¶ Mac Geek Gab 1111 for Wednesday, October 13th, 2025
It's time for Matt Geekab, and listener Brian brings us our quick tip of the
¶ Bryan-QT-Tap Search Magnifying glass in iOS 26 Health to get to the menu of categories
week by sharing that in iOS 26, in the health app, if you want to get to your health categories, there is no longer an obvious way, or at least no longer the previous way, of getting to the sidebar where you can see those categories. The trick, tap the search magnifying glass, which is generally in the lower right-hand corner. And as soon as you tap that, the list of categories also appears while you could also then type your search.
More quick tips like this, plus your questions answered, cool stuff found, and more, including a surprise. Today on MacGeekGab, 1111-1111. I know.
It's like four ones. Whatever we're going to do about this for Monday, October 13th, National Train Your Brain Day 2025. 25 greetings folks and indeed welcome to mac geek of the show where uh we do we share your quick tips like that we share your cool stuff found we share your questions hopefully with some answers sometimes we share our own quick tips and cool stuff found and questions and hopefully with some answers to those two the goal being that each and every one of us every single time
we gets together gets to learn at least five new things sponsors for this episode include our friends at mac paw with clean my mac's new uh cloud cleanup and you can try it for seven days free by using our code Mac geek, which also gets you 20% off at clean CLNMY.com slash Mac geek hub and our friends at Zapier.com slash Mac geek hub, where you can transform how you work and automate things and even use AI to create zaps.
And you can use AI inside your zaps. And it's, it's like I'm, I've been using Zapier for years and I'm blown away with all the new things that I can do with it. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. for now here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton and
Here in south dakota i am adam christensen
And here in landover maryland it's pilot p working my way back
And here, still in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun.
John F. Braun! Thank you so much for joining us today, John. I know for many of us and many of you, many of us just saying all in the Mac Geekup community, John's voice is very, very, very familiar and very welcome. However, there are some of you who might not know who John F. Braun is. John and I started doing this show together 20-plus years ago.
We did episode one together as pete pointed out we did episode 11 together we did episode 111 together we did episode 222 together and 333 44 44 and many of those i don't think we didn't oh were you here for 9.99 you might have been i can't remember now but anyway we have you back for episode 11 11 uh because it's four ones and so there needs to be four ones here one two three before i got it so how are you mr braun good very good good excellent
Enjoying uh semi-retirement.
Nice excellent love that love
Bought some new toys which we're going to talk about a few of.
Them love that Did you have something you were going to have? I'm just wondering if you guys are willing to commit to show 11,111. Just ask me. I think I need to ask my doctor about that, Pete. Yeah.
It will just be.
You're going to need to do a lot of shows or none.
My consciousness trained into an AI put into one of those Tesla bots or something. Sure.
Yeah. Up there. Yeah. That's right. We can make this happen. That's right. We should have done this show on November 11th. we talked about that we did we did talk about that to slow down to do it though this comes out on 10 13 bear with me here um we are recording show 11 11 on friday 10 10 so there's you know there's some little poetic uh numerology here numeristic on off on off yeah yeah exactly All right. Well, let's just get into it. Yeah, you got a quick tip, John?
John's got a quick tip. Yeah, let's go.
¶ JFB-QT-Check your printer drivers if you have paper selection issues
Yes, I got a quick tip. So I was trying to print. So I have a Canon IX6820 inkjet printer. The nice thing about this printer is that it can print on large paper, like 13 by 19. And I framed a couple of them. But I had one where my sister saw one of my pictures, and she's like, yeah, you know, I'd like one. So I'm like, okay, you know, I got my 13x19 paper, put it in the printer, tried to print, and it would just spit it out. And I'm like, this used to work.
And after some trial and error, I found out what the problem was. Um, apparently, if you, um, if you select Bonjour or AirPrint as the, um, the driver type, um, it doesn't list all the paper sizes that the printer supports, which, uh, was really confusing. Um, here's how I solved the problem. So if you go to Add Printer, Scanner, or Fax, and I'm going to do that right now, it will show all of the printers that are available to add. Here's how I solved the problem. Do not select Bonjour.
I selected Canon IJ Network, which I guess is the native driver. And then all of a sudden, I got more paper sizes. In this case, I think it's A3+, is 13 by 19.
Interesting. Did you manually install that driver pack from – like did you go to Canon's website at some point and download it? Okay. So you're using the manufacturer-provided driver, not the Apple-provided driver, I think is – Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's the nice part about AirPrint is that it means that your printer will always be supported, right? Because Apple will always provide drivers.
The downside is exactly what you pointed out. Apple might not always provide comprehensive drivers for your specific printer, especially as it matures in age. Yep. Nice. That printer is still available. You can get that printer for, like, $210 at Amazon. You still like that thing? I mean, with the right driver, anyway?
Oh, yeah, with the right driver. And, you know, the last print I did was very nice. And you can even get compatible ink. I forget the brand. But, yeah, buying the ink from them will cost you.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Cool. Pilot Pete on his AirPods, because he's not traveling with a nicer microphone. Correct.
¶ Uncle Jamie-QT-Enable Mint Mobile's Number Lock to prevent SIM-swapping
It's what I do. So Uncle Jamie wrote in with a quick tip, and I've got to tell you, first of all, I was like, oh, I never even thought of this. So he says, don't forget to enable Mint Mobile's number lock to prevent SIM swapping. And don't forget that it's not just for SIMs. So someone couldn't steal your phone number. At least that's what I was thinking at first.
Like, okay.
And the note under there from Mint says, Number Lock prevents unauthorized users from hijacking your SIM and phone number. Once it's on, turning it off requires a one-time password sent to your phone number or an email address that's been on your account for at least 30 days to confirm it's you. And I missed that email part of it at first, which is important because I thought, well, what if you lose your phone? How am I going to get my SIM into a new phone?
Your email has to have been. So don't turn on SIM lock if your email hasn't been with them for at least 30 days. They won't let you. Oh, okay. That's even better. It prevents it. So they won't let you. Yes. Good. Because, yeah. But I'm like, oh, for those who don't know what SIM swapping is, imagine if someone had your phone number. Ability to get texts forwarded to you for two-factor authentication to get into your bank account.
Or text as though they were you, right? Impersonating you, too. Oh, absolutely. Think of all the nasty things that could happen on your behalf. Yeah, mints. I turned this on when the email came in because I was like, well, I mean, why wouldn't I turn that on? And then my son Lucas and I were talking about how many free eSIMs Mint will give you each year. There is a limit on it. It's like two, isn't it? It used to be two. I believe it's at least five now. It might even be 10, Pete.
But I went to buy. I just was like, well, let me go and buy a new eSIM and see if it tries to charge me or if it's free. Because I just did one because I transferred to my 17 Pro. And it was like, you can't buy a new eSIM because you have number lock on. It's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.
