It's time for Mac Geek Cab.
And I'll bring us our quick tip of the week.
I was looking to try and figure out why my iPhone's battery usage was, or battery, you know.
Drain was higher than I would have liked.
And I went into settings.
Battery on my iPhone,
And of course it shows you the percentage used.
However
You can tap on the.
Top of that column
And change it to.
The time used it will still remain sorted by its interpretation of percentage use putting that at the top so go ahead and scroll down and you might find some things way down the list that show hours of background time And those things can chew your battery more than you might imagine.
More tips like this.
Plus, your questions answered today on Mac Geek Hub 1079 for Monday,
March 3rd.
National If Pets Had Thumbs Day 2025.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to MacGeekGab.
The show where you send in tips like that, we bring in tips like that. You send in cool stuff found,
We share cool stuff found.
You send in questions,
We answer your questions.
The goal being
Each and every one of us learning five new things every single time we get together.
Our sponsors for this episode include new sponsor screen. Well, not a phone.
No new sponsor screencast online.com slash M G G where you can get a lifetime 20% discount on your subscription and also factor meals dot com slash factor podcast where you can get 50% off your first box. We'll talk more about those in a little bit.
And I want your feedback. We're always iterating, of course, how we do the show.
and i want your feedback on uh some an experiment we're trying with the ads as you know we have chat gpt write every one of our ad scripts and have it add some funny things in there that forces us to say and we all like to do that together what we've done for years is put the ads uh if we had two sponsors like we do here we would just do them back to back if we had three we would do them back to back to back if we had four we would do back to back in one and then back to back in another.
And what we've started trying over the last couple of weeks is only doing one sponsor per each of those little moments where we get to talk about our sponsors and spacing them out through the show. So I want your feedback on that feedback at MattKeeCab.com.
For now, here in Durham.
New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here, also in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete. If pets had thumbs, I think mine would either hitchhike or be 300 pounds because she'd take the lid off of the biscuit jar.
It'd be definitely the latter.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
So, yeah, that would be a dangerous thing. So, no opposable thumbs is a good thing. Yeah. Because then they might be able to, you know, I don't know, put together bombs and kill us. And then we would have to have 1079 police code, notify the coroner or bomb threat.
Yeah.
That was actually awfully belabored. And sorry about that. And clearly we need a new item on the pre-flight checklist to put Debbie's work phone on. Do not disturb.
That is fair. There you go.
Oh, man. There we go. I don't know. What do you think? maybe we should get into some uh i
Want to talk about our our monthly.
Giveaway for well
I want to acknowledge.
That adam is not here today he's got a theater show going on and so we
Aren't just talking over him no no
Adam adam uh is taking taking today off from recording to focus on getting this theater show up and running that he's doing so uh we'll be able to hear about that from him next week uh also we are now in march uh so we have a new giveaway and it is you get to win one of five copies of unite version six from bzg apps which adds lots of new features and solves the issue of not being able to put google docs in as their own apps into unite which
Means It unlocks the keys for me.
To be able to upgrade the studio machine to Mac OS 15 because I couldn't do that because of the way they broke Google Docs, the way Apple broke Google Docs and web apps in Mac OS 15 compared to Mac OS 14. but unite sidesteps
That issue now and i am actually.
Doing this show with unite six uh running the mac geekub timestamps uh you know thing document that i have up or the chapters document i should say the timestamps i do and bb edit but the chapters document is up in uh in a unite window so yeah make sure to go to mac geekub.com slash giveaway and sign up to win one of five copies of that Now we can move on here, Pete. Do you want to take us to Scott?
We can do that. Now is the time that we do the quick tips. And Scott writes in, and this leads to a rather rough discussion we're going to have later in the show. Having nothing to do with this. But he goes, look, ChatGPT has been my go-to source of information when writing scripts, keyboard macro, maestro macros, or getting detailed help with a particular app.
I recently had an occasion to attempt a complex file moving process and use ChatGPT to help me with some keyboard maestro steps that were a little confusing. I was overcomplicating things. Instead of a macro to watch a folder and see if a file has been downloaded and then move it to another folder, I used SyncTime. What I then did was upload a list of all my apps to ChatGPT and told ChatGPT, look at all my available apps for solutions in the future. Man, that's brilliant.
ChatGPT came back to me with some additional solutions for my file moving task immediately with two other apps I already had, although sync time was still the easiest and most effective. The point is that ChatGPT knows about what apps and tools you have available and can more effectively help you, you can use the terminal command to create this list of apps on your computer in a text file that gets placed on your desktop. And we'll put that terminal command in the show notes.
I changed it slightly to sudo because I had some permissions denied. I have application subfolders on a few things, and I think setup is an example. They put their apps in their own subfolder So I wanted it to get those listed as well, and that's when I started getting some permissions denied. So I used super user do, sudo command to make this command work more better for me.
And then he says, then I uploaded that text file that it creates to ChatGPT to tell it what applications I have and search all the features of all those apps and helping you with solutions in the future. It has already proven helpful. In another task, I query ChatGPT about since uploading this file. In other words, it keeps me from getting caught. Scott, man, what a great idea, Scott. Yeah.
Yep, I love it. And we will put that, there's a command in the show notes at MacGeekUp.com. It basically just takes a directory listing and saves it out to a text file. It's nothing. If you are terminal savvy and want to roll your own, that's what it's doing. It's just taking the list of apps and putting it out with LS dash capital R and putting it out into a text file.
I love that idea.
The more information we can give to chat GPT or whichever LLM we're choosing to use, the better. I was actually having a conversation with chat GPT about this the other night on my way somewhere. I forget where I was driving, but I was just talking with chat GPT. one
Of the things.
As an aside that
I like about.
The voice mode with chat gpt is that uh sorry my candle just burned out i don't know what that means oh show's
Over folks change everything about the show out front should have told you i know
Uh that's right um one
Of the things that i like about that is you know i.
Start the the conversation going and it you know will interact It'll give me some information. I'll prompt it more, answer its questions, whatever I need to do.
But unlike a.
Conversation with most humans, certainly if you pave this path with someone, you could do the same thing.
I find that I had to remember that it is not expecting a response from me immediately. I can take five minutes while I'm driving in silence to think and formulate my response.
I don't need to fill the air.
It's not awkward.
For ChatGPT to not get a reply from me right away.
There you go. And so I've found that I can really kind of think and be thoughtful. It's not like podcasting where too.
Much dead air gets
Weird.
As evidenced earlier.
As evidenced by our pre-show. Yeah.
So that part was interesting.
But I was asking it, how can I... If I if I were willing to forego any privacy concerns or or be aware of them, eyes wide open, as we always are, I. How could I get an LLM like ChatGP2 or any other to look at my entire email archive and use that as data to help me? Right.
Because it might what I really want is it for it to know everything that I know right now.
Like, I don't know how you would go about doing that, but certainly for me, my email archive of received and sent email over, even if I just put the last five years in,
Would paint a not inaccurate picture.
Right? It would
Be mildly incomplete.
Because it doesn't include all of the conversations that I've had with people and the thoughts that I've had that I didn't capture anywhere.
