Tot Notch 👌

Hello and welcome to comfort zone. Sorry. Hey, if you want to do the intro, you're more than welcome to. I'm totally leaving that in. All right. Welcome to comfort zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts. Well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lolly and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. One of which is kicking it old school. As always, we're joined by Matt Berchler. Matt, how are you doing? I feel great that the word old was used and is not referring to me.

I think that's great. Well, we don't know that. Yeah, you don't know that. If it is, I'm devastated. I don't think it is. I mean, you are the oldest of the three. But we're also joined by Nelian. Nelian, how are you? Hello, I'm doing well. Good, thank you. Good, good, good. Well, we have a few things in our tiny topic section, but I think the first one right off the bat is democracy. it came back and you know what I'm ready to be rid of it again I'm so happy with democracy it's gone well

I went all out this time can you say democracy has gone well I can let's actually read the results I will be happy to read the results this time Neilian usually do but usually win so I'm going to give it a go this time so last week our challenge was find the best blue icon. Primarily blue icon on the app store. Right, Chris. Yeah, mine was primarily blue. In third place, with a lot of controversy, was Chris's Discord app with 13%. In second place was WeatherGraph for Neil Leon with 33%.

And with a massive 54%. Castor's alternate blue icon. The come from behind champ. Where are those votes coming from, Matt? They're coming from fans of incredible app design. They're coming from fans of a specific app. Yeah, I think I saw something from a certain podcast app promoting the poll and stuff like that, and I'm just wondering how much you paid them.

How much money did you give them? That's the question that's really on the table here, is collusion. Yeah. So this is what it feels like to win. Not great either. I'm either sad because I'm lost or I'm accused of fraud if I win. Sounds about right. Now, congrats, Matt, on the win. I don't know why everyone thought my pick was so controversial, but congrats on the win. We'll give you

this one, but don't make a habit of it. I won't. I did have a comment on an alternate poll. So, when the poll first went up, Neely, on your were they came out in force and you were had like 90 of the vote it was unbelievable that's because neilion's bots started voting now i'm frauding yeah i don't have friends in high places on the app store and so i posted the same question on blue sky and i asked which icon people preferred

and let me just say the replies i got on blue sky were some of the worst replies i've ever gotten like the quality of reply was it was so on mastodon the responses were mostly i like this icon the best or i like this icon the best like these are good icons but this is my favorite on blue sky i got so many people who were like this icon is bad this icon is bad this is the only good one and like people disagreed on which the good one was but like the replies were so much more negative and it really bummed me out so the blue the blue sky unofficial poll was trashed i apologize for doing

it, I shouldn't have done it, and shame on the responses because they were very negative for no reason. The Mastodon poll was great. Even if I didn't win, I would have said the Mastodon replies were much better. And very spicy. Lots more conversation in the poll results this time than normal. It was a good conversation around this one. I like that. I enjoyed this one. It was a fun poll. It was a fun way to spend the morning. Yes, it was. Alright, so Matt and I both bought something while we were recording in the last episode. The alt Ultimate Apple TV remote.

Apple TV remote pro. Yes. Honestly, I would call this the Apple TV remote pro max or maybe ultra or something. But yes, this is definitely, you know, the professional Apple TV remote. Matt, I'm going to let you talk about it and I'll explain why I'm letting, I don't really have that many thoughts on it in just a minute. This remote sucks. It's so atrocious. So first off, I think, I don't know if you 100% had to do this, but I had to unpair my actual remote first to get this to work at all.

The buttons on it, there's so many buttons on it. Most of them don't work. There's like channel up and down, which are completely irrelevant on any Apple TV thing. The skip forward and back were very unreliable for me. There's a play pause, but also there's like this. The buttons were not well. They did not work reliably. Also, it's an IR thing, not a Bluetooth thing. And so I have my Apple TV inside.

Like the thing that my TV sits on has like a mesh front thing. And so with Bluetooth, that's fine. But with this, I kind of had to do it like multiple times to get it to register. Very frustrating. It's the lightest thing in the world. It's made of the cheapest plastic you could imagine. although it does look the same as the Apple TV remote. It has a CR2032 battery that is not included. So it's six bucks, plus I had to pay another like five bucks for the battery. So this is over $10 now, which is not as good a price.

What else? There's no microphone. I don't believe there's a microphone in this. If there is, I couldn't figure out how to use it. What else is bad about this? That's enough, probably. The one thing that's good, The one thing I do like about it are the buttons. The buttons are kind of a softer plastic that are more traditional remote style. And I do like those. They're less noisy when you click them. Really? Yeah. I do not. So that's my big thing. I think I said this last week too. I do not like a remote or a controller where the buttons make an audible sound.

The Apple TV remote makes an audible sound. I prefer these buttons a little bit maybe. But everything else about it is worse. It's trash. I'll never use it again. So we spent six whole dollars on this remote. Six whole dollars, dear listener. This thing showed up Wednesday night. I unboxed it Thursday morning to go use it, and nothing. Didn't work. I was like, oh, that's weird. Flipped it over, and I noticed there is a battery case section. Open up. There is no battery in it.

It requires a watch battery. I spent six whole dollars on this thing, and they couldn't include a battery? Anyways, I didn't have time to go get a battery, so I haven't actually used it. The buttons are trash. Yeah, I didn't have time to go get a battery. The buttons are trash. I love how they try and make it look like it's the aluminum Apple remote, but it's just like cheap plastic. Yeah, it's garbage. Don't spend $6 on it. You can do so much better stuff with $6 than buy that crappy remote.

Nice. Plus a battery. What a high note to end our remote obsession on. Yeah. You brought a good remote and then a better remote. And then you ruined it. And we brought our freedom remotes, which are just not as good. They're not as good. All right. Niléane, you have something in the tiny topics. What do you got here? Yeah. So remember Stickies. Ooh, yes. Your favorite task manager.

Sure. It's an app included on macOS, which lets you put sticky notes on your desktop. There's a listener on Blue Sky mentioned this. They're called Andrew with double O. That's nice. And Andrew recommended that I try Tot. Do you know Tot? T-O-T, which is... Icon Factory. Exactly, an app by the Icon Factory. It's on iOS, iPadOS, and the Mac.

On the Mac, it's free, completely free. It's not on the iPad and the iPhone. And what it does is it's basically a temporary scratch pad, which can live in your menu bar or has tiny windows on your desktop. And you can switch between, I don't know, I don't remember, a handful of different colors to switch between different colored scratch pads in the same window, which is handy. They recommend that I try this because since it can live in the menu bar, I can always have it available from up there, click it, write something down and just get back

to what I was doing. So my answer to this recommendation is indeed, it's really nice. I've tried it before. The issue is it doesn't really resonate in the same way as Sticky's because what I liked about Sticky's is I could place the Sticky Notes like spatially on screen, like in places that mattered, like a Sticky Note that relates to an Obsidian Note close to the Obsidian Window, something like that.

