It's time for the Mac Geek Gab, and listener Dan brings us our quick tip of the week with,
… When in the All Photos section of the Photos app, even after you hit Select at the top,
it's tedious to hit each photo individually.
But I accidentally discovered a much better way to select many photos at once.
After you're in selection mode, by hitting Select at the top, swipe from left to right
beginning with the first photo you want.
And without lifting your finger, scroll downwards through the photos.
This will let you select all the photos in subsequent rows as you scroll through until
you lift your finger.
This allowed me to insert all those photos that I wanted into a shared album rather quickly.
More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on the Mac Geek Gad number
982 for Monday, May 22nd, 2023.
Music.
Greetings folks. And welcome to Macky cab, where you send your quick tips in like that one,
your cool stuff, found your questions.
We share your quick tips. We share your cool stuff found. We share your questions
We put them together into an agenda that loosely makes sense and maybe follows a bit of a flow,
The goal being each and every it's not even a goal. It's just part of the system
It's a byproduct of the system that each and every one of us will learn at least five new things,
Every single time we get together,
sponsors for this episode include hellofresh.com slash mgg16 where you can go use code mgg16 for 16 free meals and free shipping,
shadyrays.com slash mgg where code mgg gets you a second pair when you buy one pair it gets you that second pair free and
collide.com slash mggkolide.com slash mgg which is Zero Trust, tailor-made for Okta.
We'll share details about all three of those shortly here.
For now, here in slightly chillier than last week, Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here, and also chillier than normal, fearful Connecticut, this is John F. Brown.
And here, for at least a few more hours, in Lee, New Hampshire, Pilot Pete.
Thanks for having me back. You, uh, you cut out there, at least from my audio, when you said the word pilot,
Pete. So you are indeed Pilot Pete today, it turns out.
I am indeed Pilot Pete, and I'm going to execute those pilot skills in just a few short hours
while I wing my way to Europe tonight.
That's great. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if anybody else heard that little clip and hopefully it is
short lived, even if it was, but I made a mistake. Those of us live streaming with us today know that that's, that's why we're recording a
day early.
Yeah. Uh, but you know, it doesn't matter cause time is not linear.
Time is not linear. No, I. As we, as we determined last week, doctor.
That's right. I made a mistake today. I usually, I'm a very superstitious person in, in certain ways and I always take a sip
of my fresh mug of tea. As the theme music starts today, Pete, I was so engrossed with
your opening quick tip there that while I was listening, I just grabbed my tea and started
sipping it. And so maybe I'm the one that caused the audio hiccups. Hopefully that's
the only thing I caused. At least the only negative thing that I caused. The I have a
positive thing to share though, and that is our next quick tip, which is an article I found called.
80 Shades of Option Key. And it is a notion site. So actually published on the site of one of our
sponsors. I don't know who it was that published it, but it is all kinds of things that you can
do with the option key. Some of which you probably knew, but some of which I certainly, I didn't know
One is that when you're in the finder to looking at the Get Info screen,
sometimes you'll pull that up, you know, and it'll all be, all the triangles will be twisted closed and it's like, oh no, I want to see the details.
And so you go and you twist each one open one by one, Hold down the Option key when you twist open one of them, all of them will open.
Handy, and that's also true in the finder itself like if you're in a finder view that's,
It's got things twisted closed option click and it will either twist them all open or closed at once,
another Thing that if I knew it I forgot it holding down the option key and clicking or pressing like the,
keyboard brightness key on your keyboard will open up the monitor system preference, right?
And the same with sound will open up. If you option click the, you know,
volume up or down button on your keyboard, it will open up the sound system preference
and those sorts of things.
And the one that I have been using all week that I like has blown me away is,
you know when you got a scroll bar on the, you know, on the side of the screen and you can-
Good luck hitting it with your mouse.
Right, but you can grab it and like move it up and down,
or you can click in the area between the scroll bar
and either the top or the bottom, and it will go one page in either direction, right?
So we knew all that. What I didn't know, I'm curious if either of you knew,
did you know that you can option click anywhere in that scroll bar
and it will jump the scroll point to that point.
Right? You're gonna have to play with that some. I know. So these are like four of the things that.
That the option key can do for you and there are 80 of them in this article. It's linked in the
show notes at of course matgeekup.com. You can get directly there at mgg.fm slash 982 and while
you're there sign up to get the show notes delivered to your email box every single week.
Uh, that works out great for you and works out great for us.
So, uh, so that's the difference. I just found it. All right.
So I, I always thought that that just did it without having to hit the option
key, but if you, if you do it, it just moves it a page, like you said.
I did not realize that, but yeah, hit all the option key down.
It takes it right there, right.
To whatever that point is now, right. You know, if you've got a, uh, you know, 40 page document and your option
clicking in there. If you can, you know, hit page 32 consistently, more power to
you, but it does get you close. You know, it's like, oh, I know it was like
three-quarters of the way down. You just option click instead of trying to grab
the little tiny thing and drag it because the longer a document is, the shorter the little handle is to grab. Sure, right. Let's make it so small
that you can't possibly click on it. Exactly, exactly. You don't have to.
All right, and I tossed something in the show notes.
It's an Apple support article titled Mac Keyboard Shortcuts.
Which I don't know when they update it or how they update it, but it's a pretty long list.
So, you know, check that out sometime just for fun. Yeah, that's great. Good stuff.
Pete, you got one? You got an eSIM tip for us? Yeah, so Joao writes in, Um...
I recently took a trip to China and as you may know the internet can be pretty challenging
there for western visitors. With the current situation in Taiwan, most VPNs don't work.
Before my trip I bought a 5G hotspot with a Chinese 5G SIM but unfortunately I could not use it.
The only use I found was syncing my iCloud drive. In three weeks I used 150 gigs of data.
However, I've discovered a solution that worked wonders for me.
For all Gmail, Instagram, and news related.
If you use an eSIM purchased in Hong Kong, you can use it in Macau and mainland China.
Since the eSIM is from Hong Kong and you're roaming in mainland China,
your location is registered as Hong Kong and it will allow you to use the internet
without restrictions.
Of course, you'll still face Hong Kong's limitations such as the blocking of TikTok,
but overall this approach worked for me, allowed me to work comfortably with a 45 gig plan for only $40.
And that last line actually is what piqued my interest because I did buy a recent one.
I paid $40 for 13 gigs. I'm like, oh, what'd you do? Well, guess what?
He bought it, as he says there, specifically a regional, a Chinese, Hong Kong one.
And mine was global. So if you know you're only gonna be traveling to Europe,
it's cheaper to buy Europe only or Asia, Asia only, or even more country specific, it lowers the data plan.
Mine's global, so yeah, I'm paying data rates for Canada and Mexico and the United States,
which unfortunately is probably the most expensive of those,
at least as I've found as I've shopped around for SIMs.
Yeah.
Right. And I've been using the Pokefy for a long time and with really good results.
However, I found it a little frustrating that you turn that thing on and you have to wait
for the red light to turn green.
And sometimes it doesn't seem to connect to services. And so I thought, well, okay, you know,
I'll try this eSIM thing and I did it. And it turned, I actually got, hey, we couldn't activate you
and you're out of luck and no data for you, but it worked.
It was actually on and working.
So even in spite of the error message, it was up and running.
If you, the other one with these global ones that you buy in Hong Kong, if you're traveling to Hong Kong,
you're going to have to fill in your passport number and your name and all that stuff and register it
so that it will work in Hong Kong.
Otherwise you won't be able to roam there.
I remember that. And then, but lastly, Dave and I were talking about this before the show started, I found it kind of interesting that I was trying to select Mint.
Mobile off and my MobiMatters eSIM on.
So just to zoom that out a little, you were trying to turn off data for your home SIM
and turn on data for your eSIM that you had bought for travel.
My new global eSIM, yes.
And then I thought, you know what, I don't want to crunch all, and I go in the low data
mode, but I don't want to all these background programs anyway, crunching all my data up.
So I went through and I turned off all kinds of programs.
I found them out of order. It's like, okay, a bunch I use her at the top.
Then I get down and some were alphabetical and then there was out of alphabet and then some more were alphabetical and I'm just like, oh, I'm so confused.
