 The MacObserver's MacGeekGab episode 789 from Monday, November 18th, 2019. And welcome to the MacObserver's MacGeekGab, the show where we take all kinds of questions, all kinds of tips, all kinds of cool stuff found and mash it together with the goal being that each of us learns at least five new things every time we get together. We're talking today about, well, we got searching Safari's history, running Mac OS Catalina on unsupported Macs. We've got some good tips, previews in the finder's file list. And a creative use for Chrome profiles, too, that I am looking forward to. Sponsors for this episode include Mac.CashFly.com, MacWeldon.com, where MGG gets you 20% off your first order and nativedeodorant.com, where MGG also gets you 20% off your first purchase. We will talk more about those details shortly. But for now, here back in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in increasingly chilly Fairfield, Connecticut. This is John Braun. Yeah. Hey, John. I was in increasingly chilly Nashville this weekend for the first time. I'd never been there before. We went down to check out schools for my son who's a senior in high school. So looking at colleges and such. But they got to experience Nashville, which was actually kind of fun. It reminds me a lot of Austin, especially Austin, like 20 years ago. But with more live music than Austin, it feels like Austin calls itself the live music capital of the world. And much as I love Austin, I'm not sure that that title sticks. But I mean, I still love Austin, but Nashville really kind of blew me away. Fun little town, easy to get in and out of. It's a short plane ride less than three hours from Boston. So even closer for people that are closer. But yeah, it was cold there. It's cold everywhere or it has been cold everywhere in the country. I guess it's warming up in the places where it's not supposed to have been that cold. Now, what did you say, Tennessee? You were Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did you go to Graceland? Well, that's in Memphis, which is about three two hour drive maybe from Nashville. I have I have driven. I have been at Graceland before not inside, but but I have I have driven through Memphis before and so have seen Graceland from the outside. But but no, we did we did not. We did. We did go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was actually amazing. Some really interesting things there. More of a, you know, American Music Hall of Fame, I would say. But but yeah, it was cool, fun. Toward Vanderbilt and, you know, all those fun things that that you do. Fun City, highly recommend it. If you ever get a chance to go there, go. It's good. Oh, OK. What's your what's your kiddo looking to study there? Um, math slash computer science is is what interests him. Yeah. Yeah. So or maybe engineering work for me. Um, he may study engineering, but but with more of a math focus than an engineering focus, I think is where like where the computer science and it's in and math problems meet. That's where his interests are. So yeah. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. No, I've known a few folks here and yeah, actually, um, having a computer background and a financial background, especially if you're near Wall Street isn't a bad idea. Right. Yeah. No, he's he's looking to become an attorney. Um, I don't know what type, possibly patent law, those sorts of things, but but. Oh, yeah. That's fun. I've worked with, uh, yeah. And it's funny that they're very much like engineers and that we're both into process and yep. Well, most patent lawyer detailed analysis of problems and you know, like we do years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, at first I'm like, oh, he's a lawyer, you know, what a terrible thing. And well, some lawyers are all lawyers are terrible, but but they're there are a group of them. And attorneys are are people that think very much like engineers and actually the one I knew actually did takes of engineering training. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time to be a patent attorney, you need some sort of technical background. Otherwise, they won't let you in the club. So yeah, it's good. Hey, uh, you, uh, I want you to tell us about the, there's two tips that you've got queued up here. One about wallet and one about safari. The first thing that I want to do before we do that though is I want to tell everybody about cash fly our first sponsored today because in addition, of course to providing all the bandwidth that gets the show from us to you cash fly has this great web optimization engine that you can use for your business and and even a patent attorney could use it, you know, and that would still be okay because hey, we all need our websites to move as fast as possible for each second a page takes to load it costs 16% in engagement and of course fewer visits means fewer customers. So cash flies new flexible edge platform goes far beyond just delivering the content. They provide powerful APIs for solving your content distribution problems. They do on the fly next gen image optimization for you load balancing of your application smart asset delivery, you know, like they do with our podcasts for you. If your website is tied directly to your revenue and you know it is optimize your site's content now and cash fly because you're a Mac key cab listener are going to provide you a free optimization consultation free just for you go to Mac dot cash fly dot com that's m a c dot c a c h e f l y dot com and learn how cash flies web optimization solution can help you and your websites lighthouse score now Mac dot cash fly dot com are thanks to cash fly for sponsoring this episode John take it away. I will so I think the first thing we have here is from Dan I mean I'm looking at my process meter and mail is taking 100% plus so I don't know why I always quit mail when we do this show because of exactly that no seriously yeah because you never know when it's going to decide now's a really good time to index like maybe maybe or maybe not. Yeah, I think I'm going to quit it. Yeah, it'll help. Do you want me to read dance thing or do you have that? I don't know. We're good. Yeah, I got it. So so Dan wrote in and this is good stuff and Dan says hey guys many times I find myself looking through the titles of my web history on Mac OS for a webpage. I know I've recently visited this of course is easy especially when the title of the page isn't indicative of the content you're looking for. Well, I just realized that I could use spotlight to search the history also after I did that I realized I can also go to the history slash or whatever symbol you want to use show all history in Safari and there is a search although I prefer the spotlight method since it gives a preview of the page also curious I tried this in iOS I don't think the spotlight method works hard to tell but I think it's just doing a web search but if you tap the bookmark button at the bottom of the screen in Safari then tap the clock icon history button and pull down on the content you can get a search there to huh pretty obvious well no I don't think so it's obvious when you know what to do. Yeah, wow. I like that. That's pretty good. I never thought about yeah it of course it's obvious now that he mentions it but that's the beauty of quick tips cool. Thanks, Dan. Great stuff. What's the next one you got, Mr. Braun? I got it all man. All right. Well, here we got something from I don't think I'm going to read the whole thing here because I think yeah, there's there's some extraneous stuff here but anyways, John, Dave and Pete. Hi, Pete. Maybe this is something everyone already knows and I just discovered it tonight out of need but I found a way to quickly clean out my old passes in the wallet app on iPhone. I travel a lot and have accumulated several old flight tickets and events in wallet that I didn't stay on top of deleting. At first I started deleting them one by one and the task quickly became tedious. I figured there had to be a better way and then discover the edit passes button if you scroll to the very bottom of the wallet app. This will allow you to quickly delete the unwanted passes and he's right in that you can choose multiple passes if you go to that screen. Otherwise, you do one by one and who wants to do that? Oh, especially if you have multiple passes for the same event. Oh, it'll just go. Huh. Yeah, like airline passes and stuff like you and I have both done this. You know, I get my airline passes in there. Of course. So that's a good one that there's a yeah, so you could going to that screen the edit screen and it's a you know, when you see it, it's pretty familiar, but you can choose to delete all your passes if you want to though. I don't think you do because there's some you want there. Yeah, well, right. Yeah, that's handy. Oh yeah, I just got rid of my my passes for we saw a Vanderbilt football game on Saturday because we figured while we're there and so I just deleted those and I deleted my Southwest points. So your ticket for your football game, they offered a pass for that. Oh yeah, ticket master most. In fact, I also deleted the ticket for the ticket master. Little feet. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, most well and then I had a show that I saw in Portsmouth a couple of weeks ago that I also had not yet deleted. That was an event bright thing and those passes were also in there. So yeah, handy stuff handy stuff. You know what else is handy? I I follow the Apple support Twitter account and occasionally they have actually more than occasionally they have something that's super handy and in iOS 13. As you are closing your tabs in Safari the first time, if you close multiple tabs, it'll pop up and say, Hey, do you want me to automatically close your tabs after say a week or a month or something like that? And regardless of what you answer there, you will never be asked that question again, but you can get yourself back there. And this tweet from at Apple support explains exactly how you go into settings. You go to Safari and there is a it's, I don't know, maybe halfway down in the list in the tabs section. There is a closed tabs option and you can set it to manually after one day, one week or one month. And so I have mindset to one month. It turns out, I don't know, I might change that to after one week because on my phone, I tend to let things build up and I don't use it as bookmarks. Like I know some people save tabs and they don't want them to ever change. Well, then you would leave it at manually and then you'd be fine just like it used to be. But, but yeah, so there you go. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. I think I sent them in to Feedback at MackieGab.com. I was wondering how that got in there on the list and it turns out that was from you from Feedback at MackieGab.com. I like it. Then you heard them right folks. If you want to send us pretty much anything. Cookies. Well, you probably can't. Well, electronic cookies you could send us. Maybe. I don't know, but it's Feedback at MackieGab.com. I like it. I like it. All right, John, you're you're killing it with these tips here, including that one that I thought I had put in here. But turns out, nope, all these tips have been from Mr. Braun or from listeners that Mr. Braun called. Yeah, I just sent it in because yeah, so I follow the same which is is it Apple support? Yeah, is the Twitter feed Apple support? Yep. So so follow that and they'll give you can do little tips like that. But that will take us to anyways. Yeah. So Robert has a good one here. He verified something that we suspected was true, but I don't think you or I had necessarily verified it, Dave, but. He said I just verified the following works using parallels version 15 running on a Catalina supported Mac. Create a Catalina virtual machine. Okay. Step one. Then number two, copy the virtual machine file to the unsupported Mac running Mac OS high Sierra on the unsupported Mac. I'm sorry. No, that's right on the unsupported Mac running Mac OS high Sierra on the unsupported Mac run parallels and then run a Catalina virtual machine, expand it to full screen and it almost feels native native. YMMV, which is your mileage may vary, but reliable so far. That's pretty cool. Of course. I never thought about this, but yeah. Why wouldn't that work? That's a pretty no, the reason I. Yeah, so I don't know. I guess when Catalina is running in the VM environment, it thinks you're on a supported machine. I guess is the story here. Yeah, because because it's it sees the VM as the machine, not your specific Mac, which is the beauty of running inside a container. It's why, for example, it makes a lot of sense to run if let's say you're going to run a server somewhere. It makes a lot of sense to run the server inside a VM, even if you're only running one VM on your server because it that way, if and when the hardware needs to be replaced, you don't have to rebuild the server. You just move the virtual machine to a new piece of hardware, run the same virtualization engine. And it's like, oh yeah, this is the same quote unquote computer that I've been running on before because it sees, you know, in this case parallels as the host computer, not a, you know, 2011 Mac iMac or whatever, right? Yeah, so that's actually pretty good. Right. Okay. And here's the follow up. So this is why I wanted to run mail because I did not put this in our box, but I asked him what the machine was and he said the unsupported Mac is an iMac mid 2011 with 16 gigs of RAM AMD Radeon 67 70 M graphics and boot drive is an external Thunderbolt SSD because the internal drive sucks or no, he said, but what? Yeah, so I guess 2011 is the, yeah, I think the minimum for, for Catalina is for the most part 2012 hardware beyond. So that's right. 11 just didn't cut it. Yep. Yeah. I like it. Thanks, Robert. Yeah, that's good, man. That's good. Um, take us to David, if you would. Okay. I thought you could take us somewhere else, but we'll, uh, it's fine. Fine. Let's go to David. And a David. Oh man. You want me to read David's? Hold on. Here we go. Up. Here we go. All right. David has some good feedback, which we love feedback, but we're not going to repeat it endlessly in this episode like we did last time. Hi guys, I would like to provide my take on the new AirPods Pro. I'm a woodworker in my spare time. Normally when in the shop and using power tools, I wear an over the year headset with the built-in radio and his Bluetooth enabled. They broke and I look at several different noise canceling devices. Most tend to be wired and not safe in the workshop. When I found out that the noise canceling feature of the AirPods was about the same as my current device I bought up here. Best investment ever. He didn't say ever, but I thought I'd throw that in there. Sure. Um, I would recommend them to anyone. Just my experience and remember. No, I'm not going to read it. I can't. I'm going to break the rules. Well, all he said was feedback at macicab.com. John, I know he said feedback at macicab.com. Dave. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes you got to break the rules. It seems like the rules are meant to be broken. That's good. Uh, you were mentioning running Catalina native versus in a VM and I have a different type of native that I want to talk about. And that is at native deodorant.com. I just came back from this trip to Nashville and I used native deodorant. In fact, I've been using it for several weeks, both at home and traveling. The nice part is the container is super compact. So it's easy to travel with even when you just have a carry on the best part about native though is that it is safe, simple and effective. They formulated this without aluminum, parabens or talc, and they've just filled it with ingredients found in nature. Hence the name native, such as coconut oil, shea butter, tapioca starch. They never test on animals and they offer you free shipping and returns and it works using this aluminum free deodorant. Does not mean having to sacrifice on product performance. I was out and about all day in Nashville every day. I only applied once. It was fantastic. Uh, I can understand why people love them. They have over 9,000 five star reviews and for good reason and this stuff smells great. I opted for the coconut and vanilla, which is their most popular scent. They have others like lavender and rose, cucumber and mint, eucalyptus and mint. And then they have an unscented one for folks that don't like to have sent or some, some people just can't have a scent, you know, on them all day and that works out fine. Aluminum free, safe and effective and no risk to try because they offer free returns and exchanges in the U S here is the deal for 20% off your first purchase visit native deodorant.com and use promo code M G G during checkout again. That's native deodorant.com promo code M G G during checkout will get you 20% off your first purchase are thanks to native at native deodorant.com for sponsoring this episode. All right, Mr. Braun, your turn. It is my turn. Okay, cool. Jeff has a great question. This is like a question that turns into a quick tip because Jeff says I have a problem and I've tried my Google foo, but I can't find anything that applies. He says in the finders list view, how can I turn off this big honking preview that appears to the right of every window? I never want to have it there. I want the full window to be the columns of my list view. How do I do this? And I didn't even know this was a thing because I've never seen this preview. But this is the beauty of why it becomes a quick tip in the finders view menu. Go to make sure you're in list view. So go to view as list and then you can choose either show preview or hide preview and sure enough, it will appear right there in Mojave. It is about halfway down the list. And in Catalina, I believe it is right at the top of the list if I'm not mistaken, but it's there show preview, hide preview and at least in Mojave it's command shift P to toggle that on or off. A really handy thing. Actually, if you're looking at a folder full of like images or whatever, being able to see the preview right there, super handy. And if you don't want to see it, hide it. So thanks for asking, Jeff, because we love these kinds of questions because they turn into these quick little tips. Pretty cool, huh, John? Very. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Shall we keep going? You want to since it was my turn, this is the question that I thought we didn't have, but we did do. Okay, all right. Great. Yeah, go Larry. So Larry has, I think a good one that is the. I'm just going to read it. So Larry says, I have a Lacy two terabyte time machine backup drive for my Mac mini. Although the time machine app seems to be working well, it backed up 10 minutes ago. I'm getting warnings from Intego backup assistant perhaps installed by me at the time of adding Lacy in and it says that Lacy has not been backed up since October. First, do I need Intego backup assistant if the time machine app seems to be working well? Can I uninstall it? Secondly, I unwisely partition my Lacy at the time of installation. So now it appears I have only 500 of the two terabytes available without losing info, which is likely saved elsewhere, iCloud, etc. So can I unpartion it, unpartition it so I can see all of the drive is available. Presently, I have 110 available of the 500. That's a good question. Yeah, I think. So looking so first, I looked at this thing. So Intego, I think was software that Lacy acquired at some point or partnered with or something or partnered with. So you yeah. So when you buy a Lacy drive, you get Intego stuff. The thing is, I looked at the page for the software and it doesn't now first off Larry didn't tell us, but I'm assuming that he's running Catalina. And the thing is, as if you don't know, we'll tell you, but the way that drives are laid out under Catalina is a bit different in that you now have kind of two separate worlds. You have your system drive and your data drive and it's linked by what are they called? Dave of crap. Not hard links, firm, firm links. Dang it, firm links. I think that's that right. Okay. But anyway, so I'm suspecting that this software, which I, you know, is just backup software is getting upset, assuming that he's on Catalina that things have changed. So it just stops working. And also when I looked at the page for the software, they don't list any compatibility info for Catalina. The most recent they show is 10.14 Mojave. So I'm guessing it doesn't understand the new kind of split volume thing. Oh, that's entirely possible. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, things like carbon copy cloner, which we'll talk about again shortly, but that understood it and that it would come up and say, Hey, you know, if you're going to Catalina, I'm going to have to, you know, well, here's an upgrade. Right. It's like, thanks, but it seems that this software has not kept up with, with that world. So. Yeah. So to answer, to answer his question, you know, you do not need to use, if you are using time machine, you do not need the backup software that came with the device in order for time machine to work. I don't want to say you don't need the backup software that came with the device. We here recommend multiple backups happening, you know, to your data in different ways. So this, you know, Intigo stuff, if it works with the operating system you're using, certainly could be a secondary backup, but it is not required just because it came with the drive. It is not required for time machine to run time machine will run as long as your Mac can see the drive and it's formatted the right way, time machine is going to run no problem or in theory. Sometimes it doesn't, but there you go. Yeah. Right. So as far as the second issue, I actually did this in real life, Dave, because I wanted to give good advice here. Yeah. But as far as his external partition drive, as long as there's enough free space, you should be able to resize the partitions with this utility. So you run this utility, you select your disk, you go to partitions and it's going to show you a little circle or a little map. And so first off, you want to make sure that you know what data is on what partition because you can click on one of the partitions on the drive and if you click on it, you're then going to see the, or I'm sorry, click on the secondary partition and there's going to be a little minus sign and you'll then get a warning saying partitioning this device will permanently erase the data stored on some of the partitions. You can't undo this action. So just make sure you know what data is on what partition, but this utility and I think you suggested this in your reply, Dave, it may work and it may not. My experience is that it did when I did it, but it was with a fresh new SSD that I just happened to have, but I wanted to verify this. So the thing is this utility may be able to give you all your space back. Yeah, I've seen it work, you know, maybe half the time it depends on how the volume was laid out. Now all of these problems go away if the drive is formatted as APFS because you're not it generally when you format APFS, it is one partition that is then broken up into logical volumes, but the volumes do not map directly to any given location on the disk. It is just a blob of storage that is mapped to these volumes in a virtual way so that you can adjust sizes on the fly and you're not actually changing anything other than a limit or, you know, of how much space can be used. But in this case, if it's an HFS plus drive, then yes, it is partitions and discutility can do it except when it can't and sometimes things are just laid out in a way that discutility says no, I can only go so big or I can't get any smaller on this one even though you don't have, you know, a lot of data there, it just, I don't know, there's things out there. So before you do any of this, I would, if there's important data there, I would clone it off or back it up just in case because repartitioning is, you know, right, who knows? Yeah. And lastly, yes, so if whatever reason the resizing doesn't work, you should be able to copy the backup data from your existing backup drive to another drive, reformat and repartition, right? And then copy the data back. And you know what? I'm just so glad that I found this dandy. I just like saying dandy. Fair support article from Apple, which goes into excruciating detail and the title of it is transfer time machine backups from one backup disk to another. Cool, which I would say definitely applies in this case because a direct connected drive and network connected drive as far as time machine concerned are kind of different. And from what I saw in this article, it goes into detail about how you deal with the situation. Yeah. And lastly, as I think you suggested, I would not use time machine as my sole backup strategy in that you want to use something I mentioned, karmic copy cloner. I love it, Dave. I think you love it. Yeah, super duper carbon copy cloner. Back plays if you want to go to the cloud, right? Yeah, well, you should have some sort of cloud backup so that you're not storing all your data locally. But that could be iCloud or, you know, a Dropbox or that sort of thing. I know that we've all been trained to say that sync is not backup. But the reality is if your sync engine offers versioning, meaning it saves multiple versions of files and isn't just the sync of the most recent version of a given file, then it kind of is a backup because it's storing, you know, the old version of the work that you did. And if you mess up and delete or change something in a way that you don't want, you restore. So I think iCloud, you know, documents and data or desktop and documents and desktop or Dropbox or something, anything like that. As long as it's storing your data offsite somewhere, something could happen, you know, catastrophic where either everything's stolen from your house or office or everything is burned or whatever. As long as you've got something in the cloud, your data is going to, you know, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, but I didn't, you know, I was looking, we had another related question here. Sorry to go off on a tangent because we never do that ever, ever. But I don't think iCloud versions things. Is that right? I thought iCloud did version things. I thought I was looking the other day. I know definitely Dropbox does. I think iCloud will will keep track, will let you restore deleted things. But I don't think it does what what I call versioning or where it has the old version of a file. Right, right. Huh? Huh? I thought it did, but I could be wrong. We'll look into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe some of you want to let us know about your retrieval experience. Well, you know how to reach us. That's right. Well, and hopefully somebody in the chat room at mackeykev.com slash