It's time for MacGeekGab and listener Bruce brings us our quick tip of the week with a
follow-up from last week.
There is a very simple way to show or hide normally invisible files in the Finder and
that is by pressing Command-Shift-Period.
More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab 979 for Monday, May 1st, 2023.
Music.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Gab, the show where you send in tips like
that. And it was that that particular tip came from
Bruce and Eric and Ben and Wayne and so many of you I missed it during the show because I wasn't paying attention,
Next time I endeavor to do better, but you send in quick quick tips like that,
We share your quick tips you send in your cool stuff found we share cool stuff found you send in your questions
We try to answer your questions we stitch it all together into an agenda and the goal is such that by doing all of that and,
And following through the agenda, we each learn at least five new things every single time we get together.
Sponsors for this episode include collide.com slash mgg, k-o-l-i-d-e dot com slash m-g-g.
We'll talk more about what you will get when you go there, but it's awesome.
Zero trust, tailor-made for Okta. Cool stuff.
For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Brown.
And here in Leed, New Hampshire is pilot Pete. Listen to the British jets going home overhead.
I think they're gone now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
It's been loud over my house and then Pete's house as a bunch of jets are leaving from
Pease Air Force Base, right kind of down the road from us both.
So all right, let's get into this cool stuff. There's quick tips here because we have yet another follow-up.
In fact, we've got some great quick tip follow-ups here. We were talking in episode 978 about the tip for moving messages, moving among messages
in macOS and using control tab or shift control tab.
And Scott says, rather than using control tab, which I find unnatural to use within
an application, he says, I use it to shift between applications.
I simply changed the keystroke in Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, App Shortcuts, Messages
to use Command-Up-Arrow and Command-Down-Arrow.
That makes more sense to me.
This is one of the coolest things about macOS that you can set your own keystrokes to do things
and you can make them system-wide or app-specific so that they aren't getting in the way
of what Command-Up-Arrow and Down-Arrow do in other apps.
It's very cool.
And then he shares, I like that. So thank you for that, Scott.
He also shares a bonus tip, which is sort of a quick tip revisited.
He says, if you've got contacts pinned, you can use command one through command nine
to access up to, you know, you can have nine contacts pinned and you can access them that way.
By the way, pinning contacts is not just about individual contacts.
You can pin group chats as well.
So if you have like a family group chat or a work group chat that you want to pin,
you can pin that too. It's you can any anything that's a chat can be pinned.
Hopefully lots of quick tips there for you. I don't know. Yeah, that's what I got. Yep. That's that's what we got for today,
Uh, actually, no, that's not true. We have more john. We have uh one from henry also a reference to show. Yes, we do,
um last week's ios safari tip reminded me of another feature available when the address bar is fully visible.
If you swipe left or right on the address bar you'll switch to your next or previous tab.
And if you're on the very last tab, swiping left will open a new tab.
You can tell you're on the last tab if there is no hint of another address bar
peeking into the right of your current address bar.
By the way, tapping on that little bit that peeks in will also take you to the next tab.
Similar thing on the left for previous tab, but those require more precision than swiping.
Yeah. I find that harder to do.
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And this is on iPhone and maybe iPad.
I can't remember how so far, probably not iPad. Cause on iPad, you actually get to see your tabs at the top.
So yes, this is on iPhone. Yeah.
Yeah. I like, uh, that's good. That's good. Yeah.
I, um, I like it all. Um, I noticed the other day, if you are, if you are a Twitter user who
recently lost your ability to use SMS for two factor authentication, if If you like had a check mark before and then it went away,
you now, you need the check mark on Twitter in order to have two-factor authentication using SMS.
And so it will force you the next time you log in after you lose your check mark to change that.
Or if you haven't been using it, you can't use SMS unless you pay the eight bucks a month. However.
There is still the possibility of using two-factor authentication on Twitter. You just have to do it with like the you know
The the one-time passwords and I think maybe there's another way to do it but I you know, I just changed mine to using one-time passwords, which for me I store in in one password and,
And so now i'm back to having two fa on on twitter and you don't have to pay for the the privilege I guess,
SMS messages probably cost them something. In fact, i'm certain they do that's sort of how that works
So they probably limit that to just people who are paying them, but, but you can still do two factor authentication on Twitter.
Just you have to, you have to go in and actually do it again.
So it was not obvious to me the path that they sent me down.
It was like, oh, you just lose the ability to do two FA. I'm like, I don't like that.
That sort of worries me.
Well, good news. You can go get it back. Just, just knock on the door a little bit harder.
There you go. Yeah.
Um, I recently guys, you know, I've had fiber for a couple of years, John and Pete.
Uh, I recently changed my connection. I moved it, as I mentioned, I think on the
show from the office over to the house, because the house has the generator and I just want all
the network gear over there so that I don't have to deal with, you know, it just has an
automatic generator. So all good to go.
So, in doing that, I moved from, even though it's sort of the same provider, they changed
brand names, I moved from having a PPPoE connection to having a DHCP connection, which is a very,
all else being equal is way better. My IP address doesn't change three times a day anymore. In fact,
it doesn't change at all anymore. I don't need to have a router that supports PPPoE,
even though I still do, right? Like it's a better way of going about it. The one thing though,
is that unlike cable modems, the fiber, at least my fiber connection, and for those of you that
that I've talked with who are also using DHCP on Fiber.
The Fiber connection stores the Mac address, the hardware ethernet address of your router
in the provider's database and the provider is the only one who can change it.
Right, with a cable modem, your cable modem grabs the Mac address when it powers up.
And if you need to change, like if you get a new router, you just power cycle your cable modem
and then it lets you put your new router in, no problem. You don't have to make any phone calls.
You don't have to open a support ticket.
With fiber, that is not the case. You do have to open a support ticket to change.
Well, I mean, fine, but I knew this going in. And so what I did was I asked the tech,
because I could have gotten this information myself but it's way better if I get
what they think my Mac address is.
So I asked the tech, I said, tell me what your system says my Mac address is now that I'm set up with my router
and all of that stuff.
And he was like, sure. He showed it to me on his computer screen
and I put it in my entry in one password,
that also logs me into my provider's website like to pay the bill and all that stuff.
And so now, I have the MAC address for the.
Device that is authenticated to use on my account most routers will let you do what's called Mac address cloning
So if my router blows up and I need to put a new router in I know what Mac address to tell it to
Masquerade as to let me back in you don't have to open a ticket So I don't have to open a ticket at 3 a.m
On a Sunday morning when I have no idea if they're gonna be there to answer and help me right so well
That's great. Yeah. Can I go get mine off of my...
