The Year of Our Lord, Zork

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. As always, I'm joined by the Johnny-come-lately, Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm feeling attacked, but that's okay. You guys are good. You're two minutes late. I know. Two whole minutes. I know. You're depriving the people. We have a hard out. You're depriving the people of two minutes of good podcasting. Well, who is responsible for the hard out? Oh, it's me too. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Anyways, we're also joined by on time as always, Niléane. Niléane, how are you? I'm fine. But also, like, yes, the reason I don't have a hard out is because I don't have a real job. Yeah, neither do I. Yeah. Yeah, you and I are just kind of like, eh, whatever. We're just lying around. That's basically all we do is lie around. We don't really do anything. In my head, that's what all Europeans do. That's just, you just, oh. Especially in the summer. Like, I just imagine no Europeans work. No idea.

Like, I don't know, like, how you guys get groceries or anything. Because I just assume you all don't work. Like, maybe you just stockpile, like, up for three months. You know, it's kind of true that nothing's open in the summer. Yeah, right. It's right now it's still June. So it's not quite the case yet. But starting from mid-July up until mid-August, so many things are closed. You go up to a restaurant you like, just want to take out something. It says on the door, we are out of here until August 20th. So, yeah.

Meanwhile, you're lucky if you get two weeks paid vacation in America. Anyways, moving on. I got some tiny topics. Okay, so last week we talked monitor resolution. So I went around and played with my monitor resolution to kind of see if I could do what you guys were doing. And I couldn't. I couldn't do the 1080p 2x scale on the 4K 32-inch monitor. Couldn't do it. But I did switch it to 2560 by 1440, which is the middle step between where I was and where you two are. And it's a little bit bigger, but it's a little bit sharper. and I think I'm okay with this,

but I can't do the 1080p one. That's just, it's too much. We'll give you one more week and you'll be right where we are. I tried it. I tried it. It won't happen. I guarantee you it won't happen. Yeah, let's see next week. We'll see. We'll see. Chris, you are life-size on my screen. You are just like, as I should be. I should be life-size on everyone's screen. Editor Chris, cut to me full screen right now. Okay. And the other thing is I was in David Pierce's installer newsletter this week.

I talked about my home screen and what I've been doing and some other things. And, you know, go check it out. I believe it's behind the Verge's paywall now, unfortunately. Installer, yes. Yeah, which is a bummer. Pretty much everything is behind a paywall on the Verge now, which is... Anyway, it's moving on. Everything but also nothing at the same time. It's a quantum paywall they have over there. You never know what's going to pay. It's Schrodinger's paywall. Yeah. Yeah.

If you just don't, if you avert your eyes when the page loads, the whole article is there. But as soon as you look at it, it changes. It's crazy. It's 100% real. All right. We got some feedback, but I definitely can't answer this question. So I'll just let you two take it. I'm just going to drink a Dr. Pepper. Yeah, go ahead. Somebody wrote in, Ben, and said, if one were to start watching jet lag, what season do you recommend starting with?

I'm sure, Matt, you have a recommendation for Ben. Oh. My recommendations would be either you should do one of the tag seasons across Europe, you should do the Schengen season with Tom Scott, or you should do the Australia season with Toby. These are my picks. Oh, Australia is weird. Okay.

That whole continent is trying to kill you. I would never go there. That's true. That's true. I would have answered as well any of the tag seasons. They are amazing. And I discovered jet lag through the Schengen season where they try to claim EU countries. Yeah, I agree. Australia is weird. Maybe. Oh, it's one of my favorites. I know it is. And it's not bad. It's just weird. It's quite different from the others. It's good. I would just jump in. Get in there. It's so much fun. Just pick one.

They're all great, honestly. All right. Chris doesn't know what to say. We're speaking to you directly, Chris. This is advice for you as well. This feedback isn't real, by the way. We're just talking to you right now. I kind of thought one of you might have just put it in there just to talk about it. I wouldn't put it past them. Is listener Ben even real? Is Ben real? I think they are, yes. Is it Big Ben? Is it maybe Little Ben? If there's a Big Ben, there's got to be a Little Ben, right? You can't have a Big Ben and not a Little Ben.

Let's move on. Let's move on. yeah this week on Cozy Zone which is our members only episode for five bucks a month you get a whole extra episode of us every single week we tier listed iPhone features you know we love a good tier list and there was there was some contention there was some arguing there was some threatening and one of us got their own tier list. I won't say who. One of us got our own tier lists. That was

good. And both of my co-hosts are inconsistent in their judging, and that's all I'll say. I have no idea what you're talking about. Anyway, moving on. Let's get into the main show. Niléane, what do you got for us this week? Would you like to try that again? I am reviewing a piece of hardware.

Something great, something amazing that is highly valuable. Extremely valuable. It is called the Media Porter Split. I'll put in a link if you want to investigate with me. What is it? Can you guess what is it? Just looking at the link. Oh, I know what this is. Because you've been complaining about this in our chat. Yes. Is it an air conditioning? It's an air conditioning. Yes. Now, okay. It is an AC. Okay, this is tech. Fine. Okay, that's fine. That's fine.

Oh, it is. Don't worry about it. It's got an app and everything. Okay. And by previous rules, it does qualify. There you go. It plugs into the wall. I think if you do a tea kettle, you can get away with this. Exactly. We have no rules here. We like to think we have rules. It's anarchy here at Comfort Zone. Oh, we do. We do. We just don't like them sometimes. Exactly. Anarchy. So, yeah. The funny thing. So, we moved into this house in May.

It was not summer yet. It was just fine, fine weather. And already we were anticipating how is it going to be here for the summer. And two things happened. First thing is in May, France, as well as like most of Western Europe, was hit by a heat wave in May. Which this is extremely not normal. Nothing's normal anymore with the weather anyway.

