Greetings, folks! It is time for Mac Geek Gab, and I'll bring us our quick tip of the week.
I've been traveling quite a bit lately. I'm traveling again this week.
And when I park my car at the airport, I take a picture of the parking sign
that shows me the level and the location on the level.
That's part of the tip, but the biggest part is favorite that picture.
Because if you're traveling, chances are you're about to go take a bunch of
pictures and having to scroll back through and figure out where that one picture
is can be a real pain in the neck when you've just gotten off a long flight.
More quick tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab
1030 for Monday, March 25th, Tolkien Reading Day 2024.
Music.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Hub, the show where you send in quick
tips like that, or we share quick tips like that.
You send in questions that we answer. You send in cool stuff found.
We share all of that. We string it together into an agenda such that we all
have the best odds at learning at least five new things every single time we get together.
Sponsors for this episode include ZocDoc.com slash MGG, where you can sign up
for free and download the app today.
Backblaze.com slash MGG, where you can get their fully featured no-risk free trial.
And Manscaped.com, where coupon code MGG gets you 20% off and free shipping.
And if you don't know that I've been using ChatGPT to write my ad scripts and
make them a little bit interesting and even a little quirky,
I think you'll agree that knowing which three sponsors we have today,
you're going to want to listen to what ChatGPT had me say.
We'll talk more about those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham,
New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
Here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen. And also here in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete.
And could be back in the States.
Dave, I've been traveling a little bit lately, too. You may know that.
I did. I figured that out. Yeah. My trick is because sometimes I will go months
at a time without being at my car that I keep in Memphis.
Right. So, you know, where is that darn thing? And I have wandered the parking
lot before I came up with this method, which is to, I'll put it in reminders.
I'll create a reminder for the date that I'm expected to return.
And I'll write down where the car is there. So when I land, it comes up,
oh, hey, you know, here's where your car is.
And if I'm going to go out to the car that day, fine. If not,
I'll move it to the next time I expect to be in Memphis and need my car.
So maybe I should take a picture, put it in that reminder.
Reminder and yes and we've got a hybrid of what it is
yeah exactly and you can yeah you
can easily you i think you can put a picture in a reminder i'm pretty
sure you put notes and urls and invitations and
all kinds of stuff so yeah yeah oh i like that
that's great yeah that's good yeah anything i can
do not to have to think especially and you know
you do travel frequently far more than most people and
certainly far more than me but lately you
know i've i've what we did ces yes then i was in i
went somewhere and then i was in mexico and then
i was at south by south by and then
this week at podcast movement getting off
the plane it's like often if it's been months since
i've traveled i will generally remember where i parked but you know getting
off the plane after like even after just mexico it was like um i remember where
i parked there for ces yeah i'm like oh yeah we had that spot for ces we actually
had a great spot for ces yeah that was good yeah Yeah, it was good.
But it's like, but that's what I remember. And it's like, yeah,
but I don't have that one now.
So another tip for parking at the airport that I will share in this definitely
works at Boston Logan. And I only share it because I love you.
We don't want to share this with everyone at Boston Logan.
It's a multi-level garage and there will be signs that say this level is full.
This level is full. You got to go park on that level. I like to park on the
level where I don't have to put me and my luggage in an elevator to go up or down.
But that level is always there's always a sign that says this level is full. Here's the thing.
The person that is the first one to leave the level is not the person who changes that sign.
And so the nice part about that sign, it is deterring everyone who's arriving
from even thinking about looking on that level.
I always just go to that level and invariably find a spot, usually one very
close to the door. It's quite fantastic.
So I share that tip because I love you all. Please, please don't ruin it for us.
Yeah. And I'll add the one. That's a good tip. Yeah. And I'll add the one to
that, which is often if you use prepaid parking. Yeah.
We got turned away for the first time ever. We got, we prepaid and we got to
the place and they're like, oh yeah, no, we're full, but go down the street
to the, you know, to this address and they'll take care of you.
And they were like, yeah, well you didn't prepay here and we don't have any
spots either because it was spring break or winter break for the schools.
And so we wound up, you know, have a backup is I guess my point.
Yeah. You know, always up your computers, back up your parking plan.
And does nobody use, does nobody use the maps thing?
I guess that wouldn't really work for a multi-level garage, but like,
doesn't maps like automatically pin?
I never used the feature. It's like you get a pin of where you park.
It does start. At least my iPhone does that from time to time.
I live in a small town, so I never lose my car, but.
Yeah. I've used that in parking lots where it's a, you know,
fixed level ground level kind of thing.
I don't know how well it does in a garage because
it's relying on gps and i don't know
how good the gps is in any given garage like i mean i'm sure it varies so yeah
yeah that ends it for the travel geek gab folks that's right thanks for listening
we'll see you know uh simon has a tip about max is it okay if i share something
about about computers guys on travel geek here great uh simon says.
Most of us know and love Quick Look, where you press the spacebar in the finder,
Quick Look in the finder, where you highlight a file, you press the spacebar,
and it shows you some quick look at the file. If it's text, it shows you the contents.
If it's an image, it shows you the image. image
and then most of us
also know but this might be a quick tip to some that you
can use the arrow key uh arrow keys up and
down to move to other files and it will just like move the quick look around
to other files which is great if you've got you know four images that you're
trying to figure out which one you quick look one of them if it's not it drive
yourself around with the arrow keys and it finds it there right and then when
you're done you hit the space bar again quick Quick look goes away.
So all of that was the setup from Simon. But really, there's like four quick
tips baked in to the setup.
Simon says, did you also know that if instead of tapping the space bar,
if you press and hold the space bar, it shows you the file.
When you let go of the space bar, it goes away.
So if you know you just want to truly quick, quick, it's like the quick,
quick look, right? Right.
Because instead of it leaving quick look on the screen, if you hold the space
bar down, it's only up on the screen for as long as you hold it down and then,
uh, and then you release it.
So, and you know, I don't know what the timing is. I'm sure that's somewhere
set in the settings, how many milliseconds, but that is one of those tips that
instantly became part of my workflow.
Well it's like yep yep yeah
it works the way you would expect it
to work like it the timing for
me anyway was exactly what i thought it should be right whatever that i'm surprised
i hadn't stumbled across that one before but that's what i mean about it being
perfect yeah right is that we didn't stumble on it like it didn't stick once
and we wondered why it just like if you hold it long enough.
I've been using it all week now. Did you know about this, Adam?
Not at all. I'm going to try it now. Yeah. No, not right now.
Yeah, yeah, I got you. Moving forward.
Let's see. Doug brings us our next quick tip.
He says, I have set up some shortcuts that, oh, I guess he has two things.
He says, I know you recently mentioned carabiner elements on the show.
He says, I'm a FileMaker developer, And in FileMaker Pro, the return and enter
key perform severely different functions at times.
Consequently, my brain cannot handle the fact that my MacBook does not have an enter key.
So I use Karabiner Elements for one simple thing.
I reprogram the right side of the keyboard's command key to be the enter key.
My brain is now trained to use
that key as it is closer to that on my extended keyboard at the office.
And it has removed many great frustrations yeah
that's that's something worth the idea that
he mapped only one of his command keys
the one on the right is interesting because as the way that i type when i hit
the command key it is often uh the left side command key i do some things where
i'm i'm using my keyboard in a like in a different way uh where the right side
command key is actually the one I use,
but when I'm typing or whatever, it's, it just happens to be the left one.
