Put a Bumper Case on That Thing

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're recovering from some picks. As always, we're joined by Matt Burchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm feeling refreshed. I feel great about my picks. I'm going to be eight for eight next year. You guys are going to see new Vision Pros, Things 4, Dreams Coming True.

I'm still convinced we're getting that Apple car. But anyways, we're also joined by Nelion. Nelion, how are you doing? Hello. I'm doing well. Good, good, good, good. Well, we have a big show for you all today. But before we do that, we have some follow-up items. First off, we did Democracy for last week's episode. I'm just going to call kangaroo court, but Niléane, you want to go through the results? The challenge was... What was it?

Bring tech from a movie or TV show that you wish you could use in real life. Matt picked Beetlejuice, like the shrinking magic from the movie Beetlejuice that I didn't know about. Not technology. And should have been disqualified. Agreed. Disgree. But it seems the public agrees with us both, Chris and I. because Matt only picked up 10% of the votes. Ooh, that might be my worst ever. Yeah. Sorry, Matt.

And Chris picked Kit from Knight Rider, which no one has ever heard of. Everyone has. Literally, that was the response on Mastodon. What are you talking about? Everyone knows what this is. I was ridiculed. Everyone was like, hey, yes, of course, Kit from Knight Rider. let it be known I love all the kits best kits of all time is the web kit and I've already made this joke

on our internal discord and I will make it again on air and that picked up 44% of the votes, second place well done that's pretty good second place because my pick which was the small folding phone design from the movie Her without all the AI stuff, of course, picked up in first place 46% of the votes.

A hair of difference between us two. I call kangaroo court. Kangaroo court, what's that? I guess that is a pretty American thing. It's like when a court is just it's kind of like out of it's completely out of order it's just nothing is orderly it's all being gosh I don't even know how to explain it is that the same court that decided to ban TikTok or it's a different one

well technically that was Congress but yeah I don't know there was a ruling or something today There was a ruling today as we record. Okay, so a kangaroo court is an informal term for a court that is unfair and unjust because it doesn't follow the legal standards, which I stand by that. Kangaroo court on this poll. Matt didn't follow the instructions. He should have been disqualified. So that 10%, that's like all the people that vote for independence because they think that's actually going to do something, like the independent parties.

Pull out of it. Pull out of the politics. Okay, all right. All right. All right. All right. Sorry. Anyways, my point is Matt ruined it. I should have won. Kit from Knight Rider is awesome. I can't go record. Okay. All right. So we have a few more bits of follow up. Last week we talked about meta and their like terrible, horrible, really bad, all the bad adjectives, moderation policy.

And I said on that episode, I was like, I'm just done. I'm done with meta. I'm off threads. I'm off Instagram. I am completely still off threads. But what I didn't think about, and it really made me angry when I realized this, is how big of a hold Instagram has on our lives. Because the only way I see daily pictures of my nieces is Instagram. That's the only way I see those. So I deleted Instagram off my phone, and all of a sudden I wasn't seeing pictures of my nieces every day.

And that was a bummer. I love those girls. Those girls mean the world to me. And I was just like, this sucks. And we also had another family thing happen. I don't want to get into it, but I had some family members sharing pictures and stuff I wanted to see. So I'm like, this sucks. So I downloaded Instagram. I haven't been posting to it, but I have been consuming. And I don't know what this means going forward. Like, I don't know if I'm going to use it for work stuff or whatever. But I'm just like, I was mad at how much of a hold Instagram has on our lives.

Because I'm not going to be able to convince all these people to use pixel feed or whatever. Like, I'm not going to be able to convince my family members to use any other service. So the only way I see these photos of my friends and family and keep up with the lives of my friends and family is Instagram. So I'm like, this sucks. But yeah. So if you see me pop up on Instagram, that's why. But yeah, I'm a little disappointed about that. Yeah.

And I said something along this line last week. I like obviously it's not possible to boycott everything. And that's the nature of boycott. You know, I repeat sometimes that I'm an activist, a political activist, and I work for the advancement of trans people's rights. All of that to say, one in my activism work in general, one of the ways of action that I hate the most is the boycott.

Because it's always depressing. boycotting is very hard you need to hit a critical mass for it to be effective and sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn't I still think boycott is a type of action that still has meaning and in this case, in the case of meta I think it has meaning when it's people who have influence who do it but I don't expect

anyone like to cut ties from family members, etc. Because obviously the larger public is not going to leave Instagram anytime soon. So that's a difficult thing to do. And I'm not... Same, I'm not leaving Instagram. I still need it. But yeah, that's okay. We're doing what we can, of course. Yeah, like you said, I believe you said in last week's episode the important thing is to speak up. is to speak up, say something.

And yeah, it just, it sucks. I was mad how much of a hold it has, but I'm not going to give up seeing pictures of my nieces every day because that, I can't underscore how much that means to me on a personal level. I don't live in the same town as them. I can't just pop over and see them. So seeing those photos, it means a lot to me. So, yeah. Yeah. I'll just say it's a spectrum for everybody. Like, you choose what, like, social networks and other things, but, like, social networks to use based on a whole bunch of criteria that's very personal and is different from person

to person. And, yeah, it sucks feeling like you have to keep using things you don't really support or don't like, but what are you going to do? Not talk to your niece? You got to do that. So, yeah. It's tricky. Yep. Yep. Yep, yep. Niléane, it looks like you got a couple of things in follow-up. What do you got going on? Well, still on the topic of social media and boycott. I wanted to bring something to the show that's been taking off, like, it's pretty incredible, actually.

It's been taking off in France. It's a campaign to leave X. So that's Elon Musk's ex, formerly known as Twitter. I mentioned this on the show months ago that at some point, I think it was during the snapper elections last summer, I mentioned to you, that was my topic that I brought on the show, that ex was very much still in news by a huge crowd in France,

like politics, media, activists. And it's very much ingrained in the public landscape of France. But right now, something pretty huge is happening is that there is this campaign called Hello Quit X, which is a funny wordplay, like Hello Kitty, but like Hello Quit X. Oh, okay. It sounds better in French because in French, we say it, Hello Kittyx.

So you're just saying Hello Kitty, but adding the ads. It sounds better in French. Okay, yeah. It usually does. Yeah. So in English, Hello Quit X, there's an English version of the website. There's a link in the notes. And this campaign has been taking off. A bunch of media publications, like national media publications, are following this campaign. And the point of it is to collectively leave X on the 20th of January.

So as we're recording the show, it's in three days. When you're hearing this, it's been a couple of days. And of course, that day corresponds to the inauguration of the new US president. So the idea here is that there's a point of rupture where you can't just keep using X as the main platform to publish anything when the owner of the platform is a member of the administration of such a president in the US.

So, yeah, I just wanted to mention this here. It's taking off. My own organization that I work for has decided to leave X on the 20th of January. And a bunch of others as well. A bunch of other organizations are following as well. Yeah. It's honestly like it's been pretty cool to see that this is taking off. And like even everyday people are talking about this.

And even TV channels are talking about it. Members of parliament are talking about it. So on Monday, on the 20th, we're going to see a bunch of the French political landscape and media landscape leave simultaneously. And most of them are going to Blue Sky and Mastodon. And one more thing to mention is that this campaign, they're doing this pretty well. They are shipping, right now it's live, a free tool that people can use to migrate their followers and followings.

