The Opposite of Snow Leopard

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts, and this week we are all back together in the new year. As always, I'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm feeling great to have the whole crew back together. It's been so long. Feels good. And we're also joined by Nelian. Nelian, how are you doing? Hello, I am back. you are awesome i'm i'm excited to have you back i'm excited to be uh recording with you all again and and be in the new year uh we have a big fun show for you guys today so let's just let's get

into it we have a few follow-up items i believe uh actually all of them were put in here by neilion so i'm just gonna throw it over to you and you take it away yeah i was away so i have a bunch of things to catch you up on. Last time I was on, I talked about my ears. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Maybe the time before that. And what I said was, it was a tip. If you have your ear that's blocked a little bit because you've been sick, you can adjust the left-right balance on your

or any device you own. And that's a good tip. It turns out I cursed myself by giving you this tip and I got a near affection. Oh no. Yeah, because I've been sick, which is why I was away. And so now it's a bit better. But so here's my piece of advice for everyone. Don't talk about your ears. Otherwise you get an infection. Yeah. Next up, when I was away, you guys had a challenge that I missed, which was change something about your desk setup.

And I had something ready and I missed it. So I wanted to do it live now. I'm going to change right now something about my desk setup. Live on the show. You're going to change it live right here. Yeah. So we are both a video and audio podcast. So I'm going to count on you both to audio describe what is happening on my camera feed. Okay. Can you do that? And I'm going to mute myself because it's going to be a bit noisy. Okay. So we're going to narrate this. Man, are we going to do like a live sports reaction?

Like, oh my gosh, they crashed into the wall. All right. Okay. She's gone mute. She's taking off the pop filter on her mic. The windscreen, yeah. That's what I meant, yep. Oh, it's an orange one. Or a red one, I'm not sure. What color is that? She's muted, she can't tell us. Nelian is clearly putting on an orange windscreen on her mic or pop filter.

It has replaced the previously black-colored one. So Tangerine UI is taking over the real world now as well. There you go. New mic, new life, new year. And I win the challenge. Postmortem. The challenge was last week. This is like overdue. This is like turning an overdue homework. I don't know if you can get an A in overdue homework. This is more of a pass-fail situation. I'm at the top of the class.

But I do appreciate you doing it live on the show. Si? It was very dramatic. Yeah. All right. So that's it. I win the challenge. Next up, I wanted to mention something pretty important. MacStories announced that the site, John and Federico announced that the site was leaving Meta's platforms. Following the company's changes on moderation policies, Meta now allows all sorts of hate speech, especially targeting women and LGBT people.

I salute Federico and John's decision. I know some people will say it's because of me. I didn't ask them. They are good like that. They did this by themselves. But yeah, it's a great decision. I myself have disabled my Threads account. and yeah just wanted to mention that metas changes and zuckerberg's sudden suck up to donald trump is disgusting and yeah it's good that max rate doesn't stand for it and i won't

stand for it and you shouldn't either yeah it was quite a end to the the year of zuck i feel like ever since threads um launched and people are like even before it launched there was like this um cultural coming around on oh is mark zuckerberg cool now and uh it seems like he is uh whatever he needs to be to uh advance his uh company so yeah um not great um but i do i do enjoy that mac stories

um has an opinion and like there's no uh you don't have to be on every social network you don't have to use every single one. You can have good reasons. You can have stupid reasons. You can have whatever reasons. I think for the Mac Stories team, it made sense to make this one. So yeah, I'm happy that they are consistent and aren't just chasing every platform to like get people everywhere. If the platform doesn't work with their values, our values, I guess, as part of the Mac Stories team, they're not using it. And I think that's, that's cool. Whether you agree with it or not, I think it's

it's good to see people not feel compelled to use everything yep and uh on my personal side my my personal so obviously we won't be promoting the show on on any meta platform going forward of course uh i also will not be doing any of anything on any meta platform um promoting my videos or otherwise on there uh i deleted instagram and threads off all my devices i didn't delete the accounts uh just because i i i have the i i have mixed feelings on deleting accounts and like things get linked on the internet to you know instagram photos and stuff like that and do you

want to break those links i i i that's something i have complex thoughts on but so i just i've just deleted the apps they make their money off of engagement so i'm not feeding the engagement the side effect though and it's not i'm not trying to justify leaving instagram or bringing Instagram or anything. But that was how I kept up with friends and family. That's how I saw what was going on in my friends, my family's life, and how I shared what was going on in my life. I use the close friends feature on Instagram a lot. So I don't know how I'm going to keep up with those people

going forward. Maybe I actually might have to be good about responding to text messages now. We'll see if that actually happens. But yeah, no, I'm completely off those platforms as well. If you're interested in following us, we'll put links to our Mastodons and Blue Sky accounts in the description of the podcast. Yeah, and I think it's important, the MacStories article does say that you don't have to leave everything, like do as you can.

I think the important part here is speaking up about this issue. And yeah, that's great. And I wanted to say one last thing, which is, I told you so. All right, moving on. I told you so, like, last year. But all right. And remember what I said about Blue Sky a few months ago? Yeah. Let's see. Let's see what happens. We'll see. Did you guys see that Mastodon today?

I don't fully understand how this works. Neil, maybe you can explain a little bit better. But Mastodon today transferred all of the business into a European non-profit. So basically to avoid being told by governments what to do in certain instances is kind of my understanding. Neil, you could probably explain it better than me. Yeah, it's a bit complex because there's a bunch of structures that compose how Mastodon is structured.

The idea is that there is now going to be a non-profit based in the EU. It's not specifically where yet. It's not yet established. They are going to do that. And yeah, that non-profit is going to control all the main assets of Mastodon, the software, the code. And there is a separate entity, a for-profit one, that hosts the two main servers, Mastodon.social and Mastodon.online.

And that for-profit smaller entity is going to be owned by the non-profit one. Okay. Yeah, and it's just going to be dedicated to hosting those instances. Whereas before, there was just one entity that controlled both the code, the software, and those servers. Now they're going to be separate, although one is going to be controlled by the other. But yeah, it's a good move. I applaud it.

And Mastermind founder, Eugene Rochko, is going to step down from being the CEO. is going to remain as like a manager of the strategy of the product, if you can say it like that. And yeah, the idea is it's going to be less centered around one individual. It's going to be like more community focused. And yeah, it's a good move. Nice. Yeah.

I'm kind of excited to see what this means for the future of Mastodon. Yeah, I think more than ever, it's important to have something based outside of the US that can have the ability to take off at some point or continue to take off slowly, which works as well. All right. Well, are you guys ready to get into the main part of the show? Yep. Oh, yeah. So, Matt, you came up with an idea, and I'm just going to give it to you.

You go ahead and explain it because I've been very excited about this ever since you pitched this idea to us. Yeah. So much like last week where, Chris, you stole from another podcast, I, too, am in a way stealing from another podcast. Around New Year's, you get all these shows that do like their retrospectives of the previous year or they put their favorite things and they'll make predictions for the new year. And year in and year out, my favorite podcast episode around this time of year is DLC, which is a video game podcast.

