 The Mac Observers, Mac Geekab, episode 733, for Monday, October 29th, 2018. These folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers, Mac Geekab. You know what we do here? We like car talk for Apple users. Kids, you can ask your parents what that means. I'll tell you, it means we take your questions. We take your tips. We take your cool stuff found. We mix them all together so that we can answer your questions and share that all the cool stuff found and tips that you send in and that we find so that we can all learn at least five new things every single time we get together, which is like clockwork basically once a week. That's how it works. Sponsors for this episode include Other World Computing at macsales.com. We'll talk more about some of the cool things they have to offer you later here for now. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here, yet again, in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Braun. John F. Braun, as far as you know, how are you doing today, Mr. John F. Braun? Yeah, I was telling you in pre-show, you know, they're just some days you wake up and you're just kind of, even with coffee. Yeah, yeah, I don't drink coffee. But you made a suggestion and I'm going to take this seriously. I'm going to, before once, listen to your advice. And but you said that your morning regime includes down in a couple of couple of glasses or more of water. And I wake up and drink two glasses of water right out of the gate. I started doing it less than a month ago. Very difficult thing to convince my body to do. But once I finished drinking the two glasses, then I feel really good. So I just, you know, I just power through it. Now it's actually gotten a lot easier. But the first 10 days or so were kind of a chore. But yeah, it's really good for you. And your body craves water not as much as Brando, right? Do you know what I'm talking about? Very nicely done. Yes, sure. Yes. What is it? Idiocracy? Watch the movie. It's a hilarious people. And it's actually maybe a pre. But no, I won't say anymore. But check it out. It's cool. So anyways, I've had my water. Good. I've had other beverages. I've had snacks and food. So I am on a good, good path right now. Sweet. Well, I am going to share something cool with you. And then it's going to get even cooler. So John Mardallaro posted this as cool stuff found earlier or late love, I don't know, within the last week over here at Mac Observer. And it's a utility called the Time Machine Mechanic or T2M2. And it is written, created by the folks at Eclectic Light Company. And as we know, they are also the ones that make what's it called, the terminal looking thing so that you could see what was there. And why can't I remember the name of it? Consolation. The console log viewer for Sierra and High Sierra once things changed. Yeah. Where are they? Are they on three now? Because I think they had Consolation 1, Consolation 2, and Consolation. No, it's Consolation 2.4. But Time Machine Mechanic will analyze your logs and discover whether Time Machine backups have been running normally or reporting any errors or info or anything. And you don't you don't need to be able to understand logs to be able to check for problems because they parse through it and then sort of translate it for you with Time Machine Mechanic. And the Time Machine Mechanic is free. So I was like, whoa, that's great. Like I only knew about Consolation from Eclectic Light, not anything else. And so I visited the site as we were preparing for the show. They have so many apps that I didn't know about. It's ridiculous. They've got a rich tech editor, text editor called Delighted. They've got a thing that will allow you to check what. What permissions you've given to an app? Like, like specifically, can it see the camera? Can it see the microphone? Can it see your contacts? It's an app called Tassie or Techie, T-A-C-C-Y. Also there at Eclectic Light. They've got some performance analysis apps and things like that. I mean, they're they're developers, but and they mainly write apps for developers, but not only they have Keychain Check, which allows you to check your keychain for problems. We don't have that anymore. It was taken out back in, I think, Sierra. So really, really cool stuff. You got to go check out Eclectic Lights downloads. So this was like a cool stuff found that opened the treasure trove. So very cool stuff, very, very cool stuff, right? Yep. And if you look in the chat room, Dave, so I was surprised and somewhat honored that apparently they did a little post about us mentioning Consolation 3 and our podcast. They did. Yeah, that's right. 2017. Yeah. So so they got the hint that everybody wants to see a new version because who doesn't? Right? Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Love their stuff. Yeah. As Alex Santos in the chat room at mackeycap.com slash stream says, they put the stuff in that Apple takes out. So that which is great. So good stuff. And with Consol, I don't think we're alone, Dave, in that the update to Consol and the new format is the fuddling to many people. Yes. But with these tools, you can unbefuddle the fuddleness. Unbefuddle. I like it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then we heard from Eviany, who is actually the developer of remote control for Mac, an app that lets you use your phone to control your Mac in a very specific way. And it's that's been cool stuff found actually a couple of times on this show. But now they've updated remote control for Mac and added Siri shortcuts for all system actions like restart, sleep, display off and things like that. So if you're like me and you're having a problem with your Mojave Mac not turning off your displays, well, now you could use remote control for Mac and your phone to use a Siri shortcut to tell it to turn off your displays from, you know, even, you know, far away, like from somewhere else in the house. But super handy. So thank you for that, Eviany. That's very, very cool stuff in deed. Right. Good, John. I'm going to burn through some cool stuff found here. Yeah, because it's, you know, it's fun. Light it up. Yeah. So we've talked, we talked about Linux and and boot disks and all that stuff in a couple of a couple of episodes ago. And Joe recommended he said, I know you were using just straight Ubuntu. He said there's a I'm trying to think of it. It's a different twist. It's got Ubuntu at its core, Ubuntu Linux. And I had said that, you know, Ubuntu, especially with the way that GNOME, which is its desktop manager, its its graphical user interface, we call the graphical user interface we use on our Macs Mac OS 10 or Mac OS now, right? The one that that Ubuntu Linux uses by default is called GNOME. GNOME. That felt really comfortable to us as Mac users to my son and I as we were putting this together. Well, there is yet another graphical interface window manager, whatever you want to call it available for Ubuntu Linux that looks even more Mac like. And we messed around with this too. It's called elementary OS and it's at elementary.io. Like when you launch the system, I think it's the settings app or something. It looks just like system preferences. I mean, this this thing feels so at home for a Mac user that it's it's it's pretty cool. So we'll we'll put a link in the show notes, of course. But but if you've got an old Mac that maybe isn't able to run, you know, an an updated, updatable version of Mac OS and you want security updates and things like that. And you still want to keep like breathe some life into that machine. Or if you've got an old Windows laptop and you don't want to run or a new Windows laptop, then you don't want to run Windows on it and you don't want to, you know, hack and toss it. Some flavor of Linux, including this elementary OS is is a good option. So thank you for sending that in, Joe, very, very cool, cool stuff. And then did you have anything to say on that one, John, before I move us along? No, I I went to the web page and I look at it and it looks like it's running on a Mac like computer. And it looks, you know, I'm surprised the lawyers haven't been. Well, yeah, yeah, I don't think I don't think there's enough there to get. They're not ripping off Mac OS. They are paying homage to it. Yeah, yeah. There's not enough money there for Apple's lawyers to to try and go after it. So they need to go after the Chinese knockoff iPhones, I think is more, more important to them. The Eric sends in cool stuff found. He says, I believe that every owner of Apple products should listen to the Mac Observers Daily Observations podcast of October 25th, 2018, starting at the 18 minute mark concerning Apple Repairs, the Genius Bar and the Apple Repair Depot. He says, I can't remember the guy's name, but the info is great. And and Eric's right. Jeff Gamet had me as a guest on on Daily Observations last week, and we talked about a lot of the things that you can and should do when you have Apple Repairs. I encourage you to listen so that we don't have to rehash the same 10 minutes here. But the the TLDR of that is if you have something that can be repaired in house at the Genius Bar, then the Genius Bar can be a good option. If it needs to be sent off, the Genius Bar's continue to prove that they do not manage things well when they are sent out of the shop. And because the Genius Bar controls those repairs, you're actually left with less options as opposed to more. If it needs to be sent off to the Apple's Depot, you're better off setting up the repair yourself either online or in the Apple support app on your, you know, on your iPhone or iPad, and then shipping it to Apple yourself as opposed to bringing it to the Genius Bar and letting them sort of own the process much better off. So we will put a link to all that in the show notes. But but thanks, Eric, for reminding me that we should tell everybody here about that, too, because it is it is important. Things keep changing with the way to deal with support. And that's that's definitely the way to go. So thoughts about that, John. OK. My only reflection is that when I did have and it was I think it was a 12 inch. How long ago was this? Many years ago. OK. So things as you think things have changed dramatically. Yeah, it was I think I had to send the machine between me and Apple like six times. And eventually I got to someone, I guess it was in customer relations. Sure. Not customer support. And I'm like, guys, you're losing everything on this support contract by just the shipping, even if you're paying almost nothing. We've done it six times. It's like, can I get a new machine? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. No. And that's the other piece of it. We talked about that in the in the TDO episode that when when the repair process does not lead to satisfactory results, then there are the customer service ninjas at Apple customer relations that and they're authorize. Yeah, this guy said, you know, we're going to give you a machine of the vintage if you had bought it now right in the product line. And I'm like, cool. Yeah. Everybody was happy. Yeah. No, they they're good. They're good. So cool. And once it gets out of their control, every repair that I've had done at an Apple store and it's almost exclusively been on my phone and on my computer. As long as it was handled in store, results were always beyond my expectations. Yes, in store. Correct. But if they have to ship it out, take it back, send it off yourself. You're better off. So and Alex Santos in the chat room is saying and remember, in some cases, Apple will come pick it up, especially desktops. He says it's called on site service and it's in your Apple care contract. On site repair for desktop computers. Request that a technician come to your work site. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So remember that for sure. Well, that's great. Cool. He says they don't repair it on site. They come pick it up and return it for free. So, hey, that there's another reason to get Apple care right there. Speaking of me speaking, I am speaking now, but also in about a week and a half at Mac tech conference, Thursday, the five, six, seven, eight. I am speaking at Mac tech about Wi-Fi. We'll get into the some of the geekier details of Wi-Fi and mesh and how to do all that stuff. I have never heard of such a show. Mac tech is a conference. Yeah, yeah, no, thank you for prompting me. Yeah. Mac tech is a conference that happens out in LA every year. It's it's it's meant for, you know, the geekier amongst us, the IT pros, some enterprise. There's an enterprise contingent of the audience that shows up. It's usually about 250 or 300 people. It's a really good group of people. A lot of consultants there, which is, frankly, why they're bringing me in, because they know we have a lot of consultants in our audience here. And and they're kind of hoping that that more consultants will show up at at Mac tech. I will say it is a very, very good place for consultants to learn and network, you know, we're and I say we because I certainly I mean, I've done a lot of consulting. It has been my full time gig at times and I still do some of it now. So I say, we, you know, it's very easy to think that you're alone and that you have to do it all yourself and you get used to doing it all yourself. And there are other people doing the same thing as you. And it's good to sort of mind milled with them and have people that you can call and all that stuff. So so, yeah, you know, it come to this show. It's awesome. And we've got some links with some savings and stuff. So I think I put that. I think I put the right thing in the show notes. My I know a speaker link. So go check that out. Come see it. It we're all we all hang out together. They make it like camp and Neil Tickton organizes a great conference. So in addition to all this great content, they feed you pretty much round round the clock. And Neil hate me for saying that, but it's not entirely false. They really do a good job at that. And then they also plan evening activities. So we all just sort of hang out together and there is no class system there. Everybody's equal. And so we all just get to hang and have lunch and dinner together and all of that stuff. So it's it's done the way I think a conference should be done and where everybody's just equal and they don't segregate speakers separate. You know, we're all just humans and we're all interested in the same things. It's like this, you know, let's just talk. It's good. It's great. So come it will be fun. It's out in LA where it's at Redondo Beach, which is part of LA. OK, so I search. So it looks like 2010 is when they started doing their event series, what they call. And I guess this is one of them. So maybe something to compliment or. Well, now replace some of the things that we miss now, Dave, like Macworld and. Yeah, kind of less for the end user and more for the people that help the end user is. So this is this would have been sort of the pro. This this replaces the pro portion of of Macworld expo, but not the bits. It's yeah, it's so or Mac IT, which was there kind of. Yes, it replaces Mac IT in that in that sense. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Neil is screaming, listening to this. Or it's not exactly. It fills the space. It fills the space. Totally does. Yep. Yeah. My another cool stuff for a quick tip, actually. All right. Now that we're migrating into those here, my son was doing something he had to log in on that Windows machine into something, of course, so no iCloud keychain between his phone and the machine. But he knew he had the password for whatever he was logging into on his phone. And so he invoked Siri and said, what's my password for the Mac observer? Right. Or, you know, whatever. And, you know, Siri then uses, you know, Touch ID to authenticate you. And boom, displays your password right there on the on the screen so that you can then type it into wherever you need to be. Much faster than tapping 16 times to get through all the password prompts and searching and typing and all of that stuff. You just ask what's my password for and say the name of the website. And you can say the URL or you can even get, you know, creative and not creative, but you can be more casual about it. And like I tested it with quite a few things and it just works. I was like, yeah, it's like, you know, what's my password for Tevo? And boom, it showed me my password to log into Tevo. It's pretty good. I like it. You think? I think it's great. Yeah, it's way faster than what if what what if like, you know, I broke into your house and like took your your device and you can't unlock my phone. Why not? Oh, Face ID, right? Or my passcode. I mean, you'd need to have my face or my passcode or, you know, if you don't have Face ID, you have Touch ID. So I mean, it's the same. It just happened to carelessly leave your device unlocked. And I ask it for the password, then I'd get it, right? No, it's still going to ask you to authenticate because it's a password. Oh, OK. It's just like if you navigated through settings to to get to the passwords. I mean, it's it's not showing you anything you couldn't already get on your phone if you were able to unlock it, right? You go to settings, passwords and accounts, website and app passwords. Of course, you have to authenticate there and then you can search that list, but that's a list with potentially, you know, hundreds or thousands of things in it. It's way easier to tell it what you want. Yeah, no, no, no, this is great. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I like it. I mean, I like the proximity thing, which not this weekend when I hung up with the family, but I think another weekend. I brought my phone near another one of my devices and it's like, hey, you want to you want to use the password from this device? Oh, gee, that's kind of a smart thing to do. Yeah, sure. Just like, I think this is what you want to do because you're bringing me next to something else that you have. Yeah. No, that actually shocked me the first time it happened. I was like, what? No, they're doing good stuff. And I think this asking Siri for your password is a new thing in iOS 12. So if you can't have iOS 12, never tried it with you. I know I had forgotten about it until I heard my son do it from across the room and it was like, oh, that's right. I'm putting it on the list, man. So very cool. Keith has a quick tip for us. Keith says, when I've got my MacBook connected to the charger, but with the lid closed, so kind of a throwback to what we were talking about last week. He says, sometimes I get the annoying chime sound, which I can only assume is when the battery drops a tiny bit. And so it effectively resumes the charging process again. It's the same notification sound I get when I plug the charger in. He says, but it annoys me when my computer is sleeping. He says, I've been able to turn it off using the following terminal command, which is I'm just going to read it quickly and we'll put it in the show notes. To false write com.apple.power chime chime on no hardware dash fooled true, which essentially says turn on the chime on no hardware thing. So very, very cool. And we will, as promised, put that in the show notes. So it's there. I promise it will be there. So thanks for that, Keith. Thanks for that. That's really cool. Yeah, I haven't seen it for a while. Bull, of course, stands for Boolean, which basically means it's something that can have one of two values, right? Right on or off one yes or no, true or false. Pretty cool, Keith. Thank you for for sharing that. And you know, while we're on the subject, we we over the years, we have really paid attention to how batteries how max deal with their batteries specifically, is it bad to leave your Mac plugged in all the time? And it previously was not not because of the type of battery, but because of the way your Mac managed the type of battery for a long time, even with lithium ion batteries. It just didn't work out well if you left your Mac plugged in all the time. The the battery would essentially lose the ability to charge. And so you'd wind up with this battery that just ran down very, very quickly. And, you know, we always used to say the best thing for your battery. And this is still true is to keep the electrons flowing. So either keep them flowing out of the battery because you're using it on, you know, on battery and not on charge or plugged in charging back up. But once it's at 100 bad, you know, to run it. And that is still true. But what seems to have changed is the way Apple's software and firmware manage this stuff, and they seem to do a much better job of keeping the electrons flowing even when your Mac is plugged into power. So it lets it drain down and then it charges it back up as evidence by what Keith is hearing here. And as it turns out, you know, we we did a thing. I think it was in our old Facebook group where we had a lot of different people chime in about this and and shared, you know, their experiences with this. And so it was just a lot of anecdotal evidence. But it certainly all seems to point to anything from about a 2014 Mac or newer seems to do really well, no matter what. If you leave it plugged in all the time, your your battery, you know, your full battery charge capacity won't dwindle precipitously. And it's kind of like it's just not a thing you need to worry about anymore, which is really great. I'm stoked about this. So why are you? Why are you this is a good because I have a 2012 MacBook Pro. Right. The thing is, I use something and I still think it's something that people should look at. But it's called fruit juice. Well, fruit juice was created out of the conversation in this show, whatever, eight years ago, when we were discussing all this stuff, because we needed something to remind us that our Macs needed to not stay plugged in all the time. But and so it's good if you have an older Mac, maybe it's still good to run it. But anything, you know, the last four or five years, you don't have to worry about it. Yep. And we know the fruit juice guy. He's totally cool. Yeah. Yeah. We did lunch. But what else? Hmm. Anything else that will come back to me. Anyways, no, because I got the 2012 and the thing is, of course, my 2014 Mac mini is on AC power. Right. Of course. Of course. But a fruit juice says for older Macs, there's a great job of helping you manage the whole charging. It does a great job and drum. It reminds it reminds you to put your battery on charge, take your battery off charge. It does a really fine job with it. So if you are running a Mac that's more than about four or five years old, I highly recommend fruit juice still. Yeah. Oh, yes. So here's the other thing. So I noticed this too. So Dave, so we got some of these handouts and I was frustrated because I couldn't find a website that worked for it. So it was a handout from Newegg. You got one that you really like this battery pack. And I got one that was a cable that had little LEDs in it showing if it was charging or not. And I noticed this, Dave, at least with my iOS devices, is once they were done, the lights turned off. Yep. So I think per what you were saying, the iOS and Mac OS have done a much better job of saying, hey, look, I'm done, right? Stop. Well, no, no, that that always happened. That I mean, it always stopped when when you got to the top. Like that that, of course, the device stops drawing power when it doesn't need any more. The trick is that it essentially doesn't just stop charging, but it stops even trickle charging it. It lets it drain a whole lot more than it used to and then brings it back up. So yeah, yeah. Right. But it was cool at one point when I saw this cable and I came downstairs and I'm like, oh, my gosh, the lights not on. Why? Well, because it's fully charged. It doesn't need. Exactly. Yeah. Cool. All right. Quick tip in the forums and I will put a link to the forums. Of course, Feek, actually, Feek is his name in the forums, actually asked and then answered his own question. He says in iOS 11, it was possible to search for nearby photographs. I can't find that in iOS 12. Has it gone away or is it just hidden somewhere? And he says, turns out it was just hidden. Open a photograph, then swipe up and places is the first thing shown along with show nearby photos. He says, does this count as a cool stuff found? I think it counts as a quick tip. So here we are. Yeah, thanks, Feek. Good stuff. I like it. It's weird. But I had to I had to it took me a long time to learn to swipe up with the music app to get at like the shuffle features and all of that stuff that was just exposed in whatever it was iOS 10, I guess. And then iOS 11 was when that changed. But seems like a similar thing in photos. When you see the photo, just swipe up. There's more below, keep going. So kind of like when you, you know, hold down the option key on your Mac, right? To see the extra stuff in iOS. Yeah, even though it looks like it's it's all just one page. Swipe up. There might be something hidden below. So thanks, Feek. Good. Yeah. So another unexpected thing. So I had this happen day with photos. We're kind of talking about photos here. But all of a sudden on one of my devices, I think it was my iPhone. It's like, hey, here's some memories. Beach days, 2012. And then it showed a picture of my friend and I believe you met her too. Melissa, the Mac mommy. Yeah, because she came out to visit me one time in Connecticut. And and so. Photos decided to put together a nice little video montage. Well, at least one of them with with her in there and actually sent it to her. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even know. It just came up and I'm like, why are you doing this? It's like, well, you know, actually looking back, it's like, wow, that's actually not a bad video. I put the music in there and, you know, the pictures that were, you know, important to me and stuff. And it was actually a nice beachside and it called the beach days. It knew it was like, well, these are beach photos. Yeah, it's like a beach. But it's pretty good. It's neat when these things pop up. Yeah, because as far as I know, it didn't cost me anything. It just kind of did it on its own. It's like, well, you got a lot of beach photos and here we go. It does a nice job, you know. And it's it's actually worth checking out what like Google photos will do. And Amazon, I don't see quite as much of that stuff from Amazon's photos. But I get notifications from Google photos all the time saying, hey, we've created, you know, a similar thing for your checkout. Amazon just did that. I didn't publish it, but it was like, oh, you and Dave have been friends for so long. Here's a nice video of all the times you've been together. And I'm like, yeah, Amazon did this or Facebook did. Or no, Facebook. OK, all right. Yeah, no, because Amazon, you know, you can upload your photos to them and just like you can with iCloud and Google and all that stuff. No, Facebook was like, hey, you and Dave have been friends for this amount of time and you've tagged each other. So here's a here's a nice video decided. Well, maybe I'll share it with you or others. Oh, yeah, there you go. Perfect, perfect. Let's see. Graham McKay in the forums has it was a related discussion going on. But he reminded me of something that I had forgotten about. And that's what a quick tip that's like the definition of how to recognize that something should be a quick tip. And he says he was talking about it was a Bluetooth related thing. And he says, remember that you can do a reset of the Bluetooth module on the Mac. You option shift click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. So you need to have that exposed first, which is done in system preferences, Bluetooth. Then again, option shift click on the Bluetooth icon and choose from the debug menu reset the Bluetooth module. So somebody was having trouble with connecting a Bluetooth keyboard. I think they were running a beta version of Mojave. So that might well be the issue. But the reminder of resetting the Bluetooth module when you're having general Bluetooth maladies is a great one. And I totally forgot it. I mean, it's been years since I've thought of that. So option shift and click on the menu bar icon. So