But yeah, a heat wave in May, it was bad. At that time, I decided, OK, let's get an AC. we are going to get a centralized like heat pump installed someday next year or in the next couple of years but I need to survive until then so I was looking at mobile units like you know just an AC unit that you can just

that moves around on wheels that you can just place on a window and remove anytime when the summer is over you can remove it have you seen the horror stories about like the mobile AC units that you can get like the window units yeah some of them are like that basically it's like you get an AC block that's on wheels and there's a big another pipe what was it called a hose that you direct

outside your window that you have to keep made open Which is letting hot air in. Yeah, exactly. Those are almost universally terrible. Because, yes, like you said, it's letting hot air in. Some of them have like isolating kits for windows. So it's a zip tie kind of thing that you can wrap around your window

and around the hose that's passing through the open window so that it doesn't let as much hot air in. But yeah, those are always very bad in terms of like how much energy they use. And they're not super efficient. Like it will cool maybe a little bit, but if you are in the middle of a France heat wave that is 40 degrees Celsius,

let me use Tiny Start to convert that. that's about 104 yes that's not that hot I know that because that's the high temperature today and I was like oh 40 celsius that's nice not nice but it's convenient you know what I can't believe it that I am the one in the summer here and have the coolest temperature it's only gonna be 89 here today that's wild for this area 104 is like normal summer around here. That's like a cool day around here. But also, I've been seeing on

Mastodon, especially this debate, because it's mostly between British people and American people, because you guys always fight, even though you are almost the same. And we win. We beat them every time. You are the same. 250, baby! Sorry. Sorry. And yeah, this debate is like, the Americans looking at British people suffering under the heat waves and being like, how come you don't have any AC anywhere in Europe? You guys are dumb. Just install AC everywhere.

And the obvious answer is, well, this is not something that Europe has had to adapt to for the past many centuries and millennia even. Look, as we all know, history started on July 4th, 1776. You should be posting hard today. So we all had the same opportunity to install ACs at the same time. History started 250 years ago. Everything before that, that's just like the Silmarillion. It's hard to read.

Nobody cares about it. Yes, that's right. Anyway, so, and it's the same in France. Like, we don't have, and if nothing is adapted to this kind of climate, there used to be heat waves, but they were not as intense and not as long in time. Like, maybe they would last two days. And most people would just deal with it for two days. Now, a heat wave is way more intense every time. And it lasts at least two weeks every time, sometimes more.

Like, the one we just had in June is the record high for France, like, in all of time, all of history. I saw that. Congratulations. In terms of everything, in terms of the highest temperatures recorded, in terms of like the average nationwide recorded, in terms of the duration, it's all time records everywhere. Anyway. It's the hottest day so far. So far. Hottest summer so far. So, yeah.

Anyway, all of this to say, I got an AC in May and I got, I was looking at mobile units And I got the media portals plate. We route back to this specific unit. This one is actually pretty great. And this is the one that comes up a lot, especially like this is, I believe, a German brand. When you look up mobile ACs in France. It's going to be efficient. This is the one that comes up like immediately because it doesn't work like the others.

It's pretty much a normal split kind of AC where you have an outside unit that you place outside your building and an inside unit. And the two are connected by a hose, just like any regular split AC that's using a heat pump just to pump the heat and blow it outside and whatever. I forgot how heat pump works. And it can be reversed so that you can use it in winter as well to heat up your room.

Anyway, so this is very, like, compared to any of us, this is very efficient. This is reputable. And it's kind of expensive because it's kind of a, like, high-end product. I got mine in May for exactly 1,000 euros. Well, actually, €9.99. Got it delivered next day. So, all was well. Got it for €1,000.

I thought that's a good investment. When we'll get something centralized installed in the house to cool the house, I'll just resell it, and it will be fine. Since the heat wave this month in June has started, The price of this thing has been insane to watch. With kind of a bit with glee, like guilty glee that I'm feeling

because I got mine before. You got yours. I got mine. It's fucking fine. I got 1,000. Right now, the listings go up to 5,000. Oh, my God. How much RAM is in this thing? I know. Some of them are 4,000, 5,000. Some used ones, if you get some used ones, people like me who bought it earlier this year for 1,000 or less, they are resending it for 2,000 now on eBay or whatever. It's like Taylor Swift tickets.

It's the whole thing. It's crazy. And also, it's very weird because when I got it in May, I had no idea about this. The entire market of ACs, I had no idea. I don't know. Our former apartment, we had a Samsung one. That's a pretty common one, I guess, Samsung. But in terms of mobile things, I had no idea. And now I see this thing everywhere. It's become a meme on TikTok.

People are like, what's the best AC I can get quickly? This is the one that comes up all the time. And it's out of stock every freaking way. You can't find this thing anywhere now. so how do I like it I think it's great it's a great product it works really well it's very efficient like it's able to cool a massive room very quickly and the way that you install it is so

you place the outside unit on like a support that you hang out outside your window and so that's that's pretty big, but you can deal with that just fine. And the inside unit, you can place just near the window as well. They are connected by a hose, so you will have to do the thing where you have to isolate your window, wrap something around your window to make sure hard air doesn't come in. But once again, it's fine. And the thing is very efficient, which compensates heavily compared to other mobile units.

It's got an app, like I said. Do you think... How can I say this? I think it's fine. Uh-oh. She thinks it's bad. She thinks it's bad. Uh-oh. Here it comes. Here it comes. I think this app is fine. It's just it doesn't work with anything. So it doesn't work with HomeKit, not with no Matter support or whatever, not even the Samsung stuff, not even Google stuff. nothing. Alexa, nothing. However, the app is just fine.

