It's time for the Mac Geek Gab and listener, also my son, Mac, brings us our quick tip
of the week with lift subject from background.
Now you all know about this from iOS that if you have a photo and you press on the picture
of a dog or a person and hold it, press and hold, an outline will go around that person,
that subject and you can lift that subject out of the background.
Great, easy to do, share it, put it into other apps, well my son figured out, do it with
a picture of a document and you can lift it out of photos and drop it into notes.
More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on the MacGeekGab number 1002
Monday, October 2nd, 2023.
Music.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek of the show, where you send in tips just like that.
You send in your questions, which we try to answer. You send in your cool stuff found, which we also share.
We pull it all together into an agenda. We try to Organize it thematically and in an interesting way so that we are,
Certain to each learn at least five new things every single time we get together,
We have as a sponsor for this episode fastmail.com,
MGG and that's where you can go to get 10% off your first year with fast mail
We'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit for now here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton,
And here in Lee, New Hampshire, I think after nine days around the world. It's pilot Pete good to be back home,
It's nice having you back home. Yeah, you sound good. You're breathing into the mic a little bit
So actually I just think Figured I'd acknowledge it since I'm sure.
Okay, I'll try not to do Good stuff.
Yeah, no, it's good to be back, it's good to have you back, I'm here still.
We have another quick tip on stickers, but.
Then the first thing I want to do is highlight that this coming Sunday.
So the episode is going to release on October 2nd.
That means the coming Sunday, I believe is October 8th. If I'm doing the math correctly at 7 p.m. Eastern.
So later than we have done our hangouts in the past, we are doing our next hangout.
Now, these hangouts are just really for all of us all to get together and talk. We do them on Zoom.
I put the link in. And we'll send out a mailer so you can sign up for the mailing list at matgeekab.com.
If you want to get on the mailer for that, we will also put the link in our Discord channel
at matgeekab.com slash discord.
And the link is already in our calendar at matgeekab.com slash calendar.
So you can subscribe in any of those ways. I just can't put the link on social media because then we attract all the script kitties.
That's bad. Just because they aren't us. You know, they don't hang the way we like to hang.
So we will have this Hangout at 7 o'clock for, you know, 7 o'clock Eastern Daylight
Time on Sunday the 8th.
We will, we will, it's for everyone to talk. It's not a one-to-many, it is a many-to-many conversation.
And we have found that it is helpful, although certainly not necessary, to have a topic that,
we announce ahead of time so that we can all bring something to talk about, though really,
Wherever the tangents evolve during the conversation is always totally fine.
So this one, let's talk about email clients and email service providers.
This is something that comes up often with the changes to macOS Sonoma.
Sort of render a bunch of the plugins that used to exist for Mac OS mail Now won't no longer exist or and some of them are evolving into extensions and some of them are evolving into their own apps,
And there's just lots of email apps and we all do do things differently So I think that's a good conversation to have I can't take credit for the idea listener Chris came up with that,
And so I love the ideas. It's great. So thank you. And yeah, we'll see you there and hopefully hopefully lots of us can make
Yeah, we'll just hang think I can make it. I think I'm gonna be on an airplane to London that night.
All right. Well, we will schedule the next one at a time that helps you that works for you. I had to do this one,
October is such a crazy month for my schedule with this theater show. I'm doing and I mean I get it
So it was like that's the one Sunday in October where it actually is gonna work. And so we're doing it
Like it's just must go. Yeah, so we'll do this one, and then we'll do another one
You know sometime November early December, and we'll we'll coordinate a little better. I do as promised have another,
tip about Those fun little things that you remove from the background you can turn them into stickers Todd says I've been playing,
with creating stickers in iOS 17 if,
You have an image app and can drop an image or logo onto a white background,
IOS 17 does a real nice job of then creating a sticker from that image additionally,
I have been importing these JPEGs into a new album. I created in photos called,
Stickers I've also been placing photos that might make a good sticker in that album
Makes it easy to find them in one location when you go to create a sticker on your phone
Ah, right, so he is not putting stickers in the album He is putting photos that easily turn into stickers so that he can just grab them from
the background whenever he wants and pop them in as a sticker into messages or, or whatever.
So that's slick. Yeah. Yeah.
I like it. Uh, yeah, so that's that's that one. We're supposed to do more now, right?
Yes, we are. The show's not over? Okay, great. I don't hear the band, so get on to JT Ray.
JT Ray says, uh, my watch, now running watchOS 10, told me the other night that it was optimizing
its charging. Of course, he says, being ready for bed, I wasn't sure what it meant.
Now, my Apple Watch Ultra only charges to 80%, just like my new shiny iPhone 15 Pro.
The best feature they have adopted from Android. I rarely use 50% of my battery on my watch.
Now it just charges to the right spot and stops.
And indeed, there is optimized charging, not just on the watch for some models.
I believe looking at the screenshots we have here, you're still breathing into the mic Pete,
so I'm just gonna keep reminding you of that.
Uh, is it is Apple watch S E and then series six and later.
So the, uh, watch OS five or what series five watch that I have is not that, but,
uh, but yeah, interesting.
Yeah. And, and this is also, this also exists on the iPhone 15 as well that I noticed
with the, uh, my iPhone 15 pro, but I know that it is there for all of them.
As Apple said, there's a new. So on the iPhones with iOS 16 and iOS 17.
We've had the option to turn optimized battery charging on or off, right?
But with the iPhone 15, we have one more option. And that is, so we have no optimization.
We have optimized battery charging, which is the old way of doing it,
where it gets you to 80% overnight and then stops
and then resumes charging from 80 to 100 at some point just before you wake up
so that it's not just sitting at 100 all the time or for long periods of time,
which Apple has determined is not optimal for battery longevity.
Right. And by the way, it surprises you when you have to get up for an early flight,
you don't get your full charge. You're at 80%, right.
Well, now what Apple has added to the iPhone's 15 is a third option that they call the 80% limit.
It gets you to 80% and stops.
It doesn't go any farther.
And again, this speaks to this idea and clearly Apple has done enough research to support it
that they're putting these features in
that a battery sitting at for long periods of time north of 80% is bad.
If you get it to 100 and immediately start draining it, great, you know, but if you get it to a hundred and just leave it there,
that will reduce the overall life of the battery And...
This also supports the idea that this is true, not just on our phones and our watches, but also on our laptops.
Now, we're not seeing this 80% limit on our laptops. We are seeing optimized charging on some,
but with an app like Al Dente, you can set your own 80% limit. And perhaps now.
Al Dente makes a whole lot more sense to many more of us, myself included,
seeing how Apple's doing things on the phone.
So I'll put yet another link to Al Dente in the thing, but I am using it on my laptop
and I'm absolutely using it on Lisa's laptop, which is now mostly sitting plugged in
to an external screen and a keyboard.
So it is just, it is basically a desktop Mac that can be extracted from its setup
and taken with it. Does it ever go above 80%?
Yes, Apple says, with the 80% limit enabled, your iPhone will occasionally charge to 100%
to maintain accurate battery state of charge estimates.
I don't know where I got chargeness from.
I don't know, I don't know what that is. New word. Yeah, what is chargeness?
Word of the day, chargeness. What is chargeness? Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
So, well, that's why you heard the ding a second ago because I finally learned something here today,
finally, on the second, third tip. And- Glad to help, yeah. Yeah.
But that was when I read those, I was confused going, well, optimization, yeah, and that when it waits
and charges, but it's not going past that, that's what I wasn't getting my head around.
So now that I grok that, that's pretty cool.
I agree. Yeah, so we've got a bit of a theme going on here, Dave,
I would say, because Aaron wrote in.