that's like one step beyond option, which is great. So thank you, Graham. Very, very cool stuff. Right. Good. No. Why is that terrible? Why is that bad? Why should you have to reset the Bluetooth module? That's ludicrous. Dude, if it makes me shake my fist. I appreciate that. But let me point out that if things if everything worked exactly as it was supposed to, either we wouldn't have this show or it would be remarkably different from what we actually do here currently. Because, you know, no, right. So there you go. No, of course, I'm with you. Now, for those that are asking, hey, I don't see a Bluetooth icon in my menu bar. Well, what you need to do is you need to go to system preferences. And then there's a Bluetooth icon and there's a little checkbox show Bluetooth and menu bar. That's how you get that menu. Normally, I don't believe it's shown by default. So that's how you get it. I think it I think it is on by default. I can't remember it to be perfect. You know, I seem to recall the discussion. Oh, no, no, this was an iOS discussion. So when iOS 12, yeah, they actually do not intentionally show the Bluetooth module because the discussion that I saw was that Apple felt. Why do you need to know this and why are we taking up space in your precious, especially smaller screen? Why are we taking space with this icon? And the thing is, they intentionally in iOS 12 removed it. Sorry, guys. The thing is, I actually agree with that decision, Dave. Oh, do I need? Do I need to know that Bluetooth is communicating with something on my iPhone? And the thing is, I don't. Well, and I think the other problem with that was people were seeing that and thinking, oh, this is, you know, dramatically negatively impacting my battery life. I'm going to turn it off. And then winding up with problems where like your watch doesn't work or, you know, on the iPad, your Apple pencil doesn't work. There's so many things that Bluetooth is used for your car, your AirPods, right? The continuity with your Mac, like so many different things that Apple for a while now has been working hard to make it so that you can't actually turn off Bluetooth without really knowing that you want to, you know. And the thing is now also, it's called Bluetooth L.E. Low energy. Well, some of it is. Yeah, well, yeah, if properly implemented, Bluetooth shouldn't be like a major drain on your battery because the intent is the radios and all this stuff. And then the protocols will make sure that it's not doing stupid stuff. That's right. No, that's right. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Speaking of Bluetooth, we have a question. So why don't we will we'll blend things together? We'll go from quick tips to follow up questions from 732. And this one's related to Bluetooth. So Stevie says, I recently had the exact same symptoms on my MacBook that you gentlemen discussed in the last episode, I had my MacBook asleep in its sleeve. And the following morning found its battery completely dead and very warm to the touch. I found the reason for this behavior was the brand new anchor wireless keyboard I just started using was still on. Even though after 30 seconds of no use, this keyboard claims it turns off. There's still some way in which it signals my MacBook with Mojave to believe that it's awake. It's an easy fix with a flick of a small switch and things are now back to normal. He says, I love the podcast. Well, we love you too, Steve. So thank you. So this is I mean, this is one of the funny that I said what I said moments ago. This is one of those things it shouldn't work that way. But obviously it does. And so you need to find a workaround and you did. You found a workaround. But I'm I'm not I don't like this workaround because it means you have to remember to turn off your keyboard in order for your Mac not to burn itself up to smithereens there. So I'm wondering if better would be to use something that you can automate like keyboard maestro and have that do a sleep action where it turns off Bluetooth just as you're putting your Mac to sleep and then a wake action where it turns Bluetooth back on when you're waking your Mac back up. Right. I'm pretty sure that's doable all within keyboard maestro. And then you wouldn't have to think about whether your anchor keyboard was turned on or off because your Mac's Bluetooth will not be listening if you turn it off. Yeah. I like it. You don't like it. No, I don't know. And I'm going to give you a better solution. OK, even better. This is what I love. Are you ready? All right. So hey, system preferences, Bluetooth. You click on that. There's an advanced button. Guess what? There are three check boxes here in the Dave. The check box I don't like. So all of them are checked on my computer, which I will assume is the default behavior because I never go to Bluetooth. And there's a check box at the bottom that says allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer. How about you turn that off? I don't know why that's on. Oh, I do. Because to me, to me, having your Bluetooth keyboard on with your computer and your computer bag is a case where you don't want this option checked. I understand why you would want it on. Yeah. On a desktop machine, you definitely want it on because if you have a Bluetooth keyboard, you want to be able to sit down, hit the spacebar and have it wake up or a Bluetooth mouse, you're right. You know, so it makes sense that you'd want that. But for a desktop, yeah, but not for not necessarily for a laptop that you expect when you close the lid, it's going to go to sleep because then all of a sudden it's like, oh, there's a Bluetooth keyboard in the bag with me. Let me wake up and it's like, no. So just to let people know, there are subtle nuances. I like advance button on the Bluetooth and set them as you believe they should be set as key. Graham, turn off that last one. I think we can point out in the chat room, you would want that enabled for clamshell mode because otherwise you won't be able to wake your Mac up. Right. Like I said, yeah, for a I'm bringing my computer home in my computer bag, along with the keyboard, you don't want your computer to wake up. Because yeah. But it's interesting that they have these three subtle nuances of Bluetooth behavior in the advanced button. So, hey, everybody, when you see an advanced button, check it out. Yeah. Now, can we option click that advanced button and get more? No. OK. I just had to check. So it's good to check. It's good to check. It's good to check. You know what else is good, John, is our first sponsor, which is Otherworld Computing at MacSales.com. They've got their new Thunderbolt 3 10 gig ethernet adapter available now. This plugs right into the Thunderbolt 3 port on your Thunderbolt 3. A quick Mac and will allow you to connect to 10 G ethernet networks. No problem whatsoever. Very, very cool stuff. And of course, it's not just 10 G ethernet that it supports. 10 G, 5G, two and a half G, regular, regular gigabit ethernet and also 100 megabit ethernet as well. Plugs right in. You don't need a driver for your Mac. It just plugs in and works if you want to use it with a Windows machine. Windows 10 does require a driver, but install that like you would normally do. And all you're good to go. It's it's actually built to be really rugged. You should take a look at this thing. I'll put a link to it in the sponsored portion of the show notes here so you can see it. This thing looks like it's a it's a serious little piece of gear. I like it. Well, well built. And you know what? That's not a surprise because that's what OWC does, right? They build things that are reliable and useful and they understand how they work. They understand how the Mac works. They've been doing this Mac thing longer than Mac Observer has been in existence. And Mac Observer will hit 20 years this December, right? So OWC really knows this market. They are part of this market and they know what we want. Like on this thing, they have link lights on the on the ethernet jack so that you know what you're getting and you know whether you're getting a 10 G connection, a 5G connection or a regular gigabit connection just from the lights that you're looking at when you plug in your cable. So really cool stuff. You got to check this out. Go to OtherworldComputingatmacsales.com. That's where we go when it's time to add something to our Mac's external drives, external gigabit adapters, whatever you need, they've got it and they have good stuff. So check it out and our thanks to OtherworldComputingatmacsales.com for sponsoring this episode. It's cool stuff. All right. What do we have next? Well, we were talking about show 732, John. So let's stick with the follow ups on that. Carlos has something for us here and Carlos says this is a tip. Now, in the last episode, we were talking about spoofed caller ID, right, John, where we had a listener who I can't remember your name. I'm sorry, who was having an issue where calls were coming in that were spoofed to look like like you had, John, that to look like your phone number or something similar to your digits would be enough to trick you into and I just got one today. It was a visa and mastercard saying, hey, you know what? Because you've been such a good credit citizen. We're going to give you zero percent financing. You just have to give us your credit card numbers. Sure. So spam calls that look like they might be someone you know. And this