Chit Chat Across the Pond

On the Mac Geek Gab, they have a listener segment they call Cool Stuff Found. But once in a while, someone writes in with Cool Stuff Made. On episode 1143, Darrin Altman wrote in about an app he wrote originally for himself but has made available in the App Store. The app is called Talk for Me from mobiletouchtech.com/... . You see, Darrin has lost his ability to speak, so his app does what it say...

In this week's episode of "Stay off my lawn!", we have Adam Engst here to talk through his recent article on TidBITS: [Why AI Agents Fill Me with Dread](https://tidbits.com/2026/06/24/why-ai-agents-fill-me-with-dread/) Adam is an avid lover of technology and is very willing to try new things. He uses LLMs to help him write better, he uses AI tools to help him search the Internet, and he loves AI-a...

When you post online, and you know I'm following you, beware that if you say something interesting, you might be in danger of being asked onto one of my shows. That's what happened to blind knitter and programmer, Jane Jordan. In our conversation, she talks about how she keeps track of her knitting patterns using an abacus and her unique process for learning how to program. After Jane and I were d...

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, we go into the dark abyss that is Adam Engst's brain and learn how that brain influences his choice of dictation engines. He then explains how he's hacked Apple's dictation into correctly spelling unusual names of places by creating fake contacts. As always it's a fun ride, and as always he has a terrific post on the subject at tidbits.com/... R...

Adam Engst of TidBITS is here to talk about one of my favorite subjects: electric vehicles and their high-tech features. In particular, he's enamored with Digital Key 2 with the IONIQ EV he just purchased. Of course you can read his full article about his experience with Digital Key 2 at tidbits.com/... We can't stay on one topic, so we also talked about how he's handling the increased range of a...

This week, our guest is a lovely gentleman named Joseph Nilo. If you’ve been listening to Apple podcasts since the dawn of podcasting, you may recognize that name. He was one of the original hosts of the Mac Roundtable podcast. I first “met” Joseph on July 29, 2007, when I made my debut appearance on the Mac Roundtable with the great Tim Verpoorten and Don McAllister. Believe it or not, the Mac Ro...

Most people today get great joy out of buying a new car if they can afford it. Our buddy Ron has a ten-year-old Tesla Model S, and rather than buying a new car, he decided to have Tesla install a brand new battery. In our conversation, Ron explains what the original battery was and talks about the original range and how it's degraded over the last decade. One of the big reasons to replace the batt...

In this fascinating discussion with Adam Engst, we discuss how he used to think that reading added information to essentially a database in his brain. Recently, though, he has started to think about his brain as a large language model, and that instead, reading is changing the weights of the model to include new information. Here's a link to the article on tidbits.com/... where Adam explains this...

The charming Adam Engst joins us to talk about his vision of How Siri Could Become the Mac’s New Help System . His vision is that since Apple knows everything about macOS, it doesn't seem a big leap that we should just be able to ask Siri how to do things on our Mac. It could access all of the developer documentation to do this without breaking a sweat. Of course, we wandered off the reservation i...

You may know Jason Howell from his work hosting Daily Tech News Show with Tom Merritt, or his work on the All About Android and Android Faithful Podcasts, or hosting Tech News on the TWiT Network. Over the last two decades, he’s been the voice translating complex technology into clear, human stories that connect with real audiences. In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Jason joins me to t...

Adam Engst of TidBITS joins me this month to talk about the wonderful world of macOS Tahoe's menu icons. You may not have noticed, or you may not have upgraded to macOS 26 yet, but nearly every menu item in every dropdown menu on nearly every application now has a tiny icon next to it. In this discussion, Adam and I go through the fabulous blog post by Nikita Prokopov entitled It’s hard to justify...

In this rather propeller beanie episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bart Busschots explains how to configure your DNS records on your server to ensure you can send email from your domain. Like I said, it's nerdy, but we know a fair number of NosillaCastaways host their own servers and will enjoy learning how all of this works. Or maybe it's just that I really wanted to understand more about MX R...

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst joins us to valiantly attempt to explain to us how the new Phone app is supposed to work in iOS 26. He'll demystify the Classic and Unified views and even help you figure out how to call someone from the calls list in the two different views. Of course, he's written up several articles on the topic for your later reference: Hidden Set...

