 The Mac Observers, Mac Geekab, episode 737 for Monday, November 26th, 2018. And welcome to the Mac Observers, Mac Geekab, the show where we take your questions, your tips, your cool stuff, found everything. We mix it all together. We try to find some answers. We share some tips and cool stuff found of our own, sometimes even questions of our own with the goal being, yes, that we each learn five new things, at least five new things every single time we get together, which is once a week here at macgeekab.com. Sponsors for this episode include Ops Genie, now from Atlassian at opsgenie.com, cashfly at mac.cashfly.com, jamfnow at jamf.com slash mgg and otherworld computing at maxales.com. We will talk about all of them shortly and throughout the episode for now. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here, just having flown in on a 737 plane, here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun. How are you doing today, Mr. John F. Braun? I didn't really fly in on a 737, but I'm surprised to learn that I suspected that it was a plane, but actually it is also a train and a tanker, which I think is a fueling plane, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, there's a lot of 737s out there. Interesting. Yeah, the 737 is still routinely used in service by many airlines. Oh, I see that. So it was introduced, oh, wow, right around when I was born, in the late 1960s, but they redesigned it, I guess. Yeah, well, they reconfigure the, certainly reconfigure the seats depending on what an airplane, what an airline wants. Oh, right, to make it more uncomfortable for... If that seems to be the trend, doesn't it? Yeah, sadly, you know. Yeah, that surely is the way that it is. We have all kinds of stuff to talk about today. We're going to discuss. We've got some cool stuff found. We've got some gift guide stuff, as we promised. Of course, we've got some questions as well. Actually, some really good questions, but anyway, lots of cool stuff. I do want to take a minute and thank our first sponsor, though, which is OtherWorldComputing at MacSales.com. If you've got a new Thunderbolt 3 Mac and now there are lots of them out there, which is so cool, you can get OWC's Thunderbolt 3 10G Ethernet adapter. Yup, that's right. You can do 10 gig Ethernet right there on your new MacBook Air or your MacBook Pro or your Mac mini, right? Because all of these things now have Thunderbolt 3 capable USB-C ports on them. And that means that it can go fast enough to really take advantage of 10 gig Ethernet. Of course, OWC's Thunderbolt 3 10G Ethernet adapter will also work at regular gigabit Ethernet speeds, of course, because that's how they built it. And that's kind of the thing about the folks at OWC is they really know what they're doing. Not only do they create and market products that you want, but they understand how they all work and how they all work with your Mac and how they all work together. They really dig in deep. And that comes from the fact that their founder, Larry O'Connor, is a geek like the rest of us. He truly, truly is and really likes to dig into this stuff. And that is what makes OWC such a special company because everyone. I was I was on the phone with they brought in a new marketing guy there and on the phone and his biggest concern was that he didn't understand the tech deep enough yet. He was afraid that he might be shown up a little bit, which and I mean, like his intentions were sound. And of course, everybody was kind of ribbing him about it a little bit. But but, you know, all in a nice way. But it was really interesting that that spoke to the really spoke to the corporate culture as much as it is. So if you need new stuff for your Mac, do just what John and I do. Visit MacSales.com and and and that's a perfect place to start for that. It's where we do and it's where you can too. So MacSales.com are thanks to Otherworld Computing for sponsoring this episode. And that means, John, that now we can dive into cool stuff found. I want to go to the first one that we have from Ev The Nerd. And he shares with us a very cool screen saver called the Save Hollywood screen saver, which allows you to have a movie play as your screen saver, which is pretty darn cool. If you ask me, John, have you checked this thing out? That's pretty good, right? OK. Yeah. I mean, you know, why not? Right. And up it comes and there goes and you're good to go. So and it's for free. You know, you go get it. Just download it. It's just a screen saver module and you're good to go. So we will we will put that in the show notes. Fun, right? Something to do, something different. We love new screen savers. It's good stuff. Anything to add to that before we before we jump to Neil here? No, not a not a big screen saver guy, but I started using screen savers when I realized I could get the Apple TV screen savers on my Macs and then I then I put them on and I have them run for a little bit and then and then have the screen turn off. So. Well, no, I'll take that back. Remember flying toasters? I do find flying toasters. Yeah, that was that was one of the first good screen savers, for sure. So well, it was in a piece of software called After Dark, which which was, you know, fun. It made screen savers fun is what it did. So all right, Neil offers a great solution to something we were looking for. This is in the last episode, there was a question from Tony about exporting web form passwords from the iCloud key chain. And we talked about ways of kind of moving them around. But Tony found a thing on GitHub that if you walk through the steps appropriately, well, you will get a CSV, a comma separated file full of all of your Safari passwords. And the cool part is that it's written by or it's posted on GitHub by our Mandelo, which I am 99 percent certain is Ricky Mandelo. Not only fellow Mac eCab listener, but also one of the chief Safari engineers over at Apple, who's been responsible for helping through a lot of the new privacy stuff that they've put in. Really a good guy. And so I would I would trust this having come from Ricky. So there you go. We'll put a link in the show notes, of course, because that's what we do. But but thank you for sending that in, Neil. Cool. Pretty good, huh, John? Yeah, no, it's good to have that feature no matter what password manager you use. And if you're not using one, shame on you. Use one now. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Cool. All right. And then another cool stuff found comes or the next cool stuff found, I should say, comes from Katie. And as long as I can bring it up quickly enough, Katie says, I use an Apple external keyboard when I dock my MacBook Pro and the regular built-in keyboard when I am out and about, but I listen to music constantly. It was so frustrating for me that for the last two to three iterations of Mac OS, the media key is no longer just controlled iTunes, which I often leave running in the background. Well, I'm sure there's a terminal command to enable this. I found Mac media key forwarder at Milagra dot com. And we'll put a link, of course, in the show notes says Katie says she says it used to be called high Sierra media key enabler, which seems to do the same thing. It also lets me prioritize Spotify if I so choose. She says, I have no idea how legit it is, but I'm happy to have it. Even if it's buggy as it's given back a function, I've really been missing. So thank you so much for that, Katie. Very, very cool stuff. Very good. Very, very good. Cool. I like that kind of stuff, John. Things the media keys. You mean like the keys that have, like, you know, forward and back. Yeah. Play, pause, forward, forward, back. Yeah, OK. Yeah, exactly. Like F7, F8, F9, or at least that's what I see on my Logitech. Well, yes. But those aren't actually the function keys, right? Because it's not the function keys are not mapped to that. It there are function keys separate from those. And if you hold down the function button, you get the function key equivalent. If you don't hold down the function button, you get whatever the things say across the top of your keyboard, like brightness and, you know, all that stuff. So it's right, which is where I was going with this, because I think there's a keyboard setting that lets you modify that behavior. If you want to, I'll mention it a little later. There's some setting that says, you know, either use or not use the function key to modify what this thing of the keyboard does. Oh, yes, I see what you're saying. Right. To change whether it defaults to the function key being the prior, the main one or the function key not being the main one. Is that what you're saying? Yes, it toggling what the function of the function button is if we want to get all meta about it. So there you go. Cool. Was that it? Yeah, I'll see if I can find the exact way to get to that. But OK, way to set that. Or at least I thought there was and it seems you think so, too. Yeah, I seem to remember something like that for sure. Yeah. Listener David has has a little tip for us. He says, I've been playing around with Apple shortcuts and came across this article that describes a use case I never thought of using shortcuts to customize the iPhone interface behaviors, specifically the screens, folders, dock and icons. And sure enough, and we'll put a link to this in the show