It's time for the Mac Geek Cab, and listener Andrew brings us our quick tip of the week with this little nugget. By accident, I pasted some italic text into Apple Messages the other day and sent it. Bold works just as well. It's just using the command I or command plus B to highlight that text and italicize it, bolden it. I think you could probably underline it, too. More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab number 1065 for Monday, November 25th, 2024.
Before. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek, the show where we take tips like that from you, from us. We share them. We share cool stuff found. We share your questions. We try to answer your questions or at least give some idea of where the troubleshooting process might lead us so that we can each be assured of learning at least five new things every single time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include incogni.com slash MacGeek.
That's where you can use code MacGeek to get 60% off one of their annual plans. Otherworld Computing, this Black Friday Today, OWC brings us Mac users, us Apple users, unbeatable savings of up to 85% at MacSales.com. And 1Password.com slash MGG is where you can go to get set up with 1Password Extended Access Management, which solves the problems that traditional IAM and MDM cannot touch. So we'll talk more about those in a minute here on November 25th,
Shopping Reminder Day. I'm Dave Hamilton in Durham, New Hampshire.
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And greetings from the West Coast out in the Oakland Bay area this morning is Pilot Pete. Glad to be here, guys. I wasn't going to be, and now I am.
You were going to be. You weren't going to be. You weren't supposed to be in the United States today, or did I have that wrong,
Too? No, yeah, we got here early. We've been revised a couple times and all that. So 1065 code, armed robbery in progress. So if you're shopping today, just be on the lookout. Huh.
Huh.
When I looked up 1065, it said, your source for these is better than mine. I'm just going to say. Okay. Because the one I looked up at policecodes.net said net message assignment. I was like, that's boring. I mean, certainly as computer nerds, we can take that and spin it into something interesting. But I like yours better.
Kind of. Next week is a little more grim.
Is it? Okay. Well, I have yet.
Tune in next week and find out.
I have yet to prepare next week's show, so I don't know.
Oh, goodness. Hey, am I first up on the tips, too? Oh, you know what? Actually, I wanted to follow up on the quick tip that we got because it talked about italicizing messages and bolding messages, that sort of thing. Also, if you type something out and then go back and select it in iOS, if you look at the top, there's a little A with three little lines next to it.
And that allows you to do all kinds of other funky stuff with messages to include having a pulse and enlarging and dance around a little bit and circle. And it does all kinds of really cool stuff. And I think I saw somewhere in there yesterday when I was playing with it that you can also get it to insert passwords.
Oh, nice.
So, yeah, play with the message window in iOS, and you'll find some cool stuff in there.
And Pete, there's a third voice here today.
Yeah, I think I was supposed to be up first, and I'm...
I'm sorry.
Dropped the ball. No, no, no, that was my fault.
I followed up on the opening.
I'm glad you jumped in to fill the dead air that I left. But yeah speaking of air tony has a tip he says loving the show and all i learned since 2007 well thanks tony for being around maybe earlier even he thinks he says this is kind of stupid but maybe it'll help someone i switched between the logi the logitech mx master mouse and the apple magic mouse i noticed that when using the magic mouse more and more clicks were unrecognized the logic TechMouse was fine, so not software.
Uh, and I thought, well, maybe time for a new mouse, right? Well, looking at the thing, figured there wasn't much electromechanical going on, but thought, what the heck? Like it was my birthday, I blew hard into the slit between the top and bottom parts at the front of the mouse. And yes, clicks are all registering now. Maybe compressed air is a wiser option, though. and why not go around the sides as well? So blowing out the mouse like an old Atari cartridge.
I guess we did that with our Nintendo cartridges too. But yeah, like old game console cartridges, you'd have to like, you know, blow in those things to get them working again.
I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Fun stuff. That's Adam Christensen there, folks. Thank you for doing that. I don't think we've said your name yet this episode.
Oh, we did? Yeah, yeah, at the beginning.
He introduced himself.
Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. I missed that then. I thought we just stepped right over it. All right. Sorry.
I'm in South Dakota.
I remember this now. Yes. Yeah, now I remember. Yeah, here we are. Okay.
Welcome back, Dave.
Thanks. I'm happy to be here.
Glad you could join us.
Yeah, dude.
I haven't, I don't know. I haven't been sleeping well the last couple nights. I don't know why, but I get to sleep fine. And then I wake up super early and my mind's like, time to do stuff. I'm just like, okay,
Here we are.
So that's welcome to my world. Yeah.
Right.
Right. It's Thursday. We're like, everything's a little bit off.
We are recording this a little bit early so that we can squeeze in two before the holiday and all that stuff. So yeah, it's all good.
It's the fourth Monday this week.
Sure feels like it. Yeah. Yeah all right uh i have i have one from dr lee uh oh doctor
In the house.
Doctor in the house that's right uh i was listening aside
From us dave
Aside from us well i i'm only a doctor when i'm in mexico that's the only place they'll let me write prescriptions so yeah okay it's true it's
A long story folks go back many years
Uh yeah i'll find the episode uh i'll link you to it sure i was listening dr lee continues to an audiobook on my airprods progen 2 while also logging into my bank account on my mac a pop-up message appeared asking me to enter the ping id code sent to your phone just as i took a big swig of diet coke while waiting for the code stereo siri says ping id sent you a code would you like me to read it with my mouth full of diet coke i nodded yes and then entered the ping id code as siri reddit
allowed digit by digit this not our this is not our artificial intelligence folks that's just intelligent he says yes of course many codes will autofill on the mac if you have enabled messages in cloud in icloud but not all and that is true a lot of them just don't seem to work so yeah the nod with uh with airpods pro the uh the airpod nod we'll call it i it's
So cool it's so cool using it
Same yeah i i forget where i was but i've been wearing my airpods more and more um since i got the airpods pro gen 2 and i was doing something somewhere walking and got a you know a thing and i just you know a quick little nod and it it it read me the message i guess it was it was when i was in new york or something but um okay yeah those the um i the airpods progen 2 has been i'm i'm really stoked about these and i can almost guarantee you
that like i don't have advanced knowledge of this so i i'm just speculating but there will be some kind of deal on them again for black friday from apple because oh sure that's just how that be right But I went and turned on hearing assistance in AirPods Pro Gen 2. And it has you take a hearing test. It will also it offered to use a hearing test of mine that I had stored in health from two years ago, which tells me that was not taken with Apple's hearing test methods because those are new.
But I have taken several hearing tests with my, you know, with Apple's methods since since that came out. It is sure it's spot on with what i get at the audiologist and and i'm happy to report that despite bashing on the drums uh for decades and decades uh apple still is is insistent that i do not need any assistance with uh my hearing which is awesome i love that i
I've experienced the same thing which is odd because i know i have enough tinnitus that it's it drives me nuts Sure. But apparently I can still pick up the little tiny tones that they're sending me.
