August 24, 2024 — Tech Commentator Kirk McElhearn

Gene Steinberg

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Welcome to the Tech Night Owl Live, the show for PC users who can handle the truth.

And now, here's your host, Gene Steinberg.

This week, we're talking to the one and only Kirk McElhern,

who does so many different things that we don't wish to define them.

But he's always entertaining and informative, and we've got plenty to talk about.

I'm the Tech Night Owl Live.

Kirk, as always, welcome back, my friend.

Good to be here again, Gene.

One of the topics that sort of hit me right up the front here is the question of data breaches.

Yeah.

And you have a podcast for Intego, the biggest data leak ever.

I thought security was supposed to get better. What's going on here?

Well, security is getting better, but in this particular case,

it was one company that collected information about people, right?

This company called National Public Data, they're a data broker,

and they sold data for background checks, things like that.

It wasn't financial data necessarily.

The problem is that as these companies get bigger and have more data,

well, they're interested.

There's no such thing as 100% security, right?

It's almost impossible to ensure 100% security.

But what they need to do is prevent that if they are hacked,

prevent that the data be accessible.

So let me give you an example.

You log into a website, and I'm sure you've been around the block a few times,

and you use probably a password manager with a random password,

and you can't remember it, and it's not something like your dog's birthday

or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Speak for yourself.

But of course on TV, it's always your birth date, your girlfriend's birth date,

as you say, your dog's name, right?

Yeah.

So the thing is, if you use a password like that, and you use it in many places,

if there's a data breach that combines your email address and your password,

people will be able to get into multiple accounts.

The problem with data breaches is the fact that, for example,

they may store usernames and passwords.

The correct way to do this is to not store a password, but to store a hash.

A hash is basically a mathematical operation you do on the password that comes to a result

that can't be duplicated any other way, but it can't be reverse engineered.

So anytime you have a data breach with passwords, this is just the wrong back end.

They shouldn't be storing the passwords.

Now, in the case of national public data, it was addresses, telephone numbers,

social security numbers.

A lot of information about jobs, about where people lived,

which is why there were something like 2.7 or 2.9 billion records.

So more than all the people in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom,

which is what the information was stored, because people had lived in multiple addresses.

And they may have had multiple records.

People got married and changed their names and things like that.

The problem about this data breach is that, first of all, it started as a huge data breach,

and it turned out that the company also kept all of this information in plain text,

so not even encrypted.

If a data breach occurs and the data is not encrypted, then bad people get access to all this stuff.

Now, I did see someone on social media say, well, listen, I've got a list of all the social security numbers.

It starts with 111, 11, 1111, and then 111, 111, 1112.

So theoretically, social security numbers, you can make them up,

but it's attaching them to people.

The fact that it's used for identification purposes and potentially could be used,

if you call a company and say, well, I can't get into my account,

they'll ask you some questions, what's your mother's maiden name?

I hope they don't do that anymore.

But your social security number is kind of an identifying number in the United States.

You can't stop this thing from happening.

All you can do is make sure that the data is stored in a secure and encrypted way on the servers,

so when it does leak, people can't get access to the raw data.

Now, here in the U.S., it used to be if you got Medicare,

which is for those who are senior citizens,

the account number would be identical to your social security number.

They have since changed that to something more obscure, so that makes sense.

But I was thinking as you were talking about picking a password at random,

and this is one which identifies actually a cartoon character, but nobody can spell it.

Miksius Pidilik.

Miksius Pidilik, yep.

But the thing about Miksius Pidilik, so people, hackers, when they try to crack passwords,

they have text files in security.

It's called dictionary.

It's called a dictionary attack to try every word in a text file.

And it's every word you'd find in a dictionary.

It's proper names.

My guess is Miksius Pidilik would be in that dictionary because it's not that obscure.

Most people wouldn't know how to spell it offhand,

but a hacker who has a word list would be able to find it.

The one that...

The one that they can't find is the word that sends Miksius Pidilik back to the fifth dimension,

which is his name spelled backwards.

