If you use an iPhone, a Mac, an iPad, an Apple watch, an Apple tv, or are simply a technology enthusiast, you're going to love learning more about your technology with your new favorite geeks over at macgeek Gab. Get your questions answered and have some fun along the way. Visit macgeekgab.com or search for Macgeek Gab on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't get caught without having Mac Geek Gab in your rotation. Hey, Marty, how's it going?
Good. How are you, Chris? What's happening?
I'm doing great. Yeah, it's a holiday for me today when we're recording, so I'm having a relaxing day with my Mac. It's great.
Same here. It's a holiday, so we're just doing only the things we have to do today, and hopefully we'll get some time to maybe get outside and get some fresh air, maybe a little sunshine. Who knows, you know?
Not here you won't. It's raining, rain and raining, rain, rain, rain. That's what it does in Oregon. Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we're here to record this and really enjoy the things that we have planned for our listeners of Mac Chat.
Yep.
And yeah, lots of topics here. So I thought I would ask if you could start by telling us a little bit about a couple tips that you were mentioning to me the other day. You're using drafts, and maybe people don't know what that is. Maybe they do. But then how you use drafts to do some things like adding a contact to cardhop. So could you, could you tell us what Drafts is?
Sure. So Drafts is, at its core, it's a text editor, basically. So you can use plain text or markdown in it. It's really streamlined, so you can sync it over icloud, and then it will sync all of your stuff to any of your devices. So you know, if you're out and about and you make some notes on your phone, and then when you get home it'll be on your computer and you can then do whatever it is you want to do if you want to edit it or, you know, add more to it or whatever the case is. So it also, though, has a very awesome utilitarian value to it, which allows you to do a bunch of other tasks right from Drafts. So, for example, making a new calendar event, you can type out the calendar event into drafts and then there is a bar or I should say a button on the right side and you can drop that down and it gives you all these different things that you can do with your text. One of them is making a new calendar event. So the way that would work would be, is let's say you go and you open up drafts and then you type out lunch with Chris today at 12:00pm and you have that and then you can take that and then you can do create new event and it will automatically go right onto your calendar. And of course it will give you the parameters like if you want to add an alert to the event or any of those things. So super easy way to do that. You can also do the same thing with the reminders. You can remind me to whatever the case is and then you can do the same thing and you can then send that right to your reminders app.
That's cool.
Yeah, those things are pretty cool. Now I use a address book app, which is a third party app called Cardhop. And I like Hard Hop because it does a few things that, you know, the regular contacts app does not do. One of them, for example, is if you put people's birthdays in there, there's a tab and it will show you the list of all the birthdays that are up and coming. So you can just look at it as a list. There's like a celebration or a birthday button on the menu bar in Cardhop and it will show you, you know, the upcoming birthdays that are coming, you know, in the next couple of days or even today or the next week or month or whatever. They kind of just move as they get closer. So that's really cool.
That's great.
Another feature that I really like about it is that let's say I'm going through my email and I go, oh, I really want to save this person's information. And they have a signature in their email that has all of their information on it. You know, first name, last name, company, phone number, email, all those things. You know, you can copy that signature and you paste it right into drafts and then you can save to Cardhop and we'll put all that information right into Cardhop and all the places it's supposed to go, no fuss, no muss. And then of course it syncs to icloud. And then you also have it in your regular address book. So it's really great. I love it. It does a lot of really cool utilitarian things. And I'm just scratching the surface. There's so much other things you can do with it. But those are a few things that I definitely do on the regular.
That's really cool because you could say, well, I can use all these other apps like the Notes app or your Contacts app, but this integrates with everything, which makes it really attractive.
Definitely. And I like the fact that it can be plain text, you know, or you can do Markdown. There's a lot of research stuff. It's a good place to put it if you're, you know, getting stuff out of, you know, ChatGPT or anything like that. And there's a ton of plugins. They have a really great community. So you can always go to the community and you can find what other people are doing or you can ask questions or you can look for other like, plugins to Drafts to maybe enhance it if what you're looking for isn't right out of the box. So it's really great. It's a great utilitarian text app and I like it for all of those things.