That is so good. It's Jeff Canata and Christian Spicer. But it's so much fun. They basically predict what they think is going to happen in video games in the next year. And the wrinkle they have on it is that they do not do safe predictions. There's no easy predictions. They start, as they say, with bold predictions, and then they ramp it up to cool ranch predictions, which I think is lots of fun. So, and then they review them at the end of the year. So, I wanted to do that for us, but I didn't want to totally steal their naming structure.

Also, I think, Chris, you really don't like Doritos and Neelian. I don't know if you've ever had Doritos. I love Doritos. Doritos are disgusting. I know them from like children's cartoons on TV. Okay. Well, they are delicious treats that Chris is wrong about. But I thought we are an Apple-centric show. We are so Apple-centric that on our last episode, I brought up the app called Habit Kit, which I said was only on the iPhone, by which I meant it was only on the iPhone on Apple's platforms.

And I got numerous people telling me that it's also on Android. So my brain doesn't even think about these other platforms. very apple centric and i thought we could do pro predictions and pro max predictions i like it so no easy stuff no things that mark german has already reported this happening although this has gotten much more dangerous as we've gotten further into the new year where i'm just worried he's gonna have a report that says one of my predictions is true but i wanted to go through our predictions i think we have four predictions for each category so eight predictions each and we're doing hardware and software picks.

So for pro predictions, I will have two hardware, two software predictions. Chris, you'll have the same. Neilian, you'll have the same. Then we'll move on to pro max predictions. And that's a lot of picks. So we're not going to talk about each one too long, but it will be interesting to see what we've all picked for each other. Yeah, I like this. I'm excited. Perfect. Okay. I can get us off the ground with my first pro prediction. go for it which is the metaquest 4 will release and has specs shockingly close to the vision pro this year interesting now i believe uh uh uh a very close friend of this show mark zuckerberg

kidding kidding very very much kidding um uh as has uh bashed the vision pro several times uh over over its life uh he has for being too expensive and and uh apparently apple can't innovate anymore and stuff like that so uh i i'm curious uh what makes you think this so they so the quest 3 i think is two years old this in 2024 they released the quest 3s which is kind of a lower end headset with

a lot of the quest 3 features but i really think that it's it's time for the quest 4 and i think it's going to it's probably gonna be more expensive i think the current one starts at 500 but it'll probably be more expensive but it's gonna be well under a thousand it's gonna be and it's gonna be very close i think right now the tech specs you can clearly see the difference between the two headsets i think it's gonna be remarkably close we'll have to argue about this in a year with how close they get but i think it's gonna be surprising how close like screen quality can get

and performance can get at a much lower price tag. Okay. Okay. Interesting. That's my pick. Nelian, did you want to do your first hardware pick? Okay. My hardware pick, my first hardware pick, is that there is going to be a home pod, home pod, home pod, home pod, home pod, with a screen on it. Okay. And I want us to think about it the other way.

Maybe it's going to be a screen that's got a HomePod inside. So you're talking like a screen with a high-end speaker. Yeah. I think maybe the surprise here is that Apple is going to place this device as more of a home interactive device more than a HomePod, like a sound-focused device. So your pick's out of the way.

This doesn't count towards your pick, but do you think it'll be something that'll stand up on its own, or will you need to buy a case to hold it up like an iPad, or will you just be able to set it down in your kitchen and have a screen that's standing up? I think it's going to be... I can see it look like the Google Nest Home Hub, whatever it's called. The Google Nest Home Hub Ultra, whatever it's called. And I think, yeah, just a small screen that can sit anywhere. And it's got a speaker built in. And I think the important thing here is that the speaker, because it's secondary, it's going to be not great.

So worse than a HomePod MIDI? Yeah, yeah. I can see that. Okay. That's interesting. Interesting. Interesting pick. Okay, so for my first hardware pick, I think this is the safest out of all my picks, but even this still has a very bold component. There will be a new iPad Pro in the fall or winter time, so latter half of the year. It will have the M5 chip, and the base starting RAM for it will be 16 gigs, and it will have improved battery life.

And by what I mean by this is since the start of the iPad's life, Apple has claimed it has a quote unquote all day 10 hour battery life. That number or phrasing will shift in some way to be more than 10 hours. But overall, fairly minor update to the iPad Pro, like we've talked about in a previous episode. The iPad Pro is kind of like in every other update being a bigger update.

Like usually like if you look at like the 2018 ones, that was a pretty big update. 2020, not so much. Then there was the M1 one. That was a pretty big update. M2, not so much. M4, that was a pretty big update. So I think this next one won't be that big of an update. Okay. But you're predicting M5 and higher base RAM and better battery. The better battery, I think, is definitely the most pro part of this pick. I think that is actually the most risky part of it because every iPad, for as long as the iPad has been around, has been a quote-unquote all-day 10-hour battery life.

So I think that right there is the most risky bit right there. But it is ridiculous. I can only get through about half my day, maybe a little bit more than half my day, which is not 10 hours, before I need to charge up my iPad Pro again. The MacBooks, the M-Series MacBooks have incredible battery life. Like Neelion's mentioned, when she travels, she doesn't even bring her power brick with her. I want that life. Okay. I'm looking at their compare website right now. I'm looking at a 13-inch iPad Pro, a 13-inch iPad Air, and an iPad Mini.

Every single one of them, 10 hours of battery life. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I'm saying that phrasing will shift in some way with the next iPad Pro. Okay. I don't know if it's like, oh, you'll get 12 hours of web browsing or something like that. But like you will get it. That phrasing will shift in some way to be more positive, better battery life. Well, before I do mine, I wanted to say this isn't one of my official picks, but I made I wrote a blog post with some things I thought was going to happen with the iPad this year. My crazy prediction there was that they're going to let you configure an iPad more like a MacBook Air.

Oh, I would like that. I would like that a lot. Maybe you can put an M4 Pro in it. or an M5 Pro, maybe you can select your RAM. We'll see. But that would be cool. It will be very, very interesting. Okay. These are good picks. So my second hardware pick, my second pro hardware pick is the thin iPhone that's been in the rumor mill all year will release this fall, and it will just be the normal iPhone 17. It won't be a third iPhone. It won't be just the plus.

I think the iPhone 17 is thinner than the iPhone Pro, and that will make it more distinct from the Pro lineup. The Pro lineup will stay how it is. Thick phones, well, relatively thick phones, but this new thin phone is just the new iPhone 17. Interesting. Do you think it'll come in two different sizes, or it'll just be one size? I think they'll still do two sizes. I think probably the same size as they have now, within a couple tenths of an inch or whatever.

But yeah, I do think it'll be basically, here's the iPhone 17 and 17 Plus, and it has an all-new design that is as light as air or something like that. Bonus points, if that's what Craig or whoever says. All right. Well, huh, this is interesting. I've been thinking this is going to be a third iPhone in the lineup. So there would be iPhone, iPhone quote-unquote Air, and then iPhone Pro. But this would be interesting, and I actually think this makes a lot more sense because I think for the most part they struggle, especially like we've heard,

the iPhone Plus, the regular iPhone Plus, has always struggled selling. like that that third iphone slot whether it was the mini or the plus has always struggled with sales because uh because people just want like the bigger screen but not too big screen but they want a cheap phone but not too cheap of a phone that results in the iphone mini um i actually had somebody uh complained to me they found out i was a youtuber and they found out i i cover apple stuff

And they complained to me like it was my decision to cancel the iPhone mini line. And I was like, I have nothing to do with that. What I can tell you is and what we know is it did not sell very well. And it was canceled like almost right out of the gate. Like the 13 mini was one of those things that was just in development. So it happened. But if it wasn't in development, even that probably wouldn't have happened. How dare you, Chris. Cancel the mini. Yeah, it was all my fault. So I personally called up Timmy C and was just like, yo, kill this thing.

