 It's time for Mackie Gab and listener Joe brings us our quick tip of the week with a follow-up from last week in episode 1009 where we were talking about a cool stuff found and some other methods of pasting text without formatting Joe says you can also accomplish this natively in Mac OS by using command shift V Which gives you paste without formatting from the edit menu other listeners suggested this as well You're right, Joe. This is a great way to do it and it works in my experience about 99% of the time And that's probably why those other tools and utilities exist to do it when it doesn't more quick tips like this plus Your questions answered today on Mackie Gab 1010 for Monday, November 20th, 2023 Greetings folks and welcome to Mackie Gab the show where you send in quick tips like that You send in cool stuff down like we mentioned you even send in your questions Which we do our level best to answer and we stitch it all together into an agenda Loosely organized maybe by topic or theme Such that it makes it easy for each and every one of us to learn at least five new things Every single time we get together sometimes we even play that sound we've learned something especially Notable for us Sponsors for this episode include a LinkedIn comm slash mg g where you can go and post your first job for free We'll talk more about that in a little bit for now here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton And here in South Haven, Mississippi showing some love down there Pilot Pete good to be here Dave. Thanks for having me back. I mean, it's thanks for coming back It's what we do. It's like we're here together. Yeah. Yes. Yeah Yeah It's it and it is the two of us today and I believe it'll be the two of us the next time. However, it is Dave But here's the thing, you know, I Have a day job or a night job in some cases Yeah And I'm sick of carrying the show on my back week after week after week week in and week out You know, I have to answer two or three questions Will you prepare and produce and answer questions and get the advertising and record the advertising and put the show together and put it out I'm sick of carrying it on my back. The burden is tough for you, Pete. We all feel for you. Do you have a solution for me, Dave? You know, it's interesting. I I didn't have a solution for you I didn't know what it was gonna be and then we were at Mac stock and the way Mac stock works is logistics are Atypical for a conference. I was gonna be kind about it. Yeah, it's it's it's weird Right, because you don't stay at the place where the conference happens So you have to drive to and from you know, there aren't good hotels right there, right? And so this year because of other logistics, we were about 15 maybe 20 minutes drive from the hotel where we stayed to the the center and To the venue and so I had rented a car and I said well you know, we can carpool a little bit and and You and I carpooled each day and there was one other person that carpooled with us and it was Adam Christensen Adam from the Mac cast is probably where most of you know him and then He's also been working together with us here for well over a decade. He Was on staff at Mac Observer doing all kinds of Back and back and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he he did all the Mac Observer web development He did the Mac e-cab site as we split that out from Mac Observer. He was like he was he really led that project I was gonna say he helped me with it in that he did it Yeah, yeah, so and and of course at Backbeat Media. We've repped Mac Cast since the beginning help me with this show Dave Yeah Exactly it was exactly that yeah, right and I noticed in the car as We were going back and forth that the three of us had a really good rapport and We tested it out a few times on the show and this was all sort of hidden in the back of my head And I wasn't even ready to think about Well, you know, do we bring Adam in John had just retired from podcasting and left the show And I really didn't want to make any other changes anyway But it just sort of stuck in my head like oh This is a good option and we did in fact have Adam on a couple of times and it worked out great And then When Adam told me that he was you know He came to me because we rep the ads for his show and was like I really think I got a like Wrap this up just life-wise and all that he's like that. I really miss podcasting it I'm like all right. I need to share an idea with you And and so for those of you who listened to Mac cast and have listened to his most recent episode That came up right before this one You will know that Adam is in fact Retiring Mac cast but he is not retiring from podcasting. He's coming over here and joining the Mac e-cab family with us So I'm really really there's a real nice organic friendship. That's here and Adam's a new friend and when you mentioned it to me. Oh And now we get to deal with Pete's hotel Wi-Fi in South Haven, Mississippi because Pete has frozen up So I don't know what we're gonna hear from Pete here talking ever so briefly in case there he is He's back and back who left you or me. Oh, it was you Okay, I think I you know it like I I assume it was you the listeners will tell us Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll find out in post whether I kept talking or you kept talking. That's fair. That's fair Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard myself the whole time. I bet you did. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah somebody somebody in the chat, but but the audio stream which is the bulk of what this show is will be What what from my perspective so say whatever you said, please say it again? I was just saying there there seemed to develop and I consider Adam a new friend relatively new friend Sure, there's an organic Friendship that's grown out of this. This is great. I think the chemistry is great And and I look forward to that the show being same even better Say I think three of us will be more than one plus one plus one. I think it'll be yes I agree with that big time. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, so Starting in December Adam will be a regular here I'm there will be some episodes that he has to miss just like there are some episodes that Pete has to miss and Adam and I were talking to miss anything. Well, Adam was like, you know Like between me and Pete we do each produce podcast at least currently It's like we know how to do this. He's like, I know how the Mackie cab back-end works, too because I wrote it and He's like this could actually give you the opportunity to take a vacation. I was like the concept Huh an episode of Mackie cab without me. I I don't I don't dislike this idea It could be a first Yeah, like I'm not I'm not ready to like do that yet, but I don't dislike the idea There is a there's a little bit of a charm here. Yeah Yeah, yeah, this is yeah I'm excited that that's the best I can say is I'm excited and so let me say also To all you who are Maccast listeners coming over here for the first time Come join the party. Send us your questions. Send us your tips. Watch us live join us on discord Mackie cab comm slash discord if you have a Question or a comment you could get us a feedback at Mackie cab calm feedback at Mackie cab calm Pete I believe that's what you said. No, no, I said feedback at Mackie cab calm That is where things like this were sent in from listener mark Which actually didn't come into feedback at Mackie calm it came in in our discord But this is how this is what we do on the show We don't normally talk about you know, we don't spend the first eight minutes talking about changes of but but this is a big one So Mark says laugh at me if you want and we're never gonna laugh at you for discovering things I I almost skipped over this part of it. It's like no, there's never anything he says But I just discovered something that may have been common knowledge, but it's opened up the world of Sonoma desktop widgets to me I didn't think desktop widgets would be all that helpful because I usually have two completely full 34-inch screens with windows covering everything. How would I ever conveniently? See any desktop widgets? Well, I just happened to click on a tiny sliver of open desktop space and Lo and behold all of my windows moved off-screen to display the blank desktop Another click and they're all back. This makes my full 68 inches of desktop widgets one click away another click All my windows are back He says sorry to say if any of you are saying I've been doing that for years You haven't what none of us have been doing it for years. It is new to Mac OS Sonoma I'm sure it was put in for exactly this reason and You can change it if it drives you crazy and this is it It's sort of a quick tip in reverse because when Sonoma first came out we talked about how to disable this Mark M makes us realize why we might not want to disable it and instead just adopt a new habit because he's totally right Having those desktop widgets a click away Actually makes them valuable, but if you want to control this You can go into system settings go into desktop and dock and you will see an option there called click wallpaper to reveal desktop and You can either have it set to always or only