That's really great. And then Cardhop is made by the guy that's created. Fantastical, right?
Correct. Yeah, that is true.
That's great. And I love that.
Works well with voiceover and all that stuff.
Nice.
Yeah.
So there's a way to just tell it, to put it into Cardhop, the signature information.
Yeah. You literally paste. You copy the signature, paste it into Drafts, hit the button and scroll down to save to Cardhop and hit that. And it does. It's easy peasy.
Oh, nice. Awesome. And then, like, if I were to paste something from ChatGPT and I ask it the sources and all that sort of thing, are the links live then within the Drafts text box, or do you have to do something to make those links live?
They should be live. I actually never tried to copy something like a link out of ChatGPT, but it should work. I mean, I don't see why it wouldn't. I do other things in drafts, emails and other stuff, and I add links and things like that. And when you send it off, the links work for whoever you're sending it to. So.
Great. That's great because that doesn't often happen in the Notes app unless you, um, I think add a link specifically. I think so.
Correct.
That is really a great advantage. That sounds neat. Well, I've downloaded it now. It does have. You know, it's. Is it a free. It's a free app, isn't it? Or is it subscription? Remind me.
It's both, actually. There is a free version of it that you can use, but there's also a paid version, so it just depends on what your needs are. Mo for Most people, I would say, they can probably get away with a free version and they'd be fine.
Okay, great. Because I've just started to play with it and it was. It was free and then it's available on your phone and on the Mac and everything. So. Yeah, it's really cool.
It's great. And it's super lightweight and super fast, so awesome.
Well, those are great tips. A really great way to integrate things and to take information from one place and plop it into another where you need it, like with signature information. That's really cool.
And even though it has a great utilitarian value, you might have a different app that you really do a more writing in and you could always copy and paste and, you know, then take your text into another more, you know, like a word processor or, you know, anything else for that matter. So it's great. You can also like, append stuff to, you know, Dropbox or Icloud or, you know, do any of those things. So.
Right.
It's great.
That's nice. Awesome. Cool. Well, those are some great tips to start with. And now I think I'd like to move to some Sequoia updates and some things that have been going on with Sequoia, which I believe has been out since like about September ish.
Yep, that's what I say, September ish. Last year, as a matter of fact, I think it dropped on the same day as all of the other new iOS. Everything else that came out, which is a new thing they've been doing normally in the past, they haven't dropped the macOS the same time as they drop iOS stuff. So I've noticed recently they're doing that more. So maybe they're just trying to be able to drop all the new oss, you know, all at the same time.
Yeah, for sure. So I haven't used the new Apple Intelligence when it came along. I did find though, when I turned it on, it was a huge battery suck. So I'm hoping that that's not really the case all the time because, I mean, I do have a really nice, you know, M3 MacBook Air, so you would think it would not suck my battery down, but.
Yep, you never know. Yeah, but I mean, you could always do a reboot or who knows? I mean, shouldn't really suck that much battery, I would think, but maybe it does.
Yeah, I don't really know. I haven't really used the Apple Intelligence yet and kind of waiting for things to really be justifiable in that direction. I haven't really have you used the Apple Intelligence much?
A little bit. I've used it. I mean, honestly, the real thing about it is the Siri integration. If you know, you have that, there are a bunch of other little things that you can do, but it's not fully out in the sense of all the things.
Right, right.
So, I mean, it's okay. I mean, honestly, I would say right now I probably still would go back to Chat GPT if I was really doing, you know, some, you know, production work, you know, that I really needed to get stuff done. I think that I would go back to Chat GPT and do all that work in Chat GPT. Still over. Trying to do it in the Apple ecosystem, definitely. But I'm curious to see where they take it because that'd be interesting. I almost wouldn't mind if they came up with their own app like Chat GPT that you can do all your research and do all that stuff in, because right now it's kind of more integrated into feature functions, you know, like in mail, for example. You know, you can do some of that Apple Intelligence, but I've kind of turned that stuff off in mail because I didn't really like it very much.
Right. Nope. I quickly turned off the categorization of mail too.
Yeah, I, I hated that.
