Nice

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? Oh, Chris, I'm not doing incredible today, health-wise, but I am fighting through to podcast with you guys, but I do have the right medicine with me, and that is the best color iPhone 17 Pro, which we'll get to later in the episode, I bet. Sorry, I didn't mean to trigger you 30 seconds in. Just, just, just, I, and we're also joined by Neelion as well.

Neelion, how are you doing? Yes, so, no fourth wolf with me, right? This is the second time we've done the intro. Hey, that's a peek behind the curtain. We're not supposed to, you're not supposed to tell the people. Everything's fine. I definitely didn't lose power and realize there is one particular spot I need to put a battery backup so this doesn't affect anything. I will order another battery backup as soon as we wrap up the recording but there's just one spot I've realized now that there is I look I needed this power outage to figure out where this I just didn't need it to happen

well maybe I actually did need it to happen while recording anyways yes this is the second time we've done the intro I thought since Matt triggered you I might as well you both just love to just you know how to hit me so yes i'm doing well thank you good good okay well we have some tiny topics and unfortunately this is where we lost power or i lost power so um neilion you were talking about something and then i just i lost everything um my first is a surprise my first topic is a

surprise. I will quiz you on something that I will show you in a few seconds. And at the end of the show, you will both try to guess the answer. Right? Okay. So there you go. Let me just show you. This is the iPhone SE 2020, freshly updated to iOS 26. As you can tell by the hello wording, that's practically invisible thanks to Liquid Glass.

Thank you. And here's what we'll do. I will show you the state of the phone, front and back. Right. It's the iPhone SE 2020. If you want to see a particular part, just tell me. Okay. Back looks perfect. On the front here, the glass is broken. Okay. You can see a little bit the crack. Okay. Okay. This phone was purchased in 2020 when it came out, and I've been using it until last year as my camera,

until I replaced it with my current one. And the question is, if you want to guess, guess the percentage of the battery health as reported by ios in the settings so don't guess now we wait until the end of the show is it going to be like price is right rules where it's closest without going over or just closest closest wins okay okay how long was this plugged in as like your webcam how long was it just constantly plugged in very good question right Yeah, I was trying to figure out.

So, I used it as my camera. Can you mute Chris and just tell me? Yes. Chris, can you cut your power again, please? I mean, you guys, maybe what happened is you guys hacked my power grid, shut off my power, and colluded. I mean, yes, it would have been simpler just to send an individual eye message to each other, but no, that's not how you guys work. You had to, like, cut my power. Yeah, so I used it as my camera, I mean, I think for about a year.

Okay. And it was plugged into my dock. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. I know my number already. All right. Yeah, I think I know my number as well, but I won't say anything. Remember, purchased in 2020, and last year, I stopped using it. So that was my first tiny topic. My second tiny topic is welcome back to the browser podcast. I'm Niléane, your host. How come you guys can have done this part while I didn't have power? This week, we will complain about Safari in macOS 26.

It sucks. All right. Thank you, guys. This was the browser podcast. See you next week. Very SnackZone-esque. That was, you know what? That was brief. I appreciate it. Yes. Is this next thing in here, is this Matt here? A couple weeks ago, I talked about the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and I neglected to say the number one thing I like about it, which is the anti-reflective screen that they have. So I just wanted to mention that. That is the thing that I love about it.

And also, even in a world where I have an iPhone 17 Pro, I still like this phone. First time I've ever felt that about an Android phone after getting the latest and greatest iPhone. So I'm not switching or anything, but I still like it. Traitor on so many levels. No wonder why AppReview rechecks all of your apps. Wow. Wow. Whoa. Yeah. Right. Coming in hot. This week on Cozy Zone. Oh, boy. This is a good one. This might be my favorite episode we recorded so far. But we draft iPhones, but with a twist.

It's not just a simple we're picking our favorite iPhones. There is a twist to it. Matt came up with this whole game. It was awesome. And there is going to be a video version. So if you subscribe to Cozy Zone, if you go into the description, There will be a link to the video version. It's just an unlisted YouTube link that you can go check out. We don't have a great way of distributing video for Cozy Zone every single week. Like, we don't have, like, a newsletter system or something like that where we can put it in. So, there's not going to be a video version every single week. But when it's appropriate for this, like, this one, because Matt shares a screen so you can see where we're drafting things, there will be a video version.

But, yeah, this was a really good episode. This was a fun one. So if you haven't checked out Cozy Zone, this is a great time to jump on board. There'll be links in the description, show notes, wherever you're watching, whatever it's called. There'll be links there. Yeah. All right. You guys ready to get in the main show? Yes. Yes. Neil, you're first up in the dock. What do you got? Okay. This will be short and sweet, maybe. Okay. I have two short and sweet things, practically unrelated to each other.

So consider this a bundle of two items in one topic. First, Apple, they launched their sports app in eight new countries this week, I believe. Or maybe it was last week, including France. So for the first time, I don't know how long ago you've had this app for the first time. This was my first time this week.

And this is such a strange app. Like, I didn't think I would, like, even mention Apple Sports anywhere. But I have things to say about it. First, have you tried it, guys? Yes. I downloaded it a little while ago at the start of the Formula One season because they had a Formula One support. And then I realized it was the most basic Formula One information. Like, it's like, who, like, the standings of the last race and, like, driver championship standings and constructor championship standings.

It's like, I expected there to be, like, news and stuff like that. Nah, it's like the most basic thing. Like, literally, I can get the same information out of Raycast. It was pretty basic. So, I deleted it. And I saw you put in the show notes, so I didn't redownload it this morning. but they haven't really put anything in there for me. Yeah. I use it. I like it a lot, actually. I use it mostly for live activities, for tracking games that I can't watch live. Yeah. For the NFL and not Formula One, because I always watch those, even if I'm late.

