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Tips & Tricks When Travelling with Apple Gear (Rebroadcast)

• Damien Schreurs • Episode 108

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In this episode, you'll learn tips, tools, and strategies to efficiently use your Apple gear while traveling. This is a rebroadcast of episode 48 that originally aired on Nov 10, 2019.

Video & show notes available at https://macpreneur.com/episode108

Highlights:

  • [01:00] Context
  • [02:05] Travel Preparation: Booking and Planning
  • [03:43] Data Plans and Connectivity
  • [08:10] Admin, VPN and FileVault
  • [12:46] Essential Travel Accessories
  • [21:53] Day Before Travel: Final Preparations
  • [25:56] Travel Day: Tips for a Smooth Journey
  • [31:29] Arrival and Final Tips
  • [32:23] Contest and outro

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MP108: Tips & Tricks When Traveling with Apple Gear (Rebroadcast)


Introduction

Looking for tips, tools, and strategies to efficiently use your Apple gear while traveling? 

Today's your lucky day, as this is a rebroadcast of episode 48, which originally aired on November 10, 2019. 

It's part of what I retroactively called Season 1, and I apologize in advance for the lower production quality.

Quoting Pat Flynn, one of my virtual mentors: "You've got to be cringe before they binge."

Stick around till the end as I will reveal a contest that will take place during the month of August. 

For now, let's jump into the DeLorean of Back to the Future. Let's punch in November 10th, 2019, and as soon as the intro is completed, enjoy a blast from the past.


Context

At the time of recording, I'm actually in the middle of two international trips. Last week, I flew to Mallorca with my family to get some welcome sunshine and some rest.

This weekend, from Saturday, November 9th through November 10th, I'll be joining Chris Ducker and hundreds of other entrepreneurs at the Youpreneur Summit in London. I'll be on my way back when this episode airs.

So, this topic is really top of mind for me right now, and I'm sure it's going to be useful for you to help you with your next travel, whether it is in a few weeks, in a few months, or even next year. 

So I've split the episode into four parts. First, I'll talk about the preparation phase, or something that takes place months before the actual travel day, then what to do the day before the actual travel day, then the day of travel, and finally, a few things to do when you've arrived at your destination.


Travel Preparation: Booking and Planning

Okay, so now let's start with the preparation already in the booking and planning phase. 

You can use mobile devices like your iPhone or your iPad to book a rental car, bus, train, or airplane. 

There are a bunch of interesting applications you can already use. 

The one that I usually use is Kayak for plane tickets. It gives me comparisons of different airlines and also the opportunity to decide how many times I want to stop. You can also find very useful apps for train travel and buses.

Just check the ones in your country or the country of destination. Now, for accommodation as well, there are useful applications like Trivago and Airbnb if it is the kind of accommodation that you're looking for. 

Not necessarily for booking, but to check on the quality or to have some pictures and also some reviews, there's the TripAdvisor application that is useful.

So, there are a bunch of apps that you can use, obviously in parallel to their website, but with a mobile app, you can create an account already, and when you see interesting Airbnbs, for instance, you can save them and later on decide which one you want to pick.


Data Plans and Connectivity

Then, there's also the matter of data plans. 

So, when you are abroad, it's important to contact your data plan provider and ask them, "Okay, I will be going to these countries. Are there any roaming charges? Yes or no? And if so, how much? And do you have any arrangements with local mobile phone providers? So that maybe I could buy a local SIM card at a discount." 

Personally, I'm with Orange in Luxembourg and very recently they consider the U.S. to be another European country. 

So, that means that for me, now, if I travel to the US, I don't need to buy a local SIM card. My data plan covers me in the US as well and I don't have any roaming charges.

But that's something that you have to check with your mobile phone provider to see if it's the case or not. 

So let's say that it's an issue for you and there will be a lot of fees and roaming charges will be very high. 

Then, you actually have two options. You could buy a local SIM card when you arrive at your destination, but be careful because of the link between the SIM card and iMessage, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.

So, if you remove your normal SIM card and replace it with another one, you will have to re-authenticate iMessage, FaceTime, and so on. The problem is if people try to contact you through your old phone number, your normal local phone number, it will not work. So, if you plan to have a local SIM card, my advice would be to take a secondary device.

