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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'm joined by two incredible co-hosts, and one of them attempted a coup. As always, I'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm still recovering from the coup myself. Really shocking. Yeah, it was a bit much. And we are also joined by coup attempter, coup attemptee, coup person, Milion.

Milion, how dare you? How dare you defile our democracy like this? I take inspiration from the best, known as Emmanuel Macron. Oh, boy. This was beyond the pale. This chapter is going to be called Democracy. Yeah. Okay. My French president knows all about democracy, and I aspire to do the same thing on here, to teach you about democracy. Oh, wow. Very patriotic.

And Emmanuel Macron's democracy is exactly what you have witnessed. And be careful, it will happen again if we don't follow the rules. You will rue the day you put me in charge of the polls. So there you go. Wait, you're the one telling us to follow the rules, but you're the one that... she makes the rules she follows her own rules i mean matt listener if you don't know what's happening you and you've listened to previous episodes you know oftentimes when we do our

challenge we'll do a mastodon poll to let the people decide who won well neilion is in charge of all the posting uh for for comfort zone handles all the posting to all the social media mastodon blues guy whatever it handles all the poll stuff takes care of it all this week she decided to have the poll list three names on the poll so you can vote for three different you know there's three different slots you can vote for but all three names were Neelion yeah so I am declaring myself the winner because Matt didn't follow

the rules and Neelion attempted a coup so I'm declaring myself the winner I disagree okay as Neelion three I believe in the poll, I still took third place. So it is what it always is. That makes about sense. It's usually Neelyon's first, I'm second, Matt's third. Sometimes Matt and I switch places, and in a rare occasion, we'll dethrone Neelyon. I'm really starting to wonder if I understand what podcast I'm on. I do not understand this challenge, apparently, because I never do well.

Well, usually there is a sentence for you to do something, And if you stay within that sentence, those guidelines, you have a good chance of actually winning. Because usually somebody will go outside of that sentence. So it's usually a 50-50 chance if you win or not. I mean, when there's Apple TV in the guideline and you answer with Android something, you might not be on a good track to win. Yeah, I'm going to agree with Niléane on this. But I do not agree with her coup attempt.

I think it's good that sometimes we have a coup like this just to like reset the clocks and remind ourselves that the almighty Emmanuel Macron is always right. And so am I. Didn't I attempt a coup in a previous episode? I feel like I did a coup. Yeah, you introduced us as your guests. That's right. That's what it was. It was totally. I think about that every day. I think it was still really early on in the show. So I was still memorizing the intro. like I didn't have it down just yet and for some reason I said guests and not co-hosts.

Sure, sure, sure. Oh, I have an excuse. It was actually my innie who made the poll. No spoilers, not caught up. No spoilers, not caught up. Let's be careful about it. I didn't say it. I said my innie made the poll. I know, I know, but I know how these conversations go. I'm just, no spoilers, I'm not caught up. I'm like two episodes behind, so. Oh, that's, yeah, that's all new, but okay. Well, when your girlfriend doesn't want to watch the show, you have very limited time. You change girlfriends. That's what you do.

Wow, the nuclear option. You know what? I'm going to pass on that one. My partner did the same thing. There were two episodes behind, and I went ahead and watched it. I told them, no, I'm not waiting for you. I watched them. Yeah, in our relationship, that's considered cheating. All right. So we have something else in our tiny topics. Two episodes ago when, was it Devin that was on App Stories?

John Voorhees challenged me to try Cheerwine. This is a kind of apparently an offshoot of Dr. Pepper, but it's an East Coast beverage. I have lived in North Carolina where John lives years and years and years and years ago, but I've never had this before. Now, I got some. It was very expensive. I got three bottles for $20 because it was an East Coast drink. So I had to go through some hoops to get it. So it was kind of expensive. It is also a sugary drink, which I have not had a sugary soda since I was diagnosed being diabetic.

So I'm not going to drink this whole thing because it would probably quite literally kill me or at least cause me to lose a foot. So I'm going to try a sip of it. I have no idea what this is going to taste like. Oh, you're going to do it now. I'm going to do it now on the show. I have not tried this. It's been sitting in my fridge. Nice. I have not tried it. Very good. It's been sitting in my fridge. John wanted me to try it on the air. All right. Tops off. Cheers. Cheers. Looks like a Coke bottle. Oh, it's very cherry-y. Very cherry-y.

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, sugary soda. I have not had that in a long time. Does it taste like wine at all? No, it does not taste like wine at all. It tastes like, you know what it tastes like? It tastes like cherry Coke. That's what it tastes like to me. Huh. Okay. I mean, that's pretty good. Sure. Can you do some really slurpy sounds for the audio listeners to make sure they know you're drinking? Yeah, sure, sure. There we go. Oh, okay. That's the stuff. Okay, and that is going to go over there because that's probably more sugar than I have had all week right there.

So that, it's fine. It tastes like a cherry Coke to me. Okay. Fine. I'm going to go back to sticking to my Dr. Pepper here. Cheers. Much better. But, yeah. Okay. It's good. It's good. Now I've got to find somebody else to give the extra bottles to. I'll give them to my neighbor or something. I can't drink. It's fine. Neelion, you got something in the tiny topic section.

Yeah. So it's a follow-up thing. Last week on the show, in response to my own challenge, which was do something to your Apple TV setup, I brought to you guys a TV remote, an alternative Apple TV remote, which was shipped to customers by the Swiss ISP called Salt. And friend of the show, co-host of MacStories Podcast, Magic Rays of Light, Sigmund Judge, messaged me and gave some clarifications on this remote.

So, yeah, I wanted to bring this onto the show. So he told me that this remote that I talked about last week is actually manufactured by a company called Universal Electronics. And this company supplies cable companies globally with TV remotes, including alternative Apple TV remotes, which means that the remote that I talked about last week was also shipped in a bunch of other countries in Europe

as well as elsewhere in the world, I guess. And yeah, so it's not at all an exclusivity to Switzerland. I mean, I think maybe it was in the beginning, like they ordered it from Universal Electronics, but then it was commercialized via other ISPs in the world. So there you go. He also told me that Universal Electronics, this company, seems to have an exclusive deal with Apple,

which explains why their newer remote, you remember last week I also mentioned that they make a newer version of this remote for the Apple TV, which explains why this newer remote has a Siri button. And it seems to be the only alternative Apple TV remote which has a compatibility with Siri. So it seems like they have some sort of deal with Apple, this company. I also mentioned last week that this new remote, the newer version of the remote, doesn't have the buttons that I really liked.

