It's time for Mac Geek Cabin listener Donna brings us our quick tip of the week.
She says, although I don't always like Apple's changes, Maps has sure improved.
She says, I now use Maps often, but it has some new features and one of the best ones
is the ability to set favorites because now I can just have the places that I want to go all the time.
In addition to that, I can use maps to look up a phone number, check business hours, or
find a company website.
More tips like this plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab 980 for Monday, May 8th, 2023.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Gab, the show where you send in quick tips.
Music.
Like that. We share quick tips like that.
You also send in cool stuff found, which we also share. You also send in questions, which we try to answer because the goal is that each and every
one of us learns at least five new things every single episode.
Sponsors for this episode include Notion at notion.com slash mac geek out where you can
try notion AI for free collide.com slash MGG where you can try collide today.
Trust tailor made for Octa and also Zocdoc.com slash MGG where you can sign up for free,
download the app today, find a doctor and instantly book an appointment. We'll talk
more in depth about each and every one of those for now here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave
Hamilton. And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun. And here in Lee, New Hampshire
is pilot Pete and a note of personal privilege folks.
So we're, you're not, you're hearing this at the regular time, but we're recording a day early.
And we're doing that. Uh, thank you, Dave and John, both for agreeing
to record a day early because tomorrow is my colonoscopy day.
Folks, if you're at the age where you need a colonoscopy, go get one.
It will save your life. My mother is a 25 year survivor of colon cancer. She's 97.
She caught it early on a colonoscopy.
So it's curable, but it's awful deadly if you don't get it done.
So thank you for that opportunity. From my point of personal privilege, Dave,
hopefully it saves somebody's life.
Yeah, I, I did not, I did not realize that about your mom. That's, that's actually a great story.
Um, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Um, guys, I, I, I realized something this week.
I want more email.
Uh, crazy Dave, well, be that as it may, what type of email do you want more of?
So that's a really good question.
I went and saw Amanda Palmer, uh, last weekend with Lisa and Amanda Palmer has, it really
like her career has become a masterclass on the entire, like direct to fans approach, right?
She, she does not have a record label in the years I can.
I don't think I'm pretty sure she doesn't. uh, she has, she runs her entire business through Patreon, right?
And so she understands, like we do here, uh, very much so the value of having a
direct relationship with her audience members and, and like, like we've been
doing this, how long have we had the, I mean, we've been doing the show for 18
years, so we've, we know we've known this for 18 years, but she said something
very interesting as she was about to go to set break.
She played, you know, a two-set show and she said, you know, a little bit of housekeeping.
There's going to be one more song then we'll do a set break. It'll last about 25 minutes, which I thought
was really nice to know like what the schedule of the evening was supposed to be.
So you knew when to sort of mosey back to your seats or whatever.
The very, very tiny uncomfortable seats because it was in a theater in Boston and that's how those
are. They were built for children to sit in.
Back in the 1700s, back in the 1700s. Yeah, exactly. I digress and and she said the other
thing is while you're on the break, you can do this online, you can go to my website or
you can do it on paper in the lobby. Please sign up for my website for my mailing list.
She says, I promise we don't, you know, I don't spam you, but given and she's like,
it's great. Also, please sign up and follow me on all the socials. That's helpful too.
But given the way all the algorithms work.
I can't guarantee you that you will find what you want to find from me just because you're following me on socials.
She's like, you know, the next time she's gonna tour with the Dresden Dolls later this year, so she sort of used that as the example.
And she said, you know, if you want to find out when the Dresden Dolls are gonna tour, which is something many people have been waiting for a long time to see.
You might not get that if you're just following me on Facebook, because the algorithm might not decide to show it to you.
But my mailing list will decide to show up in your inbox if you let it show up in your inbox and
and she really made a compelling case for wanting more email and it's in you know timing in life is
interesting there's there there are things that only appear like coincidences i have for the last,
probably four to six weeks been very attentive to all of my mail and and curating it a little bit
more but just paying attention to the newsletters that come in that I had basically set up a
system to all but ignore, right, for years.
And because I use SaneBox and SaneBox does a great job of compartmentalizing my newsletters,
I never was looking in the folder that it was putting them in and I started doing that.
It's been fantastic. Like there are things in my life that I have found out about,
Solely because I bothered to look at the email that came in and so I yes to your point John
I I only want the email that I want,
But I I do want that email like it I find it really valuable and it was interesting as she started saying please sign up for our mailing list from my mailing list
Because it's just her I was like, okay, you know here's the pitch and I've given that pitch I give it all the time on this show and I have always given the pitch from,
what I perceive to be a position of,
I'll say selfishness right like I want you to subscribe to the Mac geek out mailing list because I want to be able to,
Reach you when we put out new episodes and all that good stuff and when we're having hangouts and like those sorts of things,
It never dawned on me that,
you all Probably also want to be on the mailing list because you probably won't see everything that we put out,
Even though we don't put out very much. We don't spam you. You know it's it's
Once sometimes twice a week, but it's probably five or six things a month that we send so it's you know low bandwidth,
but uh, but it was just interesting and and I have been very.
Very intentional lately about signing up for mailing lists of like bands that I'd like to see and different things so that I find out when it's happening because
If you're like me every now and then something will appear on socials Something that you'd like to follow and it's like I had no idea that was happening there tomorrow or whatever and it's like well,
I could have had an idea Even though I follow that band on social media if I signed up for their mailing list
I would have known You know weeks ago that that was happening and I might have been able to schedule my life so that I could actually go see em, but...
So I share this because it's true. I do want more email and I am signing up for more email.
And while we're here, go to Mac geek app.com, sign up for our mailing list.
You get the show notes with all the links and everything in it.
Right. As soon as the episodes are pushed out and then yeah, we'll announce things like
our hangouts and that sort of stuff there too.
We don't sell our mailing list.
You've never sold your mailing list yet.
We haven't sold it yet. That's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, you know, um, here's something, here's something interesting, Pete, I can say accurately
that I have never sold a mailing list because although we had a mailing list with the Mac
observer, it was never put into the asset list of the sale.
This was an oversight. This was not some, like I would have sold it with the site because like it makes sense
to sell that with the site.
You know, in fact, if I were to leverage that mailing list today, it would probably be irresponsible
of me because those people signed up to hear from the Mac Observer, not from Dave Hamilton
with whatever venture he's on to next, you know, um, but it did not wind up getting transferred
and sold. So interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. Never have. So I never have. I know.
Even when I probably was supposed to, it just, like I said, it was, I didn't think about
it until this very moment, it was like, Oh, you know what?
That's huh. Yeah.
So sorry, Dave, the new horners are seeing court. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I mean, you can, you can look at the asset list in the in the purchase and sale agreement and it's not there, you
know, so yeah, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, I really don't think I did like I don't even think they have access to it,
Anyway, we should do a show but uh now i'm now i'm distracted. Yeah Like I sort of feel bad. I I probably should have but anyway, you know, yeah,
All right So yeah sign up for more email, but only the email you want and then,
It really doesn't take very long. I go through my my like newsy.