Right, but still, that could be in a word list.

I'm going to give you a tip for a really easy, secure password.

You don't want to use a dictionary word, right?

So you don't want to use, I'm looking at an article.

You don't want to use information.

You don't want to use freezing.

You don't want to use protected, right?

Because they're all in a dictionary.

But imagine if you create a password.

Right?

A password with...

I'm going to choose three shorter words for this.

Data hyphen age hyphen company.

This is incredibly secure, even though it sounds like words.

You know, when you watch on TV and someone's cracking a password to get into a safe,

you see this thing and numbers are rotating

and they're getting the first character of the password,

then the second, then the third.

Doesn't work like that, right?

So if you take any three random words and put two dashes between them,

what did I say, data, company, what were the...

You see, this is the test for dementia.

You have to remember the three words.

If you don't, Kirk, I'm sorry, we'll put you way into the home.

Anyway, take three words.

So looking from the article about this data breach on the Intego website,

the database includes, easy to remember, the hyphen database hyphen includes.

The thing is,

a computer stores this as a 4, 8, 12, 13, 16,

as a 21-character password.

And 21 characters is incredibly secure.

It would take quantum computers to crack 21 characters.

The fact that it contains words doesn't make it easy

because you would have to go through a database.

You would have to go through a dictionary attack

with every word hyphen every word hyphen every word,

but you wouldn't know how many words are in it,

whether it's two, three, or four.

So this is a good way to make a password that's memorable.

So therefore, therefore, bagel hyphen dog hyphen microphone.

Sure, or bagel hyphen lox hyphen cream hyphen cheese, that sort of thing.

Well, that's at least related.

I want something not related.

Okay, so bagel dog microphone.

You think about that, and there's no mathematical way to know that it's

three words with hyphens.

There's no indication when it's encrypted, right,

what it's going to be when it's decrypted.

So it's incredibly secure.

Now, I use 1Password as a password manager,

and it has two options for creating passwords.

One of them is totally random.

So 2, 4, capital Q, X, capital B, 7, 3, et cetera, et cetera.

It'll do things like that which are not memorable

and which are really hard to type in when you need to type them manually.

The other option is memorable passwords,

which could be 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 words with hyphens.

And the advantage of those is you can type them.

For example, I know Amazon changed this, but a few years ago,

when you set up a Kindle, you had to type the password manually.

Now they do it with Bluetooth.

They can connect to your phone and get it if you have the Amazon app.

I had to type my old Amazon password so many times in a Kindle, which was 14 characters,

random, with special characters.

And you just can't not make mistakes when you do that.

So for some passwords, these memorable passwords mean that when you do need to type them in,

because sometimes you can't always copy and paste,

it's easy enough to do it, and they're incredibly secure.

Okay. Well, that's an interesting alternative.

And I certainly will think of something other than Mix's Piddalick,

like the words backwards, which I can't pronounce.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting because a lot of businesses used to tell me,

and I tell people, you need to change your password every month,

as if this was somehow secure, that one month you chose Mix's Piddalick,

and the next month you had to change it, so you chose Mix's Piddalick 2,

because you can't remember if it's a different password all the time.

And then you did Mix's Piddalick 3.

And no one seriously suggests that you need to change a password often anymore.

In fact, the best thing is to have a good secure password and never change it,

unless it shows up in a data breach.

Now, there is a website that you should check called haveibeenpwned.com.

Pwned, P-W-N-E-D, this is a hacker term for someone getting control of your account.

So if you go to haveibeenpwned.com and put in your email address,

you'll see how many data breaches it has appeared in.

Now, this doesn't mean that it necessarily had your password.

It doesn't tell you whether it's had your address or your social security number and all that,

but it just shows that your email address was in data breaches.

Let's go with more of this with Kirk.

And Gene, you're in the Tech Night Owl live.

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Live with Gene Steinberg.

It's the Tech Nightmare.

Now.

Because you never know what's going to happen next.

Data breaches.

What to do.

What to expect.

They will be inevitable.

They're inevitable.