The buttons to jump back and forward 30 seconds, which was really useful to skip the scrubber on screen. And Sigmund told me that he's not sure, but maybe this new remote can be configured on the Apple TV to behave like this with the skip buttons. Because it only has skip buttons, skip back and skip forward. And he told me maybe you can configure those buttons to behave like the jump back 30 seconds, jump forward 30 seconds buttons.

But he doesn't know. So there you go. Follow up on this. These remotes, they are available in many places in the world. I've been spending this entire time looking for an American version, and I cannot find one. Maybe it's mostly in Europe. I don't know. You guys got all the fun stuff. I am finding some incredible remotes on Amazon. So there you go. And I mean that in a bad way.

These are atrocious. These are absolutely shocking. I'm sending you guys one right now. You'll know just from the thumbnail what chaos this is. Oh, wow. For audio listeners, yeah. We will put a link in the show notes. This is amazing. Imagine the current Apple TV remote, the silver remote with the black buttons. Now imagine every single empty space is filled with more buttons.

It's just buttons everywhere. This is the publicly accurate Apple TV remote. Okay, this thing is $6. I am buying it. I'm buying it right now. It'll be here Wednesday. Yeah, it'll be here Wednesday. I will report back. It's $6. I don't mind biting the bullet for this. I am totally... I will absolutely try this remote. Ordered. It'll be here Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, this Wednesday. So we'll have it in time for the next recording.

Yeah, I'm buying this. Well, Chris, I hope our orders don't overlap because I too am buying it. Nice. All right. Can we skip to the show? Let's do it. Yes, let's get into it. All right, Neilion, you're first up in the document. What do you got for us this week? You literally haven't put anything in the document except we don't know what you got. So what do you got for us? All right. So remember when I was talking about remotes? Oh, no. Here we go.

I was saying how there's a newer version of this remote that I didn't have. Well, now I have it. And this is my topic today. Okay. So I ordered the newer version of the remote that's sold by Salt in Switzerland. And it turns out this newer version of the remote is also used by a French ISP called Free. Like Free. Is it free internet?

No, but you're very close. This ISP was well known because when they arrived on the French market, they had such low prices that it brought the whole market down. Nice. The whole prices across the market down. And still today in France, the cost for fiber and cost for 5G, etc., is super low compared to our neighbors in Europe just because of this company. Oh my God. I'm jealous. Yeah. I'm in a Discord with a bunch of British people.

And if they ever want to just absolutely wreck me, we start talking about how much we pay for internet service. It is ridiculous. Yeah. I like to do that as well with people. I pay $120 a month for my internet service. Jesus. It's supposed to get me 1,200 megabytes down, but only 40 megabytes up. And as somebody that uploads large video files to the internet, 40 megabytes up sucks. And that is the fastest I can get.

And everyone was like, oh, hey, when you buy a house, you'll be able to get fiber. Well, bought a house. Guess what? It's outside of the fiber ring. Same. Yeah. I pay 180 a month for a gigabit down and 20 megabits a second up. And you might be like, why don't you get something else? Why don't you find a better option? It is literally this or DSL, which is like 20 up and 20 down. So it's symmetrical, but it's 2% of the speed. Yeah, this is my fastest option.

I could go with AT&T, but it's apparently half the speeds and half the upload speed. So I would be where Matt is with 20 megabytes up, which... Megabits, not even megabytes. Megabits, megabits. I know. I knew that too. I know. I know you know that. I just want to make sure because it's, it really is as bad as it sounds. And I don't want people to be like, oh, 20 megabytes isn't that bad. Anyway. Do you want to hear mine? Yes. Hit us. Hit us. Okay. So we are paying 29 euros per month for our fiber plan.

It's one of the cheap plans. So we only have at the time currently 400 down, 400 up, symmetrical. And last week, we got an email from my ISP telling us, hey, without a change in price, we're upgrading your plan and you'll be getting one gig down, one gig up, starting next month for the same price. Oh, my gosh. We're pretty happy right now.

Can I move in with you? Sure. Can comfort zone become a commune? It's a good time to flee your country, just saying. yeah sorry man i interrupted you no it's okay it's okay i have a i have we also have a cap on our internet so if i use over 1.2 terabytes in a month they start to charge me extra what oh i i pay an extra i think it's like 30 or 40 bucks a month to sidestep that cap because i absolutely would go over that cap every single month like there's no way because danielle and i

both stream video all the time i'm thinking i'm thinking of opting into that because yeah our our bill does fluctuate a little bit because we're always very close to it and sometimes we go over sometimes we don't but that's insane it is nice i i didn't we we've had that cap in this area for a really long time i didn't buy into it for the first couple of years but i i did the math after like uh i i like basically added up all the overages that i accumulated over a year and realized it would actually be about the same price for me just to buy into to getting the unlimited data and then

i don't have to stress about it like i just like i just stream whatever i want like like i because back when i didn't pay for that i would be like okay i can't have tv on in the background or something like that because that's just eating up bandwidth or eating up my data cap so it's like yeah i i and like anytime i would have to upload a video multiple times i'd be like crap okay this is going to eat up part of the data cap as well. So it is a nice peace of mind not to pay for it, but it's ridiculous that we have to pay for it. Yeah, when flight simulator updates come out and it's like we're about to download 100 gigabytes for you,

it's devastating to me. Exactly. See, I don't keep games on my Xbox and stuff like that, so if I'm done with a game for a little while, I'll just delete it and then re-download it, and I don't think twice about it. Well, guys, I'm sorry. Sorry to hear that. We've completely derailed your topic. I'm so sorry. That's all right. That's all right. So like I was saying, TV remote in France, it's available through free, the ISP. And unfortunately, in France, you cannot order it directly from that ISP.

However, the remote is available on Amazon France. And it's the version that's included in offers from Deutsche Telekom, which is an ISP in Germany, like the largest ISP in Germany. And I've got it. It's 29 euros on Amazon. So I ordered it and it's here. It's exactly the same, even though it's got a Deutsche Telekom logo on the front, but that's it.

