Nicolas Cage Works Just Fine with MagSafe

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and every week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts that, depending on where you poll, they poll completely different. As always, I am joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm feeling conflicted today. Okay. And we are also joined by Neil Leon. How are you doing, Ilion? I am feeling fine.

I don't have a smart word. Fine. That's totally acceptable. I'm kind of tired right now, so I've been up most of the night getting things ready for iOS and iPadOS 18 release. I'm running on a lot of caffeine right now, but I actually owe both of you an apology. When I introduced you on the show last week, I called you both guests and not hosts. You know, that was my attempt at a coup to take over, but nobody actually noticed. So I'm just going to apologize and move on.

Yeah. Is there anything worse than a coup that nobody really noticed? Yeah. Right. There's a lot about you. Right. Like you guys didn't notice it in the moment. I didn't notice it until I was editing the show. And then we literally got no feedback on that. We get feedback on a lot of things. We got no feedback on that. So I'm just like, okay, nobody noticed my coup attempt. All right. Moving right along. But actually, that was completely accidental. And I do apologize. You guys are both co-hosts as well as I am. But we, as I have been doing for the last few weeks, did a poll to see who won the challenge.

Niléane, you're kind of in charge of these polls. You want to go over the results. And yeah. I'm not in charge. The government is. So just to say this. So the government published a poll to decide who won last week's challenge, where we defended our home screens. And how should I go about this? So I win.

Yeah. I win. So this time, once again, the total number of votes went up. This time we have 312 votes that were sent in on Mastodon. I win with 45%. Chris is last at 26%. And on the second place is Matt at 29%. Seriously, you guys voted for Android over my home screen.

It speaks to how good the Android screen looked. Don't even go there. But then, so that's the official government poll. Agreed, agreed. That is the official poll we use. We support Mastodon. We love Mastodon. We support the government. Mastodon loves Niléane. But yeah, I was going to say, Niléane's the cool kid of Mastodon. We will never beat Niléane. Like, it's like, you know, I don't know. Somebody cool running up against somebody not so cool.

Like I said, I'm very tired. I'm very tired right now. So that's the best you're going to get out of me. Yeah. So, yeah, the official government poll, yeah, speechless, of course, perfect result. But then the Rebel Alliance came in and decided to run their own illegal poll on threads. And that's Matt. How did that go, Matt? Yeah, so I've been having this theory after being just beaten down week after week by the official poll and finding new and interesting ways to lose.

I had this theory that Mastodon just loves Neelion more than me and Chris. And I was like, let's bring this to a different group. Let's bring it to a different group. Let's go to Threads. I posted a link to the episode. I posted all of our home screens and I did the same poll. And I smoked it. I did great. 65% of the vote went to the Android screen. Chris got second in this one. And Nelian came in third. So like almost the complete opposite of what happened on Mastodon.

And I understand this is not the official result. And I do suspect, Nelian, you brought up that it's likely people who voted on threads did not listen to the episode as often as people on Mastodon did. I suspect more of our listeners use Mastodon than Threads. Although maybe that's not true. I don't know. But it was very interesting. Even on Mastodon, people vote before listening to the... True. I was going to say the same thing.

It's very clear that people vote as they see it in their timeline. And so they don't hear our explanations for why we do things a certain way. You just see certain things like, oh, he put Age of Empires in as his pick. Even though that was a totally valid pick and Doom was not. But yeah, whatever. I have a statement when you guys are ready about this. So I will say, we may not do a poll all the time for our challenges, but I do think that we should continue to treat Mastodon as the official place where we do it.

it's just interesting that where you ask the question can get very different results, which was fun to see. Yeah. So I have a statement. I have a statement prepared if you all are ready. Sure. So after the results of this poll, my statement is, this attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed, but I assure you, My resolve has never been stronger.

In order to ensure our security and continued stability, comfort zones shall be reorganized into the first galactic empire for a safe and secure society. So that's it. We're done with democracy. I'm the emperor now. What I say goes. Okay. So this is how democracy dies. With thunder's applause. By a guy yelling into a microphone. Yeah.

Yeah. Matt, did you get that reference? I did. That's Senator Palpatine. Okay. No, Senator. No, no, no. Chancellor? No. Chancellor basically creating, making himself emperor. Okay. Apologies. Yeah. He was only senator in one movie. And for like three quarters of it. Was he a senator when he said that? No. No. Okay. I'll get a Star Wars reference one of these days. And do you remember who granted The Chancellor full powers Uh huh Yeah I know But let's see if Matt knows

Was it Padme I don't know if she'd have that power You were actually a little close to that Yeah she wasn't there Because Padme wasn't available Jar Jar Jar Jar is responsible For the Galactic Empire Misapropos I thought it was Jar Jar and I was so scared of being wrong and saying Jar Jar did it. And that'd be like the worst answer. Just a fun fact.

The way that Jar Jar speaks in La Réunion Island, on my home island, we all find it extremely funny. Because it sounds a lot like our local language. Oh, okay. yeah and um i believe somewhere i saw somewhere but that was a long time ago that george lucas did inspire uh did take inspiration from like creole languages to create the way

jar jar speaks it would make sense yeah no that totally makes sense i i didn't know that that's uh it's fascinating i love there's a uh i swear we'll get off the star wars tangent just a second but Since we're talking about the sound and stuff. There is, I think it's in episode two. There's a little bonus feature about all the sound design in Star Wars. And how they just take real life objects and make them. It's not like synthesized, completely computer generated sounds.

A lot of the ships and stuff are based on real airplanes. And they take those sounds and tweak them. Anyways, it's really interesting. But we got a lot of stuff to talk about. We should move on. All right. Matt, you're first up in our show doc. You want to go first? Matt is filling in the show notes right now. So he's like the kid doing his own work on the school bus. This episode's coming in hot, guys. That's okay. I was kind of doing the same thing today, too.

So I was that kid. Yeah, so today I am bringing something that I've technically spoken about on the show before, but never on an episode we've released. I talked about this on our test episode. And that is the M4 iPad Pro, which I wanted to bring up today because not only is it a thing that I've been using for a few months and have opinions on, it's also something I just freaking love. And I wanted to bring something to the show this week that I just adore.

and wanted to just gush for a little bit. All right. So I have a history with the iPad that goes back to the beginning. I love the original iPad. I got the original iPad. And in 2018, so that's eight years later, I guess. But in 2018, I went all in on the iPad. I went full Chris. I went full Fetichi. I was like, this can do everything. And also, this is an incredible update.

The 2018 iPad Pro, the Face ID one, it still looks super modern, super awesome. Like, I know numerous people who still use that iPad and are totally happy with it and don't see any reason to upgrade. And I don't totally blame them. It was an awesome one. And so I was like, I'm doing everything on the iPad. It's great. It does everything. A few things are a little annoying, but on the whole, it's still the best thing for me. Then Apple Silicon happened and I started doing YouTube and what started out as, oh, I'll get an M1 MacBook Air to just do YouTube video editing turned into, I guess I'm kind of a Mac guy again.

So in like 2022, I switched back to the Mac. I wrote a blog post about how I want touchscreen Macs and that's been haunting me to this day because people get very upset whenever I say Macs should look more like iPads and have touch. Let's set that aside for the rest of this conversation. This all led up to, in the start of the year, I sold my iPad. My last iPad, I sold it because I thought the Vision Pro would do the things for me that I get from an iPad. It's this more casual computer. I'll watch stuff on it. I'll just kind of like chill on the couch and just pinch around in the air.

