Get Off My Turf, Lawley

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 ferocious co-hosts. As always, I'm joined by Matt Berger. Matt, how are you doing? Chris, I'm doing well, and I'm doing the math right now, and when people are listening to this episode i think i will be ferociously refreshing my browser to order a switch to i um right there with you i think i'm the it's funny nintendo switch 2 news keeps dropping like right as we sit down to record last time it was oh you don't get pre-orders and now it's hey the

pre-orders are on the 24th or something like that so yeah uh happy comfort zone and nintendo switch two pre-order days to the US and Canada. We're also joined by Niléane. Niléane, how are you doing? Hello. I look like I'm crying. And that's because allergy season. It continues. The most wonderful time of the year. Yeah. Oh, yes. I will show you for video watchers, I guess, not listeners.

I have to flood my eyes with this multiple times a day so that I can still see things. Anyway, that's how I'm doing. All right. Well, luckily for podcasting, it doesn't require too much seeing. We just, you know, talking. But I would like you to be able to see. Anyways, we have a flurry of tiny topics today. So let's just jump right into them. Niléane, you're first up in the tiny topic section here.

Yes, I want to just mention the fact that this week there's been some news again about trans people. When are they or not? This time in the UK, the Supreme Court ruled something terrible about the fact that in the context of equality laws, trans women should not be considered women. And they're saying they should be considered biological men, something like that.

I will not get into the details of this. I just wanted to bring awareness to the fact that this is happening in the UK, in the US and in other European countries. Hungary has been heading this way as well. And I'm not just mentioning this just to mention it. I want also to advocate for a message here, which is that you should not be fooled, people. You should not be fooled by the fact that there are so-called feminists in the world cheering on bits of news like this.

This week there have been so-called feminists cheering on this news in the UK, for instance. Do not be fooled because in the case of this UK Supreme Court ruling, the fact that the UK Supreme Court ruling almost explicitly defines being a woman as the ability to get pregnant, it should be a very clear statement to everyone that this decision is nothing but sexist and misogynistic and like it's a way to view women that's retrograde,

dates back to middle-aged stuff, middle-aged times. Do not be fooled. Those people are not feminists. They call themselves feminists. And here's supreme proof from the Supreme Court that anti-trans laws will harm all women trends or not. And this is illustrated by the fact that these people view women as just baby machines that should not have any

rights unless they make us babies. That's how they view the world and that's how they view women. And that's it. Just wanted to mention this. Yeah, this is honestly, I don't really have any words. It's dumb. upsetting trans women are women I think I could speak for all three of us on that, like I don't think we have any disagreement there and yeah yeah that sucks I just wanted to say do not be fooled and that's the first step

to everything, just have a clear mind about what's happening but we can move on we also had some listener feedback who put this in here this is where I do the hard pivot from the topic that I I also feel very strongly about so yes fully supportive but we'll move on to the more techie stuff we did get some feedback on undefeated apps

listener of Logro who we mentioned I think last episode as well once again uh he wrote in to say that uh drafts is what's undefeated for him everything in his productivity stack has changed over the years but drafts is always consistent yes uh i think i mentioned last time but i'll say it again he's somebody i've followed for a really long time back you know back when we were all on twitter and stuff like that and he does a lot of really cool stuff with drafts so if you're somebody that uses drafts give him a follow uh because uh he he

He uses that app like nobody else or nobody else that I know of. Clearly an expert. Yes, clearly an expert on it. Very much worth the follow if you're a big drafts person. Okay, reminder to self, put that in the show notes. Additionally, on the user feedback side, I just have a couple tiny topics. A listener recommended us the 2FA Code Finder, which is a Raycast extension, which I said when I brought it up in the listener feedback last time,

I have not used yet. I have used it since then. It is awesome. It is exactly what I hoped it would be. It works incredibly well. It uses macOS's accessibility features to basically just see your messages in the Messages app. It works awesome. Works great. I've used it like five times this week, and it's lovely. I've tried to use this extension, and I've not had much luck with it. Really? Yeah. I just wanted to say this because I think the issue is because most services that sent me to FA codes via SMS, they do it so in French.

I think that's the issue. I'm not, I have no idea. That would make sense why you would be having issues with it and Matt wouldn't. Yeah. So maybe there's a code in my messages, but it just, I don't know, you can't find it because the message is in French or something like that. Even if the service I'm using it in English, because it's a French number, they still send me French language text messages. Yeah, I don't know if people have any idea why it's not working as well for me. Nice. The other thing I wanted to bring was a link to an article.

The article is called Slamming Into Walls. And it's about, it's by my friend Mark Crump. He wrote this article about how he needs to have a Mac in his life. He wants to do everything from the iPad, but he can't. And the thing I found interesting about this article is the publication date, which is June 13th, 2017. Oh, my. Oh, yeah. This article could have been written today, and it would have had the exact same content. And I just thought that was interesting to kind of see eight years later, you could write the exact same thing, and it's all pretty much there.

So there's one line in here in the middle. There are a few things I need a Mac to do, including AutoCAD, Lightroom, and programming iOS and macOS apps. I'm not expecting to be able to do these tests on the iPad for at least two to three years. It's been eight years. There's been basically no progress on these things. Yikes. So, yeah. I mean, AutoCAD, there's kind of been a little bit of progress in there. Yeah, and Lightroom has gotten better in that time as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sad that, like, we can go back and reference this stuff.

And like, it's just, it's not, it's, yeah, I've beaten that horse. Yeah, I know we have. I just, I saw the, I got, we were talking about stuff and he sent me this link and I was like, eight years ago, this could have been written any year and it's the same. Yeah, it's, you know, the only thing that, the only big thing that keeps changing in iPadOS is the fact that they keep swapping out the previous version of multitasking. And literally right after we recorded our last episode, that was when the Mark Gurman article came out about like, oh, iPadOS 19 is going to get a new version of multitasking or multitasking is going to change again.

And I'm just like, yes, multitasking needs updates. Like the iPadOS multitasking system is not great. It needs to change, but there's other things it needs as well. And it's like, okay, yes, let's do two things at once here. So anyways, that horse has been beat to death. Yeah, let's move on. And the last thing in my tiny topics is a quiz, a very quick quiz. So I'm writing an article that's probably out by the time people are listening to this.

I saw someone on social media say that they're paying $200 a month for streaming apps. They thought that streaming would be cheaper than cable. And what happened? Now we're just paying more for apps. And so I was like, hmm, how much would it cost to subscribe to all the apps? So I would like you to to guess in U.S. dollars because I didn't do it in euros. I'm sorry. They're pretty much the same thing, though. Okay, how much would it cost if I wanted to subscribe to, let's say, the ad-free version? Highest, ad-free, highest quality to Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, Prime Video, and Paramount.

