mine on low data mode because why, why burn data when I don't need to.
So sure.
Yeah. Well, here's the thing though. Did you notice, um, I want to say between three weeks and a month ago, mint came out and said, um, unlimited is now truly unlimited they for a while it was it would throttle after 30
Gigs okay and.
¶ Low Data Mode in iOS Cellular
Then and then i think they moved it to 40 and then they still had their unnecessary plans they had unlimited and unnecessary which was i think more tethering data
Okay yep but.
Recently did you notice that mint said unlimited is unlimited we're not going to throttle you anymore
Huh no i didn't unlimited plan i didn't notice i don't use an unlimited plan because i don't use an unlimited amount of data oh.
Okay in that
I used i use a fixed amount of data like on any given month it might change but i i um so here's i manage my uh my mint my my and my family's mint data uh a little bit i'm a little bit crazy about it because i'd like to know Like, certainly unlimited is is a nice concept for us because it relieves any concern over hitting our limits. But we all none of us use unlimited data there. We use an amount of data every month.
And so what I do is I go in on the I have it on my calendar on the 27th of every month because our plans renew on the 28th. On the 27th of every month, I go into my Mint family account and I log the amount of data that each one of us has used. And that way I know because Mint won't tell you what you used in previous months or at least they don't make it easy to find. Right. So I go in on the 27th. I see how much we've used and I've tracked that
for I catch it most months. There's sometimes if I'm traveling or whatever.
I might miss it.
And I know that like my data usage is I have a I'm on the 15 gig plan. And I usually have somewhere between eight and 10 gigs left at the end of each month. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So, and I don't like obsess over, I do turn low data mode on, but that's really kind of the only thing that I do to keep myself in check, if you will. But otherwise, I don't really worry about it. I just, and I know that if I want to use more data, I can just ratchet up to a bigger plan, right?
So, that's why I wasn't aware that Mint was truly unlimited.
Because I don't have an unlimited plan. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, I went some at some point sometime back. I went to unlimited just because I hit it like twice in a year. I got throttled and it's like, oh, yeah, because when they throttle you, it's like you're on a 300 baud modem, man. Right.
Well, my feeling with that is, and this is part of why I don't, part of what allows me not to worry about it, is I know that I'm saving a bunch of money by not paying for more than 15 gigs every month. I think the mint plans, they go from 5 gigs to 15. If they had a 10 gig plan, I would buy that. But they're smart.
They don't offer me that.
Right. So I know that if I hit my 15 in a given month, I can go buy U.S. data on an eSIM for way less than what it would cost me to upgrade from the 15 to the 30 or whatever the next one is. That's a really good point. For a whole year. Because I don't just get to upgrade for the month, right? I have to upgrade.
On the plan
For the year, right? That's how mint works. And it's crying. I love that about mint, but that's why I do it. Cause I'm like, well, I can always go grab an e-sim real fast, you know, no problem. And the, even on a throttled connection, I'm pretty sure I can negotiate my way to buying an e-sim and then just switch my data to that for the rest of the month. And then that's that.
And I'm done.
So that's my mindset on that.
Yeah. Okay. And then in the comments, I noted that John asks, does Mint Mobile use the Verizon system? No, that's visible. Mint Mobile uses the T-Mobile system. In fact, they used to use the system. Now they're a wholly owned subsidiary of T-Mobile is my understanding.
Yeah, but I am seeing posts on Reddit confirming what you're saying, that Mint's unlimited plan is now truly unlimited data, works just like Metro, which was sort of the competitor for them there in terms of that.
So there you go.
Yeah. That was nice. So I don't know what their unnecessary plan is now, except maybe, maybe more tethering. I don't know. Cause they're, they're, they're 10 gigabyte tethering is included with your unlimited plan. I don't know what's included on your fit. Do you know what your tethering is on your 15 gig plan?
I think I have 15 gigs worth of tethering. I think that's, I think that's how that works. Uh, but let's look.
Uh, so I'm looking at Mint's thing. Of course, it doesn't share my screen anymore here, so you can't see it,
But that's okay. Yeah, I don't know why that went away. But anyway, so 12 months, it's 15 a month for 5 gigs, 20 a month for 15 gigs, 25 a month for 20 gigs. And then they are not offering anything. You can do...
Oh, unnecessary went away.
Yeah, right now, though, it's interesting. They're saying, maybe this is, no, this isn't a new customer offer. They're saying unlimited for 12 months is $20 a month, which is the same price I'm paying for $15, Pete.
That's weird because I'm definitely paying $30 a month for.
Yeah.
Huh. I know. I got to get in there and flex with it and see if I can get it.
Yeah, same. Because I'll happily take the unlimited.
Right. Right. Yeah. I don't care.
Like, but yeah, let me, let me look at the, yeah, they are not offering an unreasonable plan anymore. You're with your unlimited. I'm looking at your tethering.
I don't know that
It says it in an obvious way that I, I mean, I'm sure they, I'm sure they tell you what it is.
I'm just not seeing it quickly while we're,
While we happen to be also doing a podcast.
So, um, yeah.
All right. Yeah. So, yeah. So there's, there's some tips, um, for that.
Yeah. if you uh if you
Don't want to pay for more but now i have to go talk to mint and see.
If i can get them to bump me from 15 gigs to unlimited because if it's the same price i prefer right yeah
¶ RG-QT-Use two-language keyboards to check spelling and get recommendations in multiple languages
And i might not even have to talk to him i might just log into my account in the meantime, rg tells me about tells us about something that i had no idea even existed pete and And it's that iOS 18 now supports two language keyboards, not two keyboards of different languages.
Which of course it does.
But when you do that, iOS 18 now will create a single keyboard.
Of two languages and he says this is really useful if you are wanting to enter a word or a sentence in a second language or even just check a spelling in a second language what makes this special is that the predictive text works simultaneously in both languages and does a good job of prompting in the right language based upon context it's good enough that i sometimes wonder if it's a part of apple intelligence and i think it might be if it can't decide which language is
in use it will provide the best match word in each language based on what you've already typed and it can usually change seamlessly if you change language halfway through a sentence of course not everyone needs this but for anyone wanting to add a foreign word with an accent or check the spelling of a foreign place name it can be very useful this is i'll also add that my foreign language skills are not so good i need to use ai translation to send emails to friends but
i use this feature a lot because i live in germany and i want to use german words and place names mixed while in with english and vice versa i have three different two language keyboards set up for the languages that i use as well as single language keyboards and also a keyboard for text expanders cycling through the keyboards using the globe symbol at the bottom left of the keyboard is straightforward.
