(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Comfort Zone.
This is a podcast all about pushing the host outside of there.
Well, Comfort Zone.
This episode is sponsored by ListenLater.net.
I'm Christopher Wally, a YouTuber and, well, now,
podcaster.
I'm joined each week by Matt Furchler.
Matt, how are you doing?
- I'm doing Splendid.
We're coming off WDC Week, which is tons of fun.
And I don't think we're really gonna talk about it
on this episode, so.
(laughing)
- Great.
- That's a nice thing about this show is it's not really
a tech news show.
It's kind of a tech news adjacent show
where we talk about stuff we like.
So we're also joined every single week by Neelion.
Neelion, how are you doing?
- All right.
It's been a week.
Yeah.
And you're right.
We are on own cycle here on Comfort Zone.
So, I had a realization after our second episode,
that I keep bringing a negative energy to my items.
I was a little down on the Vision Pro in episode one.
I was pretty down on perplexity last week.
And so, this week, I wanted to bring something
that I just enjoyed.
(laughing)
And thankfully, something came up that was new
and pretty cool.
And that is the theater app for the Vision Pro.
So, the app's called Theater.
It's from Sandwich, who's like an advertising company
and I was started doing some development.
They also make an app for the Vision Pro,
I think, called Television.
And the idea of both of these is basically,
you can take videos that you have
or that are on YouTube and watch them in this app,
in a theater.
They have a couple of theater,
like fully immersive theater environments
you can choose from and in their television app,
it's on a TV that you're gonna kind of place
in your room wherever you want.
And it's kind of cool.
The app is free.
So, if you have a Vision Pro,
you can just download it and check it out.
I think the free version lets you play video files
you have on your device,
as well as some pre-selected YouTube videos that they have.
But there's a $4 in that purchase,
if you want to unlock everything,
which lets you watch any YouTube video,
unlocks a couple more theaters you can watch in
and will give you the like additional video sources,
video types in the future.
So I think they kind of implied that maybe immersive videos,
not distributed through Apple,
might be able to watch through here one day.
But yeah, so it's just a fancy way to watch videos
in your Vision Pro.
And from that perspective, it's kind of cool.
I don't know, Chris, you've got a Vision Pro.
Do you, I think you watch video on it?
Do you use the immersive environment?
So you just kind of have floating windows in your space.
- If I am sitting down to watch something,
so like I watched the first two episodes of Acolyte
through Vision Pro, I did full immersive,
did the Disney+ theater and watched it that way.
So definitely like that,
just because of my ADHD and like I'm not like looking around,
I'm focused on the thing at hand.
And like the nice thing about like obviously,
I love with somebody, so like I can just be focused on
the task at hand.
- Yeah, actually similar story for me,
I watched the first two episodes of the Acolyte
on Disney+, I did the Tatooine environment.
For whatever reason, I just really enjoyed
the more fantastical environments.
I find them just a little different.
- So yeah, I like the Tatooine one as well.
The nice thing, I was just wanting to try another one.
I usually I use the Tatooine one for all the Star Wars stuff,
but I just wanted to try the Disney+ theater
to kind of see if it was a different experience somehow.
I don't even know what I would mean by that,
but it was also very late at night.
And I just wanted to watch it.
It just got back from vacation
and was literally getting ready to go to WWDC.
It was the only time I was gonna have
to watch the Acolyte.
So I just wanted to try that one.
But I like the Tatooine one and the Avengers tower one
is pretty cool too.
There's a lot of fun Easter eggs and not.
- Yeah, I feel a little bit with these immersive environments
were kind of in the early days of like iPhone app design,
the kind of skew morphism era where like,
oh, you would watch this in a theater.
So we're gonna make a 3D theater that you can sit in,
but maybe that's, I don't know, I don't know if that's good
or if the more like places you could never go
and watch these things are more compelling.
But either way, this app is doing the kind of like,
let's simulate real life.
And I think that's good.
I think that it's well-executed, the theater looks good
and all that, but what was really interesting
and the reason that I wanted to talk about it today
is that they did to launch the app kind of like
to get some buzz around the app.
They also live streamed the talk show,
John Groober's WWDC show that he's been doing
for many years now and they streamed it
in immersive video in the theater app.
And that was actually really, really cool.
More than I expected, I think.
So the setup they had looked like they were using
one of these new rigs that Apple,
I don't know if Apple invented or Apple worked with someone,
whatever, these new rigs that Apple is using
for their immersive videos, they're using a similar rig
and they just had planted front and center
in front of the stage where the show is happening.
And it didn't move, there were no cuts,
there like weren't multiple cameras
that it was switching between, it was just this one camera
right there and you could watch the show
as if you were sitting front row center at the theater
that it was actually happening in.
And it was pretty low resolution compared
to what you're used to with live streaming
or any, it's easy to get a 1080p
very high quality live stream these days
on things like Twitch and YouTube and stuff.
But this was not as good, it was a lower quality,
it's a much bigger video file, I'm sure that's coming over.
But much lower quality, it was choppy most of the time,
like the animation was definitely not perfectly smooth.
But despite that, it was super compelling,
I kind of loved it, like I was,
they were making jokes on stage
and I was laughing at the jokes way more than I would,
I think if I was watching it just on YouTube,
like it felt more like I was at a live show,
even though that technically there's tons of things
to improve, like it felt very real,
it felt like I was watching something 3D,
I was in the space and it's one of those things
where I shared a video, a screen recording of like 30 seconds
of it, we'll try to put that in the show notes.
And I don't think that captures the feeling.
I had people like saying, like, oh, the video doesn't look great,
it looks pretty choppy.
And like all of that is true, but like when you're in,
in the experience, it actually feels really, really good.
And I don't think I'd want to watch everything like this,
it was kind of awesome in a way that I didn't quite expect.
I thought it'd be okay.
And if I saw it like the, what the video quality was going to be,
I'd probably say, oh, it's kind of a bummer, but I loved it.
I thought it was really, really great.
Just to be clear, there was no one there with you, right?
No, so there was no one there with you.
You're in an empty theater.
So every other seat is empty.
The app does what you choose generally where you want to sit.
So there's kind of a grid with the nine seats.
So you can sit like left, middle or right,
and then front, middle or back of the theater.
The only one that made sense for this was front, middle.
Yeah.
So it's kind of like the TV's app immersive environment
where you can set theater mode and then like pick where you're sitting
in the theater part, like the very front or the balcony
or something like that.
Yeah.
I found with this one,
when immersive video works for me, it's when, in like the Apple ones,
it's when you feel like you are the camera.
Like it's a first person perspective.
And since the actual camera was kind of in the front row at the show,
that was the only seat that felt right to me.
Yeah.
It's the only one where you were close enough to see the depth
and everything of the people on stage.
Because it is a 3D video.
Like you are seeing depth on stage and you can move around and everything.
But at the other seats, it was kind of weird.
It was kind of like watching a video on a screen.
Whereas that front middle seat did feel like,
"Oh, I'm actually here in an empty theater."
But like I'm actually here.
Interesting.
