Ask The Tech Guys Episode 1969 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.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Ask the Tech Geeks. I am Mikah Sargent, and we start off the show by talking about how keyboard shortcuts and automations can really mean all the difference in cutting down on time.

Rosemary Orchard (00:00:12):
And on top of that, we also look at how you can actually clean up and organize all those photos on your iPhone, as well as keep track of all those things that you're trying to watch across all of the services.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:22):
Plus a caller gives me the opportunity to wax ecstatic about the M two MacBook Air and why I think it's a great device for pretty much anyone who's in the market. For a new MacBook. Stay tuned for Ask the Tech Geeks

... (00:00:40):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:48):
This is Ask the Tech Geeks a very special episode of Ask the Tech guys with Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard in person. Episode 1969, recorded Sunday, April 9th, 2023. The dog in my handbag. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. With employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as herding cats. How do you reign in so many moving parts? The Meraki Cloud Managed Network. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit. And by Melissa more than 10,000 clients worldwide in retail education, healthcare, insurance, finance and government. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. And by electric E-bikes. Start your next adventure with electric e-bikes. Ready, set spring sale. Visit electric e-bikes .com to learn more and explore the new expedition cargo e-bike, and all of the other epic models electric has to offer. It's time for Ask the Tech Geeks. That's right. It's a very special episode of a T g because joining me this week, it's not a guy, but it is a geek. It's Rosemary Orchard.

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:23):
Hi. Hey, everybody. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:25):
Hello. You're here in

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:26):
Person. I know, right? You asked me to do this ages ago and I was like, I can get flights for then. And so I did.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:31):
Sure you did. And you're here. And it's Easter. So we're wearing Easter bunny ears. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you've brought delicious chocolate from the uk and it's just all around. Awesome. I am excited about this episode of Ask the Tech Geeks where you out there call in with your tech questions. And we do our best to answer them here on the show. Sometimes you email them in, sometimes you send us video. Remember that if you want to get in touch with us and ask your questions, you can do so by going to call dot twit tv. We think the best way to do that is by going to it on your phone, because when you do, then you'll get a little prompt that says, open this up in Zoom. And then you can actually join a Zoom call where you'll wait and we'll bring you on the show.

(00:03:15):
You can ask your question. And the reason why we think that's the best way to do it is because with the smartphone then the camera's right there. The microphone's right there. There's not a whole bunch of configuration that you have to do. It just works. And so yeah, call twit.tv to join the Zoom and give us, give us a ring. Or if you do have a question you wanna ask us via email, that's ag twit.tv. Or if you'd like, you can do at tg at twit tv or ask the tech guys at twit tv. They all work. But we like to keep it simple. So I thought that today, because you're here, because you are here it would be a great time to talk about saving time on our PCs, on our mobile devices because I think that sometimes that can be an underestimated sort of field that's worth looking into. Yeah. sometimes folks will go, okay, you know, I could learn the keyboard shortcuts, but that's so much when you take the time to learn them, when you get that, that muscle memory Oh yeah. It can save you so much time. It

Rosemary Orchard (00:04:19):
Does, it does. Like even just basic things like copy and paste, not having to move your mouse to the right area to then right click at something to trigger the copy and then go somewhere else and trigger the paste. You know, add in say control or command tab depending on if your windows or Linux or Mac. And then, you know, you can switch between applications and copy and paste without your hands ever going off of the actual keys and having to use a track pad or a mouse.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:42):
Yeah. And I think that's the big thing is especially for those of us who are touch typers, who, you know, learned to, to type without looking, we save even more time that way. And with, I'll be honest, you know, sometimes you help somebody out with a, a problem they're having on their computer and you see them sort of take the mouse and they move it over. They're going up to file, they're going up to edit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. They're <laugh>. And you're like, oh, we could save you so much time. Yeah. And I think it's worth it. Oh, yeah. And, and so one of the I recently did an episode of Hands on Mac. If you are not a member of the club, you should join the club at club Twit. It's twit.tv/club twit. And you can check out that episode.

(00:05:22):
Actually, we published that episode to everyone, and now that I remember, so you could actually go and watch that TWIT TV slash om to watch that episode. And it's about keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, specifically regarding text editing. And what brought this up is last week, my co-host on the show was Aunt Pruitt, and aunt has recently made the switch from Windows to Mac Os and was kind of trying to relearn a new muscle memory for his new keyboard shortcuts. And he was talking about how he would hit the home key, the end key to move to the front of some text to the end of some text. And so I thought this would be the perfect time to go through because they're so second nature for me with, I use, you know, the option key and the arrow keys to move around text and then select it.

(00:06:05):
And it, it, it gave me this realization of, oh, this would be the perfect time to kind of teach folks how to use it. But then if they can see it sort of play out, they can see how much time that would end up saving them. And I think that's the big thing. But, you know, I, I, I will talk a little bit more about keyboard shortcuts, but there are more ways to help save you time on your devices. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and you are very good at helping people save time every week. We record our show on Tuesdays, iOS today, and people write in and they say, I have this problem and I'd like to solve it with shortcuts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And in many cases you provide a an example of how to, to fix the problem. So for the folks who are tuning in on this show mm-hmm. <Affirmative> let's hear a little bit about, about the Shortcuts app, and then maybe if you've got some basic things that have helped save you time, that'd

Rosemary Orchard (00:06:57):
Be cool. Yeah. Yeah. So for those who don't know, the Shortcuts app is an app that's available on iOS, iPad, os, and Mac os. And it's essentially a way to stick some blocks together with Legos that you can take, say a picture and overlay some text on top of it or crop it and resize it, reformat it, and then maybe automatically share it to say one of your podcasting co-hosts, like Mikah or something else. And it's, it's just a really useful app where you can take stuff in, put stuff out, or not take anything in and just create something. So going back to what you were saying Mikah, about, you know, copying and pasting, well, if there's a chunk of text that you need again and again and again, we could actually just put it in a shortcut and have a shortcut for copying directions to get to my house, for example.

(00:07:39):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and then you can just tap that and voila, you've got that. And I mean, I have loads of things that I use shortcuts for. I mean, one of them, Mikah is doing a lot of the prep for iOS today, like getting links for all of those apps for the show notes. No, I <laugh>, I'm sorry. Like, as much as, as much as I love doing like the show, I'm not gonna spend hours going through the app store right. When I could just type the names of all the apps and then be like, okay, it's this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. And it'll just chuck it all together for me, copy it, and I paste it into the document. Nice. so yeah, there was one thing that I was doing yesterday, which I can't show you on my Mac, but was really useful is I was in a, a store and I, there was something without a price tag on, but I knew that if I looked up the barcode from that item on the website of the store, then it would tell me how much it was.

(00:08:27):
 And so I just created a really quick two action shortcut, which just right there scans the barcode and then copies it to the clipboard. And that's literally all it does. But this is really useful for things like QR codes as well. Like you see a QR code somewhere and maybe you don't necessarily wanna like actually open that website now because you wanna remember it for later or something. Or you can scan it and copy it, and then you can paste it wherever you like, like send it to a friend or whatever. So things like that. And there was one that I did for you on Tuesday, Mikah, because you were saying that the New York Times Games app had changed its name on iOS mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And the way that you open it is always by going to Spotlight and then typing in C R O for crossword, which Yeah. Worked until they renamed the app. But if you add a shortcut for the crossword app for the New York Times Games app, then voila. Then, then literally it's one single action folks. It just opens an app, but it then adds that into your search Yep. So that you have an alternative name for something.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:20):
And I set that up that day. Yeah. And I've been using it so I didn't have to change my muscle memory Exactly. Which was really nice. I see. And I think that when folks are, are having these, these issues, they often, you know, you go the, the slog route <laugh> until you realize how much time can be saved. And there sometimes you see that aha moment where they go, wait, I could, oh, and then you get inspired and you want to create more. But like, how does somebody who is not as versed as you are in shortcuts, or even in the idea of just, I bet there's a way to make this faster. They're not necessarily thinking in that mindset. How do we get someone into that mindset? Is it just about going in and playing around? Is it about finding good shortcuts? Is it about finding a friend who knows how? What do you think is kind of the best way to go about learning what's possible?

Rosemary Orchard (00:10:16):
Well, I mean, if you wanna learn shortcuts, then of course you should watch iOS today. Cause we have Shortcuts Corner every week. And a little bit of self-promotion. I also wrote a book called Take Control of Shortcuts, which you can get a copy of for 9 99. But there's also a really great guide on the Apple website for the iOS and the Macros version. But honestly, the best thing that I think anybody should be doing who thinks like, maybe I can be a little bit more efficient at this or more productive, or maybe I can just make fewer mistakes when I'm doing this, is to look at what you're doing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like, actually think about what you're doing. Don't just mindlessly do the thing. Like actually have a moment where you're like, okay, I'm just gonna have a look at what I'm actually doing here.

(00:10:55):
Like, this is the step one, step two, step three. And even as you're just looking at it, like if you write it down, or even if you just make a mental list, you'll suddenly realize that instead of, you know, doing this thing where you have to go from here to here to here to here to here, back 17 times, if you prepared everything over here, then you could just take it all over there and do the thing. Like whatever it is, you know, it's a little bit about the reflection process to start with before you can really dive into the automation. And for shortcuts there's actually a gallery which I have open on my Mac. There's also a gallery on the iPhone where you can just get like a whole list of various, you know, things that you can do. And these are already made, and you can just download these. You don't need to know how to create them. You don't need to know how to do anything with them. And that's it. You, you know, batch add reminders. Oh yeah. I often need to add a bunch of things to reminders. Sure. I'm gonna grab that and you just tap on the plus and voila, that's it. It's now in all shortcuts. And if I wanna have a look at it, I can see what it's gonna do. It's even got a little explanation here.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:56):
That's really nice. The documentation and being able to see how it's built is, is quite nice. Someone had pointed out not, you know, they're not super versed with Mac stuff. Another place that I've found this to be helpful is in, in very specific instances of very small problems, I have made use of generative ai. And this is the part where some people have grown cause like, oh God, he's talking about AI again. But it, it, it, it was really nice. The other day I needed to quickly get the titles of all of the episodes published in an r s s feed from this date to this date. And I wanted them in an unordered list that I could then copy and paste where I wanted it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I had thought there are a whole bunch of different ways that I could make this happen. And the way that I am going to make it happen is by just making a python. Hmm. And so I knew a little bit of what I needed to do but I was having trouble with, I could, for some reason, the sort of standard requests package that you use with Python was not working. And so every time I would, you know, go to run the script, it was saying that it couldn't find requests. And I'm like, I know I've used pip. I've installed it. What the heck is going on?

Rosemary Orchard (00:13:24):
Was it Python two versus Python three? By any chance?

Mikah Sargent (00:13:26):
It was in, I was installing it in the wrong environment. Oh, yeah. Because I had done pa N v mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so there was a specific Python environment. So what I did was I went to chat G P T and I said, I'm getting this error, but I know I've installed requests using pip. And it said, you might be installing it in the wrong environment, add this little tag, which was like hyphen m before you do it. And that will probably solve the problem. I did it and it solved the problem. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I was able immediately to get that list of of, of podcast episodes and instead of having to go manually and copy and paste all of those. And there are so many different ways that we can solve these problems, of course. But I like that there are so many different ways that we can solve these problems.

(00:14:13):
And it is platform agnostic. You know, you don't need to be on a particular system to be able to do that. I, I, and, and I almost like, I wish that there was more of an opportunity to be a bit of a like a concierge, I guess of, of solutions for people where, you know, those, those small times you could like look at their workflow and you could go, this, this, this, and this could be solved if we just create these little custom tools for you. And I think that that could help so many people, and also, again, inspire them to want to make some of their own, because that's what it was for me. It's like once it was Text Expander was my sort of gateway entry into automation mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And once I started using Text Expander, which if folks don't know, it is a tool that lets you sort of create little key words that can be expanded into larger sentences larger paragraphs bits of texts.

(00:15:15):
So an example of this is I regularly have to type out my email. So instead of typing out my entire email, I can just do a little shortcut. It's technically called a snippet. And the, the trigger phrase is semicolon gmail, or if it's my@me.com address, then semicolon me. And then Text Expander sees that I've typed that, and then it replaces that short little phrase with my entire email. And over time, that starts to add up. And it saves you a lot of time. Oh, yeah. And once I started doing that, it's like, wait, I could have this in so many other places. So now every repetitive task I'm doing, I'm going, how is it that I could automate this? And I just the other day there and on for Tech News Weekly mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we have a, we have show notes as many shows do.