Yeah, but it's nice. I second the recommendation if you think that can be useful to you. Nice. I've used top before. Top's pretty great. I prefer drafts over top because I didn't like the limited amount of space. But yeah, top works really well. Nice. Top notch. Title. I had one tiny topic that was going to be my main topic today, but then I shifted because there really isn't that much to say.

I've been using an app called Chatwise for the last week or so to do all of my chatbot stuff. And I wanted to bring it up because there's a whole bunch of apps like this. This is just the one that I use and is pretty solid, but there's other ones. These apps are really good for people who want to use the best models that every company has available, but they don't want to pay 20 bucks a month because they don't use it enough to warrant that. These are really, really nice. So basically you just generate your key.

So this is kind of a nerdy thing. You have to generate an API key for whichever one, whichever company you want to use. And then you can input it into the app and then it'll just use that key. And it's much, much cheaper. So I was able to generate an entire website using Claude through the API and it cost me five cents in credits, which would take me 400 requests like that use up the 20 bucks that it would normally cost me every month. So if you just use them a little bit, but you want to still have access to the good models, apps like this are really a decent option. So yeah, highly recommend checking them out if that's interesting. So that's all.

That's pretty cool. I'm going to download that. I like this. So ready to get in the main show? I believe Matt, you were first up in the document. Yep. Yes. So I wanted to have a chat today about podcast apps. Which there should be the Venn diagram of people who are interested in podcast apps and the people who listen to this show. It should be a perfect circle. Because in theory, everyone is listening in an app. Well, no, we do have YouTube. Unless they're on YouTube. And Spotify. I would argue that YouTube is an app.

Even the website. I mean, what is an app? I don't know. We're getting philosophical. Sorry. We're getting philosophical too quickly. Our ADHD moments, I can see it. Let's pull us back. So I wanted to talk about it today because I am someone who changes podcast apps all the time. Now, what would you say you change more of? Podcast apps or underwear?

We don't need to talk about this. I'm just saying. Look, I'm not asking what you got going on. I'm just curious what you change more of. What about Vision Pro cases? I'm going to be honest a few weeks ago I showed you the the t-shirt I used it is still on the floor okay um but I I change them all the time it's actually kind of a problem because I'll share like a clip from a podcast online and people are like oh did you change your app and it's like I'm not really married to any app um so I didn't like the overcast update at the start of the year

or last year whenever it came out I thought I kind of messed up some things and made the app before me then a bunch of fixes came out and suddenly i was like oh thank god overcast is awesome again so i've been using overcast but for the last month or so i've been using castro huh interesting how a castro run democracy oh my god i waited until the poll was done to say this shock um anyway jesus so i've been using castro and i i like a lot of things about it i'm already seeing the points that

are frustrating about it that'll make me eventually go back to overcast because that seems to be my constant uh but i'm enjoying it right now for some of the things that it does really well uh so i was curious before i get into what i like about castro what are you guys using for your podcast app right now i'm using overcast and i'm i'm really happy uh with the new update now like marco's made some really good changes and and it's uh works really well with the way i want to use podcast apps i know i've talked in the past on this on this show specifically about like how i organize podcasts and as they come in the order in which they play and use playlists to auto sort and stuff

like that so i'm i'm really happy with overcast i'm still using apple podcasts um nice because transcripts are great oh they're so good they're very very good um so i here's the things i love about castro i love the queuing system and i know that's so boring to say because everybody says that first when talking about castro but it is so true it is so cool that you have like this inbox and then a queue that you're playing from.

And I just really like that I can go through my queue and when I want something new, I can switch over to the inbox and see what's come in and I can add it to it. See, I can't wrap my head around that because to me, that's like two inboxes. It's like I'm moving it from one inbox to another. Like, why am I just like, I've subscribed to this show. I'm going to listen to it. I know, I just, I can't, I can't wrap my head around that. So I there's very few podcasts where I listen to every episode I subscribe to more shows than I listen to so I'm not listening to every episode. So I kind of have like

Depending on what I'm doing and how much time I have to listen to podcasts. I'll listen to different shows and I'll pick and choose So I'll yeah, there's a couple shows. I'll listen to as soon as they come out every single time But yeah a lot of them I'll just archive away without listening because I just don't have time okay so that's that's probably the difference but i really love it i love that i can set rules for specific shows so um when our show comes up for example i have a rule that automatically plays it next in my queue so i don't have to like manually move it it's very very nice because we do have the best show that you should automatically listen to next when the episode comes out yes i agree

absolutely unreal sort of related uh one of the things i love about it is they have a list of the most popular shows in the app and did you know that our show is more popular than oprah's podcast yeah that's right you get a podcast and you get a podcast and you get a podcast we're we're also bigger than the minimalists we're bigger than david axlerod we're bigger than megan kelly um there's a lot of people i don't like who are bigger than us but still there's there's there's names you've heard of that are not as downloaded as we are in castro so thank you

lovely nerds who use Castro. You're the best. I also love Castro's chapter selection. I don't think any other app, I think maybe Pocket Cast has this, but like if a show has chapters, you can go in and like select the ones you want to listen to, and if you unselect one, it'll like skip it, which is kind of cool, so especially if a show has sponsor reads and they make specific chapters for that, you can well, no, you shouldn't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. That's how people You could. You could make money. You could. Do you know why I was so resistant to adding chapters to YouTube videos for so long?

Was because that's how I make money. That's how I pay bills, sponsor rates. I know. I know. Well, anyway. I know everyone likes the ability to skip them, but I also like the ability to pay my mortgage. I know. I'm cranky. True. Apologies. So if there's chapters you're not interested in, whatever they have, then you can go ahead and skip those. I think that's cool. I think it does the best side loading of any app. Yes. Works really nicely. um so i like that the the side loading thing um that is the one thing castro i i would i really want marco to implement better side loading i'm going to go ahead and guess that's not a very

popular feature so he probably isn't going to spend that much time on it but i don't like having to go to the web page and upload a file the fact that you because it's just if i remember right it's you just browse the files app in castro right and select the file and boom there you go and yeah anywhere in the system that you have an audio file you can just share it and that'll share to castro uh you can also do youtube videos you can share a youtube video to castro and it'll it probably uses ytdlp in the background or whatever to download the audio but yeah you can save a youtube video as audio um as a side load um i love the now plane screen i think it's great

i love the chunky uh time code thing the like the slider the scrubber thank you um love it It's chunky. It's beautiful. It's great to work with. Big fan of that. And yeah, I think it's just very, very nice. So I've been enjoying using it. I don't love that I talked about the queue and the inbox. If it shows in your inbox, it won't download, which is frustrating when you're out on the go and you check your episodes

and you want to add something to listen to. You have to either stream it or wait for it to download, which can be very slow in some cases. And it's kind of weird to get the show notes. I kind of like an overcast where if you're on the now playing screen, just swipe over and you can see the chapters in the show notes. On Castro, you kind of have to move away from the now playing screen and then either find the episode and hit the expand button on it or at the bottom right, there's the art. But like from the now playing screen, you cannot get to the show notes, which is strange and annoying for those shows that do like

chapter markers with YouTube style. timestamps in the description, so it's kind of a few steps to get there. But other than that, I'm very happy with it. And the other thing that I don't like about it leads into my question for you guys, is it's only on the iPhone. Not on the Mac. Not on the iPad. I mean, it's technically on the iPad in a tiny little window. Or a few stage managers. It's a factor. It's kind of a floating one. Yeah.