when you're in stage manager mode. So there you go Yeah, rest assured mark. We are not laughing at you. We are laughing with you. Oh, yeah, we're celebrating with you I I it took me a little bit Pete to Like think about using desktop widgets the right way, but now that I have man, like I'm loving it Especially especially on my like big monitor in the office. I'm not using it as much on my laptop, which is interesting to me So, I don't know. Yeah, so we're recording the Friday before the Monday when this show comes out I will get home tomorrow and I'm actually gonna pull the trigger this weekend. I think I'm Sonoma Okay, trying this out. Yeah, great. Yeah, and I'm around if you need help with like Jeepster brings us our next quick tip saying an Apple notes Clicking the date at the top of a note will switch between displaying the created date and the edited date I came across this tip on Mac power users podcast and wanted to share it It's truly remarkable how many hidden features are tucked away in Apple's various operating systems Right Yep, which is awesome. Here's the Right, right. Let me let me let me help you with that Pete. Thank you. You got it the I kind of talked to roga miba about why all of my sounds have like a little chirp at the end of them I got to figure this out I got to see if it's happening just because it's when I'm playing them in Farago But I got to see if it's happening on all of my machines or just this one mine don't seem to so no mine Didn't used to but anyway for you Dave I saw this tip and I did not know about it I had the same reaction that you did Pete when I first learned of it and then I thought wait a minute Does this also work on iPhone and the answer is yes But you won't see it immediately when you pull up a note on iPhone at the top of the sort of content window Is the title of the note and then the contents of the note But if you pull down you will see the date and it will be toggling between created and edited so you can You can you can you can do the same thing just by you have to pull down to to expose the date and then Tap it. So yeah Okay, it's good stuff. Nice. Yep. I've got a quick tip from Neil. Okay You know when I read this I went well, it's brilliant and why didn't why didn't someone think of this a long time ago? And maybe somebody did but for those of you that are our terminal Geeks Using the pseudo command what happens when you use the pseudo command it asked me for my past Every time I got to type it. Do you have a really long difficult pain? I mean, we obviously at some point we it mine's kind of like muscle memory almost more than the password I don't Pete. I have a very short easy to type password partially because of this. Well, what is it Dave? Uh-huh. That's right. Maybe it is. Uh-huh. That would actually be a good password, right? That'd be easy to type with one hand to care two fingers UH UH. I don't know that it's not That's not actually my password. My password isn't much better than that. Okay, but like uh-huh could be a password Right, if you wanted something in here, this is difficult and too hard to explain what what I'm about to tell you Okay, that you can do it's too difficult to explain here on the show But we're gonna put the link in the show notes and I will read the link in case you want to pause and do it that way But here's the thing you can use touch ID For your password in a terminal well, yeah, you can and there's a tutorial it I Download blog.com you don't have to read the link it. They'll never they'll never nobody's gonna type Mackie gab comm Slash show notes and they come out. No, so with the I don't think that gets anybody anywhere. I think that's a far Oh, that's for just go to Mackie gab comm. It's episode 10 10 Or you can go to mgg.fm Slash 10 10 and that will get you right to the episode 10 10 show notes or If you go to Mackie gab comm you will be given the opportunity to sign up for our mailing list I know everybody offers this we do too, but Ours I like to think is super valuable and we hear that from you because what we do with our list is Send you the show notes with all of the clickable links from all of the things we talk about Automatically every time an episode comes out which is generally once a week So you will automatically get all of these you don't have to think about it We had uh, I wish I could remember the person's name We had a somebody right in who is a premium listener meaning they they you know to support us directly with you know with with cash and Saying I don't listen to the show anymore often, but I still support you with my premium subscription I like the email that I get with all the links. That's enough for me Sure Yeah, fascinating it's like I I didn't know how I felt about it at first It was like I'm super like what a what a testament to you know, the value of the email. It's like what does that say about the show? Yeah, I get it. Yeah, and the important thing is we hardly never sell your email address to Google hardly if ever that's right Hardly never hardly never that's right hardly never. Yep. No Yep, yeah, you know something that I thought hardly would never happen is that But it it is happening Apple announced it on Thursday of last week when this comes out yesterday for those of us recording today Apple is gonna bring Google's The RCS messaging standard to iPhone in 2024. That's awesome It really is awesome. So For those of you who don't know what RCS is let me explain it a little bit differently You know how when you message using the messages app on your phone you message an apple person Not only do you get blue bubbles, but you get the ability to like Send pictures and video at full resolution and have meaningful group chats and you can like like messages and And and do all of the send red receipts exactly all of those things that feel like part of a modern messaging protocol And then you text with your green bubble android using friends and you don't get any of those features And pictures and video come through like they were taken on the finest of all potatoes They did just awful and into friends really let friends using android anyway, Dave I'm just saying some of us some of us let our friends use that that's right. Yeah Uh, and so instead of having pictures and sharing pictures that looked like they were taken on the finest of all potatoes RCS is what android phones use to send messages to each other So that they have all of these rich messaging protocol features People have been asking apple for years. Will you please add rcs? It's a standard that way You don't have to resort to sms, which is also a standard but much older And even as as recently as last year tim kook said no, we'll never add it Well, you know, like like many things with apple including my favorite, you know, we'll never run on intel chips until they did For a long time and then of course stopped running on intel chips and now are running on on apple silicon Yeah, and then they didn't again right, but uh, you know apple apple is thank goodness is able to change their mind Which is Which is a good thing. Yeah, right. It's good that they changed their mind Like this is something we love about apple and so they have changed their mind on this now It's important to note. There is one fundamental difference In today's rcs protocol versus today's i-message protocol Pick me Pete, do you know what that difference is? Can I send you a secret message? Dave? You can if you i-message it to me But it's not secret if you send it via rcs because rcs as the standard does not have end to end encryption in it Google has added an extension to it That is not part of the standard that supports end to end encryption apple has said they are not going to adopt that Instead they are going to work with the rcs with the gsm group Which is the the the one that that sort of administers these standards to get end to end encryption as part of the standard not as some add-on and and so Like I think this is a good thing all the way around because you know apple obviously Not just walks the talk but also walks the walk with in with encryption and security And so I think this will be good for all all phones. Like this would be great. Yeah. No, I'm excited to see that coming to it Bubbles get better versus you can see when the other person is you know in theory when they're typing When they have their keyboard open you can see it. I guess right you get yeah You get that so so this instead of just getting pictures back and forth From you know your android friends that were taken on the finest of all potatoes They now will be taken on the finest of all green bubble of potatoes Green potatoes green potatoes. Mm. Mm. All right So no, this is a good thing but a lot of people covering this missed the fact that these that that Apple is not going to be supporting end-to-end encryption on day one with uh rcs That may change though if rcs is able to add end-to-end encryption before apple's day one with it, right? Like yeah, you know Yeah, you don't have a date yet. It's encrypted But you know 99.8 of the time I kind of don't care I I know what I get but I get the reason for it and it should be your communications should be private They're correct communications and there's a reasonable expectation of