Newsletters email and sane box is is is like I couldn't live without it, but I go through that every other day and I look
at it and a quick perusal, once they're all compartmentalized together, the triaging through
them is really easy, but if I see something that's like, oh, I keep getting email from
that, I don't care about it, then I'll bother to take a minute and unsubscribe, but otherwise,
yeah.
So the question becomes, is unsubscribe still a, hey, you've hit a live email address or
does it actually work? You know, some of these that just appeared in my email out of the blue, I've taken to
going to my server and doing a global block on that domain.
Yeah. I mean, like there are some things that I definitely signed up for that I no longer want.
Right. Right. You know, or I thought I wanted and now I see what they're sending me and it's like,
I don't want what you're sending me. Fair enough. Or you sign up to get the 10% coupon.
Sure. Now I don't want it. And now I don't want that anymore.
Right. So there's those.
And some of the things that we would classify as spam are actually legitimate mailing lists
that just got my name via illegitimate means, meaning unsubscribe actually does unsubscribe, right?
But otherwise, yeah, you just put them in spam or SaneBox has sane black hole,
meaning I won't even see it in my spam folder. It just does away with it.
Yeah. I mean, technically, legally, I think it's called the Canned Spam Act
and that people are supposed to remove you if you ask them, but not all of them.
Right. How's that working out for you, Jeff? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is more about the laws of business. No, some actually do honor the unsubscribed requests. because.
I mean, just as a business person, even if you can send out a billion emails to everybody on the planet.
Most people don't want to, you know, including physical mailing,
most people don't want to send mail to people that don't want it.
It's a waste of money. It's a waste of resources. Yeah, but email is cheap.
Yes. Yeah, agreed. But it's not. In a much poorer they wouldn't do it.
Yeah, although there is like the reputable mailing list management companies like, you know, like a MailChimp or a MailRouter, you know, those sorts of constant contact, those sorts of things.
They will boot you as a customer if your spam percentage is too high.
So like those, those plays and it's because they want to have the ability to say, we
can hit the inbox reliably.
Right. And if, if their servers send too much spam, then they won't be able to hit the inbox
reliably anymore. And that's bad for business. So they will boot you.
So it, you know, yeah.
Anyway, you got something for us, Pete, quick tip, maybe. Oh, okay.
You want me to share? I have another one.
One, like I can figure out, let's see, uh, where are we?
Oh, the Eufy doorbell.
No, that's cool. Stuff found. No, you are telling us in pre-show Pete about something
that you did with chat GPT.
Yeah. Chat GPT. It's a AI artificial intelligence.
Um, I've taken to putting my writing in there and saying, fix the grammar.
And the first time I did it, I had to go through it very slowly.
But what, okay.
And then I went, ah, I've got an idea. I said, fix the grammar in this.
And at the end, give me a list of everything you changed.
And I got like six or seven items right there, you know, it was like.
Brilliant, brilliant.
I like, this is the stuff. This is why I like talking about how we use AI because I've had it fix my
grammar.
I've never thought to take it the next step farther and say, tell me what you
changed. In fact, like we can zoom, we can, and it's a good idea to zoom out on this.
It's not just about grammar.
If you're having chat, GPT do any sort of work on, on your stuff.
Like I'll say, take this article, you know, take this thing that I wrote and, uh, make
it sound punchy or something like whatever, but I've never once thought to say, that,
sounds great.
Tell me what you changed. It's brilliant.
Right. Brilliant. Because now you aren't having to go through it with a fine tooth comb and go, Oh no, that
it, cause I've, I've one or two times I've got, uh, that's not how I want to say it.
I put it that way for a reason.
No it's it as soon as you said that pre show michael that's gotta be a quick tip and i almost wanted it to be the opening quick tip but i wanted to talk about it so it can't be right yeah yeah.
We had a big discussion pre show obviously in the but that was the one that.
Like you say i mean for coding this code is not working exit what what is tell me what you fixed yeah yeah yeah and i guess.
While I'm at it, I'll share what I did with the code.
Sure. Yeah, what'd you do? Yeah, yeah. I have my website and I want people to subscribe to my show.
What I wanted it to do was to figure out whether someone was looking at my website with an iPhone or with an Android phone,
and then to open the appropriate podcatching app on that device and take them to the subscribe page.
I went, I know JavaScript like I know, uh, how to, how to build a lunar capsule. I just don't.
So I said, Hey, chat, GPT, give me the JavaScript code to make this work.
And it gave it to me and it worked like a champ.
So I was able to put it and test it.
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So we got more quick tips to do here. And this morning, just this morning,
I saw a tweet from Ricky Mandello, who is someone that most of you know,
if you know him at all, them at all, my apologies, Ricky.
As one of the more public-facing Safari security password engineers at Apple.
We know Ricky because Ricky was a Mac Geek Up listener before they ever started at Apple.
So there's been a long history of this and it's great.
Ricky posted this morning that you can now, and I should share that Ricky's the one whose
team created the whole thing where you get your two-factor authentication code automatically
put right like there when you need to, it comes in via SMS and you can just like click
it and put it in on your phone or your Mac like that feature is is killer by the way.
We all love that. Thank you, Ricky and team.
Ricky posted this morning that as of today, you can now so as of last week for those of
you who are listening to the recorded version of the show, you can now set up a passkey
for your Google account, which means we are one step closer to pass words going away,
which is very cool.
Right now, uh, it doesn't invalidate your password. So it's a hundred percent safe to set up.
Uh, I'll put a link to Ricky's tweet about this in the show notes at Mac key cap.com or mgg.fm slash nine 80.
But, uh, but just wanted to make sure to share that.
So fun stuff. Don't you think?
Nice. I'm I'm stoked about where pass keys will bring us. I mean, it'll take a while to get there, but Google adding it, like that's a big
That's like, that's a lot of people.
Um, quick, quick, quick passkey one-on-one review.
Yep.
Passkeys are the, the, what happens with a passkey is you go to a website like Google and you tell it, okay, I want to set up a passkey instead
of a password, although now at this point in time, it's in, no, it's in parallel to having a password.
So one's not going to replace the other. and that's as a transition thing, right?
Eventually we just won't have passwords and we will log in with our passkeys.
What happens is you say, yep, I am me. You prove that you're you.
In this case, you'd prove you're you by authenticating with your password
and your 2FA code to Google, right? So, okay, great.
You're now logged in. Google trusts that you are you. You say, I want to set up a passkey.
Your computer and Google now negotiate a key pair where the private key is held by you,
and the public key is held by Google.
John, correct me if I am wrong on this because I'm doing this on the fly,
but that way Google knows that anyone with your private key.
Can log in as you, but right now, only you have your private key.
And if someone watches you log in, they still don't have your private key.
They don't have your password.
Your private key is stored on your device.
It's also stored in your iCloud keychain, meaning it's on all of your devices. Now,
one could argue there's security limitations there, and there are. There's security holes
there. If somebody gets access to your iCloud keychain, well, then of course they have access
to your passkeys, but they also have access to your passwords, but no one can guess your passkey.