But it's not ideal. But that's okay for me because I don't listen to podcasts anywhere besides my phone. And I was curious if you guys listen on your other devices or just your phone. I listen on my iPad quite a bit. It's fairly nice to just like if I'm in the studio. In fact, I was doing it this morning. I filmed a video yesterday, and I was filming it in my office area, and it required me to take apart some of the stuff in my studio, like some lights, so I could use them out there,

and then I brought some stuff in the office area in here, so I had to clean up the office area before we recorded. So I literally just put my iPad down, opened Overcast, and started playing a podcast right on the speakers, because I didn't know where my AirPods were at the time, so I've since found them. It was just nice to be able to put down the speakers that are built into the iPad Pro are nice, big, loud speakers. Like, they're really decent speakers. So, I listened to that quite a bit. A few months ago, I think you were on the Mastodon thread, Matt, but Marco was talking.

There were some people talking about Vision OS apps, and Marco mentioned he has, like, dozens of users on Vision Pro. And I used to be one of them. There was dozens of us, and I used to be one of them. When I used the Vision Pro, it was really nice to have Overcast on there. It's just the iPad app, but it still worked really well. That's the kind of app that I didn't mind it just being the iPad app, because it's one of those things you just set up, you hit play, and you kind of move on to your other stuff.

Mostly use my Mac to listen to podcasts, which I know doesn't make sense, because I said I like Apple Podcasts for the real-time transcriptions, which are not on the Mac. Oh. So you have access to the transcripts on the Mac, in the Mac app, but they're not real-time like on the iPhone or the iPad. So that's a bummer. But in practice, that's what happens. Like I listen to podcasts on the Mac during the day when I work on stuff, do things on the Mac and on this very chair.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. What I've done to address that issue with transcripts is I have my phone on a Microsoft stand, a vertical stand next to my monitor, and I listen to the podcast on there with the now playing view visible so I can read the transcripts on the side while I'm using the Mac. What I do usually is I have my MacBook set as an AirPlay destination.

So the iPhone is streaming the audio to the Mac to which my AirPods Max are connected. So I can just control the podcast from the Mac using the magic keyboard. We'll talk about that maybe. And I can just go back and forth between music and YouTube videos and podcasts. This way, we're still enjoying the transcripts. So there you go. Nice. Okay.

Yeah, I'm smart. Yeah, that's pretty good. So I was also curious, when do you listen to podcasts? Because I cannot, you said you do it while you're working on stuff. I cannot listen to podcasts while I'm doing it. anything um like productive i i listen to podcasts when i'm walking my dog when i'm going on runs uh when i'm doing chores around the house with that when i'm just on my own uh and that's about

it i don't do it during the work day i don't do it while i'm like playing like games or anything i guess if i was doing like flight simulator i could do it but yeah yeah it's mostly when i'm Otherwise not doing anything. During a flight simulator. We're not focused on anything. Yeah, it's perfect. But yeah, for me, it's the contrary almost. Like, I like having a voice in my head, multiple voices in my head when I'm doing something. And I don't know, I'm like, I have a big brain. I can focus on two things at once.

No, the reality is I can't, but no, the reality is I can't. But most of the time I can just passively listen to a podcast while doing something. And when it's a podcast that I really want to listen to, I will focus on it and not do anything else. Would you just sit in a room and listen to a podcast without doing anything else? Yeah, that happens. I'm in bed. Listen in bed. I do that at the time. Or on the couch in the living room.

I mostly listen while I'm either driving, which I don't do a ton of because I don't have a commute anymore. But I do live like 45, 50 minutes away from my parents and the big city hub now. So I do do that drive quite a bit. So that's a good time to listen to podcasts. But I mostly go through my podcast queue when I am either like doing house chores, cleaning up the studio office, or when I'm filming B-roll for my videos.

Because I just have a shot list. I don't have to think about it too much. I can just put in a podcast. I can focus on the podcast and I can film the B-roll shots and stuff like that. Because that doesn't require a lot of like creative thinking. It's I already have the shot list. I know what I'm going to shoot. I just have to physically do it kind of thing. Nice. Okay. yeah i thinking about the work thing more i also really struggle even listening to music while i work whoa i i can't listen to like lyrical music while i work like if i'm writing something i can't

do that even without lyrics i struggle with that sometimes like i was using it to i was just listening to some of the nintendo app music um a while ago and i i actually had to stop because i was struggling to focus with that same i i've i've gone back to using dark noise while i'm writing and stuff like that because i can't i i i would get caught up with animal crossing and be like i should go play animal crossing i cannot live my life without music just saying um okay and this is more

of a me fishing for other things to talk about on the show question but are there any up and coming podcast apps that you know of that you enjoy because like we're talking about castro overcast podcast like these are decade old apps or more are there other ones out there that you've come across that have clicked with you i've had a few there's one that like is called scribed or something i'm on the test flight for one that's peculiar i'm looking at this right right now to remember the name of it.

A Neuercast, it's called. Yeah, that was the one I was going to say too. That's a German name. It means a new cast, I guess, in English. Neuercast. It's very minimal UI and it does this weird design choice where on a now playing screen instead of the cover art, it just displays the episode title in big, bold font. Yeah. it's a design decision that I do not understand. I want to see the cover art, not the episode title in such large type.

That was my biggest complaint about it too. Like I was like, oh, I like this design when I was playing around with it. And then I went to play a podcast. I went to play our podcast and I'm like, where's our artwork? And I'm like, I love our artwork. I love seeing our artwork. There's other shows like, uh, other, like the other MacStories show, like in PC, like they have fantastic artwork. Like I want to, And then there's also chapter artwork and stuff that we do sometimes. A lot of the relay shows, ATP, those guys do it. Having artwork visible is kind of important.

