 It's time for the MacGigab and this week's quick tip comes from me pilot Pete If you need to get into system settings simply hit the option key and touch either the brightness the mission control or One of the audio up or down keys option plus brightness will bring up system settings and Your brightness mission control brings up your displays and obviously your audio brings up your system settings sound No more having to type it search it out with your mouse quick in and easy What quick tips like this plus your questions today on MacGigab number 990 for Monday, July 10th 2023 Spokes and welcome to MacGigab the show where you send in or we share quick tips like that We answer your questions. We take your cool stuff found. We share those too. We put it all together into an agenda That has a flow to it that keeps us engaged that maybe has some common threads The goal being that each and every one of us learns at least five new things every single time We get together Sponsors for this episode include LinkedIn comm slash MGG where you can go and post your first job for free on LinkedIn jobs Notion comm slash Mac geek up where you can go also for free and try out notion projects and Zock doc comm slash MGG where you can go and sign up Yes for free and download their app today We'll talk more in depth about each of those things that you get to do a little bit later in the episode for now Here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton In here for a couple more days in Lee, New Hampshire. It's pilot Pete. Good to be back Dave. Yeah, man It's good to be back. I uh, yeah, I like that that opening tip. That's uh, I It is not the first time. It's not the first time I've heard it, but I My fingers don't know it So it's I don't use it as often as I as I can tell you how many times I've stumbled across You know, I hit command space and I start typing in system settings Yeah, I pull down the apple and I'm trying to because I'm trying to get in and adjust my sound settings all the time Right boom one quick one. It's up. Yep I like it. Yeah. No, it's it's great. These are this is this is why we share these quick tips It's for all of us you folks us included like it's we all benefit from these. It's great speaking of Tony has Kind of a little work around as a quick tip, which I like he says my wife was having trouble making out details at some Website she was visiting where she was trying to buy a shirt as she is using an iPad without a keyboard I couldn't show her the simple command plus or command minus or command zero So I tried showing her the zoom in accessibility She found that too difficult. So instead I had her take a screenshot and then switch to photos and just use the pinch to zoom in and out on the screenshot and See the content on the webpage. He says You know, sometimes he says even the accessibility features are too difficult to do in the moment And it's true and what's nice about the screenshot thing is Accessibility when you zoom in will change some of the elements on the page like text usually But not all of the elements it won't often and it depends on how the web page is written But often images stay the same size and the text just gets bigger when you use the accessibility thing. So So, you know, there you go. Yeah, I like that tip a related tip to that Pete that I Found out about this week. I think I read something that John Gruber posted somewhere or something I can't remember But you can you know, you can go into accessibility and change all kinds of these settings system-wide, right? So you could do that Did you know that you can go into accessibility scroll all the way to the bottom and do per app Accessibility settings so you could have one web browser that is set to you know 120% text size whereas your main web browser is not so you can set like Firefox to you know larger text size and yeah You go in and I should pull up my phone because you do this on iPhone and iPad you go into settings and You go to accessibility and then scroll all the way to the bottom and you will see per app settings in there You add an app and then once you've added the app you get Basically a duplicate of all the accessibility settings that you could set for that would that would manipulate a given app And you get to customize them just for that app Which I yeah Well, I didn't hit the bottom. Hey, I had no idea like I yeah. Yeah, right. I love it. Love it So this is why this is why we love quick tips Yeah, well, let me let me tell one then cuz I wrote in and let me go back a second. There's an old joke What's the definition of neurotic? It's the guy who presses the elevator button 40 times But to close the door before it actually closes. So Todd That's why I like this quick tip If you're on your phone and you're trying to get the apps to wiggle so you can delete them or put them into a Folder or move them around from screen to screen You have to sit there and press and if you count I counted three potatoes one potato two potato three potato Before I got them to wiggle sure Todd discovered that if you touch the screen betwixt In between each of the icons it takes about somewhere between half and point seven seconds For the icons to start wiggling So you say oh my gosh. Yeah, it's like two and a half seconds faster So for those of us who are neurotic in our in a hurry to get our apps wiggling it is it's clearly a difference. Oh My god, like what? Yeah, because you've got to get through when when you're when you're holding down on an app You've got to get through like the you know the apps Long press menu and it wants. Yeah. Yeah, of course if you just touch the screen They start with the apps Oh man, that's great Thank you. That is a great tip. Yeah, I'll say I'll say Chicago Tom last week I asked how people were using Siri on their Macs, right? It's something I don't do I want to learn How others do it so they can see if there's a use case for me, right? I don't just want to presume there's not one because because I'm not yet doing it, right and Chicago Tom says He says you guys might recall that I was the one that was happy to find a keyboard shortcut to activate Siri, right? Okay. Yeah, says that's because I use it all the time He says I have type to Siri activated on my Mac so that you can give Siri commands with the keyboard As opposed to you know voice and he says I do not have the hey S lady active and the reason is because I work in a shared office space and the people around me can hear me when I talk I don't want to disturb them and occasionally. I don't want them to know what I am doing fair a good example of how he uses Siri on his Mac. He says during a meeting I may want to take a quick little note to remind myself to take care of something or do something that comes up during the Conversation I hit the Siri shortcut on my keyboard and in the little prompt box I'd type a text replacement for take a note that says so the words that his text replacement You know it expands to our take a note that says his replacement is xxnn So, you know, but what doesn't matter, right? And then he types the note He says yes I could use Apple's quick notes feature in the notes app But I find when I do the new quick note window steals the focus and may move me away from for instance a zoom window in full Screen even when it doesn't take up the screen real estate my method above avoids all of that So as he's as he's doing this, I'm thinking One thing I do all the time with Siri in the car is As I'm driving, you know, it's that you kind of get into that that meditative zoning sort of headspace when you're in the car And I'll think of like I have good ideas. So well, I have ideas Occasionally they're good, but I know that if I even if an idea is the best idea I've ever come up with in my life I will not necessarily remember it once I am in a spot to do something about it, right? Like I'll think there's zero chance that I will forget about this. This is amazing And I couldn't possibly forget couldn't possibly forget and yet And yet there will be things that sort of distract you. It doesn't make it into long-term memory, right? So yeah, I Routinely use Siri in the car. I'll say Siri remind me today and I either say today or tomorrow If I don't give a date then it puts it into my it will put it into my reminders either way But an undated reminder is also something I don't see it's like like I have to go and look for them I don't because I see I sort my reminders by day and the undated stuff just falls to the bottom At least the way that I look at it. So So I say remind, you know, Siri remind me today And then whatever and it puts it on my to do my reminder system I to do list and then from there I can either take an action on it or you know Put the like if it needs to be something that's more fleshed out. It's it's just a little, you know it's a reminder that's what it is and So I find myself wanting to do that in the middle of meetings just like Chicago Tom says for the same