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Essential Apple Podcast 246: All about Apple with Peter Cohen

This week Nick is off singing carols and Jim is doing something or other, but Simon is joined by Peter Cohen (of RCR Wireless and they go into down a load of Apple shaped holes before taking a look at a few news stories from the week.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Get 2 months on the Kino Premium Plan with offer code KINOWITHJOHNNEMO
  • Affinity Sale – 30% off most stock, 50% off iPad apps

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!

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Essential Apple Podcast 225: The boys are back

The boys are back… Nick and Jim and Steve (from GeeksCorner.info) return to chat more about the WWDC and stuff that has happened since…

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Glenn Fleishman’s book Take Control of Securing Your Mac can be found at takecontrolbooks.com along with many other titles by him, Joe Kissell, Jeff Carlson and others.
  • Steve at Geeks Corner has a podcast which is usually 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.

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Essential Apple Podcast Special: In conversation with Ben Bajarin

A special episode with internationally renowned Ben Barjarin of Creative Strategies and of course Tech.pinions and the Tech.pinions Podcast. I really enjoyed talking to Ben and I hope you enjoy this special episode as much as I did!

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 Essentials free as well.
  • 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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast Special: In conversation with Ben Bajarin

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Essential Apple Podcast 182: And in other news…

The second part of the previous show where Simon, Nick and Jim carry on and take a look at some of the other news of the week.

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 too.
  • Steve at Geeks Corner will be having more giveaways in the near future. Keep an eye on the site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk
  • Serif have expanded their sale to everything in the Affinity store until June 20th

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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 182: And in other news…

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Essential Apple Podcast 181: ARM-y madness!

Simon, Nick and Jim are joined by the wonderful and perspicacious Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies, Techpinions and the Techpinions podcast to take in Apple and the pandemic, the whole ARM rumour explosion, and what WWDC might bring us – yet again the show went way long so another two parter… in this part it’s Carolina, and in part two the lads look at other news…

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 too.
  • Steve at Geeks Corner will be having more giveaways in the near future. Keep an eye on the site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk
  • Serif have expanded their sale to everything in the Affinity store until June 20th
  • Skylum have a [50% off sale] on Luminar 4

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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 181: ARM-y madness!

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Essential Apple Podcast 180: May contain Apple…

Part Two of our unstructured conversation with Jeff Gamet. In this part we actually get on to some Apple related matters including iPads, Apple Glasses and more.

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 too.
  • Steve at Geeks Corner will be having more giveaways in the near future. Keep an eye on the site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk
  • Serif have expanded their sale to everything in the Affinity store until June 20th
  • Skylum have a [50% off sale] on Luminar 4 and other products

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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 180: May contain Apple…

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Thoughts on the iPhone SE (2020)

By James Ormiston (@MacJim)

For some years now, I’ve become ever more critical of Apple with each iPhone launch, where the entry level pricing rose higher and higher. We’ve seen those who are on a limited budget left with the choice either to pay more than they had planned, or choose an alternative mobile from the Android marketplace. Personally, I finally had enough when Apple launched the iPhone X which took the price into the stratospheric region of over £1,000.

Continue reading → Thoughts on the iPhone SE (2020)

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Essential Apple Podcast 171: Apple & Google Sitting in a Tree

Mark Nick and Jim join Simon to talk about another week in lockdown, the tech news from the week and whatever else comes up in the conversation.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here
  • You can get Ghostery Midnight free for 3 months with the coupon code ‘workathome’

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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 171: Apple & Google Sitting in a Tree

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Essential Apple Podcast 153: We broke the internet!

This show is dedicated to the memory of my friend Adrian who died uexpectedly on the 28th aged 64. RIP.

