 All right, folks, it's time for Mackie Cabin. I'll bring us our quick tip of the week. I had a badge on my Messages app on all of my devices that said I had one unread message. But when I went in on my phone to the unread messages, there was nothing there. I scrolled through my messages, I found nothing. I couldn't find a little dot to press to make the badge go away. I did a little searching, frustrated, and someone suggested the answer. I asked the S lady, read me my unread messages. And sure enough, it told me, hey, Jeff sent you this video back in December, which was true and I had marked it as unread because I wanted to come back to it. Of course, that failed. So, but at least it got rid of it and it got rid of it on all my devices. So if you can't find an unread message, let Siri find it for you. More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on MacIkeb 1035 for Monday, April 29th, viral video day, 2024. Thanks folks and indeed welcome to MacIkeb, the show where you send in or we provide tips like that. You send in or we provide cool stuff found. You send in or sometimes we provide questions that we all endeavor to answer here. We string it all together into an agenda that gives us each the best shot at learning at least five new things every single time we get together. Our sponsor for today include Ecamm.live, the all in one streaming and video production studio and you can use promo code MacIkegab at Ecamm.live to get one month free. We'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, after a quick down and back to New York, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen. And here also in New Hampshire is Pilot P. Could be back with you after a week off hiatus. Yeah. In my check ride, I passed. I get to fly for another nine months. Nice. That's good. They let you fly the plane, huh? That's good. Yeah. We appreciate the check rides being part of the process there. That's a good thing. That's a good thing in the big scheme of things. In the big scheme. It might be a little bit of a pain in the neck. It keeps you out of the show for a week. But you know, it's good. To prove I'm still semi-competent to... Yeah. Yeah, it's all about fake it till you make it, right, Pete? Yeah. Yeah. Yeper. Yeper. Fake it till you retire, right? Is that what it is? Exactly. And hoping to get paid to do nothing soon. But in the meantime, let's do some quick things. Yeah. You got one from Paul, I think? Oh, I do. Yeah. I think you're up on that. I think that's you. I'll go first. She talked about this in the last unopinionated software episode. Great show. I'm sure you got this same tip from other listeners, but just in case, when you're arriving, you can say, hey, yes, lady, take a note. And that's a reliable trigger. The other phrase I use, as we all do, is very often, remind me to. So if you use remind me to, you'll get a transformation of what you say. Apple system will truncate after 10 to 12 words, admit words, and identify some words as made of words like today or appointment, or using artificial jankiness, AJ, which is AI, run a mug. I love it. It's trying to convert what you say into some sort of a reminder. So sometimes this is what you want, but given the abilities of the current S lady, that's rarely the case. So if you say take a note, you can dictate a longer note that doesn't transform what you say. And in both cases, though, a significant pause in your speech ends the reminder or the notes. And he puts in here, the editorial, given the pace of other technologies, I'm shocked at how slowly Stanford Research Institute has originated Siri has progressed over the last 10 years, even the low-hanging fruit has not been picked. You are correct, sir. I agree with all these things, but I'm now fully distracted by I did not realize that Siri came from the Stanford Research Institute. Is that where Siri's name came from? I'm wondering the same thing. I learned that as I was reading it. I used to know this way, way back when, but I honestly don't remember. OK. I didn't know that it came out of that place, in that area. Yeah. The virus spilled backwards. That it is. Yeah. For some reason, I thought, I mean, I remember Siri being a separate app on the iPhone for a hot minute there. Rather than integrated, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then Apple, of course, acquired it and the rest, as we say, is current technology, or it's supposed to be current technology. We'll see if they can enhance it to make it compete. But yeah, I don't know where the name came from. So either. So someone, hopefully, will tell us either in the live chat while we're recording this or at feedback at MackieCab.com. There you go. Wait, wait, wait. Feedback at MackieCab.com. That'd be the place to send it, I think. Yeah, he said feedback at MackieCab.com. That's right. All right, shall we move on to Joe here? We should. I think that's you. Does that mean I am up? Yes. I think so, yeah. I got Joe's right here. He says, I was listening to the latest show this morning and you talked about a couple different tips. Yeah, we do. One was related to getting the bookmarks to show up on Safari. On my phone, I tap the search bar or web address bar. It brings up, or when I do that, it brings up a list of bookmarks just like when I open a new page. You can also swipe left on a full page Safari window and it will open a new tab. With regards to reminders, Dave talked about telling Siri, sLady, sorry, the date you wanted to remind you about something when you're using Siri in car play mode. One of the things that I also do is say remind me to do XYZ when I get home. It will pop up every time I pull into the driveway, being outside in outside sales and driving around. So a good reminder every time I get home or when I get home, that day to complete whatever task it is. I mutilated that last part, sorry, but you get the point. You can tell the sLady to remind you when you get to a known location like home or some people might have office or specific place and the little geofencing thing will kick in. Remind you that, that's pretty cool. Yeah, and going back to his first sort of follow-up tip, he's right, last week we talked about the fastest ways of getting to your Siri, sorry, your Safari bookmarks on iPhone and we completely neglected his, which I think is the fastest, you just tap the URL bar and your favorites come up. So I don't, yeah, I mean, I see it there every time I do it until Joe's note came in. I never even thought to use that to get to my favorites. I've had blindness to it ever since it was brought there but there it is. My favorite one is to scroll down a little bit and I always use the one where it's like you can get links that open tabs on your other devices. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, I cloud tabs feature or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah, they're all right there. If you do, you Siri bookmark syncing, I think that's required, right? Yeah, yeah. I've been using that for years because I always, I'll bring something up on my phone and like leave it and then I'm like, where was the, what was that thing? And then I'm sitting on my Mac and it's like, oh yeah, it's right here. Oh yeah, it's right there, yep. Yeah, that is a handy thing the iCloud bookmarks or yeah, iCloud tab syncing, I guess it's not even bookmark. Tab syncing, yeah. Yeah, it's the tab syncing and it just tells you what tabs are open on your other Macs. It's even cooler when you discover that you can close tabs on your other devices. Wait, what? I forget how to do it now. So I probably just killed myself but yeah, I know at least on the phone there's a way to like, you can say close this tab from another place. Yeah, let's see. I can, I just did. Yeah, I went to the list of tabs, like I, you know, I found a tab on my MacBook Air and I just like long pressed on it and it, I got a, you know, a menu and the option on iOS. On iOS, yeah, so. In theory. I don't know how you do it from the Mac. Oh, maybe a right click on the Mac. I tried that, no it didn't work. No, it didn't work. Oh yeah, I guess we have Macs in front of us. We could, we could try these things. Close other tabs, right click, close other tabs, no. No, if you just float, like if I pull down in Safari, you know, click on the little cloud icon which pulls the iCloud tabs down. If I float over one, I see a little X by it on the right and that's where I click and I am closing all kinds of tabs on my iPad as we speak here. So there you go. Cause I don't need the stub hub links for fish tickets at the sphere anymore because that went away, that expired, that already happened and we did not go. So there you go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't get the little everything but I get right click if I do it from the main, you know, start page. So that works. Huh. What didn't work was doing anything from the dropdown from the. Really? The