It's time for Mac Geek Gab and our quick tip this week comes from listener Jeff. Way back in episode 892, we shared the tip that if you are in Spotlight on the Mac, you know, so command space bar, start searching. If you scroll down in the Spotlight interface to a file, if you hold down the command key, it will show you in the Spotlight interface, the path to that file, what folders it is in.
Jeff points out that if you press command return, then it will open the finder window that contains that file with that file selected so you can get right to it in the finder. Of course, if you just press return, it'll open the file in whatever app is built to open the file. More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on MacGeekM996 for Monday, August 21st, 2023. Music. Greetings folks. And indeed welcome to Matt Geekab, the show where you send in your quick
tips like that one, your cool stuff found like we might talk about later in the show. I think we will. And your questions into feedback at Mackey cab dot com. We take, your quick tips and your cool stuff found and we share them. We answer your questions and we string it all together into an agenda that hopefully not only makes sense and has a flow to it, but also ensures that each and every one of us are going to learn at least
five new things every time we get together. Sometimes maybe even ten, right? That's what show is about. We've got so much in store for you today, and I'm stoked to get to it, here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Lee, New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete. And speaking of flow, Dave, I think I'll be over in the arc to pick you up later. It's just, it's pouring again. It's pouring again here. Yeah. It's crazy. This is the wettest summer I can remember.
And back in 97 or 98, it was pretty wet in New Hampshire, but this, this has been amazing. This has been something. Yeah. The summer of 23 has not had too many dry days, but it's all right. We're rocking and rolling. We get to podcast in the rain. So it's perfect. There you go. Podcast in the rain. We also watch TV in the rain, and listener Tony helps point out to us that we can use Siri to control our Apple TVs, and he says, I like to use Siri commands to pause and resume my shows.
He says, I was having trouble remembering the word resume, and so I used the words continue playing, and that also worked. So you can do this with your Siri remote, of course, and I think it would also work if you have a HomePod in the room with your TV. That would also trigger the Apple TV to pause and resume. It's really nice to be able to pause just by saying pause. So yeah, thanks for the heads up. But yeah, resume and or continue playing and probably other phrases as well.
So you can send in your favorite Siri phrases to us here at feedback at MackeyCab.com. Feedback at Mackey cab.com is what I think I heard you say, Dave. I said it, I said it, and I'm probably going to say it again at some point. That's feedback at Mackey cab.com. Oh, there, you just did. I did just say it. Didn't I? You want to take us to the next one? Yeah. It's, it's kind of my own, uh, quick tip. I like it. It's uh, yeah,
because here's the cool thing. What's every now and then I get to feel like the smart guy in the room. It happens occasionally for all of us, but not all. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's particularly difficult to do when, uh, Allison over at podfeet.com is in the room. Agreed. As you know. Agreed. Yeah, I rarely feel like the smartest person in the room when she's there. Yeah, she is very smart.
Yeah. Exactly. This came as a result of your presentation at MacStock and something came up and I don't remember exactly what it was, but I said, well, all you got to do, you were talking about some application or some function within the Synology interface.
Sure. So, well, when you're in there, all you have to do is go to that little magnifying glass up in the upper right-hand corner and type the setting name or the application name that you're looking for, and voila, it's like its own little spotlight for Synology within the – it takes you right to it. So I blew her mind. It was so much fun. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it is. There is a search in the Synology DSM and SRM, which is the router manager interface.
But it's easy to forget that it's there. You told me about this after I got off stage and I was like, I knew it was there. But like, I don't think to use it is the issue where the only place I use it is when searching for apps, but you can also do it in like the app view. You can sort of start typing in there. It presents it a little more. Right. And when you know, it's when you know where the setting is or where the app is,
and it's, but every now and then there's a buried one. I find that particularly useful. Yeah. And I just, I was playing with a little bit last night and I was not able to find a file with it. I found, I still find that if I use find any file app. Yeah, that will search your Synology drive for a file, but there is also an advanced search. So if it doesn't find it, it'll say, hey, go up to the upper left corner and and use the advanced
search. So you can start putting applying filters to your search within the Synology interface. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Allison, she has a tip that we've been sitting on for a little while, but I think we shall sit on it no longer. She says, Like many in the community, I had my custom domain hosted with Google right up until they were going to charge me real money. And like many in the community, I also have iCloud Plus.
For which you spend real money. So I moved my custom domain over to iCloud. That was months ago, and it recently occurred to me that I no longer have a distinct password for my custom domain email. I realize and that means that my rescue email for my Apple ID is also my custom domain email which means they are one in the same and if I either one gets breached, well it's just the one now, I have no rescue options. That's a really good point.
Allison says, I found a dandy support article at Apple, which we will link to where they show you how to change your iCloud rescue email address and you can change it. She said she changed it to a third address that she maintains that is not included in her custom domain. That's part of iCloud plus and now she's back to being able to sleep at night. Yeah, I bet there's a lot of us that have gotten ourselves into this scenario without even realizing it.
Yes, go check now go check. Yeah. Yeah over. Yeah, right We'll run the interstate check now or make sure you sign up at Mac geek out calm to our weekly email Which includes the show notes for the episode with all the links and then you'll be reminded to at least. The link that that we have about changing your rescue email address will also show you how to see what it is and and you can just confirm that it's not one in the same. I think this is an oversight on Apple's part.
I think if your rescue email address is part of a custom domain that you later add to iCloud. It should say, hey, are you sure you want to do this? Or at least give you the option, because it seems to be an oversight. Or if you have a custom email domain you go to add an address from it to your, you know, as your rescue address, it should pop up and say, hey, FYI, just, just so you know, this might not be such a good idea. Yeah. Interesting.
Adam has some quick tips for us for iPad users, some of which might even be relevant if you don't don't live in the United States. Adam says, I have an older iPad with fully updated iPadOS. I just discovered that I can screenshot simply by sliding my finger from the bottom left corner of the screen towards the middle of the screen. It's a little easier than pressing the home button and power button at the same time.
I like this. Oh, yeah, that's cool. I don't think I've ever accidentally bumped across that one. Yeah, I've never. Yeah, I like that. So sliding from the bottom left towards the middle that gets you your screenshot. I like this, Adam. And he continues, for your Canadian and perhaps other international listeners, in Canada, YouTube does not permit picture in picture without a subscription.
However, he says, I just discovered that by turning on my VPN on my iPad, he says, I use PIA, which you can sign up for it, piavpn.com.mgg, and setting it to the USA, now picture in picture works with YouTube. So it's not doing it based on location services, which knows more than what a VPN would tell it. It's literally just looking at your IP address, or at least for now.
Hopefully someone, if you are part of the YouTube compliance team and you're listening to this part of the episode, maybe we'll just keep this between us so that we don't get caught. How's that sound? Right, exactly. Yeah. All right. Uh, we got a couple more quick tips here. I think Arthur. Yeah. Arthur, this one's a little nerdy, but it, but it's a good one. I mean, it's not like I say that, like it's bad to get nerdy. I'm nerdy all the time.