reason and I will just switch to my calendar up. I use busy cal And I will add a reminder, but that does bring my focus out of the meeting It's more with the the little Siri window the bubble that pops up You could just type it right in there. So I think this might be the the killer app for Dave for using Siri on the Mac Is is I'll come up with a little shortcut that'll say remind me today, like, you know RMT or something and then boom just type whatever I want. So yeah, I like this Well, what would be remind me tomorrow RMT? It doesn't really matter to me for doesn't matter It's it as long as it puts it on there You know in like where I will see it. Yeah, you know, yeah, right. Yeah, so I like it a long time go to try and write those things down too because like you say though There's no way I'll forget it and then There's a guaranteed way you will forget it or at least that I will yeah. Yeah. No, yeah our memories I haven't I have an excellent memory for lots of things but not for all the things and I you know And and I and that has bitten me before because I'm like, oh, I can remember like every one of my credit card numbers I've ever had and all this stuff like, you know, I have whatever however my brain works. I'm good at Remembering that kind of stuff that leads me to the fallacy that I am good at remembering all the things and that is That is a fallacy. And as you know with age more penguins jump off the iceberg. Yes, that is true Yeah, yeah, the good news is the good I was reading something about this recently the good news is with age certainly our ability to Remember specific things It does dwindle like it's just how it works but our minds get better at Perceiving bigger picture things as we age and here's the benefit Here's the wonderful thing about that as as someone who is actively aging And and hasn't really been able to do anything about that. Well, I suppose there's a way to stop the aging process But I don't want to do that either and you're passively aging and that's very different. Yes. I don't want that at all No, I'm I'm very happy. I lead a charmed life and I want to continue leading it but with You know, we have all these devices that are much better than even our younger selves were at remembering Bits and pieces of information. So it's like this is like a superpower in a sense, you know aging enhances our minds in a way that at at least thus far our computing devices You know doing things that our computing devices cannot do seeing big picture stuff and maybe they'll get there someday But right now no so every day I get better at that and every day my computers get better at remembering the things that I'm forgetting and so as long as I remember to use them for that I'm in good shape, right? Yeah, and there's billions of them around the world and that's the thing. Yeah For better and for worse. Yes Listener Matt Who is also an indie developer? Reminds us that Matt Corrie reminds us that this coming week Tuesday into Wednesday July 11th and 12th is Indy what I want to make sure I get the name of this right in the app sales day and And there is a link that I'll put in the show notes. It's It's it's a github page. So you should everybody should be able to see it and And there's all kinds of apps that will be having discounts Some of them are macOS apps. Some of them are, you know, iPhone and iPad apps So there's there's some great stuff on here Matt. Matt's the one who makes signals for home kit And I think that's gonna be 40% off this week So and there's actually an in one of the in-app purchases the automate in-app purchase is gonna be 43% off this week So yeah, good stuff So thank you for thank you for reminding us of that Matt and happy to happy to share. So yeah good stuff We have a couple of PSAs to share with you all that that I will I swear I will find here The first one comes from in our discord from someone affectionately called old guy another geezer just like me Someone who is actively aging Just like the rest of us We currently run our T-Mobile monthly payments through a credit card that offers phone loss damage insurance T-Mobile announced this week last week that in order to maintain our automatic payment discount We'll need to move our payment to a debit card. Thus losing insurance coverage any suggestions for plans that are reasonable And I don't know that there is an insurance plan that's reasonable for a phone I suppose that depends on you and your Pension for losing or destroying phones but Pogo Kelly Suggested it might actually be cheaper for you to forego the credit card Or the debit card discount continue paying with your credit card that gives you that That loss and damage insurance and and pay the Delta that that might be Some of the platinum cards and such often offer that yeah And that's what he's been doing and of course T-Mobile doesn't want to pay those fees anymore Cuz that's how credit cards work whenever you know your rewards card the merchant pays for your rewards Not like your credit card company. That's not the goodness of their heart. It's Literally literally the merchants who pay those fees and and T-Mobile clearly doesn't want to pay those anymore Well, my guess is enough people are using rewards card. So that's why they made this decision the debit card You pay for the fees. Yeah Well, yeah, well You pay the merchant the merchant pays, you know, yeah, but there's there's no rewards debit cards There's no rewards fees on debit cards. That's that's the difference here. They don't have to pay those. Yeah, so but I Was just gonna say I and I don't use debit cards for the security reason that if Someone compromises your card. It's out of your checking account until you get it Proven at least it used to be that way It's been many years and I've just always avoided debit cards for no I I got burned by the same thing Over a holiday weekend. It was like a Memorial Day weekend somebody I can't and now I can't remember if it was the checking account I use of the checking account Lisa uses I'm pretty sure it's the one Lisa uses and they you know burned through whatever she had in in that account And she was like, why am I getting like bounce check? What's going on here? And it did it probably took 60 days for the bank to finally return all of the money that was spent out of that account I think it depends on your bank and it's worth checking with your bank. Certainly back then. This was, you know, 10 years ago Yeah, exactly what you said was correct. It is, you know, you pay for it until the Case until proven innocent. Yeah, it's guilty until proven innocent or at least charged until proven otherwise Whereas with credit cards, it's the other way around And I've I've heard that debit cards some of them have gotten better But like like you Pete, I just use a credit card for everything. So yeah So that's one option. The other option is to move it to your debit card if you if you so choose but Forgo paying someone else for phone insurance and just self-insure That's the path I chose years ago because managing, you know phones for the four of us while the kids were growing up on all that stuff You know paying whatever it was 15 bucks a month times four Very quickly adds up to the price of a new phone and and keeps adding, right? And I figured, you know that we are pretty good with our phones We all keep our phones in cases were we we it's been a long time since we've destroyed or lost a phone I had to knock on some wood But but I know it will happen and and and we've saved more than enough and are In a position where if if and when you know, one of us loses a phone or breaks our phone side what works for you, obviously Yeah, and Brian in Arizona in the discord chat mentions that it's kind of a workaround Get a small checking account put a small amount in there get a debit card and you use your benefit that way It's a workaround yeah a second checking account I like there's no fees on it and all that right? Yeah, yeah to find a bank that doesn't yes like crazy Yes, so and one other thing about a debit card that I found out just briefly a zeal is kind of like Venmo and all those others I Have sent money with the zeal before someone tried to send me money with zeal. Guess what you can't do without a debit card Take money for zeal Interesting so yeah, I had to send it Venmo. I mean because I'm not Yeah, I had to convert my my ATM card into a debit card Sometime in the last five years for something and it was it was I don't think it was zeal But it was something where it was like, okay, it's fine fine But the bank I'm with city banks still I still because I was an employee there a lifetime ago I still get some free checking benefits. So I Yeah, I Don't know when that's gonna end. Really. I should get a bank that's closer to me This might probably the same time your direct TV is gonna end. I don't have direct TV I'll tell you did no. No was it. Oh, oh the direct TV stream. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes That's right. Yeah, we don't want that to end either. That's that's been a nice thing Yeah, it was it was good for three months two years ago three years ago Alison over at no silicast shares a an important thing PSA here For tail scale users who like living on the edge She says I got a call today for help from mr. Ed in our discord Who is a listener to both of our shows? Because he was running the Sonoma developer beta and his keyboard stopped working even an external keyboard wouldn't work And the problem survived a reboot Alison says I found a reddit thread where people were having the same issue And two people said that quitting tail scale fixed it Ed used his mouse like an animal to open activity monitor and force tail scale to quit Since it wouldn't quit from the menu bar and keyboard was restored. So if you are using tail scale Maybe don't use that with the Sonoma developer beta or at the very least just or either beta because the Public beta and the developer beta are close enough that my guess is the problem would would persist in both But be aware of that potentially being a problem for you All right. Hey, look, you know that feeling you get when you finally find the thing You've been searching for on the internet after spending hours Researching and reading thousands of reviews you find it this thing whatever it is Maybe you want some sparkly disco pants or maybe you want a new hard drive for your disk station or whatever it is It literally checks all of your boxes and it has five stars. Oh, and it arrives in just 48 hours So why is it that you can get the most random? wonderfully reviewed thing from around the world in just two days But if you want to see a good doctor it can take forever to get an appointment not to mention How do you know if they're even good? 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That's Zoc doc.com Mgg Zock doc com slash Mgg and our thanks to Zock doc for sponsoring this episode I think we all know that these days every new potential hire can feel like a high-stakes wager for your small business, right? You want to be a hundred percent certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available? And that's why you have to check out our sponsor LinkedIn jobs LinkedIn jobs helps find the right people for your team faster and For free we run small businesses here and very small and we need to make sure we have exactly the right people and Definitely not have the wrong people. We've used LinkedIn jobs many times Most recently we talked about using it to hire Sadie. She has been a fantastic addition to this team and LinkedIn makes it so Easy you just go you create a free job post on LinkedIn jobs Then you add your job in the purple hashtag hiring frames your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring And then you use their simple tools like these screening questions Which make it so easy to focus on the candidates with just the right skills and experience and you know that Je ne sais quoi, right that so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire You've really got to check this out and finding the right team member is key for your business Just like it is for mine LinkedIn jobs helps you find the qualified candidates You want to talk with faster post your job for free at LinkedIn comm slash m g g That's LinkedIn comm slash m g g to post your job for free terms and conditions Apply and our thanks to LinkedIn jobs for sponsoring this episode I think many of you are like me and getting work done can feel Impossible some days right especially if you're tracking tasks Writing docs and setting goals in three different places or more than three different places if this sounds like you then listen up Right notion our sponsor is an incredible tool that makes it so much easier to make progress on your projects And this is why I love notion and today I'm excited to share that they've just launched notion projects which includes new Powerful ways to manage projects and leverage the power of their built-in AI features to Notion projects combines project management with your docs your knowledge base and AI so you can stop jumping between Different tools and stop paying too much for them too with notion You get to do it all in just one workspace and you can do everything you need to get your projects over the finish line from the Brainstorming to the drafting of the plans to organizing sprints to keeping everybody on track. It's all super customizable There's also powerful filtering and automation features, which we love so you can work on exactly the things you want to work on Exactly the way you want to do your most efficient work with notion projects You can try it for free today at notion.com Slash Mac geek up. That's all lowercase letters Notion.com slash Mac geek up and when you use our link, of course, you're supporting the show, which is great Go right now notion.com slash Mac geek up and our thanks to notion for sponsoring this episode All right, Dave, what do you say we answer a question or two? I think we should answer maybe five Okay, five it is. All right, and maybe we'll learn five new things. Who knows so listener Gary writes in Yeah, I was watching something on prime video on my iPad air I tried to take a screenshot, but it came out blank any idea why it was the Avengers from the early 60s And I wanted an image of Patrick McNeigh and Diana Rigg just a still image not video Guess what? Amazon Prime and I think Netflix does this too and probably a whole bunch of other streaming services. No screenshot for you All right, no, so you're not getting it. Yeah, I think it's DRM blocking it. I've experienced the same issue I'm certain with other streaming services No, it makes sense. I mean they certainly have the control of of doing that It when it's happening inside the app. So yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah, right So I believe the only work around to that is to take your trusty iPhone out and take a picture, you know Pause it and take a picture of this Yeah Okay, that yeah, that would work If you watch it on your Mac in a web browser You could take a screenshot of the web browser like that's that's gonna work. Yeah, maybe I Seem to recall and I could be wrong I seem to recall trying to use cap toe to record my screen At one point and it would not let me do a stream say, huh? Okay, yeah, they're pretty clever over there not letting that DRM go down range I I thought I thought I was able to take screenshots of those things on my Mac and to that end Another thing to try would be launch Amazon Prime in a web browser on your iPad and Try to take a screenshot of that. Oh Yeah, as opposed to the as opposed to the client app exactly. Yeah I didn't think of that as being a worker, right? I mean it theoretically it should work. Yeah Yeah, oh Yeah, yeah, there's always like it's and I'd be curious I'm sure it doesn't work But just because this is how my brain works and I want to know I don't like to assume these things I would be curious what happens if you turn on screen recording on your iPad and And and then go into the Amazon app and start playing or Netflix and start playing like it My guess is you're not gonna get anything, but it's sure interesting to know That's what my guess too. Although if you do it first, maybe it matters the order, right? Right? Yeah Yeah Good stuff. If you know, let us know feed back at Mackie cub comm or if you have a question Or a quick tip or you know, whatever. That's also a good place to send it. Whoa. Whoa. Wait a minute. Where? Feedback at Mackie cub comm. Yeah feedback at Mackie cub comm or You could do what JT Ray did with his next question and post it in our MGG help desk over on discord at Mackie cub comm slash discord and then not only do you get The the any knowledge that Pete and or I might be able to bring to things you get the hive mind knowledge of Everybody in the Mackie cub family and that's awesome JT asks as we all know the maximum iCloud storage Apple offers is two terabytes in an attempt to add more I thought about family share I'm wondering if I could create more and more iCloud accounts sharing the data from those to a primary ID So and Brian Monroe pointed this out because again the hive mind on discord that the family share Pools the data the storage You know together so adding more accounts doesn't add to the storage pool in a meaningful way You're just paying for one pool and getting it across multiple accounts However When you have an Apple one plan you can get up to four terabytes of storage on your On your Apple account, so that might be really the way to do it. I but I It is one way to do it I'm curious though has anybody out there Actually hit this limit of two terabytes and if so what happens like is there some you know Unpublished thing that Apple has where it's like, oh, yeah, if you need more just just tell us and we'll you know We'll charge you this this like hidden thing and and and then you'll have more