TMO Background Mode Interview with Planetary Scientist Dr. Alan Stern

Dr. Alan Stern is a planetary scientist with the Southwest Research Institute. He’s also the co-founder and chief scientist of World View, working with high altitude balloon research. He is perhaps most famous as the principle investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Way back in grade school, Alan was interested in space exploration and wanted to be a part of the Star Trek future. He received his Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Colorado, and that launched his life-long interest in Kuiper Belt Objects and the Oort Cloud. He’s a licensed pilot, was selected by NASA as a Payload Specialist, and has flown research missions in high performance jet aircraft. We talked about his career, the New Horizons mission design, Pluto discoveries (and planetary classification) and his latest research.

Cool Stuff Found, DOCSIS 3.1, and The Backup Tango – Mac Geek Gab 674

Your questions answered, as always, including several unresponsive Macs and how to fix them, Life after CrashPlan, Problematic iCloud syncing, and moving your media libraries. Cool Stuff Found kicks things off, though, with lots of great stuff that you’ll love. Plus, a healthy competition about internet speeds between your two favorite geeks is in there, too! Press play and enjoy!

TMO Background Mode Interview with Car & Driver Magazine Editor-in-Chief Eddie Alterman

Eddie Alterman is the Editor-in-Chief of Car and Driver magazine. He fell in love with cars even earlier than most of us. His father was a car salesman in Detroit in the 1970s when cars weren’t great, but it was still exciting. His dad would leave copies of Car and Driver magazine open on the dining room table for Eddie. It worked. Eddie imagined that all the editors who got to test cars were “living the best possible life.” So Eddie designed his whole life around writing for a car magazine. It worked again. In the second segment we chatted about the romance of driving and also spent a lot of time discussing the technology and sociology of autonomous cars. Eddie had some great observations, based on his considerable experience, that will keep you pondering for months.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Dollars – Mac Geek Gab 673

Moving your Photos to a new drive, managing your Finder’s smart searches, reasons for a VPN, and remote access to your own Macs are just the first few topics that Dave and John discuss this week. Then it’s on to managing your document syncing, finding an old version of Mac OS X for an older Mac, some cool scripts that other listeners developed for monitoring your network, and more! Press play and enjoy!

TMO Background Mode Encore #2: Former Apple Senior Director Michael Gartenberg

Michael Gartenberg spent three years as Apple’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, reporting directly to Senior VP Phil Schiller. For his third appearance on Background Mode, we made a list of seven discussion items we both thought would be interesting. We got through two, but chatted about them in detail. The first was all about what’s to be gained by Apple allocating about a billion dollars to create original TV content. In the second segment, we talked about Apple’s struggles in the education market. Michael made some very interesting and very pointed observations. Don’t miss this one!