I'm Sick, I Have a Sickness

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, but this week I was actually able to get through the intro. As always, we are joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? Chris, I'm doing great. I'm feeling very proud of you. Well done. Thank you. I didn't call you a guest or a ghost or anything, but we're also joined by Neelion, who could be a ghost. I don't know. I've never met her in person. Only over the internet.

Are you a ghost, Neil Leone? Maybe. I'm not sure. We'll explain a lot. Yeah, I go through walls sometimes. Oh, that's a big sign. That's probably a big... Yeah, you might be a ghost. Yeah, I must say that I have not slept. In the past 24 hours, I slept to about three hours at most. I'm going to look sad. But I'm not that sad.

I'm just tired. Yeah, something's going around comfort zone because I only have about two hours of sleep right now. I'm running on pure caffeine. High octane caffeine right now is what I'm running on. I don't know. I don't know what that means. Anyways, we have a show to do. We have some tiny topics. Let's get into this. So first up, I would like to point out, I have a restored faith in democracy. Now, I have not looked at this yet, but I know my faith is going to be restored in democracy.

We did a challenge last week. It was Neil Leon's challenge to pick your new favorite Coldplay noise. She might have said song, but really it's just noise. And we put out a poll that I'm very excited about. We did not. We absolutely did. I'm looking at the comfort zone, official comfort zone Macedon account right now. And it says comfort zone episode 38 official in all capital letters. So that's how you know it's official poll. And the challenge was to find your new favorite Coldplay noise at 64% of the vote.

Well, first place goes to Coldplay sucks, which I might've voted for that one. I don't know. That was, you know, my personal pick. But coming in at second place, we have EW at 23%. And at 14%, we have Ouch My Ears. So anyways, I have a restored faith in democracy now. I'm quite happy. Thank you all for backing me up. I appreciate that.

Chris, I don't mean to rain on your parade. in the show notes right below that there's a line item called ladies and gentlemen we got them yeah i'm a little worried about that i saw that and i that wasn't me that put that in there oh i know what it is so we wondered if you would notice but every single chapter title in last week's episode is a cold play reference i wouldn't notice that because i don't listen to cold play because i have taste and in fact you complimented the titles when i sent them over last week to be fair i was very busy and i didn't care you were just like okay this works i don't care

you were clueless i okay so ladies and gentlemen i was so over this episode uh not because of the coldplay stuff but because i had a horrendous time editing that episode something went wrong with our recording and the audio and the video were not syncing up for my track and neilion's track Matt's track, for some reason, was fine. I have no idea. Perfection over here. What a pro. The whole time I was editing, I was constantly having to retime my track and retime Neelyon's track.

I started editing this episode at 9 a.m. on Monday or something, and I did not finish until 6 p.m. It was a nightmare. so when Matt sent over all the titles and stuff like that I literally could not care an ounce like I could not give a crap because I was so over this episode imagine having to listen to Coldplay stuff over and over and over again because you're constantly having to read Time stuff yeah I can't imagine yeah it was rough so anyways

yes you might have got me with that but I got you with the polls there was no poll by the way i'm looking at it right now i have on good information that the comfort zone account was compromised uh fortunately an official i'm pretty sure you're the one that gave me the password an official uh post came out uh later to reaffirm that the poll was illegal. And yeah, this week there was no, I mean, last week there was no poll, just disappointment.

And we should leave it at that. Okay. I disagree. Anyways, let's move on. And the password might have been changed. That's wise. That's wise. This will never happen again. i gotta go look all right we got a couple other things in the tiny topics and i have no idea who put in what so i'll let you guys take it from here yeah i put in um feedback on your most recent uh

video about how you're using your mac mini uh i watched it this morning and uh i really liked it it was a good video so well done um but i do have feedback um my feedback is you called out super charge which i love anytime someone calls that supercharge makes me happy i'm pretty sure i credited you for that i think you did i think but i forgot to put a link to your channel in the youtube description that's okay i should go that's okay um the worst you also mentioned you clean up your audio tracks and you need hush on the mac to do that um i did download hush i'm going to try it

out as well but i don't know if you've used adobe's enhanced speech web app that might be useful for you for cleaning up audio tracks on the web instead of in an app so if you're already paying for a creative cloud then you have it i do but it's just the lightroom and photoshop one i think that's enough but i don't know for sure what is it called adobe audio adobe enhance speech i'll send you a link okay i will put a link in the description as well but that's it's very good it can over process it really tries to make it sound like a a very deep podcast voice but it can uh also do a

lighter touch as well so interesting i i will give that a shot because that that is something that bugs me every time i record audio so i process all of our tracks in hush every time i record a video i process all that in hush and anytime i go back and do like reshoots with voiceover keen listeners may notice a couple of times in videos, pretty much every single video. Like when I record the audio or when I'm recording the video, I might say something in the video that's like, I might get like the steps to doing something wrong, or I might like, am I not explaining it in the best way or

something like that? So what I'll do is I'll just go back, re-record just audio only, and then cover it up with B-roll. So I also run that stuff through Hush as well. Nice. But yeah, that is, oh and you also had one quote in the video that i really liked as a mac fan myself you said if it's your computer and you should be able to customize it how you want and i was like yes i i have come so hard to believe that your computer you own this computer you should be allowed to do whatever you want if i want to go install malware on my computer that's my business

That's my God given, right? Yeah, I'm an American. I can do what I want. I'm going to drop my Mustang fast and install malware on my iPad. No, I absolutely believe it's your computer. You should do whatever you want. And that is something I've really been enjoying playing around with the Mac. I had a whole section in that video about like building the perfect multitasking system for me. I was able to do that because of third-party apps, and it's not something I can do on the iPad.

Yep, so that's all. Really good video. They're always good, but this one really stood out to me, so well done. Thank you. Yeah, there might be more Mac app videos coming in the near future, because I really enjoyed doing that one. I had a lot of fun putting that one together. Nice. And Niléane, you have something about the weather. Is it just sunny, sunny weather? Nice I haven't slept much. So, yeah, as you may know, I am from an island, a French-owned island, I guess.

French island in the Indian Ocean called La Réunion. And I know that some people listening to us like it when I mention it. But anyway, for the past 24 hours and more, there has been a cyclone hitting the island. And it's been an adventure because I spent the full night last night listening to the radio, local radio, and hearing the news, how it's going.

Long story short, it's pretty incredible stuff. Some of the winds that were recorded were like measurements that have not been seen since the 1960s. So over 200 kilometers per hour. So that's pretty huge. As of right now, as we are recording right now, the worst is over. like it's going away and people are starting to fix stuff.

But there has been massive floodings all over the island and lots of wreckage. Unfortunately, three people died. Close to half of the population is without electricity right now as I'm speaking. I do know from experience that La Reunion fixes stuff really quickly. Very resilient infrastructure.

