Matt's Big Chonker

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 in our normal spots. It's been weeks, weeks, I say. It's been a while. As always, I'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you? I'm good. I also, I don't know if you guys thought I wouldn't listen to last week's episode, but I listened to every second of it. And I didn't even need to. I could have listened to the first 30 seconds to know that you called me a terrible person.

Did we do that? You did do that. It was almost immediate. Whoops. It was like, it's just the two of us this week. And that's because our third host is doing hostile takeovers, destroying lives. It was the destroying lives that really got me. I mean, sure, obviously, that's what the business stuff is, but we don't need to talk about it. I stand by every word I said. I stand by it. We know you're secretly, Mr. Scrooge. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And not, like, Dickens, Mr. Scrooge, or Scrooge McDuck. Oh, if only. Yeah. You had a silo of gold coins to dive into. Anyways, we're also joined by Niléane. Niléane, how are you? Hello, I'm fine. that's that's wonderful yeah um we have a whole host of tiny topics uh one thing that i wanted to mention is i have a new membership uh i started it up a little bit before wwdc but we've had some wild episodes and i haven't had a chance to talk about it uh this is if you haven't seen it by

now i'm doing this because i'm trying to lessen my reliance on ads i don't like the fact that every single one of my video has a ad in it and it's you know the when i say that not the youtube ads it's a long story you kind of have to have those now um but i mean the uh this video is sponsored by y or x or whatever not x the twitter client i was trying to avoid saying that um uh i would never take money from them um anyways uh i have a whole new membership there's a bunch of details on it in there.

But basically, it's a way where you all can get a little bit more on the YouTube side of things for my business. Plus, I'm working on some apps, and you're going to get access to the apps, wallpapers, and a weekly newsletter. So anyways, yeah, I have a new membership and if you'd like to go check it out, I'd appreciate it. Well done. I think the wallpapers alone are worth it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, every wallpaper I've ever released is on the Patreon.

And basically going forward, I need to shut my old wallpaper store down. But going forward, that's just where I'm going to do wallpapers. If you're a member, you just get them because it makes things easier. Can we, as members, if we subscribe, can we request wallpapers? Yes, but if you request a dynamic wallpaper, you will be banned. There's nothing Niléane likes more than requesting wallpaper. I cannot see myself standing in the same spot for 24 hours taking a photo every hour to make a dynamic wallpaper.

Like, I just, I don't, maybe that's not how those are made, but I don't understand how they wouldn't be made in any other way. Maybe they're just all AI. Well, this will be a topic at the shareholder meeting. Okay. Wait, what? All right. Well, anyway, so that's there. I'd love it if you all checked it out. I'd appreciate it. There's a whole host of things. There's a bunch of reasons why I'm doing it, and they're all on there. Okay. Well, I have joined, and it's nice.

And it was cool seeing your WWDC video early before you traveled and everything. It was cool. Thank you. And I will have other videos out early on the Patreon. I've had some family stuff happen that I will get into. Well, I'm not going to even get into it, but I've had some family stuff happen this week The last three, four weeks, something like that, I don't even know. So that's why I haven't been putting out a ton of videos right now. Yeah. Yeah, totally understandable.

Another topic for the shareholder meeting, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys know what's happening, but yeah. Big business boy is coming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so who owes an apology to who? I see this. I owe an apology to NeuerCast. Okay. NeuerCast is a podcast player for iOS that I mentioned eons ago on this very show. Probably like in the first few episodes. I remember that it was a long time ago. It was early on. Yeah.

And NeuerCast is, so it's a podcast player and it looks very nice. And I remember on the show, and that's why I want to owe an apology to the person who makes it. We were marking the now playing view, which looks like this, if you can see on my camera. But basically to describe it, there's no cover artwork. It's just big font with the title of the episode.

Yeah, and we marked it. I remember on the show, we were like, that's stupid. this touch space? I'm ready to do it again. Yeah, I know. I'm ready to do the same thing. We just got our amazing comfort zone artwork. Yes, I know. But hear me out. I think I kind of love this app now. I think I like it. I really like it. Because the UI feels amazing. It's the small things, but it feels really amazing to use. I kind of wish

option to show a cover artwork instead of the big font episode title i still wish that was a thing but that's i guess a choice that they made a design choice that they made um that being said i think this app is very good um it's got chapter support i'm showcasing it with atp right here it's got chapter support um description is being weird for some podcasts for example for HCP links are working and everything but the bullet points are not showing up whereas in our show notes

in the conference and show notes the bullet points show up I reported it a few weeks ago by email I don't know if they read it but anyway apart from that I really like this and the main view is like it's a very chronological view with just latest episodes which is something I just want out of a podcast but you can queue stuff, you can search for episodes of course a couple of small settings that you can tweak

and you can pay for more settings but I don't even pay for the I'm using the app for free I don't even need to pay for anything it's perfectly fine and bonus point, if you install it on the Mac as an iPhone app, it works well it just works really well with the mouse on a mac it's surprisingly because it doesn't look mouse friendly but it very much is so there you go the one thing that's worth noticing is that

mentioning is that there's no sync there's no cloud sync so if you install it on the mac not sync with the one on your phone but the way i'm using it is just like i imported the same opml file with all my podcasts on the Mac and on the iPhone. So it's just the same chronological feed. So what's not syncing is just the progress and the played status, but that's fine. So there you go. Apologies. I think I really like this app

after thinking about it. All right. Justice for Newcast. Newcast. I can't get past the no artwork thing. Like, I really can't get past that. It's fine. It looks good, but the whole no artwork thing. I feel like that's the developer making a choice for a lot of podcasters that basically no podcaster would agree with. You still see the artwork in most places. Like, when you go on the podcast page,

the artwork is there. You can tap on it. No, you can't, but it's there. It's fine. And it's on the lock screen. You still got your iPhone lock screen. There you go. So they have it. They just refuse to use it. That's right. You know, that's why there's a bunch of podcast apps. And you can just choose the one that shows the artwork. In fact, if that's your requirement, you have so many options. Anyway, I have something else to mention. Okay. So apologies to NoCast as Don. Something else I want to mention is jet lag, baby. It's back.