(00:16:07):
Yeah. And we regularly have a little part at the end of every interview where we say, thank you for joining us. Insert the name of the person here. If folks wanna follow you online, where can they find you? And it's just a reminder to us to say that, but we were already typing their name in, in a different spot for the technical director mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so why do I need to type it twice if I can create something within within Google Sheets, a little formula Yeah. That will grab that name from there, pop it in there, and add the rest of the text. So

Rosemary Orchard (00:16:39):
Yeah. I, I did something similar when I was tweaking the iOS Today sheet a while ago, because I, I realized that like I was putting the same thing in a couple of different places and I was like, maybe I can just say equals this and format it as that. Yeah. which worked so well. And there's something that I actually wanna recommend that's built into Mac OS and iOS. And there's also a version of this on Windows for folks who are thinking, Ooh, this text expander thing sounds interesting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'd like to try it. Well, in system settings on Mac, I'm not a hundred percent certain where it is on settings on iOS, there's this function called text replacements, where you can just have it, like, automatically expand a bunch of things. So if I expand at, at, so if I just type the at symbol twice, then it puts the my domain name so I can put whatever email address in the I want. Nice. And this is a really great way to get started with this stuff. And also your keyboard shortcuts mic, there's also a thing in here for like, all the keyboard shortcuts on your Mac that are just like, set globally. And also you can add custom ones for specific applications if you want.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:33):
Yeah. I love, I I love that menu. And again, it just starts to make you feel very powerful. I think that's what's so fun about it. Now you had a specific instance for folks who use Dropbox Yeah. As a, a file storage or file management solution. And I am actually kind of amazed at what Dropbox has done over time in helping folks save time. So let's talk about Dropbox Automation.

Rosemary Orchard (00:18:01):
Yeah. So Dropbox has like two features, which I use on a regular basis to make my life much easier. First one is called Cheesier. The first one is called file requests, where you can basically have a link that you give to somebody. They go to the link and it says, Hey, like please can you upload this file for Rosemary Orchard? And then they upload it, it puts their name first. So if they're already logged in, then they can upload from their Dropbox account where they can just upload a file from their local machine. And then it puts their name at the beginning. If not, they're asked to input their name. But then on top of this, as well as like getting that file and putting it in the folder that I specifically requested and like designated for this purpose, there's this great feature called folder automations or folder actions where you can actually set up your folder so that whenever files get added there, something happens automatically.

(00:18:48):
So for example, it can rename the files or it can move things to other folders based on what type of file that is. And this is really great because it doesn't even need to happen on your computer. So if you're dealing with lots of files that are sort of coming and going, and maybe you've got shared folders with other people, I know Mikah, you share a bunch of Dropbox folders with folks and so do I. Then it's very useful for just being able to be like, okay, so when stuff goes into this folder, magic will happen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Magic that I've created. Maybe you can use chat G p t or something similar to get some recommendations for stuff that you can do. But yeah, there's, there's all sorts of things like watermarking images, like if you wanna watermark all the images thrown into a folder. So for example, maybe you're a photographer and you take photos of like dance competitions or something. We have a friend who does that. And you just want like a really quick preview system for people. You can just dump the photos into the folder and it'll just do it. And that's great, especially if you're doing things from your phone or for a metabolite where you don't necessarily have as much power or the ability or the time to do everything yourself.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:51):
Yes. That, again, saving time in these small ways, it starts to add up. And it's worth, cuz that's, that's kind of always been the ongoing joke is sort of, I invested so much time in my automation process that did I really save time? But if you devote the time once, then from that point forward you can sort of have this revelation, this realization that it is it's going to save you a lot of time in the long run. And I love again, about text expander if you want to, they have an email that they'll send you and it'll tell you how much time you saved. And I think it's every month mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and it's kind of wild how much that adds up just in the regular keyboard shortcuts that I'm using with that app. Yeah. alright, so again, if you have questions and you'd like to ask them live on the show, you can do so by going to call twit tv.

(00:20:51):
That's call TWI TV on your mobile device. Or, you know, hey, maybe you've got everything set up, you know exactly how it's working. You can do that from your computer as well. And join us in the Zoom call to have your question answered live on the show. But I do wanna take a quick break here to tell you about our first sponsor. Ask The Tech Guys is brought to you by Cisco Meraki, the experts in cloud-based networking for hybrid work. So if your employees are working at home, if they're working at a cabin in the mountains on a lounge chair at the beach in a lift on the way from San Francisco to Petaluma, a cloud managed network provides the same exceptional work experience no matter where they happen to be. You may as well go ahead and roll out that Welcome Matt.

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Rosemary Orchard (00:24:25):
Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me come. I wasn't sure I was gonna be allowed into the studio <laugh>, unfortunately. Fortunately you guys made an exception. So I'm, I'm

Mikah Sargent (00:24:33):
Good here. Yes, you're here. Excellent. And we're doing the show and it's been great so far. We are gonna head into some email questions that we've received. We have someone named Tom who's written in, and I think this is a great question, particularly for today's show. Tom writes, do you have a recommendation for an app or a method for deleting and sorting iPhone photos? Also, my photos are not syncing with my iPad. I'm not an Apple guy. Thanks. So on top of wanting to know how to delete and sort iPhone photos Tom seems to be having an issue syncing with Tom's iPad. So I think we're gonna be on the same page when it comes to deleting photos. What is your thought there?

Rosemary Orchard (00:25:19):
Well, my first thought is that before you do anything, Tom, you actually need to fix the fact that the photos aren't syncing with the iPad because there's a couple of reasons why that could be happening. And the last thing I wanna do is say, yeah, sure, go ahead and delete a bunch of pictures, and then you've lost all of those pictures because it turns out your phone isn't syncing with the cloud at all. So what you would need to do is in settings on your iPhone and settings on your iPad, it'll be look approximately the same. You just need to make sure the apps using iCloud and iCloud photos is then turned on. And you're gonna need to make sure you've got enough storage space as well. You can see that my photo's taking up about 120 gigabytes, and you're gonna need to make sure you've got enough storage space in your iCloud plan for all of your pictures.

(00:26:04):
So if you've got a lot of pictures, you may need to upgrade your storage plan to a larger one to allow for that. And I would do that first and make sure that everything is synced and backed up before you start actually going through and deleting and organizing things just because this way it's also gotta backup in the cloud. You can of course use other apps like Dropbox are similar to, to back up your photos before you start, but making sure that things are sinking first Yes. Also gives you the opportunity to do some of this on other devices because yeah, that's something you may wanna do.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:33):
Yeah, I think that's very good advice. Before yeah, before you do anything else, you wanna make sure everything's sinking as it needs to. So once we've got the, the sinking figured out, especially on an iPad, oh, and this is actually, I just thought of something mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I saw this happen recently where my partner's family, two of them were having an issue where they had created a shared photo album. Oh. And the other person was unable to access the shared photo album. Interesting. And so while they were with me, I said, okay, let's create a new shared photo album. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, let's see. Nothing was working. Yeah. Couldn't figure it out. I'm, you know, looking their store, is it the storage space? Is it this, is it what it ended up being, they had not accepted the new iCloud terms of service. Oh

Rosemary Orchard (00:27:19):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:20):
And so if you've had syncing working and suddenly it cuts out and you've tried everything else. So the suggestions that Rosemary made, make sure that on that iPad, you go into the settings app you tap on, I believe it's under general. And if it's not under general, then you just tap on your, your name banner at the top, and there's a little tab that kind of shows itself that says iCloud terms of service need to be accepted. You tap on that. You choose accept.

Rosemary Orchard (00:27:48):
Yeah. It would be showing up where, where my iPhone was if I needed to accept them. But I've already done that, so Cool.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:53):
Right. And so what the reason why it wasn't working is because essentially Apple says, until you're okay with our new terms of service, we're not going to be able to let you use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the, the service that you're wanting to use. So we did that, and then suddenly everything was sinking again. So it was really good. Yeah. that it was a simple solution, but it was one that was kind of buried. You know, you wouldn't think necessarily that that would, I think the, an average person outside of technology would not necessarily think that that would stop them from accessing what they wanted to. Yeah. So in terms of deleting photos mm-hmm. <Affirmative> how would one go about finding photos that need to be deleted?

Rosemary Orchard (00:28:31):
Well, there's a couple of ways that you can do that. So first of all, in the Photos app on your iPhone, if you go into the album section and then you scroll down towards the bottom, then there is this section here called Duplicates. And if you tap on duplicates, then what your iPhone and your iPad and, and your Mac do, and they do this locally and offline. So it may not necessarily have done it on all of your devices yet, but it goes through and it looks for duplicate photos. And I have a number here, some of which I may have prepared earlier, not entirely intentionally but it will find duplicates. And then what you can do is you can tap on it and say merge. But before you do that, if you, we have a, a look, then one of these pictures is 4.4 megabytes and the other one is 2.6 megabytes.

(00:29:15):
So when I tap merge because these are the same picture, it's going to just pick one and it's gonna pick the larger one. But if I had something where they were, there were two very similar pictures I think this one nope, it's, it's not gonna do it. I've already dealt with those on iOS today. But if you had two pictures that were very taken, like seconds apart, then it would also let you pick one of them, which is a very useful thing to be able to do there. And what you can also do is actually just say select, select all and then go merge, merge all of these <laugh>. I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. Partially because I, I need to keep this for future episodes of iOS today where we get Alice, this question again. And also just because I do actually want to go through and check, not that I don't trust iOS to be really good at like, figuring this stuff out, but also just in case

Mikah Sargent (00:30:03):
I'm the same way. Yeah, yeah. I'm exactly the same way. It, it takes me I thought, oh, I'm just gonna do it. And I No, can't do it. I gotta, I gotta see and, and make sure that it's exactly as I want. Yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (00:30:15):
Yeah. I should actually say for folks who are looking at this going, oh, like actually I kind of don't want this picture. Like, how, how can I get rid of it? If you tap and hold on any of these images, then you can tap show in all photos and it'll show you that so that you can actually see that. And then I can see wherever it was I think it, there we go. It's the same picture saved from Instagram yesterday. So, you know, I can actually just be like, okay, you know what? I'm just good. Delete this entirely. I don't care about this anymore and be done with it.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:42):
Now are there some third party solutions for this this, this problem? Yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (00:30:47):
Yeah. There are a great one, which I love is a little app called Gemini by Macpa. Now there's Gemini from Mac, which can do duplicate files in general, but there's also Gemini photos for iOS, which you can download and it will go through and analyze, but it doesn't just look for duplicates. It looks for loads of photos taken within like a short frame of time. So, for example, if you use Burst mode on your iPhone a lot, where it will take 10 pictures or it'll just take pictures while you're holding down the shutter button instead of turning into a video. Then it will go, Hey, out of all of these, we think this one's the best. Is this the one you want? And then you can select it and, and confirm that that's the one you wanna keep and continue on your way. And that's, that's a really useful app to have. I really, I, I really like that. I do have it on my phone, but I was

Mikah Sargent (00:31:37):
Yeah, no, that's, that's fine. I, so the, the app itself it will, yeah, not just show you duplicates, but can also help you separate out different categories. So you were talking to Tom about sorting. That's one of the great things about it is it will, it has a photo radar feature that will actually help you decide to move things to a specific album. So if you've got lots of screenshots, those can get moved to a screenshot album. If you have, sometimes it'll help you enhance photos. So depending on how it's saved, how it's cropped, how it's stored, that can be helpful. And then as Rosemary was pointing out, one of the things that I think makes it particularly magical is that along with just doing straight up duplicates, it does similar. And so being able to go, okay, these four photos that I took all within this period of time are similar and finding the one that you want. And then it also has, I dunno if you mentioned the blurred feature, but

Rosemary Orchard (00:32:34):
I did not mention that. No,

Mikah Sargent (00:32:35):
That's the other thing. It has it's smart enough to detect when photo is blurry. And so then you can see, oh, that was an accidental photo mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that I took, I can remove that one because it obviously is not worth having on my device. It will run in the background. It runs better if you have it running in the foreground especially like for the first time that it's looking through your photos. But after that, it'll run in the background and the photo radar feature will regularly send you push notifications saying, Hey here's a thing that I could see that you might want to change about your library. So for mine it has kind of documents and screenshots, and it says you probably wanna move all of these to their own album and get them out of kind of the main view. So it's very helpful. And then as you mentioned, if you get it on the Mac, being able to do it for photos but also for files is a great way to save save storage space. So yeah. Tom yeah, we've given we've given you some sort of inbuilt features mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and some third party methods for being able to sort through and manage your photos.

Rosemary Orchard (00:33:40):
Yeah, I did just wanna mention one other thing. On the built-in Photos app, there's a really there's some really nice smart albums that are built into photos. So, you know, I showed folks the, the duplicates before, but there's also places and people, which are the two most commonly used things. Like, whenever I'm looking for pictures, for example, pictures I took in San Francisco, well, if I open the photos and and I actually share my phone so that folks can actually see that, then that would be even better. So if I open the photos app and then I go to places, then I get this map of the world with pictures I've taken all over the place. And as I zoom in on places, then I can find, you know, for example, the pictures I've taken up here in Petaluma, pictures I've taken in San Francisco, and so on and so forth. And then also if I go to people, then I can scroll down and look. I can find Mikah Oh. And see pictures of Mikah from the last time that we met up. Yeah. Mikah, which was a little while

Mikah Sargent (00:34:35):
Ago. It's been a while.