And yeah, I just wanted to mention it because it's pretty incredible. I have a link in the show notes if you want to check. I've posted on Mastodon some clips from the live TV feed that I recorded over the night as incredible stuff was happening live on TV, on the local TV. There's a clip where power cuts out, like in the TV studios. And the host is like, are we still alive? And he realizes he's still alive because backup power went on, fortunately.

But yeah, some incredible videos of severe wind, severe rain and floodings. Hopefully now things will get better. And I wanted to mention it because it's important to me. And it's why I have not slept and will impact how I am today in the episode. And yeah, lots of love to people there. My parents are fine. My mom has some water in her living room, but it's nothing close to what some people are having to deal with,

with their house being destroyed and whatnot. So, yeah. I'm watching the video you put in the show notes, and this is wild. It looks intense. Yeah. The video I've linked specifically in the show notes is a reporter during the, when the cyclone eye, so you know how cyclones and hurricanes have eyes in the middle of them. That's where the winds are the most intense. So right when that eye was hitting the island, there was a reporter outside, barely outside, and just like showing off the conditions.

Yeah, the video is wild. The clip is wild. I hope everyone's safe and everything's able to be rebuilt quickly. That's intense. Matt, I did look up the Adobe Enhance audio thing, and there are some limitations with it that Hush doesn't have. First off, it only supports audio files, so you can't just drop in video clips. It does do video, but you are going to have a problem if it's a multi-gigabyte video because you've got to upload that over the internet. Yes, that's what I was going to get to.

is it has a 500 megabyte size limit, which ultimately, like, I could work within audio only in that size limit. That's not the big deal. But the big issue with it is it has a 30-minute max duration, which, since I throw our audio clips into it... Oh, they've dropped it. Okay. Which is funny, because they're advertising it towards podcasts, but with a 30-minute file size, like 30 minute duration max for the file.

And then you have one hour of total daily limit. So like there's absolutely no way we'd be able to use it for this show. Oh, for sure. And Hush is completely local, which is nice because it, especially on the M4 Pro Mac Mini, it rips through those, or rips through it. It processes it really quickly. So yeah. Well, dang. Bookmark it just in case for a video maybe, but. Yeah. Yeah. I'll keep an eye on it just to see if they change their limits because that would be really nice to be able to do this right on my iPad and not have to copy files over to the Mac and put them into an iCloud folder, wait for the iCloud folder to sync, then grab them from the iCloud folder and put them in my Final Cut project on my iPad.

Yeah. All right. Cool. All right. Well, let's get into the main show. Nemean, you're first up, and I am very curious about this. Matt and I already have thoughts I know, and we don't even know what this is about fully. Yeah. We used to be a remote review show. Now we are a keyboard review show, it seems. Yeah. I feel like we've always been a keyboard review show. At heart, you know. I think we are a Coldplay review show. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. This is a long con to turn into a Coldplay fan podcast.

Chris has no idea. Okay, so I will not spend too much time on this. I thought that it was funny because I've been bothering you boys with the magic keyboard so much. I thought, hey, now that this is over, let's change the keyboard I use. So I pulled out on my drawer a keyboard that I bought a few months ago and I have not used. Like it's brand new. I ordered it and put it in a drawer and threw money like that as if I did not buy it.

The keyboard is the Logitech MX Keys Mini. Okay. Heck yeah. And the funny thing is, it is my second MX Keys Mini. I have two of them. Why do I have two of them? because I used to have one that was the normal version where the layout is both Mac and Windows, and I really wanted to get the Mac-specific layout, so I did that.

So yeah, now I have the MX Keys Mini for Mac, specifically. So why this keyboard? I pulled it out because I remember liking the feeling of typing on this keyboard. Like, I know you guys are like... Don't lump me in with Chris. I want fancy switches. I will lump you in. No. You're like elitist. That's what you say. Yeah, elitist about keyboards. I will 100% admit to being elitist when it comes to keyboards.

I have no problem admitting to that. Yes. I know. However, I like the feeling of this keyboard. I like that the keycaps, they have like a rounded indent, a concave, I guess. Yeah, a concave indent on every key. It feels nice. If you remember, the way I sold you the Magic Keyboard was... Sold? Yeah. Yeah, you bought it, right? The way I sold you the Magic Keyboard last time was mainly about the function row, which I really like.

The Logitech MX Keys Mini has a similar, pretty cool, functional MIDI keys. And they are remappable, like using Logitech's software. You can do it using BetterTouch tools as well, I guess. Specifically, two keys that I wish the Magic Keyboard had. And the MX Keys Mini has. One of which is a mute button. Like a button to mute your microphone.

That's useful. Yeah. It's very useful. So if you remember, I did some trickery to remap the dictation button on the Magic Keyboard to be a mute button using shortcuts and AppleScript. It works, but it's a bit like it's not instantaneous. And the fact that it's, yeah, probably because it has to run two scripts every time. But yeah, Logitech's mute key is instantaneous and works really well. Funny thing, I have the Elgato Wave XLR on my desk, which is a very

simple audio interface for a microphone and for monitoring. The LEDs on the Wave XLR, they light up red when you tap it, because it's got a touch-sensitive surface. When you tap it, the LEDs light up red. It means you mute it. Funny thing, something I've not noticed with anything else I've tried before, when I use Logitech's mute key, it also lights up red on the WaveXLR.

I don't know what's going on. I've tried to understand it. How does the WaveXLR understand that it's muted, even though it's Logitech doing it on the software side, on macOS? If people have the answer, yeah, I'll take it. The Logitech Wave, the Wave XLR, sorry, I almost said Logitech Wave, but the Wave audio interface must be able to detect Mac OS's mute settings.

Like, that has to be it. Yeah, but I was doing that using Apple Script before, remember? Yeah. And it wasn't able to detect it. Even though I was muting my microphone on macOS. Huh. Yeah. So something different is happening. But great. But great. That's super awesome. Because I hit a key on my MX Keys Mini and it's extremely obvious that I'm muted when I am. So that has made a big difference on calls especially.

One other thing, I told you that the do not disturb key on the magic keyboard, I really like it. Some people were shocked on Mastodon about that. One person especially was like, why? Why do you like the do not disturb key? It's so useless. I get it. Why would you be shocked by that? That's surprising. Okay. I don't know.

Like, this person was... Like, they were nice. I'm not saying that. Yeah. But they seemed shocked. I answered to them. I said, like, I like to be able to just tap a button and I'm immediately able to mute notifications when I'm doing something. Yeah, I don't know. I like it. Anyway, I like the Do Not Disturb Key. Good news is the MX Keys Mini for Mac, specifically the one the model for Mac, has a do not disturb key.