So it's a web app, which is called Hello Critics, just like the initiative. You can log in with your Mastermind account, with your Blue Sky account, and your X account. And on the 20th of January, all your followers will be migrated simultaneously. So it's creating a big network effect of migration on the 20th, which is pretty cool. It's a pretty good idea, I think. How does that work? Because it's not like you can get people...

It's like everyone sign up for this, and if you're following somebody, you're auto... We'll use their API to auto-follow. Exactly. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So the idea is you log in with your Masternone account and BlueSky account. If you have both, you can only choose one of the two if you want. And then you import your X archive in there. And on the 20th, it's going to use the API. So either Mastodon's API or BlueSky's API to automatically make you follow all your former followings.

And it's doing the same for everyone. So the idea is on the 20th, all of the people who have signed up for this initiative will automatically find their followers back on their new platform of choice. Either MasterDone or BlueSky. Interesting. Even though I left Twitter a long time ago, I will sign up for this. So if anyone is following me there, it'll auto-follow me on the other places. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I mean, it's mostly in France. I don't know how many people are using this outside of France.

Oh, okay. I just opened the page and it was in English, so I assumed it was... Yeah, they translated, they localized the website in a bunch of languages. But I don't think it's taken off outside of France. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. All righty. Oh, you got something else in here too. Yeah, it's a small thing because I think I've already mentioned on the show, there is this recurring issue on Mastodon. It's very international.

Mastodon is very international. You can follow a bunch of people that don't speak your native language. And it can be a bit weird to see posts in foreign languages in your timeline. And I know this because it's something that my followers bring up often because I post both in French and English on Mastodon. And I take care to flag my French posts as French and English posts as English so that people filtering those posts can do it.

But it turns out there's a built-in way into Mastodon. When you follow someone on Mastodon, you can change which languages you're subscribing to. So it's on the web app. You can go to my profile, for example, on Mastodon. Click the three dots on my profile. And click Change Subscribed Languages. And you can uncheck French. And you will never see my French bots again in your timeline.

Only the ones in English. And that's Florian on Mastodon who found this out. His at is FloGro, F-L-O-H-G-R-O at social.lo. And he found out about this. So, yeah, I've linked to his post, which has got a screenshot of the feature where you can find it on profiles. Nice. This is fantastic. This is really cool.

I love you, Niléane. I don't know what you're – when you post in French, though, I don't know what you're saying. Yeah. This is a good tip. Yeah. If your instance supports translation, you should be able to tap the translate button and you will know what I'm talking about. I don't know if that's an ivory though. Yeah, it is. It is? It is an ivory? Oh, okay. You can press on a post and you've got a translate button. Then I've been a horrible friend and I haven't been translating your post. I'm sorry. Chris, I translate yours into French to read in a French.

Makes sense. That makes sense. You probably won't have any context, even if you translate into English. So, yeah. All right. Well, it looks like we have one last item, and I'm afraid of this. I just wanted to call out that my favorite moment in listening to podcasts last week was hearing Unconnected. The guys were talking about the software changes they are making this year, and Federico Fatici, the boss, is using Superhuman now,

And it makes me so happy to see our cult gain another member. Federico, blink twice if you're under duress. I'll come and rescue you. Just blink twice. Let me know somehow. Hand signal, something. I'll break you out of the cult. It's too late for Matt, but we can probably save you. Well done, Matt. That's all. No follow-up. Okay. All right. Well, let's get into the main part of the show. We've got a bunch of little stuff here for you today. So, Matt, you're first up in the document.

What do you got? So, I am bringing an app that I would say is the most transformative app I've used personally, maybe in years. Wow. Wow. It's astonishingly good. But you already talked about Superhuman. I don't get it. I have. So the app I'm talking about is Cursor, which is a code editing app.

It's a text editing app. It's a fork of VS Code, so Visual Studio Code, which is fantastic on its own. It's a fork of that, specifically that adds their own AI integration. There's no other way to say it. It's an AI integration that aims to help you code. And it is astoundingly good. I think listeners of the show know that I am not all in on every single LLM feature.

I am not totally engrossed with every AI product that's out there. But Cursor is astoundingly good. It's probably the best AI thing I've ever used. It's really, really good. So what's the deal? Basically, cursor has a couple core features. So all the VS Code stuff is there. If you have plugins, extensions, whatever that you want to use, keep using them. They should work here just fine.

But the cursor features are really what set it apart. And basically, the two main things they have are a chat interface and a composer interface. And I just find these incredibly useful at figuring out what I'm doing or what I'm doing wrong in line as I work. And it's super, super good. So, for example, I work on a web app called Quick Reviews.

It lets you create images and it has some other, just has some functionality. Keyboard shortcuts, accessibility stuff, a lot of color calculations going on in that app. and I can do it all my own, but sometimes I break something or I can't figure out how to do something. And instead of going to Stack Overflow, which I can see why they were freaked out by all this LLM stuff. Yeah. I can... Especially because all these LLMs are just pulling from Stack Overflow.

Like they're learning from Stack Overflow. Yeah. Yes. So is that problematic? potentially is it incredibly good to be able to ask a question about what you're trying to figure out and have the code editor you're already in understand your project and be able to give you a personalized response for what you probably should be doing yes it is astoundingly good

so i use the chat interface to ask myself about old code i wrote i've been writing this app for a couple years i sometimes go to these old functions and i'm like i should have written comments because i have no idea how this works and i just select it i command k and say explain this to me line by line this is a classic like lm thing i feel like but like it's helpful to go back to my own old code and understand what it's doing um sometimes i'll ask it how do i do this um i recently added a command bar to the web app and i do you want to say what what app you're working

on uh because i don't think you you have told people what the project is well well oh in a sec okay okay so this so this is the web app that uh has been around forever um i couldn't figure out how to do it in javascript and i basically asked it to how would i do this and it gave me some suggestions and i was able to write it um but it's not just a chat that as you can ask questions to and it can give recommendations or figure out why something's not working you can also go into its composer view and composer will just write the code for you and it is shockingly good

um you have to figure out how to use it though so you can't just say like open an empty folder and like write an app that does this this and this here's all the features here's all the things i want it to do and just have it write the whole thing for you um it really works best when you're doing very small changes or pretty minor changes and it will do them for you and you can check them and validate them and like it's good at that so i've used this for hundreds of requests over the past like month or so um to do little things so like i have a new function i want to do a new thing

i ask how do i do this in the app um and it will give me a code suggestion and i can use it um it can create whole new functions for me i can just say i want to add a setting to do this add it for me and it does a pretty good job and what this has allowed me to do and chris you teased this is I am now working on a new app on a new platform that I have not been able to write for a long time

and that is iOS so I'm working on an iOS version of quick reviews it's come together very quickly um you guys are expressing shock even though you were the first in the beta what wait I was in the beta yeah yeah that's yeah please retract your one-star review on the store it's not ready um but i have i have been using it to teach my help help teach myself swift ui so

um most people probably don't know this back in 2017 i actually had an app on the app store it was called today's forecast it was a weather weather app it wasn't great yeah yeah about that yeah it was on the store for like a year and then it didn't really sell anything i've never seen it substantial and uh yeah i think it was in a mac stories uh newsletter or something but oh yeah i mean i've seen it sorry oh okay um but but anyway so but i i was that was so bad i was just like doing my best to get by but like it was not following any best practices um this app in a

post swift ui world swift ui is pretty fantastic i but like i struggled to figure out how to get started um there are people like there are like tutorials and stuff you can follow but like i find i learn best when i'm looking at code that's i know what it's doing and like i understand everything so i've basically started with a very basic project and using cursors composer features to help me like create the initial like functions and stuff that i need for the app and the views that i need for the app i've been able to learn quite a bit of swift ui very quickly and very intuitively And I, there are moments when I use this app where I'm like, this is going to change everything.