They would need to actually get access to your keychain to get it. There's no,
I'm going to hack for X number of years and maybe guess it. Maybe there is, but it's
Far, far, far less likely to hack a passkey than it is password.
It sounds like it goes back to once someone has physical access to your device, you're ghost anyway.
You're right. But this- But up until now- Not necessarily. So I'll share my story.
Wait, slow down for a second.
I want to hear your story. I just want to make sure.
Did I get the description of passkey correct, John?
Um, I believe so. Okay, great. Yes.
So behind the scenes, it's doing the whole key management thing, but you're not really
involved in it, nor should you be, some may argue.
Right, right.
But there's, in terms of the relative safety between a password and a passkey, the password
could be, you know, stolen over your shoulder, brute force hacked, whereas a passkey, somebody
would need to get into your device to steal it.
So, right? correct? Okay, great. Please now share your story.
Um, no. So I tried this. So certain websites will offer you the option of using a passkey.
For example, like Google now is one of them. Yes. Google is one of them now too. And that's great.
So for example, Best Buy, if you try to log in, it'll be like, Oh, well, do you want to use a,
email address and password? Or then it says sign in with passkey. And here's the fun part.
When you click on that, you then get a window saying, do you want to sign in to Best Buy with your blah, blah, blah.
And you can say, well, no, give me other sign-in options. And it'll give you options to use your email address.
IPhone, iPad, or Android device, or security key, which is even better.
Well, it's different. Better is a relative term.
The security key requires you to have a physical token, which I do have two of them.
I don't know that that's better. It might be more secure. It's more secure. Yes, it may not be better for ease of use because what if you lose your security key? Well, right, that kind of sucks. So you you got to think about that. How far you want to go with your security. But past keys are definitely a step in the right direction. I think I think they're the middle ground that between convenience and security that we need. I think they're I think they're great. They they they live at the sweet spot on that continuum.
How, how do you solve the problem then of I'm over at your house and I don't have my devices with me, but I need to get into my Best Buy account or my Google account to show you something you can't not gonna happen.
Okay, you don't have the key then you're stuck.
Yeah, you would need some access to it. But what what are the chances you would be at my house without your phone?
I would say I have my phone, but I want, but I don't want to show you on my phone.
I want to show you on your, you know, 5k.
Yeah, you'd have to airplay to my 5k TV or something. Okay, but yes.
No, this is a valid like that. Yes, it does. Again.
It is the continuum between security and convenience, right?
You're in a hotel business center and you want to log into XO jet airlines to get your ticket printed out.
Yeah, but do we still print our tickets?
Do you have to internationally somewhere? No, actually, no, no, it's all it's all QR code now. Okay, most part.
Yeah. Um, and I think these are good questions to ask because like, I mean, I
realized we're sort of, you know, down, we downed our rabbit hole, but no,
it's, it's like, it, it is like, it is slightly less convenient than a password
because it is not something you can remember.
It is something you have to have.
Yeah. And, uh, well, I, I know that, can you, maybe neither of you can answer this,
but what about, you know, Steve Gibson did the squirrel, which was, uh, you
You go to this website and it presents a QR code.
You just scan it with your phone and you're in.
And I don't understand fully how it works. Maybe either of you. Say that again?
It's called Squirrel. Uh-huh. It's basically for secure QR login.
And you know you go to you go to south southwest airlines. Yeah you want to log in and it presents you with a qr code all you do is point your iphone camera at it and it was you in.
Secure quick reliable login yeah yeah. I don't know that i've ever heard about this if i have then this is you know i've forgotten it it's a kind of brilliant but it seems it seems like a way around the past key issue i'm surprised it hasn't been more.
Adoption, adaptation more faster. Um, and I'm seeing that I don't see.
Huh? Oh, yeah, that's interesting. And let's see who is that?
Somebody in, oh, Alex S. No, Mark, Mark Visser in Discord is talking about it.
The beginning of it and what Google says about past keys and that sort of thing.
And, and, uh, yeah, it's session is based on squirrel. He thinks, and that's the one Steve Gibson worked on. Interesting.
Okay. So something, you know what, that's something for us all I guess, to look at and talk
more about in a future show.
I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I know this is, I, John, did you know about squirrel?
No. Interesting. Yeah. I have squirrels, but. Well, yes. That's right.
Notice he, he made that plural.
Yes. The core curriculum, I have a login. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh.
That's I, yeah. It's, that seems like a different way to do things. I don't know.
Geez. It's been 10 years ago now. He first talked about it.
He said he was standing in the shower and it hit him like a brick like oh
Here's a great way to avoid this password issue I wonder if it'll ever catch on like I don't think it will because.
Pass keys like if it was gonna catch on it would have had to do that before we started using pass keys
Yeah, I'm just like it. Yeah, if you've got Apple,
And Google supporting pass keys it like the ship now is sailing you know yeah
I mean, it's just how it is.
It's at least untied from the pier. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, big time.
Yeah, and I don't think it's drifting. I think it's sailing,
like there's people pushing at this, yeah.
I mean, the nice thing is that both pass keys and security keys are both backed up by standards.
So you probably don't have to worry about whether it's gonna be supported, but whether- Yeah, fair.
The people you deal with decide to support it and not all of them do.
Like for example, I couldn't figure out to use a passkey on get this, the Apple site, right?
Right.
I didn't get a prompt for using a passkey. It's like, dude, it's your technology.
Well, not your technology, but it's a technology that you should probably that you widely support. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Fair. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah
Um, Ben, Ben in our, our discord chat this week noted that, uh, you can in messages use option
up and this is messages on the Mac option up and option down.
And like it used to do in a word you probably haven't heard in a long time.
Adium, the old like multi-chat app, what it would do in Adium and what it also does in
messages and it does this in Monterey as well as Ventura and probably far back is the beginning
of messages, option up and option down will bring up the text that you have typed for
previous messages.
It is not an edit mode, right?
Like Ventura supports editing, you know, in a limited sense on text messages or on iMessages,
but this will just let you scroll through all the messages you've had.
So where I used to use this in ADM was if I had sent something to someone and I wanted to copy it
and then paste it somewhere else or use it, it was way easier to do that on the keyboard
and just like scroll up, option up, up, up.
Okay, that's the third message, you know, like the third newest message.
I don't have to type it. I don't have to drag with my mouse.
Just do, you know, option up, up, up, and then command a command C and now it's on my clipboard
and I can go do what I want with it.
So, uh, it was interesting. As soon as I read this, I went and tried it.
And, you know, you have that moment where you realize your fingers remember something that they
haven't done in a very long time.
That was one of those things. It was like, oh man, I used to do this all the time.
Uh, you know where I use that, but no option needed is just the up and down arrow is in terminal.
Yes. Yes. Previous commands that you've typed in terminal are all there. With the up arrow.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that... Depending on the shell you're using, right?
Correct, John. I think most shells support that.