like Is it is it really a hard and fast limit that there's no way around or is there actually a way around it that? I would love to know that's the million dollar question Yeah, and I feel like I've just never hit that limit and I'm not close enough that it's like oh someday soon I'll get to you know So I like but I want to know like so if you know yeah If you don't have the tube chair, but if you've got the smaller plan that when you for instance switch over your iPhone Yeah, it lets you use more storage and then it takes it all away Which shows that Apple knows that what they offer at the bottom tier is no way Right, right, right? So that's a little frustrating but Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah for sure. I like I've seen that happen But what happens if you're at the top like that? Yeah, that's what I want to know No, I bet I don't know. I bet you start getting the warnings like Google I'd I'd be surprised if they offer more I could be wrong Why wouldn't they right? I mean clearly they have enough storage to give you more and charge you for it like You know, this is just simple business to me. So yeah, I don't know There are things I don't understand. I do have a fairly good working knowledge of Wi-Fi though Yes, and the Mac mommy Melissa over there in our discord asks How often do you replace your router or mesh setup? My current mesh is a TP link that is Wi-Fi 5 Her cable company Cox recently upgraded the network and now my speeds have been doubled Yay, and she has a dox is 3-1 modem. So all good there But must I also now upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 the reason I ask is because I suspect my router May be causing a bottleneck in the speed or it could be all the wireless devices that we have connected Simultaneously, I also wonder if my network ethernet switch could be causing a slowdown I'll retest everything now that the Cox upgrade seems to be complete But it was looking like I only get the full speed when connected directly to the modem With ethernet and then I get less than half once I connect the rest of our devices via Wi-Fi Or maybe that's normal how much should one expect the speed to be reduced when the whole household is connected via mesh Wi-Fi So my general advice and we'll go into details here My general advice is don't just replace your router for the heck of it Even if you can prove that your Wi-Fi is a bottleneck That's still not necessarily a good reason in my mind to replace it because your Wi-Fi with today's You know ISP speeds that we get I mean you can like many areas of the country in the world can get gigabit speeds to your house very few People are ever going to it with today's technology see gigabit speeds over Wi-Fi. So your Wi-Fi is always going to be a bottleneck at least in a theoretical or a Test case sense like you'll be able to prove that it's a bottleneck But you know like for me in it in in my office. I have Wi-Fi 6e devices right like that, you know I have I have the Eero 6e and and I get the same when I test other things in my office is Fairly, it's isolated from the house. There's not a ton of Wi-Fi devices It's not right next to the neighbors and I get six to seven hundred megabits per second in both directions up and down When I test on Wi-Fi That's those are great speeds But it's it's not gigabit like my network is capable of gigabit my internet connection because it's fiber is capable of giga Gigabit, but I only see that when I'm connected on ethernet the question to ask I think is When do I need that kind of speed on my phone or on my Mac that's connected via Wi-Fi? Like what is what am I trying to do that is being hampered by or what do I want to do that? I can't do because my speeds are hampering me from doing that And you know your Macs might be those things, right? Especially if you're doing some a lot of online backups or if you're transferring large files around in an office setting And of course lots of us have home offices these days But but that's really the question is you know, what are you doing that's being slowed down and what can't you do because of this? technical bottleneck You know is Like that would that would be the question to answer if you're getting my general feeling is For most of us is that if you test your speeds and you're getting on your Wi-Fi devices If you're getting but you know above 200 megabits per second, you're probably gonna be fine If you wind up if you're getting less than that then it's time to look at why are you getting less than that? Is it that you have the wrong mesh technology or older mesh technology in fat and newer mesh technology would be faster for you? If the answer to that is yes, then then maybe that's the right thing Or is it that you have way more client devices now than you used to and somehow that's slowing down your mesh The number of devices doesn't necessarily Slow you down, but it can And and certainly as Brian and Rowan our chat points out, you know newer Wi-Fi standards support more Wi-Fi devices at sort of Native speeds so that can be a reason. Yes, if you've got lots of devices for sure But but ask the question first don't just Presume you need to upgrade by default like find find where your problem is One of the there was some discussion in in discord about you know Well, I don't have any Wi-Fi said one person said I don't have any Wi-Fi 6e devices So there's no reason to upgrade my wet my mesh to Wi-Fi 6e and I think that While that is all those things could be true I think one way to another way to interpret it is that's a great reason to upgrade your mesh to Wi-Fi 6e If you need more speed between your mesh points because if your mesh is speaking at Wi-Fi 6e Which operates on a different band than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5 Then you have less interference in that band because you don't have any client devices, right? And so now your your wireless backhaul, which is the the connection between your mesh points is Free or and clear I don't want to say free and clear but it's less congested and That can work out really well. Remember, you know, like the idea of a Mesh network with multiple access points has been around for a very long time It was mostly only implementable via a wired backhaul like ethernet connecting all of our mesh points up until 802.11 AC hit right Wi-Fi 5 when that hit that meant that we could have faster speeds for our backhaul and You know, even though Wi-Fi 5 is operating at 5 gigahertz and it's not as good It's going through walls is 2.4 the signaling protocols they used for that Made it so that you got faster speeds And that's what opened the door for companies like Eero and all the others to start making wireless mesh products for us consumers And and so they did and obviously it's worked out really well But but yeah having greater capabilities for your mesh to talk isn't necessarily a bad thing and can be a really good thing so But more and more devices are are you know doing six and six e Yeah, so I don't know those are those are my thoughts. Yeah, no, that's a great point. Yep. Yeah, so So I was actually gonna say, you know when you started talking about they're communicating the Twix themselves At 6e when I was just sitting there thinking well, that's that's kind of like they're wired together So and like you said the original mesh was it was wired That's how they talked to each other and then sent out the signal. So yes. Yeah, perfect sense Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's it and a wired mesh is still going to be if you can wire your mesh points together It's reliable more way more reliable and it might even be faster probably is faster Yeah, but whether you'll actually notice those speeds. I don't know if it matters. It's really the kind of the thing So yeah, if it ain't broke don't fix it or do what I do and if it ain't broke fix it till it is fix it till it is Have we ever named an episode if it ain't broke fix it till it is I think would you still? Well, if we haven't yeah, I don't know I don't know While we're on the Wi-Fi subject and hopefully someone searches our site to find out if we've ever named an episode that Jamie asks on the on the Wi-Fi thing I am adding an access point to my existing Unify network which runs on the Synology RT-6600 AX so the Synology I'm presuming here is doing the Sort of gateway and routing and all of that of the network and then the Unify access points are the Wi-Fi Points so great prior to adding the new access point The RT-6600 AX is the only Wi-Fi router or access point these two devices Unify and Synology are obviously not the same brand And they won't form a mesh. That's mostly true By the strict definition, I think that is true He says a Unify access point will be connected by wired Ethernet to the Synology, right? Okay, good I want both devices to carry the same three SSIDs my main network my guest network and my IOT network And I know how to configure all of that as far as