With a lot of help from the NosillaCastaways we have a great show. George from Tulsa brings us a review of the Chromebook Pixel, Helma from the Netherlands tells us how she translates Japanese using her iPhone, Knightwise from Belgium explains how he hacked High Sierra onto a Mac that Apple says is too old to run that OS. Patreon turns around and apologizes. I managed to do one segment, where I put Overcast through its paces against the criteria with which I judged Pocket Casts and Downcast last week. Finally Steve reads his annual poem, The Night Before Christmas – NosillaCast style.
Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, December 17, 2017, and this is show number 658.
This week Steve and I helped his wonderful parents move into a new home. It was four days of packing and driving long distance and unpacking, and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It did mean that we had a lot of time off the grid and very little time to work on the show. Whenever this happens, the NosillaCastaways jump in and lend a hand. We’ve got reviews and Tiny Tips by George from Tulsa, Helma from The Netherlands, and the imitable Knightwise from Belgium. I did get a chance to do one review myself, and Steve is back with his annual holiday tradition. Many thanks to all of you for stepping up and making the show happen this week.
Next week there won’t be a live show, because it will be Christmas Eve. I’m also guessing I might not get a lot of attendance if I had a live show on New Year’s Eve either. Of course the NosillaCast will still go on with full shows both weeks, but you’ll probably get them quite a bit early. If you get a fun gadget or cool software for the holidays, I could use a few listener reviews for the week between Christmas and New Years, so please dust off that mic and make a recording.
Chit Chat Across the Pond
This week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond was with Allison Hartley discussing the trials, tribulations and Triumphs of converting to a new iPhone. Allison is the co-host of both the Tech Doctor Podcast and That Blind Tech Show. She’s warm, and funny and knowledgeable and it was simply delightful to geek out with her for 45 minutes. I should mention that her trials and tribulations had nothing to do with accessibility! Check it out in the full Chit Chat Across the Pond feed, or in the Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite feed in your podcatcher of choice. Or you can listen right at podfeet.com/….
Blog Posts
Google Chromebook Pixel – by George from Tulsa
Helma from the Netherlands stepped up with a Tiny Tip just for us:
Tiny Tip – Translating Japanese on Your iPhone – by Helma
After Helma sent the tip on how well Google Translate worked in Japanese for her, I did some testing of my own. I have a friend who often posts in Japanese on Facebook so I ran Google Translate from my phone using a screenshot as Helma suggested. Then I sent the translation to my friend and asked her how well it did. She said it was pretty darn good. Not exact but certainly got the right intent. Then I asked Kaylee from Japan to check it out. She ran it on a blog post with a quote from Jony Ive and she said she was really impressed, that it was REALLY good. Not perfect, but much better than it used to be. So thanks for a great Tiny Tip, Helma!
Knightwise on High Sierra on Old Mac
Even though Apple supports pretty old Macs with the latest OS, at some point they’re too old to be supported. But Knightwise has figured out a hack to get past this and put High Sierra on a 2008 iMac. Why? “Because you’re not allowed to.”
Here’s a link to the tool keyword used to hack High Sierra onto his 2008 iMac: macOS High Sierra Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs: dosdude1.com/…
Knightwise also mentions that his Mac has a WiFi card that’s not supported by this tool, but LifeHacker has an article about an external USB WiFi adapter from Edimax that might help: Here’s a Decent Wi-Fi Adapter That’ll Solve Your Mac’s Busted Wi-Fi Problem
Patreon
Last week I told you about how Patreon had decided to change their billing model in a way that seriously penalized those making small contributions to lots of creators. A lot of people simply dropped Patreon, many were forced to drop support for some creators to make up for the increased costs. Overall, what Patreon thought would be an improvement for the creators completely ignored the detrimental impact to the real customers, the patrons themselves.
We have great news, Patreon backpedaled 100%. Patreon CEO Jack Conte wrote a detailed apology: We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change. – The Patreon Blog. It’s well written and I’d like to read it to you.
I’m very pleased with this and I believe they’re sincere. I have always said that we can’t expect perfection out of anyone, and I believe in making decisions based on how companies (and people) react when they do make a mistake. I hope that you feel you can trust them again, even if it means keeping a watchful eye out to make sure they don’t do it wrong when they do roll out new changes.
If you left Patreon or modified your patronage downward in anticipation of the changes, I’m glad you voted with your dollars because you did help Patreon to see the impact of their decision. But now that they’ve turned around, I sure hope you’ll come back. I did see a lot of up and down movement and people disappearing and reappearing over the last week or so. Because of all the movement I can’t easily tell if we got new Patrons but if you did start contributing, I thank you for your patronage.
Why Not Overcast?
Let’s close out the show with an annual tradition: Steve’s rendition of The Night Before Christmas, featuring Honda Bob.
The Night Before Christmas
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. podfeet.com/patreon, podfeet.com/facebook, podfeet.com/googleplus, podfeet.com/amazon! And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.