Now, I was talking about HaveIBeenPwned.com.

If you find that your email address is in a data breach,

well, you need to think about what locks it could open,

and what doors it could open.

The worst thing to do is to use the same password for multiple accounts.

Because imagine this.

You've used your password Gene123 on a whole bunch of accounts.

I hope you never use that password, Gene.

And someone finds this in a data breach,

and they go to look up other accounts with your email address,

and they try that Gene123.

And they might get into other accounts.

The most important account to protect is your email account,

because,

if you can't get into an account of any kind,

and you click on the forgot my password link,

they're going to send you an email.

So if a hacker can get into your email account,

they can access all of your other accounts by saying,

I've forgotten my password,

and get the new passwords sent to the email account that they now control.

So one, make sure your email account password is really secure.

And two, never reuse passwords.

And we all did it back in the day, right?

It was common.

Because we weren't worried about this.

But now, your identity can be stolen.

People can access.

Banking apps are a little bit more difficult.

But if someone accesses your email,

they can access a whole lot of your accounts.

Well, I know that some email systems, business email systems,

when you set up a password, they will suggest for you.

But of course, so will, like a 1Password, so will Apple.

So will Apple, yeah.

Apple has enhanced.

Yeah.

It's password feature for macOS Sequoia.

Yeah.

Yeah, they've got a new standalone passwords app in macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, iPadOS 18.

Now it's in the settings.

But having it on its own, for me, this tells people how important passwords are.

I think it's going to send a message to people when they see it,

that passwords deserve to have their own app.

And this is something that wasn't the case before.

So currently, we're on Sonoma.

You can see your passwords in the settings app.

You can see your passwords in Safari.

But having an app on its own gives a lot more weight to passwords.

Of course, that's Apple doing what they call destroying another utility.

There used to be a word for it.

I can't think of it.

Sherlocking.

Sherlocking, right.

I say, El Chap, they're going to Sherlock your 1Password.

That's what Apple's going to do.

Because they've got this new app now.

And you have to think, it's with the system.

It's going to pick up all the passwords I've set through iCloud or et cetera.

Why do I need to have another password app?

Well, first of all, it's not going to Sherlock 1Password at all.

By the way, if anyone doesn't know where Sherlock came from, it's way back,

I don't know how many years ago, early macOS 10.

There was an app called Sherlock that could search for files on a Mac.

And then Apple came out with Spotlight, I believe.

I believe it was.

And so, Sherlock would no longer have any advantages, and that's where the term came

from.

Sherlock was Sherlocked.

Exactly.

That's where it came from.

So, 1Password is essentially a company for the enterprise market now.

Individuals can use it, but their main target is businesses who set up passwords for employees.

The groups of employees share passwords and all of that.

It's managed.

An IT admin can manage it.

Yeah.

They can manage passwords, can cut off access to passwords immediately.

They got venture capital funding a few years ago, and they've totally, you know, they did

a 90 degree to focus on the enterprise market while still selling to individuals.

I use 1Password for several reasons, and I probably won't depend just on Apple's password

app because I'm just opening 1Password.

So I have logins, so that's email and password combinations.

I have secure notes, which the passwords app doesn't do.

I have my credit cards.

I have bank account information, driver's license, passports, and I have software licenses,

which is really practical.

So 1Password is a database that does a lot more than just storing passwords.

You can store secure notes in the notes app, but it's like each one you have to separately

set a password, whereas here everything's in the 1Password database.

I can access 1Password on non-Apple devices, even on the web if I need to.

So it's a lot more flexible than Apple's solution, I think.

Quite possibly, but the average user may never bother.

Well, the average user is reusing the same password, and so hopefully with Apple

having a passwords app, they'll start to educate people.

I'd like to see that.

We don't know how that's going to happen, but as I said, it's creating more visibility

for passwords, which can only be a good thing.

Now, there's one more thing here that we have to watch out for, is when a company

does a software update and brings down the entire country.

Yeah, that was a funny one, wasn't it?

So CrowdStrike, yeah.