I can attest to you being able to pick up the tiny tones. And that's not a, that's not a, there's no joke backing that up. Yeah.
But then the other thing, back to the AirPod not ever so quickly, and then I'll relinquish to you, Adam. There's, I've noticed I can use it to, when Siri will announce, hey, you've left your iPad and your backpack and your suitcase. It starts giving me all, you've left all this behind. All I have to do is not know, and she shuts up.
It's yeah oh beautiful.
Yeah stop stop talking boom you know just not know she stops talking and i can go back to listening to my podcast
Now a couple things you have to turn that on right the the nod thing and then also i think you have to turn on the audio announcements which was also part of this tip so if people are wondering like why i don't get the message announcements you have these are two features you have to go into your series settings and enable them they're not i I don't believe they're on by default.
You have to enable them. And then I think there's something in the AirPods settings, which, of course, I can't look at right now because I don't have my AirPods on. It's ridiculous that the only way to get to the AirPods settings is to go into settings Bluetooth and hit the little I. And then you get this whole world. That's where your hearing test is. That's where all that stuff is. It's a little wonky.
Yeah so then finally i just want to comment on the hearing thing because i think i brought this up and i never did the follow-up i did end up using my airpods pro 2 for that concert that i went to toe the wet sprocket and bare naked ladies yeah with the hearing protection and, toad wasn't that loud i think it was somewhere in the 80 to 90 db range the whole time yeah and then uh bare naked ladies were 90 up into the hundreds and that's when it really started kicking in And it worked great,
and it monitored everything the whole time, and it brought everything back down into that 80 range, under 90.
That's nice.
Wow. Yeah. And I assume it sounded good?
Sounded good to me, yeah. It sounded great.
And that's – because I've used it too. That is something that you turn on and leave on all the time, and it just kicks in when it needs to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, obviously you have to be in the transparency mode or whatever, but yeah.
Right. You can't be in noise cancellation mode.
Really? Oh, I would have been interesting.
Well, noise cancellation doesn't just turn on.
Sure.
That makes sense now. I think it will protect your hearing in noise cancellation mode, but not letting, like, it might not sound as good.
It seems to muffle the higher ends when you do that.
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I would assume in noise cancellation mode, a lot of that noise shouldn't be coming in, right? Right.
I don't know. I haven't tried it in noise cans. I got to do that. I got to.
I actually use it.
Anyway, I just want to let out people. It did work and it worked great. And it was kind of fun even to like on my Apple watch, you know, watch that you could see the actual DB on the Apple watch.
But I leave a DB, the whatever it's called, the sound meter as one of the complications on the face of my Apple watch. So no matter where I am, I can look quick and see like right now. I mean, it's right in front of my face, but I'm at about 78 dB when I'm projecting, you know. But it's super helpful to know, like, oh, yeah, that's where it is. Yep. Okay. Great. So, yep.
And it's fairly accurate. I have put that up against a tuned dB meter used by the guy who does front of house for Kenny Chesney, this guy Robert Scovel.
I'm gonna i might put i did an interview with robert scovel earlier this year on gig gab and we got really nerdy about sound i might drop that in our mac geek gab feed for you folks to to listen to feel free to skip it oh yeah if but i i think i think there's something in there that we'd all like but i put it up against his i was actually at a kenny chesney show standing next to him while he was mixing and put my watch up against his db meter and it was like yeah man
it's it's 103 up here buddy he's like yep he actually said to me before the show started he's like dave listen i'm not going to be offended if you wear earplugs like robert i was a hundred percent going to wear earplugs and i didn't even think that you might be offended right like dude yeah so yeah
All right todd has something driving him crazy he says he says it drives me crazy that you cannot right-click on a photo to get at the export command. When you click on the file menu, export is below, which leads to export one photo and export unmodified original for one photo. I think the number will change depending upon the number of photos you have selected. He says then off to the far right in grayed out text are the shortcut keys. I've been using the Mac since the 128K.
I know the shortcut keys are to the right, but somehow, just the other day, I saw Shift-Command-E, which is the shortcut to export photos and photos. There's peace in the world again!
Love it yep
Yeah i don't uh i don't export photos often but i know people do the one that i like always is the unmodified originals you know if people want to like backup photos or because you know often you go into your photos you don't even think about it right you've cropped it at some point or you've done some sort of adjustment and edited it yeah enhanced it in some way and maybe you want to get back to the original but you don't want to like revert it back you want to leave it the way it was
in photos so you can export it out unmodified i.
I find myself i i todd's tip definitely resonated with me i find myself exporting photos frequently enough that i'm frustrated by the fact that you can't right click and export a photo um yeah yeah yeah
I started doing it as soon as i read that that's one of the ones that fell right into my workflow it's like
Oh Yep.
All right.
Well, shall I take us to Dan?
Please.
All right. So, so Dan wrote in with kind of a long one and he buried the lead and the lead is the, is the quick tip that I'm going to share. But I will say that Dan, you, he, he found a way to use notes to make it into a to-do list and an, and a rather effective one, but it's long.
And so I'm going to take some time to play with it and maybe come up with a tutorial or something that could be posted or something along those lines because using notes for a to-do list seems pretty cool because it syncs so nicely across and it isn't always popping up on your calendar. That being said, he uses notes and like me, Dan was annoyed that when you put in a hyperlink in notes, it comes up in this very difficult to see yellow. That's its default because multicolor highlights is what's
default. But he says, if you go into system settings, appearance, accent colors, you change it from multicolor to blue, or if you like magenta or whatever color you like, I pick up blue the best. I changed it to blue and boom. Now when I put hyperlinks in notes, it comes up blue. Oh, it's so much easier on the eyes. Dan, you buried the lead, man.
But that's like burying the lead is the essence of quick tips right it's the thing that dan does automatically or you any of us do automatically because it's in our workflow and then when one of us that doesn't do it sees it it's like whoa wait a minute yeah how did you bury the lead so yeah yeah because
I would go in and it would highlight the link and i would change the color to blue and then if you would messed with the link at all it went right back to that hard to see faded
Yellow. Yep.
Stop it.
Stop it.
It doesn't do that anymore.
That's a global setting though right? So like once you've done that you lose that feature.
But I'm okay with that because my eye sees the blue so well. So you're going to have to find a color you really like.
Yeah. It's just a bummer that I wonder why they don't offer some sort of override. You know like you know how they do with like setting custom keyboard shortcuts, you could do it on a per app basis. It'd be nice if they could extend that to say, okay, I'm happy with multicolor as the default, but for this one app, use this color.
Yes, and I'm looking in system settings on notes and I don't see anything about colors.
No, yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. It's just a bummer. You know, it's one of those Apple-y Apple things.
Yes, Apple-y Apple things.
Right?
It's like, you will do it this way and you will like it, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. What's the problem? There's no problem. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Tony tells us, shares a little tip. The new Apple keyboards have the new key below the F13 key. It is a context menu key, similar to like a right click. And he says, I was curious if I could add it to my previous model keyboard. System preferences, keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, keyboard, show contextual menu. and the default is control return.
