Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 220.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I'm your host, Stephen Hackett,

00:00:13 ◼   ► and I'm joined by my co-host and friend, Federico Vatici.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - Hello, Stephen, how are you?

00:00:18 ◼   ► - I'm doing well.

00:00:19 ◼   ► We are without mic today,

00:00:21 ◼   ► so you and I can do what we've wanted to do for years

00:00:24 ◼   ► and talk about the Mac the whole time.

00:00:25 ◼   ► finally we can talk about real computers for real work because all those iPad discussions

00:00:32 ◼   ► that we do when Myke is around is all pretend. Our secret nature is to be pro Mac users.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And this is the true form of connected. Myke is not coming back, unfortunately. Myke is

00:00:45 ◼   ► done with the broadcast. So thank you for your service, Myke. This is our new show about

00:00:51 ◼   ► real computers.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Well, this real show is brought to you by our sponsors, Lindo, Luna Display, and Smile.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Before we get to the Mac Mini, we have to deal with some follow-up, Federico.

00:01:03 ◼   ► We have some follow-up.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Right at the beginning, where you should be, right?

00:01:06 ◼   ► That's right.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I was so furious, I was at the end.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Listener Matt has done us the solid and registered HomePodColo.com, so that is your HomePod colocation

00:01:18 ◼   ► company we discussed.

00:01:19 ◼   ► That link has been directed to the HomePod tag on MacStories, which I think is a nice

00:01:24 ◼   ► touch.

00:01:26 ◼   ► It's a temporary location, of course, as we're putting the finishing touches on our HomePod

00:01:32 ◼   ► colo service.

00:01:35 ◼   ► We are, in fact, finalizing the details.

00:01:39 ◼   ► The way that the company is going to operate, essentially, is we're going to have our John

00:01:42 ◼   ► Voorhees go to each user's house and install the HomePods himself.

00:01:48 ◼   ► So we're just finalizing the details of the five clients we have so far.

00:01:55 ◼   ► It's going well.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And you're the first client, Steven, in case you don't know.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Well I did actually buy a new HomePod for $100 off.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I know.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's still in the box.

00:02:07 ◼   ► This week has been nuts and I haven't unboxed it yet, but it is here.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And I guess I'll wait for Jon to show up to plug it in for me.

00:02:16 ◼   ► So how many do you have now?

00:02:19 ◼   ► Two HomePods?

00:02:20 ◼   ► Two HomePods.

00:02:21 ◼   ► They're not a stereo pair because one's in the kitchen in the house and one is out here

00:02:24 ◼   ► with me in the studio.

00:02:26 ◼   ► There may be room for a third in our bedroom because we have an Echo there, but I think

00:02:31 ◼   ► two will do it for now.

00:02:34 ◼   ► The Best Buy deal went quick.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I saw it pretty early and the black ones are already sold out, so I have another white

00:02:40 ◼   ► one, which is fine.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I think both colors look nice in their own way.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I kind of wanted a dark one for out here, but I got a light one and I will get it set up

00:02:48 ◼   ► hopefully this afternoon. I'm in the midst of a little

00:02:51 ◼   ► studio renovation

00:02:53 ◼   ► which is a nice way to say I ran out of space and needed more shelves and so it's

00:02:58 ◼   ► everything's kind of piled up in the middle of the floor.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I think $100 off is probably the right price for the HomePod considering that

00:03:08 ◼   ► functionally speaking is more limited than you know

00:03:11 ◼   ► you can get with the Google, with the Echo. And I wanted to say two things. First one

00:03:16 ◼   ► is, at least in Italy, this holiday season, so leading up to Black Friday and now I guess

00:03:22 ◼   ► until Christmas, both Google and Amazon have really stepped up their game in terms of commercials

00:03:28 ◼   ► on TV. Like both the Google Home and the Echo are now officially available in Italy. And

00:03:35 ◼   ► And I also discovered, by the way, that Amazon is preventing existing users of the Echo,

00:03:41 ◼   ► like me, who bought US One, from setting it up in Italian. So if you have an original

00:03:48 ◼   ► US Echo, you cannot use the Italian language with it. But they're really going for it in

00:03:53 ◼   ► terms of commercials, both Google and the Echo. They're both using celebrities in their

00:03:59 ◼   ► commercials, which, I mean, does not surprise me because that kind of commercial always

00:04:04 ◼   ► works with the Italian audience, but I see them every few minutes on TV, basically.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And the second comment that I had, we had a small gathering for Thanksgiving, we had,

00:04:15 ◼   ► were a total of nine people for dinner. And when I put on some music, basically everybody

00:04:22 ◼   ► commented on the great quality of the HomePod. Like everybody wanted to know what kind of speaker

00:04:27 ◼   ► it was. I guess they were, like everybody was used to the, to the speaker that I had before,

00:04:33 ◼   ► because I used to show off the echo and all the commands that you could issue.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And so I think they remembered the sound quality of the echo and they were surprised by how

00:04:44 ◼   ► much better the HomePod was sounding.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So I thought that was interesting.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty cool that people would notice.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I think too, people...

00:04:56 ◼   ► The second you interact with it, it's clear that it's not an echo and it looks different.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Like it has a design all into itself.

00:05:03 ◼   ► I don't think anything else really looks quite the way it does.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Plus at your house when there's like six of them, people are going to have questions.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I mean you're going to notice them.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It's like a wall of speakers.

00:05:13 ◼   ► So it's impossible to miss them.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Anyway, do we have more follow-ups even?

00:05:21 ◼   ► We do.

00:05:22 ◼   ► We do have some more follow-up.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Up next, talking about the Power Pick picture frame.

00:05:27 ◼   ► we spoke about this last week and I think most of us mocked it. Derek on Twitter had

00:05:32 ◼   ► a point that if you put it on your nightstand, your phone is only in it when you're sleeping,

00:05:38 ◼   ► but for the other 66% of the time, you have a nice picture frame on your nightstand and

00:05:42 ◼   ► not an ugly charger. This is a good point. I'm not sure we talked about it. I have two

00:05:47 ◼   ► problems with it though. One, I still think the whole idea is sort of silly. I don't know

00:05:51 ◼   ► about you, but sometimes I end up reaching for my phone sort of like when I'm half awake

00:05:56 ◼   ► and I probably shouldn't, but I do.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And I feel like if it's leaning up against this power pick

00:06:00 ◼   ► thing, it is a big risk of me dropping it.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I like that my phone charges while it's laying down.

00:06:09 ◼   ► In fact, our friends at Studio Neat

00:06:10 ◼   ► just announced a new version of their material dock

00:06:12 ◼   ► that includes wireless charging,

00:06:14 ◼   ► and I'm excited to pick one of those up,

00:06:16 ◼   ► because again, the phone can be laying down horizontally.

00:06:20 ◼   ► For some reason, that just makes me feel,

00:06:23 ◼   ► like it's safer to pick it up in the middle of the night

00:06:25 ◼   ► or something, so I'm still not on board with this product,

00:06:29 ◼   ► but Derek I think had a good point.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Also, Derek assumes that we're all sleeping

00:06:34 ◼   ► eight hours a night, which like, that'd be pretty nice.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - I wish.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - I'm pretty close to that most nights.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I know you're probably not, but.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - Not lately, yeah.

00:06:44 ◼   ► - Well, you're busy wiring Mac Minis

00:06:46 ◼   ► and installing HomePods, you got stuff to do, man.

00:06:49 ◼   ► - No, it's a lot of cables to manage.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - You got a business to start.

00:06:53 ◼   ► I have one of those Samsung wireless chargers that are not...

00:06:59 ◼   ► Like, it's an upright type of charger, like the iPhone rests vertically on it, but it

00:07:07 ◼   ► makes me...

00:07:08 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't make me uncomfortable, because I have the same problem as you.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I tend to reach out for my phone when I'm half awake, but it's got this rubber material

00:07:18 ◼   ► on it that's really grippy.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And so I never accidentally bumped into the phone with my hand when I was not paying attention

00:07:25 ◼   ► and dropped the phone, because it's kind of sticky, actually.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's really, really...

00:07:30 ◼   ► Like, there's a circle of rubber all across the stand.

00:07:35 ◼   ► But I'm getting this new one for my desk.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Actually, the UPS guy was supposed to show up today, and it didn't show up, so I'm getting

00:07:42 ◼   ► concerned here.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I bought this charger that I saw in one of Jonathan Morrison's videos. It's called

00:07:52 ◼   ► Union something. Oh, man, I'm terrible with brand names. It's not Union City. I don't

00:07:59 ◼   ► know why I'm thinking of Union City, but there's Union in the name. But it looks really

00:08:04 ◼   ► cool. It's got this gray and black texture, and it looks like a flat ring, essentially,

00:08:09 ◼   ► like a flat circle that you drop on your desk and you put the phone on top of it. So I'm

00:08:14 ◼   ► I'm expanding the wireless charging situation over here, but also I think I remember that

00:08:21 ◼   ► a couple of months ago, I want to say Logitech or Belkin, one of those two, announced this

00:08:28 ◼   ► crazy expensive wireless charger that they were going to release in December, and I'm

00:08:32 ◼   ► going to find a link for it and I'm going to send it to you, Steven, so that you can

00:08:37 ◼   ► also put this link in the show notes.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Where can people find the show notes, Steven?

00:08:42 ◼   ► You're going to want to get out some sort of computing device, a laptop or an iPad or

00:08:48 ◼   ► an iPod Touch, and you're going to want to go to a browser, and you're going to point

00:08:52 ◼   ► that browser at this URL, relay.fm/connected/220.

00:09:00 ◼   ► And at the end, you want to use numbers, you don't want to spell that out, you want to

00:09:03 ◼   ► do 220220, and you'll find some links.

00:09:07 ◼   ► There's HomePod, colo, now a bunch of wireless chargers, and some more stuff we'll talk about

00:09:12 ◼   ► here in a second.

00:09:13 ◼   ► It's called Native Union.

00:09:15 ◼   ► So not Union City.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I don't know what Union City is.

00:09:20 ◼   ► It's in Tennessee, actually.

00:09:22 ◼   ► It's like in my state.

00:09:24 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:09:25 ◼   ► So maybe I was thinking of that.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:09:27 ◼   ► My subconscious does weird things sometimes.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm gonna have this soon.

