It's a Clear Case of Lying - podcast episode cover

It's a Clear Case of Lying

Sep 29, 20251 hr 24 minEp. 1109
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Episode description

Pete and Dave admit they couldn’t resist ordering new iPhones—though Adam stayed strong—but the catch is they haven’t even received them yet. That doesn’t stop the crew from diving into the best ways to buy and sell your old gear, plus a slew of Quick Tips you’ll actually use. From setting your default calling app to snagging Amazon’s free photo storage, updating contact images in seconds, and taking smaller HEIC screenshots, you’ll come away sharper than ever. They even explain why sticking with developer betas can sometimes be more stable than waiting on the public release. Don’t Get Caught missing these shortcuts.

You’ll also learn how to dodge surprise roaming charges after a Canada trip, fix stubborn RCS issues with one iCloud toggle, and disable carrier locks before upgrading. Listener questions bring even more depth, like whether APFS is worth it on spinning drives, how to troubleshoot iCloud sync quirks, and why Apple’s “Clear” case isn’t so clear. Sprinkle in Apple Intelligence tricks, AI-powered cocktail recipes, and smart audio bug warnings in macOS Tahoe, and you’ve got an episode stacked with must-know Apple wisdom.

Transcript

Mac Geek Gab 1109 for Wednesday, September 29th, 2025

Dave Hamilton

It's time for Mac Geek Cabin. I'll bring us our quick tip of the week.

QT-Settings > Apps > Phone for Default Calling App, Spam handling, more

In iOS 26, if you go into settings, apps, phone, not settings cellular, but settings apps, phone, you now can set some new things. You can set the default calling app. It can be your cellular connection. It could be WhatsApp. It could be FaceTime audio. There are options in there. There are also options in there for what to do with spam calls, with call filtering. It's not just unknown callers anymore.

You can actually tell it to say, if calls are identified by your carrier as spam, send those to voicemail. There's lots of options, including the ones for screening unknown callers, which take far more time to go through than this quick tip. And we will do more of that, plus more quick tips. Plus, you'll find out why at least two of us are liars. Here today on Mac Geekab 1109 for Monday, September 29th, National Biscotti Day. 2025!

Greetings, folks, and welcome to MacGeekCab, the show where we share quick tips like that. We share cool stuff found that you or we send in, the same with quick tips. And we share questions, candidly, that you or we come up with. And hopefully some answers or at least some assistance down the troubleshooting path. Our sponsors for this week include some new ones and some longtime favorites and one returning sponsor. The returning sponsor is Zapier.com slash MacGeekGab.

Zapier is a tool that we've been using for a long time, and now you can transform how you work with Zapier and the AI stuff they've integrated. ConstantContact.com is where you can go to try Constant Contact to make your marketing easier, and you try that free for 30 days. The Insta360 Go Ultra is the new camera from Insta360. It's about the size of an Oreo and does 4K at 60 frames per second.

And you can get some sticky tabs with your purchase using code MGG at Insta360 or using the link in our show notes. And a brand new sponsor for us, packaapparel.com slash MGG. We're using code MGG. Let's you grab your pack of hoodie like the one I'm wearing here. This thing's amazing.

It's warm and thin. like it's like the most comfortable hoodie and yet, you could go wear it at the dinner it's amazing and you get a free pair of alpaca crew socks when uh when you use code mgg we'll talk more about all that in a little bit for now back here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton.

Adam Christianson

And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.

Pilot Pete

And here also in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete. Good to be back with you guys. I'm not sure if that's a lie or not, but one of us is...

Dave Hamilton

I don't think that's the lie.

Pilot Pete

Okay, sure.

Dave Hamilton

Before we get into our lying hearts here, not cheating hearts, just lying hearts,

We’re liars…well, at least two of us are. Pete and Dave bought iPhones

I want to make sure everybody knows that there's a few days left in our monthly giveaway with Unify, where we're giving away the unified cloud gateway fiber and u7 pro xg so make sure to go to macgeekup.com slash giveaway for that and uh but yes we're we're all liars well two of us are are liars um i believe because um i have uh an orange iphone 17 pro uh on the way it'll probably arrived today so i made a decision i.

Pilot Pete

Know who the other guy is

Dave Hamilton

I have a i have reasons for this there was there was a bit of an incentive um that i created for myself but pete you i i believe you are joining me uh in this particular group today i.

Pilot Pete

I are a liar yeah i uh i broke down and got the 17 Pro Max.

Dave Hamilton

All right.

Pilot Pete

Because now that I am in the retired club, I'm having to turn my FedEx iPad back in. And I need a large screen to navigate with. And rather than buy an iPad, I figured I'd use the nice large iPhone screen for my charting while flying. So, and for those that think it can't be done. I know someone who's flown a single-engine Grumman across the Atlantic Ocean four times now using nothing more than an iPhone 5.

Dave Hamilton

So... It

Pilot Pete

Can be done that's amazing yeah i wanted the seven inch screen instead of that i don't know what is that three and a half whatever

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah right right no that makes sense but but whoa whoa talk about burying the lead here i know we've talked about this off the air i i i i am now finding out that it is public for the first time and everyone else is finding out for the first time Congratulations, Pete.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, yeah, thanks.

Dave Hamilton

On your retirement. Holy cow.

Pilot Pete

I'm done, yeah.

Dave Hamilton

Wow. Amazing. Congratulations.

Pilot Pete

I've never been busier in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I'm out on medical, haven't worked since November. There's a slight chance they could get me to try and come back. Okay, all right.

Dave Hamilton

There's always a chance.

Pilot Pete

It's going to be tough. A lot of work. Yeah, I've got to try and get that medical squared away, and I don't see that happening. I could be wrong.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, yeah.

Pilot Pete

But in the interim, I'm going to have to turn my equipment in. So, yeah. Sure. Like I say, never been busier in my life since I haven't been working.

Dave Hamilton

Well, congratulations. That's amazing. I know you've had a long career there.

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah. I've seen a lot in the world.

Pilot Pete

30 years next month.

Dave Hamilton

Amazing.

Pilot Pete

So just shy of 30 years. Amazing.

Dave Hamilton

Amazing.

Pilot Pete

I was thinking of sticking with it, but, you know, couldn't hang it.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah. Uh the the reason i'm a liar i every year when we get new phones we you know roll things down and and and you know bounce them through the family and then there's always we always save one phone to be our our insurance policy our spare that's that's how we uh that's how we insure ourselves is by keeping a phone around for that and nowadays we actually uh keep two spares around one is the united states spare and the other is the italy spare because we have uh family members in living

in italy so so now we have two spares in the system but it's fine it's all it all works out uh and then we sell whatever's whatever's left over you know if there's and there's always leftovers i we bought three phones last year because i wanted everybody in the family to be on a phone that could support apple intelligence right that has not really paid off although it kind of has you know i mean it not well.

Pilot Pete

If only they roll out apple

Dave Hamilton

Intelligence only yeah i mean there's some things that we all get to do and that's a good thing you know it's fine but sure could be better we had i think if i had known where it was going to be by this point I don't think I would have bought three phones last year, but you know, whatever. But that meant we had quite a few phones to sell off last year. And up until a week and a half ago, I had sold exactly none of them.

I put them all in a drawer and got sidetracked and all of the things and never really came back to it. And so when I decided, yeah, I don't really need it, 17 or whatever this year. Like I've got what I need. And Apple kind of burned me last year, although I wasn't really sour about that. But that was like that I could use that reasoning to support my decision not to buy a new phone. But it's atypical for me. I think this would have been the first time I'd ever bought a phone.

The closest to it was when the iPhone X came out. I waited and bought the XR that year. But otherwise, I've always bought one. And so this year I said, okay, I have to sell off these phones. Like it's ridiculous having this pile of e-waste. I had four phones that we needed to sell off. Well, one is like super cracked. And so I just sold that to Gazelle, who has an old iPhone 10, actually, with a cracked back. But I got like 53 bucks from Gazelle for it. So, you know, hey, I know.

