 The Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, episode 774 for Monday, August 12th, 2019. Thanks, folks, and welcome to the Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, the show where we take your questions, your tips, your cool stuff found, the cool stuff we've found, all of that stuff, and we mix it together, creating what we like to call an agenda. We follow it loosely-ish, with the goal being that we are going to all each individually together learn at least five new things every single week when we get together. Sponsors for this episode include ExpressVPN.com slash MGG, Linode.com slash MGG, and Barebones.com. No MGG required there. In fact, don't use it, it'll probably mess up. But you'll go visit those URLs, and then in a little while, we'll talk about each of them as to why you went and visited them already. For now, here in, I guess, Orlando, Florida is better, I might not be technically in Orlando, but let's say that I am. Here in Orlando, Florida, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here, still in Fairfield, Connecticut. This is Jonathan Braun. Yeah, so I am on the mobile rig, hopefully the sound works out for all of you and all of that. I guess if you're hearing this, it already does. I'm here for a podcast movement, a podcast-focused conference. It's actually the fifth one, and it's the first one that I have attended. Schedule-wise in the summer, we've talked about this, folks, it's tough. But, you know, I'm in the business. Not only do we do the show, we have Backbeat Media and all this other stuff. So it makes a lot of sense, I think, for me to be here, and I'm going to find out, because the show sort of gets going tomorrow. I did a cool thing today that we will talk about in a little bit, but we'll get some stuff, show stuff out of the way first, not out of the way. We will do some show stuff first, but yeah. So that's where we're at. You got anything to say, John, or should we just get right into it? I'll talk about my financial adventures. Yes. You have something to talk about. Your space adventures. That's right. Yeah. For sure. All right. Let's see if we can get some questions done here. Lawyer Jeff, actually, we're going to do some cool stuff found, because we know you love cool stuff found. And Lawyer Jeff is going to start us off. He says, T.J. Luoma was on Mac Power Users and mentioned a utility called Baylif, which is from the Eclectic Light Company, a company, Howard Oakley's site, where he not only pontificates and shares a wealth of great information. He also shares some apps that he's written. Baylif is a menu bar control app that lets you control whether iCloud documents are kept in local storage or just on iCloud. So that's pretty good, right? You know, we can set it, we can set iCloud to download everything or not. But beyond that, Apple doesn't give us any granular control, Baylif does. So we will put a link to that in the show notes of course. And then Jeff says, while checking out Baylif, I found yet another interesting app from the same place called Cirrus, C-I-R-R-U-S, which takes control of iCloud, investigates and diagnoses its problems. He says it's not currently working on the Catalina beta, but of course we will put a link in the show notes to both of these things because, well, after all, that's what we do. Any any thoughts on this, Mr. Braun? Not right now, but a few questions down. I'm going to mention that there are a ton of good apps. That guy is nuts, man. Hey, I know there's so many useful things here to let you let you look underneath the covers, a lot of them. Yeah. Now, what's your Mac doing, man? Yeah, no, like iCloud, especially. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, what is it? Well, what do they call it? A nest of? Well, yeah, it was like, stay away from it like a swarm of bees or something. Right. Right. There was an article that I think has been deprecated, but they don't touch this directory, man. He touched it and it looks like it's working out. Yeah, leave it. Right. That's right. Well, Howard is one of the I mean, he's a special one. He knows what he's doing. So all right. So let's let's see if we can go to Chris here. Christopher, my apologies. Who says let's see. Does he say yes. OK, he says. Regarding Jed's question in the last episode, seven seventy three, I have a cool stuff found to share. I recommend using Neo Finder from CD Finder.de as his disk cataloging software, he says, I've used it for years to catalog not only my internal hard drive, but also all those removable drives that you have stacked around your desk and locked in your safe deposit box, et cetera. He says, you do have a current backup of your important documents on a hard drive in your safe deposit box, don't you? The software creates a nice database of your drives and helps to find that file document project image sound file wherever it might reside. Just remember to label the outside of those external drives so you know which one to mount. So yeah, very cool. Thank you for that, Christopher. Good stuff. Anything to share on that one, my my friend, Mr. Braun? No, keep rolling. All right. Well, yeah, we'll roll through some of these. Ben shares, he says, with the demise of dashboard coming in Mac OS Catalina, I've been looking for replacements for my cherished widgets. I've already transitioned from June Cloud's note file to notes and started using the lookup gesture instead of the dictionary widget. I'm also prepared to replace calculator stocks and delivery status with their notification center equivalents. I went looking for a way to show uptime, that is the amount of time that your system has been running since it was last rebooted. He says I want to I found I want to want it. I went looking for a way to do this in notification center and I discovered something called today's scripts by a random Reddit user. It runs invisibly and very easily displays the results of any terminal command in notification center as a widget. Very cool stuff. And he asks, are y'all dashboard fans? And if so, what are you sad to lose? And what have you found to replace it? If you have an answer for either of those parts of that question or both of them, feedback at Mackeygab.com is where you will go to share that with us. I don't know if I heard you right over the hotel Wi-Fi there, Dave. But did you say feedback at Mackeygab.com? I did. I said feedback at Mackeygab.com. I did. That's kind of how it works. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Don't you think it's great? Yeah, it's good. In all seriousness, though, the Wi-Fi is working for you. You're you're good. You would actually let me know if there was a problem. OK, good. I heard you flange. You flanged a little bit at one point, but other than that, now it seems to be keeping up. That actually may be the audio processing fighting with the air conditioner on my end, not on your end this time. So that's possible. It's possible. We flange sometimes. That's how it works. All right. Let's see what we got here. Chuck. Chuck. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chuck has a great little option. We were talking about removing space on your iOS device. In fact, listener Scott, I think, was the one that that shared a tip for how to. He he I guess he wiped his phone and then restored it from a backup and got like 14 gigs back, which is great. But it shouldn't have to be that way. And Chuck has found, if I can even see it, well, so the the PDF is broken. That's fine. Thankfully, I prepped the show right before we did it. And I remember that Chuck said he has found email to be the thing that uses up a lot of space on iOS. When you load an email, it saves a local copy is like a cache. And oftentimes iOS doesn't get rid of these things when you might want it to. What he has done is gone in and removed the email account from iOS's settings and then just read it. And that way it wipes out the the the cache without having to wipe the the phone. Now, if that's the case, that is new behavior from my standpoint, because I have done this before. I've removed an email account because it was doing other funky things. And I've added it back and it finds the same local cache that was there before. The only way I found it, you can not see the cache of an email account is to use a different mail server name. So it stores the cache in a folder, just like it does on Mac OS with, say, username at email servers. So let's say, you know, Dave Hamilton at gmail.com. I don't recommend you email that address. You can. It will get to me. But you'll also get an auto replyer saying you probably didn't reach the day if you're looking for you, in fact, would have. But Dave Hamilton at gmail.com. There is a cache on my device that checks that account and the folder is named that same thing. It's like I map dash Dave Hamilton at gmail.com. I've deleted an account like that from iOS, put it back on and it's found the cache because it didn't delete the cache when I deleted the account. Hopefully now Chuck is right and it deletes that cache. But the only way I've been able to get around it is to create a new account and you say Dave Hamilton at Google mail.com is the mail server name and then that creates a new cache. Not every mail server has a secondary server name. So, you know, there you go. And it might have