788: Travel Tech
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Hello and welcome to Mac Power Users. My name is Stephen Hackett. I'm joined by my friend and yours, Mr. David Sparks. Hello, Stephen. How are you today? I'm good, David. How are you? Great. This was a real fun episode of prep. I already can tell it's going to cost me some money, but just be warned, going in.

Yeah, this is fun. Between this and menu bars, we've sent some people some money. Don't worry. The next two are guest interviews. You get a respite. We'll tone it down a little bit. But this was a fun show. So we've been wanting to do this for a long time. We wanted to do a show on travel gear. And my thoughts on travel gear has evolved. I've thought about it a lot more recently.

and taken a few trips recently. Last year I had a lot of trips. So got a lot of notes, and we got a lot of good ideas today.

Yeah, this will be fun. A little housekeeping today on more power users, which is the longer ad free version of the show that we do each and every week. We're going to revisit the idea of now pages is something we spoke about on a recent feedback episode about using our blogs as a sort of replacements for social media. And I've had some evolution in mind and how I'm doing it. So I wanted to

Touch base, touch base on that. You can sign up for more power users. It's just seven bucks a month. Again, longer ad free versions of the show. But you also get access to a lot of perks at Relay, our parent network. So access to a discord, some members only podcasts, which are really great. One of them I was actually editing when you jumped on Zoom. I was like editing it and then your voice was in there. It was very confusing for a second.

where I interviewed Carrie, our chief advertising officer. Really great episode will be out today. So yeah, we really take membership seriously. If you are a member, thank you for your support. And if you're not, now's a great time to check it out.

All right, so let's talk about travel. And we've got a lot of gear to talk about and ideas. But I think the starting point for a discussion of travel on a show called Mac Power Users is, which Apple gear do you bring with you when you go out of town? Yeah, yeah, it's funny. We put this whole outline together, and then I got on the call, and you were like,

Wait, we never talked about this. It's good. Yeah. Because look, there's a lot of Apple gear, right? It's back in the day. Yeah. You just like throw your power book in your bag, but there's a lot of options now. I think, I mean, without a doubt, it's like the iPhone's coming with me anywhere, anywhere I go. Right. Cause like with travel, we're gonna talk some more about this. I'm sure like there's work travel, there's personal travel, like the iPhone spans, you

both of those things. And maybe if you're, if you have a job where you have like a work phone, like, yeah, maybe you leave the work phone at home when you go on a cruise with your family or something. But I don't have that. It's all in one device. And so that's where focus modes come in, like turning off the work stuff. But yeah, the iPhone is a must have. Yeah. And if you're me, the big point I wanted to make here is if you're someone like me,

and you are a little fearless about Apple betas, before you go on a trip is not the time to sign up for the latest beta. So try to bring an iPhone with you that is not running beta software. I think that's an important safety tip. We both have scars from that. Yeah, yeah. But what can I say?

I'll get more. I'll get more. For you, dear audience, I will do it. How many times have we recorded, like, two weeks after WWDC, and you're like, well, I'm running the watchOS beta and the phone and the Mac, although you never tell me that because it makes me nervous. I didn't tell you about the Mac, yeah.

Well, you know, the thing is about betas is they multiply because it's true. You get one on one device and then you need it on the other device to make it work with the thing that's supposed to change the world, but doesn't really. Yeah. They multiply. The iPad though, I think is an interesting discussion for travel. I think, you know, my goal frankly on most trips is to be able to just bring an iPad and,

And, and I, that is kind of like the thing that iPad is best at, right? It's a small portable device. A lot of times you've got a cellular radio on it if you're traveling domestically and then you don't need to worry about all the extra gear and like the hassle of a laptop and fits in your bag. It's your book reader. It's your, you know, it's your computer, it's your communication device. I think that's like the perfect world for an iPad. But the question always is, is it enough? Yeah.

And I think for a lot of people, you should consider it enough. Like just try and get by without it. One of the things, one of the reasons, like I hired somebody at Mac Sparky to help me out in the background. And one of the ideas of that was, well, he is in front of a Mac when I am not. So if something really, you know, the wheels really fall off, he could fix it, you know?

And then, you know, the iPad becomes just kind of a device to manage things more than actually produce things. If you're going out of town, are you able to, like, if something comes up for work, can you get by with it? And it's a question everybody has to answer, but I think it's worth, you know,

It's worth considering. Like, like what if you put a VPN on and, you know, we're able to remote back to your Mac at home. Like, is there a way you can do this without bringing all that extra hardware? Yeah. Yeah. The, the iPad Mac line, like that division on a trip, I think is pretty complicated. It is for me as someone who like you works for himself. And while I have lots of people helping behind the scenes, um,

Like there are some things in my workflow that are just not doable on an iPad or at least not very easily. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking back like to a trip my wife and I took a couple of years ago to Colorado, just the two of us for our anniversary. And like I took my Mac, but it never left the bag. It was really like a just in case something really blows up and like I need to fix something.

But the iPad more for me is like, is it does? Is there an entertainment role on this trip that it could fill? Right. Like,

or video playback like on a plane or something. And so usually I do travel with an iPad, not for work, but for the entertainment side of things. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, because I could also see you saying, well, I need the Mac, so I don't need the iPad. Yeah. But if you have media consumption, then the iPad may be worth the trouble. I just got back from a trip. So my wife had a work thing she had to go to Orlando for. So I went with her.

And I'm right in the middle of a webinar for Productivity Field Guide. I've just got a bunch of things going on. So this was a trip, but I also spent a lot of time working. And for that one, I brought the Mac, the MacBook Air. And I was able to do the work, however. Just kind of, I knew the show was coming up. I did all the work I needed to with the iPad. I never turned it on, but I had it there as kind of a safety blanket if I needed it.

And it reminded me that the iPad can do a lot of stuff, you know? So like if you're doing a lot of writing and research, the iPad probably is good enough. But if you've got special things, like one of the concerns I had was what if where there's a problem with one of the videos we've got queued up for the lab sembers? Well, that I would need to get into a Mac to fix. And so I brought it along, but this is a question we all ask ourselves. But when you go out of town, can you leave one of those two devices home?

Another one, and I really learned this from the Max Barclay Labs, a lot of the members bought the Vision Pro who do a lot of work travel. And that's one of the best use cases for it because, and generally they don't use it on planes because it's just still too weird, but they put it in their luggage. And then when they get to wherever they're going for work, they've got in their bag a

an amazing experience to watch a movie. I mean, when you're out and travel, that's the perfect time to want to watch a movie in the, in the vision pro because you haven't, don't have any family there with you to share it with. And, um, and it's also a secondary monitor for their laptop. And like it, it serves a lot of utility roles for people who spend a lot of time in hotel rooms. Yeah, I think it does. Uh, I was, uh,

in the fall when some relay people were here in Memphis, uh, I forget it. I think it was Jason brought his and it was like, or Jason or Casey, I forget. And they were like watching sports at night in the hotel. Um, yeah, I am not brave enough to wear it on a plane, although I have friends who have done it, uh,

But I think it can be like a supercharged device because it can do the screen extension for the Mac, which has gotten a lot better since the Vision Pro release. Like they've got the widescreen thing now. Yeah. I would say the strike against the Vision Pro is that it's pretty bulky. Like even if you have it in the smallest bag, like I think Waterfield makes one that's pretty compact. Even then...

it you've got to kind of commit to it because it's taking up quite a bit of space yeah

But I mean, on a business trip, often you don't need that much other stuff, right? Yeah. You know, a couple outfits and you're good. So I really get it. That being said, I've never done it. I've never traveled with it. Me neither. Because when I travel, it's usually with other people. I was thinking like last year I went to Edinburgh alone to see my daughter's play. But she was with a different group and I had my own room.

But I didn't even bring it for then because I figured, well, how many times am I going to be here in my life? I don't want to be spending any time in the room. I want to go out and kind of adventure and pub life and all that stuff while I'm there. So I intentionally left at home because I could see my personality where I'd get back and stream an episode of something or another instead of going out and exploring the world. Same. Yeah. So to me, the big question with the hardware really usually is the iPad-Mac divide and

Do you bring one or both? And in my case, it just depends. But, you know, bring some intentionality and everybody listening can draw their own lines there. Yeah.

Okay. We've done travel shows in the past, but we focused on tech. This one, we're going a little more holistic. We thought it'd be fun to talk about just the luggage and bags we take too. Yeah. It's always fun to talk about bags because there's no such thing as a perfect bag, right? Like every time we do like a what's in our backpacks thing, I feel like I've got a different situation.

But traveling, you know, your needs may be different, right? The backpack I use every day is a smaller, thinner version of my travel backpack. Like the travel backpack's just hanging in the hall closet with some other stuff because I don't need the sort of the storage. But you've got some things here and you've got one, you've got the kind of the nerdy travel bag in here, the Peak Design Everyday Backpack. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great backpack. And I, um, you know, I used to make fun of my wife because she spent so much time, you know, buying purses. And then I realized that like, I watch YouTube videos of backpack reviews, like she buys purses. I, I think if I could, I'd have like 10 backpacks. I don't know what's, what's wrong with me. Yeah.

