Networking Fun and Naughty Macs — Mac Geek Gab 831

It’s time to get your geek on, and John and Dave are right there with you. Today your two favorite geeks dig into some networking issues, aiming to solve your problems, and help make sense of them so you understand even if you’re not a networking geek!

Of course, there’s plenty of time left for your Apple/Mac/iPhone questions, too. Press play and enjoy! And send your questions in to [email protected].

Glenn Fleishmann Introduces Free Book ‘Take Control of Zoom Essentials’

Glenn Fleishman has released a free version of his book called “Take Control of Zoom Essentials” as well as updated the paid version called “Take Control of Zoom”. Take Control shared the news in a blog post:

Yesterday, we released two Zoom-related books by Glenn Fleishman: a new, free book called Take Control of Zoom Essentials and a gigantic version 1.1 update to the comprehensive Take Control of Zoom. We know a lot of people are using Zoom for work and school, and we hope you find these books helpful.

Zoom usage has skyrocketed now that more people have been working and learning from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider these books to know everything you want to know about using the video sharing platform.

How Scribble and Smart Selection Improve Apple Pencil

Two of the features I’m really looking forward to with iPadOS 14 are Scribble and Smart Selection. They are designed for the Apple Pencil, but the Logitech Crayon (which I have,) will support Scribble too. Cult of Mac has a good rundown of how they help improve productivity.

With iPad, Scribble allows you to write with the Apple Pencil in text-entry fields all over iPad. Whether it’s in the search bar of Safari, an iMessage conversation or the Spotlight search box, Scribble lets you enter text with your handwriting… The second huge improvement to Apple Pencil is Smart Selection in the Notes app. This feature allows you to take fully handwritten notes, and keep them in their original handwritten form, but easily share them as text by highlighting and sharing the “text.”

Apple Silicon : Power PC to Intel Transition Gives us Timeline Hints

We’re at the start of the Intel to Apple Silicon transition. William Gallagher at AppleInsider has an editorial on how previous Apple processor transitions can give us some indication release dates.

That new Intel Mac was released 43 days after Apple Silicon was announced. For comparison, the first PowerPC Mac to come out after the Intel announcement was the Power Mac G5 dual core 135 days later. You can argue that this is one measure of how different Apple is today, that it’s got the resources to move quicker. What you can’t argue, though, is what happened next. “We’ve got some great PowerPC products still to come,” repeated Jobs during the 2005 transition announcement. But they hadn’t. That Power Mac G5 dual core was the last PowerPC Mac to be released and the sole one to come out during that transition. We’re not saying Jobs lied and we’re definitely not saying Cook did, but both men unquestionably knew what they needed to say — because of the Osbourne effect. Apple today isn’t going to fall over if everyone stops buying Macs while they wait for Apple Silicon, but it was different in 2005.

US Teen Wrote 27,000 Wikipedia Entries in Language he Doesn’t Speak

Consider this filed under “wacky Friday news”. A teenager in the U.S. created or edited 49% of the Scots language Wikipedia, despite having no understanding of the language.

[…] Michael Dempster, the director of the Scots Language Centre based in Perth, takes a more ameliorative approach and says he is now in conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation about the prospect of properly re-editing the teenager’s contributions.

“We know that this kid has put in an incredible amount of work, and he has created an editable infrastructure. It’s a great resource but it needs people who are literate in Scots to edit it now. It has the potential to be a great online focus for the language in the future.”

Walmart Enters the TikTok Purchase War

Why would a retail giant want to purchase a short-form video site? Perhaps the hundreds of millions of consumers at stake have something to do with it. Whatever the reason, Walmart is joining Microsoft to beat out Oracle in the TikTok purchase war.

AR Game ‘The Witcher: Monster Slayer’ Announced

An AR game called “The Witcher: Monster Slayer” is coming in the future. Evocative of Pokémon Go, this exploration game challenges you to become an elite monster hunter. See the world around you transformed into the dark fantasy realm of The Witcher, and explore once-familiar locations now infested with dangerous beasts as you start on the path as a professional monster slayer. A release date has not been announced but you can sign up to be notified via email.

Having Apple Gear in Dating Profile Photos Gets You More Matches

Owning Apple products has lots of advantages, but there is another, perhaps unexpected one. Having items like an iPhone or AirPods in your dating profile photos can land you up to 76 percent more matches, according to data from Comparemymobile.com, reported by 9to5 Mac.

Here’s the impact of having Apple kit visible in your dating photos, where the percentage is the increase in matches with the product visible in the photo: iPhone, +76% Apple Watch, +61% AirPods, +41%. The only positive impact seen with any other brand of smartphone was Samsung, with a 19% increase. All other brands tested had a negative effect.

Tim Cook: 'I’ve Never Been More Hopeful'

Tim Cook says that he’s “never been more hopeful than I am right now.” Writing in the September issue of Vogue, he highlighted the determination to tackle racial inequality and communities coming together in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic as reasons for his positivity.

I think you have to look back 60 years to find an equivalent. You have to look back to the late John Lewis marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Or fast-forward a few years, and you have Stonewall. Both of these were key moments that kicked off a sudden change—for African Americans and for the LGBTQ community. And I think this is an exciting and hopeful time because as a nation we have struggled with racial equity for our whole existence—and it feels good to be at a point where there’s going to be significant, massive, positive change. The other thing I would say is that this pandemic is a crisis that we’re all facing. And if you look around, there are lots of good things happening: There are neighbors helping neighbors again, which was sort of a lost art for a while.