Yes.

And I'm looking here at CrowdStrike's site.

Now consider this.

Up until recently, I'd be listening to radio or TV.

Get CrowdStrike.

Protect yourself.

They advertise.

I didn't know that.

Oh, sure.

And they're talking about mostly for small businesses.

Right, because they're not a consumer product.

Right.

I mean, if I'm running a kind of a business, say I'm selling stuff online, and I have several

thousand customers or more, which would be nice, of course, then I might get CrowdStrike.

But then CrowdStrike is going to...

Yeah.

They're going to come up with a software update.

They always do.

And if something is wrong with that update, the update process will blow up half the PCs

in the world.

Well, in this case, it was an update to their virus definitions, and they didn't

appropriately test it.

And the problem was that it's such, on Windows, antivirus software connects into the kernel

at the lowest level of the operating system, which made it really hard to fix.

You don't get the same sort of access on a Mac.

The Mac is a bit more protected.

A lot of these were older Windows systems, because businesses don't upgrade Windows very

often for key uses.

They want stability.

So the issue was more...

It was partly the way Windows is constructed, the way Windows allows third world software

to hook into the system, but also the fact that CrowdStrike hadn't really tested the

update.

Yeah.

I'm talking here about another kind of data situation, one involving Wi-Fi passwords.

And I ran into this the other day, where suddenly, in the Photos app, rather than just the family

stuff, I was seeing dozens of pictures with financial amounts on, like Bitcoins or something.

And where did that come from?

I don't use that, so I delete them, and then the next hour, more are up there.

I changed my Wi-Fi password.

Gone.

Of course, I deleted all the extraneous photos, but now everything is gone.

Of course, now I will log in in about an hour, and it'll be there again.

But seriously, that was a strange kind of penetration.

Yeah.

So Wi-Fi is interesting, because Wi-Fi routers get firmware updates.

So firmware is the software that goes onto hardware.

They get firmware updates for a certain amount of time.

And then they stop.

And you really need to check if your router has an update that you should apply, because

they don't always apply them automatically.

This is something that not enough people pay attention to, because getting access to someone's

router means that they can potentially get into your network.

Maybe you've got a Ring doorbell, or you've got a camera in your house or something.

They can get access to that.

They can get access, potentially, to data on devices that aren't well protected.

Routers are probably the least suspected items in personal computing, and yet the

ones that are probably the most at risk, because hackers know which model routers have vulnerabilities.

And they can just search for them online.

They just send out requests to IP addresses, and they'll find which router it is and see

if they can get through it.

So you really need to check your router settings and see if there's a firmware.

Now, of course, with a lot of people, you get a free Wi-Fi setup with your ISP, and

the passwords, whatever they give you.

And you set it up, and you never pay attention to it.

Now, of course, the difference is when I set up my Wi-Fi system, I will pick custom passwords.

And for example, with Cox's Panoramic Wi-Fi, there's, of course, the lower frequency

band and the higher frequency band, so you have two different bands, and you set a different

password for each.

That's one way.

But, you know, there's where you go.

That's the system.

But, of course, I use the custom password, and oh, well, what can I tell you?

Somebody discovered it, and I kind of wondered if it was one of the neighbors who just moved

in.

What?

Who knows?

But somebody, obviously, nearby.

You're living in an apartment complex.

You've got dozens of routers.

You've got dozens of routers on your network, because you're within range of them.

We're in range of lots more comments from the one and only Kirk McElhern, and we've

got more also.

We're going to talk about some new Apple products that may or may not come, and maybe the rumors

aren't so pleasant after all.

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Do you know what's going to happen next?

Well, here's the Tech Night Owl.

Live.

With Gene Steinberg.

Now, I should let listeners know, most of you know, that I had this aging, late 2014

iMac, 27-inch iMac.

And in replacing the computer, I thought, well, Apple no longer has 27-inch iMacs in

the current Apple Silicon product line.

It's 24-inch.

So, okay, fine.

I ended up buying a ViewSonic 27-inch display.