Yo. I knew it. I knew it. But yeah, I expect this to be a big year for the iPhone 17. I expect them to say this is the biggest update to iPhone ever. And I think there's rumors of like a higher refresh display as well in it. So I think it's going to be a really good year for the normal iPhone. Neilian, what do you have next? Okay, so my second pick is going to sound familiar, but it's different. My second pick is there is going to be a portable HomePod. Okay. And it's going to be called the HomePod, just like I predicted on MaxTorys last year.

The HomePod. When I added a battery base to my HomePod mini. Oh, okay, okay. I made it portable. So you're mostly talking like a portable speaker with a built-in battery. Yeah. Okay. I would actually really like something like that. I think, like... A first-party version of the Apple, no, of the Beats PL, which got a revision last year. I think Apple can slap the Apple logo on that, call it a ROM code.

Okay. Nice. That'd be cool. I like this. Like a HomePod mini size thing, maybe? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Small thing. I think that's cool. I think that'd be a cool, fun thing for them to make. They'd have to figure out how to put a battery inside that thing, and that'd be a nice design challenge. Could be a fun little product. Yeah. I think it should already exist. Are there rumors about this? No, this is just totally out of the blue. This is what I wanted. This is something I could see dropping and not being in the rumor mill because people would think, oh, this is just a HomePod mini update,

and, oh, no, it's actually a HomePod mini with a built-in battery. I like this. Yeah, and I can see it happen because I wrote about it, and they read me. Clearly. Yeah. All right. So my next hardware pick is Apple will update their external monitors. Kind of ungraded, but I kind of expect the Pro Display XDR to go away, or at least that branding to go away, and there will be a Studio Display and a Studio Display Pro, but I'm kind of keeping the branding ungraded

because you don't ever want to guess about Apple's branding because who knows what they'll do. But what I'm thinking is that there will be at least one new external monitor that has a higher refresh rate than 60 hertz and an OLED panel. Oh. I want this so badly. This is wish casting too. This is 100% wish casting. I will buy this thing immediately if it happens. um but yeah did you make this pick before or after last week's episode where we talked about my OLED screen after after because afterwards I went and sat down I think I had to edit a video

after we recorded that episode and I sat down at my studio display and I was like it's not OLED like especially because when I have my iPad Pro next to the display I have this really nice OLED display with the iPad Pro and then I have this LCD display. And I'm just like, it looks nice. Like, nobody get me wrong. The studio display looks nice, but it's not OLED. I want an OLED external monitor. And if it was high, honestly, if I had to pick between a higher refresh rate or an OLED panel, I'm going to pick the OLED panel.

Yeah, I think that's just because of the kind of work I do. The studio display turns three in March. so it's time i feel like it's time especially with thunderbolt 5 being put on all the new uh macs and stuff like that i i think it's i think it's time so i the big issue especially with the pro display xdr uh like we kind of talked about in that last episode is it uses thunderbolt 4 but because it's a 6k display it maxes out the bandwidth of thunderbolt 4 so like the usb ports on the back

to display their usb 2.0 it doesn't have a webcam it doesn't have speakers so thunderbolt 5 is here it has way more bandwidth it's time for those devices to get updated nice i would love to see this happen all right matt what do you got for your first software pick okay so now we're moving into software picks and my pro software pick is that apple intelligence launches in europe it's very simple very straightforward did they already announce that was happening this year i'm pretty sure they've already announced that's happening did they yeah that's they announced

at at the iphone event that it was coming uh in other languages in germany german was one of them and i'm pretty sure you know more than that coming to germany more than that in a multiple press releases in the European Union, they had a footnote saying that Apple intelligence was coming in April. Oh, Lord, I'm seeing this now. I retract my pick. I will do my other pick and then write a new one very quickly for the next round.

My actual pick, the one I was actually going to say, is at least one feature of Apple intelligence that was shown at WWDC 2024 will not be in iOS 19. Oh, yeah. This could be, they remove something that they've already put in or something just never makes it. Yeah, that I think is kind of a given now, just going forward. I mean, and that's kind of been the way for the last few years, but I think that is a given now, that there's always going to be features announced at WWDC

that don't ship until either the winter or even the spring of the following year. Oh, but I'm saying they will not be in any release. Oh, I just thought you meant... There's something on stage at WWDC this past June that they showed off, they did a demo of, and we still cannot use once the iOS 19 is released. I got my years mixed up. I'm sorry. I was thinking this year was 2024. So yeah, 18.3, 18.4, it's not going to be in those either.

It's not going to be in iOS 19.0. It just vanishes. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, I misunderstood. No. Okay. Wow, that's bold. That is very bold. We'll see. Neil, what do you got for your software pick? My first software pick is iPhone mirroring. You remember? Mm-hmm. Yeah. The macOS feature, which lets you control your iPhone from the Mac. it's not available right now in the EU and my pick is it's not going to be available in the EU by the end

of 2025. Not happening. Didn't they say that was coming eventually or something? No. No? I don't think so. I'm getting that mixed up. Oh, interesting. Which is funny because they did mention that Apple Intelligence was coming in April but nothing about mirroring. I wonder if they're worried about like oh if we add this do we have to add a feature so you can control android phones from your mac or something but the the mac doesn't fall under the um the dma right like it doesn't because it's not a yeah but they're worried because the iphone does um i mean i'm guessing

they're worried because the iphone does fall under the dma and i think like people are saying maybe they are worried that the EU is going to force them to make it compatible with Android phones. Which, why not? But yeah. And yeah, oh, Matt broke the document. Well done, Matt. I don't know why, but it's not updating for me anymore, so it's not broken for me.

Great. Awesome. So that's my pick. There is going to be no iPhone mirroring in the EU by the end of 2025. We will never see it. That's my pick. Interesting. And I want it really bad. I know. This is one of those picks like I hope you're wrong about because I can see why it would be such a useful feature. But I also can kind of see you totally being right and it never actually showing up. Yeah. All right. So for my first software pick, and this might be my boldest pick in the whole game, even though this isn't where all the really, really bold picks go,

but this could be the boldest pick. iPad multitasking will be fixed. And by fixed, I mean myself, Federico, and whoever's left on the iPad will be happy and have no major complaints. And I'm underscoring the word major here because there's always going to be tweaks and stuff that we want. Like, we're nerds. Like, even there's stuff on the Mac I'm sure you want tweaked and things like that that you're overall happy with.

But there's, like, little things here and there that can be tweaked to be a little bit better. But I'm saying iPad multitasking, whether it's stage manager or split view, or they figure out a way to only have one version of multitasking, which is really what should be on the iPad. There should really only be one version of multitasking. That's fixed. It works great. Everyone's happy. There's no weird limits like four windows per stage in Stage Manager or split view can be split up into four segments or something like that.