Like it's, it's similar to shortcuts in that it lets you, anyone kind of create a thing that they couldn't have done on their own by just writing the code themselves. Um, but you can do so much more. So it's very exciting. I've talked forever. Um, yeah, it's, uh, I love this. So much. And yeah, that's it. Do you guys have any questions? Yeah. So like you said, we're on the beta for the quick review iOS and iPadOS app.

And I've really been enjoying using it. I haven't been sharing stuff publicly because I didn't know if you were trying to keep it on the hush-hush or something. So I wasn't sharing stuff publicly. I did share my Aliens review with you, which I can't say what it says in there, but it definitely is aimed directly at Matt. That's a good movie. It's a good movie. It's a great movie. It's an amazing movie. It's a good movie. Anyways, but this is really interesting because this reminds me of my own kind of journey, essentially,

is I started writing a task manager app back in 2014, 2015, somewhere around there. And I was terrible at it. I was not good at remembering how to do table view stuff and how to do... It was very hacky. It never went anywhere. It never made it past beta. It never once touched the app store. and I gave up on that to start blogging which I gave up on that to start YouTube which ultimately I would say

was probably the right call. Which worked out. Yeah, I would say that it's been fairly decent for me but the fact that there are tools now that for somebody like you or me that had never done iOS development or had very little experience doing iOS development can type in a box and be like, hey, I need a table view for this task management thing or hey i need this i need code or logic or whatever

you type in there to uh rate movies and like basically give me four options and you know let me tab through those kinds of things uh that's really cool i i this is the i've said this before on this show but this is the kind of ai stuff i can get behind because it's assisting you you're not typing in generate this app for me and you're you turn around to youtube and be like i use this tool to generate 10 000 apps and i have a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue coming in and i don't have to do anything like it's not that you're actually it's very clear even from the beta

that you're putting a lot of care into this app you have themes you you you are clear like you've taken suggestions from both melian and i like you have put a lot of care into this app and the fact you're just using a tool to assist you this is the kind of ai stuff i i can get behind and i i like yeah and and like to be super clear i have so many unfair advantages um in doing this um i have years of development experience on the web i am a product designer by day um i am a amateur developer i've done product project management product management product owner roles like i've

done all the jobs basically um and so i have experience in all these things and this is just helping me accelerate the dev part of it but like the product decisions the user experience stuff like you don't get this automatically you have to iterate on it you have to figure it out like even with all the experience that i have i put the first beta out i made it available to more Burstree subscribers who subscribe to my blog. And I was inundated with, oh, did you think of this? Here's a new thing. Did you consider this? This UI is terrible. And so I've had to iterate

on it as well. So it is, to me, it felt like having just a more experienced developer next to me who I could ask questions to. But like, there's so much experience and work that goes into still making it and still making a good product. It's definitely not make quick reviews an app, enter, and you get it. it's quite a bit of work still nice yeah i love this i'm i'm excited for the finish app to come out and uh i'll make a youtube video about it and uh rake over the coals about your aliens uh

because that's an amazing movie um so yeah um no public test flight or anything for the app i will say i do hope to release it relatively soon but we'll we'll see and uh have you figured out your pricing model for it, or do you not want to say? I have an idea. There will be... It will be free to use, but also there will be some upgrade that I'm working on. Will we give privileges to the app to our listeners?

Privileges to the app. What do you mean? I don't know. Like, special theme. Oh. Comfort zone theme. I just came up with this. You know what? I mean, sure. Why not? It would have to be like dark green, black, and orange. It could work. Yeah. I'll add it to the backlog. Yeah. Just giving you more and more work to do. I know. I know. I hope this is in 1.0. Yeah. So that's it.

I'm super excited about it. I'm super excited about the app. I'm super excited about this cursor as well. I know GitHub also has Copilot, which integrates in VS Code directly. I tried that a little bit as well. Cursor, in my experience, is much better. It does a really good job when it does make code changes for you. It has a really nice interface for you to kind of go through it line by line, and it explains what it's doing. You can validate it. You can kind of just run it in line and make sure everything's good. So, yeah, very, very good.

Love it. Fantastic. We can move on. Bravo. So I have a few things for you all today. I'm calling this all the small things, which I feel like we've done this segment. One of us has done this segment before because I'm saying this out loud and it sounds very familiar now, but I'm definitely making a Blink-182 reference. And I have a few things for you. And depending on how many we get to is how long each one takes. So we might get to all of them.

We might save some for future episodes. But a few of these things are small things that I've said I was going to bring to the show in the past that I just, you know, we've been busy with other things and I haven't brought. So this first one is the Kobo Clara Black and White e-reader. I remember I had this on order when Matt talked about his Kindle and it showed up, I think, like days after we recorded that episode. It was very unfortunate timing. But this is the Kobo base e-reader.

This isn't a fancy one at all. It's a 6-inch screen e-ink display. And I freaking love this thing. It is super light. It's waterproof. The battery lasts forever. It has 16 gigs of storage, which, according to them, that's like 12,000 books, which there's no way I would ever in my whole life be able to read 12,000 books. I'm a slow reader. 12,000 books in your pocket. 12,000 books in your pocket. But overall, it's decent.

The E-ink display looks good. It can get bright if need be. It can get dim if need be. The auto brightness feature works really well. I did get the cover for it because they had a dark green one, and I was like, yes, please. Dark green, like if I'm going to have a color, that's kind of my jam right now. Is that a camera on the back? It's the power button. That's the power button. I was like, wait a second, camera. I was like, I just saw it cut out. And I was like, wait, does it have a camera? No, no, no. It's the power button. Why do these e-readers have power buttons in all the weird places?

I don't know. And I actually, that is the thing I don't like about it. Because I have a couple of times accidentally bumped that power button. It's a lot better with the case on it because it's indented. But like without the case, your finger just kind of rests there. And I have bumped it a couple of times. One thing I wish these things would do is put physical page turn buttons on the back of them, though. That would be really nice. Because right now, you tap the screen, and if you hold it funky and your thumb accidentally touches the screen,

it'll just jump to the next page, which is unfortunate. But, you know, overall, really like it. I think my favorite thing about this, so this base Kobo Clara Black and White is the same price as the base Kindle. But what you don't have to do is you don't have to pay extra to get rid of the ads on the lock screen. There's no ads on the lock screen. In fact, the lock screen, well, it unlocks when I open the case. But if I didn't have the case on, the lock screen just shows the cover of whatever book I'm currently reading,

which on this thing is Dune. Gosh, it's taken me forever to get through this book. Actually, I put it on pause because Daniel got me really nice copies of Lord of the Rings for Christmas, and I've been reading those. You want to see those? Hang on one second. I got them right here. Absolutely. This is going to be hard for the audio people, but if you look, so these are from, what was it, Eastwood or something like that? It's a gold ingot. So it's dark green leather-bound books with gold lettering on it.

Perfect. And it has, like, gold on the side. They are very, very nice copies. Each book has a map of Middle Earth in it. They're illustrated too. So it's got illustrations from J.R.R. Tolkien in them. I think there's like an illustration per chapter, at least. I'm reading The Hobbit right now, and that seems to be about what it is. And then I'll move on to the other ones. I'm a pretty slow reader. But yeah, so I'm reading these right now. These are really nice. Stupid expensive. Thank you, Danielle.