Um, he reminds us that you can use the finder on MacOS to connect to FTP servers and you do that by obviously going into the finder starting with the finder go to the go menu and click on connect to server or if you like your keyboard shortcuts command K and then enter the full server address with the protocol starting with FTP colon slash slash and then either the server address or its IP address like the server domain name or the IP address and you can log
in as a guest or username and password, whichever you like, and then the contents of that FTP server appear as a finder window for you. The one issue with this that I will point out is that Mac OS's finder only supports read-only FTP sessions. It will not let you upload or write or change files on the FTP server. For that, you would need an FTP client like Transmit is one that I use from Panic Software, I believe. I believe CyberDuck is still.
CyberDuck is still up and running. I've used that a good bit. And Forklift is my... That's the other one. I knew there was another one. FTP client of choice, yeah. Because the beauty of Forklift, and Cyberduck I think does too, but I think you have to click on it. Forklift, when I open it, I'm automatically linked to the FTP server for my show. It just, it's like a file on my hard drive. I get that with Transmit too, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I really like that.
And I think, you mentioned username and password. Once you hit that Command K and put in the address of the FTP server you're going to. Finder will recognize it and. Query you for your username and password. That's correct. Yeah, that's right It's and it's just like if you were connecting to say an SMB server, right?
Or if you still run it AFP like a regular sort of on network file server If you type SMB colon slash slash and the name of the machine Which I like sometimes I'll say I know I want to connect to the mini office and so I'll say SMB colon slash slash mini office and then it comes up and if I don't have a a username and password saved for it in my key chain, it'll ask me for one and then log me in. So not that the, not that it means anything, but I'm going to play stump the dummy.
I know AFP is Apple file protocol. I could not remember what does SMB stand for? Do you remember? I, I, it turns out that I do. I believe it's server messaging block. Um, yeah, I, I don't normally know these things off the top of my head, but everybody you can now go on your way knowing that today. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it means. It started, well, my, from my perspective, it, I was introduced to it when it was a Windows or maybe even a DOS only protocol. Like it was a
PC, not Mac protocol, right? For file sharing. Then it got introduced to the Mac. You could use it on the Mac. And now it is the preferred protocol on the Mac over AFP. AFP is no longer the one that Apple recommends. So if you are one, one piece of advice, like sort of a bonus tip here, if you are on a, you know, if you use a Synology and especially if you are backing up to your Synology with Time Machine, SMB is going to be a whole lot more reliable for you than AFP.
So you would want to go into, and I'm doing this off the top of my head, And log into your Synology disk station, go into the control panel, file services, and. Turn off SMB. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm saying this wrong because I'm thinking about trying to log in and show it if you're watching the video. Which I do. You want me to put your screen up? Give me a second to log in. Oh, come on. Let's get your password out there, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you go into...
It would be control panel. Yep. File services. And then enable the SMB service. Go into advanced settings for SMB. There is a Mac OS window there, where you wanna turn on the enable the VFS module to convert special Mac characters, just so that you're fully supported there. And then go into the AFP section of file services on your Synology and disable by unselecting, like uncheck the enable AFP service box. You wanna do that too. And then you want to go to the advanced tab of file services.
And enable Bonjour service discovery to locate Synology NAS. And within that, enable Bonjour time machine broadcast via SMB, turn it off for AFP. And then you should be good to go. I know that's a lot. This will be up on YouTube if you're just listening, which I know most of you are. So you can see my screen as we do this And I'll ask Sadie to chop this out as a separate segment too, just so it's easy to find and all that good stuff.
So, yeah, I was going to say you should have memorized everything Dave just told you or go to YouTube or Facebook. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and I was even smart enough to drop a timestamp at the beginning of that segment. It felt like we were going somewhere new. And so I, and then we did, that's correct. Yes. Yeah.
Uh, so thank you for that, Arthur. One thing I will add to Arthur's, uh, tip is that something Porthos John shared in our discord at Mac geek hub.com slash discord says, uh, transmit is great for, for connecting via FTP and being able to write right about the, the, the read only, uh, nature of the finder when it comes to FTP.
But Porthos John says, if you can ask the admin of the server you're connecting to, to enable web dev, then you can make changes from the Finder because the Finder supports read and write via web dev. So thank you very much, Porthos John. And he does confirm that SMB is server messaging block. Thank you for that. I'm not sure where it came from, but, uh, I'm glad it came from somewhere.
So, you know, it's been around for years and it's one of those things, you know, I don't think I ever knew what it stood for. Didn't care. It just worked. Right. Right. Yeah. You, my guess is you still don't care. So, right. I don't. Yeah. Despite asking the question and putting me on the spot. So who's your buddy, Dave? Yeah, that's right. Uh, so look at all that you let us down there, Arthur. That's great. Yeah. I was, I love this.
I was just a quick tip. Yeah. And yeah, that's good. I mean, just a quick tip. I feel like, listen, we put the quick tips, usually put the quick tips at the front of the show, because, I think they're some of the best information that we share on this show. I learn quite a bit just as I am like building the agenda and therefore learning all the quick tips
you folks send in. I, this is one of the things that keeps me on my, on my toes. So, uh, Porthos John does take us down a little bit more of that rabbit hole, which is that SMB is synonymous now, synonymous, yes, with CIFS, which is the Common Internet File System. So, no, synonymous means sounds the same, doesn't it? No, means the same. Means the same. Synonym means the same. What's the one that... It's a, is it a homonym? Okay, I'm super confused. Antonym is opposite, homonym, I think is...
Uh, and then there's, uh, see what I, see what I did with the rabbit hole here. That's my fault. That one's on me folks. Sorry. Yeah. Yep. There you go. You normally, I like rabbit food, but you know, yeah, that's right. We didn't find any food in this rabbit hole. Um, Greg food for the brain, Dave food for the brain. Well, sure. Uh, yeah. Uh, so, uh, Greg brings us what I think is our final quick tip of the week. With, he says, we were talking about getting to the emergency services thing.
And he says, if you mash the home side button on your iPhone a number of times, it will automatically start a 10 second countdown for an emergency services call. This doubles as a great feature if your phone is about to be stolen as it will lock your phone and render face unlock useless unless you type in the passcode again. Uh, so yeah, yeah. Just make sure you stop that countdown unless you want the countdown to continue.
But I, I, you pre-show you said you, you think it's how many times is it? Pretty sure it's five times, five mashers on, on the quote unquote power button, I guess, as it were, we'll do that. Or if you press and hold it, I believe after a certain number of seconds, it will also start into that, that timer countdown.
Um, and I'm not sure stolen's right word and well if it's gonna if you're being forced to turn it over to somebody that you would not want to have access to your phone like they can't make you look at it yeah customs so they can't make you thumbprint it or or face id it that sort of thing and then one other thing i I noticed in there when I was playing with that quick tip Dave is that is.
Where you can then select your emergency contacts, which is what an EMT would do should they find your unconscious body on the on the street corner. Right. You know, because it's a happy day. Yeah, well, and that's how you make it happier, perhaps. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. And and from there, you can verify whom you have in your contacts listed as emergency contacts.
All right. Hey, while we're here today, I've got something for all of us Apple enthusiasts and lifelong learners out there. So we share tips all the time on the show here, but we can only share so much, right? Ever have that nagging feeling that there's even more you could do with your iPhone? Well, iPhone Life's free tip of the day newsletter serves up a tip every morning that helps you discover all those features you've been missing that Apple doesn't tell us about.
Here's how it works. You go sign up for free at iphonelife.com slash daily tips, And then iPhone Life sends you a one minute tip with clear steps and screenshots on topics ranging from typing tricks to emojis to password management. Free, practical, easy to follow information from a team of tech experts dedicated to helping you learn.
