¶ Mac Geek Gab 1100 for Monday, July 28th, 2025
It's time for Mac Geek Cab and listener David, not me, listener David,
¶ David-QT-Drag files to a blank space and Finder creates a folder for you
brings us our quick tip of the week by sharing. He says, I highlighted a bunch of files in the Finder and I dragged them to a blank spot in a new folder. And I got prompted to create a folder and copy the new files to that folder. It must have been moving to a different disk. That's very interesting. I've never, with multiple files highlighted, dragging to a blank spot, an option to create a new folder appeared. I like that.
More quick tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGear1100. I know, it's crazy. For Monday, July 28th, National Milk Chocolate Day. Do we have a National Dark Chocolate Day? I sure hope so. If not, we will be the ones to create it. 2025! Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Cab, the show where we share quick tips like that. We share your cool stuff found. We share your questions. We try to answer your questions.
We string it all together into an agenda that hopefully facilitates us as part of the system of ensuring that every single one of us learns at least five new things every single week. We get together a bunch of sponsors this week, including Eternal Storms with a new app that's very cool. I'm going to make you wait to hear about it because this one kind of blew my mind. So, we'll talk about that in a minute.
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Streamlines everything. and other world computing with their thunderbolt five doc uh which we will talk more about all of those things each in a little bit for now here back here finally here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And here also in New Hampshire, where I'm sorry to say my togas at the cleaners, is Pilot Pete. Good to be back home and online with you, gents.
It is good to be back home. I've been traveling too much this month. I've basically been traveling since I left for MaxDoc. I had a weekend home in the middle. And also recovering from what we now are certain is Lyme disease.
Uh that's what has been plaguing me for about the last month uh yeah thankfully my doctor symptomatically diagnosed it weeks before a blood test would have shown it and i've been on the right meds the right antibiotics basically since i arrived at max stock and have been improving vastly every day since so yeah he
Who lies down with ticks wakes up with lyme disease
It's bizarre man one of my bandmates who was with me at the gig where i presume to have got this case of lyme disease also got lyme disease at the same gig it's not spread from human to human you have to have a tick on your body for like 12 to 24 hours for to get it so i don't know but what the chances of that happening are but it happened and then uh like three days ago i heard from another musician friend here in new hampshire who sent me a text saying stop me if you've heard
this before i've had fevers and chills and it's like oh my gosh no it's like did the ticks conspire i've got a friend of mine on tour right now and he we all had played up at one of the lakes here new hampshire and that seems to be where we got it although like there's ticks in my yard too i don't i don't want to make anybody think that these are limited to the lake but i got a friend who's on tour who's coming through this weekend
uh and playing about a very large venue about a mile from the much much smaller venues that my friends and i have played and i was like dude be careful of the ticks up there the last thing you want to the last tour souvenir you want is freaking lyme disease so anyway dan
Apparently has lyme disease that comes with too many uh margaritas.
Well in our
Youtube chat citrus lime disease.
Yes very very well yeah coronavirus and lime disease okay i get it yeah yeah yeah corona with a lime i got it yeah yeah yeah well l-i-m-e versus l-y-m-e yes of course of course that's funny All right. But yes, thank you for everybody who wrote in to check in on me and all that stuff. I appreciate it. And yeah, I'm doing way better. So I haven't had a fever for weeks since basically since the day I started antibiotics for this.
So yeah, we knew kind of right away that we hadn't kind of nailed the diagnosis, which is good.
Yeah. Well, the last thing I'll say on it is what we know, right? That medicine is good at telling you what you don't have. Yes. Not so good at telling you what you do.
In this case, weeks later, it actually told me what I did have. Yeah.
Took a while to get there.
And that's kind of how it works with Lyme disease is that, like, early tests don't show anything. So, you have to do a symptomatic diagnosis. Thank goodness for modern medicine. Otherwise, like, I don't want to talk about it. Because this would have gone in a different direction. Instead, let's go in a different direction. Gary's quick tip, I think, is up next. Yeah?
¶ Gary-QT-Apple released a new AppleCare One plan for $20/month
Yep. Gary has a quick tip for us. He says, I was checking my email during a work break this morning when I received an email from Apple. They now have an all-in-one AppleCare plan for all of us, heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. It's called AppleCare One and costs just $19.99 a month and covers up to three devices. And you can add additional devices for $5.99 a month. I was able to upgrade all my devices by going into AppleCare in the store and buying it.
When you perform the upgrade, you will get emails about each of your other plans being canceled. But I think this is much more economical plan for us Apple nerds. Keep up the great work and don't get caught. Now, I'm going to add one thing. I will bet my bottom dollar that my Vision Pro is not covered for an additional $5.99.
Oh, yeah.
Because that thing's $24.99 a month. Woo-hoo.
You're right. Well, and I'm trying to figure out. Like, I thought I was paying about, I need to look. But I thought I was paying about $36 a year for each of my Macs to be on AppleCare. And $19.99 a month, that's not – 36 times 3 is better than $19.99 times 12. Times 12. Yes. By a lot. I know I might still be suffering some brain fog here, but the devices are multiple products at the same price. Add already owned devices, a plan.
So you get three for $20, and then it's $6 each additional, right? Yeah. You got to do a little math to figure out what your best option is. But I think for a lot of people...
What's that, Pete?
I'm sorry. Like, did you scroll past the Vision Pro, and then I'll get out of the way.
Yeah, okay. Go ahead.
I'm thinking for a lot of people who aren't like us and don't have 57 devices, I mean, most people probably only have three devices. You have a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad. Yeah. You know?
IPhone, iPad, all AppleCare, protect up to three products at one low price for AppleCareOne. All AppleCare Plus benefits plus theft and loss for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Okay, add more products at any time. And you can add, but so the thing is, of what products? Oh, I clicked and now it opened up system settings for me, so that's going to be fun. Okay your devices are eligible i need to like okay every okay
The point is i think this is a great option the other quick tip i might give and i need i i thought of this and i need to do this for my accounts i haven't not done it yet yeah i'm fairly certain i'm probably paying apple care on devices that i'm not using anymore that.
Is that's where this might save us money that's right yes because i only counted for the devices that i know i have it on or at least that i believe i have it on uh yeah yeah
Interesting because i've been opting into the into the month the month or the yearly thing that auto renews you know and so it's like i'm sure i've got an old iphone in there somewhere that's like being covered and i'm not using it i need to go through and audit my account you know this is your classic subscription model what they're hoping will happen right is that you subscribe to something and then completely forget that you're still subscribed.
It's insurance, right? And the whole business model of insurance, and I don't say this as a negative or as a positive, just objectively true. The whole business model of insurance is that, When you aggregate the premiums that everyone pays and then you aggregate the payments that you as the insurance company pay out, that there is a delta between the two and hopefully the delta falls in the favor of the insurance company. Like that's how the business – that's how they stay in business.