And I wound up going to the bottom and resetting all settings or not all settings, all data resetting my data usage.
And they all magically went to alphabetical. So that's when I figured out that, oh, it's they're sorted by data usage.
Yes. They're only alphabetical if the usage is the same, AKA zero.
Yeah. However, there is- You pointed out this other tip that's cool, go.
No, no. There is a place where you can choose and see the list of applications alphabetically.
And it's simply at the bottom of the main settings screen on your phone.
And that's where you can set all kinds of settings for applications.
And you can even search there to find a specific application.
And yes, cellular data is controllable here too. So it's one of those scenarios where you can switch the same thing on and off in two different places.
As a, you know, from the user interface design schools, you would probably say that's a really bad idea,
being able to do the same thing in two places.
It is or it isn't. However, in this scenario, perhaps it, um, you know, it's,
I think it's better there because you can go to the top and search for the thing by name.
And if you're like me and you've got a hundred apps on your phone, then finding
the ones with the, start with a U or a V.
Yeah, it goes for a while. If we think about it from the standpoint of, uh, you're going to have, you know,
the settings for each individual app and in those are going to be things like
cellular data and background usage and all that stuff.
That's got to be there, right? When you're controlling the settings for an app,
All the settings should be there.
And if Apple followed, you know, strict UX design paradigms, where you only have things controllable in one place,
now, when you're inside the cellular settings, and you're seeing that list of apps organized by data usage,
it would be super frustrating to not be able to choose to turn an app off right there, right?
So it's a convenience feature of not having to like, oh, you better jump to the settings for that app and turn it off.
It's like, no, we're just going to expose this same setting here.
You're finding it while you're gone.
Right, yeah, and then don't forget to come back here because, by the way, you can't have two windows up
on the iPhone because everything's modal.
So I get why they made the decision they did, and I tend to agree with it, so.
Yeah, Dave, you probably remember back in the day, so I do, but they used to have a bunch of binders
and it was called Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
The HIG. It was like, and I may have them in my attic somewhere,
But I just sort of, my only reflection is that I think somebody took those and threw them away,
especially with venture.
Well, yeah. Well, no, they're not thrown away. They are no longer printable.
No, they're available on the web at developer.apple.com slash design
slash human dash interface dash guidelines.
Like that's where those exist. No, they still are very alive. Yeah, yeah.
They've evolved, perhaps not in a way that we would want. Evolved is a pleasant, is a polite way of saying it.
Okay, I agree with you, they've evolved. They've evolved. I'm not saying they've evolved for better or for worse.
I'm just saying, I'm not quantifying this. I'm simply acknowledging they are different
than the binders you had in your attic.
So, and if you still have those binders, folks, recycle them, get rid of them.
You don't need them anymore.
All right, I have a Lisa in my attic that I still want to revive.
Well, maybe you'll have some time this summer.
I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I don't if I if I said I kept a Lisa in my attic that there would be
people would people would knock on my door.
All right, so we will go from the managing cellular data podcast, which has seemed to be a topic of conversation many weeks in a row to the ChatGPT podcast, Geek Gab.
And John, you've got a quick tip about ChatGPT, don't you?
Which yes, everybody's into ChatGPT these days, except me. But anyways, so Sasha says,
I was listening to Pete's tip in episode 980, where he said you could ask ChatGPT to summarize
changes after it proofread something. This gave me an idea to try. Being in New Zealand, we use.
British English spelling and I was manually changing the spelling from JATJPT results after,
pasting into my work. So instead I tried telling it to proofread something but added
using British English and it complied using the spelling of the words I'm more familiar with.
I thought this would be a useful tip and yes, that is, that is awesome that it knows there
are different versions of English.
Well, and it knows different languages too. I mean, it, it's not, not just English that's there.
I, um, I, you know, I, I. Will it do translations? I haven't tried it.
I mean, there are plenty of tools that do that, but. Yeah. Yes.
I, I know some, I haven't, I haven't messed with it, but, um, one of the guys at BackBeat,
Jeff, um, has been using it for some translation stuff too. You know what they say about England and the United States, though.
Two countries separated by a common language. Sorry, Pete, I didn't mean to step on you.
No, you're right. I should have gotten out of the way.
You do know. I do know, but they might not have. Speaking of ChatGPT, I am a, I mean, we use it a ton here for production of the show and
and many other things.
Yeah, so I have a paid chat GPT account so that I, A, have guaranteed access to it
and B, get access to GPT-4.
And I will say, as an aside, we have a great thread, by the way,
going on in our MacGeeKab discord at macgeekab.com slash discord,
where we're talking about these kinds of things because it's evolving every day.
There's all sorts of different ways of using it. And just, even if the tech doesn't evolve
on any given day, our understanding of it and our ability to use it does.
And it like, this is one of those things where learning from one another is hugely valuable.
So I'm very thankful to our MackeyCab family here for that.
But I will say that, you know, the default that you get on the free version is GPT 3.5,
and then they have GPT 4.0 as well.
I wouldn't say that four is always better than 3.5. There are times I often will do queries to both
and see which one starts giving me an answer that's either formatted the way I want
or simply it takes the tone that I want or what have you.
But this week, because I have a paid account, I got access to two new features.
One of them is ChatGPT's plugins.
If you are a paid user, you go to, there's like a little three dot thing next to your name in the lower left.
Click on that, then click on settings.
In the settings, you will see beta features. Go to beta features and you can start turning these things on.
If you don't have access to them yet, if they won't even appear,
it's not like they'd be grayed out or anything.
So you can just go turn them on. Plugins are very cool. There's all kinds of things,
like dozens of plugins already written.
And some of them are things like OpenTable or Kayak, where you're able to leverage the engines of these websites
and let chat or let chat GPT leverage the engines of these websites to do some of this
assistant style stuff for you, which is awesome.
There's one called perfect prompt where you type your prompt in and then invoke this plugin,
and it will rewrite your prompt to get you results that are better.
And it's sort of meta because in a sense, that's using.
Chat GPT's engine to help you rewrite a prompt for chat GPT.
So like you can wrap your head around that if you, if you so choose.
Talk about a do loop. Yeah, exactly. Right, right.
But I've had good luck with it. Like it, I have given it a prompt and then opened another session and given it a prompt
and told it, you know, make that prompt perfect.
And the results I get are, they are better. But the one that I'm really excited about is, and I got this last week too, is web browsing.
And what this means is I can give chat GPT a URL and tell it go do something for me
I was sending out an email the other day to a bunch of,
our uh, like main sponsors and and agency contacts and I wanted to end it I was talking a little bit about how the,
Economy has you know impacted the podcast advertising industry and and it was saying look, you know
We've been doing this for well podcast for 18 years, you know.
You know, publishing for 25, like we've seen things are cyclical.
We've seen downturns before. We've seen, you know, like this is going to be okay.
Like what we're seeing here. And I put it into some context and then I shared some stuff, but I wanted to end it
on a positive note because, you know, the economic stuff isn't necessarily all that
positive right now, but it's fine.
And so I asked chat to BT, I said, visit backbeatmedia.com and come up with an email ending tagline that
is enthusiastic and on brand.
And it went through and it scoured our website. It took maybe 30 seconds.
And then it came back with a list of like five taglines and it even said, I checked
out your website. It seems you're very into representing independent publishers, both in the development of websites
and, you know, chiefly involved in podcasting from the beginning.
Like it definitely grokked what our company is about. And then it gave me a bunch of taglines and I liked, you know, one or two of them and
I didn't like five or six of them, but that's totally fine.
And it, it cost me nothing, you know, 20 bucks a month and took,
you know, let's say five minutes.
It didn't take that long. Right.
But you know, it was like instant that I was able to get this stuff.
And so having it, being able to browse the web also gives you access to things like.
It solves the problem of when you're using chat GPT, you can only paste in up to, I
don't know, 1500 or 2000 characters or something like that.
If I want it to summarize the transcript of this episode, I would have to-
Which is a lot longer than 2000 words. Correct.
Well, but I will have a web URL of the transcript of this episode.
And so I can link, I can just pass it the link to that URL and tell it to go read it
over there and summarize.