privacy. Correct. So that's it That's really what it is. Is just that that you know, if I text you something I want it to be private and and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah, I don't want people to know well like we knew that adam was coming on the show I didn't want the people sniffing our messages to know that adam was coming until adam was ready to make that announcement That was his news not ours Yeah And now it's our our collective news to share But I didn't mean I wasn't supposed to put that out two months ago. Uh, no, you were not quite too much Yeah, I was gonna say this this is he was it was brewing in my head Two and a half months ago, but not not with any timing. It was just like well Maybe someday if you know, there's a world that would this would be a good mix That was really all I thought in the car and it was like oh pile that away Say nothing. I'm excited same. Yeah, it all every everything happens for a reason pete and uh, And and this is one of those good ones. So yep. Yep. The reasons aren't always good. This is a good one So next week join me and adam for the mackey cab No, next week. It's just you and me Week after is uh is is when adam adam joins up. So yeah, we're gonna push you out dave You know, that's totally fine. Like this is okay. Yeah, you're going please. Yeah No, I I really you know, I I will say I don't When we sold the mac observer We had many offers over the years and I at no, you know at many earlier points I wasn't ready to sell and then I was ready to sell but I wasn't sure It was going to be good for me like my I I had this belief which was true at a period of time And and it clearly is no longer true that I needed the mac observer to open doors for me to do other things Right and and that was true. Absolutely. Correct. Yes. There was a period of time where that that was absolutely true Because it opened the doors for all of the things that I even currently still do in my life Right. Good. Like podcasting did not exist when you opened the mac observer. Correct This is now an avenue to many of those things. It gave me an on ramp, right and so And and and so I I wasn't ready to step away from that for a long time and then and then I was Uh, obviously we we took the deal and and made the deal happen really is there's a better way to say it Uh, I am not but when I did that I was really adamant about keeping this I that only is it is it good for me for like that purpose? It's an on ramp to other opportunities, but Primarily I like doing this show This is fun. I yeah, and I like helping people for you still as it is it was on day two It it it's it I'm having more fun with the show now than I have in a long time. I really like I'm I'm I'm like, yeah, it's and I think part of that is not having the additional management Time consumed by running the mac observer, right? Like I'm able to focus on this. It's great So it was better sweet to let that go. I assume but correct. Yeah, and the hardest part was the uh, the staff because that we really were a family And and not being able to go see my family every day for staff meetings was that was the hardest part The second hardest part was not saying I still did that happen I still sometimes go to say it like the muscle memory is deep man. Yeah, but um But I uh, but I'm not ready to to to leave this show However, the idea That this show could exist without me Is is something that never occurred to me Until adam mentioned it the other day now I know adam doesn't want to like the point is not to bring adam in to replace me eventually He doesn't he doesn't want that Like the whole point is that he doesn't want to have to produce a show and I do I love doing this show But the idea that wait could it like oh interesting. So I like that, you know I don't know. It's it's I'm excited about where we're taking this show really really excited I'm also excited about ben's uh quick tip, which is our final quick tip of this episode as far as I know is uh It says to date I knew I could specify the email address to use for each contact when sending to a group or list And this is something that you do in uh in on the mac in contacts with edit distribution lists It says however, I never read the fine print at the bottom And this is in contacts in the edit menu edit distribution list He says I never read the fine print at the bottom that indicates the same window Also offers specifying phone number and address These additional selections are valuable when sending a group text message Printing envelopes or mailing labels or other use cases So this is a quick tip with about 14 bonus quick tips baked into it. So number one is this in contacts If you've never done this before you can create groups. First of all, that maybe that's the first one, right? Yep. Yeah, so you can create groups in contacts Which is huge for focus modes It right and then god, I didn't even think about using groups for focus modes p. Oh man. Like this is I said it was the last quick tip. I as far as I knew I we've proven now that was a correct statement Uh, so in contacts Once you've you know created a distribution list Or a group you go to edit edit distribution list and then you as you click on each group It'll show you the members and as as been articulated It shows you all of their email addresses all of their phone numbers all of their Physical addresses and you get to pick one that is the primary for when you invoke this group It sends to that address instead of a different address And this is super handy if you go to email a group or whatever, you know, like I have my band members Each in in separate groups And I don't want to email Aaron at work. I want to email Aaron at home Like because he wants me to do that And so but I don't want to lose his work address in case I ever need it for whatever, you know So because it's part of his contact record so you can get to go set that And now ben points out something I never Paid attention to either is that you can do the same thing for their phone numbers and their Physical addresses, which is super super handy. So thank you for that amazingly dense quick tip and Thank you for affording us the opportunity to unpack it All right, you know these days every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for our small businesses And we want to be a hundred percent certain that we have access to the best qualified candidates available And that's why we love linked in jobs and you got to check this out LinkedIn jobs helps us find the right people for our teams Faster and for free and it's going to do the same thing for you. We use linked in jobs to find Sadie She has been doing a fantastic job here and there's no world where we would have found her Nor would she have found us were it not for linked in jobs. It's super easy You just go create a free job post on linked in jobs Then you add your job and the purple hashtag hiring frame to your linked in profile to spread the word that you're hiring And then simple tools like screening questions make it super easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience So you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire these screening tools are great I created some very specific questions to the job that really let me find the right People to then go interview and eventually add to the team here And this is why small businesses rate linked in jobs number one In delivering quality hires versus leading competitors Linked in jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk with faster Post your job for free at linkedin.com Mgg that's linkedin.com Slash mgg to post your job for free terms and conditions apply in our thanks to linkedin jobs for sponsoring this episode All right our first question of the week comes from listener larry who says i'm replacing my failing Lissy rugged usb 3.0 drive with a sand disk made by western digital portable extreme ssd Stepping up to an ssd. I want to make Sure to get the laser fast speed that is promised I have an anchor hub plugged into the back of my max studio The drive has a usb c cable that comes with a usb A adapter Is there going to be a difference in speed if I have it plugged into the hub versus plugging directly into my max usb c port Pete you want to you want to start off with this one? Yes? Maybe next question sure great. Thanks for the one word answer pete. Thank goodness adams coming, right? Carry in the show date Pete you always carry the show with your one word answers, but maybe just this once I'm addicted to being a smart alec. So what can I say? You know, it's it's like when i'm flying along and and The air traffic control says say altitude it takes every fiber of my being not to key the mic and go altitude Oh, that's gonna be tough. Yeah, that's how I go. You know, it's very difficult Uh, so no so larry wants to know is there a difference in the speed and the answer is maybe as I said, that's that's a better answer than yes If you plug your ssd into the hub versus the usb c port, there's several factors that are going to come into play, right? It's uh, the type and quality of the hub the type and quality of the cable the performance of your of your max studio in this case Um, generally speaking plugging your ssd Directly into the c