It has so many features and I just want to cry, shout a cry of help to all the kind of home, furniture, hardware, manufacturers. Please stop giving names to every feature. For example, I will list you the names. I opened the app for my AC right now. It looks like this. Very basic. On-off button and a bunch of features that you can tweak in a long list. Let me read the list to you.

I can enable or disable iEcho. Sure. iEcho. iEcho. It's Amazon and Apple merged. Right? And it says it improves efficiency while maintaining your comfort. Okay. Sure, sure. Let me enable that, I guess. I will enable it. But then below that, there's a button that just says Echo. So there's IEcho, but there's also Echo.

And Echo is Auto Gear Control to save energy. Will quit automatically after eight hours. So I'm guessing this Echo feature is not the same as the IEcho feature. Somehow they are separate, but also they kind of do the same thing. Okay. There's one toggle that says iron. So, you know, like iron, the atom size particle. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you click on that to see the description.

It says negative iron sterilization. I'm guessing I want that on as well. Okay. Let me turn it on. I don't know. I like some ions. Yeah, sure. will I be breathing eons? How do you say that by the way? Is it I-O-N? I-O-N yeah. Yeah Ion. Then there's one that says boost and this one has no description. It's just a boost toggle so

I'm guessing it will boost the cold into my home which it is doing that. You're going to need to watch all 10 Fast and Furious movies because what that is is it's your NOS tank. So when you open up that valve and that's when you get that boost. You go extra fast on the straight line. Does my AC unit take off? Yeah, probably. Is it on wheels? It might. It is on wheels. So it goes to the other room really fast. Yeah, you can drive it then. Yeah.

It has a smart plate that you can put beneath the thing so that it locks in place. even though it's got wheels. So if you want to just keep it in one place and not have it move, you can use that. Okay. One other weird thing is a toggle that says gear. And it just says adjusting power to save energy. Okay. I'm starting to think this is a car. So you've got NOS. You've got gears. Yeah. I know.

And there's a toggle that says gas tank. Yeah. No, sorry. It doesn't actually. You can turn off and on the LED display on the front panel. So that's good if you don't want that to emit light at night. There's a silent mode. That makes sense. It's a smart sleep mode. So there's a silent mode that you want to put a toggle on at night so that you can sleep without the light. And so that it becomes a bit more silent. It turns the fan down inside.

But there's also a smart sleep one. And the smart sleep, it says it dynamically adjusts the temperature while you're sleeping. Okay. So that actually makes sense. So that is probably you set it at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know what that is, Celsius. Anyway, 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and it adjusts so that it keeps the room at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. But it does that by default. Oh, then I don't know. I tried.

You just put it in temperature and it tries to keep that temperature stable. There's a bunch more. Most of them make sense, though. The app is pretty cool. I think it's fine. It has a small widget with like a power on and off switch on the widget. So it's an interactive widget. You just tap the widget to turn it on and off. And that's very useful because since it is not compatible with HomeKit or anything else, I can have the iPhone's widget from that app on my Mac in the notification center.

So I can just swipe over notification center and turn on my AC from the Mac directly. And that's it. I think this thing that I've got in this room, this AC, is the most expensive thing I own right now besides the house. So, I'm almost thinking maybe I should try to bear the heat and sell the thing to make a bunch of buck right now. But also, I'm not doing that because I don't want to bear the heat. Yeah. You're sitting on gold over there. Yeah.

Oh, man. that's interesting for it to go from like an expensive thing, but not like the most expensive thing to the most expensive thing you own. That's, that's weird. In less than a month. Yeah. In less than a month. That's like all the people that have the Mac studios with 512 gigs of Ram. Like those things are selling on eBay. Those things are selling so much on eBay. Like it is wild, like over $10,000.

Oh my God. maybe my AC does have 512 gigs of RAM or something yeah man oh man well I'm glad you're staying cool yeah cause heat sucks it really does suck yeah I'd rather be cold than hot yeah same also it's Macron's fault so I should mention that I figured. Yeah, I figured. Yeah. I figured. Yeah. All right.

You know, a few years ago, sorry, you know, a few years ago during a heat wave, a similar heat wave, he said regarding the climate change, he said nobody could have predicted that it would have come so far. And it became a meme because climate change is like the most predicted thing in human history, probably. I don't know. You're fake science. I don't know. I don't know. I think it still snows in the winter, and obviously, you know, it's called global warming, and it still gets cold in the winter.

So, you know, climate and weather are absolutely the same thing. They're absolutely – I'm with macaroon on this one. Macaroon. I love when I get to play the ignorant American. I don't know why. That's my favorite bit. Play? Interesting. You're just like this off the air as well. Anyways, moving on. Anything else on this?

Did I say already that Macron sucks? Yes, I did. You did. You did. It's not exactly the same thing, but on the characters we play, I watched a horror movie this weekend called Undertone, which is about a podcaster who it's a horror movie. It was okay. but they kept like she put on the headphones and then like she and the co-host were like okay we need to get into character and I was like what do you mean get into character do we do that? am I a character? I don't think so is Chris a character? Chris Chris is just like himself but amped up a little bit extra thank you thank you yes that's

exactly what I do is I turn it up a little bit like I do it whenever there's a camera on me I turn up my personality a little bit I'm still myself, but it's like Spinal Tap. It goes up to 11. I just want to acknowledge that I think I can hear my cat. My cat is just purring in the monitoring. And yeah, sorry. If you're hearing vibration, that's probably my cat. We set the standard for audio quality here in Comfort Zone.

No, I love it. So I said I wouldn't do it. Literally seven episodes on episode 100, I said I wouldn't do it. But I did it. I have made an app. And not just an app for internal use. This app is going to come to the app store. You're stealing my segment. Oh, no, no, this is yours. This is yours. Okay. Interesting. I wasn't reading your notes. I'm reading my notes. So the app is called Parchment. I was really happy with that name. I was so glad it wasn't taken.

