Ask The Tech Guys 2002 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Ask the Tech guys. Leo Laporte is still out, but don't worry, there were lots of great questions today. We had one caller who said look, I've got an iPhone 12. Is it worth upgrading to the iPhone 15? Plus, Dick DeBartolo joined us to talk about magnets how do they work? And another great gizmo. Plus a question about recording the boot sequence of a Mac to show employees how to log in and use their machine. All of that is coming up on Ask the Tech guys.

Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Tweet.

This is Ask the Tech guys with Mikah Sargent, Episode 2002, recorded Sunday, November 26, 2023. Therapy may help. This episode of Ask the Tech guys is brought to you by Cachefly, delivering rich media content up to 159% faster than other major CDNs. Join Cachefly, the world's fastest CDN. Your website visitors will love Cachefly's lag-free video loading, hyperfast downloads and friction-free transaction processing. Learn how to get your first month free at cachefly.com/twit.

0:01:20 - Leo Laporte
Listeners of this program get an ad-free version if they're members of Club TWiT. $7 a month gives you ad-free versions of all of our shows, plus membership in the Club TWiT Discord, a great clubhouse for TWiT listeners. And finally the TWiT Plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Linux Show and more. Go to twit.tv/clubtwit, and thanks for your support.

0:01:45 - Mikah Sargent
Hello and welcome to Ask the Tech Guys. Today it is just a tech guy, one of the two, as Leo Laporte is not here with us this week. He will be back soon, I believe in two weeks time. You will see him again on Ask the Tech Guys and you'll see him sooner on other shows as he makes his way back from his retreat. But today I am solo hosting this episode of Ask the Tech Guys and if you're tuning in, you probably know what this show is all about. It's all about taking your tech questions and doing our best or in case my best to answer them. We talk about all things internet, ai, home theater gadgets, gizmos and everything in between. It's a great time, and I'm thankful for all of you who join to ask questions. So how do you actually ask questions? Well, we have many ways of doing so. First, you can head to call.twit.tv on your device of choice. We suggest using a phone because if you open up the browser on your phone, you head to calltwittv, you will get a little prompt to join a Zoom call. You'll be taken into the Zoom stage where you kind of hang out and when we have you come up into our little portal here that we have, you'll be able to answer your question. That is one way of doing it, but you could also call us at 8887242884. When you call that number, you will be able to join us also via Zoom, but I won't feel that way. It'll feel like you're just making a call. Importantly, when you call that number while we're live on stage or on air, what we need you to do is, if you're brought into the room to get to actually ask your question, hit star six to unmute yourself. That will let you chat with us and then, if you call that number during the week while we are not on air, you could actually leave a voicemail. So that's a great way of doing it as well. The last option is to email us attwittv. When you head to ATG or when you email atg@twit.tv with your simple text based question or your audio or video attachment, we'll be able to get that there and answer it. I have a load of emails here ready to be answered, so we thank you for your questions.

Before we do dig into all of that, I wanted to take a second to talk a little bit about deals. We are after Thanksgiving, so technically here in the United States, thanksgiving takes place on a Thursday and technically, the day following that is Black Friday. Black Friday is well, it's not even. Technically it is the day that follows Thanksgiving and it is Black Friday, but it's come to expand to be so much more. But we'll talk about Black Friday first. I have heard, I was told, that the reason it is called Black Friday is because it is an opportunity for companies to get into the Black, Meaning that they are sort of rounding out the year selling the products that they have to make sure that the balance books look good, that the budget is in place and that profitability and revenue are all where they should be and that is being in the Black. And so in order to support that necessity, they have these great deals in some cases that are called Black Friday. Now Black Friday in the United States and elsewhere has expanded and it has honestly become kind of a whole month. November tends to be this deals month at the end of the year, but following Black Friday into the weekend up until the next Monday, which is tomorrow.

As we record this show, that is where Cyber Monday takes place, which was kind of the first extension of Black Friday. Black Friday started to creep into the weekend and then you got around to Monday and that was the day where you had lots of great deals online. Over time, these deals have gotten to be a lot of nonsense. In many cases, the deals are not as they appear to be, or may not even be a heavily discounted item, but occasionally you will come across some great deals. So I wanted to talk this morning about how to find good deals at this time of year, but also the year round, one of the first places that, if you are a tech person or if you are wanting to buy gadgets specifically, I truly believe you can't go wrong visiting any of the big tech sites and finding one of their articles on deals. So, for example, the Verge has a deal page from Nathan Edwards and it's currently called the best early Cyber Monday deals. So Nathan Edwards is adding different deals to this page, and what's great about this is Nathan Edwards, specifically, has worked at a company called the Wire Cutter, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, and so the deal hunting is really good here.

So let's take a look at this page just to see kind of what's going on. So it's got kind of a spotlight. It talks about headphone and earbud deals. So one of these is Apple's second generation AirPods Pro and it has the USB-C charging case. Apple itself is not a deals company, but the way that you can get good deals on products from Apple is through its partners. It's the different places where these products are sold. So, for example, amazon, target and Best Buy, which all sell Apple products, will often have deals that you can go and find. So right now, the second generation AirPods Pro with that USB-C charging case is 24% off. Deals on the Google Pixel, sonos devices, electric screwdriver, which is kind of cool.

But as we go down here, we can see some of the main big deals, but also different sort of different categories of deals. Let me find that. So, for example, the best headphone and earbud deals again AirPods, bose, quiet Comfort these are kind of the big names that you will have heard Leo and I talk about in the past when people are calling in with their recommendations, writing in with the recommendations. So, again, something like the Verge or another main tech site is a great place to go if you're looking specifically for good deals on tech stuff. When it comes to good deals in general, there is one place I go and that is Wirecutter, now owned by the New York Times, and that's why it's dropped the V in front of the Wirecutter. It is now just Wirecutter, and they have a team that is constantly making sure that the best deals are gathered and available. So, right now, 175 out of the 118, so they've reviewed 118,000 different deals and found the 175 that are actually deals, because that's the thing you will often see these products marched down, but the deals aren't that great. So thus far, 175 deals are the ones.

Now, what is this? But one of our, one of the sponsors on our network, brooklyn, and currently the all season down Comfortor in full or queen size is on sale, and the Wirecutter has, in the past, recommended this specific Comfortor, and so they found that this deal was good and worth it, as opposed to being some of the deals that aren't. If you're in the market for a photo printer, then this is a good deal on that, and so you can scroll through this huge list of items 175 and find those, and the Wirecutter did this with Black Friday as well. So when you, if you, head to Amazon or another online site that sells products, you'll be presented with so many different options and going through them, you'll find oh right, a lot of this is stuff that's junk, frankly, that I don't need, that I don't want. How do I find the good stuff? For me, that has always been Wirecutter, which is sifting through the cruft to really find the good stuff. Now, this is particularly helpful around these special deals holidays, because they do have these special guides that are all about, you know, cyber Monday or Black Friday.

But another place that I will use and this is something that you can use year round is a little site called CamelCamelCamel, and it is quite literally spelled out C A M E L, c A M E L, C A M E L dot com. camelcamelcamel is a site that helps you track Amazon prices and be able to get notifications when those prices are what you want them to be. So let's head over to Amazon and let's take a look at the site, and I can see that they have headphones and earbuds on sale, so we'll click on this as a Cyber Monday deal, and we see that they have Beats Studio Pro, which are currently more than 50% off. So I'll click on this and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this link up here and copy it and then I'm going to go to the Camel Camel Camel page and for the in the find Amazon products thing, I will just simply paste that link and do a search. This will bring up the, the actual Beats Studio Pro from the website and what I can do is I can scroll down and look at its price history. So, for as long as this device has been listed on Amazon, these are the different prices at which it was sold. So it looks like $350 up until just before September, at which point the price dropped down to $250, rose back up to $350, dropped rose, dropped rose and between September and October was back at that $350 price point before it dropped down to a little over $160. Again, back up, back down and then now it is at the best price that it's ever been at, which is $170. So you can see they will give a tag, this little tag over here that says best price. So I know that $169.95 that is the best, in the sense of lowest price that it has ever been offered from a, from a first party seller on Amazon. You can then, if you create a Campbell Campbell Campbell account, create a price watch, and what this does is it let it has Campbell Campbell Campbell. Look at Amazon and watch for price changes and when a product hits a price that you want it to hit, then that price, then it will email you and let you know hey, this device or item is on sale. So let's head over into the Cyber Monday deals here and just find something that's available for sale on Amazon, so this Canon Pixima Pro. So we'll copy the link and we'll pop over and paste that in and, oops, that's because it's a redirect. So let me have that redirect real quick. And so then we go to this page, we grab this link and, by the way, you can also create a little bookmarklet that will give you this same option. If you don't, if you use a browser other than Safari, you will also be able to use the Campbell Campbell Campbell extension if you'd like.

Now I'm going to create a price watch, and this is what's great about creating a price watch is that you're given the option to say if any price drop happens. If it drops by 3%, if it drops by 5%, by 7%, by 10%, let me know. Now, because this is already at its best price, it doesn't have more options. But if it was listed at, say, $415 and it Campbell Campbell Campbell knows that at some point it was listed for 400, it will let you know hey, this is the best price that it's ever been listed at. I will send you a notification when it reaches the best price again.

So I have loads of different products that I have considered purchasing in the past saved in my price watches and at any given time I will get emails that say hey, this is available for that price that you had wanted. A really good example of this is that every time Black Friday rolls around or any sort of deals, holiday rolls around, anker tends to put their products on some sort of sale. So pretty regularly I'll get an email that says hey, you know all those anchor products that you have listed that you wanted to get. Yeah, those are on sale, those are available. You can check those out and be able to get it at that reduced price. I think Campbell Campbell Campbell is fantastic. It has saved me loads of money and given me the ability to you know again track that best price. Or, in some cases, what I've used it for is when a product is out of stock. Setting a price watch for the Amazon price of any adjustment will let me know. Oh, they're listing it again. It's finally available for you to purchase. So it's a little bit of a kind of restock system and also a price watch system and again, that can be used outside of Black Friday, outside of those deals. So it's well worth checking out those options.