Yeah. Okay. So I agree with Chris that it's very basic. I wanted to use it for football, just like Matt, to have live activities during football matches. And by football, you mean American football. Because that's what it's called. And soccer is soccer because the English came up with it and named it. I mean, the sport where you play the ball with the feet, right? You mean, that's foosball.

Okay. Yes, soccer, or whatever that word is. But yes, football. But yes, it's really basic. It works fine. You get a live commentary. You get current standings in the league. They, speaking of leagues, they don't have much. I guess they wanted to support a bunch of very specific European leagues before they could launch in those European countries,

which is why they launched to eight new countries in Europe today. I mean, a week ago, whenever that was. they do have the Champions League really important they do have the French League 1 the French League 2 Bundesliga the Premier League in the UK so a bunch of the main leagues however Apple hates women I think Apple hates women this is my take because none of the women's leagues are there except the women's Champions League which isn't even currently happening.

Like, we're off-season right now. And that's it. Like, I cannot see a single other women's football league in the app. Yikes. I don't know what happened there. And, yeah, you're very limited to the teams you can follow and the leagues you can follow. so that's really disappointing i have a recommendation to make if people want a good app to track football and very fully featured app with tons of leagues available tons of teams that

you can follow you will most certainly find your favorite team in there even if it's an obscure one the app is called thought mob um it has ads which is annoying in the app however you can pay a small annual fee as an in-app purchase to remove all the ads uh i don't remember the amount and i could not find out earlier when i tried looking for it it's really annoying to find the price for something you already paid for um but yeah this is a really nice app thought mob if you're looking for something

like this, an alternative to Apple Sports, which is too basic. The last thing I want to say about Apple Sports is this UI is hateful. This is a hate crime against me. Like, have you seen this UI? It makes no sense. It's not great. It has a draw button at the top right that you can tap and switch between sections of the app. This whole thing should have been a tab bar at the bottom of the screen.

Yeah. And in the main area of the app, in the center, like in the main content area of the app, you have three tabs, which are labeled yesterday, today, and upcoming. And the expectation here, I think my brain, and I think that's normal, because that's how a UI design like this is supposed to behave, is that if you swipe horizontally, you should be able to swipe between yesterday, today and upcoming.

But it does not do that. If you swipe horizontally, it switches between the sections that are in the drawer at the top right. It makes no sense. It's honestly like somebody had the afternoon, like all the time they had was a Friday afternoon to update the sports app to Liquid Glass. And this was the best they can do in, you know, four hours, five hours. Was this not how it looked before Liquid Glass? I don't remember. It was different somehow, but it wasn't super different.

I don't think the swiping was different. Okay, okay. Yeah, I think this is awful. Anyway, I'm done. Apple Sports App. If you're a football fan in Europe, not worth your time. Maybe check out ThoughtMob. There are other apps like that. that are probably better. Okay, second thing in my bundle today is an app called Frosty.

And I like the name. And Matthew will like this because it feels like an Electron app. And it's probably an Electron app. But it's also available on iOS and iPadOS. And what it is, is an alternative client for Twitch. So, I've mentioned this before. I watch a lot of Twitch, either in the background or in the foreground.

I basically have a Twitch tab open at all times in some way or another. And on the iPhone, the Twitch app has become increasingly annoying because it wants you to look at stories of your streamers. Oh, jeez. Twitch has stories, yes, if you were not aware. It makes no sense. No one wants to open the Twitch app to look at stories. Also, they have a TikTok-like UI now on the iPhone.

Isn't the whole point of Twitch is you just put something on and it's on for a long time? Yes. Yes, exactly. The app has to have stories. I remember when YouTube added stories and it went horribly. They had to remove it. It's gone now. I mean, in Twitch, it makes even less sense in terms of like interface because you open the Twitch app and so it looks like TikTok, right? Oh, God, it does.

It literally looks just like TikTok. It looks just like TikTok, but instead of like vertical videos, on Twitch, nothing is vertical. Yeah. So all you have is a preview of the stream in landscape that takes just a small portion of the TikTok-esque UI. Oh my God. That's horrible. I really dislike this. Anyway, which is what prompted me to try looks for something else.

on the web it's just fine on the web i have a bunch of a bunch of custom css to remove a bunch of stuff from the twitch web page that's useless but on the iphone yeah i needed an alternative and frosty it seems like it's a wrapper around the web player but with a bunch of nice feature features the app looks really clean you can customize the look of the chat on the side you can customize how the stream takes up the whole screen or not. You can even go as deep as telling it to fill the notch area, the dynamic island area, or to

exclude it entirely. But since like with Twitch you always have it, it's nice to have the chat on the side, it's useful to force the player to take the full area of the screen even where there's the dynamic island so yeah it's i don't have much to say it's just a twitch player it's really nice you can log in with your twitch account and you get all your your the the twitch channels that you follow they all show up in a list in just a very classic list

that you can tap and you watch a stream and that's it it's really nice and there's no in-app purchase for this i see it's free it's completely free i don't know if there's a catch but it's free i wonder if there's some legal issues because it's clearly just taking twitch's website and building a wrapper around that so there might be some legal issues charging for something like that yeah maybe yeah um and there's a github github repo so i think it's open source oh okay yeah it seems to be open source

fully open source so yeah I think it's nice it's a Flutter app Flutter UI okay yeah totally know what that is it's a web app it's a universal kind of app building it's an electronic kind of thing yeah in the ballpark yeah gotcha gotcha but it does feel nice and since it's very basic it's not in your face anyway Nice. Nice. And that's it.