And I think the default ZSH shell supports that. So yeah, it's command...
What do we call it?
Command history, I guess, is it? There's also tab completion for file names and commands, which I believe is also supported
in the default shell on Mac OS now.
But that's super handy where you're in the terminal and you type something and you start
typing the name of a folder and hit tab and it will jump, will finish the thought for
you. Very handy. Finder will do that for you too when you're trying to go to a folder. Finder will do that.
I heard the words you said. I did not know this, though. Yeah, if you go to the Go menu in Finder,
and you want to go to a specific path.
Uh-huh.
So, go to folder. You know, like library slash. Oh! Whaaat?
Dude, I feel like I've already learned my five things I got a student becomes the teacher. Oh, yeah.
Now what if you want to know what shell you're running you may ask yourself,
That's the ambulance Yep. No, I know sirens dude. I've lived here for a A long time, that's the amulets.
For those of you listening in the car, this is only a test. Yeah, it's not you.
Yeah. We are not into, and, oh, but I hate those commercials on the radio where they play a siren.
It's like, you should not be allowed to do that.
I'm trying to change my own vocabulary on this. So I I'm, I'm saying this to, to help myself,
but I'm trying to eliminate the casual use of the H word from my vocabulary.
I dislike things, but there are very few things in life that I hate.
Oh, okay. I heard you say it. This is a me thing, not a, like, you know, it's just, yeah.
So I don't know, it's just one of those things.
If you want to find out what shell you're running, how do you do that?
Well, you could run terminal and type in our favorite command, PS,
which I think stands for process status.
Yeah. And oddly enough, on this machine, I'm running bash and not ZSH,
but it has instructions on how to switch, so.
So you're doing it with PS. That's an interesting, I never would have thought to do that.
No, the way I find out what default terminal is set for my user account is to use the finger command.
So you type finger, just like, you know, like I said before, your fingers will remember.
Finger, space, and then your short username, right? Whatever your terminal username is for your Mac.
And then it'll tell you lots of things, including your home directory, your full name, and your shell.
When you booted. And you can also...
You can also issue the C-H-S-H H-S-H, yes Okay, so that's C-H-S-H command Change shell Um
And then you're stuck in the VI editor if you're like me And colon Q is something my fingers remember to get out of VI
VI is an editor, it's obviously way better than Emacs
I know, I know, I know We've said we don't talk politics on the show No.
It's not politics, it's just preference. Oh, it depends on what circles you're in, my friend.
Yeah, it was, like, the Emacs vs. VI was definitely one of the very first flame wars that existed on the internet.
And for those of you that think you were some of the first to participate in flame wars
on the internet, if you weren't part of a VI vs. Emacs flame war, you weren't first.
The thing is, EMAX, I'll admit, is the kitchen sink of editors.
Somebody gave me a, oh man, what was it? It was like an acronym,
like a derogatory acronym about EMAX, and I cannot remember it off the top of my head.
Man. Let's not do that. No, it was like, you know, it was derogatory,
but also accurate about EMAX.
It was something about how it has everything in it, and it's- I mean, I even think there's a version of Advent
inside Emacs, you know, the old adventure game.
Oh, really? Yeah. It's just like, why don't we put that in there?
Nobody's going to notice, it's huge anyways.
Yeah, yeah. All right. Hang on, I'm going to find it here because I found the Facebook post
because it's, where is it?
What did she post? I know it's here.
The old joke, Carolyn posted this, was eight megs and continuously swapping,
was the joke about Emacs, so there you go. So I asked GPT and it said,
it's not appropriate to provide derogatory terms or insults towards any software or product.
All right, so wait, wait, no, you gotta ask it now because there's a way around this sometimes.
If, ask it, thank you, if I didn't,
if I wanted to avoid saying something derogatory about Emacs, please give me five examples
of things not to say.
Sometimes that works. Yeah, exactly. You want to take us to Paul, John, and his quick tip?
Yeah, Paul's got a good little tip here.
Info for Jeff from MGG979. I've run into someone calling me with,
how do I turn off this app? It's using tons of data.
You glance by a tip in Mac-E-Gab 979. I reset my data state two months ago.
My friend I had to coach that saw tons of data hadn't reset his data in two years.
He reset it and realized it wasn't so bad month to month. Okay.
Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty sure whoever- I'm sure someone could write a shortcut to do that.
Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Like shortcuts can do the things that shortcuts can do and then they can't do anything else.
So yeah, I don't know that that's I wouldn't be sure it would be worth looking to see but I don't know that that is scriptable,
um Yeah but um the person who wrote in last week who we talked about had,
Had reset their data like they knew that it was used over the weekend so still weird that that maps use 20 gigs of data in you know a matter of single digit days, but
But yes, Paul is absolutely correct.
Make sure to reset your cellular data.
All right, we got one more quick tip, right? Nick has one here.
So for those of you that also use a single AirPod Pro at a time, you will probably have noticed
that occasionally the option for noise cancellation
with one AirPod becomes non-functioning.
Even though it is enabled, it gives the error, the error wrong.
This appears to happen 100% of the time when your phone powers off, either intentionally,
such as an upgrade or by going through.
TSA checks? All right. Or unintentionally, such as your battery reaching 0%, this could be fixed
by doing the following. Put both AirPod Pros in your ears, toggle noise cancellation on-off
depending on how it is when you put them in, and then toggle noise cancellation on-off to revert
the change just done. Huh. This should restore the unique single AirPod noise cancellation
functionality. Sometimes it requires manually enabling the option again, but the last update
appears to not be required.
All right. Huh. I've got something to add to that. Yeah, man.
Please. So if you go into your control center on your phone or iPad, I assume, whatever, whichever
device you're connecting your iPods to, but if the phone is the most common, go to the
control center and put hearing, put the hearing widget in your control center and you open
that up, it is uber configurable.
You can adjust the volume of your pass through on the transparency mode.
You can, it is, yes, the, the, the second generation AirPods Pro are super configurable.
You can, and I've used them almost as a hearing aid.
I've noticed that when I have one ear in, yeah, you can get it into the noise cancelling
mode, that sort of thing.
But I've also noticed that I like that when I put it on transparency, I really want it,
to be transparent. You want lots of external, you want the mix to be greater for external sound.
Right, for the external.
Yeah. The downside to that is there's no directional capability with AirPods.
Oh yeah, you do lose that, of course. I find I lose the directional capability completely.
That's really interesting. Guys, this is yet another one of those things, man, where, like, accessibility provides us
with features that are good for- that are not there or not readily evident, I should say.
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Wouldn't you love to bounce out of bed feeling fantastic even on a Monday morning?
I've got a show for you. The 5AM Miracle podcast hosted by productivity junkie,
trail marathoner and banana enthusiast, Jeff Sanders.
5AM Miracle is here to help you dominate your day Before breakfast, create powerful lifelong habits
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Every Monday morning, Jeff will guide you through a fascinating and helpful personal growth topic,
including action steps to give you something practical to achieve in each and every episode.