port is going to give you the best possible speed with no interference or any chance of a bottleneck For anything along the way the hub trying to share band with those sorts of things But with the latest protocols and cables and and the hub and the computer I don't think you're going to see a significant slowdown So it's going to depend on your how much you're willing to spend larry and what else is now, right? Yeah, I mean the the So I'm gonna I'm gonna plug it in and try using what is it? Is it black magic black magic? Yeah for sure this speed test Yep and compare the results. Yep. That that would be uh, You know, certainly that would be the way to make sure that you're getting the the best speed and we'll put a link to black magic Again, so that that Leaves me to a question. Oh, no, Dave. Um, which was weird. I I used yeah I you gonna get stumped the geek, right? So I tried to use black magic the other day to when I was answering this question to check one of my own usb drives And it says you don't have permission And then I tried to check this reading rate on my own internal hard drive and it was like, yeah, you don't have permission So is there's something in black magic I'm missing because I haven't used it a while Maybe you need to give it full disc access And maybe there you go. I probably maybe that mean that's what I would do in those in those Circumstances be like, okay, just like let the thing do whatever the heck it wants. Yeah Yeah, I can point to it, but it wouldn't let me have permission. So anyway, no as far as larry's question There's a lot to sort of unpack and and look at here. Yes, your max studio has ports That are that with usb c connectors. They're smoking It doesn't mean that they are usb ports though. They are And I don't have all the max studio specs in front of me I'm but I'm pretty sure that all of them are thunderbolt ports They're they're there might be a version of a max studio that has some that are Reserved as usb c ports, but I don't think so because I have the lowest model max studio here and I'm pretty sure well No, the ports on the look the ports on the front No, the ports on the front are usb c only and then the ports on the back are thunderbolt Okay, and those are wicked fast Yeah, but depending on what kind of anchor hub you plug into this it could be a thunderbolt dock And then it's going to pass data at thunderbolt speeds or it could be a usb c doc or usb doc I gotta make sure yeah when we're talking about usb The letters describe the connectors and the numbers describe the speed so letters are only about shapes of connectors They do not indicate speed thankfully usb consortium is starting to change the The the numbers to actual just speed numbers So you're not trying to do that translation in your head And then a likely that four dollar cable from amazon ain't going to give you your thunderbolt speeds Well, right on a previous Yeah, but I think the Sandisk portable extreme comes with its own little cable It does but it also is a usb 3.1 device and Its max speed is 550 megabytes per second So my guess is it's not going to matter Whether your hub is thunderbolt or your dock rather is thunderbolt or usb because This drive is likely going to be And I don't want to I don't want to use this term with any derogatory Implication, but it but it is will be the weakest link in the chain so to speak Right, it's going to be the slowest of all the devices you've you've mentioned Unless like Pete said you you wind up picking up a usb 2.0 cable like apples usb charging cable That's only you know, that'll do you know 100 watts of charging But but you know only usb 2 speeds and then it wouldn't hit this But otherwise, yeah This drive is going to be fine Where you're going to see your lightning fast speeds from from this being an ssd is in terms of the latency, right? You're you're not using a rotational drive anymore. So I I mean, I think all your advice is great and I would I would plug it in to one of your thunderbolt ports with the Included cable and run a black magic speed test and that way you're going to know definitively What the maximum speeds are you're you know, you're able to get out of this drive? Then you use that as your as your baseline and start plugging it in in other ways And as long as you're still getting those max speeds, you know in the most in the way That's sort of logistically the most convenient for you to plug it in and then just do that Yeah, or what are you willing to accept in degradation? You know, if it goes down to 350. Is that killing you or are you good with that? Exactly. Yep. But yeah, but you're you will know is I will add that we kind of buried a cool stuff found in there What's that? Well, that that hard drive that that ssd That's a little cool stuff found those. I've got one of those and I plug that in regularly. That's my Don't get old or tired. It's bad for your memory the time machine. That's my time machine backup disc. Yeah Yeah So a little ssd plug it in. Boom. There you go. Love it. There you go Uh, you're you're just so just to acknowledge it For the listeners, but also so you know p you you are definitely experiencing some bandwidth Constraints. So if I happen to cut you off while you're talking it's only because you've stopped talking As far as we're concerned Great exactly. I hear shall we shall we try it and would you like to read The mark. Yeah, all right. Well mark has three terabytes of photos. Oh my Yeah Now i'm really impressed. We were we were laughing at a few hundred gigabytes A couple weeks ago three terabytes of photos stored on an external thunderbolt drive Which is I would like to view them in photos but do not want to add them to my photo library I don't want to physically have them on my internal one gig Hard drive. I think he means one terabyte hard drive I could be wrong and of course they will not fit And I do not want them stored in iCloud storage and they ain't gonna fit there either Geez, uh, I don't think so Dave would You know, I love I love questions like this because I started In the same spot you are with I don't think so and I even typed that to mark And then I started digging in a little bit to this peak. I know you're going just Yep, and Not only Is was I wrong saying I don't think so. I mean those were literally the words that I typed I'm now pretty sure that mark can do Exactly a hundred percent of what he wants And that is If you look in photos settings general, there is an item in there labeled copy items to the To the photos library And it is it is under the importing section, right? It's just in photos settings general And if you uncheck that Two things happen first is what's obvious there. It will it will not copy the items into your photos library. It will Reference them so that you can see them and organize them and all of that when you're in photos But the actual photos themselves themselves will stay on your external storage Below that though It says Only items copied to the library will be uploaded to iCloud photos So He actually gets both of his things with one checkbox It's almost like somebody at apple has thought about this. They thought about it Yeah, that's amazing. I know I was thinking I before I even read the rest of your answer I was thinking well, yeah, you just create a second library on that other drive and you're good to go Yep, yep, but yeah, don't even need to do that Yep So Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there is There are other ways to do this and I suppose it's while we're here It's worth talking about them in case it solves your problem Because you need something slightly different than what mark needed, which was a very specific set of criteria iCloud photos Only syncs with one library on your mac However, you can have multiple photos libraries on your mac. You can only open one of them at a time in photos but even if you open a second one iCloud photos won't automatically start syncing that just because it's open in photos iCloud photos only syncs to the library that is blessed as your system library And you do that in the photos preferences Uh, it's it's the system photo library. In fact, it's right there in settings general It shows you where your library is stored at the very top of that window And you can check about or click a button that says use as system photo library if you don't push that button Then it will not make that the system photo library and then therefore it will not upload to iCloud photos So if you have a bunch of photos on an external drive That you want to manage separately and don't want them uploaded to iPhoto Photos in the cloud the whatever we're supposed to call it or into your your library on your hard drive Yeah, yeah, but but like you can keep it separate. You can manage it I've done this for clients before when they need me to help them, you know sort of merge photos libraries I do it in photos on my mac because it takes time and I you know, if it's it's cheaper for them for me to do it You know at my house then to go to their house and they have to pay me for all the hours I sit there as opposed to just the hours. I'm working on doing the thing and letting the photos crunch in the background Um, it you know, it's fine and it doesn't mess with my cloud