transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] It's time for Mac Geek Gab, and listener Jeff will bring us our quick tip of the week. He says, I recently set up a NAS on my network at my business. I've been using it for some time, but I was having to remount the drives on my Mac whenever I needed them, especially because my main work computer is a MacBook that I take between home and work. I know that there are some tricks to help keep things mounted, but I really didn't want to get too deep into them. And then I thought, wait, why don't I just drag the volumes into the sidebar of the finder in the favorites section? Sure enough, they sit there. And if they're not currently mounted, they quickly connect with a simple click. Make sure to save your credentials if you don't want to get caught without your password. Great tip. And there will be more tips like this. Plus, your questions answered today on Mac Geek Cab 1138 from Monday, April 20th. National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day, which I suppose checks out given that it's 420. 2026. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Out, the show where, indeed, we share tips like that. You send them in, we share them. We share your cool stuff found that you send in. Sometimes cool stuff found that we find. Cool stuff finded. Whatever that would be. Probably just still cool stuff found. And then you send in your questions, and we provide answers with the goal being that we all get to learn five new things every single time we get together. Our sponsors include some new ones and some favorites. CarGurus.com, where you can check out CarGurus Discover, this feature where you just type what kind of car you want and it filters the search results for you. You don't have to do it. Oneskin.co slash MGG, where you can get 15% off with the code MGG. This is cool. We'll talk about that too. And then Shopify.com slash MGG, where you can sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today. We'll talk about all of them in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

Speaker 2:
[02:23] And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.

Speaker 3:
[02:26] And here in Pensacola, Florida, for another half day or so, it's Pilot Pete. Dave, I was worried when you started going upside down pineapple, well, pineapple cake. Kids don't ask your parents.

Speaker 1:
[02:37] Yeah, that's right. That's right. You may learn things. You may learn things.

Speaker 3:
[02:43] You don't want to learn.

Speaker 1:
[02:45] Yeah, this is not one of the five on your list. Trust me on that. Okay. There we go, right? Let's see. Adam, it's good to have you back.

Speaker 2:
[02:58] Good to be back. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[02:59] Yeah. MattGeekUp.com slash giveaway is where you can go to win a Plex Pass for the year. We're giving away three of those in this fine month of April. And yeah. And congrats to March's SoundSource winners, Ian, Robert, and Jeff. So fun stuff. And we'll just keep on doing it. It's fun. Yeah, it's good. I'm trying to think if we have anything else. And I don't think we do. So let's just get to we've got some questions should we do questions first today.

Speaker 2:
[03:38] If we don't have any more show business we'll move right on to questions Gary has a question sirs I just got off an hour long phone call with Apple support we are stumped but we all know how good you are on my iPhone 17 Pro Max I have a great many hundreds at least photos that I'm not able to delete there's no trash can to tap any on any advice on how i might be able to rid my iphone of said images before i pester you with some questions at max the same question rather at max talk these images are not synced from my mac nor icloud thank you gary so

Speaker 1:
[04:18] That's kind of weird i i would presume that as i was you know processing this question my first thought was oh well they're synced down but even And still, you should be able to delete them. And then, of course, no, they're not. And without seeing the phone, it's hard to say. But my first thought on this is, and maybe there's a quick tip buried in here, too. If you connect your phone to your Mac via a USB cable, then you can launch the image capture app. And I love the image capture app for pulling photos piecemeal or videos from the phone, right? Like if you don't want to wait for them to sync over, you know, over iCloud or whatever, the image capture app is fantastic for that. And I wind up using it every time we're like when Pete and I are at CES creating all those like videos, the short videos that we do from the various like conference halls and stuff. Uh we i use the image capture app to you know drag them over to my mac and then they're just there and i don't have to mess with it but you can delete from your phone using the image capture app too so that is that's probably the easiest way to be able to remotely like not on your phone it's not remote because you're tethered to it with a cable but to use your mac to manipulate photos on your phone that's how i would try it yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:46] An image capture is one of those things that is just so easy to forget it's there right

Speaker 1:
[05:50] Yep it uh.

Speaker 3:
[05:52] It's powerful and it just hits there in plain sight hidden in plain sight

Speaker 1:
[05:56] It is yeah yeah for sure where.

Speaker 2:
[06:01] Are said photos did i miss that i was reading it and i don't

Speaker 1:
[06:05] They're just they're in his photos library but he doesn't have the option to delete them which that's the weird part for me is like there always should be an option to delete i.

Speaker 2:
[06:16] Couldn't see that with specifying photos

Speaker 1:
[06:18] Yeah yeah so yep uh and.

Speaker 2:
[06:23] They're not the ones synced from messages right

Speaker 1:
[06:28] No, I don't know that you can see those on your phone. Can you? I mean, you can see them in messages, obviously, but I don't know that you can see them in the photos.

Speaker 2:
[06:36] In photos, yes, you can. There'll be a little chat icon on the photo. And so I wonder if, I've never looked to see if you can delete those because they might not be your photos necessarily. Someone shared them with you through chat. Maybe that's just a family feature. Is that only a family feature where shared ones go in to your photo library?

Speaker 1:
[06:57] No they might um i'm looking i'm looking to see if like media types or utilities i don't i don't have a i mean i have shared albums which might be another play thing to check like is it a shared album and you only have read access to that shared album i don't know like um but i'm looking to see if i can find a folder or you know a filter for things from messages and i don't know that i see them.

Speaker 2:
[07:29] That only happened here yeah no there's a there's a there's undersharing there's shared with you and again it might be a family thing because i think i only see the ones from my family in here So I think it's maybe from family sharing.

Speaker 1:
[07:49] Where are you seeing this? Like I'm on my iPhone.

Speaker 2:
[07:52] Oh, in the iPhone. I was on my Mac.

Speaker 1:
[07:55] Cause he was saying it was on his phone. He couldn't delete these things. So that's, that's the part I'm not seeing is the part of my iPhone, but they might be there. Just not, not highlighted. So, but check image capture. That would, that would be, you know, a, obviously that would be the first place i would check.

Speaker 2:
[08:18] So yeah i mean on my phone the way i see them like i said is i i have them intermixed in my main library and there's a little chat bubble icon in the lower left corner that

Speaker 1:
[08:28] Makes sense yeah i'm trying to think if i.

Speaker 2:
[08:32] Have kind of i don't know i'm curious now if i can delete those or not Yeah, there's still a, there's still a delete.

Speaker 1:
[08:41] Yeah, I get the same thing. Weird. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] That can't be it either.

Speaker 1:
[08:45] Okay. Well, let us know, Gary. Feedback at MacGeekCab.com is where Gary sent that question in. And you can send yours in too.

Speaker 3:
[08:54] I'd send a question into feedback at MacGeekCab.com if I had one.

Speaker 2:
[08:58] Well, that's where Gary, Gary sent his. He sent his to feedback at MacGeekCab.com. So that'd be good.