But it would be a way to do it.
And so I was having this conversation with ChatGPT. It did not know of anything in particular that would really be able to kind of digest that for – unless you rolled your own LLM, of course.
But um so you're just making it larger giving it more data so yeah which which begs me the question if you're sitting there for five minutes to chat gpt help you engage with the you know the road rage uh what what's that oh jerk doing uh gpt will say why he cut you off that's
Right yeah yeah yeah no.
Is there anything else you'd like to know i
Actually just find that i sit in silence and think and sometimes my mind meanders and it's like oh wait i still have chat gpt open right i can and.
You know i can
Start a new conversation with i can say all right uh thank you for that new topic uh and it'll say great what's the new topic and then we.
Go off on on whatever tangent that is so
Yeah so i well and that that actually begs the next question that i have and this is the one thing and and it's kind of a geek challenge here uh if you have an answer send at the feedback at macgeekgab.com. It's, uh, how many times do I have to tell chat GPT to give me something one step at a time? I I've taken to literally taken to swearing at chat GPT because I'll go, I'll ask for something yet. Let's do this one step at a time.
Well, have you tried going into ChatGPT settings,
And you can do this on the web or in the app.
But ChatGPT settings, personalization, customized ChatGPT, you can turn that on. And then in there, it asks you, what's your name? What do you do? And most importantly, what traits should ChatGPT have? I found out about this from my son because he was doing something with ChatGPT
And it gave him a very.
Concise answer.
And then at the end.
It said, in my opinion. And I was like,
Wait, how does your ChatGPT articulate its opinions? He says, ah, I told it to.
And so I will put in the show notes what he has put here.
But actually, you know what? I'm going to put a link to this.
I'll put it in the MGGAI section of our Discord so that we can all kind of discuss this. But essentially what he wrote,
And I think he said he had ChatGPT.
Help him craft this, which is super meta I love. But respond with a precise,
Concise, and accurate tone.
Focus on delivering clear and direct answers while avoiding unnecessary elaboration or repetition. Use structured formats such as bullet points, numbered lists, or short paragraphs where appropriate.
prioritize clarity and relevance ensuring responses stay on topic in line with the queries intent tailor the explanation to be universally understandable avoiding excessive jargon unless explicitly requested be opinionated and prepared to support your opinions always state and make clear what statements are opinion and not objective fact and putting that into chat gpt has changed it dramatically for me so pete you could put in there something that says if you're giving me steps to do something
in a voice prompt make sure to do them one by one and that might solve your problem that's
I put it in as we speak give me only one step at a time unless i ask for all of them yep specifically up front Oh, but I'm going to go back and get what you are putting in the show notes and stick that in there as well. And that's under, yeah, settings, personalization.
That's it. Personalization. Yeah. That's the part I got wrong. Yup.
That's okay. No, that's good because I can't tell you how stupid I feel swearing the JGPT.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah. How many times do I have to tell you one step at a time?
Yeah.
You know, because, you know, well, I don't know. That's kind of why I've gotten into computers because I'm not going to let a piece of silicone beat me at the intelligence game.
Right.
Even though it does every day.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. They're super stupid and super smart both at the same time.
Yep. So I will put a link in the show notes chat GPT's behavior, and it'll link to this Discord chat thread that I created live while we're doing the show, which is something no one should ever be doing while they're podcasting.
Well, that's what you do, Dave. That's how you roll.
It is how I roll.
To watch. Folks, you would not believe how much work Dave is doing while he's talking. He's vamping away and he's typing in something else. I mean, it's almost like that. I don't know if you've ever seen that game where a yellow circle comes up And, um, in the yellow circle, it says red. Yes. And you have to say the color of the circle.
The actual color. Yes.
Yeah. But not the word. Right. And how it's so hard to do. So how you can type one thing and talk another,
I don't know how you do it. Sometimes I'm not sure. I've had similar experiences on stage singing and playing the drums. Like it, there, there is a, I call it, um.
Uh, interconnected multitasking.
It's interconnected independence.
Like
In drumming, it's.
It's limb independence where you've got each of your limbs doing a different thing, but all kind of serving the same purpose. And when I learned how to sing and play the drums, what I did, because I'd already done it with four other limbs or at least three other limbs, was I just thought of my voice as a as the fifth limb and how to fit it in.
And the process that you take to sort of train your brain to do that is you're very intentional about it at first, like figuring out, OK, I'm going to sing this note and then hit this symbol here and hit this drum here. And, you know, you you work it out so that it's very mechanical and do it over and over again. And then at some point it just goes click. And suddenly you're doing each of them thinking about them without losing track of the other things most of the time. most of the time
That's that's the plan two quick things from discord both from soccer hallways he says google notebook podcast interact feature is cool and uh then he asks what happens when chat gpt has a data breach i'm uh same thing when oh your bank has a data breach oh
No it's much worse when chat.
Gpt has a data
Breach oh yeah that's true no i i i know that everything I don't think of anything that I give to.
ChatGPT as private. Now, do I give it some things that I would prefer it never... Um, right.
Yes. I do.
I give it to the NSA not half.
Well, it's not so much the NSA it's, it's just people in general. I, you know, there are parts of my life I keep private and.
And some of those have been things that I've conversed with chat GPT about some business stuff, some personal stuff, you know, all that stuff.
And so I am aware each time I do that.
That I am risking that being simply exposed to the public. Now there are a couple of ways to mitigate that mitigate not prevent uh one is to use chat gpt's temporary chat so that it's not learning from you
And they say they're not storing anything that.
Happens in those temporary chats again it it is in my account so maybe they they certainly could store those things but they say they don't so okay fine if it's something super sensitive then i'll i'll do that and the other is you create a sock puppet account with chat gpt right and and but in order to get all the features you'd have to pay double you'd have to pay with your sock puppet account and with your um you know with your primary
account and then it would be related to you somehow because you'd be paying for it with some form of payment that's yours so uh yeah the answer to me is it
I assume it.
Will at some point all get out into the open or it already is i mean they're saying they're using this stuff to train the engines to some degree and you can read their privacy policy it's it's
Pretty tight but.
Again you know data breaches happen yeah it's just yeah it's one of those things yeah yeah vent more has a quick tip for us pete before we right before we we we will get to cool stuff found very shortly vent more says uh did you know that if you select
Some text in the.
Terminal You can then go to another terminal window, select not copy. This is the important part. So just highlight and select in one terminal window, go to another terminal window and command right click and it will paste the selected text without ever going to your clipboard. And it's a weird thing. I did this.
As soon as I read it, I was like, well.
What do they mean by this? Ventmore explained.
And Ventmore was very clear.
The instructions were exactly spot on. It just didn't make sense to me.
It's like, wait, I'm not. That it didn't hit the clipboard.
Yeah, I'm not copying. I just got hit the clipboard. Yeah. And so it was a really interesting.
Command, right, click. Okay.
Yeah, just, yeah, command, right, click. And it just takes that text and puts it in. I don't know what it's going to take to get that into my fingers muscle memory. And the reason is because I use a clipboard manager, I will put things on the clipboard willy-nilly without even thinking about it because I know I'm not going to lose the last thing I put on the clipboard.