He says about setting these up, you go in to settings, general, keyboards, dictation languages. That's, oh, he knows that that's where you set dictation. That's separate from keyboards. For the keyboards, you go to settings, general, keyboard, keyboards. And then choose the first language of the pair, set the keyboard up, and then go back in and add the second language of the language pair. You can then choose which keyboard layout is shown when the keyboard pair is selected.
Okay.
This is amazing to me. I had no idea that this existed. And I bet my daughter living in an English speaking person living in Northern Italy, where German German is the primary language would love this functionality.
Yes.
Yeah. So, yeah, that I have a hard enough time getting one language squared away.
Same. Yeah.
No, that's, that's brilliant to be able to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. So anyway, yeah, there's that's a thing. When he first wrote about it, I'm like, I had to write him back. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Are you just telling us that you're using two keyboards? If so, like everything, the first time we find out about it, it's amazing. And if he's just now found out that you can have two keyboards, it doesn't make it lesser than it just means that he got to he got to get joy from that today.
where's my joy from that is 10 years old or something but no it's more than that yeah and when he dug in he's like oh no i realize this is an ios 18 thing i'm like ah i love it so yeah fun stuff uh listener lucas writes in and
¶ n-Lucas-QT-Eliminate "Paste from Other Apps" notifications on iPhone
said i just stumbled across the paste from other apps option in my iphone settings so if you have uh an iphone or an ipad app that regularly asks If you want to allow content to be pasted from another app and you always say the same answer, yes or no, this is the forever fix for you. Set it to allow or deny and never get asked again by that app. If you've missed this feature for two plus years like me, Lucas says, start taking advantage of it now.
So thank you for that, Lucas. I had no idea that that was there.
So that's super handy. Yeah. Pased from other apps. love it love it love it
Love it. Thank you. All right. What else have you got, Pete?
Well, so I've got a quick tip and I panicked. I was looking all over. Where on earth in notes is my quick tip because I'm not finding it.
It's not a note. I went through this too.
Yes. I did not put it in notes. I just, I said, you know what? I can actually remember this, but I forgot that I could remember.
The question is, can you remember it? Yeah, exactly.
Well, I can. And here's, here's what happened to me. All of a sudden in my Finder
¶ QT-MacOS Finder Expand, Collapse & Drag Sidebar Location Categories to Desired position
sidebar, which I do display all the time, my favorites were at the bottom. And I'm like, why am I having to scroll all the way down to the bottom of my Finder sidebar to get to my favorites? What, you know?
Yeah.
So I grabbed favorites and I dragged them back to the top. Boom, done. I had no idea that those would move. So in your Finder sidebar, you have favorites in iCloud and locations. And in my case, I also have tags checked. Yep. But you can take, for instance, the word locations and drag it above iCloud or below iCloud or put tags near that. Yeah, right. I had no idea you could reorganize that, but I did it just by, it just seemed natural. Hey, go try and drag that.
And there it was, and it worked for me. There's no way to rearrange it in settings sidebar.
Okay.
You have to, at least not that I'm able to see, but you can drag those around as needed. It looks like you're just dragging the word and not the categories under the word. For instance, if you grab iCloud and start dragging it, only the word iCloud starts dragging. If you drag it below locations, it'll move. iCloud below locations.
The whole iCloud thing below. Yes.
All those categories go with it. Yeah. And then you may notice off to the right of the word iCloud or locations or whatever, there's a little chevron pointing down and that's just an expand or collapse. You can collapse your iCloud locations by clicking on that. So there's a second quick tip. Two for the price of one, folks.
I have a question for you, Pete.
I've got an answer. I'll make one up right now.
Yeah, and I don't know that we have an answer for this. I have my favorites at the top. That's where I like them to be. They stay there. Right below that is iCloud, right? And so I've leveraged this quick tip already by putting things where I want them. I use documents and desktop syncing in iCloud.
and i have noticed and this has actually been a question from me on our agenda for probably eight months now rolling forward um i want my desktop folder to be in my favorites because that's the top thing on my finder sidebar and so i move the desktop folder into my favorites guess.
What it doesn't stay
Not it stays initially yeah i can put it there away and then after a day a week i don't know how long it goes away yeah.
And and here's the thing dave and i don't know i i vaguely recall you and i working on
This yep because.
I kept i did the same thing with my desktop i wanted it in my favorites because it's and it would it would be there for a while and then it would go away well man did i hose myself because now i had
Now you created in two different locations wait wait wait but wait yeah i know the both of these things are true they are unrelated you did your desktop issue was not your multiple desktop folder issue was not because you moved your.
Your, you added because I moved it. No, but it was because I, I created, I, for some reason I went in and created a second desktop.
Correct. Correct.
And because it wasn't there, I want it there. Damn it. And so I created the folder and boy, did that make a mess of things. So, uh, let go and let Apple, but yeah, I don't know why it stays. It'll stay for a couple of days and then it's gone again.
I know. Yep.
And oh, man, does that hurt.
It just drives me crazy. It's like, dude, can we just leave it where it is? So I have, I just want it to Litfa and.
And, and that's,
That's short for leave it alone. Then you can put the TF in there if you really want to. Cause I, I want to, but, um, I have not tried this in months, so maybe one of the most recent updates has solved this problem. And if not, at least now we're talking about it on the show, which is something that I've wanted to do.
For a long time.
So we may actually have a show title there if you look at the bottom of our screen, Dave.
It says a Schrodinger's desktop.
Okay. Schrodinger's, Schrodinger's.
I'm not sure how we're supposed to pronounce that word. Yeah, it's a big word, but yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that.
Yeah.
Ah, I'm eager to see what I'm eager to see what chat GPT comes up with for an image for Schrodinger's desktop. First of all, right. I also and we're not going to do it quite yet, but I also am always eager to see what chat GPT makes me say when I tell all of us about our sponsors today. Because if you don't know, I have – it started years ago having ChatGPT write my scripts for me for the ads because
¶ ChatGPT writes our sponsor scripts
what I found – the sponsors tell us that they want us to create a fresh read for every episode, which obviously is very easy for us. And it makes perfect sense. I get why they would want to do that. I'm on board. I want the reads to be fresh for you.
I want kind of candidly, I want them to be fresh for me.
Right. But it makes perfect sense. And I love it. I'm all in. But what I noticed is that I was the filter between the what they what we call the talking points, which is just the things that we're going to talk about. Yep. And a bullet pointed list generally of things we're going to talk about, hence talking points and what you heard.