It's 4K, not 5K, but believe me, for most people, the difference is very slight.

And an M1 Mac Mini.

Of course, we're up to an M2 Mac Mini and an M4 is coming out.

The Mac Mini is two and a half times faster than my previous iMac.

Yeah, any of the M series Macs is much faster than Intel.

Any Intel processor on a Mac.

Okay, so it's pretty decent.

I didn't get the Pro.

I got the regular one.

The Pro, of course, I'd get somewhat more performance, but I got such a deal.

You know, like such a deal?

I got such a deal on the M1, I said, I can't let this buy.

So I got the M1.

And when Apple comes out with the M4, we'll look again.

Now, Apple has kept the current form factor of the Mac Mini since what?

2010, I believe.

Oh, it's before that.

Wasn't it like 2005?

It might be, but I think there was a revision somewhere along the line.

So I read 2010.

Well, their revision was to take the optical drive out.

So yeah, you're right there.

Okay.

2010.

And all Apple has done is changed the innards or changed the port line up and back.

Now there's a story suggesting that Apple's going to come out with a Mini Mini or a Mini

Me, Mac Mini, which will be smaller, the same size as an Apple TV.

Now, practically speaking, that works, except I could think of a few areas where having

that smaller form factor doesn't work.

And I bet you do too.

I'm sure we're thinking of the same thing.

When I saw this, the first thing I thought, okay, is how big is the dongle that you need

to plug in to get enough ports to do anything with it?

Because an Apple TV has what, it's got an HDMI and ethernet and maybe a USB port.

So you could fit, you could squeeze three ports on the back of a Mac Mini, like if it

was that size, but you still need ethernet.

So my thought was, you know, the current iMac, it has the ethernet port in the power brick.

So you have a plug that goes into your wall, you have a plug that goes into your socket,

then it goes into a big power brick.

And then there's a cable that goes up to the output.

That's the iMac.

And the ethernet jack is in that power brick.

Now they could put all of the ports in the power brick for the Mac Mini, which would

end up being bigger than the Mac Mini.

I mean, the power brick for my iMac, so I have a 24 inch iMac, is probably the size

of the current Mac Mini almost.

If this is meant to be a desktop computer, you have to give a way for people to connect

peripherals.

And sure, you can have a Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse, and that's no problem.

But you need to have disks and you need to have maybe a scanner, a second display, etc.

So while the idea is interesting, I just don't see how this is practical for anything more

than, I don't know, I have an M2 Mac Mini that I use as a server.

I have my Plex library on it, I use it for backups.

It does nothing else.

So I don't need a lot of ports on that.

I do have external disk connected to it.

So I can see a Mac Mini, a smaller Mac Mini for that, but I don't see it for trying to

do anything serious.

Because you'd have to buy dongles and docks and all sorts of things to plug anything into

it.

Well, it doesn't have to be that size.

It could be a little bit larger and you can contain four ports, two USB-A, two USB-C,

plus HDMI.

And then you stick the ethernet port on the power strip.

Well, that's what the current one.

I'm looking at it on Apple's website.

It's got the power input, the AC input, it's got ethernet, it's got two USB-C Thunderbolt

4, it's got HDMI, two USB-A.

Now, if you took out the ethernet, you could get something about two thirds the width,

but not as small as an Apple TV.

I mean, maybe they're shrinking more stuff in it, but remember, this still has to have

thermal evacuation.

It's not going to have a fan, I don't think, if it's that small.

So, you can't squeeze everything too tight.

No, I see the point.

I'm looking also at the Apple TV right now.

And as you say, it's a little bit too small.

It could be a little bit larger.

There's nothing in stone saying the next Mac Mini must be the size of an Apple TV.

No.

And in fact, I'm not sure how serious this rumor is because, you know, we pay attention

to the rumors.

They come and they go.

The idea of a mini Mac Mini is tempting, but getting that small, I think, would be problematic.

Well, I don't really see much of a problem with the current form factor, but being a

little bit smaller, okay.

That's nice.