If you've listened to the show before, you know that did not turn out to be the case for me. Or anyone. Or most, yeah, most people. Yeah. So I desperately missed having an iPad in my life. I don't like using my laptop on the couch. I don't like, I like having the laptop for travel and stuff, but like, I'm not going to just casually go around the house using a MacBook. And so I like the iPad for that. So I want to talk about some of the things that I do with the iPad Pro.

Maybe why I chose the iPad Pro instead of a cheaper iPad as well. But before I get into some of those, I know we're all fans to some level of the iPad. Nelian, do you have an iPad right now that you use on a regular basis? I have an iPad right now that I don't use on a regular basis. And I'm actually in a tough spot with it. Ooh. Explain. I feel like I relate to your experience because I did get into the iPad in around 2020 during the pandemic.

I bought my first iPad Pro I had an iPad before but my first iPad Pro 2020 and that was the 2018 iPad and the goat yeah and I went all in just like you did I was reading a lot of Vitechi at the time and yeah I went all in and that was my main computer and remained my main computer for a couple of years maybe even three years a couple of years And today, I just don't know what to make of my current iPad.

I've got the M2.1, I think. M2 iPad Pro. M1. I don't remember. And I used to use it as a sidecar monitor, as you know, on my desk. And then I stopped doing that. And now it's just lying around and I'm never using it. Last night, I was actually on the couch with my partner. And the iPad Pro was on the couch side table. I don't know how that's called.

And I just went and picked up. I was like, oh, I should be able to do some couch surfing on that iPad right now. And it was off. No battery left. Yeah. Tough spot. I don't know what to do with it. I'm thinking about selling it. But at the same time, I like to have it around. So, yeah. Yeah. I guess my warning would be careful with selling it. because you may be surprised when you actually want it again. Yeah, I know. So, Chris, do you use an iPad?

What's an iPad? No, you know, I don't have any. I don't have a iPad. I have one, two, three. Oh, God. Four. Technically, I have five iPads here, but all but two of them are review units. So, yes, I do use an iPad. I've been all in on the iPad since kind of that iOS 9, iPad Air 2 era. I did that, and then the first iPad Pro came out shortly after iOS 9 came out, if I'm remembering timelines correctly.

I think so. It gets very confusing. But I've been all in on the iPad since then. I started off blogging on it, and then when I did YouTube, I would do everything on my iPad and then edit a little bit on the MacBook Pro that I had. It wasn't anything special MacBook Pro, but it got the job done. And then LumaFusion came out. I used that. Then LumaFusion got super buggy, so I got really mad at them.

Bought a really nice MacBook Pro that was like the M1 Max MacBook Pro. Went all in on that as like my video editing machine and a little bit of my productivity machine. Kind of like balance between the iPad and the Mac. And then once Final Cut came to the iPad, I've been all back in on the iPad. The only thing I use a Mac for is this show and like some trying home assistant. But it's not really working out very well for me right now. And like a few like really specific like automation, things like that.

I just have a Mac Mini. It's literally mounted underneath the desk that I'm sitting at for recording this show because we do a video version. And recording a video podcast on an iPad, while technically doable, would be a lot more work for me, the editor. So I didn't want to create more work for me. Hopefully so, yes. That's my long-winded way of saying, yes, I do use an iPad. god excellent i i kind of knew the answer that one okay um yeah so okay so the m4 ipad pro i don't i don't really want to do like a review of it um i would say the thing that really the thing that

makes me buy an ipad pro is pro motion i can't buy a computer without a high refresh display anymore like a 60 hertz display just feels broken to me um and it's one of those things where once you have it you can't go back it's very hard to go back once you've gotten used to something um see every single year where i look at the normal iphone and i'm like oh that'd be great for me and then i buy the pro one for the screen can i can i interject here yeah i actually did i i set up for a while here so i i still have my iphone review units uh and i have the iphone 14 pro but apple also sent me

or i'm sorry iphone 15 pro whatever the late the last year's last last year's whatever last okay I was going to say, you got to send that 14 back. The numbers are getting ridiculous. Anyways, so I have the 15 Pro. That's what I've mostly been using. But they also sent me the 15 Pro. I tried using it. And while I am not the biggest, like, ProMotion, have to have it, oh, my gosh, 60 hertz displays feel broken, scrolling. Scrolling did feel a little broken.

So you mean the non-Pro? Yeah, on the non-pro, like, it did feel a little janky, but, like, I was able to live with it. But if I'm going to buy my device and pick out what device, yeah, I'll just go get, I'll go and get the best one because, yeah. The funny thing is, on the Mac, so I feel like you guys with promotion, but the funny thing is, on the Mac, I don't feel this. When I use a friend's MacBook Pro, which has got promotion, it doesn't feel that much different.

Yes, I agree with you. Completely agree. When I had the M1 Mac, I couldn't tell the difference. I couldn't tell the difference on the Mac. Yeah. I think the big reason for me is the distance animations play. Like if you swipe an app off your, like off your home, you close an app on the iPad, the whole screen moves and like the app moves like six inches or 17 meters. I don't know what that is in metric.

But like on the Mac, you just click like an icon on the dock and it just pops on screen. And so 60 or 120 doesn't really make a difference. Maybe it makes a difference if you use stage manager on the Mac. Maybe. Oh yeah, probably. fly around yeah so so yeah i always go with the pro because of promotion i i i really adore it on the i i could downgrade my phone before i would downgrade the ipad i think for that um same and the distance of the animations and how choppy they feel um but i really like the thinness is kind of cool i feel like the initial reviews were like oh it's like it's so much thinner i guess it's thinner

I can't really tell coming from an M1 iPad Pro. It's a little thinner, but like not game changing. I really, really, really love the OLED screen, though. It is so, so good. And that's made me move my image editing completely over to the iPad. Partially because it looks great. It's the best looking screen I own. But also because it means I don't have to run Adobe Creative Cloud constantly in the background. on my mac that was the last thing like i i love lightroom i hate creative cloud yeah um so being able to just run lightroom in kind of just an ios's kind of sandboxed um format is just is a great and

so yeah that's that's like one of the things i love doing on this um and i love using the magic keyboard the new magic keyboard is so so so good um like way better not way better meaning no it is it is way better it is it is as somebody that went through three of the old magic keyboards because i use them so much i would wear them out uh this new one is significantly better in build quality and usability okay a bigger trackpad function row the metal uh or the aluminum uh uh uh insert inside whatever everything about it is nice sits further back better angle much better

yeah yeah the the metal body makes so much of a difference it feels much more like a unified device um and the keys feel a lot better too so from what i was told like are you talking about the key switches the switches yeah they're the same and from what i was really but i think what is happening is because of the metal body there and it's not that rubber material that maybe it just feels better to type on and us mechanical keyboard nerds they are like because i said the same thing and i asked apple pr and they said nope same switches okay does it sound better

um it sounds better okay it doesn't sound like pretty quiet yeah it's pretty quiet i always found the magic keyboard for the iPad pretty loud. Oh, you want to hear a loud keyboard. Okay, sure. I'll be right back. Hang on. Oh, he's really... He's bringing the clicky keys. Oh my god. There are certain keywords that I should not pronounce, right?

I should not say anything about keyboards. Yeah, just let those pass. nothing. Nothing happens. Where did he go? He's buying an iPad. The key of all on an iPad. I would believe both. Was that a keyboard with silent switches? That sounds cute. Really? Is it not?