Rosemary Orchard (00:34:36):
Yeah. Yeah. But there we go. And these are just built in and if it recognizes somebody, then you can actually you know, add a name to them and link them to your contacts and stuff like that. And that's just all built in. And then bonus, these will show up in the search as well. So if I type San Francisco in the search, or if I type Petaluma in the search, then it'll find the pictures I've taken here. If I type Mikah, then it'll find the pictures of you.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:57):
That's so helpful. I've used that a lot particularly when I'm, I'm telling someone about a memory that I've had and I can type in a location based on that, or a year or what have you to find that. We do have someone calling in. It's I'm gonna go with Arizona, Neal. I think that's what that AZ stands for. Arizona Neal is calling us. If you have questions, call.twi.tv is how you get in touch. You'll use Zoom for the call. And so we're bringing Arizona Neil on to ask a question. Hello, Arizona. Neil.

Caller 1 (00:35:36):
Hello.

(00:35:36):
Hello, Mikah. Hello. Mary, nice to meet both of you. Rosemary,

Rosemary Orchard (00:35:41):
Talk

Caller 1 (00:35:41):
To you. Rosemary, I'm sorry. No worries. But I have watched your show I today as well. I've been watching for many years. Thank you. But I did come up with a question while I'm sitting here with you about the shortcut reminded me of something. I have several Amazon echoes all around the house, but I also have some home pods. And I often you'll use, this is a bit to be simple, I'm thinking I often will use my oh, what's the word for it? The Alexa to actually give me a weather forecast. What's the weather forecast? I thought, well, I could use the home pod to do the same thing, but it does not, whenever it, whenever it, whenever I try to do the HomePod, or I'm sorry, yeah, the home pod for the weather, it says it's missing a shortcut to deliver that. I'm thinking, that's why I thought of the question. I saw Rosemary on the show. I said, what am I missing in here? I don't see what shortcut I would add, and I don't know how I would add it to a home pod. So what is it, why is it not smart enough, if you will, to give a another forecast, for example?

Rosemary Orchard (00:36:45):
Well, I think the answer here is actually that you have a shortcut that you probably don't want. And so if you open the shortcuts app on your phone and so that's the app with the blue icon with sort of a pink diamond and a, a, a turquoise diamond overlaid on it. And then you actually go into the shortcuts app, then you can actually type into the search. And if you just type something like, for example, weather, then you will probably find a shortcut that is the statement that you're saying, so what's the weather today? Or something like that. And then you can just rename or delete that shortcut. And then it'll go away. And to delete a shortcut I will just use this one which I created for an hour today demo. So I can see that that one's there, I can just tap and hold on it and then tap on the delete, and then I would go ahead and confirm that I want to delete that.

(00:37:37):
And that should be that. I suspect what it is is you may have something, for example, I've got one using the current app here mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, where you've then uninstalled the app later mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and that's what's causing the problem. And so the action will just be sort of empty and not really showing anything there. Yeah, I was thinking like dark sky yeah. It could well be a dark sky thing actually, considering the fact that that app is no longer available. It may also be, if you've been doing this over the last few days Apple's weather system has been a little more up and down than the weather <laugh>. So you may have actually run afoul of the fact that Apple's weather system has been offline if you've done it over the last few days. But other than that, I'm thinking that there, there's a shortcut that you've got installed with a name that just needs to be deleted or renamed.

(00:38:21):
You can rename things as well. I should show Fox for people who don't know how to do that. So what you can do if you open the shortcut on iOS, you just tap on the three dots on the top right. Then if you use the info at the bottom then you've got of your, your, your things here, and you can just make sure everything's working. But if you just tap on that area at the top with the name, then you can then go ahead and rename it. And so I could just put for example, oh, if I could spell, I could put micro at the end and then I would know that that's not the one that I'm gonna be triggering Yeah. From my

Mikah Sargent (00:38:52):
Voice. That's one of the, the tough things at times with shortcuts is the naming can sometimes get in the way of what you wanna say to Siri mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because when you sort of summon Siri and ask it for something, you will have a it, it will sort of try to be mindful of what you're saying and look at all of the possibilities for what you may be asking. And one of those ways that it does so is by looking into your shortcuts library that's tied to your iCloud account. And so if there's a shortcut that is very close to, if not the exact same as what you're asking, then it's going to think that you're intending to run that shortcut as opposed to it just going, I'm hearing what you're saying and I'm responding. It's going, I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm finding that shortcut and I'm running that shortcut.

(00:39:40):
And since whatever app or service that was once there is not there, it tries to run it and then it responds with what you got, which was something along the lines of like, that shortcut doesn't work, or I need you to fix a shortcut, or I need a new shortcut, or whatever. That is the one problem that I've noticed when it comes to that, because at times you are just looking for that generic response where if Siri had never sort of looked in, had never had access to a shortcuts library, then it wouldn't rely on that at all. And it would just go, here's the question that you're asking. Here's the answer, and you're done. But it goes, oh, you may be trying to run this. So I don't know if I said crossword to it, it might try to run that crossword shortcut, for example mm-hmm.

(00:40:22):
<Affirmative>. so yeah definitely give that a look into the Shortcuts app. And that is such a great question because I always love it when folks call in with questions that end up being helpful for so many other folks, because even if they're not having the same exact weather issue, they could be having another issue that's similar where they're saying turn on the tv. But because you created a shortcut at one point called Turn On the TV that like turned on a TCL Roku TV that had home kit connectivity, Uhhuh <affirmative> that you no longer have, for example, then instead of just going, oh, what you're asking is to turn on the Apple TV you have in the living room, it thinks I'm supposed to run this shortcut that doesn't work. So then it just 4 0 4 s kind of, yeah. Yeah. yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (00:41:06):
So yeah, it runs into that, that area where it's like, huh, I, I like, this is what I know that I'm supposed to do, but I can't do this and it doesn't have this, oh, but they probably meant this, so I'll do that option instead.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:18):
That infor Yeah. That inference of, of understanding there would be great. AZ Neil, that is such a fantastic question and we appreciate you calling in. You'll have to let us know how it goes. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:41:29):
Well, thank for taking my call. I appreciate that. Love the show. Take care.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:33):
Thanks so much. Bye. All righty. I think we can go to another written in question. This one comes from Vikrant who has written in and said in the Apple Podcast app, is there a way to see the queue of my list? Meaning I see how to line up the next podcast while I am listening to the one that I'm currently listening to, but what if I wanna line up say 10 episodes and see my list? Is that possible? And then there's going to be a second question, but let's start with this one. So essentially in the same way that the music app where I can say, I wanna listen to this and then I want to add this to up next, and then I wanna add to something after I wanna add this later, all of this, I can start to create sort of a, a, a bespoke playlist mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and an ephemeral playlist. In that moment, am I able to queue up episodes in the Apple Podcast app, which we all know is something that is in pretty much every third party podcast app that's kind of like one of the main features that make third party podcast apps what they are.

Rosemary Orchard (00:42:41):
Yeah. So, and this is a a really good question because it works a little differently to the music app. Because in the music app on iOS, what you can do when you're looking at say, a, a list of if, if these were tracks in the music app, then I can just tap on the three dots and be like, sure, I wanna play this next, or I play this last. And so I'll just go down and, and add something to my play next list. And then in the music app, what you can do, if you look at your now playing section, then there's, there's a list option, and there, there isn't a list here. And this is the thing that's a little confusing. Cause what you have to do is swipe up. Mm. And if you swipe up, then you see playing next and you can see the things that are in your list of things to play.

(00:43:23):
There's also a section here for chapters and show notes, right? So you know, if you were looking for something and you, it was mentioned so if I just for example, go ahead to the next episode, which happens to be an episode of iOS today looking at music then I can see all of our episode notes there. And then underneath that there's play next. So that's pretty cool. And yeah, it's, it's really handy to have all this information, but you need to know to swipe, because in music there's a little icon that shit, it's like bullet points with lists next to it. And yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:43:58):
I love it with these episode answers. Remember the individual who called in and asked I did this thing where I did it, I set a timer on my Apple Watch mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I don't know how to say that in the exact right way to make it happen again. Yeah. And it turned out it was just how the timer workeded by default.

Rosemary Orchard (00:44:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you needed to show the timer app to get the screen that he was looking for. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:19):
I I love that. Alright. And then let us do one more question here and we'll take a quick break. Michael has written in and has said, there's a recent article on Mac Rumors that highlights a change to the up next section of the Apple TV app. Apple with TV OS 16.2 updates the up next section in the watch now tab of the Apple TV app. Instead adding a large featured content section with no option to disable it. The previews also autoplay content with audio much to the annoyance of Apple TV users. I have been using and enjoying the Apple TV watch now, which keeps track of shows I have watched on my streaming services except for Netflix and Stan, which isn't recognized. The redesign still works, but it's not as nice as it was. I searched for other solutions where the Apple TV can track what I watch automatically and show me the next episode in the series to watch.

(00:45:15):
As well as showing me what new episodes arrive in the order they're released. There is an app called Tracked, which looks like it might do what I want, but doesn't seem to be supported by the Apple tv. There was an episode of iOS Today on May 15th, 2021. Okay. Historian which highlights apps for tracking shows and books, but didn't explore automatic tracking, only manually adding shows you have watched in an app. I am using the Just Watch app to manually track shows I watch. Is there a better way to track shows on an Apple tv? Open source is always preferred. Now I remember someone calling in to ask the tech guy the show, the radio show and talking about an app that did this. I don't recall what the app was,

Rosemary Orchard (00:45:59):
So I, the thing maybe, you know what, it's the thing that I'm thinking or the problem that I'm thinking of here, Mikah mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is that tracking things automatically that you've watched on Apple tv, that's your problem because tracking things manually is super easy. You pull out your phone, maybe you use an app that I've recommended called Sofa to do this. Maybe you use Tracked, which is a great service that I I also use. But automatically figuring out what you've been watching on an Apple TV and then adding that to another service, that's gonna be a bit trickier because there is nothing that can sort of like tie in and be like watching what you're doing on the Apple tv. Cause there's services that come figure out what you've watched on Netflix and add it to track. If you watch Netflix using Chrome on your Mac, which if you do that, then you airplay it to the Apple tv, then it could do it automatically.

(00:46:49):
But that's kind of tricky. I mean, personally I've gone full nerd. I have my own home media server. I've ripped a bunch of DVDs and I've put them into a great service called Plex. And because it's pretty much all in one place and then Plex can even send it to track, I know exactly what I've been watching, but that's not gonna be a good solution for most people. Nobody wants to sit down with a pile of DVDs now at a rip them all. Right. you know, I've, like, I've, I've, I'm, I'm such a weirdo, Mikah, I've ended up with two DVD players, so I can do this more efficiently. <Laugh>, I can like put the next DVD V in so that when it's ripping one, then it's like queued up the next one ready to go. Oh, that's amazing. But like, I can't imagine most people are gonna want to do that.

(00:47:25):
So I think your best option is probably gonna be using something like the SOFA app that I have recommended before. Which you can, you can have whatever you like in there. So for example, I've got movies and shows to watch, and if I go into Jack Ryan, which I have finished watching, then I can actually I I I can log this into my activity and, and, and say that I've, I've watched it. Tracked is a great service. I do personally use it. I do really love it. It's, it's, it's one of the many options out there. So yeah, have a, have a play with some of the options. Unfortunately you're gonna struggle to find the stuff open source Michael, because all of that data is collected by a number of services. The movie database, T M D B does have open source data. So something that's integrating with T M db will probably be more likely to be open source, but it's, it's not a guarantee, I'm afraid. So if you do find something open source, I'd love to hear about it.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:24):
I am wondering, now that I think about it if Apple sort of undid a bit of that that change where there was the up next promotional contents because

Rosemary Orchard (00:48:42):
Oh, they were something in there about spoilers at one point. I remember this because they changed how up next works because spoilers were kind of showing in like the, the clips, the autoplay as you scrolled across mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and so I do remember them changing that at some point. 

Mikah Sargent (00:48:58):
But, and my up next, right now with the most recent version works fine. I don't recall there being anything in the way of what I'm actually wanting to watch.

Rosemary Orchard (00:49:05):
So, no, the other thing is, of course, on Apple tv, if you use the, the, the trackpad to, to like go to the app mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then that app's up next will show if it doesn't integrate with like the, the standard apples up next. So Plex, for example, has its own individual one. So if I, I highlight the Plex app, then the things showing at the top, the top mm-hmm. <Affirmative> will be changed based on what's, what's available in Plex versus, you know, everything else. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:30):
So yeah, there, there often is some inbuilt tracking that you can do with that let's take a quick break and then I'm actually gonna go back to Vic's question because I forgot that there was a second part of that question. So we'll, we'll hit that and then we may have someone in the calls who's looking to join us. If you are wanting to join us dog in a hoodie, please hit the little button to raise your hand. If you, if you're just a spectator, then you don't need to hold your hand up. But if you actually do have a question, then go ahead and hit that little button that says, raise my hand. And that way we know that you are hoping to have your question answered. If you out there hoping to have your question answered, call twit TV is where you go.

