Klack to the Extreme

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your coat. Wait, what's the intro? I'm all thrown off now. Matt, this is 100% Matt Birchler's fault. He was late, then caused issues. Matt, explain yourself. It's my first time podcasting, and I really wish you guys would give me a little slack. Neelion, how do you feel about these travesties? This is the second time we've had to do the intro. Matt was late. We're like eight minutes past where we should be now. I feel like our whole day is just ruined.

I like it. I'm the agent of chaos, and this is a good dose of chaos. I think Matt's the agent of chaos today. He's the one that's bringing the chaos hammer. Stealing my thunder. I completely ruined the intro. I mean, I have this elegant intro I wrote and have been saying since episode one, and it's ruined now. Well, anyways. You can get ChatGPT to do it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. That's good. I'll have it. ChatGPT, redo the intro.

We have some tiny topics. And this first one in here, I'm assuming is from Matt Birchler. It's not from one of you? No. Okay. Well, I am celebrating. This is the last podcast I will do in my 30s, which is a shocking realization. And is not going to help the dinosaur jokes. No, it is not. It's going to get much worse. At least, Chris, you and our ages start with the same number right now. Yeah.

There's going to be a gap now. We're going to have three different generations, 20s, 30s, 40s. Wow. And for like five years, because I don't turn 40 until 2030. So, yeah, I got a few years. Anyway, I'm excited. Matt, when is your actual birthday, Matt? It's November 19th. If you want to tell. November 19th. Oh, okay. All right. Wait. No, we have one more. We're doing one more before you turn. We will record it, but we'll release it afterwards. Oh, okay.

I'm living in the future, not the today. Our recording schedule is very confusing to me. You'd think I would have figured it out by now, but it's very confusing to me. All right. Well, happy early birthday. I hope your 40s are good to you. I wasn't scared of it until just now. Once I said that loud. We're all going to die very soon anyway. Very soon? The asteroid's coming for us all. Yeah, the asteroid's coming for us all.

It's imminent. Anyway, what else is going on? There's a couple of things I wanted to mention that are Nintendo Switch related. Nintendo released a new app for the iPhone and stuff that is the Nintendo Switch Store app. And I used it last night for the next thing I'll talk about. And it's very nice. You're able to buy games. It'll show what's on sale. It'll show your wish list and all that stuff. You're able to buy games in the app, though technically it takes you to a web browser so Apple doesn't get a cut. Why did they do that?

I was wondering that because the PlayStation app lets you just buy games in the app. No problem. It was weird. I kind of have a feeling it's probably kind of like the Kindle thing where like, but like, it doesn't make you go to Safari, like open up Safari. It just opens up another, like it opens up the Safari preview thing. Safari view controller thing. Safari view controller. Thank you. Couldn't think of the word. But yeah, I used it to download Ball and Pit last night and I just was playing around with it.

I was like, I've heard about this game. I want to play it. I downloaded it and then like an hour later after I finished up the work, nice, an hour later after I finished up work, I went to my Switch and it was there. It was downloaded and ready to go. I was like, this is pretty nice. So I just wanted to call that out. And I wanted to call out Ball and Pit because it's a really, really fun game. It's a roguelike that kind of mixes Gallagher, Bust a Move, and Stardew Valley. Or not even Stardew Valley.

Like SimCity all together somehow. What's the name of the game? Ball and Pit. But instead of and, it's an X. Yeah. It's canonically pronounced Ball Pit, according to the book. Oh, is it? Oh. Yes. Which is very confusing considering the X in the middle. Ball X Pit. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And it's like $15 on the Switch. I don't know. It's probably $15 all places too. And I started playing it last night, and I'm having a ton of fun with it. I've heard a lot of people talk about it. And if you like roguelike games, you will like this.

It's a ton of fun. Yeah. Here's the pitch. If you fell in love with Vampire Survivors a couple years ago and loved the idea of building out these, getting weapons and getting up to the perfect build, Ball Pit really steals that entire idea and then evolves it literally by letting you combine and fuse these powers into combo ones. It's crazy. It gives me the same rush I got from Vampire Survivors. It's lovely. Yes, I'm completely with you. It gives me the same rush I get from Vampire Survivors and Ballatro.

Yeah. And even a little bit of Hades 2 in there as well because they're all roguelikes. So good. It's a fantastic game, and it's $15. You can't go wrong. It's really fun. And I have a feeling we're going to lose Neelion again during this episode. No, I'm looking at the app that you're talking about. I'm very on topic. You have your iPhone in hand, not your Nintendo Switch in hand. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. My partner is currently playing Skyward Sword in the living room. That's what Joy looks like.

