Don't Let Tech Companies Electrocute You

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts, but this week, unfortunately, one of our co-hosts is moving, so I'm only joined by one co-host, and that co-host is Matt Birchler. Hello, it's me. Matt, you are not currently moving, are you? I'm not currently moving. I hope to not have to move for a very long time. I am in that same boat. I think I might have one more move left, but I'm like, I did two moves in under two years. I don't, I'm good.

But Niléane is moving this week. So what this means is we said we would do episode 100 together. So this is not episode 100. This is episode 101. So nobody's allowed to congratulate us on it being episode 100. Oh no, Chris, I had my air horn all ready to go. I was ready to celebrate episode 100. You have to save it for a week because we can't do episode 100 without Niléane. Okay. Well, if I can't use the air horn. Oh, yeah.

We're a classy show now. Oh, my God. I love it so much. Okay. Yes. So we're not doing episode 100 this week because I just don't feel it's right to do it without Niléane. So this is episode 101. Though in the CMS, it'll probably say episode 100 because I don't know how to mess with all of them. It is going to break everything. So the CMS will say 100, but we all know it's a lie. Every Comfort Zone listener knows this is a lie. Episode 101. Episode title 101. This is the way.

It's really going to throw off the whole YouTube stuff, like the playlist. It's going to really mess up some stuff. But that's okay. Last week, I wasn't here because I was getting my puppy stay to the end of the show and maybe click over to the video version or there'll be a link to her instagram in the description if i remember to get matt that link um uh reminder reminder get yes because my puppy has an instagram account she also has a tiktok account but danielle is actually the one managing all this not me anyways that's all besides the point i'm sorry um i have not slept much

it's like having a child but I was laughing my ass off editing last week's episode especially when I got to the challenge part both of you guys did an excellent job and thank you to both of you for covering for me while I was out but the challenge was fantastic Niléane could have used a bit more task managers and Matt I do feel you could have covered that display a bit more I do feel there was a lot of real estate left I agree. I actually thought it was going to be higher. My 3D printer only prints so tall, it was a limit. It's now in the garbage for what it's worth. It was not suitable.

The 3D printer is in the garbage. You're getting a bigger 3D printer. Don't worry about that. No, you clearly need to get a bigger 3D printer so you can print bigger things. I'm trying to help you here, Matt. Okay, okay, you're right. Well, when we do this challenge again in 100 episodes, I'll get a bigger printer. That's my guarantee. There you go. But yeah, no, it was a great episode. If you haven't listened, go listen to it because I was laughing. And I got some good tips out of it from your guys' main topics.

I also appreciated your rant on the reviewers of the Logitech MX Master Mouse. And, you know, I still have my 3S and I took the 4. And I put them like I was jumping back. I couldn't really tell much of a difference, but I guess that's just me. I could tell the difference in the materials, not the shape. Okay. Fair enough. I have a tiny topic that is just one little thing. In the early days of the show, I didn't understand the rules.

I brought a tea kettle, and I was told that's not tech. I mean, I think we actually came around and said if it plugs in, it's tech. if it has power it's tech okay well i just wanted to say i have a new piece of not really tech but it feels kind of techy thing in my life and i almost brought it as my topic this week because i'm actually really impressed with it i almost brought a garbage can what

so um maybe maybe i'll talk about this more at some point but um i got a simple human garbage can which I think is a meme is a is is like I feel like the impression is these are like $400 garbage cans that use proprietary bags uh that is not necessarily the case they do have very expensive ones but those are for like big garbage cans but you can get like a normal garbage can uh I got mine for a you know a little under 100 bucks which is a lot but it is nice and again it's not my topic it's we're talking tiny topics but it is one of those things where I thought it would be so stupid

and then I got one and there's so many little things it does well that make me appreciate it I was like oh I'm I'll get one but I'll keep getting the grocery store bags and then I used it I'm like oh this is really clever this is really nice and oh yeah on Amazon they have generic versions that are even cheaper than the target bags I've been using so I just wanted to say uh simple human not as expensive as you think and actually way better design products than I expected for garbage cans.

Matt, you've joined another cult. Like, I'm looking at this thing, and I'm looking at the one... Okay, so the typical kitchen, 55 liter trash can, garbage can, is 200 bucks. That's big. That's bigger. Now us Americans are going to get confused because we're used to 13 gallons and not a liter. So the conversions are weird. So what you're looking at is slightly bigger.

I got a slightly smaller one, and it was much cheaper. Also, I did get mine from a container store that is either going out of business or is just doing some sort of weird clearance thing, and so everything was on sale, so I got it for a little less than whatever it's listed. I'll put a link to the one I have. It's great. I thought it was going to be the stupidest thing in the world, and I changed my mind. I fully know I'm going to have to get a garbage can with a proper closed lid soon because Riley and she is going to try and get into the garbage.

So maybe. I don't know. This does seem like the kind of thing I would buy. Does it plug in? Is this tech? It doesn't plug in, but it does run on a few AA batteries. Interesting. What does it do that it's the power? Why? There's a sensor and you can just, or you can get a foot. If you don't want the sensor one that like just opens when you are close to it, you can just get the foot one and that's even cheaper. Oh, okay. Okay. So entry to the cult, much cheaper than you might expect. I appreciate a good cult that has a budget friendly entry. Yeah.