So that kind of turned me off from that. I kind of expected them to change it, but I'm looking at their screenshots and stuff right now, and it doesn't look like that's changed. Yeah, no, they like it. They want it to be this way. Otherwise, I'm really absolutely not actively looking for podcast apps. Like, this is a thing that I used to do that I don't do anymore, and I don't want to do. Like, I'm happy with Apple Podcasts, and I don't think I'm switching away anytime soon.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with Overcast. Overcast is one of those apps that's like, in fact, it was one of the very first apps I ever covered on my YouTube channel. the day I launched the channel, I released three videos, and one of them was a walkthrough of Overcast. It's not available anymore. A lot of those older videos I've taken down because they're just not relevant anymore because the app's been updated. But it's one of those apps that I always come back to. I try other podcast apps. I've tried Castro. I've tried PocketCast. I've

Cool. Well, I'm always curious, but yeah, it seems like we've settled with the apps that are out there. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm settled. Like if something else came along that like worked with me even better, like worked for the way I want to consume podcasts, I would change. But like I said, like Castro, the way you and I consume podcasts are very different. And the way Castro wants you to go through your queue is not the way I want to go through my queue. So that's why I'm kind of like, no.

And Overcast is the only app that's kind of let me set up a queue of oldest to newest. But hey, let me prioritize certain shows over other shows and stuff like that. Nice. I think I would conceivably switch to the Apple Podcasts app one day. Because I love the now playing screen. It's beautiful. Especially if there's like a full screen cover art. I love the transcripts. The thing that kills me. and I'm sure I've complained about this before, but I'll keep complaining until they fix it. In iOS 18, they added the ability to tap on timestamps in the show descriptions, which a lot of Patreon podcasts do.

And it drives me crazy because it doesn't work almost ever. Really? Almost every single time. Because the idea of it and how it works in every other app is you tap the timestamp and it skips to that time in the podcast. podcast in apple podcast i'll try to i i shared a video of this on mastodon a while ago i'll try to put in the show notes but it sometimes it works sometimes i tap it it shows me a menu that says do you want to play at this point or do you want to go to this link it's not a link so i don't know and most of the time for me at least it assumes it's a link and kicks me out to the patreon app but

the patreon app knows it's not a link so it kicks me back to like the podcast app at no place at all it's crazy i don't understand what they've done it's this feature every other app has and it does not work and i listen to enough shows that use chapters this way fake chapters that uh it just drives me crazy and i run screaming into the hills i see so please fix that next year this year oh boy so speaking of stuff like that one of my favorite things that marco added to the new overcast uh update is if a show has chapters or like you hit the skip forward or you just

accidentally hit the little scrubber by like accident you just didn't mean to there is like a 10 second go back button that appears so you can go back and you can jump back right to where you were to like recover from your you know accidental chapter skipping scrubbing or something like it's such a nice feature i cannot tell you how many times i have accidentally skipped forward or skipped back in a podcast when i didn't mean to because i tapped something that i didn't mean to tap and uh it's such a nice feature to have i i love that feature uh that's one of those ones that

every podcast app should just steal though i'm sure marco would prefer it if they didn't all right that's all i got to say i'm on castro now but give me a month i'll be on overcast again probably yeah when Castro stops paying you you will switch yeah oh my god I paid them I have lost money on this I've won a bet I won a challenge but I have lost money winning a challenge like how much money is that worth to you like it's I mean that's worth more than money it feels pretty good it's a moral victory right you know what I feel much worse about spending money on this than I

on the remote than I do about okay so this week I want to talk to you about story that by the time you're hearing this is up on macstories.net and i know last week i said it should be out but i i also said there should be a video out and there's not a video out so you're not completely like oh okay i'm not alone you're not alone so this story uh it took a lot longer to write than i expected uh because i had fun writing it and going into details on it so yeah By the time this episode is out, it should be on the site, hopefully.

This story is about my vinyl setup. I want to walk you through my experience. What happened? Why am I talking about vinyls? Basically, before, like, until three weeks ago, I had never interacted with a vinyl before. never happened. And I even had pre-made ideas about vinyls. Like they're expensive, they're cumbersome, why listen on a

large, fragile record when you have millions of songs in your pocket, and lossless audio, and Dolby Atmos, etc. But, yeah, those preconceptions I had, they collapsed over the past few weeks. What happened is we have a friend, a dear friend who is storing their record player in our home.

Because it's a long story, but currently they cannot set up this record player in their home because they don't have enough space. So we just keep it safe for them and even if we keep it safe we've never touched it it's it remained in a in a cardboard box for months and yeah a few weeks ago i was looking for distraction a new distraction and i asked them can i play with this and they were like yeah sure and so i did i opened

the cardboard box and I set up this record player and they also have a vinyl collection, a sizable one, none of which like I, there are no artists in there that particularly interest me, but yeah, nice. In the end, I ended up setting up this record player and setting it up in our living room. The issue that I quickly stumbled upon, and this is what my story is about on the site, is we don't have any audio gear to hook up to this.

This record player doesn't have Bluetooth connectivity built in. only has like classic RCA ports, art ports, and one head for jack, and a weird port that I had not seen in years, which is a USB-B port, like on old school printers. Yeah. Long story short, I found a way to make this work with our HomePod Minis in the living room.

First, by hooking up the record player via USB to my MacBook. And then on the MacBook, using Airfoil, which is an app by Rogamiba, which lets you redirect a source. In this case, it was an input source. like macOS saw this USB feed and thought it was a microphone, basically. So you cannot just play it out of the speakers. So you have to use AirFoil to redirect this microphone feed, basically, to a speaker or to an AirPlay speaker such as HomePods.

So I did that and it works. It's really cool. However, we didn't want to bring a MacBook to the living room every time you wanted to enjoy some vinyl on the HomePods. So in the end, my setup is now a docked iPad Pro, an 11-inch iPad Pro in the living room, hooked up via USB still to the record player and an adapter to USB-C.

And using an app called Quanta, Q-U-A-N-T-A, And that's an app on iPadOS and also on the iPhone and iOS. That's an app. It's a vinyl companion app, kind of. What it does is exactly what AirFoil does on the Mac. It takes the input feed, audio feed, coming into the USB-C port and lets you AirPlay it to anything you want, to Bluetooth headphones or HomePods or any AirPlay-compatible device.

And that's really nice. Like now in the living room, there are pictures on the side if you want to have a look. Now in our living room, there is now a record player and next to it, this iPad Pro on the dock. And on it, you can just see the cover art for the music that is currently playing on the record player. And you can hear it through the home pods in the living room. It's really cool. Because yeah, Quanta, it lets you redirect the source, the audio source like this to AirPlay.

