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Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. As always, I am joined by Matt Berchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm feeling mischievous. Ooh, you've got something up your sleeve, don't you? You even have the Waluigi hat on right now, so like there's something... Thank you for noticing. I mean, you know, we'll get to some revelations in a future episode of something. But I understand that reference.

We're also joined by Nelian. How are you doing? Yeah, I know that the L cap, he has an L cap. But it's an upside down L. Sure. For Waluigi. This is a perfect, actually, thing that makes sense for both of you, I think. because Adam Chase swore this in a season of jet lag. He did. He did. That's where I got the idea that you could just buy a Waluigi hat if you want. No one's stopping me. So this is the intersection of video games and jet lag.

Unless it's not an official Nintendo licensed hat, then Nintendo will stop you. It is not officially licensed. The Nintendo lawyers are going to come and knock in. Anyways, we have something really exciting to announce. You've probably already seen it already because it would have popped up in the RSS feed. But because we're recording Friday, but it would have came out Monday. But then this gets released on Thursday. So we have a new podcast within a podcast.

We have Cozy Zone, which is our new member show where we are making an extra episode every week. And this is Cozy Zone. it's a little more relaxed, a little more laid back than comfort zone. The first episode is out already and we roast each other's desk setups in it. And it's a, it's a real fun time. So the first episode is going in the comfort zone feed. So you probably have already seen this. You probably have already listened to it. You're probably like, Chris, this is old news. If you would like to get more of those, you can, there will be a link in the show notes.

There will be a permanent link in the show notes. This is my reminder to Matt that you can go there. You can sign up for Cozy Zone. It's $5 a month or $50 a year. And we are going to put out an extra episode of our podcast every single week. I'm really excited to do this with you guys. I love talking with you guys. I was telling Danielle, like, you guys are like my one stable social chat group every single week because I work by myself and in here. So it's always great to talk to you guys. And now I get to talk to you even more.

So do you guys have anything to mention about Cozy Zone? Well, I am doing this under protest. I didn't want to do more Comfort Zone. I was not happy. Sorry, sorry. The Waluigi hat's taking over. No, I'm really excited about it as well. It's very fun. In the first episode, you get to see my cable management and my laziness on display. I think it's a fun time. It's a great time. It is. I'm really excited about this. and we got some artwork from the person that did the Comfort Zone artwork scout.

They did artwork for Cozy Zone, and it's even better than the Comfort Zone artwork. It's really good. It's so good. It's so good. So, anyways, we hope you all join us. Nothing is changing with Comfort Zone itself. Comfort Zone is not going—what you are listening to right now will not go behind a paywall. Nothing is changing with that. If you would just like some extra, that's what Cozy Zone is. Following the golden rule of business on the internet, which is you never make something that was for free.

I can't speak. You never charge for something that was once for free. Exactly. Yes. English. There you go. Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. That is something I stand behind. That's one thing I've had people mention, oh, you should put some of your videos behind a Patreon. on or something. I'm like, no, my videos have been always been free. So that's kind of where we're going with this. The other thing I wanted to mention in Tiny Topics is it is September, which is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. They did not ask us to do this, but I think we're all big fans of the Relay people. I've met them, hung out with them. We're friends with them. We work

with Federico and John and all that stuff. So I just want to mention that's out there. They raise a ton of money every single year. I think they've raised like in total of their whole time doing it, like $4 million or something like that, I heard him say, which is insane. So if you have some money, donate, because childhood cancer is bad. I literally think that's the least problematic thing I could say. Like literally, anyone that would disagree with that, I don't know what you're doing, but yeah.

Chris, you got to present both sides of this. You can't just give your opinion. You got to give both sides of the issue. It's complicated. did won't somebody think about the cancer cells why won't anyone think about the cancer cells no childhood childhood cancer is bad uh and saint jude is working to get rid of it so anyways that's just something i wanted to mention uh there's some other stuff in here but i don't know who put it in here so uh this first one is me we got a reader suggested app um related to focus friend which is a very similarly named app called Focus Flight, which...

Guys, I love this app so much. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. You said you would die for the bean. What's going on? I have moved on from the bean, and now I will die for plane. Focus Flight is an app. It's a focus app. It's the exact same concept, but you... And this will not be my main topic. It's really a tiny topic. You basically hop on a plane. You tell it how long you want to focus for. It gives you a bunch of airports that are that far away.

And then when you enter the focus time, the plane takes off. It does like a 3D map over the place you're going. You can switch into like a window seat and you can like look out the window. It has a live activity showing the progress. You can turn your phone sideways and it does the standby mode. It has a full screen standby mode thing. It has white noise. So you could have like an airplane or other kind of like white noise things play as it goes.

And the cool thing is after you pick your initial airport where you're going to take off from, you can't choose. You can't like just do a random flight. So I chose O'Hare, Chicago O'Hare Airport to take off from. And then I flew to JFK because I want to do like an hour and a half. focus session. My next flight has to be from JFK and I can go somewhere else. But I can't just say, now I want to start in, I want to go to Heathrow and fly to Charles de Gaulle or whatever.

I don't know if I said it right, but the one in France. You're just trying to flex right now. You're like, I know airport codes. Okay, okay. But anyway, it's so nice. It feels, the onboarding is incredible. The UI, it feels very much like flighty with that sort of attention to detail. it's so so nice they have a weird pricing model where it's free for like very short sessions and you can unlock everything for either like $20 a year or $15 for life I don't know why the lifetime is cheaper than one year

but I got it it is so fun I love this app so much wanted to give it a shout out because it was a very very good suggestion I just downloaded it I will give this a shot but I'm still that bean is my ride or die man it's my ride or die my actual issue with Focusfriend is I've been using it so much I pretty much maxed out all the furniture as the high end furniture that you can get because I've been using it so much and now I'm like okay what now I'm still using it but yeah

I will check this out I have a pitch for developers I want this but with trains You call it focus rail? I don't know. Developer, I have a pitch for you. I want this, but with a Ford Mustang, and I want to do road trips. No, no, no. Him. Nobody likes trains. Nobody likes trains. Nobody likes airplanes. It's all about cars. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Look, developer, if you make this and you put in a 1967 Mustang Eleanor, I will spend...