Just like Mac Keycap, right? There's a new episode every Monday morning.
Recent topics have included systematizing healthy habits, 10 strategies to identify your calling
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That's five with the number 5ammiracle.com And our thanks to Jeff for doing the swap with us.
All right, let's do some questions. Listener Kurt asked, pdxkurt in our discord channel,
says, I'm wondering if anyone has some suggestions for a problem that I'm having
with photos. I have put a lot of work in to connect faces detected with people. And when
I did this initially back under Mojave, it was possible to go to the people page of photos,
click on a person and see photos with that person in it. Now that it's been on Monterey for a while,
it sure seems like Photos is always working and scanning to identify people,
but it never moves the needle. Every time I go to the people page, it says the same thing.
3,585 photos scanned, 25,000 photos remaining. I quit Photos as the status page suggests so
that it will do its thing, but the status message never changes. Activity Monitor reports significant
CPU activity for photo library D and cloud photo D, but he said, I'm not using iCloud
photos, but I am using photo stream any ideas to reset this process. So yeah, like if resetting
the process is likely to be the best answer, it is likely to fix this, right? Unless you've got
some damage to your photos, but it is likely to fix this. I don't know if there's other answers
to this, but to reset the photos database, go into photos or to the faces database, I should say,
go into photos, settings, general, and then click the reset suggested people button. And I had no
idea that this even existed. Apple has a knowledge base article with the details.
And then if that doesn't work, there's a solution which is distilled from an article at podfeet.com from Allison Sheridan.
But to open the People album, select all, press delete. This should offer to reset all the names and faces data.
It will, should not, delete the actual photos from your library.
I recommend having a backup of your photos library, but this process is built to do exactly
what you want. So you go into the People album, select all, press delete.
Theory that will offer to reset all of your names and faces data.
So, um, hopefully one of those two solutions actually kicks photos in the butt for you and gets it rolling yet again.
So that's, that's what I got. I have you guys terrified with that database.
Yeah, I, um, I'm trying to think I recently, oh, I guess when I had for like the, the, you know, week ish when I had that Frankenstein's Monterey install on here,
I was like hacking and slashing at cache files and database files, trying to make
Monterey happy with all of the stuff that I had forced it to inherit from, you know, Ventura
that it didn't know about, right. Cause you know, Monterey became before Ventura.
I'm not here yet. Yeah, I'm not here yet. It's like, I've never seen the future before. And, uh.
And and so I think I was I would like some of the photos data I don't know the photos databases maybe not but I have some recent memory of messing with the photos databases to try and get things moving photos I just told it to rebuild my library for my cloud and that work brilliantly mail was the thing that made me have to nuke and pave this machine that was that was really the trick but oh yeah yeah that was that was no bueno mail was never going to be happy and so I was like you know hey speaking of mail we've had a conversation I don't have this on the agenda,
But we had that conversation about archiving mail, I have not yet heard enough definitively from the various mail archiving, the authors of the mail archiving software packages to find out like how much risk there is at say storing your mail archive in a piece of third party software if that software stops getting developed.
Because I think with each one it's going to be different. If they're storing it in a standard format, then your risk is much lower, right?
Because you could read it with something else.
However, there was another solution that came to mind that, not came to mind, that was presented
in our Discord chat that gave me one of those gasp moments because it seems so brilliant.
If you are running a Synology disk station, included with your disk station is the ability
to run a Synology Mail or MailPlus server package, which is, in and of itself, an IMAP mail server.
I actually run one here. I know. I vowed never to run another mail server.
And part of that is why I set up this Synology one, because I wanted to see how terrible
it was. I do have it tied to a domain.
It is a live mail server in the world. No one knows what the domain is.
I don't use it for anything other than, get this, a couple of mailing lists just to make
sure it actually works. And I do, I get mail to it every day.
It's like, it's been running for over a year.
It's brilliant.
However, what someone pointed out is, well, hey, if your issue is you don't have enough
storage space on say, Gmail or FastMail or iCloud Mail to archive all of your email.
And so now you're talking about where can I put it? And when we talk about, you know,
do you archive it on my Mac and then it's only on one of your Macs or do you put it in the, you know,
the, you know, Eagle Filer or Mail Steward or whatever.
Somebody said, well, why not just archive it on your own IMAP server on your Synology disk station? Oh.
And I started doing this and it's like obviously a room there It just works like of course it were why wouldn't it work like I archived one year's worth of mail over there
Just to you know just to see and it was like uh-huh like there's nothing to see unless you accept your mail
It's right right where you put it like there's no there was the aha moment was when the idea was presented the implementation of it was.
So Ridiculously simple and had been staring me in the face and it never dawned on me
So so what are the downsides to doing this? You know, you thought you'd never do it. You're doing it running a mail server
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, you never do it now. You know you're doing it correct. Is it that bad?
Is it getting hammered like yeah one would expect port 25 to be It's not so much. Yeah, but but like yes, it does it does get hammered
the firewall is constantly, you know, telling people stop, you know, leave it alone, yes.
And it is, you're right, port 25 is certainly one of those, because it has to be
if it's going to be a publicly accessible mail server.
But it doesn't have to be, like it doesn't,
you don't have to set up your mail server on your Synology
to actually be a real working, publicly accessible, able to receive mail server.
You could set it up effectively in what I'll call dummy mode, right?
Where you tell it these things, but you're never using it to send or receive mail.
You're just using it to log into your IMAP account on that server to store your messages.
And with the right port forwarding on your router, you can log into that IMAP account from anywhere.
So you don't need to go as far as I did in terms of actually setting up a real live mail server.
I kind of want to, but I know you do. I, and I, but I also know that if I ever move and I probably will retire in the
next four or five years and move, and that'll be a major backside pain.
So, well, it depends on where you move to.
Right. Yeah. Yes. But, but you're right now you're now it's yours, but if you just set it up for
personal access, like much less risk, although I guess the, the same concern
Needs to be investigated whereas with say you know mail steward or Eagle filer,
We want to find out what format does it store this data in and can I get at it?
Even if the vendor goes out of business right like so if some for some reason
I can't run the Synology mail plus server,
Can I go dig in is it just storing it in inbox files like it is the data there in a way that I could
slurp it out and import it into mail or, or Thunderbird or, you know, some mail client and have it again.
So, I don't know, it's, um, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing.
So I, that's the part I need to look at is, is the same question.
Like what happens to this data? Is it as ubiquitous as CSV? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think PDF is probably around forever now, even though that was Adobe's original.
Yes. Yeah, but like for mail you want either the inbox format or emlx would be the standards
and they're both kind of the same thing, I believe, but that, you know, one of those two would be fine.
Yeah, no, I was just ruminating on other protocols that have, you know, some have disappeared.
I wrote a bunch of stuff back in the 90s that is no longer accessible.
Right, right, right, right.
Where it was marked down or text would have been.
Yeah, Markdown didn't exist. Markdown didn't. I was gonna say Gruber hadn't invented that yet.
