Birtchtree.co.uk.gov.edu.biz

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 Mercer. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing swell. That's good. And we are also joined by Nelian. Nelian, how are you? I am well, and I have a drink. It's a tourtelle, of course. What is that? it looks like a sprite so it's a it's a alcohol free beer but it's very sweet and this one is um lemon oh okay interesting and here's proof that it's

alcohol free so i'm not lying i'm not drinking on on the job uh it's it's a really good uh summer drink. I love it. Yeah, because we take our show very, very, very seriously. No drinking on the job. Of course. This is a very serious podcast that never, ever gets derailed and stays on track. French listeners will know Tortelle. It's a well-known summer drink. Nice. Chris, you're subtly implying that we do drink while we podcast, which I don't think is true.

Is this really Dr. Pepper? I don't. That would be the most shocking thing ever. Whiskey. It's whiskey. Whiskey in a can. No, no, no. It's 8.30 in the morning here. I'm in the middle of my work day. Yeah. So, yeah. There we go. So, I got a tiny topic for us. Last week, we talked about our video game setups, and I mentioned I was playing Tears of the Kingdom, because I never finished it when it originally came out on the first Switch. The Switch 2 got an updated version where it was running 4K, 60 frames per second, and has HDR and the Zelda Notes app and stuff.

Well, I have since finished Tears of the Kingdom. And I just want to say, if you were somebody that bounced off Tears of the Kingdom, and I honestly, for the life of me, cannot remember why I didn't finish it when it originally came out. Like, when Breath of the Wild came out, I did not put that game down until I finished it. I don't know why I didn't do the same with Tears of the Kingdom. But I have since rectified that wrong. And holy crap, this is the best ending to a Zelda game ever. Like, the ending is amazing.

It is so worth the payoff. The final boss fight is fantastic. I will say, okay, Breath of the Wild has the best start to any Zelda game ever. The Great Plateau is perfection. Tears of the Kingdom has the best ending to a Zelda game ever. and if you play them as one concurrent thing you get the best beginning and the best ending I don't know so my PSA is if you bounced off Tears of the Kingdom for whatever reason you never completed it whether you have the Switch 1 or the Switch 2

go back finish it it's worth the time it was fantastic Chris this is another instance of we might be the same person two time zones apart Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games of all time i completely agree it's unbelievably unbelievably good uh i too bounced off tears of the kingdom a little bit after launch i think because it was too much in the building i was like it wasn't resonating with me initially but i came back to it can i give a tip to you just

really quick for anyone out there that the building might be a little too much do there is a quest line and you can look it up you're not going to spoil anything where you get a feature called auto build and then the Yaga guild quest line is where where you fight the Yaga master thing do that and you get a whole bunch of like auto build blueprint things do that it makes your life so much easier but please continue I just want to give that PSA yeah no that is I remember when I got that and then I basically never used it because reader listener you do not have to

build almost anything in this game if you don't really want to you can build the bare minimum you can put just like a couple boards together for most things it doesn't have to get crazy you don't have to go wild um but i beat the game and yes absolutely the ending is astounding it is not just like good for zelda stories um it is genuinely like intense and emotional in a way i did not see coming it is it is probably one of the best endings to a video game ever. It is up there.

There is a lot of games where you get to the fight. I would say Breath of the Wild. You get to Calamity Ganon and the fight is really easy. Especially if you have all the other side missions and you get all the unlocks. Calamity Ganon was incredibly easy. And I don't want to spoil it for anyone that hasn't played it, but the boss fight in the final Tears of the Kingdom is challenging, especially if you do all the stuff leading up to it because of where it is.

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. It can be a little challenging if you're not prepared for it, but the payoff is amazing. But anyways, that's my Tears of the Kingdom rant. My partner is still playing Tears of the Kingdom, but they're basically done with the game and they just won't let it go. Just doing every little quest possible, talking to every PNG. What?

Not PNG. NPC. PNG is in French. It's the acronym in French. Oh, is it PNG? Interesting. That is interesting. I thought you were making fun of NPCs and just calling them like image files. NPC. Personages non-jouers. Anyway. And they won't let it go. that's great that's fantastic yeah no i did a lot of the side quests i did a ton of the shrines i had over like 30 hearts when i completed the game and i had the full stamina bar

wonderful anyways let's move on from that just play it if you've got it and you haven't finished it um there we have one other thing in the tiny topics and honestly i i would suspect matt put this here but i kind of have a feeling nearly i'm dead yeah i so i wrote in the document hey guys i found this new web browser it's really nice it's called arc i knew it i knew it so so guys somebody ruined my web browser for me last week um a friend of mine um oh i thought she

was talking about us and like no no not this time so a friend of mine um i was talking to them about my safari setup and so you know my whole spiel i have four profiles that i have to juggle every day all day long it's a nightmare honestly that i've tried that i've managed with keyboard shortcuts and better touch tool etc and they told me like would this not be extremely simple if you used arc

and i was like that's kind of true but you know i don't really like that company so so what i did is i installed zen browser again instead and i used zen browser for about a day just a full day and try to set up so zen browser has a similar ui basically ripping off our browser good for them uh so it's got a sidebar that you can switch you can slide through and you have

multiple sidebars which you can assign to containers which is basically the same as arcs spaces where you isolate your cookies and logins etc uh basically profiles and yeah so Zen is fine but it's so much worse than just using Arc so I installed Arc browser the next day again on my Mac and try to do the same so reset up all my four profiles in four Arc sidebars and same with Zen browser

and like it's really it ruins it for you when you compare the two because Zen browser is just trying to do the same but it's worse in every single way the UI is worse, it's clunkier there are less options honestly it's laggy the UI is laggy in some places and you try to do something in ARK basically the browser company they made a complete browser

and it's really good. So what I've done for the past few days is I've switched back to Arc browser. And my reasoning for that is basically if I want to get a better browser experience, there's not much else that can fit my use case where I have to switch between four different profiles every few minutes on a daily basis. And considering the company that makes those browsers, the companies that make those browsers, they are kind of awful.