Ignore that. It's a small one, so that's all right. The remote, I've only been using it for like two hours today because I got it in the mail this morning. And this remote is really nice. Like, guys, this is extremely nice. I'm not ever using the aluminum Apple TV remote again. Okay, so first off... I don't know. Matt and I both have remotes coming that look pretty nice. I'm jealous. We have lots of bugs on us. No, I'm not. So this remote, as you can see maybe on camera, if you're watching the video, it's backlit.

And it's like backlit only when you pick it up. Like it turns off by itself otherwise. And the layout is pretty simple. It's got, compared to the regular remote, it's got more buttons. You've got channel plus, channel minus to go back and forth between channels, volumes. You've got the microphone key. So that's the Siri compatibility I was talking about earlier. It is compatible with Siri, which is really nice.

I've tested it. It works. And otherwise, the main difference is you've got a skip forward and skip backward button. And Sigmund was telling me, hey, maybe this can be reconfigured to behave like the buttons that I wanted. Yeah, I could not find it. Oh, no. I don't think it is. It would have surprised me.

That's a bummer. Oh, wait, there's the reprogram. Did you try, you know how like you can learn a remote on the Apple TV? Did you try that? So I did, but like it freaked me out. And you know what? Because this is a Bluetooth remote. not an infrared remote so and it's like it's got a specific compatibility with tvOS software like it's not like a universal remote

which you can manually teach the Apple TV to to use so yeah I don't think you can do that I can try but I'm afraid to like break something I don't know no I get that the remote is really nice the fact that it's backlit That was a really nice surprise. Like, I had no idea. I think Sigmund mentioned it now that I think about it, but I had no idea it was backlit. So that's really nice. That's a nice touch.

I'm curious, what do the channel plus and minus buttons do? Because it's remote specifically for the Apple TV. Yes. So what do the channel flipping buttons do? So in most apps, I've tried it already today. In most apps, it doesn't do anything. so like if you click those buttons in the YouTube app for example it doesn't do anything however we've got the Canal Plus app on the Apple TV Canal Plus is like a TV provider in France and we have one of their

digital offers which means we get access to all the French channels through their TVOS app and they've got a really nice TVOS app So when we watch TV, like regular French TV, we go into that app. So I went into that app to see, hey, can I flick between channels using these buttons? And yes, I can. Oh, okay. So it's meant for the cable providers. Yeah, I think so. This is the only app on my Apple TV which seems to work with these buttons.

So there you go. There's also a guide button. and this one like completely useless in my case like nothing uses this I'm supposed it's supposed to bring you to your like same thing if you got a cable provider and an app that supports it maybe it brings you to that in my case doesn't do anything one more thing last week I mentioned on the old remote which I've also got here in comparison if you're watching

the video. One big problem with that remote is it didn't have a home button, only a menu button. So if you want to go home, long press the menu button. However, cannot go into control center using the old remote. Impossible. Which is why I was saying, hey, I'm not going to keep using that because we need to go into control center all the time. I mentioned last week because we switch profiles all the time, but I also remembered, hey, because I also use my headphones with the Apple TV all the time. And to switch the audio output on the TV,

you got to go into control center. So there you go. So this new remote has a home button. Solved. Nice. Can go into control center, this one. It also has a power button. And funny thing, this remote behaves in a very particular way with the power button. On the regular Apple TV remote, if you press the power button once, it doesn't do anything. There's a pop-up on screen that tells you long press the button if you want to power off, but it doesn't do anything if you just press it once.

This remote, if you press once, press it once, it just opens the control center instantly. So it's got a utility. Press it once, and it pops up, control center, long press it, and it powers off. That's really nice. Nice. Yeah. And that's it. I think this is the one. I'm going to put back the two other remotes in the drawer using this one. It uses two AAA batteries in the back.

Oh, that's a bummer. I think it's nice. I like it. Oh, okay. They last forever, though. We have rechargeable batteries at home. I think it's nice. If that was available in the U.S., I would buy that instantly. I actually think Danielle and her mom do not like the Apple TV remote. In fact, they frequently grab the LG C2 OLED TV. So I have the LG remote. They frequently grab that and use that because it works with the Apple TV instead of using the Apple TV remote, which drives me nuts.

I try and hide that remote in a drawer because I'm like, I hate this remote. I hate it sitting out. It looks terrible. The Apple TV remote just looks nice sitting on the coffee table. It has a spot if I put it there. If somebody else sets it down, it is in a different spot because anyways. I love my girlfriend. I love my girlfriend. I love my girlfriend. Tough episode for her. Yeah, I know, right? Sorry, Danielle. Love you. Yeah, no.

But yeah, no, I would buy that remote in a heartbeat if it was available in the U.S. Yeah. And even the buttons, they feel nice. Like, they feel clicky, but not too hard. Are they like the membrane squishy buttons? I don't know how you do that. Like, do they feel like really soft to the touch? Like when you push down, like are they kind of soft? No, they're really clicky. Are they hard plastic? They're clicky. Ooh. Are they noisy? No, they're a lot more silent than the Apple TV remote. Okay, good. My biggest pet peeve is clicky buttons on controllers.

video game controllers. Yeah. Xbox has like clicky buttons that drive me crazy. Oh. So I, I kid you not. I spent the money. So when I bought my Xbox series X, it was a bundle thing came with two controllers. Great. Fantastic. I literally bought the Xbox series elite controller because the Xbox, the X, the standard Xbox controller is so hollow. Yep. Matt, that's the exact one. I have the standard Xbox controllers are so hollow that we're going to when you push a button it sounds horrible and the elite one because it has a built-in lithium

battery it's got some weight it's kind of like a mechanical keyboard you fill that thing up there's less of an echo so much nicer i don't use the paddles i don't use any of the extra stuff that comes with the elite controller i don't care about any of that stuff same the buttons aren't hollow and they don't rattle which the standard xbox controllers do it's the dumbest thing i've ever spent money on but yeah have you considered doing the tape mod on the uh on the controller just put some tape in the inside the controller like you do a keyboard i've thought about opening up the xbox

controller to see if that is something that's possible but it's just one of those things like i'm like i don't know if i really want to do it but to be fair i have these two standard xbox controllers that aren't being used because they rattle so maybe i should just try it out i might I might do it. I don't know. We'll see how easy it is to open those up. Yeah. I will say, kneeling on the batteries for that remote, I actually do see that as a feature, which is becoming an old man opinion of myself. I used to like internal batteries that charge over USB-C for everything, but I have these old iPods that don't turn on and don't hold a charge anymore,

and there's really nothing I can do. But then I have my Game Boy from 2001, my Game Boy Advance, And I just pop in double A's and it works just like it always has. Like long term, it is nice to have like just replaceable batteries. It's really, really nice. So that controller will work for years. I can see that. So my girlfriend's mom came over a couple of weeks ago and she brought over a box of old phones. Had some old iPods in it that I set aside to see if I can fix up. But she brought over some old iPhones and stuff like that.

