 The Mac Observers' Mac Geekab Episode 666 for Sunday, July 16, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers' Mac Geekab Episode 666. The show where you send in your questions, your tips, your cool stuff found, and we share. We answer, we do as much as we possibly can with the goal being that each of us, every single one of us learns at least four new things every time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include Otherworld Computing at maxsales.com and Eero at ero.com, where coupon code MGG qualifies you for free overnight shipping. Here in Crystal Lake, Illinois, I believe, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here, right next to Dave Hamilton in Crystal Lake, Illinois, this is John F. Braun. And we have a special guest for you today because it's Mac Geekab 666. So we thought of a guest no better than Mr. Guy Searle. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And here, in the fiery furnaces of hell, is Guy Searle. Forging the unholy alliance that has become Mac Geekab 666. Yes. So, folks, the way we're doing this is this is Mac Geekab 666. It is also MyMac 665. So after this finishes, you will hear, well, it won't finish. The second segment of this show is MyMac 665. Right, we've already recorded. Which, yes, we've already recorded, we've already recorded this, too, by the time you're hearing it. Well, I would hope so. Unless it's like a Twilight Zone kind of thing. Well, we're going to stipulate that time moves in a linear fashion. Okay. But I don't actually believe that. In fact, I'm certain it does not. There are certain conspiracy theorists that say it doesn't. No, being a drummer, I am convinced that it does not. However, we will just, for this episode, we will go with that. Okay, so we're living and dying in three-quarter time. That's it. Okay, good. What can drummers talk about timing? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, we are here at Mac Stock. How you doing, Mr. John Efron? How you doing? Good. Good. Fantastic. Glad to be out here again. Yeah. Because both of us didn't make it for various reasons last year, right? That's correct. Yeah, I was in Europe and you were at home, I suppose. I don't know. Yeah, I was here. I don't know. You were here. I was here. But you can't talk about where you were. What happens in New Hampshire stays in New Hampshire. Or Connecticut. That's right. All right. Actually, can I tell a real funny story here? Of course you can. It has nothing to do with Connecticut but Delaware. I traveled with this guy and he used to go out of his way to take me off. And he was from Delaware. So, to get him back, I would tell him that Delaware was a suburb of Philadelphia. Oh, wow. Yeah, he wasn't here at that. No, he did not. Yeah. Yeah. That was important for me to say in your show. That was highly entertaining, guy. Well, they're pretty tiny. Are they the smallest state or is that Rhode Island? No, it's the people that are tiny. It's really a huge state. Okay. No, it's pretty small. Hearing the two of you muse about the minutiae related to Delaware makes me wonder why it's taken us 666 episodes to have you on, guy. I think it's plainly obvious. All right. So, I want to share some quick tips that we saved for this episode. And then we've got some questions. And then we'll move on to the My Mac portion. Sound good? Sounds good. All right. So, the first tip comes from listener Robin who says, man, these windows on my 11-inch error are small. That's not what Robin says. That's what Dave says. No, I thought. And Robin says, recently I was copying a lot of Xcode projects where I needed copy data from one Xcode window to the second. I configured my mission control hot corners like this. Top left is start screensaver, which also locks my screen. Bottom left is bring up the desktop. Top right is mission control. And bottom right is application windows. To find the right Xcode window normally, I would do this. I would move the mouse to the top right corner to search for the Xcode windows. I would select the first one that I see. If that isn't the right one, then I have two options. I can do a mouse move to the right bottom corner where I can now see only the open Xcode windows and select the other one. This isn't bad, but with all of the animations flying all over your screen, it becomes a bit tiresome and you lose your mouse position. So I looked up the keyboard shortcut for application window switching and found that it is command back tick, which is generally the thing under the tilde key, at least on the three keyboards that I can see from here. But this does the same application window switching, but without animation and it's a movement I can use my left ring finger for, which is already accustomed to doing command tab. Give this command back tick a try if you have not already. Thanks so much for that, Robin. That's good stuff. Yeah, it is. And I, you know, this is why I love the quick tips that we do, because it's these things that you might have known about and yet if you're not using them, you're not using them. So as she's using like one of her little tiny fingers to... I think Robin is male, but... Okay. Yeah. Well, same, I was gonna say same thing, but it's obviously not. Sure. Would that make it a Waltzing Matilda? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, yet again wondering. Yeah, yeah, the question is being answered over and over again. Not to add to that. Well, this is technical. Okay. I'm not gonna try to be funny like I, but... No, what I learned also, I was like, you know, that's an interesting shortcut. Let me see if that's in the Apple official keyboard shortcut list. And as it turns out, it's not. But then a happy accident occurred. If you go into the Finder and you look in the window menu in the Finder, there's a shortcut called Cycle Through Windows and it's command back tick. Interesting, because I'm in Evernote, which is where we manage the show from and command back tick works, but it does not show up in the window menu. So, who knows? Who knows? All right, another quick tip from Harvey. Harvey writes, as soon as I can bring it up, in episode 664, you mentioned that by tapping on the screen you can reverse the direction of how you scan to view when taking panoramic pictures on your iPhone. Did you also know that you do not have to tap the record button to stop your recording? Once you tap the record button and start doing your panoramic scan, just reverse the direction of your scan and it will automatically stop the recording. This prevents a lot of wobbling at the end of your pano photos. I think that's pretty smart. That is pretty smart. Yeah, had no idea. Who knew? That's why I love about this stuff. I think John, the photographer, what did you have on your business card? Oh, well, they don't know this yet if they're listening just to Matt Geekia, but I think that's John F. Braun, not terrible photographer, Esquire. Yeah, that was it. Yes, that's right. That'll be in the next segment. I have some quick tips. We prepped a bunch of quick tips, but I found, I have three, I think three, four that came up today that I learned from sessions here at Mac Stock. Those are the ones that I'm going to share here. The first is if you like using tabbed windows in the Finder, Chuck joined your session this morning. He was talking about tips for your Mac and you can create tabs and all of that. The one thing that I did not know is that in that same window menu in the Finder, you have merge all windows and that will take all of your Finder windows and merge them into one as tabs. Yes. Which is really handy to consolidate things, especially if you want to copy files around because you can copy to the tabs. Really, really handy. So there's a tip that I learned. Did you know that one, John? No. No? See? That's why we do what we do. Yeah, I've actually used that on a number of occasions. There you go. It's very handy. It's handy. Yeah, right. That's why we do these quick tips. Dave Ginsberg did a session about the iPhone and iOS tips and the one that blew me away was 3D Touch. I've all but forgotten about 3D Touch even existing on my phone and he had Control Center up and he 3D Touched on the clock icon, whatever it is, the timer icon in Control Center and you're able to start 5, 10 and 20 minute timers right from there. Yeah, those were the defaults. Those are the defaults. Brilliant. The one that really blew me away was when he was adding widgets or taking widgets out and then just putting his finger on them and reordering them where they show up in that list. Yeah, with the little hamburger menu on the right. Yeah, that was so cool. Yeah. Awesome. And in that same screen, we may have talked about it before but I'm always tickled by the one with the flashlight where if you hold down, you get low, medium and high brightness on the LED flashlight. Totally forgot about that one. Yeah. Yep, I know. It's pretty cool. Dave Ginsburg knows his stuff. Dave Ginsburg definitely knows his stuff. I think some, if not all of that goes away in iOS 11 or at least has in some of the betas that have been out. I don't have iOS 11 installed on a 3D Touch capable device so I can't test that. But I've heard tell of that. It's worth checking your apps because a lot of them, developers over time will add, I guess maybe due to popular demand from the users, they'll add what seems to be something