It's just going to be fixed and we're all going to be happy. That's not happening, but true. It's optimistic and I'd love to see it. Oh, my God. I definitely went with the optimistic route for my picks. I definitely went wish casting. Mine are the opposite. That's okay. We balance each other out. Yeah. All right, Matt, what do you got? My final pro pick is, oh, nope, sorry.

Apple completes its acquisition of Pixelmator and Pixelmator becomes a free app. Mm-hmm. So are you saying that's what you think they're going to do with Pixelmator is just make it a free app, make it an Apple app and call it a day and just keep updating it or so i don't know i i had to write this prediction in duress i had to do it quickly so um but i i think that the a future could be that they have acquired the pixel mater team to work on other projects at apple including enhancing the photos app maybe creating a new pro

app um but i think as soon as they complete the acquisition they will make their existing apps free to use for customers. Interesting. So we'll see. If they're keeping them around, they won't do this, and then I'll just be wrong. But I'll have to live with that. Interesting. Okay. All right. Well, I can see them going very bold, kind of like almost the shortcuts when they acquired Workflow and completely integrating it into the Photos app and like, hey, here's a bunch of built-in photo editing tools right in the photos app and stuff like that but uh hopefully if they do that route

unlike the shortcuts actually or workflow acquisition where they turn into shortcuts it actually keeps getting updated and doesn't break all the time that would be nice although i will say using like other platforms shortcuts is still a godsend it's unbelievable which oh yeah what a normal person can do with that if you want yeah it's just um it's a so i have this one shortcut that takes my scripts from Obsidian, does a little bit of formatting, turns them into a PDF document,

and sends them to GoodNotes. Sometimes, or most of the time when I run it, it works just fine. It does exactly what it's supposed to do, turns it into a PDF, opens it in GoodNotes. But sometimes it'll convert all the characters into Chinese. Don't know why. Literally, it's just Chinese characters. But then if I take that same document in Obsidian on another iPad running the same version of iPadOS and run that shortcut, it works just fine. So I'm a little frustrated with shortcuts right now because it's very buggy currently and it's inconsistent on how it works.

And I can't figure out why. Weird. Okay. Well, hopefully not that with Pixelmator. Yep. Exactly. Neil-Lean, what do you have? Okay. So, keeping up with the negativity, my pick is Stage Manager remains untouched, both on macOS and iPadOS. Untouched. It's exactly the same. Okay. Maybe new bugs, but otherwise untouched.

No new features, just new bugs. Yeah. Is that the Snow Leopard release for Stage Manager then? But the opposite of it. yeah that would be a bummer it's a lava leopold release i mean i can see no new features on mac os but on the ipad oh they gotta do some stuff on the ipad they gotta get rid of the window limit that's the big thing now i could see something happening where last year they adjusted it on the ipad but didn't touch it at all on the mac oh last year they didn't last year for iopad os 18

it was not touched at all. iPadOS 17 it tweaked a little bit but iPadOS 18 it wasn't touched it wasn't touched at all. Oh yeah okay that doesn't bode well. But I was about to say maybe this year they could like do this thing where they only adjust it on one platform and since they last adjusted it on iPadOS maybe this year they will only adjust it on macOS and not on iPadOS. Oh that would be a bummer. Or they could go the other route and definitely abandon it on macOS and leave it like that forever and continue to adjust it on iPadOS.

Makes sense. But my pick is they won't touch it at all. So there you go. How many different built-in options of multitasking does macOS have right now? Because they have Spaces, they have Stage Manager, they have the snapping thing. There's so many versions of multitasking built into macOS. even like even on the iPad i get frustrated with the fact that they have split view and stage manager because i'm constantly having to answer questions about like oh this is stage manager that's why there's windows and split view is different and split view is on is what's on by default but on these certain ipads you can go in and turn on stage manager it's just yeah yeah

there's all there's also the split screen and mac os but i don't know about that one yeah i feel like people i don't know i feel like the normal one just works for most people and so it's not a huge pain point um which might be the difference and those other extra things are there if you really want them i don't know interesting well keeping up with my my positivity picks um i am saying they're going to bring a clipboard manager to ios and ipad os and ios and ipad os 19 and i see two different ways that they can go about this. This could be a built-in first-party feature where everything is

handled by the OS. Or there is a third-party API that securely handles your clipboard, doesn't let it report to servers and stuff like that. Everything has to stay on device. And you can have a clipboard manager built right into your system using third-party apps. Either one would be fine. I just need a clipboard manager i i that that right there is one of the biggest pain points to working off the ipad for me right now you know i feel good about this i actually feel something something just the back of it in my heart it feels good right there there's only so many more things they can add

and this is on the list that i think a lot of people would enjoy you guys are setting yourself for disappointment. I choose to be optimistic. I think like maybe they're going to add AI to stage manager but not this. Hey, if they added AI to stage manager and it was able to like predict stages that I need, like for example, every time we sit down to record comfort zone, I have a stage that has Obsidian jump desktop so I can see the Mac Mini

and iMessage all open, and it could predict that, be like, hey, I see he's about ready to record Comfort Zone, let me create that stage for you, I would be totally down for that. That sounds good. Yeah. Doesn't need AI to do this, but... Just needs a save button. Yeah, let's be honest. At this point, they would label it AI. If it was truly AI or not, that's up for debate, but I would take that feature. Yeah. All right.

Excellent. I think that takes us to the end of our first set of predictions, our pro predictions. It's the end of the broken table in the document. Yes. Now I'm not going to touch anything, so I don't break anything. As we move on to our pro max predictions, which these should be home run swings. These should be wish casting. These should be, it would be crazy if this happened next year. So my first prediction is a hardware prediction. and it is that there will be new Vision Pro hardware released in 2025.

This is counter to the rumors, but it is consistent with how Apple has done all of their other platform releases. They've never gone more than 18 months after a product released and not had a sequel. The Apple Watch was the longest. That was like a year and a half. The iPhone was the next year. The iPad was the next year. AirPods Max are not a computer. I would argue that maybe it is. What is a computer?

I think it's going to happen. I think there's going to be new hardware. I think that it could be an M3 or M4 variant of the exact same thing. It could be a cheaper model, although that's going to be tricky. But I think that they want this platform to succeed. They wanted to start moving sales. I know after it started not selling well, everyone was like, oh, it's just a developer kit. It's always been a developer kit. No one ever talked about it like a consumer product.

We all talked about it as a consumer product for like eight months. Look, I get that it's a developer kit argument, but at the end of the day, you can walk into an Apple store and buy one. When Apple did developer kits for the M-series Mac transition, you could not go into an Apple store and buy those. that's the big difference I see there. Plus, when you go into an Apple store, they try to set it to you. Yeah. When I did the demo in the Apple store last year, they wanted me to buy it.