You could just have all my money. I'll buy you the iPhone. I swear to God, if your pitch comes true and not mine, I will start a revolution. Well, you're French, so that's pretty on par for you. Yeah, yeah. You know what? Yeah, fear me. But developers, car, Mustang. Well, look, we'll get Ford on board. We'll figure that out. Don't worry. But we'll, yeah. Okay, we got to move on. Yes. Oh, there's one other thing in here. What's this? Yes, I have found Matt's Dream Monitor.

So I've put a link to a MacRumors article in the show notes. This is a newly announced 6K display by a company called A-Logic. This display, it supports touch-based input compatible with macOS. And it looks like, do you remember the Surface Studio? from Microsoft. So it's a big display on your desk that you can fold forward towards you so that you can lean forward

and touch the screen and draw on it using a pencil or whatever. It looks really cool. And when I saw that, mentioned in the article that it's fully compatible with macOS, I thought, hey, this is Matt's dream display. What do you think? I'm looking at it now. It is intriguing, I'll tell you that. It's 32 inches, which is the same as my current monitor, but my current monitor is only 4K, so 6K would be nice.

There you go. It looks like it's LCD, which is frustrating, and 60 hertz. The LCD is the display tech of the people. You will come closer to the people. Behold my 32-inch touchscreen monitor that is of the people. Yes. Okay. There is one big issue that I see right in the MacRumors article that jumped out at me right away. It's only 400 nits, which is not very bright.

The studio display is 600 nits. And the funny thing is the image in the article has it next to a window with the sun beating down on it. And there's no way in that situation you would be able to see the monitor like that. Absolutely not. However, if you tune into this week's first episode of Cozy Zone and look at Matt's desk setup, he lives in a cave. So I don't think that's an issue. He doesn't live in a cave. I see sunlight on Matt right now.

He has sunlight on him. Okay, maybe that's the excuse. In fact, I'm the only one that doesn't have sunlight on me. I'm the one that lives in a cave. Actually, no, no, no, wait. No, that's a good tease. Watch, subscribe, listen to Cozy Home. Yes. He lives in the cave, we promise you. First episode's free. Hey, look, first taste is free. After that, you got to pay. But yeah. He lives in a cave, believe me. Go see. We're clickbaiting already. Oh, no. I know, right? So the last thing in the tiny topics, well, sort of the last thing, is I just kind of wanted to mention, because it's kind of going to be a little bit of a weird episode.

We are recording the Thursday before the iPhone event. The iPhone, or Friday. It's Friday. What day is it? It's Friday, right? Okay. I don't know. I don't go outside anymore. I just live in this room. Right now, I'm so deep in my iPadOS walkthrough, like I don't go out of this room. So, recording on Friday. The iPhone event's on Monday, but this episode won't come out until Thursday. So, yeah. We're going to be the only tech podcast that's not talking about the new iPhone. Yeah, that's okay.

Yeah. People are probably tired of talking about the new iPhone. Yeah. We're going to give you a break. Yeah. We're coming in on Thursday. People have heard all the takes. Yeah. Yeah. The world's moved on. Come on. Look, you know the new iPhone has solved world peace and world hunger. You know the iPhone. You have to buy one, but if you buy one, it will solve world peace and world hunger. So, you know, go capitalism. Oh, my God.

Yeah. I am all over the place today. I love it. Yeah. And just a tease from me. I may have a Pixel 10, which is the phone that came out the week before. But, listener, that's not all. We also have a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. And they blew it because there's a stylus, everybody. And I kind of like the stylus. So just a tease, if you can guess what my topic next week will be.

Probably the iPhone. Probably the iPhone. Yeah. I'm like looking at the calendar. I'm like, is there a possibility I might have a review unit for before? I have no idea. I literally have no idea. It would be very fun if you had one and Matt is all over the place talking about his Android phones. And like the whole time I'm just doing like. All right, let's get into the main show. We got a tight episode today. Niléane, you're first up in the document.

What do you got? I'm talking about phones today. I mentioned over the summer that my work, my organization, we hired somebody. This is our first employee in a long time because we got some funding, etc. And we had to purchase things for them, including a work computer and a work smartphone.

So we will focus in a minute on the smartphone issue. But let me walk you through our decision process and what we landed on. And I think it was very surprising in the end. So regarding the computer, we wanted to go with the MacBook Air M2. Nice. Because our budget to get her a work computer and a smartphone is just over a thousand euros.

that was our allocated envelope our constraint so hey a MacBook Air M2 it was for the back to school promo arc that was going on in the end of August it was only at 800 euros MacBook Air M2 which is an amazing deal yeah however we arrived too late and on September 1st the deal was gone It was back up to €1000 and could not be found anywhere for €800.

In the end, we got a Windows laptop, an Asus ZenBook A14. I have no idea what it's like in real life. I just have like a colleague. They know this computer really well. Seems like it's a great one. And it goes for just over €800, which is perfect. Which, if you calculate in your head, you understand that it means we only have about €200 left to get a smartphone.

That's not a lot. We could go like up to €300 maybe. So we started looking at phones. Before I tell you what we landed on, to your mind, like, what are our options? With this budget in mind, very tight budget, we wanted to prioritize the computer. So we spent like 800 more on a very good computer.

And a smartphone, yeah, we just have to deal with what's left, just over 200 euros. So my guess would be, as the resident Android expert, of course, I think iPhones are out of the question. I don't know if there's a single iPhone that would be maybe there's something. But I would say either you're going to go with a older model, Google Pixel, one of the A phones. So they're kind of low end from like a year or two ago.