You're the best. So I was curious, how are you getting books onto the Kobo? Is there like a store built into it? What are you doing? so it's i don't care for the way the store works it was it was kind of a pain to set up you had to use your phone and stuff like that but kobo has their own store which as far as i can tell is just like every other ebook store it has all the same stuff um i kind of compared it to like apple book store and stuff like that and like the stuff i was interested it was it was there so they have their

own book they have their own store you can also upload ebooks like if you own your own ebooks you can also upload stuff I believe it was OneDrive support or Google Drive support one of those that you can upload stuff to it from there and it also has pocket support as well the read it later service that Mozilla owns that who knows what is actually going on with that thing right now but what I did is I set up IFTTT support so that anytime I save something to

raindrop.io with the tag article, it automatically gets moved over to Pocket, so it would be on here as well. It's fine. It does the trick, but I still mostly read, like, articles and stuff on my iPad. But, yeah, I mostly just... So Kobo has a store. You have to use your smartphone to set it up. There is a Kobo app for iPhones and iPads and stuff like that, and those sync your books back and forth too so say I'm reading something on here then I travel I don't bring the Kobo with me for

whatever reason I could pick up reading on my iPhone or iPad if I wanted to as well nice does it do audiobooks as well it does do audiobooks in fact it even has uh oh no this one doesn't uh I thought this one had a headphone jack no it just has bluetooth so I believe you compare headphones and stuff to it as well but i'm not i i if i'm gonna do audiobooks i'll probably just do them on my iphone i wouldn't do them on this thing just because airpods way more convenient true i actually well i actually find it it's very nice sometimes to listen to an audiobook while i'm reading um i

feel like i take it in and i'm able to focus on it more i also crank up the speed to like two and half X, but... Jeez. Yeah. Depends on the narrator. It's like when you share podcasts, podcast clips on MasterDome. So annoyed. They are so sped up. It's 1.25. 1.25. It's not crazy. It's like, people, it is clips. People are like... Is that because people are listening at that playback speed and they're sharing the clips?

No, I mean, Matt is doing that. No, it's because if I'm sharing from the Apple Podcasts app, they don't have like a clip share, so I just record my screen, and I'm listening to 1.25, and therefore you have to listen at 1.25. We listen to ourselves like... I do. We are very quick when I listen to our podcast. I listen to a podcast at 1.25 with SmartSpeed on as well, so it will go from 1.25 to like 1.5 pretty quickly, like just depending on who's speaking and if they have long pauses and stuff like that but yeah uh any any questions on the Kobo before i move on really love it highly recommend it if you're

looking for an e-reader i i i think this is the better way to go than a kindle uh it's this is their whole bread and butter is Kobo is all about making e-readers they have other ones but if you're just somebody that's like i just want to pick up books i'm not worried about comics or illustrations or any of that stuff, this is perfect. It's a six-inch tablet. It holds really well in one hand. It's very lightweight. So I can, honestly, I find it more comfortable to read on this thing than having a physical book just because of how lightweight it is.

Nice. Very cool. I still like my paperweight, but yeah, that seems great too. Yeah, yeah. Options. They're the best. Okay, so the next thing I have, I mentioned this again when Matt brought something else So, Matt, you brought the OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock when we had John Voorhees on, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And in that episode, I mentioned I had just replaced it, and I had replaced it with this guy, the CalDigit TS4 dock. I replaced it for one significant reason that is really, really dumb.

The OWC dock has the Thunderbolt cable that connects to your computer come out the front of it. So it was coming out the front and looping around, but it was hanging out over the top of my keyboard where, like, the function and number rows are, which I use quite a bit. And that drove me wild. Didn't Matt have this issue? I did, and I solved it by mounting it on the leg of my desk. But I still want to be able to get to this thing, because I'll explain it in just a second.

So I got this guy and the Thunderbolt's cable to your computer comes out the back. This thing has a plethora of ports. It has, obviously, the Thunderbolt port that goes to your computer, plus two other Thunderbolt 4 ports. It has two USB, I'm sorry, three USB-C ports, five USB-A ports, two different headphone jacks, a display port. But my personal favorite, it has a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port, which the OWC dock does not have.

My whole, everything that's wired internally on my network, going to the routers and everything, is 2.5 gigabits. So I can take full advantage of my internal network speeds with this. What I have been doing since I got the M4 Pro Mac Mini, which the review unit Apple sent me has the 10 gigabit Ethernet port in it, is I use the CalDigit dock and the 2.5 one for my internet. That's what goes out to the internet.

But the 10 gigabit port on the Mac mini is plugged directly into the 10 gigabit port on my NAS, and I set those up with just a static IP on a totally different subnet, so that way I just have an extremely fast connection between the Mac mini and my NAS. It's awesome. But also, this CalDigit dock is what connects me to the internet. So I have two different network cables basically plugged into that Mac Mini. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome.

The other thing I love about this CalDigit dock, and the reason why I want to be able to access it and I don't want to mount it behind something, is it has SD card slot and microSD card slot, which I use quite a bit. MicroSD card I use with my GoPro. SD card I use with my camera. use those both quite a bit. And then, unfortunately, the only thing this doesn't have that I'd really love is a CFexpress card reader. That's probably a little niche, so I just have a separate one that sits on my desk.

But overall, love this thing. If you have a... If you're not planning on upgrading your Mac to one of the ones with, like, Thunderbolt 5, this is the way to go. Thunderbolt 5, though, is a significant upgrade. So if you are planning on upgrading your Mac in the next year or so, I would hold out and wait for them to do a Thunderbolt 5 version of this because it is a significant upgrade. And I have a feeling like we kind of talked about in our predictions episode, especially if you're looking for an Apple monitor or something like that,

Thunderbolt 5 versions of the monitors I think are coming. I have a feeling that's what Apple has been waiting on to upgrade their monitors because one thing that frustrates me, I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here. One thing that frustrates me about tech media is you get a lot of people that are being like, er, studio display, it's only 60 hertz, but it's 5K, but 60 hertz is no good. But what they don't do... Oh, that's Matt. Yeah. Yeah, that's my impression of Matt.

But what a lot of people in tech media don't do is they don't do the research. What they don't realize is, yeah, it's a 5K monitor at 60 hertz. Over Thunderbolt 4, you can't go 5K 120 hertz. There's not enough bandwidth there. If you're in tech media and do research before you do those complaints, that's my... That's my... Yeah, Matt. Yeah, Matt. Do research. Yeah, do research. Matt. Watch Aliens, and actually watch it this time.

I don't know. Maybe if they would just use, like, DisplayPort, they wouldn't have to worry about this. But anyway. Yeah, Chris. No. No. I don't know if that's 100% true. I don't think so. I don't think DisplayPort has that kind of bandwidth. I don't think so. I don't know. I'm fairly certain that DisplayPort doesn't have the bandwidth to support a 6K display or a 5K display with, like, USB 3.0 and stuff like that. But anyways, point is, really like this.

It's great if you have a Thunderbolt 4 computer right now. If that's what you have and you're not going to be upgrading anytime soon, absolutely go get this. I love this one. I've had both this and the OWC one. I like this one significantly more. Not to say that OWC stuff isn't good. OWC does make some great stuff. They're supposed to send me their new Thunderbolt 5 external drive that I'm very excited to try because supposedly that is just as fast as the internal storage on the M4 Pro Mac Mini, which I can't even wrap my head around, but that'll be interesting.

