The Real Episode 100

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, and we are all back together this week for the proper episode 100. Finally. Yeah, we didn't hear that, Matt, at all. What was it? Did you hear nothing? Yeah, your soundboard always comes in really quiet and I have to boost it in the edit. Oh, okay.

I can fix that. It's intentionally quiet, but the air horn should be intense. Okay, yeah. That's fine. Anyways, technically, this isn't episode 100. That would have been last week, but we weren't all together, and I refuse to do episode 100 without us all being together. So congratulations to all of us for getting to episode 100. Yay. We've had a weird series of just duos because one of us was missing. I had to go and get a puppy. Yeah. You had to move, you know? I know. Anyways, but that's okay. We're all together.

We've done 100 episodes of Comfort Zone, and we've done like 35, 36 episodes of Cozy Zone, something like that. So, yeah. Yeah. Congratulations, us. We have a couple of tiny topics. First off, in between recording the last episode and this episode, Niléane, it was your birthday. Happy birthday. Oh, thank you. And we've officially lost the youth. We don't have the youth. I know how old you told.

I know how old you told. You turned. Told. That was weird. That's weird. Yes. Yes, yes. Anyways. Yes, I am 13 now. Yes. Yep. No more youths. We're all in the, oh, my back hurts stage. Listen, eventually you'll be 40 and you'll be like, oh my God, I was so young when I was 30. You know, the weird thing is we, my first night here in the new place, in the new house was on my birthday.

So it's like for your birthday, you get a house. Even though you're paying for it. You guys haven't figured out. Yeah. Normally I just get cake. Yeah, Macron paid for it, yes. Oh, so do you like him now? Macron, no. Oh, okay. Well, if you pay for the house, I mean, that would get any more points. No. There's also another tiny topic in our thing here, and I am shocked about it. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

So I listened, yes. I listened to the episode last week when I was away, you recorded without me fine enough episode it was a fantastic episode it was a great episode and the challenge was that was Matt's challenge to experiment with browser like mouse gestures in browsers right and Matt you set it up in Vivaldi Chris you tried it

with a better touch tool like I advised and you both were turned off by it, and you were saying some weird, insane things by the end of the episode. I had to step in today, because one of you said, oh, maybe it's for accessibility or something that makes no sense. I think that's me. I was just trying to make sense of what this could be good for. Why would that be an accessibility? I realized that after I said it, and I was like, that doesn't really make any sense. But I don't know.

I was literally just grasping at straws to try and understand why anyone would use these. And at some point, Matt, you said that they are weird, like hard to trigger the gestures and hard to remember. Like, this is both untrue because if you have a system, like I have a system in Vivaldi. Okay. Okay. Okay. I do the mouse down to open a new tab. And that's awesome. This is really useful. You're on a web page.

You don't have to reach for the tiny plus button. You don't have to reach for your keyboard to do command T. You just right-click and bring the mouse down. And it opens a new tab. And you can go diagonally. You don't have to be exactly vertical. And it works. It triggers fine. And I have a system in the square. So if I do how to like bottom then right, the bottom then right gesture, that closes the current tab. Top then right that reopens the last closed tab. So that's command shift T, the equivalent.

And I have some very specific ones that I set up for the other two corners of the square. One mutes all the tabs. Sometimes I leave many YouTube videos open and I watch multiple ones at the same time. I need to mute them all at once. I do this. It's really nice. Yeah. And the bottom right one is to trigger picture in picture. So, yeah. It just feels like, okay, down makes sense. Down to the right.

But then like once you get to like five, you're like painting the Mona Lisa and it's like opening a new tab. You don't need to make a million gestures. How do you type? You move your hand to the keyboard. Just move it first and do Command T. I don't get it. That's not true. That's not true. I use heavily the speed dial feature of Vivaldi. So the new tab page. I have many folders and thumbnails. and like my speed dial in my new type page in Vivaldi is filled.

So I do swipe down with the mouse and then click on something. I never have to reach my keyboard to reach one of my most used websites. All I'm hearing is that Vivaldi has yet another setting that I didn't know about. And I'm just like, how much crap is built into this app? Which feature? That's the point of Vivaldi. It's everything. No, wait, wait. Speed dials? like what? Speed. That is just the name of the new tab page. You have the same thing in Safari. Chris, you are. Oh, okay. Do this thing where it makes it hard for me

to ally with you. It's happening again. That makes sense. I was literally picturing some kind of wheel popping up like it just had a bunch of websites. Yeah, I kind of liked a lot. Okay, alright. Vivaldi has many things, like many built-in things, but it's a classic web browser. Like, very classic. All the classic features are there. So, don't expect weird things. Okay? And the mouse gestures, they make sense. Niléane has an answer for everything.

Alright. Undefeated. We should probably just move on. We have some questions. There's actually one more tiny topic. Oh, I'm sorry. And I have brought just because I often comment on what I've brought to drink. I brought some traditional Southern iced tea, which is liquid death, strawberry pop tart. What? What is this? Oh, let me tell you. It's not bad. I have not understood anything you just said. Liquid what? Liquid death.

Liquid death, pop tart. It started as like a bubble water company. They're the edgy bubble water company because, oh, liquid death. Sparkling water. Their entire branding is based on giving people who are at parties and want to not drink alcohol something they can drink that doesn't look like a flowery beverage. So it's actually a noble branding thing. I do appreciate that. I do. But yeah. It's Pop-Tart flavored iced tea and it's pretty good. That is. I bought it because it looked insane. Is Pop-Tart like the weird

snack did you have over there? Oh, yeah. The pastry looking thing with like frosting and stuff. You stick in a toaster. Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. Every time I see a photo of this, I get diabetes. I have to go get a treatment and come back. That's what we do. Yeah. As somebody with literal diabetes, yes. There you go. Yeah. Okay. All right. Because you read these questions. You have to read the questions. We got some questions sent in to us.

Yes. In a feedback form. We have a feedback form. Feel free to send us stuff. By the way, before we start doing the questions, I'm in a new place. I just set up my new desk. I got this at Ikea behind me. For video viewers, this is like a window shade or something. This is the most satisfying thing because it's got magnets. So you just snap it into place like this? It feels like the kind of window shade that Apple would make because there's magnets.

