And You Just Flick It!

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'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing great. It's a nice sunny day, and I realized I'm wearing my kaggy t-shirt today, and I didn't really notice it, but with this camera angle, it looks like he's just given me the side eye. All episode. That's kind of fantastic. We're also joined by Niléane.

Niléane, how are you doing? Hello, I'm fine. And do you know the YouTuber GoodTimeWithScar? I don't think so. He's a Minecraft YouTuber. Oh, yeah, I know. And his Minecraft skin, his eyes are permanently side eyes. That's like Animal Crossing. Like the Animal Crossing characters where you can pick the eyes and like you can pick and like pretty much all the options are side eyes like all the good option are side eyes like the one option where like you're just looking straight ahead looks creepy so that's pretty great uh we got a couple of tiny topic things uh nilian i think this is all you

i mean it's not me it's our listeners because we have feedback okay uh so last week remember i talked about geneva uh and public transit in switzerland like i was wondering how does it all because when I was there, I've been there multiple times, and every time it's like there's a really relaxed approach to ticketing. Like there are no checks, and some people even seem to never buy tickets.

And so Cedric wrote in to shine some light on what's happening over there. So here's what he said. Here's what he wrote. Hello, first of all, thank you for your show. Thank you, Cedric. Niléane was wondering how public transit works in Switzerland. Here is some information. The Swedes like to follow the rules. It's in their nature. As a little anecdote, my uncle once took the tram in Basel and forgot to buy a ticket.

The next day, he bought two. I guess just because he felt bad. I don't know. And he goes on. This is why there are no systematic checks at station entrances or on buses, trams or trains. However, there are random checks where inspectors come by to check your ticket during your journey. If you get caught without a valid ticket, you'll get a fine of at least around 100 francs. So the francs is the currency in Switzerland.

So 100 francs is about 90 euros, I will say. Let me check. no it's the reverse 107 euros and for your freedom currency that's 124 dollars it's a high risk high reward game it sounds like it's like look if I can go a month without buying a ticket but I only get caught once like that's that's my American brain once again we are not encouraging anyone to play this game.

That's like I know somebody who lives in New York City and they budget three parking tickets a month into their monthly budget because of just the way it all works. Yeah, it's a whole thing. And then they linked a link where a webpage where there's all the fines that you risk in Geneva. And they say greetings from Lausanne in Switzerland. So there you go. Thank you, Cedric. Yeah, thank you.

A society built on trust and honesty. I don't understand it. Yeah, I don't get it either. Insane. I will buy a ticket next time. And I have... Actually, when you go to Switzerland, this is the funny thing, because when you go to Switzerland on vacation and you have booked a hotel room, in Geneva, at least, all the hotels, they will give you a free transport card for the duration of your stay. So that's why I didn't have to look into it because I just had free transportation.

Anyway. What's next? Free health care? Nah. Sorry. That hit a little too close to home there. All right. And a certain testing, testing 9136 wrote to us on YouTube in the comments. Remember YouTube? We post on there. There's our faces on YouTube. Yeah? You guys don't know YouTube. No, never heard of it. What's a tube you?

I'm unfamiliar. And that person wrote, hey, team, in ARK browser, how do you, because we talked about ARK a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, and they wrote, in ARK browser, how do you or can you import bookmarks on the iPhone? And so it's a complicated question because like Arc has its own syncing thing, but with its own apps. So you can install Arc Search, which is what it's called on Android or iOS.

And there you will be able to see your sidebars that are on your desktop Arc browser. So you can access your pin tabs on your desktop from the Arc app on iOS. And to go the other way, if you want to access a link you have opened in Arc on the iPhone, well, you can't unless you thought ahead and sent that link to yourself.

Because like you can in Arc on iOS, you can pin tabs and you can choose in which sidebar you will pin that tab on the desktop version of Arc. And then when you open Arc on your desktop, then you will see the pinned tab that you have pinned from your iPhone. It will have a phone icon next to it. So it's not a two-way syncing, really. It's just from the iPhone, you have to think about it if you want to find that tab later.

and from the Mac you will be able to find all your tabs at all times. I hope that answers the question. And I kind of like it in this way because the way that I mostly browse the web on my iPhone is I often send stuff to myself to read them later on my Mac which is why I've been using HyperDock which is a small utility that does exactly that that lets you send links to your Mac and when you open your Mac, all your links, they appear.

And so ARK basically has that built in. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, ARK. Oh, ARK. It's still going along. Got an update. Two days ago. It's technically not dead. It's a funny thing because every week, and update. They just fix bugs and update Chromium underneath.

And they have a nice looking page for the release notes, which nowadays just says we updated Chromium. But underneath that, there's a community manager trying to entertain the community. There's the question of the week. Arc users can answer. I don't remember which question was last time, but every time it's some time is silly. Sometimes it's about people's workflows. Sounds like they're stealing my bed at the end of the show.

Yeah, this is the dichotomy of the browser company. They have some aspects that are so frustrating and so annoying and then other aspects that are just like they're so good. They're not easy to pin down. They don't just suck. They don't just rule. They're a very complicated mix of things. As long as they at least Acknowledge there are people using the browser. I mean, I guess that's okay. Funny thing, MKBHD once again mentioned that he still uses ARC.

And in his preview of the iOS beta, iOS 26 beta, you can see there's ARC search on his iPhone. He's even using it on the iPhone. There you go. Let him be our ambassador to the browser company. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's get into the main show. Niléane, I believe you had a topic you wanted to discuss with us, something that you're very passionate about.

Speaking of iOS 26, you remember Apple, they unveiled a new design, a new design language philosophy, or I don't know what to call it. New material. Liquid glass. I just want us to, like, yeah, material, yeah, texture. So I want us to just take the time. What are our thoughts on liquid glass?

On my end of things, I have been, I've started just a few days, last week, I believe, I started maintaining like a thread on Mastodon where I keep adding thoughts to it about liquid glass and screenshots. And so the thread starts with me saying, it only took me two weeks to go from really excited about liquid glass to I just want to go back to whatever it was before.

Because I think even just not the material itself, I think basically the whole UI, the way it's been redesigned, I found it frustrating. It removes these dividers, structural dividers in UI. And at one point I wrote, even on iOS, in Safari on iOS, I just want to go back to the time, the good old time, when I could tell at a glance where the page, the web page ends and the toolbar begins.

because now Apple keeps just overlapping stuff on top of each other and it's really confusing. I've seen screenshots of Apple Music on the Mac float around which look insane. Apple Music on the Mac looks insane in some cases where you know the homepage in Apple Music on the Mac. So it's the same on the iPad where you have big cards with recommendations and albums you've listened to recently.

And when you scroll them horizontally, now they go underneath the sidebar and they shine through the sidebar. But you know, Apple Music also has a second sidebar on the right of the window, which is your cue, the music cue. And it shines through that as well. which means when you have Apple Music on the Mac open now, there are so many scenarios where both sidebars on either side of the window, they will appear like bright lights screaming at you.

Anyway, I have thoughts and not good ones so far. The more I look at it, the more I hate it, I want to go back. So what do you guys think? Well, I have a controversial opinion. I think liquid glass on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, I feel differently about it everywhere. Ironically, I think it's maybe the worst on the iPhone. And I think it's, okay, here's the very weird, complex feelings, continue.

I think it looks the best on the iPhone, but it also has the most situations where it just is unreadable and tough. So I think the highest highs are on the iPhone, but the lowest lows are also there. I think on the Mac, it looks the worst, but it's the most functional. The music app is insane. I agree. And there's also at the bottom, there's like the now playing section, which also is transparent and is kind of funky.

