This Is a Big Week for Apologies

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and every week I am joined by two stunning, but they might kick you while you're down, co-hosts. First up, Matt Bursler. Matt, how are you doing? Chris, I'm feeling apologetic today. You should. And we're also joined by Neelion. Neelion, how are you doing? I'm fine. I guess I decided to wear sunglasses today. Nice. Just pulling off the Beatles look.

Don't ask me any questions. I need my coffee. Totally not because I look extremely tired underneath. That's okay. I'm extremely tired as well. I want to take a minute and thank both of you for hosting last week and carrying on without me and doing all the editing and publishing and all that stuff. I really appreciated that. I was not thinking about the words I said a couple episodes ago because I was right and you were wrong. I have no reason to think about that.

But I was sick with COVID. And, oh, boy, did nobody want to hear me talk on that day that you guys recorded. So I appreciate what you guys did. Though, apparently, I was so sick, I don't even remember popping on for, like, 30 seconds, you know? I was going to say, you were here briefly. yeah i was so i don't even remember that but also is it just me or did i sound like john vorhees like uh it's it sounded very very similar to john vorhees to me it's quite the compliment honestly

he's got an amazing voice uh but uh i i have uh no idea uh was that was that ai trained on me like did you guys like give him my youtube videos or something or am i overthinking this well open ai I did that. We didn't need to do that. Every AI service has stolen my YouTube videos. Thank you, AI services. I appreciate you. That was sarcasm. That was just a prompt where I said, you are Christopher Lolly, and you love iPads, and you hate Daft Punk,

and you keep reminding everyone that you hate Daft Punk, and that's it. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, that's good. I appreciate it. When it popped on, I was like, Wait, did you guys get John to do this bit or something? But no, I don't know why. Maybe it was just my sickly, addled brain that was just confusing everything. It probably would have been hilarious to have me on the show, but I would have been miserable. So I appreciate the both of you for carrying on without me and taking care of the show.

So thank you. You're welcome. Of course. So first up in our document, Matt, what do you got for us this week? Yeah, so this is a big week of apologies for me. So I'm sorry to you, Chris, for really hitting you while you were down. I appreciate it. Unnecessary. No, it was. I would do it again. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. No, I seriously did not get mad at all. It was hilarious.

Loved it. Every second of it. Not mad. Really enjoyed it. So the other thing I need to apologize for, I actually am kicking myself a little bit for doing. Last week, I talked about Overcast and its new update that came out and the things I liked and don't like about that. And right at the end, we snuck in an unintentional dig at another podcast app. Neelian and I both said we don't love Pocket Casts and we don't know why, but we just don't like it. And I hung up the call that week and I just kind of sat there like, hmm, do I not like Pocket Casts?

And so I installed it again immediately afterwards and I've been using it for the past week. And I need to apologize to Pocket Casts. I need to apologize to everyone on social media who likes Pocket Casts and told me about that. I like Pocket Casts as well now. Oh, OK. Were your mentions flooded with people outraged? Not flooded. My mentions are very rarely flooded with anything. But I did post over the weekend, last weekend, I did post something about an annoyance I had with how Pocket Cast works

right after I'd installed it. And I got lots of people messaging me saying, well, the more annoying response was you're using it wrong. But then lots of other people were like, Here's some settings you can maybe change to make your life a little better. But I've been using it for the past week and I like it actually a good amount. I could see myself using it for a while now. And I got thinking about why it wasn't a big thing to me.

Like it wasn't the podcast app that I chose personally. And I think that the thing that it was for me is that Pocket Cast didn't have its specific quirk. It didn't have its specific thing that it did that the other apps didn't do that I used. Overcast was the best for clip sharing, in my opinion. And so I liked it for clip sharing. Castro had its cool queue and inbox system. And Apple's podcast app has just a beautiful UI. And the transcripts now are awesome. Those are all kind of unique things that are best for them.

And I didn't know what that thing was for Pocket Casts. And it turns out, I don't think it's best at anything, but it's good at pretty much everything. And that's worth something as well to me. So I want to talk about the things I liked about it. There's four main things that really drew me to it. But yeah, I don't know if, Neelian, you wanted to change your answer from last time or add some context as to why you don't love it. And Chris, we didn't have you on, so I'm curious if you have any experience with Pocket Casts or have opinions on it.

To be fair, Pocket Cast looks good. The UI looks good and it's fully featured. But I'm just not a fan of the way everything's laid out, so to speak. I guess I don't have any specific grievances with the app. I just never was able to stick to it. Is that a satisfying answer? I'm sure not.

That's very similar to me, I think. It's like that Mad Men meme of like, I don't think about you at all. It just wasn't on my radar for a long time. Yeah, I find podcast apps to be probably one of the harder apps to design. Because if you think about what a good podcast app should be, You should basically never be interacting with the UI or rarely interacting with the UI, I should say. So like most of the time you're using a podcast app, you have headphones in or you're just playing audio or whatever,

whether it's through the speaker of your phone, headphones, HomePods, whatever. It doesn't matter. So for me, like a good podcast app is one that just gets out of my way and one that I don't have to fiddle with a bunch. I've been a big Overcast user for years because Overcast did that for me. It got out of the way, but if I ever needed to get into the app to maybe one of the hosts, like on our show, we talk about things we love. So maybe a host is talking about a tech gadget or an app or something that they really like.

And I want to be able to pull that up, so I need to be able to get to the show notes quickly and stuff like that. And Overcast was that for me for a very, very long time. And it still is for the most part. I'm still using Overcast. I didn't want to be one of those people that's like, oh, it's completely different. I'm going to jump ship. I wanted to give it time to kind of settle and see, you know, what I like. And there's a few things I like about it. There's some stuff I don't like about it. But for me, the way I've always used Overcast, ever since Marco added playlist support, I have a playlist called All Unplayed Podcast.

And basically what this is, is every episode of a show that isn't played that's in my podcast app goes here. And then I use the prioritization feature in podcast to prioritize more news related shows. So like connected or upgrade, like those get put at the top automatically and stuff that isn't as newsy. that's maybe like more video game related or something like our show that's kind of a little less um you know time specific like there's a few things like my topic is a little more time

specific this week but for the most part our stuff is very general uh and could be listened to at any point but i i really like that i am curious to play with castro and pocket cast again i have used both of those in the past, but I never really used them for very long and kind of always went back to Overcast just because the two big things in Overcast for me, SmartSpeed and Voice Boost. And none of these other podcast apps have even come close to being able to match that. I don't have nearly as much time as I used to when I first got into podcasts. When I first got into podcasts,

well, actually, the second time I really got into podcasts, let's go with that. I had a job where I I was driving up and down. If anyone knows California, basically, I was driving up and down between Bakersfield and Modesto doing third-party IT work. I spent most of my day in the car. It was great if you were a podcast fan. But now I'm self-employed. I work from home. I don't have a commute. So I don't have a ton of time for podcasts. So something like Smart Speed is very important to me to get through big chunks of podcasts and stuff like that.

I actually think I looked and I have close to 500 hours of time saved thanks to SmartSpeed. So it's kind of a valuable feature to me. Okay, sweet. So I think another reason for you, I'll skip to one of my annoyances. The iPad app for Pocket Casts is the most cliche iPhone app blown up to iPad size. It's literally the same UI. There's no columns.

