Freak'n Toad

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. And this week, neither one of them have a cold, but oh boy, do I. As always, I'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? Chris, I'm doing great. Your voice is so low. It's the sound. It's like you're doing a fake podcast voice almost. This is my James Earl Jones. And we're also joined by Nelian.

Nelian, how are you? I'm doing well, thank you. Yeah, I am sick this week, but I'm pushing through. I've only ever missed one episode of Comfort Zone, and it was when I had COVID, and I was delirious for a week, and I was like, there's no way do I want a microphone being put in front of me and recording right now. But I am pushing through for you, the listener. You should enjoy the high. I am on a lot of cold Mets right now I'm like get through this hour and a half Chris and you can go back to bed

so that's the plan right now I'm going to let you guys kind of drive the show this week because I cannot so whatever you guys want to talk about with tiny topics you go for it Matt go ahead I'm busy right now interesting foreshadow I'm busy Okay. I just wanted to mention an incredible news story came across my feed this week, which is that Superhuman is officially taking over the world. And if not the world, at least Grammarly, which has renamed itself as a company to Superhuman.

Now, this is a strange choice. Okay, this might be the cold meds, but did Superhuman buy Grammarly? Grammarly purchased Superhuman. They have adopted Superhuman's name, and Grammarly is now a product made by Superhuman. Grammarly is a way better... Okay, this whole episode, words are going to escape me. So this is going to be hilarious. But Grammarly is way more well-known than Superhuman.

I know regular people, non-techie people, that are all about that Grammarly. I would say techie people are less into Grammarly than normal people. Yeah. Actually. Really? Okay. Oh, yeah. Grammarly is so mainstream. But, yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at. It's like Grammarly is very, like, broken through, whereas Superhuman, that's like I watch productivity YouTube videos and read listicles of the best productivity apps and join cults and drink the Kool-Aid.

That is, I mean, Grammarly is certainly more well-known. I will say, as big business boy Birchler, who is in the corporate world every day, I get so many emails where the people have not even removed the sent with superhuman tag from the bottom. I get so many. So many business people use superhuman. Okay. I'm trying to get my work to pay for it for me. I mean, yeah. Oh, man. Back in my IT days when I had a corporate credit card. Oh, that was the day. I mean, technically, I still have a corporate credit card, but I'm the one paying for it. It's not exactly the same. That's wild, the renaming.

Yeah. So, good job, Superhuman. You continue to impress me. If superhuman ever shows up at your door, anyone, and they have like Kool-Aid, please do not drink it. Just don't. It's delicious. Anyways, this week we put out a Cozy Zone episode, and I'm hoping I put the right one in the document, unlike last week where I put the wrong, or maybe that was two weeks ago where I put the wrong one in the document, and I had to do a special cut-in from Editor Chris. But this week, I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's what we are the 1% at.

like what we are the best at in the world. And we kind of talked about that. And let's just say what I talked about is probably going to get me kicked off MacStories. Sorry, Federico. Yeah, turns out you're a billionaire. You're in the 1%. Definitely not. Definitely, definitely not. But let's just say my takes when it comes to pizza are going to make a certain Italian really mad.

Okay. I had completely blocked this out of my memory, apparently. Yeah. Remember I told you guys, like, the pizza, like, I used to work at a pizza place, and the pizza I made. Yeah. And then I might have, in our super secret MacStories Discord, I might have sent a picture of it to Federico to kind of harass him, and he told me never to speak to him again. Okay. So, it didn't, yeah. You're going to scare people away. This is probably my last week on MacStories. So, yeah. It was fun while it lasted, people.

I lost the race. So annoying. Wait, what? I lost, like, last second. Got a, got a, yeah. What are you doing? I'm just, sorry, I'm just busy on, I'm just playing Mario Kart on the side. Okay. This is the fall. Okay. Yeah. This is fun. Look, I'm 20 years. I can't even concentrate because of you on the game. We're trying to podcast here.

If I could show up with a cold and borderline high on cold meds, come on, Nelian. I think we should just... It's not loud enough, sorry. Yeah, we should just be quiet for another five minutes so you can finish this knockout tour. Yeah, please. Oh, I got a bail. Look. What? So, Nelian, I take it your gaming situation has had one bit of upside in the past week. So we're doing the podcast still. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I got the Switch 2.

And? Because I was too sad. And Chris, you said something cryptic in the last episode. You said, if only there was a way that you could get a Switch 2 for free, which made no sense and still makes no sense. However, that made me think to look up the gaming store, like video game stores, because they still exist, like physical stores with a storefront. Huge of true. At least in France, they still exist.

So I went there and they accept tradings. You can bring in your old Switch One. And I had a Switch OLED. So I brought a Switch OLED. I asked the partner, of course. I told them, you will keep your Zelda save, because I knew that was going to be the worry. And yeah, I picked up this thing. Nice. So how are you liking it? What games have you been playing? Very professional game.

That's called Mario Kart. Yeah, yeah. Super serious. I played FIFA, obviously. Oh, finally. Yeah. So you were bored for a couple hours. Oh, my God. And I launched No Man's Sky only to find out that the Switch 2 edition has cross-save compatibility, but I can't launch my PC save because the Switch 2 version is one patch behind,

so my save is too new to run on the Switch 2 version. So I have to wait until the Switch 2 catches up. That's how they get you. Yeah. All right. Well, that's pretty cool. Oh, yeah. I'll be just looking to the side, but don't worry. This will work. Yeah. You're definitely still paying attention. Yeah. I'm just... Well, I'm glad you got it. I hope you enjoy it. And we will have to do some Mario Kart Cozy Zone episodes or something.

Oh, freaking Toad. Sorry. Okay. This could be an interesting episode. I have a cold. I'm high on cold meds. Neil Leon's playing Mario Kart. Matt, you're basically in charge of everything, I guess. Oh, no. Yeah. Cool. This is trouble. Yeah, take it away. You guys ready to get in the main show? Yeah. Yes. All right. And unfortunately, I am first up at the document. So I guess I'm getting all my talking out of the way. I have, one second. A new backpack.

