 The Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, Episode 662, Father's Day, for Sunday, June 18th, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, the show where you send in your questions, tips, and cool stuff found. We share it all. The goal is for all of us, each and every one, you, you, him, and me, to learn at least four new things each and every time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include otherworldcomputingatmacsales.com, one of my favorite places to go whenever I'm looking for something new. We'll talk more about that a little bit later. And Harry's, we're at harrys.com slash MGG. You get $5 off one of their Shave Sets, including a limited edition Father's Day set. But, you know, today's Father's Day. So we'll talk more about what you can do there in a moment here in Durham, New Hampshire. Quite happy to be here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fairfax, Connecticut, John F. Brown. Good morning, Mr. John F. Brown. How are you doing today? Yeah, that's what you say. We got to see each other this week. That was good. Yeah. Yeah. Went to perfect. Oh, it was the perfect commuting experience. I was shocked. Not only was the weather good, I mean, my drive down was, I did stop once on the way down, but only because I thought, oh, I might as well. Actually, I got some food or whatever. But it was a smooth ride down. The weather was perfect all day. And then, yes, our train rides in and out of the city were like the trains were on our schedule. It was, it was glorious. Or more specifically, the subway. So any place where we had to get a subway within 30 seconds of getting there, the subway. Miraculously arrived. Platformed. And it's like, yeah, we even do that. Yeah, dude, it's the Charmed Life, man. We're doing it. If you are interested in leading the Charmed Life, I highly recommend a podcast called The Small Business Show, where that's what Shannon Jean and I talk about is how we endeavor to live the Charmed Life. BusinessShow.co. So I'll put that in the show notes, because, you know, I get to pimp my own stuff every now and then. But now that we are here, we should, we should move on to to the questions. Don't you think, John? Isn't that a good thing to do? Indeed. All right, cool. Let's see if I can pull up Todd's question. I've got things in absolutely the wrong spots here this morning. But don't worry, we'll get there. Todd writes, I currently have an Airport Express feeding a multi-room power amplifier. The amp currently feeds three zones. Each zone has a volume control on the wall for the ceiling speakers, and we can push music, of course, from our Macs and i devices because of AirPlay. Life is good, see Charmed Life. It hit me the other day listening to your last podcast that when the Airport Express fails, like mine has, I will get caught as I do not know of another device to replace the AirPlay service to the amp. I get that I could buy a Sonos connect and work it that way, but I like using AirPlay. Any ideas on an Airport Express AirPlay replacement to feed the amp? Yeah, so this is a good question because there, you know, Apple, well, Apple does offer something. It's called the Apple TV. I know it seems a little weird to use an Apple TV for just that purpose, but you could actually get an older gen Apple TV potentially, you know, used or refurbed or whatever that would solve this problem for you. So that that is one option and relatively inexpensive, especially if you can find a gen three Apple TV, but even a gen four one would would do this. That's one. There's an article at makeuseof.com, of course, that we will put in the show notes with a link that details some other options about getting these types of things. And and so we'll put that there. But the other one that I've heard of is called Audio Cast. And and Audio Cast is a standalone product, clearly not made by Apple. But people that have these things seem to like them, it's usually about 40 bucks. You can find it on Amazon. Of course, we'll put a link in the show notes. And and it, you know, it it does exactly what you're asking for and that it simply, you know, becomes an AirPlay receiver. If you have a Mac nearby this thing, you could use. Oh, why can't I ever think of the name of it? And why why is it not in my note here? But Rogamibas airfoil speakers is what it's called. It's an app that basically turns your Mac into an AirPlay receiver to so you can you can do things that way too. But that's or an old iDevice. Actually, you can do that with Rogamibas app as well. So that's my thought. You can now I know you probably don't want to replace your amplifier. But there are companies out there, Yamaha being one of them that makes amplifiers that have AirPlay audio AirPlay reception in them. We've got a pioneer amp actually that will do that too. So if you happen to have something like that, well, there you go. You probably like I said, you probably don't in your scenario, don't want to replace the amplifier because it's doing all of these other things and it's got multiple outputs. And, you know, you're happy with it other than its lack of AirPlay support. But but it is possible to buy an amplifier that has AirPlay support in it. And then it just appears on your on your network once you plug it in or Wi-Fi it or whatever it is that that it does. So thoughts on this, John? Because you're going to be in that boat someday too. When when like me, your airport Express dies. No, I'm not going to be in that boat. Why is that? Well, I have two destinations right now. I may be eventually. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I got a airport Express and an Apple TV. Right. Right. Right. Gen three. Yeah. And that works right now. Right. Exactly. I mean, just for yuck. I mean, if you, you know, you just, you know, put on your Google hat and type in AirPlay speakers, you'll come up with people that have decided to license AirPlay and incorporated it in their Well, but incorporating it in their speakers is great for sort of as a generic thing. But they that's not, you know, that doesn't help if you've already got speakers that you want to AirPlay to do it a different way. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Craziness, craziness, craziness. All right. Good. Well, off we go. Hopefully that helps. If you folks have any, if you have your favorite AirPlay receiver, especially a standalone one that's, you know, that's not bank breaking priced, then please let us know. Feedback at MackieCab.com. I think I heard you right in that you said feedback at MackieCab.com. I said, yeah, feedback at MackieCab.com. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. But I don't know. You know, what is that? Well, what would one even do with that? You would send an email to that and you could ask us questions or do whatever you want, you know, tips, tips, questions. Cool stuff found. All the things that we do. Curios. You could submit curios. Curios. You could. Curios. That's not the thing we eat for breakfast in the morning. Right? It's Cheerios. Oh, right. I don't do breakfast cereal, though. I don't either. No. No, I tend to eat a little bit of cheese and an apple in the morning. That's what my breakfast has become. Yeah. All right. But for those of you out there, Curios aren't just for breakfast anymore. OK. Churros. Churros aren't just for breakfast anymore, either. OK. All right. Let's go and talk to Kaz, Kaz says. I own a late 2009 27 inch iMac and will purchase the new 27 inch 5K that just came out. I heard you mentioned in the previous show the pros cons about which hard drive SSD to get. Can I get by with a 256 gig SSD and use larger external SSDs for my data without too much management on my part? Can you explain or talk through the managing of that data? What apps programs I should keep on the internal and what about email drivers, plugins, et cetera? Is there a way to tell on my current system how much of the space is taken up by each app versus its corresponding data? Lastly, can I use my 27 inch iMac as a second monitor for the new one? Can it be put in bridge mode just to function as a secondary display? So going backwards on this, yes, Apple supports on some iMacs something called target display mode. And and that does exactly what you describe, which is that it turns your iMac into a very expensive display. It does not work with all iMacs and very specifically does not work as a destination on the new 5K iMacs. I think Apple's rationale on that was or any 5K iMacs, I should say, Apple's rationale is that you don't have a video card that can drive this, so we shouldn't offer this as an option. But your late 2009 27 inch iMac or your mid 2010 or really anything from mid 2011 to mid 2014, that was not 5K can be used in target display mode. So there you go and it just works. You to use your iMac as a display and target display mode, connect it to another Mac using the correct cable, which would be mini display port to either mini display port or Thunderbolt, however you want to call it. And then and then press Command F2 on the keyboard connected to your iMac. When you're done, press Command F2 again. So that's it. It just boom, you're in target display mode. So yes, you can do that. So that is good as far as your other questions. So the regarding a 256 gig SSD, it is possible. In fact, the iMac that is in front of me has a 256 gig SSD in it. This is a 2011 iMac 27 inch mid 2011 that that I use here in the podcast studio. And yeah, it's fine, but there is some level of management