I hold the command key with the left hand and hit whatever the key is with the right hand.
So, and, and things like carabiner elements can, can, can differentiate between the two.
I'm saying with the left, likely because that's where X, C, and V are. Right. Ah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. As I'm thinking about this, the only place that
I use the right command key, believe it or not, is FileMaker.
And because it's Travel Geek Gab today, I will share that I built years ago,
I built a FileMaker database that is my trip packing list.
And i have all of each item
is in there i have uh flags
for whether it's for like a business trip or
a personal trip or if it's something that i would bring
one time and then delete later and then i also have it calculate i put in the
dates of when i'm leaving and when i'm coming back and i have some items like
say underwear that the quantity is dependent on the trip length and i I have
others like my iPhone charger where it is not, and I have that flag.
And so I have it calculate how many of any given thing I need to bring,
but, but it works out great.
What I do is in, and where I, where this command key tip comes in is I use,
I, I do my search business trip, personal trip, narrow it down.
And then I look at everything that was filtered out from the search first to
make sure that I didn't unintentionally with my, you know, broad search filter something out.
And I click through with the mouse on my right side, every item.
And if I want to move it into the group that I would pack, because I'm looking
at the omitted things, I want to omit it from the omitted group.
And that's command T in FileMaker.
And so for that, my left hand on the keyboard is perfect with my right thumb
or the thumb on my left hand, which is on the right side of my left hand.
That's how most of us work.
You know, I do command T with my thumb and my pinky and just,
and uh yep sorry says the guy in the ghostbusters uniform nerd.
Yes i haven't i'm my hi my name's dave and i'm a nerd yeah i love file making
for that yep but he does have another tip but if there's anything on on this
one wait let's do you have something to add on this one pete i was just gonna
ask I ask if you thought better touch tool might remap that key as well.
It probably would as with keyboard maestro. Yep. Yeah.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. There's right. You're, you're, so if you already have one of
those other two programs, correct.
Yeah. Don't, don't drive yourself. You don't, you don't need something new.
Um, yeah, just, just go and get, uh.
Yeah. You use whatever one you have. So I'll put, I'll put all three of those
in the show notes for everyone to enjoy.
And then his second tip is he says, I've set up some shortcuts that I use to
start and end zoom calls.
My house is very automated. So it closes the blinds, turns on the proper lighting,
including a cool little lamp that I have to indicate to the rest of the house
that I'm on a call. like the recording light in a studio. I like this.
Open Zoom, turns on Stage Manager.
Oh, good use for Stage Manager. And finally, he says, I needed to set my screen
resolution to a lower value as many of my clients are working on much smaller screens.
Ah, so when he shares his screen, they don't get stuck with his 27-inch monitor.
I could not find a way to do this natively in shortcuts, but I did find this
cool little utility on the Mac App Store called Display Menu that is Apple scriptable.
Oh, I like this. That's good.
And he says, adding a short Apple script to the shortcut solved all my issues.
And he just has an Apple script that says to tell display menu to set the screen
resolution to what he wanted it set to.
That's really interesting. Interesting. So display menu.
First of all, I love that you have this, um, shortcut slash automation that
configures your computer and your house for zoom calls.
I basically have the same thing here in the podcast studio that I,
I, when I launched like Mac geek gab, it sets the image on the screen behind
me, turns on the light, turns off my, um,
my, my air purifier and it does all all the things, right? Launches all the apps that I need.
I have thought about putting a red light out the side, the studio that goes
on when I'm in podcasting focus mode. So.
Closed set. Do not disturb. Yeah. I mean, why not? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huh.
Display menu. I like, okay. That's yeah. Interesting.
Anything to add to, uh, to this before we move on here? Nope.
Just great tip again. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Okay.
I kind of want to like pause the show and go like experiment with some of this stuff, but I won't.
Um, speaking of zoom, this dawned on me this week, somebody online was talking about, uh,
I think it was Alison Sheridan was talking about the microphone that we mentioned
on the show a while back and that it has a noisy mute switch and that that's
not good for like podcasting or even zoom calls.
And I thought about this and I've thought about it a lot. But if you are using
Zoom without headphones, so you are using, you know, you have your speakers in your environment,
wherever that is, that's the sound that you're getting from your participants
on the Zoom call, and then you have your microphone, obviously, that's picking up you.
Perhaps it doesn't need to be said, but I'm going to say it.
Your microphone also picks up the sound of the people that are coming out of
your speakers, albeit at a lower volume.
And Zoom has its echo cancellation logic in there that knows to listen for that
and adapt itself and adjust so that it's not sending that audio back to folks
and having them get an echo.
If you need to mute yourself and you use the microphone's mute button and it
is truly muting the microphone, there are some mics where the mute button on
the microphone actually tells Zoom to do its software mute.
That's different. But most microphones don't have that functionality, that tie-in.
So if you mute your microphone, Zoom will eventually think that the sound that's
coming out of your speakers is not making it to your microphone and it will
lower its threshold for echo cancellation such that when you unmute your microphone,
it's going to be flooded with this sound that was always there and people on
the call will get echoes.
So if you're on a Zoom call and you need to mute yourself, I highly,
especially if you're using your speakers, if you're on headphones,
it's kind of a different story.
But because hopefully your headphones aren't so loud that it's bleeding into your microphone.
And if they are, please protect your hearing. Yeah.
Use the Zoom Mute. Use the software Mute inside Zoom, and you can get,
you know, there's buttons that you can buy if you want to automate that so that
you have like a button on your desk so you don't have to dig through Windows and do it.
Or you can use keyboard shortcuts from any of the things we just mentioned,
Karabiner Elements and, you know, Keyboard Maestro and all that stuff.
So, that's my tip.
You could also use Push to Talk, right? On Zoom, you could use Push to Talk
as well. Which is the spacebar when you're in mute, I think.
I think by default, it's a spacebar. So if you're already muted,
if you just hold the spacebar down, that'll unmute you, let go of the spacebar,
you're muted again. As long as Zoom is the frontmost app.
Well, yeah. I know a lot of people, especially on audio-only Zoom calls,
might not have Zoom as the frontmost app all the time. Just saying.
Yeah. I've been in those meetings, too. Same.
Was it SNL? Did the, uh, which one of them did the, uh, if real life meetings
were like zoom meetings and they're all sitting at the conference table and
the one guy sitting there talking and they're like, dude, you're on mute.
You're on cause cause nothing, no sounds coming out. No sound.
Yeah. And then all of a sudden the guy disappears and he's like,
yeah, sorry. I got booted.
Comes back in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So just be aware of it, that you are limiting Zoom's ability
to do its echo cancellation if you're using the microphone's mute,
if it's all happening through speakers.
Again, headphones changes this calculus, or at least I hope it does.
Alright, what else do we have for quick tips here? Adam, you want to take us to Bob?
Yeah, I've got to put a little context on this. I can't remember which show
it was, but a few shows back we were talking about backing up your family's laptops remotely.
So I mentioned my daughter's going off to college and how do we do backups when
you've got computers in different places or people who don't hook them to the
network or who don't hook them physically to anything and they're just sitting on the network.
And so Bob wrote and he And he says, I have a similar problem in that there
are mostly MacBook Pro laptops in the family.
Using an older Mac as a backup server with Carbon Copy Cloner running on that
server, he says you can pull backups from the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops in the house.
This is something I have not played around with the Carbon Copy Cloner, which is great.
