Hi, this is Allison Sherrod in the LucilaCast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, a technology podcast with an ever so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, May 7th, 2023, and this is show number 939.  In October of 2021, I threw my money as fast as I could at Apple to get my hands on the new 14-inch M1 MacBook Pro. When it arrived, it was as glorious as I'd hoped. Made me happy that my 16-inch MacBook Pro, which was only two years old, went into the hands of my daughter, Lindsey, and that she loves it as well. I kept my older 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro as a backup. Sadly, after only a few months, I started noticing that my battery was draining really quickly for an M1. Instead of getting the 11 hours on wireless web that was touted on the sales page, and frankly reported by everyone else with the new M1 MacBook Pro, I was getting far less. I battled the problem on my own for a while because who really wants to make a trip to the table of sadness or even the phone call of sadness? By March of 2022, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I started working with Apple. We went through all of the usual hoops up to and including doing an over-the-top install of macOS. I didn't do a clean install because I'd done a clean install when I got the machine only five months earlier. I battled this ever-worsening problem until finally in August of 2022 when I convinced Apple to replace the battery. By that time, it was losing 50% in five hours when I wasn't even using it. The battery capacity had dropped from 100% to the low 90s. I was sure glad I had the spare of 2016 MacBook Pro to use while my baby was gone getting a new heart. When I got the 14-inch back, they had wiped the drive. Not quite sure why they had to do that, but you always have to assume Apple will whenever they do any repair. So here I was not even a year later doing yet another clean install. Now remember, when I do a clean install, it is a squeaky clean install. I installed every single application from scratch, and I didn't move over any kind of settings or anything. All I did was move my data and I downloaded everything fresh from the web. So it was a truly clean install. Well, my joy at a fresh battery waned quickly enough. By the beginning of this year, the battery was yet again draining quickly. When using the Mac on battery while doodling around on the web in the morning, I was losing around 15% per hour. While that calculates out to six and a half hours, which would have been amazing for an Intel-based Mac, it's barely 60% of what the specs say I should be getting. Again, I tried desperately to figure out what was wrong on my own. I took metrics at every change I made. I combed through console logs till my eyes were weary. I'm actually not sure why I even bother to look at those logs. I've never in my life been able to find the root cause of a problem by looking at console logs, but you know, a geek's gotta try. Recently, things took a dramatic change for the worse. We were back to this problem of the battery plummeting while asleep. And by plummeting, I mean again, losing 50% overnight. It was time to begin the horror that is calling for tech support. Now, AppleCare really is pretty good, but it's so just emotionally draining to have to talk to people on the phone at all and then to convince them to care about your problems even worse. I started with O'Shauna and she escalated me to Senior Advisor Camila. I explained to Camila that my five-month old battery was down to 95% capacity and it was draining while using it and while it was asleep. She tried to convince me that 95% battery capacity of five months was completely normal. However, she did agree to run hardware diagnostics, but as usual, that revealed no problems with the hardware. As a long shot, I even went to the Apple Store and I spent time at the Table of Sadness with Carlos. He was sympathetic, but his hardware tests also couldn't find anything wrong. After I recovered from my visit to the Apple Store, I called Apple again and I talked to Felicia who forwarded me to Senior Advisor Karim. I spent more time on hold working with him than I enjoyed, but we worked on my problem for an hour and 42 minutes total. I gave him piles of diagnostics from spin dumps to console logs, screenshots of my battery drain and he bundled that all up with his hardware diagnostics and sent it off to engineering. He said he'd call me back in five days. Karim didn't call me back. After a week of waiting for Karim, I called Apple care again and I got Senior Advisor Michael when I called back on April 20th. Let the record show that I called Apple on my birthday for crying out loud. Michael told me something interesting. He told me that engineering had studied all the logs and found that my Mac was waking every minute throughout the night. My Mac basically a sleep apnea. Michael at this point was the first person I talked to who said that I should be getting far better battery life than losing 15% per hour. I liked Michael. He asked me a few questions, one of which was very curious. Engineering wanted to know if the problem happened on other networks. Told him I was pretty sure it does but I wasn't completely sure. He took more data from me and said he'd call me back in a week when engineering should have gotten back to me with more ideas. Michael didn't call me back. On May 1st, I called back to Apple and I asked Bernal to get me to another Senior Advisor. I was rewarded with my favorite advisor so far, Margo. Now why do I like Margo so much? Because she's the first person to say that my battery capacity dropping to 94% in seven months is not normal. So Michael said losing 15% per hour isn't normal and Margo says having the battery capacity drop so much is also not normal. Throughout all of these shenanigans, I've had the feeling that the root cause had to be something I've done. Some pieces of software, some automation, some combination of tools that only I could dream up had caused my problems. But Margo had new feedback from engineering and they're not asking any questions about software. Instead they asked me to run a series of tests. Now when I wrote up the article for the web I did not yet have my answers to these questions but I did finish all of the tests today so I'm gonna be able to answer these questions live here on the show. Well, you're hearing it recorded but the live audience is hearing it live. So the first question was, does this issue continue with PowerNap disabled? No, this is an Apple Silicon Mac and PowerNap is only available on Intel. Second question, does this issue persist on multiple known good networks? Now this was a little harder than I thought it would be. I finally ended up getting my neighbor to let me jump onto his network. He's got three arrows in a very small house and one of them is right outside my kitchen window so I was able to work on my laptop in the kitchen and test it. And yes, the issue does still persist. I was able to measure 15% per hour while I was using it. The next question was, does the issue persist with iCloud disabled? Now actually I changed to doing this one very close to the end and when I was talking to Margo I told her, I said, you're gonna have to give me your firstborn son to convince me to turn off iCloud as my whole photos problem. And she said, oh, you know, he's 30 and he's cute but I don't think you're really gonna want him. But anyway, I did decide to test with iCloud disabled and I measured 12 to 15% per hour lost while using it with no iCloud. And I also had it sleeping for an hour or two but it would, sometimes it would lose only like 0% and have no loss whatsoever in an hour or two but overnight it lost 9%. So not quite as bad as it was losing overnight without iCloud on. They also asked, does the issue continue with all sharing services disabled in system settings sharing? And I do have three things on, let's see it's, I definitely have remote login and file sharing and I forget what the third one was but I turned all three of those off and I was again able to measure 15% loss in just one hour. They asked whether the issue persists with time machine disabled. Well, I don't use time machine, I use carbon copy cloner and back place. So the answer is yes, it happens with the time machine disabled. The answer was the issue, did the issue persist with Wi-Fi disabled? Now that's a really hard question to answer. How do you use a computer nowadays with Wi-Fi disabled?  