When Did You Guys do That?!

Let's see if I can remember how to do this. 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 Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm back in my comfort zone, Chris. My Dr. Pepper detour has ended, and I'm back on my bubble water. No, the show's all about pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Except for me, I can always have Dr. Pepper. That's the actress.

You should drink like a Diet RC or something just to change it up. Is RC Cola even still around? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. If you drive, I live near Chicago. If I drive like an hour, hour or two south, it's all RC. Oh, I don't like that at all. We're also joined by Niléane. Niléane, how are you? I'm fine. And I, contrary to what UPS would say, I am home today. And this will... Oh, yes. I will talk about this in a moment.

All right. Let's get into some tiny topics, even though I see what the first thing is, because it's become a staple in the tiny topics. It's like our podcast within a podcast. Go ahead. Take it away. Yeah. Matt, you can hit it. What? What is happening? Oh, dear God. hello and welcome back to the browser podcast i am your co-host Niléane and i'm joined by matt hello matt your favorite i have no idea what they just did this was not this they what was that

yes sorry chris we're doing a show here so okay so welcome back to the browser podcast your weekly installment, a podcast within a podcast, where we talk all about web browsers. Right, Matt? Exactly. The greatest topic in the world. Yeah. So today, we've got a browser suggestion in a feedback form, which was a Helium browser. Have you heard about this, Matt? I have. I am using it as well.

Yeah. It's really fine. It's actually an open source, Chromium-based browser. with full support for Chrome extensions. And it's got no AI. And I think it's really nice. It actually looks a lot like Chrome, but very, very simple, very clean. Yeah, a little more space efficient. Everything's a little smaller. It doesn't have anything in particular that makes you go, oh, wow, look at this browser. But it's solid. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this was the browser podcast.

Hit it, Matt, for the outro. What is happening? I... I... What is happening? What is happening? The Blowser Podcast. Hosted by Matt Persuerva, Millian.

I have no... We're back to comfort zone now. What is happening? What did you guys do with that? Did you make that? Did you hire somebody? What happened? I don't know what you're talking about. For audio listeners, my jaw is literally like stuck open. I don't... They did not tell me. Okay. Wow. I guess this is a staple now and I'm just going to have to get used to it.

The browser podcast. Yeah. They didn't even tell me about the sunglasses thing. I felt so left out. I mean, you don't like browsers. You don't want to be included. I like browsers. I just can't use any other browser except Safari. Thank you, Apple. Okay. So now that we're out of the browser podcast and back to comfort zone, I do have a browser for you. Chris that was suggested by a listener as well. You can click the link in the show notes it's called a surprise Chris I saw this, I saw this, I did not click on it I just want everyone to know I did not click on it is a GitHub page for

what is this? This is a ARC browser clone for iPadOS and VisionOS It kind of looks terrible It kind of looks really bad but hey it's a browser for you those widgets are rough oh maybe they're not oh they're pages okay never mind uh yeah it's a little rough but wow this is actually kind of cool yeah so I'm guessing this is not on the app store

at all I would have to download this put this through xcode send it to my device I guess so oh there's a test flight never mind I just saw the test flight There is a test flight. Let's see if the test flight is full. Do you want to try it out and let us know next time? I will report back. It is installable. It is acceptable. Okay. I will use this. This is my promise to you all.

I will use this to the best of my abilities and report back next week. Okay. Well, we do have a segment where you can do that, so that's great. Yeah, we'll see if we can have you as a guest on the next Browser Podcast. Yeah, thank you. I'd be truly honored to be on the Browser Podcast podcast, even though I'm, yeah. I know. I'm just so impressed with you, too. I'm like, that was amazing.

I have no idea what happened there. That was fantastic. Shall we move on? Next up, last time I talked about my iPhone AC, you guys were rambling about your iPhone 17s, iPhone Airs and whatnot. And here, as a very down-to-earth person, I pulled up my iPhone AC from the drawer. It was broken up. I had you guess the battery health on it, which was at 77%.

And at the end of the show, I revealed that I would send it to Apple to get the battery replaced and see what they say and do about the display, which was cracked. And first off, it got sent back to me today. And UPS is a great company. Love UPS. Keep doing what you do. Yeah. I was home, by the way. I got a million notifications telling me I wasn't home.

I was home. Anyway, so I had to ride back and forth for 40 minutes to pick it up. And now it's here. And look at the display. Oh, you can see Matt's fixed. Oh, they fixed it. You can see Matt on the iPhone SE's display. So they fixed it. Not for free. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. Yeah, basically, they blackmailed me is what they did. Either we send it back and you get nothing, no new battery or anything, or you pay 200 additional euros and we fix the display for you.

Oh, wow. That's a lot. Hmm. Interesting. I did that and now it's fixed and brand new battery, brand new display. I don't know what I'm doing with this now, but it's fine. And it still got liquid glass. that's what's important right yeah you gotta have that liquid glass gotta have that very important what do you want legible interfaces come on home button I think the only place where I'm actually really getting frustrated with liquid glass

is the watch like notifications are unreadable on the watch and again it's not on the main Mac I use so I know it's time to let it go you keep complaining about liquid glass I know. It's like I'm the one that always brings it up on this show. You know, it's like we need a podcast within a podcast within a podcast about liquid glass. Yeah. I will get my guy to work on an intro for that. How are web browsers adopting liquid glass? That's really what we should be talking about. Yes.

All right. So I have a bit of news. Our Messiah, the comfort zone Messiah. What is it in Dune? Gliese al-Gaib or something like that? I don't remember. glisa al gaib glisa al gaib yeah sure that the bean now has a dog form so in the focus friend app there was a cat which was egregious that there was a cat form but no dog form and they have rectified this with a golden retriever

and there is one other but I immediately went for the golden retriever is the only in-app purchase other than like this subscription that I've done in this app. But as soon as I saw it, it's amazing. The dog is perfect. It is your best friend and our messiah. How could I disagree with any of that? What are we supposed to say? Just agree with me. Wait, does the dog replace the bean? Or is it? Yes. Oh. Yeah. So the dog, I mean, it's all the bean character.

