 The Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, episode 763 for Monday, May 27th, 2019. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, the show where we take your questions, your tips, your cool stuff found. We mix them all together with the goal being that we answer your questions. We share your tips, we share your cool stuff found so that we can each learn at least five new things every single time we get together. Sponsors for this show include LinkedIn.com slash MGG, Linode.com slash MGG and other world computing at MacSales.com. We'll explain all of those URLs shortly here and now here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun. How are you doing today, Mr. John F. Braun? I was just hanging. Hanging, yeah. You you sound when you did the show intro, I think you were like backed off your mic, so you had this like awesome echo, like like ambiance reverb thing going on. But so that was not. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It was it was actually. Try to do it again. Quite epic. Yeah, it was pretty good. Well, we aim to be epic. We aim for epicocity. Yes, that's right. I don't know what that means. That's not a word. No. We also, well, one of us, I'm aiming for San Jose next week. I'll be attending. Well, Alt Conf, I'll be there. W.W.D.C. is, of course, next week. I will very likely be attending the keynote and then and then we'll actually do a show after the State of the Union. So the next Mackie Gab will be recorded on the afternoon of whatever day that would be June 3rd, which is Monday. So released on June 3rd, just recorded a little later in the day that we normally do so that we can do that. But but later that week, if there are listeners either in San Jose or the general area or are attending W.W.D.C. and will be there, we are aiming to do a little, you know, Mackie Gab gathering on Wednesday afternoon, the 5th at 4 p.m. Pacific. So and I think we're going to do it at San Pedro Market Square. It looks like a nice little place, a food court kind of thing, but we can gather there and there's parking. If you're if you're not attending W.W.D.C., but it's also about 10 minutes from the convention center walk, but it's 10 minute walk from the convention center. So very, very doable for everyone. So I think that's what that's what we will do, which should be fun. I guess I should shout out to all of our W.W.D.C. coverage sponsors, including IMAZING, SMILE, Carbon Copy Cloner, Sanebox and Direct Mail for Mack. So all of these great people making our coverage of W.W.D.C. and all of the surrounding things possible. So yeah, good stuff. Really, thank you to all of them. It's great. Yeah, should we just get into the tips here, John? I want in. OK, we will dive. We have a quick tip from Jeff, who says when entering data on a website that has a pick list, here's a tip that often avoids the need to move your fingers to your pointing device to pick the required item from the list. All right. So we made I'm going to stop us right here. We made some changes to John's microphone setup because his level was low and we were getting a lot of noise on his signal. But now what we're getting is every little bit of background noise from him. So when you sip your coffee while I'm talking, everyone gets to know that you're sipping your coffee while I'm talking. So just back off the moment. But you sound better, which is good. We just need to we need to inhibit the background noise. I think we need to change the microphone that that you're on. I think it's picking up too much of the ambient stuff. But it's it's an evolution, you know, it's always good. So Jeff says when entering data on a website that has a pick list, here is a tip that often mitigates the need to go to your pointing device. And he says the example I'll use is when entering my address on a payments page. I'll enter my street address and then tab to the state box, which is often a pick list. So he types in his name is street address and then he using the tab key. So not leaving the keyboard all both hands on the keyboard. This is great. He says as soon as I get to the pick list, I'll press the letter that's the first letter of my state. He lives in Oregon. So he says he presses, oh, this expands the pick list and positions it down to the first state that begins with the letter O, which is, of course, Ohio. He says, then I press the down arrow key twice to move the selection down to Oregon and I hit the space bar to select it. Then I can tab to the next field and carry on without having to move my fingers from the keyboard. He says most of the time I don't need to do this because I can use one password to fill my address data. But on some website payments, one password auto fill just doesn't work because it can't auto detect what's going on there. So yeah, very, very cool. And that's a that's a great tip. I use it all the time on on my end here too. Good stuff, man. Anything to add to that, John? Yeah, me too. Three times California, Colorado, Connecticut. Oh, there you go. So yeah, yeah. Good stuff, man. Good listener. Ben does have something to add to this. We talked about some of these types of things. Even you can even do it on dialogue boxes on your Mac. But as listener Ben astutely points out, this only fully works when system preferences, keyboard shortcuts, full keyboard access is set to all controls. We were talking about it in terms of mail last week, but but it works in a lot of different places. So again, go into system preferences, go to keyboard, click on the shortcuts tab and make sure full keyboard access is set to all controls. And that will that will get you there. So sweet. Thanks so much for that, Ben. Such good stuff. Anything to add to that before we before we jump to Daniel? I'm set to text boxes and lists only. Aha. Interesting. Aha. I wonder if that's the default behavior. I think it is, John. Yeah, let me look at my MacBook. Yeah, my MacBook and my MacBook. That's also what it's set to. OK, yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So changing that to to all keys can can make a difference for you there. So thank you, Ben. Such good stuff. We love it. It's how it's how we do it here at Mac. He got Daniel points out something. You know, these are this is what I love about quick tips, the things that you either stumble upon but never think to share or only think of when you are in a place where you can't log them down if you're the host of a podcast. For example, lots of carplay tips don't make it to the show from me because when I think about them is when I'm driving. And you know, it's not such a good idea to to start jotting things down while you're driving. So Daniel shares a carplay to carplay tips with us. The first is that your carplay app icons can't be rearranged on the car's interface, but they can be rearranged on your phone by going into settings, general carplay. Choose your car if you've got more than one. And from there, you can drag the icons around or even remove apps that you're not interested in having available to you in the car. He says the phone does not need to be plugged into the car for this to work. And he's totally right. And it's super handy to be able to rearrange those. In fact, I just got the head unit in my car replaced because evidently 2018 Subaru Outbacks have there's a massive problem with the head units that Harman Kardon built for them. And so they are replacing them almost almost 100 percent of them. But but mine started acting a little bit weird and I thought I'll get it replaced before it becomes a real problem. So I got it replaced and all of the customizations that I had done for carplay went away because the phone sees it as a new car because the head unit serial number is different. So John's on his squeaky chair, folks. That's that's extra bonus, bonus audio for you. So there you go. And then the second one, which is even cooler, is if you take a screenshot when plugged into carplay, it creates two new photos in your library. One for your phone screen like you would expect and an additional screenshot, which is your carplay screen. And he's totally right. You will get the screen shot of your phone screen and then whatever was on the carplay screen because carplay, the best way to think about carplay is that it is just an extended monitor for your phone. It's a very customized extended monitor, such that, you know, not everything can be displayed there, but that's really what it is. So it's good. Yeah, thank you, Alan. Five sixty seven in the chatroom says next week's sponsor should be WD 40. I like that. And the chat rooms at MacCab dot com slash stream, folks, we'd love to see it in there. It's good. Anything to add to that blast? What's that, John? I'll have to give another blast to WD 40. Indeed, indeed. Cool. All right. Well, anything to add to the, you know, you have you ever. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, you've got questions. No, but but what you're mentioning, I believe you can do the same. It sounds similar to what you can do with like Apple configurator. You can remotely rearrange the icons. Is it maybe easier to do it? It's not on a PC. On. Yes. Except you're not remotely rearranging anything. You're doing it on your phone, right? You're but you're. Yep. Yep. Like your phone, like I said, the best way to think about carplay is that it's like you're plugging your phone into a second monitor, right? It's just it's a very specialized used special second monitor. And it happens to be, you know, the screen of your car. So you're just changing the way your phone is going to display things on the monitor with carplay. The car is actually dumb in that mode. It's just the interface. And yeah, it's just the interface, really, you know, you've got a visual and a touchscreen. And that's it. Well, and maybe some knobs for, you know, different things, but like volumes and all that. But yeah, it's like a dual screen iPhone. Yeah, which is cool. Yeah, it's cool. Oh, yes. All right. But wait, I want to I want to circle back to what you were saying, though, with Apple configurator, can you rearrange the icons on your phone from your Mac with Apple configurator? Is that right? Last I tried it. And I think iTunes lets you do it, too. All right. Not any more. It used to. OK, yeah, used to. Yeah. That's right. I recall them removing that. But configurator, I think we'll we'll still let you do that. OK, that's that's kind of nice. Yeah, I also I'm the last time I did that, I think I used I'mazing, which which was one for that, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. And as I mentioned, I'mazing is one of our dub dub sponsors. So there you go. It's great. It's awesome. Amazing, amazing, amazing. There you go. Yeah. Well, I'm on the subject of I'mazing and thinking about iTunes and all of that. It is worth going into checking. This is actually separate from I'mazing, but it just reminded me of it, especially if you don't back up with I'mazing, go into iTunes, go to preferences and go to devices and take a look at the list of backups that are being kept there and look at the dates on those backups because I Lisa was going to she wanted to try to back up her iPhone or computer and she's like, oh, it wouldn't let me because it said the backup was damaged and I needed to, you know, delete the backup so it could create a new one. And she's like, but I didn't know where to look. And so I was like, oh, well, here's here's where you look. And I told her to look in, you know, iTunes preferences devices and everything that was there. She had stuff from old phones and, you know, the most recent backup there was from like 2017 or something. It's like, yeah, we should just clear all of these out. These are no longer valuable to keep around. So take a look there. Just check your iTunes backups every now and then, just to make sure that, you know, you're you're keeping stuff that's that's valuable to you because you might not be. Apple understandably heirs on the side of keeping everything until you tell it not to, which is not a bad idea. Good stuff, Mr. Braun. Anything else to add while we're on our little tangent here? I think the other I think the other place you may want to look. Is what you have an iCloud as well, right? You may have done the backups being stored in an iCloud as well. Yeah, that's a good point about this train of thought. Where can you delete those, though? Yeah, I think if you go, let me let me see here. No, I think I think you can access it on the on the Mac as well. OK. I think system preferences, iCloud backup section is where it is. Really? I've never thought about this before. Is it an iCloud manage, maybe? I don't know. Kiwi Graham is saying you can definitely do it on the phone, which makes sense. So on the phone, you go to. Yeah, this is great. I hadn't even thought about this before settings, iCloud. And I think you go to manage storage is is where you can where you can find those. So this is on your yeah, on your on your phone. Go to settings, iCloud manage storage and then click on backups there. And it will bring up all of your backups. And and and you can. Yeah, you can, you know, it shows you what you've got and you can pick which one you want to delete and it will delete it. No problem. Yep, there we go. And let's see. OK, so I'm in good shape here. I have iPod touch, iPhone 8 and iPad, which are my three iOS devices. OK, so I'm not. Yeah, you're not overdoing it. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. All right. Mr. Braun in the squeaky chair. It's great. That's I have missed the squeaky chair, I feel like. Man, sort of. Yeah, maybe I want to turn down my game a bit. Sounds like picking up. Well, I mean, the flip side is in that that's what we wound up doing was picking up is turning up John's game. But without it, we were we were getting all kinds of noise on the channel because there wasn't enough signal related to your noise. You can back off your game a little bit. What is it all the way up at like 10 or something? Yeah. All right. So back it off to like, let's go to eight and a half and we'll see if I'm OK with that. All right. OK, so here we go. Adjusting on the fly, which we knew we'd have to do. All right. So to Timothy with a cool stuff found, he says, I thought I would share one more. He says, I've been using Devon think for years, which is a great app, but Devon Technologies, the parent company offers some free utilities. He says, several years ago, I was a sucker and I bought a cleaning tool that screwed up everything called Mac Keeper. He says, it caused all kinds of problems and slowed my precious new core two duo I'm back down to a crawl in my research to get it removed. I came across an article on a forum for a utility to find all the files related to something. And its name was Easy Find and it's from Devon Technologies. This is I've been using this little utility for years. It's a great alternative to finder or spotlight and doesn't require indexing to do its powerful search. It's lightweight. It's free and it's built by our trusted friends at Devon Technologies who have a great reputation. They offer these utilities in the Mac App Store, but also as standalone downloads on their web page called Needful Things. There are a few other utilities on this page, but Easy Find is the one app that I have long used now in conjunction with Spotlight, Finder and CleanMyMac when looking for something specific or trying to remove all components of an application. Very, very cool. He says it does show hidden files and other sensitive stuff. But if you want a clear picture of what's on your Mac, this is the tool to find it. Very cool. Thank you for sharing that, Timothy. That's great. I know we've come across Easy Find before, John, but I don't know that I've ever used it. So this is what I love about Cool Stuff Found is we all get to learn things. So there you go. Links in the show notes and everybody can get it. And if you want to get the show notes emailed directly to you every week, just go to MacGeekApp.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter that sends you exactly that. It's a link to the show as well. But right in your email are all of the show notes complete with the links and everything. Sorry about the delay in getting those out this week. They should have gone out Monday morning and MailChimp blocked us because we had something in the show notes that made them think we were trying to spam you all. They won't tell me what it was because they don't want to divulge any of the details of their anti-spam measures because, you know, then people would learn and game the system. But they fixed it on Monday and then it still didn't go out on Tuesday. And so they really fixed it. In fact, they put something in their engine to fix it. So Wednesday, it went out and they're confident that we shouldn't have a problem going forward. In fact, they said that this is one of the best lists that they have, believe it or not, in terms of how interactive all of you are with it. They're like, people must love this list. I'm like, yeah, that's why I want to get it sent out. So they were very, very helpful. But go ahead and sign up for the MGG mailing list just at MackieGab.com and, you know, it'll it's all right there. Just then it just shows up in your box. Good to go. You don't have to remember. You just go through and click the things that you heard about and wanted to learn about. So it's good. It's good. Anti-spam measures are not a bad thing, right, John? Even even when they cause a little bit of headache for us all. Right. Yeah. As long as they catch more spam than not. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cool. OK, let's see. Todd has a quick tip for us. And Todd says, I had forgotten about this, but my brother-in-law reminded me this weekend that you can download Google Maps to your phone and they stay there for 30 days. He says he does this prior to like camping trips and stuff to limit his data. Oh, and also overseas trips to limit his data needs while navigating abroad. And he's right. If you get direction somewhere, it will automatically do offline maps so that you're sure to have them while you're driving to wherever you're driving. But you can control all of this. If you go launch Google Maps on your phone and go to the I call it the hamburger menu in the upper left. It's like the three lines on top of each other and tap offline maps, which comes up in that menu when you when you hit that that hamburger button. And and then you can you can create a new one or you can manage or delete, you know, any other offline maps that you have. But super handy for traveling and something to do ahead of your summer travels, you know, a couple of days before you leave, just go and like get that map so that you know that even if you've got some problem with service or whatever, you've got those maps right there on your phone where you need them. So yeah, it's good. It's smart, really, really smart. So thanks for that, Todd. Good tip, especially ahead of summer travel schedule. I will I will take that to heart. And a quick tip from from Rick, who says, from a web page, you can tap the share icon and add a reminder to read that article later, sort of like the reading list. He says, which I never get around to reading, but he's right. Yeah, he's right on his his iPad. He sent a screenshot, but you just while you're reading web page, you hit the share icon and you can add a reminder and boom, it'll put a reminder in to read this article later. Smart stuff. I I don't know that I knew that it was there. I've probably seen it, you know, 100 times, but it never never registered as a thing. So we love it. Good stuff. Yeah, good, John. Always good to get reminders. Is it well, it's good to get reminders of things you you want to be reminded of, I suppose. All right, I need to give us more, John, because I'm not getting enough. So Andrew has our last quick tip for the day. He says the iPhone Apple TV app now has a new functionality that some of our listeners might be interested in. He says the app now allows you to listen to TV in the background with your screen off. He says this uses less battery and won't distract you if you're driving. He says on the iPhone 10, here's what you do. He says, but it doesn't work with Maps app activated. So Maps app seems to turn this off. He says, but start your show playing, whatever it is, then move to a different app. The sound will stop. Close your phone. Now touch the screen and you'll see the play button right there on the home screen to wake up your phone. And there will be the play button. And if you hit the play button, then you can close your phone again and it will just be playing in the background and using and just playing the audio for you, obviously, because the screen is now off. That's a pretty handy thing. And there are some shows like talk shows and stuff where you don't necessarily need to see the host, especially if you're doing something else like driving. But you can still enjoy the audio of the content. So that's pretty good. I like that little tip. You can do that with a lot of different apps, you know, pause them and then or if they pause when they're put in the background, you know, just turn off the phone and then wake it again. And you might get that little play icon right in the middle of the home screen. You just hit it. Good to go. So it's pretty good, right, John? Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. I want to talk about our first sponsor today, John, which is linked in jobs at linkedin.com slash MGG. You know, we're as you know, I'm a small business owner and I can tell you that hiring isn't an easy process. It's not as simple as like putting an ad in the paper or posting on, you know, I used to post for jobs on Usenet and I would get tons of people. It was great, seriously. But now that's not the case. What is still the case is how important it is to hire the right people for your business. And linkedin jobs does just that because linkedin is a place where people go, even if they're not actively searching for a job, right? I post all our show content on linkedin. I'm there all the time. I'm not looking for a job, but it's a great social network of its own, which means that you have access to these candidates that aren't necessarily on all the job boards. And sometimes, in fact, oftentimes the best person to hire is someone that's not really looking for a job because they're good at what they do and happy where they are. But they might be happy with you and you might be able to get some really qualified candidates this way. And this is what linkedin jobs can do for you. It also knows all about these candidates, right? And it uses all of the skills that people have posted and the jobs that they've had to really make it easy and narrow down to match you up with the candidates that are actually going to be relevant, but also really targeted for you and your business and the position that you're looking to fill. Very, very cool stuff. And it really gives linkedin that, you know, as I like to call it, the unfair competitive advantage. And that's a good thing. Here's another good thing. You can post a job today at linkedin.com slash MGG and get $50 off your first job post. Yeah, that's right. And that might actually be enough to find your candidate. I've used this and that 50 bucks was actually enough to start finding like really qualified people. So again, it's linkedin.com slash MGG terms and conditions apply. And you get that $50 off your first job post. Our thanks to linkedin and linkedin jobs for sponsoring this episode. I want to talk about our next sponsor, which is a favorite to John and I when it comes time to look for hardware or other stuff to add to our Macs. And that is Otherworld Computing at MacSales.com. This really is the first place that I go and I know, John, you use them too. They just they make great, great stuff. And one of the things that they're making is their new Aura Pro X2 SSD, which gives you up to 16 times the space and double the speed to keep up with everything that you want your Mac to do up to 3200 megabytes per second reads and 2400 megabytes per second writes. Yeah, that's really, really fast and room to spare. You can get up to two terabytes with these Aura Pro X2s. So up to 16 times bigger than the original SSD that came in your Mac. Right. So it's your same Mac, same ports, your same stickers that you have, like it's your Mac way more space, way faster SSD, way better than what you had before. And so you go check it out. Go to MacSales.com and make sure they that you tell them we sent you because, you know, that's that's how it works. And our thanks to MacSales for and Otherworld at Otherworld Computing at MacSales. Don't worry, I can get it right for sponsoring this episode. All right, John, let's let's talk about Wi-Fi. One of my favorite topics, you know that. And one of yours, too, I think. So we have a couple of questions to sort of lead us down this path. And I'll start with Maris, which has a great question here. She says, I have a small business, just me, and I work out of my 650 square foot home. She says, I'm a PI and I'm an Apple fan. I have a time capsule, the 2011 model. And it seems this model is now old and antiquated to facilitate my use with my MacBook Pro, my iPad, my iPhone 10 and my my time capsule. So says in addition, my Wi-Fi service is horrible in the bedroom and bathroom area, where I cannot use a simple Bose wireless speaker with my iPhone for things like Pandora or Internet. Which of the mesh systems out there would work best as I retire my time capsule? This is FYI, I have Comcast with the fastest speed plan and a DOCSIS 3.0 modem from from Linksys. So, yeah, this is interesting, right? Because for most of the time, John, if somebody came to us and said, I have a 650 square foot home, we would say, yeah, one router is more than enough, right? Like that's you don't need mesh, except sometimes you actually do. And those sometimes often include things like plaster walls, right? And other stuff that just blocks signal and a lot of homes, especially, you know, like apartments and stuff. I know in the Bay Area, for whatever reason, there's a lot of apartments and condos and stuff with plaster walls that totally block Wi-Fi. That's like a because they to put the plaster up, they basically have to build a Faraday cage out of all your walls, right? Or something close enough to it that that's that. So mesh might be the right thing for you. It's possible that a more powerful standalone router could do it. But maybe not. So I just updated. Go ahead, John. Yeah. Well, keep in mind. So I just looked it up in a in Matt tracker here. But but that's an 802.11 N unit. So right at the very least, you want you want to get get up to an AC or a mesh or both, right? Right. Yeah, you definitely. So I just thought I mentioned that is that you already have a limitation now because you're you can get more pipe. Yes, that's true. That's true. That won't help things like her wireless speaker necessarily. It depends, right? But but but yeah, for the five gigahertz stuff, for sure, yeah, you want to get to 802.11 AC. Yeah, it's time to replace that regardless, I think is is is the point we're trying to make. If you wanted to try a standalone router, my favorite remains the Synology RT 2600 AC with a close second being their MR 2200 AC, which is sort of the beginning of their, you know, mesh system. It's it can be a standalone router or a mesh point. But but I did just update my mesh wireless guide this past week and sort of went through everything again. Your links is modem is a Docsis 3.0 modem. And that means it still suffers from what we call buffer bloat, which is when you've got one or more devices sending all kinds of data upstream like online backups or photo backups or anything like that. And then everything in your in your house is slow because you can't get any data out in order to get data back in. That's what we call buffer bloat because we're filling up the buffer of the data that's being sent out of the house. Docsis 3.0 modems are terrible at this. Docsis 3.1 modems are really good at this. But but with the Docsis 3.0, which is what most people have, if you don't have gigabit service, then then you will have buffer bloat. So I mentioned that because not every mesh system has, you know, what I'll call buffer bloat protection in it. But some of them do. Eero is one that actually