I think the audio processing is actually making it sound very nice. Dang it. It's like the loudest keyboard I own. This thing is a beast. It has metal plating, metal everything. It's absolutely a beast. It's not sound-diffed at all. The show is making it sound nice. Well, that bit's getting cut. Leave it in. So, yeah, Magic Keyboard rocks. I played some games on it recently. I don't think there's a billion iPad games I want to play, but I played both Monument Values over the last week or two.

Those games are awesome. And they are incredibly good on the iPad. I never played the second one before. And so it was really cool to play that. They're both on Apple Arcade if you subscribe. But yeah, those are awesome. I play Puzmo every day on it. I play that pile of poker that was unjustly destroyed in one of our polls for best daily game. Again, because Neleon is Macedon's favorite. Yes. and the last thing I wanted to say is I love having an iPad because I this is an old man thing to say but like I get

pain in like my hands and my arms sometimes like right like kind of here video people I guess can see but like on the inside of my arms like there's a tendon or something that gets tensed up sometimes when I'm using a mouse and keyboard for too long and it's like physically painful to use a mouse and keyboard and so there are some times where like I just have to stop working at my Mac and the iPad is great for that. I have no issues with using a touch interface like primarily and so it's really great to have that. This is tangentially another reason why I think for accessibility reasons a touch Mac would be great but anyway but I just I just love having like the flexibility of like it can be a laptop when I want it to be. I was working

from it. I've been running battery tests on my Mac for like too long and so I haven't able to use my max i had to use my ipad over the weekend i plugged it into my thunderbolt dock and everything just kind of worked um and i was using stage manager to do some of the like writing that i was doing um but yeah it's really great to be able to like dock it or i could use a laptop form factor with the magic keyboard or i can just rip it off and use a totally touch and like i can use the apple pencil when i want like it's a really i really like the flexibility of it um for like

whatever situation I'm in, it will adapt to me. I think that's pretty cool. Do you want to hear my, I got two hot takes for you. Oh, bring them. So you mentioned you love the OLED display. I also love the OLED display. I have spent more time since I've got my hands on this iPad, working from the iPad in the Magic Keyboard in this area, in this space, than in my office with the iPad plugged into the studio display. even though it's smaller, it's just so much nicer.

It is so much nicer, which also means I haven't been using mechanical keyboards as much just because I've just been using the Magic Keyboard, which is a bummer. And then the second hot take is I have a theory, not a theory, a wish, an idea. I will call it an idea, that Apple's next OS isn't going to be, like, for a specific device. It's going to be one OS that adapts to the screen sizes.

So no more, oh, it should run Mac OS, or no, iPad OS is good enough. No, it would be, like, Apple OS, and it would run on the phone, the watch, or maybe not the watch, but, like, the phone, the iPad, and the Mac. Like, let's just say those three. and it'll adapt to whatever screen size you're using. So if you're on the phone, yeah, you can have one app. Maybe they'll finally add multitasking there and just put two apps side by side. iPad, you can have a few more. It can do a few more things. But then when you plug it into a monitor, or if it's like a desktop or something like that, that's when you have something

that's a little more similar to Mac OS. But it's one OS. All the feature sets are the same. And it works similarly, but different, depending on what screen size you're using. Anyways, that is my idea. Interesting. Yeah, that's not happening. I mean, if you think about it, it kind of already is because every time Apple makes a feature, they have to make it for three different platforms right now. So why not just make it for one OS and have the OS do the adapting?

So I hear you. They're too far in. I mean, iPadOS and iOS are basically that already, right? Yeah. In theory. Sometimes the iPad, for whatever reason, doesn't get things right away. But in theory, that is the idea of it's one interface on the phone, and then iPads get more screen real estate that can do other things. I feel like that was their strategy with iOS. And then it didn't. And then I think they thought, like, in the 2016 to 2020 era, when, like, Macs kind of sucked, and they weren't investing in them and making a keyboard or whatever in them like that was kind of

the idea that was the what's a computer ad yeah like i feel like that was their ideas maybe this will be the os that scales up and down to every platform and then it didn't work so i'm starting over seems risky well i so i'm thinking at a very base level so as we all know the very base of all of matt apple's os is darwin that's the very bit well it's unix but we'll just start with darwin uh darwin is the very base of that at some point they're going to replace that it's going to age to a point where they want something a little more modern why not just replace that with something

that can run everywhere and handles the adapting at that level i don't i don't know anyways it's just it's just a thought yeah whatever yeah i i think history has shown the mac is shockingly resilient yeah which is i don't dislike this idea actually i i like this idea it needs to be thought out it just it feels like they keep trying to kill the mac and the mac will not die like everyone's like don't change the mac i don't need a big mac os update just give it the new like messages features

and everything but like it's great but every year people are like i want this from ipad os i want this from ios but like the mac is just gonna stick around and outlive us all i feel like yep yeah yeah yeah so it would be interesting though i'll we should clip this for uh when apple does this in like 18 months and you were like i told you i knew it would be interesting for sure oh i i think it would be more like a five to ten year scale thing like i don't think this is like right around the corner or something like that but i i don't know i just look at the way apple's making their products

and i look at the way like wwdc goes and like they're having to make the same feature for three different platforms and it's like what make it once and then like but i build the os to adapt but anyways it's just it's just a thought it's just an idea that i've had and that's also what swift ui is right is you write one app and it the system kind of takes care of that exactly yeah so it's an interesting thought for sure this would need to be a little bit better than swift ui uh but yeah uh this would need to be a little more robust but yeah it's just a thought but

anyways uh i i pulled you away from your your your ipad stuff what what else you got on this that that that's it i mean there's other things i do on it but i i just wanted to give the ipad some love uh because i think it's it's pretty great not the computer for every single thing for me but I love having it and I love the new one. Yeah I'm glad you're enjoying it. I've been enjoying mine as well It's probably my favorite iPad update

The 2018 one was a big one because it was the big redesign and that is actually what made my channel blow up. It was a nice small niche channel but the 2018 is what made everything blow up for me. So that one will always be kind of a special place for me. But outside of that, I think this might be my favorite iPad update. Just between everything, even the Apple Pencil Pro is really nice with the double-click feature. Or not the double-click, but the...

Gosh, why can't I think of what that's called? My brain. Pinch. Pinch, thank you. Yeah. Well, I have this week just put out my iOS and iPadOS 18 walkthrough. I will also have a couple other videos about what's on my iPad home screen and what's on my iPhone home screen. Because home screen customization has been a big thing, and I haven't covered those in a minute. So I thought that would be interesting. But for the sake of comfort zone, I know we talked about iOS and iPadOS 18 when they hit public beta.

But now I think it might be interesting to go into some tidbits. I'm assuming we've all been running the betas. It might be a little interesting to kind of go into the small touches and the small things that we like. I told you if you guys had something, feel free to bring it up and we can go through it. But I can kick this off and we can round robin it. Does that sound good? Or do you guys just want me to go through my stuff? I have a couple of things. I got a few things. Okay. All right. Let's just round robin it then. I can kick it off if you want. But I think one of my favorite features that hasn't really gotten a lot of press or maybe I just haven't noticed it is in FaceTime now, if you select the share play icon, you can now either request to see the other person's home screen or share your home screen with them.

