It's time for MacGeek, Kevin. I'll bring us our opening quick tip this week. I was on my Apple Watch, launched the weather app, and you know, it shows you that little circle that shows the temperature for every hour of the day. Tap the middle of that hourly circle to change from the temperature on every hour to temperature and precipitation, and then tap it again and you get to precipitation percentage. So you can cycle through those.
I had no idea more quick tips like this, plus your questions answered today here on MacGeek991 for Monday, July 17th, 2023. Music. Greetings, folks, and indeed, welcome to MacGeekGab, the show where you send in your quick tips, your questions, your cool stuff found to feedback at macgeekgab.com.
We share those on the show, organized loosely into an agenda that hopefully makes a little sense and really hopefully allows each and every one of us to learn at least five new things every single time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, Hopwater at HOPWTR.com slash MGG. That's where you can go to get 20 percent off your first purchase. Of course, BB Edit and another sponsor here today at BareBones.com. We'll talk more in depth about those shortly here for now.
Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in usually sunny Pensacola, Florida, the birthplace of naval aviation, it's Pilot Pete. Huh. I never think of, first of all, greetings Pilot Pete. It's good to get to hang out. I never think about Pensacola as like a, a Naval head, you know, but I, but of course it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is the birthplace of Naval aviation and anybody in the area, I highly recommend go visit the Naval Aviation Museum.
One of the top Naval, or one of the top aviation museums in the world, they've got some amazing things there. Huh. So. All right. Yeah. Maybe I'll come down. Everything from a lunar capsule. Yeah, come down. Come down and visit. And we'll go to the museum. And it is reopened to the public. It was closed for a couple years due to COVID and a semi-terrorist attack. Oh, man. On base. And yeah, it was really tight security, but you could now, the public can now get back
in. So that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Cool. We have more quick tips, Pilot Pete. Do. I'm going to change the banner to quick tips. All right. Let's attack those things. My face is too big. That's not, that may actually be true. I don't know. But that is the name of the Discord member of our MacGeekUp community who shared this tip. He says, here's the epitome of a quick tip. I love the epitome of a quick tip.
Since a lot of great macOS tools and apps, like the lovely macOS Arial screensaver, are hosted on GitHub, I frequently find myself wanting to know when new updates are released. If you have a GitHub account, or if you sign up for a free one, it's simple to then sign up for email alerts on these new releases. Just go to any given repository for your app, or whatever it is you want to watch, and click on watch, then custom and select releases. Voila, you'll start receiving emails
about new releases. I love this. I, um, I mentioned in the, in the thread on Discord. That Mac updater is also a great way to keep track of releases. And my face is too big replied saying, yes, I run that too, but it doesn't always catch the things that are on GitHub. And he said, so I like to use both. I like this. This is good. Most interesting because that's what everybody he needs though is more email.
Yeah, you know, I have changed my tune on email, and it really is a result of all of the social media algorithms out there. The algorithms don't decide what's in my best interest to get, they decide what's best for, what would best capture my attention and keep me, you know, doom-scrolling or whatever, right? I mean, I get it. Like, I totally, if I ran a social media company, I'd probably do exactly the same thing, right?
I get how you get clicks that's how you and that's how you keep engagements and all that stuff.
But like I've noticed with things like bands that I follow if I don't sign up for their email list, I don't I will miss shows that are coming So like venues that I like to go to bands that I like to follow I sign up on their email list, You know you could sign up for podcasts that you follow for example you could go to macgeekab.com and sign up for our email list so that you'll know when a new episode's out. You also get like all the show notes with clickable links and timestamps and everything
right there in your email box along with that. Including when we're gonna record. And you can come join macgeekab.com slash discord. Yeah. Join us in the chat there. Yep. Because that's when we are most active. Yes. We are live chatting together and that sort of thing. So I'm gonna take us down one more quick rabbit hole. Because we did mention email. Are you noticing, I'm getting things that I've had for years coming to my inbox, showing up in my junk mail. What has changed in Apple mail?
And we don't have to address it now, but later in the show, maybe? No, no, we're here. Yeah, no, it's totally fine. This is interesting. So I want to ask a clarifying question before we dig in here. Are you seeing this with email accounts that are iCloud hosted or with any email accounts? Any email accounts. Okay, so it's- Like my personal HarmonOne domain, is now there's things that I've gotten for years. But your personal HarmonOne domain is not hosted at iCloud, correct?
It is not, no. Okay. It's a just host server. It's a just host thing. Okay, because we've been getting reports. We talked about a few of them on the show. I've heard about quite a few just via email that we haven't yet included in the show, But, but there, and like my dad was also reporting this, Allison over at Nosilicast was reporting this. Lots of you have been reporting this. That- And in fact, my Mac stock ticket on the Mac geek app email wound up in there. Yeah.
Like, love it. So you're, you, you are the first one. No, I guess actually my dad would have been the first one to identify that this was happening. On device, not on server. That's what I've been trying to figure out as we've been sort of distilling through this is, is it on device? You know, is it the iCloud server-based spam rules or is it the Apple Mail on your Mac or on your iPhone-based spam rules? Yeah, me thinks the latter. Yeah, I think it's on the Mac, yeah.
Yeah, the evidence is definitely pointing towards the latter, yeah. I don't use Apple's spam filtering And and maybe that's the the answer here because yes lots and lots of you are seeing, False positives for spam so things that are being incorrectly identified as spam and put in your your spam folder or put in your junk folder I guess is the name Apple applies to it, And I bet more and more of you are experiencing this but are unaware of it, and that's even worse.
Get in your junk mail box now. Yeah, yeah, I I am For years, I've used the server-based filters that are, you know, from my mail host, whichever mail host that might be. For years, it was, of course, Google. Most recently, and also for years, I've been using FastMail, so I'm using their filters. But if I, you know, in mail, I go into, you know, mails, preferences, junk mail, and I uncheck the box that says enable junk mail filtering.
This does not stop my mail host from doing any server based filtering that all still happens, I'm just not doing a second layer of it in Apple mail, And I think it's those two layers that are getting people in trouble. Okay, I really do I like I I don't because it's what's weird about this Pete is is. To our knowledge, Apple hasn't changed anything in Apple Mail. Like, Ventura's been out for a while.
The people that are experiencing this, I know, like, anecdotally, I know that they all have been on Ventura basically since the release day, you know, ish. Right. So, you know, when, that's why when I first heard about this, it is happening sort of widespread, I thought, oh, something on the server changed. Because we haven't, I mean, we have, we've had point updates of Ventura, but no, like, you know, major, like we're not on Sonoma yet. And so it's like, it's probably not a new engine.
Turns out maybe it probably is a new engine and Apple just didn't say anything about it. I don't know. Right. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't know why I'm speculating as to why, but I, I no longer have to speculate that it's happening and it is not happening to me. But as I just mentioned, I have junk mail filtering in Apple Mail, the client app disabled. And so like that would be my advice for you.
I'm going to start there. And if it's overwhelming, I'm ready to go on to another client, like Canary Mail or something like that. Or, well, but here's the thing. Or even do web-based. I think you're better off finding a mail host that does spam filtering that you're happy with. Happy with, because that way you get it, uh, you know, sort of device device agnostic, right? Your phone gets it just like your Mac gets it. Just like, so that's.