Can I just look at my... I should be able to look at my router, see what the MAC address is and that would be it, right?
Correct. You just want to make sure you grab the MAC address of the WAN port that you are using.
Some routers have multiple ports that can be used for the WAN, like the Synology routers, for example.
I have two. They have two and one of... Here's another, you know,
So now the tangential quick tip on the Synology routers at least the RT6600 the current one the.
And this is probably true of others. There's one WAN port and then there's a four port switch for the LAN,
Right port one on that four port switch can also be used for the WAN if you want to have like a failover
Secondary backup or yeah in your case you were using cable and I was I've turned I've turned off cable
I have it all wired up. It'll take me a couple hours to like call them and have them turn it back on.
I wanted to stop paying 40 bucks a month. So it's fine.
However, even without using a secondary connection, I'm not using my WAN port.
I am using my LAN 1 port for my fiber connection because that port is the only port of the five on my router that supports 2.5 gig
Big Ethernet.
And my device from my provider also supports, well it'll support up to 10 gig ethernet.
So I figured, why not give it the headroom? I don't need these other, you know, I don't need
the one port there, I connect it to a bigger switch anyway. So that's why I can't just read
the bottom of my router and say I know what my WAN port's MAC address is. I do know what my WAN
ports MAC addresses, but that's not the one that my fiber provider knows because they've never seen it.
Well, is the, so that begs the question for me is, is the other one, is that limited to one gig?
It is. It is unclear in the documentation. I had to ask support this because I was like,
I think there's something broken with my router. I'm like, I'm only getting 2.5 on the, on the
LAN one port, not on the WAN port. They're like, yeah, no, that's as designed. Like, okay. It was
It was just worded.
You would think they would flip that around, you'd want your WAN port to be the one that
handles the most traffic and your backup to be, you've got to limit one.
Here's why it's not, I think.
I didn't ask them this. Once they confirmed for me that it was what I was seeing, I was like, okay great, I know
what to do. Perfect.
I'm on it. The reason I think that they do this, Pete, is because that way you, if they're only going
to pay to put one 2.5 gig port on there by putting it as the first port of the, the,
the, you know, the, the land switch and giving it the option of being used on the WAN.
You now as the user have the option of saying, okay, I want to use that 2.5 gig port for
my WAN, or I want to use it for my land connection because maybe I want to plug it into like
a network storage device that, uh, that would benefit from having that.
And arguably that might be the smart move for me, too.
Like, I don't know that I would ever wind up using more than one gig, you know, on my internet connection,
whereas maybe I would use more than one gig on my NAS.
Yeah, because even though the rest of the ports, and we'll get into this a little bit here just to explain,
But even though the rest of the ports on the switch are only one gig per second if you have,
Two devices connected to you know each port then each of those gets one gig per second
And that means they can each talk to the 2.5 gig port at their own full speed
So assuming the device on the 2.5 gig port is capable of transmitting data,
You know like the hard drives on your NAS can can you know generate data that fast then great
Okay, you could talk to multiple devices at full speed.
Does that make sense? That does actually. Yeah.
Okay. At first it didn't. It's like, well, that's just silly.
Why would you not have your, your WAN port being the fastest one?
That sound means I get to tell you about our sponsor collide and they have some big news.
If you're an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to a hundred percent compliance. How?
Well, if a device isn't compliant, the user can't log into your cloud apps until they
they've fixed the problem. It's that simple, literally.
Collide patches one of the major holes in Zero Trust architecture, device compliance.
Without Collide, IT struggles to solve basic problems like keeping everyone's OS and browser up to date.
Unsecured devices are logging into your company's apps because there's nothing there to stop them.
Collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication
and it's built to work seamlessly with Okta,
The moment Collide's agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it.
They don't fix the problem within a set time, well, they're blocked.
Collide's method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly,
100% fleet compliance.
Visit collide.com slash MGG to learn more or book a demo.
That's K-O-L-I-D-E.com slash MGG and our thanks to Collide for sponsoring this episode.
And while we're here, I've got a show to tell you about. Look, when the New Yorker Magazine asked Mark Zuckerberg
how he gets his news, he said the one news source he definitely follows is TechMeme.
For four years now, the TechMeme Ride Home podcast has been Silicon Valley's favorite tech news source.
The podcast has become so successful, in fact, that it launched a venture fund
where the listeners to the show are the limited partners in the fund.
The Tech Meme Ride Home is like TLDR as a service. It's not just the latest headlines from the world of tech,
it's also the context around the latest news of the day. It's all the top stories, the top posts and tweets
and conversations about those stories, as well as the behind the scenes analysis.
Guests who have come on the show to lend their expertise include Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon
and Bloomberg's Apple rumor king, Mark Gurman.
The folks at Tech Meme are online all day reading everything so they can catch you up and me too.
I've added this to my podcatcher. I listen to Tech Meme Ride Home all the time.
So listen to the one podcast anyone who's anyone in Silicon Valley listens to every single day.
Search your podcast app now for Ride Home and subscribe to the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast.
And our thanks to the team over there for doing this swap with us.
All right, let's do some questions. John, I think Jed has, Jed found an interesting thing.
Yeah, I've actually run into this myself, but Jed says, just wanted to send in this
warning question mark.
So I have Mint Mobile and never need a lot of data.
But last fall and this spring, I'm noticing that if I have maps on for an hour or three
and I'm driving kids to various sports and social stuff, my data hit its cap.
I just checked the map, eight, uh, 20 gigs this weekend. That's in like three to four hours.
So I may be going back to ways or Google maps.
Just thought I would let people know.
And yeah, you can see this, Dave, if you go to settings, cellular, it'll list your various
apps and how much data they use.
And I actually had had this happen when I switched over to 5G.
All of a sudden, I blew my data cap in like less than an hour.
Was that because you were doing a bunch of speed tests?
No, no, it wasn't. Oh, really? No.
And then I looked and I did the same thing. you know, I looked in settings cellular
and weather was taking up gigabytes of data. It's like, why?
Yeah, I remember you saying that now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Fascinating.
The only time I had maps take up data like that was like on a long road trip.
You know, last summer we drove to Florida.
But I don't recall it hitting my cap right away. I mean, I hit the cap that month
and that's why I switched to unlimited, like that matter. So you did, but maps, um, maps chewed up that much, like gigabytes of data.
I think what it was is we were just on the road for two days and, and so I wasn't on wifi.