The new season of jet lag is amazing. And it is so good. Chris is still hating on it. He refuses to watch it. It's not even hating on it. I just haven't had time. It's an America season. They're going across America. There's very little public transport. It's planes and cars, baby. Yeah. Those are my favorite. That's why I wanted to mention it this time, especially, because it's been a few seasons already since the last time we talked about it. But this new one especially, so it's in America. And it's so freaking American.

It's like, it's a curiosity for me to watch it even more than usual. Because most of the seasons happen in Europe. There's even like a handful of seasons happening all in France for the most part. So I recognize all the places. I recognize the trains. It's familiar. But now a season of jet lag in the US is like, everything feels insane. Like, everything looks insane to me. the fact that they have to get on a plane to go anywhere is fascinating to me

the amount of money they're spending every day to make that happen is incredible and also just the cities themselves, the landmarks they're visiting some of them make no sense, I don't even know why a Coca-Cola painting is a landmark but it is a whole Coca-Cola museum yes, a museum you know there's Dr. Pepper museums in Texas right? I'm sure. Oh boy. I'm actually going to be in Atlanta this time next

week so I could find some extra time You should just try and order a Pepsi while you're there I don't want to die Yeah No it's great Chris you should watch it. I don't think I have effectively communicated the obsession that that jet lag has caused in me I have seen all 20 20 seasons 18 seasons? They're up to nearly 20 seasons. I've seen them all twice. It is must-see viewing every Wednesday when a new episode comes out. And if you're not watching a Nebula, you're a week behind. So, highly recommend it. All right.

Maybe this is something I can get Danielle into. I am curious, because they're doing an American season. Is anyone trying to do a cannonball run? Not that I've seen yet. Not yet, but this is a... But there's a challenge. They do a challenge when they go to every state to claim that state. And so it could be that it comes up later. All right. Well, you don't have to watch jet lag. He really doesn't want to watch jet lag. Wow. This guy.

I think he hates the U.S. is the conclusion I'm reaching. I think he does. I think it's the cars. He doesn't like there might be a Ford car and he'd have to admit that he actually doesn't like Ford. He doesn't like Dr. Pepper. Yeah. This is staying in, Chris, when you're editing this. Yeah, editor Chris, this all stays in. I have some Riverside alternatives that I am ready to look into. I am really sick of Riverside. I'm up for it to switch. Yeah, I got to do some research when I have time.

Right now I don't have time. But anyways, let's get back to the show. Yeah. Okay. We smoothly went on and finished that topic, so no worries. Yeah. Okay, it'll be easy for you. We said you're a great person. Interesting. He's drinking a Dr. Pepper. That doesn't align with what we just said. No. That's weird. Okay. Well, it is still 8 o'clock in the morning. I can't go to the other stuff yet. All right. One more thing. I have the browser podcast. Maybe it's back as well. It's back. Is Nimi for any of this episode? Yes.

Maybe not. I don't know. yes the browser podcast because there's one bit of news i wanted to mention because i found it's very funny it's so basically the bit of news is some guy at microsoft who who was the guys i don't know some guy at microsoft he um went um went on publicly and said that he got um blink to a blink browser to run on iOS, right? Oh, okay.

Using what Apple has put in place for compliance with the DMA in the EU, where alternative browser engines are allowed to run in the EU on iOS. And basically, the results, like he made a bunch of speed tests, benchmarks, whatever, The results is it's massively faster than Safari in every way is the conclusion, which is very funny, very interesting.

Nobody could have expected that. So, yes. What's the number again? Yeah, up to 30% more performance on iOS when he tried Blink on iOS compared to Safari. So, there you go. The bit of news is Microsoft is maybe the savior we're waiting for. Microsoft will save us from this monopoly. It's what's happening here. Thank you, Microsoft. Yeah. You are the protector against monopolies, is what you are.

The hero we need. And always have them. Yes. And have never been one yourself. No, absolutely not. Well, I would love to see this. That's very cool. You said Blink, and my brain broke for a second because we always say Chromium, but Blink is the engine. Chromium is kind of the app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Blink is the engine behind Chrome. It's their web kit. Yeah. Okay. Well, cool. Okay. I have one tiny topic as well,

and I just wanted to say a very fond farewell to a friend. Tangerine UI, you were not long for this world, but you were the best way to use Mastodon. Oh, what happened? The creator abandoned their project. No one is getting refunds. Wow. Yes. As we're recording this morning, I announced that I will stop maintaining Tangerine UI. Oh. For multiple reasons, because it's, long story short,

it's become a bit hard to maintain with every release of Mastodon needing things to be repaired and adapted to new features because Mastodon, they're on a pace. They're adding new stuff rapidly and quicker than ever. But I don't have that time to keep up, time and energy to keep up. And also in the post where I announced this, I said, you know what? Mastodon has come a long way. The default UI still looks too sterile, but it's come a long way.