Couldn't believe it wasn't taken on the app store for something like that. But there's another company named that. So I named it Parchment Daily Note and Agenda. Because what this is, is this started as it was going to be an internal tool for myself. Like this just started as like, hey, I am really struggling with Riley and my ADHD of just like being able to deal with her, come back into my office and get back to work and pick up where I left off. And I was like, and I was actually, I actually missed a really important meeting because my, like I was dealing with her and I missed the calendar stuff.

And I was like, I need to fix this. So what this is, is it's an app that brings daily notes, tasks, and calendar events all into one spot. And there's two sections to this app. There is a top, and I'm just kind of giving the TLDR because I'm going to go into it. It's not on the App Store just yet. It's in App Review right now. I don't think it'll be out by the time this episode goes live. So I'm going to kind of give the background of what the app is and how I made it. And then next week or when it's out, I will talk about, I will go deep into it.

But the TLDR is basically there's two sections. The top section is your agenda. It shows there, and there's two sections in this agenda section. On the left side, it has your all-day tasks and all-day events. So these are the things that you can do at any time. They're not specific time-related. Then on the right side, there is your timed events and timed reminders. And I separated these because what I was finding is, so I was having, I've talked about it on the show, I've been having my tasks and events in my calendar all at once.

But when I have a really big day, there's stuff that gets mixed in there, and I don't see timed events at specific times, and I either miss things or almost miss things. So I wanted to separate these two out because they're not the same. I'm tired of everything treating all-day events and all-day tasks the same as timed events and timed reminders. So I separated these two out. There's also a section underneath there for daily notes, So you can do typed notes, as you would expect. But it also has support for Apple Pencil and the Pencil Kit tool set, so you can use it on the iPhone as well.

And I really wanted to have these two be together. I really wanted it so that, like, if I type something, I could underline it with the Apple Pencil or something like that. That was ridiculously hard. That was one of the hardest things I've dealt with in this. And I just, I realized even Apple doesn't do this in Notes. They separate it out in stuff like Freeform. You can draw anywhere, but you have to use text boxes to put text places. So I was like, even Apple hasn't figured this problem out. I'm not going to be able to. Oh, yeah.

I guess you can draw, but text can't be in the same place, right? Yeah. Or you could do text boxes in the drawing section, but it's not like free writing text like it would be in the text section. So I was like, even Apple hasn't solved this. And I kind of had it. I had it working, but the thing that would break is another thing that was really difficult, when it would sync to another device. So if I was handwriting stuff on my iPad and had type text mixed in there, go to my iPad,

the type text would warp, would do text warping, right? Where it goes off and the line breaks automatically. Wrapping? Wrapping. Wrapping. wrapping not working thank you wrapping uh i've literally been working if you need help with english let me know i will do yeah sorry um i've been i've literally been writing that anyways um so what would happen is the text would write rap and then like stuff would get mixed in with the

handwriting or drawings or stuff would be off it just it wasn't gonna work so i broke that up into to two sections i love this app guys i know i made it but this app has been killer for me this app has been saving my butt i just like being able to see my day organized has been really nice so the way this works is it uses event kit so it only works with reminders and and and the system calendar i it my development skills are not at the level of uh you know a big business boy

where i can do i didn't want to start dealing with todoist apis and like other calendar like outlook and stuff like that and i actually think with microsoft there was a thing back in the day that in order to get outlook calendar support you actually had to pay microsoft a million dollars I do not have a million dollars I don't know if that's still a thing but that was a thing back in the day Invest in yourself One million dollars If you spend a million dollars

you're going to be very compelled to earn that million dollars back This is my productivity advice Yeah First you have to have a million dollars I do not have a million dollars Go to a bank They'll figure it out This is not financial advice I need a loan for a million dollars What do you need the loan for so I can add Outlook support to my app that hasn't launched yet? Who wants to use Outlook? Nobody wants to use Outlook. A lot of people are forced to use Outlook. Exactly.

I apologize to all the people I have forced to use Outlook over the years. Mostly because I was forced to do it. Anyways. But I'm really happy with this app the way it's turned out. I've been doing a bunch of work on it. And I will say, I know how to make an app, but there's a lot of complexities into this app. I would not have been able to do it without Codex. So if you're, like, starchly against AI and, like, I won't do anything that AI has ever touched, sorry.

But I wouldn't have been able to make this without Codex. Like, just flat out, like, I don't have the time. And the amount of research that would have gone into it. So, for example, and Matt, you could probably help me with this one. Talk about this a little bit. Sync. I used Apple's CloudKit sync. Pretty straightforward as far as syncing goes. But, oh, boy, was it difficult. There are so many edge cases and so many things. I had to think about conflicts and mergers and all this.

Like, I spent four days just on sync. Oh, yeah. yeah there's a reason it takes a while for me to get that into my apps as well but yeah and you you can't just use a just can't use can't just use codex to do it you got to log into a web portal and do some things touch some databases unless your stupid computer friend does it for you as well you can tell your agent to do it for you i i'm just saying look i i did because

it was hard it was very difficult i did basically use codex to be like okay all right i get i need to log into this thing tell me the steps i need to do oh sure and it nailed it yeah it can help with that it nailed it it was it was right on the money i didn't just let it go ham and just like log in and do it for me no i i did i will say i had this error in xcode and i couldn't figure it out for the life of me it was like the most like it it was i couldn't understand it at all it was like the

most ambiguous error ever i've ever read i i didn't understand where this was coming from what it was talking about i like screenshotted it i was like i put it in codex i was like what is this talking about it couldn't quite figure it out so i did hey codex at at going to add xcode and figure this thing out for me figure out what's going on tell me don't make any changes just tell me what's going and it figured it out. It nailed it. I don't even remember what it was now. It was like right when I first started.