And one of the plugins that's available is a PDF plugin where you can tell it
Here's a PDF go summarize that for me. So it's pretty cool. So I'm I'm having fun with chat GBT. You got to let us know what?
What your thoughts are how you're using it feedback at Mac ecom comm we'd love to hear from all of you.
All right. Hey, look our sponsor collide has some big news If you're an Okta user, they can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance.
How do they do this?
Well, if a device isn't compliant, the user can't log into your cloud apps until they fix the problem.
It's that simple. 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. 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. If they don't fix the problem within
a set time, 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 M-G-G and our thanks to Collide for sponsoring this episode.
Hey, what's worse than buying a pair of expensive sunglasses and losing them right after you get them?
Well, breaking them, but not for me. Not since I got Shady Rays.
Shady Rays makes high quality sunglasses that are just as good, or based on what I've seen,
even better than the expensive ones. And Shady Rays are a fraction of the price.
These things are durable.
They look good. I just got a pair of the Recycled Ocean Tortoise Frames with these Glacier, they call the lenses Glacier.
They're these reflective blue.
They look awesome. They become my go-to pair of sunglasses.
And I don't worry about losing or breaking them ever because every pair of Shady Rays
is backed by their industry leading lost and broken replacements program.
Break or lose your pair, the second you take them out of the box,
they'll send you a replacement pair. No questions asked.
And they're not happy unless you're happy, and that's why they give you 30 days to try them.
And if you don't like them, you can exchange them or return them for free.
What's better than getting one pair of Shady Rays and not worrying if you break or lose them? Getting two!
Go to ShadyRays.com slash MGG and use code MGG for a limited time.
When you buy one pair of Shady Rays, you'll get the second pair free.
That's S-H-A-D-Y-R-A-Y-S dot com slash M-G-G, code M-G-G, to get a second pair of Shady Rays free.
Shady Rays dot com slash M-G-G, code M-G-G, and our thanks to Shady Rays for sponsoring this episode.
All right, uh, we were talking about ChatGPT, and I think, Pete, you might have a question about this for us.
I did. Well, actually, um, it was several weeks back. We mentioned MacGPT, which is the Mac native app for using ChatGPT.
You can log in and use it natively and create the API and all that sort of thing.
But I find it interesting that when I can go either native or web, so native means it's,
more on your machine.
It's using the API to send the data back and forth as opposed to just opening up a web view essentially.
Yeah. But I'm wondering if you've seen this. If I select in settings 3.5, I get answers in native.
If I select a 4.0 in Mac GPT, I get the model GPT-4 does not exist.
Are you a paying customer?
Yes. And sometimes that goes away and sometimes it doesn't. I have not experienced that.
I don't use Mac GPT as often as I should. I wound up nuking this machine af right after we had done that and I haven't
reinstalled it on here. Okay.
And so it's just not in my fingers to use it. I do have it installed on, on one of my other machines, but again, I need to get
into the habit of using Mac GPT, but, um, it might be like if, if I were it, so
when questions come into Mac geek, uh, if we have the answer, we answer, right?
Like that's easy.
If we don't generally issued a geek challenge. Well, no, generally the approach is what would I, if I were there, what would I do next?
So if that were happening to me, what I would do next is I would go into a chat GPT on the
web and to my settings and generate a new API key because maybe your API key for whatever
a reason isn't tied to GPT-4 versus maybe you created it before you bought GPT.
I don't know. I don't remember. Right. But that's what I'm saying.
That would be the first thing to do is just like, let's try this with a clean slate or
as clean a slate as we can.
Yeah. worth.
Yeah. The other thing I would do is I would test it like on a different machine with a different account, AKA, you know, you're having the problem.
Let me test it and see if I'm experiencing the same thing.
Uh, I'm not going to do that because this question came in in real time. Yeah.
I'm not going to do that because I don't have Mac GPT on this computer right now.
So I don't think, yeah, no, it doesn't look like it's. But the other thing is that I would just mention is it will do a lot of creative stuff for you as well.
For instance, I just was, it's been a long time since we've done this, but remember the days of haiku.
And I had to do a haiku for us. Yes. So which was Mac geek gab trio, Dave, John, and Pete insights
flow, tech solutions, a glow.
I love it. I love it. You know what else is a glow Pete?
Uh, cool stuff found. John, what's our first cool stuff found for today?
So we got a cool stuff found here from Greg and it was titled D O S C S F.
And I'm like, what does that mean? What does this have to do with DOS?
And then I realized, that's Spanish for two.
So we have two things here that he sent into us and this is great stuff.
Number one, I was looking for an app that would give me options when I tap on a map link
in Safari so I can choose which GPS app I wanna use.
This one is great.
See recording below, which you can't see because it's, anyways, it's called Map Redirect for Map Links.
It pretty much speaks for itself. And I checked it out and it has limited options,
But if you only have...
Humble deeds, then they may do it for you. And then the second one,
opener. This is one I've been using for years to use, and I use it very frequently. You can use
it on the phone, the iPad, and on the Mac. I couldn't find the Mac version, but we are linking
to the iOS or iPhone and iPad version. So if you tap and hold on a link in Safari or tap the share
button, you can force it to open in the app instead. As you can see below, they support over
200 different applications. So the chances are the app is going to be supported.
That's pretty cool. That's handy.
Yeah, because the either iPhone or iPad.
The OS tends to be more limiting, I would say, in giving you that flexibility.
Oh, yeah. It's nice that somebody figured this out. So thank you.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
I like this stuff. That's good. That's good. That's good.
This is what we love about cool stuff. Found. I didn't, I didn't even know that app existed.
Like, but what, what a clever way to do it.
Uh, in the vein of unlocking our max with, uh, without our Apple watches listener, Ben writes, I think it was Ben.
Yes.
Writes in with, um, unlocks it, uh, which enables unlocking a Mac with a trackpad
tap pattern, as well as face fingerprint or any of the Apple, uh, you know,
connected to Apple devices.
So, uh, it is at unlocks.it, which is U N L O X dot I T.
So we will put that, I guess it's just called unlocks. It was formerly Mac ID, but, uh, but now it's unlocks and I'm
That's the app I could not think of the name of last week.
There you go.
Yeah, it used to be Mac. Yeah. I remember using that with, yeah, with my phone and my Mac.
Yeah. It was good or it's, it still is good. Yeah, evidently.
Yeah. It's still out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. We were talking about ways of exporting from Apple notes last week because
Apple notes has only limited export options and not so great if you want to
to move to a different notes app and listener Tom has an answer for us, huh, John?
Yeah, good stuff. So Tom says, I was listening to episode 981 and Dave's comment about needing a way to export notes
from the Apple notes app on the Mac. I was wondering if this app might do the trick.
And there's an app out there, believe it or not, called Exporter.
It can export to Markdown or HTML and supports exporting to JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PDF. You get the idea.
Yeah. The free version will export all your notes, but you can purchase an add-on that provides
a feature called Filter View. From what I see, this should allow you to export individual notes.
So thank you for that tip. Yeah, I'm wondering, looking at this exporter app, as you mentioned, it exports to Markdown or HTML,
and it lists a bunch of apps that it would essentially let you take your notes in Apple
Notes and move them to other apps. And there's apps like Obsidian, which you mentioned last week,
Bear, Standard Notes, Craft, you know, some of these sort of indie notes apps, Ulysses,
right? Good stuff, but there's no Evernote or OneNote listed on this page. So I, as we're
going through this, I started thinking, okay, well, what can we, like, how can we import into
Evernote and can we take HTML and import that in? And it seems like maybe, so it would be,
it would be great if we could export from Apple Notes to Evernotes.exe file, which I will point
out, Apple notes will import from Evernote's ENEX format.
It just does not export to it. So that like, there's gotta be a way I just like, I don't like being trapped.
You know, I don't like my data being trapped. I also don't like being trapped.
I'm less like an Eagle song. You can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.
It's not quite the word.
That's Apple notes. Yes. Hotel Notzaformia.
You can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So anyway, that's, um, I know there's, there's gotta be a way, right?
Like there's, there's definitely a path here.