You can't beat that, so join 500,000 happy subscribers to the only free daily newsletter that reveals new things you can do with your iPhone in just one minute a day. So go to iPhonelife.com slash daily tips to sign up for free and our thanks to the team over there for doing this swap with us. Okay, that's awesome. Van wrote in to us with a question, Dave, and he said, I'm looking for your recommendations for a good time machine backup external SSD hard drive for my Mac.
My current iMac has a three terabyte hard drive. I currently have been using a Western Digital 5TB Elements portable hard drive, external hard drive, USB 3 for PC and Mac, plug and play ready. It crashed after less than a year and I'm not real happy with Western Digital hard drives after this was the second one that failed in the last three years.
Being that I'm not technically knowledgeable to install and manage a Synology NAS, oh yes you are, is there much of a learning curve for me to set it up and manage it or should I just go with a direct attached drive?" And before you answer, I want to say, yeah, and I think you answered, yeah, there's a little bit of a learning curve, but oh man, there's so many cool things you can do with a NAS drive. I agree. If you're only.
Reason for getting one is to have a backup destination and you have no interest in going farther. That's not, like having it as a backup destination is a great first reason to get one.
But if nothing else that a NAS does is of interest to you or you feel like you need your backups to be on something that you understand already inherently, Like that you know how to get stuff off of then I would I would I would say you're right with the external SSD even for me And I've been through a couple of restores recently I do back up everything to the the NAS because why not it's I've got plenty of storage there,
But I also back up to a like a time machine to the NAS. I. Clone to an SSD connected or a hard drive depending Connected to the Mac and when I have had to do like full system restores lately I have gone to that direct attached hard drive first I certainly can do it from the NAS when I'm doing migration assistant, The NAS actually shows up first in Migration assistance list before it but it looks to see if there's something direct attached like it's right there
But I don't know I like I know it's I feel like I could be very wrong about this I feel like it's gonna be faster and more reliable to back to restore from.
A a direct attached drive than it is, you know relying on the network So I could be wrong though But but just like if you're gonna do one backup and I really recommend you do at least two But if you're gonna do one, I would say a hard drive is is the way to go But I do agree with you Pete like if you're listening to this show we've got you you're gonna you're gonna be able to make a NAS work and you're You're probably going to have a lot of fun with it.
That tips out there on YouTube and everywhere else on how to how to set these things up You can set your own VPN up. You can run your media server off it You can share my daughter puts her homework on it instead of on Google Drive. So I, Like that, that's great that that I love it when my kids like are like, oh, yeah
Well, I was just using the Synology for that and it's like a hall. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah That's a warms my heart as far as normal SSDs go to connect to your computer to do your backups, either a carbon copy cloner or, uh. You know, a time machine backup. Um, there are lots of them. I've used lots of them. I, I, I use lots of different brands. The one that comes to mind first, of course, is OWC. Um.
They have a ton of external SSDs there. Really what you need to do is you said you had a three terabyte drive in your iMac van, take a look at how much data you would actually be backing up. Because a three terabyte SSD, if you can do it on a two terabyte or less SSD, you're going to save a ton of money. Getting up into four terabyte SSDs or eight terabyte SSDs, it's not cheap, Right. And, and your, and your options start to become more limited.
You can go with a, you know, a USB-C SSD, uh, up to two terabytes. Thunderbolt tends to be required for the larger ones. I'm not sure why, but it just seems to be more common that way. And then you're paying what we call the Thunderbolt tax. Uh, in order to use Thunderbolt, you got to license it from, from the Thunderbolt consortium, which includes Apple and other companies. So if you can do two terabytes, that's gonna open the door quite wide for you. But OWC is where I would start.
Something like the Envoy Pro Electron, depending on your space, but you know if you need more the Express or Pro FX range is where you're going to wind yourself up. But there are other brands, I'm a fan of the Glyph drives, the Glyph Atom EV is a portable NVMe SSD. The two terabyte version is 229. The eight terabyte version is 1099. You see where I'm going with this. Yeah. So- You know, what's amazing about that though, is the cost of technology coming down.
Oh, for sure. It's so amazing. I remember when a 500 gig SSD was probably $800, $900. Oh, or more. Oh, absolutely. In the early days. The Samsung T7 is really worth looking at. That maxes out at two terabytes, but a two terabyte T seven, I think is a 120 bucks. Right. So yeah, yeah, like it's a good price, uh, and, and works well. I'm also a fan of the CalDigit stuff, the tough nano great, tiny little drive and, uh, and runs really well.
I've, I've used the tough nanos, uh, for, you know, travel as kind of like little travel drives and they're, you know, they're great. They're great. I, it, it's also worth looking at. Um, rotational drives. If you do need that four terabyte or eight terabyte, take a look at a rotational drive, you know, you're, you're backing up to this, you're not relying on it for fast data transfer, you know, in a real world scenario.
So like, like Lisa's machine, when, when her Mac mini died, you know, whatever it was 10 days ago, I talked about in the last show, I realized, oh, she's still backing up to a rotational drive. That's a four terabyte rotational drive. It's like, okay, like that's fine. Like, you know, at first I was like, Oh, should I change this? I'm like, well, maybe because I have a stack of SSDs that are unused. So probably, but in terms of spending real money, I, you know, it's nothing wrong.
I was able to restore like she's up and running because of that rotational drive. So. All good. I was going to mention SanDisk, but there's some reports that their SanDisk Extremes are losing data for people, and they're not saying anything about it. So maybe just wait on the SanDisks for right now. I've had good luck with them. I don't want to disparage them.
My experience with the SanDisk Extremes over the years has been great. It was literally on the list And in the pre-show, someone pointed out, Hey, maybe not that. They're not as, yeah, they're not being as forthcoming at the moment. At the moment. Until they feel it, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So. And then sometime back also, we had a, and again, this is my portable one. Yep. I know I put it on a cool stuff found and I don't even remember the brand cause it's
downstairs, but there's a thumb drive that's two terabytes. That's not. Oh yeah. Not much larger than my thumb nail. Yeah, I think that is a, I have one of those that is a SanDisk. I mean, there's probably from multiple brands. It's just not the fastest thing. If you're, I mean, if you're going to bother paying for an SSD, pay for the speed, not the tiny size, unless it needs to be in your portable rig at which point, like great. But yeah, Kingston
makes a pretty small one. SanDisk makes a pretty small one. And I do keep one of those in my travel bag, I forget about it because it's like you said, it's like thumb drive is, is, is the right term for this. Well, yeah, it's way smaller than my thumb, but, and then the other thing that was cool about it, as I recall, is it has both a USB-C and a USB-A. So you just flop. Yes, that's the SanDisk one. Yeah. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So yes. Yes. So thank you to Brian Monroe for, for alerting us to the SanDisk issues. I I appreciate it, man. Uh, Brian is, is a great, uh, participant as, as among many in our discord community, and if you haven't yet joined our discord community, I highly recommend it, it is, uh, it's such a, like, we have such a great family there. And I think there's 1200 of us now, but, um, the conversation's always like, I was going to say they stay on point.