It's just like their skin. You know, it's your Fortnite skins. It's getting your Darth Vader in your Fortnite is what it is, apparently, because that's a thing, I guess. When you said it's just the skin, I imagined just a dog's skin. Like a horror movie. That's why I immediately followed up with the dumb Fortnite joke because I didn't want people to think that. Really bad. Okay. Yep. And then another tiny topic thing, we had some feedback in our feedback form.

I wasn't going to put it in here, but then I saw it was about me being right about soccer and me constantly calling it soccer and not football. And I'm not going to even read the whole feedback thing because it's about soccer and I really just don't care. But it was about me being right, so I just wanted to point out I was right. Oh my God, it's real. Yes, it is real. I can see it in the form. Okay. Yep, it is. And I just wanted to point out I was right. What am I wrong? Oh, my God.

This comment is, well, actually, something has a real meaning anyway. Yeah, it went on a little too long. Whoever wrote it, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I saw it. I appreciate it. Thank you for pointing out that I was right, because really, we need more people pointing out that I'm right on this show, because these two gang up on me. Do we have an LLM filter on our feedback form? I don't know. John made it, not me. But sure, probably.

No, definitely not. Actually, no. There is a little bit of spam protection because you have to enter your email. You have to have an email address in order to do it. Because we didn't want people spamming it. And this week on Cozy Zone, we talk about our charger setups. And one of us, and I'm not going to say who, but one of us is a bit extra. Yeah. Yeah. And one of us has like two cables. that charges their entire life.

And one of them really needs to be replaced. Like, really needs to be replaced. I forgot about that. Yes, indeed. You'll never guess who is who. The two extreme ends of the spectrum are represented on Cozy Zone. Yeah. All right. You guys ready to get a main show? Yes. Chris, I've seen your topic, and I want you to make me spend some money. Convince me to spend some money. Yes, please. My goal is to make both of you spend some money. Okay. I actually think one of you will spend money on one thing, and the other one will spend money on another thing.

Ooh. So that's how I think it's going to go. So I have two things for you both today. I have here the Logitech MX Master 4, and the Logitech... Ooh, hang on. I need to turn this off, because it's going to do things when I pick it up. The Logitech Slim Solar. So these are the two new Logitech devices that came out. I think they came out the recording of this week, but I was on vacation, so I didn't get to finish my video about all this stuff.

Let's start with the MX Master 4. So the big thing is it's kind of got very similar design to the 3S. You know, you can see here if you're a video viewer. Very similar design to the 3S. I think it's a little longer than the 3S. Like, it's a little more, like, if you were to take it, like, stretched out a little bit. But it feels really good in the hand. The big thing, there's a few big things with this one. But the big deal is, so this button right here on the side where your thumb goes.

Kind of that little, like, plank, that ledge, whatever it is. This button right here no longer does all the multitasking stuff. This brings up a new action ring. And this action ring is a ring of three, six, eight options in here. And what this is, is different things you can program. So you can program opening play pause. You can open applications. So like I have it set up to shortcuts for opening finder and chat GPT.

There's shortcuts for like creating shortcuts or opening the emoji picker. But you can also add like keyboard shortcuts to this as well. So I have one that is my HyperKey T, which brings up my new task feature in Todoist that brings up that new task window. And then I have another one that triggers a series of keyboard shortcuts that brings up the new note action or essentially the new Obsidian Quick Note thing through Raycast.

So what this does is it's kind of cool. So if I open up Logitech Options, it has a series of things. So it triggers a keyboard shortcut that is just command space. Then it pastes text, which says create note. Then it hits int return. And then, yeah, and then it hits return. And just basically gives me the ability to fill out a note right there for Obsidian. So there's some really cool things this ring can do. There's a ton of stuff in here. I mean, there's media controls.

There's open applications, open files, web pages. You can navigate through the system. You can change brightness. You can do mouse clicks. You can do keyboard shortcuts, paste text. You can add, like, the date, time, the moon phase, which, okay, I don't know why anyone would need that, but whatever. There's all sorts of widgets and multiple actions. There's a ton of stuff that you can do with this action ring.

Plus, you can install profiles for different apps. So I have the Lightroom one and the Photoshop one. So in the Lightroom one, I can quickly adjust exposures, shadows, black levels, highlights, whites, tense, temperature, contrast. And the Photoshop one, I could do brightness, contrast, exposure, value, vibrance, hue and saturation, hue, black and white, and some other stuff. I didn't really change the defaults there, but you can if you want to.

So that's kind of the action ring. And it's really kind of useful. Like, I really like it. You have to have the Logitech option software in order to use it. And that is fine. It's not great, but it's fine. Yeah. But basically, this is like keyboard shortcuts for the mouse. Like, it's like the hyper key, but for the mouse. Kind of cool.

There is another third button. So right where there's the forward and back buttons, there's another third button on the mx master 4 and this is your multitasking button now so what the plank ledge button used to do that's what this button does so you can open up uh mission control you can open up expose like you can do all that kind of stuff from here and it's all gesture based so you can like swipe you can do like uh you hold down the button and move to the right and it'll go to the next or it'll go to the previous space if you hold down the button and move to the left

it goes to the next space so like you're kind of pulling the page uh so that's kind of cool especially if you use uh um spaces thank you i literally could not think of that um so that's cool it also has haptics built into it and the haptics feel good so when i very interesting yes so when i was just jumping between spaces i felt the haptics when you hit the action button and you move around the ring you feel the haptics of like where you are in the ring like it's actually kind of cool like the haptics feel really on a scale from nokia uh 33 whatever to

iphone iphone taptic engine where is it closer to the iphone haptic engine it actually feels really good okay that's good yeah i i like it's not even like when i noticed it i was like oh is this gonna be something i want to turn off and i haven't even looked to see if there is a setting to turn it off i like it that much uh the mouse itself it's an mx master mouse of course it feels really good in your hand there's the normal scroll wheel like you can click the button and it goes to the ratchet like slow scroll you can click the button again you get the free flowing there is the side scroll as well um it's quiet like the mx3s so i'll put it next to the mic

can't hear anything no we can't even hear it yeah it's quiet just like the 3s uh has usbc charging in the front so you can charge and use it at the same time uh one minute of charging gets you three hours of battery it is so stupid that we even need to mention that you can charge your mouse at the same time as a plus because there is one mouse in the world that makes us say that statement. And it's been around since like 2012 or something like that. It has been around for so long that you would think Apple would have redesigned it. It's more than a decade.