Yeah. I've never played Skyward Sword. Oh, Skyward Sword. Yeah. Yeah. It looks weird. I was looking at the store app the Nintendo store app and Life is Strange the full collection is on sale so I kind of want to get that because I never played them all I've heard very very good I've never played them either but I've heard very very good things about Life is Strange and it's been recommended to me by multiple people and I've just never got to it but now that it's on sale

I might pick it up I think that's nice because it's probably chill, probably not super happy, but chill. This week on Cozy Zone, Neelion put out a call a couple weeks ago for people to send in their desk setups, and we roasted them. I'm just going to say, sorry, we might have been a little mean. A little, a little mean. Okay, I was a little mean. And somebody won.

Yes, somebody did win. We announced a winner. We rated everyone's desk setups. Some people, I gave tips to some people to get better video calls and stuff out of because some people had some lighting setups. There was a lot of LEDs. And one, oof. You guys remember the LEDs? Oof. Okay. Matt, you're first up in the document, and I am nervous. I haven't clicked any links. Perfect. But I see what they're labeled. Perfect. And I am nervous. I am nervous.

Okay. As it always does with the MX Master. This is the 3S. Very nice mouse. Oh, you don't have a 4? Should I go get my 4? Should I go get my 4? I'll get my 4 while you talk. You're bragging. Then a couple weeks ago for the challenge, I tried a gaming mouse, which was a Razer the Basilisk, which had exactly the right amount of RGB for Chris, if I recall. By that, he means too much. Any RGB is too much, by the way. MX Master 4. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

review unit so i didn't even have to pay for it wow wow now you're just bragging now i'm just flexing on that then and so one of the things i liked about the razor mouse was that it was lighter than the mx master which i hadn't really thought about but once i had a lighter one i was like oh this is nice and so i thought what if we went way lighter and that's where this comes in this What the what? What is this? This is like, okay.

This is like the cover that they put on unreleased cars so it can't leak. Like people can't photograph them and figure out what it actually looks like because the lines throw off like geometry. Yeah, my camera is struggling to focus on it. It's a zebra mouse. Yes. So this is the Pulsar X2 Crazy Light Mini. it's a is crazy light actually in the name crazy light is the official name of the the mouse and i got the boardsy edition which apparently is a mouse reviewing youtuber i don't know anything

about him if he's horrible i apologize but the design looked cool um and uh it's pretty interesting so uh there is one that might appeal to you chris uh it is an old school racing livery on a mouse which you might enjoy. I see this link. Can I click on the link? You can click on the link. Please do. Okay. Shop USA. It did not take me to where it needed to go. Perfect. Okay. Oh, here we go. Oh my god. Oh my god. I am I, oh, why don't mouses work with the iPad properly? I would buy this in a heartbeat. So this is the traditional

gulf livery. So it's light blue and orange together um you probably even if you're not a racing fan you've probably seen this color scheme this these colors together like the ford ran them in the lemans that they beat um ferrari in like this is this is a classic racing livery and i want this but so badly it's 150 and i don't care i want this but half the mouse is missing oh yeah what is up with that yeah so this gets this gets into the point of these mice, which is

almost every decision on this mouse is made to make it lighter. So I've created a chart showing the weight of my three mice that I just talked about. The MX Master weighs 141 grams. The Basilisk is around 100 grams. And this is 38 grams. And it comes with alternate feet you can put on the bottom, so you can take off these like slidey bits that are on the bottom of the mouse and there's little dots you can put there and you save two grams that way um every bit of this mouse is optimized so it is completely hollow

um there are holes in the bottom so there's less plastic uh the motherboard inside or whatever the logic board in there is is cut down so it's not a perfect rectangle it is cut down so only the required things are there the plastic is pretty thin but it is like solid enough and uh it's really it's very very light um it is wireless so there is a battery in here so it does not do bluetooth there's no bluetooth uh controller in here but yes it does uh do wireless with a little dongle that you can attach via usb cable so you get this little dongle with it that i wish i would have

30 seconds to hear you say that. I might have already hit purchase. Are you for real? So I just bought a mouse I can't use with my main computer. You know, you could get a dongle for your dongle. You certainly have a free USB port. I mean, technically, I mean, do USB dongles work with the iPad? Like, because I can plug it into the CalDigit thing. I would think so. Yeah, yeah. We're going to find out. Because the dongle plugs into your computer with USB, so your computer's connected to the dongle.