So what kind of standard are we at here? Okay, Safari is Apple, and Apple is basically ruining Safari in Tahoe. It's not getting better at all. this is a long-running thread when I'm so worried about Tahoe, guys. The UI Safari in Tahoe looks horrendous. I don't know how I'm going to deal with that. And like Chrome is awful because Google is awful. Firefox is awful because basically the Firefox has become a garbage, like this huge mess of a UI of features or whatever.

And Mozilla is not great. I'm not installing anything made by the homophobic guy that makes Brave Browser or whatever. Anyway, so I'm like, at this point, I'll just use the thing that works. And as far as I know, Josh Miller from the browser company is not a Nazi, so that's a low enough bar to pass. That's the bar now. Yeah, the nice thing about the browser company we're mostly upset at them about abandoning a very good product.

Yeah, we're upset at them because they have a weird product direction right now. We don't know what they're doing. Their videos are cringe and yeah, they do some things that are just like, hmm, but they're not Nazis. Not Nazis. As far as we know. As far as we know. As far as we know. And also, my criteria also was like, is ARK browser still being updated? So that's really important for a browser. It needs to have security patches, it needs to be updated. And it is. It got an update yesterday.

Had to reboot restart Arc together to update. It's not any feature updates, whatever. But they've been updating on a bi-weekly basis or something like that. They update the Chromium base and the fixed bugs. And that's it. Which is perfectly fine considering they made a really good web browser and I don't know what more I want from it. It's really good. So as long as it doesn't get worse and they keep fixing bugs when there are bugs and they keep updating the Chromium engine,

I'm fine with that. So I'll see where that goes. Just wanted to tell you all. I love it. If we can do a... So my YouTube channel is on a summer break right now. It'll come back in like August or September. And I think the first video I'm going to do when I come back as a teaser is that ARK remains the best browser in the world. I think Zen is close. And I like that it's actively being developed and they're getting closer. But I still, whenever I go back to ARK, and I use ARK daily on my work computer, for me, it's perfect.

It's great. I adore it. Even though it hasn't got any features, it's still the best. Bring non-WebKit browsers to the iPad. That's going to be my next campaign. All right. Well, let's get in the main show. I'm first up in the document here, and I have some app updates for you all. I have some new app and, like, some changes to the way I've been using some current apps. So first off, I have completely replaced Google as my default search engine.

Google, the last couple of years, has not been at its best. And lately, they've been cramming their AI search results up at the top. And their AI search results are not great. And it pushes a lot of the sources, which the sources are the key thing that I want, down. So you have to scroll or something. And while scrolling isn't the big deal, I want to be able to quickly jump into things. So I have replaced it with ChatGPT's web search. And I know what you're thinking, dear listener.

Is ChatGPT really that much better than Google as far as companies goes? That's a whole debate. Like Deleon just said, none of them are actually great. So let's just pick the ones that work. And ChatGPT's web search is very, very good. I really like it. Now, their web search is different than their chat box. Like if you're going to chatgpt.com, there is a little button in there that's like you click and it does web searching there.

So I have replaced as my default search engine on iOS and iPadOS. And I know what you're thinking. Oh, did they add ChatGPT as a default search engine provider in iOS 26? No, they did not. But if you install the ChatGPT iOS app, they have a Safari extension. And if you go in and enable that and do the always allow on every website and all that stuff, what this does is it hijacks the search bar, the URL bar. So if I was to type in Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough, instead of it doing a Google search, which is the default, and if you go into settings, Safari, you know, default web browser, all that stuff, it is set to Google.

But instead of doing a Google search, this extension takes that and forwards it over to ChatGPT's web search. Now, the funny thing is, is it does do that. It opens that Google page for like a fraction of a second and then goes over to ChatGPT. So if you hit the back button, it'll actually go back to those Google search results for that first. So I, but what this will do is it will search the web with ChatGPT. So you will get the search results. You will get the AI, you know, text and all that stuff. But you get the sources.

And I love the sources that ChatGPT's web search comes up with. I am clicking those or tapping on those all the time. I love those. I think it just does a much better job than what modern Google is doing. So this has been killer for me for, like, doing research on a whole bunch of stuff. Like, we are turning my old office area. You guys remember I used to have that office area, like, outside of the studio? I'm not using that anymore because I brought everything in here. We're turning that old office area into, like, a library for Danielle so she can put all of her books and stuff.

Like she wants like this little library area. So I've been doing that to do research on like bookshelves and some furniture and all this other stuff. So like love that. What I also love is you can follow up. This is something you can't do with Google. So like I can refine my search. So if I search for something and be like, hey, that's not quite it. Hey, focus more on this thing over here. You can refine your search with that, which is really, really nice. It's a really nice feature. And like I said, just Google's AI search results, I just don't like them.

They're not accurate. A lot of times they're not accurate. They push sources down. They really want you to just like that to be the be-all, end-all. And I really want to go to the original source. To me, I find that to be really important. And weirdly, with the AI search tool, I can go to those original sources easier than I can with Google. So because with Google, now you have the full AI thing at the top? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, especially if I'm on my iPhone and I'm in Safari, that pretty much takes up the whole page.

So now I've got to scroll down, and then you have the ads in Google, then you have all the other stuff. So you're doing a bit of scrolling, whereas with ChatGPT, it's just right there, it gives you a little text summary, and it says, like, hey, here's, you know, found this piece of information, And here's that source. And it's like, oh, that little bit of information, that's what I want. But I need to expand upon that. So tap on that. And it jumps to the source. And, you know, it goes through all that stuff. We still don't have that in France. Like Google is not rolling out this AI thing.

Yeah. I don't know if we're ever getting it. But I'm glad for now. I mean, I get everyone's hesitation with like AI stuff. But for me, at least for the search engine side of things. I'm just focusing on the search engine side. It's getting me to the sources, the original web pages, whether it's something like MacStories or birchtree.me or birchtree.net. Birchtree. Trust your instincts. I don't know.