That's why insurance is offered, right? And individually, any one of us might get to take advantage of it in a different way. But it also is like bankruptcy protection in a sense, right? You know, so that you have a fixed cost as opposed to a randomly timed variable cost.
Jan is asking, how can we find out which devices are being covered by AppleCare now in our LinkedIn chat, it looks like? That's awesome. I think the easiest way is to download the Apple Support app on your device, and you can go in there and they're aggregated in Apple Support. But you can also go into the settings on any device under your account, and you should see all your devices listed. And it should show which ones, I think, have AppleCare, if I'm remembering correctly.
Yes. Great question. And I'll put a link to the Apple Support app in the show notes for us all to have, too.
Yeah, the Support app is great, by the way. If people aren't using it, you should use it. I started to use it to get support. Like if you need to initiate a chat support or a phone call with Apple, it's by far the best way. I think it's the easiest way to find like help.
Yep.
I mean, it basically aggregates everything you'd find on Apple's online stuff, but I just find it really simple and easy to use and it's all in one place and you've got all your information. So if they ask you for a serial number, it's got all your registered devices in there. It's just... I think it's great.
And obviously free.
So, yeah.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's worth saying. And I do say we put it in the show notes.
Because they monetize everything else. Right.
We put it in the show notes for all of us, including the three of us. I reference our prior show notes all the time. And it's like, wait, we talked about an app. I want that app now. Crap, what was the name of it? It's like, I don't know. It's in the show notes. Yep. All right. Moving on. Oh, God.
She has one more. Where would you go into settings in your account on your device? So if you go into the settings, you should see your name right at the top. Tap on your name, and then you should see all of your devices that are registered to your account listed. And then you can click and tap into each one to get more information. But I think on the main screen, it'll tell you which ones are currently covered by AppleCare. I think. I'm not looking at it now, so I don't remember.
I also believe that's right. Right. Dan in the YouTube chat says, I just pulled up the enrollment screen for AppleCareOne and my M1 iPad Pro is not listed as being eligible. I wonder if that's because it hasn't been covered up until now and maybe therefore I know there's some decision tree where Apple will let you add a device that's not currently being covered.
Like it has to pass some test or something so it it i my guess is that some people's m1 ipads pro are able to be included but i could be wrong about that that is a guess uh and there might be some specific reason why yours isn't or isn't yet a phone call or actually use the apple support app and chat with Apple about it would be my advice on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Dan confirms. It says it did have the two-year AppleCare when I bought it, but it has since expired.
And Paul Conaway says that 9to5Mac has a good article about what is and isn't eligible and they won't cover quote-unquote older devices. So we will find a link to that article if anybody has it and wants to put it in the Discord for us so that we can put it in the show notes. Great. Otherwise, we will find a link to 9to5max article about all that.
So your iPhone 4 is definitely not covered.
That's right.
Just saying.
I believe I found the link to a 9to5Macs article. Nice. That's what I do. I can't just do one thing at a time.
Should I take us to Rob? What do you think?
Yeah.
¶ Rob-1099-Phonetic vs. Pronunciation Contact Fields
All right. So Rob writes in. He goes, Greetings, gentlemen, including Pete. Thank you, Rob. I was listening to the live at Macstock and your responses to Linda's question about pronunciation of her name. When delving into additional fields available in Contacts, you noticed the phonetic name and pronunciation fields and wondered about the apparent duplication. The probable answer is that there are non-phonetic languages.
For example, written Chinese characters are not phonetic. There's no way to determine how they are pronounced from their appearance. So the phonetic first name, surname fields, are there to save the phonetic version of the contact name. By contrast, someone whose name is from a phonetic language, but who finds that Siri or people mispronounce it, can use the pronunciation field to help get their name pronounced correctly. Keep up the great work.
Cheers, Rob. And I will mention that I was looking for that pre-show, and you guys reminded me, this is why it's good to talk about it sometimes more than one show, that this is on the iPhone Contacts app, not in your Mac. Right. Yes.
Yeah. One of them is in, we did talk about this in the last episode, but it was late at night, and I had brain fog anyway, but when we recorded it, anybody. One of them is available on the Mac and
One is- It looks like Phonetic may be available on the Mac. Yeah, I'm typing in contacts. I'm going to help and type Phonetic in it, and it is offering that.
Okay, but pronunciation is only on the iPhone. So yeah, fascinating stuff, amazing. Uh, we have, we got so many quick tips in since the last time we recorded a show that included all of your feedback that wasn't live, uh, that a, we have a bunch more quick tips to share in this episode. And then we have like three episodes worth of quick tips in the queue to put in. So we are going to do some more quick tips this episode.
The next thing that we would like to do is tell you about our sponsors because look, Running a business means juggling a million things, and if you're like
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¶ SPONSOR: TransLoader. Initiate downloads on your Macs, remotely from your iPhone, iPad, and other Macs.
If you're like me, I know this has happened to you where you come across a file while you're out and about. Maybe it's an installer for, you know, something on your Mac or a big demo video and think, I want that, but I definitely don't want to download it to my phone right now. That's exactly the moment that Transloader from our friends at Eternal Storm Software was built for.
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¶ SPONSOR: OWC’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock is now shipping!
And, hey, here at MGG, we love OWC. I mean, I literally have two of their Thunderbolt docks in front of me right now in my podcast setup that I can see and that are all hooked up. And they're mission critical to my podcasting setup. So when I heard that OWC's new Thunderbolt 5 dock was finally shipping, you better believe it grabbed my attention. And this thing is a beast. Two and a half times more bandwidth than Thunderbolt 4.
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Available now at maxsales.com. Go check it out and of course tell them mgg sent you because you know that's good for all of us right because when it comes to bandwidth bottlenecks you don't want to get caught so go check out the owc thunderbolt 5 doc and our thanks to owc for sponsoring this episode
¶ Adam-Bulk Scanning Quick Tip - Use your all-in-one printer’s direct-to-thumb drive scanning option
All right. More quick tips. Adam, you said you had a bulk scanning tip pre-show?
Yeah, we were talking about having to scan large printed documents. I think in our regard, it was related to theater scripts. And this was something I had to do recently, because I think I mentioned this on a previous episode that I, when I was doing my last play, it had a lot of scenes where all the scenes were very similar, like in terms of the lines and the tone and stuff like that, and it would get very confusing what scene I was in.
And so I wanted to scan everything in and then have ChatGPT give me a summary of each scene that I could look at right before that scene went and I could go, okay, that's the one where this and this and this happens. So I wanted these summaries. I was going to do it by hand and I was like, oh, but I needed to scan the whole entire script, right? So I was like, how am I going to do this?