photos or anything like that It it works really well. So yeah, you you can do this along that line. I guess then what Is there another option? I haven't even thought it in years something using something besides photos to manage Photos there's got to be other photo libraries out there that are worth managing But I'll tell you, you know, we talked about it last week Was the whole keywords manager thing which it helps me to quickly organize Tons of photos. Yeah, I don't know. You know of any other state. I don't anymore. Um, I do I'm looking to see if I put that in my Notes for this week or for next week. You know what? I we will talk about them next week Because I I have a bunch of stuff That I'm putting together. I found about some other photo management apps that are very very cool And we'll talk about that in next week's show if you know, I could see into the future That's right. That's right If you know of any though feedback at Mackie cub.com and we'll we'll pull it all together and and we'll have this conversation because There there are some great apps out there for sort of the the You know photos is fantastic for the beaten path of just wanting to manage your photos in the the way apple has Has decided but there are other apps. So yeah, yeah Let us know Feedback at Mackie cub.com. Yeah, because I I found a few just the other day and had started realized we had this episode was packed full. So Okay, so yeah, yeah, yeah All right, uh on to dan's question Dan says I've never done with done anything with or tried to set up family sharing on my apple accounts My girlfriend who is in the u.s. And I am in canada mentioned that she wanted to do that My question is since she's in the u.s Would it work for me to put her on my account and treat it like a quote-unquote family account? Pete you dug into this a little bit for us I think uh, no Oh No, I'm here. I'm here. Okay. Yeah, there was a little bit of a lag. I think because of your connection Yeah, yeah, yeah, so your your joke actually landed probably better than you intended. So yeah Uh Beautiful Well, what can I say? Um So family sharing lets you share with up to I think five in the family group I think I put that in my answer six shares your apple purchases your subscriptions. Um, Oh with five other six including you so five family members plus you Photos calendars reminders all that in the one family group and the limitation is that affects your situation is You need to be in the same country because there are things that are not available in some regions or others across international borders Different app stores and such Really? Yes, absolutely. Some some apps are not there and some apps are but the solution is One of you or the other use a vpn vpn into that country so she could vpn into canadia And create an apple id there and then you can share it that way Or you can vpn, you know using a pia Yeah, yeah, yeah that access or express that or something like that create your apple id using that ip address I believe and then you could share across international borders That's so she would need a separate apple id That matches the country of the family share account interesting I didn't I Yeah, I have I have no Functional working knowledge of any of this. That's fast. That makes sense though But but big tech says you can do it. Okay. I I believe it. Yeah. No that I mean that that makes The the logistics of that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I mean the the only time I've run into problems where my vpn doesn't really work is like when I'm trying to tube tv from another country Even though I'm vpn into the united states. It's like I know I know where you are gps out of your ipad. I know where you are The tube for you. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I know No, you tube for you. Yeah, that's right. Yep Interesting. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Cool. Um, I I am I am fascinated that we have had you all over the world literally like on the opposite side of the world And almost no connection problems and now you're in like, Mississippi and this is the worst it's been in six months Great, exactly. I love it and it's fine. It's functional. I'm in a suburb of Memphis I mean, it's not like I'm in the backwoods In the middle of the state somewhere It's awesome. I love it. I love that. That's what we wound up with. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if a different room in that hotel would Just, you know, have better proximity to the to the access point pretty close to the center of the hotel But boy, let me tell you it. Uh, yeah, I'm in a Lynn in south haven, Mississippi. Yeah, man. Yeah Yep And now, uh, not to worry. I'll be gone soon. You won't be able to find me I'll be at an undisclosed location soon. Dave. That's right. That's right. Yep. That's good And that that's as it should be Jay Oakley says I have been tasked with getting a laptop with a broken screen To connect to an external monitor The internal monitor is physically cracked and only shows colored lines, but of course nothing useful When I plug the external monitor in it lights up And I see the expected wallpaper and can move the cursor over to it But there's nothing to click on because it's in extended desktop mode The menu bar and any windows I might happen to open are all showing on the broken internal screen Is there some keyboard trick to getting the menu bar to jump to the external screen? I did not know the answer to this question and this Is one of the reasons I love our discord discord community I don't know why I tried to make that a weird word to say it's discord It's really simple mackey cub.com slash discord will get you there and people are friendly and rarely even mispronounce things like I just did nibsook in the discord community in our discord answered And said, uh, yes when connecting an external monitor to a macbook The screen is extended rather than mirrored by default making it difficult to work around broken internal monitors There are some keyboard shortcuts though that should switch your mac to mirrored mode Command f1 is one command option f1 command function f1 Those think about f1 right and the command key and then hold other keys with it until you see what you want On the external display Or For max with a touch bar It's command and dim the display brightness icon in the control strip in the touch bar is the way to do it So and and it turns out that this is a macbook with a touch bar. That's what worked for J oakley there and the problem was solved But what I had no idea Of course this exists This is yet another one of those things that apple has been through on their own And probably has needed to walk customers through countless times And it's a pain in the neck I've always vp the vnc'd like screen shared into my mac like when my my imac screen died I I screen shared in because I was like I can't get to the main screen And I never knew about these things I'm not going to try it right now because it would it would be a disaster if I did that mid-show I mean, I think the recording would keep going and that would be about it Like I wouldn't be able to see anything I got three screens going here pete be crazy, right? Thank you for that nibsook and j oakley good good stuff Uh, where are we on time? Oh, we're doing all right. Okay, tony asks tony asks Uh, I use a windows computer for work during the day And I have an m1 mac mini for personal use when I'm working from home Both computers share a wireless keyboard mouse and dual monitors via a kvm switch I would like to listen to music from the mac while I am working with my windows laptop So as to keep the music traffic off of the company vpn and to avoid it from complaining I'm looking for a usb volume knob that I can use with the music apps on the mac spotify bank Him series, you know all those things to control the volume of the music on my mac So that I can take zoom calls on the windows computer Having to use the kvm to switch over to the mac and log in just to turn the volume down takes too long When a critical call comes in ah, so you want to be able to just Turn down or mute your your mac without having to like see the max screen or control the max screen Yeah, all right goof off at work with it I don't know that he's goofing off. I like I think listening to music is is a valuable thing This is interesting because the solution he wants is the same solution I want but what happens on my mac is when a call comes in All of my volume controls and my mute and play pause controls really what I want to do is just pause the stuff over there is uh, they They now have the focus of the call That's coming in and so I can't mute it, right? So I love this idea. Pete. Do you do you have any thoughts on the pc? Yeah, I want his personal music on his work pc. So he keeps it on his mac and yeah, so that's great So there are three I'll put we'll put the links into the show notes. There's a ym a little waimu Multimedia control not okay a vdr usb volume Not a multimedia controller and an amazon d-rock lossless computer controller adjuster All right, all real stuff and then I mean every now and then there's some there's some other Cool stuff and and here's one that that I got for the purpose of this show