Yeah. Not to go off on a tangent, but I do think there is a weird logical fallacy. I don't know if it's a logical fallacy exactly, but there are certain people who it is impossible, no matter what information is presented, for them to say the Vision Pro is anything less than a massive success. oh people aren't using it oh they weren't supposed to people aren't buying it well they didn't expect to sell me like it doesn't matter what is going on like we could find out that one percent of people who bought it are still using it on a regular basis and they'd be like well that's actually the

goal it's crazy i it baffles baffles me but i do think despite all that that they will have new hardware um because they want to keep moving this product forward and there's a bunch of ways the product could get better and so that's my pro max prediction because it is potentially not going to happen but i believe interesting neilian do you have something as pro maxi yeah i think it's more pro maxi my pro max prediction is the airport router is back this year oh see you did have a positive pick i love this one oh yeah i have a bunch of positive one this time okay um yeah i

think uh it's it's it's due to arrive we need a router from apple a good one that doesn't look like a spaceship like the one asus and others make uh with a bunch of antennas and tentacles yeah it could be great maybe it could just be the same one but we're made out of aluminium instead of it was plastic last time maybe yeah it was plastic so maybe this time there's a bit of metal in there

maybe not too much because antennas but yeah they can make it work absolutely brilliant 5 foot range because it's made of aluminium yeah maybe because you may add the screen on it to control the thing. It's got Stage Manager. It adds Stage Manager to any device you add to it. So your Xbox, TV, Windows computers, it adds Stage Manager to it when paired. Great features all around.

I want it to happen. Nice. I like this. Yeah, this would be awesome. I like it a lot. This would make a lot of people happy. All right. So for my first completely unhinged hardware pick, foldable iPad Pro that goes from the portrait. So remember when the first iPad Pro was introduced and they were like, the reason why we did 12.9 inches is you could take two of the standard iPads and put the screen side by side and they were equal sizes.

So what I'm thinking is it is the width of the portrait version of the 11-inch iPad Pro. Then it opens up into what is now the standard 13-inch iPad Pro. Yes, give me this. Give me this now. So I want something I can hold and read with, and then I want something I can open up with and edit with. Okay. So a bit like the Lenovo thing, right? They have a foldable ThinkPad.

Yeah, but not a plastic screen. Like, give me a good quality screen. I don't know how they're going to do it. my completely unhinged version. I don't have to come up with how they do it. Apple has to figure that out. That's Apple's problem, not mine. I'm giving them the idea here. But yeah, no. Full OLED screen and everything. I want this so badly. This is more out there than mine. This would be crazy. This would be the kind of thing that would like... This could just replace everyone's computer.

Like for me right now, I love my 13-inch iPad Pro, but my big complaint about it is it's too big to hold and like read things with. So I end up reading on my iPhone quite a bit. But my iPhone's screen is small, especially for reading books or comics or something like that. So let me hold this in my hand as a standard iPad size and then open it up into a 13-inch iPad Pro. And they can get rid of the back cameras to make it easy if that's the big issue. Like they can get rid of that. Nobody uses the camera on the back of an iPad.

And yes, I know two people are about ready to write in and tell me they use them. But the last iPad, so the M4 iPad Pro, Apple got rid of the ultra-wide lens on the iPad Pro, and next to nobody noticed. Nobody cared. I never think about it. Nobody cared. Yeah. Nobody cared. The only time I've ever used the camera app on the iPad was to review an iPad, was to actually take photos and review. And I've stopped doing that the last few iPad releases because I'm like, nobody cares about this.

I do it every once in a while to see the back of my head, if I ever need to see the back of my head for whatever reason. So I'll stand with my back to the mirror and then I'll hold the iPad with the selfie camera up. It's a $1,000 mirror is really what it is. What? That's the only thing I use the camera for. Yeah, how is the back of your head, Matt? Oh, it's thriving. You'll never see it on stream, but it's thriving. It's doing great. Yeah, I'm starting to get a bald spot back there.

Chris, what if Apple come out with something different and it's like a huge Surface Duo? So two screens, but it folds? Yeah, two separate screens that fold over each other. Now, when it closes, would it be like an iPhone size or an iPad mini size? Give me some sizes here. No, same sizes as you said, but instead of one foldable screen, it's two side-by-side screens. Gotcha. Yeah, no, I'd totally be down with that.

As long as when it fully opens, it acts as one coherent screen, so that way I could open up Final Cut and have it full screen on both of those. Then I would be good with that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I actually think that would be the better way to go, because then you don't have to worry about the crease and plastic displays and stuff like that. Yeah, that's fine. When it opens up all the way, make it one big screen. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I like it. That's ambitious.

Okay. All right, Matt, what do you got for your second hardware pick? On a similar line, actually, I predict Apple will announce a new portable Mac form factor. Okay. There will be a MacBook Pro, there will be a MacBook Air, and there will be something new. This could be... That's my pick. This could be... Wait. No, that's my pick. That's my pick. It could be both of your picks.

Yeah. That's the same as my pick. It's not the same. What is your pick? No, no, no. You said it first, so you win, maybe. Oh. That's my pick. So I think this could be either a super thin laptop, a spiritual successor to the MacBook from years ago. There is my pick. There you go. It could be. I'm so mad. I'm so mad right now. It could be a Mac with an iPad style form factor that maybe even connects to the magic keyboard, but runs Mac OS.

Or it could be something totally different. But I was thinking about this. I've been predicting the Touch Mac for many years. Eventually, I'll be right. But I was also doing a report card for Apple's Macs last year, and it reminded me that they have three desktop lines. They have the Mini, the Studio, the Pro, and the iMac. They have four, actually. They have four different desktop lines, and they only have two portables. Why not at a third? So that's my prediction. There will be a new line. So when you go to the Mac page, there will be another item at the top.

It won't just be another MacBook Air at a different size or MacBook Pro at a different size. It'll be a whole new line. I like it. I like it a lot. I think if Apple was to bring back that 12-inch MacBook with the M-series chip, it would probably give the iPad a run for its money. And that's why I think they might not do it. Interesting. Okay. Neil, what is your pick? We have no idea what your pick's going to be.

Yeah, so instead of Matt's very, very vague pick, he's like, Apple will announce a new product. Okay, sure. Mine is very specific. Apple will announce the revival of the 12-inch MacBook, just called MacBook, maybe 11-inch, maybe smaller. And it comes in as many saturated colors as the iMac.

Ooh. Yeah. Okay. Mine is better. Okay. We both get the point if you're right, so I'm happy. Yeah. I really do think like a Mac like this would be absolutely killer. It would be great. I like even I would be like, oh, that's nice. Like, I love my iPad, but, ooh, like, I'd be side-eyeing that thing. Yeah, it'd be cool. Yeah, the colors.

Oh, the colors. And the colors are important. The colors are. Okay. Oh, that's great. Would you buy one if they made this? I think so. If not for me, I would make someone buy it in my clothes circle. Like, my partner would fall victim to this. That's good. Yeah. Okay. Obviously, I fully support this.

So, Chris, what do you have? All right. So, you remember how I said, like, the most unhinged, unlikely, you know, who knows if it will actually happen? That pick would be, of my picks, would be iPad multitasking is fixed. Sure. So, this is my second most unhinged pick. This one's probably a little more likely than iPad multitasking can get fixed. Kids, I'm going to go ahead and need you to get a little cozy for this one. Maybe grab a blanket, turn on the fireplace, grab a Dr. Pepper.

Because Apple is going to realize they need partners to build a car. Apple, Ford, and Dr. Pepper partner to make the ultimate Mustang. It's going to have CarPlay 2.0. What is wrong? Spatial audio support, like that Mercedes I got to try, that video I made about the Mercedes with spatial audio in it. It's going to have that. Built-in cold bar for drinks, kind of like James Bond's car, but it's just for Dr. Pepper's zero sugar with cream soda. Ford brings the proper circle steering wheel back to the Mustang.

