¶ QT-Disable Return to App if apps like workout are on screen too much
It's time for Mac Geek Cabin. I've got a quick tip of the week because I was out hiking this weekend and had the AllTrails app up on my phone and, of course, my watch. And then also the workout app offered to track things. And every time we look down at our watches, my son and I both had this problem, it would show the workout app and not the AllTrails app. And I was like, no, I kind of want to see the map that we have for the trail to make sure we know that we're supposed to turn right here.
And we just dealt with it for the whole hike, which was fine. Of course, first world problems. But there is a solution to this one. If you go into the settings for your watch in the watch app on your phone and go to the app specific settings, there is a when in session return to app toggle. And if you turn that off for, in our situation, say the workout app, it would not keep returning to the workout app. It would have left it on, in our case, all trails.
More quick tips like this and your questions answered and cool stuff found today on MacGeekAb1110 for Monday, October 6th, Zero Inbox Day. Good luck with that. 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Hub, the show where we share your quick tips like that. We share your cool stuff found. We share your questions.
We share answers to those questions, or at least possible solutions to the problems, all in the interest of each and every one of us learning at least five new things every single time we get together. Our sponsors for this episode include Coda.io slash MGG. We can go to get six months of their team plan for startups for free. Very cool service. One doctor ruled them all. Highly recommended. Gusto.com slash MGG, where you get three months free when you run your first payroll.
With gusto shopify.com slash mgg where you can sign up for a one dollar per month trial period and start selling today or upgrade your selling today and drink ag1.com slash mgg to get a free welcome kit including a bottle of vitamin d and free ag1 travel packs when you first subscribe we'll talk more about all of those in a minute here uh and we'll also tell you
¶ Pete’s high!
that our monthly The giveaway at macgeekup.com slash giveaway is with power photos here for the month of October. So if you don't already have a license to that, go sign up for the giveaway. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And here in Driggs, Idaho, it's Pilot Pete. I'm at altitude, baby.
How many days have you been at altitude? That was the question.
We got here Saturday, and it's now recording Friday. So, yeah, and sadly, we're heading back to New Hampshire tomorrow. Well, you know, sadly and happily. Sure, sure. But, yeah, it's taken a little adjusting to get to. We have two cans. You can buy, actually, oxygen cans in the local grocery store here with, you know, 50 or 60 intake breaths. I only hit it once, like the second night we were here, just two or three breaths, and that felt really good. It was like, oh, that's nice.
The other thing you have out here, about the same size and shape, I would highly recommend, not confusing in the dark, is bear spray. Do you know what bear spray is?
Yeah, don't inhale that. Don't inhale the bear spray by accident.
No.
Yeah, that's a don't get caught right there.
Yeah, man. You know, I'd heard of it but never really understood what it was because we don't have it really in New Hampshire. Not the issue in New Hampshire. But yeah, it's a big can like the size of a Lysol can full of pepper spray on steroids.
Yeah.
And, man, yeah, it's a last resort to get away from those things that like to eat people.
Yeah. So it's fair to say that Pete's high for this episode, Adam.
Yes.
Well, this is what I wanted to get to. I mean, until recently, Pete, I would think technically... You spent a good portion of your life at altitude.
I have. And even in the airplane, with a pressurized cabin, we're still at 5,000 or 6,000 feet. So, you know, you're semi-climate.
I found it interesting when we flew to Maxstock, we were at 8,000 or 9,000 feet. I think about 8,000 feet for a good stretch, for one decent stretch, you know, for an hour and change or whatever.
And we both had our apple watch ultras on and and our watches can can sense our uh and could at the time sense our our our blood oxygen yeah and and i recall mine being much lower than yours and and and you you just commented you're like well i'm i'm used to it like you know i do all the things i know to breathe deeply and like all the little tricks that plus your body's simply used to it It was very interesting because mine was, I think, at one point down at like 90,
maybe even like 88 or something, and yours was not, which was good.
Yeah, I mean, even up here, you know, 97 is low for me up here. So frequently I get 100 readings, so that's good.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Interesting.
That's fascinating. I have to tell you this. You guys indulge me here. The story is when you go out to the park and you're getting ready to go hiking in Yellowstone or Alaska, for that matter, where there are bears, The ranger will say, put little bells on your sneakers so that bears hear you coming and go away. Carry with you the pepper spray and be on the lookout for bear scat, to which the common question is, how can you tell them what's bear scat?
He says, well, it has little bells in it and it smells like pepper spray.
Yes. Yes. Yes. That's a good reminder right there. All right.
Yeah. So should we move on to quick tips?
Oh, I can't wait.
All right. Well, I'll take us to our first quick tip of the week then with Joe,
¶ Joe-QT-Phone-2-Phone Connection = Fastest new setup! USB-C to Lightning worked for me!
who writes in, so guys, I just got my new iPhone 17 Pro and was double checking all the steps to do the migration from my existing 14 Pro Max. One thing that ChatGPT showed me that I had never noticed before was to use a lightning to USB-C connector between the two phones to do the transfer. It was noted as being the fastest approach over even connecting to the Mac because you don't have to do all the interim backups and such.
Obviously, you would still want to do backups, but it doesn't really rely on those for the transfer. And it worked great. It took about two hours in total. So, and I'm like, that's brilliant. And my new iPhone should be here at home when I get home, and I will be doing it. And mine's a C2C transfer.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's great. Great tip. much faster I would think it.
I'm I'm I'm lost on this I have a hi my name is Dave and I have a question how do you tell it to to to do that like what what is the process because I asked because I got my new iPhone 17 Pro in orange and it When I did the iPhone to iPhone transfer and once it started, I plugged the cable into two of them and the time did not really seem to change at all. It did nothing.
There was no acknowledgement. And I recall doing this with a previous phone and failing, but it was like the first time Apple let you do it and everybody failed it. Most everybody failed. Yeah. So I know it's possible. I know that I've done it before, but I thought it was just I thought it was like doing migration assistant between two Macs where it starts wirelessly.
And then if you plug them into each other, here's a bonus quick tip, it will just shift over to Thunderbolt or USB and it will show you that on on the screen like of the of one or maybe even both of the Macs. So, you know that this has happened. There was no indication, uh, explicit or even sort of implicitly that, that, that this was working. And I did use a Thunderbolt cable. So I wasn't using, I went, I first started to use the cable that came with my iPhone.
I was like, wait, wait, wait, this is a charging only cable. This is USB two. I should use something that's good. That could go faster. although i don't think my old phone could have gone faster than usb 2 now that i think about it because the iphone 17 doesn't have faster usb but in any event i'm just curious adam do you did i did i vamp long enough to have you look up the answer great support
Article yeah thank you i mean according to apple in their support article which will add the link to the show notes uh it appears that their recommended steps are to connect the cable to both devices first, then turn on both devices and follow on-screen instructions.
Okay, so it's got to be there
When you start. Have them both powered off. I don't even know if that's required. I wouldn't think it's required, but the explicit instructions for all versions, whether you're going from an iPhone 15 or later, or a 14 to a 15 or a 14 and earlier to a 14 whatever sure every single one of them says connect the cable to the charging ports of your previous phone and your new phone then turn on both devices and follow the on-screen instructions okay okay
All right. Yeah. All right. So that's what I, I confused. I mean, in the end it got done. It was interesting though. I, I started it. I had like a band rehearsal or whatever. Then like the phone arrived. I opened it up to make sure. Yep. There it is. Got to go. And then came home and it was like, whatever, 1030 or something. I started the transfer. Uh, wanted to go to sleep at about midnight 30. Like by the time I got everything rolling, it was still not finished.