And I luckily have a scanner printer like a three-in-one laser jet a brother and it has an auto document feeder and I thought oh this is great I'll put it on a document feeder and I'll have it scan right to my mac and it failed like halfway through and it kept disconnecting and it was like huge frustration of course but then I remembered and this is where the tip comes in that it also has a usb on the front where you can put in a thumb drive and you can scan directly to the thumb drive
and that was super fast it went because the other thing was when i was scanning to my mac the scanner went really really slow and i had hundreds of pages when i went to the usb it was like it just flew through it and done and went right to the usb i pulled it off it was already in a pdf i took that pdf and uploaded it to chat gpt it was great so if you double check a lot of printers with scanners if you have those three-in-ones have scanned directly to usb.
And it works really really great and it is fast and easy no issues and so that that is my tip And, I mean, these days, I think you can get some of those laser printers, those 3-in-1s. And probably Inkjet's probably also have similar. But I think, you know, you can get a laser printer for about $99, I think, these days. I mean, the toner obviously costs more. Yeah. Yeah, no. Depending upon the model.
You're right. Those 3-in-1s are far less expensive than they used to be. And I'm saying that based on having purchased my most recent one probably five years ago. So they've gotten even less expensive now. Never thought to use... The direct to, you know, direct to USB option, essentially, that's brilliant. I always use, I use Apple's files app and the camera in the phone, because when I get scores, music scores for theater, same, same, same production, different, you know, different job.
They are like, I, they are bound. so right yeah it you know i could unbind it and put it in my printer but it's faster to just like flip pages so yeah yeah yeah
Yeah luckily for me my the director had basically created copies for us got it and so it was just like stapled you know a spider clipped or stapled together so it's just like oh just undo this run it all through yeah right yeah.
Right if
It's bound it's a little bit more difficult i mean you can like you can scan it on the thing one at a time and it'll still go to the usb and you just got to flip pages scan scan scan.
But oh that's fair it's
Definitely not as.
Fast not as fast yeah yeah yeah yeah yep it's a lot more tedious really smart i like that that's great all right yeah thank you for that good i uh because you know of of
¶ For AirPods Pro as earplugs, AirPods > Accessibility > Loud Sound Reduction needs to be on
like the the the way i am as a human despite being you know under the weather and all that i went to a bunch of concerts recently and i have mentioned on the show that my favorite earplugs to use at concerts now are my airpods pro gen 2 and this is like hands down my favorites i can switch back and adam's putting his thumb up too like yes it can switch back and forth between transparency and um and and adaptive mode are actually
the two that i go between you can go to noise canceling mode i don't notice once a band is playing i don't notice much of a perceived or reported difference between db levels between adaptive and uh full noise canceling but they they all three modes work and i set so there's a couple quick tips here and i'm not even to the one that i intended yet but i set my right stem of my air pods to uh when i hold it it cycles between those modes so i can kind of move between it very
easily and seamlessly during the show. I find that if I am inspired to sing along, that anything other than transparency mode, my voice is too loud in my head, like it's blocking so much sound that I can't hear the band over me, which I don't necessarily want. So I go into transparency mode if it's one of those sing-along moments, but otherwise I leave it in like adaptive and it works out great. Two things.
I went to shows on Tuesday, Wednesday of of a week ago and like a week and a half ago and then Tuesday, Wednesday of this past week. And I made no I don't believe I know how we users are. I don't remember making any changes to my settings. However, I got to the show the first of the shows this week after having successfully and happily used my AirPods at the shows the prior week. And I get to the shows this week and things are a little weird.
Like they're working, but it's a little weird. And I look at my watch. Now, I choose to keep a dB, the sound decibel meter on the face of my watch because I'm that kind of a nerd. But either way, you can go into the noise app on your watch and see what the ambient noise is.
Now, if you are wearing AirPods and they are in hearing protection mode, more on that in a bit, the noise app on your watch will let you toggle between what the ambient sound pressure levels are and what the effective sound pressure levels are to you after the AirPods. So it'll be with AirPods and without AirPods. Things were weird at the shows a week and a half ago. I was able to do that.
No problem. Everything sounded good and worked properly. this week i went and things weren't sounding right and i looked and i could not toggle between with airpods and without it didn't acknowledge that either and i was like i know what has happened because if you go in and i'm not wearing my airpods now so it won't be there on my phone so i can't exactly walk through it but if you go into settings on your phone uh and your airpods are in you can go into the,
your AirPods will be listed for a setting right there on your phone. If you go into the hearing protection setting of your AirPods, which is right there at the top, The first thing it says is environmental noise, and there is what appears to be but isn't actually an option for loud sound reduction. And it should be on. And for me, it was off. Now, as I said, it looks like something you could just tap to toggle, but you can't.
And there's a learn more button. I had forgotten what to do to turn this on. The learn more button, not the kind of thing I want to be reading while trying to enjoy a concert, brings you to an article that says to go into settings, accessibility and to all these things and like tune your AirPods and all this stuff, which, of course, you can't do when there's band playing, you know, at 90 plus TV.
And I'm like, yeah, that's not it. That's not it. So I just switched to my passive earplugs for that night show. So the next day, though, I intended and did fix this problem because what you do is you go into your AirPods settings and then from there go to accessibility. And there is a setting for loud sound reduction and you can turn it on or off. Mine had somehow turned off, so I turned it on. When you try to turn it off, it comes up with a big warning.
Are you sure you want to do this? You probably don't want to do this. Please don't do this.
But if you really want to do this, we'll let you. how mine got turned off without me being aware of it and though i was in brain fog mode i really and and i didn't take any drugs other than doxycycline all week so i'm pretty sure i didn't like you know turn this off and not remember it so uh i have had this happen at least once before where it just turns off so it is the accessibility setting inside of your airpods settings on your phone and
that's where you can do this so i'm saying that for you and for me yeah
And there's there's two things i want to quickly follow up on that with even one is i i was at a concert standing next to a speaker several weeks ago had my airpods in had that going on And the next day, the guy driving me to the shuttle was like, oh, my ears are still ringing. This is crazy. And I'm like, crap, I was closer to the speaker than you. I'm fine.
Yeah.
I didn't even notice it. So it was like, oh, okay. They really do work much better. You know, because it was loud. I'm like, eh, maybe I'm in. But it worked out greatly.
Oh, yeah.
And then the other thing is, while you were talking about that, I went into accessibility AirPods and forgot about this setting and just found it. you can turn on noise cancellation with one ear you don't have to have both ears
Right at a concert i highly recommend protecting both ears just correct but you are right yes
But frequently i'll listen with one air pod in and the other one not and i would like that sound protection that way i only have to plug one ear if a jet flies over well but um but yeah so those things These are amazing. What great tech.
It's there was one company Westone. I recently found out made, but no longer makes what, what they called active earplugs that did this, but they were 500 bucks and you might still be able to buy them. Maybe they do still make them, but they're 500 bucks compared to, you know, you can get AirPods pro gen two for less than 200.