And so, you know, I tended to like, for instance, uh, I listened to Sirius XM.
Cheap, cheap pilot. Not that, not that audio takes up a lot, but cheap pilot trick here, folks.
So we pay for the Sirius XM from a wife's car.
And so I get the app on my phone and I listen to SiriusXM on my phone using Apple CarPlay.
So I pay for two radios when you get the app and Apple CarPlay.
They're probably going to hear that and shut that down now. No, I don't know how they could, but yeah, that's right.
No, that's a smart, I like that tip.
I like that.
Yeah. I, I, I can't imagine why maps would use gigabytes of data like this.
Like, it doesn't make sense to me. We haven't heard, if others are out there seeing that,
though, let us know. Feedback at MattGeekUp.com.
I would definitely want to know.
Where? Feedback at MattKeyGab.com? Feedback at MattKeyGab.com. That's true.
When his email came in, I looked, because I just reset my cellular stats
two months ago, February 22nd, so about two months ago.
And I use Maps almost exclusively while driving, right? It is my mapping app.
And I have the same provider, I use Mint. Not that that's relevant here.
But in two months, Maps has used for me a grand sum total of 500, less than 500,
469 megabytes of cell data.
And that's in my top 10 apps, right? Like in terms of data usage.
And I've done, I did a trip down to New York, like I've done some longer road trips,
but I use Maps all the time.
So I'm just, I'm curious as to what it would take to get it to burn 20 gigs of data. That's interesting.
That's a lot. My biggest one for the last two months is speed test at 2.2 gigs speed test
Especially on 5g if you're getting,
You know if you're getting that that you know 100 to 200 to 300 megabit per second connection that will chew up
You know a quarter gig per speed test,
Just a sure. Yeah. Yeah interesting and by the way Anyway, the part about being on Mint Mobile that is relevant is, you know, Mint is a an
MVNO for T-Mobile, meaning they use T-Mobile's network, right?
Because they're an MVNO, there's some part about the deal, I'll say, that means they can't or don't,
show when you're on 5G versus the 5G UC or whatever T-Mobile calls it, like the ultra-wideband,
you know, whatever that is. But Mint does support the 5G UC or UW or whatever it is.
It just doesn't show it on iPhones, you know, like it does. If you had a T-Mobile connection, you'd either see 5G or 5G UC.
I think, John, on Verizon, you see 5G and 5G UW, I think.
But he'll confirm eventually, right? Yes, I've seen that before. Yeah.
But, like, you do get those speeds with Mint, even though you're not seeing the distinction
happen with the 5G thing. And so, yeah, I've had some speed tests on Mint that are like
over 400 megabits per second on 5G, which is amazing. But that's why I brought 2.2 gigs, so.
One other thing about maps, though, briefly, is that they're slowly getting the functionality
of Waze. I've gone off of Waze. They alert to speed checks and road hazards and that sort of
thing. It just needs more people playing. Report the hazards, report the speed checks.
Although, you know, Siri and her infinite lack of wisdom, spirit, you know,
hey Siri, oh, sorry, hey, yes lady, speed check at this location.
You deserve that, Pete. Yeah, I did. For those that didn't hear it, she said, that's all good.
No, thanks a lot. Yeah.
But yeah, you'll, you'll say, hey, yes lady, speed check at this location.
I can't show you that while driving. It's like, oh, dear God, make it stop.
Make it stop.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm trying to figure out where I was when I just recently got a, um, a speed
test of four, it was like 420 megs a second.
I think it was local here. It was maybe Boston or something, but, um, yeah, you can 5g 5g can be fast.
It's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, if you do see the maps using that up, folks, let us know, like this, this
would be an interesting data point, but I'm hoping that it's unique to Jed and
especially hoping that it was unique to just that weekend for you, Jed, and
not happening all the time.
Uh, we got a couple of follow-ups about our discussion on tail scale in 976,
Uh, including a big discussion kind of follow-on discussion in our discord channel, which i'll put a link to but um,
You know, I talked about in 976 how i'm using Tail scale to get to my specific machines and then how I have my synology vpn for if I want to get to the whole
network and then I have a separate VPN, I use private internet access if I just want
to get to the outside world and not deal with my home network or whatever.
And many of you, including Robert, pointed out that you can use Tailscale to be that Outward VPN and it's.
You set up one of your devices That's you know sort of permanently at your house or office or whatever,
You use tail scale and you set that up as an exit node and what that means is that not only,
Can it be a device that you can just attach directly to but it can also be your path out to the internet
just like a normal VPN and the nice part is you don't have to set up a normal VPN
You don't even have to have a router that will let you do that because tailskill will do it
So it just needs to be an always-on device So your network if you have a NAS like a Synology disk station or something, that's the perfect place to do it
But it gets even better and this was the part that blew my mind when somebody,
Really explained this to me in a way that it finally sunk and it was I think MQ Richards
I want to say in our in our discord. I can't remember off the top of my head. It was something like that,
The post is out there. So you get full credit,
but The idea was you know, you don't have to put tail scale on all of your computers,
You only need to put it on one device in your network and the reason is.
It supports something called being a subnet router. And what that will do is let you connect,
use that one tail scale device to be the gateway to your network,
which means that not only do you not have to install tail scale on all your other devices,
you don't need to, meaning you can access devices like printers,
where you couldn't install tail scale anyway, even if you wanted to.
So you set up the end and the idea is you really only need to set up one device at home with tail
scale, turn on exit node and subnet routing capabilities for it. And there's docs about
how to do this. It's really not all that complicated. And then when you're connected
to your tail scale, you can, you're, you know, you're going through a VPN if you want to get
to the outside world, no matter where you are, and you can get to your inside world just by
without needing to put Tailscale on anything.
So I immediately did that.
I'm gonna stop running Tailscale on all of my computers except for my Synology disk station and that'll be that.
But it's kind of blew my mind that this is the right way to do this.
It makes life way, way, way simpler because you can just be connected to Tailscale all the time
on your phone and your laptop.
And no matter where you are, you just get to all your devices
as though you are at your home or your office,
wherever your primary network is.
Does that make sense, Pete? Did I, did I explain that right?
Pete, you are muted. I knew you were trying to talk to me. Yeah, it kind of lost me a little bit, but...
Okay, that's why I asked, yeah.
So, I have it on the Mac Mini in the basement, and that's the one I run as my exit node when I want to run it. Right.
But I have to have it on my laptop if I want to be on that network.
Correct. You would want it on your mobile devices, your laptops, your...