Speaker 1:
[09:03] And Jim also sent his question to feedback at MacGeekCab.com. He says, hey, guys, I've been using my original Netgear Orbi mesh router for about five years, and it's time to upgrade. My internet provider is T-Mobile, and I link my T-Mobile gateway router to my Orbi two-station system via Ethernet. The T-Mobile system provides average download speeds of between 300 and max 500, and upload speeds between 150 megabits and 300 at a reasonable price. I'm somewhat tech-savvy and only use DHC reservations. My system needs to support various devices from IoT at 2.4 GHz to the latest Apple. My budget is up to $500, and I want a three-station system, a base plus two satellites. My two-station system is inadequate, and satellite coverage often drops. I use this system for several TVs, computers, iPads, iPhones, a NAS, and a printer. I have about 35 IoT devices connected, including Alexa plugs, light bulbs, etc. I'm looking at three options. Renting two mesh units from T-Mobile, the option is cheap, but I'm unable to determine at this point whether I can do DHCP reservations. Option number two would be a three-station Eero system. I'm guessing he says the price looks excellent, so I'm not sure which of the Eero systems he's looking at. But I need at least two, preferably three Ethernet ports for connecting nearby devices, and the Eero only has two. I could add a dumb switch to give me more. Number three, a TP-Link Deco Pro 7, much more expensive than the other options, so I'm guessing he wasn't looking at the Eero Wi-Fi 7. But certainly within my price range, it has a good number of Ethernet ports that I can tap into, so no need for an additional switch. If you have another system or any thoughts, I would love them. Thanks, Jim. Pete, you want to take this one?

Speaker 3:
[10:57] Yeah, I tried to answer his question, and I'm probably going to need some help from you guys on this one too. So I have a little experience with T-Mobile, which is what I'm on right now, and I really like it. But the reason I don't use it at home, boy, the price is great, but the reason I don't use it at home is for kind of this very reason that your DHCP and your extended Wi-Fi, you're going to wind up with a double NAT by doing this. And that's okay most of the time, but if you've got a NAS or something you're trying to serve from home, you start hitting all kinds of complexity walls that are way over my capability. Dave, you may have some answers on that, but given those three options that he listed, I think that that goes the right direction because you're going to get more ports and good stability across the network. But the dump switch is also a great idea. If you want to go with the aero and add a dump switch, you can get more Ethernet ports right there at that outstation. In fact, now that I think about it, at my house in New Hampshire, I have a small... Port dumb switch attached to one of those one of my euros so so that'll work um just the main thing is it depends you know if if you want to get comp uh complex and serve something from a nas drive uh i don't know if plex would work across that it is with this double nat that's my biggest thing i i like what he's trying

Speaker 1:
[12:26] To do we can solve that so let's let's let's not let that be the hang-up.

Speaker 3:
[12:29] Okay so that was that was my biggest hang-up on that because my other thing was to say, you know, take some of that budget and go ahead and bite the bullet and go to a slightly more expensive internet service provider where you, because my experience is with T-Mobile, you're not going to do DHCP reservations.

Speaker 1:
[12:46] So you're saying that because you're with T-Mobile, you are, and we're talking about the T-Mobile wireless, you know, home internet.

Speaker 3:
[12:55] Yes, your home internet. I forget what they call it.

Speaker 1:
[12:56] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:57] It's your cellular internet is what it is.

Speaker 1:
[12:59] Yeah, and you have to use their device, which becomes its own router, and there's no way to turn that off.

Speaker 3:
[13:08] Yeah, it's both a modem and a Wi-Fi router. Got it. And now you can add mesh to it beyond that. But again, that puts you into the double net lane that starts making life difficult.

Speaker 1:
[13:21] Yeah, double that really, I think, and this might be happening to you, but I think it's easy to get stuck on the hesitations of double that that we had from, you know, 10, 15 years ago. These problems, I don't have the T-Mobile thing, so I can only speak generally. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem. One would be to port forward, to manually port forward from the T-Mobile station to all of those ports, you know, individually. Say, you know, you need something coming in on port 9742. Well, you go to your T-Mobile gateway and you forward 9742 to, say, your Eero. And then you go to your Eero and you forward 9742 to your disk station or whatever it is, and that works. You just have to do it twice because of the double net. The other way to solve this problem is most routers have a DMZ function, which is essentially a catch-all. DMZ stands for demilitarized zone. There's no military involved in this. It's just a term.

Speaker 3:
[14:31] That's why it's demilitarized.

Speaker 1:
[14:32] That's right. But it's essentially a catch-all port forward where it says, hey, look, if something comes in and you don't know what to do with it natively and you don't have another port forward rule that tells you what to do, then just take everything else that comes in and send it to this one IP address and let that take it. And so using DMZ, it doesn't turn off the routing functions, but it makes it so that you can do those port forwards in a much easier way, because then you'd only do it on the second layer, which would be, you know, in my example, the Eero. So, yeah, I wouldn't at all hesitate to move to a third-party thing. And the dumb switch is right. Pick the mesh that's right for you. And Orbi mesh, if you've got to go long distances, Adam, you routinely remind us how great the Orbi is at those long distances, right? But if you need something different, use something different. pick your pick your mesh based on what your mesh needs to be and you can also choose to to to put your mesh in bridge mode and let let the t-mobile router do all of the routing you you like i like that's effectively what i do i i mean i don't have the t-mobile router but i have my my unified cloud gateway max or whatever it is i think that's the right one and that's my router and then my euro system is in bridge mode so it's not doing any routing which is the other way to go something.

Speaker 3:
[16:05] In there that has made me i thought i thought of that and then something in there made me think oh that that wouldn't work but that now that you're saying it it goes yeah that that should work just fine the the biggest problem i have with the t-mobile is that you have to use their ios app to to do any configuration you're not doing it on your laptop um and they're they really they lock it down pretty hard making things like port forwarding and dhcp just not not something you can do

Speaker 2:
[16:38] But it's good.

Speaker 3:
[16:39] I'm sorry. Let me get out of the way.

Speaker 2:
[16:40] No, you're good. I have a question about the TP-Link ECHO recommendation in light of recent events. And I know it doesn't impact currently on-market and in-market routers. But the new FCC rules, I think, is now blocking new Chinese routers, right? If I understand things correctly?

Speaker 1:
[17:07] Yes and and and i'm i i i probably already told you more than i know about it so uh yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:14] Yeah uh but my point is is do we have any concerns and maybe this is more a community question because i haven't i just honestly haven't looked into it but i'm wondering if it's something to be aware of like will that i have a long-term impact potentially on support of those router existing routers i mean i don't think tp link's going away but like if you're suddenly not allowed to do new business in the U.S., I would imagine you become less interested in what you already have out in the marketplace.

Speaker 1:
[17:45] Yeah, I mean, TP-Link, the U.S. Market is huge for them. It's certainly not their only market, and I don't know if it's their largest, but it would make sense if it was. My guess is that they will work to solve this. In whatever way that needs to happen. But, but yeah, I mean, it, it creates a concern. I, I've also, we haven't talked about this on the show. I had a weird thing with when I was recently testing the TP link, wifi seven decos works. Great. Coverage is great. All those things are great. Can't get RCS texts at home when I'm on, can't receive or send rcs messages at home when i am on my tp link system and that's with it in bridge mode or not bridge mode like it's not the routing functionality there is some filter there and the bands that i'm in all use we are mixed families right we have android people in i think every band that i'm in you associate.

Speaker 3:
[18:52] With android people

Speaker 1:
[18:52] I do yeah yeah yeah but it like it's.

Speaker 2:
[18:55] Very tolerant of you

Speaker 1:
[18:57] Like there was there was a day where i missed we had a last minute gig offer and i completely missed it and it wasn't until the next morning where i was out with the snowblower and i got just outside of range and suddenly like all these messages flood in i'm like oh hey guys i could be available tonight they're like this was for last night and i was like oh what and i'd seen it happen a couple of times and narrowed it down and i i like i found on the support forums yes There's a thing, and I reported it to TP-Link as well as chiming in on the support forms. But it makes no sense to me why this would be the way that it is. But other than that little quirk, really loved the Deco and have always loved the Decos that I've tested.

