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Fresh off Macstock, you get the full debrief on this year’s gathering before diving into a stacked round of Quick Tips. You’ll learn how to disable Summarize Notification Previews to stop needless battery churn, clear every unread Apple Watch notification in one shot, and weigh whether it’s finally time to move to macOS Tahoe. There’s a heads-up that Mac minis and Mac Studios are back in Apple’s Refurbished Store, a slick Control-Tilde trick to reveal formulas in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice, the case for a USB-only cable when you’re heading into DFU recovery mode, and clever moves like stretching a Kindle book loan with an old iPad, building reusable packing-list templates, and scheduling an automatic weekly reboot to keep your Macs running clean.

Then you tackle your questions: setting the default audio app on your iPhone, when prepaid mobile data might be the smarter play (and when it’s not!), and a big Don’t Get Caught warning that macOS 28 is dropping support for encrypted HFS+ drives, so decrypt or reformat those external volumes before you upgrade next year. You’ll also hear how Claude Code can become your new macOS troubleshooting partner, including some honest thoughts on leaning on AI to fix your machine.

Cool Stuff Found rounds it out with UDM14 for Google results minus the AI summaries, Backdrop for live macOS wallpaper, Clock Rings for tracking time in decimal, and a cheap camera lens cover that works across your MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. As always, come learn at least five new things.

Categories: Episode

Dave Hamilton

Dave Hamilton is a podcaster, a publisher, and a nerd who has spent the past three decades of his career educating thousands of computer users. In addition to Mac Geek Gab podcast (now in its 19th year!), Dave is co-host of Business Brain and Gig Gab, two other shows to check out! Dave is also the co-founder and CEO of BackBeat Media, a boutique network of podcasts and websites that represents fiercely-independent publishers, of which Dave considers himself one. He has been involved in online publishing since 1998, when he co-founded The Mac Observer, a popular Apple news site which was acquired in 2021. Technology isn't the only thing Dave's a nerd about: he's also a drummer, playing in Bitter Pill, Fling, and various other projects in and around the New Hampshire seacoast where he and his wife, Lisa, live and raised their two children. Dave's reachable for a limited amount of paid consulting at DaveTheNerd.com and you can find to him on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, too!

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