For audio listeners, it's a curtain. But I like when you keep it down because it really diffuses that light. What's the difference with a curtain? It's a curtain. It's basically a curtain. I was just explaining for audio listeners. But when you keep it down, it diffuses that light and makes it look really good. That's true, yeah. There you go. I'm done. Nice. Ikea is awesome. Okay. So we have some questions. Let's just go through them. This first one's a big one.

And this one could honestly be a whole episode if we really wanted it to be. This comes from listener... I still don't know how to pronounce their name. Ifair? Is that what I'm going to say? Ifair. They provide questions all the time. their question is, how did all of this get started? How did you meet? How did you find the concept, title, and content of Comfort Zone? And what was your first meeting? So in the beginning, there was a big bang. Oh, wait, do we not need to go that far back? I was born in 1996

on the French island of Martinique. Okay, a little further. Okay, we'll skip ahead a little bit. How did all this start? So Matt and I have joked online for years about our rivalry, and we have joked about starting a podcast. We've joked about our rivalry. We've joked about creating beef and having a YouTube boxing match, but it would be – I think at one point we said it would be Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Oh, probably. Probably something.

Yeah, like I don't actually want to box Matt. Like I don't think I'd be pretty good at that, but, you know, I'd be down for some rock'em sock'em robots. That would be fun. I started following Matt when he was blogging. I think he started following me when I was doing YouTube stuff. I found Niléane when she started writing at MacStories. We've kind of answered this question before, but I kind of came up with the idea of comfort zone and, like, the challenge aspect and, like, bringing something new because I felt stuck in a rut

talking about the same things on my YouTube channel because algorithm. And I wanted a place to where I could talk about different things. And that's kind of how I came to approach it. I don't know if you guys want to add anything more to that. Yeah, I feel like I've answered this before. But yeah, I don't know. You guys found me on the internet and sent me a DM. And I said, yes, it was fun. Yeah.

Our first meeting was, I think we just had like a FaceTime call, just kind of talking about the concept of the show and just like kind of spitballing ideas. And then, Niléane, you suggested we approach Federico and John about bringing it to MacStories, which was a great idea. And, yeah, we just, I think even Matt, you came up with the title of Comfort Zone. I think you came up with it, right? I think so. But yeah, it was just, it was something that we just kind of massaged and worked on.

And we just, I think all of us wanted like a creative outlet where we could just kind of like talk about fun things and things we were doing. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We pretty much had it nailed from the start. Like it didn't take very long to figure out the structure. Bring a thing, challenge a thing. Boom. Yeah. We have one unreleased episode that we did as a test episode. And it's unreleased because it's not great.

We were really just figuring out the structure and everything. And it worked out pretty well. So yeah, that's kind of how we met. That's kind of how the show came about. I think we just kind of figured it all out from the get-go. Like I said, we did a test episode, but the test episode wasn't good. It was just us figuring out how the show goes and fits. And I think the big thing that over time that we've kind of realized is originally all three of us were bringing something to the show each week,

and we had a challenge, and that was too much, and we dropped it to two people in a challenge, and I think that's a much better fit. It is. Yeah. All three of us have a few other things going on, so it was tough to have so much to do every week. It was. It absolutely was. You know, if you all want to, you know, sign up for Cozy Zone, we can make this a full-time thing and bring that back and do longer episodes. Matt could quit his job. I'm sure that would supplement his income.

I mean, it would make my life a lot easier, I'll tell you that. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the next one. Okay. Yes. So I decided we should go into controversy next. Okay. This comes from Tim Chatton. What is the correct movie order to introduce a kid to the first six Star Wars movies? Okay, here we go. I have an opinion, but it's boring. So, I'm curious. Chris, I'm sure you have a strong... You two probably have stronger opinions than me. Release order.

Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith. Okay, my opinion on this is there are two correct orders. This is already a wrong opinion. What Chris just said, just the release order, and the episode number order. No. From one to six. One to nine, I'm sorry. No, then you know that Darth Vader is Luke's father. No. Who cares? Absolutely not.

The four-year-olds listening to this episode are ruined now. Also, it's not that... I saw a great YouTube video on this recently. Like, the original trilogy did not handle, like, twists in the same way that modern movies do. Like, yes, it's a surprise when you discover that Vader is actually Luke's father and Anakin, blah, blah, blah.

Leia is Luke's brother. We have to leave so much of this episode. But at least in terms of Vader, he looks further. You can see it coming. Like in Empire Strikes Back, in New Hope, he wasn't, that wasn't figured out. But in Empire Strikes Back, you can see it coming. You can see something is coming about their relationship, about them two. Like something is going on between the two. So you can see it coming. So I think it's fine. It's not depriving much. Like most of the experience

of the original trilogy is not solely relying on this like this so much but my other issue is going in release order it explains like what the force is a lot better that way whereas like if you start with the episode numbers you're kind of just thrown into and you're like whoa who are these guys wielding laser swords and pushing things around and that's okay i yeah my opinion was one two three four five six. What?

Yeah. You guys are forgetting 7, 8, 9. Well, obviously we're forgetting 7, 8, 9. The question isn't including 7, 8, 9. But I think, especially for young kids, my assumption, my understanding, is that the old movies are boring. And new movies are more exciting for a kid. The kids are wrong. I was obsessed with the old... When I first started seeing Star Wars, there was One, two, three. And I was hooked. And that's what kids are wrong.

My wife let me show her one Star Wars movie because she really hasn't seen them. And I started with A New Hope because obviously that's where you would start. And that was a mistake. I should have shown her Empire. No. No. What? Empire first? Are you insane? Listen, if you need to get them in, you need to show them the best. Empire First? Yes. Are you high? No. I'm drunk on Liquid Death, Pop-Tart, Ice-T. Empire. I have never heard of somebody doing Empire First. That is wild.