been Dave Hamilton at imap.gmail.com because it saves it with the inbound mail server and I changed it to Dave Hamilton at imap.googlemail.com. So you can do that with gmail. imap.gmail.com is the same as imap.googlemail.com and smtp.gmail.com is the same as smtp.googlemail.com. But I hope Chuck is right that deleting the email account now deletes that cache folder because that would be a very good thing. So thoughts, my my friend, Mr. Braun, nice, you know, I was looking at I'm amazing to see if I'm amazing would let you manage that and it doesn't appear that it does. Yeah, I don't think it can touch that. But what I'm amazing, of course, can do is let you restore from your backup and do so selectively. And one of the things is you could not, you know, restore that stuff. So yeah, yeah. It's craziness, though, Mr. Braun. That's the that's what I say. I really wish I'm amazing could or that Apple, for example, would share a tip that, you know, would share a utility that could do that sort of thing. So we have a few quick tips to go through. But, John, first, I want to talk about our first sponsor, if that's all right by you, my friend. Of course. All right, sweet. Our first sponsor today is Express VPN, where, as I mentioned, you can visit express VPN dot com slash M G G to find out how you can get three months for free with a one year package. I'm traveling today. I was at NASA today. I had to use NASA's Wi-Fi at times. I know we all love NASA, but I don't necessarily trust what they're going to do with my data. I certainly don't want them seeing my data because who knows what they might do with that. So I used Express VPN on my phone and on my laptop to know for certain that my data is tunneled and secure. And it's mine because Express VPN doesn't just encrypt your data while you serve. It lets you stream and access content that might have been blocked. Who knows? Maybe NASA blocks like Gmail, just like we were talking about. I don't know, but it wouldn't have mattered to me because I was using Express VPN. Once I got that tunnel created, it doesn't matter because everything goes through that tunnel. And then I can do what I want. And I'm not limited by whatever the firewalls want to do or whatever filters and all that stuff. It runs in the background of your computer or your phone. And then you just use the internet like you normally would. You download the app, you click to connect, and it's super easy. It's just like one click and boom. I never go online while traveling without using Express VPN and you shouldn't either. It's super fast. Like I've tested it with speed tests on my home connection which is super fast. It's great. It's seven bucks a month and it comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. You've got to check this out. No matter what you're trying to browse online, Express VPN gives you instant access all over the world. Don't travel anywhere this summer without downloading Express VPN. And as I said, you can do it. Visit expressvpn.com slash mgg today to protect your online activity and find out how you can get three months for free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S as VPN.com slash mgg for three months free with a one year package. Thank you so much to Express VPN for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode. All right, Mr. Braun, are you gonna take us to Keith now? Yeah, first off, I'm glad about Express VPN because that came in very handy at some of the trips we took because certain people block certain things. Exactly. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I know. And it's great to have it. Yeah, it's awesome. So anyways, yeah, let's go to, I think we got a good quick tip here, which is relevant because I've had this happen to me, but Keith says, like many people, I've never really seen the point of live photos and have the option turned off on my camera. My opinion may have changed but only under certain circumstances. A friend took some pictures of me yesterday and airdropped them over. In a couple of them, I had my eyes closed but I noticed they were live photos. I tapped edit and then used the slider at the bottom. I was able to select a frame with my eyes open. But I tapped make key photo and save the picture, sort it. As a bonus, it's also possible in the edit screen to turn off live so you only, so you get only the single frame visible. This works in photos in OS 10, as well as iOS. So thank you, Keith. And I had this happen on our recent trip, Dave. I asked someone to take a photo of me. It was me making a certain gesture in front of a certain building and that's all I'm gonna say. But anyways, I guess the person did not know the intricacies of taking a picture and held down. I believe to get a live photo, you hold down the button. No, you just have your phone take live photos. It's an option across the top. You may be confusing this with burst mode, perhaps. Live photos and burst mode are similar in this regard where you wind up with a very similar thing in the end where you've got this, in burst mode, you have a burst of pictures and live photos. You kind of have the same thing. It's just treated like a video, a very short video. But the same net effect for what Keith is talking about here works in both of those cases. Yeah. So wait, how did they take a live photo of me there? They probably tapped the live photo button. It's the little circle thing at the top of the camera app on your phone. I see, yes, okay. Yeah, I see it here and right now it has a line through it. Right, but if you tap it, it doesn't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super handy for exactly what Keith is talking about. The only thing is, and I'm gonna say this and I'm probably wrong, but I'll say it anyway. It seems like when I'm taking live photos, if I'm taking lots of photos in succession, my phone needs to sort of catch up every now and then. That may be something going on with my phone though, because I actually have a quick tip to share that I will share when we're done with this, but my phone was acting up today. It's been acting up a lot lately, in fact. I probably need to do the nuke and pave, restore little thing, but with all my travel, I don't wanna do that. Well, yeah, I think I saw you write that it got wedged and you had to figure out how to unwedge it. I did have to figure out how to unwedge it, yes. Yeah, so I, as I mentioned, I think I mentioned, I did mention that I was at NASA today, touring around and we visited some crazy things and we'll talk about this in a little bit, but at our first stop, we're seeing a Saturn V rocket. Really cool, I took some pictures, now I'm listening to a guy talk and one of the docents there was talking and I wanted to take a picture and I pull out my phone and I see the spinning gear on the screen. Oh, crap. Spinning gear of despair. Yeah, it's like of all the freaking times for this to happen right now, seriously, my laptop is on the bus, my iPad is on the bus and I could have gone out to the bus, but it would have required like ask, it was, you know, we're at NASA, so there's some regimented things. Yeah, but sometimes that means that it's rebooting, what do they call it again? Yeah, rebooting springboard. The presentation layer. Yeah, springboard. Yeah, so sometimes you recover from it, but sometimes, you know. That's what I figured, I'm like, okay, well, you know, I'll listen to this guy talk and after five minutes, you know, it'll have finished whatever it's doing. 20 minutes later, we're going out to the bus, it's still doing its thing. Now, in the meantime, I've tried, I know, because we talked about it on this show, I know that there's a way to force an iPhone 10 to stop being powered on and I can't remember it for the life of me and I remember when we talked about it on the show, I said, go do this on your phone so you get some muscle memory with it because when you need to do it, you're gonna need to know how to do it and you're gonna wanna remember. So I'm there having a moment, remembering, talking together with all of you and of course, I can remember talking about it, but I can't remember the thing. I knew it involved all three buttons, but I couldn't remember the order, so I'm like trying different things and I'm still trying to like, soak in everything that we're doing there and not really stressed about it because I knew I had my iPad with the Mint mobile sim in it on the bus and I figured, okay, I can look it up when we get on the bus. So when it was time to leave, I was the first one back on the bus, I whipped out my iPhone, or my iPad and my iPhone's still going in the mode, it's hot, you know, because it's just running and like, oh great, I'm burning up my battery at the beginning of this long day where I'm gonna wanna take pictures and do all sorts of things and record people, but I looked it up and I got it to work. I'm not going to go through, I'm not going to share any of the things that I tried because I don't want you or me to misremember any of these things, but suffice to say, I tried everything except the right combination. So I will tell you what the right combination was and after I did this, the phone powered down, powered back up and everything's been fine since. The combination is press the volume up button, release it, press the volume down button, release