And a couple of them actually had expanded batteries. And I'm like, oh, my God, you've just had this sitting in your house for how long? I literally went back and I grabbed our shovel, went in our backyard, got some dirt, and dug all that stuff up and put it in a box. And I was like, okay, this is going to sit here, and then I'm going to go take it to the electronic recycling place, which isn't that far from our house, thankfully. But I was like freaking out when I saw that. I'm like, you have no idea how dangerous this is. And with changeable batteries, you don't have that.

Yeah, although make sure if you are putting something away for a long time, take the double A's out. Take the triple A's out because those will start to get nasty. I have a tip. If you're on the lookout for good rechargeable batteries, like triple A or double A, go to Ikea. They have really good ones. Ikea is just the goat for so many little things. They're not expensive at all. They've been great for us. Ikea's charging cables are like some of the best here.

They make these really nice braided cables. Yeah, Ikea. I have many of them right now in my drawer. So many Ikea cables. Nice. Nice. And they have orange ones now. Heck yeah. Yeah. Is orange the unofficial color of Comfort Zone considering like our artwork and Neelion and all that stuff? It's mine. It's just yours? Just yours? We can't have that? I actually think we're all dressed in our appropriate colors today.

You're orange, I'm blue, and Chris, you're black. Yep, always black. So anyway, I could talk about remotes for another 20 minutes, but I think, Chris, it's your turn now. All right. Well, I have an app for you all this week. I have an app called Anybox. It is a bookmarking and read it later app and stuff like that. I've tried to put all of my bookmark URLs that I've been wanting to bookmark, like apps I want to check out, articles I want to read,

stuff I want to buy to either review for the channel or comfort zone or stuff that I might want to just buy personally. I've been trying to put all that in Obsidian. But I've been struggling with how to organize these links in Obsidian because Obsidian very much is a plain text editor. It's just meant for you to type text in. It's not meant for rich linking and all that stuff.

You don't have a good way of organizing that and moving all that stuff around and things like that. It's just not quite meant for that. I was like, you know, maybe I should go back and try different bookmarking apps. I used raindrop.io for a while, but I was like, let's see what else is around. This app, Anybox, I used for a little bit a few years ago. I think when it first came out, but it has matured quite a bit since then. If I remember right, like I had like an issue with a bug or something. I don't remember the exact details, but I moved on from it.

But now that I've come back to it, I quite like it. So there's a bunch of stuff you can do for it. So like I said, you can you can paste links in there. It pulls a description of the link. It pulls a hero image. It pulls the title and all that stuff. And it does a really good job at like displaying a link. it also supports notes images and files which i don't use any of that i'm not i i feel like it's it's the the big issue with this app is it bites off a little bit more than it can chew or just bites off a little bit too much uh but what i do like about it is it has tag support so as you add urls you can add tags to them and they get organized into different tags and stuff

like that. So, you know, I have tags for like iPad apps, iPhone apps, Mac apps, gear I want to cover for the channel, gear I want to cover on comfort zone, household projects, keyboard stuff, YouTube videos, all these sorts of tags in here that are just really helpful for me to just quickly jump into like, okay, I need something coming up for this week's episode of comfort zone. Do I have anything I want to cover? Do I have anything I want to order for a future episode, something like that kind of nice uh when setting this up there is support for for a card and list view so very

typical you know what you would think of as a card view where like it'll just have an image and a title and like a one-line description or two-line description underneath it and then there's list view where everything's stacked top to bottom image title description top to bottom all that stuff uh what i love about any box is it doesn't force you to use one or the other so for example uh those gear tags that i was talking about i like to organize them in list view but the youtube tag that i talked about i like to support that in uh in a uh card view so that way i can kind of just

you know see everything you know just works left to right top to bottom you can have multiple stuff next to each other. It just takes up the right amount of space. It's really good. I like, so the fact that it doesn't like kind of like stick you to one of those or the other is really nice. But the feature that just absolutely kind of sold me on this app is its deep link support. So for any item in any box, you can right click it or long press on it and you can copy the deep link. So you can paste this in any note taking app, Safari, reminders, whatever, you can paste this, you can tap on that link, and it'll jump you right to that item in any box.

But it doesn't just work for any like, it doesn't work for just specific items, you can copy the deep link to a tag. So what I've been doing is I'm working on like a hey, here's a bunch of iPad apps that I've been trying. So I have a bunch of so I have a tag with iPad apps i copied that deep link to that tag and pasted it in my obsidian note that i'm doing for this video so i could just jump back and forth between the obsidian note and this specific tag in any box which is really nice it's kind of a killer feature right there um what you can also do with any box

that i found kind of really interesting is if you long press on any item you can create a reminder so I'm, like I've said, I'm using reminders right now. So you can create a task based on any item. And with reminders, as you all might know, there is a URL section. If you paste something in that URL section for reminders, you get a little icon next to the task when it's kind of all said and done. There'll be a little icon that pops up to it. And you can tap on that icon in reminders and it jumps you right to that item. So this is kind of a quick way of like, just long press on and create a reminder.

You can be like, oh, I want to check this app out for comfort zone. And it'll create a task and reminders. You can fill out all the metadata. And then when it's done, I can just tap it. And it just jumps me right to that item in any box. I'm like, okay, that's kind of cool. So you save things to any box and you can deep link to them from places. I'm curious, are there other use cases for like having, this is the existential question for me about apps like this is, I have tried to use them in the past and I don't ever go back to anything.

And I guess it's probably just, I'm just more of an ephemeral person where I don't save things and go back to them. But like, I'm curious what other, so you have a gear list. I'm curious what other sorts of like categories or lists or things that you're saving that you want to go back to. Or whatever. Okay. Something that I know that'll work for you, that'll click with you. I spend a lot of time on keyboard websites, just like looking at switches, keycaps, keyboards, stabilizers, whatever, USB-C cables, whatever.