So I was like, well, that's fine. I'll put, you know, I'll put the two iPhones on the bedside table, plug them, plugged one in and put, I put, plug my old one into, you know, USB charging. And the new one, I just put on my MagSafe, like nightstand thing. And in the morning, neither of them had been charged to full. The transfer was done, but it was very strange that at some point, both of them had stopped charging. And neither one has ever had an issue with charging before or since.
So I thought that was odd. Like I woke up and you know, my new phone was at 42% or something. It wasn't even like I'd stopped at 80.
Wasn't even close.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know what that was all about. Haven't seen that issue since then. But here I mention it because that's what we do on this show. And if you see anything familiar or understood why, feedback at MacGear.com keeps the conversation going.
Yeah you heard him there feedback at macgeekab.com tell them tell us about your new phone transfer.
There you go yeah but i i like the new phone it's fine it's very heavy the 17 pro compared to the 16 not pro like i know i know i said i got the 17 pro because of the battery life batteries. It's like they have mass. I understand, but it, it's two things can be true at the same time. It's very heavy. Like I, I, I'm, I'm still in my 14 day window. I'm like tempted to like, maybe should I go with the air? I don't know. So.
Right. I got the, the blue one and now everybody's getting the orange. I'm like, maybe I should have gotten the orange. Cause I've heard that the blue one scratches pretty.
Pretty easily. I thought you ordered the orange.
I was going to. And for whatever reason, I changed my mind at the last minute, pulled the trigger on the blue. So. Got it.
Got it. Interesting.
Well, there you go. They're all nice. I looked at all of them in the Apple store. Yeah. Also, I was muted earlier. Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
Oh, thank you. That's excellent. Yes. Everything's right in the universe now.
Yeah, right?
All right.
All right.
¶ Ben-QT-1108-Photos can create printed books with third party extensions
Let's go to Ben over at Sustainable Computing, because he says, as you may read in Mac Mondays, which is an article he does on his site, and I'm sure we'll have a link to it in the show notes at MacGeekGab.com. Slash show notes. Is that right?
Uh just at macgeekup.com i mean that's that's the show notes are always there yeah you just pick your episode but yes we have a link to max to mac mondays from ben
Yeah he says on uh 11 08 pete alluded and dave confirmed that photos no longer offers the service of creating printed books from our pictures however that's not quite accurate uh actually it's apple who no longer offers the service photos retains this capability through third-party project extensions in photos go to File, Create, and select a publication type. Then you can choose an extension you've already installed to handle that type
or link to the Apple Store to find one. Until next time, Ben.
Huh.
So now what I need, this is a great tip. Now what I need to know is which book service is the one to use. Because if you follow the link to the App Store, there's quite a few. It looks like the two best ones or the ones that have the two highest reviews are, well, Mimeo Photos and Motif, I think, are similar. And then I think Presto Photos had the best review rating so far. Also, Milk Books looked pretty nice.
So anybody who's used, again, going back to the feedback thing, if you used any of these services and like one in particular, let me know. because I think I want to do some of these because I haven't printed out or... I like this idea we came up with. Same. Creating a collection of some of your favorite photos in a physical form that's, you know, just sitting around.
So, you know, once a year, I think I want to make one of these with my favorite photos from the year and just start to have a collection of books on the shelf that have...
Yeah photos so you're right there's there's five listed you you listed three mimeo motif presto photo and then milk books and friedman print we'll look into each of these and and if we can do a little review of of one or more of them it would be great to kind of report back if uh but but yes if you folks can report back too that's even better so huh yeah this is how How did, I mean, I was going to ask, how did we miss this? But I love that we missed it.
That's kind of why we keep doing the show. Because there's always things to learn. And I love that Apple didn't take this away. Like that's the.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, even better, they opened it up with these extensions. So, yeah.
Yeah, you're right. that's even better that we're not just limited to what apple decides they would want us to have right you know yeah huh all right yeah we gotta dig into this this is great good time of year for it too right
Yeah right how about i take us to tim.
¶ Tim-QT-Save pictures from your iPhone to an SD Card
Yeah okay
Tim writes in with a quick tip about saving your pictures from your iPhone. He says, hi, if you travel a lot and take a lot of photos on your iPhone, you might find you need a place to store those photos before you return home and back them up to your computer. Of course, the cloud is a great option, but what if you're out in the woods camping and the phone is full? And this week, personally, I can attest to the fact that there is zero zip, not a coverage in the national parks.
No cell phone towers out there. No data. So he says Apple sells a lightning to USB camera adopter for $40 that is suited for that purpose. By connecting it to the USB port on your Mac, you can you can format the SD card. I used a 64 gig one and then attach the cable to my iPhone and selected the pictures, including the videos you want to move to the SD card. You then select share. And when presented with a list, select the SD card.
The transfer is quick and easy. When the transfer is gone, you can delete the photos from your iPhone and free up all the space they took. Tim, that's a great one, Tim. Huh. Never even thought about putting it on the SD card. But yet another way to back up.
Yeah.
You know, take a little SD card, put all your photos on there, throw it in the safe. Do that once a year. And if the cloud ever fails, you still got your photos.
Yes. I would also recommend possibly just doing a USB-C thumb drive.
Yeah. That was kind of where I thought this was going. I feel like that, I mean, SD cards have their purpose in life. But yeah, I agree with you, Adam. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't see why. Both. Because then you don't need two things. On a phone that has a usbc port right like if you have a lightning port on your phone then then you're going to need a dongle either way but yeah yeah huh i
Mean it's useful for other purposes i think it has is it a single
Adapter or does it
Have multiple is it only an sd card i think i used to have one of the the lightning version of this i probably still have it as a
Metaphor i think the lightning version is the only version that exists from apple does apple have a usbc to camera adapter or is it that
I don't know because the you know you've got all these dongles out there or you know the yeah it's a dongle portable hub whatever you're right it has the uh you know sd card slot in it, Yeah. So lightning USB three. Well, he's, but hold on, let me double check.
No, I mean, he just says,
Oh, lightning USB camera adapters, what he's talking about in there. So, yeah.
Yeah. It's just, it's just got a USB a port and then a pass through lightning port on the other end is Apple's, Apple's adapter. So you're, you're, you're still needing to connect it to your SD card reader or writer, right? You know, something. So yeah.
Apple does have one.
Okay. What's it called?
USB-C to SD card reader, $39. But you can get $10 ones, $10 or less on Amazon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
So your mileage may vary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Amazon's choice is a $14 one that has three ports. It's got micro SD, regular SD, USB-A. So we'll put a link to this one in the, in the show notes for, uh, for everybody. But yeah. Yep.
I'm just looking forward now to ditching lightning. Once my phone comes, Debbie gets my 16 with the light with no more lightning ports needed in the house or cords.
It's like heaven.