Using no deals, no bundles, or no, like, I get Peacock through Xfinity or anything like that. How many services is that? It's eight services. Jeez, okay. I'm going to say... It's basically every service to watch everything people talk about. And all ad-free. All ad-free, all 4K. And like 4K. Okay, I'm going to say one... You said eight services, so I'm going to say 175 a month. Okay.

I would say... 120. The number... $96. Oh, Jesus. So that's the absolute highest quality version of everyone. Ad free. All the things, $96. If you get the ad supported version of each one of these, all eight of them, it's $60 a month. Okay. Okay. So, and if you happen to have T-Mobile service and Comcast internet.

Yeah. And, uh, and, um, what's the other one? Shoot. There's another one. Basically it's like 35. And if you pay for Amazon Prime already and don't have to pay for Prime all over again, it's $35 additional spending. So I thought it was really interesting. Obviously, maybe you pay for Formula One. Maybe you pay for these other kind of niche things here and there. But it was interesting to kind of look at the numbers and see exactly what we're paying. Also, if you were curious, the average American pays $125 for their cable bundle today. So that's where cable is at this point. What the heck?

The average American spends $69 on streaming services. What are you doing over there? The nice thing is Danielle and I split our subscriptions. So, you know, we're still dating. Our finances are not combined. But we live together. So I pay for half the streaming services, and she pays for the other half of the streaming services. And, you know, on top of that, I also pay for Formula One. She's never going to use that. I keep trying to get her to watch a race with me, but she won't do it. It's great if you can.

My wife is into it, and she doesn't really like any sports. Now I'm curious to hear numbers for France. Yeah, right? Look it up. It was really interesting to me. It was really... I'll try to look at it. Because I suspected it was lower than people were saying it was, but I wasn't expecting it to be that much lower. So yeah, $96 to get ad-free everything. That's not paying annually either. That's paying month to month. So really cool. Anyway, that's it for me. I will say I do try and pay annually when possible because it'll save you 20 bucks or something. And like that will add up.

I know it's a lot up front, but it's, you know, but this next thing in the tiny topics, I'm very curious about. Because we have a little bit of a teaser in our document, but I have no idea what it's going to be. And I'm so excited for it. Yes. What do you got? So just so people have the same teaser I've written in the document, I've succumbed to a cursed accessory for my AirPods Max. So, there are accessories in the wild for AirPods Max.

And you've probably seen them in the wild. People have been using them. Those are often like cases. The cutest ones that I've seen in the wild, in the street, are bunny ears on top of the headband. That was going to be my guess. Yeah, that's cute. Oh, okay. That's not what I've gone for. So there is a well-known issue about AirPods Max, regardless of lightning, USB-C, whatever.

It's the design of the headband. It's the canopy, I think Apple called it at the time. Yeah, that mesh part. The mesh part, which rests on your head. I think it's quite comfortable. I kind of like it. I was dubious about it in the beginning, but I've talked about it already. I think it's pretty comfortable. However, this thing, it degrades. It degrades and it becomes loose very quickly. I knew that was an issue when I first got them.

I remember that was, there were a gift. So whatever, I was concerned about, I was not too concerned about issues related to the iPods Max. But I knew that was an issue. But hey, that loosening of the mesh, it happened super quickly over time. I did not expect it to become an issue this soon. Over just a few months, the mesh on mine has become super loose. And now it's to the point where on my head, I feel the two like rigid bands resting on top of my head instead of the mesh.

I think it depends on weather on the humidity in the air atmospheric pressure I have no idea like this mesh is alive and sometimes it's looser than other times I have no idea but yeah sometimes I can feel the rigid bands on my head and very uncomfortable when I notice it so I've gone for this cursed accessory which is a silicone protective thing

that you wrap your headband in. And I will show it to the camera. Okay. See? Oh, okay. So it's color matched. My AirPods Max are the pink ones, lightning pink ones. So it's color matched to the headband. It's a silicone thing. So on top, the mesh is still exposed. here. You can see how loose it is here. And below it's fully silicone here.

Oh. And is it pretty comfortable to wear? And you can see if you're watching the video that the bottom part in silicone like it's that part rests on my head and it's pretty comfy. Yeah. Okay. It's flexible and it's got some resistance to it. I'm trying this out. So far, it works. I'm not feeling the rigid headbands on my head anymore. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, those are metal.

Yeah, they're metal. This cost, if you search for this on Amazon, there's a billion of them. These little silicone things, there's a billion of them. They go from 5 euros to 20 euros. I have no idea. I picked one at random. And yeah, it's been fine. We'll see. There you go, my cursed accessory. It's less cursed than I think you...

I think it's a bit cursed. I kind of hate that I had to buy this thing. I was just going to say, I see this as solving a problem. I don't see this as a curse. In fact, I might get one of these because I'm starting to have the same issue you're having where the mesh is kind of starting to give away. So, I mean, I've had my AirPods Max, I got those on day one. So, I've had those for a few years. And they're the lightning ones. They're not the USB-C ones. So, it's been a few years. Yeah. I might have never gotten to that point. But they definitely, the mesh has definitely loosened.

But it got to a point and stopped. And it just kind of held there for me. So, I haven't gotten to that pain point. But on video, at least, I couldn't even tell what the accessory was at first. Like, I couldn't even see it. Oh, that's good. So, from a distance, it's pretty subtle. it doesn't look bad to me i think it looks fine especially because you can color match him yeah yeah it looks better than the case i still use it it's fine i actually found mine the other day i was cleaning out the closet and found mine i lost it lost it he threw it away i don't use it i refuse to use it lost it yeah so there you go um

One last thing. Apple, why do we have to buy this for this expensive headphones? This is not okay. The headband should last more than a few months without degrading to this point. Anyway, one last tiny topic. I have an anonymous listener question to Matt. Yeah, an anonymous.

and this anonymous person might be my partner. They are asking about Zen browser and wondering, can you group pinned tabs into folders in Zen browser like you can in ARC browser? Group pinned tabs. So in Arc, in the sidebar, paint tabs at the top, you can group them into folders.

Oh, yeah. Can you do that in Zen? Because I've looked at it, looks like we can't. But I'm not sure because this UI is full of stuff and I didn't know where to look. I don't think you can. I'm looking right now. No, it doesn't seem you can. All right. I will report back to this anonymous listener. Time to get a new web browser, Matt. I'm actually really, for what it's worth, I'm really happy with Zen.

I'm really happy with it. I enjoy it. They've been happy with it, too. I see that Firefox is gone from their doc. There's only Zen browser in there. Wow. That's the highest compliment. Yeah. And there's like, when I look at it, the sidebar has like five, six workspaces. So that's five, six different sidebars. And the sidebars are all full. Wow. Using it to the max. Love it. All right. You guys ready to get in the main show? Yeah. All right. Matt, you are first up in the document.