stream will will help us there because that would be that would be a good thing. I thought I thought you could do it on the web. I thought there was a versioning thing on the web with iCloud Drive. But I could I could very well be conflating that with every other cloud service that exists. So we will move on and and then and then hopefully we will come back to this. So in the meantime, speaking of exactly that, Donald asks a question. He says, I'm using the new Apple podcast app on the Mac and I feel like I have lost the ability to show Mac Geekgebs chapter marks. I can't find them and I miss them. And Donald's right. We for years over a decade now have been putting chapters into every episode so that if, for example, you want to go back and listen to a segment about, you know, how did we get those previews and find your list view or this segment doesn't interest you because you already know how to get chapters. So you want to skip ahead to the next one where JP asks us about extracting a video. You can do that. And the chapters will show you exactly where to go and in fact, you can just tap them and you are good to go. The chapters in the Apple podcast app on the Mac in Catalina are there in the upper when you're playing an episode in the upper right hand corner, you will see a little icon that has lines with dots next to them. That is to represent chapters. Click that and they will slide in from the right side of the screen and show you the timestamps and the name of the chapter you just click and go on iOS while you're playing it in the Apple podcast app. Scroll up. It's kind of like when you're looking for lyrics in the music app. There's a bunch of things. You'll have a screen up that appears to show you everything you need and it's not entirely intuitive that there are things that this is a longer page and you're just seeing the top of it. But in fact, that's what's happening. Move that page up by scrolling it just like you would a web page and you'll see more things appear on the bottom. One of those things is chapters. You can turn it on and then of course the same sort of thing you get the list of chapters with the timestamps and you can tap them and it'll bring you right there. Third party podcast app also generally all support chapters our Mac Geek Gab app that is available for free in the iOS store supports chapters and so you can use that too. But but there you go. So I will I will put a link to the Mac Geek Gab app there for for anyone. So thanks for asking Donald. It's always good to remind especially new listeners that we have chapters. Do you have a thought on that Mr. Ron or should we go to JP? No thought here, but we did get feedback in our chat room here from our pal Brian saying, yeah, as we suspected so recently deleted is a feature of iCloud drive slash photos but not versioning per se. And I think that's the same case with Dropbox. Dropbox definitely has versioning. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, depending on whether it's free or not, you either get 30 days or your storage. But right. Okay. I remember this. So that's a condition of so depending on the type of membership you have with Dropbox, you may well you'll have versioning. It's either 30 days with the free account or longer than that if you pay. So okay. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. All right. Cool. Very good. All right. JP as I alluded asks, he says fellas, I want to use an animated golf course flyover video from a golf course app. I played this year and use in my home video any ideas on how to get the video out of the app. The iOS screen record function will not allow me to record it. The screen just goes black. Can I open an iOS app like a package on my Mac and harvest the vitals? So no, you can't do it that way because the iOS app, it is a package but it is encapsulated in a way that I don't I don't know of any way to pull it out of there. Of course, if somebody does please let us know. But I have a few ideas. The first is you can capture the screen as a movie from your iPhone using QuickTime Player. So you launch QuickTime Player. You connect your iPhone via USB. I don't think you can do it Wi-Fi, but maybe you can and you do new movie recording from the file menu in QuickTime Player and it will it will allow you when you pull that up when the movie recording comes up, there will be the red circle in the middle of the screen that will start recording from say the camera right next to that is a little carrot pointing down. If you click that, you will see all of the quote unquote cameras that it can copy or that it can capture from one will be your Apple TV if you have one on the network and the other one should be your iPhone or iPad if it's connected. So try that because that might allow you to capture this movie from the golf course flyover failing that it's also worth trying an app called ScreenFlow. This is a for pay app, but you can try it for free. It'll put a watermark over the the resulting video, but you'll be able to see whether behind the watermark is the flyover you want or if in fact these kinds of things are blocked no matter what. But I think QuickTime Player is going to is going to be able to do this for you JP. So anyway, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, they didn't always understand external devices, but I think that be good bet. Of course, there is also the analog route. Well, that's true. I thought about that. Yeah, I don't think that I mean, depending on how nice the quality won't be great. But what I'm saying is that you get a camera, you know, either a video capable camera or a video camera and recorded from the screen itself. Yeah, you know, if it has a high enough resolution thing and you get a, you know, amount and tripod or something like that there. It may. Yeah, you probably get it pretty close. That's that's the Stone Age kind of low tech way of doing it, but that's the way to get around any sort of DRM, which that's true is what we're kind of dealing with, right? Yeah, no, that for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, we have a couple of tips to share about trading in or trading up. Steven will start us off here. Go ahead, Steve. Hi, this is Steve from the UK. A long time listener, first time caller. Just really regarding the trading for Apple's iPhones. You actually take your phone in and they assess it and then they actually give you a gift card to the Apple Store for that value. And then you can use that to purchase another item. But I did ask them what happens if I didn't want to buy another item and they said you can then trade that gift card in for cash, but they had to give you a gift card first of all in order to process the trading. Hope that helps. This is where you cut me off. Thank you very much, Stephen. Yeah, that's I had no idea that that's how that works. So you don't have to be buying something else to use Apple's trade in pricing for for your iPhone. So that that might be a great way to do things. I would definitely check that pricing before you, you know, before you I mean, as part of your your survey, Declutter has worked out well for me recently. So I would also look at them and see who's going to give you the best price and then take the money. There you go. Brand shared something along the similar lines. He says in late August, I bought a tricked out 2015 MacBook Pro for $2,200 from Apple's refurb store. I wanted to fill an upcoming need in my business with a machine with a good keyboard and lots of ports while I could. I stuck the unopened box in the closet. Then last week, the 16 inch MacBook Pro dropped and I was suffering some buyers remorse. I called Apple to see what kind of trade I might get. Initially, it looked bleak, but the business sales guy suggested escalating the issue to the service folks. Which I did. Bottom line, Apple offered to take the 2015 machine back at my full purchase price with free return shipping three and a half months after purchase. I think my situation was just a one-off and I certainly don't expect to be treated this generously again. But I thought that Apple again deserves kudos for putting themselves in the consumer's shoes. Don't try this with your car dealer folks. Yeah, that's fantastic. It shows that it's worth asking. I always say polite persistence goes a long way with a lot of companies and Apple is most certainly one of them. What a deal. And that, how about that new 16 inch MacBook Pro, John? Are you, is this tempting you now? Finally, something like I've seen the post. I'm starting to salivate over because it looks like they've made enough advancements and the keyboard doesn't suck, which was really the thing that I got to be honest that scared not only me, but a lot of people because Apple had a really bad run with the butterfly, the butterfly. Yeah. And now they went back to the scissor. Yep. Yep. So, but also like, you know, the sound system, everybody says is like, you know, really crazy and yeah, when I saw that all of it and the