the devices and VLANs go But should I do anything special to help the devices cooperate and not conflict on the Wi-Fi bands The new unit will be in the garage, but the devices will definitely have overlapping coverage I'm expecting my client devices to more or less automatically choose the stronger signal any gotchas here so I you know before Eero existed we talked a lot on this show about You know what what we now retroactively call the quasi mesh or you know the poor man's mesh Although I'm not I'm not sure that we saved money doing this So I think that might Quasi mesh might be better. That's what makes you a poor man. Yeah, exactly But you know, I would run, you know, two or three different routers I would put one in router mode and I would put the others in bridge mode And I would and I was even doing this with Apple Airport devices at times like it didn't matter I would mix and match things and I would set the SSIDs to be the same and the passwords to be the same So that was devices jumped from one to the other It would be relatively seamless, you know You as the user wouldn't have to do anything and what I did then was Manually made sure as best I could that I was not having the channels overlap with each other So I would manually set the channel on you know one device if you know if we're talking 2.4 gigahertz I would try and have them, you know 1 6 and 11 and you know If the devices that were overlapping with each other I would have one on one and one on six if I could or you know, whatever and then the same with 5 gigahertz You're just finding different channels that that are not in use and Wi-Fi Explorer is a great app for that. It is part of set app So I'll put a link to Wi-Fi Explorer in the show notes But it's a it's a good app to to be able to see Where it literally will show you you run it on your Mac and it shows you and by the way Move your Mac around the house so that you see what's You know congested in each spot Don't just presume one spot is gonna be the same as the other because it it's not that's not how worse But but that's how I did it now I will point out that most of the mesh systems including the ones we recommend here on the show today Do not use different channels. They use the same channels, but they are aware of each other They can theoretically adjust the power levels of those radios to get the right amount of overlap without too much because that's really important if you Having a signal blasting at a hundred percent is Part of the problem of Wi-Fi congestion in like apartment buildings I remember years ago when we had Alph Watt on the show He was in charge at Apple of writing a bunch of the original airport code and all of that and then he after he left Apple he was the one who made I Stumbler for a long time Which I think the development has stopped on that which is why we recommend Wi-Fi Explorer now But Alph was saying oh, yeah, you know You could you could fit way more Wi-Fi signals into an apartment without congestion if everybody would just talk to each other and Set their power levels to what they needed for their own device for their own You know spaces and not just blasting at full, you know full power, but anyway Most people don't do that. So that is some of the stuff you can do. I can't I know the unified Devices will let you adjust power levels. I don't know if Synology has something in the user interface for that, but you know, I would still if I were doing what what Listener Jamie is asking about I would absolutely use different channels today Because it just makes life easier and you know, you're not gonna be interfering so but but yeah Those quasi meshes work great in the end whether you have a mesh that's controlled by you know All one vendor or one like a quasi mesh like this The final decision as to which access point a client device Associates with is up to the client device now It is there are protocols for the mesh to communicate down to the clients and say please join that one not this one And then they can even block a client by you know It's MAC address from associating and that will sometimes nudge a client to go somewhere else But it really is all about convincing the client to go So, I don't know Yeah That makes sense. Yeah, I Did I miss something anything on that Pete questions? No, I think That covers it perfectly. Okay. Yeah, no and with with ice tumbler out I will say that I think it was worth those John pointed out that yes If if you option click your Wi-Fi signal in your in your bar And in the toolbar at the top you can get Information about your signal strength and and that sort of thing and I know I shared This is a quick tip way way way a long time ago if you go to the bottom of that winter that pops up and click on Wi-Fi settings I'm sorry. That isn't the right one It was diagnostics Yes, click on that open wireless diagnostics But then ignore that and go to the window menu then you can get all kinds of scan information and that sort of thing We shared that a long time back. So you option click Wi-Fi Click on open wireless diagnostics But rather than clicking continue go up to the menu and click on window and then you can get into assistant logs scan performance sniffer So yep, it's it it's kind of a shortcut into what's available from wire wireless diagnostics Yeah, I like it. I like it. You can you can see some of the signal strength stuff on your iPhone It's it's wonky, but you can do it you you have to have the airport utility app on your phone first and Then make sure you go into settings. I know this is convoluted go into the settings for the airport utility app and At the bottom of those settings turn on the Wi-Fi scanner option Then launch the airport utility and in the upper right will be this little sort of janky Button it's really just a text button like it's it's terrible like the UX of it is terror. It's non-apple, but Tap the Wi-Fi scan button and then when you're there tell it to scan It will take a beat and scan everything and start showing you your all of the access points It sees so if you have a mesh network, you're gonna see, you know your same SSID listed many many many many times and it will show you what channel it's on it will show you the Signal strength the RSS I I think relative signal strength indicators what that stands for and if it doesn't I think maybe it should And you know, these are all Negative numbers zero DBM is you will never see I think that's the theoretical maximum or or it should be but but you know So looking at the numbers the the lower the negative numbers so negative You know 55 is a weaker signal than negative 49 If that okay, it's hard to use the data is just presented in a terrible format there So you're better off if you if you have a Mac use your Mac Yeah, first of all, I'm surprised they even still are developing that airport because you know Apple doesn't even make an airport anymore airport utility, but that's fair, you know And given us some of that functionality in there, but here's a cool thing that Tennessee Papa pointed out in discord. What about your cell phone signal strength? Is this dial three zero zero one? pound one two three four five pound and it will give you your cell phone signal strength Really? Yeah, is that on all carriers? I I do not know. All right I'll put that in the show notes. You don't have to remember it folks. It's already pasted into the show notes Yeah, but yeah, I don't know if it's on mint or not But and I can't try it because I'm using my cell phone as my camera for the show Yeah, I don't want to make you all sick whilst watching the if you happen to be watching the video stream. Yeah, exactly All right, where are we on time? Yeah, okay, we're doing good Listener rich has a question about Sort of related to network stuff. He says I have a sonology 720 plus doesn't really matter that this is a sonology It's more about time machine to a network drive, but he's doing it to a sonology He says and he uses that for many things one of them is to back up his m1 MacBook Pro to a time machine for shared folder on the Distation this had been successful doing a daily backup automatically and occasionally manually started for six months Recently I saw that I hadn't had a time back time machine back up for about five days So I initiated one manually from the time machine menu icon by clicking backup now The process started with connecting to backup disk But never got farther than that and eventually timed out I can connect to the server and the shared time machine folder on the NAS via them finder And networks find the username and password works. I of course did all the usual things. I rebooted the NAS I rebooted my MacBook Pro. I even restored my network. Nothing worked I eventually solved the issue by making a new shared folder on the NAS and starting the process over What would your troubleshooting steps have been to avoid starting over and losing the previous six months of backups Do you think the same old time