added it after the fact. And so that that would be one option to go with. The Netgear Orbi also has buffer bloat protection, but I really don't recommend the Orbi in most cases. They've got they've got some it works great if you're using it in default mode, but start going beyond that. And it just the software just starts to get really kind of wonky. Ubiquities Amplify HD does have buffer bloat protection, but only in the gamers edition. They have not decided yet whether or not they're going to add it to the standard edition. So you pay a little bit more to get that there. Um, if you're willing to forego any buffer bloat protection, though, you know, the best like value mesh system is the TP-Link Deco. They've got several different options out there in terms of hardware. And you can you can get started with a three unit mesh from them for like one hundred and seventy nine bucks right now. If you if you want to step up a little bit, you can move to the system that has like a ZigBee radio in it and stuff so that you're sort of future proof for your smart home things. And that's like less but still less than two fifty for a mesh unit or for a mesh system. So I would I would say. Either look at the Euro or the TP-Link Deco right now. Those are those are kind of the two that I find myself recommending the most. The the Ubiquity Amplify is great. It's just a little bit it's a it's you know, it's like three seventy nine whereas the Euro you can get for like three nineteen. So you're saving quite a bit of money there and might as well go Euro at that point. But but yeah, the TP-Link Deco, man, I'm really I often find it hard not to recommend that just because price for for what you get. And they are constantly updating the software like they just this week popped out a new software update that allows you to doing something that I've seen no other mesh vendor do where you can pick on a per device level, whether or not you want that device to roam on your mesh or if it should attempt if the mesh should attempt to keep it locked to the one unit that it connects to. And this can make a big difference with like printers and IoT devices and stuff that tend not to be happy with with mesh scenarios. And like I said, they're really they're doing some cool stuff. They're not the only ones doing cool stuff. It's just really interesting to see, you know, TP-Link really embracing mesh in a big, big way. And they've got several, like I said, several different hardware options and stuff. So they're they're doing some good things there. Very, very impressed. So anything to add to this, John? Oh, the smart home aspect is interesting. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm trying to find more detail. So you mentioned they have both ZigBee and Z-Wave. Because those are the two major protocols. I didn't say Z-Wave. I don't think it has. I don't think the M9 Plus has a Z-Wave radio. It's got ZigBee, for sure. OK. But it says you can. Oh, M9. There we go. Yeah, it's the M9 Plus that has the ZigBee radio. And it's also got Bluetooth in it. So if you've got Bluetooth devices, smart home devices, those can also pair with your mesh points, right? And TP-Link has been making smart home stuff for a very long time. So, you know, you you're sort of, you know, no pun intended, meshing these two worlds where everything is sort of, you know, all in just the one unit, which which is great. Because that way your your hub is also distributed, right? You know, because you've got these ZigBee radios in several places throughout your house, it's not just one. And then it needs to kind of go from hop from device to device. It can. Yeah. No, it's it's like, yeah, they're doing some cool things there. I know it's they initially when they came out with their mesh unit, it was like, OK, you know what? And I set them up for a couple of different family members because I like to have places where they're, you know, configured in a not just a test environment at my house or office here, like, but really being used by sort of target customers. Like, you just want your Wi-Fi to work. So let's install this and tell me how your Wi-Fi works. And like all of them, when TP-Link's Deco first came out, the software was young and it needed some improvement. And it was a little janky, but, you know, you get it working. And then it was totally fine. And with each software updated, it was just like it got better and better and better. And now they're, like I said, the software updates are less about stability because that problem is basically solved and more about, hey, how can we tweak this stuff? How can we show the user more? Now you can see which mesh point in which devices are attached to a mesh point and and things like that. Like it's, you know, it's really, really great. My only complaint about it is their software doesn't auto update, which is sort of a drag when you're managing someone else's system. Like at my house, I don't know if I want the software to auto update or not. But when I have it at my uncle's house, I definitely want it to auto update, you know. So I don't know, like that. But if that's my main, if that's my only or chief complaint, that's we're in pretty good shape here, which is cool. And amplifies the other way. Like Eero, you know, they're they they're easy to talk about because they they do such a great job of it. And they've been doing a good job for a very, very long time. So I don't want to dismiss them here, but it's like there are other players in this market now that are really coming, you know, up to speed, so to speak. And it would be, you know, TP-Link Deco, as I said, ubiquity with their Amplify stuff, they know how to do mesh. They've been doing it longer than anybody because they have, you know, they're all their ubiquity corporate enterprise mesh stuff. And they're doing some cool things. They're they're also making some choices to intentionally sort of separate their home, you know, Amplify, you know, sort of the consumer small business mesh from like Unify and things like that. But so, so, you know, so it's but they do a good job with it. Like it's a it's a great system. It's locally managed with some people really like some people don't. But but they're doing a good job. And then plume with their super pods that came out last year is doing a fantastic job with things. So those are like those are the four I don't I don't know that I would recommend any mesh other than those four, the TP-Link Deco, the Euro, the ubiquity Amplify HD and plume super pods only original pods. I don't want to talk about those. But super pods, which are the current newer version, really, really great stuff happening there, too. So yeah, it's good. And it's, you know, it's nice to have options, right? And but like I said, the the TP-Link, the the Deco, it's just hard not to recommend because at the price for what you get, it's like nobody. Nobody is competing with them at the moment, which is, you know, interesting. At the price, I mean, functionality wise, yes, price wise, no, but not actually not functionality wise, right? You know, because nobody else has a smart home thing in their in their mesh unit. Iro has the the what's it called? I can't remember the radio. What's it in the Iro? John, help me with this. It's that it's that smart home solution that no one has adopted yet. Right. Iro smart home. What's it called? Oh, they added it in the in the second gen units. Man, I don't know. Anyway, it's it's, you know, I forget. I forget what the name is, but nobody's using it. Thread Roger H in the chat room for the wind. Thank you, sir. The thread radio. So but until that starts being used, it's really not anything. So yeah, it's interesting stuff. It's good, good, good. Anything else to add to this, John? One of my favorite topics. What a terrible name. Well, is Zigbee a good name? I mean, is it, you know, like, you know, is Deco a good name, Iro? Oh, it's kind of unique. Yeah, it's just thread. I mean, it makes it kind of hard. But actually, you know, they have a they actually have an article here about why it's a thread. Yeah. Yeah. Or what it is. Cool. And it's most like technologically speaking, it's supposed to be better. Right. Right. That's what they say. Yeah. All right. Well. Well, there you go. All right. Can we move on to is it time to move on to Keith? Ah, yes. All right. Keith says I'm currently running an airport extreme. It's been working fine, but I know its days are limited. I don't live in a very large house, just 1500 square feet. So I'm not sure mesh is in my future because I live on a raised foundation with a crawl space. Most of my stuff is wired through a 16 gigabit switch. However, I just installed two nest Wi-Fi outdoor cameras that stream all the time. Right. Says I'm running frontier files, so I have a bunch of upstream bandwidth. Here's the question. Should I upgrade to something like the Synology router and maybe run two different Wi-Fi networks, keeping my old extreme, one for the cameras and the other for all the miscellaneous wireless stuff? Or is the Synology alone good enough with these streaming cameras? This is I see Eero pros are currently on sale right now. Maybe I should get a couple of those. Yeah. So you could you could run a separate network. If you're going to do that, you need to be really intentional about how you set your channels up so that you're not so that you're actually running your separate network on different channels from your main network so that you truly are