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Essential Apple Podcast 302: On Coffee & Raisins

On a week where Florida got mauled by Milton, Elon unveiled a CyberTaxi and what looked like humanoid robots, Russians on YouTube unboxed alleged M4 MacBook Pros and AAA Gaming comes to Apple Silicon (sort of) Simon and Nick get together to talk about that, and lots more…

MISSION TO SEAFARERS APPEAL

  • The Mission to Seafarers is looking for donations of old, but working, smartphones and internet capable tablets to give seafarers far from home a way to talk to friends and family
  • If you have any old smartphones or tablets cluttering your cupboard and drawers why not donate them to this worthy cause? If you are in the UK contact Vicar@felixparish.com or your nearest Mission to Seafarers Centre, or if you live outside the UK simply visit missiontoseafarers.org.

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 240: Off the leash!

This week following the Apple Unleashed event Simon and Nick are joined by Patrice Brend’amour and her sometimes partner in crime Jeff Gamet to talk about the event, the chips, the ports, the Macs, and more.

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!

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Essential Apple Podcast 175: An SSD and a Hackintosh fail

A full house of guests this week as Suffolk Pete, MacJim, Nick Riley and Mark Chappell join me – other than the new MacBook Pro, we didn’t really have much news so we chat about Pete’s SSD replacement in his 2014 MacBook Air and Nick’s experiment with creating a cheap Hackintosh.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

  • Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here
  • 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

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 155: A dunce’s cap for Simon and the show that got away

I’s a dunce and did a show with Guy and Nick, but forgot to check it was recording. Sorry about that – instead you just get me mulling over what we discussed. Apple effectively soft launched the recently rumoured 16“ MacBook Pro, with a ”new“ scissor switch keyboard, and some pretty impressive specs. A strange story emerged alleging to reveal Apple’s AR/VR Headset and Smart Glasses roadmap. FIDO2 support is coming to iOS 13.3. Apple Pay is growing fast, but Apple News+ isn’t, Apple are fixing an Apple Mail problem that means your mail wasn’t quite as encrypted as we thought, and a few other musings.

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 155: A dunce’s cap for Simon and the show that got away

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Essential Apple Podcast 137: Strange Days?

This week I am joined by the semi regular co-hosts Nick (@spligosh) Riley and Donny (@rtteachr) Yankellow, to take a look at the stories of the last week or so. Of course, after the week light on news when I recorded with John Chidgey there has been a veritable deluge of news over the last 7-10 days. Including a new MacBook Pro, the WWDC19 “invitations”, the whole Huawei “blacklisting” affair, an odd little gaming device from Panic and a depressingly long list of security stories.

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’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!
We can now also be found on RadioPublic (https://radiopublic.com/the-essential-apple-podcast-6rROkd), PlayerFM (https://player.fm/series/the-essential-apple-show) and TuneIn (https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-News/Rampant-Mumblings-p726252/) as well as all the other places previously available.

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Thoughts and concerns about Apple: An opinion by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

I’d like to begin by saying the following are purely my personal thoughts (and worries) about Apple and where we are heading with them. I have no insider knowledge, or any other connections to Apple. Since Steve Jobs died, there’s been a lot of speculation and rumour, with many saying Apple is doomed and will not survive without him at the helm, but so far, these have proven untrue. That doesn’t mean there’s no reason for us fanboys/fangirls to be worried about the future of Apple.

For some time now, I’ve been saying that macOS and iOS will become one and will be the  only Apple provided OS for their computing devices. But, I hear you saying, Apple has categorically said they will not do this and have even made this clear with a big “NO.” being shown at the last keynote. However, I have to say look back at the things Apple have said they wouldn’t do, but did anyway. And now we see iOS apps will be coming to Mojave.

Continue reading → Thoughts and concerns about Apple: An opinion by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

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Essential Apple Podcast 96: A Tidal Wave of News

A new co-host, new MacBook Pros, new Surface Go, new Affinity Designer for iPad, new Luminar update, new green phone service, new French Cyber Command… A veritable tidal wave of news. So much in fact that we even forgot to mention the App Store 10th Anniversary or Apple killing their photo printing services!
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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