The dongle's connected to your mouse, so your iPad should detect it just as a wired mouse, I would think. But I guess report back. Just plug it into the second Thunderbolt port on your iPad. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. But yeah, it's very light. there are even lighter mice out there than this um there is a youtuber called uh optimum i don't know if you've seen his videos before um but he's made something i think called the zero

mouse which is i think 15 grams yeah so even lighter than this and that is chris you will not like that one that is like literally just like the uh the motherboard and then like a 3d printed frame that is as minimal as possible yeah that's not that's not the mx master um and then uh this is a gaming mouse so the lightness is one thing because it's easier to

kind of move around um the less mass you have and it also prioritizes speed so on the bottom again you're really like the on off switch is literally on the board and you're touching the board basically to uh flip it on and off there's a dpi selector here uh there's a web app you can go to that's kind of like via so if you used via you go to this website um and you can update your firmware and everything um change some settings but uh yeah it's a it's very very minimal uh Chris looks very sad.

It's a little tough to use as a primary mouse. The main issue is there's no way to side scroll on it. Which is tough, especially if you're a video editor. Man, I just spent a lot of money on a mouse. You really should have waited for the full pitch. He looks so sad. Oops. It looks so good. I wonder if I could cancel this order. I was looking at you just on the side and you look so sad. We're going to see if we can cancel this order. So it does have the buttons on the side to do back and forward, but there's no additional buttons.

There's no programmable buttons. There's no side scrolling, and there's no freewheel scroll wheel. So you can't do the thing where you flick it, and it just flies and flies and flies. So I think this will be the mouse I use with my Windows computer, and I'll just keep using, I don't know. For the no-scoping? For the no-scoping, of course. Yeah. But yeah, I don't really have a ton more to say about this. I just think it's interesting to...

There's a whole world of products made with completely different priorities than I think we tend to talk about. And I think it's interesting to explore those sometimes. Everybody likes the MX Master. Everybody likes the extra buttons and the side scroll and the ultra premium. but like what if none of that is of interest to you what would you make and uh i think this is a cool alternative and it's got a fun design i could have got the white one i could have got the black one but i why didn't you get the golf livery one uh it was not available uh and i don't know i like this one i think it'll be cool it looks nice on the desk a little character i never heard anybody

so um so you maybe you said this i don't remember yeah it's up to 8 000 polling rates yes so if it's plugged in directly i don't think this will work with the dongle um it will theoretically update up to 8 000 times per second um my understanding is this is more like 4 000 times or 2 000 times unless you're like really going very fast yeah uh question um can you explain polling rate to me and what that is as somebody that hasn't used a gaming pc since before gaming mice were a thing i don't i don't really so i i see this i see this figure but i never quite

understood what it was and i couldn't be bothered or look at it think of it like a refresh rate on a monitor the higher it is the more fluid it's going to be so the more often the mouse is updating the sending an update to the computer about where its position is the more fluid your mouse can be so this is really nice um for games obviously but it's also nice just on my monitor i'm at 240 hertz and like just moving around like it does feel and maybe it's a placebo i don't know but like it does feel exceptionally smooth um i did link i'll put links in the show notes for all these but there is quite a range of consistency between these mice uh they'll all say we have 8k polling rate

were very like linear movement when you move the mouse at a consistent speed um but there's they're not all made equal um and so this uh this specific one i got the the pulsar x2 um scored very well in the actually delivering on what its specs are so yeah um that's really it i because yeah i know a lot of people they get really mad about the mx master because it's been years and it's still stuck at 125, I think, per second.

And that's very low compared to a lot of mice. And recently I've been looking at the Keychron M6. It looks really interesting to me. I kind of want it. Maybe I'll get it someday. It's a Keychron mouse that looks a lot like the MX Master, but it's a lot lighter. it obviously has less features but it has a bunch of buttons on the side side scroll wheel as well i believe does it have a side scroll wheel it does and it works with a dongle and i believe it

goes up to 8 000 as well when it comes to polling rate it has a dpi of up to 30 000 and 8 000 hertz polling rate. There you go. And it has a battery life of 180 hours. Yeah, that's crazy. That's wild. And the USB-C ports on the front so you can use it and charge it at the same time. Most mice. Yeah. Wild. What a wild concept. And it looks ergonomic. Doesn't look like it'll break your hand. Yeah, it's shaped a bit like

the MX Master. It is. It looks like it's just distinct enough that they can't get sued. yep I think I'll get this at some point maybe but I'm interested in a higher polling rate mouse the only issue with this keychron one doesn't come in the gulf livery I decided I'm not going to cancel the order I'm going to keep it Oh.