He says, actually, it can pull backups from any Mac that is accessible even
across the Internet via a secure encrypted connection. And if the MacBook Pro
is set to wake for network access, you can get backups from sleeping Macs.
Luckily, at night, my family Macs are all on their chargers.
In my case, it's an old Mac with a network-mounted Synology drive,
but it could be just a large backup drive, two or three directly attached to the Mac.
Carbon Copy Cloner backup utility on the server Mac has scheduled tasks for each MacBook Pro.
And at one time there was a task for my
mom's imac 300 miles away yes i
had to set up port forwarding on my mom's router and let
that make an ssh connection but i was able to specify a
high numbered port on the internet facing side that went
to the imax port 22 which keeps the script kitties
from pounding on port 22 yeah so that
is a that is a great tip and i might have
have to play around with that yeah i don't know
why i haven't thought of that but i have carbon copy cloner
yeah same i had no i yeah i
never thought to use it this way and to further thwart the script kitties you
could use a vpn to connect to your mom's network so there isn't just this wide
open port uh the internet but you could yes pete thanks beat me to it with the
best answer Which is tail scale. Yeah.
Sort of a tail sharing a tail net with a family member is like,
it has to be the right family member.
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Fun. I like it. I love learning stuff.
This, this show is great. I, I, uh, I'm glad this show exists cause I get to,
I feel like most weeks I get to learn the most. So. Right. Yeah.
Uh, you want to take us to Martin Pete speaking of learning the most.
I'm going to do some. Yeah.
Cause I learned something, uh, kind of the hard way here. And so this may be
a not so quick tip. Okay. Cause I've got questions when we're done.
Okay. So, but Martin writes in, he says, uh, in the latest episode of MGG,
the show was talking about iCloud sync, which I use across all my devices.
One thing I've found is that I want a temporary, if I want a temporary folder
on my desktop, but not for other devices, I create a folder and name it whatever.
Okay. Uh, this Mac only. Sure. And then he puts on the extension .nosync, .-n-o-s-y-n-c.
And then he hides the extension in folder preferences. That provides a way of
not syncing that folder, which I find very useful. I hope you find this helpful.
Take care and don't get caught. That's brilliant. Okay.
I knew and forgot about the .nosync thing. So I am ever so thankful for the reminder of that.
The idea of hiding the extension on that fold, like going into folder preferences.
That could be problematic.
Well, or not. Like, I kind of like it. Like, it cleans up the view.
And, yeah, but you're right. It, if you forget. Hey, how come that didn't get synced?
You're right. You said it that way, dude. Right, because you told me not to. Or do that.
But, yeah, .nosync. I like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Right, that's good.
Isn't that brilliant? Couldn't you just put a tag on that instead, right?
So you can identify which ones have no sync on it? Oh, yeah.
And then wouldn't it also give it a color? Yes, it would give it a color. There you go.
That was going to be my other thing. It's either a tag or there's the set app,
which you can change your icon of a folder. Oh, right.
I forget the name of that app. You can change your icon of a folder without a third-party app.
Right. Right. It just, it happens to make it super easy. Right.
Drag it what you want it to look like. Boom. Done. Yeah. Yeah.
So, so I went to go try this and got taken down a huge rabbit hole because I went, wait a minute.
I logged into iCloud Drive and looked at it. And I go, that doesn't look like my desktop.
I've got not one, but two desktops. And I've shared you with some screenshots with Dave pre-show.
These are like, now it's like iCloud Drive Archive, iCloud Drive Archive 1.
I've got all these old desktops with files. I'm like, yeah, that was on my desktop.
I completely forgot about it. It's gone. It's not on my desktop now.
Now, Dave, I'm sure I'm not the only person who's done this.
Do you have any idea what on earth I did to myself? Yeah.
Asking for a friend. No, I do have ideas about this.
Okay. So what Pete's describing is on his Mac, if he goes into his home folder,
he sees two folders that say iCloud Drive Archive and a second one called iCloud Drive Archive 1.
And in each of these is an archive of some former state of an iCloud drive on that Mac.
And then also in your iCloud drive, if you go to desktop, you see not just a
desktop folder, but you also see desktop Pete's MacBook Pro,
desktop Pete's MacBook Pro 21.
So when you turn on documents and drive syncing in iCloud, it will ask you sometimes
if you just want to merge everything, replace everything.
We say on the show often, syncing is hard.
This is the result of Apple's attempt at the multiple desktops that you see in the iCloud drive are.
The result of Apple's attempt to not cause you to lose any data when you try
to essentially merge, turn on two computers with different desktops for iCloud Drive.
Okay. So it's like when I went from my old, from my MacBook Pro 21 to my 23.
Yeah. Okay. But these, in this case, it's an iCloud Drive desktop.
And then there's these subfolders that are the former desktops of your other computers.
The idea is that you as the
user would go through and take the things out
of those folders and put them back on your desktop as
you wish and now you just have one desktop that's sort of synced and everything's
fine the archive ones are when you've turned icloud drive off on your computer
it grabs that archives what you had there and then sort of returns you to your
home desktop folder and your your home documents,
folders, and all of that stuff.
So my recommendation then to other folks would be go log into iCloud,
go to your iCloud Drive and see if you haven't done this to yourself as well.
Go, oh, there's that file. I had no idea it was even missing, but I just assumed.
Take a look in iCloud on the web, sure.
But also look in your home folder to see if you, on all of your Macs,
to see if you have these iCloud drive archives that, that would be kind of the,
the, the, the, the next thing to do.
Uh, okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I'm just looking in my home folder.
Do I see any? Yeah, there they are. Archives. Yeah.
Yeah. That, yeah. I didn't even notice those there. Well, no,
you point, but I don't spend much time in my home folder. No,
no, no, you sent us a screenshot of those.
You just didn't realize that they were in your home folder when you sent the
screenshot, I think. Yeah. I don't spend much time in the home folder, right? Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Have you ever run into anything related to this, Adam? Have any thoughts to share?
Nope. I mean, you guys covered that pretty well. I mean, I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah.
I just didn't even realize.
All right, folks, you know, we're always here with quick tips and things that are important.
And today we're reminding you that while our gadgets are smart, we've got to be smarter.
Remember, March 31st isn't just any other day. It's World Backup Day.
And in the spirit of not becoming April fools, we're all about backing up our
digital lives with our sponsor, Backblaze. Now, we've been in the trenches, folks, right?
We've seen the horror of data loss and the havoc it wreaks.
But with Backblaze, it's like having a digital safety net for just $99 a year.
This is the kind of peace of mind that makes even a hard drive crash feel like a minor hiccup.
Backblaze automatically keeps a copy of everything, yes, everything, safe in the cloud.
Deployment? A breeze. Even if your tech skills stop it, have you tried turning it on and off again?
And for those of us managing more than our fair share of devices,
their enterprise control is like the Gandalf of data governance,
guiding your business data safely across Middle Earth or the Internet.
Got hit by some ransomware or just accidentally deleted your thesis on the cultural impact of emojis?
Well, Backblaze has your back with multiple restore options.
And if you're old school, they'll even ship a hard drive to your door with all your data. Not a fit?
Send it back within 30 days for a full refund. It's backup with a bow on top.
So don't get caught without a backup plan this World Backup Day.
Seriously, backup your stuff. Go to backblaze.com slash mgg where you can sign
up for a free trial to see why Backblaze is recommended by Inc. Magazine.
