Navigated to Life’s Too Short to Deal With Bad Cables - Transcript

Life’s Too Short to Deal With Bad Cables

Episode Transcript

Dave Hamilton

It's time for Mac Geek Cabin.

Listener Tom brings us our quick tip of the week.

He says, in a recent episode, you were talking about cables and speeds.

I started buying the smallest ip ties that I could find that come in lots of colors.

I put them on the cable right at one of the ends before the little dongle port.

I love that name.

He says, I cut the extra off so it doesn't stick out much.

I use a different color per speed.

In other words, all Thunderbolt 4 cables are one color.

You could also go from dark to light.

Oh, yeah, light being the highest, dark being the lowest, whatever.

Yeah, many options here.

Many of the lower speed ones I just grouped together and labeled them as power only.

I only use them to charge things and not for data type activities.

I'm like you in that I don't buy cheap cables and stick with the brands that we all love and use.

But this makes it really easy when you're digging through several to grab what you want.

Love that tip more tips like this plus your questions answered today on mac geek ab 1101 for monday august 4th national clouded leopard day maybe that's another operating system we didn't know about from apple 2025.

Music

Dave Hamilton

Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Cab, the show where we share tips like that that you send in or that we find.

We share cool stuff found that you send in or that we find.

And we share questions that you send in or that we have and hopefully come up with some answers or at least a path to ruling out what the problem is not.

But let's see.

We have all kinds of things to talk about here.

It being the first episode of August, our monthly giveaway is we're giving away in partnership with the folks at St.

Clair Software, five licenses to default folders.

So make sure you go to macdeacup.com slash giveaway to check that out.

Our sponsors for this episode include calderalab.com slash MGG, where you can use MGG at checkout to save 20% off your first order.

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And at that URL, you get two months for free.

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We'll talk more in depth about each and every one of those in a little bit.

For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

Adam Christianson

And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.

Pilot Pete

And also here in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete.

Good to be with you guys today.

Always thrilled to come back and do this.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, same.

Pilot Pete

We said we were going to do it again last week.

Dave Hamilton

I know.

And here we are.

And here we are.

We honor our commitments.

That's right.

Adam Christianson

That's how it works.

Dave Hamilton

Uh i don't know i don't know are we just going into more quick tips anything i think.

Adam Christianson

So yeah that was great

Dave Hamilton

That first tip i i this is something i like i need to find like a uh a multi-pack of multi-colored uh little um whatchamacallit ip ties thank you on amazon and just buy those because i like in my travel kit that would make a world of difference when grabbing things for a trip or whatever it's just like knowing that's what it is love that yeah.

Adam Christianson

I think we have more of that kind of question and tips later too i saw something so there's more uh cable stuff coming but before that we have andrew and ender has a quick tip he says here's a quick an easy way to put your most accessed playlists, albums, or artists in your Mac menu bar for two-tap selection.

Create and save a shortcut for the playlist, artist, album, or compilation.

Drag that shortcut to the menu bar on the left-hand side of the Shortcuts app.

Click on the Shortcuts icon in the menu bar and select your playlist.

It will open Apple Music, if it's not already open, and start playing on the selected speakers.

And you can set it up to play a particular podcast as well.

Dave Hamilton

Huh.

I love that idea.

It's a good reminder that you can put any shortcut you want in the menu bar and trigger it.

It could be these things.

It could be other things.

I wonder if you can make folders in the shortcuts menu bar, right?

Because i don't know oh let me look i'm looking here if i go oh no no when i hit the plus sign it just no not in not in echo is 15 so but that would be an interesting thing to have get.

Pilot Pete

On it apple

Dave Hamilton

Well i'm trying to think they'll get to it.

Pilot Pete

Right after they fix

Dave Hamilton

Ai yeah that sorry i know i think that's probably the right order of priorities there yeah yeah for at least based on what they're doing.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, interesting.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I like that one.

That's good.

That's a smart use of that menu, though, like real quick access to those kinds of things.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Carl has another tip about Apple Music.

And Carl shares with us that when visiting my sister, she told me that she was having issues getting audio to come out of her iPhone via the lightning port to a USB in her car.

So she's connecting to her car and no audio.

I tried both her husband's iPhone and my iPhone, and both of those worked fine.

After much searching on the Internet, I found out that you have to have the Apple Music app installed and at least one song downloaded onto the phone in order to get audio out of the lightning port.

Yeah.

He says, I don't know why this is, but after doing all of that, audio started working again out of her lightning port with the car.

I hope this helps anyone else with the issue.

So I'm going to say it one more time.

You have to have the Apple Music app installed and at least one song downloaded onto the phone in order to get audio out of, in this case, the lightning port.

I don't know if the same holds true for phones with USB-C ports instead of lightning ports, but I'm guessing it probably does, because this is very clearly a software thing, not a hardware thing uh it yeah i was.

Pilot Pete

Wondering if you could delete that song later and well apple music and see if it still worked

Dave Hamilton

I'm wondering trigger some setting i'm wondering if you need the song downloaded or if you just need to have played a song with apple music yeah but i have i was gonna say i have no way to test i don't have an easy way to test because i don't want to wipe my phone of everything that i have on it and.

Adam Christianson

So this is audio

Dave Hamilton

From any app.

Adam Christianson

So like if you wanted to play audio from say spotify you need wow

Dave Hamilton

Yeah it's clearly like it's you know it's one of those things where an assumption is made by the the engineering team and it might not be an active assumption it might be one of these sort of well it's all the apple music app's always there so we would never test for a scenario when the apple music app's not on the phone and i mean clearly that's not part of their test test group right.

Pilot Pete

And it flips a bit somewhere yeah

Adam Christianson

I wonder if this was a holdout or just a missed thing dating back to when you couldn't remove Apple apps from your device.

Dave Hamilton

I think you're exactly right, Adam.

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, it's dependent on a thing that was a known truth, right?

And then suddenly that truth became variable.

Pilot Pete

Less true.

Dave Hamilton

Less true.

Adam Christianson

This happens to me all the time as a developer.

It is a very common thing.

It came up just this week.

I had something go sideways.

Suddenly, something I built that's been working for years stopped working and contacted the company.

And they said, oh, yeah, ABC company that we integrate on the other end made a new requirement.

And we changed this thing.

And now you're not sending a required value to the API.

And it's just like, were you going to tell anybody that you have a new required value?

Dave Hamilton

How's that documentation coming?

It's just broke.

Yeah.

You know, this is one of those things.

I wonder if if this gets better as more and more programmers leverage some version of AI assistance in coding, because in addition to having the thing helping you write and perhaps debug code, although I've found AI, it's very helpful with the writing of the code.

It's not so good with the debugging um but sometimes but but it is very aware of every change that's made and maybe that then helps with these scenarios like hey wait you know dum-dum you made this this this thing that was previously not required now it's required you need to publish that in your documentation or in your change log or whatever well.

Adam Christianson

Yeah because what i mean what it is is the um the thing about ai is it's finding the guy like me who runs across this and then puts a post on you know stack overflow or reddit or wherever you're posting that thing so it's not in the official documentation it might never get into the visual documentation but like the ai knows like oh yeah that broke because this you know this

Dave Hamilton

Yeah right oh yeah i didn't i wasn't even I've been thinking about it from that standpoint, but that it's already doing quite well, usually.