It's like, all right, great. I'm not going to worry about trying to find somebody on eBay that wants a phone with a cracked back, you know, trying to deal with that. So it was like, great, Gazelle takes it. But the other three I sold on eBay and it worked out great. And I made way more than half of what the 17 Pro would cost me.

Pilot Pete

And nice and

Dave Hamilton

It keeps us you know with things in the rotation which is good so that's yeah that's my excuse i'm.

Pilot Pete

Sticking a similar thing i i had my phone but the problem is i uh my sister has a laser etching business sure so i had her laser etch the show logo in the back of my 16 pro which meant that it was scratched and therefore yeah valueless for trade-in as far as apple was concerned and so uh but i had debbie's 12 so i turned that in for a cool 140 all right

Dave Hamilton

Yeah i mean sure.

Pilot Pete

Why not you know yeah yeah i do i was shocked that a 12 was worth 140 still so

Dave Hamilton

And that was to gazelle not even to.

Pilot Pete

The no apple that's apple oh it might have been more you know actually i didn't even i should have i should have looked at that so here's

Dave Hamilton

My experience with this i've i've tried trading in with apple before i have never successfully traded in with apple because Because every single time, and I mean, here I'm speaking like this is universal. The two or three times that I've attempted to trade in with Apple, I send it. They tell me what the value is. I send it in. And when they get it, they say, oh, it's worth $30 less or $50 less. Take it or leave it. And I always say, leave it. Like, send me the phone back.

You pay shipping two ways on this. But before I say leave it, I look at what Gazelle or somebody else would offer me on that day. Because now I've waited two weeks. And usually it's right around the time that new phones are coming out.

So prices are dropping but i i make sure that i'm going to get more from gazelle and i i do and then i send it to gazelle and that's that's the end of it so yeah um and i've sold to other places too gazelle's not the only one but apple apple has been not the best at sticking to the value that they have interesting.

Pilot Pete

Okay yeah our best luck has been with uh facebook marketplace and the local yard sale places that you

Dave Hamilton

Know well that's there's a durham marketplace yeah to me that's different that's different from apple or gazelle though because they those are like absolutely those are wholesale wholesalers whereas you're talking retail to like ebay or or facebook or those kind of yeah yeah yeah yeah i forget about facebook marketplace that's a good yeah.

Adam Christianson

Yeah yeah yeah

Dave Hamilton

Yeah that's.

Adam Christianson

The only place i'd be able to sell stuff here

Dave Hamilton

Is that right adam facebook market small.

Adam Christianson

Town midwest everything is i think i've talked about this everything is through facebook i wouldn't be on facebook if i wasn't living where i'm living yeah um typically but sure yeah like to the point where like all businesses like they say go to my website well their website is their facebook page like oh

Dave Hamilton

I see what you're saying actually call.

Adam Christianson

It a website yeah it's like you don't have a website you have a facebook

Dave Hamilton

Page yes that's okay yes right right yeah.

Adam Christianson

That or a yard sale. I could have a yard sale. People love their yard sales here, too.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah.

Adam Christianson

I got some monitors. Actually, Jerry was asking for a monitor update. The monitors are great, Jerry, just to answer the question. So I upgraded to these LG 4K Ultra Fine 27-inch displays, and they're wonderful. But I have two monitors I have to sell now, two old monitors.

Dave Hamilton

Oh, yeah. I mean, you could sell them on eBay. Like when I'm selling on eBay, I'm shipping to all over the country too.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, but I could literally, I have no doubt I can put this on the local Facebook marketplace and someone will come get them, you know, like 50 bucks a piece or something like that.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I, I, I'm obviously I could do that here too. I don't want to be the one that my neighbor bought their iPhone from and then have them come to me for support.

Support warranty work correct yeah because because i i i mean i'm who i am it at i mean we've been doing this 20 years like if someone comes to me with a question i want to answer it right and my and it's true if my neighbors come to me i'm happy to answer their questions if they need like serious work done you know then we work out something where i'm compensated for my time but otherwise i you know i just give that away and i love it like it's obviously i love it but i i have to

work hard not to over invite it locally here so uh so that is when when you had mentioned facebook marketplace it's like oh not if i have to sell it to somebody that's that i'm gonna see at the grocery store nope nope i want to be just as anonymous to them as they are to me yeah right so yeah.

Pilot Pete

Right you don't get to follow me home after you buy right

Dave Hamilton

Right, exactly. You don't come to my house to get it either. We're not doing any of that. That's right.

Pilot Pete

So, yeah. Hey, and here's one. Always meet in a public place like a police station or something like that. My daughter got robbed selling her iPhone about a year ago now. The guy was, you know, looking at it, playing with it, and turned and beat feet in the parking lot of her apartment complex. And so. That sucks. Yeah, it really did. Jeez. And you didn't have your pistol on you she's like no i didn't even think about it

Dave Hamilton

Yeah right right but.

Pilot Pete

I don't think you're allowed to shoot somebody in the back for running away with your iphone i could be wrong not i

Dave Hamilton

Would i wouldn't no it's not and.

Pilot Pete

It would feel good no no no no

Adam Christianson

It's never the answer

Dave Hamilton

It's never no you let it just i mean the fact that your daughter walked away safely from that is the most important thing like that that was the that was the part when you said he turned and ran it was like okay thank goodness there was no.

Pilot Pete

Violence there was

Dave Hamilton

No violence you.

Pilot Pete

Know pull a weapon and say give me your phone or anything like that he was looking through it like oh gee i want to see if i want to buy it and then he just turned to be feet and yeah you know I don't think it would have happened at a police station. I could be wrong.

Dave Hamilton

You never know, but you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other one that I've used is Swappa, S-W-A-P-P-A.com. Cool.

Adam Christianson

It's interesting. Probably a quick tip or a tip, if you are selling an old iPhone

QT-Don’t reset the iPhone until money is in-hand

like that, don't reset it until maybe after it's been purchased.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, money in hand. That's a great idea, Adam.

Adam Christianson

Because then you can lock it. Like if they run away,

Pilot Pete

You just make it useless to them. You're locked.

Dave Hamilton

Oh, I like that.

Adam Christianson

Just come in front with a seller. Be like, I will unlock it once you, you know, you can just tell them it's still in my, but I will wipe it remotely and unlock it when you. Yeah.

Pilot Pete

Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that.

Adam Christianson

That's a great idea.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah. I like that. Yep.

Pilot Pete

You just bought, or you just ran away with a paperweight.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Pilot Pete

All right.

Adam Christianson

That's fine, Kiwi. You can unlock it right there after they hand you the cash. Kiwi Graham in the chat was saying, but I wouldn't hand cash over until I see it unlocked.

Dave Hamilton

And it's like, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, at some point, you have to choose. There's going to be trust thrown into this equation somewhere. But you can limit the amount of time that that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. All right. We have We have all kinds of things We have a lot more quick tips to go through And then we have a lot more other stuff too But the The next thing that I want to do Is tell you about Our sponsors Starting with the pack of hoodie that I got yesterday Folks,

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So, like, you could wear it at the dinner. I can wear it in the studio while playing drums, traveling, just relaxing, whatever. It's made from alpaca fiber, hence the name, which is one of the most sustainable materials out there. It's softer than cashmere, warmer than wool. Paka nailed it. Plus, every hoodie is handcrafted in Peru by artisans who stitch their name into the tag.

Adam Christianson

Let me look here.

Dave Hamilton

It says handmade by Lily A. Paka. So there you go. And right now, when you order, Paka will throw in a free pair of their legendary alpaca crew socks. Cozy, odor resistant, and backed with a lifetime guarantee. Really, wear them out. They'll send you a new pair. If you can wear them out. Don't get caught in an uncomfortable hoodie again. To grab your Paka hoodie and your free pair of alpaca crew socks, head to go.pakaapparel.com slash MGG and use our code MGG.