I think it's pretty great compared to how it was in 2023 when I started Tangerine UI. And I hear through the grapevines that it will get much better. Mastodon's web UI will get much better. So I feel good leaving it behind. And I recommend as an alternative for people who loved Tangerine UI, check out Phanpy. I've talked about Phanpy many times still great I still use it a lot there you go nice well and one for the homies

I would pour something out but I don't waste Dr. Pepper and that's all I have around me so you know at my funeral everyone's gonna need to do a 21 Dr. Pepper salute and shotgun him right I'll be busy that day I'm so sorry Um, it's probably next week. Um, anyways, uh, this week on Cozy Zone, we roasted Niléane's new setup. Uh, she moved and we, we, we, we, we, we pinched and zoomed. We went into some details.

So, uh, for those that aren't aware, Cozy Zone is our members only, uh, uh, show where you get an extra episode of us every single week. It's, it's a great deal. It's five bucks a month. Like five bucks is nothing. I spent more than five bucks on silly things this week. I'd rather spend five bucks on me. You spend multiples of five bucks on Codex, probably. Yes. Yes, I did, actually. Yes, I did.

Save it for next week when I have a topic. But yeah, I spent a lot of money on Codex this week. Interesting. Yeah. Anyways, let's get into the main show. We don't need to worry about my codex, Bill. Niléane, you're first up in the document. What reasonable topic do you have for us this week? A full window management reset on my Mac. It happened again. Do you really need me for this one?

Tell me what front matter I need to update. Give me the YAML. I'm ready. You're actually not ready for this map. It's just going to be stage manager. No, no, no. Hell no. Not touching that thing again, ever again. No. You don't need to install anything. Because what I've done is uninstall a bunch of things. I have uninstalled Moom, uninstalled Rectangle, BentoBox, basically most of the window management utilities,

Apart from Better Touch Tool that I've mentioned on this show since it started, I've uninstalled. I only kept Better Touch Tool because I use it for so many things. And the reason why is an unexpected trigger, let's say. So just like we mentioned, we talked on Cosyzone that I have a new desk set up with a much bigger desk. As a result, much more efficient use of the space. My 30-inch monitor is further away from me.

My MacBook Pro's screen I'm using as a second display on the side, on the stand. It's also a bit further away from me than it used to be on my older desk. And so what I did is I increased the size. I blew up everything, like the size of everything. So I actually lowered the resolution, like the scaled resolution on macOS for both my monitor and the built-in display. For some context.

And I know this will get maybe too nerdy. I don't know how much people care about this, but there you go. My 30-inch monitor, Its native resolution, like the full resolution, right, is 3840 by 2560. Okay, so it's 4K. It's a 4K, but 3x2, basically. Oh, that's weird. Okay, yeah. It's okay, but 3x2. Yeah, that is, yeah. That is like IMAX.

Is it IMAX? I think IMAX is 3x3. This is the true way to watch the Odyssey. There you go. My monitor is an IMAX monitor, is what I'm saying. If you sit close enough to it, yes. Yeah, there you go. So there, yes. That's the native resolution. And I was using it at a scale-down resolution in one of the settings I can choose in macOS at 200. No, what was it?

2560 by 1707. Oh, God, that's... That's... I was expecting you to say 1440, but okay, all right. That's 1440p, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. Focus on the width. Focus on the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Focus on the width. So, yes, 2560 is the width. So, a kind of a weird-skating factor, and people are always very... Don't even bring it up.

It's a cult, probably. People being very harsh about which resolution you choose for your 4K display. If you're not pixel doubling and it's totally retinal, you're going to get roasted. And one of those people is on the call. Matt, your monitor, you have the same panel I have. You use it at the native default resolution. That UI is massive. like you could have glaucoma and still read that stuff without any correction like that that ui is

huge you have to change it we have i've got LASIK 2020 vision too i'm i can see everything crystal clear that's that doesn't make any sense i think we're leading up to neely on saying she's doing that too though. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Oh my god! I... What is wrong with my co-host? So, now I have chosen to set it to 1920 is the width that I've chosen. So, supposedly it's a perfect multiplier

of fact, like... Yeah. Perfect scaling from the native resolution. So, can you have like one window open and that's your whole window management. I have one finder window open at a time. And that is my new window management. But almost. Oh my god. It's a full screen sticky and that's where she can do any writing. It's a full screen sticky on a 30 inch monitor. The way Nolan intended. But you're getting close to what's happening. Oh god. I have much less room than I used to have.

but you know what I think I think I really like it everything's bigger and it's so much more comfortable to read stuff it probably looks so crisp too like it does I had no idea my monitor was so crisp like for real text is crisp like I didn't know my monitor could do that I thought you know oh my gosh it's very crisp I support this 100% Look, the mode for your monitor is that's the way to go. Oh, my gosh. Yes, that's it.

As somebody that went from a studio display and used it at the native resolution of the studio display to a 32-inch 4K using it at 4K, so 3820 by 2160. 2160. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. Yes, it's not quite as sharp as proper retina, but it's fine. Oh, it's fine. It works. And you know what? I can have multiple windows open at the same time. Oh, what a luxury. Not necessary.