Oh, I have to hit pause for this. Okay. Okay, cool. Okay. I'm glad I got something, got Neilion's attention with something. Yeah. So I'm really excited about this. So I've been a big, big fan of the Peak Design Everyday Backpack for years now. Like, that has been my go-to backpack for, I don't even know how long. Like, basically ever since I got, like, switched to mirrorless camera setups for YouTube. Like, that has been my go-to camera setup.

And then I had the 30-liter version, which is a big backpack. And this year, I have basically decided to stop traveling with camera gear unless it's absolutely necessary. Like, the last couple of times, like, when I went to New York for the iPad event, I didn't use any of my camera gear. When I, last couple of WWDCs, I didn't use any of my camera gear. Like, basically, when I was traveling for these events and stuff, I would always end up either filming stuff on my iPhone or filming stuff when I got back home because just stuff happens. Like the New York, the New York iPad event.

That was such a bummer. I flew out there. I had every intention of making all these videos. Right after the keynote ended, I got a notification saying my flight was canceled. So like the whole time I'm going through briefings and trying to figure out how I'm going to get home. So that sucked. So this last WWDC, I basically decided like my 30 liter peak design backpack was way too big. Now, they do make a 20-liter version, and I thought about getting that, but I was like, I kind of want to try something new. Like, I've had this backpack for years.

I like the Peak Design Everyday Backpack because it's really adjustable. It's not just a camera backpack. Like, it has these, like, slots in there, and they're completely adjustable. Or you can just have, like, this big, empty, like, crevice of space. Like, it's really nice. Like, a really nice backpack. But I've also had my IDI on this backpack for a little while. And this is the Nomatic Luma Camera Backpack 18 liter. So it's a smaller backpack than the 20 liter everyday backpack. This is a camera backpack, but I want to make a case for camera backpacks for people that don't pack cameras.

They are completely adjustable. And I don't know how I'm going to show this on video because my camera is not wide enough. But up here, so you can open up this big slot space. Okay, actually, first off, my favorite thing about this is it's super small, super compact. Video viewers, like it does not stick out very wide. It's going to fit underneath a plane seat just fine. If you're going to an event or something, it'll fit under your seat just fine. This is like the big thing that I wanted was a small compact backpack that is going to fit under a seat and I don't have to find an overhead compartment to stuff it in or anything like

that. I could just have my stuff. Really nice. The other thing is it stands up on its own. Look, mom, no hands. Like, hands up. It stands up on its own. Why doesn't every backpack do this? It's such a nice feature. I don't need to lean it up against something. When I set it down, it stands up on its own. I am not touching it in any way whatsoever. For audio listeners, the other two can verify this. Yes. It just fell over. Oh, no, I touched it. No, I touched it. I'm kidding.

Okay. All right. He's not amused at all. I am so sick right now. They're lying about my boy. I am so sick right now. I'm like, I don't even know what's a bit or what's not. Okay, so it stands up on its own. Okay, so it opens up, and for video viewers, you can see this is like the camera side. It has these like slots right here. These are all completely adjustable, so I can move this around, and I'm not going to do it on video because it's going to make that horrible Velcro sound, but basically I can move these around.

I can slot things in differently. I can put whatever I want in here. It doesn't need to just be camera stuff. And this can become adjustable. So last weekend we went to San Diego. Or not San Diego. Where did we go last weekend? Monterey. We went to San Diego the month before that. Went to Monterey. And Danielle had a conference to go to. I was literally going in the hotel room to just like hang out, do some work, and play Nintendo. So like I rearranged this to fit my Nintendo Switch, a couple of accessories, and stuff like that.

Then I came back, I put it in the camera cube configuration. Really nice. Like, it's super adjustable. There's also, how do I do this? Okay, hang on. There's also these slots, these pockets up here. So I can have, like, I have media cards. I have CF Express card reader. I have external battery. All sorts of different stuff in here. For a small backpack, this thing can carry a lot. In fact, I loaded it up.

I was like, okay, worst case scenario, I need to bring as much of my camera gear as possible for a setup, and I was able to fit everything in here that I would need. And I was like, okay, this backpack can do what I need it to do. So there's also on the backside, there is the laptop sleeve part. It can fit up to a 16-inch MacBook Pro, but it's tight. It's very tight. Like technically it can do it, but it's tight. It works perfect with my iPad Pro. Nice. Just another reason the 14-inch MacBook Pro is the best.

You mean the 13-inch iPad Pro is the best. Yeah, you know. As long as it's not the 16-inch MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. That's crazy. That is too big. It also has a top compartment up here for the small, quick, easy access stuff. So like AirPods or MagSafe battery or something like that. I love that top, small, easy access compartment so you can quickly grab that important stuff. I really love that in a backpack. And then up here, it has another pocket.

And this pocket is just a quick access to the main compartment, but it's just the top part. So you could put a second camera up here. But what I put up here, and this is the part of the bag I hate, is a cable bag. So unlike Matt Birchler, I don't put my stuff in a Ziploc bag. I have an actual cable bag, and I can open this up. I don't even remember where I got this. Let's roast his cable bag. I can't even see what cables are in there. How do I know it's packed in there without opening it up?

Every cable that's in here is a USB-C cable because that's all I need. I have the MagSafe thing that I talked about, and the big battery brick. Or not battery brick. What are these things called? Charging bricks, too. That's it. That's all I have in here. And this is just kind of a way to organize that. So it's not terrible. But yeah, I don't like that I have to have a cable bag. One of my favorite things about the Peak Design Everyday bag is on the side compartment. So it has like these side flaps that open up.

They have like pockets in them that you can put cables in so you don't need something like this. And I love that about that. I don't like having a cable bag, but it works. All right. Nice. There's also some side compartments. So right here. And I will try and cut out the zipper noises for audio listeners. Oh, my gosh. I am so sick. You should leave it in. It's immersive.