I remember the last time I went to the US was for the Seanwes conference. And I had just bought the iPhone 8 Plus at the time. I still had my iPhone 6, so I took the iPhone 6 with me and put the local SIM card in it. Then, I would share the connection between my iPhone 6 and my iPhone 8 when I absolutely needed to have some 4G. Otherwise, I would use Wi-Fi.

Now, with newer devices, starting with the iPhone XR and the XS, also the 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, and some iPads like the iPad Pro with Face ID and the latest iPad 7 (7th generation), there is the option of a secondary eSIM, which stands for Electronic SIM. 

This means that you can subscribe to and purchase a secondary data plan. Once you are at your destination and activate the data plan, anything that requires cellular data will use the secondary eSIM.

But all your phone calls and SMS messages will go through your primary SIM card, the physical SIM card that you have in your phone. There are a few providers like GigSky, Surfroam, Orbits International, and Truphone as well.

Now, even though it is possible and it exists, it's not cheap. Roughly, for one gigabyte or two gigabytes of data within 30 days, it will cost you between 20 and 30, sometimes 40 euros or dollars, depending on the country where you will be. Okay, so it's not cheap. But it's an option, and I would say that it's a better option than having to switch from your normal SIM to a local SIM.

Okay, so that's if you absolutely want to have access to a 4G or 3G network at your destination.


Admin, VPN and FileVault

Let's continue also a little bit with the admin.

So, booking confirmation, passport, and so on, on top of the paper version, I also like to have an electronic version with me. So either it's a scanned version of the passport or the ID card. And for that, this is something I recommend storing in 1Password or in LastPass or in something that is a protected vault.

I would not store that in Google Drive or OneDrive or iCloud Drive or something like that. What will go in Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and so on would be the rest, so the booking confirmations and stuff like that. Having an electronic copy with you is good because you never know if the paper copies would disappear or something like that.

Then on your mobile device, what is good to also prepare is to install and configure a VPN. So a virtual private network. It's a way to protect yourself when connected to untrusted Wi-Fi networks like at the airport, in a hotel, and stuff like that. The one I recommend is TunnelBear. You get one and a half gigabytes of free per month if you send a small promotional tweet; otherwise, it's 500 megabytes free. You get one gigabyte on top of that if you do the promo tweet. Otherwise, it's a paid application. If you need unlimited bandwidth through the VPN and you would just need that for one month, it would cost you $10, and then you could go back to the free plan. Otherwise, if you don't want to think about it, you just want to be protected and have unlimited data, you could pay on a yearly basis, and you could get actually a 50 percent off with TunnelBear. It's $60 for the entire year.

This is one thing that, for instance, I pay for through EasyTECH, so it's a business expense, but at least I know that when I'm traveling, all the traffic between my iPhone and the destination server cannot be spied upon wherever I am. Now if you travel with your Mac, so if you plan to take your Mac with you either and use it at your destination or even use it while traveling and connect it to Wi-Fi networks, do the same on your Mac. Also, configure a VPN. TunnelBear has applications for macOS and for iOS.

Now on top of the VPN on your Mac, it's also best to check if you have activated FileVault. So for that, you have to go to System Preferences and Security and Privacy. And there you have to check if FileVault is activated. If the FileVault is doing what?

It's completely encrypting your hard drive. Meaning that if you turn off your Mac and if somebody steals it and tries to access the hard drive, like from the outside, like booting from a Linux distribution or booting from a USB key or something like that, the content of the hard drive will not be readable.

If you don't activate FileVault, actually the data is not protected. So you may think that, yes, I have a strong user account password on my Mac, but that's just preventing somebody from logging in as you, but there is nothing that's protecting the data on the hard drive itself. You really need FileVault to protect that, and if you plan to connect your Mac to different Wi-Fi networks, Open Wi-Fi networks, and so on, make sure that you also deactivate file sharing. So you go also to system preferences and then sharing and make sure that file sharing and, for instance, remote login, remote management, all those things are turned off. Otherwise, other people who are on the same network as you could actually discover your Mac and also access data from your Mac.

And there, it doesn't matter if FileVault is activated or not, they will have access to the data. Or they will be able to try to log in as you and try to break into your computer, but it's better to close entirely the door, to have no door at all.