And has some really cool stuff. There's air holes in the bottom, so it doesn't get all fluffed with air. It has a little... Here's the cool thing. Here's the cool thing. This is getting less tiny, but it's fine. The garbage bags. They are in a little Kleenex box almost sort of thing. They stick in the back on the backside of the can, so when you take out one bag, it's already in there, and it's like a tissue box. You just pull it out, and you just pull it up, and it slides across, and it's perfect, and it's just in there. It's great. That's genius.

Matt you just made me spend money damn it Matt link in the description not an affiliate link of course alright no use an affiliate link get that bag see what I did there bag garbage bag get that proprietary garbage bag yeah alright well that's actually kind of interesting send me a link to this I'm very curious about this this week on Cozy Zone We roasted our listeners' old home screen setups, and it was actually really fun.

It was a nice, like, trip down memory lane of old apps, and there was some jailbroken stuff in there that was wild. There was, and there was one home screen that really is really weird. There always is. And one person put the camera icon in the right position. we finally got someone doing it finally i appreciate them if you want to see Chris happy check it out yes and everyone should want to see me happy i mean i got a puppy this week i'm i've

been overjoyed i've like taking the week off of work i've spent the whole week playing with a puppy i mean what more could you do uh what more could you want uh but yeah yeah uh for those that don't know cozy zone is our members only show it's five bucks a month uh you get an extra episode of us every single week where we just kind of talk about things that are a little more loosey-goosey, a little more cozy. And then sometimes we go off the rails and talk about Olympic logos and how evanescent they are. That's true.

That is a scale that we explored deeply. Mm-hmm. I was robbed. Anyways, we should get into the main show. I have a classic all the small things topic for us. I kind of wanted to go over some stuff. So a few weeks ago, I talked about the new Asus OLED Swift 360 no-scope Gamer Bro monitor that I got. I am still loving this monitor. I absolutely, like, it is, I am very impressed with this monitor.

Yes, it's not proper Apple Retina PPI, but I did the display things. And Matt, you really need to fix it so that yours isn't on the like super crazy scaled version because that is way too big. You need to go into the display settings, pick the middle option, and it's good. It's good. It works. It's good. I'm telling you it's good. I, Christopher Lawley, am telling you it's good. So you should be okay with that. I need the buttons big enough where if my fist was, if it was a touchscreen, I could use my fist to reliably hit every button. It's so big. The default option is so big. It's so unbelievable. Anyways, okay. I've actually sold my studio display.

I sold it the other day. Oh. So no more studio display. The thing that pushed me over the edge is I plugged the studio display back in, and I saw I have – so on my MacBook Pro, I have an Artemis 2 mission photo of the moon as my wallpaper. I plugged my MacBook Pro into that. I saw what the black levels looked like, and I was like, yep, nope, I can't go back. The OLED monitors ruined me. And I'm not paying the $3,600 for the XDR one, because that's just, yeah, no. So the Asus monitor is here to stay.

And because of that, that means I moved around my gaming setup. So my PS5, which is the original digital day one PS5, is here in my studio. And I have like a, it's actually down there underneath my 3D printer. And I have like a 10 foot HDMI cable going to the monitor. But I have a question for you, Matt. Should I get a PS5 Pro?

Because I want the best. And this is my issue is I want the best. And I've been looking at my back catalog of games that I want to play. And a lot of them have PS5 Pro support. But the PS5 Pro is expensive now. Thank you. It is really expensive. Um, okay. I do have a PS5 Pro. Okay. I do kind of regret getting the PS5 Pro. Really? Um, it is better. But it's not that much better.

I guess the math would be different, I guess, if I didn't have a gaming PC as well. The problem for me is that it's better than a PS5, but like the PC is still way better. So it's not like the best way to play games. The nice thing, and it depends on what sort of gamer you are, if you are fine with 30 FPS games, then it's not going to be great. But on pretty much every game, if the normal mode is like 30 FPS on the PS5, it's going to be 60 FPS on the PS6 or PS5 Pro.

And it will probably go at a higher resolution. They have PSSR, which is kind of their upscaling tech that's better in the version 2 that just came out like a month ago. And, yeah, I mean, if you want the best of the best, yes. The reason I got it was for Death Stranding 2 last year because it was PS5 only and there was no PC version. And I wanted to play that the best of the best. Ironically, that's one of the smallest upgrades, it turns out. So it wasn't the best choice. But, yeah, I mean, if you want the best of the best and especially because you're coming, you're like an Xbox guy traditionally.

Yeah. So if you're coming from Xbox and you want it to feel like not only are you getting the PlayStation experience, but like the games look better across the board. they will they will okay and and i should probably explain the reason why i went with the playstation in my office here is so i do have an xbox series x uh and that was mine before danielle and i moved in together but she really likes xbox achievements so i would not be allowed to take that away from the living room so that is staying in the living room and that's kind of just becoming hers

and the PlayStation is where I'm playing a majority of my games now. I already had a PS5. I actually got the PS5 before I got the Xbox. And I was thinking about building a gaming PC instead of bringing the PS5 in here because I was thinking about, okay, I could sell the PS5. The price is going up on PS5. I could probably actually make most of my money back on the day one digital version. But what I realized is there were PlayStation-only games,

and it sounds like PlayStation is kind of rethinking the bringing games to the PC, even after their timed exclusive. Oh, my God. And on top of that, GTA 6 is only coming out for the consoles at first, and it'll probably be a year or two before it comes out on the PC. And I'm going to play that day one. That's going to be a big high. That's going to be a game that I would hope would, because it's pushing the envelope for a lot of graphics stuff in such a big world and everything that we're expecting.