That's go.pakaapparel.com slash MGG and enter code MGG. We'll also have that link in the show notes on the website and in the email we send you, of course. And our thanks to Paka for sponsoring this episode. And you know how we love

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and our thanks to insta360 for sponsoring this episode all right more quick tips more quick.

Pete uses the Insta360 Link 2c…and Alpaca wool is the most fantastic clothing

Pilot Pete

Tips yeah let's do some quick tips uh but and this isn't part of the ads but uh i'm currently using the insta360 link 2c camera as we record this show love the camera and another another uh Little known fact, my sister used to be an alpaca rancher. Alpaca wool is the most fantastic clothing I've ever owned. Go get some pack of stuff. You'll love it.

Dave Hamilton

There you go. Yeah. I've never worn alpaca before, Pete. Oh, it's amazing, isn't it? I put this thing on. I haven't wanted to take it off. It's amazing. Thin, warm. I know we need to get back to the show. Yeah. And you're right. This was not scripted.

Pilot Pete

No. All the properties of wool, moisture wicked away from the body, but super warm, super love my alpaca gear. Yeah, same. Ski socks especially. So anyway, now I should take us to our next quick tip of the day.

JoeM-QT-iOS 26 Preview App is Feature Rich!

Our second one, I think it is. Joe wrote in and he said, you know, with all the noise about liquid glass at WWDC, I missed the news that iOS finally has its own version of Preview.

It's actually pretty powerful. powerful and and that's from joe m i i summarized it but i wrote to him also i said i i remember the preview app being talked about but with information coming so fast i basically ignored it i was like yeah okay you know that's sure and i've not been a big files user on ios for the very reason that you didn't have the ability to do the things you wanted to do with the files and with ios 26 all that's

changed you get with pdf and images you've got centralized viewing you can do basic edits It's like rotate, crop, resize, export to heic.jpg.pdf.png and TIFF. PDF features, you can do markup and annotation with a pencil or your finger, autofill forms, scan directly to multi-page PDFs. And then the image features, you can create new images from scratch or from a clipboard, you know, blank images, all that stuff. So go play with the preview app in iOS and tell us what you're doing with it.

Just shoot us an email at feedback at Mac geek gab.com and tell us what you're doing with it.

Dave Hamilton

I, I have not this. I knew there was a preview app. I don't think I've launched it yet. So thank you, Joe. Have you messed with it, Adam?

Adam Christianson

I have not messed with it too much. I did notice it came up when I was doing some things where I was clicking on some PDFs and I'm like, Oh, that's interesting.

Dave Hamilton

You know kept popping.

Adam Christianson

Open yeah preview or whatever but yeah beyond that not not really mess with it too much yet

Dave Hamilton

Huh yeah i'm just launching it here i i gotta focus on i played.

Pilot Pete

With it and was shocked at how much cool stuff you can do

Dave Hamilton

Yeah with.

Pilot Pete

Preview in ios

Dave Hamilton

Amazing wow exporting to okay all right yeah that's good okay.

Adam Christianson

Should I take us to Terry? Please. Terry says, hey, just listening to the show,

Terry-QT-ChatGPT CarPlay widget requires phone face up

thanks for the call out about car widgets in CarPlay. So you have widgets now. We talked about that on the last episode, or a couple episodes back, I don't remember. But I just wanted to point out that when I used the chat GPT in the widget, my phone has to be facing up. It can't be facing down or it thinks the phone is asleep. Oh, that's why that doesn't work.

Dave Hamilton

Well, I mean, you know what? Yes, it does make sense. However, if it's going to be on the CarPlay screen, at the very least, in my humble opinion, it should tell you that it's going to require the phone. Like when I push the button and it doesn't work, it should tell me the phone needs to be face up or whatever. Like, candidly, it shouldn't be allowed to be a CarPlay widget if it requires interaction with the phone to use.

Like, why? If I'm going to mess with my phone, well, now we've completely broken the seal. Like, so. Yeah. Exactly i i don't know i like that and now you're.

Pilot Pete

Into your 500 fine range if you're driving to new hampshire doing it you know correct

Dave Hamilton

Right yeah but i mean we said it on on other episodes too i i love the enhancements to carplay but there are these things that it just feels like apple hasn't fully fleshed out like or the one where if my my my 2025 outback I did not have this problem with my 2018 Outback, by the way. But with my 2025 Outback, if the car is moving, I only get like 15 or 20 items in a list on the screen, including like Apple Music, but also third-party apps. Like every app is affected by this.

As soon as the car stops, then I get the full list of apps. So if I'm going to Apple Music and I wanted to, you know, kind of find something that was below letter B, I can't while the car is moving. So guess what I'm going to do if I want to get to something in the ages? I'm going to pick up my phone and do it there, which is like I don't I just don't see where it's safer. But, you know, hopefully Apple will continue to iterate on this in a way that pleases me.

I know that's their entire goal in life is to please me. uh speaking of chat gpt uh.

QT-System Settings - Apple Intelligence & Siri - ChatGPT Extension - Sign In if you like

Make sure if you have a ChatGPT account, even if it's just a free account, you can go into System Settings, Apple Intelligence, and Siri. And you can turn on the ChatGPT extension so that Siri is capable of using ChatGPT.

And then you can sign into your own ChatGPT account so that whatever you interact with there, A, gets the benefits of your paid account if you have a paid account, but also ties into the data store of your ChatGPT account so that you've kind of got all this stuff tied in together. And you may also choose that you don't want that to happen, and that's also fine. So then that way, chat GPT is not, you know, OpenAI is not storing your stuff. But yes, be aware of that out there.

So that's all. Sign in if you like. Not mandatory.

Pilot Pete

I had not signed in. Cool.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I thought I had signed in, and it was not. I just happened to notice it. I was like, oh, well, that's a quick tip. So yep uh adam are you uh finished signing in and ready to take us to jk dawson.

Adam Christianson

Oh i didn't know we were already to that tip i

JK Dawson-QT-Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo storage

Dave Hamilton

Think so sorry that's okay yeah.

Adam Christianson

Yes jk dawson says uh photo backups if you are not an amazon if you are an amazon prime member rather amazon will give you unlimited photo storage at no additional cost. Note, video is not unlimited. They also support raw formats, and they process the photos to identify people and such. I have not done a detailed comparison of their facial recognition versus Apple's.

The desktop Amazon Photos app does a good job of crawling your internal and external drives and finding and uploading every photo it finds, but it can drive high CPU usage, so just be aware of that. I mean, that's great, you know?

Dave Hamilton

I had no idea.

Adam Christianson

I mean, great tip. I'm so private about my photos. Sure. I don't know if I would let Amazon and Jeff Bezos rummage through my photo library, just personally.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, Amazon Prime customers get unlimited full-resolution photo storage plus 5 gigs of video storage. Uh and with family vault i'm skipping over some things so i might i might actually be skipping over some things uh with family vault amazon prime members can invite up to five members to receive unlimited photo storage and collect photos together fascinating interesting yeah i'll have to think about that yeah yeah you.

Pilot Pete

Know there's yeah have those photos as many places as you can i think just

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah exactly you.

Pilot Pete

Know our our neighbors lost all their kids photos from before age 10 when their computer crashed i don't know 20 years

Dave Hamilton

Ago now that sucks yeah no that's not good yeah.

Pilot Pete

Fortunately they had friends who had some photos but yeah some of them are lost forever

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all right uh you want to take us to Uncle Jamie?