But yes, between something like the Verge or another tech site that is specifically focused on make, exactly someone said in the in the chat anchor products are on sale more often than not. That is very true. That's kind of sort of part of their business and it's great because then you can get it on sale and you can save some money. But finding a tech site for tech stuff or another site if you know you're for home goods, there are likely sites out there that are specific to home goods during the year They'll focus on those deals during the Cyber Monday, black Friday deals, holidays, and then any time of the year something like Camel Camel Camel can help you find good deals. And one thing I want to mention too is that with the wire cutter on the side you will find a list of daily deals and this is available again all year round, so you are able to see kind of different products that that wire cutter has maybe recommended in the past I think are good, and will then give you a notification. You know, letting you know, not a notification, but give you a list of these items that you can then purchase at a reduced price. So it's well worth checking that out as well, and again, because there's so much here.

Another feature that I like with Camel Camel Camel is that they have a popular section, which, if you, if you ever need some retail therapy, the popular section is a lot of fun because it will just show you some of the products that are popular with the Camel Camel Camel community. So these are things that people are either just clicking on or actually going through and purchasing, so sometimes you can find some good deals that may not be listed. It's funny this two terabyte extreme portable SSD is on my price watch list and I keep getting notified that it's on sale, but all of these products are ones that are that have great deals. Either you know best price or have good deals, and then you can also actually, you know keep track of them if you'd like. And then there is also a top drops section so it will show you how much these these have dropped, so if they've gone, for example, this book went from I think it's actually a comic, but it went from $25 to now just $1.99. So you can sort these by how much of a discount has actually taken place on these different items. So Camel, camel, camel even if you don't plug in any of your own personal stuff also gives you just good deals across Amazon itself. That is my little rundown of different deals that you can find, be it during the deals holiday season of November or during the year, and I think that means it's time for us to take our first break here on Ask the Tech Guys, it's just me this week, Mikah Sargent, as Leo Laporte is out. He'll be back in a couple of weeks to join me back on the show, but in the meantime, let me tell you about HID Global.

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0:21:40 - John Ashley
Alright, I'm going to try and move Mark into our breakout room.

0:21:45 - Mikah Sargent
Mark, get ready, you are being moved into the breakout room. A reminder to those of you who call in at calltwittv if you have a question, be sure to click the button it's typically at the bottom of the UI that says raise hand. You need to click that raise hand button if you have a question. That way we know that you have a question and that you are not just kind of hanging out in the Zoom room, because we do have some folks who just like to hang out there, which is totally fine. So Mark is making his move and once we have him there then he'll come up on our Stargate. For those of you who are watching, for those of you who are listening, I'm sure momentarily we'll hear Mark say hello and tell us where, from whence, he hails.

0:22:35 - Caller
Hi. Well, the background is the Colorado River, but I'm in Tustin, California.

0:22:40 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, okay. Well, hello, mark, I do believe I remember you.

0:22:44 - Caller
Yeah, I'm calling back for a couple things and I wrote them down. Awesome. A while back you said you had an issue with long COVID and I have something for that if you want it. We don't have to do it on air now, but if you wanted it it's worked for me and I had like high heart rate for six months after COVID and I took these two supplements and the NIH. I got it from the NIH.

0:23:05 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, okay, and you know we've got a lot of listeners, I'm sure, out there who would benefit from hearing what's worked for other people, so tell me about it.

0:23:15 - Caller
It's just NAC and you can get them from now products. Just I get consumer labs which tests vitamins and supplements to make sure that they're okay and don't have any contaminations. And so now supplements, NAC and bromelain.

0:23:31 - Mikah Sargent
I think. Sorry, I was going to say I think I have a friend who is suffering from a really intense case of long COVID and had mentioned some of these before.

0:23:44 - Caller
Yeah, what it does is it just simply unfolds the COVID spike proteins, which just clears them. I mean, if they're no longer folded to be a COVID spike protein, they stop doing damage, so and then they get cleared out. So that's basically the mechanism.

0:24:00 - Mikah Sargent
Nice.

0:24:01 - Caller
So yeah, and so any else. So yeah, it's just NAC. I'm not going to. I forget exactly how to say NAC. Something else cysteine but I forget exactly how to say it. I could run and get the bottles to show them if you want.

0:24:16 - Mikah Sargent
No, that's, okay, yeah, we'll stick with just the names there.

0:24:19 - Caller
Yeah, just I want to go through and I couldn't find the Sorry, the sync thing. What is it? Youtube videos that Theo? Was going to put up. Yeah, I looked, so I don't know if any of them will do so. That was Zediff. When he comes back, I'd be interested for him to put that up.

Okay, yeah we'll make a note of that. And just one other quick thing is the. I was going to get the. Sorry, I'll set my brain is just, that's okay, anyhow. But I was going to get your subscription and then it said, hey, there's a promo code. And I thought, oh, do you have a promo code? Is that just something that system always puts up for everybody?

0:25:03 - Mikah Sargent
So a promo. I assume you're talking about ClubTwit at twittv slash club twit. I don't know of a promo code that we offer. If you use something like Honey or one of those services that offer promo codes, it's possible that something was suggested to you. That's the only thing that I could think of for why there would be. So you're saying it actually prompted you and said hey, here's a promo code for you to use.

0:25:32 - Caller
No, it just said like putting a promo code. As I was ordering, got it and I thought, oh well, if there's a promo code, what is it? Otherwise I would have just bought it, and if so, maybe you guys know I take it off because it stops people like me who go. I want to take advantage of a promo code.

0:25:46 - Mikah Sargent
I would have just bought it.

0:25:48 - Caller
So either get rid of it or yeah.

0:25:51 - Mikah Sargent
So let me clarify, because that's a really good point.

So, basically, these different systems that we have that are at the heart of ClubTwit.

They have a standardized sort of payment flow and the payment flow takes you to a page where you're putting in your information and there are there's the ability to create promo codes that we have for some of our contributors, for example, who are then able to pop in a promo code because they've been on our shows. We want them to be able to be in the club Twitter Discord. So it's not something we'd be able to get rid of, but perhaps I'll pass that along to the team that we might have like a note that says something along the line, you know, that sort of explains that a promo code is not offered by default, that it is something that is specific to our contributors. But that's an important thing. It's good to know. You know how different behaviors might play into it. But, yes, as of right now, I will tell the world we do not offer any promo code, but I can't say that'll never be the case. You know, maybe, maybe, maybe there will be a time where a promo code is offered.

0:27:05 - Caller
Don't make people wait. You know, that's the old Osborn thing. Osborn said he was going to put out a better Osborn computer way back in the early 80s and then everybody stopped buying Osborn one. It was a logable computer. I remember when I was in college one of my guys next door to me had one Anyhow. And then the last question is my mom just upgraded to iOS 17.1.1, I think it says all her colors changed and it's not something she would do. Have you heard of anything that? Any suggestions?

0:27:35 - Mikah Sargent
All her colors changed. Is there any more, any more that you can offer in terms of that? What colors, which colors, where?

0:27:44 - Caller
No, you know what? If you don't, I'll have to look into it. It's just, she just said that. But she says well, I'm on the phone with somebody else, I'll have to get back to you.

0:27:50 - Mikah Sargent
Okay.

0:27:51 - Caller
Those things your moms do, is they give you that quick thing and then say I'll call me later.

0:27:55 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yeah, and it's not just moms. I get that. I get this with lots of people who say this is not working anymore, and I say, okay, but what does it mean that it's not working? Which part isn't working? And then they're oh no, I'm sorry, I can't. I can't explain that right now. Okay, great, that's very helpful. I will tell you this. I have not hurt.

No one else has told me, nor have I read anyone saying anything about colors changing based on that update. But I would love it if you do talk to your mom and you call us back, you know, next week or whenever. I'd love to help out and get that figured out, because, yeah, whatever it happens to be, we can, we can iron it out. My my first thought is that it's it's possible that there was something set up on the phone in the first place that was making an adjustment, like a filter change to the colors or something, and upon updating, that has been disabled for some reason. But yeah, I would love. I'm curious now what colors changed and why. And now, immediately I'm drawn, I want to fix it, I want to figure out what it is. So I'd love to hear more about that. But yeah, to answer your basic question, which is have I heard anything about that? I have not heard about colors changing based on an update to to 17.1.1.

0:29:12 - Caller
All right, well, keep up the awesome work.

0:29:13 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you and yeah, we will. We've made a note. We will find that YouTube video that Leo had mentioned specifically in that episode.

0:29:25 - Caller
All right great.

0:29:26 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome Thanks.

0:29:26 - Caller
Mark, thanks, all right, bye.

0:29:29 - Mikah Sargent
All righty John. Where should we go next? Let's do an email.

Let's do an email. All right, if you've emailed us at atg@twit.tv, then your email will make its way into my or Leo's hand. This comes in from Warren, who writes Hi, leo and Mikah, I have an iPhone 12 mini and an Apple Watch eight. Both are up to date. When I switch listening from the iPhone to the watch, the watch starts at the beginning of the podcast. I have also tried to turn it off or on in settings. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thanks, warren. So Warren is talking about the ability to move audio essentially from one device to another, but also to to play stuff that plays directly on the watch itself. Right, apple gives you the ability to download a certain number of podcasts or other bits of audio, be it music, on to your Apple Watch, and this is a question. We've had a similar question in the past and what I ended up suggesting was there is and let me get this to I'll turn off my airplay from my Mac here and we'll switch over to the iPhone so that I can show this. They're kind of like they're. They're two different settings and one will do one thing and the other will do another. So if you have both of them turned on, it ends up kind of confusing the system. So up at the top you have a thing that says add episodes from, and down below you have a section that says add shows. If you tap on the add shows button, it will let you add different shows that you listen to and it will download those unplayed episodes to the Apple Watch for those shows.

What I recommend is not using that. I recommend, instead of going from the show side of things, that you do it by episodes and you do it from the up next section. When you do that, it is syncing based on your listening, as opposed to syncing based on whether or not you are depending on what shows you're listening to. Right that the most recent show that you're listening to, the most recent episode that you're listening to, is what ends up getting downloaded to the Apple Watch. Because I found that if an episode, if a show, is downloading to the Apple Watch and a show is downloading to the iPhone, when you go from playing it on the iPhone to playing it on the Apple Watch, it almost treats the show as that specific episode, as a new thing, right, because it exists independently on the Apple Watch If you use the up next to sync it, then it is getting all of its information from the iPhone and using that as kind of the boss that tells it what to do.

And so as you're syncing from up next and as you're playing on your iPhone, then when you move to the Apple Watch it should be where you were on the iPhone. So I would again just suggest heading into that section of the Watch app which is in the Watch app on iOS. You tap on podcasts and then in this section, just make sure you don't have stuff down in the shows part, but that you're using the ad episodes from up next section as your method of syncing between the two, and that should take care of it. So thank you, warren, for writing in and of course, let us know if you have any follow up questions there. We appreciate you. Okay, where to next, john?

0:33:34 - Caller
I'm going to pick up on a phone call.

0:33:37 - Mikah Sargent
All right, we have someone who's called in at 8887242884 to ask a question. Remember that when you join the call, you will need to hit star six on your phone to unmute yourself. Star six on the phone to unmute yourself. Hello, Hello. What's your name and where are you calling from?

0:34:04 - Caller
Hi, my name is Clinton. I'm calling from Calgary Alberta.

0:34:08 - Mikah Sargent
Canada. Wonderful Welcome to the show, Clinton. Oh, thank you. How may I help?

0:34:17 - Caller
All right. So I've got an unusual, probably unboosting question. Okay, my, all my iOS devices, like my iPhone and my pack, are pretty well unusable. Just the weird things happen and what I come to discover is that I downloaded a lot you know many apps there, but I downloaded an app to read what's all my IP address settings on the on my phone, using just the cellular radio, and what is interesting about it is that my internet IP address is a private, as opposed to when I compare it to other people's phones. It comes as a private address. It's a 192.0.0.2. And, furthermore, I do not have a DNS. And, like I said and I believe this is the recalls of my problem, the problem with the phone, and I'm not sure what to do about it. How do I get it so that it's working like a regular phone again?

0:35:26 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so I you kind of you cut out a little bit at the beginning. The part that I got was that you downloaded an app and you were able to check your IP address and your IP address is showing up as a private IP address. Of course, when you compare it to other people, those IP addresses are not private. What I missed was the issue that it's causing with everything. I'm assuming you're saying you're having trouble connecting to any of the internet because of this.

0:35:53 - Caller
Well, well, furthermore, right along those settings, right, I do not have a DNS right. The DNS is blank.

0:36:04 - Mikah Sargent
Okay.

0:36:04 - Caller
And, like I said, I cannot use this phone for anything but just phone calls.

0:36:08 - Mikah Sargent
Right, okay, I see what you're saying.

0:36:11 - Caller
When I try to put something on it, it fails.

0:36:17 - Mikah Sargent
So this is an iPhone.

0:36:19 - Caller
This is an iPhone 13 mini.

0:36:21 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, first thing that I want you to do we'll do this to well, if you're able to do this, if you're talking on it, open up the settings app and go into general and then scroll all the way down in general till it kind of bounces off the bottom. You should see a section that says VPN in device management. Do you see anything? Well, there's a VPN. Hang on, do you? See anything else in that section.

0:36:59 - Caller
Yes, I do. I do have a VPN. I subscribe to a VPN because of it, although it is turned off right now, and the reason why I got the VPN was because of this issue, but it has not helped at all.

0:37:17 - Mikah Sargent
So I'm actually not asking about whether you have a VPN. I was curious if, on that general page at the bottom, if you see anything that says profiles no profiles Okay, because at first it sounded like a profile might have been installed. That caused this issue. I assume that you have removed the VPN configuration after you'd configured it and reinstalled it, just to see if that shook anything loose.

0:37:53 - Caller
It did not.

0:37:55 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, and then the next thing that I would typically have someone troubleshoot would be to go into once again into general and then move into the transfer or reset iPhone section. I'm not going to tell you completely reset your iPhone, Don't worry. And then hit the reset button and choose reset network settings. Have you done that?

0:38:27 - Caller
I have done. I've done. Not only have I done reset network settings, I've done reset all settings. I have had the phone replaced. I've had the SIM card replaced. Wow, we see that the SIM card. We see that the SIM card. Right, I have taken it out and put it in an uh, someone else's SIM card, and the phone is fine. And I put my SIM card into any iOS phone or tablet right, the same address comes up.

0:38:59 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, interesting. So this is not something that happens if you're connected to Wi-Fi. It's only something that happens when you're using your cellular connection.

0:39:08 - Caller
When I do connect to Wi-Fi right, again, it appears that, well, I'm clicked, well I don't know what connects to Wi-Fi right now, but it appears to go through the same address right, and the yeah, the same settings still do appear.

0:39:29 - Mikah Sargent
And you're not able to browse the web. You're not able to uh.

0:39:33 - Caller
I'm able to browse your web, I'm able to do things, but just the most weird stuff happens uh, um, uh, whether it's using the GPS or or, or, um, like, um, I'll be. I think the most annoying thing is is like, um, when I open up an app like uh, especially like like the camera or or anything that the phone came with came with um, um, it'll be opening the app for like the first time. So, for instance, the camera, I hate the uh, the, the live feature on it, right, so I turn that off and it stays off, right. But when I open up the camera, when I open up the camera app right some time later and it's sporadically, it's not all the time right, it's be like opening up the app for the first time, where you are proxied with multiple messages, whether it's location services or um notifications and all that. It's like these. All these messages pop up, pop up as well. You're opening it up for the first time and that's with all the apps, like the GPS or um, everything.

0:40:44 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. So my next question for you who's your carrier, who's your cellular carrier there in Canada?

0:40:52 - Caller
So up here is uh, I've been using Rogers, okay, I've bought the attention up to them, but, however, I mean, it's just uh, uh, they don't understand, or she's not too. Um, and I have taken it to the Apple store multiple times, right, but and I've spoken with Apple care multiple times Uh, they don't seem to understand what's going on.

0:41:15 - Mikah Sargent
So you've taken it to the Apple store and when you did, were you able to replicate the issues? Uh, were you able to show them the issues that you're having, or did they not happen when you were there at the Apple store?

0:41:29 - Caller
It appears they had an excuse for for everything. Every time I showed them an an, an, an, an, all of me like uh and it's uh, it was. It's just very frustrating. Um, so I've given up on them yeah.

0:41:42 - Mikah Sargent
See, I, the problem here is uh, it would, it would be helpful to know what they said, uh, during that time, um, when one of these anomalies appeared. So it's, it sounds like it's not, it's not happening. It is not an issue of you being able to connect with Wi-Fi. This is, this is completely a cellular thing. Yeah, Because you putting your SIM into another device causes that device to have the same issue. And so, if that is the case, um, one thing I think you've said that you tried to get a new SIM, did you not?

0:42:23 - Caller
Oh, I, I've replaced the SIM multiple times. I've even uh, put, I've even reset the iPhone, uh, to like the DFU mode, right, um and um, like I said, uh, uh, the everything. Nothing changes. Like I said what I've described before, everything happens right and it's beautiful. The last two years, and what I've come down to, uh, to what I've after this two years, is what I've come to learn down is that the IP settings for my cellular radio, right, it's maybe part of a subject, right, based on this, based on uh, based on these uh readings, right, right, because I mean, you know, like, uh, I've downloaded many apps and they, they've, they've all say the same thing. Or go to my, or what's my ISP, right On on the web browser, yeah, um, uh, but I'm actually, quite frankly, I've been tracked by an unknown entity. Um, but you won't.

0:43:27 - Mikah Sargent
Well, no, I, I arguably that would not be the case, otherwise you would. If you were being tracked, they would be able to. Actually, you know, gps would work and you would be able to connect to the internet over it. If you can't make any connection that there's, they can't. Well, how would they be tracking you? Because they can't connect?

0:43:44 - Caller
And, like I said, the DNS, my DNS is it is blank. It is blank.

0:43:50 - Mikah Sargent
Um, yeah, it sounds like, uh, ultimately, what's happening here is the SIM card is putting into your phone, uh, a static IP with no DNS, and it seems like the only thing I know. You said you've tried different Sims here.

0:44:10 - Caller
It's not only a static IP, but it's an IP address that is uh, um, that is used for, uh, for private use, right, yeah, yeah, it starts at 192.0.0.2. Yeah, I have, uh, I have uh, three other uh devices that, uh, that take some cards, right, and, of course, um, they're all, they're all the same.

0:44:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this is um. This is odd, right.

0:44:41 - Caller
I believe the amount of damage is caused with me and in my life.

0:44:44 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sure. I'm sure I'm really sorry that this is happening to you. Ultimately, I don't think this is. This is a very unique situation as you you started the call out with, and it appears like the only advice I can offer you and it's the same advice I'm seeing repeated over and over again in our chat room of many a tech savvy individual is that you've got to keep pushing with Rogers, because it appears that it is something to do with the SIM card itself, and I know that it's frustrating because you have tried to work with that. You have tried to work with them before and it's still not happening, unfortunately. But I do hope that maybe there's somebody else out there who's experienced something similar and you are able to. You know, we hear from that person who says, oh, this happened to me before, here's how we're gonna fix it. But, yeah, sadly, I think this is something between you and your God, which, in this case, happens to be Rogers, your cellular provider. Thank you, Thank you for calling in. I appreciate the call, Alrighty, we are moving right along.

I think we've got some time before our guest joins us today, but let us take a quick break so I can tell you about our second sponsor of this episode. It is Wix who are bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech guys. Web agencies out there, you are gonna like this one. Let me tell you about Wix Studio, the platform that gives agencies total creative freedom to deliver complex client sites while still smashing deadlines how? First let's talk about the advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience and watch as elements scale proportionally by default. No code animations add sparks of delight, while custom CSS gives total design control. But it doesn't stop there. Bring ambitious client projects to life in any industry with a fully integrated suite of business solutions, from E-com to events bookings and more, and extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. You know what else? The workflows just make sense. There are the built-in AI tools, the centralized workspace, the on-canvas collaborating, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover. And that's not all. Find out more at wix.com/studio. Thank you so much to Wix for sponsoring this week's episode of Ask the Tech guys.

All right, we are back from the break and now it is time for what? John Ashley, Mike. All right, Mike, come on down. You're the next contestant on Ask the Tech guys, and Mike will be joining us momentarily in the Zoom, where you will be able to unmute yourself using more standard methods, given that you are a video call as opposed to a phone call. Mike, are you with us? Yes, I am, Hi. Sorry about the. Oh, that's okay. Sorry about the.

0:48:06 - Caller
I'm looking to upgrade my iPhone 12 to an iPhone 15, mostly for the camera, but I know early on, as most new products have their technical issues, I wonder if they're sorted, is it still worth buying or should I wait? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Is it worth buying or should I wait?