So they they protect you from yourself with when you turn on number lock it it seems to be fairly well thought out which is good so yeah they won't let you turn it on if you if you haven't had your phone number or email address with them for 30 days that whole thing so yeah Um nice i uh i found a thing guys with chat gpt and i i wish that i could say
¶ QT-Setup ChatGPT Tasks to stay on top of your projects
i i found it and was using it to track all the things and news. I probably will do exactly this, all the news about the new Rush tour that was announced. And don't worry, I won't wax too poetic here. If you want to hear me wax poetic, listen to today's October 13th Gig Gab where Steve Wichel and I do a 10-minute segment on it. But I'm very excited. We'll leave it at that. But... I've started using ChatGPT's automations, tasks.
Have either of you used these, Pete? Are you using ChatGPT's automations? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. I'm part of a family football pool. It's just for bragging rights. I was going to say it's for fun. It's not at all for fun. It's for bragging rights. And I don't follow NFL football enough to make picks each week on who the right winners are going to be. So I've been, of course, collaborating with my my expert assistant, ChatGPT, to keep me up to date on that.
But what I found is it's like, oh, I actually want to check in like an hour before each game starts to see who's on the injured list and all of these other factors that I couldn't tell you about because I basically watched Patriots and that's it.
And uh and so i've you know i've been asking chat gpt and and it said to me would you like me to set up automations where i do all of the work and then email you or give you a notification on your phone when the work is done with what the result is and what you should do which teams you should pick for the upcoming games and it was like oh man yes please and so i do i have a bunch of automation set up for that but like i was saying you know you can use these for all kinds
of things anything you would have chat gp2 chat gpt do repetitively you can tell it to do it and schedule it like now i've got one that says okay on monday mornings at 10 a.m gather all the previous week's news of the podcast industry come up with a topic or two uh that would be good for like a thought leadership style post on, Say, LinkedIn and write the draft of the post for me and then deliver it to me.
And then I can take it and edit it and, you know, make it my own or tell it, well, that's a stupid topic. Make me another one. But it's at least doing the prep work for me and it's reminding me of it. So I'm literally moving like things from my reminders in my calendar into chat GPT because Because why would I want a reminder that reminds me to go and ask, you know, to start a project like one of my favorite uses of ChatGPT is the anti-procrastination tool, right?
It's like anti-writers block, all that stuff. So why wouldn't I just have it do that? So, yeah, I'm pretty stoked about these things. So they call them tasks or automations in ChatGPT, but you just ask it to do it and it'll do it. And at any point, you can ask ChatGPT, what tasks do I have set it up? And it'll give you a whole list of them. An exhaustive list. It's pretty good. Well, there go my NFL picks and my college football picks, because now everybody knows, Dave.
Thanks a lot, man.
Sorry, Pete. Sorry, not sorry. That's okay. Yeah, right? Hey, Adam. So that's mostly what I use it for. So I'm sorry. That's interesting.
No, I was just going to say, it's almost like you have a knowledge navigator.
Oh, wow. That's true, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. It is like a knowledge navigator on rails.
Yeah oh man apple yeah god they had this idea in 87 yes never realized it everybody else is realizing it for them i mean that's that remember that whole video like the guy would come in and talk to that assistant be like hey can you go gather all of this and the assistant would kind of go off and and do this thing and then come back and say oh here's your schedule for the day i've got this lined up for you and that lined up for you and yes
And you can
Do this or that you
Can You can link it. I don't use Google Calendar a lot. I don't use Gmail a lot, but you can link it. And Perplexity does this, too. You can link them to your Gmail and your Google Calendar so that they really start getting insights about what's going on. It it like their privacy concerns aside that is what i want right i like that and and apple keeps threatening to deliver it starting with knowledge navigator it turns out but
The the amount of research that can be done with um with chat gpt just so incredible it saved you so much time. I was doing this the other day because here in my town, they put in these two
¶ Tell us how you’re using AI at feedback@macgeekgab.com
new, like massive, overly engineered traffic lights on either end of Main Street. And I'm like, why are we doing this? So I used ChatGPT when I was having my coffee the other Sunday to be like, do some research and like find out, all right, how much should we spend on this thing? And I found out a lot of stuff that people don't know. And it even got down to like, why did they decide to put these in? And they're like, well, trucks kept running into the old lights because they
were too close to the corners. And I'm like, okay,
Like how often does that happen? And it couldn't figure it out because there wasn't data.
But ChatGPT is like, would you like me to write the letters for you to send to the police department and to the city engineer to under the laws here in South Dakota that say they have to be able to provide public information? And they wrote the full things. I want all these records going back to 2018 under this act. And if it's going to cost more than 50 bucks, let me know. Otherwise, go ahead and pull the information and please send it to me electronically
if that's an option. and like wrote these great letters that I'm going to send in now to get all this information.
Oh, amazing. Yeah.
Yeah, it was like incredible. It's like, all right.
It's incredible. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. I mean, we could just go on and on and on with the different things. In fact, if you want that, every Friday, Business Brain is fried AI now where we literally talk through these kinds of things. So if you're into that, yeah, mostly business focused, but any of these things.
Like, I mean, I don't need to do what Adam just described, but Adam describing it reminds me of a thing in my life that it's like, oh, hey, wait, I could think, you know, so, yeah, it's just inspiration. I've got a question. Did we ask people to tell us how they were using AI and send it to feedback at MacGeekGab.com? We did.
We did. We told them to send it to feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
I'm pretty sure it's feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
Yeah, it's feedback at macgeekup.com. Woo-hoo-hoo! For the win!
So here's something that I noticed. So as far as AI, I discovered something the other day.
¶ X/Twitter client will let you summarize with Grok
The X client apparently now has a summarize with AI feature. I saw this little icon. So you know there's the dot, dot, dot, which gives you a number of options. But then there was an icon, and I'm like, what does that do? And so I clicked on it, and it does a, I think it's Grok. So it uses Grok as the engine. And I was actually very impressed with the analysis that it did. Yeah. I had a not great experience in the past with ChatGPT, and then I was like, oh, tell me about John F. Braun.
And it's like, oh, well, John did this and this and this, and it's like, no, I didn't.
Oh, that did me. To be fair, that was years ago.
Oh, yes. No, you're correct.
Before ChatGPT had live access to the web. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it's way better now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, I used Apple's intelligence the other day. Somebody, oh, well, we'll talk about it in a little bit. But there was an article and it was like, I can't read this whole thing. And it was just like, oh, if you just click in the title bar, you can pull up the summarization of the thing. And it's like, great. Now I understand. Thank you. Moving on.
Appreciate your time. Yeah. That's great.
I will say of Apple Intelligence, specifically, I am interacting with the S lady a lot more with just general, you know, questions and more and more it is not doing the whole, you know, find this on the web or do you want me to use chat GPT for that? I'm noticing it slightly getting better. I'm not saying it's good yet, but it is doing a much better job of surfacing answers for me than it did in the past.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the ones I noticed is it's summarizing the voicemails that I get. And a friend of mine called the other day and spent the first 30 seconds swearing at the driver in front of her. And the summary was uh a phone call about the dangers of driving to mephis i'm like well yeah that wasn't what the phone call was about but okay that was what it started with yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah All right. Any other AI stuff for our tangent here? Is it time to move on to John's next quick tip?