I didn't go to the talk show this year.
I literally was that the day aired, I didn't leave Apple Park
until almost 6 o'clock and that's when the doors open
and traffic and everything.
It's normally a 10 minute drive from where Apple Park is
to the California theater.
It was going to be close to a 50 minute drive.
So by the time I got there and parked and everything,
I would have been late.
So I wasn't able to go, but I've been the last two years.
And it's a very different experience being in the theater
than listening to the podcast after
or watching it on YouTube or something like that.
So the fact that this was available to people this year is cool.
And definitely it's a proof of concept thing for sandwich.
Like I'm sure like them and Gruber worked out some kind of deal.
Like I don't know the details of it or anything.
But I'm sure they worked out some kind of deal.
Like hey, let us test our new technical proof of concept thing
and we'll livestream the talk show for you.
Because it was only available on Vision Pro.
Like I was like, oh, I can't make it.
Maybe I'll just download the app on my iPad and watch it that way.
Because I thought I was going to be able to do it that.
It's not.
Like it's just on Vision Pro.
So yeah.
Yeah, so definitely some marketing for them,
some some agreement, but like it was really cool.
And like you said, there is a difference between
being in the room during a live show and then listening to a recording afterwards.
Like podcasts or live shows like this.
And again, I'm going to keep saying it because I wouldn't believe it
if someone told me this, but I've done it now and I do believe it.
Is I did get that feeling of being there.
And if I like was in it for a few minutes, I would feel like I was there.
And I would like laugh for long with the crowd as if I was there.
Which sounds so weird.
But is what happened.
And I think this is the sort of like thing that makes me more excited
about the Vision Pro than some of the things where I'm disappointed
in like how it's not the productivity machine that I wanted.
I think the more sorts of things we can get like this,
that give me an experience that I cannot get on my other devices.
I think it'll be just good for the product in the long run and hopefully make it.
Hopefully for Apple's sake make it a success.
Nice. That's awesome. I'm really happy like this worked out for you.
I didn't bring my Vision Pro to WWDC.
I plan on putting beta 2 and all that stuff on it.
As soon as I basically get off this podcast,
I'm going to load up the beta on it and play around with it.
But like I want to use it for more.
One of the things that's going to enable me to use it for more is actually in Vision OS 2.
The beta is keyboard pass-through because I'm a big environment user.
Like I love the environment.
Like if I just want to see the room around me, I'll just work on my iPad.
I love the environment because I have ADHD.
I'm able to block out the world around me and just focus on
the task at hand.
Now Vision OS 2 keyboard pass-through is a thing that's only for the magic keyboard.
Why do you keep doing this to me, Apple?
Like you're killing me.
There are other keyboards.
There are other much, much better keyboards.
But keyboards with USB-C.
Or keyboards with actual travel on the keys and customizable and proper mechanical
keyboards and not what you call your MacBooks keyboard.
You know they technically call the MacBook Pros keyboard a mechanical keyboard.
And I mean, technically it is, but it's not.
Oh boy.
Well, I like my magic keyboard.
Just wanted to say it.
Okay, okay, no, it's fair.
That's fair.
We're there will definitely be a challenge where it's build a mechanical keyboard
and we're going to get you on our train.
Sure.
If you give me the money, I'm up for it.
Honestly, I will, I will send you the parts.
I, yeah, yeah, I'll do it.
Oh, yeah.
Chris is like, I am not lacking in parts.
I literally just bought big Costco storage bins to put all my excess mechanical
keyboard parts and stuff in.
And because I was like, I don't know what to do with these.
I don't want to throw them out because I know I'll use them in the future.
And like it's good stuff.
But like I didn't know where to put them.
So yeah, it's a whole thing now.
So anyway, there's our, there's our WWDC talk that we promised we wouldn't do.
Terrible.
It does sound good your universe where you guys have vision pros and immersive videos.
Sure would like that.
It's, it's coming soon to you.
Like, what, when does it launch in France?
July 12th.
I'm not getting it.
No.
But, but my question for you is, yeah, you'll be able to go to the store and like,
they'll have demos at the store.
Will you go to the store and do one of the demos?
Oh, yeah, I will.
Okay.
All right.
Cool.
Yeah, do the demo.
Yeah, I will.
I will have to take a train about one hour 30.
Oh, but then I'm there and I'm going to try it.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like they have the time slots.
I mean, in at least in America, they're having a hard time filling up like all the demos and stuff.
And it sounds like they might be doing shorter and shorter demos now.
So you might actually, it may not be that hard for you to get like the full 30-minute demo that they've been doing.
So we'll stay tuned then.
All right.
So this week, I, well, I was at WWE DC.
I was in Cupertino.
I got their Sunday, left Thursday.
Literally, we're recording the day after I got back.
I am exhausted.
I am sunburned.
I am, I am just ready to take a break.
So, uh, but that whole time I was there.
I was running around, did some video stuff, did a bunch of briefings, met up with a bunch of people.
It was a great time.
But this year, I did something a little different than I normally do.
Normally, I bring a big vlogging mic and it's just attached to my camera and I run around.
And constantly, I'm just like, "Hitty record."
And it's this big shotgun mic that I'm just speaking into.
And the audio quality is fine.
But it picks up a lot of noise around you.
So before I left this year, I got this guy.
It's the DJI wireless mic system.
And what this is, is it's kind of, it kind of looks like a giant AirPods case.
What's cool about this is it has two microphones in it.
And a receiver and a bunch of adapters.
So the way this works is you have two love mics and they have magnetic attachments or clips
that you can put onto your clothes. And so you can attach the mics.
And the nice thing about love mics is you can get them really close to your mouth.
So that way, it's very, it's not picking up a lot of noise around you.
It's very focused.
So this was really nice system to have.
It's wireless, but there is a receiver.
So what I did is I put the receiver on my camera and there's a cold shoe mount adapter.
So basically, for those that aren't aware on camera systems, there are,
what's called cold, it's cold shoe and hot shoe.
And I never know which is the difference.
To be honest, I've been doing video stuff for most of my life.
And I still to this day don't know what the difference between a cold shoe and a hot shoe is.
But anyways, there's a shoe mount.
And you can saw there's an adapter on the receiver that you can click in there.
It slides onto the top, shows audio levels and stuff like that.
Really nice.
And then there is a audio out cable.
So that way you can plug just a regular 3.5 millimeter cable into the receiver and into your camera
and it'll record straight to your video clips.
Or the two microphones have eight gigs of internal storage each.
So you can record locally to them.
It's something like 15 hours of audio.
Like 14 or 15 hours of audio you can record.
It was more than enough.
So this was a really great thing to have.
I was able to do quite a bit with it.
Like I was just able to record video, get clean audio.
One of the videos I did, it's on Apple Intelligence.
I just published it this morning.
I recorded in front of the Apple Park Visitor Center.
There are a ton of people around there.
In fact, when I was recording the video,
somebody was literally buffing the outside of the visitor center.
And they're like going right behind me.
I mean, they were doing their job.
Like it wasn't a matter or anything.
I'm like, you got to do what you got to do.