it, press and hold the button on the other side until the phone powers down and it took all of about five seconds. So here's how I am choosing to remember this. No button is pressed with any other button, so you're only ever pressing one button at a time and you're only holding one button in only one, not multiples. So you're not holding a button and it's just press, release, press, release and hold and you start with volume up. So it's volume up, volume down, press and hold the other side button, boom, you're good to go. So hopefully that helps at least one of us remember because that's a valuable thing to know how to do. Frustrating, but thankfully it, I was able to get through it and all was good. Yeah, and that was, it was on my iPhone XR but that works with any non home button iPhone is really what it is. So 10 and later in that lineup. Good, John, anything on that? So I have an eight, so I would do the same thing but the last step would be to hold down my home button because I have one. Is that right? Is that how you do it with that one? Is it also involved the volume buttons? I didn't think it did. I thought you held like home and the side button on the iPhone, on the iPhones with a home button and that did it. But that was what threw me off was it used to be that you would hold home and the side button and then that would force the phone to power down. I believe that's correct. Maybe somebody in the chat room at macgeekyub.com slash stream and there you go. So yeah. That's not working for me at the moment but I shouldn't be fiddling with that. So anyways, but I don't wanna misinform people. Okay, Brian Moreau in the room is saying that's correct but I just wanna make sure we get that right. So, but I think it is power and home. Michael King is also saying yeah, power and home at the same time. So we're calling that third button the power button. So yeah, there you go. Huh, it's not doing anything. Ah, because the iPhone seven and eight don't have the physical home button. So I think you're right. I think you're right, John. Right, it would have to be the same scenario. Well, no, I got a home button. Well, the haptic home button, but I got a button. Restart your iPhone eight or earlier. Press and hold the power button either top or side. No, no, no, no, hang on. We got to force restart it. If your iOS device restarting, no, no, no, no. This isn't the right thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this article is not. This article is telling us what to do if the phone is responsive, not if it's not responsive. So we will. Okay, well, no, I did see in the chat room. So the thing is, if you hold the power button and the volume down, you will then get the screen that prompts you to power down or do an emergency SOS or cancel. Right, but my phone was beyond that. Okay. My phone would not do that. That's correct. Yes, but my phone would was failing at that and it needed the super firmware only thing. So, yeah, Allen 567 is saying power and volume down is the force shutdown. So I hope that's right. Does that work for you, John? Power and volume down. Does that just shut it off without bringing up that screen? Not at the moment. Okay, we will find a thing. So we don't know what the conversation went exactly where I didn't want it to go with lots of ideas and the wrong thing to remember. So iPhone 10 and later, volume up, release, volume down, release, hold the power button. The phone will shut off even if it's in an unresponsive state. There you go. That's what we're sharing. When we get the right thing that can be tested and confirmed for the seven and eight which have the virtual home button, we will share that too and we'll leave that to you, Mr. Brun. Because you have that phone to test it with. All right. And if that happens during this episode, we will get there. Stephen has a great little tip. He says, have you ever wondered how you would create a macOS keyboard shortcut in System Preferences keyboard for a menu command when there's another menu command with the exact same name somewhere else in that app? Well, first of all, there shouldn't be but some app developers do that. He's not wrong. He says, there's a way because you can specify the full path using air quotes to the menu command by putting dash greater than with no spaces between the menu command titles. That may make sense when you see it but it is by no means obvious. So you would do like let's say you wanted, he said, he used Devon think as an example. He wanted to go to file new window inbox. So file menu, go to new window and then there's an inbox option there. File dash greater than new space window dash greater than inbox matching the capitalization and the spacing used by those names and that will do it. So this is a cool thing. What you may not know is that you can do this for any menu command. You can create a shortcut even if the app developer did not create one. And that's a really handy thing. And as we indicated and as Stephen indicated, you do that in system preferences keyboard which is pretty, pretty darn cool. All right. Good, yes? Good. You wanna take us to Seth, Mr. Braun? Yeah, let me just paste the link to this handy dandy article I found which is called restart your iPhone iPad or iPod touch. Okay. It tells you what to do. Great. Confirms what we speculated. What does it confirm and have you tested it? Well, it says how to restart. For eight or earlier, press and hold the top or side button until the power off slider appears. Drag the slider to turn. Yeah, we told, stop, stop, stop. We already talked about this. If the slider appears, your phone is not in the frozen state. Right. Right. So the question is how do you, we already talked about how to do it. And then there's a follow up article on the bottom. It says if your iOS device is frozen or won't turn on. Okay. This article contains a link to an article that tells you more. On the iPhone eight or later, you do exactly the same thing that you do on the iPhone 10 which is volume up release, volume down release, press and hold the side button until you see. So it's the same thing for the iPhone eight. As you speculated, iPhone seven is you press and hold the power button as well as the volume down button for 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo. There you go. Good stuff. Sweet. Okay. So these articles should have be covered. All right, where are we now? You're gonna take us to, I can get the agenda up. Small screen. There you go. With lots of links. Gonna take us to Seth. Sweet. Yeah, we got a good, yeah, Seth has a good one here that kind of makes sense. Recently, I had a logic board die in my MacBook Air running Mojave. After replacement, my iMessages, or messages now, I guess, were no longer syncing to iCloud on my MacBook Air. So I went into the messages app, preferences, accounts to find the setting, enable messages in iCloud, except it wasn't there. Not great out, just missing completely. Yeah, all right. After some hunting, it turns out that following the logic board replacement key chain syncing in iCloud had been disabled by the system. After turning it on, the option for message syncing reappeared. This might help someone else looking for an option that seemingly disappeared. Okay, that's a good one. And I imagine that this happens because on a lot of systems, Mac and PC and all that, they sometimes use some unique information. Like maybe the MAC address of your Ethernet or your Wi-Fi to create keys and encrypt stuff. And so I think that's probably why this happened. Of course, it's not very nice that they kind of hid that the option to just disappear. That's kind of nasty. So thank you very much for that tip. That's good stuff. He said he's running a MacBook Air. I wonder if that's a 2018 or 2019 MacBook Air with a T2 chip because that would also make sense, right? Cause the T2 chip has the key in it. Like you don't get the key anywhere else. Yeah. Right. I don't know. But that's, you know, that T2 chip is, I think it's a good thing, but it comes with some caveats that you have to understand, you know, that it's gonna control some things in a way that is well, is new. Really is what it comes down to. So yeah. It's good. Fun. All right. Next, Dave. Next. I guess I could. You can. And I want you to talk about your Apple Card because you got one and we all, what did I post on Facebook? Congratulations, John, for getting your Apple Card. There you go. I first wanna talk about our next sponsor though, which is a Linode. Please. Yeah. At linode.com slash MGG, where promo code MGG2019 gets you a $20 credit. Linode is so cool. You are going to need a server for something. If not right now, probably soon. You know, we're geeks here. And honestly, even if you're not a geek for our businesses and stuff, we need a website, you know, to host things. We might wanna run like a Minecraft server. We might run a run like, you know, all kinds of things, right? And you need a server in the cloud. This is what Linode does. And what's cool about Linode is every single server, even starting with their $5 a month, Nanode server runs on SSDs. So we know the big difference that SSDs made to even our Macs that are 10 years old, the CPU is often not the issue. It's the disk speed. And with SSDs, you don't have that issue, which means that even running on their $5 