 The Mac Observers, Mac Geekgab, episode 754 for Monday, March 25th, 2019. Folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers, Mac Geekgab, the show where we take your questions, your tips, your cool stuff found. We mix them all together. We answer your questions. We share your tips. We share your cool stuff found. The goal, of course, is that we all, every one of us, every single one of us, me included, him included, you, her, everybody. Yeah. We have to. We all come here to learn at least five new things together. Sponsors for this episode include Otherworld Computing at MacSales.com, HairClub at HairClub.com slash MGG. Jamf now at Jamf.com slash MGG. We'll spell out those URLs and explain what they'll do for you shortly here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, where it seems that spring has kind of sprung, but not really. Because we've got flowers and birds and stuff, but then there's going to be more snow going on here. This is John F. Brown. Yeah. Welcome to New England. That's how it goes. Yeah. We don't quite have like it hasn't sprung here. You know, you and I are, we're very close together, but geographically, of course, but not right at the same latitude. We wind up. Miles, words for you, I think, being farther north. Yeah. We're a little further north. So we wind up getting the, you know, the poof of the buds on the trees and stuff. Usually about a week, maybe a week and a half past you. So I'm looking forward to that. It's usually right around April 1st for us. And also there's Canada. I mean, they throw their stuff at you. Canada throws their stuff at me. Canada also thinks they like Vermont and New Hampshire. We all act like we individually invented maple syrup. That is not obviously not the case, you know, we all can make it locally here. It's fine. The syrup here is just as good as the syrup in Vermont, just as good as the syrup in Canada. It's like, but I'm sure I've offended everyone now by saying that. So that's, that's my goal for 2019 is an equal opportunity offender. So I'm saying Connecticut syrup, it's nothing I advertised the world, but hey, yeah, and anybody can make it. If you have maple trees and, well, you need maple trees and then you need the right temperature, right? Because it's got to be like thawing, but not and, and, and causing the sap to run and all that stuff. It's actually pretty cool. My kids elementary school had a has that they don't go there anymore, but it still has a sugar shack at it where they would, the kids would like, that was part of their deal. They would go out and tap the trees and stuff and, you know, do all that and then they would boil it down. It's actually really cool. You know, it's a quaint, right? It's good. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We are here to talk about all kinds of things, as I said, but I want to start, John, with Apple's announcements. Now, I say that today is Monday the 25th. Apple had a huge event this week, and there were some announcements there that we'll talk about because I think, you know, at some level they're, they're relevant. But the thing I really want to talk about is the new IMAX that they announced last week, which is, of course, an announcement since we've spoken together. But man, like, so up until whatever it was last Tuesday when they announced these speed bumps on the IMAX, the Mac minis were the fastest desktop Macs you can get, right? And like the IMAX was not necessarily something that you should buy, that has changed. And in a very good way, we, John Martelero and I went through and just like we did here for the CPUs used in the Mac minis and in the MacBook Air at the end of 2018, we went through and found the CPUs that were used in the new IMAX. And those CPUs are pretty good. And those new IMAX, especially the higher end ones, which are, I think there's one that's got eight cores and it's the i9 processor in the top end, 27 inch. It's a 9th gen processor. It's got eight cores and it supports hyperthreading, which means it can do 16 threads, two threads per core. So for a lot of operations, not all of them, but lots of operations, it can actually, you know, do 16 parallel tasks simultaneously, which makes it. And don't forget turbo boost up to five gigahertz. Correct. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's a three gigahertz chip, but it'll turbo boost up with that one. That's a beast, man. It's a beast. Yeah. It's interesting though, right? I mean, and so they bumped, they bumped everything except the very, very, very bottom of the line non-retina 21 and a half inch iMac. That one's still the same as it was in 2017, the 2.3 gigahertz dual core, seventh gen, you know, i5 or whatever it is in there. But the rest of them, everybody got a speed bump either to an eighth gen or, like I said, some of the top of the line ones got ninth gen. That just means what year they came out. The ninth gen ones literally just came out in Q1 of this year. The eighth gen ones came out about a year ago, but still very relevant CPUs. And I'll put a link to the chart in the show notes if you want to really dig in and see, you know, what you get. But it's, I'm impressed with what they did. I'm curious to see like geek bench scores so that we can actually compare it with something like the, you know, the new top of the line Mac mini, which has a six core, 12 thread processor, right. But it's kind of interesting, John, because now, you know, with that mini being where it is and for whatever it is, 1200 bucks, you can get, you know, that CPU in the mini. The question is, you know, is the iMac more, is it too powerful? You know, is it more powerful than most people will need is the real question. Here's the differentiator I see between the two. So most of the specs as far as the processor and stuff are pretty comparable, OK, as far as the cores and the speed and stuff like that. Right. Let's say that's a given. But between the difference you're talking about between the mini and the the iMac. Yes. Yeah, actually. Well, the top of the line iMac is is quite a bit faster. But other than that, you're you're right. You're basically a same overlap. The difference that I do see is that some have an issue with the iMac or the Mac mini, I'm sorry, having an embedded graphics chipset for a lot of people. If your needs, if you do the kind of work where you need graphics, horsepower, or you are a big gamer, then that's the only thing that the only problem that I see with the Mac mini, but you can get an eGPU. And I think I saw a tweet you did the other day, which was like, you can get them starting at five hundred dollars. So if you need that, but the thing is, why not just get an iMac that has a radio, you know, a big boy? Right. Well, because of the graphic chipset, because it'll cost you more. Like, I still think you can buy the Mac mini with the eGPU for less than than you get the iMac, right? Right. What I'm thinking is that for my next machine, so I have the 2014 Mac mini, right, two screens, a 19 two screens. So. Do I upgrade from my mini to an iMac and then plug these two screens in, which I think I can through Thunderbolt or something like that, right? So I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to burst your bubble a little bit here. I know, Nate, none of your screens. I don't think you have any any Macs with retina capabilities, right? So if you're HD, technically, they're not red, but that's not retina, right? HD is is one just very, very big jump below retina. Right. I get that. Yeah. And so if you get, say, you know, one of these 27 inch retina iMacs and you plug in a non retina screen as a second screen, it's going to be a remote because I did it like I've experienced this. It's not a fun thing because you're looking at one screen and it's this gorgeous, you know, retina screen. And then you look at the other and it's like, oh, it's crap. You know, it really highlights how bad a non retina screen looks. I think I can take the trauma, but it's technically possible. Oh, yeah. But you can also for, you know, I mean, you can go to like Dell or or even Monoprice, right? I mean, that's, you know, and get a retina screen, you know, a retina. Well, no, it's called UHD, but your your insight is valuable in that. I mean, the the only retina screen I have right now. iPhone, right, right, right. Yeah, you want to buy a 4k screen to connect to your to your iMac or or frankly, even if you were to get a new Mac mini, I would also if someone was in your shoes, I would and they were they had the 2014 Mac mini with a, you know, whatever, a 1080p screen, HD screen or whatever. I would I would actually recommend, you know, replace all of that with a new Mac mini and a 4k screen or it's it's called UHD. Right. The Apple's the only company that uses the word retina. But but, you know, it's that concept of having higher pixel density than than the eye can see. And it really makes a difference in a big way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll I'll ponder. It's not yet that time. Machines still do what I need. But yeah, well, that's the thing, right? That's interesting. Well, the only thing is that the tech definitely my MacBook Pro mid 2012 pre retina, non retina. Yeah, we'll not support the next OS officially that they've said that much. They're like, right, and I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, I think the 2014 has a little more lifespan. I think they're going to give it a couple more years still. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it supports metal, right? So that was sort of the big cut off for Mojave. My, you know, so when I saw these new iMacs, I thought, OK, when those come out on refurb later this year, I'll probably pick up one of those. My iMac in the office is a 2014. The iMac that I'm sitting in front of here now in the studio is a 2011. This one's, you know, I mean, at some point it's going to go. So it's all, you know, I'll roll the office machine up here. I'll put the I'll get one of the new iMacs, most likely, and put that down in the in the office and, you know, go from there. So it's exciting, though. Yeah. And what's Dave talking about when he says metal? I'll tell you what he means. So if you go into the Apple menu and you say system information, you then go to hardware and graphics slash displays. You're going to see an entry saying metal. And hopefully it says supported, which it does, at least on this Mac Mini. And I'm pretty sure on the MacBook Pro as well. But that's something you want to look for. It's essentially Apple's new set of API's that allow super duper graphics stuff. Yeah. Well, yeah, super duper graphics, but also it just allows apps to talk directly to the GPU and almost directly to the GPU. So it can be certainly be used for graphics, but it can also be used for computational stuff that, you know, that that GPUs are really good at, too. So like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's stuff. I like that stuff. That's that's to me. That's the, you know, I mean, for most people, non-gamers, that's where the the benefits of those stuff and like the. The mining stuff, I'm sure that's one of the things. But really any math. So I mean, if you're there's a lot of things that will take advantage of metal and that is something to consider, right? With these IMAX is, yes, CPU wise, you know, you might be able to find one that's the same as the Mac Mini. But to your point, it's got, you know, this much more powerful GPU in the iMac. And so things like, you know, Photoshop or or any sort of crunching like that you're doing, that's not using the CPU if it's using the GPU. I don't know if handbrake supports GPU or if and if that's faster. I think I remember trying handbrake on the GPU a while back, and it was I think it was not as efficient. But that may have changed now with with faster GPUs and maybe even with metal. So yeah, there's all kinds of things where where the GPU was used for very much non like graphics display stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, fun. So I'm excited about that. At the end of last week's show, we talked about a little bit about the new iPad Air and iPad Mini. Those had just come out that day. And so I'm I'm I'm excited about that. I'm very glad to see the iPad Mini getting some love and like no compromises there, right? It's the same chip that's in the iPhone 10S and 10R, right? It's got the same amount of RAM as the 10R, which is fine, three gigs. I think that that's probably enough and it supports the genuine Apple pencil like that. To me, that's really exciting. I I have long been a fan of the iPad Mini and was sort of sad to see it move on. So I'm very glad to see it come back. So yes. Yes. Yes. Any thoughts about about that, John? They seem to be, although more constrained than. Their Android competitors, it sounds like it's starting to get a bit confusing. Remember the battle days when you had 20 models of performance? I do. It was like what? It's like Gillimilio all over again, man. I'm starting to get the sense I think you and I understand the difference if you do a bit of digging and they help you compare and they do a comparator and stuff like that. But it seems like they're starting to make the product line. Bordering on maybe a bit much for one to handle. You're talking about the iPad product line. Well, well, even the Mac product line. I mean, you know, you got the MacBook Pro, you got the MacBook, you got the MacBook Air and it's like and especially on the lower end, the MacBook Air, I think in the MacBook have quite a bit of overlap. Yeah, even with the you know, it's like, how do you? Yeah, fair. I think it's getting more difficult for and we're good at this stuff. You and I, but even I have a problem. It's like, well, which one do I get a MacBook Pro? I mean, the air is still, you know, it's like, yeah, it's kind of, you know, the processor is on the low end and stuff. But should I get it just a MacBook or a MacBook Pro? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I'm the only one that feels that way. Yeah. But I mean, it's not as bad as it used to be. Right. Right. It's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But hey, it's a better tech for. Yeah, I like the I like I see. I think the iPad product line is is not quite as confused as the Mac product line. I mean, there's the iPad pros and then there's the not iPad pros, which is the air and the mini. Arguably, I think if Apple hadn't used the name mini in the past, it would be iPad Air, you know, 10 and a half and iPad Air 7.9 or whatever. Right. Because they're 9.7. Right. I can't remember which one. They they went with I got. Yeah, I'm looking here. So so the air is 10.5. 10.5. OK, seven and the mini is 7.9. And it's like, yeah. But that like so many different screen sizes. I mean, there's subtle differences in the other features as well. I'll agree. Sure. But but no, you've got many and an air in the non pro category. And then you've got the pro, right, which is far more powerful and far more pricey. And so I think in that in that realm, the iPads fit very well. So yeah. Yeah. I think I think so. I like to me, that makes a lot of sense. And I like having that, you know, smaller form factor iPad mini. I think it's great. The fact that it's got that a 12 in it. I think that's a good thing. Am I missing something on that? No. No, no. OK. So one of my family has one. No, they love it. Yeah. No, it's great for mostly reading news and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's. Yeah. I'm I'm using a ten and a half inch iPad pro, you know, previous gen. And it's fine, but I find it heavy for reading. It's a it's a little a little much for me. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Today's app will will acknowledge that AirPods 2 came out. I don't know that there's a whole lot to say. I haven't tested them yet, but obviously what's like what's different. Hey, they have hey, S lady support in them. And now, well, that's that's actually I mean, for people that use them all the time. No, no, that's great. Yeah. Everybody's integrating that. Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess they say battery life or battery life or something. Yeah. Yeah. Better battery life. And then you can get for either the AirPods gen one or gen two, you can get the the the now the the Qi charging case so that you don't have to plug it in. You can just throw them down on a Qi pad and and charge it up. So so, you know, it's fine, right? It's all good. Evolution. It's evolution. Yeah, I have no there's nothing that I've heard of that would indicate to me that sound quality has changed and and fit seems to be the same. Right. If they if they both fit in the same case, they're going to be the same form factor. So now it's interesting. I've noticed more than once. Now, I've noticed several people wearing them when they're out and about like shopping and stuff like that. But I've noticed some people only wearing one, which I think makes it easier for you to hear what's going on around you. Because that's sometimes important. Yeah. Well, they are interesting choice. It's like even with two in I can hear what's going on around me because they don't seal. But but it not having the, you know, the input into both ears certainly helps, you know, be able to hear what's going on around you when I'm on the phone and they AirPods are by far the best Bluetooth headset I've ever used. But when I'm on the phone, I I only use one at a time. OK, so they're both like right. They both have mics in them. Yeah. OK, yeah. Yeah, which is great. And if I'm on a long call and I wind up, you know, burning out if it starts yelling at me about the battery, it's like, OK, cool. I just put the other one in wait until it pairs up. Take the one that's that's dying out and charge that in the case. Well, yeah, nobody's the wiser. Yep, it's pretty good. All right. Apple had their event today. I want to talk about that was just a media circus. A little bit, but but we're going to wait. We're going to wait because the first thing I want to do is talk about our first sponsor, which is Otherworld Computing at MacSales.com. Now, the reason this is so timely and the reason I wanted to talk about it here in this segment of the show is because OWC already has pricing and kits available for the new 2019 27 inch iMac 5K RAM upgrades. And yes, the RAM in those iMacs is user upgradeable, the same as it was in the previous iMacs. And boy, howdy, can you save some money from these people because you can get a 32 gig kit. So two 16 gig chips from OWC for two twenty nine eighty eight. As of the price list, they sent me for for today. That's 62 percent off the factory price. So that's to me worth it. You're getting, you know, RAM that's lifetime warrantied because that's how OWC is. You're getting RAM that's tested like totally trustworthy and you're saving a ton of money. The 16 gig kit, which is two eight gigs, you say 40 percent versus the factory, the 64 gig kit, you say 55 cent percent versus the factory and and OWC is testing qualification on a one twenty eight gig kit. They say that they can confirm that the system is able to see the one hundred twenty eight gigs installed, what they're doing. And this is what I love about OWC, right? They plugged it in. It works. They didn't stop there. They're continuing their testing to confirm that all the applications and Mac OS itself fully and reliably utilize the double factory maximum rate because the factory maximum is 64 gigs, which is 16 times four. They're obviously going double that and testing it. It's not uncommon at all for Macs to support more RAM than Apple says. But OWC is going through the motions and really like not just going through the motions, they're actually doing it and testing these things before they'll come out and certify it because they want to know that it's working the right way. And this is why John and I go to OWC any time we need to upgrade our Macs. And you can to go to MacsSales.com and and you're good to go. So you know, you're you're in really good hands there. And our thanks to OWC at MacsSales.com for sponsoring this episode. All right. Today's Apple event. Why did they miss it for us? So yeah, I don't know. But it's weird, right? Because Apple always does that. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, OWC. But yes, today's today's events. Different. So I think my favorite part of it was the intro video, which which we have a link to. I think they put it on YouTube. It was like this really kind of old school. I mean, it certainly spoke to the the nostalgic in me, right? You know, where it was they showed the old Rainbow Apple logo and they created this. They had the rousing music, like the action music. You know, it was just like a very exciting list of people they were giving credit to for whatever. I agree. Yeah, it's fantastic. I think one point was the narration by S. Lady. Yeah. It's like, yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. They did a nice job. I don't know. You had a comment about the dress code. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, we were just messing around on Twitter. I noticed that most of the guys were wearing white sold shoes where the color of the shoe matched the color of their shirt. So that was a very interesting thing. But anyway, right. To me, you know, there were two things. There was a lot of fluff in this show, and they trotted out a lot of celebrities that to me seemed to be pitching their their concept ideas to us, the public. When I think Apple already approved them all. So that was a little weird. But anyway, it's fine. You know, Apple celebrities, fine, whatever. There's two things that I'm trying to decide between them that as to which I'm more excited about. So this Apple News Plus thing, the $10 a month subscription that adds magazines and some newspapers. And of course, they're trying to get more, I think is is a pretty powerful thing, you know, for 120 bucks a year. If they have everything that's of interest to you, that's a great price. Like it and of course, it puts it all in your iPad. And if you are part of a family group at same 10 bucks covers your family. Like, I think that's a that's a big, big deal. And I think it will. I think it's a big deal right out of the gate. And I think it will continue to evolve. And I hope it will continue to evolve. So I'm excited about News Plus. Your thoughts on that, John. I think it's good to be it be more compelling to me. Thing is here, you know, I'm in an area that's populated. So you would expect local news sources. So I applaud them having a. Greater presence of magazines and other content. But no, I guess that's good that they provide better access. But my the need I haven't seen fulfilled quite as well is local content. So I agree. And it would be great to see them to see them do that. You know, I guess, you know, since most local content, most most people don't realize this, and it's certainly not true in every area. But most local newspapers have all sold out and are actually most of them are published from a company in Dallas. There's there's one come I can't think of the name of it, but that they publish most of the local news for the country and have, you know, correspondence in in local areas that obviously go and cover some events or whatever. But but it's all sort of handled through whatever this company's name in Dallas off the top of my head, I can't remember. But tribute. Is it tribute? They're a big one, too. They're they're they're a very large broadcasters throughout the country. I don't think it's a tribute, but I think it begins with an S. But but you might be right about that. But OK, no tributes in Chicago. OK, regardless, there are like a lot of local news isn't actually local companies producing it. And therefore, that means that Apple has to partner with less people to cover, you know, to include the local news into this news plus thing. So I think there's a real possibility there for for this to to work out. And I hope that Apple and these companies can kind of work together on it because I agree with you, local news would be would be very handy. And it's something we really lose sight of, I feel like, in today's world. So, yeah, I mean, otherwise, it's a, you know, it's a portal to content, which I think that's almost good if somebody gets paid. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they highlighted some, you know, pretty well known publications that are part of the club. So so it looks, yeah, if you want to bundle your your news. And I usually go to aggregators, like, you know, news.google.com or news.yahoo.com, which, you know, gives you a mix as well. But they're they're doing it for you. And actually, I do, I see more and more people tweeting Apple news links for articles rather than direct. Yes. Right. So. Yeah. So so it looks like the platform and I even use the, you know, which I guess is an extension of it, their stock app has business news, which I think is sure part of the news feed. And actually, I find that quite useful. Or yeah, that app is is pretty good. And so so there's that. And and I think that is now available as part of iOS 12.2 and Mac OS 10.14 point, I want to say four, if I'm remembering correctly. And those are out now. I have not installed Mac OS 10.14.4. I have installed iOS 12.2, but haven't really played with it yet because we've been, you know, recording the show. Sinclair, thanks to Alex in the chat room at MacCicab.com slash stream, where where he has answered our question about the company that's publishing news in Dallas. I'm pretty sure you're right, Alex. Yeah, Sinclair. But the other thing that really made a difference, I think, today is this announcement of Apple Pay for Transit starting to roll out in the US. I think Portland is going to be the first one, Portland, Oregon, which is the Portland most people think of. I live an hour from Portland, Maine. So I always ask, but Portland, Oregon is where it's going to roll out. And then New York City and Chicago later this year and hopefully more US cities after that. So I think a lot of I think this is lost on a lot of folks here in the US. If you haven't experienced it elsewhere, it's fantastic. So when we went to London a few years ago, they have had it on the tube and and really all of their public transit. And what was fantastic is we got off the plane and we were able to ride the the tube, which is their trains, their subways, essentially, and and their buses without needing to go and get like anything. We didn't even need to go get currency, let alone, you know, a metro card or a tube card or anything like that, which they call an oyster card, you just use Apple Pay. And it the cool part there is that, you know, you get discounts for riding more frequently or whatever. And with your Apple Pay, those discounts just automatically, you know, it knows that you calculate up one tip for anybody that's traveling in London or using it in London. Your Apple Pay, each device that you have generates a different number, credit card number for your credit card on Apple Pay on that device. So even if you're using the same credit card on your phone and on your watch, they will have different numbers. And therefore, at least in London, you'll they are treated as different accounts because they are different account numbers. So just bear that in mind. But but being able to, you know, being able to use this in in, you know, cities like I'm very much looking forward to when it comes to New York. It would obviously be excited if it came to Boston, too. I think it it makes a big difference for folks that live there. But I especially think it makes a big difference for tourists or people that are there just occasionally, you know, you go to any time I go to New York, it's like, oh, where's my my metro card? Like, I got to find this thing and I don't know how much money it has on it. So I've got to check and it's just a, you know, it's just an added hassle. Whereas I just want to get on the train. Here's the thing. Yeah. So MTA runs both the train in Connecticut and the subway. But you have to use different cards. It's like the stupid thing is you can even buy a combination train ticket slash metro card from the dispensers on the platform. Why are there two different ways to pay for it? It's all the same line. It's like a cooperative between us and New York. So it's like, why are there two different ways to pay for it? And then we have our city bus system. Same thing. I don't know that Apple pay is going to solve this problem. In fact, I don't know. It's it's local. Yeah. Governments or bureaucracy that has to figure it out because you could. I mean, there's no. I mean, we pay for our train. You've used the app. I pay for my train ticket with Apple pay. So why can't I just do it directly? Why do I have to go? Sure. Well, they need to