I was the Dave filter in the middle of this. And it turns out that even though the Dave filter was creating a fresh script every time, it was basically the same thing every time. Because Dave's brain is a human brain and it really loves shortcuts. So patterns, patterns. Yeah, right. So I was literally I mean, I went back and I saw I was like, dude, without even thinking about it, I'm almost saying verbatim the same thing.
that's not great for all of you and that's when i think it was you that that turned me on to like why don't you use chat gpt i was like oh my gosh that's a great idea and so i have been using chat gpt for a very long time and and many of you have heard this before but just for the the sake of anyone here so that we can have some fun together uh i tell it a i tell it to you know keep it in my style and b make sure to find a way to incorporate our.
Catchphrase into the ads of course
And then And C, I ask it to come up with something appropriate yet preposterous for me to say in the script. And we all generally get to find that out together because I usually am able to do the scripts with one pass through. Sometimes if I realize what it said, like I don't pre-read them is what I'm what I'm saying. but sometimes if I realize oh I can't say that sponsor is going to be super upset if I say this thing.
That ChatGPT had me say
So I have it rewrite the script and then it's fine but usually you are hearing me discovering what it is having me say in the moment that you're hearing me say it so I just like to share that so, yeah.
It's a wonderful writer especially if you give it talking
Points yeah right you know which i do i i feed it all the information so and it it's still not perfect like it will anyway but i have to i do have to check that our sponsors generally will give us a what's called a call to action which is like verbatim stuff to say at the end like with perhaps their coupon code or something and anything that, is supposed to be read verbatim i don't trust jat gpt not to modify that so i just look and read that verbatim and like there's no reason to to.
Take that risk so
Oh uh just a quick tip on that then dave i i tell it the i give here are the talking points what i put in quotations leave it verbatim yeah that's that's
Because it does that for me but i i don't i i just trust it not to no i upload the pdf i don't copy paste anything i just i upload the pdf to it gotcha.
And and then there's
There's i don't i don't get to manipulate it i just go fair enough yeah.
Yeah that's true you didn't use it and i and i think i do that now too you didn't used to be able to upload
Correct right to it so correct yeah we have one last quick tip pete and that is from listener dan uh.
¶ Dan DXZDB-QT-Teaching your Apple TV Remote new Tricks
Who uh shares some
New tricks we can teach our apple tv remotes uh he says in settings remotes uh there is a way to on the apple tv uh there is a way to allow the apple tv volume buttons to change your tv's volume buttons but even after you get it working it could just mysteriously stop working after fighting with lots of settings i found an article which we will link to, if your volume buttons on your Apple TV remote aren't working,
do what it says and you probably can get your Apple TV remote to get it working again. And he says, while I was crawling around in the settings, I found that you can have your TV remote learn the functions of the Apple remote. It's a little confusing and it's possible to assign the volume buttons so that they do navigation and volume at the same time. So don't get caught doing that.
But also depending on the TV, it might not help. He says, I've also found that turning on HDMI CEC on your TV may allow the Apple TV remote to turn on or off your TV. And then the tip I want to add to this. I love when my audio cuts out. That's just my favorite thing of the day.
That was me muting you,
Dave. Yeah. Crampy. I really wish I could figure out what it was.
uh crampy in our discord chat added to this and said um there are instructions to restart your apple tv remote and to do that you press and hold both the tv control center button and the volume down button at the same time for about five seconds until the status light bring blinks rapidly and he's they say that this quick fix can resolve connectivity issues unresponsive buttons and other common problems that might be frustrating for.
Yeah i had to do that recently now that you mentioned it that was very frustrating uh that when the remote was just acting acting up that remote was acting up but uh here's one
Hang on one second pete i'm gonna reset my audio one more time because it has to happen, And we're back. It's all good. No, I, it, it, for whatever happened,
¶ Pilot Pete-Using HDMI-ARC results in crappy sound occasionally…what is it?
it had bumped my, uh, my sample rate up so that I was hearing myself on a huge delay.
Which was really messing with my brain.
So thank you for accommodating me on that. Uh, sorry, continue, please.
Yeah, no worries. So a quick question, and let's quickly move on if there isn't an obvious answer. Sure. So I have an LG TV. It turns out it's got three HDMI inputs. HDMI 2 of all of them is the ARC, which is the audio return.
Yep, which sends audio from your TV back out to a soundbar if you want.
Yeah, and that's what I did. So I've got this Vizio soundbar because the audio speakers on the TV were crap on a good day.
Sure.
So, bought that, put it all in, it seemed to work great, except about every 10 to 15 minutes, the audio sound bar seems to cut out. It will either mute or have slight cruddy audio from the TV speakers for about four or five seconds, and then it comes back on and I'm getting good sound again, which is very frustrating because then I have to pause and back up and go, what did they say? I missed it. Any thoughts on why that is?
So it's interesting that we're having this conversation, which appears to be a merging of my audio cutout issue and then the Apple TV thing. So I love that.
What a segue.
It sounds... So it could be the Vizio soundbar, right? I mean, it's possible that it just has an issue. And I realize that isolation testing by either putting a different soundbar in there or putting that soundbar on a different TV is way easier said than done. But that would be a way of doing that. But the other thing, and probably easier to implement, even if it might not be the solution, would be look at what kind of HDMI cable you've got if you've got a cable that is not up to snuff, right?
Because there's, you know, HDMI version 1.6 and hold your hat right and like all the different things.
Yeah, your tongue not at the left side of your mouth.
Yeah. So getting, uh, you know, in HDMI cable that is, you know, way, you get one that's good for 8k video or something, and that's going to have more than enough bandwidth. So that, that's where I would probably start with it. That's the first one, sure. So I would, I would, I would go, I would, I would hope that it's just the cable.
That would be nice.
Yeah. Yes.
Cause, cause what really chaps my kazoo, it was an open box from Best Buy. So a really good price. And then I threw the box away. So it's really, it's yours now.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's mine. And, um, and the other thing that chaps me that I didn't realize I didn't have until I got it home was no, uh, toss link cable. Oh, it would have been nice to have the ability to do that. Oh, I take that back. It has it. It, uh, the TV doesn't have it.
Right. Well, and there's a reason for that. Yeah. Toss link, which is the optical cable that we used.