Yes. Okay. Sorry. I'm. Ah. Okay. There's the Velcro. Yeah, there's the Velcro sound. So there's a side compartment. So if you do have a camera or something you want to quickly access, you can fling the bag around, pull the camera out or something you want to quickly access. And then on the other side, there is I love this feature about it. So it has this guy right here. So the side pocket that is meant for either a water bottle or tripod, whatever you want to carry with you. But it's magnetic and it closes up. So when you aren't using it, it's not like flapping off to the side.

It's just there. And then you can pull it out and you can use it. It also comes with this bongo tie thing that you can use for a tripod. I'm never going to bring a big tripod with me unless I'm doing like some kind of interview style thing. So I just put it on the side and hung my WWDC lanyard off of it. You need a tripod to create that dynamic wallpaper, you promised me. Oh, yeah. Wait, I promised you dynamic wallpaper? I don't know, but since you're high, I'm trying to take advantage of you.

Oh, okay, cool. You did promise me, yes. Talk to my assistant about that. Yeah. And then, oh, the other thing I forgot to mention, the laptop sleeve part up here is padded. So you can just throw a laptop in or iPad or whatever. It's nicely padded, so it's not going to get ruined. And then one of my favorite features about premium backpacks that they tend to have that regular backpacks don't is, this isn't going to show up because it's all black, but it has this little strip right here.

So when you're running through the airport, you can slide the backpack on your luggage handle and just carry it through so you don't have to put it on your back, which is nice. That's a really nice feature. But, yeah, I am absolutely loving this backpack. I did a trip with it already, and then I used it to go to Starbucks and stuff like that to work out at Starbucks. It's just nice. It's not overly big. I don't need a big backpack anymore. I am in my phase of bringing the least amount of gear as possible with me to places, but I don't want multiple bags.

I don't want a small bag for when I just need iPad stuff, a big bag for just camera stuff. I am at this phase of my life where I'm like, I just want one backpack that I can put whatever I need in and it can adapt to my needs. And it doesn't need to be overly big. And that's what this is for me. This is very nice. Thank you. And I got it on sale. Normally it's over like 200 bucks, but I got it on sale for 170. Oh, that's pretty good.

I was going to say, I feel like I have the budget version of this. I have. No, no, no. Like this is serious. Okay. I have the brevity bag, which is also an 18 liter bag. It looks like it's marginally smaller in all dimensions, but it doesn't have as many pockets as yours. Mine's more of a traditional backpack layout. It did have the camera separating things in there, but I got rid of that, and I just tossed the camera in. Oh, God. Of course. So your, what, $3,000 camera or something like that is just bouncing around in there, 3, 4, whatever?

It's just bouncing around in there? I mean, you know how it's protected. Oh, Matt, especially because I know what lens you have, too. You have the same lens I do. Yeah, it's about $5,000 of camera. I don't put it in anything. I just drop it in a bag. the same episode over and over. I'm going insane. I just... Matt, come on. That's worse than the Vision Pro, man. It's pretty good. There's stuff that moves in cameras. You've got to be able to hold... Yeah, and it moves a lot. You do you, boo. It stands up to the pressure.

You do you, boo. You do you. You remember my backpack, of course. Yeah, your backpack is great. You remember? Yeah? Yeah? It's great. so this is what i wanted to say chris uh your backpack seems nice however i think you deserve a little color in your life it looks it looks too sad i think you should maybe patch it up with some you know i don't know shirt patches what chris isn't telling us is that his backpack is black but his shirt when he travels he goes like bright pink with stars on it like he's he's already flashy

well i i have the pink wwdc 2025 it's a start it's good but that's good there's a reason why i get black so this backpack does come in colors but there's a reason why i get black because i might be putting camera gear in it because i might be putting my expensive ipad or whatever in it i don't want to signal this is a camera backpack i want it to be a generic black backpack so that way it doesn't look like anything like i'm jumping out because look it could be a girly backpack doesn't have to scream it's a camera backpack but but i'm gonna buy a camera backpack because i'm gonna put

camera gear and stuff in it and there are definitely camera backpacks that people know and see and they're like oh that's a camera backpack that was one of the things i didn't like about the everyday backpack is like people knew that was a camera backpack um and i was like i don't want something signaling hey this guy's got thousands of dollars of gear in his backpack that's fair i i actually agree with that that's that's decent because like the colors of this backpack actually look good and i was about to get um oh god what what i don't even remember what the i can i got the website here

but um i uh sorry my i am on so much cold medicine it was it was the uh the the the sage one i like actually i like the rust one too it's like the orange one that one looks pretty cool too i like i liked both the colors of it but i just i don't get colors when it comes to backpacks because i i just want to blend in i don't want to stand out i don't want to be oh that guy's definitely got a camera backpack let me let me send you something okay we're brainstorming something here look okay we're brainstorming look what about something like this this is half like i sent this in our

group chat by the way this is mostly a joke but not really what is this a baguette so this is a press-on patch yeah in the shape of a baguette but this this website for example i just stumbled upon this by googling it has a bunch of cute things like cute cute press-on patches that you can add they have flowers maybe maybe you like flowers maybe you hate flowers i don't know

maybe some website has Star Wars press on patches look if somebody can find a Star Wars one or a Ford one or a Mustang one send me a link and I will buy those best I can do is a Chevy look at that no don't you dare don't you dare Matt Berchler I will tell your mother I don't know look I sent you some Star Wars ones oh my gosh that does not look like Obi-Wan Kenobi at all. It's just a preview.

There's a bunch of the page on the page. Okay. There's Baby Yoda ones, Vader. You like Vader? You like? Oh, yeah. He doesn't like Vader. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. You know what? I might order some of these. Add some color to your backpack. Okay. All right. I'll take a look. Thank you. When I am not, you might have to remind me about this in a couple of days. Sounds good. Or actually, I guess I'll get the reminder when I edit the episode. Right. Editor Chris, this is your reminder to take a look at those patches and see if there's anything good, order it and bring it to the show.

But yeah, that's my camera backpack or that's my new backpack. I like it. It's adaptable. My case for people that travel and you might need a bag to like adapt to different needs, whether you're traveling for personal and then business or, uh, what hobbies, whatever. I, I, so many different reasons why somebody might travel, uh, and you need a backpack to adapt. Maybe take a look at a camera backpack. I still think the Peak Design Everyday Backpack is probably the best for, like, here's a camera backpack, but it's not really a camera backpack.