getting that, you know, a band spatial separation, if you will, between the the, you know, the two bands. That are running and that would be fine. You could do that, but you're probably OK. I run a couple of, you know, stream all the time. Why Wi-Fi cameras and they don't like I haven't noticed any local bandwidth issues because of them. But I also have been running a mesh or, you know, a quasi mesh that I've sort of cooked together myself before mesh was a thing. With with, you know, alongside these cameras. And so with a mesh, you sort of get the dual router set up because you're having multiple access points around the house. And usually, at least with the smart mesh is they are on different channels. So you are getting that that spatial separation and all of that stuff. And it just kind of sort of happens automatically. So the question is, do you want a set it and forget it type of solution that mesh gives you or do you want the geeky or I want to control everything and I want to choose exactly where the cameras connect and all of that with, you know, this dual setup. And that's really, you know, like a dealer's choice or geek's choice. Right. But but mesh would solve this this problem that it doesn't sound like you're having any symptoms of yet. But it's not a bad idea to have multiple access points, especially if you've got something that's streaming all the time. Because that's one of the places, even though, you know, the biggest feature we talk with mesh is range, right? And coverage, which it does a great job with because of how it works. Sort of the second feature that that a lot of people don't think about is now that you have these multiple access points, if you have one device streaming content either, you know, in or out, it doesn't matter a camera is streaming into the mesh, Netflix or YouTube or whatever is streaming out of the mesh, if you will. But either way, having multiple access points allows you to have that device streaming while other access points are sort of open and and not overutilized and can, you know, conserve other clients that need to do other things. So I think it's dealer's choice. So there you go. What do you think, John? Like the last question, so they say they have an airport extreme, but not what flavor I suspect it's not the AC one. So again, at the very least, you want to upgrade that so you can get a AC versus N. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's a very good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, gigabit switch that that should do you per. Yeah, that's fine. It is, but like we're getting to the point where our devices may want to get a 10 gig switch, right? Yeah, I mean, no, yes, but no, like I, you know, you know, I think they're still kind of pricey. They are. They are. They is, you know, I've been talking not in the show about my current migration of my Synology. I did a bunch of testing with the Synology DS 10 19 plus. And now it's time to really move all my data to it, which is a pain only because all of my, you know, I started using Synology years and years ago and my main Synology unit runs EXT4, which was their original file format. I want to be on their new file system called BTRFS. It's a very the differences between EXT4 and BTRFS. It's a very similar conversation to HFS plus versus APFS. So it's like I want to be there. I could stay on EXT4 and you know what? Things would be mostly fine, but I want to get the snapshots. I want to get all of the things that BTRFS has because why not? The problem is Synology doesn't have a way to migrate your content to a new volume on a different file format. They have ways to migrate your content in every other scenario, including one literally called migration assistant that just like will beam your data from one, you know, distation to another, preserving all your settings and all that. But unfortunately, it moves the volume at the block level. So it keeps the file system format, which is like rats. So I've been moving it all manually and move all the data manually. Then I'm using shared folder sync. If anybody listening is thinking about this. So I'm doing it with shared folder sync. Then I will do a backup of the configuration of the old Synology. I will restore that backup to the new one. And then I have to manually install all my apps and reconfigure most of the third party ones. So not a fun process. But the fun part has been this shared folder sync because Synology allows you many of their distations have more than one ethernet port. And they're smart enough that you can plug both of the you know, both of the ports into the same switch. And even if the switch doesn't support channel bonding, the disk station supports channel bonding and it will do it. And then things can travel faster than a gigabit. They could travel up to two gigabits. So so does the Synology get two IP addresses? No, one. It gets one. Yeah, it bonds the channels together. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So yeah, it's cool. Right. And and so, you know, I think I posted a screenshot to Twitter, but I I found my Synology doing like one hundred and sixty eight megabytes per second, you know, across the network. And it's like, OK, so this really does work. I'm traveling fast because both of the units I'm syncing between have two ethernet ports on them. So like I made sure to plug them both in because I knew I had a lot of data to transfer. And it's, you know, it's doing a file level copy. So at some points it was only doing, say, 30 or 40 megabytes a second because there's small files to deal with. But when it was moving, you know, things like movie files or whatever, I assume it was able to, you know, sort of ratchet up the speed. And yeah, I saw it, like I said, one sixty eight, I think was the. And I I might have seen it go a little faster than that. But that's not bad. Oh, that's good. Yeah, it's pretty. I mean, in theory, in theory, two hundred megabytes a second would be the the full saturation of that. Right. Yeah, I think it would actually be more like two twenty. If I'm not, if I'm doing my math right. But but yeah, I mean, somewhere in your two hundred or something. Yeah, because I've seen it. I've seen my Mac go faster than a hundred megabytes a second. You know, copying data to my Synology. My Mac's only on, you know, single ethernet port with no bonding or anything. So but yeah, you know, it's fun. It's fun to do this. The next part is not going to be as much fun because because, you know, the I have to I have to I have to dedicate like probably three or four hours to just sitting down and and making sure I get, you know, most of my settings right and configure it and test it and all of that. And it's fine. Once I'm done with it, then in theory, I'll be done for a very, very long time and it'll be worth it, but just carving out that time. It's not easy for me these days, but I'll make it happen. On the subject of this backup, though, Brian and Roe asked, what about backing up your data to an external USB drive than formatting the internal drives on the Synology and then restoring it? Synology doesn't have a way of restoring a backup that keeps all of the settings for all of your they call them packages. I'll call them apps. They have a tool called Hyperbackup, which is built to do exactly this. And it's a good tool and it will back up all of your data. But Hyperbackup only backs up the settings for Synology's own app. So if you're using things like Plex and, you know, I have I think I have, I don't know, 50 apps installed on my Synology, maybe 30 that I actually use. And it was going to manage the settings. Hyperbackup was going to see the settings and back up the settings for 15 of them. So I was like, OK, yeah, no, no, no, that's not going to that's not going to cut it. I posted a Reddit thread, the thread about this, like asking what's the easiest way and the reality is like there's no easiest way. Unfortunately, but, you know, it's fine. Anyway, it's, you know, I'll get there. It's all good. Yeah, maybe Dandy, if they had a tool that would just upgrade your file system. You know, we were talking about this before the show. I don't I used to like I thought the same thing. And then I stopped for a second and was like, well, wait a minute. Apple has a tool that migrates us from HFS plus to APFS, right? I mean, really the same thing. And about a year after everybody ran that tool, we started hearing about a lot of weird problems that people that migrated had. And that's, you know, we spent like two months in the fall constantly talking about this stuff where people the real solution was just wipe the drive formatted as APFS from scratch and then, you know, restore your data to it, you know, essentially with a clone. There's no way to do a clone of the Synology is the problem. That that would be the the answer. But yeah, I don't think I want my my network attached storage devices file system to have janky underpinnings when it's managing multiple drives and, you know, like, yeah, I don't know, I'm not into that. Yeah, I wish their migration assistant start fresh. Yeah, I wish their migration assistant tool would would let me do this at a file level. Like it will do everything. It just won't do this one thing, but it would get all the data. So yeah, that's right, because you and I basically have the same Synology unit now, you're running a DS9 18 plus and I'm running the DS10 19 plus. And these really are like built for the prosumer who wants something in their