And so if you do it the way that you're on your device and you see their home screen, you can draw on their home screen and highlight things and be like, okay, tap this, tap this, tap this, or do this, do this, do this. But you can also take it a step further, and in the top right corner, there's a hand icon with a finger pointing out. You can select that, and it'll send a prompt to the other person saying, hey, so-and-so wants to take control of your device. they can accept that and you can actually start tapping on the screen and selecting things y'all when i was in it i would have killed for this feature like this this feature is going to be

huge for people that do any sort of tech support whether you work in it or you help your grandparents out with their devices or your parents or aunts and uncles nieces nephews what whoever it doesn't matter it's gonna be huge like that is a really big thing and uh i i think that's one of my favorite features that i haven't really seen a ton of people talk about yeah i forgot that was in this release but yeah they announced that at w that was like on stage of wwdc wasn't it uh i believe so i think so

yeah that there was a lot happening at that keynote but anyways uh what do you want to go next if you have something i have something um my favorite i had to pull it up to make sure i didn't say any stupid things in the photos app now you can actually filter screenshots yes and you can filter out screenshots so you only see real photos and you can do the reverse you can only show

screenshots from your library and that's extremely useful yeah i was i was sitting with uh john vorhees dan morin jason snell and we all at wwdc when they announced this feature we all looked at each other and we're like well this is for us yeah and actually missed the fact that you can do both you can only have screenshots and also only have photos and i only noticed that like a couple weeks

ago somebody mentioned in the masternone i was like hey that's a pretty good tip i like it yeah that's really good i like that i didn't know you didn't know you could do that yeah matt what do you got so my favorite thing in the release is r c i knew you would say that you know what's funny yeah yeah i i looked uh to enable that i don't think it's uh supported by my

carrier yet i can't enable it oh no i've got the same issue uh i'm actually like i'm not in an old place where in France, there are basically three major networks, a bunch of carriers on those networks, but three major networks. Only two of those have enabled RCS. And mine is not one of them. I'm kind of afraid that they won't even enable it this week when the release is out and that they will only do it like months from now or maybe ever i i'm worried guys i really want it

it's it's very nice i've it's it's very nice especially for my older relatives who don't really do email they don't they're certainly not installing whatsapp and figuring out like multiple messages places to find like who you're talking to or like oh yeah i talked to aunt julie in the in whatsapp but i talked to matt and i'm like they they just do it all through messages and so it's been really nice to be able to send them videos of like my niece and stuff it high quality and not like those like tiny postage stamps stamp videos that they would get normally so

it's been an amazing quality of life uh improvement over the summer my carrier turned it on i'm invisible uh in the u.s and they turned it on like a month ago or more maybe and it's just awesome um So yeah, it just feels like iMessage for the most part with green bubbles instead of blue. And that's fantastic. So I'm super happy it's there. You should just cut the green bubble people out of your life. Oh my god. Are green bubble people really your friend?

I mean, some of my favorite people are green bubble people. I'm not a green bubble person. What are you talking about? Well, my two favorite people are blue bubbles, of course. if you come to the european union we have fun here and yeah and one of those fun things is meta will be forced very soon actually i think a couple of months away from that from the deadline forced to support third-party platform messaging platforms and there have been leaks screenshots, etc.

And I think Meta have since announced a short of the screenshots themselves. In WhatsApp and in Facebook Messenger, you will be able to just add contacts that use other apps like Signal and any other third-party apps that want to use the same protocol. I'm actually kind of hyped for this because my social circles are spread out over iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Signal.

A lot of people on Signal, especially because in the activist circle, Signal, the end-to-end encryption is really popular in those circles for obvious reasons. yeah, I can't wait to be able to just because the Signal app is just the most horrible app. That's a statement here, but yeah, I'm going to stand up to it. And I think it will be very nice to be able to

chat with my Signal friends from WhatsApp. And that's just in the European Union, so we have fun here. Nice. Congratulations on the phone. There's a French telegram joke here, but my brain's too tired to make it. Oh, and telegram too, yeah. Telegram is never going to support this, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. What's the joke? Well, didn't France arrest the telegram CEO or something like that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a joke about that.

See, we have fun here. Come here, have a good time. Go to a French prison. man yeah i bet they're very nice okay moving right along let's get back to some ios stuff uh i'm gonna i'm gonna stick in the iMessage realm and say one of my favorite features is actually the ability to schedule messages uh you both don't know i've done this but i've done it to both of you i've done it to apple pr i have scheduled messages to be sent later because i'll have an idea of something about in like the middle of the night or something like that.

And I just want to get it off, but I don't actually want to start having that conversation. And so I'll type out the message. You go into the iMessage app drawer, which is still a thing for some reason. And you can schedule a message for later right there. It's actually really nice. But you know, the middle of the night for you is like, I'm awake. You're always awake. That's the problem. I never know when you're asleep. You're awake in our night and your night. That's very true. I'm always awake.

I have a widget on my iPad home screen with both of your time zones. So I don't like bother you guys. But even if it's like 2 a.m. your time, you're still texting us. So I'm like, I don't even know. Neely on just gets messages whenever. Yeah, my schedule, sleeping schedule is all kinds of messed up. So I shouldn't worry about that. I think this is an iOS 18 thing. But kind of similar in the iMessage App Store. You know, if you long press on the plus button now, it brings up the photo library right away.

Was that an 18 or a 17 thing? That might have been a 17 thing. It was a 17, yeah. I was like, I knew that was something, but I always forgot. Dang it. Okay, cut that, cut that, cut that. All right, so that's mine. Neilion, what do you got? Just right off the bat. Right off my head. What's the expression? Right off the top of my head. Right off the top of my head? Off the top of my head? Yeah. off the top of my head okay uh the flashlight in the dynamic island yeah feel you feel like an engineer every time you turn on the flashlight now and so you can adjust like how intense the light is

and you can adjust uh how wide the angle is for the for the cone of light um i've shown i've shown this off to my partner a few days ago and they were like okay but why i honestly have the same question i always feel like i'm doing it wrong now i love this feature it's so i love it too so like this morning i i slept for a little bit but i got up around like 2 a.m and uh when i got up i

you know to grab my clothes and stuff like that i turned on the flashlight but i lowered the brightness so i didn't wake up my girlfriend so i just lowered the brightness and you know you can focus the beam if you want but i just you just lower it right from the dynamic island you don't have to go into control center it's really nice yeah and the design is top notch yeah yeah there's one design designer at apple who just goes very extra on something every year this is this is it this year um i have another thing okay i love the hiking directions in apple maps oh okay and it's

not because i hike it's because i walk my dog in the suburbs and we go to like little neighborhoods that we've never been to before and it's hard to figure out like what's a mile walk gonna be and so i've been using this to like go somewhere we park and then before i get out of the car i just map out okay here's our walk and i start the walk and it's always the right distance i'm never like there have been times where i get him out there and it's been like a mile and i look at the map and i'm like oh we are nowhere near back to the car bud and we have a lot to go so it's been very

nice to just have the length walk i want uh wherever i am so i really like that so that's the dog dog walk route for me it is yes it could be good for working out too like if you want to go on to run and you want to go a different path, you can kind of measure it out. So yeah, I think it's a pretty rad feature. Rad. Watch out, the cool kids in town. I'm just kidding. So for me, math notes is this big thing. That's part of the big calculator update. But there is a little feature in math notes. Well, it's not even in the calculator app. So if you are typing something

out say in messages you're typing out five plus five and hit the equal sign it will actually use math notes and give you the answer right in the quick type bar but it doesn't just do it for math equations it also does it for unit conversions as well so i can do like 500 usda to euros or 50 inches two centimeters or whatever uh so that math notes like quick answer stuff is anywhere the quick type bar is in ios or ipad os nice nice that one's cool yeah uh you guys got any more i got a couple

more that i can just rapid fire if you want i've got one rapid fire one okay go for it you can now erase and format external hard drives into multiple formats it's so i've done it for my iphone twice and it is it's just very nice not to have to get the mac out for that xfat and fat are supported now you can also do apfs i love it i'm getting deja vu we talked about this we did we did talk about this in the beta one i i brought it up then because i was very excited it was one of like the two wishlist features i actually got this year uh it wasn't even high up on the wishlist but it was

one of those things i'm like yes finally have this i literally at one point uh when i i didn't even own a mac uh i bought an external drive it was formatted for fat or x fat or something like that and it wasn't support it wasn't showing up on my ipad uh so i actually had to drive it over to my brother's house format it and then come back to my house and use it uh so that was annoying uh so So I'm really glad this is here. If you're using APFS, you can also encrypt the drives as well if you want.