To use or used
For, you know, an interim period there. There is no, um, copy protection or any of that, uh, what going over optical and you can't do all of the things. Like, I don't think you can, and I might be speaking out of turn, but I don't know that you can send more than 5.1 over an optical cable. Like there are other limitations to the, to the toss link there. Maybe, maybe not that, but I know there were other reasons and maybe somebody in the, in the chat will, will help me here.
But, uh, I know that the HDMI arc is, is the thing that allowed Atmos to be sent from your TV to a sound bar. like it it is it has all the copy protection so it it checks all the boxes for everybody to have allowed it to do all the things that it does so that's why tvs no longer have um the optical the toss link connectors so yeah um we have some don't get caught things this week pete i i it i've noticed that this.
¶ KYEngineer-DGC-Make sure your printer drivers are correct
Might be your favorite um
Section of the show and and i don't know I don't know how I feel about that, but anyway here we are, So Kai Engineer, Kentucky Engineer, wrote in and says, make sure that the drivers installed for your printer are the drivers supplied for that printer whenever possible. Recently, my new M4 MacBook Pro quit printing to both my Canon wide format and HP 8139E printers. I could not find the problem. I contacted Apple support and while they were
helpful, they could not solve it either. We did everything. Restarted, loaded new drivers, booted in safe mode, etc. I had an M2 Mac Mini and had no problems printing. The case was elevated to the next level of support. Finally, I looked more closely at the drivers for both Macs. The Mac Mini had an HP OfficeJet Pro 8139e listed as its driver, while my MacBook Pro had a generic driver. When I first got the MacBook Pro, there were no problems printing.
However, macOS was updated, and this is where the issue started.
He's 80% sure. I think he's probably right.
When I set up the printer, I used the default generic macOS-provided drivers, but when I downloaded and installed the drivers from HP directly.
The problem was solved.
Yeah, using the manufacturer's drivers for your printer can be great. i will i will caution as with everything if it ain't broke don't fix it however fix.
It till it is that's
Right thank.
You for that appreciate that
Uh but but if it is broke that's a good place to start uh sure i and i because i've seen where you download the driver from the manufacturer and and maybe this is old now because macs are way more popular but there was a time where hp's mac drivers would get ancient and not be compatible with the latest os and cause all kinds of problems if you tried to shoehorn them in or whatever but uh but nowadays you're probably probably best off using
the manufacturer's drivers when possible apple does try to keep them up to date, in mac os because they want this to be friction free they don't want you to have to go download drivers they just want to be able to say we've identified the printer and here's the exact right driver for it but they don't always work yeah and most of the time it does yeah but and this is why, uh kentucky engineers tip is a is a good one because it's easy to forget that
you might actually need the manufacturer's drivers for your printer and even forget that they might actually even make them for.
You so yeah yeah
I got an interesting question asked of me uh yesterday on i was on the phone with garmin uh because
¶ Garmin’s software prefers Macs?
i bought a update for my airplane's navigation yeah garmin and the guy's like well are you windows or mac and i said well i'm mac and he goes oh good it'll work mac mac keeps it up on windows you have to download the drivers in order to get the card reader to work yeah okay yeah
So it's fair
So everybody listening on windows go out and get yourself a mac it just
Works there was a point in time and i know you are part of this crowd pete where a lot of our listeners were people that were about to become switchers or had just been switched from from but we had a we would get a ton of email where people would say I haven't yet switched to the Mac, but I started listening to your show to learn about it before I did. And I would never have thought to do that if I were in your shoes. But I think that's one of the smartest things anyone could do.
If you are thinking about switching, especially switching platforms, because even if you have a good reason to switch from Mac to Windows or Windows to Mac, whichever, or iPhone to Android or Android to iPhone, The day you want to start learning about that platform is before the day that you buy the device for that platform, in my opinion.
Why won't this work?
Why doesn't this work? Oh, yeah, I've been osmosis learning this stuff. Like, oh, I heard those guys talk about this. It's a really smart move. Yeah, I think it was great. And I'm sure it still happens. It's just not quite as common these days.
Right.
Well, it's because so many more people are on Mac.
On the Mac already.
Than they used to be.
I mean, it's, you know, once they went to the Intel.
Oh, yeah.
You know, Intel, that brought in a lot of switchers. And now that they're on their own again, it puts an amazing, these are amazing chips.
You got one more? Don't get caught.
¶ Todd-DGC-Follow Up - Do Apps need Access to Devices?
Yeah. So the listener Todd wrote in, and we talked about this a couple weeks ago, And it was about, do my devices, let's see, I'm down at the bottom here. Basically, does my device need to, I'm sorry, does my browser need to access devices on my local network? Yes or no? And you talked about it and said, well, you know, if you need to print and that sort of thing, it may be. And then Todd sent in the article that talked about connecting to devices on your local network.
And it goes into, oh, well, you don't need to necessarily grant that access because things that work on the built-in Apple services don't require you to give it access. So things that will print via AirPrint, stream via AirPlay, share via AirDrop, or use HomeKit devices, that's okay. They're going to work if you deny your browser access. So let me read it real quick. The below it article speaks to the message in iOS.
Oh, and by the way, the article only applies to iOS and iPadOS, but I did a little more search and it now really applies to MacOS as well. It comes up and says, hey, you know, do you want to allow your browser access to things on your local network? And if you deny it, for the most part, you're going to be okay. If you would like to,
Sorry, I'm going to stop this right here because this is getting confusing. And I disagree wholeheartedly with the sentiment and I'll say, I'll explain why. Okay. I think of all the apps you have, your browser is the one you would most likely want to give access to devices on your local network because you're going to want to connect to your router. if you have a Synology disk station, if you need to get to the web interface of your printer, all of those things are devices on your local network.
And so- Are you not going to be able to get there by addressing them by their IP address?
That's exactly what you are preventing when you say you can't access devices on your- Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
That is the distinction there is, do you want this thing to just have access to things on the internet, aka devices past your router, Or do you want to let it talk to things on your local network? And there's good, I get the security part of this. There are good reasons for like saying, oh yeah, this app is only ever going to talk to a server on the internet. I don't want it to see anything on my local network. No, thank you.
Yeah, I don't want it gathering data about me and reporting back and that kind of stuff. So, okay.
But, and so in that sense, 100% yes, Todd. I totally agree. the browser specifically is the one thing that you're eventually most likely going to want to give access to your local network that's all yeah yeah so i don't necessarily i i overspoke i overstated i i was hyperbolic i don't wholeheartedly disagree with this i just the browser is is probably not the best example to use is really.