I've learned that I have to, when it comes to tech support specifically with AI, I have to be very careful, and this is true with everything, but specifically tech support, perhaps more so.

I have to be very careful with how I ask the question, because if I have a theory, If I share that theory as part of my question, even just accidentally, like unintentionally leading the witness, oftentimes, even though I have it in my instructions, don't try to please me.

Just tell me what's actually true.

It will say, oh, you're absolutely right.

You know, this is what the problem is.

It's like, no, is it though?

You know, so I have to be very, very careful with like, I feel like I would be an even better prosecutor now because I know how not to lead the witness because I'm trained with it every day.

Adam Christianson

Right.

Well, so your point is exactly the thing when it comes to using AI to troubleshoot a problem.

And we know this better than anybody on the planet because we've been troubleshooting stuff for people for decades.

And, you know, I was always, people would like thank me for, you know, finding solutions to their problems.

And they would think that I have some astute knowledge for the past, you know, 10, 15 years.

No, I knew how to Google things.

But more importantly, I knew how to Google things and then filter.

And the problem with the AI is it's not good at the filtering part yet.

Because you go to a site and you say, I have ABC problem, or multiple sites usually, which is what it's doing, it's aggregating.

But we would do this as humans, right?

But we could filter and go, oh, no, that's not really that problem that that person says this is the solution.

That was a solution for them, but it might be for some other reason, or they were having a slightly different variant of that problem.

But it's in that same thread, right?

And so the solutions five posts down or whatever, the AI is not smart enough to know, like, it's just kind of, well, here's a answer, you know, and a bunch of people liked it or commented on it.

So maybe that's the right answer.

It's like, no, that's not the right answer in this case.

So, you know, it'll get better.

It'll get there.

But, I mean, that's the advantage we have, right?

It's like, we know.

You're not quite getting this.

Dave Hamilton

Doesn't pass the sniff test.

But, like, that's really it.

is, you know...

Like I said, finding not leading the witness and then also just being objective for a moment before just rolling with exactly what the AI says.

Does this sound realistic?

You know, and if you don't know the answer to that question, you can ask the AI, does this sound realistic as a solution or are you sure?

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

Are you fun in me?

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, and those three words, are you sure, are some of the best words I've ever passed to an AI, and I do it all the time.

Yep.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, I do a similar thing.

I'm like, eh, I'll even say, you know, I don't think that's quite the right answer, the thing I was looking for.

Like, I don't, like, just as you said, that doesn't sound right to me.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, it just doesn't sound right.

Yeah.

Pilot Pete

That might even be worth making a little text expanded snippet to throw are you sure in there, you know?

Dave Hamilton

The problem is I do it from my phone all the time, although I could do it in the Apple things.

One thing I will share, sort of a related quick tip, is, and this especially happens when I'm on my phone, I found I can ask people.

An llm usually it's chat gpt for me a question and i don't have to put a question mark at the end if i type are you sure i can hit send and you know on my max keyboard no big deal that that's a you know to hit a question mark on the phone's keyboard that's there's like a little bit of you know hoopty hoops you gotta yeah extra jogging yeah exactly so yep yeah all right shall we get back to quick tips yeah.

Adam Christianson

Tom has one for us he says i had this problem back in the day but found a solution.

And it is, fix the permanently incrementing system name numbers.

He says, in system settings, energy or energy saver or battery version dependent do not have prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off.

Oh, this was related to, I think we were talking about the network numbers that keep incrementing.

Dave Hamilton

Network names, yeah.

Adam Christianson

Network names, sorry, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So he says, do not have the permanent prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off disabled and wake for network access enabled this combination along with a random bad luck race condition between the proxy and system causes the system name to increment so this is in system settings yeah you look at your system name and you know the network name starts incrementing right so got it okay solve that problem so

Dave Hamilton

Yeah so his instruction is turn off prevent automatic sleeping when display is off and turn on wake for network access uh that would make sense yeah yeah yeah yeah i.

Adam Christianson

Don't know he says do he says do not have those two so do not have prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off disabled along with wake for network access enabled that interesting specific combination huh

Dave Hamilton

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I understand now.

Thank you.

Adam Christianson

And I have that all the time.

Like I don't want my thing to just sleep when the display is off and I want it to wake for network access.

I've had that combination for that.

I can almost guarantee you that's what mine is set to right at this moment.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah.

I need to check that because I thought I let this computer sleep.

Oh, well this computer doesn't have the problem.

It turns out Tom is onto something here.

Adam Christianson

Yes i mean you'd think you'd i you'd think you'd want that because i don't i don't want my computer to go to sleep well it's not so big a deal now it used to be when i had external drives because i think some external drives would detect that and spin down the drive right you know and the drives are spinning down and spinning up all the time and when

Pilot Pete

You had an intel chip

Adam Christianson

And when i had an it was more

Dave Hamilton

Of a battery hog you mean two weeks ago when adam had an intel chip.

Adam Christianson

Oh, we should add something.

Ask me about that on Don't Get Caught, because I got caught with something.

Dave Hamilton

Well, tell us now.

We're here.

You can't tease us like that.

We can come back to quick tips.

Fine.

Adam Christianson

Well, so Dave, I went to go work on some web stuff.

And as you know, I have my computer set up with, one, Homebrew.

And two, I have it set up with Apache and MySQL.

Dave Hamilton

Okay.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, none of that stuff works anymore.

Dave Hamilton

Well, not without resetting it all up.

That's right.

Adam Christianson

But the worst don't get caught part is...

Um, I didn't export all my databases from my old machine.

Like I didn't do a, my SQL dump on my databases and I was going to give that computer to my daughter.

I waited several weeks.

I'm like, all right, we're, we're cool.

We're all cool.

I just had just erased that computer to get it ready to center.

I have all the databases, but they're just the, the raw, like DB files.

I think there's going to be a way to recover them, but it's not as easy.

Dave Hamilton

Well, yeah, you're right.

I mean, if they're MySQL or MariaDB files or whatever, once you get that engine reset up on your new machine, then you can do that.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, it's not as easy if I had just done a SQL dump.

And the other thing was like Homebrew was all in the wrong folders because it's different on Intel versus – it's a mess.

So I'm digging out right now.

Dave Hamilton

That is definitely kind of the one thing that does not migrate over the right way at all.

No, no, no.

Adam Christianson

No, it migrated exactly how you would expect it to.

It put everything exactly in the same place.

That's the problem.

And Brew Command was still working because of the path.

Yeah.

Well, not only because of the path, but even because I have Rosetta or whatever installed, right?

So it'll just run under the x86 command.

Luckily, I did find some instructions.

I'll have to go dig them out.

Somebody had some instructions for how to migrate homebrew over.

So you can dump all your homebrew casks from the old environment, reinstall homebrew, and then you can re-import those.

And then there's an uninstaller for the x86 homebrew.

So there's like scripts for all that stuff.

So that was easy to sort out, but the database stuff is not going to be as much fun.

Dave Hamilton

Easy to sort out today.

When I had to do it years ago, it was not that, this fabled instruction set of which you speak had not yet been born into existence.

So yeah.