0:48:26 - Mikah Sargent
So you said you're on an iPhone 12 right now. I am Okay. So yes, you are right in suggesting or being concerned that in the early days of a new device there are going to be little hurdles that might pop up, because essentially, apple goes from a very Any company will go from a very locked-down approach of bug testing, where oftentimes these devices are covered in big plastic or other sorts of objects so that they don't look like they are the latest and greatest iPhone, and that testing needs to take place in controlled environments. Sometimes they let the different people take them home, but they're only specific people and so there's just no way to catch all of the issues that might crop up over time. So what ends up happening is after the first sort of shipment of the new phone or device goes out. Then, in the real world, with millions of iPhones being tested or other phones being tested, we learn about how this is not working or that has an issue or what have you, and so what is great about that period of time is that Apple is going into Whenever this happens. They are very quick to find different phones that have an issue and collect them and learn about them and fix the issue right, and so that process typically happens in the month after the iPhone the new iPhone is released, so it was announced in September. Then that whole month is the period where they're grabbing all these phones that might have issues and finding out which ones are trending or that they crop up regularly and taking care of the problem from there.

Now, if it's a hardware problem, it can sometimes be fixed with a firmware or software update. If it's a software problem, obviously that's fixed with software, and there haven't been any of the kind of stop-down, start the sirens and freak out issues with this new iPhone, and because of that that's been great. There were some issues with iOS 17. We are now on iOS 17.1.1. And that means that not only is it the update that fixes the problems that they found in the release of the software, but also it's an update that fixes the problems found in the update. That fixes the problem that we found in the release of the software. So we're at a good place now software-wise, and we're now at a good place now at the end of November.

It's been two months of looking for those issues hardware-wise, and so I do think that it is a good time to consider making that upgrade rather than waiting for something to change Things kind of solidify, and Apple is working on even just getting a supply to reach demand. So it's not a bad time at this point to make that jump. And I think going from an iPhone 12 up to an iPhone 15, there's a part of me that's almost jealous of you, in the sense that there's going to be much more of an experiential jump there right that you will get to really appreciate the new camera system and what that provides over what the iPhone 12 did at the time. So, yeah, I think that you have been very patient and have done a good job of holding off to make sure that everything gets ironed out as it needs to be. But I would argue that we are past those wrinkles and that we have moved into the stage. And yes, as someone in the chat has pointed out too, there were any time that there's been some sort of hardware thing in the past, apple has been very good about supporting its customers and making sure that those devices are replaced.

I had even me, who gets these things on launch day like a fool, no, but as someone who needs to be able to test this stuff, I had an iPhone on launch day I think it was two iPhones ago and there was something wrong with the display. So I documented the issues that I had with the display. It just when it was very dim, it didn't look right. That's a kind of simple explanation of it and I documented it. But I don't necessarily know that I had a whole lot of necessary proof to explain what was going on and I was kind of worried about it.

But I reached out to Apple support. I said hey, this is the issue that I've had. I've done these few troubleshooting things, I'm running the latest software and even though it was in the period of time after the new iPhones had just gone out, they were able to get me a new iPhone within days of me having sent off the one that I felt had a problem. So even in those early days they're very good about doing this. Now that things are getting much more steady and everything's kind of leveling out, even if there was some issue that cropped up three or four months later, you'd be definitely able to not worry about getting a replacement if that was the case. But all that said, I have not seen any large issues that haven't already been addressed by software updates and firmware adjustments that have taken place. So yeah, it's a really good question. I imagine it's a question that a lot of people have when is a good time to upgrade if I want to avoid any of the headache of kind of new hardware purchasing. I think that's a really good question.

0:55:03 - Caller
Well, thank you very much. You're always extremely helpful. I do appreciate your time.

0:55:08 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in and happy holidays, and we appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Alrighty, we have time for what an email maybe. Well, there was someone who actually asked a question. Oh, that's right, there was a Discord question. Yes, let's take a look at the Discord question. So you have let me know.

I am running iOS beta 17.2. So, first of all, I would like to let you know that if you tried to call Apple with this, apple would say, oh well, you're running beta software. So bye, I'm running iOS beta. Trust me from experience, ios beta 17.2. And the other day my YouTube app was switched to Belarusian.

Should I be worried? It took a lot of Google Translate to discover where to change it back. Oh man, should you be worried? No, I don't think that. By. If the implication there is that by updating to iOS 17.2, you have somehow allowed a hacker from Belarus to get into your phone. That's sort of the implication of worry. So in that case, no, I don't think you should be worried.

I think that you are running a beta and lots of weird things happen, and it is probably. I mean, this is the thing. All of these little, these little features are tied to other settings and features of your phone, and so localization features, like switching it to Belarusian, is tied to the base settings on the iPhone, and so what may have happened is that when the update took place I mean, this could have been any number of things something either didn't make it its proper connection and somehow it changed to Belarusian because of that, or it thought that you were in Belarus, or it I mean, that's the thing we don't know, but because it starts with iOS beta 17.2, that tells me that that is at issue here. Now, if you continue to experience this issue post you know the whenever you get back to a non beta, then there's something to be concerned about. Scooterx does point out that there isn't a Belarusian language in iOS, or that, you know may not be, but if you were using Google translate to kind of determine what the language was, it's possible that it you know it thought that what it was was Belarusian and because it was close enough to whatever language it actually was, you were able to use that to navigate through the app and find that.

But a delightful question. Yeah, I don't think that you should be worried about it. I think that if it keeps happening, then, hey, you're going to learn some Belarusian. That's, that's awesome. Pretty soon, you'll know what settings language and English are all in Belarusian, so that's cool, but good question nonetheless.

Nonetheless, if you do have, you know an issue that pops up and you know you're running betas, what should you do? Well, I also would suggest and recommend that you take screenshots of having of that having happened and use the feedback app that gets installed on your iPhone whenever you run a beta to let the developers know that that's going on, because, particularly for apps that are very popular apps, apple will look to those and make sure that everything is correct. But I'm kind of curious now because I am. I do believe I switched to a beta. Yeah, I'm currently running the developer beta. I wonder what happens when I launch the YouTube app if it switches a language. Nope, still in English. Odd, oh well. So, yeah, that didn't happen to me, but interesting, interesting nonetheless. Let us know if it happens to you again in maybe the next beta. That would be kind of cool to figure out. All righty, john. Is it time for a guest to join us? I think it's time.

All right, it's time to put on your dance and disco shoes, start the disco music and pull out the disco lights, because Dickie D Bartolo is joining us on. Ask the Tech Guys Welcome. How are you? Oh, I am doing quite well, dick. How was your Thanksgiving?

1:00:08 - Dick DeBartolo
It was quiet but it was great turkey stuffing. What can be bad about that? Absolutely, absolutely. I know the Belarusian guy. There's a much simpler solution is just find someone in Belarusia or whatever that place is, and if they have an English phone, just swap it with them.

1:00:27 - Mikah Sargent
That's exactly what they should do. Why didn't I think of that? See, maybe you should be joining me every week to give these answers?

1:00:36 - Dick DeBartolo
That would be the kiss of death.

1:00:39 - Mikah Sargent
Dickie D joins us from time to time here on Ask the Tech Guys to tell us about some gizmos and gadgets worth checking out. So I am looking forward to seeing what you're going to make me buy my niece this time around.

1:00:55 - Dick DeBartolo
Well, you know, does she have a weird sense of humor?

1:00:58 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know if she's old enough yet to.

1:01:01 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay, oh okay, a lot of I showed this on gizmos and a lot of people thought it was funny and several people, including me, think it's strange. Okay, it's called the face bank. Face bank, yes, it's a bank that when you put money in it, it kind of eats the money. Oh, weird, it's creepy it is creepy, right?

1:01:26 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that is creepy, I kind of love it.

1:01:31 - Dick DeBartolo
Okay.

1:01:32 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, yeah, I guess I fall into that category of weird sense of humor because yes, yes, yes, if you don't need it right away.

1:01:43 - Dick DeBartolo
On Amazon I paid $17 and I think now I checked right before the show with $16. I guess AliExpress is looking at what you're looking at, because then a couple of days later I got a thing that, oh, the face money bank, the face bank is on AliExpress for either six or $7. Wow, but you have to remember it could be, you know, two or three. They're getting better over there at shipping stuff, but you'll save a lot of money if you like that and it comes in different colors.

1:02:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I see it comes in blue brick. I think will be the one.

1:02:21 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, exactly so if you want to search AliExpress, just type in face bank and that should come up.

1:02:31 - Caller
I go weird, it's so weird.

1:02:34 - Dick DeBartolo
The other thing is now you know what? Do you live in a house or an apartment? Yeah, I live in a town home. Yeah, In a home. Okay, All right. So this is probably more for people who live in apartments and don't have a lot of space.

Oh, it's a tiny town home, so I'm like yeah, this may work, and I'll tell you why in a minute. Why it's a great time, if you like the idea. So when I don't have anything to do, I just roam through pages of Amazon and I see magnetic spice racks and I'm thinking well, you know what? I don't use spices, but a magnetic rack would be great because in my kitchen I need more space. So I bought a set of these. You get five of them. It's four magnetic shelves and a magnetic towel rack and I held it up to the refrigerator and the refrigerator almost pulled the shelf in. The magnets are great.

1:03:39 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, so they're super strong magnets.

1:03:41 - Dick DeBartolo
Super strong magnets. So now I have three shelves on the side of my refrigerator, which is a giant help. I put glasses in one cups in another, and then pens and pencils and flashlights in the third shelf, and I already have a countertop paper towel holder. I stuck the paper towel magnetized paper towel on the front of my refrigerator and I hang dish towels on it.

1:04:12 - Mikah Sargent
Smart. Oh, that's a great idea, yeah.

1:04:16 - Dick DeBartolo
They are great. And the reason that it turned out to be extra great is I was looking up to say they were 40 bucks or 41.99. And it turns out that on Amazon they are what is tomorrow the Monday, or Cyber Monday, Cyber Monday at half price. No way I'm getting them. So they're, I believe, $20 and 49 cents. You get the four magnetic shelves and the paper towel holder that, as I said, you can hang towels on it. And Dennis bought a set because his desk has no drawers. His desk is just a work shelf. He put these on the side of his computer because it's in a metal case and now he has a place to have an extra keyboard and extra mouse pens and pencils. So any place you have a magnetic surface you could use these.

1:05:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they show them in one photo stuck to the side of a washer, which I think is a great place to have them.

1:05:24 - Dick DeBartolo
Yes, you could stow your washing tablets and bleach and stuff.

