The Son of a U.S. Something-or-Other

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. I almost said guests, guys. I almost, I thought you said ghosts. I almost said, I was trying to say guests and co-hosts at the same time. I don't know why that happened. Anyways, I just ruined the intro. Matt, Neelion, hi. I completely ruined the intro there.

Hello. Welcome to the show. The audience must excuse me while I hairdress myself. I thought we figured this out before we started recording. You're just going to take your hair, flip it over your head, and go like full cousin it from the Adams family. You know, this is the thing. Like doing a video podcast, I'm seeing myself. And realizing that people are seeing me like this. And I can't let it go. I actually finally went and got a haircut, and I tried to do my hair and look nice, and then I saw it right before we started recording, I grabbed a hat,

because I was just like, yeah, I'm not dealing with this. It's just not working for me. It's too early. Hats don't really work on me. Just say no to hair. That's my opinion. I'm only a couple years away from that. I'm looking at genetics. Oh, no. Yeah, it's not going to be good for me. Anyways, we have a show to do, and it's not about hair or hair-related topics. It's a good one today. We have some tiny topic stuff. Nimeon, you want to go first with your stuff?

What's my stuff? I don't know. You put some stuff in here. Didn't you put Democracy Prevails in the document, and then I put something else that I'm not allowed to say underneath it? Oh, I put that in the document? Okay, sure. I don't know. I don't know. I'm so disappointed. I cannot stress how disappointed I am. Okay, so recap. Last week, we held a challenge, which was bring your endgame keyboard and be prepared to defend it.

Exact wording. You brought some green keyboard. Matt brought the mod envoy without any keys. and I brought the magic keyboard combined with Clack, the famous Clack. I forgot that you included Clack as part of your choice. And also, do you actually use Clack? I'm actually not sure if this is a bit. I use Clack. Okay. You want me to share my screen right now? No, no, no, no, no, no.

We're good. We're good. I use Clack, guys. It's really good. This is not a joke. This makes me laugh, but it's not a joke. I would like to file a petition to the group. Yeah. Since Matt did not have keycaps on his keyboard, he should be disqualified and his vote should go to me. Matt, go with this. Just go with this. Matt, go with it. This would give you the slight win. I can't do it. Matt, we are going to lose to the Apple crappy, horrible Magic Keyboard.

That is a terrible keyboard. We should say the results. We haven't even said the results. We should say the results. This is a bad podcast. Okay. A terrible podcast. Okay. So the results are Chris came in last with 24% of the votes. Matt's mod envoy came in second with 29. And my magic keyboard with Touch ID combined with Clack came in first at 47%. For most of the vote, I will say, most of the duration of the vote, I was like leading by 50 more percent.

It's because your bots stopped voting. Yeah. I was impressed by the number of voters this week, too. Like this time it is 139, which is a bit more than usually. Although last time the Castro folks came in. Yeah, Matt bought off the Castro people. Yeah, what an icon. I'm so disappointed. I'm so disappointed. Do you remember, Chris, I asked when you wanted to do Democracy, I asked on the show, what happens if my magic keyboard wins?

I quit. This is my last episode. I'm done. This is nice. I'm having a good time here. No, I quit democracy. I'm done with democracy. I know I had the best keyboard. I know I had the best keyboard because I put the most amount of work into it. At least mine had key caps. That's true. I'm so disappointed. I'm so unbelievably disappointed.

I have heard from sources, and by that I mean Jonathan Reed and Max Torres, that the developer of Clack was really happy about the result of this poll. Oh my God. There's, so that sounds like fraud to me. If my Castro, if the fact the Castro people like me because I like their Ica. I mean, they didn't make a public statement on whatever social media to garner votes. Oh man.

They were quiet. They were happy and quiet. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, congratulations. Thank you. I think this is the greatest win I've ever had on the show. This one feels special. I don't. I am full on going to go full dictatorship. I have the login to the Mastodon account. We'll see what happens next week. All right. Wow. Okay. Anyways, let's move on from crushing disappointment to...

Matt, what have you got? I have two tiny topics. The first one is I turned on notifications for Mastodon in Ivory for the past week because I see people who have notifications on for social media. And I've had them turned off for like five years or more. But I wanted to turn them on to see what it was like. And I don't understand how anybody does this. It's horrible.

Maybe if you don't get a lot of notifications, it's fine. But I turned them on for just mentions. Just mentions. That's all I wanted was like someone replies to me. Yeah, that's what I do. Did you do mentions from everyone or mentions from just people you follow? It, I don't know. I don't think it would have made a big difference for me. The people I interact with most on Mastodon are mutual. So I don't think that would have moved the needle for me. but like i found it very annoying to be just like constantly disrupted and like having social media like thrust upon me throughout the day it was very very frustrating and like i have announced

notifications on for my airpods so i'd be like walking or running or something and like these like they would just keep coming in as like and they would read it to me and i'd be like stop stop or it was just very very frustrating so i'm turning them back off but like i wanted to give it a go because i know some people do like it i see people like complain about like oh the notifications are in this app or that app or whatever and like i will i i am not a fan of them i like to go to social media when i want to do something social but i don't like it thrust upon me as though they're

like i messages that are coming through from everyone so yeah i gave it a shot this is a minor comfort zone thing because i did exit my comfort zone for this um i also had notification summaries i have those on because they are useful for a lot of apps uh they are terrible for social apps like no they're terrible period no i i disagree but for like it is insanity like they work in messages because like a thread will have like multiple messages and they'll summarize those but like it doesn't understand that every mention is a different conversation technically so like

it just combines them all into one blob that never makes sense and it does it immediately so like you'll get a notification in real time but it's already summarized and just melted into the pot of other notifications that have come in and it doesn't tell you what it was it's a mess i would oh i have zero good experiences with this i guess so i would not recommend the other thing i have though is a review okay so huh this oh one sec