And that gives a reason maybe to sell new units, but really it's what's inside that

counts.

The Mac Mini is an interesting Mac.

It started out as the Mac for switchers, right?

So it was, what did they call it?

A-Y-K-M, bring your own keyboard and mouse.

So all you get is a computer and they assumed that you were a PC user.

You had a USB keyboard and a USB mouse.

And I even used one as my main computer for a year or two, 15 years ago.

It was fine.

It's a powerful computer, especially now with the M series processors.

I believe you can put, if you get the Pro, you can put four, it's got four Thunderbolt

ports.

They can put two or three displays if you need.

I mean, I've never used more than one display.

So it's an incredibly powerful little computer.

I don't see the need to make it smaller.

You don't gain anything by making a computer like that smaller.

I don't see any advantage.

I can think for cosmetic purposes, you make it a little smaller just to say, look, it's

different.

Hey folks.

But you've got the M4 processor as opposed to the M1 or M2.

That's the difference.

Who cares?

But there's a continuity in this.

In this computer that has been this shape and this size, as you say, since 2010.

But before that it was the same size in width and depth, just not in height going back to

like 2005.

So there is a continuity and Apple doesn't necessarily want to break the continuity with

something like this.

We'll, we'll see.

I think they currently have a model with an M2 Pro.

There's no hurry to put an M4 into the Mac mini.

I don't think.

This is going to be something we'll see this year.

I'd really be surprised if anything, it's the Mac studio.

That's going to get the M4 before the Mac mini.

It's got the M2 Max and ultra, but the jump from that to the M4 is more for the Mac studios,

the Mac pro for most people, right?

Most people don't need a Mac pro because of the size, because of the, the amount of things

you can connect.

They don't need it.

So the Mac studio is the pro computer.

Right?

For the majority of people.

And I see that being updated to an M4 long before the Mac mini.

Well the point being here is that the Mac mini has parts similar to a Mac book air.

essentially it is.

Yeah.

So why not?

Who knows?

I mean, w we try to read the tea leaves with Apple, but you know, we'll find out when we

find out.

I'm sure that that's not their priority.

Mac mini is not a big selling computer.

Although a lot of people buy it as a small server.

Well the person who delivered those rumors is someone who's been reasonably accurate

in his projections.

Yeah.

Well we'll see.

I'm not that excited about it cause I've never, apart from a period when it was my main computer,

I'm more interested in the iMac.

So my current iMac is three and a half years old.

Yeah.

It's an M1.

I don't feel that it's not fast enough for just about everything I do.

When I bought this, I said, okay, I'm going to keep this five years because I had already

had an M1 Mac book air and I saw how much faster they were.

And since you can now extend Apple care, right?

So it used to be Apple care was only three years and I really liked Apple care on my

computers that I use for work.

So I just recently renewed this in June.

So I've got another year of guarantee on this, should anything happen.

And I'm tempted to want to keep it five years, even if they come out with an M4 iMac, I'm

not sure what advantages it would give me in the work I do.

The way I have mine set up is also very practical.

So I have a separate display, which obviously can work with different computers, it sets

up either with USB-C or HDMI.

I have it connected via the HDMI port.

I also have just a small drive on the iMac and a large Thunderbolt external with a Thunderbolt

case.

So it's performance based on benchmarks is identical to the internal drive, but being

it's an external drive, two terabytes, I could just take it to my next computer.

So I can spend hundreds of dollars less.

Yeah.

To buy the next Mac mini, if that's what I get, which probably will be, and not have

to worry about that replacement cost makes it so much cheaper to upgrade.

Yeah.

We've got more to come with Kirk McElhern.

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What are you listening?

The Tech Night Isle Live with Gene Steinberg.

What's going to happen next?

You never know.

Now, in contrast to my upgrade policy now, which is new, for years I had iMacs.

But then again, you want to upgrade an iMac, it's all or nothing.

So there are pros and cons.

The one is that the iMac display is beautiful, and it always has been, at least since the flat screen.

So even with the CRT iMacs, they were very good.