Oh, I have an update, by the way. Oh, yeah? Do you remember I told you about my Ethernet cable situation? Yes. Where I used network adapters into the world, power adapters. That was early on in the show. Yeah, that was a long time ago. A couple of weeks ago, around Christmas, I believe, I purchased a 30-meter cable, Ethernet cable. Oh, I love a long Ethernet cable. And I finally just ran a cable from the router directly to my dock.

What triggered me to do this is my ISP, out of the blue, which I'm not going to complain about, increased our cap limit on our bandwidth. It went from $300 to $400. So for free, like the price, without a price increase. So I was like, hey, that's nice. I was getting the maxed rate out of the power adapters into the wall.

But when it upgraded to $400, I wasn't getting the $400. So I was like, hey, so there's a limit here to this setup. So that triggered me to just purchase a 30-meter cable and run it. And now I get the full rate to my computer in the room. I love it. I absolutely love it. When we record this show, because I don't want to crawl up in the attic space. And when I say attic, it's not traditional attic.

It's literally a crawl space. Because I don't want to go up there. I run a cable from our guest bedroom where our router is into my studio here and just plug the Mac Mini in and then wrap it up and unplug it or unplug it and wrap it up and put it back in that room when we're done recording. Because I'm like, I do not want to go up in the crawl space just for one network cable at my desk. So my desk is the opposite wall of this guest bedroom. So I just drilled a hole in the wall and passed a cable through and put plates on either side, which worked great.

But that's not something I can do in this room without going up in the crawl space. And I refuse to do that. So I love it. Those ultra long cables feel like manual Wi-Fi, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So at my last IT job, we had this really long building. It was insanely long. And we actually had two server rooms in that building. And in order to connect the server rooms, because they were more than 300 feet across, we actually had fiber going between the two rooms.

Yeah. Yeah, that was fun. Like a straight-up fiber cable. Yep, straight-up fiber cable between the two server rooms. Yeah. It was cool. It was multiple fiber cabers, too, just in case one went out, which it did at one point. Maybe I should get that and plug it into my Thunderbolt 3 dock. There you go. Just wire it in. You open up the Thunderbolt 3 dock and you wire the fiber in. Oh, yeah. I love it. I'm going to run this Thunderbolt 3 cable into the ground with all the power.

I love it. All right. I got a couple more things. They're really small, so I think I'll just get to them really quick. But the next thing is this TomTalk Messenger bag. Now, I love bags. I really like Tom Talks stuff because they're like this middle ground of they're not super expensive. You're not spending $300 on this bag, but you're not getting like a $20 Amazon bag that's going to fall apart after four uses.

It's a nice quality bag. I think this bag was like $50. And it's perfect size for a 13-inch iPad Pro or probably like a 13-inch laptop or 14-inch laptop. I don't know. I didn't test that. I don't have those. But I've been working outside of the house lately. I've been going to Panera Bread because I live in a very small town, and that's what we got. And it's been great to just get out of the house and go and write or edit stuff and just be not cooped up in the house.

There were a couple of times when we moved in here, I realized I went like a week without going outside. And I'm like, this is not healthy. Like, this is not okay. So I've been trying to get myself to go out of the house and work a couple of times a week. And this has been the perfect bag for that. I can throw the iPad in here. I keep a power brick, a USB cable, battery pack in here. Oh, it's right here. like battery pack like this, like one of these big batteries, external batteries for the audio listeners.

And then when I'm ready to go and I just want to go out the house, I throw my iPad in here and my AirPods in here and just leave. It's kind of the bag's always ready to go except for those two things. And it's just a really nice small bag to grab go. And I don't have to worry about like a big camera bag carrying that, especially because I use the Peak Design Everyday Bag. And because of certain events that have happened in New York with certain healthcare CEOs, that bag is very recognizable now as a camera backpack.

Everyone knows that is a camera backpack now. And that, hey, if people are walking around with that, it is an expensive backpack that probably has expensive gear in it. So I don't really want to be walking around with that backpack. I'm actually thinking about retiring the Peak Design Backpack now because I'm like, it just doesn't blend in. It almost like highlights you as somebody that probably has expensive tech gear in the backpack. And I don't really want that.

So this is just kind of a nice bag to grab and go when I want to go out and do some work. Nice. This brings up one thing that I want to show. Okay. On this show, I'm famously good at packing things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're definitely... He's going to scar me for life right now. Is it a jeans? Bare jeans? You know what? Yeah, the end game here is that my luggage is just like a scarecrow. He does the classic cartoon thing where he just has a stick and a bundle, and it just wraps everything up in the bundle and just carries it.

Yeah. I've heard people recommend this for years, is to have basically a bag of chargers and stuff that you use when you travel and you never use it at home. Oh, 100%. I finally did this like a month or two ago, and it is so nice. Matt is holding up a plastic bag. I quit. Matt is holding up a Ziploc bag of chargers and stuff. I quit. I'm not. I'm done. I'm done with the show. This looks very neat, though.

This is good. It has an Apple Watch charger. It has two bricks that go into the wall. Everything else is a USB-C cable. Chris, don't you agree he's got such a dad energy? He's very dad energy. He's such a dad. This is perfectly practical. I don't need to spend money on a bag to make this look nicer. One of the things I love about the Peak Design bag is I don't have one of those tech dongle bag things inside of it because it has these side compartments where you can put all cables and stuff in.

Matt is scarring me. He keeps holding it up. He keeps like... You could have this. I need MaxStory's PR. Or MaxStory's HR. I'm sorry. I need MaxStory's HR. It's a PR issue as well. John, call me. This is an HR issue. I need to talk to you, John. Do you want to see mine? I want to do it. I want to be part of this. Okay. Okay. It's just going to be a cable. Oh, okay. No, mine is a real thing. It's a small pouch. It's like a nice maroon colorish pouch.

Yeah, it's soft to the touch. Is that like a leather pouch? Yeah, but fake. Okay, okay. In there, it's got just a 20 watt power adapter. Yeah. Yeah. And USB-C to lightning cable and the MacSafe, the MacBook MacSafe cable. See, I like that. That is perfectly organized. That is perfect. And a couple of USB-A cables as well. But how can you tell if something's missing without opening it?

Can you not... You have to open it to see what's in there? That seems annoying. That's true. I might upgrade to the Ziploc bag. So for my bag, I literally... On the right side of the Peak Design bag, I keep one power brick. I have this 3-in-1 MagSafe charger that charges AirPods. iPhone and Apple Watch. I have a couple of USB-C cables. Actually, I have like three USB-C cables, and that's it.

Like, they're all wrapped up nice and neat. I know exactly where they are. I can reach and grab them. I could go through it. If somebody blindfolded me, I could go through and pull out everything in that backpack and correctly identify it without even looking. I know exactly where everything is in that backpack. I love it. So you say we can blindfold you even without the big design bag? I mean if you if we're ever all in the same place we can totally do this as a challenge but you could blindfold me and I will pull

every single item out of that backpack correctly identify it without even looking I can guarantee I can do it even like three drinks in at a bar sure we can totally do that I am confident I know exactly where everything is in that bag and for me I am one of those people that like I keep copies of stuff in that bag. So like I have an SD card and CF express card reader in that backpack that never gets pulled out of that backpack when I'm home.