I'll work on some programming but it turns out everything I've got is all talking to the internet, everything I'm working on. So none of that could work. I thought, I know I could read a book, I could open the Kindle app, I'm in the middle of a great book that Lindsay recommended. I'll just read my book but it wasn't downloaded to my laptop yet and I'd already started the testing. So what I did was I wrote up this article because I figured I had a lot of time to write while I was just, you know, waiting for this hour to go by and to test it. Now it was interesting with Wi-Fi off, I did get better battery life, I lost 11% in an hour, which isn't great, it isn't meeting the metric that it should meet, it's better than without but, you know, you're turning off a radio so it should do a lot better than that I think. They asked whether the issue persists with the peripherals disconnected and all of these tests, every time I'm using it off power, it's always got the peripherals disconnected. So yes, the problem does occur with that. Finally, they asked, does the issue continue with all internet accounts removed? So when you remove your internet accounts, you basically can't get your mail and the problem was 16% hour lost while I was using it with internet accounts removed and I lost 9% during six hours of sleep. So all of that basically, yes, no matter what I do, Wi-Fi was better but everything else, the problem still persisted but I didn't have a very major observation on this. I had to run these tests several times because I figured out that if I had the battery fully charged to 100%, the loss is much less per hour. So if I started the test at 100%, I might lose 10 or 11 or 12%. But if I started say 85%, I would definitely lose 15% per hour or even 16% per hour. So I thought that was really interesting. I don't know if there's some bad reporting at the beginning of a battery drain or if that's part of this problem that I only have 94% battery capacity, I don't know, but that seems to be important to the experiment. So I did spend basically the better part of this week doing all of these battery tests and I'm supposed to have a callback from Margot on Monday. And she also told me something really interesting. She said, don't call back and ask for a senior advisor because if you do, I lose control of the case and I really wanna stick with you and solve this. So fingers crossed that Margot will call me back on Monday but in the meantime, while I wait for Margot to call back, I came up with the workaround. I bought a refurbished M2 MacBook Air. Guess what? The battery life is as glorious as they say. I'm going literally a couple of days without charging this little beauty. I bought it in fingerprint magnet blue or what Apple call midnight. It's just as gorgeous as they say and it gathers fingerprints just as quickly as they say. I actually have trouble keeping it clean or even getting it clean because a simple damp cloth leaves streaks on the surface but it's really pretty when it's cleaned up. I was very curious whether I could really tell the difference in weight between the 13 inch MacBook Air and the 14 inch MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air is only 13 ounces lighter but that's actually 23% lighter than the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air is less than a quarter of an inch thinner but that's 27% thinner and it's also very noticeable. The 14 inch MacBook Pro is so much better to carry around than my 16 inch MacBook Pro but the MacBook Air is even more delightful to hold in your hand and carry it around the house. Now I do find it a bit annoying to only have two USB-C Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook Air and especially to have both of them on the left with the MagSafe connector. Having Thunderbolt ports on both sides for peripherals and especially for charging is much better with the MacBook Pro. I chose the 35 watt power supply with the two USB-C ports for the MacBook Air and it is absolutely adorable. The MagSafe cable is dark blue woven material that looks really nifty too. Now I'm used to lugging a 100 watt power supply around for the Pro MacBooks but the 35 watt power supply is about as small as a proper GAN charger, you know the little gallium nitride chargers. By the way, why hasn't Apple gotten on the GAN bandwagon yet anyway? We should be bothering them about that. Well here's two fun charging anecdotes for the MacBook Air. Using my ginormous 100 watt Apple charger the MacBook Air charged from 14% to 92% in just an hour and 10 minutes. I thought that was pretty amazing. Now another time I had the MacBook Air on the counter in my bathroom where I charged my iPad Pro. I was able to fully charge the MacBook Air overnight using the 20 watt power supply of the iPad Pro. It was up to 100% by the morning. I know that's a slow way to charge but you know with 12 hours to feed it, it worked great. The keyboard on the MacBook Air is a little bit stiffer to press which makes it feel like I'm doing more work when I type. The keys kind of make a faintly sticky sound that I don't really find pleasing. I don't hate it but I prefer the keyboard on the MacBook Pro for sure. Now it was suggested by someone, I forget who that I might be disappointed with the display on the MacBook Air after more than a year with the amazing screen on the MacBook Pro. I gotta say, I haven't noticed any difference at all. There is a difference but I don't really see it. The screen size of the MacBook Air is only a smidge smaller at 13.6 inches versus 14.2. The MacBook Air has an LED backlit display with IPS technology while the MacBook Pro has the liquid retina XDR display with pro motion. I tried really hard to look at the two side by side, different kinds of things like images, scrolling text by really quickly but to be perfectly honest, I don't think I can see the difference.  I'm not sure what place the MacBook Air will have in my life going forward. Will it be my doodle around on the internet while in bed with my morning coffee machine? Will it be my TV watching device on the couch in the evenings? Will it be my throw it in my bag just in case Mac for when I go to a friend's house? Will it be my roadmap? What if I discovered that it can actually do the live show and I wasted a lot of money buying a pro Max MacBook Pro? That's kind of scary to think about but I'm gonna test it. I'm also still working on how to replicate the environment I have on the MacBook Pro. I know other people live happy to computer lifestyles but I still haven't settled on what should be only done on the MacBook Pro and what can be done on either Mac. The most important thing is that I can start my blog posts on either Mac since I use Bear for my rough drafts and it syncs beautifully via iCloud. But my final posts are done in MarsEdit and MarsEdit doesn't have any kind of syncing when a blog post is in draft mode. To use MarsEdit on two Macs, I'd have to always push the drafts to my blog and remember to refresh before starting to work on it again on either one. If you're a programmer, it's like using Git to work on the same project on two Macs. Pull first, make