So. All right. Uh, in the cool stuff found realm listener and discord user, rawl9,
sorry, ROL 605 shares an Anker charging station.
And this one, you know, listen, we were having this conversation pre-show, which you can always join.
If you sign up to matkeycup.com slash calendar, it'll tell you when we're recording and you can come hang out with us pre and
post show. But this one is, so I think there's lots of chargers.
You got to find some differentiator about it. And this Anchor 525 is, I find it interesting because it's got on one side.
Two USB-A with PowerIQ and two USB-C with power delivery. And on the other side, it's got three grounded USAC outlets.
And then, of course, it's got a cord that plugs into the wall.
So, this is, you know, for me, the kind of thing that I want to have with me when I travel.
Something I can plug in, charge all my stuff, And if it turns out that it's four ports on the front are not enough or the wrong kind or whatever for whatever I'm doing,
All I need is to plug into one of its outlets because a lot of times in a hotel or even an Airbnb,
You know you an extension or an outlet behind the TV can.
Bingo, yeah, the way 600 pounds I was just gonna say I think I know why I need to visit a chiropractor
practice regularly and it's because I've had to move TV cabinets in hotels. Right.
Right. So yeah. Well the only thing that need is a universal European Chinese. Yes.
Well, which you could put on the other end of it. Yeah, which which I, yeah, we
gave one in last week's show. Exactly. There's an adapter. Yeah. You know, for a few
bucks. Yep, yep. Ah yeah, I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's, there's all
kinds of all kinds of there's all kinds of chargers out there but but like this
one it would would be like great I'll throw that in my my travel bag and I'm
good I don't need anything else like I want a couple of AC outlets that's for
sure and then I want a couple of USB a and a couple of USB C like that that's
that's what you need these days and and then from there you can you can you know,
do what you need to do yeah I'm comparing it to the behemoth that I have and you know the one that I have so it's similar in that it has two A and two C ports but it's 100 watts.
But it's much larger than heavier and heavier than this one I suspect.
Yeah, and what's the output of this one?
Uh, this is 65. 60, 67. Yeah, okay. All right, that's gonna be- Yeah, the one I have is 100, but it looks to be larger and I'm almost guessing heavier,
so I like the, um, is this GAN? It has to be GAN.
Yeah, this one, I will, no, it might not be. It doesn't say that it is.
Um, well, I'm looking to see, is it G A N it is not, no, no, or at least it doesn't say that it is.
So it therefore probably is not, they anchor is usually pretty good about sort of leading with, with that if it's got it.
It, but, um, but yeah, like this is, like I said, I am finding that I want to be able to travel with.
AC outlets and, and it turns out this has surge protection built into it too.
Short circuit protection, over voltage protection, over current protection,
internal safety shutters, fire resistance, grounded protection. So like, so in a hotel,
that's not a bad thing to have. Well, and the coolest thing about that is, like you say,
is those AC outlets, because I have to carry, you know, two or three foreign adapters for each thing
I want to plug into. Now I don't. Now you don't. And I think I'm gonna. I will say this, technically
these kinds of things are either not allowed or frowned upon on cruise ships. So if you are going
to use one on a cruise ship, make sure you use it only when you're in your room and the door is
locked, aka not when your state room attendant is going to be visiting your room to help you
keep it nice and tidy. You know where else they're frowned upon? I found this fascinating. Nursing homes.
Really? There are too many cords, it's a trip hazard type thing, it's like, okay, but it reduces the cords.
Yeah, no, but I can see this. Like I've used one of these in a hotel room before where, you know, you've got to, you,
want to have it plugged in or you want to have the outlets near the, like the bedside
table, but the outlet is way over there, you know?
And so there is the cord running across the floor. Now, you know, it's like, maybe it's a sobriety test.
Even if it's against the wall, it's, it's, it's a trip hazard.
It, it, yes. Right. And it's like, okay. Like I'm, but I get it.
I get it. They have to have the rule and they can't.
Well it's on, like a nursing home is different from a hotel for, for many obvious reasons
and, and they are taking more responsibility for ensuring the guests are not tripping.
The most, yeah. They're taking the most conservative route. Yes.
Because they have to. Because they have to.
Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. paid to do is take care of people and keep them safe.
So yeah, hopefully keep them happy and comfortable.
All right.
We have at least one more cool stuff found. We'll see. We'll see where this goes.
I love cool stuff. So, you know, David Klempkin shares two cool stuff's found about or I guess
there's just several that showed up in discord when this conversation
happened, but we were talking about different, the cellular coverage in your area.
And he mentioned coverage map, a coverage map.com, which is a community sourced
coverage and speed map, and you can actually submit your own with you know, with there.
I think you have to like, it's kind of a pain in the neck with coverage map to submit your own.
I think you have to like use a speed test and export it as a CSV and they've got a YouTube video about how to do that.
But anyway, if you want to look at the data that other people have submitted via CSV, that's even easier because it's right there.
You just put in a zip code or an address and it will do it. I believe it is only for the United States right now, but it will show you where you're getting coverage for, you know, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc.
Et cetera. And then of course they have the, the, um, MVNOs as well,
like Mint Mobile, Invisible and all of that. But, um,
knowing where the main carriers are, are getting you coverage, it's,
it's handy. You know, um, I, I use it,
I use it often to check like before I travel, especially going to like visit family in rural Maine,
Like, am I going to have coverage or am I going to enjoy this off the grid time?
There you go. Yeah, that's good to do. But I'll tell you what I recommend, unless you've
got unlimited data, don't waste your data on a speed check. Right. Speed check.
Yeah. That's it. We'll use it.
Some companies don't count that against your data limits and some do.
I can say definitively that Mint does.
Uh, I was using, doing some speed tests recently.
For some reason, probably as a, you know, it It happened, or I did it while I was traveling,
but I had 5G turned off on my phone. I don't know why.
And it was when I was down in Austin in March that I realized it and I turned it on.
It was like, oh man, I'm getting service like in the movie theater now where I wasn't before.
And like, this is great.
And then it was like, oh, well, let me see how my coverage is at home.
I've been toying with the idea of using T-Mobile's 5G to the home as a backup connection for my fiber.
I've decided against it for a variety of reasons. I mainly, I just don't need to, I don't need it.
You know, it's going to be fine.
I can always turn Comcast back on and that's only going to take a couple of hours.
I've already have it all wired up.
So like, I don't, I don't need it at the ready. Right. But I was doing some speed tests to see like, is this even viable?
Do I get 5G in the house and in the spot where I would need to put this device?
And if I do, what is the, you know, what kind of speeds do I get?
And I mean, especially speed tests over 5G where you're seeing hundreds of megabits per second.
They burn up data really fast. So I watched it burn, you know,
two, 300 megabytes very, very quickly on Mint.
But yeah, if you want to use that. There is in the conversation,
an app called OpenSignal came out and that, or it came up, it's been out for a while.
OpenSignal also does tests of your connection and they have an app and it's community sourced
and all of that stuff, but they have an app and they will do the test and log it.
So a little bit easier to, to get lots of data in there.
So, yeah, there's another one. I, and I don't, I could turn my camera off and start flumming through my phone,
but there's another one. It's an, it's like an antenna finder or self tower, something tower tower.
Yeah. I'll have to look for it and get it back to you. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's fine. But I did that when I was trying to determine whether I could put.
Say the words, use your words, Pete.
New lips, sorry, new lips. Whether I could use T-Mobile here in the house, which is IE Mobile, it's your towers, you
know. Is it going to be close enough?
And I was thinking I was going to have to boost and put an antenna on the house, which
direction did I want to point the antenna?
But then it turned out that T-Mobile is much better coverage here than T-Mobile.
Guys that start with an A. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, T-Mobile's generally,
it depends on the area, but in general, T-Mobile seems to have the best coverage out there. Like,
there are those areas of like rural Maine where Verizon might still have the edge. They certainly
did for a while. They've sort of, they've not been expanding their network like T-Mobile has.
Here's a question that you may or may not know the answer to though, because you were talking
about thinking of using the T-Mobile 5G as a backup connection. Yeah.
Is that thing portable? Can you put that in your RV?
Can you take it kind of anywhere or is it, is it geo-located?