Again, go to backblaze.com slash mgg for that no-risk free trial and join the
over 55 billion files restored club.
Because in the world of tech, it's not about if you'll need a backup,
but when. And our thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring this episode.
All right, folks, it's spring officially now, which means it's time for spring cleaning.
And while you're dusting off those gadgets, don't forget about the gadgets for personal cleanup.
I'm talking about one from our sponsor, Manscaped, the Lawnmower 5.0 Ultra.
Now, look, I'm not the hairiest guy in the tech world, but if I were,
I'd be all over this like static on your favorite fleece.
This lawnmower 5.0 is like the gadget to beat all gadgets.
Seriously, it's got interchangeable blades for that precision trim or the full
mow down dual LED spotlights.
So you won't miss a spot even like in the hard to see areas.
Waterproof. Yep. Because why not make your shower a one stop shop for cleanliness?
This. It's got a compact case. You can take it with you everywhere you go.
And speaking of travel and comfort, I'm going to California next week.
They sent me these Manscaped Boxers 2.0.
I love that they use version numbers on their stuff.
These things are amazing. They're like cloud storage for all your bits.
I'm actually excited about the plane ride to California because I know I'll be in comfort heaven.
And the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra isn't the only gadget they have, right?
You can get the full grooming experience with Manscaped Signature Beard Hedger
Pro Kit and Handyman Electric Face Shaver.
So whether you're looking to craft your signature look or clean up that neckline,
These are always the right tools for the job.
Get 20% off and free shipping with code MGG at manscaped.com.
That's 20% off and free shipping with the code MGG at manscaped.com.
Nothing like a little spring cleaning in your pants or wherever else.
And our thanks to Manscaped for sponsoring this episode.
All right, you know me. I'm always on the lookout for the techiest,
slickest solutions to life's little problems.
I like to spoil myself a little bit. Well, healthcare is no different.
I mean, why wait on hold to book a doctor's appointment when you can find and
book the Michael Jordan of doctors with just a few clicks on ZocDoc?
ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare highly rated
in-network doctors near you and instantly book appointments with them online.
Once you find the doc you want, you book them immediately. There's no more waiting awkwardly on hold.
And all these doctors have verified reviews from actual real patients.
We're talking about booking appointments with tens of thousands of top-rated,
patient-reviewed, credible doctors and specialists.
You can filter specifically for ones who take your insurance or are located
near you or both and treat basically any condition you're searching for.
The typical wait time to see a doctor booked on ZocDoc is between just 24 and
72 hours. That's it. And sometimes you can even score same-day appointments.
Like I said, I've used this and I think you're really going to like it too.
Go to ZocDoc.com slash MGG and download the ZocDoc app for free.
Then find and book a top-rated doctor today.
That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash M-G-G.
ZocDoc.com slash M-G-G. And our thanks to ZocDoc for sponsoring this episode.
All right. We did a bunch of quick tips. Pete, you brought us into questions
deftly out of that last quick tip. Why don't you bring us into our first listener question?
Uh, I can do that, Dave. I'm sorry. I was looking at quick tips.
Cali question. That was Cali, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let me,
let me find Cali here. I'm sorry about that.
Um, I was, and if you noted me, uh, I missed it.
So Cali says, uh, lost, long, lost.
You're not lost Cali. I am a long time listener.
First time asker. I have an ACEs RT alpha x-ray. That's AX88U router in my apartment.
And I was thinking of moving to a mesh system because there are some spots in
here that Wi-Fi ain't so good.
So my question is, should I invest on two UniFi Express units and Lite 8 PoE or something like that?
I need to have six Ethernet cables to use with my TV, Xbox, Hue Bridge,
Harman Kardon soundbar.
I'm coming to your place, man. Sounds like you're wired for sound.
Mac mini server and Apple TV for the future.
This setup would cost me in Finland around 380 euros, but is it worth it?
I could get something like the Asus RT-AX1800U for 68 euros and use it with my AX88U with AI mesh.
Do you know, is Asus AI mesh any good? What benefits do I get with UniFi, if any?
And does it matter in aces set up
if the inferior router is first it would
be question mark thank you for a great show cali i'm
i hope i'm pronouncing it right it's not calais or something it might be calais
i it could be a swedish name i think is we're going to americanize it and butcher
it right here there you go yep probably so yeah um so there's actually a lot
to to dissect here or the...
I haven't spent, I've used the Asus mesh a little bit.
I haven't spent a ton of time with it, but we do have, there are a lot of you
out there who use it and love it and, and have nothing but good things to say about it.
Which, and it might be the simplest way to go because you're going to have your,
you get to use the tech that you've already got.
So you don't have to like decommission something and buy all new stuff.
So that's where I would go.
As far as putting the inferior router first.
I think your reason for that, and this is based on a follow-up conversation.
Was based on the number of ports available and needing more ports in one location
versus another and that sort of defining where the inferior router goes.
You can get a switch a network switch
an inexpensive network switch to mitigate that
and then put the more powerful wi-fi access
point with its router attached wherever that
needs to be i think you're going to be okay with that.
In either in in either way right like
you might want the more powerful router as the first or
the more powerful device is the first thing because it's going to be handling
all of your routing and sort of the heavier lifting thing and then
the other inferior one could be your uh your access
point your satellite and then just hang a switch off of
that so that you can have more ethernet devices and that's not
unique to aces you could do that with any router
that like there there are a lot of people with eros who
hang a switch off of you know the
one or two ethernet ports on the ero depending on which model it
is and give themselves lots of ports on
essentially a wireless link which is which
is really nice because that way think about this if
you've got you know let's say your internet comes
in on one side of the house and your tv is
on the other side of the house so you put an ero or any
sort of mesh axe wire wireless mesh
access point over there hang a
switch off of it so that you've got plenty of ports now you
plug your tv your apple tv your nvidia.
Shield and i'm loving the the nvidia shield uh it's really
the best plex client that exists uh you know your
xbox whatever you've got into the ethernet
ports now they're not competing for wi-fi space
they're all just using the ethernet into the ero and then the eros managing
the backhaul and it can wind up being a more efficient setup so that's what
i would do that's the first part i wanted to unpack there's more i want to dig
into here but let's i'm going to pause here adam do you have anything to add or repeat.
No, I mean, I guess I do. Yeah. I mean, I like the idea of, and you know,
we can get caught up in technology and like new great stuff and you know, that sort of thing.
But I like this idea of, Hey, if you can use what you have and supplement it
and do it at a lower cost, why wouldn't you want to try that first?
Like at least try that first.
And if it's like a huge failure, you haven't made a huge investment,
you know, and if it works great,
you've saved a lot lot of money and so that concept
to me is is i think good all all the way
around right probably one of the reasons why i haven't updated my
my intel macbook pro because
it still works yeah and like it does everything
i need it to do so as much as i would like a new like m3
macbook air or something like that i don't see spending the money but yeah yeah
try little things do little tweaks if you can and save some money i think that's
a great great thing to do yep yeah
it makes sense I will put a link to a TP-Link switch that I have used.
It's the TP-Link TLSG108.
It's an eight-port switch. You can get it on Amazon for like 18 bucks with a
$3 coupon or something right now.
And if you need less ports than that, fine.
But it seems like eight is always kind of the number where you can buy plenty of ports.