Speaker 2:
[19:38] No, they're great. I mean, I think when I did my search, it's like 34% of the router market in the U.S. or something like that. So they're not insignificant. Yeah, they'll probably work it out. But again, it's just these things you think about.

Speaker 1:
[19:50] Soccer always in the discord chat asked me if I have the enhanced protect firewall intrusion detection on, and I don't think I do because I'm in bridge mode. So I don't think you can have that on, but I will look. That is, that is a good question. I thought I had gone in and like turned everything off, but I'll, I'll make sure of that. So, yep.

Speaker 3:
[20:11] And Paul asks, and you put the team over router in bridge mode and to my knowledge, you can not.

Speaker 1:
[20:17] No, but you can, um it it you i'm looking to see so dhcv dhcp reservations are you able to check this on your, um

Speaker 3:
[20:34] No i well i can't at the moment because my i'm using my iphone as my camera got it okay

Speaker 1:
[20:40] And so that's yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2:
[20:41] Okay and they don't have a web interface

Speaker 3:
[20:44] No they just don't You have to use their T-Mobile app and, uh, and they're constantly changing it. Like when I started researching this question, it made me download a new app. It's like, but I already have your app here. No, no. Different app now.

Speaker 1:
[20:56] Different app. Stop. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[20:58] So that being said, it's, you know, it's 40 bucks a month and it works great here. We all run TVs and computers and life is good. So it does what I need for our second place.

Speaker 1:
[21:10] That's good. All right. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[21:15] We had enough routers?

Speaker 1:
[21:16] I think so. Moving on.

Speaker 2:
[21:18] All right. Ian has a question. Ian says, love the podcast. Learn at least five new things on each one. Well, perfect. That's the goal. I had a question for the brain trust. I am using up datist. Is that how you say it? Yes. As my new utility for finding apps that have updates ready. I previously used Mac updater until they decided to stop development on it. The updatest app leverages homebrew as an option for updating apps so now the question how comfortable are you using homebrew for updating apps would you use it on all your apps for example one password can be updated using homebrew through the app many thanks ian yeah

Speaker 1:
[22:03] I mean i think you probably can guess my answer at this i i use homebrew for a lot of different things so i would I find it extremely reliable. Updatist is an interesting alternative or replacement for Mac updater. It works with Homebrew and the Mac App Store and apps that use Sparkle and Electron. And it even points at GitHub releases. And it seems like they are working hard on being the ones that, uh, that, you know, can, can kind of take over this. So yes, I would, uh, I need to dig more into it, but yeah, I would absolutely be okay with that. Uh, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:48] Same.

Speaker 1:
[22:49] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[22:51] Yeah. I install stuff with homebrew all the time, all the time.

Speaker 1:
[22:54] And it keeps itself updated or it updates what I tell it to. Yeah, exactly. Yeah yeah yeah reliably and works quite well so yeah i would i would absolutely do that, hopefully update us i i miss mac updater so hopefully update us can be the one i got to dig back into it i i remember it came up in our discussions a little while ago but i don't think i i don't know why but i never i never dug deep so i gotta dig deep.

Speaker 2:
[23:21] I used homebrew and flawed to help me because i had this really old um i i sometimes mess around with uh like raspberry pies and things like that i had a raspberry pi camera that i bought I don't know years ago and it had its own little mac app and of course I went to go check it out and it had never been updated for apple silicon and so it walked me through because it was an open source app so it walked me through how to get the source and download it and and I did all that through homebrew and then uh compiled it and recompiled it and took a few tries because it got some errors here and there but we had to change some libraries and update libraries but eventually compiled my own uh apple silicon version of the app

Speaker 1:
[24:08] That's awesome it yeah it really it you know with that ai assisted kind of coding and that kind of thing it just makes it i don't somebody was asking me does it make it faster and certainly there are there are things where ai assisted coding makes it way faster but even if it doesn't it makes it more fun because you don't have to do the grunt work yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:34] And to be fair i don't think it was a true apple slogan i think it compiled it so that it would run under um rosetta sure yeah

Speaker 1:
[24:42] Yeah i like that yeah fun uh.

Speaker 3:
[24:49] I want to add one other quick thing about it which was what i learned from you the last time you were at the house because i hadn't done it in years is the terminal command brew update that's important to have to Get you the latest version of homebrew on your... On your machine because i don't know how many years old

Speaker 1:
[25:08] Well no brew um a brew update oh to update homebrew itself yes yes yes yes yes sorry i thought we were talking about the apps that were inside oh.

Speaker 3:
[25:20] Yeah no no i just uh yeah so it was it was a tangent sorry didn't mean too far down the

Speaker 1:
[25:25] Hole no no it's it's good is there a difference between brew update and brew upgrade yes there is yeah yes yes yes and.

Speaker 3:
[25:34] Well and that was my other question i wasn't going to ask so we could move on but uh what what is brew upgrade i don't i don't know the

Speaker 1:
[25:40] Difference brew upgrade upgrades all of your that's the one i run installed routinely is all the things that are are upgraded or are um installed with homebrew all the packages yes okay yes okay yeah yeah i'm looking to see um yeah this brew update just updates homebrew is that right adam uh.

Speaker 2:
[26:06] I think it also updates all of the lists and stuff like that, too. It gets all the information for all the new formulae and casks and all that stuff as well.

Speaker 1:
[26:19] I think, though, that Brew Upgrade includes Brew Update.

Speaker 3:
[26:25] Oh, as it should,

Speaker 1:
[26:26] Right? I think so. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[26:29] Because it seems like it disables a lot of stuff in the background in order to get everything up to speed.

Speaker 1:
[26:34] So while we're here, though, I will share something we learned about as a cool stuff found a long time ago. And that is an app that you can install with homebrew called top grade. And you install it by saying brew install top grade. And then you just run top grade. And what top grade does is it updates all of your brew packages, all of your Ruby packages. It finds out if you have system updates. It's the update, all of the things that it can see. It's not going to be like Mac updater, but it's all of the command line things plus your Mac OS updates. It'll find.

Speaker 2:
[27:15] Yeah. The only thing I'll say about just running a plain brew upgrade without specifying the specific thing you want to upgrade, it is going to upgrade everything on you. Yes. So if you're dependent on, sometimes, especially if you're doing web dev work or stuff like I do, certain things may not run on the latest version of whatever tool I'm running,

Speaker 1:
[27:43] Right?

Speaker 2:
[27:44] So you can get conflicts depending upon what your dependencies are and stuff like that. So you just got to be careful.

Speaker 1:
[27:51] Makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:53] I, I, because you can break stuff unwittingly, you know, if you have some package that needs some specific version of something and now you've upgraded everything and it's like, you got to run that thing. I've, I've got caught doing that. And it's like going to go to run something like I do a, do a, like compile or a package update on my something. And it's like, Nope.

Speaker 1:
[28:17] Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2:
[28:18] Yeah. And you're like, why is that airing? Oh, So it wanted version 014 and I'm now on 015 and it's not happy.

Speaker 1:
[28:27] Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I don't do enough of that on my machine to run into those problems, but I can, I totally, it totally makes sense.

Speaker 3:
[28:38] Because I'm willing to break stuff. I installed top grade and then ran top grade whilst you were talking and it even offered to upgrade my. I think it wanted to take me to the latest version of Tahoe.

Speaker 1:
[28:50] Yeah, don't do that.

Speaker 3:
[28:52] No, I'm not going to do that right now.

Speaker 1:
[28:55] It will ask you. It did ask.

Speaker 3:
[28:58] It did ask. I'll give it that. Else you guys wouldn't have seen me for a few minutes.