amount of, you know, I mean the processor, the memory. I mean, you'll pay. You'll pay dearly. Well, not as dearly as I would have thought. Like, I'm I was impressed, especially if you can wait a couple of months until it appears on refurb. But I mean, you can get that 16 inch MacBook Pro with a six core i7 16 gigs of RAM, 512 storage for 2400 bucks new. That's pretty. I mean, I thought that would be 2999 to be perfect. Okay. That's pretty good. I think I mean, that's a that's a pretty good. You know, yeah, I don't think it's that that's a big screen though. I don't like for me that would be way too big to travel with. Really? Okay. 16 is my my portable for probably a decade has been the 15 inch right version of the MacBook Pro. Right. And I think the new 16 is is either the same dimensions or maybe even smaller because they've got the thin bezel on that screen. Right. So it's not it's not much bigger if at all bigger than your 15. So but the 15 was was too big for me too. It's like I like the 11 the 13 is a decent compromise for me. It's a it's a big enough screen that I you know, I don't mind traveling with it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about you as soon as I saw that like, oh, this might be now I posted. Yeah, I did some Twitter posts about it. And I'm like, you know, this may be enough to push me over the edge. Yeah. I mean, the thing is my 2012 does what I need. But could I do more and with the 16 inch? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I got a so I got to weigh my options here. How how much does it weigh? Speaking of that, the 13 inch MacBook Pro is three pounds. The 13 inch MacBook Air is like 2.6 or something. The 16 inch MacBook Pro Oh, that's a heavy thing. That's 4.3 pounds. So two kilograms. That's that's that's nothing to sneeze at. That's a lot to lug around in today's world. It might be lighter than what you have in your 15, though, to be fair. But I noticed the difference between the air at 2.65 or something and the Pro at three for sure. And I was happy to revert back to my air recently. But but if you want that big screen, you know, then you're just going to be just going to weigh more. I'm looking forward to maybe you'll maybe you'll get one before CES. Maybe maybe we can play with it there. Perhaps I'll have to talk to one of our contacts to see if I can get a deal. Oh, there you go. Yeah, right. Right. Cool. Because I don't think it's going to be in the reefer store for quite a while. It's probably not that. I mean, probably not before January, but but probably before February. I mean, writing that time frame was when the MacBook Air last year hit and that was that was released about this same time. So yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah, fun. I mean, I think the biggest news is that they got past the Apple more or less admitted that they screwed up with the keyboard design. Yeah. Well, mine has already been replaced and upgraded to the like the latest and greatest of the butterfly keyboards. And that happened six months in. So and this new one feels pretty good. Like I feel like it might actually last. But right in the yeah, the, you know, from what I I've read here and there, the plastic was, you know, the keys would break. They weren't easy to replace and stuff like that. So the things on it would start doubling. Like you would you would, you know, hit a key. Yeah. Oh, that's fun. Oh, no, it wasn't. Both Lucas and I bought airs, you know, before Christmas. They were our Christmas presents last year. And and both of us have had the keyboards replaced on them. So, you know, there you go. But now we're OK. Now Apple won't. Hey, you know, they make good when when they need to, right? Eventually, yeah. 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Go to Mac Weldon.com promo code m-g-g for 20% off your first order our thanks to Mac Weldon for making such cozy clothes and for sponsoring this episode. All right, Mr. Braun. Let's see where we are here. Let's let's let's share some more tips. I mentioned in the intro to the show that we had a great idea about using Chrome profiles and sure enough in 788 we were talking about needing to be logged into different Google accounts as primaries and I was using multiple browsers to accomplish that. Jeff says, I have a similar situation to Dave where I need to be logged into multiple accounts of one vendor. Chrome profiles work amazingly well. You have to set up a different email address for each Chrome profile but if you have a Gmail address well, that solves this problem. If you're looking to do it for Google accounts you're good to go. If you're not looking to do it for Google accounts you can still do it because and here's like the bonus tip that Jeff baked into this if you have say you know user at gmail.com like for example I have Dave Hamilton at gmail.com I do not use this account because there are at least 10 other Dave Hamilton's that use the same email address and so all I have there is an auto responder that says you didn't reach the Dave Hamilton you're looking for in any event. Dave Hamilton at gmail.com does get to me but so does Dave Hamilton plus client A at gmail.com and Dave Hamilton plus client B at gmail.com because Gmail is built to do it that way. You don't have to go configure anything you just put in you know your username plus whatever you want at gmail.com and that address is an alias to your main address. Super simple and what a great idea and he says that saves me from having to use multiple browsers. I like it Jeff that's cool stuff. So to be clear yeah chrome is a browser correct and they offer a profiles preference I would think and that's where you do this work that's where you're doing this yeah you can set up different profiles in the same browser yeah great great clarification thank you that's right yep yep yeah because personally my order of preference for browsers is I pretty much run Safari sure I think most of our listeners but maybe not and then if a page doesn't work which happens sometimes when well depending on who put your page together if you don't know what they're doing then I go to Firefox and then my third choice is chrome but chrome does offer some bonus features like this which yeah I I used to follow that same cascading order chrome or with chrome at the end and then you know Safari Firefox chrome and I have found that Firefox is less and less likely to render things the way I want if I if I need that my secondary browser nowadays is chrome pretty in a pretty standard way and then and then Firefox with you too because every time I launch Firefox it's like hey here's a new version it's like okay that that's great but like every time I launch you you come up with a new version I mean that's I mean what's up with that well chrome does that too you just don't notice it they're very good right it's the secret background it's the secret update yeah exactly listener Kurt was having a battery drain problem we talked about it back in episode seven eighty four and Kurt was his problem was if he had certain web pages open but he didn't know which ones in Safari and put his computer to sleep he would lose you know somewhere between say ten and twelve percent of his battery overnight and you know we talked about different things it could be of course we said try and narrow down you know closing tabs and see which websites it is that cause you know this battery drain try and turn off like you know energy savers app nap and that sort of thing he tried all of that and wasn't able to narrow it down you know you know time frame that you know he's an impatient guy like we are but he said I did find something that fixed it he says I poured over the logs and I couldn't figure it out but he says I'm trying to find it was as it wasn't linked to the Wi-Fi environment but while looking for clues as to that the laptop was secretly waking up I decided to punt and I use the command sudo space p m set dash b auto power off delay eighteen hundred and I will put that command in the show notes so that we are all on the same page he says what that will do is it causes the laptop to go into low power sleep after eighteen hundred seconds which for those of you playing along at home is half an hour while on battery power the half hour delay he says was a compromise to get the laptop laptop back to instant operation and situations where he might be working intermittently and the laptop had gone to sleep while his attention was you know temporarily diverted or whatever he says this completely solved the issue for him his laptop can now sleep for days without losing more than a percentage point or two in battery charge and he says with today's laptops there really is no downside he says yes the laptop has to load a ram image off of a file when you wake it up but the SSDs and these are so ridiculously fast and he's right like fourteen hundred megabytes a second even on my air that the delay really isn't noticeable just blasts it up and you're good to go so that's a