But either way, I have the Peak Design one. Everybody says that's the one you need. And I really like it. And I actually use that. That is the backpack that I have loaded in the car with a whole bunch of stuff, like part of my survivalist car mentality. And it's nice. It's really good. I like the way the top latches onto it.

I mean, there's all the little decisions on this stuff were well made. You know, it's like they thought about them. And frankly, that's kind of my goal with the stuff I buy is I want to buy things where people were intentional that made it. And the peak design certainly fits that bill. Yeah. As does the Waterfield stuff. I bought a lot of their stuff too. Yeah.

And they've got kind of a different vibe, but you know, peak design is very utilitarian Waterfield. So I think feels like a little more fancy. But the two primary ones I use is the peak design one. And I also have the Waterfield and the one I use from Waterfield is the tech folio backpack. I like it cause it opens very easily and, and I carry a lot of tech, you know, so, but it's got a nice pocket on the inside of it and it's really a,

I should write it up for Max Bargain. I don't think I've ever written this thing up. I've been using it like a year, but it's really nice. Did I tell you, Steve, when I'm into rucking now? Have you heard of this rucking? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. You stick some weights in a bag and walk through the neighborhood.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, but I have a different version of it. It's called Disney rucking. There it is. And you know, so me and a good friend, Liana, she's been a guest on the show. We started doing this thing. We're trying to do it once a week. We haven't quite got there yet, but you get a morning and you fill your backpack with just a ton of stuff, get it, you know, nice and heavy. And then we walk like five miles through Disney. Like we walked through the whole resort and,

And then we finish and have like a healthy lunch and maybe, you know, answer email or do a little work remotely and then go home.

But I've started doing it and I've been using this, I've just been using this Waterfield bag or my peak design kind of depending on what I'm, I'm loading out that day as my rucking bag. And, and usually people like buy very dedicated ones for it and they put weights in it. But I load mine with things like laptops and iPads and books. So that's, that's my, my low tech rucking, but it's been fun and it's a good exercise too. You really, in addition to the walking, carrying the weight really helps. But yeah.

Yeah. What's your bag? Uh, my daily is the Bellroy classic backpack. Yeah. In the, uh, in the 16 liter, it's the small one. Uh, the website says it'll fit a 13 inch. You can cram a 14 inch MacBook pro into it. Um,

And it's mostly fine. Maybe it is the 20 liter. Don't quote me on that. But it's just a very simple, straightforward backpack with some relatively simple storage in it. I have tried the everyday backpack from Peak Design a couple of times. And I agree with everything you said. It's extremely well thought through, made very well, high quality, and

But it's too like its opinions about how storage should work in bags doesn't really align with mine. And so the couple of times I've tried it, I've ended up selling it or returning it or whatever. But the the classic backpack from Balevory is just very simple and straightforward. But it is a little small. And so I picked up actually before going to London for the the Relay 10 event last year.

The transit work pack, which is basically a bigger version. It's kind of similar version to that bag, but a little more storage. They have a 38 liter version of it, which is really big. So mine is the 20. So I think mine is 16 and 20 liters, but yeah,

I like the Bellary bags a lot. Well made. They both come in orange. They call it bronze, but like it's like a burnt orange. Looks pretty good. It's hanging on my shelf over there. And I've been I've been quite happy with the Bellary bags. Like my daily need for a backpack is not even what yours is like.

I if I go to work, you know, at my favorite coffee shop or have a meeting somewhere like it's a laptop, a charger, you know, maybe an iPad, probably a paper notebook, not not a lot of stuff. And so that that classic backpack is just simple and small and just enough to kind of get me what I need.

I've never bought any Bellroy products. Everybody I know loves them, but I've never tried them. Yeah, it's great. How comfortable are the straps? The straps look a little thin to me. They feel better than they look. That was actually another complaint I had about the Peak design. I did not like the straps, which I think puts me in a minority. I think a lot of people do like them.

um they're better than they look but they're not they're not incredible either yeah well the peak design straps are good for me so that that's a good sign yeah this one works um and i'm definitely a backpack guy you know i just don't i rarely wear a one shoulder back at this point because it's just so much better for me physically oh yeah you can get wrecked with a heavy shoulder bag yeah yeah

That being said, we did have a messenger briefcase-style bag on our list, the stuff that Waterfield makes for air travel. They've got a bunch of them, and those are good. I've got the Aeroporter Carry-On, and that one was given to me by them years ago, and I used to use it as a lawyer as my briefcase. It's just so good. It just looks good. That's cool.

It does look good. I have, I don't know which one. I have some shoulder bag from them that I really don't use that much. I've thought about it. Sometimes you need something a little bit nicer than an orange backpack. But generally, I'm with you. Even as little as I carry, a shoulder bag is not in the cards for me anymore.

Do you do the roller, like carry-on? Do you bring like a rolling bag with you when you go and travel? I do. If I'm traveling, my ideal is like a carry-on and a backpack.

where I don't have to check anything. Now, if we're traveling for work and like we're recording a show, then I have to use this Pelican case full of sound equipment and I have to check a bag. And I know you have experiences as well, getting through airport security with like microphones and cables in your bag, you're going to get, you're going to get stopped, you know, like, what is this? What are you doing? But ideally, and especially if I'm not recording, I,

Um, yeah. And I've got my wife and I, we have, we have a series of different sizes of, uh, away carry ons. They're like this polycarbonate. So they're tough, nicely made. They aren't a sponsor from a long, long time ago. Uh, but, uh, really nice carry ons. I've been, we've been very happy with ours, including the ones like we've taken overseas. Yeah.

Yeah, us too. And we've just bought a fleet of them over the years. You know, when we need a new one, we just get another away. They have a lifetime warranty. I had one crack on me and I sent them a picture and they just sent me a new one. No trouble. That's cool. That being said, I recently ordered a new roller and it's the new Peak Design one. Have you seen this? Yeah. So they're doing a Kickstarter right now.

As of our recording, which is several days before this comes out, they've raised $6.5 million on Kickstarter. What are you doing? Well, some of it was from me because I ordered one. Yeah. It looks really nice.

Again, it's just the, you know, just the intentionality of you watch the video. You're like, yeah, that, that, and I'm in, you know, and it's a very strange carry on. It's not like the typical one where it zips down the middle and, you know, you open it up into how, like two pieces of bread, slight on a sandwich, you know, just opening it up. It's, it opens from the top. It's very strange. You just, we'll put a link and you can go check it out. And again,

And I'm sure it's going to be great, but I have ordered a new carry-on and I'm very excited about that, but I'm not going to be getting it for like, I wasn't willing to pay the extra to get it early. So I'm going to get mine like I think later in the year sometime. Yeah. Well, follow up with us on that because I think it's really interesting they're doing this and I'm sure it's going to be good. Yeah. Yeah.

Peak design stuff is usually really well done. In fact, I mean, I'm kind of in with peak design on a lot of my like smaller bags too. So it works for me.

All right. If you're traveling and you've got a bag, you want to track it. I mean, Mac power users, I think Apple air tags are really the main point here. You know, you got it. I have an air tag that just stays in my, cause my main roller, my way bag is of the ones we have in the family. There's one that's got a bunch of star Wars stickers on it. That one's mine. And in it, I've got my packing cubes and an air tag. All that stuff just gets put away with the bag. So when I get it out, it's just sitting there waiting for me.

Same, same. We have air tags everywhere. I mean, keys, cars, definitely backpacks and carry-ons. And

At first, I found it a little frustrating. Like, there's no way to attach an AirTag to something. But there's such this huge ecosystem now of things to put AirTags in, to, like, mount to the outside of a bag. A lot of bags now, including my Bellroy, has, like, a hidden AirTag pocket in the backpack. Nice. Yeah.

This is becoming very mainstream. And I mean, if I open Find My, there's probably like eight or nine air tags in there between my wife and I, and I absolutely love them. Yeah. And I heard from one listener, actually a labs number, who told me that he uses two in his luggage. Yeah. This is like a travel warrior. And he's like, yeah, I have one hidden and I have one that they can find.

And I thought, wow, that's a little paranoid. But it kind of makes sense, too, if you travel a lot. Like I was looking at my way, there's like a zipper that gets to the hardware. I was thinking that'd be a pretty good place. You could tape one in there. I don't think people would think they'll look there. Yeah. Although the bad guys probably know, you know. Yeah. But we've got a new feature in the AirTag with the airline center.

Yeah, as of iOS 18.2, you can share an item location if it's lost. So say that you lose your carry-on, you can basically share that AirTag information with another person or if the airline supports it with the airline themselves. I've had this experience. I was coming back

I think for Mac stock and my bag and I got separated. And so I had to go to like the, the terrible place in the airport basement where all the carry ons live. Right. And it's like, Oh, which one is your, which blue one is yours, you know? And so this makes a lot of that easier and it's really cool. I have not flown since this rolled out, but I think it's a great addition to be able to track something down a little bit easier. Hopefully if something gets misplaced.

Yeah, and the rumor is that an AirTag 2 isn't far away. The rumors are that it's going to have extended range but going to be harder to disable the speaker on. Apparently, some of these bozos are using these things to track people. So that's a good sign. But either way, I have a flock of AirTags, and it's awesome.