And I will do it for the show. You'll put it on the display. It'll probably be one of those things I use in thumbnails a lot. Because it's very colorful and it'll pop. That's worth something. Then you get comments to people like, where can I get that mouse? And that's just engagement. Yeah, yeah. Link. And then I have to figure out what they mean by link. Because people won't add context. They will comment link, But I have no context into what they're talking about, so I have to, like, yeah. And then they'll ask you how it performs, and you have no idea because...

Yeah, I have no idea because it doesn't work on my computer. Okay. Okay. So that's it. Short and sweet. Cool. All right. I like it. I mean, I better like it. I just spent $150 on a mouse I can't really use. You can use it. You're going to love it. Yes. We'll see. I mean, the fact that there's no side-scrolling is the thing that's actually, like, it will make editing not great. Yeah, yeah, that'll be a little more tricky. But I could do the thing I used to do where I had the Magic Trackpad on the left side and my mouse on the right side,

and I used to literally just use a Magic Trackpad just to scroll through timelines. That's literally the only thing I used to use it for. This is for higher brains. I know people do this all the time, but having to use both your hands feels like you're a superior being. Thank you for recognizing I am a superior being. I appreciate that you recognize that I am a superior being. Considering how you make reasonable purchases and take time to look at the product before buying.

It's not my fault. Matt put it in the show notes. It's not my fault. Everything's my fault. Matt made me do it. Matt made me do it. Anyways, let's move on. Yes. Niléane, what do you have for us this week? For you today, I have a new installment on something that hasn't happened in a long time, which is Niléane talks about Mastodon. Whoa, this is a rare occasion. You don't talk about Mastodon very often. I know.

But yeah, for real, it's been months because there's not much been, not much has been happening in the Mastodon space in terms of like new features, new apps, things like that. one really really nice app came out it's called Bestomasto, some guy made it but apart from that not much has happened so yeah I just wanted to bring you up to date today about Mastodon what do you feel?

It sounds great, can I guess what Mastodon has been up to? Go ahead Okay, they are going to rebrand as just Y and they are going to become the everything app. They're going to do bank payments, messaging, note-taking, task management. It's going to have AI built into it, and it's just called Why. Because why would you do that? Yeah. So now, actually, Masternone, you can set an NFT as your profile picture? Yes! Finally! Woo! Finally, I'm able to use those things for something. Finally!

JPEGs! Twitter is back! Okay. Speaking of Twitter is back, So, yeah, this week, Masternode 4.5 came out. It's actually a very important release because it adds quote posts to all the Masternode servers that update to it. It's already a bunch of servers have already updated, including the big main ones on which you are, masternode.social, et cetera.

They have had QuotePost for a while, actually, because they were running on a beta of those servers. But yeah, now everyone can update their server to Mastermind 4.5. I think it's really nice. QuotePost are pretty useful. And they're actually well-made. I don't know if you were around at the time when this topic was a topic of controversy on Mastodon.

Like, should we add quote posts? And I think it was a very important controversy to have, like a good controversy to have, if I can say that. That is like, there was this debate. People were very worried about having quote posts on a new text-centric social media platform. because people have the past experience of Twitter where quote posts were used as a way to harass people

and literally do the worst kinds of things on social media. It was a tool for mass harassment. And even when it wasn't being used for harassment, it was being used to cheaply dunk on people. that just like, yeah, they've never been great. Exactly. So that's why people were, I think, rightly so, worried about the feature coming to Mastodon.

And initially the founder, the guy who started Mastodon, Eugene Rochko, he was against it, which is why it's only come now, because work has never started before. on it, even though Masterna exists still since 2017. But obviously, the team has grown and they have more funding now and the focus has changed and they've changed their mind. And I think they did it really well because it's not that they changed their mind about the idea that it's dangerous.

I think everyone still agrees that it's a dangerous feature that can be weaponized. The ability to just quote people and direct all of your follower base toward that person, that can be dangerous. But they've done this in a smart way. So now when you post something on Mastodon, you can choose for every single post, you can choose whether it can be quoted and who can quote it.

You can choose to only preserve the ability to be quoted for your followers. So that, yeah, only your followers can quote you. Or you can say only just you. Only yourself can quote yourself. That's something you can do. Obviously, you can also choose to disable the ability to be quoted at all. If that's something you're not at ease with. So I think, yeah, they've done this in a correct way.