It is only used when I'm traveling. I have a USB hub. I have an external drive. I have those cables I mentioned only used when traveling. I'm, I'm, I'm a little crazy when it comes to that stuff. Cause I think Matt wins. Don't, don't. it's a ziploc bag i like the way this has turned this is nice i don't see i don't even have to have like i don't have an extra bag they just go in my backpack but they're organized i mean that's

that's nice too i i don't hate that they're organized like i did i've never been a big fan of a bag in a bag kind of thing like oh let me have like a dongle bag inside my backpack like no let me have just organization in my backpack so i don't have to deal with a bag in a bag can i tell something too that you're gonna hate you just throw stuff in your backpack you don't you don't organize anything every sometimes when i when i pack my little like travel toothpaste will go in there too this is great actually you know what no i take it back okay so i do have one backpack and

i think i talked about it on the show that the whole idea of the backpack is it's like if you're gone for like two to three days you can put all your camera gear all your tech gear and your clothes in there so i have done that before like when i went to new york last year that i i only packed a backpack and that was all of my luggage it was it was great it was fantastic that's awesome i'm such a light packer i can i can get away going days out of a very small suitcase yeah same all right i got one last thing. This was actually a Christmas present. I've been wanting this for a while but this is the James brand

Folsom pocket knife. I have carried a pocket knife and I know like Europeans especially get weirded out whenever I talk about pocket knives. Yeah, I'm weirded out whenever a YouTuber or anyone goes over their everyday carry like we call it and there's a knife in there like what the heck are you doing? Why are you going around with a knife in your pocket. I think this is just one of those things that's America is very different from Europe kind of thing. I've carried a pocket knife every single day since I graduated from high school.

And it's just a tool. It's just a tool. Like, I use this thing multiple times a day. Really? What do you do with it? I literally have the same one as you. I got this a year ago. Oh, do you really? I do, yeah. It's the same one. I got the clearance color, so it's just black. But I leave it in my office and I use it around the house occasionally. Every day, though. I use it every day. What do you do with a knife? Whether that's opening packages, breaking down boxes, opening packing material, whatever. I use this thing every single day. Do you know how I open packages?

You just grab it and rip. There's probably some EU-mandated, like, quick-release thing. That's a good idea, though, yeah. let's bring it up to the next european elections no i what i do is i try to look around me for the sharpest object and most of the time that's a pen i do this and i just puncture puncture the package of a pen and that works oh yeah i i have opened more packages with my car keys than any other

thing. Yeah, there you go. Here's the issue. My car key doesn't actually have a key on it. It's just a fob. No, there's... I actually... Sorry, you're too rich. You're too fancy to have a key. Okay. On my key ring, I actually don't have any keys. It's just fobs. It's just AI. Yeah, my keys are AI. So like But no, I keep this right here. So you know that on jeans, it was originally the coin pocket, but then it became the iPod Nano Pocket.

You know what pocket I'm talking about? It's on the right side. I just keep this in here. It's super handy. This is their special color one that the knife part is green. Or I'm sorry, the knife part is black. The handle part is green, but then there's also this orange trim. It's like the comfort zone colors. No? Yep. Sure. Okay. All right. No, it's great. I do not want to identify as a pocket knife. Okay, fair enough. But it's a really high-quality knife. The metal is really high-quality.

It's easy to keep sharp. If you are somebody that carries a pocket knife, highly recommend it. If you don't, totally understand. I'm not trying to push my pocket knife agenda on you. You are. You are. I'm just saying, okay, I have carried a pocket knife every day since I graduated from high school. in my pocket just as a tool like even in my IT jobs super useful just just really handy to have the only time I didn't carry a pocket knife well actually I did and that was the mistake was WWDC

two years ago uh I totally forgot I had it in my pocket it's just one of those things it's like when I get up and go I grab my phone my wallet my keys and my pocket knife and sunglasses like I just grab those things it's just a habit i walked into apple park with it and they had security searching and i was like i am so sorry i have this and it was my really nice bench made pocket knife it was like a really it was just a really fancy pocket knife and i'm like i am so sorry i totally have this uh i can't go back to my hotel just throw it away and i know the security person kept it

that hurt me a little bit because i was like what am i gonna do miss the keynote like absolutely not it was totally my fault 100% my fault i shouldn't have had it i forgot i had it and yeah so you know what you know what deserved uh 100 that was my fault that was 100 i completely owned it i didn't even wait for them to want me down and was like hoping they wouldn't find it or something like that i just owned it right then and there i was like i totally forgot i had this and I'm sorry, throw it away, keep it, whatever.

Some security guard got a really nice pocket knife that day. But yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. I totally get pocket knives aren't for everyone. I don't know. I've always had one. I guess it's an American thing. Anyways, that's all I got for you guys, unless you guys got any questions. You know what? Your segment was great. I laughed a lot and I think that's good. I learned a lot.

And I loved a lot. I don't know where I was going with that. All right. Well, you guys want to get to the challenge? Let's do it. All right. Challenge. Nilion, it was your challenge, right? It was my challenge. My challenge was change something about your mouse. Intentionally vague, like just saying mouse can be a trackpad, whatever you use as a mouse, as a cursor to control the cursor.

And I will go last. Should I go first? I will go last. I don't know. You should go first. I should go first. Yeah. Okay. So the way that I changed something about my mouse is on the Mac, I've done something that actually improved my mood. Setting this up, this actually brought Troy to me. I changed the default cursor on the Mac to the Wii cursor.

Oh, yeah. And it's so good. The Nintendo Wii. The Nintendo Wii cursor. So, if you don't know the Wii, on the classic Wii, I also think, yeah, the Wii U is basically the same thing. When you hold up the Wiimote to the Wii, to the TV, you can control the cursor on screen. And that cursor had the shape of a hand pointing up like this with the index finger pointing up.

And I always thought back when I had a Wii, I never had a Wii, back when I played a Wii, I always thought it was really satisfying because if you rotated the remote, the cursor on screen would rotate as well. Very satisfying. Overall, I just think the Wii cursor is just really lovely. It's lovely. It's a lovely design. And somebody made it and you can install it on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I've got a link in the show notes if you want to have a look at it. And yeah, it's really cute. On the Mac, you need to install it via a software that's available for free on GitHub. That's called Mousecape. It's really simple to set up. Just authorize it. And you can just change your default Mac cursor to this Wii cursor. There are four variants. And each variant is for the four players on the Wii.

Like there's a little one. There's a little two. A little three. A little four. And each one has a specific color. So one is blue, two is red, three is green, and four is an orangey kind of yellow. So, of course, I'm using the fourth one because it's yellow. Shot! Yeah. I've included in the show notes two demo GIFs. GIFs. GIFs. GIFs. The first one is amazing. Yeah, the first one is the perfect demo of this cursor.

So if you click the link, it's me just like, yeah, pointing around Chris's face while he's talking with the Wii cursor. It looks really, really nice. And the second demo GIF, what was it? Oh, yeah. The second demo GIF is when you try to select text. And when you resize a window, it's got a special shape. And when you resize Windows, it's actually very funny because it's showing like the key on the back of the remote,

like the B key, which was on the back of the remote, which you triggered with your index finger, I guess. Which you used to like grab things in that, right? Yeah, exactly. You click to drag. Yeah, and that's using this for the resizing arrows. It's very nice. Genuinely, like, it's a very satisfying cursor. Like, the fact that the default cursor, instead of just a plain arrow, is this funny little hand pointing with the index finger

is very, very satisfying. It's satisfying to click on anything with this cursor. Like, just pointing at stuff on screen. It's really funny. I like it. Anyway, so that's how I win this week's challenge. You have the ground. You have the floor. Yeah, you're going to win. This is becoming a bit of a dictatorship that she just always declares herself the winner. It's kind of sounding like somebody else we... I don't even want to get into it moving on. Don't worry about it. Matt, what do you got?