The one non-AirTag tracker I'm using, I bought the Chipolo wallet card, I don't know, about six months ago, and I really like it. I've actually left my bag once somewhere, and I used the card tracker to find it because I didn't have an AirTag in that bag. And it's great. So it's the thickness of about two and a half credit cards, and it's an AirTag tracker.

Their business model is weird. There's no replaceable battery. What you do is you send it in after the battery dies and they send you a new one, I think at 50% off. So that's their battery program. But the, but I really like it. I know there's others too that make these, that's the only one I have any experience with though. Yeah. The Chipolo thing is in our household as well. That's what I put in Mary's wallet. I, I,

She usually carries it in her bag, but sometimes she doesn't. And an AirTag just wasn't a good fit for the way her wallet gets kind of put together. And so I got one of these things. We've had it a couple years. It's been totally fine. It works basically like an AirTag. It shows up in Find My, and Apple, I think, has done a good job extending that to third parties. I was thinking, if I did a lot of international travel, I think I'd buy another one and put it with my passport. You know, just like...

Because I've got my passport and my little wallet. This would fit right in the back of it. You'd never notice it. And then I'd have a tracker on my passport. Yeah, that's a good idea. You always put a tag on the outside of your luggage, right? You know, put something...

like a distinctive looking tag or something. So someone who also owns in a way doesn't pick up your bag. But those things sometimes get ripped off or torn. And if the bag gets lost, a good idea is to have a card on the inside with all your details on it. Yes. Or even if you want to go crazy, but like an NFC sticker or QR code or something. But, but I actually think in this case, the analog card is probably the best bet.

I think so too. That's something I've done forever is have a business card with my information on it, uh, readily available and the inside and the outside of the bag is key because like to go on YouTube and watch videos of how luggage is handled, right? Like things happen. And I think having, um, having it, uh, safe and sound inside the bag is, is a good idea because, you know,

Most people, I think, are honest and want you to get your stuff back. And so make it easy for them. Okay, so you're going down the jetway, about to get on your plane. And you've got your roller bag and your backpack. And you get to the end and they say, Oh, Mr. Hackett, bad news. We're completely out of room. So I'm going to take that roller from you right now. How hard do you fight back? I mean, I generally am a roll follower. I've had that happen traveling with the...

with the sound equipment, you know, in that hard case. And then I'll be like, Hey, look, this is expensive audio equipment. I can't do it. You know, I'm sorry. I did have one time where they were like, no, you have to. And I was like, well, let me take some stuff out of it. Cause you don't want to have microphones in like the unpressurized part of the plane. And so pulled the microphones out and then I just had like four microphones in my lap as I was trying to get in my seat. It was a nightmare. Yeah.

But yeah, that is always a bummer when that happens. But usually I'm a real follower. There's a friend of mine who's a professional saxophone player. And there's actually a law that says that you can't force them to put their instrument in, you know, because a saxophone is so delicate. It's so easy to break it. So he carries a laminated card with the law on it. And he shows it to them and said, no, you can't take this from me. It's just not possible.

but yeah i i don't usually fight like you i but i also pack with that in mind like i don't like i have friends that say i'll just put the laptop in the in the roll-on you don't need it right and i'm like yeah but what if they take it from me yeah um because i don't use a laptop on a plane i don't use an ipad i haven't opened a laptop on a plane in years but the um

I don't usually find it. Recently I had a trip where I had a very short layover and they tried to take my bag on the first leg. And I said, I've got 20 minutes to get to a plane. Cause you get to the point was already, my outgoing plane was already late. You know, I had an hour and a half. Now I've got 20 minutes. I'm just not giving it to you. You know? And,

And she said, okay, we'll find a place for it. She didn't find me too hard. But either way, I'm with you. I usually let them take it. Sometimes I'll volunteer if I really have nothing important in it and I've got that lifetime warranty on my away stuff. If it's just a bunch of clothes and I'm going home and I don't care if it gets lost for a few days, I'll even volunteer on those occasions because then it's just less for me to wrestle onto the plane. Yeah.

You mentioned something earlier that peaked my interest because I have not gone down this road, but I keep thinking about it, of packing cubes. Yes, packing cubes are the greatest thing, Stephen. You have to get some. And you have to get compression packing cubes. So there are people listening who get it. They've already heard this, but people who may have not. You know, packing cubes are exactly what they sound like. They're little...

cases or bags that you can put your clothes in before you put them in your luggage and you can get them and also you know they make them on amazon everybody makes packing cubes but um the thing that really changed it for me was compression packing cubes and peak design came out with these several years ago so it's got like an extra zipper around the end so you can like compress it down so you can put all your shirts and pants and everything in it and then you you run the second zipper around

And then it just compresses even smaller. And it gets all your clothes into like there's a really nice compact package. And then when you get to the room, you can unzip it. And it's almost like having a drawer right there because you've removed the compressions, like bringing a drawer with you. And the Peak Design one is very clever because the inside is engineered so it can move up or down. And there's zippers on either side.

So you put your nasty, dirty clothes in one side and keep your clean ones in the other side. And when you get back, you just take it to the laundry and you're good. It's just really great. I mean, I, I, for the longest time, I'm like, well, why do I need this? You know, I, I always pack my clothes fine. And then peak design had a sale at some point. I mean, they've been making these things for years and I said, okay, I'll buy like a couple of them. And I'm like, I love these. I love these so much. Yeah.

And there's a part of me that is very much likes organization. So I guess that's, that's, that's a part of it, but it does allow you to get your stuff in a smaller package and your luggage. And when you put them in your luggage, everything is nice and tidy. I feel like your, your own neuroses is going to really latch onto this Steven. Okay. All right. I'm going to order some. I'm going to order some. Yeah. There are other vendors too, that make compression ones. If you don't want peak design.

but the peak ones are the ones that I got. Okay. They also have a tech pack. That's really good. Yeah. Tech pouch. And, and that works just, just as well.

Yeah, I use some sort of like ancient Tom Ben tech pouch. I don't even think they sell anymore, but it's just a place to put your cables and your charger. And like the Peak Design one has some internal organization. Mine does not. It's just like two zippers kind of with a thing down the middle. And it just gets thrown into the bottom of my bag. It's actually always in my backpack, even though I don't need everything that's in it all the time.

But having, I find at least, having loose cables is just not something I want to do. But I also don't like bags, backpacks or travel bags that have like too much organization, like...

Oh, like put the charger here and here's where you're all your pins go. And there's this little zipper for your air, your, you know, air pods or whatever. Like I'm kind of fine with it as being a little bit more open and then having a smaller bag for cables or tech stuff that I can, I can pull in and out at will. Yeah. That's interesting. Cause my, my tech pack from Waterfield does have all that organization and I've come to really enjoy it. So we're, you know, to each his own.

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Okay, we've talked a lot about luggage and sort of managing that sort of thing. But let's get into some tech, some tech accessories that we find useful on trips. Yeah. Noise-canceling headphones. That's the big one. Yep. Yep.

Amen. Historically, I got the Bose Quiet Comforts. I had a pair of those. I rage bought them. I was on a plane and there was a baby next to me just screaming for like, that was like a three-hour flight. And it was like a layover before the next flight. And I went into that expensive store in the airport and I bought a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Oh, no.

I was like, I am not doing this again. And so this is years ago, but then the thing I always hated about them is they take up so much space, you know, and then what you've got them for the whole trip. And I don't use them except on the plane and AirPods pro and AirPods pro two are good enough. And, and,

I gave my Bose away to a friend and all I've used since AirPods Pro came out is AirPods Pro for noise canceling on a flight. Yeah, AirPods Pro 2 are incredible. In many ways, perhaps the best thing Apple sells right now. Absolutely love mine. I don't do a lot of noise cancellation. I will on a plane and they're good enough for my needs. I mean, I don't leave home without them. They're always in my bag or my pocket.

Yeah. And here's a pro tip. They make a thing on Amazon. You can, there's a million of them. They're all about 10 bucks. I'm going to link one, but this isn't the one you have to buy. It's called an AirPods lanyard. And the thing, my fear with the AirPods is that you're going to get on the plane and one of them is going to fall. And then you only, then it's gone. Like it's just gone. You know, it falls on a plane. You're never getting it back.

Every time at the time I dropped my Apple pencil on an airplane while it landed. Oh man. Yeah. The plane was landing. I was putting my, my iPad back and the Apple pencil fell in the aisle. And as the plane hit the ground, it was like a race car. It went up like eight rows. It just like slid up forward eight rows and it was sitting there and

And the plane landed. And while the plane's taxiing, all I did was look at it there. Like my eyes would not come off of it. And then as soon as the bell rung,

I raced up there and got it. But I mean, like you drop things on a plane, like an air pod, there's a really good chance. It's going to fall into a crevice. It's going to roll somewhere. It's just gone. So there's lanyards. It's just a rubber, you know, length of rope that you put around your neck. The good ones have magnets on each sides and, and they, they, there's a Silicon fit around the base of the air pod. So you can just hang them around your neck and you can use the magnet to like attach them in the middle.

But when I'm on the plane, I always put the AirPods Pro in the lanyards and keep them around my neck, and then I'm good. Yeah, that's super smart. Especially if you're like me and you have a tendency to nod off on a plane. Like you wake up and your AirPods gone, and you have no idea when or where. Yeah, that's a good call. That's the best $10 if you get on flights you can spend in this entire episode. It's good. It's just like, yeah. In fact, now that I look at it, I'm going to add a couple pair. Okay.