changes, then push. It's not hard but it takes some discipline. Most of my other crucial tools either sync through iCloud or don't require syncing and it'll be great fun to figure out what I can do with the new MacBook Air. I'm hoping to get to parity between the machines eventually but it'll probably take a while. I do have another excuse for buying the MacBook Air. I did save $260 by going with a refurb from Apple that was on a two terabyte model that still doesn't justify dropping $2,500 using AppleCare, or including AppleCare I should say. Remember I had a 2016 MacBook Pro, the 15 inch and Steve has a 13 inch 2016 MacBook Pro so we both have them as our backups. But 2016 Intel MacBook Pros cannot run Mac OS Ventura. It might not sound like a big deal to stay on Mac OS Monterey for most people but we've embraced shared photo libraries in Mac OS Ventura and those Macs don't get any of our shared photos. I looked at trading prices at Apple to trade them in to buy the MacBook Air and while I know they normally are low ball prices they were absurdly low for these two Macs. They were both Intel i7s with a lot of RAM. Mine had 32 gig and they had big SSDs. Mine had two terabytes and Steve had one terabyte. So they low balled them, they gave us, what did they offer? I think it was $165 for Steve at $170 for mine. So we decided to try selling them locally instead. I sold mine in one day for $400 through a local Mac user group. Steve sold his in $400 in two days through Facebook Marketplace. Now it's always important to remember that your next Mac isn't really as expensive as it looks since your previous Mac will have high resale value. What seven-year-old Windows PC would be worth $400? So I can now justify the M2 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of RAM and two terabytes of disk because after selling our two Spare Macs, hey, it only cost me $1,700. While Oshauna, Camila, Carlos, Felicia, Kareem, Michael, Brinella, now Margo have all tried to help me fix my MacBook Pro's battery woes, I find myself happily playing with my M2 MacBook Air. I'd like to tell you about a little tech gadget that won't have you moaning about what I did to your wallet this time. It's called Boogie Board and it's not the kind you use to ride ocean waves. Boogie Board is a whole lineup of thin, rewriteable tablets. Think of Boogie Board as a place to just jot down a quick note while on a phone call and then when you take action on that note, you can click a button to clear the screen. If you're old enough, you may remember the Hasbro Magic Slate paper saver. Remember that thing where it was a thin film and you could write on it and that corner made an impression and it turned dark where you write and then you could peel it up and it would erase? Boogie Board is kind of the reincarnation of that idea except it doesn't wear out like the Magic Slate. It's much more modern. The Boogie Board I have is the Jot writing tablet in Jot Pink of course, for $25 from myboogieboard.com. It's eight and a half inches tall, five and a half inches wide and it's only about an eighth of an inch thick, like three millimeters. It's really, really thin. It's also super light. I weighed it and it weighed 3.8 ounces. It comes with a small plastic stylus that clips into a little slot below the screen. If you misplace the stylus, you can actually write on any Boogie Board with your fingernail. I also got the neoprene sleeve for the Jot writing tablet, which was another $10. I like the sleeve because it ensures the stylus stays in place and it protects the screen when I carry it around. Now, when you scribble your notes and drawings on the Jot Boogie Board, the text is a light turquoise color. It's legible, but it's not super crisp as maybe you'd expect from a full screen tablet, you know, like an iPad. Then again, it's $25. It's three millimeters thick and its whole job is to be erased after writing. The back of the Jot writing tablet has two magnets so you can stick it to the fridge and write reminders to the family. After you no longer need the note or drawing you created on Boogie Board, you simply click the button at the top and your Boogie Board is perfectly clear again. This does mean you need to make sure not to click it until you're sure you finished with the information. One day I was using it and I had it upside down so the button was at the bottom and I accidentally clicked the erase button with my palm. I won't make that mistake again, I hope. Well, the one thing I wish Boogie Boards had was the ability to erase just part of what I've written. The blackboard line of Boogie Boards does in theory allow you to erase part of the screen. I bought the note size version of Boogie Boards Blackboard Smart Scan Reusable Notebook, which runs $30. It's slightly larger with a 5.5 inch by 7.25 inch screen and it sports a heftier stylus with an eraser. The stylus sticks to the blackboard magnetically. That sounds like a good thing but I often pick up the blackboard only to find the stylus has gotten knocked off. I don't lose track of the stylus on the jot nearly as often since it clicks into that little slot. Now, I was actually disappointed in the blackboard's eraser capabilities. It has this rather involved calibration process where you write a list of numbers down the screen and then you click two buttons on the top, erasing one number each time you click the buttons. When you start, the eraser just kind of smudges over the numbers and that doesn't look very good but each time you click the two buttons, the text gets slightly dimmer which also makes the smudging dimmer. You're instructed to keep clicking and testing eraser until you get down to an acceptable balance of dimness of your text and lack of smudginess from erasing. In my experiments, I never found what I would call an acceptable balance. I want the displayed writing to remain bright and the eraser to completely erase what I've written and that's not really how this works. I talked to customer support and a lovely gentleman named Chris helped to make sure I was following the process correctly. When he determined I was following the steps but wasn't happy with the results, he offered to send me a different boogie board to replace the blackboard and didn't make me send back the blackboard. That's how I ended up with the jot which I find quite pleasing. But here's the interesting thing. There's something I really like about the blackboard that has led me to use it pretty often in spite of not being able to erase. The blackboard's display is actually semi-transparent unlike the fully opaque display of the jot. On the back of the blackboard you can slide in different templates to change the background. It comes with two pieces of stiff plastic coated paper. One has a grid of dots on the black background and the flip side is solid black.  