My only chance was to show her the best one. Long story short, we haven't watched anything after A New Hope because it was deemed boring. I forced Danielle to watch him. I was like, I will break up with you. I mean, we value content. Not when it comes to Star Wars. It needs to be forced upon them. They need to watch it. Okay. Okay. We should move on. This is another Star Wars talk. Cozy's only have a whole episode where we talk all about this. We tier-laced all the Star Wars. We did. It was non-controversial. Tim has a second question

that's more challenge-related for the show. Have we ever considered doing a Newton challenge? And I, obviously, the answer is no. No. Do any of us even have an opportunity? Have any of us used a Newton? Do you even know if you had to get a Newton tomorrow, how you would do it? I've never even seen one. I've never really seen one either. I got to probably play with one for like 10 minutes in the 90s or early 2000s or whatever that was. But like, I have zero. See, I'm not a nostalgia tech person.

I'm not interested in playing around with like the original Mac or an Apple One or Apple Two. Like, I don't really care. But, yeah, I wouldn't even know how to get my hands on one other than eBay. And who knows if that's going to work or even show up. But Tim is writing in the question, let's have the comfort zone crew get some E-Mate 300S's, I don't know, message pads, and have a chance to get some work done with the Newton in 2026.

Are you suggesting, Tim, that you have some to provide us? Yeah. If you're going to suggest the challenge, you've got to provide them. Yes. I will do the challenge. I don't even know how I would be able to do my work on that. Edit a video on the Newton, Chris. Can't get real work done on the Newton. Yep, yep. This is the real life iOS. Okay. So, unlikely. Although, I would be curious to try one out.

The trouble you get in with these old tech products is that the TLS protocols have advanced to the point where these old devices don't support the modern versions and literally no websites load. Do they have internet? They don't. I think they must have. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think they would have Wi-Fi cards. Would they have Wi-Fi cards? They might have. Oh, no. No, that's before Wi-Fi. Considering that it was contemporary with the Second World War

and the Nazis did not have internet. Oh my God. I don't think the Newton had internet. It probably was able to send email over the cellular network and that cellular network stuff. You can't actually connect an original iPhone to a cellular network anymore because Edge isn't supported anymore. Edge is dead, yeah. It's alive here. Still alive. That's that communist government. It's going away, though. Okay.

You're getting freedom is what you're getting. Okay. Daryl Baxter has a litany of questions. We can probably rapid-fire through them. The first one is just a troll to me. Why is Twin Snakes terrible? Daryl, you know it's not. It's a great game. I don't even know what you're talking about. I have no idea what that is. Yeah, that one's directed at me. Why hasn't Chris gotten into Metal Gear yet? Because I tried playing it, and I had no idea what the hell was happening. Literally, I played one.

I played, I think it was the last one I started playing it, And it was like 40 minutes of like cut scenes before you actually got to do anything. And I'm like, what the hell is happening? I have no idea who any of these people are. I'm like, yes, this isn't the first one, but you should probably establish some stuff for new players. And yeah, no, it was terrible. And even the gameplay didn't feel that great. Oh, boy. Okay, this is the worst opinion yet. Moving on, though, before I get a movie. Excuse me. Let's watch Star Wars episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Oh, because they don't introduce the characters at the start of episode one, and you're just jumping right in. Yeah. Same thing. No, you need to start at four. Well, not even four. Technically, Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith. I have spoken, people. Next question. What is everyone's favorite Tomb Raider game? I've never really played it. Oh, I've played one Tomb Raider game, actually. I've never played a single. I played the original Tomb Raider 2

it's fine on PC back in the day but I actually really liked the remakes the remakes that were out a few years ago or probably a decade ago now those were pretty fun I enjoyed those okay nice not super important kind of important Daryl actually is a writer who wrote one of the official histories of Tomb Raider and talked with a bunch of the devs So that's why he's interested in that. What is one Apple product you'd each like to return? Oh, easy. Vision Pro.

Yes, the Vision Pro. Yeah, Vision Pro. Easily Vision Pro. If they would give me my money back, I would give it back to them. Do you guys realize I actually have two Vision Pros in my house right now because I still have my M5 review unit? Wait, is the question which product would you like to return? Oh, TV return. Sorry. which Apple product would you like to see return that you would like to return I just I had to talk about it again I guess I don't know we already answered this I think I said the AirPort stuff like the

routers yeah if it was like a modern spin on a device AirPort would be cool an iPod with Bluetooth and Apple music support yeah an iPod with Bluetooth and Apple music support but give me that click wheel baby um with a fancy duck inside oh yes give me um yeah ipod gotta be ipod uh who's tried Irn-Bru i don't even know what that is i don't know what this is either i saw this and i assume someone else would know Oh, it's a drink. It's a drink. Scottish carbonated soft drink.

It's like a Fanta. Oh, okay. I didn't even know what this was, so I have not tried it. Have not tried it. Sorry, Daryl. And finally, who's your favorite Spice Girl? I don't know them. I know who they are, but I don't... I couldn't name a Spice Girls song. Look, the only thing I know about Spice Girls is one of them was... Huh? Wannabe? I don't know what that is. Yeah, yeah. I know that's one. You know it. I legit do not.

The only thing I know about the Spice Girls is one of them is married to Christian Horner, the former team principal of Red Bull. Ginger Spice. Okay, thank you. I didn't even know which Spice it was. Danielle had to tell me which Spice Girls she was, but I had forgot. Okay. okay sorry daryl sorry daryl just any of your questions yeah sorry we are not cultured uh it's it's tough for americans um it is it is listener somebody think of the americans

henry wrote uh i recently upgraded from the original base m1 macbook pro to the m5 macbook air this also included adding um slightly higher specced 48 gigabyte m5 pro mac mini to avoiding to dock a laptop that is not us oh that is highly specced yeah yeah um yeah 48 gigs yeah m5 pro mac mini that's that's a good mac mini yeah so henry says i am now in love with the air and its portability and i'm curious on your views of it as well during the most recent discussion matt

Chris talked about the MacBook Neo, but we were mostly comparing it to the Pro. And he was wondering, how do you feel it compares to the Air? And talks about kind of, you probably do all the things you want to do on an Air. And I will say, I got as close to it as I've ever gotten into a beef with Jason Snell, who's a lovely human being, when I suggested that maybe people looking at the MacBook Neo should buy an older MacBook Air. So I'm a little hesitant to suggest it. But yeah, I think the MacBook Air is great.