All right. Well, for me, I finally got my review units from Apple for the September event, and I have just about everything. I think literally the only thing I don't have that they announced, I don't have the Apple Watch SE, and I don't have the battery pack for the iPhone Air. Those are the only two things I don't have. Oh, interesting. They didn't send you the battery pack. What's weird is they sent some other people the battery packs, but it seemed like they didn't send everyone everything.

So I know one person that got the battery pack, but they didn't get the Ultra 3. And if you're looking at the video, I have the Ultra 3 on my wrist right now. So it's kind of weird. I don't know how they decided who gets what, or if it was just, I don't know, but I'll take it. So by now, you probably have read reviews. You've probably seen videos. So I'm not going to rehash a lot of the stuff that is in that. Like, I'm not going to sit here and review every single device. I will have videos out probably by the time.

I don't know. We're actually recording this early because travel and stuff like that. But I don't know. I'll have videos out at some point. So who knows? But I want to start off with the iPhone Air. I really wasn't sure about this. When this was announced, I kind of figured right away, I'm like, this isn't for me. In fact, the iPhone I ordered was the 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange. Like, that was the iPhone I bought. But the iPhone Air showed up, unboxed it, and it feels impossible.

It doesn't feel real. It's insanely thin, and I know it's not as thin as the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro is still the current thinnest computer Apple sells. But the shape, the size of this, it just feels so good to hold. So I've had this, and I've had the 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange. The one I bought was in Cosmic Orange, and the one Apple sent me was in Cosmic Orange.

So Apple knows what's up. They know what the best color is. It also looks the best in thumbnails. So that's why I kind of have a feeling a lot of YouTubers got the Cosmic Orange, because this really pops in thumbnails. So I've had both these phones and I've been using both of them. And I've been reaching for the air more when I need to do phone things. Like this weekend, I've been posting a bunch of stuff to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. And anytime I need to do that stuff, it works best on the phone for really stupid reasons.

So I've been grabbing the phone. I've been, you know, texting people, stuff like that. I've been grabbing the air more than the Pro Max because it just feels so good to hold. Now, the thing that everyone was like, kind of like, when I started being rumored, oh, Apple's going to make an ultra-thin phone, everyone's like, the battery life is going to be horrendous. Now, I've only had a couple of days with this, so I haven't had, like, I don't, like, this isn't a full battery test. This is not, because, like, indexing and all sorts of stuff has to happen.

But yesterday, Sunday morning, I woke up at 3 a.m. Yes, that's right, 3 a.m., because Formula One was on, and I have to watch it live. yeah yeah so formula one was on and i was editing a video i had to watch it live i don't like watching formula one on replay because usually i'll open like reddit or instagram or something and something will get spoiled for me so i woke up at 3 a.m this was on the charger the whole night so i had 100 battery life and i went to bed at 9 p.m last night when i went to bed when i laid down and put this phone on the charger it was at 28 and i was using the phone all day now i didn't go very many places

I went one place yesterday. I went to go get donuts for me and Danielle. So I didn't go very many places. I didn't do a lot of stuff outside of the house, but I was using the phone for work stuff. So there was being used. So that's very anecdotal. Like it's like it's not a full battery test, but I didn't put it on the charger at all yesterday. It literally, I made a point to make sure it never touched the charger at any point yesterday.

And I made it the whole day without needing a battery pack or anything. So that was interesting. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it keeps going after that. Because yeah, the test for me is not necessarily how does it do every day? It's how does it do on unusual days when you might be away from your normal charging situation, when you may be away from home. And those always scare me. And so I always go with the bigger phones. So that is what leads me to my next point. This, the iPhone Air, is where my SIM is right now. I am not somebody that has multiple SIMs.

I have zero interest in having multiple SIMs. This is where my SIM card is right now. One of the reasons why we're recording early is I have a trip coming up. And I am going to use this as my main phone or as my phone on the trip. Now, I'm going to bring the Pro Max with me because we're going to be at some very nice locations where I'm going to want to take photos. So I'm going to dual-wheel phones, but I'm going to use this to take photos and stuff. But I think for most of that trip, maybe one day I might move the SIM over to the Pro Max so I can shoot a video for that.

But for most of this trip, I am literally going to use the Air as my phone to see how the battery life holds up in those kind of conditions. I was wondering, are you not afraid to hold the thing? It's maybe a small hands perspective, but it feels scary to hold in the streets and outside. Does it feel like soap is my question, maybe? No, not at all.

No? It doesn't feel like the iPhone 6S. Was that the super slippery one? 6S, 6, something like that. No, it feels good to hold. I haven't dropped it. I haven't felt like I was going to drop it. I have big hands. I can type on this thing one-handed. I can type on the Pro Max one-handed. I have big hands. So that probably skews it a little bit, but yeah. And I will say, screen size-wise, so this is a 6.5-inch screen.

The Pro is a 6.3. The Pro Max is a 6.7? Does that sound right? 6.9, I think. 6.9. Okay, maybe it's, I need to bump it. Anyways, the Air sits pretty much right in the middle between the Pro and the Pro Max. but I will say the screen size feels more like a Pro Max. In fact, I was comparing content on the screen, and the iPhone Pro Max can obviously show more on the display, but it's not that much more. So this really does feel kind of like a Pro Max phone, and if you don't like the Pro Max size, I don't know if you will like the Air.