Or the nothing. They've got like one or two really cheap phones that I think are pretty decent. So those are my guesses. Yeah, yeah. I just pulled up the Apple refurb page, which I'm assuming you have in France. I'm going to go ahead and just do that. And I got excited for a second because I saw iPhone 14 Pro, 128 gig, unlocked, $220. But I got a little gung-ho there, and it says save $220, and it's actually $679.

There you go. So I was like, okay, never mind. No, iPhone's out of the question because the iPhone 16e is still too expensive. I mean, I don't know how carrier stuff works in France, but I mean, maybe carrier contract or something. We are buying without contracts, and most people do that here. Okay. So, yeah. yeah okay so 16e i just reminded myself is 600 dollars which is wow it is six about almost 700 euros let me check i i know it's more in euros but i i don't um how much was it in euros

720 euros the 16e but you are right both right that we first started looking at because we were going for the macbook air at first so we thought hey let's pick an iphone yeah um you can calls and messages right from the macbook and stuff like that yeah exactly yeah So we first started looking at the 16e and realized how premium of a phone this really is. And that wasn't an option.

So we started looking at older iPhones that were maybe still being sold in some places, refurbished. iPhones are freaking expensive, guys. and if you want to get an iPhone under 300 euros, the iPhones you are looking at refurbished are the iPhone 11, maybe 12, but not any newer than that.

And isn't the 11, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the 11 the oldest one that supports iOS 26? I'm pretty sure it is, yes. So that's as old as you can get in order to get the glorious liquid glass. Yeah. Yeah, and we want, obviously we want liquid glass to be supported. Yes. So anyway, obviously we will turn to Android. And Matt, you are right that when looking at comparisons online and charts, one that came up often was the NothingCMF Phone 2 Pro.

What a name. nothing cmf phone 2 pro i've put a link in the show notes and as you may notice i have named that link smartphone for men because it is my honest opinion on the design of this thing uh it looks like smartphone smartphones that were designed for men uh very like visible screws and mechanical looking and black and that's the stuff and the most manly tint of orange possible they found it it's on this phone

so ladies and gentlemen they found it and you know what Chris loves it if an iPhone looked like this I would be all over it so I mean maybe I'm just proving your point but yeah i would be all over it if an iphone looked at but i also agree with you is very uh like like looking at their promo images you i think you put the the france nothing logo or the france nothing website in here because probably he's wanting me to redirect to the u.s one

but um they they have they have all sorts of people modeling the phone yes but i will say There's only one image, and it's the second to the last image, and it's the guy in the bottom left-hand corner that looks like he's like, yeah, I'm enjoying this. I want to see my screws on my phone. That's true. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're proving my point. Okay. But regardless, it is a pretty decent phone for this price.

Well-reviewed as well. And we were looking at it, especially because so far, nothing has a good reputation when it comes to software updates. If you remember, I brought the NothingBuds 3A to the show months and months ago. Still have those. Love those. Those are what are paired to my Switch and the Peloton stuff. Like, they're great. Like, if AirPods were going to go away and I had to use those, I'd be fine. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

I've got a friend who picked up Nothing Buds as well and they're pretty happy with them. Anyway, so, so far so good. Asus Zenbook A14 and the Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro. We ordered the first one, however the latter was out of stock everywhere. So we were really out of luck uh first the macbook air now this so we had to start looking at something else and you are right

matt that we also started looking at all the pixel and the a-line the pixel phones the a-line the 7a 6a and it's very difficult to find those the older ones uh you will find amazon renewed which is very dubious. You don't know what's renewed in them. And you don't know who renewed it either. Yeah. And maybe they only reboxed it. Those listings are very, very sparse.

And the reviews are very heterogeneous. So it's hard to know what you are going to end up with. So we really want to buy something new as well. We got a brand new computer and we wanted to find a brand new smartphone as well. And the latest Pixel A line, just like the 16e, is very expensive. So we went with, in the end, drumroll, with the Samsung A26, ladies and gentlemen.

It is a Samsung phone that we picked after all. And it doesn't look amazing. I mean, it looks very generic. It looks like a modern smartphone with a full screen display, a full display that goes all the way to the corners, a slight chin at the bottom, maybe. Teardrop notch for the front-facing camera and a bunch of sensors on the back that I don't know how well they perform.

However, the Samsung is well-reviewed overall for its price and supports 5G, which is not something to be said about all the Samsung phones in this line. So that's good. And we were able to find it at €199, brand new, which is an incredible price. The point that got me worried is that I had an old idea about Samsung phones, which is that they never get software updates.

And that seems to be an old idea. There's just that. It seems that these days, Samsung is promising up to six years of software updates, even for the A-line, for the A26. So that's pretty good. We're pretty happy with that. We have yet to receive the phones and I will not be able to see it because it's going to read directly to our new employee. But I think we did well with the constraints. But I wanted to make this my topic today because I just wanted to remind people that phones are expensive and they are getting way more expensive.

And we only talk about the more expensive stuff. Who's ever talked about the Samsung A26? I've never seen Marcus Brown make a video on the Samsung A26. However, it's a well-reviewed phone when it's reviewed. And it's got a really good price. And it makes you realize that even if those smartphones in the lower range are invisibilized, we still need them to exist because my employee would not have a smartphone, a work smartphone otherwise.