like, they'll need to on the subways and everything. This is an infrastructure change, right? They need to put NFC readers on all of the trains and or turnstiles at the very least, you know, depending on what you're talking about. I got the expense and the logistics. So yeah, so it's a logistical thing, but it works out really, really well. Somebody I think it was Alex in the in the chat room earlier was saying that Japan's had it for a long time, too. And it's fantastic there as well. So yeah, it's good stuff. It's good to swipe and go, man, or tap and go. Tap and go. That's that is what it is. Yeah, you just get on. Yeah, you just don't mess with it. You're good to go. Oh, I think it's it's fantastic. Yeah, that's good. All right, we have some questions to answer. And yeah, so let's let's get to them. Actually, the the the next thing that I would like to do, though, John is I want to talk about our next sponsor, if that's OK by you. Absolutely. All right. Look, John and I are very blessed when it comes to the thick lush hair that we have on our heads. We know we're fortunate in that regard and we know that many of you are not. And that's why I'm happy that we were able to partner with our sponsor. Hair Club at Hair Club dot com slash MGG, where you can go today to get a free hair analysis and a free take home hair care kit. Confidence is important, right? And sometimes one change like this can make all the difference. Hair Club knows this. And that's why they're inviting you to become part of the Hair Club family to see how getting the most out of your hair can change your life. They understand the emotions that you're feeling. They know the questions that you have. 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One key does not work. And I'm wondering if there's a place I can get one. I'd rather not go through the effort to install an entire new keyboard. Thanks for any suggestions. Yeah. So I found I've never had to buy one, but I did find a company at replacement laptop keys dot com. And there is a link there at slash MacBook. So I will put a link there. They seem legit based on where I found out about them and all that stuff. I can't promise anything, of course, but because we haven't used it, but it sure seems like a good place to to go. So who? What's that? Who's that replacement laptop keys dot com? Oh, OK. No, they're good. Yeah, you've used them. Oh, well, no, but I search in Google and they come up. OK. Yeah, right. They look they look if they were thieves, you would think that Google wouldn't, you know, post their ads. Sure. They the the the trick, of course, they've come up in the past. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a tall order. I mean, I've, as you recall, I replaced the keyboard one time, but that's like sure to be like a hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It could be a pain in the neck, if not impossible on some machines. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Macworld UK has an article detailing how to pop keys off of a keyboard and put them back in. That's it's sort of a tricky process. If it's got that little butterfly under under it or whatever, you know, whatever it is for your laptop, I would actually recommend taking the key off first before you order a new one and and just make sure that it's not that just that some debris or a gook or whatever has gotten in there because you might take it apart and realize you can actually fix this without a new key. But you might need the new key. And that's where that's where replacement laptop keys comes from. So so yeah, the mechanism is really weird. It's usually a combination of little posts. And I don't know what to call them, but it can get. I mean, it's usually designed so you can usually pop it out and pop it in without much effort. You've got to get the alignment right. You've got to get it right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, it's not all together fun. But, you know, it can work. Apple's got Apple's got they've also got a keyboard service program for MacBook and MacBook Pros. But base that that's not going to affect Joe here or Joe's friend that only goes back as far as the early 2015 laptops. But I'll put a link to that here in the in the show notes, too, just in case anybody else is is having that. But then last week, I actually thought that my keyboard was broken. But I'll tell you what I did. What you do know what I did. You can accidentally activate mouse keys on a Mac. Oh, mouse keys is an assistive mode where it replaces the trackpad with keyboard equivalents. The thing is, if you have this engaged, then you don't know it. It would appear that your keyboard and trackpad are failing. Yeah, yeah, because you hit certain and I was like, wait, the M key doesn't work. It's like what? And then I'm like, all right, let me log in as another user. And I did. And it's like, oh, now it works. I'm like, OK, it's software. It's not hardware. It's software. And I got to figure out what I screwed up. And eventually I I found the solution. But if you ever run into this, I've happened had it happen like twice to me. Huh, right. Accident. I think if you hit the shift key five times, that doesn't. Who knows? You may accidentally do that. I think that's right. Yeah. No, that's a good thing to know. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, disabling mouse keys. We'll put a we'll put a link in the show notes. I think Apple's got an article about this. I can't be the only one. You know, I'm sure you're not the only one. That's yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah there. Well, Apple doesn't have an article, but somebody else does. So I'll put a I'll put a link to that. Yeah, good stuff. Cool. All right, let's we talked about the media event today. So we've got a couple of media questions. Jurgen asks, he says, I'm afraid I messed up big time. I'm a big music lover and have many, many hundreds of CDs. I ripped them all in the past and converted them to MP3. When Apple Music was introduced, I subscribed and had it analyze my whole library. Since I was convinced that Apple Music, Apple loves music and would do a better job in converting the songs, I swapped out all of my songs to the Apple Music matched version. OK, that's fine. After this initial step, all the songs had either matched or uploaded as iCloud status and everything was fine. Up until last week, when I looked at the iCloud status of some of my songs, I haven't done that for years. And we shocked at what I saw. There are now many, many songs that have no iCloud status at all or are listed as no longer available. They still play fine in iTunes on my computer where the library is located because I have the files, but they don't play on other devices via Apple Music. Did I make a mistake in deleting my own versions and replacing them with Apple Music? Is there a way to convert those Apple Music versions that are still on my local hard disk into versions that are no longer connected to Apple Music? Or do I have to dig deep and search the box with an old hard drive to see if I'm lucky and have an old backup? So I think you're going to be OK, Jurgen. If these songs are matched or were matched and maybe aren't anymore, then I think you're going to be fine as long as you have the the files that you downloaded from Apple. Look in Song Info and for anybody else following along, highlight a song, then go to the edit menu, go to Song Info and look at the file tab, which is the one all the way to the right. If kind is listed as a matched AAC audiophile, you're OK. However, if it's listed as Apple Music AAC audiophile, then that indicates that it's DRM'd. It has, you know, some copy protection on it and only will work on that computer in iTunes or or maybe QuickTime. But I don't think so. I think it's got to be iTunes. But I don't I think if they were matched, they're you're not going to see that they're just going to be matched files that you downloaded from Apple with no DRM whatsoever. So I think you're OK. Those files are able to be played anywhere that AAC files can be played. But if you want to convert them into something else, first go to iTunes, Preferences, General. And in the section about CDs, it says like when a CD is inserted, there's an import settings button. Click that choose your import format there. Choose the format that you want to convert these files to there. It could be Apple lossless. It could be MP3. You get to set all your options, hit OK. And I think you have to hit OK again to get back to the list. Now highlight the song or songs that you want to convert. Go to the file menu and choose convert. And the last option in the menu should offer to convert it to, for example, Apple lossless, if you chose to Apple lossless or MP3, if you chose MP3, and it will convert those. And that should do it. You might also be able to do this without converting the songs. I think you'd have to like take the songs and like copy them somewhere so you don't lose the song files and then remove them from your Apple Music library so that it removes them not just from your computer, but from everywhere and then re add these songs back in. I think it will upload them because it's not going to be able to match them anymore. And once you do that, then your other devices should be able to get them. I think so. Those are my thoughts on this, John, any thoughts by by you, my friend? The hoops that you recommend we jump through sound to be about the best solution possible. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, you have to go that way. But yeah, I'm guessing what happened. I should check my stuff, too. I'm guessing what happened with Juergen's songs is there are songs that Apple did have the rights to, you know, have as part of Apple Music and now doesn't for whatever reason anymore. So, yeah, so there you go. Yeah. Craziness, it's great. I haven't seen that on mine, but I honestly haven't looked. So I could be I could be wrong on this. You want to take us to Colby, my friend? Here's a head scratcher from Colby. I'm going to try to condense this here. OK, very specific. OK, yeah. Oh, so he has a but the relevant parts here, I think. So Apple TV, fourth generation. Here's the problem. There's an app that you can run on this generation, Apple TV. I do not have this. I have the third generation, which didn't support apps, but the fourth generation does. So here's the problem. At one point he signed up for Direct TV, which typically last I checked Dave is a satellite service. But I guess they also offer an app. Where you can tune this stuff in, which a lot of other people do this HBO and all these guys. Right. Yeah. Here's the problem, though, is that when he runs the app. Sometimes it'll feed local channels for one area of. So he's in the state of Colorado, but it'll feed him local channels from an area that is not his local area. So then he was like, well, what about location services and actually searched around. And apparently this is a problem that they tried to address a year ago where their app. And so it's an Apple TV fourth generation thing, kind of, because that model has location services. Mine does not. I'm actually not sure, you know, I was digging around a mine to try to find out how does it know where it is. And like if I ran weather.com would be like, so somehow it knows probably due to my IP address. And I think that's what they're using. And confusing with his service, because I think he suspects a lot of times IP address changes and sometimes it may be located where your ISP is. And I think that's what's happening here is that it's confusing the IP. So the thing is, I think it's a bug in their app. It's like, guys, you have to be able to figure out the local channel lineup. But he mentioned that his iPad and his iPhone, which I guess also run the app are able to do this properly, but I think the reason that's the case, Dave, is that they have GPS and the Apple TV does not. So even the location services tries to do the best it can. If there's no, and there's no GPS chip last I checked in the Apple TV fourth generation. And I don't even know, have you messed with that setting on yours? You have one, right? I do, but I've never run into this problem. So I haven't had to dig, but I think your analysis of this is spot on that, you know, the Apple TV can only get location information from IP address. Like that's the only. The apps that you've run on yours, whether they be built in or third party, you've never had a geocoding error. No, I mean, I've definitely run apps that care about geocoding. Like for example, you get different options on Netflix if you're in the US versus, you know, for example, in London or whatever, right? You know, there's just different things that Netflix can stream to you. But like it gets my, my guess is that it's getting my location wrong because I've seen it, you know, I've looked up my IP and sometimes it says it's two towns north of me and sometimes it says it's like, you know, 40 minutes south of me in Massachusetts. But both of those are, you know, still in the United States. So it's granular enough that it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? So you've never been denied access to content. No. Which is happening here because, you know, like especially sports, I think, have blackouts and stuff like that. And if you're in the wrong area, it's like, well, I should be able to watch this, why can't I? Yeah, no, that's it. I think that's, I think you're right. Yeah, the IP address. And honestly, I mean, there's no other way for an app to, on the Apple TV to get location information because the Apple TV doesn't have a GPS in it. So it has to use IP. But maybe there's a hint, GPS. Yeah, I don't think there is. Well, remember that? Well, remember, oh, remember back in the day, I think it was the iPod, there was an iPod touch. That's right. That's right. That they had not initially enabled the Bluetooth radio in it. And then once they've released an iOS update, it was like, what? Yeah, that's right. Look at the devices from us. So maybe there is, we just don't know about it. It's an Apple. Maybe, it's possible. I mean, it could be baked into the Wi-Fi chipset or something, but getting GPS signals inside your house would also be awful. If you want to, if you want to send us an anonymous tip or a piece of information, Dave, you know, you could send it to feedback at macgeekab.com. You could go to feedback at macgeekab.com, just in case John's speaking too quietly for you. It's feedback. Right. And like my good friend said, and I'm going to speak up here, feedback at macgeekab.com. So yeah, I think, you know, I don't know that there's a perfect solution. I know Direct TV is probably under contracts with, you know, the providers to not let this stuff leak beyond the right areas, but it's not uncommon at all. Is that it? There's a contract that, okay, you can't broadcast this content in this area because we have it. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, they have, well, they have the rights. I mean, well, they have the rights to broadcast in a certain area. It's just how, like it's how those things work. But I don't know that there's a better answer here because internet service providers routinely, like they get, you know, they use blocks of IP addresses and they, you know, like I said, I mean, I've seen it where my IP addresses says it's, I mean, Lowell, Massachusetts. Yeah. Well, here was my awful answer, is stream the content from your iPhone or your iPad to your Apple TV. You could. But that's not the way you should have to solve this problem. That's right. So Alex in the chat room is curious, and thank you, Alex. You've been, I know there's others that have been vocal today too, but it seems like Alex has the timely information. He suggests either if you're using a VPN for your entire network, turn it off because that will, you know, mislead the geo fencing or the geo detection. And if you're not, maybe you should use a VPN for your entire network so that you can target it to be that, you know, in certain places. Right. Yeah. I didn't mention this, but he mentioned that when he's using his iOS devices, he is using one of our sponsors, ExpressVPN, I believe. Yeah. Well, but iOS will bypass. But he says it, right. And that I think the GPS chip is. That's exactly, is prioritized. That's right. VPN reported location. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So a VPN could break this or fix it, you know, but it alters that. Do they make ExpressVPN for Apple TV? No, they don't. They don't. Yeah. That would be interesting though, right? Yeah. Like iOS, I mean, it's kind of iOS, right? Oh, it is iOS. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's just different features. Yeah. All right. Keith had a really interesting question earlier today and I'm actually really happy that we got a solution. It's imperfect, but sometimes imperfect is better than nothing at all. So Keith writes, he says, I need to nuke and pave my iPad Pro and start from scratch, not restoring from a backup. Okay. He says, however, I would like to keep my lock screen image and my main wallpaper image the same, but I can't find the originals because I first set these up on an original iPad I've long since lost. They may be buried in my photos library, but that has over 20,000 images. And although I've looked, I can't find them. What I really want to do is save them so that I can put them back after I've blitzed the iPad, but I'm struggling. He says, I bought amazing some time ago on your recommendations, but I can't find anything in there which will allow me to save the lock and home background images, but perhaps I'm missing it. Can you help? So the answer is, thankfully, yes. I found a couple of posts, one on Stack Exchange, it seems really, really helpful, that talk about a few ways that it, including digging into the backups. And these files are stored in the backups and the Stack Exchange article sort of talks about how to dig into Apple's backups and find them your, but it's buried. Now, here's the thing though, even if you get them out of there, they are saved in a format called CP Bitmap. And the presumption is that this is because of the perspective and cropping and all of that stuff. So that makes things interesting. And we'll get to that in a bit of a minute here, but in any event, IMAZING can do this. I talked to the folks at IMAZING and they said, you go into File System which you can do with your backups in IMAZING and you go to Backup, Home Domain, Library, Springboard and there's files in there, there are JPEG files and these CP Bitmap files. You want the CP Bitmap files, the JPEG files are just thumbnails so that's not gonna make you happy, but you pull these CP Bitmaps out. However, and then there's actually, there's two sets of CP Bitmaps. One set is labeled with original and that's the non-cropped versions, right? Cause you can take these and crop them when you make them in your background image. So take the non-cropped versions and they're gonna be big, tens of megabytes a piece and then you need to convert them. I hear you whipping out your knife to peel another layer of this onion. Yeah. No, you're right. Because Graphic Converter says it will read CP Bitmap