And sometimes I'll come across something, I'll be like, okay, that's kind of cool, I like that, but I don't have, like, I'll be like, okay, this is a cool keycap set. But I don't have a keyboard that I'm currently building right now, and I'm trying not to just order stuff and store it. so like keyboard stuff specifically i'm like if i'm going to order a keycap set i need to have a keyboard to put that on with switches and stabilizers and all that stuff so i will just save those uh keycaps to any box and be like okay you know maybe the next couple of days if i see a keyboard that i really like i'll order that and then i can go in here and be like okay this is a

keycap set that looks good with that and then i can kind of order all that stuff together uh for me another one like i i apps uh i cover a lot of apps i will try and what i try and do is like i'll make these big videos about like here's like 10 ipad apps i'm using or eight ipad apps i'm currently using right now because i so what i do with those is i just as i find apps i save them to any box or bookmarking or obsidian or whatever like i save links to those apps because what i don't do is i don't just sit down and be like okay today i'm going to make a video about eight ipad apps and

i just go searching for eight ipad apps i just find you know as i start using new ipad apps i save a link to them and then like that builds up and then i get a good amount of them be like okay now it's time to make one of these videos because i have a good amount of apps and i wasn't just like searching for like some random thing on the app store i don't know yeah so it's it's more of a place to just save these things to kind of remind me about them later but i don't want to put them in a task manager um and obsidian just doesn't do a great job at handling these kinds of rich link like a large amount of rich links um so that's where these kinds of apps come in and the fact that you

can deep link to them so like i said i can just copy the deep link to the ipad apps tag put that in my note for the next hey these are the 10 ipad apps i'm using video and i could just jump to that really quick and kind of like see that stuff side by side okay that makes sense i have a system for this but it's it's very different and and and not to be replicated by anybody you just remember yeah that's my system if there were keyboard if they're like keycaps i liked but wasn't ready to buy right

now i would save it as a task and things and set it as due in three months and in three months i would see the link see okay yeah yeah no i i tried using a task manager as a bookmarking app but it problem with it is it adds a lot of extra tasks to my task manager and i'm trying to be very um purposeful about what gets put in my task manager because i was getting to the point where i had hundreds of tasks in my task manager and it made it really hard to uh just be able to quickly glance at like okay this is an important thing i need to get done and stuff was just getting buried in my

task manager that makes sense yeah don't replicate what i'm doing so okay so that makes sense so you like to have like a central place where you can go and like it's just a place it's just a box to store stuff exactly it's it's it's a box that i just dump a bunch of links into and i use tags to categorize them and you know as i'm like okay i'm prepping for comfort zone like i'm prepping like my next four topics for comfort zone uh is there something that i save that i might want to review on comfort zone or something like that then i can jump in there like for example uh okay

upcoming topic i'll just spoil it i bought one of those terminal things you know the the ink displays. I bought one of those. That was in my comfort zone folder. I just bought it and I was like, okay, whenever that gets here, that'll be a topic. Chris, you're so much more put together than me. It's very impressive. I wouldn't go that far. It's a fake it till you make it kind of thing with me. Maybe. Maybe. You said I don't just, if I need to make a video about here's eight apps I'm using on the iPad, I like to have a plan. I like to have them build up.

And you're like, I don't just wake up one day and say I'm going to do it and then look at my phone or look at my iPad. This is what I do. This is exactly what I do. I'll be like, I haven't made a video in a week. Let's see. What am I enjoying? Okay. That's the video today. This is my content strategy. And this is why it takes me forever to make videos. This is why it takes me no time at all. Yeah. Yeah. No, I let things build up because I try and like, okay.

Because a lot of times what will end up happening is I'll add an app to that list, and then I'll start using that app for a week, and I'll be like, okay, never mind, this kind of sucks, and I'll kick it off the list. So it's just kind of like a way of me using those things and making sure I'm actually using them for a good period of time before I sit down to review them. Because what I don't want to be, and I'm not saying you are, but there are certain really big YouTubers out there that I know for a fact

probably spend less than a day using tech devices and apps and things like that. And then just make a video about it because apparently you only need a day to review something. What? Nope. I'm not calling anyone out. Nope. Never mind. Moving on. Are you calling me out because I only got the remote this morning? Yeah. Yes. Actually, no. It's actually a direct attack. No. I'm pretty sure with a remote, you can be good for a couple of hours. you know what, moving on because I don't want to get anyone in trouble I don't want to get yelled at I'm in trouble

no, I was not talking about you there is anyways, moving on say names, names no, please move on I'm definitely not naming names so long I'm trying to move on please move on Chris come on okay so any box um so you can customize you can customize this app really it's absolutely wild the customization you can do um you can completely change what shows up in the toolbar at the bottom there's a list of options some stuff is disabled by default you can move things in there um like for

example, I added the option to change how items are sorted in a view. So whether it's a tag view or one of the built in category views or something like that, you can change how things are sorted, whether it's oldest to newest newest to oldest name, whatever. You can change the default behavior from when you tap on an item. So by default, if you tap on an item, it shows like this, another toolbar that you can add a bunch of stuff in there. I don't care for that. I just changed it When I tap on an item, it opens up into the default web browser.

Speaking of default web browser, you can set it up so that, like, if you open something in Safari, it always opens in reader mode. That's okay, but considering I use this to save links to gear, apps, YouTube videos, and stuff like that, I don't always want that, so I don't have that enabled. And then you can change the swipe actions to do different things, whether it's opening something, moving something, deleting something, editing the metadata, whatever. You can do that.