notes, you can have custom icons in your shortcuts app and then use those to create things like a blank screen if you want that or laying things out in different ways because you can create your own icons that then can map to essentially whatever you want them to and shortcuts is is the glue that provides that functionality and holds it all together. So we'll put a link. There's there's two of these articles here, both from meme cura.com and we'll put them both in there. So so there you go. There. No, it's actually kind of cool. If you want to if you want to have a unique or very custom home screen layout on your phone, this is one way to get there. Pretty good. Right to good. And rack things up here. It only appears on my Macbook Pro, probably because I don't have an Apple keyboard backing back going back to Katie. Is that right? Yes. OK. Yeah, it's on. You go to the assistant preferences keyboard, the keyboard tab. And at the bottom, there's a checkbox saying use F1, F2, et cetera, keys as standard function keys when this option is selected. As you said, use the FN. So so it's like a toggle if anybody's interested in that. And that is where it's say that say where that is again. System preferences keyboard keyboard and then there's a keyboard tab. Yep. Ah, there it is. Right. Yep. I was just befuddled because on my Mac Mini I have a Logitech wireless keyboard and that option does not appear probably because naturally it's using their keyboard driver instead of Apple. Right. Right. Yep. There it is. Cool. And Alex in the chat room at mackeygab.com slash stream found the same thing. So very, very cool. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Sean. Good stuff. All right. Also from 736. Mike wrote in, we were talking about the fact that older versions of pages and numbers weren't able to open files saved by the versions for which the latest update had had made changes. And Mike says, I wanted to chime in on Scott's I work warning. He says, I have a tip. He says, and he says, it seems like your advice seemed to lack a free and easy though possibly inconvenient solution that is to use the I work apps on iCloud.com. Presumably this would work from any version of Mac OS. And I think that's probably true. Yeah, I certainly tested on on my machine that couldn't run the latest version of numbers. And yeah, if you if you save your files to iCloud, then yes, you can access them through the web interface or the web version of I work, which there you go. That it's a it's certainly a failsafe if nothing else. So thanks for that, Mike. It's always good to remember these. This is what I love about quick tips, right? Is the things that are obvious to to you may not be obvious. In fact, almost certainly are not obvious to other folks. And that's what we love about this, because we all get to learn. Very, very good. Cool stuff. Hon, John, indeed, fortunately, I'd never I've never had I've been fortunate that I've never had I work for matters. That'll change shortly. I was just going to say I'd open my next document that's going to crash violently or say, oh, right, right, right. Well, if you well, you don't have any machines that that can't run the new version of pages or numbers, right? You're not running any machines that are capped out at El Capitan. So that's the that's the big difference for you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think like we I don't know if we mentioned it, but when we got the question, the thing is we got another question. I don't think we addressed directly, but it was like someone that was like, OK, have this machine on this version of Mac OS and it's running these versions of of I work. And then I got this other machine that has a different version of the OS and these. And it's like, yeah, I mean, it shouldn't be an issue, but it is. Right. Well, I mean, things change. Not just I work, but, you know, word or Microsoft stuff. Yep, you have to expect that software is going to evolve. And that's where there's actually some good argument for using web based apps when you can, because you're sure to always have not only the latest version, but consistent versions amongst all users. And that's not such a bad thing. So it's probably also worth a shout out to Synology for their office products. If you've got a Synology disk station, chances are it's able to run Synology office, which gives you, you know, a word of essentially a, you know, pages or word clone numbers or Excel clone. It's got and there's more in there, too. I use these all the time with one of the companies that we have here. We've standardized on that and it's great. I've got multiple people all logged into my one DS 1817 plus disk station all day long editing these files. I can pull it up just like Google Docs, right? In that in terms of the functionality. Oh, no, I get it. It's just it irks me that an app intentionally jettison support for older formats of legitimate data file. It's like, why are you doing this? Just just leave the support in there. Well, it's not that they jettison support for it. You can open older versions. What you can't do is open the newer version of the data file from the older app. And again, like you have to expect that you can't expect software to stagnate, right? It's it's got to be allowed to march forward. And Apple, you know, I think El Capitan is what? When was the last Mac released that could only run El Cap? I mean, was that six years ago? So you can't really, you know, like maybe longer than that. Maybe eight years ago now that I think about it. So you can't really blame them for that. Like that's that's a long time. And again, the web's right there. So I think it's pretty good. Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good. John, I want to talk about our second sponsor, if I may. You may. All right. Our first sponsor today is Ops Genie by Atlassian. We all know about downtime. Here's a great example. Last week, we made some changes to the way our ad server worked. And then, you know, I tested it, things looked fine, went to sleep. Woke up Monday morning to a series of emails and texts and various other chat method messages indicating that we had had a problem overnight. But you know what I also woke up to? A solved problem. Do you want to know why? Because even though I am the main point of contact for this stuff. Everyone that was backup points of contact were able to be contacted and step in and easily. Thank goodness. Resolve the problem because of the way Ops Genie works. It gives your team the power to respond quickly and efficiently to unplanned issues because it helps notify all the right people through a smart combination of scheduling and escalation paths that take into account things like time zones and vacation schedules and holidays and all of that stuff. So it knew Dave's sleeping. Find somebody else if Dave doesn't respond right away. It allows for deep flexibility in how, when and where alerts are deployed and it's supported by over 200 integrations, it's from Atlassian, right? So it supports all of their stuff like Jira and all that. But also Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic and more because it's by Atlassian and they are so open about this stuff. It's so cool. Here's the thing with Ops Genie, your next incident doesn't stand a chance. And here's the best part. You can visit OpsGenie.com to sign up and get a free company account and add up to five team members. That's right, free, no credit card, free for up to five team members. That's OpsGenie.com. Never miss a critical alert again with OpsGenie. Our thanks to OpsGenie and Atlassian for sponsoring this episode. All right, John, I want to take us to the forums now at MacGicab.com slash forums to Zarkachat's message where Zarkachat asks, can anyone tell me please how I can update Safari on old iOS on an iOS 10 phone? I have a 32-bit iPad and no support or update in iTunes. Is there any way to do this, please? So we had an interesting conversation here and Petter Hull, another forum user said there is no way to update Safari on an older version of iOS because that's just how it works. It comes with iOS. It's not available separately as, of course, Zarkachat noticed. But Petter Hull had a great answer, saying you can just download a different web browser from the app store. And sure enough, I took a look and both Firefox and Chrome are available and supported all the way back to iOS 10. Actually, Firefox lists iOS 10.3, but if your iPad runs iOS 10, it will run it iOS 10.3 and even later. So you're good to go. I think that's that's probably a really smart way to do this. That way you're getting an up-to-date web browser. You you are still stuck with the core web kit in there because that's just how iOS works. But at least it gets you somewhere. So that's so there you go. Thoughts on that, John? I suppose there's a technical hack where you could install a new version, but it almost certainly wouldn't work right. It expects a certain. It expects certain functionality from the version of iOS that's running on the device. And you can you. So I'm sure you could download it and try to run it, but I don't think it would run well or at all because it just. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and as we've mentioned, you know, Safari is not just an app. Right. Safari sits on top of WebKit. And so if you didn't upgrade the core WebKit, I don't know what would happen there. It would be very difficult to do. You'd have to jailbreak your phone or your device first. Right. Because WebKit is used by. I don't know, every app, but, you know, certainly mail and anything has to render web type stuff for us to use. Including third party web browsers on iOS. Right. So Chrome and Firefox on iOS ultimately have to require have to rely on WebKit to do that work for them. You cannot. I mean, I think even like for like the app store, I think that's actually WebKit. I mean, it's as far as I can tell, it's registering a web page. And, you know, you know, it. Yeah. But I think it is. So I don't know how much of the security updates that come in future versions or current versions of web browsers would actually work with this particular solution because Firefox on iOS is just its own skin wrapper, if you will, around WebKit. That's not true on the Mac, right? Firefox uses the Gecko engine. It's a completely different rendering engine. But on iOS, Apple will not allow that. So it's just a wrapper over built-in WebKit. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that got pretty deep. Yeah. So there you go. Good. Cool. Well, that's what we do here. It's great. And if you're not in the forums yet, check it out. Premium listeners, you know, you already have an account on our Mac Geek app forums because you're a premium listener and your account is actually flagged that way so that people will know that you are someone who's a premium listener. So go check it out. Macgeekapp.com slash forums. We'd love to see there. Going to our next question, which comes with a lesson and thankfully one that I think worked out to be OK. Listener Allen writes in, a couple of days ago, I installed the latest Mojave update on my Mac. When it completed and attempted a reboot, it stalled with about 1 1⁄8 of an inch left on the progress bar for hours. I finally powered it off and on, tried to reboot again, same result. After several tries using recovery mode, I did disk repair, then a reinstall of the OS, still no luck. I finally decided to restore from a clone backup I keep, supposedly daily. After the restore, the Mac rebooted successfully. I keep a daily journal. So at once I checked to see what the latest entry was and it was September 12th. He wrote us this email on November 22nd. When I looked into carbon copy cloner, it claimed that the last backup was October 2nd, not much better. Although why I lost journals back to 912 is inexplicable, nor do I know now why the daily backups apparently didn't happen for over a month. I hope that since Pages keeps its files by default on iCloud that I would be able to find a file I created last week and very much need. But from what I can see in the Pages open dialogue, there is nothing there prior to September 12th. What happened to those files on iCloud? When I rebooted, did my Mac sync and delete all the newer files that were missing from the Mac? Is there any way I can recover them? Same goes for Dropbox, where I have other files I'd like to recover. And while I'm asking, will they show up in Time Machine somehow, I haven't looked there yet, but will soon. So yeah, I think kind of going backwards here, I think Time Machine is likely your answer for those files because it sounds like they were stored locally and perhaps not in iCloud. But it is also possible that when your Mac restored itself, it pushed its version of the truth back to iCloud. And you know, I say this here, of course, not to poke it Allen, but as a reminder for all of us, sync is not backup, right? Sync is not backup. Because, right, sync can be overwritten. Well, it kind of is, what kind of is? Sync, but it's not. But this is the Achilles' heel of it is. Correct, it can sometimes function as a backup wood for you. But when you're syncing something, if you make a change to a file by nature of sync, it will overwrite that. Now, some sync engines like Dropbox do allow you to go back and look at usually about 30 days, sometimes more, sometimes less, right? I was gonna mention that is some cloud services, they'll do their job and that, oh, well, I better sync what's on this disk with what's in the cloud. And in this case, of course, that was not the desired behavior, but Dropbox is smart enough to see that file has been deleted. So we'll give you a chance to restore it. As far as I know, iCloud does not do that. I haven't seen that in iCloud today. Actually, if somebody knows, please let us know either here in the chat room while we're doing the show or at feedback at mackeycap.com. Did you say, oh, I'm gonna make a backup for what you just said is feedback at mackeycap.com. And because we know that the only thing better than two backups is three backups, I will say feedback at mackeycap.com. So because sync is not backup, this is why I also have carbon copycloner send me an email every day when it finishes success or failure, right? That way I'm used to seeing that email come in because I fear the scenario that Alan described that something happened and carbon copycloner stopped running, right? We've seen it. I've seen things like this happen over the years on my computers. Obviously it happens. We're seeing it from Alan here. We don't know why it stopped, but it did stop. And without any indication from it that it's doing its job, you only can assume that it has been doing its job. And of course, in Alan's case, that assumption was false. And I feel for you. Like I really, this is why I get these emails every day and it's easy enough to just delete it. It's fine. And if there is a problem, I know. There it is, good to go. And so for all its faults, Time Machine is a backup and is an incremental backup. So if you change a file, you can go back and see prior versions, depending on how things you have set or how you have things set. English apparently is new for me today. So, and we certainly did hear back from Alan and he was able to find the files that he wanted in Time Machine. So this is why you also have multiple backups, right? We always say have a clone, have a Time Machine backup and then backup to the cloud. Well, you were syncing to the cloud that kind of counts, except when it doesn't. You were cloning, which definitely counts, except when you're not cloning. And you didn't know that. And so this year's the third backup, Time Machine. You know, saved you. And I've had Time Machine save me before too. So this is why we do multiple backups because backups sometimes fail. So it is a lesson to all of us. And thankfully it sounds like Alan came out mostly unscathed, but let that be a warning to all of us. So thank you for sharing that Alan. I'm glad you got through it. So good stuff. More on that, John, or moving on to Harry. The only thing that occurs to me, I'm glad that the files that need to be restored. I was almost expecting, so Time Machine will not back up everything. It backs up mostly everything. And I'm trying to remember, I think there's a P list file with the exclusions. I mean, it won't back up some things which makes sense the last time I looked at this file, like caches and stuff. I mean, that doesn't make any sense to backup, right? Yes, that's right. I was like, is it gonna back up your iCloud directory or the local version of your iCloud? And well, I guess the answer is yes. Right, right. Yeah, for sure. You just gotta know where to look. I mean, that gets a bit tricky, at least with iCloud. Well, not too tricky, right? Where is that stuff again? Well, it's in, I mean, if you click in the iCloud folder in the sidebar, it's right there. Yeah, but also it's in home library application support, mobile sync, so. That's it. Yeah, yeah, so. And also just to kind of circle around on this, the issue that Alan had initially where the Mojave install would not finish, he's seen that solved by zapping the PRIM, which is Command Option PR on restart. So certainly worth trying if any of you happen to run into that in the future and make a mental note. So what we do here on Mac Geek Hub, right? There's no way any of us could remember everything. In fact, I proved that. We mentioned, I mentioned three things in the last episode that were like cool stuff found apps that I had noticed at Mac Tech and was really blown away by them. And like, wow, how come I haven't known about this? And as I went through and sent out my sponsor note, or not sponsor, but mentioned notifications. Anytime somebody's mentioned in the show, we let them know. And as I sent them out, I realized that in each of the cases, all three cases we had previously mentioned those apps. Now, so they were like 2014 and before. So perhaps not even relevant to newer listeners and a good thing to re-mention. But even I didn't know that we had re-mentioned them. And I was the one that mentioned them the first time. So yes, this is why we just do this stuff and keep reiterating it. It helps us all. So cool. Eventually becomes a blur dude. Well, that's it. But that's the thing is like, when you know somebody, if somebody out there is, you know, we'll forget this, this little eighth inch, you know, hang tip until the next time one of us is out there, you know, working on a machine and it does this. We'll say, oh, wait, I heard about this. Or if it's me, I'll say, I talked