That's not really true. We get into tangents just like we do here on the show, but they are always about tech and everybody just loves to help Everybody else. That's the part I love about it. Yeah. Yeah before you get to the next question I we may be this will probably be answered in a future show But I reach Khan on YouTube asks, what's the best way to go about creating a bootable USB for a Mac OS? So I think that's probably a future show one. You know, we can answer that question. Okay?
Well, then he goes on here where he throws the curveball. It looks like a nice straight fastball It could have been you didn't have to share the whole thing, but you're about to so go ahead. Yeah, okay He says, I don't have access to a Mac. It would have to be through Windows or Linux.
Okay, so I don't like off the top of my head. I would need to think about the curveball But in terms of creating a boot drive even with a Mac, it's not, It's not like it used to be where you could just plug in You know an external drive into your Mac use carbon copy cloner, right?
Because that's what it was or super duper and just clone to this external drive, It doesn't work like that anymore because Apple has made it very very difficult to do that It's still sort of possible, but the best way to do it is, Well, if you just want to make a boot drive that does not have any of your data on it So not cloning to it, but literally just creating a boot drive. That's pretty straightforward and that is the first step in.
Creating a bootable clone is you boot to you boot to your normal internal drive, run the installer for whatever OS you want to have on this external drive. And when the installer asks you what disk to put it on, choose the external. And then you go through the whole installation process. It builds the system, it splits the drive in the magic way that it does and does all its stuff. And then you wind up with a drive that has a system partition or system volume with that operating system on it.
And a data volume with essentially nothing. At that point, you can use your clone and clone over to it, or you can use migration assistant to pull your data over. And at that point it becomes a snapshot in time clone of you, but yeah, you have to use the Mac OS installer to do it. And it used to be possible from a Windows machine or a Linux machine to just say, here's two drives, go ahead and read, you know, clone one to the other and it would have created your bootable clone.
That's not how it works anymore. I think you'd need a Mac to do that. Yeah, I would think so too. But that was a super timely question though because the very next one was Inoccuoso who goes, I got my boot drive. Now it's filled up, what do I do now? It's true, yeah. On Discord, Inoccuoso asked, I have a 2018 i5 Intel Mac mini running Ventura Ventura whose 250 gig internal drive is approaching full. It's about 215 full now.
It says, but the Finder window, when I look at, you know, everything on the drive, it adds up to roughly a hundred gigs. And that includes hidden files. So where are the extra 115 gigs being consumed? So The free version of CleanMyMac X identifies only three gigabytes as system junk. ICloud drive is 12 gigs in case that matters. Any ideas about the hundred gig discrepancy? And Richard A. in our discord got to this one first and asked, do you have multiple users on this Mac mini?
If so, I don't think that you logged in as your user gets to see the size of other users' home folders from within the Macintosh HD Finder view. If you unfold the user's folder, the sizes of those folders will be reported as tiny because it's based on the files you are allowed to see, not the files you are not allowed to see. And indeed, that's what it was for Inocuoso.
You are right to run things like space lens, uh, inside clean my Mac X or, or other utilities that will sort of give you a peek at not just how full your drive is, but where it's full. But yeah, other, other user folders are tough to see. It is doable. You can run the finder in, um, so you can actually go to the terminal and using the sudo command, which is the command that you would run it, like choose to run something as super user.
You can actually go and run a copy of the finder as super user, and that might let you see what other users folders have. Uh, it might not though, things get a little wonky when you do that, but yeah, logging into those other users would be the way to, to sort of the prescribed way of, of getting in there. So, right. Or, uh, yeah, I was, I was gonna say, if, if, if you were the admin on that machine, though, you should be able to see it from your. it from your.
I don't know that's what i'm saying you're if you're an admin you can you can go to the terminal and run sudo and and then you can run an app as root but as admin you don't get to see extra things you just have the ability to turn on the ability to see extra things so yeah login in the finder you won't get to see it but you could you could do it from the terminal There is a terminal command that I'll use. I will, you know, sudo up as root on the terminal so that I have full access to the drive.
And then I use the du command. I think it's du, gosh, I need my fingers. Remember this? All right. Well, you're working on that. Sudo means super user do. And 99% of the time, it's going to ask you for a password, right? Or a hundred percent? Probably a hundred percent. Well, if you do a sudo command. It depends on, uh, w w w how recently you've done it. Right. But, but yes, it, yeah, there's a little timer. So if you sudo and then come out and come back in, it'll, it'll let you do it again.
Otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, D U dash S H uh, and then star or sudo space D U dash S H and then star. And I'll put this in the, um, the, the, the show notes at geekup.com, um, will show you the sizes of all the folders. In like all the sub folders in your, in your current folder. So if you wanted to see the whole drive, you could go to the root level and do that, but that, that is a way. And the.
H in the du-sh command, no, it means human because it shows you the sizes in human readable form so it'll say like 16k or 4 gigs instead of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead of 400 million bytes. Here's how many bytes they are, yeah, exactly. I forget what the S means. Oh, the S means show me an entry for each specified file. So that's how you get the listing as opposed to just a summary. So dash S means not a summary. Hey, here's a swag. Yeah. Uh, D U means disk usage. That's correct.
Yes. Sorry. I should have started with that. Yeah. It is displayed disk usage, usage statistics. You can also use, um, D F dash S H that shows you, I think of DFS disk full, uh, or sorry, D F dash H I'm getting my commands confused. Will show you the usage by volume if you do DF-H. Um, so yeah, it gets confusing. All I can say is anybody driving, don't try to remember all this. No, you don't have to, I've typed this into the show notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, uh, and those are, I'm, I'm assuming DF is also a pseudo require. Um, no, I don't think so. No, because it's just showing you how much which is used in general, which is not a it's not showing you by folder, it's just showing you by volume. And so I've never needed to use sudo for, for DF. DF is display free disk space. So yeah. Yeah. So it's just showing you how much is free. That's it. Yeah. Not how much is used, which is different. Yes.
Gotcha. I mean, one is part and part, but not where it is used. I guess that's the differentiator there. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. How about I take us to Ben? Hey, please do So Ben writes hi guys. My daughter is starting the college this fall as a biology slash genetics major, man, You've got one that's gonna support you Ben.
Just saying Her college requires a laptop. So we bought her a 13-inch m2 MacBook Air for use in college, One, is it wise to enable Mac's built-in firewall since she will be on the school's Wi-Fi and wired network while at school? And two, are there any software or tips you would recommend to keep her MacBook safe while at school? I'm not sure, but I think there might be misbehaving comp sci majors trying to have
fun hacking the non-tech majors. I'd love to hear from you and listeners on this topic. She's only used iPads throughout her schooling, so she is getting used to the MacBook. Yeah, she's going to love that machine. So I wrote back, I said, first of all, Ben, my sympathy is to your wallet. I have one in college and one that's a senior starting next fall. So I fully feel your pain.
Yeah. I said, first of all, I'd absolutely run the firewall and additionally, I'd run file vault so that the hard drive is encrypted and should the laptop fall into the wrong hands, then any sensitive data will not be accessible without the password. Without the password. Get her set up. This is one I'm still pulling my hair out on. I cannot get my daughter to remember her social security number or any of that stuff, even though I've put it in one password on her machine.
It's like, here's a way to keep your data secure and get to it. Oh, no, I can't do that, Dad. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of those lessons that, you know, there's a lot of lessons that kids, we, not just kids, that each of us as humans needs to learn for ourselves. Right. You can't learn it for your kids. Having your data stolen from you is a lesson I would not want someone to have to learn for themselves. Yeah.