matt was very prepared for whatever he's doing here i'm intrigued he's currently going through the drawer in his office in the bookshelf behind him he's looking for something he's pulled out an iphone this is the iphone 16e and i'm excited to bring you my review apple says this completes the iphone 16 family and it's very much an iphone 16 in all the ways that matter, but a few things are missing to get us down to that $599 price point. But honestly, I think a lot of people are going to be okay with it. Now, you only get one camera, but it's a very

good camera, and compared to the SE that this is replacing, it's very, very nice, and I think will make a lot of people happy. You also lose the Dynamic Island, but honestly, I don't really miss it. The notch is fine, and live activities show on the lock screen anyway, so I'm not missing anything. You do lose MagSafe and millimeter wave 5G, but like a lot of people don't need that. It's fine. Everything else is pretty intact. You get an A18 processor. It has Apple intelligence. It has one less GPU core than the 16, but in all my testing, every game runs fine.

So I think you'll be okay without it. And you get the action button, the ceramic shield. You get the OLED screen that looks amazing. It's just a really nice phone. So if you're someone who normally buys the pro phones, this probably isn't for you. But if you are someone who just wants a really good iPhone that doesn't cost nearly $1,000, I think this will be a good fit for a lot of people. So thank you so much for watching. Please like and subscribe. You do know you're on comfort zone, right? And not recording a YouTube video, right? What is happening right now? I have no idea what is happening.

So for audio listeners and video listeners, too, because you probably can't tell, this is not an iPhone 16e. This is an iPhone 7, which is the only single camera phone that I have. has also looks in the back very similar is that the jet black one no it's the normal black one oh okay yeah i've never i've never actually seen the jet black in person oh so nice um but i wanted to do this fake review because probably the embargo has dropped at this point i do not get to review units from apple i have no idea there's just a guess um you'll know by the

time you're listening to this but i'm gonna wager that review sounded very similar to some reviews that are out there right now and it's not really a dig at like youtubers or anything like christy and i do uh iphone reviews too it's just like it's so different reviewing phones today than it was like 10 to 15 years ago when things changed a lot like we kind of know how this phone's going to be like you could basically record your entire a-roll and then just put b-roll of the new phone once you get it on like from yeah and you'd be okay like i feel fairly confident everything i

said is most is pretty much true i think it'll be fine um and so yeah i just it's a weird thing where like the phones change so little and they're so reliable like that is i guess a good thing like we know there's it's probably going to be a totally fine phone um that you could look at the spec sheet and kind of know all the things you're going to think about it so yeah just kind of a weird place we're in where you kind of know what the phone is going to be uh before you even get in hand and uh yeah that'd be fun to do a as close as i've ever come to an embargoed review which i for a product i do not have i i completely agree with you i think there's two points where like there is going to be

some intense testing required with this phone and that is apple's new modem the c1 modem and if it truly is uh better battery life than the regular 16 phone uh because according to apple's battery numbers which i never ever take apple's battery numbers at face value um it's supposed to get battery life closer to the plus phone than um than the regular 16 phone so

even though it's the size of the 16 phone so which would be great so i hope people i hope people test it um but yeah there's fewer and fewer things every year it seems to test um yeah i i i don't enjoy doing iphone reviews anymore uh just in general like i didn't even really do a 16 pro review i did a like hey this is what i'm doing with my phone kind of video just because like they're all the same yeah and that's that's more valuable i think i think those are more interesting these days than just like the specs yeah exactly i the only the only devices i do

like spec reviews for are ipads and that's just kind of because it's expected of me kind of thing and that's you know my um niche but like that mac mini i got i'm not going to do a spec review i didn't do a spec review of the iPhone. I didn't do a spec review of the Apple Watch. So yeah. Well, I am first up in the document here and I have something I'm very excited to bring to the show. This right here is a hammer. Yeah, it's a hammer. Yeah, no, this is the MagFloat Pro.

People that have watched my channel for a long time know this is a magnetic iPad stand. There's been a couple of versions of these in the past. The first one was just the regular MagFloat and I was i think i was the first person ever to review it i kind of have this weird achievement of like being the first person to review a lot of magnetic ipad stands it's a weird thing to be oddly proud of but like this one the the lab 22 the saradichi uh moment uh infinity adjust ipad stand i was the first person to do in fact they didn't even have packaging they had to send it to me in a pelican

pelican case uh so like it's this weird achievement of like that's i don't know why i'm proud of that but anyways uh this is the mag float pro this is the version of the mag float that telescopes so it raises and lowers um and there was a version of this one that came out a couple years ago for the m1 m2 ipads with the magnets built into it and all that stuff uh but when the ipad for the iPad Pro came out, that iPad was redesigned. The internals were completely redesigned. And because

of that, the magnets changed. So the M4 iPad no longer worked on the previous MagFloat or MagFloat Pro. Well, this is the MagFloat Pro for the M4 iPad. It is now shipping. It is here. A couple of disclosures. Chargin, the company that makes this, it's a husband and wife company down in LA. They sent me the previous mag floats. They just gave them to me because they're nice. They wanted me to review them. They just sent them to me to keep. I bought this one with my own money.

They didn't reach out to me. They didn't even tell me it was shipping, which I was kind of surprised about. But I just saw on their website it was shipping. Immediately bought it. Bought it myself with my own money. Disclosure over. Yay. Super important. What I love about this stand is it is the only stand that I can get that will put the iPad at the same height as my studio display. Now, I have to set this on the monitor stand on my desk in order to get it to that height because I use the tilt and height adjustable studio display.

But this allows me to get my iPad to be level with my studio display, which is really important to me because it's just a little bit more ergonomic. It's a little bit nicer that way. It works, like I said, for video viewers, you can see there's a little knob on the back. You can loosen up, and you can lower it, you can raise it, and then when you get it to the right height, you just tighten it up. I like the look of it. It looks clean. Yeah, it looks really nice. It's very Apple-looking.