Uncle Jamie-Quickly Update Logo / Image in Contacts

Pilot Pete

I do. So I found this on our Discord help desk place, and Uncle Jamie wrote in, and then later, I found a solution, and then down at the bottom, he found it as well. Great. So he found his own answer, but he wrote in and says, I've been frustrated with how difficult it is to add a specific image to a contact card.

Imagine this scenario. You create a contact card for a business that you expect to use more than once you want to add their logo from their website to their contact card it's pretty easy to copy the logo from the web browser but then what it's amazing to me that i can't just paste it into the contact card it wants me to jump through a bunch of hoops of adding something from my photos library or creating a genmoji he says i've got the image on my clipboard already

am i doing something wrong what's a good workflow for this And then he goes, I do have one quick tip for doing this. You can just drag the graphic from the web page directly to the image placeholder in Contacts, then resize and crop as needed. And you don't even need to be in the edit mode. I played with this. You can just drag the image right onto the little circle next to their name in Contacts in macOS. And there it is. Then you can resize and crop, et cetera, et cetera.

And in his thing, he said, you need to arrange the windows so you can drag one from the other. And Ben got in there and pointed out, you don't need to prearrange the windows. Once you pick up the image, you can use command tab or whatever other thing. App switcher that you use to bring contacts to the front and then just drop it in there. So that's a good way to get a photo into a contact card that doesn't otherwise already have one.

Dave Hamilton

Okay. So I have two things. First of all, wow. I had no idea. I love this. The whole time you were sharing this tip, I think my mouth is probably, if you look back at the video, probably hanging on the floor.

Pilot Pete

Close your mouth, Dave. You're going to catch flies.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah secondly the the issue of you need to have your windows arranged so that you can go from one to the other is i've been look i i use an app called yoink we talked about it on the show i think they even they sponsored the show they we did some giveaways yoink solves that problem that like what you describe there is that problem right and what that yoink solves because as soon as you start dragging something anything it could be an image from a web page it could be,

a file from the finder or whatever the little yoink uh it's like a trough i call it a trough but it's not at the bottom it just pops out from the side of the screen i think you can decide where it comes i have mine in the upper right which i believe is the default and then you just put it on the trough and the trough stays there until you drag it out of the trough and then it goes away and you forget that it never existed so in those situations where

you can't or it's not easy to have the windows up and and you know you don't want to have to do the one-handed drag and move and like you know command tab that's where yoink shines so i it was just a perfect opportunity to like explain what yoink does without being able to show you what yoink does so yeah yeah yeah anyway this.

Adam Christianson

This is a feature that was in the newton i don't know if you remember back in the day. So Newton had this really great copy-paste thing where you could select a bit of text or whatever, and then you would drag it to the edge of the screen, and it would just create a little bubble on the edge of the screen. And you would just leave it there, and then you would navigate to wherever you wanted to paste it in.

And then you would go back, pull that bubble out, and you'd have your little block of text, and you would just drop it where you wanted it. And I don't know why that never made it to any of the operating systems. I think that would just be a convenient little way to do that. It would just stick it to the side of the screen. You'd literally drag it over and it would just stick there, just like your little trough analogy. I guess we have third-party apps for that.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, that's what third-party apps are for, right? Yeah, exactly. And Yoink works really well with Mac OS 26 now, too. Go ahead.

Adam Christianson

The other tip trick that I often use is just use expose features.

Use Expose to drag and drop to a new window

Dave Hamilton

Right.

Adam Christianson

You can be holding on to something, dragging it, and you can expose, you know, so So you can expose, map out all your windows and just drag it over to that window and then hold it there and that window will pop forward and drop it that way.

Dave Hamilton

Oh, I always forget about expose. That's a perfect use for expose.

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

Dave Hamilton

And you use the F4 or whatever on your keyboard to do that, Adam?

Adam Christianson

Exactly, yeah.

Pilot Pete

F4 or F3? F3 on mine anyway. But I have so many gosh darn windows.

Dave Hamilton

You're right. It's F3.

Pilot Pete

I can't see any of them.

Dave Hamilton

You're right. I never would have thought to use expose once I was dragging something.

Pilot Pete

Yeah. Dude. Interesting.

Dave Hamilton

This is like mind blowing.

Adam Christianson

Gosh.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah. Okay.

Adam Christianson

Love it. Lots of ways to handle this. All right. Let's talk about Alex here, right?

Alex-QT-Take screenshots in HEIC format on macOS

Dave Hamilton

Yep.

Adam Christianson

Alex says, in case someone has... In case someone as odd as me takes screenshots very often and doesn't use a multi-terabyte machine, thus may be interested in a bit of space saving, macOS has been taking screenshots in PNG format only. But the new macOS 26 Tahoe allows you to enable the high-efficient HEIF image format.

It's a new row in the options of the menu so in the screenshot app you can choose that as an option choose how much brightness and color to capture uh below options oh how i'm trying to read this and i don't understand the uh you

Dave Hamilton

Can i think he basically created a list but put it in paragraph form of like the things you can do with it so.

Adam Christianson

Okay so you can choose how much brightness and color to capture. Below options, select capture format and select HDR or SDR. HDR captures more color and brightness, but requires an HDR display to see the difference. SDR captures brightness and color, but is standard format for most computer displays and mobile devices. If you show an HDR screenshot on an SDR display, you see the SDR format. If you show an HDR screen recording on an SDR display, you see slightly reduced

quality. So I guess you can kind to mess around with the quality. However, there's no options for using HEIF on non-HDR monitors, on HDR incompatible Macs, or more likely basic displays. So no disk saving is possible via the HEIF format. It's a common case. Yet there is a 2017 terminal command that it looks like allows you to, I guess, force HEIC screen capture.

And I'm sure we'll have this in the show notes. I'm not going to read it out because it'd be boring um he said reddit saved the day on that one uh and i've already taken thousands of screenshots and embedded them into docs thanks for the show so you can move to heic format for your screenshots

Dave Hamilton

And you don't need mac os 26 to do this uh oh.

Adam Christianson

You don't well

Dave Hamilton

It's a new option in the he everything he said is correct that you can't choose this in the screenshots app on operating systems prior to Mac OS 26. However, uh-oh, I have lost connectivity and we will see if it comes back. I see you guys moving around. What happened here? Huh. Well, this is fun. I'm going to drop a little anchor here. Oh, my computer is not acting nice. Well, Huh. Interesting. You still hear me? I wonder if StreamYard's having a problem today.

Yeah, it looks like we're coming back. Is everybody back?

Adam Christianson

Was that me? Wasn't just me.

Dave Hamilton

It wasn't. Yeah, I thought it was me too.

Pilot Pete

Okay, so.

Dave Hamilton

We all went away, right?

Pilot Pete

Yes, yes we did.

Dave Hamilton

Okay, what also was interesting, we connect with StreamYard for this. So this is a fascinating thing.

Connection Troubles!

I went and we all just lost our connection to StreamYard temporarily. This is at 10, 18 Eastern on Friday, the 26th. I'm logging this because I also could not connect to our Google doc that we use for the agenda because I was going to put a timestamp in there in case I needed to edit. You know, like if there was if it was I'm not going to edit this. This was only, you know, less than 30 seconds. But if it was, you know, five minutes of like, hey, Dave spinning his wheels, that's not interesting.

So I was going to cut that out. but stream yard and google docs a are two different browsers for me and in theory two different, endpoints but clearly not two different endpoints because i think somebody's endpoint went belly up for a hot minute so i.

Pilot Pete

Don't know wow interesting yeah because i was able to i immediately went to terminal and pinged

Dave Hamilton

Apple.com same was.

Pilot Pete

Getting decent return times so yeah okay

Dave Hamilton

Yep yep i know very very interesting oh okay david klemkin says in on the youtube stream that your adam you were the only one that was still live that's interesting yeah.

Adam Christianson

I could see myself moving in the video okay this went completely

Dave Hamilton

Okay gone.