And iPhones need to be cheaper, I think. Like whenever Apple is rumored to be launching a cheaper option, people get mad sometimes. I think they got to get way cheaper than the 16. They have to sell something well below this price. In Europe, there's nothing under 720 euros. That's quite insane. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

I mean, literally, we're on the eve of two, three, one. Definitely, some of us are going to be dropping a lot of money on a new iPhone, because that's something we do. But, yeah, it is wild, especially because when I got my first iPhone, the way it worked was I signed up for a contract. I paid $200. here's my iPhone. And it was mine. It wasn't a rental thing. It wasn't I had to return it at the end of my no, I, I sold it. When that two year contract was up, I sold that phone,

find it and then pay 200 bucks for the iPhone five. Like, you know, it was literally whatever it was. So yeah, I agree. Phones are very expensive. Because I was like, I was like, how much is like a 15 or how much is going to be what are what are we going into 16 17 pro what what's what's the next iphone 17 okay i hate these numbers man i really hate these 26 26 or it could be the 26 that would be i think by now packaging would have leaked if it was going to be the 26 i think they're

going to keep the numbers because i think it'll confuse like ios software version numbers are a different breed than the actual iphone but uh my point being is i look i went and looked i was like how much was the 16 pro max 512 gigs with tax and everything uh for tax in my area and all that stuff and shipped to me it was just a smidge over 1500 dollars for a phone and i was like whoa okay uh so So yeah, phones, man, they are expensive.

Sorry, this is completely out of topic. When you talked about Focus Flight earlier in the show, I messaged my friend who was a big fan of Focus Friend and told them about Focus Flight. And now they just answered my text and it's very funny. So sorry, Eunice, I will read your texts on the show. He just said, did you just say flights?

That means he's very happy. It was what it means. Okay. Okay. Okay. I was like, where is this going? I'm like, not sure. Okay. Okay. Okay. It is worth the bleep. This, he's very happy. I can tell this. This means he's very happy about this recommendation. What if we put the bean on the airplane? This is the collaboration everybody's waiting for. No, no, hang on. Better yet. The Bean driving a Ford Mustang. Oh, no. It's over, people.

We've made the world's best app. Oh, gosh. Anyway, sorry. That's okay. Yeah, no, I think it's a very good shout. Like, we do focus on the high-end phones in our kind of corner of the Internet. Or even our big, like, MKBHD. There's no one bigger. Like, he's the biggest voice potentially in, like, technology. And he's really tall, too. He's very tall. It's not often I feel short at 6'2", but when I've met him twice, and he made me feel short.

So he's the tallest voice as well. He's also potentially the most, I mean, he's also an ultimate Frisbee, like, gold medal. Like, it's, he's unfair. But, yeah, like, I mean, it is a blessing. We are fortunate to be able to even have these phones in the first place and be able to like talk about them and like whine about the camera but not being as nice as we wish it was so i think it's definitely a good shout and uh yeah i mean for years now phones have been as i mean that you can do everything on any phone released in the last five six years probably

yeah you don't have to buy it like the highest end one but yeah it's still fun so if you can i get why you would and i think i will continue to but it's definitely a point of privilege to be able to do so um i'm good to remember yeah this was a plea apple make a very cheap phone please yeah all right anything else on this or should we move on let's move on let's talk about a cheap

phone yeah uh continuing our discussion that's not about phones because we're recording before the biggest phone event in the world in this year, I want to talk about the iPhone 16 Pro. It's been out for a year now, or almost a year, and I kind of wanted to go over our thoughts on it, because all three of us have one, or Pro or Pro Max, whatever version of that. And I kind of wanted to go over our thoughts and what we thought about it. You know, I was kind of going through the list of, like, the big changes to it, and there wasn't a ton,

but the stuff that it added was killer for me. uh i i just want to say so the big thing that it added was a whole new button and that would be the camera control button i know it has very mixed receptions but and i'm gonna add another bleep here i love the camera control button but i love it because i went into settings and i turned off all the complex nature to it literally all it does is launch the camera app and take a photo that's it That's all I have it do.

But it was so nice, especially in Disneyland, when my niece would go running to hug a character or something, and you just want to quickly, you need to be able to quickly snap a photo, and getting your phone out, tapping on the lock screen, and getting it over. Yes, that's fast. But you know what's even faster? As you're taking it out of your pocket, you're hitting the button to launch the app, you're aiming, and it's already launched, and then you just shoot. And that was killer. I absolutely loved it I'm kind of curious like have you guys really like embraced the camera control button I know Matt was a little iffy on it at first yeah uh I was and I I mean I feel like

this is what I keep hearing from a lot of people uh I have grown to like it for launching the camera and I do nothing else with it I launch the camera I don't even use it as a shutter because I don't find it satisfying to click i use the screen to do that too um and yes every single other advanced thing is annoying it should just be a stupid button i i do use it as a shutter to take a photo i absolutely do uh and it does not bother me which as somebody that likes good buttons you think it would but it doesn't yeah it's just yeah it's weird i don't like it for that it's my liquid glass

uh nilion how do you feel about camera control so the first thing is i got it way later than you on a whim uh i did not plan on upgrading this year but i was very happy to do it um camera control i think is very nice i don't understand people who turn off the complex features because i think then like the one where you can switch lenses with it is very nice uh just

swipe on it to switch between 1x 2x 5x that's i use that all the time um i agree with matt that it's not satisfying to use as a shutter button i think it's too hard like there's too much resistance to use it as a shutter. The consequence of that is my photos are blurry when I use it as a shutter button because when I press the button, I move the phone while pressing. It requires too much force.

I will shake the phone while pressing. It's not ideal for that. However, yes, I do use it all the time to launch the camera app and to zoom in and to yeah to the shutter button I used the one on screen as I always have yeah like when I compare it to the shutter button on my Canon camera the Canon is so much easier to press so much lighter obviously that is like the most important thing on that device versus this but I kind of wish this was like

a magic button because like opening the camera with it is perfect that's fine but then I wish it went into like a lower friction or lower pressure so you can tap it much easier. Like it was haptics instead of like an actual button? Kind of, yeah, with like, I don't know, force touch or something. Maybe they bring that gem back. It would be nice if you could light press it to focus just like on my DSLR. Did they say they were adding that?