Yeah, definitely heard nothing good about that actually.
Yeah, nothing good. A lot of people don't like it, so a lot of people are turning it off, so.
Oh yeah, Apple get the hint.
But it would be great though if they came up with an actual, like, app, you know, that you can open up. Similar to Chat GPT where you just had a box and could put whatever you're, what project you're working on and prompt it and do all that stuff, you know, right from, you know, whatever window.
Yeah, yeah. They have a long way to go with that, but it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. As an aside, a couple days ago I had Chat GPT write me a proposal to acquire that wonderful multi line Monarch Braille display. I can't believe the proposal it wrote for me.
So, way over the top.
Or was it really way over the top? Good. It was great. Anyway, ChatGPT is great. But back to the Sequoia here. I know that one of our friends over at appleviz, Tyler, did a command customization spot on appleviz, little tutorial that you can find if you subscribe to all the appleviz podcasts. And Tyler talked about giving us a walkthrough, really, of the changes in the voiceover Utility where things have moved and really how things are different. For instance, there aren't the commanders anymore, but there are different categories of things like for Braille and keyboard, et cetera. And at first I thought oh, it wasn't broke, don't fix it. But I kind of like the way it's organized. And there's also a big category for navigation which we're going to talk about pretty soon with one of the unfortunate bugs or things that got changed in one of my students computers that messed things up for a little bit. But we did find the answer by going to Voiceover utility. It's still, you know, VOF8 and then you have the categories, but it seems to be laid out in a way that makes sense to me. So I'd be interested to know what other people think about that. Of course, you know, we are at feedbackmute show.
Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to make things a little bit more simplistic. So if you're able to do what used to be keyboard commanders right now, maybe it's a little easier to assign keys to do different tasks or key combinations. Have you messed around with the new setup or not yet.
I just been in there to look at the things that I'm going to talk about in a little bit regarding the voiceover cursor and the mouse cursor and synchronization of those two things. But I know that you can add your own custom commands for sure, which would be the keyboard commander. And Tyler did demonstrate, you know how to do that and. And talked about the use cases for that. So I highly recommend that everyone goes there and checks that out. I think I have a little link that we can either post on the website or put in the notes and. And people can find it. Yeah, it was released on September 16, so it sounds like it was on the day of the release of Sequoia. So that was.
Sounds good.
Pretty handy.
We'll drop a link so people can go check it out.
Yep, we'll do that. So of course. And there's been a recent security update in 15, so I would think that that would be a really good idea to update to that latest version. I haven't noticed any regressions in voiceover usage after updating. And so in fact I noticed something is better. And I don't know when it changed, but when I would be in the Safari address bar, you know, typing in something to search for a website, it stops. So much verbosity of repeating everything I'm typing from start to finish every time I press a key. So a little bit too verbose. And so I'm down with that. So. Yeah, so. But sometimes updates can temporarily break things. And I wanted to talk about this because a lot of the things that I chat about have to do with my own experiences in my teaching and working with students and, of course, the things that I work on and, you know, personally on my off time.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. It's a really great. A learning platform for me, for sure. So I have a student who updated his computer, and the computer is most of the time in. In Spanish. So the language is in Spanish, and I've learned a lot of cool Spanish computer words, and so is the voice and so forth. But I believe there's some system language or whatnot that is still in English. So all of a sudden, he brought his computer into me, and it was speaking Spanish and English often at the same time and different places. Like, the English would be saying one thing, and the Spanish wasn't related to that would be saying something else. So, you know, it made his computer impossible to use. And so, you know, he would sometimes touch the trackpad, which would trigger this, but it wasn't always the case. And turning off the. Oh, you'd think, okay, we'll just turn off the trackpad, use the voiceover, and twist two fingers counterclockwise and voila, your problem should be solved. Well, that did not work.
Wow.
So that was pretty frustrating. So basically, his computer was unusable. And we thought we fixed it because we found this setting. And I was at work in the office. Sometimes I teach remotely, but this time I was in the office. I ran down and got our IT person. And we figured out, so the voiceover was reading what was under the mouse pointer. And so there's a setting for that, which I'll mention. And so we thought, okay, just turn that off and we'll be fine. Well, that did not fix it completely either. So what happened was we went on a small wild goose chase or a large one, you know, or a large one. Several geese to hunt down.