I think it's really nice. Watch out, Matt. Jason Stelz behind you. He's coming in for the body slam. No, I look, I think the MacBook Air is great. The obvious thing about the MacBook Neo is the price. That's why I ordered one. I think for me, the MacBook Air, like I wouldn't mainline a MacBook Air because it doesn't have a fan. And I do enough heavy-duty stuff that thermal throttling is a real thing. Like, I can spin up the fans on this MacBook Pro, no problem. Like, no problem. I can get these fans spinning up.

So not having some sort of active cooling is enough for me to go, eh, probably not for me. I am, you know, trying to figure out what is next now that I am kind of using. I've kind of settled on like how my computing life works is, you know, when I'm at my desk, I use the Mac. When I'm sitting on the couch, I use an iPad. Or if I'm sitting at my filming desk, I use an iPad or something like that. If I'm traveling, I use an iPad. So I'm considering personally like the next go around, you know, whenever I do update, maybe just getting really highly specced Mac Mini or even a Mac Studio.

Because price difference, when you spec up a Mac Mini and you spec up a Mac Studio, the price difference between the two isn't that much. But they keep killing certain SKUs of the two products because of RAM stuff. So I'm just kind of waiting for the M5 updates for those. But the other thing is that touchscreen MacBook Pro, that might throw a wrench in all my plans as well. So I'm kind of like, I'm in a wait and see mode on what's going to be next. I think I'm just going to kind of wait out this year, and it sounds like maybe the beginning of next year,

before the touchscreen MacBook Pros come out, to kind of see what I want. But I've been playing around with the ChatGPT codex computer use thing, which is what the old workflow people, workflow to shortcuts to Sky, and then Sky got bought by ChatGPT. That's what they're working on now is the computer use thing. And it's pretty cool. And they just put out an update the other day that you can, from your phone, use Codex to control things on your computer using computer use.

And that would really benefit from having an always-on desktop Mac. And I've kind of been really enjoying playing with that. So I don't know. I don't know where things are going. But for me, I think the MacBook Air, I need that fan. I know I need active cooling. I can't get away with not having a fan. The Neo has proved that to me. Okay. Okay. Listener Rowan asks, how many apps will the Comfort Zone hosts have collectively published by the time you reach episode 200? 6-7, baby. 6-7.

Who says we don't have the news? I can answer that. I'm not planning to do any more apps. Yeah, Matt said that before. Remember Matt said he was done making apps? And then like... He never said that. How many micro apps are you at now? He's literally said that on the podcast. Really? He's literally said I am done making apps. And he's made at least three, four, five more apps since he said that. Okay. Okay. Niléane, do you actually think he won't make another one? You're not going to get the itch? No.

It's just because I had this one idea and I executed on it and it's great. And I will keep iterating on it. And I don't have such another idea that I would, I don't know. There's nothing in mind. And also I'm still learning. So I don't feel comfortable just making something else right now. So it would just probably suck. Whatever else I do.

well i can tell you i have no plans to make anything but mostly because i have Matt Birchler's phone number and i can just text him whenever i want something so which i have texted him multiple times over this last week when i wanted some features and quick reads and he's been very fast about adding them i appreciate it matt thank you in the beta right now um i'm at 16 apps total jesus wow nine oh and yes and if you add up the digits like it's one plus six equals 7. So 6-7. We're back to it. 6-7! Yeah. By my count, it's 9 on the App Store. A couple web apps

and a couple little things I released open source just for my micro-app series. So, yeah. I hope it's in the 20s. Look, there's a non-zero chance I make something, but I don't... Look, I've made internal tools for myself, but I will never release those because they are very much just for me, and they are rough, and I have no interest in polishing them.

Okay. We have one. This one's for Chris because Niléane and I are not special enough. Listener Ben asks. You guys are special. In my heart, you're special. I'm really curious about Apple review units. And I guess this is where, Chris, you'll read your NDA and remind yourself how much you're able to say. But how does the process typically work? How long do you keep the device before you have to return it? What happens if you break it? And, yeah. So, as Matt alluded to, there is not an NDA when it comes to review.

Well, there is. There's mostly embargoes, but I'm not under any embargoes right now. So I'm guessing I can talk about this stuff. Shocker, there's no Apple products coming out in the next week as far as I know. Yeah, right before WWDC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so how this kind of all started, I guess I should give some context. So one day I just got an email from Apple and was like, hey, we want to have a call with you. And I actually thought it was like a scam.

I almost didn't reply to it because I was like, well, why would they want to talk to me? And I've actually since found out the whole story, and it's actually kind of cool. Thank you, Federico. But so typically the way it works is you will always have a briefing with Apple, whether it's virtual or in person. You will always have a briefing on a product, whether iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, whatever. You always have some kind of briefing and they'll go over what's new.

They'll give you a chance to ask some questions and stuff like that. Apparently, I have a reputation for asking too many questions. In fact, I've been so interesting. But so you'll go for the briefing, then they'll send you some like if there's an embargo. So if you're getting the device before it's publicly available, there is an embargo. If you're getting it after it's publicly available, then you can just start talking about it right away. And then you, for how long you get to keep it, it kind of depends on who you are, actually.

I found out, like, some people get to keep things longer than others. I usually get to keep stuff for pretty long, like I alluded to. I still have my M5 Vision Pro review unit here. Well, that's because you are using it and you're making content about it. And it's very useful for Apple to have you have this product. Yeah, it's definitely not because I just haven't been lazy to put it back in the box and take the FedEx. But so it kind of depends on who you are. I usually get to keep my stuff for a pretty long time, which I really appreciate because covering Apple products is expensive.