So you can do this. He says, but I changed it to F13, which I don't use for anything. And that way it almost matches the new keyboard. So you can assign a key that you never use like F13 to this show contextual menu keyboard shortcut. And that way you can get your keyboard shortcuts up.
So yeah.
Wait, on my extended keyboard, under f13 is the function key for me but i have an old keyboard so you're saying the new keyboards have some sort of new.
Key yeah there's a key to show the it's i think apple calls it the context menu key um it and it it brings up it's like right clicking right it it wherever you are it brings up the context menu of things so yeah so you can approximate this again system prep and And we'll put the whole string of things in there in the show notes, but it's, yeah, system preferences, keyboard, keyboard, shortcuts, keyboard, show contextual.
And this only works with new keyboards or is this mapped on old keyboards?
This is how to, that's the tip is how Tony is teaching us how to map it on an old keyboard. Yes.
Got you.
Yeah. Good stuff.
So speaking of mapping, last week we had the tip about shift and enter and just enter by itself. So I used your keyboard maestro and I got it set and it was doing it for everything. And so I went, ah, this is terrible. And then I went in keyboard maestro and said, yeah, only do it for messages and chat GPT. I can't tell you how many times my, apparently I'm subconsciously or unconsciously hitting shift and enter. And now I keep sending messages. It's, but I'm getting there.
I'm going to keep it. I'm going to work with it until, until it goes back to normal. Cause I've been hitting shift enter to get to a new line. So I don't send a message and I'm in Shannon, send the message.
You just described my week because I created those shortcuts during the show, right? To test them and make sure they work. And then of course it's keyboard maestro. So it syncs to every Mac that I have. And I don't need to say you said it like I've been, oh gosh, I'm fumbling. and my fingers don't know what they're doing anymore. Yeah, it's been. Maybe that's why I haven't been able to sleep this week. My mind is learning new things. Unlearning.
Like, son of a gun. Yeah. Oh, that's right. I have that keyboard remapping.
But every time it happens, I'm like, this is 100% my fault and my doing, and I want it this way.
Yes.
However.
It's going to take some time to unlearn, and then the next time you get a new Mac, you're going to be, actually it syncs across. It should work.
It'll work. Yeah, it'll just be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, would you like to learn something else new, Dave?
I would.
John has one for us. He says, good morning, gentlemen. Oh, there's that word again. Oh, no. I often make disk images, sometimes encrypted, using file utility. I noticed that making them on an external hard drive often fails with the error operation failed with status one, Operation Not Permitted, If you see this, he says, go into system settings, privacy and security, full disk access, and make sure that disk utility has full disk access by adding
it from the applications folder if it was not listed. His wasn't. So that will allow you to continue to make disk images. So disk utility needs permissions. I don't know why I wouldn't have that by default, but there you go.
Dude, yeah. Yeah. Why, why isn't it asking for it either? Prompting to like, right.
I hate those errors that go. Yeah. Uh, code one. What what's code one? Come on, man. Just ask for the permission.
Just ask. Yeah.
But yeah, but one thing, and I think we probably covered it on here, but I learned several weeks back, if not several months back is that, and I don't think I ever knew this is that you can drag an application into that settings window for full disk permission or many other settings. Hey, it wants to be able to do this, wants to be able to do that. How do you add it?
Instead of hitting the little plus sign and looking for it, you can just drag the application right on top of that settings window and it comes up great.
Yep.
Yep, it's true.
You know, sorry, I was just going to say one thing about that dialogue that I wish would, all those dialogues, is I wish that developers maybe had a way or Apple force developers to like add some sort of explanation as to why certain apps need certain levels of access like i often don't understand like why is this app asking for access to you know audio recording or screen recording or whatever it's like some sometimes it feels odd and i'm sure there's a very good reason for it but yeah.
Yep yep one of my favorites in sequoia mac os 15 is when i launch an app and it asked for access to devices on the local network yeah
That one's the most.
Confusing and it but it's it's for printing is what it is uh because some just say that that's the thing right like the mac should tell me what triggered this you went to print and it wants to talk to a device on the local network which isn't entirely correct because Because I'm just telling it to print and the system is handling the printing. So like, that's the one that feels like I want to tell this app no to this question and yet still allow it to print.
Uh yeah there's it i believe especially with mac os 15 and the you know the expiring reminders and all of that i think apple's gone too far yeah right i really do i really do yeah it's very windows vista-y it's it's vista we and you know like i feel like we burned our opportunity on this because didn't we call like three os's ago the one that was flaky the windows vista a you know this one's not unstable so which is which don't get me wrong like super happy about that yeah um but it is like
yeah we're gonna get alert blindness i know we've talked about this before but you know yeah yep yep um nibs in the uk shared a tip in our discord that actually for me was a tip in reverse and the tip is that uh you Can go in to your reminders setting on your mac and you can do this on your on your phone too and set a notification for all day reminders so that if you have you can because in reminders you can set reminders to be timed reminders so you could say you know remind me at 10 a.m to
do this or you can just say remind me tomorrow to do this and then it's an untimed reminder you can set in settings a notification time for your all of your untimed reminders so that you still get that notification and it's it's in reminders settings and then in all day reminders and you can show a today notification and the default is 9 a.m When I saw this, I thought, oh, my gosh, I need to be able to turn that off.
So I did. I went in and turned it off because I don't need all of my reminders are untimed and I don't need reminders. I don't need a slew of notifications at 9 a.m. that talk about alert blindness. I just click them and turn them off 100 percent of the time. So I just turned that off and now I don't get that 9 a.m. Deluge. I already get it from Slack and everything else. It's like, yeah, no, I don't like that. It's like, just no, 9 a.m.
Change it to 901, Dave.
Oh, that'll make it better. Yeah, right as soon as I've settled back into my work from being distracted by all the 9 a.m. notifications that are unnecessary. Now at 901. Awesome. Amazing. Pete, can you make sure to text me at 902 a.m. Every day just to continue?
Hold on, let me remind myself. at 8.59 to remind you in three minutes. Yeah, exactly.
Fun stuff, fun stuff. If you've got quick tips, folks, feedback at macgeekgab.com. We would love to hear from you.
Don't send them there. Send them to feedback at macgeekgab.com.
What did you say, Pete? Feedback at macgeekgab.com?
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So I've got an early Christmas gift for everybody. I'm going to read this next review that comes from the United Kingdom, but I'm not going to use a British accent. You're welcome.
Thanks, Pete.
Thank you for that, Pete. Yeah. Yeah.
So many tips and nothing's a problem. Only an opportunity to learn. Five stars, by the way. This is their motto, and they live by it, helping you with your problems if you need, and in doing so, helping us to learn how to fix or avoid a problem. A family-friendly show, but beware of their cool stuff found sections that can be very pocket unfriendly when you realize you need all these excellent things you never knew about.