Sure and the two things that i i really gleaned from it are if you click deny or you click allow and you want to change it it's easy to go into settings privacy and security local network and there it is there's a list of everything you've allowed or denied access to see things on your local network so settings privacy and security local network boom you're in there and you can add or subtract from there as as you want and then um
And the other part of that was something that is way over my head. It's for the developers, but it talks about the developers should explain the benefits or reasons the app would need local network access. And that's on the developers. There's a place in there when you're developing to explain why you want to be able to do this.
Correct and it will appear we've all seen it with apps that that have taken this advice and you see it on the the screen like on the little dialogue where it says do you want to allow whatever it's asking you to allow and there's a little message that says this is so that the app can do x and it's like okay yes or no so.
Great right so i'm sorry about being confusing up front there there this was a long article with a lot of information in it that gets very deep but uh i think did we put the article in the show note we'll we
Will put the article yeah um
But yeah there it just uh if you deny it though it says it will still allow print via air print stream via airplay that's sure
That was the that was the interesting part to me is okay well then why are so many apps now asking for this and it it seems to be all the apps that in the past would ask for it only when i went to print like that's when it would come up and i'd be like okay well then sure but i guess now i should just assume and say no i don't want to give you access to my local network and see if it can still print like that that would be the the litmus test the test.
Sure absolutely Yeah.
¶ DGC-Thunderbird May Not Be Indexing Your Mail
I have an entry for Don't Get Caught this week, and it is about Thunderbird because I'm the one that told us all about Thunderbird.
And I've been
Using Thunderbird as my email client. I mentioned this casually in the show, and I kind of wanted to draw more attention to it. And I've linked to the bug report that I filed with the Thunderbird team on this is that Thunderbird has an issue with its indexing function. And the indexing function is the thing that it uses to build its search database. So when you go to search your email, it doesn't search your messages or your
mailbox individually. It just looks it up in this database that it has built and keeps up to date perpetually.
Right?
Way more efficient. All makes good sense. Great. Here's the problem. I noticed that there were some things that I, some emails that I knew I had and could even go find them, but we're not showing up in the search results.
and then i looked in the thunderbird uh activity menu what it's it's uh the tools activity manager is what it's called and i saw that the indexer was stuck on you know one of my larger mailboxes and i have quite a few of those for archives over the years and it was like you know indexing message 45 32 of 25 000 or 12 000 or something right and and i'm like okay and then i looked 10 minutes later and it's message 45 32 of 12 000 it's like okay it hasn't moved oh my gosh what's going on here and i
would quit the only way to get it to even try again was to quit thunderbird relaunch but when it got to that mailbox it would stop and so it would not go to the next mailbox so not only was it not indexing completely anyway not completely indexing that mailbox it it's just like that's it the indexing process is a single thread and if anything stops it it just stops and there's major problems with that but the two major problems for me are a i didn't know this because it there's no alert saying
that it's having this problem hey.
I'm hung up
Yeah i'm hung up and it's not failing gracefully and at least moving on to the next mailbox so a mailbox that It does not have any issues and why it has issues indexing. I don't know, but it should at least be do it at the very least. The user should know with a huge like red alert, red alert. Your email is not your search results are not accurate or at least incomplete. I don't want to say they're inaccurate, but they're not complete. And and so I reported this bug thinking.
Wow, yeah, it's amazing. And
It's been, as it always.
Is with Thunderbird and their Bugzilla team and those folks, and I realize it's mostly volunteers,
But not entirely. It's been months of this slowly progressing. Yeah. Just this week, somebody was commenting and being helpful. It was like one of the community managers was like showing, okay, yeah, this is interesting. Here's my notes from 2009 about a conversation. And he pasted the conversation in where it confirmed that, yes, this would just blocks. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me that this has been here for at least 15, 16 years? i don't right i what good.
Luck finding message 4532 by the way so you could just delete it
And i have tried like rebuilding the mailbox and that worked on a few things but not all things and they've been trying to have me and i'm happy to try and help like okay this message you know So could we figure out what the message is that's holding it up? And that is a problem to solve, but it is not the problem to solve. Like telling users, so I am here telling you it is possible.
If you're like me and you have mailboxes like me, it is highly likely, but certainly possible that your Thunderbird search results are incomplete at best. So just FYI, if you're using Thunderbird. Now, this is for the global search. If you are searching in a specific mailbox, because you can do that, too. There's two different search functionalities. The search in a specific mailbox happens in real time and the results are reliable.
And that's how I was able to, like, figure out that something was wrong because I'm like, nope, there's the message. Why aren't you showing it here?
And then that's when I dug. Yep.
16 years. At least. At least. how is this so frustrating how is this not something that they're like waving the flag about.
I don't know
It so i i use both thunderbird and apple mail i have all my mail connected to both and for searching i use apple mail i have to there's no.
I'd like i just jumped
To apple mail and i searched there, So I just wanted to share that with you. I don't like to be Dave, doom and gloom, but these are important things to know. I kind of feel like I did when I recommended the Drobo FS, the Drobo FS for months. And then.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Dave.
Yeah, I know.
We all bought them. And then. This is weird. What's going on with my audio today? It's super. Yeah. There's something. It's back. Whatever the issues are with audio and Mac OS. Oh, interesting. when that audio just hiccup there it also stopped sharing my screen into oh.
It sure did
Stream yard yeah yeah there's something there's something weird going on dude i don't know um if.
Only we had some geeks to help us answer these i know
I but uh we do and we will get to at least your questions, if not my questions. The next thing I want to do, though, is I want to talk about our sponsor. Because look, if you're a Mac user who works with text, and of course,
¶ SPONSOR: BBEdit, the power tool for text from Bare Bones Software; now with integrated Notebooks and extended language support.
that's all of us, you need our sponsor, BB Edit. Right now, it's open on my Mac, and that's both because it's part of my Start Podcasting script and my Begin the Day script. It's like the Swiss army knife of text editors, but without the risk of poking yourself. Lately, I've been loving two features in particular. First, projects. BBEdit's projects feature lets me group-related files, code, nodes, show docs, even markdown stuff, to jump between them quickly and keep
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All right. Well, I think we should move to questions.
¶ Russell-How can I add touch ID to my Mac mini?
And in the entire don't get caught segment, I had the cool tips up still. So fun.
All right. So it's fine.
Well, the show is it's an audio show. As I say, we do a primarily audio show and we stream the video and provide it on YouTube for anyone who wants the voyeuristic experience of watching. well today two people record an audio podcast and that's cool i i don't i don't say that with any judgment it's just a funny.
