 It's time for Mackie Gab and our opening quick tip comes from me last week while I was traveling I was using my laptop a bunch and of course I'm running Ventura on my laptop and because fruit juice has been end of life I had gone into system settings control center and added the batteries show in menu bar there and as we were getting ready to so that might be a quick tip in and of itself as we were getting ready you know as our trip was wrapping up I wanted to make sure my laptop was you know fully charged before we got on the plane and did all that stuff and so on Friday night before we flew out I looked and I saw my laptop was sitting at like 80% charged and it was not charging and so I looked in the battery menu and there was an option in there that said well first at the top it said the power source was from the power adapter and it will be charged by 11 a.m. I knew we were gonna be leaving by about 9 a.m. and right below that was an option that said charge to full now I selected that from the little battery menu and then boom it started charging and of course it was all fully charged up by the time it was time to go more tips like this plus your questions answered and really plus cool stuff found today on Mackie Gab 966 for Monday January 30th 2023 greetings folks and indeed welcome to welcome back to Mackie Gab the show where we take your quick tips like the one that we just shared your questions sometimes but we probably won't get to questions today because we also take your cool stuff out and we have tons of that we share it all we mash it all together into an agenda that makes some sort of sense to us at least when we start out the goal being that each of us learns at least five new things every single time we get together sponsors for this episode include masterclass we can visit masterclass.com slash MGG for unlimited access to masterclass we'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit for now back here after being in the South Tirolian region of Italy back here in Durham, New Hampshire I am Dave Hamilton I think John still muted again that's gonna be a thing for you every week John but you know it's all good yeah and here in Fairfield Connecticut this is John F. Braun and here in Lee, New Hampshire where it's indicating that I'm not on mute this time because I've never done that before except every week is pilot Pete thanks for having me back guys it's always fun to be here with you welcome back Dave glad you thank you the travels were safe I had a an interesting incident with like double security in Germany on our way back on Saturday where they pulled me out for random screening this was after I'd already gone through the whole TSA thing yeah their version of TSA right you know you're the you're on there no fly list too huh dude this they had an entire setup that was just like the TSA thing downstairs we were in Munich Airport which is just massive this was right before I could get to my gate they pulled you know some of us out at random we had to go through second round of nudie scanners we had to go through like take all our stuff out of our bags but this was way more thorough than what they made us do you know for the normal TSA-ish thing they made me take and this is when I started to tantrum a little bit they made me take my iPad out of its case which I've never seen in Europe yeah yeah not uncommon in Europe they they made me they made us take all our food out of our bags they made us take our shoes off which they didn't do downstairs of the TSA thing and then this was the worst part and it freaked everyone out it wasn't just me like I you know I like the tantrum in situations like this because you might like you might have sort of intuited about me that I have issues with like authority figures I don't know if that's obvious or not but but you know your own you know when you're in charge well exactly there's a reason that I'm in charge they they were asking people and I I need to iterate here this happened in Munich they were speaking English to us but of course had you know fairly thick German accents they were asking us to remove our books and our papers from our backpacks so that they could inspect our papers this yeah it it it was a little tone-deaf from the you know history from maybe you know 70 years ago something yeah yeah it was it was not it was not a good look nobody was happy like in fact everybody there they were losing control of the situation it was it was a fascinating little thing like how to do it in a different manner than or adjust but correct yeah correct we have a we call them FCIS flight crew information files those are read files that they put out to keep you up to speed on information and one of the ones they sent out geez three or four years ago now was how to remove your iPad from the case because it's a very common request fascinating Europe yeah the whole papers thing the guy in front of me they asked him dude like do you have any books or papers he's like well I've got my book that I I'm gonna read on the plane and I've got some papers for work they're like yeah take those out we need to inspect those it's like what how is that making the plane safer for you to inspect his papers I'll speculate that it's they're making sure that there aren't any you know communications in there that may be okay to ask or you know I don't know man that's a bit that's what if your speculation is correct that's also a bad look for them it is but you know criminals are stupid and would carry those papers around with them right by yeah I definitely still asking to inspect our papers in a German accent was it yeah yeah bad bad for PR Lufthansa bad for PR Lufthansa all right Dave I got a story what's your battery story so as you know I just got Apple care done on my MacBook Pro 16 inch cuz you're one of your keys wasn't working right correct yeah so I brought it to the local Apple store they're like oh yeah you know it's they're like we're gonna you know we'll send it out and I'm like I'd rather you didn't could you have the parts shipped here and then fix it here and they're like yeah sure so I get the machine back everything is working great and then I noticed on the top of the screen because I still run fruit juice it showed that I was charged to a hundred percent and then when I unplugged it shows the remaining time and it was like six hours 50 minutes and I'm like that's not right so I run fruit juice and look at the factory capacity history and it was like well at almost full capacity oh how could this happen what they what they probably did so it was close to 80% when they got it in the shop it was like 80% capacity which is a usually if you have less than that within the time period you get a new battery well I guess they just made that decision on the right nice oh that's that makes like that gives your machine like a I would say a little boost in value or at least a boost in sellability if you know if you're gonna sell it and get one of those those M1 or M2 max whichever a new battery to go that's great wow yeah so it and then I looked in the system info yeah and it was at 8595 of 8790 milliamp hours and shows 11 charging cycles that's great 11 oh that well that's how you know it's brand new yeah there you go oh that's great man so we'll care people how I I mean I know fruit juice still runs on on Ventura but it has been discontinued folks so yeah so just just so everybody knows it's that's which is too bad yeah well it's unnecessary anymore it is worthless there's no doubt about it but yeah yeah yeah it's it's its day has has come and gone and in its day it was a very necessary app but it's it it is no longer that yeah yeah all right we do have some quick tips to get to in fact we have a lot of quick tips to get to John you want to uh you want to start us off with Joe we'll start with Joe so Joe says I've got a quick tip that comes by the way of my seven-year-old daughter Phoebe a couple of days ago she asked for my assistance with something on