useful. So hey, if you've got a few moments, you know, 3D Touch, everything on your phone and see what comes up. You know, likely something will happen. What was the first phone that allowed you to do 3D Touch? I want to say the... Because I've got a 6S. 6S, I think. See, I can't use it. Yeah, 6S is what brought it in. Okay. Yeah. 6S to be me. That's always kind of been a minor annoyance to me because technically there's no reason they couldn't... Put it in 6. Well, I think you could add something 3D Touch-like. They have. I mean, if you long hold, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Which I think that's what David was actually doing on screen. Oh, is that... No, he was 3D Touching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because long hold doesn't do those things. So, yeah. All right. Another one actually that happened when you and I were chit-chatting, you were saying that you had something on your phone that was using a bunch of cellular data. And I said... And this is... Here's the quick tip. If you want to see app-specific usage of your cellular data, your phone tracks that for you. If you go into Settings and go into Cellular and just wait a second, a list of all of your apps will come up at the bottom. What that list is mainly for is turning on or off the ability for that specific app to speak data over the cellular connection. But it also shows you how much data it's used since the last time you manually reset your cellular counter. So, you can see what it's using and then of course you can manually reset your cellular counter at the bottom of that screen. And there you go. Well, you'd also want to... You know, if you've got a runaway process on an iOS app, you'd want to be able to see which one was using the most data so that you could shut it down completely. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. So, there you go. God, it sounds just like anyone I'm talking about. Yeah. Holy. I suspect it's because I was recently in Manhattan for a couple of days for various events. Yeah. And usually when I'm about town we have... But my ISP offers Wi-Fi. So, I must have just been running something and I didn't realize it was chewing my data seriously. I'm down to like 75% and I have like three weeks left. So, I think I'm going to have to... Well, actually what Verizon does now is I do believe they will not shut you off, but they will reduce you to 3G unless you buy more. Okay. So, it's not like they totally cut you off, but I'll get slower performance. So, it may be okay. Yeah. Well, that's not terrible if that's all we do. Yeah. Yeah. One last quick tip from Allison Sheridan's password manager session here. She mentioned a great site that was put together by Barpooshot. It's called xkpasswd.net. So, xkpasswd.net. And it is built to help you build a memorable yet very hard to guess single password that you could then use for things like one password or last pass or even your Apple ID. The few passwords that you can't store in a password manager that you have to type in occasionally. So, xkpaswd.net will help you generate these passwords. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that. I don't know that I ever knew about it. Well, you've been on his podcast, right? I have. Let's talk Apple. I've been on podcast with Bart. I don't know if I've been on that one, but I certainly know Bart. Yeah. Yeah. So, we will put all of that stuff in the show notes. John, that's the end of my quick tips. And I think that's the end of our quick tips for this episode. But we've got a few questions. We'll see how many of them we can get through. Do you want to take us, John, since you're the one that prepped all these? All right, sweet. I will kick it off with Bruce here. And this is a great question. And Bruce asks, hi, guys. Are you aware of any kind of add-on you can add to Apple Mail, which would then give you a... Oh, and there's a page break right there. But I think his question is, give you an indication that someone has opened your email. Okay, and then the next part of this here is some services using include JPEG in the message, which is how they get information back to confirm the message has been read. Any ideas? Yes, I got several ideas about this. So sadly, while the email standards support this and that you can put something in the header of an email that you send out that will request a read receipt, most clients ignore it. Whether that's right or wrong, I don't know. Well, we're talking about consumer grade mail programs. Yes. So regular email, it can be requested, but it rarely happens. There is something you can do. I found an article at lifewire.com and it basically instructs you on how to put a request read receipt or I think send disposition. It's in the article. You can read it. But you can actually do a default writes from the terminal and insert this header in emails that you send out. And I actually have had mostly people running Outlook for some bizarre reasons, certain implementations of Outlook honor this thing and I'll get an email back from the person saying, yeah, they read it or no, they didn't read it. But in general, it's ignored. My best advice here, what you can do is, you know, just search for email read receipts. There are various services that will do what he suggested, is that they embed what many call a web bug and it's basically a one by one image in an outgoing email and when somebody opens it, it registers with a server and it says, yep, that's been read. But would that be limited to when the person actually opened it or when the email arrived on the server for the person to read? It's essentially loading an image. So they have to open it and have an option to load images and it's kind of sneaky. It's a one by one thing. They're not going to see it nor know that it's happening unless they have some software that detects an outgoing thing. Absolutely nothing sneaky about that at all. I would throw mail butler, which we've talked about on a few shows recently into the ring. It's a plugin for Apple Mail and that's one of the things it can do is it will do that for you. It can embed that tracker? Yep, and it'll help you do that. I think with the free version, you get a limited number, I think you get a limited number of what they call premium events or something per month and I think that's one of them. That's their business, you can buy them. The indication I also got is that if you work in a closed email ecosystem, like Outlook, read receipts can be requested, but that's outside of the scope of this. I think he was looking for a general solution for just regular emails. Yeah, you're right about that. A corporate email often has this included in it. I saw references, Google, if you're all based on Google Enterprise, email, outsourced type of thing. I think that's really it. Another thing I'll mention is that Dave, we've used MailChimp in the past to send out emails to confirm people's address and one of their features because they're really a web-based service that generates emails. One of the things they advertise that they can do as well is to indicate if an email was opened, as well as provide email address hygiene and stuff like that. The thing I'll close with here is although you can tell if someone has opened, perhaps using a third-party service, you can tell that someone has opened your email doesn't mean that they've understood it. Opening, reading, and understanding are three different things. Before we jump to the next question, I do want to talk about our two sponsors for MacKicab today. Our first is Otherworld Computing, who happened to be literally sitting across from us here at MaxDoc in the common area. OWC is, as we have said many times, the place where John and I generally go first when it's time to buy a peripheral. Whether you need an external hard drive or an SSD, or you want their new Thunderbolt 3Doc or even their existing Thunderbolt 2Doc, I really like their Thunderbolt and USB drive docks that they have where you can put external hard drives in them without having to put those in cases. So it's this thing that just hangs off your computer. If you have a drive you need to put in, you just drop it in and boom, it's mounted. You're not using a screwdriver to mount the stupid thing in a case just to get data off of it. It's like a toaster. It looks like. Really awesome stuff. They understand every bit of tech that they sell. Let me say that again. They understand every bit of tech that they sell. That's really important these days. Can I give you a great example? Sure. Just recently. I've got this 2013, early 2013 MacBook Pro. Had a 250 gig SSD and it's too small. So two days before I was going to leave on this trip, it was like, God, can I get a one terabyte SSD that quickly? And of course, the first place I go to look for stuff like that is maxsales.com, OWC. And sure enough, they said, oh yeah, we can get that to you in a single day. It was like, really? Yeah. The next day I had it and not only did they send me the drive but because I got the kit that comes with it, it came with an external case that I could put the existing SSD that was in. All the one you're removing. Right. Yep. Put that into the existing case, came with a cable for that to go right into the computer. And they included all the screwdrivers and everything that I needed to take the back of the MacBook Pro off. I didn't need