TMO Background Mode Interview with Early Apple Podcaster Victor Cajiao

Victor Cajiao was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in the U.S. and became well known in the Apple world for several different podcasts. He’s an Apple tech geek as well as a musician (saxophone) and hobby photographer. Victor told me the story about how he came to the U.S. via a special initiative started by President Kennedy. The fascinating story continues as he eventually worked his way into a job with AT&T rising to the level of IT Technical Director. He also told me the story about how he fell in love with the Mac and then launched his podcast, The Typical Mac User. Victor recently retired from AT&T after 26 years and now travels the U.S. in his Airstream trailer. Recently, he’s been sighted at Macstock, doing terrific demos of Mac technologies.

Skip the Dongle, Learn about Cruft! – Mac Geek Gab 726

It’s time to fully embrace the USB-C interface, folks, at least according to listener Zack. Todd helps us understand Cruft, Phil needs to know about storing IDs when traveling, Felix is curious about storing archives, and that’s just the half of it. You’ll have to listen to hear Dave Hamilton and John F. Braun talk all about this and more!

TMO Background Mode Interview with Academic Director of IT Bradley Chambers

Bradley Chambers has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Currently he’s the IT director at a school in Chattanooga, and he’s also a contributor to 9to5Mac via his weekly column: “Making the Grade.” Bradley told me about his work as an IT administrator, how iPads and Macs are deployed, configured and repaired. There are some good tools for doing that, but they’re also supplemented with Google docs and JAMF tools. His kids are taught programming at an early age with Swift Playgrounds, and it turns out that the iPad offers just what his students need for a K-5 curriculum. We finished with a discussion of a few of his recent columns, including why digital textbooks generally failed in the market as well as thoughts about the state of Apple’s iBooks Author app.

Apple/Amazon Trillions, 5 Eyes Magic, iPhone Battery Replacement Reminder - ACM 478

Amazon was briefly the second company—after Apple—to be valued at US$1 trillion. Bryan Chaffin is joined by Jim Tanous to discuss what makes the two companies, and their valuations, different. They also examine the recent 5 Eyes statement attacking encryption, and then remind everyone to take advantage of Apple’s iPhone batter replacement program while they can.

TMO Background Mode Interview with Backblaze Director of Product Marketing Skip Levens

Skip Levens is currently the Director of Product Marketing at Backblaze, the cloud storage and backup company. He’s very experienced in brand marketing and technology evangelism. Skip is a former U.S. Marine. After leaving the Marines, Skip went to work for Alain Pinel, a real estate company that embraced the NeXT computer, and that launched his successful crusade to work for Apple. We chatted about Skip’s work at Apple in early internet technologies, then Developer Relations that involved him with supercomputers. We explored the rise and fall of Apple’s Xserve and Xserve RAID as well as the evolution of his expertise in storage technology at Active Storage, Quantum, Symply Storage and now Backblaze. You can’t have more geek fun than this show.

Back to School CSF, APFS on Externals, Cable Modems, and Beware iPhone Lint! – Mac Geek Gab 725

Going back to school often means needing to take things from the digital world and connect them to the analog. Need sound? Need printouts? John F. Braun and Dave Hamilton have some Cool Stuff Found for you! Then it’s on to troubleshooting external disks (including APFS), cable modem advice and what to do with an extra Mac mini. All this and more, just press play!