Ports your ports per dollar is maximized
you get up to 16 it starts getting a little more expensive and it
can these are unmanaged switches that means they're not smart that you don't
access them with an ip address but and if you want to do that then you you will
pay a little more but uh but for just what you're talking about i think an unmanaged
switch would work totally fine and it saves you some money and only add like
i said 20 bucks or less to the whole uh the whole thing.
So I'll put a link to, to that in the show notes.
Yeah. Yeah. And so for those who were watching and saw me waving wildly and
trying to get Dave's attention, that's exactly what I was going to say.
I'm like, why would you do two routers?
Wouldn't you just want to put a switch and get yourself more ports? Yeah.
Yeah. There you go. So that's, yeah, that's great. I love that.
I, while we're here, I, I do, I have wanted for a month and a half to talk about
the Unify Express, which Kelly mentioned. and it is cool.
I am a huge fan of the UniFi stuff.
I've used it here in the house at times. It is...
Networking for prosumers right
and it can also just be for pros but
it the the flexibility of this
stuff and the amount of hardware options
that you have with unify it's from
a company called ubiquity they make enterprise grade stuff
unify again like i said is there i'll call it
their prosumer line it is really
built for small offices and and
homes run by geeks you can it's
all like the way you get to manage it it's it's
super fun and this it used to be when we first talked about unify on this show
years ago you had to buy like you had to buy all the separate parts when we
talk about routers right now really what we're talking about is a router that
has a switch in it, an ethernet switch in it,
and also has a wireless access point in it.
So when we say router in sort of common parlance, and even on this show,
we mean this combo device.
When we first started talking about Unify stuff, they didn't have a combo router
that you bought a router, you bought a switch, and you bought wireless access points.
But that flexibility is what makes it powerful, Part of what makes it powerful,
the software behind it also makes it powerful.
Since then, UniFi has realized that they do have this market of people who want
to at least have their core device be this all-in-one.
And they came out with the Dream Machine years ago.
It was a little expensive and a little underpowered, in my opinion, for what you were doing.
This UniFi Express, it's $150.
It's tiny. It's compact. packed it it's got wi-fi in it it's got your i'm pretty
sure yeah it's got well it has two,
ethernet ports so it has you know one for the
wan and one for your lan you could add
a switch to it so i guess it really is it's not an all-in-one it's
a two-in-one but that's fine it's just like ero right ero
has has their units are have
only two ethernet ports and it works out fine you can going to add that switch
for 20 bucks 150 bucks you put this there and it can be your router right and
you can be done but then you can add unify gear to the system and that unify
there's more oh there's so much more you want outdoor access points.
You want indoor access points that are powered by Ethernet.
You want like all of the things and you want stuff that can go long range.
You want stuff that can go short range.
You got like there are so many options and it's all part of the Unify ecosystem.
Meaning it's all compatible with each other.
And then also with Unify, in
addition to the router and the switch and
the Wi-Fi access point you used
to need a um god what
was it called the cloud manager or something it was something you ran locally
you could run the software on a mac i think or you could
run it on enough yet another box it was
like the management software for all of those
devices so you need a fourth thing this has that built into
it too so it really is like yes here
you go here's your all-in-one router that's really
you know kind of four in one and do what
you need with it and then you can expand into the unify
universe so uh fun stuff for sure yeah and it's 150 bucks and it really really
catches fish 149 bucks but yeah wow yeah it's it's like if you're thinking of
moving into to something new,
you know, like there's, there's really, there's two routers that I would use
in my house that I know of.
I have a feeling there might be something from TP link in the Archer realm where
that, that would change this for me too.
But as far as I am like, have had hands on and would use in my house as the
primary gateway router for my home, it would either be unify or or Synology. That's it.
I'm not saying the others are bad. The others are great. I'm just nerdy,
and I want control and granularity. Yeah, exactly.
Eero's router is great,
but ignorance.
Is the wrong word to use, but I'll say it anyway.
Way ignorance is bliss like if i didn't know how great it was to be able to
tinker and mess with everything all the time then i wouldn't know what i was
missing but however i don't get that benefit,
that's funny i would i i went that route because
when i moved out here i needed coverage
i wanted to go mesh and i just went i'm just
going orby wi-fi six yep you know
because that was the thing at the time it was very expensive but it was literally
i got the kit i plugged the things in done yes yeah and i didn't think about
it i ran the little app it did the setup you know and if i want to get in i
can do you know the little stuff that i'd like to do like dhcp um you know.
Configurations and stuff like that but you know overall i
wanted to set it and forget it if i was going to do it now i probably
would go with the the unify stuff i think i
think that stuff's great yeah i had a client that
i worked for that put it in in his house you know the really high
end stuff yeah because he was wiring up everything
for smart and like building his house and like doing this whole thing
and i helped him with some networking and i was very impressed
by that gear i didn't know about it at the time but now
yeah that's that's high end good stuff it's high
end but it's not it's not cheap getting
cheaper though like that that's a great price yeah
it it's it really it is inexpensive
now i mean it can be inexpensive
now you can make it as expensive as you want to but you get all the power and
the the foundation of the platform for 149 bucks so yeah yeah and as you were
describing it i'm going to age myself so it you know i think too when you're
talking about all the separate pieces versus sort of all-in-one thing,
it reminded me of, you know, do you want a component stereo or do you want a
bookshelf system? Right.
And I should say that, you know, the Dream machine has evolved.
It is now called the Dream Router and it is only $199.
So, you know, you get, and now you get a four-port switch with it.
Two of those ports provide power over Ethernet, which
is great if you're using access points from
unify that need power over ethernet now you're
good to go with that so and it's a
wi-fi six access point so like the the i
have not tested the dream router but that if
if you were gonna if you if we were having this conversation
about what you would get adam i would probably steer you toward the dream router
instead of the unify express just because you get a little more ports you get
a little more power in the foundation of what you're doing here so um yeah no
unify has they realized that there are people like us,
it's probably the best way to say it and they
have built initially when i first talked to them
they're like are you sure you and your audience would
be interested in this and i'm like yes yes yes yes yes and they were
like well you're gonna need like 14 pieces of hardware and it's
gonna be you know $1,200 worth of stuff I'm like yeah that's fine
send it to me I have audience members that are going to buy it and
they certainly like that yeah was true but now they were like oh maybe there
are people like this and then now they've built this stuff that it sort of fits
and gets you into the unified world at a price that you would pay for the Orbi
or the Eero or whatever so.
And you did say you know obviously there are
others of which you're not aware of their features entirely yet um
but and you did mention ever so briefly tp link
showed us some amazing stuff yes i gotta
follow they're up and coming yeah the archer line
specifically i i believe i am
missing something there and uh
and so i you know i'll fix that like
i i meant to reach out to him after ces i guess i
guess this is still after ces i might
have mentioned that i've been kind of traveling and the idea of
changing my wi-fi around uh just
to test something makes my brain hurt with all the travel i've been doing because
as you know when i leave my house it is not unoccupied and i must have a reliable
system in place for the occupants of my home right so So including in the price
of the new router is the price of the divorce layer.
If you screw it up. Right. Yeah. Even when somebody sends me a free router,
it might not be free. Yeah.
Yeah. I did just change my internet back from BreezeLine to Fidium because they
still couldn't, the block of
IPs that they have for New Hampshire is blacklisted all over the internet.
I couldn't post on some forums and I think I mentioned it on the show. Yeah, you did.