I thought they were adding that too. Like that was supposed to be a feature or something that came later, but I do not remember it ever being added. And I was literally just trying that because I was like, wait, wasn't that a thing? But I do not. That would be nice. Camera control. No, it's not here. Camera adjustments. No, it's not there. Maybe that was a collective hallucination. It says that it should be here. Yeah. Anyways, so I do like the camera control button, but an aspect of the camera control button I never use

besides the complex swipe gestures, which I just found too complex. I found it easier just to, well, back when the camera app wasn't a mess, to make the changes on the screen, but now the camera app, RIP to a real one. But the other aspect I don't use is visual lookup. Do you guys remember that if you hold down the camera control button, it brings up visual lookup, and you can have... Wait, it's what? Yeah. Not in the EU, I bet. Oh, yeah.

Yes, it does, actually. Oh, it does? Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. You guys got it. They have Apple Intelligence now. My bad. Yeah. I had no idea. That was a thing. Literally, I literally just used visual lookup, pointed it at my camera that's recording here, and I typed, what is this? And it started doing this Shazam listening thing, like it was listening from you. Like, I'm like, I never used this thing. It was not worth it. Yeah. I use it sometimes. I have used it to, there was a, I mean, it's not like crazy revolutionary stuff.

There was like a button in my car that I could not figure out what the heck it meant or what it did. And I used visual intelligence to ask and it did get me the right answer. So like it's. What did the button do? I don't remember. I never pressed the button still. So it must not have been that exciting. But every once in a while, it's okay. It's probably a nice accessibility feature. Like if you do have poor vision and need help with that. This is a thing that I enjoyed on the Meta Ray-Bans is you can have it describe what's in front of you.

And so like it could help you read a sign, understand what the rules that is trying to indicate what icons mean. So like there's some use cases there, but I don't use it really myself. I more often accidentally trigger it when I hold the button a little too long because I meant to launch the camera and I accidentally held it for another couple of milliseconds. that did the visual intelligence now uh for a couple of months this year because i i apple had sent me both the 16 pro and the 16 plus as review units so for a couple months this year i

actually used the 16 plus and i was going to do a whole video about it but uh i realized that there were some stuff about the pro that i just really missed and one of them was not promotion i i i i like I get it it's nice I I care more about physical things I can do with the device and it was all about being able to take raw photos and be able to shoot log um with the iPhone and that is just something that's on these pro phones that like if that doesn't come to this new air which by the time you're listening to this you already know if it does or doesn't if that doesn't come to this

new air phone that air is immediately out like if it doesn't get raw capture and log support for filming video, like I have, I'm not even interested in it because those two things I realized I cannot live without. I love shooting. I literally have my, the camera app set up to always shoot raw. And then, uh, I, I do video capture in the final cut pro app, but that's always set up to shoot log and stuff. And another aspect of the, of the 16 pro that came to the video capture side is 120 frames per second. Uh, and you may have noticed I've made a short, uh, there should be another short out by now.

I'm doing some short form stuff. I am embracing a medium that you love. Talking to the kids. There you go. Vertical video. Oh. Look, I need to stop being an old curmudgeon and I need to understand that that's the way. So you're done with 24 FPS. No, God, no. My projects are still edited in 24 frames per second. No, I'm not a monster. I'm not somebody that would edit in 30 frames per second like an animal. I capture certain shots at 120 frames per second then you put it in your timeline and you can slow it down and you get those nice

smooth slow-mo shots but are they smooth if you slow them down to 24 yes so they get really smooth then so the more frames you have so previously you could do 60 frames per second and you can do this but now you can go to 120 frames per second and it's even smoother if you're not watching the video you're missing out um but yeah so the camera side of the 16 pro has been huge for me as a creative thing there's been a lot of like photos and stuff that i've captured that i've shared that i've just shot on the iphone and i'm doing all the short stuff

all all the short form stuff i'm doing on iphone i'm not even bothering with the can like i actually have the mount for a tripod to make my canon camera go vertical but i'm not gonna even mess I'm just going to shoot it all on the iPhone. Yeah. I'm actually, I think, the opposite of you in this regard. I don't really shoot raw on my phone, but I do, I cannot live without a high refresh display. Yeah. I can. I don't know why. It just doesn't, it doesn't bother me. It's nice. Yeah. But it doesn't bother me.

Yeah. I mean, only premium phones get that, like the CMF Phone 2 for $200. I believe the Samsung A26 has a high refresh rate display. Yeah, literally there is one company making these phones now. Crazy. I'll try to stop. I'll try to stop. I mean, $1,000 iPhone 16 Plus does not deserve 120 frames per second. They were a bad phone, bad, bad phone, and they should feel bad, and they don't deserve it. No, I'm kidding, people.

The last thing I want to mention is the titanium on the 16 Pro is really nice because it's a lot lighter than the previous Pro phones that were all aluminum. Supposedly, the phones that are announced already, but we don't know, have aluminum on the back and aren't all glass. So they should be even technically lighter. Which is what I'm hoping is it's still titanium on the sides. It's like it's a mullet. It's titanium on the sides, aluminum in the back, and that way you can make it even lighter, because

that is my big complaint about the 16 Pro versus the 16 Plus. The 16 Plus is noticeably lighter, and it's a smaller phone. And the Pro is the smaller phone. Can I vent for just one second? Absolutely. I do it all the time. We will see how this goes. I am curious how the aluminum is going to be incorporated into the phone, but I've heard... again i love the apple community i think we're awesome but it drives me crazy how whatever apple does is often seen as just genius two years ago when the iphone 15 was coming out and they were

like they're gonna have titanium everyone's like oh apple's so genius it's a lightweight metal it's gonna be great they're making the perfect choice and then two years later it's like they're ditching titanium for aluminum and everybody's like they're so genius they've done it again i i forgot okay i messed up i thought the 16 pro was the first one with titanium no the 15 15 yeah i messed up there yeah so i just think it's funny like it's whatever's apple apple is currently doing is just perfect and nothing could be better and then like two years