that I have to do. I find but I but I choose to record all of my podcast audio to the local internal SSD. So so at some level, that's really the only management that I have to do is this, you know, maybe once a quarter, once every three or four months, I take the data, you know, from the podcast stuff and archive it off to the disk station. I just like to be able to save to the SSD because years ago, had some interrupt related issues saving to a spindle drive. My guess is that that wouldn't happen now, but I don't want to guess. I just want to podcast. So so I deal with that. I certainly could connect a USB three. Well, a Thunderbolt USB three via Thunderbolt because this computer doesn't have USB three SSD and and save there. Eventually, I'd have to archive that stuff off to the disk station anyway. So it's fine. I did the other day. I use Omni disk sweeper, which would answer your other question to figure out how much space is taken up by things there on your on your computer. So I use Omni disk sweeper. There are others, Daisy disk and things like that that scour the drive and show you where all your storage is being used. And the other day, I found I was like 25 gigs worth of QuickBooks backups because Lisa also uses this computer to do our books and that sort of thing for TMO and Mackie Keb and backbeat and all that stuff. So and I had QuickBooks backups going back years. And so but that that's the nice part about Omni disk sweepers. It will go and find those things. And so I, you know, picked which ones I cared about and threw away the rest. So so, yeah, I think you can email is something you are almost certainly going to want to let it store in its default location. There's no question about that in my mind. You I'm sure you could remap the home library mail folder somewhere else. But that is completely inadvisable based on what I've seen. But but I think I think 256 is OK. It's not going to be Panacea. But but it's workable for sure workable. I've got actually several machines with just 256 on the on the boot drive. And it's fine. I wouldn't go less than that. But I think 256, even in today's days, is fine as long as you're going to have some other direct attached or or even network attached storage that that is mounted all the time that you can rely on having there. So, you know, your your big projects and things like that are just automatically stored off. I have my photos library not stored on this. You know, it's very easy to relocate your photos library. Very easy to relocate your iTunes library. Do that. And then you should be fine with 256. What do you think, John? Depending on what you want to do. Yeah. I have a larger drive just because just because I store my photos, which is several hundred gigabytes. Right. On one machine. But and you store that on. But then we're talking about your laptop here, right? That's where you store your photos. Yeah. So that's a little different because having an external drive required on your laptop is sort of a non-starter, right? But for an iMac, that's fine. You're not going anywhere. Yeah. Now, one thing that was pointed out to me in the past, we were talking about hard drive speeds and I got an update. So I was talking about SATA speeds. Yeah. What was pointed out to me, Dave, which is good information is that the SSDs in the iMacs and I guess the other machines as well use a different bus. Oh, it's the N.V. I can't remember what it's called. But yes, right? Am I heading down the right path here? It's a higher speed bus. And so what I said was not entirely. So as far as the throughput of the SSDs and Apple equipment, it's probably going to be faster than SATA three, which is potentially faster. If the SSD is faster. And I remember this when I was looking at the specs for the iMac Pro. At first, I thought it was an error. They're like, oh, yeah, well, the drive speeds are, you know, megabytes per second. And I'm like, what? That can't be right. It's not how it is right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's N.V.M.E. Is the is the tech used in the internal SSDs, non-volatile memory express. Direct connect to the PCI bus and much faster than SATA. And I can thank Jeff Butts for that because he wrote a great article for us on Friday about how high Sierra allows more like a hackintoshed N.V.M.E. drives out of the box, which is kind of cool. Hopefully it stays that way. I'll put that article in the show notes, too. Yeah, where was it? OK, so right here. So I'm looking at their specs. Three gigabytes per second. Wow, well, throughput. I mean, who needs that? Well, somebody does, I guess. Right. Right. That's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy. Well, I mean, you and I have both learned never to say, dude, I would never need that kind of speed because, you know, we were both happy with our 40 and 80 megabyte megabyte hard drives back in the day. You know, I'll never fill this up. Sure, you won't. Oh, it reminds me for some reason when I'm talking about that. I remember I got my first 100 megabyte drive and was all excited about it. It was like something that somebody was thrown away or whatever. I'm like, I'll take it and I tested it and it was like, yep, it works. Great. And then I put it in my case, you know, to like mount it in my machine and it didn't work and I looked and it was one of these drives where the screw holes were right next to the motherboard. And and the screws that I had were too deep for this particular drive. And when I screwed it into the case, I drove that screw right into the not the motherboard, but the you know, the circuit board on the control board right on the drive was like, oh, no. So that was that was a drag. But to this day, any time I'm putting screws in a drive, I always look to see where the screw holes are in relation to that circuit board. And most drives are actually built properly today, so you can't even make that mistake if you're not thinking about it. But it was a painful lesson. I was so excited to have a 100 megabyte drive. It's like 60 more than I had before I had to throw it away. Anyway, let's go on to Michael, shall we, John? Right, did we we got through everything for for Kaz, I think. Yeah. All right, so let's move on to Michael. And Michael asks, is Michael, you or me, Michael's me? Uh, since Apple just announced high Sierra, I decided it was time to upgrade to Sierra. He says I'm running a mid 2015 MacBook Pro retina. I backed everything up and I ran the upgrade so far. So good, the upgrade ran fine with no indications of issues. However, in the last few days, my system completely locked up a couple of times. Only function that available was mouse. Everything else was completely non responsive. During the last occurrence, I started looking at the system logs for any odd messages. I've noticed a message in logs called dirty jet some memory limit. Any insight on what this is. So I took a look, John, because he sent us a snippet of the logs and jet some. That's the opposite of lots of right or lots of jets. That's that's like seafaring terms. Right. Mm hmm. And and so I dug around a little bit and I found an article about memory pressure that talks about specifically about the jet some memory limit. And and this seems to have something to do with when, you know, the memory pressure management system has to do something. And so it decides that it's got, you know, dirty generally means that when you're talking about something like cashing, correct me if I'm wrong, John, but but to me dirty means that the data that's in the cache is no longer reliable and we need to flush it and and reload it. Is that a fair way to say that, John? It's it's not fresh anymore. OK, there. OK, there you go. And when you're not feeling fresh, you got to. You got to you got to clean it out. Problem. That's it. Yeah. So so to me, that seemed quite normal. But the fact that it was happening a lot made me think, well, how much RAM do you have on this machine? Are you running out of RAM? And here's the thing about troubleshooting in console. It is a sea packed with red herring swimming all over the place. Right. If you don't know what to look for, you will find things that are not problems. You will also potentially find things that are problems. And the problem, the meta problem, is you don't know which is which. So it takes a lot of googling and and sort of patience to go through the thing. And really a decision before you go in to not get distracted by something that you prove to yourself is not an issue. Right. So once you once I kind of looked, it was like, all right, to me, this dirty jets of memory limit, not an issue, at least not the issue that's causing this problem. And that's the other thing is you can find what might be another problem or it might just be something barfing stuff out to the console. The console is not meant for you as a user. It's really not meant, especially based on the way Apple has has done this in Sierra, the console really isn't meant for a troubleshooter either. It's meant for the developer of the software that is running to go and look for their stuff and their stuff only. I mean, it doesn't mean you can't use it for troubleshooting. I just mean that it's. Oh, no, dude, it's awesome. If you want to look at things that get you into a panic, then by all means. Right. The console, like you said, is chock full of all sorts of things that you can you can agonize over. Yeah, if you want to agonize, oh, it's it's lovely. Yeah, yeah. But I did, you know, I looked in his console and I