And they've made the timeline scrubber thing like one pixel tall. So you have to hover over that one pixel. then it gets big enough to actually interact with. It's very strange. So I think it looks the worst on the Mac, but it's also, I have no issues using it day to day. I think it's actually pretty fine. And then the iPad is a middle ground. I don't think it ever looks as beautiful as it does on the iPhone, but I don't have any of the issues. I honestly have no usability issues on the iPad that I can think of.

It's also the device I use the least, so maybe I just haven't run into them. like yeah i uh i feel differently differently about it everywhere this is why transparent uis are hard this is why you always start with the transparent ui and it gets less transparent and less transparent and less transparent until it's completely opaque and then 10 years later someone's like i bet we could do a transparent ui couldn't we and we do it all over again i've been around a while i've seen this happen several times yeah um so i i agree with matt for the most part um i haven't used tahoe yet that's the one beta i haven't used because the mac i'm using i'm is like

my stable production machine i'm not i'm not gonna mess with tahoe right now um the ipad is not bad the one usability issue I have is I use my devices in dark mode Safari is doing this thing where if you load a page and the page is white like apple.com it's going to make the toolbar white but like the URL box might be dark and like I've sent you guys

some screenshots and it just doesn't make any sense I think it's bugs but like it's not great but overall on the iPad it's fine for the most part now that being said I had to change my wallpaper to just being this dark image that I use because without that you can't read your notifications like notifications are unreadable on the iPhone that's especially egregious because you really can't read notifications if you have like a multi-color wallpaper

or a light wallpaper or something like that. Like, I just found, like, I couldn't read my notifications like that. So, overall, I like liquid glass. I like the whimsy bits of liquid glass. I don't, don't get me wrong. I do not, like, that stuff is fun. I like that. But I think legibility should be the number one thing that Apple should be concerned about. And that's the worst part of liquid glass. Because on the iPhone, like what Neilion was saying, it's really bad in Safari. I have not enabled the setting.

I'm curious if you guys have enabled it where that gives you the old Safari toolbar back. I know that helps with legibility a little bit, but I'm just trying to use it as it is so I can make my walkthroughs and stuff. So I'm just sticking with it until it actually ships in after my videos, and then I'll probably enable that setting. But the whimsy of it I love. I love the whimsy of it. Like, switching between tabs and the little bubble and stuff.

That's fun to play with. But it does feel a little sluggish. It feels slow. And on top of that, like, it's... I don't... Like, just the legibility. And the thing is, if we peek under the hood, Beta 3 was a lot more legible than Beta 1 and 2. Then Beta 4 came out, and then they went back. And I don't know what's going on. I don't know if they're like just testing, like they're trying to figure out like a nice middle ground or something.

But legibility is my number one complaint. My second complaint is there are parts of it that feel sluggish because like you're watching all of these animations and stuff. And while the animations are nice, after, you know, the 10th time of seeing them, it's like, okay, I just want my stuff to be snappier. I just want Safari to be snappy. Okay, so there's, I think I have two main arguments. And the one thing is obviously legibility.

Big problem. Almost all over the place. And so I don't have an iPad. But on the iPhone, I found it terrible. I just want to jump back on, so you mentioned Safari has an option to bring back the full toolbar on iOS. And I've tried to enable that. And let me just show you what's deeply wrong with this setting. Let me show you just to the screen and I will try to describe it.

But this is, I talked about FanPy last week, right? So with the full toolbar enabled, the UI of Safari looks huge. And it's insane on websites like FanPy, where websites, they have a bottom navigation element that's floating on top of the... So in the end, you have... How much is that? It's 500, 600 pixels of padding at the bottom of the screen until you see the content of your web page.

That's insane. My point is it's huge. This is... Because it's a floating thing, like it's a floating plateau, over the web page and websites have to work around that area it looks it looks i want to say it looks stupid and i won't say it looks stupid and i mean it looks a little stupid i mean i think it looks stupid on the old ios as well but but i think websites did that because it was like you i mean

you only adding like this many pixels right like that was it was the same issue on the last one yeah I think it's the fact that because the webpage draws around it yeah that's what makes it feel that's true but yeah so there's the legibility issue on one side and on the other side I think and that's the main argument that I want to make so as not to focus especially on the liquid glass aspect of it is that the redesign is fundamentally flawed in so many ways

I will have one example, the sidebars. What is going on with the sidebars? So that's on the iPad and the Mac. To recap, with the OS's 26, the sidebars, they float now. And it doesn't make any sense. Why are they floating? why on the Mac and on the iPad, the window controls traffic lights.

Why are they inside the floating sidebar, which makes it seem like you're controlling the sidebar and not the window. And I just want to mention, I should have picked up the link beforehand, but Jason Snell, he previewed macOS Tahoe when the public beta came out. his hero screenshot of his article. I just want to look at this together.

I guess honestly, this screenshot, it shocked me. Let me send you the screenshot right now. So we'll look at it together. There. Sent you the link in my message. Look at this screenshot of macOS Taro. So you will have a link in the show notes as well, listeners. On this screenshot, you have the Photos app in the background, then the Music app, and then Shortcuts.

All three have floating sidebars with the new design. Jason Snell on this screenshot also has Spotlight activated, so there's a floating spotlight bar on top of all that. The sense of hierarchy in this desktop UI, it's insane to me. For decades, there was a paradigm in desktop UI where the drop shadows that are drawn beneath windows,

they indicate where windows are and the movable things, where the movable things are on your desktop, right? So now there are seemingly movable things inside movable things, except they are just sidebars, so you can't move them. And they have window controls, which seems to indicate that they are windows, but they're really not windows. I don't know if I make sense, but that really seems like a fundamental problem that I'm really worried about.

I've never had issues with parsing UI. Like, I'm pretty good at things when it comes to computers. And yet, when I look at my OS Taho screenshots, I go insane. Because, like, my brain cannot comprehend what I'm seeing. Like, what's movable? What's a window? What's a window anymore? Things are floating everywhere. I don't get it. And I think I've identified in this aspect of that, in this aspect of the redesign, I've identified what I find to be fundamentally flawed in a big way.

And when you think about the iPhone, it extends to that as well, because on the iPhone as well, things are floating that used to not float. So toolbars, etc. What do you guys think about this? Am I insane? i don't mind the sidebars um i mean the sidebars so again i have not used mac os tahoe but like i'm looking at it on the ipad right now and it's fine like one of the things that like that makes the floating thing make sense is the sidebars are collapsible so you can hide the sidebar if you don't want the sidebar kind of thing uh and when you do the stoplight controls you know they they go

to the full files or find your window or whatever you have open. I don't mind them. Sorry. Ducks. So I'm the only one of us who's actually used Tahoe to any real extent. I've been using it since the day of WWDC because I'm insane. It doesn't bother me at all. Everything you said makes logical sense.

like I appreciate that and all I can say is as someone who's been using it for almost two months none of those things ever occurred to me when actually using it so maybe it'll be better once you honestly the thing in this screenshot that bothers me the most is the doc on the right I don't know how people live that way it goes on the left people the left but yeah I mean it is i i actually do think i guess like i said i think it's the most usable on the mac but also the least aesthetically pleasing i think it's gotten better since beta one and it looks better if you turn on

dark mode but like i think these floating everything floating is a little strange like you can see it in his screenshot like um the floating plus button on shortcuts with like a drop shadow with blur of 7000 or whatever like yeah just massive blur it looks i mean fine there's kind of low contrast um for like a interaction element but if you look at like the finder the finder by default has five of those in the toolbar for like back and forward the different views just look at the

photos app in the in the screenshots the tool bar in the photos app yeah yeah exactly like that so It's very busy and it looks a little sloppy there. It looks like a prototype in a way in some cases. So that stuff bothers me more than I think the sidebars do. But I think it's the same problem though. They invented the problem because they made things float.

that don't make sense in floating. I just want to point out as well, I brought up the spotlight, the search bar that's on this screenshot. When I look at this specifically, I think maybe it makes it obvious when I'm talking about the spotlight window. It seems like it's part of the photos app.