Way to say it that's all
It's almost as exciting as watching paint dry but anyway so russell writes in with this question dave he says looking at moving from a macbook pro with a large external screen to an m4 mini with the screen but i use the touch fingerprint key a lot as i work to unlock passwords and other security features as i have some secure information for my work don't want to have to type my long password every time for that is there an external touch button available to add alongside a keyboard or can
an iphone be set to use touch or face recognition to unlock the secured items on the Mac Mini.
So I have answers here. I don't know that you're going to like the first one. You might love it a lot, except for the $199 that it costs, which is the Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. This is an external keyboard for your Mac that with the magic of everything Apple does, has a touch id sensor in it and will unlock your mac and do all the things that touch id can do on uh.
You know on a on
Like a macbook pro or something that that has.
It you know
A laptop that has it built in so 199 bucks though and you've got to like the kind of keyboard that it is it's the soft touch keyboard that apple uses it's not like the you know battleship keyboards the extended pro 2 or the matias or whatever to my knowledge there is no official way for anyone other than Apple to release something with a Touch ID sensor for your Mac.
So bear that in mind. However, If you have an Apple Watch, you can have it set to do a lot of the Touch ID style things and authentication that would happen with Touch ID simply by having your watch unlocked and on your wrist. So that might, if you already have an Apple Watch, then that might get you over that particular hump without even worrying about it.
as far as using your phone to unlock there is that app that's like ble unlock or something what's it called i want to find it here yeah yeah.
Yeah yeah yeah
Um so it's called ble unlock and i will put a link to the uh the github page in the show notes and it is it says no iphone app is required it works with any bluetooth low energy that's what ble devices that periodically transmit signal from a static mac address so you can unlock your mac when your phone is nearby without entering a password you can have it lock your mac when your device is farther away uh and and so it works with an iphone 5s or newer any apple watch and a
mac running uh with bluetooth low energy support which your mac would have and running uh 10.13 which is high sierra or later so i will put a link to ble unlock it is free to download and the latest release appears to be about a year ago so let's hope it still works with um current versions of mac os but uh but But yeah, BLE Unlock would be the other thing to do there. So your mileage may vary, obviously. That would be my, that would be my, my answer to that.
So I don't think there's anything else.
No, I just, I was, that's what I was the one I was trying to think of when you were doing it. My other guess was going to be the, the watch, but I didn't know that the watch will unlock the computer itself, but I'm not sure it will unlock the passwords.
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I had mine prompt me for one password even all the time. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's all.
I haven't properly set mine up then.
Yeah.
Yep. Yeah, for 1Password, you have to go into 1Password, and you need to be wearing your watch, and you need to go into 1Password and turn it on in the settings in there, whatever it is. I don't dare launch 1Password.
Stand on your right foot, close your left eye.
It's not quite that bad.
Okay.
Yeah, but you definitely have to go and enable it. And if you've got two Apple Watches because you've got an old one that you wear, sometimes you have to enable it for both.
So, yeah.
But, yeah, works fine. Yeah. i i find the watch unlocking for things like like all the mac os stuff not not just limited to one password i find it a little weird because you got to go and like double tap that side button which if you get ahead of it like if you do it before it prompts you to do it now it puts your credit cards up on the screen and you get the whole thing going.
On so it's a little bit
Wonky but whatever works fine so all right next question uh gary gary has
¶ Gary-Efficient Way to Manage 256Gb Laptop Storage?
one for us here pete he says uh two for good day mgg crew i decided to take advantage of the apple card monthly payment plan and ordered a midnight black m4 15 inch macbook air what would be the best and least expensive solution for backing it up or at least to extend the amount of storage i elected to get the, baseline 256 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of unified RAM. I'm looking at a good backup solution for the content of its drive.
I have a WD portable SSD serving as the time machine backup for my M1 24-inch iMac. Since they will be linked to the same iCloud account, should I buy another external drive for the MacBook Pro? And just remember to carry it around when I take the laptop away from the house. uh and then i'll ask his second question later so okay we'll do this we'll do this as a twofer with two with two prongs yeah.
There you go so i i answered and then somehow i missed in there he'd already ordered it so this is for other people considering the same thing um i said you know like anything on a question like this it's nebulous right i mean i can't definitively answer your question for you because it's you and your use case whereas you know mine is different i I'll tell you what I would do, and I'd say I'd buy at least a 500 gigabyte and consider a one terabyte drive.
And some people, they can get away with a 256. I find it amazing that Apple still even offers that version, that the 256 is a base. But there it is. And then I'd use an external 500 gig or one terabyte USB drive and consider a versioning backup like Time Machine. I said, I have a one terabyte in my MacBook Pro, and then what I do is my backup is I clone that once a week with a USB drive, a two terabyte USB drive.
But for anybody considering getting a base model, if you can afford it, I would get at least the 500 gigabyte. That doesn't help Gary. He's got the 256. So I think, yeah, getting a large USB solid state drive I think you've just spent more than what you would have spent on the.
Well, not necessarily. Apple storage is way overpriced. Apple storage is not free.
We all know Apple storage is not free in any way, shape, or form.
For a hundred bucks, you can get an external, you know, one terabyte USB or maybe even less.
Right. Yeah.
So, but, you know, if you take advantage of what was your comment before was let go and let Apple. Right. So if you let go and let Apple and you have the 256 gig storage, and I know there's many of you out there listening that do, right? Because Apple sells lots of these things, so it stands to reason. And you let it do optimized storage and you do the documents and desktop syncing and put all your documents in your documents folder so that your Mac can aggressively move things off to the cloud.
Into the cloud.
Yeah, then maybe it's going to work out. It depends on what you're doing with it, obviously.
I never considered that, Dave, yeah, that it does the optimized storage. It's good at that.
It is good at it, yeah. Now, the only question is, is 256 enough to keep all your apps and your apps' data separate from your documents? But otherwise, yeah, you know, and you might need to aggressively kind of manage your downloads folder. I use you can use Hazel for that. Right. Which is a great it's like it's folder actions, essentially. So you can say and it comes with a great set of default ones for your downloads
folder so that you really get to see how it manages it. And it's a good example, too. But Hazel would be my my my recommendation to keep your downloads folder in check. And yeah, I mean, I think it'll probably work OK where where I get into trouble with that is mail. And it's because I choose to store all my mail locally. But you don't have to. You can also store that in the cloud and just pull down because I have – but I also keep decades and decades of mail somewhere.
So wanting to keep that on my laptop or have access to it on my laptop, I have easily over 100 gigs of mail. I know.