Mine's more boring. I am a big fan of the mouse. And so for the past week, pretty much all the time, I've been using this guy, Apple's trackpad. I bought this about a year ago for a certain headset. But anyway, so... The Quest? Yeah, sure. I paired it to my Mac this week, and I've been using it when I'm at my desk. And, guys, I've never liked mice more than using this for an extended period.

Really? I don't like using a trackpad on a desktop, unless I have to. Oh, wow. This is the wrong opinion. This is not correct. You know what, Nelion? I think I'm on your team, but I'm going to save it for my segment. So, I feel slow. I feel imprecise. The only thing that I like better about it, I think, is... I mean, to be fair, it is fine. It is totally fine. But it's not as good as a mouse. I find it's so much more I have to move my hand. And I have to...

When I want to drag an item, like I'm in Figma and designing something, I want to drag something from the bottom left or bottom left of the artboard to the top right. With a mouse, I just minorly click a finger down and I move my hand and it's nice and comfortable. But with the trackpad, I've got to click and hold with my thumb and then I have to make multiple moves with my index finger to move all the way across the screen. You're using it wrong. You're using it wrong. It's got acceleration. And the other trick, turn up the tracking speed.

crank up the tracking speed. Oh, yeah, sure. It makes such a huge difference that you don't have to go as far or make multiple swipes or something like that if you're not going as fast. Yeah, crank up the tracking speed and it makes the world of difference. You're holding it wrong. Yeah. Yep. You need a bumper case on that thing. Do you use spaces? No. No, okay.

so I mean I do like the gestures the gestures are nice to be able to kind of swipe up to see all my windows um to scroll more smoothly I do use it sometimes actually to record videos because the scrolling is smoother than using a mouse it looks nicer but so when you are editing in final cut and you have the timeline the vertical timeline yeah what do you how do you scroll through that without a trackpad? I just used the side scroll button on my mouse. Okay. Yeah.

I could do it quicker probably with the trackpad, but... Yeah, it makes especially quicker with the trackpad, and you know, I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, but I find pinching and zooming in or pinching and zooming out to be even faster when you're like shrinking or blowing up the timeline in Final Cut I don't even use command minus and command plus anymore. I just use the trackpad for either zooming in or zooming out on the timeline. Yeah.

I actually have, for zooming in, for like all my keyboard shortcuts and final cuts, I actually have removed the command. So just hitting the key plus minus does it. So like, it's not a problem I have. I found a solution. So yeah, not a huge pain point for me. But yeah, I'm not really a trackpad guy. Okay. Interesting. i tried okay fair enough okay okay okay okay so i'm coming from the opposite side of matt because i'm an ipad person that kind of has to make me a trackpad person because mouse support

has never been great on the ipad even even back and like the accessibility when it was just like an accessibility feature mouse support wasn't fantastic especially when it came to scrolling but for this challenge what i did is i busted out my handy logitech master ms master 3s mouse whatever this thing's called uh it's the fancy logitech mouse that that is is silent clicking um i love this mouse this mouse is amazing ergonomically it feels really good in the hand uh you know if you need to charge it there's a port on the front uh it actually conforms to like

the shape of your hand and not some flat, weird, small arc object. So you got it for this challenge? No, I've had this. Logitech sent me this when it was originally released as a review unit. And I think I still had a Mac at the time, so I reviewed it as a Mac device. They sent me this and the keyboard, the master keyboard, MX keyboard, whatever it's called. MX keys. MX keys. MX keys. Whatever. I didn't like the keyboard. Logitech never reached out to me again after my review came out because I love the mouse hated the keyboard

because the stabilizers they used for the keyboard, they didn't lubricate them, so they just rattle. I don't think they're screw-in stabilizers either, so they just rattle like nobody's business, and it bothered me. For a $100 keyboard, you can get stuff that's a lot better than that. Yeah, you can get the Magic Keyboard. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But anyways, so I paired the Logitech MX Master 3S mouse with my iPad, and I've been using it.

The unfortunate thing is it's not programmable like it is on the Mac because there is no, you know, Logitech software for the iPad. So I've just been kind of having to use it as it is default. So there's left click, there's right click. There are the two buttons on the side which do act as a forward and back button. So, like, if I come into Safari, I can go, let me pull up a tab. Wait, why isn't it working anymore? Was this on the, am I getting, I might have gotten confused that this was when I paired it with the Mac.

I'm sorry, never mind. The forward and back buttons don't work with the iPad. I forgot about that. I got that confused with the Mac. See, that's the problem with working from two machines. I just, you know, I can't even, can't keep it all straight anymore. Mouse support when working with the iPad is better than when I last tried it. It's a lot smoother now. I did crank up the thing where the mouse speed, like I have that cranked up. So, you know, I can zoom across to the iPad's display or the external monitor display or anything like that.

Clicking's nice. The tracking on the mouse is really good. The side scroll does work. If you're like in an app like Final Cut and you have a vertical timeline, you need to scroll vertically. The side scrolling does work, which is nice. Overall, it's fine. But again, trackpad support for the iPad is just a lot better. It's ultimately like I wish Apple would make the mouse support good for iPadOS because I used to be a mouse person until the iPad got mouse and trackpad support.

And I realized how much better the trackpad was. And I just, you know, went the trackpad route from there. But ultimately, really like this mouse. I think my favorite thing about it is you can pair multiple computers with it. So I had it paired to this iPad. And I had it paired to the M4 Pro Mac Mini. And you just hit one button to jump between them. There's nothing. You don't have to unpair and repair like you do with Apple's Magic device line. Because they refuse to support multi-device pairing. But yeah, that's it.

That's what I did. I don't have anything too fancy for you because iPadOS software is kind of limited when it comes to stuff like this. Yeah, coincidentally, I think the last I used an iPad for real, I used the Magic Mouse with it. And it was really nice. Yeah, I think the Magic Mouse works really... Did the scrolling work well? So that's the thing. I actually think I skipped over this bit. While the mouse works fine with the iPad now, it's the scrolling that really gets messed up.

So if I scroll too fast, it'll jump to the bottom and do this really long elastic animation where it pulls, pulls, pulls. And it's really slow, and then it'll just snap back. And it's really slow. Yeah, that sucks. No, but yeah, the Magic Mouse works just as well as the Magic Trackpad. You've got all the gestures on top of the mouse. the scrolling is very smooth just like on the Magic Trackpad it's actually really nice the Magic Mouse

doesn't bother the thing everyone complains about with the Magic Mouse is the fact that the charging port is on the bottom, okay fine, whatever the thing that actually bothers me about the Magic Mouse is how it's just not ergonomic at all, like it doesn't fit my hand if you're watching the video the Logitech Mouse fits perfectly in my hand. It's comfortable to use. The Magic Mouse does not. I feel like I'm making this weird claw-shaped thing with my hand and it just doesn't work right.

Yeah. I would like to add to my bit. I'm also using the Magic Trackpad as you guessed. And using the Magic Trackpad with the Wii Cursor is like it feels like a natural continuity because you're just pointing your index on the surface of the trackpad and there's your index on the screen. So yeah, I just wanted to sell my Wii Cursor once more. And moreover, when I play Flight Simulator, I need a mouse.

I can't play Flight Simulator with the trackpad. So I use the Stadia controller and a mouse. And that mouse is the Logitech lift mouse. So it's a vertical one and it's very smooth. So unlike the MX vertical, the Logitech also has a mouse that's called the MX vertical. The MX vertical, I've tried it, it's very heavy. It's as heavy as the MX Master which I also find to be quite heavy.