John's up.
John's up. All right.
¶ JFB-QT-If your Apple TV remote is being finicky, try un-pairing and re-pairing it
All right. Here we go. So I watch a lot of content on my Apple TV. And as you know, the Apple TV comes with the remote.
And then one day i was trying to scroll i was trying to scroll around and for whatever reason no matter what i did it would think that i had the down button depressed and it would keep scrolling down i'm like no no no i want to go i want to go this way and it's like no you don't you want to go all the way to the bottom of the screen and i'm like uh that's no good, But so one problem is that I probably shouldn't have too many remotes.
I think there was a problem with the pairing. So I actually have three remotes. There's a silver one, there's a black one, and then there's a white one that takes a battery. The other two have rechargeable batteries.
And I'm like, how do I solve this? um one way i solved it is there's a remote app that you can install on your phone um that seemed to help a little bit but every now and then the problem would come back so i'm like let me see if there's an article telling me how to fix this and sure enough um apple support has an article titled, If Your Siri Remote or Apple TV Remote Isn't Working. And it will go through the various things you can do. You can repair it.
You can restart the remote. It tells you how to do that. And it also has a suggestion, check your remote signal strength, but I'm very close to it. So that worked for me. So I think I restarted one of my remotes and then that was fine.
Yeah. And that is holding down the TV or control center button and the down volume button for five seconds. That's handy. I think we've talked about this before, but I forgot about it until I'm seeing it again. Yeah.
I would never have thought to reboot my remote. I reboot the Apple TV quite frequently, but the remote itself, I don't know.
That's really smart. Oh, yeah. We'll link to this article in the show notes naturally. Nice find, John. that's uh yeah that's good sweet fun And that worked, right? You're good. You're back and good to go and all that stuff, John.
Yes.
That's great. That's great. Cool. Cool.
Excellent.
All right.
Ben has one for us. It looks like remote related, but differently.
¶ Ben-QT-1110-iOS 18 added remote control
He says in a discussion on episode 1110 about convenient remote control options for Macs, you commented about not having screen control available on iPhone and iPad, even though Apple Sports seems to have the ability, at least, to point to the screen. However, remote control was added to iPhone and iPad in version 18. I agree the extent to which a recipient needs to see notifications and act on them makes starting a share challenging, but the functionality is there.
I think that did come up on the show, too, right? Somebody mentioned, I thought that it didn't have it, but you can request. No, that's on the Mac.
That's on the Mac. Yeah. It turns out you can do the same thing on the phone too. I I've never done that. So I want to mess with that. Yeah. Yeah. Huh?
We'll have to do it together. I mean, again, the challenge here was like, I want to do this with my mom, but I can't, I can't get her to, I can't get her to click the little button. So invariably what she does is, you know, especially when it's something like on her iPad, she'll, we'll get on a FaceTime call that she'll like, just flip the camera around. Cause she can figure out how to do that. And just like, or no, she doesn't, she can't even figure that out.
She turns the phone around and tries to point it at her ipad screen so i can see what she she can see oh wow and you know it's off center because
She can't see what she's aiming at of course yeah right it's
Futile it's just like
Well maybe this
No mom no maybe
This remote control is actually the answer then
Well again but the problem is i can't get her to click the actual button to because she has to initiate you know allow this person to control my thing and it's like i cannot get her to tap on that button to save my life so good for other people not not probably for me i just i have to suffer and the way i suffer always yeah
Yeah yeah yeah well you know
But good to know that's that is a good tip yeah the option is there have
You ever used the remote control john uh with with like your parents or someone else with with an ipad or an iphone
Not yet.
All right. There you go. Let's see. What else do we have? Any more on this or are we moving on to Robert here? Robert has a fun little tip for us. We will let Robert share it. Yeah. I think we're going to let Robert share it. One of the issues that I've heard
¶ Robert-QT-Create a Shortcut to Toggle Liquid Glass Effects
regarding liquid glass is some people don't like it and other people do like it. So I set up for myself and my family members the accessibility shortcut menu where you push the side button three times and it invokes that menu. And then I added to that menu the two features, reduce transparency and increase contrast. It's a great way to turn the feature on and off, the feature being liquid glass, when you're just not in the mood for it or you're having difficulty seeing something.
Hope this helps. love that i always man i should have thought of that i know Yeah that accessibility shortcut that it i mean it's it's not a shortcut like capital s even though it's later there's a capital s but it's not like in the shortcuts app it's just the the shortcut to toggle some accessibility features deep in the settings correct yeah yeah yeah yeah I got to tell you, speaking of shortcuts and settings, the tip from last week where we set up –
and the link is in last week's show notes if you missed this or whatever, folks, go do it.
Setting up the shortcut in Control Center that opens the settings – pane in the settings app for that app for whatever the front most app is so like the other day i was in mail and needed to get to the settings for it and i found myself going to like settings and apps i'm like wait no back to mail control center hit the little shortcut i added boom immediately at the settings pane in mail i didn't need to dig through five screens and scroll through six others and to get there
it's like that's pretty hip man it's pretty good so nice yeah it is yep it is All right, we have a mountain of quick tips still to get to, including some really – I mean, they're all good. They're all good. Other things that are good that we want to talk about next are our sponsors. Because this morning, literally this morning, I used our sponsor Zapier's Co-Pilot
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the zaps for you. even though even building the zaps doesn't require knowing how to write any code. Here on the show, we talk about using tech to make your life easier and Zapier delivers. It connects AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude to the apps you already use so you can automate workflows, enrich data, coach your team, resolve support tickets, whatever you need. Whether you're an IT pro or just tired of repetitive tasks, Think about how many repetitive tasks you have.
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And you know how we always say on the show, don't get caught,
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¶ JFB-2018 i7 Mac mini trade-in with Apple went smoothly
All right, John, we've been talking about trade-ins on the show, and you had an opportunity not to trade in an iPhone recently. You traded in a Mac, didn't you?
Right. So, when I was doing the show, I was using a Mac Mini i7 late 2018.
Okay.
And at some point, I upgraded my laptop, but I still had the Mac Mini, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to trade it in. Sure. So if you search online and you say Mac trade in, it'll bring you to a page where you can do that.
Was this a page on Apple's site? Is that right?
I tried to go to apple.com slash trade-in, but that didn't.
No, but I mean you traded it in with Apple or with a third party? Oh, with Apple. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
The nice thing about the experience was this time around, in the past, they would usually ship you a box, and then you would return it, put it in the box, and then go to your local FedEx or whoever. And send it back that way. This time around, they were like, oh no, we'll, FedEx will take care of it. Just bring it to your nearby FedEx, which I can walk to and just give them the machine. I'm like, okay. So, you know, they gave me a label, you know, prepaid label.
Yeah.
And I gave them the machine. And then, you know, at some point I got, I think it was an Apple credit. Yeah. For the amount. I only got like a couple of hundred bucks for it because, I mean, you know.
That's what it's worth.
Yeah. But the one that I got matches the specs of my MacBook Air.
The new Mac Mini that you got.
Well, I got it refurbished.