Hmm. Yeah. I've definitely wanted a 6.5-inch phone for a while, The 6.3 on the normal Pro is a little small for me. Yeah. Like a little bigger. But the Pro Max is way too much. I find it just a burden to handle. I do think it's interesting about this phone is it does feel like, I'm not the only person to say this by any means, but it is curious who it's for. Yeah. Because even you, you're like, I kind of like this. This is really good. I'm going on a trip. So obviously I'll bring the Pro because I need the Pro features as well.

but like it is weird. Like, yes, if you don't need camera and you don't need battery, but you want the prettiest phone and one that just feels like really cool. Like I held it in the store when I picked up my phone. It's striking. I get it. Oh, yeah. It's a novelty is what it is. It's absolutely, and I have a feeling the novelty will wear off at some point. In fact, I know the, I absolutely 100% know the novelty will wear off and my SIM card will end up in the Pro Max.

Like, this is not going to be my phone for the year. I know that because of the cameras, particularly the Pro Raw feature. I shoot all because, okay, I hate the HDR look of iPhone photos. It was introduced with the XS. We actually talk about it in our iPhone draft episode of Cozy Zone. But I hate the HDR look of iPhone photos. So what I do is I shoot the JPEG XL lossless RAW for every single one of my photos.

So that way I don't have that HDR look to my photos. And then I can go in and edit them for there. So you have that option with the Pro Max. You do not have that option with the Air. The Air does not shoot RAW. So you are stuck with those HDR looking photos, which I do not like. So I know the Pro Max will end up being my phone. But damn, does this feel good to hold the air? Like it feels really good to hold. It feels if this is the minimalist phone, the iPhone Pro Max is the maximalist phone.

Yeah, for sure. So how do you like the Pro Max? The battery life is insane. I barely put, like I said, I was using both phones over the weekend and stuff like that. I barely was putting a dent in the battery life in this thing. Like, I'm really going to have to put it through its paces. The 1X and ultra-wide cameras, those sensors didn't really get upgraded. The big camera upgrade on the backside this year is the telephoto lens, which is now 4X instead of 5X, which I like.

5X was way too zoomed in. 4X is about 100 millimeters. And that is a very typical focal length for professional photographers to shoot at. I love that focal length. I think that can't, and it's a 48 megapixel sensor now. The images look really good. The 8X, which is kind of the cropped, according to Apple, it's optical zoom. It's not. It's cropped in, but they are putting some like special sauce on there to kind of clean up the photos. They're increasing the sharpness. They're taking away some noise.

Like they are. It's not just like if you went into Photoshop and zoomed in 50%. It's they are doing some stuff to it, but it's not optical 8X. Like that's let's get that clear. But it looks good. It looks good. And I mean, the cosmic orange is the best color. It's so good. Like I love this color. I love the look. I love that Apple finally did a color in the Pro phones.

Other than that, the screen is really nice. Like, I love how big the display is because I used the Pro last year. This year, I'm back on the Pro Max. I love how big the screen is. I just, it's fantastic. But this is a big phone. This is the maximalist phone. This is the, I am doing work from my phone. I need the best cameras. I need the most amount of battery life. from this device and it's not for everyone but it's for me yeah i i got i got the pro not the max but the iphone 17 pro i like it quite a bit i actually like the construction i think the

um the 16 pro and 15 pro looked better um like they looked like fancier like more like jewels than tools but like i like the i i this is a different look it's fine like it's i don't dislike it um certainly better than those early renders we saw like a year ago where we saw like the first like phone wide mesa or plateau apologies uh the great plateau horrendous the great or no or the iconic card plateau great plateau zelda that's zelda um but i the thing i really like is the extra rounded corners it's definitely very comfortable and is i think it's a good

good compromise between the sharp edges we had at the 12 13 14 and the super slippery edges we had on the 6 um i think it's a really nice combo and the aluminum feels feels nice so i dig it the 4x zoom is technically less but because it's a 48 megapixel sensor when i if you did like go to 5x anyway it's it's it's at least the same as it was on last year's phone like it might even be better in quality. So I don't feel like you really lose anything. I agree. One thing you said about the design, I wrote this in a video, an upcoming video, I wrote this in my script, that this year

feels like they are embracing the pros as a tool. Like this is an industrial design. This is like, this is a workhorse thing. This isn't meant to be a piece of jewelry. The piece of jewelry is the iPhone Air. Yeah. You know what's the piece of jewelry? What's that? Pop socket. No. Oh my gosh, I hated that thing. I felt so good throwing that thing in the trash when we were done with that challenge. Hated that thing. One thing I did want to mention about the pros, since this year all the cameras are 48 megapixels, unlike last year,

where only the main camera gave you 24 megapixel images and the telephoto and the ultra-wide were 12 megapixels still by default. Now, every single camera takes 24 megapixel images unless you change it to something else. I thought the ultra-wide was already 48 megapixels last year. It was, but it binned down to 12 megapixels unless you shot RAW. Or maybe if you manually picked, you could do 12 or 48. If you got the ProPhone, shoot RAW, get rid of that HDR look. Just go into the settings, go into camera format, set it to JPEG.

Look, if you're not going to edit the photos, set it to JPEG Lossy XL. JPEG XL Lossy. If you're going to edit the photos, JPEG XL Lossless. Lossy will save you a bit of file storage, but it cuts that HDR look down. I hate that. Here's what you do. You just set your photographic style to amber, and you're good. That's perfect. No. I don't use photographic styles because I shoot everything raw. Raw, baby. I think amber is the correct choice. Yes.