Huh.

All right.

Okay.

That's good to know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and you're absolutely right.

That's a don't get caught because you don't.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

All right.

We do have more quick tips to return to, and we have your questions answered and probably even some extremely cool, cool stuff found.

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All right, Pete, back to quick tips.

We were talking about ChatGPT before.

Pilot Pete

You got one for us?

We were, yeah.

And I stumbled blindly into this quick tip earlier this week.

I've been using ChatGPT on my Mac for, I don't know, two or three weeks now easily.

And what I've never noticed is been right in front of me the whole time, hidden in plain sight.

At the bottom of your answer from ChatGPT, there's a thumbs up, a thumbs down, and a little copy icon.

I don't know why I never noticed the little speaker icon in there.

I clicked on it, and ChatGPT read the answer aloud to me.

Dave Hamilton

Of course it did.

Yeah.

It's right there.

Yeah.

Pilot Pete

Huh.

Don't have to cut and paste and, you know, put it into some kind of audio reader transcript.

Just read it right to you.

Dave Hamilton

I've seen that a million times.

I never noticed it.

I never paid attention to it.

Yep.

Brilliant.

Love that.

Yeah.

This is what the quick tips are all about.

Doug shares a quick tip about Mac OS 26 and shortcuts.

But it's one of those things that his example, I think, kind of opens our eyes to what else we might be able to do with this.

He says, I've been using the Mac OS 26 public beta since it was released.

All is mostly going well.

And I've now moved back from a five point harness seatbelt to a standard three point seatbelt.

I like that.

With the new Apple shortcuts application automation features, I now have total control of my time machine backups.

I have set time machine backups to run manually.

And then that's in system system setting.

Sorry.

And then use the shortcuts run shell scripts option to run the TM util command to start a specific time machine backup to a specific drive.

There are a lot of shortcuts automation triggers.

You can run the shortcut based on time of day or when the files are added to a folder.

Oh, right.

Unfortunately, there's no trigger for time duration, i.e.

hourly.

So I have created 15 automations to run the shortcut every hour from 9 a.m.

To 11 p.m.

Not ideal, he says, but fairly quick to set up.

My shortcut contains a lot of criteria for actually running the backup for example i do not run a backup if certain apps are running with the combination of shortcut automation triggers and actions i now have a lot of control right so the one time he says that the one time machine feature i've always wanted is to set a unique schedule for each time machine drive solved this is really interesting i mean i like the idea for time machine i would want time machine not to run when i'm recording a show so i could say well don't run time machine when say logic is running if i was using logic as a mixer or sound desk which is what i use now or you know any any of those things but also this now with with these automations that can run shortcuts on the mac natively something we did not have before we had to rely on like keyboard maestro or something else to trigger a shortcut now there's all kinds of new things that we can do it seems like the most obvious feature of shortcuts would be to have this but it took till mac os 26 for it to come out you know you.

Adam Christianson

Could use your podcast focus mode

Dave Hamilton

Oh right oh you're exactly right yes yeah, Yeah, that's very true.

I use I also use an app called amphetamine to keep my Mac from going to sleep under certain conditions.

And you can, of course, tell it manually, like, don't put it to sleep for four hours or something.

But I have it so that when my specific apps are open for podcasting, it is not allowed to sleep until I, you know, those apps are quit.

I wonder if I will need that anymore.

like could i write a focus could i write something like you said based on focus mode that now sure kind of kind of does turns that on and off well.

Adam Christianson

I'm sure because i think amphetamine just runs a it's probably a

Dave Hamilton

Terminal command i'm sure it is yeah yeah i mean i think it's it's, caffeinate would be the one for x number of hours uh which is a terminal command i know it sounds strange uh but it really is and then yeah i wonder i wonder what it's running to completely, disable sleep it's probably i mean it's a terminal command but it might not be caffeinated but it could be yeah yeah so yeah um one other thing i saw on i don't know some of the socials one of the socials somewhere was that ricky mandelo uh a long time macky cab listener more importantly for the world though a uh slightly less of a long time as a safari engineer at apple and is the one who has led the team that is responsible for creating the feature we all love in Safari, where when you get a text message or now an email with your six-digit code that you need to enter after you've typed your username and password, it automatically offers to fill that for you.

And that's wonderful.

And of course, that's been there for a long time.

And Ricky and his team really pioneered something there that I think we all love.

That has expanded now, according to Ricky in Mac OS 26.

And that is that it will work.

Any app so you don't have to be in safari for it to offer to fill that for you so if you choose to use chrome as your primary browser for example the text can come in and uh and the you know the mac os will offer to paste it into that browser too and really any app and and they uh in their post where he put a there's like an API or something that you can use to opt out of letting your app do these things so it seems like it will automatically just work but if there's an app that it doesn't make sense to to have these things pasted in then of course you can you can say please don't do that in my app so I thought that was pretty cool yeah awesome yep awesome.

Adam Christianson

Uh I got Phil here, and he has a tip for anyone who might be running older operating systems.

And it's a riff on something that came up at Mac stock.

He said, Hi, just listening to the stump the geek challenge.

And there was some talk about security issues with High Sierra.

Although not official, High Sierra is still receiving X protect updates from Apple.

You can use the app Silent Night, and he provides a link to the app, which we'll provide in the show notes.

to track the updates.

So far, every time there's been an update to security from Apple, it appears on my HiSierra system.

But you can always run Silent Night and install the updates.

Also, most systems are behind router firewalls, and as long as you don't browse the darker parts of the web and use a bit of caution, you should be okay.

Bus Audio guys are very much on the if it ain't broke, don't update it world.

Dave Hamilton

Yes.

Yeah, that's true.

Adam Christianson

Great show as always.

Thanks, Phil.

Dave Hamilton

Thank you.

Oh, that's pretty good.

Yeah.

Huh.

I wonder, does that solve?

I mean, it's great that the X-Protect updates come through, but isn't one of the issues that the root certificates stop getting updated and then you can't visit secure sites in your primary browser?

I mean, you might be able to use like Firefox because that sort of brings its own certs with it.

Right?

isn't that yeah.

Pilot Pete

That sounds very familiar yeah

Dave Hamilton

I don't know that's what I got I mean.

Adam Christianson

This offers a bunch of different things that it like looks into

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah Silent Night is a cool little app that's from Howard Oakley over at Eclectic Light, but yeah there's all kinds of it it not not only does it let you do all these downloads but it shows you what it has done um and and what's up to date and what's not up to date it's a very um very handy little app yeah yeah yep very cool yeah howard writes some great stuff really smart guy, Uh, all right.

I think our, our last quick tip, Tony has a theory about what we were talking about in the last episode where recently saved photos is, you know, the majority of our photos library with tens of thousands of photos in it that definitely weren't recently saved.

Uh tony says i believe the abundance of recently saved photos found in your folders is refilled when one migrates to a new device causing the photos to be repopulated, and i that's as good a theory as any yeah um i.

Pilot Pete

Don't recall coming to a new device but there's no

Dave Hamilton

I mean you came you got a new iphone back in the fall yeah.

Pilot Pete

But recently yeah i guess what's recently

Dave Hamilton

Right recently that's fair yeah yeah yeah yeah although.