Speaker 1:
[29:05] All right. GW has a question for us. Yes. I placed a bunch of video files on my Mac's desktop. I also have desktop sync enabled for all my devices. I selected the files and right-clicked to download them. I was on my MacBook and my AT&T hotspot. It was taking forever, and I wanted to stop the downloads because it was slowing my connection down. But I couldn't figure out how to stop the massive downloads. I even tried shutting down and restarting my MacBook. But the downloads dutifully resumed. The only way I could get it to stop was to delete the files from the desktop. Do you guys know a way to stop the downloads once they have begun? This was very annoying to say the least. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3:
[29:53] Here's how I'd do it. I'd just go into settings, get your Apple ID, go to iCloud, iCloud Drive, and turn iCloud Drive off. That's the only way I know how to stop it because once you hit that download, it commits to grabbing it and rebooting doesn't stop it. Um it's it's my watch on the table it's one of those things that that just works and that's turns out it's not always a good thing um that's the only way i know how to stop the sync do you well

Speaker 1:
[30:24] I i would be at the very least far more granular than that and i would go into iCloud Drive and turn off desktop and document syncing so that you're not turning off all of iCloud Drive.

Speaker 3:
[30:34] Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[30:36] Uh, but, but yeah, I mean, that would be, Yeah, I don't know of another way. Do you, Adam?

Speaker 2:
[30:47] Not that I'm aware of. This was on the Mac, right?

Speaker 1:
[30:53] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[30:53] Because the only other thing I can think of is, because he said he was on a hotspot,

Speaker 1:
[30:59] Right? Yep.

Speaker 2:
[31:01] I mean, on the phone, can you disable, if it was phone, could you disable downloads over cellular?

Speaker 1:
[31:11] Yeah you could yeah that would be one way probably yeah but yeah but not on not on the mac and.

Speaker 3:
[31:18] I think you could do the same thing on ios in in ios though right as far as turning off your iCloud

Speaker 1:
[31:24] I wonder can you do it granularly i wonder no i but i wonder if you could, if putting it the connection into low data mode would filter that out because you can do that with wi-fi connections on your mac sure um so that may be but that would that would just sort of you know kick the can down the road um i'm i'm not doing it here on this mac but can you right click the file and choose like remove download or does that only appear after the file itself is downloaded.

Speaker 2:
[32:01] Yeah, that was my other question. I just don't remember because when it's actually downloading, you get the different icons. So if it hasn't synced, you usually have the little cloud icon with the download button, right?

Speaker 1:
[32:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[32:13] And then as it's downloading, I think you get the little, don't you get the little spinny wheel icon next to the file or folder? And so hovering over that doesn't offer like a cancel button or anything like that?

Speaker 1:
[32:26] No, I just tried this because on this computer, I am storage limited. So everything is, you know, download only if needed in my documents folder. And I just downloaded something and the remove download option did not appear until the download itself had finished.

Speaker 2:
[32:47] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There's no way to cancel an in progress download.

Speaker 1:
[32:52] Not that I am seeing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I clicked on. Well, no, nope. I thought I did, but no, I, I clicked on the, I tried your, your trick of clicking on the icon, you know, the little download icon and it, it did not, it, it, it completed the download and now I can right click and choose remove download, but I did not have that option until it had, uh, it had finished. Right. Yeah. Yep. So, and while we're here, there is also the option of keep downloaded if you want to make sure that everything, that, you know, whatever that file or even folder is, it never gets jettisoned, you know, out of the, it's always cached locally.

Speaker 2:
[33:48] And when you turn off desktop and document syncing.

Speaker 1:
[33:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:55] Does it, does it do, does it give you that prompt about keeping files on your Mac?

Speaker 1:
[33:58] Oh yeah. It's going to, it's going to put you in a world of hurt to do that. But, you know, but less of a world of hurt than I think turning off iCloud drive in and in and of it like entirely, but it's, but, but that, that, that desktop and documents thing is how you will wind up with the, uh, a separate, you know, desktop and documents folder in your home folder or i forget where it puts it but right.

Speaker 2:
[34:27] It puts it back yeah

Speaker 1:
[34:28] Yeah it puts it as a subfolder of that machine's local documents folder and then you can reintegrate and merge and you have to.

Speaker 2:
[34:36] Move everything back after you turn it back on

Speaker 1:
[34:38] Correct yeah so yeah i i would not do that lightly at all um, yeah yeah i'm trying to think if there's a that the low data mode would be the only thing to check and i don't want to i'm not really on wi-fi here so there's i have no way of of really testing that live and probably have to check test live anyway probably.

Speaker 2:
[35:01] Apple support or to see what it low data is

Speaker 1:
[35:06] I i let i let claude kind of run through this and it well it it offers um you know kill the bird is the name of the terminal process that does the iCloud syncing and you could go to the terminal and do kill all bird i'm not sure if it would respawn though i would expect it my understanding it does respawn yeah yeah um yeah.

Speaker 3:
[35:32] Because i remember looking at that and and i think i asked jet gpt about bird and it said it's going to restart that's my that's my recollection of my conversation with JATGPT. I do not know.

Speaker 1:
[35:42] Yeah, but it would make sense that it would respawn itself. You're not alone. There's articles here that I'm seeing where people are asking Apple, like, can you please give us a cancel button on this?

Speaker 3:
[35:59] Right.

Speaker 2:
[36:01] Are there third-party apps that can just block a process?

Speaker 1:
[36:06] Trip mode. was the one was the app that was essentially the, you know before low data mode existed this is trip mode is what we all used to to do this where you can, filter it's essentially a network filter that lets you turn on or off different, processes from being able to see your network device which then of course keeps them from doing any syncing or whatever yeah so i'm trying to see if they're yes iCloud is something that can be blocked with trip mode at least according to the screenshots that i'm seeing here so i will put a link to trip mode in the in the show notes that would be there you go yep that'd.

Speaker 2:
[36:54] Be the best

Speaker 1:
[36:54] Way that's that's absolutely the best way yes because.

Speaker 3:
[36:58] A wise man once said that syncing is hard so i imagine that's why apple doesn't add a pause button it doesn't need to add more complexity

Speaker 1:
[37:05] No no this is just a download no no no i don't buy it that no i mean box.

Speaker 2:
[37:11] Has a cancel right or uh drop box and box and i think i think those you can

Speaker 1:
[37:16] Cancel i can tell it to remove this isn't sync I mean, syncing is also part of this, but this isn't about syncing because you don't have a copy. There's nothing to sync with. It's just a pointer to it. So this is just downloading.

Speaker 3:
[37:31] Right. Yeah. You don't have it stored locally.

Speaker 1:
[37:34] Correct.

Speaker 3:
[37:35] And you're getting it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:36] Correct. Yeah. This is not sync.

Speaker 3:
[37:37] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:38] Yeah. So, yeah, no, I wouldn't. Yeah. No, but it's frustrating. Like, I feel you. All right. Shall we move on to Dr. Brad?

Speaker 3:
[37:51] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[37:53] Sure. Yeah. He says,

Speaker 1:
[37:56] If I can.

Speaker 2:
[37:56] Find it here. I'm seeing the PS. Last week's conversation about Plex sparked me to ask, why can't I access my Plex account remotely? This started a few months ago. I can see it on any device in my house, but not off-site. The proper ports are open, but I can't see it. And he thought, so he can't seem to access his Plex remotely.

Speaker 1:
[38:23] Why?