1:05:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this is quite good. They're kind of fun, aren't they? Yeah, and I saw there's a refrigerator, my refrigerator. There's an area on the right side of it that is currently not being used for not being used for storage, and now it will be, because I'm getting these at 50% off.

1:05:51 - Dick DeBartolo
Yeah, I think they're great. As a matter of fact, now that you've started it, I'm thinking I should probably just have another set. Yeah, I think they should have to search for something magnetic Pretty soon, yeah, your whole wall will be metal.

1:06:09 - Mikah Sargent
Can you imagine having a whole metal wall? That'd be great. You could stick these all. You just have so much storage space.

1:06:15 - Dick DeBartolo
Exactly. You have to be careful when you open a box of paper clips.

1:06:20 - Mikah Sargent
Just go to the wall. Not meant for anyone with a pacemaker device that's controlled by magnets or anything.

1:06:28 - Dick DeBartolo
Exactly, the magnets are strong, but you need that because you're going to put I believe they said it can hold up to 15 pounds, something like that. So they're pretty substantial.

1:06:42 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Wow, I'll put my weird face bank on my magnetic shelf. Oh there you go there you go.

It could creep people out when they walk by. It reminds me of the Never Ending Story. I don't know what from the Never Ending Story, but something from the Never Ending Story. That movie, it's the Rock Monster. It is the Rock Monster. Yes, oh yes, yes, it gobbles up rocks and it kind of reminds me of that. Well, dickie D, always a delight to have you on the show so that I can buy stuff that I think is well worth it, stuff that either makes someone else happy or makes me happy.

1:07:24 - Dick DeBartolo
And I do a quick plug for one thing Please. Yes, gizfiz is continuing. You know you stop streaming over there, so I timed it so it goes on after this week in Google. So it's 8.30 New York time on the East Coast and 5.30 on the West Coast. So a lot of people email and goes oh, we want to play games, we want to answer match game questions. So I am continuing GizFiz over at gizwiztv.

1:07:56 - Mikah Sargent
GizWiztv is where you'll head to be able to continue to watch the show. That's wonderful. I'm really glad to hear that. That's great.

1:08:03 - Ant Pruitt
Thank you.

1:08:04 - Mikah Sargent
And now, I suppose, is the time to mention the what the heck is its competition. If you had to GizWizme and you click on what the heck is it, you will be presented with an item where you will need to come up with what the heck it is. If you can figure out what it is, or if you can give an answer, that's wonderful but is wrong. You may just get a copy of Mad Magazine. They're up to six for the correct answer, up to 12 for the, as you put it, cute, silly answers. Exactly, we record stupidity.

1:08:43 - Dick DeBartolo
We award stupidity at GizWizcom.

1:08:47 - Mikah Sargent
I think I might actually know. If I don't know what it is specifically, I think I know what branded.

1:08:53 - Mikah Sargent
I won't say, but I think I know what you're covering up there, because it looks familiar.

1:09:00 - Dick DeBartolo
Wow, you can see through.

1:09:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I've got the X-ray specs.

1:09:06 - Dick DeBartolo
Wow, you're probably too young to remember X-ray specs.

1:09:09 - Mikah Sargent
I am too young to remember them. However, it was just a New York Times crossword answer the other day. I didn't know that it ended with X. I was very confused. I thought there's not enough space here for me to write X-ray specs, but I know it's X-ray. It ended up being X-ray. S-p-e-x was how they had it. Now I'm seeing an image where it's spelled S-P-E-C-S. I don't know, in the crossword it was S-P-E-X. That's all I know.

1:09:38 - Dick DeBartolo
The fact that you can do the crossword is even more impressive.

1:09:43 - Mikah Sargent
That's a good time for me, but folks head over to gizwizbiz. That'll redirect you to gizwizme to check out all of the awesome stuff that Mads Maddest Writer Dickie D Bartolo is up to and, of course, head to gizwiztv to keep checking out the giz fizz, dickie D. I hope you have a lovely holiday season and you get some great Cyber Monday deals.

1:10:11 - Dick DeBartolo
The same and I believe I'm seeing you one more time before the big holidays.

1:10:15 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely so. We'll see you then. Thanks so much.

1:10:18 - Dick DeBartolo
Thank you, so much. Thank you, take care. Bye-bye.

1:10:22 - Mikah Sargent
All right, should we take another break, I guess? Okay, cool, we'll take another break. Thank you, dickie D, for joining us here on Ask the Tech Guys. Let me tell you about CacheFly, who are bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. Quite literally, for more than 20 years, CacheFly has held a track record for high-performing, ultra-reliable content delivery. They're serving over 5,000 companies in more than 80 countries. These organizations consistently choose CacheFly for scalability, for reliability and for unrivaled performance.

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1:13:37 - John Ashley
I'm not sure if it's that you, blair martin, but they're phone callers.

1:13:40 - Mikah Sargent
Alright, we've got somebody calling in at 888-724-2884. Ask it as Blair. Whoever you happen to be, when you are brought in, remember to hit star six on your phone to unmute yourself as you are brought into the call. We have invited you to join us for this call and it looks like you're on, so remember to hit star six and, as soon as you are with us, tell us your name and where you're calling from. Hi Joe from Santa Barbara. Hi Joe from Santa Barbara. How may I help?

1:14:19 - Caller
Yeah, I have a Mac Air and I use Safari 15.6 for my browser and one of my banks now requires 16.0 Safari for banking. The problem I have is that my Mac Air is from 2012 and it only go up to Catalina and Catalina only accepts Safari 15.6.

1:15:02 - Mikah Sargent
So, yes, because you have an older system. Basically, you're unable to update to a newer version of the operating system that will give you access to a newer version of the browser that will give you access to your banking app. I'm going to give the chat room time to remind me of a service we've mentioned in the past that lets you install a newer version of the Mac operating system on an older machine. But what you could also do is you can use a different browser, and I'll mention thank you to Brian C in the Discord, who has reminded me of the name. I should have that written down somewhere. Maybe I'll get a tattoo. But if you download a different browser Firefox or Chrome you and I know look, I'm a Safari user. I love Safari. I like the stuff that I have set up in Safari. I love the settings that are in Safari. I don't want to use other browsers, but for the sake of being able to access your banking, you might want to be able to try a different browser. That's the easier option. I recommend Firefox personally, and it's especially on a MacBook Air. Chrome is a heavy resource hog, and so a MacBook Air would probably run Firefox a little better. However, if you want to go the more difficult route.

There is a little tool called OpenCore Legacy Patcher, and we'll include a link in the show notes, as we always do, to OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It is a tool that allows you, on an older machine like your MacBook Air from, I think you said, 2012 or 2014, to be able to install newer versions of macOS. Now it's important to understand that at any time when you're using a tool like this, apple could make a change in the operating system that makes it so that you're not able to do it. There's every possibility that this is not a permanent, long-term solution, but up to this point, it's been a great solution for a lot of folks to be able to install the latest version of macOS on their older machines. So OpenCore Legacy Patcher is an option for you.

I don't have a complete walkthrough or anything like that. Luckily, the site has a great set of documentation that will explain how to get it installed, how to use it, what you need to do, et cetera, but it will let you. It basically bypasses that thing that says oh, I can't install a newer version of the operating system, so let me do that. But yeah, if you need a quicker fix, I just think you should download Firefox and use that just for your banking and just keep everything else in Safari as you want to.

1:18:16 - Caller
Yeah, I did, because I couldn't go through. You used Chrome last time and everything was fine, but I just wanted to stay with Safari.

1:18:27 - Mikah Sargent
I'm with you. I'm with you. I really like Safari. I think it gets out of the way and it's very lightweight, so I completely understand wanting to fully use Safari. Of course your bank is doing it this. Actually, it's for a good reason the security of an older browser is not going to be as great as a newer one, and it sounds like you get that. So yeah, between using Chrome or Firefox or going all the way with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, one of those should work. Or perhaps a Black Friday deal or Cyber Monday deal could help you work your way into a newer machine If you can't. Get a newer one.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's always an option, but it's an expensive option. Yeah.

1:19:15 - Caller
Another thing I'd like to say is thanks for being so patient with some of the callers. It's appreciated.

1:19:22 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, you know what? I think patience is one of the most important things, because it's hard right when stuff isn't working how you expect it to and when you're left with confusion or, in some cases, fear. I think a patient understanding of that is very important. And yeah, that's what we're here to do, right Is to help people with the issues that they have, even if some of them are perplexing and maybe not something we're able to fix ourselves. The other great thing is that we've got such great folks who are out there listening, who are so helpful and have their own thoughts and ideas that I often am able to pull from. So I'm thankful to the patients, the folks that listen to this have. Thank you for calling in with your question.

1:20:15 - Caller
All right, micah, thank you very much. Bye, bye-bye, all righty.

1:20:20 - Mikah Sargent
I'd like to go to another email, if that's all right. You can do whatever you want.

All right. So here is an email from Robert. Robert writes in with an interesting problem. Long time subscriber going back to the Tech TV dais, thank you for subscribing. How can I record content on a Mac from another Mac? I want to record the boot sequence, including login and user movements, to document a process for onboarding our new employees. Do you have any recommendations to capture the entire process? Thanks, robert.

Robert, you present us with an interesting, intriguing question, because what you want to do requires access to the view of the screen before we actually get into macOS proper. Right, you want to get the boot sequence, the login and all of that stuff. So what I am going to recommend to you is a little device called an HDMI capture device. What you are going to do is essentially make the Mac think that the display that you're using is this HDMI capture device. So, in the same way that when I plug a screen into a Mac Studio, or I plug a screen into even this MacBook Air and I close the lid on it, it sends all of that information to that external display and I'm able to look at everything on the external display. An HDMI capture device captures what is coming through HDMI. So there are many options out there.

Elgato sells HDMI capture devices that come in all sorts of varieties, including HDMI capture cards, but you can get a little device that plugs into your other Mac, for example. So here is the Cam Link 4K, which people typically use with a DSLR. They have their actual camera and they plug that in to this Cam Link, which has an HDMI port at the end of it that runs to the camera. The camera outputs into the Cam Link and the Cam Link, via USB, goes into your machine and you're able to then view that as your camera, so you would be able to then essentially just capture from that. I recommend something a little bit more powerful, like the HD60, for example. This is a relatively new device, but this has multiple capture options, so you can plug in that device in the back and be able to get it. Now, excuse me if you want to get fancy.