Essential Travel Accessories

Okay, so next up is, it's all about accessories. I talked a lot about accessories in the context of the iPad in episode 35, and so most of what I talked about in episode 35 applies right now.

I will just take a few of those and mention them now because they still apply for traveling. For instance, the first one is the Apple TV and an HDMI cable. So, if you do a presentation, for instance, that could be a way to connect to a projector and then do over airplay. You could use your iPhone to do your presentation rather than your computer.

But it's also interesting if you travel and in the hotel or in your Airbnb, there is a large flat screen TV with an HDMI input. Well, if you have your Apple TV and you connect it to Wi-Fi locally, you will have access to all your multimedia content from your Apple TV.

So it's also nice, it doesn't take a lot of space in your luggage, and I think it's a nice companion when traveling. In addition to the Apple TV, I also would recommend to buy and bring a portable Wi-Fi repeater. So it's something that can plug directly into a wall socket and preferably with an Ethernet cable. Sometimes in some hotels, even though they advertise that they have Wi-Fi, you may be in a room really at the edge of the Wi-Fi signal.

So yes, there will be Wi-Fi signal, but you will have maybe one or two bars of Wi-Fi. But in some hotels, you still have Ethernet from the wall. And so with this kind of portable Wi-Fi repeater, you plug it in, plug the Ethernet cable into the repeater, and now you have your very own Wi-Fi access point, which will be very strong.

Okay, the next accessory is a power bank. That's great, especially if you travel a lot. If you will have like almost a full day of travel, have a power bank with you.

Now it's more for the entire trip rather than just the traveling days. Having a portable hard drive can be useful to back up the photos that you may have of your iPhone and your iPad, especially if you travel in remote locations where you don't have Wi-Fi every day or all the time.

It's good to offload, either just to offload your iPhone. But also to have a backup copy of the photos on your iPhone. On top of that, you can also locally store movies and music so that you can access it and not fill your iPhone when you will be traveling. Some examples that I mentioned last time were the SanDisk iXpand, which has a lightning connector on one side and a normal USB A connector on the other side.

There is also the iDiskk one terabyte and that's a combo. It's a very large hard drive with 1TB of storage, but on top of that, it's a 10,000 mAh battery so it's combining power bank and portable hard drive and this one is around 130 dollars.

Now if you travel with your iPad and you plan not to take your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with you, which is the case for me at the Youpreneur Summit, it's only two days, I don't need to take my computer, and actually I don't want to take my computer, but I want to be able to take notes, and so I have an iPad Air 1. And I found a nice keyboard case from Uzone. And it's nice because I can actually detach the keyboard if I wanted to.

So I can have it in pure tablet mode or in quote unquote laptop mode. And in addition, it has backlit keys. Last year, I took my iPad mini four with me, but in the conference center it was a bit too dark during the presentations and I could not see the keyboard very well.

And though it was painful last year, I hope this time with the backlit keys, it's gonna be better. Otherwise you have other brands like the Bridge keyboard, BRY, the DGE for the iPad Pro, and so on. But I would say think about where you will be and also on the airplane, sometimes it's good to have backlit keys.

Now, if your iPad is running iOS 13 and really you don't want to take your MacBook or MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with you, then you could also take a Bluetooth mouse because since iOS 13, it's possible to actually have a small cursor and move it with a mouse, or it could be a wired mouse, but then for that you will need an adapter. You will need the Lightning to USB adapter. But yeah, the Apple Magic Mouse works great on the iPad running iOS 13. I've tried it with my iPad mini 4 and it's working fine.

The last bit of accessory that I will talk about is headphones. So you have different options. You can have in-ear headphones versus over-the-ear headphones.

If you have in-ear ones, depending on how they fit, and especially if there is some seal, you could already have some passive noise blocking. For instance, I use wired Philips headphones with a rubber tip and they fit so snugly in my ear that just having them in my ear blocks maybe 50 percent of the plane engine noise.

That's passive because you put something in your ear but there are also headphones with active noise cancelling and active noise cancelling works. How? There are some microphones that listen to the ambient noise and they try to actually completely cancel it by emitting the reverse of the wavelength and of the sound wave, the reverse sound wave of the outside noise. I've had those in the past, and they worked quite well. At the time of recording, it's been a week, a little bit more than a week, than the newest AirPods Pro have been out. And so, they are the successor of the AirPods. And they actually feature active noise cancelling. I have not had the opportunity yet to test them.