00:09:33 ◼   ► I wanted to have it today so that I could talk about it on the show.

00:09:38 ◼   ► It's a 10 watt charger, so in theory it should be supporting the faster charging for wireless

00:09:44 ◼   ► charging on the iPhone.

00:09:46 ◼   ► But I guess we'll follow up on this in the next episode because my UPS friend is not

00:09:51 ◼   ► here.

00:09:52 ◼   ► He stopped at the bakery too soon.

00:09:55 ◼   ► We announced this over the weekend, but I didn't want to share with the connected audience

00:09:59 ◼   ► directly, that I will be joining Mac Power Users starting in January.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Yay!

00:10:05 ◼   ► Katie Floyd, who has been co-host with David Sparks.

00:10:07 ◼   ► That show is nine years old.

00:10:09 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Like 450 episodes.

00:10:12 ◼   ► It is just an institution of a show.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Katie has some in-real-life stuff she's going to go do, and so she's stepping away from

00:10:21 ◼   ► Mac Power Users, and they asked me to come on and fill her shoes, which is a huge honor.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I'm sure like many of our listeners,

00:10:27 ◼   ► MPU was one of the very first,

00:10:29 ◼   ► one of the very first podcasts I ever listened to, honestly,

00:10:34 ◼   ► way back in the day.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And it's a real treat to be able to join.

00:10:40 ◼   ► So that doesn't change anything for connected.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I will continue to be on connected each and every week,

00:10:47 ◼   ► but I will also be on Mac Power Users Sunday evenings

00:10:50 ◼   ► with David Sparks, who is like just a true nerd hero of mine.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I said that on Twitter and I really meant it.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So yeah, that's exciting.

00:10:58 ◼   ► We've been planning this for a little while,

00:11:00 ◼   ► and it's fun to be able to finally talk about it.

00:11:02 ◼   ► This is incredible news, and I'm very happy for you.

00:11:04 ◼   ► It makes perfect sense to--

00:11:06 ◼   ► it's kind of perfect to have you be on the sort of new generation

00:11:12 ◼   ► of Mac power users.

00:11:13 ◼   ► I couldn't think of anyone better.

00:11:16 ◼   ► This show is an institution, as you say,

00:11:18 ◼   ► and I know that it's a huge responsibility for you,

00:11:21 ◼   ► but I know that you're going to be perfect for this,

00:11:23 ◼   ► and you're going to love it. And I think people are going to love your perspective. Because

00:11:29 ◼   ► I think what makes what you do unique, Steven, is that you know Apple's past, but you're

00:11:36 ◼   ► not one of those people that is stuck on old ideas or old workflows. You know everything

00:11:44 ◼   ► about old Apple computers and old Apple software, but you always like to try new things. You're

00:11:50 ◼   ► still open to experimentation, which is not something that you can say about a lot of

00:11:54 ◼   ► Mac nerds. So I think that perspective is valuable and I cannot wait to see what you

00:11:59 ◼   ► do on your first episode and beyond.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Thanks man, that means a lot to me. I do have a tiny topic for you. This is a topic that

00:12:09 ◼   ► is not quite a real topic.

00:12:11 ◼   ► No, it's not quite tiny considering what you bought.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Well, the subject of it can be as big as it needs to be.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:12:19 ◼   ► The topic on the show is small.

00:12:21 ◼   ► And that is, that's a washing machine.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So I need to tell you about my Thanksgiving.

00:12:25 ◼   ► We did the show last Wednesday.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I got the show up.

00:12:28 ◼   ► I went to a Thanksgiving thing Wednesday night.

00:12:30 ◼   ► We saw family all day on Thursday.

00:12:32 ◼   ► We come home Thursday night and it's like, "Oh, I just could do a couple loads of laundry,"

00:12:35 ◼   ► you know, because the weekend was going to be busy.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And we discovered the washing machine no longer spins or agitates or does anything it's supposed

00:12:43 ◼   ► to do.

00:12:44 ◼   ► In this washing machine, Federico, what year were you born in?

00:12:47 ◼   ► 1988.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:49 ◼   ► This washing machine is only, was only one year younger than you.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Wow.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Seriously?

00:12:56 ◼   ► It was still working?

00:12:57 ◼   ► Yes.

00:12:58 ◼   ► So I have taken it apart several times over the years in increasing frequency to keep

00:13:03 ◼   ► it running.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Turns out I know a lot now about washing machine repair.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So if podcasting ever goes away, I have a backup.

00:13:10 ◼   ► But it was at a point where what it needs now is too expensive to put in something that

00:13:16 ◼   ► old. And the next morning was going to be Black Friday, which means lots of places have

00:13:21 ◼   ► lots of sales, of course, including appliances. So, I started what ended up being a very long

00:13:28 ◼   ► Thursday night into Friday morning research binge on what washing machine we should buy.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Because I think, like a lot of our listeners, I don't like going into big purchases uninformed.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I want to read reviews, I want to see roundups, I want to see what people actually think about

00:13:43 ◼   ► them.

00:13:44 ◼   ► So we settled on a washing machine, we ended up getting the matching dryer as a bonus because

00:13:50 ◼   ► we got such a good deal on Black Friday.

00:13:52 ◼   ► But what I quickly discovered, and I promise you I was unaware of this, when I saw this,

00:13:59 ◼   ► I was like, "What is happening?"

00:14:01 ◼   ► There are a whole bunch of washing machines and dryers and it turns out a lot more home

00:14:05 ◼   ► appliances like hot water heaters and ovens and stoves that have the Amazon Echo voice

00:14:11 ◼   ► assistant built in. It's like, what is happening? I thought that this was a thing that people

00:14:17 ◼   ► talked about at CES, but then it wasn't actually real. It turns out I could drive to my Lowe's

00:14:21 ◼   ► or Home Depot and buy a washing machine with the Amazon Echo voice assistant built in.

00:14:26 ◼   ► It does a bunch of stuff, so depending on what you get, you can do things like remote

00:14:31 ◼   ► So you could tell the echo to, "Hey, start my washing machine, start the dryer."

00:14:36 ◼   ► You can ask, "How much time is left on a cycle?"

00:14:38 ◼   ► So like, "How much longer--"

00:14:39 ◼   ► No, that's useful.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that is actually genuinely useful.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I think, "Oh, how much longer does the dryer have?"

00:14:43 ◼   ► Especially if you're out running errands, right?

00:14:45 ◼   ► And you can trigger this on your car or your phone.

00:14:48 ◼   ► And then if you have a smart hot water heater or an oven, they basically can just do smart

00:14:53 ◼   ► stuff with your voice.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So start the oven, turn down the hot water heater.

00:14:58 ◼   ► if you're going on vacation, you don't need it running,

00:15:00 ◼   ► full tilt, all that sort of stuff.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Which I find pretty interesting as a nerd,

00:15:05 ◼   ► like, oh, this stuff is sort of merging,

00:15:07 ◼   ► but I ultimately did not buy a smart washing machine,

00:15:11 ◼   ► and I wanna see if you think my reasoning was sound.

00:15:13 ◼   ► My thought is, appliances like this,

00:15:15 ◼   ► like a washer and dryer, should last a decade or more.

00:15:18 ◼   ► The ones I bought have a 10-year warranty on them,

00:15:20 ◼   ► so they will at least a decade under warranty,

00:15:23 ◼   ► and if my last set was any indication,

00:15:26 ◼   ► they'll last a really long time.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And I hope that's true.

00:15:30 ◼   ► But I felt like, could I use the Amazon voice assistant

00:15:33 ◼   ► on this washing machine five years from now,

00:15:36 ◼   ► 10 years from now, 15 years from now?

00:15:39 ◼   ► I just don't see that being possible.

00:15:40 ◼   ► I think the technology will continue to evolve

00:15:42 ◼   ► and those old APIs and stuff will just be, you know,

00:15:45 ◼   ► deprecated and gone.

00:15:47 ◼   ► And then like, I'll have all this complication

00:15:49 ◼   ► in my washing machine that I can't do anything with.

00:15:51 ◼   ► So I didn't do it, but I just, I wonder like,

00:15:53 ◼   ► what do you think about that?

00:15:54 ◼   ► Because it set me off on this train of thought of all this voice stuff, all this smart home

00:15:59 ◼   ► stuff I have now, what's the longevity of it all?

00:16:02 ◼   ► Do you ever think about that sort of thing?

00:16:04 ◼   ► No, no, I totally agree with your position on this.

00:16:10 ◼   ► My stance on these API-enabled appliances is I try not to buy appliances that are heavily

00:16:20 ◼   ► software based because the moment you buy an appliance that is heavily reliant on software,

00:16:26 ◼   ► you introduce dependencies in the product that you're going to need to use for like

00:16:31 ◼   ► a decade. And I was really hesitant when we were buying a dryer to buy one with a display

00:16:38 ◼   ► because a display is software and I don't trust software to be as reliable as, I don't

00:16:43 ◼   ► know, a rotary dial made of plastic. I was really hesitant when I was buying an OLED

00:16:49 ◼   ► TV last year because it was heavily based on webOS, but unfortunately when it comes

00:16:55 ◼   ► to TVs we're now at the point where every TV is a smart TV, unless you want to buy a

00:16:59 ◼   ► monitor but then you're going to have to buy a decoder for the digital TV anyway. So I

00:17:06 ◼   ► was not able to avoid that. But I agree with you, like, when the moment comes that I need

00:17:10 ◼   ► to buy a new oven or a new fridge, I'm not going to buy a smart one because I don't trust

00:17:15 ◼   ► the software to live as long as the actual materials of the fridge or the oven. And yes,

00:17:23 ◼   ► most appliances have their own software, but they don't depend on a cloud-based API. And

00:17:29 ◼   ► you never know what's going to happen. You never know if Amazon decides, well, now we

00:17:33 ◼   ► don't do the Echo anymore. And suddenly you have a half-functioning dryer or washing machine

00:17:39 ◼   ► you know, when you tap on the menu it does nothing or gives you an error, or you just paid an extra

00:17:44 ◼   ► for a feature that is not going to be available anymore in five years or something. So I don't

00:17:50 ◼   ► mean to sound like an old person, because I don't think I am. I actually, like, I try to buy smart

00:17:56 ◼   ► appliances when they make sense and if they can be easily replaced. So lights are fine,

00:18:04 ◼   ► I have a small air purifier, that's fine. I don't want to buy something as essential as a fridge or

00:18:10 ◼   ► a washing machine or a dryer that is advertised as a smart one where that smart component could

00:18:17 ◼   ► be easily outdated in five years. Also, I don't want to think about software updates for my fridge.