machine sparse bundle corruption that pops up every now and then was my issue so No, I don't think this was the corruption because the corruption Would you would be able to connect to the backup disk and probably even the backup, you know The sparse bundle it just would have issues and never actually start the backup But you were you were stuck in the connecting process and so it sounds like Your time machine on your Mac. I want to be specific about this I don't want to say your Mac couldn't see the the shared folder But time machine couldn't see the shared folder time machine stores a different keychain entry than say the finder does Time machines keychain entries and and network connection entries are very specific about the name of the share and the protocol Used to connect to the share Time machine used to only support a protocol called AFP Apple file protocol now if and for Several iterations of macOS it has supported SMB server messaging block That is a better protocol to use for a network connection. It's more efficient Apple has moved all of their file sharing to SMB and Your disk station has If you updated your disk station recently and this is where the disk that it being a disk station might be relevant It might have told you hey Apple recommends using SMB you should probably turn off AFP So it's possible that you turned off AFP But time machine was still very much bound to an AFP connection to your disk station and It couldn't find it because it's not advertised via AFP. Yes, it's advertised. You just solved one of my problems I love that so So the the trick here it what you did was you connected to a new shared folder rich and that Made a new connection. It would have seen only the SMB and again I'm making some presumptions here But if that's the issue it would have seen SMB it would have connected that way saved it in the keychain entry and all is good But if you had told your Mac forget this time machine back up leave it out there the old one and then just go Through the steps of reconnecting to it that would have been my first troubleshooting step It's just you know what time machine and it might not even be the AFP versus SMB thing. I've just seen it where time machine Needs to be taught how to reconnect if the name of a device on the network changed or you know Something about your network changed time machine like I said It's very specific about the volume to which it's gonna back your stuff up and sometimes I just need to tell it It there it is. It's I know it's the same thing. I didn't change anything Yes, something about my network probably did change. So I probably did change something But let me just reconnect this and it's all good. So that would have been to answer your question That would have been my troubleshooting. That would have been the first thing I would do the in the if I were there What would I do first or next? That's what I would do is just manually reconnect it to the existing share That probably would have solved it for you unless you had the corruption issue Then you would have gotten connected and I wouldn't work, but yeah Yeah, still yeah, I just know I have that time machine issue where I know the disc is there and it's not seeing it So I need to go in and Yeah, I don't know how I'm gonna do that fact. She don't know how I'm gonna do that though Wait, what doesn't see the disc does your finder see the disc? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, oh then then what okay? Then again in the if I were there, here's what I would do I would Go into time machine and remove that Disc from time machine just so that you're you know giving it a clean slate essentially and Then I would go into the finder and connect to that volume Get it up and happy. I know time machine is gonna make its own connection to it But having your Mac and confirming that you already talking to it right. It's actually on my Synology So great. Yep. So you get that thing make sure you can see the time machine volume Okay, great, then I would just go in and add it again and and hopefully it shows up there But that that would that would be the first thing to try. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so Hopefully oh catch it Hate to go back in time, but since time is non-liter we need to do that. I changed it in the show notes But it's asterisk 3001 pound sign 1 2 3 4 5 pound sign and I think an asterisk at the end too, but I also put a Link to cool cell phone codes that Tennessee pop I think from great put up in there awesome Okay, cool. Thank you. No, that's good to have that correction. That's that's good stuff. Yeah Let's jump forward and shall we shall we jump forward in time? You want to take us to Steve's question Steve Steve wrote in Hey guys a question regarding how you handle your photo library Do you import all of your non iPhone photos into your iCloud library? Meaning if you have a hundred photos you've taken with a DSLR from a family vacation Do you drag those into Apple photos library on your Mac so that you have all your photos in one spot? Or is that just a waste of storage space since you're now essentially dupe cleaning all of your photos the originals and the imports? Thanks for your thoughts and happy fourth my fourth was good. Hope yours was too Dave. Yeah, it's super laid-back. It was great Yeah, yeah, so this is this is kind of more of a philosophical question than a tech question But I told him, you know years ago. I started putting all my shots in in photos once First of all, you know iPhoto Yes simplicity sake And I somewhere along the line adopted the phrase let go and let let go and let Apple Obviously there are cases where it doesn't work for everyone But with iCloud backing up photos library, then you're less likely to have a disaster And I was telling him my you know, I had neighbors years ago Who lost a hard drive and I mean they sent it to the guys who charge hundreds of dollars to recover data And it was trashed and gone the only photos they had of their children before age He was from family and friends. They lost them. They had it all on hard drive and no backup Soul crushing to hear a story like that. So That's just my opinion get everything you can into photos and then I think you're okay to delete From a separate folder or file on your hard drive. Let photos do it. Let it take care of it All your photos are going to go to iCloud assuming you don't now would I make that my only backup? Oh goodness, no because assuming your your iCloud account gets hacked or anything weird like that, right? multiple layers Of backup is the only safe way to ensure you don't lose all this stuff Period. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I haven't heard about apple losing any photos from anyone like like like there's there have been zero reports of people saying I did nothing apple lost all my photos like that has not happened If it had we would be like in a terrible like like that would change everything and apple knows it by the way Like they know that they have to protect that data Like their company depends on it because in a sense it does Yeah, it does absolutely. Yeah, there's no doubt that but it could happen And we need to act like it can if we value that data. So I I do back up my photos Yeah Yeah, my point was what you know, what if someone hacks your account and manages to lock you out? If if you're someone who doesn't have two factor authenticate I don't know if you can even have an iCloud account that isn't two factor authenticated Not with not with all the services you'd want to use no Yeah, so but but the fact remains there they're in theory could be a way someone with access to your machine Could change your stuff and lock you out of your account and erase it all or you know something nefarious like that Highly unlikely but entirely possible. Yep so Yep So like I say that was more of a philosophical question than a technical question But I I think you're better off just letting photos handle it all it's all in one database And apples get your back I I agree. I do the same thing. I you know I I do have a copy of my a local copy of my photos library I do push that to my Synology so that I can have Synology photos see that same library But it like it is it is truly just a copy of my apple photos library. Everything lives in apple photos for me I suppose Yeah, relating it to J.T. Ray's question earlier in this episode like if you hit your two or four terabyte maximum because of your photos Then you've got to think about different things, but Even then I don't know. I actually be curious like for those of you with massive photos libraries What do you do? Do you archive some stuff off and and if so? To what do you archive it like what what apps are you using? What storage? Paradigms are you using to keep all those things out? That would be interesting to know about You know whether or not you're hitting your two or four terabyte limit like You know if you're not storing all your photos