about this. And then I'll remember or you'll remember like, oh, right, it's PRAM. Yeah, let's try that. You know, and even if something similar happens, like, well, I heard about PRAM solving one installation issue. So let's try a different one and see what happens. That's what we do here. That's the goal. All right, with that in mind, we also have some geek challenges. So I will share Harry's question and he says, at work, we have a PC connected to two HDMI monitors and a Mac mini connected to two HDMI monitors at separate desks. I need to move them to the same desk, but do not have room for four separate monitors. My initial thought was that a KVM keyboard video mouse switch with two video in for each computer and two video outports should be easy, right? As it turns out, it is anything but easy. I'm finding lots of KVM switches for two monitors, but they are all either set up to mirror displays or show each computer in a separate display. I can't find anything that will allow me to extend the two displays for both computers. I can't be the only one that wants to do this kind of thing. Any insights on how to actually make this happen? So I'm thinking about this and I didn't have an answer when it first came in, but as often happens as I'm reading this for all of you here on the show, things start to percolate in my head and I know Monoprice has what they call Matrix HDMI HDMI switch boxes. And I wonder if like a four by four Matrix switch box might just do this. I don't know, but maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. I got to look, but that would be the way to go with this is to find an HDMI matrix switch box there that has multiple inputs and multiple outputs and you can control what goes to each. And then you just treat them separately. You'd say, okay, output one. So I think I found one. It's the Blackbird 4K Pro 4x4 True Matrix HDMI switch. And if I look on the back of this thing, I have output A, B, C and D and input one, two, three and four, okay? And then on the front of this thing, I have output A, I have four separate blocks and I can choose what output A gets from any one of one, two, three or four. I can then of course choose what output B gets from any one of one, two, three or four. So you could do this, right? You could map it and then that might do it. So I'm gonna put this in the show notes, but if anybody else, so Brian Monroe in the chat room is a step ahead of me saying how about a Matrix switcher? So there it is. Yep, or just use remote desktop and control one computer from the other. That's another way. I like that solution. I like the remote desktop solution. That's a good idea. Anybody else have any ideas? John, do you have any ideas? I was rooting for the Magic Box. Well, I think I found the Magic Box. Yeah, yeah, no you didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this, so there you go. Get a bigger desk. Oh, that's, I mean it's a waste though if you're really only gonna use one or two monitors at a time, why have more than two, right? So. Oh no, no, no, I'm with you. When I did server work, we would have multiple, we would always have KVMs for a rack mount. We would have like eight or 16 computers in one rack and you don't have six, well there's no room for a 16 screen. Yeah, and Brian's asking how expensive is that Matrix switcher? The one that I found is 129.99 for a four by four. That's a little, like he only needs a two by two Matrix. I just, in my quick hunting, I didn't find one on Monoprice but I could be wrong. Oh, there it is. There it is, the Monoprice Blackbird two by two HDMI Matrix for just 40 bucks. So there you go. I will put that in the show notes too because that's actually what you want. So Monoprice two by two Matrix switcher. And this actually, this segment served a dual purpose. I've been trying to, for years, think of an opportunity to discuss and explain what a Matrix switcher does. And Harry's example kind of laid that foundation perfectly. So this is actually great because we get to explain a Matrix switcher with a real world example and there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would do it. Well, would this do it? No, no, you need a four by four because you've got four inputs and two outputs. So really what he needs is a four by two Matrix switcher and I'm looking this up here. Of course, hello. Yes, does that one do it? See, there's all kinds here. This is where it gets crazy. Yeah, yeah, so there's a four by two Matrix switcher. I'll put a link to that one in the show notes because that's what Harry actually needs. Okay, now we've gone through enough. Don't you think, John? No, no, there's so much more. There is so much more. Right, let's keep doing the show. Oh yeah, yeah, fun. Let's go, let's go to Jeff. Jeff brings us to a fun little topic because it's about new gear and we love new gear. Jeff says, I'm sending you an email about my recent iPad purchase. The email might be too long. No, no, no, it's not, it's fine. Since last week, I received my 12.9 inch 2018 iPad Pro with 256 gigs. I also bought the Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard. I've been using it for a week. I do enjoy using an iPad daily but I have decided to return the iPad and purchased a 2018 MacBook Pro 13 inch. I already own the 2017 version of the 12.9 inch iPad which worked flawlessly with my Logitech combo keyboard because I'm an Apple fan. I decided to purchase the 2018 iPad with the Smart Keyboard and it just did not seem to be enough of a wow in terms of differentiating from my 2017. The Smart Keyboard from Apple is not illuminated and the typing experience is just okay. Logitech is not ready with their updated keyboard for the new iPad and do not have an ETA as to when it'll be ready. Additionally, the powerhouse processor that is the new iPad just does not seem to be utilized by much existing software. I hear the iPad processor surpasses some of the MacBook Pros but no one really has any day-to-day software that shows this. So to make this email longer, I just wanted to get your opinion on what you thought about the 2018 MacBook Pro with the Core i5 processor with 16 gigs of RAM and a 256 gig storage with the touch bar. And he says PS, I don't know if it has already been, oh, nevermind, yeah, yeah, that's different. Okay, so this is interesting because the 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro is the one that is updated to the four-core processor on the i5 unless I'm totally mistaken and I don't think I am. And that's a nice machine, right? And I think a few of them are even appearing on refurb now so your timing might be right. But you bring up a really good point about usable CPU capacity and without true multitasking. And I know some people are gonna get hand-wavy about me saying that. But without having a window thing where you can have really multiple apps going and really using them, the iPad probably won't ever fully utilize its CPU. Yeah, and you might get a Photoshop thing to really do it but you're not gonna have multiple things going at once on an iPad. There's just not enough RAM on those to make that a reality. But it is important to remember that an underutilized CPU generally consumes less power. So that's probably part of Apple's thought process on this. Like, yeah, let's put a killer CPU in there. And if we need to, certainly we can use it. But if we don't need to, we can, you know, kind of, we'll throttle it down and for day-to-day tasks, it's gonna use much less power and yada, yada, yada. And it's also important to note, I think it was Marco Arment, right? On Twitter about a week and a half ago was ranting about how apps that run for more than 60 seconds in the background on iOS are killed. So factor that in to how much of your CPU you're gonna use and whether or not you wanna get hand wavy about me saying the iPad is not a true multitasking machine. If the OS is set to kill or at best suspend any process that tries to run for more than 60 seconds in the background, that's not really a multitasking thing. And I don't mean to poop with the iPad. In fact, in a minute, I'll rant and rave about how I'm really, like I've breathed new life into my 10 and a half inch iPad Pro and really found it quite useful in a lot of ways. But iPad Pro versus MacBook Pro, I love my iPad Pro, but this is not a comparison, right? In today's world, get the MacBook Pro and hopefully find it on refurb. And unfortunately, Apple has changed the refurb store a little bit for the worse. They've changed the way it's laid out, but they've also changed the level of detail on the main refurb page. So you can no longer see how much- You're like reading my mind because I went to the page and I'm like, oh, it's prettier. Look, it has, you know, it shows like a picture. But I'm like, where's the year of the machine? Well, the year of the machine, the RAM and the storage are no longer on the main screen. You have to click through. Now, it's interesting you bring this up because I need, it is time for a new machine for me. It's also time for a new laptop for me. It's also time for a new laptop for my son. And I've really been on the fence with these new MacBook Airs that came out. It's like, okay, well, do I get a MacBook Pro and really for what I do with a laptop, a dual core machine is gonna be fine for me. I do not need like a super powerhouse quad core machine. Same is true for my son. And so looking at the dual core MacBook Pros versus the dual core Air, it actually, I start to lean, in fact, I have leaned toward the Air. And that's actually the machine that I've ordered is an Air. Now, because you get Touch ID, right? Which you don't get with the dual core MacBook Pros. And otherwise it's the same two Thunderbolt three capable USB-C ports, the same audio port, same 13 inch screen. Well, not quite the same 13 inch screen. It's the same resolution on a 13 inch screen. Better battery life, slightly lighter, but that's not, I mean, I think it's a quarter pound lighter or something like that. But yeah, I'm going with the 2018 Air. Now, my biggest problem with my 2011 Air is that it only has four gigs of RAM. And that's the most I could get in it when I got it. And as we all know, with Apple laptops these days, the Air being no exception, the RAM that you buy is the RAM that you will have forever until you get rid of the machine. And so I asked on our forums, I asked a lot of people, like, am I gonna be okay with eight gigs? Am I son gonna be okay with eight gigs? And the answer from everybody was yes. It was totally yes. And I also got my Air with 16 gigs of RAM because I can't change it just in the event that this is wrong. So I did kind of the same config, 18, or 16, 256. 