My phone, my iPad. Phone your iPad the things that aren't that are going to be traveling away from home with you, right?
But you don't need it on my on my Synology drive my NAS drive in order to see that's what I'm saying,
It with the subnet router. You don't need it on more than one device at home,
Because if you let's say you make your Mac mini, right your tail scale device
yes, and it can be your exit node if you want it to be you turn that on or off and,
And if you go enable subnet routing, now that Mac mini will not just be a gateway
to the outside world, aka the exit node, it will be a gateway to the inside world via subnet routing.
They use that, subnet routing is the wrong term, right? Exit node, for some reason,
like the English equivalent of that makes good sense.
It should be an inbound node, right? So it is just the path to your network
and then you use your local network IPs and you can get to everything from wherever
and it doesn't matter where you are.
Right, okay. Well, that's beautiful then because, yeah. I mean, I still love it because the fact is.
You know, with my other show, I have a ton of data. Well, I need to offload that from my laptop.
So that I don't have gigabytes and gigabytes of past shows that I don't have anymore. Correct.
So, I put that on a NAS only folder, but I can't access that from the outside world
until Tailscale came along last. Right. Oh, yeah, now I can get to it from anywhere in the world.
And I, there is no harm in it that I found in having Tailscale on more than one device in your network.
So, what you're doing with it on your Mac Mini and on your NAS, like there's no reason
to stop that necessarily, but there's also no reason to set that up necessarily.
You just set it up on one and then add this subnet routing, aka the inbound node.
And then you could hit, via your Mac mini, you could access your Synology all the time anyway.
Well, then let me ask this, and it may be because what I do now is I go to the TailScale
app, or, you know, right up in the top in the menu bar, and I go down to network devices,
my devices, and it shows my disk station there.
I click on that, and it copies the IP address of my disk station, then I go to Finder, and
I hit connect, and I use that IP address.
I no longer need to do that. I can just go to my 168.4? Correct.
That's correct. You would use the same local IP address, whether you're in Dubai or in Lee, New Hampshire.
Or in the living room. Okay. Correct. Yeah, Dubai or the living room.
That's a much better way. Yeah, see, that's the marketing phrase right there.
Yep. Okay. Yeah. Right. It keeps you from having all these different addresses for the same devices.
All that being said, because of the Boy Scout in me, always be prepared, right?
If you are, if you know that you're going to be accessing your Synology a bunch from
remote, you don't, and you're going to need to rely on that because of this data folder
that you said you had out there.
I would not be too hasty to remove tail scale from the Synology because once you do, it
is reliant on your Mac mini being up and running and not having crashed or you know, like Murphy's law, right?
Yeah, so like there's a world where it's okay to do both is I guess what I'm saying.
Sure. Yeah, you turn the Mac mini off it won't work.
Correct. But leave that on there it'll work even with the Mac mini.
Now you got to back up, right? You know, so, yeah. it.
That still it says that these guys at tail scale are brilliant.
They are yeah they we have a question in the chat at mackiecap.com slash discord from PM Conway saying can you only use those features if you have a custom domain I'm using a Google account.
No I am also using a Google account and a hundred percent of the features we've just talked about work so.
And most of us who signed up for Tailscale early on
are doing the Google account way because that's the only way it was possible to do it early on.
Now, you can sign up with a custom domain and in fact, they just came out with new pricing plans
that add more features to all of this, including,
giving you up to three users for free, not just one user for free, which is huge.
However, those of us on Google accounts still only get one user for free because you have
to be on a custom domain to add more than one user to your account.
And I believe somebody, please correct me if I'm wrong, that all of those users need
to be on the same domain.
That's how it does what it does. And this is why at the moment anyway, they're working on it, they say, but at the moment
You can only have one Gmail user per domain, because otherwise they would let every gmail
dot com user onto every other gmail dot com user's account, and that would be super bad.
And so they're not doing that. Now that being said, my wife has a separate computer, her own iMac.
And I just put my tail scale account on there. So I don't need another user. Correct.
If you're fine with someone having full access to everything and also being
logged in to your Google account, which is fine with your wife, then, then you're
great. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
And you could get creative and, and create a second Gmail account that's only used
for these purposes and then it doesn't matter, you know?
Yeah. So, but I just got an idea though. So mom's 97, lives in a nursing home.
Her only connection to the outside world is the iPad, and that thing is always giving
her trouble. I need to put Tail Scale on her iPad.
Yes. So I can give her support remotely. Yes. It's, you know, it's frozen up.
I can't get email to do this or that.
Yeah, yeah. Now you can. Now you can. Hang on, mom. I'll take care of that. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. Right, right. Yep. Yeah, no.
Tail Scale. Thank goodness for Tail Scale. show notes at macgeekab.com or mgg.fm slash 979 if you want to go right there and it'll be in
your email box if you sign up for our weekly emails at macgeekab.com but they talk about why,
they are able to offer a free plan for free and how that works and how they are able to,
not just make you the customer or you the product right you are we are still the customer
They know that by doing this, they see more uptake on their paid plans.
And so it's the freemium model, not the we're going to sell your data model.
And they're very transparent about all this. So it is worth giving a good read.
All right.
More questions? Let's go to Craig here. Craig says, Does anyone use the Logitech Circle View HomeKit camera? We have a few and all of them cut out
daily, showing no response. The fastest and only way I've found to resolve it is to switch off the
power, you know, cycle the power on the camera. And that works every time until the next time.
It's not ideal, especially if we're away and I can't access the plugs. I'm considering
buying a couple of Wemo smart sockets so if we are away theoretically I should be able to turn
them off and on remotely to solve the cutout problem if it happens while I'm away. Does anyone
else have these cameras? Have you had this problem? And have you found a solution? And several of you,
reported using these cameras and seeing this exact problem. So maybe not so many of the Logitech
CircleView HomeKit cameras need to be purchased going forward. That's a little PSA. Anecdotally
anyway, you know, there's there's like four people.
So, you know, factor that into your, your purchasing decisions.
I have found this though, that the, the symptom that Craig highlighted is that he goes into the home app and it says
no response on the kind of the, you get that main sort of dashboard screen, right?
And you see your favorite devices and your cameras and all that stuff on the, on the dashboard screen for HomeKit.
Uh, the cameras will say no response there. I see that sometimes with the cameras I have, I have a combination of
Eufy cameras, which are, you know, direct to home kit support.
And I have a bunch of non home kit cameras, like ring and like a Foscam camera and, and others that I use home bridge to connect to home kit.