Raw. This is the one I use as well. Okay, so I got a couple of other things, but I'm going to kind of go over these a little bit quicker because I don't think I have too much to say. I also have the iPhone 17 here. I have it in sage, which if you like this color, it's kind of a mint green. It's a very good mint green if you like this color. I think this phone is the goat. You know, I would agree for most people, I would agree with you. Like the upgrades that they put on this phone, I didn't even talk about the front-facing camera, but all of them got a huge update

to the front-facing camera. It takes really good photos now. The center stage thing is kind of cool to play with. I need to do some more testing because I kind of found it like it doesn't adapt perfectly all the time. The 17 has ProMotion. Its base storage is 256. Like, I think for most people, this is a great go-to phone now. Like, the base iPhone 17 is a great phone to pick up. I think if I had to upgrade this year, I would go with the regular 17.

Interesting. Like, the only thing that made me go with the Pro the last two times was the screen, the ProMotion display. now that's on the regular phone I don't think I can like unless there's something really interesting in the Pro that I really want and there's not so far yeah interesting yeah I think that's really awesome they made the exact same screen in all three of them it's the exact same brightness exact same ProMotion tech it's the exact same durability

like just whatever iPhone you get it's got the best screen. Yeah. The 3000 nits brightness is pretty nice, but it's been very cloudy and rainy here the past couple of days. So I haven't really had a chance to test that. So the AirPods Pro 3 are flipping amazing. I already have a video out on these. The ANC is much better. I kind of got lucky when I was doing my testing. My neighbor started mowing their lawn. So I threw in the twos and the lawnmower would break through slightly. Like I could hear

that it was there. I put in the threes, no lawnmower whatsoever. Like it is, it is noticeably better. So it is great. But the big thing that I love about the AirPods Pro three extended Bluetooth range. And I tested this with both the 17 phones and the, uh, and my iPad pro. So it wasn't something I knew that was like related to this generation. AirPods Pro 2, if I was to leave my device here in the studio and walk to the kitchen, and as soon as I get to the refrigerator, as soon as I grab a Dr. Pepper, that's when they would cut out. Every single time. Every single time. Now with these threes, I can go and grab a Dr. Pepper, and my music, podcasts keep playing. I even walked to the

stove, stood there for a few minutes, like if I was going to cook something, kept playing just fine. I was like, okay, this is fantastic. Best update. The question is, what's in the Dr. Pepper that disrupts? I was going to say, have you done a double blind test to see, like, is it the Dr. Pepper that's causing this? Or is it the same? If you go for a glass of water, is it the same issue? Because you're blaming the AirPods Pro 2, but I think the common denominator here is the Dr. Pepper. Why are you guys gaslighting Dr. Pepper?

I would never drink Dr. Pepper. you guys don't gaslight dr pepper i mean clearly it's not dr pepper because it works with the threes so clearly it was the twos right that's science okay that's how science works i got the threes as well i wasn't going to and then the reviews were so effusive i i yeah just went to bestbuy.com and they were available for day one delivery so i got them um they're already on sale by the way so i could have saved money if i waited like literally two days um but uh yeah they're pretty good um i will say the noise cancellation it's about the same to me i'm really i'm when i

was i was actually mowing my lawn i'm used to those i was my airpods too during that and uh it maybe was a little better but it might have been the placebo effect i you know i could still hear the mower just fine but the tips i do like the new tips they do stick in my ears better um and So that's good. They don't slowly work their way out of my ear like the AirPods Pro 2 did. And the only thing that I think is a downgrade on these is they change the shape of them a little bit, which is no big deal, but they more aggressively poke out from your head.

I really can't get the stem to be close to my cheek. It's really just kind of poking out like a Q-tip, poking out of my ear a little bit more than before. Can you show us? i can try okay matt is demoing the airpods for us okay oh wow oh yeah okay it's it's kind of poking out right away from my face i can't really i mean i can kind of get it but now the seal isn't quite as right yeah so it's the smallest thing but see i i think the fit is actually better for me with the threes like they're more comfortable for me weirdly though on the twos i was two the i was

medium-sized tips on the twos on the threes i'm a medium-sized tip on the right one but on the left one i'm a small ears are weird i'm an extra small on both and it's great airpods pro 3 i think were a big upgrade for me i'm i'm really happy with them uh they the the airpods earbuds themselves have more battery life but the case actually has less which is interesting it has 24 hours instead hours, which is interesting, but honestly hasn't been a big deal for me. I just probably will charge them more.

Can I ask a random question, Chris? Yeah. All of the new Apple things I got this time had like half to less than half of their battery when I got them out of the box. Yes. Yes. This never happens. Same. Okay. Same. 100%. Strange. Yeah. My AirPods had like 20% battery life. I got the low battery warning like immediately when I was doing setup. Yeah, yeah, I got the same thing. All the iPhones were like half, like they had almost nothing in them. Yeah. Okay, I was just wondering if that was just me or I've seen a few people say it online.

I wasn't sure if it would happen to you as well. Nope, got the same thing. I had to charge up everything and like the iPhones I had to plug in while doing the transfer and stuff. Weird, yeah. No big deal or anything, just like it's a difference. Apple stuff is usually like fully charged or pretty close to fully charged, especially when it's like just released because it hasn't been sitting on a shelf for months. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Weird difference. Yeah, normally stuff's like around 80-ish percent or something like that, but yeah, interesting. One last thing I have to cover, Apple Watch Ultra 3 in black, space gray, whatever they're calling this,

and I swapped out my orange Nomad watch band for the dark green Nomad watch band, which I got with some other black watch, and I had it in the drawer. Love this combo. Dark green is my go-to now. Dark green and black, it just, it looks so good together. uh honestly i forgot what's new in the ultra 3 i haven't even started on those videos so better battery okay slightly smaller bezels and it has the better screen that the series 10 got last year which has better off-angle viewing viewing for the always on mode and the always on mode goes down to one hurt hurt uh so it can when is in always on mode the seconds will keep

ticking, which is nice. One what? Hertz? Hertz. One Hertz. So it... Right. Okay. So the screen only refreshes once every one second. Yeah. I did not understand that word. Which also applies to timers as well. If you, like, set timers with the always-on display, it would show, like, the minutes, and then there'd be, like, two dashes for the seconds previously, and now it just shows the seconds at all time, which is nice. So, yeah. Not an essential upgrade, in my opinion, but no I I wouldn't have if Apple didn't send me a review unit I would still be wearing the ultra 2

right now but Apple sent me a review unit so I'm going to put on the ultra 3 and and the black honestly the black could probably get me to just buy this because it looks really good I really like this it looks like it could be classy-ish like I have a wedding I'm going to and my mechanical watch broke unfortunately so I'm probably going to be wearing this to a wedding. And yeah, I think I could pull it off. Yeah, with the suit.