anything else. 100% of it was in the box. 100% of it was there. And it was ridiculously, I mean, yeah, it was an extra cost beyond the SSD. But it was ridiculously inexpensive. And if you had called them for tech support, they would have understood exactly what you were doing. And even the fact that they sent you all the right stuff, that's a testament to it. So you got to check them out. MaxSales.com are huge thanks to Otherworld Computing for sponsoring this episode. Thank you, MaxSales. They don't know. Thanks, guys. Our second sponsor for this episode is Eero at ero.com. Eero is the most mature of the mesh Wi-Fi solutions in the market today. They've been out the longest, which means that they've been around about two years, at least in the market. And they just released their second generation system, which means that in their base units, they now have a third radio. So they have a 2.4 gigahertz radio and two 5 gigahertz radios. What this means is they can, and they dynamically assign these radios on the fly. But what it means is things can be a lot more efficient, either for the backhaul between all of your Eero units or perhaps also for the fronthaul where you've got all your clients connecting. Things are going twice as fast with their true mesh now with the additional radio. They also added a product called Beacon. The Beacon has two radios, but it has been tweaked so that it's, I think, about 30% faster than the original Eero and the cool part about the Beacon is you just plug it into a wall outlet and it sits right there. You don't have to plug any wires in. Even for power, it literally just sits there, doesn't take up any space on your table, and will take care of getting you Wi-Fi bliss. So you've got to check this out. You know, the single router model just doesn't work in many, many cases. If you've got dead spots in your home, it's because you don't have an access point within range of where you need your, or where you bring your devices. That's what mesh is for. It's all distributed. It's all configured from a single interface. You do it from your phone. You don't have to manage each device individually. It's all one thing. They're all aware of each other, and they talk with each other. That way, your devices are always connected to the right one, and you just get blanket coverage throughout your house without having to think about it. Enterprise-grade Wi-Fi in your home in just a few minutes. Here's the deal. If you go to ero.com, make your purchase, add overnight shipping to your order, it'll charge you, or it'll say it's going to charge you for it. Then when you add coupon code MGG, or promo code MGG, it will not charge you for overnight shipping. So you can have your ero system in one business day. Go to ero.com, add overnight shipping, add the promo code MGG. That will make the overnight shipping free, and you will have Wi-Fi bliss very, very quickly. Our huge thanks to ero for doing what they do, and for sponsoring this episode. All right. What's the next question, John? Well, Douglas has a question. Actually, I have two questions. We'll answer the first one and answer the other one later. My brother has a 27-inch iMac running Sierra 10.12.5. Everything is up to date. His internet access is through AT&T U-verse. The iMac is directly connected to the U-verse via a LAN cable. The U-verse modem also puts out his Wi-Fi signal for his iPad. So there's the problem. Whenever he wakes his iMac up from sleep, it takes about a minute for his internet connection on his iMac to kick in. For example, if he clicks on a bookmark in Safari, just after waking his Mac, Safari will tell him that he is not connected to the internet. After a short time, 30 to 60 seconds, the webpage will load. After that, everything is fine. When my brother is getting a little frustrated with having to wait, each time he wakes the iMac. When using Wi-Fi with his iPad, the connection is immediate. I have checked his internet settings, and everything seems fine as far as I can tell, though I'm in no means an expert. You guys are the experts, okay. So I was wondering what you think the problem may be. Is there any one of those? Have you experienced this before, John? No. Oh, I get this from time to time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm all regime in the question. I have some additional thoughts, but let me give you some of my first thoughts here. Okay. All right, so clearly it's a problem with the iMac and not the iPad since the iPad reacts. Well, the observation is that the iPad always works, and the iMac, it takes it a while to get a connection. Yeah, I'll give you that. Sure. So I'll speculate that the problem is localized to the iMac. Sure. Okay. It could be. Now you know about our friends' caches. Caches are things that work that has been performed and is stored and is referred to later. The problem is sometimes cache is malfunction, or get dirty, or... Bad data. Bad data. There is something in most operating systems called a DNS cache where you look up something, you look up a website, and rather than going out to a DNS server, it's like, hey, I got this cached. It could be that the DNS cache is corrupt. There is a way, a couple of ways, to clear the DNS cache. So one is you can hop into the terminal and do that, and I found an article over at dreamhost.com that tells you, based on which version of macOS you're using, how to clear your DNS cache. So it can't hurt to do that. It'll get rebuilt, and then maybe everything, all the problems will go away. Onyx also does this, too. So this is another place I think you can look, is that if you go to Onyx and you go to their cleaning menu and then their internet menu, well, there's a checkbox for DNS cache, and actually they have a box for browser cache, and a few other internet-related caches as well. So clear those out as well. Keep caches key. Yes. Another thing is that what you may want to do to isolate the problem is that there is something called network diagnostics within macOS. In system prefs. And we'll link to an article about that. Yeah, you go to system preferences, network, and then assist me and you will get... Oh, yeah. I forgot you can get there that way. Oh, yeah. Wait, so I was right. You were right, guy. Oh, my God. Well, partially... No, it's definitely right. You were right in where to start. So system preferences, network, I'm going to look right now. And then, yeah, then assist me, and when you hit assist me, you get three choices. Cancel, probably not what you want. Diagnostics, and then they have something called assistant. Try those tools while the problem is occurring. Personally, I don't know if I've ever had it diagnose a problem for me successfully, but maybe it can get the wheels rolling. Maybe it'll clear something out or get something moving that'll eliminate this problem here. You know, while I was reading the question, another thought occurred to me, Dave, here. So it sounds like the iMac is wired and the iPad is wireless. Whoa. Bad cable? Well... A wired network connection issue? I mean, it seems weird that it wouldn't work and then all of a sudden work, but I don't know if the cable's working. You would think it would work faster under a wired connection? Absolutely, but it's just... My observation is that there are two different connections that this thing is providing. One is wireless and one is wired. I believe it sounds like it's wired. Yeah, you know, there's more than just the DNS cache. I would go in and remove, in System Preferences Network, and remove the network connection. Just highlight it and hit the minus key. Delete it. It's not going to delete your Ethernet port. Trust me, it's still going to be on the back of your computer. But when you then hit the plus button and add Ethernet back in, which is the next step to do, then it creates a whole new profile and that might be the thing. Honestly, it sounds to me like it has a proxy server turned on where it's looking for a SOX, SOC, KS proxy or some kind of auto proxy and it's waiting and waiting and waiting for the proxy to respond. It doesn't and so it falls back to non-proxy mode and goes and looks up the site and connects. I've had this before where I've been connected to a proxy network. Everything's fine. I go somewhere else. I plug in and it's like, why is this so slow? Then you go in and you see how the proxy settings are checked. So you can check that too. Another thing to try would be to go back. If it is a wired network, go back to you've only got the one connection on your iMac, but chances are back wherever the router is, you've got multiple outputs or inputs that you can use. Just try switching to another input. Yeah, it could be that there's a bad cable or I mean a bad cable is not going to be resolved by doing that. There's a bad port on the switch. Do you think that if it is a problem with the cable that it's first trying to connect through the wired and then saying, okay, I can't do it through the wired. Let me go ahead and go to the wireless and that could be the cause of the delay. Totally. Well, I'm not a big fan of having multiple interfaces on any machine. I actually have network profiles that have one or the other, not both. Well, you know, one way you could test that would be to remove the wireless connection and see if you're able to come on to the wireless. See if it starts working entirely. Right, and if it