and somebody Right. Oh, I used the elgato stream deck and you can use The you're good. I'm back. I was good. I'm back. Yeah. Yeah. I used the elgato stream deck And I used the 15 button one but that plug that into the usb on your mac And you have all manner of control of things between that and keyboard and maestro And the macros that that thing will run for instance When we go to do the show I actually have one button that I push and it calls up chrome and it moves me to stream yard And it calls up audio hijack pro and then ferago which I use for the sound effects and loop back in order to mix it properly And discord and all that stuff comes up with the push of one button so I like the stream deck is a Far more expensive option. These are you know the other first three I mentioned are 25 to 35 or 40 dollars And the stream deck is in the 149 dollar range when it's not on sale Yeah, but but those are pretty good options there those first three that I mentioned I like these little volume knobs. Yeah, and and and like some of them have Play pause controls and and shuttle controls where you can skip to the next song or whatever So like this is really Yeah Yeah, exactly what he's looking. It's exactly what he's looking for Yeah, they're like years ago. There was like one company that made a thing And I'm looking because I had it. It was like the iRig Volume knob or something a shuttle control or something But it was just a knob like it didn't do anything else and these are these are pause fast forward volume up Oh, yeah, and and I venture to guess they're just sending the same signal the stream deck is Um, they're pre-programmed they're pre-programmed. Yeah, but It's probably different than the stream deck because the stream deck is sending Different types of things that didn't have to be triggered. It's more of it. It's like a keyboard. Correct. Yeah, exactly Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yes, I mean in a sense It's doing the same thing. It's it's sending a command that the computer then then does something with so How good finds man. I like that. That's great and Christmas on all those seasons are coming. We're on thou shelt exchange gifts We are upon that. Yes. Yes. Those those are good gift ideas. Yes. Yes. Yes. I like it Any questions that turn into cool stuff found and therefore become expensive rich asks I have an apple macbook pro 16 inch i've been using it without an external display forever I'm thinking about getting a 27 inch monitor My problem is the macbook pro display is awesome And I and it's just an excellent display. Basically apple has spoiled me. Yes. I feel your pain He says I like I do photography and I like the color palette and the sharpness and the retina and the pro motion and all of that of the macbook pro Should I shell out the big bucks for an apple studio display? Or do I go with the lg ultrafine 5k display or a ben q display? I'm not sure the macbook pro supports an external monitor about 60 hertz It depends on the model of your macbook pro mac tracker will probably help you decide that Does anyone have experience down these paths? Yeah, I do because I've been spoiled in the same ways and I've had to Come to terms with that went and I you know, I had 27 inch i max retina i max for a long time And the first one that I stopped using was the one in the office When I got the m1 mini and so I was like I've been I'm too spoiled You know, I have a retina up in the studio. I had a retina here at my desk I I can't not retina eyes and so I bought the lg ultrafine 27 inch Display amazon it's 5k. It's you know, it's it's essentially that display from the From the inside that you know the 27 inch i max close enough And you can I bought it refurb on amazon. They still are available there I mean I bought it years ago. The price hasn't changed much if at all it's 988 bucks which is a crap ton of money to spend on a 27 inch display and it's gorgeous and it's awesome However, I have Been Coming to realize that There are some really good 4k displays not 5k That look really good with a mac that even look really good right next to The retina display in the configuration that you're talking about there And I found yet another one recently that the um, there's a couple like the view sonic the 27 68 4k Is awesome. I I love it. Uh, it it it looks fantastic It's it's got a black bezel If that you know and a black stand and all of that stuff But it it was my primary Monitor here in the studio with the with the mac studio all summer Because it was the best screen that I had that I wasn't going to take my retina screen from downstairs And I very quickly learned you know what it's fine Uh, it it looks great. In fact and then I went to pepcom recently And as you know and I got to check out another display from a company called phillips And it is their creator series Uh display it's 500 bucks For this 27 inch display It is fantastic. It's got first of all the glass on it. It is what's in front of me right now I Can't compare it to the the uh 27 inch iMac in in this room because that screen died, of course but I would say that it very it's very reminiscent of looking at that display It's really like so it has a fantastic Glass in it and it really is it is like sharp and and warm and the colors are all right In fact, we were noticing this morning That I was looking at colors of our video on this screen and then I moved it over to the view sonic and was like wait, what happened? Oh different screen. Okay Uh, and uh, it really is gorgeous It also is rotatable like in its stand. I could rotate it and use it in Uh in portrait mode if I so chose I'm not doing that right now because I prefer it in wide mode But I'm thinking about maybe moving things around and having it in portrait mode to my right here in the studio There's there's options It's got a hub. It's got a hub in it usb hub. It's got like three usb c ports usb a couple usb a ports And then of course display port and hdmi and all of those things it can be driven usb See it can be driven of course display port or hdmi or any of those It goes full 60 hertz. It's gorgeous That hub also Allows it to have its own kvm in it So like what tony was talking about in the last question where he has his mac and his pc hooked up to the same monitor He has a kvm that he bought separately to do that right for you know Probably between 50 and 150 bucks depending on the capabilities This screen has that built into it So you just plug all your things in and then tell it what's where And it will share the keyboard and mouse that's also plugged into it with the computer's upstream So it's it's a pretty it's a pretty special display and it'll provide 96 watts of power out to your mac book as well So less than 500 dollars 499. It's 499. Wow, dude. It's amazing when I saw this I I'd seen the press release. They'd sent me it embargoed, you know before pepcom or whatever And I sure read about it on on the train. It was like, oh, I gotta make sure I see this Like a lot of times when people are there with displays, it's like I don't know and uh, and then I went and saw and it was like wait a minute This is special and it it truly is and it's set up really fast The stand is is like, you know, adjustable in every which way So you don't need a hub anymore Don't need to yeah, I mean it depends on how you want to hook things up But yes, you're enough, but yes, what would you say 4? 499 No, no the uh, but the daisy chain and and and the it's a USB-C built-in kvm height adjustable daisy chain power power 96 watts. Yep, and uh, but it looks like you said four usb for Three usb-c I might have said four but I now that i'm thinking about it. It's got three usb-c one provides 96 watts of power The other provides 15 watts of power And then the middle one I think it's just five watts And and then there's two usb a's as well And then you know all of your sort of video ports if you if you want to call it that way, so yeah Yeah, no, it's a it's a i'm i'm blown away by this display. It's the phillips creator series 27 inch It's 4k uhd IPS black it like the call it's the colors. Yeah, man Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's it's it's a serious contender Against a display that's double the price podcasting monitor at home. Yeah, man one of those. Yep, beautiful. It's gorgeous Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it really is so not that long ago. I I managed to pull up a Like a 10 or 11 year old macbook air Yep That my I had given it to my sister after I was done with it And then she brought it back and said i'm not using it anymore It gave it to me and I opened it the other day and i'm like No, I have my glasses on It's like, oh my god that used to pass as standard. Yeah Yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah No, the screen I have behind me here in the studio All I use it for is displaying The logo of the like the mac kee keb logo logo or something interesting for you to see on camera Right that that's I do not use it as a display But it is the third display connected to this computer and I just set the background and i'm done Yeah, like I used that monitor as a monitor like like staring at it all day and not like If I look at it now, it's awful. Yeah It's just squinting. Yeah