Pilot Pete

Oh i couldn't even see myself my all i got spinning circles in three windows same interesting

Dave Hamilton

Okay but you and i are both on the same provider repeat we're both on fidium yeah there you go so but we didn't lose access to everything only some of the things interesting okay well all right um what i was saying is that you can do this in previous operating systems right with this heic thing uh uh apple only added it as an option in in this uh latest mac os 26 but as alex pointed out there's a terminal command where you can enable

it and that terminal command he found was posted in 2017 so obviously it existed back then uh you can also if you don't want to mess with the terminal command which we will put in the show notes it's copy paste uh you can do it, in onyx and there is a new version of onyx for mac os 2026 or

CSF-OnyX 4.9.x for macOS 26 is out

mac os 26 so um yeah yeah but uh but yeah it's all there um and i i just did it on i'm i haven't updated to 26 on the studio machine um for because it's my studio machine and i i will wait until probably december to do that, But I just did it here in the studio on Mac OS 15.7 or whatever it is that I'm on, which I think is right, 15.7. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Christianson

Just be aware H-E-I-F is not, I mean, it's more well-supported. It's not greatly supported everywhere. So you might be, if you're sharing things, needing to convert them back into JPEG or PNG or something.

Dave Hamilton

Thank you. Yes, excellent advice. Yeah, I might regret these conversions, but they are way smaller than the PNGs that I was creating.

Adam Christianson

Right. Yeah, it is pretty well supported in browsers now, which is kind of nice.

Dave Hamilton

Oh, that's true. Oh, I didn't realize that. Oh.

Adam Christianson

Yeah. But it's not well supported in things like Zoom. So like at work, I can't. Right. Like when I take a screenshot with my phone and it comes over H-E-I-F, I have to convert it before I drop it into Zoom. Mm-hmm.

Dave Hamilton

Mm-hmm yep and.

Adam Christianson

I the caveat is i think it's not supported in zoom on the i want to say on the pc i don't it just doesn't share well

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah yeah yeah i i don't see it when i put it in zoom it it does not appear like in the chat or whatever it's treated like any attachment or whatever just some random attachment yeah yeah good point um i i was thinking about something

Is it more stable to stay on the Developer Betas for a couple of months?

i well actually this is good to talk about. If you were on the betas of any of the Apple OS 26, right, the day that the releases came out. Even if you were fully up to date with the betas, developer or public beta, certainly developer beta in my case, if you turned off developer beta, you were offered the upgrade to 26, the release channel of 26.

That's new. That has not happened in years past. I've always just switched over, and then I don't get offered an update until there's a .01 on the public channel or whatever. So I did. I moved over. There are some quirks with Mac OS 26 that we're going to talk about here in a little bit and quirks with iOS 26. And my son has not moved his phone off of the developer beta channel. And he gets access to those bug fixes before I do.

So i'm wondering if if it's worth staying on the developer channel until like october or november when things settle in because right now all apple is doing is fixing bugs like they're not adding new features it's not like it's not like the early days of the developer beta where it was way more way less stable now it's way potentially way more stable because you're getting access to those bug fixes sooner i think that's that's the the the you know the logic argument that i'm making

here i'm not it it might prove out to be untrue mind you but uh i am tempted to go back to the dev beta for a couple of months until things are stable.

Adam Christianson

Might not be a bad idea.

Dave Hamilton

I know. I know.

Adam Christianson

Were you guys hit by the battery thing? There was a bunch of people complaining about battery life on iOS 26. It was happening to me when I was in Chicago to the point where I went to the Apple store and bought a Belkin battery because it was so bad. But I have a feeling that it was more due to using location services in the city with all those tall buildings. And I think two things were happening. I think it was struggling more to get cell signal.

So it was ramping that up a lot. And then also I think it was probably struggling to get GPS as well. Because it seemed to get fine once I left Chicago. So I don't know.

Dave Hamilton

Huh. I was not i had battery issues for the first day and and and then but but not like not the first day that it was released to the public the first day that i had it on my phone but i always attribute that to yeah that's that to me that seems normal so yeah i don't know i don't know i do have some don't get caught things that we need to talk about because I caught myself, and others there's actually more don't get caught than we've typically had in an episode so we gotta get to that,

and we will the next thing that we want to do is, Talk about our sponsors. Starting with, well, automation, right? You've heard us say it a million times here on the show.

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Events, landing pages, yep, all right there in the platform. No more juggling tools that don't talk with each other or any of that mess. And Constant Contact's AI content generator, it'll turn your rough ideas into ready-to-go campaigns that look and sound just like your brand. Plus, you'll get automated sending, real-time reporting, and tools that actually help you grow sales. I mean, 97% email deliverability? Yes, please. Over half a million small businesses already trust Constant Contact.

It's time to make your marketing simple and smart. Get a free 30-day trial when you go to ConstantContact.com. Try Constant Contact free for 30 days at ConstantContact.com. One more time, that's Constant Contact. Dot com go visit it check it out and our thanks to constant contact for sponsoring this episode all right well i mentioned that i get that i got caught um.

QT-Disable Data Roaming when you return from Canada (especially if you’re on Mint Mobile or another prepaid plan)

When I was in Canada, I used Mint Mobile, and Mint Mobile now has, as of, I don't know, about a year ago or so, has free, it's included, data roaming in Canada. So, great. You get three gigs free every month. And so it was like, great. We were going to be there for whatever, four days or something, five days.

And so we got there. and when we landed I went to use data and it didn't work I was like ah okay I got to turn on data roaming okay that makes sense so I turned on data roaming and then it lit up and I was great loved it I was still on iOS 18 at this point because I had chosen as I mentioned in the show that I didn't want to I wanted to wait until I was done with my summer travels to you know move to the beta so we got home i moved

to the beta that day like that night we've you know arrived home was like oh yeah it has a perfect time is sitting on the couch great so i did that.

And for about the next week mind you this is the first week that i'm running developer betas, i was having all kinds of cellular connectivity i noticed it especially when driving it was like apple maps was constantly telling me it had to use offline maps and i'm seeing myself connected and i know many of you have figured out what's going on here because i i connected these two things already in this little tip but i just assigned this to as a bug in you know apple maps on the new ios 26 and

my gosh they're going to need to fix this this is a disaster and for some reason i was like shoot but nobody else is reporting this that means i'm going to have to go in and reset network settings and there's a whole rigmarole of resetting network settings that you know you lose all your Wi-Fi passwords if you don't do it right and you get a turn off iCloud syncing and hold your mouth just right otherwise you know it's a big disaster.

And so I went at this after like a week, I went into cellular settings and I saw that data roaming was still turned on. Now, because I'm on Mint Mobile, it's a prepaid cell plan. And so data, if I'm roaming in the U.S. here, they don't charge me more. I just don't get to use the data. If I'm on a Mint capable tower, then it's good. But if I connected to somebody else's tower, I could have data if I were to have paid for it, but I did not. And so I get nothing.

Turning off data roaming solved my problems. So the moral of the story is if you turn on data roaming on your main plan when you travel, you almost always turn it on on eSIM plans, but that doesn't matter because they expire and they're gone. But if you turn it on in your main one when you travel, set yourself a reminder to turn it off when you get home.

Because otherwise, you're either going to pay more if you're on a plan like that, or you're not going to get service if you're on a plan like mine. So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. But, yep, I got caught. Yipper.

Adam Christianson

Yeah.

Dave Hamilton

Yep. So disable data roaming when you return from Canada, especially if you're a Mint customer. We have more about this.

Adam Christianson

Sim stuff?

Dave Hamilton

Sim stuff, yeah.

Pensacola Craig-QT-Disable Carrier SIM Lock before upgrading

Adam Christianson

Pensacola Craig on... It says, Disable carrier Simlock on a current phone. Many may be using the Simlock feature through their carrier. This avoids bad guys from hijacking your number. Make sure to turn this off before ordering your new phone from an Apple or a carrier, because if you don't, you will have major issues because the number can't be moved from the old phone to the new phone.