Like there's no sense of hierarchy anymore that it's really important on a desktop environment, in desktop software. If you bring a raycast in Sequoia, it's really clear, like it's a window that has a drop shadow, as every window does. But the thing is right now in current UI in Sequoia, there's no drop shadows inside Windows.

So it's clear what's a window and what's not. I don't know. I guess I'm just repeating myself. I think it really bothers me. It strangely really bothers me. Yeah. And I think the other thing about the spotlight in that screenshot is you're not the one who invoked it, so you don't see it coming up. And also those four other buttons only appear if you bring up spotlight and then move the mouse. That's when those show up. So by default, you kind of get the same Safari or Spotlight that you get today. But yeah, the hierarchy is funky.

And when you start to think about it, it does get weird. Because yeah, something with a drop shadow doesn't indicate it's a window. It also doesn't indicate it's an interactive element. It might, but it might not. in Apple Music, you can click on something, but those look different than the buttons. And yeah, I think if there's one thing I would say about this design is it has thrown away the idea that users need to understand what's clickable and what's just there. And like that, they're not using visual indicators to like make it very clear what is what they're kind of trusting you to figure

it out which is maybe not ideal yeah i i get what neilion is saying and i agree that like the hierarchy is a little weird maybe maybe it's because i haven't used tahoe but like on the ipad i haven't felt that was an issue like window like i like i understand what windows active i understand what's on top uh like spotlight feels like it's another layer um the one that like i like every beta that comes out, like the first thing I go and look at is I pull up the music app and I go to the homepage

and I just look at like the toolbar and the now playing and just kind of like see how that goes because that is kind of like my test of like, okay, what's like the legibility level of this beta? And like right now it's pretty egregious. Like I have, I was listening to the BC Boys License to Ill album, which one of the greatest albums of all time. And like, I cannot read what song it is. Like, I'm just scrolling through the home tab right now, and I cannot read what song that is.

And I know it's the Beastie Boys underneath it, but like, if I didn't know the artist's name, I wouldn't know what it said underneath it. Like, that is particularly bad. But windowing hierarchy, I haven't had an issue with it. But again, I haven't used Tahoe. All right. yeah i i've kept saying over the past weeks that i'm i'm i'm worried about the mac about tahoe and that was my answer my to everyone uh that was my answer i think it looks so there's the

subjective thing where i think it looks atrocious i will be very honest about i think it looks atrocious like for real but even putting that aside i think there are some really big visual issues with this ui and and why am i worried because in the past purple has made decisions ui decisions are weird that's not new but why i'm really worried this time is the reason is i don't know how they can fix this like unless they roll back they literally roll back things I don't know how they can fix this

there's nothing that comes to my mind they make it opaque well okay then the material is gone they get rid of floating sidebars then on the Mac probably nothing seems to have changed and maybe they're worried about that they want us to see that some things have changed on the Mac as well and I don't know I don't think it's fixable and that's why I'm worried so yeah yeah i mean i think the way i would fix this is they need to get headers and sidebars back i think that would help immensely like i'm not super worried bothered by the floating sidebars but

those header areas like in the photos screenshot there in finder those sorts of things i really think those need just a background and some sort of line indicating this is the ui chrome and this is the content below it um yeah but that is going to get rid of a lot of the liquid glass effect of course and they love that so be fine with that yeah so i think it i think we will see tweaks to

this over time, for sure. But... Why are you so calm about... I'm insane. Why are you so calm? We're six... So the reason I... Because we're six weeks away. That's why I'm so worried. Yeah. The only thing I can say is I've been using it for six weeks, and I see people freaking out about it. And if I hadn't seen that, I wouldn't have thought much of it. And so... Oh, okay. Like, again, I have my personal computer here. my work computer on sequoia whatever the stock version is i think my new mac look i think i think tahoe looks better and i feel better using it um than sequoia so that's that's why i'm not

freaking out is all of this makes sense but i kind of like it okay yeah well uh it's kind of interesting we all kind of fall in in different categories i'm i'm in the middle matt likes it neilion has yeah to be clear i think the the legibility issues especially on the iphone uh especially on complex backgrounds for notifications which i know like people like me are more likely to put like a pattern on their uh on their wallpaper but like most people will do like a photo or something so like photos

with complex details and stuff are the main thing like main thing people use as their wallpaper and that's where notifications are hardest to read. So I do think that's a problem. I don't think it's like, I feel like people talk about it. I've heard a lot of accessibility talk in the last month or two, which is great. Love to hear it. But I definitely feel like there's an impression that some people have that like accessibility is something that you is all is for people who need, like, I've heard people say this phrase, some people need accessibility. But no, no, no, no,

know accessibility is a gradient everybody needs something like if the if there's zero contrast and for like text on a background you can't read it i don't care how good your eyes are you can't read it so but there's like there's a bar that you need to like cross to like just make sure something is legible um at a reasonable level and i think ios still falls short on liquid glass on a lot of those places and they should fix that. Very hard to do when your UI is dependent on the content of the app. But yeah, everybody needs accessibility. Everybody needs accessibility features at different

times. And just the core operating system should always have a baseline of accessibility in terms of contrast, in terms of target sizes, in terms of all these things. So yeah, I think that's the big challenge for it um yeah right now uh just one last complaint if you try right now in the public beta to turn on reduce transparency by the way since we're talking about accessibility so it makes everything opaque so on the iphone it makes everything opaque but everything's a blinking light now so well done just try to turn it on so it basically it turns the glass material

into an opaque material of some kind, but a material that picks up the color that's behind. So if you scroll in the music app, with just transparency on, the thing will blink, like whatever album cover is behind. From red to blue to red to green to yellow. It's just a light show down there. So maybe there should be a no blinking, reduced blinking setting. I don't know.

um just that was my last complaint i'm done until next week all right well uh i wanted to talk about ipad os 26 i am i am back on that ipad bull uh i ipad os 26 checked off so much of my wish list like i've said it checked off about 80 percent that's not me exaggerating. It checked off a lot. The window management stuff, like if I got to sit down,

if Apple came to me and said, Chris, you get to design window management for the iPad, it would be very, very, very close to what we got. I really like it. It's very good. And what I like about it is the flexibility of it. So when you open an app for the first time, it opens full screen. But then you can resize that. You just drag a little handle and you resize it and now it becomes a windowed app. And if you open other window apps, it'll be right there alongside those.

But the key part to this that makes this usable, because this would be really frustrating, like this would be really, really frustrating if every time you opened an app, you had to resize it. But what's really key to this is iPadOS remembers that window size and position. Always. It doesn't matter if you minimize the app. It doesn't matter if you force quit the app. It doesn't matter if you restart your iPad. No matter what, it always remembers that window size and position.