But yeah, sync was hard. You can't just do import cloud kit and call it a day. You gotta... That was ridiculously hard. But I have learned so much. This has really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. He said the thing. I said the thing. But I've learned so much. I've done a bunch of research. But Codex has helped me with building features.

And you know what's really good with AI? Debugging. If you have this really obscure bug that's hard to reproduce, that's hard to nail down, just tell it, hey, I'm experiencing X. Figure this out. And it does a really good job at it. the other thing that I really struggled with was design and I want to say a special thank you to Niléane you helped me a lot the other day you gave me a bunch of really good feedback

and I appreciate it I think I implemented just about all of it and it's really helped the app I think the thing that I was the most hesitant about but the thing that I absolutely love the most is at the top of the app there is a yesterday, today and tomorrow section and you can jump between the two and i was like i don't know if i need this i have a date picker already in here but you know what it's been now that i've been using it it's really nice to go back and view yesterday and see like hey did i leave something for myself over here or it's really nice to go into

tomorrow and and like make a little note for yourself for tomorrow and just be like hey when i sit down at my computer i now have that note because when you open the app it's always going to open to the current date. So if I, today, if I make a note for myself tomorrow, I come down and sit at my computer, open the app, it's going to be right there in my face in the today section because we're on tomorrow now. And it just, it was a really nice touch. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're welcome. I totally had all of that in mind. And it's not because I had suggested to move all the controls

that were at the top and there was an empty space there thought, what could be there? And came up with this just off the top of my head without thinking too much about it. You know what? It works really well. It works really well. But it's felt really good to push myself again. This is kind of the main point that I wanted to make. It's felt really good to learn something. I feel like I've been stuck the last few years. Like, I know how to make videos. I know the iPad. I know the iPhone.

I know the Mac. Like, I could talk about these stuff. Like, I don't feel like I've really been pushing myself to learn something new in a while. And this definitely has pushed myself. And I haven't made a video actually since WWDC because I've had some family stuff going on. And I haven't spent a lot of time at home, but I've had a lot of downtime. And just being able to kill time on my laptop working on this has been really, really nice. So it's been about two weeks, maybe three weeks, maybe a little over two weeks since I started working on this.

And I've already got like I'm very close to a shipping 1.0. I've submitted it for App Store review. I actually had a poll. I submitted it last night, but I had to pull that one because I found a bug this morning. So I pulled that, fixed the bug, submitted it again. So we'll see how long this takes. But my hope is that by the next episode, it's out. That's my hope. But yeah, this has been really killer. I know you guys have looked at it very briefly. Do you have any thoughts on it?

I think it's a good idea that should exist more, like the idea of being able to combine those three things, the reminders, the calendar, and being able to annotate stuff. And yeah, it's good that you found a way to make that work. Yeah, the reason why I have not been super interested or using it is because I don't find a useful at all. And that's totally okay. And I'm not expecting you guys to like,

oh, this is my new daily productivity. I know you, especially Niléane, you're not going to use this. I mean, maybe it might replace Stickies one day. Maybe. But I doubt it. I did add a yellow and orange theme just for you, just to see if I could tempt you. Whoa, I did not even see that. Oh, yeah, there's yellow and orange themes. There's yellow and orange icons. You can make the widget match the theme of the app, or you can just change the widget so that it's the system colors. I didn't want to mess with people's home screens.

The widget is one of my favorite things because it's just the agenda view. So you can have your full task and calendar right there. Just the agenda view right there on your home screen. The orange theme should be the default. What are you doing? I know productivity apps a little too well. You have to have the blue theme to be the default. It's what people expect. I know. I know. You know what? I don't even think the blue theme is the best. I use the dark green theme, which was added just for myself. Dark green.

I know. I love the dark green. Let me check it out. Let me see if I approve. No, sucks. The dark green looks good in dark mode. You got to use the dark green in dark mode. But yeah, there's an orange and a yellow theme. I added it specifically for you, Niléane. I added the pink theme for Danielle. Matt, is there a color you want? I haven't added a color for you. I have purple. I have purple, which is good. Yeah, there's purple. There's red, green, blue, purple, yellow, orange, pink, dark green.

I just pulled that off the top of my head. Wow, I'm impressed. And there's an app icon to match every single one of those. I want to know, Matt, what do you think of the changes I suggested? I want compliments from the designer in chief, Matt Birchler. I think the changes you suggested were good. You suggested things such as moving the buttons that do specific actions closer to the thing that they're actioning on, like the share button. If it's sharing the daily note, it should be next to the note, not at the top of the screen. So that works great. Yes.

I'm feeling good. Thank you. Yes. No, I definitely appreciate Niléane's feedback. I needed to find a way to make this about myself. It's okay. Originally, basically at the top, I had this idea of that, like, there would be a menu bar in the app and that was it. It didn't work, but I appreciate Niléane's feedback because it does work. One of my favorite features of this, of this app is it has natural language input for adding events and tasks.

And so basically I added natural language input for reminders before Apple did it, because there you can say they have it, but they don't because not only can you add the name of the event, you can say when it is the time you can switch the list you can switch you can tell it to repeat itself you can tell it uh the priority you can tell it uh location as well and what's nice is so i was trying to get the natural language to determine like hey is this an event or a task

and automatically figure it out but it wasn't it was very it didn't work so i i broke it up into two tabs. There's an event tab and a task tab. But if you just start typing and you're in the event tab, you can type task and it switches over to task automatically. If you're in the task tab and you want it to be an event, you can just type event and it switches over to the event tab. You don't have to tap anything. And then there is a detail section if you want to manually change some stuff. And there's a few things like notes and URLs and stuff like that that I wasn't able to add via natural

language input that you can manually add in there. In fact, I just found a bug that it doesn't really scroll very well, so I've got to fix that. Okay. How did you do the natural language parsing out of curiosity? Codex. I literally told Codex, I was like hey, this is how I want it to function. These are all the functions I want it to do. And I set it to just goal mode. and just let it run for like 20 minutes

and it figured it all out and it just knocked it out of the park because I'm not smart enough to figure that bit out. But hey, I will say I have reviewed all the code that is in this app. I have personally reviewed it. Okay. I was just curious. And if you want early access to it, it's available on my Patreon for Patreon members. That's a Patreon perk. Nice. I'm pretty happy with it. I like... Oh, and, okay, love this feature. One more thing. Okay, so for reminders, if you go into the agenda section and if you tap on them, it deep links to the reminders app.