I'm trying to think of a use case for it. Why would you want it from one window to another? haven't you already run the command and then the up arrow just repeats the last you know in in sequence well there's another quick tip for you use the up arrow to get to your previous commands
Yes that is right yeah in most terminals yes in most shells um you might not be copying a command to paste in you might have a directory listing on one side and then issuing commands in another and you don't want to jump around so you're
You're copying any.
Text not just text that you've typed in uh obviously when you when you're pasting it or causing it to be typed in for you because it's not actually pasting uh right okay then that's in a user input field but yeah yeah so passwords would would be one potentially copy a password from a file um or not copy but you know expose a password select it again i'm trying to figure out i would love to know some use cases this maybe I'll ask in the in the quick tip thread in in there and we'll we'll
Figure it out.
All right, folks. Look, we all spend a lot of money on our Apple gear, our Macs, our iPads, our iPhones, maybe even Apple Vision Pro for Adam, right? When you want to check your email while looking at things like a futuristic sci-fi villain.
But are you really getting the most.
Out of these devices? That's where our sponsor and our friends at ScreenCastsOnline come in for
Nearly 20 years. Yes, they've been at this longer than YouTube. Screencasts Online has been helping us Apple.
Users level up with
In-depth.
Easy-to-follow video tutorials. Each week, they drop a 30 to 45 minute Apple-related deep dive, plus a shorter tip video. That's over 1,400 tutorials covering everything from macOS and iOS to the best third-party apps you didn't even know you needed. And the best part?
It's for all skill levels.
Whether you're just discovering keyboard shortcuts or you're scripting BBEdit to organize your entire life. Not that I do that. Okay, well, sometimes maybe I do. Look, their team of expert presenters includes Don McAllister, who founded the company, Lee Garrett, who's running the company now,
Darcy Haggerty, Mike Schmitz.
And, of course, new listener, the legendary Allison Sheridan, all sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm for Apple gear. And
Yes, you even get.
Access to their digital magazine featuring guest articles from Mac Sparky and more.
Don't get caught using your Mac at half its potential.
As an MGG listener,
You get 20% off a monthly, quarterly, or, for the best value.
Annual subscription.
And this discount will be applied with each renewal for as long as you remain a ScreenCastsOnline member. That's right. 20% discount is for the life of your subscription.
Go to screencastsonline.com slash MGG and choose your plan so you can get access to the whole Screencast Online library right away again screencastsonline.com slash MGG and
Our thanks to Screencast Online for.
Doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode and now without further
Ado cool stuff found Dan brings us in he says I'm.
Not sure if you follow Matt Jummel I think that's how we pronounce Matt's name on Mastodon But he just came back to the Mac after
Years of being an iPad.
Only author.
So he's been posting interesting stuff about his return.
One of the tips I just picked up was using a window management app called Rectangle Pro.
Out of the box.
It's pretty similar to Magnet and others like it. But it also has the ability to store whole workspaces full of apps and an interesting filing feature, fling feature. Sorry, not filing, fling feature. And the concept of stashing windows, which I haven't mastered yet. There's a $10, 10 day trial, sorry. And I believe it's $10. It is. It's $9.99 US.
So, yeah, window management. I had not.
Even heard about Rectangle Pro yet.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it looks like the folks who make Rectangle app also have something called Charmstone that says you can use that to switch and launch apps with maximum efficiency, man. So, yeah. Ryan Hansen makes these. I'll have to check out Rectangle Pro. That's fascinating.
All right.
Cool. Fun.
Yeah.
On that same thread, listener Jim brings us a similar thing. He says, last week you recommended Randy Walker's DeskPad, which I messed with and is kind of amazing, by the way. We messed with that at post-show. Yeah.
He says, I.
Wanted to make you aware of a very similar macOS app that I believe also provides for virtual displays of varying aspect ratios while providing even more functionality. and it's called Better Display. It's hosted on GitHub and Better Display Pro. Even you get custom resolutions. The idea behind
This is you're creating a.
One of the things is you create this virtual display of, an entire window so that when you're presenting in uh you know a zoom call or something like that you get to control exactly what size what characteristics that window has and it's kind of separate from your other windows which is pretty cool so nice i like finding more of these better display nice yeah
Yeah now the cool thing about it dave as i understand is you're able to look at for instance we record in stream yard if this is similar to zoom
Yes you can actually
Control that window in stream yard or in zoom vice having to have it on a second
No no no no
Display is that not what display the no thought i thought you were controlling it from within there
No okay no zoom and stream yard don't have any um ability to to share control of it it's just sharing your screen that the
The salute the reason this.
Is interesting is because it allows you
To create a.
Screen in a window right so right and you can set the size of that window and the characteristics of that window all of those things to your liking now in
Theory you could put your mouse.
On the on the screen that is being shared and look at it in the courtesy monitor that zoom gives you
That's that's how it came across to me okay
But you could do that anyway
Where yeah i mean i i have yeah but the.
Trick is you know do you want to share a 27 inch screen on a zoom call where you know some people are on laptops that's where things get a little dicey and do you want them to see all of your other windows in there and with this you get you get to choose total granular control exactly yeah okay yeah yeah so yeah fun stuff
Cool all right you
Got one for us
Pete i do kent wrote in with uh plank ssd for iphone and when i first looked at this i went where have i seen this before oh it was at ces yes he had one at ces if you need an ssd for your iphone the plank is from the same folks at shift cam we'll be talking more about them in a minute and you know looks like a fun option we'll put the link in the show notes um you can get a one terabyte or two terabyte it's it's super tiny uh footprint form uh and for only 346 000 no that's their goal to get it
started it is a kickstarter uh but for 125 126 dollars you get a one terabyte for 200 you can get a two terabyte and it looks like uh to own a plank bank two uh two terabytes in a plank bank i'm not sure what the plank bank does uh for 239 pair with the plank bank the
The just so everybody's got this in their head pete and i get to read it as does anyone who's watching the youtube but for everyone who's listening it is plank p-l-a-n-c-k uh which of course is uh related to or inspired by the name was inspired by the plank constant which is um what's the right way to think of the plank constant is it
Is it the the smallest.
Smallest yeah yep the smallest smallest number yeah
Yeah yeah yeah I don't know.
You know, I had it. You know what is funny? When he mentioned it at CES, I had it right on the tip of my head. You did. Oh, yes. This is what we did, yeah. I remember it from chemistry and physics, but yeah, because it's from Planck's constant.
Which is something very small. Yes. Yep. So that's why they kind of went with this. So, yes. I'm sure many people will tell us what Planck's constant is, and we appreciate that. But there you go.
There you go.
Yep.
Yeah.
So speaking of shift cam, so if you need
An SSD and this thing will go at 10 gigabits per second.
If you have an iPhone pro and the reason they created this was to be able to, uh, shoot high-res video straight to SSD without any issues. Yeah.