Seven years, a follower of their show, and I love how they always keep me interested. And then I am desperately waiting for the next episode. And that's from S. Cranmer in the United Kingdom.
I actually got to meet S. Cranmer when the whole family was over in the UK. Hey, we had a little meetup at a pub near where we were staying one night, and he was one of the people that came down. It was actually really nice.
Nice.
Oh, that's outstanding. Yeah. Very cool. Well, and we got another one from Mexico. Excepcional. Uno de los mejores podcasts sobre productos y plataformas de Apple. Siempre aprendes algún tip, manda preguntas, y ellos tratan de ayudar en inglés, años de recomendaciones, y apoyo a la comunidad Apple. And basically what they're saying is one of the best podcasts about Apple products and platforms. I always learn something with a new tip. You can send questions and they try to help in English.
Years of recommendations and support for the Apple community. So thank you so much from Mr. Yailis. Y-A-I-L-I-S. Yailis. I'm sorry for butchering that.
I have one thing to say to that review, and that is, no te dejes atrapar. So don't get caught. Yeah. Matt geekup.com slash review is the place to go. We make it easy for you to review the show. And we really love to get those five star reviews. Really any stars, but you know, the five is we like those better, I guess. I don't know.
Hey, Dave.
Hey, Adam.
Window show.
I just have to come in. And I, you know, listen to those ads, right?
Yep.
That last Incognito ad, those examples seemed oddly specific.
Did they?
Just saying.
How does ChatGPT know about my flamingos? That's right. For those of you who don't know, I tried to make the ads interesting. I've always tried to make the ads interesting. In addition, I tried to make the ads short for a variety of reasons. But, you know, certainly one of the top ones is we are respectful of your time and we want to tell you about these cool sponsors that we have, but we want to do it efficiently. So I do pre-record the ads for the show most of the time.
We play them in so that it's in the flow, obviously. About a year ago i realized that even though i was trying to make the ads different each time when i would get the same set of talking points my brain would basically make the same script and so i now have chat gpt make the scripts for almost every ad you hear us read and i tell it to make it different from the last one and add in some little easter eggs in there so that we all kind of have some fun as we're listening to them
even if it's the same sponsor you've heard before you get to hear it a little bit differently and we all have some fun together so I haven't pushed the limits of what the sponsors will accept because you know it's fun but we don't want to get caught I want to share one other thing about ads now that we're here, because this is probably going to start happening.
I believe I talked on this show about the privacy pixel or a proxy that I created back in August while I was at Podcast Movement so that we could put the industry's third-party redirects in our RSS enclosures. Right. Right. So that they can confirm the download and all that stuff. But I want to protect your IP address. And so we are going to start doing that on this show. I've been doing it on Business Brain now for several months.
That was the first show I tested with. And it's going spectacularly. And one of the major benefits is there are sponsors. I would say half of the sponsors we have on Business Brain right now would not be on that show if we did not allow pixels.
And they are all okay with the way we're doing these pixels mostly obscuring obscuring who you are specifically but still giving some some like geographic data and things like that so that they can know that okay well someone in new hampshire listened to this episode okay great they're in the dma of the boston area like those things are important and also they can confirm that someone actually downloaded the show and so they get their
numbers and all that stuff i'm telling you this because I know lots of you use Overcast. And Overcast right now for our show does reports that we don't use any trackers. It is about to start reporting that we use trackers and that's gonna be true. I'm gonna work with Marco and hopefully have him put something in there about the BackBeat Media privacy pixel that communicates that it protects you from being actually being tracked
That's not going to be in there on day one. And so I just wanted to say that here. You are being protected by us. We're not going to beat a whole lot of drums about this in public. And that's largely because the podcast industry has said, listen, just like Nielsen had before, there's nothing new. It's nothing bad. This is not negative, although the words I'm going to use might sound that way. We need a shared delusion in every industry about how advertising can track
success and performance. And this is the one the podcast industry has chosen. Nielsen was far more imperfect than what we're doing here. But basically, nobody talked about how imperfect Nielsen was. We just all accepted it in the industry and it was fine. The same thing is happening in podcasting and it's totally okay.
And our thing will still protect you even though we were not out there beating drums and you know wearing t-shirts that says it uh the industry basically has said don't talk about it so much so we're happy to talk about it here we're just don't expect a press release about this but know that you're being protected right good yeah did i say that right like it did you guys have anything yeah i think yeah
I think so and i do remember you talking about that back when you came back from podcast movement
Yep yeah so it's working it's working way better than i ever anticipated because i didn't think the attribution trackers were going to be okay with it and for the most part they all seem like yeah just it's like it's fine it's fine dave stop stop talking like okay got it do
You do you mind if i say something positive about one of your advertisers
I don't it's our advertisers but that's okay well
You know what i meant yeah so so i i took up the incogni deal and i put in everything and the apple card rejected the payment oh man oh man so i went back and and i approved it and apple card said oh yeah go ahead now you can now you can do it i went all right good so i went back and filled it all out and i paid full price i'm like oh
Man because
It took the code out when it refreshed the screen so i went back to incogni and said, hey, can you give me the $18 or so back? And they're like, yeah, we can't do a partial refund. They responded right away. They go, can't do a partial refund. Cancel it. We'll, we'll give you your money back right now. And they did. So I got my money back right away and I re-signed up and what I thought, well, I'm going to have to enter all this information again about my email addresses
and all that kind of stuff. And went back and started it back up and it was all there. It worked. So it's super fast and a responsive customer service. And I really appreciated that.
Amazing. I'm curious to hear about your experience with them. I haven't used it yet myself, which is why you didn't say I've used it.
So far, they've saved me over 215 hours, apparently, according to their dashboard, to send, hey, can you take me off your list,
Please? Cool. That's amazing.
And over 300 removals. I had no idea I was on 300 lists.
Well, that's.
Oh, I'm on 3,000, probably 10,000. Who knows?
Well, at least. Yeah, I'm curious to see my numbers, but not in like, it's more like the, I can't turn my eyes away from a train wreck curious, but yeah.
Right.
Yeah. But yeah, good stuff. Hey, other good stuff. I want, while we're in the show business here, I want to thank all of our premium subscribers whose contributions have come in recently. I'm trying to think about a better way to do this. So if anybody who's listening says, I wish you guys would do it this way. Feedback at MacGeekUp.com. Tell us. I want to acknowledge everyone, but I know it takes a couple of minutes. And so I'm open. Please suggestions. Yeah.
Until we have a better plan, or maybe this is the best one. Thanks to Daniel in San Diego for his $50 contribution. Thanks to Harry in Canyon Country and Raymond in Edmonton for your $30 contributions. And thanks to the following for $25 contributions. Timothy in Coralville, Mike in Onchin, Jed in New Jersey, Charles in Midlothian, Harvey in Shoreham, Daniel in Levittown, John in Fredericton, Mark in Knoxville, Craig in New Lambton.