Clean your eyes clean my eyes were better back then Yeah Speaking of eyes. I'm gonna jump us to cool stuff found because I I know we're gonna run out of time. Yeah, okay I did get to check out there was another monitor at pepcom that I got to check out pete and it's the view sonic It's a portable screen. So you know how I'm into these portable screens, right? You know when I travel I like to have a portable screen and we have learned That you can get away With a 1080p screen as long as it's the right 1080p screen We've talked about those on the show But stepping it up a little bit going to a 4k screen definitely is visually noticeable even at the 15 inch size And so the difference between like a 1080p screen is you know, maybe 120 bucks You can maybe closer to 100 if you can find the right deal the k You you what is the the screen that I really like that I kvv screen, whatever it is That is 4k Is about 220 bucks. So you're doubling your price there 240 depending again depending on the day I'll let you double the price again for the screen that I'm about to tell you about However, this screen is the result of iterative design and it checks all of the boxes It is the view sonic Vx 16 55 4k OLED 15.6 inch screen this thing is gorgeous That's like the glass on it again blew me away It showed you we've been remodeling the kitchen at home And so lisa was sort of displaced from her normal place of work in the house And so instead of using her big 27 inch monitor with her MacBook Air she was using one of my portable screens, you know the 15 inch 4k screen with the MacBook Air this showed up I set it up for her to test because it was like why we gotta I gotta test this somewhere You're you're a perfect candidate And it was like she was like what we were both like wait a minute. It's awesome The so like it looks great and and that's what's gonna like justify Or not the the you know, $442 price that that it's going for on amazon However, the layout of this thing is fantastic Because it's less than an inch thick one of the things there are two things that drive me and and several of you that Have talked about this with drive is called crazy uh In terms of these displays one of them is when the stand for it Juts out like if it's a fold around stand and it juts out in front of it So you can't put something on the the desk in the hotel right in front of the display, right? This does not have that it has a kickstand that comes out the back of it that again Is super flat when it folds in and it's just a simple little kickstand it kicks out And and and so it takes up no room in front of it on your hotel desk. So that part's great the The the second best part about this kickstand Is that all of your connectors are in the kickstand and the kickstand Is not as wide as the display This means you can plug a usb-c cable In to the the where it goes on the display and still put the display right up against Your macbook pro because you don't have the room of the cable Sticking out the side of the display Right like and and the bezel on it Just to fit all the electronics in it it it needs to have some room in the bezel They put all of that room at the bottom, right? So it it effectively lifts the display About an inch up off the desk, which is where you would want it Next to your laptop and the bezel looks like it's smaller than a like an eighth of an inch And yeah, and then around the rest of it. It's an eighth of an inch, right? Yeah, exactly It like it looks great and functionally it is designed really really well So what I need to figure out how to do is to wrestle this back from lisa before I take my next trip And so that's going to be gonna see on amazon. It says deliver to davin durham You need to change that address That's right So yeah, no pepcom I did not go to pepcom expecting to come back with you know, some of my favorites being two monitors And yet that is exactly what happened. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I was Impressed with these and it takes a lot Um, you know monitors generally you're sort of a dime a dozen It's like, you know, you need a 27 inch monitor go find the right one at view sonic or mono price and you're done Like that that's you know, that's it. And then philips was like nope. I got you uh There's a couple more cool stuff found. I wanted I want to get in here and I know you've got one two pep Rod l tells us about he says You know when you don't want to take a screenshot just to lift the text off the page Right because you can do that now if if there's like an image or something that has text in it You can take a screenshot and then and then you know in preview you can yeah We're photos for a word and if there's a sign in your photo that has that word in and it goes and finds it right But he found an app called text sniper That does this for you without you needing to do the screenshot hokey pokey And uh, it just extracts texts from images and anywhere else Instantly from youtube videos if there's text in a youtube video it'll grab the text out of that Online courses screencasts, you know photos obviously all of those things. So yeah I did like as soon as I saw it. It was like, oh, yeah, this is a mac app I wonder if there's an ios app that uh is similar. I it doesn't look It doesn't look like it from this I I don't know you would have to do the screenshot on ios because apps can't Yeah, that's true control your screen on ios like they can less need for it. I think in ios than in a Maybe yeah, yeah, I mean ios sort of does it As part of ios so it's all sort of there. Yeah, but yeah, you're right Yeah, yeah, yeah hadn't thought about that. But yeah, so thank you for that rod. Um, I had never heard of text sniper So, uh, yeah, yeah, this is a this is a good one. He says uh He says we do a lot of content development website creation process documentation And i'm always grabbing text from something and repurposing it somewhere else And if I can't simply highlight it, I fire up text sniper It's easier than taking a screenshot one of the things I love about text sniper. He says is its accuracy I sell them if ever Have to correct the text it grabs and this is especially important when I'm grabbing things like a skew a part number a serial number of vin Uh, you know on your car the vehicle identification number Uh, that that sort of thing that wouldn't get caught by spell check and fixed you need to have accuracy So thank you for that rod. That's great I found something pete this week that might change the lives of all of us I uh I was looking for a backup destination for my Synology, I've been using synology c2, you know a cloud backup destination I have a one terabyte plan with c2 And i'm sort of the things I want to back up are now just inching above one terabyte And i'm like, okay, well, you know c2 is 60 bucks a year To move up to two terabytes actually more than doubles my price because I have to buy the different plan of c2 Or whatever it is. Yeah, right, right and so it's like okay So now it's going to be 140. I'm like, well, uh, that's real money. Like let's look around. Let's find and I found I found something called iDrive e2 Now what iDrive e2 is is it is an uh, uh Oh gosh, why can't I think of the name of it an amazon s3 compatible storage Service and s3 is what amazon started is there You know if you want to store things in buckets You just use this and and you're good to go and then you can you can buy different types of amazon s3 storage Depending on how you want to retrieve your data if you want to retrieve your data if it's meant for cold storage or whatever Uh, but amazon glacier It is even amazon glacier which is their sort of least expensive one is still pretty expensive on par with you know What you would pay for say the Synology c2 at 60 bucks a year or anything like that iDrive e2 for 1 terabyte is 30 bucks a year Except my first year I get for 15 dollars. Great. I signed up for this I uh actually bifurcated my Synology backups because I'm I'm signed up through august for for c2 I paid my 60 bucks. Like I can't get that back. They won't you know, it's it's how it works They don't prorate or anything. So no right, which is fine. And so I'm like, well, I'm over Anyway, so I'm gonna move my biggest thing over to iDrive e2 now Leave sort of the crumbs the the things that spill over the 1 terabyte I'll leave those on c2 for now and then when uh Next year comes around I'll expand my iDrive to Uh two terabytes which at worst will be 60 bucks But I bet I can convince them to give it to me for 30 again because that's how all of these services work They just you know, it's like it's is it actually ever 30 bucks or is it always 15? Well, here's the thing even if it is 30 bucks in my home it's still half the price right and by well Or even if it is 60 bucks. I'm sorry A year still that's half the price Yeah, but but think about it What is that cost if you were out buying hard drives and then having to replace those hard drives in five years because it's You know, they're wearing out and that's it's that time That's awesome. And now just to help my brain get around it hyper Because I don't use it yet hyper backup is an app in Synology, correct? Correct hyper backup is is Synology from one Synology drive to another