He said, my iPhone 12 battery was around 84% maximum capacity and it had very little battery
life. After deciding I would hang on one more year, I went to the Apple store to change the battery.
What I did not expect was that the phone magically became brand new fast.
I mean, it was like a snappy new device, speeding through all the tasks again with iOS 17.
He says, I knew that Apple throttled the phones, but I didn't realize how much.
Based on this, I would recommend a battery change if your battery's maximum capacity
is in the mid 80% range and you notice your phone is being slow.
For $93 for a brand new experience, it's worth it. Keep up the good work, Aaron.
So that's awesome. That's surprising.
I didn't think that this, that I knew that this would start to happen at some point.
I didn't know that it would happen at 84%.
Yeah, I didn't know that either. And I think because I'm using my phone as on a camera,
I can't see my maximum capacity on my three year old iPhone 12 Pro Max.
All right. Yeah, I'll be interested to see just what exactly that is at.
And go from there. I did order the 15 this week while I was on the 15 Pro Max
while I was on the road this week.
So I'm expecting that by now, by the end of October. So it seems like it's kind of a popular phone.
Yeah, or at least more popular than Apple budgeted their factories to make. So, yeah.
So go buy your Apple stock now, folks. Full disclosure, I do own some Apple options.
Buy as much and as fast as you can. That's my tip for you. Sweet. Yeah, that's interesting.
If Pilot Pete is not an attorney or a stock advisor, consult your own advisor first.
That's right. Advice is meant for humorous purposes only. you may not sue Pilot B.
I'm going to take us to Bartender because I came up with some quick tips for Bartender this week.
Love me some Bartender.
Yeah, Bartender 15 is now out. Bartender is an app, if you don't know,
that allows you to control what and where menu items appear in your menu bar. And you can
choose to have some that don't appear in your menu bar unless you, you know,
You know, you can create like alternate menu bars.
Now with Bartender 5, you can create a preset menu bars so that when certain conditions happen, it changes.
So it changes to a different menu bar. You can say, yeah, if I'm connected to Wi-Fi, show me this menu bar if I'm on, you know,
in this location or whatever. So there's, there's quite a few things.
One tip that I have, you need Bartender 5 for macOS Sonoma. I've got macOS Sonoma running on my laptop right now,
and so I've been testing all kinds of things with it.
Of course, you need Bartender 5 to work right with macOS Sonoma.
Delete Bartender 4 from the same Mac. I was having some weirdness going on and things got way better.
Once you've done that, Then make sure you go into Bartender 5, into its Preferences, General,
and reconfigure your Menu Bar Spacing.
One of the nice things that Bartender lets you do is control how much space is between each of your items.
Over the years, Apple has added more and more space by default.
And while that might be really nice on my 27-inch screen here in the studio,
It's not so great on my 15 inch or 13 inch laptop screen with a notch, right?
So you can, they have four different, uh, spacing levels, starting with the widest
being Apple's default, and you can get down to absolutely no spacing where your,
your menu bar is just all crammed together.
And once you get used to that, I actually kind of like the, the all crammed together.
And of course I can get lots of things in there before the notch.
That's almost a, a dual cool, cool stuff found in there for bartender.
Yeah, I'll tell you if you folks if you don't have bartender, I believe it's in effect
I'm sure it's in setup because that's where I have mine the I have more than 30,
menu items and,
I couldn't survive without part That's almost as important as clean my Mac and you know.
Yeah, I oh I think it's more important I think it's yeah, it's it's certainly one of my desert island utilities, right
You cannot you can't read your regular program menus if you cram all that stuff in your all your menu items up to the top
They're without bartender. Yeah, just would be on,
And evidently I called it bartender 15, but it is bartender 5 is 5. I thought you said yeah
I think I said both I was I was I was mixing and matching Pete I was just trying to keep everybody on their toes you want to why you want to take us to Larry Oh,
Oh, Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry, where do I begin, Larry?
I don't know what to tell you.
Hello geeks. So yesterday, after updating to iOS 17 and the day before switching out my new eSIM for
a physical SIM card, iMessage is no longer working on my, on my phone, assuming it's iPhone.
All of my iPhone friends text messages are in green and I can't send pictures to them
either. I called Apple and they said iMessage could take 24 hours to connect.
Could this be true? I've never heard of this.
But so sure enough it it worked out right true. It's true. It's true it's to quote the great madeline khan in uh.
Young frankenstein Frankenstein yeah, it's true. It's true. Um,
Or maybe that was pleasing saddles, but uh, but i'm gonna keep us out of trouble
It turns out yes apple says it can take up to 24 hours. They're not kidding around this time
I was like that, you know, we're going to send you an email could take up to 24 hours for it to get there
Yeah, you know, it's already sitting on my on my screen right right. I'm there right serious. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's fascinating and,
another thing Dan wrote in as well about this and Once connected to I message on his new phone. He was he noticed he's like look, you know,
I've I've synced everything to I message in the cloud or whatever they call it messages in the cloud
I guess and he's like, but I looked and I have I only have messages going back to July
What gives and I didn't see his email for a few days because I don't,
Necessarily check the Mac ekeb email box every single day and it had been a few days and I said, um,
I I think in the past I've seen this to check again, would you I think it's gonna it sometimes takes a lot of time
To sink down, you know gigabytes and gigabytes of your message history and sure enough. He was like, oh, yep,
He's like, it's all there now.
It's like, so yeah, patience is the.
Yeah.
But there's still something weird going on with buying, because for instance, that quick tip we opened the show with.
I read on my work iPad, that's where it came in.
And I presume I can't check it on my phone right now, but I went to get the exact verbiage before the show,
so I could do it out of messages on my laptop.
And guess what ain't there?
Really? Yeah.
Yeah. And I've noticed that with a couple other text strings that I'm not getting it
perfectly synced betwixt all devices. So something's still...
Interesting. Hinky. Interesting. Yeah, right, right, right. Huh. Huh. All right. Yeah.
So I've got more work to do, I think, is what it boils down to.
Yeah. Yeah. Syncing, syncing's hard. I know we all take it for granted these days, but
It's not, it's not easy.
In the process of upgrading to my new iPhone 15 Pro, I am a Mint mobile customer as,
which won't come as a great surprise to anybody who's been listening for a while.
Mint did not auto transfer my eSIM over. I just had to re, I had to launch the Mint app on my new phone
and just tell it to install a quote unquote new eSIM on my 15 Pro and it did that and then everything was fine.
As a force of habit, simply because I've been traveling enough internationally over the last
year and a half where I do this as a matter of course when I get a new eSIM for travel,
I did this with my eSIM, I went in to settings, cellular, and looked at the settings for my
cellular plan and noticed that my low data mode, which I leave on all the time on my Mint plan,
had been turned off because presumably because it was a new sim but i don't know it might have also
been turned off if you migrated even a sim you know for a different carrier over so the tip is
just go check low data mode on your new iphone if and when you get one just to make sure that
it is set the way you want it to be set and the same would be true for the 5g modes because you
can have it you know use more battery or less battery and you know all that stuff so just go
check all your cellular settings on a new phone, even, even,
and perhaps especially if you did migration from one phone to another and just
presume everything to be the same, it might not be so.
Yep.
Yeah. Yep. And here's one that's going to tick people off. Okay.
You've got it. It's your next one.
Oh, it's because that functionality has been there the whole time and they just haven't ever turned it off.
I know. So it, the, uh, with tvOS 17, which I had to manually install on my Apple TV this morning, it's the,
we're recording this on Friday, the 29th, it's been out all week, you know,
more than a week. So I had to go and manually do it, whatever. Um,
you now have the ability.