It's actually better this way, Chris. It's actually good for you to not be able to do it. Because it forces you to take a break and really step away from work. It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of something critical. For the record, it's not a deal breaker. I understand if you're fine with it. It's okay. But it is not a good thing. And it will be nice when they fix it. If they fix it. Oh, God. They'll never fix it. They will. I don't know. Maybe. I'm making a call. Someday they will discontinue the magic mouse. Uh-huh. And that's it. No replacement.

Ooh. They'll just sell Logitech's mice on the Apple Store. Interesting. And it'll be a trackpad and a keyboard that they make. They won't make a mouse. Yeah. Yeah. That's my call. I also could see that. I could see it, too. Just because of all the gestures and stuff that are built Like Apple clearly, like on the iPad, they think, you know, trackpad first. On the Mac, it very much trackpad first. So, yeah, I could see that. Okay. I've got a question about the actions ring. Okay.

The button, the action rings, but actions ring, right? Yes. Does that have to be mapped to the actions ring? Can it be mapped to anything else? I believe you can reprogram it. Let me pull up the action rings button here. Yes, you can remap it to, so there's action ring, mission control, show high desktop, screen capture, switch application, keyboard shortcut, spotlight effect.

You can also have it do AI action, so open AI prompt builder or open chat GPT. You can create a smart action, And there's a whole bunch of other actions. Yeah, it's the full range of... Yeah, and then basically anything that you can add to the action ring, you could add to basically be the single click instead of the action ring. So yes, there's a lot you can do with it. Stupid question, similar thing. Can you remap other buttons to the action ring?

Oh, yeah. The third button on the side, could I make that the action ring? I'm pretty sure you can. Yes, you can. You can already use the action ring with your MX3S. Oh, okay. I did not know that. That's already a feature. I'm pretty sure. I did not know that because that's like the big deal with this one. I'm kind of surprised they added that. Which is why I was surprised to see it as like featured as a... Yeah, when I got my briefing, they definitely did not mention that.

they definitely made it seem like this is the big deal with the mx master 4 is this like how the airpods 3 airpods pro 3 have the translation feature but also the airpods do have it don't worry yeah like like i think it's one of the things is like hey the mx master 4 can do this and asterisk asterisk asterisk do not look at the very tiny print that we didn't send you of the mx master 3s can do that well because on the 3s like they've got that button already on this kind of like where your thumb sits. Yeah. And I never use it. I actually have it turned off.

Me either. It's because it's so hard to push and it's like a lot of pressure. I'm guessing the haptic one is easier to press or is it on the bottom you press? Can you push on the side a little more? So I just turned this off. It's just like the Magic Trackpad. It's not technically a button. It's a haptic thing. So it's really easy to press but not accidentally press. It's just like the Magic Trackpad. It doesn't actually move, but there's haptics that make it feel like it's moving. But if you turn it off, just like the Magic Trackpad, and you try and push it, it doesn't really do anything.

There's no button click. It's all haptics. Okay. That sounds like a good button for the gestures. Yeah. You know, you can map it to the gestures. I actually like this third button as the gesture button because I can just push it down, and then I can swipe to the side to move spaces or just click it to get to expose or mission control. Yeah, I like the default setup of this. Yeah. I'm curious, Matt.

How do you set up your MX Master? Oh, God, I'm so boring. Literally the default for everything. I think I have the side scroll direction reversed because I think whatever they do by default doesn't make sense to my brain so I always try to do the other thing I think I did that too I have the side little thing little touchpad or not whatever presspad disabled and I have the thumb button the thumb button disabled and then the wheel I have just free

free spinning oh that's wild okay yeah I have the wheel free spinning too Oh, you guys are wild. A thousand miles an hour all the time. Yeah, just like that thing. How do you control stuff with the free spinning? No, it's because it goes so slow because I can go like tiny amounts and I don't have to do like the full like clicks or whatever like you get with the... And it's got too much momentum, doesn't it? No? Yes, it does. And that's good, I guess. I like the free scrolling. I will click the button and do the ratchet sometimes so that like it is like if I need something really detailed, I will do that.

But for the most part, I do free scrolling. Yeah. On my Windows computer, because you can pair it to three devices, which I assume you can still do. Yes. There are the same three buttons on the bottom. The classic Logitech. When I have it paired to my Windows computer, that's preset one on this. And on Windows, I have it ratchet by default, because Windows is insane. Oh, God. The way they handle scrolling, it's too fast. It's uncontrollable. So you've got to have the ratchet by default. Yeah. I used to use the... was the MX, maybe it was the MX Master 2, maybe it was the 3 back in my IT days, but it was probably the 2, and I did the same thing.

When it was paired to my Mac, it was free-scrolling Windows, it was Ratchet. Yeah. I have a question about the materials. Okay. So, my favorite thing about this, and my least favorite thing about the 3S, is the material on the top. It's kind of this soft-touch, plasticky, rubbery kind of feeling thing, which is great, but it also absorbs every single oil from my hands and like every few months i have to like really scrub it to clean it up so i'm curious what this is like so it's plasticky but it's more plastic and it's kind of textured so it actually feels really good in your hand i don't think you're

gonna have that same issue like it feels more like the uh click click buttons area uh like it It feels kind of like that. Like it feels, it is plastic. It definitely feels like plastic. But it's not like a material texture fabric kind of thing that's going to absorb hand oil. Okay. That's good. And are the buttons like frosted something? Like they look, in some of the pictures they look like fancy. Yeah. So the buttons, it's not going to show up in the video, but like the click buttons are kind of this clear like this they have this level of like clear plastic and then like this gray layer

underneath so if you look at the very edge it's almost kind of like this dark-ish see-through plastic honestly i didn't really notice it at first so it's not that big of a deal but yeah it is kind of like that yeah okay one i'm kind of sad about the material So I kind of want the rubbery thing. So the rubbery part is still on the thumb bit. Like where your thumb goes, that's still very rubbery.