But the mic did a good job of kind of cancelling that noise out
because it is directional.
And I did use some of the final cut features,
like noise removal and stuff like that.
Just to clean it up a little bit.
But the mic itself did a really decent job at cancelling out car sounds
and people talking and things like that.
Now what's nice about this mic system is
that there are adapters with this.
So if you don't have a camera system,
like I shoot with a Canon R5, if you're not using that,
say you're just using an iPhone.
It comes with both a lightning and USB-C adapters.
So you can plug that into the receiver
and then just plug the receiver right into your iPhone
and then use the microphones to record.
So that way you can be, you know,
you can put your iPhone on a tripod, be six feet away.
And these microphones go really far away.
Like it's like, I think I saw like it was like over 100 feet.
It might be close like 200 feet, something like that.
So you can be really far away.
I don't know why anyone would want to be that far away from the camera,
but you can.
And uh, demo.
I guess, yeah, exactly.
The nice thing is you can plug it right into your phone.
It will record right into the audio video that you're recording on your phone.
So you don't have to go back and sync up audio if you don't want to.
But again, you can record directly onto the mic.
The mics have USB-C, so you just literally plug your mic
into your computer and you copy those audio files over.
Really nice system.
Kind of a niche thing to bring to the show.
I promise I know last two episodes I brought like video stuff.
I promise this won't be every week, but I've just been covering an Apple event.
And uh, uh, yeah, like the video stuff is kind of my bread and butter.
These weeks when I'm doing these kinds of events.
So it's a really nice system to have.
It's definitely not going to replace like the mic that I used to record this podcast
or the mic I have above me to record my traditional videos.
But if you're looking for like a travel mic setup,
this is not a bad way to go.
How do these travel?
Is there like a carrying case or anything?
Or are you just kind of like loosely tossing in a bag?
Yeah, so there is a case.
It's probably about like three size.
It's like three times the size of an AirPods Pro case.
And it works exactly the same like the lid lifts up.
It's a charging case for them.
So everything the mics, the receiver, the adapters,
they all go into this case, which is really nice.
And then there's a USB-C port on the case.
So you then just plug one USB-C cable into it and it handles charging everything.
The case itself has a battery.
So um, say you're out and about.
You're doing a bunch of recording.
Uh, you're using the mics, the receiver, the battery dies on them.
You can just put them in the the the case itself and it'll charge all that stuff back up.
You don't have to plug them into power.
Okay.
And does the one that clips into the shoe,
does that get powered by the camera or no?
No, that has an internal battery.
Ah, okay.
So that the receiver, so that's the receiver.
And then there is the two mics.
All three of those have their own battery.
And then the case has a bigger battery.
And then you can charge, you can charge like the receiver and the mics individually if you want.
Um, and there's a version you can buy of this.
That's literally just a receiver and mic.
It doesn't have the case.
But I would spend if I was you, I'd spend the extra money and get the case if you're interested in this.
Because you can literally just plug one cable into the case and it charges the whole system.
Which is really nice and really convenient, especially when you're in a hotel,
trying to balance charging camera batteries.
Your devices, mics, Nintendo Switch, all sorts of different things.
Yeah, like I use, I have the road wireless go to a system, which is like similar to this it sounds like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the things that bother me about this one, actually all three things you mentioned,
actually make it sound better.
I'm not going to buy it, but makes it sound better.
Is the carrying case is great.
These are just kind of loose.
So if I'm taking them somewhere, I'm just tossing them into a bag, which is annoying.
They do charge individually, but similarly, it does not charge
from the camera when it's plugged into that.
I was really hoping that would be a thing because sometimes that dies on me and I'm like,
"Oh, I forgot to charge the thing on the camera."
And then the magnets, the magnets actually would be really, really great.
These guys only have clips to clip onto you.
And a magnet would be so much better for the sorts of t-shirts that I wear.
It would be a lot easier than trying to clip it up to my neck or just randomly in the middle.
Those all sound good.
I'm sure it costs way more than the road ones, but it's $250 for the version that I got.
There's a cheaper version without the carrying case, but the carrying case definitely makes a big
difference because like you said, it's not loose stuff because these things are small.
Like the mic is small, the receiver is small.
All the adapters are really small.
So just throwing those at a bag, that's a good way to lose them.
So the case itself is really nice, like even the charging capabilities aside.
And the really nice thing is the case has an LED light, like battery indicator on the front.
So there are four lights on the front.
So it'll tell you like how much battery life is left on the carrying case.
And as soon as you put the mics in the receiver in the case,
it starts charging them right away.
You don't have to put them in a specific mode or anything like that.
It works just like AirPods in that instance.
Yeah, that's very convenient.
These guys have zero indicator what their battery is.
That is not something I would use for a professional workflow.
I am not a professional video maker.
Yes, you are.
You absolutely are.
A scrappy video maker.
Okay, yeah, we're all scrappy.
Every person that does video has to be a little scrappy.
That's true.
Yeah.
Chris, I have two questions about the mic.
First, is it one of those mics that you can hold up to your mouth,
like one of those tiktokers nowadays?
And it looks ridiculous.
That's the question.
That's it.
So technically, yes, you can.
Just like any mic.
I mean, technically you can hold any mic.
I mean, you always see those people now with SM7Bs.
Yeah, but does it look like the tiktok vibe?
It is 100% the same mic all the tiktokers use that they hold it instead of clipping it onto their...
I do not get why they just don't clip it onto their shirts because
when you hold it, you're moving your arms.
So you're getting uneven audio because you're moving the mic further away from your mouth.
You're bringing it closer to your mouth.
I don't get that trend drives me nuts.
I don't get it.
I do not understand it.
These come with a magnet.
It's super easy to just clip to anyone's shirt.
Or you can mount it someplace or whatever.
Or it has the clip option a traditional loft mic would have.
But the magnet system is really nice.
So yes, it is the mic that all the tiktokers and YouTube short people
that are using in their hand holding it.
But I have never and we'll never use it that way.
That is my promise to you.
And they don't have a variant that looks like a tiny little microphone
that you can hold up to your mouth.
All right, those are the best.
Yeah.
Oh, the ones where people are like pinching it.
It's like the loft mics.
But they're like pinching the clip thing.
I especially don't get that.
I'm like, what are you doing?
You look like you're holding this little dainty thing.
Like, what are you doing?
I don't know.
Some people.
Perfect.
I really wanted an excuse to have your opinion on that.
That's good.
Next up, you talked about plugging into the iPhone directly.
How is iOS handling that?
Is that all right?
Yeah, iOS has handled external mics really well for a really long time.
It does a really good job.
I haven't used it for any production stuff, but I've done some tests with it.
I tried it with the built-in camera app and my pick last week,
Kino as well. I tried it with that as well.
And it worked fine.
The audio from the microphones and from the receiver gets baked into the video.
So it's using that mic and not the iPhones mic.
So it's really nice.
So if you're, you know, like I said, putting your iPhone on a tripod and standing six feet away
or in Nenelyon's case, I believe that's about two meters.
Thanks.