256 storage is plenty for me on an Air or on my laptop for what I do. And I'll be totally fine with that. I'm fine with it now with plenty to spare. So I think that'll work out fine. But yeah, so that's the way I leaned on this, John. How about, what do you think? Do you think I'm crazy? Do you think I made the right decision or the wrong decision? It's more than you got. So I think that's good. And you thought out the only thing that I would have having one terabyte SSDs in both my machines, I would prefer. So I think 16 gigs of RAM is enough. Well, I know that 16 is enough. But yeah, do you have a machine that's running eight gigs of RAM right now, John? The mini is running eight gigs of RAM. And that was enough for you or is enough for you? I would seem so. Yeah. Wow, that's interesting. That's for podcasting. So I think I bought it with less RAM. I think it came with less. And this machine is user, well, as is the current one, I think, kind of. Kind of, yeah. They always make replacing things that are meant to be replaced in the mini a kind of a... Well, no, I'll say this was like a piece of cake. You just screw off the bottom. Right. And there's the RAM. So yeah, I think I got it with four or two or something. Okay. I upgraded it to eight. No, I found it's enough. I found it's, you know, never thrashing. Huh. That's for the... But I typically run very few apps at the same time on this machine. I'll run, at most, what I need for the podcast, which is chat and audio and a browser and a few other things, but it's fine for that. Makes sense. Yeah. No, everybody has said... Yeah. I mean, that I upgraded to 16 gigs. And I think it's necessary because on this thing, I'm typically running way more apps and just kind of need the breathing room. Got it. Got it. Okay. That's what I think, I think. That's good. All right. There you go. Let's see. What do I want to do next? Well, we have some... We have our cool stuff found gift guide stuff to talk about, but first, John, I want to talk about our next batch of sponsors if that's okay by you. Please do. All right. Our next sponsor is Jamf. We're at J-A-M-F. That's how you spell jamf.com slash M-G-G. You can go and get a free account that gets you three devices in Jamf for free, forever, forever. Not like for a limited time, unless forever's limited time and then I got nothing. For free, forever. Three devices, you can manage your Apple devices remotely, or you can manage somebody else's Apple devices remotely. Of course, they have to give you permission, but this is great if you run a business and you need to set things up. You can configure like Wi-Fi settings and email settings. You can even remotely wipe a device if, you know, heaven forbid, you have to, right? And it works on your Macs. It works on your iPads. It works on your iPhones. You can do this. I mean, it's free for three devices. So you can do it for your family if you want, or you can do it for your business, or you can do it for both. And it doesn't just have to be the family that lives in your house because this is remote. So you can do it for people all over the world as long as they have access to the internet. Very, very, very cool stuff. You got to check this out. Like, you should start using this for your family right away because you get three devices for free forever. So just do it. Go visit jamf.com slash mgg. And then after those three devices, it's just two bucks per device per month. That's it. Check it out. Jamf.com slash mgg are thanks to Jamf Now for sponsoring this episode. Our next sponsor is someone you've heard about for a long time here on Mac Geek Eb and that is Cash Fly. We have been using Cash Fly to, as you know, get all of the content from us to you, right? That's how the show gets to you. You download Mac Geek Eb from Cash Fly. They run a distributed content distribution network that is planet wide and they know what they're doing. Now they're doing even more. They know that when websites don't load, we lose interest, right? People fade off. It's not good. Fewer visits means fewer customers, bad. Cash Fly has your back, just like they have ours. With their new web optimization capabilities, all your content will be optimized before it's delivered to your visitors without requiring any extra development efforts from you. They've done some cool things here with their web content optimization at Cash Fly. Powerful APIs for solving all your content distribution problems on the fly next generation image optimization to make things look good and be small. Application load balancing, smart asset delivery. They've been doing this longer than we've been doing Mac Geek Eb. They've learned a few things. They're now applying that and letting you take advantage of it. So if your website is directly tied to your revenue, and I can't imagine it's not, optimize your site's content now. Guarantee the best user experience for all of your customers no matter where they are or what device they're using. And here's the thing, the good people at Cash Fly are even going to provide a free optimization consultation for Mac Geek Eb listeners. You got it free for you because you're a Mac Geek Eb listener. So know exactly where your site stands today with a lighthouse score report and learn how Cash Fly's web optimization solution can help add 60 points instantly to your score. Just visit mac.cashfly.com. That's m-a-c dot c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y dot com. And I know I've said this hundreds of times, but I'll say it again, our thanks to Cash Fly for sponsoring this episode. All right, now it's time for some gift guide things. And the first one, actually, as I promised, talks about my iPad Pro. I have been using the new, I'm trying to think of the right way to say it because it's not obviously right there. There it is, the new series two Bridge iPad Pro keyboard. So you might have seen this, John, but you might not have noticed that you've seen this because the way these Bridge keyboards work, they match the color scheme of your iPad Pro. They match the metal of your iPad Pro. And the way they kind of grip your iPad Pro makes them open and close like a small laptop, right? And it's not just the open and closing that makes it like a small laptop. Having this kind of keyboard that really holds it up, it'll hold it up on your lap, like the Apple Smart keyboard, it's a little too flexible for my preference. And the keys are a little chicklitty for my preference. I like the keys that they have, which are a lot like the Apple laptop keyboard. And it will hold its angle. It's really, really cool. And I've been using this on my iPad Pro for about the last week and a half here. And it almost made me think, I don't know that I need to buy an air. Like if I could truly have some kind of multitasking on this where I could record a podcast in a meaningful way to me and all of that stuff, I'd probably be okay traveling just with this just because of this keyboard for $99.99 or whatever it is on Amazon, yeah, $99.99. This changes the functionality of my iPad Pro remarkably. And this is their new version, which means it uses Bluetooth 4, which means it connects faster. So you just hit a key on the keyboard and it connects and you're good to go. It's got backlit keys. It's got lower profile keys. On the backlight, you can have different amounts of backlighting, of course. Instant response and super long battery life. Like it's just crazy. So I'm blown away by this thing. Like I said, it really has fundamentally changed my iPad experience. And I've tried different smart keyboards over the years with the iPad, the Apple One being the one that I've used most frequently. And it's just like, oh yeah, it's nice to type on. But you can't really, like it's just too clumsy. It's really kind of the way I described the Apple Smart keyboard. Don't let that, you know, dissuade you from trying others. This bridge one's awesome. So we'll put a link to it in the show notes, but