Yeah. I still, I charge, I've run, I have no lightning ports needed and lightning cords needed in the house anymore. But the iPads that I use for gigging are all still, uh, lightning, but it's fine. I mean, I like, you know, my drums, she can kind of see behind me. I have three lightning cables that, so I can charge all three iPads at once
if I need to, you know, before a gig, like I'm doing right now. And, uh, and it works fine like it's all very standardized that where it's going to be a problem is when i decide to start moving you know like my my ipad mini 6 when when i replace that for its daily use and then that becomes my ipad for you know music now i've got two different chargers to contend with again for probably a very long time because the the things i use those ipads for that
don't require the latest and greatest, right? So there's an alarm going on. Oh, it's my alarm. Oh, that's nice. Oh, yeah.
Finally, Dave does one.
I did that. I did that.
Adam's got a siren coming up. I usually interrupt with Debbie's work phone, and now it's your turn, Dave.
Yeah. We record at 9 a.m. Typically, and I was here in the studio prepping Gig Gab that I recorded earlier this week. I got here a little early and was like, oh, I can get that done. Like, well, I need to set an alarm so that I don't just blow through 9 a.m. And evidently, when I told the S lady to set the alarm, I was thinking, I got to be ready for 9 a.m. So I need a 9.59 a.m. alarm. There you go. I did not. I needed a 9.59.
Hurry up, run back in time, Dave. Yes. You're stuck in that linear time.
Yeah, I know.
Oh, and Dan in the comments points out there are also flash drives with lightning plugs on them. So he's a SanDisk made at least one model.
Interesting.
Yeah. So for those of you still on Lightning for a few more years, I mean, geez, you know, those phones are going to last a while. If you're not doing a show like this and upgrading every year, because you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I think I had one of those SanDisk ones. It had a little flip around thing. I think it had both USB-C and Lightning, if I remember correctly.
Huh.
Interesting. That's kind of cool.
Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. All right. We have a few things to do here. We have a few more quick tips to run through here. The next thing that we want to do is tell you about our sponsors. And let's be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings,
¶ SPONSOR: Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll when you start at gusto.com/MGG
managing benefits, or juggling compliance. And that's where our sponsor Gusto comes in because they did all that. And then they can take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR for you so that you can focus on what matters most, like, let's say, recording a podcast or, you know, running your tech business. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay,
hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I haven't used Gusto yet, but every time I look at it, and I've been looking, it just makes sense. From automatic payroll, tax filing, to easy direct deposits and built-in HR tools, Gusto is clearly designed for people like us who know tech, not so much with the tax codes. And it's quick to switch. You don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll.
So why not try it out? Try Gusto today at Gusto.com slash MGG and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at Gusto.com slash MGG. One more time, Gusto.com slash MGG. And our thanks to Gusto for sponsoring this episode. And, you know, when we started this whole thing here, there was no playbook, right?
¶ SPONSOR: Shopify. For anyone to sell anywhere, sign up for a one-dollar-per month trial period at Shopify.com/MGG and upgrade your selling today!
It was, you know, figure out your mics, your scripts, your website, stand up a server, figure out your logos, all while still learning or even inventing what podcasting was together with everybody who was doing it. Right. Super exciting, somewhat overwhelming. And there were pieces that we had to create on our own. And I can only imagine how much simpler it would have been with our sponsor,
Shopify, by our side. because Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses powering 10% of all U.S. E-commerce from brands you know, like Mattel and Gymshark to the ones just getting started. I use Shopify with one of my other shows to do merch and all that stuff, and it's amazing. It's super easy. They've got beautiful templates to make your site look pro and AI tools to help with product descriptions, marketing, even your photography.
It's like having your own built-in tech team and design studio in one. From inventory to international shipping, Shopify makes all of it super easy. And with tools to spread the word, email, social, and more, it's no wonder they become the platform for launching and growing businesses. So don't get caught stuck in the startup spiral. Turn your big business idea into ka-ching with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash MGG.
Go to shopify.com slash MGG. One more time. Shopify.com slash MGG. And our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. All right. Back to quick tips.
¶ QT-Check your “Notify when left behind” Find My settings
I noticed something. I went and was looking. One of my various third party, and I don't know that it matters as a third party, but one of my AirTags that I have in my car, like connected to an old pair of AirPods, every time I leave the house, it chimes. It like rings, you know, it sets off a bell. I'm like, why is this? And I, candidly, I still can't figure out why.
Because there's nothing in there. But and maybe also because I got distracted when I went into my settings and looked at the whole like, OK, is it part of the notify when left behind thing? Right. Like, is there something weird? Like, it's almost notifying me when it leaves, not when it got left behind. Like, is there something weird? And I looked in there. And there were four listings for this particular AirTag. One was my home. Perfect. One was a place in Manchester, New Hampshire.
One was a place in Seabrook, New Hampshire. And one was Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia, where Lisa and I just were. I can guarantee you that this AirTag was never at Hampton Coliseum because it was in my car. And my car was at home while or at Logan Airport while we were in Hampton, Virginia. And then I looked and every single one of my AirTags, including my Apple one. So this is nothing to do with whether it's Apple or third party had the exact same exception list.
I definitely didn't set this for any of them, at least not intentionally.
And yet it was set for all of them and i had to go in manually painstakingly and remove the three i don't want it to yell at me when i leave it at home but all the other locations there they are i have no idea how it got set this way uh i certainly didn't intend to do it i don't i maybe i unintentionally did it we must acknowledge that but i i don't know so i'm i here's my quick tip slash don't get caught like go check those because they you might find some surprising things like i did i don't
know wow yeah yeah so anyway that's that's what i got on that one All right kiwi so we
¶ Kiwi Graham-QT-Notes in macOS 26 now supports Markdown export!
Go to our favorite uh fruit man right
That's right man
Kiwi gram has a tip for us i just gave him that
Nickname yeah yeah sorry kiwi stuck now
I've just upgraded he says hi guys i've just upgraded to tahoe and noticed when i open the notes app that import and export for markdown is now supported i haven't given it a full test so i'm not sure how well it handles complex notes given your many conversations about notes sharing apps and their interoperability you may well have noticed this already but i but it's worth pointing out as one of those slow feature improvements from
Apple.
Awesome. I am curious to see if it now natively supports me writing in Markdown. Is it just the import? Or is it just import-export? Or can I actually... Use markdown and then have it convert i'm hoping it is the latter as well
But we'll
Find out i haven't upgraded to tahoe yet so i don't don't know
Yeah i'm not on tahoe on this mac um but so i can't test it right here but oh interesting um there is a mac there's a mac rumors article oh that's true yes uh baron the the end of the mac mac or part of the mac rumors article about this says bear in mind that notes doesn't display markdown syntax when you're writing it continues to show rich text formatting as usual the markdown conversion happens during the import and export process so you'll see plain text formatting only when viewing the
file outside of notes okay sure yeah but that so that doesn't answer your question which I thought it might I mean we could test it on the iPhone
Yeah because I'm like I have other apps I have other apps that support markdown and they kind of do this real-time conversion of it, right? So Ulysses is kind of a great example of that. It displays the formatting after you type it or enter it in,
Basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it kind of converts on the fly. But the underlying file is still marked down.