And it costs a lot of money to be able to do it. So being able to keep review units for a while is nice. What happens if you break it or damage it? I've never actually done that. I can say I've never broke a review unit or damaged it. I'm assuming you would have to send a I'm sorry email to Apple PR and just be like, please don't hate me. Please don't. Please, I'm so sorry. But I imagine they're probably pretty cool with it. I imagine it happens. It's never happened to me, thankfully, but I imagine it happens and they understand.

And, you know, if you're probably like Marques or somebody like that and, like, it's an iPhone, they will probably rush to get you a new one out. at the end of the review unit can you buy the review unit instead of having to send it back not that I'm aware of oh and he also asked do you get a discount I don't think so I've literally never asked I doubt it if I am going to send something back and buy it for myself or buy a product for myself usually I will change the specs of what I'm getting because like

most of the time Apple will send you like really high end versions like the ones with like the iPhones with the more storage or something like that. And that's usually not what I'll end up getting unless it's the iPad. Then I always get the one with the most storage. But you don't really get a discount. I probably wouldn't even go that route even if I could buy it and just keep it because I would want a fresh battery, fresh, all the fresh stuff and fresh warranty and things like that. So I just, I don't think I would go down that route. You do have to send everything back. And one thing I will say,

Apple does things differently than basically every other tech company when doing review units. They don't just give it to you. A lot of companies will just give you something. And that, and like, if it's not technically, you'll see like YouTubers and people use the word gifted. If it's gifted, then you don't have to pay sales tax on the thing because it's a gift and it's implied that, hey, we're just giving you this thing. We don't care what you do with it. You don't have to cover it. If we're sending you this thing and we're telling you you have to cover it and you get to keep it, you now have to pay the sales tax on it.

So what Apple does is Apple loans you things. It is a loan. I've never been given anything from Apple to keep. I have to send everything back, which I appreciate because I don't want to pay sales tax. I don't want to deal with all that. So anything I've ever been sent by Apple, I have to send back at some point, which I do appreciate. And ethically, it makes things a lot simpler because I'm not being given a device.

So I'm not being like kind of influenced to be a little bit nicer because, hey, I got this thing for free. It didn't cost me any money. No, if I'm being sent an iPhone, I'm going to have to send it back. So I have to go still buy my own iPhone. Like I don't get to just keep it forever. So I do appreciate the way Apple does that because it does ethically, it makes things a little easier. And tax wise, it makes things a little easier. Very interesting. Nice. Okay. And this last one is more of a statement than a question. Aziz doesn't ask.

He says, shouting out another LogiOptions alternative, BetterMouse. And this is where I turn to Niléane. Are you familiar with BetterMouse? There's a whole bunch of better blank apps. I am familiar because I talked about it on the show. You have? Okay. There's better mouse. There's better touch tool. There's better display. I can't keep them all straight. Yeah. Better mouse is one. The first one I recommended actually when Logi Options Plus got way too much on my nerves and I switched to that.

Now I switched to better touch tool. Is it developed by the same person? Who? No, no, no. No, okay. All right. Just similar branding. There's a realm of possibilities where Tiny Start would have been named better something, like better launch. Better spotlight. I don't know. Better raycast. Better spotlight. That would have been sued. There were options. Yeah. But better launch, I think, would have been something. But yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I'm not seeing it. This was in episode 83. 18 weeks ago, you talked about Better Mouse in Are You Predicting Doom? Oh, I remember that. Did you all see Raycast is feeling threatened by Niléane and is releasing Raycast 2.0? They're feeling the heat of Tiny Start, and they're like, this tiny startup is coming for us. And, uh, yeah. Tiny Startup Fire under there. But, yeah. Yeah. We've mentioned it again.

That means a link to Tiny Start in the description. It's very good. There you go. I'm happy about this, yes. All right. Well, that's the end of the questions that we have today. So I just want to say the episode's not done, but thank you for listening to us for 100 episodes. We had a few people who wrote in questions who said I've been listening since episode one, and that's very, very nice. So thank you. I got mentioned like a few days ago on Mastodon by someone who started listening to Comfort Zone, And they're starting from episode one. Ooh. They just started. And the. Yeah, I guess so.

I don't understand how people do this. But, okay. Those. I was just figuring out how to do, like, audio balancing and stuff. Because I'm not used to having multiple audio tracks and stuff. And videos and audio files and stuff like that. So, those first few episodes. The edits are rough on those. I'm sorry. Yeah. But also, like, if you just started listening, you should not feel the need to do this.

We are a kind of podcast where you can jump in. You don't have, there's no, like, maybe there's some running gags, but... You know, Matt being in cults, you and your headphone collection. We'll catch up on that pretty quickly. You don't have to go all the way down. You figure out I'm susceptible to cults pretty quick. I'm talking about him pretty regularly. hey matt i have an idea for you but you got to give me ten thousand dollars first absolutely no questions asked cool why would it be so expensive if it wasn't great exactly exactly

all right well that kind of that's the end of the questions thank you matt for reading those and thank you to our listeners for sending them in we appreciate it uh we have feedback form if you ever want to send in questions or follow up or something feel free to write in uh Niléane i have a question for you how was your move it went okay um it went okay uh it's still happening like no we're not actually moving now we're like settling in setting things up um dismantling and remantling

furniture um yeah and i just wanted to mention like in the tech side of things how it went uh first off um the fiber was hooked up pretty quickly very quickly actually but it's also just rubbing that in on us yeah oh yeah oh yeah i will uh it's also because i like i looked into it beforehand and made sure like you had to actually go up on the isp's website and tell them hey i'm

moving so i planned ahead so i did that well i am proud of proud of myself uh so fiber is hooked up it's really fast it's just as fast as my old place no difference so that's good um in terms of home kit uh i've been suffering and then through some pains for this migration uh so what do you guys do like you've moved recently right um what do you guys do when you move do you keep the same home

in home kit or do you create a new one and migrate everything yeah um yeah i moved it's been four years now my strategy was to bring the same routers and to and also just as a second thing when i buy a new router it always gets the exact same name and exact same password so that there's no issues um but i just it's my mine's just called home and so it's wherever i live and i'm not super fancy i don't have multiple homes so i can assume that if i'm in one home that is the one home that

I live in right now. So I just keep it up like that. Yeah, I do the same thing. When I moved, I did get new routers when I moved. I talked about them on the show. But I kept the wireless network name the same and the password the same as my old stuff. So that way, everything just auto reconnected and I didn't have any issues. It's weird that works. But Niléane, I imagine you wouldn't be asking this question if it all went well.