later they do something different it's like this is the this is the height of everything it'll never be better than this anyway not exactly that tone but it's the vibe i get I yeah I totally understand my whole thing is make it lighter we've seen the leaks now we're getting into weird territory here we've seen the leaks of the 17 Pro where it's got like that kind of almost two-tone back kind of thing and I really like that especially the orange one like I like a good blue phone but that orange one that's what I'm ordering if that's the case

blue phones can be nice but anyways that's the 16 Pro guys have any other thoughts on it any other than that i just kind of felt like this was a great time to kind of review it because to me most people are not going to be upgrading their phone year over year and unless there's something revolutionary about the 17 pro line this is a perfectly good phone like i mean like i said at the beginning of the show uh if you buy the 17 pro you solve world peace you solve world hunger so if you want to be a good person you buy that phone

But if you don't care about being a good person, the 16 Pro is a perfectly fine phone. Yeah. I had one question for you two. One of the big complaints with the 15 line of phones was that they overheated. They got warm in your hand. And when the 16 Pro came out, I think the impression was that, oh, this is better this time. And I think it probably is better, but I don't know if you've noticed it as well, but my 16 Pro definitely gets warm in my hand in a way that other phones don't. So it's definitely still a thing I'd like to see them improve.

I didn't notice it getting warm until I started installing the iOS 26 betas. Once I started installing the iOS 26 betas, that's when I felt it getting warm. And it felt warm the other day, and we have beta 9 out right now. So I don't know what's going on there. I guess to melt the glass, like to turn it liquidy, you probably have to heat it up a little bit, something like that. That makes sense, actually. But yeah, I haven't felt it heat up since only when I've had the beta on it. Okay.

Yeah, I upgraded from the 14 Pro. I never had the 15. And I think I always use my phones with a case. So I think that's taking away from whatever impression I might be getting. I never noticed it's quite getting warm. And just like Chris, I only noticed it with the beta this summer. And I shared the trick on this show that you can, in the train, you can place your phone on the AC vent in the French trains because they're right next to your seat.

So that's very useful. Yeah. And I could not care less about titanium, just to say it like that. Like, I don't know. I don't care. I don't even know what's the difference in my hand compared to aluminum. So, yeah. What's the deal with titanium? What's the deal? Yeah. I don't know. all right well this was interesting i i kind of like looking back as like a little bit of a retrospective like i said it was a weird episode like we're recording before the iphone event but

it comes out after so it's kind of hard to cover new tech topics this way so i thought it was it would be interesting to look back very last thing i will shout out about this phone the one of the low-key my favorite things about this is the non-destructive adaptive styles for the photos where you can style you can do a custom style but it's not baked in. So you mean the feature that could have been software and backported to older phones? Listen, I'm not here to defend anybody, I'm just saying it's a nice feature It's very very nice. It's just weird

that it doesn't work with raw photos That's the thing it should work with the most because raw photos are all about being able to edit and capture a bunch of extra data but that's why the file size is so huge but whatever I throw them in Lightroom and edit them myself I don't care I don't use the photo styles they're nice they're there for the people that want them I'm picky challenge let's get to the challenge Matt Matt it was your challenge what do you got time for the challenge so my challenge was as we discovered I think after we recorded

which is as we were doing that episode, oh, this was on my list of challenges for us to do in the future as well. Well, it turns out we've already done this, but we're doing it again, everybody. To be fair, I meant it as you originally pitched it, which your original pitch was change your input device. And I took that as keyboard, mouse, anything you use to interact with a computer. But you had a different meaning. I did. So mine was change something with your pointer input methods.

So probably Mac or iPad. I think it's all right if you have recurring challenges, you know. It was just funny because I busted out the MX Master 3S mouse and I started using this and I was like, man, I feel like I just used this not too long ago. And I was like, why would I have used this? Oh, probably comfort zone. Oh, wait, we literally did this challenge already. Well, and we should be better at it this time then, right? Sure. We should kill it. Yes. Everybody should have done great.

I'll start, and I'll say I messaged you two as soon as this arrived, because I got something that I knew was going to drive Chris specifically absolutely insane, and it is this. Oh, dear God. It is the Razor Basilisk 3 something. Why is it flashing? it looks like a police car like it's just flashing lights at me a police car but if it was gay just clarify so i'm gonna go ahead and turn off the lights because i actually just use it

not with those on um but i are you supposed to 360 no scope bro without the lights on Listen, I don't even 360 no scope at all, bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. I use an MX Master, which I love, I think is great. But I am always told by people, this is not for gaming. No one who plays games would ever use this. It's too heavy. And I was like, well, I've never used a gaming mouse, so let's try one.

And this was one of the top selling ones on Amazon. I've never had a Razer or anything. So this is a first with them. But this mouse is very light. It is. I mean, it's very pointy. That'll poke your eye out. Very sharp. It's aggressive. It's not my style, I will say. But what it does have. But if you listen to the Cozy Zone episode, you will totally understand it is actually Matt's style. Listen to that episode if I know. Oh, yes. Indeed. Yes.

I still disagree with your assessment of that. So what this has is a lot of buttons and it's very light. There's just a ton of buttons on this freaking thing. There are two at the top by the scroll wheel. There are three on the sides in addition to the normal ones. And that's actually it. There's not that many at the end of the day, but it's a little bit more than normal. There's a Razer app you can install on your Mac or Windows computer that will let you customize this to your heart's content.

It has tons of DPI settings, so depending on what you're doing, you can have the mouse go insanely fast. I cranked it all the way up, and it's insane. This button on the side, by default, so just the backwards and forwards buttons that all might seem to have, and then there's this additional button. This one lets you temporarily switch to another DPI, so if you're changing tasks, you can change how sensitive the mouse is. No, you're sniping, you're really panning around, and then, oh no, somebody came behind me, click, boom, 360 noose, go brah.