Scott in Columbia Peter in Seidel Gary in Houston Robert in Paso Robles Rick in Traverse City Brian in Walton Hills Jim in Myrtle Beach thank you for your $25 contributions thanks to Bob and LePesh for your $15 contribution and $10 contributions thanks to Jason in Charlestown Wagner and Alan Robert in Columbiana James in San Antonio You know, Chris and Charlie Wood, Bill in somewhere parts unknown, Barry and Des Plaines or elsewhere. Timothy and West Windsor, Mark in Verona, Vero Beach, sorry.
Abel in Santa Rosa, Kevin and Edison, Neil in West Hartford, Michael and Robbins, Santiago and Palm City, Phil in Summers, Mark in Coopersburg, Donald in Furlong, Frank in Voorhees.
Nake and marquette scott and bourbon a's cal and russellville jeremiah and edgewater brian and southbury and john in wake forest thank you thank you thank you you all rock yeah let's do some questions and you can learn about the premium program of course mac geekup.com slash premium and we love you for it absolutely let's do it questions yeah so
Questions i was looking for of the questions banner. There it is. It's coming up now. So the first question comes from Gary. How do I extend AppleCare Plus as month to month? Good day, MGG gents. I downloaded the Apple Store app to my phone because I'm thinking of getting a newer Apple Watch since mine is two years old. I was looking at the information for my products. I just happened to notice that the AppleCare Plus on my M1 Mac will expire January 11th, 2025.
I was looking at information on the Apple site, etc., and it looks like I can extend my coverage with an annual plan, and it says I have to do it within 45 days of expiration. I'm not seeing an option to renew it on the site. Do I actually have to wait for the warranty to run out before I can do so, or is my Mac too old? The iMac was purchased on January 13th, 2023. Thanks for the show, and keep them coming. Thanks, Gary.
Yeah. Gary's not going to like this answer. Okay. I was trying to do the research to actually find this. I think it's buried deep in your AppleCare Plus terms and conditions somewhere. I was having trouble finding it, but I'm pretty sure, I'm 99.9% sure the answer is you can't. You cannot switch from a yearly plan to a month-to-month plan at all, which is why I started buying the month-to-month plan up front, because the month-to-month, you just continue until you don't want to pay anymore.
Obviously, the advantage to Apple there is probably most of us are going to forget that we have a product on month-to-month and forget to turn it off at some point. So I have to actually go back and review mine. You can go through your devices list and see what's on AppleCare and what's on month-to-month and stuff like that. But yeah, you cannot do it. You can't extend the yearly. And in the terms of service, it's worth noting, Apple does not need to extend your yearly. They just do.
But there's specific terms in there that says they don't have any obligation to extend it.
Obviously, they let you. but sure um yeah so you really can't you have to kind of decide when you're buying the device if you're going to do yearly you know the two-year whatever it's at the terms are or the month to month which apple calls they have a different term for it but basically the month-to-month plan pay-as-you-go plan or whatever um so that's why that's why i switched i mean that was the main reason i switched way back in the day is
i just decided this is a better option for me because I can keep going as long as I have the device. And I don't know how long I'm going to have this device or this product. Whereas the yearly, I think you can do once. The other thing to be aware of is you can transfer your AppleCare Plus to a new owner. And I think you're only allowed to do that one time under the terms and conditions.
Another thing to know about the terms and conditions is they are set depending upon when you bought the device. So every time they change them, you're sort of grandfathered into whatever term you signed up for originally. So a lot of the stuff I'm talking about is the more recent plans. If you go further, further back, there's different terms and conditions. And on Apple's terms and conditions page, they'll have it listed out.
Hey, if you bought your AppleCare Plus on this date, these are your terms and conditions. If you bought between these dates, these are your terms and conditions. Oh, wow. So it gets really complicated very, very quickly.
Huh.
Yeah, unfortunately, you cannot transition between month to month and yearly. I don't think you can go the other way either, but that I'm less sure of. I don't know.
Huh.
Oh, and Paul Conway on Discord was saying that there are some exceptions to the month-to-month coverage, too. He says he has a 2020 iPad Pro, and it was on the list that he couldn't cover his Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard. They were covered originally when he purchased the iPad.
Yeah, that's another interesting nuance to this is you really want to look at what's covered. Because I think back in the day, and I'm assuming it's still the same, if you bought a Mac and a monitor at the same time, i think the monitor is automatically covered by your apple care package or was again i don't know if that's and maybe that's not the same for month to month maybe that's only like so you gotta like your airport.
Router was also covered you know if you had apple care on a device yeah yep
Yeah so read the details people because there's like there's nuance in there unfortunately but.
Adam I've never gone with month-to-month. Do you know off the top of your head, is it the same price per year?
No, I think it's ultimately more expensive.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, but you're gaining the advantage. And I think month-to-month is only offered, do they even offer non-plus plans now?
No, not to my knowledge. But what do I know? I'm the guy that hasn't stopped.
Because the plus, I think, adds the like death loss protection. Yeah, accident protection or whatever. Or not theft loss, yeah, accident protection. I think if you want that theft loss 20 you have to go you have to go higher yeah yeah but anyway, no i mean i mainly do the month to month especially with like my iphones and stuff like that because i hand them down in the family and so we transfer that apple care to the next person down the line and you know it just continues and.
That makes sense. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Then everything's covered like for forever, but I'm sure like I, I need to go back and review because I'm sure I'm paying for Apple care devices that I'm either not using or, or not in use anymore. I can almost guarantee it.
Oh yeah. That's a good, yeah. Review your Apple care. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good tip. Yep.
Yep. Because Apple just doesn't turn it off for you.
Right. Keep that income coming. Keep those cards and letters coming.
Yeah. I wonder if those, those like, you know, subscription removal services, um, would think to look at that stuff. Maybe. I would think so.
I mean, I think they require you though to them plug it. Don't they, you have to like plug in all your, your login details. That's the one thing that always gets a little weird.
I think Experian bought the one though. I forget the name of the one you used to use and Experian bought them.
Yeah. But yeah.
Um, interesting. interesting and i think dave am i am i wrong does mint mobile use like allstate or something like that and they offer you a i think it's like a seven dollar a month plan for your phone they
Do offer it i've never bought it so i i don't know what they use yeah
Yeah yeah uh fyi porthos john in the in the discord chat says that if you trade your apple devices in they will auto terminate your month-to-month subscription which makes sense yeah.
Yeah yeah that's
Yeah i mean but The main reason I buy the month to month is because I know I'm not going to like get rid of them. If I knew I was going to get rid of the product in two years, I'm just going to do the annual plan.
Right? Right.
Like in two to three years, I'm just doing the annual plan. I'm just extending my coverage. But yeah, I do the month to month because I mean, I keep my stuff forever now. Like I don't upgrade that often.