To record. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so, um, I'll, for those watching live, I'll do it. Obviously we'll have it up in the show notes too. The next thing I wanted to talk about is the ShiftCam SnapGrip Pro. Saw this at CES, too. And it's basically a Bluetooth shutter button and power bank that... Connects to your phone, giving you the feel of a DSLR camera.
Yeah, the idea,
I'll see if I.
Can describe this for people who are listening.
It, like Pete said, it's MagSafe.
The MagSafe portion of it,
One side of it ends.
With the MagSafe, so it's not blocking your cameras. and then the other side is about the same width as your phone and comes down and the battery is in the shape of
The bump that you would hold a dslr.
Camera with and it's got the shutter button right where you would want it
So for all those videos that.
I did it like ces and nam this
Is what i was.
Using to do that um because it it just meant i could just pull my phone out and it's really easy to take especially video but even pictures with one hand with your iphone so yeah yeah pretty
Cool thing and so i just turned it on and then it uh it starts charging my phone again so that's really cool and then here's the other ring lights and stuff like that too that mount to the front of the shift cam handle and i can show you with for instance my uh snap grip wallet that it just it MagSafe right onto the front of that, too, so it's a pass-through.
I don't think it's not a pass-through.
No, no, okay. It isn't a charging pass-through, but it's a magnet that allows you to continue to use the MagSafe features of your phone, even though you've put something on there. And by the way, the SnapGrip wallet does the same thing. The SnapGrip wallet on my case allows me to pass the magnet through there, too, so it It even makes it a little thicker, but it makes it so much nicer.
As you noticed, David, at CES to film one handed, you're just so much more steady because you've got a more solid grip on the phone. It's, it's just less shaky. You're less likely to drop it.
It made.
The, it made videos way easier to
Take because not only did I have that steadiness.
I could use my other hand to manipulate whatever the item was.
Yeah, well, or if I want to literally grab the item with one hand and film it with the other.
Yeah, it really made things interesting. So $70 on Amazon. We'll put a link in the show notes to that. While we're here, though, you buried the lead, or teased up, I should say.
Yeah, I did.
Another cool stuff found. So tell us about the Osnap Snapgrip wallet.
So the O-Snap SnapGrip Wallet, this is a really cool piece of gear, too. It holds up to eight cars they claim. I think they said eight or nine hundred thousand cycles on the spring. It's got a... But it's MagSafe, connects right to the back of your phone, and it's a great way to take a few credit cards and your driver's license and, you know, maybe your health insurance card, whatever you want.
But it also has, like the regular snap grip, I hate using the term, but it's, you know, they were the first, right, was the pop socket capability of it. So it's got the one-finger hole, the full rotation. It snaps into place so that it creates a stand.
For some reason, I did not realize that this – so this is a metal and plastic.
I would assume, wallet for your phone. You mentioned the hinge in passing without explaining it.
So instead of, like most wallets where there is a stretchy piece of fabric.
That holds it together, this one, there is actually a hinge in there. Right.
And that's what holds it together.
Hundreds of thousands of cycles without failing in their testing.
It's not cheap. It's $80.
And you can get it at osnap.com. But, yeah.
I do recall being able to get it for $65 if you're a first responder.
Okay.
Or maybe there was a... I think there was also a discount if you signed up for email updates.
Oh, okay.
All right. That sort of thing as well. But I think it was $65 for first responders. All right. Military veterans, teachers, that sort of thing. Got it. But love this thing. I have... I've been using it probably for three or four weeks now, and I don't intend to go back to my thick wallet that was giving me back pain and numbness in my leg.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah. But it's a great way to go out with just your phone and not forget your driver's license and your cards. Yeah. And a whole lot less easy to lose. How do you say that? A lot easier to keep track of because it's connected to your phone. And how often do you lose your phone? You don't leave that around.
And the key to me is I am I am someone who wants.
A grip on my phone.
I currently use pop sockets and I have I have two. I have one that's just a pop socket. That's the one with my gig gab podcast logo on it. And then I have one that's a wallet with a wallet and a pop socket. That's the one with the Mac geek gab logo on it.
And I switch back and forth depending on what I need.
I will not use a wallet on my phone that doesn't have some sort of grip in it.
And the Snap Wallet from Osnap definitely has a grip. So that opens up the possibilities as far as I'm concerned. I got to check this out.
All right. Yeah, and the other cool thing about it, as I said, was it allows you to continue. The magnet is not a charging pass through, but the magnet passes through. So you can mount your phone to your refrigerator, to your car fender, you know. Anything metal, it'll magnet. Well, anything magnetically metal, it will attach to it.
Dan brings us our next cool stuff found with something for creating Gantt charts called Aeon Aeon Timeline.
And Aeon Aeon Timeline, he says, I went looking around recently for a way to quickly do a Gantt chart for tracking an upcoming event. And looked at ClickUp.com
And Monday.com.
And both seemed to have a lot more of a learning curve than I wanted to deal with.
I realized that an app that I bought years ago called.
Aeon Timeline was
Really all I needed. He says it has its own learning.
Curve as well, but the recent version has made things way easier to enter. There are several interesting ways to look at the same data. So if you ever want to plan things out, this might be a great way to go. So for building those charts, Gantt charts for your project. Gantt charts are the things that kind of go across in a horizontal line showing where the horizontal line is the date range. And you can see where bits and pieces of projects overlap and all that good stuff.
So this seems interesting. I'm looking to see. It's $65 to own it forever, and there is a free trial. So, yeah.
Cool. And you get, well.
You own it forever with a year of updates. And then after you buy it for $65, if you want an additional year of updates, it's $35. So whenever you want that update. So, yeah, cool. Thanks, Dan. Good stuff.
Nice.
Russ, on the subject of AI and LLMs.
Large language models.
All those things. Russ has some comments for us. He says, I heard about Perplexity.
A different LLM, when listening to Mac Power users, and I gave it a shot. It has quickly become so useful to me that I'm paying them 200 bucks a year for it. It's free for simple queries and three to five complicated pro queries. The paid version has a deep dive that floored me. It's sort of a privacy issue, so I don't want to send the question an answer, but I asked it to give
Me advice on.
Three grad school programs my daughter has been accepted to, and the result was fantastic. Oh, and the paid version lets you access Claude 3.5 Sonnet, I think 3.7 is out now, Sonar, GPT-4.0, Gemini 2 Flash, or Grok 2, if you want to also use them. So far, I just used the default, optimized for fast search. I write song intros for our band. He says, I tried using ChatGPT and was really loving the conversational way it worked.
But when it told me that Paul McCartney sang Moon River during a concert as a tribute to Andy Williams
When he died.
And I used that in an introduction until I wanted to hear it and couldn't find it on YouTube, I asked ChatGPT for the reference and it told me, oh, I was confused. He says, at that point, I went back to perplexity. I also asked perplexity to find it and it said there was no reference to that. I have a perplexity space for introductions. I've loaded a couple files that I tell it are instructions to follow. Yep. I've loaded samples of introductions I've written, and I'm training it to help
me research songs and write intros in my style. Very cool.
Yeah.
I think with any large language model, when it starts presenting you with facts,
One of the best.