her Macbook Pro when we woke the machine we were greeted with the multi-user login window she quickly typed the letter P to get to her login so she could enter her password I was like wait what did you just do after almost two decades of using a Mac I never knew you could do that anyway I'm not sure it's worthy of quick tips well no yes it is that's exactly a quick tip I had no idea that's great yeah thank you for that and then let's see and then the next one here here's another fun one from Ben as usual I discovered this quick tip while erently pressing a keyboard shortcut you know the little up-down button next to the where pop up menu in a save dialogue on the Mac oh yeah we're like shows the name at the top and then where you're gonna choose it and it's a little menu yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it expands and contracts the dialogue often the default state in an application is contracted and you have to know to click it to expand well I just discovered the command plus is the keyboard shortcut for this action I have no idea how long this has been around huh huh did you did I have you try this does it work John oh yeah it yes it works definitely amazing and also if you run default folder if you go to the small save dialogue yep it'll show it there'll be a little icon embedded in there and if you click on it it will expand the window and also show you all your default folder and categories and does it what sort of way to say it does command plus also toggle that in default folder not really okay so it's not the same keyboard shortcut for for default folder to do this okay but but default folder is within the dialogue is is what I'm saying oh oh I see what you're saying okay got it got it got it that makes sense okay yeah cool I like it I like it I'm well in well in Italy that the area that we're in South Tyrol is was part of Austria actually up until about a hundred years ago and because of that German is the most sort of prevalent language used there pretty much everybody there speaks German and Italian and and then also English is extremely common but but it's it's this it's it's different than elsewhere that I've been in Europe where there's the primary language if the country doesn't speak English like you know in Greece or or in France or in Spain but the secondary language is always English in this South Tyrolian region it's German and then the secondary language is Italian and so English isn't isn't in most places so I was messing with we used Google Translate and Apple's translate apps a lot and you know a side quick tip before you travel download the language files into those apps for offline use just in case you don't have a solid data connection like there you go however not only do they do do these apps both Google Translate and Apple do this they do where you can type in the words you can take a picture of like a menu and it'll just sort of magically change it on the screen and then it will also do audio where it will translate audio they both have a conversation mode where you can have it literally listen to actively simultaneously to two different people speaking two different languages and it will translate as you're going in in real time and it's really fascinating how well it works it obviously requires you to sort of speak and then pause and speak and then pause because it's got to do its translation and and and relay that translation back and forth but it's pretty smooth have you used any of these conversation features in either Apple or Google Translate Pete I have to some degree I have but I don't recall I was going to ask you what does it speak it or is it just print it on the screen both it speaks it and prints it yeah don't recall yeah I've never tried that so I'm gonna have to play with that some more because I recall you trying some earbuds it's a yes that did yeah on the fly and the guy was speaking Mandarin and it came right through yeah do you remember what he was saying to you we were just having a conversation about how loud it was in the room was really talking about but yeah but yes this works the same way it's it's really I was blown away with how smooth it was fascinating it's gonna make the world even smaller very soon that well that's the thing yeah even even just being able to take a picture of a menu because menus were either in it most many yeah most menus there were in like every dish was the description of it was listed in both German and then Italian but but English menus were few and far they were they were hard to I've used that a lot or menus street signs yeah all sorts yeah exactly the wrong gender bathroom yes yes exactly exactly yeah and then the other thing that I was using was safaris translate to English mode it this happens on the fly and it works on your phone it works on your Mac if you're viewing a I mean obviously my computer is set to English as the main language so it knows when I'm viewing a page that is not in English and then it offers kind of where you would find your password manager or reader mode or any of those you just tap on that little menu in safari and often not always but most of the time one of the options is translate to English and it it translates it within the page so you can still see everything the formatting remains where it should be in most cases it just translate the page to English on the fly yeah yeah so Andy little travel tips what's next John I think what's next is Keith okay I don't know if you've already mentioned this but it's cool I was doing some screen recording on my phone and mentioned to my 13 year old girl that we should replace the sounds and add voiceover to it she says you can do that already of course the 13 year old has eaten yeah if you long press the screen to recording button from the control center you will get a pop over that allows two things one it allows you to select the open app that you want to record nice and then presents a button for the microphone to turn it on so while it is screen recording you can do a voiceover I haven't played around with the volume control while recording it but that would be useful as it doesn't duck existing sounds when you speak I haven't found a way to toggle it on off while recording without going to control center maybe a tap back to do it that's pretty cool I didn't know that you could sort of the the the lead that's buried there is I didn't know that you could pick a specific app to record I I thought it was just because I've always done it and then trim the edges out and and you could if you had to go and like toggle the microphone on and off you could just go in and slice out those you know those those moments where you're going back and forth to turning the mic off but yeah huh that's pretty good just bring it to iMovie on the laptop and do it that way yeah yeah exactly I'll say that iMovie on the phone is an excellent editor but you know it's an even better editor on the phone is tiktok the tiktok video editor and stitcher together and like all of the tools in there are fantastic if you want to you know it if you want to create a tiktok that's like four different videos or something you can put them all together and then you can trim them in there and also set the elapsed time of each video so if you want to you know like people are showing like a morning routine or something you might not want to see somebody brush their teeth for two and a half minutes or something so you know you can compress that down to a five second thing where they're just like brushing really fast or making coffee or whatever like it's pretty amazing tiktok's video editor is one of the best that I have seen I was going to say on the phone but really anywhere for just doing simple things and then of course you can go through and do your voiceover afterwards which I think is an even better way to do things so yeah yeah no check out tiktok's editor too it's pretty good and I'm sure bonus tip when you're in control center if you hold down if you