Just don't forget the password because if you do, you're kind of out of luck. Yeah. In shortcuts, the if statement, you can now use multiple conditions for the if statement. So you can be like, if the date equals this and if the device type equals this, then do this and or that. So there's multiple conditions you can do in there. And as far as I know, there's no limit. I did like five of them the other day, and it all worked just fine.

So you can get really granular with how if statements work now. So that's pretty cool. That's great. That's awesome. The iOS, the new iPadOS tab bar design can be customized. You can remove items. You can add items. But in the TV app, you cannot remove MLS. It is pinned in there. Apple, for some reason, will not let you remove MLS. And what drives me nuts about this, well, first, soccer is boring. I'm going to say it. Come at me, Europe.

You're not even watching. But also, it's American soccer. How exciting can it be? Really? Okay, come on. Let's be honest. But it's pinned there, and it's a subscription on top of Apple TV Plus that I don't even pay for. So it's just a constant promotion. Anyways, that's not even a tidbit. That's just my gripe. I just can't. And then going back to Matt's files, you can long press on a file or folder that's in iCloud and force it to keep downloaded.

The feature from iPadOS 13 that was removed during the beta is back. It took five years, but hey, it's here. But yeah, this was originally announced with iPadOS 13. They called it penning, but now it's just keep download. So, yeah. And then, let's see here. I had something else for you. So that's how many years to figure out how to call it? Five. Was that an issue? We don't know how to call this.

Yeah, it was the label, yeah. and what was that the other thing i've had one more what was the other thing oh uh spotlight um spotlight is one of my favorite features in ios ipad os mac os i love spotlight um there is now a option for what's called semantic search so developers are allowed to build an index in their apps of their data and spotlight can search that index so for example i

use sql as my media tracking app if i type in rings of power it will show up in spotlight for sql so i can tap on it and it jumps right into sql right into that uh right into the rings of power chart page whatever you want to call it uh and i can mark an episode as watched read description see who's in it, all that stuff. Really cool. But yeah, I think that just about does it for the tidbits. I put out my big iOS and iPadOS 18 walkthrough. A bunch

of stuff is in there. Go watch it. Matt, this is your reminder to add that to the show notes. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. I'm saying thank you as well. Oh, thank you. Are we going to turn into one of those shows that's like soft spoken? Okay, good, because I hate that stuff. Let's not do this. I really hate that stuff. Okay, good. Okay, all right. I need to be able to be loud. All right. Like that keyboard.

I swear this keyboard is really loud, and it's just the audio processing in Riverside that's not doing it. Anyways, it doesn't matter. So that's what I got this week. Neilion, it's your turn. What do you have for us this week? Yeah, all right. So speaking of software updates. Oh, okay. Another big one came out. And that's Android 15. Really?

And in Android 15, there's a big feature. And that's called desktop mode, which you can enable on tablets, on Android tablets. And I guess on foldables, maybe? Yeah. And so I've linked a video that's from 9to5Google. They highlight a bunch of the new features in 2015, including desktop mode. And the way this works, I wanted to bring this up to see how one of you especially feels, and that's Chris, about this desktop mode.

So the way this works is when you enable it, if I got this right, to enable it, you tap and drag the top of an app that's in full screen and drag it down to the center of the screen. and it pops into a floating window. And from there, from the dock at the bottom, you can just tap on any of the apps, and they will be adding themselves to the workspace as other floating windows.

There doesn't seem to be a four-app limit to the amount of floating windows you can have. There are no stages, like group. Yeah, okay. You can just pile them on and they are regular windows, which you can minimize, maximize and close. And is this what we need on a tablet UI, on a touchscreen UI? Yeah. Yeah.

100%. I saw the video of this the other day and I immediately was like, yeah, this is exactly like when I kind of like think of a concept for multitasking on the iPad. This is exactly what I come up with. Because right now, we have two multitasking versions. We have Split View and Stage Manager. And I use both of them. When I'm using my iPad in tablet mode, I use Split View. Because it makes much more sense with touching the screen and moving things around. And Stage Manager works great when a keyboard and trackpad is attached.

And for the life of me, I do not understand why Apple doesn't have some toggle in their multitasking settings that says, When a keyboard and trackpad is attached, enable Stage Manager. When no keyboard and trackpad is attached, go to Split View. I do not get why there isn't this. And this seems like the happy middle ground of you can use either one in any situation. But I like this.

Yes, I am saying something nice about Android. But yeah, I legitimately like this. I wish this was a part of the iPad multitasking system. There needs to be a little bit more to it, but yeah, no window limits, no stages. We don't need any of that confusing stuff. Multitasking, windowing is not something that really needs to be reinvented or have a bunch of stuff added to it. Give me the ability to do the thing that's new in macOS Sequoia or whatever, but there's been a bajillion third-party apps that have done it for years where you can drag an app to the left side or the right side of the corners, and it'll take up half the screen or a quarter of the screen or go full screen or whatever.

Give me that. But yeah, I legitimately do like this. In a year, literally the day iPadOS 18 is coming out, and there are no multitasking changes whatsoever. We're still using the same version of Stage Manager from last year, which did get some changes from the very first version, some really good changes. For sure. But I'm not exactly waving the flag of iPad multitasking right now.

I'm not exactly its biggest cheerleader. So something like this on the iPad, I would love that. Yeah. I think it's interesting because it is looking at, I haven't used it. I don't have an Android tablet to like try this on. It looks like, so stage manager is like a very highly engineered, complicated way to try to simplify window management and like try to, it tries to help you. Like you move a window and it's like, oh, actually you wanted a couple millimeters over here. We're going to realign it a little bit for you.

Or we're only going to let you do these specific sizes. And then we're going to create these stages for you so you can like bundle things together. The Android one seems to be just like click app, get window, make it whatever size you want, wherever it goes. Maybe it'll be a bad size, but we're going to let you do it. Which I guess is kind of the difference between the Android way and the iOS way in a lot of ways. But I do kind of wish, like Chris, you kind of alluded to, like maybe stage manager needs a I truly know what I'm doing and grew up on a Mac mode. where it just it takes away all those things it just lets you load up apps and like if you have 10 apps on screen it gets slow okay that's fine well and one thing about stage manager i appreciate

is you can hide that sidebar that strip you can't you can't and i i do that i don't use that i get it out of the way because it just takes up extra ui space because i'll just command tab through or there's the multitasking button on the magic keyboard. I don't, you don't need that strip. It just takes up extra UI. It makes things a little more cluttered. So I do appreciate that, but you're right. Like I need a mode to where I can put 10 windows on my screen at a given time. Yeah. Well, and like, if you just click in it, if you have like a stage with like two apps open, I have like yesterday I had Ulysses and messages because I was talking to you guys while I was

writing a blog post, um, very productive and, um, it's the optimum writing experience. absolutely i am your muse i don't know if you've realized this yet but i am your thank you you guys give me energy um but i wanted to open a safari window and i click safari in my dock and opened a whole new stage and i was like oh i just wanted that in the same space and so yeah i think can you like shift click yeah so you can either shift click or hold down shift and tap and it'll open it in the current stage but i have long said there needs to be a setting that lets you invert that to where if I click on something, it opens in the current stage.