Questions you can use is, are you sure?
Because that will let it go and find out.
What I love is something they've added to chat GPT recently, where you can choose to tell it to do deep research and you click the deep research button.
For example, an episode of Gig Gab podcast is coming out the same day.
March 3rd. We recorded it before this one. We were talking about Bob Dylan and my friend, Paul Kent, who is known to many of us here and was back on GigGab for a week.
He said, gosh, is Bob Dylan the most covered.
Artist of all time? I thought, well, that's interesting.
And so I was having this conversation after we recorded. I thought, wait, we can.
There's a there's an engine that will do this research.
So I told it.
Do deep research. And I asked it that question
And it came back with a follow up.
Like what's the criteria to to you know to use and and it was the criteria we chose was the number of recorded cover versions of their songs and so it came up with a top 10 list i think and the beatles were number one bob dylan was number three duke ellington was number two and that made a lot of sense because of you know yeah yeah take the a train and and sophisticated lady and and all the other things that duke wrote that have been covered countless times by so many jazz artists it
Doesn't surprise what surprises.
Me is that the beatles are above him but it gave because it did the deep research it gave all of those um sources you know it's like here's here's where i found this data here's this and and it it probably once it had its instructions chat dbt told me um all right this is going to take about 15 minutes come back and and sure enough 15 minutes later it was ready to rock so you
Know dave i well i'm surprised because i would have thought that the most covered one was morris albert feelings nothing more than feel so how many people sang that damn song
Here's what's interesting no it it's interesting because i
I had i.
Had take the wrong i i don't think chat gpt did i i attribute take the a train to duke ellington uh billy strayhorn wrote that as dr dream points out uh and it was duke ellington was absolutely the first person to make it uh famous so make it big yeah okay yeah so yeah
Okay uh i have a cool stuff.
Found for us here and that is i love backpacks and i need to always be careful when deciding to review or talk about a backpack here because there's so many of them that it's just like well you know here's another backpack with more zippers and all that stuff so
Is this the one we saw at
It is not yet the one we saw at ces hopefully.
We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks So
What I am looking for are.
Things that are different than just iterations on a standard theme of backpacks. And... We found one from a company called Portland Gear, and they call it their Cascade backpack. The first thing that jumped out at me was the price. It's $98 for this thing. Now, that's about a half or a third of the price that most quality backpacks that you're going to buy for your computer cost.
So that alone was something. But what really caught my eye is the way that this thing opens instead of having a zipper at the top that opens to a kind of, you know, tiny little opening that you have trouble and you got to see things. this thing has it opens i'm.
Trying to think of what how i would describe this but it kind of opens i'll say like a grocery bag but
It's whereas the top of it opens just as wide.
As the bottom and you get this huge container
To put things into and the top of it has a.
Um it's a metal frame inside
Of the backpack.
Material so when you zip it up it holds its shape state
It still stays very lightweight uh you can carry it.
It obviously is a backpack it also has handles if you just want to carry it kind of like a grocery bag but uh a great thing for packing things into it's got a sleeve for your laptop a sleeve for like an ipad or something like that other little pockets inside it's got extra pockets on the outside as
Well so you.
Certainly aren't without a uh you
Know to me you're not really.
Missing anything and to get something out of the
Bottom of the backpack you don't have.
To take everything else out to get there you can kind of move things around because you have this huge opening when you want it it's also got a secret pocket for your um you know for your uh like passport and money and things like that and it's got little holders in there for phone and snacks and and all those things but man what a and it's got luggage straps so you can put it on your luggage this thing is amazing the the worst part about it pete is they sent me one and um because it
was lisa who told me about this after i uh am finished reviewing it i um am told at home that lisa is going to be the one who who takes this as her primary and i don't know if i'm happy about that pete but for 98 bucks i might just buy myself one so
Uh and right now it's.
Like 98 bucks and buy one get one 50 off they've got a sale going on so for 150 bucks you can get two of these and that's still less than you would pay for another backpack i think pete wants to say some things but i don't think he wants us to hear them because his mute button is on there you go
I was going to say, well, so the price is right, but yeah. So what you should do is buy two. I'll split the cost. We each get one for $75. There you go.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, these things are, it's really, I was shocked.
It's such a brilliant design.
This looks like a really cool flight briefcase. Yes. Folks, you know, yeah.
Well, and that's the beauty of it is it is, it's not, it, it.
Despite the, the size of the mouth of this it's not
Large by backpack.
Standards right it's it's a standard size and feel of a backpack so you're not giving up you know you're not taking something massively bulky with you or whatever so yeah it's i'm really kind of blown away by this i can't believe
No one else has done.
This before it
That's the part that was like oh this kind of seems obvious like what a way to solve that problem.
So yeah it's
Pretty cool it's.
Pretty cool comes in all kinds of different colors and you know all that stuff but um yeah actually that that would be the that would be the way i think they they sent me either a black one or a i think it was a black one or a yeah must have been black so maybe i'll take that one and buy lisa one in a color of her choosing when we when we buy our get buy one and get one pete so yeah
There you go
Yeah yeah yeah fun fun stuff so yeah yeah yeah and and
And there's there's a few companies out there.
Doing different things with the whole backpack design and i'm i'm here for it and good news is you're also going to be here for it because we've got a couple others to come up but this one i don't it's going to be hard to beat for me All right, folks, you know, I love efficiency, right?
Whether it's tech, automation, or getting a killer meal without spending hours cooking. And that's why our sponsor, Factor, is one of my favorites. Chef-made, dietician-approved meals, ready in two minutes. I recently had their Tuscan pork chop with cauliflower rice.
Super delicious, super healthy,
Super easy. Look, if I could install some kind of like SSD or something in my stomach to speed up digestion so I could eat more Factor meals in a day.
I might do it.
With 40 weekly options across dietary preferences like keto, calorie smart and protein plus, Factor makes eating well ridiculously easy.
No chopping, no cleanup, just delicious food that keeps me fueled for deep dives into my max system logs.
Don't get caught wasting lots of time cooking when you can eat.
Smart with Factor.
Get started at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast.
Then use code FactorPodcast to get 50%
Off your first box plus.
Free shipping.
That's code FactorPodcast at factormeals.com.
Slash factorpodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. You got to check it out. You're going to love it. And our thanks to Factor for sponsoring this episode. All right.
Deborah has one for us.
She says
Recently you talked about.
Tapestry from Icon Factory in episode 1076, a piece of software, a new app that will aggregate many social media networks and RSS feeds and things like that. Debra says, I thought it was worth mentioning that the new version of Reader, 3E, R-E-E-D-E-R, also consolidates multiple social media, including video and podcasts, as well as RSS feeds and subreddits into a single chronological feed. so uh i
I used to use reader at when i.
Was doing
Rss on a regular basis.
For things and uh really had kind of walked away from it for a while because i've walked away from rss but
Now knowing that it does.
All of this i might have to dig back in it looks like podcasts and all kinds of things This is interesting. Thank you, Deborah.
Great stuff.
Love that. Very nice. Yes. Yes.