So, you know,
I will add one more thing because it's what we do here. When wearing these at concerts, I have knocked them out of my ears before, even though I have some tips that seal well for me. I mean, if you whack the thing, it's going to come out of your ear. And while that sucks when you're at home, it sucks a lot more when you're at a concert and there's a lot of people around and it's dark and all those things.
So uh i have learned the hard way uh to use a i bought these little um magnetic they're magnetic in that they clip to each they click to each other magnetically but it's just a strap uh that goes over the tips of your air pods so that if one falls out of your ear it has a very very high likelihood of not leaving your body and uh and i'll put a link to this in the show notes i I got three of them for 25 bucks.
You might be able to find things cheaper. In fact, I'm seeing the three pack was 29, 25 bucks, but I think the one pack is, is like $11 or something.
So you're saying you only want your feet on the deck when you're in front of a band at the concert.
Pretty much.
You don't want to be laying around down on your hands and knees.
Dude, it's gross down there. It's gross down there. And I've picked up an air pod from down there and put it back in my ear. Oh yeah. And I think I got Lyme disease from a tick. No, I'm sure I did. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yep. So that little strap, you can't put it in the charging case in the strap, though. So just FYI. That will be extremely obvious when you look at the picture of this, but just saying it out loud. All right. All right.
David has something for us. I think this is mainly for me.
¶ David-TestFlight can get in the way of merging Apple accounts...and there's a fix!
I think it'll help other people as well. Because anybody who's been listening to the last few episodes know I've been dealing with this merging of Apple accounts this year. So this is related to that. He said, there's been an on and off again topic about merging iCloud accounts. Recently, I had a similar issue and wanted to share with Adam and everybody else what got me over the hump.
I realize having a developer account and the complexities that go with that are probably more the issue, but this is worth investigating. One of my many bullet points in the support, or one of the many bullet points in the support document for migrating accounts is about test flights. Quote, you can't migrate purchases if your secondary Apple account is used with test flight to test beta versions of apps from a developer.
So open TestFlight and select Stop Testing for each active and inactive app to remove it from your account. I believe this language has changed from when I was looking at it months ago, possibly because of me. The important part is removing all TestFlight apps from the secondary account. I had removed any that were in progress, but there were a couple that were expired that I didn't think would affect the merge since they were not active.
But apparently so. As soon as I removed everything from TestFlight, it merged, and I've been a happy Dave ever since. Side note, I did call Apple support, got to level two, and I know she was in touch with the engineer, but then she didn't call back to tell me what was found. The second call to level two found a note on my account that said they found TestFlight data was the hold. Best of luck.
This is interesting because i can grab my phone now and double check but i think i did encounter this um and i did have an active app well an app that i was actively test flighting that was not being ready to uh do and yeah no i already i already got rid of all my test flights so for me that wasn't the case again i think for me it's related to itunes connect and the other thing that is outside of the apple developer stuff um i can't remember
there's there's two like connect things we have itunes connect and podcast connect right oh yeah so and i don't know what itunes connect is used for anymore now that i think about it again i think it's something related to managing podcast data.
Yeah, I think maybe. I can't remember what has migrated from iTunes Connect to Podcast Connect and all of that stuff.
Yeah, and I'm using that account. I probably could switch it. I need to figure out how to do this. I'm using that account for the new podcast I do with my daughter, the Debut Film Podcast. Oh. We get stats and stuff through that, right? Right. So I'd have to figure out how to undo that. And then that might be the last domino in my developer account issue.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yep. Interesting. That's good to know. Thank you, David, for sharing that. Yeah, absolutely.
Just a quick question. You don't have to delete TestFlight. You just go into the TestFlight app, select that program, and click stop testing?
Will that work? Yeah, exactly. And the ones that I had in there, I had tested them years ago, like been on beta, and they're now full apps anyway. So it's just like I'd never just disconnected from the beta test program.
Makes sense. Okay.
¶ Andrew-QT-Some USB-C devices need a USB-A to USB-C cable to properly charge
Andrew says, I found your discussion on pedantic USB cables in the show from mid-July. Unsurprising, USB-C cables and their various pins are a mess that don't solve their intended purpose. I recently encountered a story that infuriated me. He says, I'm a ham radio operator who bought a Ugreen USB-C charger for my mobile setup to power my MacBook and iPhone. It delivers 100 watts to the MacBook and 20 watts to the iPhone via USB-C. Great.
And also has a 10-watt USB-A socket. It works flawlessly with my Apple devices, including my iPad. However, I have two USB-C devices in my mobile radio kit, an antenna tuner and a portable shortwave radio. One day, I plugged these devices into the USB-C plugs instead of my Apple devices, and they got no power. I checked that the cables and the charger were working. Yes, nothing was wrong. I then tried a USB-A to USB-C cable, and it worked.
This led me to discover that some USB-C devices only charge from power sources with USB-A sockets. He says, I found an article from Pluggable about this that we'll link to this. But I remain outraged by this oversight. I have also encountered this, Andrew, and I never understood why until you told us about this Pluggable article. USB-C, the standard for USB-C, also includes power delivery.
And if the device that is sending power can send more than whatever it is, five volts or – I'm not remembering Adam Shank nodding his head, so I think I have it right. Then it needs to negotiate, A, how much power it should be sending, which is a communication between the two devices on either end of the chain. But also, which direction power should flow? Because when you plug, say, your iPhone and your Mac together with a USB-C cable, oh, I have lost connection to the other guys. This is fun.
Am I back, guys? Great. Okay.
It wasn't just me.
The audio recording has all of me in it, but we lost you guys. Okay, great. So what I noticed when you plug USB-C in, two things happen. One, and I'm reiterating this for the video chat, but also so that Pete, Adam, and I are on the same page. One thing that happens is the devices decide how much power should be given.
But the other thing is which direction power should flow. Because if you plug your iPhone and your Mac together with a USB-C cable, both of those devices can give or receive power over that same port. And that is what is missing from, in Andrew's case, his shortwave radio, the two devices that have to charge via USB-A. It's that those two devices are not built to a full USB-C spec.
They just happen to have a USB-C port on it, likely for waterproofing of some level because USB-C ports are much better at being waterproof than USB-A and USB-C ports were.
Uh and the uh it and and and then the other end is just for usba so it is the manufacturers of the devices that need to be charged with the usba to usbc cable that have decided not to meet the spec um and and i never i i knew this was true i never knew why until now so thank you andrew for sharing that link with us we'll put that link in the show notes for anybody that wants to do for the reading.
So can I point out that... You know, I feel like there was a lot of rage back in the day over Apple and Lightning and Firewire and stuff like that requiring certification and standards and things like that. Now we get to see that we live in USB-C land, what not having that, the impact of not having that kind of regulation comes into play. Because different people can conform to different specs and standards and without a standard, this is what you encounter.