If you have the Siri remote second gen or later, your iPhone can use a find my like
Functionality to locate that remote it doesn't have the ultra wideband so you're not going to get super directional stuff
But you will get the hotter colder thing that that you used to be able to get you know with the non ultra wideband find my devices and,
It works, but here's the thing I upgraded to iOS or to tvOS 17. I already had iOS 17 you need both,
upgraded tvOS 17 and And the way you find this is you don't use the Find My app.
Right. You launch the remote app on your phone, which you can either do by launching the app called Remote,
or if you have it in Control Center still, which it's there by default,
you can go into Control Center and tap the little icon that looks like your iPhone,
like your Apple TV remote. Like a remote, yeah.
Yeah, and then it launches the remote app.
Where you find this is there's a dropdown at the top where you pick which of your Apple TVs or other
devices you're going to use the remote with. And it's weird that I have other devices showing up
up in there, but I do.
Next to the compatible devices in that list is where you will see a Find icon for a find button for the remote, but mine wasn't there right away
I waited probably 10 minutes messing around with the TV,
Making sure everybody was on you know tvOS 17 iOS 17. You were holding your tongue right Dave,
No, then I turned it off. I turned the Apple TV off with the remote and,
and put it aside and did a couple other things and was like,
all right, I gotta go over to the office now because we're getting close to record time or whatever.
And I thought, let me try it one more time. And I launched the remote app on my phone
and not only was it there in the list, there was a little notification sort of overlay,
the pop-up bubble in the app, teaching me that this feature was now there.
So, but you don't use Find My to find it. In fact, I should confirm that we,
that it doesn't also show up in Find My. So I will-
While you're doing that, let me ask you this question. It's not there.
To which I think I know the answer.
It won't play a sound on the remote. No, it's not like the remote has an air tag in it.
It's probably using the Bluetooth of the remote.
Like I don't think it's as air taggy as we would want it to be, because yeah, I would
like the remote to be able to like make a sound so I can dig in my couch cushions and find it.
You know, that's where we're going to, that's where we're going to, that's where the value is, Apple.
All right. I am happy to bring a fast mail back on as a sponsor for Mac Geek, because fast
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They've got things like snooze and scheduled send, custom rules, right?
Fastmail is super easy to use and they are also super complex if you want them to be.
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episode while we've got you here i've got a great podcast recommendation for you when it comes to
to Apple, the folks at Twit know what they're talking about.
Leo Laporte, the founder of Twit.tv, bought his first Mac almost 40 years ago in 1984
and has been an Apple lover ever since.
That's probably why they have three, not one, not two, but three Apple podcasts on the Twit podcast network.
The oldest, of course, is Mac Break Weekly, started almost 20 years ago.
Alex Lindsay, Andy Anotko, Jason Snell, and Leo talk about the latest Apple news.
They are Apple fans, but not Apple fan boys. They call it as they see it.
And sometimes they're even a little hard on Apple.
They also do a show called iOS Today with Micah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard.
If you're into iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, or Apple TV, you'll love iOS Today.
And then of course, there's Hands on Mac.
Inside tips from Micah Sargent on getting the most out of your Apple devices every single week.
Expert analysis, helpful advice, and entertaining discussions.
Go to twit.tv slash Apple to find your next favorite Apple podcast.
And our thanks to Leo, Micah, and the team for doing this swap with us.
Okay, so that brings us to our time to go to questions and tips shared Jeepster writes in and asks for some thoughts. He says I'm trying to get more my notes organized
I have around 200 notes with information about home car motorcycle computer, etc
And so forth right now They're all in the default folder and I use search to find what I'm looking for which works,
Okay, I was thinking of using folders to organize the notes moving them from the notes folder one of several new folders
Which I'll create I see I can create a smart folder and then assign tags to the notes
And this will keep all the notes in the notes folder But I can also find them in their respective smart folders any opinions as to whether to move,
Notes into folders or use tags and use smart folders I'm leaning towards smart folders, but I thought I would ask so that I don't get caught Dave
I've got a quick note on this myself, a quick opinion, which is use the smart folders.
That's great.
But be aware you can't nest a smart folder within a smart folder.
And I think you can put folders within folders if you really want to get granular, but you
can't do it with smart folders.
Yeah. I, I, um, listener Ben commented on this. This came up from Jeepster in our discord and he had said you can use any of the three
and it's similar to how it works on the finder.
Brian8944 said I've been using folders but have recently moved to tags and have found
it easier to quickly add a tag at the end of my note allowing me to retrieve the information later.
This is an interesting discussion for me because I have never successfully used tags with anything so certainly when I started with notes and,
Even with Evernote and yo Jimbo prior to that I think they all supported tags at some point in their evolution. Yeah, and I never,
Yeah, I never even tried it because every experience. I've had using tags. I have failed with I don't mean to say that tags are bad
It's just incompatible with what has been incompatible with my brain really tried it in mail
And that's where it was like yeah, no, but.
It so with me so with notes, which is where I've standardized a lot of my life
I've been using folders, but I'm finding that I'm creating a note and forgetting where to file it or,
forgetting to file it or,
you know the idea of of with mail, I don't create the emails that I file, right?
Somebody else creates them and sends them to me. So I am already in triage mode,
my first interaction with a piece of mail, I'm in triage mode, right?
I mean, I'm also in processing mode, but it's, you know, it's,
I'm going to do something with this and it's all starting from the same spot.
I'm interacting with it.
With notes, it's the opposite. I'm creating the note by and large.
I mean, I have some shared notes with people, but in general, I'm creating the note,
which means I have an idea.
I just wanna start creating the note.
I don't wanna stop and pause and say, wait, I'm about to create a note.
Where should I file this? And then go into that folder and create a new note.
What that means is I am creating notes in the all iCloud folder, right?
That's where everything starts.
And then I have to remember to go back and file it after I've created it.
You know, I've got this inspiration, so I just go.
And I think for that reason I'm tempted to give tags another shot because tags are something
that I can add while I'm editing the note, not when I'm finished editing the note.
Does that make sense? Yes.
Yeah, it does. In fact, I would say that I'm also a tag cripple.
Yeah. I'm tag challenged, as it were. Tag challenged, yeah.
But I have found that in Notes I have several smart folders that I use in order to arrange who are potential guests
on my show, who has been on the show, that sort of thing.
And that's worked well for me so far. I've used smart folders with some success,
not 100%, not perfect yet, but the more I do it, the better I get at it.
And I've also found, so the way to do it is to hashtag and then the note, and then I find that Notes
offers to auto-complete the note for me.
So I can select, it'll pull up a dropdown and then I can just use the arrow key
and go, yeah, I want the second one.
So I'm curious about something here because this makes sense to me and it's something that I think,
I'm already interacting with the keyboard, whether it's on my Mac or on my phone, right?
Like I'm typing a note, so chances are I'm typing and therefore doing the, you know,
tagging the tags makes sense.
Like I don't have to get into a different mode like I would to file the note in a manual folder.
So I like all of this.
Where I'm curious is if I've got a shared note with someone,
let's say I want to take this shared note that Lisa and I are using and tag it with family,
you know, something just so I know where to find it later.
Does that tag it for her too, is the question. And I realize I can find out this answer.
I'm just thinking about it live while we're talking about it.
I think it does because you're typing it into the note.
And it looks to me, it turns yellow by default in mine, which looks like a link. Okay, okay.
So it appears to me to be, you know, data within the note. And then Notes looks at it and goes, oh, I've got a hashtag here.
What, do I have any instructions to do something? What do I do with it?
Yeah, okay. So I have a question for you now.
I took Jeepster's note that you and I share in Notes. Okay.
And I added, at the very end of it, I added the, you know, pound sign, hashtag MGG.