So if you always want Obsidian taking up 50% of the view on the left side, It will always be there until you, the user, physically move it to another place or physically resize it. It will always be there no matter what. And that, I think, is the key thing that makes this actually usable. I saw, Matt, you wrote an article and you linked to some other people about how iPadOS 26 window management, in order to get two apps side by side, takes a lot more steps now

than iPadOS 18 did. I disagree. Because once you've resized that window, it's there. And you can use the stoplight controls, which are a great addition. You can long press on them, and you can get two windows to go side by side. You can flip it over to the side. Or you don't even have to use the stoplight controls. You can take the window, and you just flick it over to the side. And it'll be to the halfway point. But then on top of that, you also, if you have a keyboard attached, you can use globe control left arrow to make it go to the left.

you can use globe control right arrow to make it go to the right. Yes, I know the article you're referencing. I was wondering if you would read that once. Whenever I put iPad or something in the headline, I'm like, I think Chris will read this one in his RSS. Just so you know, we read everything. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, everything. Every word. And not just like the stuff you publicly write. Like we've hacked your notes and we read all the private notes. Oh, great, great. I have so many drafts I've never published. Okay, great. So you know the terminal I have is set up to show. everything you write on that that's something matt wrote right there yeah the screen share thing is on my screen why is that on interesting

um yeah uh yeah i i was lamenting that like like like it or hate it at least like the old way of like moving split like making split screen happened was like this like ipad native touch native thing and that now um you have to like click seven buttons uh to make it happen uh or use a keyboard um had no idea uh that you could flick it to the side because i didn't know i've not is that a gesture anywhere else in ipad os where you know flick an element and it's it's super confusing

to get right like i actually had to have apple like demo it to me and like slow down and like okay let me do it um so like you literally take the window and you start a drag and you just flick it you don't you don't push it to it's not like mac os where you like push it to the side and hold You literally take it and you flick it. You flick it. You throw it. And it works. And it's fast. But yeah, you just flick it. So once you have the window open, you flick it.

Why is that so funny? It's so funny. I'm trying to explain. You just flick it. Don't worry about it. You just flick it. You just flick it. Title of the episode right there. We have the title. I was trying to do the thing you do on Windows on Mac where you just like drag it to the side and then it shows a preview and then it goes half screen. I don't know why it does. I know why they don't do that because that would be slower. Like the flick gesture is actually faster. So you literally just throw it over to the side and it just takes up 50% of whatever side you throw it to or

the top part or whatever. But that's not what people will try to do the first time. Well, people need to watch my videos so they know. That's the problem. People need to watch more. And they need to watch it multiple times and click the links and all that stuff um i'm just kidding not really actually watch my videos um but i so i think this is really good i like the fact that there's multiple tiling options and i didn't even mention there's tiling you can go into the menu bar and get tiling options as well like so there's the menu bar on the ipad now there's a window section and there's even more tiling options in there including a quarter view now here's my complaint under the stoplight controls if you go in there

and you have three apps open, there is a three-column view for three different apps. That's great. If you go into the menu bar, that is not there, but what is there is a quarter option. So it kind of annoys me that, like, there are some options under one place, but they're not in this other place. Like, both those options should be there. Anyways. But I've actually been using Stage Manager on my iPad again. Now, one thing I love about this windowing mode is when you tap an app, not in Stage Manager, just in the regular windowing mode,

when you tap an app, it opens up on top of your other apps in your same space. That's fantastic. It works like the Mac. But with Stage Manager, it takes advantage of all the new windowing features. So freely resizable windows, freely placeable windows. You can move stuff wherever you want. You can flick it. You can use the keyboard shortcuts to do the tiling stuff. All that stuff is there in Stage Manager. Stage Manager is now just a layer on top of the new windowing mode.

Except when you tap an app, it still opens in a new stage. You have to shift-click on an app or drag and drop it into a space. That's annoying. But for the most part, I've actually really liked Stage Manager as a way of organizing my different workspaces. I've basically been using it like I use spaces on the Mac. I have an admin place, I have a writing place, and I have a creative place. And I have a social media place, too. That's been really handy. I've also been using the external monitor support a lot more with my iPad.

I used it a bit before, but most of the time, like if I was going to work on my iPad, I'd just sit down with the magic keyboard and I'd do it. And I would use it a bit, But I found with an iPadOS 18 and previous versions, with the limitations of window size and window placement, external monitor support was never perfect for me. But now that they're freely placeable and freely resizable, it's exactly what I want. At some points, I even forget I'm using the iPad, and I think, oh, this is great, like the Mac, and this is the Mac, and it's not.

But yeah, it's really, really interesting. It is wild. When you are using iPadOS 26 on an external monitor, it really looks like macOS. It is nearly indistinguishable most of the time. It's crazy. Too bad it's the new flawed design. We have moved on to the next topic. We are on a different topic. I am not moving on. Respect the document. Respect the document.

But I touched on the menu bar a little bit. I will say the menu bar is really handy. So the menu bar replaces the feature of where you used to be able to hold down command, and you would see a list of all the keyboard shortcuts. That is now replaced. Literally, they basically took that from the bottom and moved it up top. Because if you went into an app like drafts and held down the command key, you would see categories like file, edit, and all those other ones that are normally there. So now instead of those just being there when you hold down command, they're there when you push the cursor up to the top or you swipe down from the top.

Now, I have seen some people complain that they don't like the menu bar because it's harder to get to notification center. The trick is if you're in tablet mode, swipe down from where the clock is and you don't get the menu bar. You just get notification center. Kind of like on the battery side, if you swipe down there, you get control center. Or if you're using a mouse, you can click on the clock and you get notification center. That's the trick to that. Speaking of the mouse, it's pointy now, which is nice. It's much more accurate.

I've been doing some stuff in Photoshop and Final Cut, and having a pointy mouse is great. Agreed. Fantastic. Low-key, one of the best things. Yeah, I used to not—I didn't hate the rounded mouse thing until I started using Photoshop and Final Cut more on the iPad, and then I'm like, okay, this is not accurate. Background task is a nice addition. I had to download some very large files from Safari the other day, and the fact that I could just move on to other things and didn't have to leave Safari open, great.

I've been moving stuff to my NAS from files, background tasks. I cannot wait for the Final Cut update so that I can do background exports. Oh, that would be so good. I like the fact it's a live activity, too. Because, like, I think Safari did background downloads, but maybe and sometimes, but like knowing it's happening is good. That's the thing is yes, it did do it technically, but there were definitely times where like Safari would get kicked out.

I would move on to other things and Safari would get kicked out of RAM and background tasks is supposed to prevent that from happening. So like, for example, on my M4 iPad pro, I can have 12 windows open at a given time right now. Say Safari was the 12th one that I had used. I'd opened up 11 more apps on top of that. I open up a 13th app. It's going to close Safari, but the background task thing, it keeps it in RAM, so it's going to keep downloading those files. That's key. I have a question. Yes.

Do apps have to implement that in a specific way? Yes. Yes, there is an API. So third-party apps can implement this. Final Cut will be getting an update when all this stuff ships. So right now on my iPad, even though I'm using Final Cut Pro for the iPad, I don't get background tasks because I need that update. Apple sent me the test flight. The dock. The dock got, like, a couple of minor upgrades, but, like, very nice. So on my 13-inch iPad Pro, which is the one I've been using the beta on, I have no idea if I'm going to stick with this one and go to the 11-inch again.

There's things I miss about the 11-inch. There's things I love about the 13-inch. iPadOS 26 is definitely best on the 13-inch iPad Pro. but the dock so on my 13 inch ipad pro i can put up to 26 apps in the dock plus i have three folders in the dock as well i have my documents folder my downloads folder and my video projects folder so i have uh i have 29 items plus the app library icon as well so i'm guessing what the limit is is you can have 30 icons in the dock now which gets really small in portrait mode but it's still

very usable if i tap on if i'm holding my ipad in portrait mode and i tap on to do this to do this is what's going to open i have one question actually chris yes yes 30 icons and 12 windows when will it be enough honestly that's enough for me okay well great that i'm actually i'm good i'm i'm i'm actually good with that like i was bummed when i found out there was a window limit but then i started thinking about i'm like i don't even think i have like 12 mac windows open at once like maybe in different spaces and stuff.