I just type birchtree and it fills it in. Birchtree.co.uk.gov.eu. Yeah. But I was talking about Google. the Google's AI feature that's not that's not all of that here we have chat GPT search oh okay okay okay sorry I thought you were talking about chat GPT no you're lucky not to have the Google one because the Google one is not great I don't like the Google one one thing I will say or two things quick about that that's exactly what the Kagi extension does on iOS as well

is it hijacks Google searches so it'll quickly do a redirect to Kagi with the same thing, which I think is fun that multiple companies have figured out the same trick. Do you remember the extension I talked about once? Which one was it? There's a Safari I don't remember the name. It's made by the developer who makes Vinegar. The Vinegar, the extension. So I talked about a show. On the show it's an extension that just takes Google search results and cleans them up.

So it's really clean and simple. And I really like that for a while. Nice. The other thing real quick is if you don't like ChatGPT, but you like that search experience and you want to stick with Google, if you're in that very small Venn diagram potentially, I have found the AI mode search on Google to be much better and is more similar to the ChatGPT thing. It is a second tap. So like after you do the search and you see the search results at the top, there's an AI mode. And then it does kind of the more ChatGPT style thing.

So if you don't like ChatGPT, but you still want that sort of thing, you could give that a go as well. Yes. And the thing I will say is sometimes I still need Google search results. So like, for example, I was making a reservation for Daniel's birthday. And it was just easier to get the Google search results because the business hours were right there. And then the phone number was right there when, you know, when I typed the name of the place in. And that's not something I'm like needing to go to MacStories.net for.

Like that's just something, you know, like I just need the hours and the phone number. So just give me that in that card. That's fine. So what I did is I use the extension XSearch. And what XSearch does is it sets up a whole bunch of shortcuts to search different web pages. Is it search on X? No, well, actually, it technically can, but X search was around before Twitter became the website name that I refuse to say because it just makes that one dude mad. The everything search engine.

But what X search does is it has this whole gallery of different websites it can search. So you can go in and you can set up Amazon. You can set up YouTube. You can set up Apple.com. There's a whole Wikipedia, like all sorts of different things. And then you get a shortcut. So I can type YT Matt Birchler or YT a better computer, and it'll show me Matt Birchler's YouTube channel. It'll show the search results for a better computer on YouTube, essentially.

So it'll show his channel and videos related to that and stuff. Amazon, you can search for that and then put a product name, stuff like that. So I set up the Google one. So when I do need to do a Google search still, I just type G and then the Google search and it still goes straight to Google. So I still have that ability to do Google search on iPhone and iPad, but I don't. But like if I just type something in, it goes straight to ChatGPT. So that's kind of nice. Yeah, the extension I mentioned is called Lucky for Safari, by the way.

And I talked about it on the show. Don't remember when, but it was early on in one of the early episodes. at some point in time it was mentioned yes and then the last app i want to talk about is completely in a different direction but it is about obscurus studio uh by friend of the show ben mccarthy ben is a wonderful human being i got to hang out with them a couple of times at uh different wwdc's and ben makes an app called obscurus which is like a really good high-end professional

iPhone camera app that gives you raw photos and a bunch of control over taking the photos. Well, Obscura Studio is the other end of that. It is a photo editing app. And we've talked a lot lately about like the prosumer market of like, where is those middle apps? And this is perfectly one of them. This sits in between what you can do in the photos app and what you can do in something like Lightroom. This is absolutely perfect. You know, you can go in here, you can adjust, you know,

exposure, highlights, contrast, black levels, white levels, shadows, you know, all that stuff in here, but it also has filters as well. So you don't have to know what all those controls do. You can go in there and just pick from a few different filters, but then you can jump over to those controls and edit that filter if you want. And then there's things like color controls that you would find in like Lightroom. There's the graph feature. So you can do like S curves and all those kinds of

things. This is a wonderful app, like been put a ton of work into this. And one of my favorite things about this is you can very easily save your own filters. So if you come up with a look that you like for your photo, so you're just playing around with it and you like, Oh, I love the way this photo You can save this as your own filter and you can just use it on any other photo in your library. Now, there is one feature request. So, Ben, if you're listening, when you go to pick a photo in Obscura Studio, you have your photo library.

One thing I wish he would add is a little raw tag. So, like, hey, was this photo taken in raw? Let me know. Ben, if you're listening, that's the one feature I meant to email you about it, but I totally forgot. Until right now. But anyways, my point is, this is a lovely app. You can do all sorts of different things with it. You can flag photos. You can basically reject photos. You can do all the stuff that you would do, you know, in Lightroom like that where you're managing your photos.

It's just a wonderfully well put together app. This to me, like you get the pro controls that you want over a photo. Like you get the controls you want over editing a photo, sorry, but you don't get all the wild Lightroom stuff that most people don't know what that does. Like you have to be like a professional photo editor with 10 years of experience to even know what this feature does. So I've been using this app to edit photos that I take on my iPhone, like personal photos.

Like, Danielle's birthday was just, like, a week ago. And I took a bunch of photos that day, and I've been editing those in this app. I don't necessarily need that stuff in my Lightroom library. My Lightroom library is, like, my professional, like, this is where I do thumbnails and wallpapers and all that stuff. But this has been a great place of, like, hey, I took this photo on my iPhone, and, like, I just want to punch it up a bit. And that's what this has been fantastic for. And it's a great app.

Like if you're just looking to learn how to edit a photo, this is honestly the place I would start. Because like I said, it doesn't have the insane controls Lightroom does, but it doesn't need that. You know, this right here, you learn the basics of how to edit a photo right here. And that is the important bit. Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah, Ben is awesome. So I fully support this. I actually did not know this existed. So I had just installed it myself.

Yeah, I kind of feel bad for Ben. It was unfortunate timing. It was like right after WWDC when it came out. So I think it got kind of passed over in the news cycle a bit. And so I wanted to highlight it here because it's a wonderful app. I got a little bit of an early test flight, and I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and it's fantastic. Nice. Yeah, I'm definitely going to go try this out. This is great. Yeah, and to add on to what you said, What I really like about Obscura, like the original app, is the filters.