do the same thing if you hold down on flashlight timer calculator or wallet you will also get additional options yeah yeah yeah yeah cool we love these bonus quick tips it's good oh you want to take us to Scott John is that who's up next here yeah okay there we are okay Scott says I use the timers on my watch often when the countdown hits zero it starts vibrating and showing the done indicator on the screen there's a tiny X in the lower left corner and to end the timer that I've always had a problem tapping because of its size on location this morning I thought what happens if I just press the crown and I did that guess what it turns off the timer way easier oh so you just use the crown to dismiss the timer I love it okay I don't assume that would snooze it I was thought unless you get the end that you're gonna get get it back on again in nine minutes you know yeah I wonder if the alarm if it would snooze the alarm I think that's correct Pete I think the crown snoozes the alarm but dismisses the timer huh yeah I never knew that that would dismiss the timer that's pretty good it's pretty good as I was processing last week's show you know I always go through and find all the companies that we mentioned and send them out their emails and all that good stuff I came across the link to the Apple support article that we mentioned last week talking about how to use terminal to tell your computer to you know restart at a certain time every week because Ventura removed all of that from the you know from the user interface one thing I noticed in that article was it was referring to the PM set terminal command which is what you used to do all that and there was a link that brought me directly when I clicked it it said do you want to open terminal I was like sure and it brought me to the man page the documentation page in the terminal for that PM set command and it used and I'm putting this in the show notes so you folks don't have to remember this as I'm typing it but the URL that was there was x-man-page colon slash slash and then command name so in this case it was colon slash slash PM set and that's all it took so you can link directly to man pages which means here on this show whenever we talk about terminal commands we will link to their man pages for you because and maybe what we should do is link we'll use this the I think there's a man page for the man command which is super yeah there is so we will link to the man page for the the for the man command just to you know make things interesting yeah pretty good John Harvey he's next Harvey is next in one of your episodes you talked about setting multiple timers on Apple watch sometimes that can get confusing when you have multiple timers going as to which timer means what thing like when you were cooking or grilling something in need to to time it when multiple things will be done or need to be attended to here's a quick tip it turns out that all you have to do when you use the escalator to set a timer is name it so you might say escalating take a break timer for 10 minutes your timer will be named take a break then if you have to say set a take a break timer for 10 minutes sorry right I think because I set set a take a break timer for 10 minutes yes yeah I missed that your timer will be named take a break then if you another timer just name it something else pays lady set a call Dave timer for 30 minutes escalated doesn't almost get exactly what you label it but it is enough for you to figure out what the timer is for all the timers will show up on your watch and should be labeled with what you asked it to do this makes it easy to differentiate multiple timers on your watch unfortunately as you mentioned these multiple timers only work on an Apple watch not any Apple not any other Apple device that I know of and I'm gonna have to disagree with that Dave really yes because what I did is I actually tried the same so I tried it with the watch and it worked okay then it was like hmm do I have any other devices that use the s lady I tried it on my home pod mini and and it worked but here's the weird thing the timers were separate from the watch timers oh like each device has its own little world right that makes sense yeah yeah yeah yeah timers are not synced across devices I mean for obvious reasons right you've got multiple timer availability on the watch and as you found on the home pod on your Mac on your iPhone it's one timer actually I don't know there's no timers app on the map Mac I should I should take that back on the iPhone and iPad you get one timer at a time I believe multiple timers work very well with the Amazon a lady as well we do we use that in the kitchen all the time or we'll say you know set a bread timer for 54 minutes because that's how long sourdough cooks for in our house but you know you can also say you know set a whatever you know rice timer for for 12 minutes or however long the rice is supposed to take because I think normally it'll just call it like second timer correct you're right yeah it will let you but then you know you start stacking them and it's like well we which timer is that like you know which I have no idea I have no idea no totally fine just for fun if you want to see that one of Apple's best ads ever right was the timer in the cookie monster remember that one oh yeah that's right so go look that up on YouTube it's an absolute scream you know if I could save time in a bottle and you know he's just dying for those cookies to be done yeah yeah hey it turns out that there is in fact a timer in Ventura the clock app as P. M. Conaway in our discord live chat at mackey cub com slash discord points out if you launch the clock app there is the world clock the alarm the stopwatch and the timer tabs and if you go to the timer tab you can set a timer so that's that's a good one this is why I love doing the show and streaming it live because we get yeah we didn't have to wait a week to correct that I love it all right Bill Bill's got his own quick tip for us take it away Bill hey guys Bill from Menlo Park here I have a quick tip on AirPods Pro and using them with an old iPad mini I have a hand me down iPad mini to my wife is the prime iPad user in our household I also have the new AirPods Pro second-generation a Christmas gift to myself I use the iPad mini rarely mostly for videos I've downloaded on Netflix or HBO Max or Prime when we travel on a recent trip I tried to use my new AirPods with the old mini but unlike on my iPhone or MacBook they don't magically appear and connect in order to they show up in the Bluetooth settings the mini to only handles up to OS 12.5.5 by the way a quick bit of Google Foo after I got home brought me to this video on YouTube and I've included the link where it was shown that there is a little button on the back of the AirPods case that will put the AirPods into a normal Bluetooth discovery mode I hadn't realized a little circle on the back of the case was a button with your AirPods in the case you open the top hold the button and the LED on the case flashes white then using the Air iPads Bluetooth settings I could connect the new AirPods to the old iPad won't get the controls for active noise control but if you set up your AirPods to control that the press and hold on the Air pod itself you can do it if you have trouble I suggest shutting off Bluetooth temporarily on the other devices this not-so-quick tip may help others who hang onto their tech toys longer than average like I do take care enjoy the show always I've listened for years and don't get caught there's that sound that sound means I get to tell you about masterclass our sponsor with masterclass you can learn from the world's best minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you could learn scientific thinking and communication from Neil deGrasse Tyson you could learn science and problem-solving from Bill Nye you can learn how to think like an FBI profiler from John Douglas you can learn how to cook from Gordon Ramsay you