Yeah. All right. You want to take us to the next question, John?
Sure. See if I can condense this a bit. So Scott's question is DAS or NAS for Apple Music Storage?
DAS, of course, being a direct attached storage and NAS being network attached storage.
So he says right now he has an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad as a DAS drive connected to a 2015 iMac
storage by a large music library or iTunes library if you're old school. The particular
enclosure has hardware RAID and is loaded with four 3TB Western Digital hard drives.
It's about 10 years old, wow, that's impressive, and I've only lost one hard drive, which is
even scarier, but I'm getting worried about how much longer it will last.
Okay, good concern for a 10-year-old piece of hard drive hardware.
I want to upgrade as soon as possible.
I've narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first would be an OWC Thunder Bay 8.
My concern is this unit does not have hardware RAID and it uses soft RAID.
Okay. No concern, by the way.
Yeah, I mean, the enclosure should be, or the computer should be able to run that without breaking a sweat.
Software, enough of software is built into Mac OS that you don't need to install the drivers to read from the drive.
As far as I understand it, I don't run any software things, but that's the story everybody at Apple and OWC tells me, so yeah.
And then he says, my second concern is that this unit has a Thunderbolt 3 port and my iMac has a Thunderbolt 2 port.
So I would have to use an adapter.
Yeah, all right.
Still going to be plenty fast, I think, especially for music.
The second option would be to use a Synology disk station.
My main concern is putting the iTunes library folder on the NAS and having a seamless experience
while using an Apple TV or an iDevice.
I've written many articles stating iTunes gets flaky when the library is stored on a network drive.
And yes, I have found that as well.
So I would not recommend using a Synology to store your Apple Music.
Any network drive, you wanna store it locally, either internal or external, but local, not network, yeah.
Right.
So yeah, I found the same reports saying don't use a network drive for a music library.
However,
So the Thunder Bay is a solid choice. So if you're comfortable with that, go with that.
The thing is, the Synology is just so much fun. And then it has all the packages.
So like, if you can do that. Now the thing, so here's the thing.
If you want to store your music on your Synology, they have the thing called Audio Station.
And I'm using that personally myself. So I've copied my iTunes library from my computer to the Synology,
Using audio station and then I can stream my music to my various devices Probably using a third-party client.
But that works for me, so I'm wondering about your thoughts guys. Yeah, I I
I, um, I, well, I mean, I shared some of them as, as, you know, as we were kind of going through it,
they're definitely direct attached. Um, the Synology is fun, but you do not want to have
your Mac connected to its music library on a folder there. Like you, you, you, right. Like
for sure. Um, because it will get flaky. It's just how things are. So yeah, like direct attached for
for the music library, but your point about the Synology being great for being able to
serve that library in a variety of ways.
I have mine ingested into Plex so that, you know, not only can I see it, but people that
I share my library with can see it.
And and audio stations, I used to use audio station for playing it.
Now I just use Plex amp because it does a better job on like car play and all that stuff.
But uh, what I do is I have my Apple Music app saves the music data to an external drive,
and this is just a single drive SSD, it's not like, it's not a RAID or anything like
that.
Partially because it's not fault tolerant, I then, once a day, have Carbon Copy Cloner
Sync the contents of that music library folder to my Synology so that Plex and
audio station and all the other things can see what is effectively my updated data.
I mean, it's not instantly up to date. I suppose I could use something like Chronosync or, you know, whatever to sync
it in real time, but it's not important to me. It's, you know, once a day is more than enough.
And a carbon copy cloner does a fine job of that. And so I have a backup of my music library, a copy of my music library, which
which also serves as a backup on my Synology, but the live one is just connected direct attached.
Yeah, yeah.
The nice part about iCloud Music Library is you only need to do that on one of your computers, right?
You can, if you're using iCloud Music Library, you can sync it everywhere, but,
and only download, you can do the whole optimized storage thing where you're not downloading everything.
On the Mac where you have the direct attached library, you don't want to optimize storage,
want it to pull everything down.
And even then, um, some stuff doesn't come down automatically.
I built a couple of playlists, like smart playlists in Apple music.
And, and one of them is named iCloud music. That's not yet downloaded.
And I forget to do this. And in fact, I haven't thought about this for a while.
So like, I definitely need to do this again. I probably need to put it on my calendar or somewhere.
But, uh, I go into that folder and anything that's in there,
I highlight and I right-click and I say download and then it disappears from that folder because it's no longer meeting the smart criteria of
It's in my iCloud music library, but not yet downloaded and so,
effectively emptying that folder by downloading things to my Mac ensures that I,
Don't wind up with this weird scenario where I think I have everything on my Mac and I don't so I.
Share that that's a little tip tip. That's a bonus tip. Something like that. I don't know. What do we got? Um, I'm trying
to think what else do we have here? We've got some good, cool stuff found. So should
we jump to that? Are there any, is there one last? Yeah. All right. We'll do it. Um, I,
didn't, didn't realize I was doing this, but, uh, I have a second tip from the aforementioned
Ricky Mandello and a link to the Twitter chain in which, uh, that happened.
Uh, if you want an Apple, if you use the Apple password manager, there is no
like icon for it on your, in your doc or on your, you know, phones, like home screen or anything, you have to like dig into settings and like go there.
And that's kind of a pain in the neck.
But if you use a third-party password manager, like 1Password or some others that aren't LastPass,
because we really can't recommend that you use LastPass these days.
You get to launch it like an app.
Well, there's a shortcut and an icon that you can put together and make yourself a little click.
Tap on your home screen, tap on your dock, and launch the Apple Password Manager.
So we have a link to that in the show notes so that you can go and learn how to do that too.
And it was posted by Ricky.
So yeah, good stuff. Kind of, sort of from Apple, but let's be frank, not really.
What else we got here? Oh yeah. Listener Martin,
shares, we've been talking about unlocking our Macs with our Apple watches and some Macs,
like John you were saying last week, that yours doesn't always work.
Some people have Macs where that's just not possible. Well, Martin says, I have been using a tool
that lives in the menu bar called Blue Unlock.
B-L-E-U-N-L-O-C-K that allows various Bluetooth devices to do what the Apple Watch does.
And it's available on GitHub and it will allow you to unlock your Mac with all kinds of things,
including your iPhone. So I actually might, I might, I think I used this years ago or something
like it. And then I got an Apple Watch and it was like, fine. But nowadays that I'm wearing
my Apple watch less and less frequently, I might want this on the Mac in the office.
Cause I always have my phone with me.
Yeah. Right. Like, and it's, it's right there. I turned mine on last week and I found that I'm finally, after about a week, I'm finally
not reaching for my fingertip ID button, you know, unlock my Mac.
You know, so it jogs my fingers like, oh yeah. Okay. My watch is doing it for me.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is handy. That is one of the things that makes me realize that I miss wearing my Apple Watch on the days
I'm not wearing it. I do wear it some days, but not every day. So yeah, that's a pretty good one.