So on that side of things, we kept the same router and everything. So all of that went fine. It's on the Apple side that things are weird. So you know how, like, I have a bunch of, we have a bunch of HomeKit automations that take into account location, your current location, your home location. And if you keep the same home in HomeKit, that address, you can't update it. It will actually update itself, apparently,

over time if you've got your home address updated in your contact card and stuff like that in your iCloud account and stuff like that. But you can't do it manually. Yeah, this is exactly what happened to me. I had like a two-week pain period where it was freaking out that I wasn't home because I was at this new place and not my old place. And yeah. Yeah, so none of that is working right now.

It just thinks we're away from home all the time. So that's, yeah, that was painful. But yeah, one last thing is, you remember in my old place, I ran a, I don't know how long, 10 meter, 15 meter Ethernet cable to the router from my desk to have a good connection. Because I had several thick walls in the way. Turns out in this place, this room where my desk is, is right next to the room where the fiber endpoint is and where the router is.

So there's basically just one thin wall between me and the router. And Wi-Fi is really good. This is the first time in my life that I've had such high speeds on Wi-Fi. In the know, my M5 MacBook Pro is like Wi-Fi 6E, I believe, because it's only the M5 Pro models that have Wi-Fi 7. So that would have been even better. Yeah. Yeah, I did not know that. But yeah, so my router is Wi-Fi 7, but the MacBook Pro itself is Wi-Fi 6E. Anyway, that is all. Well, I will.

So if you can see my new background here, the window is blinding us right now because the camera goal is not great. And also I have nothing to light myself from. And this blank wall, I'm planning on adding shelves like you did, guys. Yes. Yeah. I will be having fun putting together my Lego sets that I had to take apart. Like the Space Shuttle, the Saturn V, and they will probably go up there.

Also because I'm not allowed to put them in the living room where there's already too much stuff. I will put them there. Put them here instead. So really quick tangent. We have Legos in our living room, and Danielle and I have both put some of our sets out there. But every once in a while, I notice one of my sets disappears, and one of Danielle's sets reappears in that spot. And it's weird because, you know, she's clearly not doing it. She says she's not doing it. So I guess we have gremlins or something in the house. That's making my sets disappear and her sets show up.

It's the puppy. Oh, that rascally Riley. Yeah. So there you go. I will keep you updated how the move goes. But the new place is awesome. I'm happy. Well, congratulations. I know how much fun moving is. Yeah. Now we're in the fun part where we're making things cozy. Yeah. Ooh. Cozy zone. Oh, I forgot to mention last thing. Remember a few months ago, I got a new standing desk.

I have replaced the top part of that desk with a new desk top that I got from FlexiSpot. So I kept the old frame that I bought from a French store. I don't even know which one it is, but it works just fine. I just replaced the top. And this one is 20 centimeters deeper because I have much more room here, like more room to play with so I can have a deeper desk. And it's amazing the difference that it makes.

The like 20 centimeters, additional centimeters is awesome. I can't reach. Like, my arm is too... I can't reach the screen. Which is something that I've not been able to do before with my desk. I was able to reach my screen very easily. I technically can't reach my screen either. But, you know. Yeah, because it's behind you. Because it's at a different desk. Nice. Nice. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it. Yeah. All right. I'm excited about the challenge. Okay. All right. So, the challenge was mine this week. I'm finally doing it.

I'm finally moving away from Safari and watch Safari get side tabs at WWDC this year. But I'm finally moving away from Safari. I played with a bunch of browsers. Yes, I did play with Vivaldi, but I aged like 25 years just going through the settings page. Oh my god. I just couldn't handle all of that. It was just so long. It was longer than the whole Lord of the Rings. If you want, I can send you my config file. and you have just my config and my config is perfect you know but i ended up settling on dia

and i'm really liking dia so the challenge this week was to help me switch to dia and i had a few things i needed from you all um that i'd like to go through uh the first was i need a password manager that works with dia and safari this week so this whole week i have had dia set as my default browser i've been using dia on the macbook pro and the macbook neo that is my default browser i click a link and that's what that's what opens um i've just been using passwords and oh boy is the passwords integration really bad like stuff doesn't even autofill it's so well i mean i was using safari

it was really good in safari i don't know what are you using the chrome extension yeah okay okay Yeah, so I have the Chrome extension installed, and then if you go into the Chrome settings for Dia, all the autofill and password stuff is set to Apple's passwords. But it still sucks because it still doesn't autofill most of the time. And then sometimes it asks for a code. Sometimes it asks for my system password. I don't know why. It doesn't make any sense. We've been telling you.

But it was fine in Safari. It was fine in Safari. Apple password works if you are 100% in on Apple and Safari. Exactly. If you take two steps out of line, you're screwed. It doesn't, like, why can't they make a decent Chrome extension? Like, I don't get it. Like, I know they don't want people using Chrome, but guess what, Apple? People use Chrome. If you want people to use your password manager, which I'm guessing you do, make a good Chrome extension. Anyways.

That's crazy. So let's start here. What password manager should I be using? And does it have the ability for me to simply export my passwords for passwords and import it into there so I don't have to retype everything? Should we say it together, Matt? We should. Three, two, one. One password. It's so expensive, though. It is. And you know I ranted about this, Matt. I know. The reason I ranted about this is because I don't want to move to anything else. I really don't want to.

But does it work just as good as passwords and Safari works? Like all the autofill stuff. Better. Credit card. Here's what I'll say. Everyone, literally every single person I see online who complains about one password sucking is 100% of the time talking about the Safari extension. The Safari extension is the worst part of 1Password. Okay. And that's the only way I think I've ever used 1Password was in Safari. The Mac app is totally fine.