(00:50:15):
 There you'll be able to join a Zoom call and hang out and hopefully have your question answered live on the air. But it's time for a quick break. So I can tell you about Melissa who are bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech Guys digital onboarding and ID verification. It's a necessary tool to reduce fraud, to improve customer engagement, and to ensure peace of mind. Melissa verifies the authenticity of ID documents and allows customers to securely submit their identity information anytime from anywhere and on their preferred device. From an easy to use mobile app, there are four things to consider when looking for a digital onboarding and ID verification service. There's, ID check. So today, machine readable zone or r z and optical character recognition, OCR technologies, they instantly identify document types such as passports, driver's, licenses, and other count country IDs.

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(00:53:23):
All right, back from the break, are here for Ask The Tech Geeks a very special episode of Ask the Tech guys where Rosemary Orchard is joining us here in person. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for wearing some bunny ears to Otter this Easter Sunday as we record this episode. Why not? And we've, we've had some great questions so far. We've talked about sort of speeding up our lives mm-hmm. <Affirmative> making our lives better with with, with help. And I, I wanted to, before we go into this question, there was somebody who, I think it was even last week they had written in and they were having a problem with their email. And so their email was not working as they expected. Every time they opened their email on their phone, it wasn't syncing properly with what their Mac was showing or their PC was showing.

(00:54:14):
Oh, yeah. And they would try to move files around, and it was just all this nightmare. And the solution ended up being that they were using pop Oh, yeah. An older email technology and not imap. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> a newer email technology. Yeah. So I heard back from that listener, we said, Hey, switch to imap and yes, scooter X pop versus imap. And they have, they, they wrote in once, sort of the day of to say, Hey, it looks like things are working. They wrote back about a week later and said, ever since I switched to imap, everything's been exactly as I wanted. So, mm-hmm. <Affirmative> this is my little PSA that if you are logged into your email accounts on your different devices using POP for email it may be time to make that switch to imap. And depending on what your email provider is, it's probably as simple for you as searching, insert name, email provider.

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:10):
You probably don't even need to go searching. All you need to do is add the account again, maybe remove it first, and then add it a second time to your device. Because as your device goes through setting it up, it should automatically detect the best settings. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so especially if you're using you know what the more popular email providers such as say, fast Mail, Google Mail office 365, that sort of thing, then it should go through and just set things up so that you don't have that horrible thing of, there's an email on this device, but it's not on that device. Wait, where did it go? Why isn't it there? <Laugh>? because I, I know for a while my mom was absolutely adamant it was a, a different thing. She was adamant that she needed a different iMessage ID on her iPad to her iPhone because she didn't want messages going to like one when she wanted them going to the other.

(00:55:56):
But the problem with that was then we would just reply and say, yeah, okay, I'm on my way to the train station to pick you up, because she was one person as far as we were concerned. And they would go to her iPad and she wouldn't know that we were going to the station to pick her up or whatever. And so, yeah, that, that was very frustrating. But similarly to that, you know, letting your device go through the best settings, unless you have a very, very niche specific edge case, that's probably the best thing to do. And it will just get the right, get it set up right for you.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:23):
So yes, there you go. Now the second question from Vikrant via email says, my dad is hard of hearing but refuses to wear a hearing aid. When I speak with him over a video call, he cannot hear me well, even after cranking the volume all the way up, both on the phone and the headset, is there an external headset amplifier? Currently the headset is connected to the phone using the 3.5 millimeter port. I am envisioning a small amp that goes in between, meaning this amp has a 3.5 millimeter in from the phone and 3.5 millimeter out. This will go to the headset. Any suggestions or recommendations? Vic? There are quite a few of these devices that are available. And you, let's see. There's one that Leo recently recommended, and I wish I could remember off the top of my head. But I don't <laugh>, I'm, I'm having trouble recalling what it is. But even if you just did a search for headphone amplifier iPhone or headphone amplifier iOS, you'd be able to find some different options. But there are, as Rosemary thinks going to point to some settings, adjustments that you can make.

Rosemary Orchard (00:57:34):
Yeah, there are. And what you can do actually on your iPhone or an iPad or Mac is in the settings app system settings on Mac os under accessibility. There are a number of options here which may be useful. I know you said your dad refuses to wear a hearing aid, but if you could maybe talk him into a made for iPhone hearing aid, then I think that that might actually be a very good idea because there is an entire section in here for hearing devices where you can set things up. I don't have a hearing aid so I don't have those options, but under audio visual, there are some other things which may help. So if your dad is harder of hearing in one ear than the other, then what you could do is perhaps either use mono audio, which will make sure that same audio output goes to both left and right devices.

(00:58:24):
 Or you could change the balance so that it is more to the left or to the right as is appropriate. So that that can help. The other thing is, if he isn't using something like noise canceling on AirPod Pros and he has, and he has headphones that can do noise canceling, is to use that noise canceling feature because getting rid of the other noise around should hopefully help him hear what is going on so that he is then gonna be focused on just your voice. And what you're saying similarly on your end when you are speaking, making sure that you are using voice isolation on your device will help to make sure that there aren't other sounds coming in. Maybe from children playing, people running around that really cute dog that's, you know, somewhere near you that's playing who's absolutely adorable.

(00:59:13):
There happens to be a dog in the studio today. She's adorable. I love her. If she, if she goes missing, she's in my handbag. But yeah, there, you know, doing those things will help. And also don't forget that you can also get hearing aids over the counter now with made for iPhone here in the us. So that may be, especially if cost is something that he's concerned about, that may be an option to be worth exploring and focus, maybe be focusing on the maid for iPhone part. The fact that these are like AirPods, but even better they

Mikah Sargent (00:59:41):
Yes. Would be really don't even call them hearing aids. Yeah, they're, they're earbuds

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:45):
Dad. Yeah. Yeah. They're custom earbuds for you. Mm-Hmm. So that you can hear really well. And you know, the fact that they happen to be hearing aids, eh, makes everyone in the family happy and he's gonna be happy cuz he can hear. So fingers crossed, Vikram, you can vient you can actually convince your dad to do something, but there's some settings on some devices there that can help.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:04):
Beautiful. And I wanted to give an update. AZ Neil went through, did that removal and now the weather app is, or the weather forecast is working. So we always love to hear that whenever that takes place. So that

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:17):
Is really

Mikah Sargent (01:00:18):
Good. Again, that is for everybody out there. Then if you're having trouble where you're getting that notification, something about it not having a shortcut or I need you to

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:27):
Shortcut, was unable to run something like that from your HomePod or from an iOS or Mac Os, iPad os, apple TV device, whatever,

Mikah Sargent (01:00:35):
Check it and make sure that you've got the shortcut. And if you have the shortcut and it's an app that you've deleted, that could be the issue. Yeah. there, all right. I know here in a minute I'm gonna head over to Radio Corner and show off a little product, but before we do that, let's let's go to one more question here via email. Our hooded dog friend has not raised a hand, so I think they're just spectating. Sometimes we get folks who like to watch the show from Zoom. That's at call twit tv. You're totally welcome to hang out there. Sadly I have not seen, we usually have a truck driver who joins us for Ask the Tech guys and will sit in the Zoom and has their phone up on the dash. Oh, nice. And so then you kind of get to see the, the truck sort of rumbling and driving through these different areas. So I hope they're okay. They're

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:26):
Okay. Missing out on, on an experience. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:28):
So, so exactly. So I hope they're okay cuz I have not seen them in the past two weeks. But let's go to the question that comes in from John. John has written in and said hi, in fact, hi Mikah and Rosemary. I recently updated my 2020 MacBook Pro 13 from Catalina to Ventura. My system immediately slowed down mm-hmm. <Affirmative> before the update, the system was very snappy, but now it thinks about commands for about two seconds before responding. Is this a common result or is it possible that malware entered my system at the same time as I updated John?

Rosemary Orchard (01:02:06):
Hmm. Well, I mean, my question is how long has it been since the update was installed? Yep. Because there's a whole bunch of indexing that goes on after you do a Big Mac OS update.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:16):
Can you explain indexing?

Rosemary Orchard (01:02:17):
Well, indexing is essentially, your computer needs to know where all the bits and the bys and the files and the folders and the applications are so that it can do things. So for example, if, like me, you were to use an app from your keyboard to open apps. So you could use Spotlight using Command Space, for example. Then when you type command space and you start typing things, those results that come back, they're the results of it. Everything on your computer being indexed. And with Ventura there's more things that are being indexed than there were with Catalina, for example. Shortcuts are part of this. So if you have, I don't know, say 1,600 something shortcuts on your devices like me, then it's gonna have to go through an index, all of those as well. And the other thing is, is there's some apps that just need a bit of time to update.

(01:03:03):
For example, photos. If it has to go through and reorganize a bunch of photos for you, it's gonna be taking a while to do that. So if you haven't since the update just kind of left your Mac plugged in for a while and lo and so, you know, ideally not shut down, you want to have been locked in so that you've got into file vaults so that it can actually do this stuff because file volts, that's macko S'S native disc encryption will, you know, once, once it's locked, it can't do anything. It needs to have unlocked your disc so that it can go through and do a bunch of stuff. So you may just want to leave it plugged in overnight, maybe for a day or so. You haven't said how big your hard drive or SSD is. So if, especially if you've got a lot of data, it's gonna take a little while for it to do that.

(01:03:48):
 And then of course the other thing is just make sure you've done things like empty the trash and stuff like that. Yes, yes. Because if you, you've got, oh, and of course desktop files mm-hmm. <Affirmative> having a bunch of files on your desktop doesn't do it so much anymore, but a long time ago, <laugh> having a lot of desktop files could crash your system. This was me and Windows, I remember. So definitely worth if you've got, you know, just a bunch of stuff dumped on your desktop, huge amounts of things in the trash, photos, trash is separate. Don't forget then just going through emptying trashes and clearing stuff out and if you're still having problems, they're in. I mean, there is a really great app from MACPA Yes. Makers of setup. We mentioned Gemini earlier on the show. They also have clean my Mac. Yes. and that can go through and just do a little bit of tidying up, but if you haven't just left it plugged in for a day or so you know, after you've logged in once, it doesn't have to stay awake for that entire time to be clear. Just has to have been like logged in. So it's not like been shut down and, and locked out.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:49):
And, and for folks, what I saw, I think the folks were joking in the chat, but at the same time, I do wanna be aware of folks who are not as techy when Rosemary's talking about being plugged in. She's specifically talking about a device that has a battery in it. Yeah. Power that you are putting, you're putting wall power into it, not just the battery. Because with these devices, they have lots of different power saving things that they do whenever you are not charging it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So obviously a Mac that's plugged into the wall like a Mac studio or a Mac Mini or an iMac, she's not talking about keeping that plugged in. She's specifically talking about battery. I mean, yes.

Rosemary Orchard (01:05:23):
I I would would hope that you would plug this in. Yeah. Keep please plugged in. Please do plug those in. Otherwise they're not gonna work. And if, if you don't have it on like a surge protector as well, then then do me a favor and free advice for everybody. If you don't have a surge protector connected to like your computers, just please go, go grab on and just chuck it in there. It, it's well worth it. But yeah, he's specifically mentioned a MacBook Pro here. Yeah. So make sure you've got that little power cable plugged into your device so that it is actually charging so that yeah. And John has just said it has been over a month. That, that sounds a little suspect to me. So I definitely look at running something like clean my Mac. Yes. and Apple also has some support pages on doing some, some maintenance on your machine. So I'll be perfect. Find some, some links to

Mikah Sargent (01:06:07):
Those. That'd be great. Ultimately, I don't think it's malware.

Rosemary Orchard (01:06:10):
No, I very much doubt it is. 

Mikah Sargent (01:06:11):
Well, okay, let me be clear. I don't think that it was malware that was installed when you did the update specifically. If you, if you got the notification and you went into system settings, which at the time I believe was still called system preferences and did the update through that method, then I, you did not have malware installed instead. Now if you just went to some website and it was like, it's time to update to the latest version of Makos, and then you clicked on that, maybe you did install some malware, but if, if there is malware on your machine, it's not because you did an update, it's because it came through a separate means mm-hmm. <Affirmative> in any case. Yeah. Give clean my Mac a try as a third party solution because Clean my Mac also has a malware detecting scan built into it.

(01:06:57):
Yeah. You have actually inspired a and yeah, that's a clean my mac.com. You have inspired a little bit of a rant that I completely forgot to have a couple of weeks ago. So I had a family member who she and her other family members had gotten new iPhones. Okay. And they went to the carrier store. They didn't go to like, to the Apple store. They went to a carrier store through the carrier that she subscribed to and they got their new phones. And while they were there, the agent told them, Hmm, this makes me so angry. It's so stupid. Told them, whatever you do, never ever, ever, ever, ever plug in your device and charge it overnight.