But you know, now, like, it's difficult for me because I don't think I want, like, I wish I had more room. But the trade-off, I don't know if I can make it. Like, it feels like I have a new monitor because even though that monitor is four years old, Mm-hmm. Which is very weird. I'll tell you what. Here's the defense. Here's one of the reasons I did it years ago. When I was designing stuff, I would design it on a desktop display that was much bigger

than the laptop screen most people were using. And I'd open it on a laptop, and I'd be like, oh, that's huge. But when it's huge here, then you're basically designing for laptop users and iPad users as well. You know what? That's very true. Yeah. Chris's ears perked up. No. No. Nope. I don't buy this defense at all. I don't buy it. So we come back to the topic of how do I deal with Windows now?

And the way I'm dealing with Windows now is I'm just using the default macOS styling stuff where you drag and drop your window to the menu bar, left, right, or each of the four corners, and it just tiles in place. I think this works really well because why did I use Moom before? I used Moom because I had so many snap targets that I had set up myself with custom key binds

and special regions on screen to trigger them, etc. I don't have the room to use. It makes no sense to be able to control Windows in such a granular way now with this resolution. Now, basically, I just need only to do three things with Windows. Either full screen them or put them on either half. And that's it. Sometimes I will put one in a quarter, but I do that occasionally.

And mostly I have the MacBook display on the side where I can also full screen stuff there and put two apps side by side there. So there you go. This is quite literally, you were maybe expecting I found a new utility, but quite literally a window management reset because I don't need anything now. I'm just styling windows like this. It's been a week and it's great. One more thing. I find myself using actual full screen windows more with this setup, especially on the second screen, on the MacBook screen, because it just makes sense to be able to reach over the trackpad and swipe between the apps that I've docked there.

So I recommend trying that. If you have a laptop on the side that you're using as a second display, try the full screen stuff there that you know you will want to keep there, the apps that you want to keep there. For example, for me, it's always my Mail, Mimestream, Swinsian, and Messages. I always keep those three apps on the laptop's display. Now all three are full screened. And I just reach over and swipe with the trackpad to switch between them. It's actually really nice. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I too, Chris, I had no idea. I think like the scaling factor, who freaking cares? I can scale to that number. I want that number. I will choose that number. But it turns out there is a superior one. There is a superior scaling factor that you should choose because it's crisper. It's crisper. It is a little crisper. It is hard to get used to. And I will say I've been doing 4K monitors for many years. My last one was a 27-inch.

And so when I went to a 32-inch, I was like, okay, it's a 2X scale, so we'll do 1080p upscale to 4K. And the first time I saw it, I laughed out loud because it is a little funny how big it is. But you get used to it. You get used to whatever. That's how it goes. I will say I did try to get used to it, and I couldn't. Because I felt, especially going from the studio display to this, I felt like, yes, I'm going from a 27-inch to a 32-inch monitor, but now I am able to have less stuff on the screen because of this.

And that was the thing that I was like I couldn't get used to is I have less space. And the big reason why I wanted a 32-inch monitor is I wanted more space to spread out. Because I use big apps like Final Cut and Lightroom and Photoshop and stuff like that, where they benefit from having the most amount of space you could possibly want. 100%. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That makes sense. If I was just like a writer or something like that, I think I would probably pick the scaled option,

the default option. because like I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily need the extra monitor space like because like when I'm writing in my text editor I don't use I don't make Obsidian full screen I usually Obsidian for me usually takes up about a third of the screen and I center yeah yeah so yeah I almost want to run it at 540p and so it's a 4x pixel scale oh my god how crisp would that be You get one icon, not even a window.

You would just get an icon. Those people complaining about Mac not being touch-friendly will have nothing to say then. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Big touch targets. They'll be able to slap the close button on a window. Okay, slightly related, but because they've made Mac OS more touch-friendly, no, but it's just for- It's not touch-friendly. It's never happening, Chris. Sorry, you triggered me. You triggered me. It's literally all over Golden Gate.

But, okay, because... Okay, no, it's just for sidecar. Never mind. Okay, so I was having this brain idea, but I just walked it through my head, and I realized it's not it. But I was like, what happens if you get one of those external monitors that's also a touchscreen, and hooked it up to macOS Golden Gate now? How well would that work? But I just realized the update was related to Sidecar. And I'm guessing there's probably going to be another update to Golden Gate that makes it like now it's truly like touchscreen friendly. I suspect, yeah.

There's probably some device query that it won't enable it on any existing Mac. Of course. Although I got to say, we already thought that Mac was going to be expensive. And now Tim Cook has said, yeah, prices are going to go up. Yeah. I'm very worried. I'm going to try very hard to get a review unit of that one because I don't know if my bank account is going to be able to handle that. See if they'll give you two or three. Yeah, I'll just be like, look, guys, it's not for my podcast co-hosts.

I need three of them because I have three different desks in this office. And it's a laptop. I obviously can't pick it up and move it to another desk. But also, I need you to send two of these other ones to these different addresses. Don't worry. I know it says Illinois, and France, just don't worry. I'm going to be the one using them. To France. That's all we know. That's as detailed as we can get. I'm not giving. Yeah, exactly. The carrier pigeons will figure it out. Yeah. Well, Niléane, I think this is actually a classic topic for you

because it reminds me of stickies. Here's my system. Nothing. And then next week, it'll be completely different. You know, you build, you bring it all down. I don't think so. Should we take a bet? I think that what's more likely is that I may install some utilities again. But I don't think I'm coming back from the resolution thing. Okay. See, I was thinking that I was making a blanket statement that something would change in the window management.