Definitely one wasn't enough.
Right. So we suspected them. Mouse settings needed to be adjusted. So that first thing I mentioned, speak content under mouse pointer. That was turned on. So we definitely disabled that. And what was kind of fun was our IT person was using, you know, their iPhone to look up things and the exact verbiage in Spanish, because the computer was entirely in Spanish. So we had to know what does that command or setting look like in Spanish. So that was. That was pretty fun. So we're multitasking and troubleshooting at the same time. And so then we went to. So when that didn't fix it. And the poor guy brought his computer because it seemed temp, you know, fixed. But then he left, you know, because that was the end of his lesson. He came back the next time and things were running amok again. So then we went into.
He must have just been, like, out of gas at this point.
He's a very agreeable, you know, likable, tolerant, patient kind of guy. But frustrated, for sure, because.
But anybody would be frustrated.
Absolutely. You have two different languages speaking at two different times, saying two different, different things. It was crazy.
And is he familiar or was he just learning at the same time?
No, he's familiar. But this was beyond his pay grade for sure. And above mine almost as well. I felt happy when it person and I. And. And so anyway, we figured it out, so. So we went to voiceover utility, and then we went to navigation. I believe this is a new category in here. And then we checked the box which was not checked, that said synchronize keyboard focus and voiceover cursor. So the two things were asynchronous. They were not synchronized. So the mouse cursor would yap about one thing and the voiceover cursor would be somewhere else. And the mouse cursor was usually in English. And the. Wow, that is crazy was in Spanish. Yep. And then there's another setting that's under the mouse pointer. There's a dropdown. There's a mouse pointer, drop down, down menu. And we checked ignore voiceover cursor. Because then it would never have to. We'd never have to worry about it. But there's another setting in there as well that would probably be just as good, which is mouse cursor follows voiceover cursor. Now, you would think that the synchronizing bit would take care of that, but apparently not.
Well, here's the thing I'm a little bit confused about. Like, voiceover should be, you know, it's through the operating system, so it should be, you know, computer wide. I think it's weird that you can have Voiceover, you know, speaking Spanish, but then when you use your cursor, it's speaking English. But yeah, voiceover. I mean, that's got to be a bug. I mean, I can't imagine that that's a thing, really.
Yeah.
Why would you want that?
You're right. I have no earthly clue other than voiceover has its own language profile. And maybe the computer Just knows. Oh, well, this is voiceover's language profile and it is, it is Spanish and it's. And also the computer itself, the system apparently was in Spanish, which, yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. While we're. Why we're hearing English. So it was.
Well, I hope whatever that issue is, they fix it. That sounds crazy to me.
Yeah, it's fixed now. And so synchronizing the mouse and voiceover cursor and turning off speak item under mouse cursor and then having the mouse and voiceover mouse cursor follow the voice cursor, the voiceover cursor. That, that is the, the trio of solution for that. So. Yeah, but what I learned today while preparing for the show here is that you can turn off tracking according to Apple and use the keyboard or mouse cursor independently of each other. And I'm thinking to myself, why would I want to do that? I don't really want to do this to experiment because I don't really want to mess things up. But you could. Apple's suggesting on their support website that you could move the cursor to the message portion of your, like in your messages app to hear the incoming messages, and then you could have the keyboard focus remaining in the text field to type outgoing messages.
Yeah. With your luck, you would have Voiceover running in English and then all of a sudden your voiceover or your mouse cursor or whichever.
Right.
Speaking to you in French, you know all that.
Yeah, exactly. Right. So, yeah, so as an aside, I asked Chat GPT. I was on the website. I prefer to use the website. I haven't really explored the Mac GPT app, but I wanted to clarify the difference between the mouse cursor, sometimes apparently called the mouse pointer and the voiceover cursor. So I thought they were actually three things, but it kind of clarified that. The mouse pointer, I guess, is like when you're clicking on stuff and the mouse cursor is like when you're editing text and that's where the cursor is. So I, having been to Apple's website already and read about this and having checked out my own settings on my computer, I asked ChatGPT how to synchronize the voiceover and mouse cursors. And it virtually copied the material from Apple's support page. But the kind of funny thing was it had all these little asterisks or star characters in the. It's like, star, star, voiceover, star, star. I'm like, do I really need all that? I Do not need to hear star, star every line.