Cause I have on my server, you know, you get into the various, oh, I forget what it's called, but it's basically the spam, you know, uh, you know, I can't think you give it, it assigns it a number. Okay. You know what I'm talking about? Where the server looks at the email and it assigns it a number and above a certain number, it's going to throw it into junk mail.
Below a certain number. So, but getting the heuristic filter set on that to determine what is and what isn't obviously is a very complex problem that has challenged the best minds in the computing industry. Oh, well, and it's a cat and mouse game too, right? Because the people who want to send spam are sending it out. So, you know, and are combating that. No, so, yeah, like fast mail. And I think we, I've had this conversation sitting in this chair with this microphone
recently. And so I think it happened on the show. But it might've happened pre-show or post-show or in our hangout that we had on Sunday. I can't remember, but, um, yeah, yeah. I, I, um, I recently reset my fast mail spam filters. I, I reached out to support and had them wipe my, my teachings. I heard you say that, but I don't remember where, but I did hear you say it.
But so I did that and I've been retraining it and I check my spam every other day. I have it in my calendar and it really works and it takes me, it's way less than a minute to do it when I'm doing it that frequently and uh... Is that on the business brain? Maybe it might have been on this show to Pete like I don't I don't know it might have been don't get old It's better bad for your memory. I've heard yeah, I've heard that I can't remember where I've heard that.
So it like but yes there This is a known issue if you are using Apple mails like the client Junk mail filters be hyper vigilant as to checking your spam folder because you will you will miss things I like I guarantee it almost guarantee it you know, There you go. Well, my humble apologies for taking us down that rabbit hole, but no, I'm glad you did. As soon as we talked about getting even more mail, I said, oh good, I can have more mail in my junk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that, you know, it, it's my desire to see newsletters, you know, direct sent newsletters signed up for, you know, but that's why I now I'm checking my spam folder more vigilantly Because I want to make sure I really manage that stuff and get what I want and all of that I will say this and it this is just me, Anything I find in my spam folder that is not spam Of course I move it to my inbox and train it that that is the way fast mail and most mail including Apple mail and and,
Gmail that's the way to train it. So do that. I, Don't know. I'm gonna finish my thought because this is really important So I train the stuff that is not spam to be not spam. I do. Absolutely no training of things that are spam if something makes it to my inbox I, Delete it and the reason is I know that I'm gonna check my spam folder every two days, right?
It's no big deal for me to hit delete and what I don't want to do is have too many false positives So I opt not to train things as spam I know you feel like I'm beating I'm like I'm beating the system if I make sure I train stuff as spam you might be beating your own system. I don't know. I'm just sharing what I do and what works for me. So there you go. I thought you were going to pre-answer my question, but you didn't. So I'm going to
ask it here real quickly. What happens to mail that is in your junk mailbox or your spam mailbox and you delete it? Are you now not training that as spam? I mean, obviously you should leave it alone, but. No, no, you can delete things. Again, this really is very dependent on who your mail host is and how they manage things.
But most mail hosts do it all the same. If something's in your spam folder and you delete it, which I do every other day, I go through, I pick out the ones that are not spam and I delete the rest to, you know, flush the queue and clean it out for the next time. That act, especially with, I know with fast mail, but it's true with Google and Apple as well. By deleting something from your spam folder, you are confirming that it is spam.
Okay, good to know. Yes. So in that sense, yes, I am training it. I am reinforcing its belief, you know, Fastmail's belief that this was spam. We thought it was spam. We put it here. You left it in spam and then deleted it. That confirms that it was spam. So yes, in that sense, I am training it. So you're good to go there. Okay. I didn't want to defeat, hey, you put it in the mailbox, the spam mailbox, if I deleted, if I just told it, it's not spam. That was my concern.
No, not with fast mail. And also not with Gmail, but you know, you gotta, it's eyes wide open, right? You want to make sure you understand how your chosen mail host does this stuff. And it, If you're using iCloud Mail, that's how it does it. Excellent. Okay. Yepper. Well, rabbit, rabbit hole. Oh, look at us. We're out of a rabbit hole. I think we should go back to quick tips. Are we? Are we out of the rabbit hole, Pete? For now. I got another one, I'm sure.
I'm sure you do. Uh, PC Unix in our Discord has a quick tip says, I usually click on the text I want to select and slide with my finger to select more. Is talking about on the like iPad or iPhone. Sometimes little formatting pops up and interferes with that, making seeing where you are sliding to difficult. You know, if it starts putting up like the little, you know, bold italic things or whatever. He says, but if you're.
Using a keyboard on your iPad, you can revert to the same methods you use on the Mac. And so with a keyboard on your iPad, or of course a keyboard on your Mac, the things we're about to describe our ways of selecting text. Hold down the shift key and use the arrow keys to select what you want because then those pop-ups get out of the way on the iPad. If you happen to be selecting from the insertion point, you can skip tapping and only use shift
and arrow keys. Right. So if you are navigating through the document with your keyboard and, your cursor is at a point where you want to select either forward or back from that, hold, down the shift key and select to the right or to the left to go one character at a time. Click the up arrow or down arrow to go one line at a time. And you can combine these, right? So you can say, I know I want to select, you know, three lines down and four characters over.
Okay, well, you'd hold down the shift key, you'd hit down three times and then to the right arrow four times and boom. Now you have that all selected and you can do whatever you want with that selection. I use this, my fingers know this, right? I use this all the time, sometimes to delete things, sometimes to cut and move things around, sometimes to select text that I want to make bold or italicized or whatever.
So yeah, it's a good little tip. So hold down from the insertion point, hold down shift and then use the arrow keys to select text. Best thing you can do is go play with it and then try to remember it so that you start using it and then you won't think about it anymore. Until PC Unix reminds you of the quick tip. So yeah. And here's the cool thing. Play with the option key and the command key because if you use shift option and the arrow key, you get a full word. What? Yeah.
You get a full word at a time. And then if you use the command key, you go all the way to the end of the line. Wait, say this, wait, I was blown away by the first thing you said. So shift and option. So shift, option, and then the arrow key gets you one word at a time. Takes you to the entire word. So you don't have to use a letter at a time, that sort of thing.
But if you want to go to the end of the entire line, then hold shift, command, and the arrow key, and it will take you to the end of the line. What magic is this? Right? It's here. Once we again, it's stuff I've been using for years. Years. Amazing. And oh yeah, by the way, doesn't everybody know this? I know this. That's the interesting thing of the human mind. You assume everybody else has your experiential knowledge. Yes. We just do it. No, we do it. We assume other people know that.
Yeah. Of course, when we say it out, when you say it out loud, it sounds utterly ridiculous. Right? Like, you know, the, the, the presumption that someone would literally have the same experiential knowledge as you is, is ridiculous. However, we, I, I, I can join the, we in saying we make this mistake all the time and this misassumption. Yeah. Fascinating. So, but that was, yeah. When I saw that and went, oh yeah, option and command keys. Oh, okay. Here's what's cool.