This only comes in the V8 5.0 version and above. So we're talking Mach 1, GT350, GT500, those. The Mach E is discontinued or at the very least renamed. They let me reveal it, and I am the first one to get one off the line. Ford and Dr. Pepper become a permanent sponsor of mine and pay me in products. Daft Punk and all techno music is blocked in this new Mustang that Apple partners with.

So, yeah, that's probably a little bit more likely than iPad multitasking getting fixed. Okay. Have you treated this entire episode as a setup for this incredible punchline? Basically. Because I, yeah, Apple, Ford, Dr. Pepper, call me. Okay. Actually, Apple has my number, so you guys can. Wow. if it happens we'll never see you again you'll you'll be paid in dr pepper is that what you said yeah and mustangs hey like i've said um i don't accept payment and product this is a this is a

trend sponsors have been trying to do lately where they're like oh hey we want to sponsor you and this thing that we're going to send you for the sponsorship is worth like four hundred dollars so we'll just take that off of your fee that's like a trend that's trying to do right now i do not put up with it. But if you're Ford or Dr. Pepper, you can just pay me in product because you get all my money anyways. Let's just cut out the middle man. Interesting. I don't even know what to say. You broke me. I'm just saying it would be the ultimate car. Why would anyone else need that car? It would be the best car ever made.

Why would anyone else I mean trains want of trains? Oh, no. That's a very European thing to say. Hey, look, I can't get on a train to go to my parents' house. Like, there is no way that's actually possible. Well, maybe if you can get a spot to present a keynote on Apple Campus, maybe ask them to make a train to your parents' place. I don't know. Where I live, you ain't getting a train out here.

I think that's more likely than this car coming into existence. a public works project to help chris specifically is more likely than this car happening this dr pepper anti-daft punk monstrosity and all techno music don't forget all techno music and daft punk like basically if you grab your iphone or you go into car play you try and play daft punk it just doesn't play like nothing happens so this is what the stage manager engineers are working on can't update stage manager we need to add music filters to censor the speech of exactly exactly yep yep and the world can thank me for this oh my god when is this segment over

whatever you guys want to move on yeah let's move on okay so my my next pick a software pick is equally no exactly the opposite in duration things for releases and is a subscription app that's the pick wow i i think this is highly likely uh do you i thought this is highly likely for five years it never happens that's true i they haven't put out a significant a big update to

things three in a really long time like they put out an update when you know a new version of ios like they did the thing where they supported the dark mode icons and stuff like that but they haven't really done too much two things three in a while and we know they they said like like one of the big things everyone complains about is being able to check off recurring tasks early they've said that was in alpha like four or five years ago uh so i don't know what's going on there but i've always kind of assumed they're working on things for i have assumed as well and i've been let down

i think at the end of 2020 i made a video that i said i was pretty sure things for was coming in 2021 years have passed i like it though i i hope it's true and i hope they i what i really want them to do is add a Kanban view. If they add a Kanban view, perfect. It's funny how updates to task managers are Christmas to you. They kind of are. Web browsers and task managers are my catnip. They're my Dr. Pepper.

Yeah, web browsers I can get behind. Alright, cool. Less discussion on that one, but I would love to see it. I cosign. It's way past time. They need to do it. I see people, you know, it's funny how the dynamic has kind of shifted for them. They used to get praised for not being a subscription app, but now people are complaining that they're not a universal app, so you have to buy it individually on each platform.

So it's kind of weird how that landscape is starting to shift. I don't know if subscription apps are just becoming like, okay, people are finally accepting them, Or people are just more annoyed at the fact that you have to buy this app individually on different platforms. Yeah, I don't know. Ungraded for next year. But part of my pick I was thinking was Things 4 will be announced. It's a subscription app, and people are mad about it. And then they'll be like, oh, it was so great. You could just buy it on each platform you needed. It was a la carte. If you don't need the Mac one, don't buy the Mac.

So I think people will have rose-colored glasses. Yeah, people will get mad at pricing no matter what. unless it's completely free. But then the developer doesn't make any money and stops supporting it after six months because they didn't make any money and they have to pay their bills somehow. So, yep. We all got to eat. Yep. Nelian, what do you have? All right. My pick is macOS 16, which I believe is going to be the number this year. The new version of macOS this year will feature a new Apple Music app rebuilt from the ground up away from the legacy iTunes foundation.

No way. I think this is riskier than my car pick. See, I'm taking risks. I think it would be amazing to have a great Apple Music app on the Mac. Not that the current one is terrible, but I think it's not great. Oh, Matt, you think it's terrible? I think Apple Music is the most miserable Mac app I use on a regular basis. Oh, okay. It's pretty bad. I like it quite a bit on the iPhone and iPad.

I think it's really good there. I do not like the Mac app. It's crazy how it works. When I am working at my desk, and if I'm working from that M4 Mac Mini Pro, M4 Pro Mac Mini, whatever those words, put in whatever order you want, I will pair my AirPods to my iPad or my iPhone and use Apple Music there because the Apple Music app on the Mac is horrible. Damn. Okay. I fully support this. This would be great.

Yeah. That would be nice. And I want it. Very now. Very now. Immediately. So my software pick, my first unhinged software pick, is virtual display mode on Vision Pro but for the iPad. So you guys know how you can put on Vision Pro and you can see your max display and you can do the wide or the ultra wide view. That, but for the iPad. And I think this is incredibly risky because I can already see in Apple the meeting.

Well, why do we need to implement this? We support iPad apps on Vision Pro already. And I can tell you very easily because not all developers, including you, Apple, support all of your iPad apps running on Vision Pro. There is no Final Cut on Vision Pro. So let me have my iPad with the apps and files and documents and stuff that are on my iPad. Let me have that there. And then let me use my Vision Pro essentially as an external display where I can work from the stuff that's on my iPad, but have a nice big wide screen and use the virtual environments

and stuff like that. Yeah, I fully endorse this happening. I do not think it will. but I think it would be a good feature to have if it works very nicely on the Mac and yeah it would be good to be able to do it for iPad users as well nice yeah I I um I I this would just be absolutely killer this would be a huge thing for me uh I get so much work done when I'm able to put on the Vision Pro and spin that virtual environment dial up all the way but the issue is not all my

apps are there my not all my files are there the core workflow like the core apps to my workflow aren't there um and the apps that are there like obsidian is just the ipad version and the ipad apps they just don't work great on vision pro they really don't i apple tried but it is very hard to select something and then use your fingers to tap on it um they've gotten better since vision pro's launch but they're still not great yep i agree an ipad app on vision os is really tough to use yep especially a non-native ipad app like obsidian yeah if you yeah yes yeah all right matt what is

your first software pick all right my second software pick because i already did things for My second software, my final pick of our predictions is Apple releases a major update to Time Machine for the Mac that adds co-pilot style screenshots of everything you do. And Apple stresses this never leaves your device and is uniquely powered by their on-device models. Yikes. I'm kind of, I can see Apple having this on a whiteboard somewhere.

but then seeing all the backlash Microsoft got and going, eh, maybe not, and just erasing it. Yeah. I mean, they also have released Image Playgrounds and a lot of other AI things that aren't particularly good or universally well-received. I don't know. What I will say is I used, what was it called? Recall? Something? Rewind? Rewind? Oh, yeah, Rewind AI. I used that app for a few months when it was new a couple years ago.