Oh, yeah. I'm not sure. I don't know if Ben made all the filters themselves, but they're really good. I really love those filters, especially the black and white ones. They're really nice. And I've been loving to use, I've loved using Obscura just for the filters. And the fact that they are available in Obscura Studio, that's really nice. I believe Ben made all the filters. They really, really care about photography.

I've got to sat down with them a couple of times at WWDC. We hung out and stuff. And they very much care about photography and design and all that stuff. And that's why I just... Everything they make... Ben even has this really great Pokemon app. When a new Pokemon game comes out, It's a must-have on my iPhone for me. It's like a full Pokedex. It's fantastic. The way they design things is amazing. So, like, anything Ben makes is an immediate download for me.

Yeah. The app is called Ketchup, by the way. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's so good. I use it because I'm a dummy with these Pokemon games. I don't know who to bring to a fight. So, like, when I know who they're going to have, I'm always looking them up and finding who I should bring. Always Charizard. Always Charizard. Agree to disagree. Anyways, so that's what I have this week. A few app updates for you. One new app, go check them out. But yeah, that's what I got. Nice.

Matt, what do you have for us this week? Well, I've been putting this off as long as I could. But as I was thinking of what I was going to bring this week, I've run out of things. and so it's it's the summer it's this is always the hardest time for like coming up with new things like you taking time off from your channel is genius right now because there's nothing to cover right now there's nothing until we have the public betas there's nothing we can do right now so yeah i this is always a hard time of year yeah so i just took a look at like what am i doing with my

computers right now and i have been coding so much uh last or it was only six months ago i think i i said hey i'm working on an app for ios um today i'm pleased to announce i have four apps in the works. Oh. Full sweet. Yes. Yeah, the Birch Tree bundle is coming along.

So do we only know about three of them? You. Hmm. I think you know. I stopped counting. You'll forget. It's hard to remember them all. So let's just go through them real quick. Okay. These are not available yet. They are available in beta to more Bertrie subscribers on my blog. So if you want to subscribe, that's a Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, must not nearly on an iron getting a cut of that But they should be out a couple of them should be out hopefully in the next like month or so because they're getting pretty pretty much there

Some will not be out until iOS 26 is out for reasons. I'll become apparent So the obvious one that I'm working on is quick reviews 2.0 This is an update to the app that I've had out for a while that lets you review things, create nice images that you post on social media. This is getting a new UI that basically fixes all the bugs of the last one. So there is a bug with editing things that drove me crazy.

Cached data makes me want to scream. I need it to be fast, but I also don't understand fully how it works. So long story short, I have data overriding new data. That's all fixed. So if you ever had the issue in the app where you edited an existing review and then you went back to it and the colors hadn't changed, that is fixed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. I have been slaving away trying to fix that, and it just took a full rewrite of the entire UI. Okay.

So I've got some new colorful options for the list of views to see a review list. It still does all the things like letterbox sync and all that good stuff. So I'm really happy with how it's coming along. So that's lovely. Also, it is going to be built around the liquid glass thing. So all the glassy things will be there in the phone when I'm allowed to do that. Hey, I've got a bottle of glass with liquid. Yeah, could you email me that bottle, please?

It needs to be like the WWDC video where you're like studying how it's laid and like it just works with physical objects. I don't know what I'm doing with my hands. This is good. This is good. The other thing. Oh, so I've gotten the UI figured out and now I'm working on a couple new features. It's not going to be a ton of new features. It's mostly just going to be a usability improvement. The thing that I'm adding, though, is for my alt text fans, alt text fans out there, which should be all of you posting to social media. previously there was a setting in the app where you could automatically copy the review text to your clipboard when you like export the image so that when you go to your mastodon app or whatever

to post it it's already on your clipboard you can just paste in the alt text lovely not everyone wants the same alt text some people want to have the score in there some of them want their the title in there some of them want just like their own free form text and so now one of the features I've added is the ability to write your own thing and there's tokens you can use to place the text in there so if you have your own format for all the text that you would like uh you can go ahead and make it now so I'm very happy about that nice that's pretty cool so that was that's

an expected thing that's whatever 2.0 who cares um the new stuff so the first new app is one that I made for myself uh because I was getting overwhelmed with social media I was annoyed that I felt like the worst version of myself when I was on social media. I didn't feel like I was getting much out of scrolling my feed. I was mostly just getting angry. So I didn't want to be totally disconnected, though, either. So I was trying to figure out what to do. And so this is where app number two came in, which is called Bestomasto, which is a app.

You'll be amazed to hear the name was not taken. It's the Bestomastodon. It is an app that you just sign into, and it will pull in the 20 most interesting posts from your feed from basically the last, like, 12 hours or so. So you can just open the app, see what has gotten a lot of engagement from people in your timeline, what's getting a lot of likes, those sorts of things. And then you can close the app.

There's a reload button, but that reload button only works once every 60 minutes. So you can't even just hang out in the app. It is actively not... That's smart. I like that. Yeah. It'll actually like shake its finger at you and say like, no, no, no. You got to wait. So there's that. I've been using that. It's been really, really good. So it's helped me find like a couple of fun things without getting sucked into the feed. So that's cool. I am also done a top eight. So if you're old enough to remember MySpace, you could set your top eight.

There's a top eight in this app as well. So if there's up to eight accounts that you want to really see everything, you can select those accounts and then you can just see a feed of only them. So Matt, who's in your top eight? Obviously, you two take up a quarter of it. And then I... Right answer, right answer. So there's a top eight. And then the other feature that is in there that's pretty cool. and this one won't ship until iOS 26, but there is going to be a feature that can be called Hidden Gems

that will use the Apple Intelligence on-device model to look at the other posts that didn't necessarily get as much engagement but might be interesting to you. It'll be in there, and then there's also a little custom prompt box where you can say, like, I'm interested in, and it could prioritize those sorts of posts. So that's pretty rad. That's cool. You told us about that Hidden Gems. idea. And I was like, that's genius. That's exactly what I want. So I can go in there and put iPad, iPadOS and make sure anything related to that gets serviced. I like that. Yeah.

Any questions about this app? So is it a good idea to launch four apps at once? Yes. Okay, good. No, I really like the... So I have a real comment now. I really like the master than app idea. I think it's a thing that more social media... Not social media. More master than clients especially should do.

