A Summit of Geeks – Mac Geek Gab 899

MacMost’s Gary Rosenzweig joins John and Dave today to share Quick Tips, Cool Stuff Found and, yes, to help answer all of your Apple-related tech questions. Topics include dealing with Monterey’s “Load Content Directly” issues in Mail, Network Utility Replacements, Monterey image tricks, portable Apple Watch chargers, and much more! Press play and learn at least five new things with your three favorite geeks!

Meet 'Actions' a New App to Add More Actions to Shortcuts

Actions is a new app for Shortcuts, and it adds actions that Apple doesn’t provide. So far there are 25 actions with more planned in the future. There are actions such as Generate UUID, Get File Path, Trim Whitespace, Remove Emoji, Random Date & Time, and more. I’m most excited about the Get File Path action. It should be useful in a particular shortcut I have that creates a “changelog” of new files I need to remember to back up to my SSD.

Rare Apple-1 Going to Auction With US$20k Starting Bid

A rare Apple-1 computer, hand-built by Steve Wozniak, is up for auction, AppleInsider reportedThe sale will happen later this month, with bids opening at US$200,000.

The Apple-I, which is being put up for auction by John Moran Auctioneers and Appraisers, was hand-build by Steve Wozniak. The specific model in question is known as the “Chaffey College” Apple-I because it was purchased by an electronics professor at the school in 1976 and sold to a student. According to the auction listing, the computer is made up of an original “NTI” motherboard sporting Sprague 39D capacitors, original power regulators, and rare “Circle D” ceramic capacitors. In addition, the lot includes an Apple Cassette Adapter and is housed in an original ByteShop Apple-1 koa wood case with a Datanetics Keyboard, the connecting cable and power supply, a 1986 video monitor.

M1 Mac mini vs. Mac Pro: a Surprising Outcome

Tech video blogger Max Tech decided to test how well the 2020 M1 Mac mini could stand up against a 2019 Mac Pro. The results are astounding, considering the Mac Pro costs $15,000 compared to the $899 Mac mini. While the Mac mini is beat out on most benchmarks, it held its ground in real-world tests. In fact, the Mac mini outperforms the Mac Pro in compiling Xcode projects. It’s also faster at HEVC video stabilization. When viewing and processing Canon R5 10-bit video footage, the M1 Mac mini blows away the Mac Pro. It’s also slightly more responsive in Lightroom Classic despite having to run the app through Rosetta. The Mac Pro does beat the M1 mini in many Final Cut Pro tasks, but it has much higher memory specs. In the end, Max Tech says, “For most video editors, the M1 is just fine in Lightroom.”

Top 6 Keyboards For Geeks

Six keyboards you should definitely check out: Das Keyboard Mechanical Keyboards, Logitech MX Keys & Logitech MX Ergo, Logitech Solar Keyboard, system76 Open Source Launch Keyboard, and MatiasWorldwide Tactile Pro.

Find links to each in Mac Geek Gab 894

macOS Monterey Quick Tips, M1 Choices, and Cool Stuff Found — Mac Geek Gab 898

It’s been a busy week in the Apple world: the new M1 Pro/Max-based MacBook Pros began arriving, Monterey dropped for most, AirPods Gen 3 arrived, you had questions, and your two favorite geeks have answers! Listen as John and Dave help try to sort through all of this, deciding what’s important, what’s not, and which macOS Monterey Quick Tips you might’ve missed in the mayhem. Press play and learn at least five new things together with the MGG family!

Cryptee Update Brings Encrypted PDFs and Print-Accurate Editing

An update to Cryptee, a platform for encrypted photos and documents, brings Paper Mode, a print-accurate view for your documents. It also adds editing for encrypted PDFs.

You can now work on your documents in Cryptee Docs, using a print-accurate paper view, by choosing paper sizes like A4 / A3 / US Letter / US Legal etc, just like the way you would in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

While exporting your documents as PDF files, you can now easily set a key, and encrypt the PDFs. These encrypted PDFs can be opened using any PDF viewer, on all operating systems and PDF viewer apps.