You encounter cables that either charge or don't charge. They go at this speed or that speed. The manufacturer gets to decide what they want to do and they don't have to conform to any given standard. And so this is the kind of hair pulling. And that's why Apple did that. There's good and bad with everything. You know, the good is we have an open standard and device manufacturers have the freedom to do what they want. The bad side of that is we encounter frustrations like this.
The other way around is like, yeah, the other way around is there's, you know, yourself. Just recognize there's pluses and minuses to everything, folks. So when you were raging back in the day that, you know, Apple required everybody to conform to their standard, we never had issues. A FireWire cable, a FireWire 2 cable or 3 cable worked exactly the same with every other FireWire 2 capable port and device out there. Yep.
Yeah.
Dan nailed it.
Go ahead, Pete. Share what Dan said.
I was saying Dan nailed it in the chat. USB-C is at least a dozen separate standards in itself, and it's simultaneously great and awful.
There you go. You want to take us to Chris, Pete?
I can do so at this time because Chris writes in – he had it in Discord and in an email.
¶ Chris-QT-Turn Off Notification Sounds on Mac & iPad to Avoid Notification Overload (aka MacProCT)
He says, hey, guys, the latest episode had a listener expressing his frustration with notifications on multiple devices, sometimes not working and sometimes being overload. First thing I tell people who are having issues like that is to restart all of their devices once in a while, including iPhones, iPads, and watches. But it's true that Apple has a notifications problem. It's inconsistent and unreliable sometimes.
As a result, if I haven't heard a ding from my phone in the last one to two hours, I check and see if there are any notifications and they sneak in under the cover of darkness. But on the other end of the spectrum is hearing too many devices ringing when a call comes in. Here's my solution to that. Like Dave said, there's a slim chance I'm going to answer a call on my computer.
I know it's the same for my clients. So my SOP, even for my clients' computers, is to turn off sound for FaceTime notifications on all the Macs. This way, the phone ringing is limited to the phone and the iPad. And if you're adamant that you'll never answer a call on your iPad, you can turn the sound notification off on that as well.
If you leave screen notifications enabled for FaceTime, you will still get on-screen notices of calls, and you still have the option of answering the call on that Mac. If, for example, you can't find your phone, that's never happened to me, but I hear it's bad. The approach makes for a much more peaceful life.
Chris amazing yeah that's that's good advice i i will say although it hasn't happened to me in a while that even with sounds off if i i think it's the space bar if i happen to hit the space bar the moment that notification appears before i realize it it used to default in answering the call i don't know if that's the case anymore and i say that only because it has not happened to me in well over a year. So either I've learned or the system defaults, you know, the keystrokes have changed.
Something's different and it might be me. It might not be me, but yeah, just be aware of that. Yeah.
I try not to use the Mac just because, you know, when I get the notification, there's a call coming in. If I've had, for instance, my AirPods in and I'm listening to my Mac on the AirPods and the phone rings, well, that's ringing in the AirPods. I'm thinking it's the phone. I I touch my AirPod to answer the call, and immediately the Mac tries to answer it, and I get call failed. I'm like, I just don't even want the notification anymore. There. I just don't want it.
Yeah.
I'd rather do the AirPods dance on my phone.
Ah, that's right. All right. We have a bunch of questions of yours to answer. So we will see how many of those we can get to in a minute. The next thing we would love to do is tell you about our sponsors. Because you know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans?
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¶ Tim-My 2019 iMac intermittently reboots without warning every few days
Outstanding. I think we should move to questions. Our first question is from Tim. Tim writes in, Dave, Pilot, Pete, and Adam. I've been having two problems with my iMac 2019 with 40 gigs of RAM. I am running the latest macOS version Sequoia 15.5. It will intermittently crash and reboot at least every few days, most often when I'm not using the computer, but also when I'm using Zoom. I'm not running many apps, so I doubt I'm running out of memory.
When I check console, it usually shows that LSD is the process that crashed, but sometimes a non-Apple app will be the culprit. I'm not sure what to look for in console, and more importantly, what to do to prevent the crash. I now have an M4 MacBook Pro with 24 gigs of RAM, and it never crashes, even though it's running mostly the same apps. Another potentially related data point, when rebooting, not all the apps I have set in settings to launch at boot automatically load.
They're not always the same apps that fail to launch. Deleting and re-adding these apps in settings does not fix the problem. I'm hoping the brilliant minds of the Mac geeks can help me solve these two problems, which may be related. I have reinstalled macOS after a nuke in Pave, but the problem persists.
Oof. Uh-huh. Adam, I have some ideas, but do you have any ideas off the top of your head?
Yeah, I mean, there could be a number of things that I can think of off the top of my head. Those login items, potentially, depending upon what they are, might be an issue. Like anything that you have that auto-starts. I could think of old applications that maybe have old like system extensions and those sorts of things.
And then even thinking further outside the box, and this was more of a question I had for you because I don't remember if this manages that or not, but I'm pretty sure the old iMacs still have a logic board battery. Like a little CR232 cell.
But I don't know that that would cause, does anything to manage power that's what i can't remember i live if that if those batteries those logic board batteries have anything related to do with power management so if like that has died like well that can that potentially cause some logic board like craziness weirdness that would cause the thing to reboot the one thing that he didn't mention and i'm assuming he's not seeing this that you know it's
not like a uh a kernel panic because you would get the message saying here, Mac is unexpectedly, you know, shut down or whatever. And I didn't hear him say it or mention anything about that. But if he's seeing that, that would lead to more the software sort of thing. Like you have an old kernel extension or you have an app, an old app that you're automatically starting up and it's running in the background and it's misbehaving or something like that.
So those are kind of things that I thought about. The last thing, I mean, I have a potential fix or thing to try to fix which would be uh resetting the power management doing an smc reset um because there is power power management chip that can get out of sync on your mac and um i think for a 2019 imac the process is completely shut down the mac you unplug the cord from the mac you wait at least 15 seconds to let all the power sort of drain out um then reconnect the power cord,
wait for five seconds, and then power up the Mac.
You are 100% correct on the SMC reset for that, Adam. Thank you. Yeah. So my brain went in a very different direction to get to the same initial recommendation, which was to reset the SMC. This seems like hardware to me because of the intermittent crash and reboot.
I'm not convinced the two issues he's shared are causally they are not related in a causality way right like i don't think the apps but i could be wrong about this i just my brain didn't go in that direction that these apps would be the problem it's more like well why why would both of these things be happening what's the symptom and bad ram comes to mind for me uh or improper improperly seated ram because those 2019 iMacs they were intel based as we've already discussed and and you know
had removable ram i had one i have i still have one it just has a dead screen and i haven't been able to convince myself to get rid of it but um Yeah, you know, and also make sure the fan is still running because if that processor is overheating, you know, then that would also cause things that look like a hardware problem, right? Because that's a hardware problem. So get an app like, you know, iStatMenus or SMC Fan Control or something just to confirm that the fan is still spinning.