home that they can really use or in their small office, they're very, very capable devices. They both use the same processor, which has the ability and at the hardware level to do 4k video transcoding, which you you want if you're running a Plex server or a video station server or something. Right. I think the only difference between the two units is yours has four drive bays and mine has five and I think yours comes stock with four gigs of RAM, but it's upgradeable and mine comes with eight and it's not upgradeable. But but other other than that, I think the units are are identical and and really capable units like these really are if you're looking for something to, you know, to have at your home and will last for you the DS10 19 plus or the four bay version, the DS9 18 plus or the are the two to go with some. I like being able to run a Windows VM on it. Right. You can. Yeah, you can run docker containers and and virtualized you know, environments and all of that stuff. I did think about virtualizing my Synology's environment on my on my Synology so that it's truly portable and then I could move it to any disk station because it's just a contained virtual machine. I didn't do that. I wonder if I should have, but, you know, whatever. I'll I'll regret that. I'll wait to regret that for like five years, so that'll be fine. All right. Anything else to to go through on that on that little tangent, my friend? No, no, no, we're. We're good. We're good. OK, cool. I do want to take a second, especially now that we're on this sort of geeky realm right here, I want to take a second and talk. Actually, I want to take about two minutes and talk about our third sponsor for today, which is Linode, right? So we're talking about, you know, running servers and stuff and all of that great stuff and Linode allows you to run servers in the cloud. In fact, you can instantly deploy and manage a server in the cloud that's entirely SSD based, and this is very cool, right? So you've got this server, it's in the cloud, you pay for, you know, you're the monthly usage and like it can you can start with a server that's like five bucks a month and it can probably do what you need it to do if if you're looking for something simple. For example, I set up a VPN server in the cloud. So that I don't have to worry about if somebody's blocking like Comcast's home VPN range or whatever. I just set up a VPN server at Linode on a five dollar a month server and it works great. It's awesome. But you can and you know, so open VPN, WordPress, WireGuard, Counter-Strike, Global Offensive Servers, Minecraft servers, Team Fortress, two servers and more. And the cool part is all of those things that I mentioned are able to be set up without you having to like go and install all the packages or anything. You can do that. You can set up a, you know, a stock install of of, you know, CentOS or something, if that's what you want and then do whatever you want. But they also have these things that can be started up very quickly. You just say, I want to start an open VPN server. And it they've already got the environment set. They just clone that to a, you know, to whatever, you know, size server you pick and boom, now you've got your open VPN server. You're good to go and you just, you know, connect to it. And then, you know, through the process of setting it up, it'll say, OK, you've got to, you know, decide on passwords and things like that. But it installs all the packages for you so you don't have to. It's very, very cool. You get to pick from any of their 10 worldwide data centers, including their newest one that just opened in Toronto, which allows users to comply with in-country data protection requirements, but simultaneously taking advantage of all of Linode's technology and tools. And their new cloud interface is awesome, makes it so easy. And here's the cool part. Right. So I told you, you can set up a server for like five bucks a month. How about if you have 20 bucks credit to go and play? Think about how that's going to work for you, right? You can set up a server for more than five dollars a month, but you can start with that and then, you know, decide if you need more, which means you get to play for free. So visit linode.com slash MGG and then use promo code MGG2019. This is all in the show notes. You don't have to remember it, but it's right there. Linode.com slash MGG promo code MGG2019 and you get a twenty dollar credit to go and play. Go do it now. Have fun and our thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. All right, Mr. Braun, let's let Chuck take us somewhere, shall we, my friend? Yeah, good. Yes. Did I lose you? OK, I'm sorry. I thought I lost you. All right, let's see if we can find Chuck. Hey, John and Dave, love the show. I've learned a lot, but now I have a question. I use iMessage all the time on my Mac. It's paired with my iPhone. It's great. I can send out text messages, iMessages. It's awesome. But I've noticed that a lot of times while I'm typing, it will stop. I'll get a little beach ball. And then if I just keep on typing about a second later, it will catch up to me. It does it a lot with iMessage. I notice it. I never notice it with any other apps, just iMessage. I have a lot of messages in iMessage, so that might be it. But I also have a MacBook Pro 2018 totally maxed out 32 gigs of RAM with the i9 processor. So I don't think it's a limitation of my hardware. I'm just not sure what should I do? Should I just go in and start deleting a bunch of text message threads or something like that? Or is it something more obvious that I'm missing? What do you guys think? Man, that's a good question. So, yeah, I don't think it's your CPU, obviously. You've got, you know, this sort of reminds me of the problem that I was talking about last week with with, you know, my key chains on my fastest Mac that I have that wasn't happening on any of my other ones. It could be the lots of messages problem, but it could also be, you know, related to that that an iCloud message sync is happening. So let's first make sure that messages in the cloud is active before we start blaming it for these things. And you do that on your Mac by going into messages, go to preferences, go to iMessage, and then there's a box that says enable messages in cloud. That box, in theory, I think it's a good idea to check that box. But if that box is checked, then it means it's sinking all your messages down to and from the cloud. So it could be one thing and turning that off and seeing if that fixes it. In fact, turning it off and turning it back on might also fix it as we found with many, many things, but try turning it off and see if that does it. If it doesn't, it could also be certificate related. And this could just be me, you know, having spent some time troubleshooting certificates lately, but it sounds like you're having might be having a similar issue when you go to type a new message to someone. Um, once it finds that person in, you know, you say who you're going to send it to, iMessage in the background, theoretically, goes and checks with Apple servers to say, is this person an iMessage user or are they not? And if they are, then you, you know, you get blue bubble chats. And if they're not, then you get green bubble chats. But it's more than that, because if they are on Apple server, then that means that messages will be sent through Apple server and they will be sent encrypted end to end. In order for that to happen, you need to download that person's public key from Apple. Again, this all happens in the background. Or without your, without your involvement, it happens. I don't want to say background because this might be the thing that's slowing you down. So it pulls down that person's public key and then will encrypt your message with that public key and then send it up to the cloud as an encrypted blob. And then this, it, Apple can't read it, right? Because all they have is the public key. The private key lives on this person's devices. But a lot of us have a lot of keys because we have a lot of devices and it's a single key per device. So you might have to download, if you were going to send me a message, you might have to download six keys. And maybe your keys database on your computer is bloated or damaged or something. And so as it's trying to merge the keys it just downloaded from Apple into this database, maybe that causes some sort of delay. And maybe that's what's going on. I don't know if that, if there's an answer there, but I'd be curious if this is happening to when you start messages to people that are not iMessage recipients. What do you think, John? Yeah, I was, I fired a key chain access and there are a whole bunch of iMessage signing keys that I see in the login key chain. Now, I don't know if you want to touch those. Right. Yeah, probably, probably a bad idea. Because I think with a lot of things, if you delete these keys, you may not be able to see past content, right? It depends. If they're your key, if they're your private keys, then yes, right? Because yeah, some I'm looking here and some are, yeah. So if you search for iMessage, they're both public and private keys there. Again, don't touch that. Oh yeah, I see a lot. I just, I just, I just wanted to verify, you know, if you want to look beneath the covers, that's where you would look. I have a lot of these keys on my computer, John. Like, I mean, I have, so if, if I serve- I'm just resisting the urge to like get rid of them because it's like, well, what