Pilot Pete

My clunky workaround is still the only thing i've seen the to fix

Dave Hamilton

Yeah just don't recently.

Pilot Pete

You know less you define 30 days 60 days whatever you want recent

Dave Hamilton

To be yeah yeah yeah that it's it's yeah recently saved For me, 54,000 out of like 70-something thousand.

Pilot Pete

And I'll quickly say, so someone didn't have to go back and look it up, I said create a smart folder and put the thing that any new photo, within the last 30 days or last 60 days, you define how long you want it to be, and then your smart album becomes your recently saved.

Dave Hamilton

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

There you go.

All right.

Shall we move on to some questions?

Pilot Pete

Well, that's a question in and of itself, isn't it, Dave?

Dave Hamilton

I'm being very meta today, Pete.

Adam Christianson

Oh, yeah.

So I guess I'm kicking off with Andy here, right?

Yeah.

So Andy says, I'm replacing the messenger bag I've used as a briefcase for years and years with a backpack.

And that's got me rethinking how I use my daily carry bag.

Like many of us, I suspect I carry a laptop, iPad, and sometimes a Kindle.

That's easy.

The bag will accommodate them easily in dedicated compartments.

As someone who works with a lot of technology, both mine and other people's, I carry a pretty significant array of cables, a bunch of adapters, and a few tools.

Historically, I put everything loose in my bag because I didn't have another good option, and over time, it would turn into progressively more and more of a spaghetti nightmare.

Eventually, I would get frustrated enough to take everything out, wrap it all neatly, and put it back in until the next time.

Velcro cable ties or pieces of tie line to tie up the cables help to some extent, but I feel like there has to be a better solution.

So I'm curious if any of you or your listeners have suggestions on how they manage a large number of USB cables, charters, small accessories, and adapters, keeping them easily accessible and in a system that's easy to maintain.

Thanks, Andy.

Dave Hamilton

I'm sure we all we each have answers for this or or if we don't we wish we did, but mine it this is a great question I don't use my backpack every day because I my commute is you know across the driveway but I do use my backpack when I travel and I have of course the same issue things just become a rat's nest really really quickly thankfully for me and I say thankfully because it sort of, catalyzed my need for a solution.

The amount of time that I bring my backpack with me, uh, and then also travel on an airplane is like greater than 50% of the time that I bring my backpack.

And with that, I needed to come up with a system so that I could get myself on the plane, uh, and be very efficient about taking the things out of my backpack that I need or want to have, uh, it sort of in the seat back pocket for the flight.

And then I can either stow my backpack under the seat and not need to mess with it back and forth.

Or if there winds up being room in the overhead bin last minute, you know, I can toss it up there and I also don't need to worry about it.

So I have a series of little ipper mesh pouches.

And in each one of them is a set of cables for a specific purpose.

There's one set that I would use on the plane.

And so when I get on the plane, I grab that pouch, my water bottle and my iPad, and then I'm done.

I have everything I need.

My AirPods are in that pouch, along with whatever cables I might wind up using on a plane.

And then I can steal my backpack and I don't need to worry about it.

I have another pouch for things that I'd need at night, like in a hotel room or whatever.

I have no idea where I got the pouches that I use, but I looked on Amazon and thankfully, to the rescue, they come.

I found a set of six mesh pouches for less than $10 U.S.

On Amazon, and they seem like they would work great.

I like the mesh pouches because this way I don't have to think about – I don't have to label it.

I literally can look at the pouch and see through the pouch as to what I'm getting and where it is, And it also makes it really easy to like find things in it because it's, it's not like dark inside the pouch.

There's just light getting through the side.

So that's my answer for this.

Do either of you have a solution that you like?

Pilot Pete

I guess I'll go because Adam said pre-show, he doesn't travel as much.

And I kind of get that.

What I've always done was take the cables that I'll use in the hotel room, that sort of thing.

I actually grabbed a long, long time ago when I was writing business class, one of those little, the courtesy bag that they give you with the toothbrush and the socks and all that stuff in it.

And that's been my pouch for years for all my little doctors and cables and that sort of thing that goes in.

And that rides in the side of my suitcase.

Don't care if I check it.

And then I've just used the rat's nest method, like you say, Dave, in the little side mesh pouches on my backpack.

I'll keep a cable that I'll need for charging right there so I can grab it out of the backpack, plug it in, and go from there.

And then I do keep several other cables in that backpack, but that's where the rat's nest truly is.

so i'm not as organized as i should be in that sense i like the i like the mesh pouch idea for the backpack

Dave Hamilton

Like i said i have i i know that the pouch that i started this with was like a gimme from like a you know seagate or sonology or something at a trade show and it was like i don't know what to do with this and and then suddenly it was like i need more of these and And, you know, and obviously the ones that I link to are maybe not.

Obviously, they are six pouches of the same size, having pouches of different sizes or shapes, which is sort of the the menagerie that I have is also really nice because I know with my hand which pouch to grab because I know, oh, it's not that one.

That's too big or that feels different.

It's like, yep, this is the one good to go.

So, yeah.

Adam Christianson

Yeah.

So even though I don't travel as much, I like to keep a good complement of cables, obviously, in my laptop bag.

And I actually happen to have my solution out right now because I got a new laptop and I need to swap out what's in here.

But this is like the best Christmas gift I ever got from my mom.

And it's really cheap for people who aren't on video.

It's like a little case.

I think it came from like Kohl's, you know, around Christmas time.

It was just like one of those little throwaway add-on gift area, you know, the areas they set up where there's a bunch of just little random stuff for, you know, stuff for dads or whatever.

And like, I think it was that kind of thing.

I think it was probably about 10 bucks.

But if you open this thing up, it's like Dave's solution.

It's got a little bunch of mesh compartments.

And I just slide in different cables, adapters.

Um i've got uh there's there's old let's see there's even old iphone uh styluses in here um from back in the day but i have you know my usb a couple usb keys in here and just all my different adapters and then i'll coil up different different cables and so i need to swap all these out because i like some of these are old like there's a lightning to usb cable that i probably I don't need an adapter that I don't need anymore.

I've got these are old video adapters for DisplayPort that I don't need anymore.

So I've got to swap everything out.

But I've used that for years and years and years, and it's amazing.

But it's like your mesh bag thing.

It's just kind of all in one little case.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, I found something similar to what you have on Amazon here for like $17.

It's just a travel organizer case.

So I'll put a link to that in the show notes for everybody just to give you an idea as to what this is.

Adam Christianson

Yeah, and what's great about this is it's not very thick.

Like once you get everything in here, and I just slide it in, you know, into the outer, one of the outer compartments of my laptop bag where you, along with my like iPad.

And it's just there.

I can reach in.

But I use a mess.

I use, I don't know what they call them.

It's not the messenger bag style.

I have a long vertical bag that just has a flap that opens up on the top.

So I can grab everything straight out of the top of it pretty easily.

Dave Hamilton

Love it.

That's great.

Smart.

All right.

On the subject of cables, Kaz has a question.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, he does.

But I'll add real quickly that it looks like you have several hundred dollars worth of equipment in that bag, even though some of it may be obsolete.

Adam Christianson

They're all obsolete adapters.

But yeah, if anybody needs an old adapter for, you know, anything, I've got it.