a month plan, you're still getting that same fast SSD speed, which can make a huge difference for like your WordPress site and getting all that stuff running. If you like the command line, Linode will give you, you know, root access on your virtual server and you're good to go. If you don't like the command line, they have all these quick start things. So let's say you want a WordPress site. You just go in, you say, I want a WordPress site. They ask you a few questions like, you know, what do you want it named? Do you have a password you want to use? And then it sets up all the stuff you need so that you don't even need to worry about like Apache and MySQL and all that, just sets it up and says, okay, here's the address. Here's the login go. And you've got WordPress up and running in seconds, maybe minutes. So you got to check it out. Go to linode.com slash MGG youth promo code MGG2019 and our thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. Now congratulations, Mr. Braun, you were able to order and even get now, I think your Apple card. So tell us about this mythical device. So here's the experience. So the notes that back in March and then you can go to Apple's website and they have a page that talks about the card and then they have a little thing that says notify me when it's available. So it's like kind of a pre-release. So the thing is it's not yet officially quite released because I still see that button on the page. But the thing is, Dave, you know what? Some work is best done at the last minute. The thing is I requested an invite using the notify me thing. And you want to enter the Apple ID of the device that's going to utilize the card. Sure. And so I did that. And the thing is I requested it last Tuesday and I got the invite on Wednesday. It's like, what did I do to deserve this? I don't know if I have a friend at Apple or something because there were people that were shaking their fists at me saying, you know, I requested this back in March and I still haven't gotten the invite and you got it in a day. And it's like, well, you know, are you sure you didn't put your name in when they announced it at WWDC? Like, because I know a lot of people I'm almost certain I didn't. Okay, all right, because that's possible. I mean, you know, who knows? Yeah. No, not that good. So anyways, and then what happens is, so what's going to happen is once it's rolled out, the way you request one is you go into wallet, you hit the plus sign and what you're going to see is probably a couple of different things. You're going to see credit or debit card or what I saw because I got the invite was Apple card. And it's like, oh, well, that's cool. Okay, so, you know, clicked on Apple card to add that. And then it asks a few questions. So it's like, all right, here's what I think your first and last name are. Please tell me your birthday. And what else did it, and your phone number, which it knows that because it's on the phone. Here's the thing. So if you happen to be someone like John F. Braun, what I did is I changed my first name to John Space F so that the card has John F. Braun on it. So if you want to put your middle initial in and that this works with a lot of other systems that don't explicitly ask for your middle initial because I want it there because all my other cards have it. So anyways, and then I think it confirms your mailing address because you may want to get the physical version of it. And then it asks your income between us, you can pretty much, from people I know in the banking industry, you can pretty much make up a number, but I didn't. You can, but they can also cancel your card agreement if you provided incorrect or false information on your application. Yes. Yeah, thanks for the tip. So there you go. So anyways, and so I provided that and then don't get caught. It basically did a check and it says, okay, well, here's your limit and here's the interest rate and I got the lowest interest rate because like you Dave, I'm a credit superstar. And I'm like, okay, that's fine, that's great. And then the card was added to my wallet. It's like, wow, that's pretty neat. And at that point, you could have started using it for Apple Pay purchases, right? Like right at that moment. Correct, because, right. I didn't do that until the next day, but I did and it worked just like any other card. So you didn't have to wait to receive your physical card in the mail to start using it? Correct. Cool. Now, but you did get your physical card in the mail today, if I saw it correctly, is that right? Right, now the other thing, oh, okay. So here's the other thing though, you wanna be aware of. And we talked a bit about this, I was on Kelly's gig a couple of days ago. Yes. Make sure, now I don't have this, but some people who are concerned about their credit or fraud may have their credit file frozen, which means that if anybody asks anything, it's gonna say no. So if your credit, and they check with TransUnion, which I found out because like an hour after I got the card, at least three services that I signed up to all said, hey, you just had a hard pull on your credit. And I'm like, yeah, okay. Right, yeah. They didn't have to do it, and I don't know why they did it, but they did. So just be aware of that. In credit language, you don't wanna have too many hard pulls where they make a formal request, in this case, to TransUnion, because then it looks like you're desperate for credit and you may not get it. So just be aware of that, that you're probably gonna get one of these on your record. And also they didn't do this with me, but they may ask for additional information if they're not sure you are, who you say you are, like a scan of a driver's license or something like that. Though, apparently they trusted me. So that was great. So then, yeah. So then you're able to use the digital card. Here's the fun part. If you have an Apple cash card, which is a virtual debit card that you can also have in your wallet, you get daily cash. And it actually deposited like the next day, I made a purchase for like whatever, because I used Apple Pay. I got 2% back right into my Apple cash card. So that's pretty neat. That's pretty cool. Their deal is, so the cash back works as follows, 3% if you buy Apple stuff, 2% if you use Apple Pay and 1% for everything else, like if you use the physical card. Sure. That's actually a pretty good deal. I mean, it's not the stellar deal that you can get if you're maximizing for travel points, depending on how you're doing it, you can definitely do better. But Apple chose simple over best rewards. And well, 2% on Apple Pay purchases is pretty good. I mean, that's pretty aggressive. That is because actually I had one card, which they stopped the deal, but it was a Wells Fargo card and they actually offered something similar, but only for a limited time. And then if you used Apple Pay, you get a little extra bonus cash. So yeah, so I think I'll use it for that. So the thing is, you've gotten it. Now, you and I have both held Apple cards now. I actually got to hold one at WWDC. I don't want to say who's, but suffice to say I was able to hold an Apple card. I found it very, it's metal, it's titanium. It is hefty, but unlike the AMEX black card or the Visa black card, which are metal and could slice skin, I found the Apple card to be delicious to hold. It rounded edges and was that, are you finding the same thing with the production ones? Oh yeah, I used it in a couple of places. And one, people were like, wow, this thing's kind of heavy for a credit card. I feel it's metal. And they're like, oh, okay. And I'm like, hey, check this out. See the number on it? And they're like, no, I'm like, yeah, there isn't one. So from a security standpoint, that's kind of cool. Now if you want the number, and this card in addition to the virtual does have it, you can go into the wallet app and it will give you the 16 digit number begins with a five because it's a master card. Sure, don't know if anybody knew that, but the first digit of a credit card typically indicates the issue, the which group it belongs to. And the CCV and all that stuff there. So if you need that information, it is in the wallet app. So if you want to buy something and they want, and they don't integrate with Apple Pay or your phone, then you can get that information. I don't think in person, anyone should ever ask you for that, just so you know. They should, but they, oh, yeah. So the card was interesting. So came by a FedEx, popped it open in a FedEx envelope and then it was in a card board box and then it was in a container. So here's an interesting thing. This is, I've never activated a card like this. Most cards, when you get them, you got to dial up a phone number and then enter the number of the card and then they're like, okay, your card's activated. Otherwise in theory, you won't be able to use it. Here's how it works with the Apple card. The packaging that it's in actually has a tiny little, and if you look on my Instagram, you'll see I took a picture of it and I know you saw it and a lot of other people did, Dave. There's a tiny little RFID chip in the packaging. And so what you do is you run the wallet app, you say activate card and then you hold it near the packaging and then I don't know if it's Bluetooth or whatever, but it then sees. Well, you