Black Magic also makes a device called the ATEM Mini, and the Black Magic ATEM Mini is, again, it's more an interface than a capture device, but what it lets you do is, in the same way, be able to pipe in multiple HDMI connections, be it from a machine or from a camera, whatever it happens to be and pull the audio, the video, out of that and display it somewhere else. So you could even go as inexpensive as finding something on Amazon. Amazon sells a lot of different HDMI capture devices. It just depends on the level of quality you're looking for and how much you're willing to fiddle around with things. So I don't necessarily want to point you to something specific other than to say that I know that the hardware from Elgato and the hardware from Black Magic it's probably overpowered for what you need If you go with the HD60, for example.

But if you go with something as simple as the Cam Link, that might be a good option for you. But what you'll do is you'll take the device, you'll plug it into that second Mac that you're using to kind of record things with and you'll open up your recording software. It could be something as simple as using QuickTime, so you can open up QuickTime and next to the record button there'll be a little arrow that you click and you choose that Cam Link as the option hit record, and then you have, on the other side of the Cam Link is the Mac that you're wanting to actually do the stuff on. That's got HDMI cable plugged into it, that's running into the Cam Link, which is running into the machine that is recording everything, and then on that secondary machine you're able to do the full process from the boot all the way through to the end game, if you didn't need to do the boot sequence and all of that. It's much simpler because you could just do a screen recording on the machine itself to do it, but because you're needing to kind of see it from the perspective beforehand. That's why we need something like an HDMI capture card.

So, yeah, that's how you would pull that off, robert, and thank you for that question. I thought it was a fun one. An interesting little problem to figure out. Alrighty John, who are we going to next To talk about? Another phone caller Sounds good, we've got somebody on the line. We will bring you into the Zoom and I remind you that if you are calling us at calltwittv and part of the Zoom call, if you have a question that you want answered, make sure to hit the little thumbs up icon. It's a button that will appear in the UI, typically at the bottom of the UI. You hit that button and it causes this little yellow hand to raise on the screen. That way we know you have a question, because we do have folks who just like to hang out in the Zoom room, and so if you are here for more than just hanging out, let us know with that little hand raise. But in the meantime I think we've got our caller on the line. Let us know your name and where you are calling from.

1:26:38 - Caller
Is that me?

1:26:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, that is you.

1:26:41 - Caller
Oh, okay, well, you can use my ClubTwit name, which is Superceded. Hello, Superceded you can call me Super yeah, and I hope everybody that's listening has a ClubTwit account.

1:26:55 - Mikah Sargent
I hope so too.

1:26:57 - Caller
Oh, go to twittv, yeah. So what I'm calling about is I just got a new iPad that's 10th generation, and it's the first time I've ever used Apple and I got it. I used a Windows PC, so I bought it for the sole purpose initially anyway to use Procreate. Are you familiar with that app?

1:27:24 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely yeah.

1:27:25 - Caller
It's pretty good, and so I haven't done anything with the iPad yet except put a case on it. Good, I don't break it Very good. But what I'm wondering is how I'm using it to edit some, I guess take photos and then edit them for fiber arts, and I'm wondering how? How am I going to get my edited photos and open them in on my Surface Studio PC?

1:27:59 - Mikah Sargent
Very good question.

1:28:01 - Caller
That's where I do that work. I don't even understand file names or anything.

1:28:05 - Mikah Sargent
I would love to know, first and foremost, what fiber arts you do.

1:28:09 - Caller
It's quilting, oh, but you know what you should listen. You yourself should watch textile talks. They have recordings from it's mostly art museums and quilters. One recent rerun that they would have was it was either knitting or crocheting, or both artists in museums, and I was thinking of you when I was watching it. Oh, I was going to textile talk. Textile talks yes.

1:28:40 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome.

1:28:41 - Caller
I'm going back to the. Let's see. I don't even know what the file extension name is going to be on there, and I'm assuming I can. How can I open the Apple file in Windows, or it'll be a photo. I don't understand.

1:29:01 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so I just want to make sure I'm getting your process down, so you are taking a photograph, like with the iPad or with a different camera, and having it on your iPad and then what you want to do is take that camera or that photograph I guess you're asking like from Procreate and be able to pull that up on your Windows machine to do more editing on it. Am I clear?

1:29:35 - Caller
Yeah, well, that's kind of it. Windows doesn't. It can't use Procreate, there's not an app for that, so I just want to. It makes sense that I would take a photo on the iPad, because that would be the logical thing. Yes, although if I could bring it in from some place else, that's another complication. And then you edit it. I would edit it with Procreate, and then what?

1:30:03 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, yes, so, so what's great about Procreate is that Procreate lets you export in lots of different formats. So good, yeah. So Procreate for iPad, and I'm on a page that I'm going to share with John, our producer. That is a Procreate page that has basically all of the stuff, all of the different files that it can share. It can share individual layers as PDFs, it can share a JPEG, it can share a PNG, it can share a TIFF, it can share even a Photoshop PSD, so it doesn't need to stay in the Procreate file format, which is great. You, basically, when you're in Procreate, you will see in the top left corner there's a little wrench icon, and that wrench icon will have an option that says share in it. It's in the actions, and one of those actions is share, and then you'll see you can share as if it's a Procreate file, a PSD file, a PDF, a JPEG, a PNG or a TIFF, and you can do that as the image is a whole, or you can choose to share specific layers. Procreate is smart enough to know about those and then from there it's going to bring up the built in what's called the share sheet on iPadOS, which is this you've probably seen it pop up from the bottom and it's got you know. You can send a message or you can email it or you can, however you want to.

What I'm going to recommend is a lovely, lovely tool. It's an open source tool and it is awesome. It's called LAN drop, l-a-n drop, and this is how I get files from my iPhone or my iPad over to a Windows machine. It's a little app that you open up on Windows and then on iPhone it will appear in that share sheet I just mentioned. So you just tap on the icon and it will let you pop it over to the Windows machine so you don't have to wait for the email to come through or, if you choose, to share it to like one drive or something like that. This just does it over your local network and it's really great and it's called LAN drop.

1:32:24 - Caller
I'm watching you on the screen while you're showing it.

1:32:26 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, nice, good, Good. So yes, between those two things you'll be able to get that. You know, whatever file format you end up wanting to use to pull it over to your Windows machine and be able to pull it up there or save it or, you know, pop it wherever you need to. So, yeah again, we'll have links to all of that stuff when the show goes live at twittv slash ATG. That first bit of information is from the Procreate Handbook, and then the second one is the app. It's LAN drop L-A-N-D-R-O-P dot app. Is the website LAN drop dot app.

1:33:09 - Caller
So can I also use my Kindle? I mean, can I use download Kindle files to my iPad? So it's actually much simpler. It's a separate question.

1:33:20 - Mikah Sargent
No, no, that's okay. Yeah, it's, it's you. There's a Kindle app in the App Store. Make sure that you get the one that's from Amazon. But yeah, if you open the App Store and you type in Kindle when you log in with your account, then your Kindle the Kindle books that you've purchased will let you download them. Now, if these are Kindle files that exist outside of the app, like they're you know, maybe you've, you've got them in the past or something, they're from a different account. Let me see about importing Kindle books to Kindle app. There's probably an import option, but I'm not sure.

1:34:05 - Caller
I wouldn't need that myself, because I would. I would I have a Kindle library. Oh, I think I might have to get my books from Amazon, but maybe some other listener might want to know that.

1:34:14 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so that's, that's good. I think that they, they may. They may have taken away the import option, because I also I just use the Kindle library. That's where all of my stuff comes from. So yeah, you're, you've got it very easy. You'll just go into the App Store, you'll get the Kindle app, you'll log in with your Amazon account and then you'll have access to all of your Kindle books.

1:34:37 - Caller
Oh, how about Chrome? Can I use Chrome on the iPad?

1:34:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so there's the Chrome app. It exists, okay.

1:34:47 - Caller
I'm really a beginner in.

1:34:49 - Mikah Sargent
Apple and that's totally okay.

So, yeah, you just do a search in the App Store for Google Chrome and then you're able to to use the Google Chrome browser.

Now it's important to understand that it's going to look, it's going to feel, a little different from the Chrome browser that you're used to, due to the way that Apple has its kind of rules set up. It's a long story, but the basics of it is the system that renders websites through Google Chrome is its own system, and the system that renders websites that decides how they appear for Safari is another system, and what Apple says is you're allowed to have your own browser, but what you're not allowed to do is have your own system that shows how those web pages appear. You have to use hours, so it won't make too much of a difference for you in terms of because your logins will still work. All of you, the extensions that you like, that stuff is still going to be the same, but if you, it could be just slightly different in terms of your experience of using Chrome on your Windows machine. So just be aware of that. But, yeah, google Chrome is one of the apps that's available to you on the iPad.

1:36:07 - Caller
So that was. That was my last. You just answered my last question, but it was for tips on what's going to confuse me when I have, when I'm familiar with the, with the Microsoft, yeah. I think, I think you you covered. I'll just oh yeah, what's the, what's the file extension for? For Apple files or iPad files or whatever, whatever. So no, that's if I use it for some other purpose.

1:36:35 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's a good question. What's great is that Apple is if you pull a file off of your iPad, whatever the file extension is, it is going to be let me see how do I put this so there's not. There's somebody out here is going to grumble about what I'm about to say, but I'm saying this to you as someone who is asking these. You know these questions specifically. There's not a an Apple file extension. If you are creating a text document in an app that creates text documents, then when you export those, they're going to show up withtxt at the end, which can be open in Windows machine, ordocx, which, which can be open in Microsoft Word. Or if you export a PDF, then of course it'll just open wherever. If you are doing photos, you can export those as JPEGs or PNGs or TIFFs, like all of that.

Apple doesn't you know, sort of put a put an Apple covered coding on any of the files. It keeps them as they are so different files that you're using. They're going to stay as they are Standard file formats. The only thing that's unique is if you're using a specific app like procreate, which has its own file format. But the great thing is you don't have to use that file format when you export it to your Windows machine, as we showed earlier. You hit that share button and you can say I don't want theprocreate extension, I wanttif forpng orpdf. So yeah, you really won't need to worry about a specific Apple file extension or anything like that. Apple just works with the standard file formats as if it was, you know, a PC itself. Yeah, it's, it's. At this point the operating system is advanced enough that everything's pretty well cross compatible. It all likes to play together.