good one he says he'd also like to suggest that there's an article that Howard Oakley at eclectic light who makes all kinds of apps that we recommend constantly here on the show he wrote an article on this PM set command and power management in general and he says it's a great resource for anyone looking to understand how power management works on Apple products so we will put that in the show notes as well thoughts on this john nope right right cool now I like a eclectic light yeah don't they make a yeah they make a they make silent night and T2M2 and yep and good news happy update just to let everybody know remember I was going on about how I was having time machine backup issues yes well you know what solved it Dave was I took a CCC backup carbon copy cloner yep erased the drive in my MacBook Pro after making a backup reformatted it and as APFS and everything's dandy so it was your stall anymore it was your source drive that needed to be refreshed let's say correct because it was a victim of the APFS migration versus doing a fresh install which you would think because we told everybody that you should do this that I would know better but I didn't because you know it's just the way I am but so once I reformatted it and then restored the backup from CCC my backups have not stalled or just not have been performed so that makes me happy that's pretty good man I think it was just it was just you know corruption was just you know but because of the conversion route versus the reformatting route I think corruption was just getting worse and worse and at some point it got so bad that you know time machine was just like dude I don't know yeah now it's working great so my time machine stuff is working great so the thing is if you haven't yet already if you do have a drive that is converted to APFS you may want to do a fresh restore we said this a couple of times but I didn't listen it's my fault but now I'm good now you're good cool awesome that I'm glad that I'm glad that worked I yeah it doesn't surprise me that eventually these drives that were migrated from HFS plus to APFS are going to need you know a little bit of it's just going to need to be wiped out and but thankfully I mean that the the process of doing that for you was no big deal right you just cloned and and restored I erased you know I reformatted and then I restored and you know carbon copy clone it was like oh hey you're booting from a you know a backup you want me to kind of hold your hand through this whole process and it's like yeah sure thanks oh wow yeah I've seen that notice I've never I never used it because I've never been in been in that scenario since they added it we're trying to think of how I did it when I did mine but I I don't remember carbon copy cloner being so so like I mean I used it but I don't think it I'd let it like do the hand-holding thing I mean I just like is that it's smart enough it's like dude you're booting from a clone so maybe you're trying to restore to somewhere else and it's like yeah yeah good thinking yeah right all right cool and in 788 we were talking about different things and Gerard points out he says I heard you talking about using duck duck go for searching but sometimes going to Google he says if you use start page dot com you get Google searches without tracking if you go to start page dot com and scroll down they explain how they use Google searches in their search engine but not directly connecting you to Google so that's actually pretty cool so that you can get Google searches without without having Google track you which is cool I like that the cool part though is what yawn and many many others of you pointed out to me but we'll read yawns here he says he says imagine my shock and horror listening as last episode you continued to say Dave that sometimes you still pasted a search into Google to get a different sometimes better result do you not know that using exclamation point G before a search in duck duck go will send the search request to Google from the duck duck go infrastructure do you not know that the search would go way faster did you just get caught the exclamation point G or as we like to call it in computer terminology the bang G is what duck duck go calls a bang and you can go to duck duck go dot com slash bang it's a shortcut to search through another search engine quickly from duck duck go and you can use Google Wikipedia Amazon Twitter etc he says I have duck duck go installed as the default search engine everywhere and in those rare instances instances where it does not provide me with what I need I just type the bang to get me to Google search results I've even taken it a step further and use the built-in macOS and iOS text replacement to expand XG into bang G that way I do not have to type shift one plus G on my iOS devices oh yeah that's smart he says because that's a pain I can just type XG whatever and I'm off to the races you can put bang G at the end of your search results I found this weekend while in Nashville to because I was looking for something and was like that duck duck go and then I remembered oh hey I saw those emails from everybody that told me about this bang search let's try and I just added it to the end of the search in the bar in iOS and boom up comes Google with the search results now using Gerard's idea of start page would be potentially even better because it's not tracking you while you do it and you're still getting Google results but nevertheless you can do this and I and like I said there's all kinds of them so we will put a link to duck duck goes bang shortcuts and in the show notes so that you can so you can learn about all of them yeah it's I mean there's tons of them it's such a cool thing bang bang Twitter the mm-hmm bang eBay bang Twitter bang Reddit bang steam bang step overflow bang maps you can just go straight and search maps it's pretty cool okay so they kind of anonymize yeah no no no no they just take your search and start page duck duck go just takes your search and hands it off yeah so you're you're actually going to Google when you do this so yeah yeah it's yeah I know it's pretty cool I like it I will confirm that here but I'm I did it quick this weekend and G go and I am getting results from Google so yeah it just brings me to Google so yeah no anonymization but pretty cool stuff so I got caught John and I learned and that's like that's what we do here I like it sir yeah all right JP has a question he says fellers yeah it's the same JP from earlier in the episode you might remember JP in LA right or in Maine I don't know where he is he oh yeah he's a bicoastal dude yeah he says he's a premium listener at Mackie comm slash premium he says fellers now that Apple dumped back to my Mac in July what's the best way to log into my out of state Mac in say LA from my iMac in Maine I've tried VNC colon slash IP address in the connect to server menu but it will not work is it true you can't screen share or remote access your Macs unless they are on the same network nowadays or is my situation an anomaly all of my computers or at least both in this scenario have screen sharing on remote login on file sharing on so no JP your situation is not an anomaly there are a few ways VNC which is what Apple uses at the core of its screen sharing with some enhancements let's say will work across the internet but it requires exposing your remote computer to the internet internet with port forwarding by default VNC answers on port 5900 so you could port forward your routers 5900 to your iMacs 5900 and be good to go but that comes with a mild security risk in fact it might be more than mild because now you're gonna have people hacking to get right in to your Mac a better option is to use a third-party app and there are lots of them the one that I use is from a company called Adobe a called screens or screens connect you run this app on your Mac and it registers you with screens connect and then you can run screens a really full-featured VNC client on either your iOS devices or another Mac and it will traverse your firewalls for you with this screens connect engine and you are good to go so that's the one that I use I see somebody in the chat room it's actually several people are mentioning John in the chat room says remote PC is what he uses Warren says team viewer you can use all of these as as we mentioned be careful with team viewer at some point they decide that you're using it for commercials and shut you off but yeah all of there are lots of options what do you use John um well the one I've I've used in the past log me in yet another one yeah right yeah yep there are a lot but I'm I'm I'm okay with the you know it's the I mean you have to get a bit down and dirty to enable the screen sharing option in Mac OS and then put the hole in your firewall so but I think most world listeners know how to do that I acknowledge your risk of someone taking over your your network so you know use a good password and stuff like that but I think that is you know a place