It's exactly the same UI, even in landscape. So that's one thing. And Castro, I still think, does not have an iPad app at all. So I think you just run the iPhone one. Although even Stage Manager, that's better. Yeah, that is kind of the nice thing about Stage Manager. I have a bunch of apps that are iPhone-only, like Instagram, for example. Whenever I publish a video or something like that, I post from my iPad things to Stage Manager, and I just use the iPhone app.

Okay, so the things that I respect about Pocket Casts and drew it to me. The first one, I already mentioned, it is everywhere. It is on every platform. So iPhone, iPad, Mac, but it's also on Windows. It's also on Android, and it's a good app on Android. It's not just the crappy version of the app that's on Android, which some apps that make the jump do. It's very good there. There is a web app too, right? There is a web app. And the web app is so good.

But is it on webOS? I mean, I bet you could make it work. I'm just saying, you know, webOS, you can't do real work unless it's on webOS. That's true. I do most of my work on webOS. Yeah, there you go. Okay. and my podcast listening now because of the web. But yeah, it's everywhere and it's so good. And I really, really like that. And I have to remind myself that we live in a niche that only uses Apple devices. But the average iPhone user has a Windows computer.

The average Android user might have an iPad. So like people are cross-platform very, very often. And I could see why if you want to have your podcast sync between your non-Apple devices and your Apple devices, This would be very, very compelling. So that's one. The other thing is I currently feel quite strongly this is the best now playing screen in any podcast app. It is very, very good.

It has larger touch targets. Everything is one tap away. One of the complaints I had last week with Overcast, the new update, is that they've moved some things to be two taps away. That used to be one tap, and that's slightly annoying. but it's slightly annoying every time. And they also have gestures. So you can swipe between the pages kind of like with the old Overcast UI, but it's the full screen that moves. And so you have the full screen for chapters, the full screen for show notes. It's the best. I am so, so happy about it.

Like even little things like on the now playing screen, it shows you a progress bar for the chapter you're currently in. So you know how far you have left in that chapter. That's really good. It supports YouTube style timestamps in the show notes. So a lot of shows will not do full good podcast chapters like we do. They'll just put like YouTube style like timestamps in the description for when things happen. And those are tappable. Every app does that now. Even Apple Podcasts and iOS 18 is going to add that.

But it's so good to have it here. And it's just it's just very, very nice. Oh, and the fourth thing is good discovery. I think Castro and Overcast have basically zero discovery. They have a discovery page, but like I never, ever use it. Apple podcast is pretty good here. And Pocket Cast has an actually quite good discovery page. And I think that's awesome to surface more podcasts. So those are some of the things that just like really stood out to me. And I think the one thing that is going to, that draws me the most is the really good now playing thing or now playing screen because chris like you said i just wanted to get out of my way

i just want to do what i want to do quickly and that's what the screen lets me do so i'm quite uh quite happy with that how is uh pocket cast like do they have a voice boost and smart speed feature how is that like i said i haven't used it in a very long time so i'm kind of curious yeah so this is where the show is not a official review show i have not used all the features they do have a voice boost and a strip silence feature how good they are I do not know because I don't use either of those feature oh yeah so I used to use the smart speed

and trim silence and whatever each app calls it but I found there were moments in podcasts were like I wasn't getting the joke because I wasn't hearing the awkward silence or I wasn't hearing the cadence of the person talking and like like how that impacted like what they were saying. And so I turned it off and I'm actually okay with it. So I'm surely losing time, but I think just I'm currently in a more Zen state for podcasts where I don't need to listen at full speed. I don't need to strip silences out. I'm going to listen to a little less, but I'm going to hopefully enjoy it more, but you know, everyone to each their own.

I don't really care what anyone else does, but yeah, that's the, that's been working for me. So I have not used these features. I assume they're okay at the very least, but I don't have an experience with them yet. Interesting. So there is two things that are very annoying to me about this app. One is there's no clip sharing, which is a real bummer for me. I clip share basically every day I listen to podcasts. Sometimes it's for posting online. Sometimes it's just for me to like save a little segment that I think was fun and want to just save for later.

Because podcasts are very ephemeral just in general. So I like to kind of have like little clips that I can go back to in here. No clip sharing. Overcast and Castro have it. Apple Podcasts with its transcripts has a unofficial screen share or clip sharing thing that we talked about last week where you can just record your screen on the transcript page. That's pretty awesome. Anyway, that's the thing that I know most people don't care about. And the other thing that's really annoying to me is what I posted on social media is when you add a new show in Pocket Casts, it marks every episode as unplayed.

And it adds it to all of your filters. So whatever filter you have set up for new releases or favorite shows or whatever, it adds sometimes thousands of episodes to that filter. And then you have to go in and there's a couple taps to select all. And you have to listen to them all. You have to listen to them all. Yeah, that's the one downside is you have to listen to every single episode. When you subscribe to a podcast, especially if it has more than a thousand episodes, some big guy named Bubba shows up at your door and he just stands over your shoulder,

arms crossed, looking down on you and is just like, all right, I'm here until you finish those. Yep. Yeah, just out of camera, he's over here. What's his name? Bubba. Bubba? Bubba. His name's Bubba. Okay. Like in Star Wars. That's a southern name. It's from another galaxy. Anyway. Basically. So, yeah. So, that's annoying. I've heard from numerous Pocket Cast users that it's actually a feature, not a bug. I disagree.

But it's not the end of the world. I think that's one thing that I did not mention last week. One reason that I enjoyed going back to Apple Podcasts is because it has taught me not to care about those things because Apple Podcasts doesn't care as much about marking episodes as read and unread and stuff. You can just poke around your library or the up next queue and pick something to play

and it's alright. You don't have to manage filters and mark episodes as read. You can add new podcast and it won't add the back catalog to you to your library or something and that's that's been nice yeah but but like even apple podcast has like a latest episodes screen which is basically what i replicated in every app and they only add one episode they don't add like every single one there so uh yeah it is it is strange so the way i do podcasts is i like to have it like a mail app basically like i want an inbox with all the new episodes that come in and i want to archive the

ones i don't want to listen to and i want to listen to the ones just right there um apparently some people get really aggressive with playlists and like create a queue of things they're actually going to listen to um chris it sounds that's more sounds like that's more like what you do where you have multiple playlists i would say it's it's kind of more of a blend between what you do and that it's i just have one playlist and every new episode of a show that comes in so um say uh App Stories has a new episode, but I haven't even listened to the one the week before.

So both episodes of App Stories will be in there. The playlist is sorted by oldest to newest, but then there are a few podcasts that use, like there's a priority setting in Overcast the playlist that you can prioritize a few podcasts. So news-related shows always get put at the top of that queue. everything else just filters in oldest to newest. And if there isn't something I want to listen to, like maybe, you know, there's an episode about the Mac

and I'm just like, well, that's, you know, that's not for me. Like I'm not the Mac person. I'll just delete that one. No big deal. And then move on to the next thing. So it's kind of a blend of that. And I haven't really found a podcast app that does that natively without having you to do some kind of configuration to make it, you know, come in like that. But the nice thing about that is I can literally just jump into my podcast app and resume that playlist or tell, you know, the assistant to resume.