found, you know, something that was happening a lot that was something about from cloud D that said com.apple.cloudkit.pcs. Gee, what could that be? Yeah. That couldn't. Yeah, that's iCloud. It's iCloud. I saw that too. And I'm like, oh, great, iCloud again. Right. Right. Com.apple.cloudkit.pcs.flushcaches. And it says has been registered 20 times. This might be a leak. Like, OK, so maybe there's some issues. Maybe that's fine, because the problem with the console, if you only look in the console when you are experiencing a problem, you don't know what normal looks like. Right. And and so it is worth going in the console and just looking at the, you know, the data barf every now and again. Just just look and, you know, everything's running fine. You haven't been having any problems. Just look, take two minutes and watch this barf of data that exists in the console. And and you'll sort of get an idea, especially for your system, because every app that you have is going to report differently there. So your console is not going to look like mine. And it might be totally normal for Michael's console to have this, you know, cloud kit PCS flush caches thing. I don't know. And that's sort of the that's the issue is I might, you know, even just by saying this, I might be sending Michael down, you know, a path of fruitless endeavors. But but, you know, when you see that kind of thing, the first thing I recommend is do a safe boot. That clears out a lot of caches. And then you could use something like Onyx or whatever you want, you know, to clear them out manually. But a safe boot does a lot of that sort of in the Apple prescribed way and and is a good place to start. But really what you want to do is unless you know that this console that, you know, this particular item in the console log is very much related to this other problem that I'm having, unless you you've proven that. My recommendation is look to solve the actual symptom of the problem or the problem itself, if you can find it instead of the console log related symptom that you think is part of the problem. Is that is that a fair way of saying that, John? My advice would be clear out the caches. Yeah. Yeah, it's never a bad thing, right? It seems most of most of the problems that we hear about eventually boil down to it being a dirty cash. Yeah. Yeah. As you pointed out with Onyx, so you start up Onyx, you go to cleaning and several of the categories system, user, internet, fonts and all that. But they're really doing is just getting rid of these these caches that are causing you grief. Yeah, these caches are great things. But when you get, like you said, dirty data in there, when there's there's data that is not reflective of what it took to originally build the cash. The cash is just a more efficient way of retrieving that data. So if you're going to have to read the data one, let me let me let me see if I can put this in a better term. So we have when when you come to Mac Observer, right, there is a database that contains all of the content for the site, right? And when you request a certain web page, the way it's built to work is that the web engine says, OK, thank you for the request. Now I must go out to the database and and scour for this particular web page. And it's got to pull all all kinds of things together. It's got to say, all right, great. I know that this was written by author number 14. Let me look up. OK, author number 14 is Mr. John F. Braun. So let me get his name. OK, I also need to find his picture and all of this stuff. Right. So there's this this relatively complex, not overly complex, but relatively complex query that happens. Right. And it's a lot of work and work, of course, takes time. Of course, if you have a faster CPU on your server, that time is diminished. But now you're using more of your CPU. So if you know that that article hasn't changed, you can be really intelligent about it and say, OK, you know, user A, you requested this article, I went out, I did all the work. I fetched all the related data. I pulled it all together and now I'm going to take the result of all that work and stuff it over here so that when user B comes along and says, I want that page, all I have to do is look to see, do I have that in my cache and has it expired? And if the answer is no, I just give it to user B. That's it. Very, very simple. And so now not only do I have it right here and the user gets it faster, but the CPU doesn't have to do any work or not much work because it's already been done. And and what's supposed to happen, let's say John goes in and edits that article. Well, when John hits, you know, update after performing his meticulously handcrafted edits like he does with the show notes, he hits update. The update process saves that data to the database and then goes and tells the cache, hey, I what you have is no longer OK. And so the cache says, fine, this it flags it or deletes it. But it certainly flags it is dirty the next time somebody comes, you know, user C shows up and says, I want that page. Nope, can't have it. I got to go get it out of the database. And so it does that all that hard work one more time and then delivers it to the user and stuffs it in the cache. So that's what caches are good for. But that's also why sometimes they need to be cleaned out, because if, for example, in this case, when John hit update, if the cache was not updated, well, now you've got one set of data in the cache that does not reflect what's actually in the database and you have a problem. So forcing the cache to wipe itself out is not necessarily a bad thing. Was that does that help describe it? That's the world I live in all day. Yeah. Then you want to be sure that your database does a two phase commit properly, otherwise that leads to chaos. What's a two phase commit, John? Yeah, look it up. OK, I'll look at the fund database stuff. It's a way to manage. Yeah, basically a way to manage atomic operations within a database so you don't destroy everything. Oh, is this like commits and rollbacks and that sort of thing? Something like that. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, where you can put something in the database, but not actually overwrite what it so it's got the data, but but it hasn't overwritten what's what's actually there until you say, yes, that's what I want to overwrite and you do it. Is that kind of what that? Do I have that? I think so. Yeah, OK. But it's also let's say two people are working on something. Right. You don't want them. Assume that they simultaneously almost simultaneously say, here, here's a change. Oh, you gotta be careful there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so we use commits and rollbacks with any of the stuff that we write so that you can save it, but not you could still read it while I'm saving in that sort of thing. OK, well, fun. This is what happens when John and I get together. Folks, these are the kind of conversations we have sitting on the train. I feel really bad for the people that sit around us. All right, moving right along. We have a question from John, but not not you. It's a listener, John writes. He said it's actually not a question. It's a tip, which is even even better. Did you know that on the AirPods, you can get to mute and other phone controls while on the speakerphone or AirPods by tapping on the time when your iPhone screen wakes, it was annoying to me not be able to unmute my AirPods with a tap on them, but this solves that problem. So when you're on a call, tap the time in the middle of your phone screen and that will bring up the phone controls where you have, you know, you can get to the keypad and you can get to mute and unmute and all of that good stuff, because evidently the AirPods do not have an unmute tap on them. Or at least listener John was not able to find that. So thanks for that heads up. That's that's a good one because, yeah, sometimes that doesn't show up when you want it to and it does. This doesn't matter with what kind of headset you have. You can just, you know, or even if you're on speakerphone. So there you go. Good tip. Thank you, sir. I like these kinds of things. Simple, simple, simple and yet makes everybody happy. Thoughts on that, John? I hear people like the AirPods. Yeah, I've I've tested them. I have not. I do not own them, but I actually that that may change. I have some on order. But what I've tested them and am very impressed with how they sound. That's it's it's an interesting thing. And the people that I know that that have them and use them all the time are totally gaga over them. Except if they if they physically work for you in that if they fit your ear and all that good stuff. And that's not the case for everyone, nor could it possibly be. Yeah, good. Well, I hear they got staying power, too. I have one of one of our listeners. I know was questioning the ability of them to stay put when you're doing crazy gymnastics moves. And apparently for most people, they they. That's good. They're doing backflips or whatever. Front flips. Sounds like the AirPods will do it for you. If I were doing backflips or front flips, my AirPods falling out would be the least of my concerns. I'm just going to say, I mean, you know, it's just me. The biggest concern is you don't break anything. Yeah, and I'm not talking about the AirPods. I'm talking about stuff, you know, inside the dermal layer. Yeah. Yes. Yes. OK, our first sponsor today that I want to talk about, John, is Harry's. As I mentioned, at Harry's dot com slash MGG, you get