Uh, Pete last week, I think it was last week. We talked about displays and, uh, We were talking about the layouts of displays, and we've been excited about the upcoming 5K display from ViewSonic that we saw at CES. And so we got some emails about that. But Mark K2473 wrote in and said, I've had the LG 5K sitting next to a BenQ PD32 4K.
On my desk for a while.
And he says that the scaling on this monitor is fantastic. The BenQ, of course.
Needs to be down-resed for proper scaling to that 2560 resolution,
But still looks great.
Hardly a difference between the two doing photo and video editing that's great um and he says my personal opinion is that if you have only
One screen i'd.
Gladly take the
32 inch over the.
27 inch for the screen size and give up the very slight almost imperceptible difference in quality And
This BenQ 32-inch screen, 4K is 550. I have not tried a 32-inch screen yet. And it's because I've been trained that 27 inches for a 5K screen at that resolution, you know, with the retinized.
Resolution that we talked about in the last episode,
Is the thing. And this still does retinized resolution, right? this this one.
But it's slightly larger and you're going 4k to 5k i have 4k screen to my right doing that retinized thing as i mentioned and actually the one in front of me i keep forgetting this this um philip screen is not 5k so maybe it would be okay man maybe maybe i should test out something like this benq and and see how i
Like it yeah.
Yeah yeah you
Can easily get too large though at least that's been my experience i've had a 27 inch imac and i found it uncomfortable to work with You know, if I was writing pages, now what I needed to do was then, you know, crushed the window down uh downsized the window that i was writing in that sort of thing oh but i always felt like overwhelmed i was too close and there was too much screen real estate in front of me now if i was doing online trading and had charts and graphs and
trade windows and you know that that type of thing and and obviously the things you're doing uh running this show you've got things queued up and ready to go on one monitor your notes on another monitor that's what and that's that's needed that's necessary even
For my daily workflow i i am a 227 inch monitor person wow okay i have i have well and this this is actually an interesting conversation.
We do have one other monitor to talk about but
You know on my main screen my main screen is in front of me my secondary screen is to my right that's just how my brain and.
Everything works so right
Um But I'm curious what you folks do. So on my main screen, the just slightly right of the slightly more centered than left, but it is on the left side of the screen is a full height email window. Right. So I have full height email. My doc remains on the left side of the screen because I have more horizontal real estate.
Than I do vertical real estate. Most screens are oriented that way. So I figured, well,
I don't want to give up my height for my dock. So my dock lives on the left after the dock is a full screen email.
And then after that,
Moving to the right is a full screen safari. And that's my primary sort of work thing is email and browser right.
In front of me.
On my right screen, I have my messaging apps, Slack and Messages stay up and WhatsApp these days stay up all the time. And then I have other things. Oh, and Discord lives over there too.
Right?
So I have those four as kind of my primary anchors of that screen. And then other things. My calendar either lives behind or in front of my email and browser because I want.
My calendar to be a wide window.
Or it lives my calendar is the one thing that i am constantly moving from screen to screen depending on what my workflow is if i'm talking with someone in slack on the right screen i move my calendar to the left.
And i'm if i'm doing
Something with email.
My calendar to the right so that i can have those things up front but um i'm curious
How everybody else does it.
Uh that might be a
An interesting topic for a hangout uh.
So that we can all kind of share and see what everybody does oh
Yeah yeah and plus you have your stand-up desk
It's an adjustable desk it it's either standing or sitting that's.
Right yeah yeah
But you use it standing a lot right i mean and that allows you well i guess with a rolling chair you can back back up yeah what you need but but it seems to me you can easily adjust and shift and move to
Yeah i um i stand it's interesting i go through phases where i will raise my desk up for some reason and then for like two weeks it will just be up and.
Then i'll lower
It down for some reason and so for two.
Weeks it'll just be down
I don't i don't have like a i am starting the day and therefore my desk will be standing um when i first got my standing desk i probably used it for almost a year.
And then I got a cold and just found myself exhausted, you know, because my body was like fighting off this cold or whatever.
And I moved my desk down.
I'm like, I got to be able to sit. And so I brought over my chair and obviously sat down and it was like, oh, yes, I forgot. It's kind of nice.
So it's more about how my body is feeling on any given day.
Okay. But I will say if I have to lead a zoom meeting or if I'm a little bit stressed about like, oh, this I'm a little anxious about, well, this is an important meeting or whatever. I will stand up for it. I am. I find that I am more attentive, more energetic, uh, all of those things. If I'm standing.
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. That's which was one of your early tips for podcasting. Stand up.
Stand up. we did we stood up yeah we stood up for the far i stood up i don't i don't think john ever did i can't remember but
Certainly for the first.
Almost year of this i stood up and
I probably still would if the layout in my studio room allowed me to.
Stand up but it the way i've put things in here yeah
You're in that dormer there i'm in a dormer is less yeah
I i have thought about.
Orienting things
90 degrees and then i theoretically.
Could stand up and i don't know we'll see someday the other monitor that
Was recommended as part of this came from.
Marble wraith uh and he says it is the acer
Predator xb 32 3qx.
32 inch 5k display uh he says it won't
Launch in north america until q3.
Of this year but uh they were showing it off at ces as well and so again 32 inches but this one's 5k no pricing that we have seen but it sure looks interesting so um yeah they the digital trends said that they liked
The way it looked.
Uh so you know it's full 51 20 by 28 80 so half of that you get that to 2560 by 1440 resolution so yeah we we will see but i'm excited about all these things all right pete nice we
Still got some time here what do you got.
I do so uh and let me start off with if you think you don't need one of these you're wrong okay you should have one of these i love doing this dave going nuts in the back stop it look the day before my daughter graduated from high school she uh totaled my truck thank you i love that truck but i love my daughter more and uh the good news is look the fire department and the police department in our town those guys i talked to them later they rolled up they
said oh there's there's going to be fatal this one's bad and uh fortunately uh my truck and the other drivers all involved were doing the right thing except for the guy who kind of caused everything didn't didn't get a scratch and kept going and was never seen from again sure but that's that's a whole nother thing uh the the point is my daughter saved a ticket sheet. Now she was at fault for the crash, but the video proved that she was not texting and driving.
She was not distracted driving. She wasn't speeding. She wasn't following too close. All those things.
I have a question for you.
Yeah. I believe you've buried the lead for too long. The video from what I ask?
Video from what? The dash cam. So if you think you don't need a dash cam, you do. I promise you do. It'll save you on insurance. It'll save you uh you know from being accused of something in court whatever this one is cool uh i got the next base pico 2 smart dash cam with it and they have a mobile app okay that comes with it as well i installed this thing in i already have one in my truck i installed this thing in max car you
If it took me 12 minutes, I'd be shocked. I'm sure it was under 10 minutes from the time I took it out of the box and had it all wired in and ready to go. It was a super quick and easy install. Now, this particular one, the Pico 2, is only a forward-looking. So, it won't prove that you weren't texting and driving or distracted driving or anything like that. But it has a super nice wide angle that covers everything in the front.