Can you check in notes and see if that syncs? Yes, it's there.
It's there. Okay. All right. So it does do that. So I would need to inform the people with whom I share notes, and there aren't many, there's a handful. It's my
family and you. So I would need to inform people, if you see a thing out there, live with it.
But now I'm imposing my tagging on other people And yeah, but here's the beauty of it is you could put,
You know as as we answer we could even put it into the script,
Current show and then boom it would drop into the current show. I don't you know, yeah,
Then it automatically I don't know but it seems like it would automatically go there for you,
Yeah But the problem is then you have to remove that or put a second tag in after it's read to get it out of the,
Smart folder current show as I'm thinking as no as I'm thinking about this I think for what you and I do with with Mac geek up having shared it,
Like entire folders that are shared right is the right path.
But yeah it for like all the other stuff that I do For me and maybe it's that my shared notes are just my shared notes
And I don't worry about tagging those and that's gonna be okay. I don't know. Yeah, right,
Yeah, I'm let us know feedback at Mac e cub calm. I'm really curious how you folks are using notes,
it it's a powerful app and And I think we can all learn from each other and maybe,
That's one of those things that's a good topic for one of our hangouts someday, too
That's where I'd send it to feedback at Mac geek app calm No, I meant feedback at MacGeekGab.com Pete, not the thing you said.
All right. Well, be sure to put a tag in there so that we can see what to do with it when you send it to us.
You want to take us to Allison, Pete? I do, but if you, you know what I'd like to do, since we were talking, you talked about
mail, I'd like to call a quick audible and bring up Bill and junk mail folders, and then
go to Allison. If you're cool with that. Great.
I'm very cool with that. Yep. All right.
You
Hi guys, when I'm trying to train my Apple email junk folder, does it matter what the
device I use to move it on?
New lips, sorry. When trying to train my Apple email junk filter, does it matter the device I use to move an
email to or from the junk folder?
I'm wondering if I move emails to and from the junk folder on one device, does training
apply to the other other devices and my iCloud account?
It does. Yes, it very, very much so. iCloud is trained when something is moved in or out of the junk mailbox, out from junk
to the inbox specifically.
It doesn't matter which device does the moving. It's all synced.
You can do it on your Mac. You can do it on your iPhone, your iPad, and you can even do it on iCloud as well.
You know, in the web interface.
So it's almost like when you move something in or out of junk mail that Apple silently in the background
tags it somehow. Oh, I see what you did there, Pete. Thanks for that. Yeah.
Yeah. Tag, you're it. That's exactly it. Now, I will say that Apple.
Like a lot of the big email providers,
Apple uses, Apple seems to prioritize their sort of meta-heuristics for what is and isn't
junk over your individual preferences as to what is and isn't junk.
It does honor both, but I believe that if I take something, like if the email I'm getting
from you, let's say I'm subscribed to the mailing list for your podcast, right, Pete?
Do you have one? If you don't. Well, go ahead and make one, because Pete's show, So There I Was, is great.
So let's say I'm subscribed to the upcoming email list of So There I Was, and all of those
are just going to junk.
I move those out of junk to my inbox, because I want to make sure I hear from Pete and Fig,
repeat and Fig, sorry, you're Pilot Pete here, you repeat there, I don't know, it's crazy.
What'd you say? I'm sorry, what? Huh?
And so I want to make sure I get this.
If Apple's mail filters were strongly of the opinion that that was junk, my experience with,
and my family's experience more specifically with Apple's training, is that it will take
quite some time for it to learn that for you this is not junk. And I say this to contrast it to my
experience with FastMail, where once I started properly training their filters, and I should
I should say that I went years with Fastmail, completely ignoring any attempts at training their filters,
and that is not such a good idea.
So I had them reset my trainings so that I could actually start over and do it the right way,
and I did that about a year ago, and it's been great ever since.
But if I were to move that out of junk, it would, more often than not, that's all it takes.
It definitely gives my preferences a heavier priority than, say, Apple's does. But it does work.
You just need to be persistent about it.
I find managing junk. Certainly with fast mail and even iCloud, I find managing it on the web
interface, really a great way to do it.
I put a note in my, uh, a recurring to do in my calendar for every two days.
And I just go in and it takes me all of about 40 seconds to scan through everything that's in my junk folder.
I sort it by, um, sender name so that when I get a bunch from the same Oh, that's a great idea, hang on.
Sorting by date, sorting by date is not it.
Either sort- Oh, sort by sender, because then you see you've got,
you don't want that sender at all. Boom, they're all gone.
Yeah, and what I do is I sort, and or sort by sender or sort by subject.
I find if I'm doing it when I used to only do it once every couple of weeks or once every month,
I found sorting by subject to be the most efficient way to go through it.
But I was throwing out a lot of babies in that bathwater, doing it only every couple of weeks or every month.
Now that I do it every two days, I sort by sender and it works out great, takes me very little time
And I can stay right up on it and it's super easy.
Yeah, sort by sender and then I just scroll through and the only thing I do is, you know,
mark messages that aren't junk and the rest I, you know, I, so I'm, I marked the ones that aren't junk.
I say, move those to my inbox and then the rest I just delete and they're gone and that's the end of it.
Oh, that's a great, it never occurred to me though, to do it by sender.
I've always just done it by, cause everything else is done by date.
Correct. Yeah. Date is, date's the worst way to do it. Because you're, there's just no flow for my eyes to follow.
Well yeah, because by, you know, spam by its very nature, those same spammers keep sending
you the same crap over and over.
Over and over again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah.
Yeah. And I sort, I have, I use a service called SaneBox that truly keeps me sane.
It's not, I mean, it's not terribly expensive. It's not cheap.
I don't know. It's a couple hundred bucks a year. You've been using that a couple of weeks now, as I recall.
Oh, I've been using this for about a decade. Yeah. At least, yeah.
And it, I have it set so that when things that are newsletters come in, they go into,
they're auto-filtered into a box that is newsletters and other things too.
But my newsletters box, specifically, I have it set up so that I can, you know, I don't
I also go through on an every other day basis, and you might find this as not surprising at all,
it's the opposite days from when I do my spam. So I'm only doing one or the other every other day.
And when I sort my newsletters, I absolutely do that by sender, because then it makes,
it's way better than trying to do that by date too. So yeah, yeah, thinking like,
play with this stuff, find what works for your system and your brain and you'll, yeah, you'll you'll get there.
Yeah. And when you stumble across something so simple that you want to go,
so seriously, how did I not think of this before? Send it to us.
Things like, you know, sort by sender. Yeah.
No, that's it. When you, this is the best litmus test and the best sort of mnemonic, right?
For remembering or noticing what would be a great thing to share with the, with the fam,
the MackeyCab family here is exactly what you said.
Those moments where you're like, I can't believe I ever did this before.
This is so obvious and amazing.
That's the thing that makes us ring the bell.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. So we've got to go back in time a little bit, Dave,
because this one's been sitting in the box for a few weeks now.
A couple of weeks, yeah.
But a new listener, Alison, wrote in and said, I got distracted and didn't circle back to, oh, that was me.
I said, hi Dave, when you all were talking about Pete's Synology router and disabling the admin account,
you said very quickly, quote, and change your password often, unquote.
You probably don't know this, but back in 2016, Laurie Cranor,
Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, wrote a report about studies that have proven
that if you force people to change their passwords often, they make less secure passwords.
And then she had a link in there, I gotta go find it. No, I already got it. It's in the show notes. Yep. So I wrote her a response, but.
There's this is a whole discussion thing if you get lost in the woods and.