So I asked, was it in markdown? Why was all the star? I think that might. Sounds like it might have been some markdown that you were getting into.
Maybe I've experienced that before. I think it is. I don't. Yeah, I don't know if it's. When it thinks something is either misspelled or maybe it's thinking about a command. It's. It's identifying the thing as a command. So I asked it to rewrite these instructions without the star characters, which it did not do on the first pass. So I told it it did not follow my instructions and to please do it again. And. And then it said, oh, okay. So these instructions are rewritten without any special formatting. And that is the magic phrase that you want to use if it inserts formatting into your directions so you could copy it into your drafts, apparently so. It did, though, have bullet in there. But that's okay because, you know.
And this was all in mix GPT as you were doing this.
This is on the website. Yeah, Chat GPT website.
So I think you were into the markdown. So I think it was writing it in markdown, I feel like. But in the future, if that ever happens again and you don't want it to be in markdown, you can just prompt it to convert this to plain text.
Oh, nice.
You'd be good to go.
Okay, cool. Okay. That's a really good tip because I don't mind the bullet points. They're okay. But I cannot. I cannot abide with all those stars. It's just. Yeah.
Next time that happens, just try prompting it to convert to plane plain text. And it will convert it to plain text.
Oh, nice.
Or it should. I should say convert it to plain text.
Sure. Oh, that's great. Love that. Yeah. Because why. Why should I have to then put it in a plain text editor or like, I shouldn't have to take that extra step. So.
Correct. So that might be the easy way for you to do that.
I really appreciate that. For sure. So it's been really interesting using the Chat GPT website. It. It still seems as functional, you know, as it has been with the. And the various buttons seem to be labeled still and. And all that. So I really.
And are you using the free version or did you pay the monthly fee now?
No, I do the monthly fee. Gotcha. Yeah. Because I don't want to be encumbered by a limit of how many things I can send it or the size of the files or I don't remember all the differences in the two types of accounts.
It's also a different language model as well.
Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, I definitely want the 4.0. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So do you use the website or using the Mac GPT or some other app on your Mac to use it on your Mac?
Yeah, I'm using Mac GPT seems to be. Honestly, I think it's really just kind of a window. It'd be. I, I almost feel like it'd be the same if I went to a web browser, but this way at least I can just open it up. It's standalone window. You can do everything right in there and that makes it easier for multitasking. If you have. Want to have a text editor open, you can be kind of going back and forth and I like that. So.
Sure, that's great. Yeah, I'll have to. I'll have to download it and see what I find the differences to be. It sounds like it's a web app anyway, right. So it sounds pretty similar.
Yeah, I think so. Now there is a actual chat GPT app for Mac now. So I mean, you can always try that and see if there's any difference.
Okay, that's cool. Yeah, looking forward to that. I really, really am enjoying using it and I think it's, it's really a, a game changer for a lot of things. So.
Definitely.
Yeah. So I was curious, we were talking the other day about how do you use your Mac differently than your phone? Because, you know, I think a lot of people start out by using a lot of folks who are, who are blind or visually impaired specifically. I'm thinking of start out maybe using an iPhone and then they. Oh, wow, cool. I know. Voiceover. I'll get a Mac and then there's a big learning curve and everything. But still, I'm just curious how, how you use the devices in different ways and what you may do on one that you don't do on the other.
Well, let's see. My phone, I would say I kind of. It's a mix between just small tasks or small daily tasks or basic, you know, entertainment type stuff. Listen to music, you know, any of those kinds of things. I mean, I still do the. I still email and text and do all those things, but I would just say it's on a smaller scale on my phone. Sure. Well, you really could do probably almost anything on your phone that you can do on the computer. I mean, obviously with a couple exceptions. But yeah, I mean, usually whatever I do on my phone is More something really quick. Jot down a note real quick or record a voice memo real quick or check email, reply to an email, things like that. You know, just kind of small tasks on the computer. I tend to do more work, work stuff, you know, more long form writing if I need to do that, or you know, doing recordings for all the different podcasts we do and stuff like that.