I think yes. I think that is the intended use case. Just like the MX Master, it has a wheel that can either click or it can be free, and you can do the thing where you just spin it, and it spins and spins and spins and spins. And it can dynamically switch between those two based on how fast you're scrolling. It charges over USB-C. One of the nice things is that it comes with a dongle. So for a lot of people, including myself, using a USB dongle is better than Bluetooth, is more reliable for most mice.

And what's cool about this is that it comes in this little... So the dongle's in here, and it comes in this little box that's connected over a long USB-C cable. And so what this means, and these are like a little rubber kind of bottom to it. So you can basically run this. I'm running it from my Thunderbolt dock, which is under my desk. And so it's not a direct line of sight to the mouse, which is fine. But what I can do is I can run this up and it's just sitting kind of below my monitor now.

And so they're just like eight inches apart and the connectivity is just very, very, very reliable. so that's nice and this is again sold mostly to gamers who have a pc on the floor so it's even further away so this kind of lets them get a wireless mouse with better latency and just more reliable connections so i like this a lot actually i've been happily using it all week but there are two main problems.

Problem number one. Ooh. After using a silent clicking mouse for so long, it's a little tough to use it, and for this episode, I've had to use the MX Master because you'd hear all my clicks. So, that's one problem. Not great. The other problem is there's no scroll wheel on the side, which is usually not an issue, but it is a huge issue when I'm video editing.

And it is, literally today, I'm going through a spreadsheet and it is insanely annoying, especially because macOS has the scroll bars disappear when you don't move anything. So I have to, it's insane. I'm not pleased with it. So no way to scroll left and right is definitely annoying. So those are the downsides, but I actually find it very comfortable to use and I actually like it quite a bit. So I'm going to keep using it, but I need to figure out a way to handle the scrolling left and right.

I don't know if there's a weird hack I can do. I wonder if there's an option for if you hold down command and then use the scroll, like it will do horizontal scrolling or something like that. Because I think I've seen that in other mouses before. Yeah, there might be. I mean, I should probably explore. Maybe I can do a thing where I hold down that DPI changing button Maybe I can map it so when I hold that, then I can move the mouse to scroll. I don't know. We'll see. But I think it's pretty okay, even though it looks insane, especially with the lights on.

Nice. That's nice. Can I go next? Sure. Because mine is disappointing, so we should go, and I'm sure yours will be amazing, so we should go... Well, obviously, I always win every challenge. Yeah, so we should live on a high note. Yeah, exactly. So my submission to the challenge is a change to my setup that's quite substantial and that I regret deeply and that I reverted today. Fair.

Which was that my change of pointer input method was that I took my MacBook Air off the stand, that's off to the side of my monitor on my desk, put it in front of me instead of having my Logitech keyboard and mouse in front of me. And just using the MacBook's built-in keyboard and its built-in trackpad.

and that's it. This is the change. This has had unforeseen consequences because I work a lot in laptop mode. So I'm used to the built-in keyboard and built-in trackpad. There's no issue there. The unforeseen consequence is that I'm short. I'm not a tall person and having the laptop in front of me means I had to raise the monitor behind it

so that I could see the entirety of both screens. But we know how much you love when a part of an external monitor is covered up. Again, it goes in a cozy zone, episode one. It's free for everyone. Exactly. So yeah, I had to raise the monitor is the solution to that. And it was so high. I was working like that with my head raised.

It was not great. I will say that it is an appealing kind of setup. I kind of like it, if not for that issue. And that's because of something that I did not realize was so nice, is the aluminum palm rests. resting my palms on the macbooks aluminum it feels it feels all right i like it um i think it's because they are colder to the touch than whatever i have on my desk which is an actual palm

rest a squishy palm rest and a desk mat uh they can get pretty warm and yeah the aluminum was a nice change. I like that. Regarding the trackpad, it has made me realize that over the past weeks, since switching full-time to the MX Master again, and away from the Magic Trackpad, the external one, it has made me realize that the trackpad, I do not really miss that much. It's all right when I work in laptop mode but on my desk i do not miss it it's tiring for my uh hands and when you use

your macbook in in this way in front of you with a display behind it um the the trackpad is in the middle is it's in the center of your of your desk in front of you and it makes you um turn your arm in weird way in front of you and having to like make some weird hand uh shapes to perform the gestures on the trackpad that was not great so yeah i reverted it today um like as soon as i woke up

because i had meetings and it also messed up with the way i look at my camera and meetings uh like right now during recording as well. So, yeah. Reverted all of that because my camera is right here and it's above the MacBook display on the stand. And I'm really used to that. Generally, I have a call on a MacBook's display and I can look at the camera. It looks like I'm looking at people. So, that's really good.

Anyway, disappointing stuff. It did not work out. I like my MX Master 3S. there you go nice well for me this challenge kind of got a little messed up because I realized fairly late into it that hey we've done this one before and I was doing the exact same thing I did last time was using the Logitech MX Master 3S on an iPad which by the way scrolling is still broken anyways so I embraced something I mentioned on the show last week even more

and that is pen and paper I have not traditionally been a pen and paper person, but I have started using the Sidekick Notepad as kind of like a way to rewrite my tasks. Every morning I sit down, I put the date on there. In the top bar, I put what did I publish today? Because my goal is to publish something almost every single day, whether it's some photos, a short video, whatever, comfort zone, whatever. So I put in there and then I rewrite my tasks in the order of which I'm going to do that.

And that helps a lot with my ADHD. Well, I embraced the notes section this week. And for some shorts and stuff that I've been doing, I was writing shot lists on there. I was writing out title ideas and stuff for my iPadOS 26 walkthrough. I was writing out like sections that I want to go back and fix and move around and stuff like that. It was nice. What I like specifically about that notepad is it replaced my palm rest for my keyboard. It just sits right below my keyboard. So it's just right in front of me. I don't feel like it's a notebook.