It's well thought out. Now when you post, there's a full visibility dialogue where you tweak all the controls and you can even set it globally on your account. Like always allow my post to be quoted, always disallow if you want to disallow. So that's good. Obviously, third-party apps need to update to support this. Ivory, they had a fake kind of quote implementation.

That is the Ivory, for example, and still does this, they render quote posts only if you add a link to your post. So basically just like Twitter used to do. Yeah, this is what like a lot of apps have done for a while. Mona was the first app I know that added it that I used. But I think other apps have like, so now we have like this fake quote post and then there's new quote posts. Yeah. I'm curious how these apps will handle having both out there.

So, obviously the intent from the Mastodon team is to only have the new one be supported. Because the new one means that people can control how, like the privacy settings that I just talked about. With the old one, you can't control. You are not even notified when somebody just links to your post and it gets turned into a quote inside a client. The person that gets quoted, they are not notified.

With the new standard, they get a notification in their notifications tab. So that's really important, I think, privacy-wise and just like online safety-wise in general. Yeah. Now, what is preventing somebody from saying, okay, this person set it up so that only they can quote post themselves, but I really want to quote post this person. What is preventing me from just copying a link to that Mastodon post, pasting it in a post, and just essentially quote posting them without using the built-in quote posting tools?

So obviously, you can still do that. You can have links to anything. But it will just be like it used to be. Like you'll just have a link to that person's post, but it will only render as a regular link. And on the apps that support the new quote post standard, it won't get turned into a quote. Like you'll have to open it as an external link, like any other external link.

So obviously you can still do that, but at least it doesn't get turned into a quote post with which you can interact directly inside the client, which is why I think it's important that third-party clients, they update ASAP to the new standard because having the old ones still exist defeats the entire purpose of these privacy features. Yeah. This is a rule I wish we could set at a social network level for quote posts. only allow quote posts from people with fewer followers than the person they're quoting if you're gonna quote them you gotta punch up you can only punch up you can't punch down

because that's what that's what really sucks is right is like the worst case scenario is like on on twitter was someone with like two million followers would quote someone in their replies who has like 10 and then they'd be like isn't this person stupid and then that person would just like minding their own business maybe they said something stupid i don't know but like that's really sucked about them is when you weren't standing up to someone more powerful or influential than you. You were just punching down on someone who didn't have the influence you did.

There was a pretty big YouTuber that did that to me once and I literally just had to log off Twitter for a couple of days and I was just like, this sucks. They were absolutely punching down. Man. Can't believe Marquez did that to you. Nope, not Marquez. Definitely not. Look, I've only met him twice, but he's a really nice guy. Definitely was not him. I won't say who, but... Okay. He didn't catch you tweeting with an Android phone or an iPhone when you're advertising Android?

When I was promoting an Android phone. Definitely not. Anyway, all of that. Yeah, since you were talking about that issue, Chris, you were bullied by somebody bigger than you. But if that happens on Mastodon now, something that's really nice I haven't mentioned is that, and it's pretty new for the Fediverse, I think so, is that you can change that setting, whether you can be quoted or not on a post, you can change that setting after the post is published.

Oh, that's nice. And I can only imagine, and I'm pretty sure it's like, having read a little bit about what happened behind the scenes, it must have been a pretty big technical challenge to achieve that, to implement in the activity protocol and all of that. But yeah, so now on Mastodon, if you publish something and you change your mind, maybe your post is blowing up or something. And you're like, no, no, no, I don't want people to quote me on this.

But you can keep the post up, but go into the ellipsis menu and change. No one can quote me now. And you can also individually remove your post from people who have quoted you. So that's a good thing as well. So if a jerk quotes you, he's saying something really mean, but you still want others to be able to quote you, you can only remove your post from that person's post. So that's good.

Anyway, so that's the quote post news. Maybe you're, so it's likely if you use MasterNode, your server has been updated to support it. If not, it's coming to happen soon. Your admins are probably not paid at all or very little. So leave their time. I can't speak anymore. Anyway. Bear with them. Bear with them. That's, yes. I wanted to mention one more thing. um remember fanpy oh yeah of course this is my mastermind client of choice i last time i talked about it on the show i said this is my new mastermind client instead of ivory i'm only on fanpy

still the case today i still use fanpy it's got full support for the update uh the quote post all of that, all of which I just talked about, fully implemented by Fendpy. So if you want to use that, it works really well. And so it's a web app, as a reminder. It runs in the web browser. And on iOS, you can install it as a progressive web app. So you can add it to your home screen, basically, and it runs full screen as if it were an app.