Yeah. So I, I'm back to BreezeLine. i i'm sorry
back to fidium i yeah yeah they were very
nice my price and i called them about a deal yeah and
so for ten dollars less they gave me twice as much speed which
i can't use right yeah yeah that's actually a good little tip you you move to
from a one gigabit to a two gigabit connection right and you can't use two gigabits
with your setup and you know you're even well Well, first,
you would need a router that has at least a 2.5 gigabit port to use for the WAN connection.
Some routers have that. Some routers don't.
For example, the Dream Router from UniFi, it's a 1 gigabit WAN port, as is the Express.
And I'm just confirming that on their site. And I've got the Synology 2600.
Right. The 6600 from Synology has one 2.5 gig port.
You can use it either for the LAN or the WAN. But even if you connected that,
it's like, well, what device, no one device that you have is going to transmit
it more than one gigabit.
Because as I mentioned, the Synology router has one 2.5 gig port.
So your router can talk at 2.5.
You could have two Macs doing a gigabit each connected to Ethernet simultaneously over the connection.
And that's where you would start to use the 2.5. Or maybe with Wi-Fi 6E potentially,
and certainly Wi-Fi 7, you could get into where... But I don't know, like...
I see that 2.5 gig, you know, the two gig from, from Fidium.
And I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing. It's like, well.
Be nice to be able to use that someday. For why? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like there are use cases for it, but they don't,
they don't currently play out for most of us.
Yeah. You can only jam so much down that funnel. Yep.
Yep. Trying to set me up for Cliff. I wasn't, but it seems like I did.
So please take us to cliff yes so the
only question i have here cliff has has a bunch of things including uh
sort of some feedback and a question so we'll start there and
we can get into some of the other things he has feedback and
a and a question but really what we want to get to is he says on the law on
the last podcast you were trying to answer a question a listener question about
new wi-fi routers well we're doing that today too yeah in my humble opinion
you should Should have added a quick discussion of which Wi-Fi standard to get.
My new setup is 6E to align with my new Apple stuff.
But if you don't know better, you may choose a cheaper option,
which will not leverage the speed of your devices.
So, opinions, guys, on what standard, what should people be buying?
I know, Dave, you just mentioned 7.
I got Wi-Fi 6. I don't remember if the Orbi does 6E or not.
I don't think it does because it was bought a few years ago so these things
change pretty quick and it gets confusing i think which which it has what and
you know if it's an emerging standard do you buy the emerging thing even though
it's probably not locked in yet you know yeah um Yeah,
it gets confusing.
So Wi-Fi 6 still uses only the 5 gigahertz band and the 2.4 gigahertz band, right?
It is faster because of the signaling protocol that it uses.
So it uses a different way
of transmitting the data and therefore it can
be faster Wi-Fi 6E
uses the same signaling protocols as Wi-Fi 6 however it adds a new 6 gigahertz
band which is unused by many other things so more radio Now,
higher frequency with all else being equal, the higher the frequency, the shorter the range.
You might have more trouble going through walls with the six gigahertz.
It's still pretty good with it.
So six E is great. And when six E first came out, I was like,
oh, this is what you want for your mesh system because we didn't have any Apple
devices at the time that had six E.
I think, I think new phones use six E and I think some of the new Macs use six E too.
But, uh, I was more excited when they didn't because it meant the six gigahertz
band was was unfettered, unclouded,
and your mesh points could talk to each other over that band without your devices clogging it all up.
Over time, that is changing. Of course, we knew that would change.
It would be nice if there was an agreement to say, hey, let's only use this
for backhaul, right? But that's not how life works.
So that's what 6E does, is it adds that 6 gigahertz band. It also expands on
the signaling protocol a little bit, I think, lowering some of the latency in
the router, but I don't know how much that matters.
I guess it's probably a use case, right? Wi-Fi 7 is yet another signaling protocol,
but the trick to Wi-Fi 7 is that it uses all of the bands simultaneously.
Simultaneously so whereas with wi-fi
6e and earlier you were
you know you could use wi-fi 6 on 2.4
gigahertz and sometimes it does it uses that signaling protocol on
2.4 gigahertz okay great or it'll use it on 5 or with 6e it'll use it on 6 but
it's one of those three whereas wi-fi seven has a new signaling protocol and
it uses all can use all three bands simultaneously.
So you have this massive potential, massive amount of throughput.
They say it's almost five times faster than wifi six E it's the parallel port of wifi.
Bingo. Right. It is serial. It's it's wider band. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
And, and the nice part about that is that,
We know, you know, like we were saying, you know, the higher the frequency,
the, uh, the shorter the range, but then also, you know, there's lots of things
that clog up 2.4 gigahertz.
So that's longer range, but a slower to begin with less bandwidth to begin with
and clogged bandwidth, which makes it even worse with wifi seven.
The, the tech is using all of the bands simultaneously and using whatever.
Like maximizing the
available throughput without having to
jump around and so you do get
you know in theory i haven't tested any wi-fi 7 stuff yet
um it's out various vendors have
it it's wicked expensive to use a a
term that would make massachusetts residents proud uh
but uh but you know it's there so that's
that's what that is to answer cliff's question i'd
probably lean more towards 6e
especially for a mesh system just to get
that six gigahertz out there if you've got
the money or if you don't and you don't care about running
up your credit cards then sure go wi-fi 7 it is
all backwards compatible so your wi-fi 6
and 6e devices will happily use your wi-fi
7 router and then your router gets to use all of
that backhaul so yeah so the question i
have then does do any of these routers we mentioned before that
the unify the synology are
they wi-fi 7 capable no i
well i i don't i don't know
if unify has a wi-fi 7 option um but
like uh i'm pretty sure ero
has their wi-fi 7 stuff out the max 7s yep so yeah there's the ero max 7 that
would that would be certainly a place to start i'm pretty sure netgear's got.
One and i think tplink's got one too so okay another stupid question pick me pick me pete so you.
I have my synology router yeah and i take the ero max 7 and i plug it into a
switch with an ethernet i'm now taking advantage of the wi-fi 7 speeds correct
okay that is correct yeah and that i mean You essentially described the setup that I have here.
I'm not using Wi-Fi 7, but I'm using Eero 6E stuff connected to my Synology
with the Wi-Fi turned off.
I still have issues with Synology's Wi-Fi mesh.
It's only with one of their devices, but it's there.
So I don't know what their...
I don't know. It works really well for some people, and it works well for me, except for one device.
Okay. So I was going to go buy one.
Go buy one pack in bed to, to start to get up there. But a three pack is $1,700.
Exactly. Is that, is that the Eero that you're looking at?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a max seven. Like I said, it's wicked expensive.
Yeah. I think I'll get a vision pro before. Yeah.
Yeah. Let me, um, let me take it the other direction too, though.
Cause I, you know, I want to ask the layman's question, which is
how much does this matter for most people and if
you have an opportunity and less of a
budget you know is i don't know if there's
still even six devices out there but like to get
six or six e like how many people will
really benefit from you know a
lot of this stuff yeah i have more speed no it's a
great question and yes there are plenty of six wi-fi six
devices in fact the unify express and
dream router are wi-fi 6 they're not 6e uh i
unify may have some 6e devices but those aren't
it right so um the the
answer is it's not going to make a huge difference for
most people as long as the five gigahertz band isn't overly encumbered in your
home or or wherever it is you are planning i'm putting this then wi-fi 6 you
probably won't notice a functional difference between 6 and 6e.