Yeah, no problem.
I did, hey, I did that conversion on the fly.
You're getting much better audio than you would get if you were using just the iPhones mics.
So if you're even somebody that's doing just like iPhone videography or something like that,
this might be something to look into.
Nice.
And for comparison to the, I was using the Road VideoMic Pro Plus.
That was all the stuff I was using for travel videos before I got this system.
And that mics like 400 bucks and that's this like big shotgun mic that has to sit on the top
of your camera. It has its own independent battery system.
It uses micro USB to charge.
It's really annoying to travel with.
This is so much nicer to travel with.
This is basically replaced that.
I will probably look for somebody to give that the Road VideoMic Pro Plus too.
And a bit once I am positive these DJI wireless mics have proven themselves.
Yeah, micro USB is a deal breaker in 2024.
The only thing worse than micro USB is micro HDMI.
And that's on my camera.
And we were, I was a little late to the recording because I was dealing with micro HDMI issues.
I hate that port so much. I hated. I hated. I hated.
Why can't it? Why?
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This week I wanted, so just like Matt, I wanted to have a more positive vibe
because that went downhill last week.
So I tried out two accessories by Switchbox.
You know that brand.
Yes.
Very familiar.
Yeah.
I've heard of it many times and never tried it.
It's actually pretty cool.
So I got actually a few months ago.
I already got the Switchbot Hub 2.
Yeah, that's the name.
Switchbot Hub 2.
Yeah.
And what it does is it's a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, and it's got a light sensor as well.
All in one.
And it has a neat trick up its sleeve.
It can trigger IR
appliances, infrared appliances.
So anything that you can control with a remote, basically a classic remote.
So what I did is enroll my AC using this.
So now I can control my AC in the home app.
Using that hub.
I also got the Switchbot bot.
So it's just the bot.
It's the initial product that gave birth to the company, I guess.
And that's a little thing that you stick on top of a
or any button really, even the light switch on the wall.
And it's got a tiny arm that's so cute.
And which one it does.
It's got a tiny arm that comes out and presses the button.
For you.
And you can program the bot so that it has multiple modes, basically.
It can work with one whale switches.
So if it's just a press.
Or if it's a rocker that has two positions, it can also trigger that as well in both positions.
So that's really neat.
Yeah, I'm really happy with these two products.
They work really well.
There is one issue though.
And that's where it's maybe going downhill again.
Oh, no.
Switchbot doesn't have in any of their product
native home kid support, right?
So you have to use their app, their iOS app.
But recently, the Switchbot Hub 2, the one I got,
got Matter support.
So that's good news.
Yeah, it means you can enable it in the app and it will show up in the home app,
like any home kid accessory accessories.
So that's the matter idea right here,
committing a clutch, I guess.
That works.
Although it is so buggy guys.
Switchbot gets you act together or something.
Oh, I don't know if it's Switchbot, if it's their fault,
or if it's the matter support that's garbage in general,
like the matter standard is garbage in general, I don't know.
I've only had a couple of other matter accessories,
which are EVE products.
So smart outlets, which I can upgrade to matter using the EVE app.
And I worked well, although there's absolutely no point in doing that,
if everybody in your house just uses home kid.
But yeah.
So yeah, Switchbot's matter support is garbage.
It doesn't work.
There's a huge latency between when you press the button in the app
and when the bot or the hub actually does something.
So I wanted to go another route to add these two
devices in the home app.
I wanted to leverage my home bridge,
instance that's on my server in the living room.
I guess I can talk another time about the server in the living room.
I think I mentioned it, but it was on the secret pilot episode.
So nobody's heard that.
But yeah, I have a server in the living room with a home bridge on it.
And there's a plugin for Switchbot accessories that you can install,
which adds home kid compatibility to your Switchbot accessories that works
a lot better than the native matter support.
There's a lot of downsides, of course, because you have to set it up.
It's not super easy.
You have to read through a bunch of documentation on the GitHub page.
So that may not be the most welcoming place for everyone.
But once you're done setting it up, it works.
So well, there's no latency.
I believe it's just using the Switchbot native API.
So that's why it's so fast.
Yeah, so I compared a home bridge home made plugin.
And the company's native home kid support via Matter.
I'm afraid the home made stuff works better.
The open source amateur thing is better than their actual service.
That's not great.
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked, I say.
Impossible.
I don't know, guys.
I think over the past few years, I've been extremely disappointed by the promise of matter.
I think it's a...
It's an excuse to get into this for me.
But yeah, there was this promise that everybody would make products that works with everything.
I don't know.
It's not been the dream.
There's a few matter products I have.
And they work worse than just dedicated home kit devices.
If they go through matter,
one thing I am interested in is so for iOS 18...
Well, all the OS updates that have home app support,
it looks like they're getting the new matter, standard, new matter update later this year.
So it's going to bring robot vacuum cleaners and stuff to the home app.
Which I'm excited about.
But I am like, yeah, is this going to work worse than just going into the native app for my
robot vacuum cleaner?
Or is this because I would love...
I want everything to be in the home app.
Like I have home bridge installed so I can get everything in the home app as well.
But matter is...
Matter is the promise to the people that are wandering the desert without any water.
And they went, "Uh, just getting...
We don't have any water for you. We have Mountain Dew."
So...
Yeah.
So Matt, are you...
Matt, are you...
Mattur.
Well based on this conversation, I am Matt.
Good connotations.
Tidal.
So...
So what?
So this little...
Switchbot bot.
Yeah, it's a little...
That's the best thing.
It's a little box.
It looks like you stick it to like anything...
You stick it to the wall.
Yeah.
Or anything really, yeah.
Yeah, they've got it like hooked up to a coffee maker
in one of their photos.
Yeah.
What...
So what are you using it for?
And now that you have it, are there other things you're looking around like,
"Oh, I could use Switchbot on that."
Yeah, so...
Yeah, I'm using it for something very specific in our living room.
So we don't own our place.
So we can't just replace things that are built into the apartment or something like that.
So we have a bunch of smart lights in the living room, of course.
But there are ceiling lights, which are tiny LEDs that are speckled on the ceiling.
Imagine the grid of, I don't know, 12 or 16 LED lights, LED spots on the ceiling in our living room.
And those you can only trigger using the wall switch, right?
The built-in wall switch.
We don't want to replace the wall switch to make it smart and make it show up in the home kit.
So that's perfect.
I just stuck the tiny bot on the light switch.
And that's it.
It works.
The thing is that...
And that's something really important, I think, is that you can still use the physical button.
It doesn't prevent you from using the physical button.
The bot is out of the way when you're not using it.
So yeah, we can still press the button on the wall and it works.
Yeah, I think that is like my...
After I've been doing home automation stuff for years.
And I think the thing that I realized at some point is if you're going to have a light,
for example, that's smart, you need to have a way to just switch it on and off manually as well.
You can't make your phone or your voice be the only way to do that.
Because otherwise you're going to get frustrated.
Your partner's going to get frustrated.
It's going to be...
Yeah.
It's even worse when they get frustrated.