Yeah. Interesting. Huh. All right. Shall we go on to Mike?
We shall. Am I reading it?
I think Adam's reading it. I can read it. Doesn't matter.
Mike is.
Oh, wait, I was?
That's what it said on the thing that you were going to read, Mike.
Oh, did I just, I think I just, shoot, I think I just removed it. Hold on. While I vamp here a little bit. I'm lost. So if somebody has it handy.
Go for it. You know what? You want me to do Joe? Will you look for Mike?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yep, go for it.
Okay. So Joe writes in. And he goes, hi, guys. Dave is familiar with my setup, so can probably respond more easily. I've been using a Synology NAS to store a media collection using Plex and as a supplementary time machine backup. The thing is, configuring and maintaining the Synology is a pain in the rear end. Sometimes. That's Pete's editorial comment there. But not always. I'm a bit of a nerd. I listen to MGG, after all.
But I am not interested in learning and staying up to date on Synology systems which are the opposite of user-friendly. Okay. And now I see that. I get that. I'm sorry. I keep editorializing here. And now in the Synology security issues I've been reading about, I'm seriously considering ditching the NAS and using the available M2 Mac mini as a server. What am I giving up by abandoning the NAS? Cheers, Joe.
So I agree with some of your editorialization, Pete, that Synology is fairly user-friendly for me. And it is more user-friendly objectively than lots of other NAS systems. However, it is a new operating system to learn. And it's the most Apple-like of all the NAS web interfaces. But that doesn't mean it's Apple-like. There are three different places to go and set things. And it's not a linear path to do some stuff.
Once you know it, it makes sense, but it's not intuitive in the way that, you know, just anyone can just bounce in there. And to Joe's point, he doesn't want to stay up to date on Synology. So, like, that's okay. As far as the security issues, I did want to address that. There was a recent exploit that was discovered with Synology Photos.
It was made into a big deal by some of the articles about it and it it was a big deal but the thing is most people don't have Synology Photos installed the articles made it sound like it was installed and activated by default on everything and it's only true on the Synology B station which is there sort of not it's like a NAS light if you will it's NAS for people who don't want to have to manage a NAS like like Joe and it does some things but you know the services are just on and photos is one
of the things that's just on they have patched that bug and all all is well in the world again again so long as you stay up to date on it but as far as I know that's really the only big one that's happened recently as for what to answer your question mac os isn't really built to be a server right it's I know it's running Unix underneath, so it can be, but the GUI that we call macOS is not really built as a server operating system.
Some things just aren't available on it. For example, if you want to run Synology Office, which is their self-hosted Google Drive, Sheets, Docs thing, then you'd need some third-party software to do that. And now you're back in the world of managing a third-party server that happens to be running on macOS as well. And that may or may not be any different. However, if you just want to run a Plex server and use it for time machine backups, then obviously that's something macOS can handle.
And your Mac mini has a way faster CPU than the Synology disk station that most of us would have in our homes. Way faster. So for all that video transcoding that Plex might want to do, your Mac is going to be like eons faster than what the Synology can do.
So you'd be giving up um fault tolerance storage that the synology has right because your mac has one drive and the synology you know you've packed plenty of drives into it you could mitigate that by getting something like the owc mercury elite pro quad or the thunder bay mini you're gonna spend for those about like in the in the rounding error category it's basically you're you're spending the same on that box that you would be on the Synology
box and then putting drives in it in order to get that fault-tolerant storage and Mondo storage. So, you know, and now you've got to manage that thing, but it is managed by macOS, right? If you want, you could use software and that sort of thing, but macOS can do it. So, you know, it's a trade-off, but you get the faster CPU of the Mac Mini, which to me is the allure of it, but I'm comfortable with Synology. So, I see you nodding along, Adam.
Yeah, no, no. Yeah, I'm good with all those things. I mean, the biggest one is the fault tolerance and the drives and stuff like that. And again, for that single-use scenario, though, it's a really nice way to, you know, use a Mac Mini that you may not otherwise be using, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
So, So I use both. And let me first start off with addressing some of the things. If you've already got the Synology, here's the thing, Joe, is that I had the same issues. It was difficult to learn, and I still don't know it completely. But being a pilot, I don't have to memorize the flight manual. I have to know where to go to find the answer. And Synology makes that easy. In the top right corner, there's a little search window.
And any setting you're looking for, if you type that in there, it will almost assuredly take you right to the setting for which you are looking. And often there's a little I, and you click on that and go, and it comes up and says, hey, this is what's going on. And I type that into ChatGPT and go, okay, what does this really mean? And often get the answer. So I'm able to muddle my way through with Synology most of the time.
Though I am having a difficulty with, Dave, I'm going to need your help, I know, and then maybe it'll be a show topic in the future, why one of my drives keeps going and not playing. I got two Synology stations. One keeps going abnormal, and I'm not syncing. I'm like, I put it all in, and the next day it's off again. But that's a whole other thing. And finally, Joe, there are lots of YouTube videos on how to do this in Synology and how to do that in Synology.
And being a visual learner, I find that super helpful. But that being said, I also use a Mac Mini for my media server. I run Plex on it. I run channels on it. And, man, one of the beautiful things in channels is you can tell it, make my CPU hurt, find the commercials, and skip them. So when I'm watching a television show, it will automatically skip right through. And I don't think that the Synology may do that with channels, but not when you can run eight cores of the CPU on a Mac mini,
it won't be nearly as effective. So I do use both. Is Synology frustrating? Sometimes, yeah. But I've also learned to muddle through using those tips, which is the search window and asking chat GPD. What does it really mean? What happens if I change this setting? And frequently get a pretty good answer.
Sometimes it's strong and wrong.
Yeah, the thing I'll add to that with the Synology is, yeah, you do have to sometimes figure some stuff out.
But the reality is is it's sort of the ron popeel method you have to figure it out once and you set it and you forget it like once once you've done the work for the most part you know you mentioned occasionally you might have the odd issue but i mean that's just computers um once you've done it it's done and you're done like i don't go in there and mess with my my plex or i don't go in there and mess with my time machine backups, right?
Yep. Yep, for sure. There is one piece of software that might be interesting to anyone thinking of using a Mac Mini as kind of the headless server of your house, if you will. And that is a piece of software called OwnCloud. It's available. It's free for community use. And then if you're going to use it for, you know, your company or whatever, then you pay for it for sure. But it gives you control like a NAS would. It has spaces, which is like managing files on a network drive.
It has Web Office, which is like only office and all of those things kind of pulled together. So you can, you know, tie your work documents and it kind of like Synology Office.
So uh looking into own cloud again if you're if you're using that might be interesting i looked at it you know a couple of years ago when i was kind of having this thought process of oh should i stick with synology or should i just take an old mac and repurpose it or whatever and um so own cloud is is worth looking at there
Very cool.