Pilot Pete

HDMI to lightning, he's got it.

Adam Christianson

I still have, you know, SCSI terminators if you need those.

Pilot Pete

There you go.

Dave Hamilton

Oh, yeah, I'm not proud of the collection of things I have.

for sure that.

Pilot Pete

Looks expensive so anyway yeah cast wrote in he says i recently purchased several samsung t7 and t9 ssds and all they although they came with usb cables they are not labeled and soon those cables will get mixed up with my other unmarked cables therefore i want to methodically test and label my usbc cables with their speeds and capabilities for future use what methods do you suggest I use to determine the cable's max throughput, and do any of you have a method of labeling USB cables?

As an example, the T9 supposedly has rewrite speeds of 16 gigabytes per second, so theoretically I should be using a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 max 20 gigabytes per second to achieve maximum transfer speeds.

But how do I tell a USB 3.2 Gen 1 or Gen 2 with 5 to 10 gigabytes per second, respectively, from the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.

Thank you for all you do,

Dave Hamilton

Kaz.

Kaz, I think Tom opened the show with the answer to your second question, with the ip ties, the multicolored ip ties.

I think that's one of the most brilliant things that we've had come in, and I love that both of your emails came in in the same week.

I, you know, for, For testing, I generally, I do one of two things.

I connect a device that I know to be as capable as possible, like, you know, a Thunderbolt 4 dock, for example, or, you know, a Thunderbolt drive.

And then I look in system information on the Mac in that section, and look in the USB or Thunderbolt sections, because if the cable is not capable, it might show up in the wrong place, if you will.

And that will often tell you what it has negotiated now again you need to be really aware of what you're putting on each end of that cable that your mac would be one thing of course because if you plug a you know thunderbolt 4 cable into a 5 gig usb drive it's going to show that it's a 5 gig usb connection that's because of what's negotiated on the other end so So just be aware of what you're using and know where the weak link in the chain or the slow link in the chain could be.

The other test is to connect a fast drive that you know can transmit data and then run Blackmagic speed test and see exactly how fast it goes.

The system information thing is probably going to get you more what you're looking for of the two that I came up with, but that would be the way.

Adam, do you have another way of testing, finding out cable speeds and all that stuff?

Adam Christianson

No, I mean, I think that's kind of the right answer.

The answer I would go with, maybe there's some other third-party software out there, but I think that's certainly the easiest.

Yep.

Dave Hamilton

Yep.

Pilot Pete

And I will add that if anybody is listening who manufactures cables, I was out at the airport yesterday talking to the mechanic about the JPI engine monitor, and he says, JPI labels all of their cables every 12 inches with exactly which cable it is.

How brilliant is that?

How hard would that be to put on the case?

Dave Hamilton

I have, I mean, I realize your question is rhetorical.

And the real question is, why don't they do this, right?

Yeah, there you go.

And I'm used to microphone and speaker cables, which are almost always labeled with what they are.

And especially true of trying to tell the difference between what I would call an XLR microphone cable and a DMX cable, because those can be wired differently, I think, in terms of grounding.

And the same is true of an instrument cable versus a speaker cable.

They both have quarter-inch tips, monophonic, usually quarter-inch tips at each end.

And if you don't know how it's labeled, you don't know how it's grounded inside without slicing it open, and then suddenly the cable doesn't work as well anymore.

So I am used to that.

But it is ugly on the side of a cable if you are looking at the side of a cable to see this writing that's just constantly wrapped around the cable or whatever.

Many of us have our cables in spots that are conspicuous on our desks and so i think the visual uh impact of that might be a reason that some companies choose to not put those labels on cables also you know if you want a cable that's uh instead of it being like a rubbery cable it's more of a ropey cable well now that's slightly more difficult to print on yeah right So I think, but also, people are probably cheap about this.

Pilot Pete

Yeah, the ends of the cable.

Dave Hamilton

The ends of the cable is what you're showing here, Adam.

I like that.

Adam Christianson

So our friends at OWC got this.

I don't know if you can see this, but this is two sides of, you know, both ends of the cable.

One side, this is obviously a Lightning USB-C 4 cable.

It's got a number, sorry, Thunderbolt USB-C 4 cable.

It's got a four under the Thunderbolt logo.

And then on the other side, it says 100 watt, 40 gigabits per second.

Dave Hamilton

Brilliant.

Adam Christianson

Love it.

On both ends.

Pilot Pete

Thank you, OWC.

Dave Hamilton

Love it.

Thank you.

I love it.

Adam Christianson

Yep.

Get good quality cables.

They do think about these things.

Pilot Pete

Yes.

Buy the cheap crud, you're going to get the cheap crud.

Dave Hamilton

And I will say.

Adam Christianson

And this is not a cheap cable.

This is a very expensive game.

Dave Hamilton

Yes.

Yeah, that that that is is yeah Half the value of what was in your bag to begin with, The to answer in the way you asked your question Kaz of course you were correct talking about USB you know 3.2 gen 1 gen 2 and all that stuff the USB standards, consortium or whatever it is has, updated their labeling or not labeling but their their naming guidance to do away with the 3.2 generation one generation two and all that and we call cables by their speeds nowadays uh in terms of gigabits like like that one you know says it can do 40 gigabits a second that it i am so thankful that the the industry is at least pushing to get rid of this very confusing naming convention that that usb.

Uh saddled us with for a long time we have more questions uh to go through and we will we have some cool stuff found that we may or may not get to but there is one that i want to get to because it is so related to everything we're talking about here it would be irresponsible of us to ignore it robert says uh i put labels on every usbc cable i bought thinking i would never get mixed up on charging cables data cable speeds usb yada yada but it was a pain in the ass and it never really works he says so i bought a bunch of inline usbc power meters that work on any usbc cable and i put each i put one in each of my go bags so that i have them everywhere uh and and of course we can you can find these all over amazon the really cool thing that he found is and it was his favorite in his list is an inline usbc female to female coupler that allows you to create longer cables from two shorter cables and the amazing thing uh is that the one that he found which we will link to in the show notes is certified for 240 watts of power delivery and Thunderbolt 4 speeds of up to 40 gigabits per second.

And then also, because of all that, 8K at 60 hertz for video.

Like, this seems like, and it's $8, less than $8 today, at least, for two of them.

So, 240 watts, 40 gigabits per second, female to female couplers, so that you can just extend your USB-C cables.

I've already ordered these because, like, I need to have them in my travel bag.

Because so many times it's like dang it i need a longer cable i don't have one now i've got to like create this scenario that's non-optimal just to be able to plug things in quick.

Pilot Pete

Question yeah is there a limit on length when you start adding those up are you how how soon do you start degrading your throughput

Dave Hamilton

Okay i i'm doing this from memory uh someone will hopefully correct me No, I believe that with Thunderbolt 4, with the 40 gigabits per second and 240 watts, I think the limit is two meters.

With USB 4, which are the same statistics, the limit is longer.

And when things are not certified by the USB consortium, they can go even longer than that.

So I don't know what the physical limits are on these things, but I know that they're like Thunderbolt has the shortest limit to be certified as Thunderbolt.

USB has a longer limit to be certified as USB.

And then if you don't care if it's certified as USB, test it first, of course, before you travel with it, then it can go even longer than that.