The Chrome extension is rock solid. The system-like level, there's a keyboard shortcut that can bring up 1Password literally anywhere and autofill anything. That works great. It's specifically the Safari extension blows. Okay. Okay. So that's to be aware of. How does 1Password work on the iPhone and iPad? Because I don't want to split these two. I mean, pretty flawlessly, I would say. It integrates into the system, so I just have passwords turned off, and 1Password is there, and so just the system sheet comes up and says, would you like to autofill this?

And you say yes, and Face ID, and boom. It's absolutely painless. Okay, all right. I guess 1Password's getting some money from me. Give it a try. It's like $5 a month. I think you'll like it. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. And if you're comfortable, what I would recommend is go into the security settings and loosen those bad boys up so that it only prompts you for a password like once a day, and you're going to be so happy. I did this a few weeks ago, and I'm liking this life.

And it makes sense, too, because I lock my Mac anyway when I walk away, and it requires Touch ID. One password also has a setting they added somewhat recently where it can tie your one password lock status to your computer's lock status. So when you unlock a computer, one password unlocks. When you lock the computer, one password locks up again. Okay. That, I think, okay, I would do that. Just play around. Play around. But if you're annoyed by, like, the, like, constant prompts to, like, type in your password from passwords, it'll feel like a dream.

As a former network admin who made people's passwords be a minimum of 20 characters, I don't mind making people type passwords. Okay. What do I do about the iPhone and iPad? Do I just stick with Safari? Because there's no dia there. Stick with Safari. I think so. I think so. What would you need? I do like the ability to, especially in Safari, I do like the ability of like, hey, I'm on my iPhone, but I had this tab open on my Mac because I was doing research for something, and I just want to be able to pull that tab.

I really do like that feature. And I'm guessing there's no way to really get that with Dia. Okay. No. You will have to leave that behind. Okay. Yeah, I do use that a lot, but okay. All right. I'll figure something out for that. Maybe I'll start texting links to myself. I'm just kidding. I'm not a mad man. That sounds like something Matt would do. To send links to your Mac, you can use the app that I mentioned a while ago, HyperDock. Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay.

You know what? Yes, that would work for me. I remember you talking about that. It's awesome. HyperDock. Okay, hang on. I'm going to write that down really quick. HyperDock. Okay. What extensions do I need in DIA? What extensions should I be installing? Okay. I have three right now. I have raindrop.io. I have raindrop.io. I have quick reads. And I have Apple's passwords app. All right, Chris.

You need one called Tampermonkey to install user scripts and start looking into user scripts. You will love the web. You will love tweaking the web in all the ways possible. I have user scripts in there to do such small things that I can't live without. Just like tweaking something on the website that I dislike. I can do that. Let me look at it, actually. Yeah, I have something to remove YouTube Shorts. So it's a user script that somebody made and it's being outdated.

I kind of need those. I kind of need those. It's just one example. It's very customizable, by the way. You can tell it to only remove them on the homepage, only remove them from your subscription page. So it's not just remove them entirely, which you can do as well if you want to. Anyway, I have one user script in there that is awesome. It's called Reddit No Translate. And it's something that you can't relate with because it turns out, boys, I don't know if you're aware,

But if you do a Google search, because Google signed a deal with Reddit, Reddit links flood Google search results nowadays, right? Which, fine, okay. But if you are in France and you click a Reddit link, the Reddit page will be translated to French. And, like, with no indication whatsoever. The full page is in French. The full conversation is in French. There's just one tiny button at the top of the Reddit page that says translate back to English or something.

Back to English. And it sucks. The translation sucks. So you're forced to see Reddit in French. It sucks in terrible French. So there's a user script here that removes the parameter from the URL that Google adds automatically so that it turns back into English. Anyway. I just want to burn to the ground the US companies that want to translate everything for me. I, anyway.

Hey, I turned off that auto-translate thing on YouTube. I'm glad, yeah. One other extension that you should get is called, hear me out, picture-in-picture extension by Google. Okay. But Dia has picture-in-picture already, isn't it? Oh, it does. It does. Like, if you are watching a YouTube video and you click away, picture in picture happens. Okay. Like, I actually really like that feature. I was like, oh, why is Safari not doing this? Basically, this is an extension that Google made for Chrome that I'm using in Vivaldi that does exactly the same thing.

So you just click away and put it in picture picture automatically. Is there a setting Vivaldi is missing? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Vivaldi has a picture picture thing where it adds the button all video embeds, which is nice because some websites don't have the picture-in-picture button. So it does do something with picture-in-picture, but it doesn't force it. Okay. I think that's it. The rest of my extensions, you will not like. uBlock Origin Lite. You love ads, so you will keep your ads. Okay, so

Dia has an ad blocker built into it, but it doesn't seem to block YouTube ads and it doesn't seem to block, like, indie blog like in some of the indie blogs that i read like the ads that they have it doesn't seem to block like the max story stuff so i'm like okay i'm okay with this a little bit i think it's just because dia has terrible block lists it's not because they're trying to be nice oh okay having tried dia's built-in blocker it's just that it's not a great blocker um yeah okay um oh one one that

you might like is called Dark Reader. So do you know the Safari extension? Oh, yeah. I've tried this in Safari. Yeah. Yeah. The Safari extension that's really popular is called Noir. Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah. I've talked about it on the channel. Yeah. This is basically the equivalent for Chromium browsers. Nice. Yeah. That's it. Nice. Okay. All right. I would add two more. Okay. I use one called Stylus, which lets me apply custom CSS to pages. This is how I get Tangerine UI on Mastodon, even though Mastodon.social has not officially added support for it.

And the other one I would add, and I don't know, this is a YouTube one, so Chris maybe won't like this as much, but we'll see. YouTube dislike counter. Bring back the dislike counter. I find the number of dislikes is a relevant metric on some videos. Honestly, yes. because the only way for me to see the dislikes on my videos is I have to go into studio.youtube.com, go to the content tab, and then I can see what they are. I want to be able to see if people aren't liking a video.

I'm curious. Where does it fetch this data? Is it just the people using, like I'm talking about the user script, like the extension? It is still available in some API. Oh. And so I think it just runs that on the page and updates the thumb. That's a very YouTube thing to do where we didn't actually take it out of the back end. We just like hit it. Yeah, backwards compatibility is a thing. So anyway, I like it. It's nice. No, I actually would like to have that. I would like that. What settings do I need to change in DIA?