said it's RFID. Yeah, so it's RFID, but I don't know what, I don't know if it's Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or whatever. I, or NFC, but it doesn't really matter. I would guess it's NFC. Yeah, yeah, that's probably right. Yeah, so it doesn't really matter, but this is how you activate this card is you hold the phone near the packaging that has this little radio in it and then it's like, oh, okay, all right, you can now use your card. And I used it. So it has both, it has a chip in it, but it also has a MagStripe. So you can use it in places. Okay. I was wondering about that because I don't think I've seen a picture of the back of the card. So for people that still haven't gotten hip to the chip thing, it does have a MagStripe. Cool. A lot of merchants are discouraged from using that and apparently there's a liability issue if you still insist on using a MagStripe versus the chip or Apple Pay or something. That's right, yeah. Yeah, so that's a good news. As a merchant, you're more on the hook for fraud. Yeah. Right, right. So there's the good news. So I bought stuff with it. I got the cashback. Everything's great. I got the physical card. It works great. Here's the bad news. And here's, I don't think it entails a fish shake, Dave. Maybe a finger wag. There's no web interface to this card. I heard that you can't link to Quicken or Mint or any of those things. So for now. Right, right. So the thing is every other card that I have as I'm sure you do, Dave, you can go to a website whether it's Citi or AMEX or Capital One or whatever and you can access your card data. And as you pointed out, there are services like Mint and others that will go to the site on your behalf and scrape your data and warn you and keep track of your stuff. That is currently not an option with this card. The only way you can see your transaction data is through the wallet app on your device. That's a drag. I'm with you. That would actually keep me from using it. I mean, I'll get one and it's fine and it's good to have appropriately have open credit. So I'll have it and probably won't use it a whole lot because of that, because I track all my stuff. I still use Quicken, you know, and I'm using Quicken 2019. I'm really like, I've been a Quicken user for a very long time. They went through a dark period. I'm not gonna lie about that. I stayed with them because all my data was there and I only had to use it once a month, but now it's fricking awesome again. So Quicken 2019 for the Mac is great. Yeah. Now, based on, I'll say sources, that's all I'm gonna say. Okay. Goldman Sachs is working on this. Oh, great. They're aware it's an issue, but I don't know if I entirely blame them for not making this a priority for the launch. Well, it's not even launched yet. Maybe I will. Right? I mean, that's the other thing is it's, I mean, you've got a pre-release-ish, whatever you wanna call it. You've got an early access to this, right? You were blessed by someone somewhere. So then it may have been. Right. Random may not have been, but yeah. Yeah, I'm still, I mean, am I getting approved in the day? I'm just like, huh? Yeah, that's great. So yeah, something happened somewhere. I don't know if they pre-screened me and they're like, oh yeah, this guy is like a credit rock star. So yeah, let's send him an invite. Or they're like, oh, it's... A friendly listener, who knows? Well, they could have been, oh my gosh, this is John Brown. I mean, oh wow, bitter. I mean, there, you know, it would be one of those listeners. And we know you exist. That, you know, likes John a little bit better than me and that's okay. It's fine. It's fine. I'm still waiting for that, though. No, I just don't. So overall, a very pleasant experience. I just hope that the only thing lacking is the access to the transaction data. So if and when they get that, then I would say this is... And just the model that they have. So here's the other nice feature of the card, Dave. No fees. Right. No late fees, no yearly fee. Right. There's no fees. There's no fees. If you don't pay, like a lot of companies, and I've had this happen a couple of times and you may have two is that, you know, for whatever reason, I didn't make a payment on time. Oops, my bad. And they'll charge me like, you know, a $25 late fee or something like that. And sometimes, you know, if you're a good customer and you say, you know, can you make this go away? They're like, yeah, okay, this one time we will. But in this case, they don't, there's no late fees. You still pay interest. Of course. You still pay interest. I mean, they will charge you interest. One thing I use my online like access, like my AMX account or my city account or whatever, you know, for my various credit cards, one thing I use that for is to set up auto pay so that on the due date, if I've forgotten or am traveling or whatever, it's gonna make the minimum payment from my checking account on the due date so that I'm not, not only, I mean, it's one thing to not get a late fee, but it's also one thing to not have a late payment noted on your credit report. And I guarantee you that at some point, maybe not on the first one, but at some point, even if Goldman Sachs isn't charging you late payment fees, they are most definitely reporting those missed payments on your credit report. I mean, of course. My understanding is, so there's no way to do auto pay? Oh no, there is. No, absolutely. You can schedule payments from within the app as well. Yeah, no, no, but I want it to auto pay my minimum on the day due, even if I've done nothing. Like, that's to me is auto pay. From what I can see that they will allow that. Okay. Yeah, so if I go on, so number one you got to put in. So the thing is, I use discover for my bill pay. So, so you can, you can input a bank. Yeah, okay. And you know, you put in the routing number and the account number and stuff like that. And like in my case, so I punch it in and it's like, oh, that's discovered bank. And I'm like, yep. But then here's an option here, Dave, schedule payments. Now I haven't done it yet. Now that's the other thing. Their payment date is always the last day of the month. So it's predictable. That's kind of nice. So if I click on scheduled payments, it's going to say, okay. Yeah, and it looks like it has the ability. Yeah, basically pay my bill on this date. Great, okay. So it looks like you can schedule recurring payments for the balance. Great. That's good. Okay, good. Cool. Thank you. Here. Oh, look at this lock card. Requestable replacement card, express transit. Yeah, so almost everything is managed within the wallet app, which is kind of weird. Again, I'd like a web interface. Yeah, but this is Apple's thing. It's Apple's thing. Yeah. So it definitely has some advantages and also getting the daily cash back is cool. Yeah. It's $0.38 on my Apple cash card. So we're good. Cool, cool. That's great. Thank you for going through all that for all of us that have to live vicariously. So yeah, it's good. Speaking of living vicariously, I wanted to talk about this visit that I had today at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. So as I mentioned, I'm here in Orlando for podcast movement. NASA is speaking on Thursday at podcast movement because NASA has a series of podcasts that they do. You might not know that. So now you know. And that's part of the reason that this visit happened today. So NASA worked with the organizers of podcast movement. They brought, I think about 20 of us out. There was an application process for anyone who was interested. It meant flying out a day early. And you were responsible obviously for your own travel and everything. But they took applications from more than 20 podcasters and selected 20 of us. They had us tell them who they were but then also explain our interest level and all of that. And evidently, I passed the test which was fricking awesome, very, very stoked. Wow, you didn't get caught. I didn't, I know. Well, then when we got there, I mean, they told us all the things that we couldn't bring. And most of it was pretty obvious. Some of it, one thing was sort of interesting. We had to wear long pants and shoes or sneakers that covered your entire foot. And if your pants didn't go all the way down to your shoes, you had to wear socks that went up. I think that's because we were climbing or not climbing, but walking around in various spots where there might have been like fire ants or like other little critters and things like that. But today was one of the toxic gases. Floridians were complaining about the humidity today. So it was, I mean, it was bad. Like my glasses would fog up, walking out of buildings and things like that. So anyway, it was all worth it. We got to see one of the three remaining Saturn V rockets. That's where I mentioned my phone went through its little snippet earlier today that I fixed. And then we got to see some really cool things. We got to see Launchpad 39B, which is NASA's Launchpad that NASA uses for NASA's stuff. Launchpad A is where the SpaceX Falcon takes off from. So this was pretty cool, right? I had been there, the last time I was there it was probably, you know, almost 40 years ago, maybe 35 years ago. And when I was there, I remember seeing the space shuttle being moved on what they call a crawler to one of the Launchpads. What's