I think it'll look good with the suit. So, yeah. I also have the Series 11, but it's still in the box. I haven't touched it yet. It's a busy weekend. They sent me a lot of stuff. I'm a one-man army. I don't have time to get to everything. Yeah. But I do have it. I will do something with it at some point. My understanding is the Series 11 is the smallest of the upgrades. No new chip, no new features, really. It seems like basically the same thing, and then all the software things that we thought were new for it

are actually in the Series 10 and 9 as well. I don't know. Isn't it just like better battery life? There's one thing. Slightly better battery life, but they changed the measurements a little bit, so it's a little unclear on how much of an improvement it is. Yeah. I looked into this. I was going to write a scathing blog post about how Apple lied to me about the Ultra battery life change, but they didn't. So I didn't write the post. Because you got the Ultra as well, right? I got the Ultra as well. In part for the improved battery life.

So, yeah. But, yeah, it seems like it is legit. Yeah, I like it. I got it with the orange Alpine loop. I also got the black one. I had the titanium color before, which I really liked. And so I was a little worried about the black one not being as good, but I had to make it feel new. Yeah, the black one, yeah, you got to do that. That's what I used to do when, you know, it was the iPhone S years and stuff like that, is I would get the opposite color, so that way I filmed their front pod. Yeah, like, yeah, I really like this. But yeah, overall, I think this was a really good September upgrade cycle for Apple.

Like, I think Apple Watch is probably the thing that, like, is the most disappointing as far as the upgrades go. Oh, it's 5G. they got 5g that was the that was the thing oh yeah okay i whatever whoop-de-doo yeah okay um overall like apple watch aside the iphones irepods really good upgrade like if you're upgrading at all like you will probably be pretty happy with what you get uh but yeah i i will have a bunch of videos and stuff on on this stuff coming out but this is my like i've had a few days

with a bunch of devices, and I've literally just locked myself in here to work. I even had Formula One on an iPad in here because I was working while that was on. Yeah. I will say this is probably the largest gap from the quality of Apple's products released in September to the frustration I have with them on other matters. The gap has never been larger. Yeah. I won't go into details, but you can probably guess. Chris. Yes. Okay. So you love us. Yes. You will reserve for us the exclusivity of a band test.

No. But you will not do it on the iPhone Air. Okay. Because it's got titanium. We know now. It just snaps back. It's fine. The iPhone Pro, however, the 17 Pro, it's moved back to aluminum. And I think it's an interesting band test subject. I'm going to do it now. Look, Matt is trying to do it. I'll let Matt sacrifice his phone.

I'm not going to do that because they're well over $1,000, and I'm not going to. No. There's plenty of people on the internet that do bend tests and Blender tests and all that stuff. Let them do that. Matt has just broken his phone. It's bent. Oh, my gosh, Matt. Matt, what have you done? I think it's still okay. Yeah, our listeners were joking. Oh, that's right. Phew. Yeah, no, I'm really happy with it. And the orange.

The orange looks so good. Yeah. Right? Don't sleep on the blue. Matt is a traitor, ladies and gentlemen. Even though he said in the last episode that he was all over the orange and he bought the orange. I did. He was holding a blue phone. Yeah, I don't think I said it on air, but I did buy the orange phone and picked it up on Friday. And the moment I pulled it out of the box, I was like, oh, no, I don't think I'm an orange phone guy. And slept on it. And then Saturday, exchanged it for a new one.

Yeah. Sorry, Chris. You know what I'm just noticing is the orange iPhone is very similar to the orange action button on the Ultra Watch. Is this shot of you right now? Very weird. I was like trying to compare it for the camera, but I mean, I can't bend my arm that way. There we go. I don't know. Whatever. No, I'm not a very flexible person. All right. We should probably get to the challenge. It was your challenge this week. What did you have us do?

Oh, I, well, we had a short week in between recordings. So we had to do a nice, simple one. And I just wanted us to all find the best smartphone wallpaper that we could. So you could make one. You could just find one. Whatever you wanted. just a nice looking smartphone wallpaper and hopefully people will get a new wallpaper out of this as well yes so i can start please i went with a tried and true option uh which is one that

i get comments on every single time i post a screenshot with it in use uh it's from a collection called tap back uh which is like looks like 17 wallpapers and nine desktop wallpapers i will say the fidelity of the desktop wallpapers is pretty blurry on a big screen so i wouldn't use those but if you're using them for your phone they are so good uh the chapter art will be one of them here that i kind of prefer but there's this really nice one with this these green leaves that i think look

really good uh if you go to the link in the show notes and go to the wallpapers page on this guy's website there's actually like a halloween set as well if you want some spooky wallpapers I like the one that's purple with like a house on a hill I think it looks really cool but I guess the official one I'm bringing is this kind of mountainscape with a sun and a red sky behind it that I think looks really really nice and on the lock screen

the kind of background plays with the glass time which is really really cool so I think it's great I don't know how many times I've given out this link to people to check out but But yeah, it's pretty rad. So that's what I'm bringing. Nice. The Nemo one looks crazy. Oh, yeah, the Finding Nemo one. Yeah. Yeah, this looks good. Looks good. I like it. So for me, I knew I wanted to bring one that I made myself.