But yeah i think i've got like a three meter cable that'll do this or a four maybe even a four meter i i when i did all that testing a couple years ago to find all this stuff out i i that's where that came from but i i was not prepared for your question so sorry dude no i love that someone someone will will help us and even if they don't i can look back at my notes and and find that answer perhaps even later in the episode we do have more did you have something else to add or no.

Pilot Pete

No, I was just going to say, as pilots, we try not to do that to each other, especially on check rides, you know, in front of the FAA.

Hey, you know, what's the tire limiting speed?

Why, I don't know that.

You failed.

Dave Hamilton

That's right.

Well, that's when we refer back to our pre-show conversation and start asking questions as though the initial question were, what's the airspeed of an unladen swallow?

Well, it depends.

Was the rubber made in Kentucky for that tire or was the rubber made in Florida?

Because that's going to change things.

And asking questions that even the FAA examiner might be going like, wait, what were these guys?

Whoa, they are sharp.

Look at that.

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All right.

I think we got time for a couple more questions.

Adam Christianson

Sure.

I'll kick it off with Roger.

Roger says, I would be grateful if you could help me with my iPhone 16 Pro making pocket calls.

Both my 15 and now 16 phones make uncommanded calls to my contacts when I put my phone back in my pocket after making or receiving a call.

I googled it and have turned off just about everything, including Siri.

I click the phone off after a call.

I have called Apple support twice about this.

the first time a second-tier tech not believing the phones do this.

I have even erased the phone and reinstalled the OS and data.

Last Saturday, the phone made two calls in quick succession to different contacts.

Oh no.

I don't know what else to do other than to now erase the phone and treat it as new without installing a backup, manually reinstalling the contents, which would be a pain.

I don't think you're going to have to do that.

I have a hard back case, but no screen protector.

Help, please.

Roger.

Pilot Pete

Roger, I feel your pain.

I just do, man.

I do it all the time.

Dave can attest to the fact that my phone will do this.

And so I think it's more of a hardware problem in that sense of the way or an interface problem that is causing this.

So erasing your phone, reinstalling, I don't think is going to help.

It happens to my favorites.

Fortunately, my airplane mechanic works till one or two o'clock in the morning sometimes.

So when I dialed him the other night at midnight and immediately hit end before it even rang on my end, he immediately called me back and said, something wrong.

Is there an emergency?

I'm like, no, dude, just put my phone down.

And my phone swiped across your name.

And here we are chatting.

Dave Hamilton

Can we call this an error between the button, the keyboard?

Pilot Pete

Yeah, exactly.

It is.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think the way to is to be conscious and hit the side button to blank the screen out before you hang up.

And I told him with, you know, either your AirPods or CarPlay, you know, hanging up with your AirPods or CarPlay after turning the screen off should work.

And he says, well, I don't have AirPods or CarPlay.

So, you know, that would be my first idea.

A couple other ideas, Dave, Adam, you guys jump in here, but I think go to accessibility settings, accessibility, touch, turn off tap to wake.

Are you inadvertently tapping the phone and waking it as you put it in your pocket?

And then it's sensing touch.

And this one's a real clunky solution, but I think would work is require face ID with attention in order to get that screen to open back up and do anything.

Because, yeah, frequently when I hang up a call, if I don't blank the screen out, I'll grab the phone by the screen in the back, sliding it into my pocket, and the next thing I know, I'm talking to somebody.

Adam Christianson

I have one for you.

And I actually learned this because I like to listen to YouTube videos.

So I'll have a bunch of YouTube videos, longer form stuff generally.

And I don't really care what's on screen, because it's just like kind of what we're doing here.

It's just people talking into a microphone.

That's fine.

I just want to hear the audio.

And I started to have this problem where, because YouTube throws up ads, when the ads would come on, I was somehow, while the phone was in my pocket, it was clicking through to the ads, right?

So I'll throw the phone in my pocket, I'll have my AirPods on, I'll be walking around the house.

And what I realized was orientation matters.

So as long as I put the screen facing away from my body when I put it in my pocket, it's less likely to tap on anything.

So what's happening is, because it's capacitive with the screen towards the fabric's not enough to stop the capacitiveness.

So as I'm walking or something, you know, my leg will bump the screen or whatever, and it'll detect a tap and go through.

So I would definitely be conscious about when you're putting it in your pocket after turning off the screen, and i agree with you pete but he said he was already doing that uh definitely have the screen facing away from your body rather than toward your body and that will prevent hopefully unintended taps but it shouldn't wake up on its own that's the weird part like if you truly turn it off it should not just wake up and make a phone call you'd have to actually have you know i i think most commonly what happens is like was just you hang up the call you you're still in your contacts then you put in your pocket it hits some contact and makes a call yeah i think that's more likely what's happening so yeah have the screen facing out rather than in toward your body good

Pilot Pete

Stuff yeah moving

Dave Hamilton

On to paul.

Pilot Pete

Oh yeah right

Dave Hamilton

Yeah i don't have anything yeah.

Pilot Pete

Yeah we are because you know because i was sitting here uh having a conversation instead sorry

Dave Hamilton

I'm just trying to keep it.

Pilot Pete

Moving It is what it is.

Yeah.

He writes in, thank you, Paul.

Let me say thank you right up front.

Because he writes in, hello, gentlemen, and Pete.

Just kidding, Pete.

He says, I have a question I hope you can help me with.

I have a 2023 MacBook M3 Pro.

I use a 70-watt MagSafe charger.

If I use my extra 87-watt charger already in my travel bag, will this have a negative impact on my laptop?

Thank you for your help and time.

adam and the other guy just kidding again pete have been a great compliment to the

Dave Hamilton

Podcast paul.

Pilot Pete

Thanks paul i'm not thin-skinned

Dave Hamilton

I'll be back after.

Pilot Pete

I get my kleenex

Dave Hamilton

That's right yeah thankfully none of us are uh i agree i i like the dynamic we have here it's a good thing um and i my my reaction to paul's question is you have nothing to worry about now.

If we just go like to in theory, higher wattage chargers could create more heat in the battery because they're sending more current to the battery and heat is the enemy of battery longevity.

But your MacBooks charging system only takes the power it needs.

And then even beyond that, it regulates the inflow of power to keep the battery healthy, drawing less and less as it gets closer and closer to full.

And, of course, we've seen in recent years even macOS will stop charging at 80% until it thinks you need more and do all its things.

And that's exactly to mitigate that – it's not theoretical.

It's a it's a physical thing, but it's only it's theoretical because it doesn't impact us because Apple has mitigated against it.

Right.

That theoretical thing where heat bad.

So, yeah, your 87 watt charger won't force any extra power into the Mac.

Your Mac will draw power from it as it sees fit.

Perfectly safe to use.

And you likely won't notice any difference in battery longevity.

But you might notice a difference in the speed at which your computer charges, especially when it's almost or completely out of power.

It's that, you know, that initial 50 percent or 40 percent or so where it will draw as much current as it can and really can, you know, that can make a difference, that fast charge kind of thing.

So that's that's my thought.

uh adam do you have any any any anything to either disagree with or add.