Oh, nice. Oh, nice. So that's really nice. I love the idea of a do not disturb key. I'm totally on your side here. The only thing I wish we could do with them is change what focus they triggered. So by default, they all just trigger the generic do not disturb. But like, it would be really cool, like in macOS settings, or maybe this is something that you could do with better touch tool or shortcuts or something like that. But instead of it doing do not disturb, I could trigger my work focus or something like that. And then when I toggle it, it goes back to my personal focus. So, but that's just a side note.

Yeah, maybe, yeah, could maybe be done with better touch tool. Yeah, I could see how you could. I'll play around with that. That's something, that's something I would like. Yeah. Another thing is it's got a screenshot key, which is like so dumb. And like all the Windows people right now are like screaming out of their lungs. Print screen, print screen. Yeah. Print screen, print screen. Anyway, Apple doesn't know about a screenshot key. Exactly.

Apple doesn't know about a screenshot key, but Logitech does. Exactly. So the screenshot key by default does it the same as Command Shift 3, which is a full screenshot, I believe. I've remapped it to be Command Shift 4. So I can select a portion of the screen and press space to select a window to screenshot that window. Obviously, I'm using CleanShot X on my Mac. Obviously, Matt Burtzler, because Matt Burtzler is on the show and he really loves it.

Also featured in the latest Christopher Lolly Mac video as well. Oh, there you go. I don't watch your videos anyway. Ever since a Coldplay incident. That makes sense. Unsubscribed. Yeah, really like Clinchard X. I've got a Clinchard X key, basically. It's really nice. All right, final thing that I really liked about the MX Keys Mini is it's backlit.

yeah yeah is the apple one not oh no it's not oh okay and yet it won our poll none of our well does yours have rgb it can i i i disable rgb on all my keyboards but they can't a lot of them can i think the only ones that don't have it are my mode keyboards yeah i think the The mode keyboards don't have RGB because mode has taste.

The Logic Keys, what's the name of it anymore? I'm losing my mind. The MX Keys Mini. MX Keys Mini. Yeah, so it's backlit. It's not RGB. It's just plain white, which I like, actually. And it's done in a fancy way. Like, it lights up when you approach your hands above the keyboard. I do this. When I'm watching, I'm not using the keyboard, I'm watching a video.

I just do this on my keyboard. I raise my hand over it so it lights up because it's satisfying. Yeah, they added that. My reaction to this is I love this keyboard. This is an unbelievably good keyboard. This is the keyboard I have at my desk at work. That's what I got worked by me. It's so good. Like you said, it feels good. It's very reliable. There you go. like the um what the like when your hands approach it it they added this in like the last revision a few years ago to like all their uh keyboards but like it also if it's like in like uh because it's

bluetooth if it's in like it's deep sleep mode it also somehow detects when your fingers approach it so it wakes up before you even touch a key so you don't have to do that thing where like you have to wake up the keyboard first and then it starts pairing like i had no idea it should already be by the time you touch it, which is awesome. I love this keyboard. I fully support this. I think it's great. I had no idea. I have the reflex to press the spacebar. Okay, I will try it to see if that works. And it's way cheaper than the Apple one.

It is. And somehow it feels more premium in some ways. So, yeah. So before this keyboard came out, Logitech sent me the MX Master 3S mouse and the MX mechanical keyboard. So it's very similar to this layout, but it's a mechanical keyboard with like brown switches and stuff like that. And this was a while ago. This was back when I had like a MacBook Pro and stuff like that.

So I did a review on that, and I hated their mechanical keyboard so unbelievably much. Their mechanical keyboard is garbage. They have no lubrication on any of the stabilizers. So anytime you hit the space bar or the inner key or something like that, you just hear this rattling sound. It was egregious to me. It was an insult to even be near me. I hated this keyboard. The switches they used felt terrible.

I hated this keyboard so much. I love the mouse. So when I made the video, I talked about the mouse first because I knew Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, like that was going to be the big thing because it was silent. People were excited about that. I focused on that. Then I transitioned over to talking about the keyboard. And I ripped that thing apart so hard that Logitech has never reached out to me. They have never once after that video went live have talked to me. So I ruined my relationship with Logitech, but really, Logitech ruined their relationship with me by making such a terrible mechanical keyboard.

Okay, so Logitech, if you're listening, I like you. Send me stuff. I will review it on Comfort Zone for Chris's pleasure. I still like a lot of their stuff, but... I like, yeah. All of their stuff is great except for the mechanical. Okay, I've never seen it, actually. It's really bad. I ripped it to shreds as well in my video review, and it is, I think to this day, my most disliked video. Oh, people get very upset when you rip apart the MX series of devices.

People are like, what do you mean you spoke bad about the MX Master Mouse? Well, it works terribly with the iPad and it's Apple's fault. No, you can't dislike that mouse. You have to like that mouse. No, I don't because it doesn't work with the iPad. And it's not Logitech's fault. It's Apple's fault. It's Logitech's problem. But anyway, yes. Back to this keyboard. I think it's great. I didn't realize it had a Do Not Disturb button. That's really cool. I don't know if mine does.

I have an older version. I should show it on video for people watching. Hey, look at this. Oh, and you even have it in a good color, too. Oh, you didn't. Yeah, the white one doesn't look as good, I think. Yeah. It's because the board is kind of gray-ish. I don't like it. It can pair with three devices, like all the Logitech things, which is perfect for me. It's great. Apple, what are you doing? I only use one device, so that's useless to me. But yeah, it does. I mean, to be fair, I did figure out the Magic Trackpad, and now I don't worry about swapping them around.

Literally, just like the smallest bit of follow-up. That has been glorious. Just having the Magic Trackpad always plugged into the CalDigit dock, and just jumping between the Mac Mini and the iPad has been amazing. It works. The only thing that can make it better is if I can find an actual Thunderbolt 4 KVM switch or Thunderbolt 5 KVM switch now. Yeah. Can I actually say the one thing I don't like about Logitech's MX series? Ooh, prepare for the feedback, people. Start typing. So that we get the dislikes.

The one thing I really don't like is that none of them, at least none of the keyboards and mice, and I've used basically all of them at this point, none of them have an actual wired mode. It's always Bluetooth. Even if you plug it in, it's still using a wireless connection, which is almost never a problem, except when you're booting into safe mode or you have a PC that's in a different state and you can't connect to Bluetooth. Their accessories are useless. So I have like an old, just wired.

I use other keyboards and stuff, I guess, and nice when I have to do that. But yeah, even when they're plugged in, they're technically doing a wireless connection, which is slightly annoying. Yeah. That was always really frustrating back in my IT days. Before I got into mechanical keyboards, I used to keep a cheap $20 wired USB keyboard in my desk drawer just so I could boot into safe mode and stuff for Windows computers. I think a lot of us have that cheap, like came with a desktop, Dell or HP. It's always the HP keyboard that came with one, but you don't actually use those because you don't want to make your users suffer that much

because it's the cheapest, crappiest keyboard. Yeah. I have a final thing to say that I almost forgot because I'm asleep. So it is the conclusion to my topic. Where is the Magic Keyboard, you may ask? Well, it's still on my desk. Okay, so you're using two keyboards. Are you becoming Christopher Lawley? I am not. I still quite like Coldplay. So yeah, the magic keyboard, what I've done, I can't really show it right now.