Well, new to you, I meant. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but it has the same specs. So it's an M2. I got it with 24 gigs of RAM and a two terabyte hard drive. And that's the exact same specs that I have on the MacBook Air.
That's great, man.
Yeah, if you want to upgrade. So, you know, two pieces of advice. So one, trade-in with Apple. You may not get the most money, but in this case, I wasn't going to get much anyways.
Did they give you the amount that they promised you? Yes. Okay. See, this is good to hear.
Um i i said in last week's show that uh i had stopped going to apple for my trade-ins for my iphones because they in my experience and you know i'm a i'm a use case of one uh it happened a few times they pretty consistently would come back and say oh it's not worth you know it's not in the same whatever there's something wrong with it that's going to devalue it do you want you know 30% less and was like no screw you I'll go to Gazelle and get it for 10% more than you're going to
give me which is what they said they were going to give me and then they give it to me but he accused you of prevaricating Dave prevaricating did I learn a new word what does that mean that's your 50 cent word of the day prevaricating lying oh I'm no I'm no prevaricator I've never heard this word before I love this I'm going to have to look this up. Prevericator. All right. I'll figure it out. I'm no provocateur.
I was going to say that one you might be.
One thing I want to add here, the migration process. So here's what I did. So I made a carbon copy cloner backup.
Yeah.
And then started the new machine up and imported from the hard drive.
¶ If migrating from Intel to Apple Silicon, check Go64
Great.
What you may want to do...
Using like Migration Assistant, I mean? Correct. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, cool.
Yeah, and everything worked great. The only thing I would suggest is St. Clair Software makes a utility called Go64.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that will show you, although pretty much everything ran, if there's a universal version of an app available, you may want to switch to that. But even if it's an Intel-branded app, what's the name of the translation?
Rosetta.
Rosetta, yeah. Yeah. So you can run your old Intel apps if you want to, but you may want to look and see if there's a universal.
That's good advice because there's still a lot of people upgrading now from like you just did, right? From Intel to Apple Silicon and making that leap. Yeah. I forgot about Go64. That's good.
And don't forget to back up your low-level stuff like your MariaDBs, because you're going to have to reinstall those under ARM.
Well, hopefully John's Carbon Copy Cloner backup would have had that type of stuff on it.
No, it does. The problem is it doesn't just run. You just have to redo it.
Restore it manually. Yes. Yeah, Migration Assistant won't grab that stuff. That's right.
I mean, it brings the DB files over, but they're not compatible because they're not. That's what I'm saying. Like, it doesn't just load into the new SQL.
Got it.
And that SQL is not going to run. And so then I had to reinstall MariaDB using Homebrew, that ARM version. Now the new thing doesn't have my databases in it. and trying to get it to work with the old DB files is a nightmare. It's much easier if you export all those as a, you know, SQL dump file and then re-import them. That goes really smoothly and easily. But if you're having to deal with the raw...
The binary files.
It can be done, but it's a nightmare.
Right. I never even thought about it. Oh, yeah, man.
Yeah, that's where I host myself. I'm literally considering, because I still have my backup somewhere, trying to restore those to an old Intel Mac and then re-exporting them from there to bring them back in. Because I've been trying for a month now to get those database files back and everything I try doesn't work. There's a million tips and ways to do it. But I think the only way I actually can do it is one table at a time.
And that's going to be a nightmare for the number of databases that I have. So anyway.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
It's a very niche problem for people like myself, but just something to be aware of for like lower level stuff because john's right i mean like when i switched over and i should have done my research ahead of time too um you know i had a bunch of apps and when you first launch a app an intel app that's not universal i think the machine prompts you to go download and install rosetta because it's not even there by default but then once you install it everything runs just fine but again if
you want you know the better performance and you want to take advantage of native obviously you want to upgrade to as many of the native arm native apps as possible
Yeah right right i found that um edge microsoft edge still like you don't get a universal app uh to your point john you you know it's like there i haven't found one you are either getting uh apple silicon binary or an intel binary it's like you know we all have i mean the amount of space that it's going to take for you to do this it's not terrible so anyway i don't know um to my comments last week uh we got two responses uh
bill said uh i've oh am i am i stepping on you pete were you going to read this one am i i think it
Was on my on my list one of them was
One of them is all right yeah i'm here oh there are two bills i'll take the first bill yep since since I've got Pete muted because of his background noise and he doesn't know it. Oh, no, I'm back. All right. I'm sorry. You want to take bills then? Sure. I'm queued up. Yeah. So Bill wrote in, hey, to add to your discussion of trade-ins,
¶ Bill-QT-In-person Apple Trade-Ins are More Reliable
and by the way, Matthew Dropko is putting that in the comments also on YouTube, similar to this. He says, I've had better luck getting full value with trading in things in person at the Apple store than with mailing them in. At the store, they have to run a quick test, and they've given me the maximum value by mail, whether it's Apple, Gazelle, Buyback World, or others. They seem to be pickier about scratches on the phone.
This is also if you have 14 days to do the trade-in at the store for a credit to a purchase. So you can order online without specifying your trade-in. It helps that I now live 10 minutes from an Apple store. All the best, Bill. So yeah, that makes total sense to me that if you bring it in, they're going to have to look you in the eye and call you a prevaricator. A prevaricator. We need to get shirts that say, I'm no prevaricator.
That's right.
I like that. That's great. Okay. That's good. And then there was another Bill that also told me
I was wrong. Yeah, Bill says Apple's trade-in values, trade-ins hold value for
¶ Bill-QT-1109-Apple's Trade-ins hold value for me
him. He said, Dave, I'm sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience trading your devices into Apple. I upgraded my iPhone every two to three years, my Apple Watch every three years, and my iPad every five to six years. I've used Apple's trade-in program since it became available and have always received back what was estimated when I enter my device in their trade-in estimator. I've never had them come back with a lower price after they received my device.
Most recently, I traded in my Series 8 watch for a new Series 11. I got full credit for that trade over the weekend. I hope that your experience is atypical, and I don't want MGG listeners to think that Apple's program is a sham, Bill Shear. I don't think we ever alluded it was a sham. It was just, it works the way it works.
It works. Yeah, but it sounds like it works better than I have seen it work. And again, to be fair, it's been years since I've used Apple, attempted to use Apple's because I had a couple of these experiences in a row. So next time around, I will try it again. This is great news. so yeah it's a sham wow sorry pete with the 50 cent words i love it
Um i know that mine you know like i know i wouldn't get value because i don't i don't use a case as people know so like my wife my poor wife gets my trade-ins and she's like i probably should
¶ Do you put a case or a screen protector on your watch
start putting on a glass screen protector oh yeah i'm like looking at my my 16 pro here and I've got several scratches. It doesn't bother me. I think Steve Jobs used to kind of feel about this, like some of that wear and tear is part of the showing of the usefulness of the device, right? You have these old things, like an old watch that's all kind of scratched up and dented, and it's more the character. My kids make fun of me. I just used to tell them, hey, that's just the patina.
So they throw that back at me all the time. They'll have some old busted things like, dad, is that just patina? Yes, that's patina.
