Hands-On Tech 185 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.
 

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. I will be answering several questions about iPhone shortcuts, about figuring out how to track one's network use across devices, a little bit of follow-up from someone who has some thoughts on Drobo, and so much more coming up on this episode of Hands-On Tech. This is Twit. Welcome to Hands on Tech. This is the show where I take your tech questions and do my best to answer them. I also occasionally review gadgets and gizmos. This is going to be an episode full of great questions and I'm excited to get started. So we should get started. First question comes in from Mark, who has written in and says I have been trying to create a shortcut on my iPhone to toggle between iPhone speaker setting, which I use at home for answering calls as my default setting. I need to switch it to the automatic setting when I'm in my car using CarPlay to be able to make or answer calls without having to manually go through the iPhone settings menu, which is, of course, in accessibility touch audio routing. It could be a simple shortcut to just manually toggle from speakerphone to automatic or from automatic to speakerphone. It would be really nice if I could automate the shortcut so when I leave the house and enter my car, it would change to automatic and then vice versa when back at home, something tells me that all of this may be a little too much to ask for. So Mark is talking about a setting in the iPhone that lets you choose from where your audio comes, so you can have it play out as a speaker phone, you can have it go into if you've got something Bluetooth connected, and that all changes based on it's sort of an automatic setting by default, and the automatic setting tries to be smart about how the call audio gets routed. But people have issues with that and so I have had issues with that myself.

02:13
The way that you access it is by going into settings on your iPhone and then going into accessibility and then going into believe it or not, touch of all things and then going into accessibility and then going into believe it or not, touch of all things and then going into call audio routing, and you can see that right now I have it set to Bluetooth headset. It can be set to Bluetooth headset, to speaker or to automatic, and it says call audio routing determines where audio will be heard during a phone call or FaceTime. Audio determines where audio will be heard during a phone call or FaceTime audio. You can also set it to auto answer your calls, so that, if a call comes in, it will, yes, automatically answer it. Yikes, I have never turned that feature on, because I never want to answer phone calls in the first place, but if that's something you want to turn on, you absolutely can. In any case, in the past, I have always changed it as it is here, from automatic to Bluetooth headset, and what that does is it makes sure that, when the call comes in, that is where the sound is going to be coming from. Okay, so what Mark was talking about, though, is wanting to be able to have this happen automatically.

03:26
Now, unfortunately, this is not something that Apple has provided access to in shortcuts as a means of being able to change this setting, so you can't just create a shortcut that pays attention to your location, and when you change locations, it goes ahead and adds or switches to a different call audio routing setting. However, there's something really cool that has happened over time, and that is that a developer has figured out that almost every single one of Apple's settings pages is able to pick up on, or rather, is able to be accessed via a link, and so if you want to access a specific page within settings, you can do it through a kind of deep rooted link. So I'm gonna show you this page if you're watching the show. There's a GitHub that actually has all of the information listed here and you can see that this is a GitHub repository. But what I want to do is go into settings urlsmd, and if I go into settings, urlsmd, I can see that each of these pages has a URL after it called. It starts with prefs and then a colon and then has a bunch of information. So if I want to access, for example, cellular cellular data options that is stored or that is accessible via prefs colon root equals mobile underscore data underscore settings underscore underscore ID and path equals cellular underscore data underscore options. It's a lot of nonsense as far as kind of trying to understand what it all means, but what it does mean is that many pages within settings are able to be accessed via that link, and it also means that you can set up a shortcut to go to those pages. So what you do is you have to actually create a shortcut.

05:41
So what we're going to do is we are going to launch the shortcuts app, a shortcut. So what we're going to do is we are going to launch the shortcuts app and we are going to hit the plus icon in the top right corner and we are going to just type in open URL. We'll tap on open URLs, which is the first option, and then we are going to go back to that page and find the setting for call routing audio. So let's head over to that page and we can do with a little bit of movie magic. I will look up what that accessibility setting actually is, so we can scroll down or find accessibility on this page and we can look for the setting that is for call audio routing. So we kind of scroll through. We've got accessibility voiceover. We need to go to accessibility touch and then we find, okay, there's assistive touch, there's call audio routing and the root page.