00:18:23 ◼   ► I don't want to think about the idea of, well, connect a USB cable to your washing machine and

00:18:29 ◼   ► and update its firmware like, okay, some people like to do that, but I don't. And I agree

00:18:38 ◼   ► with your take on this and I think you made the right decision.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Yeah, we I guess I don't think I'm gonna do a bunch of follow up about my appliances,

00:18:46 ◼   ► but they're back there and they're not smart. And that's the way that I like them. Yeah,

00:18:50 ◼   ► good choice. All right, we're gonna get to some topics here. But first, I want to tell

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00:20:40 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:20:41 ◼   ► We promised this, that we were going to get into

00:20:44 ◼   ► our Mac minis, both you and I have purchased new Macs,

00:20:49 ◼   ► And I thought we could talk about the hardware we each have

00:20:52 ◼   ► and how we're using the hardware,

00:20:54 ◼   ► and then we'll talk about software stuff.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Does that sound good to you?

00:20:56 ◼   ► - All right, yes, let's do it.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - So I ended up with the three gigahertz i5,

00:21:02 ◼   ► 16 gigabytes of RAM, 256 gig SSD Mac Mini.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So pretty much like middle of the road.

00:21:09 ◼   ► It replaced a 2011 model that I had.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I think long time listeners know,

00:21:14 ◼   ► I use a Mac Mini as an entertainment,

00:21:17 ◼   ► in my entertainment center.

00:21:18 ◼   ► It's actually under my TV on a shelf,

00:21:21 ◼   ► and it serves basically as a home server.

00:21:23 ◼   ► So it's not a workstation for me.

00:21:24 ◼   ► I don't sit down in my Mac when I need to work.

00:21:27 ◼   ► But it is connected to a Drobo 5D

00:21:31 ◼   ► via a Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 3 adapter.

00:21:34 ◼   ► So the Drobo is Thunderbolt 2.

00:21:35 ◼   ► So that adapter's a little pricey and kinda bulky,

00:21:38 ◼   ► but it seems to be working just fine.

00:21:41 ◼   ► I have an Apple USB SuperDrive hooked up for the rare time

00:21:45 ◼   ► the kids wanna watch something that's on DVD

00:21:47 ◼   ► or I want to rip something,

00:21:49 ◼   ► that has gone months without being used.

00:21:51 ◼   ► But it's just collecting dust really at this point.

00:21:54 ◼   ► So I guess I'm never gonna see that in space gray.

00:21:56 ◼   ► So it's like bright silver in that many space gray.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And it's hooked up to our HDMI television.

00:22:02 ◼   ► It's a 1080p panel, I've had it for years and years.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And it all just works.

00:22:07 ◼   ► So the TV's there, the Mac Mini's there, the Drobo's there.

00:22:11 ◼   ► I was a little nervous about losing the IR port on paper,

00:22:14 ◼   ► But in reality, the Apple TV is our main interface

00:22:17 ◼   ► to the television.

00:22:18 ◼   ► I wasn't actually using the infrared remote

00:22:20 ◼   ► for the Mac Mini in years, so as soon as I thought through

00:22:24 ◼   ► it, I was like, that's not a big loss for me.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And it seems a lot quieter under load.

00:22:29 ◼   ► So in the entertainment center, again,

00:22:31 ◼   ► it's kinda hard to be close to it,

00:22:33 ◼   ► but it seems like if I put it under a heavy workload,

00:22:36 ◼   ► that the new cooling does a really nice job

00:22:39 ◼   ► of keeping things nice and quiet.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So that's kind of what I have and what I have hooked up to it, but I think yours is probably

00:22:47 ◼   ► far more interesting.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So I got a 3.2 GHz Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM and also 256 GB of storage.

00:23:02 ◼   ► So this Mac Mini is on this new desk that I got at IKEA.

00:23:05 ◼   ► It's a, I think it's a Besta desk.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It's a white one.

00:23:09 ◼   ► And it's connected to the LG Ultrafine 4K display.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It's connected via a single USB-C cable that basically runs from...

00:23:21 ◼   ► The Mac Mini is right next to the display, so it's a very compact setup.

00:23:27 ◼   ► About the display, I wanted to say that I don't love it, like the way that it looks

00:23:31 ◼   ► around it.

00:23:32 ◼   ► The bezels are ugly, and I so wish that Apple would make an actual display.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I think the last thing we know is that they said a few months ago that they were going

00:23:42 ◼   ► to make a display for the Mac Pro modular system in 2019.

00:23:47 ◼   ► My dream that I actually like, I shared this on Mac Stories a few days ago, I want Apple

00:23:52 ◼   ► to make a display that accepts two kinds of input.

00:23:57 ◼   ► So I want the same display, I wanted to be able to support Thunderbolt 3 for Macs, but

00:24:04 ◼   ► also USB-C input for the iPad Pro. I don't think that such a display exists right now,

00:24:11 ◼   ► like a single 4K or 5K display that accepts two kinds of inputs, but if Apple were to

00:24:17 ◼   ► make one, I would be surprised if they would make one that is not compatible at all with

00:24:22 ◼   ► the iPad, especially considering how they're making such a big deal that the iPad Pro can

00:24:26 ◼   ► drive a 5K display. Anyway, the bezels are not great, but the display is. It's a very

00:24:33 ◼   ► nice display, the colors are awesome, I cannot see the pixels of course when I'm working

00:24:39 ◼   ► on the Mac. And the brightness is fantastic and I love how it can be easily adjusted,

00:24:46 ◼   ► both like I can tilt the viewing angle but I can also raise and lower the actual display,

00:24:52 ◼   ► so when I'm working with the Mac Mini the display is kind of low, but when I'm working

00:24:56 ◼   ► with the iPad Pro connected to the same display I can raise the display so that it sits just

00:25:03 ◼   ► above the top edge of the iPad. So I got the iPad in front of me, the keyboard and the monitor that's

00:25:12 ◼   ► above the iPad. So it's very nice. I'm not happy about the fact, and this is why I mentioned my

00:25:20 ◼   ► dream of a display that accepts two inputs, I'm not happy about how I need to use the same cable

00:25:30 ◼   ► for connecting both the Mac Mini and the iPad Pro.

00:25:33 ◼   ► So what I have to do right now is,

00:25:35 ◼   ► when I want to use my iPad Pro with the 4K display,

00:25:39 ◼   ► I need to unplug the cable from the Mac Mini

00:25:42 ◼   ► and plug it into the iPad.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I don't think that like a splitter type of a device exists,

00:25:50 ◼   ► but yeah, that's what I have to do right now.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So I'm still not finished with cable management,

00:25:57 ◼   ► but I've used some, like, I don't know how to call them,

00:26:02 ◼   ► some like little plastic cords

00:26:06 ◼   ► to hold longer cables together.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And that USB-C cable to drive the display

00:26:12 ◼   ► is the only cable that I haven't managed.

00:26:15 ◼   ► So it's a loose cable because I need to move it

00:26:17 ◼   ► from the Mac Mini to the iPad.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Not super happy about that, but it works.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Then I got a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Tripad

00:26:25 ◼   ► because I needed to have a quiet keyboard for doing podcasts.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I got, of course, both in Space Gray,

00:26:33 ◼   ► and I wanted to note how it is incredible

00:26:36 ◼   ► that Apple is not making the small Magic keyboard in Space

00:26:41 ◼   ► Gray.

00:26:41 ◼   ► You can only buy the Space Gray one with the long version

00:26:44 ◼   ► with the number pad, which I don't need a number pad

00:26:48 ◼   ► because I'm not an accountant.

00:26:50 ◼   ► I mean, even when I do my taxes, I don't need a number pad.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I'm not that kind of a numeric professional, but it's there.

00:26:59 ◼   ► So it's there.

00:27:01 ◼   ► There's nothing I can do about it.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I guess they want to charge more money for this keyboard.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I've got an iMac Pro here in space gray.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And I use the Magic Keyboard, the little one,

00:27:12 ◼   ► because I also don't need a number pad, and a white Magic

00:27:15 ◼   ► Trackpad, and a mouse, like a Logitech mouse.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And I would love to have all that be in space gray,

00:27:21 ◼   ► but it just doesn't work for me with the keypad on it.

00:27:25 ◼   ► - I mentioned the wireless charger that is not here,

00:27:28 ◼   ► so I need to wait for this, I guess, tomorrow.

00:27:32 ◼   ► But the idea is this would sit on the right side

00:27:35 ◼   ► of the stand.

00:27:36 ◼   ► So right now I got the Mac Mini to the left side

00:27:40 ◼   ► of the display stand.

00:27:43 ◼   ► The H6 audio interface on top of the stand itself,

00:27:48 ◼   ► which is like this black square

00:27:51 ◼   ► that acts as a stand for the display.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And on the right side, I wanted to put the wireless charger

00:27:55 ◼   ► so that I could keep the phone in front of me

00:27:58 ◼   ► while doing podcasts and also charging, but it's not here.

00:28:02 ◼   ► On the left side of the Mac Mini,

00:28:04 ◼   ► there's an external SSD that I bought.

00:28:07 ◼   ► This was on sale for Black Friday.

00:28:10 ◼   ► It's a 512 gig SSD from Western Digital

00:28:15 ◼   ► that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds.

00:28:19 ◼   ► So that would be 10 gigabit per second transfers.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And I'm using this external drive.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna get a second one,

00:28:28 ◼   ► but for now this is the time machine drive

00:28:30 ◼   ► for backups for my Mac mini and Sylvia's MacBook Pro.

00:28:34 ◼   ► I did something horrible at first.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I decided to format the drive with APFS.

00:28:42 ◼   ► I did not know that that format is not supported

00:28:46 ◼   ► for local network, like a shared time machine backup.

00:28:51 ◼   ► If you wanna have like a shared time machine drive

00:28:54 ◼   ► on your local network, it appears that APFS is not supported.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I followed this tutorial that I found

00:29:00 ◼   ► by just by Googling things around.