Really, really great. And there's so much more you can customize with this app. This is just like a few highlights. Like, we literally do not have the amount of time needed in order to go into everything this app can do. It's very, very extremely customizable. Like I said, it can be a bit much. like it shows the uh like you can save files photos notes which i'm not sure why you would save notes but if you want to you can um there's a lot you can do with it there's also another section to that shows you where you saved from and like what computer it was saved from which i think

is a bit much like i don't think that's necessary i wish there was the ability to turn those off you could collapse those sections on the sidebar but you can't just turn them off completely which is a bummer because I just don't use them. They're just in the way. But overall, really great bookmarking app. It's really if you are using another bookmarking app, and it has an export feature, any box has a very wide way of supporting importing from other apps. And it also supports exporting to so like your data isn't just locked in there, like some apps, you can absolutely export

stuff and uh yeah you can export stuff you can import stuff i don't know where i was going with that sorry my brain my brain froze for a second but you can import so like i imported all the stuff from good links and it worked like a champ it imported um not just all the links but it imported the tags as well so like i didn't have to go through and re-tag everything which was really nice uh it is a subscription app but it has a very generous free tier so you can like you can absolutely try it out for a while and just like see if it's for you it's not like one of those things where

like you have to make a decision to subscribe before you can do anything um it's it's very generous free tier uh it's 15 bucks a year if you want to subscribe yearly or i think there's a lifetime subscription that was like 30 bucks or something like that um whatever way you want to go that that way and the lifetime one obviously is just a one-time purchase but yeah that is any box You know what I like about it? What's that? The icon is really nice.

And they have an orange icon. They have a lot of different alternative icons. But the only... So if you use like the dark mode icons in iOS and iPadOS 18, the only one that supports the actual dark mode icon is the default one, which is a bit of a bummer. Because I would have loved to have had the orange one with the black background. That would have looked killer. All right. Any questions on that or do we want to move on to the challenge? I mean, I like a challenge. All right, let's get to a challenge.

Matt, I believe it was your challenge. It was. So let me pull up the challenge to make sure I say it right. Our challenge was find the best primarily blue icon on the app store. And that's pretty simple. So not the best app. Just find the best blue icon. So how will you mess it up this time? I really think I've nailed it this time. Well, I messaged you guys like the day after where I was like, I thought I had my pick, and then I realized it wasn't on the App Store,

and I would have been disqualified immediately. Just classic. Classic behavior. This is your challenge. You were 100% in charge of the phrasing of this challenge. 100% you. And it's going to go great. It's going to go great. I feel pretty confident about this one. So I'll go first. I have a pick and a backup pick in case you don't like this first one.

And I hope the link has synced. So my pick is an app I already had on my phone. And is maybe something worth talking about in next week when I bring something. Is Castro. And I know what you're saying. Castro has a green icon. That is true. But we agreed that alternate icons do count. Yeah, we did. Yes, we did. Castro has a great alternate blue icon that is basically their icon, but with a really classy blue background with a nice subtle gradient and what looks like stitching.

I don't think it's exactly stitching, but it looks a little bit like kind of old school. And then it has a lovely kind of effect of the Castro icon getting smaller and more blue into the background. And I think it is just lovely, and I love having it on my home screen. This is a good icon. I like this icon. I mean, it's not better than mine, but it's good. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. I like it, but I'm not a fan of mixing turquoise like this with a deep blue.

I think it looks good. Oh, you do? I think that's really what put it over the top for me is I really like that extra accent. I think I would have liked it, but with shades of the same blue, the same hue. Okay. Well, the people will decide. The other one I brought and I don't need, but I did want to shout out because I do think it's a really great icon, is the Copilot icon. Not the Microsoft Copilot. There's a budgeting app called Copilot that has a really nice icon with a blue arrow and a nice subtle

white-ish, white and blue background. I like that icon too. I need to look it up. I think the Castro one is better. That's my pick. I definitely thought you were talking about Yes, I was about to pop off. I thought you were talking about Microsoft Copilot. I'm like, that's not the one. That's not the one. I really dislike the Copilot app. It is very frustrating. It's so bad. It's so typical Microsoft. It's so...

Anyways. Anyway. So Castro. Incredible blue icon. I think that's a good one. So for mine, I picked Neil Leon's favorite app of all time. And I'll be shocked if she didn't pick this one as well. I picked Discord. But not the Discord app icon you're thinking of. If you go into the show notes and click my Discord link, There is a custom Discord app icon for iOS that is kind of like 80s synth kind of thing, where it's got this starry background, but very blue.

Very blue. And the Discord icon itself, though, I don't even know what that thing is, is kind of like this, it's a gradient from like blue to gunmetal to black to purple, pinkish, whatever. Like, it's kind of like, I don't even know how to explain it. Like, it's just very metal, very synthetic. In my dock, it is the only custom icon. Well, actually, no, I take that back.

I'm sorry. I have two other custom icons I forgot. It's one of three custom icons in my iPad dock. And normally, I've just been giving in and just using the default iOS and iPadOS 18 dark mode app icons because I think those just look good, like, all put together. But this one, I love this one so much. I love some 80s, like, 80s synth app icon. The other one that I wanted to use, but it's definitely not blue, is the working copy app icon, but the custom one that is, like, the 80s neon synthetic one,

that's really good as well. Now, which one? What's the name of the icon? Do you know what the name is? For Discord? For Discord, yeah. Let me look it up. I literally have no idea. I'm looking at the Discord app right now. I feel like I don't have this option. App icon. It is called Galactic Chrome. Oh, I've got it. It's about the center. Oh, I see. It's about the center. Are we saying this is blue? That's totally blue.

Are you kidding me? That's absolutely. We said primarily blue. The background is blue. The top of it is blue. That is absolutely blue. Do not come at me with this using Android TV for your Apple TV challenge. Do not even start with me. Okay. What I will say is you were describing this blue icon, and I'm looking through the list, and I was like, there are no blue icons here. There's a lot of purple icons. I think there's a purple icon. That is absolutely blue.

That is a dark blue. That is a dark blue. I mean, the night sky is pretty blue. Yeah. I don't care about that one. I like my galactic chrome. I'm going to allow it, of course. No, I mean the night sky in your galactic chrome. Oh, I thought that was another one. I was defending you, man. Thank you. Thank you. So I picked this one because the background is clearly blue, and the top part of the Discord. What is that? What even is that? The Discord icon thing. It's a little bug. Or is it a controller?

I don't know what the icon is, actually. Oh, is it a controller? It looks kind of like a controller with eyes. Oh, I think it is a controller. Wow. Okay. Okay. I thought it was like an alien or something. Okay. Anyways, the top part of the Discord... Yeah. Whatever that is. The top part is blue. So I would say that's primarily blue, and that was what we agreed upon. But I do have an alternative pick. I think you should stick with this pick, because the people, the democracy will decide whether it's blue. Yeah.