It blends in with your desk, which is really nice. This new one comes in a space black version, So it's a little darker. So if you have black stuff on your desk, it'll match a little bit better. What I also like about this stand is the iPad magnetic panel part, whatever you want to call this, rotates. So you can go portrait mode, you can go landscape mode. Personally, I like using portrait mode when I'm at my desk because when I'm using my iPad at my desk, The iPad screen is usually for widgets, maybe my task manager and calendar, referencing a document.

So like if I'm editing a video, I'll have the script up to the side so I can see what B-roll I filmed and notes and all that stuff. And I just find having a portrait display to be really nice. I'll even put like messages or something up there. Or if I'm like having a video meeting, I can have my notes over to the side, stuff like that. Like it's a really convenient thing to have. It also works great with universal control. So like I said, I've been using that Mac Mini quite a bit lately. So I will put my iPad next to, or I'll put my iPad in the stand, which is next to my studio display, which is, that would be plugged into the Mac Mini.

I can just, the keyboard and mouse I'm using with the Mac Mini, I can just move it right over to the iPad. And because the iPad and the studio display are at the same height, works incredibly well together. like extremely well. So I can just control stuff right off my iPad. So if I need to get something, like, I don't even know, like something from an iPad-specific app, like 2FA code or something like that, I can just grab it from there and then put it on the Mac. It also comes with something that I'm kind of surprised is becoming more of a standard.

But it's this, if you guys can see it, this U-shaped USB-C cable. So what the idea of this is, is that your iPad is in this stand, and you can just plug it in right here at the bottom. And that way, there isn't a cable coming down. It's just plugged right here or plugged into the side, and the cable is going, and it's back behind the MagFloat stand. Oh, that's good. Which makes it really nice. Yes, it is really good. My only complaint about it is it's not a Thunderbolt cable.

I was about to say. Yeah, it's just a regular USB-C charging cable. So you can't use this to like, hey, plug this into like the studio display and use this as like the studio display cable. This only works for charging. But if you're using your iPad with, say, like universal control and your Mac is primarily plugged into your monitor, this would work really well for this. I also just use these like around the house and stuff like that because it's nice to have the cable. My iPad's right here in front of me.

you might be able to, if you're watching the video, you'll be able to see. But, like, it's nice to just be able to have the cable kind of go back there. And you don't have something sticking out to the right side. It just goes back behind the iPad. Yeah, that's great. I've never seen a cable, I've never seen a USB cable like that. I've seen, like, the right angle ones. Uh-huh. But, like, never the full, like, U. But this, this would be really good. I'm thinking, like, I need to go order one now to use with my Switch. Because my least favorite thing about the switch is the charging ports on the bottom.

And I like to rest the switch on my lap or something while I'm playing on the couch. And I can't do that because the wire is there. So if I could just have it be a U-shaped thing, that's great. Well, yeah. So that would fix your issue. Yeah, it's a great cable. And it's a nice, solid cable. It's braided. It's not flimsy at all. It's a really well-made cable. And they even give you a free Velcro strap for it. Oh, heck yeah. I mean, you can't afford not to get it.

And then one last feature of this. If you have an iPhone with MagSafe, you can put your iPhone. There's a specific spot just for the iPhone. So you can have a dock with it as well. So it has a MagSafe magnet just for the iPhone. That's what I was trying to say. I wasn't doing a very good job of saying it. So what this is great for is if you're using, say, okay, I'm sitting at my desk.

I got to have a video conference call. Oh, no, the studio display camera. It's horrible. I don't want to use this. I want something that looks better. Hey, I have my iPhone. And the iPhone and Mac do that thing. What was it called where you can use the iPhone's camera for your webcam on the Mac? What is that feature called? Continuity camera? Yeah. Yes, that's what it is. So you can use continuity camera this way. Kind of cool. It's not something I do very often. In fact, I don't think I've ever actually done it outside of testing.

But to be fair, I don't have video calls on my Mac. Yeah, and to be fair, it looks terrible. I mean, it does. But at the end of the day, this isn't meant to like, you're not going to leave your phone like this. I don't know if listeners understand what it looks like right now. So the iPhone is like on the iPad panel on the mount. But like... It's sticking out to the sides. Sticking out to the sides, yeah.

Like it's about to fall off, really. It's not. It's on their saw. I'm fiddling with it, but it's on their saw. I'll take my hands away. But this isn't something I would leave. But if I needed to have a video call in a pinch and I needed to like, hey, you know, it's really important. I have a decent quality camera. That would work. Especially if you don't have a tripod or something with the iPhone stand. You know what this raises?

Back in the old days, I mean, six months ago when I had an iPad on my desk, I really wanted to be able to use the iPad's front-facing camera with the Mac in continuity camera. I really wish you could do that. If you have an iPad on your desk, just use the front-facing camera as your webcam. Could you do it if you did the thing where you extended the Mac's display to the iPad's display? No. does it work that does it work that way no um i i i don't think the ipad i let me rephrase the ipad's camera system the front and back camera system is isn't great it's usable but

it's not great it's pretty good i mean it's pretty good uh for as a webcam like fine better than any webcam reading but i would rather use an iphone if i'm if like if i'm going to grab a second device i'd rather use an iphone sure okay so just don't ruin my argument i'm just saying in case like apple people are listening why is this not a feature why is nobody talking about this why is nobody talking

i want to use any camera in my home as with continuity camera why can't i do that uh but overall, I have used a lot of magnetic iPad stands. I would venture to say I've probably used every single one. There are a couple out there that the brand names just keep changing, but they're the same. I have used a lot of them. This one hands down is my absolute favorite because of the feature. It can telescope so you can get it up high and it's solid too. Like you can tap on it. Like you can make it as high as you want tap on it it's got a weighted base so it's not gonna like fall