I don't know. I know that the Starlink does have a Starlink for RVs. Okay.
That's the satellite one, not the mobile one. Right.
Um, I don't know if your T-Mobile 5G for the home is portable.
Because the reason, I think it was Verizon was offering one for 25 bucks and I thought,
well, that's, that's half the price and I can do it at our place in Florida, but it's
like, oh, it's not available.
It's also not 25 bucks.
It's 25 bucks if you're paying for, you know, some min, like some higher end plan
for your phone, otherwise it's like 60 bucks or something.
So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's not probably not for you, but But but like the the T-Mobile one is yeah
I wonder I know that in order to order it you have to be in an area that they deem,
Has 5g coverage for your home like they need to be able to send it to an adj- sorry about that
They need to be able to talk him with my hands again So I told Pete to use his words now. I need to tell myself the same thing,
Uh, they, they need to send it to, you have to give them an address, a shipping
address where you're going to use it, that they believe you will have good luck with it, right?
Like, I mean, for lack of a better term, they just don't want a bad customer experience.
Now, if you choose to take that somewhere else with you, I don't know.
That's interesting. Feedback at Mac e-cab.com folks. Let us know if you, if you know the answer to that, to that question, because
that would be a fascinating solution.
So yeah, so send it to the address of feedback at Mackey gap calm And let me know if it works in the Florida panhandle,
There you go. Oh, yeah, well you can put the address in.
I'll put a little I got told it didn't and I'm a bummer Oh, but if you shipped it here, and then happened to accidentally leave it at your house there. Yeah, whoops. Yeah
Yeah, right.
That was feedback at MattKidCap.com.
Yeah, it looks like most, you know, I did a.
Mobile home 5G search and it pretty much came up with, you know, Verizon, Mint, T-Mobile, stuff like that.
So I think you got to just look at their map.
Yeah. To see if it's likely that you're going to get coverage.
Yeah. Because I know, especially middle America is a challenge,
or as you said, Dave, you know, Maine, because, you know, who lives in Maine?
I mean, why, why even put cell phones?
I'm just kidding.
Yeah. Don't need them there. Yeah, that's right. Signal can't get there from here.
That's pretty much how it is sometimes when I'm visiting my family up there, yeah.
If I was going there, I wouldn't bring my cell phone. All right, well, we've now, I've watched our download numbers.
We now no longer have anyone in the state of Maine listening to this show. Great.
We've been canceled in Maine. That's right. Yes. That's the, yeah, canceled in Maine.
Well, it's either that or it's a hotel, notes of Fornia.
Um, we shall see. I did find, do you guys have any, uh, other cool stuff found to
add before we move on here?
I have one, uh, that I figured I'd share. So it's, uh, from our friend Howard Oakley.
Uh, I saw there are two apps that he makes one is called viable.
And the other is called livable live viable.
I do. Do I have it? Liviable. Liviable.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And these will let you create and run Mac OS virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs.
That's what viable does.
And Liviable lets you create and run Linux VMs on Apple Silicon Macs, which is pretty,
darn cool if you ask me.
So I put a link in there for those. Isn't the Mac already running Mac OS?
Yeah, but if you want to virtualize an environment so that you can do a test of things or what have you.
Yeah, without corrupting your entire computer. Yes, exactly. Right. Yeah.
Or you want to know, like, does this problem happen in, you know, a clean setup?
That's not a bad way to test it. So, yeah, viable and live viable or liviable. I'm not sure what.
But yeah, from our friend Howard Oakley.
Ooh, all right, that sound means I get to tell you about HelloFresh, where you get farm fresh,
pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep.
You get to skip those trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy,
fun and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit.
It's fantastic. There's no more scouring the grocery store for that one ingredient to complete your recipe.
HelloFresh takes away all the hassle by delivering fresh pre-portioned ingredients
so you have exactly what you need and it helps you cut down on food waste.
It also makes it fun because they send you these instructions,
the recipes with your meal kit, meaning you get all the food that you need plus the instructions.
And what we find at home is if one person's making dinner, even if everybody's in the kitchen, that's what it is.
It's everybody's in the kitchen while one person's making dinner.
With HelloFresh, because you get those instructions, makes it really easy for everybody to be fully involved
because there's no delegating that needs to happen.
It's just right there. You say, oh, you got step number one, great.
I'll take step number two and on you go.
HelloFresh makes dinnertime a snap with all these deliciously easy options that'll please everybody.
They've got fit and wholesome, to pescatarian, to veggie. There's meal plans that suits everyone's lifestyle.
Plus you can swap out proteins and sides to your liking.
Go to hellofresh.com slash MGG16 and use code MGG16 for 16 free meals, plus free shipping.
Again, that's hellofresh.com slash MGG16 for 16. And then you use code MGG16 for those 16 free meals,
plus the free shipping. Our thanks to HelloFresh,
America's number one meal kit for sponsoring this episode.
And hey, while I have you here, I got a show for you. Wouldn't you love to bounce out of bed feeling fantastic
even on a Monday morning?
Well, you can, if you listen to the 5AM Miracle podcast hosted by productivity junkie, trail marathoner
and banana enthusiast, Jeff Sanders.
The 5AM Miracle is here to help you dominate your day before breakfast.
You can create powerful lifelong habits and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.
Every Monday Jeff will guide you through a fascinating and helpful personal growth topic,
including action steps to give you something practical to achieve in every episode.
So these are out every Monday morning. They come out, I think about 15 minutes
before Matt Geekab comes out on Monday. So you do this first thing, you do Matt Geekab, you're good to go.
He's got 500 plus episodes and 12 million downloads over the last 10 years
with focuses on productivity, healthy habits, and personal development, go to 5ammiracle.com
or subscribe to the 5ammiracle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
Again, that's 5, the number 5, ammiracle.com. And our thanks to Jeff for doing this swap with us.
Hey, John, we were talking about Passkeys recently when Google added them, when Google
announced the Passkey login, and we started getting some feedback about that and some
other things. So I figured maybe we should talk a little about Passkeys here. You want to take us to
Allison sharing some stuff. Yeah, I got mixed feelings, but it sounds like Allison's is too.
So Allison points out, as soon as Google announced Passkey login, I enabled it using my Mac. Now,
when I try to log into Google, it presents me with a QR code as Pete described. When I scan it with
my iPhone it says there are no matching passkeys in iCloud keychain. This makes perfect sense
because I don't use iCloud keychain. I prefer to have all of my info in one place and that one
place is one password. And now 1Password plans on implementing passkeys. They do have it for
creating new accounts now. But until then it appears I can't use passkeys at all unless I
turn on iCloud Keychain. If I'm missing something, let me know, but I thought it was interesting.
The only thing that popped into my head with this, Dave, is in order to use things like HomeKit, I thought you had to enable iCloud Keychain.
Um, I don't think so.
Okay, maybe not anymore, but I recall at some point when I was using it, it's like, hey, you got to turn this on.
But anyways, other than that, yeah, I mean, all the documentation that I found for these says, yeah, oh, by the way, you got to enable iCloud Keychain.
Cloud keychain. So I think she's soon, though, that will not be the case because as Paul
Conaway pointed out in our pre show chat today, one password has announced that it will support
pass keys coming June 6th, which of course is the day after WWDC announcement happens.
So we'll I mean, it's no surprise like Apple's been supporting pass keys obviously for a
I don't think they're divulging anything, you know, of Apple's secrets.
They are simply divulging their own secrets, which is that pass keys come to one password
on June 6th, which is great.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm still living a dual life. I use iCloud Keychain and 1Password simultaneously.
And it mostly works out fine.
I have kind of let my passwords get stored in both, and whichever one wants to fill it is great.
I, I have started using Apple for my credit cards again now, because it will store my
CVV codes, whereas it previously didn't.
So I would have to auto fill a password credit card with Apple and then go either look at
the credit card, like a caveman or like look in humanity or look in one password to find
out what my CVV, you know, was and type that in.
But now it, the last time I did it, it was like, Hey, you want me to store that for you?
It's like, yeah, please.
So, um. Yeah, cavemen didn't have credit cards.
Sure they did. How do you think they got to, they had to buy their like,
axes and stuff? Oh, maybe credit rocks. I mean, what would you use as currency back then?