And what I used to do is go back around 10 years, right, when every couple of years the improvements to a Mac were such that it was really good to get a new Mac.

And so for me, I used to buy every 18 to 24 months a new Mac and sell the previous one.

I'd always get at least half what I paid for the new one.

So it wasn't that expensive.

And that's why for, since the first 5K iMac, I've been using iMacs as my main computers, because I do tend to sell them.

Although now if I'm going to keep this one for five years, it won't have much value when I do potentially sell it.

But I'm just more comfortable in not having an external display of one less thing that goes wrong, because Apple doesn't sell a good external display at a decent price.

What is it, $1599 for the studio?

The studio display is the cheapest, but I'm just looking on the Apple website.

$1599, yeah.

That's more than, well, that's almost the cost of the iMac that I have.

So I've had third-party displays in the past, and they've never been as good as Apple built-in displays or even Apple Cinema displays.

And I'm not prepared to spend that much on a display, so I'd rather just buy an iMac.

And by the way, I don't need, I downgraded from a 27-inch to a 24 when the M1 iMac came out.

And I don't miss.

It's a larger display.

Because of the work I do, I don't need a big display.

And the difference is not that big, because that's a diagonal measurement.

Right.

So you go for each end of it, and you say, okay, it's now an inch and a half less there.

It's an inch and a half left in the corner.

It's a little bit smaller vertically.

It's not that big, because you're looking, if you're looking at the computer, it's still going to be wider than your normal field of vision anyway, unless you go back quite a distance.

Yeah.

I consider that.

But this was a more practical alternative, because the price I got on that ViewSonic display, which, as I said, is not quite up to the Apple display, but not really that much less in terms of quality.

It's not.

And therefore, what's the point?

Well, again, for me, having AppleCare means that if something goes wrong, it's covered.

Now, you could buy a separate guarantee for your ViewSonic.

I don't know if you did, but I just, I like to simplify things.

I really do.

It's cheap enough that you don't really care.

You get five years out of it.

Yeah.

It's $350.

Yeah.

You get five years out of it, so what?

It's still two more cables, one power cable, and one to connect it to the back, and I'm tired of cables, and it's, you know, we each do our own wedging.

I'll do mine.

You do yours.

We're both happy.

Whatever.

It's the first for me.

I haven't.

I haven't had anything beyond the iMac since the mid, early 2000s.

I think a 2009 iMac was the first one I bought for regular use.

Before then, I had separate display, a separate Mac Pro, I think, at that particular time.

And fine.

That's what I use.

I had the big computer on the floor under my desk, and I had the display.

Now, to point things out, despite.

The miniaturization, and maybe having a few more cables in the back, I have the same computer desk I had in 1993.

My desk, I had two desks made for me in the early 2000s by a furniture maker, and I'm still using them.

The one I'm on, I'm only using one of them now.

I used to have them in an L shape, but I'm only using one.

It's about just under six feet long by three feet deep.

Something like that, or a little bit less deep.

So it's not a computer desk.

It's a proper large desk.

And in the past couple years, I've been really into minimalizing.

I used to have all sorts of things on my desk, and I knew where everything was, and I've been clearing stuff off, so my desk is a lot more empty.

But this is the larger of the two, and I've recently been thinking of going back to the smaller one, which is 160 centimeters, so that's about five feet or so.

And that's another thing.

An iMac doesn't take up much space.

It's no bigger than the display.

I know a Mac Mini doesn't take up a lot either, but I like having less stuff on my desk.

Obviously, to the left side of the display, I've got my Mac Mini.

Behind it, I've got the little tiny drives.

Obviously, I have external backup drives.

Yeah.

So therefore, having one more cable with one more drive is no big deal.

Yeah.

These drives are just really tiny, so it doesn't matter.

It's not like in the old days where you wanted to get an external drive, and it's a big, humongous thingy.

These are tiny things, and therefore, it doesn't make a difference to me.

An extra cable or two, who cares?

Because remember, I have a microphone on the desk.

I have the mic mixer on the desk.