00:29:04 ◼   ► It's from last year, so I think it's accurate

00:29:05 ◼   ► and it worked for me.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I needed to format the drive in macOS Extended.

00:29:11 ◼   ► case sensitive journaled for some reason,

00:29:14 ◼   ► but now we have a shared time machine drive.

00:29:17 ◼   ► So my Mac Mini backs up locally via USB-C,

00:29:22 ◼   ► and it's fast, it's very fast.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I also have, I should say, a cable that I bought on Amazon.

00:29:29 ◼   ► So, you know, I've been doing my research for USB-C

00:29:34 ◼   ► because of the iPad Pro series

00:29:36 ◼   ► that I'm writing on Mac Stories.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And I wanted to make sure that I would,

00:29:40 ◼   ► basically upgrade all my USB-C cables to support the 3.1 Gen2 spec.

00:29:48 ◼   ► I did some research and I ended up buying this cable from Amazon UK because it was not available

00:29:56 ◼   ► in Italy. But it's from a company, I think they're called J5 Create. I'm just going to double check

00:30:04 ◼   ► on this to make sure. But it's this cable that is short because of course these cables that support

00:30:10 ◼   ► fast data transfers, they cannot be too long, so they need to be short

00:30:16 ◼   ► cables otherwise they're gonna lose bandwidth and all that. So it's called the

00:30:19 ◼   ► J5 Create and the cable is the JUCX01. It's a 0.7 meter USB-C to USB-C cable

00:30:31 ◼   ► that supports 3.1 Gen2. This is the cable that runs from the Mac Mini to the

00:30:36 ◼   ► Western Digital SSD. So my time machine is fast. Sylvia's network backup is a little slower,

00:30:43 ◼   ► of course, because it's going over Wi-Fi, but it works. So it's doing its own incremental backups

00:30:50 ◼   ► right now and everything seems fine. And finally, last piece of this setup that I still need to

00:30:58 ◼   ► configured the way that I wanted. I've been testing the OWC USB-C travel dock. So OWC were

00:31:07 ◼   ► kind enough to send me a review unit of this product. I'm going to cover this product in

00:31:13 ◼   ► future iPad Pro article on Mac stories, but this is one of the best USB-C docks that I think you

00:31:21 ◼   ► can find right now because I also bought a bunch myself on Amazon and I was not happy with them.

00:31:26 ◼   ► This dock supports USB 3.1 Gen 1, so not Gen 2. OWC, they have a Gen 2 dock coming, I think,

00:31:36 ◼   ► that also supports Thunderbolt 3. This one supports Gen 1, so that would be 5 gigabit per

00:31:44 ◼   ► second transfers, not 10. But it's good enough, and it's got an HDMI 2 port, it's got two USB

00:31:52 ◼   ► 3.1 ports and one USB-C that supports power delivery so that you can do power pass-through.

00:32:01 ◼   ► It's compatible with the iPad and it's compatible with the Mac Mini.

00:32:06 ◼   ► I'm trying to understand if I want to use this, like, always leave it on my desk.

00:32:12 ◼   ► Like if I want to... because I'm still trying to decide when I'm working on the iPad Pro,

00:32:20 ◼   ► Do I want to work at the kitchen table or do I want to work in the corner of the bedroom

00:32:25 ◼   ► where I set up this new desk?

00:32:28 ◼   ► So I don't know if... because the travel dock can be used... it's very small, it's very

00:32:34 ◼   ► compact and it's called the travel dock because it's meant to travel with you, it's meant

00:32:38 ◼   ► to be thrown in a bag and when you want to use multiple USB devices with a USB-C device

00:32:44 ◼   ► like a MacBook or an iPad Pro, you have this dock in your bag.

00:32:49 ◼   ► But what I'm realizing now is that the mechanical keyboard that I'm using with the iPad Pro,

00:32:57 ◼   ► it's a Mattias keyboard. It's a mini tactile Pro. It's very loud and it's bothering Sylvia,

00:33:04 ◼   ► so I don't think I will be able to continue typing in the kitchen, which means that the

00:33:10 ◼   ► travel doc will sit on my desk. I just need to figure out where.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Yeah, this thing looks pretty nice. It's pretty cheap this week. There'll be a link in the

00:33:21 ◼   ► show notes. But yeah, this looks awesome. Have they said when the Gen 2 one may be coming,

00:33:26 ◼   ► or is it just coming soon?

00:33:27 ◼   ► I think it's already available, actually. If you enter "Thunderbolts Free Dock" on their

00:33:33 ◼   ► website it's very expensive, I should say. It's also a powered dock. It's got its own

00:33:39 ◼   ► adapter and supports 85 watt power delivery via USB-C for, yeah, like that one supports

00:33:50 ◼   ► two 4K displays or one 5K display. It supports both Thunderbolt and USB-C 3.1 Gen 2. It's

00:33:58 ◼   ► very, you know, it's got a lot of options and it costs a lot of money. But, yeah.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Yeah, the Thunderbolt stuff always makes stuff more pricey, which is a bummer, but it's kind

00:34:09 ◼   ► how the world is. So you've got a desk, you've got a Mac Mini, you have a display. That display

00:34:14 ◼   ► has a double life when it's not hooked up to your Mac Mini. It's hooked up to your iPad Pro

00:34:19 ◼   ► through a means that are less than ideal, but I guess that is what it is at this point, right?

00:34:25 ◼   ► This sounds awesome. I've seen pictures of it. It looks great. I know you wanted to do this for a

00:34:30 ◼   ► long time, but it's been a while since we talked about your desire for a Mac Mini. We talked about

00:34:35 ◼   ► a year ago I feel like, like a long time ago. So why this and not something like a MacBook Pro or an iMac?

00:34:43 ◼   ► So the MacBook Pro, because I already have one, and I really don't need a portable Mac,

00:34:50 ◼   ► I need my Mac to be the podcasting computer, essentially. So it needs to be, it's a fixed

00:35:00 ◼   ► machine that doesn't move from my bedroom and if I need to record somewhere else, like

00:35:06 ◼   ► I don't know, my beach house in the summer, we have Sylvia's MacBook Pro, which is a 2017

00:35:12 ◼   ► one. My MacBook Pro is a 2015 one. So we have a backup portable computer and I really didn't

00:35:20 ◼   ► need to have another MacBook Pro because I don't need my Mac to be portable. Also, I

00:35:26 ◼   ► to have a bigger screen because it's more comfortable, because my, you know, with years

00:35:31 ◼   ► past and my eyesight is not as good as it used to be, I'm already wearing glasses and I feel like if

00:35:37 ◼   ► I can have bigger UI elements on a big display when I'm clicking things that, you know, that's

00:35:41 ◼   ► better for me. To which you might reply then why not an iMac? Because I wanted to have a modular

00:35:48 ◼   ► system where I decide what I want to buy and I wanted to buy a display that was going to be 4K

00:35:55 ◼   ► and that was going to be supported by the iPad Pro as well.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I just like the idea of building my own setup better

00:36:03 ◼   ► than just saying, well, buy an iMac and you're done.

00:36:05 ◼   ► So I wanted to buy every individual piece myself

00:36:07 ◼   ► and that was fun to do.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Also kind of expensive, but it was worth it

00:36:11 ◼   ► because I feel like I have this setup now

00:36:13 ◼   ► that is flexible enough to last me for several years,

00:36:17 ◼   ► I hope, because I don't want to buy another Mac.

00:36:20 ◼   ► - I think you'll be set.

00:36:21 ◼   ► I mean, this seems like a great setup

00:36:22 ◼   ► and I think all those reasons make a ton of sense to me. You know the iMac is

00:36:27 ◼   ► great if that's all you need at your desk. It's why I have one. I really like

00:36:31 ◼   ► the all-in-one deal, right? Like while the cables go off the back, I don't have a

00:36:36 ◼   ► tower under the desk or on the desk somewhere. It just really works for the

00:36:39 ◼   ► way my setup is, but for your needs the Mac Mini I think was a great choice and

00:36:44 ◼   ► I'm glad that you seem happy with the hardware that you've got there.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very nice. It's very cool. And also I installed the Philips Hue light strip+

00:36:55 ◼   ► behind my desk, so facing the wall, and it creates this awesome lighting effect that I can set up some colored scenes with Siri.

00:37:05 ◼   ► it's very nice, which also drove me down this insane rabbit hole of making your own LED

00:37:18 ◼   ► light strips. It's a whole thing about buying compatible Zigbee controllers. So Zigbee is

00:37:26 ◼   ► one of the protocols for wireless lighting control for a smart home. My problem is that

00:37:33 ◼   ► when you buy the Hue Lightstrip Plus, it's a 2 meter strip, but I only needed 120 centimeters.

00:37:41 ◼   ► So I have this cut-off end of 80 centimeters of a strip that is unused.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Philips says you need to... there's nothing you can do with it.

00:37:51 ◼   ► You need to throw it in the trash.

00:37:53 ◼   ► But there's people, very courageous people, who have been doing their own modifications

00:37:58 ◼   ► and reusing the cutoff ends of Lightstrip Plus to create another Lightstrip, which means

00:38:05 ◼   ► buying your own controllers and connecting them with custom accessories that you can

00:38:10 ◼   ► find online.

00:38:11 ◼   ► There's a company called Lit Accessory, L-I-T Accessory, that makes these additional parts

00:38:19 ◼   ► for modifying the Philips Hue Lightstrips.

00:38:22 ◼   ► My problem is that I think I will need to do some soldiering if I want to reuse this

00:38:28 ◼   ► cut-off part. And I've never done any soldiering in my life, so I'm not sure what the solution

00:38:35 ◼   ► is going to be here. I'm probably going to have to buy the parts myself and then ask

00:38:39 ◼   ► my dad to do the soldiering for me. So I will also keep you posted about this, because I

00:38:44 ◼   ► have no idea what I'm doing.

00:38:46 ◼   ► soldering is not that bad. But yeah, you maybe your first one should not be on something

00:38:51 ◼   ► kind of expensive like a light strip. Yeah. We're gonna talk about our software on the Mac minis.

00:38:56 ◼   ► But first I want to tell you about our second sponsor. This episode of connected is brought

00:39:01 ◼   ► to you by our friends at Luna display. Luna display is the only hardware solution that

00:39:06 ◼   ► turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. So you'll have a super portable second display

00:39:12 ◼   ► with stunning image quality and basically zero lag.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Setting up Lunar Display is really simple.