So I can put like one in different bags and give one to my wife. And they're just cheap enough that you can get extras. Yep. You have in here portable speakers, which is nothing. I have never traveled with a portable speaker. So I was curious if you have. Way back in the day, I had a Bluetooth speaker when I was doing a lot of traveling as a lawyer. And I'd get like do a trial and I'd be in a hotel for like weeks. And I would for my music.

I don't do that anymore. I mean, the iPhone speaker is good enough. The iPad speaker is good enough, but I just, and I just remembered I used to do that. So I, uh, I put it on the list. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm listening to something like in a hotel room or something, yeah, just like play it on my phone and leave it on the counter. Like it's, they've come a long way for a long way.

The other one I have, this is not really tech related, but I have because I have glaucoma, the drops I take give me incredibly long eyelashes like I except for every other part of my body. I could be a model, a supermodel, you know, because I got supermodel eyelashes.

But I really like sleep masks on planes. Not only do they block out the light, they tell the people next to you to leave you alone. Like you put one of those on, it's like, okay, shield's up. Sleep mask on, lanyard, AirPods in, and he's gone. But they're hard for me to wear because my eyelashes are too long.

And a friend of mine says, you got to get a Manta. And I'm like, what is that? And it's like the Cadillac of sleep masks. And I ordered one and it's like the greatest sleep mask because it puts more distance between your eyeball and the actual mask part. Okay. And they're expensive and they're like, you can get sleep masks so cheap, but this one is like, there'll be one person in the audience that will hear this and say, yes, that's what I've been looking for. So you're welcome.

Wow, they sell like a weighted one and one with Bluetooth so you can get some white noise in there. They do a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I only got the basic one, but it's nice. Okay. Yeah, so I'll put the basic one as the one in the show notes people can check out. Yeah, yeah. I've never tried a sleep mask, but I, to my wife's chagrin, is like I can fall asleep anytime.

I fall asleep very easily. I'm a light sleeper, but I can fall asleep very easily. At some notes, she'll come in our room and like all the lights will be on and I've been asleep for an hour. Like it just doesn't, I can do it. It's fine. But I get it. I think my wife is like part cat. Like sometimes in the middle of the night, she starts doing stuff, you know? And like that always wakes me up. I keep this thing next to the bed. So I don't just use it on travel. Like if she starts like,

rumbling around in the evening, I'll put it on, you know, so I've got it on at night too. So yeah, I, this is a, this is important tech to me. Yeah. Yeah.

iPhone stuff. I mean, we talked earlier, the iPhone's basically essential on travel. And a lot of that comes down to capture a photo or videos, right? You're on a trip someplace, beautiful. You may not make it back to you. You want to take some pictures and some video. You've talked about this before, but it is so good. The Moft tripod, M-O-F-T. Yes.

Yes, I got it last year. Just from I saw a review of it. I'm like, this looks really great. It's, it's about the size of a wallet. And it turns into a tripod, it uses the mag safe mount to attach your phone, you can use it as a mount in the evening to hold your phone up, like, you know, but also,

It's just a great little tripod that you can keep in your pocket. And as you're going through the day, if you want to take a picture that requires a small tripod, you've got it covered with almost no carry weight or space. So for years, I used to recommend the Glyph and one of those little tiny tripods. I had all this stuff, but this is even better because it's so small. The footprint is...

is really small yeah i mean obviously the glyph can attach to an actual tripod there's all it does more but this thing uh for like if you're just traveling you want to use your iphone to take pictures having this along gives you a lot of flexibility yeah no it makes a lot of sense also comes in a

And because it uses a magnet, you get standby, which is really cool where you put your phone horizontally on a MagSafe mount and you get widgets and rich notifications. I use it at my desk all the time. At my desk, I have a MagSafe that holds the phone up and standby is really awesome. Ten colors, no orange. What's up with that?

I have a white one. When I bought it, they only had one color, white. But that's okay. It's fine. Another thing I have, I'm not a pop socket guy on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. But years ago, I got a magnetic pop socket that attaches to MagSafe.

And I keep it in my, in my way. It's like another like travel thing. I never use it except when I'm on the road. But when you're traveling, it's actually kind of nice to have a pop socket you can put on your phone without like, I just didn't like the idea of gluing it on and having it there always. But this is like, you know, magnetic. So you can pop it on or off as needed. And I only really find I need it when I'm traveling. So I keep it in my bag. I do like pop sockets on Kindles.

And I recently gave an older Kindle to my sister-in-law and it had a Batman pop socket on it. And I was just like, here you go. Like I didn't say anything about the pop socket. It's like, here's this older Kindle paperwhite for you. I hope she's still using it. I like to think that she is. What about a car mode? Like if you're going to go somewhere and rent a car,

Why not bring your own car mount? I used to do this. So I used to travel a lot for work. Years before Relay, like back before I was podcasting a long time ago, I would travel a lot for work. In fact, I have a story about that later. And I carried, I had a phone mount in my carry-on. But now, like I haven't rented a car in years that does not have CarPlay.

And so what I have swapped this out for is I make sure that I have a USB-A and C cables that work with my phone. So, cause when you get in a car, you never know if you're going to get USB-A or C newer cars have C some, some cars like, like we'll have USB-C for charging, but still use USB-A for car play. And so now we're just make sure that, you know, I've got, I've got those cables and, and,

It has not bitten me yet, but I used to do this for years, kept just like a suction cup iPhone mount in my bag. Rivian update. I have now put all the pieces I need to mount my phone on my dash in my Rivian list, but I have not ordered them yet. Okay. Well, I just spent a bunch of money on packing cubes, so maybe you should do that. Well, I'll tell you that the things that are bugging me on it is...

On the dash, it gives you the length of time. You need to go two miles and turn right, but it doesn't tell you what the street is. And the other thing it doesn't tell you is they've got the thing in CarPlay where it says it's three red lights away. I find that kind of useful, and that's not there. Me too. I'm going to send them feedback, but...

It's like, it's close, but I'm not sure. I think I may end up, you know, Marco told me that I'd end up ordering this stuff and I don't want to, cause it's got a Walnut dash and I don't want to cover it up. But yeah,

I think that it's probably going to end up happening. It is cool. The inside of your vehicle is infinitely nicer than mine, but that's fine. Other kind of Apple gear. I mean, we had ideas in here for like portable keyboards, portable monitors. Well, that's the thing now. Travel monitors are like that has evolved. You can get a cheap one, super thin. It's like USB-C, you know, like you don't, you don't need anything else. I know our friend and sometimes enemy Casey lists uses one.

I think Federico and John at Max Roys have played with them. I've, I never have, I've never traveled with a portable keyboard. You know, I've traveled with an iPad with a keyboard case, but yeah,

If I'm taking my laptop, that's all I'll do. The one thing I do, if I'm going on a trip where I know I'm going to be using the Mac a lot, say WBDC, I will pack my mouse just because using a trackpad all week for if I'm doing shows or doing a lot of writing or whatever, trackpad is hard on me after a while. And so I will throw my Logitech mouse away.

The one that I use literally at my desk right here, the MX master three S I will take it with me if I know it's going to be a work heavy trip. Yeah. Like any type of heavy editing, whether it be videos or documents, you need a mouse for that stuff. Yeah. The travel monitor. We actually have one in the house cause my wife works from home a lot for her job, but she's a fancy lady and works with a lot of spreadsheets and like reference data.

And we don't have, she doesn't have a desk at home. And I said, well, what do you want to do? And she, we ended up getting one of those that just hangs off the side of her work laptop and that that's fine. And then it, it packs away and it's not like around when I'm not, you should a 3d print her desk.

Yeah. Or use all that fancy woodworking stuff in your garage. Yeah. I should just make her one. But the, where would we put it? We have a small house. She actually, what she does a lot of times is all, cause I have like a rolling desk here in the studio. And so we work together. So we just kind of, we're coworkers for a day. Yeah. Mary comes in sometimes I have another desk in the other room, but also have a couch in here, which is like the best thing I've ever added to my office. And she'll bring her laptop out here sometimes and, and get some stuff done.

This is another one inspired by Daisy's work is because she deals with confidential data, even at work, they make her put a screen privacy filter on her computer so people walking by can't see all the Disneyland secrets. Yeah. But I thought that would be a good idea for travel. I mean, if you are somebody who works with secure data and you're in an airport or whatever,

Those things are not expensive anymore either. I definitely see them. I think every time I fly, it's like someone flying in a suit, right? Is not who I want to be, but, uh, you know, usually, uh, a think pad or a Dell or an HP, like a, you know, an it, an it provide a laptop using one of those things. Cause they're doing secret, you know, secret business things.

What about, you know, when we went on this trip to Orlando, because we park our car in LA, we park it in a garage that drives you to the airport. And there were two guys in there having serious business-y business talks in the thing while we're driving in. And I got thinking, I'm so glad I'm not a lawyer.

just listening to those guys talk. I'm ruined. I'm ruined. If this whole thing falls apart, I'm going to have to go get a job doing french fries or something because I can't go back to having those conversations. I just can't. No, I get it. iPad gear. Now, in the past when we've done shows like this, we had a whole list of things for the iPad, and I was thinking about it prepping for today's show.