five bucks off one of their great shave sets. And they're always coming out with such good stuff. You know, for today's Father's Day, obviously, but today in that the day we're recording this is Father's Day and you may be listening on Father's Day or past Father's Day, of course. But but for Father's Day, they had a great shave set. They actually sent me one of those. Actually, they sent me two of them so that I could, you know, gift one to someone. I will say this, these Harry's razors are now being used by every single member of my household. Everybody loves these things, including people that have been shaving for decades. One shave with Harry's and it changes you. And the cool part about this is these blades are really inexpensive. I mean, it's just great stuff. It's a if, you know, it's a five blade cartridge or cap. I don't know what you call it. But and and it just it works so well. The way they've got this little kind of flexible hinge on this thing. And when you need to, you know, buy new blades, which, frankly, isn't often at all. I almost I mean, I do replace my blades, but it takes me a long time to get to the point where I like, oh, yeah, I probably should replace this. It's two blocks of blade or less if you buy, you know, lots and lots of them, but two bucks. That's it. And for me, it goes weeks, if not more. It's really good stuff. And these shave kits have have got, you know, obviously a razor handle. They've got three sets of blades with them. They come with this foaming shave gel. I, you know, I think they've changed. Maybe they haven't changed the formula. Maybe I've changed. But but I I like both their gel, their foaming gel and their their cream. And I travel, I use the cream because it's it's easier to travel with. And when I'm home, I generally have been using the foaming gel. It's like thick and lathery and buttery. It's awesome. You got to check it out. So go to Harry's dot com slash MGG. As I said, that's where you get five bucks off one of their shave sets. And it but it's for a limited time. And and they really would like to see that that you are listening. So visit Harry's dot com slash MGG. That helps us. That helps you. You get five bucks off. Try this out. I just can't recommend it highly enough for everybody. It's awesome. Harry's dot com slash MGG are thanks to Harry's for sponsoring this episode. All right. Otherworld computing, John, at max sales dot com, man. I don't know about you, but I think I know about you in that when you have to get something new for your Mac, you know, another drive or even a case for a drive or something like that. I go to max sales dot com. And I think you do, too. I think that's what don't they have? That's my question. That's the big razors. Well, they don't as far as I know, they don't they don't sell razors razors for your face. No, that's true. Right. So but that's OK. You know, we've got we've got the Harry's folks to do that. No, these I mean they have they do they have everything. And this stuff is such good quality, you know, they're they're docks. They're USB C dock and they're Thunderbolt dock. Great stuff. I've got a couple of their Thunderbolt docks here. I know we're all waiting for the approval of the Thunderbolt three dock, which you can pre-order right now. And, you know, it just the nice part about it, I have their Thunderbolt two dock down on my iMac in the office. And it there is never a problem with this thing. It just it feels like in my mind, it is just part of my iMac. It it just works. I rely on it. I'm happy to plug devices into its USB ports. Like I don't think I should plug that into one of the ports on the motherboard. No, I just plug it in and I don't worry about it. It's great. Really good stuff. They also sell used refurbished and even new Macs. And you and like you can get stuff there way less expensive as in terms of a starting price than you would get on the Apple refurb store. You know, I mean, like several hundred dollars is sort of where it starts. In fact, they say on their website today that they're used in refurb start at one hundred sixty nine dollars. That's it. And and if you wind up spending two ninety nine or more, you get a free copy of Parallels desktop where you can run windows on your Mac along with that purchase. So check it out. Macsales.com not only are they great people, but they've got great support and, of course, these great products. It really truly is my first stop shop. And it sounds like yours to John, make it yours, folks. Macsales.com are thanks to Mac sales for sponsoring this episode. OK, let's let's go to Bob. This is one of those things, man. This is why I mean, this is why we keep doing the show. But Bob says the problem is that the contacts information on my iPhone is different than what's on my iPad, my MacBook Pro and iCloud.com. The data on the iPad, the MacBook Pro and iCloud are the same and remain in sync. The difference is that on the iPhone, I have old information for my family members, previous phone numbers, addresses and notes in addition to their current information. I haven't checked every contact, but several family members data have been affected. I noticed this problem last weekend when I tried to call my daughter and couldn't reach her. I looked at the number and realized it was a very old entry. I had just called her a week before with no problems. I do have the Interact app on my iPhone and was using it the other day to see if I could determine which account a contact was associated with. I don't normally use Interact as I prefer the Apple applications. I don't know about Interact. Your help would be appreciated, says Bob. All right. So I've experienced this. I think, you know, this is a pretty common thing where one of your devices stops properly syncing data with iCloud. We've talked about this. In fact, last week we kind of went into how iCloud works and all that stuff. One thing to check is and I know this sounds silly, but bear with me because I've seen it turn off on my devices. And I know I didn't turn it off, but go in to set on your phone. It will be settings and then you tap your your name now, which it brings you to iCloud preferences and then go to iCloud and make sure that contacts is turned on. And again, I know it sounds like one of these, you know, is it plugged in questions, but I've seen this turn off on mine and I'm certain I didn't turn it off. So just make sure it's still syncing with with iCloud. If it's already on, which it probably is, is to try and and kickstart it, restart it. And, you know, similar to what we discussed with doing this with keyboard shortcuts last week, that process can include adding a new contact from your phone so that it pushes that data out to the cloud and then watch on either the cloud, which is handy because you can really see or on one of your other devices to see if that that data comes up and or disabling contacts, you know, turn off contact syncing, reboot your iPhone when it comes back up, turn it back on. When it asks if you want to merge or replace the data on your phone, say replace, don't let it merge because you know that the data in the cloud in your case is what you want the master to be. Sometimes that can help. John, any thoughts on this? Well, specifically, I'm I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it. It gets turned off when it shouldn't be. I hate that. I got it so frustrating when I'm troubleshooting a problem and I go, I'm like, wow, let me look. Oh, why is this off? Like I did. I swear. I didn't do it also. Yeah. I mean, one thing that could cause this is if you do change your like that password, a lot of things get turned off. Right. That's true. Yeah. Messaging and other things like that. Yeah. Messaging especially. That's one that because you don't see that in the iCloud list, you have to go into messages and then you'll see, oh, yeah, it's off. Oh, sweet. Thanks. Appreciate that. Yeah, that's thanks for not telling me you did that. Yeah. Thanks for not telling me you did that. Yeah. That's more like I understand, like you said, if you change your password or do something that, OK, it turns that off. But dude, I mean, can you help me out a little bit here? I don't know. Yeah. Actually, this question prompted me to go through my contacts. I had some pretty, pretty dated stuff in there. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you may want to every now and then just just tear through? Well, I just looked at it and it's like, yeah, that's somebody I haven't I haven't talked to in, you know, a hundred years, a decade. So yeah, let's let's clean that out. So while we're on the subject of of contacts and cleaning things out, I I upgraded my MacBook Air or 2011 MacBook Air so old to High Sierra. And of course, I did that while I was out at WWDC, as I always do. It's fine. And with Sierra, that computer has been at at times, especially like upon wake up or or startup, it's just unusable for a long period of time. It's like, dude, you know, this thing used to work. It used to do all the things I needed to do and it was fast. Why is that not the case? And of course, I watched the CPU. Well, what's the problem? I like is when you were here and we're sitting next to each other doing our computer stuff, I got my MacBook Pro. Yeah. And it's doing fine. And your fans are howling in them. Yeah. What's going on with that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's actually normal for that thing, because, you know, you wind up using the CPU a lot, especially I was in Google Docs because that's where we managed the show. And so I was I was sitting there prepping the show on Friday morning before I left your house. So that's kind of normal and that's fine. But, you know, it's when the CPUs are just it pegged at 100 percent. It's like, OK, what's going on? So I always look and I see things like calendar agent and contact sync and things like that going. And and I don't have my calendars synced. My I cloud calendars sync with that phone or with that computer. In fact, I don't have them synced with any of my Macs because I use busy Cal, right? So busy Cal does that syncing within the app directly. And and I'm like, why are why is calendar sync? So I started digging and I realized calendar sync is also syncing my contacts. And I went in and I looked and I have contact syncing turned on not just for iCloud, but also my Google account and my LinkedIn account and my Facebook account. And so I turned it off for all of them. And and my computer became totally usable. It's like it was like I got a brand new computer. Whoa. OK, great. So I know I want iCloud contact syncing on. So I turn that on and things were fine. I mean, you know, there was like this initial little blip. It was a, you know, several second long blip. It wasn't long. And I turned that on and then and then golden. No problem. Like, OK, let's let's let's troubleshoot, right? Let's do the thing that we that we do. And I turned on Google contact sync because that would be the one that matters to me as well. And again, like there was a little blip as it sort of got itself set. And then it was fine. I left it like that for a day. And every time I woke up my computer, it was fine. It wasn't like CPUs pegged calendar agent and the contact thing and Cloud D weren't just going nuts. Like, oh, I did it. Woo. And then I went and turned on Facebook syncing. And it was like grind to a halt. We must sync all the time, you know, and you can go into contact settings account or preferences accounts and tell it when you're enabling and disabling this stuff, you can do it either in internet accounts or in contacts, either one. But in contacts, you can set how frequently it goes and syncs with these things. Well, I'm like, you know, the only thing it's doing with Facebook is maybe pulling people's birthdays and also pulling their profile pictures. I don't care about that, especially not on that machine. I can let another computer do that. No problem. So I leave that off and I've left the link says sorry, link says linked in thing disabled and it's been blissful. You know, my computer is responsive. Yeah, when I'm doing something again, like Google Docs, which is you know, massive JavaScript stuff, it tends to tax the CPU. But but that's sort of I mean, it's not tax. It just, you know, it heats it up. It's at 50 percent instead of 20 percent. And so the fans kick on just fine. No problem. It's responsive, though. That's what I want. A responsive computer and turning off that contact syncing has made it responsive. Somebody said maybe I've got a corrupted contact out there. And that's certainly possible. But but I don't think so because with Sierra about six months ago, I wiped it clean and did not restore from a backup. I truly started that machine from scratch and and all this crap came back. So it seems to me, I mean, maybe it's corrupted in the cloud. I don't know. But Facebook and and potentially linked in. But but certainly Facebook. And I just don't need that stuff. So turn it off. It's good. How about you, John? Any any thoughts on that? No, no additional thoughts other than go through your contacts and make make sure they're they're relevant. Yeah. Yeah. It's helpful. You got to, you know, sometimes you got to do a little bit of manual cleaning and that can be it can be cathartic. There you go. Oh, all right. Let's go to Simon. Shall we, John? Simon's got a good question. Simon says, no pun intended. I think I already have a fair backup protocol in place, a combination of time machine to my local Synology files copied across multiple machines, including a Mac mini with Mac server or Mac OS server running 24 seven at home and indeed a few in the free bits of cloud storage services that I have. However, I keep imagining a worst case scenario, a house fire, accidental malware, encryption of everything connected to the land. Hence my question entitled the preppers approach to backups. So I had two ideas. Firstly, pay up to one of the cloud services and copy everything there about two terabytes of data regularly and disconnect from it when not air, not copying, i.e. use an air gap. But I realized I didn't want to do that. I cloud is too embedded to Mac OS. Dropbox is too convenient when using a PC at work. Microsoft's OneDrive has the overhead of office bundled in Google Drive. Well, those fears of being scanned are there. Or he says I could buy a two base Synology with extra drives and make private cloud again, copy everything there regularly and disconnect from it when not copying. However, the only offsite place that I'd put it is my parents' house and their broadband is not very broad one to two megabits as opposed to 70. He says and they live a couple of hours away. The challenge of this is the occasional updates being so slow. And what's the easiest way to occasionally copy, connect, disconnect to Synology's private cloud service? Or should I just not be silly and stop worrying about worst cases? But wouldn't that mean that I might get caught? Simon, good to hear from you, Simon. Yeah. You know, I think in a general sense, an offsite cloud is a necessary part of any good backup strategy. And you need to have some things, whether it's at your parents' house or at your friend's house or, you know, it Dropbox or Backblaze or anything like that. As far as your data getting encrypt, you know, protecting against that. So so what Simon's talking about here is this these recent, it's not that recent, but this wave of ransomware where you get some Trojan on your computer that encrypts all of your data and also sometimes encrypts your backups or your data gets backed up and it's encrypted and then they offer to sell you the key for, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 worth of Bitcoin or something. And you pay and you buy the key and hopefully the key unlocks your data and you're back in business. But that's awful. And so good backups can and should protect against that. If you are backup and you want a cloud backup that does this, if your backup allows for versioning, then you should be safe even if your encrypted files wind up getting backed up because you can go to an older version of that file that is not encrypted. So you want to use some backup software that's allows for this versioning. And, you know, what Backblaze does this crash plan does this? I mean, really, if it's backup software and not clone software, it should have versioning. That's the way it works because a backup isn't just to take this data and put it there also. That's a clone. A backup is to protect you against things that you can do to ruin your data or things that malware can do to ruin your data. So having versioning or even just, you know, if you make a change to a file and you're like, yeah, this is what I want. Great. And then a week later, you're like, oh, crap, I need that old version of that file. That's the point of a backup. And Time Machine, of course, does this as well as you know, your cloud service. The problem with Time Machine is it can be compromised by a ransomware attack because it's local and it can access those files from the operating system. Something like Backblaze or Crash Plan does not is not the archives are not directly accessible from the finder. You have to go into their software, into their interface, navigate, find it, restore it. And that that creates that air gap that I think you're looking for here. The same would be true of. What does Synology call it, John? Is it cloud backup or hyperbackup? Hyperbackup is between two Synologies. Cloud backup is the cloud backups. Cloud backups the one from your Mac to the Synology. And again, that that creates that level of air gap there. So that's kind of where I would go with that. But what are your thoughts, my friend? I think my thoughts are. So one, I like hyperbackup because I use it and I back up the entire contents of one of my Synologies to the other to the other one. Sure. Sure. Back up the backup. Right. Right. And that's another way to do this. That's that's right. Yeah, for sure. But in general, and, you know, if you search for this, but, you know, most experts in the field suggest a three to one strategy. What does this mean? Well, other than it being fun to say three to one blast off. You want three copies of your data to which are local and at least one off site. That's it. And it sounds like that rule is more or less being followed in this case. So, yeah. The thing is never, never, ever have only one copy of data that's important to you, right? Because it's not if, but when it will get destroyed and corrupted and you won't be sad. Yeah. And you want, you know, again, with this ransomware stuff, you want those additional copies of your data, at least some of them, to not be directly accessible from the, you know, the operating system of your computer. So again, you know, storing in in Synology's cloud backup or back plays or something like that is good. Even Dropbox, right? You know, yes, your Dropbox is accessible from the Finder, but it stores old versions of your files, especially