And it should do that, though. I think the shortcut support might be gone in the new Overcast. I don't know. I've been sick with COVID. I haven't had a chance to play with it all that much. So the last thing, I guess, pricing, Pocket Cast is a subscription. But take all of my opinions with a grain of salt because I bought the app for like $7 10 years ago. And apparently that gave me a lifetime subscription for free. So nice. Yeah, I've also got that. And I often won't forget that you subscribe nowadays.

Yeah. So yeah, I apologize. It's pretty good. And yeah, just good vibes. I guess question for the audience. Do you accept Matt's apology? I like that at Matt Birchler flood his mentions don't forget that he said he doesn't have a lot of mentions just Matt Birchler's mentions and no email to me at Chris Wally as we will talk about in just a second

I don't need any more email please no more email never any more email transition it would probably be really important for us to talk about apple intelligence uh it is now in the 18.1 beta uh despite what apple said at wwdc it is not shipping in 18.0 it is shipping in 18.1 some stuff is here some stuff isn't half features for some features that are here it's very confusing and if you're in europe nothing's here so there you go well yes i well sort of kind of i i saw something go by i i don't know i i i saw something that uh well i guess we'll just rip that band-aid

off right now but uh i'm assuming neilion you haven't used it at all right no okay i did see something go by about how apple intelligence may come to europe but just on the mac people have been able to enable it on the mac already i think okay and by switching the region to the us and Switching the language to US English on the Mac? The proper English. Not the king's English. The president's English.

Sure. But yeah, on iOS, you just cannot install it. Interesting. Not available. Well, guys shouldn't hold corporations accountable. Let them have free reign, and then you can get Apple Intelligence. So, you know, that is a joke. Please do not at me. But yeah, so I'm assuming, Matt, have you tried Apple Intelligence? I have. As we've spoken numerous times on this podcast, I recklessly install every beta as soon as it's possibly available.

So I have it on my iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac are all Apple Intelligenced up. Even though you're the one that told us, do not install beta on your production machine. Correct. Still mad. I'm kind of in this weird spot because I have to do my iPadOS and iOS 18 walkthrough. So I have my review unit iPad still, luckily. Luckily, I still have them. So I have one iPad with 18.1, one iPad with 18.0, and then I have some review unit iPhones still. So one iPhone on 18.1 and one iPhone on 18.0.

It is a very confusing time here. And whenever I pick up a device, I'm like, which one are you again? So, yeah, talk about privilege, I know, whatever. But I've been playing around with it, and there's some stuff I like, and there's some stuff I didn't. And I figure we can just go through this stuff as a group. Neelion, if you have any questions, feel free to jump in. I'm sorry you haven't had a chance to try it. But let's start with the new Siri. I love the animation, but the actual Siri, when it comes to asking it questions, has not been great.

And I want to caveat all this by saying this is very much a beta. This is obviously not the shipping version. stuff can definitely change but this is the stuff that they have shipping to developers right now um and i will very much say that like the question so i talked about this in the MacStories team discord i get one of the very first questions i asked the new series softball question like literally the softest of softball questions just because i wanted to see if i could get it when was the next when is the next formula one race uh and it gave me balray balrayne in like 2023 so the opening race to last season not even the current season uh we're currently on summer

break for formula one so the next race isn't actually until i believe end of august isn't that right matt end of august we're end of august yep yeah so didn't even come close it didn't even give me that a future race it gave me a past race uh and that was pretty disappointing uh matt have you had any better experiences with that i okay so i haven't read up any on any articles of like here's what's new or here's what's currently available in the beta here's what's not yet so from my perspective siri is exactly the same i i cannot tell any difference from what it's outside

of the animation it seems exactly the same to me yeah it's right as much as it is it's wrong as much as it always has, like, I don't see anything smart or clever about it that wasn't there before. So from my understanding, and I could be wrong about this because I read all of this stuff while I had COVID. So if you've had COVID, you know, you're not exactly in the right mind when you have that. So from my understanding, all the scraping and web stuff and like the information should be there, but the app intense stuff where it digs into your task manager or your email app or something

That stuff isn't there right now. So it should still be able to answer a simple question, like when is the next Formula One race, not when was the Formula One race opener for 2023. But anyways. I have a question. Yes. I'll just do this from time to time. So I have a question. When you said this in the chat, I replied with a screenshot of my old Siri, and I asked the same question

did it get did it get it right? I don't remember because my brain was shot let's see if I can let's see if I can oh my god that was a bad question no it's okay I have the old theory right here when is the next Formula 1 race? actually this one does get it right wait no that's when is the next Formula 1 race is the next one the Dutch Grand Prix

that's what it told me it is the next one so old Siri got it right I'm going to ask new Siri again I just asked new Siri and new Siri did get it right for me when is the next Formula 1 race okay so it got it right now but it when it when it originally launched it did not get it right so uh okay it's always learning classic siri one one thing i do love about the new siri though is the type to siri so on the iphone you can long press on the like home bar thing and get that if

you have like an ipad and i'm assuming it's going to be the same on the mac you can hit globe s on a keyboard and you can just start doing type to Siri, which that is something I loved. I, that's been an accessibility feature for a while, but it was one of those things that you either had to turn on type to Siri and turn off like the voice option of Siri or have the voice option turn off type to Siri. It was one or the other. Now it's both. And on the iPad, I really like type to Siri because I'm usually hands on keyboard, work it away. And if I'm in public, I don't want to talk to Siri

uh and look like a weirdo i look like a weirdo enough as it is so uh i i really love that feature have either of you ever used type to siri i have but but just like yeah just like you i i prefer only uh sometimes i want to talk sometimes i want to type and yeah yeah being able to bounce back and forth is great for for me it makes more sense to talk on my iphone and apple watch and type on my iPad and well just my iPad I almost said Mac but I don't use a Mac that was weird you didn't mention a vision pro either oh vision pro is type 2 Siri even on vision pro I don't even know no one's checked

no one's no one's checked Neil Leon how about you do you use type 2 Siri yeah I do on my iPhone okay the thing is when you enable it in accessibility settings you can't trigger it anymore with the side button oh really you can i mean you can't trigger it the normal way with the side button it's always type to siri oh yeah yeah yeah it's it's you can't do the voice stuff and type to siri that's right the nice thing is with the new siri is you can do both you can do voice and then if you like long press on the bar you would get type to siri instead

which I really do like that because sometimes I just want to type. I don't want to talk to it. I have a warm take. Okay. I was expecting that by this time, I mean, we are in 2024. And a few years ago, I was expecting that Siri would someday merge into Spotlight. Same. 100% the same. Yeah, and now that we've got Type 2 Siri, it's a bit strange that we're having two text inputs, somewhat smart text inputs that do different things.

But although sometimes they do the same things. Yes. And, yeah. I kid you not, Niléane, when I started putting together my notes on Apple Intelligence, because I'll do an Apple Intelligence walkthrough video when that stuff ships. That was one of the first things I wrote was, why is Type 2 Siri separate from Spotlight? Okay, so I'm not alone. No, I don't even think that's a warm take. I think that's a good hot take. Yeah, that's what Raycast does, right? It's like you use it as a launcher.