I don't think I need any of that stuff anymore. I think, you know, get a keyboard case and an Apple pencil if you're inclined and you're good. Yeah. So much of the iPad hardware ecosystem just collapsed the second they had a keyboard with a track, especially the one with the trackpad, right? It's like, Apple's are expensive, but Logitech and other companies make less expensive ones. And if you're using your iPad as a computer, you probably already have it. So...

It's great. Kindle. Do you bring a Kindle with you when you travel? I do. And it is basically always a sort of, I want to read on this trip, right? It's like a, it's like a goal, you know, it's a, an inspirational item to pack and,

And I'll never read it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, that I, I'm the opposite. Like I, I read a lot when I travel, but I, I always load up movies thinking I'll watch them and I never watched them. But yeah, I am in a very weird space on e-readers right now. Yeah. I'm cranky with Amazon because they made it impossible to download books anymore. So I've switched my book purchasing to Kobo.

We should probably at some point do a show on this stuff. But I don't know if I need an e-reader. I can put my books back on my Kindle device, but I just...

don't feel inclined to you know so i've been loading them into the apple books app which is fine still pretty good and uh but then you know everybody says well you shouldn't read those all those electrons at night you know it makes it harder to go to sleep and i often read ebooks before i go to bed so i don't i don't know what i'm gonna do am i gonna buy a kobo thing we've got a guest coming on that's a big fan of the supernote so i've got one of those here i'm testing

And you can read books on that. I don't know what I'm going to do, though. I'm in a weird spot. But I will tell you on my last trip, I didn't bring any Kindle. I just used my iPad and the books app. Yeah. I put e-books as a topic idea on the list. Yeah. Let's do that. There's a lot going on. Yeah. There is a lot going on.

Kind of rounding some things out here. We got a section here for safety and security. And the first thing you put in here was the birdie personal alarm. And I may have heard about this from you, but I bought one and it sits on top of our fridge. And if my wife or daughter go out for a run,

uh, I, I try to get them to take it with them. Cause it, you pull the plug and it makes a whole bunch of noise. Hey, go nuts and just buy a second one and give one to your daughter and one to your wife, you know, and we just let them have it on their key chain or whatever. I got them for all my girls. And the, uh, like one time when we went through Disneyland security, they took one of my daughter's birdies. I'm like, why? Yeah. Yeah.

And they're like, well, if you pull it, it'll be very disruptive. Like, well, then you should throw us out if she does that, you know? Yeah. But she's not going to do that. But anyway, they took it. So I immediately ordered another one. I just, I don't know. I'm a paranoid dad. And what it is, I guess we should have said that. It's a little device and you yank on it and it makes a ton of noise. And it's just a great security thing.

Um, but so I, I recommend that when you travel, you know, I, I have not bought myself one. I guess I should, I mean, put it in your, uh, your prepper bag.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like even just like I was thinking when I was in Edinburgh, I was going down all sorts of valleys. I didn't know my way around town. I didn't know it was good and bad parts of town. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to have something like that with me. You know, and, and I, you and I both skew a little bit everyday carry, you know, so this section has more stuff than it needs. Pepper spray is always good. If you're checking the luggage, you can always have that with you.

This whole thing with RFID blocking wallets, any wallet you buy anymore, or almost any of them, say they have RFID blocking. How much of a problem is that where people try to yank data off your cards through your wallet? This is, I will admit, an uninformed opinion because I haven't gone real deep on this. But it's kind of like, I kind of view it as like, I'm not personally targeted that I'm aware of. So I don't think...

There's someone trying to like swipe my stuff as I like pass through the airport. And I also basically only fly domestic. So I'm not flying with my passport in the US. I just have my driver's license just in my wallet, in my pocket, as I always do. And so I have not really gone down this route. Now, I'm sure there are people who have and may think what I just said is foolish, but it doesn't keep me up at night.

Yeah. I mean, as I understand it, they have to be really close to do that. So I don't know if that's important or not. I had a legal client who was a retired fire chief and he told me he had a whistle on his key chain. I'm like, well, you got the whistle. He's like, always have a whistle, Dave. When there's an earthquake or a fire, we save the people that have whistles.

And, uh, and every since then I've carried a whistle, you know? Yeah. They're just like the way he said it was just like, and with his authority, you know, it's like, yeah. Okay. So I need a whistle. Uh, but yeah, I keep one when you travel, it doesn't hurt to have one. Like something happens, you want to make some noise, uh, a flashlight. Uh, this is, uh, this is the part that I have. I made fun of it for years on this show. And now I've gone down the rabbit hole. I talked about this on our gift guide. I bought last year, the night core EDC 27, uh,

which is a fancy flashlight. I always said I wouldn't spend a hundred bucks on a flashlight. And I did, this thing is awesome. But one of the things it has is it's like got a panic button where you push it and it, it flashes like a lot of lumens at somebody. Like if you got in a spot where you wanted to get away and you pointed this at them and push the button, it would blind them for a little bit. And, um, I thought that was a good, um,

You know, it's again, safety and security. Why not bring it with you? So when I travel, I bring it with me and keep it in my pocket. Yeah. I wish I'd got the 29. They have the 27. They have like different gradients. I got the 27. The one, after you spend this much money, why not spend another like 10 or 15 bucks and get the better one? With this one,

You can lock the flashlight. The problem with these really fancy flashlights is if you accidentally trigger them in your pocket, it gets really hot, like it can even burn your leg hot. So you've got to kind of disable it when you're carrying it around day to day. And the EDC-29 has a physical slider, which is a lot easier than hitting the code on the thing. Yeah, that makes sense. I wish I'd done that.

I think someday when I'm just flush with cash, I'm going to buy that one and then put the other one in the car. I don't know. But the, there you go. I think one thing that's easy to overlook, we're going to talk about travel apps in a minute, but having hard copies of things can be really useful when you're traveling. You know, obviously you're going to have your ID and whatnot, but things like having a copy of your passport or like having your credit card numbers handy is,

Can really save your bacon. And a lot of people do this in kind of the form of an emergency card where you've got it in your bag and you just have some information that's printed that may be handy if you don't have your wallet or you don't have your phone. Yeah.

Like what if you, you become disabled and you can't talk to somebody in a foreign city. And I think about this, I do this when I, when I travel internationally, I should do it domestically, but I don't, but I put a card and I put my hotel contacts, my contacts. I put my wife's contact information on it. I have a list of all the medications I take. And this stuff is on my, a lot of it's on my phone, you know, but I,

I'd just be like, I don't know if some guy in France is going to know how to do that, right? So you just put it in your wallet and you carry it with you when you're traveling. And if something happens to you, presumably they'll look

And then the flip side is a digital version of the data is like your passport, your credit cards, all that stuff to me is scanned into one password. I mean, one password has fields for them, but I also literally just scan each page of them in the front and the back of the cards. So I've got digital versions of those as well. Yeah.

I want to talk about knives while we're in the everyday carry section. Okay. Since we're doing this. Yeah. Since we're doing this. But first I have a travel knife story. So I mentioned earlier when I used to travel a lot for a job back when I was consulting, when I would carry a car mount with me, I at the time had a pretty nice knife that I liked. And cause this was back in the day when I was doing a lot of consulting on Apple's, on Apple's behalf for K through 12 schools. This was like,

16 17 18 years ago and we'd go someplace in texas and roll out like 150 imax across three schools right that was my life for a while and i went on several trips and i couldn't find uh the knife that i liked and i got home probably after my third trip to dallas and found the knife in the bottom of my carry-on backpack it's like it had been through the airport six times

Well, I'm glad I'm not a bad guy, you know? Yeah. But my current knife that I carry is by Benchmade. It is their bug out knife. A friend of mine recommended it. And what I like about it is you can customize it. So mine, the handle is orange, the hardware is black, and the blade is hardened stainless steel. Or not stainless steel, but, you know, they're like stainless.

alloy, whatever they use. Um, and it's awesome and you cannot take it on a plane. Uh, but that's okay. Uh, it's, it's in my pocket almost every day. I love that you found a way to talk about your pocket knife though. I love that. Yeah. Well, sometimes you travel and you need it and then you stick it in your checked bag and hope that it arrives.

Yeah. I am a huge Leatherman fan. Me too. And I have the arc, which is their kind of nice one. And I, it's got a really great blade on it. And I stopped carrying my pocket knife because I,

This does that just fine. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I've got the wave plus, which is a kind of like the little brother to what you've got. Yeah. I once, when I was going up to the Bay area for a case, I got to the airport and realized I had my Leatherman in my pocket and I went out in front of the airport and I buried it in the planter. I just stuck it in a planter. Like if I'm sure the video cameras must've seen me and I'm surprised I didn't get arrested. But anyway, yeah,

I put it in the planter. I flew up, made my court appearance, then got back and, um, and got it out of the planter and went home. I was with a friend once who did that, uh, going into an NBA game where they got metal detectors and he like ran outside and like put his knife in a planter. I think that happens a lot. Like, I bet if you just wandered around the outside, outside of an airport, you can pick up something nice. Yeah. Yeah.