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:49):
Oh my God. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is when it does all the backups and the updates. They

Mikah Sargent (01:07:53):
Said,

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:54):
Oh no, that's a terrible piece of advice. If

Mikah Sargent (01:07:57):
Your, if your phone gets to 100% and it's left overnight, it's going to ruin the battery, it's going to heat up, it's gonna, this, that and the other. No. And I had to have this moment of like calming down internally and going,

Rosemary Orchard (01:08:09):
I don't think I'd have calmed down internally. I'd have just screamed and, and then asked where the store was. Yes. I could go and talk to their manager and ask them to educate their staff because

Mikah Sargent (01:08:17):
That means they're telling other people this as well. And

Rosemary Orchard (01:08:20):
And they won't be doing automatic iOS backups. Exactly. They won't be doing the security updates automatically. And

Mikah Sargent (01:08:25):
Then they live, there was a, there was an anxiety that I could feel from this family member. That's what really got me is like, she had genuine concern. She is now spending this ec these extra cognitive cycles thinking about, oh, do I need to unplug my phone really quick? Or, oh, can it? So I wanna make it clear almost every, and certainly with iPhone and iPad, I can speak with 100% certainty with iOS devices. But in almost every modern device there is battery technology that is in some cases an actual chemical change is in some cases a firmware change is in some cases a software change that will help to keep that from ever being a problem. It used to be a long time ago that yes, if you plugged something in and you kept it plugged in, it would try to charge past its full capacity and that would cause the battery to get hotter.

(01:09:20):
And then eventually you'd have a problem where the battery got so hot that it ruined the chemical nature of the battery and it either shortened the life or completely just ruined the battery modern devices. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> have so much smarts built in that Oh yeah. Keep it from doing that. And in fact, for most of our smartphones and mobile devices with batteries, what along with, again, a bunch of other smarts that are kinda behind the scenes, it essentially charges the battery to 100% and then lets the battery discharge a little bit mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then charges it and lets it

Rosemary Orchard (01:09:51):
D discharge. I mean, it doesn't even necessarily go straight to a hundred percent either, Mikah, because if you charge your phone overnight every night, at least on iOS mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and then it won't actually charge to a hundred percent as soon as it plugs in. It knows, you usually unplug your phone around whatever time you get up in the morning and unplug your phone or take it off a max if charger or a wireless charger, whatever, you know, charging method you use. And it will wait until before then to finish charging. It even does this on the Mac. And there's an option in the battery settings where you can say no, I just continue charging to a hundred percent. I have just double checked. This feature's built into Android as well. It's called Adaptive Battery. Beautiful. and it, it does the same thing also on an iPhone just to remind folks under settings in battery.

(01:10:37):
 You can actually see what your battery health is like. So if I just share this so that folks can actually see that and then that would probably be helpful. But yeah, there, there's this option here where I can show my battery percentage, which then actually tells me the exact percentage inside the little battery icon. And it's then got a whole section on battery health and charging. So I've got 97% of my capacity and I have optimized battery charging turned on. Now, if you're here in the US you'll also have something called clean charging where it can dry and tie in and use clean energy tariffs as well. My region is set to the uk so I don't have that feature sadly. But yeah, that's, that's there. And yeah, but you, you should, like in general folks, please do charge your devices overnight.

(01:11:22):
The only time that I would say do not charge your device overnight is if you have a damaged cable, a damaged power brick, and, and or you've bought some really dodgy chick ones somewhere. And like if you're, if you've got a u s BBC and it only charges, will you like plug it in the right way around? Please do me a favor right now, take that u s BBC cable, go to your nearest like waste recycling facility center and dispose of that cable. Cuz that's not standard. Yeah. That's not to spec. If it only works one way around, that ain't a good U uss BBC cable

Mikah Sargent (01:11:52):
<Laugh>. Ooh. That actually is like, kind of gives me heap heavies a little bit <laugh>. Oh,

Rosemary Orchard (01:11:56):
Please don't unplug that cable. Yeah. So yeah, charge your devices overnight. They do updates. The, the duplicate feature that we talked about earlier on your iPhone and iPad, they, they happen overnight while your phone is charging. Like they don't happen during the day when you're gonna need to use your phone. Cause that's when it's gonna run outta battery if, if you're trying to use it. So yeah, please. And also double check with your friends and family members. Make sure

Mikah Sargent (01:12:18):
Yeah. And seriously as you're listening to the show, check, check in and if they've ever been told that, then you can let them feel free and feel okay. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with charging their, they don't need to wake up at three in the morning and unplug it because they're worried that it's going to damage the bat. No, it's fine. These devices are going to work just fine. In fact, as someone was pointing out in the chat they have an iPad that's just literally always plugged in. I had the same thing for quite a while where the iPad's purpose was just to be there, be on, and it worked just fine. And the reason why it, the reason why this was brought up for me is because the person she was, she, she was almost felt like it was confirmed to her that this was the case because when she brought it home that first day, her phone was hot. And so I was explaining why the indexing thing. And so yeah, that's what sparked That is the reason why the case. Yeah, exactly.

Rosemary Orchard (01:13:17):
Never if, if you've got a horrible, cheap, dodgy case on your phone. And if you've been using wireless charging and stuff like that, maybe you've put it in the sun. If it's a dark

Mikah Sargent (01:13:25):
Charge, you leave in the sun,

Rosemary Orchard (01:13:26):
Charge your devices in the sun. That, that's, that's the only thing I'd say. Like if you can move it somewhere slightly shadier to charge your device, that would be great. Like putting a phone in a black case with a black battery on it outside in the, in the sun to wireless charge, that is a fast way to, well probably have a very dodgy lithium eye battery. That's, yeah. Yeah. Don't do that. But yeah, charging your device overnight is a good idea. And the sun is usually in overnight, so I suspect most pop folks will be fine there.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:53):
Yep. And just remember every new update is going to come with some indexing, some syncing, some all sorts of background stuff. And then as the phone settles in, it'll chill out a little bit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> both literally and figuratively.

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:05):
Oh yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:07):
And your phone also stops charging if it gets too warm and we'll pop up a little notification it will to say that it will come back and finish charging when it cools down. If that does happen, folks, by the way, do you just like either unplug, like, don't use one iWireless charging for a little bit, maybe take the case off or something to let it cool down, but it will shut down automatically if it gets too hot, so you don't need to worry.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:26):
All right. Earlier this week on Tech News Weekly I had come across a story regarding Tesla and how it was a Reuters report and Reuters reported that Tesla employees were taking photos and videos captured by customers Tesla cameras, and sort of sharing them around in an internal messaging system and in some cases making memes out of them making fun of them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The car guy, Sam Amid joined us for that episode and was great cuz he popped in a little bit early, so he was able to provide a bit of a response and his thoughts on what was going on with this Tesla report. So take a listen.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:15:18):
To be honest, I'm not, unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised that this is happening. Oh. you know I mean, it, it's happened before you know, it happened I think with Ring a few years back. Ring employees somewhere in Eastern Europe that were doing similar thing. You know, they were, they were tasked with doing labeling and annotation of video data from Ring security cameras like mm-hmm <affirmative>, the the doorbell cameras. They were sharing some of the, the video content that was being captured by these cameras. So in this particular instance, you know, this, well, first to, to what you were saying aunt earlier about you know, whether customers agreed to this. I haven't read the full terms and conditions of the Tesla connectivity agreement, but in general I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that when you agree to have connectivity in your vehicle as part of that agreement, you are agreeing to share some of that data with the manufacturer. That, and they use it for mo I mean, most manufacturers use it primarily for product development to understand how Yeah, that's what, I'm

Mikah Sargent (01:16:29):
Sorry. They're trying to make it better down the road. Right,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:16:31):
Exactly. And, you know, so it's, it's imperative on the manufacturers to have some controls in place to make sure that, that anybody that within the company or within their contractors that has access to this data isn't misusing it. Now to the specifics of this particular, you know, of, of what's going on with Tesla, Tesla's got kind of a, an unusual situation because in most cases for most manufacturers, you know, mo most, most new cars have at least some cameras mounted on them for their driver assist systems. Every, every new vehicle built since I think 2016, has a rear backup camera. Most vehicles have forward facing cameras. Many of them have surround view cameras that when you when you put it, put the car in reverse or you, you maneuver around at low speeds, you can get that bird's eye view so you can see what's around you.

(01:17:26):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's, that's really hand really handy features to have. In almost all cases, as soon as you turn off the car, all that's all those cameras turn off, the computers turn off, all, all that stuff turns off. And so nothing can be recorded. It sounds like from reading the, the Reuters story about this, which I'm assuming is probably the one you're, you're referencing it or maybe another one mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that you know, what was happening here is there, the employees are looking at data that was captured from test Tesla's century mode. Tesla offers this additional mode called Century, which is basically a sec, a surround view, security camera system, oh, for their vehicles. An anti-theft oh, or, you know, anti vandalism thing. So you, when you turn on Century mode, your cameras on the, the, the eight cameras that are around the car are on all the time and recording. I, I think, you know, there's a buffer. So, you know, it's, it's like other security cameras. So they're not, they're not capturing all the data all the time because they, they don't have enough storage space, but they're looking for things that, you know, anything that might be a security issue, you know, somebody seems like they might be trying to break into the car or vandalizing the car, then, you know, it will record, you know, some amount of video, you know, from the ring buffer.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:49):
I think what he said there at the beginning was what really I just went, yeah. Was he surprised? No, he was not surprised that this was the case. This, of course, I I, I also found it surprising in the report that one of the cars that was looked in on ended up either belonging to or was someone who Elon Musk knew because it was in the garage of Elon Musk, based on the fact that you could see this expensive water vehicle that Elon Musk had purchased. And so it's unclear if Elon knew that that was going on. It was, it was a little scary, the, the story in terms of knowing that that information was just so readily available. So please go check out that Tech News Weekly episode so you can learn about that and a whole lot more.

(01:19:46):
 Sam Abul Summit is there for that, but also we go into three or four different EV stories following that conversation. So I'm over here in Radio Corner because there's a product that I really wanted to talk about. For the longest time I have had first U S B A chargers, right? I had I can remember having this like eight port U S B A charger and I could it was a, it was actually both a hub and a charger, so I could plug in some flash drives. I could stick in a hard drive if I wanted to, but then I could also charge different devices. At the time I was like an iPod nano with that device and do all of that at once. And since then I've gotten a few chargers, but they're always U S B C and U S B A if you, if you've got sort of a multi-port layout.

(01:20:37):
So it would be, you know one u s BBC and three U S B A, or maybe you'd get two and two, or in some cases if it was just u s bbc, it was just two u s bbc. So I've wanted something where with these modern u s BBC cables, I have to be able to charge all of them. And Sati came along and said, well, I've got that for you with this new six Port GaN charger. And folks, this is a 200 watt u s BBC charger. It's available for 1 49 99, so 150 bucks. And it is simply a u s BBC charger for up to six devices at once. And what's awesome about this is that each of these ports is PD rated, so power delivery on all six of the ports, and it's got a big old honk and plug on the back that you plug it into the wall.

(01:21:32):
And depending on how many devices you have plugged in, it will change how it is able to output. So <laugh>, they've got this kind of matrix going where you can see how much power you're getting depending on what you have plugged in. So in any of these ports, if you're just plugged into one, then you can have, or sorry, it's rather in the top two if you've got just one device plugged in, it's 140 watts max. So you can charge, you know, a full on laptop in the third and fourth, it's a hundred watts max, and then down in the fifth and sixth it's 20 watts max. So you'd wanna plug in something like an Apple Watch charger or another small device. If you've got two things plugged in at once, two devices plugged in at once, each of these top two can do 100 watts at the same time.

(01:22:24):
So that's where it gets up to that 200 watts. If you've got something in one and three, then it can do 100 watts, one and four obviously can do 100 watts because these are all 100 watts max. And then from that point on, you, you know, it can kind of break up. So if you've got something plugged into one and five, for example, that top one's gonna do a full 140 watts, and the bottom one can still do a full 20 watts. So even with two things plugged in, you're still getting the top rated charges for each of these. And as you might imagine, as you add in more than that top rate will go down. So if you've got, as they say, sex tle port output, then it works like this, 65 watts in the top, 45 watts in the second, and then 20 watts for three through six.

(01:23:14):
So even with all of these filled in, you're still getting 65 watts at the top end and then down from there. So you can do some pretty magnificent charging with this. Now, one of the things I like about Hitachi is that they try to match the sort of overall design of apple devices while not they don't go with super premium materials. So this is, you know, like a plastic outer piece and or plastic casing was the word I was looking for, but it's still very strong and it's very hefty for sure. And it still looks nice. So sitting next to, you know, your, your Makos devices, it still looks nice and kind of fits in with the overall look and feel of what you have. But even with that, they can, you know, not charge <LAUGH> as much money because they don't go with those super, super premium materials.