to start right right yeah and Brian Monroe in the chat room points out something called Chrome remote desktop and it looks like this might work from the Mac which I did not realize so we'll put a link to that in the show notes you can't use it with oh it's possible actually Catalina Safari will do this because WebRTC has been added there but it does require a technology called WebRTC but Chrome will do that and of course Chrome is available for free as well so I'm just on Mojave here in the studio still because I haven't upgraded this particular machine to Catalina but but yeah that would that would work honestly the way I do use screens connect because it's simple and it just works but another way to do it would be to set up a VPN the VPN into your other network and then from there you can use VNC just like you're on the same network because that's essentially what VPN does is it tunnels you through and puts you on that other network so if you have a router or some device like a Synology disk station that can act as a VPN server that's another way to get around this and I use that sometimes too so yeah now is Apple remote desktop even a thing anymore absolutely played with it lately okay but it's it's local a local network only I mean unless you do some port forwarding or VPN or whatever but it doesn't have a firewall type option like screens connect right to configure yeah some people get in okay because I remember you and I played with it and you know it's it's good for what it is I haven't actually run it I still use it actually locally on my network I use it all the time because I find that for whatever reason in the finder you know sometimes machines don't show up in the list and so to use you know screen sharing just from you know from triggered by the finder so I just leave Apple remote desktop in my sidebar and I run that and I'm good to go I think it's free with a developer account like I haven't bought it in a long time and I don't know if that's because I have a developer account or if it's because I bought it a long time ago and they just keep upgrading me I can't I can't I couldn't tell you so there you go and then of course there's Microsoft remote desktop which does that work as a I know it works as a client on the Mac is there any remote desktop server for the Mac I'll have to look into it okay okay I'm not sure but I remember using that at some point yeah I mean especially yet if you're in a Microsoft environment oh sure still do make a Mac client which is is nice yep yeah yeah as a as a client yes for sure for sure all right in a sort of similar vein Ken asked in error I clicked on desktop and documents folders in system preferences iCloud iCloud Drive and I found both of these file structures on iCloud and not on my Mac following an Apple text advice I created a folder on my desktop with different names when I try to copy a folder from iCloud to the new folder on my desktop all I get is a file named data dot text clipping so the operative question is how do I restore my desktop and documents folders to my Mac great question so in this scenario your data is on iCloud and you can confirm that by going to the web interface of iCloud.com like we were talking about earlier in the show and you can download things from there but it's not on your on your Mac assuming that what I would do is uncheck the the box that you checked in system preferences iCloud iCloud Drive and give your Mac some time to process then reboot it and recheck the box and see if it slurps it all down from iCloud right as long as it's up there on iCloud you're it like it you will be able to get it back down to your Mac so the idea is let's sort of trick this thing into getting back down on your Mac if once all the data is there and maybe that's the question you're asking if you turn it off what will happen is it will move all this data into a different folder that will no longer be synced and then you can and then it will recreate a desktop folder on a documents folder so that you can put this data back in there and have it back to being locally only on your Mac does that make sense have you done anything like this John yeah I was kind of mystified when I first enabled this option because all of a sudden it's like well where'd my stuff go right you don't have a desktop documents folder anymore well you do but they don't live in your home folder they live in your iCloud drive folder which is what I've done and so here's a an extra added tip and maybe you'll learn at least one additional thing listening to this is I would take that folder which is where is it Dave it's in home library mobile documents mobile documents so if you take that folder which actually maps to iCloud I think in the finder I cloud drive in the finder yep right if you take that folder and you put in your sidebar it makes life a lot easier well it should already be in your sidebar named iCloud drive but if it's not then yes yes no you're correct but the I like having the explicit machine specific folder in the sidebar okay I mean it's the same folder right there's no difference right okay yeah okay yeah yeah because that yeah it well it used to be that that didn't appear there it it was you know just sort of hidden away and so like the library folder we got in the habit of putting that in our sidebars but now it should be there in the iCloud section and iCloud drive so okay yeah well good good yeah I found it really handy to have my documents and desktop folder in the cloud I'm using that more than I expected to just having my desktop folder synced between multiple computers and stuff yeah let's see no I think you're yeah okay so yeah so I see there's iCloud drive then there's documents and then there's a folder specific to the machine so it's kind of buried very much buried yeah that's right that's right all right all right um where are we here on time we have time for a couple of cool stuffs found Mr. Braun the first is from listener Robin who says I know it is recommended to only use your Mac account in standard user mode but I find this too restrictive most of the time so I would set up my account in admin mode which quite frankly is I think what most of us do even though we know that we shouldn't and you know whatever but Robin says I spotted the following tip on one of the Mac sites recently it is for an app called privileges from a little company called SAP and there's a link to this app on github he says privileges allows you to use your Mac in standard mode but to quickly and easily add admin privileges to your account and to keep them for a defined short period I've not yet installed that he says but it does look cool and I thought I would bring it to your attention yeah that's a pretty good idea it it allows you to sort of it sort of like using sudo from the command line it it just and I my guess is that it is employing something of the sort but it just lets you you know add add enhance your privileges for a short period and then kind of tighten back down so yeah I like it that's a good one that might actually allow us to be what we want is security and convenience simultaneously and those are tough things to accomplish together I will say that Apple as a company has been pretty good at delivering security and convenience simultaneously like with touch ID and things like that to be able to make life and face ID for sure that like that is the best they've done so far because it just sort of happens which is great so thanks Robin that's good stuff I noticed John today at least I noticed it today I'm not sure when it happened maybe last week GPG suite version 2019.2 is now Catalina compatible which means you can use GPG inside of mail to encrypt and decrypt your your messages now so I'll put a link to that in the show notes but nice to see them get Catalina compatibility finally so oh yeah yeah I actually kind of gave up on them I actually deleted them because so GPG here's the deal GPG is I think the best way to put it is a peer to peer encryption model that's right agree with that yeah yeah I mean it uses PGP encryption it just they call it GPG suite because they want to be different right but the thing is you have to authenticate people that say hey you want my keys or right you want to exchange keys whereas the other model which is the SMI model is reliant on what we call a certification authority so correct correct that's right yeah but GPG key chains all also can sync with a key server so that and you can you can give people authority on the key server right like we can we can all get together and say I I confirm that the person with that key is John F. Braun and if you have 10 people that do that then when somebody looks you up on the key server they can be like oh that key probably does belong to the John F. Braun that I think it belongs to that's great you know those sorts of things so yeah shared key encryption mode web of trust as listener John points out in the chat room so yeah yes pretty good the other model until who was it who