Know that you you are lost and you know people are searching for you The thing to do is sit still so people can find you and I assume that that's why they say that about passwords
Leave your password alone. You're sitting still in the woods and someone's gonna stumble across it. Sure,
That's why they that's why they advise to change passwords. Right. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Sure, right
And so by the same token, i've always thought what's to prevent you from changing your password to their next guess,
I mean, yeah, if it's an if it's a very secure password,
you know and with things like uh, uh, some people still using lastpass I suppose but one password, um,
What's the shareware one? iCloud Keychain. I mean, there's the one built into our Macs now. Yeah.
Yeah. Using those, highly encouraging to use very secure passwords.
And if you're not using very secure passwords.
Shame on you. Bad things are going to happen. It's not and I think that's the point. Allison's trying to make and it's a it's a good point is that if you're having people who are changing their passwords routinely are more to monkey one and monkey to yeah, they're more apt to be like, forget it.
I can't I can't keep going and generating a new one. It's just gonna be monkey one. You got it. That's right. Yeah, exactly.
And or monkey one exclamation point does that work yep okay great now I'm done
and then you're using one of the five passwords that you know you you keep in
your head all the time so yeah this I gotta change my password I know how did
how did you know that I used to have a cat named Monk but we did we had a cat
named Monk and we called him monkey and I guarantee you I made some passwords
with his name, and I probably still have some of them.
But now you've got me thinking.
But you've disabled the admin account, so now you need two things, the username and the password.
I guarantee you the admin login password for my Synology was some flavor of that cat's name.
Guaranteed. I know what it was.
This is not a guess. But it's disabled so it doesn't matter.
The issue would be if you are, if your password is somehow compromised,
and I think that's the flip side of this argument, is by changing them often,
if you have accidentally written or intentionally written your password somewhere,
that got out into the wild, changing it often prevents that, right?
Changing it often does not prevent the random hackers from getting in.
They are just going to try random things and it doesn't matter whether you're changing it or not
to your point it's the if you've shared it intentionally or accidentally by changing it
often you are sort of limiting the amount of people that that would have access to the current
password and and both of these schools of thought make sense but the practical the practical result
of forcing people to change their passwords regularly,
is exactly what Allison and Lord Cranor pointed out.
Yeah.
But the other thing you should never do.
Yes, sir. And I think you'll agree with me on this, Dave, is have the same password for multiple different logins, accounts. Oh, great. Oh yeah.
Yeah. My Synology admin passwords on all my Synologies were exactly the same for a long time, long time.
And the same five character login name called ADMIN, right?
Like this was super insecure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Two-factor authentication now exists on my Synologies because gosh,
it would be a disaster. I need to do that. I don't think I've done that yet.
Yeah, I, yeah. 2FA is huge.
That's just.
Yep. I, I, I agree. Yep. I was talking to,
Two people very close to me, I don't want to out my wife and son, so I won't acknowledge that it was them,
but talking about two-factor authentication, they were having a conversation about two-factor authentication,
and at least one of them was like, oh yeah, anytime something tries to turn that on for me, I turn it off immediately.
It's such a pain in the neck to log in. I'm like, no! Don't do that!
Yeah. Yeah.
Yep. So their names rhyme with MOOC and MESA. That's correct. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It was a show with Robin Williams, wasn't it?
There you go. Shall we go to William?
We shall, we shall.
Am I reading William? Oh no, I'm going to read William. That's right.
Yeah, you're totally right.
I'm sorry. I'm back, William. I was gone for a while. I'm back now.
Same. Yep, we're here. We're both here. I'm going to read William.
William says, I've been looking, now that I'm moving into this more USB-C world,
have some USB-A in my life. I've been looking for a decent cable that has USB-A, USB-C,
lightning in a multi-ended way so that I can mix and match and be sure to be able to plug into
whatever I want. I see plenty of USB-C ones or plenty with AC, micro and lightning, but I want
one approximately two meters long and I want USB-A to power with, you know, C and lightning
on the other end and man is.
If the folks at Rolling Square could hear you ask for this, they would be so happy
because they're in-charge cables, I-N-C-H-R-G-E, cables are exactly what you're looking for.
They have them in all different lengths. The ends of them are so intelligently designed.
They are USB-C to USB-C cables at their core.
And what that means is when you are using C2C, you get to take advantage of things like data transfer, if you want, or I think they do data transfer. They definitely do.
100 watts of power because they can do full power delivery because the USB-C is the native part of
the cable. And then one end has a lightning connector that is built into the jack that
you can just snap on or off as you like. The other end has a USB-A connector that you can
can snap on or off as you like.
And that, and the best part, I didn't even know this until one of you pointed it out to me about a year ago, that the lightning connector
is also a micro USB connector.
It's like, when you look at the end of it, it's like, wow, how did they do that? It's amazing.
It looks like a lightning connector. It also looks like a micro USB connector.
So you can have, depending on whether you're looking at it and on the side.
Exactly. It's C to C, C to A, C to lightning, or A to lightning, or lightning to, you can,
and you can do, you know, lightning to C with this. I mean, it's all mix and match every
combination. You just can't do A to A with it or lightning to lightning. That's really
the only thing you can't do with it. And I know that when we migrated to phones in the
past, we might've wanted a lightning to lightning cable, but we don't need that anymore. So
Are these the folks that we ran into at CES?
They are the folks who ran into at CES, yeah. That's a great, I've got the little, I don't know,
it may be four inches long gable.
But with the multi heads like that. I still have that one. They sent me a long
They sent me two longer ones and the aforementioned the afore not mentioned people.
Misa and Mukus Acquired them. Snag one did they? Right before like they didn't make it off the kitchen counter Pete
They were like, oh my gosh, this would be I need this. Can I please like? Yep. Okay. Sure
So I don't have a long one
I, I still, I just have the little short one, but it's, it, it, it serves its purpose when I need it.
I probably am going to pick up another long one to use as my sort of default cable now.
So yeah. And my default travel cable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that is, that is what you are looking for.
Those are great little, yeah, that's a great little cable. Look, the small one that I have, my only feature request on that would be to have one end, have one like that where one end is a female and you could then multiply,
Oh, multiple.
Well, with USBC, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Right. There you go.
Right. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. It's craziness. It's craziness, Pete.
Um, I, there's some cool stuff found that I definitely
want to go through here.
Um, and before I do that, I just want to take a minute to thank all of our premium subscribers whose contributions
have come in in the past week here.
Uh, as we say, often the premium program, you can learn about it at Mackey cub.com slash premium.
It is optional. It is for those of you who can and who wish to support us directly.
It is certainly not mandatory. Listening to the show, sharing the show, sending in your questions, visiting our sponsors,
all of that stuff helps immensely as well.
With that said, I want to offer our thanks for this past week to a $25 from Andrew in
Honolulu and Bryn in Sun City and Fernando and I don't know where you're
from Fernando and Michael in Omaha and Thomas in Garden Grove and Robbie in
Hendersonville and Sharon in Wesley Chapel Randy in Westport, Kirit in
Bloomfield Hills, Ed in Torrance, Doug in Richmond, Anthony in Bournemouth, Steven
in Linlithgow, Wayne in Waipahu, Mark in New Palestine, they were all $25 in the last week,
$10 in the last week from Jeff in Chesterton, James in Melville, Joseph in Marietta, Jonathan
in Plainsboro, Paul in Lawrenceville, Gary in Babylon, Steven in Plainfield, John in
Vienna and then a $60 contribution from Steven in New York. So thank you to all of you for that. I,
Couldn't possibly we couldn't do the show without you. It's a it's a blend right our sponsors,
Others help immensely, you folks help immensely, it all really comes together in a wonderful way in.
Can't so maybe that was Steven in playing field and his other brother Steven and his other brother.