So that one might benefit. That's, that's another reason why I'm thinking, I should just get the PS5 pro now. Cause it's going to, it's going to run so much better on it. Like I really wouldn't be surprised if it's a 30 frames per second game on the regular PS5. I would expect that, yes. So that's why I'm like, let's just get a PS5 Pro. Yeah. I hate it. I hate it. And, like, the price of the thing has gone up so much. It's ridiculous.

Well, yeah, that's the thing as well that brings me a little piece. It's like $200. It was like $200 less when I bought it. Yeah. Which is crazy. It's ridiculous. I mean, I bought my, so I have the PS5 digital version. and so I bought that for $400 when that originally came out. It's like $600 now or something like that. It's ridiculous. But I will say, games look fantastic on this OLED monitor. I have always, always been a console plugged into TV person.

I don't think I've ever plugged a console into a monitor before. And oh boy, wow, is this cool. Sitting up close to it looks good. 32 inches you know i have a 77 inch tv but a 32 inch monitor you would think okay 77 inch tv is going to be a lot better but the way our living room is situated i sit pretty far back having a monitor is way better it's fantastic yeah um oh and you've got high frame rate high refresh rate

i do so i that monitor goes up to 240 frames per second playstation 5 supports variable refresh rate It also supports 1440p if the game wants to run at that. So that's nice. Like I have all the options with this monitor, which is fantastic. When I talked about this monitor originally, I did mention the one thing that I wasn't sure how I was going to do was audio. And for a while, I was just plugging headphones into the PlayStation controller.

But I was like, I don't really like this. This sucks. now I have this cable I got to deal with it's just it's not great so I figured so I used Claude and I was like okay let's start doing some research and I was looking for wireless headphones that worked with the PlayStation and found a bunch of different options and the ones that ended up going with are do you have a drum roll on that machine there you need a drum roll okay that works I mean it's not that exciting um but I got the Razer Black Shark version

pro wireless headphones um and these are very gamery headphones all of your purchases recently are like i know you're exiting your apple era and entering your your 360 no scope era this is very unlike me very much like what is happening like i i'm shocked there's an rgb just glowing off this but these are actually really nice headphones they have support so okay headphone annoyance time

they're headphones they have two speakers but if you look at these things they claim that they support uh oh i didn't put a link in the description sorry i thought i did um but if you if you look at these things they claim they do uh dolby surround sound 7.1 but that's not possible because they don't have seven speakers in a subwoofer but they emulate 7.1 surround sound and the emulation of that actually sounds pretty good for headphones like i've been using airpods

max and plugging them into the controller these sound better for games than the airpods max do because it's doing that emulation. Okay. Whereas AirPods Max was just doing left and right. It was just doing stereo. Yeah, well, because AirPods can do Dolby Atmos, which is another standard for, like, surround sound through stereo speakers. But if the PS5 doesn't do that... Exactly, because Microsoft has Dolby Atmos licensed for the Xbox, so the PlayStation can't do Dolby Atmos, which was another reason why I was a big Xbox,

person because my sound system on my tv at dolby atmos it's a whole thing people huh oh boy nothing better than video and audio standards you know right and then like people uh and people licensing them so competitors can't use them and stuff like that it's a whole thing but you know what i'm really happy with these so these have anc and they also have a transparency mode as well uh i've been using the transparency mode so when Danielle walks in, I don't jump 20 feet in the air when she

touches my shoulder because I'm playing some game and some creepy thing is crawling up and she grabs me just as that. Another reason why I went with these is they have a detachable mic. I do not play multiplayer online. I am not a Fortnite-er. I don't Fortnite. I have played a Fortnite. You know, the first time I ever played a Fortnite, I won and it was at my brother's bachelor party. and uh i won and they were all losing their mind i was like why are you guys and they're like oh

this is a hard thing to do and i was like didn't seem that hard uh but whatever i don't know if i just got lucky or whatever but you got anyways i was like okay all right whatever um but uh yeah so they have a detachable mic they charge via usbc they have like 48 hours of battery life and the nice thing is when the playstation turns off it notices that and like 30 seconds later these turn off so i don't have to worry about turning them off to save that battery life you do have to manually

turn them on when the playstation turns on though but it's not that okay okay so there is a power button as well yes there is right there okay um yeah so that's that's kind of nice um so it's a see you know there is mic volume on here you can mute the mic if you're like into that the end but what i really love is there's a big knob on the side on the on the left ear cup here that you can control the volume of the headphones so you can just you can crank that that's really nice and

most importantly they're comfy if you're going to be playing for eight hours or whatever like they're comfy i like them nice and the wireless works good like in terms of latency like you don't feel like there's any issues there yes it has really low latency so there is a dongle that comes with this thing that plugs into the playstation and that i think is what helps with the latency but there is no noticeable latency whatsoever i think it's like under 10 milliseconds of latency so if you could notice that you are superman um because yeah 10 milliseconds is

i don't even think it's i may not even be that i'm sorry i i should have wrote that down but it is no noticeable latency whatsoever like i've been playing starfield lately and i shoot a gun in starfield it sounds of gunshot so um yeah i i'm i'm pretty pretty happy with that um but yeah that's that's kind of my gaming setup uh like i said i'm i'm kind of torn between getting a ps5 pro especially with what it sounds like the ps ps6 is being delayed for a few years because of storage and

memory prices and all that stuff. It sounds like that, that it may not be a bad thing to get a PS5 Pro, especially with some upcoming games like Wolverine, man, I'm excited for. Oh yeah. Wolverine. I hope it's great. And double O seven, the new double O seven game that comes out next month. It's pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's next month. I think it's like end of June or something like that. Very excited for that. There's new, I'm for the horizon game coming out. I think this week as this episode's released, I think comes out literally the day.