images, but it won't. Not these because Keith tried and Keith failed. Well, he failed with Graphic Converter. Graphic Converter failed, Keith did not fail because Keith kept going and Keith found a way using a couple of terminal commands to convert these images and then Keith went to the next level and Keith posted in our forums how to do exactly all of this. So we'll put a link to the post that he put in our forums and then it solves this. I'm not gonna talk through the conversion because it's not gonna matter if I talk it through. It's better to read terminal commands and all of this. So, and he's even put the amazing locations and all that in there. You don't need to remember any of this. You just need to know that there's a post on the MacGeek app forums that talks about how to use iMazing to extract your background and lock screen images and turn them, because what you need to do is even though your new iPad or your iPad, you know, your fresh install on your iPad is gonna want these as CP Bitmaps in the end or it's gonna turn them into them. It doesn't want them as CP Bitmaps. You have to feed them to them as JPEGs. So you need to get them back into JPEG format so that you can feed them to your iPad so that it can do this magic again. So, fun stuff, huh, Mr. Braun? I think I learned about 12 new things there. Yeah, exactly. One question that's right. What a mess. Yeah. Sponsible for this outrage. Yeah, it's interesting that this is like, that there's no way to just export these out. Yeah. Yeah, cause I'd found myself in this scenario before and I've just, I've punted. Like if I'm gonna wipe a device, it's like, oh man, I love that image. It's like they're using a special proprietary... It's not proprietary, it's just special. Let's just put it... CP Bitmap, I've never heard of it. JPEG I've heard of, okay. But it's not proprietary. There's a difference between uncommon and proprietary. It's uncommon, okay, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's still... Yeah, it's crazy. Ah, so I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But you know, so... What's next? What's next? Let's see, what's next? After all this, what's next? You know what I wanna do next is I wanna talk about our third sponsor for this episode if that's okay by you. Outstanding. All right, we all know how much fun it is to manage our own devices, right? I mean, let's face it, we enjoy that stuff at some level, but at some level, we don't. And when it stops getting fun at all, is when we have to manage other people's devices. Well, Jamf can change that for you with Jamf Now because Jamf Now makes it easy to set up, manage, and protect not only your Apple devices, but the devices for all of the folks that work for you and that you have to support. The people that you're responsible for in your organization or maybe your clients, this is what Jamf is for. You can check your digital inventory, you can distribute wifi and email settings, you can deploy apps, enforce passcodes, protect company data. You can even lock or wipe a device as needed from anywhere with Jamf Now. It helps you manage your devices so you can focus on your business instead. This is the trick, right? There's only so much time in the day and you need to be efficient about everything that you're doing when it comes to tech support and managing devices. Man, that can be a time sink. Even just sinking, time with the person to do it to get in the same place with Jamf Now, you don't have to because you can remotely keep track of your own Macs, your own iPads, your own iPhones, but also all of those for the folks that you need to take care of. And what's even cooler, MaciCab listeners can start securing your business today by managing your first three devices for free. You can add more, starting at just two bucks a month per device. Now, there's a special URL you have to go to. Go create your free account today at jamf.com slash mgg. That's jamf.com slash mgg and take your efficiency back into your own hands. Trust me, you will love this. And it's free to start going and actually free for your first three devices forever. Jamf.com slash mgg are thanks to Jamf Now for sponsoring this episode. All right, John, we talked about European travel and you know, like people are planning their vacations now. In fact, I got two text messages while we're doing this episode from two people asking me questions about, hey, what about this and what about that? In addition to having already prepped this question from listener David. So David asks very simply, I'm going to Central Europe. He's going to Romania and Moldova this summer. He says, what thing should I take into consideration? Sims, data, power, et cetera. So we talked about this when I did that European trip that I mentioned, but that was three years ago on Mackey Gev 614. And we'll put a link to 614 in the show notes for sure. However, but not much has changed. Some things have changed. Really what's changed is cellular stuff. So let's talk about that. Power is easy. That's probably left. You're right. Yeah, power hasn't changed. Let's check. Power hasn't changed. Most adapters, and if not, I think 12 South is one of our favorite companies. I wouldn't go to 12 South. I would, I have a much better option for people. I mean, not that I wouldn't go to 12 South. It's that I would go to Rick Steve's first. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I had a 12 South one that's worked for me, but Apple also offers an adapter kit. Yeah. The problem with those is they're all customized to one type of device, right? You know, like the 12 South one is only for your laptop, you know, deal. You don't, you don't need to, you don't need to, most of our devices don't require us to convert the power. They just require us to adapt the plug. And that's the important thing to remember, like your power supplies for your iPhone and your Macs and really everything except like a hairdryer and a curling iron, which I'm going to advise you simply not bring with you. No, because it's like. Well, the high powered and it's, the conversion is more difficult, I think, to get it. Way more difficult. You're going to, it would be cheaper to just buy a hairdryer when you get there, but chances are wherever you're staying is probably going to have one, you know. But in terms of you and you look at the adapt you have and you look at the voltage and the Amperage range, you see what the input says. And if it says 120 to 240, then you're probably good. And the frequency, of course, that that's usually right. It's got to go between 50 and 60 Hertz. That's right. Yep. So, but you're, you know, your Mac adapters, your iPhone adapters, your little chargers or whatever, those are fine. So really all you need to do is adapt the plug and Rick Steve's store, they still have them. I bought them when I went years ago. They have adapters for all the different, you know, countries and types for a buck a piece. They're not voltage converters, they're just adapters. But so I bought, there were four of us going. So I bought four of each so that we each had one. There was never a scenario where we were using all four, but it was handy to have, you know. And I wound up buying, you know, we went to, we were in Barcelona, Paris and London. And so Barcelona and Paris both used what's called the Continental Europe plugs. And then in the UK, they use a completely different thing. And so I had to buy a second set of adapters for that. But they were all like a buck a piece. So don't drive yourself crazy with all the expensive stuff. Just go to go to Rick Steve's by the, you know, just buy the stuff you need. I've loaned these out to friends because, you know, I don't need them if I'm at home. And they've worked flawlessly for everybody. Yep. It really is just, I mean, you could build your own. I don't recommend that, but you could, you know, cause it really is just adapting, that's all. Yeah. No, no. Good advice. The other people mentioned offer a subset of this, but it sounds like they offered all for a really good price. So yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, they're, it's great. Yeah, exactly. Now the nightmare is phone and data services. And I'll let you lead with that because the last time I did that, I had a Verizon, I was in Paris and I had a Verizon phone CDMA, which is a popular overseas. And I actually got like extension phone. They offered a way for me to get a phone that was like forwarded from my other phone. Sure. I could take and receive calls when I was in Paris. And it wasn't terribly expensive. Of course, now, I mean, I, I still don't think that's an issue with CDMA like, you know. CDMA doesn't exist in Europe. Yeah. Well, in that the phones handle both GSM and CDMA. Yeah. My phone speaks both. And LTE. Yeah, that, so right. So you need to be using a phone that supports GSM and LTE and or LTE to be able to work in Europe. That from that forward, you then need to decide, do you want to use your existing US-based carrier while you're there? Or do you just want to get a SIM while you're there and use a, you know, one of the European carrier? The downside to using a different SIM, of course, is your phone number changes while you're there. You get the phone number of that SIM to benefit is cost. Right. So if you're a T-Mobile subscriber, and it's worth checking with whoever your provider is, but T-Mobile, for most of their plans, offers essentially free roaming. I don't want to say worldwide because I'm sure there's places where they don't, but most of the places that any one in the US would consider traveling to on a regular basis. And it's like