Speaker 3:
[38:25] I've had this happen to me a couple times, and I don't know if it was, I don't know what's caused it. But I've gone in and then found that the remote access on the Plex server settings was somehow unchecked. And that sits in your left sidebar under settings, and in general, below that is remote access. So that's that box needs to be checked allow remote access if it's if it is checked already i would cycle it i'd uncheck it recheck it and restart the server or maybe uncheck it restart the server check it and go that way and then i'm going to jump here into something that made sense to me when i wrote back to him but but now i'm not seeing why that made sense to me Wait,

Speaker 1:
[39:12] Wait, wait. Why do we want to confuse our listeners? Is there a benefit to confusing our listeners with a thought process that we're going to throw out? If there is, great. But otherwise, I would just caution us.

Speaker 3:
[39:28] Well, I think it's another option is that making sure that the Plex server hasn't changed IP addresses in his network. But that shouldn't matter, right? Because your port forward is going to port forward that port.

Speaker 1:
[39:43] Well, to an IP address. So, no, you're, okay, so this, I just wasn't sure where you were going to go with this. Yeah. No, I, like, that's realistic. If you have done this with manual port forwarding and your Plex server is now on a different IP address, well, that port from your outside world is being forwarded to the old IP address of Plex and it's not landing.

Speaker 3:
[40:07] And that's what I was thinking when I did it. And here's the problem. While we were doing that, I screen shared into my Mac Mini, which holds my Plex server. And for whatever reason now, it's telling me that my router is unreachable.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] Nice.

Speaker 3:
[40:24] So I couldn't see the port forwarding and the IP address and all that. And I don't have enough of that in my head that I was able to make that. But that was the other answer I gave him is make sure that your IP address hasn't changed. If it has, you need to port forward to the proper IP address.

Speaker 1:
[40:41] And there's a huge asterisk on that because most people running Plex won't be doing manual port forwarding. You can, and it can solve a lot of these problems. So that might actually be the answer. But Plex is built... To do its own uh if your router supports it it will do its own uh it will add its own port forward there and even if your router won't support it it has a way of kind of tunneling through the plex server ish to get things done uh but you get to see all of that because on that same screen where you're in your settings you have to go down to the server settings not to the the client settings but you go down to your server settings into remote access you have your enable and disable and right below that you can see the network kind of flow of things as they can get to your plex server and it shows you it's it's a weird thing to look at because it's actually when you're thinking about it from the internet in it's a right to left thing that it shows you on the screen but it shows you the internet and then the internet points to your public ib ip on a certain port and then it points to your private ip on a certain port and those um pointers have little green or red connectors between them and green tells you data will flow right tells you data won't flow right and so you can see what plex thinks is the right flow of all this right there they they really try to solve this for you so hopefully looking at that screen would answer your question as to okay where is it breaking down and and yes adding a manual port forward to your plex server can be that answer it it you then. Need to choose whether you're going to put that on plex's default. Port of 32 400 or uh you know or another port that you just kind of know um. But but it it all needs to it the plex you don't generally connect directly to your plex server from the internet. You log into Plex, And then the Plex servers manage that connection between you as an outside world client and your server as an inside world client because both are logged into your Plex account. So it's not quite just port forwarding.

Speaker 3:
[43:08] Yeah, it kind of handles that dynamic DNS issue for you.

Speaker 1:
[43:12] Yes, yes.

Speaker 3:
[43:13] Should your ISP change your IP address?

Speaker 1:
[43:17] But it also does a lot of firewall navigation. yeah where it's built to.

Speaker 3:
[43:21] Be smart it's

Speaker 1:
[43:22] Good yeah yeah it's not just it's not just sort of uh quote-unquote dumb port forwarding they're they're doing some some sort of smart routing where where both things get to be clients of plex's server and plex's server is always available to everybody on the internet it's it's one of those kind of things yeah and.

Speaker 3:
[43:41] And i put a link to the plex support forum awesome in the show notes and years ago i asked something you something about plex you said hey go check their support form oh my god is that a good resource

Speaker 1:
[43:53] Oh yeah.

Speaker 3:
[43:54] If you're running plex you you need to get familiar with the support forum those are great

Speaker 1:
[43:59] Articles yes yes yeah um i agree yeah yeah no it's and and people answer quickly yeah.

Speaker 3:
[44:10] With good answers usually not made up stuff no like you know check your ip address in your port 40.

Speaker 1:
[44:17] Are you do you run plex adam.

Speaker 2:
[44:20] I absolutely do i don't use it a lot got it uh what's on there mostly is i ripped my entire old dvd collection before i mothballed it sure i didn't want to have to go find discs and stuff like that yeah yeah i think i have some home home movie stuff too that I keep it there from old tape days that was digitized.

Speaker 1:
[44:43] Yep. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. No, it, it, we had a long conversation in last week's episode about Plex versus other solutions. And I like absolutely still, I, I love Plex. It's it's, it's the most reliable of them all for sure.

Speaker 2:
[45:00] Yeah. I bought the, uh, lifetime license years, years ago. So.

Speaker 1:
[45:06] Yeah, there you go. All right. We have, well, we started this show with quick tips. We have more quick tips to get to, maybe even some cool stuff found in there. The next thing to do here is we want to tell you about our sponsors. And, you know, car shopping used to mean 17 tabs open, a spreadsheet, and that creeping feeling that you're about to overpay by two grand. Then our sponsor CarGurus showed up and just fixed it. Their new Discover feature lets you type what you actually want. You know, like reliable commuter with decent cargo room in plain English. And it surfaces real listings that match. No filter gymnastics. Then on the lot, dealership mode turns your phone into your co-pilot. Side-by-side comparisons, deal ratings, price history, final price estimates. It's basically developer tools, but for car buying. And I'm here for it. It's no wonder CarGurus is the number one most visited car shopping site, according to SimilarWeb's estimated traffic data. Buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at cargurus.com. Go to cargurus.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.com, cargurus.com. Go check it out. Think you're going to like it. And our thanks to Cargurus for sponsoring this episode. And look, I've been slapping this aloe lotion on my face since I was 17 years old, and I figured that was the ceiling, and it's been good for me, right? Then I learned about our sponsor, OneSkin, and I went down the OneSkin rabbit hole. Wow. Founded by longevity researchers who asked a pretty nerdy question. What if instead of covering up aging skin, you could switch off the damaged senescent cells actually causing aging skin. That's what their OSO1 peptide does. The first ingredient proven to do it, backed by four peer-reviewed clinical studies. I'm about a weekend, so it's too early to see any results. But I've read the science, and I'm fully on board with this. Apparently, my face is now running like its own firmware update. Don't get caught still treating symptoms when you could address the source. Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now as you age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using code MGG at oneskin.co slash MGG. That's 15% off at oneskin.co with code MGG. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Of course, please support the show and tell them MacGeekGab sent you. Go check it out. I think you're going to like this. I'm kind of stoked about it. And our thanks to OneSkin for sponsoring this episode. And as you know, I use our sponsor Shopify for another podcast and another business of mine. We sell merch with it. And I swear we went from, hey, should we do this in a morning meeting to literally having our store set up and our very first sale having come in in under a day. Like we had the morning meeting and before I left my desk that night, not only did we have our store set up because of Shopify, we had our first sale. That's not marketing talk. That's literally what happens. So picture this. You're on your phone late at night. You find the thing you've been hunting for forever. You hit checkout and your wallet's in the other room. And then you see that purple shop pay button, right? One tap, done. That's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. My credit card hasn't been touched by human hands in months. Shopify also packs in AI tools that can help you write product descriptions and even enhance your product photography, plus award-winning 24-7 support when you get stuck. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go ka-ching with Shopify and their ShopPay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash MGG. Go to shopify.com slash MGG. that's shopify.com slash MGG go check it out I think you're going to like it and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode, Back to quick tips, shall we, guys?