But the other parts, oh, and on the right side too. The right side, like kind of where your pinky goes, that's still rubbery as well. So where your thumb and your pinky go, that's still rubbery. Where your palm and your pointer and middle finger go, Those are still, that's very much plastic. Okay. Okay. I have one more question about the design. Okay. How much RGB is there? Oh, God. None. Thank Jesus there isn't. Okay.

Okay. Well, it's good to know. Yeah. No. There is no RGB on this whatsoever. In fact, they very much pitched this as an enterprise solution. You're going to buy a hundred of these for your office kind of thing. So I don't think you'll ever see RGB on an MX Master. Okay. What kind of rich company buys 100 of these? You would be surprised. Oh, boy. Yeah, you would be surprised. Everywhere I've worked is like, why isn't the Dell mouse that came with your desktop good enough?

Yes, exactly. Okay. The last place I worked, everyone got the freebie mouse except me. My company credit card bought me an MX Master 2 and probably an MX Master 3 as well. It might even be the 3S. That's in my drawer. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if I bought that or not. No, Logitech sent me that. Never mind. Logitech sent me that one. All right. So any other questions on the MX Master 4 or should we move on to the keyboard? Let's do the keyboard. Okay. So this is the Logitech Slim Solar DK something, something, KBD, GT.

I don't know. Whatever. I hate just about everything about this keyboard. I love the MX Master 4. I hate everything about this. And this is exactly why I think Neelion will like it. Everything I like about keyboards is not in this keyboard. And everything I hate about keyboards is in this keyboard. So let's start off with the keys. They feel mushy. They feel like the Magic Keyboard. They feel like that mushy, membrane, cruddy, like not great to type on.

I used this for a bit to work on a script, and I could not wait to be done with it. Like, it just felt bad. It's also the extended layout. So you'll notice there's a number pad. That's the only option. Like, it's the full size. It's ridiculous. It is way too big. I do not need the number pad. I do not want a keyboard that's, you know, having me to go to Boston in order to reach my mouse. Like, it's ridiculous. I never understood why, because most people in the world are right-handed.

I'm sorry, this is going to make some lefties mad. Most people in the world are right-handed. I never understood why they didn't put the number pad on the left side so that your mouse could be close to the keyboard. Because then, like, if the number pad was on the left side, your mouse wouldn't be super far away. Yeah, I don't know. But ergonomically speaking, I think it's better if your arms are more apart than closer together. I don't know. I like my mouse close to my keyboard. I have a few accountant friends, and they swear by the number pad.

And I think they're just used to going, like, going crazy on it. When I was a consultant, I did IT work for some accounting firms. And all of them required their keyboards to have number pads because they just live off this. Like, they can just boom, boom, boom, boom. And, like, watching them go was mesmerizing. It was very impressive. So accountants, I literally think, are the only people that use the number pad. Accountants and people that work off of After Effects. After Effects, the number pad is really handy.

Oh, interesting. Okay. I forgot about After Effects. Okay. So also some of the keys are completely oversized. So I'm going to try and hold this up here and see if it focuses. Do you see how big that escape key is? That is ridiculous. Why is it that big? Who needs an escape key that big? I love it. Gotta escape. I use escape all the time. I'm one of the people who when the MacBook Pros removed the escape key, I was like, how would I even live? This doesn't make any sense.

I was jumping for joy when the magic keyboard for the iPad added the escape key. Also, look at this control key. It's not, it's not, it's got like a chunk taken out of it. No other keys have that. Oh, that key does. So these two keys have, like, why did you do that? Just like the Magic Keyboard, Chris. I think the Magic Keyboard does that too. Oh, that's terrible. That's disgusting. The newer ones do, yeah. That's disgusting. Okay, so there are a couple of things I do like about this keyboard.

There is no USB-C port on this or USB port of any type. And you're like, how do I charge it? Well, you might have seen in the name that it says solar. There is the solar panel bar right up here. And that is the only way to charge this keyboard. That is it. So if you live in a hole, this probably won't work great for you. But what's kind of cool about this is it's not just the sun that charges the battery. It's also desk lamps and maybe filming lamps and stuff like that. And I have put this to the test. I, like, closed off the blinds, put this under my desk lamp, and it did charge up the battery.

So it works. And, like, where this would be, it would just constantly be recharging it. Like, it wouldn't be an issue on my desk, except this will never go back on my main desk whatsoever. I'll get to that in a minute. But I do like that. Like, I actually think that's a very novel feature. There's no batteries. There's no lightning cable or USB-C cable you need to plug in. You don't need to flip the thing over and plug it in at the bottom and go take a, you know, coffee break while it charges. And you can't use it. Seriously, Apple, come on.

What are you doing? So there's literally no plug. You can't use this in a wired mode either. No, there's literally no plug. This right here is the on-off switch, but there is nothing else. There is no, there is nothing. Not even a pairing port or anything like that. Maintenance port, nothing. It is literally wireless, and that is it. In classic Logitech fashion, you can pair it to multiple computers. If you install the Logitech options thing, there's a couple of programmable buttons.

There's a bunch of function key buttons and shortcut buttons and stuff like that that are nice. I should note, this is the one for Mac. This is specifically the one for Mac. So it has just the command, the control, the option key. If you get the one, like the regular one, it does the stupid thing of like, oh, half the key, like the symbols on the key is like half the key says Windows key. The other half says command key and stuff like that. But when they were going to send this to me, I specifically asked for the Mac version.

I also did the same thing for the MX Master 4, but they sent me the regular one for that. But the regular one seems to work just fine. I don't know what the difference between the MX Master 4 and the MX Master 4 for Mac is. I really don't. I think the difference, I looked it up, is that you don't get a dongle with the Mac version. Oh, you don't. Yeah, it's just Bluetooth. That's annoying. Which is very weird because they're the same price and just get one less thing in the box.

To be fair, I don't think that dongle costs them very much to make. I don't think that's the expensive piece of that. That's a big value, though. I would 100% buy the non-Mac version then to get that. That's more reliable for me than just a Bluetooth connection. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. But, okay, so other than that, the solar keyboard is immediately going in my giveaway pile of like, hey, person came over to my house. This is stuff I get via my work.

Do you want any of this? Because keys are mushy. It doesn't feel good to type on. It's too big. It is not a mechanical keyboard. I just don't enjoy using this, which is exactly why I think Nelian will like it. You know what? I don't think so. Oh, interesting. Okay. I kind of agree with a lot of your points. The numpad is crazy. I don't understand why people want it.