But other stuff I bring with me, this isn't quite tech related, but it's great on trips. And I just went unloaded on this Hero Clips. These are, they're carabiners that like open up into like something wider. And the reason they're so good is like if you put one in your backpack, you can hang your backpack off the edge of a table or you can hang something off a coat hanger. It's just great.

The hero clips, just look them up. We've got a link in the notes and you'll probably want a couple of them. Yeah. The other ones that I find really useful are just mini carabiner clips. You can get them off Amazon by the boatload and I've got a bunch of them. I bring them with me and I just always find uses for them when I'm traveling.

Just little things like that. I bring plastic bags and that you just find uses for plastic bags, you know? Yeah. Recently I've got into paracord. So I now have a little length of that and I haven't needed it on trip, but I put it in my bag anyway, paracord and a few good knots. I, you know, you can fix a backpack or whatever with it. Yeah. When I travel, I have a nice like moisture wicking towel.

You know, Doug turns out Douglas Adams was right. You find all sorts of uses for it, put it in your backpack and just to kind of complete the, the blackout with the eyes. I also have earplugs. I keep them my thing if I want to, I don't want to listen to music.

Yeah, I've got some, uh, actually they're made from the same, I got them made when I got the molds made for my in-ears for work. And so, um, they're in a little case and they have a lanyard built in, so you can't, you can't lose them. And, um, that can be, I can be really nice. I got another cheap recommendation that is like the lanyard, something that's a must buy. It's called the YTT screen cleaner.

And a listener sent me this link and said, you need to try this. And I bought it and I love it. It's a little squirt bottle of cleaning juice for your iPad or your phone screen. But it's wrapped in a microfiber. It's like the bottle is wrapped in this microfiber cloth and then it's got a little plastic insert you drop it into to protect it.

And it's eight bucks and you put it in your bag and anytime your screen is dirty, you pull it out, you squirt it and then you rub it with the bottle in essence and it's clean. And it is really well done. Yeah. That's clever being all in one. Yeah. Pretty cool. And it's small enough that it doesn't trigger like the,

you know, the liquid limit when you get on an airplane. But yeah, I put, got a couple of them, put them in my various bags. I got one on my desk right here and just find all sorts of use for it. Especially if you use your iPad much because the iPad screen that gets dirty. This episode of MPU is brought to you by NetSuite. Nobody knows for sure what the future holds for businesses. If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 different answers.

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Speaking of opportunities, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning today at netsuite.com slash MPU. The guide is free to you at netsuite, N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E, netsuite.com slash M-P-U. Okay, so power and networking. When you travel...

you know, the big limiting factor often is power. Like where do I recharge things? I always laugh when I go to Disneyland and I go in the men's room and there'll be like one guy with his phone plugged into the wall in the bathroom. Like he found the single plug in Disneyland and he's sitting there. He paid like a hundred bucks or whatever to be in there that day. And he's sitting there for an hour in the bathroom charging his phone. I just, I don't know.

I got no words for that, but the, uh, you can solve that problem. There's a bunch of them. Some of them we have talked about in prior, um, episodes like the gift guides, but, uh, the anchor power bank continues to be a must have for me when I travel, it's their big one, the big boy, and you throw it in the bottom of your bag. And when you're traveling with family, you are the giver of power to your family. I bought one of these after a previous gift guide episode and,

And look, you could, you could throw it through a window. Like it is, it's a beast. It's a beast, but it is so awesome. And yeah, I, I, I use it all the time. My wife and her two brothers at the new year of year, they go hiking and it's like, it's like hardcore, like off grid sleeping on the trail hiking. And I was like, look, I know this is heavy. And like, you know, you're carrying a bag and,

But the three of you could go the, you know, the two nights, three days and keep your phones charged just with this. And they did. It did the whole thing. It's got a screen on it. What's really cool about it, this and some other anchor products now have like a charging base that you can just leave on the desk. Mine's on a shelf, a bookshelf in my office.

I just sit it down on there. So you don't have like a, a USB-C cable to plug in. It's kind of like Mac safe. It's got the little pins and lines. Yeah. It's, it's really nice.

Yeah. Great. Great. I mean, they're not cheap. It's like on sale, you can get them like 130, 140, but I think normally like 180. And I think that's with the base of my way of serves. So this is not a small expense, but boy, does it just solve the problem? Yeah. The other, and honestly, almost everything I'm recommending here is anchor because I've just come to trust them so much. I don't, I guess I should say, I don't get any,

residual from Amazon or anybody from anything we link. I used to have an Amazon account. They banned me because I put a link in a, in a newsletter once knowingly that that's bad. Yeah. I got a warning about it. And, uh, but yes, we don't use Amazon affiliate links in the show notes anymore.

yeah so just whatever you know you guys are all good um but but this is stuff we love and and the anchor um prime power bank which is another one that this is a new one the one i bought was before this version but it's a it's a battery with two plugs on the that built in so you just plug in the wall and then it doubles as a charger when you're in the hotel room but then when you pull it off the wall it's a battery

And the new one has the little screen on it that shows you the status. It's nicer than the one I bought, but I'm not going to replace it. But it's just a nice – that's another kind of variant of this. So this one is your battery on the plane, but then it also, when you get to the hotel room, it's your power supply for your Mac. And that's kind of a nice –

thing. It doesn't hold as much of a charge as the power bank, but it's still great. Yeah. And it's cool that it just plugs right in. I mean...

uh i've talked about this on previous guest guides i didn't put in here but i'll mention it now one thing that i travel with is like a little eight inch extension cord or maybe you know six inch or something yeah just because very often in a hotel or something like you got to plug into like the top of the lamp and maybe your thing doesn't quite work there and just gives you that little bit of extra flexibility

Yeah. And everyone knows how like the plugs in hotel rooms are loose. Oh yeah. They've been treated real, real badly over the years. You know, they're just jamming screwdrivers in there or something. I don't know, but like the plugs just fall out. So like, you know, bringing an extension that you can kind of lock in is actually a really good idea.

And then my Anker battery triumvirate, the third one is the portable one, the Anker MagGo. This is their version of the Apple magnetic battery.

It's a little thicker. It's got more charge in it. It's not quite as integrated, but Apple doesn't make theirs anymore. So this is what you get. And it's good though. It's solid. And I got one and keep it and use it all the time. So you don't need all three of those things, even though I have all three, but the, you know, choose your poison. Yeah. Yeah.

I did have some, I don't think it was anchor, but I had an older version of some sort of like mag safe battery like this. Uh, and I got recalled. I got an email from Amazon. I'm like, please don't use this thing. Uh, I've not replaced it. So the Mago is going in my, uh, in my shopping cart. It's on sale right now too, which is cool. Honestly, that's why I buy the anchor stuff because it's just like, um,

I just feel like, yeah, they're not going to do something that's going to cause my hotel room to catch on fire, right? You know?

And, um, and I don't want to be that guy, you know, you don't want to be responsible or, you know, in my pocket, like some of this stuff on Amazon, you know, it looks fine, but I just don't know the brand and I'm not sure I can trust them. You know? Yep. There's, there's another one I'm going to put in. It's anchor has what they call the power extend, which kind of solves the hotel plug problem. And I don't own one of these, but in researching the show, I was looking at it and I'm sorely tempted to buy one.

One reason I like the short little extension cords is that it's, it's very simple. And I actually, I use them in my office because I got some stuff on like a battery backup that is like a big wall wart, right? And it like blocks the next plug over and on a battery backup, like space is at a premium. And so I will use those little like six inch or eight inch little extension cords to manage power bricks at work. And it's, it's very, very helpful.

This one's called the anchor nano charging station. It's a 67 watt charger. It's got a three prong plug in it and a five foot cord. And then it's got a little like dongley thing on the end. It's got two additional three prong plugs to USB a and two USB C up to 67 Watts. And like in a hotel room, this could really save your bacon. Yeah. In fact, you know what? I'm just going to order this. There you go. I'm going to buy one. The blue is nice.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Bring it on my next trip. On the last trip I went on, I had that problem where the chargers just literally fell out of the wall in the middle of the night because the plugs were so bad. Yeah. It's unfortunate. Yeah.

Have you ever done anything with like travel routers? I know we got some friends who are into this, like Casey lists. We mentioned earlier, I think Quinn Nelson is also into these. These are small devices. You like plug into the network at an Airbnb or a hotel room. If you have hotel with ethernet and you like have your own little network.

Yeah. If you go back into the Mac power users archive, like episode 100 ish, you know, I bought one back then and set one up and it was, it was cool. That's the reason I put in the outline. I thought, I know we still have listeners that do this, but they've come a long way, you know, since then. And, but it is exactly that you can use it as a repeater. Like if the hotel has bad wifi, you can repeat their signal or you can set up your own network and, and,

you know, the advantages is it's your network. So you kind of control that and then everybody doesn't have to log into the hotel wifi. I have, I had one years ago,

Um, I do not currently use one. The travel I do doesn't seem to really need it. Yeah. And I just, I just, you know, for whatever they're going to do it, but I know this is a thing people do. So I wanted to make sure we at least mentioned it. So here's the thing I do. I have an Apple note that I, I have called known good hotels.