I don't think it's converting on the fly because I just did two asterisks and then wrote this is bold, which is what that should have done, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not i'm not seeing one asterisk one is it one is it it can be wondered
It could i can never remember i get
Confused well i tried both and neither worked yeah so it is not letting me write in markdown at least not on my iphone running 2601 i believe yeah whatever whatever is current well whatever my phone thought was current as of now but yeah so it does not do that on the phone don't and it is 2601 i don't know um yeah interesting yeah i'll
Have to play with it when i when i upgrade
Yeah fun uh we you know what while we're here now that we're talking about upgrading we have a question uh that we were going to get to later but roger uh asked you you want to you want to you want to just read us roger's question here pete
¶ Roger-When is it safe to upgrade to iOS 26 and macOS 26?
i know i'm putting you on the spot. I can.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Let me find it real quick. I'm sorry.
Um, no, I I'm, I'm the one calling audibles here. Yeah.
Yeah. See you Roger. Where is, uh.
I don't know where I put it. If I can't find it.
I'll just type in his name here in notes and see if it comes up. When is it safe to upgrade iOS 26 and macOS 26?
I mean, that's pretty much the question.
Yeah. Hey, guys, after listening to your latest episodes, I held off loading both iOS 26 and macOS on my devices. It's a bit like having a box of chocolates and not being able to open them. I feel your pain, Roger. Until when? When do you think it's a good time to upgrade? Kind regards, Roger. um and i still have it on my mac but okay obviously yes and.
Adam you haven't on your mac have you on your phone
Oh yeah absolutely the the phone my ipad my vision pro uh everything's been updated uh i can't my watch i'm in a series six i can't remember it's supported or not
Um but yeah
I've done everything other than my mac and the only reason i haven't done my Mac is because I do this show on it. I do an audio podcast. I have a Motu interface. I need to do research on figuring out, am I going to have any audio issues? Because I can't have that. Right. And I haven't had time to do the research. I've been doing this show. I've been working.
So it comes down to needing to do my due diligence to make sure anything that is critical to my life and working on that machine is not going to break before I upgrade. And that's the general advice I give most people. Now my phone and other devices, I know I can, I'm making the conscious choice that there's nothing mission critical on there that I, you know, if it broke, I would be super sad about. So, you know, that's sort of how I draw that line is like, okay, what am I using this device for?
What apps and functionality do I have on there? And just frankly, outside the Mac, over the years, I've just found, you know, iOS to be pretty stable. I mean, the most often common thing I think you'll get is sort of like we talked about last time, some people reported a few battery issues and things like that. But, you know, I feel like iOS has generally been relatively safe. I don't remember any years where something's gone really, really sideways.
Anyways um the
Mac is a little more
You know again
Mission critical because i rely on that for my web development i rely on it for
Um audio
And stuff like that so
Uh as someone who is running 26 on most but clearly not all of my devices uh so i am running it on all of my iPhones and iPads that will let me uh I am running it on every Mac except for the one here so uh I would, I think iOS 26 and iPad, iOS 26 is definitely ready. IPad OS 26 is fine. I've chosen to turn on the windowed mode, which really isn't good for an iPad mini. I've done it so that I can have experience with it, right?
But it's not something I would actually use. And really what happens is I wind up accidentally moving something from full screen into windowed and then being like, oh, yeah, I can do that. But it is a good reminder because we do this show, like how to be functional in that mode. And it's great. And I think if I had a larger screen iPad, I would absolutely love it. But I don't love it on my iPad mini for obvious reasons. You know, it's like I want all the real estate I can take, which is fine.
But it's stable i i do recommend it and you can turn i can't i could turn off the ability to go in and out of windowed mode so that that didn't happen uh but i i just intentionally have not as far as mac os um i part of me wishes i waited until at least 26.1 um and it's A large part of that is like third-party stuff. Bartender had to change everything about the way that it does stuff to manage my menu bar to the point where on the Mac in the office, I have turned off Bartender.
And I know it keeps getting better every day, but I've turned it off and I'm just using Apple's stuff to manage what's allowed in my menu bar. And that's that. And also telling apps that just willy nilly put things up there. And over the years, I've just been like, yeah, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. Now it's like, no, it's not totally fine. I don't need that in the menu bar. I can access it another way. So that's made things a little better.
But it's not just bartender. my mac in the office and i know this is not a universal experience because my laptop does not my m2 laptop is fine not suffering from what i'm about to share here but my m1 mini in the office and i don't think it has anything to do with the cpu has been indexing since i installed mac os 26 two weeks ago uh it like just doesn't stop it's the media media indexer d or whatever it is media library indexer d it seems to be going through my photo library over and
over and over again uh i've tried deleting caches i've tried deleting indexes i've tried you know all the things and thus far have have only been able to get it to like back off occasionally i did uh there's There's a cool stuff found coming at some point from somebody reminding us of a long favorite app called AppTamer that I used here in the studio on my Intel Mac for a long time. What it does is it allows you on a process by process basis to.
Control how much cpu any given process can can take and it's great for spotlight indexing like my machine that my in the studio here i i made spotlight like a very low priority so that it wouldn't just decide hey we're in the middle of a show now's a great time to take all of your cpu this app is actually the thing when i when i'm sitting in my office and anybody if you're listening uh and i hope you're not but if if somebody is so be it you hope they're
Not listening wait.
Well when i'm down in my office here i hope you're listening but when i'm in my office i hope you're not listening because i am very politely and with words that would make both parents and children just smile and radiate love and peace and joy uh i am saying something along the lines of hey do you think maybe i could be the one to use my computer now um and uh an app tamer actually lets me do that so so it has been helpful but it's it's not a solution
obviously to this problem it's a it's a good thing and i'll probably leave it on there even after this because i'd forgotten how much i liked it and it works well with apple silicon and all that now um but uh it is the thing that is making life possible on that computer right now which is not a great thing to say and again i don't think it has anything to do with the fact that it's an m1 versus you know an m2 my m2 machine just isn't just doing this indexing constantly um
so there's there's something wrong and it it might be it like i need to nuke and pave or some version of that with something i don't know but um i'm hoping that this is something that's fixed in like you know 2602 i guess maybe that's the computer to put the beta on and uh and then report the bug in the beta, right? Because they pay attention to those a little bit more closely. But maybe the beta fixes it. That's it. I did learn a thing, though, but I'm happy to talk about it then. Yeah.
And even on my laptop, it's just a little bit janky. Like, for example, when I wake my laptop from sleep, the CPUs just peg for for longer than than they should. Just everything kind of being like, oh, I got to wake up like it's just doing more. But they don't peg for very long on the laptop. It's just like, yeah, OK, I see. It wants to do more. It wants to use more of my computer than, than previously. And I'm guessing that that's going to get, get remedied.
That's really what it is. It's just a little bit sluggish and wonky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and Matthew in the comments said he wished he could roll back on both his phone and his watch. You know, I asked him why and he says, so he's the one on the watch.
I noticed too, is the Apple workouts, audible announcements of your running time and your splits and all that has, has mysteriously gone away um so uh which i used a lot i really enjoyed that and i i just thought, i had done something to change it i forgot that i had upgraded to what watch os yeah you know because dave i didn't change anything i don't.
Yeah right right
That's my story and i'm stuck with it yep.