Like, and you can accept the entire page from, from the middle down by hitting shift command and the down arrow takes you to the bottom of the page. Oh. What? Or the top of the page. And here's the cool thing that I've noticed as I'm playing with this and really screwing up where I am in our agenda, because that's the document I'm in doing this. And so this works like in a web doc, in a Google doc too.
Yeah. Shift and the up arrow just shift all by itself in the up arrow goes up to the the you know the previous line or Down arrow down to the next line To the insertion point you know to right above where the insertion point is however, Shift an option and the up arrow goes to the beginning of the line above and so yeah, I. Like this man. This is good Pete, I think you somehow muted yourself. I think you pressed it. I did. I had a dog barking in the background. Sorry. People running out.
That's all right. That's all right. Oh, this is awesome. All right. Cool. Oh, I love this stuff. This is, see? See? This is why we do this show. For everyone's benefit. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's great. Chicago Tom has our final quick tip here, which is, I have the sound module showing in the menu bar. You know, the sound icon. Yeah. Yeah. The icon with the speaker. He continues, if you click on this icon, it allows you to set the sound output to another device.
Did you know that when you option click on the icon, you can quickly reset or change the input device as well? I don't know that I knew that pilot Pete, but I do now. Yeah. Yeah. The option Key can be your friend, folks. It is very much a fun, fun thing. So experiment with it as clearly we've been doing here. You'll probably learn something and then you'll send it in to us at feedback at MacGeekGab.com because that's what we do here for each other.
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And our thanks to Hopwater for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode. Next up is one of my favorite apps, BB Edit from Barebones Software. I know I get excited about a text editor and I think you might get excited too because it can do so much. Obviously, it's great for doing all the nerdy things like the programming that I do. And the reason I love it for that is because it's smart.
Not in the way, right? It knows what language I'm using and it starts highlighting things just on the screen. The text files on the disk, stay text files. Like there's no extra added to that. But on the screen in real time, it's showing me highlighting variables, highlighting functions. In fact, I can even twist open or closed functions so that I can collapse things and see my code better. Does all that stuff and it works the same with like, you know, JavaScript or C++ or HTML.
Like it just, it knows. It's very, very cool. It knows so many languages, knows way more languages than I do. But that's not all. Maybe it's great for just working with text. If you need to compare two documents, it's awesome at this. If you need to count the number of words in a document, it's awesome at that. If you need to do any kind of editing, multi file, find and replace. This is a game changer, especially on like a whole folder of documents.
It's amazing. You've got to go check this out. They've got a fantastic eval period, right? It's this 30 day full functioning of the app after 30 days. As some of the features go away, go check it out. Barebones.com, you're gonna download it, check it out, and then after 30 days, you'll know whether you need the free, just the free features.
Or if you want the other ones, but you'll probably wanna pay them anyway because you've got this great app that you're using and you'll support the development. Our thanks to you for doing that, and our thanks to BB Edit from Barebones Software, barebones.com for sponsoring this episode. And while I got you here, I have a great recommendation for you. When it comes to Apple, these guys know what they're talking about. Of course, I'm talking about Leo Laporte of the Twit network.
He bought his first Mac over 40 years ago in 1984 and has been an Apple lover ever since. That's probably why they have three, not one, not two, but three Apple podcasts on the Twit podcast network. The oldest of course is Mac break weekly, started almost 20 years ago. Alex Lindsay, Andy, Jason Snell and Leo talk about the latest Apple news. They're Apple fans, but not Apple fan boys. They call it as they see it. And sometimes they're even a little hard on Apple.
They also do a show called iOS Today with Micah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard. If you're into iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, or Apple TV, you'll love iOS Today. And then of course, there's Hands On Mac, inside tips from Micah Sargent on getting the most out of your Mac every week. Expert analysis, helpful advice, and entertaining discussions. So just go to twit.tv slash Apple to find your next favorite Apple podcast and tell Leo and the team that we sent you here.
All right, Pete, you want to take us to Judy's question, my friend? I do. I switched my gosh darn page and then my mic was still on mute, I thought. So yeah, we're going to go to Judy's question. Judy writes in, she says she has an M1 2020 MacBook Pro running the latest OS and an iPhone 14. It's also up to date. She inadvertently took a burst photo,
but managed to save one photo out of the 10. She says, as far as I can see, it is just one photo, But when I try to import it into photos, I get the message that says duplicate burst photos are not supported I can't find the duplicate. It's not in the duplicates folder nor the imports folder She says I really want this photo in photos and I'm using iCloud photos now since photo stream was abandoned Any ideas on how to get this photo into my photos? Thank you, Judy. Huh, so.
My first thought is Let's confirm that the photo is already in your library, right? Like I mean it it's saying that it is Is is it is it confused that it's saying one of the bursts? But a Different one is there or is that one from the burst there or is the entirety from the burst there? And it's asking you to maybe go select that with photos on your Mac So that would be the first approach is is, Why is it telling you what it's telling you?
Is it an erroneous thing or is it correct? And if it's correct, then that would be a different path because maybe it wants you to extract the the burst photo you know, from the group of them that's already on your Mac. Assuming it's not there. You know, the Mac has that image capture app that lets you grab things off of devices that are plugged into it in pictures and movies specifically off of devices that are plugged
in. And your phone counts as a device that's plugged in if, of course, it's a device that's plugged in. So what you could do is extract that photo from your phone using image capture and save it like on your desktop and then manually drag it from your desktop into photos. Maybe that would do this. I don't like, you know, I bullheaded persistence, right? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
What about in the other option? Taking it is probably not probably losing a lot by doing this, but I would say try and take a screen capture. Oh, and then save it with preview or something like that. you're probably really losing a lot of what is there if you do that. I agree with that. Yeah, I mean, like, that wouldn't be the first, that wouldn't be my- It's a last resort.
It's a last resort, but it would get you there, right? Like, I mean, depending on what- It would look good on your iPhone if that's what you want to look. If you want to blow it up and print it, you know, to a poster, probably not as good. Right, right. Just a thought. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like it though. I mean, I like that idea, you know, it kind of gets us. All right. Exactly. So. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I have, I have lost Kentucky engineers.
I got it. Question. No. Oh, you got it. Essentially, he's asking about what does the tab bar do? Well. Show tab bar on the finder, um, cause he, he updated and then I lost, lost the plus. Sign that is normally there, even if you only have one tab open in finder.
That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And if you don't, so yeah, it was, I was going to approach this a little differently, which is why, no, that's why I called it what I called it, but essentially what you described is correct, right? If the plus sign is not there in the finder, it's because there is only one tab showing. Or there is only one tab open and no tabs are showing.
So you can either make that plus sign along with the tab bar show by adding a new tab with command T, or you can go to the view menu and choose show tab bar. If you enable that, then it will always show you the plus sign even if you only have one tab open, which is how I do things in the finder. I mainly do it that way because I don't like things jumping around when I add another tab. And so by having the tab bar there, it's not like, you know, things aren't jumping up and down when I,
when I add a tab bar, it's not shifting everything down. I do the same in Safari because I know I'm going to have tabs open more often than not. So also in, in Safari, I choose view, always show tab bar. And that way it's just there and I don't have to, uh, have to think about it. I'll tell you the one I do frequently, I use all the time is Forklift. That's a replacement for Finder. The advantage of Forklift, and I think Finder can probably do it too.