You can use it as a search, but you can also ask questions in it as well, and it does kind of all of them. And the funny thing is, too, is the Magic Keyboard doesn't have a dedicated... You would think that the new Magic Keyboard for the iPad would have a dedicated Siri button. Now, like I said, you can hit Globess to do type to Siri. You can long press on the dictation button to get the talk to Siri. But then you also have command space for Spotlight. It just seems so obvious that all of that stuff should have been combined right into Spotlight.

You should have been able to just ask it a question and let Siri handle it and figure it out from there. I'm shocked that they didn't do that. Yeah, even if it means getting rid of the Spotlight name, just rebrand it all as Siri. Yeah, like Siri Bar or something. Maybe not that. Yeah, iPads don't get a menu bar, but they do get a Siri bar.

Oh, my Siri just went off. Oh, no. That's saying in the show. So a couple other things. Let's move along because we're kind of going long. But a couple other things that have been added into it. So first off is writing tools. This is the thing I was the most excited about. Proofread is really good for the most part. It messed up big time once, but it was really nice while I was very, very sick and needing to send off some important emails to catch some major grammar and spelling mistakes

and just fix them for me. I actually really like that. I will probably never use the context writing stuff like make this more professional or make this friendly. That stuff just kind of seems weird to me. I don't want that. What I do want is a really good spelling and grammar checker. And that seems to be it. The surprise for me is it actually kind of works in Obsidian. I was not expecting that. because obsidian is this weird catalyst or not even catalyst uh it's like a weird electron app that kind of actually works really well and uh but yeah the writing tool stuff is there matt have

you used those yet i have um i did use proofread and it crashed ulysses once or twice for me but other times it works great so beta things yeah uh yeah i i am most excited about proofread as well because I have so many typos. If my mentions are flooded with anything, they are telling me about typos in my blog posts. So don't stop doing that. I love those. Thank you. I've been recently experimenting with Grammarly in my writing to try to get rid of those obvious errors.

And I think it's noticeably better than proofread is in Apple Intelligence. But I'm hoping Apple Intelligence catches up because I would much rather just use the native thing and not use Grammarly, because Grammarly gives me the creeps a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I've been enjoying Proofread, but there's definitely cases, like I said, it messed up big time once. But again, like I said, this is very much a beta thing.

Mail, Safari, and Messages, they all kind of got their own versions of summaries. And this is another thing I was very much looking forward to. We have some busy group chats, some things I'm hoping this stuff goes to third-party apps like Discord for like the Mac Stories Discord, Team Discord and stuff like that. If you're like away from a day, like some stuff can pop off over there and it would just be nice to get summaries. But I found most of the summaries to be very vague. Like it's trying to get a lot of stuff into just a couple of lines.

And you can mostly get the point of it, but for some stuff, like some emails and stuff like that, you're like, what are you? It's kind of having a little bit of a fever dream. And like I mentioned, I was going to talk about how bad my mail is. I have over a thousand unread emails right now. And I'm really going to rely heavily on this summary feature to just quickly skim through and be like, is this something I actually need to deal with?

Is this like a spam related message? Is this just one of those ones that like, hey, this person found my public email address and they thought I really wanted to sign up for their newsletter or they put me on a bunch of mailing lists and sold that mailing list off. Thank you for those, by the way. If you're one of those people, I really love you and you're my best friend. you heard it everybody i i'm trying desperately not because i'm trying to remember hey this is a video podcast so there's one thing i really want to do right now but i can't do it because

we would get in trouble but yeah those people um you you are if you sign me if you sign somebody up for an email thing and without their um uh permission you are a horrible person i i'm just gonna say that i i yeah yeah yeah yeah i'll blame it on covid if you get mad at me but really i do think you're a horrible person if you sign me up for stuff and i didn't give you permission but anyways mail message summary what do you guys like about those sorry i just went off on like an angry tangent for a second there over a thousand unread emails right now i'm not even joking no

it's no way to live yeah it's a you problem it's a my career problem and people trying to scam the way uh trying to scam their products onto my channel um yeah yeah yeah so i i very much agree this is very cool some of the time um i find it really nice for message or for yeah for messages when a number of messages came in.

They're short, but they are also sometimes beautiful. My dad sent me and my siblings some messages yesterday, and I took a screenshot of it because the summary from Apple Intelligence was Dad dreams of aging. Time's impact on life. It wasn't that serious a message, but like... Oh my god. I was like, what is happening? I tapped into that thread very quickly.

Oh, my gosh. That's great. Yeah, I had one. I think it was from you two that you guys were talking about recording the episode last week or something like that. And I was like, peak COVID. And I saw the summary and I'm like, I have no idea what any of this means. It was, but also it probably could have just been COVID. So that's why I'm not trying to be too harsh on the summaries. But the stuff I've seen in my email and stuff like that, it does not go great.

The other issue with the email stuff is that if you use something like SaneBox and it filters into other folders, so like the SaneLater folder or the SaneNews folder, it does not give you a summary for those messages. So you do not see a summary at all for those. It only gives you a summary for stuff that is in your inbox, which is a bummer because that means I have hundreds of emails that do not have that summary. So I'll have to go into the email and then click summarize.

You don't get like the little two line summary where the original first two lines of the email used to be. And there's no setting for that? Maybe there is, but I haven't found it. So if there is a setting, at Chris Lolly. yeah it's it's also inconsistent i find like i'm looking at my inbox right now in mail two out of the six messages i can see right now have them some of the ones that don't have been

there for days so there's been plenty of time for it to generate them but yeah i wonder how much of it is beta behavior how much of it is intended behavior it's hard to tell yeah exactly like it's gonna be one of those things we'll know more as betas come out but that's why i'm trying not to um be too harsh on it. It doesn't look like there is a setting to tell it to summarize messages in other folders. It's just an on and off setting, so that's a bummer.

But yeah, it's just summarize message previews, and I'm assuming that's just for Inbox. So yeah, it'd be cool if it did it for the other folders. But I know Apple's also kind of working on their own version of same same box and i'm very excited to try that but we're not sure when that is going to ship but moving along i got two more things i want to talk about um photos has the ability to create memories so basically albums from a prompt uh and i threw a couple at it like uh me and my girlfriend

uh me and my family dogs and stuff like that and it did a really good job i never got any false positives with those now to be fair i didn't throw it anything too hard but uh the stuff i threw at it was all on point have you tried that matt i have um the one issue i've had with it is it often says it does like the cool animation and then says i can't make an album of that i can't really for that i haven't had that yeah so i i actually haven't seen the result yet because it always says that to me so again beta things most likely huh interesting okay um i i like it hopefully that

gets smoothed out so you can try it um and then the last feature i want to mention is the reduce interruptions focus so this is the new focus mode that is supposed to be smart and basically let notifications that are priorities come through but everything else gets blocked and so far it's done a really great job. I think I made a video a few years back about how I'm always in a focus mode, and I have different focus modes for different tasks I'm doing and stuff like that. And that is still true to this day. But I've been kind of easing up on that a little bit. And I think this

reduce interruptions kind of smart focus is going to replace a lot like when I'm writing or doing admin tasks or something like that. And I'll probably just have like a specific focus mode for when I'm filming because like when I'm filming my devices, I want no notifications coming through because I don't want to have to reshoot stuff and things like that. So I like that one quite a bit. Matt, have you played with that? Nope. Like I said, I have not read what's in here, so I didn't even know that was there, but I just turned it on. So I am very intrigued by that because kind of like you, I used focus modes for like work and I still have a weekend one that I really like,

but reduce interruptions is probably what I want most of the time. I've also gone through a, uh, uh, moment of enlightenment for myself where I've turned off notifications for almost every single app. Yeah. Um, maybe we should talk about that at a later date, but I turned off like literally everything except for messages and Ooh, I'm, I like it. I, uh, yes, we need to add that. Cause I have some hot takes on notifications. So we should talk about that next week or something.