on iCloud and you're intentional about that. Where are you storing it? Ah Where are we here? I don't even know. What's my name here? Yeah, right now. We so uh, uh rich was uh No, we I'm sorry. We're doing rich. We did rich. Yeah, we did steve It's time was asking about travel when dropping from one of the big mobile carriers. Yeah, um, so mark Had and I will pull up mark mark's question because I want to make sure I ask it the right way he uh He says my dilemma. I've been on t-mobile with a simple four line Simple choice family plan for eight years now and it includes my state employee discount for an all-in price of 120 dollars a month I realize I could get the same plan for 80 dollars a month on mint mobile Uh, he's and use t-mobile's network He says there are some t-mobile perks that I use that makes the 40 dollars in potential savings a bit less like the mlb package That runs 120 a year and paramount plus for six bucks a month He says so that makes the difference 24 a month instead of 40, but still meaningful Now the real issue he says i'm going to Alaska next year for a few weeks So I checked the mint mobile website and they show no service in alaska and their site says coast to coast coverage Hmm, I can assure you there is no mint mobile service in alaska brilliant Okay, so that that pete talked to mint and they were sort of they said you might have service near one of the airports or something So that was you know and pete you might even tell us that that's not the case Yeah, no, it's not there is no mint service in alaska. They also claim there's no mint service in hawaii yet. There is Okay, so that was my question. How long ago was it that you how recently have you tested the Two weeks ago. Okay. Never mind. So there's no mint service in alaska. Thank you pete Uh, no, I'm glad like to know this is good. So, you know, his thought was um, I know t-mobile will be fine in alaska But if I switch to mint, uh, what do you think will be the best way to have service in alaska? He says my wife and I have iphone's 13 and 12s right now and by next year it'll be a 13 and a 15 Yep, I understand. I know how this works Uh My advice would be make the you you get 24 dollars a month in savings, right? And so you're going next year So let's say over the course of a year. You're going to save 288 dollars, right? Uh on on all of this Oh public math you're doing it Well, I'm I'm letting I'm letting siri help me by the way another quick tip and I do this without thinking about it So I'm glad you highlighted this pete command spacebar bring up the spotlight search. I typed in 24 asterisk 12 And it comes up with 288. That's how I knew it was 288 dollars Uh, you've always got a calculator at your fingertips if you're max right there Uh, so you got 288 dollars Uh A limit of 288 to spend On whatever your solution is now if you had to spend all 288 of it to implement some secondary solution That wouldn't be worth it because you would have the inconvenience of having to figure out and implement the secondary solution But i'm pretty sure that if you're going to alaska for a few weeks Let's say a month you can get 30 days of you know data for us data is expensive So it's not going to be like europe data, but still let's say you pay 30 dollars for you know the data that you would need it's probably not going to be that much It's probably going to be half that right so times two you've got e sims You just go to e sim db Find and and do this a week or two before you travel like you don't have you can look now Just to get a feel for what it would be like if you were going now, but certainly don't buy anything now Um and and use an e sim. They're really simple an e sim db is going to be your answer assuming the site doesn't go down another That's the twice. Yeah, we got to knock on one again. I don't know what I would do if that site went down Uh, and I would probably start a replacement for it because it's super valuable but uh But you know just get an e sim for your alaska data and you're you're good to go. It's going to be fine Uh, I really that's okay. Okay. I was gonna ask like you actually do this more frequently feet So what do you what would you do? I do and I haven't used an e sim up there yet But I that's absolutely what I would do because I just bought a worldwide data Last month and uh and used it for the first time maybe two months ago now and and that worked out great The other option is uh, there's a little Piece of gear and I know I've talked about this before it comes out of hong kong. It's called a poke fi Uh p-o-k-e-f-i and I think it's about 160 bucks and then it's 15 dollars for five gigs And I use and and essentially you're on wi-fi You know that thing connects cellular and use its wi-fi for all your access The hiccup I found on that is often is not my phone But sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't says oh you need to disable airplane mode because you know, you don't you don't have cell service And you can't make a phone call even though I have wi-fi calling enabled. Yeah, I know it comes up and says no No, no phone calls for you. So but what's happens guy you've been all that still sure my eyes. So yeah, that's my work around with it, but Huh And I've also found interesting. This is the weird part. That's interesting So you have to have airplane mode off even if you don't have signal In order for your phone to make a call make a call on wi-fi calling And I found that to be more true since I put the e-sim on the card. Oh, interesting. Yeah, okay I mean my guess is that that is a a function of apple's software, right? Like it disables the phone When the the phone app the phone app. Yeah, exactly when it's in airplane mode. It just doesn't function. So I okay like It doesn't need to be that way as you've proven with like what's happened skype because if they work Yeah, the phone call over wi-fi calling would work fine too. So Yeah, I just told my way, you know, what I was taking to doing is just tell my wife, look I turned what type on when I'm overseas Call me on what's app and the phone rings like normal works great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah But it only uses data And interesting look carefully if you're doing one of those e-sims overseas They I think you discovered this too, Dave. They'll break it down. They'll give you like eight gigs of data Uh, sometimes 15 gigs. I said five, but I think I bought 15 It gives you like eight gigs of regular data and then five gigs or seven gigs of yeah social media data Some one of the companies it was yeah, I forget which one it was. I saw yeah, we talked about that I saw that plan too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, just pay attention. That's all You know when you're buying your e-sim, but you will you know, you're you're read all the fine print read the fine print Yeah, yeah, and look for discounts on e-sim db often has coupon codes For carriers, you know for e-sim providers And like when we went to Montreal recently it was the e-sims that I bought for the three of us each Were I think we got five three gigs or five gigs I mean I needed I was three gigs for five days, which was great and we I think I think I used a gig and a half I think My niece used gig and a half and Lisa used maybe a gig like it We always use way less than you think because you're like out doing stuff. You're not just sitting around You know and back at the Airbnb or your hotel. You're gonna have Wi-Fi, but um But it is good to have obviously data connection when you're out and about doing your thing, but uh, we Uh, the the e-sims were nine euro the company we used was yee yee sim. Why yes, I am and They were nine euro, but I had uh e-sim db Which referred me to them by the way, and you know, that's why I would have gone with it had a uh five euro coupon, so I paid four four euro each so 12 euro total and uh You know it's good to go. It's funny. I bought Emily's I bought my plan one night like the day before we left or something And it was it turned out to be you know $4 and 33 cents or something and then we bought my niece's plan the next morning And it was like four doll I saw the credit card charge notification come through it was like four dollars and 27 cents. I'm like, oh exchange rate helped You're good to go. Yeah. Yeah, save six cents. You save six cents Yeah, the exchange rate between us and canada is well, it's very favorite favorable right now for traveling to canada It's not so favorable for traveling from canada to the u.s. I would suppose but yeah I have a one last thing that i've been playing with for a while and wanted to talk about peat and it is called the mackey dlz creator This looks like and is a mixer It's 800 bucks, but I'll tell you what it is It is a mixer built for people podcasting streaming youtube all of that It it really is built to be sort of your all-in-one solution And it also connects to your computer, but it has an sd card and it has a usb port So you