is called spoofed caller ID, right? And we didn't come up with a way to solve this problem of not having them ring. And, you know, we talked through a couple of options, but nothing was perfect. Well, we have a couple of other options from you folks. And Carlos says I've tried several tools over the years to do this. And the one that stands out in its ability to block those calls, which you spoofed caller ID is called wide protect spam call blocker. And it costs two ninety nine in the app store and says it has the unique ability to block phone numbers based on what digits the phone number begins with. For example, if your phone number was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, oh, you could tell the app to block all incoming calls with the caller ID of one, two, three, four, five, six, X, X, X, X, right. And he says I've now found it necessary to specify the first five digits of my own phone number for the reasons we just discussed. And he says the app has the ability to block up to 40 million phone numbers. In other words, up to four entire US area codes if you want it. And you can also whitelist all your contacts just in case their phone number happens to collide with the blocked block that you've chosen. He says I found wide protect to be an absolutely invaluable app. And after installing it, I haven't had a single spoofed caller ID ring my phone yet. So you've got you got to check this out, John. It seems like you're you are sus, you are subject to this, not suspect of it. I don't think you're suspect of it. But but yeah, I guess. I just ignore them. I'm like, look, I don't know anybody in it. If I knew you and you had the first six digits, you would come up as somebody in my contacts list because you don't. I'm going to ignore you. And every now and then I'll pick it like I told you today I picked it up and they were like, blah, blah, blah, congratulations. And by the way, press three to not and I press three and nothing happened. Yeah, yeah, because they're just fishing for credit card numbers. Of course, it's pretty obvious. Yeah. Well, Albert came up with another way to solve that problem. He says, check out G ringtones available on the App Store for two ninety nine. The interface is a bit low tech, but it does the job. It allows iOS to set ringtones by contact group. So this was something we were looking to do in the last episode and couldn't find a way to do it. Well, looks like somebody built an app that can do it because apps can manipulate your contacts. He says, I have business, family, in-laws, etc. in my contacts as groups. I set the default ringtone to silence family to one ringtone. Other groups to different ringtones. So if a call comes in that isn't in my contacts, it doesn't ring or even vibrate, but if a call comes in from family, I get a ringtone. Easy peasy. Thank you so much, Albert. That's great. And Carlos, too. These are good solutions. So we are we are good to go. I like it, man. It's good. Anything on that before we move on to Gary's tip from 732, which is actually sort of why they helped us. Oh, those people. No, no, those. Well, then you've got to get one of these apps, man. Why are you calling me? Get wide protect. Spend the two ninety nine. You're good to go for one ninety nine. I got a call. I wanted to be somebody that wants to talk to me and not. Well, they want to talk to you for me and not steal from me. Yeah, yeah. Let's see. Where's Gary here? Let me find Gary's or tell me that I'm a good person. I thought you could at least start with that, you know. Yeah, I'll do that. John, you're a good person. We're going to talk about Gary. Can I give you my credit card now? You can. Yeah, give me your credit card quick. Yeah. Gary says I just got done listening to Mac. He kept seven thirty two and you were talking about the difference in heat between using the lightning cable versus Qi wireless charging pads. I think the amount of heat also depends on the charger you're using. I personally recommend the anchor PowerWave seven point five watt Qi wireless charger because it has a cooling fan in the base of the charger. And although it has a blue LED, which Dave doesn't like, he says that he says the ring is the blue LED is pretty pretty out of the way. He says, but it comes with the cable and the quick charge three point zero wall wart. I have it in my bedroom and although I don't have a nightstand next to my bed, I can tell you that I can't really see the LED ring and the cooling fan is very quiet. I can't hear it unless I'm right on top of it. So you can get it on Amazon for a little under 40 bucks. So that's what a great idea. Like, why didn't we think of this last week when we were worried about heat and charging? Well, a fan, duh, pretty smart. Well, I want to go in a bit. I think there's a difference between heat. Heat due to power used to charge the battery and heat in other parts of the system. You see where I'm OK with this? I think I think the heat is most damaging when you're doing a fast charge or high current or high power charge. Sure, on a battery, the heat other in other places is when it's coupled with battery technology is always bad. OK. Mm hmm. If you can go with me on that, yeah, sure. Heat kills for a lot of things, but also battery. So the hotter the battery gets, the shorter the life. I don't think that's debatable. I think that's just I'm with you on that. Technology works. Yeah. OK. Yeah. But but having less heat in other parts of the system, I agree with it. So I guess I agree with both points, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. But no, I saw a thing and actually, no, I responded to someone in one of our e-mail trails here. So actually, one of these guys, Rene Richard, you know, this guy. Rene Richie, who publishes, of course, I actually saw one of his tweets recently and he said, the best strategy for batteries is pretty much slow and steady wins the race is that if you charge at low current and low power, that's going to be something that's probably going to make your battery last the longest. And I think he's also written articles about that as well. So that's that's my commentary on that. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. All right. So there we are. There we are. Do you want to take us to Keith, John? Keith has a fascinating problem, and I'm just amazed that I was able to dig into the archives and figure it out. Cool. It sounds like we figured it out. So. And the source of blame is something that we've always blamed for problems on our computers, but I'm going to hold you in suspense for a moment here. You like to do that. Yes. So Keith says, Hi, David, John, I've been listening for years and have just signed up for premium. Thank you so much, Keith. I wonder if you have any suggestions for me. I have an early 2016 Macbook with Mojave. Today, I noticed that some of the icons in my doc had been replaced by generic icons. This has never happened before. I killed both the finder and the doc using kill all from the terminal with no effect. By the way, if you go to terminal and you type kill all, it will relaunch the doc application, which sometimes may pick up problems with your doc. Try that. It's good stuff. But he said I rebooted it was still the same. I've run the current version of Onyx, gone through the maintenance option and rebooted it's still the same. If I click on the applications folder in my doc and I scroll up and down, you can see that some of the apps have missing icons. I'm going to assume he means generic icons. However, if I open the application folder in the finder, the icons are all correct. OK, I'm wrong. Well, yeah, I don't like icons in the in the doc, right? Is is where he's saying them. Yeah, but not in the application folder. OK, so there's a there's a icon disconnects there. Disparity. Yeah. So he said I remove male icon from my doc and when I try and drag it back in, when I cross the finder board of the icon goes bad and you don't want your icons going bad. It's just it's not. No, when icons go bad, things are, you know, they just they really go south, they, you know, they stop talking to their families. They turn to a life of crime. It's just it's not good. It's not good. Brilliant. A picture can speak a thousand words. So he sent us a movie of this and I didn't really need it. But thank you. The more you can send us, whether it be a screenshot or a movie or whatever, of disturbing behavior on your computer, Dave, you should probably send it. If not an email, but at least a movie, if you want, or screenshots, you probably send that the feedback at Mackeycap.com. Well, I think feedback at Mackeycap.com is a better place. And I think you wrap this up before we continue with the question here. Feedback at Mackeycap.com I think is probably the best choice. Well, you know, unless you're Keith or you're like Keith, because Keith is a premium subscriber now. And so Keith gets to use premium at Mackeycap.com. But continue, my friend. Right. And that's how we got this. So so anyways, he did some of the mail mail icon. He put it in there. We got the video. And I think actually that pretty much wraps it up, Dave. OK. So the thing is he ran Onyx. OK. Good. Good strategy because Onyx, like he said, the maintenance portion of it. Has options to clear out a lot of caches and other things that. And if you haven't heard us talk about caches, Dave, a cache is I can either ask for some data or can ask for