This week it’s Diwali (the festival of lights), there is more “not news” than news, Tim Cook talked about diversity, being gay, and more. iPod turned 18, Amiga 1200 turned 27, Google proved Quantum computing is real, and I was joined by Steve (@nibsUK) Leach from the Mac&Forth podcast to pick over these fragments… And we broke the internet… Well my internet went out for 3 HOURS in the middle of this show, so forgive me if I was a bit off my stride in the second half. Also I am a bit later than I like posting this – a family friend died unexpectedly on Monday and as you can imagine that sort of messed me up a bit.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount!
  • Get Donny Yankellow’s 2FunDads iMessage stickers for FREE

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.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 153: We broke the internet!

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Apple’s Journey to $1 Trillion

An infographic by Ellie Summers

from her original at
thewatchstrap.co/apple-1-trillion-infographic 

by kind permission of www.thewebsitegroup.co.uk

Creators of Pay monthly websites with no setup costs. As a leading UK provider of affordable web design, The Website Group offer more than just pay monthly websites. From web development to expert SEO, with prices starting from just £39.00 per month. They’ve got you covered!

See the full infographic below the fold!

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Dumbing down – the finale

“What happened was…”  by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

If you’ve been following my journey from smartphones to dumb phones, you will have read that all wasn’t smooth in that process: here’s the final instalment to the story.
For those that haven’t read the previous two parts to this report, I will just say I had been wanting to move away from smartphones to something much simpler, quieter, and less demanding, but finding a mobile phone that would suit my needs was difficult; but not totally impossible. I ended up buying a Punkt MP02 mobile phone, a simple and small basic phone that had the ability to be used as a mobile router for my iPad and MacBook via tethering but I ended up returning it.

Why? It was due to the fact that I couldn’t get onto the web etc via the tethering feature of this mobile phone. Although I linked my iPad to the MP02, I just couldn’t get online…

As I write this final part, I’m awaiting a refund from the supplier as it was returned to Germany from whence it came.

Continue reading → Dumbing down – the finale

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The Apple T2 Chip and Your Security

A Comment by @Dougee

 

In December 2017 Apple released hardware with the new T2 chip technology. It is found on the iMac Pro, 2018 Mac Mini, 2018 MacBook Air, and the 2018 MacBook Pro models.

The T2 integrated several other controllers including the System Management Controller (SMC), image signal processor that works with FaceTime HD, audio controller, Touch ID, Touch Bar, and SSD controller.

From a security perspective the T2 is really quite interesting. The T2 contains a Secure Enclave that provides the platform for Touch ID, Encrypted Storage and Secure Boot.

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Essential Apple Podcast 110: Scrap-Book Air?

This week of course Apple had a keynote event in New York and revealed a host of items, some expected (iPad), some only hoped for (Mac Minis and MacBook Airs)… Also they had an earnings call – not something we tend to get overly wrapped up in on this show but there were a couple of points of interest. Unsrprisingly there wasn’t really much other news of note to us but even so we run extra long…
DONT FORGET THE JOE KISSELL OFFER… 30% OFF any Take Control purchase before November 30th with this link 30% Off or use the code ESSENTIALAPPLE at checkout.
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!
We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

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Essential Apple Podcast 108: Slap a sticker on it!

This week the Bloomberg story rumbled on, but Donny and I decide to just summarise that and concentrate on things like the Apple 11% drop in Q3 Sales. Alleged info on the upcoming iPad Pro. Apple’s TV streaming plans and a wireless charger that intrigues both of us but we just think is too good to be true.
DONT FORGET THE JOE KISSELL OFFER… 30% OFF any Take Control purchase before November 30th with this link 30% Off or use the code ESSENTIALAPPLE at checkout.
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! We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 108: Slap a sticker on it!

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Essential Apple Podcast 105: The Shiny Objects Edition

Well this week was of course the Apple event… 3 new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. I think many of us were a touch disappointed that was “all” there was. Does this mean another event later for some iPads and/or Macs? Who knows? I am joined once again by Donny and we talk about what we made of it… and a few other stories. Meanwhile Hurricane Florence flooded parts of the US, a Category 5 Typhoon hammered the Philippines and is bearing down on Hong Kong and China…
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! We can now also be found on Spotify, Soundcloud and even YouTube.

Continue reading → Essential Apple Podcast 105: The Shiny Objects Edition