00:39:17 ◼   ► You just plug in this little hardware dongle into your Mac

00:39:20 ◼   ► and it comes with USB or USB-C when you order it.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And you'll just be up and running in seconds.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Everything just works over your local Wi-Fi.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And if you don't have access to a Wi-Fi connection,

00:39:31 ◼   ► you can just connect directly via USB.

00:39:33 ◼   ► It's all really simple.

00:39:35 ◼   ► Lunar Display also acts as a complete extension of your Mac.

00:39:38 ◼   ► It supports external keyboards.

00:39:40 ◼   ► It was the Apple Pencil and Touch interactions.

00:39:43 ◼   ► You can use your Apple Pencil on a Mac app.

00:39:45 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:39:46 ◼   ► It basically turns your Mac into a touch screen device.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So they sent me one.

00:39:50 ◼   ► I've got-- actually have the dongle right here.

00:39:52 ◼   ► It is super small.

00:39:53 ◼   ► You can just put it in your bag.

00:39:55 ◼   ► It's not this big, bulky thing.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And what absolutely surprised me and keeps

00:40:00 ◼   ► me really happy with this product

00:40:02 ◼   ► is the extremely low latency.

00:40:04 ◼   ► It feels really fast.

00:40:06 ◼   ► And so if you've ever remoted into a computer,

00:40:09 ◼   ► You have that lag and it makes it frustrating to use, and that just doesn't exist with the

00:40:14 ◼   ► Luna Display.

00:40:15 ◼   ► It's all really, really smooth.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I'd totally recommend it if this fits a need in your setup.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And listeners of Connected can get an exclusive 10% off Luna Display.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Just go to lunadisplay.com and enter the promo code "Connected" at checkout.

00:40:30 ◼   ► That's lunadisplay.com, promo code "Connected" at checkout for a 10% discount.

00:40:35 ◼   ► thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Okay, software.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Software makes hardware work.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:40:44 ◼   ► That's what it does?

00:40:45 ◼   ► That's what it does.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's in there and it just makes things happen.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Mine, again, my Mac Mini Entertainment Center home server.

00:40:54 ◼   ► So the software I'm using is all really based around that.

00:40:57 ◼   ► It's not set up as a workstation.

00:40:59 ◼   ► If I needed to take my iMac Pro to the shop for something, like I don't have logic or

00:41:03 ◼   ► anything installed on this Mac Mini.

00:41:04 ◼   ► like a different thing. So I mentioned that I have that big Drobo attached to

00:41:10 ◼   ► it. I'm using the Mac to manage file sharing, just the stuff that comes in

00:41:15 ◼   ► Mac OS Mojave that works for my needs. I used to have a Synology and I, like you,

00:41:22 ◼   ► sort of had a bad experience when it started to fail and I decided that I

00:41:26 ◼   ► just would rather have a Mac managing my files than a NAS. And the

00:41:31 ◼   ► The Drobo is too loud to have at my desk here, so it's in the house.

00:41:34 ◼   ► The Mac Mini is hooked up via gigabit ethernet, as is the iMac Pro in the studio.

00:41:39 ◼   ► So everything's wired.

00:41:41 ◼   ► I did consider buying the 10 gig Mac Mini, and I think I'm gonna kinda wish that I had

00:41:46 ◼   ► done it in the future and put a 10 gigabyte switch in.

00:41:50 ◼   ► But it's all gig for now.

00:41:51 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:41:52 ◼   ► I don't edit off the Drobo.

00:41:54 ◼   ► It's like cold storage, right?

00:41:55 ◼   ► So I work on a project and it gets stored there.

00:41:58 ◼   ► Because it's attached to the Mac directly, I've got Backblaze, which is a sponsor of

00:42:02 ◼   ► the show and other shows here. They have a really great online cloud backup.

00:42:06 ◼   ► One of the beautiful things about it is, it will back up connected devices.

00:42:10 ◼   ► The Drobo is hooked up via Thunderbolt. It's a locally attached drive. Backblaze sees it,

00:42:15 ◼   ► no problems. Sometimes, with the Synology, you have to jump through hoops to get a cloud

00:42:19 ◼   ► backup service to work with it. You don't have to do that with direct-attach storage.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Backblaze is running all the time. The Drobo is actually just looking at it.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I've got something like six terabytes of stuff stored on it or something like that.

00:42:35 ◼   ► It's a pretty large chunk of data.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Backblaze keeps all that backed up.

00:42:42 ◼   ► The Drobo I have split up, I have a share for storage, and then I have a share for our

00:42:47 ◼   ► main iTunes library.

00:42:50 ◼   ► This iTunes library is less important than it used to be because of Apple Music.

00:42:53 ◼   ► in the old days anything we purchased I had automatically downloaded to this

00:42:57 ◼   ► iTunes library as like the collection, like the main library. And for

00:43:04 ◼   ► music now that's really not that important but it still downloads any TV

00:43:08 ◼   ► shows or movies we purchase via iTunes which again we do way less of than we

00:43:13 ◼   ► used to but sometimes especially with kids they like to see movies over and

00:43:17 ◼   ► over and we'll purchase something and it's just it's just there all the time.

00:43:19 ◼   ► time. And so that iTunes library is always running, have automatic downloads

00:43:24 ◼   ► turned on. And you know, so it's sort of there as like a big bucket of media we

00:43:30 ◼   ► can dip into if something's not on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. And like I

00:43:35 ◼   ► said, this machine like it over the years has become less important in my

00:43:41 ◼   ► setup. Really like if I could have a silent raid in my office, I would hook it

00:43:46 ◼   ► directly to the iMac Pro and probably get rid of my home server and just do

00:43:49 ◼   ► everything on my workstation here, but things aren't quite there yet and the

00:43:54 ◼   ► Drobo still works really well. I'm not looking to replace it anytime soon, so I

00:43:57 ◼   ► feel like the Mac Mini will have at least several more years of service for me.

00:44:01 ◼   ► But because I have a desktop now, and I think we're gonna talk about this with

00:44:06 ◼   ► you, I have a Mac that's always on anyway. So the iMac Pro, I don't shut it off at

00:44:12 ◼   ► night. I just let it run. And so I used to have like a lot of Dropbox and Hazel

00:44:16 ◼   ► stuff running where it would watch a Dropbox folder for something and then

00:44:21 ◼   ► Hazel would name it and sort it into you know folders. I do bills and

00:44:25 ◼   ► invoices and you know bank statements, those sort of PDFs. I have a bunch of

00:44:30 ◼   ► Hazel rules to deal with all that and now that just runs on my iMac Pro on my

00:44:34 ◼   ► desk instead of like the Mac Mini having to do it and you know I gotta wait for

00:44:39 ◼   ► things to sync. It's just all all right here. So you know this is kind of one

00:44:44 ◼   ► reason I didn't buy a nicer mini. I really bought the i5 just for a little

00:44:48 ◼   ► future proofing. And so again, if I need to put it into service

00:44:53 ◼   ► somewhere else, it was a little bit faster than that Core i3. But that's

00:44:58 ◼   ► about it for me. It's really stock. There's very little data on the SSD

00:45:02 ◼   ► itself. Really just enough for the file sharing. Everything is stored on the

00:45:07 ◼   ► Drobo. I have Time Machine set up for this Mac Mini just so I have my setup. So

00:45:12 ◼   ► when I set my new new Mac Mini up it pulled over its file sharing settings

00:45:17 ◼   ► and all that stuff but it's really clean and really basically it's as stock as it

00:45:23 ◼   ► can be for what it is and I like it that way just so if something goes wrong it's

00:45:27 ◼   ► really easy to figure out what it is one last thing it's not the notes but just

00:45:33 ◼   ► came to mind I run a little utility called print opiate are you familiar

00:45:37 ◼   ► with this Federico yes I've used it in the past I think so so what this does is

00:45:42 ◼   ► So my printer doesn't support AirPrint, which means I can't print to it directly from an

00:45:48 ◼   ► iOS device.

00:45:50 ◼   ► But the printer's on the network, and the Mac Mini's on the network.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And Printopia is a little application that runs on Mac OS, and it basically allows non-AirPrint

00:46:03 ◼   ► printers to work with iOS directly.

00:46:05 ◼   ► So if I go to print a PDF from my iPad—I actually just had to do this yesterday—I

00:46:09 ◼   ► I had a PDF, I needed it printed, I was on my iPad.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I go to print it, and that printer just shows up

00:46:16 ◼   ► as if it was fancier than it actually is,

00:46:18 ◼   ► because Metopia is in the middle,

00:46:20 ◼   ► sort of negotiating everything.

00:46:22 ◼   ► It's like 20 bucks, I've run this thing

00:46:26 ◼   ► years and years and years across multiple versions

00:46:29 ◼   ► of Mac OS, it's really solid, I've never had it fail on me,

00:46:33 ◼   ► I've never had like a print job get eaten by it,

00:46:35 ◼   ► it's really great, and so that may actually,

00:46:38 ◼   ► Other than the Drobo dashboard and like carbon copy cloner and back plays, like I don't have

00:46:44 ◼   ► many third party apps on this Mac Mini.

00:46:46 ◼   ► This is definitely one of them.

00:46:47 ◼   ► So if you have a printer that doesn't support AirPrint, this can be a great way to make

00:46:52 ◼   ► it more useful in our iOS world.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I'm familiar with it.

00:46:57 ◼   ► I used to use it back when I used to have a MacBook Air and I had the printer and I

00:47:03 ◼   ► lived in Viterbo.

00:47:05 ◼   ► The printer was not compatible with AirPrint, is that the name?

00:47:10 ◼   ► And I used Printopia, that was really great.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I am curious about Backblaze, because on this Mac I still don't have even Dropbox installed,

00:47:21 ◼   ► because I just access Dropbox via the web browser.

00:47:24 ◼   ► But I was thinking like, I have a local backup on an SSD via Time Machine, I should probably

00:47:30 ◼   ► also have an online one.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Does Backblaze allow you to browse the individual files via an iOS app, maybe?

00:47:40 ◼   ► Yes, it does.

00:47:42 ◼   ► So you can go in and restore single files or download them actually directly as needed.