Actually, there's a French bias here. Can you guess what it is? Oh, the 7 doesn't have the dash through it, so it's not the proper 7. We don't have the dash through the 7 on, like, computer. It's handwritten only. Oh, okay. No, it's got to do with the French layout, keyboard layout. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, on a French, let me show you my keyboard, on French keyboard layout. As you know, in French, we have lots of accents on letters and special characters and that.

All of those are on the number row. Oh. And as a result, the number row isn't actually a number row, first and foremost. it's a special character row. Like, the numbers are not the primary characters that you get when you type those keys. That is interesting. You type the 2 key to get the A, the E with an accent. But if you want the number 2, you have to press shift to get it.

I think in that case, I would want a number pad. Which is why lots of French people, they absolutely love a number pad. But my response to that is that it's just fine to press shift to get the numbers. I mean, I'm okay with that. I've always done that. But yeah, French people, they love the number rose because of this. Anyway, so that's a problem for me. And the second problem is I don't like the look of it. It looks... It doesn't look very premium. It literally looks like it's going to belong on a desk at an accounting firm. Yeah.

I believe since this is the Mac one, it comes in gray, and I believe the regular one is like this white. I don't see a white. I'm looking at the regular one. I don't see a white color. Oh, maybe not. Maybe I got that mistake. What you might be thinking of is the exact version of this keyboard they made 15 years ago. That's what it was. That's what it was. Yeah. They showed that in the briefing. Which was, by my recollection, like a $30 or $50 keyboard. It was definitely cheaper because I was so poor and I was able to get it.

But it was really nice never having to think about charging your keyboard. Although I think this one's better. The one I had, again, 15 years ago, you did need the sun. It did require the sun. The whole claim to fame for this one is you don't need the sun. Any light source will do. So in your accounting firm, the fluorescent lights that are right above you, stealing your soul, we'll charge your keyboard. Sorry if I've gotten anything wrong. My briefing on this stuff was weeks ago.

I've literally had this for weeks. This is the longest I've ever had a pre-release product. They literally sent this to me, and I had like three weeks with it. But it was like the weeks of iPadOS, iPhones, vacation. So I was like, yeah, I'm not going to have time to make videos on these. So I'll do something with them eventually on the channel. But if I did get anything wrong, I apologize. My briefing was a while ago, and I have since had vacation brain. All right. Matt, what do you got for us this week?

So I wanted to go back through the history of comfort zone. This is episode 70. We've been doing this a little bit, and we've done a challenge. Every single week minus like twice, I think. And now we have a child podcast. We do. We have multiple children podcasts. Yeah. So I wanted to go through some of the challenges. So the whole concept of this show is that we will challenge each other to step outside our comfort zone, try new things.

And I was wondering, do we actually stick with anything that we tried in the challenge? and I did not feel bold enough to go through the things you two have done. If you'd like to add some delightful finds you found doing challenges, feel free to jump in. But I found a few from episodes past that I am still using and wanted to give them a shout out. So I am going to start with my favorite thing I've ever brought, I think, to the challenge, which is in episode four

when I brought an app called Spirit Talker, which is an app for talking to ghosts. I'm making it cold. I remember that. I 100% remember this, and this would not be the thing that I expected you to still be using. So, guys, it has gotten weird in this house. It is October. It's spooky season, and no, I actually had totally forgot. I had expunged this from my brain. I forgot this was even existed. Making it cold. It's engraved in mine.

Actually, I've done a few phone restores. I wonder if it's still on here. Oh, so you're not still using it. No, I'm not still using it. This is a joke. This is humor. Oh. The other one I'm not doing anymore because there were a few total whiffs. The other one I'm definitely not using was episode eight where I took a work meeting from the Vision Pro. Oh, I would love it if you were still using that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. never doing that again what am i my problem is most of my meetings are with apple and if i did that they would be excited no i wouldn't get the reaction like you would get off your meetings

yeah um but a few things i have stuck with um the most recent one that i found and the one that i think is the most surprising and relevant to what we just talked about is in episode 66 i brought a Razer gaming mouse. And I'll be honest, it's stayed. I mean, it's only been four weeks, but it has stayed as my mouse. I've had the MX Master just off to the side. Now the MX Master feels heavy to me. It feels big to me. Like it's, I don't know.

Something's changed in me. I don't know what happened, but I kind of like this loud, garish mouse. I don't know. You got to be able to 360 nose cut, bro. I'm 360 no-scoping so much. You're spending your nights on League of Legends, probably. Yeah. Well, you can't 360 no-scope with an MX Master. You're right. It's too heavy. This is meant for precision. Yeah. Not. I tried a 360 no-scope and a spreadsheet opens.

It's crazy. I don't understand. You hit that action ring and all of a sudden chat GPT is, you know, being like you're terrible at Fortnite. You need this Darth Vader skin. So another thing that I did for a challenge was we had an automation challenge in episode 20. So going back a ways, a year almost at this point. And my automation was basically I changed the font size of my phone based on time of day. So way late at night, like at like two in the morning when I'm definitely asleep, it will raise the font size a little bit.

And it will lower it back down at 6 a.m. when I'm definitely out of bed. So basically when I wake up and I'm like, like fumbling for my phone, I need to like check something. All the text is a little bigger and my still waking up eyes can see stuff and read things more easily, which is a really nice quality of life thing that I did not expect, but it's stuck. I'm also still using my sidekick notepad. Oh, you are. I am. I'm also, and I don't remember what this is called.

This is the other one they did. The pocket thing? Is that pocket? No, is that not a name? It's kind of the like pocket sized. It must be the pocket. I'll put a link in the description to what this actually is. But this is the other one from Cortex brand, the CGP Grey, my curly thing. I like this. I don't think I can really show anything on camera, but I like having it to just write a couple things down that I just need to keep in mind. I have things that I'm planning to do at work in 2026, and it's just nice to have a place to look at that that's not a computer.

So I dig it. I don't use it for everything, but it's fun. One more is the endgame keyboard. There was a challenge for us to bring our endgame keyboard. You're right. And I brought the mode Envoy, which remains my endgame. I love this keyboard. It's so nice. I think that I love that I was able to customize it exactly. So I have this forest green as kind of the body color. I have a copper accent here and here.