are they all doing there? Yeah, no, you don't want to get rid of them. They're taking up space. My guess is I have an equal number of public and private keys, just looking at this, this list, like- Yeah, it looks, looks about the same here. Yeah, and but I have, there are, so there are 238 items in this list on this computer, which tells me that there's, you know, 119 pairs of items. It might not be exactly that, but I think it actually is exactly that. So these would, in theory, if it is pairs of private keys and public keys, then that indicates that it's all of my keys, right? Because I would have both the private and public pair. No one else, theoretically, would have anything except the public key. So I would be curious. Yeah, Chuck, go into Keychain Access and in the search box in the upper right, like John did, just type iMessage and give it a second. Make sure on the left category, all items is selected so that you're seeing everything. And I'd be curious if your number is above or below 238, because I'm not having any, I'm not having the same issue on this machine. So in theory, macOS is totally fine with 120 public key pairs. Yeah, I bet I have created 120 public keys over, I mean, iMessage has created them for me over time with all the various devices and you restart a device or reset a device, then that's the end of that. So, yeah. And finally, it could be that iMessage is just acting up. Now, how can you tell that? Well, Apple has a dandy status page at apple.com slash support slash system status. And right now it claims that everything's working great. All the dots are green, including iMessage. Yeah, my guess, you're right. That's a good thing to check first, just as a sanity check, right, to make sure that you're troubleshooting your own problem and not somebody else's. Yeah, for sure, for sure. This is interesting. I would also run Activity Monitor and have it open on the CPU tab sorted by, you know, most CPU usage at the top, so descending. And when that beach ball is spinning, look at Activity Monitor, you know, have it on your screen in such a way that you can see that while you're using iMessage and see what's using the CPU, because the spinning beach ball tells you that macOS is waiting for some other process to give control back. So that's just macOS' default way of saying, hey, you know, you did something, you've got something running, I'm not in control of it. So I can't do anything until it gives it back. That's what the spinning beach ball means. So if you open up Activity Monitor, again, and you know, CPU sort descending, you can look quickly while it's happening and see what's causing it to spin. And that might help you, you know, sort of sniff down this path. That's what got me, you know, when I was diagnosing the similar lags from Keychain stuff in Safari for me. It was like, oh, OK, so it's this. OK, now I can go further and further. So there's a couple of interesting suggestions from the chat room. One, Petter Hall in the chat room says, does it happen in messages? Share sheet, for example, share a page from Safari and click messages. So not in the app. And this would be interesting, right? Is it part of is it something to do with the core of iMessage at the framework level? Or is it something about the messages app itself? That's a really interesting scenario. So a couple of things, right? Look at Activity Monitor to see what's causing it. Look to see if it happens when you're sending to someone that's not an iMessage user, one of your Greenbubble friends. And then also, you know, test it outside of the app. So again, it's just this troubleshooting process of isolating and seeing if we can narrow down where the problem is. That's all great stuff. Got anything else on this, John? Greenbubble friends? Greenbubble, don't you have any? Do you not have any Greenbubble friends? I have some Greenbubble friends that use androids or whatever, you know. And so you just get Greenbubbles instead of Bluebubbles and iMessage. Or messages. Interesting. The Bluebubble says that it's not using SMS. The Bluebubble says that it is using iMessage as the carrier. The Greenbubble says that it's using SMS as the carrier. That's the difference. Learn something new every day. That's what we do here on Matt Geekab. That's why we wake up early in the morning to do this. Yeah, cool. Speaking of Petter Hall in the chat room, Petter has a question for us queued up next on the agenda and says, I'm hoping that you can help me wrap my head around something that I don't understand or if it's just me not seeing the actual benefits. I work in tech support and often have to ask people to take a backup before erasing or factory resetting their devices. It says there are, as you know, two official ways of doing this on iOS devices, either through iTunes or more preferred iCloud. What many people might not be aware of but is an important fact is that a lot of what you store in iCloud isn't actually included in that backup. It's included in the sync that happens all the time. To view your synced content on an iOS, go to settings, click on your name at the top, press iCloud, and then review the list of everything iCloud does. Photos, mail, messages, contacts, reminders, etc. These are synced items. It doesn't matter if a backup is done or not, if these are synced, they're synced and you can get them on a new iOS device or on your same iOS device after you wipe it clean. What is left over after this long list of services on your iOS device is just a few things that might seem trivial to some and perhaps aren't as important to lose if you have to erase before backing up. A list of what an iCloud backup includes therefore is app data, whatever that is, Apple Watch backups, device settings, home kit configuration, home screen and app organization, however you can always redownload your purchases, messages if it isn't turned on to sync iMessages like we just talked about. Same with photos, it will back up your photos unless you're syncing to iCloud Photo Library in which case it doesn't need to because they're already there. Ringtones, he says, but these can also be redownloaded and your visual voicemail password and there's an Apple article that actually lists these things. He says, we know based on this that not having a recent backup in most cases, especially where a race or restore has to happen, isn't quite as critical to many people, but it might be. So he says, why does Apple even bother having an iCloud backup feature at all? Why aren't all of the things mentioned just turned into another sync service? Is there any technical or practical reason for having backups in iCloud rather than just having syncs? A few cons of using backup and why he's asking these questions, if you need to fully isolate software from hardware in a troubleshooting scenario, asking a customer to use this device without restoring from backup is often a very valid step. Number two, you can't midway restore from a backup. You have to erase your device and set it up again. That's true unless you're using iMazing in which case you can do some of that cool stuff. Number three, it's confusing to explain to people that some info is synced and some is backed up. I'll give you that. And similarly, customers might be confused as well, not understanding the non-importance or the relative importance of having a backup and they might get caught. Well, that's true. This is all true. But you're right. Anything that's checked as synced to iCloud is generally speaking, not included in the backup. And a good way to think of that is the backups at the end of the list. So anything that's not being synced above it, well, it falls through and it gets backed up. That's just how it is. It's only the data that is local to the device and not the stuff that's synced. And I think he makes a good point What do you think, John? Do you have a thought on this before I share my thoughts? What I think is that Apple has an article that kind of explains this. You'll see it in the notes here. What does iCloud backup? And it says, well, it backs up this stuff, but not this stuff. So it's pretty much said what our... Well, that's what he said. No, he's asking why. Why do we even still have iCloud backup and when most of the stuff that we care about is synced? And that's the article he linked us to in there, just to identify it. But why are we in this situation? I think is the bigger question because he's right. It does create a confusing scenario. It's like, well, what's actually in my backup is not what you think is there. So much of your stuff is not backed up because it's synced and that gets a little wonky. So I mean, I get the question and I think it's... We have to look at the evolutionary path of this and that might, to me, that's the explanation. Initially, everything was backed up because it had to be. There was nowhere else for the data to go. And then slowly as these sync things came and started being added to iCloud and all that, it was like, well, if we're syncing this, it's already in iCloud. We don't need to duplicate the data in a backup and use more of the customer's valuable storage. Apple sees their storage is so valuable they can only afford to give you five gigs for free. So I think that's where it came from. And as each of these things, especially photos, was a big one, right? Once you could sync your photos to the cloud, it was like, okay, get those out of the backup because the backup now can happen faster. It's using less space. And