And it is brilliant to have. It is so great. However, you have to trust this third-party company to store your data securely and everything. And it's a lot to ask. So it seems like the sort of thing that would naturally be built into the operating system and would be all processed locally. And I think it's a really cool thing. But yes, the big thing that would probably keep them from doing this is the outrage that people had for Windows trying to do it. I don't even think Windows has rolled that out, have they?

I don't know. I don't think so. So maybe they'll beat Windows to market as well with this feature. I'd be worried about the resource, like how it's going to be in the background. Yeah, I mean it could be they could do optimizations so they're not using like actual screenshots It could use like metadata from the apps that are on screen and store it. It could be Storing all this to your external drive as well. So maybe it's not taking up internal SSD space It's using whatever drive you have time machine connected to I don't know, but it's

Definitely a unlikely thing, but I think would be bold for them to do it and that's why it's my pick okay i like it but i don't i don't see it happening my second pick yes my second software pick is apple is going to add functionality to mac OS this year to manage your menu bar icons. A bit like Bartender does and the multiple

times mentioned Ice, which are apps that let you move around your icons and hide them and show them when you need them. And maybe Apple is finally going to implement something in macOS in system settings to manage a menu bar. And that would be nice because they've added the notch years ago now and the notch has made things worse and there's no way

to circumvent icons going behind the notch and disappearing. That's wild that they didn't put in some kind of like hey don't put anything behind the notch yeah logic in the menu bar also menu bar items like the apple menu file edit view like those things if an app has a bunch of those it'll go to the other side of the notch as well and it'll take up more space that your icons would have so you lose even more so it would be interesting more icons it would be interesting because yeah apple could potentially

do something with those menu items as well. So maybe like when you mouse, it uses all the space, but when you mouse up to that spot, somehow it throws another interface below. There's some apps that try to do this, but I would love, love, love to see this because yeah, you're right. They rolled out the notch. The notch is on all their laptops now and it doesn't have a good graceful solution yet. What do you guys think is more likely? They do this or they just figure out a way to get rid of the notch on all future laptops? and they just kind of ignore previous ones.

I think to do this is more unlikely. Sorry. Oh. I think this is more unlikely. Okay. I kind of do as well. I think it's going to be many years until we have notch-free Macs, though. There's that rumor that the next... So the MacBook Pros that come out next year in 2026 will not have a notch. we'll see we'll see yeah all right so for the very last pick of our game my last software pick is there is a mac mode for the ipad but oh this would be it would be ipad os in tablet mode so when

you're holding your ipad and no keyboard no trackpad nothing like that is paired you're just using like your apple pencil or something like that it's still ipad os but then when you go to dock no your your ipad with the smart key with the magic keyboard and trackpad and all that stuff then mac os appears and that is the interaction you get whether you're using the magic keyboard or you plug it into an external monitor something like that but here's the kicker you're the file system is all the same So if you have a file local in iPadOS, that file is local on macOS as well.

So it reads across. It's not just running like a virtual machine or something on top of iPadOS. Okay. Yeah, I went unhinged. I liked this pic until I hated it. Really? I was laughing because Matt's faces were not happy faces. Why do you not like it, Matt? I think if you're going to do a touch Mac, you should just be able to use the Mac, whether keyboard's connected or not. See, I was thinking about that, but I was like, you know what? The iPad OS still makes a lot of sense as a tablet.

I don't think Mac OS makes sense as a tablet. I think it does. I think it would require a lot of work that Apple's not willing to do. Now, we could go back to the idea that I had. I think I talked about it on this show. if i haven't talked about it on this show i definitely talked about it in a video um of apple os so it's one os and it runs on the iphone the ipad and the mac and it just adapts to the screen size so if it sees it's on an iphone you kind of get a more straightforward version then it's on an ipad you get some multitasking features and some other stuff and then it's on the mac and

you get everything. Then you like, you know, it's on like a big screen and you get everything and you could almost do it. And I dare to say this because I hate it every time somebody brings it up in the comments of a video like Samsung Dex, which I think is the dumbest thing ever. I think it's a, every time I see somebody demo it, I'm like, this looks so slow and so clunky and why would anyone want to use this? But I actually think Apple could pull it off because both the hardware and software vendor, and I think they could make it work.

Okay, this is a bold pick. Yeah, it's definitely a bold pick because I don't think macOS will ever, ever be on a device that is called an iPad. Oh, I agree with that. So I think that alone is a bold pick, but the fact that it adapts is next-level bold. But hey, fortune favors the bold. I think according to Matt Mark Wahlberg or Matt Damon or whatever one of those crypto commercials I don't know which bro it was

okay I will just say I think people are they that's so much work to do instead of just making the touch targets a little bigger in a couple cases on macOS and it's so much work to make it so that all the apps I need disappear as soon as I unplug my keyboard or my keyboard, I would not buy this product, which is the problem. It doesn't solve the problem. The problem is not when it's in touch mode, I can't, I need to use my iPad. It's that I need my Mac apps.

I need my Mac things. So anytime you take away macOS, but anyway, if they do it, I'll vent about it, but you will get the point at the predictions episode. Yeah, I don't think I'm walking away with any, I think maybe the only point I might get in this whole game is the clipboard manager thing. Maybe. I do feel good about that. Oh, and maybe the iPad Pro one But that's about it I think I went a little too risky here Don't think the car is happening Well, okay Actually, I take it back The Apple car is definitely happening Apple, Ford, and Dr. Pepper

Are going to listen to this episode And we need to get on this right away And have something before the end of the year And they'll have me reveal it They'll give me the first one off the line And Daft Punk will be blocked And all that other stuff I said imagine if apple and ford do team up for something with carplay and then it's a dr pib in the car in the ad mr mr pib mr pib apologies it hasn't earned a doctorate there uh here's the thing that made me think about this ford and apple they're kind of like buddy buddy right now when it comes

to like car stuff like ford is featured a lot in apple keynotes like even at wwdc they they showed off the when they were shown off customizable control center oh you can lock and unlock your car remote start from control center and stuff like that and i have that in my control center it's great like i love that feature okay well this was fun yeah i enjoyed this i think i'm going to win history dictates you will win but we'll see speaking of that should we move on to our challenge for the week i

I should actually, before we do that, I do want to say this was a really good game. I had a lot of fun with this. I'm really curious to see if any of our stuff goes right. Literally anything coming true is a miracle. So we'll see. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Let's move on to the challenge. Matt, it was your challenge. What did you have us do? So my challenge was to bring a movie or TV show that has tech that you wish you could use in real life. Just pretty open-ended. I can go first.

I have a pick that you're going to have to hear me out for. Now, if we're doing a poll, I'm going to lose because people are going to say I didn't follow the rules. Okay. For his own challenge. For my own challenge. Did you bring a book or something? I brought Beetlejuice. What? What is this? Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice. That was three times. What is it? Oh, boy. It's kind of magic. more than technology but i would love to have technology where i could make a model in my home and then shrink myself down and then run around in it this would be so fun i would build i would run

around my lego sets i would run around just like i would make like little like games for me to play in there and i would run around and have an absolute blast i would love to have a technological way to do this. You could have just said like a shrinking machine or something like that. Like from like Honey I Shrunk the Kids or Honey I Shrunk Us or something like that. Oh, that'd be a better answer, yeah. Is it the Tim Burton movie? Yeah. Have you never seen Beetlejuice? No. Oh. Next Halloween we are doing a comfort zone watch party. Beetlejuice is fantastic. We keep saying this.