With all of these options the blackboard boogie board has become our tool of choice to use when playing card games. We have this new game from Steve's mom called We See, O-U-I-S-I in which you lay out a series of cards with pictures on them in a five by five grid. As the dealer you choose five cards you're trying to get the other players to guess by saying just one word to describe them. You have to keep track of which cards you choose which is harder than you would think to remember which five. We use the blackboard with its grid background and mark off the cards for each round. It's easily cleared with a click of the button as the dealer position rotates amongst the players. I know that seems like a very specialized use case but it's perfect for the job. We even brought the blackboard with us on vacation to Wine Country recently because it was so much easier than trying to find a scrap, a paper, and a pencil. I lost the stylus in the back of Steve's car because it fell off the magnet and Steve's car is black and the pencil is black too and we ended up using my apple pencil on the blackboard during the trip until I discovered the stylus was in the trunk. Luckily the apple pencil hadn't fallen off my iPad like it usually does when traveling too because it's held on by a magnet. Because the blackboard is translucent the writing on it isn't quite as bright as the jot but those changeable templates give it value for me. I guess I should confess to Chris that I'm using both of the boogie boards. Now before I ever bought a boogie board for myself I bought two of them for two of my grandkids. Forbes was six at the time so I bought them the Jot Kids Writing Tablet for $25. It's very similar to my Jot Tablet but it comes with a plastic protective cover which seems like a good idea with kids. The only downside is that the Jot Kids only came in blue or orange and I know he would prefer my hot pink version. Sienna was barely two so I bought her the Scribble and Play Kids Drawing Tablet for $30. The Scribble and Play is very different from the other boogie boards. Attached at the top and bottom are four thick styluses for drawing different kinds of patterns on the screen. They've got little bumps so they make different patterns. When you drag these styluses across the screen instead of leaving just a single color mark like on other boogie boards they draw a rainbow pattern. It's great fun for the Wii ones to create unique colorful drawings every time. And with both kids I was amazed at how quickly and happily they erased their masterpieces. Personally I feel a certain attachment to anything I've created but the kids don't seem to have any regrets when they gleefully press the button and start over. It actually seems to be the best feature of the boogie board to them. Now boogie board also sell accident production for their devices at $5.50 for two years so I decided to buy it for the kids boogie boards. So far and more than a year of use they haven't broken them so I haven't had to exercise the warranty. If you're a parent of small children and you wanna keep them entertained while in a restaurant but you're resisting the temptation to hand them a phone to watch them turn into zombies you might find the boogie boards for kids to do the trick. They're a small and light addition to a diaper bag when you're going out. I know my kids love having these for their children. Now you may be wondering what powers the boogie board line of tablets? They have a thin replaceable battery inside of nearly hidden little door. I only know that door is there because I went looking for it or I never would have noticed it. Now I said at the beginning that boogie board has a vast selection of tablets and I was not kidding. I've described boogie boards that are more for casual use but they also sell them for work environments. They sell a professional version of the blackboard for $140 that uses a smart pen that allows you to transfer your notes through your Bluetooth connected devices. Now I do wanna make a point someone on mastodon that I tutored about this article they said the black, sorry boogie board doesn't ship to Europe so you might need to check in your country to see whether you can get these because the person really wanted to get that smart pen. Anyway, boogie board even sells tablets pretty much for every need in between the ones for little kids and these higher end business ones. They even sell the technology and what I would call reusable sticky notes. They call them Versa notes and they're small round squares of the same thin film material as the tablets but in different colors. Each has a tiny button in the corner so you can erase the note and behind that button is a magnet so you can put these on a refrigerator, a file cabinet or maybe a magnetic whiteboard. The four by four inch starter pack comes with four different colored Versa notes for 25 bucks and they come with a stylus. You can buy more expansion packs of four more without the stylus for $17. You can also get Versa notes and four by six inch size for a little bit more money. I haven't tried them but they look pretty nifty. Boogie board have so many more options that I've even described here I highly encourage you to go to myboogieboard.com and check out all of the kid and grown-up versions of this useful technology. The best way I can describe how delightful boogie boards are is via this anecdote. We had our friends Diane and Bill over recently and we played the game I described earlier. When I showed them the boogie board to do the scoring Diane's reaction was, why have you never told me about boogie boards before now? I'd like to make a special shout out this week to Tim Genvik. He's been a patron of the Podfeat podcast for a very long time but something broke all of his scheduled payments to different services. Now, you know how that when that happens it'd be really easy to just let the support of the show slide but instead he made a point of going back to podfeat.com slash Patreon and recommitting to support the work we do here. And that means a lot to me. That is an extra effort. It's not accidentally still giving some donation to keep the show going. He did it on purpose the second time. Anyway, if you'd like to be cool by Tim, like Tim, go to podfeat.com slash Patreon and become a patron today. iCloud is Apple's superpower. I've been planning on writing up how much I take advantage of all of the integrations Apple give us between our devices. The subject came at even sharper focus when I was conducting these experiments at Apple Engineering's behest to solve my pesky battery problems on my M1 MacBook Pro. Like I said before, the most annoying experiment they had me do was to sign out of iCloud and then check the battery drain. I knew it would be torture if only because it takes nearly a week for my Mac to regain access to all of my photos but I didn't really think about how much doesn't work when you're signed out of iCloud. As you might expect, I lost access to my Apple ID email. I recently converted my personal domain email over to iCloud as well which means mail lost access to my podfeat.com email as well. The only email I see is my Gmail account and that's not used much for more than some Google services and I get notifications from my website. Now I'm not a big fan of Apple's Messages app and I vastly prefer Telegram but a few of my friends like David Roth and some of my family still use Messages. Apple warned on their support page that signing out of iCloud will stop iCloud's syncing of Messages but I was really surprised that it completely logged me out of Messages all together. Oh well, guess I just wouldn't chat with those folks while I was doing that experiment. One of the slickest parts of throwing money at Apple for iCloud Plus is that you can sync your documents and desktop across all of your devices. Until recently, I primarily use one Mac but more than once it's been super handy to get to my files on the road from my iPad or iPhone. Using the files app, I can browse my documents and desktop just as easily as I could browse Dropbox or Google Drive. I keep my weekly podcast files in my documents folder which meant when I was signed out of iCloud I literally could not work on the podcast. I couldn't get to my audio files, I couldn't get to screenshots for blog articles and I couldn't get to listener contributions. I felt like I was working with both hands tied behind my back. Now my friends and family are big fans of Find My and especially Find Friends. Sure, it's great to track my devices like with air tags at an airport but really often I use it as a way to find out if now would be a good time to call someone. If I look at Find My and I see Bart is on a mountain, it's probably not a good time to ping him with a question. If I'm going on a walk and I see that Pat Dengler is at Disneyland, I probably won't call her to entertain me. If I see Lindsay's on her drive home, I will call her so we can entertain each other. Kyle has a gruesome commute so if I time things properly, I can call him when he's on the most boring part of his drive to keep him awake. It's also fun to see when our buddy Ron is someplace wild like when he was in Easter Island this week and doing that using Find Friends. You know what? When I was signed out of iCloud, I couldn't see anything in Find My. It made sense but I missed it. My calendar was empty too. I felt like I had nothing to do. My contacts were empty. I felt like I had no friends. I had no reminders so I just took a nap. I'd been tracking the progress of my battery tests in Apple Notes but guess what was empty then? Yeah, I had zero notes available. I had some out of date apps from the Mac App Store but I couldn't do anything about it because I would have to sign into iCloud to get back into that.  