over if you're tapping on your iPad screen the fact that you can rotate it from portrait to landscape and landscape to portrait that's really important to me overall really love this iPad stand and I'm super happy it's finally shipping for the m4 iPad pros it took a minute I mean those have almost been out for a year now so it did take a little while but it is shipping absolutely love this highly highly recommended like I said I bought this one with my own money so but the others were sent to me for free but this one

as soon as I saw it was finally available it was available for pre-order for a while but I was like I'll just wait till it actually starts shipping and then when I saw it was shipping I immediately purchased it what did you say the cost was oh that's a good question it is $150 thank you yeah so it's a little pricey could be worse it could be worse it could be better but at the end of the day it's very well engineered oh i it i forgot to say it does tilt too so you can tilt it back and forth if you want but i don't i don't really do that so does does it happen to snap or does it have like like lock

into place at the 90 degree angles no i wish it did um but i just put it next to my studio display and kind of just line it up with that that's fine i just i've i've used a couple of these before and have done that and i it feels like a thing that would be really nice to have there today yeah like like kind of just like a lock like this one you can just keep rotating it it goes full 360 oh but like if they did like just 180 like like you either had like these like that two angles and it locked in place i think i would take that over doing a full 360 yeah interesting but the nice thing

is is if you do do a full 360 what what you could do if you jump between computers a lot so say you have like my kind of setup where you have a mac on the desk and an ipad and you're constantly moving the thunderbolt cable between your dock or studio display or whatever if you put the the stand like this with the camera in the bottom left corner if you're looking at it it's in the bottom left corner that would put the thunderbolt port of the ipad at the top makes it a lot easier to unplug it and plug it back in i've kind of been doing that a lot at my desk it doesn't look the best uh but it does

make it a lot easier to move that Thunderbolt port or Thunderbolt cable around. Yeah. The thing where we wish it would snap, like I agree, it snap at 90 degree angles. This made me think that I wish more MagSafe docks would do that, MagSafe stand for the iPhone. You know how like the battery, the MagSafe battery that Apple used to sell? Yes. On the back of that battery, so you've got the magnet ring, but it also had a strip of magnets, vertical strip of magnets below the magnet ring.

That would make it so when you snap the battery onto the back of the iPhone, it would stay aligned. I wish more MagSafe stands had that, like that little strip of magnets to make sure that when you put your iPhone on the stand, it's perfectly vertical. I completely agree. I do that all the time. Right now, my iPhone is on the stand and it's not perfectly vertical and I keep tweaking it throughout the day. It's like, I hate this.

Yeah, I have a third-party battery pack that does the same thing. It has the ring of magnets and you can just rotate it all day long because it doesn't actually snap into place and lock. But yeah, that's the MagFlow Pro. Do you guys have any other questions on it? I mean, I'm pretty sure I would have loved to have that back in my iPad days. Yeah. Like I said, I've tried just about every magnetic iPad stand, and I've tried a lot of the clamping ones.

I don't like the clamp ones where there's two things that clamp onto it. I love the magnetic iPad stands. These have been huge for me. This one is hands down my favorite. I liked the Affinity Adjust one because it was kind of cool, because especially if you were drawing, like it would come down low and you could like draw on it. That was really nice. I don't do a lot of drawing, but I could see for people like that, that's a really nice feature. But if you're somebody that works at a desk and you just want your iPad as a display and you want it eye level or level with your monitor,

this is the way to go. Like I said, I'm tall. So I have this thing up high already. and then it sits on top of my monitor stand. So that way it can get to the same height as the studio display. So it can be ergonomic for me. So you might have to prop this up a little bit more. I've talked to them in the past and they were like, this is about as comfortable as we want to make it as far as going high because what they don't want to do is they don't want to make it too top heavy and have it come crashing over and then your iPad display breaks.

Your iPad's getting wrecked if it falls like that. Yeah, if this thing falls, But that being said, the base is sturdy. It's not going anywhere. Like, I'm applying a lot of force to shake it right there. But, like, just tapping on it. Like, just imagine my iPad's in the stand right now. It's not. It's over there. But, like, it's not falling over if you're tapping on the display. Like, you've got to punch that thing in order to knock it over. Like, it's got a nice base to it. Nice. Cool. Awesome.

Well, yep, that is the MagFloat Pro. Again, highly recommended. The M4 versions are now shipping, which I am incredibly glad about. It's got an M4 chip? Yes. The stand itself has an M4 chip. How much RAM? Wow. It has 16 gigs of RAM, and unlike the iPads, it can actually have five windows in its stage manager. Incredible. Please fix stage manager this year, Apple. Please fix stage manager.

All right, Matt. I believe you are next up in the document. I am. So I only care about one thing, and that's productivity. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like getting stuff done. You're all about that GTD? Absolutely. Any moment I'm not advancing my life and my career is a wasted moment. and by GTD I mean the new Mustang GTD which is the barely street legal version of the Mustang that has like DRS

oh wow I knew that would get you however I also like to have fun wait wait wait wait you said you only cared about one thing are you lying to us? I was lying I'm sorry I tried to have a little fun. I'm trying to have a little fun this episode, you know? Okay, okay, okay. Fake reviews. And being a little dramatic. A little dramatic.

I am bringing a streaming service, which might be a first for the show. Wow, okay. I am bringing Dropout, which is a streaming service that is available only, Well, it's available everywhere, but like, I don't even know how to describe it. It is a group of people who do comedy, a lot of improv comedy. And I had no idea this existed like six months ago.