1:38:35 - Caller
Oh, that sounds great. That was a very comprehensive answer. Thank you very much, and let me recommend your show with the Rosemary. I always do when you're on. I listened to that just in case you mentioned something about some app that is available both in Windows and Apple.

1:38:56 - Mikah Sargent
You know what that is a great inspiration. Super. That's something that we should consider for a future episode is stuff that works between Apple and Windows for sure. So thank you for that and thank you for your question, and always feel free to also write into iOS today If you, you know, come up with an issue that you're having. We'd love to answer questions there and here. Thank you so much.

1:39:22 - Caller
Okay, thank you.

1:39:23 - Mikah Sargent
Alrighty John A. Should we take a quick break?

1:39:28 - John Ashley
Let's do one quick break.

1:39:30 - Mikah Sargent
All right, we will be back momentarily after a word from our sponsors and we're back after a word from our sponsors. Who is next to join us here? On one person kind of hanging out on the call. I don't know if we should be gone. I think I saw there was like a, there was a cigar going on, something like that. All right, join us in the Stargate. Dear listener and caller, you too can join the call by heading to calltwittv. I will start by saying what's your name and where are you calling from?

1:40:09 - Ant Pruitt
Well, my name is Ant Pruitt and I'm calling from outside on the porch.

1:40:14 - Mikah Sargent
Hello Ant Pruitt from outside on the porch how you doing.

1:40:18 - Ant Pruitt
I'm unbelievable, sir. How about yourself?

1:40:21 - Mikah Sargent
I am doing well, especially now that I've got a pal joining me here in the Stargate for this episode of Ask the Tech guys. Welcome, welcome. How can I help you?

1:40:34 - Ant Pruitt
Thank you, sir. Quite frankly, I was just listening in as I just wanted to just sort of hang out for the day, but then a question popped in my head Nice, it's getting that time of year where I'm really having to make sure everything is squared away with my backups and getting everything organized to get ready for 2024. And, as you know, I have moved to Mac OS and this will be my first time getting ready to do that migration, that annual migration, if you will, with Mac OS. And there's a problem that I have with Finder. That's probably super easy for you to answer, which is why I'm asking you. And it's when I go to drag files into Finder. I tend to use the icon view. Every now and then I go to the list view, yeah, but most of the time I go to the icon view. But there's just a little bit of an annoyance Every time I drag things to Finder in the icon view, I always have to right click and do the cleanup option.

1:41:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.

1:41:39 - Ant Pruitt
Is there some simple setting that would allow me to just leave them be and not have to worry about them being all scattered in the window? And because it could look a little weird. I know it doesn't screw up my files being over there all scattered and whatnot, but it's just an aesthetic and sort of an OCD thing for me.

1:41:58 - Mikah Sargent
No, I totally understand. So yeah, just so we can show. So what Ant is talking about here is that when here let me make this full size so when we click on the three dots, micah's favorite button, you will see that there is the option to clean up or clean up by, and you can choose a specific way to clean those up. When Ant is dragging a bunch of files over and drops them, they just kind of appear in random places and it's not very clean. So what we want to do is hit the three dots and we go to show view options, and in here you will see that there is a group by and a sort by option. And if you, if you choose sort by and you choose snap to grid, then what will happen is when you drop those files in, they may appear in random spots, but they won't be like in between rows or anything like that. So that's the first, that's the first thing you can do. But the second thing that you can do is you can actually say sort by and you choose. You know, maybe you like to have things date modified, for example and then you choose snap to grid or excuse me, no, you just choose date modified and then down at the bottom you need to click use as defaults, and what that does is it says in any finder window that I open, I want you to sort these by date modified every time, and so then that way, whenever you're in this icon view, you're telling the system this is how I want it to be every time.

If you have it set to none, then that is where you will have that. You know it appear however you want to. That's the default. Because they don't. You know, then you're not kind of messing with things, but to keep it locked you can if you just if you're not, you know, intent on every time. I want the files to look like this, but you just want them to kind of lock to a grid. At the very least, I recommend using snap to grid and clicking uses defaults. But if you are okay, you're like, look, the way that I think about files is always name, so it's alphabetical, or I like them sorted by kind or the. My favorite is date modified, then you can select that, at which point you're able to choose uses defaults, and that will lock those to to. You know, do that every time and actually keep them sorted that way.

1:44:37 - Ant Pruitt
Interesting. I find it fascinating that you know snap to grid isn't by default in the OS.

1:44:43 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I wonder where that is from as well. I don't know what. What that? The only thing I could think is that originally it probably looked pretty cool. The things didn't have to be like that. The the screen was so independently addressable, right, that you could just put a file wherever, and it's like whoa, it's just like a desktop. I can lay down a piece of paper wherever. So it almost feels like a holdover of a time when it was more about being able to show off what the machine is able to do. Now somebody is pointing out for them, wizarding says, using snap to grid ruined their custom icon layouts, and so you know there may be people out there who they. They have things just how they like them, and it's not necessarily pixel perfect, so they set them up a certain way. But yeah, for me, I, I like things to be clean and for not to just be random and to have that right what you're saying. Having to hit those extra few keys or the extra few clicks to get it how you want it is annoying, sweet.

1:45:51 - Ant Pruitt
Well, sir, I really do appreciate that simple tip. That's why I asked you, because I knew you'd know right out the gate.

1:45:58 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you for calling in with that because, yeah, it's something that I'm almost always browsing in ListView, but that's because I don't do a lot of photo stuff and so for me in ListView things don't do that, and so anytime I'm in icon view and I go to direct, I'm like why is it like this? So yeah, I completely understand that frustration and like what, what is the point of this? It's silly. So yeah, great question.

1:46:23 - Ant Pruitt
And thank you. Thank you, hey man. I appreciate your help and shout out again to the members that's been calling and to appreciate your support in us and club twit.

1:46:34 - Mikah Sargent
The twittv slash. Club twit is where you head to join the club and thank you, Ant, for everything that you do with club twit. We appreciate it. All righty, see you. See you All right. Do we have any voicemails, John? Yeah, we can do a voicemail. Cool.

1:46:55 - John Ashley
Hi, this is Stuart. I'm calling from Los Angeles. I'm calling just because I'm trying to set up some new internet of things this lighting system that is attached to Wi-Fi, and I have quite a variety of other internet of things items and I'm trying to figure out how best to separate the main Wi-Fi system from the internet of things system. And if you had any suggestions, I'm having some trouble with the current modem slash router I have provided by my provider. It doesn't seem to be working as well. Thanks so much Okay.

1:47:36 - Mikah Sargent
So, if I'm understanding the question correctly, it's this what's becoming now an age old question Should I separate my network for internet of things devices and have them on their own sort of partition? I am getting to a point. I think, as someone who has been using tech stuff, has been using smart home stuff for quite a long time, that if you, what I feel becomes the advice is if you invest in high quality, well-known, battle tested, respectable in terms of sort of privacy, security and updates brands, then it's not worth the hassle of having to have things on a separate Wi-Fi network with that IoT stuff. If you're going to have IoT stuff in your home in the first place, you are, by default, potentially opening yourself I mean just by connecting to the internet, as in general, you're opening yourself up to the possibility of that being a weak point in your network, right, and so going with these brands that regularly update their devices their firmware have maybe dealt with breaches in the past are known to pay attention to what's going on almost seems more worth it than this hassle of trying to set up a bunch of different networks. And one of the problems I don't usually talk about whenever we talk about having different networks is that, depending on how you set up a secondary network, you may have trouble reaching those devices to do everything that you want them to do if your own device is on your main network and that secondary device is on the partitioned network, particularly with HomeKit. Because of the way that HomeKit works and the way that it tries to do everything on the local area network, it doesn't always work as well if you have your devices on a guest network or something like that.

The outside of all of that advice, I think the other thing that I would say is for anyone who has a, who has internet at home. I just really feel that it is so worth it if you're able to invest in your own modem and your own router and not use the one provided by the ISP. If you're using your own modem and your own router, if you ever move, you can take it with you. You're no longer paying a monthly fee for that modem and router Often it's a combo from the ISP and you're able to upgrade more frequently if you'd like to, because you have the freedom to do so with your own devices and then you have more control over it in general. So if you do decide that you want to create a partitioned network. It's much easier if you're using your own thing. I use Zero at home.

I've talked about it before. I think they're great. You can set up your IoT stuff on the guest network. But again, I've run into some issues doing that before, and so I've just accepted that if I have smart home stuff, I'm going to have it on my network and I'm going to not use the bulb that cost me $2 from eBay and connect it to my router, that I'm going to invest in high quality products from reputable brands, and that to me seems to be a better solution than trying to use really crummy stuff and hope that if you put it on a secondary network, that it's going to be okay. So, yeah, that's kind of where I am as far as the advice goes there.

Ultimately, using an ISP's modem and router, I don't know what it would look like to partition that network properly without knowing more about the model and what it's capable of doing. So, yeah, this goes back to my earlier the way that I started off the show. If you're looking for modem and router recommendations, I suggest heading to Wirecutter. That is how I chose the modem that I have. That's an RS modem and I've used RS now for years and it's been steadfast and true and at the time I believe Eero, and I'm not sure they may still be a recommendation, but I haven't been in the market for a router in a long time because I've got Eero and it works so well. So, yeah, that's the answer to that question. Alrighty, where are we headed to next, john, another participant in the Zoom call.

I think it's the DAC I want to say Alright, vidak, perhaps Join us in the Zoom. So as Vidak joins us there in the Zoom, we'll be able to bring you on the air. Hello, alright, first tell us your name and tell us where you're calling from. It's.

1:53:52 - Calller
Vidak, it's Vidak.

1:53:53 - Mikah Sargent
Vidak.

1:53:54 - Calller
Alright From Montenegro. I've called the show a bunch of times. Ah well, welcome back. Yeah well, it's been a while thank you, you sound great.

1:54:03 - Mikah Sargent
It's good to be back. This is, whatever mic or set up you're using, you sound great.

1:54:08 - Calller
Oh, it's the magic of the Shure SM58 combined with a Scarlett 2i2.

1:54:15 - Mikah Sargent
Ah, I see, I see. So how can I help you today?

1:54:19 - Calller
So I have. I think it's a quick question. I made the mistake of well, I'm saying that, but it's like it's going to be like I don't know 15 minutes, Just kidding. I made the mistake of buying the M2 MacBook Pro, maxed out everything except for storage, that's, one terabyte, Just a couple of days before Apple announced M3. So did I do it very wrong, or am I not missing as much as I think I am?