Well, I mean, they, see, that was the thing is they, they didn't use cash.
They only used credit cards, John.
Like, obviously we know cavemen, we know cavemen didn't use cash.
That's ridiculous. This was thousands of years ago. So obviously. Yeah, they didn't have pockets.
They just had to remember their credit card number. That's it, right. Obvious, obvious.
All right. Uh, Kyle had a comment about that conversation. Yeah.
I got to try this out.
So Kyle says.
A MacGeek at 980 during the segment on passkeys, there was a discussion of whether or not it is
possible to use passkeys to sign on to other devices that are not syncing the passkey. This
is possible if the passkey containing device is present at least within close enough, at least
with new enough software on all devices. Okay, there we go. The device communities,
the device communicates over Bluetooth.
See the WWDC 22 session, meet Passkeys.
That's nice.
I want to meet the Passkeys. You can watch that session. And we have a link to this video.
And he says he thought there was another video where it was demonstrated, yeah, whatever.
But anyways, that would be really cool.
I haven't tried this though. I do have Passkeys enabled in a limited fashion,
so I should give this a whirl, because it'd be nice if you just had the device present.
I think what this is saying is it's possible to do this without using iCloud Keychain.
No, I think you would still need iCloud Keychain, but maybe not, I don't know.
Yeah, it's worth watching that session, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah.
It's good. All right, one last one, maybe not so much about pass keys,
but pass codes, John.
Yeah. Where? From Todd? Wait. Yeah, no, no. I see it. Great.
There we go. Okay. Navigating notes. Hotel. Navigating hotel notes-a-fornia. Yeah.
Yep. All right. As mentioned in MackeyGab980, the Apple password manager is getting more and more capable,
but it does rely on your Apple device password, which can be the weakest link.
Agreed. of my friends still have a four-digit passcode on their iPhone or simple Mac passwords.
And basically, we got to tell everybody to just get their act together or check your settings.
And just so if you want to know here, the place that you want to go to change this is
is, sorry, settings, all right?
Yeah, I've got it listed in the show notes for us. No, no, I got it, yeah, no, it's in the,
no, I'm just fiddling here with this stuff. Settings, face ID, and passcode.
Settings, face ID or touch ID for older products, and passcode, change passcode,
and then there's gonna be a thing that says passcode options.
And at the very least, and I haven't done this, so I still use the four digit one, I'm sorry.
Don't steal my phone.
But yeah, there you can then select to do, you know, a multi-digit one, a multi-character one.
There are all sorts of wonderful options there, and they should.
Choose anyone except four-digit again. Don't do as I say do as I or don't do as I do do as I say
so if we were to send chat GPT the you the URL Mac geek gab and.
Have it go through every episode we've ever recorded Is it possible that chat GPT could find you uttering your four-digit passcode on the show?
That's a rhetorical question. You don't need to answer it But I'm just saying like, I recommend using a not four digit password.
I recommend using a password where the phone doesn't tell the person entering the password
how many digits it is.
Because that way they don't know you could be using a four digit passcode, you could
be using a seven digit, you could be using a five, who knows, right?
And it's like, if you choose to use a four digit passcode in that scenario, still the
same number of things to type in, but there's not four bubbles for a hacker to know they need to fill out.
So.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I believe the option is still available to have it wipe your phone after 10 wrong
guesses, which is not a bad thing.
You know, if you've got a backup, your phone backs up pretty regularly and you had to recover
it, you could do so. So I am, I don't, we talk on the show all the time about how there's that continuum
between convenience and security.
And I definitely choose, you know, security more often than I choose convenience for.
Sorry, reverse that. Here in Hotel Multifornia, I choose convenience, not security because I want to get out.
I know, you're right. Everything you said is correct.
If you're backing up your phone, you're doing all the things that are sort of relatively
easy and good to do, you're going to be fine, except I know because I have Murphy on my
favorites list.
We used to say have Murphy on speed dial, but kids, ask your parents what that means.
I know, because I have Murphy in my favorites list, that...
The one time I would type my pass or somebody would type my password in wrong,
like not maliciously, but just accidentally would be while I'm traveling.
And it'll be the one trip that I don't bring a spare iPhone with me and I don't
have my data connection and I desperately need like that thing to get into onto a
plane or, you know, like, it's definitely gonna, gonna burn me if I do this.
Yeah. But 10 times a, that's a lot. I know. The only time I wouldn't use it is if you've got toddlers in the house, right?
Right, right, right. Then you're gonna be resetting your phone every week. Every week. Oh, yeah, guaranteed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of a very tangential story, but semi related when Woz,
Woz, Steve Wozniak, for those of you who don't know, kids ask your parents.
When Woz Woz loves numbers. He loves repeating numbers. He loves patterns.
Well, he would often post, like, his hotel room number to social media if he got, like, a good one that had, like, a repeating pattern or it was palindromic or something like that, like, he loves all that stuff.
And when the 888 area code opened up for toll-free numbers, Waz immediately went and got 888-888-8888.
Because he thought, now I can do it. I can have one phone number that's one digit,
and this totally appealed to Waz.
And he had to give the number up.
And the reason he had to give the number up was he was getting prank calls from babies all day long.
And he loved, I mean, he did love it because he thought, what a perfect thing.
These kids are making their first prank call, and I get it.
But eventually, it sort of became more trouble than it was worth, but yeah.
Anyway, that's that's my that's my story. I don't think they were intentionally prank calls. No, it was just roll the dice
Well, but I mean they were having fun. They were pressing the buttons and seeing what happened and talking to was I mean
Isn't that kind of what we?
Also did as slightly older kids for prank calls as we press the buttons and see what I will say
When my oldest was about three years old, he managed to get the police to show up at the house
And yeah, and guess what, that's entertainment, baby.
And, and after the third day, the cops were like, can you please keep the phone away from him?
Well, that's why we're coming every day, at least in this country, 911 is 911
because the nine and the one are as far apart as you can get on the keypad.
Yeah. It's not 911 in all countries though. Like different countries have different things, but yeah, here we chose 911
because it's diagonal. Actually, some it's 119. That's true. 119. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, but they drive on the other side of the road too, so. That's why. The wrong side of the road, Pete.
Let's, let's, so we've got, we've cut, we've cut Maine out. As we say the wrong side of the road, we just cut out
the UK, you know, obviously, and, and Japan drives on the wrong side of the road too? They do indeed.
Well, forget them too. That's right. And they use the wrong electricity. It's 100 volts, 50 Hertz.
I mean, what's up with that? Actually, it makes perfect sense to me to have-
From a math standpoint. those numbers from a math standpoint.
Well, in Europe, they don't use the same electricity either.
That's a different electricity. So, yeah.
But yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's 999 in the UK. Tennessee Papa in the chat room says it's 999.
So, yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, maybe they get prank,
maybe they get more prank calls there than we do here.
Or maybe we learned from them, like the E911 system is very,
like, relatively speaking, is new here. Like it, it definitely came into being when
I was a teenager, I guess. Yeah.
So, all right. Um, Gary, let's answer some questions here. I like these.
We'll see, we'll see where we get. I don't know how far we're going to get. Yeah.
Let me get Gary up here. Hold on there. Isn't that you Dave?
All right. Nope. No, no, no, nevermind. It's John. I got it.
It was the next thing on the agenda, but you know.
Yeah, it's the next. He's next up, right? Yep.
So Gary says, why are you jumping around on me?
Stop that. Okay. I just watched CNET's pre-WWDC show and the hosts were talking
about what they want to see in the next iteration of iOS.
I've been wanting this since the original iPhone was created in 2007 with iOS 1.0.
Wow, iOS 1.0? What did I mean? Tell people what this is.
Why doesn't Apple have an audible low battery alarm?
If someone doesn't pick up and unlock their device, they will not get the notification unless they have a video or something,
that's got a device on when the battery becomes low.
I know there is an audible alert while on a phone call. All but seriously guys.