And equally with both of those, the Eufy HomeKit cameras and the non, you know, via HomeBridge cameras,
I will routinely see the same no response in the dashboard.
However, if I tap on the camera and force it to go and like try and talk to the camera,
it wakes right up and I see the image live right there and good to go.
So there is something about HomeKit being perhaps impatient on waiting for a response back from the camera.
I don't know what it is, But if you do see this issue before you presume that you have a camera, that's just bogus,
tap on it and dig in and see because,
You might you might be pleasantly surprised. You might also be you know Unpleasantly frustrated, I can't promise what's going to happen.
I can just share what happens with me and others that I know.
You use any HomeKit cameras, Pete? Do you use HomeKit at all?
Uh, I don't. I need to.
Um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't rely on HomeKit. I use HomeKit as sort of the,
convenient aggregate of all of the other things that I use because, like, sure, I could run the
Eufy app or the Ring app to see each of, you know, the separate cameras that I have in those,
obviously, but launching the home app is super convenient because it I have everything aggregated
there. I've set up home bridge, which is a open source engine. I have it running on my
disk station, but you could run it on your Mac. I'll put a link in the show notes.
I have home bridge running, which which essentially becomes a gateway for all non many,
not all most, most non home kit devices to be visible in and controllable and home kit. It's It's quite nice.
So I use HomeKit as kind of the, the, the convenient.
Default way to look at it. It's nice because it's available on my Macs.
And so I don't have to have the ring software on my Mac. I can just launch the home app and see things, but it's kind of buggy is as
Brian Monroe in the chat says, uh, HomeKit is just buggy garbage.
Well, that's true, but it's convenient garbage. It's right at the tip of my fingers.
So I, but I wouldn't rely on the home. I may have misstated.
The home app is different than home kit. No. No, the home app is your view into home kit. Okay. Yes. Yes
So well, so I misstated it then I use it a little bit when this lady won't turn off a lighter turn on a light
I can open the home app and go. All right, you know, let's go. My favorite one is hey s lady
You know turn on the living room lamp. Yeah, and I get the error the Google I.
Don't know why you get that error. I've seen it too. Yeah You get it more than me.
The Google app you needed to have installed to make this work isn't there.
I'm like, that has nothing to do with Google. It's a Philips Hue light.
And I just told S lady to turn it on and she wants a Google app for it.
And I'm like, no. The Philips Hue light is HomeKit native. Yeah.
Yeah. That's why it's particularly frustrating. Come on.
That was a really kind way of communicating that sentiment, Pete. Yes.
Okay. You know, yeah. So I do want to take a baseball bat and go hit that home bridge down in the basement. Yeah. Yeah. Stop.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, Homebridge has been great because again, it just sort of aggregates all these things
together and it's it now that they have native Homebridge for Synology, I don't have to run
it in a docker container and manage that.
It's an, I don't think I shouldn't say that, but I, I'm pretty sure. Yeah.
Um, now that they have that, I think it's through Synology, Sino community or something,
like it, it really is not, it, it, it's not for the faint of heart.
I'm going to say that, but it's pretty good, you know, there's some of the configurations
of getting it set up with each of your different things is a little bit of a deal, but you
can do it. If you're listening to the show, you can do it. I have faith in you.
And if you have any trouble, come to our Discord and ask. I'm there.
You know, there's others there using Homebridge.
Like, it's a good place to, it's a good resource. It's like.
What I haven't done yet though and I had a discussion when I was down in Tennessee with my
nephew this week and he's getting ready to do it and I went, you know, it's not a bad idea
is setting up a DMZ and putting all those Internet of Things devices on that separate from...
You're talking about a guest network, not a... a DMZ is sort of the opposite of what you would
want to do, right? Okay.
Because a DMZ... He used the term DMZ, but I'm thinking, okay, I want a zone where I put all those
Internet of Things that can't access my network.
Oh, yeah, no, that's not what most routers what DMZ means is And it's it it's you know demilitarized zone is the term and so this is already a misnomer, but fine
you know is it is a way of setting one device as.
The one that gets all of the traffic that just floods into the outside of your network that your your router by nature of its
sort of de facto firewall capabilities keeps out like,
normally Unsolicited packets that arrive at your routers doorstep are just Ignored because your router doesn't know what to do with them, right?
You know unless you've set up some port forwardings then it'll forward them,
But a DMZ on most routers is port forward everything that I haven't told you about,
To this other device and let it handle it. Okay, okay, so it's a miss misstatement of terms
Yeah, but what it sounds like he's doing is setting up a separate, you know, a.
Like a guest network. Yeah. Yeah a guest network or you know, some version of that where it's it's.
Segregated so that those things can only talk to the outside world and not impact his other devices the problem with that,
I've always had is is.
What convenience are you giving up for that with something like a ring camera for example?
No problem because you're never talking directly to other than when you set it up
You're never talking directly to your ring camera
it talks to the internet you talk to the internet and that's where you meet your ring camera and,
Actually get the data. So it's it's a super inefficient thing and from a networking standpoint. It works totally fine
I guess it's it's great. So that would work fine. But what if you've got a device that's like, you know
a Foscam camera or something where it can do both and you can talk to it locally,
Which would be all of your home kit devices you're talking with locally, right?
So, you know, you're you've been you have to get on that network in order to talk directly to correct instead of your yeah,
so I've always sort of felt like.
That's a it is a solution, but it's a baby versus the bathwater solution you're just it's your you know, we talked about the
the continuum between security and convenience and that's way closer to security than convenience. Well and you and I have a different and John we have
different needs I mean in the sense that that we are isolated enough that that
there's not a lot. Now he's in an apartment slash townhome complex where there's a lot of Wi-Fi networks able to interact with each other and people.
Get back into his. Interfere with each other but they're not going to interact
with each other. I guess I'm thinking about being a place for someone to try
and hack and mess around with your Wi-Fi. Yeah sure, sure. And try and get into your
network using your Hue light bridge or your you know and I know that's difficult but the I guess my point is the Internet of Things devices they're
better now early on they were totally open. Totally oh and that wouldn't whether
Whether you're alone in the country or in an apartment building, the easiest attack vector is the same.
It's come in over the internet and poke that hole in your off-brand camera or off-brand
printer that has security Swiss cheese in its default Linux core, embedded Linux core
that where all the passwords are defaults or whatever.
And then it has, and then once you're in, once you, you know, have root access on that
device, then you, you know, and presumably that device is connected to the network.
Now you have access just like you're on the network. So yeah, that issue, I mean, it's still potential today, but as you said, like man, most many,
I don't want to say most.