an older version of data that I assume is valid. Here's the problem with cash data. Cash data can go bad. And if it goes bad, something like this is going to happen. So my suggestion to Keith was he may have a corrupt icon cash. What's an icon cash? You're asking me. Are you asking me that, Dave? What's an icon cash? It's a cash that stores images of icons. And you know what? If that cash gets screwed up, you're going to see generic icons in your doc or in your finder or maybe both. So I whipped out the Google food, Dave. OK. And I found. A dandy article over at GitHub, and it's called clear the icon cash on a Mac when you start seeing generic icons in the finder or the doc. What do you think? Does that sound pretty close to here? I would go with that. Yeah, man. So basically, this article goes into you have to dive into the terminal. Don't fear the terminal. It's not bad. It's not a really big digs into some kind of obscure. Well, one's not so obscure, Dave, and that it actually is. If you go to system, I think library caches, there's a caches directory in there, Dave. And it actually had me thinking about caches. Why not just to lead all your cash directories every now and then? Because you got to admit, dude, a lot of the problems that we've had are due to faulty caches. Now, sometimes and also he mentioned that he he did a safe boot, safe boot clears out some caches. I think mostly font caches, but not icon caches. But it was good that he tried that as well. But the thing is there is a caches. There are explicit cash directories in your library folders. I'm just wondering if it would be a good thing to just like write a script to like purge those, isn't that what Onyx does? Well, that that's the thing, Dave. And then in this case, Onyx did not explicitly clear out this cash. It clears out many caches. But I look in detail in the maintenance portion of Onyx. And maybe they haven't added it yet. They could, but there is not an option to clear out the icon cash. There is an option to clear out lots of the others. And I mean, I love Onyx because it lets you dig into so many things here. So maybe they just are not aware of this option or they haven't added it yet. And I hope they do, Onyx. Well, we'll send them note because we talked about them, right? So sure. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll put that in there because I mean, it's theoretically possible. I mean, it's just a directory in your library folder called caches, right? Yeah, that's true. That's right. Yes. And the report we got back from Keith is that fixed it. So nice. Thank you for, thank you for signing up, Keith. And we're glad that we solved your problem. Yeah, that's great, man. Yeah, I'm surprised Onyx doesn't. I would have sworn that I didn't see it. No, I believe you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, maybe they just didn't have the data when the because the thing is Onyx. Onyx is very specific to each version of Mac OS. And maybe they just haven't gotten around to. I mean, I don't think anything has changed about the cash directory within the library folder, but maybe it has. I don't know. Are they just or they just haven't added it. So yeah, Onyx guys, maybe you should add this. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, I agree. All right, cool. I got a couple more from the forums, John, because it's it's where I've been spending some time there. And lots of you have to, including soccer dad who asks and it was answered. He says, hello, fellow Geek Gabbers in Windows in the display settings. You can select for one of only, you know, for only one of two or more connected monitors to display anything. He says all content is then displayed on that monitor, regardless. When you need the extra space of two monitors, you can then go back and select to extend to get both monitors to be active. So the idea is he wants to be able to do this on his Mac. And it's like disconnecting your second external display. But instead of physically disconnecting it, Windows allows you to, you know, effectively, virtually disconnect it. He says I would love to be able to do this on my Mac. And Alex Santos came to the rescue with a thing he found on GitHub, believe it or not, called Disable Monitor. And it sits up in the menu bar of your Mac and you get to go and choose a monitor and you can choose different resolutions or the big one right at the top. Disable and boom, it's gone. So so there you go. It does say that this software could cause irretrievable damage to your computer. I see this a lot in, you know, people that just create things for their own use on GitHub, right? You know, but so, you know, you'll see that too when you go here to download. Danger will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's clearly, you know, someone has figured out functionality. And so boom, just go through and do it. So very cool. It also comes with a terminal app or a terminal. You can run it. You can invoke it from the terminal if you want, which would also allow you to then script it and things like that. So very, very cool. I like it. I'm glad this is good stuff. So fun, fun. Thank you. Thank you for that. And then we got one more from the forums. I think, John, from Jeff in the forums, if I can find it here. Yeah, Jeff said he was asking about VPNs. He says I have set up a VPN on my Synology router. This is and it works in that I can connect back to my Synology with the with the IP range from the VPN. He says, now I have chosen to allow my VPN or to set my VPN to allow access to my local computers. When you create a VPN on your local network, as Jeff has done, you can set it to only use your internet connection. So allowing you to use it to sort of tunnel, safely tunnel your internet traffic when you are not at home. And and or you can also set it to allow you to access local resources. He wants to allow access to local resources. So he turned on that box, which is fine. And he said, in theory, that should enable me to see my Macs on my remote land. Since I'm usually using Apple remote desktop and I don't know how to set it up so I can see all of my Macs. Should I see them under my VPN range IP or the IP of the remote network? Where would they appear? So this is an interesting thing because when you VPN into your network, in theory, you are just another computer now on your local network. And that is true, sort of because Bonjour, which is the thing that makes things appear like in your sidebar and all of that generally does not translate across a VPN link. So if you launch that, if you're used to connecting to other computers by launching the finder and looking in the sidebar and just clicking on them and then either choosing, you know, share screen or, you know, connect, that's not going to be there. So you have to manually connect to these things. And I do it by going in the finder and going into the go connect to server menu. And then you have to type in what you want to connect to for file sharing, I use SMB. So I type in SMB colon slash slash and then the IP address of my computer as it normally is on the local network. You can, you know, do screen sharing. The way you do that is instead of typing SMB colon slash slash, you type VNC colon slash slash and because it uses the VNC protocol for screen sharing and then boom, you can screen share and you're good to go. That that's how that works. There's no there's no bonjour for for that. So it's not just going to auto populate, right? Yes. No. Did I get something wrong? Yes, no, absolutely. No, you're absolutely correct. So the thing is the convenience of typing in a name of the computer versus the IP address is lost typically when you're on a VPN. No, no. If you're if your router supports local DNS, you can also type like I can do SMB colon slash slash I Mac office. What I can't do is go into the finder and just see I Mac office magically appearing in the shared section. That's the difference. Yep. OK, I guess. Let's rewind. What I'm saying is that knowing the IP address of the device that you want to connect to over VPN. Yes. Will probably help you. You may be able to use, like you said, a zero conf bunch or whatever name, but. Well, no, that's a it's a DHCP name is what that would be for local DNS, right? There's a difference and they're often the same name, which is why it gets confusing, but when your router, when your computer can request its IP address from your router, it can pass along its DHCP ID, which can be its name. And some routers, not all, but some and his Synology router is one of the some that does this takes that name and relates it to the IP address that it hands back so that if you are on that local network or VPN and in and using your router's DNS server, you can say, hey, look, you know, if it gave my iMac office, you know, the address of 192.168.1.15, I can look up iMac office and the router knows to translate that with local DNS. OK, it's not zero conf, though. That's and that's the difference. It works the same, except it also works across your VPN link. So there you go. All right, gets a little confusing. My strategy to connect to my servers is to always use the IP address because I know that you know it's going to always work. Totally, totally agree. Yes, if you get a shortcut, like you said, a zero conf or Bonjour or whatever you want to call it, local DNS, yeah, or local DNS. The thing is, I've as I told you, so my primary router is my Eero now. It doesn't seem maybe it's because you're a plus or something, but it doesn't seem to support local DNS and I've done experiments. Oh, just does. Does if you turn Eero plus, does it does local DNS work again? No, so I got to figure out what it could be something else on my setup here. It could be my cable modem. I don't know. Huh, it shouldn't be, but it could be. I thought Eero supported local DNS. In fact, I'm certain it does. All we're saying is that so certain computers and you probably know the reasons for this. So one computer that is one of my primary computers, the IP address ends in 42 and you probably know why. Another has the IP address ends in 203, which you also being a Connecticut resident. Sure, if I fan, you know why? The thing is I pick numbers at the end that are easy for me to remember. So I'm like, oh, yeah, well, of course, that device has got whatever. That's not it on that, I guess. No, it's just a no, it's a it's a. You can't access the device. Oh, yeah, you could. Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, it's like, dude, MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro. Local, I mean, the thing is that, you know, it comes up in the system preferences is like, well, you should be able to access this computer using, you know, this this name, right? Well, I can't write. Well, you can locally. Yeah, just sometimes. Right, it's just the VPN complicates things. Yes, it does. It does totally. All right, I do want to thank a bunch of our premium subscribers. In fact, I want to thank all of you whose contributions came in across the last week. For those of you that want to know about premium MacGygab dot com slash premium, you all you already know that you get the premium at MacGygab dot com email address to use. And we do prioritize that you get that warm, fuzzy feeling from supporting your two favorite geeks and the people that that added to their warm, fuzzy feeling this week were, let's see, we had a one time contribution of 100 bucks from Lee M. Thank you so much, Lee, you rock. On our ten dollar monthly contribution plan. Came in. Payments from Joe BP, Tony Z, Evdenerd, Robert D and Nick S. And on the biannual twenty five dollar plan, Mike H, Charles K, Robert R, Run KMC, Keith M, Thomas S, Chuck J, Janes H and Mark W. Thank you so much to all of you. You everybody who's a premium subscriber. Thank you, you rock. Really, it does. Makes a huge difference for us. So if you didn't do what you do. We may not do what we do. That is pretty I'm not making a threat. I'm just saying it's how close. Yeah, it's how close for sure. Now, the markets work. But it is one cable. Wasn't there a run DMC? I kind of like that handle. Of course. Of course. So that's a creative variation on the correct. Correct. Band, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep. KMC. Thank you so much. And everybody. Yeah. All right. David asks a question that seems to be getting more and more common here in Mackie, Gabbland, he says, I'm in the market to purchase a Synology and I'm looking at the DS 1817 plus for it to become my media server and backup destination, or do you think a different Synology distation would be better as far as transcoding? I chose the DS 1817 plus to accommodate future expandability. And for a NAS, do you think Western Digital Gold or Western Digital Red hard drives are better? All right. He says I'm going to be waiting until Black Friday to order, which is smart. So because you never know, there's always deals and we like deals. So big question, especially in light of the fact, Dave, I was just at the Synology event, unfortunately, you couldn't make it. They should have one in Boston, don't you think? And they have it in New York City. But also I was at a PhotoPlus Expo and some of the NAS vendors were there as well, so it's a it's a good question in the, you know, how do you make the right choice? I mean, you don't want something that's wimpy and that that is actually the case that I'm certainly doesn't not. I mean, for some people, you know, a lower powered and lower cost to station is absolutely the right thing. If all you're doing is, you know, sharing files on it. Maybe you wanted to run your VPN server like these are these are low impact things, but he wants it to be a media server and he wants it to do transcoding. So the DS 1817 plus is super power processor. So you need a processor that can handle that. And the thing is, Synology has things ranging from kind of wimpy, but as you pointed out, they're appropriate for NAS stuff. Like if you just want to use it as a storage device, OK. But if you want to do more sophisticated things like transcoding and running a VPN or I'm sorry, virtualization, which is they're they're going to hook me up with something that will help me do that. Did you know that you can use your Synology to run a VM? Of course. Yeah, if it's powerful enough, yeah. But I can't with my current units, Dave, I can't because the limit it sensibly is that your processor is just too wimpy. I'm sorry. So so the DS 1817, that's actually the one I have here and the one I currently run and it will it will do transcoding for you. But here's the thing you need to know. The DS 1817 plus does not do hardware transcoding. So it is using the CPU 100 percent of the time when you want to transcode a video, which happens most of the time you are playing a video unless you pre-transcode things and store them in that format and it's just then streaming them across the link to your Plex app or if you're using video station or whatever. There are some disc stations, though, that have a hardware transcoding chip in them, and that makes things a lot more efficient because you've got this portion of the chip or a separate chip, depending on how it's laid out, that is just there to do this transcoding. And for that, I really like the new DS 918 plus. It's got a good CPU in it. It has the hardware transcoder. It only has four bays. That's that's the only limitation that I see on that unit. And I say this as someone who started running a five bay unit and now is in an eight bay unit. You know, you need to think about how you're going to lay out your drives. But for most people these days starting out, drives are big enough that really you can get away with a four bay unit and probably do just fine. And then the 918 plus is also expandable. So you've, you know, you can I think it's expandable. No, you're right. OK, no, I asked them about that. The thing is, many Synology units will accept. I think right now it's an ESATA expansion bay. So even now, the one that I have now, which is quite dated, the 713 plus is a two bay. It has a two bay expansion chassis connected to it by the ESATA cable. And as far as I know, ESATA is what they use in the internal as well. So you're not losing anything by having an expansion bay, but it's nice when you do buy a Synology or other NAS, see if they have an option for you throwing some more drives on there. As they pointed out, which is a good point, like right now, when at the event I went to, Seagate just announced a 14 terabyte iron wolf drive. So having a lot of bays may not be a big deal. No, I mean, you can get 14 terabytes on a single drive. I mean, it's it's crazy what they're doing, at least with the rotational. Yeah, they'll get there eventually with the SSDs, but a 14 terabyte rotational drive is crazy. It's crazy. So yeah, so I would, you know, I think the 918, that that's the unit that that really kind of percolates to the top very quickly for us here these days. It's an it's an easy choice. It'll it'll last you into the future. So I think that's a good one. As far as the drives, well, you asked about red versus gold from WD. The gold drives at Western Digital are geared for long term storage for data centers. The red drives are built for NAS. So to me, that answer is easy. Buy the NAS drive, go red. Cost wise, it will be tempting to go to green. We've talked a lot about this. I know you do green drives, Mr. Braun, but no, they're they're in the pile of things that I'm bringing to my recycling center because they failed. Now, they last that many years, sure. But I'm with you is that green drives are not. And that's not built for NAS design for NAS. So get get NAS drives. You don't need the iron wolf drives for a home setup. But you know, they're nice to have. They have a lot more diagnostics. They can sync up with the NAS in a kind of a whole new way. But what they talk, Synology, in that if you get an iron wolf drive, Synology will enable additional functionality as far as monitoring its performance and reporting and stuff like that. So yeah, so I would do that with others. But, you know, it's worth looking at. And they also have like an enterprise, you know, data recovery option for the iron wolf, it's but yeah, it's more an enterprise. Yeah, well, I would just go for the red. I would go for red drives, either, you know, Seagate or WD, just get their NAS focus drives and you'll be in good shape. So we have Ed, let's let's answer Ed's question quickly. I think I think this is a quick one because we're not lawyers. We can't go too deep. Well, it's a legal thing. Ed asks, he says, I have a large collection of music CDs and DVDs that I've all ripped and put onto my computer. Is there a reason to keep the originals or can I donate them to charity or my local libraries as I have an Apple music subscription and use Plex for watching my