1:55:04 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so a couple of things. It's been two weeks, hasn't it? Yes, because, yeah, I was going to say you would have had that two week return if you chose to return it. No, no, I haven't gotten it yet.

1:55:18 - Calller
I haven't gotten it yet. Oh, I thought you said you. That's the problem.

1:55:21 - Mikah Sargent
I, oh you, ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet. Bought it, got it.

1:55:26 - Calller
But, yes, correct, it's arriving from the States.

1:55:28 - Mikah Sargent
Got it. Okay, understood, okay, well, so there's still hope if you choose to go up. So which model of M2 did you say again, max, max? Okay, here's what I will say. The jump between the M2 and the M3 is nowhere near as much as the M1 to the M3. But the fact that you don't have it yet, there's almost no reason to Let me ask this was there a discount at the time? Because it no, because it was right before the new one was announced, right? So it wasn't as if there was a special deal. I almost don't see a reason why you wouldn't just go for the M3, other than you have to wait on the right.

1:56:17 - Calller
Here's the problem, though. It was bought by my cousin, who is delivered from the States, because Apple won't ship it here because they don't want to deal with the issue of maybe something getting broken or something like that. But I might be able to ask him to I don't know return it Can you get? I'm guessing you can get for the same money. You can get somewhere near what I speculated out for M2, right.

1:56:49 - Mikah Sargent
Somewhere near. Yeah, okay, so, especially since you're not doing the big jump on the storage, yeah, you should be able to. Now here is the thing If your family member is able to return it, golly, this is a tough one because it's not as simple as you walk down the street to the Apple Store. You drive even a couple of hours to the Apple Store and you make the return. This involves crossing borders and all sorts of stuff. There's a lot of logistics here. I honestly don't know.

I'm feeling, look, okay, let me give you advice, as if I don't know your specific situation, as if I'm pretending that you are a person who bought an M2. Wow, this chair can be very uncomfortable at times, especially whenever you're faced with a question like this You've bought an M2 and it's within the two-week return period. As someone points out, sometimes there are extended holiday return periods. I don't know if we're within those yet. You then hear that a week later or a couple of days later, now there's a new one.

I would tell that person, without any other context absolutely go for the M3. It's not just because it's the new shiny, it is because it is A more performant but B that the life of the machine is going to be longer because Apple's support of the machine is going to be longer, but also something that I think is incredibly important, that sometimes people don't consider, is the life of the battery in the machine. If you're buying an older device, even if it's just some months older, that battery that has been sitting in storage somewhere for this M2 waiting to be purchased.

1:59:05 - Ant Pruitt
It's going to have a shorter lifespan.

1:59:07 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah it's going to have a shorter lifespan. It may not be that much shorter and of course you can get a new battery, but everything, why not get the most recent thing? That is what I would tell a person if I didn't know your specific context. With your specific context, you've left me in a state where I don't know which way to go and I'm just very. That makes it tough.

1:59:33 - Calller
I can try that. I mean, the reason why I was asking is I felt a little I don't know what the correct word is for me not to say something I shouldn't say on here.

1:59:47 - Mikah Sargent
But Trust me, everyone who heard you tell this story. We're all saying those words, so they're imagining it in their head right now, so you don't have to say it.

1:59:55 - Calller
Okay, yeah, good, but I can try to do that. I don't know if Apple will go along with it, but yeah.

2:00:05 - Mikah Sargent
Here's what I'll say it's worth trying and if you don't pull it off, I know that if you, maybe you'll have to go to therapy a little bit, but you will be able to get past the disappointment of not having the M3, because, honestly, this maxed out machine you're going to be very happy with, right? So, honestly, at this point, what do you do with your? What stuff do you do with your machines? Are you like video editing or folding proteins?

2:00:38 - Calller
Video and audio. I'm an audio-video producer Okay, actually, I'm a radio producer. First Radio, first Video producer. Video and audio.

2:00:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, second, so even with this machine like it's the M3 that's all maxed out, that is, folding proteins and doing 3D modeling and all of that kind of stuff, I think you're going to be very pleased with the machine you end up with. And so, regardless of whether Like so for you I'm not even saying that you need you should get the M3 because it means that it's going to be more capable of the job that you want it to do. I don't necessarily believe that that's the case. I think this M2 that you possibly are going to get is going to be plenty capable for the job that you want it to do.

The only reason that I am suggesting trying to make the M3 thing happen is for those suggestions that I made, that the life of the device is going to be just a little bit longer because it's a newer machine and has, you know, the newer battery and everything. But I think it'll be plenty pleased with the M2 fully. I mean, you've got the M2 maxed. So, yeah, I think If it doesn't happen, then I think it'll be okay in terms of, you know, your ability to get done what you need to get done with this M2. Well, as you said, therapy might help. Yes, exactly, and in the end, if that's what you need, then that's what it takes.

2:02:19 - Calller
Can I ask another laptop question? Yeah, of course I am also looking to buy a throw-around laptop, because I'm not going to be comfortable looking around a $6,000 laptop for the first, whatever it takes for me to get off the honeymoon phase wagon. I was trying to look for an older laptop. It doesn't have to be super capable, I just need to have to be able to do audio editing on it. I was looking. Somebody suggested to me a Lenovo P51, which is a machine from six years ago. It was a workstation that Lenovo did for quite a while.

It's a 4K screen, I don't know. 32 gigs of RAM, i7 processor, Whatever. What is your take on buying so old of a laptop? Should I do this or maybe not?

2:03:30 - Mikah Sargent
So this goes back to what I was saying before. Honestly, I understand the desire to have a throw-around and normally this is why I would say get a new Chromebook, because you won't spend too much money and also it will be new, so the battery will be new, everything.

But, because of what you need to be able to do with it, then you need and I'm guessing you have no problem bouncing between operating systems. No, no, no, you're pretty good about that. Look, ultimately, I guess my take is if you need it and it is You're not investing. You're going into it fully aware that you are investing in something that is aged and that does not necessarily have the support the company support that a newer device would have. Then in that case, I think that, again, you're going into it with eyes wide open, right, then it's okay.

I don't know that it's something that I would do, necessarily.

I think I would just really maybe get a case, for I would just want to use that MacBook Pro for everything.

I guess is kind of I understand what would be safe with it, but, yeah, this is a tough one, I guess as well, in the sense that, yeah, I guess, if you are aware of the fact that you are buying an older machine that may not have a long life and you're willing to make whatever smaller investment it is in something that might be You're buying three of them over the course of the life of that one MacBook Pro because it's a banger on a laptop, then by all means you're good to go. As far as Lenovo ThinkPads I know Leo thinks those are great. I know Ant Pruitt has used them, maybe even be currently using one like those. One in the chat suggested maybe an AMD-powered machine that you can get for like 500 bucks would be worth it. That's a little bit newer, but yeah, whether you go for something newer that's lower-powered or something older like this that you know is higher-powered and is from a trusted brand like Lenovo, hey, as long as you're comfortable doing that, then why not?

2:06:03 - Calller
Well, sir, you've answered all my questions. Thank you very much.

2:06:06 - Mikah Sargent
I am wishing you all of the luck and goodness in the world that everything works out. I hope at the very least, you email us to let us know what ended up happening if you got the EBT2 or the EBT3, but feel free to call back if you'd like and let us know Before you let him go.

2:06:20 - Benito Gonzalez
Vidak, are you the guy? Yes, I think you called earlier, like a couple of months ago, about studio monitors, is that right?

2:06:28 - Mikah Sargent
Is that you Correct? Yes, that's me.

2:06:30 - Dick DeBartolo
I just want to check in and see what you bought, Like what did you end up with?

2:06:35 - Calller
Well, that's a longer story. I bought neither of the suggestions that were made in the show. I couldn't get them because Montenegro is Montenegro and some stuff is hard to get here. I ended up with a pair of Polkalk, I think that's how you say the name. Yeah, those are great I gave those which started giving off a burnt plastic smell in the first three hours that I had them, so I had to return them.

2:07:12 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's too bad, oh man. So now you don't have any.

2:07:17 - Calller
No, because I'm reluctant to buy. I liked them. They sounded awesome. I couldn't wrap my head around me having potentially overdriven them with a Scarlett 2i2. I don't think that's possible. Yeah, that seems unlikely.

2:07:40 - Mikah Sargent
It seems unlikely.

2:07:41 - Calller
And currently I don't have any. I might try to get one of the suggestions, which was a Yamaha. What is it? Ssh2 or HS2? Hs5 or the JBLs? Yeah, correct. Or the JBLs, right, yeah, okay cool, correct. I might try to do that again at some point.

2:08:01 - Dick DeBartolo
All right, good luck.

2:08:04 - Calller
Once I solve the MacBook.

2:08:07 - Mikah Sargent
Oh man, I am wishing you all the luck in the world. As I said, thank you for your call and I'm very hopeful that that all works out in the end.

2:08:16 - Calller
Thank you, it was nice talking to you, good to talk to you. Say hello to Leo for me.

2:08:19 - Mikah Sargent
We'll do Bye-bye, all righty folks. I think we're going to call it at that. It has been a wonderful episode of well, a wonderful joining you all for this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. I can't call it a wonderful episode. That's for you to do, or if you don't feel it was, let us know that too. But thank you so much for tuning in this week for Ask the Tech Guys. Again, if you want to reach out to us during the show which we record every Sunday round about 11 a while Leo's out 11 am to 1 pm Pacific in that area, you can head to call that Twitter TV during that time to join the zoom call, where you will have your opportunity to be brought on stage to ask a question. You can also call us at 888-724-2884 during the show to be able to ask us a question, or during the week you can call 888-724-2884. And when you do, you will be able to leave a voicemail that we can play live on air. And, as always, you can email us atgatwittv. When you email us with text that ends up in our mailbox or, in this case, to my right, where I'm able to answer some of your emails, and you can also send audio and video there too, if you'd like. Those will be then played back on the show. If you would like to help support the show, one of the ways to do that is by heading to Twitter TV slash ATG and subscribing to the show. You can find links to subscribe to both audio and video there and your podcast player of choice Apple podcast, spotify, wherever you happen to listen to your podcast, pocket casts, overcasts, all the places we have links there for you to kind of click or tap to pop in directly and get that subscription, but the and that will make sure that it's available for download.

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2:13:09 - Scott Wilkinson
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