(01:24:13):
So this is meant to sit on its side or if you'd like, you can use the included stand and have it sit facing sort of vertically. So you just take this and drop it into the included stand and then here, and I'll show that from the top there. So you're able to plug things into the front of it. And yeah, it's it's quite nice to be able to just have one device that I can plug into the wall, run six different things from it, and know everything's getting the charge that I needed to get. Or as I mentioned, if you just drop that down to 4 32 with 140 watts max coming outta that first and second port you can get everything charged. And I think this is gonna be a great thing to take on a trip where I can just have this and then the various cords that I need to charge everything else with.

(01:25:08):
And that's one of the benefits I think as we make this overall shift to u s bbc, everything, it means that I can take something like this around and I know that it's going to work as I expect it to. And I also think about international travelers, right? Where you are going around and you, you know, you, you don't have some sort of, there's a converter with you. Well, this has all of that technology built into it. So you could use this in Australia and just as long as you have the adapter, you don't need to also have the converter to be able to charge those devices. So

Rosemary Orchard (01:25:46):
Yeah, what I really love about this micr is also the fact that it just uses a standard C seven cable. And so that's the figure of eight headed cable. So what I actually do when I travel because I, I have other satche chargers and the only thing that I'm currently mad about is Mikah didn't tell me about this early enough for me to order one <laugh>. So this quite C seven, this is the clover head, but what I, what I usually do is I just buy another one of those cables cuz then you don't need an adapter, you just plug in the US cable or the UK cable or the EU cable. And especially when you're worrying about, you know, adapters. For some reason I always have this problem here in the US mic, like my, my adapters fall out of the wall in the hotels, like the sockets are super loose.

(01:26:23):
So I travel with a, a small extension lead. But yeah, this is a C five CUN six cable thanks to the CHATT room for that. And the other brilliance is because it's a removable cable, if you happen to have a pet for example, who, who, who thinks that cables are delicious I, I sincerely hope not. Or you maybe just run over these cables with your desk chair every once in a while if the cable goes, you can replace it and you've still got that charger. So I definitely like that. I also wanted to mention somebody in the chat room was saying it, it's kind of difficult with multi-port chargers to keep track of like what, what ports you can use. For me, I have a very, very simple rule. I know what the top side is and I know what the bottom side is. Biggest device plugs into the top smallest device plugs into the bottom. So if I'm charging something like my hydrate spark water bottle that goes into the bottom port, but if I'm charging my Mac, that goes into the top and then I just fill in, in between based on the size of the device or

Mikah Sargent (01:27:18):
A smart

Rosemary Orchard (01:27:19):
Whatever it is. So yeah, you can even get like those colored dots. Mikah, you've got a great recommendation for the, the dots that you can put over the lights mm-hmm. <Affirmative> on tables mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or, or devices to sort of block them out.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:33):
Light dims. Yeah. Yes,

Rosemary Orchard (01:27:34):
That's the ones. But if you have a spare one of those, maybe just pop it on top or just those cheap colored dots that you can get from like the stationary store. Like I'm sure Target has them or something, you know, maybe, maybe do themes. Easter Bunny ones. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:27:45):
You'd switch it out every season. I love that idea of just thinking about the biggest device plugs into the top, the smallest device plugs into the bottom and you just kind of fill in from there. And a lot of times, and of course this isn't the case with every device typically price can factor into you know, if you're, if you've paid a good price for it, it often does have technology built in that will only take as much power as it needs as opposed to it being an issue. But it's still best to try to match as close as possible. So something like the Apple Watch, charging puck, plugging it into that 140 watt it's just overkill, right? So, and it's only gonna take what it needs out of that. So it's worth just keeping that port available for something like, you know, your, your laptop, particularly if it's a MacBook Pro, cuz not even this MacBook Air needs 140 watts of, of power to be, I think it can get away with 65 watts and still be able to charge, if I remember correctly. So yeah, that is the saachi 200 wat USB six Port GaN charger, gallium tried charger a hundred forty nine ninety nine in US dollars, but it looks like it's available in Australia, the EU, and the UK as well. Oh, it's so sad to see EU and UK separated like

Rosemary Orchard (01:29:01):
That. Well, I mean, they would have to be anyway because they use different plug types. Ah. but as I was just trying to find a link for the chat room. Europe doesn't have just one plug type. It's very complicated. And I was actually staying in a hotel in London just before I came out here and I went to plug something into the wall by my bed and they only had a very weird European plug that I've seen in like a really old hotel in Italy there. Oh. So I ended up plugging like my phone like my charger in like outside of the bathroom and using a three meter cable to get it to charge at the end of my bed. So other bonus with this charger, by the way, is the fact that you have that cable between the actual charger and the wall so you don't have the whole weight of the charger like hanging out of the wall. It's then, you know, you can put it somewhere that's more convenient for you. So I really like that. I'm, I'm gonna have to get one. I've officially signed out to be emailed when they're available in the uk.

Mikah Sargent (01:29:52):
Nice, nice. Alright, I'm gonna head back from Radio Corner so we can continue on with the show. So let us keep, actually no, it's time to take a break. And then we're gonna come back with another great question that one of our listeners sent in. But I wanna take a break to tell you, Ooh, do I love them? It's Electric e-Bikes who are bringing you this episode of Ask the Tech Guys. There's no better way to get outside and enjoy the spring season than with a electric e-bike. Transform your trips across town or to the beach into a carefree and fun adventure with fun, fast, and foldable electric e-bikes during their ready set spring sale. From quick store trips to outdoor adventures, electric e-bikes created a mode of transportation that anyone can ride with quality, feature filled models financed as low as $73 per month.

(01:30:46):
Your adventures won't cost a fortune. They include a powerful removable battery, a bright L C D display, seven speed gearing, and five levels of pedal assist to power your ride. Plus you can lower your gas costs and reduce your carbon footprint. You if you're watching, are seeing Leo driving around on Electric Ear, I guess pedaling around on electric E-Bike. And I also had the opportunity to try out these electric e-bikes and they're so much fun. The wind was in my hair. We were riding around in the studio parking lot, but also on the road, and it was just delightful. The Pedal assist is really great in terms of not just, its like responsiveness, but also if you, if you crank up the speed a little bit, it could really get you zipping along. And that was a lot of fun. And I don't know, there was just something exhilarating about it.

(01:31:41):
And I think about, you know, you may want to ride a bike, but you th you get to a part where there's this huge hill and you go, why did I ever make the decision to do this <laugh>? But to have that pedal assist technology there to help you get going along. And right now on the video we're seeing Leo, it was in his trunk, it was all folded up and he's able to pull it out and unfold it and adjust it exactly as he wants it just right and then lock things in and get rolling. With Electric e-Bike, it's so much fun to again, zip about with that, with that special pedal assist technology. You also, I should mention, can make it your own because Electric E-Bikes offer a wide range of customizable and adjustable e-bike options to accommodate an array of different lifestyles, including rides from the effortlessly fun XP lights to a highly capable cargo e-bike.

(01:32:36):
That's what you saw Leo riding on the expedition with that, that cargo rack in the back. And you can join more than 250,000 dedicated writers on the road so far, and it can become your adventure companion Rome freely and reach up to 28 miles per hour with the twist of a throttle or next level pedal assist. You can add cargo baskets or bags, comfort upgrades, and even passenger accessories to certain e-bike models. They cost way less than the competition. They're foldable, they ship free and they come fully assembled so you don't have to worry about how do I get this all set up? That was a fun part riding the bike and there were some vehicles behind us and, you know, I didn't feel like I was causing too much of an issue because of how fast you can get going with <laugh> with those electric e-bikes.

(01:33:25):
It was a lot of fun. Start your next adventure with electric e-bikes. Ready, set Spring sale. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the new Expedition cargo e-bike, and all of the other Epic models Electric has to offer. That's L E C T R I C e-bikes dot com. Electric e-bikes dot com. Thank you Electric e-Bikes for sponsoring this week's episode of Ask the Tech Guys. All right, it's time to get back to the show. This very special ask the Tech Geeks episode. Rosemary Orchard is here in person for this episode. We've had some fun answering questions thus far showing off some gadgets and gizmos providing some advice. And now it is time a question has come in from Frank. Frank writes in and says, I am a regular listener of your network and always appreciate the helpful tips and solutions you provide.

(01:34:23):
I am writing to seek your guidance on an issue I'm facing with my two MacBook laptops. And this is a really interesting support question. I own a MacBook Air M two and a MacBook Pro M two Max. Recently I used Migration Assistant to set up the MacBook Pro, and now both laptops have identical content. However, I would like to ensure that any changes I make on one computer are automatically synced to the other. This includes installing new setup apps, adding fonts, configuring new email and outlook, adding Bluetooth devices, and even syncing settings for applications like Ulta, maker, Kira, and Bartender. My goal is to have a seamless experience between the two devices. So when I switch from one to the other, all my changes and customizations are available without any manual intervention. I understand that certain solutions might not cover every aspect, but I'm looking for the most efficient way to achieve the synchronization. Could you please provide some guidance on the best approach to accomplish this? Any advice, any tools, any services that you can recommend would be greatly appreciated.

Rosemary Orchard (01:35:36):
This is a tricky one. Very tricky because there isn't really a sync Olive Mac feature mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that's, that's available. If you were using mail on the Mac, then when you add an account on one Mac, then it will add the account on the other, you just need to re the password mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but syncing everything across, that's, that's pretty tricky. And I mean, there's, there's some things that you can do if you're using iCloud or, or Dropbox or both. Then you can make sure that all of the things are saved into those folders so that you, you don't have anything that's not in iCloud, anything that's not in Dropbox and so on. But syncing, everything's pretty tricky. But I do have an app recommendation Okay. That I'd like to make to help with things like installing fonts and so on.

(01:36:24):
And this app is called Translator. So Translator for Mac is just a, a handy lap which lets you download something to another Mac. And so you can, when you go to download something just right click and then send it off to the other Mac. And th this, this then lets you basically just say, okay, so if I'm going to download something, so if I just pop open for example, safari and then I were to download this image, then when I actually use the share option, I can actually download it with Translator. I don't have the extension set up for the images at the moment but when I download it with Transla Loader then it can just be sent to this device and another device. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is very useful. Because you know, I have my work machine, I have my personal machine, I have my MacBook so when I want things in all the places then that's what I do.

(01:37:19):
The other thing you can do which I do like to do is with setup, what I have done is I actually tend to go through and favorite all of the apps that I have installed on my Mac. Yes. Because there is a little filter for on this Mac. And so when I install something, cuz a lot of the time I'll install something and go, oh, like I'm just trying this out. I'm not sure I'm gonna keep this. But when I install something and I'm actually gonna keep it and I'm gonna run it, then I favorite it because then when I go into the favorite section, then I can actually just click install all and that's a little thing that's right there. I can't remember if they added that in response to something loads of people asked for, if it was just something that I messaged them and was like, Hey, it would be really useful if you had this.

(01:38:01):
 But the folks that said after it's did great work. So awesome. The fact that there's an install all button there is is worth, worth knowing about. The other thing is, is when it comes to installing things like fonts and stuff like that I mean, if you use Translator to download it, then it can automatically do things with certain files and if it can't do something, then maybe Hazel from Noodle Soft can do the rest. You're, I I think the, the best thing to just do at the moment though is just admit that there are going to be some things that don't suck. And be prepared for that. And don't expect everything to just happen because it's, it's, it's not going to, it, it's gonna be very painful. It's gonna

Mikah Sargent (01:38:44):
Be a multi-service solution where, and, and not everything's going to work in the end if, because you can use synced desktop and documents folder with iCloud. So at least those two folders can be synced between two Macs. I use that feature. I know a long time ago people were really not comfortable with letting Apple do that syncing, but now it works just fine. So anything that I have on one desktop eventually makes it to my other Mac. And so I've got those files there, or in my, again, in my documents folder. And then when it comes to the other folders, files, features, you can, as, as Rosemary's pointed out, you can do some sort of download syncing and you can sync folders. But to actually get every single thing would require having as we, a lot of people are talking about in the chat, you'd essentially have to have some very enterprise software to pull that off some mobile device management that is next level. So you'd be paying a lot of money Mm. Just to sync two max together. Where it kind of is just imaging the device between two places and getting it as much as possible. I think ultimately it's just not the way that most people are using their devices. And so because of that, it's not a solution that Apple has made available. Yeah. you know, I would continue to, to search for things and will listen to feedback and hear what other people have to say. It

Rosemary Orchard (01:40:19):
Would definitely be worth considering using the mail app instead of outlook, just because it does have that feature of automatically adding accounts and it will pop up a notification. Actually, technically it pops up an alert. The difference between a notification and alert is an alert stays until you dismiss it and a notification sort of pops in and then pops out again. And so it pops up an alert when you add a new account on one device and prompts you to add it on another device. So that's, that's certainly worth considering for those benefits, if not for the fact that, you know mail mail's pretty great, actually, to be honest. I, I really like it as an app.