There's a lot of great wallpapers out there, but I wanted to make one myself. So I opened up Lightroom, and I went to the unedited photo tab. and literally went through all my photos that were unedited, and I found one that I was like, why have I not edited this? So if you go ahead and click on the wallpaper and lock screen image, and I'm sorry, Niléane, it's probably going to take forever for you to load. It's faxing in. It's faxing in. Okay, I don't know why CDN stuff. You're in France. I have no idea why it takes forever for you. It's fine. It takes forever for me, too. Oh, does it really?

Yeah. Okay, sorry. I don't know. I should figure out a better hosting thing. But anyways, so this image you will probably notice is bigger than the iPhone. Like if you look at the wallpaper one, the aspect ratio is bigger than any iPhone. And that's because I wanted people to be able to play around with it. But it is a mountain. It's over by a place called Bass Lake. It is a mountain right behind there. And there was some fog rolling in over the mountain. I edited so the trees were really dark green. The fog in the sky was very gray.

I wanted it to look good with dark mode is what was the whole point of it. So if you look at the example, you'll notice I have the big clock and the mountain is just covering the bottom of the clock part. Still legible, still able to tell what time it is, but, you know, it's covering it just a bit. And, like, the fog is in the background, the mountain is in the foreground, but then there's fog rolling over the mountain as well. Of course, there will be links in the show notes and chapter art and all that stuff. But I made the image bigger than what the iPhone is, specifically so people can play around with it.

If you don't want it to cover the clock, you don't have to have it cover the clock. There's a little bit of the lake at the bottom, so you can kind of see the lake. You can play around with it as much as you want. So I did make it a little bit bigger than the iPhone. But I really like how this turned out. I've been looking for a good dark green background. And I think this turned out kind of perfect for the gray sky with the clock in the background, the mountain, and then the widgets and stuff at the bottom pop. So I'm pretty happy with this.

I like it. Yeah, this is very, very nice. This looks vaguely like what Apple would do for one of their California wallpapers. This is California, right, you said? This is California. Yeah, it's about an hour and a half away from me. So nice. This looks really, really nice. Yeah, I really like it. Yeah. Yeah, and the link will be in the show notes so everyone can go and download it if they want. I made it so it's free. There's no paywall on this one. I almost submitted mine, but you already saw it, and I thought I would like...

Anyway, so mine is my current... I'm going to show you to the camera. This is this photo that I took a while ago that I edited. It's basically... It's a taken in Grenoble. It's just the snowy mountains in the background and some dead trees because it was taken in the middle of winter. But I did not go with this one. I selected a wallpaper that I loved for years.

It's a really old one. And I think it's really nice. I have put a link in the show notes. It's one wallpaper by Louis Mancia, the designer, well-known designer. They made a wallpaper that's called Bria Rose. And he published this wallpaper in 2007. So just a few months after the iPhone was revealed to the world, the original iPhone.

And yet, this is a 6K wallpaper. So it will be able to fit your phone screen just perfectly. You can crop it however you want. It works really nice on a big monitor at your desk, which is what I've been using it for. And basically, if you look at it, it's just the cosmos. It's an interpretation of the cosmos with some very nice saturated blue and violet tones and highlights here and there among the stars.

And the stars, they look, some of them are pinkish, some of them are blue. It's a really nice, pleasing starry sky kind of wallpaper that dates back to the original iPhone. And I thought that would be nice to bring. That is pretty cool. It's nice that it's in 6K. I mean, that can go studio display or even pro display XDR right there. That's fantastic. It looks really good. I like this. And it's not every day that you can find a wallpaper from 2007 that's this high resolution.

No, you cannot. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I like this. This was a good challenge, Matt. Yeah. Links to everything. Do iPhones. Everyone wants new wallpapers now. Exactly. Exactly. Links to everything in the description. I always see an uptick in wallpaper sales around this time. Oh, really? All right. Whose challenge is it next week? I have a new challenge for you. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm always terrified. And it's a sequel to a previous one.

Remember, I had you compete to sell me on a gadget, right? Uh-huh. This led to... Is this the $1,000 one? A thousand euros? Yeah, let's do the $1,000 one. Woo-hoo. This led to the advent of the MagSafe fan, right? Yeah. Which is still on my desk here. I was robbed. A great MagSafe fan. And Chris, you had your own iteration of this challenge, which led to the advent of the big ball, of course.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, which is right over there on. I can see it. It's on my charging table. Right. So I thought let's keep this going because this is changing our lives in big ways. And this sequel is Compete to Sell Me on an Ikea product, specifically under 50 euros. So you will have to dig through Ikea's catalog of small.

And, you know, they have a ton of these small things for the home, accessories, gadgets, whatever. Is there a particular theme you're looking for? Is it just anything in Ikea? Anything Ikea sells counts as long as it's under 50 euros. And it must be available on the French store. But I think that will work anyway. Okay.

All right. Okay. I have some ideas in which direction to go, but we'll see. You will have some time for this since we're recording early. We're recording for almost like two weeks. Yeah, almost two weeks. Yeah. Okay. A jungle skag or something, something like that. No, no. Please be original. Let's not copy a jungle. So I can't tell you to get two Alexa drawers and then the kitchen countertop thing and have a new desk. That's under $50?