Dad, that's patina. That's right. Right. Yep.
Adds to the value.
It adds to the charm. And like in real estate, I'm pretty sure talking about the charm of your iPhone is not something that's going to increase the value of the device. So the wrinkles and gray hair, that's patina. No, that's patina, Pete. That's right. Yeah, that's right. We all are working tirelessly, for me to say, on our patinas. That's right. Yes. Hey. It's better than the alternative, my friends. It is indeed.
Yeah. I think I don't know. I don't I don't experience with the alternatives. I don't know. Andy, in response to a question I asked last week about using HomePods versus a center channel,
¶ Andy-1110-Stereo Speakers can work for TV
John, and anyone who didn't listen to last week's show to catch you up, we were talking about using HomePods as your TV source for the sound source for your television. Thank you. And I wondered how it was for someone that understood the value of a center channel. It was kind of one of those things. If you don't have it, maybe you won't miss it. But if you had it, could it work? And Andy, who is a friend of the show, a premium supporter, and a world-class sound engineer, wrote in.
And he says, I don't use HomePods for my TV sound. But in my house, I have two TVs. One of them has a 5.1 sound system, which, of course, has a center channel. And the other has a pair of stereo speakers, quite inexpensive studio monitors. They're the first monitors I ever bought, and they're not anywhere near accurate enough to use in a real studio, but they sound good. So they're great for television. The stereo speakers are pretty much right on either side of a 32 inch TV.
The left and right of the surround sound system are about three feet to the left and right of that 55 inch TV. So much wider with the speakers that wide. I absolutely miss the center channel if I listen to just the stereo speakers. But with the speakers in close to the other TV, it's just fine. I also think where your listening position is relative to the television is important. For example, if you're sitting to one side, both speakers and the TV are all
on one side of you. It may not matter very much. On the other hand, if you're sitting perfectly centered and the speakers are wide apart, that missing center channel or the or having a center channel would really pull it together that said he says if i was buying a new sound system to go with the tv and i didn't have the money for a good surround system i think either a sound bar or a pair of stereo speakers placed very close to the sides of the tv would both be just
fine so thank you for that andy i yes the The listening position makes a big difference. And I would add to that that the distance one is from the sound source makes a difference. The farther away you are, the less that missing or addition of a center channel matters.
Right. In terms of... Physical location of the sound, where a center channel can also make a difference, and this would depend on what you have processing your sound, but a lot of times, dialogue can get buried when it's in just the left and right speakers. And adding a center channel, if you are getting sound that has that center channel in the source, can really deliver just the dialogue or whatever's supposed to be front and center to you. But again, that depends on what you have processing.
I would presume that whatever is processing HomePod sound for television is absolutely taking the need for enhancing dialogue, even without turning on the enhanced dialogue feature into account. So anyway, that's my nerdiness on that.
Interesting. Yes. Yeah, I just, when I moved here, I never even set up my rear channel speakers. So I just have the Sonos soundbar in the sub. That's what I use for my setup. But my living room isn't really that large. So that's worked fine for me. So I'm kind of with them, like a soundbar or just, you know, two stereo speakers. Even if they were HomePods set kind of right on either corner of your television, probably would work great for most people.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the sound bar is, that's where I would direct most people these days is to get a, and you know, you can get, There are Sonos soundbars, there are JBL soundbars, there are all kinds of different soundbars, but not only do they have the left, right, and center in them, most soundbars, even the ones that are going to be in the $150, $200 range, have simulated rear channel where they will bounce the sound off of your walls and kind of make it sound like it's coming from behind you.
I mean, it's pretty impressive what they've figured out how to do.
Yeah, my problem is the way my living room was set up, we have a door that's there in an entryway. And so previously in my old place, I just had literally a pair of these iron, they were meant to hold a big candle, but I had set my Sonos root channel speakers on top of those, and then I could get them near outlets at the edges of the room to the wall.
But I just don't have power back there, and I've got this walkway, so I really need to mount them up on the back corners of the wall, and then I need to have an electrician come in and actually install plugs there so I can actually plug them in so I get bothered with it. Yeah, yeah. And I haven't really missed it. Like you're saying, the sound bar does a great job of simulating the rear, and it works fine.
Yeah, sounds good. Blake also wrote in in response to my question and says,
¶ n-Blake-1110-I Switched from a Center Channel to 2 HomePods and love it!
I used a sound system with four speakers, a center speaker, and a subwoofer. I replaced it with two HomePods paired with my Apple TV. I love the sound, and I don't miss having all of those speakers at all. They recreate a center speaker just fine, and the surround is exceptional. So there you go. Thank you, Blake. I think based on where we are time-wise that we would be well-served to go to Cool Stuff Found. John, are you ready to – because we have some – there are some fantastic things
in Cool Stuff Found this week. So, John, are you ready to go?
I'm ready.
Let's go.
All right.
¶ JFB-CSF-FIXD Car Scanner
So I got another upgrade. Sadly, my 94 Saturn died. So I got an upgrade.
May have less than peace.
I got a 2019 Mercedes E300.
Okay.
Which I think is a nice upgrade. Sure.
That's different.
Yeah. And it's got a turbo. And you can tell when I get this thing on the highway. Got to be careful because the ride is definitely much smoother than the Saturn. But anyways, here's a nice thing. Unfortunately, the 94 Saturn had what I'll call OBD 1.5. So OBD is onboard diagnostics. So any car that I think is newer than 97 should have a port that you can plug into. It's usually under the left portion of the dash. You should see the connector.
But it was like, wow, you know, now I can take advantage of this port. And the one that I got, I got it a while ago, even though I couldn't use it, but Fixed, F-I-X-D. And you can see it on the screen if you're watching the video. I actually was able – yeah, I actually found a deal. I don't know if it was an Instagram or Facebook or something. I got it for $20.
Nice.
Okay. And then it has an app on the phone. They'll give you basic information. They have some enhanced features where you have to pay a membership fee. But I just thought I'd mention it because, yeah, especially if your car is acting up, it'll do a scan and give you an error code, which I guess are standardized. I think they all begin with a P or something like that. So, yeah, if you want to find out what's ailing your vehicle, yeah. I think it's a good place to start.
Yeah. And even if you can't find a deal, it's $40 on Amazon. We'll put a link in the show notes. There you go. We had those years. Well, I guess your car wouldn't use it, but there was a company called Automatic, not with two Ts, but with the one T, that had those. And it linked to your phone. It Bluetooth. I mean, it was effectively the same thing. But this seems like it gives so much more information than that one did. Like, that was, yeah. But I mean, that was the first of its kind.
