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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon’s CEO, Ring forcing password changes, flying cars, a Boring tunnel in Ft. Lauderdale, smartphone features in other devices, a Starlink satellite dish attached to a car, Amazon’s new EVs, and more.
Joe in Gladewater, Texas listens on 97.5 FM KTBB and is calling in via the App and asked: “I just had an iMac, 27-inch, die on me. The screen still works, but the hard drive is toast. So I’m buying a new M1, 24-inch. Wondering if I can use the old iMac as a monitor. It would be cool to have 24 inches on one side, and 27 inches on the other side.”
Joe, the answer is yes and no.
27 models from 2009 and 2010 can be used as an external display. Apple used to call the feature target display mode and it worked by connecting the iMac to a laptop or other desktop via the Mini DisplayPort.
There are two things that will likely keep you from being able to do that, though.
First of all, an operating system is required to do that, in particular it needs to be macOS High Sierra, so youd need to get a hard drive for your old machine, try to find High Sierra and install it. Given how cheap regular monitors are, that may just not be worth the hassle.
Second and most important, it wont be compatible with your new generation iMac. Apple supported the feature during the decade between 2009 and 2019, but newer iMacs cant use your model as an external display anymore.
If you still want to have a 27 external monitor, you can find them for as little as $150, so it may still be something you can do if it will help you be more productive.
Richard in Hero, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk MIssissippi and asked: “My Samsung Galaxy watch just suddenly stopped working and this thing’s probably less than a year old. It acts like it doesn’t want to charge up. So I think maybe the battery’s dead or something like that.”
Richard, your Samsung Galaxy Watch should last more than a year, as you probably know theyre expensive devices.
The good news here is that they do offer a 1-year warranty so if they watch is refusing to charge you should contact Samsung as soon as possible and send it in for repair before the year is up.
You can find an authorized service facility to take your watch to by calling Samsung at 1-800-SAMSUNG.
They should be able to guide you as to where to get the watch fixed and confirm that its still under warranty, though their blanket coverage is 1 year, so it should be.
Well also have a link in our show notes at IntoTomorrow.com to Samsungs wearables support page, where you can find more information as well as put in a request for service.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/mobile/wearables/
Doug in Durham, North Carolina listens on NewsRadio 680 WPTF and asked: “I have a Samsung Chromebook, probably 4 or 5 years old. I’ll be typing to somebody and it’ll go back over what I’ve already typed and start typing what I’m typing at that point, just messing up the whole thing. I don’t know what’s going on. I need help.”
Doug, unfortunately, that sounds like a hardware issue and its unlikely that Samsung is still supporting the hardware after 5 years.
You could have an issue with a driver, but Chromebooks are meant to be no-maintenance in terms of software as far as the user is concerned and driver upgrades are handled in the background for you.
If you want to rule that out as a problem you can restore the laptop to its factory settings. The main advantage of a cloud-based laptop is that you can do that without losing data.
Dont hold your breath though, it sounds like either the mouse or the keyboard are randomly firing off signals when you type and there may not be a software solution for that.
One thing you might want to be conscious of though is if your chromebook has a trackpad, as most do, make sure youre not resting your palm on it while youre typing. Doing so may very well move the cursor around. That has happened to me on more than one occasion.
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