I'm Dave, and I have a problem.
Well, there's that.
But that's me. So I think it's workable with 256. 56, I'm tempted, but I'm not going to look on this computer because it's only got 512 to see how much, of my i mean i have 13 gigs available on this 512 drive here but i have all kinds of apps installed i keep all my mail on here i have like all the things right although actually my mail no my mail is stored on an external drive so but i i'm doing a lot of audio recording and and even the 13 gigs is kind of making
me sweat a little bit right now but uh but i and i leverage hazel aggressively so what i wanted to look at was how much my applications folder takes up on this computer because that would be an interesting data point to share. But given all the audio issues that have been happening here today, I'm not entirely tempted to do that.
Yeah, I don't have it pre-calculated,
So I'm not going to.
Calculate that now.
And letting it do the optimization, the only other thing I would say is make sure you do some pre-planning if you're going to be, for instance, off the grid on an airplane or something like that where you know you're going to want to work on some documents that you've got those on board that they aren't only in the cloud with a link to them yep um so
Yeah that's the that's the only issue with.
That is is right
Making sure that you have for offline use what you need for offline use but if you're going to be connected most of the time it really, you know it my guess is that that i know there's a way it's going to work out because, that's the limitation you have and so you're going to find a way to make it work and share with us in fact i'm really curious i know there's a lot of you that have max with 256 gigs and and i also know that we uh the way we speak here it's unfathomable
for us to have these it would have been unfathomable for me here in the studio to have a 512 gig drive but it was the computer that was available on the day that my other one got burned up by lightning, and so it's what I have. And I had an issue migrating to it because my previous machine had a one terabyte drive. You find a way to make it work, and then it's just fine. And once you, you know, so I want to hear from you. What are your systems?
How do you, and I don't want to make this sound negative. What are your systems for making it work with 256 gigs? Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
You heard him. Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
That's feedback at MacGeekGab.com. We have time to keep going.
¶ Gary-Should I reset the ink/toner cartridges that I have?
Okay, so Gary had a second comment question here. Also, he says, adding to your discussion about toner ink and waste cartridges, you guys may have forgotten that manufacturers often have a chip on those cartridges, ink cartridges especially, that reports to an ink monitor built into the printer. Even if you empty the waste ink container, refilled the cartridges, etc., unless you either reset or replace that chip, the machine will still think it's used and not let you continue printing.
There are places that sell chip resetters and there is software on the Windows side that's supposed to erase those. But a lot of the printer manufacturers have gone to a rotating serial number using a formula only they know.
There is a serial number embedded into the chip, so unless you can get your hands on a chip and are willing to melt the epoxy and replace the chip, it may not be worth it to keep using the same cartridge i had i had a similar issue with drives, and my drobos in the old days if a if a drobo decided a drive was dead i couldn't like take it out reformat it somewhere else get it up back up and running and put it in and be like no i know this drive i've.
Seen this drive before you're not allowed to put it yeah so
Thoughts on that pete.
Well, yeah. So, first of all, I think I may have conflated because in that discussion, I distinctly remember talking about refillable and all that. So, I may have conflated an inkjet refill, which my mother-in-law had recently bought. I believe it was a Canon that they're designed to be refilled. They sell you the little bottles of ink that you just pour in. Those are much cheaper than they used to be.
Correct.
Yeah. Yes. So those are kind of cool. I really do like those. And I was saying that I have a laser printer. I think, is it inkjetsuperstore.com? We've seen a couple people write in about that. Yeah. Yep, for sure. And I had actually used those. So my laser cartridges, I buy those. I had been using Inkjet Superstore. I found them actually cheaper on Amazon. Again, sometimes you get what you pay for. I have not been burned by these that I've gotten. on Amazon. I've been very happy with them.
And my, let's say, Brother 930CW, man, that thing, that's got to be a 10 or 12-year-old printer now. It thing is just cranking and cranking. It was the waste toner cartridge that I looked on YouTube. How do you empty this and not give yourself lung cancer if you happen to be downwind of all the crap coming out of there?
But that thing uh you can do it you can empty it and i saw that the way that one seemed to work was the crude analogy is like the float valve on the toilet it the waste toner fills up and it moves this little lever and says hey i'm full um but i decided you know what for the i think it was 26 bucks or something for a new waste jet or waste cartridge yep so i just did that rather than mess with the other um so but yeah there's there's no way i would mess with trying to
Refill a laser printer cartridge i think
There are some that you again that are built to do that but but otherwise.
Yeah i i agree with you
You're just you know unless you unless you like making driving yourself crazy like
Suffering sir yeah that's right um
So yeah there's several people have written in about it was inkjet super yeah
Michael dj was the one that we had that.
We had queued up but yeah yeah so yep yeah so thank you for that
So yeah i didn't mean to conflate the two though the refillable inkjet ones now are pretty cool and substantially lower priced than they were Yes. Although they're probably still a hundred bucks a gallon for ink.
Oh, it's more expensive than airplane fuel. I bet.
So, yeah.
Uh, all right. We are, we are close to our, our limit here. I wanted to take a minute and thank the two people that sent in, uh, reviews in the last week here.
¶ MGG Review-rgAdg17 from the UK
The first one comes from RG 80 G 17 in the UK. Five stars. Outstanding.
Dot, dot, dot is the title.
That sounds ominous, but it's not. There are plenty of Mac podcasts, RGA says. Several of them, RG says, sorry. Several of them, very good. But MGG stands out for the fully interactive content as well as the expertise. This is the podcast where the agenda is mostly driven by listener viewer input, which is more useful and relevant for many people.
Expertise is needed, and no shortage of it in this podcast. But two or three experts can't cover the range of cool stuff found, nor the real life issues and problems, nor the helpful warnings of don't get caught items and the MGG that the MGG audience all contributes. And if you do get in touch, the interaction is friendly, helpful and positive. The aim is clear to clearly to share and assist, not to show off or be clever. Production quality is first class.
Except for today.
And although very much USA style, it works well for European and indeed worldwide listeners.
Russell thank you russell amazing that's uh yeah that i love that thank
You for saying.
That and
Yeah. And we got another one from Dude Man LA. And so being Pilot Pete,
¶ MGG Review-DudemanLA - 2025-04-10
I have to ask, is LA Los Angeles, Louisiana, or Lower Alabama? Asking for a friend.
Fair.