So do I. Oh, okay. All right. One of us is bringing notifications next week. Okay. Well, Niu Lian, so that's about it. But Niu Lian, do you have any questions on Apple Intelligence before we move on? I don't have questions. I have impressions from the outside. Okay. All of this. And I mean, everything. Okay. Sounds like something that I don't really want on my phone. Interesting. Okay.

The most interesting things were, to me, the writing tools. But I don't think I ever need that on my phone. And on the Mac, I have other things to do this. I have other tools to do this already via Raycast and other tools. So I'm a bit... It's a recurrent theme this year. I feel a bit let down.

And I feel like maybe Apple has wasted the full software cycle on this. Yeah. Hopefully next year is more interesting and has features that actually ship in Europe. But yeah. Maybe it's because I'm just upset. I realized that I may be just upset, but none of this sounds really interesting to me. Yeah, for the most part, like I said, I'm trying to be a little more open-minded because this is very much a beta.

So hopefully it gets smoothed out and all works a little bit better. But the writing tools and the reduce interruptions focus, those are definitely the two things I'm the most excited about. I will definitely use the writing tools on my iPhone because I send professional emails from my phone. I would very much like those to have proper spelling and proper grammar. The photo stuff is interesting, but I don't think that needed to be attached to Apple intelligence. That's just something Apple should have done no matter what.

And new Siri was a long time coming, but as I've said, I don't think it's that much better right now. Well, I mean, it is getting the right Formula One race, so we'll see. That one kind of might just need to be shaked out and go from there. The one thing I wanted to say about Siri is I think once they add like the additional stuff that it can do with like interacting with the apps on your screen and stuff, the thing that's not a functional change, but a thing I think they should do anyway, is they need a new voice for Siri. Yes. It will make it feel more new than it is now.

That's one of the things I was feeling when I was asking some test questions after I installed it. And it just, it was the same voice as always. And I just like thought of it just emotionally. It was the same Siri, which is a lot of software design is dealing with people's emotions, but it just felt like the same Siri I've always talked to with a new animation. And so I would suggest if they can, they should have a new voice ready that sounds better. Like the open AI voices are like obscenely good.

What about Scarlett Johansson? You know what? It would be the funniest thing possible. Honestly, at that point, you might just do it to be spiteful. And I would 100% applaud that. I would just be like, yes, because get Apple to pay you a bajillion dollars and just do it. That would be awesome. But yeah, that's kind of it for what I have for Apple Intelligence. I'm sure this is going to be something we follow up on. But I kind of wanted to just go over what is here, what's not here, and what we're excited about.

So, yeah. Nice. So, Nelian, you have something different here. Yeah, I'm very curious about this. So, this is kind of a follow-up item, but yeah. Anyway, a couple of episodes ago, I don't know, that was three weeks ago, four weeks, I told you that I convinced my partner to get a MacBook for the first time of their life. Nice. Yeah, and they were coming from years on end of Linux laptops.

So that's not a person who's been using Windows. Actually, they pretty much don't know anything about Windows. Oh, interesting. So keep that in mind. Now, I have taken notes over the past weeks on what my partner hates the most, complains the most on a day-to-day basis about macOS. And I will tell you the top three things that my partner hates the most about macOS. But I just want to give you guys a go. Try to guess what are those three things. Oh, I think I can get two of them right off the bat. Yeah. Keep in mind,

They don't know anything about Windows. Yeah. So not your typical usual complaints. I think I can get two right off the bat. I'm going to guess the first one is probably all the app permission stuff. Especially this week, we saw that the screen recording thing is blowing up where it's going to ask you, are you sure you want this app to be able to do screen recordings every single week? But all the permission stuff for using microphones and dictation. I can't remember all the stuff that's on macOS, but all those prompts, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about.

and then the other one that I'm going to say is Gatekeeper I think it's Gatekeeper right is that the thing that if you're installing a non Mac App Store app or something like that or a non signed yeah non signed app that's what it is you have to go into I don't know I don't use I literally use a Mac once a week for Edge I rarely use it so I don't remember what it's called but like you got to go into settings that basically say like, yeah, you got to like tell it to open and stuff like that.

I'm guessing that's two of them. Am I close? Kind of, but not really. Okay. I was going to say something about incessant notifications and pop-ups as well. Okay. Interestingly, my wife who came from Windows about a Mac recently, that was one of her complaints. Again, which is not great when the Windows user is complaining about pop-ups on Macs. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to say something about software availability. The apps they're used to and want to run maybe aren't on the Mac.

That's also very close. All right. So top three things. Top one is mission control. My partner complains about mission control every single day. And let me explain. Yeah, let me explain. On Linux, there is a very common desktop environment that's available in Ubuntu and most other distributions.

That's called GNOME. And it's a very popular one, very user-friendly, easy to use. And GNOME, the way it works is it looks a lot like macOS. Because you've got a dock that's sometimes on the left side of the screen, sometimes on the bottom, depending on the distributions. I think Ubuntu now puts it on the bottom. Anyway, so it's got a dock and an overview. And it's called the activities overview.

And in that overview, your windows are in expose mode. And you can create spaces. So they are called desktops in Gnome. and you can create multiple spaces and you can swipe horizontally between your desktops and still have the dock at the bottom. And in that Activities Overview at the top of the screen, there's a search bar. So imagine like it's Mission Control combined with Spotlight. And that's the main piece of UI that you use to manage your Windows, your apps, and your apps on your Linux laptop when it's running GNOME.

So they're really used to that. And when I was trying to convince them that they would be at home on macOS, because macOS is a very similar thing. Mission Control is very similar to this concept. When you go into Mission Control, you've got your dock visible, you've got your windows visible, and they can be stacked by apps in Mission Control. You enable the setting. And you can create spaces at the top of the screen, and you can switch horizontally between spaces. Right. The thing is, they made me realize that Mission Control is extraordinarily limited on macOS, for no obvious reason, actually.

Example, if you go into Mission Control, you cannot right-click on icons in a dock. Have you? Did you know that? No, no idea. I did not know that. So when you're in Mission Control, you cannot interact in any way with the dock apart from left-clicking on stuff. And if you left-click on the stack while in Mission Control on a stack in the dock, it opens the stack, but then it throws you out of Mission Control.