Obviously, web apps on iOS are not great. But there are ways, which is why a lot of companies, their mobile app is basically a web app, but they ship it inside a wrapper, which has better performance, adds more native features, maybe notifications, GPU-powered animation. I don't know. I'm saying stuff.

But yeah, it has a bunch of system improvements to do that, which is why a friend of the show, listener of the show, Matt Fentinel, he did this. He took FanPy, open source project, so yeah, And he put it inside a basically one of those iOS frameworks wrapper for web apps. And he shipped this.

So right now, it may not be available yet. But right now, as we're talking about, and I'm allowed to talk about this, He's trying to ship it in AltStore so that people in the EU and soon in Japan can install it directly from AltStore PAL, the alternative app store. Why does he hate Americans? So the issue was that he did not want to and could or could not afford the developer fee that Apple charges to ship on the App Store.

But apparently, like, maybe this will unlock things. Maybe he will be able, after all, to ship on the App Store as well. So anyway, this is in progress. But I've been trying the app out. I've installed it manually. on using Alstore on my phone. And it's great. Like, it's just like, it's just fancy, but it runs inside this very nice web wrapper that a lot of companies use on iOS. I forgot the name of it.

I'm so bad with memory today. But yeah, in terms of even just animations, it stays in memory longer than the regular PWA, than the regular web app. So that's nice. Oftentimes when I used to open the FanPi web app, after a while, it would load from scratch because iOS had unloaded it. Yeah, that's it. I think you should check it out, maybe. If it's out already or maybe it will be out soon, you should check it out.

I think it's a very, very good client. And for a web app, it works really, really well, even on iOS. That's pretty cool. Yeah. If it ever is able to come to America or I can get a test flight link, I would definitely check it out. Yeah. I think, yeah, they're trying to ship it on the App Store as well. Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. Yeah, no, this is really exciting. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness Macedon is putting into all of this stuff, like the quote post controls

and stuff like that. I really appreciate that. And it just goes to show that they really care and they're not just trying to make something that maximizes engagement. Yeah, that's good. And people are really happy. Like my timeline, it's, you know, that kind of week when a new feature comes out on the social media and everybody's using it at once. So my timeline is full of people quoting each other. It's actually fun. Nice. I like it. This is not the topic at all.

But I just Googled Fambi. And it is actually a Pokemon. Yes. It turns out. So the first like six results are Pokemon. But I noticed this little Pokeball in the bottom of the Google page. And it's a little game you can play in Google to like catch as many Pokemon by searching for them. Oh, that's funny. Oh, it shows you the outline. So it's basically a who's that Pokemon. Oh, this is a cozy zone idea right here. Oh, I'm like getting an idea for a Cozy Zone episode of who's that Pokemon.

I've never played Pokemon. You remember? I know. It's my chance to win. No way. You're not beating me. You're not beating me. I've never played, but even I knew that Fempy was a Pokemon. Oh. This is not bode well. I didn't know it was a Pokemon. Gen 2 Pokemon. Okay. Gold and silver, baby. Gold and silver. All right. You guys ready to get in the challenge? Yeah. oh all right so it was my challenge and my challenge was to pitch a new app it could be for any software platform but you need to pitch a new app you need to have basically essentially

pitch it like you're pitching to some vcs you want me to go first wait is that the prompt i mean that was what we talked about in the episode yeah that's what we talked about in the episode was like pitch it like you're pitching to vcs i've never talked to vcs i don't know either Okay, okay. That's why I'm going to do it satirically and make fun of them. Oh. I've seen Silicon Valley. Exactly. Though we can't do what they did in that episode.

No. Definitely cannot. We're a family-friendly show. We can't talk about that. Okay. I don't know. Yeah. But anyways, yeah. So I can go first if you'd like, but I need one second for a costume change. oh no okay oh no oh that's i like it i like this he's putting on a hat a cap backwards okay bros ready are you ready for this okay we are going to change the world we are here to

revolutionize the world one person at a time we are going to absolutely disrupt the whole market space and we're going to focus singularly on one person and that person probably i mean neilion said earlier that they are a superior being so clearly we need to focus on christopher lawley as we all know he's big ipad boy b-o-i uh boy he is absolutely just all in on the ipad but

He was a little lost in the woods earlier this year and went to the Mac and used a Mac like a monster. And on that time, during that time, he found a couple of apps that he just can't live without now. And there's specifically one that we are going to revolutionize the world by bringing it to the iPad. But we're going to do it a little differently. We're going to think different. We're going to be like Steve Jobs. You know, Jobs would absolutely just love this.