really cool is, you know, NASA, and as with many things, and the internet is also a great example of this, you know, NASA was essentially is tasked with creating things and developing technology that would be nearly impossible to expect, you know, private industry to create. But then once created, sort of handed off and say, hey, private industry, take over. And that has happened, right? And it was really cool to see, you know, the Artemis project, which is the new trips to the moon, one of which should go in 2020. I think there's no humans on the 2020 launch. There's humans on the 2022 launch and then going to the moon on the 2024 launch. But so that's happening, right, at NASA. And then simultaneous with that is this commercial enterprise, right? SpaceX is there and Blue Origin and all that stuff. So it's like, it's happening so much so that they call Kennedy Space Center, a, this blows me away, John, a multi-user spaceport. And that's what it is. So it's really, like that sort of blew me away. I mean, I knew of all this stuff. I actually didn't know as much about Artemis as I should have, but I'm certainly aware of it and certainly aware of SpaceX doing their thing. But, you know, that concept of multi-user spaceport, like that's actually what's happening. And the Artemis thing, they're using so much of it to test what they can do for Mars missions because, you know, it takes three days to get to the moon. It takes six months to get to Mars. So they're doing all this stuff to see about like plants growing so that they don't have to bring all their food with them when they go to Mars. Like what can they do? And all this deep space sort of research they're using the moon as this test bed so that they kind of, you know, work some of the kinks out when it's a, you know, one-week turnaround essentially as opposed to a one-year turnaround to get to Mars. Very, very cool. I got to see one of these crawlers that brings things from the Vehicle Assembly Building where they sort of stack the rockets together and then it moves at one mile an hour, John, these crawlers do, and they crawl from the- Well, they're kind of big though. I don't think- They're six million pounds. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you want something that big moving too quickly. No, no, and we talked, I got to talk to two of the drivers. There are eight people that are, I don't want to say they're certified because I don't think anybody's certified to drive one of these, but there's eight engineers that are the ones who drive the crawler. And what's really cool about them, John, is, you know, these guys, and it's all men right now, although there is a woman sort of being trained to drive the crawler. But all of these people went to school and became engineers. And then the, and they said it's the best engineering job in the world because not only do you get to design the stuff, you also get to be part of building it. And not only do you get to design it and be part of building it, you are the one that gets to use it. So like where else do you get to be an engineer that you're actually the one using the thing that you designed and helped build? Like it's, they said it's great. One guy was there, I think, he'd been there 38 years and another guy was there 32 years. So these are jobs that people tend to keep. And yeah, they said that crawler moves at one mile an hour. It burns gas at the rate of 32 feet per gallon. So yep, there are 400. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Not a mileage champ. No, no, but they say it's interesting. They say there's about 25 people working on it as it's driving and it's a constant conversation on the headsets. It takes about seven hours to get the thing from the VAB, the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is sort of the thing that you think of when you see Kennedy Space Center, like that building with the flag on it and stuff. And then it takes about seven hours to get it to the launch pad. And they wouldn't want it to go any faster to your point. Like the drivers are like, oh, no, no, no, no. It requires a lot of conversation. They work in two hour shifts and they're constantly talking, you know, about, okay, how there's people on the outside measuring how far they are from either edge so that they can stay straight. And it's this constant, you know, thing where they're just tweaking and nudging and tweaking and nudging. So. What is it using for fuel? I mean, do they just pull up to the gas station? And so, oh, okay. Well, it's diesel and they have generators that are doing some electric, but it's, yeah, it's diesel. Yeah, 32 feet per gallon. Yeah. I'm just thinking they pull up to the gas station. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, just give us all you got. No, and in fact, it's built, it holds, I think there's, oh, I wanted to say five tons of fuel on it. I forget. No, they, I didn't take a note, that's wrong. Maybe it's, I forget. Anyway, they've got enough fuel, they've got two tanks on there and they've got enough fuel to get out and back. So there is no midway refueling of the crawler. And there's also no stopping. I mean, sometimes they have to stop very, very temporarily and then can continue. But if they start the day and they start moving the crawler, they will not stop. The crawler will either make it and the stack will be transferred to the launch pad or it goes all the way back to the vehicle assembly building. It is not left overnight on the thing. If something happens to the crawler or whatever, because they've got this huge, very, very expensive rocket out there teetered up on this thing and not protected from lightning where it is protected in the assembly building and also protected on the launch pad because they have these arrays of lightning distribution. But yeah, so they have to, which is why the engineers are the ones that drive because if there's a problem, everybody that helps build the thing from soup to nuts is there to figure out the solution and move it. And these are the same crawlers that they built for Apollo back in, you know, 65 or something. So like these things were well designed, over engineered perhaps. So yeah. It's pretty cool. Lightning. Yeah, I remember, man. You know, some of the best lightning storms I saw when I vacationed in Orlando. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I saw one today, man. Like driving back from there, it's about an hour from where I am here. I'm just on the other side of the airport at this, whatever, the Rosen Schingle Creek Resort wherever podcast movement is here. And it, yeah, it took, it was pretty cool. I got to stand underneath one of these crawlers. I mean, like we got access to things that most people don't get to do is really, really special. Very, very cool. What, what, and it's cool. I mean, it's cool what I got to do, but it's also really cool what NASA's doing. And that's why they did this. They, they wanted, they want to build some awareness for what's happening there because it's the public that funds this. And you know, they're well aware of that. So they want to make sure people know what they're doing and hopefully then want to support it. But step one is they don't want to know what they're doing. So they said, John, they took out 300 miles of copper cable and replaced it with fiber throughout Kennedy Space Center in the past, whatever, the past renovations, wherever that, you know, whenever that happened, which is crazy. There's also 6,000 gators there just in case you want to wander around, not only with security, maybe get you, but the gators might get you first. Yeah, there you go. Craziness, huh, Mr. Braun? All right. Yeah. We have a couple of questions. Yeah, they want to do, they want to do this stuff again. So, yeah. We have a couple more questions I want to talk about our next sponsor first, which is Barebones, BBEdit at barebones.com. John, I have BBEdit running on my MacBook Air right now because it's where we process the show notes. It's where I do comparisons of text. It's where I edit files for, you know, our PHP files for Mac Observer. It's where I do everything. I count words, I convert and make sure that before I paste text in somewhere, that it is plain text because BBEdit will only give you plain text, even though when you're in like some PHP file or an HTML file on the screen, it formats the text so you can see it and it makes functions sort of highlighted so they're easy to see, but that's only on the screen. The files are always, always text. You got to check this out. If you're not a BBEdit user, go become one. Go to barebones.com, download BBEdit. You can download it for free. You get a 30 day free trial of all the features. And then when that trial ends, you have the free version of BBEdit, which has lots of features, not all of the features, but lots. And frankly, for what we do, they might be enough for you. So go check it out. Barebones.com, our thanks to Barebones and the BBEdit team for sponsoring this episode. All right. Let's go to James here, John. We'll get a little theoretical. I figure that's appropriate after we... That? After we talked about NASA. That was my thought when I saw this question is that we get to... There's no right answer. No, there's no wrong answer. There's a strategy. Yeah. So James says I have a few