I have exactly the feet colors that I wanted. The switches in here are perfect. They're the best I've ever had. It's great. No number pad. It's a 60% keyboard, I think. So no function row either, which is a little annoying sometimes, especially again on Windows. but you get used to it. And I love it. It's so, so nice. I have not bought another keyboard since I got this keyboard. Nice. And I was buying keyboards pretty frequently back then.

So, Chris, I hate to say it, you were right. That is, it was the keyboard. I haven't been buying keyboards lately, but that's for a whole different reason. Tariffs are fun, right? oh yes yeah no price of everything has just gone through the roof um i'll do a couple other equipment's quickly uh projects is an obsidian plugin that basically lets you create a kanban board uh which i still use to manage my youtube channel uh pusmo is still my a daily game that i play every single day i play the crossword i play the word games i play the sudoku game it's great

I still use the United app I'll be flying in a couple days And will be flying United And really enjoy the app I still use Ghost to host my blog And I still use my camera And I still use the same photographic style That I picked last year When they made them really nice For the iPhone 16 lineup I use the adjusted amber Photographic style And it's great I don't even think about it And I just think my phone photos look Pretty nice Nice That's awesome I like this idea of revisiting this and just seeing what we're still using.

When you told us about this, I went through some of our documents. I did not have time to go through 69 episodes, but I went through some of them and just kind of pulled out some highlights. We did an accessibility challenge about use an accessibility feature, and the highlight around the iPadOS cursor is something I still use because the iPadOS cursor with a dark background is easy to lose. And just adding like a white highlight around it makes it pop a little bit. That was probably the challenge? Yeah, I believe that was your challenge was do use an accessibility feature.

Okay. I remember. Yeah. And then I had a challenge that was do something new with your iPad. And part of that was I used the Obsidian Web Clipper. Still using that almost every day. Love that feature. Neelion had a challenge that was downgrade your audio setup, and I used the earbuds, which they sound terrible, but they're really great to pair with the Nintendo Switch when I'm just laying in bed, and I don't want to mess with Bluetooth stuff, and I just quickly want to play a game or something. That's great.

I think this was my challenge. Figure out a new way of quickly capturing notes, and I did the capture cut shortcut with the use model action. Still using that. That's really handy. Basically, it just adds tags and filters things for me. I believe another challenge I did was an Obsidian plugin, like find a new Obsidian plugin, and I use the Home tab plugin. Still use that every single day. Really, really handy. Matt, you mentioned your daily game challenge. I'm not playing the same daily game.

I have a new one. It is on Apple Arcade, and it's this is Jeopardy! I have so much fun with this. I love this game. I play it every single day. Absolutely love it. I am really good at it to the point where I'm wondering if I should actually take the Jeopardy test for the show. I kind of want to. This is white male confidence if I've ever seen it. I know, right? 100%. 100%. Am I the smartest person?

No, no. I didn't say I'm the smartest person. I'm just wondering if I'm smart enough to qualify for Jeopardy. I mean, I say give it a shot. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I don't qualify. I mean, that's literally the worst that can happen. Oh, it's called Jeopardy Daily. Okay, I'm downloading it now. Yeah, it's so much fun. I absolutely love it. Like every day there is three categories you go through, and then there's a daily double where you can risk points. And then after, I think it's like four or five days, there's a final Jeopardy, and you can risk a lot of points.

And those questions are quite hard. But I've got quite a few of them, And like, I'm actually really enjoying it. And there's a game center stuff. So if you go into the games app, you can see where you rank with people and stuff like that. And I was ranked fairly high recently. Okay. And then the last one I pulled was the automation challenge. And that was my on air sign that I use kind of tied with my focus mode. So when I go into filming focus, which I'm in right now, my on air sign automatically turns on, letting everyone know in the house, please do not come in here.

You would think they would follow that, but they don't. Has it been ineffective? Yes. Okay. I still like it. It's effective for one person, but another person... Okay. Yep, yep. And that's all I'm going to say. I'll let you fill in the blanks there. But yeah, I like this. That's kind of the ones I was able to pull. Oh, and the most recent challenge, new wallpaper. I'm still using my wallpaper that I made.

But you might notice it's on a different phone now. It's on the iPhone 17 Pro Max in the best color, despite what my other two co-hosts think, the Cosmic Orange, because I'm testing this phone now for videos. I have pulled just one. It is the one from episode 40 of Comfort Zone. And this is the one that I said at the time, it was a challenge that escalated quickly because it led me to buy a new iPhone.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The challenge was find an alternative to one of your staple apps. And it must be a new app to you. And my choice was to find an alternative to Apple Music. And I went toward Doppler. And this has led me into a rabbit hole where I wanted to go all in on my offline music library again. And for this, I needed to upgrade my phone to a higher storage tier.

I got a 512 gigabyte phone, the iPhone 16 Pro. And yeah, I think very successful challenge. Especially if it got you to spend money. All right. I like this. This was great. Anything else on this or should we move on to the challenge? No, that was just a little mini topic. A little look back. That's nice. All right. Well, the challenge this week, I believe it was New Leons. What did you have us do? I had us do a sequel to a series of challenges now, which is compete to sell me on an IKEA product under 50 euros.

So funny thing is I went to Ikea this week before we recorded. So I had to guess what you... No, sorry. It's a joke. But I will go again. It's okay. What are your submission, boys? Okay. Well, I am dropping in... So the rule is less than 50 euro. Euro, yes. Okay. It's the money that we use in some European countries.

Okay. So not Switzerland. Okay. So what I have done, I have... Not Sweden either. Oh, my God. I've taken a swing. Oh, my God. So I am presenting the... Okay, I just clicked it. The Hostuloda lamp. It is a USB-C lamp that is on a little curly, looks like bendy, kind of arranged however you want. little arm and you can plug it into your laptop and light up your keyboard. You can have it plugged into a battery bank and hold it while you read. And what I like most about this

is it is one euro and 49 whatever parts of a euro are. I mean, cents. Are they cents? Okay. 49 is the price. So it is well under budget. You could buy a lot of these if you wanted to spend the full 50. But this is a new item. It's a hot item. You might want to get it before it sells out. It does say it's new. Okay. And I also, just for the record, I did search specifically the French IKEA site to make sure that was available.