I'm definitely going to stick with that pick no matter what, because it's one of my favorite icons. I think my absolute favorite icon is the working copy 80 synth neon one, but that is a clear runner-up. Okay, but my alternative pick, the Files app. But not the Files app you're thinking. If you click the icon, if you click the link in our show notes, you will see the Finder icon. Oh, there you go.

But that's not Finder because this is on my iPad. I replaced the files icon, and this is why I made sure alternative apps, alternative app icons worked. And we didn't say the app had to give the alternative app icon. We never said that. Sure. We just said there could be alternative app icons worked. So it worked. I checked the tapes. Now I understand what it's like to listen to me explain how I did a challenge. I checked the tapes on this one.

I edited the show. And when I was editing the show, I was very carefully listening to exactly what we said. And we said alternative app icons are okay. So the files app is the laziest app icon Apple or anyone has ever made. It's literally a white background or black background now with a folder on it. It is absolutely the laziest app icon. I hate it so much. So a while ago, I created a shortcut that all it does is open the files app. and I put that on my home screen, but I use the Finder icon as the app icon.

And who doesn't love the Finder icon? It's a good icon. Who doesn't love it? It is a great... It's why Apple still hasn't replaced... If Apple were to ever replace the Finder icon, there would be riots in the streets. You know what? You say that, but this is where I pull out my old man card. People rioted when this icon came. It used to be a different icon, and people were very upset when they abandoned the old one. People were rioting. Like, went across. That was what? When they're still using lead paint? Come on. People were wrong then. Oh, my God. Whoa. I know. I'm a little feisty today.

I'm coming out hot. No, I love the Finder icon. It's my alternative pick, but it's not my serious pick. My serious pick is the Discord one. Okay. Okay. I'm looking forward. Nelian, what do you got? Okay, so my app icon of choice is the one from WeatherGraph. I've got a link in the show notes, if you want to click it, to the App Store. And it's just the default icon for the app.

To describe it shortly, it looks a lot like the Apple Weather app icon. But instead of a cloud beneath the sun, it's got a wave, a white wave, kind of like the graph inside the app. So I think it's really smartly designed. It looks like the default weather app. Also, it's not. Also, it reflects the fact that this weather app specifically is based on graphs.

It will show you all kinds of graphs. I love this app, by the way. And I think it's really well done. It's really neat. It's nicely shaded. I don't know what to say. And the sky is very blue. And even the wave slash cloud beneath is like white, but it's also a gradient to light blue. I think it qualifies as a blue icon. And I love when there's a touch of yellow and orange or orange.

And that's a bright, big, bright sun. There you go. I like this. I've never used this app before. I've never heard of this now. Really, guys? What? Really? Yeah, I just downloaded it. Oh, the dark mode. Nemean, have you seen the dark mode version of this? I have not. I don't use dark mode icons. Okay, I would just put your device in dark mode and look at the app icon. It's very good. Okay. But it's not blue. So it wouldn't count.

But yeah, no, this is a good one. I mean, it's no, you know, Discord. It's no purple icon, sure. It's not purple. Weather graph. If you don't know weather graph, because apparently you don't know it, it's really nice. It displays the forecast in a superposition of graphs. And you can customize, like infinitely customize that graph. It's really nice. It's got a bunch of themes.

You even have the option to have the layout like the old Dark Sky app. So vertical layout for the forecast, which is really nice. And it's got complications for the watch. It's got widgets for the home screen, for the lock screen. Check it out. I thought you would know this app. It's really good. I love it. No, this is good. I used to really love Weatherline when that was an app. And so it's a bit like Weatherline, but like super powered. interesting I like this I'm going to give this a shot I'll replace Carrot Weather for a week and see how it goes

yeah it's got a bunch of the same sources that you have in Carrot Weather nice well I'm excited for democracy if democracy I can actually come back we'll see I will consult with Emmanuel Macron but I think we will have proper democracy next week this week hope so. I've named multiple of the chapters we're going to be doing in quotes. This is democracy.

This is files. This is blue. Yeah, yes. Yeah, Discord's blue. Mine's totally blue. Mine's totally blue. Alright. You guys ready for our friendship to end next week? Yeah, I saw this in the notes. I spoiled myself. You I'm not going to be happy, but I'm happy. Okay. All right. Well, it's my challenge next week, and I want you to bring your in-game keyboard and be prepared to defend it.

Now, for those that aren't familiar with what an in-game keyboard means, is in mechanical keyboard world, you might say, I'm just going to buy one, and I'll be done. Never in the history of anyone ever buying a mechanical keyboard have they ever just bought one and been done. It's just, it's, it's physically not possible. So what I, Nelian, what did you two, I hope, I hope you both bring those and I can, they're audio listeners. They're waving up their Apple magic keyboards to me.

I hope they bring those so I can just decimate them. I'm not bringing anything else, man. Like, spoiler alert, I'm bringing this this week. That's my challenge. So what you're, anyways, what your in-game keyboard is supposed to be. oh my gosh this is gonna be the end of the show next week is gonna be the last episode of the show i don't have anything else i have a logitech it's mostly inferior so okay all right well so anyways what's your in-game keyboard is supposed to be third time i've tried it okay well i'm getting through this i'm gonna i'm gonna hide you guys so i can actually get through this and not

see whatever you're doing to mess me up so your in-game keyboard is the one that like Okay, I've put all the parts that I absolutely love into this thing. It's perfect in every way. I got the sound. I got the feel. Everything is perfect. So I want you to bring your in-game keyboard, your perfect keyboard. Literally, the definition of I could get rid of every other keyboard and only type on this one, and I'll still be happy. Bring that and be prepared to defend it. Okay. I wonder what keyboard I will bring.

I wonder what you're going to bring. you know what the keyboard you all think that I've hyped up a lot in the past the keyboard that you think I'm going to bring is not it I have not talked about this keyboard publicly at all so yeah it is absolutely different from what you what you think it's going to be okay I'm excited Chris what happens if I bring the magic keyboard you bring like a very fancy whatever keyboard and I win the challenge.

What happens? I quit the show. Okay. Just one last. Okay. All right. Well, that just about does it for the end of the show. And I'm just now realizing I forgot to grab an end of the show question. So now I got to pull something out off the top of my head. And I'm going to ask, What is your current favorite automation that you guys have been using? Oh, gosh. Oh, I made one just today, actually, on my Mac.