I really would like to test them because they, in addition to being inside the ear with a rubber tip, they have on top of that active noise cancelling. If you don't like things that go inside your ear, the Beats Solo Pro is an example of over-the-ear headphones that also have active noise cancelling. In both cases, we're talking about a budget between 270 and $300.

It's very good to block out plane engine noises, for instance, because this is a very repeatable kind of sound waves. It works a little bit less well in a crowd because of the different kinds of voice and modulations and so on. With the newest AirPods Pro, they even have, I think it's a transparency mode that they call it, meaning that you can deactivate noise cancelling, but actually amplify through software the noise that is outside.

So if you're traveling by bike, for instance, and you still want to listen to music, but you want also to be aware of your surroundings, it's possible to actually have to really listen to the traffic for safety reasons.

Okay. So that's in preparation. So I talked about those accessories because you should order them weeks or sometimes months in advance because you may not be sure how long it will take for shipping and so on. I will put links in the show notes for some of them, in macpreneur.com/episode 48.

Okay.


Day Before Travel: Final Preparations

So now, we're on the day before our trip.

The first thing that I recommend doing and that I do is to backup all my devices. So I do an iCloud backup of all my mobile devices, and I also do a local backup of them in addition.

I will charge all the devices and the accessories. And then I will do the electronic check-in, checking the hotel, but also the flight.

Now, a small tip, if you do online boarding or if you do electronic boarding from the application from your airline, and you have luggage that you need to drop off, when you will be dropping off your luggage, the airport staff at that point can print physical boarding passes if you need to.

If you didn't have the opportunity, for instance, to print it, especially when on the fly back, when you do the electronic boarding on your phone and you don't have access to a printer, you can still ask the airport staff to print physical boarding passes on top of your electronic ones.

At that point, I recommend adding as much stuff as possible to Wallet, so your flight tickets, your event tickets, put your credit card if you can use them with Apple Pay.

So have as much as possible in electronic format. And also download as much multimedia content as possible on your iPhone or on an iPad. Like music, podcasts, audiobooks, with Amazon Prime you can also download some videos, with Netflix you can download also. So either you download them on your device if you have enough space or you fill your external hard drive.

Then download all the necessary applications for transportation, for accommodation, make sure that you have everything. Transportation, for instance, look in the city of destination if they have, like buses or metro, subway, specific local applications. I remember when I was in Austin, Texas, I downloaded the app for the buses. And so I was able to see at what time there were buses from the airport to downtown Austin and stuff like that. A small tip also for Google Maps, it's possible to download data over Wi-Fi for a predefined region. So you decide, you pinch to zoom, zoom in and out, and you decide the area for which you want to download already the data.

That means that you can do that in advance at home. And you can already download, for instance, all the downtown area of your local destination. That means that when you will be using Google Maps locally at the destination, you won't need to have 4G or to use 4G or 3G. You will have all the data on your device.

And at that point also, the day before, I will download a local copy of the most important files that I need on my iPhone or my iPad. I would say avoid iCloud Drive because you don't really control how iCloud Drive manages the data, unless it's Keynote or Pages or Numbers, then yes, but still download them the day before.

For the others, for Google Drive, Dropbox, and so on, you can flag files as being, as you wish to have a local copy all the time. So that you can have access to, for instance, the boarding information, hotel reservation, you will have access to a local copy and you don't need the internet to read them, read the documents on your device.

The last thing to do the day before is to check the weather at your destination so that you can bring clothes or you can also wear appropriate clothes during your travel day.


Travel Day: Tips for a Smooth Journey

Okay, so next up, the travel day. So, any device that you won't use while traveling, turn them off, especially those that go inside the plane. If you travel by plane, turn off all the devices you don't use so that they don't try to communicate, try to get Wi-Fi or cellular data, or stuff like that.

First of all, you will save battery, but also you have fewer chances of somebody trying to hack into it and seeing it.

Now on your main iPhone, I would say turn off cellular data usage for most of the apps that you won't use during the travel, and I would include the photos app as well. So yes, you will take a lot of photos. You may take videos and so on during your travel, but turn off the cellular data usage so that it doesn't consume your bandwidth for that. If you need to, double check that roaming is turned off. For that, you go to Settings and Cellular Data.