So yeah, sorry about that. Maybe I'll take a picture for the show notes. My MacBook Air on my desk is on a stand, like one of those laptop stands for your desk. So you can open up the MacBook to have a second screen, which I do sometimes. Most of the time I don't. What I've done is I've stuck the magic keyboard underneath that stand, upside down.

Why would I do that? Well, because exactly, Touch ID, if I need to unlock my Mac, I can just reach over my finger underneath the stand, which is right over there next to my keyboard, and I can unlock with Touch ID. So now the best of both worlds. It's brilliant. I've even like done it in a way that I can keep the magic keyboard plugged in to the dock to the Thunderbolt dock so that it's not adding a Bluetooth connection because there are already too many Bluetooth connections

in my house which has caused some frequency issues in the past anyway so just wanted to mention the magic keyboard is not dead in fact it's quite alive and the reason why i have them i love the mx keys mini is because it's an approved version of the magic keyboard in some way so there you go magic keyboard still wins no but have you considered doing the thing where you take apart the magic keyboard and just like build like a touch id sensor box thing i i know a few people have done that and it looks cool i i i

I kind of want somebody to just start making those and selling them for like 200 bucks because I know it would be expensive, but I totally would buy it. I have not considered it, even though it seems nice, just because I don't want to bother. I don't have a 3D printer, so I can't make it look nice by myself. So, yeah, I will not do that. So many problems would be solved if we just had 3D printers. Seriously, if you run a 3D printer company, reach out. We will totally shill your 3D printer if you send us some.

I would go crazy. Like I would start fixing things left and right like a maniac. One thing, do you know about adhesive putty, like paste, adhesive paste that you can reuse to stick stuff on walls or... Yep, silly putty. Not silly putty. Sticky tack? No, it's just adhesive. Yeah, sticky tack. Yeah, in French we call it patafix after a brand.

But anyway, I'm addicted to that. Like, I'm sick. Like, this is a sickness. I'm aware. When something goes wrong in the house, I always try to fix it with that first, which sometimes doesn't make sense. And my partner looks at me funny. but it often works. I can fix so many things with that.

One time we had a hole in the wall in a former apartment that we needed to fill before we gave back the apartment and yeah, didn't have any refiller on hand. No problem. I mean, that works. Like just paint over it and make it perfectly flat and the landlord will never know about it. And I don't really care for landlords.

So there you go. I'm done. Great keyboard. Yay Coldplay. I'm going to start bleeping all the Coldplay references and stuff. It's going to be a lot of work. I'm just going to start bleeping them. It's going to be so much work. After last week's episode, it was so long. It was nine hours. If I just did the math right, I don't know. I'm running on two hours. It's OK. It's okay. They can fix you. It's fine. Yeah. Anyways. Jonathan said on Mastodon that we need to come up with a punishment for you.

And I think fortunately, you've had it. You've had your punishment with the edit. Yeah. That was a rough one. But yeah. Anyways, moving on. So, Neelion had a topic about keyboards. I have a topic about what I like to call like secondary keyboards or secondary input devices. so it's kind of a story here i was i saw on the web somewhere advertised this guy right here this is the vault plus what this is is a standalone mechanical number pad so it's just like a mechanical

keyboard but it's just a number pad uh and i was like oh okay that's kind of cool and it comes in a bunch of different colors uh i put a link in the show notes so you guys can check it out if you want there's there's lots of colors i got this green one to kind of match my green keyboard from the the previous mechanical keyboard challenge um just ripping the band-aid right off do not buy this thing it sucks oh no oh no it looks good uh no it's horrible so i have put together i i now have like

20 something mechanical keyboards most of which i've put together it was a breakup hobby during COVID. It was that thing. Everyone had that one hobby during COVID, but I also happened to be going through a breakup. It was like two things in one, so I went really hard in it. It's totally fine now. No big deal. I'm just imagining the saddest Chris I've ever seen just home making keyboards. Living by himself in his apartment making keyboards while COVID's happening.

It was a time. I saw this thing. And I was like, okay, cool. Custom mechanical keyboard. I saw you had to put it together. I'm like, no big deal. Put together a bunch of keyboards. Not a problem. You need to provide your own switches and your own keycaps. But it did come with stabilizers. So I was like, okay, cool. No problem. So this thing shows up, put it together. I'm like, okay, this thing's not going to take me more than like 30 minutes to put together. I'm going to be able to do this pretty quick. I'm not going to go wild with like tape mods or anything like that. So I start putting this

thing together and you'll notice up here at the top video viewers and neely on a mat you'll notice that there's this black spar right here and there's a knob yeah so this right here is supposed to be a screen you can put like date and time or custom info like you can do all sort you're supposed to be able to do all sorts of stuff with it and this knob is supposed to be able to control the volume up down you could push it into mute play pause whatever you want to program it to be these things do not work because the way this thing is built is these things connect to the pcb board via these

ribbon cables and the ends of the ribbon cables do not have actual connectors that you push in into something it's literally just a ribbon you slide into a slot but they're extremely short they're just long enough to fit in there when you close up the case there's nothing that locks them into place. So what was happening is I was putting this thing together. And then I slid the ribbon in there. And then I put it all together. And the ribbon would come out because there's nothing locking those ribbons in place. So these things up here don't work. And I spent probably a

good two hours trying to get that all to work. And I just couldn't do it. And I eventually just gave up. I was like, fine, I'll just use the number pad part. I'm like, so the thing that attracted me about this is not the fact that i want a number pad i'm not an accountant i don't sit here do a ton of stuff with numbers to make me need this but this is all programmable using the app via or you could program it with something like keyboard maestro or better touch tool or whatever you want like this could all be custom keyboards in fact all of these buttons right are actually all

the number buttons are just function row numbers they're extra functions it's like f16 to f22 or something like that. I don't like I just set it up and kind of forgot it. Thanks. So like, these are all set up to just be like extra function numbers that I can program to do different things with something like keyboard maestro or better touch tool or whatever you want to use. And then I since I couldn't get the volume knob to work, I was like, okay, I'll use these buttons right here to be volume up, volume down, play pause. Great. So I loaded it all up, programmed it via via, Plugged it in, started doing stuff with Keyboard Maestro.