Is it, is it being released day and day on the PS5? It is. Nice. That, yeah, Microsoft kind of like going like, yep, we're just going to release stuff on the PS5 has really helped me because I know like Fable, I love Fable games that I have played all the Fable games. I have like 100% of them. I love the Fable games. There's a new Fable game coming out, supposedly, at the end of this year. It's going to be released the same day on the PS5. I'm like, yep, okay, cool, I'm in. Yep. So, yeah.

So that's kind of my gaming setup. The one other thing I wanted to mention is I 3D printed an ergonomic stand for the Magic Trackpad. Link will be in the show notes. This thing has been amazing. Like, my hand feels so good using this. And what's nice is... Oh, I've seen these. Okay. Yeah. So it puts it at an angle. So your hand is... Oh, let me turn it off so I don't start doing things. So it's for video viewers. You'll see it's angled. So your hand is kind of in a more ergonomic position. It's not flat.

It's more ergonomic. This has been really nice. Now, the one thing I will say is the model is very tall. So what I did is I shrunk the Y-axis by 70%. and that really seemed to help but if you're somebody that has a 3d printer or access to a 3d printer and uses a magic trackpad highly recommend printing one of these it's uh made using the magic trackpad a lot better wait it it angles it to the side yes it angles it to the side

so your hands kind of like that oh okay yeah so it's because that's the way like ergonomically that's the way that your hand goes. So here, you should be able to see my desk. I will make me the full screen person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can see right here, it's kind of angled up. So that way, it's kind of where your hand just naturally goes. And it didn't take that long to get used to it. It was pretty quick. And now it feels weird to use it without it. Okay, nice.

Yeah, I thought it was like a trick of the camera or something at first. I was like, why is it angled that way? Because that's like the ergonomic position that you should be using it. But Apple wants everything to be flat. And this doesn't feel good anymore. Like that actually hurts my wrist. Like this feels much better. Well, what you need to do now, you need to try out, you know how there's like those vertical mice where like you hold them like a handshake? You should get your Magic Trackpad set up like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just full vertical. Just like 89 degrees.

Just a slight angle so it doesn't fall off. Actually, there you go. It stands on its own. 90 degrees right there. Perfect. No. You don't even need to print anything. You could just get a little Velcro-like strap so it sticks to your hand. And then you're doing whatever it needs to do. Cut this. This is our billion-dollar idea. Don't tell anyone else about it. No one is allowed to steal this TM comfort zone. Yeah, yeah.

anyways just an idea just an idea so that's what i got for you this week um gaming setup just kind of been tweaking my setups and just kind of getting everything dialed in for the summer i think um we're just a few weeks away from wwdc which is what i consider to be the start of the summer for me at least you know just kind of the way my my life works out and uh i have a really good feeling that This is going to be a big WWDC, not necessarily for the iPad, but for the ecosystem. Hmm. Okay. Just a vibe.

Just a vibe. No, no, not a vibe. Whatever you want to call it. Just a feeling. Just a feeling. Just a feeling. Just a feeling. Well, that's exciting. Anyways, that's what I got for you this week. Unless you have any questions, I'd love to hear what you have for me. Oh, I also have a small thing. But just one. which is I am an Apple Watch guy always have been used to be literally what I was known for until there was nothing else to talk about and I moved on to other things but I one of the things I love to do is to run

I'm a big runner so I actually just hit 100 miles for the year which I'm very proud of a couple years ago it took me like most of the year to do that so to do it in the first few months is cool um including winter oh and when i was sick and traveling anyway and and for the record you have real real winter not california winter so yeah like it's literally like i will slip and fall and die if i run during some of those so it's risky damn um but i've always used apple's

workouts to track my runs and it works fine. I'm not, there are some things I need the best of the best calendars. I need something that's awesome for other stuff. Yeah. Just something that works. And Apple workouts just worked. It's good. It has auto detection. I really like that feature. And yeah, it works. It works well. However, I had a thought, why did I have this? I don't actually know what spurred this thought but i was like strava is a thing Niléane mentioned it on a recent

episode of uh one of our cozy zones actually how it uh caused military strife oh yeah yeah so i but uh so maybe that jostled something in me so anyway i installed strava uh which i haven't used in many many years and uh i've been used to track my runs for the last few weeks and i gotta say it's pretty cool it's pretty nice um it is the big thing about it is the social aspect which i

have not gotten into um maybe i should maybe i can but so far i've just been i set my account to absolute private like nobody sees my runs nobody can find me i'm a i'm a secret strava user but even still it's kind of cool uh number one the animations in the app are super slick this is not necessarily the most important thing but like it's super cool like when you uh finish a workout on the on the phone it does like this full screen animation of like i've never seen before it's

really slick uh even on the watch if you start on the watch uh it has a really nice countdown that's even nicer, I think, than Apple's. So it just feels good to use. It's a really nice feeling app. And when you finish a workout as well, mine are all outdoor runs, so I'm moving around the world, you get this nice little map, and it shows you here's what you did, and you can do a flyby as well afterwards. There's like a little animated video you can watch of like watching you run around, and it fills up the space,

and then it zooms out and shows you the whole map, and it's, I don't know, It's kind of cool. So I lead with these experience things because the features are very similar. You start a timer. It tells you how fast you're going. It tells you when you stopped because you say that you tell it that and it tells you how fast you went. That's really what it does. There's probably more, but I really like that. It gives you kind of a feed of what you worked on.