And I would love for Ivory to add something like that. But they won't. And you will. There you go. Will you have a setting to choose an audience? I'm asking for the audience. A setting to choose the client to open into. Oh, that's a great call. So this app will support the ability for you to post single posts to your feed.

And it will let you like and boost posts that are shown in the app, but it won't let you reply and it won't show you replies. So if you want to see the rest, you can tap on a post to see it in the web browser or in ivory, or if I can figure out Mona's URL scheme, which I figured would be easy, but I have not found. So anyone who knows how Mona's URL scheme works, please let me know. To open it in your own, whatever clients you actually typically use, and then you can do more.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. And this app, I guess not 100% confirmed, but I think this is just going to be a free app that I'm just going to release and people can use. Because it's not super complicated. And yeah, I would just like to have a free app out there that people... And the Mastodon API doesn't cost much. Doesn't cost anything, no. Thankfully. So, yeah. Yeah, this was a classic case of I want to solve my own problem with an app, and I don't think anything exists that does this, so I wanted to make it.

The last two are for what exactly we're doing right now, and these are two apps called Quick Chapters and Quick Subtitles. Whee! And so Quick Subtitles is the first one. This one won't launch until the OS26s are out. This uses the new voice transcription on-device model that is available to apps to create high-quality transcripts on your device. And you can export it as an SRT. I have also, well, that is the core function.

You record a podcast, you edit it, you throw the MP3 or the video file. You could do this for YouTube videos, too. Throws it in, it creates a subtitles file in a couple seconds, typically. Matt's underplaying it. I ran this on my iPhone 16 Pro the other day on our last episode, which was like a little over an hour and 20 minutes. And it exported it in, what did I say, a minute and 40 seconds or something like that? Or was it even faster than that? It should be a little quicker.

It's usually just about a minute per episode for us is what I've seen on my phone, which is crazy. That's crazy. That's wild. I'm trying to find it, but for some reason, iOS 26 is not showing me images that we sent. Oh, here it is, right here. Maybe it's showing you, but it's too transparent. I apologize to Matt. I bespurched his name. He can challenge me to a duel if he wishes. But it finished it, our last episode, which was over an hour and 20 minutes long, and it finished transcribing it on an iPhone, 16 Pro, in 1 minute and 14 seconds.

It's pretty good. That is very efficient. Very efficient. And it's accurate, too. It's very accurate. I find it to be just about as accurate as Whisper transcription is. Yeah, I would agree. It's definitely in the ballpark. Maybe ever so slightly not as good as Whisper, but way quicker than Whisper and available on mobile devices. The Whisper model, that is very good, is not available on iOS or iPadOS. Yeah. So I think it's pretty cool. And I, to be clear, I did zero work in making this model fast or smart. And the best part about this, as opposed to like another app that's like downloading,

like the whisper model is you're using the on device model that's already there. So the file size of the app is small because you're not having to download another model. Whereas like, If you use the Whisper transcription app on iOS, you have to download, like, it's almost like a gig or something like that. It's a couple gigs, yeah. Yeah, locally in order to do this, and it's still not the good, good model. Yeah, no, it's pretty rad. The other thing I did in this app, and this is a new thing that you guys haven't seen yet, because it's not in the beta yet, is, so what I wanted to do.

So, again, this is an app specifically made for me because every week I make subtitles for this podcast. Chris, I think you do as well. And I also want help with writing the show notes. So I write the show notes and I try to get links to everything we talked about in there. I write some of them while we're recording. I always miss things and I try to remember them while I'm listening back to the episode. But I still miss things. And so what I typically do is I go to, I actually use Gemini for this. But I feed the transcript into Gemini and say, what did we say would be in the show notes?

And it finds the things. And it's super, super helpful. And so I was like, Apple Intelligence, I can do that with the on-device model. That's great. I'll just, after it's transcribed, I'll feed it into Apple Intelligence and it'll tell me the same thing. And there's no need for any fancy accounts or anything. Well, I have become spoiled by large context windows in these fancy models. the on-device model and Apple intelligence will not read a podcast transcript. It is way, way, way, way, way too big. I think it'll read like 10% of it or something. So, uh, yeah. So I'm going

to have a bring your own key situation, bring your own Gemini key or open AI key, and it'll do that. But I do have that working right now where you can, after the transcript's created, after you wait the whole minute for it to happen, uh, it, uh, you can toggle over to analyze and it'll find all the things you said would be in the show notes and give it to you so i'm very happy about this this is gonna be great for me that's pretty cool now feature request is it just saying is it just looking for hey this will be in the show notes could you also add this will be in the description so i can use this for youtube videos uh i could adjust the prompt yes i could okay um because you know

apparently you know youtube videos are descriptions podcasts are show notes that's true yeah that's true that's pretty cool everything in the doobly-doo or whatever uh your uh youtuber of choice says okay last one um too many apps the last one this one is that now we're up to four this is the fourth yep this is the fourth okay um the fourth this one is called quick chapters and this one is the only one where i'm trying to replace an app that i already have in my workflow um and that app is forecast, which is an app Marco Arment made, which is awesome.

You just feed it an audio file and you can add chapters to it showing it. Like you can add some of the metadata. You can add chapter art, all that stuff. It's very, very good, but it could be better. And Marco isn't really working on it. So, um, the main thing I wanted to do was make entering the chapters easier, uh, with keyboard shortcuts. Um, so being able to just tab like and hit like control enter or command enter to like create it one and then have like the focus go to the right field.

So I can just do the next one. Like I create these chapters every single week. I know the pain points that I personally have. So I'm trying to address those pain points. So what I'm trying to make is basically forecast, but by me, so it's going to be similar. Uh, but this is going to let you add chapters to audio files, export them. I'm working on chapter art, working on links for the chapters, so trying to get some of that stuff in there. But I've used it for the last couple episodes we've made, so as long as those chapters have shown in your podcast app, it is working.