Now Apple has vastly improved iCloud's syncing for third-party apps in recent years. Used to hear the developers complaining all the time about how janky it was and they would always get blamed if iCloud syncing messed up. But no longer do I hear developers complaining about that. In fact, more and more of my apps offer iCloud syncing so the developers don't have to manage their own syncing services. But when I'm signed out of iCloud, that meant that a whole bunch of my apps were far less useful. I use Keep It from reinvented software as my storage for my brain. It's kind of like an Evernote replacement. Every little nuance I learn in programming by stealth gets stored in Keep It. It has all of my podcast logos. It's the canonical source of all the jingles for my podcast. I keep notes in there when I'm working on my podcast. Every little tweak of my OS is recorded in Keep It. And Keep It syncs through iCloud. That's been great because I can get to all of this information in the mobile version of Keep It. When I opened Keep It after turning off iCloud, my only choices were to open the app or try again, turn off iCloud or quit. I kind of had a bad feeling about what happened when I would turn iCloud back on, but it actually worked okay. I use CopyM as my clipboard manager, and while it still worked while signed out of iCloud, this one Mac was on an island of its own. I can't copy something on that Mac and then use CopyM on my iPad or iPhone or second Mac to paste. Keyboard Maestro seems unperturbed by the lack of iCloud, but it was also stuck in a static configuration until iCloud syncing is back. I hope it was okay. It seemed to come back normally, but if iCloud didn't exist at all, that would make using Keyboard Maestro across two different Macs really difficult. I write all of the blog articles for podfee.com in bearer for two reasons. One, because it supports text expander even on iOS, so I could write on my iPad and use my beloved text expander. But the second reason is because it syncs through iCloud, so I can seamlessly jump from my Mac to my iPad and back, and now to my new Mac. Guess what didn't sync up my Mac Macro during the test? The very article I'm telling you about right now. I was wondering whether there was any way to find out how many of my apps and which ones used iCloud syncing. It turns out if you open System Settings in Mac OS Ventura to iCloud and then select iCloud Drive, you get a pop-up menu where you can enable syncing of iCloud Drive and also desktop and documents. But that same window now has a notice that says apps syncing to iCloud Drive. If you select it, you can see all of the iCloud syncing apps you're using. I have 40 of them. That's how big iCloud syncing is for the Mac these days. If you're a relatively novice user, you may not realize how powerful Apple's continuity platform is. Continuity is this very broad term and encompasses a whole host of amazing integrations between Apple devices and they all depend on iCloud. I think Apple's tagline for continuity is actually spot on. All your devices, one seamless experience. So let's go through a couple of continuity features I use all the time and which were gone from my life when iCloud was disabled during my battery test. I find it super handy to copy something on one device and paste it on another device. I mentioned that with my clipboard manager, but I also use it for just single copy and paste. Maybe I find a link on my iPhone to an article I wanna read. I can just copy it from the iPhone and paste it into the URL bar of my Mac. Maybe I take a screenshot on my Mac and I wanna paste it into an iPad on my iPad. I use this feature constantly. When I was setting up the new iPad, I copied some fonts from one. I just selected the fonts in the right folder, hit copy, went over to the new Mac and hit paste. The fonts are now on the new Mac. While I was writing this article on the MacBook Air, I was taking screenshots of how weird the MacBook Pro looks with all those iCloud errors. You know what? I couldn't paste them onto the MacBook Air because there's no continuity without iCloud. I can't save the screenshots to my documents folder either because my documents are all gone without iCloud. I might have to resort to saving to Dropbox for some of this and I did a little bit of that but I basically abandoned the images because it was just too hard because I was gonna end up with a big mess to clean up when I got my MacBook Pro back on iCloud. Now as recently as six months ago, when I needed to scan a document, I would ask Steve to use his fancy pant scanner and then transfer the document to me or I'd use a dedicated scanner app on my iPhone. Even with a dedicated app, it took a lot of steps. I had to launch the app, tap the plus button, scan in the document, hit the save button, then tell it to download to my Mac. I had the files downloaded to a holding cell on my Mac and then I'd have to move them to their final resting place. I finally got on the continuity bandwagon and I started using the built-in tools of the iPhone to accomplish this task. I should say built into the iPhone and the Mac. So now let's say I need a receipt scanned into my financial folder. If I start in that folder, I can right-click in the finder window, choose import from iPhone and then scan documents. As soon as I do that instantly, the iPhone is in scanner mode. You hold the iPhone over the document and it automatically captures just the document. Tap the scan, hit save, and the iPhone gets itself out of scanner mode and the file is instantly saved to your folder on your Mac. It's truly magical and it is so much easier. But without being signed into iCloud, that feature doesn't exist. Now, I've not really gotten onto the focus modes bandwagon like some of my friends, but I do use do not disturb on a regular basis. When I'm recording a podcast, I surely don't want my phone ringing or notifications popping up. With continuity, I can select do not disturb on any one of my devices and all of them flip to do not disturb. I can use my Apple Watch, my iPhone, my iPad or my Mac to make this happen across all of my devices. But sadly, do not disturb, doesn't propagate to a device that isn't signed into iCloud. Now, there's a lot more continuity features out there, but to be honest, I've not become dependent on them. While it's slick to be able to use an iPad to extend the desktop of your Mac, I still find it unreliable over WiFi. And if I plug the iPad into my Mac, the iPad will actually drain the Mac's battery to charge itself. I don't know how to have it not do that. Maybe a data only cable. Maybe I should see if I can find a data only USB-C cable. I wonder if that would work.  