Essential Apple Podcast 188: CEO Roast - Mmhmm

Simon, Jim and Nick take another look at the world in Apple and related “stuff” before taking a summer holiday break… Big Tech is getting grilled, and rumours abound, We have some feedback on stuff which is nice, and Simon admits that although it is his wedding anniversary he is struggling to remember exactly how many years he’s been married – but at least his wife is no better!

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here and now he has also released Take Control of Zoom and Take Control of Slack too.
Steve at Geeks Corner) has restarted his podcast which is a 5-15 min show of his thoughts on tech. Also keep an eye on his site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk to watch for regular giveaways.

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Recorded 30th July 2020

Listen to the show:

This and other episodes are available at:

On this week’s show:

NICK RILEY

@spligosh on Twitter very occasionally.
Sometimes appears on Bart Busschots’ Let’s Talk Apple
Sutton Park Circuit church worship on YouTube

JAMES ORMISTON

In charge of the Essential Apple Flickr
Also on Flickr as thesrpspaintshop
Has videos on Vimeo

APPLE

Apple TV+ wins pair of Emmys for Ghostwriter and Peanuts in Space — Cult of Mac
Apple Reveals Ground-Breaking New iPad Technology – Forbes
Congress grilled the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Here are the big takeaways – CNN

TECHNOLOGY

Mmhmm turns your boring Zoom call into a Weekend Update-style TV show – The Verge
Google’s Enormous Underwater Cable to Link US, UK, and Spain to Improve Internet Connection – Tech Times
Google One App launching for Android and iOS – Geeky Gadgets — Geeky Gadgets

FEEDBACK

Listening to the show. The thing that’s interesting about Microsoft Teams versus Slack is possibly the purchase model. My company was using on-premises MS Exchange and we’re looking to the future. They evaluated Google Apps and Microsoft 365. Google won comfortably on features and price except for one factor. We have a large corporate license for a whole plethora of Microsoft software and services including Windows. If we had gone with Google Apps, our bill for Microsoft would not have reduced. So we would have had to ditch Windows as well. And you know how well that went down. So we use MS365 including Teams.

SECURITY & PRIVACY

Sick of AI engines scraping your pics for facial recognition? Here’s a way to Fawkes them right up – The Register

JUST A SNIPPET

For things that are not worth more than a flypast

My daughter has started an Etsy site for her handmade crochet velveteen bunnies

NEMO’S HARDWARE STORE (45:17)

StarTech TB3CDK2DP Laptop Dock $331 US Direct. Amazon $198 US / £183 UK
- Nemo says “They have excellent pro quality 24-hour 5-day online support and great raves for the product on its own web page. Plus adapters for almost every device and situation a serious user will encounter.”

Essential Apple Recommended Services:

Pixel Privacy – a fabulous resource full of excellent articles and advice on how to protect yourself online.
Doug.ee Blog for Andy J’s security tips.
Ghostery – protect yourself from trackers, scripts and ads while browsing.
Simple Login – Email anonymisation and disposable emails for login/registering with
33mail.com – Never give out your real email address online again.
AnonAddy – Disposable email addresses
Sudo – get up to 9 “avatars” with email addresses, phone numbers and more to mask your online identity. Free for the first year and priced from $0.99 US / £2.50 UK per month thereafter… You get to keep 2 free avatars though.
ProtonMail – end to end encrypted, open source, based in Switzerland. Prices start from FREE… what more can you ask?
ProtonVPN – a VPN to go with it perhaps? Prices also starting from nothing!
Comparitech DNS Leak Test – simple to use and understand VPN leak test.
Fake Name Generator – so much more than names! Create whole identities (for free) with all the information you could ever need.
Wire – free for personal use, open source and end to end encryted messenger and VoIP.
Pinecast – a fabulous podcast hosting service with costs that start from nothing.

Essential Apple is not affiliated with or paid to promote any of these services… We recommend services that we use ourselves and feel are either unique or outstanding in their field, or in some cases are just the best value for money in our opinion.

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