Many, uh, including most of the, the top name brand vendors have gotten better about this,
but there's still those holes.
So I get it. Like I get the desire of doing this. You just, I don't know.
It feels like more trouble than it's worth for most people.
So. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting point. So I'm actually glad I brought it up now.
I see less of a need for it then. Then initially when he mentioned, you know, yeah, I want to set it up.
Yeah. There's a need for it, but it's gonna introduce complications that you can route around but it's you know
It's gonna be you're gonna be the one well, here's what's gonna happen to me. Let me tell you folks
Here's what's gonna happen. So Pete's gonna if you're not gonna you're probably not gonna do this, but if you did this
here's how the flow works that I've learned over the last decade or so is.
Pete sets up this this, you know new shiny security protocol and then And Pete goes off to travel, because he has to, that's how he pays for the new shiny things
that he gets.
And then Pete's wife calls Pete and says, I can't turn the lights on and off anymore.
And then Pete calls me and says, Dave, my lights won't turn off anymore.
What do I need to do? What do I need to do? So I stop everything I'm doing.
And then we try and figure this out.
And I asked, well, what did you change? I didn't change anything.
And then, you know, within about 15 minutes, we get to, well, I mean, I did that thing
that I mentioned on the show.
It's like that that's when I that's when I hit my particularly frustrated moment.
It's like, why did you do that? Right. I told you, you idiot, you're going to have problems.
I told you not to do that. So, you know, it's just one of the it's like, but it like this is true of all of the things
that we all do all the time. I mean, thank you for letting me, you know, use you as the punching bag on that one, Pete.
You know, but like, this is this is the the the thing is you you presume some of the ripple
effects of the the changes that we make to our networks and our computers and our phones like any device.
And then there are the ripple effects that actually happen, the ones that we didn't predict.
And that's why this show exists. So you send your questions and feedback at Mackeycub.com. It's great.
Yeah. There you go. There you go. All right, John. Maybe we can do a couple more questions before we have to run today.
This has been fun.
Uh, well, first, do you have, like, do you, how do you use HomeKit?
Uh, no. See, see how John, see what John just did? I intentionally didn't ask a yes or no question and it didn't matter.
It didn't matter. I love it. I really, really don't use it.
Um, yeah, when I look at the home app, I think my Apple TV is part of the club.
Yeah, my, uh, HomePod minis are part of the club, but that's really it.
So you could use home bridge to join all of your smart things devices to the club.
And, and it doesn't preclude you from using your smart things devices the way you currently do.
It just adds that convenience layer of putting everything together in that one
interface that's accessible on all of your Macs and in Control Center and like all of that stuff.
So like I do recommend doing the Homebridge thing if you have a blend of HomeKit and non-HomeKit
devices, because when it works, HomeKit is super convenient. It's just that, you know.
We're talking about maybe 60% of the time. All right, take us to Listener John. We've got a
got a couple of Apple Watch things to talk through. Yeah, John says, I somehow
developed a problem on my 24-inch iMac. I try to unlock with my Apple Watch and
nothing happens. It works fine on my MacBook Pro. On the iMac, I went to Touch
ID and password and flip the switch to enable Apple Watch, but as soon as I do
it flips back to off. That's frustrating. Both devices are on the same Apple ID
and as I said it works on my MacBook Pro. Any idea of what is wrong and how to
fix it? I don't know and this is a rough one guys. I mean I've on my system I've
had the Apple Watch setting disabled but turning it back on worked I never heard
of it turning itself off again.
I mean, a few thoughts. One, restart.
I'm sure you've done that already, but, you know, can't hurt.
Make sure you have latest software updates. I seem to recall some of the recent ones had something to do with the watch.
And the third thing, maybe it's a cache, isn't it always? Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah.
Maybe clean things up with Onyx Maintenance Cleaning Options.
I like that idea. Yeah, I mean i've certainly seen this where when it says that it's on it doesn't work,
And and in those scenarios turn it off reboot turn it back on often
Fixes it you've got to have your watch near you've got a pair and and maybe,
That's part of the issue here Like is the watch close enough is bluetooth on on the mac like it uses both bluetooth and wi-fi
And I don't know probably the phase of the moon or something thing, but it, I like the idea of cleaning caches because if you can't get it to even
attempt to turn on the rest is obviously a non-starter.
So yeah.
Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But mine, I had turned off and I didn't realize I went into system settings and typed in unlock
and it came up with the ability to go right to, you know, allow your app watch to unlock your Mac.
So I turned it on, it came right on, so I don't know what, I've just been using the
fingerprint ID, you know, that's...
On your laptop. On my Mac, yeah, on my laptop, yeah, it just seems, that's it, because when I need to turn
it on, I'm already touching the keyboard anyway, so it's right there, and comes right on.
And I don't know, I'm assuming that capability has stayed with all the latest generation laptops.
Yes, oh yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a, yeah, that's a game changer.
The need to turn it on with your Apple watch is almost less secure because you could be in
the next room and someone could, you know, open your machine and.
You'll get a little notification on your watch. Yeah, but how often have you learned to ignore that?
Oh, I'm real good at ignoring that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I noticed, you know, lately I have been wearing my Apple watches less or my Apple, I guess I
have two, I have my OG one and I have the, you know, the series five.
I've been wearing them less. Simply because I've been enjoying wearing my mechanical watches.
I love my mechanical watches.
I have noticed two things, like first of all, where I really miss it most regularly is my iMac in the office doesn't unlock anymore, I have to type my password, fine, okay, but whatever, like that's fine
I wish my phone could be that, like if my phone's in close proximity and unlock, it unlock my Mac, like wouldn't that be an interesting way to do it? Anyway, I digress
The other thing that I've noticed, to your point, Pete, is phantom taps on my wrist.
I will be wearing a mechanical watch that does not have haptic capabilities, and I
will look at my wrist because I am certain I got a notification and I am wrong.
So.
Yeah, that's, that's a real phenomenon too. I read about it years ago about people feel the phone vibrating in their pocket.
Yeah.
That too. Yeah. I don't notice that as much anymore, but I have yeah, yeah, yeah.
Crazy. All right. Uh Let's stay with apple watch here and see maybe this is a little bit of a geek challenge
But john, you might have an answer for for mr. Mike here Uh, all right. Well, we'll see. Okay. Um,
Mike says i'm thinking of dumping at&t for cricket, but the latter doesn't have a cellular watch plan,
Can I keep my watch on AT&T and switch my phone plan to Cricut?