On the Mac, super easy. On the iPhone, and I'm kind of worried this might get me rejected, there isn't any documentation for this. So this was another thing that I sent Codex to goal mode for and just let it run, and it figured it out for me. Like, this would have taken me weeks of trial and error trying to figure this out because it is obscure. That app is never coming out. I might have to pull that feature for iOS. I'm kind of worried. Because it's such a good feature. Look, if Apple rejects it, I'm going to email PR. I will email PR.

Here's what I'll say. This is your first app submitted to the App Store? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If this gets through on any of your first three submissions, good for you. okay you are you are i mean maybe you've you've done it absolutely perfectly and i'm just an absolute moron it took it takes me especially when my first app came out i submitted like five builds before they were like they're like did you think about this did you think about that where's the link to this uh it's crazy so i wish you did go i did go so one of the things i did do

with Codex was, hey, pull all the App Store rules, look at our app, and make sure we are, like, compatible. The only thing it said that we're probably in, like, the gray area for is the deep linking for reminders on iOS and iPadOS. So we'll see. But I made sure, you know, all my privacy policy stuff is there, all the accessibility stuff is there. That was one thing I really appreciated Codex's help for, was I pointed it, I told it to basically audit my app and figure out what accessibility features we need to add.

And it did a really good job of figuring all that out. Because I didn't want to leave that out, but also I'm not a big accessibility user, so I didn't really know. So I appreciated that. All right. So that's it. Hopefully that comes out soon. And if I get it, Matt, should we make a bet? Oh, boy. If I get it under three submissions, it gets approved in under three submissions,

first time we see each other in person, because I think it'll happen at some point, first time we see each other in person, you buy me a beer. If it's over three submissions, I buy you a beer. Sure. We can make this bet. Let's make it five beers. Five beers? Yes. okay what's a BO I mean that's some steak well now they're expensive everything is expensive some steak okay alright alright well we'll see well good luck Chris

I'm very excited for this for you I you are going down a familiar road where I have trod as well which is none of these apps do exactly what I want oh no i think i know what i'm about to do and so i hope it resonates with other folks as well because it is cool yeah and it feels so good and i will say i have a list of apps that i kind of want to make so i've i i the other app that i've made that i haven't talked about i don't think i've

talked about on the show is balance audio um because one thing i am terrible at is getting all three of our audio tracks to be the same level. So I made an app that's literally a front end for FFM peg, because yes, I could do this in the terminal with FFmpeg, but I didn't want to. But it's a front end for FFmpeg, and it Oh, you two. Wait, why is it a challenge, Chris? Because you two have the worst mic techniques out of anyone I have ever podcasted with. I can hear myself. I'm on one side, and now

I'm all the way on the other side. And Riverside also tries to auto-balance things, too, I think, because when you guys were backing away, one of your air conditioners went way up, and all of a sudden I could hear your AC. Mine's off. So it was Matt Birchler's. Mine is roaring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So, anyway, so, basically, this app that I made, this is technically the first native app I have ever successfully made. Native to Electron? Oh, good for you, Chris.

Native to macOS. Good for you. It is a native Mac OS app. I've made some web apps and stuff before. And actually, I did make one Mac app that started off as a web app, and I was like, this should be a Mac app. And I put an electron wrapper around it. But, yeah, that one I don't actually really use anymore. But anyways, balanced audio. It's really nice front end for just, like, getting our audio tracks to be the same level consistently. But yeah, anyway, so that's my app development journey.

I'll dive deeper into how I've been using Parchment and stuff once it's officially out. But I will say it's just going to be $5. I've already kind of committed to that. It's going to be a $5 one-time purchase app. I don't think I'm going to be adding a bunch of stuff in the future. I do have an ideas for a 2.0. But other than like the yearly here's the new features from Apple kind of thing, I don't think I'll be adding a ton to it. And it's really an app for me. Like I'm making it for me and I'm just going to release it on the app store because I think other people are going to benefit from it.

Nice. All right. Should we get to our challenge? Yeah. Yes. All right. Matt, it was your challenge. Yes. And in possibly a comfort zone first, we've all theoretically done completely different things. Because the challenge was to redo your favorite challenge that you have ever issued. Do not tell your co-hosts until next week what you've chosen. Now, I can go first, if that's okay. Please. Please. Okay.

I went back all the way back to the origins of Comfort Zone, episode four. Whoa. Oh. I know. I was like, I remember issuing this challenge, but when? And it was so far back. It wasn't in Notion. It wasn't in Obsidian. I literally had no show any notes. It would have been in Notes. It would have been in Notes. It would have been in Notes. You're right. Apple Notes is where it would have been. Yep. That was the go-to, by the way.

We should go back to that. Oh, disagree. No, we're not moving again. I'm tired of moving. Tired of moving. We're good. But the Comfort Zone database did help me find it. because I just searched for it and found it. It was great. So I went back to episode four, which was reorganize your travel bag. Oh, no. And I have had the same backpack for seven years, I think. I have the Brevity camera backpack.