Obviously, I enabled side tabs. I was shocked that that wasn't the default. I understand why it's not the default. I get it too, but it should be. People need to embrace this new world that we are in and understand this is a better solution. Yeah. Related to extensions, and this is just a Chromium browser thing first, if you right-click the extensions in the command bar or whatever and go to Manage Extension,

you will see a Keyboard Shortcuts button, and you can set a keyboard shortcut for any extension to perform their actions. And so, for example, for quick reads, I have option R as a shortcut, so I can just save a page immediately with option R and not have to click anything. Obviously, I could paint Starry Night with my mouse, and it would eventually save it through a mouse gesture, but I choose not to do that. That might take you a minute. Okay, I like that. I like that a lot.

So the thing is with the, there's not a ton of settings in there. It's not. It's no Vivaldi. It's, you know, I'm not going to waste 50 years of life going through this. It's not Ark either. It's much more straightforward than Ark used to be. I think you should hear me out. I think you should try tabs at the top. No, then I'm just going to go back to Safari. I think you should hear me out. I think Dia, with tabs at the top, feel like what Safari should be. It feels very native macOS web browser.

This is like what if Apple made Chrome and if you loved Safari before, I don't see why you would not love Dia this way with the tabs at the top, just the simple browser but clean, works really nice and you have the power like the added features you still have all of them you have the pin tabs you have the the groups and all of that oh you do okay yeah yeah everything's there it's just laid out differently horizontally but you will not have to manage a full sidebar

which can get overwhelming and you tend when you have a sidebar you tend to micromanage what goes there, what's there, and always keep in mind all of your stuff. I think I feel like the tabs at the top are calm. Like, they feel more calm to me. Okay. Alright. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Maybe I'll enable it for a day and just try and work with it. I do really like the tab group things. Like, this summer come iOS, iPadOS, macOS

updates and stuff like that, that's going to be really nice for research season, which is pretty much my whole tune is just researching and note-taking. So I'm really looking forward to being able to use tab groups for that. Sounds like you would like Vivaldi, but okay. Eh, it's too much. I've tried it. I tried it first, and I was just like, this is too much. I feel like there's too many options. There's literally the same tab group feature in Vivaldi. Yeah, but then there's like a list of a billion other options that I need to... Which you don't have to deal with.

You can just ignore it. I kind of think you do because I'm like, I can't not ignore options. I have to look at the options. Sure. But it's too much. There's nothing more important to a browser than how it feels to use. And that is a personal choice. So I get it. Yeah. So Vivaldi, yeah. We're going long, so I'm just going to wrap it up with one last question. And it's for Matt. Will this kill my battery life faster? I have done the research. I dare you to find me any data that's less than 10 years old

that says Chrome is horrible on battery compared to Safari. It has changed completely. I've ranted about this already on the show. Use the pressure. I just wanted to poke him. I knew what he was going to say. But anyways, that was my challenge. Niléane, your section says you must confess something. Yes, I have to confess something in relation to Dia because I talked about it recently, right? And I said I was using it. Yeah, I haven't installed it again. This is what I have to confess. You have guessed I'm fully back on Vivaldi. I just, I love Vivaldi so much.

And what I have to confess additionally is this. You will not like this, but this is my browser on iOS now. Oh, my gosh. Why is your browser not in your dock? Well, I don't have to put it in my dock. And see, on iOS, Vivaldi has a full tab bar, right? I do love that. That is monstrous. That is a wild way of dealing with tabs. And you can stack them together just like on the desktop. It's awesome.

It's really awesome. Yeah, I think you should try it. I think everything you just said about Dia, I think everything applies to Vivaldi, and you should try it. And more. And more. And more. Yes. Oh, that's wild. Okay, that is wild. Look, I'm just happy I'm able to record my podcast in the same browser that is my default browser now. Oh, what a world. I know, right? Wow.

By the way, you were saying with Dia. There's no Dia for iOS. So you were like, what am I still using Safari? There you go. Boom. Your solution. Just use Vivaldi on the Mac. And you have Vivaldi on the phone. And they sync together. Everything syncs together. It's awesome. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, this was helpful. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. Niléane, it is your challenge for next week. What do you have for us?

I was inspired by my move. Okay. And the challenge is prank your spouse slash partner with smart home stuff. So make sure they don't listen to this episode and be spoiled and expect something. Oh, yeah. My partner doesn't listen either. No. Danielle will read the transcript sometimes just to see if I mention her. Yeah, try it. Tell her to use the database to just search whenever she comes up. I know. I've told her that.

She was upset that she comes up less than Dr. Pepper and Mustangs. Is that surprising? That's a thing for you guys to work out. Yeah. Anyway, so prank your spouse slash partner with some smart home stuff. I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but I feel like this can evoke some things in us. Yeah. divorce or getting dumped. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, that is going to be something I have to work on.

So thank you for that. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Normally, I have an end of the show question. If you can film it. Oh, my God. Yeah. That might be tricky. Okay. Yeah, that might be tricky. All right. We'll see. Yeah. Because that'll give it away. If I'm, like, filming her, that'll give it away. Yeah, for sure. Like, with a smart home camera. Pretend you're filming the puppy and then just kind of like pan up a little bit. Hmm. Okay. Why do I have a feeling I'm getting dumped this week? Just change the angle of the Eve cam in your living room somewhat.

We actually don't have any cameras inside the house. I do not want cameras inside the house. Yeah, we just have the one to look at the garden and see if any of the pets are outside. Gotcha. Yeah. alright well that brings us to the end of the show normally I have an end of the show question for you all but I feel like we answered a bunch of questions and we're going long so I'm just going to wrap it up here thank you Max Stories for having us for over 100 episodes now really appreciate that thank you Matt and Niléane for doing the show with me I really appreciate it and thank you all listeners for listening

or viewers because we're also on YouTube appreciate it thank you all so much and have a great day bye bye