Because you set it up and you're like, "Oh, it'll be so easy."
And then if it's not, they're like, "You said it would be easy."
And it's not easy.
How dare you?
So yeah, anything like this that where the switch is still available, I think is really cool.
I have something...
It's a little different to this, but I have something that kind of like...
For my living room, I have a similar situation where there's a switch that controls all the ceiling lights.
And it goes on top of the switch so that you...
It's like a button that goes on top of the switch.
So you can't actually switch it.
The switch is always up.
It's always on.
But there's...
It is basically a smart button that'll toggle it between on and off.
For you.
And it has like a dimmer and everything.
I'll try to find a link to that.
It's on Amazon.
But I'll try to find a link to that for the show notes.
Because I've had a lot of luck with that.
And it definitely improved our old situation, which was all smart.
Like, it has to have to do it through the phone.
And yeah, that improved our quality of life quite a bit.
Yeah.
It's really nice.
As somebody that used to be a renter and used to live by myself,
I used to be able to do all sorts of weird stuff,
but I wasn't able to drill holes in the wall or replace things.
So I did a lot of Phillips Hue stuff,
but I would put the Phillips Hue lights,
which is on the walls as well and use those.
But now that I own a house,
I am going down the Lutron Kassada route.
And I'm going to save this for a future episode once I finished the project.
I literally just started ordering everything,
but I didn't want to start installing it.
And then leave for WWDC.
And like, my girlfriend not be able to turn on lights.
Because that would not lead to a happy relationship if that was to happen.
And like, the other thing too is like,
my girlfriend's mom stays with us quite a bit.
So she's not a techie person at all.
She's the very, very non-technical, which is totally fine.
But that means I can't have her be like,
oh yeah, in order to turn on the lights in the living room,
you need to yell at the assistant in the home pod to turn on the lights.
Now, there needs to be a light switch that she can hit.
So the Lutron Kassada stuff is really interesting to me.
You need to be comfortable doing a little bit of electrical work
or hire somebody to install it.
Yeah. I think the other thing, the hub too,
it kind of feels really, really smart.
And I guess that's their way of doing things, switchpot.
The fact that you can just program IR commands.
And the way it works is you launch the app
and you enroll a type of device.
So in my case, I was an AC.
And it's going to guide you, right?
It's going to say, all right, point your remote,
your physical remote at the hub and start pressing buttons.
And you can assign commands to each IR command.
And yeah, it's because, and becomes a smart device.
And it's a really smart way of doing things.
So I guess the way it works is that the hub too has
a IR, an IR emitter.
And it replaces your remote basically.
Nice. Yeah.
I'm trying to think what I would use that for.
I know this was a thing that like Android phones had for a long time.
I think they called it an IR blaster,
where you could do a similar thing.
And then I think those died off eventually.
But it would, it does sound like a cool way to automate things that are not smart.
Like my TV does not connect to any smart home,
anything's, but it would be kind of cool if I could ask Siri to turn on my TV.
Wow.
Like, well, do you have an Apple TV plugged into your, to your TV?
I do. I do. Okay. So do you have CEC on your TV?
I do. It does do that, but it's, oh, yeah, it doesn't work all the time.
It's slightly annoying, but yeah, it's as reliable as Siri likes to be, I would say.
See what's interesting from my TV setup is the TV works just fine with CEC.
My issue is my sound system.
For some reason, when I moved, I'm literally using the same cables.
There is nothing different. The sound system is even plugged into the internet.
But for some reason, all of a sudden CEC is not working right with the sound system.
But it works fine with the TV.
And it worked fine at my old place.
Like it worked perfect at my old place.
It would turn on with the, like if I turn on the Xbox or the Apple TV or something,
it would turn on the sound system.
If I turned it off, it would turn that off as well.
But now it doesn't always turn on.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it turns off. Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it just stops responding and you can't control the volume until you go up
and unplug the thing and plug it back in.
It's getting replaced because it's driving me wild.
And more importantly, it's driving my girlfriend wild.
And that's the reason why it's really getting replaced.
Yeah.
That's the result I'll tolerate a lot.
All right, when's the challenge?
I can't wait.
Challenge challenge challenge challenge challenge.
Maybe on challenge.
It was your challenge.
What did you make us do?
All right, I asked you and myself to revamp your doc on your main device.
Nice.
Who would like to go first on who, what'd you do to your doc?
Let's start with Matt.
Matt, what'd you do?
Okay, so you've successfully chosen what is likely the most boring answer.
So last week we agreed I would do my phone, which admittedly
kind of restricted me to how crazy I could get because I only get four icons.
At the start of the week, right after we stopped recording, I empty-dock my doc
and tried using my phone.
And I forget exactly what was in my doc before.
I think it was messages, ivory from acetone,
overcast, and YouTube.
Those are the four apps I had in there.
And I took them all out and I was like, let's see what I actually need in there.
Like, what do I want my phone to be?
What do I find myself like accessing quickly the most?
So let's just make the most utilitarian doc possible.
So I am back to four icons in my doc and three of them have changed.
Messages is still there.
Messages has been at the bottom left of my phone for a decade and it's never going to move.
I just do too much to messages and I need it to be there.
So messages has not moved.
But I did make some other changes to the other ones.
So ever since we started working with Mac stories, I'm suddenly an avid Discord user.
I have so many messages going through Discord now and I moved Discord,
which I don't love, but I need.
I moved it into my doc because it is,
something I'm constantly going into, into a couple of servers.
So that's moved in there and that's made me use Discord a little bit more, which is nice.
I also moved podcasts into there.
So Apple podcasts instead of overcast.
I think it's because I just really love how beautiful the podcast app is.
I love the discovery in there.
I find more shows browsing through their kind of browse page than I do anything else.
This is also maybe a bigger topic.
With overcast, I feel like I need to listen to everything.
I need to be a completionist.
Whereas in podcasts, the podcasts come in.
If you listen to them, you listen to them.
If you don't, you don't.
It's not a big deal.
And so I'm trying to see if I can handle that more casual podcast experience.
I don't know if I will, but it's a challenge.
So I'm giving it a go.
And then the fourth icon in my doc is Reader, which is an RSS reader.
And this is the one that I've used for many, many years.
But it's never been in my doc.
And it took the spot that I've rehabbed.
So when I would typically go to social media to see if I could find something interesting,
now my muscle memory is taking me to my RSS reader, where it will still be clickbait stuff.
But it will be at least longer form higher effort, things that usually make me happy.
So that's what I've been trying to do.
I tried to get wild with shortcuts or maybe there were apps that I could put in there,
where a long press would trigger these fancy actions.
And no apps do anything interesting with that.
So I couldn't really make a launcher in my doc.
I was kind of thinking I could.
But yeah, I just kind of turned it into what are the core things I want from my phone.
And that was messaging people, listening to podcasts, and reading the news, blogs,
fun articles, that sort of thing.
And I think I like it. I don't know if Discord will stay there forever, but it has been,
it's been making it easier for me to stick up to date with everything going on.
My Discord server is so, yeah, I would say it was not very painful, ultimately,
because I did not get that adventurous, I think.