does then you know that it's either the port that you're connected to or the cable. Of course, the other thing is since wireless seems to be working is switch the iMac over to wireless and eliminate the hardware. That's not a good solution. It also depends on what he's using. I mean, if he's just online surfing and getting an email, then a wireless connection is fine. Yeah, as long as he's got good connection. Yeah, if he's, you know, Skyping or downloading video or anything like that, he definitely would want to go with a wired connection. I had an issue with the iMac in the studio that thankfully was fixed as part of a motherboard repair. But the Ethernet port, something had happened. Probably some kind of power surge strike issue. Yeah, I've had that recently. Where it would no longer sink at gigabit speeds. Even though it was a gigabit port and, you know, obviously the connection on the other end was gigabit. Something in the port on the iMac fried to where it still worked but only at 100 megabit speeds. And so the only way I could get it to work was in system preferences. I had to go to Ethernet and go to, I think it's, I don't think you go to advanced. I don't have an Ethernet connection on this computer, but you go to hardware in the Ethernet settings there and choose instead of configure or set the speed automatically you manually set it to 100 base TX instead of 1000 base TX. And for me, that fixed the problem. But obviously it was a short term solution. Yeah, I wound up actually using the Otherworld Computing Thunderbolt 2 dock or maybe it was the Thunderbolt 1 dock at the time. But, you know, their Thunderbolt dock had a gigabit Ethernet port on it. It was like, alright, well if I can't use the built in one. I can use this one. I'll use that one, yeah. It's got enough bandwidth. Oh, Thunderbolt has, yeah, totally. Yeah, it worked great. Yeah, so it's possible that the port itself has become damaged. Or like you said, the port on the Switch could have been, I mean, both of them are equally susceptible. And to detect the problem that, like Dave mentioned, there also is something called network utility. And if you click on the info tab it then gives you a list of all the interfaces that you have. So for example, I look here now and it says Ethernet, EN0. And it gives a whole bunch of statistics. Now right now I'm not connected by Ethernet, but if I was it would tell me send packet errors, receive packet errors, and also the link speed. So you want to make sure, and the link status and a whole bunch of other things. Yeah. Actually that would have shown you that your connection was dumbed down to 100 from gigabit and then you could be like, Right, yeah, but my problem was it tried, it kept trying to negotiate Ethernet. Yeah, of course, because it was like, I see gigabit, you know, and so yeah, it was a thing. Cool stuff. Well, that I think is the end of our time limit for our Mac GeekGab segment. So for those of you listening on the Mac GeekGab feed, we will now begin my Mac segment. So standby to standby for that. And those of you that are listening on the my back feeds, standby to standby for the Mac stock segment. Man, easy for me to say. No, it was not. It was probably harder for you to do my apologies. We haven't even started drinking yet. No, no, it's stone cold sober. That's right. Yeah, maybe that's the problem. Yeah, we need to be drunk. You know, I'm still amazed it's taken a 666 episodes to get you here, guy. I'm not amazed at all. Thank you so much for joining us on Mac GeekGab. Oh, no problem. Thank you. And I guess is that it? That's it now. Okay. You can say it. Okay, standby to standby. And we will all be right back for some Mac stock stuff. You're listening to another great podcast in the My Mac podcasting network. My Mac podcast 665, an unholy amalgamation. Oh, crap. You're listening to the G-Mac on the My Mac.com podcast. And welcome everyone to the So Far No Mistakes My Mac podcast number 665. We are here at Mac stock. Now, I do not have gas this week. No, you don't. I do not have gas. However, I do have probably the most unlikely combination of guys that have ever actually agreed on purpose to be on the My Mac.com podcast. I think it was our idea. That's right. That makes it worse, Dave. And there were promises made, which are under non-disclosure. Right. Well, we can go over those at dinner time. Yes. And you're buying dinner, right? Or was I supposed to buy dinner? I thought that's part of the deal here at Mac Stock Conference and Expo. Well, if you buy a certain ticket, right? Oh, you got to have the golden ticket. You have to buy the right ticket. That's right. The right ticket. We have Dave Hamilton and Mr. John F. Braun. And you have to put Mr. before his name from the Mac e-gab. Hey, guys. Hey, man. Thanks for having us. It was nice to be had. If only you knew. If only you knew. Yeah, we had. Now, you guys are going on when? Tomorrow? John's not speaking. Oh, that's right. That's right. I am speaking. Right. So we're recording this on Saturday, the 15th. Yeah, that's the 15th. Yeah. And I am speaking about mesh networks in 20 minutes or less on Sunday. You're not doing a deeper dive for that, though. No. Sure ain't. You probably should have. I offered. Was there just like no spaces available? Well, I'm going last. So there's really no time for a deep dive after your last. And you've got something going on right afterwards anyway. Yeah, I'm actually not going to do that. Oh, you're not going to do that? There's a fish concert, folks, happening Sunday night actually on Saturday and Friday, about an hour and a half from here. But logistically, it's going to be a disaster. So I spent about an hour and a half last night. Trying to figure it out. It all out and every piece of it was its own like renting the car was its own nightmare, you know, and really the final straw that broke it was tickets are available but via StubHub, which is fine, but only for pickup. So I can't do an electronic ticket, which means I have to then stop at some StubHub office in downtown Chicago before I go out via the minor tiny little artery to Randall's Island or not Randall's Island. That's New York. Whatever. Northerly Island here. It's just not going to happen. I've accepted this. Okay. It's hurting me. Well, I know that you're a big fish fan. I am. And we're not talking about the Miami Dolphins here. No, no, never have been a Miami Dolphins fan. Well, let's see. You're from what's that area called New England? The New of England. The New of England. So I'm trying to think about what football team you guys could possibly possible. We have the champions. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. No, no, no. As a long suffering Miami Dolphins fan, and I have to say I hate Belichick with every single fiber of my bean, but only because he's not the coach at the moment of the Miami Dolphins. Right. No, I understand that. I totally. Of course. That makes sense. Yeah. Is that what the topic of the My Mac segment of this show is? It wasn't really intended to be, but this is kind of a stream of conscious consciousness show as much as it is. Half the time I just stand there and go. And that works. It does work. People keep downloading the show. There you go. So odd. I think it's mostly because of gas. Real quick, I wanted to talk about the stuff that's on the My Mac website for the week. And I'm doing this so fast. I have none of this written down. I'm just going to talk real, real fast. Geekiest show ever. 265 Lethargic Skype podcast. Go download it. Essential Apple podcast 48. Hey, garlic head. It's Keith R. Wrong shot Baker. I have no idea what that means, but I'm sure it's a great podcast. We have the new force EDC in ear monitors. This is a headphones review. The Mac stock 2017 conference photos, which I guess just came up today. Because since this is, and that was the last one. So that's all the stuff over at my Mac.com. It's gorgeous. Did you, are you the one that reviewed the new force EDCs? You know, oddly enough, since I, you know, starting in 2009, when gas and I took over the podcast, I have not been able to write as much as I used to. It just, just doesn't seem to be enough time. All right. Well, so, and it's so, so that wasn't you. I was going to ask you all about them. Oh, they're great. I love them. Okay. But it wasn't me. But you've used them. No. Okay. Awesome. I just, in general, I think it's a good idea. Right. Okay. It's just a good idea. Okay. John, how are you today, sir? Fantastic. We have not heard enough from you. It's all been the Guy and Dave show. Speak to us. Yeah. What kind of house been? What do you want me to speak to you about? We'll be doing an entire Mac geek gap segment. This show will be released to both of our audiences. You know, we should probably talk about how this is going to work. Now that we're five minutes in. Yeah. Now that we're five minutes in. We're going to use the same garage band band file. So when we're done recording this, I'll save the band file. We'll put it on the USB stick and I'm laughing because that apparently was a whole big thing a little while ago. Give that band file to Dave, and he will edit it for the Mac geek gap. I'll edit mine for my Mac. And essentially, if you listen to the Mac geek gap, you'll hear the Mac geek gap part first. Right. And then you'll hear the my Mac. You already heard the Mac geek gap