It's a backpack that adapts is probably still the best. But, like I said, I wanted to try something new. And what I like about this one is it's really small. It's going to fit under a plain seat no problem. So you're not going to have to be like, ah, crap, all the overhead stuff is full. Like, where am I going to stuff this thing? Oh, they're coming around and they're checking to make sure, like, the bag actually fits underneath the seat. We've all been there. This one will do the trick. Okay. Yeah. So that's what I got.

All right. All right, Matt. Your topic has to be something distracting enough, like captivating enough that I don't resume my Mario Kart game. So is this whole episode basically entertaining me, Leon? Yeah, entertain me. Okay. Are you not entertained? It has to be something very high quality. This is ominous because I know you can see the show notes and you know what I'm going to talk about.

High quality and not expensive at all. Okay. Yes. And it has to be software, of course, because I'm fascinated by software in general. Understood. Okay. So you want to talk about the Vision Pro, Matt? What I'd love to talk about. Honestly, we were having camera issues, and while I was fixing it, I was going to pretend I was going to put the Vision Pro on. I just had to troubleshoot. So, yes, actually an incredible tee-up, Neil Leon. Thank you.

I am bringing a new piece of software that is completely free. Famously free. In fact, it is the number one thing in their marketing campaign for this product. That is Affinity Studio from Canva. no i i forgot canva bought the affinity yeah same i actually thought adobe had bought them but anyway um apparently can't would have been bad yeah yeah that wouldn't have surprised me at all

no um yeah canva purchased them in march of last year and uh have you two used the affinity apps before do you have opinions on them oh as as a big ipad boy absolutely i've used the affinity apps Because that's where they got their start. And that's, you know, obviously, obviously they didn't forget about their roots. And they're still big iPad apps, right? Yeah. Did you like them, though? Did you use them? No, I actually hated them. They were way too complex.

They were overly complex to the point of, like, I would try and do simple stuff in, like, Affinity Photo or Affinity Illustrator. And I was just like, I know this is a simple thing. In Photoshop, this would be two or three button presses. Or Illustrator, this would be four or five button presses. But I don't even know where to get started in this app. I thought they were overly complex, and I never understood why people were like, yes, these are going to kill Adobe, because they weren't.

How about you, Nelian? I'm muted, sorry. We are all over the place today. Yeah, perfectly focused. affinity. I've used it a lot. I am a bit like Chris in that I find the UI absolutely terrible. I've always found it terrible. It's way too difficult to navigate. Some things are buried in places that seem way too hidden. And when I saw this announcement, I was

hopeful. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would say I'm in a similar place to both of you. I've used the apps. I purchased, I think they had a sale a couple years ago, it looks like, and I purchased the whole suite of all three of their apps. And yeah, I think they're better than when they were new. They did a version 2 big release where they read it everything a couple years ago. I think that made it better. But I agree. It was so complicated. The UI was just different enough from what everyone else was doing that it was like really hard to navigate and figure out.

It's the Da Vinci Resolve of the graphics world. I disagree with that. Really? Because I think it's the same thing. Resolve does everything just differently enough to where like you have to relearn everything. You can't just jump in. Interesting. I think it's, well, okay. Da Vinci Resolve might be a topic for a future episode. We'll see. Ooh, okay. Yeah, let's see. So, anyway, so basically, Affinity Studio is the first release after, major release after the acquisition.

And instead of three apps, instead of Affinity Photo Designer and Publisher, there's now just Affinity Studio. So, it's one app you install on your device. It is not a web app. It is a Mac app. It is a Windows app. And the iPad app, they say, is coming soon. We'll see what soon means, but it's coming. It's never going to ship. Come on, guys. Literally, you are what you are because of the iPad. I just want to put that out there. They have said, if you have the old apps and you're happy with the old apps, you can keep using them, but they have explicitly said.

Sometimes companies will toe the line on what will happen with the old apps. They have said they will continue to work. I think they literally say we will keep the authentication servers running, so your license will register. Thank God. We will receive zero updates. like explicitly they will not receive updates. So Mac OS 27 comes along makes one minor change, breaks the app and they're done. Bye. Yes. Yeah. Okay. It's a funny thing to say like don't worry we're keeping the registration services on but like thank God

you are. I paid for a lifetime license. What do you mean? You could have plugged it off? What do you mean? Yeah. And that lifetime license always comes with an asterisk of like, well, we may just change the name of the app and make it something else. And now you got to buy another license. But yeah. So a little thing that I liked upfront, and I don't know if this is going to resonate with literally anyone else on planet Earth, but when you download the app, it downloads a DMG and it is a one gigabyte DMG.

Yes. And I was so happy about this. My least favorite thing is when I download what I know is a large app, and the installer is like a megabyte. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no. So this is just a thing that's going to download. The installer is going to download the actual app. I do not like this. I like this when there's just like a DMG I can just get and just put it on my computer. Very, very nice. So I was very happy with that. Caveat. So the DMG is indeed like about a gigabyte. When you install it on your hard drive, it takes more than three.

It is three and a half gigabytes. Oh, that's a chunky app. Yes. Which is why it's already gone from my Mac. Oh, interesting. Spoiler, spoilers. Yeah, I will say more. Okay, so what they have done is they've combined all these three apps into one app. So they call them now Vector, Pixel, and Layout, and they're just different modes you can put the app into. So Vector is kind of the same as their Illustrator. Pixel is the same as Affinity Photo was.

And then Layout is their InDesign. Publishing. Yeah. Publishing. InDesign. It was Publisher. Publisher. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So it is really like Resolve where you have your editing tab. You have your effects tab. It is similar to that. You have your color tab. So like stuff that would traditionally be different apps is all in one. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And so there's more. All their marketing is like, these are the three modes that replace our three apps. However, there are more that you can enable in there. There is one called Slice, which is such a specific mode.