can learn the art of negotiation from Chris Voss there's so many classes in fact masterclass has over 2,500 classes from a range of world-class instructors so that thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think I took that cooking class with Gordon Ramsay I've been to one of his restaurants and I loved those scrambled eggs if you've never had Gordon Ramsay scrambled eggs these things will blow you away well in this class one of the lessons is you learn how to make these scrambled eggs and they work like I did it it's amazing what's cool is each lesson is broken down there about 10 minutes in length in fact the scrambled eggs lesson in the Gordon Ramsay class was only six and a half minutes long which is which is great because you don't have to dedicate hours to taking the whole class at once you get to take it in bite sized chunks wherever you are works on your phone works on your Mac you can Apple TV like do whatever you want very cool stuff I highly recommend you check it out get unlimited access to every class and as a Mac Geekab listener you get 15% off an annual membership go to masterclass.com slash MGG now that's masterclass.com slash MGG for 15% off masterclass and our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode while we're here I've got a podcast to tell you about it's Mac break weekly you can get ready to join the podcast all about Apple from uncovering the latest Mac's iPhones iPads Apple Watches and Apple TV plus new innovations and rumblings inside Apple the Mac break weekly podcast covers it all go behind the curtain with twit.tv's Leo Laporte Renee Ritchie Andy and not co Alex Lindsay sometimes I'm even on there as they dive into everything Apple related get a new episode of Mac break weekly every Tuesday evening and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts like I said go check it out it's a good show and our thanks to Leo and the team for doing this swap with us so last week of course I was traveling and I mentioned that I was doing some work I did actually some work every day to make sure I stayed up to date with things and that's the only way that we're able to be here this morning doing the show because otherwise I'd probably be buried in emails and all that good stuff I as you know like to bring a screen with me so that I can have a second screen to use when I set up my sort of travel work environment and this time I brought the brand new VP 16 OLED from view Sonic this screen is is fantastic I it's a it's a 15.6 inch diagonal screen they call it a 16 inch screen fine 1080p OLED it looks so much better than the other 1080p screens that I've used at this size that OLED screen is awesome it's also got a very cool stand that folds up along the back of it so it folds flat easy to put in your suitcase the stand either acts as like a little kickstand that essentially rests the base of the screen on the desk and then this has a little kickstand that comes out behind it or the kickstand itself can be the base of the stand and you can have the screen up several inches off the desk it's a really cool design and like it worked flawlessly for me one of the nice parts is it's got it's got two usb-c ports on it so I had one of them running upstream to my Mac which gave me the display and then one of them running to power so that all I had to do was sit down and plug the one thing into my laptop and it started charging and fired up the screen of course so it's it's available from view Sonic I think you can get on an Amazon too the MSRP is 427.99 US dollars so yeah that's that's my first contribution to cool stuff found this week it was it was a lifesaver yeah it was a great piece of gear that's the one we saw it see it's the one we saw at CES and they were able to get me one before I left yeah it didn't give me one yeah yeah no this this screen is spectacular they were also showing off a 4k OLED screen at CES but that's not ready I think that's coming out like second half of this year let's say yeah so but this thing this thing blew me away it does have speakers in it I didn't really even use in my I mean I would I we had an extra bedroom in our Airbnb that I sort of made into my office and so I would just put my AirPods in and and you know go so it worked great yeah yeah that's good that's good thank goodness too man like it was so great at this trip happened at a bad time work wise for me to like go away because we were at CES and then we came back and at least two of us here were you know sick with whatever that thing was at CES that we got and that wiped me out for a couple of days and I so I I was leaving sort of without being caught up so being able to have that screen and and have a good work environment while I traveled it changed my my outlook for future trips you actually talked about that on your other show though the business brain on business brain that's correctly you know setting it up so you know one or two hours a day focus on that sort of stuff and then you can be present with your family instead of worrying about absolutely that's a big deal no it may it was a huge deal it was really nice because obviously we were visiting our daughter who lives over there now and I wanted to be there but I it was like we should do this in May yeah yeah so yeah good stuff what's what's your first contribution here John has it come from Steve is that right yes sweet Steve and Christopher so Steve says it's been a while since I submitted anything to you but when I received Gary Rosen wigs Rosen's wig he's been on the show we love Gary oops so sorry I mangled that macmost.com newsletter and yesterday he posted an article about his free clipboard manager a new free Mac utility app clip tools clip tools is a free clipboard manager and text selection utility for Mac from Mac most with it you can access your clipboard history save clips use programmable smart clips paste the date or time insert example text perform calculations and paste the result or replace the selection convert numbers to words sort lines and so much more huh check it out huh right a link to it that's cool have you have you played with it John have you no no okay do you you don't use a clipboard manager yet is that right not really um the um um golden chaos extension the better touch tool does have a clipboard manager okay so okay I have access to one I just yeah yeah yeah it's not really part of my my groove only because you haven't like I think a clipboard manager for most people it does take embracing some change so I'll just say that out out loud but having that stack of your clipboard available there is amazing to be able to copy multiple things and then still recall older stuff like I it's something that Apple I think should incorporate into every device it might be a little weird to do on iOS because I don't know how you would invoke it that wouldn't be clumsy but I would like to see them try but really I imagine it's especially useful for people coding yeah I mean yes I like I can't I use it so regularly in everything that I do that I okay yeah it's just part and parcel of my workflow like if if I use keyboard maestros because I have keyboard maestro already running for other reasons and so I you know it's just I don't want application creep or at least I try not to have it I have it just I try not to but if for whatever reason keyboard maestro isn't running on my mac I know almost immediately because as soon as I start doing anything with text it's like oh crap no no keyboard no no clipboard history shoot like I rely on it for things I'll copy stuff to the clipboard and I'll just know that it's going to be there later I can go grab it it's it's pretty awesome yeah it looks like set up may actually have one in there I don't know I think they have several yeah but Gary's is free so and Gary's Gary sounds pretty full-featured like in addition to just sort of the standard clipboard stuff it looks like his has like you said John it's got like calculations and and almost it sounds like maybe snippets as well so yeah I like that I'd never heard of it before yeah so I like these uh cool stuff found segments what do you got Pete I have this cool piece of gear that I actually picked up at CES for tweeting hey I'm here at the yee light that's YEE LIGHT yee light booth yeah and uh I tweeted that I was there with it and here you know here's my little giveaway so it's it it's up on the screen now both in my hand and uh all right there we go and uh it's also Dave's going to show the Amazon link to it it's $15 on amazon describe it so that the listeners know what it is about seven inches long by about an inch and a half to two inches wide okay it magnetically attached you take two little metal clips and you they have double-sided tape on them and you put them like up underneath the shelf I happen to have an armoire that I'm for years have been grabbing a flashlight when I need to find something in there and the cool thing about this it has uh two things that are really cool one it's rechargeable so it's got a usb-c rechargeable uh on the end and then it has a motion detector on it so when I open my armoire the light comes on and it has two different brightness settings that you can go to and man I I'm buying more of these I can tell you right now first of all I think under the counter and the kitchen is nice so I was just gonna say under the kitchen counter yep yeah near it'll also come on when when the mice run by yes well you know because no one has a mouse that's right and then uh but yeah in the armoire in a closet anywhere where you need light perfect I mean this this thing has been the coolest little find so absolutely just the fact that it's motion sensing and rechargeable and magnetically clips on so I'm able to just pull it down and recharge it and I haven't had to yet they're led so I imagine it'll go a year or more yeah they say that it's it'll last for five hours and always on mode but the the whole point of it is it doesn't need to be always on yeah it just it motion sense is wow that's pretty cool yeah so I've been enjoying the heck out of this thing it's it's a neat little light yeah they say it they they're the amazon listing says it'll last two months in motion sensor mode so yeah so I see look looking at your page there it says 1999 well there's two of them Pete there's there's the the 7.87 inch one which is what you have which is 1499 and then there's the double length 15.74 inch one which that's a that's five bucks more better for an under the counter to get exactly longer one yeah a little longer throw yep sure great little light that's so much fun I you know isn't it amazing like there's this and the the oh snap that we covered on another show yeah little things that you're just go brilliant yep I should have liked better yeah yeah exactly right yeah yeah all right John what's Zach got for us all right Zach has uh Zach taught me a new term every year or two I take a busman's holiday and I get an android phone I just picked up a pixel six pro on amazon since I can't use the messages app on my mac I've discovered mighty text they have a mac app they have an ipad at coming soon it's the power user text app that lets you see up to nine sms or mms messages on the screen at once and it will let you use your mac to start phone calls and tells you your android battery percentage that's pretty good that's pretty yeah yeah so if you want to make your android phone part of the family this sounds good uh yeah they say text from any device phone notifications on your computer photo and video syncing call notifications yeah just have just being able to sms I mean we we're so used to being able to sms from our our computers using the messages app because it syncs with our phones to be able to do that from the from an android phone that's yeah I can see that being huge last week kind of along the same lines whatsapp released their native mac app in beta and of course being in europe everybody uses whatsapp so it was perfect timing for me it's how we were communicating with our well I mean our airbnb host we used it to communicate amongst the family we use it to I mean what it drives me crazy that we hear in the US like that whatsapp isn't just a default part of everyone's messaging life here in the US and I think I was I was looking into this trying to figure out why because for those of you who haven't used whatsapp it's it's a a messaging app that is uses your data connection so it's it's not sms it's it think of it as i message but open to everyone so not just for apple users and it means that you get like have you ever tried like sharing especially in a group sharing like videos or images in a in a sms group like a green bubble group it sucks because sms and mms like just munges all of that stuff and dilutes it down with whatsapp it's a data protocol and it works for iphone it works for android it works for mac now it works for you can get an ipad app you can use the web it it's end-to-end encrypted but I I it just drives me crazy that we don't use it sort of ubiquitously here like like everyone that's not in north america does and I think the reason that it hasn't caught on is that we have unlimited sms as part of our plans here in in north america in the u.s and canada that's not the case everywhere you you know you get limited sms still in a lot of places or at least you did for long enough that it sort of pushed everybody to whatsapp but it's so much better than than trying to deal with sms so I was stoked to see the mac app come out and I look forward to yeah that's awesome I think I could be wrong but you can also do voice and face time type calls video calls over it as well right thank you yes I had a I had a call while I was there and I just used whatsapp which again is great because I was using a data-only european plan for my phone now I could have made calls on my mint mobile plan but it would have cost me but making calls over whatsapp just used the data and that was you know cheap the cool thing I'll tell you one use we did for it back when I was doing union work we would be at a conference where all the airline unions were together in one place and you know there's a conference going on and of course our mec executive council yeah would would be all in one whatsapp group and you could say hey I need the safety chairman in conference room B to cover something and you just blast that out to the group so you could communicate to your entire group so even if the safety chairman didn't see it someone else in our group would go oh hey rich you need to go over there yeah yeah no I um well for group communications for group communications yeah every conference I go I mean when we were at CES I was part of the you know a CES sort of tech whatsapp group uh I'm part of one for you know the upcoming podcast movement I'm part of one for south by southwest I mean it's just because it's that rich data messaging that is cross-platform it knows no bounds it's it's I message for all ish I mean it's owned by meta so whatever but it's all end-to-end encrypted it's you know it's fine so yeah it's good speaking of handy apps to use when you travel so it was the three of us that flew out and back my wife my son and I Lisa and I are both global entry members meaning we get to go to the the fast line when you're re-entering the United States and it works fine it just scans your face you get a little receipt you walk through the thing at Boston Logan the global entry line is is poorly designed just from a logistic standpoint because there's like a line that you have to stand in after you get your receipt but you have to walk past that line in order to go to one of the kiosks to get it so it's it's a it's a cluster is really what it is it's it's it moves quickly but it would move even better if it were actually designed efficiently our son does not have global entry uh so he and if you're gonna get TSA pre-check just spend the extra $15 and get global entry and that way you get both