questions for you regarding network speed. Number one, how much internet speed does the average person really need these days? Number two, should internet speed be looked at as household total for what you need for everyone combined versus trying to get the maximum speed per device? Like, do I really need one gigabit per second internet just for my MacBook? Or should it be looked at as to how much devices are filling up the pipe of saying 100 megabit, 300 megabit or higher, like five devices streaming up to 30 megabits per second? He says, I think Netflix 4K tops out at 25. That's correct. I believe. Question three, should your network speed match your internet speed for all your devices? So this is your internal network speed versus your external internet, LAN versus WAN. And number four, do you think I made the right decision based on my needs? And he chose, I'm looking here, he said he was on a 300 megabit per second plan and downgraded to 150 megabits per second with unlimited data. He says he has two kids, six and eight years old that watch Netflix and YouTube videos and play a little Minecraft on their iPads. He streams 4K Netflix on one TV in the house and 1080p on the other. And they stream Spotify on their phones and do the random downloads and those sorts of things. He says, I'm gonna leave it at that. So I think for what? I got a quick answer, Dave. Yeah. If everything's working, you're good. You know what? The speed that you have is the right speed for you, except I will, in the back of my mind, I was trying to think of this as like a system level analysis here. The only thing is, so one, you have your real-time services, whether they be streaming, whether it be gaming or Netflix or, you know, spot. So video takes some pipe. I think gaming doesn't really take a lot of pipe and I think audio takes very little pipe. Okay. Concur with me. I researched this at one point. I don't think- You were right in terms of bandwidth, but gaming, I'll put a big asterisk on because if your pipe is too small, even though the game itself- Or too slow. Well, no, I mean- Tell me because you- Pipes are speed, right? So slow, small, same thing, right? So if your pipe speed is too low and everything is soaking up the data, you know, the amount of data that you have, the speed that you have, then all your data is left in a queue, right? So if you're downloading a bunch of stuff and you're waiting for data from somewhere up, like say your email or something, it's gonna get in line behind all the data that's coming in. Similarly, anything that's going out, if you're using all of that to upload to your online backup or, you know, iCloud photos or whatever, things are gonna get in line. Games do not like to be in line and especially if you're playing those twitchy games where your first person shooters and all that stuff, you want the moment you do something, you want everybody that you're playing that game with online to know it and when they do something, you wanna know it. So you need to have enough headroom in your pipe, right? In order for the games, my new little bits of data to get in and out real, real fast. And there's some routers that are actually built to prioritize games and actually lots of them are. You can sort of tweak that stuff. So that's the asterisk that I would put on games for you, John. Yeah. Okay. The only thing I could think outside, so if all your services are responsive enough, whether it be audio or video or gaming, then you got the right speed. The only thing I could think is that if you're doing a lot of moving about a data, like huge downloads and stuff like that, it may be worth you getting a bigger pipe. Now the thing is, I mean, every now and then, like, you know, for example, I think the biggest thing that I download on a regular basis is Xcode. Yeah. Whenever they update it. Yeah. And that usually gets on the order of gigabytes and it takes a while sometimes. It's not instant because it's a big file. Right. What do I have? I think I have 200. I think I have 200 down, 35 up. And that works for as a single person here, but with a lot of ways. I would be, I had 200 down and 10 up, which is what Comcast offers, right? And the 200 down was totally fine. Even for me being a geek, right? Like certainly there were times like you said, when you're doing some big download like Xcode or you know, an operating system download or whatever, where it, you know, I mean, you see that it's using the maximum of your speed. That's great. But it was never too slow. Where for me, it was too slow was that 10 megabit upstream finishing a podcast. And you know, I'm recording at least three podcast episodes a week. We do this one. I do gig gap. I do small business show. And I'm the one doing the recording. And then, you know, sending it off to Alphonic to do our post production. And that 10 megabit upstream was killing me. And so I called Comcast and I'm like, is there anything you can do to increase my upstream? They're like, yeah, we can get you to 40. If you, or maybe 35 is what they advertise. It comes in at like 42 or something. But they're like, yeah, we can get you to whatever, 35. If you go to our gigabit plan, it's like, okay, sure. So that's why I have the gigabit plan. I honestly see very, there are very few moments where I notice the difference other than doing a speed test. And it's like, oh yeah, look, gigabit, ooh. You know, I think 200 is a good number for most people. Again, there's no way for us here to say that without knowing a whole lot more about your own scenario. Except like you said, John, if it works, don't worry about it. You're good to go. But you bring up an interesting point is that so for most, I think most DSL and cable are what I'm gonna call asymmetrical, at least in the nature of the down versus up is that they're not the same number. Almost never the same number. Whereas fiber, I think typically will advertise that you get the same up and down. That's symmetrical for fiber asymmetrical, like you said, for cable and, yeah. And I will tell you. But you bring up a good point in that the upstream is probably more important for most people, as you pointed out. I mean, you're uploading content. I mean, you know. Well, but we all are. That's the thing, John, is it's like, yes, I'm doing it for a very specific thing with the podcast, but as soon as I did that, we all noticed that things got easier to use and it had nothing to do with going from 200 to 1,000 on the down. It had everything to do with going from 10 to 35 or 40 on the up because we're all, you know, our phones, we take pictures with them. What happens? They blast up to iCloud. We have online backups. What happens? Well, they got to back up. That's all using the upstream. I really think what you have 200 down and 40 up would be what I would call a minimum power user, power home connection where you've got, you know, I mean, you really, you should have 200, 200, you know, but most of us can't get that. So a realistic number is what you've got. 200 down, 40 up. Unfortunately, most people... I think it's only 35. Well, 35, whatever. Yeah, but that range, most people can't get that. Most people are on Comcast, right? That's the biggest provider in the U.S. And in order to get more than 10 up, you've got to go to the gigabit plan. So that's the only reason I would suggest considering gigabit if you're with Comcast is to get that, you know, 30 megabit plus upstream Now, to jump to his second question, does your internal network speed need to match your external network? Now, of course, if we're all using ethernet, we're probably on gigabit ethernet. So even at gigabit speeds, your internal network is gonna be as fast as, you know, or faster than your external. And that in a perfect world, that's what you want. You don't want your internal network being your bottleneck. However, for most of us, our internal network is some kind of a bottleneck because we all use Wi-Fi. And Wi-Fi doesn't go gigabit. I know it says it does, it doesn't. For most of us, especially using iPhones and MacBooks, we're using what are called two-by-two Wi-Fi devices. And you're gonna get, even on 802.11ac, you're probably real world looking at somewhere 400 megabits per second. I mean, I've seen 500 real world. 