That's a painful one. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then speaking of passwords, I showed him how I do my passwords, which is I will pad mine with either symbols or numbers or letters, that sort of thing. They, some places won't let you use repeating series of a single letter. So if, if that's the case, then I might go a dollar sign, pound sign, dollar sign, pound sign to mix it up, but you can make your password very long yet memorable.
Like by padding it. And I think over it, um, uh, Steve Gibson's website, GRC, GRC. Thank you. I couldn't think of the C, uh, GRC.com. and I think it's Haystack, slash Haystack. He talks about padding passwords and how you can make your passwords extremely hard to remember. Bye. By padding them. So, and then I use symbols in there, you know, often I'll use a three for an
E or an A for an, ampersand for an A, that sort of thing. So, but uppercase, lowercase numbers, symbols, all the various letters, and then pad. It, is the point of my diatribe here. And then I said, finally, and this is not solicited, but they have been recently, a sponsor on the show is PIA, Private Internet Access. It's very an expensive VPN service and very versatile. And once you have an account, you can use it on your
phone, your iPad, your laptop. And so this should always be on when you're on any publicly accessible Wi-Fi. Remember, however, every now and then, and I don't know why, for no apparent reason, my mail does not work properly when I'm using the PIA VPN. It might be because you are also using Apple's protect, mail protection. We've had some reports that the two of them together, uh, do not play nicely together. Apple's mail privacy. I forget what it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
That makes sense then. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, but the, and the point of these things is, you know, nothing's a hundred percent safe, but, but if she does these two or three things, she's going to make herself a harder target and the, the, the geeks will go on to harass somebody less protected. It's a simpler pastures. That's really what you're looking for. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Just don't leave any, any holes open.
I, I very much try not to create my own passwords because I know that I will fall into patterns and habits that people could or computers could, it you know begin to think if you get four if i were to create passwords based on, a pattern or a set of patterns and you got five of them well is that enough to start to, make far more educated guesses about what a different password of mine might be possibly right so i am a big fan of letting for logins i let one password just create my passwords or
or iCloud Keychain can create a password. But for those moments where you need to create a password, but you don't, like one password is very particular. If I ask one password to create a password, it's gonna store it, and it's gonna decide how to assign it and like where to put it. And it's gonna, like sometimes I know it's gonna put it in the wrong place. Like if I'm on one site, it's gonna be like, oh yeah, should I replace? No, no, I just want a password.
Especially if I'm creating passwords for other people, right? Like, you know, if I'm creating a login for somebody at work or something, and I need to give them a password, I don't want to come up with it off the top of my head, but I want it to be secure. And so, uh, and one password is going to try and store it for me. It's like, nope, I don't want that password. I just want to create it on the fly and make it go away.
Um, I like there, there are websites there's, um, uh, what's the XK password. Right. Is, is one of them. Okay. I think is a good, uh, S K P A S S W D. I believe it's S K X K P A S S W D.net. It's that will allow you to make memorable passwords if you want, because it will use words, uh, interspersed by different, you know, interrupting characters. I like an app called PSWD that I downloaded from the Mac app store.
It sits in my menu bar when I want it and it will just create passwords and copy them to the clipboard for me so I can just paste them where I need and then I forget about them, which is great. Oh, that's nice. And you know, it's funny because you bring up a good point. Talking about, you don't like to make your own because. Then it becomes guessable, right? I mean, the human brain is predictable to machines. But I've always resisted that.
But you bring up a very good point in that, I'm not gonna, while I can remember it, when I see it, or if I have to type, it makes it easier for me to type in, I guess. Is the only thing that that does for me. Because otherwise, I'm using the one password all the time. And I should just let that copy it over rather than let it be that way. Although I don't know what I have that anybody wants, It's beyond my, my social security numbers locked down. I could broadcast it here.
Yeah. Fair. All my credits locked, but. Fair. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. But it's. Well, fun, fun stuff. The principle of it. I like it. Yes. The principle of it. Well, and it's, you know, here's the thing is people say, well, you know, when it comes to, to like privacy, I have nothing to hide or security. I have nothing anybody would want. That's what you think, right? But you don't know what someone else wants. from you, right.
And so there might be something very specific that you don't think about that somebody else is like, oh, if only I could get that from Pete or that from Dave or whatever. That piece of data will allow me to, yeah. Yeah. Will allow me to do a thing. And you're like, oh, well, that seems so useless. It's like, well, to you maybe, but yeah. So, so I, I like those tools, XK password and the PSWD app either, either one.
Um, I, you know, try to make my life a little bit easier. Yep, to do it what it is I want to do and what I wanted to do recently Pete was understand the difference, between a USB 4 cable and a Thunderbolt 2. Three or four cable, so we're talking about cables with USB-C ports right not the lightning ports that our phones currently use right so, cables with USB-C ports mean USB cables or Thunderbolt cables and this started when I was.
Furiously like I was about to leave for a trip, and I needed a cable for my extra screen And I realized that most of the cables with USB-C ports that I had would not pass video And it was like okay, so these are just charging cables I need cables to rule them all. I need cables that will certainly charge and pass power delivery, but I also need them to pass data as fast as I want for anything. And I need them to support USB and Thunderbolt and all of that stuff.
And I see USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 used not interchangeably, but like at the same place a lot of times, like, oh, well this device is USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. Like almost like whoever is saying it is treating the distinction as a toss away item, right? And so I was like, all right, I'm doing it. I'm going down the path here. So my real question is, like I said, what's the difference between USB4 and Thunderbolt cables, not USB4 and Thunderbolt devices and drives and all of that, cables.
So, I bought a bunch of cables, because I wanted to know, and I also wanted to know, can I get two meter cables? Because those little tiny ones, the .75 meter ones are great for connecting a little drive, but like if I want to connect to an external screen, I need more room to like wrap the cable around. I have to assume that I want my screen on the side opposite from where the ports are on my device, you know? Of course. Right, of course, right.
So, two meter cables, things that I can just throw in my travel bag and know that they, are going to work with whatever devices I want to plug in. This is the path I headed down here. Okay, let me ask real quickly then, and you used, what, your laptop? I mean, you're using a device that can obviously, it won't max out, in other words, the cable isn't more capable than your device. Correct. Yes, I used both, well, I used the iMac in the studio and my new M2 Air, so yes,
Yes. And I, and part of the reason I use the iMac in the studio is because in addition to having. Both Thunderbolt and USB-C like devices and hubs or docks, using those definitions. I also have a Thunderbolt 4 hub here in the studio, which is it's OWC's device. And that is very much a Thunderbolt only device, right? It takes your Thunderbolt ports, and takes one Thunderbolt port and makes it into, you know, three or four of them or whatever.
And so, I knew that that required Thunderbolt capabilities. So, I did all these tests over the last week here. I started with a CableMatters USB4 cable, but I made a mistake when I bought it. It said that it was a 20 gig cable. Actually, I didn't make a mistake. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to see if they meant what they said and that it was going to limit itself to 20 gigs per second, whereas it could go, you know, with Thunderbolt, it can go up to 40 gigs a second or whatever.