But it also like recognizes using the Shazam API recognizes the song and displays the cover art on screen. And with compatible songs, it will even show real-time lyrics on screen. It's extremely cool. So when this works perfectly, and it does all the time, it's really cool, I just launch the app on the iPad, set the record down on the turntable, set the needle down gently, And then it starts playing.

And as soon as the sound, as you start hearing the music on the speakers, the cover art appears on screen with the lyrics and the title and the track title. It's really cool. Really, really cool. So yeah, my story on the side, it works through my process with this, like how I went from... There's a part where, which I'm not talking about here, where I tried using, and I still have an headphone amplifier, so I can use my wired open-back headphones that I talked about on the show a couple of weeks ago.

I can use my open-back headphones with the record player as well, plugged in to the amplifier, and that works nice. But yeah, I went through the process, like I went through trying to make it work with the Mac, then going back to ending up with the iPad setup. but that's not all like this iPad setup with this iPad which is now permanently docked in the living room I wanted it to be usable by me and my partner at any time of the day which meant it could not have Face ID

like my partner needed to be able to unlock it by themselves and so what I did because iPadOS, inexplicably, doesn't have multi-user support like the tvOS. I created an entirely new Apple ID, which is called Zelda, after my cat, after our cat. Yeah, so my cat has an Apple ID now. Well done, congrats. And so that's an Apple ID that's entirely dedicated to this iPad.

We've added it to our family sharing, So it's got access to everything, Apple Music, TV, etc. Our purchase is on the App Store. And the iPad is fully unlocked all the time. It's just sitting there, always plugged in in the living room. And now it's basically a shared dashboard for the home. Because what I've done is on the home screen, I've added home widgets.

So my partner, who always struggles with HomeKit and Siri, now they can just walk up to this display in the living room, swipe up the lock screen, and tap on the widgets to toggle some lights. And if they want to have a listen to a vinyl, they can just set the vinyl down on the turntable and launch Quanta, and there you go, it starts broadcasting to the HomePods. So yeah, it's really cool. I'm so happy. Like this makes me happy. The whole experience with vinyl has been extremely satisfying. I understand my conceptions, my preconceptions were like not fair.

I do say so in the story. I say like, it does sound worse. I'm not saying, just let it be known it sounds worse. Then if you're used to lossless audio all the time, AirPods Max or whatever, sounds worse. However, like combined with the moment that you take to settle down in the couch, to set down a record, to gently lower the needle

and start hearing the music, play through the home pose. And now with the iPad, you can see the cover art appear on screen nicely. The entire thing, it's so nice. I think the entire experience makes it sound better. yeah i i think that's i that's totally totally right like i i i totally get it like like you said like i listen to apple music most of the time and i can listen to any song i can think of in five seconds it's like not a problem that's awesome like that's so so so so cool um but i do kind of like the intentionality of vinyl of like having to like find the find the record get it out like you

have to be careful with it and you know only touch the edges and um and you've got like like you've got it on the ipad i don't have any mine's all very analog my setup but like you still have like the record uh thing that you can put next to it um and you're listening to it and if you get to a song on the album that isn't your favorite it's so much work to like go over there lift the lid move it exact the needle exactly to the next song like you just let it play and like i i do kind of appreciate that of just like hearing songs that you might have skipped otherwise and maybe

appreciating them more um not in every case but in some cases but yeah just kind of the intentionality of it is something that i think is kind of cool and again as as the old guy who grew up listening to cds and having to like choose what cds am i bringing and all that like i yeah i do oh same i do appreciate that kind of feeling a little bit of feeling more of an attachment to this the things that I'm like physically playing and physically owning than the ones that I'm just streaming so it's it's definitely cool yeah I'm glad you got a setup that's working for you Matt I got two things for you Matt first off when you did the cd thing did were you like the cool

guy that had a binder with all of his cds in it that you just brought it everywhere oh my god okay yeah of course I had a binder yeah I still have that binder somewhere with all my page through them of course but uh danielle and i have a really good record player setup but it we just have bookshelf speakers like we don't have like the speakers themselves are actually the worst part of the whole setup uh like our record player and the amp are really nice but the the speakers themselves they're they either need to replace them or i have on my list to figure out a way to get uh the record

player to go to the sonos stuff in the house so that way we could just play the music throughout the house it's on the list of things to do maybe i'll bring it to the show when i when i get to that stuff but me lian um yeah i i we have an extensive vinyl collection um but i don't think you'd like most of most of the stuff i got like i have i have an original pressing of van halen's first album the self-titled van halen album you know the one with ain't talking about love and uh i know what that is yeah yeah yeah and like metallica ride the lightning and uh you know i

I think I even have an original Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. Don't think you'd care about that. But I have one I think you will care about. From 1980, the original Empire Strikes Back record. Now, this thing has been beaten up because it was my dad's. I wasn't alive in 1980, despite whatever joke you want to make nearly on right now. It is the original 1980 Empire Strikes Back soundtrack album. It has two vinyl records, but when you open it up, it has a little storybook of all the characters.

It's kind of very fragile. It's got a bunch of images from the movie. Star Destroyer chasing the Millennium Falcon. Han, Leia, 3PO Chewie and the Falcon. Vader versus Luke. Falcon arriving at Cloud City. This is very cool. This is the original 1980 pressing. This was the original one. it is beaten up to hell. My dad, uh, actually used to be a DJ, uh, like for parties and stuff like that. And he had a huge, huge vinyl collection.

And he has talked multiple times about the biggest thing he regrets in his life is selling that vinyl collection. He had everything. Um, uh, but yeah, so Danielle and I, like we live in California, uh, California has some stereotypes. Uh, a lot of those stereotypes are absolutely true uh the idea of going to a beach town and there being 10 to 20 vinyl shops is absolutely a correct stereotype anytime we go to the beach uh we go to these uh vinyl shops and and usually pick up like one or two things but like yeah uh this one here

is my pride and joy this was actually my dad's uh yeah so this is one of my favorite ones in fact It used to hang in one of my very first studios, office studios for YouTube. It used to hang on the wall, but because it's so black, you couldn't really tell what it was, so I took it down. But yeah, anyways, that's what I got for you. This is awesome. But yeah, I myself got, like I said, my friend's connection not really to my taste.

So when I started setting the record player up, I said to... Ah, can't talk. When I started setting up the record player, I went to the music store first, like before anything worked. I didn't even know if it was going to work with the HomePods, if I could find a way. I went to the music store because I wanted some motivation to... like to look...

something to look forward to, like if I can make this work, I'm going to listen to this. And so I picked up at the music store, like a big one in the city here. I picked up the latest Seguros album, my all-time favorite band. The latest album is called Outa. And the record, like the records themselves, they are yellow. Like the exact shade of yellow that I love. Really nice.