So is sorry if this is a dumb question but i just don't know and don't have time to look up um is the like workout assistant rolled into watch os yet the watch os health app thing right doesn't apple have new like workout assistant service and could this be a change they're gonna like roll it into something like that
To some degree i haven't done uh i haven't done a deep dive on it yet i just know it was nice before to tell me hey you're behind your pace from yesterday oh you're ahead of your pace from yesterday and all that seems to have gone away it still gives me my mile split right and that kind of thing but yeah uh but i haven't but but it looks like there's down yeah down in there deep in there you could get it to to talk to you more and, huh workout buddy i think they call it yeah.
But you have to use siri and ai and stuff like that so i think that was also saying he's not interested in using that stuff oh
Interesting yeah i see what you're saying yeah yeah yeah
Yeah i.
Wonder i i had the same thought about it Like, why would I want that? And the answer can be, it's not for you, Dave, right? Like, that's okay. But I also wonder if it's one of those features that if I were to give it a try with an open mind, I might be all in. Like focus modes, for example. You know, because at first I was like, that's not for me. That's not for me. Now, oh my gosh, it's 100% for me. Right. Yeah. They definitely designed it for me.
So, I don't know. Like, I don't know. And that's kind of what I'm trying to communicate here is we don't know until we try. So. I did learn something, though, from my – oh, do you have a question,
¶ DLH-Syndication.photoslibrary appears in my home folder and holds images and videos from Messages
Adam, before we move on? No, no, no. Okay, great. In digging into the Media Analysis D thing that was – and I'm sure still is – chewing on my photo libraries, the plurality of that is what I noticed. And it was actually, you know, I started feeding logs into ChatGPT out of frustration and desperation and all that. And it's been somewhat helpful and somewhat, you know, whatever. It's ChatGPT's troubleshooting. It's, you know, it gives you ideas.
But it showed that I had, it was like, well, you've got these two photos libraries. And I'm like, no, I don't. But, of course, it was not wrong. So I have my main photos library, which is on an external drive. This is not going where you think it's going, folks, unless you know exactly where it's going. Then that's where it's going. And that one's there, and that's fine. And then on my internal drive, I have another photos library.
And I thought when it started telling me this that it was like, oh, shoot, do I still have some like lingering photos library and home photos, you know, whatever, home pictures, whatever it is. The answer is no. I have, as we all have, a syndication.photos library buried in my home library folder, not for me to find. It is a 40 gigabyte library, and it contains every single photo that I've ever sent or received in messages. You knew about this, Adam.
Oh, yeah.
I had no idea that that's where it was storing all that stuff it makes sense why would he why would you recreate the wheel if you were apple if you want to index these photos and do all the things well then why not just have it happen there so it makes sense but i had no idea and and this problem is happening with both of them it's just constant well near as i can tell both of them are are in the index process so you know yeah i
Mean as a dad with a one daughter who loves sending photos and videos all the time i learned this pretty quickly
I i knew it was taking up space on my mac because i i i resemble the remark you made uh but i did not know where it was so yeah and you can open that library and treat it like a photo i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't add things to it but you can parse it you can yeah i double clicked it that
I didn't know that i
Didn't know it opens right up in photos it's happy i wouldn't choose to make it my iCloud Photos library or anything, that would cross the streams.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
But it's in the home folder? I'm not seeing it in the home folder.
No. Well, yes. It's in home, library, it's buried. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, let me see if I can find it.
Syndication?
Yeah. Home, library. It's called syndication.photoslibrary, but it's in, I don't know, it's buried in there. Maybe it's in, oh yeah. Yeah. If you look in home library photos, not home photos, but home library photos, libraries.
Yep.
That's where it is. Yeah.
There you go. Libraries. Yeah. Syndication photos library. And then you just, I suppose, click it and show package contents. I mean, it's only five gigs. Wow.
Well, you probably tell it to optimize storage or not sync all your photos or maybe, or maybe that's all you've got i don't know i
Would think i have a lot more because i also have a.
Uh yes
We all have daughters.
That's all that's all it needs to be said that's right
I'll need to double check my settings because mine's actually tiny and i know i've got tons of stuff in there but i maybe i have my messages set up in a certain way where it's not
You might not be syncing your messages to to your mac i you're oh
That's entirely possible
Right if you go into the messages app and go to settings and then iMessage there is enable messages in cloud i i think that would be part of this right syncing everything down so yeah we're
Gonna play with it
Yeah yeah yeah so just
Delete the file you're fine what could go wrong i haven't.
Yeah i wouldn't i I would not mess with this.
Don't do that.
Just kidding. Right. Right. But it is there. That is where that stuff is stored. So that's the thing I learned. So anyway, that that's, that's what I, that's what I have to say about that. We have more, is there more to say on this topic before we move on? Because we have, we need to decide. So everybody cast your votes. We need to decide whether, whether we're jumping straight to questions. We're doing cool stuff found. The next thing that we're going to do is talk about our sponsors.
So, you know how we're always saying here on MGG, It's good to know what normal
¶ SPONSOR: AG1. Head to DrinkAG1.com/MGG to get a FREE Welcome Kit, including a bottle of Vitamin D and free AG1 Travel Packs, when you first subscribe! That’s DrinkAG1.MGG.
looks like so you can know when something isn't. Well, that's part of why I've started using AG1 from drinkag1.com slash MGG. It's become part of my morning routine, and I like it. I love that AG1 is formulated not just to include vitamins and probiotics, but to ensure my body actually absorbs them. One scoop, once a day, and boom, I'm getting 75-plus nutrients, Five probiotic strains, and no need for a multivitamin or separate supplements.
It even helps me start my day with hydration because you put the powder in the thing, you shake it, and you drink it. I feel great right away with all that hydration. It's starting my day. It's awesome, right? It's a microhabit that's supporting my whole body health every day. And for me, that's worth it. But AG1 Next Gen is helping to raise the standard with multiple gold standard clinical trials in an industry where not everybody invests heavily in research.
They go to great lengths to continually invest in rigorous peer-reviewed clinical trials. I love that. Head to drinkag1.com to get a free welcome kit, including a bottle of vitamin D and free AG1 travel packs when you first subscribe. That's drinkag1.com slash MGG. And our thanks to AG1 for sponsoring this episode.
¶ SPONSOR: Coda, the one Doc to rule them all. Bring your text and tables together! Get six months of the team plan for startups for FREE at Coda.io/mgg.
And you know how it feels when your ideas are flowing, but your tools are slowing you down? That's one of the things I love about using our sponsor, Coda. I discovered it while working with one of my other businesses. We use it there. And it's one of those tools I didn't know I needed until I did. So Coda brings your docs, your spreadsheets, your databases, even AI all together in one place.
And now with Coda Brain, powered by Grammarly, it's like having an ultra-organized assistant who's also your best editor and project manager all in one. So whether you're managing a startup, your team's podcast workflow, for example, or you just want to clean up the chaos across all your tools, Coda connects with Salesforce, Jira, Figma, Asana, and more. So you're building smarter systems instead of fighting fragmented ones.
Really, this thing's built for geeks like us, so don't get caught using clunky tools. Head over to Coda.io slash MGG right now and get six months of the team plan for startups for free. That's C-O-D-A dot I-O slash M-G-G and get six months of the team plan for free. Coda.io slash M-G-G. And our sincere thanks to Coda for sponsoring this episode. And all right, guys, are we moving to Cool Stuff Found? Are we moving to Don't
¶ Pete got caught!