if you pay them. It will store more of them if you pay them. And that is what you're looking for here is this thing that's protecting you against things that you could do to your data either intentionally or otherwise. So there you go. All right. I want to talk. Actually, I want to thank this week's MacGicab premium contributors, John. If you're interested in a premium membership, you can visit us, of course, at MacGicab.com slash premium that helps support us directly. You get access to our premium at MacGicab.com email address where you can send your stuff and we prioritize that. And and we've got other goodies actually coming very, very soon. I almost thought I would have something more to talk about today, but but I think it'll be next week. So I want to thank the folks that either signed up new this week or renewed this week and those include on the monthly ten dollar plan. James C. is new this week. Thank you. Joe S. J. C. John V. Stephen A. And Micah P. Micah P. is renewing at the fifteen dollar month level. So thank you, you all rock on the every six month plan. We have Anders E. New subscriber at the thirty five dollar level. Guy D. at the twenty five dollar level. Thank you to you both. Phil G. Stacey S. Felix B. Steven B. Santiago M. Andrew R. And Charles R. Charles has basically earned lifetime status as a MacGicab premium member. I totally screwed up migrating his account over from the old system to the new one and and neglected to change the option from how often it renews, which by which defaults in the engine that we use to every day. I neglected to change that to every six months. So poor Charles was being charged twenty five bucks a day for a little while. And we fixed that for him by canceling a subscription. We of course refunded him. And then he renewed his subscription. He started a new subscription and the system was like, ah, I see a subscription for Charles. Let's do it. And it extended his old subscription, including the the every day thing. Support, Charles, my apologies, sir. Thank you for your patience. Thanks to everybody for your patience. Most of you have been migrated without any of those issues. But because there's no reliable way to automate that migration, we have to do it by hand. And if we had automated it, we would have to scour through all of them by hand. And so as it pains me to say, we've essentially been waiting for human error to cause those problems because when you don't automate things, that's one of the risks. And my apologies, Charles. So thanks to you and thanks to all of you who support us. You rock. Very, very much so. And we couldn't do this without you. Again, MacGicab dot com slash premium or Mac Observer dot com slash shop. It's all the same place. Thank you. Thank you. All right, John. And speaking of GD, I believe G has a question for us. Is that correct? I think so. All right. Let's do it. So here's the question. And it kind of has to do with iCloud, which is a source of much grief. Oh, it's a source. A lot of content for us is what it is. But here's the question. I hope you can help me with a mail drop problem. Oh, yeah. My iCloud user is in order to use MailDrop, I have to create an iCloud mail address in order to. Switch on mail in my iCloud account in the mail application. This gave another mail account at iCloud dot com. OK, so. MailDrop is Apple's technology to handle large attachments and it does use iCloud in a sense. So that's why this was being done. But it's not it's not I want to I just want to interject here just so that people understand. It may well be and likely is that you need an iCloud account to support MailDrop, but that does not you can send. You can use MailDrop sending from any type of address because MailDrop is turned on for my Google addresses, which are not iCloud accounts. So I have iCloud. I think the requirement I think the requirement is that it has to it has to be an iMap account. OK, various technical reasons. OK, I found that in one piece documentation that because sending mail has nothing to do with iMap. Correct, but for it to do its thing as far as sensing whether it's needed, I think it has to be an iMap account you're dealing with and not a pop account. But all right pop these days. Yeah, all right, fair enough. I had no idea that. But I just wanted to make sure that people understood you can use MailDrop with accounts that are not iCloud, but it but it sounds like you need to have an iCloud account attached to that computer in order to use it because it is actually using your iCloud storage for these things or iCloud credentials for these things or iCloud drive specifically. There you go. Yeah. But here's the problem. What should happen is that if it's enabled and you try to send a large attachment, many email providers limit the amount of data that you can use to send file attachments because you're not supposed to use email for that. Right. But everybody does anyway. But right. But a lot of them will warn you and this is where it should come in. MailDrop should step in when the person you're trying to send the mail through says, no, that's too big. You know, don't don't send gigabytes of data through mail because I don't want you to do that. I don't even think it waits for the provider to say it. I think if it's larger than I thought it was larger than five mags, but it might even be larger than one mag. It just says we'll just use MailDrop, right? Well, I think it waits for the provider. But anyway, that's basically what happened. So they're trying to send a large attachment and they get an error saying, I this is not happening. OK. How do you solve this problem? And so there are a number of steps. That you can go through and we went through them. Or there are a number of things that you want to check. If if MailDrop is not working for you. There are a number of places you can go. Now, you do have a support article called Mail for Mac, add an attachment in mail that does kind of go through this. But basically at a high level here. So the first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure and this was done. But if you go into mail and you click on accounts and you click on an account in the account information. Section of whichever account you have highlighted, you're going to see a little check box saying send large attachments with MailDrop. Now, from what I see here by default, that's on for your iCloud account. But it is typically not on by default for any of your other accounts. So that's the first place to look. We look there. Yeah, I'm looking right now and on all of my accounts on my Mac Mini here, except for my iCloud account, that box is not checked. Interesting. OK, first place to look. Got it. Now, second place to look. Now, this is where it gets kind of crazy. And I dug around for dug around for this. But this is something that is totally nonintuitive and that you also want to make sure because, as was mentioned, iCloud Drive is a part of this. So if you go to your iCloud, click on iCloud Drive, click on options. There's going to be a documents tab, Dave, and you're going to see all of the applications that can support document storage using your iCloud Drive. Yeah, make sure that mail is checked. And I absolutely confirmed if mail is not checked. Mail drops not going to work. So OK, so it's just going to sit there in your sent or your outbox and it's never going to work because. It doesn't have permission to write to your iCloud. Drive. Right. So OK, just so that because I understood exactly what you said and you were correct. But just in case when you go into iCloud preferences, there is an option for mail on the front of that, you know, on the first level of that. That's not what we're talking about here. You can actually have that unchecked. It's inside the options for iCloud Drive from there that you want to make sure you have mail checked. Correct. And very interesting. I like it. So good find. Yeah, OK. So here's what happened to both of those things. So we went back and forth. So I got screenshots showing that, yes, indeed, the checkbox to enable mail drop was checked for the account that. OK, we wanted to use. And also the. The iCloud Drive mail setting was also checked. It still wasn't working. It still refused to work. Huh. And unfortunately, here was the solution. So. My hail, Mary, for iCloud problems, Dave is signed out and signed back in again. Oh, really? For a lot of iCloud problems, like, you know, I had this one problem also with. Messages wasn't working for some reason, Dave. And I think you suggested that it's like, I don't know. I can't just my messages aren't working through iCloud. And it's like, well, maybe you got to sign out and sign back in again. Now, there was some concern. I said, well, you know what? Just because iCloud is an integral part of this whole thing working and that it uses iCloud Drive, maybe something's just a weird state where it just doesn't. Sure. It just doesn't realize that it can use it. Lilo, right? As Brian and Rose said in the chat room at geekup.com slash stream, log in or lowly, I guess is what it would be. Log out, log in lowly. Yeah. Now, the thing is, there was some concern here because, well, you know, when you try them, the thing is you get you get some kind of scary messages if you try to sign out of iCloud. Yeah. It's like, well, you know, you may lose some data and it's like that you should be good. Maybe make sure you got a backup, as we said. Yeah. Right. But it turns out, in this case, Dave, logging out, logging back in