And a related rant with the introduction of the dynamic island, now the low battery notification
only appears in that area. I only saw it because I was looking at my phone when I saw it. The only
other indicator is a red battery icon. Apple is usually on top of making sure their hardware and
software is accessible for those with disabilities, but this is two strikes. I'm legally blind and not
always going to be looking at my phone. As the horse I ran in Snimby stated, no sir, I don't like it.
Yeah, but you found him an answer, John. Yeah, believe it or not, I poked around and apparently
someone else has had this problem as well. And it's a little steps you can take here to create
a shortcut and it's titled to how to get Siri to alert you when your iPhone battery is low.
So check that article out and it'll teach you how to create a shortcut.
Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. You just like create an automation in shortcuts,
automations being the things that trigger by not you, right? Like how to trigger a shortcut that's
that's not you. And one of the triggers that you can select is you create a personal automation.
Is battery level. Yeah. And so you can choose it when the battery and I think you can even set it,
as to where it is. Yeah, 50 or something like that. There's a slider. My only finger wag
is it's not visible until you scroll on that selection screen.
What are you talking about? What I'm talking about is when you go to the criteria used for setting
the shortcut, battery level does not appear on it.
You have to scroll up. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Was that clear? Yes.
That's the only thing I said, because yeah, I looked at it and it's like, where is it?
Oh yeah, scroll up. Yeah.
If your screen isn't big enough, then yeah. Yeah.
But yeah, you find it and then you can set the level and you can actually get,
you can have it trigger a shortcut depending on whether the battery is above, below,
or equal to that battery level.
So, yeah, that's pretty good.
I like that. That's smart. And then obviously you can have it say something
or send you an alert or speak text, you know, whatever you want.
So I like it. Yeah, so.
With a two year old phone. You know, so it'd be nice if they tossed it into accessibility, but, you know, this will
do it.
Yeah. And my phone's two plus years old, so I'd use one of those shortcuts.
I have mine go into low power mode. Once I go below 65%, just to slow down the discharge rate for the rest of the day.
Oh, Pete. Yeah.
Oh, I'm going to do that for like 40%. But yes, because it only asks you when you hit 20, and that might be...
You want to go to low power. Do you want to go to low power?
Yeah. It automatically goes there when I, when I hit 64%, it's by set when it goes below 65.
So thusly 64 comes up, goes up. I'm in low power mode now. Thank you.
Right. But it doesn't keep doing it. Like if you, if you turn low power mode off, let's say, and you're at 60%, it's not going
to keep turning it on because you have your automation set to equals 64% not is below 65%.
Oh, interesting. have below 65, but I need to change it to equals the right.
And then I can turn it back. Yeah. Then you can turn it back on and not have it fight you all day long.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I would, my solution to that before we just turn that automation off.
Yeah. I know what I want and go in and turn the automation off.
I like that solution much better. Equals. Yeah.
We're going to have to mess. See, I love that. This is what I love about this show.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get to learn things while we're doing, while we're teaching.
Yeah. Um, maybe we can learn something, Pete, you want to summarize and briefly
share your geek challenge here.
I will, yeah. So, user Jeff wrote in and said, I use my Apple Mail for all my mailing,
or I use Apple Mail for all my mailing needs on Mac and iOS.
I find it frustrating I can't have the same email signature on my iOS devices that I do on my Macs.
I use a photo banner, i.e. a JPEG image, per my signature, but it doesn't seem to work on iOS.
I can copy and paste the signature into my iPhone, which happily shows in the signature section,
But when composing an email, it places a box and a question mark in it.
Uh, other than using a different email app, do you have any ideas on,
on how to embed the graphic signature?
So I went, man, I'm using my Google foo and I found a LifeWire article that
essentially says, go in, create your Apple signature, uh, or use your, uh, email
and your Apple or your mail signature with, you know, whatever scripting and
an image that you want and save it as a draft.
Then go into your phone, open that draft, and copy your signature.
You know, select it all and copy it, then put it into, go into the signature section
of your iOS mail and paste it in there.
And then you have to shake your phone to undo to get it to look like what it looked like
before it went in. I don't know why it doesn't paste right, but you shake your phone and go undo and it goes
back to what it should look like and then you save it.
And that all seemed like it was great and it was going to work just fine.
Then when I went to compose an email, instead of, you know, the scripting of my name came
out right, and the thank you or comma, you know, whatever, but the PNG file that I was
using just came up with the file name dot PNG.
And you're like, ugh.
So it remains a geek challenge.
Is there a way, other than creating a hyperlink to an image you've stored online, to make
your little graphic go with your signature in iOS?
I can't find it. Sorry, Jeff, thought I had it.
Thought LifeWire had it. Not so much.
That's just dumb because I've seen your signature for our site and you have, you know, a graphic in there.
It should sync to the signature on your iPhone, but so it's just being dumb about graphics,
which is disappointing. you would think.
I, I, I, um, and I know this is because I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, by every day becoming even more and more of an old man, but I really have always disliked graphics and email signatures.
And the reason is they, people generally don't spend the time to size the graphics correctly.
Right.
And so they will just put like some Mondo image in their email and then in their email program,
Just say okay display it at a smaller size, but you're still sending along this Mondo image
Which I mean fine like we all have lots of bandwidth now
It's it's not a big deal
But when I go to reply if I wind up replying in plain text mode now their image is this huge
Mondo thing and it's like oh, that's cool like that. That's great Let me let me fix this for you
you know, while I'm busy replying.
So I, I don't know. I I've never, like, I know who you are. I don't need you to brand yourself in your email like that.
Like, but I, I get it.
Like some companies it's actually company policy to put the image there.
I'm going to send you a bill.
For my, to my ISP for all that. For the bandwidth. Yeah.
Right. Exactly. I like it. Remains a geek challenge. That one should be, John's right.
That one should just be simple.
Yes. I don't know. I don't disagree. iCloud would take care of it.
I mean, iCloud does a lot of very useful things in the background,
including syncing your signatures. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't disagree. Despite my personal preference, I fully agree that it's weird
that this just isn't a thing.
So yeah, so Jeff, in spite of having found the answer, sending you the answer and going, I haven't been able to try it tonight.
I'll try it tomorrow. When I tried it tomorrow, it didn't work.
It didn't work. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right. Um... Shake.
At the risk of potentially running a little longer than we normally might. Let's do it.
Bill asks, he says, I recently purchased an M2 Max based MacBook Pro, and I'm considering
purchasing a dock to use at my home office, connecting two 4K external monitors and a
plethora of USB devices, mostly type A. And because I have the M2 Max, I can take at least
96 watts of power from the dock.
You don't need at least 96, but you can certainly take it.
He says, I'm having, I've looked at the OWC, the Belkin and the CalDigit offerings in the
Thunderbolt dock range.
And he says, I'm having a little trouble choosing which one is which.
And it seems like he says that I need a Thunderbolt 4 dock.
And it seems like maybe the CalDigit's the only one that really does what I need.
I'm not sure how to look at these things help.
And I'm paraphrasing here, but that's where we start.
The place that I will begin with the answer here is that when we're looking at all of this,
it's really important to go back to that conversation we had a couple of years ago with Larry O'Connor
from Otherworld Computing, where he came on and he's such a nerd.
And I say that in the most positive way and with the utmost of respect because he really understands this stuff.
And in many cases, better than we do here which is why we often have him on show.
But he explained to us that the term Thunderbolt 4 is really a marketing term.
And what it means is Thunderbolt 3 but with all the features enabled.
And that sounds ridiculous to me when I hear it that way.
And there's a good reason and it's because I'm a Mac user. We as Mac users did not experience what non-Mac,
AKA Windows and Linux users, experienced with Thunderbolt 3.
And that is many of the features of Thunderbolt 3 were not enabled, and yet manufacturers
were still able to say they supported Thunderbolt 3.
Intel changed that, or the Thunderbolt Consortium, or whoever, changed that with Thunderbolt 4.
In order to say Thunderbolt 4, you must support and have enabled all of the features.
What that is for us Mac users with Thunderbolt 3 every feature was enabled Save 1. And that one feature is hubbing. And what hubbing means is
not being able to do... With Thunderbolt 3, you could have two Thunderbolt ports on your dock.
One that would go up to the host, your, aka your Mac, and one that could go down to either another, like,
Thunderbolt drive, or to another Thunderbolt dock, which could then have two ports on it.