Get Caught? All right, Cool Stuff Found it is. Let's go. Okay. Great. That's you, Adam. That's Alex, I think, right?
And I'm already on deck.
I got a quick question. Dave, I didn't realize you were doing a live read because I went off to look at something else. Did you guys hear me blowing my nose or did you mean me?
No, no, no. That's why I texted you earlier that we were going to be doing a live read for that one. But that's okay. Yep.
Sorry, everyone.
It's all good. just
The the more well now that you pointed it out now everybody knows pete so great
Yeah but it was not as loud as you think okay
Well it's good you know i'm just glad i didn't go to the head.
You know yeah leslie nielsen rest in peace uh when i do gig gab uh for musicians sometimes people ask me on the show uh can i swear like they'll ask in the pre-show or whatever you know And what I tell them is, yes, do whatever you want. It's as easy to check a box. It's a show for musicians. I generally don't swear on that show, but I understand it's a natural thing. It's very normal with musicians especially. It's fine. But what I tell them is, if you decide to swear, just roll with it.
Or if you catch yourself swearing unintentionally, roll with it. If you stop and ask, is it, oh, shoot, I swore. And I'm like, now it's a segment. Which is exactly what's happened with your blowing your nose here. It's a segment.
My apologies, everyone. I assumed I was muted because I had gone off to find my next read.
Yep, there you go.
Didn't have myself on top.
There you go.
I got caught.
Yes.
Let's get uncaught and do some quick tips. I got right on here.
¶ Alex-QT-Use Quinn Nelson's Shortcut to Open Settings from Current App
It says, one of you likely has already seen this new idea from Quinn Nelson. But just in case not... He has a clever shortcut for the shortcuts that's consisting of just a single action, open URL, that can save us quite considerable efforts of opening settings of the current app in settings. Unlike previous efforts, it's not tied to one specific app, meaning it opens settings dynamically of any app that is currently in the foreground.
The intricate URL that needs to be put into that action is this. And then he has a link there. So I'm sure we'll have this in the show notes. Now we can add this shortcut to the control center via the plus button above the cellular network's name. And the hack is just one swipe tap away. In case you'd like a direct sharing link to the shortcut, just search for Quinn Nielsen shortcut.
I put a link to this in the show notes. This is a game changer. Well, the problem that it solves is when you're in an app and you want to adjust its settings, but the settings are in the settings app in iOS, but you've got to go to settings, scroll all the way down to apps, and then you've got this massive list of apps, and you've got to scroll through it to find the right settings for that app. What this does is you pull down Control Center, activate that shortcut. while you're in the app.
So, you know, if you're in... Yeah, exactly. And it brings you to the iOS settings pane for that app, one fell swoop, and it's super easy, and you don't need to know anything about shortcuts to make it happen because Quinn Nelson posted this on X, and we put a link in the show notes to Quinn's post on X that will then just link you to the shortcut and you're good to go. It's a game changer. Yeah.
Gotcha. Yeah, I buried the lead by not reading the title here
Yeah yeah maybe that's it yeah i don't i don't know yeah it was thanks
So thank you for clarifying
That yeah when i first saw it i was like do i want this is this worth putting in the show really and it was like oh my gosh this is worth putting on my iphone like yeah 100 yes yeah so it's one of those things you won't use it like every hour of every day but when you use it you'd be like oh yeah look at that i got away with something so yep yeah it's it's pretty good the way that it all uh the way that it all just kind of works
you know you're you're in an app and you you know you swipe down you hit the little thing and then boom it brings you to the settings for that app without even thinking about it boom it's just brilliant so It's good stuff. Good stuff. Excellent. Uh-huh. You up for the next one, Pete?
¶ ScottS-CSF-Spotify Brings Lossless Listening to Premium
I am. Attention to orders. Marine, Scott Souther sent this one in. Good morning, Marine. Spotify Premium listeners, the wait is finally over. Lossless audio is here. It's rolling out now in over 50 markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Australia. With Lossless, you can stream nearly every track in 24-bit, 44.1 kilohertz. It's FLEC giving you CD quality sound with all the detail the artists intended.
So that is cool because I know, Dave, you have in the past moaned and groaned about the compression standard that Spotify has used. And Scott did several tests with all of his equipment, including Sonos. We'll share on the show notes the Spotify link, the Sonos link, and a Grok link about the best way to listen to it.
Uh listen to uh lossless audio apple still seems to be a little better they're using a little bit higher compression i'm not sure my ears could tell the difference in lossless between apple and lossless i mean lossless.
Is lossless i i mean apple's using a higher sometimes using a higher sample rate correct yeah yeah yeah not compression rate i just wanted to make that
Yeah sample rate Yeah. But I'll tell you the other thing, he showed me a picture of his setup and his Apple TV. He said the lossless on his Apple TV. With his Sonos, and I forget now the receiver that he had. He said it is off the charts.
Amazing.
All right. Yeah. But lossless audio, I turned mine on in Spotify. You go to set a profile. If you're on iOS, you click your little profile on the top left. Go to settings and privacy, and then media quality. And you can set it to go to lossless on Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi and cellular.
And the only thing i wish it would do for me is compare side by side i'd love to hear both side by side and i guess i could go back and forth but i'd be i'd want to do it side by side and i haven't found a way to do that yet because i would want to go how much different is that for me problem is 40 years being around jet engines is.
Well there's that you know yeah yeah um there there was sounds
Richer i think it sounds a little richer.
Yeah there's a lot of confirmation bias that happens to to all of us here i i sure you know um i dug into this pretty deeply about a decade and a half ago um but it there is or at least was an app for the mac i was looking for here and couldn't find it called abx tester which let you load let me load two audio files and you could play them back to back and and and have it randomly pick one and it i Comparing apple's 256k aac at the time and this is again 10 15 years ago and the lossless version
of the same tracks i generally speaking had a lot of difficulty telling any difference between the two of them There i learned on some tracks how to hear the artifacts of compression the easiest place for media like most music is is mastered in a way that that like you won't hear those artifacts it's it it's like there's no space in the music is really what it is and i and i don't say that judgmentally it's just kind of how that works that's modern mastering going back to um a dave
brubeck album called timeout which has the famous song take five on it uh it was recorded in a church with ribbon mics and you can really hear the church throughout it's instrumental music it's jazz um and the song kathy's waltz is a a very um there's a lot of air in that song and i learned that if i counted when a certain reverb like natural reverb of the room tail started i could tell if we were on the lossless one for the AAC by how long the tail went now
did this and even knowing this does this impact my enjoyment of the music no but I can at least tell like ah yes reliably I can say this is one this is the other Like with 256 K AAC and most music, you're not going to hear a difference with Spotify. I don't know what they were doing. I don't, there was like quality settings or something that they were just setting with their, even their 320 K MP3s that just, I don't know, that lost some of the life of it.
That was pretty, pretty easy for me to tell the difference, but yeah, the ABX tester would be the, the, the app to use. Okay. If it, if it's there. Yeah. If it's still there.
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, but thanks to Spotify for finally rolling out lossless.