Seven years without a backpack? Backpack? Wow. Which is a 14 liter little baby backpack. It's a camera backpack ideally, but I never carry a camera in it. It's just a nice little backpack. But I finally got a new backpack. And this one's for Niléane. This is the I don't even know what this brand is. It's the one the jet laggers wear. Oh, really? You see all the time if you watch jet lag,

which, Chris, you totally should. hashtag sponsored apparently code open paxie but theirs are so freaking colorful oh yes they got very colorful ones I got the Chris Lawley edition just the black just the man version I don't love having a flashy backpack or like flashy luggage I just like to be generic as possible I mean I do the same thing like when I bought my backpack I bought the black one because I don't want to stand out as having

a camera backpack. Or maybe you're just a man and you're afraid of colors. Would you like to look at my app and see how many colors? There is no pure black, by the way. Orange is not the default for some reason. I don't get it. Because productivity apps have to be blue. Who says that? The people. Men say that. Yeah. True. He said it made Dark Note the default. anyway i got a new backpack uh and the reason i did this is i was going on a one day business trip

uh flying to atlanta one day coming back the next day and i was like i have an opportunity to do what i've always dreamed of doing which is not take a suitcase on a trip oh so good and i did it but i didn't have room in the smaller backpack so the the brevity one is 14 liters uh this one is kind of the smaller one that they offer but it's 28 liters so lots more space compared to what i'm used to and i just it's got little compartments in there so it's it's easy to kind of put your clothes in

one area your electric electronic stuff your electronic ziploc bag let's be honest in another area um your t-shirts you're using to carry new vision pros that can go in there super simple all works great and uh it was i i came back a changed man i don't i don't know how i'm ever going to use a suitcase again if it's a two or three day trip i'm trying to cram it in here because it was so liberating not worrying about cart like space in the plane not worrying about like when you're

getting up like having to reach up and have to be like excuse me sorry i need to uh grab mine like you just pull your bag out from under the seat you get going it's incredible the last few times I've flown I literally just traveled with a backpack it is amazing yeah it's nice so anyway that's that's exciting I'm very happy about this I love it though you need to get some stuff for inside your backpack that's on Ziploc bags and t-shirts no I'm pretty happy with that system that's going fine

anyways uh anyways uh one of my favorite challenges we ever or i ever issued because it was you had to pick a challenge you issued uh was automate your startup routine and if you guys cast your mind back this was the one where i built uh an automation that launched all my apps but then looked at what keyboard i had plugged in and picked a wallpaper that matched the color of that keyboard if you all remember that um so i went a little bit of a different route this time

um i went and i set up a codex automation to look for important emails because as we've established it it i get a lot of email so it pulls it looks through my email it looks through my inbox my later for my same later folder same news folder looks for the important emails looks for message important unread messages and then pulls 10 news articles of things that I'm into. And it has been spot on. It has been fantastic. I love this thing. Okay, okay. How does it pull the news articles you're interested in?

Web searches. And it pulls based on, so I told it basically, hey, these are the things I'm interested in. Be specific to these categories. Look for breaking news, industry leaks things like that and then um uh it just goes from there i didn't say 10 specific i think i said five to 10 articles uh fun fact yesterday when it ran it pulled my installer piece it had a thing about like uh being productive on the ipad is back again that's how it phrased it

or something like that i was like oh what's this and i clicked on it and it was me and i was like oh I do love that's the height of artificial intelligence let's see what news would Chris Lawley be interested in oh here's an interview with Chris Lawley yeah I was like uh you don't need to include it I did I did modify it after that I was like you don't need to include anything that that has my name on it that's a whole separate automation I'm not I'm not that vain you probably think the song is about

you i'm not that vain but i do have a google alert set up somewhere that i have no idea uh that will every like six months will email me when someone links to something that says virtualer yeah i don't know where this was set up and it's never like tech stuff it's always like some unrelated virtualer out there that triggers out a google alert i have the same thing and it's only ever fires for some reason when it's like 9to5Mac or MacRumors like other websites will link to me but it never fires off but i can't figure out how to turn it off i don't remember where it is

like i don't want this anymore i set it up when i like first started i was like obsessed with you do you want it i don't i know you do look it's nice when people link to me but i usually find out other ways i usually find out before this so Niléane, what did you do? What did you do? Okay, so I was looking on the conference database which episode it's from, but I can't find it.

I know this is a challenge that I issued at least. You bought a new iPhone, everybody. What I really did as a challenge is change something about your music listening setup. I knew it. And I'm pretty sure that's very early as well, like one of the few first episodes. But yeah, I can't find it in the database. Maybe Matt can do some magic and find it. I'm looking for it right now. Okay. So anyway, I redid that challenge. And what I did is I swapped out Doppler, the music player on iOS and macOS.

I'm no longer using it on macOS already. I'm using Swinsian, as you know. But I was still using it on iOS. But I swapped it out for Plexamp. Plexamp is an app made by Plex. And it's a music player. So that if you have music stored on your Plex server, you have Plexamp that you can install. And it's a full-fledged music player, and it's very advanced. I probably already talked about Plexamp before.

As a reminder, it's very advanced. So many audio file features that most people probably don't even need to hear about. For example, all of that bit perfect playback, nonsense. If you want it, you can have it with Plexamp. One very funny thing about Plexamp is that it lets you show, like a display of visualizer for your music,

just like in the old days, in the old days of Windows Media Player. Nice. What was it? Winamp. Let me show you maybe what that looks like on camera. Basically, it's on the now playing view. You can have that. You can tap it to switch it between the cover. and the visualizer. And you can swipe, yes. You can swipe to switch the visualizer. Oh, nice. That's cool. Yes, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is like early iTunes days for me. Yeah. It's 2001 right here. It's very nice. Very nice. Actually, I forgot that it's kind of satisfying to watch as you're listening to something. Especially if you... I tend to do this sometimes. Most of the time I listen to music casually in the background of while I'm doing something else. Many times as well, I'm listening to music like I'm focused on it.