No, but that's the... No, I was doing a bit because that's the desk setup every single YouTuber had in 2016. And it made desk setup videos really boring. Yeah, I don't know if IKEA has any full, like, big furniture over €50, but let's avoid that. Right. I don't need any new furniture. Okay. Small things. Let's skip to small things. All right. Well, that'll be fun to figure out. So that brings us to the end of the show.

But Niléane, you had the quiz for us. Yes. At the beginning of the show, since we don't have amnesia, any of us, we remember that I asked you to guess my iPhone SE 2020's battery health. The percentage battery health, I bought it in 2020, used it as my camera for over a year, always plugged in, essentially. And I just updated to iOS 26.

And it's funny because it's showing the demo using an iPhone, very modern iPhone, as the illustration. All right. So each of you, what are your guesses? what is the battery health percentage on this phone? How do we do this fairly? Maybe we text Neelian our answers? Yes. Individual text. Because you don't want to hear the other's answer.

Yeah. Okay, okay. Okay, so I'm going to text you mine. In the meantime, I will look up the number, And I have it. I'll do the Jeopardy music. Okay. I have both of your guesses. Okay. Okay. So closest wins. I have to calculate now. Oh, it's close.

Okay. Who's the closest? Should we say since we've submitted ours now, we can't change it. We should say ours. All right. Yeah, go ahead. I said 68. I said 82. Okay. Okay. Funny, 82 was my original one, but then I was like five years, a year always plugged in. But maybe a couple years not used at all. I don't know. Yeah. I was 82, then I said 72, then I was like, no, let's go into the 60s.

All right. The answer is 77%. And that means Matt is the closest with his guess, 82%. I went too aggressive. Yeah, too aggressive. So this phone... 72 would have been a perfect tie. Yeah. Wow. I know. I should have stuck with 72. Damn. 77%.

reveal at the beginning of the show because this would have given away too much, but this is going to be sent to Apple in a couple of days. I will have the battery replaced. Oh, okay. So there you go. This phone will live on. And I wonder if Apple support is as picky as it's been when you're sending in a cracked screen. um they might be yeah i know but i want to find out so we'll see yeah i i could see them being like well we don't want to send back a subpar product

or something like that saying something like that yeah but also i've read on reddit and other places that apparently now when it's just a battery replacement they're not as picky as they used to be. So I wanted to find out. Okay. That's good. Hopefully. Maybe you'll get some nice technician he'll just throw in a new screen while they're at it. That would be nice. Maybe. I will follow up. Cool. All right. Well, I have an end of the show question for you. Well, actually, a listener has an end of the show question for you. If you have a question for us, we always like to end the show with a question. Feel free to send it in. We have

a feedback form that's in the show notes, description, whatever. If you want to submit how you did with the challenge or topics or anything like that feel free right in we like hearing from you all we've got some great notes about comfy zone so far and uh it's great to hear that you all are enjoying it so that's been nice but this question is what's the favorite what what's your favorite lego set that you've ever built i know for me it's pretty easy but i have a close runner up so i have the ucs millennium falcon the the current one that that's i love that got it as a birthday thing sort of the paid part of it like

it was it was a big deal it's a very expensive set love that one that one was so much fun to put together but probably the close runner up is if you're looking at the video bower door behind me oh bower door bower door the tower bower door um that's a that was a pretty fun one to put together two i think my answer is the the no no no saturn five that's a good one rocket yes launcher whatever

and for me it's got to be the lord of the rings as well it's the rivendell set it has everything it's a thing that i love it looks beautiful it's got tons of different sort of building things you do. It's got little secrets here and there, little Easter eggs that Lord of the Rings fans will appreciate. It's great. Loved it. It took all summer last year to do. I'm having deja vu. We've talked about what our favorite LEGO set, or what our most recent LEGO set was, but we haven't talked about

what our favorite LEGO sets were. So you both have recency bias, is what you're saying? Probably, but I mean, look at that thing. Yeah, I don't want to talk about how many sets I've done since I built this one last summer. You can see a lot in this room. You can't see all of them, that's for sure. Our house, both me and Danielle are really into Legos. So our house is covered. Mine are in the living room. Yeah. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the show.

Thank you all so much for listening. Either of you have something you want to promote? I don't know. No. Take a week off reading my website and watch my YouTube channel. Don't worry about it this week. Go back and watch all of my YouTube videos. All of them. Watch all 400 and something. I don't even remember how many. I know it's in the 400s. Watch all of them. But yeah, no. Thank you all so much for listening. We really do appreciate it. And if you checked out Cozy Zone, we appreciate that as well.

Huge thank you to MacStories for having us. We are a MacStories podcast, after all. There's a ton of stuff on the website right now. I know we're recording early and this will go out later. but they have reviews of all the OSes, iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, VisionOS, WatchOS. I think the only one they didn't do is tvOS, but I don't really know if there's anything new in tvOS this year. I updated tvOS earlier this weekend, and, like, I don't get it. Oh, they did change it?

Well, there's just liquid glass now. Oh, it's very, very subtle. It's very subtle. Yeah, you have to notice it. Yeah. When they did the TVOS segment at WWDC, that was when Federico and I were, because I sat next to Federico, we were talking about other stuff. We totally kind of ignored that bit because we were not. TVOS, poor TVOS. There's one nice feature, which is now when you wake the Apple TV from sleep, they will show you the profile peeker.

Oh, that is nice. Every time. So it forces you to pick your profile. This is nice. I'm so going to enable that. Oh, my gosh. I think it's on by default. Yes. Okay, cool. I like that. Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for watching and listening. YouTuber and me. Hearing us. Hearing and listening to our vocal cords. And have a great day. Bye-bye. Bye.