Oh, yeah. That's okay, right? Obviously. we're not monsters no I love this alright anything else on this or should we move on to Matt's I want to talk about Matt's big chonker alright Matt what do you got for us this week I have a big chonker this is Keychron's new not a keyboard not a mouse it's them expanding into even more products it is their new Thunderbolt 5 dock which if I can be completely transparent

uh i get a lot of review pitches from just the worst products you've ever seen um every once in a while you get something decent and every once in a while you get one from a company that is just easy to work with Keychron has been very good to work with um on reviews they're just like hey do you want this uh and there's like no contracts no anything it's very simple uh no expectations no reviews all that good stuff um but this is also a product that i've been thinking about for a while

now because thunderbolt 5 has been around and there's these new docks coming out and i've got a thunderbolt 4 dock that's fine but you know the new stuff is always interesting so uh but i couldn't be shiny you you need you you need shiny things yeah i do i get it okay i get it you need shiny toys yeah i do like shiny toys and um but i couldn't pull the trigger because i was like my current doc works fine what am i doing i'm not gonna spend five hundred dollars on the ts plus or

whatever ts5 plus and CalDigit so i didn't do anything but then they're like hey would you like reviewing it? I said yes. So, disclosure's out of the way, I suppose. So, I've been using it for a few weeks. It just came out last week, as you're hearing this, and it's a Thunderbolt dock. Here's what I'll say. It's totally fine. It works perfectly. I've only had it for two weeks, so I can't speak to long-term reliability, but I plugged it in. Everything worked. There's not

much more i can ask from a thunderbolt doc so i will not read through all the specs but this is a 14 and 1 uh these docs are usually uh like how many inputs and outputs do they have it's 14 and 1 but the thing you always have to look at with these docs is what are the 14 What have they chosen to be the 14 things that they use? And Keychron's is interesting.

It's a little bit, it seems like a dock made for people with both new and older tech, as well as Windows users. Two of the 14 are HDMI ports. which is, for my use case, this is a 12-in-one. Yeah. Because I'm not going to be using those. It has outside of the... Oh, also, whenever they do these counts, they count the Thunderbolt cable that goes to your computer. That drives me nuts. That doesn't count.

I don't understand that. That port does not count as expansion. It does not count. Yeah. So, I don't count it. So, this is a 13-in-one. If you take out the HDMI, it's an 11-in-1. There's also a micro SD slot and headphone jack here that I also don't use. So I'm dropping those. It has two Thunderbolt 5 ports, full speed. Okay. And that's it. So it's only giving you two Thunderbolt 5 ports. It's giving you a USB-C port, and that's it.

So basically, if USB-C plugs is what you're looking for, there's only three that it gives you, which ironically is the same number that my old dock, my OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock had. So I got no more of those, and it has four USB-As, which I have filled all but one of. And it has HDMI and Ethernet, 2.5 gigabits, so all that stuff. And it has an SD card slot, which is nice, because with the way my computer is in my desk, I don't have access to it, so it's nice just to have it in the dock.

um here's the thing and it's a thing that i keep thinking about which is that our computers are too fast like i know i know we'll look back and be like oh can you believe in 2026 we only had 120 gigabits per second through our thunderbolt cables but that is a lot um so i wanted to kind of talk about how this compares to my thunderbolt 4 doc because there's been thunderbolt 4 docs for a

long time i feel like thunderbolt 4 was like the point where those docs got like really really good and like reliable and very mainstream and you could buy a billion of them so the max bandwidth which is like the highlight feature of thunderbolt on thunderbolt 4 was 40 gigabits per second on thunderbolt 5 it's fifth or it's double it's 80 with a boost mode up to 120 one direction um so three times quicker potentially um for monitors and chris for our monitors this

is relevant uh which is probably why you were able to run yours at 240 hertz uh thunderbolt 4 did not have the bandwidth to run a 4k monitor past 144 hertz because it is too much data uh we'll get into that later it's actually a shocking amount of data it takes to run the monitor i actually use the DisplayPort port and cable off the monitor and plug it because I have the CalDigit TS5 Plus and that has DisplayPort on that which supports 4K at 240Hz. So I don't actually I saved myself a Thunderbolt

port by switching to this monitor. You did, but you are using it's all going over that one Thunderbolt cable. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a catch, yes. So anyway, that is actually literally, I wanted to say that is literally the only change in my experience, is that now I can run my Mac. My Windows computer has always been able to run a 240 hertz 4K. Now my Mac can as well. And can I see the extra frames? No. Once you get past 120, I can't tell the difference, personally. Going from 60 hertz to 240 hertz was wild.

I will say that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 60 feels insane once you get used to. Yeah. There's good reasons why I sold the studio display. Yeah. And then the other ones are whatever. The other one is power delivery. So my old Thunderbolt dock did 100. I think Thunderbolt 4 was capped at 100 watts of power delivery. This Thunderbolt 5 can technically do 250 by the spec, but I have not found any docks that do this. The Keychron, the CalDigit ones, they do 140, which for us Mac users is fine because the 16-inch MacBook Pro caps out at $140 as well.