00:47:47 ◼   ► It's pretty great.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Okay, alright.

00:47:49 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Alright, so my setup.

00:47:53 ◼   ► So the first thing I did, I set up a dynamic hostname.

00:47:59 ◼   ► My ISP and the modem that the MyISP provided as a built-in option in its own settings to

00:48:07 ◼   ► interact with one of the, to integrate with one of the, some of the most popular dynamic

00:48:13 ◼   ► host names providers that exist.

00:48:17 ◼   ► The idea would be that you get a unique domain name that redirects to your local IP.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So I have my own domain that redirects, I can set it up so that it redirects to individual

00:48:33 ◼   ► ports and devices on my network.

00:48:38 ◼   ► And the reason I'm using this is because I want to be able to access my Mac remotely.

00:48:42 ◼   ► It's kind of like having a static IP address, but it works in a slightly different way.

00:48:50 ◼   ► this dynamic hostname that is configured at a network level. So it's not my Mac that is

00:48:56 ◼   ► updating this hostname with the new IP address, but it's my modem. I can fully control where

00:49:02 ◼   ► the traffic goes and which devices have access to that and all those details. What I can

00:49:08 ◼   ► do is I can VNC into my Mac Mini via 4G from my iPhone or iPad using screens, but I also

00:49:17 ◼   ► set it up for file access. So using File Browser, which is an iOS app that I brought about on

00:49:23 ◼   ► Mac stories before, via 4G from my iPhone or from my iPad, I can log into my Mac Mini

00:49:32 ◼   ► and see the file structure, see my home directory, see my downloads, see my documents, see my

00:49:38 ◼   ► apps directly from iOS, both on Wi-Fi when I'm on the local network or using a dynamic

00:49:44 ◼   ► hostname when I'm out and about and I'm on 4G. And even better, using File Browser on

00:49:53 ◼   ► iOS, once you log into one of your remote computers, one of your remote servers, you

00:50:00 ◼   ► can open the Files app, so the System Files app by Apple, and you can enable the File

00:50:05 ◼   ► Browser location, and that network folder will be available as a location in Files.

00:50:12 ◼   ► So any other app that wants to import a document is able to use the file browser location as

00:50:21 ◼   ► a document provider.

00:50:23 ◼   ► To give you an example, a few days ago I needed to upload a CSV file that I had previously

00:50:29 ◼   ► downloaded on my Mac Mini to a website in Safari, but I was on my iPad.

00:50:36 ◼   ► So what I did was I logged into my Mac Mini via file browser, and then I jumped back to

00:50:42 ◼   ► Safari on my iPad, and I tapped on Upload File, and I tapped on Browse, and then I opened

00:50:49 ◼   ► the Files app, and I selected the file browser, and I moved the...

00:50:53 ◼   ► I selected the file from my Mac Mini for upload.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And so essentially, Safari on iOS used Files as a middleman to deliver a file from my computer

00:51:04 ◼   ► to the website with iOS in the middle. I thought that was really cool. So on the Mac you set

00:51:10 ◼   ► this up in the sharing preferences. You need to, so let me double check because I need

00:51:16 ◼   ► to be sure. Under sharing you enable file sharing and in the options you need to, I

00:51:25 ◼   ► enabled both SMB and AFP because I think file browser required AFP. So I enabled both and

00:51:34 ◼   ► I set up access just for my user. And I also, after many, many years, I set up a more complex

00:51:41 ◼   ► and longer password because you never know.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So when it's out there, you know, that's a more important thing. We didn't hit it from

00:51:49 ◼   ► anywhere.

00:51:50 ◼   ► But I'm actually very happy with this setup of being able to log into my computer from anywhere.

00:51:58 ◼   ► I never had this before because the previous company that the ISP that we had in Viterbo years ago didn't support dynamic house names.

00:52:07 ◼   ► So that's really cool. And then of course, I turn my attention to automation and scripting.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And as you can imagine, Steven, I started experimenting again with AppleScript, which

00:52:22 ◼   ► is something that I used to do years ago, but with a new flavor of AppleScript, if you

00:52:27 ◼   ► will, which is integration with shortcuts and Siri on iOS.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So there's two...

00:52:33 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:52:34 ◼   ► What have you done?

00:52:36 ◼   ► You've created some sort of hideous monster between two very different worlds.

00:52:40 ◼   ► It's a Frankenstein monster of scripting, basically.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Wow, that's a title-phishing statement.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It's what it is though.

00:52:48 ◼   ► So what happens is this has two sides of my strategy here.

00:52:57 ◼   ► There's a Homebridge, which is the popular utility to create like a HomeKit hub to add

00:53:05 ◼   ► unsupported devices to your HomeKit configuration.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And so of course the Mac Mini is acting as a Homebridge server.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I promised many months ago that I'm going to write about this eventually.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I first set up Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi, but I was really not happy with its performance.

00:53:22 ◼   ► It's so much better on the Mac, it's so much more stable, so I never had a single issue

00:53:27 ◼   ► so far.

00:53:29 ◼   ► So there's the Homebridge side and there's the shortcut side.

00:53:34 ◼   ► So for Homebridge, what I did, I set up the Mac Mini to integrate with three different

00:53:42 ◼   ► accessories.

00:53:44 ◼   ► I installed plugins for my LG TV, my Air Purifier, which is now officially supported by HomeKit,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and iTunes.

00:53:55 ◼   ► So what I can do now is I can fully control my TV, I can switch inputs via HomeKit and

00:54:02 ◼   ► therefore via Siri and therefore via shortcuts. I can change the level of the volume because

00:54:10 ◼   ► the volume is like a fake light in HomeKit, so you can adjust the volume with individual

00:54:16 ◼   ► levels.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a fake light. It's called TV volume, but it's a fake light.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

00:54:22 ◼   ► I can set the mute. I can navigate channels with up and down. There's two switches in

00:54:28 ◼   ► In HomeKit there are channel up and channel down and they navigate up and down in the

00:54:33 ◼   ► list of channels.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And then I can also open any kind of input I want.

00:54:37 ◼   ► So I set up the HDMI 2, which is my Nintendo Switch, HDMI 3, which is my PlayStation and

00:54:42 ◼   ► all that.

00:54:43 ◼   ► All of this is running via a WebOS plugin for Homebridge on the Mac Mini.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Super stable, works really well.

00:54:49 ◼   ► I needed to change a bunch of settings on my TV to enable Wake On LAN and that type

00:54:54 ◼   ► of stuff, but now it's working really great.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Air purifier, again, just needed to install a plugin,

00:55:01 ◼   ► drop in some info for this device on my local network.

00:55:05 ◼   ► Now I can turn it on via HomeKit.

00:55:07 ◼   ► I can set its speed.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Again, the air purifier in this case

00:55:12 ◼   ► is a natively supported type of device in HomeKit.

00:55:16 ◼   ► So you got like a custom icon and custom controls.

00:55:19 ◼   ► It's not a fake light, it's an actual air purifier.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And then I can also trigger its silent mode,

00:55:25 ◼   ► which is like a special mode for, like, if you want to leave it on at night.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Finally, iTunes.

00:55:31 ◼   ► So iTunes is based on this Homebridge plugin called the AppleScript file,

00:55:38 ◼   ► which allows you to create Home... This is wild.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It allows you to create HomeKit accessories,

00:55:44 ◼   ► switches, so things that can be on and can be off,

00:55:48 ◼   ► that when you turn it on, the accessory in HomeKit,

00:55:53 ◼   ► it runs code from an AppleScript file.

00:55:57 ◼   ► So I have HomeKit accessories that can, for example,

00:56:02 ◼   ► change the volume of my HomePods,

00:56:06 ◼   ► or play specific playlists from iTunes,

00:56:10 ◼   ► or play specific playlists on specific HomePods,

00:56:15 ◼   ► or set things on Shuffle.

00:56:17 ◼   ► So all the things that you can do with AppleScript in iTunes,

00:56:20 ◼   ► they can become AppleScript commands that you run via Homebridge and therefore on iOS

00:56:27 ◼   ► or any other Apple device via Siri and via HomeKit.

00:56:31 ◼   ► This is very cool because I set up a scene, for example, that when I trigger it, it dims

00:56:39 ◼   ► all the lights around the house and turns them red, turns off the TV and starts playing

00:56:47 ◼   ► our favorite playlist on shuffle at a specific volume through the three HomePods that we have.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And this is done, of course, you need to leave agents running in the background on the Mac Mini.

00:56:58 ◼   ► The display does not have to be on, you just need to leave agents in the background and in agents

00:57:02 ◼   ► you need to select, at first, so not every time, you need to select the HomePods as destinations

00:57:09 ◼   ► in the AirPlay menu. But that's it, once it's done, it's done and it's very cool. And again,

00:57:15 ◼   ► Super stable never had a single issue so far. This is just the homekit side

00:57:19 ◼   ► Yeah

00:57:19 ◼   ► What's the delay like on all that stuff like is the is the iTunes side pretty fast?

00:57:24 ◼   ► Like is it respond quickly less than two two seconds? I would say

00:57:28 ◼   ► One second usually like even even saying pause iTunes, which is now a command for me in Siri

00:57:35 ◼   ► Takes about a second. It's it's really well done the plugin works and this is also wild it works by

00:57:44 ◼   ► using the native iTunes remote API.

00:57:48 ◼   ► So when you first register the plugin,

00:57:51 ◼   ► you will need to enter a pin code via iTunes

00:57:54 ◼   ► because this plugin is using the official Apple API

00:57:57 ◼   ► for iTunes remotes.

00:57:58 ◼   ► So that's why it works really well.

00:58:01 ◼   ► It's not like, it's not just using AppleScript.

00:58:04 ◼   ► I'm using AppleScript for some things,

00:58:07 ◼   ► but it's also using this native remote API for iTunes.

00:58:11 ◼   ► It's really, really convenient.

00:58:13 ◼   ► So right now in HomeKit, I have a mix of official HomeKit accessories, like my Philips Hue lights,

00:58:20 ◼   ► like my Elgato, actually not Elgato, Eve sensors, but also I have some custom ones.

00:58:28 ◼   ► iTunes, my TV, you know, stuff that I set up via Homebridge, my air purifier.

00:58:34 ◼   ► All of these automations, I also adapted them manually to shortcuts and Siri.