could actually record right from this thing to you know, either an internal card or an external device So you could do it all right here. It's got four xlr and and quarter inch it's got four combo inputs So you can plug in up to four microphones and then it's got two really three other channels that are sort of assignable to various different things you can assign them to The There's inputs like more quarter inch inputs that you can assign them to you can assign them to a bluetooth input You can assign them to usb Outputs from your mac so your mac could use like your mac It's some audio generated from your mac could go out to this And you can mix and match those and then it has a separate an additional channel for Built-in sound effects so you could have like your theme music and your ding sound and all that stuff and there are Six soft pads on that channel that you can just use to trigger and there are four banks that you can have loaded there So up to 24 different sounds as you sort of bounce around this It's almost got a mini stream deck built into it and in that sense. Yes Um, it it auto it has the capability of auto mixing So you tell it okay. I want these four channels or these two channels like if we were just having you and me in there I want these two channels to be The levels to be equal Or I want, you know, these three channels to be equal but with one to take priority So if the host starts talking it ducks the other two, but otherwise auto mix them so that everybody's equal You can turn that on or off And it has four Headphone outputs and there are four headphone jacks. You can have four separate headphone mixes Where you know, you you have you know, you could like whatever you want in your ears Is different from what I have in my ears or if there's something you want muted from your ears You can do that too now where this starts to get really interesting Is I started thinking about this. I'm like, okay. Well, so everything I've just described so far is great for the person podcasting with people In the same room like like it would be fantastic for that But of course, I don't generally podcast with people in the same room I podcast with people who sometimes are literally on the other side of the world And so there are more features It connects to your mac as I said via usb And there is sound that can go from your mac out to it So I could grab the sound from your Uh, you know from our void connection. We use stream yard, but it could be skype or discord or whatever It doesn't matter and I could route that out to one of the channels here because there are there are actually Uh two stereo Sends from the mac to this mixer that are assignable Great. Okay. So now I've got you know a fader for dave's local mic a fader for pete's remote mic Great. I have my sound effects fader. Great. I have another fader From the second stream coming from my mac that might be say, you know listener questions that i'm playing from the mac Okay, so now I can mix that so far. We're checking all the boxes, right? This is this is good My mac can capture the sound coming back from this Uh Either the full mix So if I want to use the mixer to actually mix things and send it back I can do that or it's a multi-channel Capable device so I could grab the audio from every channel and record it in say logic And that includes the channel that's coming from you Out from stream yard to this mixer back into the mac into logic But processed by the mixer and yes, my head hurts. I'm sorry that it's like all the things But it's like they have covered every base. Oh, yeah, and there's processing. There's there's there's uh Effects like like reverb and delay. There's compression on this Every chance right like so it's got all the things it sounds good Here's the part as I'm going through this. I'm like, okay, so the one thing I'm missing though is I need that headphone output To be able to go back to you because I need to send you a signal that doesn't have your Voice in it because it would be on a slight delay and that would drive you baddie. You don't want to hear that Well, they have a little Dave. Oh contrary. I love hearing my own voice. Can't you tell? So they have a little feature on the headphone outputs You can pick any one of them to be sent back to the mac via usb So now I could create a headphone mix, right? Like they've thought of all the things I I can't like I I need to I need to rip apart my studio and uh record an episode with this Or at least a dummy episode with it, which I've actually sort of done already and I I really haven't found the That you know, there's like they it seems like they've caught everything It's it's like it's almost like they listened to what I needed and built it And maybe they did awesome. Yeah. Well somebody who clearly understands. Yes sound engineering Put the thought into this and podcast needs like because I've used like the roadcaster and things like that And there's always like a well, you know, there's the asterisk of I can't really get the mix I want back in so I've got to do that in a different way and it's fine But you know, but like this Yeah, okay now So they're not giving this away But what you've got up on the screen in your screen share shows a couple other risks. This is at 799 Yes, and it looks like there's something up there for 599 and 399. Are those the same companies? No, not the same company. One of them is the road roadcaster. Yeah, no Like this would be even for me. This would be a little overkill, right? Because I don't need Four mic pre's, you know, I could do two. So there's a maybe this is their first foray into this at Mackie Maybe there's a world where there's the Mackie dlz creator mini or something, you know, two years down the road I don't know where it was four. I mean that could be, you know, it could be a mixture for a band or You wouldn't yes it technically could it's not built for that. But but yeah, I mean, it's got all the outputs So yes, I could I could mix a band with four signals I mean as long as you were doing like just vocals, which sometimes happens. So yeah, I mean in a pinch. Absolutely. Yeah Yeah, yeah, wow. Yeah, it's a pretty cool I'm really impressed by this device. So that's why I wanted to take a few minutes and just talk about it here But um, but my few minutes are now up. So I will I will keep us all posted as we as we go forward as we go It's a pretty cool little device. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've been messing with it for a couple of weeks I I've been eager to talk about it, but I really wanted to like get into it and make sure that I I understood it. Yeah before I before I started talking about it. But yeah, no, it's I'm I'm impressed with this thing So yeah, thanks for hanging out with us folks. Thank you indeed great as always Feedback at Mackie cub.com. I know we said it many times in the show, but You sending in your stuff is really the fuel that keeps us going here um, so Please keep sending in Thank you to all of you who do and have Thank you to all of our premium subscribers at Mackie cub.com slash premium That's where you can go to learn more about that. It's not mandatory. It is very much appreciated Thank you to cash fly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you Thank you to meta for putting out yet another social media platform that is actually worth checking out It's worth checking out threads if you haven't yet Uh, yeah, it it it's worth checking out. I'm curious to see how how this whole landscape evolves. Yeah, it's uh, it's good And of course, I'm out there at Dave Hamilton On threads because it's it takes whatever your instagram username Is or was and I mean it it remains and it just sort of clones it over there. So yeah, yeah, yeah So your name is already reserved. I think is how that kind of works Well, the problem is I don't have my username on instagram is Not pilot Pete. So I'll have to go figure out. I have to go figure that out. Oh, there you go Yeah, right. Yeah, go go now. Right. Yeah. Yeah Why uh speaking of pilot Pete he uh, go listen to his other podcast. So there I was It's a great one for aviation enthusiasts And I've got two other shows that I do business brain for Entrepreneurs and gig gap for working musicians come check those out Mackie cab merch is available get your merch now and you can have it If you're coming to max stock, so that'd be fun And we will see you at max stock. We've got some fun things planned We'll probably talk more in depth about that in the next episode Um, yeah, that's what we got. Thanks for hanging out check out our sponsors Of course, Mackie cab.com slash sponsors will tell you all about the things that are current And uh, and of course the links we mentioned in today's show notion.com slash Mackie cab Zock doc.com slash mg g and linkedin.com slash mg g Pete For the people who aren't on video. What's your shirt say upside down? It's hard to read. Oh, I'll just look in the camera Don't get caught