You can't do both at the same time. Interesting. One other thing, they immediately complained about the fact that in Mission Control, contrary to GNOME, you can't interact with the windows apart from making them active you can't close them you can't quit them you can't hide can't hide them minimize them move them the only thing you can do is make them active or move them to another space and that was really frustrating to them and i made them by a small utility that i've used for years and i don't even remember that it's not part of the us

It's called Mission Control Plus. Yes. This is what I was going to ask is if they installed this. Because even when I had my brief stint back on the MacBook Pro after LumaFusion let me down, this was like one of the first utilities I bought because I was like, what do you mean I can't close Windows from Mission Control? Yeah. Yeah. And this leads me to the second most, the second thing that my partner hates the most about macOS.

And that is, where do I find trustworthy software? First, right off the bat, they were really surprised that I had to install something to fix machine control. But yeah, they were really surprised that it's not actually easy to find trustworthy software. when you're not already in the ecosystem. So I told them, just go into the App Store. But then many utilities are not in the App Store.

Many popular apps are not in the App Store. So then you got to find them online. And that's why I told you, remember they're not coming from Windows because Windows users are used to that. They download software from the web all the time. That's not an issue. They barely know about the Microsoft Store, the Windows Store. But here, my partner was used to just being able to download stuff from the Linux repositories, the distribution repositories.

So everything's in one place. You've got one place to go where you can download all your software. That's not the case on the Mac. And so I kept recommending stuff to fix annoyances in my partner's workflow on the Mac. And every time they were like, but why, what am I installing here? Who is that person making this? Can I trust them? Has it been authorized by anything or anyone? Of course, we know as longtime Mac users, Apple OS users in general, that Apple notarizes stuff.

And you know that when you don't have to deal with pop-ups, like you said, when you don't have to deal with gatekeepers, you can install a software right away. It's been notarized and it's fine. But my partner doesn't know that. I had to explain that to him. That's really interesting because I think Apple's perspective on this would be you shouldn't have to worry about this as a user. You should just, if you find an app that you think looks cool, you should be able to install it.

And if it's not secure, we'll show you an alert that says, hey, this app is not notarized. It's not, we can't validate it. And then we'll make you jump through hoops and you probably won't. So you'll just uninstall it. But it is interesting to have this other perspective of, I want a way to be confident before I even download anything. Like, is this from a reputable developer? Is this something I can trust? And I guess the developer's website has to do that, right?

You have to show people who say they like it. You need to show reviews. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, especially for a Linux person, like the restrictions on the apps in the mac app store are not going to make those things they want to use most likely uh easily available and it probably doesn't help that we just had a big hubbub over bartender in the apple community recently which is a very rare thing we don't we very rarely have like uh blow-ups over mac apps and like not knowing who makes them like being in the apple community we usually know like developers or teams or something behind that we know like

if you see something made by bare-bones software or Panic or Omnigroup or something like that. It's going to be no problem. Just install it. You don't have to worry about it. But when you come from Linux, I totally get that. I totally see that. Yeah. It was really surprising to me because I guess we are very much biased.

I know off the top of my head of maybe a list of 20 apps, utilities on the Mac that I can trust that I know many of us have been using for years and recommending for years but what happens if you just come in blind you don't have that list and you don't know anyone who would pass on that list to you and in their perspective I was the only person being able to recommend them stuff.

And yeah, I can understand that. It was hard to trust me. Well, that was like when I got my very first MacBook that I owned. So I got a 2009 MacBook Pro, graduation present, but I didn't get it right away. I had to wait for my dad to get his bonus check in the summer. So it was like a month after I actually graduated from high school before I started college, I had to wait. And I spent that whole month just researching apps, finding Apple blogs, because I was a big Windows person before that.

I built custom PCs. I knew what apps and stuff to go and get and what software to install. But on the Mac, I was like, man, there's all these wild utilities. I remember Bartender being like one of the first ones and stuff that I installed back in the day. And I would literally just spend a bunch of time researching apps and stuff like that. But I also was on summer break and had that time and really wasn't doing much else except working at a pizza place. So that was kind of what I did in between the month of when I found out I was getting one and I was actually going to get it.

And it actually was beneficial that I waited that month because I also got the back to school thing. So it worked out just fine for me. But, um, but yeah, no, I, I totally get where your partner's coming from nearly on. Like, like that is kind of a hard thing when you know an ecosystem like the back of your hand and then all of a sudden it's okay. We're going to try something completely different. And, oh, what do you mean? I needed to go understand that. Like, Hey, Mac stories and nine to five Mac, they're trusted blog. So if they talk about a Mac app, you're probably good to go and download it.

But, you know, like this really weird, random Apple blog, one, two, three, four, five, whatever. Like, we don't know who they are. We don't even know who's behind it. So maybe be a little more cautious kind of thing. Yeah. So, and the top third thing. What is the order of words here? third top thing that my partner hates the most in macOS is something very specific.

It's got to do with Finder. It's the way that the icon grid in Finder is not aligned by default. If you know what I mean. Can't you turn that on like the snapping? Isn't that an option? Okay, so if anyone knows a fix, well, yeah, please send me a message. But what I've found is that you have the option to clean up. That's what it's called.

Oh, that's one second. Yeah. Yeah. And it does align everything in the grid. But by default, when you drag and drop stuff in there, it's just free form. You can place them anywhere and items can overlap. it can be a bit of a a bit of a disordering nightmare so it was really hard to convince them that this was meant to be

that this was not a bug because they were convinced it's a bug my finder is completely broken Niléane, help me out why can I make my icons overlap, this does not make sense I think I found it Oh, is it? Okay. So if you go into Finder and put it in Icon View, there is the menu button on the far right side just to the left of the magnifying glass icon. You see that one? Mm-hmm. Yep.

Okay. And then there, so if you scroll down, there's Cleanup, Cleanup By, but above that there's Sort By, and there is Snap to Grid. Is that what you're looking for? Oh, very good. Yeah, the iPad guy knows the Mac. What's up? All right, let me level this up for you, too, as the Mac guy. Go ahead. If you right-click or hit Command-J in the view and go to your view options, Yep.

There's going to be sort by, and you can choose snap to grid. And then at the bottom, say uses defaults. So that'll work everywhere on your Mac, not just that one folder. Oh, nice. Oh, okay. See, I always use column view. I'm a big column view person. So that's why I was not really helpful, because I never use this view in Finder. I don't like it. Can I tell you the good news about columns? okay so they hate the column view because i preached it like like i should it's great you got a details pane when you're at the end everything it's really good yeah uh they hate it

so there was nothing i could do yeah um it's weird i know column view is like huge and mac users but like i am yet to find the windows or anyone else yeah like is drawn to it it's very weird they want the icon view interesting to me because i as somebody that was in a big time windows user for like well i don't even know let's say 15 years whatever um the moment i started using a mac actually it's probably more like 12 years i don't it doesn't matter it really doesn't matter my brain

is getting hung up on it though the moment i started using finder and found column view i was like oh my gosh this is genius you could move things around you can move things to the other folder You can see other folders. You have the detail pane. That is wonderful. I love this. So that is interesting to hear that your partner and other Windows users, like Matt said, don't like ColumnView because I... I think they're just really confused by the fact that you can see multiple directories at once.