00:58:43 ◼   ► So there's this technology, there's this command,

00:58:48 ◼   ► the shell command called osaskript,

00:58:51 ◼   ► and osaskript, it lets you run Apple scripts

00:58:54 ◼   ► via the terminal on the Mac.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Shortcuts, the Shortcuts app

00:58:58 ◼   ► has a native run SSH command action,

00:59:05 ◼   ► and of course, if you put in your IP address of your Mac

00:59:09 ◼   ► and your username and your password,

00:59:11 ◼   ► you can use OSAScript to pass AppleScript commands to your Mac.

00:59:16 ◼   ► So just let me look in shortcuts for a second.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Let's see. To give you an example of the commands that I set up,

00:59:25 ◼   ► I have Wake Mac.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So this wakes up the display.

00:59:29 ◼   ► And of course, if you wake up the display and you have an Apple Watch, the Mac also unlocks

00:59:34 ◼   ► because it's getting the Wake command.

00:59:36 ◼   ► Sleep Mac. So puts the display to sleep.

00:59:40 ◼   ► pause iTunes and play iTunes.

00:59:41 ◼   ► I can set some text to the clipboard of the Mac,

00:59:47 ◼   ► or let's see the more custom ones.

00:59:49 ◼   ► So this one uses, so I've been going through

00:59:53 ◼   ► the entire archive of Doug scripts.

00:59:57 ◼   ► Are you familiar with Doug scripts, the website?

00:59:59 ◼   ► - Yes. - So.

01:00:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, this thing, this website is amazing

01:00:04 ◼   ► if you wanna do automation on the Mac.

01:00:05 ◼   ► - There's Apple scripts for everything.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And there's an entire iTunes category, but not only that,

01:00:12 ◼   ► there's an entire sub category for iTunes

01:00:16 ◼   ► and AirPlay devices.

01:00:18 ◼   ► So it's amazing.

01:00:19 ◼   ► And I've been using that to put together commands

01:00:24 ◼   ► for changing the volume of individual AirPlay devices

01:00:28 ◼   ► from shortcuts on iOS.

01:00:31 ◼   ► What's even better, and this looks amazing to me,

01:00:34 ◼   ► My shortcut has... the AppleScript is put together via a text action.

01:00:40 ◼   ► So I wrote the AppleScript in a text action, but the text action has a combination of text

01:00:46 ◼   ► and magic variables. So it's like this bridging these two worlds together in shortcuts of like

01:00:52 ◼   ► having the AppleScript but also having the variables from shortcuts. It looks really,

01:00:57 ◼   ► really good. Like visually speaking, you can see like these two worlds colliding.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But yeah, I can change the volume of my HomePods. I have templates for speakers 10%, speakers 20%,

01:01:09 ◼   ► speakers 30%, and so forth. I have two long AppleScript-based shortcuts that I put together.

01:01:18 ◼   ► One is a menu that on my iPhone and my iPad, it lets me choose from multiple HomePods. So I have

01:01:26 ◼   ► kitchen, hallway and nightstand, and it asks me what kind of volume do you want to set

01:01:33 ◼   ► for the selected HomePods.

01:01:36 ◼   ► And I can do all this from iOS, but it's the Mac Mini that of course receives the code

01:01:41 ◼   ► and the command and runs it, because it's a home server, that's what it does.

01:01:45 ◼   ► And the other one is called rplaylist+mood, which is the shortcut that I described.

01:01:52 ◼   ► It runs a bunch of code and what it does is it changes the iTunes output to specific home

01:01:59 ◼   ► pods and the specific volume level, usually between 8 and 10, because we listen to music

01:02:03 ◼   ► late at night, we don't want to disturb the neighbors.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And then it runs that code, triggers the HomeKit scene for the, you know, turning off the TV

01:02:15 ◼   ► and playing the playlist via iTunes on shuffle, and then finally it turns off the Mac Mini

01:02:21 ◼   ► display. So everything's, you know, TV is off, Mac Mini is off, the lights are red,

01:02:26 ◼   ► we're listening to some music, we're having a good time, and it's beautiful

01:02:30 ◼   ► because it runs from, I can run it with a single Siri command via

01:02:34 ◼   ► shortcuts. So yes, I've spent way too much time coming up with these sort of Mac

01:02:41 ◼   ► and iOS together automations, which I think is something that I'm gonna cover

01:02:44 ◼   ► a bunch next year on Mac Stories, because it's really fun.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Putting the stories back in Mac Stories, as they say.

01:02:49 ◼   ► That's what I'm doing, baby. I'm putting the Mac back in Mac series. Yeah, yeah, I love

01:02:56 ◼   ► it. Finally, you're gonna be happy with this. I can go on and on about this stuff, but man,

01:03:02 ◼   ► it feels good to talk about the Mac again. I'm using a custom screensaver. It's the Aerial

01:03:10 ◼   ► Screensaver by John Coates on GitHub. It uses the screensavers that you also get on the

01:03:16 ◼   ► Apple TV, but you get them on the Mac, and it's been updated to version 1.4 that integrates

01:03:24 ◼   ► the ISS videos from TV OS 12.

01:03:27 ◼   ► So the beautiful International Space Station videos that you get on the Apple TV, you can

01:03:31 ◼   ► get them on the Mac too, and they look amazing.

01:03:34 ◼   ► It's an amazing screensaver.

01:03:37 ◼   ► I tried running it on my old Mac Mini, but it would run the fan.

01:03:43 ◼   ► But most of the time the Apple TV, like the Apple TV is the default input on our television.

01:03:47 ◼   ► Of course, I use it there.

01:03:49 ◼   ► But I need to check this out again, because I have not I have not spent time with this

01:03:55 ◼   ► in a while.

01:03:56 ◼   ► So I may download this and build it again, just to just to spend some time with it.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And it's a it's version 1.4 point five.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So coming right along.

01:04:04 ◼   ► It's really cool.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Those new ISS videos are just really amazing.

01:04:09 ◼   ► You don't even have to be a space nerd to appreciate them.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Well, you are listening to believe that the earth is a globe. You know, there's people

01:04:17 ◼   ► who don't. At least that's the only requirement, I think.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Did I make you proud, Steven, with this?

01:04:28 ◼   ► Yes. You have done this in the way that I had hoped that you would, where you are blending

01:04:36 ◼   ► the Mac into your environment. I was a little afraid that you were just going to buy this

01:04:41 ◼   ► and it was going to be just for podcasting

01:04:45 ◼   ► and you would feel like you spent a bunch of money

01:04:47 ◼   ► for something that you only use a couple times a week,

01:04:49 ◼   ► but I like that you're integrating it into your,

01:04:51 ◼   ► the rest of your stuff and that makes me happy

01:04:54 ◼   ► because you know, the iPad and Mac can get along just fine.

01:04:57 ◼   ► There doesn't need to be a war between us.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's true.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Yeah, so I will keep you posted on the next steps, yeah.

01:05:05 ◼   ► - Yes, please do.

01:05:06 ◼   ► All right, our third and final sponsor this week is Smile.

01:05:09 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you

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01:06:23 ◼   ► Smilesoftware.com/podcast. Our thanks to PDF pen for their support of this show

01:06:29 ◼   ► and all of Relay FM. I meant to ask you are you running dark mode in Mojave?

01:06:34 ◼   ► Not at the moment.

01:06:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's kind of how I feel.

01:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:39 ◼   ► It was a novelty, and then I got tired of it.

01:06:41 ◼   ► I think it's going to be more useful on iOS, honestly.

01:06:44 ◼   ► Yes.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Because when it's late at night and I'm lying in bed, I really want my phone to be darker.

01:06:50 ◼   ► So, probably...

01:06:51 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I mean so much of iOS is still just like huge panels of white, you know?

01:06:56 ◼   ► But, so we're going to wrap up today talking about iCloud.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:07:02 ◼   ► And specifically some iCloud issues that you are experiencing.

01:07:11 ◼   ► So I think you, like probably a lot of our listeners, use iCloud on your iOS devices,

01:07:17 ◼   ► on your Macs, having it be the glue between all this stuff.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But you have run into a little bit of a problem.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's the worst kind of problem, tech problem, in that it happens randomly.

01:07:32 ◼   ► it's impossible to reproduce by following specific steps.

01:07:38 ◼   ► It just happens sometimes.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And of course when you need to explain to somebody that you're having an issue sometimes,

01:07:45 ◼   ► that is really hard to do, because again, you don't have instructions to repeat the problem.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Here's what happened.

01:07:53 ◼   ► For the past two weeks and a half, three weeks,

01:07:58 ◼   ► I've been having some random iCloud issues.

01:08:01 ◼   ► things like HomeKit didn't think that I was home while I was at home.

01:08:09 ◼   ► And so some automations kept running.

01:08:11 ◼   ► Like my motion sensor kept sending me notifications because it detected motion

01:08:17 ◼   ► because nobody was home, but I was at home in front of the motion sensor doing the motion.

01:08:24 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:08:26 ◼   ► I love that sort of problem. It's like, this technology is so smart, but it's so dumb at

01:08:33 ◼   ► the same time.

01:08:35 ◼   ► Or some other issues involving, like, my iPhone didn't tell me that it hadn't backed up for

01:08:46 ◼   ► four weeks. For the past month, my iPhone was not backing up to iCloud, and it didn't

01:08:51 ◼   ► tell me.

01:08:52 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:08:53 ◼   ► And then I started noticing that some reminders that I had previously changed on one device,

01:09:01 ◼   ► like changing the due date of a reminder, was not syncing to other devices. So after

01:09:08 ◼   ► a few times this happened, I went like, "Wait, I just did that a few minutes ago on my iPhone.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Why is it still here?" And at that point I realized, "Oh, something is really wrong,"

01:09:19 ◼   ► because all these things that have been happening are connected together. So something is definitely

01:09:23 ◼   ► wrong. So, you know, debugging iCloud is a nightmare because for obvious reasons, Apple

01:09:32 ◼   ► likes to keep things simple and invisible. There's no like pretty log that you can see

01:09:39 ◼   ► like something that is easily viewable or, you know, displayable on iOS. You can capture

01:09:47 ◼   ► logs but it's a really geeky thing to do and they're basically unreadable unless you're

01:09:51 ◼   ► an Apple engineer. So I started doing what everybody recommends doing. First off, the

01:09:58 ◼   ► main issue appeared to be reminders, because I had entire sets of reminders out of sync

01:10:04 ◼   ► between my iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iCloud.com. I started by turning off reminders sync in

01:10:12 ◼   ► iCloud on multiple devices and re-enabling them one at a time after resetting my reminders

01:10:20 ◼   ► on iCloud.com, sort of bringing back individual devices, one after the other. That didn't

01:10:26 ◼   ► work. So I tried to sign out of iCloud, which is a really disruptive procedure in that it's...