Unplugged it because I was going to put this in a video talking about, like, a video that's already out right now about my latest desk upgrades. This thing is absent from the video because I hate this thing. Because when I unplugged it to use it, to film it for the video, I went back afterwards to plug it back in naturally. And you would think, hey, you programmed it via via. Great. It should remember all that. No, somehow the PCB board got flashed again and the custom firmware got wiped out. So it got reset to factory defaults. And I tested it a couple of times and every time I would plug it in and unplug it, it would get reset. I'm like, well, forget this like that. So anyways, if you see this thing advertised, this is more of like a consumer warning and I'll get to an actual recommendation here in a second.

But this is more of a consumer warning because I've seen this advertised all over the place. Do not buy it. Do I am somebody I am somebody if you take the custom mechanical keyboard community, I'm probably above average. I'm not I'm definitely not like the most expert expert person, but I'm definitely above average when it comes to building these things. This thing was a pain. It doesn't work right. And it sucks at being programmed. So don't buy this thing. I'll tell you what. There was a red flag to begin with, which technically, this is the Volt++.

Yes. Yeah. They have two pluses. Is it one plus? Is it two pluses? It's the Volt++ symbol. And that's just, it's suspect. Yeah, on the bottom it says plus, and then there is a plus symbol, so that is a little weird. So it's the Volt++. Yeah, it's the Volt++. There's a programming humor joke in there, but I'm not going to make it. Um, yeah. Anyways, don't buy that. Now, I have talked about this thing in previous videos.

Now, this right here is the BN009. This is a macro pad. This is a nine-button macro pad. Unfortunately, they don't make this one anymore. There is a new version now. Actually, there's two new versions. There is an eight-button version that has a knob that kind of looks like this, but basically this top left key or button right here is replaced with a volume knob, which is nice because you could do volume up, volume down, and play pause with that, which would fix three of the keys that I used this thing for.

And then there is a nine-button version with a big knob. So there are new versions of this thing out made by the same company. So I'm going to go ahead and assume they still work pretty well. You can still find this thing on weird websites, but the one that I have the BN009. But I wanted to talk to you guys about these kind of macro pads and on top of that, the Stream Deck. And I was kind of curious, do you guys use anything like this? Like any of these kind of like secondary devices that could do like keyboard shortcuts or toggling shortcuts

or macros or any of those kinds of things? I am a sucker for buying these. Yes! I have bought two stream decks and at least two macro pad style things like this. What do you got? I don't know. And I'll tell you why, because I don't really care. They're all sitting in a closet. I never use them for more than a couple weeks. This is how the story ends. Yeah.

I always have big ideas. oh like like you guys were talking about screenshots earlier and it's like command shift three and four i also use five uh command shift six also one to repeat the previous screenshot exactly um i have tons of shortcuts for that uh but and i was like oh map them all to the macro pad it'll be great and i just don't do it i just i do it and i don't use it i just keep using the keyboard shortcuts on my keyboard so i yeah they just kind of end up being things that i take up space on my desk so

i never really click with them i don't know why they're cool like i'm looking at this and i'm like i want to buy it but like i know it's going to happen i i love this thing um because i and what i didn't mention is because this macro pad right here i should probably say for the audio is i love the the bn009 this macro pad right here it's just a night button keyboard uh and the reason why i love this one particular is you can program it using the web app via which we've talked about a lot on this show which is basically a way to install custom firmware onto a mechanical keyboard

and because it's working at the firmware level it works not just with the mac but with the ipad as well so i have uh this button right here does command shift 4 so i can just hit this button right here and no matter if i'm on the ipad or the mac it just takes a screenshot i don't have to you know stretch my hands out or anything like that i have media playback controls i got custom keycaps printed from wasd with the media media buttons on them and stuff like that love this thing uh neilion do you use anything like these like stream deck or a macro pad no definitely not

and you could probably guess it because i'm such a fan of the function grow like and just like matt have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts that i have come to learn i know that if i have something like that on my desk i will not use it i will still be using my keyboard shortcuts for everything um so yeah no i don't yeah they always look nice but i think they would be pretty useless for me I totally get that, especially since I'm using a Mac Mini, and when I sit down to work, a lot of times I sit down at my desk.

So even if I am working from the iPad, having these plugged in is really nice. But if I had a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and I worked from wherever, it would probably be kind of annoying because I wouldn't want to take something like this little macro pad, this nine-button macro pad with me. I definitely wouldn't want to take the Stream Deck, and the Volt++ is heavy. This thing's got some heft to it. In fact, it weighs more than the Stream Deck, which isn't that surprising. The Stream Deck is... There's next to nothing in it. But this Volt++ is heavy.

So I totally get the idea of custom keyboard shortcuts, especially if you have an app that does hyperkey. Do you guys use a hyperkey app? Yes, I do. Can I guess which one you use? Is it Raycast? That's what I was going to guess. Yeah? No, that's not it. Oh. Oh. I use BetaTouchTool. Oh, okay. Does that have, is that a built-in feature? Is that something you made yourself in Better Touch Tool? It's a built-in action, yeah, that you can set in Better Touch Tool.

They have one action that's just called Act as Hyperkey. So you can assign that action to any key on your keyboard. But I do the thing that people do, which is the captlock key. So we should probably explain what Hyperkey is really quick. Essentially, hyperkey replaces, usually it's the caps lock key, but really it could be any key, but usually caps lock key. It replaces it with a combination of command shift option control. So it acts as if you hit caps lock key, it thinks you're hitting those four modifier keys all at the same time.

So it basically gives you another way to create custom keyboard shortcuts that won't interfere with other apps because no app is going to have you hit command, shift, option, control all at the same time and then another key. Because like trying to do that with your hand, I had to do it the other day when I was filming that Mac video because CleanShotX doesn't actually see hyperkey. It just thinks it's like for some reason just registers it as a command key. So I was having to hit the all four modifier keys to get it to show up on the screen capture thing.

So anyways. Matt, do you use hyperkey? I am trying to. Oh, okay. The problem I have is my mode keyboard. I'm already using the caps lock key as the tilde key since I don't have that on that keyboard. So I don't really have a good key to assign to the hyperkey. What? And you know what? People gave me crap when we did the poll about having too many keys. I have a tilde key on my keyboard. Just saying.

What's the tilde key? That's the one above the tab on the far left. Under escape. Okay. Okay. You're talking about, yeah. Okay. That's the US layout. Oh, yes. Okay. So you use that as a what? As the caps lock key? So my caps lock key is that key because I use that character quite a bit when I'm doing things. what you could do is you could set up like hyperkey escape to be your tilde key so it's like in that same similar position i'll have to play around i only have so many keys to

play with i am so confused so you use the tilde quite a lot that's what you're saying i do yeah okay he's a big programmer boy now yeah okay but what's wrong with leaving it as the tilde key then I don't have a tilde key. Oh, you don't have a tilde key. Above my tab key is the escape key. So instead of like tilde 1234, it's escape 1234. Oh. Because 60 and 65% keyboards do not have tilde keys. Yeah.