very, very cool. You know, I say gift guide for these things. I mentioned this last week, certainly if you've got somebody in your life that for whom any of the things that we mentioned is good, you know, then great. It makes a good gift. But we know that we're all geeks here and oftentimes that means these gifts are for us. So you can do one of two things. You can wait until after the gift giving season. You're finished buying for other people. Other people are finished buying for you. You know what you've gotten. You, you know, stack them up. And then, you know, that week after Christmas or whatever your giving season timing is, then you can go and like get the stuff you want. Or you can do what I do, which is I do that sometimes, but also if there's something I really want, I just buy it for myself. I wrap it. I put it into the Christmas tree to Dave from Dave and good to go. I shouldn't have. I know, but I did and it was great. So, so anyway, the, uh, this bridge keyboard totally changes the iPad pro for me. It hasn't, I haven't taken it off the iPad since I got it. So there you go. So there you go. What do you think, John? Any thoughts on that? No, I don't, I don't have a keyboard for my, uh, rather age it. Oh, you don't have a pro. That's right. Yeah, it would change. No, I got the air. I got like the original air. Right. Right. Kind of dated. Yep. Yeah. I do have a Bluetooth keyboard. I'll see if I can remember the vendor, but it's a battery powered Bluetooth keyboard. Sure. Which, um, I don't know. In my mind though, I separate keyboard work on the MacBook pro from other type of work or play on an iPad. I just kind of break out the, the, the tasks. Right. So that's actually what I'm saying here is having a good solid keyboard for the iPad changed that for me. Dramatic. Right. Cause I think, and the thing is, um, it's always concerned me that some try to force the iPad to do things that I don't think it was designed for. Like, unless you get a keyboard, right? Right. I mean, you know, an iPad, I would not do word processing on an iPad without a keyboard. Right. That would be insanity. Right. Well, maybe if you dictate to it and get supposed to it. Right. So, you know what I'm saying? Oh, no, I prefer to do email. I do email on my iPad, but it's, it's always a little clunky cause you're tight, you're tapping on that on-screen keyboard and it's just not as efficient as using a real keyboard. This changes that for me. And it really, really changed. Like I prepped most of this week's Mac Geek answering emails, answering forum posts from that iPad. And I would not, the only time I've done that previously is when I'm like stuck on an airplane or something and it's like, oh, okay, I'll do it with the iPad. But no, it makes a big difference. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Along the same lines, actually I have a related tip. Then we'll get back to the cool stuff out. But I have a related tip from listener Dave. He says, oh, and I do want to point out one thing before we get to Dave's tip. This keyboard has made me realize that Apple is entirely wrong about one thing that they have tried to tell us is a universal truth. And that is that laptops should not have touch screens. Tablets are the only things that should have touch screens. Having this keyboard on my iPad Pro makes me wish that I had a laptop with a touch screen. And my son feels the same way in the interim between getting his new air and retiring his old machine, for lack of a less kind term. He's been using this Windows machine that I mentioned that we put Linux on and is running really well. That has a touch screen on it, which Linux of course picked right up on. And it's a great experience. So I look forward to the day when Apple will change stance and put touch screens into laptops. But in any event, moving on. Listener Dave says, I read how iPad Pro Face ID users with an external keyboard were able to unlock their iPads instantly. I had no such luck with my Bluetooth keyboard. He says, I'd heard that it was possible to touch any key to wake the screen. Then Face ID does its thing super quickly. The iPad unlocks, touch another key and you're in, golden. Said the experience would seem like you had tapped a key and boom, right away tapped another key and you're in. Thus it feels like there's no lock on the device as long as it's you. This is great. Says, this treads your famous line, Dave, of security convenience versus protection. Gives you the best of both worlds. Agreed, sounds great. He says, but mine didn't work. I could tap a key and the screen would not wake. Notice I'm using the past tense and that's that last sentence. He says, would the answer lied in settings? I got a love just needing to flip a switch. And that is in settings, display and brightness, lock and unlock says this has to be on. Not an obvious setting. It certainly doesn't imply a key on an external keyboard will or will not unlock a display. Even the description explains that it's a setting for the iPad cover. Okay, Apple, but it's also for external keyboards when hitting a key. And he says, this is a huge time saver not having to tap the screen every time I want to wake things. He says, I probably do it over 50 times a day. Absolutely, Dave. Yep, I turned that on with mine too. So it's a, it's a great reminder there. So thank you for sharing that tip with us. Always good, good stuff. All right, now back to cool stuff found. One of my favorite things we've mentioned on the show many times before is the new Ventiv wireless charge stand and it's new this year. It's available depending on the color if you want the original gray slash black color that's 42 bucks on Amazon and the new white one is 59.99 on Amazon. And what's cool about this is it's a, it's a Qi charger. It, and it's a stand charger. So your phone can be up. You can see it while you're at your desk. It also is really handy to kind of have on the bedside table because it holds your phone up. So you're not wasting all that space by laying your phone flat. And it has adjustable angles. You have two angles you can pick from it's actually pretty clever. You can flip the stand around and it goes one angle or the other and you can adjust the height of where the Qi sensor is. So if your phone is, you know, depending on the height of your phone, but also if you want to mount in landscape versus portrait mode, it's all right there for you. And my favorite part because I put it next to the bed. I've know I've talked about it before. The light goes off after about 30 seconds or so. So you don't have this blue light shining and illuminating your bedroom. So there you go. That's my second, I guess, thing to add to our cool stuff found list. So I've had this since it came out back in March or whatever. And it's, I couldn't live without it. So. Oh, all right. Well, they sent one to me. And yeah, it's on my nightstand. There you go. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, I like that you can, you know, flip. It gives you a lot of flexibility as far as how you want to orient your phone as well. So you can do it portrait landscape. Yeah. You can remove that puck. I think you mentioned that. Yeah, right. You can remove the puck and just have it sit flat too if you want to do that. Yep. For sure. Yeah, I'd like. Now I think about it. I'd like their decision to shut off the LED after it confirms that something's happening. Yeah. Yeah. At first I was like, well, is that really a good thing from a user experience, user interface point of view? Because at first I was like, wait, the light, because I was watching it and I'm like, wait, the light's not on anymore. I'm like, is it charging? Right. And I looked on the phone and the little lightning bolt was there. So I'm like, yeah, it is. It's like, oh, now I know what they do that. And then I counted. Yeah. I think they flash out like 20 or 30 times, whatever. Oh, nice. But another product that does this, Dave, is their Ventev wireless charge pad plus. Okay. And they hooked me up with one of these and it's a charge pad. It's fabric, so rather than cold harsh plastic, it's fabric on top, actually. So it coddles your phone. I suppose that's important to solve. It's like a little phone bed. Yeah. But it also, it's the charge pad plus because it supports fast charging, which on Apple is 7.5 Watts and Samsung 10 Watts. The thing I like about this and another one I'll mention is that they both have things that you plug into 120 that come out to a USB-A and there is a standard for this called Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 Charger. Okay. The device that we just mentioned does not have that. It's a proprietary thing on the other hand. So. But it'll do up to 15 Watts, which is why it's proprietary, right? Yes, whereas, so Qualcomm Quick Charge, this device has it, it's USB-A and this I believe it's USB-A to USB-C. So the receptacle on this is USB-C. I guess the only thing is that, hey, you kind of get a free USB-A to USB-C cable if you want to use it for something else, which I assume you could. But anyways, I can, and actually I did an experiment. All the chargers that I have in the house, even this old Samsung thing that I bought, will all support the 7.5 watt fast charge, which on the iPhone 8 means that it gets to about 25% after half an hour, which