But it's going so well. I'm actually very happy about this one, and it's a universal app, so it'll work on the iPad and iPhone as well. So, Chris, if you wanted to add chapters to an episode and you're working from the iPad, you would be able to do that. That's a topic for another week. Okay. Whenever the public beta comes out. Yeah. Okay. That's a whole other topic. Matt, so I have a question. At which point do you think you could, and maybe you've thought about this already, you could ship an app that combines all of these features?

It's a dedicated post-production podcast app where you can do all of it in it. Yeah. This is something I have considered. Yes. So I started doing the chapters thing like the day after WWDC because I was like, oh, this is obviously what I want to do. And I'm sure there'll be like 50 apps that do this when the OS is launched. so I just started making that and now it's working and it's reliable and it's good and I did the chapters one

and it's working and it's reliable and it's good and I could merge them but I'm so worried I'm going to break things or it's going to be like I don't know so maybe I should make a third, a fifth app that's I see, I'm going to disagree with Neely on here, I think they should be separate apps because the transcription thing could be used for a lot more than just... My mom right now is bugging me for a good transcription app on her iPhone that could just listen to a phone call or take

an audio file and transcribe it because she has to do that for meetings for work. I haven't really found one that works in her way. I could see a version of your transcribe app that intercrates call kit and is able to transcribe calls and stuff like that. I think that they can do that. Oh, is that a thing? Interesting. 50% sure. Maybe not. That's not high.

Maybe 40%. I don't know. It's a feature request from my mom to you, Matt. Okay. Yeah. Don't disappoint my mom. She's a lovely person. But I could see the transcribe app could be used for a lot more than just podcasts, whereas the chapter thing is very podcast specific. So I think keeping them as separate apps makes sense. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, it is a, I do like, Neil, I think you are on to something with the idea of this kind of like podcast post-processing app

where you do it all in one place. Like, okay, the file's ready to go. I want a transcript. I want show notes. I want to add chapters. Honestly, the dream, I don't understand why it's so bad at it, but these LLMs, I feel like, should be able to auto-suggest where to put the chapters for you. Every time I've tried to do this, they are so bad at it. It's so wrong. Like, always wrong. I really wish they could help me with that.

What the heck was that? Really loud motorbike went by. My window is closed, by the way. So that was really loud. That was. Wow. Well, with that, yeah. So I've mostly been working on coding stuff. So yeah, four apps in the works. I hope that's enough. You have a full-time job, a YouTube channel, a website, and a podcast plus four apps. I think you're good. Yeah, I've cut myself off, by the way.

There will be no more new apps this year. This year. This year. We'll see what happens. We're halfway through the year, by the way. Yeah, maybe next month. You know. We'll see. Who knows? Who knows? All right. Well, that was awesome. I really liked hearing kind of how you're doing. I want to check in with you closer to iOS 26 ship date and kind of see how all this is going for you. But, yeah, let's get into the challenge. Niléane, it was your challenge. What did you have us do for this week?

Yeah, I inaugurated a new kind of challenge. I think it's a fun one. The challenge was, Matt and Chris, you will compete to sell me on a new physical accessory. And I will let you present what you've picked. And I will pick the winner and order the winner's accessory. The accessory must be under $40. And I must be able to order it from France, obviously.

The under $40 was the challenge bit for me. Yeah. That was... I had a lot of ideas. There's a lot of good stuff that's $70. Oh, my gosh. I found one thing that was $43. I was so annoyed. It was $43. I was so annoyed. But anyways... I will explain maybe after you presented why I picked specifically $40. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. So whoever wants to go first.

I do want to go first and I didn't put it in the show notes because I didn't want Chris to get any ideas what he was competing with and honestly I'm not super confident in it um but here we go so what I wanted to do was find something like what is Neilian really want what is what does she need in her tech life and I started thinking about well obviously something orange and I started looking at like nice orange cables and i was like she's already got these she doesn't want a cable if i come to the show with a cable i'm going to just be left out of the room i've got a lot of

cables yeah i feel like i feel like you're you're set on cable so none of this and then i was like oh you know it'd be great let's get an orange desk mat and then i scrolled through our chat history and i was like what does she have right now and i'm pretty sure you have a yellow or orange desk mail already. I have a yellow mustard yellow. Yeah so that out the window as well but I didn't give up and I was thinking okay let's think more recently what what's going on and you've mentioned a few times the annoyance of the heat waves that have been going through France and it's

just so hot and we know that our phones struggle when it gets hot and so what I have brought is the brilliantly titled Hagabas Magnetic Cell Phone Cooler Ultra Thin Cooling Fan that connects to the back of your phone with MagSafe. Is there a link though? There is a link. Oh yeah. Okay. I don't know if you can order it from France, but it's on Amazon, so I'm really hoping. Oh, I hope you can't. It's a MagSafe thing? It's a MagSafe fan that connects to the back of your phone and just spins and cools your phone for you.

There's no way this does anything to your phone. It's going to say. There's no way this does anything. Okay, I can say it now. The reason why I picked $40 is because I knew things like that would come up. Like, if you pick a low enough bar, weird things will pop up on Amazon. So, yeah, I'm happy already. Okay, good. because the options were either boring as hell or questionable utility, but potentially cool.

And I went literally cool. So I think that's worth something. And it's half the price. It's half the budget. I don't know what it is in euros, but it's $16.99 in the US. That is cheap. Let's check if it's on Amazon France. Oh, please, please, please. I mean, I can order from Amazon.com anyway. No, you said the rules of the challenge said it had to be available in France. Yeah, but I mean, it ships to France. Okay, okay. I didn't know how to check that, so I just prayed.

So it's okay if it's on Amazon.com, I think. Yeah, it's on Amazon France as well. Okay. It's a lot more expensive. 25 euros. 25 euros? Yeah. Okay, still under budget. Still under budget. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so that's what I'm bringing. I think that is... This is interesting. It is... Does it work? I don't know. But it does show... It is a personalized gift. Not a gift. Purchase order.

Based on what I know about you. So I think it's a good personal suggestion. Can I take a minute to just scroll through the listing? The Amazon listing. So it says... Magnetic phone cooler. Okay, as we've established. It says extreme cooling, semi-conductor cooling technology, fast cooling. So it's fast. So fast. It says cold at once.