and you're you're good to go but uh our son does not have global entry because it's a pain in the neck to get it you gotta go for the interview and and all that stuff um so he will say they renewed mine with a FaceTime interview oh that's good to know so I did not have to go to to the airport to get my re-interview so sorry no I'm glad you for you to share that that's that's good for us to know you if you can just live through it once then you're good to go um but he found he so so he used the mobile passport control app which you just download onto your phone uh you can set it all up ahead ahead of time you you take a picture of your passport you enter in details about your flight and then when you land you tell it okay I'm here in Boston start the timer and the line that he went in was it was a very small line um it it was small corral because he was literally the only one in it the the line was labeled for uh ambassadors and mobile passport users and so it's like are you a diplomat or did you download an app he was the only person in the line he finished well ahead of Lisa and me with the uh with global entry and of course it he saved the 15 bucks he is a pre-check member obviously so you know we paid the 85 bucks for the five years for him but but yeah there's almost no reason I mean I'm saying if you're gonna bother with pre-check get the global entry and if if all else is equal I would as a global entry member I can choose either once I choose to use the mobile passport control for that particular entry I can't use global entry so you you have to pick before you really know the length of the lines but at least in Boston Logan the the few times we've done it there has been no line for mobile entry mobile uh mobile passport and yeah yeah so which do you use Pete when you come back in uh I have global entry I have your mobile passport the one total cluster that I was involved in was at San Francisco coming back from Asia one time and I found out the hard way I think I used mobile passport and I got up there and it turned out I was in the global entry line and they're like yeah you gotta go back to the back of the line again and I'd already stood there like half an hour and that sucks yeah so yeah it was yeah that's a good thing to know you can do one or the other you can't choose one and then do the other well unless you choose global entry see the line is super long launch the app and and push the button and then go to the mobile mobile passport line right point yeah yeah so I like that sort of was my plan is I had my mobile passport thing sort of not I hadn't started it but it's pretty quick once you get all your data in there and it was like oh yeah I know I'm doing this this is good yep it was fine it's just it's just a cluster at Boston Logan everything's a cluster there but yeah get that app folks if you're doing any international travel that's uh that and what's app you're gonna want both of those apps for your international travel we got more time we have more cool stuff found Pete you want to take us to uh to your next one yeah so we saw these at CES the AWOL AWOL vision laser projectors they had an LTV 3500 and an LTV 2500 on display the 3500 is 3500 lumens 4k uhd triple laser uh comes with the 3d glasses that kind of thing the 2500 I don't know if that comes with the 3d glasses I think it does but uh oddly enough Dave you may recall the 3500 was in kind of a darkened booth with good sound and all that sort of thing yeah 2500 was out in the brightly lit area and it was killing it that thing looked like an OLED TV screw blew me away and it's such a short throw too like it's uh 20 inches from the wall it will project 80 to 150 inch screen and and and for those of you that that understand or are thinking about the physics of it uh this is just below where your screen is it's got a you know sharp angle that it shoots up at your screen but it does all of the aspect ratio correction knowing that angle and so you see it as you're supposed to see it as though it was being projected perfectly onto it and the question I didn't ask at CES but subsequently found out is yeah what if I don't want it on the floor in front of my screen what if I want to hang it on the ceiling guess what yeah it's a simple you hang it on the it's got a ceiling mount and it what yeah so it'll do it from so it doesn't have to be right there it's just that it can be or a low table in front of the screen it will hang from the ceiling as well um I actually did a about a three minute video about this for cool stuff found uh up at the mechicab website um let's see what else uh I think 2500 lumens but I'm telling you we were in a brightly lit room it did not matter in the least it looked like an OLED TV uh and and Steven I forgive me for forgetting his last name at the booth said that's our competition we're not competing with other projectors we know we're better than they are we're trying to compete with OLED TVs it's pretty cool so yeah and then I mean if you've got $16,000 laying around they have this beautiful case uh piece of furniture basically that automatically raises the screen pulls out the projector turns it on and when you're done with it it folds down the screen and closes up and it's just like a low coffee table over by the wall it's a it was a beautiful piece of gear um but but the 2500 is only like 2500 bucks right so yeah and um yeah it which is an incredible price for oh what you get absolutely goes away any projector I've ever had it they have 36 watt built-in stereo speakers um you know all the keystone correction which means you know the angle that it shoots at yeah uh let's see 30 milliseconds input lag at 4k 60 hertz so it's okay for gaming it's it's not a bad gaming uh screen I mean it isn't perfect for for they say themselves this isn't great for uh you know 1v1 shooter games yeah twitchy gaming sure yeah but for uh driving mario kart uh those type of games it does just fine um trying to think there's anything else jumping out off the screen at me here amazing yeah triple laser 25 000 hours which is uh roughly just almost four years three and a half years of constant viewing yeah right and if you use it six hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year you're looking at 11 years before you're gonna have to replace the laser so that's amazing yeah very cool really neat piece of gear I want to yeah of course we do yeah that's right one for inside one for outside people absolutely yeah man absolutely I do that sometimes now I actually have a screen out there that uh yeah in the summer evenings movie night outside absolutely well you get I mean with this with this laser I bet you could do summer daytime yeah yeah yeah uh one of my favorite things from CES and that I've been using since the moment I got home and was happy to get home to it again is yet another three-way charger the three-in-one charging station bedside table this one comes from Otterbox it is MagSafe approved by Apple MFI approved which means it'll charge at a full 15 watts it charges the uh the phone MagSafe you just pop it on there charges the watch MagSafe and what I'd like about this is it's not huge like the Belkin one but it does put the watch right next to the phone so the watch isn't behind the phone it's sort of the base of it is the same size as the ones that have the watch behind the phone very very tight and compact but this one the watch is right next to the phone so you can kind of see both and they're right there very well done and then the base of it also has a a chi pad in like a little tray for built for AirPods you could put a phone there it's it's got a little bit of a gap it's it's not optimal for that but as you might expect it's 150 bucks because it is MFI approved and they get to say MagSafe as opposed to just magnetic so if you want just the magnetic one the one Pete found for like 36 bucks there you go charges at seven and a half watts this one charges at 15 but you're paying the Apple tax on it