It basically lets you go through your document and then create all the frames for what you want to export. So you can just do one bulk export, which is actually kind of nice. What would you use that for? I'm not following. It's probably cold meds. You might use this if you are an app developer and need to provide files in many different sizes. So I guess this wouldn't be relevant anymore with the new way iOS icons work. But if you make an icon PNG for your app, you have to export it at every resolution from 1024 to 512 to 256.

Like every single resolution down to 16 by 16 pixels. And it is the worst. So something like that would be useful there. You still need to do that if you're a web developer, like for the five icons and stuff. Yeah, true. So yeah, so there's use cases, but it's very, very specific. I've never seen like a dedicated mode to that. There's a retouching and color grading views. So these combined are kind of like all the Lightroom things. So it's the lightness, highlights, shadows, those sorts of sliders. The color grading one is, or sorry, the retouching one is like selection, adjustments, like, you know, the source of like adjustments you would make in Lightroom. The typography one is pretty

cool. So this is like basically exposing all of their text controls and they have tons. So if you are doing a lot with text layout, you may go into this one. There's a compositing one, which is all their selection stuff. And then what's actually very cool, if you're into this, if you're really enjoying the app, you can create your own space. So you can just create your own and you can bring whatever combination of tools into that. So if you always use the same like three tools and never use anything else, just make your own space with those three,

hide the other ones, and the app is pretty simple. Or if you, whatever, whatever combination of work you do, you can just bring them into your own space. You can name it, you can give it an icon, a color. Like it's, it's pretty cool. So that one, that one actually really delighted me. I think that's pretty nice. It is very quick, which is cool. uh there is one trick that they do to do this which is i have noticed in high resolution images they just render it at like one third resolution uh so i thought everything was broken for uh

because it'll import your a lot of your adobe files so i pulled in a high res photoshop file that i use for device mock-ups and it looked horrendous and then i exported it and it looked great so um yeah maybe there's a setting i can find to uh tweak this but yeah by default it renders at a very low resolution sometimes uh they're just preparing in advance for the unoptimized ipad os oh the spice the spice um would you say the ui is i know you mentioned the the version 2 update that they did a few years ago and made the ui a bit better but would you say the ui is even

better now like it's more i like it's closer to like photoshop or something like that like it's it's more user friendly so i actually had affinity photo 2 installed on my work computer and i had this and i saw them side by side it is ever so slightly better but it is it's very minimal the difference neilion is doing a million is like imaginable gesture yeah saying no i think so i

think it's relatively okay like i guess compared to photoshop i think it's it's not bad especially if i just like filter out the tools that i don't end up using i don't think it's that bad but yeah it's not it's not much different if you hated the old one you're not you're likely not like this here's an a way for you to understand chris if you have not like you have not tried it um all of the things that matt mentioned so far i have no idea where he found those things in the ui i have no idea that's exactly what i was getting at is basically can i find the stuff that yeah i'm

actually impressed like the normal like i'm not a photoshop expert in fact i'm quite bad at photoshop I am not good at it. But there are a few things I do in Photoshop every single week, and I have them down. I know where – and, like, they're not – the tools that I use aren't buried because they're not obscure tools. They're very generic tools. But, like, man, every time I use the Affinity Suite, I could never figure out, like, how to do the most basics of basic stuff.

Interesting. I'm probably unfair, but I installed it because I was, like, kind of hyped and I had high expectations. Like all of the things that you talked about, Matt, I have no idea where those things are. Like the slices, where are those? I don't know. One immediate thing that I checked in the UI to see if I would like it better or not is do buttons have labels? And the simple answer is no, there's never labels.

When you hover over it? You hover and there's a tooltip. Yeah. Oh, okay. So every time you wait a second to read all the tooltips, the icons don't... Like, if you're not a... I'm pretty sure those icons in Affinity are their own alphabet. Like, they are very precise and symbolic and they mean exactly what they mean. But if you don't know what they are, you will have to read all the tooltips. The second thing is I checked if there was a command bar or something like that, like in Figma, like in, I mean, a ton of pro apps these days to search for things instead of having to find out what the UI means.

And no, there's no command bar. You can still search through the menu bar, but OK, but the menu bar is packed with stuff. So good luck remembering where everything is. Yeah. Fun. I mean, I will say when you, the tool tips are world-class tool tips, you hover over it. It tells you what it is. It describes it and it gives you like all the keyboard combinations. There's a learn more, uh, where you can like see more details on it. Um, I wonder if I haven't been as impacted by it.

Cause I usually use keyboard shortcuts to pull up a lot of these things. Like V brings up the selector and brings up the marquee, um, P brings up the pen tool. like these pretty basic things um and those are the same as photoshop for the most part so i just have been like hitting those and then like it works um but yeah it is definitely their own language you kind of have to figure out um like it was back when they're normal affinity under sarah for whoever it was um i believe i believe in you guys you could figure it out if

you really wanted to um but uh what else um there are some ai features and this is where shocked shocked i say to find ai features and software in 2025 how what so here's so it's a great deal because the software is free right so the software is free and there are some features that you can use free. And what's kind of cool is that they are opt-in.

Well, one is opt-in. You can download the specific features you want to your device. So, for example, if you use Lightroom or Pixelmator or whatever, they have these smart selections where you can just click a subject and it does a perfect selection of the subject. Which I use all the time. I love that. So good. That is such a handy feature. Yep. That is a machine learning tool in here as well. And if you never use that, no worries.

If you do want to use it the first time, it installs the little model that does that. So that's nice. However, everything else is hidden behind a Canva Pro subscription, which is $15 a month or $120 a year. Convert to your local currency. But everything else is kind of locked behind that. So some examples are colorization. It would be super resolution, increased resolution of an image that's blocked behind it.