Adam Christianson

No no i mean again yeah like you said heat's enemy of batteries so you know don't leave it hot cars and stuff like that like yeah yeah

Dave Hamilton

Yeah.

Adam Christianson

You know, or yeah, even, even if you're driving around on a hot day or something like that, you know, depending upon how you're running the AC or having it in direct sunlight.

So even like a positioning of, you know, where you, where you place it in your car, if you have a holder or something like that, if it's up on the dash directly in the sun, beating down, even with AC, you know, that's not probably an ideal position to have it in, um, you know, those sorts of things, but you're absolutely right.

Like as far as charging goes, uh, Apple devices should be regulating it on the inbound side, no matter what.

So, um, but you know, all the other things, like, again, I don't know how much this factors into it.

It might be more mental than anything else, but you know, if you're using third party wall chargers, I try to make sure that I'm buying known good branded ones that we had a couple of tips about, you know, things you can use to test the current on those things to make sure it's you know coming out correctly but again your at your apple devices should be regulating it on the inbound side anyway um so that's less of an issue but i mean end to end making sure everything's good is probably a good idea too i mean

Dave Hamilton

I'm that reminds me john f braun had an issue where i i think he cooked his iphone twice with a car charger like a you know a cigarette lighter style adapter to to iphone and and it just you know he cooked his phone and and then it happened again and i'm like dude i i think it's yeah we talked we went through it and he's like yeah it turns out you know he checked the current coming from the thing and it was not great so to your point about get quality stuff uh when it comes to the power delivery and i don't just mean pd capital pd power delivery but whatever you're using to deliver power to your devices matters so.

Adam Christianson

Right uh so i related to that

Dave Hamilton

Uh when.

Adam Christianson

You're traveling there are many places to plug your phone into that will give you power or your things into it will give you power i usually try to find an outlet and use my own adapter i don't trust any of those little things are like the, you know, the lamp.

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

What could go wrong?

Adam Christianson

You know, let's just plug into the lamp at the hotel and

Pilot Pete

240 volts boom yeah

Adam Christianson

Again it's again your iphone should have circuitry to like help with that but you know

Pilot Pete

Well i'll say i've noted recently that i have gotten a little alert that says battery will resume charging when the iphone when battery returns to normal temperature so i'm assuming the computer has that same technology in it as well so in spite of my attempts to cook my battery it's now gotten smarter than me.

Dave Hamilton

And I'll take it.

That's a good thing.

Yeah.

These things aren't cheap.

And, you know, we keep saying your Apple devices will regulate the power, the inbound power.

It's not just Apple devices that do this.

You know, every Android phone worth its salt also does the same thing.

Like, this isn't something, I'm sure Apple has their own patents on how they've chosen to do it and all this other stuff.

But everybody is aware of this and makes their devices so that they keep themselves as safe as they can.

Adam Christianson

Well, again, like you're talking about Android, you're talking about Apple.

Dave Hamilton

I said Android devices worth their salt.

Adam Christianson

That cheap toy or that IoT thing that you bought, like, I don't know.

Oh, yeah.

Chinese, whatever.

Lots of things have rechargeable batteries in them.

I don't trust those really cheap things to be regulating anything.

So if they came with a power adapter, I'm using that thing.

I'm not grabbing my 75-watt Apple USB-C charger and plugging that thing into that.

That ain't going to fly.

Dave Hamilton

Yeah, fair.

Fair.

Adam Christianson

That's a house fire waiting to happen.

Dave Hamilton

I meant to say Android devices that are worth their salt.

I think that is what I said, but I'll reiterate.

You did.

No, you make a good point that it's not everything, but yeah, the things that you, yeah.

Adam Christianson

Just because so many more and more things, like little things are just having batteries in them.

Be careful out there, folks.

You don't want to assume that every little cheap $10 USB-C thing with a battery is going to regulate inbound power.

Probably not.

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Dave Hamilton

All right.

Should we do a cool stuff found or two and call it a day here?

Pilot Pete

We can do that.

I got this one in the email, and Dave grabbed it, and we chatted briefly yesterday about it.

And I thought, you know, I'm not sure.

I don't think so.

Maybe.

But Segev writes in.

He says, I've recently launched a new Mac OS app.

It would be thrilled if you could take a quick look, share any feedback, and possibly review it.

So here's what it is.

It's a low-friction app switcher for Mac.

Well, who needs an app switcher, right?

I've got the Command-Tab button.

Oh, was I wrong?

This thing is cool.

You set it up when you get it so that, for instance, on the Mac, because my laptop, I have a trackpad, not a mouse.

You can use the middle mouse button, that sort of thing.

But I have it set up.

It defaults to right command, but I moved it over to the right option key.

And you can have it in a fan, a palette, or a list, or what have you.

And I set it up so when I touch the right option key, I get a fan of all the apps that are open on my machine.

I hover the mouse over the app I want to switch to and release the option key.

And boom, I'm there.

It's fast.

It graphically points it.

And so you aren't hitting the tab key over and over and over again because it's, you know, 14 apps down in the list.

It's right there.

Sergev, I think the app is called Dory, D-O-R-Y.

I think you've stumbled onto something pretty cool here.

Nicely done.

It's amazing.

Yeah, I don't know a better way to say it.

An app switcher, right?

Who needs an app switcher?

I don't think I do.

Oh, wait, I like this.

So the Dory app switcher.

I could see someone like my wife, who is less technically inclined to play with the computer, that sort of thing, being very much interested in this because it's so graphically pretty to put your apps in front of you.

Yeah.

So, nicely done, Sergey.

Dave Hamilton

Huh.

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

Dave Hamilton

Cool.

We got a note from, in the spirit of the people who made it telling us about it, we got a note from our friends at MacPaw about a feature that has been added to CleanMyMac called Cloud Cleanup.

And this is a simple, secure way to manage your storage space, not just on your Mac, but across iCloud, Google Drive, and OneDrive all in one place.

So I don't know that something like this has existed before in that way.

Pilot Pete

I'm sorry.

Dave Hamilton

That's right.

Yeah.

um yeah it it it so i i haven't messed with it a whole bunch but uh i like i mean it looks great like it just i like yeah i.

Pilot Pete

Like that yeah

Dave Hamilton

Yeah yeah so very cool very cool stuff i meant to mess with it i just haven't you know i've been coming coming back online here my my reminders list is only four times as long as it should be after the mania of the month of july which is fine you know we're getting there yeah yeah there.

Pilot Pete

You go um richard wrote in and told us about view scan he writes adam brought up the subject of scanning and it occurs to me that i don't ever recall you mentioning hamrick software's view scan that's a v-u-e-s-c-a-n application for mac i had a nice SnapScan 1500M from Fujitsu, but after upgrading my OS a few years back, support went away.

I found ViewScan, and it has been a lifesaver for anyone with a scanner that either no longer works due to a software update or for anyone that needed a lot more scan features, this is a great application.

Ed Hamrick is continually updating it, and it's very responsive to any questions.

I would rate ViewScan as my top application.

Keep up the good work.

So, yeah, I mean, I just, and go ahead.

Adam Christianson

I just found out I'm going to need, probably need this software after I can find the scanner I need to find because, you know, I think I've told you guys, I don't know any other people.