a restore takes a whole lot less time because your photos can come down asynchronously, right? Meaning you get your backup restored, you get your phone up and running, and then over time, your photos will sort of repopulate as necessary as opposed to having to slurp 100% of them down as part of your restore process. So I think that's why we're here, but I'm with Petter on this, that when you're dealing with customers and having to explain this, it's like, well, let me tell you about the evolution of iCloud. Why are we having this conversation? I get that we're here. We shouldn't need to be here. I think he's right. Why not just sync everything and have it just be that? I don't know. I'm kind of with Petter on this one. It's interesting. So maybe Apple will have a solution for us at WWDC next week, right? I mean, because this whole five gigs free per user, not even per device, I buy, if I'm using four Apple devices, I still only get five gigs free in my iCloud account. Like, yeah, but shouldn't I get some pad on the back for buying more devices? That I need to back up? I don't know. Hopefully they'll come around with something. It would be good. Any more on this, John, before we move on here? Yeah. I'm, yeah, I got the 2.99 a month 200 gig plant that works for me. Yeah, that makes sense. For a single user, 200 gigs tends to be what most people standardize on. 50 isn't quite enough, but for a lot of folks, but 200 is good. I am on the 2TB version with the family all sharing that. So it's $10 a month for whatever, six of us or something, because I've got my dad and his wife on the plan. But it's great. But we're not even using a terabyte of it. I think we're using, I think I was in there before when we were talking about whatever it was. I think I saw that we're just shy of 800 gigs or something. But it's great. Everybody's got their desktops backed up on their Macs and why not? Just let it all be there or synced, I should say. Sync is not backup. Everybody likes to say that and it's a meme and it makes sense and all of that. But the reality is, it kind of is a backup. It's your data stored somewhere else. It is a sync of your data though. So what sync does not generally protect you against is if you make a mistake, like if I delete a contact from my phone, that deletion will be synced to the cloud. And if I don't have a backup of a previous version of it, I forget actually off the top of my head. I forget if iCloud stores iterations of contacts. It might not. So like that's the difference between sync and backup is that backup would have that. But I don't know that an iCloud backup does. So yeah. So maybe somebody in the chat room will correct me or clarify me on this, whether or not. Yeah. Unless your sync solution has versioning, then that's kind of a backup. You're exactly right. And that, no, I agree with you. That's where the line starts to get blurred. So Brian and Ro in the chat room. To protect against terrible things happening. Correct. You said is oops, I deleted it and now it's forever. Well, roll back. Yeah, roll back. Yeah, exactly. And Brian and Ro and Petter Hall in the chat room confirm that if you go to iCloud.com slash settings, and I can't go there because evidently I'm not logged in, but that you can restore recently deleted items. And that's a good thing. So. Oh. Yeah. And I think contacts is one of those things that you can restore. So that's a good thing. So to your point, there you go. It's like, okay, well, how close to a backup is this? It's not terribly far away. I'm looking. Oh, yeah. If you go to, he's right. If you go to iCloud.com slash settings and look, I'm on a Mac right now. So if very much in the lower left, there's an advanced section and then grade out in that advanced section, but clickable. Oh, no, not clickable. Oh, I have to verify my identity to view this information. Okay. I can do that. Yeah. Restore files. So wait, read that list. Don't, don't, don't trail off on me here because that's the valuable list. So. Files, contacts, calendars and reminders and bookmarks. There you go. Yeah. So. Huh. I never knew that. So recently deleted stuff can be, can be restored. I'm, I'm looking here. I was re-authenticating myself. So yeah. Now, okay. Now they're not grayed out anymore. Great. So yeah, I can say restore contacts and, and it will show me an archive of different contacts. And I have, so this is May 26th when we're recording this episode. I have archives from May 21st, May 20th, May 18th and May 17th. Presumably those, I have not changed anything in my contacts since May 21st. And that's why I don't have an archive. So there you go. This is when sync really does, to your point, become backup. And I, and so. Yeah. Yeah. It's, but it's all very confusing. It's like, well, wait a minute. Is it synced? Is it backed up? And the answer is, yeah. We're all set. Good to go. But I had no idea that was there. This is, you know, this is why we all learn five new things every episode. Because that's, that's how Mackie Keb works. And I learned that we needed slightly less gain on Mr. John F. Braun there. But because otherwise, you know, we would hear the squeaky chair all show as opposed to just beginning of show. Yeah. Yeah. But helping you fine tune things. Yeah. But now I'm getting that, that, that signal to noise ratio problem from you. Like your, your voice is sort of, it sounds, the word that I use is fluffy. Like it around your words is this like static that, that sort of just follows you because, because we don't have as much gain versus as before. So I think we just need to try that other mic and see if that solves the problem. Your problem, the problem is that you have lots of noisy things very close to you. Like, like consistently noisy. I think you've got two disc stations, like within a few feet, right? Of, of you right there. And they've got. Anadrobo. Anadro, yeah. Okay. And so. Well, I checked out the synologies and they're on the quietest setting. So. Yeah. Yeah. But still, like it, there's, there's an argument to be made about, can you, could you have those like across the room from you, right? So that they're not as, so they're further away from your mic, right? But we can try with that other mic because the hyal is pretty good at, like I said, it off axis rejection. So we can, it's, we'll, we'll mess with it. It's fun. It's good. It's good. It's good. All right. Well, that's, I think that's all we've got for this show because, you know, that's how time goes. So yeah, check, check the link in the show notes. I will create an event for us at WWDC. But I think it will be Wednesday, whatever the Wednesday is. What did I say? Wednesday the fifth? Yeah. Wednesday the fifth. It let's say 4pm Pacific. That way it, you know, it's, it's not too early in the day. If somebody wants to get a beer, you know, nobody feels guilty about it, but also it doesn't like impede on our dinner or evening plans or anything like that. So let's, let's take a look at it that way. And I'll put a, I'll make it a Facebook event so that we can see how many folks are coming and all that and also just have a place to, to, you know, assemble plans. But, but you do not have to be a Facebook user, of course, to come. That's why I'm saying it here in the show. So pretty good. Pretty good. Let's see. Yeah. San Pedro Market Square. Sorry. San Pedro Square Market. I will get this right at some point is where, where we're doing that. So, but it'll all be in the show notes which you can get emailed to you. Like I said, go to MackieCab.com and sign up and that they will, it will be emailed to you. I'll make sure to say it in the next show too so that if you sign up this week, you will still get it. But it's always it like the show notes are at MackieCab.com. And it's already on the MackieCab calendar, which is at MackieCab.com slash calendar. See how great we are with all of these things. It's such good stuff. I love it. I love it. All right. Oh, there's somebody rolling by Mr. Braun. Yes. All right. Very good. Very good. I want to thank all of you for listening. Thank Mr. Braun and his squeaky chair. I love it all. It's good. Who do you want to thank, John? It's not squeaking anymore. I know. I picked up on that. Yeah. It's good. Huh. Maybe the maybe some of the WD-40 worked its way in there. Yeah. That's great. What else do we have? Anything? Anybody else that you'd like to thank Mr. Braun on our way out the door this week? All right. No. Okay. No. Okay. Just our listeners. Yeah. Our fans and. Absolutely. I want to thank Cashfly at CACHEFLY.com. For hosting all of our shows here. They provide all that bandwidth to get from us to you, which is really important. Podcast Marketplace, of course, with all of our sponsors from this show. Linode.com. Slash MGG. Remember that coupon code MGG 2019. 20 bucks for free to play. You're not going to go wrong there. Otherworld Computing at MaxSales.com. LinkedIn.com. Slash MGG. And then, of course, our ongoing sponsors in the Podcast Marketplace are Smile at smilesoftware.com slash podcast. Fairbones.com. Eero.com slash MGG. All of our WWDC sponsors that make it possible for us to get out there and come and see anybody that can make it to that, but also to report back to you. Amazing Smile. Carbon Copy Cloner. Same box and direct mail from Matt. Mr. Braun, you got us started in this mess today. What do you have to say? Mr. Braun. What do I have to say? Yeah. Not one, not two, but three things. And those three things are don't get caught. Maiden.