It has more controls than apples as well. One of the things that has killed me is this freaking workout buddy. I don't know if you have any workout buddy experience. Oh, I do. And I want to murder workout buddy. Yes. I hate workout buddy. Yes. I liked workout buddy. And then I just, it's too much. It is too much. It tells you too much. It is, it's like, it's basically like, instead of saying like, milestone, one mile, time,

12.43 or whatever, it'll be like, good for you. You've done an incredible first mile at 12 minutes and 43 seconds. That's better than your previous one. Let's keep it going with comfort zone. And it's like, it's too much. It's too much. It's like trying to be a personal trainer and a DJ and your buddy. And it's like, I don't want any of this. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's the thing. Don't want to get on too much of a tangent, but that is the thing that drives me crazy about it is it only tells you good news. It's a workout buddy, not a workout trainer.

And I would love to know because it'll be like when you start a workout, it'll be like great job getting out there for your fourth run of the week. That's two more than you had at this point last week. These are like exact quotes, by the way. This is like the tone that it has. But if you do less, like you're doing like worse, you're going slower, you're doing fewer workouts. It just tells you this is your first workout in 75 days. Yeah, let's do it. Like it doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't give you it only gives you good feedback, which is. Yeah.

You know what it really needs is it needs the carrot weather personality. So that, like, hey, you haven't worked out in six months, you slob. Like, get out there. You sick human, you sick meat bag. What are you doing? It needs the carrot weather. Yeah. All this is to say, there's no workout buddy here, but there are more settings. So one of the things I would like with, like, the workout buddy in the future is the ability to, like, be more just succinct with your messages.

I do like to hear the milestones. I just did like, I just mentioned I did a hundred miles. I know that because I'm tracking, but it is cool when workup buddies like you just did your 4,000th minute of running this year. Like that's a cool milestone to hear about. So I would like those. I would just like them to be more compact. I would also like to be able to control a little bit more what it tells me, like when the audio feedback is there and Strava has quite a few controls over like, I want to know this milestone and I want you to say this. like it's it's much more configurable in that way one of the other things that's really cool though

as an outdoor runner is i live in the suburbs and there's a lot of windy roads and stuff and you know i have a couple routes that i tend to take but sometimes i'd like to go a different route or just figure something out that's interesting or maybe i want to do a different distance than normal and it's really hard i actually this is actually a thing i would really love to exist as maybe it does but like some way for me to just like draw on a map and like see how long this would have been if i ran it um because i don't really know and then suddenly i'm like miles from home and i'm like

oh no i'm so tired but i still have to get back you're calling your wife can you come pick me up please and so one of the cool things about strava is because so many people use it um there are in your area, assuming there's literally anyone else in your area who's using Strava, they can create routes based on different distances. So you can just find a route that someone else has made. And they also have this ability

to generate routes for you. So I could just say, I'm going to start my run here. I'd like to end my run here. And I'd like to run for three miles. And it will figure out, based on the streets around me, some routes that would work. And that's super cool. That is super, super cool. Like, you can figure that out with, like, trial and error just in real life, and that's fine, but it has gotten me doing some different paths than I've done in the past, which is fun. It's novel. A little novelty is okay. So I think it's nice. I'm using it for, oh, and it also syncs to Apple Health,

which was the critical thing. Oh, nice, nice. Okay. Because I am still using my yearly run goals app to track my progress towards my goal of 365 miles this year. And so it syncs automatically. The two downsides of it. The three downsides of it. The three downsides. Four? Only three so far. A couple downsides. Number one, you can start a workout on your Apple Watch.

I've switched the action button on my Apple Watch Ultra to OpenStrava. And it's basically the exact same UI, although more reliable because it actually starts the first tap every time. Not like happens with watchOS 26 in the workouts app. So you start the workout and it gives you all the feedback here. The problem is it does not sync or at least it's not working on mine. It does not start the workout on the phone app as well. So I don't get the live activity on the phone. And the audio feedback when you're doing the workout from the watch, the audio comes from the watch, not from like your AirPods or anything.

So that's a little weird. So are they assuming you are pairing AirPods with your watch and you're running without a phone? Maybe. They could be. But yeah, so it goes both ways. That's a big assumption because now it's like, okay, you have a cellular watch with a cellular connection with AirPods that are paired to, like, specifically AirPods that compare to your watch. That's a big jump. Yeah. And, I mean, more annoyingly is when you start it from the phone, it doesn't start it on the watch. Oh.