See, I see that as a benefit because I can just move files around really quickly. Yeah, I guess it just doesn't compute for some people. How does your partner feel about like tabs in Finder and Terminal and stuff like that? So they've been trying to use it, to use tabs. But I've been trying to convince them that it's not necessarily the way to go. So I'm not sure. I think they're not settled on it.

I know that I prefer, except for my browser, I prefer not to use tabs. Interesting. In most places. And I think they should do the same as me because they rely so much on mission control. Like, they really want to use mission control. And I think that's the best way to deal with multiple views is to have multiple windows instead of multiple tabs. Having tabs in every app is actually probably the top of my list thing that I miss from macOS. like i would love to have tab view in um notes tab view in uh mail and other other apps and stuff like that like i know it's in uh obviously it's in safari and stuff like that but like it's

not in finder like i i don't have tabs and that so that means i end up with well you don't have finder or files i'm sorry files but whatever it is i end up with four files windows but and i max out at that and i'm like that would be a great way to get around your stage manager limitation of of only being able to have four windows which that that limitation that is my biggest annoyance right now with ipad os but we don't have time for that yeah so that was it uh i guess you solved one of the

three things that pretty good guys well nice well hopefully that gets you some like uh uh partner points as as i call it with my my girlfriend i call them partner points and i will point things out when i'm like hey i did this thing i would like two partner points for it and i don't know what i redeem them for but hey yeah good concept yeah i just like to win speaking of oh god are you guys ready for me that's ready to lose i just like to point out before we get started i've been miserable for the last week and a half with COVID.

I just want to point that out. You know, whatever, you know, don't let that influence your vote. But yeah. How is that related? Sounds like an easy target then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it's ready for the challenge. Matt, you had a few things for us to do. What did you have for us? I did. So I've evolved the challenge form to actually be a competition as well. So I really like daily games and I thought it'd be fun for us to try to find the best daily games we can.

So general concept, a daily game is a game that you can play for a few minutes every day and it changes every day to incentivize you to come back. I wanted us to pick what we think is our personal favorite. And then also one, it could be the same one, I suppose, one that you think is the best for everybody listening to the show that they should check out and they're going to love the most. Maybe we should do a poll on Mastodon or something. Yeah. I would just like to point out, just ask a clarification. Are we only voting for the person to win that has the best game for everyone?

Or are we voting for our two in general put together? I think the poll should be voting for the game. For everyone, not just the one that's specifically for us, but the one that we're bringing for everyone. The one for everybody, yes. So our poll should have three options, and they should be the three games that we pick, not our names, so no one picks favorites. I mean, if they... Yeah, okay, all right, I like that. Okay, yeah, we'll have to do like a poll, and we'll boost it or something, but... Yeah.

Neil, Leon, you want to go first? Okay, so I picked two games that are related, and there's one that I like over the other. Let me explain. So the first one is Mini Metro. And it's not always been something that you could categorize as a daily game. But in Mini Metro, it's been the case for a few years, every day you can open the game and you can play a daily challenge.

Sounds like something we would like, right? Yeah. Yeah. So to remind everyone what Mini Metro is, it's a very cute looking game where you draw metro lines between stations and you've got to stay alive for the longest time possible. And by staying alive, I mean you die by getting a station overflowing with people.

If there's too many people in the station, you lose. so you got to keep the cars moving and the cars have limited capacity uh it's really addicting games addictive games and it's incredibly well designed i'm sure i'm not um i'm not um you're not learning about this game right yeah no i love this game i i think it's great yeah it's wonderful and i've rediscovered it this week uh through the daily challenge the way

The daily challenges work is every week, every day, sorry, you've got a map that's been picked, I guess by the developers, maybe it's random, I don't know. And there's a map that's been picked, a difficulty mode that's been picked, and you've got statistics. So you can compare yourself to the rest of the user base, of the player base. So you can see how well you're doing compared to everyone on Earth playing this game, which is really fun.

and sometimes there are special rules like uh the other day there was a i don't remember which map it was uh london maybe i don't i don't remember but um it was in difficulty mode in a hard mode uh oh my god i should have taken notes i don't know it wasn't london i think it was caro in egypt where the cars on this map, the cars, the train cars are smaller. So they have smaller capacity.

And it was in difficulty mode hard, which meant that you could not redraw lines. So everything you did was permanent. And that was especially hard. And I didn't do well on that day. So anyway, Mini Metro, it's great. Play the daily game. It's really funny to see how bad you are doing at this game compared to the rest of the world. And the other game in this pair that's related to it is a more recent game.

It's called Mini Motorways. And you may see in our show notes, guys. Yeah, what is this qualifier? I feel called out. This is personal. I feel like it's a personal attack. I did not say that it's the best for everyone, Mini Motorways. I think it's the best for Americans. Because you all like cars, cyber trucks, and stuff. We don't all like cyber trucks. Yeah, you all. No, definitely not cyber trucks. I was not yeeing for the cyber trucks.

I hate the cyber trucks. Ford Mustang GT. That is my car. It is the most problematic thing about me, I will fully admit. I love my gas-guzzling Ford Mustang GT. The most problematic thing about me, but yes. All right. I love cars love cars alright cars anyway just so you know I have no idea what you just said those are all cars to me I don't even know okay so mini motorways is similar to mini metro but as you guessed it instead of drawing lines

metro lines you're drawing roads, streets between houses and workplaces and the city is ever expanding and you have to keep up with the demand and the amount of cars on the roads. And what's funny, Chris, is that you keep mentioning car names like Ford, whatever, Cyber, Cyberford, I don't know. No, no, no. We don't mix Ford in with the Cybertruck. We keep those. That's the collaboration everybody wants.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I will not allow that slander. I will not allow that slander. But in Mini Motorways, they are all the same shape. They're all cars. And I think that's a great representation of roads and cars. Anyway, this game is really good as well. Like, seriously, it's really addictive as well. And it's kind of different because the challenge is not in the same places. You have to deal with the shape of your roads, with the amount of intersections.

You can unlock motorways, like highways. that you can place a bit more 3D but you don't have as many of them so the challenge is not in the same places as in Mini Metro where in Mini Metro you optimize for other things so I think I think it's it's more advanced game but that's why I didn't classify it as best for me I say it's best for Americans because okay seriously best for everyone because

because I think you can get more hours out of it. You're not going to get bored as quickly as with Mini Metro. And it's also got a daily challenge. And it's the same concept. It's every day. It's a different map with different rules. And you can see how bad you're doing compared to the rest of the world. It's also got a weekly challenge. So that's a thing as well. Ooh, that's a bonus. Nice. I've played both of these. I enjoy both of them. I agree. I like mini motorways a little bit more because it just has a bit more mechanics when it comes to not just placing the streets,

but you also have the freeways and stuff like that. So, yeah, I like those. Gorgeous, too. Absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, it's beautiful. The sound design is incredible as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, for me, I've got a couple. First one, I know we said you're not allowed to bring Wordle, but I didn't bring Wordle. I brought Star Wordle for me because it's Star Wars, but Wordle. I mean, it was the only daily game that I could find that was Star Wars. So you knew I had to jam it in there somehow. I had to jam Star Wars in there somehow.