Sure.
I have like, you know, like my big interface and microphone and all that set up and research is easier to do on a bigger computer, I feel like, for me anyway. So I kind of like having the bigger keyboard and all that, so.
Right.
But for the most part, you know, that. That's what I would say.
Cool. Yeah. I think it's also what you're in the habit of doing. How you started out. I. I got my first iPhone3GS in early 2010 and I got my first Mac in 2012, so had one for a long time. But I started out doing, you know, obviously everything on my phone. So on my phone I tend to send messages, of course, but I. I rarely send messages on my Mac. I think that's because if I'm working on my Mac, I probably don't want to necessarily be disturbed. I'm thinking things that, like you mentioned, simpler tasks on the go, you know, probably more inclined to do those on my phone. I can't tell you how recently it was. It was pretty recent that I really played with messages on the Mac because I really never send them on the Mac.
Yeah, it's a very similar experience to what's on the phone, honestly. Except it's on your Mac screen and you have a bigger keyboard. Obviously. For me, interestingly enough, I do most of my texting on my phone. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of times I'll have my phone, you know, right here next to me and I put it on do not disturb. But you can turn this off, by the way. But I don't. And when I put my phone into do not disturb, all my other devices also go into do not disturb.
Right.
So if I don't have my phone right here in front of me, I may not know I even got a message.
Got it. Yep.
You know, on my Mac. But I can do other things, like if I'm recording or doing a show or I could use my phone to look up something really cool quick if I need to and not have to get out of, you know, whatever I'm doing, especially if there's other people involved.
Sure. Yeah. I have that setting too, where I Turn on one device and it turns everything else on. Do not disturb. So that's really handy.
Definitely.
I love it. For whatever reason, I love zoom on my phone. I usually connect my braille display to my phone and I just love doing zoom calls on my phone and so it seems like, you know, usually it's, you know, if I'm on a zoom call, it's most likely that I'm on point. You know, I need to be answering questions or I need to be really top of my game and just throw the all the commands in there and the different places to go. I don't know, it sounds silly, but for some reason I'm so happy with the phone and my braille display and so that's what I've just gotten used to. Back in 2018, I was using zoom before it was really a thing with everything, everybody. So yeah, it's just handy to have.
It on my world to zoom.
I know that's right. Yep. And I have a little tripod I put my phone on and everything.
So is that like a MagSafe one or what kind of a tripod are you using?
No, it's just it. It has three legs that can extend. It's. They're not like, I guess gorilla made one where they're. Things are kind of flexible. But this has like a clamp that you can put your phone in.
Oh, gotcha.
You know, portrait. Or you could swivel around to be laying on its back in landscape, which is what I would do when I would have to unfortunately read Covid tests with Aira. Then you can have your phone back facing camera face down, looking at your work surface with your little test kit and everything. So.
Yep, yep.
Yeah, unfortunately. So. So yeah, tripod is great and so that's awesome. I'm more inclined to do notes on my phone though. I've definitely done them on my Mac if I want to listen to video content or if I'm taking some like continuing education credit, you know, courses for my continuing ed. I'm more inclined to use my Mac because of its great battery life and it has better sound and so I do that with the Mac. Also word processing, most Safari web browsing, I'm generally on my Mac because it just seems to be better for me. And then most ChatGPT queries are also on my Mac on the website rather than the app, which is just. Just the what I do with it. And let's see. Oh, I never use Siri on my Mac just because I'm not a real fan of Her. Anyway, so. Yeah. Accidentally triggered the S Lady, but yeah. So I think those are the things that I do differently with my Mac and my phone, so.
Sounds good.
Yeah, definitely. Let's see here. So finally, I wanted to mention a new mic. You know how I'm a tech collector.
You know, I do know this very well.
Yeah. And I actually kind of.