01:10:33 ◼   ► It is. Everything breaks. Basically.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Everything breaks. Everything breaks. And it asks for confirmation, you get emails,

01:10:40 ◼   ► you get two-factor authentication stuff. But I did that. I did that on my Mac, did it on

01:10:46 ◼   ► on my iPhone and my iPad.

01:10:48 ◼   ► That also didn't work because after a few minutes

01:10:50 ◼   ► that everything was back online, stuff was not syncing.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I, what else did I do?

01:10:57 ◼   ► I reset all my settings.

01:11:01 ◼   ► So needed to start from scratch,

01:11:05 ◼   ► changing all the little settings

01:11:06 ◼   ► that I change on my iOS devices,

01:11:08 ◼   ► like my date format or how my contacts are sorted.

01:11:12 ◼   ► All, I needed to redo them all

01:11:14 ◼   ► because I reset the settings.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I restored all my calendars

01:11:20 ◼   ► and all my reminders from a backup.

01:11:22 ◼   ► This is something that you can do on iCloud.com.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It basically erases all of your reminders and calendars,

01:11:30 ◼   ► removes all sharing information,

01:11:33 ◼   ► and recreates them based on a backup

01:11:36 ◼   ► that is available on iCloud.com.

01:11:39 ◼   ► That didn't work.

01:11:40 ◼   ► The only thing that worked for me,

01:11:43 ◼   ► I was able to fix the iPhone backup situation by deleting an old backup, actually deleting

01:11:49 ◼   ► all previous backups, and starting one from scratch.

01:11:54 ◼   ► A reader on Twitter told me that something was probably like a random file was causing

01:12:00 ◼   ► the backup to fail, and that seemed to be true, because after wiping all my previous

01:12:05 ◼   ► backups, I did one from scratch with like 80 gigs of data to upload to iCloud, but that

01:12:12 ◼   ► worked, so backups are not fine. But reminders are still not syncing reliably across devices.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And yes, I did what you're probably thinking right now, you dear listener connected, "Did

01:12:25 ◼   ► you file a radar?" Yes, I did. And I'm at the point where I got an Apple employee to

01:12:33 ◼   ► look at my SysDiagnose log from my iPad, and I still don't have a solution for this.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Literally, the next thing to do would be to drive to Craig's house and say, "I did everything

01:12:50 ◼   ► that you possibly wanted me to do, and there's nothing more for me to try. There's nothing

01:12:55 ◼   ► else for me to try." Also, I didn't mention that I updated to the latest iOS beta because

01:13:05 ◼   ► I thought, "I'm on the stable track, maybe by doing a full software update, maybe it

01:13:11 ◼   ► removes caches or it flips all the right switches and things are going to clear because it's

01:13:17 ◼   ► a software update." No, that also didn't work. So I'm at a loss here. There's nothing

01:13:23 ◼   ► more that I can do. I've done everything. There's Apple employees are now looking

01:13:27 ◼   ► into whatever is wrong with my device. It's a nightmare. And it's also, it's even worse

01:13:34 ◼   ► because I really like reminders and I don't want to go back to using a third-party task manager

01:13:38 ◼   ► because I like dictating my reminders to Siri, I like using my home pods, I like using good tasks,

01:13:43 ◼   ► I really don't want to switch. So now I'm using reminders and effectively managing my to-dos twice

01:13:50 ◼   ► on multiple devices. It sucks, it's terrible, but I don't want to switch. So I hope that if you're

01:13:59 ◼   ► you're an Apple engineer, there's a... I don't know, Steven, can I put the radar number in

01:14:04 ◼   ► the show notes? Is that allowed? Just the number?

01:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah!

01:14:07 ◼   ► There will be a radar number in the show notes. You will find my log if you work at Apple.

01:14:12 ◼   ► Please look into it, because I'm going crazy.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Wow.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:17 ◼   ► It's like standing at the edge of the ocean and just, like, screaming.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Fun fact, Stephen, you can capture sysdiagnose logs on iOS. You need to press volume up,

01:14:31 ◼   ► volume down, and power or side or top button, three buttons all at once. Wait 10 minutes,

01:14:38 ◼   ► go into settings, privacy, analytics data, you're going to find the sysdiagnose file.

01:14:43 ◼   ► For me it was a 200 megabyte file, which took a while to upload via Safari. Also, interestingly,

01:14:51 ◼   ► I was not able to send, and this is totally ironic, I was not able to get that. That sys_diagnosed

01:14:58 ◼   ► file is a .tar.gz archive. It's a heavily compressed archive. I was not able to copy

01:15:06 ◼   ► that to the files app because it was not showing up in the in the share sheet. I needed to

01:15:15 ◼   ► use a third party app to send it there. And then from Safari, from the bug reporter, you

01:15:21 ◼   ► why in Safari it was to read all documents, pick the location where the disease diagnosis

01:15:28 ◼   ► was. So, a whole nightmare all around. I've been in this situation, I had something

01:15:32 ◼   ► similar to this with Notes, probably two summers ago during the beta where I would have Notes,

01:15:38 ◼   ► but more specifically Notebooks, come back from the dead. I'm looking at Notes now, I

01:15:45 ◼   ► I probably have 20, 25 notebooks in the Notes app.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And I create them and destroy them as things go along.

01:15:53 ◼   ► So I'll make one for a project.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And then I'll archive those notes or print them elsewhere.

01:15:58 ◼   ► If I don't need them, I'll just get rid of them.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And I'd have these zombie notebooks come back.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And sometimes they'd have notes in them,

01:16:04 ◼   ► and sometimes they didn't.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And you file a radar, and you get in touch.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And maybe eventually someone figures it out.

01:16:10 ◼   ► but iCloud needs some sort of way for Apple at least

01:16:15 ◼   ► or someone to go in and hit the reset button, right?

01:16:19 ◼   ► Like just reset Federico's Reminders database.

01:16:21 ◼   ► And then it's up to you to say,

01:16:23 ◼   ► "Okay, the phone is the master record.

01:16:27 ◼   ► "I want this to go everywhere else."

01:16:29 ◼   ► It's just like, OmniFocus does this.

01:16:31 ◼   ► If you install OmniFocus on a new device

01:16:33 ◼   ► and set up sync, it asks you,

01:16:35 ◼   ► "Hey, do you want the stuff on the server

01:16:36 ◼   ► "or do you want local stuff?

01:16:37 ◼   ► "Do you wanna merge them?

01:16:38 ◼   ► "Like what do you wanna do?"

01:16:39 ◼   ► iCloud, even if it's not user accessible, but you could call AppleCare support or talk

01:16:45 ◼   ► to a developer via radar and say, "Hey, I need you to do this," and they just do it.

01:16:50 ◼   ► That would be really great.

01:16:52 ◼   ► You are in a privileged position that you're famous in this world, and so your radar may

01:16:57 ◼   ► get looked at more rapidly than someone else's, because someone follows you on Twitter or

01:17:02 ◼   ► works on the team or something.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:17:04 ◼   ► You know, Tim Cook is just having espresso down the street and say, "Hey, fix my reminders,"

01:17:08 ◼   ► and he does it.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But this is why I think Apple needs this for regular support people.

01:17:14 ◼   ► So if you could just call it AppleCare, chat with them online and say, "Hey, my reminders

01:17:18 ◼   ► have fallen out of sync.

01:17:19 ◼   ► They have some way to just kind of reset the clock and make it all work again."

01:17:24 ◼   ► Maybe that does exist and I'm just not familiar with it, but I know with my notes thing, I

01:17:28 ◼   ► sort of had to do what you had to do is like I had to kind of make noise publicly and then

01:17:32 ◼   ► someone noticed.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And that's not a viable solution for 99.9% of Apple's customers.

01:17:38 ◼   ► So I'm sorry you're having trouble with it.

01:17:41 ◼   ► This sort of thing doesn't mean nervous.

01:17:43 ◼   ► It seems like reminders-- a lot of apps build on top of reminders, like Good Task and others.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And I would be really hesitant to try those, just because reminders seems to be kind of

01:17:54 ◼   ► an older part of iCloud maybe, and it doesn't quite seem to behave all the time.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Godspeed, my friend.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Godspeed.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really true. Yeah, thank you. There's nothing else I can do at this point, so I

01:18:08 ◼   ► did all the things that people told me to do, both randos on Twitter and friends privately.

01:18:16 ◼   ► I've done it all, and I'm just waiting at this point.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I think that does it. I think that was a... We talked about the Mac, we talked about iCloud.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Pretty fun, pretty fun week. If you want to find links also if we talked about, head over

01:18:30 ◼   ► to relay.fm/connected/220. There you can see Federico's radar number, but you can get

01:18:37 ◼   ► in touch via email as well. If you have feedback or follow up for the show, send us an email.

01:18:41 ◼   ► We get it and we read it and we respond when we can. Actually, most of the time I do respond,

01:18:46 ◼   ► if you're nice. It ends up in follow-up and feedback, so we can keep moving the show forward

01:18:52 ◼   ► the way that it is designed to do. Of course, you can do that on Twitter as well. The show

01:18:57 ◼   ► is there at underscore connected FM. But I have you know, it's the holidays I want to

01:19:02 ◼   ► keep everybody in good mood. So you should follow us on Instagram. You can find Federico

01:19:07 ◼   ► there at Viti VITI CCI Myke is there as I am why ke you can find me on Instagram as

01:19:14 ◼   ► Steven m Hackett. Those links will all be in the show notes. I think our sponsors this

01:19:19 ◼   ► week Linode Luna display and smile. They made this show this excellent Mac mini focus show

01:19:25 ◼   ► possible. Until next week, Federico, say goodbye.

01:19:28 ◼   ► Arrivederci. Adios.