But like, that's where going back to stage manager, I can have 12 windows open in one stage. Then I can have another 12 windows open in another stage. And then I can have another 12 windows open in another stage. So that's where like kind of, you know, I've been using stage manager spaces and stuff. Well, that's good. Out of curiosity, I'm a filthy Mac user and I use a lot of windows all the time. And so I was curious, how many windows do I have open right now? 12. So I'd be fine too.

Interesting. One, two, three. But, well, Neelion counts. I'm kind of curious how many she has open. I'm going to guess in the 20s. 18. 18. I was close. Okay. Okay. So still not enough for Neelion. Maybe another year. Most of them are hidden though. I hide maps. Okay. So that's the thing is when you're using these, and so instead of, you don't really hide windows. on iPadOS, you minimize Windows. So you'd use Command M, and it's still there. It's still going. As soon as, like, so say

I was to hide Obsidian right now, if I was to hit Command M, I have Obsidian open. Obsidian would be minimized. And when I want Obsidian back, I just click on it and it's going to bring it back right into that space or right into that same content that I had opened when I minimized it. So it's kind of the same thing. One of the new apps in iPadOS 26 is Preview. There's actually a few apps. There's the phone app, there's the games app, and the journal app. And Preview. So there's four new apps. I just didn't get a glorious, can't say the word, thing.

I love the Preview app. The Preview app is great. It's exactly what you would expect from the Preview app. Exactly what you would expect from Mac OS stuff. It pairs great with the Open With feature. So in files now, you can right-click on a file, and you can do open with, and you can select all the apps, all the apps that you have installed that support that file type. So if it's a PDF document, all the PDF document apps that are there, preview is one of them. But then you can take it a step further, and you can go into get info, and you can set default apps for file types.

That was going to be my question. I was like, is it on a one-by-one file basis, or I can just say always open this file type with this app? It's just like the Mac. So when you go into get info and change the app, it's going to ask you, do you want to change it for just this file or for all these file types? Just like the Mac. It's fantastic. So what this means is when I have a JPEG and files and I click on it, it doesn't open it in photos anymore and mess up my photos library.

I can have it open in preview now, which is fantastic. It's great. Great. Love it. The local recordings feature is really interesting. So podcasters, video people can do stuff locally. I actually haven't used this yet. I need to. Yeah. I need to do something with it. It's actually on the iPhone as well. It is. If you go to Control Center, you can enable it and you can do it. It seems like, I don't know, I haven't done it either. I don't know if apps have to actually upgrade to it, but it seems like you basically start it and then it waits for a video call to start.

Yes. So what I understand, like Zoom and stuff is already working. So I have an idea of something I'm going to do with this over the summer. I just need to talk to the person and get it going. But yeah, that is a really killer feature that I need to play more with. But there are some things that iPadOS 26 didn't check off for me. And the big one is third-party apps. Apple needs to bring developers back to the iPad.

Developers have been neglecting the iPad. And honestly, it's kind of Apple's fault. They need to open up the iPad even more. Stuff like, I need Chrome on my iPad. There's just too many things that Safari doesn't support. I need Chrome on my iPad. We record this. You need ARC. Or ARC, Chromium. Just give me a Chromium browser. Give me a Chromium browser. Because we record this show in Riverside. I need that. I need Chromium for all my mechanical keyboard via stuff.

Chrome is too important not to have now. An app I use on the Mac almost every single day, Hush, to clean up audio. That's not on the iPad. I mentioned Riverside already. A better transcription utility, but Matt's kind of working on that for me. Thanks, Matt. Oh, I talked about it. Never mind. You've already talked about it. Yeah. I know. I almost didn't put it in the show notes, but I was like, wait, you know, he's already talked about it. And like, there's so many Final Cut features that are missing. Like, there are so many things in Final Cut Pro for the iPad that are missing that the Mac version has.

Literally, like, stuff you just would take advantage of. The big thing that I always harp on is the ability to copy effects from a clip in the timeline and paste it to another using keyboard shortcuts. That is not there. And it surprises me every day. Yeah. Chris, do you know what I think the best feature in the world would be for the iPad? What's that? on the Mac, you can run iPad. No, no, no. This is not a joke. This is not a bit. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Although, you know what I want. I do know what you want. But on the Mac, you can run iPad apps, right?

Mm-hmm. I think, and I know it would be incredibly tricky technically to do, and I think it would be messy and not every app would work, and it's hard. But it would be so awesome if you could run Mac apps on your iPad and maybe check a box that says, no idea if this will totally work, but I think it would be so great to make this happen. I think Apple's getting there. I honestly think there will be, like, look, we have universal apps between iPhone and iPad.

I think the Mac will get there one day. Yeah, and the Mac too. It'll be, you write one app and it goes to all the Apple platforms. Yeah, well, not even, Well, that exists. Like the app that I, like the. True. Those, like I just write one app and the UI changes based on the platform and that's already working. I'm talking about these people who are never going to write an iPad app. Yeah. They're just going to make an iPad app. Maybe it's an Electron app that, whatever, they're just not bringing it to the iPad.

Bring it over here. I think it was, it was cool to get some more apps. I think the idea of the compatibility mode for those iPad apps on the Mac was to get more apps on the Mac. But I feel like the actual problem is the iPad needs the apps. We need to get the Mac apps on the iPad. Well, that was the thing. At that time, the iPad was getting all the apps. Now the Mac is getting all the apps. Yeah, Apple Silicon was so good, and it brought the Mac back. Yeah, it devastated the iPad app economy. And like now, like there's not really interesting apps because like there's all this stuff coming out for the Mac, like Sky, the people that used to do workflow and shortcuts and stuff like that.

They're making a automation utility called Sky. That is just coming to the Mac. There's no, and it's, it's because Apple doesn't allow stuff like that to happen. Apple doesn't allow, you know, apps like Raycast or Hazel and other automation utilities, menu bar apps, terminal. Like there's so many things Apple doesn't allow on the iPad and Apple needs to loosen up a little bit when it comes to the iPad so it can get these apps like that. And I know Apple wants you to have a Mac, an iPad, an iPhone, but that's too much.

I do not like having more than two devices. When I have more than two devices, I get like that, that I feel overwhelmed. Like I'm like, okay, I got to keep all these things up to date. And, oh, I changed this app. So I got to change it all these. No, I just want two devices. I want my iPad and my iPhone is what I want. I really don't want to use a Mac anymore. I'm really happy with iPadOS 26. Yes, there is more that I want, but it is such a good foundation. It kind of feels like iPadOS 26 is rebooting the iPad.

Ooh. That's what it feels like. There's your video title. Yeah, actually, yes. I don't know about that, Tom. Nobody steal that. Nobody is allowed to use that. Trademark Christopher Lawley. I'm publishing my review next week, even though it's not out yet. I'm breaking all the rules. You'll still get way more views. So about those floating side vows, then. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I think we need to get to the challenge.

let's do unless you guys have thoughts on iPadOS 26 if there's something you want to mention I had one thought not really a complaint just a thought because it seems I complain every day now no just a thought on the iPadOS I think it's really strange and interesting that so now you have free floating windows everywhere all over the place and There's no desktop? Isn't that strange?

