![Sonos Announces Sonos One, a Smart, Voice-Enabled Speaker [Update]](https://www.macobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sonos-one-voice-speaker.jpg)
NEW YORK CITY – Similar in size and form to Sonos’s popular PLAY:1, the Sonos One adds a six-microphone array to give it far-field voice recognition capability, and will ship on October 24th with support for Alexa baked right in.
Dave Hamilton
Dave Hamilton co-founded both The Mac Observer and <a href="https://www.backbeatmedia.com" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank">BackBeat Media</a>, and he is producer and co-host of the <a href="https://www.macgeekgab.com" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank">Mac Geek Gab Podcast</a>. He has worked in the computer industry since the early 1990s, doing time as a consultant, trainer, network engineer, webmaster, and programmer. He has worked on the Mac, all the various Windows flavors, BeOS, a few brands of Unix, and it is rumored he once saw an OS/2 machine in action. Before that he ran some of the earliest Bulletin Board Systems, but most of the charges have since been dropped, and not even the FBI requests that he check in more than twice a year. Dave's reachable for paid consulting at <a href="https://www.davethenerd.com" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">DaveTheNerd.com</a> and you can find links to him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ here, too.
Articles by Dave Hamilton
Apple's AirPlay 2 Coming to Sonos in 2018
NEW YORK CITY – Details were sparse, but throughout the presentation, the company said the brand new, voice-controllable Sonos One would support AirPlay 2.
Alexander Hamilton Papers Now Online at Library of Congress
Alexander Hamilton is household name these days for many reasons, perhaps even moreso in my house, but likely yours just the same. The Library of Congress has now published digital versions of over 12,000 letters, legal papers, speech drafts, and more, many of which are in Hamilton’s own writing. The example shown here is a letter Hamilton wrote on November 11, 1769 when he was 12-years-old in St. Croix, telling his friend that he would “willing risk my life tho’ not my character to exalt my station.” There are some fascinating treasures within.
What to Do Now That CrashPlan for Home is Going Away
This week’s Mac Geek Gab had many listeners writing and calling in, asking for guidance on their cloud backup options now that CrashPlan has announced the end of CrashPlan for Home. John and Dave talk through various solutions including BackBlaze, B2, Amazon Glacier, CrashPlan for Small Business, and others. Listen to this Mac Geek Gab Highlight from MGG 672 to hear the advice of your two favorite geeks.
Internet problems: Is it my Wi-Fi or my ISP?
If you have internet problems, perform these quick-and-simple tests before you drop a few hundred bucks replacing your router, just to confirm that’s the issue.
Apple's Potential Movie Deal and Ways to Avoid Scam Calls - TMO Daily Observations 2017-08-21
Jeff Butts and John Martellaro join Dave Hamilton to talk about Apple’s potential deal for first-run movies in-the-home, as well as ways to avoid getting scammed by fake calls from Apple support.
How to save both Optimized and Original iCloud Photos on the Same Mac
Listener Dan has wants to store optimized version of his iCloud Photos on his MacBook Pro’s internal drive, and full-sized originals on his external drive. An interesting dilemma, for sure! In this week’s Mac Geek Gab Highlight, Dave and John talk through the solution for this one. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
How to Restore Spotlight App Launching in iOS 11 Beta
Many folks using the latest iOS 11 betas have been unable to launch apps in Spotlight search by just typing a fragment of the app’s name. We dug into this and, in this week’s Mac Geek Gab Highlight, we’ll tell you how to fix it! Listen, learn, and then subscribe to MGG if you want to hear tips shared like this every week!
Apple's Patent Struggles and The Untold History of Multitouch
In 1983 a group of musically-inclined computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University invented multitouch… and changed the computing world forever.
How to Share iCloud Storage with Family Members Not Yet Running iOS 11 Beta
In this Mac Geek Gab Highlight, we feature a segment that teaches you how, exactly, to use your iCloud Family Plan to share your iCloud Storage with family members that aren’t yet running (or can’t run) the iOS 11 beta. Listen, learn, and then subscribe to MGG if you want to hear tips shared like this every week!
Here's Why You Still Need to Force Quit Some iPhone Apps
John Gruber penned a piece at Daring Fireball with this premise: iOS is so good at managing background apps that you never need to force quit them. He is 100% correct that this is true about iOS and most apps. Unfortunately, as with most general advice, there are exceptions. We’ll show you how to find them.
Use a RADIUS Server to Control Wi-Fi Authentication in Your Home
After our discussion about using RADIUS for Wi-Fi authentication in Mac Geek Gab 664, listener John Skinner set to work on a how-to:
If you have a Mac with a wired ethernet jack, an Airport base station capable of doing WPA2 Enterprise, and $20 (to buy macOS Server in the Mac App Store), you can set all this up! Then you will be able turn on and off access to your WiFi network, per user.
It’s that last bit that explains “why?” With Personal WPA2 Wi-Fi, everyone shares the same password. With Enterprise WPA2, each person has their own password. The RADIUS server is the key to making this happen.