And now I am a huge fan. It is some of the funniest stuff I have seen in a long time. And I truly love it. It's a wonderful... It's not going to replace Netflix or Disney Plus or anything. It's a very funny show. It's actually... Oh, I know this face. Yeah, it came out of college humor. Oh. I think the primary owner of it is Sam Reich, who is the son of former U.S. something or other Robert Reich

from like the 90s. But anyway. I hope I qualify as a US something or other. Am I a US something or other? You know what? Just edit this out. Just put in what the actual title was. I forgot what it was. I'll use the AI to put in your voice. Perfect. But it's so funny. It's so great. And basically, they have a ton of shows on it. And they have normal release schedules every week, every two weeks. One of these shows will come out. And it's a delight.

So some of the shows, I'm going to make a very quick pitch for some of the ones that are good. Make Some Noise is an improv show where they, exactly, they give them a prompt and they do funny things with them. They're fantastic. It's lovely. So, so good. In the last season, they had people like Ben Schwartz, Paul F. Tompkins, Pete Holmes. They've had some celebrities on, but like the core cast is just fantastic. There's a show called Smarty Pants where people give PowerPoint presentations on ridiculous things.

It is lovely. New season's coming out of that soon. Hank Green's going to be on one of those episodes, it sounds like. There's one called Game Changer, which is a game show where the rules are different every single episode. I've seen this one. It's hilarious. It's great. Often they do not know the rules and they kind of have to figure out what the rules are midway through. So like sometimes they'll be making wagers on who will do something ridiculous for the least amount of money. They'll try to talk each other down.

I'll do that for $10. I'll do that for $5. There's other ones where they had to like go out on the street and get regular people to do things. It's very fun. There's a whole bunch of shows. There's a Gastronauts one. It's a food show where they get real chefs to do insane, make insane things. There's one called Um Actually, which will be very good for nerds, where it's entirely people trying to trick people into, oh, how does that one work?

I don't know a good way to put it. It's basically a bunch of statements about nerdy things, and one part of the statement is false, and you have to say, um, actually, this part is false, and it's very fun. And they've got specials. I mentioned Hank Green already. He did a stand-up special about his experience with cancer. That's on Dropout. It's very ridiculous. And I wish I could honestly just show you clips of the show to understand it. We'll maybe put some links in the description to get an idea for what it is. But it's so lovely, so wonderful.

And it's like $6 a month. And I would recommend everybody listening, give it a shot for a month. Six bucks, you can enjoy quite a bit in a month, and you can cancel it if you like, but it's very, very fun. And one of my favorite new discoveries of the past few months. So the funny thing is, a few months ago, I was at a friend's place, and so they live with their partner, so they were both there, and they were like, hey, Niléane, every day we watch, like every week or something,

we watch Game Changer. Yeah. And there's a new episode today, And they wanted to show me the episode. So I watched it with them. And I don't know what happened. But I found it extremely unfunny. Oh, no. So this is the impression that it left on me. But they were crying. They were laughing and crying. They were loving it.

And I was right beside them just thinking why it's so funny. Wondering why it's so funny. But okay, you have my testimony that at least two people were indeed laughing really loud to this show. It's hard to explain comedy. Yeah. Yeah. So I will definitely put some clips in. And you guys should watch the clips and see if it does anything for you. I will sign up you drop some names in there and some of the show descriptions and stuff and that sounds right up my alley

so I will sign up for a month and check some stuff out nice so that's our homework of course but are there other small streaming services that you guys enjoy like outside of the big ones so I see your notes and I'm just going to steal one right from you You should. F1 TV. I mean, come on. We are a month away. We are almost back. Is that small? It's different. It's not a startup.

They're getting started. I would say it's one of the mainstream ones. And, I mean, it's only available in certain countries. So, like, the UK people can't get it because they're stuck with Sky and, like, some other places. And then now there's word that it might go away and Netflix might get it. It's like a whole thing. Oh, I really hope Netflix doesn't get it. Yeah, F1 TV is the best sports streaming app. It's so good.

It's reasonably priced and you get everything. It's available in France. And what's really cool about it too is it's, okay, you're watching a race. Yes, they have the main feed, but they also have a bunch of different feeds. Like if you have a favorite driver, you can just switch the feed to constantly sit in the cockpit of that driver's car. And you could just watch that driver's car for the whole race. So there are people that will set up a dozen TVs, a dozen different screens or something like that.

And they will have the main, like you see these images on Reddit and stuff like that where like, yes, they will have their big TV with the main feed of the race. But then they'll also have like the track telemetry feed. They'll have like the cockpit feed of a bunch of different people. It's really good. And it has some of the best presenters, best hosts of any sports stream service I've ever seen. I know some people are on the fence about Will Buxton.

He's no longer with it. He went to IndyCar. So he's gone. That's true. Yeah. But they have former Formula One drivers, former IndyCar drivers. They have journalists. They have a really nice balance of people with different experiences, but they all have a love for Formula One. And you can just tell they're just nerding out about it. So it's a lot of fun. Yeah, it's great. I also really love the Corridor Digital premium subscription, I guess.

They do like VFX artists react. They do that series. Oh, I see who that is. Yeah. So they do extended episodes of that on their subscription, which is again, only like six bucks a month or so. It adds up, I guess, but that one's really, really good. They release new episodes every Saturday. So I, I like to watch those. That's a great way to start my weekend. Can I say one thing about streaming services really quick? Sure. So streaming services started off as a way to cut the cord from cable.

Save some money. Hey, you got a bunch of stuff over here on Netflix. Oh, that's cool. Oh, yeah, this thing called Hulu popped up, and it's all the major TV networks putting all their shows on the Internet the day after they air. Well, that's pretty cool. A couple years go by. We now have a worse version of cable that costs way more money. Like, Danielle and I kind of added up what we're spending on streaming services, And it's way more than like my family when I was growing up ever spent on cable. And everything's in these different silos.