That could happen there So each and every one of those people has paid for the privilege of not having to share the show everybody else listening
You must share the show. It's state law. I don't know what state you're in. I don't know state law
Well, it's a state of bliss Pete from listening to the episode bingo Bingo, make it so. Go out and share the show, please. If you can't contribute
financially, that's cool, but sharing the show is even cooler. Be one of the cool kids.
Be one of the cool kids. We're all cool kids here. It's really great. Yeah, it's
really great. All right, for nerds and geeks, we're the cool ones. I agree. I
agree, yep. I want to, speaking of cool things, it is time to talk about some
cool stuff found. Oh boy, put your locks on your wallets. Some of this stuff is free,
some of it's not. Go with that. Stephen Robles from Apple Insider created a super mute shortcut
for the action button and so that in and of itself is a cool stuff found and I've linked
to this. It will turn on if silent mode is on, it will turn it off, it will change the
the volume level, it's a great shortcut,
and of course he has linked to it.
So when run, it gets the current mute state and then toggles the mute and the device volume
one way or another, so you can just hold that shortcut and get a response to it.
I created, and he used Toolbox Pro, which I'm pretty sure we mentioned, I think it was just
last week, here on the show. Toolbox Pro is the thing that, if we haven't mentioned it, my
apologies, it allows you to essentially, it's got all sorts of extra things to do with shortcuts.
This is one of those things that Snail, the development took over from Alex Hay when he
passed away and thankfully it still lives.
So it's just, it's a great shortcuts utility.
You've got to go check it out. So that-
You know, I was going to say, if you mentioned it last week, I wasn't listening, but you
did mention it. Yeah. I think when- One or two shows ago.
Rose took over the development of it. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's the must-have shortcuts
utility. So I'm glad it remains in development. Steven used that to create it. I created a
shortcut, Pete, that allows you, it allows me, to turn tail scale on my iPhone on and off with a
shortcut with my action button, because what would happen is I would be going to visit
the web page, like I'd be in Safari going to visit the web page of one of my local resources
on my network when I'm not home, and it wouldn't access it because I wasn't connected to my tail net.
And so then I would have to jump over and launch the TailScale app and click the connect
button and then jump back to Safari. And this happens to me quite a bit.
So I now have a shortcut, link to my action button, that connects Tailscale for me,
and, uh, when it connects it, I don't want it to show a dialogue that it's connected,
because I'm interacting with the phone, like it's in a moment where I want to do something,
and so I don't want a dialogue getting in my way,
uh, but I have it vibrate the phone when it turns it on, and then when the toggle turns it off, because it gets the state of Tailscale,
and it does something similar to Steven's thing,
It goes in the other direction and turns it off and then shows me a dialogue that it turned it off because if I'm turning
It off. I'm okay with that. So Sure that shortcut. I will I'll put that shortcut in the in the show notes here, too. Yeah for sure. Very cool. Sure. Yep,
Yeah, while we're on the subject of,
shortcuts So Rob has one for us and I just I just swear that I need to get there,
so Rob says,
You might want to check out jelly cuts, which lets you write shortcuts as code,
Instead of the UI drag-and-drop style,
This seems like magic to me and yet it exists and it works It's called jelly cuts you can write code it is you know.
Very Cody like the so much simpler to do some of these things with code And then it turns it into a shortcut for you. David, you know I write amazing code now, right? I do. Yeah, I'm aware.
ChatGPT. Yeah, that's right. Just saying.
Yep. I was, hey, I was using ChatGPT yesterday to help me write some Apple scripts to.
Replace, to fill in some of the functionality gaps that I I no longer have on my Sonoma machine now that I can't use Smallcube's mail suite.
Is I've started writing just some, um, you know, I've got keyboard maestro triggering some apple scripts to do,
Some various things in terms of how I like to file my mail,
And I even wrote one that will automatically cc the sent the from address,
If it's coming from feedback at macgeek.com or for our premium listeners premium at macgeek.com
So when i'm sending an email it auto ccs because we're using small cubes mail suite to do that now,
It's not working exactly the way that I would want, but I'm close.
I'm close. Okay. Yeah. So that's, that's actually, I don't remember if it was before the show or since the show started that you asked me if I was on Ventura or Sonoma. Yeah.
And that's kind of the reason I'm still hanging on Ventura because I need to configure.
Same.
We gotta, yeah, we gotta figure out a new workflow for ourselves because of Sonoma. Yeah.
So, yeah, I know, I know, I know it's, um, but like all my filing of mail, cause I, I used, um, mail act on,
which was also part of some mail suite to file mail.
So when I would, you know, read a message, I could triage it really quickly with just hitting control, whatever,
and it moved it to where I wanted.
That also goes away because mail suite in its entirety goes away.
Keyboard Maestro and some cute little scripting, and I was able to fully replace that functionality. It's totally fine.
So I've got a bunch of mail actions in Keyboard Maestro that are doing a lot.
Not everything I need, but a lot. Nice. You want to you want to take us to Andrew?
I do, because Andrew told us about something really cool.
Here it is, folks. Strap in, buckle in. VPN on Apple TV is here.
Yep. It's real and it's spectacular.
So there hasn't been much coverage of this. Apple TV now accommodates VPN apps. I've tried it and
it works and it's awesome. On the TV app store, there's about 10 VPN apps. None of the big
players like Express, Nord, or Proton are in the area, but a few are. And there's a link in there
about an article who shows you who's in. He says, I downloaded PureVPN and set it up on a week's
free trial. With just a few clicks, your Apple TV can appear to be anywhere in the world.
One second, I'm in Amazon Prime, Australia, my home country.
The next minute I'm in Prime, USA. Last Thursday night, USA time.
Friday morning in Australia, I wanted to watch Thursday night football, 49ers versus New York.
And I turned, well, how?
Andrew, I was a fan of yours until you wanted to watch the Giants, but OK.
Just kidding. We're Patriots fans here. We are in the minority, my friend. We are indeed.
I turned on the VPN, closed and reopened the Prime app, and it showed me the Niners match with HD and 5.1 surround.
Awesome. That's the trick.
You have to close the app and reopen it. So wakes up and works out that it's in a new location.
You do this by double clicking the TV button on the remote and flicking up to close the app.
It's amazing how you can travel 7000 miles and Amazon doesn't notice the short time in which you so do.
Okay, a few other things from my time abroad. I made the Apple Store accounts for the USA and the UK.
I have now added them as, added them in users on the Apple TV UI.
So just go into settings.
Now when I want an app from either country, I just effortlessly switch to that store,
download the app and switch back to the Australia store.
So yeah, I've downloaded PBS America, BBC, iPlayer and the United Kingdom
And both apps work perfectly with live TV
and recorded content.
One more thing.
So the VPNs actually fool Apple's own app store currently. Yeah.
Wow. That's a good thing. Maybe we should cut this out of the show. That's right.
Well, where I noticed it was in our discord, both Rod L and Porthos John were having a conversation
about how tail scale is now available on Apple TV And Porthos John said he tested it
by taking his Apple TV to work,
and connecting it to his tail net because the tail scale app now exists on Apple TV.
And he was able to see his home Plex library and connect to things directly and do all of that stuff.
And it can be used as an exit node. So your Apple TV could now be your tail scale exit node
because it's on all the time.
So yeah, it's fascinating.
At least that's what I understand. I haven't I haven't messed with the tail scale on the Apple TV yet.
I'm I I will warn you that some of these VPNs that are available on the Apple TV are not,
The best tail scales fine. Obviously you're using that with your own stuff, but like pure VPN.