I got to go grab and open to a certain page. It's always open. It's right there. I can write in it, rip out the page when I'm done with it for the day, stick it at the bottom. So the page height stays the same. So it doesn't get too low. Yeah, it was good. I really don't have too much to say about it. Other than if you are somebody that struggles with like opening up a task manager and seeing you have 12 tasks you need to do in a day, try taking your task, writing them in a specific list. You can leave out the small stuff that's not super important. I just wrote like the, this is the stuff I have to get done today.

That other stuff in the task manager, I can get to it later if I have time. But I just want to get to this important stuff today. And yeah, it really worked. I think it's fun that you did not follow the rules this week. Yeah, I did. I was like, I'm not going to, I looked on Amazon. I was like, I could buy a mouse. But I'm like, what's the point? I was like, there's nothing, because I'm using iPadOS. There's not really anything special I can do there. So I was like, what's a pointer? I'm like, your finger's a pointer.

And you know what attaches to your finger? A pen. And pen and paper. I appreciate it. I actually think in the last episode, Matt kind of hinted that that would have been acceptable when I mentioned that I was using pen and paper. So I'm going to take it as a moral victory and say I won. Here's what I'll say. I wish that you had bought this mouse and used it with the iPad because by default, that crazy RGB rainbow thing that was happening, it's on by default. So you need to install the app to turn it off.

So you'd have no recourse. You'd just be stuck. It's like those mechanical keyboards that do that same thing that you got to set up with via. You got to go into via, add the key to toggle the RGB, toggle it off, then go back and replace the key again. Oh, that's miserable. Yeah. No, I'm glad. There's no way I'd buy a mouse like that. Well, Christmas is coming. He may be getting one. That actually gives me a good idea. What if we did Comfort Zone, Secret Santa? Oh.

That might be an idea. Anyway, that's an idea that we could talk about off the air. But yeah, that was a challenge. Matt, how do you feel we did? I think two out of three of us did great, and I won't say who the two are. Definitely me. I think all three of us did great. I think it was me. Look, I could have bought a mouse, but there really wouldn't have been anything interesting to say. I thought the pen and paper thing was kind of a... It was pushing me outside my comfort zone. I'm not a pen and paper person, but it's something I've been trying these last two weeks, and it's actually been really helpful.

So it's like the whole point of the podcast. All right. Neil Leon, it is your challenge, and I always get nervous when it's your challenge. It's a very simple one. You may have noticed that I'm steaming with this all the time now, which is a PopSocket. I mentioned this last week or the week before. I don't remember. Oh, yeah, yeah, the paper cut thing. You're like, I hate it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. PopSockets, I think they are very interesting.

Very interesting. And they're affordable. So this is a PopSocket-themed challenge. You will go out and get one, obviously. And the challenge is find an unexpected use for your pop socket. Can it be going in the garbage? That is as expected as possible from you. My last week with the 16 Pro and you're going to ruin it.

It's unexpected use. I'm sure you can come up with something. And maybe I will. I actually have no idea what I'm going to do. Do PopSockets get in the way of MagSafe charging? This is a MagSafe phone, so you can pick it up from the back of the phone. It's magnetic. Okay. All right. Okay. All righty. Well, that'll be interesting. We'll see if I can do it. All right. That brings us to the end of the show.

And as always, I have an end of the show question for you all. You're only allowed to put three non-stock Apple apps in your iPhone and iPad. What would they be? And I should say this was a question submitted to us in the feedback form. Please, if you want to know anything about us, put in the feedback form. I'd love end of the show questions. I already know what my three apps are. I can just literally rack them off right now. Obsidian, Final Cut, Lightroom, done. Mine would be Doppler, the music player, Mimestream, and a good web browser.

I have no idea, which maybe it doesn't exist. I think you got to pick it. We're working on this. The question is non-stock Apple apps. And I mean by that that Safari is not good in iOS 26. And I don't want to use it. I don't want it in my talk. I want a good web browser. So there you go. Matt, what do you got? Okay, this is hard. Three is tough. So on the iPhone, I would install YouTube.

I would install Mimestream as well. And I would install Reader Classic. Interesting. See, YouTube is wasted there because you can just use Safari. The YouTube app is underrated. On the iPhone or iPad? Are we talking about both? iPad is... iPad is disgusting.

Trash. I guess I was approached. It's all right on the iPad. I mean, it's better than... Yeah, it's okay on the iPad screen. As soon as you go to an external display, it is insane how bad it is. Oh, yeah, it's really bad. No one does that. I mean... Some good ones. All right. The late episode is Spice. I love it. That brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you all so much for listening. Feel free, please check out Cozy Zone if you're interested in that. I promise we won't harp on it every single week as much as we are, but we're really excited to launch this. So everyone that checked it out, thank you so much.

And a huge thank you to MacStories. Both John and Federico, they put in a lot of work to help us get this thing launched. So big shout out to them. Be sure to go check out all their writings and podcasts and stuff. There's a lot happening. I know Federico is working on his review and stuff like that. So there's a lot going on. So go check out Mac Stories. Either of you have something you want to promote? I mean, PopSockets, they're amazing. And I'm sure we'll hear a ton about them next week. That's going to be interesting.

I would like to promote the fact that the mouse actually does scroll sideways. You just rock the scroll wheel side to side. Although it doesn't have any speed control. So you're going pretty quick. So you got to be careful. And I would like to promote my own stuff. I have a bunch of videos out now. Go check them out. You've been cranking them out. Yeah. Well, it's that time of year where like stuff's actually happening now. So it's like, okay, now I can ramp up because let me tell you, making videos about tech in July and August is rough. I just don't.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to be out of that. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye-bye.