little dropdown, if you float over, if you just float your mouse cursor over one of them, you don't see a little X on the right? No. Huh, weird. All right. I mean, I believe you. Just, yeah, wondering why mine is different. It's being buggy. Yeah, as well. I don't know. You know, go figure. Speaking of buggy or pesky devices, I have found that I have some older technology that likes to, especially smart home-ish devices that fall off my network on the regular. One of them is my, my Q garage door opener, which I don't recommend. You can't really use it anymore. I have the special home kit bridge that they stopped selling. So it does link that one garage door or that pair of garage doors to my home kit, which I love that you can't buy that bridge anymore. Don't know why, but anyway, it's flaky. Maybe that's why you can't buy anymore. And it falls off my network occasionally. But what's weird about it is I can still access it and use it from the my Q app. I cannot use it from home kit. And all I have to do is unplug the power from it and replug the power. And then it's fine for a couple of days. And then it goes sort of wonky again. Well, I have smart plugs, you know? And so I put a smart plug on this thing and at 542 AM every day, I have a little routine. I have standardized on the A lady to do my home automations. I know we've talked about other platforms. It's all fine. Mine are there right now and it's fine. But you can do this, you know, basically every platform will let you do this. And so I have it at 542 AM, it turns off. I have the script then pause for 20 seconds and then turn it back on and everything is good. And it's been great for a couple of weeks on that one. So yeah, yeah. I also have found, I tried doing this with my Sonos Play 3s are also being really flaky for me. And they do occasionally, more than occasionally need to be power-cycled. And I was doing this the same way. It's not helping like, because sometimes they just go offline during the middle of the day. There's something, there's a whole thing on the Sonos forums about how there was a software update that came out. I think this past summer that I think causes some out of memory errors on the Play 3s. So, but certainly putting them on smart switches makes the restart process simpler. But the scheduled restart every day didn't help those as much, but it has definitely solved, at least so far the issue with my Q garage door opener. I will say though, that I have become a huge fan of the Maras home kit compatible garage door openers. I know we talked about them on the show here. I, those are freaking amazing. I put one of those, they have a couple of different versions. Make sure I'll link to the right one, but put the, you get the one that's home kit compatible. And they make one that is a one garage door unit, and then they make another one that is a three garage door unit. Based on your feedback, most people say the three garage door one gets a little janky. It will expose three doors, whether or not you have three connected. So if you buy the three and you only have two, it will expose a third door to home kit that people say they can't really hide. You could unfavorit it, I suppose, but just be aware of that. But yeah, the Maras thing works great. I've got that on Lisa's garage and it's been absolutely fantastic. So, and rock solid. Do do that. It's cool. It works with your existing garage door opener. You don't have to replace anything. It just plugs in. It's actually got two leads that plug into terminals on your head unit for your garage door. And then it just like it know, and you know, it just triggers a opener close. So yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like 40 bucks or something. So that was Pete is trying to talk. But actually, I think Pete is talking, but Pete has muted himself and so. Well, I was, but you know, there you go. It's like maybe you could set up to open a neighbor's garage door with that third door. Well, I think they all have to be in the same. They have to be in the same Wi-Fi. They have to be in the same garage. Like at my house, you know, I've got two in one building and one in another. I don't think the three pack would work for me because you've got to be able to wire them all into the same head unit. So yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not the, you had prepped a cool stuff found from Allison, Pete, when we were last talking about garage door openers that we had yet to get to. So I think now is a good time as any. So I'm vamping for you here. Yeah, thank you. Sure. Yeah, so new listener Allison writes in. She says, I'm the one out of 10 who isn't going to recommend Maras for fixing the idiotic Chamberlain lift master Fiasco with smart control of garage doors. Nothing against Maras. I love their switches, but the sensor for the open closed looked too flimsy and small to make me question reliability. Also feedback from listeners on it. Anywho, we chose the tailwind IQ three because of its huge magnet sensor combo and how the sensor mounts to the J Channel for the rollers of the garage door. Of course I wrote it up and thanks for asking Allison. And Pete said, send it to feedbag at mackegab.com but I'm writing to that address was denied. So Dave, I don't know. I guess that was out folks. Don't write to that anymore. Only for Allison is it denied. She said she was one out of 10. I wrote back and said, well, you're two out of 10 because listener James also wrote in and even it looked like they were sitting next to each other copying and pasting. Yeah, they're emails were the same. It's almost identical. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't, I know what she's saying. It is a, so when you wire in the Maras garage door but like I said, it's a small little unit, you know, maybe smaller than your iPhone. And so it has three leads coming off of it. One, there are three sets of leads. One that goes into your garage door opener unit to trigger it, as I mentioned. One that is power. It's actually a USB-A power but it comes with its own little brick so you can manage that the way you want. And then the third lead is the one for a sensor that you put on your garage door so that you know it knows whether it's open or closed. And it is a small little sensor. It's basically one of those sensors like you would see on windows and stuff to, you know, like with a home alarm system. For the security system or something. Yeah, it's that kind of a thing. But it works really well. I was, I just kind of threw it up in my garage and didn't really spend a whole lot of time lining it all up the right way and all that stuff. And it works, the proximity, it just needs to be close. It doesn't need to be nudged right up against it like we're used to with the security things in our homes or whatever. This, as long as it's close, it just, it works flawlessly. We haven't, I mean, I probably had it in for six weeks now. And it's like, I haven't thought about it until we started doing this episode. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's not true. I thought about buying another one for my garage door so that I didn't have to deal with this flaky chamberlain thing. But then I actually am using a Meras smart switch to solve the problem of the my Q garage door opener going offline. So, you know, like, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cheaper. Well, in that I had the switch and it wasn't deployed anywhere. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's cheaper because I had it. Yeah, as we know, it's always easy to throw money at a problem. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, for like 40 bucks, those Meras garage door opener things, like it's probably the right decision for me because that $40 would just save the headache and I'm done. However, I, I'm a nerd. I'd like to like, I do this show. I like to come up with fun little solutions. And so, you know, yeah, I'm inspired. You know, for about four bucks, I could get one of those little metal handles, screw it into the front of the door and get out and lift it. I don't, I don't understand. What's the fun of that? I know. What? What? I don't, getting out of my car. Like, I don't even want to have to. So you're having to walk all the way across the living room to change the channel on your TV. You know, I get it. Yeah. Now, what I have failed at though is I wrote a shortcut that would open my garage door when I got close. But your phone has to be unlocked for that shortcut to run. But I got, like, before I realized that, I went way, way down a rabbit hole because I was like, look, I don't want my phone to open. I don't want this shortcut to run unless I'm the one driving. Like, if I'm in Lisa's car with her, I don't want my garage door opening just cause I'm near the house, right? And so, I wrote a secondary shortcut that saves essentially a one or a zero to a note that says, am I on car play or not? And that shortcut is triggered by when I connect to car play and when I disconnect from car play. And so, when I connect to car play, it rewrites a note and puts a one in there. And when I disconnect from car play, it puts a zero in there. And then, when my other shortcut runs, for the proximity of the garage door, which of course doesn't work cause my phone's not unlocked, but be that as it may, it reads that note and will only continue if the value is one, not zero. Nerd. I know, isn't it cool? However, I, and I thought, okay, well, I could probably, you know, people are like, well, you know, rewire it so that your, so that HomeKit thinks it's not a garage door but thinks it's a switch and then you can have it turn on a switch that happens to be a garage door. You know, they were like, do all this and trick it. And I was gonna do that. But then I realized you can, first of all, just ask the escalator while you're driving with car play to open your garage door. And that's fine. Like it won't do it automatically, but it will do it that way. And then, you know, there's that, when you're in car play, you can have like the full screen view of your app or you can have the half screen view of your app, right? Where the, you know, like the map is on the left and then on the right, you get like a series of widgets. It's my favorite view. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I don't use that view often, but I believe it was listener Andrew in our Discord hipped me to the fact that that view, as I get close to my house, the very bottom widget changes to be my garage door. And it goes to the garage door that you most recently opened from that phone. So it just shows and I can just tap it on the screen. I didn't even have to, and it, you know, it pops up when I'm, I don't know, when I'm in the neighborhood. So it, like it's the perfect timing. I just tap it and the garage door is open. I haven't messed with my automation, which still runs every time it just fails because it, you know, can't unlock the phone. So I know I'm nerdy. What can I say? But that is kind of a, that is kind of a cool view. I know we're way ahead of ourselves. We're going to stay here for a second because we might as well finish this little segment on garage doors because, because we're here. Uncle Jamie in our Discord says, thanks to MacIka, I learned what home assistant is, which is great. He says, I had assumed incorrectly that it was associated with one of those big companies like Google. No, he says, but it's not, it's a cool open source platform that plays nice with other platforms as desired. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm getting, I'm reading. Anyway, he says, I was wondering why when you talked about garage doors, Rat GDO was not mentioned. He says, I have one and I'm happily controlling my garage door and light from a home kit home bridge with no involvement whatsoever from my Qs app or cloud. Yeah, Rat GDO is this cool, like he says, open source. It's a control board. It's kind of like what I was talking about with the morass thing where you, it's built to work with Chamberlain or Liftmaster garage doors. It might work with others. I don't know, but it's a, you know, nerd community kind of created thing and you can buy the little bridge and it connects to your door and it will work with home kit or any of the other things. So we will link to the Rat GDO thing if you want to go that route for controlling your garage doors, especially if you got burned by the Chamberlain and whole fiasco. Yeah. Dave, how about we finish in the garage door theme with Tim? Yeah, go, sure. I love it. Yes. Yeah, so we're going to beat this garage door horse to death and here comes the last one. We covered it. What's the horse do to us? 1033, the only thing that Jim might need to change on his, this is listener Tim writing in, Jim need to change on his network is the garage light. Cheap, super bright LED garage light bulbs and shop lights are notorious for creating EFI interference that can slow down your Wi-Fi and interfere with some garage door remotes. And I think we covered this on the show some time back. Yeah. I had LED lights actually in the garage door opener itself and often it would interfere with my ability. If I walked out and got in, if the car wasn't in the drive and I walked out or if I backed out, the light would come on, right? Cause it tripped the little sensor. Yeah. And then I couldn't close the garage door with my remote. I was like, what the heck's going on? But come home, I could, it would work. So whenever the light was on, I was getting interference and the remote wouldn't work. I replaced those with NK Anderson, which are, don't work even with a good bulb now, but that's a whole nother story on a 25 year old remote. But I did put a shop light in the main garage door, a garage light, and that seems to be working just fine. So it's- Okay, so it's- In the- Close proximity is the problem with the LEDs and Wi-Fi. And it's not Wi-Fi, it's the LEDs and the RF for your remote for the remote for the garage door. So if you go with one of these home kit things, you could use LED bulbs because it's not controlling it remotely, as long as it's not. Like- As some do, for sure. Some of them do, like the MyQ ones that I have do, it's still a remote. The RAT GDO and the Meras one and the Tailwind one all wired directly in. So it's, yeah, that's right. Fun, all right. So Adam, I know that April 29th here is viral video day, but Tuesday is another special day you were telling us about. April 30th. So there was a Gimlet podcast, great podcast back in the day. It's no longer around, unfortunately called Reply All that I loved. Oh yeah. And the hosts over there, this isn't something I suffer with. I'm pretty good with my email, but I know a lot of people out there, you know, you have emails that come in and sometimes there's one that you get that you either just forget about like you meant to reply to and you just literally forgot about it or maybe you're not sure what you wanna say at the time and then you forget about it for whatever reason, right? You end up with this email that you meant to reply to, you never ever did. So they were like this and what they invented was email debt forgiveness day. And this is a little bit different than email amnesty day or the one where you just like, you know, look at everything in your inbox that's there and just dump it, right? That's another one. The idea behind this one is you get to reply on April 30th to any of those emails that you just left sitting there and you get to reply as if you just came into your inbox. And so you're forgiven for not doing that. And so you just link, you know, you throw the link to this page, we'll have it in the show notes and it explains everything to the person you're sending it to and you just, you don't even have to say anything. You just reply as if I just got the email and all is forgiven. And then you can relax and you don't have to stress about that email that you're looking at and it's like, I meant to reply three months ago, I can't reply now because they'll think I'm weird, you know. All right, folks, look, have you ever dreamed of running your own TV station but thought, no, too much hassle? Well, with our sponsor, Ecamm, it's like having a full broadcast studio right on your Mac. Perfect for streamers, podcasters and even those who just wanna look super polished on your next Zoom call. Ecamm turns your video presentations into something akin to a primetime show. Whether you're hosting a webinar, teaching a class or launching your own live show, Ecamm's got you covered with easy camera switching, slick graphics and even guest interviews that'll make late night hosts envious. And let's talk multi-streaming with Ecamm. You can broadcast live to all your platforms simultaneously, reaching your audience no matter where they hang out. It's like being omnipresent without the need for cloning yourself though. Let's face it, who wouldn't want a few extra use to handle your tech to be awesome? What did? I don't know. Setting up as a breeze too. You don't need to be a tech wizard, although, hey, we're all a bit geeky here, right? Ecamm is plug and play but also lets you tweak and tinker to your heart's content if you wanna get really fancy with your productions. So don't get caught with your tech down. Make your next video or stream effortlessly amazing with Ecamm. You can learn more at www.ecamm.live and get one month free of Ecamm Live using promo code MacGeekGab at checkout. That's one month free of Ecamm Live when you use promo code MacGeekGab at checkout because in this digital age, it's not just what you say, it's how awesomely you say it and our thanks to Ecamm in Ecamm Live for sponsoring this episode. All right. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can we get a show title from an ad? I think so, it was said in the show. Why do you ask, Adam? Don't get caught with your tech down. Don't get caught with your tech down. So as you, as I've mentioned on the show, I let chat GPT write most of the scripts that I use for ads because sponsors generally give us a version of free reign, right? They give us talking points and then we just read. And this was absolutely inspired by what you do, Pete, over it. So there I was. But I realized that I had gotten into a rut while they give me free reign, ours free reign. My interpretation of the same script winds up sounding kind of the same over and over and over again. And then Pete, you told me, you're like, oh, I just feed the talking points into chat GPT. Tell it, make it funny. Tell it, make it a thing. And so I, I've, I have a little theme, right? And I tell it, like, make sure you include don't get caught in the ad read, keep it funny, you know, yaddy, yaddy, yaddy. And so this week, yeah, sure enough, don't get caught with your tech down. So you go and just made me laugh. I don't know why. Yeah, same. Oh, it made me laugh too. It made me laugh when I read it. I I've gotten to a point where when I do the ad scripts, I generally don't read them before I record them. I do pre-record them. So it's like if there's something in there that's like, oh, my God, that's totally incorrect. Or there's no world where I'm going to let it let make me say that, you know, I can I can deal with it, but it, but it is, it generally is a first take and a first read for me. Often I am reading it while chat GPT is like spilling it out. So I have no idea where it's going to go. But yeah, that was a good one. Don't get caught with your tech down, folks. All right, what about upside down food pantry? Pyramid. Oh, sorry. Upside down food pyramid. Why did I say yes? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. So upside down food pyramid has a question for us. And I don't know that I have the answer. She says, do you have a good or he they say, do you have a good solution to sync I photos with Google photos? Oh, I think so. I I know that the Google Google Google Google photos. Yeah, sure. It's easy for me to say. Chat GPT didn't write this for me, so I can't read it. But I I think the Google photos app for the iPhone will will do this. I mean, if the idea is that you want your Google photos and your you know, iCloud photos, your iPhone photos to be the same using the Google photos app on your phone will do it. And I also think that there's some version of this that Google drive the app for the Mac will also do. But that that's where I would go with this. Otherwise, I mean, I think I think that's the only answer. What do I do? I I don't we were talking about this earlier. I try to let Google have too much of my stuff. They obviously have a tone of it, but photos is like a line for me. Yeah, we got to draw the line somewhere. I mean, you know, so, yeah. Yeah. All right. Pete, you want to take us to our Stanley? I can do that. So he wrote in and asked. So my 2019 iMac has a one terabyte fusion drive and runs very slowly. I'm thinking that moving to an external SSD would be the easiest way to speed it up. It's already been upgraded to 40 gigabytes of RAM. Dang. My question is, would I be OK? Running off a 2000 megabit per second USBC 3.2 sand disk. I've seen some comments that this particular iMac doesn't support USBC 3.2 and so. Would default down to less than a thousand megabits per second. Those commenters recommend using a Thunderbolt three drive to get the best speed. But would I really need to run that high of a speed? I wouldn't be moving large files around just trying to run Mac OS and ideally improved performance of VM fusion for my son, who is trying to use the fort trying to use Fortnite and its design program. SSD prices seem to have jumped since I purchased it about eight since I purchased about 18 months ago. And anything that's Thunderbolt compliant looks to be double the cost of anything that's just USBC. Thanks to the vice for any tips or recommendations. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're going to be fine. It's certainly worth trying and it's definitely going to be faster than your fusion drive, right? So like there's there's no world where this is is going to be slower than in my opinion, it's going to be slower than what you're currently doing. The biggest and I know it's been years since we've had this conversation on the show anyway, but the biggest benefit to me that SSDs brought us or bring us when it comes to using as like a boot drive is the latency basically goes away, right? So you're not waiting for the heads of the hard drive to seek around. And I know the fusion drive was built to sort of bring that to the the the more affordable pricing of spindle drives, right? But it didn't really work out all that well. So yeah, I think you're going to do better with this. The only time the raw speed is going to make a huge difference is when you're doing large amounts of data, either reading or writing, boot up time, I think is more about reading a bunch of small files than it is reading big ones, although Apple does some caching there so it can read things all at once. But even still, my guess is even if you plugged in this drive as a, you know, 3.2 drive versus a 3.1 driver, whatever the 20 megabits versus 10 megabits or whatever, I don't think you'd notice a huge difference. And you could if you have a Thunderbolt dock connected, that Thunderbolt dock might have a USB 3.2 port on it that you could plug this into and get faster speeds. But I wouldn't recommend it if it's going to be your boot drive. I would, if at all possible, plug it directly in to a USB-C port on your Mac or a Thunderbolt port, which will be USB-C just so that you're not like if there's, you know, some power issue with the Thunderbolt dock or whatever, you're not just having your boot drive just fall offline, right? That that would be that would be my only thought about it. I don't know. What do you think, Adam? No, I'm in general agreement with all of that. I mean, the only other the only other option and it sounds like maybe not comfortable enough doing that would be to, you know, put it in an internal. But opening 2019 iMac, I know I understand can be daunting. I mean, you got to I fix it in a bunch of resources where you could get the instructions and but you have to be comfortable doing that sort of thing. Yeah, it's not it's not a fun process. It's not as easy as it used to be. I think the 2019 iMacs I think have glue around the screen. It's not even just put the suction cups on and pull the magnetic screen off. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you have to break the seal and put a new seal in. Yeah, it's probably not worth it. This is much easier. And I guess the thing is, is you could you could get it try it. And if if it's not working, turn that into some other drive and then still get that, you know, you know, get a thunderbolt one later. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We can always use more drives. I mean, again, budget considering, I don't know what kind of budget they have. But I mean, worst case scenario is, you know, it were best case scenario is it works worst case scenario is you have a good SSD drive that you can use for some else. Yeah. Well, and maybe, you know, if if you roll to this and you realize, OK, it could be faster, but it's still better than what you came from. You've got this as an interim solution. And it either works and is fine as an interim solution until that machine is eventually replaced or at some day down the road, you're like, yeah, I'd rather move this to a thunderbolt drive. Maybe prices have come down. Maybe, you know, whatever finances, you know, open up a little bit and then you go that route. So, yeah, I like it. Dan wrote in and asks a question. Is anyone else having trouble getting messages to sync between iOS and Mac OS? It used to work seamlessly, but lately I'm noticing that messages in particular SMS messages are not updating on my two Macs. I made sure the obvious same Apple ID allow text message forwarding from the iPhone, restart everything. I even deleted the messages folder in the library folder on my Mac and let things sync. The syncing worked for that moment in time. OK, interesting. But messages since then from the phone are not showing up on the Mac. Before I contact Apple support, I thought I would see if anyone else is experiencing this with Sonoma. It's a bit of a geek challenge or a discussion point. So I like I have some thoughts. But Adam or Pete, do either of you have any thoughts? Not just a Sonoma thing. I'll just say that like it's just a thing that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sadly, I've noticed it happening to my solution. And I know he didn't didn't work for him. Sign out, sign back in and it seems to force the re-sync. Yeah. Yeah. The other one. And I don't know if it's self-inflicted or what, when I've used my eSIM overseas, I find it really starts getting things going stupid because it's trying to use another number and all that. So. And I think I think the solution to that is used to international going forward. Oh, yeah. Right. It's now more affordable. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I I have certainly run into this before I am not currently running into it, though. I am seeing Kiwi Graham in the live chat saying finding intermittent message sinking issues recently. There is the whole messages in the cloud part of iCloud 2, which if you have that enabled might be part of this. It shouldn't be, obviously, it all should just work. But we know how that goes. So if you go into messages on your Mac, go into preferences and go to the iMessage button at the top. If you have enable messages in iCloud checked, then you also have a sync now button that you can click. And that might be the thing to trigger. Hey, wake up, buddy, and go ahead and do this. We've also seen this take on like a new install. We've seen it take a couple of days for people's messages on their Macs to sort of fully populate from the cloud. So bear that in mind, too, although that doesn't really sound like Dan's specific issue, but figured I'd bring it up while we're while we're having the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And he did say he already checked things like the messages settings and make sure that I can be reached at. I'm wondering if specifically because he's saying it's SMS, if if it's a phone number thing, like is that phone number on all devices like? Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, because if it's not on your Mac, then. But then you would expect that it would never sink. And it sounds like this is just intermittent syncing issues. So. Well, that same page of the preferences where you can click the sync now button on your Mac, there is also the list of all of the addresses phone numbers and email addresses that are attached to your iCloud account that that would absolutely be the place to make sure that, you know, you can be reached. Yeah, make sure it's checked there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I've gotten that one with people who are like, but the way that usually surfaces is like they sink to every device except this one device, right? Or I never get the message on this one device, but I get the message on all these other devices. I had this with a friend recently and I'm like, well, you don't have your, you know, your iPhone, you don't have the phone number attached and people are sending to the phone number. So it's never going to get there. It's never going to get there, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as long as we're on that settings page, I want to mention something to down at the bottom of that settings page and I message on the Mac. There is a checkbox for send red receipts. I uncheck that because you can individually enable send red receipts for for people. You don't have it isn't an all or nothing thing. Right. So right. So for the most part, you know, I send it to friends and family, but generally speaking, I don't send red receipts to everybody. Yeah, I I also have that off. I am I'm fairly judicious with. Who I enable it for, but I like to be able to enable it just so I know who's who's getting red receipts. I I, although I like I. Wouldn't be a poll. I I I get why Apple has this ability to turn this off. But I wish it were on by default. Like I I think I think our hour. And I realize this goes counter to what I currently do. Like like I get that. But I think texting in general is better when you know that a message has been delivered and read and and all of those things. Like for all the people that you are calling people. Hey, ping, ping, ping. Hey, have you seen this? Have you seen this? Like I know you've seen it. You're choosing not to reply to me. That we might have another conversation about that. You know, but but that's OK. Like I I it is good. I find that the red receipts really helpful and probably. Would opt almost certainly would opt for that as the default. I like WhatsApp. I have a bunch of people that I communicate with with WhatsApp these days and it's you know, it's the default there. It's it's weird because it's like you get one check mark when the message is sent to check marks when it's delivered. And then the check marks, the double check marks turn blue, right? When the message is read. So you have to know how to decipher these things. But once you do, it all makes it's like very easy. And at a glance, you can be like, all right, great. Max read that message. Awesome. I know he's seen it. I know he'll reply later, but at least I know he's seen it. And I don't need to worry about that. Yeah, so it yeah, I yeah, anyway, that's just yep. All right, so I just checked something because I was curious because I had had that checked and I was curious. What happens if I uncheck it now? Do I have to go back in and opt everybody back in or do I opt them out? And it looks like anybody that I've already messaged at least that I've just checked. It's opt out and I'm assuming new people. I don't know if it would be there automatically opted in and I have to opt them out one by one or is it you guys know? Like if I got a new message from somebody who had never I messaged me before, now that I've unchecked that, I'm assuming they're not going to get a re-receive until I have to them in. Yeah, OK, but that would be my guess. And and just for clarity, you just confirmed that you had it checked, you unchecked it and went back and looked and the people that you've already had a message history with remain on send red receipts. Yeah. Got it. OK. So that check box if you want to send me a message, you could try it, you know, right now and I can tell you or you can tell. Because if it Pete, that you're not new with. You're in my little right. Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying that I would like to see each other. Yeah. Yeah, which is great. So no, that's good because I was worried, you know, because I think I've always had it on. So I was just worried. This is my family. If I turn this off, something going to not get receipts anymore and they have to go off to everybody back in. But no, it all looks fine. It all looks fine. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So that check box, in a sense, is. Applies only to newly started conversations. I would assume so, yeah. I wonder what the reverse is. Like if I were to go and turn that check box on. What about the conversations that I have where I haven't been sending red receipts to people? Yeah, I wouldn't go back. We're going to go down a rabbit hole. Yeah, that's it. Well, that's what we do here. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. All right. Great. You want to take us to Mike, Adam? Sure. Speaking of rabbit holes. This isn't too much of a rabbit hole. Maybe. Well, maybe we'll see. He's Mike says, Hello, gentlemen. I was so disappointed when that the MacCast went dark. Oh, sorry for that. But overjoyed with the addition of Adam to your band of brothers. I'm disappointed, however, that with the addition of Adam, you haven't upped the number of things I'll learn. He's got to be worth at least a couple more things, right? Sorry. I guess I missed Pete's comment. But what did you say? Pete Packett. Or send Pete Packett? Oh, I see. And then we can just keep it at five. I got you. So it used to be three things that we would learn. And then I forget when we raised it from three to five. I don't I don't know. Like, should we? Like this is this is not a decision just for the three of us. Like this, I think, is a community decision. So let us know how many. How many things do you learn each episode? See, I got to push penguins off the iceberg to learn new stuff anymore. You know, don't get old. Oh, same. Oh, yeah, we learn. I'm excited about learning new things every week. It definitely means that I forget the old stuff. But that's OK, because then I'm super excited when I learn it again, right? It's totally fine. Yeah, it's actually really nice. You know, the good thing and I say this often and that we are all and I mean, all of us that are listening and sort of alive in the world today, we're really fortunate because as we get older, you know, studies have shown that the way our brains work and the things that our brains are good at changes as we get older, right? When when we're younger, our memories are fantastic, right? Relatively speaking. And as we age, our memory gets deprioritized, I'm choosing words carefully here, in favor of our brains, enhanced ability to process big picture items, to see and and and think of things as a whole and and really kind of have that that that perspective and ability to really process. And I say we're lucky because we have these devices that we're attached to all the time that have nearly perfect memories. So we don't have to remember things anymore. They do it like these devices do it for us. Now, can the devices do the big picture processing for us? Well, clearly that's being worked on. It's not quite there yet. If I if, you know, so I'm glad that things have worked out the way that they have, that we have these devices where the memory on them is, like I said, nearly perfect. You know, you back it up and now it might actually be perfect, right? But there's there's there's holes in this, but not not huge ones. So I'm I don't know. I kind of like it. So there's your rabbit hole, Adam. Yes, well, I mean, so how how far are we from just plugging that always on thing right into the to the brain, Johnny Pneumonic style and then is we're then worry about when your hard drive gets full. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I like yeah, it's great. I I I'm eager to see where we go with all this tech. But it's I'm glad we're where we are. Especially given where I am with my age and all that's like, it's great. So my hard drive filled up years ago. Yeah, I got to say, you know, I used to really pride myself on my memory. Like I I I could see a group of numbers and just remember them forever and things like that. And I don't even try to do that anymore. Like I don't care about that anymore. And that and and I think part of that is informed by the fact that my memory isn't as as keyed into those things as it used to be. So I've I've let it go. But also it's like, well, I didn't let anything go. Like I've already got all that data and I'm you know, I'm still functional. I can remember. Let me offer this, though. And I'll tell you, right, especially if you're in your 20s and 30s and you have a hard picture laying around, get the back of that and write down the names of the people on there. I was looking at a photo the other day, right? Turned out we a guy we had on the show this week. It turned out we had the same drill instructor. Different. We didn't go together, but we had the same drill instructor from hell that that made our lives an absolute misery. And I'm like, is that staff starring Gladstone? It sure is. Yeah. I used to be able to go through all 30 people and name every one of them. Yeah. And I can name two people on that photo anymore. I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. Those are names I never would forget. I mean, the hell we went through together established a brotherhood. Yeah. And it's gone. And it's like, oh, you're going to be kidding me. Yeah. And so those sort of things, if you have that stuff and you remember, write it down on the back of the photo somewhere, things like that. I encourage people that are younger to back it up. What do you still have it? Because I guarantee you're going to forget it. I guarantee it. And one other super quick story. I went through training to become a first officer on the MD 11 when I was about 39 or 40 years old. And I just read it, retain it and do it. And the guy I was going through training with was 58. And it just kicked his backside. I'm like, dude, this isn't that hard. Come on. He could fly an airplane like nobody's business, but he could not retain the interface of the computer. And then I changed airplanes at age 59. Oh, my God, I went, oh, now I know. Yeah, I used to be able to read this and do it. And now I can't. I have to read it, write it down, think about it, ask questions. So it definitely, your brain's processing changes. Yeah, for sure. There's, yeah. So, Beck, you know, just verifying what you're saying. But yeah, no, I it's why I'm such a fan of telling the S lady, hey, remind me, you know, later to do this thing or remind me about this thought that I had, like I'll be driving in my car and have like a spectacular idea. And I and in the moment, like you with the, you know, the picture of the people you went through all that with, like in the moment, you're like, there's no world where I will be able to forget about this. And I feel the same way when I have some, you know, epiphany about something. It's like, oh, my God, I'll never forget this. Ha, right. Yeah, hold my beer and watch you should bring this. Watch out, right. Yeah, it's it's not you. I definitely will forget it. And so that's why I use that all the time. So bringing Pete's thing about the photos, the physical photos and writing people's names on the back, back to tech, I have to ask because I use this religiously with I club photo library. Do you guys use the facial recognition thing? Like I got really fanatic about tagging people and even like really distant relatives that I, you know, see every 20 years at a family reunion or something like that, I will tag those people because sometimes, you know, it's a cousin of a second cousin and you're like same kind of thing. 20 years later, you're like, you can't remember their name, right? That's a great idea. So I have really obscure people in there and there's only like one or two photos for them. But, you know, they're not my favorites or anything. They're way down the list, but at least like that's sort of, in my mind, the digital version of that. That's brilliant. Yeah, that the I mean, you're essentially making the argument that tagging the faces of the people that aren't as like common in your life is more important than tagging like your kids. Right. Like, I mean, it's easy to do. And so there's no reason not to. But chances are, you know, if you're seeing someone regularly, you're not going to forget who they are, whereas someone that you've stopped seeing regularly. It's like, who was that person? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even cool people I've met at conferences and stuff like that. Exactly. Yeah. And it's helpful, too, sometimes in the moment, because it's like, you know, 10 years later and you met them at a conference and you, you know, had a drink one time. Yeah. And you had a great conversation and maybe exchanged cards or whatever. But you really haven't communicated since. And so like, I can even like sneak up like, oh, what's their name? Oh, there they are. Yeah. Yep. Cool. Pretend like I actually have a memory. Yeah. What's funny about that is you're talking about it, though, of all the pain, all the faces in there. There were three steps. There was a staff sergeant, a sergeant and a captain who was our platoon commander. I couldn't tell you the other two, but staff, sergeant, Gladstone, I'll go to my grave with that. Well, there are some things you won't forget. That's true. I can if I wanted to. And I don't want to forget to thank everyone whose premium contributions have come in. And we do have some cool stuff found to talk about. So I want to take a quick minute and and do this again. It's all at mackeycub.com slash premium. It's not mandatory. It is very much appreciated. And it definitely helps us do what we do here. It's been a couple of weeks since we've done this. So we had a $5 contribution from Bob in Lafayette. Thank you, Bob. We had $10 contributions from Frank in Tunbridge, Stephen in Plainfield, Joseph in Marietta, Warren in Gloucester, Bill with an APO box, Jeff in Chesterton, Barry and his planes, Timothy in West Windsor, Kevin in Edison, Jonathan in Plainsboro, Matthew in Forked River, Paul in Lawrenceville, Michael in Robbins, James in Amity Harbor, Santiago in Palm City, Frank in Voorhees, Brian in Southbury and John in Wake Forest. Thank you to all of you. Eric in Southfield sent us a $12 contribution. Bob in Lafayette Lafayette. No, Bob in Lafayette sent us a $15 contribution. And then we have $20 contribution, $25 contributions from Gene in Denver, Scott in North Little Rock, George in Natick, Doug in Centerville, Andrew in Durham, Jed in Jersey City, Michael in Wake Forest, Robin in Andover, Charles in Kobe, Keith in Edmunds, Robert in Pontusbury, Peter in Rochester, Brian in Johnson City. And we had a $30 contribution from Seth in Tucson, a $35 contribution from Anders in Westeros, $50 contributions from Patrick in Little Rock, Edward in Manhattan Beach, Joseph in Aventura, $100 contribution from Harry in Luz, a $150 contribution from Brian in Glendora and a $500 contribution from James in Pleasant Prairie. Thank you to all of you so much. And James, I believe you now hold the record. So thank you to all of you. But really, it's not a competition. We appreciate every bit of it. And absolutely. Thank you for all of that. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Hey, I've got an idea, though. What's that? That can't afford to contribute money. You can't contribute by sharing the show. Absolutely. To a friend. Yep. Yep. That is the that really. And just listening, contributing, you know, by listening. And like you said, share the show. That's the great stuff. I'll give you one more. Yeah, we're review is also always appreciated. Oh, yeah. Yep. Those five star reviews are awesome. Yep. Not three stars. Don't do it. That's right. You can go to MackieCab.com slash reviews and that will get us as close as we can get you to reviewing on Apple podcast. So, yeah, please, please, please. Those are great. Let's do some cool stuff found, shall we, Pete? We shall. So here you have a story to tell us. Yeah, I do a quick story. The other day I was playing with the chat GPT on iOS and I noticed a little headphone icon in there. So I tapped on that and then I want to you go in and you can set up what voice you wanted to reply in and the speed and all that kind of. It's really cool. This is like Star Trek computer. Do this computer. What's the state of that? It was amazing. And here's where it got really cool for me. I switched my Wi-Fi to the Euro 6 E router. And for some reason, it knocked all my sonos off and I could not get it to recognize no matter what I did. Well, I've got Sonos Play one. I've got Sonos one. I've got a bar, a sound bar. The original one, the sub, all that stuff. They're all different to get them to reset. So I just went. I went to chat GPT in iOS. I tapped a little headphone and I said, all right, tell me how to reset the original sub and give me step by step instructions. Pause after each step and ask me when I'm ready to continue. She goes, OK, you know, here's what you do. Push this button and I go, no, no, wait a minute. That's not the button that I have in front of me. I have this button. Oh, I'm sorry. You have the original sub. So push this button, hold it. Let me know you continue. Yeah. And we went through everything step by step. OK, I'm ready to continue. It just sits there and listens and it is or the other things I've used it for. Hey, give me a quick review on Shakespeare's naming of the shrew. Oh, OK, these are the characters. This is what it is. You know, give me a recipe for that. All right, here's a good recipe to make. The most interesting part about this, Pete, is the most interesting part about this is without thinking about it, as you were telling this story about working and resetting your son of stuff, as you said, we went through it step by step. There you go. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the part where it starts to become so fluid and seamless that it feels like you're interacting with, you know, that you're actually having a meaningful interaction here. And you were having a meaningful interaction. No doubt about it. Yes. Yeah. You know, that's fascinating. I got to check that out. And that's just in the really cool. That's in the the like the the the first I say, first party in chat GPT's app on iOS, not some third party app that taps in via API or something like that. Right. No, it's chat GPT's app. And I do pay the 20 bucks a month. OK, yeah. I'll tell you what, I have found that 20 bucks a month is some of the best money I've ever spent. Same. Yeah. Yeah. It has been great. Yeah. And it's good, you know, right down the road, ask it questions, chat about what's. Oh, yeah. Is there a car plate? Interaction? Interaction? Oh, yeah. Integration? Really? Yes. Oh, I got to mess with this. OK. Yeah. All right. You want to take it to Chicago Tom, Adam? Yeah. Chicago Tom says, hi, guys. I was just listening to episode 1027 in my ears perked up when I heard Adam mentioned that he uses the program marked to convert his markdown files to word. In relation to that, I thought it might be timely to remind listeners of a program called Pandoc. Pandoc is a somewhat standard Unix command line program that can convert between numerous markup and word processing formats, including, but not limited to, various flavors of markdown, HTML, latex, and word doc X. This is an incredibly versatile and useful program for converting all kinds of document formats back and forth. For instance, it not only converts markdown to word, but also converts word to markdown. It is, unfortunately, not part of the standard Mac OS distribution, but is easily installed via your favorite package manager. I use Homebrew. I use Homebrew also. That's my favorite one on the Mac. But yeah, very, very cool. I'm a command line nerd, so. Pandoc. Brew install, Pandoc, P-A-N-D-O-C. That's, I just issued that command and I now have Pandoc installed in my terminal. So, wow. I would not be surprised if, you know, who knows what marked is using, but. Yeah. Oh, that's fair. Right. Yeah. Right. Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what's going on, but yeah, very commonly, a lot of GUI apps are just really using underlying stuff. Interesting. Interesting, interesting. Huh. I like it. Cool. Very cool. Pete, you mentioned getting some new Eero hardware and I wanted to take a minute and kind of talk about some new Eero hardware that we've both been playing with. I wound up, after we talked about it on the show, and I said, well, I'm not sure why anybody would need Wi-Fi 7 right now. Eero said, we want you to find out. So, I've got a three pack of Mac 7s in the house. Now, I was coming from the 6E, so the most any of my client devices can do is 6E. Right. So I have no Wi-Fi 7 client devices. The only Wi-Fi 7 devices that I possess are these Eero access points, right? So, color me surprised when, and I know that this is why they wanted me to test it out because they knew, when my speeds were, you know, 100 megabits faster with Wi-Fi with the Eero 7s than they were with the Eero 6Es, 150 megabits faster here and there. It's like, okay, wait a minute. And I did the test over and over and over again. And, you know, I'm getting like in my house where I would previously get 600 megabits a second, I'm getting 750 or even 800 megabits a second. And again, I know all our homes are different. I know 6E is capable of these speeds, but where I was testing from, I was not getting those. And so there is this, and I wanna talk about it. There's also the fact that backhaul with Wi-Fi 7 is so much better. I have one location in the house where I can't do wired backhaul. And this, I need to have an access point there because it's the only way I can get through the concrete to get out to my back patio and get Wi-Fi out there. It's the whole thing. And with 6E to the patio, I was getting like, you know, 119 megabits per second. With 7, I was getting 275 megabits per second to the patio. And again, just using the backhaul of Wi-Fi 7. What Wi-Fi 7 lets you do, or lets the technology do, is use all of the bands simultaneously, not just picking one band at a time. And then there's some different signaling that happens. But I asked them why my 6 and 6E client devices got faster with the Eero Wi-Fi 7 access points. And the engineers said three things. On Mac 7, we were able to get our transmit power closer to the regulatory limit so the client would be getting more power and thus more throughput in the same location relative to the access point. Okay, that's one. Also on the Mac 7, ironically, the antenna gains are lower which allows us to increase the total power delivered to the antennas. He says on the Mac 7, the four antennas give the receiver on average 3DB better received performance relative to an access point with two antennas. And they also kind of talked a little bit here and said people think because they've been told that antenna gain improves performance. That's really only true when you're operating at long distances and have directional antennas that concentrate the energy to and from the client devices. In indoor settings, you wanna put as much energy as you can into the space. More antenna gain reduces the total amount of energy which is interesting. So there are some technological improvements that Iroh made from the 6Es and the 6s to the 7s that actually make your client devices, your non-Wi-Fi 7 client devices already operate faster. But I also moved my son in his apartment from the 6s to the 6Es and we saw his backhaul performance double to about 600 megabits per second. He was getting like 250 to 300 and now he's getting about 600 on those 6Es which is what you have now, Pete, right? You've got the 6Es. I've got the 6Es that they sent me and I've gotta tell you, it's, yeah, I'm speechless. You see, I'm speechless. Look, so here's the deal. I was running the TP links before and those did good. They bathed the house and Wi-Fi because my daughter's room was not even getting Wi-Fi and that was particularly frustrating. So that's why those TP links solved. And on a given day, I would do a speed test and with gigabit ethernet, I'm sorry, fiber. Yep. And then converting to Wi-Fi, obviously, I was getting, with everything going in the house, streaming, television, son gaming, that sort of thing, 200 megabits, 250 on a game. Were these TP link devices, Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6? I think they were 5. Okay. I'm certain they were, they were old. Okay, well, but like a lot of people out there are running Wi-Fi 5 stuff because it's fine, right? You're getting 200 to 300 megabits, it's fine, yep. And for the vast majority of what I do, that worked great. Yep. But with these, I just ran one, well, you were talking. We're streaming back and forth and all that stuff. I went ahead and ran one. I'm getting 358 up and down and I'm 40 feet away through two walls to the nearest access point. And the backhaul is Wi-Fi on that access point. Oh wow, okay. Now, if I'm in the same room with it, even with my son gaming and doing all that kind of stuff in the house, I'm getting 850. Wow! Yeah, smoking speeds on the 6E. And again, I think it's down because we're streaming back and forth video. My son's in the basement gaming and I'm 30, 40 feet away through two walls. So that's why it's terrible performance. You've got rock solid connection and as you just proved, more headroom than you need. Yeah. And that's really what it's about. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So I stand corrected. There are some improvements with the Wi-Fi 7. I still think the 6E is probably, if you're looking to buy today, I think the 6E is a, it's a good choice, but there is always the how long are you gonna keep it future-proofing thing to keep in mind? And if you can find the Wi-Fi 7 stuff at a price that works for you, we know that eventually Apple will add it to their devices and so will everyone else. And in the interim, you get Wi-Fi 7 backhaul without any congestion. So that's not so bad. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Hedy Lamar. Yes, that's right. Do you guys know the Hedy Lamar story? Yeah, I do, but go tell it. So there's a documentary if you wanna watch it. I rewatched it recently, a great documentary called Bombshell, the Hedy Lamar story, that Hedy Lamar actress in World War II era, 30s, 40s, is believed to have or did come up with a lot of the ideas behind frequency hopping. And the reason was to drive torpedoes towards Russian submarines, right? In a secure manner. And German subs. Oh, sorry, what did I say? Russian? World War II, German. Did I say, did I say Russian? I meant German, yeah, yeah, yeah, German submarines. Sorry, thank you. What were you talking about, memory earlier? Memory? Yeah, but the point is, is yeah, she laid the groundwork for that, her and another guy and I'm blanking on his name. But yeah, it's a fascinating thing to find out that like this actress, this starlet actress kind of came up with this idea that then drove forward a lot of the wireless technology that we use today. It's crazy. It's awesome. I love it. That's great. Yeah, and I think she got the idea from an early remote for like a Philco radio or something like that. It's in the story, cause they had this thing where you could have this remote box that connected to the radio and you could change the dial, right? So you would add like a phone dial on it and you'd spin it and then it would go to 900 frequency and then you'd spin it again and it would go to 1300 frequency or whatever. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so supposedly that's where the original thought came from was this Philco remote box. Amazing, so amazing. I love it, love it. All right, we have maybe a minute or two. We were talking about nerdy stuff and so I wanted to share Paul's cool stuff found that he sent in. He says, I often wanna paste my upcoming calendar items into a journal like day one or into a weekly plan.txt or send plain text to a colleague or something. To this end, he says, I came across an old terminal program that has been taken over by the programming community called iCalBuddy. It, like the other thing we mentioned, installs from Homebrew and has a man page. A don't get caught tip is that if you're, once you have it installed, you have to type man space iCalBuddy with a capital B. That's only true for the man page. The command invokes with a lowercase b. Yeah, he says the man page is long and there are plenty of options. The command that I like that I've put into TextExpander is one, I'll put it into the show notes, but it's got a command that only lists the dates and times and title of the calendar items in the next 14 days. And it's really a nice little, like, it's nice. Yeah, I like it. So yeah, pretty good. Yeah, so thank you for that, Paul. Fun stuff, love the, love that. And I think we need to do Elliot as well, Pete, because otherwise we're just gonna keep hearing from all of this and it's from everybody about this. And it's great, but we know now and we wanna share. So go ahead, take us to Elliot. Okay, I'll do it. So actually in the notes, what he actually wrote is gone and I don't know why or how, but that's okay, and Allison had a follow-up, but he wrote in about a program called TouchRetouch, that's an iOS program, TouchRetouch, that was designed to remove a line, like a power line or a telephone pole, those sorts of things from a photo. And it does it really very, quite well. The app was designed for this problem among others after installation in photos, tap on edit, and then the three-dot menu in the top right and you'll see TouchRetouch as an option. And then you can open it as an extension of photos and one of the things is lines. So you can pull lines and objects out of photos. Now, the one, I had covered this as a cool stuff, found several months back, the one I use, but it's not an iOS one up front, it's on my Mac, but I used the hitpaw at hitpaw.net. Yeah, you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here's the weird thing about it. It does all these other things that I didn't realize. I got it as a photo enhancer, that's what I'm talking about. And as I speak today, it is on sale for $26 instead of $37, I think, but that could change in any minute. Sure. But not only does it do photo enhancer, it will do background remover and then what we're talking about, object remover. So a telephone pole, telephone lines, that sort of thing. It is an AI generator, similar to Dolly. It will take a, you give it three photos and it will create your portrait. You can get it any style you want in the portrait. And then the other thing it'll do is you can take a, just a headshot of you and turn it into a photo ID for your passport, those sorts of things that, and it says, you pull the country, I want it for Japan or I want it to UK or the United States and it will send it to you with all of those. Two by two inches, whatever the standards are that they need. And then while I was at hippod.net, I also found, it looks like I'm gonna have to go spend some more money. They've got video editors, video enhancement, all that kind of stuff too. So they're really big into the photo manipulation. When you first told us about hippod, and I remember having this conversation, it seemed like one of those sort of janky pieces of software that I wouldn't want to install, but clearly they have worked really hard on turning this into like it's something, that it's a very useful tool. So yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, scratch repair. I have like a neat photo of my great grandfather who was the head swimming coach at the University of Pennsylvania for 40 years. Okay. The photo was taken in the 1890s and it just beautifully restored it to the focus and it gets scratches out and takes away the sepia. Amazing. It looks like that, yeah. Amazing. Well, the time has come, my friends, to talk of many things. Oh, actually to stop talking of many things. Adam, did that remind you of the song from Alice in Wonderland about the oysters? I don't know if I know that one. I've only seen that movie. You're talking about the Disney film, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Disney film, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I've seen that one time in my life. The time has come, the walrus said. Yep. All right. Well, no ceiling wax for us, but we do want to thank Cash Fly for providing the bandwidth to get the show from us to all of you. Of course, thanks to all of you who contributed to the show, either with your questions or your tips or your cool stuff found or in Discord. The conversations I love when I go into Discord to catch up on things and answer questions and I see that there's like a thread 20 posts long where you folks are helping one another. It's amazing. I absolutely love it. And if you want to join our Discord community, of course, it's just macgeekab.com slash discord. That should get you a link in. So go check that out. Thanks to our sponsor, of course, Ecamm.live, where code macgeekab gets you one week for free and you can learn about all our other active sponsors and even deals from inactive sponsors. But the deals are still active. That's all at macgeekab.com slash sponsors. And sign up for the email list and the show notes. You get them in your inbox. Pete, we missed you last week. What, do you have anything to share with us? Well, I had a check right and I took the advice that I'm about to give to you. Don't get caught. That's good advice. Made. Later.