There's another cable you can get with it, and it allows you to do what's called smart parking. So if someone hits your car while it's parked, it turns on. Or if someone's vandalizing your car, it turns on, and you can get video footage of that. It has a witness mode. you say next you start witness mode and it sends an SOS signal to a friend, you know, an SMS to a friend or loved one, you know, lets you know that, hey, may need help or whatever.
I originally bought one when I got hit by a guy and the cops wouldn't write him up because he was a selectman in the town we were in. Oh. Yeah. And so I went, oh, okay, that just cost me my $500 deductible.
Yeah, exactly.
And that was kind of crap. but uh uh i have uh provided video like i've seen accidents happen in front of me and have provided video to the cops go hey here you go here's what happened and they're like oh thank you man that saves me all this time investigating and trying to sort out who's saying what and and um i i absolutely love having a dash cam in every one of my vehicles um so
Is this pico still available because it looks like it's not um interesting at least not on amazon i mean i like the product listing is there.
Yeah i wonder if next base may have it i'll look real quickly okay see if next base has it on there it's because um uh the that's what i got from next base at CES.
Okay. And got it. Maybe it's new then. Okay.
Then they've got another one coming out. That's, that's forward looking back looking and has, you know, the app you can, you can call up and look at your car while it's parked and you do need to get a second. This isn't one that just plugs into your cigarette lighter type 12 volt.
Okay.
Power supply. This is a cable that actually goes down and, and I believe it mounts into, do you remember what it's called? Dave? There's that, that plug system. that i can't remember the name of it obd2 or whatever yeah yeah the onboard diagnostic thing it plugs into that as as a plug through so that it's constantly powered and that's how you can call up what what is what's in front of my car right now yeah the other side of the plant um yeah
You can buy it at you can buy the 2k for 99 bucks at uh at pico uh net nextspace.com so we'll put a little link in there yep
Yeah and it looks like this other one is is.
Going to be double the price if to do maybe a little bit more yeah to do all those other
Things but uber smart i'm i'm eager to try this other one out and since see debbie didn't have one in her car when uh when it got totaled a couple months back oh man that's thing she was literally sitting in her parking spot and It just started the car when she got hit in the parking spot, and it totaled her year-and-a-half-old Volvo.
Nice. Yeah.
Well, fortunately, the woman admitted, hey, it was my fault. I hit her, you know, and so there was no dispute. But had the camera been there, there definitely would have been no dispute, even if the other driver had said, no, no, she backed into me.
Yep.
You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah.
All right, we have a couple more cool stuff found that we're going to go through here. The first is from R. Stanley in our Discord. We were talking last week.
I believe, recently, about the iPhone 16e
And its lack of.
MagSafe. Well, for $10, you too can buy a case for your iPhone 16e that adds a MagSafe
Ring in exactly the right.
Spot. And in fact, it's even less than $10 because there's a 10% coupon for the $9.99 price.
Yeah. So they say it's got military-grade drop protection. It's from Soup Fine.
I'm sure there are brands whose names we know that will also make cases and maybe we would potentially trust more. Although some of these are fine. I would obviously just test it out before you truly rely on it.
But for the MagSafe part.
That's pretty easy to test because you just put it on. Yeah. Right.
Yep. So you.
Can certainly add
MagSafe to these things, which is not different from what iPhone, you know, 10 owners were doing for a while or Android phone owners do.
Like this Qi 2 is essentially MagSafe,
Right?
And so, you know, you can find these and add them to lots of phones,
Which is great.
So thank you for that, R. Stanley.
On the subject of cases.
And speaking of the cases and things that my wife likes,
The Speck Presidio Lux MagSafe case, this is one of the best-looking cases I have seen because it's clear and has these flowers all over it, and it's MagSafe.
She's got it with her new pink iPhone 16,
And it looks fantastic. It's amazing.
I, I, yeah, I,
I speechless about this.
It cases to me are things that I buy to be functional.
And certainly, you know, you get something that represents your style or whatever.
But a lot of times it's certainly function and over form, uh, when it comes to these kinds of things.
And that's, it's, that's something that's totally fine. We saw this one, we, we got it for her. And when it arrived.
She was like, this is amazing. Lisa never sends me selfies the first thing she did was go in front of a mirror with her iPhone and uh and take a picture of the
Phone and her uh because of how great the case looks I was like.
You know you're in this picture
Right she does not.
Like seeing the pictures and
She's like yeah but look at the case like the case is amazing.
It really it looks fantastic so um
Not inexpensive it's 50 bucks uh but it's spec and it's spec quality.
And it's got MagSafe and ClickLock and you know all of those uh things it's the presidio lux mag safe case nice yeah yeah it's really that on their site
They have it with a with.
The white or silver iphone or whatever they really should show it with like the pink or a blue or something i realize why they're doing what they're doing but it it pops when there's a color underneath it so um just wanted to wanted to share that on the subject of uh of of clicking uh mark m has a suggestion for a
Cool stuff found called super click.
And this is a piece of software it sits in the menu bar and it converts optimizes edits images videos audio and documents at superclick.app it is free while in beta and it's just your kind of all-in-one converter man i i have been using permute for a while to do these kinds of things but this because i have to i have to convert a lot of things often huh
Will it uh oh and it'll download videos from youtube tiktok instagram etc.
You can convert things compress pdfs oh what i okay oh yeah i gotta check this out whoa yeah it's free now and then a standard license
Oh if you get your free license.
During the beta it remains zero dollars all right well i know how
Do they yeah
That's fine they afford that yeah uh
So i'm downloading now so go download now.
Quick quick uh yeah
Great stuff fun, So much cool stuff found.
I want to stay on cool stuff found, Pete. We're not going to do any questions today.
I don't know. But I have a question.
Dave.
I know.
Can we do more cool stuff found?
While we're on the subject of cool things and cool.
Really just cool boxes, I Corky while we were at Mac stock told me about this thing called the VC box and you have something similar to one of these Pete the VC box is a it's a TV set top box.
We'll call it. And what it is.
Is it it's a streaming box that connects you to all kinds of things on the Internet to stream stuff you didn't know you could stream.
Now, I don't know. You are responsible for whether or not this is stuff that your local jurisdiction allows.
You to stream, but it's sure not going to stop you. uh so you know don't get caught for sure but it's at vc box that
The letter v s e e b.
O x and
There's there's several different versions of this thing.
Uh and i'm looking at the latest model it is can i buy one how do i where do i order this thing from huh i can't uh vcbox.com
Can you buy it there
No that's what i'm saying is i i don't know where where i can buy these things from oh vc box order application if you have any immediate order needs.
Please fill in the order form and we will see if you can we can
Fill so this.
Must be one of
Those things where they they build them in bulk and then kind of you know in batches.
I should say and and then ship them out but
Yeah really interesting thing what you have one of the you don't have the vc box but you've got something similar.
No, I have the Formular, F-O-R-M-U-L-E-R, and I have the Z8. They're up to the Z11. I would highly recommend that. I've started having some issues with, I screwed up and put a, I don't know if I screwed up, my TV speakers sound terrible, right?