I wonder how that would work with the French layout then. Okay. Yeah. So for me, just so people know, that key, the tilde key that you're calling it, below the escape key and above the tab key. For me, with the French layout, that's the at key, the at symbol, as well as the hashtag. I don't know what's the character called, but yeah, Octothorpe. Sure. That's actually the name of the symbol. It's Octothorpe.

It is, it is. Okay. That's why whenever somebody would be like, oh, hashtag blessed or something, I'd make fun of him and be like, Octophore Blast! Yeah, I think the French name for the character is Croision. And I used to say that as well to annoy people who say hashtag, I say, which is literally just, yeah, anyway. So yeah, that's a pretty important key. Like the ad key.

So yeah, where would that be then? We're too far down the rabbit hole. I'm like already like searching French custom mechanical keyboard. Okay, we're going to go too far. I can already see the ADHD train going. So let's pull our locomotive of focus back into the station. But I did recently just dig out my stream deck, which was kind of in my like tech gear closet because it doesn't work with the iPad,

even though technically it's supposed to, like they have that whole API now, but exactly one app I know of supports this and it's working copy. So I don't really use the Stream Deck with my iPad, but I have been kind of like, ooh, this has a lot more buttons. And the nice thing about the Stream Deck is you can do folders and profiles and you can do shortcuts and you can do macros and you can assign custom keyboard actions and all sorts of stuff right to it. So I'm kind of like gearing up to like, I think I'm going to play around with the stream deck a little bit more and do some like,

do some real fiddling and kind of dive into it. I got really heavy into the stream deck when I had that M1 Max MacBook Pro. And now that I've just been kind of playing around with the Mac even more, I'm like, I could definitely see this as like a nice secondary input device on my desk for like triggering custom final cut keyboard shortcuts or triggering like shortcut automations and stuff like that, or just quickly opening something.

The thing I don't like about the stream deck though, you guys want to take a guess? Feels terrible. Yes. These buttons are disgusting. Oh, really? You know what they feel like? Did you ever use one of those that like old people, old people have it? I'm just going to be mean for a second. I'm sorry, but I'm going to be mean. Old people's laptops, they put those plastic covers over the keyboards to keep the crumbs out. You ever use one of those? I have one. I used to own one.

You have one? Yeah, maybe. Did I just call it me on old? Yeah, mine had Final Cut Pro keyboard shortcuts on it. Yeah. Looks great. It's in a great state. That's exactly what these feel like. That's exactly what this feels like. And it hurts my custom mechanical keyboard heart to use it. So it's like, I want to like it. Like tactile switches and clicky switches. These are like pushing into sand, I feel like.

Yeah. It's just not satisfying. They don't sound good. They're slow. They're not quick. I would love for somebody to build, basically merge these two together. Give me a custom mechanical keyboard with mechanical keyboard switches, but give me the ability to like program the key caps with icons and stuff like that, with ink icons, because that would be cool. I know there are keyboards kind of out there like that where you can program what comes up and stuff like that.

But give me something like that in a macro pad with maybe more than nine buttons. Give me something with like 12, 16, something like 12, 15, 16, somewhere in there. What if you add a plastic film on top of the stream deck? Oh, it might go all the way around. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Then it would be good. Something to think about. So that's kind of what I got this week. I was going to bring this, the Volt++, as a tiny topic, mostly because I hate this thing.

I've seen it advertised everywhere, and I don't want anyone to fall for this thing. It sucks. It's bad. It's not good. Don't buy it. We'll put in the show notes the links to the new versions of the BN009. So if you're interested in macropads, great way to go. Love this thing, especially if you want to program it with via and stuff like that. Or if you're wanting to take a step up, Stream Deck works too. I've used this thing forever. I'm going to put it back on my desk after we record and play around with it a little bit more. But yeah, that's what I got.

Time for the challenge. Yes. And Matt, it was your challenge. So what did you have us do? It was. So my challenge was to bring a video game for the Mac that you think the comfort zone audience would love. And I wanted to say the words there specifically because I wanted us to take our audience into account. Don't just pick your favorite game. Pick the one you think the audience would enjoy. So what did you do, Matt? So I definitely did this.

I started thinking about this, and I initially went to Steam and started looking through my library of Mac-compatible games. And then I was like, Self, you got to get out of Steam, because I know the comfort zone audience, and they're not going to want to go to Steam. They probably don't have Steam installed. They're going to want something on the Mac App Store. Wow, that's a big assumption. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the poll will tell me I'm wrong. The poll always tells me I'm wrong. So I am anticipating this being true. People right now are installing Steam just to be wrong.

I don't even know what game you picked but I have a feeling I'm gonna come in third this week but I'm actually really excited about my pick that's that's actually a great energy to bring into the challenge um so so what I did I booted up the mac app store and I was like what mac what's what games are available on the mac app store and one of my favorite games in the past like 10 years is on there death stranding love this game but I don't think it's the right pick for this and so I went with one of my favorite little games of last year neva or neva i'm not 100 sure how to pronounce it

but it is a beautiful game it's a side-scrolling action game where you play as this character who is going through a world with her pet wolf and you go through the seasons you go through all four seasons and it is an incredibly touching lovely story if you have a pet if you have a kid i imagine this will really really resonate with you and i put a couple screenshots in our show notes to give you an idea for the art style it's unbelievably gorgeous and it's very pretty it's uh it's fantastic uh it's from the studio who

made greece gris g-r-i-s a couple years ago i was gonna say oh yeah this looks like that so this is a more action-y one version of that game. Actually, it's pronounced Gris. Gris? Oh, I shouldn't. I can't. It's Grease. It's iPhone X, not iPhone X. Grease. Grease. Anyway, I love that game too. And yeah, this one is, there's a little more action to this one than that last one.

That last one was more just like platforming with very little combat. This one, there's more combat, but it's definitely a chill game um that's not going to give you a huge challenge and there's like accessibility features and stuff you can turn on like you could turn on like i don't even take damage and so anyone could play this anyone could get through it and yeah it's it's beautiful i kept i have like hundreds of screenshots from it because every time i thought it was as beautiful as it was going to get it it blew me away a few minutes later so yeah i think it's a great great game um you could be doing like four hours too very very short the art style reminds me of Fez.

Have you heard of that game? It's a platform game where its trick is it rotates, the plane rotates and gives challenges based on that. It makes me think of Fez mixed with Monument Valley. Oh yeah, Monument Valley is a good similar one as well. But yeah, that's my pick. I like this. I'm going to, I actually haven't played this, so I'm going to, I'll go download this and check it out and play.