06:44
Then what we do is we simply take this link here, this URL, we copy it and we paste it into our open URLs section right there, and so now it's made available to us and I can tap done. And then what I would do is I can double, I can tap on the three dots for this shortcut and I can hit share and then I can save it to add to my home screen, which is what you would do, mark and then, at any time on your home screen, you could tap on this, and I'm just going to go ahead and tap on it from within here, just so you can see when I tap on it. I'm just going to go ahead and tap on it from within here, just so you can see. When I tap on it, it takes me immediately to that call audio routing section. So it saves you a whole heck of a lot of taps. Now, if you wanted to get a little fancy, mark, what you could do is get a little NFC chip and you can put that little NFC chip into your car. You can put that little NFC chip into your car and you can set up an automation within your phone that when you tap on that NFC chip, then it automatically runs this shortcut for you. And so then, if you wanted to, that could be your way of getting to this page instead of just hitting the app tile on the home screen. Personally, I think hitting the app tile is enough. You can also set this up to trigger based on whether you are entering or leaving a location. That is also possible, but again, I really do feel like the best option here is simply to create this shortcut and use it that way.

08:25
Our next question comes in from Kira. Kira has written in and says I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max. I already finished paying off Nice good job. I have always kept it inside an OtterBox, so it is in excellent condition. The iPhone 13 Pro's camera has always seemed okay, so when I began to hear about the iPhone 16, I just sort of tuned out. However, it just so happens that the iPhone 16 release date is on my birthday, so we're a little bit behind on this question. Plus, after seeing the new clear case pictures I shared you shared is what Kira said talking about me on Club Twit I quickly caught a case of the FOMO. Thank you, kira, for being a sponsor or sponsor. Yeah, I mean, essentially, you are being a member of Club Twit.

09:11
Here's my dilemma. If I order an iPhone 16 Pro Max, of course it won't be cheap. Even after trading in my iPhone, my old phone, I could get an iPhone 15 Pro Max instead. Iphone, my old phone, I could get an iPhone 15 Pro Max instead, which should be cheaper, and I think I'll still be able to use Apple intelligence when it comes out. Do you think the iPhone 16's features make it a worthy upgrade over the iPhone 15, despite the extra cost? Kira, this is such a good question, and it is a question that doesn't have an easy answer, as you might imagine. It's probably why you asked me. Instead of sort of trying to, you know, go through that question yourself.

09:57
There are a few things that I want you to consider. Yes, the iPhone 15 Pro Max does support Apple intelligence the current set of Apple intelligence features that are scheduled to come out but we don't know what features Apple plans to ship down the line. That will be for the most current model, iphone 16, of its lineup of its offerings. So you may be jumping to a new phone that will quickly become obsolete in the next year due to any new additions that Apple makes. That could be only available for Apple's latest set of iPhones. That's one consideration. If those Apple intelligence features that are currently there are enough, then the iPhone 15 Pro Max is probably a good choice as far as that specific consideration goes. But there's one other thing that I think is important to consider, and it's something that makes me hesitant to suggest iPhone 15 Pro models to people versus the iPhone 15 standard models. I don't know if it's just a large amount of anecdotal evidence or if it truly is a trend and something to be aware of as a as a as a kind of large issue, but there are a not insignificant number there are.