Yeah. Yeah. I love when the record's a good color. It sounds better. Yeah, or it's like Toto's Africa, where it's shaped like Africa. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay, so Neilion, yeah, this is a whole thing. So you know the song Africa by Toto, right? Yeah, I know. Okay. Side note, my brother's dog is named Toto after the band. They put out, when that song came out, They put out an album and it's shaped like the continent Africa.

And it has that song on it. It's really hard to find. And if you do find it, it's expensive. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Oh. I see it. Yeah. So it's like, okay. So it's like a 45 or something, but it's huge. Oh, yeah. It's a small 45 RPM. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah. No, it's a very cool album. It's one of those things that like, if I ever find it, it's an immediate purchase. Like I don't, under a certain dollar amount, of course, I'm not going to pay anything.

But if I do ever find it, it is an immediate purchase. But I've never found one in a good condition that, yeah. So yeah, that's all I wanted to bring today. That's really cool. The story on the site, it's one of my favorite things I've ever written, I think. I tried going at it at a different angle, like instead of just introducing my setup, just walking through the process that went through my mind and talking a bit naively about my first

experience listening to vinyl record. So yeah, if you want to check it out, please do. I like the story. I love it. You told us you were writing the story a little while ago, and I told you I'm very excited for it because we're both kind of doing very similar projects you did it with the home pods i'm trying to do with the sonos stuff um but yeah i i'm i'm very excited to actually read the the finished story yeah all right you guys ready for the challenge yes i'm so excited i've been excited all week to talk to you guys about this i i'm so excited about this i know it's gonna

be amazing and i know exactly what neilion's gonna bring up i knew exactly what matt's gonna bring up but i don't care i'm excited to talk to you guys about this matt i'm not sure do you you though i i think because matt and i have talked about this on the side so i i'm i'm fairly certain i know what matt's gonna bring up but i think it'll i think it'll still be good so but my challenge was bring your in-game keyboard and be prepared to defend it and by in-game i mean people that are in mechanical keyboards would know what this means but you don't ever just buy one mechanical keyboard when you get into it you end up buying a bunch and then eventually you get to a point where you're like okay i finally have built the perfect keyboard it's perfectly balanced as all

things should be um you guys mind if i go first please do okay so i have here and this thing is heavy i'm not even doing a bit this thing is ridiculously heavy this is the kbd 8x mark 3 now most of you probably thought i was going to bring a mode keyboard because i for the last couple years i have not stopped talking about mode keyboards i love them uh this is my new favorite keyboard uh it's a pretty it's it's quite a bit cheaper than than the mode 80 keyboard in fact it's like half the price of the mode 80 keyboard uh and it's amazing it's it's a very similar build

quality uh this right here is the anodized pine green version on the images on the website it looked like it was going to be a darker green than what it was um which is kind of a bummer i was hoping for a darker green if i knew i would how much i would love this keyboard i would have got it in black but at the time the anodized black version was sold out i've been checking every day waiting to see if the anodized black version comes back in stock they have some eco black ones but i don't like those as much because e-coding is more of a lighter matte finished anodized is a much um

more saturated, darker color. So, like, if you want something that stands out, like anodized, like, Neelion, if you click that link in the show notes, there's an anodized, I think it's called Anodized Sunflower, or maybe it was the E-coat Sunflower, but that's one of the ones that I was like, that jump, I saw that one, I was like, oh, Neelion would love that. It's like a very bright, yellowish, orangeish color. Oh, yeah, I see it. Yeah? Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah. So, this mechanical keyboard can either be top mounted or gasket mounted i went with the gasket mount just

because i like the feel of a gasket mount it's a little more firm um i am using for the switches i have here these are the pc keys hmx gulf linear switches and they come in this uh the 57 gulf livery racing car uh like oil drum canister kind of thing like it's it's very racing like right matt I know Matt knows what this is. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's good.

I like it. Iconic. And it even opens up kind of like an oil can. So it opens up. Kneel on you like this. So the switches themselves, if you see here for the video listeners, they're orange on the top and blue on the bottom. Really doesn't make that big of a difference what you put together a mechanical keyboard because you won't see them. But they're linear switches. They feel really good. I don't know if you can hear it. A little bit. But they sound good, too. They have a little bit of a click, but they're not very loud. Tiny bit. They have decent travel.

And then I am using the PBT Fans Pastel Gray keycaps for the keyboard. They're more of a beige. And I just thought the color combo with the green looked really good. I don't know if you guys can see it or not, if it's all blown out. Hopefully not. But yeah, that is kind of the design of the keyboard. I did do a tape mod and some extra foam to kind of just cut down on the echo. I'll do a little type test for you. Hang on.

Always love those. Yeah. Yeah, so I love the way this keyboard. Honestly, I think this is my best sounding keyboard. I took the time, made sure all the switches and the stabilizers were lubricated properly. I spent like a good day working on this keyboard. Like it was a ton of time. I also customized it using via.

So I have media keys up here. I have volume up, volume down, play pause, skip, go back. I did a couple of macros and stuff for like some final cut stuff. Really nice. I did mess up when I ordered this. You might notice here that there's only two modifier keys next to the space bar, not the typical three. I messed up and ordered the window keyless version. This is the first time I've ever had a Windows keyless version keyboard. And for those that aren't familiar with what that means is on a keyboard, on a Windows keyboard, you have control.

Wait, is it? No, alt. No, control on the left or alt on the left. No, control. Control on the left. Control, Windows, Alt. Okay, so what this keyboard means is you don't have that middle modifier key. You don't have that Windows key. So on a Mac keyboard, that would be the option key. I messed up. When you go to order this keyboard, it defaults to the Windows keyless version. That's never happened to me before. Every keyboard I've ever ordered always defaults to the Windows key version. I don't know.