There's a depth sensor. So you give a depth sensing thing where you like just give it a flat image and it can figure out the depth. Kind of like portrait mode on an iPhone in the photos app. So it can do that, but is locked behind the subscription. So the Canva Pro subscription basically unlocks AI features. and that's mostly it and i do not have a canva pro subscription so i do not know although there is a 30-day free trial so maybe i'll try it and make a video before that 30 days is done but um the one thing i will say um because i don't have i'm not an affinity expert necessarily but i have photoshop on my computer for precisely one reason i have these device mock-ups that i use

when I need to create images of apps running on things. And they are Photoshop files. And I need to open them in Photoshop because not only are they Photoshop files, they are Photoshop files with embedded Photoshop files. So there's like a layer for the device screen that is a separate file, quote unquote file, inside that you have to open. And so apps like Pixelmator have been able to open these files, but I can never edit that sub file. affinity, I actually can. So this can get Photoshop. Hopefully, I'm going to try it a little longer to make sure there's no gotchas, but this might let me uninstall Photoshop from my

computer, which would be awesome because it gets me one step away from being able to uninstall the Creative Cloud app from my computer, which is honestly all I want from a computer. I just want to be able to uninstall that app. Man, I'm just waiting for, I just need a Lightroom competitor that's on the same same the same level is i so the way i pay for adobe stuff i pay it's the lightroom photoshop combo that comes with like two terabytes of cloud storage or something like that like it's like 20 bucks a month and it's like i and it just i i pay for it primarily for lightroom

and because of that i get photoshop in tow so you know i'm just gonna keep using photoshop because I get it for what I'm paying for Lightroom. But man, I would love not to have to spend that $20 a month on Adobe stuff. And it's not that I don't want to spend $20 a month on software. I would happily give $20 a month to a really good indie Lightroom competitor. But every Lightroom competitor I've ever tried just doesn't quite get to the same level as Lightroom.

Yeah, they're not as good. Random note, this whole discourse about these apps being free has brought up people's anger about Creative Cloud, which I totally get. But it reminded me, when I was in college, in whatever year, it doesn't really matter, Photoshop was released every year or two, a new version. And it was $700. $700 in today's money from when I was a freshman in college is now almost $1,200.

Can you imagine paying $1,000, let's say, for an app every year or two? That's crazy. And that was just Photoshop. That wasn't the whole suite or anything. That was like just Photoshop. It's crazy. It was $700, and yet we all had it somehow. Somehow. Somehow. I was in high school with CS2 and CS3, and I had no income to buy CS2 and CS3.

I don't know how it appeared. And yet, somehow I still had it. I have no... In high school. But you know what? That's how I learned video editing. Yeah. And that's how I got to a point where I could start paying for that software and stuff like that. That's true. That's true. Anyway, it really hit me. I was like, is this like a fake... Just like a Mandela effect thing where like in my head, obviously it was $700, but like it wasn't. It must've been like 50 bucks. No, it was crazy expensive back then.

So a video I once made and have deleted because I do not want to deal with the comments of that video is you've never owned software. So I get a lot, anytime I, any, anytime I cover an app that has a subscription, I always get five to 20 to 50 comments of, I don't want to rent software. And you know what? Even when you paid $700 for Photoshop or $10 for Things 3, you don't actually own it.

You have never owned software unless you were Matt Birchler and have made your own software. What you are buying for that money is the right to use that software, the license. You have never owned Photoshop. You've owned the license to use it. And by that, I mean, if you go look at the agreement, the terms of service, it very clearly says, like, you do not own this. You are buying the license to use this.

So when software switched from a one-time fee to a subscription fee, the ownership of that has never changed. You're now subscribing to the license. You're subscribing to the software to use the license for it. Or you're purchasing the license to use. But you've never actually owned Photoshop. Oh, Chris, I can see why you don't want to deal with the comments on this one. Yeah, I know, right? I think you are both correct and incorrect.

I think you are technically correct, which, of course, is the best type of correct. but I would like to mention before anyone asks me, I am on a lot of cold medicine again. So I'm not doing a great job articulating my point, but the point was that you never actually bought the software. You bought the license was, was is, is the underlining point. Yeah. I think that's, I think, I think that is, that is fair. I feel similar about movies. I don't like buying digital movies because I don't like that, especially like I can't even download them with my stores.

And it's a lower quality. It's a lower bit rate. It's like, yeah, it's the whole thing. We bored Neely on. She's back to playing Nintendo. I know. Oh, sorry. Yeah, busted. So that's it. No downsides, all upside. It's perfect. We all agree. Sure. I don't even know if I agree. And that iPad app is coming any day now. That iPad app. You know, that iPad app is going to ship at the same time Final Cut Pro for the iPad gets plug-in support. I mean, I would just take background export support at this point for the iPad.

Dude, where is that? Isn't that the entire reason that feature exists? Do you not have that? No. So they put out an update for Final Cut Pro for the iPad after iPadOS 26 came out. But it was just like menu bar stuff. It just added support for the menu bar. Background export wasn't there. So I'm like, where is this? Like this was the entire pitch of this feature. Do third-party apps have it? Third-party apps can add background support.

I don't know of any that have it right now. Basically, the only apps I know of that have it are files in Safari. I did try to add it to quick subtitles, and it was during the betas, and it wasn't really working, so maybe I'll try it again. I wonder if that's a similar story for a lot of developers. It's almost as if the software isn't great. The OS. Okay, we can't do a liquid glass bit. We don't have time for that. We can't do a liquid glass bit. All right. So that's it. Cool. all right well you guys ready to get to the challenge yeah yeah all right uh Niumion it was your challenge

what did you have us do this week yeah this one I don't think it will be very interesting but I thought it was funny at the time I mentioned last week how um the young they add each other and find my uh they find it fun and I understand why you can see where your friends are and it's I use it with my partner to be fair because it's easier to meet some place and to know where the other is at etc so that's useful anyway so I thought let's do that

we are friends right and we are young yes yes few of us are Chris oh boy oh boy we are young so we can add each other on Fadmai and we did um and So the initial prompt was like, I listened it back and I said something like, let's pick up screenshots of where we are, et cetera. So first, let's not dox ourselves. So that was a bad idea.