Yeah. And if I travel to WBC, it's like there's a couple of hotels in the Cupertino area I've stayed at. I like staying someplace with the kitchen. And so I have like notes of like, hey, this hotels, these hotels have nice kitchen. So I don't have to like remember. And I'm trying to book a hotel for WBC or an Apple press thing can be stressful as I got. These are my hotels that I know are good.

But I also have on there a little note about how the network is. Because especially on a work trip, that might be really important. And tethering can get you a long way. I have never played with these sort of travel router things. But if you travel a lot, it may be something that is useful to you.

Other kind of weird travel tech is if you are going to another country, you know, getting your own eSIM or mobile data card. That makes sense. I don't think we need to say much more about that. I've never done it. Me either, because with AT&T, they've got a reasonable plan when you travel. And I just pay them. Then I don't have to monkey around with it.

It used to be the other thing people used to just get those portable hotspots, you know, where you get like a domestic, like if you're in a foreign country, you get a hotspot from their domestic service and you just carry it around and hook into that. I'm sure we've got veteran travelers in our audience that do that. That's a thing that you can do. If you've got big experience in that, share it in the notes at talk.mcpipers.com. But that's a thing.

All right. What if you're going out of town and you want to do some photography or video? What do you bring with you? Yeah. So we mentioned earlier some tripod mounts and those sorts of things. Having a little bit more horsepower behind your iPhone photography can be nice or even going beyond it. I know moment lenses were very popular for a long time. These

And there were different versions of it. Other companies had them too. Like you get a case or it's a magnetic clip, like the Ollo clip. Remember those guys? Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Where you could have different lenses kind of on top of your iPhone. I think these are still popular in some circles, but I have not used one in a long time.

Yeah, me either because the iPhone got so many lenses. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like the iPhone doesn't have the kind of glass that Moment does. So like if you're really serious about it,

I think that's still probably the vendor of choice. Something to know is they've changed their mounting system in the last few years. So if you've got older lenses, they may not work with the modern cases. So just look into it. But I do think Moment is probably the place to go. All that said, I don't bring those anymore. I mean, I'm shocked at how good the iPhone is for a travel camera.

And like the old days where I would bring an SLR with me, I don't even think about that anymore. Yeah.

Things that I would like someone say, well, if you want to bring a better camera, what would you bring? Like the Sony has some of the lower end cameras that are smaller, like pocket cameras that are good. Yeah. I'm not sure if they're worth it or not. I did buy the DJI Osmo pocket three video camera, which I use for B roll in the max Berkey labs. And I keep threatening to do more Disney vlogging with it.

And I think that's superior to the iPhone because frankly, when you're out and about, you kind of need your phone to get around. And this is just a dedicated video camera, but that I think I'm kind of on the edge with needing that. I think most people will just use their phone. I think, I think we have crossed that threshold now for years. We talked about, Hey, we're almost there, you know? And honestly, like I've got a Sony ZV one. I really like it.

But most of the time, I don't even think about taking it. Like I just, I take the phone, the iPhone. I took, I actually took the ZV-1 to a couple of WBCs because a couple of my Apple history calendars that I did on Kickstarter had photos taken at Apple Park. I was like, okay, that needs to be more than an iPhone because I'm printing it, you know, nice and big. But,

We have crossed the threshold where for most things, for most people, most of the time, the iPhone is totally fine. We're beyond it being passable, I think. Yeah. There's a Max Markey Labs member who is like a serious photographer. Like he's got Leicas and lenses and everything. And he was just telling me that like some of his favorite pictures, one he showed me on his wall, is taken with the iPhone. I mean, yeah.

It's just, it's, you know, even for people who are real serious about it, the iPhone is a player now. Yeah. One thing though, I would say is often a problem with an iPhone photography is, is light sources. And I got a couple loom cubes like six or seven years ago and they're just a little, if it's in your pocket and it's a, it's a portable light, you can do the same thing. Like have your friend use their phone as a light source, but the loom cubes are more powerful and,

And they're very small. So if you think you want to do something fancy and it's dark out, you may want to pick up a couple of these and carry them in your bag. That's the one thing you can't do right now is like get a light source from another angle with the phone. Yeah. Yeah. You've mentioned these before. And I think it's a really good idea, especially if you're going someplace where you know you're going to be indoors. Like, you know.

Going to a lot of exhibits or a conference or something. A little extra light could be useful. Or even outside in the dark. Like you just have somebody stand out of shot holding the loom cube from the side. And it actually does make it nicer. And they're kind of indestructible. I got them on Kickstarter a long time ago. And there's probably competing...

as well. But yeah, just an external source of light. Yeah. Uh, when you go on travel, do you bring extra storage? I do. If it is a work, a work trip. And so if we're recording a podcast or doing video, you know, I'll throw in, I've got several of like the Samsung, you know, T five, T seven, T nine, whatever the current number is, USB bus powered SSDs, really small, really lightweight, uh,

You can usually find them on sale on Amazon and they're, they're fantastic. The, the only like thing I would say about this is if I were going somewhere where I was taking a lot of photos and I didn't have an internet connection, I would bring a drive just to back up those photos on the trip. Like when my wife and I went to Colorado, I took a lot of photos. I went up in the mountains, we're hiking, we're doing all these things and

And the apartment or like the Airbnb we were in, like this apartment had actually shockingly good internet access. And so I was able to import my photos online.

And they synced with iCloud Photo and got backplaced overnight. And so I had a backup of them. So for me, it's do I need the storage for a work project or I'm in a situation where backing this data up is difficult. And then I'll just toss one of these in my bag and be done with it.

Yeah. And it's funny because this is another thing that's evolved in the old days. I would always bring a hard drive on trips and I would always, you know, like the good dad make copies of everything and always had to make sure you didn't put the drive in the same place you put the computer when you flew home and like all that stuff.

Not necessary anymore. You know, iCloud backing up all your photos. When I do bring storages, if I need to do work, you know, I don't because I don't have the, you know, my main machine is a laptop.

I actually have a little Samsung T7 that I put a bunch of my data on encrypted, like the Mac Sparky assets. And so if I go on a trip and something happens with, even with my little MacBook Air that doesn't have any storage, I've got the main data there. And I also have that stuff in the cloud as well, but you just never know when you go on a trip, if you're going to be able to get to the stuff in the cloud. So I have a little drive I bring if I'm going to do work, but that's it. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and SSDs make this so much better. I mean, back in the hard drive days, it's like, Oh, do you need a rugged hard drive? Like there are rugged SSDs that crucial makes one, but the ruggedness was about the very fragile mechanical spinning drive inside. Like, yeah, I'm not worried about damaging a Samsung SSD, right? Like it's going to be in my backpack. It's going to be safe.

It's not going to get damaged from being jostled around. And so this is yet another place where the SSD revolution has made things much better. Like I would never take an external hard drive on the trip anymore. Like I would, I would only take solid state. This episode of the Mac power users is brought to you by Google Gemini. Go to Gemini.google.com and supercharge your creativity and productivity.

I used Gemini for the first time the other day, and the most impressive thing to me was just talking to it. You go live with it, and then it's just like you're having a conversation. You can just talk about your day or have it explain something to you or start brainstorming ideas. I'll give you an example. I pretended I had a job interview coming up and asked it to help me prep for the interview.

It immediately started suggesting common questions I might get asked. Then I started talking through my answers out loud and it would give me feedback. And it's all happening in real time, like I'm talking to a career coach.

That's just what I tried first, but you can talk to it about anything. And that's the magic of it, how you can have this back and forth and it's all seamless. If you haven't tried it yet, it's definitely worth checking out. You'll see what I mean. And our thanks to Google Gemini for their support of the Mac power users and all of relay. Okay. Travel apps, right? You got your phone, maybe you got an iPad. What are some apps? What are some things that can make, uh, make travel better?

Starting with your preparation is the Maps applications, Google and Apple Maps. They both have offline downloadable maps. I prefer Apple Maps. I guess I'm just kind of in the bag for Apple. But what I do is I go in and I add favorites for the hotel map.

any points of interest, you know, and I also put in, if it's domestic, I put in the local Kaiser cause I have Kaiser health, you know, in case something happens and, um, and like restaurants, just whatever it is that I need to, to be able to access. I added his favorite to maps before I leave and then download the maps. And then I know I'm good. Downloaded maps are huge. Saving favorites is huge. We did a whole episode in Apple maps a while back now and,

And I really will create and get rid of favorites and Apple maps like willy nilly, like just, especially if you're driving in a place where you're not familiar or a car you're not familiar with, right? Like it's very easy to have, have your favorites there and tap them in car play and, and,

and be ready to go. And the offline access can be huge as well. One thing that I would, that I would add to that is depending on where you travel, like Apple maps is really good in California and a lot of the U S but you get outside of the U S and maybe it's not as good or like what I've noticed being in London over the years is

Google Maps is really good for some things and Apple Maps is better at others, right? Like either the public transit is better or one or the other. So even if you don't use both, like even if you're a loyalist to one or the other, normally having both on your phone and I have a separate travel home screen that I enable when traveling that has them both side by side and having the offline data and both of them having favorites and both of them like

it can make a lot of sense to use them in conjunction with each other, depending on what you're doing. Yeah. Currency conversion. Do you have a recommended app or anything for that? I don't. I basically, if I'm in the UK, which is really the only place I travel internationally, is that I just try not to think about it and hope that things are going okay. I don't, I don't really like, I don't convert cash. I don't really go down that road.