Yeah. Thanks for that, Martin. I got to say the one annoyance with Apple Watch unlocking is so when I'm done with the podcast,
I'll put my machine to sleep.
Very often. It'll wake up my machine before I'm out of range.
Oh. So you like intentionally, you don't just let it sleep on a timer schedule on like an idle timer.
You choose whatever menu option. I could do that, but I prefer, you know, if I can manually do it.
But yeah, it's like, oh, there's the watch. Let me unlock. So I actually have to put the watch in another room and then put the machine to sleep.
So that happened to me last night when I was finished with everything I was doing, I put the
Mac to sleep and within a couple of seconds, it woke back up.
Now I can only think that I grazed the track pad or one of the keys on the keyboard or something
like that to make it happen because I then put it to sleep again and it stayed.
Yeah. And I closed the lid, but, but yeah, I was like, wait a minute.
What happened? Yeah. Yeah.
But it's at me on the wrist and, uh, I think I think it did anyway.
It tells you. Yeah, yeah. There's no, but you know, that whole false,
you know, phone vibration in the pocket is a real thing. The false tap on the wrist.
It is, it is.
Your fingers will remember, Pete. John, you got a cool stuff found for us this week, my friend?
Yeah, I was poking around, you know, so there's a chat GPT stuff.
You know, a lot of chatter has been, how do I know that my student or my employee
or whatever used chat GTP to write their stuff.
And then taking credit for it. There's a thing called zero GTP at zero GTP.com. Slow down.
What does it? It's zero GPT.
Ah, sorry. The T comes last, P goes in the middle. Oh, I said GTP, sorry.
You did, right. GPT. Yes. Okay, thank you.
Basically you paste in some text and it says, okay, here's a chance that it's written by a human,
here's a chance that it's written by an AI, here's a chance that it's a mix.
So I guess you want to keep an eye on your underlings. This may be fun to play with.
I don't know how accurate it is. I haven't really used it that much.
Like, yeah, there's a whole conversation to be had about how the education system needs to adapt to using this.
But like, I, I praise my employees every time they come to me with something that they're like, oh yeah, I use
chat GPT to like create this, you know, the core of this. and then edit it from there. It's like, great.
You saved us a bunch of time, like super efficient. You're more productive.
Way more productive. You are more productive. Yeah. So I, like, I can see why some perhaps misguided, uh, teachers might want a tool like this in the
short term, right?
Like until they figure out how to adapt their classroom and their learning environment to
embrace the fact that chat GPT exists as opposed to like, you know, uh, because it's not the tool
that's going to give you answers.
It's the tool that's going to like do the grunt work for you.
It's a fantastic assistant. Right.
But, um, in the workplace, I can't even imagine why I'd care.
Maybe I'm the wrong guy to ask. I, I don't think you would in the workplace.
I can see it in the academic environment where you want people to at least understand
how to communicate sentence structure, object, verb, subject. Yeah.
Yeah. Subject, verb, object, sorry. I'm sorry, not speaking Russian here.
Not speaking like Yoda. Right, right, right. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, I guess.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Did you, have you tried it?
Interesting. Have you tried it? Did you feed it things that you wrote versus things that chat GPT wrote.
Why not man like I want to know how it yeah, I'm working on it. I'm gonna feed it the most recent.
I'm gonna go to Mac geek out calm because I'm I've been using chat GPT every week
I feed it just the agenda of the show like that the chapters of the show really is what I feed it and
I have it write a blog post for me and the reason that I do that is because I know
I know that for search engine optimization, having like a well-fleshed out blog post
is a really good thing.
But I also know that I need to get the show published. And if I wait, if I, you know, I beware the onces,
like once I have this blog post written, I'll publish the show.
The show would never get published. Like it would be inconsistent at best because I know how I am.
But when I can have Chad GPT write it for me and then I take it and tweak it,
because sometimes it doesn't know.
If I have like in the show notes, if it says like, Donna, you know, tells us about, Donna
Dash, what was the first tip that we talked about? Donna Dash, Apple Maps Favorites, right.
It might interpret that as Donna asked about how to use Apple Maps Favorites, and we all
know that no, Donna shared a tip about it. So I will make those edits, but it's way more efficient for me to edit.
And so I would, I would, you know, I, so I, I, I use chat GPT to create the bones of that and, uh, and then, and then create the thing. Yeah, so I took the.
Paragraph the four paragraphs five paragraphs that I put in that you know for last week's show and I.
It they are it was written by chat GPT I made edits similar to the one that I just told you but by and large I would say,
98% of the text here is,
Written by chat GPT and zero GPT says your text is human written. There is zero percent AI GPT in this Yep.
Oh, well, so much for that. Walk.
Wait, wait, wait. I do have the sad trombone sound effects somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, there it is. Yep.
No bueno. So I don't know. I mean, maybe I should try it with like the raw text from
chat GPT, but it like it should be. If you had another guess, if you had another guess, that's right. Zero G.
That's right. This needs to be transformative as well. Like, ah, if you might have been wrong about this, what would
your answer be?
Yeah, I think, uh, language is just going to be one of those things that it's not going to be able to detect.
Yeah. Well, and is it because I edited it? Like, you know, I, yeah, I don't know. Yeah.
Because there are people who are very good writers who would then it'll say, Hey, no, the chat GPT wrote this.
I, how do you spell chat GPT?
I don't know what that is. I wrote this. Yeah. It says my, my text from the week before is
also human written 0% AIGPT.
So in incorrect and try again.
All right. Uh, Pete, you got a cool stuff found for us before we, before we bail out here?
In fact, uh, let me, uh, let me share my screen there.
So I, uh, was paying money for my ring doorbells in, in three different locations, my mother-in-law's
place and all that to store video and the interesting thing was this most recent winter storm here where we were way below zero for a long time got me my
it basically killed my battery on my ring doorbell here at the house and so I
went out and got the eufy doorbell and chime at this case it was at Best Buy it
It was on sale, so I saved, I think, 30, $35.
I think I paid 40, 149, or 145. One of those two. Anyway, the long and short of it is,
here are a couple things.
Super easy to mount, two screws.
It offers a angle plate because in my case I needed to angle the doorbell away from it couldn't
just be mounted flush otherwise it would be looking at the opposite beam of my garage door so I angled
it out a few degrees so it would look at my driveway in the walk-up. So when you're saying
you angled it just so people understand you're not you're not talking about up or down you're
talking about left or right? Left or right correct. Okay got it just want to make sure.
Probably be a way to angle it up or down I don't know what that is but there is a 15 degree angle
mount in there to allow you to point it a little bit away in one direction and you just have to
flip it over if you want to go left. I had to do that because the field of vision when it was
mounted straight was not appropriate for my location. But yeah, they have the 15 degree,
angle mount and that really helped. So it's aiming down at the street rather than the road
because the problem was if it was aimed at the road it would go off like every five seconds.
Right.
And that's another cool thing about this one is you can set the, uh, motion
detection zone from about three and a half to four feet up so that Rover and
spot and Rex don't set it off every time they wander around in your yard.