were those guys which guys the guys that decided not to give away certificates every year oh Komodo or whoever acquired them most recently that's right yeah yeah so that was the other model that's right and now they're like oh well we want money for doing this thing for you and it's like what are you nuts that's right well you know I it wouldn't surprise me if at some point Apple becomes an SMIME certificate authority and bakes that in well isn't you know I mean thing is I've been you know I got some new synologies like you probably did but even if you didn't encrypt me is an upcoming service you mean let's encrypt encrypt yeah let's encrypt is the one yeah yeah we use well I mean we use let's encrypt for a lot of our SSL certs on the web they just don't do SMIME but many of our SSL certs that we use on the web not the Mac observer one because we bought that before we started using let's encrypt but a lot of the ones that we use are are just for free through let's encrypt they have this great little engine they're 90-day certificates but it's great I have a thing that runs every day on the server and it checks and it sees if a certificate is within 30 days of expiring it just goes and gets a new one which which on the web is all you need a 90-day cert for email would be a pain in the neck because people need to have your current cert they can't like when you visit a website you get the cert the moment you connect and it doesn't matter what was there the last time it you know it just you just get it for that transaction whereas with email you want something that's a little longer lasting even a year sort of caused us trouble because we had people that had the old cert and you know it was always kind of a thing to make sure it propagated out so yeah it would I would be curious to see if they ever get into SMIME or if Apple gets into it it seems like Apple might you know I mean they're sort of doing it with iMessage I mean well yeah yeah I mean there's encryptions and certs right right and oddly enough I don't know where I don't know where in my memory I got this but encrypt.me is a thing encrypt.me is is a VPN service and they it used to be something else I think you get it for free when you have ERO plus or something like that I think that's the one that's included with that okay but yeah it's a VPN it used to be cloak is what they called it and then it was acquired and and now it's encrypt.me so but yeah I'm pretty sure cloak yeah cloak became encrypt.me so there you go yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I've got a couple more cool stuffs found to round this thing out you know me I love all kinds of well I love listening to music when it sounds good and I've got two things from JBL that are good for this holiday season one is their JBL live 500 BT headphones they're bluetooth headphones they pack up great for travel they're 150 bucks actually they're 149.95 and they've you can use your you can't use the S lady but you can use Google voice or the Amazon a lady right there inside your headphones and they have what they call ambient aware talk through technology very similar to but I mean it Apple chooses to call their version of this the the transparency mode on the on the new AirPods Pro same kind of thing you just touch a button and it increases the ambient sound so you can hear what's happening around you either for walking down the street or where I really find it handy is on an airplane when I hear an announcement being made I just click it on and now I don't have to take off my headphones but I can hear the announcement coming through and all that stuff so I will put a link to these JBL live 500 BT's in there they sound man they just they're comfortable and they sound good and they pack up easy over-the-ear headphones good stuff so that's that's one of my cool stuffs found at another one is the JBL pulse for I have been a fan of the JBL pulse speakers since the first one came out and it just keeps getting better this is a speaker that is built to look like a lava lamp and it really does it's cool that you can have different light effects on it I if I have room in my suitcase I will bring this one otherwise I bring a JBL flip with me because that one's a little bit tighter in size but if I have room I bring this with me and it's super nice to have in the hotel room you know a nice like ambient light kind of thing that's not just the weird hotel lighting and all that it's kind of cool to have you know the sound sort of synced with the with the lighting and all that cool stuff the new one is super clear the old pulses had like a mesh around them at times of the first couple of versions of it but this now it's just like clear glass and it's full 360 degree LED because the sound only comes out the top but it sounds great too so so it's like a guilty pleasure I guess but isn't that the point of like entertainment and music and all that stuff right it's it's good one last cool stuff found before we wrap up John is a service called tune my music comm to you any my music comm that allows you to transfer playlists between streaming music services it supports Apple music of course Spotify title Deezer YouTube Pandora Amazon music Google Play music RDO I think I got them all so if you move from one service to the other you decide hey like yeah I feel like Spotify is a better thing for me than Apple music or Apple music is better than Spotify whatever you don't have to lose your playlists you just sign up you have to have both running simultaneously and it'll just convert your playlists from one to the other and you can shut down the old one which is pretty darn cool so I put that in the so is it that there are different playlist data formats that they understand is that what I'm hearing yeah yeah I mean they're completely different and they are all incompatible with each other no okay so yeah so this figured out this this rebuilds it essentially it parses your playlist on one engine and then you know rebuilds it on another which which is cool yeah sweet I know it's good stuff man these it's good these people know uh well they know what they're doing which is you know sort of the point because that's why it's cool stuff out and there's the band I guess that means we're we're out well not not quite out I hope you got him a heater it's cold out there man it was cold in Nashville too it was like yeah I mean the whole country's been in this you know cold snap it was in like California I've seen my California friend saying right right yeah this is half of the country yeah that's right yeah no it was cold down there it was I don't think it got much above like 50 while we were there normally this time of year I think it would be like 60 65 during the day but yeah I got cold okay yeah but not below freezing because my observation has been with southern states especially when you get the black ice and snow it's a disaster oh yeah no no they they don't get much of that down there they do I mean they'll get maybe one snow storm a year people were telling me but but they don't have the equipment to clear it from no no no not at all no not at all Warren in the chat room suggests that I eat hot chicken I ate Nashville hot chicken that is some tasty stuff yeah it is they it as the story as the story goes hot this woman was upset that her husband was being extra flirtatious around town and so when she made him fried chicken but she poured a lot of cayenne pepper into the batter ah and he loved it and it turns out so it already else so now hot chicken has become this Nashville thing and there's lots of restaurants that serve it and it is it's good I mean it's it's like it's like fried chicken with a dry rub of cayenne it's kind of the way I describe it yeah it's like that's pretty much a staple I've I've been known at least to myself to make buffalo chicken wings and cayenne pepper is a staple of that recipe this is like buffalo wings and fried chicken had a baby is kind of kind of kind of but it's not like a it's not a wet thing like you would get with buffalo wings it's it's it's a you know it's like a fried chicken thing but with that heat that's good yeah yeah it's good all right thank you for listening folks thank you for submitting all your questions all that good stuff we have some reviews to read but I didn't want where we're running out of time so I will read them the next time but submit your reviews go to Mackie Cub comm slash reviews that'll get you as close as we can to Apple podcasts reviews engine just go leave us a review there we would love it it really truly makes a big big difference sign up for our weekly newsletter to go to Mackie Cub comm that way you'll get the show notes for every episode right 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Braun and he's Dave Hamilton I am so folks I know I got caught because I didn't know about the duck duck go bang gee but I got caught and I learned still I think the general advice needs to remain the same and and so that is don't get caught.