That was what I was going to say. Links will be in the show notes to our location. Our exact locations? Nope. Nope. So there will not be screenshots. I don't know why I saved that. I took screenshots of YouTube, but I fully intend to delete those. and they will be gone. But I took it for the challenge, but they are not uploaded anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean. We're not showing any screenshots, obviously. But yeah, it was just like, let's look at each other on the map every so often during the week and see if we can spot each other

in some place interesting. I caught, Nelian, I caught you in a couple of places. Oh, okay. But the problem was, is everything where you are is in French, so I have no idea where you were. Okay, tell me. You weren't at home. I want to know. I can send you the screenshots if you want. But I'll text our group the screenshots because we can dox ourselves in our chat. And I can see if I can say things out loud or not. But people, like, we don't have a geo-guessor experts, right, in the audience anyway.

Nah. Look, everyone be cool. Just everyone be cool. If you somehow happen to be an expert in one of our three locations, Just be cool. We're people too and we like our private lives. Yeah, and fascism. Anyway. No, we do not like that last bit. Comfort Zone is completely against fascism. This is why it's dangerous. Okay, so you sent me a screenshot of me and my home. So good job. That's my home.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, now I see that one. That one doesn't count. One of these screenshots has, and I hope this doesn't it down too much i don't know how what spread this is but there's a hagen does yeah i know i i i wanted to say that too but i didn't know if it was too much detail yeah so i was like that's all right it's not close to my home so we can talk about this okay yeah so clearly neilion was going to hagen does here so this is a screenshot from the city center in grenoble and i'm on the i can even say the plaza like this is in the city center like this i don't live there i don't live there

um so this is the place grenette in grodobe if people people are listening and know and indeed there's a agandas there's a bunch of ice cream shops there nice creamulated restaurants there's a concentration of ice cream shops um and guess what i know why i was there i was there because you pick up this bad oh yes to pick up the nintendo switch 2 uh so yeah the store in question is like uh just a few it's on the screenshot actually it's one of the yellow dots above me okay did

you get some ice cream as well was it just a nice day out in a switch 2 and an ice cream i just like ice cream i packed up my switch OLED put in my backpack went out the door went to the city center, picked up the switch to, went back home, all of that within one hour. It was like a quick job. Oh, wow. So I just happened to get you like right at the point of time then. Yes. Oh, interesting. Quick job, in and out. I don't want to stay outside too long.

The weather was terrible. So there you go. I'm curious, did either of you find me outside of my house at all? So, Matt, did you? No. I could do my update real quick, which is basically, this was a story of everything going fine at first and then opening the app a couple times a day, every day, and becoming increasingly frustrated that I never timed it right

to catch either of you outside your home once. so i tried doing it in the morning to catch neilion during the day i tried during the day to catch chris away from home i as far as i can tell you guys never left the house and that may be your impression of me as well but i saw nothing absolutely nothing uh so we recorded the last episode late we recorded on monday and we're recording this on friday of the same week yeah so it's only been five days five days i have left my house a grand total of one time for one hour yesterday like that was it that was the only time you would have seen me out i do not and it's not

like i'm like a shut in like i don't like going places i work from home like i don't and then like by the time day and day usually like days danielle works and she kind of has a weird schedule doctor stuff but days Danielle works which was every day of this was Monday through Thursday of this week because she works four days a week but she works longer shifts those were the days it was Monday through Thursday so when she would come home she's tired so we didn't want to go anywhere so it's like we did nothing this week the fact we didn't have a weekend I think made it harder as well yeah yeah yeah because if

literally if we were to record this like you would catch me outside of the house this weekend like you would catch me actually at interesting places this weekend but you're you're gonna miss it we're not gonna get it yeah you're not gonna get it for the challenge okay Nelian did you get either of us um so I wrote to remember because I forget things so I wrote down my notes for this challenge which are first point the american suburbs are terrifying on the map really what do you like the so the places where

you live like i'll say for me i definitely live americana suburbs like it is suburbs as suburbs get same yeah yeah i can tell on like you like there's not i i was i i knew about this obviously i'm you know i have a bachelor's degree in geography so i knew about that stuff but um seeing it on a map the fact that none of you both like none of you have a store

anywhere in your house? No. Well, yeah, I do. Yeah. You do? It's like a seven-minute drive, but like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly for me. It's a seven-minute drive. That's what I mean. Yes, this is, like, this is insane. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I do a three-mile run, just a loop. I never walk by anything besides a house. Yeah. Wow. I could theoretically do that same thing, but I'm not going to. Yeah, that's crazy to me. But yeah, I knew about that, obviously, but I was still surprised.

And the second point is, you ever been out of the house? I don't think so. I don't think so. Like, you're always in the same spot, both of you. You never move. So am I the only one to catch one of us outside of the house? I think so, yes. Wow, and I got lucky with that. I went out more than I thought I would this week. three or four times. But you did catch one of them.

Yeah, even if I don't leave the house, I do two to three dog walks a day. I do a 30 to 40 minute run. And I usually go somewhere. I'll go to the store, a quick seven minute drive. Each way, you know. I went to work. I spent all of one of the days away from home. 10 hours away from home. Never caught. Yeah, there was one day that was probably the day I totally forgot about this challenge and didn't check. There was one day

this week that I totally forgot to check. Maybe I did not check. I don't think I caught you. Yeah. I think one of the most fascinating things, and I'm going to hold back a little bit of information, was I was kind of curious to be like, how long would it take me to go see Matt, and how long would it take you to go see me beyond yeah so for matt it was over a day of just driving if i was just to drive it'd be over a day okay if i was to go see me on information unavailable yeah no yeah there's a directions button in find my that you can tap and if you like if i tap on one

of you guys it just the app gives up it just goes back to the previous screen yeah well because yeah I have my wife in here and then I have you two. And my wife is zero miles, sometimes like three or four. And then Chris, you're 1,730 and Niléane, you're 4,425. Niléane for me is 5,868. And somehow with all this information, someone will be able to figure out exactly. Oh, shoot. Okay. I'll bleep that. Triangulation.

Yeah, literally just triangulated our locations. I mean, that triangle could be anywhere. Look, that would be a lot of effort to go through. You would think so. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that triangle can move around. I'm definitely in Alaska. Yeah, the suburbs in Alaska are crazy. Oh, yeah. It's funny, Matt. There are two people. So outside of my family, there are a couple friends that I have in Find My, and there is one person that you are exactly 21 miles away from.