There are some people who are part of the fabric of the NosillaCast, piping up from time to time over many years to provide valuable insight to the show when a topic tickles them. One of these people is Andy Dolph, who’s been sending in content and chatting with me in the background since 2012. You may remember a few years back when Bart had a curious failure with his microphone, and Andy gave us...

This week, our guest is the ever-delightful Adam Engst of TidBITS. In this episode, he explains what agentic web browsers are and what they are designed to do for you. Adam put five of them through their paces. I don't want to spoil the story, but he uses phrases like "full cuckoo", "daydreams in class", "hapless third graders", requiring "academic integrity referral", and "like a scared, insecure...

This week Adam took on a subject I'm guessing pretty close to 100% of the audience will care about; how to tame Liquid Glass on OSes 26. We go through macOS, iOS, watchOS, and even tvOS. This conversation must go hand-in-hand with Adam's article on TidBITS where he has screenshots of everything you'll hear us talk about. I have to say, the most impressive thing about the article IS the screenshot...

In this week's Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst of TidBITS joins me to talk about his decision process on choosing an iPhone 17 over the 17 Pro. One of the things I like best about Adam is how, just like me, when he starts digging for an answer which should be knowable, he's like a dog with a bone and won't stop until he succeeds. The main decision point between the 17 and the 17 Pro is wheth...

CCATP #821 for September 17, 2025, and I'm your host, Allison Sheridan. This week, our guest is a real throwback for the show. If you've been listening for a very long time, you may remember this guest as creating the best Honda Bob commercial of all time, where he performed it as a Klingon war commander. He's the man who coined the term for his own podcast, "Making technology work for you." He's...

In this week's Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst of TidBITS fame and fortune joins me to talk about recent changes to AppleCare. While the big story of the day is AppleCare One, there have been changes over the past few years (and even this year) to what AppleCare covers and how it's charged. After discussing those changes, we get into the huge pitfalls and dangers in AppleCare One. If you don...

Tage Bushman joins me this week to talk about his career path to become a Professor at Western Technical College . It's a fascinating subject for obvious reasons. The ground has been shifting constantly since he first got into tech, but now with AI, things have gotten even more "interesting. Tage teaches in the Cybersecurity program and Web & Software programs. Specifically, I teach Cisco 1 (netwo...

Adam Engst recently wrote a post on TidBITS describing his journey migrating from a 27" Intel iMac to an M4 Pro MacBook Pro. He entitled the article Switching from a 27-inch iMac to a 14-inch MacBook Pro: A Fresh Start . I asked him to come on Chit Chat Across the Pond so he could walk us all through how he decided on the MacBook Pro (vs. a Mac mini or a Mac Studio), how he made his display migrat...

This week, our guest is Adam Engst, writer, editor, and publisher of the fabulous TidBITS Newsletter . In late May, The Browser Company announced that they are discontinuing their ground-breaking web browser Arc . As soon as I saw the headlines, my heart sank for people like Tom from Ontario, who first introduced the NosillaCast audience to Arc and Adam, who has been one of the biggest fans of Arc...

Bart Busschots joins me to talk about his trials and tribulations finding a good bookmark manager to replace Pocket, which he never really liked in the first place. He tells us everything he loves about Raindrop.io . Unlike most Chit Chat Across the Pond episodes, there's a full blog post in the show notes if you'd rather read than listen ... or do both! Referral Links: Setapp - 1 month free for y...

On Chit Chat Across the Pond #814 , Adam Engst and I discussed the results of a VPN survey he conducted with the TidBITS subscribers. From there, we got into a discussion where Adam challenged the common wisdom that we need a VPN when we're on public WiFi networks. We got a bit mired in some of the discussion, where we almost had enough knowledge to explain our positions. Networking is a topic on...

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst joins me to talk about two recent articles he wrote for TidBITS. The first topic is life-changing for me. Have you ever wanted to send someone a link to a specific spot on a long web page? With text fragments, most, if not all, web browsers now allow you to select some text, right-click, and select "Copy Link with Highlight". This lin...