That one did pretty good. One feature that the automatic had, the second version, I think they brought it out, is it had cell service, like 3G cell service built in plus GPS. The one feature that I loved for it, because I was running my own business at the time, was you could set it up to automatically start and stop on all your trips. And then you could go in and categorize, oh, this was business,
this was personal. yeah and then it would do do my mileage tracking i don't know why they didn't they never survived but um
I i agree yeah because the the concept is still relevant like i kind of like this this is pretty cool yeah
Yeah they like i don't know they i i don't think they're still in business right no
No no they're not yeah i just i found a web page at crutchfield about it like a product page but it's like no longer available at crutchfield it's like yeah well no longer available anywhere but yeah yeah
But these things are great i mean i agree with you john like it's nice um the nicest feature is you know your check engine light comes on and you're like if you read your manual it's like well pull over and stop your car don't go don't go anywhere it's everything's you know catastrophic and it's like toe to the dealer
For only six hundred dollars
My wife had this old honda pilot and for whatever reason every once in a while it would just miss a cylinder fire and we had it tuned and checked and you know mechanics never a problem but you know it would trigger the check engine light and it was like what does this all the time and it's like every once in a while it was like one cylinder three misfired you know and it's like oh check engine light you know but it's like one time over a month
you know it's like now the check engine light stuck on and so the other nice thing about this is you can use them to reset your check engine light oh
Yeah right yeah of course
Yeah here's the only i got a fish shake, for mercedes so i i i got the car i think in february and was like oh you know that's great they
¶ Fist shake for Mercedes!
even have an app that was cool um but then i get an email from them once i signed up for you know getting emails and they're like oh yeah by the way these features will stop working after this date.
Unless you pony up.
Unless you pony up, yes.
That kind of aggravated me. Welcome to luxury vehicle ownership, my friend.
Yeah, the only feature that I really miss is you could do a remote start. Now I got to use the... No, I don't think... I was looking for a hack to do a remote start with the fob. But some models, I think you can, if you do a magic press on the fob, I think it'll do a remote start. But that's the only feature I really miss, a remote lock and unlock via the app. So, but yeah, welcome to the club, I guess.
Yeah, and I say welcome to the club of luxury vehicle ownership, but this subscription for features thing is really not limited to luxury vehicles. It's kind of there on lots of cars these days. I think every manufacturer has some, most manufacturers have some version of, you know, pay. Revenue enhancement. Revenue enhancement, that's right.
The other feature that they eventually disabled was locating your vehicle. How did I solve that problem, you ask?
¶ JFB-QT-Put an AirTag in your car
I put an AirTag in the car.
Love it. Yeah, that's a great idea.
That's a scripting story.
So use that instead. And then here was the aggravation with the AirTag, though, is where I mounted it. It would fall off, and it would go between the center console and the seat. There's this little gap.
Oh, into the suckwitch there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't have the thing, but there's a third party that makes a blocker.
The suckwitch blocker. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what they call it, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because one time it fell, and I couldn't find it. But if I went to my phone and I said, make noise, it made noise. Sure. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's in the dead zone there.
Long forever.
It's really hard to get in there.
Why not just put it in your glove box, though?
I put it, there is a, I think it's allegedly for your sunglasses.
Oh, the holder up top there?
Yeah. Yeah, so I put it up there. There you go.
All right, we have some more cool stuff found. And I'm only jumping to this because I'm super eager to have us share this next one. So Adam, I think you're up. And I think you're muted, but I also think you're up. Well, eventually you'll unmute.
Sorry, I was trying to see if there was ODB open source software and I think there is.
¶ Check OBD Fusion for open source OBD-software
Oh, really?
Yeah, I think this app looks like it's based on open source i was trying to do the research odb fusion okay so anyway i don't know how good they are but maybe our audience could also do a little research but i had to imagine there's like open source software and then it lists which adapters it works with for ios and android and stuff like that so i wonder if
It would work with my old automatic adapter
Yeah, maybe. I didn't see that listed, but...
Okay.
It says all ELM-327 compatible adapters, whatever that means. All right. But yeah, there might be some more information follow-up on this, so...
Okay. Hey, one last quick comment. I have... I'm sorry. Matthew Dropko had put it in there and I'd forgotten about it with the ODB, the OBD, onboard diagnostics port is what it is. If you're willing to give up the privacy, insurance companies will send you one. Many insurance companies will send you one. You can plug it in. They'll determine whether you're a good driver or hell on wheels and give you a discount or raise your rates based on how you drive.
So maybe if you put one in, maybe a note on your dash that says, hey, you're being watched.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah, exactly. Just a thought.
I don't need more reasons for insurance companies to deny my claims.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, let's take us to something more positive. Tony's got a cool little
¶ Tony-CSF-Folder Quick Look
thing called Folder Quick Look. He says, every now and then, there is an app or utility whose usefulness is so obvious that you immediately think that it ought to be part of macOS. Folder Quick Look is a great example of this. It does one very simple job, and it does it in a way that just seems like it's always been there. While Steve Jobs was a great believer in the concept, it was Joe Sparano, who said, good design is obvious, great design is transparent.
In other words, once a design exists, it seems completely obvious that it should have always been that way. Apple's Quick Look feature is something we likely all use all the time. I know I do. Click on a file, hit the space bar, and this is in the Finder, and then you can quickly see the content of it. Martin Lexow's folder Quick Look does exactly the same thing for folders, and I agree with John Gruber that it ought to be built into the Finder itself.
Simply install the app and click on any folder or archive, press the space bar, and you can immediately see what's inside of it, including the contents of subfolders. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
This is utterly brilliant. I installed it, and I went to use it, by just hitting space bar on a folder or a zip archive and it showed me the contents it's like wait is that new like i i assumed it was always there but but it hasn't been always there it's new quick
Look had an extension in the early days for at least for the zip
Thing yeah for sure like
A built-in i don't know if it still does i haven't used that in a while uh my question
On this is i I will answer that question.
I am exclusively in my finder, almost exclusively for every folder. I'm a columns view person.
Okay.
So like, how is this better than that? I guess the subfolder thing is maybe.
No, that's an interesting thing. I am not in column view. I am list view forever because I want to see sizes and all of that stuff. Yep. And so I live in list view. and to be able to spacebar on a folder and see the contents of it, it's like, yeah, that's what I want. Because the alternative is simply showing me a big icon of a folder. It's like, guys, maybe that's not the best thing to show there. Maybe that's not the most useful thing. So, yeah, I'm into this.
Yeah, the native zip extension does not apparently exist anymore. It doesn't work.
No, I'm finding that too. at
Some point uh but kiwi gram in our discord chat says better zip has a zip quick look extension
Okay there's
Probably others i bet you i could go probably find one
Yep too yep i like it no quick look yeah quick look is cool this one is like i said as soon as i installed it i i had to like look at it more deeply to confirm that no this hasn't always been here which uh which you know to um to tony's point is exactly why it's so great sherlock
That thing quickly
Yeah it will don't do not oh you know they will they should no they should everybody should have this feature i like i i know it sucks when something gets sherlocked but like it's how it's how it's how it goes it's fine All right. Where are we here? You want to take us to air battery, Pete? Speaking of useful things.
Pete's muted now, too.
Pete's muted, and I can't.
We're both guilty.
I can so do at this time, yeah. So, yeah, Avram writes in, and he says, Hi, guys.