What do you got for us this week? All right. So I have what is probably going to be a shorter topic, although we always say that and then it goes long. This is my iPhone for video viewers. This is the desert iPhone 16 Pro. And this right here is the camera control button, which I have lambasted on numerous occasions. I'm not a fan. So I've been using the action button.

This is a real visual presentation right now. Yes. I've been using the, oh no. I've been using the action button. If you're not watching the video, you're missing out right now. Matt is trying to get his camera to focus on the iPhone. I'm doing the makeup tutorial thing, right? I've been using the action button to launch the camera, but listener and viewer right now. Hello, viewer. I have changed my action button for the first time since the iPhone 15 Pro launched.

And I have reactivated camera control to open the camera app because my action button. Could you want to guess? Do you guys want to guess what I would put on my action button? Yes. You have heard the wise words coming from me, which is that now it's your flashlight button. Okay. Good guess. I'm going to guess... You know what it's for.

Okay. Matt, you are well known as being part of cults. Multiple cults. Is it a superhuman button? As members of cults, you have to give money. So I'm guessing you just created a shortcut with the action button. So that way you can just hit it and it just sends off money to whatever cult you're a part of this week. Okay. Well, I regret to say, Chris, you're closer to right. Whoa. Is it a superhuman notion mail button? It is a shortcut button.

And it is a shortcut that launches Google Gemini. Ah, okay. So, um, this is making me rewire my brain a little bit. Cause I have three different buttons that launch three different things on my phone, right? The power button launches Siri. The action button launches Gemini. The camera button launches the camera. So I'm rewiring my brain. But, uh, yeah, I, I reached a point where I really just got frustrated with Siri.

Um, a novel experience. I'm sure no one listening has ever been frustrated with Siri. And I found myself using Gemini for certain things that I just knew Siri wouldn't be able to do. And I was going to it enough that I was like, should I put this on my home screen? But what do I take off my home screen? I don't want it to be on my home screen. I don't need it there. And I was like, I have these buttons, physical buttons, the joy of physical buttons. Yeah, so I just mapped it there. A cool thing, actually before I did it, because I hadn't actually launched a shortcut with the action button before, I thought I had to make the shortcut in the shortcuts app. It turns out you don't have to do that, which is cool. You just go to your settings, go to the action button settings, and then you can choose, I want to do a shortcut, and then you can either choose one of your shortcuts, or you can just go through your list of apps, and every action that shortcut enables, you can just have it just launch that.

So that's nice. And so I have it launching the typing interface for Gemini. So I can just type into it. Or with a second click on the screen, I can go into voice mode and talk to it. And it's nice. It's nice to be able to have Siri and Gemini for different things. Because they're very, very different and have very different capabilities. Like all the smart home stuff, that's Siri still because Gemini can't do it. Although, maybe, no, it can't do it yet. Not on the iPhone. Android can. um timers siri but like questions about the world gemini is better and like weird questions like that

aren't like just like two second answers like siri will do gemini is better and gemini can search the web and so like it just there are things that i want to ask where i know i just know siri's not going to be able to help me and i know i know and now i can say like tell it to ask chat gpt to do this thing but like it's slow and for i don't understand how this is physically possible but the chat gpt responses in siri i've seen other people say this now too so i don't think i'm crazy

they're somehow worse like are they still using chat gpt 3.5 or something like i don't understand why it's so bad compared to... Yeah. 100% right. I was using the ChatGPT stuff for a while. I even had a shortcut set up so that it would just immediately go to Ask ChatGPT. And it's worse than just... You get worse responses. I don't understand what's happening there. I don't get it, but yeah. Is that the case even if you log in with ChatGPT Plus?

I am logged into my ChatGPT Pro account. Okay. Same. It's very strange. Yeah. I don't get it. And it's slower than ChatGPT. I don't get it at all. I guess because it's routing through Apple servers, but like, I don't know. I don't know. So all the things. I did want to mention two things about Gemini that I really, really like. Number one is deep research.

which I think is a thing that chat GPT rolled out first and then Gemini kind of has its version of it now but like I have found this so so useful for example I work in payments I was doing some research into like how to do things with surcharging and cash discounting and like these sorts of like ways for people to offset payments which I know everybody loves as a consumer but anyway I'm trying to learn as much as I can about them And I was basically just able to like write a short paragraph of what I wanted to learn.

And it took like three minutes and pulled in like, here's, it's like, here's 60 web pages with information. And like, I was able to see, I was able to click into them and like read those. And it gave me this incredibly nice document with like, here's all the things that you wanted to know. And I'm going to explain them to you. And it was, I mean, pretty darn accurate. I'm sure there are instances. I know with chat CPTs, when they rolled it out, like their example of it had bad information in it, which is very funny. But like most of the time it's close enough or like to be helpful.

And again, you have all those links. It has inline links to like where it's getting this information from. So you can click into them and see if you want to see if you're doing it for your job, which I was. I wanted to validate these things. We're not just hallucinations. So again, more responsible use of understanding the limitations of these things. But like it was really, really helpful. Another fun thing is that you can export the report as like a Google Doc. So if you're deep into Google Docs, you can just put it in there. What I actually did with a couple of these that I've done is I told it to format it in the way that a text to speech thing would not get tripped up with like footnotes all over the place or tables of data.

And it reformatted the whole report for me. And I fed it into, well, here's what I did. I wrote it as a draft on my blog, used the preview URL to send it to Readwise Reader. And then I used Readwise Reader's text-to-speech to listen to the report as like a podcast, effectively, while I walk the dog. That's amazing. That's fantastic. I love the deep research stuff. You and I were talking before we hit record that I have a Disneyland trip coming up.

And while I am not the one paying for it, thankfully, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I'm not the one paying for it. I am the one that's kind of project managing it. And planning a Disneyland trip for nine people is probably one of the hardest projects I've ever worked on. So I used the deep research stuff to like basically like, hey, where are places to eat? What are things to do? When do we need to start making reservations? When do we need to do, like, there's things for my nieces that we're doing and stuff like that.

It was so incredibly useful as a tool because, like you said, it gives you links to all of these places. And, like, I don't just take what it says in the AI chat box. I go and double check it. But it was such a useful tool. I loved it. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. And, okay, this is actually on the complete opposite end. When you do a deep research thing, it also, I thought it was like, oh, this is great. It's great. They have it built in. There's a, at the top of the report, there's a little three dots.

You have three dots. And then there's a, like, turn into conversation or something. And I was like, oh, is this going to, like, do a text-to-speech and read it to me? No. It turns it into their, like, fake podcast thing that their notebook LM service had, where it turns it into, like, a 15-minute podcast with these two hosts. i hate this with every fiber of my being i hate hate hate these podcasts they are so vapid they sound like there's like you know how there's i'm sure you've seen these like jokes of like what

most podcasts are like with like two people and they're like just about to start getting going into like what we're about to talk about or about to say something really important but we're going to build up to it and like it feels like it's just that it's just like they're saying these inane things and then they're like, oh, that's really interesting. And no matter what the topic is, it's just like, I find them so obnoxious. I find them absolutely terrible. And it's the worst way to listen to anything in the world. It's cool, I guess, that we can do this. But I find these to be the absolute worst way to learn about anything.

These stupid little 15-minute podcasts I generate. What about Zoomers? Do you think Zoomers would then turn this? The kids these days. um i you know what's funny is notebook lm is the reason why i'm still subscribed to gemini and not just all in on chat gpt uh i love the notebook lm feature because what i did is i took all of my scripts and all of my research notes for like the last couple of years and uploaded it to it and i've

just like i can sit there and ask questions and be like oh when was the last time i covered things oh uh give me like five ipad apps i've been using or like like i can ask questions about like stuff that i have been covering but it doesn't require me to go look it up and be like oh when did i talk about this shortcut and like did i mention i was going to make a video about this thing in the future or something like that like it's really nice tool if you have like a text database of your stuff but i completely agree the podcast thing is the dumbest thing that's come out

of silicon valley in a while so well at least since the uh uh the the ai pin thing yeah um so yeah yeah and similarly um if you're in the google ecosystem um i can ask it about like this give me the serial number from this product that i bought that's in my email inbox like it's able to find that sort of stuff so it's hooked up into my like google life so um because i've given into the google borg it's it's better you're in the ecosystem you get the benefits i guess so yeah um i've been enjoying it um would i remap my like the norm like would i completely replace siri if they ever added the

option to set a default assistant i don't know really really i mean i would okay what if okay What if EU gets their way and Apple has to open it up so any assistant can control smart home stuff, system timers and stuff like that? Would you replace Siri then? So, I mean, that's the good question. That's the competition thing, right? Right now, Gemini cannot control your home. It cannot do these things.

So, if it's in the form it is today, I probably wouldn't. I'd probably stick with my current setup where I have Siri, but then I also have this on the backup action button. But if Gemini got better, then yeah, I'd love to have the option to be able to do that. Or if ChatGPT did a better one or like whoever, like if there's a better option, I'd love to have the better option. Just like I can with browsers, just like I can with other things. So yeah, I would be, I'm not going to say I'm going to do it today because I don't think it's ready. But like if Google does the work and like gets the other things that you'd want in there.

Yeah, totally. Nice. Nice. I think I would too. I think if, you know, there is like all these other assistants had access to system timers and smart home stuff. Just like I said, I think I would replace it just because what's the deal with Siri? It's so bad still. I know there's leadership shakeups and all that stuff. And hopefully it does get better. but I mean, it's been, what, 10 years? No, it's been more than 10 years. When did the iPhone 4S come out?

I mean... 2011. Yeah, so... Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, maybe Siri will get better. I don't know, but like, yeah, it would be nice to be able to choose the voice assistant that works best, not just the one that's kind of on there mandated. Thrusted upon you. Yeah. But at least Siri glows, you know? The glow is nice. Listen, it's so vapid, but when I turned off Apple Intelligence for a little bit, and I did miss the glow. They should not have put out the glow yet.

I am a firm believer that they should have held that until the new Siri was ready, because all that was doing is painting a turd gold. And you can paint a turd gold, but it's still a turd. Yeah, I still see people trying to do things with Siri, like have a like back and forth conversations with it. And like some of the things that they like said was going to be there. And like, they're like, knocking it for not doing those things. Well, but I'm like, they never really shipped that. So like, it's but like, people expect it to be there because they said it would be there. So yeah, it's a yeah, it's all. Well, it's like they put in the follow-up thing, and the follow-up kind of works, but not always.

And it's, yeah, it's Siri. So, yeah, that's it for me. All that on a little action button change. Nice. Nice. Well, I am curious, for the camera control button, did you disable all, like, the extra gestures and stuff? Like, changing F stop and lens? Okay, yeah. Yeah. I still have those disabled as well. Camera control is just click the button, open the camera app, click again to take a photo. Yeah, that's good for that. Yeah, I like it. The other stuff is too fancy.

I like the swiping to zoom, though. Really? To change lens, like to go from 1x to 2x3, etc. I found myself accidentally bumping that too many times. Oh, really? Okay. Because it was such a soft press in order to activate it, And then, like, if you just slide your finger across it, I don't know. I just want to be able to quickly take open a photo, especially, like, with the, I mentioned I have a Disneyland trip coming up. I'm going to be taking a lot of photos.

I just want to be able to quickly open the camera app, snap a photo, and move on. So, all right. Milian, you're next up. What do you got for us this week? Okay, so I've got a techie thing. Okay. Very in the weeds thing. Let's talk about DS store files. Oh, yeah. Let's get nerdy. Wow. We're in the weeds. Yeah. We are going to get nerdy. Yeah. So let's recap what those are.

I'm sure everybody listening to this knows what they are. But yeah, DS store files are system files on macOS that get created by Finder in any folder you navigate to where you have personalized the view or something like that, like view options. So this file gets created if you change the icon size, if you change the view from column to list or icons, if you, I don't know, sorting, I think also is stored in those files. Anyway, so

this is I think a weird thing that is inherited back when it was not an option to just store options out of you out of the user's way in just some database on the system and instead they're just storing it right there in your files as files, as hidden files. I guess it works. And it's got a neat side effect, which is that they are portable.

So if you copy a folder where you have customized the view and the layout, and that folder hence has the DS store files, if you copy that to another Mac, those options should port over. And somebody else opening that folder containing this.stor file should see the same view options that you have set up for them. So that's a good side effect. However, I don't believe anyone does that. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think anyone does that.

Not in 2025 anyway, where we sync files more than copy on USB sticks and share. So anyway. Short story. Long story short. we don't like these tool files on the show. At least I don't. So I wanted to, recently I wanted to get rid of them all. Like delete them all from my system. Why? Because I found out a new set of view options in Finder Windows that I really like and I wanted to apply that globally.

Yeah, good luck. You've been using your Mac for a while. good luck applying your new favorite view options on the Mac globally in every folder. Because what happened is over a few days, I opened a new folder and, oh my God, my new view options are not here. I have to redo them all. And if you look online, there are ways, like in view options, there's a checkbox there that you can tick to apply view options globally. Yeah, that doesn't work.

That's a scam. I'm convinced this is a scam. This checkbox is a scam. It does not work. If there is a DSTOR file, let it go. This checkbox will not work. So yeah, this is why I wanted to delete them all. I've Googled how to delete all DSTOR files from my system. If you do that, you will see people have terminal commands that let you do this pretty simple. Copy and paste at your own risk, but they are pretty straightforward commands.

They let you delete all of your DSL files on your system. I've done this. I felt like fresh air coming in my lungs. That was nice. And after this, now I had to find a way that those files would not get created anymore. Please. And I looked around. So there are ways. One thing that I found is a utility called FindFX.

I've linked it in the notes. Finderfix is an app that you can install. And basically this app, I think it's really nice. It has a bunch of options for people like me who want their Finder windows to always look the same. Whatever the folder, whatever the drive you're accessing. So it allows you to set, to pre-define a specific window size that Finder Windows will always respect by default.

New Finder Windows will always respect this pre-defined size. So you set it like a width and height. It also lets you, let me bring up the window so I don't forget anything. It lets you, by default, position new Finder Windows on screen, if that's your thing. That's not my thing. But if you want to Finder Widow to always open a specific spot on your screen, you can do that. You can also set it to always center your new Finder Windows on the screen, if that's your thing.

I like my windows to fly all over the place. I'm not doing that. You like a little bit of chaos. Yeah. However, the predefined window size, yeah, that's Chef's case. That's perfect because finder windows on the Mac. Yeah, they live their own life. They just, you pick a random window size. Every time you click on something, it's beautiful chaos that I do not enjoy. So yeah, I like this option. It has view, it can predefine view options as well.

So you can set it to always show the sidebar, the toolbar, the path bar, the status bar, those things. Because, yeah, the finder tends to... I don't know how that works, but sometimes it forgets those settings as well. Find a fix attempts to permanently restore them whenever they get erased by the OS. And in the settings, there is this option that I really wanted, which is automatically remove the store files.

You check that. Find a fix will always remove those files whenever they get created. And there is a second option next to that, which is remove them system-wide. It's a beautiful option. So I've enabled that. If people are worried about this, like, again, this does not do anything apart from storing your view options. If you do not care about view options, this is safe to enable. This is very safe to enable.

Yeah, and it's got a final two additional features of this find a fixed utility. it lets you cut and paste because I wanted to mention this because Matt we raised about the fact that SuperCharge lets you enable cut and paste with Command X just like on Windows and Linux computers so yeah this utility if you do want to use SuperCharge for some reason has this option to enable cut and paste with Command X

there you go this is lovely I've already installed it and I'm using it. And I saw that option too and I was like, oh, look out, supercharged. Yeah, yeah. Cool to see it. I am going to install it after we finish recording because, you know, I don't want to break anything just yet. Nelian, you mentioned you have like a new finder view you really like. What is it and why is it column view? So, okay. I was a big fan of column view. Not my thing anymore.

I'm a new person. I'm a new woman. I've changed. Okay, so no, my new favorite view in Finder is the list view. Is that it? Yeah, the list view. Hmm. But with, yes, but with big icons. Yeah. And that's the tweak that made the deal for me, that sealed the deal for me. I was using list view sometimes before, but always like had to switch because the icon was too small. No. So now I'm in list view, but with bigger icons, with chunky lines.

And that's really nice. Interesting. With the detail pane always enabled on the side. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How is that called the detail? Yeah? Wait, what is this? What is the deep tail pane on the side? The preview pane is what it's called. Like kind of in column view when you select a file? Yeah. Yeah. Well, how do I turn this on? So you go into the menu bar, you go into view, and then you click show preview. Command shift B to toggle.

Oh. Look at you. I've been using the Mac for 30 years. Yes. I have never known this existed, but as someone who very regularly hits command I or command option to pull up info on things. This is great to have. So Command-Shift-P brings it up as well. So okay. Yeah, and you can have permanently enabled.

This is really nice. So if people are not familiar, when you click an item in the main view in the middle of the window, on the right, it displays details about the thing. So metadata, the size, especially that, the size of the file. It's something I always love to see. And you can add stuff to that too, because I know I added, and I don't even remember how I did it. So you can have quick actions at the bottom of this pane, and that's where you can have shortcuts.

But there's also the information. So if you click on an image, you can add dimension and stuff like that. I know I did it with video files. I added, I think I did. Because I added codex, I think, because I don't think that's there by default. Add tags. No, so that's... No, it's under show view options. No. Finder has a lot of hidden things. There's so many weird things that you can do in Finder, and I love it.

Maybe it's under... Wow. The thing I like about this preview pane is that when you select multiple files at once, shows you the total size of your selected files. Yes. So I found what I was talking about. Yeah. If you right-click on the file, and this is going to be different for each file type. So if you have like an mpeg4 file, you can right-click on it, and you can go show preview options, and in here you can enable more information

to show on that preview panel. So for example, for an mpeg4 file, I have dimensions, and I have codecs enabled too. So I can see that this file I have selected here is mpeg4aach.264. Yeah, I can see it. On an image right now, you can enable any exif tag on an image, and even the location, if there's a location attached to the file. That's really nice. Yeah, you can do aperture, you can do ISO, f-stop.

Actually, I am enabling all of that right now because that is something I could use. That's fantastic. Yeah. I like it. It's crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff you can do in Finder. In fact, that's actually giving me an idea for a video. Get off my turf, Lolly. Back to the Mac, baby. Back to the Mac. Yeah. That's my entire segment, guys.

I just wanted to share this. Find a fix app, which is really cool. By the way, I forgot to mention earlier, a find a fix is not notarized. It's not a notarized app. And yeah, you learn that the hard way when you're trying to install it. macOS will be like, nope, nope, you will not install this. Nope, you shall not pass. So you have to like try to open the file first, then head it to system settings. There you go into privacy and whatever.

And there you will have a button that says open anyway. And then there's a pop-up on your screen that says open anyway or move to trash. But the move to trash button is the primary button. So do not press enter right away. Otherwise, it will just move the app to the trash. And you open anyway. And then it should be good to go. Remember when you just used to be able to download apps from the internet and there was like a 50-50 shot if there was malware in it or something like that. I guess that's my window days.

Apple. There are certain things that they're doing in the name of privacy and security that I'm just like, this is my computer. They do not want you to fix Finder. No, they do not. But they do let you anyway. They let you. That's good. Let's be glad that you can still open that. that app. Because you can't do that on the iPad. You can't download apps from... We're walking towards the cliff again.

Yes, I'm done. End of the segment. Fix your finders. Love it. All right, you guys ready to get in the challenge? Yeah, let's go. All right. The challenge was mine this week, and it was pretty open-ended. And the idea was I wanted you to automate your startup process. And that could be when you sit down at your computer. That could be putting a smart home plug on a dumb coffee machine. That could be, I don't know, Matt finally making me a robot to go get me a Dr. Pepper. It could be that.

He is a developer now. I don't know what's taking him so long. You should be able to vibe code this yourself. Anyways, do you guys mind if I go first? Yeah. I don't mind. I was like, wait a second. All right. So I actually want to start with where I got the idea for this challenge to come from. And then I'll kind of talk about what I did on top of it. So this whole thing started from I was sitting down at the Mac Mini and I was like, OK, you know, I would boot it up or not boot it up.

But like I would close things throughout the day. And like I just put it to sleep at night. Like I wouldn't I never actually shut the thing off. but I would come back and apps weren't where I wanted them to be. So I was like, there's got to be a really easy way to just open up all the generic apps I use throughout my day. So Safari, Mail, Task Managers, Ivory, Obsidian, all just the general apps that I have open throughout my day. But the challenge was, is I use Spaces.

So I couldn't just have a shortcut that opens a bunch of apps or add things to like login items or something like that because I wanted apps to open up in a specific space. So I was like, well, let's see what AppleScript can do. And I actually blank coded this. I won't say the word. I will not say the word. I blank coded this because I haven't written AppleScript in a very long time. You can say the word. I'm not saying it. I refuse to say it. So I used AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro for this.

So what this does is with the keyboard shortcut Hyperkey O, it triggers this Apple script, and it opens Mail Safari, Todoist, and BusyCow, because I've been playing with Todoist and BusyCow lately, all in space one. Then there's a one-second delay, and it shifts to space two, opens up Obsidian, and a new Safari window in space two, then shifts to space three, opens up Messages, BlueSky, Ivory, Discord, my RSS reader, and raindrop.io in space 3.

So those are like the core apps I want open. And it puts them all in their specific space. Does a great job at this. Like, it's fantastic. So that was kind of like the idea behind this challenge. But I've also had like a few other paper cuts when I sit down at my computer that I wanted to solve. So I added to this script. Sometimes my audio output changes. So on my desk, I have an audio interface, and I have two big KRK Studio monitors plugged into them.

That is always what I want my audio output to be when I'm at that desk. But for some reason, it doesn't always switch over to that. So I use this to automatically set my audio output in Keyboard Maestro. There's just like a little action in Keyboard Maestro for setting your audio output. And this is the part that I'm really proud of. this is the part that I this is my challenge submission right here like audio output whatever that's not anything this looks this script in keyboard maestro uses the if then else action and looks at what USB devices are connected

and it looks to see the name of certain keyboards so my KBD 8X Mark III or my mode envoy And it then changes the wallpaper of my desktop to match the keyboard color. So, like, if it sees the KBD8X one, which is a green keyboard, it uses a greenish image to match that. Now, the trick was, the hard part of this was I used spaces.

So if I just use the action, just the one-off action to set the wallpaper, it would only do it for whatever the active space was. It wouldn't do it for all the others. So I actually went in and did set wallpaper and then an AppleScript action to switch space, set wallpaper, AppleScript action to set space. So it actually jumps through all of these three times. But no matter what keyboard I have attached. So if I use my mode envoy one, which is a black one, it uses a really dark black wallpaper.

I love this. I love this so much. It's so dumb. It's absolutely pointless. Does nothing. I absolutely love it though. And then the last thing the script thing does is it runs my mode cut shortcut, which just basically has me enable a focus when I'm sitting down to work and stuff like that. But the important thing is, yes, my wallpaper now matches whatever keyboard I'm using that day. be honest with me when you were let's pick a different name daft punk coding um you were you probably had this working and then you were like you know what i bet i could do

and then you're like robot could you also do this on all the spaces and it was like i got you yeah um it it uh it it's pretty awesome that i could do this i so i didn't put it all in the main apple script that opens up the apps because i i couldn't figure out a way it was having issues like detecting the different usb devices with apple script and like the names and doing the space i don't i don't know what was happening there but when i did the if if then else action and then use the

usb uh it's like a usb let me look it up here really quick so i actually have it right um it is oh oh so it's okay i i misspoke i'm sorry it's an if any condition uh is met there is um if if the usb device is kbd 8x which is that's the one it starts off with it pulls this desktop image but then it goes into if it's something else it pulls another if it pull if it sees the uh mode envoy it

pulls something else uh if it then i have a few other keyboards and stuff like that i didn't do it for all like 20 something keyboards, but I did it for like the ones that I use the most. And this is fantastic. I love this so much. Give Chris a Mac and it goes crazy. Yup. Yeah. It's like we put you just in like a super car and you're like, oh, I can do so many things. It also sounds like you've recreated how the way you've been using focus modes on your iPad.

kind of um kind of like the like i did have wallpapers change based on focus modes yeah uh but with the ipad obviously there was no way for it like there's no way for me to automate like hey see what mechanical keyboard is attached to you and change the wallpaper based on that but yeah i mean the part where you you change the late the home screen layout depending on and the wallpaper, depending on the focus mode. Yep, yep, yep. This, to me, I think might be the challenge I am the most proud of, because it's the dumbest thing ever, but it's absolutely

the most me thing. Like, hey, have your wallpaper determined by what mechanical keyboard you're using that day. I love it. I think it's great. Well done. Well, that's me. Nelian, what did you do for the challenge? Yeah, so mine is so simple compared to yours. Okay. So first off, I had an issue with this challenge, which is I don't want anything to open when I start on my computer. So I've got a bunch of apps that open at login, but those are menu bar apps that don't spawn any windows or anything.

And those apps, many of them, I just disabled the menu bar icon as well. So I don't even know they exist once I've set them up and I forget about them. So I don't have anything to automate here. But I did think of something because I've had an issue. So I've had an issue for a while, a paper cut issue. And I thought, hey, this is the time to fix it. So here's my issue. It comes back to Doppler once more.

Always Doppler. Always Doppler. Okay, so you know that my MacBook Air, not a lot of storage on there. It's based here. Like, I upgraded the RAM on it when I bought it, not the storage. Which means I cannot store my 100 gigs and plus of albums and music files locally. So ever since I did that challenge and started using Doppler a few weeks ago, I stored all of my music in the living room on an old MacBook Pro,

which I've already mentioned before. I've got an old MacBook Pro in the living room that I've turned into a home server, basically. So it's running Ubuntu now. It's got HomeBridge and Plex, a Plex server, a bunch of other stuff. And it's got a couple of SSD drives attached to it where I store some things. I think I have some backups on there as well. I've automated a bunch of server backups. Anyway, so I've stored as well all of my music on there and I've set up a, what is it called?

A Samba drive, Samba share drive, whatever. SMB. SMB, yeah, which is a protocol which lets you mount network drives on your Mac and Windows and Linux as well. So in Doppler on my Mac, the library folder in there, I've set it to point to that network drive. So basically Doppler on my Mac is streaming the music from this home server in our living room.

And that's been working great. However, macOS is not great at maintaining connections to network drives. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. So that's annoying. So here's the setup. I have this network drive called Media mounted on my Mac. And the way I've been doing this so that Doppler can access it at all times is I've added that network drive to the login items. Because, hey, you can do that.

I didn't know. You can do that. You can drag and drop a network drive into the login items section in system settings. It means that when you boot up your Mac, macOS will automatically mount the network drive. And that's been working. However, whenever my Mac goes to sleep and I wake it, then it's chaos. The network drive is still there, but macOS isn't really connected to it.

I double-click on it and a whole bunch of errors, and I have to unmount it. But then if I try to unmount it, most of the time I will notice, hey, this network drive called Media. Now we have a hundred of them showing up in Finder. So it's somehow there's a bug and it's a known bug because people are talking about it on Reddit and Stack Overflow or whatever. This is a known bug. When your Mac goes to sleep, it may duplicate new network drive.

It will mount it many times. And only one of them will remain, like will be a real mounting point. And all the other ones are phantom drives that show up in the list and clog up your finder window. And it means Doppler is now confused. Doesn't know where is the actual music library now, in which network drive. So when that happens, I always had to like unmount them all mount the drive again, and quit Doppler, start it again,

and now it's good. Not idea. So all of that is just my paper cut. This is the paper cut that I want to fix here related to how macOS starts and mounts the drive as startup and when it goes to sleep. So what I've done is I removed the network drive from login items. So now this drive is not mounting when I start on my Mac. Instead, I'm using Better Touch Tool.

Two. Oh, never mind. Better Touch Tool comes in later. Instead, I realized that even if the drive isn't mounted, when I open Doppler, it will mount by itself. I had no idea that was a behavior on the Mac. So like if an app tries to access files that are located on the network drive, macOS will just mount it automatically. And that works super fine.

So I don't need, I never needed to add the network drive to the login items. However, the issue with the Mac going to sleep remains. So I had to find a way to unmount the drive whenever my Mac goes to sleep and quit Finder at the same time so that when I wake my Mac from sleep and I open Finder, sorry, and quit Doppler at the same time so that when I wake my Mac from sleep

and I open ClickFinder, it will mount it again just fine. This is where BetterTouchTool comes in because I discovered that BetterTouchTool has a trigger that's called before Mac goes to sleep. Oh, I had no idea. So you can add that trigger, and in there, as the only action, I have one terminal command. That terminal command is killall Doppler, so that quits Doppler, double ampersands.

So that's, I'm explaining Linux commands now. So double ampersands, so that's to chain two commands together, but the second one only executes if the first one is successful. That's the double ampersands in the middle. And double ampersands, diskutil, unmount the network drive path. So now when my Mac is about to go to sleep, better touch tool automatically disconnects the network drive

and quits Doppler. and I wake it. I can just click Doppler again and then network drive is there, ready to go. So that's my automation. I fixed the paper cut. That was really annoying to explain. There you go. I like this. It kind of reminds me of something I did years ago when I was on the M1 Max MacBook Pro where I had something very similar but using Keyboard Maestro to mount my NAS automatically to my computer.

Because if you add it to the login items and you turn on your computer, it doesn't always mount and it'll throw up an error sometimes. So I use Keyboard Maestro to actually properly mount it. And login items, I don't know what's going on with that, but it's never really worked great beyond just launching apps. And it's crazy that just the fact that your Mac goes to sleep, it messes everything up. That's like a basic feature of the OS, going to sleep.

I'm glad I found a fix. Yeah. No, that's great. Exactly what this challenge was for. Perfect. Matt, what do you got? All right. So let me reread the challenge. Automate your startup process. Okay, I think I did follow the rules. I guess Neilion automated her shutdown process. I mean, my entry to the challenge is I removed the network drive for my login items.

Okay. Yeah. So that's something. Okay, well, my story is less focused on one thing and more broad but it is ultimately me hitting the minus button a few times as well um i similar i think to neilion i don't want too much automation i things like this are they ebb and flow sometimes you need a lot of stuff sometimes you need a little

and i think i'm in a phase of my life where i want a little less and i'm sure it'll bounce back up one day but i don't want crazy systems i just want to try my computer and ideally it's just where it do not touch anything um and so what i did was i went to login items and extensions and i just it was a bloodbath i just took everything away i i uh yeah there were some things that had crept in here over the years that i don't need anymore steam had like a little helper thing that was auto launching chrome had its like auto update thing going which if i used chrome like as my

browser i would keep going but like i don't so i don't need that i just like cleared things out so i have five things that no sorry four things so it's it's friday um i have four things that auto launch well four apps and then i have a whole bunch of other things the four apps that have earned the right to launch on launch is clean shot x it's got to be there my mac is broken without it's raycast it's got to be there my mac is broken without it supercharge yeah if you didn't see

this coming you haven't made attention to me um and number four is one we maybe want to talk about in another episode aqua voice oh what the heck no idea what that is yes the best reaction um without this becoming the topic aqua voice is a text to or a speech to text so like it's a dictation tool um that is as you may guess powered by ai and it uh is but it's very very good and

it's very very reliable and it does some stuff that's really nice with like if you're like dictating something and you're like oh i screwed up the last sentence you could just say like delete the last sentence and then keep talking and it will take your commands and like adjust the text based on it so it's it's pretty it's pretty interesting um i don't know if i'm going to keep using it forever but it is very nice um yeah this needs to be a topic yeah so maybe maybe this will be a topic um but those are the apps that i have launching on launching on launch um and then there's this

whole other section down here that i've never really paid attention to as a mac user yeah allow in background and that's where other things go so like one password is there which i do want i have so many broken items in this list yes yes i have so many like yeah the icon is gone yeah um but yeah i found like fantastical still had a thing here even though i'm not using fantastical at the moment um passwords is launching something which i didn't need um pay spot lives here which i do need um and yeah there's just like things here that i didn't know and so i started clearing that

out and then you keep scrolling and there's another section for extensions and i was like what are these and so this is really interesting there's like all of these little things that you can adjust so like there's a section for finder if you click the i next to that these are like all the actions that show up this is like another interface to like because i think in like the share button or whatever you can like manage and like it brings up a view of like here's all the things ways you can share and you can like adjust this is in the preview pane too in yeah well the preview pane i

just learned about but like yeah it's the same thing is like you can add things like i can add a remove background from pixel mater pro um to my fight when i right click on a on a file in finder from here um there's some shortcuts here that i can add and so and there's like quick look actions there's so many things here this is it's it's real i've i've it's made me look at things i haven't looked at before and i'm not totally sure on exactly what all of these are doing but um yeah it's it's it's a whole level of my mac i hadn't explored and i um i'm really glad i did because

there's some well i cleared off a whole bunch of startup items which is great you'll love you'll love to see it um i love oh i know developers love deleting code i love processes for my mac i think it's so fun um yeah and there's this one called dock tiles yeah i just saw that customize your dock by adding spacers i have three apps there and i don't maybe they're custom icons Doctiles, I don't have that Oh, I bet these are apps that I've set alternate icons on I have Arc, Fantastical

and Nova See, I have BusyCal and Setup for mine, which Setup isn't even in my doc so I don't See, previews and actions and more I don't know what that is, because I use Reader Classic, and Reader Classic has a custom icon that changes based on how many literally changes the icon based on how many articles you have unread. So, like, I don't understand why that's not here, but these are. But I have set custom icons for all three of these apps. That's the only thing I can think of that's the same.

That could be it. I don't know. Yeah, icons that show data in general. Yeah. It's a weird thing, but... This is giving me an idea for the show. We should, like, review our login items. Ooh. Mine's perfect now, so... Yeah, I mean... Good luck. Maybe you can be the judge and pick between us two. I've got nine items in my login items. Eight. I'm sorry. Eight. I miscounted.

Are you happy with them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But we've got to save for that. Okay. Okay. 14. Oh, I got some catching up to do. Man. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, anyway, this has been more fruitful than I expected. So great. Nice. Well, I like it. I'll give you guys a passing grade on this one. I did keep it pretty open-ended, so I was kind of curious.

I like it. We haven't really done Democracy for a while. I don't think this is a good one to do it on either. I don't think so either. Yeah, but if we did, and this is going to make you want to do it more, Chris, I think you win by a mile. I mean, come on. Automating your wallpaper based on the color of your keyboard? That's awesome. Like, come on. You definitely went the extra mile. No. Like, I have a yellow keyboard that gets, like, this, like, fall image that's very yellowy orange and stuff like that.

Oh, it just works out so great. You'll be able to know what keyboard I'm using in screen recording videos now. Like, come on. People need to know that information. But anyways, we are going long, so we need to wrap up the show. You guys did a great job, but now it is Neil Leon's turn to give us a challenge. Yes. Okay, I want you to click the spoiler tag in our document and read the name of this challenge.

Hold an election. Okay, I just wanted to frighten you. These are getting more vague by the day. I just wanted to frighten you, but it's actually pretty simple. I want us to work together on something that I've been having trouble with, which is I have trouble whenever I need to hold a poll for work, generally. Like schedule meetings, decisions.

In my organization, we often have to vote on decisions and we do that in Discord. And there are so many ways to do that. They all suck, I think. It seems that they all suck. This is a general rule. But I don't want to give up on this. I want us to work on this. So I wrote a whole denection. what the challenge is actually is let's pick your favorite, your best poll slash voting tool utility app that you can find

for next week and perhaps together we can solve this problem. Now, what if I don't believe in democracy anymore and I just want to go full authoritarian? I mean, yeah. That's a you problem, maybe? I don't know. I think that's an everyone problem. It's an us problem, really. If people are more familiar, I'm thinking of tools like doodle.com, if that's still around.

I'm not using that anymore. But yeah, doodle.com, which is an online polling tool where you can send an invite to people so they can vote on a poll. It's often used to schedule meetings to see the best availability time slots in a week to organize a meeting. Things like that. Okay. All right. Usually I have an idea and I have no idea. Yeah, I know. It's a problem.

I need a fix for this. Okay. Usually I have like a gut reaction. That's the direction I go. I am totally at a loss for this one. but it'll be interesting to try and figure out. All right. Well, that is our challenge for the week. Again, I just want to remind everyone, we now have a feedback form, so you can feel free to play along with the challenge. Let us know what you did or answer the in-show question that I'm about to ask. So check that out. There is a link in the show notes, so you can send us your feedback.

So my question for the two of you and our audience, if they would like to chime in, what is your current favorite headphones? Like, what are your favorite headphones right now? When you sit down to work or listen to music, what are your go-tos? I love this question. Easy, it's the AirPods Pro. AirPods Pro 2? Yes, with the USB-C, whatever. With USB-C. So, wireless charging out of the case, quite a bit of battery life, more than enough than I ever need.

Comfortable to wear, and the noise cancellation is plenty for me, even on an airplane. And it's the one headphone that just works everywhere. It connects with my Apple TV if I ever need that. It connects with my Vision Pro, all my Apple stuff. They're perfect. They're maybe, oh boy, let's just say it. It's the best Apple product in the last 10 years maybe. Ooh, spicy, spicy. I have nothing bad to say about them. They're worth every penny. Nymian, what about you? I love this question because if you ask me this in a month, it might be different.

Right now, it's the headphones that I'm wearing because I just got them last week. I'm in an audiophile kick right now. Oh, nice. So I wanted to get a nice pair of wireless headphones that have a flat sound profile so I can play with the EQ by myself and all of that. What are the headphones? So these are the Beyerdynamic DT700 Pro X Sony grade level of branding there.

I think we have the same ones. The 770s? No, 700 Pro X. Oh, okay. I picked those because they have a removable cable. This is a mini XLR part. Yeah, same here. These have the same mini XLR cable. Maybe you have the 700, no, the 770 Pro X. Oh, DT770 Pro X. Yes. Okay. Mine are DT700 Pro X.

Okay. Yeah. They're cousins. Yeah, they're cousins. What is happening? Okay. I have no idea. So this is my answer today. Ask me again in a month. I think for me, man, I even came up with this question. I have a hard time answering it. When I am home and around the house, I use AirPods 4. They're comfortable, very comfortable, just the regular AirPods 4. They're really comfortable. The thing I don't like about them is despite the fact that they have noise cancelling, the noise cancelling isn't great.

So, like, if the dogs across the street start barking, I can absolutely hear it. Now, like, they're just, I'm like, ugh. I can just hear it just enough that it starts to pull me, and that's when I grab the AirPods Pro 2. I love them. Noise cancelling is great. They're just not comfortable to wear for a long period of time for me. Yeah, I agree. But yeah. All right. Well, that just about does it for the show. Thank you all so much for listening. A huge thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast after all.

Matt, Neelion, you have anything you want to promote? MacStories. Yeah. It's a good website. All right. it is it is a great website thank you all so much for listening have a great day