But when I approached the challenge, I did a very similar thing you did, Matt. I actually installed Steam on my Mac, and I was like, I don't know. So I went over to the Mac App Store, and I was browsing around, and I did actually make a mistake in recording last week. I said Cyberpunk was out. I mixed up, no, it's just announced, and apparently Cyberpunk is coming to the Mac. any day now early 2025 is what they've said so i i mixed that up that was my mistake uh cyberpunk was not out because that was my first thought was like oh yeah i'm gonna install cyberpunk i'm

gonna push the m4 pro mac mini and like see what it can do and let's see if i can break this thing and i was like that would be fun but um you know nothing really struck me on the mac app store nothing really struck me on steam and this week it was literally the best possible coincidence russ over at retro game core put out an app i put out a video about emulating games on a mac and i was like huh this is really interesting because i lately have been i don't know i've just like not there hasn't been a big new game that has like grabbed me lately avowed is out and i've been

waiting to get through the series of videos i'm working on right now to start that but like there's nothing that's like big new games that that are really pulling my attention and there really wasn't anything big and new on the mac i did see the new assassin's creed game is supposed to be coming to the mac day one i'm very curious how that's going to turn out i don't think it's going to go well at all but um retro game core uh had a few recommendations for emulating certain games And I've been going back and playing through my Game Boy, Game Boy Advanced, and Super Nintendo catalog.

So I have all of my games emulated as ROMs. And I went ahead and I loaded them up in an app called OpenEMU. And what this is, is it's kind of like a central hub for a bunch of different emulators. So you can throw in all your ROMs for Game Boy games, Super Nintendo, Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, PSP, DS, Atari, all sorts of different like retro arcade or retro gaming consoles.

So I threw in my ROMs and I started playing some Super Mario World. I played Legend of Zelda Link to the Past. Sorry, I had to think that one through. I was playing through, I put in Pokemon Emerald. I threw in my very first, it's not in here. I still have my original like Pokemon Red cartridge that's been emulated and stuff like that. So I played a bunch of different stuff and this worked really well. These games in particular, like Game Boy Games, Super Nintendo Games work really well with a keyboard.

I didn't even pair a controller. I just used the keyboard controls and it worked really well. I broke out my special gaming mechanical keyboard that I have no idea why I built that. I think I thought I was going to build a gaming PC years ago, and I never did. But I was like, well, first I have to have a gaming mechanical keyboard. I didn't. But anyways, that worked really well. I would say I'll get a link for the show notes to that video. It's an hour-long video, but he covers everything from just open EMU for your basic emulation stuff to Xbox 360 emulation on a Mac and stuff like that.

All sorts of different stuff. Everything that I did, and again, all I did was Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Super Nintendo games. Everything I did ran really well. And yeah, I was really happy with it. So that's my pick. I know it's not technically a specific game you install, but you had to install OpenEMU and then load up your ROM, so I think it still counts. Plus, I was looking for something a little more cozy instead of like a big AAA game. Though I almost did pick Borderlands 2 until I saw like the last update was like five years ago or something like that, and I was like,

I'm not going to even try and see if this will still run because I doubt it. That last statement is really upsetting. Five years ago, and I don't even think it'll run on a Mac. Windows is like, this game came out 20 years ago. It probably still runs. See, that was the thing. I saw Borderlands 2, which is one of my all-time favorite games. I love that game. It's probably in my top 10. I saw it was on the Mac App Store. It was $20. I was like, oh, I'll do that. And I scrolled down, and I was like, oh, last update was five years ago. Who knows if this will even run.

And I was like, five years? Isn't that before the M-Series transition? So I'm like, I'm not going to even mess with this. Like, I, yeah. But yeah, I think this is a good pick. Emulation is awesome. Game preservation is awesome. It's very frustrating that we are restricted from playing old games based on when the companies who own the rights decide we get to play them on modern hardware. So I think it's great. I'm very glad that even though I don't have those old consoles anymore, I still have those cartridges.

I still have my old Game Boy Color somewhere, but I have no idea where my Game Boy Advance is and stuff like that. But like I have hardware like the analog pocket, which is great. You can literally slap in Game Boy cartridges and just start playing it and stuff like that. It's fantastic. Big issue with Game Boy games, they have batteries in them. In order to keep their save, those batteries die. You can open them up and change them out, but it's much easier to buy a little device. And I got the one, I don't remember where it's at. I don't remember what it's called, But I got the one that John and Federico always talk about.

And it works really easy. You just slap your cartridge in, run the software. It rips it. It creates a ROM for you. You own it. I don't see anything wrong with it. If you own the hardware, you own the cartridge, and you create a ROM from it, I don't see a single problem with that. That being said, you do you, boo. And you know what I mean. This is not legal advice. This is not legal advice. Nelian. I know what Nelian's going to pick. I haven't looked.

I know exactly what Nelian is going to pick. Can I? No, I don't want to take it away from you. But I'm just going to say, I know what it is. Just pump your fist in the air if you got it right. Okay. Yeah, I've been obsessed with a game. It's called, it's a little indie game called Civilization. I was right. I knew it. Yeah. So obviously I picked this game. It runs on the Mac natively. You've got to install it through Steam right now. I do expect it to come to the Mac App Store at some point because all previous games have come to the Mac App Store.

All previous games, by that I mean Civilization 5 and then Civilization 6 are both available on the Mac App Store. So right now, Civilization 7 is only available on Steam, but it runs natively on the Mac. So I will be fair about this. It runs worse on my M2 MacBook Air than it does on my cloud gaming solution. So I have played a bit of both. I've played it a bunch locally on the MacBook Air.

It's really fine. It's immensely fine. If you turn down the settings, it works great. You can play full game with it. No issues there. It's just because I have access to this cloud gaming solution that I'm paying for, on which I can max the graphics and everything. Obviously, I'm going to pick that most of the time, but it runs great on an M2 MacBook Air if you don't go too far on graphics.

Otherwise, yeah, it's an amazing game, guys. I want to touch a few words on this because people have been raging about this. People are upset. Why are people upset? I'm shocked. Gamers are upset. Yeah, gamers are upset. News at 11. It's a great game. What did I want to say? Yeah, people are upset because a bunch of mechanics have been simplified, overhauled, and yes, Civilization players have old habits, I guess,

and they will leave harsh reviews if you change anything about their favorite license. My honest opinion is that Civilization 7 is more accessible and has a bunch of smart ways to deal with complexity as a game runs along. Because now, if you don't know, in Citation 7, one game is split into three ages.

So you've got the Antiquity Age, the Exploration Age, and the Modern Age. And that's been really nice, Because basically, once you end an age, it means that you can stop there. And the developers actually encourage people, like, if you just want to play one age, you can. And you don't have to start at the antiquity age. You can start a game at the modern age directly. And you can play just one full age instead of all three.

This alone makes a big difference, makes the game more accessible. You don't have to look into the depths of 10, 12, 14, 16 hours long games. Now you can just play at least like a third of that by yourself or with a friend. Otherwise, I will bring the happy news that you have been waiting for, which is that I have won my first Civilization 7 game.

Nice. Yesterday, actually, as we're recording. Please like and subscribe my screenshot. Is that how you say it? I'm not on YouTube. Please like and subscribe to my screenshot that I posted on Mastodon showcasing my victory. And finally, because the challenge said that a game for the Mac that you think the comfort zone audience would love, It is my belief that the comfort zone audience is a radicalized one, which I appreciate.

But it is also my belief that it is a very nerdy one that really likes those types of games. So I'm kind of betting on this. I don't know. We'll see, I guess. So this is also why I was comforted in submitting Civilization for 7 to the challenge. It's a great game. Don't trust the reviews. Gamers are sad and alone.

It's a great game. Nice. I've only ever played like one round of either like Civilization 4 or 5 or something like that. and I never really grasped the concepts but you seem very excited about this game so I will check it out as well yeah okay so I assume that it's obvious what it is so it said Civilization is a turn by turn strategy game I guess it kind of looks like a board game where you move pieces around on a hexagonal grid you place your cities

and you can make wars, you can research technologies and you don't have to win only by which is what I really like about the civilization series you don't have to win like by beating everyone up you can win by just making more money as any other civilization you can win with a scientific victory, culture cultural victory etc there are multiple ways multiple ways to win and multiple ways to play

and so many strategies nice yeah i've been playing this too a little bit i haven't played since civilization 2 which i played on my apple performa something or other way back in the 90s um and uh yeah i'm playing on m2 pro macbook pro and uh just performance wise uh i can get it to run at pretty high settings however the fans are as loud as i've ever heard them on my computer so it's really pushing the dm2 pro to do to its limits uh but yeah i need to find a tutorial on like how

to play this game because i don't understand what i need to be doing am i supposed to be at war all the time am i i'm just like going through turns and i just i can move the soldier up two spots and then back down two spots and then up two spots and i don't know what to do with them should i send them off to fight should i what am i doing so i need to figure out like literally how to use civilization because what i learned in the 90s hasn't carried over i'm gonna assume matt you were a big age of empires 2 guy um i was more of a civilization guy actually oh okay although i was a starcraft guy anyway i was a mac guy so i had five games i played them all oh so you know terms like b2 expand

and no I don't know what that is there was no internet really back then it was really you gotta understand where I'm coming from here you gotta remember Mattis from the time of the dinosaurs like yeah I bought Civilization 2 from like a circuit city in a box it was a different era this was my PC gamer era this was when we were we had PCs at home and I was getting games like Descent X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, Age of Empires, stuff like that.

Yeah, and then your friends would make copy. Then maybe one of you in the friend group would have a CDRW drive and would make copies of certain things because there was no DRM. I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. Anyways, moving on. So that was the challenge. I think we did a good job with this one. but it's my turn to challenge you all for this next week and I have a challenge for you. I'm going to go ahead and paste in the document

right now. I want you to find an alternative to one of your staple apps. By that, I mean like an app in your doc. Like an app you use all day long multiple times a day. Calendar, task manager, maybe use an email client that's part of a cult something like that. Web browser video editing software I don't know. It's one of your staple apps i want you to find an alternative to it but the app that is the alternative must be a new app to you so if you go to the app store it has to have get next to it or the price it cannot have that cloud icon uh and if you're downloading it from the web i've just you know honor system

you haven't used it before okay that makes it harder okay yeah i i don't want to just like find a new app i wanted i want or find a different app i want you to find a new app something you haven't used before i have an idea of something that i wanted to install for a while but i still not so yes i mean there you go qualifies yeah but it just has to be alternative to a staple so like it has to be like an alternative to an app that you use every single and i do mean you interact with it can't be like hazel where it's just like yeah it runs in the background and i don't i don't really

do anything it has to be something you interact on can i have a suggestion can it be like staple app can that be like a fundamental feature of the os or something like that you know what sure i'll give it to you i i was thinking like more like task manager calendar something that like you go in you open up and you interact with but i'll give it to you you know i'm I'm not going to use a test manager. I know, but that was my example.

Note taking app, text document app, or music app or something like that. Like something that you open up. But I'll give you a system feature. I don't have a thing. I don't know. Okay. Okay. All right. And hey, if you want to bring a second thing too, feel free. But yeah, so that is the challenge for the next week. I look forward to seeing what you guys bring. Well, that just brings us to the end of the show. But before we wrap up, I have my end of the show question for you. A little different this week.

You guys got any plans for the weekend? What are you doing? Oh, nothing. Nothing crazy. I'm seeing my parents. Having a roast, I believe. So that'll be delicious. A roast? A roast. What are you roasting? I'm not. My mom is. And it'll be great. Is that like meat? Oh, what are we roasting? it's mostly you two yeah no I don't know it'll be like a beef beef based roast carrots and potatoes and all sorts of stuff

nice Niléane what are you up to so I have to work on something so that's sad I will spend the weekend on that besides that I'm going to keep watching White Lotus which I've started the day before yesterday. I've binged watched season one. I'm excited to get into season two and three. That's pretty good. Nice. Nice. I come heller high water. I am finishing my reminders video this weekend.

I am so tired of that video being held over my head. Oh yeah. Everyone keeps asking me where it's at. I'm going to finish it this weekend, but I also plan on spending a few hours detailing Sally and just getting her nice and pretty Sally what's Sally my Mustang Mustang Sally her name is Sally Mustang Sally Mustang Sally the GT you know okay I'm gonna spend a few hours detailing her I I love what does that mean what does that mean oh detailing you're going to add details to the no no no okay so you know you wash your car like I I am somebody that does

not take my car to a car wash i am the only person that's ever washed my car i'm the only person that touches that car i do not take it through one of those automated car washes because they will scratch up your car dear listener do not use those automated car washes take the time do it yourself so i wash the outside of my my car but detailing means like you'll clean the engine hood you'll vacuum the inside you'll wipe down the inside you'll make sure everything's nice and clean looks like it's just come off the showroom floor.

I love detailing my car. That's like my happy place. Okay. Good to know. All right. Well, that just about does it. Thank you all so much for listening. Huge thank you to Mac Stories for having us. We are a Mac Stories podcast after all. Go check out their other stuff. Matt, Neleon, you got anything you guys want to promote? Not sure yet. Okay. No. Don't watch any of my other stuff. Just do Comfort Zone. Okay. I do have other videos that have come out this week. I know for a fact at least one video is out, but hopefully there is a desk upgrades video and a reminders video out.

And I'm saying this on the podcast, and I'm specifically saying the names, so I have to get them done. Or I will just cut this bit because I'm also the editor. Who knows? We'll see. If you're hearing it, most likely those videos are out. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.