really nice piece of gear so I'm I'm happy with this thing so I wanted to share so I've got a question Dave yes and you may or may not be able to answer it then but so I have the you know the fast charger came with my watch ultra yeah you know that has it's MFI approved for the fast charging and all that but should I use the slow charger I did last night just for grins to go you know what I don't know if it's harder on the battery to fast charge it yeah huh thoughts on that John Dave anyone I would go ahead John yeah fast charging as far as I know will generate more heat and heat is the enemy so but that's a generic statement it is a true generic statement and as I understand it the way Apple manages that it doesn't let it pull 15 watts all the way up to 100 it'll it'll do 15 watts at you know when you're when you're down at like you know 10 15 20 30 percent and as you get closer to the top it ratchets itself back so I think the the iPhone and the watch just like your MacBook you know I mean you can plug your your MacBook into a 100 watt charger rarely will it actually use 100 watts because that's terrible for the battery so it slows down as you as you get close and and then you know as I talked about in the opening quick tip on your Mac which is also true of your phone and your watch when it hits 80 percent if you have it on optimized charging it will wait and and just do the last little bit so that so I I don't you're right that heat is bad but I I haven't heard anyone that's dug into it say not to use fast charging I mean really if you want to do the right thing for your battery going with John's heat is bad statement which is correct never use any sort of magnetic charging never use induction charging only ever plug it in because that way you're not having that heat scenario generated by the charging mechanism the battery is going to heat up when it charges anyway adding you know the the induction charging of MagSafe adds to that heat so you're better off kind of waiting now but there's one you can't plug in the watch ever correct right fair everyone's fair speculation that the you know the coming iPhones are not going to have any ports on them whatsoever you think that'll happen or not no I mean I like how do you listen obviously yeah how do you wipe an iPhone like the the whole how do you troubleshoot the thing there's got to be a way to plug into I mean there is with the watch like if you open up the the connectors there's those little things that presumably Apple can use if they need to yeah okay to do that so yeah I don't they may do that with the phone then ultimately yeah I mean everything I've heard serviceable right everything I've heard is that the phone is just going to usb-c okay um but but but you know I mean I don't actually know anything just yeah hey well I'm down a rat hole let me yeah man let me get one other rat hole too real quick sure p.m. kind of way in the chat room mentioned that the inventor of the clock app has a stopwatch yeah we talked about that earlier did I miss it you totally did don't get old it's bad for your memory it's all good man John what do you have next um uh let electronic caregiver so okay them saw them at the show what caught my eye is I walked by and there was a v r a r assistant on the screen and so we went through some of the steps here so what what I would say is that it's it's a platform to get between you a caregiver and a physician depending on what you need and it encourages a lot of good habits so one thing he demonstrated is a habit log your medications or let it remind you to take your medication every day if you have certain conditions it can interface with certain devices like a thermometer you know bluetooth thermometer on it or a cuff that can take your your your pulse and all that and it can also interact with you know with the physician if you do have uh if some of your values are out of spec then it will let people know whether it's a caregiver or a physician um that is this use your your phone your ipad like what's the it's it's its own thing it's own thing got it yeah I think it's a windows machine oh under the hood but but you regardless of what it is it's sort of part and parcel of it and it's it electronic it's called electronic caregiver is that right correct yeah um it can instruct your caregivers on how to interact with um uh with the person they're taking care of when certain things come up um it provides a portal to get behavioral health which um you know especially if you're locked up inside all day you may need that yeah we all I I think regardless of whether we're locked up inside all day I think making I know it's no joking matter to me I think no you're mental yeah I I'll say it in a trite way I think every single one of us would benefit from seeing a therapist I'll just like that that that's there's there's a lot of good that can happen there and and just being able to talk things out so yeah no that's great that's great yeah um yeah I think I mentioned this but you know you can get one of those um you know they'll guide you on the use of the uh you know I fallen and I can't get up thing sure so if if you need help uh it offers multiple ways for you to get that as well cool cool so check them out if you're if you're taking care if you if you're caring for someone that can't care for themself then I think this is a neat platform to do that pretty cool yeah uh the next step I have is is nothing quite as as earth shattering as that but it's from Jeremy it's called the pebble bee and it is a 2999 find my capable tracker uh he says I found it on Jeremy says I found it on amazon it's similar to the chipolo tracker just less expensive and still works with find my uh and they've been pretty responsive to questions on amazon yeah it it's um it it's a flat sort of thin wallet shaped tracker if you will and uh and yeah it's you know find my it participates in the find my network meaning it's you know it's you're gonna be able to get what you need out of it wouldn't you know as soon as I glued a uh air tag thing onto my wallet of course an air tag in there they come out with a flat credit card size that's right if only if only we had done this csf when Jeremy sent it about a month ago maybe uh yeah sorry maybe that wasn't quite a month ago maybe three weeks ago but but yeah yeah good stuff um ben's got a fun little one right john oh yes wait it's a web page you get to visit right is it it does this yeah yeah here we go um appear in my vocal group just inform me about why to mate a free youtube downloader check it out um on youtube go to the video you want to download um and then he has a little trick here in the url type pi after youtube and before com like this www.youtubepi.com slash and then the uh the watch code for that particular video um you can also just go directly to why to mate um so this isn't an app that you download this is a web page that will do the conversion of the video you request and let you download it is that right how are they not being shut down um good question right i mean like like that seems i bet they appear to youtube is just somebody watching the video yeah but you know i know they could still shut it down they they got big brains over there well and and where the reason i asked that question is it's one thing to use like you know one of the the various uh youtube downloader apps on your computer right because you're downloading the youtube video and then your then then you're converting it locally is what's happening right with this they are uh converting it on their end and then letting you download from them a drm ripped version of content that is youtube's or belongs to a content creator on youtube that's like like they are now participating in stealing content they you know it's like it adds yeah absolutely yeah so i don't like i mean they're still they're still up as of as of this moment when we're recording the show uh huh all right well you know we'll see how long they last right yep pete