11:44
There are quite a few people that I have seen, myself included, who have had issues with the batteries in their iPhone 15 Pro models. People talking about the edges, not about the batteries not lasting as long as they would expect. People talk about the batteries reaching lower, lower, lower, lower, lower capacity quickly. I have seen a lot of complaints over time specifically for the Pro models of the iPhone 15, and especially, in particular, it seems, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max models. Now, as someone who gets a new phone every year, it hasn't been a big issue for me, but the fact that you have the 13 Pro Max right now and we're on iPhone 16, tells me that you do a great job of holding on to your phone for quite some time. My concern is you buy the 15 Pro Max and you plan for it to be a phone that lasts for two, three, four years and then you're looking at it going. Why the heck, after one year of using this phone. Am I already into 80% battery capacity territory? Battery capacity territory there have been huge improvements to the battery life for the iPhone 16 lineup and my hope is that we're also going to see improvements to battery health in the 16 lineup. That has yet to play out, but that is my hope, based on the battery life that we've seen from this device, as someone has pointed out in the chat.

13:34
Greg from YouTube, thanks for tuning in. I'll just quote Greg, who says in fact, not only will I quote Greg, oh, I would bring. Yeah, there we go. Greg says everything will be obsolete, whether you need it, no bleeding edge here, that is for sure. So Greg is talking about the fact that, yeah, over time, your, your devices are all going to be obsolete. True, but when it comes time to upgrade, if you're really itching to do it, I think that your best bet is getting the latest thing. Because here's the other factor that people don't consider.

14:18
I've felt again anecdotally when I've talked to people about what device they should get. You get an iPhone 15 right now, and you have to bear in mind that the battery in that device was likely manufactured a while ago, and so the battery, even though it's not being used and it's just sitting there, is already older than if you get the latest model. And I know that I'm basing this a lot around battery, but I think that that's the heart of your phone. It is the heart and the mitochondria of your phone. It is the power source. A lot of people are going to be griping now about how mitochondria are not the powerhouses of the cell, but that's not the point. Lot of people are going to be griping now about how mitochondria are not the powerhouses of the cell, but that's not the point. Anyway, my point is it is vastly important to the overall experience of your device, and take it from someone who has a significant other who has a phone that, without even using it, by the time the midday rolls around, the phone's at 40, 30% battery. It's frustrating, it is upsetting and it is also something where you have this anxiety when you go out and about is your phone going to be at a high enough charge throughout your day? So just based solely on the battery life and the age of the battery, because buying an older device means that the battery is going to be older sitting on some shelf somewhere.

15:50
I think that getting the latest is the best thing. I also think that when someone is a person who holds onto a device for a long time, it's worth that investment because you can do the math and your division, your number you're dividing by, is a lot bigger than a person who's buying their phone every year. So when you're going yes, this is going to cost me $1,200, but I've got Three years, so I've got what? Is it 36 months that I can divide by? And suddenly that number doesn't seem so big, even if you're just buying it outright. Just thinking of it in, like how much it's actually costing you per month or something, could be helpful for some folks. And then there are those of us who need to buy it in one year. We only get to divide by 12,. If that and so that I think is helpful as well you seem like a person who takes really good care of your device. You'll hold onto it for a while. I think it makes sense to get the latest and the greatest, even if it's going to cost you a little bit more upfront. And then you get to banish that FOMO as well, because you've also got the latest and the greatest there. So, yeah, I think that if it was last year and you were asking me this question and I somehow had the knowledge of the battery life issues that I've experienced with the 15 Pro Max, then maybe I would have said, oh yeah, going to the 14 Pro Max would be fine, you don't need to go to the 15 Pro Max.

17:28
But this year, I think that Apple it's proven out that the company has updated its whole lineup to encourage people to move to this phone. Whether you get the standard iPhone 16 or the pro model, you're getting almost all of the features. You're getting that new button. You're getting excuse me the camera control. You're getting all of the cameras. You're getting so much, regardless of what phone you get. And I think that part of the reason why all of these phones are so compelling is because Apple is attempting to make it so that people will upgrade to these devices, and they're doing that not just because the iPhone is the bottom line, but because the next set of features and offerings that the company's going to have are heavily tied in with having hardware that can run it, with having hardware that can run it. So if you want to hop on board that generative AI train that Apple is, you know, touting, I think it's worth upgrading to the latest model of device. So, akira, I hope that's helpful, because it's a tough call and, you know, budgetary constraints are always something to be mindful of and I don't ever want to push someone past their means by making a suggestion. But if it is within your you know ability to do so, and especially given that you just hold on to devices, for you know more time than some of us I think that it's worth doing. All right, let's go ahead and take a quick break before we come back with more questions that you all have asked.