You know, what would Jobs do? We are going to take the app Hush, which has basically been abandoned on the Mac because it hasn't received an update two years ago. And we are going to bring it to the iPad. We are absolutely going to revolutionize the space of audio processing. So what the app Hush does, it's unlike any other app, and it 10x is your productivity, 100x is your billions that you've made.

What this does is it's simple. It has one slider, and you just pick the intensity of it. Then you drop your audio clips in there, and it cleans up echoes and background sounds and hissing and noises and all that stuff. It really does a great job. But the problem is it's only on the Mac, and it's essentially been abandoned. The standalone Mac app hasn't received an update in two years. So we're going to bring it to the iPad because, as we all know, real creatives get real work done on the iPad. It is impossible to get real work done on a Macintosh.

So we're going to essentially make this UI iPad-friendly. It'll work with files. It'll allow you to save the audio files wherever you want. You can batch process audio files. and it'll use the background task feature that came with iPadOS 26. This will completely revolutionize the way Christopher Lawley can use his iPad because not just Christopher Lawley, I shouldn't have just pitched this for me because I actually really want somebody to make this app. There is a lot of, okay, I'm going to break character for a minute.

There's a lot of creative people I know that use this app. Basically, every time I sit down and talk to YouTubers, one of the first things that comes up recently is like, hey, have you guys been using this app, Hush? Inside Apple, I know they use this app. Like, literally, I heard about this from the Apple production team. Like, they're the ones that told me about this. This is actually a really popular app, but the developer of it has since moved on and is focusing on, like, their Logic plugin and their Pro Tools plugin, and isn't really focused on a standalone app.

I have been trying to find any app that does something like this for the iPad or even something that's updated for the Mac because there just isn't a version like this at all. Like there's nothing like this. Like there are other tools, but they are so much more complex. The beauty of this app is that there is just a slider and you just choose the intensity of it. I use it for this podcast. I use it for all my videos. I know a bunch of other creative people. John Voorhees, he uses it for all their podcasts.

I know a bunch of other creative people that use this as well. And the fact that there's not something like this on the iPad that has just absolutely killed me. I've been editing a lot more videos on the ActionFact. Almost all my videos since iPadOS 26 came out have been edited on the iPad. But I have to take all my audio files and put them on the Mac first to process them and then move them back over to the iPad. And that kills me. Something like this on the iPad would be killer. It is like the big missing tool for like video and audio creatives on the iPad.

There are apps on the app store that claim to do this stuff. They do not. They do not do a good job. So, yes, my whole pitch is take the app Hush, make the UI relevant for the iPad, and Matt Hush for the iPad. Hush but iPad. Hush but iPad with a lot of dollar signs. See, Matt Birchler gets it. Successful app developer Matt Birchler gets it. Hint, hint, developers. So anyways, this app would actually make a big deal.

And like it could be a universal app, so it could be iPhone, iPad, Mac. But like this would actually make a big deal in a lot of creative people's lives. If there was something simple like this and worked just as well as Hush, but was on these multiple platforms that you could like do voice memos on your iPhone and then send it over and clean up the audio and stuff like that. It just makes such a big difference. Anyways, if there's an app developer listening, please make this app for me. Interesting. This is very niche.

I was not expecting something like that. This whole challenge was literally me. I came up with this challenge just as a way for me to pitch this and trying to get a developer to make this. Wow. That was the whole reason for this challenge. So now it's happening, definitely, right? Yep, absolutely. That's how it works. Okay, okay. Niléane, what do you got for us? I was wondering whether I wanted to argue to go last or second.

Okay, well, I mean, you're second in the document, and we all know I can't disrupt the document. I can't disrupt the document? Can't disrupt the document. Okay, okay. So, my app, I'll strap to your seats. My app, the name of it is Beatmaker. Okay? And what this does is not music. It just adds a bunch, like it adds life to your Mac.

Or it can run on Windows and Linux. I don't care. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with cross-platform. Okay. So, here's the pitch. And don't tune out what I'm about to say because it's very smart. It will 100x your productivity just as well. Ooh. Yeah. Imagine clack but tuned up to the extreme.

I quit. I quit. I'm done. Hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me. out. With this installed with Beatmaker on your Mac, you will hear every single sound that your computer doesn't actually make. And that's sad when you think about it. Like, these days, computers don't make any noise. So let's bring it all back. With this, you get fake fan sounds, You get electrical whir, you know, when your computer's freaking hard on something.