But my 14-inch only caps out at $100. So I get nothing. Or I think mine caps out at $90 maybe. So anyway, I get no benefit there. So would I have spent this money? No, probably not. Is it a fine dock? Yeah. But yeah. I wanted to talk about some real-world speeds to get an idea, because Thunderbolt 5 gets you 80 gigabits of bandwidth, bi-directional. And what does that actually work out to?

Well, if you have a Thunderbolt T7 SSD, that's about 8 gigabits per second. So that is 20% of the capacity of Thunderbolt 4, 10% of the capacity of Thunderbolt 5. You're nowhere near. if you have an nvme drive the fastest nvme you can buy today in like an enclosure 16 gigabits per second so faster but you're still not capping out either of them but displays displays got me going down a rabbit hole because i was wondering about this i was like all this other stuff is like

nowhere near maxing out the bandwidth so like what's my display doing why is it like why is why why is it a thing um and i learned that if you are sending uncompressed video over uh whatever cable it is so much bandwidth it is 4k 240 hertz uh uncompressed is going to be about 60 gigabits per second of bandwidth constantly which is why thunderbolt 4 can't do it thunderbolt 5 can um

I have also learned that once you get past 60 hertz in most situations, pretty much every consumer product, you're going to get compressed, which is there's this thing called display stream compression, which compresses the video signal in the signal it sends to the monitor. And that reduces it quite a bit. So that gets it down to like 18 gigabits per second. But that's 18 gigabits constantly feeding through the cable. And so if you do some quick math, Thunderbolt 4, 40 gigabits per second, even if it was doing that, half of your bandwidth is constantly being used.

So that's how you kind of get into these limits. So if you're someone using a high refresh rate, high resolution display, and you're transferring data, and you're doing like Ethernet, like internet over the Ethernet cable, if you're saturating these ports, you can get there. I don't know if I do, but it was really interesting to see like, oh yeah, it's kind of a lot of bandwidth. that you're sending over, and I can kind of see why on these lower-end computers, it's hard to drive more than one display. Yeah. You should, but yeah, it's so much data.

It makes you realize how much power it's drawing as well, right, from the wall. Because I don't know if you guys have that in the U.S., but I think it's an EU thing now. all tech products have like an eco score or whatever where it tells you how much part like how energy efficient it is and displays are all pretty bad like they rate so it's a b c d f g and

they all rate like d e some or g if you if you look especially at the high refresh rate displays they're all down there in the red. Yeah. Oh yeah, we don't have exactly that. We have this thing called Energy Star which is on a lot of tech products. A lot of TVs have this. Although it's kind of a funny system. I don't know if they've updated it since but like when I used to work at Target and sell, I worked in electronics and sold TVs but they hadn't updated the numbers for like LCD

TVs which were like way lower energy than the CRTs of before. So like every TV said it was like way, it was like a plus plus in terms of even if didn't make any difference um yeah i mean i do think there is something in here about the quiet ways that we use a lot of energy in our life yeah that don't get headlines but uh for what it's worth i actually did think about that i was like why am i wasting these frames so i am actually running my monitor down at the lower resolution or at the lower uh refresh rate again because i was like 60. not 60. no i'm doing a 144. okay but not not the 240 that

i technically can okay interesting i'm not gaming on the mac so it's okay i should try that um i wanted to go over my recommendation though because this is a 349 thunderbolt 5 dock which is relatively competitive um the CalDigit TS5 which is kind of the go-to like high-end one is 50 bucks more at $399. The TS5 Plus, which, Chris, I think is what you have, that's, ooh, it's the Mac Daddy. It's incredible.

It's got all the ports. It's like a 20-in-one. It's crazy. And 10 gigabit Ethernet. $499 for that. Yeah. OWC, who also makes these, they have a couple Thunderbolt 5s, but they're kind of weird. Like, they don't have just, like, a straight upgrade to what they had before, which was very popular and worked great. They have like this smaller one that's $329. And they have this like more networking focused one, which is $500. It's kind of weird. But what I would like to draw people to is this.

The OWC 11-in-1 Thunderbolt dock, Thunderbolt 4, that I've been using for years. It's $230. And I think it's great. And I think it's going to do everything for basically everyone. And I would recommend still looking at Thunderbolt 4 docks because... Does this have the logo that glows up? Yeah, it does. This thing turns blue. This is the one. I think we talked about this on the show. I had this one. But my big issue with it is the cable that connects from the dock to the computer comes out the front.

And where I put my dock, it was going across my keyboard. And it annoyed me. And what I like about the CalDigit one is everything comes out the back. Yeah. For what it's worth, that is how the Keychron one works as well. The plug that goes to your computer is on the backside as well. Although, I must say, here's my problem with the Keychron one. I think the best one for me, shocker, is the most expensive one. Because for me, the most valuable thing on these things are the USB-C ports. Whether they're Thunderbolt or USB-C, I don't really care. A couple of them should be Thunderbolt.

and if that's your requirement all of them the Keychron has three usbc ports two are thunderbolt ones usbc uh the owcs have three to four um and then the cal digits oh they lean into it so the ts5 has six and the plus has seven usbc type ports and most of them are thunderbolt which is bonkers. At one point, I had all of them used on the backside. There's two on the front, and I keep those for like

when I need to plug a device in, or if I need to charge something really quickly, or something like that. That's what I keep those for. But at one point, I literally had all the ports on the backside of that CalDigit hub used up. Wow. So the TS5, the, like, the in port from the computer is on the back? Mm-hmm. Yeah? The CalDigit one, yes. Yeah, okay. And then they have some ports on the front. They have like USB-C and USB-A and SD card reader and stuff on the front so you can just like quickly plug

stuff in. And the TS5 plus one from CalDigit comes in space black. So it matches your computer if you got the right color. I got the right color, but mine matches. It's a nice silver. Let's be honest, they all look very bad, right? We agree. I mean, they kind of do. I actually like the CalDigit. They're very utilitarian. They are. It's a utility, and I think that's fine. I don't think it needs to be super designy.