But that's why I labeled it best for me. But really, I think the best for everyone. And it's one that I've been playing quite a bit. I just because like, again, I've been sick. Coffee Golf. This is a game. Apparently, it's been around for a little while. I just found it. I must have missed that week when it was in the news, if it was ever in the news. I don't know. But it's a very simple golf game. There's five holes. You're on kind of basically an island, and you have three clubs. You have a driver, an iron, and a putter.

And the goal is to get the ball in the hole as few strokes as you can. I even got a hole in one once, which was really fun. But it's really interesting. It's a very addictive game. It's daily, so there's new courses every single day. Really enjoyed it overall. I really like it. It's not an overly complex game. It's one of those ones that I can spend 5, 10 minutes playing and then move on with my day. I didn't feel like I was sinking my whole day into it. I would just play the course and then move on.

And yeah, I don't really have too much to say on it, but I had a lot of fun with it. Star Wars looks like fun. I will try it. Yeah, I'm going to try to play Plagueis. Yeah, well, Darth Plagueis the Wise. The Sith Lord. I know which one that's not going to find. He found the secret to immortality. Supposedly. Yeah, so those are my two. I don't really have too much to say on them, but Star Wardle, I mostly just wanted to jam a Star Wars reference in here.

It's Wardle, but Star Wars. It's nothing special. but coffee golf if you're looking for like a very casual daily game it's perfect it's it doesn't require a ton of brain power you're not going to sink a ton of time into it it's very very casual yeah this one is good i i like golf games and uh i haven't played this one a little bit but you've reminded me that i should go back to it nice all right well that's an easy transition into what I have picked as the best for me game, which is Pixel Pro Golf, which is a golf game. And I love, love, love this

game. This is one of my favorite mobile games of all time. It's as close as I've ever found to a modern Mario Golf of the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance styles. There's no RPG stuff, but like the gameplay is so good. I love it. And they have daily tournaments. So they have a daily tournament where it's a random selection of one of the courses with a certain set of golf clubs and everybody can play it there's actually two of them and you can play one or two of these tournaments and like uh like with many motorways you see how you rank on a leaderboard of everyone

playing the game and there are like something like a thousand people playing it every day so like you can really see uh where you're at i did win one tournament once i was so proud of myself Oh, wow. Nice. But often I'm shooting for like the top 200 or 300 in the world. So anyway, I love this game. It's so, so, so much fun. I think it's free and then just a couple bucks to unlock everything. But the tournament, the daily tournaments are free. They also do seasons. So if you want to like commit, the more, the better you do each day, the more points you earn.

And then at the end of the season, there's a ranking for the whole season as well. So you can try to rank highly there. I love this game. But the one that I think is best for everybody is one of the games in Puzmo, which is my favorite daily game thing of all time. I love it. But there's a specific game in there called Pile Up Poker, which is hard to describe. But it's basically you're playing poker hands using a deck of cards and you're playing them on a four by four grid.

So you basically draw a hand of cards and you have to place those cards on the grid. And then you get another hand and you have to place those. And you're basically trying to make poker hands horizontally, vertically and on all four corners. And, you know, a two pair is more than a pair. They're straights, they're slushes, there's all these things. And so they're all the poker hands most of us know. And it's so fun. It's so like well animated. and you basically play five boards a day.

And there's also this community pot. So you're not necessarily competing with everyone else, but you are, everyone who plays the game is adding to a pot of fake money. And when they hit certain milestones, they unlock new things. So you're kind of all working together to play the game and get more stuff. So I really like this game, and I think a lot of people would love it. Yeah, I'm playing it right now. It's kind of interesting, But yeah, no, I like this. It's pretty cool. I actually hadn't heard of the Pixel Pro golf game either.

I just downloaded that. That one looks really interesting. Yeah, it's really fantastic. I like that it sounds like a Google Pro product. The Pixel Pro Golf Edition. I had to think that through for a second. That was actually, yeah, that's good. I like that. All right. It looks like an RPG. It does. It's just everything but the RPG. It looks like a Super Nintendo game is what it looks like.

That's what immediately jumped out at me. This looks like something I could be playing on Super Nintendo. All right. Well, I guess we're going to do a Mastodon poll to find out who won because I have a feeling we'd all just vote for ourselves. Okay. Yes. Right? and then declare each one of ourselves our own winner so i guess we'll do a mastodon poll to find out and we'll put some links in there and stuff to do that but uh this will be fun before

we wrap up the show because we're going long so i'm just going to move us right along here uh it's uh my turn to challenge you guys this coming week and uh i do have a quick question for you both are you both obsidian users do you do you use the app obsidian yes yes okay great this is be a fantastic challenge then uh i want you both and myself to find a new obsidian plugin uh and it can't be a popular one it can't be data view or advanced tables or anything like that i want something

i want something that maybe it's been written about before talked about before but it's i don't want something that's like like top 10 i want something that's like okay i don't think most people have heard of this one so uh yeah that's my challenge for you all okay that's a fun i pick a plugin that a friend wrote yeah absolutely yeah as long as it's not like look i i think as long as the spirit of the challenge is don't pick something that's like popular that every obsidian user out there knows like data view or advanced tables or something like that like if it's something your

friend wrote and you use it and you like it yeah absolutely go for it all right all right anything else before we wrap up i'm glad you're back thank you thank you so much and and again thank you both for for uh carrying the torch uh olympic pun intended uh while i was out very very ill uh nobody wanted to hear me talk last week trust me on that one uh so that just about does it for this episode oh we have our dating question game i forgot about that i forgot to pull that up oh no he's looking for looking for a hard one oh i love this one oh this one's good this is a good

one no this is a good one right here all right if you could join any fictional fantasy group which would it be what is that fictional fantasy group so it could be the rebel alliance it could be oh okay like like like a group like yeah you know actually that that's gonna be mine rebel alliance Actually, no, the Jedi. I would be the Jedi. Oh, no, but they corrupted, Chris. Yeah, well, so am I. So, whatever. Okay, sure.

I would say the eagles in Lord of the Rings. Oh, that is a good one. That is a good one. I like that. Can fly places? Yeah. Why don't you just fly the ring to Mount Doom? I'm just kidding. There's a whole reason for that. Of course. It doesn't matter. Matt what would yours be oh man okay I was going to say the hobbits in Lord of the Rings okay so not the

not the not actually going anywhere and doing anything on a journey but I don't want to be just the hobbits in Hobbiton yeah yeah yeah you want to eat, drink and be merry yes and have a nice ethernet or fiber connection in my hobbit hole sometimes I can just pass by and pick you up and drop you at Mount Doom and see how you struggle to come back Mount Doom, no the eagles are evil wow I mean, they kind of saved him from the Felbeast, but anyways I could go on about Lord of the Rings

mythology for a very long time, but we have gone very long this episode, so I'm just going to go ahead and wrap up the show here and say thank you to everyone that listened Matt, Neelion, say goodbye. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Bye.

Bye.