A Definitive Solution to a Simple Problem

I finally found the right setup to definitively fix my audio record quality. The problem triggering this endless trial-and-error journey is that the Blue Yeti microphone can be too sensitive and pick up too much background noise1. On paper, the macOS Voice Isolation recording should fix this. However, ScreenFlow 10.0.9 has issues with audio recording from a USB microphone while Voice Isolation is active2.

The solution? Use Audio Highjack3 to record from the USB microphone with Voice Isolation active and output to the ScreenFlow audio capture driver. When recording, I start the Audio Hijack session, then switch to ScreenFlow and hit record. Voilà. I do use Adobe Podcast Audio Enhancer too. The results are quite good! You can hear it in my latest podcast episode. A screenshot of my Audio Hijack workflow is included so you can look at it4.

  1. People in the house don’t always pay attention when I’m recording my stuff. We could hear them quite easily. ↩︎

  2. The sound is highly distorted. It’s a known issue, apparently. ↩︎

  3. Audio Hijack is a superb piece of software if you ask me. ↩︎

  4. More tiles are included so I can make sure there are no lingering background noises after Voice Isolation makes its magic. ↩︎

I just received my Nomad leather case for my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Best case I ever used on an iPhone. Better than Apple’s leather case. It complements the Peak Design one for use with my bike. Another great case, btw. Not cheap but well worth it. 👌🏻

I’m still in my early phase with my iPhone 15 Pro Max 📸📱. Taking photos with this phone offers more possibilities, asking for more thoughts while shooting a scene. Am I the only one who wished Apple had created a profiling questionnaire during the iPhone setup, asking questions to determine our general experience level with photography? Depending on our answers, parameters would be set accordingly. ☝🏻

I made discoveries today while doing some much-needed cleanup in my home office. Here, this is what could be the first Apple dongle1. More to come soon… 👀

  1. This box was an AppleTalk network junction box. The smaller beige piece was for connecting two AppleTalk cables. ↩︎

Peak Design Case Issue With iPhone 15 Pro Action Button

For those looking to buy a Peak Design case for the iPhone 15 Pro Max, just like I did. I love the case but… here’s the kicker; the action button is really hard to press with this case, the cutout should have a button instead which would press the action button, just like for the other buttons integrated into the case. They plan to fix this. Check out this video to learn more.

Update: The way the company is handling this issue is a prime example of how customer satisfaction should be handled. Bravo.

What a Strange iCloud Drive Bug!

I have a folder named “Noto” in my iCloud Drive folder that keeps populating empty folders inside of it, on all my devices. Noto is a note-taking app that I tried in Feb. 2020. Today, I found out that I had more than 30K empty folders sitting there. I deleted the folders from my Mac mini, and it came back. Same with the MacBook Air. It came back. I visited all my devices to see if Noto was still installed. Nope. I reinstalled it on the iPad to see if it would populate something. Nope. I went on Files.app on the iPad to delete the root folder. Still re-appearing. On all my devices, I reinstalled Noto, to disable iCloud sync. I visited the iCloud storage section within Settings on the iPhone. The Noto folder isn’t there. But, on the iPad, it was there. I deleted the item from iCloud storage management. Yet, the folder keeps coming back. What a strange bug. Help.

Update: the issue went away after rebooting my M2 MacBook Air to fix an issue with Screenflow screen recording permission request. I went back to the iCloud Drive folder and sure enough, the Noto folder didn’t come back. I guess the issue is resolved.

When adding widgets on macOS Sonoma, there should be a visual cue telling me which widgets are coming from the iPhone vs from installed apps on my Mac. This screenshot shows two Dayone instances, and Fitness Totals is on my iPhone.☝🏻

What happens when you run Micro.blog.app and the web app side by side? Here is a peek at Activity Monitor on the memory consumption tab. There’s the native app. Fine. But, for each web app, Sonoma seems to spin three other processes (Graphics, Networking, and some root process using the web app URL name). Fascinating. Native apps don’t consume as much memory.