So I started, well, really what I started with was you know, an OWC Thunderbolt 3 cable because I had one, right? And this is a, you know, one meter or 0.75 meter cable. It connects to everything. It connects to USB 4 devices, connects to USB 3 devices, connects to anything I can plug a USB-C cable into and it has full capabilities, right? So in the system profile or whatever we call it on the Mac, it shows the devices show up as Thunderbolt 3, but it works, right?
Like that's just what these cables do. That's normal, regardless of whether it's a Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 cable, the Mac says Thunderbolt 3. Cause really the distinction between three and four for Macs is a marketing term. And we can talk about that another time. But doing full 2,400 megabyte per second reads from a Thunderbolt drive. So all of those things like, yep, okay. So I know my devices are capable of this.
And when there is a cable that is Thunderbolt certified, it does all these things. Great, so put that cable aside. Then I tried this CableMatters USB4 cable that's listed as 20 gigs. It did limit its speeds to 20 gigs. It did not matter though, that the cable says that it's USB4. It connected as Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt devices. It connected to my Thunderbolt hub and did all the things that my hub needed it to do. It was limited to 20 gigs because that's what the cable said.
But other than that, no difference that I could tell just because it didn't say Thunderbolt on it. That was also true with a, and that was a two meter cable. I did find Thunderbolt, the specs say that in order to go 40 gigs, you can't do that over two meters with Thunderbolt, you have to do it with USB. But I have found two meter cables that will do either. In fact, all of the cables that I found will do both. So, I found, you know, I used OWC's Thunderbolt 4 cable.
Which is exactly the same in terms of how my Mac and devices see it as the Thunderbolt 3 cable. 2400 megabit per second reads, 40 gigs, you know, on the connection, and I can get that two meters, $57 for a two meter OWC Thunderbolt 4 cable. Same with a CableMatters Thunderbolt 4 cable. I think that was $60 for a 6.6 foot one. And then I found this Lurie, L-E-U-R-U-I. I wanted to get something that did not have a brand name I knew.
So I bought this two meter cable for $28. It is branded as a USB 4 cable. It has, of course, USB-C ports on either end. It is branded as a 40 gigabit per second cable and I plugged it in and Pete, It worked just like a Thunderbolt 4 cable would work. Everything said Thunderbolt 4. Yeah. Yup. And today on Amazon, it's actually, I bought it for $28. It is- Down to 25. Down to 25. And there's a 10% promo code coupon today on Amazon. So you could save, maybe that is the thing. I don't know.
But still, 25 bucks, you know. Yeah, that's what it is. It says, yeah, 27.99. Two meters. 10% of it takes to 25. Yep, two meters. No, I think you get another 10% off with the Amazon coupon today. Yep. And, uh, and I've, I've used it. I, I, I'm going to bring it with me when I go to podcast movement this week. I'm also going to bring a thunderbolt cable just in case I actually have proven myself wrong here. But, um, that's just because Murphy, uh, I keep on my favorites list on my phone.
So, and Murphy's Law always applies, but basically what I found during my experiments is that other than the price and the branding on the cable, and presumably the certification process that it goes through there is no functional difference to me for between a USB 4 cable at 40 gigabits per second and a Thunderbolt 4 cable or a Thunderbolt 3 cable for that matter. They are all functionally the same for me. So, I know that Thunderbolt cables go through a certification process.
You. I know that there are, you know, electronic tolerances that they are required to have that USB 4 cables are not. Some of the USB 4 cables that I bought, the Cable Matters ones, were said that they were USB IF certified, Intel certified or whatever. Oh no, that's a Thunderbolt one, sorry, that I'm looking at here. Here, but I'm pretty sure they said that they were USB certified.
Yeah, USB I F certified and that's why cable matters cables can't go faster than 20 gigabits at at 2 meters because they say that they won't be certified for that. But my guess is a lot of these are literally the same cables. They are just either certified for USB or not certified for USB and therefore less expensive and, or certified for Thunderbolt and way more expensive.
So I, and again, we're talking about the cables here. I'm not talking about the devices, like your device that you buy, like your hard drive that you buy, that's a USB device is not going to magically support Thunderbolt capabilities, right? Um, it's going to, it's going to be USB. That's different. What I'm talking about here is cables and connecting two Thunderbolt devices works with any of the cables that I tried out. I'll put links to all of them in the show notes for you.
So I've got actually another cable question then. Yeah, man. Just because I can. Yeah. So I'm sitting here with a ViewSonic monitor to the side. Okay. And that has a, what appears to be a normal USB-C cable connection on both ends. But as you and I both know, it's not, but it's carrying an HDMI. Well, what are these Thunderbolt 4 cables work on that? Great question. I tested that too, cause that was the thing that sort of brought me down this
path to begin with. Okay. I plugged them all from my laptop into my portable USB connector on the monitors that I have that, you know, I travel with and it worked every single cable worked for that. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah. So yes, but, but a charging only USB cable will not work in past data, past video. But yeah, every one of these past video too.
So yeah. Interesting. OK. So, I don't know, all I can tell you is what I, and I've done, I tried to do some research on this to see what other people were saying or willing to say publicly, and I might be the only one willing to say any of this publicly, but people are like, well, you know, there's the tolerances and they're certified. I'm like, you know, I understand that. And listen, for my mission critical stuff, if I have like my Thunderbolt hub here, did I test it with a USB cable?
Of course, will I use it full time with a cable that's not Thunderbolt certified? No, why would I? It came with a cable that was Thunderbolt certified. Of course, I'm going to use that cable. Right. Yeah. You know, so, but it worked fine, uh, without it. So I, I, um, I mentioned the iMac here in the studio, Pete, during that story. I have another story to tell you. Oh, it's very similar to the story that I told last week, Pete.
I came up here after a weekend of being in and out of the studio Testing all these cables. I came up here on Sunday night to do some prep for a thing I needed to do Monday, and I have three monitors in the studio one is built into the iMac, And then I have a ViewSonic monitor that sits to my right a 27 inch 4k So it's the 5k 27 inch monitor in the iMac, ViewSonic 27 inch 4k monitor Another gorgeous display, it's got color matching and all that great stuff. I think it's the 2768 4K.
I'll put a link in the show notes once I once I remember. 2768 4K. Then behind me, I have a Monoprice 27 inch 4K screen that I mostly just use to put like little images up while we record the show for people watching on video. So I came up here and I woke up the iMac as I had done earlier that day and the day before and the day before that. And the two external screens woke up and the iMac screen was black. So I'm like,
oh. So I hit the brightness button on the keyboard to no avail. Okay. I move my mouse around. I can see the mouse is moving fine when I move it to the right to the other screens. Okay. And I, you know, know, um, uh, VN seed in from my phone. I use the app screens on my phone, uh, which lets me do that. Um, and I.
Was able to see all three screens, right? So, and I was able to manipulate things on the screen from my phone and presumably from another Mac, if I had one here, you know, convenient and, uh, it's like, okay, so I shut it down, I unplugged everything from the iMac, plugged it back in and, or, you know, powered it back up and the iMac screen, it made the noise, it remained black,
I could VNC in again and do all of my things. So I turned on the flashlight on my phone, I got it real close to the screen and looked hard and I could see all the icons on the desktop and
the windows and the menus, uh, the backlight on that iMac ceased to function. What's weird about this I started researching it on that machine there are two backlights there's one on the left and one on the right yeah one they shouldn't die together they in theory if the backlights are going to die it's one at a time there is also two engines on airplanes that's it one one gets you to the side of the crash yeah it's what the second one's for so this one didn't even get me to the
side of the crash, Pete, um, I, uh. I have come to understand that there is also a backlight controller built into the motherboard. It didn't used to be. It used to be a separate part, which would have been great for my life because I could have spent like 120 bucks on a part and then be done.