At that point, I would also make a screenshot of the data usage so that I have a record of how much data I used until that point. And then if you really scroll to the very bottom of the cellular data panel, there is a Reset Data Usage Statistics option at the bottom, so you can reset them.

And so you can have a feel for how much data you will be using while traveling. It's especially useful if you have an eSIM plan, for instance.

Now if you use 1Password and you want to protect some of the vaults, you can temporarily deactivate them. It's called 1Password travel mode. It's only available if you have a 1Password subscription. So that's feasible. You can do that from the app.

And then, also, security-related, if you're worried about where you will be traveling, and especially at border control, I would turn off biometric authentication to unlock the phone.

So you can keep biometric authentication, like Touch ID or Face ID, for your purchases and for the apps and so on, but for unlocking the phone, I would turn that off. So you have two options. You can leave the settings as they are on your phone, in the Settings app, but when you arrive near border control or when you are in a potentially dangerous situation, you activate emergency SOS.

To do that on the newest phone, starting with the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and 10, you hold one of the volume buttons and the on/off button for a few seconds, and it will activate emergency SOS. At that point, it will deactivate the biometric authentication. If you have an older phone, you have to press the on/off button five times, and it will activate an emergency SOS.

At that point, the only way to unlock your phone is through the passcode.

Now, if you want to be even more secure and cautious, then you could go into settings, then Face ID and Code or Touch ID and Code, and then you would toggle off the use of Touch ID or Face ID for unlocking the phone.

So that means that whenever you need to unlock the phone, you will need to enter your passcode or your password if you've put a password on it.

If you're traveling with sensitive information and you really don't know what's happening, be aware that it's possible. If somebody else takes your phone and you don't see what they do, it's possible for them to inject spy software on the iPhone.

So it doesn't work on the newest ones, like the ones since the A13, such as the XR, XS, XS Max. Those devices are protected, but anything below that, like the iPhone 10, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, all the iPhones below, those can be hijacked, and you don't see anything. The only way to protect yourself would be to shut down the device and turn it on again.

Otherwise, you have no way of knowing that there is spyware on your device.

So if you have an older device that is susceptible to this kind of hack and you really don't want any bad surprises, then worst-case scenario, I would reset the phone to factory settings. And then you set it up as a new iPhone and only add the necessary contacts and email accounts during the travel, knowing that because you have done a backup, an iCloud backup, when you will be at your destination on the other side of border control, or in your hotel, or where you have Wi-Fi, you could then restore from the backup over Wi-Fi. Again, travel day, so now to think about security again and activate the VPN.

So turn on the VPN, make sure that it's on all the time so that every time you connect to unsecured Wi-Fi, at the airport, in a restaurant, on a motorway, or in any restaurants or the hotel, activate the VPN. Take this habit of protecting your connection using the VPN.


Arrival and Final Tips

And finally, when you arrive at your destination, as I already mentioned, if you absolutely need to, you could restore from the iCloud backup. But, I would say that's for extreme cases.

If you have decided to use an eSIM, you could activate the eSIM at that point so that you can use the cellular data plan.

Then, I would go back to the cellular data usage, app by app, and decide which ones are allowed to use cellular data. And basically, that's it for my tips and tricks when traveling with Apple gear.

I hope you found this episode useful, and you now have a better idea of how to prepare and leverage your Apple gear.


Contest and outro

Before concluding this episode, there's one more thing I'd like to mention. 

If you're listening to this in August 2024, you have the chance to win a 1-hour Mac coaching call with me worth $200. 

To participate in the prize draw, it's very simple: rate and review Macpreneur in Apple Podcasts by visiting macpreneur.com/review.

This will direct you to the show page. 

Scroll down to the bottom where you will be able to rate and review the show. Take a screenshot and send it to me by email. The address is damien(at)macpreneur.com.

You have until August 31st, 2024, at midnight Pacific Time. Beginning of September, I will randomly select one of you and announce the winner.

Once again, visit macpreneur.com/review.

In the next episode, I will rebroadcast episode thirty-eight to help you decide whether or not you should invest in a NAS or network-attached storage for your business.

So make sure to subscribe or follow this podcast to get it automatically next week.

And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day.

Thank you for listening to the Macpreneur Podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with a friend right now.