And yeah, there's the TV app, but Netflix doesn't support it. But they kind of supported it for a minute and they have the technology to do it, but they refuse to support it. But anyways, we've made a worse version of cable, people. Yeah. You know what? This is not something that people say out loud. But I just pirate things now. I don't care. I'm so mad at this I used to like currently I don't have a bunch of money lying on my account like we're having trouble with money

so we've been cutting down on services and oh my god it's so much money when you start cutting down you realize all of that money was going away every month and we're not even watching like offender was disney plus like there's a ton of stuff on disney plus but what we're paying it for is star wars there's not a ton of star wars star wars comes out every like six months at most there's

a new thing but then then there's nothing and yeah so we've got disney plus i'm going to pay for it just when there's a new Star Wars thing that comes out, and then I'll cut it again. Yeah. That's probably what we're going to end up starting to do is because it's just like we'll focus on a couple of shows at a time, and these other services we're paying monthly for and not touching them. So it's like, why are we doing that?

And especially when you get to the point where it's like, okay, we want the 4K version, and now almost every streaming service requires you to pay extra 4k version and it's just like and it's low bit rate 4k so it's not even like really good looking 4k it's like it's like just a bit better than 1080p oh i must say something terrible that netflix does all the time i don't have a netflix anymore i'm free from that nightmare i just treasure stuff i don't care they find us transphobic people so i don't care i will treasure this stuff all day um

so netflix i'm really worried about like what i have to do to make sure we don't get in trouble with the edit of this episode. I mean, I'm not in the US. Like, if you're in the US, don't do it, okay? Yeah, but there's some YouTube rules that I have to worry about. Okay, I love YouTube. Like, I've been loving YouTube all... Can I make it go away in the trouble? I love YouTube. We are great guys, YouTube. I pay for YouTube premium all the time. I pay it twice every month. Anyway, yeah, Netflix, something that I hate about it is the fact that in France, at least, there's a ton of movies that's available on it,

and series as well, where they only have subtitles in French, or like some weird thing like that. You get the original version and then subtitles in French. You can't have subtitles in English or any other languages. For example, you're limited to French, which I hate because to me it causes trouble. Like when I'm watching something in English and subtitles on different language. I'm having trouble following. And worse, sometimes it's only in French dubbed, dubbed in French, and that's it.

You can't switch it to the original version. And that's even worse that I hate it. And it's even more expensive. It's getting more expensive every day. I hate it. I'm so mad at this. We have created a worse version of cable. Yeah, I think it's a better version of cable, but we can leave it there. I just don't like that everything is in different silos, and then you get into stuff like the Apple TV, and things have different players, and that different player handles subtitles differently, or audio differently, or controls differently.

And then on top of that, some services support stuff like the TV app, others don't. I mean, yeah, I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective of someone who remembers multi-year contracts where you couldn't cancel if you wanted to. There was no ability to get rid of. Okay, sure. You remember times when black and white TV, okay. He remembers the time of the dinosaurs roaming the earth. I only bring it up because you said it's the worst version of cable, so I'm comparing it to cable.

Yeah. But yeah, like the ability that you can say, like, I'm just going to subscribe to Disney channels when I want to watch Disney stuff is a nice thing. I think that's a good thing that you can do that. And yeah, I like it. I think it's good. Yeah, no, it sucks. I don't want to leave you the final word on this. It sucks. Let's move on. I just want high bit rate stuff. Just give me high bit rate stuff so I can see it on my glorious TV. And you know what's happening now too?

Like now you're paying for it more than before. Like it's getting more expensive. And they're adding ads on top of it. Jesus Christ. Why are we accepting this? Like this is not okay. What the hell? That's what really annoys me is when I pay for like the ad free tier. But they're like, oh, no, we're still going to show you ads. But it's just for our stuff. And that's okay. And I'm like, no, no, it is not. Do you mean the thing that plays at the start of an episode where it's like, here's another show on our service,

like Apple TV does? Yeah, exactly. That's still an ad. That's still an ad. That's 100% an ad. And look, I get it. As somebody that makes money from ads, like I pay my bills because of ads. I get it. But I also aren't selling people a $6, $7, $10 a month subscription to my YouTube channel. Like... And raising the price every day. Exactly. I mean, I could. Like, if you really want to, you're more than welcome to send me $10 a month if you want.

I will not say no, but I'm also not telling you you have to. So, anyways. So, Matt, how did that conversation on streaming services go? I really just think you should watch Dropout and have some fun. Yeah, that's what I recommend. I like that. My promise to you, I will check it out. Perfect. All right. I don't want to do this. I really don't want to do this. Hey, you know what? I'm having fun today. We started strong with democracy, and we're ending strong with a great challenge.

What was the challenge? What was the challenge? That's a good question. You guys need me for the rest of this episode? I can bounce. Yes, yes. So last week's challenge, I wanted to have fun to slightly peer off the table the tech side of things. And I was into music, as you know, lately. So, yeah. And I found out that you both don't really like Coldplay. I would say that's an understatement.

Yeah, I know. You don't really enjoy Coldplay. I kind of like it. Like, it's not my favorite band or anything. I kind of like it. So the challenge was find your new favorite Coldplay song. And last week I said, like, try to find a, like, don't just go and look at their top charts. Just trying to look for it in some way. And yeah, that's it.

Intentionally vague. Do what you want. Just find your new favorite Coldplay song. Should I go first? Yes, you should. Okay. so what I did because I have every Coldplay album in my Apple Music Library Chris Chris is looking a bit weird okay every Coldplay album in my music library the best one by the way is not the one that you you would think but I won't say which because I don't want to spoil any if it's any of your picks and I was wondering

Do I have any singles in there? Usually I don't add any singles to my library. I don't know if you do that, but I hate adding singles. Very, very rarely. Unless it's like... Unless it's not available in an album. Or like it's only a single. The thing that comes to mind is a couple years ago, My Chemical Romance did that one-off song. And that was it. They didn't do an album. It was just that one-off single, like that kind of thing.