in the hundreds, the number of countries, it's just included, doesn't cost you any extra. You use your minutes and your data while you're traveling and you're good to go. However, if you're not with T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T kind of screw you. I think AT&T screws you more, but it might not be any different. AT&T, you can pay 10 bucks a day per device. So if you're traveling with a family of four, this starts to get really expensive, really fast. But- Now, question. Yeah. The newer X-Series iPhones support dual SIMs. Correct. Their way to retain your existing number and add a data SIM, a data e-SIM, is that possible? Yes. And this? That's, you're absolutely right. Yeah, no, so that's the other way to go is to, now we say these phones are dual SIM. They don't actually, unless you bought it in China, they don't actually let you put two SIMs in, but they do let you use the e-SIM. And many, many carriers will support the e-SIM and you can just sign up for service in whatever country you're in and assign it to your second SIM. Now, you need to be really careful, though, that you're not using your US-based SIM for data or texting or calls while you're there because you're gonna be paying whatever these roaming fees are and that's gonna add up. But you can have it, yeah. And so, it just depends on whether convenience, where you fall on that spectrum of, do you want the convenience of having the same phone number while you're in Europe? You probably don't care for the most part. There's one place where you might care in that texting and that's why years ago, I set my phone to all of my iMessages from my email address, not from my phone number because that way, when we traveled to Europe, it was no big deal. It was just, oh yeah, people still iMessaged me, it was fine, no problem. Because if people iMessaged my phone number, I would not get that while I was in Europe, but I would get iMessages to my email. Yeah, so, but for regular texting, the green bubble people for us iPhone folks, that will not work. So it depends on how important that is and it really, when we were there, the only time it was important, there was a, we were in Paris on their best deal days, what we call it here, but they're fit the national, I think, but their version of the US is 4th of July, their Independence Day. And I think I'm not misclassifying that and if I am, I'm sorry. We were there in Paris and there was a bombing, I think, in Nice that day. And so people, friends at home were naturally concerned and we had some folks that were texting us and couldn't get us because we didn't have our AT&T sims in our phones. They were in a little baggie in my bag, you know. So we didn't get those texts until we got home. But other than that, it really didn't matter. But there is one scenario that you need to think about if you're going to just go with, essentially turning off or removing your US SIM and using a European SIM money-wise, you can get a 30-day SIM for like 20 bucks and you're good to go throughout Europe. So, you know, cost-wise, it's way cheaper to just get a SIM. You can do it with the eSIM or you can get a SIM when you get off the plane and the airports, they have them. The deal is you have to buy these SIMs and the service when you're in the country, there's no way for them to sell it to you before you leave the US, so that gets a little weird. But otherwise, it's fine. However, once you get this new SIM, you are probably going to want to use Uber and Lyft while you are there. And I didn't think about this until it happened and then I thought about it. But Uber and Lyft have your phone number tied to your account so that your driver can text and or call you. They will not be texting or calling you if Uber still has your US-based number in your account. So, as soon as you get your new phone number in whatever country you're in, go into the Uber app, go into the Lyft app and re-authenticate that number. It'll probably text you something and you type in the code like you always do and then you're good to go. And set yourself a calendar reminder to undo that when you get back home because you've run into the same problem coming back. Didn't we just talk about this? Why do you have so many problems finding out where I am? It's so easy. I'm not sure what you're saying. They're not having trouble finding where you are. It's that if they want to call you. They're using a flawed... What? They should be able to figure out where you are and where to call you. No, you're missing this. They can total, Uber knows where you are. It uses GPS. But if your driver wants to call you, they call the number that Uber has on file. And if that number is not the number that's assigned to your phone at that moment, the call will not go through. All right, if you assign it to the SIM, I understand. Yeah, it's not a location thing. It's just like, it's literally a phone number thing. The number on file. And actually, I've been playing with T-Mobile about my data SIM and my iPad, and they're still having problems because they're like, who are you? And it's like, well, here, I mean... Here's the number. Yeah. So you've got to assign the... You just need to make sure that Uber and Lyft have your numbers. And other than that, I think you're going to be fine. Yeah, yeah. Another service to think about is a service called GigSky. They are eSIM, Apple SIM compatible. So if you've got a dual SIM iPhone, you can use GigSky. GigSky for data only, they don't have voice service. But to your point, John, makes it really easy. You can do it all right inside your phone. You don't have to bother getting a SIM. It's all right there. And you can just sign right up. So we've used GigSky before, and it's fantastic, at gigesky.com. We'll put a link in the show notes to that too. So, yeah. Anything more on this one? Time to move on? I don't know where we are. Yeah, I don't have any big traffic coming up. Cool. Yeah, I don't. Chicago, maybe. I don't think I do either. I mean, in Manhattan, actually, there's a new show you may have gotten an email about it. Cool. I didn't, I don't know. But sure, what's the name of the show? Oh, it's some security thing. It's a new, I think showstoppers thing. It's like, hey, we're doing a security kind of thing near sometime. And I'm like, okay. Cool. One, I think we've got, oh, I do wanna remind everyone sending your mail workflows to us. We told you how to find us, of course, but that we asked last episode, we've gotten some great workflows from you folks. And I think we're gonna have a lot of fun kind of sharing these and distilling them down together. And perhaps increasing the efficiency of the workflows we all use. So I'm really looking forward to it, but send them to us. We already told you the email address, but if you're a premium subscriber, you can email us at premium at macgeekab.com. And if you're not a premium subscriber and you wanna learn about it, you can visit us at macgeekab.com slash premium. And if you are a premium subscriber and your payment came in this week, I want to thank you. So we had a one-time $100 payment from Steve from California. So thank you, Steve. We had $10 monthly payments from Tony from Massachusetts, Ken from Kailua, David from Illinois, Clive from West Sussex, Jeff from Indiana, Joseph from Georgia, Scott from California, and Robert from Alabama. So thanks to all of you. And then on the $25 every six month plan, we had contributions from William from New York, Jeff from Maine, David from Kentucky, from Nando from Pennsylvania, Andrew from Honolulu, Royce also from Hawaii, Lee from Maine actually is on the $50 every six month plan because you can adjust your amount. So thank you. Lyndon from Kent, Michael from Oklahoma, Brian from Arizona, and James from Texas. So thanks to all of you for being premium subscribers and supporting the show and all of that good stuff. I think I have one last thing, John, that we have time for today just because we spent so much time talking. Apple created news that was sort of relevant for our show here, I know, it's crazy. But listener Chris asked, he said, back in show 748, you mentioned that you would update us on how your experience with using the OB 200 and Google voice was going. He says, as a current Comcast Xfinity VoIP customer, I'm considering following your path into free VoIP service with this. How is it going? Any gotchas or tips? And my apologies, I totally remember saying this and I thought I had gone through it but I haven't. It has been working splendiferously. It really is blissful. In fact, I'm kind of kicking myself, as we always do, for not having done this sooner. It is so much more pleasant dealing with the Google voice stuff than it was dealing with the Xfinity stuff. Money aside, it's just a better experience for us because we can get the email sent and the notification sent the way we wanted. Xfinity's notifications were always kind of weird and wonky but for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about here, I had a VoIP line from our cable company which for us is Xfinity and they started charging me for it. It was free as part of our bundle for a while and then that stopped. And so it went, I think it went to 15 bucks a month for a short period of time and then was going to 25 and was like, okay, we got to do away with that because either one of those numbers is not okay. And I knew that Google voice was free. The trick is that you cannot port directly from... The only thing that you can port into Google voice is a mobile number. That's a better way to say it. So I had to do an intermediary step. I ported my phone number from