Appreciate it. For you. And the price was right. I honestly, I don't even, we don't even need to do the rest of the segment. I assume I have already won with this innovative pick. Yeah. Okay. You can plug it into your phone and then you could like brighten your phone. I suggest that Chris, Chris, what I'm saying? Chris, you reveal yours and you can fight it out, I guess. Okay. All right. I just added the France link to the show notes.

So you can click on that if you want. So yours is gold? The Vatten car? I don't know. Vatten car. Okay. So I took a look. I went back. I went to Cozy Zone, episode one, and looked at Neilion's death setup. And I was like, I'm Neilion. I'm young. I'm hip. I like yellow. I like oranges. I listen to music. I listen. I'm just so cool. I'm just so cool. What do I need at my desk?

And I noticed you didn't have one thing, and it's a monitor stand. Now, what I liked about this particular monitor stand is that it has different levels to it. So you can do kind of what I do and keep your monitor on your desk and put this in front of your monitor and use this as shelving to, like, organize things or display fun things or things like that. This is kind of like an interesting, you know, like, you know, way to kind of like, you know, display things.

Spice up your desk setup. You know, monitor stands don't look great. No monitor stand outside of Apple monitor stands look good. Like, they all look very gamery bro or enterprisey bro. They're going to look bro-ish. So this, I thought, would be an interesting way to kind of like give you a way to personalize that space and like make it your own. So, yeah, that's what I got. it's a monitor stand and it's 1999 euros no it's not is it not 19 I'm not on the French website I added the French one

it's like significantly cheaper in euros than it is in American dollars for some reason maybe it's got to do with the president before we make you make your choice I will say, if you want to stay under budget, you could buy the stand and 20 of my lights. Oh my God, please do that. Okay, so I will go through both. The lamp is interesting.

It's a very small thing. And I don't even know what I would do with this. maybe give it to my partner and then they would forget it exists but it looks it looks funny and it's very cheap, no risk no risk you could steal it, they wouldn't even stop you yeah, whatever on the other hand, Chris, the Vatten car monitor stand I do like this and I've seen it multiple times before in the store and always thought, do I need this?

Maybe I don't. I think you do. And I have a problem, which is like I'm a small person and my monitor is pretty big. It's 30 inch. Okay. And I don't have a lot of depth here, right? I don't need this monitor to be higher. It's the perfect height right now. That's why I picked this one because you can do what I do with the monitor stand and leave the stand sitting on your desk and just put this in front of your monitor.

So if you look at like the photo of my, like my monitor is not actually on my monitor stand. My monitor stand is in front of the actual stand part. So that way I can put decor stuff and make it look nice. Yeah, but the thing is, I think this would like eat too much space on my desk, right? And if you go to the Cozy Zone episode one and look at my desk setup, I already have like very specific containers on my desk to put stuff in,

including a bunch of cables and all that. And I think this would prevent me from keeping those containers on my desk. Hmm. Yeah. Did you see that it also separates, though? Yeah, I can see that. Okay. I mean, it's only 10. So it's 10 inches deep, 26 centimeters deep. 26 centimeters. Do you have a tape measure?

No, I know that by hand. I have. Okay. All right. I have measuring eyes. Okay. I think... Okay, let me grab a measuring tape. Oh, is that one handy, of course? You gotta. I literally have one right in that closet right there. Yeah, okay. I know exactly where it's at. Unless Daniel steals it. 26 centimeters deep. Yeah, 26 centimeters deep.

Look at this tape. It's got your weird inches on the back and the centimeters in the front. I don't know what you mean by weird. It makes way more sense. No, not at all. 26 centimeters is huge. Yeah, not happening. No. I think this is eating way too much space. I think I'm getting a USB-C lamp. Oh, I thought I had this in the bag.

I was like looking at your desk. I was like, what could she need? I kind of want to make this work because the USB-C lamp is just so useless. Thank you. Remember when I proposed a USB-C fan and you were like, what an achievement. What a treat. because but like i'm measuring right now yeah i don't think so i don't think so i thought i had this you know that my monitor

stand is weird because it's not all the way to the back of the foot of the stand so if I do what you say and have the monitor like behind it it would be even even further from the wall like and it's even more space than needed yeah yeah I don't think this works oh boy I thought I had this and you know I'm in your camp Chris I don't want to share the USB-C lamp.

It's stupid. What are you going to actually use it for? Come on. Honestly, this is violence. Right. He's just making me buy useless stuff. He's forcing you to waste almost $2 or €2 on something. What are you going to use it for? My thing has practicality. It could spice up your desk setup, give you places to display your little knickknacks and Legos and things like that. I know, I know. But how would you see them if you couldn't light them?

You're aware that I have a light bar and a key light and LEDs all over the place. What if you want to leave the desk? What if you want to light things elsewhere? She has lights in her house. How would you charge your keyboard? What? Chris's keyboard. All right, okay. I guess I could plug the lamp into the keyboard's USB-C cable. Yeah. Do you have a free USB-C cable? Wait, does that do power out?

Maybe. Tune in next week to find out. Oh, my God. You know Ikea's 20-minute drive. I will drive all the way. Oh, you're actually going to go there? You're not going to just order it online? It's probably expensive to ship. Yeah, Ikea is weird with shipping. Don't you know that? Oh my gosh. The shipping is going to be more expensive than the $1. Ikea, they want you to spend so much money just to ship your things.

It's crazy. So I will go there. So, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. When I moved into my very first apartment, I did the whole Ikea furnishing thing. And I had the weirdest truck show up delivering Ikea stuff. and it was like, it wasn't UPS, it wasn't FedEx, it was this weird third-party thing, and I was like, is this actually my stuff? Like, what is going on here? It was weird, but yeah. All right. Congratulations, Matt, I guess.

I think you're going to love it. You're going to be surprised. This is a great victory. I'll take it. My victories don't have to be proud. I'm trying to pick you down and you won't. No, you will not bring me down. I just won a challenge. This happens once or twice a year. I'm thrilled. Okay. Okay. Well done. Chris is irate. This was a great strategy, to be fair. I literally was just...