Mikah Sargent (01:40:56):
Yeah. I'm, I'm thinking if there is some way to like, to sync one of the system folders that just has been so message I would really <laugh>

Rosemary Orchard (01:41:06):
From, from personal experience as a developer. So I have a lot of things set up in various weird and wonderful places that I do need to sync and configure, but it's syncing, not syncing as in like everything automatically happens. So I have scripts that will take everything that I've installed with Home Brew and dump out a list for me, but I will not like automatically install that on another device. I will have to like run the command to do that. You can sync some of these system settings around, but a lot of applications, for example, pop Clip, a great app that I use on my Mac actively discourages syncing that system folder. Oh. Because it will end up breaking things at some point. When you've got two devices that simultaneously edits something and then it, something goes wrong and it kind of all explodes, it, it, it just doesn't work very well. It's like if you have a shared file in Dropbox and you try and edit it offline and two people edit it at the same time and then the internet connects, it all kind of blows up in your face and that that's not good. So yeah. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for these things and maybe look for alternative apps that can sync. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:21):
I will say I know John s Salina and Leo LaPorte both use an application called sync thing, or service called Sync thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. And that can do some pretty smart syncing. Yeah. So, you know, give it a, give it a shot, see if it, if that would work for you or get you, maybe you could at least sync the fonts folder mm-hmm. <Affirmative> sync thing. Yeah. Get, get to some level where most of it is happening between the two. Yeah. And where it's all working together to,

Rosemary Orchard (01:42:50):
I mean, I think with a little bit of smart setup, you could definitely do something. So for example if Hazel watches your downloads folder and it looks for any font files, it could copy that to a font folder in iCloud or Dropbox. And then whenever a file appears in the font folder, it could be automatically installed from Hazel as well. So that's definitely a recommendation that's worth looking into. But yeah, there's gonna be some pain points, but fingers crossed you can get the big things working.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:18):
Yeah. All right. We do have a caller. I'm going to wait for them to join the call so I can ask their name. The name that's currently provided is not a human name. So we'll bring them into the on air room, they'll get the little prompt, and then we can go from there. So once they've joined, then we can say hello. All right. Hello where are you calling from and how should we refer to you?

Caller 2 (01:43:48):
<Laugh>? Hello, my name is Jay Lane, also known as Wise. I'm also located outside of Durham, North Carolina.

Mikah Sargent (01:43:56):
All right. Welcome to the show. I think we'll call you Wise. I like that. That's a good one. Hi.

Caller 2 (01:44:00):
Yeah, everybody call me Wise. That's my last name. Alright. So thank you Mikah and thank you Rosemary. I have a question. It just popped my head while I was listening to the program. I'm doing, and since you mentioned this on another program, you're talking about Clubhouse, Uhhuh <affirmative> on another show earlier. I used Clubhouse cause they allow a lot of media production with Club Deck. Okay. And I'm using Old Map with Pro, but I want to upgrade. I was thinking about getting a, the newer map with Pro M one s, but I know you said you love your your M one Air Uhhuh <affirmative>. So I wasn't sure which one I need to upgrade to. I would like to keep it on a smaller budget. Yes. Cause I got my iPad many, I mean, my, not my, but my my iPad Pro Maps and I used that lot, but I didn't want to get a big Mach big laptop. Right. If I can just use a MacBook Air for something like Clubhouse and run all your production Light Loop back and all that stuff, that allowed me to play a lot of me files. Yeah. So I would like to love your suggestions on

Mikah Sargent (01:45:05):
That. So I am using the, it's the M two MacBook Air right now. And Okay. Hands down, I would almost recommend this machine to any person who asked me what, what Mac laptop they should get. This thing has been an absolute powerhouse. It is incredibly op as the kids say, overpowered <laugh> it will run multiple applications. Oh, maybe it's not what the kids say. I'm getting some shakes and laughs in the background. But anyway, it's very overpowered. It is so quick to launch things if you are, you know, wanting I, I've just now learned about this club deck. If you're wanting to run Club Deck and be able to, as you've mentioned, pull up some media files that is still not so much that it's going to, you know, slow everything down. I mean, I've regularly got so many different tabs open.

(01:45:58):
I've run some AI engines on this M two MacBook Air. Okay. and and done. Yeah. Some, some really deep processing. And I've had absolutely no issues with it. The other thing is I never really, I've, they, they provide me power if I need it. But I would never really have to have this thing plugged in whenever I'm doing this show on the weekends, which is not something I can say for devices I've had in the past. So yeah, if you're looking for something that's going to be more than just having, you know that, that iPad but you don't want to s supermax break the bank as long as, you know, the smaller screen is okay for you. Or maybe you're plugging it into something that has a bigger screen. I do. Okay, cool. Yeah, I really think you're gonna be happy with the M two MacBook Air. It's, yeah. I, I'm actually just had a friend, a family friend who was asking their daughter's gonna be going to college. What laptop should I get? Like M two MacBook Air? Absolutely. It's just, it's so light. It's great. And Rose

Rosemary Orchard (01:47:01):
Your thoughts too, if I didn't already have this M one MacBook Pro and I was in the market for a laptop, I would be getting the M two air. I bought this because I needed battery life on a trip to New York. And I needed to be able to like do development the entire way there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and this on the way here. Okay. I had an 11 hour flight from London to San Francisco. This battery loss of the hallway.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:23):
Wow.

Rosemary Orchard (01:47:24):
Like on, on this. So yeah, I I I have no doubts that the M two error would be a, a fabulous device. And also it has the slightly bigger screen now, doesn't it? Yes.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:34):
Than the Yeah. Because of the new bezzles and everything.

Rosemary Orchard (01:47:35):
So Yeah. Definitely worth it. And yeah, I, I mean I personally think that it's a, it's a great device and don't forget of course with Apple, if you do buy it and you give it a shot, then you do have a two week return policy mm-hmm. <Affirmative> where you can take it back and then pay the difference to get the Pro instead. If you do need to do that fingers crossed you wouldn't need to, and I wouldn't encourage people to do this, to borrow a device or anything. Right. <laugh>. But if you buy it thinking that, yeah, this should do everything I need, and then you find out that maybe it doesn't then you can certainly yeah. Return it, upgrade if needed.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:09):
Yeah. It's okay. And running. I've, I've run some different shows that I was recording that required Loopback required a few of those Mac Paul, or excuse me, those audio hijacked tools and ro gaba, that's what I was going for ro gaba tools and it random them like a champ. So I honestly, this is one of those machines where I kind of sometimes want to look at Apple and go, did you mean to release it for this price? Did you mean for this to be what it is? Because it's sometimes so shocking. This I've, I, I know I geek out about it a lot, but genuinely I have never liked a device from Apple more than I like this MacBook Air and Okay. I've, I've had a lot and it's just, yeah. It's, it's really great. So I mean that's, that's a great question too.

(01:48:59):
 Because there are so many different options right now, and Yes. When you know that you're trying to do some sort of power user stuff, do I need to spring for that extra? Will what they and Apple's just done a great job, such a great job with Apple silicon that I, I see no reason to push people into something more if they don't need it. But as Rosemary points out, really put it to its test in that first week and a half, and then you've got, you know, a few days left to go take it back or send it back. And Apple's really good about, you know, if it is a send it back, it it, if you do it right at the end of the two weeks, then you can still, you know, if you're getting that in place and say, okay, actually no, the MacBook Pro is what I need to go with, but I don't think you'll end up needing to do that with this.

Caller 2 (01:49:42):
One more question. Yeah. With that being said I do little like reels and stuff be your reels. So I know it won't take that much power, but if I get a gig to do a large video and I had to do a large content or something like that, do you still recommend that type of laptop as

Mikah Sargent (01:49:59):
Well? I have done, I've not done a whole lot of video editing on it, but here's what I'll tell you. When I used to have a MacBook Pro that was before Apple Silicon and I needed to edit, edit, no, edit some quick video clips, I would go to my iPad with Apple silicon, which was what it basically was at the time, and edit it there because it would transcode and export the video faster than if I was doing it on a spinning well on, you know, on a, on a Mac that had an Intel chip in it. That what I'm thinking of spinning, I'm thinking of the fans and it would get hot and it would take forever and it would be an issue. So given that I was doing it on an iPad instead because it was faster than you can expect, I think the same thing here.

(01:50:48):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think the only problem where you, you know, the only thing where I could see that crop up is if you're doing multi-video. So you're trying to, you know, you've got three different angles and you're trying to layer those all at the same time and cut between with the multi-video footage and you're doing a bunch, you're adding a bunch of effects on it as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, once you start to stack up a bunch of stuff, then yes, you might start to see the limits of it. But if it's, you know, you're doing some basic cuts and you are occasionally layering video I don't think you'll have

Rosemary Orchard (01:51:23):
An issue. I mean, the, the other thing is with this as well, it depends on what applications you're using for this stuff because some, some applications which are made for the Mac will work much better on the Mac than something that was made for Windows and has a Mac version Yeah. Where they kind of just threw it in a wrapper and it's not a real Mac app. So yeah. Yeah. yeah, if your tools, it's certainly worth trying that in, in like the first 10 days that you have the machine with, you know, even if it's just a fake file that you're, you're editing or do something that you've previously done again if you have the time or similar and just, you know, open up something huge and see how, how it handles it. But I somehow think that you'll be impressed with the Mt. Mac. and also that thin the, the map error is so thin and light. I'm looking at mic as right now. Yeah. And

Caller 2 (01:52:07):
It's like, that look gorgeous.

Rosemary Orchard (01:52:08):
It, it, it, it really does not only looks gorgeous, but it's also so thin and light. Like mine Uhhuh <affirmative>, like if we hold both of them up, like it's, you know, there's,

Mikah Sargent (01:52:17):
She does have a lot of ports, which I'm a little jealous. So that h my port on the side, yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (01:52:21):
Like I have to say, the ports are handy. I also have a little stand on the bottom of mine, so Oh, nice. Prop it up if I need to. But I don't, cuz this desk has a, a nice slip built in. But yeah, if, if I, like if I didn't already have this, I'd be getting one of those. No question.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:36):
And especially if you've got a fast wifi or internet connection mm-hmm. <Affirmative> at home, let me, let me rephrase that. If you've got router that has the most recent or a pretty recent version of wifi, then air dropping files between two devices can go pretty quickly. So if you're working with video files, you know, if you're kind of concerned about that, cuz a lot of people go, well, I've only got the two ports on the side. I find that in some cases airdrop can be just as fast to get those files over quickly. And, you know, eventually you may decide then I'm gonna invest in something like a cow digit dock that I can plug into the side and now suddenly I've got every single port I could ever need and then some right there as well. So yeah, you've got options to add on to the experience and I think that would still keep you under the price of the MacBook Pro that you would want to get if you were going that way. So, yeah, I I really think that you'll be happy with the MacBook Air and you know, again, I encourage put it to its put it to the test, you know, run it through its paces and if it's not right for you, then that's when you can decide to make that jump.

Rosemary Orchard (01:53:48):
Yeah, definitely.

Caller 2 (01:53:48):
Awesome. I appreciate you Mikah, Rosemary, thank

Mikah Sargent (01:53:51):
You. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for calling in Wise. Yeah. We appreciate it.

Rosemary Orchard (01:53:55):
Great question.

Mikah Sargent (01:53:56):
All righty. Let's see, I thought I had one other question here.