what's next so listener john writes cinder sorhos i hope i didn't push oh i think i think you got that right yeah he just released a new on the mac app store app called amazing ai that lets you let's you run stable diffusion on an m1 or m2 mac and oh by the way ventura 13.1 13.0 it do not work the okay the link is indeed in the uh in the show notes give me in the show notes in your butt yeah uh yeah this looks pretty cool it's it it's like using the the dolly thing that we talked about a couple of weeks ago yeah so here it is i'm back so what is stable diffusion stable diffusion is an open source image generation app unlike dolly or mid journey every image creation happens on your own machine and there are no fees are using it except for your electricity bill and note if you do install it you might initially think it's not working because it's uh image generation is taking place on your local machine not a bank of high powered servers in the cloud he says his first image took uh a little over a minute to render and he's on a mac book pro the link is in the show notes i've played with it a little bit and yeah i've had some really good results and and some pretty stupid results but but you know i mean it that's uh machine learning uh it it was mostly very good and a lot of fun like i had santa in a snowstorm um santa flying in a snowstorm and and there was santa off the ground and snow all around him and and it came out pretty good uh when you try to get too granular you know like i had i would try to uh tiger flying because i have a grumman tiger you know tiger flying in a rainstorm in a snowstorm it just you know had like snow and then black and orange stripes sure okay yeah yeah i don't get it yeah right yeah makes sense put a fun little app to play with yeah that's cool i like it that's cool fun stuff yeah uh let's see next up erin uh talking about ai while we're on the subject erin says check out waves clarity vx this it's 36 bucks and it's a uh a plugin and an engine that uses ai to clean up vocals and dialogues so helpful like if you do an interview with someone that you've recorded and you want to clean that up this is now kind of taking it to the next level and using that whole machine learning model to uh to to clean that stuff up without you having to like painstakingly go through and do all that hard work and for so yeah so dave tell me uh what does cleanup mean to you so if you've got you know a lot of background noise wind static you know extra reverb in a room it like to be able to d reverb things is magic i i've i've done this with isotopes rx plugin in the in the past and it's amazing so um so i'm curious to sort of compare that to to waves clarity vx yeah i would love to if anyone ever hears of please let me know something that you could take out the ums the uhs the the so and i get that that's difficult but i would think that at some point you'd be able to go i want to take out all the ansos the um like and you knows yeah you know i will type you know or make the sound you know take it out i i think rx 10 from isotope will get you there uh because well it's smart enough like i've i've done it where i take the audio from this show and feed it in now it takes a little bit for it you know a few minutes for it to examine everything but then it knows that there are multiple speakers and if i say okay name speaker a john and name speaker b pete and name speaker you know c david whatever then it like the rest i can say isolate john's parts if john's audio is too low i could bring that up uh and it it it will you can also search by text phrases so it's converting it at least internally to words so i like i haven't used it to you know d um to take out words like you can take out hum and re d reverb and all of those things sure but i don't like it's there like you could i'm just trying to think if it's got some automated way of pulling those things out you certainly could search for them and then you know chop the audio that way i don't know so it'd be worth taking a look at yeah i'm certainly gonna play with it there's no doubt about it uh i just know that you know i spend way too much time on my show pulling out that stuff and i probably shouldn't i don't think people are bothered by the verbal ticks particularly my own as i am but right right i i you to a point that is correct uh as i go through you know i edit the ads i pre-record the ads for the show so that i can keep them tight and the process of doing that i edit the ads down and it highlights for me all the verbal ticks that i have makes me aware of them and certainly hasn't ridden me of them entirely but just that process the the self-awareness it helps sure you try to remove those from the thing and i tell the guests before they come on i said i'd much rather have a silence than a um and so that's a lot harder for me to find and pull out than the silence i can see the silence and silence isn't such a bad thing either right like in our heads when we're talking silence is much longer to us than it is to the people who are listening and so just waiting to speak and learning that you don't need to say and then i went to this and like that gets pretty annoying uh you don't need to do that hard to get used to by the way but it is really is much harder than i ever thought it would be yeah yeah yeah yeah all right we got we got time for one more and i wanted to share this thing that mike sent in it's called mac or the url is mac apps dot link i had heard people talk about an app for windows called ninite ninite that let you just select the apps that you wanted to put uh on your windows machine and then it would just download them and automatically install them mac apps dot link is like ninite for mac you select the apps that you want to install from a web page you click to download them and then boom it puts them uh on your computer so thank you for sharing that with us mike i uh i appreciate that next time i set up a new mac which might be this week on this particular one because gotta do it i core sound the core audio i i need to know if a clean slate on this computer will solve the problem that i'm having or if it's just ventura versus intel versus core audio is you know is is just a non-starter the way that i need to integrate both hardware and software audio devices i don't know machine and read i'm gonna i'm gonna wipe it clean and try it yeah first yeah yeah i'm not happy about this pete but but i need to know before i replace it because if i replace it i want to know do i just take migration assistant and let that you know convert me over and be done with it or do i do i need to start from scratch anyway and so it's like well if i'm gonna do that i might as well do it now so later this week i've carved out some time on my schedule if i can actually keep that time carved out on my schedule by the time we record again i should know the answer to this but uh but you know that time won't come unless the show ends pete john we gotta uh we gotta wrap it up today fun one the time has come the walrus said got anything else to uh share john before we uh before we head out of here not at the moment all right thanks to the folks at cash fly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you they also get another show to you that's pete's aviation podcast so there i was go check that out at so there i was dot us we've got merch you can wear a t-shirt that looks just like the one pete's wearing if you're watching the video says don't get caught on the front very cool shirt go to matkeykev.com slash merch to get yours that's what we got make sure to check out masterclass at masterclass.com slash mg g make sure to check out all our sponsors you go to matkeykev.com slash sponsors or just go to matkeykev.com and click on sponsors at the top there we list all the active deals whether it's an current sponsor or not we've got you covered it's good to be back john what's pete's shirt say again um don't get caught made it does that it does later