This may hit you during the fulfillment stage or when you get the new phone and try to migrate from the old to the new. It will give you errors when it gets to confirming the e-SIM on the new phone when migrating from an old phone.

Dave Hamilton

Interesting. Yep. Makes sense. Yep. Good advice. Don't get caught like that. I've also been having, I don't know if I got caught with this or,

QT-If you Mac can't send RCS with macOS 26, toggle "Enable Messages in iCloud" off and on.

I mean, I guess getting caught with a bug is getting caught. I have several people in my life that don't use iPhones. Many bandmates, in fact. And so I have individual messages with them and group messages. On my iPhone, it's all working fine. On my Mac, receiving messages via RCS or SMS, totally fine.

Sending messages via rcs or sms it appears as though it works on the mac the message never appears in that chat on my iphone or any other devices nor does it make it to its intended recipients uh i have been messing with this for the last few days and it seems like messages in icloud is part of the is where the problem exists if i turn off messages in icloud on my mac, then i can send those messages and then if i turn it back on it seems like it works but i'm not convinced that that that

fix will persist but the whole messages and icloud syncing thing it seems to be part of where this is breaking um and it is only mac os 26 that appears to be affected my group text when i use them on my mac os 8 sorry my mac os 15 machine here.

Work fine you know that even though my phone is on ios 26 so i don't think it's an ios 26 bug i think it's a mac os 26 bug so i share just be aware and and toggling that enable messages in cloud on your mac uh seems to fix it at least temporarily can't promise but yep uh mac.

Pilot Pete

Don't stick the stuck bit

Dave Hamilton

You gotta unstick the stuck bit yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah i like that yeah yeah yep um.

DGC-macOS 26 (Tahoe) has significant audio-related bugs

MacOS 26 according to our friends at rogue amoeba has a bunch of audio related bugs um they've got a they've got a um a knowledge base article out about it and uh oh well i thought they did oh i see i i have the url wrong guys that's why i can't show it on the show now i can uh there's there's some audio loss that happens when sample rates are mismatched uh and it's specific it's specifically easy for me to say affects sound source because sound source will if you want let you send audio

to multiple devices simultaneously which can be very cool but if they are not all matched with sample rate one or more of them may not receive sound um and that's new as of tahoe i'm not convinced it's a bad thing but i'm actually not convinced it's a long-term bad thing because sample rate conversions when they happen in software cause all kinds of weird glitchy sound things when we've had weird glitchy sound things on the show in the past that's like right that's

the first thing i go to so if mac os is being more protective of allowing of or not allowing that scenario to exist i'm not i'm not upset by that. Um i i'm not certain that that's what's going on here though right like you know i'm projecting maybe my wishes um that that core audio is is more stable in mac os 26 so it might that might truly be the case i should actually ask i'll share this this conversation with rob and me but but.

Adam Christianson

No more chipmunking.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, right. Well, that's the other thing that can happen is the chipmunking. Yeah, where you, yeah, yeah, yeah. You start out sounding like this. Yeah. Which might be a nice way to record a show. What do you think, guys?

Pilot Pete

You get about 3% of the show episode being listened to and then people tuning out.

Dave Hamilton

I could be wrong. Yeah, we've lost them now. That's right. yeah uh so just be aware of that i'll put that link in the show notes for anybody that wants to research deeper too yep.

Adam Christianson

Hey joe has one for uh

Joe-DGC-Beware Apple's "Clear" Case isn't so clear

you new iphone owners out there and i actually had to go like i saw this and i had to research this because this is unbelievable to me like i don't understand the thinking behind this one but he says hey guys just a quick tip i got my new copper orange iPhone 17 Pro ordered. And also ordered Apple's clear case for the thing and was highly disappointed.

The clear case covers about two thirds of the back of the phone with a white label of some sort so that the Apple logo shows up almost complete, so that the Apple shows up almost completely obscuring the orange color that you bought the phone for. So short version, do not buy Apple's clear case. Yeah, they like cover, they cover the orange color,

Pilot Pete

Which is it's a clear case except for the part that isn't clear i guess

Dave Hamilton

Except for like 70 of it is white yeah it.

Pilot Pete

Doesn't you buy a white phone

Dave Hamilton

Sure it's clear yeah it it's so that the apple logo is centered in the in the area there i like i don't know dude i i can't stop stop it apple knock it off yeah and they want 50 bucks for a case that's that like it's gonna that's not clear that case is lying why yeah you want it yeah that's right there's there's we're pete we're in good company now apple are also liars because it's not a clear case it's a clear case of lying oh well.

Pilot Pete

New show title there i was thinking i'd stick to stuff

Adam Christianson

Bed but it's uh i mean to be fair the picture clearly shows that it's

Dave Hamilton

Not clear.

Adam Christianson

But yeah the verbiage does not jive with the same thing

Dave Hamilton

Oh yeah yeah i don't know man like that's yeah yep it's a clear case of lying so i'm really sorry about that that's going to stick for a while, I think. Yeah. All right. What else do we got?

Pilot Pete

Was I next? I think I am. Yeah. Yes, I am. So Mark wrote in with a question

Mark-iCloud Files were found in iCloud Drive (Archive) folder

that turns out also to be a good don't get caught answer. So he writes in, I have this folder on my desktop. I have had this folder on my desktop since 2021. I just went to get something and the content of many of them is zero bytes. Where can they go? So I do sync this desktop with my Mac at home. This one is at work. Pretty sure I have the desktop setup. Boy, new lips this week. To set up the sync. Where do I check? Thank you, Mark.

Dave Hamilton

Yep.

Pilot Pete

Well, you had the answer for that, Dave.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I didn't realize that this was a question.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, well, I grabbed it to read it because it was a good don't get caught. Got it. I'm sorry.

Dave Hamilton

No, no, no. That's okay. Yeah, the... Apple has moved this a few times over time and uh and neglected to tell you neglected to tell it's yeah yeah so it it it is in if you go to icloud uh drive on your mac then you used to see these things in the drive right the the old icloud drive folders or whatever they would call them archived iCloud Drive folders. Now they are in, Mark found the solution.

That's why it was a don't get caught. You just, I think you just missed up in the text chain that he found the solution. So Mark should get caught for this, not me. No, it's totally fine. It's in your users folder. So your home folder rather, you know, so for me, my username, my short username is Dave. So it's users Dave. And then right there at the top of my home folder is iCloud Drive Archive. So they are moving these things.

Previously, they would put these things in the iCloud Drive, and now they are out of the drive and in your iCloud Drive Archive. Because I think people were getting confused seeing multiple desktop folders and multiple documents folders inside their desktop folders and inside their documents folders. Pete, yeah, you caused a lot of grief for yourself. I did.

Pilot Pete

I lost 70 gigabytes of stuff because I didn't properly realize what was going on.

Dave Hamilton

You didn't realize what it was. Yeah, exactly. And so now, clearly you weren't alone. And now you get the iCloud Drive archive. It's very clear what it is. And it's like in a separate place now, which I think is all, yeah, it's good.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, I actually even, and I was smart. I wasn't going to lose that data. I used super duper cloned it and everything except that it was All off my drive?

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, it wasn't saved.

Pilot Pete

Out of that folder. Correct. It was not in that folder anymore. Yeah, exactly. It was just a pointer.

Dave Hamilton

Yep, yep, yep. So, yeah, no. Mark, I don't get credit for that. I get credit for putting a little screenshot in our notes so I could talk about it easily. But, yeah, no, Mark's the one that found that. So it's just at the top level of your home folder now, which is a much better place for it, in my opinion.