Rosemary Orchard (01:54:04):
Well, we do have a question from the chat room actually. Oh. With somebody who's currently not able to use Zoom, but they were wondering if we would recommend buying an iPad Pro 11 inch or the M one iPad air because they are so close

Mikah Sargent (01:54:16):
Together, they're

Rosemary Orchard (01:54:16):
So similar. And I mean, it's a really good question because I have the 11 inch iPad Pro mm-hmm. <Affirmative> I actually have it here in it's oops, I've just turned Apple Pencil away. But I have it in the magic keyboard, which I, this is a slick wraps cover mostly so that micro and I won't get confused between us today next week cuz we can guarantee we're both gonna have our iPad sounds <laugh> and mine's gonna be the pretty pink one. But like they're, they're so similar. And the other thing is you wouldn't necessarily have to get the current generation of the iPad Pro, you could get one of the refurb models right. With the, with M one in it. That's a good one. Which would be potentially worth doing if you were looking at it from that, but I can't remember my, it's so current iPad Air doesn't use the Apple Pencil two does it, it uses the Apple Pencil one. Oh wait, no, the standard iPad. Yeah, it's the standard iPad is the one that moved the camera to the top center, which meant that it can't have the magnetic I Apple

Mikah Sargent (01:55:09):
Box the iPad Air. Makes no sense. That's what I'm gonna

Rosemary Orchard (01:55:11):
Say. <Laugh>. Yeah. The, the iPad, I mean if you want color then yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:15):
I just don't understand what its purpose is in the lineup because you've got the standard iPad, you've got the iPad Pro, you've got the iPad Mini, what is your point? Ipad Air. So it makes it confusing. It makes it hard to, to answer that question. You know, it's got an M one chip in it, it's got the newer rounded bezel. It's got face ID wait No, it doesn't. It uses a touch ID on the

Rosemary Orchard (01:55:38):
Yeah, that's it. It's got the touch ID in the power button on, on the end. Because this is, this is what got me confused when I was, cuz my grandmother was asking for a recommendation for something. And what I'll just do a second is if I just pull up the Apple Comparison website then we can just take a look. So, I mean if you want purple you're gonna have to go with the iPad Air because it only comes in purple. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But yeah, it's, it's a slightly larger screen.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:10):
Right. I think that's what

Rosemary Orchard (01:56:11):
It's doing with promotion technology. Yep. and current, the current iPad 11 Inch Pro, if you just walk into the Apple Store and buy one comes with the M two chip. But you could definitely hit the refurb store. This is something I always recommend that folks do is scroll down to the bottom of the Apple website in this case, cuz I'm doing comparison. It's a long way down <laugh> and then click certified refurbished because they often have devices and if you can save some cash then you know, it's, it's worth doing. And look at that, you can get a refurb 11 inch iPad Pro second gen for 5 49 at the moment in Space Gray or Silver both available. So yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:56:56):
It's, yeah, honestly, I, I guess what I would say is if you can afford it, go for the Pro mm-hmm <affirmative> the sake of, especially if you're going for the M two cuz you get a bigger screen and you get better display technology and that's what the iPad is. Yeah. It is a, oh,

Rosemary Orchard (01:57:10):
That's screen, that's, I remember it's this magic keyboard. The difference is the air uses the magic keyboard where the connectors at the bottom right. Versus this one uses these connectors or is it the

Mikah Sargent (01:57:22):
Ipad? I think they both, they both have the same connectors. Yeah. It's

Rosemary Orchard (01:57:25):
So confusing now. Like, what is Apple doing? Why are they doing this to me? I don't like that. So go

Mikah Sargent (01:57:30):
Pro, if you can go pro.

Rosemary Orchard (01:57:31):
Yeah, I, if you can, if you can swing the Pro Swing Pro but definitely check the Refurb store because there's some great options there. Including current models by looks of it. So yeah. Worth considering. They do have the iPad Air in here as well. Make sure you check which generation it is you're buying. And also bonus tip for folks, if you are looking for something that currently isn't in the refurb store, then there's this little website called refurb.me where you can sign up for refurb notifications from the Apple store when something comes back in.

Mikah Sargent (01:58:01):
Well that's handy. What a great little

Rosemary Orchard (01:58:03):
Tip. Yeah. It also works great for, this thing is not yet available on the Apple store, on the Apple Refurb store, but what I wanna know when it is. So that's what I use it for. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (01:58:12):
Alright. Then another question we got in from Tony who writes, I have a question about my iPhone 13 when I'm trying to reply back to a text. I have my earbuds on, I have my Apple watch on and I ask Siri to respond to a text. It tells me I need to unlock my iPhone first. What am I doing wrong here? I don't know. I think this could be in settings and then we go down to privacy and SEC security. No, no, no. We go down to face ID and passcode and then you type in your face ID and passcode and then you scroll down and down at the bottom, there are some options that say allow access when locked. You need to make sure that reply with message is toggled on so that even if your phone is locked, you are still allowed to reply with a message. That's what I'm guessing is probably the at issue

Rosemary Orchard (01:59:07):
Here. I I suspect that is the case. There is a setting in the notifications area where if you go into settings, notifications, and then under announce notifications, there's reply without confirmation. But I'm, but that's just, if Siri is confident that it's understood what you've, and Siri's now listening to me that it's understood, then it'll just send before it, it it, cuz otherwise it does the thing where it reads back what you, what it thinks you said and then you go, no, I wasn't talking about chasing cats, I was talking about something else. It doesn't burn

Mikah Sargent (01:59:44):
Jason Kaz.

Rosemary Orchard (01:59:46):
Yeah. Or Jason Snell, for example. <Laugh> that, that could be somebody. So yeah, I

Mikah Sargent (01:59:51):
All, yeah, I will never, I'll never trust Siri enough to not have that on just Oh

Rosemary Orchard (01:59:56):
Yeah. No, though my favorite when it mispronounces your name, you are frequently Mika. Yeah. Even though I've told it how to pronounce your name multiple times, you're, you're often Mika. Yeah. So if I'm driving then it'll go Mika Sargent send you a text

Mikah Sargent (02:00:08):
<Laugh>. I'm

Rosemary Orchard (02:00:08):
Like, no. He's

Mikah Sargent (02:00:09):
Like, no, that's not who that is.

Rosemary Orchard (02:00:11):
<Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:12):
And then we'll go with one more question. This comes in from Claudia. And Claudia writes, I know how important two factor is. I'm a disabled woman and I don't have a cell phone. My question is this, how can I use two-factor without a cell phone and would it be easy for me to use? Huh? So there are some applications that will do two-factor authentication like Athe. And I will be honest, I'm not sure about where

Rosemary Orchard (02:00:38):
They, ay actually is not gonna work in this case because as far as I'm worried you actually need a phone number to sign up to have an off the account. You're right. But the good news is, is services like one passwords do, do to fracture authentication. There's also a Google Authenticator app and a Microsoft Authenticator app. Yeah. Which should work without a cell phone number to sign up for. But I

Mikah Sargent (02:00:59):
Can speak to one password, one password's accessibility mindedness is good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I can't speak to Google or Microsoft. I'm not sure how they are with those specific apps, but yes, I know that one password does a good job of making sure all those are labeled. So if you're using a screen reader or something like that, you would be able to do this. And the good thing about One Password is that often it will just automatically suggest to you, oh, I see that you're trying to set up two-factor authentication. There's the QR code on screen. Would you like me to go ahead and do that? And as a disabled person, you may also like that it automatically puts those numbers in for you that you're not having to jump back and forth between the two. So there's now a link in will be in the show notes for one Passwords, two factor authentication support.

(02:01:43):
And I should also mention our sponsor here on in, in on Twit or for TWIT in general is Bit Warden and Bit Warden also does offer some of the sort of autofill suggestions and options too. So those are worth checking out. And then yes, the, the good thing is whenever you're talking about Claudia, that you don't have a cell phone to do this as we've discussed on the show in the past, it's honestly better if you're not doing two-factor authentication via a cell phone. It's, you'd have to be very much targeted to be part of sort of the, the spoofing techniques that bad actors use to try to gain access to your account. But still it's just not as secure as using an app to generate those two-factor authentication codes for you. So it's kind of in, in a way, there is a blessing to not being able to use the the phone to do that because you want to use something that's a little bit more secure. Yes. And then the second part of Claudia's response is my goddaughter is eight and she has an iPad, but her friends are all on Android devices. My question is this, is there any way for her and her friends to communicate with each other without buying her a cell phone? Many ways.

Rosemary Orchard (02:02:58):
Yeah. I mean it really depends. Like the, the problem with kids is what's the cool app right now? Yes, because I'm pretty certain they've all moved on from Snapchat. But God knows what they're currently using. 

Mikah Sargent (02:03:11):
Google Docs, they're just typing back and and forth in a Google Doc

Rosemary Orchard (02:03:13):
Space. Yeah. That, that was a thing for a while. I know that. And also it's, it's definitely a regional thing where like different, like especially across different countries, different people use different things.

Mikah Sargent (02:03:25):
Yeah, exactly. Whatsapp

Rosemary Orchard (02:03:27):
Is your, everybody just uses WhatsApp. Yeah. Like that's what everybody uses is the default communication method. If you ask somebody like for their number and then you message them and you don't use WhatsApp, then most of the time they'll be like, why didn't you do that? Yeah. and the answer is usually I, I went to use messages and saw you had a blue bubble. <Laugh> like messages is so much better. But yeah,

Mikah Sargent (02:03:48):
It's Club Penguin <laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (02:03:49):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, if they're using Club Penguin Neo Pets, that was the thing when I was Neo Pets. There we go. I'm aging myself massively back Maple

Mikah Sargent (02:03:57):
Story.

Rosemary Orchard (02:03:58):
But yeah honestly, it, it really depends, but a lot of this stuff will work on the iPad or the iPhone. And so yeah, she should be good to go. Go ahead and

Mikah Sargent (02:04:09):
Yeah, third party app would work just especially if they're on Android. Then Google, whatever Google's most recent chat app is.

Rosemary Orchard (02:04:16):
It's, it's not Hangouts, it's not voice that, that actually requires the sim card to sign up. Oh, I

Mikah Sargent (02:04:20):
Think it's the most recent one's called, or a phone. We will be deleting this soon is what I think the

Rosemary Orchard (02:04:25):
Oh is called. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's that. Yeah. You

Mikah Sargent (02:04:27):
Should just call it Sun Setting. That's the name of the app. Yes.

Rosemary Orchard (02:04:30):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:04:31):
No, but find out what an, you know, what Android way they're messaging each other and then you can get those emails and then you can set it up where you're able to chat with them on whatever it is, Google Duo or whatever it is right now. <Laugh>, this is where I need Jason Howell so I could ask him what, what it is most likely to be used. Alright. with that, I believe we have reached the end of this episode of Ask the Tech Geeks a very special episode this week. Rosemary Orchard, first of all, I wanna thank you so much for being here in person of all things. It's amazing.

Rosemary Orchard (02:05:05):
Well, I'm really glad I made it. And you know, I think, I dunno, can I stay for Tuesday? Mike? Can we do iOS today on Tuesday here?

Mikah Sargent (02:05:11):
Can, we can do iOS today in person as well.

Rosemary Orchard (02:05:13):
Awesome. That that sounds better than me sitting in my hotel room and you sitting at home.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:17):
Yeah, you're calling in from your hotel room <laugh>. So I Yeah, having your morning coffee from the Yeah. Yeah. so let me name some things and then we will ask where folks can find you online. But folks, I wanna mention Club Twit at twit.tv/club Twit. That is a place where you can go to.tv/club twit to sign up to join the club. When you do, you get some pretty great things. Starting at $7 a month, $84 a year. Joining the club means you get access to every single Twitch show with no ads. So it's just the content, none of the ads because you are in effect supporting the show. You also get access to the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show. All sorts of fun stuff including twit events that occasionally take place.

(02:06:03):
You can also join the Club Twit Discord server. That's a place where you can go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and also many of us here at twit, you can share animated images like mashed Potato just did, where it's a bunny surprise for Easter. And it's just a fun place to, to share all sorts of, of back and forth conversations and talk about what you're up to. Ask questions occasionally get those answered there. And then you also get access to some Club twit exclusive shows that includes the Untitled Linux Show, which has some of the most beautiful show artwork I've seen. You can also watch Hands on Windows, which is Paul T's windows program all about Windows tips and tricks. My show Hands on Mac, which is a short format show that covers tips and tricks for Mac, iPhone, iPad, apple Watch, all those things.

(02:06:59):
And the newly relaunched Home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson is there in the club as well. So, so much fun to, to have you supporting us directly. Like we thank you so much for that. And it means a lot to us and it means we can keep on keeping on with all this stuff that we're doing. Twit.Tv/Club twit, if you'd like to tune in and watch the show as we record it, you can go to twit tv slash live every Sunday round about 2:00 PM Eastern. I'll have another guest with me next week, and then I believe after that, Leo will be back. So please tune in next Sunday for Ask the Tech Guys. And let's see, what else? Oh, go to twit.tv/atg. There you can subscribe to the show, an audio or video formats. You'll find some links. Subscribe to audio, subscribe to video on all the different platforms you use. Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, all those places. And now it's time Rosemary Orchard. Folks wanna follow you online and check out all your work. Where should they go to do so?

Rosemary Orchard (02:08:03):
The best place to go is rosemary orchard.com, which has links to podcasts I host books I've written and other things that I do around the internet. And other than that, you can also find me in the clip to Discord. I'm usually hanging out in the iOS Today channel because, you know, that's, that's the show we do every week. But I do try and keep an eye on the other channels as well whenever stuff pops up. And you can also follow me on Master Dawn Rosemary Snail at social if you want to. Beautiful. I, I am actually currently being active on Instagram, so there's a link to to that from my website. What about you Mikah?

Mikah Sargent (02:08:37):
I am at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network where you can add to chiwawa.coffee, that's C h i h u A H U a.coffee, where I've got links to many of the places I'm most active online. Again, send in your questions at ttg, at twi, do TV or atg@twi.tv. And that way you can get your question answered live on the air. You can also call us, call do twit tv. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Ask the Tech Geeks with Rosemary Orchard and me, Mikah Sargent, I'll see you next week for another episode. Goodbye and happy Easter.

Jonathan Bennett (02:09:15):
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet put to game consoles, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk. You already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twit now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Lenox Show. Whether you're a Linux Pro, a burgeoning ciit man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club twit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet? We'll go to twit.tv/club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.