¶ Avraham-CSF-AirBattery shows your Mouse's battery level
I must have missed the usual pop-up about my Apple Magic Mouse being low on battery because I was in the middle of working when it unceremoniously just stopped working. It wouldn't be so bad if it could just be plugged in like a normal mouse. But, of course, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put the charging port on the bottom. Fist shake, I agree with you, Ava. I hate that. So you have to totally stop what you're doing in order to charge the mouse.
He says, I'll add my fist shake about this to all the other billion people who have fist shaked about it. Yeah, moi, Osi. I thought there must have been a way to see how my keyboard and mouse batteries were doing without having to dig into settings. You could use the built-in Apple widget, but again, in their infinite wisdom, Apple has decided not to let you make widgets float on top of all the other open windows and apps.
So if you have a lot of open things on your desktop, then that widget gets completely covered. The cool stuff found was an app called Air Battery.
It's open source, so you'll have to allow it in your system settings, but then it will allow you to pin your Bluetooth-connected devices to your menu bar, showing their battery levels with a quick glance so you can see if something will need to be charged soon love the show avram and i hope i'm not butchering your name it's spelled like avraham i think you got it right yeah yeah yeah yeah so thank you avram great tip that
is a great tip and there are i i almost got caught by putting the wrong thing in the show notes um there are two apps called Air Battery. One is called one lets you Use your AirPods on Android, and the other is what you just described. So I will make sure that the correct link is in the show notes. So, yeah, good stuff. Thanks, Avery.
Perfect.
Another fish shake for Mercedes. I told you I got it in February. One day I went out to the car. Usually you can pull on the handle,
¶ Another fist shake for Mercedes - No battery warning for FOB
and if the fob is nearby, it'll then let you open the car. Nope, didn't work. Here's the problem. So fortunately, they give me backup fob, so I had another one. And I'm like, well, let's see if this works. And I'm like, okay, hmm. You know what the problem is? The battery died in the fob. And I didn't even get a warning. That's the only thing that bothers me, is that it didn't warn me that the battery was low. Unfortunately, it takes the CR2032, which I have a ton of them.
And I did a practice run at one point to replace the battery in the fob. So that was the problem. So make sure you have a backup fob.
Might have been able most fobs you can there's like a little button you can press and it pulls out a mechanical key key yes yeah so that you could open the car yeah
I have a i have a widget question from that previous tip yeah so mentioned you know you could use the battery would widget in um what do we call this thing not control center the notification center right Is that what they call it?
On the Mac? I think it's Control Center on the Mac. Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?
Where your little notifications are, where you can add widgets, right? Where you click on the time and it slides out. Yeah. I thought, did I misunderstand they said that you couldn't have these on the desktop? Because you can drag those out and put them on the desktop.
Yes. And we've been able to do that at least since last year's OS. Maybe before. Right. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So did I mishear that? Because was that part of the complaint that you couldn't put the battery widget in a place where it would be visible all the time?
I think the issue was that your AirPods weren't listed there. Wasn't that part of it? Or am I now confusing?
Or the mouse.
Maybe it's the mouse. Sorry. The mouse. The mouse. Yes, yes, yes. The mouse. I'm on AirPods because that other AirBod.
I wonder why the mouse wouldn't be listed. Because I was wondering about this when I heard it. And I was checking it. And so I can see when I pulled my, I have my AirPods, I have my magic track pad, I have my magic keyboard and I have my Mac all on that widget. So I wonder why they would leave the mouse out.
That is weird. Huh. All right. Well, there it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's strange. I agree. Because you should be able to pull that out.
You're right.
Maybe this has, maybe this one has already been Sherlocked. There you go. Here's something to UnSherlock, though. The next one, right, Adam?
Oh, am I up again?
¶ Terry-CSF-O2 Buddy: Blood Oxygen brings Blood Oxygen data back to Apple Watch
I think so. I think so. Okay.
With Terry? Terry, all right. We're good. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I got my system here, so I can get there quickly. So Terry says, Hi, Dave, Pilot Pete, Adam, and John. I probably didn't know John was going to be here. I just upgraded from my Apple Watch Ultra 1 to the Ultra 3, and one thing I really missed since I have asthma was seeing my blood oxygen level right on the watch.
As you know, Apple has had to disable the O2 sensor for a while because of the lawsuit, and when they brought it back, readings only appeared on the iPhone, not on the watch itself. Well, I found a great workaround, an app called O2 Buddy Blood Oxygen. I first heard about it from a YouTube developer video that has since been pulled, but the app is still available in the App Store as of now. Once you install on your phone, it syncs to the watch and even works as a complication.
On the phone, the app shows your current reading, today's average, yesterday's average, and a scrollable list of recent samples. For example, mine shows today a 97% average and yesterday 95% with individual readings logged throughout the day. If you've been missing that live O2 data on your wrist, grab O2 Buddy Blood Oxygen. While you can, it might not stay up forever.
Interesting. I don't think they're doing anything that would put, I mean, A, it's not Apple's app, but B, I don't think they're doing anything that would put Apple in violation because the watch isn't showing you the reading live on the watch. Like this app, it's getting the data from health kit. So it's like almost real time, right? Reading from your phone to get that data and pull it in. So I think this is a clever workaround, which sucks.
Because Pete, your watch and my watch still show the... The ultras have never been affected by this. Oh, no, no, no. That's not true. Okay. Oh, interesting. Okay. Which is why I bought my Ultra 2 when I did, because it was before the cutoff. And then they had to re-engineer it so that that sensor was essentially turned off for a while. And like you were saying, Adam, they brought it back in this way. The phone can show it, but the watch can't. The Series 11, does that have it?
Now and only in this way in the new way yeah yeah as does as does the current apple watch ultra right like they had to they had to change it but thankfully they didn't have to take the feature away from those of us that already had it right yeah it's so valuable in general aviation to you know know what you know hey i need to get on supplemental oxygen even though i'm below the the faa mandated altitude i may need some supplemental oxygen here
or for somebody with asthma i mean there's a lot of reasons yeah oh yeah no and i don't think the lawsuit was what there weren't valid reasons the lawsuit was that someone had patented the idea of showing you this on your wrist i think that was the issue i think it was something along those lines go ahead adam yeah kiwi
Graham in the discord chat was alluding to that he also notes that this is u.s only so if you're outside the u.s you do still have this feature so yay united states
So could you buy an apple watch on a trip to europe and then and then you're good to go i
Would imagine they have it geolocated
Well but but like my watch is geolocated to the US and because I bought my watch before the government said Apple's had to stop selling these before the injunction happened, my watch still works this way here in the US. So I wonder if you bought a watch in Europe, right? Like, wouldn't the same, you know, thought process apply? I don't know. Maybe if you're a friend in Europe, have them buy you a watch and mail it to you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or take a trip. Why not?
There you go. That's right. That's an expensive watch. Well, or like, is Canada excluded from this? It might well be. In which case, you know, that's a five-hour drive for us, Pete. So yeah. Yep. And a nice place to visit. so i may have to go there next summer to see rush i know i know i said i wouldn't talk about it i'm going to talk about it a lot over the next year just get used to it folks it's how it's going to be i'm very very very excited about this uh where are we on time let's see a
Little bit more
Yeah we've got we've got time for one or two more oh pete you've got it pete's got a heart out in about three or four minutes all right well do you want to read this let's parachute back up one and then And then we'll do John's printer before, after you're finished. Okay. Let me go ahead and do that. Yeah.