Xfinity to T-Mobile because I was able to get a $10 T-Mobile SIM and then I ported this number from T-Mobile into Google voice and Google voice charged 20 bucks. So there was $30 worth of porting fees essentially one to buy the T-Mobile SIM. I signed up for a $3 a month plan. So $33 and it was fine. And that took all of about, I want to say five days maybe total to do both of them together. They say it takes three days each, but it didn't quite. So I think it was four or five days. And then once I got it into Google voice I used this thing that a fellow listener recommended which is called the OB200, OBI 200. And it's this great little box that plugs into your ethernet port on your, you just plug it in ethernet into your router to your network or whatever. And then you log into it with a web interface and sign into your Google voice account and it maps up and syncs up to your Google voice account. And then you plug, it's got an ethernet port on it and it's got an RJ11 port. I plugged it into our phone lines in the house and boom. Everything's good to go. The phone rings. When it rings, you can make calls going out just like having a landline without paying anyone, anything, then it's wonderful. So I think it was, that was about 50 bucks for that thing. There's, we'll put an Amazon link in the show notes. There's, they come in white and black. I bought the white one cause it was 50 when I got it. I checked the other day that's 65 but the black one's 50. So get the black one. You know, it doesn't really matter what color it is. It's going to sit behind your router. The things, I don't know, half the size of an iPhone, it's tiny. So it's just big enough to plug a couple of ports in, to plug a couple cables in. It works great. So I think what I spent, so $50, $83, right? All in. Yeah, I think that'll take three and a half months and I'm almost, I'm almost there. So yeah, it's pretty good. You were talking about doing this too cause you said your phone company started charging you, right? No, no, I have an intro deal. So I have VoIP through my cable modem. Yeah. Optimum, and it's 15 bucks a month. Oh, so they are charging you. Okay, so you could make this back in. You know, I always look at the deal, they're going to jack it up eventually. And then, you know, we got to do the dance, you know, just do the dance every year. Yeah, well, we'll just do this dance and then you're done, right? Cause, right, if you do it for 83 bucks, less than six months, less than six months. Well, so I'm with you. Actually, that's a fair concern. No, it's not, but what do you use Amazon? They're monitoring your traffic. You know this. Of course. I mean, don't you find, you know, I've seen so many people say this that I, I like to believe that they don't do this, but it's just too weird. So you're talking about something in front of your S person or A person, and all of a sudden you see an ad for something related to that, like when you're surfing the web. It's like, that's just too weird, right? Yeah, yeah. It's just me. No, no, no, it's weird. I find that Google- I like to think they're not listening to me, but are they listening to me and showing the ads for things that I may want to buy? I mean, that's okay, but just let me know what you're doing. Yeah, right. Yeah, just let us know. That's right. Yeah, I find their spam filtering for phone calls and, you know, text messages and all that on Google Voice is fantastic. I'm glad you mentioned that. So the thing is, there have been articles. As of late, the Verizon is gonna offer free spam phone calls. We talked about it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, all of a sudden I noticed, like since we last talked, I'm now seeing, and I'm not running their app, but I'm seeing things in my incoming call registry that either says potential spam or unknown caller or the name of somebody because somebody spamming is still using the, let's use the first six digits of your phone number to make you think it's somebody you know. Now it's coming up with names of people that I don't know that are in the same town that my number is in, which is Narwalk, but it's like, I don't know who this guy is. Sure. So I think rather than requiring you to get their app, they just baked it into their, whatever, their cell software. Yeah, right. Your incoming call software. Right. All of a sudden I'm like, well, why are you saying that? You've never said that to me before. That's great. That's good. That's how it should be. Yeah, you're right. There are offers that I think Verizon was kind of lagging as far as their free offering, which I think all of them should do because it's. So I wanna circle back to this Google Voice thing with you though. Cause you bring up a good point. How much do you use your landline? Like how much does this matter? And you know, I mean, if it's VoIP, I mean, it's probably all encrypted and so. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just, you know, again, putting on my tinfoil hat. No, you know me. I love the tinfoil hats. Yeah. And then watches the watchers, you know? Yeah. It's like, are they monitoring my traffic on behalf of the government? And if they hear certain keywords, is it even possible? I mean, even, you know, at the event today, Tim said one thing that's a very important app. He's like, hey, it's between you and whoever is on of our business. Right, right. But I guess like for us, we don't, our landline is used so infrequently that really we could have gone, we could have just done away with it and probably been fine, but there's a few places that still have our landline. It's like, ah, you know what? Like, and honestly, you know, we've got a daughter away at college and stuff. Our phones go on, do not disturb at night. We've actually had an issue where she was trying to call us in the middle of the night and it couldn't get through, but she called, but she was able to call on the house line. And it's like, okay, so it's worth, you know, a hundred bucks to just lock this number in and it's ours forever. And we don't have to worry about it. Okay. You know. My only reflection on getting VoIP versus copper, which I used to have until several years ago. Oh yeah. Copper's a done deal. Is that the voice quality is, I find it more consistent under VoIP than cell phone. Cell phone being RF and the other being over cable. I've had, not that, it depends. Not as many as a belate, but, I mean, I can see a cell antenna like from my house. So I know I get a good signal or I should be getting a good signal. Well, but if you're doing like LTE HD voice, then you'll get, you'll get a better signal on, you know, on that, then you will over like Google voice or whatever. But yeah, yeah. Right. And actually, when I talk to somebody who I know has that service, it's like, you know, like, it's like this. Yeah. Heaven's open. It was like, oh my gosh, you sound awesome for being an RF signal. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's like this. We use Discord here, right? I mean, it's the, you know, same kind of thing. You just get great quality voice. So most of the most of the people I know are not on Verizon. But when somebody's on Verizon HD audio, it's like, oh, yeah, you can tell. Right. It's just like, right. So that's good. Yeah. Cool. All right. Another good one, folks. Thank you so much for for hanging out with us. Thank you for sending in all your stuff. Thanks for everybody in the chat room kind of following along and helping out. Thanks. Thanks really for everything for learning with us because that's really it. You learn. We learn. We all learn. And that's that's is that a good I think it's a good. I think it's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm into it. I'm into it. Visit us in the forums. Mackey cop dot com slash forums and and and a favor. Then I'll ask this at the beginning of next episode. But we really would appreciate some iTunes reviews. I know many of you have done them already. And that's that's great. I don't think you can do another one, which would be nice. But if you haven't done one, please go to Mackey cop dot com slash iTunes. That's the closest I can get you. Then from there, you've got to sort of click and say, I want to review the show and then it'll let you. But it really does help us, you know, every now and then to have kind of a few extra iTunes reviews come in. So it helps you because it gets us up on the. Yeah, more listeners is good for everybody there. Yeah, it's the community. And the thing is more people that have their fingers in this pie. Better for all of us, the better for all. Absolutely. Unless you haven't watched your hands, in which case, dude. Yeah, well, it's actually fine, because we don't have to touch each other here in the Mackey cop community. So that's not a bad thing. So yeah, please do that. We'd love that. So thanks to all of you. Thanks to everybody that is doing those iTunes reviews. You rock. You have a special place where you rock. That's nice. We appreciate it. Thanks to cash fly, of course, for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. Thanks to our sponsors, of course, O W C at Mac sales dot com. Jamf now at jamf dot com slash MGG hair club at hair club dot com slash MGG bare bones at bare bones dot com. Eero at Eero dot com slash MGG. Smile at smile software dot com slash podcast. So much good stuff. John, anything anything lasting to add? I don't know. I'm going to sound like a broken record. But for three weeks now, Dave, I've been telling you and you've been succeeding. It's working in the effort that we all should make throughout our lives is that. Don't get caught.