In this week’s show I highlight a new Apple Podcast called snobOS. I have a new gadget – the Luna Display that’s a hardware solution to let you use your iPad as a secondary display (spoiler, it’s amazing.) Then Troy Shimkus joins us for a short interview segment talking about his adventure going to Apple Park, AKA the Spaceship campus.
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, November 11, 2018, and this is show number 705.
We’re at a secret, remote location in the desert for the show tonight, also known as Steve’s Sister’s house. We invited ourselves to Elaine and her husband Darrell’s house in Arizona. It’s pretty much the only way we get to go anywhere. Ask Maryanne and Devon how we ended up in New Zealand after we invited ourselves to their wedding.
We’re having a blast out here, hiking and horseback riding and eating and even just hanging out. I highly recommend Elaine’s Bed and Breakfast – she even put mints on our pillows! Ok, enough about our fun times annoying Steve’s sister, let’s dig into the show!
Chit Chat Across the Pond
This week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond is a bit different. You’ve met Joe Dugandzic a few times before on Chit Chat and in our CES coverage. He does the Smarter Home Life YouTube channel and blog. He also happens to live in a Tiny Home. On our trip to Phoenix to visit Steve’s sister, we added a day to get a chance to visit Joe and see his Tiny Home.
Joe walked me through his home explaining the work he’s done to use lighting to create the feeling of multiple living spaces in a single room. He has taken home automation to the graduate level by programming in scenes using the Indigo platform on his Mac and integrating these scenes into Insteon switches on the walls of his Tiny Home. He even takes us on a tour of his tiny closet where he has not only all of his clothes and such but also all of the gear stowed away to create his Youtube channel including multiple tripods, LED light panels, and green screen.
Steve recorded video as well and that video will be posted on Monday. We chose to delay it one day because he only had the old black/grey/red intro video on his MacBook Pro so we’ll have to wait till he gets home to pull in the blue and red intro. I’m sure you understand why we had to delay for such an important thing as branding!
As always the audio is in the Chit Chat Across the Pond and Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite feed, and embedded into the page on podfeet.com. The video will be embedded in the same page when it’s produced.
New Podcast – snobOS
I don’t usually plug new podcasts, but I’m going to do just that. You know I’m a huge fangirl of the SMR Podcast. Getting to know Rod and Robb and Chris over the years through the show and then in person with Rod and Robb has been a great joy for Steve and me. A frequent guest on the SMR Podcast is a guy named Terrance Gaines. Terrance brings an “ever so slight Apple bias” to the show so that I don’t have to carry the load all the time.
Terrance, aka BrothaTech has teamed up with his friend Nica Montford to start an Apple-centric show called snobOS. How great is that name? I thought I leaned into my Apple bias! Anyway, Nica is so my people. She has a bachelors of science both electrical AND computer engineering and is getting her
Masters.
Now if this was just another Mac podcast, I probably wouldn’t have brought it up, but Nica and Terrance are bringing something unique to the table. Along with the usual Apple news, tips and tricks, cool software and gadgets, they’re also going to flavor the show with a cultural angle.
Being African American, they hope to bring to light the viewpoint of people of color and how their world might be different from most mainstream tech users. I really like learning about how other people experience the world and this sounds like a great opportunity. It’s not preachy or anything like that, it’s just like some extra spice added to the mix.
I told Terrance that they made a huge mistake with their inaugural episode. Your’e supposed to look back and laugh at how awful it was, but their first episode was great! It’s called Origin Stories and it lets you learn a bit about them and then jumps right into the tech.
I hope you’ll go check it out at www.snoboscast.com/… or look for snobOS in your podcatcher of choice. They even spelled it like macOS with lowercase snob and upper case OS all run together as one word!
Blog Posts
Luna Display Turns Your iPad into a Mac Monitor with Low Latency
Troy Shimkus on the New Apple Spaceship Campus Store
NosillaCastaway Troy Shimkus posted in our Slack (podfeet.com/slack) that he was going to be in the LA area and asked for ideas of what to see. We met up with him for coffee and he was as delightful in person as he seemed online. He did a whirlwind tour of Los Angeles, hitting the Getty museum, the California Science Center to see the Shuttle, AND the Disney Hall designed by Frank Gehry, all in one day!
Then he drove to Central California, went to Petaluma to meet Leo Laporte and watch MacBreak Weekly. I’m not just describing his summer vacation for no reason. From there he drove to Apple Park in Cupertino, also known as the Spaceship Campus. We knew he was going to the Apple Store on the campus so I begged him to buy us some shirts while he was there.
When he got to the store we did a FaceTime so I could sort of virtually experience it with him. I thought it was great fun and was going to tell you all about it, but we came up with a better plan. When he got back to the LA area, we had him over for dinner and we recorded a short segment in my studio so we could let you hear the fun first hand. Let’s hear it in Troy’s words.
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Patreon and Amazon
Whenever you hear me talk about a gadget on the show, I will always try to give you a link to the product on Amazon. If you learn about a product on the show and it sounds nifty to you, I’d really appreciate it if you used the link I provided. These are affiliate links, which means if you buy through that link, a small percentage of what you spend goes to the Podfeet coffers to help offset the costs of creating the show. I realize it can be a little extra effort to do this, so I appreciate all of you who do this.
If you don’t shop through Amazon or it’s too hard to remember, you can always go to Podfeet.com and click on the big, red Support the Show button and find other ways to provide financial support for the podcast production. If you can’t support the show financially, that’s 100% fine. You can still annoy your friends, co-workers, random people in line at the grocery store and the DMV by telling them about all of the fine podcasts over at Podfeet.com. Thank you all or your support.
Parallels Toolbox – The Gift that Keeps On Giving
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/slack, podfeet.com/chat, 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.