My other pick is not a real technology either, but it's from the movie Challengers. There is a, they do, it's a special effect in challengers, but there's a camera inside a tennis ball that kind of like is stabilized and like lets you like move as fast as the tennis ball, but it also like shows you the players as they're about to hit the ball. It's very cool. I'd love if we can make a camera like that for sports. Okay. So that's not, that's not my pick. Beetlejuice is my losing pick, but. But it's a movie. How did you not follow the rules? It's not tech.

Is it not tech? It's magic. Well, it would be a technical way to do it. Okay, sure. If you would have said like, Honey, I Shrunk Us or Honey, I Shrunk The Kids or something like that, you could have got it. And that's not magic, Chris. But that is technology. And that's the challenge. You know what I did is I actually struggled with this more than I thought I would. I thought it'd be easy to think of something, and it wasn't. And so I went to my letterbox and just sorted all of the movies I've ever watched from highest rated. And Honey, I Shrunk The Kids was not highly rated, so it wasn't in the first like 100 or so that I looked at.

So Beetlejuice was, and that's my pick. Okay. I look forward to being roasted in the comments. Well, mine, mine was because I made you, well, I didn't make you, but I suggested that you change the challenge a little bit because you said any movie. And I was like, well, what about any movie or TV show? Because I had something that came right to mind right away. And that is Kit from Knight Rider. Oh. Yeah, so if you're not familiar with Knight Rider, it was a 1980s show.

There was a remake in the 2000s. We don't talk about the remake. Well, actually, I'm going to talk about the remake in just a second, but it's bad. The whole idea of Knight Rider is Michael Knight and Kit the car. The Knight Rider 3000? Sure, we'll go with that. I don't remember off the top of my head. Anyways, they drive around, solve mysteries, and fighting network TV crime. And I would totally love that if I could do it in my Mustang, which, by the way, the remake was a GT500.

So, kind of, yeah. So, Kit is a car. Kit is a car. Of course it's a car. It has a bunch of gadgets built into it. It talks. It has a personality. It has an LED light on the front that pulses back and forth like a Cylon. It has, like, oil slicks. And, like, what it would do is, like, Michael Knight is chasing, like, a bad guy through an alley. And the kit would come driving around because it's a self-driving, self-aware car. It would come driving around and it would open the door and it would trip the bad guy over. And that's how they'd stop the bad guy.

I want to drive around and solve mysteries and fight network crime TV. You know? I don't know. That's what I want. But only if it's in my Mustang. That's great. And that's not magic either. No, it's not magic. It's technology. I followed the challenge. That is technology. Okay, okay. The line is hard to draw. Okay. Okay. I'm worried about my pick now.

I picked... So do you know the movie Her? Of course. You know the movie Her? Which is often like misused in arguments about AI. It's a utopian future that we all want to live in. Yeah. I take it you agree. So, yeah, so I don't want the AI part of it. That's not my pick. My pick is very specific. My pick is the phone and the design of the phone that the guy is using.

Specifically, the tiny phone that he's holding throughout the film on which there's Samantha, the AI. But I would take it. It's a regular phone otherwise. And there's just a small camera on the back. And it's got what looks like a wooden back or at least some sort of textile back. It looks very, very nice, very cute. And I want this phone.

And that's it. That's just it. My pick is the design of this phone. I want it to be real. That's cool. It's got a hinge very much like the Microsoft Duo. Yeah. Although I don't think it's got two screens. No, just one screen. Yeah. So mine is basically the iPhone mini in an alternate timeline. Yes. Nice, nice. All right, I like these. I mean, Matt didn't really follow the challenge, but Miu Mian and I did. Oh, my God. Okay, so the poll.

Are we doing a poll? Sure, why not? Because putting Kit in a poll would be hilarious. I'm sure people know about this. From Knight Rider. It needs to say Kit from Knight Rider because that's the only way people are going to recognize this. okay um all right Neil Leon I believe it is your turn to issue a challenge this week what do you got for us yes so new challenge new year new me new challenge it is this week change something about your mouse whatever

you do just something. It can be hardware, it can be software. Change something about your mouse. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Interesting. Okay. I like it. Let's do it. As a disclaimer, I've already done something to my mouse and that's going to be my thing. I thought you were going to say I've already done something to your mice. No. Okay. That's a tricky one. All right. Well, I like it. I'm excited to dive into it. So that kind of brings us to the end of the show. But before we wrap up, we have our end of the show question for you. And I'm realizing now because of the sync issues, the question I had for you got erased. So I'm quickly coming up with something off the top of my head. And I'm going to ask you, what app do you use to view your photos in?

So photos you take, me, for example, I just use the built-in Photos app, but I'm curious, you guys use like a third-party app or something else? Same as you, the Photos app. Okay. Also the Photos app. All right, this was not a very good question. But I came up with it on top of my head because I'm having syncing issues, and I don't remember what the question was that I was going to ask. I'm sure it was great, and we'll do it next week. But are you not using an orange iconed app for the photos?

My orange icon, my home screen is half orange, and the orange icon is right there. Are you not using that? I don't know if it works most. I can't see. I do use that, but that's just to make sure everything's syncing correctly. Okay. We're talking about Synology photos. The Synology photos orange icon. I mean, I do the same thing. I have it on my device to make sure everything syncs to my NAS. Okay. Yep. But yeah, I think even with the changes this year that weren't universally loved, we'll say, I still think the Photos app is pretty great.

I like the changes to the Photos app. I know. Okay. I like you can go back in my Mastodon feed to right after the WWDC keynote like that. I think it was that Monday I installed iOS 18 and I'm like, I kind of love this. And you know what makes me more, what, what the change that they did is when they removed the carousel feature where you could pin certain albums at the top. That's the thing I don't like that they got rid of.

I was like, that was such a great feature. It didn't work in the betas, which is why I'm assuming they got rid of it because they couldn't get it to work. Well, it didn't work well in the betas when it did work. it worked it was pretty cool it was a pretty cool concept but um yeah i i actually like ios 18 photos but anyways let's wrap up the show we're going kind of long uh huge thank you to MacStories for having us we are a MacStories podcast after all uh you guys have anything you want to promote before we wrap up i just reviewed an app called lotty lab on my youtube channel and it is getting the dreaded 10 out of 10

in terms of viewership in YouTube Studio. So go check it out. It's a good piece of software. By the way, I'm going to be using that, I think, for something very soon. So it's a great recommendation. Nice. I will have out, by the time this episode is out, I will have an Apple Intelligence video out talking about the assistive features in Apple Intelligence and kind of how I've been using it from a productivity side. I'm not covering image playground or any of that stuff because I just, I don't use it, but some of the built-in writing tools, features, and Siri stuff, I've actually been using quite a bit

and have been pretty, pretty helpful. So go check that out as well, because I'm worried that is going to be a 10 out of 10 as well. I'm actually kind of worried about that video. So thank you all so much for listening, watching. Have a great day.