And that's not exactly what I'm looking for right now. But in any case, this feature depends on iCloud too. One of the coolest new features in continuity is continuity camera. But for the life of me, I can't get my iPhone to act as a camera consistently either. When it works, the image is glorious. But this is one of those features that you can't invoke with any kind of incantation. So when it's not in the mood, you just can't use it. Other people seem to be fine with it. So I don't know, maybe it's something I'm doing wrong. But it doesn't matter because when my Mac isn't signed into iCloud, the iPhone's camera is definitely not in the mood. Now the one saving grace was that I was still able to go to iCloud.com and access a lot of my data. I could send and receive both my Apple ID email and my podfeed.com email from iCloud.com. I was able to see my calendar, I could find my contacts, and I could review my reminders. I was able to see my notes and I could use Find My to track my devices, but I wasn't able to stalk my friends and family so that was kind of a bummer. I was able to see all of my photos inside iCloud.com as well. Now it's comforting to see all of this in iCloud.com but it's not the same as using the native apps. The bottom line is that this experiment taught me that iCloud really is Apple's super power as I said up front and I depend on that power quite a bit. With it gone, I was really reminded of something the Podmom used to say, everyone goes when the whistle blows. Well, that is going to wind us up this week. Did you know? You can email me at alison at podfeed.com anytime you like. I actually answer people. Well, when iCloud's not turned off, I do anyway.  You can follow me on mastodon at podfeed at cast.social. I am super active over there, having a great time. Remember, everything good starts with podfeed.com. If you wanna join in the conversation, you can join our Slack at podfeed.com slash Slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-silla castaways. If you're listening to programming by stealth, that channel is super hot, lots of stuff going on, but the best channel is actually Delete Me because Alistair posts the best stuff in there. It's a lot of fun. Anyway, you can support the show like Tim did at podfeed.com slash Patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeed.com slash PayPal. And if you wanna join in the fun of the live show where for a couple of brief moments, we actually had more women in the chat room than men, head on over to podfeed.com slash live at Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic no-silla castaways. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.


Studying Romeo and Juliet, here's how you can analyse the dialogue between Benvolio and Makushio in that two scene one. The scene opens by Romeo asking this rhetorical question which is written in iambit pentameter. We can see here he doesn't want to leave the scene until he sees Juliet. He has Benvolio and Makushio looking for him so he runs away. Benvolio calls out for Romeo and these exclamatory sentences show that they're trying to get him to leave they don't know that he's fallen in love with Juliet. Makushio also speaks in exclamatory sentences here to call out for Romeo but unlike Benvolio who's really concerned about where Romeo is, Makushio is joking and making fun of him. He then says I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes. He speaks here in iambit pentameter to tease Romeo about Rosaline's seductive beauty. Benvolio then tells Makushio here to stop making fun of Romeo and this zero in alliteration shows he's scared that Romeo will run away because he's being really killed by Makushio. Benvolio then convinces Makushio that Romeo probably wants to be alone and this is shown through on Jean-Mont Anami Pentameter.


The AMA's approach focuses on treating the effects of obesity rather than the causes. As your editorial noted, the best approach is one that stresses public health and education in regard to good eating habits and exercise. The last thing the American public needs is the medicalization of yet another everyday problem. Like they've done with everything else. Everything has a syndrome. Well, in the diagnostic, you know, statistical manual of psychiatry, you know, when you protest or expose authority, you have a disease. Yeah, if you disagree with the powers that be. If you have an independent free thinking mind, you have a mental illness. You have a syndrome that requires more medication. Yes. The drug companies make more money. Yes. And it goes on and on and on and on and on and on. And on and on. Oh, hold on. The stove piped the guy. And it goes on and on and on and on, never ending. Every time they look in the medical book, every time they see a human issue, every time they see a human issue, they tack a syndrome onto it. It becomes a profit. Profit making the disease in the American healthcare system.  Yeah. So they could prescribe more psychiatric medication. The house rejected a five year, half trillion dollar farm bill on Thursday. That would have cut two billion dollars annually from the food stamps. And let states impose broad new work requirements on those who receive them. Where are they finding these jobs for the welfare people and the food staff people?  There are no jobs out there. Where are the jobs that they expect welfare recipients to get to perform? Hey, maybe they want us to move to China? Maybe they want... That's one way to get rid of it. Maybe they want to move you into a little cubicle, a little cubby hole with a hammock. They want you to live at Foxconn, like the people that practically live there now. And work with an adult diaper on so you don't have to take bathroom breaks. You could just pee into an adult diaper. And shake. Say the word. Shit, too. Yeah. In your diaper. Oh, so they look at every little minute. You working? Of course. Productivity, productivity, productivity. Those cuts were not deep enough for many Republicans who objected to the cost of nearly 80 billion dollars a year food stamp program, which has doubled in the past five years. In the last five years, we came out of the big financial meltdown, which benefited Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. The vote was 234 to 195 against the bill, with 62 Republicans voting against it. The bill also suffered from lack of democratic support, necessary for the traditionally bipartisan farm bill to pass. Only 24 Democrats voted in favor of the legislation after many said the food stamp cuts could remove as many as 2 million needy recipients from the rolls. The addition of the optional state work requirements by Republican amendment, just before final passage, cost many remaining Democratic votes. Majority leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia. Scumbag. Scumbag number one. Well, actually he's number two. Paul Ryan is number one. Actually John Boehner is number two. And then Cantor is number three. Boehner's been quiet for a while. That's because he can't do nothing because the Tea Party has him like a puppet. The puppet. He's a puppet.  A marionette. Yeah. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, both of whom voted for the bill immediately, took to the House floor and blamed the other parties for the defeat. Cantor said it was a disappointing day that the Democrats had been a disappointing players. I guess it's playing to cut food stamps. It's like a game to Mr. Cantor. Yeah, well, he doesn't miss too many meals, like Chris Christie. He don't miss any meals, and I'm sure he eats the best. I'm sure he eats 100% organic, just like I hear the President and his family eats. I mean, paying the bills and living a decent, comfortable, clean life and getting enough to eat is not an issue with people like Mr. Cantor. That's wider out of touch. Hoyer suggested that Republicans voted for the food stamp work requirements to tank the bill. What happened today is you turned a bipartisan bill necessary for our farmers. That's not true. Necessary for the big agribusinesses like Cargill, et cetera. Big agra.  