Well, I only have a Wi-Fi watch, so I couldn't test this myself, but they have an article
calling setup mobile on Apple Watch, and it's kind of confusing, Dave and Pete.
So they have one section and it says, your iPhone and Apple Watch must use the same network provider.
Okay, that's one statement. That's clear.
The watch was set up for a family member who doesn't have an iPhone. If you change network
providers on your iPhone, you need to remove the previous service plan on your Apple Watch
and sign up for a new plan. Okay. So the way I read that is you got to reset up your carrier
access on the watch. Yeah. So I wonder, I would love to hear from somebody who's tried this,
right? Because I think that little clause in the middle there is separate from the others,
right? Because if we take that out, the but, you know, if we say your iPhone and Apple Watch
must use the same network provider, if you change network providers on your iPhone,
you need to remove the previous service plan on your Apple Watch and sign up for a new plan.
Okay? Like that makes sense. This little clause of unless the watch was set up for a family member
who doesn't have an iPhone, I think, lives on an island. I don't think it's related to the
the rest of those two statements.
However, you might be on to something here, like...
If I have an iPhone on Mint Mobile, which Mint, at least at the moment, doesn't have.
An Apple Watch plan, I don't think, unless it changed this morning or something, and I'm not
aware. But let's presume. I would, I can't add my Apple Watch to the plan. Like you, John, I don't
have a cellular Apple Watch, so this is a non-issue for me, but we'll go with this, right? So I can't
add my Apple Watch to the plan, and because I use Mint on my iPhone, my presumption was there was
no world where I could get an Apple Watch and put it on, say, AT&T or, you know, one of the,
the, the, you know, blessed carriers that can talk to Apple Watch.
However, what if I treat my Apple Watch like it is a family member, you know, owned by a family
member who doesn't have an iPhone and attach it to AT&T? My guess is what that would mean is
I would have to have it on a different Apple ID, and it couldn't be on my Apple ID.
This is a guess, but my presumption is that as soon as the watch sees that it is connected
to my main Apple ID, the one that is also connected to my phone, it's going to say,
oh no, no, no, no, these have to be the same. I could be wrong about that,
But it would not surprise me if it needs to be a completely separate thing, so that that watch and that phone don't share notifications, they don't share any of that stuff.
They're just, you know, one is they're both members of the same family plan and that's the extent of their.
Relationship, for lack of a better term. But I don't know. I'm guessing at this, but I'm...
I wouldn't be surprised. Can you even have an Apple Watch independent of an iPhone?
I don't even remember. Well, that's what they're saying, Pete, is yes.
If you don't have an iPhone, if you're part of a family plan,
your family member can set up your Apple Watch without you having an iPhone.
And therefore, it can be on a carrier separate from your non-existent iPhone.
But I think that's the key point, is your non-existent iPhone.
As soon as you have an iPhone, now they need to be on the same planet.
Yeah. That would be my guess. But I like this little geek challenge and there's a loophole here.
There's a loophole in the language. The question is, is there the same technical loophole?
And my guess is no, because otherwise we'd hear about people doing this all the time.
But, maybe it's just something we haven't heard about, right?
Yep. Kurt, Kurt noticed something. Kurt says, I have a 2021 M1 iMac with eight gigs of RAM running Monterey still.
He says, oh, this is interesting. This, this actually, well, now it's possible that this, this, my theory holds.
He says, I open a lot of windows between browsers and office products.
When I first got the Mac with all the programs running, I would get the message saying I was using
saying I was using most of my memory and running out of memory recently, the memory issue, or at
least the alert does not happen. Did Apple fix something? So you might remember if you've listened
to this show for more than about six weeks, that there was a period of time where we were talking
a lot about all of these memory alerts that we were getting on our Macs. And what, you know,
out of memory alert, what does it mean? Do I need to pay attention to it? How do I pay attention to
What do I do to fix it? What do I do? Is it anything or is it nothing? And we had a lot
of speculation. There were certain things that you look at and okay, you're running out of swap
space. You're doing this. Okay, that's bad. This is bad. But these sort of generic, non-specific,
memory errors did exist. And a lot of the sort of conjecture and conclusions that we came to was,
is, eh, it doesn't seem to be anything to do,
just ignore it.
And now we stopped hearing about all of those messages. And Kurt noticed this.
So I'm wondering if Kurt's right. Did Apple fix it?
There have been updates to Monterey, you know, security updates, but Apple's been known to bake some things into these updates that go beyond security, especially nuisance fixes.
So did they remedy this problem or did they just simply realign the alert threshold so that it wasn't so annoying?
Because if we were hearing about it regularly here, I also know who else was hearing about it a lot more frequently, right?
You know, so like, I really, I wonder if that threshold was just like somebody said, all right,
if we're not going to be specific about this and tell users what they need to do,
how to fix it, then we can't be getting these phone calls.
And so it just raised the tolerance level. I don't know. I, again, more conjecture.
I don't know. But did they fix it outright? Or did they fix it? Right. Who knows?
Who knows? I you know if they fix that I've got a list of things I'd like to have them
take a look at now that that's off their list because especially in Ventura like
say core audio in Ventura I'm just is there a problem with core audio in Ventura Pete I you know what here Dave I got a suggestion we can find out okay
upgrade your podcasting machine to Ventura and see if that works okay okay Oh, wait a minute. You tried that already once.
Wait, this sounds very familiar. It sounds like you tried that and it was a total disaster.
It was a total disaster.
Speaking of avoiding disaster, Pete, you got a cool stuff found for us, my friend, today?
Um, I do. Hang on. Hang on. Okay. Yeah, okay. So I had to find out which one,
which one we were talking about.
Um, I'm going to go ahead and say
So, in my regular updates for security, I got a warning that came across my desk last
week and it said, the FBI warns against using the phone charging stations that scammers
are using to attack your phone.
So when traveling, you know, we drain our batteries on devices.
Most airports, hotels, public places have free charging areas and USB ports, you know,
like under the seats in the waiting area, that sort of thing.
Yep. There's a thing called juice-jacking, and you should avoid using free charging stations
at airports, hotels, shopping centers, that sort of thing.
And here's how it works. A scammer puts a malware or a monitoring software into a public USB port, and that gives them
the ability to steal data off of your phone or even lock your phone up.
It could take passwords, addresses, banking information, all that.
You know how you have your entire life on that little thing in your pocket?
They can get to it.
So, what can you do, you ask to stop such a thing? There's a thing called a Juice, what's it called?
Juice Jack Defender. Juice Jack Defender. Yeah, Juice Jack Defender.