19:15
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21:00
All right, we are back from the break and our next question comes in from Eric, and this is a question that is partially I'm sending it a little bit to the live stream because I know we've got some IT professionals there who may have some thoughts on this. So I'm going to read the question, I'm going to talk about my suggestions and then we'll see what comes up in the chat as well. So Eric has written in and said I recently was informed by Comcast that I was exceeding my data limit and being charged extra. Oof, eric happens to the best of us. As a result, I want to review the traffic that each of my devices are generating. I want to review the traffic that each of my devices are generating.

21:45
My Linksys Velop Mesh Router does not have a monitoring tool. I have searched for third party tools, but most seem far too complex to implement and don't really accomplish what I want. Is there a simple application for Windows, mac or Linux that will allow me to initiate the app and will tell me over time, by device, how much data and Eric puts in quote, not packets each device is consuming or generating? So, eric, the first thing I want to say is I had so many suggestions for you and then you said I went to the internet and many of them seem far too complex. No, that immediately limits a lot of the options, because there are lots of very complex options out there that would work for you in this instance. So here are a few suggestions that I have.

22:40
I first want to say this I'm kind of shocked that the Linksys Velop Mesh Router does not offer monitoring. If it doesn't right now, I think that you and anybody else who has it should be reaching out to Linksys and saying you need to add this feature, because how do you not have this? I find that to be a very helpful feature for my Eero Mesh Routing system, and I regularly check in to see what devices are using data, because I want to make sure that there's not some device that has run away with data grabbing. So I think that that is an important aspect of it, and it's how I found out that the I'd connected a, because we always recommend to people, unless you really need to, don't connect your smart TV to the internet. I had connected mine to the internet temporarily so that I could do some firmware updates to it, because that also included some stuff that I needed for at the time, hdmi, earc updates, and ever since then you know afterward I would shut it off. I'd forgotten to shut it off, and so there was a lot of data consumption going on with my on my network and I was able to look and see, holy cow, this TV is talking to the internet so much. So I feel you in wanting to have this as a feature.

24:09
There are some ways that you can go about doing this, but one of the ways that I'm going to suggest is kind of involved. There is a great service called NextDNS and you can find it at nextdnsio and it is a, uh, it's a DNS system, um, so it or it is a, it's a way of let me, let me, change this. It's a bit of a DNS filter, uh, but basically what it does is it when your devices are trying to communicate with the internet and communicate with different sites they're using, you are using uh, that person's name, like, say, I'm, I'm trying to call, I'm trying to uh talk to somebody, and so in my phone I look through and I find my friend's name and I tap on it and then I take the call right, I place the call. The computer in this case the phone is using the phone number, not that person's name, as a means to reach out to that person. So, whereas I'm using their name, it's using the phone number. The DNS system is like the phone book, and so what it does is it says, oh, this person wants to go to applecom. In the background, applecom is actually this set of numbers, and because DNS is between every transaction that you have with the internet, then you are able to kind of track what a device is doing on your network, if you can see those DNS requests. So NextDNS, if you set it up at the router level, can be very helpful for keeping track of that.

26:04
But the place where I say it's complex is that if you really want to see device by device by device, you have to install either a special little bit of software on each of those devices or you have to make some changes to the settings, and that can be complicated if you like. If you're in a family or if you've got multiple people living in the home where going in and making those changes can be kind of, you know, upsetting. Frankly, it's like what are you doing? What do you need to do this for? Why is it, you know? But if you're, if you're in charge, then you know you do what you got to do. But that can also get complicated, and so it's kind of hard, outside of just having your router do it, to come up with a solution that works for you here.