It's the home screen. I wouldn't be surprised if the home screen for the iPad gets rethought in a future update, whether it's 27 or 28. I wouldn't be surprised if it's pretty soon that the home screen of the iPad gets updated. But Apple knows what works is widgets. Honestly, I don't mind not having a desktop. I never save stuff to the desktop anyways. what most people use their desktop for I have a folder in my documents folder called underscore temp and that's where all my temporary stuff goes

oh man oh god you've got your life put together more than most people what I have is a downloads folder with 800 files in it oh god oh it should not be allowed to have storage my downloads folder has 9 items in it Wow. Mine is empty. What? I empty it every day. Usually mine's pretty empty, but I actually have something I'm working on right now that like those folders or those files are being used. So nice. Well, let's get on to the challenge. Matt, it was your challenge.

It was my challenge. And I think I really had a good one here. So the challenge was, bring your unpopular tech takes. One thing, so two takes, one thing that you think is better than most people think it is, and one thing you think is worse than most people think it is. And ideally, this is for like our circles of tech, not necessarily just like most people in the world to think? I don't even know. So I can get us going. I will start with the positive. And the thing I think is better than most people think is this. The iPhone 16e. I think when

this came out a few months ago, it was basically considered a complete failure that isn't made for anybody and is way behind in tech. And some of those things are true. But I think if you don't really care about your phone that much, you don't need to be on the bleeding edge. You don't want to spend a thousand dollars on it. You just want a phone, specifically an iPhone, that's going to last years. I think this is a good buy. It's got the latest, it's got the same chip as like an iPhone

16 minus one GPU core. It's going to last you for years. It'll get software updates for a long, long time. It has a modern design, not the dynamic island, but it's not like the old SE that was very behind. Oh, that's a very good point. It's getting liquid glass. And it's getting liquid glass. Oh, God. But I think it's a really solid phone and like I used it for a month and it was, I mean, fine.

I missed things because I like nice phones, but like it's well-made, it looks clean. Like it's a very capable phone. You can spend less money on like a Android, like a more budget Android phone, like a Pixel 9a or whatever. And that'll give you a higher refresh display. This has great battery life as well. It's the best battery life outside of the 16 Pro Max in the lineup, which is great. But yeah, but like the processor in these lower price Android phones, the battery life is usually not as good.

And so I think it's just an all around good phone. It's maybe not for you if you're an enthusiast, but like, I think people who buy this phone will largely be quite happy with it. Yeah, I agree with your take. Ooh. Yeah. I still think it's $100 too much. I think if it was $100 cheaper, then the whole vibe would be different. I don't know. Something that's worse than people think.

Safari. I knew it. I knew he was going to pick Safari. I think Safari is not as good as people in our circles think. So specifically our circles. I know we have a lot of Safari fans. Some of them might even be on the call with me right now. I think Safari is slower. It used to be faster than Chromium. Chromium has since taken the lead in performance. Chromium is faster. It adopts standards quicker.

I don't know what is going on with Safari extensions. Whenever I see someone complain about an extension, I always ask them what browser they're using, and it's always Safari. Why are extensions apps that you have to download from the app store? It's so frustrating. doubly frustrating because a couple years ago they said we're like adopting the kind of industry standard for how extensions work but like you can't just use other extensions you still have to package them into an ios app and get them through app review and that's that's frustrating and there's just bugs there's bugs that have been around forever did you know that technically safari

can have the text focus be in multiple text fields at once it's annoying it's usually not an issue but If there's iframes on the page, you can theoretically have the focus be in multiple places at once. They may have fixed that in the past year or so, but this was an issue I had in 2018 on a project I was working on, and they just didn't fix it for years, and so we had to do special code for Safari. Yes, several times I've had to do special code for Safari, because Safari is weird, and Firefox is weird.

Anyway, I don't think Safari is as good as people like to think it is. So there's my sassy take. That is some hot takes there. So about Safari, I agree. I sadly agree. Because it's objectively my favorite browser, and I've been using it the most for the past decade. and what I like about it is no longer enough and it's part of why I'm not using Safari right now.

The things I like about it are not enough anymore. So what I like about it specifically is the UI. I found it to be very very simple and very clean and I'm the kind of person that I only have one tab open at once or like a handful and I open and I close tabs as soon as I'm done with them. And Safari is good for that in terms of UI. I agree. It's slow. And lately, I've been like really, really banging my head against my desk because of performance issues on web pages, on websites.

And I just try them in the Chromium browsers and everything works fine. Even in the Firefox-based browser, everything works fine. So clearly something's wrong with WebKit and Safari. Yeah. And let me clarify. I think Safari is actually pretty good on the whole. This is not like, oh, it's Internet Explorer bad. Do not take me as saying that. I leaned into the things I don't like about it. But I think Safari is a pretty good browser on the whole. Just there are things about it that make it more frustrating for me to use.

It makes me feel like I have a different experience than other people who seem to really enjoy it. yeah yeah yeah i with the ipad i'm just stuck using webkit browsers so so those are my those are my hot takes nice i like them uh you mind if i go next yes please uh so the thing the positive thing the thing that i think is better than what most people think I'm going to say files. Files on the iPad and even the iPhone has gotten a lot better since it originally shipped in iPadOS 13.

13? I'm going to say 13. It might have been 15. No, I'm pretty sure it was 13. It has gotten better every single year. When it originally shipped, it was bad. It was really bad. But it's gotten better. I like it now. I've been using an iPadOS 26 and I haven't had any issues with it as far as not being able to load content or anything like that. There's a few things that I do. So one thing I do do is I have a 2TB iPad Pro. I keep all my files local on the iPad. I do that on my Mac as well.

I don't like the whole like, oh, we'll offload some of your stuff and we'll keep it in iCloud and not. So that might be one of the things that helps me a lot is all my stuff is locally on my iPad. The other thing, there is a fairly big tech YouTuber who I cannot stand, who keeps claiming that files is bad because it doesn't have an eject button for media cards and external drives.

Apple has stated multiple times I have stated also because I've talked about it multiple times that it doesn't need an eject button they wrote it from the ground up for modern computers you don't need an eject button for it so stop claiming it needs the eject button you know who you are not that you listen to any of my stuff is there really not an eject button there is not an eject button you don't need an eject button That's funny because there's one on my network drives.

Yeah, on the network drives, there is an eject button on iPadOS for some reason. Or no, wait. Yes, yes, there is. But you don't need it. You don't need the eject. I don't know why on network drives, there is an eject button on iPadOS, but you don't actually need it. I don't know why. I never realized there wasn't one for drives. Media cards and external drives don't need it. It's gotten a lot better. There are things I want files to get. There are things I want it to do better. One of the things I really want it to get is tabs.

But yeah, it's gotten a lot better. The search has gotten a lot better. I would say, especially if you have your files local, search is pretty fast in files. At least from my experience, I'm able to find stuff that I want pretty quickly. So that's the thing I like that I think is a little bit better. I like it. I respect this choice. I agree with you. It's gotten better over time as well, especially this year. Lots of nice things in it. There's a lot. There's definitely before the files app and after the files app.

There is this idea that you don't need files anymore on an iPad, but you need files. You need files. I'm glad Apple has walked that back. The annoying thing is because of the whole era of you don't need files, in the iCloud Drive folder you have a bunch of applications that stored their own files for a while, and you can't quite get rid of those, that I find frustrating, but that's Apple's fault. That's not File's fault. The thing I think is worse than what most people in our circle think is the studio display.