I've gotten into pinball machines and I've got a couple old pinball machines and I just discovered a guy who had a tutorial video, the back glass, the glass that goes up on them are often damaged on the old ones.

He restores them, but what he does is he does it all in Photoshop and he uses, I don't know if you guys remember, there was a Canon scanner back in the day that looked just like a sheet of glass.

It was really thin.

It was just like a sheet of glass and you could put it on any surface.

And you just set it face down, facing the thing you want to scan and you scan it.

So he uses one of those and he grids out, he puts it in Photoshop and he does it and then he takes it someplace and has them do printing directly on glass and basically recreates the thing from scratch.

A lot of people try to repair them with paint, but this seems like an ideal way to go.

So, and I guarantee you, there's not going to be software.

I've used it to view scan stuff for years.

It's, it's amazing.

It is truly a great app.

Dave Hamilton

We, we've, we've certainly mentioned view scan on the show over the, you know, two plus decades, but it's been a while.

Uh, and I, when you had put it in the list, I was like, oh yeah, like we, this is something that we don't all need to know about it all the time, but when we need to know about it, it is important to know about.

Yep.

Adam Christianson

That's the key.

That's the key.

You dig out that old scanner and you're like, Oh, I want to scan some things or you come up.

I mean, a common one that'll come up is people will come across like a box of old photos when, unfortunately, when someone passes away.

Right.

And you want to like preserve those and yeah, you can shoot them with your K your camera, but I mean, an old scanner is also a good way to go.

So.

Dave Hamilton

Yep.

I will point out and, and they are the view scan folks are great about telling you the same thing before you buy look at their list of supported scanners because they are very and their list is exhaustive and specific so make sure that the exact scanner that you want to use with your mac is listed on their compatibility list and if it is it's going to work and if it's not i'm sorry to say it's not going to work but they're very clear about that before you buy.

So, yep, just make sure that...

Pilot Pete

Yeah.

And I'll mention, this is a special for the people that are watching here today right now, because by the time the show comes out, this sale will be over.

His professional edition, normally $69.95 is $52.45.

Standard edition is now down to $30 and the basic edition down to $15 for the year.

And there's a lot of cool features when you get all the way up to professional edition to include slides, scanners that do slides and stuff like that are not supported with the two basic ones.

Adam Christianson

I mean, that's another big one for, you know, people find a whole box of slides and you're going to need a scanner for that.

I mean, I think there's some little devices you can get that attach to your iPhone that can kind of do it.

I don't know how well they work.

But I also point out, Dave, your point about making sure your scanner's on there.

Also there's a free trial so you can

Dave Hamilton

Even better try.

Adam Christianson

It and make sure it works before you before you jump in and

Dave Hamilton

Buy even better great yep that's right great uh well i have one last quick one it's actually developed by somebody that grew up here in uh in durham new hampshire uh it's a new app for your phone called dialed and it is a motivational coach that uh is built for uh Overcoming procrastination, and you get little 60-second motivation things with little pep talks.

Pilot Pete

I'll get that app later.

Dave Hamilton

And concentration music.

That's right, Pete.

You can remind me when you do.

Haptic feedback, all of these things.

And you can pick different coaches in the app.

It leverages AI to really kind of make this happen and personalize it and do all of the things.

But there's four different coaches in there.

The challenger the mentor the stoic the visionary right and you tell it what is blocking you and then it starts to kind of give you these things for those instant mind shifts so uh yeah the the very cool stuff and marlon and his team uh they quit their jobs and they're living out in the bay area and taking a run at this so uh i i took a look at it and i was like oh this is actually a really cool little thing.

So yeah, nicely done, cool stuff.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I think that's what we have.

And Adam, it's the first Friday of the month, right?

So is the siren going to go off soon?

Adam Christianson

It should start here in a second.

Although I got to experience it for real this week.

That was fun.

Dave Hamilton

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh-oh.

Adam Christianson

We got to go drive over to the county building and hunker down in the basement.

Yeah.

Dave Hamilton

Is everything okay now?

And was it even then?

Adam Christianson

Yeah, nothing.

It was just, yeah.

I mean, there was a tornado that touched down, I forget, in part of South Dakota.

And it did take out a house.

I can't remember if anybody got killed.

I don't think they could.

They don't think anybody was in the house because they didn't find anybody.

So that was the good news.

But yeah, it went off for real.

So it did its job.

Wow.

And we were safe and we just hung out for about an hour or so until it passed.

There it goes.

There it is.

We've had severe storm warnings here the last couple of days.

So we've had some pretty severe storms, but, uh, yeah, luckily no, no tornadoes.

Dave Hamilton

Well, it's good.

Cause Steve Miller will say that that's the reason he canceled his tour that wasn't selling any tickets to begin with.

He said it was the weather.

Uh, so yep.

So your tornado gives our friend, Steve Miller, a reason I thought it was the strangest thing to come out and say, we're canceling our tour for the weather yet.

like you could look at all the seats that were still available on ticket master.

It's like, I don't think that's the reason Steve, but okay.

Uh, yeah.

All right.

Well, that's what we got.

Make sure to visit Mac geek up.com slash giveaway for your chance to win one of five licenses.

Uh, I don't, we, I, I, I confused us at the beginning of the show.

As I said, one of five, I realized, I don't think we said that we organized the agenda in such a way that we each get to learn five new things.

So hopefully we each learned five new things today.

There it is.

Yeah.

Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the audio episode from us to you.

Speaking of audio episodes, check out Adam's debut film podcast, Pete's So There I Was.

And then I do Gig Gab and Business Brain sometimes more frequently than I would like, given what I've done to my schedule these days.

But that's okay.

It's fun.

I love doing this stuff.

I really do.

Yeah.

Just sometimes I look at the calendar and it's like, what did I do?

Why?

And I don't have an answer for that.

Thanks for hanging out with us.

Good stuff.

Feedback at MacGeekCab.com.

Pilot Pete

Oh, you heard him.

Feedback at MacGeekCab.com.

Adam Christianson

That was feedback at MacGeekCab.com.

Dave Hamilton

Yuppert.

Pilot Pete

I can't believe we almost didn't mention that.

Dave Hamilton

I know.

I thought about it a few times, but we were rolling.

There was a lot of stuff.

It was just action-packed, man.

Pilot Pete

And you're back up to speed, it seems.

Dave Hamilton

I am, yeah.

Pilot Pete

Feeling well.

Good.

Dave Hamilton

Thank goodness, man.

That was not fun.

Lyme disease, do not recommend.

Zero out of five stars.

Yeah, take care of yourselves.

And the one thing I learned with Lyme disease, it is a strange, it is an atypical illness because most of the symptoms are subjective.

So the patient is the one that knows the most about the impact of the illness.

And it's really easy for, you know, a guy in his mid fifties to be dismissed at the doctor's office when you go in and you say, my back hurts or my leg hurts.

Right.

They're like, yeah, welcome to the club, buddy.

So but really, it was it was an interesting thing.

So if if if you know something is wrong, don't get caught.

Tell your doctor that was really a big part of of my diagnosis on that was was and treatments easy once the diagnosis happens.

So, yeah, have fun.

Don't get caught.

And we'll see you next week.

Maidon I'm back.

Pilot Pete

See ya.

Dave Hamilton

Later.