So you can't, like, look at your stats. Maybe this is some configuration thing I've done wrong, but they seem to see each other and everything seems to be working. But it's like I can't – what I would love is start the workout on either device and I get the live activity on the app on the phone and all the metrics on my watch so I could see my time and everything as I'm going. So that's definitely a downside. That's definitely something that doesn't work as well. I think actually workouts does this great. they added this in uh ios 26 we're now on the phone you get a live activity you can see everything

from the phone screen if you want you can stop the work out there pause it like all the stuff works and you can do it from either device and it syncs perfectly not with strava unfortunately unless i'm an idiot and it's broken or i broke it um another small downside it does sync with Apple Health. Although, if I do the workout from the watch, I can stop it from the watch, and it says synced to Strava, which is great. But I need to launch the Strava app on the phone for it actually to send the data to Apple Health. Which isn't the end of the world,

because I do look at that cool map anyway, but it is an extra step. So I was wondering why it wasn't showing up in health right away, and that was the reason. And is there a third issue maybe there's not i really got held up on the uh it doesn't show up on both devices at the same time that is that is very frustrating and i i know like the apple watch isn't the easiest device to develop for uh so and like bunch developers have had issues and stuff like getting stuff to

sync so but man that's that's frustrating yeah um but that's pretty much it i think I'm going to keep using it and seeing what happens. There is a subscription that I'm free trialing for the month. I really need to figure out exactly what this does. It's like $80 a year, which is a decent amount. So I'm probably not going to keep up with it, but it looks like the route suggestions and that sort of thing is a paid thing. Maybe just get them during the trial. Yeah, yeah. So maybe I'll just get the good ones during the trial

and then stop and then use them going forward. Yeah, that is interesting. That would be a really good app for runners of like, hey, build your route and like maybe like have some kind of like watch app that not only is like tracking your health metrics, but also gives you like a GPS of like, okay, at this corner, turn right. At this corner, turn left. Oh, keep going straight here or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that'd be nice. That might be interesting. and like have it all run on the watch so you can go without your phone and then yeah i don't know

if that's possible or not but if it is and you make that app you owe me 10 for every everything i want 10 of the business um did you see the new fitbit that was announced uh at the time recording yesterday i think it was yesterday uh i did see that they announced something so it is basically the fitness tracker we've all been asking for from apple where it is just a band

there is no screen on it whatsoever and it just links to your phone i kind of want this but also i'm like i want the apple version because i don't want and like it's supposed to work with health the health app and stuff but i have a feeling it's going to be like strava where it you have to like open it and there's a bunch of limitations because apple yeah hmm yeah i don't know i'm interested i'm interested sort of i thought about going i thought about going down this route a few

months ago right i tried using wearing a regular watch instead of an apple watch um i don't know what i would do because i want to have a watch i want to be able to tell the time am i going to be a two wrists see that's what i would do is i would if if i could get the fitness band that i want from apple fitness band goes on my right wrist traditional watch goes on my left wrist because like I really don't want to wear an Apple watch but I really want the health I really want the health metrics and I really want the time and date on my wrist like those three things and date and time I can get with a traditional watch

and then the health stuff I can get with a band but like there's not I don't know I almost bought this thing but then I was just like it's going to be a Google product so there's going to be limitations with how it works with iOS and like maybe I'll just wait for the reviews because I'm not a fitness influencer like I'm not going to be making videos about it it would just be for my personal thing so I could probably just wait until the reviews are out because it's not coming out till the end of the month okay yeah I gotta I gotta check it out I'm interested in it it's only a hundred bucks like

it's not crazy yeah i mean that's in the impulse by territory for a lot of folks yeah same it'll be interesting hmm it's like a whoop is that kind of the idea i'll be honest with you i don't really know what a whoop is because i'm like all right let me let me be honest a whoop there it ain't because it sounds like it's cult. It is a little culty. I don't... I looked into this.

This was one of the things I looked into when I was considering going watch-free or smartwatch-free. It is... It's culty and it's also very expensive. Yeah. Like Apple Watch expensive or... Well, it depends. if you want i'm looking at it right now basically they're like best it is mandatory subscription i think the product is relatively cheap and then it's about three hundred dollars a year

for oh yeah that's too much yeah yeah that's too much yeah no for for that i would i i'm considering i'm like okay what if i just set up the apple watch so that i don't get any notifications i you know have a very simple home screen and stuff like that, or watch face. But I'm just like, it feels like overkill. I don't know. I'm not sure what to do. But I'm not currently happy with the Apple Watch as it is. I feel like it's more of a distraction and a hindrance than it is a tool to help me.

Turn off the notifications and see what happens. So I've done this experiment before, and this was years ago, so maybe it's been fixed. But I turned off notifications, and all of a sudden, I wasn't getting, like, when I would get a text message, my phone wouldn't ring or buzz, like vibrate. Like, it wouldn't do anything. Oh, you wouldn't want? Interesting. Okay. Like, I would still want that. Like, I would want the notifications to, like, if my wrist isn't going to buzz when I get a text message, my phone needs to buzz.