They're not like My and I should I should say I didn't do research right before this episode my
recollection of them the last time I researched them was that they're one of
the VPNs that sells your your usage data and all that stuff. So just be aware of
that. You know you may not care and then that's fine. He was saying you did it
as a trial just to see if he could get it working. So the other thing that's why
this is game-changers is often the streamers have different licensing arrangements for movies, shows, different markets. Prime or Netflix Australia may
not have for example all episodes of Breaking Bad but Prime, Netflix, USA,
say Europe and Japan might.
So changing countries I can get the content I might not otherwise ordinarily get
with my existing subscription.
The only one that hasn't worked for me so far is Paramount+.
I call this a game changer as with access to other countries
I don't need to subscribe to as many streaming services
to get what I want, particularly either the offerings of PBS and BBC.
And I will also offer though, and I haven't tried it yet, but when I wrote back to them I said,
here's where I'm gonna be interested.
I had direct TV stream for a while.
Okay. And that one didn't seem to care where I was in the world.
As long as I was VPN to the United States, it would let me do it.
YouTube TV wants out of my iPad, I want your geo location, your GPS, where are you?
Yeah, but that's true with a lot of the other ones, Pete. Yeah, direct TV stream doesn't seem to care.
YouTube TV definitely does. So I'll be interested to see if I can.
Your Apple TV doesn't have any geo data to share with it though.
There you go. Yeah. Unless, unless it's using your local IP address, which Apple always gets to see
like tvOS gets to see that.
So in theory, they could use that and say, this is the actual location. If the app asks.
Oh, so the question becomes, let me ask this Dave. Yeah. I've got YouTube TV app on my Apple TV. Yes.
Can I use tail scale and watch my Apple TV on my iPad?
Is there a way to do that? No, this isn't a remote access thing.
It's not remote control.
It's showing, this is where my Apple TV, it's telling the streaming services, this is where
my Apple TV is. Correct. Yeah. Correct. So that's the problem.
I mean, and I've gotten around that mostly fine with channels DVR.
Absolutely. Yeah, because that's happening locally.
Yeah. NBC, NBC Sports, CNBC, and several of the other NBC-affiliated network affiliates have
removed themselves from TVE, which is TV Everywhere. That's not true.
I want to make sure we're saying this correctly. Oh, they have not removed themselves.
They have set up the authentication such that channels DVR is not compatible with it.
So they aren't, yeah, NBC hasn't said, no, you can't use TV everywhere is not compatible
with NBC and therefore channels can't do it.
So if you can find a way to get an M3U, then you could, if you can get an M3U URL and put
it into channels DVR, it should in fact work with it.
But I don't know. So Dave, are you hearing me? It looks like you have stopped completely.
I am hearing you. Okay, so I can't hear you, but I can see you.
But anyway, so I'll continue to vamp for just a little bit.
The point is, is I, several months ago, lost NBC networks and affiliates using channels DVR.
I've tried a few M3U file URLs to try and get NBC in, URLs to try and get NBC in, and I've gotten some local ones,
but they are only the ABC local, NBC local, that sort of thing.
I'm not getting the network feed and the shows that I want. So I don't know the,
the, I haven't figured out the workaround. No, there, there, yeah, there isn't yet. That's it's true. It's true. Okay.
I want to take a minute. I want to, I want to change gears and talk about I've,
I've been testing a couple of things here that I want to compare and contrast for you. You know how important my,
Uh second screen has become to me and i'm using them a lot when I travel Everyone that i've set up with a second screen on their laptops for travel or even just in their,
Offices wherever it is and and doesn't it's not limited to laptops. It's it's desktop people, too
Every one of them has said, I don't know why I would need that and it's it that
makes sense because without having it you don't know what you're missing and
then once you have it you can't live without it. And so I've been looking for
for what's the least expensive.
15 inch portable screen that someone can get that's not going to be terrible on your eyes.
And so by saying least expensive, we're already excluding 4K screens. Now, I will say that for
somewhere between 200 and 250 bucks, you can get a 4K screen from KYY from Amazon and they're great.
That is, you know, to me, that's, it's weird to say that that's the gold standard, but that,
That's certainly the recommended screen if you're going to use this a lot.
But for folks that are like, I really only have about $100 to spend, I don't want to spend $250,
what do you recommend? I started looking at some 1080p screens.
Now, both of these screens that I'm going to talk about here will pass power from the screen through to your Mac, so all you need to do is plug a USB-C cable
between your Mac and the screen and the screen will power your Mac if it's being powered or,
if you don't have power anywhere your Mac will power this screen and of course you can power
your Mac and have it power the screen so it works in a vacuum but it's also nice in my hotel room
I will set up one of these screens plug power into it leave another USB-C cable dangling out
of it when I bring my Mac back I just plug it in and boom now my Mac is connected to the screen
and charging and everybody's happy.
I checked out two of these. One is the ViewSonic VA1655, which on Amazon goes for $112, $113 as of the moment
that we're doing this.
It's a 1080p screen.
One of the things I really like about this is the stand on the back sort of just kicks
out from the back. So it's not taking up extra desk space with the stand.
I really like that.
The other one that I'm looking at here is the INOCN, I-N-N-O-C-N, portable 15-inch N1F Pro.
$115 so $2 more than the ViewSonic one. I've tested both of these.
The ViewSonic one, when I tested it, I was like, yep, okay, this is what you get for a 1080p screen.
When I tested the NoCN one, I was like, am I sure this isn't a 4K screen? And it's not.
However, it is the best of the 1080p screens that I have ever, ever used.
It's really super clear.
It also has, the base is a little bit different. It folds sort of out of the back of it in a different way,
but it sits very solid on the desk.
My only complaint about it is that it doesn't have a cover included with it.
So when you travel with it, you've got to be careful. What I often wind up doing-
Definitely in a padded backpack or...
Um, I just, no I don't even bother padding it. I just put it, if I'm gonna put it in my suitcase and check the bag, I put it, I just put it inside a t-shirt.
I just put a t-shirt over it. And that way it just doesn't get scratched.
That's all I'm, you know, worried about is, you know, is some, you know, one of the hooks on my luggage is gonna scratch the thing or something.
So I just make sure that it's inside a t-shirt and I'm good to go. I'm good to go.
But yeah, for 115 bucks, you can go directly to their website and buy it,
I think for 99 on a, what do they call it?
They don't call it used. They call it a refurb.
Right, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
Those are the two, I will list them here, but yeah, the InnoCN is definitely my pick of the two.
The ViewSonic isn't bad, it's exactly what I would expect a 1080p screen to be.
It's just the InnoCN for 114 is way better. It's interesting you made the comment of, are you sure it's not 4K?
Because my question to you was going to be, before you stated that,
and I guess I'll still ask it for not rhetorical purposes,
but on a 15 inch screen, can you tell the difference between 1080 and 4k?
And clearly you can. 100%. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and I don't know why, because you're right.
Like in theory, the pixel density shouldn't be that much different that you can tell.
But whatever, whatever it is that leads a manufacturer to call something 1080p versus
calling it 4k. And I don't mean to say that people are lying. I just, I'm not an engineer
of displays, so that's as far as I get to go with those comments, is it, there's definitely
a visible difference between the two.
So are you saying they're almost good as, as good as the retina display, Dave?
Just, you know, to use technical terms.
Well that's the thing is, I'm using them sitting next to my, my retina display, right?
And so like, that's the, that's the, the comparison because it's literally right there, you know, my magic.
I'm being a smart aleck because is the Retina's display not a 4k?
Or is it 1080?
It depends on which Retina display we're talking about. When you're on your phone, it's not even close to 4k.
Yeah, right. When you're on a 5k iMac, it's 5k. Your MacBook Pro is gonna be different than my,
then, you know, your 16-inch MacBook Pro is gonna be different than my 13-inch Air. But Retina means a pixel density
be tight enough such that your eyes don't see the pixels.
