It's a French Thing

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushy co-hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts, and this week, well, specifically today, is one of their birthdays. As always, I am joined by Matt Berchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing great, and I'm happy for my co-host who's having a birthday today, which is lovely, But I'm also seeing our first tiny topic is just three question marks, and that makes me nervous right away for this episode.

Yeah, and our other co-host, Niléane, who is also here. Hi, Niléane. Hello. She also texted us, too, about, like, challenge clarification. And whenever she does that, because it's her turn to get the challenge, it's never good for the two of us. So, yeah, this is going to be an interesting episode. So let's just get right into it. Niman, you have a whole host of tiny topics in here. What's going on? Yes. So the three question marks, it was just in case you forgot my birthday.

And this was the point where I was about to say, you forgot something. So you passed the test. Well done. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of listener feedback. Oh, good. One of those. Our favorite. Yeah. One of those is Henry Fisher, who wrote to us on Mastodon. And Henry was able to complete the challenge that you gave up on, let's say.

My challenge was, I remember when I was trying to find a scheduling tool, like a collaborative scheduling tool to set up meetings, appointments and all of that. I had a suggestion that something that I already use, which was from a date. It's a French, from a French thing, association. It's an open source thing. And Henry Fisher recommends something called Chejit.

So S-C-H-E-J dot it. It's also open source. And it looks really nice. I tried to set up a fake thing with it, a fake poll with it. And I think the UI looks really nice. I don't know how you were not able to find that on your own, but we, thankfully, have listeners who have the best recommendations. So I will try to use that for real, and maybe I will report back if it's not that great.

I don't know. We'll see. Another thing I mentioned last week that I have an obscure bug with macOS once again, where the Messages app keeps quitting itself randomly with no reason, with no crash dialogue. It sometimes just disappears. The Messages app is done and it goes away. Scott Wilsey wrote to me on Mastodon as well. They have had the same crashing issue, like what seems like a crashing issue, a while back, but it hasn't happened lately.

So something's weird going on here. In my case, it's still happening. Like today, it happened once again. The messages app just quits by itself. Yeah, I just want to keep gathering feedback. If people have the same issue, just tell us. And I don't know what we'll do with it. Maybe we'll set up a petition. We'll send it to the U.S. Senate or something.

Yeah. So I have had, on a related note, I have not had the same messages crashing issue. I've kept an eye out for it, but it doesn't seem to be happening to me. I have had a similar issue on my iPhone that has never happened before and is really driving me insane. so I'm going to hold my phone's home screen up to the camera so you can see that I have two rows of icons at the bottom of the screen that are always filled out

there's one app that will not stay on my home screen and I've never had this before and it is the music app I add it to the one of the rows here and it will stay there for like 30 minutes and then I'll unlock my phone and it's gone. I'll add it back and it's gone. And this has been happening for two weeks now or so. It's gone through the iOS 18.4 to 18.5 update. And what drives me absolutely crazy is you will see now that there are two full rows.

That's because I don't have the Apple Music app there. I have a camera app that I'm trying out there. And it stays just fine. No problem. It's just the Apple Music app is removing itself from my home screen. And I don't know why. This is so strange. That's wild. So I don't know. I don't know how these are related. They may not be. But it is wild to me that, hey, open this app. I'll go ahead and close it for you. Hey, put this app here. I'm going to take it away for you.

I've never seen these before. And it's twice in a week that I've heard about them. Do you have multiple home screens? I do have multiple home screens. Are some of them hidden? I do have a hidden home screen that is just for the weekend. Yeah. It is also happening on that home screen. Hmm. And it's not being shifted to another page. It is not being shifted to another page. It is only the music app.

Huh. That's fun. So anyway, Tim, Craig, if you're listening. Which they are. Which they are. Yes. Please fix these. Huh. We'll add that to the petition. Yeah. That's some weird bugs you guys are having. I know. I know. Usually I'm the guy who's like, everything works fine for me. It's great. I don't know what these issues you guys are experiencing are. And this one's just driving me insane. Yeah. That would, especially the music app, which is probably an app.

At least for me, I go into it a bunch of times a day. Yeah. Not being on my home screen would be really annoying. Yeah. And it's a gap. That's the worst part. There's a little imperfection. You can't have a gap. It's not perfectly symmetrical, and that's unacceptable for a home screen. Interesting. Well, if anyone's having those issues, let Matt know, because that's weird. Nelian, you have one more item here. What's this? Yes, we talked about Finder. lately. I recommended FinderFix twice now as part of our login items last time as well.

And I found another app which is really useful and I think it's a must-have. It's called Folder Preview. And what this does is it adds a quick look extension to macOS so that if you select a folder or anywhere in Finder or on the desktop even, and you press the spacebar to bring up quick view, instead of just a big folder icon, you'll get a preview of what's inside the folder.

Ooh, I like this. Oh, that's cool. It's cool. And it doesn't stop there because this supports zip files as well. So you can select a zip file, press spacebar, and you can see the contents of the zip file without having to unzip it. I very much like this, and we'll be installing this right after the show. Yeah. I don't remember the price. Can you see the price? $2. $2. Okay. $2 in American money.

Okay. This is really nice. I think it's made by the folks who develop Anybox. Yep. Yep. And pinning. Pinning. I don't know that one. Oh, what is pinning? Pinning is kind of like a calendar alternative. I am blanking on who wrote it. Somebody wrote about it in the Club MacStories newsletter, and I am blanking on who wrote about it. But I remember reading that and going and downloading that because it sounded interesting.

Nice. Interesting. Cool. Yeah. All these will be in the show notes. Yep. All right. Should we get into the main topic? Yes. I have been so excited about this ever since Matt teased us last week. And I realized we didn't do a very good job for the audio listeners. No. Matt held up a flip folding phone to the camera and then went, nope, nope, we're not talking about it. I don't even know if that's what he's going to be talking about today. Actually, I do. I can see it in the document.

But I'm taking the wind out of his sails a little bit here. But I've been so excited to talk to him about this ever since he teased us with it. Okay, well, good, because I'm hoping you guys have questions. I said I've been having that icon issue on my iPhone for the past couple weeks. That hasn't impacted me as much as it normally would because I have been using this phone, which folds in half for the past two weeks as my main phone. It has its own phone number and everything. I love eSIM for just signing up for quick service for like a month to test something.

It's very nice for that. I have one issue with eSIM. My carrier gives you a certain amount of times you can do it for free a month or free a year. And then after, it's like two or three times. And then after that, you have to pay $3 every single time. So like come iPhone review season, I'm ending up paying like an extra 20 bucks because I'm swapping Sims around all the time. That kind of sucks. That does suck. What I actually did was I didn't want to, again, Neil, you will not understand this, because getting off iMessage would be such a pain for me.

This is actually a separate phone number. So I'm doing basically everything with message on here. But anyway, I've been using this. It's the Motorola Razr Plus. It's the 2023 model. And I've been using it as my main phone for the past couple weeks. The reason I got this is because I've been so curious about folding phones for so long. Samsung released their first one in 2019. So it's been six years these have existed. And I've never used one in person. I'd seen people using them, but I've never used one myself.

And every time I got like curious about one and was like, I work hard, I'm going to treat myself to a new phone. And I see the prices and they're like $2,000. And I'm like, nope, that's not happening. But this was on sale at Best Buy for $300, which is not nothing and is objectively stupid. But we have content today, so it's a write-off, right? How much did you say?

$300. Okay. For what is effectively a two-year-old flagship phone. I mean, it's an insane deal. That's devaluation. Yes. Well, yes. But anyway, so I've got it. I've been using it. and I didn't want to get it to necessarily review the phone or like switch to it because it's Android. And it's a two-year-old phone. Who cares, kind of? Oh, my God. You phone elitist.

I'm just never going to use an Android phone. It's just not what I prefer. The apps aren't as good. You can fight me on this, but it's not there. No, thanks. I agree. I'm an iOS guy. Despite all of my qualms with iOS and Apple and everything, it's still miles better in my opinion. So I wanted to get this to see what... I want to look at it from the perspective of an Apple customer. Why hasn't Apple made one of these?

Should they make one of these? And the rumors are that there is one coming next year potentially. What are the things that we hope they fix about the current state of folding phones? So I want to tell you about the experience a little bit. The first thing is this is a flip style. So it is tiny and it expands to the size of a normal phone, a tall normal phone, but a normal phone. I think it's a 6.9 inch screen, but it's a taller aspect ratio.

But when you flip it down, it's just this little like a wallet size thing. And the other style, obviously, is the fold, which is it starts out in folding form. It's a normal phone, and it folds out to kind of an iPad mini style thing. And I'll just get it out of the way first. I think I would prefer a folding phone, not a flip phone. Because this seems to be for people who sometimes want their phone to do less, And the folding format is for people who sometimes want their phone to do more, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I will also say I don't quite get the flip style phone. I get why we used to have it back in the day when like the original Razer phone was out, which I had that thing and that thing was awesome. So in today's world where we have what we used to call bar phones where like you literally just take it out and it's a bar and like you can just get right into it. The flipping mechanism doesn't really seem like it adds anything.

Like what is that giving me other than now I have an extra step from when I take my phone out of my pocket. I have to flip it open. What do I get out of that? Whereas the folding, you get a bigger screen and basically a tablet. Nelian seems like she has an idea. Yeah. Buckets. Women's buckets. Yes. Egg. Exactly. In my running shorts, my iPhone, I have a Pro Max phone, and this doesn't fit super securely in my pocket when I'm in my running shorts, because the pocket is a little smaller than,

I guess, my jean shorts. That's a Pro Max. That's a Pro Max. Okay. But this, this fits very nicely. Like the size difference is enormous. Compared to the Pro Max, when you flip open the Razer, how much taller is the Razer compared to the Pro Max? It is a marginal amount. Very marginal. Okay, interesting. So it is actually really, really nice to have such a small thing in my pocket.

So that, I think, is the benefit is it fits better. This actually fits in the coin pocket thing in my jeans. Oh, wow. Just barely. But that's a pocket that normally holds. I'll put a picture of how it fits in the show notes. But it's a tight fit. But I could hold it in there if I wanted. Which is crazy. But yeah, you are totally right to hit on the, isn't that just when I take it out of my pocket, it's another step to open it up? And yes, it is.

It looked cool when you just flipped it like that. If you're not watching the video thing, Matt looked very cool flipping it like that. It feels aggressive. It is aggressive. You're trying to hit me with it. You know what it feels like? Go back to the Star Trek, the original series. It's like their tricorders when they just flip it like that. That's what it looks like to me. I've seen these flip style phones and I've seen the Fold style phones.

And the Fold style phones to me, like, yes, I could get on board with that. Having a tablet in my pocket, great. I get it. My pants actually have pockets. Weird flex. Yeah, I know. I could actually put things in the pockets of my pants. Didn't think we'd be talking about pants this much this week, but here we are. But yeah, I don't quite get it. So my hope is if Apple's actually doing one of these folding phones, it's the fold open and give me a tablet.

I agree. And so here's the interesting thing for me is like this screen, you can run apps on it. So this is hard. It's hard to demo things. But like I can pull up YouTube and YouTube is here and it's the full YouTube app and I can run it and I can watch videos and all that stuff. What it's more useful for is doing quick things. I have the Google Home app locked to the screen so I can easily launch it, and I can adjust the temperature in the house or do whatever.

I also have Pocket Cast so I can easily manage my podcast from here if I'm listening to something. I've got the Google Wallet app to just quickly do an NFC payment. But if you're thinking, hmm, you're kind of just using it to do little things here and there. if a text message comes in, I can reply to it from the screen and the keyboard is actually just the right size without going full screen. That's exactly what I use my Apple Watch for, though. So I think this solves similar problems to what the Apple Watch does. Quick replies to messages, little

tiny quick actions that take like one or two taps, and if you want to do any more, you open up and go to the full screen. So if you have a smartwatch, this is going to be even less useful because I think the smartwatch does a lot of the same things. So I would agree with you that as Apple does make a smartwatch that is very successful and tons of people own, they would probably want a phone that does more sometimes, not one that does less sometimes. But there's other things to consider. A nice thing about this is you can fold it to any angle you want, which means if you open the camera,

which you do with a little twist. Nope, that's the flashlight. Oh, no. Twist open the camera. There we go. So I don't know how well this is going to show in video, but the camera app is just kind of a normal camera. And if I fold it in half, you can kind of see it shifts to this new mode where all the controls are on the bottom. The preview is on the top half of the screen. And you can just place this on a surface, set a timer, walk into the photo and then take a family photo or a friend like a group photo or whatever

which is really nice um you can also do this with like youtube youtube will split the interface if you do that as well so you can put it on your desk without a stand and it can play videos propped up um which is kind of nice it would be better on a folding phone because the watching a video on just the top half of the screen in portrait mode is pretty small but yeah um also with the camera if I do this while it's open, you can have the phone totally closed and take a photo.

And now you're taking a selfie with the main camera. So you're getting the highest quality camera, video as well, with a selfie and the ability to see everything and frame it perfectly. That's very, very nice. I really like that. These cameras are not as good as iPhone cameras. Not even close. but an iPhone with these cameras would be great. Or a phone like this with iPhone cameras would be great. Another thing is, ooh, lordy, this phone was $300, and I know it was on like a super clearance sale, but $300.

This has a 165 hertz LTPO OLED display that's 2,000 nits in brightness. Oh, and this external display, 165 hertz LTPO. Oh, my gosh. 2,000 nits display. But Matt, you can spend $1,000 and get an iPhone 16 with 60 hertz. I know. Silliness. Silliness. Oh, my. I will say this is not as bright as I thought it would. I think in ideal situations, it gets those brightnesses.

But outside, actually, the iPhone 16E is brighter to the eye, which is interesting. Interesting. think anyway um but i did think it was funny that this is this even this tiny little baby screen is 165 hertz variable refresh rate always on display that's do you guys a quick quick tangent just yes or no paul do you think apple will ever bring pro motion their their 120 hertz screen tech their pro motion to anything that is not a pro device that does not have pro in the name okay

I think so. Do you? I don't know. If they do, they need to rename it. I don't think necessarily they need to rename it, but I'm skeptical that Apple honestly thinks that the regular iPhone needs anything beyond 60 hertz. But anyways, that was tangent. I could see it where they keep it to the Pro phone the way that it's a variable. it changes the frequency depending on what you're doing on the screen.

And on the normal iPhones, it's just locked to whatever, 90 or 120. Yeah, maybe like the Pro phones go to 160, whatever, and then the regular phones go to 90 or something. Anyways, that was just a quick tangent. I think, well, yeah, whatever the Pro phones have had, it used to be the Pros were OLED and the regulars were LCD and then they were all OLED. The pros got the dynamic island and the non-pros didn't and then the next year so I think they'll get there. Eventually it's just like it's just basic tech

and it'll be you just do it but anyway. Another thing that you haven't asked about but you might be thinking of is there a crease in the middle of the screen and can you feel it or see it? And the answer is yes and yes. You can see it and you can feel it. However, it's a thing I almost never think about when actually using the phone. So this is actually, if I can go on a slight tangent, there's a thing out there where, and we'll just stay focused on iOS versus Android

because that's easy to, it's literally what we're talking about actually. There's a thing where if we just focus on one side of it, Android phones tend to do this thing and iPhones don't. And therefore, a lot of iPhone fans will be like, that's stupid. That's why they don't care about the details. Obviously, that's unacceptable that the product would behave that way. I think about when the iPhone had symmetrical speaker grills on the bottom of the phone and people were like, that's attention to detail, baby.

That's essential. These other phones don't do it because they don't care. Look at the bottom of your iPhone today. It's not symmetrical. And nobody cares. Anyway, so the crease is effectively never visible. When the screen is on, I don't see it unless there's a bright light reflected exactly in the middle of the screen, in which case you do see it a little bit. So it's not as good as a normal screen. If my normal iPhone had this crease, I would be like, good God, what is wrong?

You know, it's a give and take. You get the benefit of a folding screen, but you sometimes see a reflection that looks funky. The feel is pretty subtle, but it's definitely there. The way I would describe it is, you know how sometimes you get like a little sticky spot on your phone from like food or whatever. Like you're munching on like french fries and you get a little like, I don't know. Never. I would never, ever have dirty hands and then touch a device. Never. So, okay, you're going to have to imagine this then.

But, like, if you ever have one of those little, like, spots on your phone and you, like, scroll over it and it's a little, like, oh, that's a little annoying. And then you, like, brush it off. It feels a lot like that. It's just a tiny little bit of extra friction or a tiny little bump. What I will say is the vast majority of the scrolling that I'm doing is scrolling on the bottom half of the screen. So I don't really notice it. But there are some times where you're like dragging something from the bottom to the top and you like feel the little thing in the middle. So you do feel it. It's not ideal, but it's a thing that I only really think about consciously when I'm writing about it or talking about it now where people are like, so you feel that crease?

And I have to be like, yeah, I guess I do. But it doesn't really bother me that much. So I think it'd be awesome if someone could figure out how to have no crease. But I guess I would say I now understand why people who like folding phones don't really complain about it that much. It would be nice if it went away, but it doesn't ruin the experience, in my opinion. Beyond the crease, something I wonder about often is the texture of the screen. Does it feel like real glass?

Yeah, that's a great question. So there is a screen protector on this. and during startup there is a warning that says do not try to remove this screen protector and it's you don't really notice it like you can if you look if you get like real close to the screen you can see it in the corners one thing that would annoy i think really obsessive people is that the the corner radius of the screen protector is ever so slightly different than the main display

but again we're getting into nitpicky territory but it's so close to the edge that you can't, I don't even think I could get my finger under there if I I can get a fingernail under there if I wanted so I won't though but how it feels like it feels like a normal screen it feels like a normal screen to me this is a thing I kind of like tapped with my fingernail both my iPhone and this if there's a difference, I don't think it's substantial.

It feels like a normal phone. It doesn't feel like I'm using a plastic screen or anything like that. Okay. What else? Oh, one thing that's interesting. Waterproofing. It's not. Makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, so I have gotten used to, over the past couple years, having a phone that I can just not care at all. It drops into the sink. Who cares?

It's raining outside. Who cares? I want to take a phone call in the shower. Who cares? I haven't done that, but I could. Please don't. Please don't ever call me from the shower. Guaranteed I will now. This one, I cannot. Huh. I'm sorry. I really bothered you with that. So I have a confession here. I still, you know, I'm older. I come from a time of water next to technology equals not good.

So I still don't take, like, my phone near the shower. If I have the shower on and, like, the humidity and, like, moisture in the air, I leave my phone in the bedroom. I don't take it into the bathroom. Like, I'm still one of those people that, like, it's just ingrained in me that you don't take technology next to water. Like, yeah. Then you would be okay with this. I probably would be. This is, it's good. I mean, I wouldn't, but.

It's IP52, I want to say, which effectively means there shouldn't be any dust, but technically there could. And if you submerge it for even a moment, it's probably dead, but it can survive the slightest splash. So basically, raindrops start falling, put it away immediately. I think it'll survive rain, but maybe not heavy rain. But anyway, this is what I'm talking about. If it's raining outside, here's the best way to put it. I went for a run, like I said.

Wanted to use this because it's easier to carry around. It was raining. I did not bring this phone because I was paranoid I would destroy it. So, yeah. Waterproofing, definitely still an issue. I feel like I have gone over most of the things. I will say battery has been totally fine. No issue there. The battery is split between the two halves, and it's fine. Literally no issues. Ooh, one weird usability thing, and is another reason why I think this folding or this flip style is tricky.

I've had to get used to picking up the phone, And you're like, what are you talking about? And the reason is if you look at your iPhone, well, I guess Apple would have less of an issue here, but look at the left side of your phone with the three volume buttons and the action button. And if you folded that phone in half, almost the entire side of your phone, yeah, harder, Chris, fold it harder. Be a bending test. Basically, buttons span the entire length of the side of the phone.

So when I pick it up, I'm very often changing the volume or hitting the on-off switch. So that's an interesting thing is I've had to train myself to pick it up from the top and bottom rather than the sides like I'm used to with a phone. With a folding-style phone, it would be less of an issue. Oh, this is something you guys, I don't know if you'll like this or not. Around the edges, so like iPhones, most Android phones, the glass goes all the way to the edge.

Yeah. With this phone, there's a very subtle rubbery border around the whole bezel. Rubber? Yes. And the reason, if I slam it shut, so instead of glass slamming into glass, it's just the rubber hitting the rubber. I don't know how Apple will address this. I have a feeling they will make... No, that doesn't make any sense. So if you have a case on your phone, you already are used to this kind of thing. What's the problem with that?

Glass slamming into glass will break the glass? No, I mean, what's the problem with the rubber? It's probably not a huge issue. And again, if you have a case, you're already doing this. But it has the same gestures as iOS, right? So swiping up from the bottom of the screen, there's a little bump you go over first. you go do like the back gesture there's a little bump there so it just feels a little less premium that's fine okay not an issue not an issue um i think there was one other thing i wanted to say

oh authentication this is the last thing i wanted to uh say and if you have any questions we can answer them but um authentication this is an android phone does not do any face unlock there's side button for fingerprint. So it works when it's open. You close it. Authentication works again. So it works fine. How would Apple do this? So I think, okay, are we assuming Apple is doing this style of folding phone or the Either of them. Either way

they have the inner screen that is normally the face ID camera folded in. I think it would be face ID but would be using the outside camera. And it would be when you pick it up, like it uses maybe the accelerometer or something, it knows you're picking it up, it knows you're about ready to use it or you tapped on it or something like that. It does the authentication because Face ID authentication is very fast. And then by the time you've opened it, you're authenticated it in. Yep. So this was my thought as well.

However, what if you just leave it out like this? You can just leave this phone flat out. The always on screen works here too. What if I just leave my phone out here? It's not going to my pocket or anything. Let me just leave it out on the table. Do I flip it around? As we established last week, the proper way of doing this is to never let your phone go to sleep. Oh my god. Yeah, that is actually tricky. It's like, do they put in double face ID?

This is what I'm wondering. At that point, that's going to be expensive. Yeah. uh i don't i guess not because they've got face id to go into like the 16e and even the se before that right so like face the the components for face id have the price have come down so maybe they can just do double face id i mean if apple does a folding phone let's be honest it's gonna be like two grand 2500 it's gonna be expensive this thing's gonna be at least 2 000 i think i i I think it's going to be, I see, I think everyone's going to think it's going to be 2000.

That's why I'm thinking it's going to be 2,500. It's going to be the vision pro kind of thing where like, we all thought it was going to be the $2,000 range. And then we saw the price and we're like, what? This is the company that makes a thousand dollar monitor stand. I would just like to remind everyone. So there's, there's definitely a reality where the vision pro comes down in price. And this is more expensive than we think. And a vision pro and a folding phone are the same price. You know what? Hot take. Actually, probably not that hot of a take. I'd rather have a folding phone that folds open into an iPad mini that when you open it up, it runs iPad OS,

than I would rather have the Vision Pro. Yeah. Hot take. And I've actually been using my Vision Pro more lately. Maybe that might be an interesting topic later on. They could just have Touch ID. They could do Touch ID. I really don't think Apple wants to do Touch ID anymore. But they do it on the iPad, yeah, still. yeah they've they've never mixed authentication you've never had a device that had face id and touch id i think it would be great if they did i would love my normal iphone to have touch id as a

second option but touch id never worked great for me uh it just for some reason there's something with my hands that it never worked great like i would always have to authenticate multiple times or I just end up typing in the password. Yeah. What this did make me realize is a total tangent. A lot of Android phones have in-screen fingerprint readers that are just kind of on the bottom half of the screen. This kind of power button one is less in style now. I really like the under-screen ones.

So if Apple does bring Touch ID back, I would love it if it was in the screen. I guess on the outside screen it would be like in the middle. It might be weird. But anyway, just a tangent. so if you guys have any other questions i'm happy to answer them but uh this is a very cool phone i i didn't even mention it's really freaking weird the first time you take this out of the box and you're like okay i guess it's gonna work and then now yeah i'm just like whatever flip it open and it's it's fine like it's it's very cool and like as someone who doesn't like android as much as ios

sometimes I get like a pixel phone and I'm I really have to struggle to use it because like it's the same type of thing I'm used to uh this is totally different than an iPhone this is a totally different experience and it's been pretty easy for me to use it the last two weeks so yeah I think it's a cool and I hope Apple does eventually do a folding something but probably more of the into iPad size one so if Apple was to do a folding phone and we established like like you just said like if you want you want a folding one where it opens up into a tablet but if apple let's

put that aside apple doesn't do one of those apple makes this style of flip folding phone would you get this over the regular iphone iphone pro i think i would but that might be because i'm a sucker for novelty okay okay all right i was i was kind of curious like i actually think if apple made this style like they made this folding phone and not the tablet style folding phone i think i'd be like thanks but no thanks like feel free to send

me a review unit but the one i'm going to buy would just be the regular pro iphone uh that year yeah it would be tough but if they uh yeah if they did release an actual folding one that folded out to an ipad mini size the price might kill me but i would be interested in it for sure yeah i i I think no matter what, when Apple makes a folding phone, it's easily going to be more than $2,000. I'm saying $2,500. I'm putting my flag on the ground. That would be too much for me. We can roll back the tape, and I think it's rumored not this year, but next year.

I think so. I think it's going to be $2,500, and I think that's going to be the starting price. That doesn't include storage upgrades. So I'm guessing you're going to be able to spend $3,000 on an Apple folding phone. All right. All right. Neelion. John, you're up next. What do you got for us this week? I have a very, very predictable topic. And the short version is I blew up my window management system once again.

And here's why. You blew the windows out. Yeah, by the way, if people are watching, you've been noticing that I'm looking over regularly. And that's because there's a huge wasp at the window. Not inside the house, right? It's outside? Just outside the window. Okay. Anyway, but yeah, I changed out the way I manage my windows on the Mac because I reach a critical point, I think, where these days,

so I'm overflowing with windows. But first, I should say how I'm usually managing my windows. Usually, I have three spaces on the Mac. The first one is where all my messaging apps go. So Discord, messages, Telegram, WhatsApp. Of course, I am in France, so I have a million messages up, depending on who I'm messaging. So Signal, all of that goes into the same first space. In the second space, I have email and Safari and social media things.

Basically anything that will very easily bring me to a web page so that it just opens in the same page in Safari. And the third one is an overflowing space, I like to call it. So that's where everything else goes. Usually that's Obsidian, the music app or Doppler now and other like Figma. Usually if I work in Figma, it's maximized in that third space.

And that's it. However, like these days, I'm just reaching a point where it's too difficult to keep track and to manually sort windows. I'm obviously using the thing in macOS where you say always open this app in this space. But that's just adding obstacles to the way I'm managing windows. Because sometimes I don't want that window to always open that space. Because there are cases where I need to have them side by side, etc.

So I revived an experiment that I did for a Mac Stories article a few months ago. That was in April a few months ago. That was last year, I just realized. That was a year ago, in April 2024. I did the single space challenge, which was remove those two additional spaces, just live in a single space, which is what most people do. And I still sometimes when I thought about this, I'm like, how can people do this?

It's just your screen is overflowing with the windows all the time. And in that article, I found for myself some tips to clean up your windows, to not have a bunch of stuff on screen all the time. And so I did that this week. I went through all the tips that I gave to myself last year and applied them again because I think I need to have windows side by side too often now.

And I can't just keep swiping between spaces. And including the messages that I'm used to keep separate on a separate space, now more than ever, I need to keep them side by side with a browser, with Obsidian or whatever, because I'm always switching back and forth and sending files back and forth, et cetera, and copying links, et cetera. And so I went through those tips. I will not go through them all again. Go check out the article. Most of it still stands.

The main thing is using the built-in keyboard shortcuts in macOS to hide windows. That's really useful. So if you didn't know that, but it's been there forever. If you option click an app, whether that's in the dock or an app's window on screen, you will hide the previous app that you were on. So if you're in Chrome, for example, and you click on an Obsidian window while holding Option, the Chrome window will disappear.

And you can do that in the dock as well. So it's easy to just move on from apps without having the leftover apps clung up your view. That's the main tip. I think hiding widows is the key to this. But I have a bunch of new tips today. that I've been able to use to make that work this time. Because last time, I gave up on the challenge after a week. I went back to my three spaces.

This time, I want to stick with it. So the first thing is I revived Moom. And you remember that I mentioned it last week as part of my login items for one single feature, which is the hover feature. In Moom, you can enable hover and assign it to a modifier key. In my case, that's the control key. And what this does is if you hold the control key and hover using your mouse pointer over a window, you can just move the window without having to grab the title bar.

And that's extremely useful. I'm just flinging windows left and right, and it's very fast and very fluid. It's awesome. And it has an optional feature, which is if you had if you had a second modifier key, it will let you resize windows on the fly without having to grab the corners. And that's really useful. So it just lets you resize the window from the nearest corner. Like if your mouse is toward the bottom right of the window, it will resize from that corner.

It's very fast. So you can just click in the middle with the two modifiers. you can click anywhere in the window and resize. You don't have to go to the corner. You don't click. You don't even click? Your pointer only has to be over a window. You hold control and you can just move the window. What? Yes, you don't click. And it works with background windows. Like if a window is in the background, you can move that window in the background without having to activate it.

Like it stays in the background while you move it. Oh, interesting. Does it only work in Windows in the background or even the frontmost window? Yeah, both. And you have it set to the control key as the modifier? That's what I've said it to. Interesting. But you can choose any of the modifier keys. You can choose your own. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. This feature, like, underrated. I think it's awesome. You should try that. And I think it's made a huge difference for me because now that I'm using a single space, I have so many windows on screen all the time.

And being able to just fling them around easily, just as I need it, without having to... I'm using a trackpad. I don't use a mouse. I use the Magic trackpad. And the trackpad is awesome. But it's finicky to grab the title bars and window corners to resize them. This makes a huge difference, especially if you're using the trackpad. Oh, yeah. That's really... That's very cool. A lot of Mac apps these days have small areas in the top toolbar to grab.

Chrome has very small. I'm looking at Vivaldi right now. There's a couple of gaps between the buttons I can grab, but there's a three-pixel window I can hit. That's interesting. I'm a weirdo who just likes free-form window sizes. I don't do half and half. I'll just like, I always have windows poking out everywhere. Like they're not neatly sorted. But that, I did not, so I've never used Moom. But that ability to more easily just move windows around, that is actually really interesting.

I might use that. Yeah. I'm the same. I don't tile windows. I like just windows to let the peek out from under windows just so I know they still exist somewhere on screen. I like to do that. See, I'm like my uncle. I tile my windows. Oh, backstory. My uncle is doing a tile company. Okay. That's a joke that would kill in the lolly household. Oh, yeah. It needs a little context for us.

Yeah, literally. Nobody listening to this will get that because none of my family will listen to anything I do. But, hey. Yeah. I like tile. And I use a combination of better SnapTool. and hyperkey. So I've set up basically a bunch of keyboard shortcuts combined with hyperkey that I can make things like half and half or a third or a quarter or full screen or center and all that stuff. And I just get Windows flying everywhere. Yeah.

Okay, that's fine. You can do that. So first thing, Moom has made a huge difference. The second thing is two features in Supercharge. The first one is not something that Supercharge invented because it's a hidden flag in macOS and Supercharge just lets you easily toggle it. The way you used to do it without Supercharge is via a command line.

And that is dim icons of hidden apps in the dock. So like I said, the way I've been able to make this work is by hiding windows aggressively. But it's hard to track which windows you've hidden or not. If you click them in the dock and they pop out of nowhere, it's sometimes jarring. I like to know before having to activate them, which ones are hidden. And what this does is just what it says. It reduces the opacity of the icon in the doc for the apps you've hidden using command H or the option click method I mentioned.

So that's nice. And the second one is, I believe, in supercharge. This one is under experimental. Let me look it up to see the phrasing. It's not under experiment, but it's also under the doc section, supercharged. What this one is, is the option is called when clicking an active app in a doc. And you can choose either do nothing, hide app, minimize windows, or cycle through windows.

And what I'm doing is hide app. So it's a very easy way to, another easy way to hide apps instead of having to hit command H or remember the option click method. And now I can just click an app icon in the dock to bring it forward, and then click the app icon again to hide it. It's a double click, essentially, to hide any apps from the dock. Really, really useful. And the last one is Better Touch Tool. I've set up something experimental for a single app, and I will see if I will replicate it or not.

But the experiment is I watch a lot of Twitch streams during the day in the background or in the foreground. And I alternate a lot between the two. Like sometimes I watch it in full screen when I'm in dead zone in my day. Or sometimes I just have it in picture in picture in the corner of my screen. However, switching between the two is annoying. So using BetterTouchTool, I set up a hyperkey shortcut, which cycles between two resize actions in BetterTouchTool.

So the first action is it puts it in the center of the screen. So it resizes it to be quite big and put it in center of the screen. And the second action is it resizes it to be very small and narrow so that the layout on Twitch switches to have the stream on top and the chat below instead of side by side. See what I mean? So it has a vertical layout. So I resize it to that and put it in the corner of my screen.

So now my Hyperkey shortcut is HyperT, Hyperkey plus T. so now I can just press hyperkey plus T to toggle between those two views and that's been working really well and I think I want to apply that logic to all the apps I just want to be able and this will take time because I need to think what are the use cases for the apps but for example Safari oftentimes I have a big Safari window

in the center of the screen but many times as well I want a small Safari window in either corner or on the side, in the column. And I think I would like to assign maybe Hyperkey S to quickly cycle through all of those setups where it's very easy to just have it in center, in the corner, etc. It takes a while to set it up, but I think I will do that. Maybe I will report back.

Interesting. Is it possible to have it only affect the currently focused app? Yeah, I think so. So you could just have the same keyboard combination, and if Safari is in front, it cycles between its layouts. If Twitch is in front, it does its own layouts. I think it's possible. It's probably possible. Yeah. Because what I'm doing is right now with Twitch, I'm just using an action to resize window, and I filter all the windows to only select the Twitch window

so that it works system-wide. The Twitch app doesn't have to be active so that the shortcut even works, even if I'm inside another app. Gotcha. So I can be in Safari, hit HyperKT, and it resizes the Twitch app on the side without having to bring it forward. This is very fancy. This is very advanced stuff. Yeah, this is very fancy. I like this. I like this. This is very well thought out.

Yeah, I know. I reached a point where I was going crazy, having to switch between all my spaces and convincing myself that this is the way to manage my windows. And I had to blow it up and start over. Interesting. Well, I approve. I like it. I'm going to borrow some of the stuff that you're doing here from my own system because I like this. Should we get to the challenge?

Or is there anything more you guys want to talk about this? That's it for me. All right. Well, I think it's time for the challenge. And this week, it was my challenge. And oh, boy, do I regret doing this challenge. So this challenge was use the Raycast typing practice. This is a built-in extension in Raycast. And submit your best word per minute. I learned something new about myself this week that I just never realized. I am one of those people when I type, I look at the keyboard.

And the way this practice, the way this Raycast thing works is you need to type what is appearing on the screen. And if you're somebody that's looking at the keyboard, it's also really hard to see what's on screen. So the whole time I'm doing this, like I'm going up, down, up, down, up, down. If I added some left and rights in there, I'd be the Konami code. But yeah, so I did not do very well at this at all. I put my screenshot in the document, and I got 49 words per minute, but a 97% accuracy.

Just because I was up, down, up, down. And I tried not doing that. I tried forcing myself to look at the screen. Because I can type looking at the screen. But I think it's just a habit that I have of looking down at the keyboard. And I just, I did terrible at this. It was not good. Chris, you suck. I was really bad at this. Wow. I was really bad at this. So I'm kind of curious how you guys did. But yeah, 49 words per minute. but a 97% accuracy only had three letters wrong.

And my source was from Super Mario Odyssey, which I thought was pretty cool. That's cool. Did you just do it once? I did it a couple of times. I did it a few times. I believe in the challenge, I said you could do it as many times as you want. You just need to have a screenshot in the document by 8 a.m. PST. I didn't upload the screenshot. I don't remember the screenshot. Frantically uploading. Oh, no. Rewind the tape. Editor Chris, rewind the tape. I hope I still have the audio clip.

Can you see the history of your typing test? The challenge was you must have a screenshot in the document by 8 a.m. PST, which is when we record. I win. I think I win. All right. We'll see. We'll see. All right. I don't have the screenshot. Can you see the history in Raycast? I have no idea. No, you can't, can't you? I have no idea. But I know for a fact, because I edited it, that I said you had to have a screenshot in the document by 8 a.m. PST when we recorded.

I mean, I just won by default. And I don't even think I did the best. This doesn't count. Did you have a screenshot, Matt? Check the deck. Was it there by 8 a.m. PST when we started recording? I don't know. Okay, I have a screenshot, but it's not my best try. My best attempt. I mean. That sucks. All right. Well, Niléane, tell us about your best attempt. So the screenshot I have is 80 words per minute, 95% accuracy.

My best attempt was 100 words per minute, 98 accuracy. I think I did it like five times and it oscillated between 80 and 90. And like this one-off, the 100 ones was a one-off. I only took a single screenshot. Okay. Yeah, all of my attempts were around the same. 49 was the best I got, but it was usually around like 47 to 48 is what I was.

But yeah, I definitely said. I have a small story time. I used to be an enthusiast for an alternative French keyboard layout. It's called Beppo. So named after the first four keys instead of QWERTY or whatever. The French layout that everybody uses in France is AZERTY. So A-Z-E-R-T-Y.

So I was a big fan of this alternative niche keyboard layout. And I used that for years. And that keyboard layout is not available for anything like hardware wise. So to be able to use that, you have to learn it by heart. And I became super good at blind typing and using all my fingers to type. At some point, I went back to Azit because not having the labels on the keys is insane. And I think I kept that a good habit a little bit of typing with multiple fingers.

I'm still mostly using the index fingers, but yeah. Small story. Interesting. Interesting. I had a small stint where I tried Dvorak, the alternative. Oh, boy. The nonstick. So hard. One thing I do want to point out, just so I'm not embarrassed. I can type faster than 49 words per minute, but it's because I look at the keyboard and I'm not looking at the screen. That is, that is, that is, I just, yeah, I can type faster than that, I swear.

But oh boy, typing challenges where you have to look at the screen and looking up and down slows you down. Did not work for me. Anyways. Yeah. Matt, how'd you do? And did you have the screenshot in there by 8 a.m. PST when we sat down to record? I don't need to incriminate myself. That's not how this works. What I will say is, so I did this like 15 to 20 times probably. Okay. Because the results were all over the map. I think my lowest was in the 50s.

My highest was 115. Whoa. But it varied quite a bit based on what quote I was given. Yeah. If I could get the whole quote in my head, then I could type it incredibly fast. but if I had if it was if I couldn't like remember it or was using words I don't typically use and just don't have the muscle memory for typing quickly those would take longer again like Chris like you said up and down up and down a little bit um as I it because I would make a typo because I can I can touch type but if I make a typo then I have to look down to like see oh no

where did I go wrong um so yeah if it was a quote that I knew and I got a couple that I knew I flew it was great which I think is more how I normally type because I'm thinking what I wanted to say and I can just I guess I could look at my keyboard as well so if I know what I'm typing if I know it ahead of time like I know what the next like couple words are going to be I can go quick if I'm looking at the screen and like figuring out as I go I'm so slow yeah that's so I have a hard time memorizing things like I tried doing the thing where I would read the quote and like have it in the back of my head and then I could just

type it out but like even like i i just i don't do well memorizing things like even my scripts aren't like scripts that i'm memorizing they're more outlines and i you know i i i know what i mean in certain points and stuff like that so yeah i i struggled i struggled with like the whole like memorize the quote and then just retype the quote and yeah but 115 that's very impressive i must highlight that English

is not my native language. That's true. If we had to write in French, I would be dead. My words per minute would be one. I would be much higher if it was in French. I mean, that's a great card to play. That is a really good card to play. I don't really have anything to... Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, hang on. So you're doing 100 words. The podcast is in English.

So you did 100 words per minute with your hand tied behind your back, effectively. Like, this is not, you could be even quicker. No, it's not really, that's not really true. I type in English all day. That's not fair. Yeah, I'm disappointed that I can't get like an accurate word per minute test for me, because I'm like, I really want to know what it is. But like I even looked at alternative typing tests just to see. And like they were all kind of the same thing of like type what's on the screen.

And I'm just up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And it just doesn't work for me. Yeah. It would be kind of interesting. Maybe there's it would be cool if there was a way to do a free form. Like maybe if Obsidian, for example, you could start the timer. You could just write what you're going to write. You could write your blog post, your script, whatever. And then once you stop, you could see what your words per minute were over that. it wouldn't be like scientific although I don't know how scientific these are either yeah I mean you could be

an idiot and just do like A space A space A space A space and just rock out a massive score but what if you're just curious yeah exactly there might be an obsidian plugin I'll do some research and come back with something but yeah that was the challenge I thought it was a fun one even though I did terribly I thought it was a fun one but Niléane, it is your turn to issue the challenge. What do you got for us this week? Okay, so it's in continuation with me blowing up my window management system.

I want you to do the same. So the challenge is get rid of your macOS dock. Wait, what? And there is a specific, yes, the dock in macOS. So there is like a technicality to take into account that feasible we all use supercharge yeah so it turns out cdrasaurus just updated supercharge uh i believe yesterday and added a new feature in supercharge and that new feature i will read out the name of it precisely where is it where is it you will love it you will love it

Okay, so this toggle that you will have to turn on once you start the challenge is prevent dock from showing when moving mouse to screen edge. And there is a little explainer from Cinder Service in the app. It's useful if you want to hide the dock entirely or only show it with a keyboard shortcut. So here we want to hide it entirely. Okay, so do we need an able hide dock then?

Yeah, so you need to hide the dock. Once you're ready to start the challenge, you need to hide the dock, then turn this on so that you don't have a dock anymore. And the challenge is let's find a way to live without it for a few days. I have a few ideas. There are some pretty obvious ideas. But I think it's fun. And thank you, Syndrasaurus, for providing this feature to make it feasible.

All right. I just did this. I do not like it. I'm not happy. I'm not thrilled about this one. But okay. All right. This can involve third-party apps, whatever tweak you find to make do without the dock. Oh, boy. I turned it out, and I'm immediately uncomfortable. wow okay and as always uh audience if you want let me try try you try it with us oh that's bold i don't like this at all uh i'm not through i'm like okay how am i gonna get to

stuff okay okay well that's that's actually that's that's i guess that's the challenge is having no dock is untenable. Yes, so you have to find something. You have to find something to make this work. And there are things. Okay. I can think of one already. Me too. I can't think of any. Fantastic. Other than Raycast, other than launching everything with Raycast. That kind of feels like the easy way out of this challenge. I was going to say, you should just use the iPad all week.

Oh, well. You know what? How you teased your flip phone. What is this? Doesn't this look smaller than my previous iPad? It's an iPad Air. No? No. It's just the 11-inch iPad Pro. Oh, okay. Oh. So, yeah. I haven't had one of these since actually the 2018 one came out, and I only had it for a week, and I went, oh, that's too small. Okay, so I've removed Mac OS from the dock.

from the challenge prompt. So if you're using an iPad, you can't use the dock on the iPad. Wise, wise. Get rid of your dock. Yeah. Just get rid of your dock. Can you? I mean, I guess you can have it auto-hide with Stage Manager. Whatever. Anyways, I'm not going to. I'm not going to upend my whole workflow for a week because, yeah. All right. Well, this is going to be a very interesting week of using the Mac. All right. Well, let's wrap up the show there. But as always, except for last week, because we were running really long, I have an end of the show question for you two.

And I want to know what piece of retro tech you have that you just won't let go of and how you're using it today. I don't have anything. You don't have any? I got something. We have a really old record player that we kind of had rebuilt and AMP and stuff like that. And that's kind of something we enjoy doing is just putting on records. Okay. Yeah, I don't have anything Okay It's probably an old game A handheld game console is probably it I've got a Game Boy Advance

From 2001 That I bought from Walmart With Which me and my friend bought from Walmart With a Ziploc bag Full of coins mostly How did they not tell you to go away? They were very patient with us But yeah, it was probably like $100 and we probably had like $20 in cash and then a lot of quarters and dimes. Anyway. That's awesome. But I still have it in one of the drawers back here. That's fantastic.

I still have my Game Boy Color somewhere. I should find that. But yeah, that's it for the show. Thank you all so much for listening. Huge thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast after all. Be sure to go check out all the other podcasts and writings and stuff on the website. There's a lot of good stuff happening there. Matt, Nelian, anything you want to plug this week? It's my birthday. Everyone wish Nelian a happy birthday, but by the time you're listening to this, it'll be about a week late, but still wish Nelian a happy birthday.

Yes. I got nothing. All right. I don't really have anything either. I'm coming back from vacation. I have no idea what's coming out next and what's happening, so there'll be something at some point on the channel. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.