Exactly. I also do that. Only add singles if they're unique, if they can't be found in an album. So I was wondering if that was the case with Coldplay. Do I have any Coldplay singles in my library? Because if I do, it means it's a song that's not available in any album. And you know what? There was one, and that's my pick. And that song is a Christmas song, and it's called Christmas Lights. And I've listened to it a couple of times since, yeah, for the past few days.

It was released 14 years ago in December 2010. And I actually remember when that song came out. I really liked it at the time. So I don't know what to say about it. It's a cute song about Christmas or Christmas Lights. down in the street whatever I don't care the lyrics are cheesy but it's nice I like it and I found that the music video

is actually pretty nice too it happens on a theater stage like a small theater stage an old school one wooden floors and with wooden decors piece of decors it's cute that's my pick, a Christmas song by Coldplay. I think it's pretty unexpected enough to be my pick. It's not what I expected, no. Chris, we can play these songs for YouTube. YouTube will be fine if we just play. Yeah, we can just play the whole song.

See, that is my favorite part of the fact that our show is on YouTube, is that I have the absolute best excuse of not including these songs in the edit, because we would get an absolute copyright strike against us. They're not like 30 second fair use or something. No. Another thing. You could probably get away with like three seconds. Yeah, maybe three seconds. And no. Yeah. Let's not do that. I got a copy. I did a video like after an Apple event once.

And I included a 12 second clip of the keynote. And even that got like a no-no strike against it. Like, you can't, like, the clips you show have to be short. No, it was just like the Apple keynote thing. Okay. All right, Matt. What is your favorite Coldplay song? So, I went all out with this one. Oh, I'm so disappointed in you. I listened to every single Coldplay album.

Oh, nice. That's torture. Elyon, you just tortured poor Matt. Look at him. He is a broken man now. I mean, he did that to himself. I didn't do that. So I really wanted to do it right. And I wanted to test my own preconceived notions. Because you did mention in our iMessage a week or two ago, like, do you guys like Coldplay? And my initial reaction was, not really. But I haven't listened to them in many years. And I used to like them.

So I wanted to see if I had changed or they had changed or whatever. So I listened all the way back from Parachutes all the way through the new one, which is like a moon. I forget what it's called. Moon music? Yeah, it came out last year, I think. So I listened to everything. They have an album called Moon Music? Really? Oh, my God. So I have actually, one, two, three, four, five, six, I have six songs from their first six albums that I think are really great.

And then it really falls off a cliff for me. So I have no picks from anything after that. Everything after Ghost Stories, I have no picks. Those aren't for me. It's fine. I see. Are you sure? Yeah. Milo's Die Lotto. That was before Ghost Stories, I think. And Charlie Brown is the best song for that album. So anyway, Contenders on Parachutes, Yellow. Oh, what a classic. The first one a lot of us old people heard. It's lovely.

From X and Y, Fix You. A cliche choice, but it's the best song on not their best album. It's great. On Viva La Vida, Lovers in Japan, Reign of Love. Very good song. So good. Really enjoy that song. My favorite song in Viva La Vida is Life in Technicolor 2. Is that the opening or the closing? Yeah, there's an opening that's just life in Technicolor, but that's just instrumental. And then there's a... Okay, yeah. Beautiful La Vida is very good.

Yeah, Milo, that one. Charlie Brown. And then on Ghost Stories, I really like Magic or Sky Full of Stars. Star Full of Stars? I'm not sure. Those are both pretty good. But the best song is I regret to say is not a change from what I probably would have said 15 years ago. It is The Scientist from A Rush of Blood to the Head. It's an incredible song. So I actually was off to a really good start when I listened to Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head and I'm like

this is great. I'm enjoying this. And then yeah I'm not so much into there. Once they transitioned into like I don't even know. More straight up like pop more electronic influences. Yeah, they went hard into Ultra Pop or something like that at some point. Ultra Pop, okay. Yeah, that's what I would call it. I don't know if that's it. Okay. But yeah, it doesn't click with me. I don't find it offensive or anything, but I was skipping tracks when I was halfway through on some of those new albums.

But yeah, The Scientist is my contender. I think it's a very, very good song. I'm not saying it's the best of... I suspect the next person will say this is my pick. He probably doesn't even have a pick, but it's going to be, this is my pick, and I still hate it. I think this is a brilliant song from a band who was making really, really great music that I enjoyed. Nice. I like this selection. Now is the time to say that my favorite album that I was mentioning earlier that I didn't say the name of is Everyday Life.

It's got a black and white cover, and it's got great titles in there like Orphans and Everyday Life, And including a song featuring Stromae. Like, if you don't know, he's a Belgian singer. Yeah, I don't... Okay. It's also possible because I mainlined these in, like, two days. It's possible I just out-coldplayed myself. And at a certain point, I was like, I can't listen anymore coldplay.

But I was committed, so I kept going. Yeah. All right, Chris, you're doing faces. Yeah. What do the faces mean? So the challenge, the wording of the challenge. Hold on. Hold on. Find your new favorite Coldplay song. Song. That is the optimal word there. Because the word song implies that they make music, which they don't.

they just make sounds, noises. Okay. Yeah, I didn't do this. I wasn't going to listen to Coldplay. There's not a chance in hell I was ever going to listen to Coldplay. Like, I... Okay, so... When I was in film school... When I was in film school, my film school teacher loved Coldplay. So we would be in the editing lab, and he would have Coldplay playing over the speakers all the time. And it was pure torture. It is soulless radio music. It is not...

Music has to have emotion, and Coldplay does not have that at all. It is just notes. That's not true. That Christmas song is emotional. Okay, sure. You hate Christmas. No, I love Christmas. Are you kidding me? I love Christmas. Christmas is my favorite holiday. Except my birthday. My birthday is the best holiday than Christmas. they don't have a your birthday song again another issue with Coldplay so I listened to some Van Halen

some Def Leppard a little bit of Rush I listened to a lot of the old AFI stuff this week like Very Proud of Ya is one of my favorite albums of all time back when AFI was a punk band so Chris no not Chris Matt what are we doing here I don't care this is my protest this is my protest challenge Okay, let me ask God. Is Coldplay music? Are you asking Siri?

