TMO Background Mode Encore #5 Interview with Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford

Dr. Kiki Sanford makes her fifth appearance on Background Mode. Kiki is a neurophysiologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California. She’s a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show. In this episode, we chat about some some recent topics discussed on TWIS that fascinated me. 1) Yale roboticists have developed skins with embedded actuators that can turn just about anything into robots. 2) A 127 million year old fossil was discovered in China that fills in another gap in the story of how dinosaurs became birds. 3) The new NASA exoplanet search mission, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is operational. We talk about its mission and how it compares to the Kepler spacecraft. This is just a sample; we covered much more cool science stuff.

Don't Panic, Kernel. It's Just a Kill Switch and a Nuke-and-Pave – Mac Geek Gab Podcast 730

Sometimes things go wrong with your devices, and sometimes the path you think will solve it winds up running you in circles. The same things can happen to your two favorite geeks, and this week’s show talks about some of that while also answering your questions and solving your problems. Press play and enjoy!

TMO Background Mode Interview with Former Apple Software Engineer James Dempsey

James Dempsey worked at Apple for fifteen years before setting out on his own in August 2011. As a software engineer at Apple, he worked on iOS, Aperture, and macOS releases Leopard through Lion, including half a decade on the Cocoa frameworks team. He’s the founder of Tapas Software, developer of iOS and Mac software. We talked abut his “aha” moments in life starting with his college roommate’s Mac Plus in 1986. His dream to work for Apple was eventually fulfilled in 1996, and James described what it was like to be an Apple evangelist in those days. But James is also an accomplished comedian, vocalist, ukulele player and has a published album. He’s also routinely written special songs for WWDC each year. If you ever wanted to work for Apple, this show is must listening.

AWS4 Love, Design Meets Science, Apple's PG TV Dreams - ACM 481

Bryan Chaffin and Jeff Gamet can’t get enough of Apple Watch Series 4, even though Jeff is wrong about the Infograph Watch Face. They also find it interesting that a designer got recognized by the world of science, and they weigh whether or not Apple’s plan to avoid sex, violence, and politics with its original TV shows will hurt its streaming service.

TMO Background Mode Interview with Technology Journalist Ryan Faas

Ryan Faas is a technology journalist and author who has been writing about Apple, business, enterprise IT topics, and the mobile industry for over a decade. He also spent a large portion of the past 15 years in the systems/network engineering and IT management fields as an IT director and systems administrator. He’s worked for MTV Networks as well as being a former Apple Genius. Today, he is also a Contributing Writer for Computerworld. We chatted about how he became such an expert in enterprise matters as well as knowledgeable in multiple OSes. He told me why the wireless carriers decline to push Android updates as often as Apple, and he filled me in on what really going on with macOS Server. Finally, Ryan also predicted when Apple will go to ARM processors in the Mac.