Yeah. Cool.
All right. I found, I found my place before we quickly move on. I do want to come in, John in the, in the discord chat pointed out from our earlier conversation about Apple care plus, uh, Apple care plus on the Mac is not available month to month at all. So just FYI, everything we were talking about applies to, you know, for month to month is just applying to other devices outside the Mac. So just to clarify that.
Thank you.
All right. So Mike had a question. He says, gentlemen and the other guy.
I love that. Oh, oh, oh, that's perfect.
I know who he's talking about.
Same.
Love it. He says, long time. Touch of gray. Glad to hear Adam again, too. Well, glad to hear from you. And thank you. I also have a touch of gray. So I think we're in the same camp. But he says, hoping you can fix this without losing the entire message string. We have a family message string that goes back and back and back with lots of photos of kids, grandkids, and so on. It works fantastic on all my devices except my MacBook Pro M1.
I still see all the messages come into the string, but alas, no reply box is present at the bottom to reply. I have to move to another device like a Neanderthal to reply. Uh so he wants to know how do we fix this he says as always your help is greatly appreciated.
I hope we can help um i i i've seen this before so yeah my and and it's i've made it go away but that doesn't mean i know how i did that um you
Sold your computer
Right so essentially it's It shows up in messages as a read-only thing, almost like you've been removed from the chat. And I think that's an important way to frame how we might approach this. So the first thing would be go into Messages, Settings, iMessage, and click Sync Now and make sure it's doing its syncing. If that doesn't work, sign out of iMessage, reboot, sign back in and see if that unsticks things. I know from Mike that that did not work for him.
So the other thing to kind of as we tug on this thread of, OK, it's read only messages doesn't think I am able to participate in this anymore. But clearly you are because your phone and other devices can do it. It's just this one Mac that says no. So in messages, you go into settings and there's the list of addresses that are that you can receive and reply from.
And if that message thread includes either a version of you, an address for you, an old phone number, an old email address that you or a current one that you've unchecked there, this could happen. Or if it's an old one, this could happen. And so the way I would approach this is, well, A, check that list and look and figure out which address of yours this chat has. And then either have you on your other device or someone else add a current
version of you to the chat. I remember we had to do this with our daughter when she moved. We had our family chat was based on phone numbers. And when she moved to Italy, you know, she gave up her U.S. number. Well, actually, she converted it to a Google Voice number, but it's no longer part of her Apple ID. And therefore, we needed to add her with her iCloud email address. And then, you know, that kind of brought everything back. I still have a weird problem, by the way.
My sons, it just went away. This is totally separate. And yes, I'm taking personal privilege on a tangent here. My son and daughter were part of our family group chat or part of their iCloud identity had their at MacObserver.com addresses. Obviously, we sold that domain. They don't use those addresses anymore. They're not part of it. In Find My, when I see my daughter, she is her old at MacObserver.com address. I don't get to see her name because it's not part of our iCloud thing,
and I can't figure out how to fix that. But anyway, back to you, Mike. My son was exactly the same way. Not quite back to Mike. My son was the same way. And then magically, recently, it just fixed. So I don't know about that. But three years later, here we are. But hopefully, Mike, adding you again in there would be the trick. That's, I mean, you know, we don't know, but.
Sounds logical to me. I mean, it's worth checking that for sure.
For sure. Yeah. So it's a weird thing. Yeah.
So you need to ask Lucas what he changed.
I did. Oh, can you? I immediately texted him. Like, dude, how did you do this? He's like, I didn't do anything. I'm like, yeah, but is that true? Like he's, he's, listen, he's a way better programmer than me. Go ahead.
He edited his Etsy host file.
Oh, if he did, he knew what he was doing. He's really, actually, I don't know how he is with the server stuff.
Oh, Dave, you cut me to the quick.
He's, he's a much better coder than I am and spends a lot more time in, in Linux than I do, especially nowadays.
So yeah yeah yeah yeah i deserve that yeah you did you did that's true i don't disagree who loves you buddy uh yeah man yeah all right uh if you have any thoughts on these questions feedback of course at macgeekab.com not feedback of course at feedback at macgeekab.com of course that's a better address i'm not going to go add feedback of course at it's going to bounce so Is that slash,
Of course, or?
Jesus. Thanks, Pete. I deserve that. Okay. Let's do some cool stuff found. Randy Walker found one. Let's do. It seemed quite popular in our Discord at MacGeekUp.com slash Discord, where everybody rocks, by the way. It's an app for your phone called Redact Privacy. Of course, we have a link to it in the show notes. And what it does is it mass deletes all of your social posts, comments, DMs on whatever platform you you pointed at. And I think it works with a lot of platforms out there.
So if you've decided you're done or, you know, haven't used a platform for a long time and just want to kind of erase your digital history from the platform doesn't mean it's a race from race from search engines, obviously. Obviously but if you want to erase all your social posts from redact privacy we'll do it so thank you for that randy fun stuff love it love it
Very, very cool. I have a cool one from Soccer Hallways. I think that's how you probably say it. I'm assuming this came through Discord.
Also Discord, yeah.
Also kind of goes into our gift guide stuff. I would buy this for someone, maybe even myself. He links us to the Retro Games coding advent calendar. And I'm going to try to describe this. We'll have a link in there. But this looks like, I mean, it's an advent calendar where you open the little boxes. And then there's cool stuff inside. But what's great about this one is the cool stuff that's inside is electronics components like LEDs and wires and breadboards and all that sort of stuff.
And it comes with a little booklet and you open it up and each day it gives you things to build a game. You get like 24 games of this thing, I think, by the end of it, obviously, because it's an advent calendar. So you get to build and play every day with a little electronics kit. And what's even cooler is it looks like the whole thing then becomes, remember I talked about those sort of retro, electronics kits you would get from like Radio Shack back in the day?
Yeah. And kind of, on the back, it's printed, but it kind of looks like that and you put the breadboard inside of it. You know, you mess around with things. But you get to build a little game each day as you open up your little thing. And it's like 30 bucks.
30 bucks. I know.
On uncommon goods. So.
Yep.
Yep. It looks like a lot of fun. I might order one of these for myself.
I know. Yeah. We, we do advent calendars for our kids every Christmas and we've continued doing that. Um, and we're really stoked because for the next two weeks, my daughter is home with us. So we're, we're getting to kind of hang out, um, which is nice, but we do advent calendars. If we had not already gotten Lucas, a different advent calendar, this would absolutely have been ordered immediately. Um, cause it's the kind of thing that, yeah, like us nerds, We love it. So yeah.
Uh, Porthos John actually sent in quite a few cool stuff's found. The, the one we're talking about here is the base U S I believe that's the name or is it basis B A S E U S I call it basis. No most eight in one charging station. This thing's pretty cool. It's got, um, a cheap pad for like your, you know, your, your AirPods or whatever.