26:52
Someone else suggested Wireshark, but again, wireshark is so complex and given that it's so complex, I don't think that that's the solution you're looking for, eric. So I think that you are going to need to. You're really going to want to, I think reach out to Linksys and see about trying to get some form of network monitoring. Maybe see what they suggest, because I can't imagine that there are no other people who also want this feature. And I'm not the tech support person who's like get another product because it works better. But again, I say, with my Eero mesh networking, I have been able to keep track of what data is going to be there. Um, so that might be something worth looking into. Um, yeah, this is, this is a. This is a hard one to make it both easy to do and also have that tracking thing happening. So, yeah, that's my suggestion for you for now, eric, is reach out to Linksys if you're able to. If you're not, check out NextDNS.

28:16
Someone in the chat has said it will tell you almost nothing about how much data is transferred. I'm wondering if your setup is different from mine, because that has not been my experience. I was able to uh see which devices were sending the most requests and, um, see, you know again, device by device, which devices were sending the most requests and uh, in doing so, able to uh kind of realize, I guess, if you, if you aren't. Um, maybe there are devices that are sending fewer requests, but those requests have a lot more data. That I guess that's what you might be talking about. Why that's different? Um, someone is suggesting a little device called fire Wallalla. That is also something that you could look into. It acts as a firewall on your network and it will help to not just show you what is going on on your network in terms of the data, but will also help you to manage your network, keep certain you know sites from being accessed, block ads.

29:47
A lot of people really like Firewalla. You could also go the route of the Raspberry Pi, and you will be able to. You could use that with Pi hole, which is another way. But again, it's all so complicated and that is where, eric, you've really thrown a wrench in the spanner in the works, as it were. And yes, as Brian who had written about NextDNS not helping you. Brian is right, a request could be for just showing a static web page. A request could also be for downloading a 200 gigabyte game. So, yes, there's just so much complexity there, and that's why I think it might be best if you just switched to a different router that shows you how much data is being used. Ultimately, that feels like the easiest method. Outside of that, a firewall, a pie hole. So spending a little bit more time learning how to use these tools Wireshark to help you out All right, let's move on to our next question, which comes from Thomas, and then we're going to have some follow-up from Ben and that's going to be our episode for today.

31:05
So Thomas has written in and Thomas says going to be our episode for today. So Thomas has written in and Thomas says after updating to iOS 18, I was looking at what was stored in my iCloud drive and I noticed that I had 62,000 plus messages synced. This has to be every message I've ever sent. I don't keep messages on my phone. I routinely delete messages about every six months. Even after switching the iMessage settings to keep messages for only 30 days, icloud still says I have 62,000 synced. How do I delete those synced messages from iCloud? Well, this is a great question and it's a question that is an understandable question about why you would be confused. Understandable question about why you would be confused. So I'm glad that you've written in, because it does help me to be more aware of how this could be one of those things that people get confused about.

32:00
So what we're going to do is I'm going to show you on my phone that if we're in the settings app, I've launched the settings app, I can scroll down and, by the way it used to be that messages was on the main page of settings. Apple has now tucked it away in the apps section in iOS 18. I think that that is mostly because it makes it look less like they're prioritizing their own apps over other apps, which is an important thing when it comes to the EU. So we tap on apps and I'm going to scroll down until I get to M for messages. I'll tap on messages and I will scroll down to the bottom where I can see or I guess almost to the bottom message history, and this is the setting that Thomas changed. Thomas changed message history from keep messages forever all the way down to, I believe, keep messages for 30 days. So what this means is that after 30 days, those old messages that Thomas has are going to be deleted, or so you would think.