Yes, my guy. I struggled with this one. I was kind of looking around my office, and I was like, you know, what is something that's worse than what most people think? And, you know, I almost put in the Vision Pro or something like that. But then I saw the studio display. And I love my studio display. Don't get me wrong. I do love my studio display, but it's expensive. I looked it up. The studio display that I have is the regular glass with the tilt and height adjustable stand.

I spent $2,000 on that. And it has an LCD panel. A high refresh rate one though, right? No, it does not. It is a 60 hertz LCD panel, and the black levels do not look great on it. Well, it's HDR at least, right? No, it is not true HDR. It's HDR. Apple says it's HDR. It is not true HDR. I tried watching, I don't remember why. I tried watching a movie on this once, and I didn't even get five minutes into the movie before I turned it off,

because I'm like, this does not look good. It is insane that Apple in 2026 is charging $2,000 for an LCD monitor with these levels of black, this black level with this refresh rate. Okay, it's 5K. That's really nice. It's proper retina. That's really nice. We've gotten into there are other retina monitors out there. Matt's covered that. If I stand here, it's retina. If you stand far enough away, any screen is retina.

um yeah but i spent two thousand dollars on this thing and i was thinking i was like what else like have i spent like around that kind of money for and for not quite a thousand dollars more i got my really fancy 77 inch lgc whatever oled 120 hertz tv like that thing is a beast compared to the studio display. And yeah, it was, you know, but you get a lot more bang for your buck.

Not that I'm saying use a TV as a monitor. Don't use a TV as a monitor because that's bad. But I'm just saying like that. I feel a lot better about spending that much money on that TV than I do spending $2,000 on this monitor. Now, I will say the one nice thing about the studio display as Thunderbolt's going from the display to your computer. But there is three or four, three USB-C ports on the back, and they're a full 10 gigabit per second connection.

Not very many monitors can say they have that. Not even the Pro Display XDR. Pro Display XDR, those USB-C ports on the back, they're USB 2.0 speeds. So anyways, that's my spiel. Nice. I obviously fully endorse this as someone using an OLED monitor that I'm very happy with. lower resolution, doesn't have the inputs the same way. But yeah, I was listening to, I think, Upgrade with Jason Snell. Jason Snell, friend of the show, becoming. Oh, yeah.

No, I hung out with Jason Snell at WWDC. Absolutely friend of the show. Excellent. But he was talking about the LCD panel that's in use in the current studio display is effectively the same one that they've had since the 2013 iMac. Since the Retina iMac was introduced, the Retina 5K iMac, it is the same panel. Yep. So, yeah. My take on it is the studio display is totally serviceable, but it's also the most expensive display in the market, effectively. Consumer display in the market.

Except, yeah, the second most expensive display. Yes. But, yeah, so it's due for an upgrade. I'd love to see a nicer studio display. It needs to be at least mini-LED and at least 120 hertz. but ideally it needs to be OLED, but I have a feeling that's going to be, because the Pro Display XDR is mini LED right now. I have a feeling that gets bumped up to OLED and the studio display gets bumped up to mini LED. That's my theory. All right, excellent. These are good takes in the spirit of the challenge.

Cool, cool, cool, cool. Why are you saying that? Well, I'm just kind of, you know, so far, you know, two out of three, not bad. I mean, Chris has a history. Well, I have a history of not following the challenge. I am not the only one. I refuse to be singled out here. Chris once or twice has not done the challenge. Well, if you're going to try and make me listen to Coldplay. Yeah, you'll never forget that one. Okay. Side note, Coldplay finally did something right.

Like, they finally actually did something by getting those people that were cheating together, like, highlighting them. For the first time in any member of Coldplay's life, they finally did something good. And you know, I'm going to include all their parents, too, and their grandparents, because, you know, reproduction gave us Coldplay. Thanks. They should be tarred and feathered for that. But finally, first time any member of Coldplay has actually done something useful with their life is, you know, brought all of America together over that. So, yeah. I mean, they probably donated to charities and stuff.

Yeah, but it's with Coldplay's money. So it's like dirty money. It's dirty money. Like, I would rather take mafia money, like money that's been laundered, than money from Coldplay. This is your most chaotic take. Makes sense. I had to do something after being reasonable for the challenge. Neilian, what do you have? Okay, so my two takes are about liquid glass. No, just kidding. Have you seen the sidebars?

The sidebars are insane. um no so i think ikea desk accessories are better than most people think agreed is my first take hard agree and i don't have i don't even have something specific like it can they have lots of bips and bobs i on my desk right now for example i have a small bamboo holder we have pants and all the i will not show you because there's a bunch of personal effects in there But it's just under my monitor.

It's really small. It's tiny. It's cute. It looks like bamboo. So bamboo looks cute. And they have small tablet stands as well. Bamboo as well. At least bamboo-like. I don't know if that's real bamboo, but whatever. And they're really nice to hold up your iPad. And they have even something for a laptop. So if you need a cheap, bamboo-looking laptop holder, laptop stand for your desk they have one and I've

mentioned this before but I want to mention it again Ikea is a great deal for cables so Chris two weeks ago you wanted to sell me a cable I don't need to be sold a cable because I already buy my cables at Ikea they look they're colorful they're really Chris just renounced saying something Ikea cables they look they're colorful they are what's that called when they have textile over there like braided cable?

braided that's the word they are braided cable and they renew the colors every too often so if you go at different seasons they will have different colors available USB-C back well they still sell lightning cable lightning cables if you need those and they are MFI certified if that's any value to you and And so, yeah, great deals on cables. And also in terms of lighting, they don't have any fancy options.

Like they have light strips that you can just decorate your desk space with. But they are very basic light strips. I don't believe IKEA sells smart light strips as of now. They just have boring, regular light strips that you have to connect regularly and turn on and off manually. But they're nice and they're cheap and they work well.

But even besides light strips, they have nice looking desk lamps. I think just... Anyway, I will stop there. Just in general, IKEA accessories, they're pretty nice. And people should stop demeaning them. At least, not as much. Not as much. Not as much. I agree. You can get some good stuff from IKEA. When I started off doing YouTube, I bought a fairly cheap-ish IKEA desk.

And it worked out great for me for a long while. Exactly for what I needed. So, yeah. yeah I still have an Ikea desk by the way because I needed a small Ikea desk when we moved in so I still have the same one with two drawers I believe it's called the Alexa so it's a small one with two drawers and yeah it's really nice nice oh and still talking about desk they sell things that you hang underneath your desk to hold all the cable mess that you may have

Oh, yeah, I have that under my main desk. I have two of those. Well, yeah. Ikea ones you have? Yeah, yeah, like the racks. Exactly, yeah, the racks. So you buy them and you can screw them underneath any type of desk. So that's really useful. There you go. I'm done. The second take is Apple Notes is worse than most people think. Ooh. And my arguments are, firstly, the UI, I hate it.

I agree. My first argument, I hate you. I hate it. So the UI, especially when you're formatting text, lately I've been needing to format text inside Apple Notes. And everything's buried. Like they bury things as deeply as they can in those sub menus. and it's cool when you don't need them when you use Apple Notes for basic note taking when you're not formatting anything and just using bold and italicize or whatever.

But once you start getting into bullet points and needing to change the format of the bullet points and needing to turn those into check marks, check whatever, check mark bubbles and add tables, the tables, the tables boys in Apple I had to fight them with my fists the other day I'm starting to think Nelian doesn't like any UI and just wants to use like terminal for everything no that's not true so I have a counter example to that which is Google Docs like Google Docs

looks horrible but everything's laid out like everything's there you will find it If they have a menu bar sort of, like file, whatever, you will find it in there. They have a search bar, just like in the macOS menu bar, you can search through menus. And otherwise, the default toolbar that's just there, it has a million buttons. But if you used Google Docs for more than two months in a row, you know where everything is. And I noticed right away when Google moves a button in there because there's like a muscle memory.