Yeah. And a couple of months ago when we first had, when we most recently had this conversation, Andy had sent in a note about going into those media quality settings and changing some things about it because there's like some auto adjust and, and such that. And the settings are different now than they were then, because now you do have lossless in there, which they did not before, obviously. But there, there were some ways of tweaking it to make it suck less,
but then, and now this adds to that. So yeah, it's great.
Yeah. Oh, and Scott actually noted, he says his receiver and his rack connected to the Apple TV is the Sony, uh, via HDMI 2.1 STR AZ 300 ES 3000 ES. So yeah. So for those of you who want one, go get one of those.
Sure.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm sure Sony's given those away yeah.
Yeah yeah exactly
So it's a nice setup Scott thank you for the photo it was like man now I'm jealous but I'm doing my basement into a home theater so oh there you go you know fun get there yeah fun.
I just use a HomePod like a troglodyte.
Like a caveman. I'm sure it sounds great. Do you use, I'll take us on this tangent, I'll bite.
¶ What’s your home audio setup?
Do you use, with your TV setup, you're using a HomePod, is that right?
No, I use an old Sonos soundbar.
Got it, okay.
I have a Sonos system that I bought when I sold a domain and came into some extra cash.
I remember that. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I will ask all of you listening, for those of you who, and I really hope I'm not becoming a thief of your joy by highlighting something that you're potentially missing, but we're here. So with it, for those of you using two home pods in a stereo setup for the audio for your television, do you miss, do you notice issues with not having a center channel?
Um and it this might be one of those things where and again this is this is a term of efficiency where ignorance is bliss like if you've never had a center channel you might not realize what you're missing and that might be a good thing right you know if you're happy with what you have sorry but also don't change it but i'm just curious if if if this is something you've noticed or you are in a scenario where you've experienced the center channel before
and now you don't have one because you're using this home pod setup or whatever i'm curious how what that's like for you because i i know there are ways of sort of faking a center channel uh with with you know beam forming audio and i know the home pod can do all of that so i'm i'm really just curious what what everybody's experience is feedback at mackiecap.com Cool.
All right. I got some fun for you guys. My favorite weather app for years has been Carrot Weather.
¶ Carrot, the Musical (from Carrot Weather)
And I guess quick synopsis for people who don't know, Carrot Weather is this app. It has kind of its own personality to it. The developer does a great job doing it. It's got, of course, all your standard weather features, but there's a bunch of fun stuff built into the app. The number one thing is just this personality. So when you get the weather, Carrot will give you some sort of, you know, like phrase or something like that.
And you can adjust the personality, everything from, I think it starts out as professional to friendly, all the way up to overkill. I have mine set at homicidal because I like the abuse. So Carrot will kind of abuse you. But the developer does a great job of adding a bunch of fun features. And I was just checking this because I was curious, because I'm a premium subscriber, which allows you to do a lot more customization of the app, stuff like that.
So it's a subscription, but there's a free version of the app, and it does have all this fun stuff. So the developer is constantly adding new things, and most recently, they added A musical, Carrot the Musical, with great tracks like What the F is This, Make It Rain, Penguins Assemble, Big Fat Morons, Oops, I Blew It All Up. And the way it works is every day that you open the app, you unlock a new track from the musical.
And the songs are just hilarious and funny. I think they're probably available elsewhere. It looks like we had a link to a YouTube channel. So you might be able to get them other ways. They're not, they're not super protected, but it just, it was another nice surprise. I opened the app and it's like, Hey, we're launching carrot, the musical. And, uh, so now when I open it up, I get a new song every day and they're actually
really well done. I got to find out how, you know, who they're doing them with,
But, uh, yeah, there's an article about the, the, who are the singers for the carrot, the musical and, and the YouTube playlist that I found is published by carrot. So it is the official playlist. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
So you can listen to it there or I highly recommend the app. It's just fun, you know, like the ability to take something as boring potentially as a weather app and just make it entertaining. The developer has just done an excellent job and I love all the carrot apps. They also, I use the carrot health apps too.
Like they have a weight app for, you know, doing your weigh-ins and, you know, you get abused when, when you, you know, so it's not for everybody, but, you know, part of it is a little bit of shaming when you're, you know, weight's going on. and that sort of stuff. So it's just, but it's all tongue in cheek and done very creatively.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
With, you know, humor and fun. I like to have a little humor in my life, especially these days.
Here at Mac Geekab, we don't personality shame based on what you choose for your weather, for your care at weather personality.
You can go friendly. I mean, if you want friendly, you can go friendly. You don't have to. I like the abuse. I think it's hilarious.
Like I said, we don't personality shame here. All right. Where are we going next? Are we sticking with cool stuff found or should we answer a question? We can go anywhere. We can go anywhere.
Let's do some questions.
All right. Great.
Might as well.
¶ What to use for remote screen sharing with my parents?
Yeah. Should we go to Joe?
We're going to Joe.
Yeah, that works. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Make sure I get the right Joe here. Ah, Joe has a great question. He says, hi, guys. My mother-in-law is 93 years old. Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations.
That's amazing.
We should all be so lucky. Yeah. And was never very good with her MacBook. But she had a small stroke almost a year ago and now isn't capable of doing much of anything with it. The worst is that because she can't use her one password anymore, or any password manager for that matter, she is constantly clicking forgot password and resetting her passwords. Oh, no. What software do you suggest we use to access and control her computer remotely? She's in Massachusetts, and we're in Florida.
ChatGPT is suggesting splash top business access and remote PC. What do you think?
Hmm.
So that would work. But here's the deal. We know that you're going to have some kind of third-party software running, right? Because that's going to be more reliable and a little safer than just port forwarding for Apple's screen sharing. If you were on the same network, you could use Apple's screen sharing or remote desktop from Apple if you own that. And it would work great. That's what I use here. And it is super reliable.
But you're going to have some third-party software running, right? Right. Knowing that and knowing that Apple screen sharing is reliable and doesn't have issues if you're on one operating system and they're on the other and updating and all that stuff. My advice is tail scale. It's what I would use. In fact, it is what I use because it's so reliable and it's free. So you don't have to go and buy Splashtop. You don't have to do anything.
All you need to do. And I realized this part might seem somewhat daunting, but it's really no different than installing any other app is install tail scale on your computer. If you don't already, and you'll create your own tail net that links all of your devices. But it really walks you through that. It was easy when we first did it five years ago. It's way easier now. But install TailScale. It'll walk you through creating a tail net.
What a tail net does is any of your computers that are running TailScale logged into your account will just see each other no matter where they are in the world. Could be on the same network. Could be, you know, on the other side of the planet. Anywhere with internet access, you can see each other. So do that first, then install tail scale on your mother-in-law's computer and invite her via her email address to your tail net.
Again, this is something you would do once you have tail scale installed and you can specifically invite her to see certain devices and not others. And you know, all of that stuff, you can give her the access that you want and once you do that then she's connected to tail scale and has that bridge to your tail net which means you can see her computer anytime you want and i i know everything i described sounds a little complex but it really isn't it's
Not and it's amazing.
Yeah and joe wrote back and said he did it uh he asked me actually if i had time to help him set it up and this week As I mentioned, I did not, um, but show Joe wrote me back and he's like, yeah, we got tail scale set up. It works great. Like, yeah, I know. I love it. Like, and, and we've got, there were a lot of emails about tail scale for whatever reason this week.