33:02
There are two places where you need to change this setting. This is for the messages app itself, and so if your device has downloaded a bunch of messages, then those messages are going to be there. It has nothing to do with the messages that you have now synced to iCloud. Icloud message syncing is still happening and this is just saying on this device. I want you to delete these messages after 30 days. You need to do it in two places.

33:31
So what we need to do is we need to go, we'll launch settings again and we're going to go to our Apple account. By the way, that's the new name for it. It used to be called Apple ID, it's now called Apple account. So in the settings page I'll show you quickly. At the top of this page you'll see your name and you want to tap on that. I'm going to switch away because it's got my personal information there and, as much as I adore many of you, I've received a number of messages in the past from people who got my personal information and I would rather not have that. So once you've gotten through there, on the Apple account page, you will see the option that's called iCloud. It's right below the kind of main first four settings. You tap on iCloud and then you come to your iCloud page.

34:25
I, in this case, have iCloud Plus, so I see a little iCloud Plus at the top and a goofy little subscriber badge to the right, but below this I can see stuff that has to do with storage. I can see iCloud Backup, icloud Plus features, and this is where I want to choose Saved to iCloud. I will tap on this and choose See All, and then I'm going to look and find messages in iCloud and you can see that I have 93 gigabytes of messages in iCloud. When I tap on this setting now I see that there's an option that says Keep Messages and I can choose how long these messages are kept. So here is where I need to change. If I wanted to, uh, like Thomas, keep messages, I would tap into and I would choose one year, 30 days.

35:20
Whatever you want to do, I have 344,389 messages being stored in iCloud, 4,389 messages being stored in iCloud. You said you had at least 62,000 and you want that changed. So that is where you need to change it on your phone, on your iPad, everywhere else in the messages app, but then also in your iCloud settings for messages in iCloud. That needs to be changed as well, and then, if you'd like, you can choose manage storage and you can choose to remove kind of individual messages from that page with individual bits of data. It will show you kind of the biggest data users that you have. So that, thomas, is how you make sure that you can remove those messages from the cloud. I'm kind of I'm impressed. I don terrified of deleting any of my messages because I just don't know if I would ever need them for something and so I just can't get rid of them. So that's why I have 344,389 messages in iCloud, because I'm like, who knows, maybe someday I'll get called to the stand for something and I'll need to show. Oh yeah, I texted this person on July 12th 1984. Because I was totally alive at that time.

36:40
All right, let's move on to our last thing, which is not a question but is indeed follow-up. So we had someone write in recently and asked about using a Drobo an older Drobo and whether it made sense. It was actually a person named Dave who had written in, and Dave said hey, I have a Drobo, I've owned it for a long time and it's working fine, but I'm worried that it's not going to work after a while because it's no longer something that's offered. So is it dangerous for me to continue to use my Drobo? What's dangerous about continuing to use it? And we talked on the show. I say we because I had some great feedback from the chat room at the time about the security concerns or lack thereof, the concerns for the hard drive failing, because Dave was also using an old or was using the original hard drives as well, and so we kind of talked about those different issues. Ben was listening to the episode and realized that there was something else worth talking about. Ben says I heard you talk about Drobo on the recent Hands-On Tech. I just wanted to add that there's a risk of the Drobo hardware itself failing due to age.

38:02
A number of users, including my son-in-law, have had internal Drobo hardware failures. Including my son-in-law, have had internal Drobo hardware failures. As Drobo has gone out of business, the only source of replacement hardware is the used market, like eBay. And then here's this. This is interesting. Further complicating the situation is that the Drobo firmware is no longer readily available. What this means is that you'll have to identify the firmware you were using which is pretty hard if your device is already dead and then source a used chassis of unknown reliability, and then you have to find the firmware that your now dead Drobo had, flash the used Drobo with the firmware and move your drive pack to the used Drobo. Ben says this is very problematic and my son-in-law was not successful. Thankfully his Drobo was only backup and his live versions were still okay. Ben says I have moved to internal drives on my Windows server using storage spaces. Mirroring this data is then backed up via crash plan into an off-site encrypted USB drive.