So it only detects humans walking up.
That being said, a clever burglar couldn't crawl underneath your detection zone.
Right. Right. Right. But you know, you can set it so animals won't set it off. Yeah.
Here's the best part, in my humble opinion, about this thing, is there's a storage card,
SD card, mini SD card in your Chime that stores the video, that stores the video so you aren't having to pay.
Them to continually store events, motion detection events, ring doorbell event, no that's proper, doorbell being rung events.
It's stored automatically locally on your Chime device and you can configure the Chime device to make different sounds for you and,
using the app and I just found it a great replacement for the Ring because,
Uh, you can hardwire it in if you need to, I don't happen to have pre-wiring
out there on the garage, so it's always been battery, but after two short years,
my battery got utterly destroyed by some sub zero days here in New England.
You know, it was down near zero and then it got, the battery percentage was down near zero and then it got super cold while I was on a
trip and it ruined the battery.
So now not to say that this won't face that same problem, but I was looking
for something to replace it where I didn't have to continue to pay ring.
I forget what the amount is. Yeah. 60 bucks a year or something per camera.
Yeah. Store the events. Yeah. No, thanks. I'm done with that.
Yeah, I'm with you. The the the identification matrix or whatever.
But the matrix to define what's important for motion detection is much better.
Last I used it than the ring algorithm.
Right. Yeah. We've had a Eufy doorbell for a while, I had a ring doorbell and then we changed our front door and the, um...
The spot in the molding, the frame of the door got narrower on the new door
and the ring doorbell wouldn't fit, but the Eufy doorbell would.
So, I moved to this basic- I'm pretty sure I have the same one that you're talking about here, and yeah, it's been great.
I, it's interesting. I didn't experience issues when we had like super cold weather.
Um, so either my, my door, your battery wasn't that low when that happened,
then perhaps, you know, I think mine was just too low and, and that's the,
the problem with lithium batteries, right?
If they're near zero, if you let them get to zero, they will frequently be done.
Okay. I quit.
Yeah. I'm all set. Yeah, that's right. No, for sure. For sure.
Yeah. Um, and one last thing about it, I think it's a two K camera in there.
So plenty of resolution to, uh, to see who, what, where, and why.
And it, uh, it works with home kit, right?
Yes. Yeah. I was going to say, I know mine works with home kit and I'm pretty sure it's
native, but because I run home bridge, I always have to stop and think.
Right. I happen to use the app separately and all, but boy, what a...
I just love it. Yes, yeah, no, I agree. That's been my favorite doorbell.
It sounds like you too, John, that we kind of all used different ones.
It's always fun to get a notification and it's the male person.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we get maybe or the package person. There he's going to say, that's sexist, John.
Could have been a female person.
Well played, Pete. Male. M-A-I-L, Pete.
But it could have been a FedEx person, we don't discriminate at our house, you know,
we let the mail and the UPS and the FedEx all show up.
FedEx and UPS are my dog's favorite flavors. Yeah, I have a big box from FedEx, first time in 18 years we're doing the pre-show and a
FedEx delivery person opens the door to my studio.
Which is upstairs, like you have to come into the garage, go all the way to the back, come up the stairs,
opens the door, and I see the door open.
I'm like, what the heck's going on? And I see his head sort of poke in.
He's like, I have something for you, but you need to sign. I heard your voice through the floor.
I just figured I'd come up.
I'm like, yeah, man, like, it works out. Like, we're just in pre-show, it's all good.
And now you've got some cool stuff found for next week. I do, I have some stuff from the company,
whose name is a palindrome, I believe. Oh, yes it is.
Right? And also, it works the same, not just if you flip it from left to right, but upside down.
Oh yeah, okay, if the capital. If all the letters are capitals, it's five letters.
The first one, I'll give you the first three.
You can figure out the rest.
S-O-N.
So, yeah, there you go. Wow.
Fun stuff, fun stuff. It's not secret. These, these are released products.
It's the new Sonos, uh, era line of, of things. So, yeah, I'm excited to finally be able to check them out.
I need you to talk to them.
What's the name? Not the move. The other one, the smaller. Oh, the little Roam?
Roam. Yeah. You know, the only reason I haven't bought it, it doesn't have a microphone,
in it because I like to be able to have a telephone conversation with dispatch,
where my first officer can listen in.
So I'm not on a secret page with weather and fuel and that sort of thing.
Pete, it, I mean, I haven't used it for phone calls, but I think I could if I had it on Bluetooth.
Oh, interesting. I was told it did not have a microphone. Oh, I use it with, we bring it out to the hot tub with us.
We, the Sonos Roam is what we're talking about.
The, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the little one.
It's like a pill size speaker.
It looks like a Toblerone, but you know, yep.
Little large, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Larger than a Toblerone, but you know,
It's that, you know, that sort of shape, triangular, if you will.
And we bring it to the hot tub with us every night when we go on the hot tub
because it's, you know, I forget what the official word is, but I call it waterproof. If it falls in the tub, it's not going to be ruined.
If it's raining like it was yesterday, it doesn't matter. All good. And we use it with the A-Lady because I have the A-Lady paired with
it and we use it with the Sonos voice where you say, hey S, but it's the other S, it's
the palindromic S. And so it definitely has a microphone in it.
There's no question about it.
Well, I knew that, but I would sure love it if you'd try and give me a call on it and
see if it'll work as a speakerphone.
Well, that's the thing is when it's at my house, it's in wifi mode.
I don't shift it to Bluetooth unless I travel with it. So I would need to leave my house.
I'd go buy one today if I knew if I could use it as a speaker.
The next time I leave my house, I'll bring it with, and convert it to Bluetooth mode, Cause I, I.
Maybe I can convert it to Bluetooth with Wi-Fi around, but I think it keeps shifting back. I don't know.
I'll test it for you, Pete. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that'd be awesome.
Yeah. And we will have more Sono stuff to talk about in the next week or two.
Very soon. Yeah. I call mine, mine happens to be white in color.
And so I call mine White Rome because it's like the white room,
like the cream song. I don't know why.
This gives me this never-ending pleasure. Every time I see it, I think I'm so clever.
As I'm saying it out loud, I've just ruined it for myself because it's really not that clever.
But I still like it. I'm still gonna like it. My basement is called mini me, so. Ah, I like it, yeah.
Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks for sending in all your questions and such to
where? Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
Did he say Feedback at MacGeekGab.com? No, John, he said Feedback at MacGeekGab.com. I'm certain of it.
Any one of those three will get emailed to us, I guarantee it.
Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you.
Check out our other podcasts, there's links in the show notes to Pilot Pete's So There
I Was, My Business Brain, and My Gig Gab.
Thanks for hanging out. Check out our merch page at matgeekup.com slash merch.
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Music.
Do you have do you have any like anything to say? Like maybe I'm just going to read what's on Pete's shirt.
And what Peach Shirt says is don't get hot.
Made on a Mac. I gotta find the guy who made that made on a Mac thing someday.
Been there for a long time.
Time. Later!