Speaker 3:
[49:59] Yeah, man.

Speaker 1:
[50:01] What do you got there, Pete?

Speaker 3:
[50:03] Oh, am I first? You are? Yeah. I'm waiting for you guys to. Okay, this is a slow tip, everyone. So Peter wrote in, not me. And, of course, I don't even have it up. But here's the cool thing. He was looking to create a shortcut for his clipboard. Turns out, I'm sorry, a QR code for his clipboard. Turns out shortcuts has create QR code in there. I didn't know that. So he was able to create a shortcut that grabbed the information off the clipboard and put it into a QR code that was usable. And he was using it for, I think, privacy with his students or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[50:46] Yeah, he said, I created a shortcut for teachers in my district that's set to take the clipboard contents, make a QR code, and then save it to the desktop as a PNG file. He says, this has the benefits of being entirely local with no third-party interaction at all. Yeah, so cool. This was a response to student data privacy concerns around third-party generators that sometimes add tracking. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[51:11] So it turns out the quick tip that I was expecting was already covered in the show opener. Sorry about that, everyone.

Speaker 1:
[51:20] Oh, right. Yeah. Our first quick tip was from Jeff.

Speaker 3:
[51:22] Yeah, I'm looking at the agenda.

Speaker 1:
[51:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Jeff's quick tip about the mounting network shares from the Finder, it was like the epitome of the perfect quick tip because... I happened to be here in my studio when I prepped that one. And I do that here. I have some network volumes that I've saved and I've never thought about sharing it as a quick tip. And so I, I, that when, when Jeff's came in, it was like, I love this. Love it. All right, Adam, what do we got?

Speaker 2:
[51:52] I got one that I discovered, I think a couple shows ago after the show, because we use Apple notes, uh, on the, and I'm using it on the Mac for, uh, doing our show notes. And I have a magic trackpad. I accidentally was in the body of a note, and I two-finger swiped. And I noticed as it went over, I could see who had edited the different parts of our shared note. And the further over I would drag, it would then... So first I see names, so I can see like, hey, Dave edited this, or typed this, or put this in, and then Pete put that in. And then if I go over further I can see like a date as well suddenly appear and i was like oh that's interesting i didn't know that feature existed so just like you can kind of do it in messages on notes you have to swipe to the right i think on messages it's to the left i remember right

Speaker 1:
[52:51] Maybe yeah i think you're right i i think you're right and then uh in the post-show chat uh and and i forget it was soccer hallways who said uh that You can also pull that up by going to view and show highlights on your Mac if you are like me and you don't have a trackpad connected to your Mac. And then Soccer Hallways also pointed out that you can click on the people button and go back in time to see the version of the note that existed before those edits were made, which I love. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[53:32] There's also a keyboard shortcut to activate that view, which the view is called highlights.

Speaker 1:
[53:38] Yeah. Show highlights.

Speaker 2:
[53:38] So command control. I will, uh, when you're in the, again, you need to be in the body of the note, not the, uh, not just the list, right? The note has to be pulled up.

Speaker 1:
[53:48] Yep. Ah, that's great. Very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[53:52] I know. Command control. I, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[53:56] It's cool. Who knew? I know. Notes surprises us, sometimes even in good ways.

Speaker 3:
[54:05] Right.

Speaker 1:
[54:06] Anyway, listener Dave wrote in a great little quick tip. He says, this is Dave, an early listener to MacGeekUp going back to the early days. I've been hooked since the beginning. He says, you may have already covered this tip on disabling a MacBook from starting up automatically when you shut it down to clean the keys in the screen. But if not, here's a great one I found that I did not know of before. No, I didn't know about this. So his issue is, you know, you power it down, you start wiping down the keyboard, and of course, touching the keyboard fires it back up. He says, in order to keep this from happening, hold down the left control and the left command, and then the right shift for seven seconds. And then without releasing, press and hold the power button for another seven seconds to force the shutdown so this is something that you would have a hard time doing well you'd have a hard time doing period you'd have a really hard time doing this accidentally and i think that's sort of the point uh after you do this your macbook will now only turn on via the power button or lid open and close for the next startup allowing safe key and trackpad cleaning. One caveat that I discovered, he says, was to stay clear of the touch ID slash power button when wiping the keys to prevent that inadvertent boot up. That makes perfect sense. So, yeah, great. Thank you for that, Dave. What a trick. So, let's see. Left command, left control, right shift for seven seconds, and then add to that the power button for another seven seconds, and it'll shut it down.

Speaker 3:
[55:50] So, I have an app called Keyboard Clean Tool.

Speaker 1:
[56:00] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[56:00] That'll do that for you, too. And you click on it to start the cleaning mode to lock the keyboard. And then, it says, attention, this will lock your keyboard completely until you press the button again. And you won't be able to type anything while it's locked. So, it allows you to, you know, locks your keyboard out. and keeps you from what's that

Speaker 1:
[56:20] Probably an easier way to do it i love that keyboard clean tool it's from um yeah it's from full of aura which are the people that make um better yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah.

Speaker 3:
[56:30] Okay here's here's a uh don't get caught associated with keyboard clean tool do not turn your brightness all the way down so you can clean your screen or you won't have any way to know where your uh mouse is to get to click the button to uh to get back up and running and i think then you then you're forced to hold the button down

Speaker 1:
[56:57] I'll see your i'll do you have the answer for him adam for for that because.

Speaker 2:
[57:03] I do not

Speaker 1:
[57:05] Well my answer would be i don't know if it's the best answer but my answer would be if that happens take out your phone turn on your phone's flashlight and shine it on your screen because all the stuff is still there when your screen is dark the backlight's just off and you will be able to find it and i i know this because it's how i navigate that imac that i have running my open claw server if i can't remote into it i that's how i see it because i just you just shine a flashlight and it it does its thing so but remote access would also do it right like if you're remote in the backlight doesn't it's you could still see yeah yeah, Yep. That's good.

Speaker 3:
[57:49] All right.

Speaker 1:
[57:50] One last quick tip.

Speaker 3:
[57:51] Yeah. So, uh, JP wrote in, we had a discussion about some of his stuff a while back. It was about the drives on his Synology and should he replace them and that sort of thing. And he writes in and he says, by the way, as I listened to the latest show and you're covering my question, which I appreciate, I must tell you that three days before I was to leave town for the summer to go East, the Synology was fine, but the power supply for the NAS died. I had one day to get a new power supply, which is proprietary, by the way, from Amazon. Thank goodness for overnight shipping. So the power supply only lasted five years on my Synology 918, but the drives are still going strong. Thank you for that. And I had a similar thing happen with my 415 Play. It's been about two years ago now. It just would not turn on. And I'm like, oh, man, what? And I found out there's a power supply, and I forget what it was. It was 40 or 50 bucks, but it was a whole lot cheaper than a new Synology Drive and or you know this whole new sonology ordered one from amazon uh took it out put it back in turned it on and it's been going strong for two years so i got at least three more years i hope yeah yeah so but it difficulty level easy easy and i think i might have even used i fix it oh for how to do it they tell you how to fix everything yeah yeah so yeah so it's not wasn't difficult it was some screws and that sort of thing um and it just it just was i if your synology is just dead that's the first thing i'd try pj

Speaker 1:
[59:30] In the discord chat suggests uh use a ups with your nas and i i love this advice i if you've listened long enough you've heard me wax poetic about the benefits of battery backup units, UPSs, uninterruptible power supplies. And I have found that. I have those on all of my electronics, my TVs, you know, everything. And, you know, I'm going to knock on some wood here, but, you know, our our electronics last way longer than I would expect them to. And then other people's do. And I can only attribute it to the clean power that a UPS provides, because it is those powers like the power supplies, you know, especially when they're converting from AC to DC. There is heat involved in that. And if the power supply is being asked to convert inconsistent or somewhat nonstandard power, which is basically describing what most of us have in our home every day, every day, then they have to work a little bit harder and and their service life winds up being shorter. And so having a UPS which not only protects you from when the power goes out but also just conditions the power and keeps it level and clean can make a huge difference so um yeah I go along with PJ's advice on that well.