At once. Cold at once. Yeah, that means something. Low noise. And what else is interesting on there? Three speeds. One for office chatting, one for movie short videos, and one for gaming. So, okay. Okay, I can game. And the reviews are pretty good. Like 4.1 out of 5 stars. Yeah. So, okay.

There you go. Okay. I really like this position. I like being the judge on something. It's really nice. All right. My turn? Your turn. Okay. All right. So there are two options in the doc. Don't click on anything just yet, but we're going to focus on the real option. Okay. But don't click anything yet. You know, I sat down to do this challenge, and I really thought about Niléane. I put myself in her shoes. I was like, okay, you know, I like yellow.

You know, I'm hip. I'm cool. You know, I make fun of the dads. You know, they're old. You know, I call them dinosaurs. I like headphones. uh you know i like the magic keyboard you know i really thought about that and every single option i came up with and came was just above 40 dollars and i was like okay all right let's let's think about this practically what is something that i christopher lolly really enjoy that i think neely on would also really appreciate so i literally walked around my studio with my phone

and I was like, okay, how much is this? It's about $40. Okay, how much? No, that's just about $40. And then I came to the real option. You can go ahead and click on it because Matt said, you know, cables are boring, but I would like to present to you the one cable that's not boring. So there are two links. There's the real option. You want the real option. We'll talk about the fun option in a second. Oh, we'll talk about it later. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a real submission because I knew you were, I was only allowed to pick one, but it's something I actually think you would enjoy

and I wanted to highlight. Okay, so real option. It's a real option. It is this guy right here. It's a cable. It's a cable. Oh, no. USB-C cable. I wasn't sure if Matt clicked the link. It was, like, making fun of me at the time. No, I didn't. But that was perfect. It's a cable. It is a cable, but it is the best cable ever made. It is hands-on. I have bought so many of these because I love these. These are in my backpack. These are all over my studio. These are all over my house.

This is a nylon braided cable, so it feels really good. It lasts a really long time. It's not going to break on you. It does up to 240 watts of charging, so you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. That's all the watts. And it has a built-in cable tie. See? Okay. Nice. It has a built-in cable tie. This right here, I've replaced all of my charging cables with this cable. Like, this is the cable I use for everything.

And I know you're living your best USB-C lifestyle right now. This is the cable you want. And here's the difference between Matt's pick and mine. I know this works. I know this will work. This will work. That's a good point. That's the difference. This will work. You will not waste money on this. You will want to buy more of these after you buy one of them. it is the best cable ever now my only complaint about it is the longest version uh is six feet so like two ish meters um i wish there was a 10 foot option but other than that this is a this is a

solid cable that's really long that is long i i like a good 10 foot cable because i have that uh i have this really big external battery that sits on the back side of my couch that i throw a 10 foot That is the only cable that I use that's going from that thing that is not one of these. But I throw a 10-foot cable over the couch so I can plug my Switch in while I'm playing on the couch. But anyways, this, Neelion, this is the best money you will ever spend right here. Okay, so Chris, you brought a cable.

I did bring cable. But you know what? I walked around my studio and I was like, I love these cables. So I have a cable. This is the cable I use all the time. This is the Apple USB cable. It's so much better than the Apple cable. This is so much better than Apple. I don't understand. How is it better? It does faster charging. It's better quality. The nylon is really nice. I really wish I could just hand this to you right now. And it has a built-in cable tie. Now, here's what I'll say. As a slanderer of cables, those gifts. Yeah.

A couple years ago, I gave my wife a cable as part of, like, a birthday gift. There were a few gifts, but a cable was one of them. and she was like, what the heck is this? But reader, she loves this cable. Uses it every day. It is so great. So a very nice cable is actually a nice thing to add. It's a good quality of life thing that you can enjoy every single day. Yeah. Danielle has these. She loves them. Wait, Matt, are you defending Chris? Well, I'm trying to level it out because I didn't mean to accidentally slander the entire concept of his gift.

That was so fantastic. Or a suggestion. But this is practical. This works. I know this works. I have a bunch of these. Okay. I want to know the fun option. What's the fun option? Okay. So the fun option, you can go ahead and click on it. It's literally a Lego set that I honestly think you would love. I got this for Danielle for her birthday. This was one of her birthday presents, and she loves it. It just kind of seemed like you. I was like, when I ordered it for Danielle, I was like, you know who else would like this? nearly on.

And it's like this little plant Lego set, but like they have faces on them and they have feet and they're holding hands and like, they're like, I don't, it's like Toy Story about plants. And why did you choose a cable for your real option? Because it didn't seem like an actual tech accessory, so I wasn't sure it counted. Oh. But it felt, that felt like a desk accessory. Yeah. Like I wasn't sure if that would fit, that fit the spirit of the challenge. That felt more like a good desk accessory for you, But this was a proper tech accessory.

Maybe you could rest your AirPods in the leaves. You'd have to take them out because these are very small. Yeah. But you know what you could do is you could wrap your cable up and put it over there. Oh, yeah. They could be like a cable holder. They could be a little cable holder thing. Yeah. But anyways, that's the fun option. But I saw that and I wanted to show it to you because I thought that's something you would like. Yeah, I do. Okay, so I have a choice between a cable and a MagSafe fan for my iPhone to do gaming.

Or whatever. Or just being alive in the hot year of 2025. Or you can throw an Audible and, you know, do the fun option and I can still win. Well, I was not expecting this choice. I think I will... Okay, so let me check if the cable is on Amazon France as well. Sorry. Yeah, I didn't check that. I just assumed it would be. It's an anchor cable. Yeah, there's no reason. Yeah, there it is.

Okay. It's 19 euros. Oh, wow. It's even cheaper there. 180 centimeters. Okay. I will place an order on the cable I can get this Sunday. The MagSafe fan on Thursday. Okay, okay, okay. So both. It's a long time to wait for a delivery.