The advantage to Forklift is that it allows you to FTP as well. It doesn't have to be a local drive. you can FTP to a server.
Or from a server. All right, so this is interesting to me next to each other because you, I think of forklift as an FTP client, And and it is as you said, but you backed into that you said you think of forklift more as a finder replacement, I do that allows FTP Yes, that I That's interesting to me because there are a lot of people over the years that have asked us for finder replacements for a variety of reasons, and we always mention one and that's Pathfinder, right?
Like that's the only- I do like Pathfinder too, but yeah, I find I use Forklift more. That's fascinating to me. Huh. So what do you like as a, coming at it from the Finder replacement angle, what do you like about Forklift that sort of attracts you to that over the Finder or even Pathfinder? Boy, that's a $64,000 question, Dave. It's one of those things that I adopted early into my workflow and I liked it. You know, that's not a satisfying answer to a lot of people I know.
No, it makes sense to all of us here. Which worked for me. And yeah, it just, I found it useful. It seems to me one of the things is it's always in columns. And I know some people every now and then I'll try to go to a list view and find that sort of thing. But I really liked the column view layout of the Mac OS. And that's one of the first things I really liked when I came over from Windows, the column view with Mac OS was much better. I forget you're a switcher.
It's been a while. Yeah, it's been 17 years. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and because that's the thing we always joke about, right? It was what a hot mess Ventura is, it's Windows, it's a Max Vista. Yeah. But oh man, Ventura isn't even close to being a mess. No, no, no, it's not. But it's fun to poke them in the eye over it. Yeah, they deserve the eye poking. The comparison is not accurate. Yes, I agree. I agree. It's fair. Not accurate. It's fair, yeah. And I think I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure that. Set app is where you can get a free, as it were, copy of, um, of, uh, not Pathfinder, Forklift. Oh, interesting. All right. Yeah, I, I, no, you, okay, so you said you, you weren't sure how to answer the question. I think you did a great job, uh, because like the idea of columns in the Finder is something I loathe. I want to see the detailed view. Are you a list view? I am a list view guy. Absolutely. 100%.
Obviously, you can get far more granular with list view. You can alphabetize and, well, I want it by the date it came in or size or anything. Sure. And I do use that, on some occasions, but more often than not, I like the column view just because I find it, quicker to move things around. And that's why I like four. That's the beauty of personal preference. Is it, it like, what works in your workflow? What works in your workflow? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ah, it's fascinating. I like it. All right. Thank you for that. That what I. What I now my mind's a little bit blown. I like it. I like it. That's twice today. I know. It's great. Uh, Aaron shares a tip for us. He says, uh, Dave, as a musician,
you probably know about the quest for ear protection that doesn't ruin the tone of the sound. So yeah, earplugs, the wrong earplugs, and to a degree, even the best earplugs, like I have custom fit musician earplugs, they somewhat change the tone of the sound, of course, and lesser expensive, lesser costly earplugs are sometimes worse, especially like the foam ones, They just cut out all high-end. They protect your hearing. Don't get me wrong.
But he says in the 80s We had custom etymotic earplugs that had filters on them 15 DB 20 DB 25 DB. I still have my old ones Yep, and but they all ruined the sound everything was muffled over the years people tried to improve on this well on my keyboard forum that people were talking about. AirPods Pro Gen 2 so the current generation of AirPods Pro and and the Adaptive Transparency feature. It basically tries to keep loud sounds under 85 dB.
And the interesting thing is that you can see the volume reduction right there on your Apple Watch. You can see the volume that is external and the volume that's reaching your ears. And he said it can be used as essentially an earplug. He says, I tried this with a loud guitar and yes, I could see it limiting the volume to peaks of 87 decibels and then bringing it back down to 85, but there's more. You can customize this transparency.
You connect to your AirPods 2 and play a song from any audio app. That, you have to do that, Otherwise, none of these options will show up. Once you're playing music through your AirPods 2 on your iPhone, go to Settings, choose your AirPods, go to Accessibility, go to Audio Accessibility Settings, and turn on Headphone Accommodations. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see Apply with Phone, Media, and Transparency Mode. Make sure you turn Transparency Mode on.
So this enables a custom transparency mode. and you can set the amplification to the lowest setting. You can adjust the tone, darker, whatever you like. Now, when you go put your AirPods 2 on, AirPods Pro 2, sorry, and play with like a band, it will limit the sounds. It's pretty amazing. He says to make sure. In iOS 16, it's called adaptive transparency. In iOS 17, it's called loud sound reduction is on because adaptive transparency was not clear enough.
And I agree with that change. I'm glad Apple made that change or is making that change in iOS 17. I'm jonesing for the latest pair of the AirPods. Yeah. Because of that. Yeah. One of the features that looks good is that you can have it in active noise canceling and begin speaking and it goes automatically to the transparency mode and mutes the music, that sort of thing. The one thing that I find frustrating with the transparency mode is I lose directional.
Where's that sound coming from? it seems to give me both the same amount at the same time. Even with the AirPods Pro 2 or no? Cause I thought they- I haven't tried the Pro 2's. I think they've solved that with the Pro 2's to a degree. You know, as I hadn't thought about it until you started talking about it here, but I would presume that this adaptive transparency feature, is one that was borrowed from the in-development Vision Pro.
Pro. Yeah, right right the whole i'm in i'm immersed i start talking now i'm outside of my environment now i'm back in my environment That's definitely a vision pro thing Hadn't thought about it because we were introduced to it in airpods first before we knew about the vision pro so yeah.
I'm sure of it like of course yeah, i bought a pair of airpods pro gen 2 and, They showed up and pretty much between the day i ordered them and the day they showed up, Lisa started showing me how her AirPods Pro were like totally foobar and one of them was shot and this that and the other thing and it was like, Okay. Well, here's um, here's AirPods Pro Gen 2. She's like you didn't have to order these for me
I'm like, I didn't I didn't know I ordered them for me I love you, honey, but I didn't yeah, I ordered them on Prime Day. It was a year ago, right? I ordered them on Prime Day and Uh, and so I haven't used them. Oh wait. Okay. No, I could be mistaken. Then we, we may be talking past each other a little bit, Dave. I have the latest until WWDC back in June where they announced the next set. Where do you have those? Are those out yet?
Um, I don't think they announced new ones, Pete. I think they announced features for the current ones that are coming. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm, I misunderstood that then because like, that's the one where I was looking forward to the ability to be in active noise canceling, listening to music, then start talking and it stops your music and goes to transparency. I thought that was a new set. You will get that in iOS 17. Yeah, yeah. I won't, I mean, unless I shell out for AirPods Pro Gen 2.
So, which I probably will. Yeah, you know. And I got to tell you, and I think I mentioned it on another show, I've tried other Bluetooth active noise canceling earbuds and I like them, but the AirPods are hands down the best of the various that I've tried. You know, now you're, I wish we'd had this conversation two days ago because I'm sure there was a deal I missed during Prime Day. I've been testing. New active noise cancelling headphones from both JBL and from Polly.