Well, I think you did a good job.
I like that you swapped out apps. That's good.
I fully agree with Apple podcasts being really good these days.
And I want to say that on the more superficial note, the Apple podcast icon is really good.
I like that it's colorful, saturated, it's got a nice gradient.
And yeah, I like it. It's good icon.
Yeah, it's very good. And they added a whole bunch of, again, this is not a WWDC episode,
but they did add in iOS 18, which I'm running on all my devices, dangerously.
They added a whole bunch of little kind of nice UI features that just make using the app even better.
And then the transcripts are great. It's super awesome.
So, yeah, it's an underrated app, I think, on an Apple's ecosystem, although it's super popular,
so it's not that underrated. But amongst nerds like us, it might be underrated.
So, the device I did was my main device, which is obviously my iPad Pro.
Like, that's the device I worked from.
So, when we initiated this challenge, it was before WWDC. It was the Friday before.
When we completed the challenge, it's after WWDC. So, just keep that in mind.
So, my doc has looked like this and we're going to put links in the show notes so you can go ahead
and go and look at them if you want. You can see my stuff, nearly on the bat. We'll have links in the show
notes so you can go check them out. My doc has looked like this for probably at least the last year or so.
Definitely since the action button came to the iPhone, because I think the last thing I swapped
around was putting action cut in the doc. So, I have files, which files the icon has actually
been swapped out for the Finder icon. This is still my old doc. I hate the files app icon with a passion.
I think it's a bad icon. So, I swapped it out with Finder, which is a much better one.
Now it looks like you're on the Mac. Exactly. Like, a lot of people think like, how did you get Finder
on your iPad? I did not. It's files. It's just using the short method of replacing the app icon.
You fixed the files app. Yeah, I fixed the files app. Yep, personally fixed it by just swapping out
an icon. Yep, fixed it. I wish it was that easy. Then I have Safari, Mail, Things, Fantastic
Al, Obsidian, Drafts, Good Notes, Reader, Range drop.io, Final Cut Pro for the iPad, Lightroom,
Photoshop, Photos, Music, Messages, Ivory, Discord, for the same reasons Matt said, Shortcuts,
Action Cut, and then it's the app library. One thing I did do a long time ago is I disabled the
recent apps. If you do that on the iPad, if you disable the recent apps in the doc, and you actually
get three more spaces to put apps, so it brings it up if you have the 13-inch iPad for a total of 18
apps that you can fit in the doc. I use all of that space. That's kind of my old one. You guys can go
ahead and click on the After doc link in our show notes. Things look similar. I didn't swap out any apps
for, you know, I just couldn't. There are apps I want to put in my doc, but I'm on the beta for them,
and they haven't officially been announced, so I can't put that in there because then I would
leak them and I would feel bad if I was taking that away from the developers. In the After doc one,
if it ever loads on my computer, see here. What you'll notice right away is I have iPadOS 18 installed
on this iPad. This is my sacrificial iPad that I'm using for all my testing stuff this summer,
not my production iPad, but the docs are the same. They just don't have the fancy new dark mode icons
that I really like. The new dark mode icons in iOS and iPadOS 18 are really good, especially
photos and maps. Those two in particular jumped out to me right away and I just I absolutely love
those. Music looks good. I just I really like the dark mode icons. Have you guys seen those yet?
I am not a fan of all of them, but some are great. Like you said, the photos app
looks really really good in dark mode. The icon looks really good in dark mode. But you said the
maps app, the maps one, I like the maps one. The maps icon, it looks it looks bad. Really, I like it.
I actually just added the negative filter on top of it. I guess I guess I don't know. I just I think
it looks kind of interesting. I like it, but yeah, it looks pretty good. I'm with the Chris. I
think it looks pretty good. I like we said last week, I will be shocked if we ever all agree on
something, which is kind of the thing I love about this show. It's absolutely the thing I love about
this show. But I like the dark mode icons. The other thing I did is to kind of match the theme.
Obviously third party apps haven't updated to support the dark mode icons stuff. Like it was
literally announced on Monday. There's no way they could have updated. I mean, they're not even
allowed to use the new API stuff and submit that to the app store until September. So what I did is on
icons that support multiple app icons I went in and purposely picked ones that had black backgrounds.
The ivory one is the one I've always used. I switched my raindrop.io one to one with a black background.
I changed the discord one to like this kind of cosmic dark one that looks really good.
But I didn't go in and do any like icon theming for any of the other stuff. I just didn't want to.
The only app that I do that for is files because again, I hate that app icon so much. I will deal with
the shortcuts bar that shows up at the top every time because of how much I understand reasonably
hate that files. Yes. But so I kind of did that. And then I also went in and the last app icon in my
doc is a shortcut called action cut. This is a I made a video about this. Basically, it's a shortcut
that I designed for the action button on the iPhone, but I use it on my iPad and it looks at what
focus mode I'm in and gives me different shortcuts depending on which focus mode I'm in. So it kind of
it adapts to whatever situation I'm in. So like if I'm in my personal shortcut, it'll show me stuff
like laundry timer. But if I'm in my work show shortcut, it'll show me stuff like new video projects
and stuff like that. So it kind of like adapts for me. I really like it. It's a shortcut I've been using
ever since I got my hands on the iPhone 15 Pro. But the other thing I did is I put a folder in my doc
and I have not used folders on the iPad for a really long time because I don't like the way they work.
I don't like the fact that when you tap on a folder, it literally takes up the whole screen of the
iPad. Like everything else gets blurred out. You see this grid of like, I think it's 16 apps in a
folder that you can do or on a single folder page. And that's all you can see. Like it just takes up
the whole thing. I think there would be a much better way to design that UI. It's not good, but I was
like, you know what? There's a lot of small utilities I've been using lately that I like have to use
Spotlight to get into or add them to stage manager or something like that. Let me try like putting a
folder in the doc. So I put a folder in the doc and you guys can go into the show notes for this. And
there is a link to the folder doc for or it's called folders for utilities. And in here I have shortcuts.
The new passwords app, the new calculator app notes an app called emulecio. I always pronounce it
wrong, but basically it's an app for stabilizing video, unsqueez, which is an app for upresing video,
or Ryan, which is the HDMI like capture card app that I use to like control my Mac and stuff like
that. Jump desktop, which is the app I use to remote into the Mac if I can't use a capture card.
Camo, which is a nice app for like video calls and stuff like that and doing like multi cam stuff.
The home app, floating player, overcast, runestone, working copy, the app store and settings.
So I've just kind of been using these as a way to like quickly add them to stage manager,
jump into those utilities when I need them. And it's been okay. I don't love it. I don't hate it.
I'm kind of ambivalent on it. I just don't like the way the folder UI works. I'm very used to
using spotlight to adding stuff to stage manager, because especially now since iPad OS 17, you can
just type the name and then shift click on something or shift or hit shift enter. And it'll add it
to this your current stage. So I'm very used to launching stuff that isn't in my doc via spotlight.
Is the folder really any better than using the app library?