I want to be focused on the music I'm listening. And actually having a dumb visualizer like this on the screen is pretty cool to be able to focus on your music. And it's very hypnotizing because it's kind of like you're seeing the music move, which is the whole point, I guess, of a visualizer. Anyway, so Plexamp is pretty great. One funny thing is I stumbled, while researching some things about it when I was setting it up, I was searching on Reddit, and I found a Reddit thread

where somebody posted on the Plex subreddit, I believe, that the Plexamp team no longer exists. There's only just one guy, a single guy still working on Plexamp. And I believe that he's a guy who used to be, who used to work for Plex, but then he was either let go or he left, I don't know. But now he's still working on Plexamp. With Plex's grace, like Plex allows him to keep working on Plexamp,

even though he's no longer working at the company. And he still wants to work on it because he loves the app. And it's like his passion project now, even though it still bears the name of a company and that's not his. It's kind of weird, this arrangement that they have. But I guess it's working because, yeah, on this subreddit post, people were like, yeah, it's been like this for a while. Apparently, this was not news to some people. It's been like this for a while. Anyway, yeah, Plexamp is still pretty great. You should check it out.

The UI is kind of dated, I think. Well, there's only one guy's working on it. It has, yes. But it has its own style, and it's not that bad. It's all right. I like it. And also, since it just syncs with my Plex server at home, this saves me the hassle of having to sync over the files, like locally on the iPhone, which was what I had to do with Doppler. There you go. Okay. All right. I like this.

That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. You didn't have to buy a new iPhone for it. You did not. Exactly. It was episode 25, by the way, you issued this challenge, which was to stop using Apple Music. Oh. That's how I phrased it. All right. There you go. I stopped using Apple Music again. that was a rough week nah you're fine speaking of rough weeks oh no it's my time to share your channel I found a new app boys it's a Mac app

and it's amazing and you will have to use it for a whole week no no no it's called Snick So S-N-I-C-K Snick What this app does Is it makes sound As you scroll Oh Jesus Christ It's clack for your scroll wheel It's clack for your scroll wheel And it's awesome You should try it On the website you can actually try it out If you go on the website there's a toggle And you can There's a live demo It's pretty cool

why there's a bunch of sound you can choose from you can tweak the sounds if you're using a track pad it will actually trigger the hap the haptic engine below the track pad so you can feel it as well it's seven dollars i i have to pay money to torture myself you you you kind of do yes yes because it is the point of the show I think you will end up loving it No I won't I kind of love it

It's the perfect companion to Clack and everything else It's a companion to every app actually It makes every app better Every single app No this is going to ruin Parchment Every single app that scrolls You're going to ruin Parchment so this is a challenge for one week until next time trackpad haptics yes who wants trackpad haptics while you scroll well you in one week you will have been convinced yes

i'm buying it right now me too i should buy it there you go you haven't even bought it yet I'm waiting for the challenge just like you guys. Don't bother, bonnet. I was like, okay, wait for the challenge. This will be fun. So you don't even know. This could be like malware. This could be like hijacking. Nah, it's fine. All of our source code. It's fine. This person's going to see three purchases like right in quick succession be like, we've gone viral. It's happening. There you go. I mean, now that we've mentioned it on the show, definitely viral.

Remember the success of Clack, thanks to me. Oh, God. I am not convinced. No, I am convinced that you single-handedly pushed the success of Clack. There you go. Not necessarily a compliment. I'm taking it as a compliment. Thank you very much. 7.70 euros. That's a good enough conversion, right? Okay. All right.

Well, let's just wrap up the show here. And my end of the show question for you two is, what's something you're excited about right now? Oh, you know, you know, I have a perfect answer for you, Christopher Lawley of California. Oh, no. Yes. What I'm excited about is that we are in the year of our Lord, whatever Lord that is, 2026. Zork. Yes. Palpatine. And next year is 2027. And 2027 is the year of the French presidential election, which means Macron is on his way home.

Like, wherever his home is, it's not in the French presidential palace. He'll be gone. You know where his new home is going to be? It's going to be your next-door neighbor. He's buying the house next door to you. You know, I would kind of love to. It would be a Dennis the Menace thing. You would just mess with him all through the log. I think I deserve to be his neighbor after all this. Bart Simpson. It would be the Bart, it would be the Bart, it would be the Simpsons episode when George H.W. Bush

moves into Springfield and Bart just messes with him. Okay. I believe you. Okay. Matt, what about you? Oh boy. Um, I'm genuinely excited about using Snick. Ugh. But I'm also excited about the World Cup. I watched my first match yesterday. Are you Canadian now? Ew. Sometimes I wonder. Why Canada? Because they're close by

and I think they like soccer. I don't know. They do? I don't know. Yeah, by the way, I'm missing a match right now. Brazil, Japan is happening right now. I'm missing it for you. Actually, I'm not watching it. I'm not going to watch it. Yeah, I'm protesting the World Cup because of all their human trafficking and human rights violations and stuff. So, yeah. Oh, okay. You're trying to out-woke me? Yeah, I'm the wokest of us.

Remember when I was just all excited about history started in 1776? Anyways, I'm excited. I just finished 007 First Light. It was a great game. If you haven't played it, go play it. Oh, yes. Go play it. I'm actually excited about it. I just finished Death Stranding 2, which I've been playing for almost a year. What year is it? It's one of the most incredible endings any game I've ever played. It's so good. Unbelievable. I just installed Snick. I think this is the best thing ever. All right. Well, on that note,

thank you all so much for listening or watching. We are on YouTube. Big thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast after all. Thank you all for listening, and have a great day. It's actually clicking as I scroll. It's awesome. Oh, God. All right. I love it. Thumbnail.