Oh, okay. So I use Homebrew to have a few things installed on my Mac. And every couple days, I find myself opening the terminal and going to just typing brew update, brew upgrade, and making sure those are up to date. And I was doing that a couple days ago and was like, why am I doing this? This is so stupid. And so I set up an automation. I created a bash script that basically just executes those commands for me and shows me a little notification after it's done it

to tell me what it's updated for me. And so that's automatically running every day on my Mac, and it's really nice. Nice. Look at you being a developer. Nice. Nice. He's all fancy pants over there. I broke the seal on development, and now I'll never be the same. Making bash scripts? Okay, so I have my pick as well, my answer. On my Mastodon server, which I host myself on a dedicated server, I've installed, like recently, about three weeks ago or something,

I installed a script that runs automatically every 15 minutes, and it's called Feddy Fetcher. It's on GitHub if you want to look at it. This script, what it does is it will fetch remote replies if you speak Mastodon, you know what I mean? It will fetch replies to all the posts in your timeline, which means that's a problem in Mastodon often is you go to a public post and not all the replies are shown in your client.

That's because the server that's hosting the post is the server that will get all the replies and not yours, not your server. So what this script does is it will fetch all of the public replies to a post in your timeline. And yeah, it's been running on my server every 15 minutes. And it's really nice. Like in Ivory now, I've got all the replies. I never have to open a link. That's great. Yeah, I was able to install this because I host the mastermind instance, my mastermind instance myself.

I'm not sure if it's possible at all. if you don't. Maybe. I don't know. I host mine through MastoHost. Yeah. I think you can email them. They're pretty receptive. It's clearly you're talking to people who are doing it. So I could probably request this be added and see if they can do it. But this is great. Do you know, does it pull in favorites and boost counts as well? It doesn't. Only replies.

It's got a bunch of rules that you could say only fetch replies to posts in your notifications or only fetch replies to the last 300 posts in your timeline. It can also do this thing where if someone followed you recently, it will fetch all of the posts from that person in a time period. So like if somebody you don't know just followed you and you go to their profile in your client, most of the time their profile is empty

because your server hasn't fetched their posts. well using this you will have a bunch of posts to scroll through when somebody just follows you that's really nice this is really cool nice yeah and i hear the mastodon team are working on implementing this natively in a better way like without having to so maybe one day mastodon will do this by itself hopefully that's great yeah sometimes it it is interesting one of the things about mastodon that's interesting is that like a lot of the posts that show up in my feed

they might be viral posts but they show like one favorite because only one of my followers has interacted with it and i find that kind of freeing in a way like i'm not like it doesn't it feels less of a popularity not a contest but like it's i don't know how successful a post is when i see it in my feed and so i kind of get to decide for myself um if it's cool or not um but i do miss that sometimes especially when i see like someone announce something that seems like it should be a deal and i see zero replies zero favorites and zero boosts and i'm like and then i view it on

their server and i see like oh okay people are interacting with this thank god um yeah since i've been using this script like when there's a very viral post viral post in my timeline i will see like it's this one has got 70 replies i will see this which is which is something compared to compared to having no count for the boost or the favorites yeah that's cool yeah chris do you have Do you have something that came to mind? Yeah. Any bash scripts? I have. It is not a bash script, but it is a timed automation with shortcuts that defers certain tasks in reminders.

So like I've talked about in the past, I have video projects, and I work on those over multiple days. Well, one thing I really hate is when I assign to, hey, I'm going to work on this video project on Monday, but I know I'm not going to be able to finish it until Wednesday or Thursday. I don't want an overdue task in my task manager all week long. So I set up a timed automation to defer these projects. And basically what it does is it finds all the reminders with the due date that is the current date. It's not completed and is specifically either in my list that is video projects.

And then I have like a separate one that's in my list of short videos. And then it just changes the due date to be today because what it does is the timed automation. So it runs a little bit after midnight every single day. So this way I don't have a bunch of overdue video projects and stuff sitting in my reminders list all week long. Because that was something that really bothered me about reminders. But that's been really helpful just to be able to defer those tasks. So if you have tasks that take multiple days, that might be a handy thing to use.

Nice. That's cool. Another advantage of using reminders, I suppose. Yeah. I'll put a link to that shortcut in our notes, and then we can put a link to it in the description if anyone wants to use it. But it'll take a little bit of tweaking because it's set up for my video project list and my short project list. So you'll just have to tweak them for whatever list you want them to be in. But that just about does it for this episode. Huge thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast. or I'll go check out all the writings and other podcasts and shortcuts and all the great stuff at macstories.net.

Yeah, something to promote. What do you got? It should be out by the time this episode is out, or maybe it's about to be out. Anyway, time. I will write something about my vinyl setup. Ooh, I am very excited about this. You were texting us in our group chat about this, and I've been going through a similar project with our record setup and stuff like that. I'm trying to get it to play a little bit nicer with our home speakers and stuff like that.

So I'm excited to see what you've done. Yeah, I'm going to talk about it to bring this on the show when the story is out. So maybe next week. Matt, you got anything you want to promote? I will promote my own app again. quick reviews on the app store five star rated featured in mac stories uh newsletter last week so very happy about that thank you federico uh or john i forget who put it in there but thank you okay they are i've never actually seen them together so they're probably the same person interesting interesting i have um but yeah i'm still putting a lot of work into the app uh i've

added a new layout a new showcase layout that makes uh the poster art um the main event of your review and then hopefully by the time this episode's out uh we'll have the next update out which has a basic letterboxd integration and what else did i add oh it'll also satisfy the number one feature request i've gotten since the app started which i will just um i won't say now but oh it's the number one thing people keep asking me about and i'm i finally did a picture of chris when the app launches like just a picture of me you know i was going to apparently those are deprecated you're not

really supposed to do those in the same way anymore so yeah yeah i tried to do it in the app review was like you can't get chris out of there i'm so sorry that's sad yeah maybe the eu can back you i see once again apple's just trying to put me down I will have some videos out this week I don't know which video but there will be a video that's what it's like when I'm working on multiple projects at once because yeah I swore I wasn't going to do that at the beginning of the year and here I am working on multiple projects at once

mostly because I'm waiting on some stuff to show up and I'm not going to sit around and twiddling my thumbs the whole time So anyways, there will be a video out. I don't know which one it'll be, but you'll know by now. So link in the link in the description. It's there. Yeah. Chris on YouTube. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye bye. Bye bye.