I because I test a lot of apps because I have a lot of test flight stuff and I'm trying new apps
all the time. My app library is kind of a mess. And my problem with the app library is it's based
on the categories of apps, developers pick. And a lot of times developers pick categories that they
know their app will do good in. Not the category the app should be in like my classic example is
fair right. The podcast editing app is under the entertainment category for some reason and not
the creative category. And that just drives me wild because I absolutely will like think okay,
fair it's a creative app. So I'm going to go into that first and it's never there. So there's a lot
of use cases like that. And then there's stuff like test flight stuff where like test flight apps
don't go into those categories. They go into their own separate categories. So that folder becomes
a mess especially like in the summer. I just took all the test flights off my devices because
we'll start getting test flights for the new updates here really soon. So that's going to become a mess.
So I don't know if it's better for most people but in my case I think so.
Yeah, so I revamped in quotes my macOS talk. So let's look at my initial dark how it was a week ago.
My doc has been this way for months. I've not touched it in months. So in order there is a finder
of course which I can't change. Safari, fantastical, ivory, threads, messages, what's up?
Telegram discord, the home app, MIME stream, the main male client, podcasts, music,
they want photos pixel made of pro, figma, Apple notes, visual studio code,
GitHub, Obsidian and warp, warp is a terminal app. Then on the right side of the doc,
I've got two stacks. One stack is where my screenshots go. And the second stack is the default
downloads followed by the trashcan of course. So my doc is at the bottom of the screen which is the
correct place where docs go in general in life. Yeah, yeah. And so hear me out. And the issue is I
caught my first thought when going into this challenge to remember my doc was let's try to move my docs
on where else. Let's try to put it on site on the left side like Matt on the right side like weird
people. So I tried that. The issue is that if I put it on the left side of my display,
then it becomes horrible, horrible to switch my cursor to be on my second monitor which is on the left.
Okay. Yeah. Right. Because then the docs sits in the middle of the two. And
having the second monitor on the left means that your cursor doesn't bump on the wall when you
know when you go to the left. So that's an issue. And it became really hard to just click on things
in my doc. So I tried it to put it on the right side of the display. So now you can click
my second link in the show notes which is my newest version of my doc. The one I'm rocking right now.
The icons that are in there haven't changed much except for one thing. Actually two things.
One thing is I removed the threads up. So there's no thread up of course on on macroth. It's a
it's a web app. Right. It's a Safari web app to open the threads. So I removed that for my doc
because I don't use it that much and I'm kind of a thread's header. So I'm just trying to be more
positive. So let's not just not use it as much and I'm going to be fine. So I removed it from my doc
and let me just say guys when trying to remove anything else from my doc. I could not last an hour before
I put it back. So let me tell you which ones I tried to remove. I tried to remove the whole map.
There's a reason why I have the home app in my doc. Because oftentimes when I'm at the desk I just
want to control my lights in the lights that are on my desk the lights in the room and macOS does have
home widgets. They are so bad. I just never want to deal with those again. They are really buggy
and they are widgets. So it comes with the inconvenience of having widgets on macOS. They either on your
bestops you have to squash your windows away to see them or you are there in your notification
center and that's just a mess in and of itself. So yeah I like having a home app in the doc.
You can just quickly click it and control any lights and close it again. And the home app is actually
pretty good on macOS. It's just basically the same as the iPad app and it launches fast.
So I like having the home app in there. I try to remove it. I just couldn't. I put it back right
away after about an hour. Another app that I try to remove was day one. So day one is my journaling app.
I do a lot of journaling. I wrote about it on my story is actually one of Apple's journal app
came out came out and I really liked that one. The thing is I thought I could remove it from my dark
because even if I'm a big fan of journaling I don't write that much that often in the app.
Right. And we have it open all the time. I open the app basically every
this once a day at most but sometimes it's just barely two times a week or something like that.
So it's really not an essential app to have in my doc. But and here you're going to call me crazy
and that's all right. I want to have the day one app in my doc because I turned it yellow a few months ago.
The default day one icon is blue and I made a custom icon for it. I turned it yellow
because it looked nice in my dark right in the middle and it makes for a nice gradient between
the music app and the photos app. And if I remove it that nice city is gone and I could not bear it.
So I put it right back. I get it. I'm the person that replaced the files app I come with the
finder app because I just I want something that looks nice in there. So I'm I totally 100% get it.
Yeah. This is a little crazy but I do get it. All right perfect. So the other big change that I made
to my doc is I at the bottom of the doc I re-enabled the recent applications section. Yeah you can
on the macOS just like on ipad ways you can turn on that section at the end of the doc. So it's even
the bottom if it's on the side or on the right side if your doc is on the bottom side of your display.
And that section is actually pretty useful. I'm quite surprised. It means that apps stay in there if I
open them recently and if even if they're not open correctly and it's actually pretty useful. I
found that pretty useful to be able to just relaunch an app that I just used an hour ago or something
like that. So I would recommend turning it on if perhaps you turned it off because your old school
mac user and you're like none of that. I think it's I think it'd be useful. I'm not opposed to the
recent section. Like I would leave it on on the ipad if it if turning it off didn't give me more
spots to use in the doc because the doc on the ipad is limited like there's a cap to how many apps
you can put in there. So if it didn't give me more spots I would 100% leave it on but I would
rather have like the stuff that I really use a lot in the doc then like oh here's this random
utility that you use like once a week that you just opened. Chris now you have a second doc in your
doc with that folder. Yeah. So you're you're you're you're you're all in the thing I'm noticing.
Okay there's two things I'm noticing. Number one your custom figma icon is delightful.
Oh I didn't know that was custom. That's amazing. Yeah that's the icon made by Gavin Nelson I believe.
Okay. Yeah. I need to find a specific one on these good road page. I think if I remember right.
Okay. Well I'm looking for that after the show and then both of you have much bigger docs.
Then I ever use. So my doc on my Mac and my ipad are basically nothing. It's just the apps that I
currently have open. Which is very different from also you mean the number of icons in there.
Not the size. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The number of icons. So I have like three or four
icons on my Mac doc by default. And then as I open new apps they get they show up there.
I I guess I don't really use it as an app launcher necessarily. I tend to do that through
Raycasts. For me because I'm on the ipad having apps in the doc just makes it really easy to add them
to stage manager. Especially if I don't have a keyboard and trackpad attached. I can drag it
right up which that's why it's like the core apps I use are in the doc. So that way if I don't have
a keyboard and mouse attached I can just drag them up or tap them and jump between them really quickly.