But instead, I have to replace either the motherboard to the tune of like 800 bucks or the screen to the tune of about 900 bucks, Which is fairly inexpensive for a 5k screen 5k retina screen right like the 27-inch screen You can't buy one of those for 900 bucks all that easily, but again. I was sitting here thinking, okay
Well, that's like having to buy the same monitor twice. That's a little frustrating and also it's tied to that one computer I don't get to use it if I replace that iMac ever right it is built into that iMac and that is a 2019 fine iMac it's an 8 core Intel i9 like super hooptie but it is Intel and.
So I was like you sounds like you get an expensive paperweight over there Dave yeah and that paperweight is far away from me now it's on the other side of the room because what I'm sitting here recording this show on today is an M1 Max, Max, uh, yeah. M1 Max, uh, based Max studio. I started looking at, okay, well. You bought a studio? Should, yep, I did. Should I, should I get a Mac mini? Like, should I look at the M2 mini?
And I did. And the price wise was like, okay, so I'm going to be at like 18, 1800 bucks. Okay, fine. You know, I can have it by Wednesday. Fine. And then I kind of started looking and I'm like, well, what about the Max Studios and the M2 flavors of the Mac Studios are pricey, but the M1s are available on refurb and the base model M1, which comes with 32 gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD, a 512 gig SSD. I'm. Was, uh, you know, 1529 on reefer. And I was like, okay.
And so I looked at the speed differences between the two, the M twos aren't that much faster slash better than the M ones. And certainly I was fine with an I nine, you know, Intel chip. So like clearly don't need the speed. And, uh, so I was like, all right, I'm going to do this. And my local Mac shop actually had a brand new one there, same base model. Uh, and, and sold it to me, you know, they were selling it for the same price as a refurb.
So on Monday afternoon I drove down there and I bought myself yet another computer, Pete. I can't, I can't do this every week. Um, you know, on the way home I stopped at the blood bank and the plasma bank and the sperm bank and, you know, bought my family a bunch of ramen to eat. Like this is getting ridiculous, but yeah. So I am running on that, it's obviously doing fine. The nice part is because it's the M1 Max and older model, it also runs Monterey, so I was not forced to upgrade to Venturi.
That was my question. Yeah, I'm gonna run on the core audio issues. Yes, so I'm gonna have to upgrade at some point, I know, but for Monday and for today, I did not have to. So I have this new machine here, it's cranking, it's got four Thunderbolt ports on it and a couple of USB ports and a couple of, actually more than a couple of USB ports. Like it's awesome. I did slow down the fan. It does have a fan in it, which I'm not entirely thrilled about. No one seems to know why it has a fan.
People don't ever see it go faster than it's 1300 RPM, but it is much quieter at 1100 RPM, which is where I have it now so that y'all don't hear it. But the temperature stays the same at 1100 or 1300. so I just slowed it down to 11. And I am able to run, speaking of core audio, I normally run Logic, which is kind of my mixer. I normally run that at 256, oh gosh, what do we even call it? I should never be looking at this while we're recording. The I.O. buffer size is set normally to 256 samples.
That's where I get it reliable, on the Intel Mac. I am today running this at 64 samples, and it's been reliable so far. But I've recorded like a bunch of shows on this, like I think it's going to be fine. Um, which means I hear my voice a lot closer to when I say things, um, which is better for my brain. So, um, yeah, so I have Mac studio up here, but it did mean that I had to promote the view sonic screen to prime position and the monoprice screen to, uh, you know, the second slot, right.
And that means that I went and found this square 14 inch. Um, that's why it looks different. Off-brand screen that sits behind me. And that's why it looks different. Cause it is different. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. And it has a DVI connector on it, but I had a DVI to HDMI cable for it. And then I had a really long HDMI cable that came around from the computer. So I bought for $4, I bought a HDMI coupler and that, that seems to be working fine. So.
Nice. It's a nice set screen. Cause it just needs a long cable to get around the back. But. Yeah. Now, yep, I'm actually surprised that the studio came with Monterey on it though, instead of Ventura. Well, it, it, yeah, it did come, it was, it did have Monterey, but it, it supports Monterey because it came out, you know, a year and a half ago. Right, that's what it came out with. Yeah. So it will take it, which was the important part.
Yeah, yeah, I did notice one thing with it. What's that? But it came with it, Well because it or did you because you didn't go through the Monterey back downgrade like you did on the iMac
No, okay. No, it just came with it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, just yeah because it was brand new It just had been sitting in the box for a while, So I put an Apple care on it my Apple care just started this week So I got three years of Apple care like I'm all good, I did notice something though because I no longer have Intel machines in the house slash office anymore because Lisa's machine that died was the in the storm was the M was the Intel mini and of course, this is the Intel iMac and,
migrating both of those setups to, Apple Silicon I learned something and it happened on both. Most apps that each of us had on our machines were universal so when I booted up to to, uh, you know, M one Apple Silicon, it just was like, okay, fine. Like I'll, I'll, I run natively on this platform too. There were two apps though, that on both machines needed to be downloaded fresh and have reinstalled in order to run Apple Silicon. And those apps are Microsoft edge and one password.
You have to go download the specific installer for Apple Silicon from Microsoft and from the folks at 1Password. So just FYI. Yep. Yeah, just and and like one password would at least run in Rosetta mode, Here so that was fine. Like I could get it up and running but then I had to you know, I want it to be efficient, Microsoft Edge the Intel version like for whatever reason would not run not even in Rosetta. It was bizarre, So I just had to go get another version of it. But yep, so.
So, you know, it's all fine. It's good Yeah, uh-huh It's been an expensive summer. Yeah, I know. I started off, I mean, I got my new laptop, MacBook Pro M2, 16 inch, love it. That was my own choice. The rest of the choices have not been mine. And not just tech. Right. Leaks in our house, pool pump's dead. You know, daughter's beater needs $1,500 worth of work. You know, little things like that. All those things. It's that's how this summer spend. Let's um, let's take a couple of minutes.
We have a couple minutes left. Let's make it a little bit more expensive for folks and share a couple of cool things found so that we can all sort of be in the same boat here. One of the first things I wanted to share is if you are a Comcast slash Xfinity provider, they now offer wireless backup connectivity for use during storms. When they're, you know, when they are a, right, they are a wired connection that is not fiber. So far more susceptible to lightning damage.
And you can get this box that you put at your house and you can rent it for $7 a month for 36 months, or you can purchase it for $252 and seven times 36 is 252. So I would just take the interest-free loan on that. Um... And then it lives in your home, uh, and is ready to jump on a cellular circuit. If and when your Comcast connection goes down, you have to be a Comcast subscriber. Those of us who are on like fiber can't pay Comcast $7 a month for this service.
I asked, Hey, can I only have a seven bucks a month on limited internet? Yeah. They call it Xfinity Storm Ready Wi-Fi. And it comes with a four-hour battery in the unit too, so that you get Wi-Fi even if like, not only your cable is like literally down, but also when the power is out, at least for four hours. So yeah. So I thought that was pretty cool. So I wanted to share that.