And then, you know, again, I landed at the SMC reset because as John and I used to say for probably, you know, for a decade and maybe stopped saying it a decade ago, when it seems like hardware but might be software, it's the SMC.
So yeah so.
Yeah that's that's kind of where i landed on that one so
Hopefully place to start it's.
The right place to yeah yeah yeah exactly so make sure all those things but the first i would start with the smc reset because it's easy and you'll know very very quickly if that if that helped things
Yeah and i mean if you want to double check the the battery the the actual physical battery again i'm not convinced that that's the issue but that could also be dead it could be separately just dead um you could uh turn off um like the automatic time setting reboot your mac and if your time is off that's a pretty good indication that because without that battery your mac won't maintain its clock yes it's it's time clock so and and unfortunately changing that battery is.
It's a pain.
IMac, you got to take it apart and you don't have to replace the seal. And yeah, it's not.
It's a whole thing. Yeah.
Yeah. That may be worth taking it in and just paying to have it done. I mean, unless you're into that.
It's a 2019 iMac. It may be a good excuse to say, hey, maybe it's time for a new iMac.
That's fair. Yeah. It's ridiculous to essentially EOL a machine because of a nine cent battery. However. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would also support that decision. So, yeah. I'm looking at the iFixit instructions on how to replace this, and I'm halfway down the page at step 25. So, oh, yeah, we're removing the hard drive brackets next. Okay. Now I'm at step 30.
Well, unfortunately, if it's your RAMs become unseated and you need to reseat it, you'd be doing the same procedure, essentially.
The 2019 IMAX had a RAM door.
Oh, it has the door. Yeah.
You don't even need a screwdriver, I don't think. You just pop it out.
I want to make sure it's seated.
That's your next one. So definitely start there. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Dave, watching you scroll that, I have an ad hoc quick tip, which is whenever
¶ QT-Remembering where screws go when removing them from a computer
I've opened computers to do that sort of work using iFixit, and they have some screws are orange, some screws are red, and the little circles on there, I take little colored Sharpie markers and I color them the same. I put a little red dot or an orange dot on each of those screws so I know where to put it back, even though I put them in there. I have a little magnetic grid that I put the screws on and say where it comes from.
That way I don't try to put a screw that's 8 millimeters into a hole that's 4 millimeters deep and punch through a circuit board.
So I also have solutions for that problem. A magnetic grid that you can write on with a Sharpie is a great one. The other thing that I used to do, and I still kind of go back to, is I print out the instructions. So in this case, it would be 500 pages. And I use scotch tape to tape the screws to the step that they came from on the paper. And then when I'm coming back around and, you know, going backwards through
it, it's like, okay, these are the screws for this step. These are the screws for this step. You got to be careful that, you know, you tape them well enough that they aren't going to fall all over the place. And then you're, then you're screwed. But, you know.
I see what you did there.
Did you? You like that? Yeah.
So not to be pedantic, but I would write on my magnetic board with a dry erase marker, not a Sharpie.
Thanks, Pete.
We actually had a pilot go in one morning and do this whole big whiteboard brief in permanent marker.
Yep.
It stayed there for months.
Yep. One thing I found, uh, speaking of dry erase boards, you know, when you have like one of those dry erase boards and over time, like you erase from it, but it doesn't erase. Well, I, one day I have one of those in my office. That's probably 15 years old. And I was like, this sucks. And I looked around and I'm like, what do I have in my office that I might be able to clean this thing with hand sanitizer?
Took that stuff off like it was nothing and and it did not i don't know it didn't ruin the finish at least not to the point where i couldn't then draw on it again like once i dried it i could draw on it again it was totally fine so if you've got any extra hand sanitizer left over from anything that might have happened in the last decade uh you might be able to use that for cleaning your dry erase boards so alcohol yeah yeah alcohol in general fair
yeah yeah yeah this This is alcohol that you don't want to drink.
Save the vodka for internal.
Yeah, yeah. Speaking of things you might need alcohol for, I had another mom tech support call this morning.
¶ Managing passwords for our extended family members
And it was related to her iCloud account. And there's some odds that maybe her password has been compromised. And so I might have to go through. I'm not entirely convinced. you know, basically what happened is she got that typical notification. Hey, uh, a new iPad has been added to your messages. And this happened on her phone. Um, well then that could be a lot of things because I, I get this, like I've had an iPad. If an iPad goes dead, I think this happened recently.
Like, um, I don't use my iPad a lot anymore and my iPad battery had completely gone completely dead. Probably sat dead for days. I was getting ready for Mac stock. I'm like, I want to take my iPad. I plugged it in. It had to charge all the way back up. And once it came back online, sure enough, I got the notifications for messages and FaceTime and like a new iPad has been added to your iCloud. So I think that can just happen in that scenario. I'm not convinced that it's always that.
But then I walked her through the process of checking, you know, what devices are connected to your account. We did find one iPad that seems suspicious, although it could be my brother's or because we often help her with her iCloud. And sometimes that means using one of our devices to log into her iCloud, whatever it might be. So we'll see what happens. But if she does have to reset her password, this is where the discussion comes into play.
She doesn't know her passwords. So like the technique that I take is I make her when she sets up a password for a new account or a thing like that, and I'm on the phone helping her, I make her tell me the password she's going to use, and I put it into 1Password. So I have her passwords for her bank, for everything in my 1Password, so I can manage it. Now, she also... Unfortunately, writes them down on a little notebook that she keeps in her house, never leaves her house. So that's a good thing.
That's her system. It's just how she works. I'm not going to be able to get her to, there's no way I'm going to try to teach her one password because she will never get it. I also can't do the two factor thing often with her because that's just, that would just, I would just open myself up to phone calls every single day.
I do make her make separate passwords for each account and make sure that they are good you know secure passwords um she has different patterns that she uses but they're always a mix of upper and lower case and some substituted character and some random numbers so like we're good on to at least make her say but again she writes them down i put them in my one password she often forgets that she's changed it And so I'm usually the backup for her password management. So that's what I do.
But I'd be curious for other techniques or what other people do and that sort of stuff.
I maintain a 1Password family account. And that allows me to invite people that aren't even in my iCloud family or whatever. It's obviously 1Password account. And I have many, not all, of my extended family members in that 1Password family account, and we have separate vaults in 1Password. And so, you know, we'll we'll put passwords and things like, you know, to be able to manage if it's a password of theirs that I would also need to have access to.
And that's true. Not not of my not just of my extended family, but my nuclear family as well. Like, you know, we share passwords and it's handy to have those vaults. I may or may not, when I buy software, put the software license in the vault that's shared with my family. So if they ever need to register that software, it's right there. But the same is true for passwords. I have one that just Lisa and I share, and then I have one password thing that's shared amongst the family.