And if I shift click, it opens in a new stage, which would make way more sense to me. But like Federico and I were both like begging Apple when stage manager first came out for that shift click that very first year, because it didn't come out till the following year. We were begging Apple for that. And that was kind of like, at least for me, I don't want to speak for him, but for me, that was like the compromise to like just get something like that. But now that it's here, I'm like, okay, now I want the setting to invert that.

I've got a more nuanced opinion on the Android thing. I think this is not totally the way to go. So the way I feel about stage manager is I've always liked the idea of it. and I love the fact I know that it's a pain point for many but for me I I love the fact that it flies your windows around all the time it feels very fun and you want to touch it you want to

interact with it and I wish it was not frustrating so it just could be the fun aspect of it and not frustrating part but um so i like the idea of stage manager the fact that you can group windows together and the fact that it feels very touch friendly uh to be able to move your windows around and and arrange them and this desktop mode on android feels very desktop like and i don't think

that's the way to go if you want something that works well on a tablet where you use your finger as your main interacting device, I guess. I want to believe that there's a middle point here that Apple can find, and maybe Google will find it first, but that Apple can find where we have stage manager, but we have also this. We have this where there's no app limits and there is no grid, there's no fixed sizes.

And like Chris said, there's a feature or a non-by-default setting where apps are added to the current workspace by default instead of the reverse thing. And if we can reach that middle ground, I think we have something really good, but it doesn't exist. Google feels like it's coming to the rescue when you look at this I haven't used this as well on Android 15 so I'm only speaking like watching the videos

from watching the videos and Google feel it feels like Google is coming to the rescue and and saying like Apple you should be doing this on your iPad but I I doubt anyone would really like this on the iPad. Or maybe at first, but it would... For the common folk, I will say, it would not be something that people would turn on. And I don't think on Android 15 that's something people will turn on as often as you do, Stage Manager, on the iPad.

That's fair. That makes sense? Yeah. I mean, when I, I am one of those creepy people that when I go to like a Starbucks or like I'm out and about and I see somebody using an iPad, I look to see like how they're using it. And more often than not, they don't use stage manager. I would be very surprised if the stage manager usage was very high, but the issue is on Apple there because stage manager is off by default and there's two multitasking systems in the history of

i'm going to say popular computers has there ever been a popular computer with multiple multitasking systems it really like they need to blend that they need they need one they they need the one ring to rule them all as far as multitasking goes and i don't think split view is close but there needs to be more flexibility stage manager is a good concept but there needs to be more options uh that's so yeah that's the thing that that's the thing for me too is like um at the start of this i think chris you mentioned the sequoia or maybe you mentioned the last segment

sequoia added the ability for you to like drag your window to the right side of the monitor and have it fill up half the screen yeah but mac users weren't clamoring for that they were asking for it but they weren't like clamoring for it because there were like 20 apps that could do that for you. So you could add this. And so those options were there if you really wanted it and you knew what you were doing. And I think that in the world of iPadOS where Apple has more control over what you can do with it, these more options are a good thing, right? We need the easy multitasking intermediate and then we need experts to be able to kind of have it.

And yeah, I feel like they aren't solving for the experts right now. Whereas maybe the Android one is, hope you know what you're doing. And if you do, maybe this will be great for you. But yeah. Chris said, asked, is there a popular computer where you've got multiple multitasking systems? And actually there is. There's macOS. But the thing is, with macOS, the different layers of multitasking systems that they've added over the years, they can complement each other.

Like you can use mission control with stage manager. You can also type your windows. You can use all of this together. Whereas you're right, on the iPad, it's either one or the other. And that's a big difference. That's kind of what I meant is like a popular computer where you literally hit a button and it turns off one and turns on another. So I believe it is time for a challenge. And I've been very much looking forward to this challenge ever since Niléane issued it.

I did some research. And, yeah, you know what? Let's just get into it. I'm excited. Niléane, you want to explain what the challenge was? Yeah. So I was sick in the meantime, so I forgot the wording. Find an unusual iPhone case and use it. Yeah, that was it. Okay. All right. Yeah. Find an unusual iPhone case and use it. So should I go first or last? I think usually we have the challenge or the challenge-y, whatever.

Go last, right? So, Matt, you want to go first? Yeah. So this is my iPhone. And it's not just an iPhone. It's also a Game Boy. Oh, boy. Oh. That's a cool reveal. I like it. I'm actually reticent to link to this because what this is is a piracy machine. Oh, okay. So this is advertised as having games on it.

And the screenshots on Amazon show what are clearly not official Nintendo games. But there are official Nintendo games on this thing. And yeah, so this is a cool case. I mean, it's annoying as someone who doesn't like to have buttons on the back of their phone case. But it is actually a great size. The buttons are very mushy. So that's not ideal.

But it does function. And you can play some really great classic games on this thing. And it's got a speaker built in. So I actually had to turn it off because I don't know how to turn the sound off on it. Yeah. But it totally plays like NES style games. And the screen is actually pretty decent. It feels relatively good to play. And like the buttons are in a decent spot.

And it charges, one negative about it, it charges over micro USB. So it doesn't plug into your phone or anything. So it has its own internal battery. But if you have a micro USB cable around, which I do for my camera batteries, it's literally the only one in my life, or my camera battery charger thing. And yeah, it's pretty cool. What camera battery charger are you using? The Canon one just plugs into the wall. I don't... I have a double battery charger.

It charges two batteries in one. Oh. Yeah. Anyway. Downside is it's micro USB, But not for this, because this guy is pretty cool. And it was very cheap. It was like, I could buy two of these for one fine woven iPhone case. So pretty good. Can you try to move it closer to the camera? Yeah. That doesn't make a big difference. Okay. Yeah, your camera is very pixelated. Yeah, for some reason. It looks cute, at least.

It looks interesting. It looks pretty good. And I can use my phone like normal. It's very thin. So it doesn't feel like I'm using a super thick case. It's just the buttons on the back are a little annoying. Have you been actually using the case on... All seven days since the last one? No. But for the last 48 hours, I have had it on the phone. And yeah, it's totally usable. It slides into your pocket just fine. Yeah, I could see why a child might use this.

I'll never put it back on the case after today. I will say that. But you don't have to. Like, you can just use it, just take it off the phone, and now it's still a fully functional piracy device. So does it have preloaded games, or can you load your own? You cannot load anything onto it. It just comes with what it has. It's like a grid of 16 games that are on. So you can't just turn this into a legit thing? No, no, no.

It's not like one of those many emulation devices out there. Okay. Gotcha. Interesting. So, yeah, kind of cool. I don't know if I'd totally defend it. Certainly not in a court of law, but it's fine. Oh, my God. All righty. Well, I have two for you guys. Because the first one, I didn't feel completely like it justified the challenge. because it wasn't a new case, but I actually think this is a case our audience would like, so I wanted to bring it up.