So I put a sound bar on, and the only method of getting the sound out is through the ARC, the audio return cable, HDMI, and it seems to me messing with the remote controls of both the formula box and the uh television itself i wound up having to reset the television and use my phone so
Looking remote work looking.
At these things are amazing that
Looking at the um the the vc box on the web and and then looking at the formula they are the same.
Like the same box they're
The same box so it's
An android it's an android device that.
Does that that's doing the processing and and all the magic and and their custom software and all those things yeah
Right and i took a two terabyte uh external drive and stuck it on there so that it will time shift a little bit for me it'll record shows it it does not do it's not like the ability that the other services give you to record a series but you can record a show or record a movie okay you can time shift a little bit you can pause and return to where you were on live tv so that's nice those those will have that on the back mine has on the back an hdmi
a cat or an ethernet and the usb and obviously also the power and a little remote ir thing so that you can hide the box in a drawer or something like that and just put a little tiny what
Did you pay for this thing.
P210 okay
Wow an expense
Is there a subscription that you need to to.
Well here not well any any streaming m3u it will handle an m3u and i believe it has some of its own stuff but you it has a google play store on there so you can find other things there but um i happen to also have a streaming subscription that i paid 90 for two years for and it gives me a lot of channels that i'm assuming they must be legal or they wouldn't have been able to sell them to me right dave don't
Get caught pete uh well so you can.
Buy this thing i put in via pia vpn and i vpn it sure i stream all my content through ontario or montreal yeah or peru interesting
So you can buy the formula on uh amazon and i'll i'll look to see if you can buy the vc box on amazon
Too that 195 for the formula one for
The yeah for the 11 pro max is uh is that and yes you can buy the vc boxes on amazon for sure so that's that's where you would that's where you would get that's where they're reselling them interesting yeah really uh it's a fascinating
A fascinating market like i said i'm sure.
There's some there's a gray area here there couldn't there couldn't not be but
And it is vse Not Victor Charlie.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've got links in the show notes.
But, yeah, you're totally right. Totally right.
I got an impromptu one. Go on.
Yeah, of course.
I can chat about it. Yeah.
So from the same folks that brought me the.
ShiftCam Pro handle, they also were kind enough to send me three lenses to try. Okay. Oh, and a case, by the way, because
The lens is attached to the case. Don't dangle them. to the case. They make way too much noise.
Just tell us about them.
I'm going to stop dangling. So I do have, they sent me a 60mm telephoto, which is really nice because essentially I go from my 35mm to my 60mm, which is halfway in between when you go from one power zoom to two power zoom, that's 120. So this takes you to halfway between there. So without having to digitally crop, you can get a nice
photograph. These are lenses. that attach to your iphone case that they that you get also with it so um and then i have some they sent me two macro ones a 10 times macro okay oh my gosh um it you know take a picture of your thumbnail or something like that and get grossed out actually i was able to get a nice shot of abraham lincoln sitting in his chair in the lincoln memorial and On the back of the penny. U.S. penny.
So, people that don't know that, Lincoln's actually sitting in his chair in the memorial. So, yeah, I got the 10x macro, and the other one is a 60. No, that's the wrong one. 10x macro. There it is. The other one's a 75mm long-range macro. And by long-range, they mean you can be up to about three inches away. You don't have to be right up on there, so it's less likely to cast shadows.
We'll link to these things.
I want to explain. You're right.
And what you did was got a case for your specific phone that has a place for these to screw into.
But they also have a universal lens mount.
Oh, right. So you don't have to have a case.
Correct. And
You can adjust it and.
Adapt it to your phone to use it without a case and still fit these lenses on. it's not changing the lens i mean
The lenses that are.
On your phone remain on your phone right but
This is adding.
On to that
And we've seen products.
Like this over the years uh it's been a little while since we've seen one i think oloclip was the company that was doing this a while back and right i haven't i haven't seen them do anything i don't even know if they're still yeah they are no longer around but yeah this is the shift camp folks they've developed these that's and you can buy you can buy different kits they've got bundles um but you know right right
And then and i'll show you right here for those for those that are watching uh go to you go to our youtube feed and watch it but here's here's the lens itself it just fits right into the uh
The case has an ability to screw the lens in.
The case has the ability to screw the lens in. Yeah. And there's a little adapter, and that's my nice 60-millimeter telephoto, which takes some – it's just some beautiful photos. I really enjoyed playing with this.
Fun. Fun. Yeah.
Yeah. All right, folks. And they have super wide angle, all that kind of thing. Go in there and choose your own favorite for your camera needs.
Yeah, exactly.
I will specifically link to all of the bundles so that you can find the right bundle that works for you.
They've got a photography kit. They've got all kinds of different ones. They've got a macro kit, a videography kit, an ultra-wide kit. And you can mix and match, of course, with these kind of two-lens kits.
But it takes your mobile photography to the next level.
I mean. Oh, yeah.
Cool things you can do with these lenses and plus they've got a whole bunch of other stuff play around looking around on their site their tripods their their lights their everything yeah
Fun stuff yeah cool stuff in fact is what we call it cool stuff found you can send yours into feedback at macgeekab.com.
You heard them. Feedback at MacGeekCab.com. And you also hear something else. Mr. Music, please.
That's right. Feedback at MacGeekCab.com. Send in your questions.
We will go back to our standard format next week with a little bit of everything and a focus on questions again.
But it was time to talk through some of this cool stuff found.
And I'm stoked about it. Yeah. We've had some good stuff here.
Let me mention this real quick. because we did skip over it, but we got some good, speaking of feedback, we got good feedback last week. I conflated two things.
No, no, no, no, no, Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete. We skipped that section because I want to take a little time with it.
Yes.
Okay. The don't get caught section.
We're going to talk about conflation next week.
We'll come back next week. I promise. But we're at the hour and 19 minute mark.
No, no, no, no, no. We're not adding more. I just wanted to say thanks
For the feedback.
Yes, thank you for that. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we just can't.
And I'm sorry to pull the rug. It's just like there's always more we can add.
And we have to just kind of draw the line somewhere.
We're going to draw it right here.
Yeah, thanks for hanging out. MattGeekHub.com slash giveaway is where you can go sign up for a giveaway.
Our giveaway with BZG Apps for a copy of Unite, the latest version. It solves lots of fun little problems for us.
It worked flawlessly during the episode here.
So I'm stoked about that. It frees me up to potentially upgrade to Mac OS 15 up here. Maybe I will.
Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. Thanks to, well, thanks to you for listening, folks. Thanks to you for all the reviews at MacGeekUp.com.
Slash review.
Make sure to check out Pete's other podcasts. So There I Was for aviation enthusiasts. he is my other shows are business brain for entrepreneurs gig gab.
For working musicians and even
Though adam wasn't here make.
Sure to go
Check out his debut film podcast.
I think you'll like it it's fun stuff
Thank you folks so much fun i love being able to do this i love that what was that one app that i gotta go that converter.
App uh oh yeah i forget the name
Super click Super clip. What's the other thing we can't forget, Pete?
Oh, you can't ever forget this, which is why I told you to get a dash cam. Don't get caught.