Speaker 3:
[61:04] Well and I'll add there's no telling how long that 415 play was dealing with uh uneven power and getting hit by lightning and such when it was living at your house Dave

Speaker 1:
[61:13] So it was on clean power the whole time was.

Speaker 3:
[61:15] It okay oh yeah back in the day because Yeah. Cause you, uh, you certainly were the lightning rod for Durham for. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[61:22] No, no. I I've been putting, I've been putting all of my electronics on UPSs since the, the late nineties when I lived in Austin and we had lightning storms all the time. Yeah. And it was because I saw what happened, you know, we were doing a lot of field work at the time and saw a lot of, you know, a lot of people, we would have a lightning storm in the next day. We'd, you know, have three times as many messages on our, our answering service to like schedule calls with clients and it's like all right well we get to go tell all these people that their computers are fried you know and some often it was the power supplies but sadly not always yeah so yeah no you homeowners policy out you got it ups has been part of my part of my life for a long time yeah, you got uh you got one you got some don't get caught for us adam or at least one.

Speaker 2:
[62:08] Yeah i have one that popped up on my feed the other day um there was a video i think it came up on a conversation that i have a chat that i have going with um some other folks in the mac community but um Basically, there is a hack that was demonstrated by a firm called, I think I'm going to probably mutilate the name, Veritasium, I believe, out of the UK, a couple of some researchers and stuff like that. And it is a iPhone hack that they did with MKBHD, Marquez Brownlee, who people probably know from YouTube. And they were able to, without having him unlock his phone or do anything with his phone and Apple Pay, steal $10,000 from his Apple Pay account.

Speaker 1:
[63:07] Hey, that's bad.

Speaker 2:
[63:11] And uh so i wanted to highlight this for a few reasons uh yes one that's bad uh and what they were leveraging how this works i'll just explain how it works is so basically what they discovered is there's a feature that apple added that probably a lot of people use called express transit card so if you live in a city where you have a subway or a bus system or something like that, you can pay with your Apple Pay. You can enable the feature and assign it to a credit card, and it allows you to go through the turnstiles very, very quickly. So to make that system work, basically Apple created a system because they don't want you to have to do your face ID, take out your phone. You're trying to get through. You don't want to block the line. So they developed a system where you could go through quickly without having to unlock your phone in that specific scenario. So what they discovered is they figured out a way to reproduce that signal basically that says, okay, you don't need to unlock your phone. That's fine. That's one level of protection. There are two other pieces of protection that are supposed to protect you from this. These two pieces are, it's not supposed to allow high value transactions. So it'll detect, okay, this is a couple bucks, no big deal. If there's fraud, right? You can probably undo that. It's not going to be a huge thing. So it's a small amount. And then, so if it is a higher amount, it's supposed to prompt and say, hey, wait a minute, this transaction's really high, you need to verify, so you need to like base ID and do all that stuff. The researchers were able to bypass that, and that's where this flaw exists. Now, it gets even more nuanced because... The only cards that this works with is Visa cards. And the reason is that MasterCards and other cards use a digital signature that is required to go both ways. Because it's a man-in-the-middle attack, so they're messing with the messaging going between the phone and the devices. And they actually had to put his phone on a device, on a scanner basically, that they had produced. and then they are able to intercept the signal when it's being tapped on the terminal machine basically to create the transaction. So there's normally a digital signature that says, okay, let's make sure that in transit, the messages weren't tampered. And so MasterCard requires that. So it's not susceptible. Visa does not have that. And I think the rationale was that if you're down in a subway and you don't have signals, they can't check things. I don't know. That wasn't really clear. I have a link to a great blog article in the show notes. I also have a link to the video that goes through the whole hack and how it works and stuff like that. So the video from Veritasium and MKBHD is linked. I also am linking to an article that kind of explains how all this stuff works. Um, and so the issue lies with Visa. Uh, it's not necessarily an Apple thing. Apple is aware of it. Visa is aware of it. And unfortunately they've been aware of it for four years. So I don't think it's going to get fixed. Visa just claims they have protections. So if your money were to get stolen, they would reverse the charges and, you know, they're on your side and blah, blah, blah. But what a pain in the butt if it does happen. So what can you do to not get caught? Um, one of two things. If you are using a transit card, this express transit card feature, don't use it with a Visa card. Just change it to a MasterCard.

Speaker 1:
[66:55] Or Amex or Discover. I've confirmed while you've been talking here that it really is only Visa. MasterCard, Amex, and Discover have been tested and proven not to have this issue.

Speaker 2:
[67:07] Yeah, and then if you don't use transit cards, go into your Apple Pay and just turn this feature off. Like completely just disable it.

Speaker 1:
[67:16] It is handy. I mean, like I, I leave my transit card on all the time so that when I find myself in a city, I can just do the thing, you know? Um, and I would, I would presume that your Apple watch would be as susceptible to this as your phone would be, uh, because you can turn on transit cards for your watch too. So, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:37] And all this said, as far as I know, uh, I don't know that there's ever been a case or a reporting of this actually happening in the wild. Because it would require someone to be near you with a basically scanner near your phone and then doing a tap thing. It requires two devices.

Speaker 1:
[67:55] Yeah, but you could, I mean, think about all the times you're packed in on a subway, right? Sure, yeah. If somebody had one of these things and just like started putting it next to everybody's pockets where you can see the outline of their phone. Like, you know, you could you could probably make this make this happen. But but the issue is and this is where, you know, headlines matter. No one's stealing this money from you. In the end, no one is stealing this money because Visa is going to catch it. And Visa, like you articulated, Adam, is going to credit you for fraud like they would credit you for any fraud. Right. Right. And then also, they're not going to pay on the merchant side either when they realize that fraud has happened. So like this is this is this is why Visa hasn't solved this problem, because it's easy for them to just like go and negate the transactions. And and in the moment, that's easier than having a team of programmers go and fix this flaw. Right. So, I mean, it like it's interesting that this exists, but I don't think and it's good to know about. But like the FOMO that has been, or the FOMO is the wrong, the fear that has been created around this is, it's a little overstated with some of these headlines. Like people can steal $10,000 from you. It's like, no, no, they can't.

Speaker 2:
[69:28] The other half of this that,

Speaker 1:
[69:30] Go ahead. They can't.

Speaker 2:
[69:31] Sorry, I was just gonna say the other half of this that I haven't dug into specifically though, is, I mean, Android has this kind of feature as well. It is not susceptible on Android. So they're doing something different over there. So I think a little bit of the thing is like, well, Apple, you probably could deal with it, but it's the same argument, right, Dave? It's like, It's not really, you know, as extreme as it is. It's going to be kind of a pain and inconvenience if this did happen to you. For sure.

Speaker 1:
[70:02] Yeah, you got to go through the whole fraud, you know, reporting thing. And like, I didn't charge 10K. And that can be a pain in the neck, especially if you're traveling to suddenly have no credit left. You know, if your credit limit on your card is 10K and now suddenly that's tied up. well like that that could you know now you can't pay for your hotel you can't pay for your uber you can't pay you know can't pay for dinner so like yeah.