And this is the Bang case. Now, full disclosure, I was sponsored by these people to talk about this case for a video. They have no idea I'm talking about it on the podcast. They have no idea what I'm going to say. But I have this case, and I actually think it looks pretty unique. It's kind of got this transparent tech background, and as we all know, transparent tech is the best tech. But what's interesting about this is this case gives you another action button, essentially, on the right side, kind of above.

And I think they got very, very lucky. It's above where the camera controls will go on the 16 line. So I think they got really lucky here. But what's interesting about this second action button, so it uses the accessibility features in iOS. So you can assign shortcuts to it, but you can assign three shortcuts to it because they actually thought it out on the actual action button. So you can single press it, double press it, or long press it to trigger three different shortcuts. So this is something I used quite a bit when I was kind of testing this and stuff like that.

My issue is I have not been able to use phone cases in a really long time. In fact, the last iPhone I put a case on like full time was the iPhone 6S. I just don't like cases on my phone anymore. It just adds too much bulk, and I don't break things, so it's fine. But if I was going to use a case, I'd want to use a case that gave me some extra functionality. So something like this, I actually really like. Now, my big issue with it is, kind of like Matt's, it has a battery in it.

So it has a proprietary connector that you have to use. It's not USB-C. It doesn't, you know, siphon the iPhone's battery or anything like that. That's the only, that's my only kind of downside to it is it has this proprietary like two-pin connector kind of thing. But it works great. It always triggers the shortcuts, and I like that it gives it three different options. So that's what I'm calling my functional pick. But again, former sponsors, so take that for what you will. I'm not biased.

I mean, it takes a lot more to buy me off, but that was a joke. But also, like, everyone does have their price. Send me $10 million, people. I'll say whatever you want. Anyways, so that's my functional pick. Any questions on that before we move on? No, it's pretty cool. Okay, all right, pretty cool. All right, so I am going to put in our document. you might see I have a second pick in here that's called the fashion pick.

And there is, I'm calling this mystery case. So I'm going to go ahead and put the link in here. All right, so the link is in there. I didn't do a very good job. But go ahead and click on that link. Okay. Oh, my God. What? So you asked for an unusual case, And I think I found the most unusual case you possibly can. What are you doing, Chris? So this right here is a phone case with an image on the back of it of Nicolas Cage, shirtless, but being peeled out of a banana.

You just heard that right. 100%. When I saw this case, I was like, I was trying to look for something like Matt's and stuff like that. But then I saw this case and I'm like, yep, this is it. I put it on my phone for a little bit. It didn't stay on my phone for very long. One, I hate cases. Two, it's very interesting. But yeah, it is the most unusual case I could find. And I think that was the challenge. Find an unusual case. And yeah, it's Nicolas Cage shirtless being peeled out of a banana.

What I like is that there are four variants of this. Yeah. Two of them are like normal cases. Matt, stop doing this. Why are you serious about this? I mean, it's a serious case. It is a serious contender. is analyzing the product this is this is a serious contender you asked for an unusual case you didn't say it needed to have functionality or anything like that i think this is this is the most unusual case because i have no idea where this image came from other than probably some fan fiction website

don't want to go much further into that uh yeah so yep that is my unusual case yeah uh-huh um okay I'm posting a picture we'll get this in the show notes as well the recommended other case I could buy I didn't see this I just okay if I would have saw that I would have bought that one it's 15 bucks for a human sized foot coming out of your case wow this is why you analyze everything seriously

okay you're right you're right but yeah that is I would like for the record the Nicolas Cage case to be my official contender for this week's challenge I don't know what I was expecting because you asked for an unusual case and that is about as unusual as I could get it is unusual you followed the rules and that's not a given for us i i'm just saying i i apparently if you don't follow the rules and you go for actually fun picks and things that are interesting uh you you don't win so i decided i'm gonna follow the rules

this week and you know what i'm i'm hoping you win i'm hoping you thank you thank you i hope i win too oh man yeah you won't i'm hoping yeah sure oh okay what what do you what do you got for us let's see let's see what's gonna win this let's see this all right guys i have brought okay Let me be in front of the mic. I have brought three objects for you today. Whoa. Okay. For this challenge. Yeah. Are you kidding?

It's all one device. Okay. It's a keyboard. Okay. It's a case. Oh, do I know what this is? I think I know what this is. Oh, dang it. It's a time machine. Wait, what? Okay, I don't know what this is. It's a keyboard. Chris, here. It's a keyboard. Oh, I know what this is. It's a case. I know what this is. And it's a time machine. Are you getting it, Chris?

Yeah, it's three separate devices. No, it's all not three separate devices. I know what this is. For our audio listeners, I have props. That's why you hear clanks in the background. So this is one single device, and this is the Clix keyboard case. Yeah. She's going to win again. No, there's no way Clix keyboard beats shirtless Nick Clix case being peeled out of a banana. There is absolutely no way.

We're asking for unusual. It does not get much more unusual than this. You're right. I'm screwed. One of you is going to win. I would like to point out for our Mastodon poll that we make sure the word unusual is in there. But Niléane, I have so many questions about this. I have been using this. Really quick, Niléane, your camera really zoomed in. Oh, yeah, because I was doing this. Oh, okay. When I do this, I should remember to reset it. Okay.

So I have been using this for a few days. And, yeah, I have thoughts. And I will take your questions. But I have pretty... I just can't get over my own little sketch. Okay. Maybe this might help. Nicolas Cage shirtless being peeled out of banana. It's extremely blurry for me, Chris, and makes it even funnier.

Blurry Nicolas Cage. This is definitely an episode you want to watch the video version for. Yes. Also, Chris, you just posed for the thumbnail. Okay. So if people don't know, the Clix keyboard case for the iPhone is an iPhone case with a physical keyboard at the bottom. So you end up with a remote-like iPhone because it's extremely long.

And there's a small keyboard at the bottom. The first thoughts, the keys feel very clicky. They're actually pretty nice. And that's it. Regarding the hardware side, that's pretty much it. Otherwise, the case is very unremarkable. It is a silicon case. Feels a lot like the Apple silicon case.

Except the back is hard. and the back is plastic probably. It's hard. You've got a bit of padding behind the keyboard at the bottom on the back. But on the software side, this is where things get interesting because one of the main selling points of this case is iOS comes with keyboard shortcuts like natively.

If you pair a keyboard to iOS, you've got keyboard shortcuts that you can use. It does. iOS has keyboard shortcuts. And this is where it gets a little bit interesting. So, one of the first things you can do if you're on the lock screen. Let me unlock it first. There you go. You're on the lock screen and you press the spacebar, you go to the home screen.

It's just like the iPad. Just like the iPad. If you're in... How am I going to demo this? If you're in a web browser... Exposure? Anyway, if you're in the web browser, you can press... There you go. You can press the spacebar. to scroll. And it sometimes doesn't work, as you can see. You gotta focus.

You gotta focus the window just like on a computer. But there you go. It scrolls every time you press the space bar. And one... Chris, what is the keyboard shortcut to go back to the home screen on the iPad? Command H. Exactly. So you can do the same thing here. Oh, nice. Command H. and you go back to the home screen that's cool yeah um let me go back to maybe i should do dark mode so things are easier to see there you go um if you're inside an app you

can do command space and you've got spotlight so you can bring up spotlight anywhere inside ios just like on the ipad and that is the single most useful feature of this entire case The fact that you can summon Spotlight anywhere, that's really cool. Okay, so I'm now officially out of good things to say about this case. Uh-oh. Okay.