and then waiting for about 30 minutes is the feedback that I got. And all of a sudden, they work again. All right. Sometimes I just don't know. But the thing is, Mail Drop is actually really clever and it should step in and detect when something's too big because. Right. The email provider will they typically, at some level, will send a, you know, you'll try to send it and they'll say, well, and you get the explicit error message as he got and that I got when I had it, when I didn't have it enabled. It's like, well, no, your provider only allows, you know, this this size attachment, you're trying to send more. So I'm not going to do it. We should never get that message of all the pieces are in place. Right. Right. Because it should just avoid that entirely. Yeah. And it should just send send via Mail Drop and then it's not. It's just not an issue. Yeah. So I was happy because it's like, you got all the check boxes. You got you crossed your eyes and you dotted your T's or wait. Crossed your T's and dotted your eyes. No, but you're still getting the error message saying it can't happen. So good stuff. So yeah, put that in your in your hopper tool kit. There you go. Log out. Log in. Log in. Yeah. All right. We have we have a little bit of time left here. You know what? Let's let's let's let's go into router stuff because that can be fun and we'll kind of let that wrap our stuff up here. So Jed, why don't you bring us into this? Hey, guys, this is Jed. I am calling with a question that I think you've been asked in 1200 different ways. But I'm going to ask again. So it's about routers and it's about wireless and it's about mesh and it's about everything that, you know, is coming up nowadays a bunch. I just upgraded the files to the gigabit and it's super fast. Only the router is super slow. I find that their wireless doesn't reach my across my house. Now, I have an old power line hooked up to an airport base station. I forget which version an extreme and it's AC and it has three antennas and it doesn't be pretty much code to my house, but just barely. And I'm beginning to think I want to upgrade my router. And so I guess my question is so I live in a smallish house, but it has lots of walls that seem to be Wi-Fi unfriendly. However, once again, my airport extreme three antenna AC. The house is covered. It's just enough covers it. So I guess the question is if I was going to upgrade, should, in your opinion, should I go with something like a Synology, really powerful router? Just turn off everything else, use that, code the house. Or should I go with an Euro, which I think is probably the right call. I just don't know if it's overkill. Yeah, more info. That's the my base, my have a Synology NAS and a whole media stuff. And that's not near the router. But I mean, it's relatively near. It's like, you know, 40 feet, 50 feet from the router. So if I use an Euro, I can use the Ethernet out of the Euro to be a hard line, right? Because that actually becomes a deal breaker already. Once again, I guess this is where you're coming off. All right. Oh, we'll we'll cut you off. Like I'll figure out how to hit pause there, but instead we'll use mute. All right. I have one suggestion. Yeah, man. Well, it's actually from Pink Floyd. If you know, I do, I'm going to let you go. Think, Jed, you could do is tear down the walls. There you go. Yeah. But that's probably your landlord probably would not like that. Well, also it makes it kind of weird if, you know, if somebody wants to sleep in one room and and now it's not a room anymore. It's just a big but having the having what has been identified as Wi-Fi blockers, I think would would guide at least my guidance on this. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, based on what he's saying, and this is the tough part, because we do get the which router should I use? The what router for me question all the time. And it's fine. Keep sending them because it's great to have these discussions. But it's important to have the specifics because everybody is different. I mean, we all sort of, you know, have similar things. Most of our homes have walls, you know, internal walls, although those of you in studio apartments, not so much, right? But, you know, there's there's generally these other things and factors that are at least common to some of us. And given what you've described that it works, you know, I think, yes, the Synology router, especially the RT2600 AC, which is the four by four router from them with those monster radios. I think that would probably do your house great justice. So so there is that option. But and it way outperforms the Apple stuff. There's no question there. So if you're getting like OK coverage from your Apple stuff, then the Synology thing is more than likely to be fine. And since you already have a Synology disk station, you're going to you're very familiar with the interface, the web interface of the disk station. You're going to love SRM, which is the web interface for the router. That said, something meshified might give you the fastest speeds to your 50 feet away disk station. And that can be kind of a wonderful thing. And my advice, you know, it's tough because this stuff evolves so quickly. But right now, and I have not yet tested the new Euro Gen two hardware that came out this week. But prior to that, and maybe after that, I honestly don't know. I just haven't tested it yet, but I will have it here. The Orbi has the best backhaul because the high end Orbi has the best backhaul because they use those four by four radios, but only for backhaul, not for the front hall stuff. But if you've got, you know, two Orbi's, you can ethernet into the satellite one and, you know, from your disk station and all that stuff. And you'll get really good connection on that back end. So that would be one option is to look at that. And then, of course, you've got this device that's there and broadcasting Wi-Fi from wherever that location is. And that can be a really handy thing, too. In your scenario, yeah, I think the strength of the Synology Router will cover you, but I think a mesh solution of some type. And it might not have to be the Orbi, you know, the great part about the Orbi is what I said. If you get the high end one, the backhaul is awesome if you, but you miss out on some features in the router, like you can't do ethernet backhaul. So if you ever do wind up with ethernet in the walls, at least at this point in time, the Orbi does not support that. That's kind of a big deal for me. It doesn't support QOS, although I have every reason to suspect that it will very, very soon, but I don't know that. They haven't said that. I'm just talking about from what I see digging around in the interface. There are there are newly added pages that make it make me think that QOS is is coming. The new Eero, the original Eero's had two radios in them, one that's used for 2.4 and one that's five gigahertz. The new Eero's add a second five gigahertz radio to that. And from what I understand, our faster radios overall are more powerful radios, not faster. That's still two by two, but they're more powerful radios overall. And and so that makes the new Eero, they say, performs twice as fast as the old one. Again, I haven't tested so I can't speak to that. But it certainly would make sense that with a third radio in there, it could start being a whole lot more efficient about what it does because it can manage its backhaul, however it finds that to be best and then offer whatever it needs on the front wall. So so I would certainly look at that. And it's it's, you know, it's tough. You're going to really what I would do is is kind of look at it all. It sounds like you're leaning toward the Eero. I don't think that's a bad option for you. It might be a great option. So get it and and test it and see how your speeds are. See if you like the way it works. And if it does your golden, you know, it is not a small investment to do this stuff, especially the mesh stuff. So, you know, test it, make sure it does what you want to do. But I think I think that, you know, especially the new Eero, the second gen Eero would probably be, you know, a great option for you. So so there you go. That's that's that's my thoughts, John. The only other thing I would say is if you I know you don't have ethernet in the walls, but if you have coax cable, both where your initial point of entry is where the base station, the router goes, and then also where your disk station is, that might be it makes you a good candidate for using Mocha for your backhaul if you wind up needing that. So those are my thoughts. What do you think, John? Yeah, I think I'm with you on that. OK, cool. Cool. Yeah, good stuff. The mesh guys all Eero and all of them, but I'm sure they all have a trial period. We can kick the tires. Yeah, you've got to make sure it works for you. Yeah. And some of that might be, you know, moving things around and making sure you get the right coverage and all of that. Thankfully, now most of them, and Eero certainly does this, but but most of them do this, where they tell you which access point any of your devices are connected to. So you can see, all right, is, you know, am I it is the placement of access point number two? Is that a good place or is nobody winding up connecting to it? And so maybe I should move it. It's cool stuff. And I also, you know, a conversation about mesh I can't have without mentioning Linksys and Velop. That's that's also a tri band solution. They are being very aggressive with how quickly they're moving in the market with software updates and things like that and really doing some cool things. So that's another one to watch. So I know it sucks, especially if you're thinking about buying today, because I can guarantee you that six months from now, what you bought will have changed, most likely for the better. And what you didn't buy will have changed, most likely for the better. And so it's, you know, but it's like anything with technology, right? That's just how it goes. And you just got to kind of, you know, pick what works for you today. Bank on their future, you know, and make an educated bank on their future and then just go. I mean, the only thing I want to toss in here and I dabbled with this, though, I don't know if it's. But, you know, you did an AC extender for a small premises. Yeah. May you may be able to get that may you're going to drop less coin. You know, if you get one of these AC extenders. But I think our conclusion was that it's it can make things better. But I think mesh is probably better. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, and then there's that that middle ground that ubiquities amplify HD mesh points provide because the mesh points are part of their mesh. Right. You know, you have the router and then the mesh points just plug directly into the outlets, kind of like the new things that that come with the Euro V2, the Euro beacons. But the amplify mesh points, HD mesh points, so there are three by three radios, which is unique, by the way, can be used with the amplify mesh. And then they are truly mesh or you can add them to whatever router you already have, and then they become, you know, this quasi mesh thing. And I say quasi mesh because you have to manage it from multiple interfaces. But it's a lot of that same tech. And if you added another one now, they'll start talking to each other and managing clients and that sort of thing. So I'll put a link to those in the show notes, because I think those are just 130 bucks or maybe even a little bit less than that. So yeah. Good stuff. All right, John, we don't read. Do we have time for Jeff? We're going to do Jeff. Let's just do it. Um, go. I think we got time for John. Take us to Jeff. So, uh, yes. And I. All right. Here we go from Jeff. Hmm. It's going with that because he sent in two questions. OK. Yeah. Here we go. Background. Comcast Cable Internet. My own doxxus modem. Asus RTAC66U router daisy chained to some ethernet switches to provide ethernet, a Synology, IoT hubs, Wi-Fi for the rest, IoT. All right. So he's got a lot of internet of things, smart home stuff. Let's see some smart things. Sonos, a couple of bulbs, a lithics. Yeah. All right. So he's got a lot of equipment. Yeah. Here's the problem. Surprisingly, it's all worked pretty well for a long while with the usual minor hiccups. However, about two to three weeks ago, stuff just stopped working. It started with my Sonos set up to the house, Wi-Fi, not a tub. The iPhone app wouldn't find the network. Nothing helped until I deleted the app, reinstalled and reconnected everything. Two-play LS and a connect. Then the lithics, play, play fives, I think, is what you're saying. Two play fives. That's good. That says OK. All right. Then the LIFX bulb wouldn't respond, seeming to have lost Wi-Fi. Then a couple of smart things switches stop responding to the smart things app, all the while responding to the schedule in the sky. Now, my Sonos is out again. I guess this could be what I deserve for a wacky system, but it seems an odd cascade of failures that I thought might hinge on my router. I've resented the router a few times, but in fact, we restored and I've made sure the firmware is up to date. I've also cycled the modem for good measure. Nothing seems to help. I've Googled around a bit with nothing coming up that seems similar. What prompted my email to you yesterday was that I was wondering if the Daisy Chain ethernet switches could somehow be at play. Or could it be the router or just bad luck? Well, I put it on my tinfoil hat, Dave. My new cat pock likes to wear his tinfoil hat. So my thinking cap. Oh, right. That's different. Based on my thorough analysis of what he said here, Dave. I see a common thread here in the items that are giving Jeff grief that they all seem to be Wi-Fi devices, Dave. Yeah, I don't think it's internet. I'm totally with you on that. Yes. So Daisy Chaining Ethernet switches is certainly a valid thing to do. The only thing you want to make sure of is that the connection between them can be a bottleneck. But it it doesn't cause connectivity issues. It should. I mean, unless you've got a damaged switch, but even just one damaged switch would cause that. So, yeah, no, I'm totally with you that that barring that. I don't think his ethernet switches are the problem. No. So what I see is this. This is a Wi-Fi situation here. Yeah. And that I think you're you're. Now, things have worked fine in the past and that I totally understand that the thing is. Well, nothing you've done may have changed. The problem with Wi-Fi is that because everybody and his brother and sister and third cousin has Wi-Fi, someone something has been introduced in your environment that has now changed the dynamic. So once it just and I have here is to get a tool like I Stumbler and see what's what's happening. I bet there's something new that is causing you grief. It would have to be. It's either that or one of your devices has has run amok. It is just, you know, barfing Wi-Fi packets or it could be barfing ethernet packets. Right. I mean, we've seen that where, you know, it at some point once your signal gets wirelessly from your device to your router, then it does have to speak ethernet to the other things. And if you've got something barfing ethernet packets or whatever. But but no, I mean, I'm I'm just exploring all the possibilities, most likely. And I'm 100 percent with you that it's it's Wi-Fi. Yeah. Right. So get I Stumbler or similar software and see what's happening in your neighborhood. And what you may want to do and any Wi-Fi access point worth it's salt, we'll let you change the channel that it's on. Sometimes it'll choose it automatically based on doing something smart, like, OK, what's less crowded? But that may have changed. And I think typically they don't read. Most of them don't renegotiate this. It's just whatever channel they're on, they're going to be on until you cycle power. Yeah, that's true of, I would say the mesh stuff. I've seen change its channel. Some of it just, you know, willy-nilly or not willy-nilly, but on its own without a restart. But yeah, a restart will certainly force any device that's in auto mode to go, hey, what should I do? Yeah, OK, good. I'll go here. Great. Right. Another suggestion is that as you know, or you may not know, but 2.4 gigahertz is crowded with all sorts of terrible things. So if you can at all move things over to five gigahertz. Now, from what I've seen, typically a lot of Internet of Things stuff or switches and all that, a lot of them are stuck on 2.4, which is unfortunate. But if you can at all get them to five gigahertz, do that because that'll solve. Problems that things have with 2.4. Yeah. You may want to explicitly set up on the one thing we sometimes suggest. If you don't have any problems than having a single SSID for all of yours and letting the devices make the choice is a way to go. But if things get crowded and there's chaos and Wi-Fi trauma in this case, you may want to set up an explicit five gigahertz channel. And then force your devices to connect to that. Yeah. Maybe get an extender to kind of or a mesh product to distribute the workload here, because it sounds like you're just going to a single device here. And based on all the things you told me here, I mean, technically it should be capable of maintaining all of those connections. But if there's any way at all to kind of spread the love. Spread it. Yeah. And either it gets, you know, some things to talk to an extender, you know, put it in a straight line. Talk to an extender, you know, put it in a strategically located place. So you get some devices talking on that. And not the main thing. It may be that this this thing kind of, you know, the Wi-Fi that you have right now, maybe doesn't handle multiple too many clients that well. Yeah. I don't know. I'm with you. Oh, it's good, man. That's yeah. I don't know what else to suggest. Those are certainly the first things to try. And then failing that will keep us posted because, you know, we're with you. We're here. And you can also post in our Facebook group at Mackeygab.com slash Facebook to to get the opinion of all of the folks there, which is an awesome thing. You can also call us at 224-888-GEEK, which John is four, three, three, five. It's true. It's true. I want to thank Cashfly, C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com for hosting all the audio that gets from us to you. Of course, I want to thank our sponsors, Other World Computing at MacSales dot com. I want to thank Harry's at Harry's dot com slash M-G-G, which will save you five bucks off your new shave set there. Other sponsors, of course, Smile at SmileSopper dot com. Bear Bones software at bearabones.com. And there's more new ones coming, actually. Very excited. Well, John, we've made it to the end. We always like to say something. Don't be don't be frivolous. No, no. Don't be fraught. No. Don't get caught. Made on the map. Have a good week, folks. Thanks, John. Happy Father's Day to everybody.