Speaker 3:
[70:30] But what about multiple people at you know 13 and 85 cents are you going to notice it are you going to call it you know and then you're on the subway and hit up 10 people you just got 138 dollars and

Speaker 1:
[70:44] That yeah and it will take you there's the danger that's i agree with that yeah yeah because you you might not notice it when you get back from a trip you're like oh yeah okay you know yep sure yeah yeah yeah fair fair point that.

Speaker 2:
[71:00] Don't get caught

Speaker 1:
[71:00] Yeah don't get caught that's right um bingo paul has a uh don't get caught for us as well and and even has a solution which i love uh he says, he shared a note from backblaze uh that says it actually well i don't know if it was a note i don't know i don't know how he got it but it says uh with our recent update backblaze now automatically excludes the home library mobile documents folder amongst other cloud-based directories and this means that even with files configured locally as long as they remain within the iCloud directory, which is what the Home Library Mobile Documents folder is, Backblaze will not back up these or other cloud-serviced files. And this, evidently, Paul noticed this because he noticed it, not because he was alerted to this change in any meaningful way. So the don't get caught is be aware that even though the files are locally stored, right, you've downloaded them as per the discussion we had earlier, but. Because they are in your mobile documents folder, your iCloud synced documents and desktop, they will not be backed up to Backblaze. And Paul says, after thinking more about this, I suppose I could run Carbon Copy Cloner on my iCloud drive to a continually attached external drive that is then included in my Backblaze backup. And he says, I bet if I configure CCC correctly and turn iCloud drive optimized storage off, that this could work. So, yeah, if you clone it to somewhere else and then have that clone backed up. But at that point, well, you know, do you already have enough backups of this that it doesn't matter? Like, you know, but good to know that if you're relying on backblades to back that up, it has stopped backing that up.

Speaker 3:
[73:03] Turns out Sync isn't a backup?

Speaker 1:
[73:06] Go ahead Adam Sorry.

Speaker 2:
[73:08] Which thing are they not backing up

Speaker 1:
[73:09] Your iCloud drive The local copies of data Synced, To and from your iCloud drive So you're If you have turned on Documents and desktop syncing like we were talking about before Yeah yeah yeah Even if you have it all downloaded locally, Backblaze has Changed the way they do things and is no longer Backing that up.

Speaker 3:
[73:37] Because sync is backup. Wait, maybe not.

Speaker 1:
[73:43] I mean.

Speaker 3:
[73:43] What do you think they're doing? There's Backblaze just saving bandwidth here?

Speaker 1:
[73:46] Yeah, I mean, I think they're saving storage. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:50] Which is getting really expensive.

Speaker 1:
[73:52] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[73:52] And there's the climate.

Speaker 1:
[73:54] Yes, the current AI climate. Yeah, storage and GPUs, right? GPU horsepower. So, yeah. And RAM. But all the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yupper.

Speaker 2:
[74:09] We have time i believe it all up

Speaker 1:
[74:11] Do we have time for at least one cool stuff i'm going to make make us time for at least one cool stuff yeah there you go because i'm i'm i've been using this for a couple weeks and i i love it i i am a mechanical watch user and wearer i i certainly have my my apple watch uh but i i like wearing mechanical watches as i've often said it's fun to have this complex piece of technology that is not battery-powered. One of the things about mechanical watches is that they don't keep perfect time. The mechanics in them are, you know, they need to be adjusted and tuned, and even when they're adjusted and tuned, they still don't keep perfect time. It's just how, if you want perfect time, get a quartz watch or, you know, an Apple watch or whatever. There is an app now out called TickIQ, T-I-C-K-I-Q, that uses your iPhone's microphone to measure how accurate your watch is. And it takes about, I don't know, 10 or 15 seconds or something. You take your phone, when you run the app, to do a measurement, you take your phone and you put it like the bottom down. So you sit your phone tall on top of your watch, and your phone will vibrate when it's done taking the measurement. And it literally uses the microphone to listen to the watch ticking and will tell you what your, you know, how far off your watch is. And I've got several mechanical watches. I've got, you know, some that have measured to like just plus one second a day, which is great. I think that I think this if you're going to have a Swiss certified chronometer, it can be plus 10 or plus plus six or minus four seconds per day in order to achieve certification. And then, you know, and then obviously you can buy third party watches. I mean, you can buy a mechanical watch for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, of course. And then you can also buy mechanical watches on Amazon for like 30 bucks. And the one that i'm wearing now is this invicta that it probably costs a lot more now because invicta has kind of become a brand but when i bought it they were nobody's and i i paid like 30 bucks for this watch i haven't measured it yet but um this one i keep forgetting and i'm not going to do it during the show but tick iq and it's like it's free to do five measurements and then i think they uh they're going to get you for like 40 bucks a year or something which.

Speaker 3:
[76:38] I got two mechanical watches so i'm good

Speaker 1:
[76:41] Well the idea is you might want to measure it again in six months right you know and and you can do a monthly membership too for for like nine bucks or something um and there's a whole community of people inside the tick iq like app where people are posting pictures of their watches that they're wearing every day because that's what people with mechanical watches do so.

Speaker 3:
[77:03] When thinking of things that are hard, though, that seems like when you think about it, something you put on your wrist, that it keeps it within minus four to plus six.

Speaker 1:
[77:11] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[77:12] That's got to be hard.

Speaker 1:
[77:13] That's yeah. That's why it's difficult to get. I will point out that this Invicta is not Swiss certified, but like it keeps pretty good time. I'm actually quite eager to to see what it what it what it clocks in at. But I have another watch. I have a is this my Tissot? I got to look. um bit is like oh no my t so is pretty good i have i have this other one that i bought for like you know 30 bucks recently on amazon and it's plus 54 seconds a day so it's like yeah you know but like whatever it's fine um yeah my t so is plus seven two so you know like yeah i'll measure this one i'll i'll i'll report back but it's fun little app so i don't know do we have any other cool stuff found or is it time to go i.

Speaker 3:
[77:59] Think it's that time

Speaker 1:
[78:00] It's that time okay then we will make it that time here we go thanks for hanging out everybody fun stuff we'll do more cool stuff found soon we've got it's starting to it's starting to pile up again guys oh who.

Speaker 3:
[78:14] Uh can i ask something from the audience would you do us all a favor and share the show tell someone else about it please please

Speaker 1:
[78:23] Love it.

Speaker 3:
[78:24] We asked nice

Speaker 1:
[78:25] We did he said please and we say thank Thank you to those of you who do. We also say thank you to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth for getting the show from us to you. We do other shows. Pete does So There I Was. Adam does the debut film podcast. I do Business Brain and Gig Gab. Go check those out. I have Rush's 50-year-long lighting director on Gig Gab this week. So it's a fun little thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's getting ready to do their upcoming tour. So if you're into that kind of stuff, it was a fun, nerdy conversation. Ah, now that's what we got. Thanks everybody. See you. Well, wait, uh, yeah, we'll see you next week. Uh, cause we got all that cool stuff found and other things. Uh, what else?

Speaker 3:
[79:13] We're going to do it again.

Speaker 1:
[79:14] Yeah, we're going to do it again.

Speaker 3:
[79:15] Perfect.

Speaker 1:
[79:16] I think so. Um, Adam, do you have any lasting advice to share before we go?

Speaker 2:
[79:22] Absolutely. Don't get caught.

Speaker 1:
[79:35] Made on a Mac. Later.