Okay. And I turned, I've done this before, and I've turned off notifications, and, like, I would get messages, and nothing would happen. gotcha okay that makes some sense yeah like if i get a phone call my my phone needs to still vibrate it my all the sounds are off of my phone but like my phone like if i get a phone call my phone needs to vibrate uh and it wasn't doing that so yeah okay i have no idea how that works these days yeah i i don't need i i could play around with it it's just something like it just

seems like a lot of work to turn all that stuff off and if it doesn't work i'm like okay now i'm have to undo it all and yeah i'm just being lazy okay uh did you see uh mr mobile michael fisher posted a video with a few of his small things and he has a band that's supposed to be for habit tracking and it gives you an elect little electric shock or a relatively significant electric shock if you uh do something you're not supposed to do i have seen those before and i've thought about doing that for like eating healthy but i don't know i don't know how that's like gets set up and

stuff like that but i think you have to literally like hit a button on it and then a few seconds later it shocks you so you have to like tell it to do it to you yeah i don't think i would i don't think i would purposefully do that like if i go in and grab ice cream i'm not gonna be like okay shock me i'm just gonna be like okay i'm getting away with it and don't shock me yeah no i would yeah no okay don't don't electrocute yourself don't don't do it don't let tech companies

electrocute you don't don't don't don't don't do it yeah anyways we should get to our challenge it was your challenge this week yeah it was it was a weird one because it made me get out of my comfort zone and uh oh we didn't i didn't move it over to the new document but my challenge was i want to get word for word use a web browser that supports mouse gestures and find a really nice gesture that revolutionizes the browser so yeah oh no this has all the makings of a chris

did not enjoy this challenge on it well the issue was the week that we chose this i have taken a majority of this week off i have not done a lot of computery work i've i've edited comfort zone i found out about this challenge as i was editing the show um and my issue with it was okay so now i gotta install another browser which i did uh and set up these gestures which i did but i wasn't at

my computer enough to remember the gestures, so I didn't really use them. I also did the thing our co-host suggested, Niléane, and I set up a better touch tool so that I would have, like, if I swiped up on the left side of the trackpad, it would create a new tab, or if I swiped up on the right side of the trackpad, it would do Command L, or not Command L, the thing to go to the bar.

Why can't I say, yeah, Command L. Yeah, Command L. Yeah, Command L. I don't know why I was, oh, yeah. But, so I did that, and I mostly just forgot about them. I'm sorry. I did set it up, and I did use them a couple of times, but my thought was, this seems worse than keyboard shortcuts. Hmm. Okay. Okay. But I'm curious what you did. So this is not a thing that I use. I've never used mouse gestures. They've never clicked with me. I've never understood them. And so I wanted to have an excuse to try them out.

So I have been using Vivaldi more this week. Obviously, already installed. I had all the browsers installed. This was not a problem. When do you not have all the browsers installed? And so I decided not to rock the boat. I basically used some of their built-in ones, which the common ones I used were basically two of them. a new tab, which is you hold down the right click button and then go down, straight down. That opens a new tab.

You can also do a new tab in the background by holding down the right click and then going down and back up. And you can close a tab by holding right click and going down and right. And I succeeded in the challenge by using these some. I failed in the challenge by revolutionizing the browser because I don't understand how this is better than anything. Exactly. See, that's where I was. And I think a big issue for me is I was using the Magic Trackpad.

So I didn't have the ability to hold a button and move a mouse, like physically move a mouse. So that was the big thing is I didn't even think like, oh, yeah, I should switch to the mouse for a week. I was like, how am I going to make this work with the Magic Trackpad? And it just, it just, nothing felt, it never felt faster than just hitting command T. Yeah. And like, like you mentioned command L, like that's two fingers. That's a two hand thing for me.

I don't know if you do it with one hand, but like. I can do it with one hand. I can do it with one hand. Yeah. Okay. Well, I do it with two hands. So I could see potentially like if my hand is already on the mouse and I want to do that instead of moving my hand over to the keyboard to do that, I could do a gesture, but I don't think I would. I don't know. It seems like it's solving a problem that I've just personally never had. Yeah, yeah. Like, it was an interesting thing to try out, but I don't know. Maybe more of an accessibility thing? Maybe. Or maybe...

Although the precision you need, I guess, yeah. I don't know. You need to be pretty precise to be able to do these. So, like, depending on, like, what your specific needs are, but, like, and I guess if you don't have it in your head that command L focuses the address bar, command T opens a new tab, command W closes it. Like, these are pretty basic ones, I guess. But, like, if you don't have all of these or, like, back and forwards, you don't know our command, the braces right and left. If you don't have those in your head, then maybe it's easier for you to do gesture left to go back and right to go forward.

But yeah, it just didn't click with me at all. Maybe for these newer generations coming up where their primary devices that they learned computers on are touch-based, maybe that might be who this is for. You and I grew up in keyboard-first world. I grew up in mouse first world, actually. Well, okay, yes, but we learned keyboard shortcuts. We learned copy, paste, cut. Maybe, I don't know.

Every once in a while, Chris, you walk into one of my things that I'm thinking about and don't know how to write into a blog post and get to talk about briefly here. And this is this idea that we always talk about, kids these days they don't know how file systems work they don't know they don't know how non-touch screens work they're not going to know these keyboard shortcuts and i'm always wondering is it because they're a new generation that is doing things totally differently or is it just because they're children and they don't know everything yeah and i think and and a part of it

is like i grew up a nerd i wanted i wanted to know everything a computer could do i wanted to do everything possible computer so i learned everything yeah do they just not care do they even need to care like let's be honest do they need to know command x cuts yes or do i mean that's probably a bad example that that's do they need to know command l opens up the address bar in a browser do they even need to know that

i i i don't know uh i don't i don't i that's that's a whole philosophical thing for another time i guess yeah but yeah i i i struggled to remember to do these i sat down this morning and i was like oh what was the challenge again and i was like oh yeah this uh oh okay i kind of did it but it's it's definitely something that will be disabled as soon as we're done recording because I could see myself accidentally swiping up on the left side of the trackpad and opening a new tab and be like, wait, what just happened?