Yes your speed tests will if
you have the internet bandwidth so
you would if you don't have a fiber connection none of
this is going to matter like um in terms
of internet speeds now if you're
doing a lot of data transfer locally where you
know and you can't use ethernet for whatever reason or
ethernet's cost prohibitive then yes 6e might
start to make maybe we'll start to make a difference but
it might not even then right because you're just
expanding that that to that new radio frequency range the the the is again as
long as that five gigahertz isn't overly encumbered i think you're fine like
like i don't i think i know in fact i'm thinking in my head i am using Using 6E here at the house.
But when I was testing and using the Synology mesh, that was 6.
I noticed no difference. All of my stuff worked great, other than the weird
problem I was having with the one access point.
And so, you know, I think that the answer is for like a lot of things,
you know, it's the whole perfect is the enemy of good thing, right?
And for a lot of people, good is good enough and you can maybe save some money
and, you know, but if you're a nerd and you love this stuff and you want the
latest and greatest and you want to tinker and mess with it,
then go for it if you have the money.
But, you know, I just always want to point out, like a lot of people listen
to these shows like this and they think, oh, I got to have this stuff.
You know, step back. We all get excited. You know, I have a Vision Pro that
I haven't worn for a while.
Oh, interesting. Still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with it. But yeah.
Well, I injured my eye, so that's part of it. Oh, right. Right. Yeah.
So I'm going to get back to wearing it. But I was looking last night to see like, what's new yet?
And it doesn't seem like a lot has changed in the last couple of weeks,
which is worrisome. But we'll see.
I think developers will get an app out there soon. I heard they put out the
app store that you can see without having to be on the Vision Pro to see what's
available out there, too.
So I think that's more of a tease for people like me who don't own one to go,
oh, I can go look at these. Let's see what kind of apps these are.
So along those lines. I still love it. I, you know, absolutely love it.
It's absolutely the best device for consuming media, hands down, in my opinion.
I absolutely love it. But, again, this is all lower experience. So, yeah.
But I digress. I digress. No, I agree with you.
Like i i and i'm i'm a router nerd i
just said i haven't gone out of my way to
get any wi-fi 7 stuff here you know i'm
interested in it from a technology standpoint from an
is this going to make a difference for my life well i also just
said that there's no difference for my life between six
six e and seven so you know
there you go yeah there there
may be at some point in the future when our band
as our bandwidth needs increase and
you know things like the vision pro or the quest three where
you're streaming more and more data to these
things at more you know higher resolution stuff wider you know bigger images
bigger videos that will be the thing that causes us to need more bandwidth in
our homes and that's fine that's like that's a story as old as time like of
course we We will get there, but we're not there today.
So, yeah, if you're buying something new right now,
I would I would start by looking at the six E stuff just because you want to
future proof a little bit and then compare that to the cost of the six stuff to your point,
Adam, and decide, OK, am I there?
Like, does it make sense to do this particular future proofing step step now or do I do it later?
Those numbers are crazy, though. Wi-Fi 7. Up to 46 gigs per second.
Yeah. Someday we will care about that. Yeah. So, I mean, I just feel like Tim
the Toolman Taylor, the show from the 90s. More power. More power.
And I got to laugh because I have a good friend who works for one of the ratings companies.
And he told me once, 25, 30 years ago, he goes, what it's going to come to is
you're going to be able to pick the movie you want to watch tonight and tell
it to download. And when you get home from work, it'll be there,
ready to go. But that kind of already happened. Yeah.
No, no, that was saying that was 30 years ago. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, yes, yes.
And it's like, oh yeah, you're going to have to wait all day for the movie to
download. And, you know, even with technology today, you're going to have to
wait 20 minutes for the entire movie to download many gigabytes.
Yeah, but you don't have to. That's the beauty of streaming.
No, it all streams. Yeah.
So, but I just, I laughed that that was where we were going to Sunday.
We're going to be able to grab our movie in a day.
Yes. yes online you don't even
have to go get the dvd right yeah yeah i
remember downloading pirates of the caribbean to my
video ipod and how long that took oh yeah
they finally put out of you i was frustrated
one of the first movies available i was frustrated yesterday trying to
put a movie on my ipad from my local plex server and
plex they're downloading things sometimes it's
terrible well it in it's it's
not the best coded solution and
so you have to leave the plex app open
uh front most and open and i wanted to use my ipad and so i kept like switching
back and forth and i got frustrated because i i wasn't willing to leave my ipad
for 10 minutes to download this movie right well and then other times i found
like i'll tell my ipad yeah download over cellular Oh, yeah.
I've got an unlimited cellular on my company iPad. It's like,
get downloaded over cellular.
But it won't do it. It just won't do it. Nice. Okay. Yeah.
Yep um i don't know
where we're going with any you know i i do know what
we're doing jim joe no we're gonna uh listener adam
had a good little tip for
us that's in this networking realm so
while we're here uh we'll share this and then and then
there is one question i want to get to i think we're going to save cool stuff found
for uh another episode guys we're going
to have to do another episode uh what next week all right
yep all right yeah okay uh listener adam
says i was listening uh to the discussion about backups
in episode 1026 and was surprised about something that wasn't mentioned while
apple no longer sells their time capsule devices which were easy to set up for
network time machine backups most home routers nowadays allow for setting up
an attached attached drive as a time machine destination.
I have a five terabyte, two and a half inch drive plugged into the USB port
on my Asus router and have it shared using the router's own settings as a time machine destination.
My previous Synology router could do that as well. On any Mac you wish to back
up, just log into the share, save the credentials, mount the shared partition
and point time machine at the volume and let it do the backup.
This can work especially well on laptops who can back up over Wi-Fi as long
as the drive is mounted, and you can do that all with an alias or a shortcut.
I would only do one computer's initial backup at a time just because of bandwidth, but there you go.
It says also if there's a NAS in the house, you can likely designate a folder
as a time machine backup there, depending on the NAS's capabilities. capabilities.
Given the amount of time since I heard the episode and now you might have been told this already.
Oh yeah. Uh, we might've been, but we hadn't mentioned it. So thank you for,
uh, for bringing it up. Yeah, you're, you're totally right.
Many routers, not all of them, but many will allow you to, uh,
hang a drive and use, uh, use that as time machine. And that's valuable for sure.
All right um how did he get that to us did he send it to feedback at macgeekgab.com,
he did he said go ahead what's that
yeah i think he sent it to feedback at macgeekgab.com that's
easy for you to say yeah yeah feedback at macgeekgab.com folks feedback at macgeekgab.com
just asking for a friend it was funny this week we had i i came across two emails
one was from from a listener that didn't know how to email us.
And I was just like, this is amazing.
Like how much more, like we already say it too much. It's already become like
shtick, the worst kind of shtick.
But you know, I get it. Like it doesn't sink in. It doesn't sink in. Like I get it.
And then we got another email from a different listener that sent in something
and it felt like a non sequitur a bit, but they said something about a problem
they were having. Oh, with like magnets on their Apple watch band or something.
I'm like, wow, that's amazing. amazing and they wrote us back and said okay
look i gotta explain that email was actually meant for the accidental tech podcast
because they were talking about magnets and watch bands but you guys have drilled
feedback at mackeycab.com into my head so much that i sent it to you instead.
Beautiful i love it so but it like since both of these emails came in at the
same time like it's It's like, there you go.
Yep. There you go. Yep. One or the other. Well, I've got a geek challenge for
someone to send a feedback at mattgeekapp.com.