Whatever. It actually hasn't ended up being that big of a deal. So I have on this side, the left side is Control and Command. on the right side i have option and uh like the fn function menu key kind of thing uh it's been fine it really hasn't been that big of a deal but uh like i said i love this keyboard so much i want a black version to match my desk now so i will be ordering another one uh i will get the anodized black one and when i do i'll make sure i order the window key version i i saw the other day that the anodized black was back in stock but it was windows keyless only and i was so pumped i was like oh dang it but anyways this is my keyboard this is i i think other than the fact that i am

going to order another one but in black with the windows key mostly just to fix my mistake this is my in-game keyboard right here i love these switches i will probably order these same switches again for the black one because i on it these are like some of the best switches i've ever used they sound amazing they feel amazing the whole thing is great to type on uh it's not it's not led backlit like a lot of people like i do not like led bike backlights on my keyboards i don't need them i don't i'm not some sick gamer bro 360 no scoping kind of thing it just has this

one led strip right here that kind of like pulses rgb um and it's not that big of a deal i actually kind of like it that it's just like this one little line over here but overall i absolutely love this keyboard oh and it has this a stainless steel weight bar on the bottom makes it flipping heavy like if you're somebody that likes a big weighted keyboard this is for you oh my gosh this keyboard is incredibly heavy uh zombie apocalypse happens this is the thing i'm grabbing because you're gonna you're gonna clock some zombies with this thing but not your knife book knife

no you don't want that would you'd have to get way too close to the zombies oh yeah sure no no you gotta think about that the distance our weaponry isn't practical that's not what we have but anyway so this is it it's the KBD 8X Mark 3 we'll put links in the show notes it's from KBD fans not to get political but there are things happening with the United States and shipping and all that stuff I would say if you're gonna order it order it now because it does come from china uh who knows how long you'll be able to get that stuff

they even have a warning on their website right now that's like uh who knows uh i had been waiting on a shipment for them and i almost for some like other keyboard parts in fact it was actually that fancy usbc mechanical the fancy usbc mechanical keyboard cable that i ordered for the magic track pad that i talked about last week um that was something i ordered from their website and it was kind of like, I don't know if it'll show up or not. And it eventually did. But yeah, so if you're gonna get something like this, order it sooner rather than later. Okay. Any questions on it?

It's a keyboard. I'm a little hurt that after all these years of you telling me to get a certain keyboard, you come onto the show and you're like, the best keyboard is not the one I told you to get. It's a secret. Well, so I love my mode keyboards. I absolutely love them. But my big issue is, I love the 80% keyboards, but they stopped making the 80% one that I absolutely love. And they make this other one now. And this other one, they can't keep the parts in stock for me to order it. Like, literally, every time I go to their website to buy it, they're like, oh, sorry, we don't have it.

It's like, but this one, they may not have the exact color you want, but they have plenty. Like, they always have something in stock. And it's honestly, Matt, it's cheaper, and it's about the same build. like it's about the same build quality and everything it's about when i when i put together this keyboard it was about half the price of the mode 80 keyboard that i want yeah matt all right i want matt to go next i know neilion is technically up next up in the show document but i want to save neilion for last because i have a feeling neilion is going to uh do something

I really struggled with this I've been debating between my keyboard of choice recently um up until yesterday in the show doc I had the Lemo Key L4 which is from Keychron's kind of sister brand I'm not really sure what the relationship is there but it's from Keychron they make a Lemo Key line which is more gamery I guess but like this isn't a gamer keyboard um it doesn't look like keyboard it is so nice to type on it's i think an 80 or 80 ish percent so similar in size to yours chris um the thing i love about this keyboard is that in addition to looking good and sounding good

it has bluetooth and i love it's so so so convenient with my setup where i'm switching between three computers over the course of a day sometimes to have a wireless connection to one of them at least so i really like that i really like having the function row however when i really thought about it the keyboard that i love the most here we go and you're catching i i'm such an idiot i've

been doing work on my keyboard stuff this is the mode envoy that is completely naked because I've been moving switches around. I've been experimenting. I tried actually putting the switches and keycaps from this, which I really love, into the Lemo Key one. The combination wasn't as perfect, so I'm going to move them back here. But right now, I can't do a... So your endgame keyboard is a keyless, switchless keyboard. It's a 0% keyboard. Yeah.

What he does is he takes tweezers and he hits the two connectors at the same time so that he's triggering each letter and that's how he types. Very smart. I was just going to say, I have this keyboard as well. I have two mode keyboards. I have their original 80% keyboard, which they don't sell anymore, and this one, which is still on sale, and I love this one. Mine is the black with the multicolor plates, so it's like that purple burned multicolor thing that looks really cool, but yeah, I love this one as well. Yeah, so I didn't buy this for a long time because of how expensive it was.

Like this whole keyboard, including the switches and the keycaps, which you don't have to get, was like $300. And that's insane. However. Matt, do you know how much my 80% is? I know, I know. Even more. Even more. The 80, the mode 80, it was like $800 all put together. Shh. Don't worry. Okay. Yeah. All put together, that keyboard is like $800. I feel better about my choice. But still. Yeah. I'm literally just trying to make people feel better about their keyboard choices.

So I was like, this is stupid. It cannot possibly be worth it. And then I got it. And I built it. Do you want to tell everyone who forced you to get it? I think Nealian did. She was like, this is a great keyboard. You should totally get it. Sure. Chris, you told me to get it. And you were right. It feels so good to type on. It comes completely disassembled. And so I had to build it. I'd never built a keyboard from scratch before. and it's still it's a kit but like still um i love that i was able to get this kind of green forest green default color with a copper back plate um there's a little copper uh piece

of metal on the back of it as well and it just feels so good to type on it looks so good it is i i i enjoy typing here more than anywhere else on any other keyboard and the one downside of it is there's no wireless. It's wired only. And that's annoying. And that's what would have put the Lemo key ahead. But then I just used it for a couple days to remind myself how wonderful it was. And yeah, this is it.

I do want to shove a battery in there somehow and make it wireless. It's such a good keyboard. I love that keyboard so much. My only thing that I don't like about it is I like having a function row that I can program with macros and like media keys and stuff like that. That's the big downside for that keyboard to me. It's just, it's a little too compressed and I have a big desk. So it's like, I don't mind putting an 80% keyboard down on that desk. Uh, I don't, I don't have any 100% keyboards with like the number pad or anything like that, but the Envoy is just such, it's, it's a great keyboard. Yes, you have to put it together, but mode does a great job at giving you

pretty clear instructions on how to do it plus mode is popular enough that there's going to be a ton of youtube videos yeah well and also like when you put it together it's kind of like the vinyl thing like the song it sounds better because of the experience like the fact that i built this myself and like it again it's a kit it's not like i like like forged the metal myself or anything but like yeah you didn't build the pcb board yourself or anything like and like the nice thing is um if you're getting into mechanical keyboards i recommend just getting hot swap don't don't go down the solder route when you're checking out there'll probably be an option that says

hot swap pcb board or solder pcb board hot swap means you literally just take the switches and you push them in hot solder means you actually have to sit there with a soldering gun and solder them it's not that big of a deal but it is a pain it takes forever and if you ever oh it's a huge deal I would never do that. And well, if you ever want to undo it, then that's becomes a huge deal. But yeah, I mode does a great job. I should mention this KBD 8X, the instructions that they have to put it together are terrible.

If this was the first keyboard I would have ever put together, I think I would have gave up like the instructions are bad. There's probably YouTube videos out on how to put it together. But the instructions are not super clear, which is very unfortunate. Yeah. So potentially I would get this exact keyboard, but with a function row. That would maybe make it a little nicer. But I like how small it is too. So I don't know. The Sonnet. The Sonnet. Look at the Sonnet. But then it's so much money and I could just buy something else and be very happy with something else.