So, you know, like our Fubo login, everybody in the family needs that one login. Everybody needs our Plex login, right? So those kinds of things are shared in different ways, and that can help, but there's I, I haven't done that with someone in my family who is technologically resistant is the wrong word. It's just who isn't as much of a, a, an eager technology user as the rest of us are. Right. So they don't care. They don't care. Yeah, exactly.
Well, that's not true. They don't want to be bothered. Yeah. They care. They don't want to be bothered by it.
My dad, my dad, he's fairly technologically astute, but he uses Apple passwords. He doesn't use one password, even though he has an account as part of ours. But I will store his passwords in my one password so that like if I need to log into his email account to check something for him or something else, it's just like, wait, I have that here. I know how to get in. And he has access to that vault, but I don't think he ever looks at it.
But that's OK. it's like you know he tells me when he changes his password so it's fine
That's funny uh just real quick i also use vaults for my immediate family in exactly the same way you're using them dave i think that's a great feature i have a one password family as well and so you know i have vaults for just my daughters vaults for my wife and i and then there's a family vault and i have my own vault and it's same same exact scenario yeah um the nice thing about the apple if you can get them to use apple passwords and this is probably why someone connected with
their ipad i've done it before with my iphones because she will save because i don't even think she knows that they're going into the passwords app or the vault or whatever but you know apple will ask you do you want to save this password oh yeah save it um so i have had to recover a password in that way for her because she's forgotten it she didn't write it down i don't have it so it's like all right, let me get my old iPad. I'll log into your iCloud account or into your Apple account.
I think, and then you can get access. I can sync over those passwords and then I can look them up, right? Because I can go into the device and get access to that password. And then I immediately put it into my one password. So...
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes, yeah. All of that, um, obviously makes sense. Yep. I like it. Yeah.
Uh, and the caveat is when I set, sorry, the caveat to that is when I first set her up on her iCloud, I made her turn on the password syncing so that I have that capability. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you do anything different, Pete? Anything to add?
Not a whole lot different. That's why I would like to see pass keys become more universally acceptable so my mother-in-law could use her fingerprint, that sort of thing. But actually, it's funny. The resistance I get more is amongst my kids. When it's like, oh, what's my social security number? Look in 1Password. It's in there for you. It's in your own vault.
They don't have that memorized, Pete. I made my kids memorize that.
Yeah, same.
They need to. There's no doubt about it. it's very frustrating because I told them last time it happened and it's been a year or so ago now. It's like, I'm never giving it to you again. Here's where it is. You go get it. I've heard it 20 times.
Let me teach you to fish today.
Driver's license is number two. It's just a good thing to know.
Right. You used to be able to know yours in New Hampshire and then they changed the format of the driver's license number.
That was the problem. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, too bad. I still remember my California word.
Update all that stuff and that all went away
Yep yes yes it's all about learning how to fish right where are we on time we have we have time for one more do you want to take us to Randy's Adam Randy
¶ Randy-WHY Thousands of Photos in "Recently Saved?"
Has a question he says in iOS photos if I go to utilities recently saved It is showing 9K plus photos, basically most of my library, dating back to 2013. This isn't helpful. How do I fix what is considered recent?
The short answer is you don't. At least not that I can find. I don't find anywhere in photos how you can change what Apple considers recently saved. And it can obviously be a whole host of things that come into play here. Did you recently import them? Did they get put on a new, I don't know. The database can look at it and go, oh, you have 9,000 recent photos. I do, however, I think have a fairly good workaround for you, Randy, which is create a new smart album.
Open your Mac and go to Photos, File, New Smart Album, and set a rule that date added is in the last 30 days. So as you put in new photos, they'll hang there for 30 days, and then they'll cycle out as needed or to whatever time frame works best for you. That's... My, uh, workaround solution to a problem that I don't see an answer to in, in the operating system settings or in, in photos settings. Gents, either of you have an idea?
I know when I saw this one come in, I, I had the same thought as you was like, well, um, I, I don't know. Like, I love your solution. Like, I, I, I think that's a great solution. How about you, Adam? Do you have any thoughts on this?
Uh no but i'm trying to see where is this setting.
It it's in well it's in photos right right i mean the screenshot he sent was from his iphone photos i believe yeah uh but i but i mean i think it it would be there on the mac too but yeah there's
Um it's recently saved uh is one of one
Of the categories
I don't i don't see anything called utilities in my photos so maybe it's a version thing yeah.
Where did this screenshot come from pete do you
Know well i you know i don't know i can tell you you can tell it is uh some form of either ipad or ios device it appears to be ios because it says 5g and it has bars and a battery at the top yeah and it was taken at 13 13 local time That's all I can tell you. You know, I did not go into my photos app on my phone. I went in on the Mac looking for this. So you know what? Maybe there is a setting for recently saved being changed in the phone.
Oh, no. I see it. In photos on my phone, I scroll down past my – and I'm on the iOS 18, the release version. So I see – Oh,
It's way down.
It's way down. There's a thing called utilities. Yep, and if I tap that, there is a recently saved option, and I can click it, and there are 54,694 photos in my recently saved imports, just for reference, 67,819. So at least it doesn't have everything there. Yeah, so that's nice.
I've got to catch up because I've only got 2,000 in my recently saved.
What were you saying, Adam?
I'm saying this is bugged. This is a broken feature. Oh, yeah. I have 17,300 out of 22,000. And so however Apple engineers are defining recently saved is something's off. It's either maybe the syncing is causing it or like, because I haven't recently saved 17,000.
Yeah, I mean, have you done nothing other than saving photos for the last, you know, three months? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah i'm calling this busted.
Yeah it's the same engineer who figured out whether you're a worker you're at home and you can change your password yeah
Yeah i think this is a this is a feedback or apple.com slash feedback uh you know thing send your feedback to apple and tell them this is busted, fix it, please.
Yep.
Or explain it. They either need to fix it or explain their logic. One of the two.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh, yeah, that doesn't, yeah, I got, I got nothing. We, but we're, but we're all in this boat together, Randy.
So you know who might have something? Our audience. They could send us the answer to feedback at Mac geek cab.com.
Oh, perfect. Feedback at Mac geek cab.com.
Feedback at Mac geek cab.com. I love that. What a brilliant idea. You're so smart, Adam. Thank you. Do we are we is it is it time I think it's time to pull the plug on this thing isn't it it seems like it is or do we save us Dave Adam do you want to do any cool stuff found or should we save that for next week so we can really we can do
A little bit all right I was kind of late I can make up some time.