We talked in the last episode, Pete, about various apps for showing keyboard shortcuts on the Mac, And boy, was I upset when I saw this one come through. Oh, cause that, cause Kikiu is the one I could not remember to save my bacon. Yep. Well, well, thank, thank goodness. Yeah. Thank goodness. My face is too big on our discord shared Kikiu from Ergonus. So we'll link to that in the show notes. And then Matt one shared another one called paletro P-A-L-E-T-R-O.
Of course we will share both of those, but these are things that, uh, uh, with a keystroke, we'll just show you a window that highlights all of the key commands. Of course, the one that we were talking about in the finder that led to this discussion shows up in neither of these apps, I will point out, but other ones do. So it is handy. It is handy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that's, I was just so bummed. I, I've, I've used key crew, key queue for years and then it slipped off my machines.
And then, and so I couldn't, that's why I couldn't remember it. Got it. And I'll probably go back to that. Got it. Got it. Um, listener Rod shares a, uh, uh, uh, well, a web app, a service, um, called tango at, uh, T-A-N-G-O dot U-S.
He says this allows you to document processes or for like training and things like that, and you just sort of walk through it captures your screen and your video and your sound and you just walk someone through doing something or you walk yourself through doing something, and you don't have to take any screenshots. It does all of that for you. It also builds a step-by-step flow based on what it sees you doing and what it's listening to.
So you can just hand it to somebody and be like, oh yeah, go do this. It will allow you to blur portions of the video if you have passwords or sensitive data in the video, you can blur those out before you share this stuff. So yeah, it's called Tango and it is create how-to guides in minutes. I messed with it a little bit.
There is a YouTube video that I will put in the show notes because it is like, go watch this video and it will, you'll see it in action and then you'll be like, oh my gosh, like I need that. So it's super intuitive then. Super, yeah, that's the whole thing is it just like, It is intuitive. I've been traveling, go ahead. You just caught, cost money. She loves screenshot. Oh, that's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, I have been doing some traveling this summer, as we all know, as I've shared on the show and one of the things that I have brought with me for all of my travels is the new, um, iteration of the flip speaker, the portable speaker from JBL, the flip six. Uh, this is the, the, the sound on this is, I you know I've had every version of the flip because it's it's what I do I check all these things out, This one has a much.
More I would say rounded sound quality to it it the base I I guess I guess there is more low-end to it But it doesn't feel like it has like gratuitous low-end it it feels like it has the right amount of low-end And it will fill you know I've been using it like in Airbnbs and hotel rooms And it fills the room with with good sound It's got a battery in it, of course, 12 hours of playtime. It is IPX7 waterproof. So yeah, it, it, I, I love this thing.
And you can get it at least on Amazon today. It's the MSRP is one, one 30 or one 29 95, and you can get it today for 89 bucks on Amazon. So nice. I know a funny story about gratuitous sound. Yes. Debbie picked me up at the airport. We're sitting at the circle down on route 60 near Logan airport. Sure. We're jammed up because cars going around the circle. Yeah. Debbie's reaching up and she's trying to turn down the radio. Oh, it was the car next to us. She goes, why? I go, that's, that's him.
So you didn't need to spend all that money on a nice car stereo, honey. We'll just listen to his. Oh, wow. It was that loud. I have one last cool stuff found to share before we were a little bit out of time, but I'll share it anyway. It's actually two things moving to a, uh, third party external display as my primary screen here on this Mac in the studio, and it not being a Thunderbolt display. I needed a way. System settings doesn't work. System settings does not work to control the brightness.
Correct. And I like to be able to control the brightness up here in the studio. So I started looking at third party apps. I found one. The first one I found, I think, was this app called DisplayBuddy, which is available in Setapp, or you can buy it, you know, separately. And it, it works. Um, it was not able, there's, there's several modes of controlling a screen. There's like DCC mode and, uh, something else, the Apple mode.
And then there's what they call software mode where it just literally changes the colors on the screen to simulate a reduction in brightness. And it actually works like it, it, it makes the screen shine less light. But, um, and they said, oh, if you have, you're doing this over HDMI on a Mac studio, you can't do DCC or whatever. Like, okay. So then I tried an app called Lunar, uh, which effect, effectively does the same thing, but for whatever reason, this one does control the screen's
actual brightness over HDMI from my Mac mini, same cable, same thing. Never once did my fingers leave my hands. So I am at the moment anyway, using Lunar, which, uh, I think I'm still in in the 14 day trial, but my guess is I will, um, be a, a paid member for $23 with a lifetime license. It is D D C not D C C. I said the wrong thing, but. Delta, Delta, Charlie. Uh, display data channel, but yes, Delta, Delta, Charlie. That's correct. Yeah.
So those are my, uh, those are my things. That's what, uh, that's what I got for today. Love it. And assuming you folks are hearing this episode, Then it means my Mac studio has survived. It's made in Mac geek out voyage, which is. Really a good thing. Yeah. Yep, speaking of using the phonetic alphabet I got trivia for you Dave you like it I love to report stuff. I do what do you think they use in Atlanta? Which is the hub for Delta Airlines instead of Delta?
Right you're on the Delta taxi. Well. Oh, no that would just confuse everything right? What do they use? Dixie. Dixie. Oh. Of course they do. I like that. Just a little aviation trivia for everybody. But that's not every airport. Just that one airport. Just Atlanta. Every other airport in the world, it's the Delta Taxiway. Atlanta, it's the Dixie Taxiway. Fascinating. Fascinating. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting.
Chicago used to be one of the bad ones. They'd be like, go down Cherry Street. And then they almost had a mishap and the FAA came in, this is 25, 30 years ago, FAA came in and said, no, no, stop with your local colloquialisms, code standard. That makes sense. I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder when the FAA is going to tell Atlanta to knock that off and just call it Delta. Right. Man, imagine that confusion.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, but Delta's also in Chicago. Like, it's not that much confusion. But it's obviously Atlanta being their worldwide central hub. I'd say 85% of the flights in and out of there are Delta Airlines. OK. And it can get confusing very fast if you're trying to use the Delta tech. Wait a minute, were they calling us? No, they're talking about a taxiway. Yeah, fair. Okay. I can see that. Sure. Maybe Delta should change their name.
Right? Dixie Airlines? Dixie Airlines. Oh, man. I don't think so. All right. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. Thank you to all of our premium listeners. You folks really are part of the magic that, makes the show possible. If you want to learn more about that, mackeatgab.com slash premium. You really rockin' it. It is part of the Mack Geat Gab family, the partnership that we all have here.
It really makes a huge difference. Yeah, thank you. And go check out Pete's other show. It's called So There I Was, and that is for aviation enthusiasts, where they might even talk about stuff like that. You can check out my other shows, Business Brain for entrepreneurs, where we tune our business brains together each week, and Gig Gap for working musicians or anyone who wants to see behind the curtain of what it's like to be a working musician.
Speaking of which, I need to finish producing the show and then go play five gigs this weekend. So, wish me luck. Count them five. Count them five. That's right, yeah, five things. Pete, you got anything left to share? Just one thing, Dave, while you're out playing those gigs, Don't get caught. Made on a Mac. Thanks, Pete. That's good advice. I try.