But again, you go back to like you're really happy with the mode keyboard because of just how... Because the build quality, the keyboards come down to build quality. Like how good the parts are when you're putting it together. Well, we'll see with the next one. I think there's other variables we are not accounting for. The next one I have a feeling is going to be more software related. So anyway, I love mine. I think it's fantastic. And yeah, I just wish I could get a wireless version.

I would pay obscene amounts of money for a wireless version of this keyboard. Yeah. I can see that. I don't really care because like I talked about in the last episode my situation is that everything is plugged into that CalDigit dock and I just move the cable from either the iPad to the Mac Mini or vice versa. So we're running long. Neilian hit us with the knockout blow. What's the best keyboard you've got? So you guys are cute. Thank you. Aw, shots.

Okay, so my keyboard First off, it has keys. Okay. That's good. Secondly, it has all the modifier keys. Like, none are missing. I mean, none of mine are missing. They're just in different places. Are we doing democracy on this one? I don't know if we need to do democracy on this one. We don't need to fight each other. I think we should. I think we should. Okay. My keyboard is the magic keyboard with Touch ID. What? I'm shocked. It's beautiful. Okay. So, I'm going to try to defend it for real.

You should. It's a great keyboard. Yeah. It's a great keyboard. Supports Bluetooth, Matt. Listen, this is what I'm controlling this whole podcast. Oh, there you go. This keyboard. Okay, so I've tried going to different keyboards in the past. I've never tried any like hardcore mechanical keyboard like yours. But I've tried a bunch of different keyboards in the past. I always go back, come back to the Magic Keyboard.

A few reasons. On the Mac, like the function row on the Magic Keyboard is extremely useful. I use that all the time. The media keys are great. I cannot launch Raycast or Spotlight in any other way than by pressing the F4 key on the Magic Keyboard, which is the Spotlight key, which I've remapped using BetterTouchTool on the Mac to launch Raycast instead of Spotlight. I have ingrained in my muscle memory that I can just tap the moon button, which is the do not disturb button,

in the F6 key on the Magic Keyboard. That's extremely useful. I like that. I've also, in my muscle memory, the fact that I've remapped the dictation key on F5 to a mute switch, which I use on calls all the time. Oh. Very nice. Oh, how does it, that mutes your microphone? How are you doing that? Use my microphone. It's, okay, it's a whole thing. It's a shortcut that I trigger via better touch tool. Okay, okay. Say no more.

But the shortcut itself is just an Apple script. Okay. So there you go. Three layers. Makes sense. I love the globe key. Like the globe key, by default, Apple does weird things with it. I've remapped it to many other things. By default, I just placed it once to bring up the Raycast emoji picker, but now I'm also combining it with a bunch of different keys for another layer of keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. Really useful.

Okay. There are two final blows to your picks, which will make me win. the first of those two final is the fact that my keyboard has Touch IT and none of yours have that's a really nice thing I love that the second and the second and final thing which makes this specific magic keyboard the endgame magic keyboard

is the fact that combined with Clack a beautiful application for macOS. I didn't see it coming. I should have seen it coming. I knew when I came up with the channel. Okay, so Clack. It's a beautiful application on the Mac which adds satisfying sounds when you type on the keyboard through your headphones. It's very, very nice. It works well. It lives in your menu bar.

You can switch the switches and you can switch to another type of switches if you want. And it's regularly updated. They recently added new switches. I was really happy on that day. And yeah, I love typing on my magic keyboard with Clack enabled on my Mac. So there you go. My magic keyboard is the endgame keyboard because Touch ID, Better Touch Tool, Function Row, and Clack. Yeah, it's a good keyboard. The thing I'm most upset about is that you've mentioned Clack, and I try to be very good about including links

all the things we talk about. And again, I need to link to Clack in our show notes. Do not link to Clack. I will delete it from the show notes. Okay, anyways, moving on. I win the challenge. I have the best keyboard. Cool. No, I love it. I'm actually surprised you haven't bought one of the colorful ones like off eBay or something like that. I've been resisting doing that for years. Yeah. That's actually, I think, the biggest surprise is that you're just using the generic silver one.

But anyways, we're running long. So that was the challenge. Niléane, I believe you have the challenge for us for next week. What are you going to have us do? Okay, so sometimes when I try to come up with a challenge, I always try to think outside the box, hence the name of the show. Outside the box, which is the name of the show. That is the show. Yeah, that is the show. And sometimes I'm trying to look for things that will upset you. Of course. Makes sense. So I, like, ask random questions throughout the week in our group chat.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Just to find things out. I know what's going to happen. So this week, I asked you both about Coldplay. Oh, no. Oh, no. Which is a band. Yeah, I probably know that. I wouldn't define it as that. They would define it as noise, but okay. They've been doing music for years. Okay. Noise, but okay. So my challenge is, Matt and Chris and Sobulai, let's try to find our favorite track from Coldplay and let's think through how we find it.

Okay? So, yeah, just do not search for the top trending Coldplay track for the best charting Coldplay track. Find a way to look for your favorite Coldplay track. Yeah. I hate my life right now. I quit this show. All right. And the last part is only so it qualifies as a tech challenge. But yeah, I really wanted you to listen to Coldplay. Okay.

I mean, this is fine. This is whatever. Yeah. I think this is fun. I believe this comes under the category of torture, which is against the Geneva Convention. This is the thing. Chris, sometimes we agree, and then you take it so far that I have to be like, actually, I disagree. I have opinions, Matt. I don't know if you know this about me, but I have opinions about certain things. The thing about it is this is just another music challenge. All right. All right. Well, I have to do it because it's part of the show.

All right. Well, that just about does it for this episode. Thank you all so much for listening. But I have an end of the show question for you. What TV show are you guys currently into? What are you guys watching? Severance. Yeah. I'm still a few episodes behind, but yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. Matt, what about you? I'm really enjoying Silo. Season two just wrapped up. I'm about halfway through it. I didn't start watching season one until just a couple months ago, so I caught up on it and really liked it.

It's amazing. And so we qualify for our Apple TV Plus check. I've been watching Mythic Quest season four, and it's good. It's not as good as the first two seasons. I think especially that first season was something very magical. I would say that first season of Mythic Quest is better than Ted Lasso, but... Hey, you know? Okay. I really don't like that show. Wow, okay. All right. Anyways. Yeah.

That's what I've been watching. So, anyways, thank you all so much for watching, listening, however you consume the show. This is, what did you call the show? I forgot what you called the show. The Coldplay podcast. No, definitely not that. Because, God, I have to listen to Coldplay this week. Anyways, thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.