And I'm really blown away by both of them. I have them teed up for our next cool stuff found episode. It would be good if I could compare them to the AirPods Pro Gen 2. I might have to borrow Lisa's Pro Gen 2's a little bit. Because, well, one of the things that I find with a lot of them, like I just sold my Jabra's because you could only listen and use independently, like the right side.
Oh, interesting. And you could, you could listen to stereo, but you couldn't use the left by itself or vice versa. I'm not sure which one it was, but it was like, that's kind of silly. I want to be able to use both independently. And that's one of the beauties of the AirPods is you can put one ear in, and then when the battery dies, put the other, the other one and the other in the case and go all day long.
And especially for podcast listening, that works great. You have the world around you and well, and for phone calls to being able to just like, yeah, you've got twice the battery link if you're willing to only have one ear in. So, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, let's say we move on to Ned. I'm in. Bring us to Ned. All right.
Well, Ned said this morning, and probably the morning he wrote, not this morning, but this morning, my MacBook Pro would not connect to the internet using a wireless or wired. Another symptom is that all the wallpapers change to default. It does connect to the local network devices like the Synology, the NAS, Synology WAP. I don't know. and I'm missing something. Wireless access point. Ah, there you go. So it connects us to the Synology wireless access point, the NAS, et cetera.
Now my work MacBook Pro Intel 12.6.7 does not have problems. I've shut down and start up, rebooted the router and the WAP and connected to the wired router. Any suggestions on what to do next? You need a new MacBook Pro now. So yeah, this is a discussion thread in our discord group in our discord group and I'll put a link to that thread because there's some great stuff from From lots of folks. I've chimed in a little bit, but it's been, discussions been driven by.
Several of you out there Brian Monroe and and Tony have been really helping, You know the obvious things to check when you've got a device where it clearly appears to be connected to your local network But can't get on the internet. I've seen this before or starts with, did you check your DNS settings, right?
Like make sure that you're actually able to do DNS lookups. And, you know, you can check that in system settings or system preferences, depending on which version of macOS, go into network, see the DNS. But really a great way to test it is to open up the terminal and type ping space www.apple.com. If it comes up with an IP address, even if it doesn't answer, if it comes up, you know the DNS is working, right? if it's because it's DNS translates from the names to the IP. So that's.
That's one way, another thing that was suggested, which is great advice, is check the parental controls to make sure that you don't have something turned on there. Do you have a profile from your employer? I realize this isn't your work MacBook Pro. It'd be weird that your work one works with a work profile and this one doesn't without, but make sure that you don't have a profile installed because that's like parental controls just for adults.
And then you see if there's a VPN running because anything that can get in the way of your network see if tail scale is running see if little snitch is running right all of those things are going to manipulate the network stack in a way that in theory would be something you want but it could sort of break that, Ned also pointed out that the wallpapers all changed to default.
That was weird. Well, no. If he's using Apple's like, you know, wallpapers that download from the internet, if they're not able to download from the internet, this is a consistent symptom, right? Oh, yeah, okay. So, like, I took it that way, like, okay, and it could be completely unrelated. It could be not that, but that was kind of my thought. But... Thank you. I, I, when Ventura, prior to Ventura, you could go and remove any network device, you go to system
preferences, go into network, and you could remove a device and re-add it. You can't do that in Ventura with the Wi-Fi device anymore, but you can do it with the Ethernet device. But Ned is saying that this is happening with both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, so while I might be tempted to remove the ethernet device and put it back. I'm not convinced that that's going to help because
it's happening system-wide. It's not when I'm on Wi-Fi this works when I'm an ethernet it doesn't you know it's it's something that would make sense then to remove that device there's a stuck bit. Sure exactly right there's a stuff yeah bit I like that um you know so the um I'm still Still, another way to test for a DNS issue is there is the 1.1.1.1 DNS service that you can use from, I believe that's from CloudFlare.
You can load 1.1.1.1, 1.1.1.1, you have four ones, in your web browser and it doesn't require a DNS lookup because you're literally loading an IP address, it just happens to be four ones and see if you can load that, because that will tell you if you have something blocking the internet that is not related to DNS. So that would be another good way of testing that.
But that, you know, that's kind of, I don't, you know, these are the, if I were there, these are the next things I would try, right, is to just try and get there. You did mention tail scale, but I know for a fact that I'd. When Tailscale ubered me is when I had it as an exit node, and then I was also trying to run PIA VPN at the same time. And I was absolutely not on the internet. And I don't know, you know,
there were two firewalls there blocking it. And then somehow in Mac system settings security firewall, maybe something in there has been blocked too. Fair. Yeah, fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. Well, that came about like this morning I get up and it's not working. Well, wait a minute. Well, what? Yeah. What changed? What changed and why? Yeah. Yeah. So, so check that. Yeah. You know, those are the, those are kind of the things that come to mind and, uh, uh,
and check, you know, yeah, check those out. And I think, you know, so, uh, and it's, it's on the notes. I think it's probably, uh, uh, Brian Monroe that Ned did fix this. Oh, great. that it was, I don't recall that it was in there now. We don't see the fix in our screen capture of the Discord. So we'll have to switch back. Which is why we're just going to move on. It's totally fine. We can do that. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Take us to Manic Vlogger, would you?
I'm going to do that at this time. So he writes in, uh, Hey there, I have a number of Apple devices, the iPhone 13 running the latest operating system, an older Mac book and it, and occasionally it keeps asking me for my Wi-Fi password. This is very near and dear to a very close friend of mine, which means I have to keep typing in the password, and I just have to repeat it again days later. I have an ASUS routers using mesh. It started happening recently and I'm not sure what to do next.
Dave, you had a good answer for him. Am I sharing the answer here? I'm happy to. Well, I guess you can. I tried it. I tried the same thing. And sadly, it repeated itself. And so my solution was to change my network name. Because it wasn't happening. I have two networks, Sharpie, and I have Sharpie 2.4 for my 2.4 gig. It would always connect to my 2.4 gig without fail. But it would never automatically connect to my 5 gigahertz network.
So I changed the network name from capital S, Sharpie, to all caps, Sharpie, and the problem went away. Well, of course it did. Because I changed it, it was a different network. Because it's a different network. As far as the iPhone was concerned. Right, right, right. If you want to keep the same network name, and there is, you know, we talked about this recently, changing your network name is a painful process, right?
Oh yeah, because all your internet of things. Correct. And, and you know, there's the, the, uh, the domestic, uh, peace factor as well that you don't want to disturb. Be prepared to write checks to your divorce attorney. That's right. When you start changing network names and email accounts. That's right. Yep. Um, if it's just happening on your Mac, uh, the, the way I would approach this is, uh, I would go, I would disconnect from wifi.
So just turn Wi-Fi off on your Mac, disconnect from this network on all of your devices, and then on one Mac, go into key chain access. First, choose the iCloud key chain that's there, and then either filter, search or sort. And find the things with that network name. You might have more than one entry. Look for the entry or entries where the kind column calls it airport network password. That's where your Wi-Fi passwords are stored.