This should be our section. What showed up as Chris's doorstep.
Yeah. Really? Exactly. Well, a couple weeks ago, I kind of stole possible thunder that you might have had before I got there, which I got the Rode Interview mic, which is really, really cool. And you can record locally on the microphone, and then you can plug it into the Mac and download the content. And it's really a really, really cool. It's so cool that it stores the recordings. And so I just wanted to mention about the mic and also how extremely accessible the Rodecentral app for the Mac is.
Oh, that is awesome.
Yeah. Because you were so surprised when. Well, a. When you found out I bought the mic. Yeah.
I wonder how. How did you hear about that mic?
Huh? I think a podcast buddy of mine maybe told me about that.
Marty Gotcha.
And I kind of, like, bought it. So I updated the mic, no problem. Just plugged it in. It said, oh, hey, here's the Rode mic.
You're talking about the firmware. It was.
Yeah, the firmware. Yeah. And so it was really neat. Very accessible with voiceover to update the mic and to, you know, give it that update. So that. And then I also noticed that I could download the recording that I made for the Digital Bites demo that I did using the mic. And then if you're using the software, you can. Can also rename your file, which you can't do if you just use the mic as like a. So to speak, a drive. You know, if you don't run the software, you can't rename the files.
Yeah. And what would that be like if you. I mean, how do the files come off? They're just a bunch of small audio files that are just numbered or. How would that work? How would you know that. What each file is without having to listen to it?
Yeah, I think it. I believe it had a timestamp, and I think that's. I. And I forgot, really, the protocol for its naming convention, but I think it had a date and time stamp, so you might have to listen to them if you didn't rename it. And you had a bunch of them on there. But it. It seemed really easy to work with, and I was really excited that this App that was new to me. I could just plug and play, you know, it recognized what it was. I said I wanted to update the firmware. It said, yep, there's an update available. Here you go. And so it's, it's really cool. I'm. I'm really looking forward to, to using it in the future when I go to csun.
It's coming up quick.
It is, it is. I'm really, really excited about it. And this.
Yeah, I want to hear your experience with that mic. You know, when you're at csun, how it was having something like that in the field and ease of use and all those fun things. How the audio comes out in an environment like that where it's a lot of noise and stuff.
Yeah, yeah. And it's meant to be an interview mic, so it's meant to kind of take all that into consideration. So I'm looking forward to it too. I'll probably take a backup mic situation in case I don't want it to be my only option. But I really am looking forward to having it there and using it because if it stores the recordings and it has many hours of recording capacity and storage on it, so it's pretty cool.
Yeah, it's super awesome. I believe it also has auto gain and 32 bit float as well. To make sure your audio is always at its best.
It does. And it's really neat how it kind of comes apart so you can charge it and it stores everything inside. I don't know, it's just a really ingenious idea. So I'm really looking forward to taking it to CSUN with me.
Awesome.
Yeah. And speaking of csun, I hope some folks are going to join us there that are involved in our unmute club. What are you thinking?
I'm thinking, yeah, we're going to be having an unmute get together that's going to be in the restaurant at starting around 6pm on Wednesday evening. And you're free to just come and go as you please. We're just going to have a bunch of people hanging out, be super casual. But if you want to come say hello, come say hello to be super fun. So we had a great time last year. We're kind of doing the same thing again this year, so that's great.
It's just probably even more, you know, formally announced like in, in the community, like Soundcheck newsletter. I think it came out there.
That's the club newsletter. So we did put some information there, but anyone's allowed to come. So if you're going to be at csun. You want to come hang out, then go for it.
That's cool. It'd be great to meet everyone for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Well, do you have anything else you want to add before we give some closing contact info? And that's.
No, I think I'm good to go. Let's do it.
Great. So many great topics and it was really good to chat with you about all this.
Yeah, yeah, it was super fun. We had a good one today.
Yeah. Awesome. So if people want to get in touch and send us some feedback, where do they go?
So you can check out our website at Unmute show for all the things we got going on there. And if you have any questions, comments, or anything else, you can always email us at feedback. Mute ship. Thanks and we'll see you next time.
It.