And I found one on Amazon for less than $6.
And essentially what it is, it's a little USB-A to USB-A plug.
Like a pass-through device.
Yeah, a pass-through device. And what it boils down to is it doesn't have any wires inside it that allow data to transfer
only power. So you can still charge your device but there's no route in there by
which data can pass in order to take data off your phone or to put a virus or
data onto your phone that sort of thing. So right there if you're traveling a lot
highly recommend that if you don't carry a battery pack something to recharge
yourself then then have one of these little devices for less than five less
and six bucks plugged into the end of your charging cord for public use and never grab
a look there's a cord right right right let me just use that gee what could go wrong right
yeah they could they can put data on to there is a there is a safety mechanism in the iPhone
where you have to allow the device that you've plugged into they trust this device trust
this device screen. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but let's say you grab a
cord that you just found and you plug it into your computer to charge. Yeah. It's
gonna say, trust this device. Well, yeah, it's my computer. Of course I'm gonna trust it.
And there's no telling that there isn't something in there. Yep. That's how, you.
Know, that the Iranian centrifuges were. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. years ago.
Cool. All right. Well, on the charging front, John, you had a cool stuff found to share with us for today. Yeah.
Yeah. So I got this for my birthday because I put it on my wish list, Dave.
Nice. What do you do if you're out and about and you need to charge your Apple watch, but there's no charging station anywhere?
Well, maybe you should get this device that I found called Portable Charger for Apple Watch.
And it's a little battery pack, 1000 milliamp hours, so you will get a couple of charges,
at least. That's really it. Yeah. Yeah. How much is it? It's like 15 bucks. There you go.
Yeah.
Cool. But it's a good option for, uh, when you're on the road and you need to charge your watch.
So for the listeners that can't see what we're looking at, it's basically the size of a keychain.
Yes. Yeah. Little key fob. That is awesome.
The one thing I will share about this is it has a battery in it, which means if you're
flying on a plane, it needs to stay in your carry on. You can't just put it in your charger bag as a spare and, and forget about it because
you can't put batteries, uh, in a checked bag.
How so. Unless you can disable it, turn it off. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Right. That's a whole. Yeah. That's a whole nother thing.
There is for $12, a two pack of these little things that I carry and I have, I always keep one of them.
Actually, I keep one in my travel, like my carry on. And I also have one in my charger bag because for 12
bucks, they're cheap and it is just a USB-A to Apple watch Puck.
Similarly a little keychain thing I keep a spare of these all the time I have one in my car it is super handy to have these around and and i've even been known to just give them away if if you come up to me and ask do you have an apple watch charger i can borrow it's like nope i have one you can have here you go cuz they're twelve bucks so now now i now i just gonna put myself in the poor house cuz everybody's gonna come up and everybody will be at dave's after the show that's right.
Speaking of what you would see at Dave's after the show, I've been, you know me, I like my NASes, my network storage devices, and I like them to be able to run as hardware transcoding for my media library, for my Plex library and all of that stuff.
And Synology, up until very recently, was not including hardware transcoding engines
in their devices. And so I started looking elsewhere.
Talked about QNAP, and QNAP has some devices, certainly has some devices that are very much
built for transcoding.
I found another brand, though, called Terramaster.
And I've been, I got one of their Terramaster F4423. It's a four bay NAS.
It's got a Celeron chip in it, which has transcoding, it's the Celeron N5095, so it's a quad-core
and it'll do 4K transcoding, I've been testing it for a while, it's fantastic.
I like its web-based user interface much better than the QNAP interface.
It's actually very similar to the Synology web interface. The one thing I will say, it is dollar for dollar, less expensive than the QNAP for,
you know, features per dollar.
However, and so compared to if you want just something that's going to do hardware transcoding
and you don't want to wait for, you know, the perfect Synology new model to appear that
would do it, this is a good option to look at.
The issue is that Synology has way more features in terms of its apps than Terramaster or QNAP have.
Neither of them has an analog to the Synology Office suite, which I find to be spectacular.
I love being able to use Synology Office. It's like you're running your own Google Office, Google Docs, Google Sheets, you know, web-based, collaborative. It's awesome.
That doesn't exist on TerraMaster. But if you're looking for a NAS, they do have cloud syncing,
so you can run your own private cloud, just like your own private Dropbox. TerraMaster has that.
They have native apps for Mac and iPhone and iPad, as well as Windows and such, and Android.
And it's a solid NAS offering. And I like what they're doing. It's pretty cool.
How's their price point, Dave?
Um, you know, the one that I have with this Celeron in it bare is $4.99, so that's, you know, that's, that's about $150 less than you'd spend on a Synology.
It's about the same price you'd spend on a QNAP.
So, um, so yeah, I've been, I've been, uh, I've been happy with it.
You know, it's a, it's a, it's, like I said, it's a solid offering.
So that's, uh, that's where we go. It's always good to see competition and things like that because it keeps the other prices down.
Prices down well and it keeps like the feature set is sort of the important
thing like the fact that this exists the fact that QNAP is doing what they're
doing the fact that we've been saying what we've been saying and I will I will,
reiterate that you know our community's voice has been no small part of why
Synology took a second look at transcoding on what they're doing the
Marius hosting's community similar right like we we definitely you know joined
joined a similar mission with Marius on this and and and he joined with us so
it's but you know like it's good to have these things out there so that you can,
see what the options are and compare and contrast yeah it's good competition is.
Great I agree that's what we got time for today folks thanks for hanging out
sounds like the band is playing the band's playing man champing at the bit
as it were. Yeah. Do we chomp at the bits? Do we chomp at the bits? Do we chomp... a horse
chomps at the bit but do we here on the show what is what we're doing like
chomping at the bits or are we chomping and spitting the bits and then you get
the bits and you've your computer or your iPhone takes the bits and transforms them back into an analog signal that goes into your ear holes and
And then that's what we did here.
I don't know. Something about the bits.
All right. That's what we got. You got anything else to share, John?
Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for checking out our sponsor, collide.com.
Of course, you can see all of our sponsors at matgeekhub.com.
But make sure, please, go to matgeekhub.com, sign up for the mailing list there.
You get the show notes delivered. We don't spam you at all, unless you consider having the show notes
lovingly handcrafted with links delivered right to your door,
or right to your email box.
Music.
Thanks for hanging out, John. You must have one last piece of advice.
That's not one word, but maybe two, three words. Can we get three words out of you?
Yeah, I see it on Pete's shirt.
And the three words are don't get caught.
Music.