400 is a better, like, maximum. And really, unless you're sitting right on top of the router, you're more in that 200, maybe even less, like somewhere between 175 and 300 megabits range. So if you've got gigabit, your Wi-Fi devices definitely will not get the full speed of that gigabit download. So just bear that in mind. If all your devices are on Wi-Fi, you probably don't care whether your speeds are gigabit or not. Even on Ethernet, I mean, for what most of us do, you probably don't care, so. I mean, the other thing to consider, and I think you've pointed this out, but some of the newer Wi-Fi, single Wi-Fi routers are kind of, can be smart about allocating bandwidth to devices. And I think to bring it to the next level, a mesh system will, I think is even better because then it distributes the load among different access points. So you don't have a single choke point, if you will. That's right. Or limiting factor. Yeah, that's right. And when you talk about his scenario here where you've got multiple people streaming simultaneously, if they're doing that on Wi-Fi, even if you don't have coverage issues, mesh can still be a big help because of exactly what you said, John, where it can distribute the load to different access points and that can really help. Because generally speaking, if we're using Apple Gear, your Wi-Fi devices are only speaking one at a time. We do not have multi-user MIMO on Apple Gear yet. I don't know if we ever will, but the mesh gives you that without having to have it built into your devices. So yeah. Alan in the chat room, Alan567 in the chat room asks, does Eero have any tools to tell you that you are saturating your connections? They do not, but Eero is one of the few mesh vendors that has protection against what we call buffer bloat. They call it SQM, queuing management. I don't know why I can't remember what the S stands for there, but... Sequence. No, it's not. But that is, Eero's SQM will do exactly that. It will make sure that you're not saturating your connection and causing that problem that would cause games to have issues. Other things will have issues too, but that whole thing with buffer bloat, maybe it's smart. I think you're right, Steven23 in the chat room. I think it's smart queuing management. Oh, smart queuing management. Yeah, I think that's right, yeah. So yeah, yeah, it's good. Well, you know, that, you know, something in the back of my head, I'll just spit it out. So how do you tell how much pipe all of your things are using? And I'm glad you mentioned Eero today because I was doing this the other day. I think when I was looking at my 4K streaming connection, how do you know how much bandwidth all your devices are taking? That's not an easy task unless you have something. So fortunately, the Eero software will show you the upload and download of your various devices. I'm not sure. I think you mentioned a tool. So if you don't have an Eero, but I think certain routers may be able to report this information to help you understand what your landscape looks like. Yeah, Eero's certainly not the only one, but they are one of them. That's right, yep. But I thought there was a general purpose tool. I think it's kind of geeky that you mentioned at one point that'll show you the bandwidth that all the devices connected to the network are using, whether they be wired or wireless. And Eero does a great job of this. And, you know, I've used it at times. I'm like, wait, how much bandwidth is this connection taking? And like for example, my Netflix, I'm like, is it really taking the bandwidth it says? And it's like, oh yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My Synology router, the RT2600AC will do that too. So it really has to happen at the router level unless you have some kind of box that's standing in the way of that to do it. But generally it's gotta be the router. I mean, there is, if you have a router that supports SNMP, which there are fewer and fewer of, you could use multi router traffic graph or MRTG to do it. But that's so far off the map these days that, I mean, I'm sure there's some of you using it, but I would definitely not recommend even trying to pull on that thread, just get a router that will do it internal to the router. There's many of them. I think most links this routers will, certainly the NETGear routers will do that. The Synology, as I mentioned, Eero. I think the new Deco firmware does that from TP-Link. Like it's a pretty common thing these days because just like you said, John, it's finding that information otherwise is near impossible. So ASUS will do that as Brian Monroe in the chat room points out. Yeah, thanks, it's good. All right, I'm trying to think if there is one quick, well, you know what, we have a couple of tips that might make sense to go through. This is what I get for prepping the show moments before and not really reading through everything. So we're going to do Todd's tip and I don't know how long this one's going to take. But Todd says, I picked up the Eero Pro 3-pack on Amazon Prime Day for $2.99, that's a win. With the Eero, I think it's going to be a win. With the Eero, I now see when devices are added to my network. My son's good friend who lives behind us had his mother's iPad at our house and joined our Wi-Fi. No problem. The next morning I saw his mother's iMac at his house also join our Wi-Fi. So her iPad passed our Eero name and credentials to her iMac via iCloud because that's how iCloud Keychain works. And the Eero in my house next to a rear window is strong enough to reach across our yard and into their house. So her iMac picked it up. Being a geek, I let her know and provided instructions to sort her Wi-Fi list in System Preferences Network Wi-Fi to the top so that she's getting hers and not ours. He says, I just thought the series of events was interesting how the capabilities of iCloud sharing its passwords with iCloud Keychain across devices and the power of Eero came together. It's nice that neither she nor I got caught. So thanks for sharing that, Todd. Yeah, that's a real, I mean, it's a first world problem, right? But it is a thing that will happen for sure. It's good, yeah? I mean, the cool part is with Eero, you know, I was tempted to do this one time when you came to visit. And actually, I hope you got some invites for some events as of late that you're gonna come. Yeah, I think we'll go together. We'll have some pep-com events down in September, yeah, yeah. Well, Synology also has their deal. Right. Look for that one. Okay, I will look. But I was thinking, so the nice thing about Eero is it gives you the ability to selectively block things. That's true. He kind of just blocked her iPad. And I was thinking at one time when you came, I'm thinking at one point, I was gonna do that to you and you'd figure out how long it would take you to realize that it was, you know, messing with you. Oh, it wouldn't take that long. And then I would have to go up and firmware, you know, reset your network, which would cause all kinds of headaches for you. And then you'd have to ask me for your password or you'd need to firmware, reset your network. This would not be, it would be interesting to tell the story. It wouldn't end, yeah. It wouldn't end well for either one of us, no. But Eero and I think a lot of other systems give you the ability to selectively block specific clients, which, hey, depending on what world you live in, that you may need that. You may need, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. All right, John. I think we're gonna find the band. I think the band is on vacation here in Orlando. So, oh no, that's the wrong, the band's playing the wrong song. I hit the wrong button. The band's playing the wrong song. So, we will try this again, band. Are we ready to just vamp a little bit? Band loop two, hello? There it is. There they are. They're doing what they need to do. There we go. It's great. Yeah, much better. Yeah, how could you leave them outside, man? Oh, and this heat and humidity? It's gross out there. Yeah, no wonder they were playing the wrong song. You can't really blame them. It's kind of how it goes. Yeah. Yeah, have you seen the love bugs? No. Okay. No, I don't know what that is. No, when I vacation there, there's a certain time of year when you got these bugs that are very affectionate towards one another, they swarm like certain areas in your windshield and your car will be like... Thankfully, no, I didn't run into that. Of course, when I was driving back tonight, it was pouring rain, so I think like torrential downpour. Thankfully, the roads in Florida are mostly just straight and flat. So, you know, it wasn't all that difficult getting back across the state from the coast. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you for the email. Yeah, we told you the email. Unless you're a premium listener, and then it's premium at MackieCab.com, and if you wanna join, of course, MackieCab.com slash premium is where you will find that. I wanna thank, well, I wanna thank all of you for listening. I wanna thank everybody in the chat room at MackieCab.com slash stream for doing this. Thanks for dealing with my crazy schedule, Mr. Braun, and I'm glad this seems to have worked. Thanks to Cashfly at cashfly.com for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you. Thanks to all of our sponsors. As we mentioned in the show, expressvpn.com slash mgglino.com slash mgg barebonessoftware at barebones.com. Smile at smilesoftware.com slash podcast. Otherworld computing, maxsales.com. Eero is also a sponsor, not of this episode, but they're an ongoing sponsor. Eero.com slash mgg. Wanna help your credit report? Go to Experian.com slash mgg. So much good stuff. And Dave? Yes, John? I gotta say, I am so glad, especially, with the fact that you were at a government facility. The dogs sniffed my backpack, John. Like, they had us leave our backpacks on the bus and get off the bus. And they walked up, police officer walked up. So these were like exploding, explosive stuffed dogs, I can't remember. Also looking for other contraband. Contraband, contraband. Wow. Hey, it's a government facility. Absolutely. They had rules. They told us what not to bring. It was easy enough not to bring it. You just, you know, there you go. Well, the fact that you're still talking to us, Dave, at this moment in time, means that you didn't get caught. Made out of backpack.