And it like, they warm my heart because so many people are just using it and, and not with, with, with the low friction that it, that it brings.
So, yeah. I had something weird go on, and Andrew brings up in the comments. P.U.? Yeah, I know. And I don't remember what it was.
Okay.
But for some reason, Tailscale was not logged in on my Mac Mini, and I needed it. And I'm like, oh, crud. What do I do? And Andrew mentioned it in the, I think it was YouTube comments, but he says, jump desktop. And I still have that legacy from when it was available in Setapp, which it is no longer. So I used Jump Desktop to get in there and turn TailScale back on and all was good to go. But yeah, TailScale makes it so nice that you can...
And when they changed the subnet over, I don't think it used to be in the original point where you could use your 192.168 to get to your machines or whatever subnet network you're using.
But now you can well it always was there but you have to and it's still there but not automatically you have to turn on subnet routing to do things like that i
Didn't remember doing that but yeah once you mentioned that i went oh yeah and that works great now i can get to my mini two.
Ways yeah exactly yeah yeah i mean tail scale can be this very complex thing it you know but that the the the first step into it, which is extremely functional, uh, it is, is very straightforward. So are you using tail scale, Adam or not?
No, no, I don't really have to do much remote stuff, but I do have, I do have a, a question.
Go.
¶ Initiating Screen Sharing from within Messages/Facetime
Um, because, and this has come up in this exact scenario with me and my mother, um, because, um, You can also initiate screen sharing, as Kiwi Graham points out in the Discord chat, from the Messages app and also from FaceTime. But my thing is, is I'm pretty sure when you do it that way, it's literally the person on the other end has to initiate it, and it is only them sharing their screen.
Whereas I think what we're talking about here right is the screen sharing app on the mac which actually acts more like remote control right can't you can you can actually control the other person's you
Can control the other person's device when you when when it's initiated via messages as well uh they have to give you permission for that but they also have to give you permission to connect in the first place which is
That's what i struggle with with my mom it's like yeah getting her to actually find the button right like and she doesn't have a mac so we're dealing with ios so in my case and i am correct with with ios you cannot control the screen like apple support can yeah i don't know why they will not enable that it drives me batty because they obviously have the technology because you call up apple support and they say can i take control of your screen sure and boom they're controlling your
ios device so like why that is not allowed yeah drives me batty welcome
To the club But, yeah, you can. The issue that I've had anyway is twofold. One, that process like you like you mentioned of getting someone to click the button. But even when they do, it's more than half of the time it works, but it's not 100 percent of the time that it works. There's there's some whatever negotiation it's trying to do with, you know, routers and firewalls and all that stuff. It doesn't always succeed, even though there's no good reason for it to fail.
So that but the big one is for what we're talking about here is they have to be there for you to take control of their screen. Right. And and sometimes that's that's not the case. So that's where tail scale is great. As long as the computer is on, yeah, you're good to go. So, yeah.
And Kiwi Graham says his last Apple support call, they would only use a pointer on his screen, but they wouldn't actually control his device. I'd even accept that.
Sure, yeah. Go here. Yeah.
Because the number of times is like, the two things that happens with my mom is like, do you see this thing on your screen? No, I don't see that. Do you see this thing on your screen? No, I don't see that. I see this. Don't click on that. I already clicked it it's just like this constant comedy of hair it's like no no no that's not the right thing don't don't don't it's like do not do not touch anything just look at your screen
¶ MGG 1110 Outtro
yeah and then the number of times is like you see this no do you see this no i see this i see this tap on it then we get back to that screen she's like oh i see it now i see
It now yep yep yeah I mean, that's normal. That's like the human condition is the problem.
And then I try to get her to do the share screen thing, and that has never worked. It's like, do you see this button to share your screen? No, no. It's like, ah.
No. No. That's right yep all right we are uh i think we're done guys i mean we're at 116 if we were to start the next question now we're going to be it we're going to be at one given no we how how how verbose tangentialized we've been today i think i think we got a call it i think so i didn't realize we
Got to all the things we did almost all of them
Yeah we hit yeah we didn't hit the don't get caught that's okay well um next time what do you say you want to do this next week
But I got caught. I'll be here next week. You know what? I may be. I have to go to Florida and get my daughter and bring her home.
Oh, I hope you're here next week. Because, I mean, if you're not, we will still have three. But I want to have four. Because it's show 11-11.
That's right. 11-11. I will make every effort to make it happen. Even if I have to stay an extra few hours in a hotel room.
Well, and if we need to juggle the schedule around, we can talk about that. Because, at least as the schedule shows currently, we have a special guest coming for 11.11.
Does he know?
He does. Yes. Yes. Yeah, we're going to have John F. Braun join us for episode 11.11. Because it's a fun, it's the biggest palindrome number we've ever had on this show. And I don't want to.
Likely.
It might be, it might remain that way. At the very least, it will remain that way for decades.
Yes.
Would be, because 22-22 would be the next one. We know how far away that is.
I'm not sure I'd be here.
Right. Same. It's like, I don't know. I don't know.
Hold on, let me check my calendar to see if I'm here that weekend.
I don't know. We'll see. There's no plans to end it soon, but there's not, I don't know.
I'll be in my mid-80s. I'm still gonna be running every day.
I don't know is that
What it works out to
Another 20 years it would be.
Exactly another 20 years because that's how long it took us to get to this number
Yeah, I'll still be here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 11-11, right? Divided by...
52.
52, yeah. It's 21 and... Well, right. It's 21 and change because...
We did some extra shows.
There were those years where premium meant we were... John and I were doing extra episodes to a week at times, so that accelerated our path here. I mean, who knows? Maybe we'll decide to do that. Here's something, an idea. Apple actually suggested this idea to me. So I'll throw it out. And I'm throwing it out to you guys as much as, like, it's something we three would need to decide. But maybe listener feedback will help.
Apple was like, you know, we find that there's a huge uptick in premium demand when you offer extra content. He's like, I know you don't want to have to go out of your way to make extra content. But what about just doing like you know a Mac Geek after dark here and there that you only put out to the thing and it's just like a peek into your lives and this that and the other thing so we can chew on that idea
Yeah I'm on board if we can drink and swear no I'm just
Kidding the rules are ours to make Adam it could be that right how after
Dark are we
Talking I would want to talk about the swearing, like how necessary is it? No, I'm just kidding. Right? But, you know, having a drink like that, that would kind of be part of it, I think. You know, kind of the looser, less hit. Not that this episode was super regimented to an agenda or anything.
Hold on, let me get my Kleenex.
Yeah. All right. Let us know. Feedback at MacEcab.com. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for listening. Make sure you go sign up for the giveaway. at geekab.com slash giveaway for power photos. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. If you haven't had enough of us, you can have more of Adam at the Debut Film Podcast, more of Pete at So There I Was, and more of me at Gigab and Business Brain. Links are in the show notes for all of that and more.
What do we, uh, what do we say? I don't know.
I would say like a...
Well, when Dave Stewart alive, bad.
Like a boogie in a tissue, don't get caught.
Maybe. But you can have a boogie in your shoes, right? Later.