So, pass-through Thunderbolt was allowed and capable for us Mac users with Thunderbolt 3. With Thunderbolt 4,
Or hubbing means you can have more than two Thunderbolt ports on a dock, and so you can
have one go upstream to your Mac, and then many go downstream to other Thunderbolt devices.
I will point out that the speed of all of it is aggregated and sent through the Thunderbolt
4 pipe up to your Mac, so you're going to be limited there potentially, depending on
what you're hanging off of it, and you need to be cognizant of that when you're choosing
how to architect your Thunderbolt setup. You might be better off, say, hanging an SSD directly
off of your Mac on one bus so that the other bus can have, you know, the dock with the hub and all
that stuff. But knowing that that's the difference between Thunderbolt 3 and 4, you can start looking
at these docks a little bit differently. You need to first decide, do you want hubbing? Do you need
hubbing for your setup. Do you even care about that? And if the answer is yes, then find a dock
that supports multiple Thunderbolt ports. And if the answer is, or more than two Thunderbolt ports,
I should say. And if the answer is no, then don't worry about it. Just go get a Thunderbolt 3.
Hub that has all the other ports you want. That said, CalDigit's Thunderbolt Station 4
has a ton of ports on it. It really is a great device and might exactly be what Bill needs and
what many of us need. But there are others out there when you start taking the need for the
marketing term away and just start looking at actual capabilities. You know, the OWC Thunderbolt
Dock, which is the name of that product, is a Thunderbolt 4 dock and also has your 96 watts
of power and those sorts of things.
So that's my advice for going through that. I don't have any one to recommend, um, any of the ones that, that, uh.
That Bill mentioned are great, but also, you know, Anchor makes Thunderbolt hubs.
They don't make the one they used to, which had tons of ports like the CalDigit. Seems like
CalDigit's the only one making that sort of, you know, kitchen sink hub these days, which is,
you know, just fine. So, I don't know. You guys have any thoughts on this? Are you using
any Thunderbolt devices, John? I like the OWC 14-point,
Thunderbolt dock with cable, blah, blah, blah.
So that's technically a Thunderbolt, we would call that a Thunderbolt 3 dock,
just because it just has two Thunderbolt ports on it.
But yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, for my current setup, it has the ports that I need,
which are primarily, you know, believe it or not, USB 3.1 connectors.
So do you mean USB- The peripherals that I have plugged into it are for the most, go ahead.
You're saying USB 3.1, but I think, correct me if I'm wrong, please.
I think what you mean is USB-A connectors.
Yes, they are USB-A connectors. And on the device itself, they are marked as USB 3.1 Gen 1.
Yes. Okay, to be clear.
Yeah, but because you could have USB 3.1 Gen 1 over USB-C as well.
Like it's not limited one or the other. And we would call USB 3.1 Gen 1, correct me if I'm wrong,
Well, these days we call that USB five gigabits.
Yeah. Okay. That's way easier.
But yours- Well, the other port I use on it is there's a, uh, uh,
Thunderbolt passthrough, and then there's a monitor port, which I have my secondary monitor plugged into.
So that's what I use. So I don't have, I mean, the CalDigit one
that was mentioned sounds fabulous.
It's got a lot of ports, yeah. And has lots of power too, if you need that.
In my case, I really don't need that. Yeah, if you're plugging into a Mac mini, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, exactly. So that's the one I recommend. I don't know what you use these days, Pete.
Let us know. Well, I'm trying to figure out why, and I may be asking why is the sky blue?
Uh, but I, my observation is then that's why the hub that I have,
sorry, banging my microphone.
The hub that I have has a little pigtail, one USB-C in.
Yep. And, and everything else is all USB-A and SD card and that sort of thing.
So that makes sense to me.
You're probably using a USB-C hub, not a Thunderbolt hub or dock or whatever term you want to use.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
But if that's what you need, that's fine. And John, are you using, you said it has a monitor port.
Is that HDMI or DisplayPort?
It's DisplayPort. Yeah, I'm looking at the diagram. DisplayPort 4K.
Okay, yeah, there you go.
So it's more than I need because my secondary screen is not 4K.
And more often than not, right?
So many things are now USB-C these days and that's why we covered it back in the pre-Christmas show.
Just those little adapters, USB-C to A and then a little rubber tether to hold it on the end of the cable.
And that's how I solve my port needs at this point.
Yep. Yep.
That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm still, I have a Thunderbolt.
The OWC Thunderbolt hub, which has four Thunderbolt ports on it.
So that's what I use to add Thunderbolt ports to my setup here.
And then I also have the Thunderbolt 3 dock, which I think is basically what you've got, John, from them up here.
Downstairs I have the old CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock so that I can keep testing all those things.
I actually have the Anker one that's kind of a clone of the CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock as well.
So, but yeah, yeah, these days that it would be the OWC Thunderbolt hub or the CalDigit Thunderbolt
station four would be the, sorry, the OWC Thunderbolt dock, uh, would be what I would,
recommend for folks or the, um, or the CalDigit one, but, but, you know, they're,
they're both going to give you some extra ports and that's, you know, extra Thunderbolt ports
meaning. And then also some USB-A ports and that sort of thing. So yeah, it's, there's lots of good
options there. Cause yeah, the OWC Thunderbolt dock has four Thunderbolt ports, four USB-A ports.
Three of them are 10 gigabits. One is USB-2. So for your keyboard or mouse or whatever,
and it's got GeGe and SD card and that sort of thing. But if you, you could use the Thunderbolt
Well, four ports for connecting your displays if you want, or you can, or then if you don't
want, you could get like the CalDigit Dock or something different to support your displays
if you want that HDMI or DisplayPort port.
And all those extra pieces of gear, since I'm pretty much a single computer user instead
of an iMac at home and a laptop and that, I'm just going to get the 16-inch MacBook
Pro with all the dead gum ports on the side I already need. There you go.
Well, you know, there's that 15 inch air coming, Pete. So there you go.
Maybe, maybe put some ports in it.
Yeah, I'm still with you, Pete, man.
I...
I hated that the battery life on the Intels were so bad, but I just really liked having a 16-inch screen,
especially when I was doing work.
I wandered in an Apple store last week in Cambridge, England,
and they had the Air and the Pro sitting next to each other.
The Pro is 30% heavier or so, 25% heavier. Yeah. But man, they're nice machines.
Yeah. But yeah, did you try typing on the keyboard?
No, I didn't. Well, those keyboards are all great now. Well, no, but no, no, what I'm saying,
maybe this is not the case in the UK, but it is certainly the case in Paris.
Because I went into an Apple franchise, and I tried typing on the keyboard,
and everything was coming out as gibberish.
So either I was having a stroke or something, or I look at the keyboard, and I'm like,
what? What'd you guys, why did you, what did you, why did you do this?
There's a different keyboard layout in, many countries have different keyboard layouts.
I mean, obviously Asian countries, because they have so many characters,
but it was just like, oh, that's why what I'm typing is not what I'm seeing.
You have to type in French, John, then it would just be perfectly fine.
There you go. Just think in French, you type in French, you'll be fine.
You were typing English and the keyboard was translating it to French.
That's what was happening. It's just because you don't speak French,
you didn't know. AZERTY is their layout, not QWERTY.
And there's other differences.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth
to get the show from us to you.
Make sure to check out our other shows. Pete's So There I Was, My Business Brain, and My Gig Gab Show.
And yeah, thanks for hanging out. Make sure to check out macigab.com slash merch.
We've got all kinds of fun stuff.
Check out our sponsors, as we mentioned in the show, collide, K-O-L-I-D-E dot com slash M-G-G,
hellofresh.com slash M-G-G one six.
Music.
I guarantee you, it's gonna come to mind.
Shadyrace.com slash M-G-G. John, would you do me a favor?
I love it when you tell me what Pete's shirt says,
because I love it when you share pithy advice. Do you have anything to share?
Yeah, I think you can get one of these if you go to mackeygob.com slash merch.
And if you do that, you can get your very own shirt that says on the front of it, don't get caught.
May God's good advice.
Thanks for hanging out with us for a little bit.
Music.