The lift is pretty lightweight. It's made out of plastic contrary to the mx ones so yeah that that explains it uh okay thank you guys cool yeah this was good i i like it it was honestly i probably wouldn't have tried a mouse with the ipad again until ios 19 or ipad os 19 to see if you know the scrolling thing was fixed but it was it was nice to kind of just revisit this and use it for the week.

And, um, okay. And do we do democracy? Sure. Why not? I have a feeling you're going to win this one because people love Nintendo. Also, you liked what you did. I liked what I did, but also like it does. I don't think this works well as a poll. Yeah. So, but I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I can see how it wouldn't work well because it'd be what? The Wii Cursor, Logitech, MX Master 3S, and the trackpad?

People are just going to vote for what they use. Also, Chris, your entrant is what I like. That's my mouse, and I love it. And I'm using a trackpad, which I don't like, but you like. So what do you vote for? I would probably end up voting for you. Actually, no, I wouldn't. I would vote for me. It doesn't matter. Neilian would get 80% of the vote anyway Yeah, it doesn't matter. Cool. Neilion won this one. We'll just give it to Neilion. Yay. Go download the Weaker, sir, in the notes. Actually, I will probably try that out.

I will probably download that. I have a reminder set for after we record. Yeah, I'll probably set it up tomorrow. I got some other stuff going on. Since I've got the player four, you guys can pick one, two, three. Perfect. Okay, hang on. I'm going to call Dips on one right now. I want player one. I want the blue one. Matt is sad. Okay. sorry Matt you gotta call dibs quicker that's how it works it's not gonna stop me okay alright challenge for next week

you guys ready I believe it is my challenge I so we have all been very critical of AI but we've I think we've all found AI tools that we're like you know what get this like it it's not stealing content from people. It's not generative. It's been assistive. So I want you all and including myself, of course, to find an AI tool, a new AI tool, something you haven't used before that can assist you in your work or your

personal life or whatever, just something new AI tool. And I can't bring what I brought today, which I declared the most transformative software I've used in a long, long time. I saw you put that in the document and I was like, perfect. He's getting the good one out of his system. So that way I can beat him next week. I'm bringing image playgrounds, everybody. Yeah, you won't win. But no, just bring something. Use an AI tool for your work. Try something new.

You know, whether it's good or bad. Okay, I have a question. Okay. Can I be nefarious about it? I mean, sure. But as our audience loves to point out, if you don't follow the rules of the challenge, you don't win. You just said show, so that's in the rules. You can bring whatever you want. Remember when I brought Age of Empires 2 for trying a new Microsoft thing, and Matt brought, it was his challenge as well, and he went, oh crap, there is no good Microsoft app, and he brought a game as well. I did, we don't need to relitigate it, I did bring an app, I just hated it.

Exactly. So you can bring whatever you want. You can be as nefarious as you want about it. But I would say at the very minimum, the tool needs to be labeled AI in some way or LLM or something like that. But that, I mean, you could throw a rock and hit one of those right now. Yeah, but I mean, can I use a nefarious tool? Is what I mean. I mean, as long as you're comfortable sharing it and it's not illegal. You're stamping your name on this. You're signing off on it.

I don't care. Apparently, there's no law. I know. You know what? If the challenges were subject to law, Kit would have won. I'm just saying. Knight Rider would have won. Kangaroo Court. Kangaroo Court. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, all right. So that's what I want you all to try. We'll talk about it next week. But before we wrap up, as always, I have an end of the show question for you all. And I want to know, what piece of tech do you really want right now?

Something that is in existence that you could absolutely go out and slap a credit card down on, but you just can't justify spending the money on. What do you got? I've got a controversial response. Okay. The Vision Pro. Oh, okay. Oh. Interesting. Because I just wanted to watch things in bed. Yeah. Yes. Honestly, I would not spend the money again. But now that I have, I don't want to be without it necessarily. But yeah, justifying the cost is tough. That's a good one.

But again, this is money aside. What's something you want? So I totally get that. Matt, what about you? What do you want? Mine is pretty basic, but it is an M4 Pro or M4 Max. Why not? M4 Max MacBook Pro with a matte screen. Ooh, nice. My M2 Pro is totally fine, but sometimes I'm sitting here just waiting for videos to render and I'm like, this could be faster. Oh, I'm changing mine. I'm changing mine.

You're so close to be nice to the Vision Pro and now it's gone. Yeah, forget the Vision Pro. I want the studio display. Okay. Just the studio display. Because I was going to say the Pro Display XDR. Like, you know, if you're going to do it, why not do it? Like, get the stand and everything. My answer is either the Pro Display XDR with the $1,000 stand or the new Mode 80% keyboard. I have Mode's old 80% keyboard, and I love that thing.

But the new one looks really nice. I priced it out the other day, and it was going to be, like, just the keyboard and the parts itself, not talking switches and keycaps. It was going to be, like, $600. And I was like, yeah, no, I can't justify spending that much money again on an 80% keyboard remote because that's a lot of money. And I've done it once already. Oops. If they had Bluetooth ever, I'll be back on board. Yeah, but it just sits at a desk. You don't travel with it.

I really don't think that keyboard needs Bluetooth. You clearly don't switch between devices like I do. But see, okay, again, that's where this guy comes in. I do switch between devices, but my keyboard is plugged into the CalDigit TS4 dock. And then all that I do is I take the cable that goes from the dock to whatever computer and plug it in either to the Mac Mini or the iPad. So I switch computers all day long. I would kill. If this thing, if they ever decided to put a KVM switch in this thing, I would absolutely buy it again in a heartbeat.

But for now, just plug the keyboard into the dock. Are any of those computers a Windows desktop computer under your desk, though? Yeah, but I'm not a monster. Well, I'm just saying. I'm just kidding. I'm probably going to be building a gaming computer this year. Yeah, I would actually be shocked. That should have been one of my predictions last week, is Chris will build a PC. No, because then I purposely would have waited until January 1st of next year to do it. you know what I would have done is I would have bought all the parts and just sat there and waited till January.

Just put them on the shelves behind you. Like I could make it. I could do it. Any day now, Matt guys, this should have been the game. We should have predicted things about each other. Yeah. Okay. Maybe that's for another time. Okay. Yeah. This is a good idea. That's, that's for another time. All right. Well, that's it for this show. Uh, thank you all so much for listening. Uh, a huge thank you to MacStories. We're a Mac Stories podcast. After all, go check out the other shows and all the CES coverage. NPC just put out a whole episode that I'm excited to listen to about the Nintendo Switch 2.

That's literally all I've been thinking about the last day or so since that trailer came out. What is that second USB-C port for? What is it for? Anyways, all right. Thunderbolt 5. Maybe. How else will you get all your work done? You can only get real work done on Nintendo Switch 2. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. You guys have anything you want to promote? Sure. Mastodon. Follow me on Mastodon.

Pictures of my cat. Oh, I know what to promote. Go on Niléane.fr slash at Zelda. And that's my cat. Follow it from pictures of my cat. Gotcha. Matt, you got anything? No. Just listen to me on Comfort Zone. Okay. I think they just did. Then they're ahead of the game. Cool. All right. I will have my Apple Reminders video out by the time this episode comes out. Hopefully.

It should be out. If not, it will be out in the next day or two. But, yeah, go check that video out on my YouTube channel. All right. Thank you all for listening. Goodbye.