Man, I'm so disappointed. So disappointed. Because I know I have the better product. I have the better... But anyway, let's move on. So the challenge is mine for next week. Yeah. And I'm realizing now, we kind of discussed this before we started recording, Matt is not going to be here next week. Yeah. And I kind of wanted to save what I had for when all three of us are together. So I'm trying to come up with a good challenge that's me versus Neely on.

And I'm wondering if either of you have an idea for that. I was thinking, like, my original idea was, oh, I have to work from the Mac and Neelian has to work from the iPad, but I remember she sold her iPad. Yeah. So I was like, okay, that sucks. So I was wondering if either of you have an idea. If not, I can go to what I had. But, yeah, I thought it might be. Does Matt have any idea? All right. Well done.

I don't have an idea. Hmm. I was also thinking like something like Battle of the Bands, but I don't know how that would work out. Like, I don't know how we would do that. Music thing. Because your music taste is very different than my music taste, but I don't know how we would do that. Maybe you could actually do Find Your Favorite Coldplay Song. No. No. Find your favorite Metallica song? Find your favorite Garth Brooks song? Ooh. You could do, listen, you could do, So, Neelian, you find one of Chris's favorite band's songs.

Your favorite song of one of Chris's bands. So you could do like, find a Metallica song. Chris, you could find a Daft Punk or Sigur Rós or something. No, I don't like this. We're rejecting on this. No, I don't want to. No, no, no. This is the one comfort zone you will not mess with. I don't mess with my musical taste. Because then it starts throwing off the recommendations. And it's like, oh, it's this whole thing. That's old man talk, if I've ever heard it. You know there's a focus filter.

I do use that for my driving focus, so that way when Taylor Swift starts playing, happy new Taylor Swift album day to both of you. I know you celebrate hard. So that way when Taylor Swift starts playing in my car, it doesn't get wrapped up in their recommendations. So you can use that for the challenge. I could. I could. But here's the problem. As soon as we do this, Neilion's going to make me listen to pick out a Coldplay song. And because there's only two of us, I can't not do it. Yes. No. 100%.

No, no. For real. Absolutely. No, I do not believe it's going to be that or Daft Punk. Like, I don't believe you. Wasn't the suggestion that... So you would pick your favorite band and I would have to find a song. And I would pick my favorite band and you'd have to find a song. Or a band. It doesn't have to be your favorite. Or maybe we can have, like, Chris, you try. We're brainstorming this. is great. Chris, you can try to guess, like to find a song, whatever song, from whatever band.

Find a song that I will like. Okay. And vice versa. Okay. Like we're making recommendations for music for each other. Yes. I like that. Okay. And you win if the other person likes it. And maybe it's our style of music. So maybe I get a little punk rock-y or a little 90s country or something like that. And like, you know, you do your stuff and we try and find something. So there's no tech angle at all in this challenge. No, not so ever.

But you know what? Honestly, it'll be episode 71. Make it a little personal. Yeah. Use Apple Music. You'll use a streaming music service that makes it easy to try any song you want with no risk. It's great. Yeah. You have to send me an Apple Music link. That's what it is. There's the tech angle. Build a shortcut to send me an Apple Music link. I don't know. To build a YouTube music link. A cursed YouTube music link. I like this. I like this a lot. Recommend some music.

Okay. I spelled recommend wrong, but whatever. Okay. I like that. I think this could be interesting. All right. I'm going to have to, I'm going to find some stuff I think you'll like. Yeah. Oh, and since Matt is not here next week, There may be an installment of the browser podcast if listeners send other browser recommendations. Well, we already said there's going to be browser podcast follow-up because I have a browser to test out.

Oh, that's true. That's true. Let's do that. Yes, perfect. Yes. Oh, by the way, Chris, do you want to be a guest on next week? I would love to be a guest on the browser podcast. Thank you so much for asking me. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. I don't even know how we got this into this far into having a podcast within a podcast, but we have a podcast within a podcast now. Yes. All right. Let's wrap up the show here. We have an end of the show question submitted by one of our listeners.

Thank you so much for sending those in. We have a feedback form. So if you want to send in feedback, play along with the challenge, topics, or send an end of the show questions. We really appreciate that. Feedback link is in the description, show notes, whatever. This question was, what was the first video game you ever played? I think it is Pocahontas on a Game Boy Color, and it was my sister's.

Oh, okay. I think mine is probably the original Super Mario Brothers or Duck Hunt on the NES. Dude, are we the same person? We might be. Your aunt, your aunt, that is literally my uncle Ed? Yeah. Well, no, it was my dad. It was my dad's, but it was definitely either Super Mario Brothers or Duck Hunt. and I think it was probably Duck Hunt with the laser gun oh yeah it's either that I know what the first video game I ever owned

was and that was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the original Nintendo my dad bought it for me they got an original Nintendo as a wedding present and I got really into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid and they had that thing for years and he got a used copy of it from somewhere because that was definitely before GameStop yeah nice are we the same person it seems that way yes I'm a little concerned about this I'm just Midwest Chris I'm West Coast Matt alright well let's wrap up the show right there

thank you all so much for listening a big thank you to MacStories for having us we are a MacStories podcast after all go check out all the writings, podcasts and stuff on there there's a ton of stuff happening there's a lot of great stuff happening on the club especially the newsletter like John and Federico have been posting their behind the scenes on their big OS stories and how they did that. That's been fascinating to read. So go check all that stuff out. Do either of you have stuff you want to promote? It's difficult.

Lots of things to do. I'm tired. Okay. I will likely have a very interesting battery test out by the time this episode airs. Cool. I'm glad you're doing one so that means I don't have to do one i could just link to yours the results are not surprising so don't worry yeah i yeah look there's a reason why i'm back on the 17 pro max right after a trip like the air did not the air did not pass travel tests uh spoilers for an upcoming video

uh yes you on a certain podcast this week you will hear a podcast intro that I made in GarageBand in under an hour using public domain sample tracks and the say command in Terminal or macOS to do weird voices. It's great. You may have heard it. Maybe you heard it today. So yeah, I want to provide that. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Clearly, you know, clearly. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a good day. Bye. The Blowser Podcast The Blowser Podcast Hosted by Matt Bursler and Millian you