So love that. but we're and and kiwi gram uh asks offers a clarifying comment in the chat which is helpful after the way this one evolved here on the show he says just to be clear we're talking about the archive folders that are created when you switch icloud drive on again or off when you switch it off and then turn it on again yes and that is a hundred percent correct when you you start getting into that scenario where icloud drive

is turning on or off which sometimes you have to do for troubleshooting now that's what we're talking about here yes thank you kiwi grant for the uh for the the clarification love that uh i got

Jessica-DGC-1108-The episode was late to Apple Podcasts...and it's Dave's fault!

caught again guys i broke this well it's the sacred timeline problem right we recorded up until today is the first time we're like back in what i consider a normal schedule uh but we had recorded some episodes out of sync and out of order and early because of my i think it was just my travels but maybe it was maybe it was i was traveling that's right it was that's right yeah both of us had travels that caused the schedules and then also apple dropped the you know iphones in the

middle and we didn't want to wait our reactions to that by two weeks or something. So it all got a little crazy. And I left the episode for Monday's episode last Monday's 11 0 8, uh. As a draft in Apple podcasts, not as published in Apple podcasts and Apple podcasts is a little bit dumb. You know, we put the audio in there ahead of time. I didn't want it to be there too early. So I, I didn't turn it on when we recorded it a week and a half before that. I forgot to go back in.

And then when the episode actually dropped in the RSS feed, Apple's podcast isn't smart enough to just let that go. So it remained in draft. Thank you to Jessica and Ben and Bill and everybody else that like waved as many flags as you possibly could for us contacting us in all the ways you knew how to make sure that we knew that it was out in everything except Apple Podcasts. And I mean, I think we were delayed by about 10 hours, which is not great.

I don't. But, you know, could have been it would have been longer because I was traveling when when that episode was supposed to drop. And for me, it worked. So when I tested it because I was testing an overcast. So yipper. Oh, don't. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we've we've kind of ventured into questions territory here ish. So let's have let's. Let's keep going with that until we run out of time, shall we?

Louis from Montreal–Is APFS good these days or something else for external drives?

Pilot Pete

Well, Louis, but no, not Louis, because he's from Montreal. So Louis writes in. He says, hi, guys. Insert gentleman joke here. All right. Stop swearing. There's gentlemen in the area. I'm about to set up an external Samsung portable T9 SSD to hold a 300 gig photo library for a family member. Not an Apple Photos library here, just straight directories and files. It will be connected to a 2024 iMac. I vaguely remember Dave mentioning to avoid formatting in APFS.

What should I use as format to maximize file access and speed? Thanks, Louis from Montreal.

Dave Hamilton

You want to take this one, Adam, or you want me to take it?

Adam Christianson

I want to hear what you have to say about APFS now, because I use it for everything.

Dave Hamilton

I use it for everything, too.

Adam Christianson

It's just my de facto now.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I think there was probably a time, I know there was a time, when APFS was not the greatest thing to use for rotational drives. And candidly, that might still be true, but I use it for everything anyway now. So even though it might not be the most efficient thing, and even on SSDs, I think at one Mac Tech conference, we talked about it on the show, so you're going to have to go back and, confirm all this, but I'm pretty sure somebody proved that...

That i miss those mac tech conferences it's so nerdy somebody proved that it was like apfs was like one percent slower than hfs plus on even on ssds uh but but it was it was remarkably slower on on rotational drives than hfs plus because it was built for ssds and and you know it it leverages a lot of the benefits of ssds with the expense of okay well if you got to move heads around then this is going to be you know maybe not the

greatest but so i think that might be what lewis or louis i can't remember he i think he's told us the pronunciation of his name over the years it might actually be lewis from montreal i know i i want to say louis too but um when.

Pilot Pete

You live in a french

Dave Hamilton

City man exactly yeah yeah yeah uh but, I use it on everything like you, Adam. Yeah.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, I'm trying to think. My old backup drives, I think, were even, and they were spinning three and a half inch USB powered drives for doing like Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner, CCC backup. Yeah. And I want to say those were even APFS, and I never had any issues with them that I'm aware of. I've replaced them now with SSDs. Sure, sure. I don't have them connected to check them, but I'm pretty sure I formatted them APFS.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah. that that's what i would do these days i.

Pilot Pete

Had taken the liberty to ask chat gpt and it basically said yeah the problem is with spindle drives it's scattering uh metadata all over the place for so and that's why it's slowing it down a lot more head movement to go get

Dave Hamilton

It yeah so yeah yeah exactly it makes sense okay good yeah all right i do have memories of of warning people not to use hfs not to use apfs on like you know you're exactly this your your backup drives because Because in the earlier days of SSDs, we were generally only using SSDs for our boot drives, right? And then everything else was rotational. So there was a balance. Now, I still use rotational like you for some things, but a lot of things, I'm just like escrows.

It's all SSD these days. It's all plastics these days, kids. All right.

Pilot Pete

Shall I move to Bill?

Bill-1107-How to troubleshoot file syncing issues?

Dave Hamilton

Yes, please.

Pilot Pete

Bill's question. And yeah, he writes in High MG Gears at about 1.12 in show 11.07. Why do deleted files keep reappearing after reboot included a discussion about how to troubleshoot and potentially correct desktop file syncing to iCloud issues. For me, this part of the response discussion was a bit fragmented and is not as clear as most of your troubleshooting suggestions.

Could you please review this in an upcoming episode? I'm a long-time listener and really appreciate the information and insights you guys share each week. Thanks, Bill, a.k.a. Harry from Lewis.

Dave Hamilton

Huh.

Pilot Pete

All right. And that is Lewis.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, right. That is Lewis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the way that I would... Troubleshoot desktop file syncing to iCloud is the same way I would troubleshoot file syncing in any scenario. And I remember this conversation, but there were a lot of moving parts to it.

And this part did get sort of glossed over, is that I figure out where the syncing engine, i try to figure out where the syncing engine looks as a source of truth um and with icloud specifically we get access to that source of truth at icloud.com slash drive um so to me that's where i look and it's like okay if i'm putting something uh on my mac does it appear in the web interface of icloud drive and if i put something in the web interface of icloud drive does it appear on my Mac.

And it is the same true for my iPhone and my iPad and my other Mac, right? You know, so that is the way it's, it's a one, you know, one variable at a time and checking each direction. And sometimes when it's when, okay, so now we know how to identify a problem. How do we correct it?

Sometimes the process of identifying it, meaning that process, not a process but that specific process of identifying it will then also get it unstuck because adding something new often is what needs to happen because indexes you know of any one of these clients might think oh i'm all up to date i don't need anything more because it's just you know it's it's most recent file is it thinks the same as the most recent file on the on the on the server or whatever and and it's

not and so putting a new most recent file on the server says oh i have things to go get and then it just goes through its sync process and gets everything hopefully, how about you adam yeah.

Adam Christianson

No i mean i i think again i think this conversation was was related to deleting but it's like the same thing right delete the file you delete the file and if it's reappearing you know check i think your advice is the correct one icloud.com slash drive and is it actually deleted there if it's still there there's a chance it might sync back the next time you reboot right so that's what's happening so then that kind of points to okay your mac's not really

syncing and maybe a good way to try to fix it is yeah put a new file on or make a change there and then wait make sure it syncs and then you might be going again obviously the the extreme part of that is once you've identified whichever thing is not like sinking, if you're making changes, and it's still not sinking, then, you know, often I find just toggling drive sync off and back on again we'll kind of get things going again

Dave Hamilton

Yeah right yeah fair and then you might wind up with one of those archive folders that we talked about before in your home folder so go look for that too yeah yeah it won't always happen that that archive folder but yeah sometimes it will so yeah yeah yep yep uh where are we on time here i think about.

Pilot Pete

An hour and 15

Dave Hamilton

Right yeah i i think we should jump down to jk dawson's uh one because we asked in 1108 what you

JK Dawson-1108-Using AI for Recipes

use ai for and we got uh some responses and i think this one happened in discord and there was a response to a response uh so we uh you want to take jk dawson's here and we'll we'll kind of go from there pete yeah great.