if you want that, that's good, but this supports it. Yeah, cool. Cool. Fun stuff. We love it. What's your next one, man? You got another one? Do I, wait, let me look at this. You said you had another one, another that you were gonna mention, so. Oh, I better mention it. Okay, well, it's from another company that we love, MyCharge. They make all sorts of chargers, battery packs and things like that, but I got one of these at a show and tried this out and it's pretty similar to the Ventem. Supports fast charge. What's it called? Well, it's called the MyCharge PowerDisk Plus, the plus meaning, hey, we support fast charge too. Got it. And I confirm this. So it's got a very unobtrusive blue LED that shouldn't pester you, but it stays on all the time. And it also has a fast charger. Now this one also, so it's a certified fast charge thing. It's USB-A to micro USB. So, huh, okay. But the Ventem and the MyCharge retail for $49.99. So you want fast charging for your iPhone or your Samsung or whatever, I like either one. So I would, for any of these pucks, it seems like if you're paying more than 20 bucks for one of these pucks, you're overpaying. And both of these that we mentioned here, the ChargePad Plus and the PowerDisk Plus are both 50 or 49.99. If you go to Monoprice, you can get their 10 watt Qi charger for 17.99. And let's see, I'll put them in the thing here. The Samsung, the first one that I bought when I got my iPhone, Samsung makes one that also supports fast charge. And I think it's like $22, let's check the price. So I'm with you. If you can get a discount or a coupon or something, that would be nicer if they have that. They're probably having special today because today is, oh, I hate saying, I'm not even gonna say the word, I hate it. Well, it's Cyber Monday, but most people will be listening after Cyber Monday. So those deals will probably be gone. But you can get, this isn't a cyber, well, it might be a Cyber Monday price, I don't know. But the Monoprice, so their 10 watt one is 17.99, at least at this moment. Their one amp, so five watt one, normal charging speed is $5.65. So if you're just gonna buy a puck, I see no reason not to get one of these Monoprice pucks and save yourself a bunch of money. Yeah, because as we discussed before, fast charging may not be the best thing for the life of your battery. Yeah, well, I've heard people say that, but you pointed to a Tom's Guide, you pointed to a Tom's Guide chart and it showed that even fast charging is way slower than plugging in a lightning cable, right? So is it really bad for your battery? Like, I mean, if it is, then lightning's worse? I don't know, like that. To me, the more power means more heat, more heat means less battery life. I'm sorry. So you're saying, yeah, I know, but I will challenge that blanket statement by saying if we follow that, then the only way we should charge is with a standard Qi charger, right? Because that's slower charge than anything else, including lightning. And lightning could go, yeah, but is that true? Like, I know that heat is a bad thing for batteries. I mean, I fully agree with that, but I think the question is, what's the minimum level of heat required to start being bad for a battery? And I'm not convinced we're at it. So, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's gotta- I guess I'm gonna do. So like with my iPhone 8, the fastest charge is a USB-C charger with a USB-C lightning cable from Apple. That provides the fastest charge last night check. That's correct. Yeah, fast wired charging, yep, that's right. But the battery, like the speed at which a battery, the fastest speed at which a battery will charge is controlled by the battery. And the maximum size of the battery, right? So your fast wired charging with the same adapter and cable would charge an iPad Pro with more power across the wire than it would your iPhone 8 or your iPhone 10 because your iPhone 8 and your iPhone 10 have smaller batteries than the iPad Pro. And so the speed at which it can take a charge is dependent on the relative size of the battery. And I think that's because of the exact thing we're talking about. So are the batteries built to protect themselves and none of these speeds are a bad thing for them? I don't know. Of course, well, you know, it has fast charging has been around for a long time, right? Since the iPad came out. We haven't seen that negatively impact batteries. Or- As far as we know. Right, as far as we know. So I don't, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And actually, well, it's interesting though. So Brian Monroe in our chat room, we already told you how to get there at backiekev.com slash stream says, but if you're going to swap your phone out every couple of years, then does it really matter? Right. Well, and you can replace your, like Apple will replace your battery for 30 bucks, right? Well, until the end of this year, then you got to pay more. Oh yeah. Well, I have, actually I have as far as I know this will fit, but one of the, I fixed it, guys actually gave me an iPhone 7 battery kit, which I'm pretty sure it'll work in the iPhone 8. That's another reminder that- Really? What? It will? I thought the guts were remarkably different in the two phones. Oh, okay. I think the layout of the guts is different. Yeah, cause the iPhone 8 has a cheat charger pad in it and the iPhone 7 doesn't. So like, it would be remarkably convenience if the batteries were the same in them. Oh. All I know is that the phones are the same size because I was able to use my cases from the 7 on the 8, but I'm not afraid of a good point. Yeah. The cameras are different. I fixed it knows this stuff here. I'll have to look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just want to mention that they make battery replacement kits. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Well, Apple does too in that you go and pay them and they put in a new battery. And speaking of I fixed it, the next thing on my gift guide, cool stuff found list is their new iFixit Pro tech tool kit. Man, like it's 60 bucks. You can get it right from iFixit and it comes in a nice little wrap around case. It's got so many things in it that you would need to work on your whatever, your, you know, your computers and really anything beyond that. It's got a ton. I can't even remember how many bits it's got, but so many of these little bits to control and manipulate all different kinds of screws and nut drivers on them and Torx drivers. Especially the proprietary crap that Apple uses. I'm sorry, I said it. It's got it in there too. I think I think I have an earlier version of this kit here, but it has a pentalobe and it has the security screw that they use on the Mac mini. Yes, they use a special screw on that, even the 2014. And actually I saw someone in my feed, they confirmed that the 2018, I think it's called a T8, a security T8. Yep. Yeah, they got all the annoying Apple screw bits in there. So. Yeah, it's great. It's, it's cool. It's definitely cool stuff found. So, so you'll want one of these and maybe a loved one will want one too. Let's see, I have been blown away by something, John and it's called the Rove Viva Pro. And what this is is a cigarette lighter adapter or it's a thing that plugs into the power port in your car. We used to call that the cigarette lighter, but I don't think people use it for that anymore. And cause it's 2018 and it's got two USB ports on it and it's also got a microphone in it and it supports the Amazon A-Lady in it. And paired with the app on your phone, which it uses for your data connection and all that, you can have the Amazon A-Lady do things in your car, including like getting directions, which it would then open with Waze or whatever maps app you choose. Very cool thing. It's 73 bucks, at least at their website. You might be able to get it cheaper, but it really kind of blows me away that this thing can exist and it works and it's just great. And Rove ROAV is, it's called the Rove Viva Pro and it's an anchor brand, right? So this is from the folks that we've known for years at Anchor, they've brought Rove in-house and now you can have the A-Lady in your car all the time, which has worked out really well. I've had it for a little while and I'm really kind of blown away by it. So pretty good stuff, man. If you've seen these, right? At the, at like CES and things like that, right? Have I? I thought so. Yeah, they showed them off at like PEPCOM and stuff. So, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. Wow, that's an, yeah, I'm like, why would you want to put all that stuff in that thing? And it's like, oh, no, that actually kind of makes sense. I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Let's see, Warren in the chat room mentioned this pre-show. It's called the Line Dock, L-I-N-E-D-O-C-K. And this is, it's like a, it's the size of a MacBook Pro and it's essentially a little mat that goes underneath it but it's your dock with a battery in it. So, it's got a, let's see, let me see if I can find all the specs on it here, right? So, it's got a 20,000 milliamp hour battery. It'll, it's the size of your 13 inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air 2018. It's got, it can have storage in it. So you can get it with no storage, 256 gigs or one terabyte. It supports a one 4K display. It's got nine ports on it. And I'm trying to get a list of all the ports. Here it is. Three USB-C type-C ports. So you get full power delivery 2.