Delete any entries with that network name with the kind of airport network password in the iCloud keychain. Then, go to the login keychain and do the same thing. After you are done doing that in the login keychain, go back to the iCloud keychain and make sure they're still gone. Reboot your Mac, reconnect that one Mac to that Wi-Fi network, And hopefully it asks you for a password when you do that. If it doesn't, it means that it has re-inherited it from iCloud.
Go repeat those deletion steps again. What you need to do is make that one Mac the truth, right? And then have it push it out to iCloud. It's possible that iCloud actually has it right. And at any point in this process, your Mac might just be fixed and then you're good to go.
But otherwise just keep making sure you're wiping it out of iCloud so that that one Mac can become the truth and that one Mac can be correct and then have that Mac, that Mac hopefully then will push it all back out to iCloud and the rest of your devices will inherit it from there. You know, we don't know whether the problem is specific to that Mac or that problem is specific or is iCloud wide. We know your other devices are okay, but that doesn't mean that iCloud's okay, right?
It might just mean that your other devices are okay. It's, we've seen it go both ways and it's, there's no easy way to tell other than starting down this path and just seeing how many times you need to sort of beat against that wall before it finally, you know, lets go. So. Right, and you told me at one point, Wait 24 hours for iCloud to properly purge and propagate. Yeah, it shouldn't take that long. I mean, it should, but yes, I mean, with yours, it was, it was just
happening so much. I think you had, I think your issue was that this was sort of tied in knots on multiple Macs simultaneously. And that, yeah. So, and I had the, I also had the advantage that, you know, I do go away on business frequently for more than 24 hours. So I had the ability to forget that network for 24 hours and not affect my, Yeah, your, your workflow. Yeah, exactly.
Yup. Yeah, yeah, all right Well, how about we move on to Roger? I'm into it. All right. He says hey guys I have a T-Mobile internet router that occasionally goes wonky when the house power blips, It does not do a full reset and I'm without internet to check cameras and thermostats, Calling T-Mobile does not solve the problem because it will not show up on their system as being online I can call my neighbor to come over and pull the plug for a minute and that will cause it to successfully reset,
However, I would like not to impose on him when this happens Which seems to only happen when I'm out of town like this past week any suggestions on how to accomplish this, Perhaps plugging it into some sort of power surge device that resets up to every 12 to 24 hours may accomplish that goal Is there such a thing on the market? Do you have any suggestions? And so you answered that question and my answer ahead of time was just put it on a UPS.
And that way when the house power blips, you're right or doesn't power blip. No, that is a way to avoid this problem, assuming that that's the only time that this happens, is that if it's only on a power blip, Because I would agree.
Really the solution, and I think having your network gear on a UPS aka a battery backup unit is a good idea, There are several brands that I happily use APC is sort of the the you know, Gold standard brand if you want to call it that Amazon basics also makes great UPS as I have many Amazon basics UPS is in my house Okay, I think I have I think I have more of those now than I have APC units,
So, you know, but, you know, buy one that's the right size, the big, the right size battery for whatever you need to power your router doesn't take much, but you might choose to power your router and something else. I have most of my electronics, all my TVs, all of that stuff are on UPSs and, you know, they, I can only speak anecdotally here. But in addition to keeping power blips, you know, with the power drops from affecting my units, it also conditions the power.
So all of my devices get very consistent power. If there's a spike or a dip, it just smooths it all out. And since everything is on a transformer these days, and since those transformers are probably the least expensive component in the camp in the in the chain there, You want to take care of those transformers and giving them consistent power, Keeps them from overheating and having to regulate things.
It in an in an overactive sense so my stuff lasts, and I'm gonna you know knock on some wood here But you done did it now. I did yeah, but um but you know a UPS would be would be great however, However, if your router doesn't gracefully recover from a power outage, there's probably something wrong with that router from T-Mobile. So I would ask them to get you a new one. All that said, I do have an answer for the very specific question that Roger asked.
There are two devices that I know about, that we've talked about on the show, that do exactly what Roger is looking for. The first is called Keep Connect, and it is for 50 bucks. You can find it on Amazon. I've got a link in the show notes.
It is called the Keep Connect router rebooter. you connect it in line, you plug your router into this, you plug this into the wall, so it has the ability to cut power from your router when desired, and it also connects to your Wi-Fi, so it monitors your connectivity, and when it sees that connectivity has dropped for too long, it resets your power and brings your router back up and hopefully everything is good. It says it will also send you texts upon resets.
So, that's one, the Keep Connect, which I, you know, like this idea. There's another called the Connect Sense router rebooter. That is $55 on Amazon, and guess what? It does the same thing. I don't know about the text, but otherwise it kind of does the, you know, the same thing and does that. I found a thing on Amazon for $8 called the Extension Cable Router Rebooter. This does not connect to your Wi-Fi. It does not know when your connection has dropped.
It is also not plugging in via AC power. It is plugging in between the transformer and your router. So, probably a whole lot more limited use case, but it's only $8. And. It resets the power on your router every 24 hours, whether it needs it or not. So there you go. Yeah. Or whatever's connected to it. I mean, it's, it's, it's built for a router, but you know, could be, could be anything. So, um, yeah.
So those, those are, those answer the question, but I, I like definitely the economical one, but yeah. Oh, I like your answer. Yeah. I mean, I like get a UPS, but I also think, you know, especially if this is a T-Mobile device, go get, get T-Mobile to replace that device. It's obviously, it should recover gracefully from a power outage. I had that problem after a software update with my first fiber, ONT, which is essentially the, we'll call it the cable modem for the fiber, right?
And it was fine until it was not fine. And then it wouldn't recover gracefully from a power cycle. You had to like re restart things in the right order. And it was no bueno. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not good, but, uh, you know, I got him to replace it and everything's been fine ever since. So I think, I think it, it, it, it, a firmware update sort of borked it from them, you know, one of their, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Let's move on to Barb then. Sounds good.
Barb writes in, she says several, several episodes back, y'all talked about resetting the Apple TV remote when there is a problem. My personality. My personality made me do it. Okay, I get it. Now I'm with you, Barb. My personality made me do it even though there was nothing wrong with my Apple TV remote. Now my Apple TV remote will not turn off or turn on my TV even when I long press the power button.
When I did a search on your website, it sent me to episode 961, which did not have what I needed. Please send me in the right direction. Thanks, Barb. And I listened to the latest podcast. If it ain't broke, fix it till it is. What a hoot, because that's exactly what I did. It happens to the best of us, Barb. You are in good company. So I think I'm understanding the way I'm interpreting this is that once the TV is on, the Apple TV remote still controls the Apple TV device.
It just does not power cycle. It can't control the power of the TV. Right, and or I'm thinking maybe also the volume. I would assume the volume too. Yeah, exactly. So if that is what is happening here, what you need to do is sort of reconnect your Apple TV to the remote functionality of your TV and that will also retrain your remote if it's doing it via infrared. So to do this, you've got to manually power on your TV, I know, like an animal. And then...