I have a spare mic in case I need it.

I'm all set for everything, so it really doesn't bother me.

But as you say, to each his own.

So just next to the stand of my iMac, behind the display, I have a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Pro Dock.

I think it has 18 ports, something like that.

It's got three Thunderbolt, four USB.

It's got audio.

It's got Ethernet.

It's got HDMI.

It's got a SD card slot in the front.

So that's what I was thinking of with the Mini Mac Mini.

You still need a dongle like this because you've got things you're going to plug in.

So I have a microphone, too, and my microphone's USB.

I'm not using a mixer anymore, so that's got to be plugged in.

I've got two time machine drives.

I've got a drive with my music.

Then I've got off in a cabinet about three feet away, I've got two other hard drives, spinning hard drives.

The ones on the desk are all SSDs.

That's a lot of things that are connected.

Okay, there's a difference.

My layout is two external drives, one carbon copy cloner backup, then a time machine backup.

Of course, I also use Backblaze for all.

Off-site backups.

And then I have the external drive, which is the main drive for my Mac Mini.

So it's three drives.

Okay.

As I said, because the SSDs are so tiny and you've got maybe a foot and a half cable, who cares?

I will say this in terms of longevity.

The Thunderbolt cable on my external drive failed after a few months.

And I got a new one.

A new one's like $10.

Or something.

During that period, what I did is I used the carbon copy cloner drive for my data and used the internal drive on the Mac Mini for the operating system and the apps.

So I was able to get going and keep going for a couple of days until Amazon sent me the replacement.

That's a good solution because then you don't need a Mac Mini with a lot of internal storage.

I mean, you can get 128 gigabytes and you're fine for the operating system and apps.

And you put all your data on a different drive and you're fine.

And as you say, you can take the data drive and connect it to another Mac.

We're living in a period of luxury with all these self-powered SSDs because they don't need an extra power supply.

Self-powered hubs, even.

So a lot of these things are – we do have a lot fewer wires than in the past.

But still, I'm like you.

Carbon copy cloner, time machine.

I have two time machine disks.

Backblaze, multiple backups just to be safe.

So, yeah, there's still a lot of things you need to connect.

Paranoid is our middle name.

Well, no, I lost data once.

I lost a day's work.

And ever since then, I've backed up with belts and suspenders and online.

Well, I think I can get away with that with one time machine drive and one carbon copy cloner plus Backblaze, which is constant backups.

Yeah.

The same as?

Yeah.

The same as time machine, which is, I guess, hourly.

So either way, I figure I'm okay.

I'll survive.

And it sounds like a song from the 1960s or something.

But we don't want to get into that.

Not that disco song, I Will Survive, Donna Summers.

Was it Donna Summers?

Someone like that.

No, no, Gloria Gaynor.

Gloria Gaynor, exactly.

Yeah.

Whatever happened to her?

I don't know.

See, Donna Summers, I know, died in her 60s, which was sad because she was really talented.

Yeah.

She had a Broadway voice, and she could sing anything, and she had a great personality.

So I actually heard a live concert, and it wasn't just a disco lady.

She, as they say, would sing any kind of song, but she used disco to become popular.

Of course, that was also a downside because it killed the Bee Gees.

The Bee Gees could sing a wide variety of stuff, but after the disco era failed.

It was a different type of disco.

You know, her song with Giorgio Moroder, I Feel Love, was a groundbreaking song.

It was totally different than what the Bee Gees did, but they, you know, they cohabited all that stuff.

Yes, but when disco ended, the Bee Gees didn't have as much of a career.

They wrote songs for other people.

True.

So Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and Celine Dion.

Yeah.

And lots of other people, they wrote songs for them and even produced them or played on them.

And did backup on them, but you didn't have as many things coming from the Bee Gees as before.

But if you look at their history, they had a wide variety of sounds.

And also this incredible, and an incredible harmony.

They could sing acapella perfectly because I saw them do it a few times.

We're going to do this one more segment with Kirk McElhern on the Tech Night Out Live.

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Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest.

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