It's a dumb reason, aside from money, because those are all extremely expensive. They are. A few years ago, I got a Thunderbolt dock that was just as expensive when I got it, the Thunderbolt 3 Pro from Belkin. So I'm still using Thunderbolt 3. And it looks really nice because it's rounded with aluminum all around. It looks actually... That's also one reason. When I see the newer dogs, I'm like, they all look so bad compared to my old one.

I think it's the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Pro is the one I got. Yeah, that looks all right. Looks all right. I don't know. Mine is just command stripped to the side of my desk. Of course. If you're watching the video, you can see mine right behind me. It's just in that shelf underneath my monitor. It's so big. It is big, but it fits perfectly in that shelf. Yeah, good. It's got 20 ports on the thing.

It's got to be big. That's true. What are you going to do with all those ports? Yeah. So that's it. It's a nice dock. But honestly, for me, it's fine. And just as fine as the one I was using before. Okay. My recommendation is go Thunderbolt 4 if you want to save some money and get probably the same experience. Okay. All right. Go big or go home. You know? You know? Yeah. All right. Should we move on to the challenge? Sure. Yes.

All right. So it was my challenge this week. And the challenge was to let AI control your life for the week. And I can go first if you all would like. Okay. So I, like I kind of alluded to earlier, I had some family stuff happen this week. And I was actually using AI stuff a lot. I had either a lot of downtime or a lot of questions that needed to be answered. So I was using Siri AI to answer all my questions and look things up. and it actually was pretty good.

I have access to the Siri AI app on the 27 beta, so I've been using that. It's just really nice to hit the button on the side to do it or open up the app and start typing to it if you're around people. They've done a good job with it. I used Siri for commands I didn't use in the past, so I would just tell it to get directions to this place I was going to a lot this week, or that was like, it's just like in this like downtown center that's impossible to navigate.

So like, doesn't matter how many times I've been down there. I just had to get directions every single time. I was adding stuff to my reminders list constantly. I was using the new Spotlight and Siri integration to just open things and do actions like play music or send messages and all sorts of stuff just to like quickly do this without having to jump into apps. Just as somebody with ADHD, having Spotlight and Siri together is really nice because I can just pull down on that bar and just start typing whatever it is I need to do.

And I don't need to jump into an app. But outside of the Siri, I was using it to I had a lot of downtime, but I wasn't here at home. So I was just kind of sitting with my laptop and I just was using it to work on things that I've had on my task list for months and in some case years. For example, one thing I've had to do on my task list for years now is build a media kit for like sponsored and like review stuff and things like that.

So I can send it off to brands and things like that. And just be like, hey, here's a body of my work and pricing and all this stuff. Like, here's a bunch of stuff. and I used Codex to help me build that. I came up with like a series of questions because I had no idea what a media kit looked like. I had no idea what needed to be on there. So I had Codex come up with a series of questions about stuff that needs to be on a media kit. I answered it. It compiled that information and then you know what I did? I had it prototype out the media kit in Keynote for me and then I went in and cleaned it all up. It worked really nice. So like throughout this whole week,

I was just relying on AI to do things for me. I also was doing some other stuff that I will talk about next week. I don't, you know, always, you know, always leave them wanting more, that kind of thing. But, you know, I'm doing, I'm building something that I'm actually really, really proud of. And I'll talk about it next week. But I used AI for a lot of that, too. So I'm kind of curious. How did this work out for you guys? Go ahead, Matt.

you're muted you're muted matt well uh i i struggled to figure out how to approach this challenge also truth be told i didn't look at the notion document and i just found out what the challenge was when i listened to the episode on wednesday oh yeah i forgot to tell you what the challenge was and you weren't here last week yep no it's fine sorry my bad um No, I'm sorry. So I only did it for a couple of days and I wasn't sure what to do. So I interpreted it as use the new Siri. So I did.

I explored it. I used it. There are things that I would Google or that I would open the Cloud app to do that are just like quick little searches sort of things. And I tried using Siri for that. and it's much better. The model itself is not as impressive, but it can search the web, it can use tools to do things, and it's pretty okay.

It answers questions for me. Here's a stupid question that I ask these stupid chatbots all the time. I'm playing this game. I just completed this mission. How far through the game am I? And it tells me, like, here's a percentage of here's about how far through the game you are. And this is so helpful. As an adult who is, like, actually, like, shorter games these days, this is actually very nice information. But, like, Siri would never do that before. And it does that pretty well today. And I think it does a pretty good job of including source links, which is nice.

And they like to put, like, images in line in their answers sometimes, too. So it's pretty nice. I don't know if I used it to automate my life, but I did use it because I had it. And it was, yeah, I don't know how much more I would expect from Siri at this point. Once third-party apps have more, once it can do more with third-party apps, there might be more to automate. But, yeah, it seems promising.