You're going to have to walk all the way across the room, Barb, and head back. Or use the remote that came with your TV. I mean, either way, you know, yeah. Uphill both ways in the snow. That's right. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're carrying the coal and the firewood. Then once you've got that on, use your Apple TV remote to control your Apple TV. Go to settings, again, this is on the Apple TV, home theater control, control TVs and receivers, and make sure that option is on.
If that's off, none of this is gonna work. Once that's on, if it was off and you turned it on, try it, you might be done. If you're not done, also on that screen, there is the learn remote feature that learns your TV's remote into your remote. I think this is what happened for you. You reset the remote and it forgot the infrared commands that it had previously learned from your TV. So you're going to need your TV, maybe, you might need your TV's remote.
Apple's so smart about the way they do this that sometimes you just say, oh yeah, I have a Panasonic TV or a LG. And it's like, yeah, I got you. Does that work? Yeah. Okay, great. You don't. That may be all it takes. If I completely misunderstood the question and it's that your Apple TV remote isn't controlling anything, like not even your Apple TV,
then you might need to repair the remote with your Apple TV. And so again, turn on your TV manually so that you can see what's going on and set it to the HDMI input that your Apple TV is plugged into again so you can see what's going on. Point your remote at your Apple TV. Make sure that that the remote is about three inches from your Apple TV. So for this one, you definitely need to get up off the couch and then press and hold the back or menu button and the volume up button for five seconds.
Your TV might ask you or your Apple TV via the message on the screen, might ask you to place your remote on top of the Apple TV to complete pairing. If it does, of course do that. So hopefully, hopefully one of these two things was the problem and even more hopefully One of these two things is the answer, but my guess is you have to just do that learn remote thing. But I figured while we were on the subject, we'll go through the whole, the whole shoot match.
And, and I, I have mad respect for you, Barb, that you heard about a thing you didn't need to do and you did it anyway, because that's what we do here. Yep. Absolutely. You're on good company. Yes, we do. I break stuff all the time. I hear about like, Oh, it sounds like that's gotta make things better. So I, I, I definitely need to do it. And then it turns out, no, I think within the last six weeks, I've done it on the show. You were talking about something in safari and I did it.
And you're and then at the very end you went, oh, and before you do this, remember to. Yeah, I do have a habit of of not prefacing it. Like, I'm really good over the years. I've learned that. But this doesn't happen in the order that you folks read it. Like when you send in a question, I'll start answering the question like, OK, yeah, yeah, do this. This is this. And then it's like, oh wait, I got to go renumber all the steps I just put in this email because
step number one is make a backup. Like, you know, yeah, but I will start giving advice. And then after I give the advice, I'm sort of digesting, or even as I'm giving it, I'm digesting, what the implications are. It's like, well, obviously make a backup first. And it's like, you got to put that there. Yep. Dave. Yep. Yep. Yep. So yeah, I'm, I'm, that's partially my fault, but whatever. Exactly. So, no, that's great stuff. And I've got one, uh, here's another
rabbit hole for you. Okay. And I, it's weird. So I've got this really nice LG TV I bought after Christmas about four or five years ago when it was all on sale and it's the OLED beautiful screen and all that, and it stopped connecting to Wi-Fi.
So, I can't update it anymore, it's weird. And I looked on YouTube, and it involves placing it on his face, taking the back off, blowing out the card that handles the Wi-Fi, and I'm like, I really don't want to do this to this expensive TV, but I can't seem to find a way to get it to connect to Wi-Fi. So if anybody knows of another way without taking my television apart, pick me, pick me! Dave, in the corner! I know I'm sitting in the back of the room, but What if you?
Got a device that would connect to Wi-Fi and then let you plug your TV Ethernet into that like, you know, like a. Access point a router well or an access point from your mesh network, right? Like like some yeah mesh access actually actually where that TV is sitting I have a hole drilled through the floor down to the router and up and I do have some cat5 cables right there I have not tried the cat5 cable So I would that that would be my thing is it could be the whole network board is shot, right?
In which case then it doesn't matter but Yeah, I mean I would just say well I mean sometimes Wi-Fi cards die right and then you use the Ethernet exactly and sometimes Ethernet cards, right? The TV works great, except I only use the Apple TV input right now Now I can't use the Netflix app on the TV as it were, because it doesn't connect. So, which is fine. I, you know, I don't use it. I don't need to use it, but it would be nice that it worked.
Yeah. You know, I. We have for the most part at home standardized on not using our LG TVs, smart TV features. We just use the Apple TV because it's just so much easier. However, at present, and they told me, but they've told me for six months, so I'm not holding my breath anymore. They told me they're working on this. At present, the Plex app and only the Plex app on Apple TV has trouble, it will not in fact, play Dolby Atmos sound through the Apple TV.
The Plex app on my LG TV will play Dolby Atmos sound so if I want to if I have a movie on my Plex server and I have a few where there are you know where there is Dolby Atmos on there I have to play them through my LG TV otherwise I need to listen to it in 7.1 without the Atmos metadata like an animal and I you know like who wants to do that so. Right exactly. So yeah, I mean it because like otherwise the Apple TV makes life so much easier,
Don't be at most sound from Apple's movies from Netflix. This is most definitely a Plex issue.
There's a long story. I Plex is I know they just did a bunch of layoffs. I Never like that's too bad. I never like to hear that about my friends, And and certainly the folks at Plex are are people I consider friends so many of them not all of them However, a silver lining to that may be that the one person who was in the engineering department that was sort of holding up a lot of progress on how Plex does things might not be there anymore.
I don't know whether that person was let go or not, but I do know that that person existed, at Plex and is a huge, has been a huge problem there.
You know, we don't usually get into the gossip here, but but like I've dug deep enough to find out like why aren't you guys doing these things and and of course, corporate brass will not say anything about this, but of course, they can't know which and there was should they right, but you get into the trenches and when like five people point to a specific person, the engineering manager and they're like, that's the problem.
It's like, Oh, I can see this now. I've had interactions with that person. I, I get what you're saying. There's like a fiefdom thing going on. and so. So I don't, you know, that's why I said, I'm not holding my breath. Well, they, they say something, you know, and then this happens, you know, they get the, okay, that's a lawsuit, you know, that's right.
That's correct. Yeah. But they could just let that person go, like, you know, it's another lawsuit, but yeah, maybe, maybe, you know, I don't know. No, I get it. What, what, which is too bad because, because I don't know about all the listeners, but if, if you haven't tried plex, boy, is that a a great way to conglomerate all of your media. Right. I love it. Between that and channels, and then you can play Plex through channels even, so.
Yeah, no, and don't let my comments about their internal politics dissuade you. I am a huge Plex fan. I love Plex. It is, like, I don't know, I would use MB. There is a competitor of sorts to Plex that is pretty much as good-ish, and it's called MB, E-M-B-Y. So, if Plex were to go away, I would definitely switch over to MB, but I don't want to have to. I really like Plex. I don't know what Plex lifetime pass costs right now. I think it's in the hundred and a quarter range, somewhere in there.