How Scott Forstall Selected The People Who Would Create The iPhone’s Software
In 2005 Scott Forstall was tasked with finding people to build the iPhone and, due to secrecy concerns, Steve Jobs said he could only pick people from within Apple. From Mark Sullivan over at Fast Company:
“During all the interviews for the team, we screened for people who were growth mind-set,” Forstall told me. Forstall said he had been a fan of Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor known for her theory that people exist somewhere on a continuum between “fixed mind-set” and “growth mind-set.”
eero Adds Tri-Band, Wall Plug, and Enhanced Features to Mesh Wireless
eero maintains backwards compatibility while adding new capabilities and form factors to the mesh wireless company’s line-up.
TMO WWDC 2017 Coverage Sponsor: Other World Computing
Please join me in thanking Other World Computing / MacSales.com as our sponsor for our WWDC 2017 Coverage this week. MacSales.com has great everyday prices on storage, memory, used Macs and more. Plus they have unbeatable specials on hundreds of products for your Mac, your iDevices and your life.
Mac App Store will require 64-bit macOS Apps Starting in 2018
At WWDC Monday, Apple announced that this year’s macOS High Sierra will be the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps “without compromises.”
Apple’s Rumored Siri Speaker Targets Sonos, Too
The Siri Speaker may be more of a living room device than a kitchen device.
Adam Curry's Podcaster Pro Aims to be All-in-One Podcasting Solution
With features like noise gates, compressors, dual mic inputs, and multiple virtual USB audio devices, the Podcaster Pro aims to solve all the common (and some uncommon!) needs that podcasters have both in their main studios as well as on-the-road.
Andy Grignon 10 Years Later, Reflecting on Helping to Create the iPhone
Skylar Hamilton*, writing for Mouth of the River, recently interviewed Andy Grignon, one of the original iPhone team members:
“It was terrifying to be honest! Remember we had spent years in solitude working on this thing under the strictest of Apple standards. Seeing it ‘out in the wild’ was surreal, to say the least,” says Grignon. Imagine hiding something so big for years and then the entire world not only knows about it, but they all use it. “After that feeling passed, it turned into sheer terror.”
*Yes, for those of you wondering, this is a “proud papa” moment for me, too. Forget that, though, and go read the interview. Some great stuff in there, including a tip about extending your battery life!
Sonos PLAYBASE Review: Room-Filling Sound for Music, TV, and Movies
The new Sonos Playbase falls right in line with what we Apple users have come to expect, delivering a simple-yet-robust experience for people who want to enhance the sound of their TVs and simultaneously add a whole-room music-listening solution. In one, low-profile box that sits underneath your TV (officially anything 75lbs or less), the Sonos Playbase gives you all of this and more, complete with easy setup and simple operation.
Fun with Mac Terminal’s ‘banner’ Command
Mac Geek Gab listener Alex points us to a fun Mac Terminal command called “banner”, and its usage is simple. Launch Terminal, type ‘banner’, hit enter, type some text, hit enter again and voilà! You get a sideways banner of your chosen text fully suitable for printing on your favorite dot matrix printer.
Use the π Symbol on Your iPhone for Pi Day
Today is Pi Day. While some people might say that Tau is more relevant than Pi, it’s still Pi Day. With that in mind, you may want to wish your friends a happy Pi Day. And while that’s cool, it’s even cooler to wish them a Happy π Day (OK, well, it may or may not be cooler to do this, but it’s definitely geekier!). Unfortunately, we don’t have a π symbol in emoji on iOS. So in order to send that symbol you’ll either have to copy it from the text of this article and paste it in … or you can do what we did in the first place: add the Greek keyboard to your iPhone and type it from there!
Use a 4K Monitor in Retina Mode on Your Mac
In the old days when you purchased a monitor you had to decide between higher resolution and larger text. If your monitor’s native resolution was too high, you were plagued with either living with small text or running the screen at a lower resolution. People buying a 4K monitor today see the same issue, but there is an easy way to get that running in Retina mode. Apple’s solution to this issue was to introduce what they call “Retina displays” on Macs, and macOS allows you to achieve the same effect with your third-party, 4K monitor, as well. We’ll show you how.
Sonos Puts the PLAYBASE Under Your Television
Today Sonos announced their new PLAYBASE, combining home theater sound and music playback in a low-profile base (just 2.28″ high!) that sits underneath your TV. The PLAYBASE is the result of nearly four years of iterative design work inside Sonos, and is made to complement the wall-mountable PLAYBAR in Sonos’ lineup. If your TV sits on a table, put a PLAYBASE under it; on the wall, put a PLAYBAR there. The PLAYBASE will hold TVs up to 77lbs, which should handle what most of you have.
While I haven’t yet tested the PLAYBASE in my home, I did get a chance to test it at Sonos’ offices last month, and the stereo spread and frequency response are impressive. They were able to fit a subwoofer in the thin design by use of a specially-engineered S-shaped port. It works, too, and really fills a room with sound for both music and video content. Of course, you’re able to use your iPhone or iPad to automatically tune the PLAYBASE to your room with Sonos’ Trueplay technology, ensuring the best possible sound for your environment. The PLAYBASE is priced at US$699 (same as the PLAYBAR), and will be released on April 4, 2017. Existing Sonos owners can pre-order starting today.