Yes. Yes. This has happened to me with keyboard text expansion things. I set up a weird text expansion thing that I forgot about and wasn't in the normal text expansion app that I used. So every once in a while, I'd type something out and something weird would happen. I'd be like, what just happened? I lived like this for weeks until I figured it out. My favorite was before I learned Markdown, I set up a text thing that said two ampersand signs next to each other would autofill my phone number.

And then I started getting into Markdown, and I'm like, wait, why does every time I go to an H2, it's inserting my phone number? Yeah, it was something like that for me, too. I was like, why? Why is it doing this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have something else set up for it now. Yeah. It was interesting, but I don't think I will stick with this. Yeah. I mean, listen, that's the point of comfort zone. Yeah. Try something else. We tried it. We tried it. The point isn't to always find something new to constantly use, but it's to try something.

And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. And let us know. Give us some feedback. Are you using mouse gestures? Are we crazy? Is there something we should be doing? Yeah. Did we miss the point? It's possible. Yeah, we could have missed the point. And maybe that's the thing. But yeah. So it's my challenge for next week. And you don't really actually have to really do anything during the week for my challenge. The ideal challenge. It's kind of, it's not really an ideal challenge. It's a concept. It's to help Chris switch to Dia.

I've finally done it Matt I'm finally like okay I get it I want my tabs on the side I don't think Safari is going to give it to me and I think Dia is a very interesting browser you guys were talking about it last week on the show and I was like hmm I haven't checked it out in a minute let's check it out and you can disable a lot of the crap on here and it's basically ARK now like it's kind of basically arc right yeah it's arc with some more stuff and some slightly different

things but it's it is it feels very much as if they'd kept working on arc and just made it better yep it that's that's what it feels like which i okay i don't know why whatever anyways um but i have a few things that i would like you to think about and Niléane Niléane if you're listening or just looking at the doc, whatever. But here's some stuff that I need from you guys to help me switch to Dia. And basically, I'm putting all my homework off on you is what I'm doing this week. I need a password manager that works with Dia and probably Safari, and the ability to move from the passwords apps

to whatever this is. I need to know what do I do about the iPhone and iPad. I need to know what extensions do I need. what settings I need to change. How long is Dia sunset and how long until Dia is sunset and I am back on Safari. Okay. The icon is literally the sun setting. So I noticed that it doesn't use a full squircle, but it is better than the Safari icon. Okay. But most importantly, Matt, this one is specifically for you because I know Dia is a Chromium browser. Will this kill my battery life?

It will not kill your battery life. It will be fine. I am running three Chromium browsers simultaneously right now. My battery life is excellent. Everybody needs to just stop living like it's 2012. I mostly just wanted to trigger him out there. I know. I've read his report. Chrome is not the battery killer it used to be. If anyone can give me literally any data showing that it does, I will be open to it, but nobody has data. They only have vibes from 10 years ago.

And as we've pointed out, we hate vibes. It's not a real thing. Some of us love vibes. This is a vibe for a podcast. Not if you're recycling vibes from 10 years ago to prove battery tests. Yes. You actually have to do battery tests, people. But anyways. Okay. Well, that's my challenge for the week. That's a fun challenge. Yeah. Now, I do have an end of the show question for you, but I have to go get it. Can you hold on for like two minutes? And we'll cut this from the show. Sure, sure, sure. Okay. All right.

Put in some hold music here, Editor Chris. The Blowser Podcast. The Blowser Podcast. The Blowser Podcast. Hosted by Matt Birchler, Amelia. Okay. He's still not back. So my end of the show question for you is how adorable is this puppy? oh boy on a scale of one to ten we're looking at an 11. Oh Riley you got an 11.

If you're not watching the video version you really should be. We'll put chapters in there here so you can skip right to the video. But this is Riley. This is Riley Rascal Van Lawley and her middle name was actually inspired by Jason Snell calling you a rascal. yeah so uh yeah this is this is her she this is my puppy oh how old is she she is nine weeks old nine weeks old oh boy she's a big girl she's already 17 pounds yeah she's gotten bigger since

last picture i saw she since we've picked her up she's probably 20 to 30 percent bigger than when we picked her up so yeah she's she's a big girl do you know how big she's gonna get um her probably around 70 to 80 pounds. Yeah. So we're trying to not carry her around because it's already hurting both of our backs. Okay. Yeah. But anyways, this is Riley linked to her Instagram account in the show notes. Go follow her.

Danielle manages most of it. I've done very little with it because I don't really want to manage more stuff. Oh, she's interested. What is she again? What breed? She's a golden retriever. It's a golden retriever. Okay. It's the European line, so she is basically white. And has these brown racing stripes. Okay. Oh, boy. Well, this is going to be an enormous part of your life now, and your camera roll is going to fill up. You're going to be like, I need the absolute best camera. You're going to become that Leica guy.

I'm going to be a Leica guy. I've already started doing the research. I've already started it. I literally have tabs open right now with Leica's webpage. But yeah. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye.