Browser Curious

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. As always, I am joined by Matt Berchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing well. I am just now realizing I don't have a drink with me today, so if my voice gets increasingly scratchy this episode, that's why. A podcast without a drink is... I don't even know. Niléane, we're also joined by you.

Do you have a drink? Yes. Same as last time. It's a different Coca-Cola. But it's still sparkly water. Just basic sparkly water. And I have Dr. Pepper, zero sugar with cream soda. So, you know, I have the holy grail of drinks here. By the way, dear listener, I did pick up an extra case for WWDC. My plan is to ambush John and Federico with them and try to get them to drink it on camera and see what they think.

Because if you remember back to the App Stories arc where they had all of the Mac Stories people on, everyone seemed to have comments on my beverage of choice. So I kind of want to get John and Federico to try it. I think they'll love it. All right. Well, let's get into the show. We got a whole host of tiny topics. But the very first one I wanted to cover is this is episode 52 of comfort zone. So that means we have been doing comfort zone for a whole year. Wow.

Good for us. So I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you to everyone for listening. I really, really appreciate that everyone listens and like the feedback we get on every episode, like just the, the, the jokes and the, the, you know, suggestions and everything has just been fantastic. I love hearing it. And I also want to say to Matt and Neilion, doing this show every week with you guys, it's a highlight of my week. I really enjoy doing it with the two of you. And thank you for doing it with me. Yeah, same here.

Nice. It's a very, it's a good milestone. And I agree, it's still surprising that people listen to us and actually reply to things we say. That feels weird, but it's great. Yeah. It's wonderful. I have nothing else to add. Well, let's do some tiny topics. Niléane, I think you put a bunch of this stuff in here. You want to take it away? Yep. So what I've put in the document is a bunch of listener feedback.

People have reacted to the no-doc challenge that we had two weeks ago now, I think. Two episodes ago, anyway. So the first one is an anonymous, an anonymous, yes, that's a word, an anonymous person said, I was just listening to the last episode and I started wondering, am I Windows-brained? I seriously almost never use the doc for anything. And so I wondered what you guys actually use it for.

I switch put in the open apps with Command Tab, again, Windows-brained, they say. I switch open instances of the same app with option tab. What do I need the doc for? But my Windows taskbar is also pretty empty, so maybe I'm just weird. So I will let you react, but my first thing to say to this person is, yes, you're weird, but that's okay. We're all weird. We encourage that. That's fine, yeah. Windows brain, yeah, probably sounds like it.

I've never used Command Tab, like extremely rarely. I always forget that's here. But I can understand why it's a Windows habit. Yeah. The ultimate Windows brain thing, I think, is making every single window full screen. I work with people who have ultra-wide monitors, and they share their screen, and it's just insane because it's like a 32 by 9. It's the widest of the wide monitors, and their Chrome window is just maximized, And the website's like on the left, like 5% of the page.

And it's all white space everywhere else. And they do this every time. And I don't understand how they live this way. But yes. But anyway, how I use my doc is I keep the apps that I use all the time there. And then it's really just so I can click them if I want to launch them. I launch most things with like Raycast. And I switch windows with command tab as well. But like, I like having the visual over there. I like having the dots next to the icons to know which ones are open.

Apple removed that by default like many years ago, 10 years ago, maybe at this point to make it more iOS-y. I hated that. Everyone hated that. And then I went back. But like, I don't know. I just kind of use it as a general like task manager. I'll quit apps from there. I'll right click and quit from there. Yeah, I don't use it all the time. But like, I don't know. It's comfortable. i'm mac brand i guess i think i use it pretty much the same way matt does i use it to launch apps sometimes i'll quit apps from there but i do use command tab i do use raycast to launch stuff that

isn't in the dock um but i just you know i like being able to look over see what's open uh you know sometimes i'm i'm i i i call uh this my lazy mode but like i'll just be like laying back leaning back hand on the trackpad, no hand on the keyboard. You know, that's like my cool guy, like using the computer stance kind of thing. And, you know, you just click stuff. Yeah, I know the keyboard's more efficient. I love keyboards. I absolutely know that. But, you know, sometimes you got to take your cool guy stance.

You're like leaning back and like driving a car like with a hand at the top of the wheel. It's literally, yeah, it's exactly that. It's just that. It's just a finger down on the trackpad. Yep, yep. I love it. Yeah. Same for me. I like the visual of it. And it's got all the apps I use all the time. And I don't actually launch apps using the Raycast. Like I use Raycast to launch specific things, like a specific section of system settings or a shortcut, things like that, the specifics I launch with Raycast. But the apps, I mostly use the doc.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Another person reacted to the no-doc challenge. This one is called Enders. They say, thanks for a great podcast regarding the latest episode on docs. Depending on your specific needs, RCMD, R-command, I guess, is the name of an app, might be an interesting alternative. And they've linked it to it for us. It basically creates keyboard shortcuts with the right command key to quickly launch or navigate to apps.

And so I know this app, actually. This app, actually. It's made by the low-tech guys. They make an app called, a utility called Luna, which lets you smartly manage your monitor's brightness. It is very fancy. That's how I've heard of them before. And write command, I've tried it once. And it's actually pretty cool. It's very close in concept to the hyperkey. So you just bind, like, write command O to launch whatever, write command S to launch Safari.

And it lets you switch between those apps if you just press those keyboard shortcuts when the apps are already running. It also has a very minimal UI that lets you, appears that you can, by default, I believe it's in the bottom right corner, that lets you see all the running apps on your system at a current time. It's nice. And the one thing I have to say about this app is I actually use the right command key to perform regular shortcuts, regular command shortcuts.

So I can't understand. Like, I don't know. I understand some people always say the right shift key and the right option key are useless, etc. I know I use those keys as what they intended for. I use the right shift key all the time. I don't know. Yep, I do too. I guess if you don't use the right modifier, it could work for you. Yeah, this is an interesting thing. There's a similar app I tried a few months ago called LeaderKey, which does something similar. and that's kind of it's similar to raycast and that there's a keyboard shortcut that brings up like the window but instead of a search box you just set up like keyboard shortcuts so like if i

hit the shortcut and then hit p it opens photoshop if i hit t it opens the terminal and if i do and then you can do like folders so if i do like b s that'll be browsers safari so it's an interesting thing it doesn't really work for me i find it easier just like type in the name of the thing i want but like there is definitely a group of people um some lovely weirdos uh presumably we're all weird um who like this like very quick like just a single like letter press gets me to the exact app that i want so i like that there's options out there for these these folks i don't like this next

one yeah baby let's bring it yeah let's talk about it so we had we had a controversy in controversy in our group chat this week because I realized something about my phone that I really didn't like when I noticed it, which is the UI effects that you get on iOS around Apple intelligence features, they look extremely bright sometimes.

Like, extremely is overstating it, but they look brighter than everything else on screen. and I was wondering, is that HDR? Is Apple actually using HDR level brightness to display the glow effect around the screen for Siri or when you double tap the gesture bar at the bottom to make it glow or the cleanup feature in the photos app? All of that. Chris, what is happening over there? I'm so excited. Just bring it on home.

Say it, say it, say it. So I messaged those two guys in our group chat and I asked them what they thought. And Matt was like, nope, that's not HDR. I can't see it. It doesn't exist. And they called me crazy. No one called you crazy. No, no, no. I did not. Actually, I'm pretty sure I missed that whole conversation because I had do not disturb on. I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything because I had do not disturb on because it's been a crazy busy week for me. Yeah. So I was like, I'm not crazy.

So I filmed it. I filmed it with my webcam, this very webcam, because you can't screen record it. I had to film it with another camera. And I think it's pretty obvious on my footage that when you double tap the gesture bar, the bottom of the screen, that it's a lot brighter than everything else on screen, even though I had pulled my brightness way down. And Matt was still like in full denial. No, nothing's wrong with your footage.

Verbatim. And so I went to the people. I went to Mastodon and I posted on Mastodon wondering, like, what do people think? I posted the same footage. Do you think this is HDR, basically? And everybody was like, Adam, yes, it's HDR. And I have confirmation from inside Apple. Somebody messaged me to tell me, yep, we're using HDR level brightness for such effects, for these effects.

And some other people also have confirmed it, developers mainly, who have noticed it before. So yeah, I just wanted to mention this because Matt is wrong and I'm right. I'm still not convinced. So I missed that whole conversation because, like I said, I do not disturb on. But it's absolutely HDR brightness. Like, they're using HDR. They're making that stuff HDR level. Okay. So here's what I will say.

Number one, it was first presented to me as when my screen brightness is all the way down. It's like, and maybe it's because we had just talked about how blinding HDR is. I was like, this is incredibly dim. I turned my brightness all the way down. I triggered Siri and I was like, it's super dim. It's not blinding me like HDR on like my social media feeds does. Even when I turned it up, I did eventually notice it's maybe a little brighter. But I think the thing for me is that they may be using HDR, but HDR means you can go brighter.

It doesn't mean you're going all the way to 11, right? Maybe it's like 5% and maybe the younger your eyes are, the easier it is to see the difference. Maybe I just need HDR for everything so that I can see anything with these old decrepit dinosaur eyes. But it's not crazy. I will acknowledge it's HDR. But I do not see a problem with it. I think it's fine. Yeah, no, I think it's fine too. It's just I find it a little bothering because...

So you're right. when you turn the brightness all the way down, like it's just as dim as the rest. But like when you're a bit in the middle, like in the middle of the bottom half of the slider, let's say, or something like that, then I think it's bothering me because that's a situation where I'm in bed, this very bed right here, at night. And like I get a priority notification, for example, an Apple intelligence priority notification. And that's so bright.

I'm in bed in the dark and my brightness is turned down and there's a bright notification that appears. I'm like, oh, why? This feels obnoxious. But I agree, it's not too bad. And I think that's it for Tiny Topics. We definitely don't need to go over this last thing. You know, nobody cares, right? So, yeah, I agree with you. There is one last topic that we need to go over. WhatsApp came out this week on iPadOS, which is crazy. Like, what?

it's taken so long what app is on iPad? everyone on the continent has given up on this and yet this has happened now Bradley Field on MasterDone wrote to us actually they say let me guess Niléane will be celebrating WhatsApp finally on iPad, on Comfort Zone with Chris Lurley and Matt just not understanding why this is a big deal we understand we just don't care there you go that's it and i wanted to talk about this because just to mention

the fact that i think this highlights a monopoly issue like just ask yourself would we have gotten an ipad os app for whatsapp years ago had meta not bought it like had WhatsApp still remained an indie company I'm not saying it would have I'm just asking like if it was still

an independent company like would they have made an iPadOS app a lot sooner is it not just because it's meta and it don't really care and like they they're in a dominant position especially with WhatsApp in plenty of countries and they don't really care. Like, I think this highlights this. I think it has more to do with a lot of big developers and big companies don't care about the iPad.

It's not a priority to them. I mean, I think Instagram is like the perfect example. Yes, it is a meta thing, but Instagram makes money based off ads. That's their whole business model is we make money while you use the app. So wouldn't they want that app in as many places as possible just so that they can get people to constantly keep using that app? So if I'm on my iPad, I would be using the app, but there is no iPad app, so they're not making money off the time I'm using my iPad.

I don't know. I think it has more to do with literally developers just don't care about the iPad. Yeah, you're probably right. But we're celebrating still. Well done. I don't have an iPad anymore. I was going to say. That's great. You're mildly celebrating, but you won't get to use it. No. They waited until I got rid of my iPad to release it. That's great. I love it. Is there a WhatsApp app for the Mac? Yeah, and it's actually good.

It's a good app. It might be a Catalyst app. Well, if it was a Catalyst app, they would have had the iPad app out. So it probably is a native app, but I think that just helps prove my point of developers do not care about the iPad. That's true. Yeah, it is a native app. A few years ago, because before that, they already had a macOS app, but it was like a web wrapper.

It was a web wrapper. Oh, okay. Gotcha. And at some point, they just got rid of it and released a brand new WhatsApp app, and that one feels very native. Nice. All right. I'm done. Well, you guys ready to get into the main show? I did take a peek at your guys' topic, and this might be the most stereotypical, cliche episode of Comfort Zone ever. So, Matt, what do you got for us this week? So I wanted to have kind of an open-ended discussion about web browsers because...

Really? You? You want to talk about web browsers? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. I have a passion, and my passion is very particular. So I have... We're recording this a couple days after my favorite company in the world, the browser company wrote a blog post about why they moved on from arc and started their new browser dia i've been using dia for the last like month or so and i don't like it and so um i wanted to just talk about browsers and like what i don't know i it's definitely going to be

open-ended thing i want to know what you guys are using i want to know if like like what do you want from a browser what what features do you wish were there is there something like do you think browsers are going to change significantly because like the thing with the browser company their thinking was we made arc we liked arc but it wasn't a fundamental change to how browsers work and so they wanted to do a fundamental change and whether they're doing that we can debate but is there like it like do you use safari or chrome or what or vivaldi or whatever and are like oh

this has been the same this isn't like is there a thing that like makes you want like a totally refreshed browser or not really like are you generally happy with what you've got going right now so i mostly just use safari uh because i want tab syncing between devices i want to be like i want to be able to pull up a tab that was on my iphone on my mac or pull up a tab that from my ipad that was on my mac or whatever like i want to be able to pull tabs from different places have my history sync all that stuff like that stuff's important to me i also use um safari profiles

a lot. That's a really important feature to me. Just being able to like say, hey, this is my work profile. I'm signed into all my work accounts. This is my personal profile. I'm signed in all personal stuff. Oh, this is the comfort zone Mac stories one. I'm signed into all that stuff because I upload to two different YouTube channels. I have to sign into different Google accounts. I have to sign into all these different things. And it's just nice to be able to have those profiles so i'm fairly happy with safari that being said i have been looking at

other browsers i i will say um he's browser curious excellent yeah you know i'm i'm browser curious i have i'm i'm trying to convince safari to have an open relationship um you know kind of be a little more uh open to trying new things so is that the b in lgbt browser curious yes oh yes yes that's right those are the four orientations yeah yep yep yep um that's where i am now um because like you know i have seen things uh like i've seen you guys talk about different browsers

that have like the the vertical tab bar on the side and stuff like that and i really like that design but i don't think safari is ever going to take big swings like that again because safari kind of like edge or ie back in the day is now the standard browser for a lot of people and like you guys remember when they just moved the url bar from the top to the bottom and how freaked out people were like how upset people were so just going based off kind of like that i don't think safari is going to take big swings like doing vertical tab bars on the side or really rethinking

browser UI or anything like that. I think Safari is going to follow browser trends and stay very consistent probably for the next, you know, 10 years or whatever. So yes, I have been looking at other browsers, but I haven't really, you know, like committed, you know, I'm trying this whole like open thing and jumping around. But at the end of the day, I really like the ability to have my tab history my um just regular history and and profiles syncing between all the devices that is a really nice feature yeah and what about you i so as you know i use safari and i have used safari

for years um but you know i'm coming from places i used to be a volunteer from mozilla long time ago so i was a firefox nerd and i was big into firefox firefox has been disappointing to say the least for many reasons over the years and sometimes i think i like some it has happened that i thought about going back to it just for the sake of it i guess but but what i'm saying

this far is there's no like there's no point for me to move away from Safari like literally no point Safari works fine it um recently I've set up profiles because that was the main pain point that I was able to solve using profiles I had to switch between so many accounts always and so painful the profiles have solved that for me and I wrote an article on MaxTouris how I set up shortcuts to easily switch between them and i'm in a good place and you mentioned the blog post by josh miller from the browser company and yeah he said like web browsers are going to be a lot

different now that are that there are lms everywhere and at the same like i think this is very interesting in this blog post because at the same time he says we went too radical with arc we we changed the ui completely and that was too radical for most people we did not we did not have the adoption rate that we wanted and in the same article just a few paragraphs below he says browsers are no again the same we need to rethink completely web browsers and web web browsers as you know it

will not exist anymore and we need to be on that train. So you're contradicting yourself in my opinion here. And you can see that with DIA, it's basically Chrome with a chatbot, big Chrome with chatbot energy. And to me, that feels like it's just a regular web browser. It looks very much like a regular web browser. You're just adding AI features on top of it, which is like, I guess it has its value for some users.

I think he's admitting that the web browser doesn't need to go places radical maybe it maybe it's great to try things and I think that's what was great with ARK but I think he's lying to himself when he says like web browsers are no more and now we are we are we are up for AI browsers as a web. Yeah. Well, like Arc launched and the thing that made Arc compelling to me, the sidebar was cool, but like the thing that like their ethos, they're like the concept for like why Arc existed and why they built it that way was that apps are on the web now.

I personally at work, I use like zero native apps. Everything is in the browser. Everything Their idea was that you can dock, you can pin your apps there, and they are, bless them, they are one of the two browsers in the world I know of where if you pin a tab, that tab cannot be closed. I hate, hate, hate how in every browser you can pin a tab, and then you hit Command W on it, and then it closes, and it's gone, and you're like, oh, I love pin tabs that never

go away. Safari doesn't do this, by the way. Well, I don't like Safari. You can't close pin tabs. Yeah, you can. You can close pin tabs. No, if you press Command W and pin tab, it just stays. Okay, respect to Safari then. Oh, you can right-click it and do close tab. That's what I was thinking. I'm sorry. But if you do commit, you're right. If you do do Command W, it doesn't close. You can't accidentally close it. Okay, well, that's nice. But their idea was that, like, okay, you're going to, like, pin all of your apps. And so, like, on my work computer, where I still use Arc, I pin Gmail, and I pin Confluence, and Jira, and all the apps that I use every single day, right?

And it's great. It's like an app launcher. Keyboard shortcuts work to get to all those things. And they live there. And again, those tabs never close. And so if I do close them or whatever, I just click them again and it launches the homepage for whatever that app is. And that was awesome. And then ChatGPT happened. And they were like, ooh, maybe it's not just apps. Maybe it's LLM everything. And I think, I mean, we'll see what happens. But the impression I have is that they did a hard pivot to not the right solution.

I think they had a really cool platform with Arc. Not a platform necessarily. They had a really cool browser that solved a real problem that people like me had, who live in web apps. And then they basically pivoted to a completely replaced, like, they have no... I recorded a video this morning, my last video of season three of A Better Computer. I recorded a video this morning where I demoed Dia. But the first minute is me demoing Chrome. Because Chrome has the exact same feature they have, basically.

And like, they're screwed. Is Dia a Chromium browser? Yes. So it's literally just a reskin version of Chrome. I mean, I think they do more than the average Chromium skin. They do have kind of this ARC browser, like UI engine that they built for ARC that they're reusing here. So I think they have some more custom stuff than maybe some others do. But like, yes, it is a Chromium browser based on Chromium. So Chrome extensions work. They didn't originally, but now they do.

But like, and also extensions have nowhere to live right now. They don't show in the interface anywhere. So if you like rely on clicking that icon, can't do it right now in the current version. It's in alpha, but yeah, it's very strange. But yeah, like they're like, well, you can chat with your web pages and Chrome does that. There's browser extensions that do that. And it's fine. Like the one innovation they have, the one kind of cool thing is you can, when you like open a new tab, the new tab window is a search box, but it's also a chat window.

So if you just type something, you can do a Google search or you can ask a question and it does an LLM thing. But you can at mention your tabs. So if you have a bunch of tabs open because you're researching something, you can at mention all the tabs. You can say like include all my tabs in here and it will include those in your questions. I don't understand the use case for this, though, which is like the weird thing. I was really struggling to like show this off of like when have I ever wanted to do this?

And like an example they have is you're shopping for a car and you have like eight tabs open with eight different cars. and you go to the chat bot to say, like, compare these cars. Why would you have eight different tabs open for eight different cars? There's only one car you need. Oh, my God. A Mustang GT. A Fiat 500E. No, no, no, no. All the colorways of this toy enemy. No. There are two of them, by the way. So, yeah.

Anyway, lastly, I don't want to make this just the D-dunking segment, but like the thing that was really interesting to me is that in that blog post that we keep referencing, we'll put a link in the description. They talked about how an ARK, they actually had, they had a ton of people sign up for it and they had some fall off. But basically they said like, if someone was still using ARK three days after they installed it, they were going to use it forever. They were locked in. They were really, they're going to be evangelizing it. They were like a big fan. So if you made it past day one or two, you're going to, you really love it.

So really what they should have done is invested in marketing for ARK instead of... Yeah. Never mind. I don't know. But part of that was they were like, well, we released these really cool features and only a few people used them. They're like, we have different profiles, which you guys talked about. And they're like 5% of people use that. What a waste of time that was. But did people know about that? That's the thing that always gets me. Did people know about that? Because if you just put a pop-up box, like after an app updates and put a pop-up box that says, oh, here's all the new features, people are going to click right past that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, they were like, basically, we had all these features that only like a small percentage of people used. So we were like, these aren't actually working. And then they said, in Dia, we're seeing about 40% of people using the chat feature. Which is to say, in DIA, where the only feature is chat, 60% of people don't use it. Most people who download DIA don't use the only feature of DIA. Yikes.

It's really a matter of framing. Maybe that's an ungenerous way to look at it, but that is the entire thing. That is the entire value proposition. It's the entire point, otherwise it's just Chrome. Otherwise it's Chrome with way fewer features. It's a little crazy. I bet internally they are praying to whatever god they believe in that Google is forced to sell Chrome. Yeah, maybe. It's a weird mess.

I'm so depressed by it. They had a very successful thing going that got tons of press and tons of people were enjoying. And people would have paid. I would have paid to keep using ARK if they needed it and needed a business model. That's the thing that really irked me with the blog post is like you have this undertone throughout the post where basically they're saying we need to make more money. We need something that lets us make more money in the long term.

But like you did not try. They did not try to make money. It's incredible. I genuinely think they don't realize that. Yeah. Well, and now this entire browser is LLM-based, so their bills are higher, right? How much does it cost to run a browser on my computer? Zero. I download it, and then that's like no money. It just keeps working, right? Yeah. But now that their browser is entirely search and LLM-based, and it's totally free, and it's using GPT,

which is, I guess, at least it's not Anthropic. And the Anthropic API is insanely expensive. But like all those searches cost them money. All those chat messages cost them money. If I'm passing, I passed in two, no, sorry, three 20-page PDFs. How much did that cost them? And like, that's so much text input into the LLM. And it was totally free for me. I didn't care. But like, yeah, so now they really need to make money. And now it's like, instead of, you can't charge for a browser.

No one's charged for a browser in years. No, no. But like. No regular person ever will spend. Exactly. Would even spend $2 to download a web browser. Yeah. Because you can go get Chrome for free or Safari or whatever. Yeah. But enthusiasts might, right? They might, they would be more willing to pay. We did pay $50 for host browser. All three of us, I think. I saw the price. I was like, no, I'm good. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, so now that they're like, we want to be like a wide net, blue ocean, like here's everybody.

But like, they're not going to pay for a browser. And that's why the big browser companies are Google and Microsoft and Apple who have platforms and everything. So I don't know. It's a weird decision. But moving beyond that, when you guys are doing your day-to-day stuff, I don't know if it's a day job or fun times after work, whatever you're doing, that's the best way to phrase it. I'm sorry.

Are you doing most things in a browser or are you using native apps? I guess on the Mac is where I'm most interested. Are you using the browser for everything? If you would have asked me a year ago, it would have been native apps. But I, you know, there has been a lot of web apps creeping up. Your Quick Tools website has been very handy. I really appreciate that. Notebook LM, the Google Gemini thing, I use that a lot. I uploaded all my scripts and research notes, and that's basically my assistant when I'm writing scripts and stuff now.

web app. I mean, technically they did just release an iOS and iPad app. Which is basically just the web app in a wrapper. Exactly. And perfect example, Todoist. Todoist technically has an app that you can put in the dock and you can click on that, but that is absolutely just a web app. That is an Electron app through and through. Do you do it in the browser or do you have the Electron app installed? I have the Electron app installed. I do have the Electron app. But I mean, it's essentially, It's just, it's, it's like, like, it's not like, I mean, even, well, Obsidian is, is an electron app, but, um, but it's not a web electron app, but, uh, like more and more,

I have been using more web apps and it's just one of those things. Um, perfect example. I was writing something about like what the iPad needs, uh, like kind of pre WWDC. And I don't think I'm going to publish this, but, um, I basically made the case for Apple needs to give up WebKit only browsers on iOS and iPad because there's too many web apps now that people need and too many of those web apps need Chrome to work properly. Oh yeah. I mean ironically you two use Safari, I use Zen and we are all using a different browser right now to record. Yep.

I'm using Edge. I'm using Mivaldi. Well that's Riverside's fault. That is Riverside's fault. But it's Riverside using technology that only Chrome implements. Yeah. I don't know about that. I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Like, okay, for example, Matt and I are really into mechanical keyboards. We use a site called Via. For that, you have to use Chrome because there's a thing that Chrome enables that no other browser enables. And it's like, it's web something.

I don't even remember what it is. I can look it up. But there's a specific piece of web technology that Chrome is the only browser that enables it right now. Firefox doesn't enable it. Safari doesn't enable it. Like nothing else enables it. You have to use a Chromium browser in order to use VIA. But with Riverside, I don't know if that makes sense. It's just recording video and audio, which any browser can do. I don't know. But just to roll back to Matt's question, do I use web apps on the Mac?

I'm like you. I use a ton of apps that are actually web apps in the wrapper. And that's okay. But I think the distinction between running them inside a browser window or in a standalone window, I always pick running an app in a standalone window. So I want to be able to manage my apps at the OS level, which is why I was happy to try Arc when it was all hype in the beginning

because it was new and stuff. But I did not stick to it because I am frustrated having to manage my web apps inside the browser. I want to be able to manage them at the OS level with mission control, with the dock, with better touch to whatever. I want to be able to manage them at the OS level. This is partly why I think the classic browser paradigm where it's just tabs on top, URL bar, don't innovate too much on it.

I think that approach still has life in front of it. Because I think a lot of people do it just like me. When they have the option to install an app, they will do it. Who uses Discord in the browser? Most people install Discord, even though it's a web app through and through. I think most people like that, and I'm part of that. I would actually love to know the numbers here. I'm obsessive. At my work, we do a lot of things where people share their screens, and that's just candy to me.

I love when someone shares their screen, especially when they do the full screen, and I can see what tabs they have. I can see their bookmarks. I can see their doc. Matt, let's be honest. I think both of you, if somebody was to post a screenshot of their macOS or something like that, or their iPhone, you both are a pinch and zoomer, and you're going to see what's in the doc. Absolutely. Yes, I will find whatever secrets you have. I will overanalyze your entire life based on your screenshot. But what's interesting is the thing that I've noticed is that literally, so we have basically, and we have some rules, but like basically you can use whatever web browser you want.

You can install pretty much any app you want for most things. Literally, everyone at the company uses Chrome. Half the company is on Macs. I've never seen someone use Safari, which is interesting. and also every person again in my company every designer uses Figma in the browser every one I see uses Gmail in the browser I see almost no apps on these people's computers

it's all in Chrome. Figma in the browser is a crime I don't understand this what okay it works pretty good but i i use the figma app as well but like yeah i'm the only one as far as i can tell which is very strange but like i would be curious like who what are the numbers how many people use in the browser versus the native app that you know the mac app um because yeah i don't know but it would be super easy especially in arc i could just bookmark figma and boom i think if every every app

I used was a web app, something like Arc would be appealing, but I'm with Neely on that, like, most of the stuff I do use, like, there are a few small utilities like your QuickTools that I use in the web browser but most of the stuff I use is a native app. I want to be able to use window management tools and keyboard shortcuts and all that stuff to move things around, and yeah, I'm still team native apps when possible, but I'm not anti-web app. Yeah, I think for me it's the stuff that just runs in the background i like to have that as an app so like slack is open

all day long and i'm going to it whenever there's a new message and that i have the app installed and i like that because i get the doc icons and i can just pull it up and everything um the browser will never put it to sleep in the background um what else uh my calendar email so i do use those as apps um and those just kind of sit in the background i pull them up but like for any documents or like any work I'm doing outside of Figma. I do just find myself doing those in the browser, like document editing. I think I feel better doing it in the browser than any native app, which is weird.

But I do most things in Google Docs and Confluence. Yes, I work a ton with Google Docs, and I pray, like I used, I've given up on this, but I used to pray that we would get a native Google Docs app someday. Like, I really want a native app for Google Docs. It's so painful. Like, I've had to set up four Safari profiles just to deal with Google Docs. Like, it's insane. Yeah. Yeah. My unpopular take is that Google Docs is actually excellent.

I think it's great, too. Okay. Just some nightmarish UI choices. Yeah. There's a couple of things. They got good keyboard shortcuts, and it's hyper reliable. Yeah, it's wonderful. Google Sheets, too. Underrated. All right. Anyway, that's it for me. I don't know what the point of that segment was. I just wanted to talk about browsers and vent a little bit about my betrayal. Yeah, I like it. I know how much you liked Arc, so I totally get it.

Neilion, what do you got for us this week? So I will give you a lot of candy for you to mock me today. so feel free alright basically I went on a journey an unexpected journey like Bilbo would say I broke something last week actually just two hours after we recorded last week's episode I broke something so let me show you the breakage

so I will show you on camera and describe it as well for people listening. So I'm using them. I've had these headphones for two months, somewhere like that. It's the Beyerdynamic DT700 Pro X. Great branding. Love it. And it's a great pair of headphones. I got it because I wanted to upgrade my music listening experience. It's a very flat sound profile. It's meant for studio use, of course.

which means it's very adequate if you want to play with EQs, for example. You really want to get into the weeds, into tweaking your music listening experience, which is why I bought those. And they've been great. As you know, or maybe you don't, but when you need to plug headphones into a computer, there needs to be a DAC somewhere. So a digital to analog converter.

So basically anywhere you've got a headphone jack in a computer, there is a DAC somewhere for that to make it work. So to convert the digital signal into an analog signal. And I wanted a high quality one. Okay. So it turns out Apple has been including very high quality DACs into their laptops. for a few years now. So my MacBook, as you know, is the M2 MacBook Air from 2022, I think.

And yeah, the DAC in there and all the later laptops supports high impedance headphones for one. So that's not high. This pair is not high impedance. It's pretty low. It's 48 ohms. But yeah, the DAC in the MacBook, pretty high quality. That being said, I want to be able to use these headphones with my MacBook and the iPhone as well. I want to be able to switch between the two. But now you tell me there's no headphone jack on an iPhone.

So that's annoying. You need the dongle. I don't want to deal with a dongle. That's annoying. So I bought this cable from Beyerdynamic. It's a mini XLR to USB-C cable. So Beyerdynamic makes this for this line of headphones, the Pro X line. And it's got a really high-quality DAC in there. So I will not mention the numbers. It goes really high up in the kilohertz and the bit depths.

Anyway, it's great. Like 100? I don't remember. 392, I believe. It's all the best numbers, the great numbers. We love our numbers. We have the best numbers. It's the best. No numbers come close to our numbers. Our numbers are the best. It's kind of a nerdy version of it. It's an interesting impression. Yeah, because I can't bring myself to do the real thing. I'll be depressed. The one thing to know about DAX is that the good DAX are the DAX that you don't notice a difference in how they sound.

Like in tonality. They must be transparent. It must not affect how the music sounds, right? Yeah. Where they can make a difference is in clarity. So how well you can distinguish between instruments, frequencies, like the lows and the highs. And in that, they can improve the soundstage, like how wide the sound feels around your head. So that's where a DAC can make a difference, not in tonality.

So it will not increase pace, increase the highs, etc. Anyway, so this cable, it's been great. And since it's USB-C, I can just plug it into the MacBook and into the iPhone very easily. Switch between the two during the day. And that's been great. However, this is what I broke last week. This is what I broke last week. Let me show you. Very close to the camera. How does this work? It's too close. It's not going to focus on that.

there we go right there okay that doesn't have a plug yeah you're missing something there yeah it's here the usb bit came apart um the reason for that is so this is a 1.6 meter cable so it's average size it's not too long not too short uh however i'm too used to wireless headphones so I have this habit of just standing up and grabbing a drink in the kitchen and this is what

happened I stood up oh no last week with the headphones on my head and just plugged into the USB port yeah I just I've done that I've absolutely done I yanked it really hard and like there was a sudden pull and then a sudden release and then I was like oh it came apart that's that's fine And I inspected it. And it was not fine. The USB bit was still in the port. And the cable was in my hand. Yeah, I've seen a lot of USB cables in my day.

That is not in good shape. It's not great. So it's dead, by the way. You cannot fix this. At least it was the cable that broke and not the headphones. Because I'm going to assume the cable is a lot cheaper to replace. Yeah, this cable is 90 euros. Oh, this is very convincing. cable so i was a bit a little bit disappointed having never mind that anyway so this has opened up the unexpected journey how do i replace this cable because i'm not getting the same one again

because this will happen again i do not to break another one i want to find a better alternative so i went to the beyerdynamic shop again uh and i bought a regular analog cable to replace it And I got this one. Let me show you. It's a cord cable. Oh, I love those. I love the wrapped cord springy whatever it's called ones. Yes. So it's three and a half millimeter jack on one hand, mini XLR.

So mini XLR because the mini XLR port is what's used to plug them into the headphones. This cable is three meters. So it doesn't look like it looks really short in the hand. but it expands to three meters which means like literally i can walk away uh really far into the apartment like outside of the room and i can get to the other side of the room here it's really i can lie in you can see my bed is right behind my desk here i can lie in bed like on the other side of the bed and still have this plug into the macbook and and it's got room to breathe so it's

a great cable. However, back to square one, this is a jack. So it means I cannot switch easily between the Mac and the iPhone. So I need the dongle. I need the dongle. I need the DAC, a USB-C one, preferably, so that I can easily just switch devices. So what I did is I plugged it into the Wave XLR, which is on my desk, which is what I use to, it's

the audio interface that I use for this mic. But that doesn't solve anything still because it's a headphone jack. So that's not great. Also, the DAC in the Wave XLR is not great. It does not sound great. it turns out to listen to music the sound, music sounds very compressed would not recommend that. Anyway after searching the web I have come to a conclusion that a lot of audio files have also come to which is

Apple's USB C dongle is great Really? Yes. And like, this is surprising, but it's like everybody says this. Like, this is a common knowledge. The Apple dongle, the $10 one, 10 euros even, is here. Oh. It's good. It's really good. So, like I said, a good DAC is a DAC that's transparent, preserves clarity.

And this does it. It's $10. And it's good. And so I pulled out my old... This one I got when I got the 2018 iPad Pro. So it's an old one. But they haven't changed much. They have not been updated. And I can attest, like, I don't hear a difference. It sounds great. Of course, if you know that dongle, you know, it's very flimsy.

Yeah, I have a couple of them. Yeah, it's floppy. The cable is very thin. So I bought... You can see the rabbit hole unfold, right? So I bought this. Can one of you try to describe what I'm holding? That's a bag of yarn. Yeah, that looks like, you know, what was that Kirby game where they were yarn? Oh, Kirby's Epic Yarn. There we go. It's a disassembled Kirby is what you're saying.

Oh, that's upsetting. This is not yarn. These are, let me show you one up close. These are plastic. How does that work? Okay, there you go. Right there, right there. Right there, okay. I cannot tell what that is. See how it's... Oh, so it wraps around a cable? Exactly. You wrap it around a cable. it's a coiled piece of plastic basically that's colorful and I've wrapped it around the dongle so now it looks

like this okay so dear listener for those that aren't watching the video basically Neelian took the USB-C to 3.5 millimeter adapter that Apple makes and put a blacked wrap coil cord around it so it's a little less flimsy I'm assuming Yeah, it's a lot more resistant. You can see it doesn't flop around as much. Oh, okay, okay. That's pretty clever. Yeah, yeah, it's really good.

Guess who suggested this? I'm going to say Federico. No. Oh, okay. He's the only other audience, my guess, as well. No, Chagipity suggested this. Ah! Anyway, this costs $2. So I bought it and tried without any belief that this would work. It works. $2 was worth that experiment.

That's a good, solid return on investment there. Yes, I've got two final things on this. So you can find other dongles for not that much more expensive. Like $10. The Apple one is $10. That's really hard to beat. But there are others out there. The Ugreen one, it's a braided one. And it's a lot more robust.

This one is 14, I believe, euros. I don't know how much in dollars. Indeed, it's a lot, like it's very well constructed. The braided cable, really nice. And in terms of numbers, we talked about the kilohertz. This one has bigger kilohertz than the Apple one. So just to mention them, the Apple dongle goes up to 24 bit, 48 kilohertz.

That's still pretty good. Pretty good, yeah. Pretty good. Pretty good. It's higher than 44 kilohertz, which is like the basic standard for lossless listening. The Eurogreen one goes up to, I believe, no, 24 bit 96 kilohertz. So in terms of just raw numbers, it's just higher. So you must think, hey, that's better. I think it sounds a bit worse. Like a bit like the Wave XLR syndrome that I mentioned earlier.

It sounds a bit more compressed. Obviously, again, it's still a pretty good DAC because it's basically transparent in terms of tonality. If a DAC affects the tonality of your music, something's wrong with it. So it's a decent DAC that you might want to get if you just want something sturdy that works. This is almost the end of the journey I ordered something else that has not arrived.

And I forgot to include the link. I will add the link for you. It's made by the brand iFi. So I-F-I. They make a lot of audio gear. They make amps, DACs, cables and whatnot. And they make a very small dongle. It's called the iFi Go Link. And basically, it's praised, it's largely praised on forums and whatnot as a pretty good upgrade for anyone wanting more than just the Apple dongle.

And that's just another USB-C to 3.5 millimeter adapter? Yep, yep. It's chunkier because, like, it's got a, I guess it's got, it needs more room for the bigger DAC chip in there. So it's a bit chunkier. Yeah, there's more bits. so I will try that and report back but that's it yeah this is the unexpected journey from a broken fancy Beyerdynamic cable to twingly bits bought on Amazon for 2 euros hey if it works it works it works nice well this is fantastic

and very up your alley I love this this is fantastic You guys ready? Let's get into the challenge. We're running kind of long, so let's move into the challenge if you're ready. I'm sweating. It's really hot. Yeah, no, it's really hot in here too. Okay, so this week it was my challenge, and originally I had one thing, but then we realized that wasn't going to work, so I pivoted quickly on air, and the new challenge was find a new background app for the Mac. You guys mind if I go first?

Yep. Yeah. So, for me, I wanted to solve a very particular problem. I am going to WWDC, and by the time you're listening to this, a couple of days, but by the time we're recording this, just over a week, and I'm going to be working outside. When you're at WWDC, the press get the nice shaded section during the keynote. So, that's good, but I'm going to be using my MacBook Pro there, and I'm going to be writing all my notes and scripts and stuff like that. And one issue is when you're working outside is can the screen get bright enough so you could see everything?

Now, on this MacBook Pro, I actually do have the Nano Chexture display. So I'm not too worried. But I wanted to be able to make sure I could absolutely see my screen, perfect brightness, whether I'm editing video or writing scripts. Because while you're sitting in the keynote, you might be in the shade. After the keynote, Apple blocks off the cafe section at the Apple Park Visitor Center for press people, for a place for them to work and stuff like that. And you can sit inside, but there's not a ton of tables, so most of the time you end up outside.

So I wanted to make sure I had a nice bright screen. So I installed the app Vivid, and I had heard about this before, but I've never used it. This is a new app for me. And basically, this allows you to run your MacBook Pro display, like any of the ones with the XDR display, at HDR levels. Your guys' favorite topic. The benefit of this is when you're out in the California sun, your screen is nice and bright. It's easy for you to be able to see your display. This isn't something I'm going to run all the time.

It's a background app because once I installed it, I set up a keyboard shortcut and I never have to interact with the UI stuff again. I literally have it set up. I believe it's Hyperkey R that I set up. And that just triggers the brightness. I had Hyperkey B to something else. So I was like, well, let's do R. So Hyperkey R, it toggles HDR brightness. Hyperkey R again, turns it off. Great. Fantastic. Solves a problem. And I'm looking forward to using it at WWDC.

Nice. This is cool. I've heard about this app. I am curious when you're outside in the heat. My laptop likes to get very hot when I use it outside. So I wonder if that combined with the maximum brightness leads to a fire. Yeah, I don't think it'll lead to a fire, but I could see a point where, you know, I have to move inside. I can't sit outside or I have to shut it down for a little bit. We'll see because I will be editing video there. WWDC week is always super chaotic, so I'm not entirely sure how it's going to happen.

Maybe I end up having to turn it off. I don't know. We'll see. Good luck to you. Thank you. Niléane, what do you got for us? I have something. Okay, so I switched back to the Magic Keyboard, right? One thing that I really liked about the Logitech keyboard that I was using before was the mute key to mute the microphone. As you know, on my Magic Keyboard, I have remapped. I've done this a long time ago. I've remapped using better touch tool, the dictation key, because it's a nice microphone glyph on the key.

So perfect candidate to be remapped to be a mute key. So to mute my microphone. And you can always hit control twice to do dictation as well. There is that other keyboard shortcut. Okay. I don't use dictation, but okay, that's good to know. And to do that, I was using a combination of better touch tool and shortcuts, which works, but it was slow. The time that it took, it took a bit less than a second every time to effectively mute the microphone after I pressed the key.

Not ideal. So this challenge, I thought I would check out an app that I've heard about before. It's called the Mic Drop. And it's like the challenge requires. It's an app that you set up once and you forget about it. And what it does is just mute your microphone. And it's instantaneous. You can map a keyboard shortcut to it. You can have it in the menu bar. And what I've done is just I've mapped a keyboard shortcut, a complicated one that I will never remember.

But I have using beta touch tool instead of the dictation key on the Magic Keyboard running a shortcut. It's just now mapped to the complicated keyboard shortcut for Mic Drop. So now when I press it, I go away. See, it works, it works. Anyway, that's it. Yeah, it's a really nice app. It's pretty cheap. I don't remember how much it costs, but it's on the Mac App Store, and you can try it for free, and it's nice.

and it has a nice sound effect a bunch of sound effects that you can choose from mine does a sound effects this is awesome I'm going to install this I like this a lot this is definitely something I could use yeah nice Matt what do you got for us this week so I brought an app called Backdrop which is an app that lets you use animated wallpapers on your computer.

So this is a paid app. It has a seven-day free trial, which I am on day six. And it's ten bucks a year, so it's not the most expensive thing in the world. But yeah, so it's animated wallpapers. And they basically have this marketplace sort of thing where they have a whole bunch of different wallpapers. So they have some space-themed ones. They have sci-fi ones. They have like...

I'm pulling it up right now. This is very fancy. It is very fancy. Yeah, they have some landscape ones. They have some abstract art ones. Ooh, they have an eyeball one that's very upsetting. Yeah. So they have a lot of these wallpapers, and I've tried a bunch of them, And I've only found one that I actually like. It's called Serene Retreat. I'll make it the chapter art for this chapter probably. But it is animated wallpapers are very distracting, it turns out.

Some of these are like huge. I have one called Singularity, which is like it looks like a black hole. And it's like animated with like a spaceship going around or something. And that spaceship is a moving. And it's just constantly moving. It's a lot. I installed another one called Futuristic Landscape, which is kind of not really Blade Runner-y, but it's like a weird building in the middle of a wheat field. But there's dust in the air. And the animated part is the dust blowing in the wind.

And I keep looking at my screen thinking it's a smudge I need to... Oh, that would drive me nuts. I would uninstall that in a heartbeat. It's like when you see a fly in your peripheral vision. It's like that, but every 20 seconds when it loops. Oh, I can see the black hole one. Yeah, so it's a lot. And again, I'm on a 32-inch screen. It's huge. It is a lot. So yeah, Serene Retreat. I would recommend that one. It's kind of like an anime or like Japanese animated sort of like just little cool house on a hill.

Okay. Yeah, so it's not for everybody, but it's worth installing and checking out. It does use 6% of my CPU at 100% of the time. Ouch. So just be aware. That's not good. I mean, it's playing a 4K video is basically what it's doing on a loop. So it's using some power. But the macOS Sequoia screen savers. Yeah. It's very similar to those because I do like those. I actually used, before I installed this, I'm using one of the forest ones where it's like an overhead shot of the forest and it kind of goes over the trees.

But then once you log in, it stops. And it comes to a stop. So then it's just an image at that point. But yeah, it's very similar to that. But yeah, some of these are wild. So it's worth playing around with. Okay. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. I don't think I will install this because animated wallpaper would be very, very distracting. Yeah, if you are prone to distraction, this is a bad app for you. Nope, not going to happen.

All right. Well, I think we did a great job with this challenge. I like everyone's picks. Well, I like Neelion's pick. Matt's, I don't know. I wouldn't vote for Matt. I'd vote for me. We did a great job. All of us brought one. All of us actually followed the rules. Followed the rules. We did a great job with this. You know what, guys? Everyone give themselves a pat on the back. You know, we did a great job. Okay. Good for us. Don't get too egotistical. That's good. That's good. Okay, Matt, you're pushing it there. All right. Well, Neelion, it is your turn to give the challenge.

But before you reveal what it is, I just want to make a quick note. For the next episode, it will be WWDC week. We are going to be doing something special. I'm not going to reveal what it is. But we're going to put a pause on the challenge for that week because I just don't think we'll have enough time to be able to get to it. So this challenge will be for two weeks from now when you're hearing this. So, Niléane, what do you got for us? All right. You will love me for this. Oh, no.

Okay. It's two words. Just two words. Automate stickies. How? Do stickies have shortcut support or something? It's a great idea. You will love it. So the backstory is I've begun something with Sticky. I've begun automating something with the Sticky. So to clarify, I'm talking about the Sticky app on macOS. I've begun automating something with the Sticky app on macOS, and I stopped myself.

I was getting in too deep, so I stopped myself. I was like, oh, that's a great challenge idea. The boys should try that, and we can compete on it. So this is the challenge. I just looked and there's no sticky support and shortcuts. Maybe there's something in Automator or... You are right. There are not a lot of things that you can do, which is why it's a challenge. Yeah, this is going to be a challenge. All right.

It's going to be two weeks. Yeah. It's definitely not going to be a wild, insanely busy two weeks at all. So, I mean, every WWDC is going to happen, and they have those slides with, like, here's all the, like, features that are, like, the big updates to each platform. On the macOS slide, I'm going to be looking for stickies on there somewhere. Yep, and one of the bento boxes, it'll be automated stickies. This is the year we get stickies automation. Yep, which means we have to install the beta for macOS the very first week.

I'm ready. I always do. Well, you have fun with that. So, stickies is just you create sticky notes, right? And you can just close them and you can change the colors and you can format text. And that's it. That's very basic. So let's just, the idea here is let's try to find a way to automate something about it. Okay. Okay. I have an idea. I don't know if it's possible, but I do have an idea. Okay. We'll see. All right. Well, that just about does it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for, if you've been with us from the beginning, thank you for listening for

a whole year that's wild to say uh it's been a great journey uh but before we wrap up i have an end of the show question for the two of you and i want to know what is the one thing one thing because and i'm limiting myself to this too that you're hoping to see announced at wwdc i have a very easy answer okay so a couple weeks ago i brought this little guy the surface pro which i purchased because i got frustrated with my ipad and wasn't using it and i had been enjoying the surface pro for But what I want to see at WWDC is a reason for me to return this product, which is still in the return window.

So I still have an opportunity, but I want to see them do something that makes me go, oh, my problems are solved. That's what I want to see. Nice. I like that. Neil, what about you? Okay. Mine is very specific. I want the option on macOS to invert the stage manager behavior. just add a checkbox so that windows are added to the current stage manager group instead of the other way around where it always creates a new stage when you open new apps yep just one checkbox I want that checkbox

every year it's been three years I think three four years it's been years every year I'm just really hoping this checkbox will appear in the beta cycle it never does but I'm confident it will happen. Otherwise, I will just ask the EU to sue Apple for this. Make it a requirement or whatever. Just add the checkbox. It's one line. Just toss it into your... Or else 50% of your revenue. I don't know.

I will ask them to do something. And that 50% of the revenue gets make that check out to comfort zone. Yes. We'll split it. I think you and I, the three of us, could easily split 50% of Apple's revenue. I think we could figure that out. Yeah, I'll find a way. Well, I think the three of us could figure that out. Cool. All right. Well, I think for me, it's a very simple, very easy thing that I'm going to ask for. A ground-up rethink of iPadOS. Is that all? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one thing.

Like, Matt, give me a reason. Look, I want to love the iPad. I don't, I, you know, I said I want to have polyamorous relationship with Safari. I don't, I want to be committed to the iPad. I want, but you gotta get, you gotta, like, it can't be 80-20 all the time. You gotta, it's gotta be 50-50 sometime. That's the bedrock of a good relationship. But anyways, thank you all so much for listening. A huge thank you to Mac Stories for having us. We are a Mac Stories podcast after all. Be sure to go check out all the writings and other shows and stuff.

There's a lot of stuff happening, and I'm sure there is a lot of stuff planned for all the shows for WWDC week, because it's going to be a wild week. I'm excited I'll get to see John and Federico in person. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye-bye.