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 and display port. You get three USB three ports on it. So you can connect to all the devices that you have. It'll do pass through charging. It's even got an SD card slot on it. And you can, they say it's got multi-device support, which means you can have seven ports used simultaneously. So this is a pretty cool thing. It starts at 2.99 and then if you want storage in it, obviously the price goes up because you're paying for storage, but very cool. Thank you for that, Warren. I like it. Good stuff. Cool. Right? Yeah? Fun. I have another thing, John. It's kind of been blowing me away lately. And that's this thing called the Riva Concert. Riva, it's a speaker. It's for sale for 179 bucks. From a distance, it looks exactly like a Sonos One or a Sonos Play One. Like, I don't know if there's gonna be some issue with that. But for our sake, this thing, it actually has, whereas the Sonos One has two speakers in it, a tweeter and a woofer. This has six speakers in it. It's got two in the front, two on the left, two on the right. And it uses them to create a wider stereo field. So that, and you do, like I played Pink Floyd's Money on this thing and you do, you start to get a wider field. It's not crazy stereo, but it works. And it gives you a little bit more spread if you've got just one of these in a room. It's also got the Amazon A-Lady built into it. It's got some smarts to make the sound do what it's doing. It supports AirPlay, right? So you can connect with AirPlay, which means it connects via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It'll also connect to your, you know, DLNA server. So if you've got a music server running on, like your Synology Distation or something, no problem. It supports Spotify Connect. It also has an aux input, right? So compared to a Sonos One as a standalone device, it blows it away. They say that there's a software update coming to do multi-room audio with these things. It's a really interesting thing. And like I said, for 179 bucks, it's about the same price as a Sonos One. If you already have Sonos, then this is not the thing for you because it won't link with any of that unless you're using AirPlay for everything, in which case it would link with that because it's AirPlay. But it's not part, you know, it's not a Sonos device. So it's not gonna participate in that ecosystem. But for just a standalone device, it's a pretty interesting concept. Again, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But yeah, it's rare that a speaker shows up and makes me scratch my head and go, huh, but this one did. And you can buy a battery with it that it sits on top of and works wirelessly. No battery or no power required. But until the battery runs out. But you get about 15 hours of battery life and it's splash resistant and all that stuff. So you could bring it out to the pool with you or whatever, if you've got Wi-Fi connectivity, great. If you don't, you can still pair your phone with it, either Bluetooth or you can connect Wi-Fi directly to it. It's a cool thing. They've kind of over engineered it a little bit and it sounds good, which is the key. So yeah, interesting. Keeps things interesting. You have any questions on that before I move us along, Mr. Braun? Nope. Okay. Eric, carry on. We've got time for... Yeah, I'll have to save these questions for the next episode, but we do have time for one more. And that is from Mike, the 12 South High Rise Pro. So 12 South has been making great things for us Apple users for a long time. And this High Rise Pro that Mike has picked out is certainly no exception. He says, I just picked up one of these and I'm looking forward to using it to provide a home for my new Mac Mini when it arrives next week. And what it is, is it's a box, essentially, vented box that elevates your display over your Mac Mini. And or you could just put an iMac on it. Like you don't have to put a Mac Mini inside this thing, but it's a stand for your display that could fit your Mac Mini in there if you wanted. Very, very cool stuff. So anyway, there you go. That's what it is. It's, well, can you put a Mac Mini in there? I don't know that you can. Actually, now that I'm looking at this, who was it, the Mike that recommended it? Maybe he's not planning on putting his Mac Mini in there. No, it doesn't look like you can, but you can put hard drives. You can put it under it. Oh no, there it is. I see, it looks like maybe there is a picture with a Mac Mini in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Certainly looks like that. Yeah, so it's... Oh yeah, it does. There's a Mac Mini and a drive and stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So anyway, we're taking a look at it. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes, as always, very, very cool. Very cool, so thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. I do... What's that? No, it's funny because you've seen my setup, but you know what I used to elevate my monitor? Because desks for whatever stupid reason tend to be too low. Yeah. I got a copy of the Macintosh Bible. Remember that? Oh yeah, man. It's a nice, chunky book. That's awesome. It's just the right height to get my Asus monitor up to the height where I want it. Yeah, pretty good. Because a lot of monitors don't offer really good stands, including this one. That's right. It's like, you're stuck. I mean, you can change the tilt of the screen, but you can't change the height. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Let's see. Where are we here on everything? I want to take a quick minute, John, and do something that we didn't do last week that I definitely want to do this week, and that is to thank all of our premium contributors for the last few weeks here. And with Thursday having been Thanksgiving, this is certainly in that spirit of things. Because without you, this show would be remarkably different than it is. So it really does make a difference. You are sponsors, everybody who's listening and contributing and all of that stuff. It's all, you know, it's all one homogenous kind of thing that allows us to continue and all of that. And our premium listeners, of course, you are a big part of it. So I want to go through and thank everybody. We had a one-time $50 contribution from Richard B. So thanks, Richard. On the monthly $10 plan, we had contributions from Paul M, Mike C, Mark R, Chris F, Bob at Working Smarter for Mac users, Ryan M, Neil L, Scott F, Dave C, John G, James C, Jay C, no relation, Frank A, Joe S, Abdullah B, Ari L, Barry F, Michael P, Mikhail S, Bob L, Jeff P, John V, John D, Santiago M, Ken L, Clive S, and Dave G. So thanks to all of you for the monthly $10 subscription. We had Chris S for a monthly $20 subscription. So thank you. And then on the biannual $25 every six-month plan, thanks to Ed T, David B, David S, Scott R, Craig R, T, Andrew W, Bob S, Brian M, Scott G, Brian W, Art K, Jim W, Dennis M, Bruce D, Daniel M, Rick S, Harvey H, Ian T, John P, Mark P, Tim B, and Jim D. Thanks to all of you. And then Daniel W on a $50 every six-month subscription. Thanks to you as well. So really, truly great stuff. And again, we just couldn't do this without you. The good news is we have a lot of questions left for next week, John. So, so, you know, we're there you go. That's how it works, right? We will have plenty to do, and we will be here next week. Uh, we've already told you how to get to us. Of course, premium listeners can email premium at mackeykeb.com. And if you want to be a premium subscriber, check it out. Go to mackeykeb.com slash premium. And you can learn all about it there. If you can't or aren't interested in supporting us directly, that's OK. We still definitely, uh, you are very much appreciated as a listener. This is, uh, this is not a mandatory thing. In fact, you're listening and visiting our sponsors. We, as we always say, you don't have to buy things from our sponsors. That's between you and them, but we would love it if you visited them. So that's another way to help out and just learn about their products. But sometimes we'll have a link that you can use. So just visit the show notes at mackeykeb.com or go to mackeykeb.com slash sponsors and visit there. It really does help. And if you find something that works for you, obviously, by all means, you know, there you go. Uh, two, two, four, eight, eight, eight geek is the number that you can call and leave us a message. And John geek is four, three, three, five. That is true. Uh, we've already talked about the forums a lot. So I will just say, uh, thanks to all of our sponsors that, uh, that have been part of this, of course, cash fly, as you know, because we mentioned that during the show, ops genie at ops genie.com. Jamf now at jamf.com slash m gg, uh, otherworld computing at mac sales.com. Smile at smile software.com slash podcast, bare bones software at bare bones.com and ring and ring.com slash m gg heroes coming back. Hero.com slash m gg, get your, uh, free shipping there, too. Make sure to check that out, Mr. Braun, do you have anything to add before we depart? I've got one, two, I got three things for you, Dave. And those are, yeah, don't get.