Okay? Necessary for our consumers. Oh, yeah, they're really worried about consumers, aren't they? Necessary for the people of America that many of us would have supported. You turned it into a partisan bill, he said. The Senate overwhelmingly passed its version of the Farm Bill last week with about 2.4 billion a year in overall cuts and a $400 million annual decrease in food stamps. There's no need for a big price. We need increases. It's small enough.  Cory Booker and the other Congresswoman, they're trying it. They can't do it. No, it can't be done. The food stamps are as microscopic as it is. Just like welfare is microscopic.  And then New Jersey, the state, when I say state, I mean Christy Administration, has the nerve to say, well, some states in the United States don't even have a welfare system. So what does that mean then? We are not those states like Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana. They've always been cheap. So people perish? Yeah. So then where's the, what's so wonderful about America if poor people don't have social services in those states? Where's the incentive to... What's so wonderful about a country that allows poor people to exist? Yeah. And I don't mean to kill them. I mean to, why wouldn't good Christians think in terms of, you know what, why don't we give all the money they need to people on welfare and bring them into the middle class? Then they don't need welfare anymore. And then when you... I don't think like... When you put more moolah, when you put more money back in the pockets of mainstream, there's more spending that gets put back into the economy.  You know what I'm saying? You know I'm so sick of hearing Larry the cable guy go on and on and on about America is the best and everything American is the best and America is America. That's because Larry the cable guy has a syndicated... He's got a show on... He's on Fox, right? On... No, no. He's on a history channel. Wait a minute. All right. Larry the cable guy's got a show on cable. And... But he's right wing. He's from... He's a bit of a teabagger because he's always bragging. He's always waving the flag and bragging that America is the best. Everything American made. Everything... Every concept, any mental concept from America is the best. Everything that happens in America was born in America, was created by Americans. That is America, is better than the rest of the world. He's constantly bragging. He wears... He dresses like a farmer. He's from... The bib overalls? Yeah. The same outfit. The flannel with the bib overalls. He's from Nebraska. He talks with a drawl with an accent. And... He... He's kind of...  And this is Larry the cable guy's gimmick. He's a very funny comedian. Don't get me wrong. But... He goes on and on and on.  Well, he doesn't look at the studies. He's a very happy guy. Where in life expectancy in America is way down the bottom. Healthcare is three times as much as any other industrialized country. Right. On and on and on. No, he doesn't... So America is not the best. He doesn't look at these facts, no. Correct. The White House was supportive of the Senate version, but had issued a veto threat of the House bill. If the two chambers cannot come together on a bill, farm state lawmakers could push for extension of the 2008 farm bill that expires in September or negotiate a new bill with the Senate and try again. Some conservatives that suggested separating the farm programs and the food stamps into separate bills. The best way to feed the people of any country and particularly the United States how it originally was was local, organic food produced locally. Support your local farmer no matter what he produces. Local and small family farms is the way to go like it was in the past. Main Street over Wall Street. But if America was so great, as they always contend, it would have no poor. Like Larry the Cable Guy keeps on bragging. Hey America, America. There's a simple way. Hey America, hey America. Constantly waving a flag. There's a simple difference between the poor and the rich. It's called money. The lack of money. As far as the poor is concerned. And the rich, they have it. The haves versus the have nots. So if you want to do something and make America great, why not get rid of their poor? And I don't mean killing them. And saying that people on social services and people that are unemployed are just lazy instead of...  That's the tea party. Those factors. Ronald Reagan's welfare queen. She never existed really, right? Yes. She never did. Not everybody's octa-mom, you know? In politics, it's not the truth or the fact. It's the perception that becomes truth. How could perception become truth if it's not proven? Because they don't require proof. Because that's their game. You got... That's a game. They create that reality, false reality.   Crap means they're cult. They're so-called Christian cult. And I was talking to the person managing the God Project segment on the Facebook group, Heart-Hitting Truth, and she says you have to understand something. Zidang from a Christian Bible study student from North Eastern India says that in every religion, whether it be the Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and definitely we're Christians, there are all these sects, these different churches, different segments of the religion that are cultists, that are not accurate, that do not go by what's in the Bible, and they are like cults, and some of them are just downright wicked. That's because they don't practice what the Bible says. Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. That doesn't mean faith. And all these cults, all these different sects, these segments of these religions that are negative, they all have one thing in common. They all seem to be power-hungry, they're right-wing fundamentalists.  Nobody else is good but them and lying. Usually keeping their women as second-class citizens, maybe third-class because they're animals, they treat better than the women. That is true. The family dog actually has more rights. For the oxen. An oxen has more rights in an extreme Islamic country than the women do. That is very true. And hey, even India traditionally doesn't give women many rights. They've got more rights than the Muslim country but the Indian women have been really protesting. Yeah, they don't like being married to somebody they don't love. Yeah, they arrange marriages, but in general women from the old country, especially your third, fourth and fifth world countries, they don't have a lot of rights really compared to the men. Their governments are very totalitarian and very fascist. You have the poor and then you have the people hogging all the wealth on top. No middle class. They have similarities. But continue reading, but I'll be right back. The letter writer criticizes former U.S. Senator Robert Dole for daring to vent his frustration about current Republican Party shortcomings. Well-respected former Governor Thomas Cain, that's of New Jersey, and many distinguished Republicans share Dole's concerns and disappointments.  