or in this case to your iDrive Yeah, and all you do is and they have instructions for how to do this specifically with hyper backup But it's very straightforward You you launch Synology's hyper backup you choose s3 storage As your as your thing and then you put in the hyper drive server And your access key, you're you know, essentially your username and password It's it's it's a it's an access token that it generates for you But you know you put that in there and then you just store it in a bucket And and you can have multiple buckets like I could buy iDrive storage and and this is where I wanted to go with this I could buy Uh s3 compatible storage from iDrive or from anyone and use, you know one Blob of storage so I could buy two terabytes or five terabytes or whatever from iDrive e2 And then have different buckets for the different things. I want to back up I could have one bucket for one Synology one bucket for another Synology buckets for each of my max So your cloud backups for your max can be done to these generic s3 storage providers like iDrive and the app that I would use to back up To iDrive e2 from my mac is arq From haystack software it it is built for this. It's at arq arq backup.com And you buy the software and then you use the software It and and you know, they are not the backup service provider. They are I mean actually they are now they have they have arc Cloud you can you can pay 60 bucks a year and five computers and you get one terabyte of storage But you can also just buy arc 7 for arc version 7 for 50 bucks and then you can back up to whatever you want And and you know, however much storage you want to buy and it it's amazing how well But then the iDrive that we were talking about a minute ago that is also Much cheaper than buying a second Synology unit filling it with drives and handing it to me and having it me plug it In in my basement and vice versa. It's off-site It's off-site. It's way cheaper than back plays. It's way cheaper than like it's it's the least expensive I've found they've been around for a little while. Obviously, you can you know have whatever your arc or hyper backup will encrypt your data on You know before it sends it up there. So, you know, that's fine. That was gonna be my next question. Yeah, is it secure? And you have the keys you have the keys. Yeah, so yeah, and they you know, they're compatible with tons of things that iDrive which I mean, of course they are they're just an s3 compatible like Anything that works with s3 Works with iDrive is really how that how that goes It's great. So think the reason I wanted to bring it up is a because I found this pricing and I was blown away But b I wanted to share this idea of you know, you don't have to buy the backup software and storage from the same vendor Like you that you can you can sort of open source this if you will which is really what we're talking about here And potentially save yourself some money and offers, you know, get yourself some flexibility. So yeah So those are my three cool stuff found for this week Pete. You had uh, you had you had something from last episode You wanted to share as we were because we were writing out the episode here Here's the thing if you haven't seen it, Dave put the link in Discord he put the link in the show notes Go back and look at the cover image for last week's show mackey gab dot com slash Epster 1009 1 0 0 9 mgg dot fm slash 1009. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and look at that cover image. Yeah, and Dave and I were howling What that image came up And it's ai generated using dolly under a a open ai Gpt for what have you um it It's amazing that that is now free with doll Is it dot e dashy dashy whatever it's dolly Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it's it's built within Uh, it's not it's not free gpt. You have to pay your 20 bucks a month. Yeah a month. I'm sorry 20 dollars a month Yeah, if you've got any kind of workflow that that Chad gpt works for you. You will find that four works so much better than 3.5 I think it's worth the 20 dollars a month I paid it for a while then I quit and I degraded to 3.5 And I about six weeks later went back to 4.0 said quit being jeep It's so much better I um more effective and but but you created this image and we're I I think it's in the top three of all mcky gepp Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, we were talking about you know, we just kept saying in last episode You have our permission you have our permission So it was obvious that was going to be the title and I had used dolly mid episode to create a A picture of two nerds with you know giving you your permission. That's all I told it to do And then the concept of a goat rodeo came up And it was like, oh man, that should be the episode image and I'm like, what about and so I did I typed to to chat gpt Let me see if I can find it here the words that I type Draw a wide orientation picture of a goat rodeo with two nerdy goats giving you permission This is the image that came up. There was no iteration required from uh From this like this was it And and I I saw this came up on my screen mid episode like while we were talking And it was like how do I not like burst out in tears laughing at this stupid thing because chat gbt dolly It's it's not good at um spelling words correctly But that was I think it's intentional almost. Well, I don't know But it was perfect for these nerdy goats to have missed misspelled go ahead on their stupid painted signs like it just I wish I could say that I I had this vision and iterated it with chat gbt to to realize it And no, I like this is what it came up with. So yeah, oh tie on the back of the neck But you you can play with goat rodeo. You can play with dolly three without Uh paying for chat gbt. You can use Bing ai has has dolly three in it now. So you got to use microsoft edge They let you to like ten a day though, right? Ten. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but but you can play with it So yeah, go play with it. I have no idea what this episode's uh title is gonna be at this point We're gonna have to figure that out. Maybe it's the finest of all green bubble potatoes. I don't know um Nothing better seemed to have come up. So I think that might be it. So now I got to figure out green bubble potatoes Yeah, exactly. Yes and no Yes, yes and no, that's it short answer. Yep Yep, thanks for hanging out with us a little extra today folks while we talked about this. Thank you for uh All your quick tips and your questions and your cool stuff found Love it. We love being able to do this and uh, we're privileged to be here Yeah, I agreed. I'll agreed. Yeah, I meant what I said earlier, you know about not Having any plans to to leave the show like that or end the show or anything like that I like I'm This is you know, I I still have other businesses I am not retired But if if I ever get to a point where I I say that I am quote unquote retired My guess is I'll still be doing this. So yep. Yep. I uh show 2000, baby We might we might we're definitely gonna get to 20 years. Um, That that was a that I've never said this publicly before But that for a while like when we were in the 12 to 15 year range There were some moments there where it started to feel a little bit like a grind in this. I'm like, all right mg g 20 and I even had like a thing in my notes like, okay There's like we got to make it to mg g 20 20 years not mg g 2020 and now it's like, okay Maybe it's mg g 30 like I don't I don't know like 20 is close like we're 18 months away from I don't know No, we're not stopping at mg g 20. No, no, no, no, no, no Well, and it and it can be a grind and I didn't realize how much until I started trying to do my own show And it's like, oh, it's a lot of work every week. This is not a this is not something you just do I always say that it's a labor of love. There have been times where it was more labor than love But these days I'm really back to to the the balance being far on the other side of that. I I love doing this So yeah, thanks for hanging out with us Yeah, thanks. I think it does I and Mike and I know that it came through when it was more labor than love I remember hearing from some of you, you know at times you're like, oh, you know, you're being a little short on the show Like you I can tell that you're not like is everything okay I mean it was it was all very kind and supportive, but it was you know, you're all telling me You're not you're not batting a thousand anymore That's the great thing about this audience. It's more of a community. It's way it is a community. Yes community than not an audience No, it's not an audience. No, and you guys are fantastic out on discord everywhere Yeah, come join discord. Come hang out with us. That's uh, just do that mgg.fm slash discord or mackeykev.com slash discord um, and we'll we'll see over there and uh Thanks to our sponsors, of course linkedin.com slash mgg for Sponsoring the episode you can see about all our sponsors at mackeykev.com slash sponsors I'm looking at peach shirt your camera is working folks I have three words of advice for you today and uh, make sure Please if you're going to do anything that we've talked about in this episode Make sure you don't get caught