movies? So here's the thing, right? You would need those CDs or DVDs if something happened to your media library. So don't let something happen to your media library. Like, you know, back that up, do whatever you need to do. That that should go without saying, but we like to say it anyway. As far as what you're talking about, though, as I understand the law and I am just hack lawyer Dave here, right? I'm actually a pretty good hack lawyer, I've been told. But, you know, still just a hack lawyer. I don't I have not passed the bar exam. I don't necessarily intend to. So but as I understand it, if you were to donate those CDs or DVDs to someone or give them to someone or sell them to someone, it doesn't matter if they if you transfer ownership of them. You have also transferred ownership of your license to that content. Technically, you probably don't even have a license to rip them. But I think there's been enough history with that that you'd probably be able to get away with it if you if somebody said, hey, you have a digital copy of this movie and you're like, right, I ripped it from this DVD. I think you're covered there. But if you can't produce the DVD from which you ripped it, you now have an illegal copy of that movie. So. Is someone going to come after you for this? I can't there's no crystal balls, but I don't think so. That said, if it matters to you to be able to have these licenses, don't give away the licenses and the CDs and DVDs are those licenses. That's that says hack lawyer Dave understands it. So there you go. I mean, you know, do whatever you want. I think I'm pretty much with you. So I've worked with patent attorneys and copyright attorneys and all sorts of attorneys. The thing is, you're absolutely correct in your interpretation. The thing is, you have a license to the content. You do not own the content. No, no, a temporary license tied to that media. And like you said, if you liberate that media from its original medium onto another thing, that's where the license lives. So if you then give it to someone else, yes, you are technically being naughty. You should delete the movies and songs when you give away or otherwise transfer ownership of the CDs or DVDs. Correct. Yes. Correct. If you do retain them and then you do also give them, then you are technically breaking the law. On the other hand, in the spirit of sharing content and making people happy. And the thing is I've actually bought. Depends on who you're. This is subjective now, because I'm pretty sure the person who wrote the song or created the movie would not be happy by the scenario you're about to describe. So, you know, bear that in mind. No, I get that. But the thing is, I've actually bought and I'm sure I've actually bought at my library and actually my library right now does not accept any CD or DVD donations anymore. Right, right. But I've been able to buy some old DVDs that they had in their library for like a dollar or two dollars. Sure, it was certainly sold for more than that. But the thing is, so do you want to help benefit people in your community and expose them to new art and entertainment? And can you live with yourself if you're. Kind of breaking the law, I guess is it's a gray area, I guess is a thing. So yeah, I mean, the other thing too is the impact on the environment. I mean, what if you throw them away? I mean, you know, there's what aluminum and plastic and stuff like that. Just throwing them in the trash. Maybe it's not the best thing. So if you do want to discard them and be legally clean, maybe properly recycle them, I don't know. Well, yeah, or give them, I mean, the best way to recycle is to give them to someone that's actually going to use them. So there you go. Well, hence library. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, for sure. All right. Mark asked, he said, guys, what's your opinion on the Comcast X5 pods as an alternative to other different mesh slash extender solutions? So Comcast slash Xfinity is offering these what they call the X5 pods. If you have the Comcast X5 router, you can add these pods, which just plug in all over your house and or create a wireless mesh. These pods are the first generation plume pods. OK, they are hardware wise. They are that software wise. They are mostly that, but they will only work with your Comcast router and you can't take them and use them on a normal plume network. Right. But but from a hardware standpoint, that's what they are. These are again. What's that? What's stupid? No, no, no, it's very smart actually because it makes it super easy integration standpoint. I think from an integration standpoint, you just plug them in and they work, right? And that's Comcast's goal. Comcast is actually doing some very cool stuff with with this and their mesh stuff, and it's I actually like it because it totally takes the headache away. You just get the stuff you plug it in and it's good to go, right? But it is just the first generation pods and anecdotally what I've heard, I have not tested these, but I've got a lot of friends and family who have. And then, of course, all of you that we hear from either with the X5 setup or with the plume first gen setup is that these don't really reach as far as you might want them to. Based on what I can tell, I don't think they're going to. I don't think they're even going to match the performance of, say, a first gen Euro system or something. So be aware of what you're getting into with these. They're probably not going to do stellar work for you. That said, please don't take this as a dismissal of plume in its entirety because the plume super pods are freaking amazing. Like these things are really good. They've got three radios, one of which is a four by four radio and they go far, they go fast, they're very reliable. So buying from plume and getting the super pods, great. The the non super pods, again, I haven't tested them. So I can only share what I've heard anecdotally. And what I have heard is like it does better. It helps, but it's not great. That's sort of the general consensus I get from everyone that has tried them. So and it could be that, you know, it just so happens that everybody I talk to is placing them incorrectly or whatever. But it is universally the answer that I get is meh, you know. So bear that in mind. But it's super easy, right? As I said, setting it up. So maybe they'll figure out a way to to do an X5 super pod, right? And if they do that, then that could change everything. So so there you go. So just so keep it keep it real. So I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. Well, there you go. Where are we at that? You know, where we're at, man, is we are, I think we're pretty much at the end of this this particular run, my friend. It's just kind of how it goes. It's good. It's good. It seemed like moments ago, we started talking. Uh, yeah. And solving problems and creating a nice little I don't like popery, really. Even the crouton thing, you know, I like croutons on my salad. We didn't we didn't call this a salad today, but I'm going to be with you. No, actually, I'm with you. No, I actually got a really good one. They just had a new one at the at the store. I went to it was like a miso spinach salad. It was dull or something, but no, it was good. It had like miso and crunchy noodles and spinach. And it's probably good for me, probably crunchy, too. Because, you know, a part of food, Dave, is not just the taste, but the texture and the smell. There's so many aspects of it. Kind of like a podcast. I mean, we don't just solve problems. I'm saying, see what I'm saying. We do all sorts of things here. You know, if we just had a single goal, they get boring and old. I don't know. The single goal is to help solve your problems, right? That's it. Well, full stuff out. But yes, that's true. If we just did one thing, we'd be bored to death. Having to do that thing for over a decade. That's not because it's me, it's Dave, it's you. It's the variety in the show. It's a I don't know where to go with this. I'll take it from here because we actually need to get out. So come visit our forums at macgeekyub.com slash forums. And and you can interact with all the great stuff. You heard some some samples of what's going on there. Not only questions that have been asked, but answers that have come in and really, really great stuff. You know how to contact us. You know how to email us, so come visit the forums. And and that's that's where we're going to go with that. I want to send a big shout out of thanks to the folks at cash fly. C A C H E F L Y dot com for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. I want to send a big shout out of thanks to all of our sponsors, including O W C, of course, at max sales dot com. Smile at smile software dot com slash podcast. Bare bones software at bare bones dot com ring dot com slash M G G the LinkedIn dot com slash jobs. And a ton of new ones coming in next month. So there you go. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for contributing in all the ways that you do. I believe we're going to see if we can get Mr. Braun to be pithy and concise here for this last little moment. It might take some effort. But Mr. Braun, do you have something lasting to share with our friends here? I do. And it's not going to be three or two. I maybe didn't get it down to one word. No, I can't do that. It's impossible. But the three words that I have for you are don't get made.