Speeding Up a Sluggish Mac and Cool Stuff Found – Mac Geek Gab 641

Cool Stuff Found today contains lots of things you suggested after listening to recent shows, including tools to help your Mac sleep, help you manage your keyboard shortcuts and macros, privately sync your notes, auto-file your Mail, and free backup storage! Then its on to sharing your tips and answering your questions. Want to learn how to factory reset your AirPods, enable band-steering on your router, or have Siri search Google instead of Bing? Let’s go!

Samsung's Note 7 Fire Report: Surprise, It's the Batteries

Samsung will officially announce the results of its investigation into the Galaxy Note 7 fires next week, and there won’t be any big surprises because they’re pointing the finger that the smartphone’s battery. The company is also going to say there were manufacturing issues, although it’s not clear yet what those were.

Simply Mac Stores Closing, but it Isn't Apple's Fault

GameStop is shutting down several of its Simply Mac stores across the U.S., and initial reports claimed it’s because Apple ended its Authorized Reseller agreement with the retailer. GameStop representatives say that’s not true and that the stores are closing because they don’t perform well enough.

Apple Releases New Design Resources for iOS Developers

Today Apple shared some free design resources for iOS developers with an update to its iOS Human Interface Guidelines (via 9to5Mac). The resources include UI and template materials to make it easier to design iOS apps. Apple says the design resources are “comprehensive and accurately depict the full range of UIKit controls, views and glyphs available to developers using the iOS SDK.” The files are available in Sketch and Photoshop formats. This is a change from the Sketch-only files in the past. Interestingly, both light and dark UI elements are given. It adds a small amount of fuel to the fire for a rumored Dark Mode.

Get Jim Dalrymple and Bryan Chaffin iMessage Stickers

OK, get this. Nodconcept made this custom emoji of me for the company’s Facebook emoji app for iOS. They made one for my friend Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, too. Facebook emoji apps are so 2009, but the Emoti emoji are available as an iMessage sticker pack. And—more importantly—Nodconcept told me they added the emojis for me and Jim to that sticker pack.

The Devil Box Enables Solid Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Expansion

The promise of Thunderbolt has always been to eliminate the need for internal expansion slots. But it wasn’t until Thunderbolt 3 and its 40 Gbps speed that having a second, external, high end graphics card would become a practical reality. For example, if you’d like to augment your new 2016 MacBook Pro with a Radeon RX400 series or an Nvidia Geforce GTX 10, now you can do that with this $379 TB3 expansion box from PowerColor called the Devil Box. Here’s a review to whet your appetite for some serious graphics power.

Kult of Ktulu : Olympic, a Textual Narrative Lovecraftian Video Game

Check out Kult of Ktulu: Olympic. It’s a textual narrative game, but what hit me were the gorgeous graphics backing up the narrative. Players take on the avatar of a young girl named Elena on a ship crossing the Atlantic in the early 20th century. Elena is investigating the Kult in a world built from H.P. Lovecraft imagery. I haven’t played it yet, but it looks lush and delicious. It’s currently in the App Store as a free download with in-app purchases. It’s in Google Play, too, if that’s your poison.