Okay all right great I mean we were all kind of late let's be candid about that today all right then let's do some cool stuff found Pete you want to take us to Andrew my friend
¶ Andrew-CSF-Compress for videos and photos on iPhone and iPad
I can do that quite quickly, I'm sure. Andrew wrote in, where is it? There it is. He goes, hi, there was a discussion on this week's show, 12 July, concerning converters and file size reducers for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. On the iPad and iPhone, I use PDF at all for compressing PDF and other tasks, compress for video, compress for photos, and compress for ipad both versions also run fine on my mac andrew
Very cool i yeah yeah i've always tried to do compressing with like uh shortcuts and stuff and that never works as well as i would like it to so i'm happy to learn about compress that's great yeah
It might be compress but Compress
I would think it's compress Yeah Compress Yeah Either way Spell the same Run the same app There you go Right Yeah. All right. Shall we, shall we move on? Yeah.
Yeah. Our friend Kirsten has one. And I think this actually was something she
¶ Kirschen-CSF-FlashFinder combo flashlight and FindMy device
also mentioned at Marty's travel tips session at Mac stock this year. So this is cool. It says just a quick blurb and links to the flashlight finder flashlight flashlight rather, and find my device. I read about this on Jason Snell's Six Colors earlier this year. It is a USB-C rechargeable LED flashlight that's small enough to be attached to your keychain. The light has different levels of brightness and is great for lighting your path to the door when it's dark.
It also has an emergency red, amber, and blue flashing lights as well as an audible alarm and magnetically attaches to metal surfaces. Well, that's awesome. so you can do like hands-free operation but it's got a party trick and that is find my capability and acts like an air tag and in my humble opinion better than any air tag attached to your key ring so yeah i already have a air tag attached my key ring but if i can have an air tag plus flashlight I mean, come on.
Right.
That's pretty cool. Huh? Yeah. 25 bucks. Currently, anyway, on Amazon. We'll put a link in the show notes. Love that.
Why didn't I think of that?
I mean, you're welcome to have thought of it. You know, you don't need to be the first one with any idea. I always love it when people say, I don't want to share my idea without an NDA because somebody will steal it. And it's like if you want your idea to be worth $100, the best way you can do that is to write it on $100 bill. Ideas aren't worth anything without execution. So if you can execute better or slightly differently even than these folks, off to the races, man. Good to go.
That's my feeling on it as someone who has has made a living doing things using other people's good, not great ideas and having bullheaded persistence to not stop. Too dumb to quit.
Can I mention one more thing on this? Yeah. She brought it up in the talk and now I just thought of this, especially with my daughters. So this flashlight is also it's super tiny, but it's also very, very bright.
So it could operate as a pretty good personal safety device you know you shine this in somebody that's coming at you i use eyes you're going to blind them for a second that might give you enough time to take that away also because of the air tag capability you can share air tag locations on find my with like you know your family group or whatever i don't even think you need to be in a family group i think you can share them with anybody now so they
could also even though we already do find my with their phones for personal safety and security reasons could also share this and so it could serve double duty for like personal safety and protection which i think is great i.
Love that idea that's great yeah
Absolutely fun.
Stuff well not fun but good stuff yeah uh all right we have one last cool stuff
¶ Scott-1099-ChromeOS Flex instead of OCLP
found uh from scott it it was inspired by a discussion that we had in the last episode that we recorded live at Mac Stock. He says it's a follow-up on the options for old machines that don't get macOS patches and might want something else. He says, instead of using OpenCore Legacy Patcher or something else, try Chrome OS Flex. I didn't even realize this was a thing, but it turns out it's a thing.
You can install Chrome OS Flex on your Mac or your PC, and it is Chrome OS running on your Mac or your PC. So, yeah, good stuff. Scott says if it were him, he'd put Ubuntu on it, and then it could run Tailscale or Plex or whatever. But if you want an operating system that is just easy for a user to use and still being updated and all of those things, Chrome OS, that's an interesting idea. Huh.
This seems like it might be great for, you know, a lot of schools use Chrome OS as their main OS. And this would be a great way to repurpose. I mean, so here's the thing. We used to have people that back in the day you'd have an old Mac and you didn't know what to do with it a lot of them we even had a program in our Mac user group to give them to schools, These days, schools don't want them because they're like, we can't use those for anything.
If you could repurpose an old Mac with Chrome OS, they might be able to take that in and manage it. And like, I'm assuming this is full regular Chrome OS.
Seems like it. I didn't see any.
Like a Chromebook would have. Right. Right. And so, you know, not all schools can afford devices for their entire, you know, thing. Some can, but like might be a great way to work into some kind of school program to be like, hey, we'll take these older devices. And so if there's IT guys out there who are in schools that need additional devices, this seems like it might be a perfect way to go.
I'm glad to know about this. Yeah, this might be a game changer kind of thing for folks. Like Scott said in his note, installing Ubuntu on it would probably give you more options than any of the other things that we've discussed. Although open core legacy patcher now you're running mac os you're inheriting a nerdy situation but let's be candid you're doing the same nerdy situation just in a different flavor with ubuntu so you know uh yeah interesting huh
That's cool. Yeah, I know. The wheels are turning. This is great. I love when we get to the end of an episode and the wheels are turning. And yes, folks, we have gotten to the end of the first episode of the 1100s here. Pretty amazing.
¶ MGG 1100 Outtro
With no codes or nothing. We're out of codes.
We're out of police codes. That's true. Ten codes anyway.
Ten codes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make sure to check out. Go ahead, Adam.
But we now go to 1100.
That is true. how did i'm so glad we didn't get through this episode without one of us noticing that thank you adam that's amazing i should have worn my cirque to mac 11 shirt i uh i really missed an opportunity with this wow wow amazing yeah here we are mac geek up goes to 11 100 love it love it that's great i'm just gonna take a minute enjoy that all right that's fine uh mac geek up.com slash giveaway where you still have a little bit of time to enter our giveaway for the Victrola turntable,
so go check that out, and we'll have something more coming in August. I swear, I promise, I hope. I've been out of the office since 6, so I haven't coordinated anything, but hopefully somebody else here has. Cashfly provides all the bandwidth to get the episode from us to you.
Make sure to check out our other podcast like adam mentioned his debut film podcast pete's so there i was my business brain and gig gab and thank you for listening thanks for everything you do go check out our merch store we've got some more stuff in there that we've added recently including the 20th anniversary uh shirts and such so mackeycup.com slash merch check it out have fun thanks for everything folks we love that we get to keep doing this
I bet we do it again.
What's that, Pete?
I bet we do it again.
I bet we would. You guys want to do it again next week? Just one more time?
Absolutely.
You know, this means we are within spitting distance of MGG 1111. So that's kind of cool. All on. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one, one, one, one. I can't think of that. I can't translate that to binary because, A, I can't translate that, And B, Pete taught me years ago that you never do public math, especially that kind of public math.
So with that in mind, do you have another way of saying maybe maybe a more generic way of saying don't do public math that would be good advice to leave everyone with before we before we take off for a week?
I would say when you're trying to do public math, don't do it, because if you do, well, just don't get caught.
Made on a Mac. Later.