I'm curious, do you find that you, I don't know, maybe enjoy is the wrong word, but you're using it more or maybe it's more convenient that it's built into the system. And you can either just say the trigger phrase or hold down the button on the side of your device and you don't actually have to jump into an app. Or you could just pull up Spotlight from anywhere in the OS because that's one of my favorite features is that you could get to Spotlight from anywhere in the OS on the iPhone and iPad.

it is a little nice to be able to ask siri it is nice to ask siri questions and then be able to go back to those in the siri app later and like remember what it told you at the very least um so that's kind of nice i'm always a little hesitant to compliment apple on doing a thing that only they can do because they own the platform and others do it so i'm always a little hesitant to be like they've done a great job and now they've they beat claude because claude isn't able to do that and it's like well dma hasn't let them do it dma's like what's going on here

but uh i mean it is convenient it is it is convenient um i wrote a member's post uh on my blog actually recently about how i moved away from things and i'm using reminders now so that is one of those things as well um that is probably going to be easier with this, but I don't want to give them credit necessarily. Okay, fair. Fair, fair, fair. Niléane, I'm going to tell you, how'd you do this challenge? Have you ever heard of the term malicious compliance? Oh, yes.

And I figured that's exactly how you would treat this. So, I have You've what? You've what? I have Muxplayed my stairs. Mixplayed? Alright, there is a link in the show notes. Muxplay is a name of an Ikea product. Oh, it's an Ikea thing.

Okay. It's a motion sensor. Okay, okay. And go on, kiddo. It's just scratching my chair. And yeah, so it's a motion sensor. I've put it all over the stairs. So basically our house, I will not guide you through all of our house, but basically there's three levels, ground floor and two upstairs. Bougie. I know. It's a very vertical house, let's say. Not very horizontal, very vertical.

So yeah, so basically there's two big set of stairs to move between levels. And actually, no, three. I don't know how to count. Whoa, she doesn't even know how many staircases she has. She hasn't even gone to all the floors yet. No, two, two, two. Look, she's got the main staircase for her. And then there's the servant staircase that they're supposed to take so she never sees them. Yeah. No, I've got an elevator, actually. I'm not using the stairs. Oh, okay. So I've put all the mux sprays all over the stairs. And we replaced all the light bulbs as well.

And now the stairs, they light up as you walk through. Oh. So AI, because this right here is artificial intelligence, I'm telling you. It's very smart. And because I set up automation, it does it on its own. Like I'm not touching any buttons. It just turns on the light. Yeah. So you walk up the stairs in our house and the lights, they turn on as you... It's very satisfying, by the way. As you go, they turn on. And I even went with advanced automations.

I used the controller for HomeKit app on iOS, which lets you do more advanced HomeKit automations. And I use that to like add conditions so that at night, depending on how deep into the night you are, it will not shine as bright. Oh, wow. So if you walk up or down the stairs, let's say at 1 a.m., it will just, it does the same thing, but it lights up with a tint of red. So very dark, like very dim red so that you're not blinded in the middle of the night. during early evening,

it's just bright yellow. Can I throw a pitch your way really quick for this? Okay. You add speakers, and as one motion sensor is triggered, you have a piano sound play, and you can just do scale, so you can do... Yeah. It's like clack. You realize HomeKit is very laggy, though. Yeah. Yeah, you'll be three floors away and you'll hear the piano go. You'd have to use Home Assistant or something for that.

Yeah. That's funny. So there you go. AI, like it automated the heck out of my life. I'm fully compliant with the law of your touch. I think you're closer to it than I am, honestly. Honestly, I left this pretty open-ended because I was just kind of curious how you all would interpret it. So, yeah. I will say, Niléane, you mentioned this at some point, that you're going to use a home sensor for something. And we have a closet just outside this door behind me where there's no light inside it.

There's a hallway light that has a smart bulb in it, but there's no switch or anything in the house for it. So I don't know what the intent of this thing is. But we have to use like Siri to turn it on. So we like open the thing and I have to yell out to Siri to do it. And it's super annoying, but I got a little motion sensor as well. I put it inside there, and when the door opens, the light turns on. And when I close it, the light turns off, and it's very cool. You got a mix spray? I did not. I got some, I think a Belkin one, actually. I got whatever was cheap and available for next day shipping on Amazon.

Yeah, sounds about right. The IKEA is nice. So it's one of their newer products. It's compatible with matter. It works over thread, I believe. and it's 8 euros oh yours is cheaper than mine dang alright well that was that challenge but Matt it is your challenge for next week what do you got for us alright my challenge is

redo your favorite challenge that you have issued on comfort zone and do not tell your co-hosts which one you are doing until we meet up next week. Okay. So we will all do different challenges because you must do one that you have issued and you would like to do again. And, you know, do one that was easy. Do one that you had fun with. Do one that you think you could do differently. Do one you maybe need redemption on. I don't know. Oh, no, I'm going to get another new iPhone. You need to move your local music library

to the one terabyte iPhone. oh no alright I like this this is pretty good alright this is a good place to wrap up and we're going kind of long so I think I'll save our end of the show question for next week so we need to wrap up here thank you all so much for listening thank you to MacStories for having us we're a MacStories podcast after all feedback link in the show notes thank you all for listening and have a great day okay bye bye