It's got a mag safe or i think it's chi 2 which is magnetic um and and fully functional uh thing for your phone so essentially mag safe for your phone and you can put it into nightstand mode because it flips up it's also got three ac outlets on it which is different than a lot of these things and having ac outlets like i could see this either it it you know like on your couch where you might wind up wanting to plug stuff in and have plugs there.
I could also see potentially even traveling with this thing so that you've got outlets where you need them and then it's got USB-C ports on the side.
And not behind the big credenza.
And not behind the big credenza.
In your hotel room or behind the headboard of the bed so you're lighting the whole bed out,
Yeah. I swear my back problems come directly from having to move credenzas in hotel rooms. It has nothing to do with carrying drums. um yeah but yeah it's a pretty cool thing it's it's 70 bucks right now on amazon you know how prices change over there but um but yeah cool so thanks for sharing that porthos down very very cool um oh this is a it's free uh james shares this action button shortcut
which I'll put a link to it at the Reddit post here. I'll put a link to it And we've talked about, you know, you can run a shortcut with your action button. And this one, I love the idea is this. So what happens is when you press the action button with this shortcut, and you can download the shortcut and just use it out of the box for free, the shortcut will run and waits for one second. If you do nothing, it toggles silent mode, which is the default action button behavior.
However, in that one second, if you press the increase volume button, the button right below the action button, it opens the authenticator app for this user. If you press the volume down button, it opens a menu with other apps that you might want to open. And then also, if you do nothing and you're driving, it opens a menu with destinations that he can map to with Google Maps or, of course, you can do it with Apple Maps, too.
So but i i love this a for what it is but also for the the thought process that it triggers it's like oh wait you do the action button and then you can do other things that you're telling the shortcut to do it's like that's the part where it's like the one second pause is huge to me because now you get different shortcuts going on so
Yeah, that's perfect because I started messing around with changing what my action button could do. And I quickly realized I had a hard time getting my phone back to, you know, off the silent. I don't want that. I want it to, you know, I want it to be silent. That's what I use it for. It's my muscle memory. Yes. And seeing this, oh, that's awesome. And for, I'm going to tell on myself, I really feel stupid. I don't know why I thought the power button was the action button.
No, it's a little button above your volume up and volume down button. But, uh, cause I changed it and I didn't realize I'm like, it's not working. I don't know what's why it's not working. And then a couple of days later I hit the action button and went to, to take my phone out of mute. Yeah. Cause I'm going, I'm not hearing things. Oh, that's the action button. Nevermind.
So, uh, we have lots of cool stuff found left. So we'll talk about more of those next week, but there is one that I wanted to share. Cause I know you're traveling Pete. And you want to share this one from Grumpy Mike?
Yeah. So Grumpy Mike put in Discord. Thank you so much. We talked about the Barrel X or Barrel AX, I don't know, MT3000 travel router that repeats the hotel Wi-Fi or the airplane Wi-Fi. And what I didn't mention is that even though it's in beta, it works really well. It supports tail scale and using an exit node. So I know what I was trying to do was, and messing with it, and I still haven't done it, is make my VPN, the router go to my VPN, to my home.
I can get it to work with PIA VPN, no problem. It's kind of built into it. You download some files and it works great. It lasts a long time. Couldn't get it to work with my VPN running off of my Synology router just because you have to go in and configure it and I didn't have time to mess with it. Well, it turns out that tail scale... Uh, I can run my Mac mini at home as an exit node and often do, and the barrel X router will go, Oh yeah, I can use that.
So uses tail scale and my exit node is now home. I appear to be home even when I'm not.
That's awesome. Tell that to my wife.
Honey, I'm here.
I also want to remind people that, uh, there is a tail scale app for Apple TV and you can set your Apple TV to be an exit node, I find it to be faster than my synology at acting like an exit node because there's some CPU overhead that happens and evidently it's quite a bit. And my Apple TV is plugged in all the time and is on Ethernet. I think if your Apple TV was on Wi-Fi, you might want to see how good that connection is before you start using that as an exit node.
And for everyone who is completely confused about what we're talking about in terms of tail scale exit nodes what an exit node does is it essentially makes it like a vpn so you connect to the tail scale device at your house and when it's set in this exit node mode and you use it that way and this is a choice you make in the menu on your mac or on your iphone once you enable that all your traffic goes through that device at your house and you appear like pete said to be coming from your home
or wherever that exit node might be living.
Yeah. So except the YouTube TV, which goes, oh, no, you're on a laptop. Let me have your location. Nope. You can't watch. Oh, but that's okay. So, and, and I'm, there's a way to do it. I read about it and I didn't do it yet. And so my project going to be this week is to learn how to access, for instance, my printer at home, because I can't put a tail scale client on my printer.
I've already done it. You just have to connect to your printer by its IP address on your local network, and then you're good to go. That's what I do. And I come home and things are printed. I did it on the train. I connected my laptop.
When you say on my local network, but my local network is 10.68.8.1, and my printer isn't on 10.68.81.
Well, it's on 10.68.8 something, though, and that's the IP. You go into system settings, printers, add a printer, manually add by IP address, and put in the IP address of your printer, assuming it's a network printer. If it's not a network printer,
Then no. It is. Yeah. Okay, so here's where I'm confused, Dave. So my home network is not 10. It's 192.168.1.1.
Sure.
My travel network is 192.168.8.1. So it's on the .8 subnet, not the .1 subnet.
Right, but tail scale can be set to, and I forget the terminology of it. But tail scale can be set to allow local network access. In fact, that's exactly.
Allow local network access. Allow direct access to the local network when routing traffic being an exit node.
Bingo.
So checking that, I should be able to ping my printer.
Correct.
I've already done it. See?
Yep.
How easy that was.
No, it's great. And it won't see it like in the Bonjour browser. If you're far from it, it won't see it. You have to manually, I had to manually add it as an IP address and then it was fine. And now, welcome to what happens when my phone rings and it's Pete. That's the conversation. So, there you go.
We just had it.
We just had it. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Adam, do you have anything more to add?
No, I'm all good. I'm ready to get out of here.
Same. Yeah. All right, folks. Happy, if you're in the U.S., have a great week and happy Thanksgiving. Make sure to check out our, actually, if you're not in the U.S., also have a great week. There's no, like, the Happy Thanksgiving part was for the folks in the U.S. Have a great week is for all of us. Make sure to go to MacGeekUp.com slash giveaway. There's still time to get into the OWC giveaway for their Express 1M2 SSD enclosure here in November.
And then we've got some fun stuff coming up for December, of course. Have a uh yeah have a great week thanks to cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you make sure to check out adam's new show the debut film podcast pete's show so there i was my show's business brand and gig gab and uh yeah leave us that review we'd love that geekup.com slash review that's right five new things five stars
Make it so
Make it so uh adam do you have any last lasting words for them
Uh thank you here oh yeah don't get caught.
Later everybody