Pilot Pete

Yeah so he writes in what do i use ai using ai for recipes ask for recipes i asked chet gpt for a pasta primavera recipe with no squash or mushrooms in it and with balsamic sauce and it came back with one it created which was great a great and easy to generate recipes uh for what you have on hand and that's fantastic idea i have used that before personally We never thought to say, you know, but I will tell you this. I had the problem with it is I did it for Apple Crisp last year.

Guess what? I said, give it to me one step at a time. And it blurted out the whole damn thing. And then I was like, okay, stop. Go back to step one. Okay. And it gave me step one. I'm like, all right, I'm ready for step two. And it blurted out the whole thing. I was yelling at chat GPT like you wouldn't believe by the time it was over. Stop it. How many damn times do I have to tell you? One step at a time. I'm sorry. I'll let me give you one. Then it would give

me one step. And then the next on again

Dave Hamilton

On it again but that's a fantastic idea.

Pilot Pete

I bet there's some amazing things it could come up with i

Dave Hamilton

I like the idea that it that jk's idea of saying give me this recipe with tweaks but you know i want primavera with balsamic not you know this and and i i don't want squash or mushrooms i'll take all your mushrooms just send them this way i love love mushrooms squash you know whatever uh it's a consistency thing for me i don't it's like it's a little anyway it's got to be just right and even then uh i've got to be just right about it that's

what it is but um but i i love this where you want to make some tweaks to a recipe you don't have to find the recipe first and make tweaks just tell chat gpt what you want that's brilliant love that yeah yeah.

Pilot Pete

And i bet even with cocktails these this is what i've got

Dave Hamilton

We we've definitely done it with cocktails yes take a picture of what's in your bar send it to chat gpt boom.

Pilot Pete

Oh even easier than typing it

Dave Hamilton

In i've never done that before mind you i'm just just coming to my mouth oh yeah oh yeah i think i.

Adam Christianson

Think should we go to dj because i think he has one that's kind of or she,

DJ Mac-1108-More AI for Recipes

I guess I shouldn't assume things, might have one that is kind of related to what you guys are talking about, not drinks. But it says, I've been using it to make weekly menu plans based on our criteria. Then once we settle on the menu, I have it create the ingredients list for all the recipes, combine them for a reasonable total quantities, and buy and build a grocery list by area, category, and a grocery store. I have it list list.

Next to the item, the amount needed for each recipe. So something like two 32-ounce cartons of chicken stock. This is really helping us as my wife did this for our family for 40 years, and she's tired of it. Yeah, I understand that. We're eating fairly badly. We were eating fairly badly for a bit until we worked this out. Much easier than creating this ourselves every week.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah see this is that quality of life stuff where right where ai can can help and it makes it fun right i mean i know the novelty of it is part of the fun but okay like it's still it's still fun so.

Adam Christianson

This i have one that actually isn't mine this came up on my trip so i was we were doing a reunion with a bunch of high school friends we all used to hang

ChatGPT: Make us a travel itinerary in the city we’re visiting

out in high school and we don't see each other very often. It's probably been about 10 years since we all got together and did this. We did it in San Francisco about 10 years ago. We did it in Chicago this time. And a couple friend of ours had been traveling and they said, you know, we used it for? We used it because we were going to be in a certain city in Europe in a day and they didn't know what to go see.

And they said, can you make us a itinerary for the day, including lunch and dinner plans and And what should we see in this city? And they said it was the best plan. And most importantly, it gave them this little lunch spot that they never would have found off the beaten path. And they said it was just fabulous. And it was a wonderful day. And they didn't have to think about it.

And they got to see things that they probably normally would not have seen if they'd just gone through a traditional route.

Dave Hamilton

I will add on to that. I recommend, especially if you travel, even if you don't travel terribly often, make a travel or interests project in ChatGPT. And then inside that project, have all your chats about this stuff and give it feedback about that. You know, if it recommended a thing and you like this lunch place, tell it that.

Because now you're training it to tailor things even better for you the next time when you come up because lisa and i have been doing this basically all summer uh with the various places that we've gone we haven't usually and i love the the fun part of before you go visit somewhere researching it and talking about the things you're going to do and even planning out your days you know you know to whatever extent you like to plan out your days we we kind of like half plans

for days you know but but whatever you know do we'll do what you want to do we had we just didn't haven't had time to do that uh as much as we normally would have and so we we will get to a city and be like all right well uh you know we're here for some concerts at night because that's the only reason we tend to travel anymore uh you know but what are we going to do during the day we don't want to exhaust ourselves but we don't just want to sit around either you

know and so it's this balance and we've been giving it feedback this past weekend we were in hampton virginia for some fish concerts and hampton is the town that time is forgetting it it's not like i don't recommend visiting there there's not a whole lot it's not a tourist town the venue's cool the hampton coliseum it's a very like it's a cool venue it sounds good it's it's fun easy to get out um but. But there's not much else to do, and we didn't rent a car.

And so we told ChatGPT this, and it made some recommendations. We got recommendations from other people, too, because we'd asked around. Those people are making recommendations about what they enjoyed and that's fine. Chat GPT is now learning what we enjoy and it prioritized some recommendations for us. And we did, we went and visited Fort Monroe, which is a national monument there. I don't know, about 15 minutes from Hampton, Virginia. We Ubered over and back and it was very cool.

Like we loved it. And it was the perfect little thing to do during the day. Then we went back and kind of napped in the afternoon and went to the concerts. But yeah, Yes, making your travel itinerary It's amazing For that And gets even better As you give it feedback on things So, yeah, Alright, I think it's that time Guys, I think we've hit our limit For the day It's time, It's that time I'll find the band Good news, the band still works I assume you

MGG 1109 Outtro

guys can hear the band still Thanks for hanging out with us everybody thanks for uh thanks for you know supporting the show by listening by sharing thanks okay i'm distracted i'm going to say thanks to cash flies so i don't forget, I always tell you to listen to our other podcasts, or I suggest, and it just dawned on me that recent episodes of our other podcast, each of us has had our daughters on our shows.

Pilot Pete

That's right. Because Adam- Adam does every time.

Dave Hamilton

Every time. You do the Davey Film podcast. Yeah. Pete, you did an episode of So There I Was with your daughter recently.

Pilot Pete

Yep. You fly by your seat and your ears.

Dave Hamilton

And I did Gig Gab celebrated its 500th episode, and I did that with Mike Schulte, who's been on that show a bunch, and with Skylar, my daughter.

Pilot Pete

I was going to say, Mike's not your daughter.

Dave Hamilton

Not as far as we know. No. And it was great. I loved it. Very cool. So you can go listen to all those shows and hear us with our daughters. Evidently, it was Bring Your Daughter to Work Month or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, pretty special. Now I understand why you're doing what you're doing, Adam, and maybe I need to start another podcast.

Pilot Pete

Right.

Dave Hamilton

Or maybe I just need to have Skylar on GigGab more. So there you go. Yeah, so thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. And thanks for all you do. It's nice to be back in the rhythm of a schedule. I'm looking forward to more of that this fall. I had too much travel this summer. Fun, all worthwhile, just a little bit zany.

Pilot Pete

And if you're watching on YouTube, you see a QR code that says go to MacGeekGab.com slash review. Give us five stars, please.

Adam Christianson

Also, feedback at MacGeekGab.com if you want to send in your questions, tips, and don't get caught.

Dave Hamilton

Did you say feedback?

Adam Christianson

Because we kind of got caught.

Dave Hamilton

Feedback at MacGeekGab.com, Adam.

Pilot Pete

That's what he said. Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.

Dave Hamilton

Don't get caught, folks. We'll see you next week. Made up.

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