I bought it when it was $79, probably seven or eight years ago, if not longer, and it It has been worth every penny. Absolutely. If you don't have a Plex lifetime pass, get it. It is so much. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So functional. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Start for if you haven't started with Plex start for free. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, make sure it works on the hardware. You have make sure it does the things you want get familiar
with it. And then if you're consider if you're at the point where you're like, I want to pay for a year of this just pay for, the lifetime pass. You will thank yourself and absolutely. Yeah. And as much as Dave hates it, I'm going to tell you, you should do this. Well, I don't, I don't, Dave is not a, Dave is well, okay. Hate is a strong word to Dave is not a fan of the word should correct. No, correct. If you want to be like Dave and me. Yes. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.
We have one last thing to share from listener Javier. Um, we were talking recently about, uh, your Apple TV not working all that well, and a way to fix it is to free up storage on it. And our advice was to delete apps. Well, Javier says, I've experienced the same issues. I have a 64 gig fourth gen Apple TV and a 64 gig third gen. When I went to storage on both, they were both almost full. I too got caught, but here's the thing.
I don't have many apps or games on either of them. In total, all my apps take up about 700 megabytes of the 64 gigs. I don't have any games installed. Let's assume the Apple TV software itself takes what? Six gigs on my 64 gig Apple TV. That would leave over 50 gigs of available space. But he says, I was seeing, it was reporting less than one gig of storage left. He says, but I think I found the culprit or at least a big contributor to it. The aerial screensaver.
When you go set up the Arial screensaver, the Apple TV warns you that each screensaver can take up to 950 megs. There are four different flavors of Arial. You can choose to enable one, two, three, or all four, and each type has several videos that can be played, and they can be updated with new ones and downloaded automatically, and you have no granular control of how many to download. If you multiply each one by 950, you can start to see how quickly that will add up.
To make matters worse, there's no way that I've found to delete or reduce the number of these videos. He says, so my solution, change the screensaver from Arial to say, Apple Photos. You can select between animals, flowers, landscapes, nature, or shot on iPhone, or of course, under home sharing, you can use your own personal photos. But the amount of data the Apple TV or storage the Apple TV will use for the screensaver should now be significantly less.
Since turning off Arial, my storage has climbed from less than one gig to now four gigs free using the same apps as before. So maybe it's now finally deleting some of those screensavers as they expire. Yeah, fascinating. I wish there was a way to, and maybe there is, to tell it, don't cache anything, just download it every time you're going to use it. I don't have, I have unlimited bandwidth. I've got, you know, I'm on a fiber connection. Let's, let's, let's rock and roll. Yeah.
They are bootiful. I know that's the thing is I don't want to give up my aerial screensavers, Pete. You understand. Yeah. There's the one over LAX. There's the one over. There's the several over Dubai. There's the Grand Canyon. Yeah, Dubai is beautiful. There was something over, I think it was over the Netherlands. Some gorgeous, you see these all the time. I never do. The Northern Lights. So the Aurora. Oh yeah, right. Exactly.
You pilots, you know, I know that you know, most pilots also know how spoiled you are in this regard that you get to see those things on a fairly regular basis from a great vantage point. It's really something. In fact, I got a quick, funny story. Okay, go. My first time, I'm a brand new FO, first officer on an MD-11, and we are coming back from Europe, back to the States. And it's a long flight, so there's three of us. And the captain goes back for his rest break.
The relief pilot is sitting in the captain's chair, and we're out over the North Atlantic on a December night. And the most gorgeous aurora borealis northern lights I've ever seen are up there. So we turned down every light in the cockpit to go as black as possible. And we just sit there for about 10 minutes watching this. And it's like, oh, this is beautiful. It's like, all right, we got to get back to flying now.
The autopilot has the airplane and things are going along. It's fat, dumb, and happy. So we go to turn the all the instruments back on and they're black. I have got adrenaline racing through my heart. I'm like, Oh crap. Now I got to go wake up the captain and tell him we're over the North Atlantic at night. And all we have is what we call a peanut gyro, a little standby instrument and, and our McDoo, which is where, how we program the computer, but all of our attitude instruments and all that,
other than this peanut gyro are gone. It's like, and you can't even use like a flashlight because it's all glass. This is glass. It's like, if your iPhone's brightness is down, right? And now I'm literally, I've got adrenaline pumping through my head. Oh yeah. Oh, this is bad. We're over the North Atlantic in the middle of a December night, and we got nothing. You have time. You do have time on your side. Yeah. And fuel. And fortunately, time is what it took because about 40 seconds later,
the instruments started fading in. These, this is an MD-11, they're CRTs, cathode ray tubes. They are not the instant on LED LCD. So we had turned them off. They had cooled down, now they needed warmup time. That was all. Oh man. That's the longest 40 seconds you've ever experienced. It was terror, absolute terror. Like, oh no, we're gonna have to fess up. And hope they don't change our routing or anything. Says, as long as we're on our routing, we're good.
We don't have to do anything, the computer's got it. But yeah. Oh, right. Oh yeah. Yeah, so that was terrifying. Not making gap stuff, but we talked about the Aurora Borealis and I had to go, yeah. I appreciate the story, yeah. Self-inflicted stupidity wound. We were supposed to have some here last night in New Hampshire, and they did not make it here, but it was just as well.
I was up at the previous day, I was up at like 2.30 in the morning to do my final round of prep for a colonoscopy that I did yesterday, which was early in the day, and so there was very little chance that I was going to be able to stay up as late as I normally do to see those, And so when I saw the news report that said, you know, you don't like, it's not going to happen. It was like, okay, that's it. I'm going to bed. So I'm well rested now. Everything's good. Colonoscopy went well.
It was, you know, simple and easy. So, yep. Excellent. Yepper. If you want to be like Dave and Pete, go get your colonoscopy. If you're the right age. It's simple and it'll save your life. Yeah. If you're the right age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agreed. Totally agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for hanging out with us, folks. Thank you for sending in all your questions to feedback at MacGeekGab.com, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I believe is what I said.
Whoa. Did you say feedback at MacGeekGab.com? I believe I said feedback at MacGeekGab.com. Hopefully that's where they're sending it. I think I said it in the I think I even said it in the intro of the show. Maybe. OK. But I didn't give you an opportunity to, you know, do the shtick. So I had to open that up. The shtick it is. Yeah. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. Thanks to our sponsors, of course, Hopwater.com slash MGG.
That's HOPWTR.com slash MGG. Finally was able to have another one last night after my my cleansing and all that stuff. I loved it. It's great. Those things are awesome because I couldn't drink alcohol yesterday. You see, I had anesthesia, you know, it's a responsible thing. I can today and I will. Uh, and BB at it from bare bones. I should like, thank you. We appreciate that. Um, we're going to head off to Mac stock. The next episode will be recorded maybe at Mac stock, but we're
going to have another one in the can just in case, uh, there's something issue. Yeah. Just because you know, editing and all that stuff might take some time, but hopefully the live Mac geek cab caucus that we are doing at Mac stock will be recorded in a way that we can share it with all of you on these channels. So if you're coming to MacStock, be sure to say hi. If not, say hi everywhere else we are. And what's the last thing we're gonna share with them today, Pete?
Well, you shouldn't get caught. In fact, I'm gonna be more directive and say, don't get caught. Made on a Mac. A command instead of a shameful insinuation. I like it. There you go. Thanks for hanging out with us.