Wow. Yeah. Sunday. I should go with the cable. Sunday? That's sooner than Thursday. Yes. Wait. Oh, no. Today's Friday, Matt. I was living in the future. I don't know what he's saying. Okay. I will place an order for the fan, I think. I mean, I... So, the reason why is I have cables. I don't have MaxSafe fans. But you don't have this cable.

This cable is amazing. They do. They really complement each other, though, in a way. Like, if you got the cable, which has the super high-speed charging, your phone would heat up enough that you might want to throw a fan out the back. How is the fan powered, by the way? Yeah, that's a good point. The fan is powered by USB-C, so you have to plug it in. It doesn't look like it has a battery. I do believe that is the case, yes. Plug it into what? To the iPhone itself? You probably could, but it doesn't look like in the images it doesn't show that, but you probably could. Yeah, what the heck?

Okay, we'll see, I guess. I will review this fan on the show, I suppose. Okay, okay. So it's too late. I bought it. Okay. All right. Well done, Matt. This is the first challenge I'm wearing in this calendar year, potentially. Well done, Matt. I mean, yeah. Who would suggest a cable? I thought it was practical.

I was going, I was like, I thought about going absolutely bonkers, but I was like, she's not going to pick something that just doesn't make, that she doesn't know works. Like, she's not going to throw away her money. I went practical. I went too practical. I'm so happy. This went well, I think. I am curious. Are you going to order the Lego set? Probably. Okay. I'm going to take it as a moral victory. Okay. I mean, the Lego set's great. We have that as well. It is, it's very nice. It's very cute. It's about the same price as the fan, so I don't know, but sure.

Is it the same price as the fan? It's right. It looks pretty similar. It looks similar. Yeah. $22 you asked. It's about the same. Can you believe Lego set or Maxi fan? Lego set. Only one has magnets. Okay, so I'll get the fan on Monday, and Monday is the national holiday of France. Oh. Perfect. Do you hear the people sing, singing? Okay, sorry. What am I saying? I don't know. What is it? Les Miserables.

Oh. France. Yeah, I know France. They've had several revolutions. One of them was turned into a musical. I'm aware of the French things, yes. All right. So it is my challenge, I believe. Yay. Okay. And thank you for participating. That was fun. Yeah, absolutely. This was a fun challenge. I like this. I think this should become almost like a reoccurring one because I like this one.

But for my challenge for you guys, and I had to change it this week from what it originally was, but it is going to be try some new, and in parentheses, it says widget or widgets, and I'm going to bring the chaos hammer for this challenge. You can bring as many widgets as you want. It doesn't have to be iOS widgets. It could be widgets on the terminal. You could make your own physical board and put widgets, like physical widgets, in your room.

You could try the new Vision OS 2, and if you know a developer that can send you a test flight beta early, you could use the thing where it pins the widgets all over. Go wild. As many widgets as you want, any style of widgets as you want, it's not limited to iOS or any of that stuff, go ham. Okay. It's funny because it doesn't seem like there's much you can do with widgets in general.

But yeah, I guess that's the start of the challenge. That's exactly. So it doesn't seem like there's much you can do, but I think there is a lot you can do, especially when we're not restricting it just to Apple hardware. Yeah, that's interesting. Something interesting with widgets. Okay. Yeah. Actually, that's probably a better title is something interesting with widgets. I actually like that title better. Okay. I mean, we've proven we can integrate F1 into our workflows. If we can do that, we can do anything.

Yeah, successfully. Yeah, I know. Neil, I assume your computer still looks the way it did. Yes. You'll never change it. Always, always will be that way. This is how I look when I don't lie. my computer looks exactly the same i will cover my desktop in widgets is that what i'm doing next week that's what that's that's the thing you can do as many as you want i didn't want it to be just a single widget you could do it on any platform any piece of hardware i was even thinking like you can

take a cork board put a calendar on there put some post-it notes whatever you can make physical widgets if you want. You can define widgets how you want. Just follow the spirit of the challenge. I think we all know a widget when we see it. It's like the Supreme Court says. Alright. Well, that just about brings us to the end of the show. I wanted to ask you guys I usually have a question for you guys at the end of the show, but I actually didn't come up with one

this week. You know what? I got one. Kind of based off of what we were talking about earlier. What is your favorite musical? Oh, no question. Yo, go. Hamilton. I knew one of you would do that, yeah. I mean, what are musicals? Singing, dancing, putting on a show. Okay. La La Land counts? Yeah, La La Land's definitely a musical, yeah.

Okay, okay. I don't know if that's my favorite, but I really like this one. I actually really like Les Miserables. I know. I changed my answer. Okay. Okay. I'm going to guess you're going to change it to Cats. No. The movie, specifically. Not the movie. Lion King. Oh. That's the one. I saw that one live in Paris a few years ago in a gorgeous theater. And so good. Love that.

Nice. Nice. Nice. I actually like Les Miserables, and I like the movie too. You know, Russell Crowe might not be the best person for that role, but Hugh Jackman, you get Hugh Jackman singing, and I'm there. I'm just waiting for Wolverine the musical. That's what I need. Did you say Greatest Showman? Oh, God, I forgot about that one. No. I didn't quite enjoy that one as much. I love, there's two things that get Chris really going.

The first is a Ford anything, and the second is Hugh Jackman. Why? What is wrong with Hugh Jackman? No, no. In a good way. In a good way. He's exciting. I like Hugh Jackman. You like him. Okay. I like Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman seems like the kind of guy I could have a beer with. He should be president. Sure. I like that. In Greatest Showman, I like Zac Efron. Oh, okay. I think he plays well. I've kind of blocked that movie.

I did not enjoy that movie. I really didn't. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. I know some people like die by it, but I'm just like. I really like the original music. Okay. But the movie by itself, it's not great. Okay. All right. Well, let's wrap up there. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast after all. Be sure to go check out all the other writings and shows and stuff. There's a lot of stuff happening over the summer.

Matt, Nelian, you guys got anything you want to promote going on this week? Buy some tourtel. I do not have steaks in this company, but it's really good. That really sounded suspicious. Like, I don't have steaks in this company. Go buy some. Again, this is how I look when I don't lie. You know, it's true. It's impossible to tell. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.