part. Right. We'll have to say this again on the geek gap part. We'll have to give some sort of warning. Yeah. After this very sensible part of the podcast, there'll be the my Mac part. That's right. Okay. Good. People do need to be warned. And then the third part, we'll just talk about what happened here at Mac stock today. That's right. And so far, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, but let's not ruin that. Oh, that's right. Right. We got to save that. We got to save that. Exactly. Well, now you flew out here. I did. You did. But let's not talk about the Mac stock stuff. Well, this was just general. Just general. Yeah. Yeah, general chitchat. Yeah. And I picked you up at the airport. You did. And along with Wally and Wendy Chew. Chewinsky. Chewinsky. I always have a lot of trouble with their last name. I don't know why. You might know, if you don't know who Wally is, you might have seen his work. If you watched any of the multi-camera shots that were done of the Macworld All-Star Band years ago, he edited all of those together. Oh, I did not know that. And sort of spearheaded that movement. Yeah. Yeah, that was Wally's brainchild and laborers of love. You know, of everything that happened at, I guess we're not really talking about anything in particular. Everything that happened at the Macworld Expo. I think my favorite part, honestly, one of my favorite parts was the Cirque du Mac parties. And, you know, even more so, because when you're at the Macworld Expo in the way that we all were, where, you know, we're covering the event and we're spending a lot of time in the press room, either recording a podcast or writing about the Expo or talking to vendors or the rest of that, we don't really get to see a whole lot of the show. You know, we're walking the floors looking at cases, the last few years. Yeah, we experienced the show very differently from other people. From other people. Yeah, exactly. So the community that we were dealing with was mostly other press guys. It was all in the press room. But then when you'd go to, like, the smile party or Cirque du Mac or what was the big part, the big Macworld Microsoft parties they used to have. Macworld used to have parties and then prior to all of that were the Mac the Knife parties. I never got a chance to go any of this. Okay, yeah. But that was where you would actually get the community, the community spirit from all the different people that would go to the Macworld Expo. And you would see some of the same faces every year but you'd see a lot of new faces too. Part of the problem with that though was that it was so big that you couldn't always spend a lot of quality time talking to people. No, plus there was a loud band playing at Cirque du Mac that really couldn't talk to people. Well, the 2007 Macworld Expo was cheap trick at the Microsoft party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next year I think it was Devo. I remember them once. Yeah, Devo. I think Modest Mouse was in between cheap trick and Devo I want to say but I might be wrong about that. Well, they had a DJ one year that was really super lame. They had Little Feet. The final year, right? Maybe it wasn't the final year but they definitely had Little Feet play. God, I hope I didn't miss that one because I love Little Feet. Oh, it was Killer. It was over at Mezzanine where they had the, you know, and then they had Paul, Paul Kent's band, the House Rockers, played one of those too. Right. And then of course the House Rockers and you guys all played, you know, the Macworld All-Star band which included a lot of House Rockers. It only included one House Rocker. Really? It was just Paul. I thought that there were other people that were involved in that. No, I mean there were other people involved that wasn't just drums and guitar. From the House Rockers. No, no, it was just Paul. Okay. Because you guys always had such a tight set. It surprised me to find out that you really only had one serious practice session before the actual event. We had one practice session. It wasn't necessarily serious. Oh, come on. You guys are so slow. No, we worked hard. Yeah, we worked hard. And just everybody that would spend the time to put those together was just so, so wonderful. And when it all went away, I was kind of heartbroken. Even though I hated the flights out there and trying to get back on the red eyes leaving them that last night after at the end of the show, just to be out there, knowing that I was going to be out there the next year would help kind of get me through. And I know that at the end of the 2014 one, was that the last one? That they were kind of saying, oh yeah, well, we'll see you all next year. I think everybody knew at that point that the writing was on the wall. Yeah, it was literally on the wall. Like the dates weren't posted. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so no more Macworld. But we have other things too that have kind of taken a place to that. We'll talk about that in the third section, which is one of them being this conference that we're here at today. And do you think that smaller conferences like these can take the place to something like Macworld, or do you think that it actually really needs to? I don't think there's a place for a conference like Macworld anymore. I mean, I think this is the only type of thing that makes sense. I mean, Macworld was a conference for consumers. Right. And it had to make money at that, right? It needed to be a profitable venture. For IDG. Right. And I mean, that's fine. But it doesn't make sense for exhibitors en masse. You know, 100 exhibitors or 150 exhibitors or 300 exhibitors to spend that kind of money to be in front of those consumers. 20,000 people. Yeah, 20,000 people even if it's 30. I mean, it's just like the web has changed that. Apple likes to take credit for it and say it's Apple stores, but it's not. But there was a point where I think you saw the decline of the event, not the quality, but the value proposition that there was the year that Apple decided to say, you know what, we're not going to show up. We don't feel we need to because, as they said, and you hinted at, you can come to our store and learn all about our stuff. You don't need to come to Macworld to learn about it. And to a certain extent, I think they were right. Well, they were. But it was just so unfortunate that. And I think the other thing that I did like, the direction that it took towards the end, I personally, it could just be my own take on things or to provide value is I would always blow by the booths of the big guys like Adobe and FileMaker and things because I'm like, I already know what they do. To me, one of the biggest values of going to Macworld was when they started doing this little, as we called it, what do we call it, tiny town we called it. The little shanties where you had small developers who all are struggling for the most part. Houses that have less than 50 or 25 or maybe one or two people. How are you possibly going to sell and promote your product? It could be the best product in the world, but you need a presence. You need a way to get exposure. And I would do my best to find people that were little guys that were making these really innovative things and helping promote them. Do you know what was cool about Tiny Town? Well, I mean besides the fact that it was just cool, they had all those round tables and then you would have up to four vendors at each one of these little round tables. And it was like literally one side would be a guide with some kind of graphics program. The next one would be medical technology. The one after that would be the world's greatest audio scrubber and the one after that would be an iOS game. And it would all be on that one table. So you could walk around that table and as an interviewer have 20 minutes of content. Just talking to those guys there. Yeah, the problem was each of those people paid a thousand bucks to be there. It really doesn't matter how many of those people you have, you're not going to even pay the rent on the space. Well, do you know what part of the problem with that was after Apple left? Yeah. And I'm sure you noticed this as well. There were less and less press there. Well, there were less attendees in general there. I know, but I mean, did you go to the very last year? Of course. How many people did you see in the press room ever? Oh, it was empty. Yeah. Yeah. I think MyMac had like, we had like six or seven people there. Yeah. We were the biggest contingent. Yeah. It's probably right. If you had six or seven, that was more than we brought that year. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you, and I guess the writing on the wall was literally at that point when, because if you don't have press there, then even especially the smaller vendors. Yeah. Well, like I said, there's no place for a large 20, 30,000 consumer show. There's just no business model for it. Well, you go to CES, right? Yeah. That's not consumer focused at all. CES, in fact, if you are a consumer, you cannot attend. Really? Yeah. It's only for press, distributors, you know, tire kickers, but you have to be someone in the industry. Now, they are very loose about that definition. Right. But that is what it is. So, and really the show floor is a mess. From a press angle, and people that listen to Matt Geek have heard us say this, that the show floor doesn't make sense for press, because... It's not segmented in any particular way? It is segmented, but when you go up to somebody's booth, you know, you're competing for their time with people that have interests that are widely varied from yours. And frankly, most people are there looking to get distribution for whatever their products are or are going to be. So, somebody from Best Buy ranks a lot higher than, you know, somebody perhaps even from like, you know, the New York Times, let alone Mac Observer. So, there are press events, specific press events like the PEPCOMs and showstoppers and unveils that work really well. And we go out for those, but the show floor is almost worthless. So, you think that the days of the big consumer event-based shows are done? There are none left. I mean, CES, despite being called the consumer electronic show, is not for consumers. So, I don't think there are any large consumer, tech consumer events left. Well, there's one coming up that they have at the Javits every year called PhotoPlus Expo. I would argue that it's for photographers. Professionals. And semi-pros. But not consumers. Not just users. You have to be pretty serious about photography. To attend or to exhibit? Well, either someone who makes money from photography or somebody who really wants to learn about the craft. I mean, they have, you know, conference sessions. You know, you can learn lots of new things because they have a lot of top-notch, you know, Kelby, you've probably heard of him. You know, he does things there. I get value because, you know, I fancy myself a not terrible photographer. And I like the technology. Is that what you have on your business card? John F. Braun. Not terrible photographer. Esquire. When I go to that show, I should get that made up. But the interesting thing is that there's an overlap. The reason I get value is that I like photography, but there's also an overlap between the people who see it photo plus because... I hope you're tweeting that, Dave. Well, they have lots of, you know, all the Naz vendors. Because if you take photography, you're probably going to need a place to store the stuff and not lose it. And so, you know, you get the Drobo and the Synology and QNAP and all those guys there. A lot of software people there that make the imaging software and the, you know, photo software. So it's an interesting intersection of different markets that I think does provide value. But I'll agree with Dave. Yeah, it's not pure consumer. Maybe pro-sumer, I'll say. So those days are gone, then? Yeah, they've been gone for a long time. In fact, I think they were gone... I think Backworld was probably the last one. And I think it lasted longer than it should have. Not that I'm sad that it lasted, but just from a sort of general standpoint, I think the desire of 25,000 people for it to continue as long as possible kept it continuing as long as possible and longer than it should have. And that's, listen, I'm not complaining about that. Right. Yeah, just how it is. Well, it's too bad, not just because of the show itself, but just because that community spirit. I mean, you think back to when user groups were huge in the 80s and the 90s, maybe even in the late 70s. Yeah. And as soon as the internet became a thing, user groups disappeared almost over... I'm not saying that all of them, but a lot of them disappeared almost overnight. Yeah, for sure. I belong to the Washington and Apple Pie. Okay. And they were a pretty big group there for a while. Yeah. And then right after... God, it was probably mid-2000s as the internet was starting to get real big. Yeah. I went to an event there, and they... I hate to say it like this, it was almost like God's waiting room. It was almost everybody there that was like really, really super old. Yeah. And this isn't... I'm not slamming user groups in particular because there's a lot of value there in belonging to a user group. The user groups that have turned that corner have made their user groups into social clubs. Right. And that's where it had to go. Yeah. There's the meeting, and whenever the meeting is, I've seen it work in the evenings, and I've seen it work on a Saturday morning kind of thing. Right. But everybody shows up because A, they like all the other people they're going to see, and yes, they have a shared interest in this hardware that we call Apple or whatever it is. But they're all there for pizza and beer afterwards or the lunch that you always go to. And it's this monthly social club. Right. Look, I mean, that's great. I mean, this year alone, I think I've flown all over the country speaking at like six different user groups. And they're great because it's this social club. Yeah. I mean, I go and I speak, and then my favorite part is... After. After. And I'm not alone in that. And I'm okay with it, having been the speaker. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I hope I didn't piss anybody off with that God's waiting room thing. Well, you probably did. Okay. Yeah. Not the first time. You weren't wrong. Yeah. All right. Well, we are... We're over 20 minutes, so we should probably wrap this up and then we're going to get into your guy's stuff. And then the last section, we'll talk about all the stuff that happened here today in Mac Stock. Sounds good. All right. So everyone, please stand by to stand by here in God's waiting room and we will be right back. Greetings, folks. And welcome back to 665, the third section. And Matt Geekub, 666, the third section. Three for three. We are three for three. I'm Dave Hamilton, of course. We are here at the McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, Illinois at Mac Stock, just ending the first day. Say that name, I dare you. The Lake Conference Center. Oh, nice. Nicely done. I'm going to make it up. Okay, good. Yeah. That's what I do. That's what I do. I throw to my right. John F. Brond to my left. And Mac Stock day one. I was going to say is almost over, but that's actually not true because the best part about Mac Stock is the camaraderie, getting to see everyone, all of that. And that continues well into the evening with the third annual Barry's Mac Barbecue thing that continues to evolve. Right. Let's see the first year. Was that his house? Was that his house, it was brilliant. The house with the amazing faucets and cats and cats and it poured rain and oh my God. I mean it like poured rain. Yeah. But they put a tent in their backyard that was big enough for everybody and it was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And then last year they had it right outside the doors here. Right. Yeah. They had the great pork chops. Yeah. I missed that, but I remember hearing that's where it was. Yeah. They couldn't have booze in the parking lot. Right. But it's a dry school. Some schools let you have booze on campus. Okay. Not this one. Well, students certainly, college students certainly don't consume. No. Oh, at some school, at UNH, I know. Students of age can drink. It's not a dry campus. Oh. It's weird. I think his, I think his point was that no college kids drink ever. Oh, even like underage college students don't drink. No. Yeah. College kids in general. Never drink. Never drink. But, this year's event is properly titled Barry's Midwest Mac Mingle After Party. Yes. And there's going to be a band. There's going to be food. I hear. I know. And the great thing is, you know, the total cost of the conference for both days, including the Midwest Mac Mingle was $200. I mean, and that was the most that you could spend. And that was without the discounts and everything else. You got two full days of the conference. You got lunch on both days. You got the Midwest Mac Mingle. You got a t-shirt. You got a, a, a stein glass. Yep. Yeah. John's holding up his right there. Yeah. I believe that there's a coffee mug. I mean, just all of the, there is, and I was talking about this on the last, my Mac podcast, you couldn't go to any major city in the United States, spend $200 and have two full days of entertainment like this. So you're saying that Mike needs to charge more for Mac stock. And, and when he does, we will all pay for it. And it'll be my fault. No, it, I'll take the blame for it. I don't. But, but he should charge more for this. Pay for it. Like this is, there is a greater value here than, than you are paying for it. Even if he doubled the price, that's still probably half of what really this conference should cost. Yeah. And part of that is that Mike puts in so much work. He does. And I don't, I honestly don't know the financials of the conference, but my guess is he's not making much if anything from this. I doubt he's making me know. I know how to do math. Right. And also, I want to give a big shout out to, and I, and I now including myself in this group, but it's okay. A shout out a thanks to all of the speakers who travel here on their own dime. Speakers are not paid. Speakers don't pay to be here. So we get food and, and that sort of thing, and the mingle. And the mingle. Right. But airfare and hotels or travel and hotels are on us even though we're speaking here. So it, I mean, this is a labor of, of, of love for, for many, many people and Mike Potter, Barry Falk and Dave Ginsburg. I think this year shouldered a healthy amount of the load. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. No doubt at all. And it, and the thing is, especially if you've been to smaller conferences, because the, the people that put these conferences together don't necessarily, you know, have a large budget. Right. A lot of times that shows in what you see, but not here. No, it's true. Right. This feels like, and I've been to it. A much bigger show. It feels like a thousand dollar conference. Yeah. It really does. And, you know, for people who have never been here before, the Luigia Loigt conference center, that is an amazing, small, large conference room. Yes. The sound system is great. The people that work in IT here at McHenry Community College have been very, very responsive. And, you know, even the cafeteria workers have put together the lunches. Oh, it's stellar. It's unbelievable. Yeah. And I think the other part that makes it great for this area is just how great the locals are. Yeah. And not even talking about the people that actually are here at the conference, but the people that you run into in the hotels, in the shops, in the restaurants, you know, anywhere you're going, just warm, open people, what can I do to help you, you know, that kind of thing. It's a great area for a conference. I will say the one, sort of the one difference if I'm going to nitpick and I might as well. Sure. Because I just put a price tag on it, so now I can nitpick. The one difference between this and a $1,000 conference is that all of the events for this, the hotel, the conference center, the mingle, all of it are in different locations and you need to travel by vehicle. Mm-hmm. 10 minutes. I mean, nothing's hugely far apart, but you are traveling, you know, 10 minutes to do this, 10 minutes to do that. Thank God that phones have GPS. Yes. But you either need to rent a car or they do have shuttle service for the hotels and the college. But if they were to move the price way up, I would hope that as part of that they would consolidate, they could find a venue where they could consolidate everything and just have it where our rooms are upstairs from the conference room. Yeah. I mean, that would be a huge difference. Well, you know, I was actually talking to Mike about this Thursday when I got here and he was saying, okay. And, you know, I thought about that and, you know, I'm a Floridian. Orlando, I think might not be the best place for a small conference like this. Not only for the expense, but because of all the major distractions. You want a place where there are not, I like a conference like this to not have a ton of distractions around it. Like doing it, not that I would suggest it, doing it in Vegas would be bad. Yeah. Because now, instead of us all saying, well, we literally have nothing else to do other than go to the Mac Mingle. I don't mean to diminish the value of the Mac Mingle. No, no, no, I get it. I get it, yeah. But it's like, it's like either that or gosh, you know, I could just go down the street and see the Cirque du Soleil Love Show, which, you know, Blue Men Group or whatever. Yeah, like, people are going to disperse. They're going to bring their families and disperse and that does diminish Daytona. Yeah, okay. Because, you know, during the day, yeah, you got the beach. Yeah, right. But at night, you don't have the beach. Now, there are, there is other entertainment, but I think Daytona would be like a great place for something like this. Yeah, I mean, there are towns around. It would be nice to do it somewhere that's right near Ann Airport. Yeah. And you got Orlando and Daytona and Jacksonville far away. Right? Right? And I have a technology angle here. It's the first time I have ever done this. Well, there are a number of things that I did for the first time here. Well, maybe not the first time. I heard about that. Second time. Yeah, well. What happens at Max Dock stays at Max Dock? Max Dock, John. No. So the first thing is that my airport is a lot better now about direct flights. Go ahead. Right. So that was cool. Second. Let's not talk about the pickup. Okay. The second thing that I enjoyed was that at least on this American flight, they had in-flight entertainment on Wi-Fi for free. That was kind of neat. I liked that. Yeah. Because I had my MacBook with me and I remembered to bring my headphones this time. Now, the third thing that I was able to do, and this was really neat, so the official hotel here is called in McHenry, which is a Hilton property. The Hilton app not only let me check in and choose my room, but it also has a digital key in that I can use my phone to open my door lock. So my phone is my key. It's not doing NFC. Dave, I think, knows more about it than I do, but it's doing it, I guess through Wi-Fi or cellular or whatever, but it somehow knows to tell my lock to open when I press the button. And I think that's pretty darn cool. It's the first time I've been into that. Yeah, I'm actually curious about how it works, because even though the iPhone has NFC, it does not currently allow any use of NFC other than Apple Pay. Now, iOS 11 opens that up a little bit. Carefully. Carefully. Right, but still not to the level that, you know, the third-party app could just like drive at it. Yeah, it could be. But you would need a Bluetooth receiver at almost every door for that to work, because the range is so limited. Bluetooth receivers are cheap. Well, they're already electronic. That's true. Especially a BTLE receiver. Yeah. Right. And they're already, I mean, the keys are NFC or something like that. Maybe it's not NFC with the keys. Well, normally, I think most are Magstripe. No, they're not Magstripes here. Oh. They're proximity keys. Oh, they are. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'm not exactly sure how it works. It is. And on Hilton's site, it says on the day of arrival, the digital key will be available once the room is ready when the smartphone is in range of the room. A signal is sent through Bluetooth to unlock the door. The registered guest then clicks the button in the app to unlock the room. No need to stop at the front desk. Just head straight to relaxation. So, yeah. So, there you go. It's Bluetooth. Okay. That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice if the phone, you know, if iOS let, I mean, I get why Apple don't actually get it at all. I mean, the fact that they could, you know, allow a third-party app to use. I knew what it is. They don't want to open it up for Samsung Pay and Google Pay and all the rest of this. And that's what would happen. Exactly. Any non-Apple Pay. They don't want that to happen. Oh, right. And if they let third-party apps do whatever they wanted with NFC. Yep. Huh. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I mean, let's face it. Apple Pay, and what we were going to talk about, it doesn't matter. Apple Pay is going to be one of the future big sources of revenue for Apple. I mean, this is, I think this is really the beginning of Apple practically becoming a bank. Well, they take a little, it's very little piece. Just that little bit. They take a very little, and that's why I think in some countries or some banks are resistant to deploy it or some stores like CVS, I think, right? I don't know why CVS. Well, I think the reason why I liked CVS and some of those other companies didn't want Apple Pay wasn't so much because Apple was taking a little chunk. It was because Apple also wasn't giving back any information on the people that were using it. Apple was very protective of the privacy of the people that used it. And I remember CVS tried to roll out this disaster. Yeah. It was CVS and Walmart and a couple of other companies, and it, you know, they made a big splash. I can't even remember what the hell the name of it was now. Current C. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the value propositions. And one people found out about it. Yeah. The worst it looked. And then all of these companies that were part of this consortium started getting hacked. And it was like, yeah, let me give you my credit card information because that's, that, I can tell, you're very sensitive. You're the ones. Yeah. Very sensitive. But I think in some promotional materials I saw for the platform, they made a point to the merchants saying, we can give you lots of valuable data to make the experience valuable for you. And that moved out too. Not the consumer, but you, the merchant. The merchant. Right, right. Right. So it wasn't about, it wasn't, I work in a help desk. I work in customer relations. Yeah. And the hardest thing that I have to do when trying to implement a change is convincing the people on the back end that it's more important that whatever the service is, is easier for the people that are going to use it than the people that have to administer it. Because the more, the easier it is for the person that's using it, the more people will use it. Of course. Yeah. But they don't see it that way. They see it as, well, what am I getting out of it right now? And what you're getting out of it right now is completely unimportant. It's, you're trying to build a platform with this technology and the rest of it, as far as data information and the rest of that, that can come later. You first have to get people to use it and to trust it. And if they don't trust it, they won't use it, and then it goes away. And currency is a good example of that. Well, and Apple is a great example of the, of doing that right. Yeah. Right? They notoriously will roll something out in a very feature-limited way. I mean, us geeks start ranting about why didn't they do this? If only it could do this. Right. My certain corner case isn't covered. This sucks. But they find out what, you know, it's the spend, you know, focus on 80% of your customer base. And make it a good experience for them. And make it a good experience. Yeah. Worry about that because the person that doesn't have that weird edge case covered, well, okay, they're not going to be the happiest, but as long as the things that they do with it work and the things that they do are the things that most people want to do, it definitely creates a trust. Value. Well, it creates value. It's added value not only for the consumer, but in the long run for the people that are not only going to administer it but for the people that are taking the payment on the other end of it. Yeah. So, and this is something that Google doesn't understand. This is something that Samsung certainly doesn't understand. It's something that all of these companies that are dealing... I think Google understands it. Well, they may understand it now. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Because Google Pay is still... Well, I'm not talking about Google Pay. I'm just saying in a general sense. I think Google grocks that. Maybe. I don't know. No, maybe they don't because they throw a lot of features and stuff. What is, who's Google's customers? It's not us. Oh, no. No, it's the advertisers. Exactly. Right. I mean, I use a lot of Google services and I get that, you know, free comes with a price. Right. For sure. And, you know, just... And again, just because something is free doesn't mean it's free as in beer. That, you know, they're not doing this. They're not sitting there rolling out this office-like product to you and saying, oh, here you are. I am so happy you're using our product for free and we just want you to love us. Thank you. Yes. Okay. You know what? To be fair, though, the fact that Google Docs and, you know, I work in the cloud. Sure. The fact that those things can exist is magic. It is. 15 years ago. Yes. I mean, you have a fully functional word processor that multiple people across the globe can collaborate on simultaneously. Yep. And it lives only in your web browsers. Securely. This is magic. I mean, it's almost magic today, not alone 15 years ago. So it is cool that they, I mean, because they were really the first ones. Yes, it is. But your point is still valid. It is. Yeah. And, you know, as long as you're willing, as long as you understand, going in that everything you do that's related to something that they can sell to someone else, that they're going to do this. Yeah. You know, and as long as you go in knowing that and you're okay with that, then, you know, fine. Use Google services. I personally use mostly, you know, Apple pages and numbers and all the rest of that because as of right now, Apple isn't selling my information to other people. I mean, I go to Amazon and I look up Shoes and then all of a sudden I go to web pages all over the globe and I see lots of advertisements for shoes. That's not a coincidence. No. That is not a coincidence. No, but that's ending. I mean, I think we will see that ending. So Apple is doing it with Safari, with their... Well, this is their revenge against them kind of stealing the look and feel of the iPhone. Well, but, you know, as someone who's been in the advertising industry since before Google existed, the human mind has not changed. Not mine. Right. But in general, like this whole thing about tracking clicks and all of that, it is not the most valuable thing about ads on the Internet. You know, and I famously had Andrew Green who has done all kinds of things. He's 12 South now, but he was with DLO and all kinds of stuff. He once said to me, he says, who counts the success of a billboard by the number of cars that crash into it? Right. That is such a great billboard. Yeah. Bam. Right. That's actually bad for business. But, you know, Google had this period of, you know, about 12 years where they sort of have everybody focused on this one metric. It's not a worthless metric. It's just not the only one and it's not the most important one. And I think we're finally seeing that particular bubble bursting. And even Google is changing some of the ways that they're marketing their ads and that sort of thing. I think they're always going to be in the advertising business. That's their thing. That's their thing. Right. But they are changing the way that is presented to the customer so that they still can, you know, be paid. Which is good. And Apple with what they're doing in Safari and iOS 11 and macOS iSierra is great. You know, compartmentalizing all those cookies and keeping that crazy tracking from happening. Right. So do it. I mean, it is good. The whole re-targeting business in ads, I've said enough. You don't. Because we're talking about Mac stock. Well, actually we were and then we weren't. But during your second, we talked a lot about Mac stock. We talked a lot about Mac stock. So it's okay, I think. Yeah, yeah. And as far as I know, there's going to be a Mac stock 2018 and hopefully the people that listen to the MyMac.com podcast and the people that listen to the Mac e-gab will believe us. And we're, you know, I mean, we're not we're not blowing smoke up your ass here. This is really a great con- This is a concert. This is a great conference. Yeah, you should come to this next year. What I've what I noticed for this one, so we missed a year, Dave and I, but this time around, based on user for attendee feedback, they tailored some of the sessions. Yeah. So some were deep dives and some were quick and dirty. Because, honestly, well, then you had what Tim and I did. I'm not sure that that really You did a game show. It was awesome. It was, no, it was the perfect post-lunch thing. Honestly, the only better time to do it would have been 3 o'clock when everybody would normally kind of hit that slump of right. But instead, we did this at 3 o'clock. So, it kept everyone's minds active. It totally did. It was a perfect digestion. There were valuable prizes awarded. Lots of larps. We... Guy sang. He kept his shirt on. I did. Thank goodness for that. Everybody was happy about that. Still are. You know, and I laughed, I cried, I learned something about myself. No, actually, I did learn a few things and we did actually have some challenges from the studio audience. I believe at least one of the answers that they had was not entirely correct. You'll have to come to MacStock to experience it for yourself. Yeah, I'm pretty sure as long as Tim is willing for a little more input for me, if we do this again, he was actually talking about maybe doing like two half-hour ones on like Saturday and Sunday, but I honestly think that the one session for 45 to 50 minutes is actually better because... Yeah, you don't need to do it twice. Yeah. It would be repetitive on day two. Well, none of that, but if you think about five, 10 minutes of it... Yeah, it gets everybody up to speed. Yeah, where it's like, okay, we're doing this to have fun, we're having a good time and don't worry if you don't know what the answers are because we're basically gonna give it to you. We didn't want to walk away with the prizes. We wanted people to have the prizes. The goal is to win, folks. Right. At all costs. At all costs. So, we are, oh my God, we're at like an hour 20 right now. Yeah. I think this joint Mackie Gabs Six-Sex Talks and My Mac, I can't think of anything in my own podcast. My Mac 665. My Mac podcast 665, but before we go, John, if people wanted to get a hold of you, how the hell would they do it? Hell, 666, It's all coming together. I don't know, I guess probably the best way would be, I'm on the Twitter, John F. Ron, our podcast is on the Twitter as MackieGab. So those are two ways to reach me. Yeah. And I understand that you can also be reached at feedback at MackieGab.com. I believe you said feedback at MackieGab.com. No, I'm going to have to correct both of you. I believe it's feedback at MackieGab.com. Wait, so you're saying it's not feedback at MackieGab.com? No, but premium listeners can email us at premiumatmackiegab.com. I do want to thank our sponsors, Eero and Otherworld Computing for this episode. Also, Smile Software and Bare Bones for their continued support of MackieGab. And everybody for doing what you do. Yeah, and then how can I get a hold of you, Dave? Oh, at Dave Hamilton on Twitter is perfect. And you can reach me, guy at mymack.com is my email address. My Twitter handle is MackPettit. Squawk. Dang. I'm so used to gas just jumping in and doing that. I say, Mac Parrot. And it's like, no, it didn't happen. OK, good enough. So I think Dave is going to do it for the evening. Who knows? Maybe we'll get together tomorrow because I'll have all this set up again tomorrow. There you go. And we'll just have some more fun. And in the meantime, stay safe, be nice to everyone, and have a great day. Thanks for listening, folks. Thank you. Hey, guy, is there one thing before you leave our MackieGab listeners, is there one thing that you could share? Like one final bit of advice? Yeah, if they haven't learned all four things that they needed to learn, if there's just one maybe left. I would say that that last thing that they need to learn is don't get caught made on a Mac.