ChatGPT. Oh, okay. Technically, yes. But I get the feeling you're asking something deeper, like whether Coldplay's music has artistic merit. No. Or if it fits a certain definition of real music. If so, it depends on your perspective. They blend pop, rock, and atmospheric sounds, which some people love and others find bland. What's your take? Yeah, okay. I would like, if we are doing democracy for this one, I would very much like my option in the poll to say,

I hate Coldplay. Or Coldplay sucks, Coldplay is not music. You can take your pick. Anyways, this is my protest week. I don't think we've ever had a protest week before. I am... No. I'm leading the charge. I can't listen to Coldplay. It is... I just can't do it. It's just so sad. Yep, sorry. Couldn't do it. I know I'm going to get crap for this. I absolutely know I'm going to for not following the rules, but dear listener, every single week, we have somebody that doesn't follow the rules.

Neilion brought clack last week. Matt didn't even have keycaps on his keyboard. And yet I came in third, so... I brought a keyboard. I just I couldn't do it I couldn't bring myself to do it sorry this is chaotic behavior I'm sorry I couldn't do it I I knew like all week long this was hanging over my head and I was like I gotta do something at some point and it literally got to last night and I was like I'm not gonna do it this is just okay okay so I'm protesting this week hmm yeah well sorry okay I'm I have an idea.

Okay. Your protest will be reflected on the thumbnail. How's that? Yeah, I don't know. Okay, all right. It will. Oh, are you going to like Photoshop on top of him? Oh, no. I was not thinking that. I do not consent to that. I was not thinking that, but it's a good idea. No, I do not consent to that. Something to think about. I was thinking of blacking out his face but yeah well you know we'll see what happens Matt is a designer after all

he is a designer he's a lot of things he wears many hats but not actual hats almost never know alright I don't even know how to we just move on right No, we don't. No, we don't. Oh, you got something else? Okay. I want to end on Coldplay. So, I will recommend, in addition to Matt's pick and Christmas lights, go listen to, which one was it?

In Everyday Life, the album, listen to Arabesque. Great song by Coldplay, which I think Chris might like if he tried. I'm not going to try. It's a great song. Arabesque. there you go now we can end I stick by my stance of their soulless radio music new challenge is super sweet super simple super sweet find your second favorite Coldplay song no absolutely not I'm vetoing this I'm feeling good again

nice no it's obviously not that instead I want you to find the best screen icon. No, we're not doing that either. We're not doing that either. I was about ready to tell you to pick something different. Okay. So now that I've given you all the bad ideas, my actual one is continuing the fun trend. I think we should all try to bring a video game that is playable on the Mac that you think the comfort zone audience would

enjoy. Nice. Does it have to be related to Coldplay? It doesn't have to. But if there's like a Roblox thing you can find where there's a Coldplay world, whatever. The one stipulation I just thought about this. It should be a game you can run on the Mac. Okay. Not a cloud streaming thing. Like you have to install it on your Mac. You should be able to install it on your Mac and run it from the Mac. that's the only rule app store no app store whatever um but yeah some some mac game okay yeah mac game gaming doesn't get a lot of love um there's more there than there used to be like

there is some some pretty decent stuff so yeah find uh cyberpunk is on there now and that's uh that's pretty cool did it actually come out yeah that's already out yeah yeah my god have mercy on our gpus all right i know right so yeah i was actually kind of surprised about that about that one did no man's sky ever ship i know they said no man's sky was supposed to come to all of the m series but did it ever come to the ipad because it's not gonna come to all the m series ipads okay all right

it came out on the mac i think maybe only on steam as well not in the mac app store maybe it is on the mac app store but yeah it's uh definitely on the mac but i don't think the ipad one ever happened that is a great PSVR 2 game if you have a PSVR 2 that is a great game to play really fun it's not in the Mac App Store so it must be only on Steam interesting alright well that just about does it for this episode of the show

but before we wrap up I have an end of the show question for you like I normally do and this one might take a turn but I'm kind of curious what is your favorite tech-ish related tip that you've ever got that kind of changed your life for the better? It was one day somebody asked me to find my new Coldplay song, my new favorite Coldplay song. Best tech tip I've ever had. The tip you gave yourself. Yeah. Found a great Christmas song.

Oh, I know what I'm going to do. It was a great Christmas song. Everybody loved it. Oh, no. Jesus. I have so much editing to this episode. You reap what you sow. Matt, what about you? What you sow, what you sow. You reap what you sow. It's not tech-ish. It is tech, like just straight up tech. Someone, my brother, convinced me to build a PC like five years ago now.

And I'm so glad I did. Nice. I can play so many games now. Nice. I know. I think this is the year I build a PC. But GPU prices, man. What's up with that? You're still all in for less than a baseline MacBook Pro. Yeah. I think a lot of what ends up happening in my computer-related life boils down to what happens at WWDC this year. We'll see.

For me, it's kind of sort of techish related, but it's just clean your workspace every single morning. Like when you come into your office, clean up, have a fresh, clean space. I get so much more stuff done when I have a nice, clean room or clean desk. You know, if you have trash on it or packages or letters or Dr. Pepper cans or whatever, just take a minute, clean it up. It's really nice. All right. That just about does it for this episode.

Thank you all so much for listening. Oh, by the way, I forgot to say. Okay. Yeah, go listen to Coldplay. Oh, Chris, I've got one thing to say, actually, as well. I swear to God. Really go check out those first couple Coldplay albums. They're very good. That's it. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Ha ha ha ha