Dole may not be equal to and at times over glorified Ronald Reagan, but he speaks from the heart and possesses far more integrity and common sense than the GOP presidential hopefuls in the last election cycle. The lack of a broadly appealing party platform, shifting demographics, increasing Tea Party fatigue among voters, and a repeated lackluster lineup of presidential candidates will once more pose a major hurdle for the GOP in 2016. Governor Christie could make a difference for the GOP. He has repeatedly shown that he is not willing to subject himself to the party's ideological straight eject. He realizes that the current brand of conservatism is moving increasingly toward an extreme and a regressive position that will not shape the future of this country. He also seems to know the value of compromise. But what the GOP tries to do every election cycle is to put New Garb on the same old crap. That's right. With so much money wasted in government, with bad decisions, here's one that is easily fixable. New Jersey's Governor Christie insists that a special October election for a Senate seat is best for the state. But with a $12 million price tag, it is very wrong, and that $12 million price tag could go to reinstate the homestead rebate program for the elderly and the disabled. You mean this election he expects to be paid for by the taxpayers? Of course. Who else is going to pay for it? Which is the middle class. That's only one election. That's the election with Cory Booker. Not the Christy one, the Bono one. That comes a month later. This is a special election. Wait a minute. Does this have to do with the passing away of... Mr. Senator Lautenberg. Senator Frank Lautenberg. Senator of New Jersey, and replacing Senator Frank Lautenberg. Correct. Okay, okay. It's going to cast $12 to $24 million. I'm sure that could reinstate the homestead rebate program for the disabled and the elderly. It's funny how all this money is there to benefit the people on top of the ladder. But not for the women's health clinic. Planned Parenthood. Food pantries for the homeless and the poor. Oh, no, they get closed. Oh, yeah. Anything to benefit the fat cats? What about the... Since Chris Christie is stronger than the storm, like the annoying commercial tells you, then how come the people that lost their homes near the coast don't feel like they're stronger than the storm? Because they didn't receive their money yet. And, you know, they're not going to receive it, too, because the mortgage holders want the money first to pay down their mortgage, not to repair their house. Do you know what the... And it's all legal. Do you know what the insurance company told my brother, who lives near Point Pleasant Beach in the town of Brick, New Jersey? My brother Scott, they told him, you have a choice. This is post-Sandy. You have a choice. We raise your home insurance to around $2,000 a month. Or you physically elevate your home. Okay, we'll have the whole house lifted up, which would cost... I think it's 11 feet, no? Something like that, which costs $80,000. Aww. So, or, number three, you try and sell your house. Try and sell your house, and you move inland. So, this is the choice that people living on the coast in New Jersey have. You know? So, as far as New Jersey residents being stronger than the storm, Christie doesn't live on the coast. It's not his problem. Of course he's stronger than the storm. He's not there. Yeah, but they're not stronger than their insurance companies.  It goes like this. We're stronger than the storm. We're stronger than the storm. Yeah, except the people who lost their homes and are still waiting for their money. I think the private contractors are stronger than the storm. Oh, yeah. If they're getting rich, all the poor homeowners are getting screwed. Okay? To continue. The governor should put any reason for the early election in the garbage. Yeah. And do what's right for the people. His decision diminishes his authority. I could only wish that he would act with more common sense and compassion. I think the only thing Mr. Governor Christie has compassion for is an eclair. Yeah, eclair or a gigantic waffle the size of a manhole cover.  Even if you lived in a tent or a tree house, I don't even think you can buy clothes and food with $140 a month. We know how many people living in a tent right now in Lakewood. Intense. I don't even think they get $140 a month. You know? The United States foiled a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange because of the sweeping surveillance programs at the heart of a debate over national security and personal privacy. Officials said on Tuesday at a rare open hearing on intelligence led by lawmakers, sympathetic to spy. The House Intelligence Committee hearing provided a venue for officials to defend the once secret programs and did little probing of claims that the collection of people's phone records and internet usage has disrupted dozens of terrorist plots. Well, they couldn't give because it hasn't happened. Army General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency said the two recently disclosed programs. One that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the U.S.-based internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism are critical. Alexander told lawmakers that leaks by Edward Snowden have caused irreversible and significant damage to this nation and undermine the U.S. relationship with allies. Yeah, I'll say it did that because we were spying on the allies. In the days after the leaks House Intelligence Committee chairman Michael Rogers cited one attack he said was forted by the programs. In the comments of other intelligence officials that number grew to two, then 10, then dozens. Without proof on Tuesday Alexander said more than 50 attacks were averted because of the surveillance. These included plots against the New York subway system and a Danish newspaper office that had published cartoon depictions of Mohammed. In a new example, Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said the NSA was able to identify an extremist in Yemen who was in touch with Khalid Quasane in Kansas City, Missouri. Quasane. Enabling authorities to identify co-conspirators and thwart a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. Quasane pleaded guilty in May 2010 in federal courts in Missouri to charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Bank fraud. Money laundering. Joyce said the arrest was made possible by the Internet surveillance program disclosed by Snowden. Joyce also said a terrorist financier in San Diego was identified and arrested in October 2007 because a phone record provided by the NSA so the spy and Americans is working, they say. Without any proof. Just believe us. Don't question us. Believe us. Believe us? Yeah. It's like the Twilight Zone episode when they said the state has determined you obsolete. Burgess Meredith. You're obsolete, my friend. Because we decided that you are obsolete. Not that you are obsolete, but the state has determined that you are. Declared that you are obsolete. First is weapons.


We live in a society where engineers and developers coders are really at the forefront of societal change. So we ended up starting Geekwire. Startups are really at the heart of what Geekwire is about. The website is our lifeblood. Reliability of the site is critical. It's not unusual for the site to experience a 5x, 10x increase in traffic. We migrated the site to Azure and we host the site on a variety of different Azure services to support those really unpredictable traffic spikes. Geekwire runs on WordPress. We needed the ability to run a web server farm running Nginx and PHP. We needed a CDN where we can distribute our image assets, a Redis cache to help cache and manage the traffic spikes. Microsoft Azure offered all of those services. The decision maker was when Microsoft launched a new version of a managed MySQL instance. So we could also run the database layer together with that whole stack. We're also using the Azure App Service, which gives us the ability to automatically scale our web server. One of the first tests of our new Azure implementation came with some breaking news. SpaceX just took off and Azure just scaled right up with it. We have a much more powerful infrastructure that can support a lot more traffic at a lower cost. We love that we've built this business here at Geekwire in a scrappy, bootstrapped style and that Microsoft has developed an ecosystem around the startup community.