Which is the Florida Panhandle, Lower Alabama. So, all right. Love the Mac Geek Gab podcast. He says, I really like this podcast. I've been listening to it for a long time now. And it's the best out there for Mac, iPad, iPhone, troubleshooting, useful tips, finding cool new software, and more. I learned so many great tips and troubleshooting techniques. Dave, Adam, and Pilot P are very knowledgeable and entertaining. I always learned something. At least five new things.
Amazing. Love that.
Love that.
Thank you, Dude Man LA. No matter where you are.
LA. That's right.
And while we're here I do want to thank everyone whose contributions have come
¶ MGG Premium Listener Contribution Appreciation Moment
in since the last time we talked about this which I think is about three weeks ago so starting with, thanking thank you Brian in Glendora for a $150 contribution thank you very much it's very kind and generous of you, James in Chugiak and Steven in Woodland thank you each for your $100 contributions you both rock thank you Steven in New York for your $60 contribution thank you to Patrick R in Little Rock, Edward in Manhattan Beach and John in Studio City for your $50 contributions you all rock,
Jimmy in Cushing and Sandro in Garnet Valley. Thank you to both of you for your $30 contributions.
Thanks to the following for your $25 contributions. Robin in Andover, Ralph in Bangor, Andrew in Bellington, Craig in Costa Mesa, Bruce in Decatur, Gene in Denver, Susan in Honolulu, Donald in Jamaica Plain, George in Natick, Roger in North Charleston, Scott in North Little Rock Colby in Otis Paul in Pomona Michelle in Quebec Mike in Raleigh Rob in South Hertzville Kurt in Tawanda David in Troutdale Robert in West Westford sorry I.
Almost did that wrong
Chris in Windsor Jeffrey in a Windsor in a different state Jonathan in Woodside and Andy in Durham.
Thanks to each of you for those $25 contributions.
Thanks to John in Narrowsboro and Robert in Wakefield for your $20 contributions. And the following thanks for your $10 contributions, Wagner in Allen, Peter in Auburn, Scott in Bourbonese, Jason in Charlestown, Chris in Chorleywood, Robert in Columbiana, Mark in Coopersburg, Stephen in Costa Mesa, Jeremiah in Edgewater, Donald in Furlong, Nick in Marquette, James in melbourne anthony in middleborough santiago in palm city cal and russellville james in san antonio uh.
There was somebody else in san
Antonio wasn't there anyway uh abel in santa rosa phil and summers brian and southbury mark and vero beach john and wake forest neil in west hartford and timothy in west windsor windsor you all rock as we always say, Our premium program is optional and very, very much appreciated. You can learn more at macgeekup.com slash premium.
And your support really is a
Huge part of.
What allows us to keep doing what we get.
It's so humbling that, you know, people crack their wallets open and share their hard earned money with us to keep this going.
It truly is. I, yeah, I know. Thank you. That's the, yes, thank you.
That's the right word, humbling.
And, and it, it, you know, the, the reviews,
Especially, you know, what's been said in the reviews recently are really humbling to like, I know we ask you for your reviews and, and we always.
Ask you for your five-star reviews because that's what we're told to ask you for. That's right. Yep.
But go find another show to give that three-star review.
But I, we, we, I think it's pretty obvious that we are students of this craft. We like to get it, I say get it right implies that we could possibly know all the right answers. We don't. We like to get it as great for you as it possibly can be and as valuable for.
You as it
Possibly can be and hopefully as entertaining so that, you know, 75 minutes of your time. So you come back. Yeah, exactly. But like we work really hard at this and the comments in the reviews, I love the five stars. Don't get me wrong. Five stars means a lot to other people, right? Go look at the show. How many five stars reviews does it have? So that's where that matters. What really hits me is the specific comments that you give. Where it's like, was it R.J. R.G.'s. I kept saying R.J.
R.G.'s. Russell's. That's easier to say. The one that I read today. Where, you know, saying that, like, we know we can't have all the answers and that we're leveraging the community and all of the things that we work really hard to do. Hearing you echo those back to us says, OK, like it's working. I love it.
And I know occasionally are getting it right.
And we do occasionally get it right. But we also occasionally get it wrong. And that's OK. We're teaching the process and we're helping everyone, including the three of us, level up. And that's why.
And we're trainable. constructive criticism is a good thing oh a hundred percent yeah we take that under advisement and yeah and then i go sit in the corner for a week yeah that's
Right sometimes i.
Have to sit in the corner but that's okay it's
All it's all of us yeah.
So thank thank you seriously it's it means a lot and um and
So dave i had so much fun i i think i'd like to come back and do this again next week Maybe
We'll get Adam to join us, man.
Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah.
¶ MGG 1086 Outtro
The April giveaway here is CleanMyMac. So go to MacGeekGab.com. Let me try that again. Go to MacGeekGab.com slash giveaway. And you can sign up for the giveaway there. There are five copies of CleanMyMac being given away this month, and you have a good chance of winning one.
So, yeah.
And we have some fun giveaways coming up next month. Yes, Pete?
John asks, where do we post the reviews?
Oh, great question. MacGeekUp.com slash review. That is the closest we can get you to the place where to leave reviews. But it works pretty well. Go to MacGeekUp.com slash review. We've partnered with the folks at PodGagement to really facilitate. They do a great job of facilitating all that review stuff.
So, yeah, it's great. Really, it's good.
Thanks to all of you for just for listening.
That's it.
Thank you. Thank you for listening. And of course, thanks for sending in your feedback to feedback at MackeyCubb.com. Thanks to the folks at Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. If you missed hearing Adam's dulcet tones this week, you can hear him and his daughter, Kenny on their debut film podcast. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. You can hear more of Pete at.
So there I was his podcast for aviation enthusiasts. and if you really feel like you need to hear more of me I do two other shows, Business Brain and Gig Gab the first for entrepreneurs and the second for working musicians thanks for hanging out we've had.
Some amazing Gig Gabs lately by the
Way thanks, yeah we're having fun with that show we have some amazing ones coming up too, yeah I like them to be a surprise sometimes but yeah we've got Prince's the guy who was Prince's sound engineer for a long time and amazing stories. Like the things that Prince thought about.
Dude. Yeah.
Dude. Tell me.
Oh my God. It's crazy. Yeah.
Pete, neither one of us wore the shirt today. I didn't wear my shirt because I thought you'd wear yours.
So I should have texted.
Well, yeah. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Yeah.
What does your shirt usually say though?
It's good advice.
Non adepto di princes. Oh, that's Latin for don't get caught.
I thought that was just your big word.
Of the day. That too.
See ya.
Later.