There were no Zen Tech shows for both Wed 8-8-18 and 8-22-18

---

 

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

The KVMR audio archive wasn’t working right as I post these notes. Audio for today’s program, if it shows up, and recent shows will be here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

 

Mikail Graham joined Glenn in the studio today.

 

Glenn reminded listeners that they can call in with their questions or comments during the show. The number in the studio is 530-265-9555. Or they can send email to zen at kvmr dot org.

According to Mikail, Apple is about to announce a huge lineup of new products, “so they say”. 3 new iPhones are expected. The announcement is expected on Wed Sep 12.

He got a question from a user whose friend has an iPhone 6 with 16gigs of memory. The user wondered if his friend needed to buy a new iPhone just to get more memory. Yes, sadly, that is the way it works, Mikail said.

Mikail then went on to describe a card that plugs into the Lightning connector to which you can then add flash memory. The unit Glenn got is an all-in-one unit that plugs into the lightning connector and it has the flash memory inside giving him an extra 32gigs. <I’m guessing that the iPhone 6 doesn’t have a lightning port.>

But Glenn encountered a problem with his new flash memory unit. His intent was to transfer all of his photos to the flash drive, but it only allowed him to transfer 200 of them and he wasn’t allowed to choose which photos. He said he’ll do more research to resolve the problem.

Mikail asked what brand it is. Glenn thought it was Lexar, but wasn’t completely sure. The unit Mikail ordered for himself is a 128gig San Disk.

Mikail recommended that people get the phone model with the most memory when they go shopping for a phone, no matter what the brand, but especially Apple “because you can’t change it after the fact”. 64gig is the minimum you should consider, he added.

Glenn thanked supporters of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a contributing member, you can call the business office at 530-265-9073 or go to the KVMR website.>

Mikail read the disclaimer this time:
The views and opinions expressed on this show are those of the speakers, being Glenn and I and any guest that might call in, and do not reflect the management, staff or any of the people here.

Mikail highly recommends Imazing, which he’s been using for about 3 years. It’s a backup program that runs on the PC or Mac <he was ambiguous about whether it runs on the iPhone, but it looks like it does>. It can back up everything, not just what Apple allows. It sells for about $39.99 and occasionally goes on sale. On the PC you can bypass iTunes completely, he said. With iTunes you can only add music the way it lets add the music, Imazing frees you from that constraint. It’s one of the best investments he can recommend for IOS users, and support from the company is good. There is a demo you can download for free.

Mikail mentioned that the new operating system for the Mac called Mojave is coming out soon. But he said to stay away from it for a while until it gets a couple of updates to fix things. He waited until April of 2018 to cautiously switch to High Sierra.

Mikail is a beta tester of Apple products. If you’d like to become a beta tester, google the words: apple beta test.

He’s run IOS 12 for a while and it improved the battery usage significantly. Also, it runs on all phones that IOS 11 runs on — all the way back to the iPhone 5S. IOS 12 is snappier — windows open faster, apps open faster and the responsiveness is much better. But he stopped using it because some things didn’t work — the home automation thru iCloud or Home Kit, for example.

To automate his house, he bought a Logitech hub for about $75. It can handle 8 to 15 devices, depending on the remote you have. It can control the home lighting, AC/heating & TV viewing, for example.

One of the new things in IOS 12 is an app that lets you teach Siri to “do all kinds of different things”. For example he’ll be able to tell Siri that he’s going to KVMR to do his radio show and Siri will know to turn off the lights & TV and turn on the porch light. Then when he gets to KVMR, Siri will remind him what he needs to do. <Similar to what Google Assistant does, as I understand it.> Unfortunately, Siri still seems to have problems understanding commands when used in a car, as Glenn mentioned on a previous show.

Paul sent a text (txt) to the show saying he won’t call in, but wanted to say hello from Budapest Hungary, where he just arrived.

Kate called about a problem she has with her iPhone concerning email. She uses iCloud, Gmail and SBC Global for email. The iCloud and Gmail accounts work ok. However, SBC would seem to load the mail and say you have 74 messages but nothing would open up. She was on the phone with the iPhone help desk for 2 hours last night but nobody was able to help her.
– A quick fix suggested by Mikail is to go to your SBC account and set up a mail forwarding to the Gmail address, so all of the SBC mail is forwarded to the Gmail account. That way you don’t have to abandon SBC mail and then have to notify everyone that you’ve changed to a different email address.
– He recommend using the Gmail app. It works with other email services including SBC, not just Gmail. And when replying, you can tell it to to use the address the email came from (SBC) or your Gmail address.
– Go into Setting -> Email -> Accounts & Passwords, then check to see if Yahoo <meant SBC? – are they the same?> is looking for a password.
– Also check to see if the Yahoo <SBC?> account is using IMAP or POP. If it’s IMAP, you can log out and then log in again and “everything will repopulate”. Often that will rest everything so it will start working again. She said she did that but the problem persists.

Art called. He has an older Toshiba laptop that was able to play DVDs until he upgraded to Windows 10. He was told that Microsoft has a new program that plays DVDs. He’s tried other players like VLC but no luck.

He went into Device Manager and clicked on the drive, and it said “Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information in the registry is incomplete or damaged. Code 19”
– The driver is not installed correctly, Mikail thought. But Art searched for and installed the latest drivers.
– Its possible the DVD drive is no longer supported.
– Try going to the Toshiba website and search for drivers for your specific laptop.
– For under $30 you can get an external DVD drive and under $100 a Blueray drive. That’s cheap enough to avoid the hassle of resolving issues with a built-in drive. And you can use the external drive on other computers.

Last Updated 11:53 PM 8-29-2018