39:14
I wholeheartedly agree with Ben here that, yes, the hardware itself can fail. And what I didn't know was the firmware issue. That, because the firmware is no longer available anywhere, trying to do that is very difficult. And what's particularly troublesome about that is you might have to be getting your firmware from an unreliable source and so then you're putting firmware on this device that's storing your data. This is just a nightmare. So where before we were kind of talking about, hey, maybe it's time to upgrade those drives? You know, hardware failure is an issue as well. I suppose if the drives are okay then you can hopefully swap them into something else.

40:01
But if Drobo, you know, does a little bit, because I've had that issue in the past where I had this network attached storage, it was a cheap, cheap thing and it was just one drive. It didn't have a backup or anything like that. It was just one drive and it was just kind of meant to be. I wouldn't even call it Um, it wasn't really a backup solution, it was just. It was just NAS, it was it was network attached storage that I would put files on. And the drive didn't fail. But the system failed around it and I got an enclosure for it and I plugged it into a Windows machine that I had Elvis, my blue suede Surface laptop and it wouldn't show up. I'd already tried it on the Mac. It was definitely not showing up there. Tried it on Windows, it wouldn't show up and I thought, oh, this is bad. Luckily I had a Linux machine plugged it in there, was able to gain access to it, fix what was broken, but it was all kind of proprietarily. It was like a proprietary file storage mechanism that made it difficult for anything to access what was on the drive, and that alone is is an issue. So that's something to bear in mind as well. If you're going to use old hardware and it's old hardware that's no longer supported, you may have to go to unreliable sources to get your firmware, and at that point you're really risking everything. So it's not worth it. At that point, folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Hands on Tech.

41:52
I do appreciate those of you who have written in. I appreciate those of you joining me in the chat room live to talk about what's going on. Thank you for your responses, like the follow-up from Ben at any point. If any of you want to reach out that way, you can as well. From Ben at any point, if any of you want to reach out that way, you can as well. Hot at twittv is the email address that you will send your questions to, your feedback, to anything like that, and I do appreciate you for tuning in.

42:19
I want to mention that there's a great little thing we have called Club Twit at twittv slash club twit. It's just $7 a month and when you join the club you gain access to some pretty awesome benefits. You get every single one of our shows ad free Woo, it's just the content. You also gain access to the Twit Plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club Twit events get published there. Access to the members only.

42:47
Discord server a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit plus exclusive live things that happen there. My crafting corner, for example, happens in the club. We just had someone who recently joined Club Twit because they wanted to check out Micah's crafting corner, which is so awesome. That's just a an evening where we all kind of hang out and chat about whatever while we're working on crafts, and you guys, you folks, kind of get to follow me along while I am currently in the process of building what's called Jason's kitchen, which is a little miniature setup. I've got the sink components done right now, the sync components done right now, but there will be more added as we continue to work through the module, and I've also got some Lego that we'll be doing. It might actually be taking a break from Jason's kitchen on the next one and building some Lego, because people have really been asking for that.

43:41
But you bring your crafts, I bring mine and we just hang back and chat. There's a little music that plays in the background. It's a great time and that's all via Club Twit and you can only get that in the Discord, so you really want to tune in. Oh, you also gain access to the video versions of our Club Twit exclusive shows, including iOS Today, hands on Mac, hands on Windows and a few other great programs all in the club. Twittv. Slash club twit is just seven bucks a month and we would love to have you join us. Thank you for tuning in One more time with that email hot at twittv.

44:21
Maybe I'll have something pop up on the screen. Flash says hot at twittv. We'll see if we do that for next time. It says HOT at Toot TV. We'll see if we do that for next time. But thank you so much for your time today, for joining us, and be sure to tune in later. For this Week in Tech, I have been and continue to be Micah Sargent and I'll see you next time for another episode of Hands on Tech. Buh-bye.