But I cannot build a muscle memory in Apple Notes because everything is buried into right-clicks, into sub-menus, into drag things that need to be dragged, the tables. You have to drag rows. It still doesn't really make sense to me how the tables work in Apple Notes. Basically, I like top-level UI. things yeah don't bury things please okay at first i didn't agree with you but now but when i understand kind of what your complaint is is this mostly on the mac that you're annoyed with it uh i

never use apple notes on my iphone just when i need to just look up something that i typed in on my mac okay so i actually a better hot take than the 16e is pretty good uh would have been that google Docs and Google Sheets are actually incredible because I know a lot of people don't agree with that. On a Mac. Chris. On the iPad, if you still, if you go to Google Docs or Google Sheets on the iPad through Safari, you get the little thing at the bottom that says,

oh, you should try our app. And if you hit no thanks, it does nothing. Oh, that's still a thing. I remember this book from five years ago. And on iPadOS 26, Google Docs is the brightest thing ever. It is brighter than the sun because it's white. And then it makes the Safari UI toolbar white. And it's just pure white. It's pure, what is it? Like pound zero, zero, zero, zero. Or is that black? I don't remember. Yeah. F-F-F-F-F-F. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just pure white. It is the brightest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Okay. I literally had to do something in Google Docs and I had to turn down the brightness on my iPad. Hey, it's almost like the new design is flawed. Maybe stuff I shouldn't pick up from the web page. Anyways. Okay. You have inspired a quick little game. So this is for both of you to answer. So I'm going to tell you one keyboard shortcut, and you're going to tell me what the next keyboard shortcut is. So in Google Docs, to take a line of text and turn it into an H1 heading.

I don't know. Command shift H? It's command option one. Oh. What do you think the keyboard shortcut to make a secondary heading is? Command shift S. Option two? Command option two? Command option two. And heading three is command option three, four, five, six. Oh, it makes sense. I thought you were going in the direction of it doesn't make sense. Okay. Now, well, the keyboard shortcut to create a heading, an H1 heading in Apple Notes is command what?

Command shift H. What makes a subheading under that? Isn't it command shift S? Is it command shift? I'm trying right now live. Oh, heading. Okay, yeah. What's your question? Secondary? Second heading. Yeah, because they call them subheadings. It's not like H2 or something like that. It is called a subheading. But it can't be command shift S because that's save as.

Oh, is it command option S? It's command shift J. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay, sure. This has real Apple mail keyboard shortcut energy, in my opinion. This is why even when I write in notes, I still write in Markdown. Anyway, I thought that was a fun game because I was like, yeah, that's fun. Yeah, but I never use keyboard shortcuts in those apps. Like I click the buttons, so I don't even know them, even in Google Docs.

It's really nice whenever you paste something and it's like you pasted a heading or something from another doc and you paste into Google Docs, it's just supposed to be paragraph. Just hit command, option zero, and it turns into plain text. Oh, that's nice. Oh, okay. Okay. Interesting. Learn something new every day. Yeah. Well, I think we did really good on this challenge, Matt. I think we did. I'm very proud of everybody. Yeah, I think we all had some spicy takes. Niléane, it is your challenge for next week. What do you got for us? Okay, so I have a challenge. It's a suggestion, and I have a question to enhance it, if you will.

Okay. So the prompt is for next week, downgrade something about your music listening setup. But here's my suggestion that maybe we could spice it up, but it could be too difficult. What if it was downgrade something about your audio setup in general? I think I would still probably go to... No, okay.

Yeah, no, I... Yeah, it could be... That would include microphones. Oh, no, let's not mess with recording. As the editor of the show, I veto anything that messes with the recording that makes my life harder. Okay, okay. But still, it could encompass more things. Yeah, that can encompass a lot because now you have listening to podcasts, listening to music. It could be video calls, stuff like that.

What's the exact wording? Okay, so we're changing it. Downgrade something about your audio setup. Downgrade something about your audio setup. So it could be your headphones. Okay. Software that you use, the streaming service. So Apple Music to Spotify, for example. You define what's a downgrade. But it has to be a downgrade for you. Okay. And my hope is that maybe we come out next week with a nice story.

I thought that was a downgrade, but it turns out I like it. Yeah, I like it. Or maybe we'll all be really angry. No, this is a good one. This feels like a theme challenge that we could do again. Yeah. Downgrade your... Downgrade your keyboards, downgrade your mouse, downgrade, yeah, all sorts of different things. Yeah, this has got my brain thinking. Cool, I like this one. Yeah. All right. Well, this brings us to the end of the show. And as always, I have an end of the show question for you guys.

And I want to know what your favorite office decor item is. Like something that decorates your office. What do you got? I got this. I showed it already once. It's a knitted sushi. Oh, okay. Cool. A friend made it for me a few years ago. And now it sits on top of my Belkin Thunderbolt dock, which means it's really hot. nice i i think for me because matt's looking at his office i i have a toss-up for me i have i'm probably my favorite item because it was the hardest to get

and i need to put it in the office now because i you know i i gave danielle the office area and it's a library so i need to put in the studio now but probably my youtube silver plaque you know i I worked really, really hard for this thing. Yeah, that's a good one. Like, this is probably, like, you know, if I'm going to flex something, this is probably it. This was really hard to get. And they don't come in this size anymore. If you get them now, they're small. Oh. Oh. And I just got this. Danielle got me my Lego White Whale, which is the diorama Star Wars set that is the trash compactor.

They don't make this anymore. It was, like, an exclusive thing. And yeah, Daniel got this for me. Does it move? Yes, it does. That's so cool. But I think I messed up the building of this side, so I need to fix that. But yeah, it all goes in. That's very cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Man. For me, it's one of two things. It's my Lego Rivendell, which actually goes down there as well. That took me all of last summer basically to build.

And it was the best Lego experience I've ever had. And the second thing would be my pink skull up there. Okay, I think I've asked this question before because you've talked about that. I just realized that. I'm pretty sure I've asked this question before. Have we talked about this on the show before? We have talked about this because it was like the pinkest pink. The pinkest pink, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I got the paint in October. So at Target, there was a skull available I could paint. Was I here for this? Maybe you weren't.

maybe i don't remember this it's uh this is the very very short of it is uh years ago someone patented vanta black do you remember that the blackest black yeah yeah paint that like absorbed all color someone patented it someone someone in europe i think they could have been french was very upset about this so they kind of like created like a whole line of paints that were the pinkest pink the reddest red the greenest green the blue is blue and so i ordered a batch of the pink is pink and I painted a human-sized skull.

Okay. It's really imagine being in my place where there's a pink skull and everyone knows about it and assumes you know about it. Oh my god. That's crazy. I like it. I like it. $5 this thing cost me. You could make it a lamp. Oh, I could. 2017. It would actually be funny if he's going to make this. All right. Well, that just about does it for this episode.

Thank you all so much for listening. Just a reminder, we have a feedback form. So if you want to play along with the challenge or the end of the show question, or if you just have something you want to mention, there is a feedback form in the description or the show notes, wherever you're watching. We do have a YouTube video version if you want to check that out. It's over on the MacStories channel. Speaking of which, a huge thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast. Be sure to go check out all the other writings and podcasts and stuff going on there. I have no idea what Niléane is doing to the camera right now.

I think this is a good place to wrap up. I'm just advertising the video version. Oh, okay. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye-bye.