It makes switching between apps a lot lot quicker on the ipad. But if I do have a keyboard and
mouse attached you most of the time like 95% of the time I will just use spotlight to either
launch an app or add it to stage manager. Even if it's in the doc like I will like if I'm adding
something to the stage say like I have ivory open and then I need to add I want to like check out
discord. I will just you know command space discord shift shift click or shift enter and just
it adds it to the space and it's a lot quicker than me going down to the doc dragging the icon
and dropping it into the stage. That makes sense. That makes sense. What I'm learning from this is that
we all have like very set in our ways docs and like like we're I'm going to guess all of us go back
to our original docs maybe except for like some custom icon stuff on my end like I don't want to
speak for you guys but like I'm probably going to leave the custom icon stuff but I think I might take
out the folder. I don't know I now that I'm thinking about it and like I love the way Matt phrase it's
a second dark and I kind of love that so I might just do that. Yeah it's a good concept. There's one more
thing the stacks at the end of the doc. Yeah so I'm used to having two stacks a screenshot stack
and the downloads folder stack. I believe the downloads folder is there by default. Yeah okay so I
just yeah I just like to add the screenshots folder. Let me say the stacks are vastly superior
when your doc is at the bottom because they open in a fan upward and it's just really easy to just
grab the latest file in there and drop it somewhere whereas if your doc is on the side it opens
always in a huge grid that covers everything on my screen. I just want to cry every time it's the worst
thing and you can't just have the fan open on the side. I guess it would look weird I guess but I just
want my fans stack and so yeah I just want to conclude my section of the challenge by saying that
right now live I'm clicking right clicking on my doc. I'm navigating to position on screen and I'm
selecting bottom again okay I can bring it again. There we go so that was a fail. I am going to leave
the folder in my doc for another week and play around with it a bit more because the more I'm thinking
about it I'm like it is really nice to be able to just add those apps to stage manager or something
when I'm not using a keyboard and trackpad and with these new iPads something I found
because there's so much lighter I'm using it in tablet mode quite a bit more like I'm using it for
reading because I have a 13 inch iPad that's that's a big boy. It's kind of annoying to hold like the
old ones used to be really annoying to hold one handed they were terrible to hold portrait. This
one's not terrible this one's not bad at all like I've been reading off of it I've been reading
books off of it I've been reading articles off of it just in tablet mode no keyboard no mouse
attached so I think I'm going to keep the folder in my doc for another week as kind of like a second doc
nice I've got to say the folder in the iPad doc looks a bit wild yeah because it's just a tight
create in a small space they really need a better UI like they need a better UI and better
app like our icon design for it that's something that has been on my wishlist for a very long time
but it's such a low priority yeah they should probably get to it but like there's so many more
important things to do on the iPad they should be stacks in the doc right yeah yeah well I don't
I don't know if I like so for me whenever I had a Mac in the past I always turned off stacks
the stacks icon in favor of the folder icon so like it would show like if you had downloads it would
show the downloads icon folder or it show like if you put apps the applications folder in there it
show the application folder icon and stuff like that so I in the stacks just seemed a little messy to
me but I get the appeal of them. Hey Rosie hey you put the talk at the bottom that's heresy.
Oh my god if I could move the doc on the iPad it would 100% be on the left side but that's also where
the stage manager stuff is so I can see that never happening.
All right folks leave a like on this YouTube video if I'm right and also leave a like if I'm
right too because Ashley gets that we'll we'll we'll know well though we'll leave a comment there you go
and you can you can find us on Macedon as well and let us know yeah if you agree with me then hit the
subscribe button hit the bell. If you agree with me smash the subscribe button and smash the bell.
This is why you're the pro YouTuber is it highlighting right now? Is that a new thing right?
Now smash and it's been around for a while because it just seems way more dramatic.
I mean now in a YouTube app when you say subscribe or like I think the buttons light up
Oh do they? Oh yeah yeah. Oh okay yeah I'm the world's worst YouTuber because I don't actually watch
YouTube videos. Oh Chris. I watch mats and a few others but that's that's about it. Okay okay then that's
fine. I just realized I had a backtrack because I don't own friends on here. Are you guys ready for
our new challenge? Yes. I'm excited. What do you have for us Matt this week? I'm really excited.
Okay so the new challenge is hopefully pretty easy although it might be bad if you've been reviewing
apps for a long time. Oh no. My challenge is to go to the app store on your iPhone or iPad which
everyone you prefer and go to the top apps. They can be the top free apps, top paid apps and find an
app that you've never installed. So not one that has the open icon, not one that has the red
download icon. We need a price or a get button next to it and find an app you've never ever ever
installed. The most popular one you can stomach installing and put it on your device and see how it
goes. Ideally on your home screen so you can stare at it always. Do you know what one that is for me?
Do you know what one that is for me? What is it? I have never downloaded it. It says get next to it.
TikTok. Never have once downloaded in my life. Oh my god. Grants bar. So there you go. I'm not happy about
this. I have been so proud of I'm gonna find another app. I've been so proud of never. You can find
another app. It doesn't have to be number one. I legit. He said it. The reason why I hate TikTok is I hate
vertical video and they were like the precursor to it. They were the ones that made it popular. So I
blamed them for doing vertical and short form video and I hate that stuff with a passion. I hate
what it's done to YouTube and like the creator sphere and all that stuff. I could go on a whole rant
about that. I'm gonna find another app because I refuse to download TikTok but I will find something.
I'll find something that's actually interesting because everyone's tried TikTok except me.
I love this challenge but I'm afraid when I'm going to find my top app is 10 you. So I'm gonna just
next week you're gonna see me with a whole bunch of cheap garbage around. Oh my god. My grandparents
love that app so much and I keep trying to tell them like it's not like it's not what you think it
is. It's not you're not getting these amazing deals or anything like that. Microsoft Teams. Am I going
to install Microsoft Teams? Yes. Yes, Microsoft Teams. Yes. And it needs to be like a team of one
where you're just like literally talking to yourself all day. I just send you invites.
I did my time. We all used Microsoft Teams. I did. That was my last big project in IT other than
dealing with COVID stuff was getting Microsoft Teams set up for everyone and like a almost 300 person
company and it was a disaster. Literally got abused from day one. It was a nightmare. So that's it
for this episode of Comfort Zone. Thank you all so much for listening. Our thanks to listenlater.net
for sponsoring this video. Matt say goodbye and tell people where what you're up to and where people
can find you. Well, you can find me on YouTube a better computer. Find me on my blog.
BirchTree.me. Yeah, I'm just enjoying the summer, taking a break and mostly just working on this podcast
with you. Find people. So looking forward to next week. Oh, shucks. Nileon, tell people goodbye.
Word find you what you're working on. I know you probably have a really busy summer in front of you.
Oh, yeah. So I just won't get into it right now, but there are snap elections happening in
France and it's a both a nightmare and really exciting, but mostly a nightmare. So I'm going to talk about
that on Master Don find me there and maybe I'll write something on MaxiWizness week probably. Yeah.
Nice. Well, I'm Chris Froulli. You can find me on YouTube. It's my name L-A-W-L-E-Y or you can go to
the untitled.site and links to all of my stuff are there as well. Our thanks to MaxiWiz for hosting
this podcast. We are a MaxiWiz podcast after all. It's great being there. It's been really fun.
Thank you all so much for listening. If you're watching on the YouTube video, hit the like button.
And if you're listening on the audio version, maybe go into Apple podcasts or overcast and
rate us or give us a star and overcast or something like that if you feel up to it. It actually does help
people find the show and we'd appreciate it. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.
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