my family, we all want to take this trip to Japan. We've been saving for it for like four years. It was going to happen this year, but just with life, we couldn't do it this year. Maybe next year, we're kind of hoping for next year. But every time I look at the yen, I don't understand it at all. Yeah. At least going from the US to the UK, it's like, I can do that math in my head. I don't know. I think a thousand yen is like

six dollars but it might be sixty dollars i'm not sure but anyway i i'm gonna have to figure something out when we finally go over there because that that's something yeah uh one that you turned me on to is flighty yes and man that is such a great app um and my subscription just expired

um and i don't know if i should renew because i only have one trip planned this year so i don't know if it's worth paying for it but one of the things i love about is it shows me when you're taking trips and like i get to follow my friends but also like when you're on the plane and i don't know how it does it it like figures out how long you're gonna be or like i told the the war story earlier when i landed and i i only had a few minutes to get to my my um

to my connecting flight. Yeah. Like flighty told me where that was in the airport. So I knew how to run there, you know? And like, it's just like, if you travel at all, man, it's, it is, it is the winner in terms of, uh, you know, plane tracking and just navigating airports. Yeah. It's really good. They do have this, uh, week by week plan. So you could basically pay for the features you need. Like, Oh, the one week you're traveling. Uh,

Cause it is probably do that. It is kind of expensive otherwise, but yeah, it's great. And I will use it. And it usually knows things before the airline app. So, uh, yeah. Flighty. If you fly at all, it's, it's worth the, uh, worth the time. The other, any other, uh, flight tracking apps or itinerary? Like, is, are you a trippet guy? I'm not a trippet guy. I know people are. Um, and I, I, you know, a lot of people like, uh,

Want to have everything. Um, Tripsy is another one, uh, for iOS, iPad and Mac. And Tripsy is like very much in the sort of indie app scene. Uh, really nice. But I, I do my planning in Apple notes and it's enough for me. I can have, you know, links to the various things I need. I can share it with anyone I'm traveling with and, uh,

critically, unlike some notes apps, Apple notes is offline, right? It syncs everything to your device and TripIt and TripSee, like they are offline as well, I believe, but I don't need all those features. And so I'm just using, I'm just using Apple notes. Yeah. The joke is because my favorite place to go is Hawaii and, and my family knows I always want to go back. So now whenever we fly back,

uh, from Hawaii, I create a new note for the next trip and share it with them. So when they get off the plane, they're like, all right, dad's ready to go. But the, yeah, but the, uh, it's great. You put your, you know, I use an Apple note that's especially now that you have folding and Apple notes, it's so much easier. Like all the hotel information is whole folded under heading. The flight information is folded, folded under heading, and you can share it with the whole family or whoever you're working with. And that's good enough for me. Uh,

One topic I want to talk about is trip discovery. I find...

I love plants and I like to garden, but whenever I travel, I'm always admiring trees and plants that I see, but often they're in climates that I couldn't grow here in Southern California, but I still am interested. And there's this great app called picture this, and it's got a subscription, but it's a great plant identification app. And I've been testing it against the new AI thing that Apple does and picture. This is safe. It's good. You know, it's much better than what Apple's doing.

But I, I think that's a great travel app. If you're interested in that stuff. I know this is again, probably just for a few members of the audience, but if you like plants, get picture of this. Whenever you travel, you can capture all the plants you see. Yeah. You also have, you also have in here an app called flush, which you just have to explain this. Um, okay. So I, uh, I like clean bathrooms, you know, I'm not going to lie. And, um,

And I will go into a bathroom and decide that I don't need to go that bad. But Flesh is an app that rates public restrooms. There you go.

There's an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which acts as like a Seinfeld, like a redo of the final episode. And George talks about an app that does this. Oh, really? Yeah. Me and George Costanza. Yeah, you and George Costanza. Has ratings for 200,000 public restrooms across the world. That's all I'm going to say. It's good to know. Yeah.

Okay. We talked about Apple Notes. I think reminders can be in that conversation as well, particularly in preparation for a trip. Sharing reminders lists with a spouse or your travel companions can be very useful. I just use the checklist feature in Apple Notes. In fact, I have a couple of notes that are basically just like travel packing lists. Yeah.

Anytime I realize I don't have something on the list, I just add it as another checklist item and I can check them off in Apple Notes and then uncheck them at the end of the trip. And it's really become valuable for me over the years.

I put the shortcut in the shortcuts field guide. It's a template packing list for reminders, but I'm using arrays so I can pick topics. Like I'll say, am I going swimming on this trip? And if I click the box, then it gives me all the things I need to go swimming. Or am I going to be doing like serious iPhone photography? And then it reminds me to bring that stuff.

Or am I bringing an iPad? And then like, so I've just made little topics. Is it cold? Is it going to rain? And so I made an array for each one of the main topics. So when I go on a trip, I just click the boxes for the ones that I'm going to need on this trip. And then that generates a packing list for me. And then I share it with the family. You know, that's the last piece and reminders lets you do that so easily. No, that's great. Something else I wanted to mention that kind of missed, I missed in the outline when,

When we're talking about maps and directions, if you have an Apple watch, this is one of the best uses of the Apple watches when you're traveling because it puts the directions on your wrist. And quite often when you're traveling, you're, you're, you're walking like in cities or whatever, and you don't want to be the obvious tourist walking around looking at your phone about where you turn left and right and watch can put it on your wrist. Just look like you're checking the time. Yeah, it's good. That's a really good tip.

Do you use a VPN app? I do. And I had experience with this this past summer again in London where I needed to do something. I needed to log into the company's bank account for something. And it was just very unhappy that I was in the UK. So fired a VPN, told it I was in the US, and everything was fine. Yeah. Nice. I think when you travel, you should think about journaling, right? Agreed. I mean...

It's taking a lot of pictures. Day one is still the weapon of choice for both me and Steven. The Apple does have a journal app, but like that'd be a great place to kick off a journaling habit. Yes. Along with you. Absolutely. One thing I will do too, if I don't have time on a trip is maybe on the, on the plane ride back.

Uh, we'll open day one and do some journaling. And day one has this great thing where you have your, your photo and you, you like drag it in and it can set the journal entry to the date, time and place the photo was taken. And I really liked that. Um, me too. And, uh, and critically to me, Apple journal is still just on the phone. It's not on the other devices and it, it blows my mind.

Well, you know, reminders isn't on vision pro. I mean, there's all sorts of things going on over there. It's true. I think at one point there was a memo and someone said, really, we're all working on Apple intelligence for the next year. Yeah. The I made a list of travel shortcuts. I already talked about my packing list one, but I had some other ones. Some of these, I just kind of made up when I was doing the outline. I haven't actually created them, but I thought they'd be fun to,

Travel mode turns on VPN, lowers brightness, turns on do not disturb. Easy, easy shortcut. I didn't build it, but why not? Yeah. One that I actually build is when I go, it's called find my hotel. And all I do is put directions to my hotel address because I know my address for my hotel when I go.

So, you know, I just say find my hotel and then it gets me direct walking directions to my hotel. And when I'm out, like I used to use this a lot in San Francisco because I just got turned around. We go to these big Apple events and I just want to be able to get back and again, drive those directions to my watch. So I don't look like a weirdo and that's good. One that I made up planning the show is panic mode. It locks the phone, sends the location to a trusted contact.

and triggers find my iPhone. I don't know if I'd ever actually stopped to do that if I was actually in panic mode. I'd probably just yank the cord on my little alarm and run. Another thing you do is media downloads before travel. This isn't a shortcut, obviously, but do you do that? Like go through your HBO or Netflix and download stuff? Absolutely. Myself and kids, both. That can be very useful to have done. Even if you're watching something for...

Like once you're there, you know, if you're on a, if you're in a hotel, like the internet's slow, you don't want to wait around for whatever to download. I do that with the best of intentions and I never watched them. Just, I just don't, you know, I don't watch stuff on planes and when I'm on the trip, I just don't find time. Yeah. Something I was thinking that would be useful now, chat GPT and Claude and Jim and I am sure to an extent could be really good travel companions. Like just like,

I'm standing at this corner in London and there's a statue of Winston Churchill. What's this about? Just ask it a question like that. And you could probably... I think it would be quite helpful. I mean, this is a theoretical idea to me at this point. I haven't traveled where I would need it, but I think it could be a good travel companion. Yeah. No, it's good. I think we're ready to go. Are we ready to jump on the plane? Let's go on a trip. Okay.

It's just one of those things, right? Like where the tech we use every day, like we have to figure out how to adapt it to what we need when we travel. And that's always changing, right? I think if we do this episode again in five years, we'll have some different stuff on the list. Yeah. But I think it just gets simpler over time. The tech element of it has really got easier. Yeah.

All right. So that's it for travel tech. Let us know what you're using over at talk.macpowerusers.com. You can go to relay.fm slash MPU for feedback and membership. Thank you to our sponsors today, Squarespace, NetSuite, and Google Gemini. We are the Mac Power Users. If you're a more power user subscriber, stick around. We're going to be talking about now pages and maybe then pages too. So I'm looking forward to that. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.