What's that? And maybe you guys can answer this or not. When I say S-Lady. Yeah.
Turn off the living room lamp.
I get this little Google thing that says, you need a, you know,
Google app is missing. Can't do it.
And then I turn around and the very next thing I say is S-Lady,
turn the living room lamp off.
It works. Yep. Anyone know why? why i've seen that
i don't know why i don't know why it's so frustrating it's
rare for me i don't see it as often as you do now but
yeah yeah okay adam you want to take us to one question from listener jim because
i i think this would be yeah absolutely yeah this is a great one to talk about
uh so jim says just picked up a new macbook air m3 hey i'm a little bit jealous and once again Again,
face the eternal questions.
Antivirus on Apple? Need it at all? If so, do you guys use?
Great show. I listen during my weekly workouts, and you guys make the time pass
quickly. Well, glad to hear that.
And I get smarter at the same time. Yep. And peep.
Don't let those fling wing guys get you. They're just jealous.
There you go. Pete, can you explain what fling wing is first?
Yeah, that's for the uninitiated. That's a helicopter, which the definition
of a helicopter is a million parts rotating about an oil lake waiting for metal fatigue to set in.
So this checks out. Yeah.
As far as Jim's question, I know we all have opinions on this.
I, um, I, I, I don't believe that virus protection software is necessary on the Mac.
However, I run it anyway in that I don't run anything in real time because I
don't want it to slow down my Mac, but I do run malware bites on each of my
Macs once per week in a semi-automated fashion.
Malwarebytes has a way to automate this, but it
comes hand in hand with their always
always running in the background scanner and
i don't want that so i have keyboard maestro
set a macro that runs once
a week that launches malwarebytes on every one of
my macs and when i come to my mac and i see that malwarebytes has
launched that for me is enough of a reminder to hit start scan
and then it scans and i've never had
it find the only thing i've ever had to find is like a
an old word document that had a like word
macrovirus in it but other than that i haven't had it find
anything but i'm happy to know that it runs once a week
so i guess i guess maybe i do think you need it
but i don't know like in a limited sense why or why not don't you want it running
in the back oh i don't want something slowing down my computer um this is definitely
a holdover from the days of slow cpus and spindle drives aka slow drives where if and and supporting
supporting Windows machines, which absolutely, at the time anyway,
I don't really know how it is now, needed virus protection software.
Virus protection software, the whole idea is it sits in the middle of everything you're doing.
Every file that's accessed is scanned first before your system gets to see it.
Everything you do is being, you know, filtered, essentially.
And that, by definition, causes some level of latency in what you're doing.
Whether that latency now is something i would notice or not given how fast technology
and how much it how fast it is and how much it's improved i don't know but that's
my reason for it and i don't think viruses on the mac are bad enough that i
need to potentially give up performance,
for protection right that was a great apple ad campaign too for a while remember that.
You're coming to a sad realization prevent or allow yeah prevent or allow right,
how about you adam what do you what do you yeah i'm
i'm same i you know i run um run mallor
bites occasionally that's for sure uh the other
things that i do and i don't know if i'm unusual or not
but i have apple's firewall turned on i always
have um so i get notified if things are coming
in or out uh there's other tools you can do you can get
to run this and um you know to do things
like that um i also don't i
run with gatekeeper on like i don't disable gatekeeper i don't do like the sip
thing that people do where they turn off security protection like i think it
depends on sort of how you operate your mac you know if you're one of these
really techie geek people that you know you want to be able to download anything
from anywhere on the internet it and install it,
and you've turned all that stuff off, then you.
Might need that stuff more yeah to be honest yeah you know
i also just practice safe computing and
i drill that into my friends and family and and like as a
matter of fact even my mom knows this so much she's on an
ipad um and she just
called me this week because she got the pop-up and it was
like you have a virus on your computer and you need to
call this number and she immediately calls me it's just like but
for her it was more like how do i stop this thing from going
because it it was actually playing audio like which
i hadn't even heard before yeah it was super annoying and
it was very hard over the phone to talk her through how to
close a safari window it's like but you know it's my mom do you see this do
you see that little blue button with the tabs like it looks like two squares
no i don't see that it's at the very top you know but finally got her to it
and showed her how to close the
tabs and and uh she was fine but you know like i i i don't you You know,
I don't like try to download illegal movies.
I buy my movies and content, you know, from Apple or I watch streaming or like,
you know, it depends on a lot of what you're doing.
You know, like if you do, if you're going to dark places on the internet,
yeah, you might need it a little bit more.
Yeah. But, uh, yeah. Yeah.
You bring up, you, your, your mom, especially your mom's anecdote there brings
up an interesting thing.
And that is one thing I do check on the regular is in safaris extent preferences, extensions.
I go in there and I make sure that I know that.
Every extension that's listed because it's really easy, relatively easy to wind
up installing an extension that
will do nefarious things and not even know about it. So there's that one.
And then there's also the, if you go to Safari, uh, preferences,
websites, notifications,
look there too, because that's super easy to allow a website to give you notifications
in notification center.
And we've talked about it on the show fairly recently.
Conware. Yeah, there can be Conware notifications that look like they're coming
from system preferences.
Say you have a virus, you click the notification, it brings you to a nefarious
website and walks you down that path.
So check those two things.
I wind up checking them regularly enough as I think about it right now or when
an email comes in from one of you or something like that, Yeah,
but put that on your list to check once a quarter,
extensions and notifications in Safari,
because those are pretty, they're easier attack vectors for folks.
Yeah. And another one I have to mention, CleanMyMac has malware removal in it,
and that comes free with Setapp.
Yes, that's right. Well, it comes with Setapp.
Yes, right. It comes with Setapp. Yeah, yeah. Pete and I were thinking the same thing.
Yeah, I was going to say that. I was also wondering if CleanMyMac X had a thing for extensions.
It probably does. It probably does. Yeah, we should dig into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. All right. Well, we've extended our welcome here.
And if my new mixer setup works. Oh, it does.
So I did. I used Sound Desk again today to mix the show here from the studio.
It's the same software that I used while I was on the road last week.
I've learned a lot more about it.
I think there were two reasons that my CPU on my laptop was flaking out.
Now, Porthos John pointed out something that we talked about when I was in Vegas,
Pete, when we were in Vegas, but I forgot about.
Now it's in the pre-flight script, and that is low power mode on the Mac laptops
will cause things like Chrome to really crater.
And so that, especially video in Chrome, that sort of thing, that was part of it.
It and then the other part of it was i didn't realize that sound desk
had its own plugins inside it
that are all running at zero latency and
very low cpu usage and so i've learned
a lot because i played with it and recorded like six podcasts with
it since this is amazing it's it's a
great piece of software for 40 bucks so but i'm curious i know
we are using a completely different game structure for
this episode so if you've listened this far and you
have thoughts about out did we sound the same did we sound different
is it better is it worse thoughts send us feedback at
mackeycab.com thank you folks for listening
thanks to cash fly for uh providing all
the bandwidth to get the show from us to you thanks to our sponsors
you can learn about our sponsors at mackeycab.com slash sponsors of course coupon
code mgg at manscape.com gets you 20 off and free shipping backblaze.com slash
mgg gets a fully featured no risk free trial and zocdoc.com slash MGG is where
you go and sign up for free.
I don't know. Do you have anything else to add?
Me? I don't know. Anybody. Sure. But don't get caught. That's it.
Thanks for hanging out, everybody. Made on a Mac. See ya.