Oh. Oh. Interesting. Okay. who and now that person can dox him oh no yeah that person now knows the triangle that person can will absolutely dox you that person 100% has already done it yep and they know exactly who they are too interesting yep anyways so yeah that was a fun challenge to kind of spy on each other but yeah the problem is we don't go anywhere

We don't go out much. And also, I think of the short recording time. Like I said, if it was over the weekend, especially this weekend, you would have caught me at some fun places. Yeah. As long as I'm not sick. Apple Maps will not give me directions to walk to you, Chris, but it will give me biking directions. Oh, okay. About 10 days. About 10. Whoa. Woof. Yeah. Okay. All right. Interesting. So it's my challenge for next week.

And one of my favorite challenges we did recently was pitch a new Apple product. So along those same lines, I want us to pitch a new app. We have developers in the audience. I know for a fact we do. I heard from some of them at WWDC. So I want us to pitch an app. It doesn't need to be an Apple-specific app, but pitch an app, and you've got to have a full how it works from start to finish. Not how to make it, but how it works start to finish. you know, maybe some UI ideas, but definitely like a pitch deck for it.

Like you're going to go into some VCs and you're going to pitch this thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was expecting to pitch a Microsoft product, but that's maybe a future idea. Microsoft and I are still on a break. Okay. New app. Okay. That sounds fun. Okay. Yeah. I thought it'd be kind of interesting to kind of like put that, you know, put that part of our brains to exercise. Can it run on tvOS? It can be, it doesn't even have to be an Apple specific platform.

It just needs to be an app. So it needs to run on something, run on hardware. It could be an app for the new Pebble watch if you want. It doesn't care. I don't care. It could be an app for your Nintendo Switch. As long as it is an application, it is software running on hardware. That is my requirements. And you got to come up with a pitch for it. Like you are pitching VCs. So you got to come in and be like, yo, bro, guess what? We're going to change the world. I'm here to fix the world. We're going to make the world great.

Okay. So like, here's the thing. I need like $10 billion for like 5% steak. And what that's going to do, man, we are going to revolutionize food delivery. It's Uber, but for Uber. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. And you know who I'm going to say we win, and this is going to be a long-term win thing, is if a developer in our audience makes our app. Oh, yes. And it can't count as Matt making his own app. That can't count.

Okay. What about Mutt Batchelor? It's not Matt. Mutt Batchelor. Mutt Batchelor. Yes. It's a guy I know. That guy's crazy. He makes apps all the times. All right. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up. Niléane, you had something you wanted to talk about here at the end of the show, right? Yes. I wanted to call, once again, our audience to donate to the Gaza Giving Circle that we talked about a few weeks ago.

This is like a fundraiser for people living in Gaza. And Gaza might not be in the news right now, might not be dominating the news, but the situation is still dire there. People still need help and supplies, food and money helps them get that every day. And so we have the same link as before in the show notes that you can click.

It has information from the folks that are running this fundraiser. Once again, these are folks that we know, that we trust, and they have been running this fundraiser for a while. And right now, they're really struggling to collect any funds. Probably because Gaza is not much in the news right now, even though people are still in grave need of help. What did I want to say next?

Can I add something? This isn't a political thing at all. This is very much a human rights, human necessities thing. People are starving. People need food. I know it's not exactly breaking news that people need food to live, but this isn't us getting political. This is us just looking out for other humans and being decent people. like I don't I don't like I nobody should have to starve like it shouldn't be a thing that has to be said but

I guess does yeah and we yeah we wanted to mention it again today because right now particularly they're really struggling to collect any any funds and even five dollars helps and you can go on the page and they have updates regular updates with the situation the folks they are giving to so you can know how your money is being useful right now. And believe me, every euro, every dollar, every pound is useful every day.

But not that Canadian money. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yes, Canadian, worth more than anything else. So if you're Canadian, no. But yeah, and feel free to share. I also wanted to say that feel free to share this with people because we may all be struggling to meaningfully help in regard to the gravity of the situation.

But this is one way to help. This is one way to be meaningfully helpful. There you go. Nice. Yeah, it's a great cause. I gave some last time. I'll be doing it again. Yep. Awesome. All right. I think that's a good place to wrap up. Thank you all so much for listening. We are a MacStories podcast. Be sure to go check out all the other stuff happening on MacStories. There's been a lot of really good stuff lately. I've really been enjoying Jonathan's podcast, First Last Everything.

That's been really fun. So go check out the other stuff right there. Just picked up the first season with Brendan Bigley. Yes. I have not listened to that one. I didn't realize it was the end of the season. That one is still in my queue. It's a great one. Brendan's fun to chat with. And yeah, so that's cool. Thank you all so much for listening. Do either of you have something you want to promote for this coming week? Maybe my Switch friend code. Can I promote that? No, maybe I should not.

I need to add you, actually. I think you put it in our Discord, right? And I need to add you on that. Wait, no, I'm too famous. People are going to, the thousands of people are going to add me. All right. Well, it's your call. That's not good. Okay. We can cut that. Cut, editor, Chris. Cut, cut, cut. Just, we can. No, don't cut it. Just, people have to know this is for the VIPs. Like, my friend code. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, it's for my big friend, Muth Bichler and Christopher Lawley.

Oh, thank you. And every cozy zone subscriber. Subscribe. Oh, yeah. Oh, there you go. There you go. Subscribe to Cozy Zone and Neil and Neil will play Mario Kart with you. And I will beat you at my own contest. Oh, that's great. Okay. Matt, you got anything you want to chat about, promote? No, as ever, I would like you to just never read or watch anything that I do. Links in the description, but, you know, don't click them. Don't click them. Big business boy, Birch, they're really playing 3D chess out there. You don't know what angle I'm taking.

Look, as small business boy, Lolly, I would like you to watch my videos. I should have something new out by the time this episode is out. I hope. I've had a couple of production issues, plus getting sick has slowed everything down. So hopefully I have a new video out. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day.