It's clicky. The keyboard shortcuts are nice. I hate typing with this. It is the worst typing experience. Did you ever have a phone with a keyboard like this before? or is this your first? I've only had phones that had 9 keypad. Yeah. Okay. So no, I've never had a Blackberry before. Neither have I.

And every time I've tried to use one, I've also found it actually very hard to type on a physical keyboard that size. It is. Yeah, I think it is really hard. I had a Blackberry and I don't i don't understand why people were obsessed with the keyboards on blackberries because they're not good uh i mean maybe it was just because it was a small size thing and people were actually able to have a a full size keyboard and not just like the the nine numbers and like having to do the t9 texting

and stuff like that but yeah um that's interesting that this is not good to type on because that's the whole selling point of it. Do you find yourself like doing a lot with the keyboard like beyond typing like are you I mean can you command tab through your apps or is that not on the iPhone? You cannot command tab. I have tried this. Inside Safari you can do things like command L to focus the address bar. You can command T to open a new tab like I'm opening a bunch of tabs right now.

Command H on screen. That's what you said. What was it? Command M. There was another one. But yeah, in some apps, you've got a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcut sheet that you get on iPadOS where you hold the command key to see all of your keyboard shortcuts available inside the current app, that's not on iOS. Ooh. So there's no discovery here. You got to try things out.

The keyboard is backlit. I forgot to say. And that's okay. Looks decent. Yeah. I know I'm probably like biased. Like you said, I've never used the BlackBerry before. And that's why I've introduced this as a dime machine. I think this is a big nostalgia case. Yeah. It looks cool too. Like the yellow is bold. I love the look of it. Yeah, I like the look as well.

How well does it fit in your pocket? It's horrible. Okay, good question because I forgot I was about to say this. This was made by men. Like, this is extremely obviously made by men. men who have huge hands, who are able to type on this thing and not feel like they are killing their hands.

I've got average size hands. I don't have small or huge hands. And it hurts. Inside the manual that you get inside the box, there are tips. One of those tips is how to hold the case. And they recommend to hold it like this with your two pinkies under it. That's how they recommend holding the case to type on it. That's weird. I mean, I usually balance my phone with my pinky, but I have big hands.

So even on the Pro Max size phone, I can type one-handed while balancing my phone with the pinky. So I'm part of the problem. doesn't have an indent in their pinky where their phone sits. Yeah, I don't actually. I do. I totally do. One more negative thing to say. This is advertised as MagSafe compatible.

And their choice of wording here is really smart. Lawyers don't have an angle of attack here because they do say MagSafe compatible, which means it passes through, but there are no magnets in there. So all of your stands become upright stands, become useless. This falls right off. This is too heavy to rely on the magnets of the charger itself.

There needs to be some magnets in there, And are not. That's annoying. See, Nicolas Cage works just fine with MagSafe. Yeah. Title, title, title, title. Oh my God. Okay. That's pretty much it. I don't have much to say. I am not going to keep using this. And I regret spending the money on this because that was 130 euros.

Oh, that's a bummer. And I was stuck in French customs for way too long. Maybe they were really curious about what this is, and they were like, maybe we should not allow a French citizen to have this. So I understand the concern. Yeah, if you have any more questions, go ahead. That's it. Now, a little peek behind the curtain. We were chatting the other day in the Mac Stories team Discord. There is a new version of this that was announced. And I don't really remember what's in the new version because this doesn't appeal to me.

But does anything in the new version fix any of your complaints? I have looked at it. I don't think there is. It's just got the camera control thingy. Okay. And that's it. Yeah, that's disappointing. Are you at least able to return it? No, I'll keep it as a collectible. Okay, okay, okay. I've seen people be extremely enthusiastic about this and I want it to be the thing I saw some people do is they were

able to use it as a controller filled Delta which I thought was kind of interesting but there is that case that's coming out and I think I might order one their pre-order sold out like almost immediately so I wasn't able to get it but it's by the same people that make the bang case and basically it's kind of like Matt's case where it has a Game Boy controller that can sit on the back, but it's magnetic, so you can disattach it, pull it apart, whatever, put it on the front, and use Delta to play your games,

and the Game Boy controller part sits on top of the bottom half of your phone. So Delta takes up the top half of your phone. The bottom half would normally be the controls of Delta, the software controls, but the hardware buttons go over it. And I'm very interested in that, But that's about, I don't really like adding bulk to my phone. Like, I have zero interest in that. I want it to be as, like, light and thin as possible. Yeah. Some real-time follow-up real quick.

In this iPhone 16 version of this, they did add actual MagSafe. Oh, they did. Oh, interesting. So if you buy a new phone, maybe new Clix. So the new Clix is compatible with MagSafe along with Nicolas Cage. MagSafe built-in. Oh, they changed the language. Look at that. Yeah, I'm looking at their comparison page where they say MagSafe compatible and it says no for the other ones. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I think what they were thinking is it's wireless charging compatible, but it doesn't, it's not.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Congrats. You followed the rules. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Thank you. Nicolas Cage says thank you as well. Seriously, if you're not watching the video version of this episode, you're missing out. Maybe it's a good week to not watch the video. Yeah, you should. Or the chapter of Grease. The chapter is going to be very Nicolas Cage, don't worry. Yes, yes, yes. I was so excited when I found this case.

Yes, there are even weirder cases like the foot one, but come on, Nicolas Cage, shortlist being peeled out of a banana? I mean, come on. Anyways. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. So that just about does it for the challenge. I do have a suggestion. When we do the poll for this one, we keep it anonymous, whose case is whose, for the people that are voting before they listen. So we keep it anonymous. Okay. I agree. And I'm curious if that changes the results.

Yeah. I don't think it's obvious who brought which case this time either. I don't think so either. Yeah. Okay. Are you guys ready for next week's challenge? Oh, I'm so ready because you have so much redacted in this. I'm like, what is this? This is a long sentence. It's a big one, guys. This week, I would like us to find an unofficial way to use a major company's service. Let me explain. This would be I found an alternate way to watch YouTube or I found a different way to work with someone who's using Microsoft Office.

I don't know. But some clever way that the company might block one day. Oh, no. Chris is inspired. Yeah. So, yeah. Something clever. It doesn't have to be crazy or anything. Maybe you already use it. But, yeah. Some interesting way to use something that a big company maybe doesn't want. So, you want us to get into trouble. I like it. Yeah, I'm down for it. I'm down for a little breaking the law. Breaking the law.

Comfort zone does not decode. Not, not, not. Wow, I cannot speak today. We do not decode the law. Don't break the law. But breaking the law, breaking the law. All right, I like it. I like it. I have a couple of ideas. Yeah, cool. All right. Well, that just about does it for this week's episode. We went really long this week. This is going to be a fun one to edit. But to wrap up the show, I have a question for you, too, like we do now. What was your favorite TV show from your childhood?

Friends. All the way. Ooh, okay. All right. Danielle, my girlfriend, will approve of that. She would really like that. Matt, what about you? Mine was Batman, the animated series, which I'm currently rewatching and is so delightful. I love it. That was literally what I was going to pick as well. I will think of something else. Okay. Other favorite childhood. You know what? I'll go kind of alongside the Batman animated series, but a little disattached.

X-Men. 97. Yeah. Yeah. Matt, did you get the two Batman the animated series Lego sets? No. But now I might. you should uh the the danielle my girlfriend she got the mosaic like painting one that's like kind of the diorama thing she loves those and then i got the batmobile uh so yeah we we have those

all right well uh that's the end of the show you nearly on matt say goodbye goodbye bye oh we went