Pick the pixels out, yeah.
Which, what's funny is, go back and use a machine that's eight or nine years old.
Oh yeah. And you're like, you're squinting, you're like, I can't seem to focus,
my glasses are dirty, what's going on?
Oh yeah, that's the way we used to look at computers every day. Every day?
Yeah, every day, yeah, exactly. I didn't even notice it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those great big console 25-inch.
480 resolution screens. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly Wow, yep
So that's that's those two things that I wanted to compare for us all,
I bet you got two more. I do have two more Pete because I'm and I'm really excited about these two I have.
I Have air pods Pro. I like my air pods Pro they don't fit my ears as well as they do for some people and so I that puts me
in a position of looking for better you know better yeah it thinks that for my
ears but that still have true wireless that still have and by true wireless I
mean you know there's no wires coming from my ears that still will charge in
in the case that the case will charge on a cheap pad
that can sync to multiple devices of mine with ease,
you know, all of that stuff.
And so I've been testing two of these sets of headphones, the JBL TOR Pro 2, which is 250 bucks on Amazon
and the Poly Voyager Free 60 Plus UC,
which is 295 on Amazon as of today.
And both of these check all of those boxes.
They also both check a very different box. And that is that their cases do something
that Apple's cases do not do.
And their cases have touchscreens on them, Pete. And- No way.
Yeah. And the touchscreens can manipulate the ear buds while they're in my ears, right?
So not only do they show me the charge status and other things on them.
And of course the folks at JBL's PR team put my Mac Geek Out logo on the set
that they sent me to test out, so that I would be impressed with that out of the box experience.
They must have lost mine in the mail, I'm just saying. Yeah, but using the touch screen on both of these,
I can control the ambient sound.
I don't have to remember like, oh, which is it? How do I squeeze it just the right way to do it?
Which you can, I just don't have to remember it.
And it's really nice on an airplane when I see the flight attendants coming along,
if I've got my ear buds in, say, you know, my polys or my JBLs.
I just tap the button on the thing and now I'm hearing ambient sound,
I can see the battery charge level,
I can control the EQ, I can set sleep timers, the spatial sound on the JBLs is configurable this way,
It like so many different features that and I can control play and pause on the on the on the cases too
That's nice going between I both of these fit me better than air pods Fit alone is the thing that has me choosing the JBL tour pro twos over the Polly's because they just fit my ears better,
But really either one of these is a great choice And I like them both better than my air pods, too
So either the Polly, you know the Voyager 360 plus you see or the JBL tour pro two
They they are fantastic little things. Let me ask a couple questions. Yeah, man,
The sounds are which one sounds better.
You're an audiophile I Use the JBL's more than the Polly's,
I don't have a preference of the they both sound really good. Yeah, I don't neither one of them
So I would not choose one over the other for sound. Okay. Yeah, and but I would choose them both over air pods for sound,
Yeah, and then, okay, interesting.
Very good. All right. And then what was the price on each of them again?
Yeah. Cause that looks like some serious coin there.
250 and 295. 250 for the JBLs, 295 for the Polys.
Yeah. Okay. So. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So I would, at any price and I, you know, I
should just be clear in case it wasn't obvious.
I received both of these as review units. So I paid, I paid the same price for both of them.
Um, I would choose the JBLs over the Polys, but But again, it's just about how they fit in my ears,
but they both, if I had never tried the JBLs, I probably wouldn't think to try anything other than the polys.
They fit my ears well.
They're, they're better than, than the AirPods. So, yeah, but I, I like the JBLs.
They must've lost my review units in the mail. But we'll get here next week.
So interesting on that feature, I just want to mention that for the first time I tried the
auto voice detect in my AirPods last night, we were standing outside the airplane.
They were loading the airplane and we try to stay out of the pilot's way
because the only jump seats are in the flight deck,
with the pilots on the particular airplane I was riding on. So we stand outside on the top of the stairs,
waiting for them to load the airplane and boy is it loud out there.
The elevator that loads these 15,000 pound cans is a loud diesel engine and it screams.
So I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna put my AirPods in so that I use them as noise cancellation,
which really works great.
Until you're trying to have a conversation with somebody and as soon as you start talking,
all that noise gets amplified right through to your ears. It's like, ah!
So, doesn't work in a loud environment when you're trying to have a conversation.
I get what they're doing, if you're listening to music and enjoying your own little world,
and then you need to talk to somebody, in.
It is a nice feature. When you're trying to use them as earplugs, and that's not their
intended purpose, I get it, but when you're trying to use the noise cancellation to protect
your ears from noise, that ain't the way to go.
You gotta turn off the voice part that lets the voice in. The auto-detection, yeah. You just gotta turn it off.
I've seen people at concerts this summer using their AirPods as earplugs, and I mean, just
like you did. I mean, it works.
I do it all the time. You'll notice at the hockey game I wear them. Yeah, interesting.
Because for two reasons one I listen to the to the radio feed so you can hear about 90 seconds later
Okay, what was that penalty? I missed that. Yeah, that's what it so I get that but the other advantage is is there noise-canceling?
So I hear that what what um, what app do you use to listen to the radio radio use iHeart radio? Yeah.
There's a local broadcast. Yeah, and a choccy games. Yeah, I get it there. That's a really smart thing to do I mean I I all I
As a kid, I remember going with my dad and my grandmother to see baseball games,
and there would be people that would bring their little AM radios,
and they wouldn't even have headphones.
They would just keep them relatively quiet. But I always appreciated it.
It was like, oh, I get to hear, like, the calls that you, you know,
far less talking happens in the stadium or arena or rink than does on the radio,
because on the radio, you're presumably not also watching, right?
So, yeah, that's interesting. Huh.
Interesting. Interesting. Cool.
So, yeah. Thank you, folks. Thanks for hanging out with us. It has been an absolute blast.
Is the band lost? The band's not lost. Where's the band, Dave?
No. The sound thing that happened before, I wound up connecting twice to StreamYard.
I saw that.
Well, but I didn't know it because my window, I'm still on Monterey on this machine,
It has that problem where sometimes when you click, it brings another window to the bottom
of the screen or something.
And so I didn't think I was connected to StreamYard, but I could still hear you.
And it's like, what is going on? So then I started reconnecting to StreamYard and that's when I showed up twice and it muted
me and all that fun stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Cause it was funny.
And that's where you heard me talking to hear myself talk and mentioned the word vamping
and all that stuff. Folks that I'm looking at two Daves at the bottom of the screen and going, Oh, where,
It's Dave and his other brother Dave. Yeah, exactly.
Here's the show title for you. There you go. It's Dave and his other brother Dave. Yeah.
So, yeah, that's all that happened. Once I realized it, it was like, oh, I know what to do.
All right, great. Fun stuff. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks.
Thanks for checking out all our sponsors at matgeekup.com slash sponsors,
and then, of course, fastmail.com slash mgg.
Today, thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you.
Thanks to all of you for sending in all of your tips and questions and cool stuff found.
It makes what we do so much fun because it means we really do get to learn five new things
along with you and that keeps me excited about it. It keeps us excited about it. It's amazing.
So thank you for hanging out with us. Here we are into quadruple digits.
I've been trying to decide if we're supposed to put a comma now.
Are we part of the comma club because we're in the four-digit show. I don't know.
I don't know what to do, I don't know.
Pete, as I'm cogitating about this, do you have any advice for me?
I do, I got new shirts for us.
And right on the shirt, that advice is printed for the world to see.
That's a T there, not an F. Don't gif, no, don't get caught.
Music.