¶ Tom-CSF-Parachute Backup for iCloud
So Tom wrote in about parachute backup. He says, hi guys. I've heard many times on the podcast about how storing files in iCloud can be problematic. Files are only backed up by programs like Time Machine if they are downloaded and physically located on the drive. If you're storing files in the cloud only, then only the pointers to the cloud files will be backed up. Enter parachute backup.
The third-party utility will backup your iCloud files and photos, even if they are stored in the cloud and are not physically located on the drive. When this program encounters a file that has been offloaded by iCloud, it temporarily downloads it, creates a local backup to your selected destination, and then automatically offloads it again from your Mac.
I have been using it with excellent results. This initial backup of my iCloud drive was surprisingly fast, and it appeared to take up only minimal temporary drive space while operating. It now incrementally backs up changes as often as I would like it to. Enjoy. Tom S. from Chicago. Did we cover this? I don't think so. I think there's a conversation in our Discord about it, too, which might be where you saw it. Yes. All right. Yeah.
I saw it. Man, I'm getting old, and I just don't remember. It's possible we covered it. I mean, there's a way, there are actually several ways to find out, but I will use the on-site search to see. But it's so good, it's worth covering twice. So nice, we'll cover it twice. There you go.
There you go. Excellent.
No, I don't see parachute in the show notes by the search engine at all. Okay. So, yeah, I think that's good stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bye, Pete. All right, Pete, I guess we've got to say goodbye to you before. Yeah, I'm going to bag out. Wonderful to see you, John, Dave, Adam. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you having me. I'll leave travels. Yeah. Later, Pete. See you. Don't get caught. Blessings. All right. I'll try not to. All right.
John, before we go, you want to do one more cool stuff found for us?
¶ JFB-CSF-Brother DCP-L2550GW
Sure. Um, excuse me. So another one of my toys died. My aging GCC 1200 DPI laser printer finally rolled over.
That thing was older than my children. Just to give everybody a perspective here, who now don't live at my house anymore. So, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Now, I'm not sure how I stumbled across this. I think I found an article that was like, oh, here's some multifunction printer scanner things you may be interested in. And the one that I picked up is the Brother DCPL2550DW, which they advertise as an all-in-one wireless monochrome printer, 2400 by 600 dpi, 36 pages per minute, 250-sheet... Tray. Tray. a 50-sheet ADF, automatic document feeder, and it does two-sided printing.
For $350?
Yeah.
That two-sided printing, that's fun, right?
Yes. Yeah, it's nice to get that choice when you're printing something, and it's like, oh, you want to double-side it so you can save some paper. The nice thing is that the scanner in this is color.
Right.
But the printing is only black and white.
Sure, sure.
Or grayscale. Yeah. But, yeah, and they even offer both a Mac and an iOS application that they call Scan and Print. Nice. So you can actually initiate operations like that remotely.
Huh.
This one I have set up via Earprint. Okay. And it talks to it just fine.
Yeah. That's great. $350. That's not bad, man. Huh. It looks like they've got go ahead adam yeah
I was gonna say i have a brother color one that i've owned for years and they're great um and i i was gonna try to find the model i'd my my daughter needed a printer too and we ended up getting her a brother black and white yeah laser i don't know if it was this model but you know it was relatively inexpensive and they're just really good quality and work really well with your mac yeah
It looks like there's quite a few options as I'm kind of scrolling around on Amazon here. I mean, you can even find something. It won't print quite as fast as the one you've got, John, but for like 160 bucks and it's multifunction. Won't do double-sided? No, we'll do double-sided. So yeah, I love the double-sided printing. I didn't think I was going to care about that feature at all. And it has become like it's table stakes now.
If I'm going to print something, I want to be able to print on both sides of the paper. No question.
Yep yeah absolutely yeah
That's pretty good
Uh yeah this model was the hl l2 460 dw i don't remember if it did but it was 180 bucks at the time we bought it that's right tax and everything yeah yeah yeah so that's awesome i don't remember if it did double-sided or not i thought it did i think it does
Based on the picture that i'm seeing here duplex yes It will do both sides.
Yeah, that's a nice little compact unit. Probably can get it cheaper than $180 now.
That won't do scanning. That's just printing.
It's just a printer, yeah. Just so everybody knows. Scanning feature. And I'll reiterate the tip that I gave on the scanning. John, I don't know if yours, I would assume yours, does yours have a USB port on the front of it? Mine had a USB port, and you can scan directly to USB, and it's so much faster than going over the network. And the network thing is fine, but I have had issues with that in the past where I'll start a scan over the network and it'll just disconnect or fail.
And I was trying to scan several, you know, a lot of pages. This was when I was trying to do something for one of my plays. But, you know, I just took my thing apart, put it in the automatic document feeder and it just went right to a USB PDF and then I could take that back to my Mac, you know, to a thumb drive.
That's pretty good. Huh? Very nice. All right.
¶ MGG 1111 Outtro
Well, this has been a pleasure. 11-11. We started with four ones. We did. We're down to three ones. So we're down to 1-11. 1-11. But what a blast having you back on the show for just an old school Mac Geek Gab hang.
I like it.
Fun. Uh, thanks to everybody listening. Thanks to all our premium supporters. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. If you need more of Pete and want to hear him on an even better mic than he had today, his So There I Was podcast for aviation enthusiasts is always a blast. The, uh, Adam's debut film podcast that you do with your daughter is a blast. I mentioned my other two, Gig Gab and Business Brain, uh, as we were talking
here. So if you need more of any of us, you can find us. John, where can people find you? Where do you hang out these days?
I'm still on Twitter. And yes, I'm going to call it Twitter.
Okay.
I do too.
It still disappoints me that, you know, Twitter had developed such a, you know, presence. And then he changes it to X. It's like, well, what does X mean?
I don't know. Do you own the domain? There you go.
Yeah, but most places. But yeah, on Twitter, if you want to chat, John F. Braun.
There you go. John F. Braun, ladies and gentlemen.
On Twitter and most other venues. I think I'm on Instagram and Facebook. But yeah, so John F. Braun. I put the F in there to distance myself from all the other John Brauns out there.
There you go.
John F. Braun, ladies and gentlemen. John, thank you. This is a blast, my friend. I really love this. It's fun. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. Make sure you go to MacGeekUp.com and leave us a review. We would love that. That would be fantastic. And it makes a huge difference in terms of getting the show out there and all that good stuff. Plus, we love hearing from you. Feedback at MacGeekUp.com also works. Oh, what a blast. Now I have to go buy Rush tickets. I know.
I'm still talking about it. For you. John, do you have any lasting, lingering advice that you might want to share with everybody listening?
Not really. Oh, no, there is one thing. And I encourage everyone to remember these three words. Don't get caught.
There it is. Couldn't have said it better myself. Made out of America. Later.