You're exporting Final Cut project, yeah? Yeah? You can hear your computer think. He's like, hmm, you can hear some hums maybe in the background. Oh. In addition to the electrical buzz and the clanks, things are clanking inside there, right? Maybe spinning hard drive sounds. spinning hard drive as well when you're copying files, things like that, okay? When you're browsing the web, you can so, I don't know if you've known this by the way, but in French there's an old people way of talking about the web

like surf the web you say that in English, maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah I mean, not so much anymore, but yeah I think we invented it, actually all right so people in french like old people in french still say this a lot and always makes me laugh so yeah with this on your mac uh when you're browsing the web in your favorite web browser of the moment that you've been recommended to uh to try out uh thanks to the browser podcast uh you will hear the waves the sounds of the waves and crashing down on the sand uh this is how you browse the web with Bitmaker.

And, and, and, imagine if when you're opening Finder and searching for files inside Finder or in Spotlight or in Raycast, and your computer, so it's buzzing when you're searching for things, it's buzzing, and you can also hear the sound of somebody shuffling through a pile of paper. Imagine that. That would be amazing. Like there's a little man in the computer looking for the file. Absolutely. And you could have DLCs. So this developer who makes this app, they could sell DLCs where maybe you can

download an underwater pack. And so this turns every single sound in the app into as if it was underwater, like your computer was underwater. It's slightly muffled and bubbles maybe coming out of your computer. All the same sounds but just underwater. I thought could upgrade so that your computer would be more modern and they would like take away the noises and for like two hundred dollars you could have no noise yeah that's a good idea as well yeah maybe maybe that's so there's the underwater pack and the outer space so you can have the

outer space pack and in space there's no sound so there you go in space oh wow you scream yes exactly uh anyway this is the whole spiel what did you write computer but loud computer but loud There's no dollar signs on that note, though. Well. Lots of dollars. Why should I, Mark Andreessen, invest in Computer Cloud? So, reminder, it's clack, but tuned up to the extreme.

Ergo, it's something you want. Bitmaker, for your Mac. Download today. So glad I don't really use Mac anymore. Yeah. Yeah. But since this is going to ship, like, in 10 years, maybe it will like the iPadOS can run things like that by that time. Or are we going to die before? I'm not sure. It's going to take 10 years to develop this app? I'm saying it's going to take 10 years for iPadOS to allow that to run on. Okay, yeah.

That sounds about right. Anyway, so I'm glad we did this challenge. I won. We don't need to hear Matt's idea. I'm so glad you both went with Niche. apps. Chris, to an audience of one. To be fair, I walked that back when I realized in order for me to get this made, I need to actually appeal to developers and make them realize a lot of people use this app. A lot of people use Hush. A lot of people use Hush. A lot of people use Crack.

More than you'd think. Oh, yeah. More than you would think. Still in the app store charts, maybe? That's what I'm pulling up right now. Oh, okay. God. Top paid apps. I feel responsible for that. It is out of the top. We need to talk about it some more. It's number 11. People, get back to work. Yeah. Anyway, I do have an idea. And much like your ideas, although yours was genuinely new.

Horrifying, but new. I. Mine was new. It uses iPad UI. um mine is i don't know if either of you remember fever the rss reader i think so i have was that the one with a ton of ease no no that's you're thinking of re no reader feed feed yeah yeah okay i'm thinking of fever i have i messaged you a link to the web archive version of it because it is the website is gone today oh i remember the icon fever was an awesome

app you had to self-host it which was a challenge but it was 30 bucks you paid for fever and what fever did is it was an rss sinking service but what it did that was cool is that if there were specific links that like multiple of your feeds were linking to it would make a heat a heat check on basically and so you could just browse like a normal rss reader and it's synced with reader and those sorts of things um but in the interface you could just go to your i forgot what the page was called but like you would just go to uh i don't know i think it's the it's called hot hot yes you

go to the hot page and then it would show a temperature rate uh for each link and it would show you here's all the websites that link to it um and so if everybody's linking to the apple newsroom post or whatever it would just be at the top and you could click that and then see here's the seven people i follow that link to it how i would evolve this is the challenge of this was that it only really surfaced apple stuff for me because i mostly um just followed apple accounts that would

linked to the same like macrumors post or whatever and so you don't want that you want more diversity i want some more diversity i don't know exactly know how we're going to do that this is where i need money to do the research uh but somehow you'd be able to get links similar to what you follow but are somehow a little bit outside of what they're actually linking to um or if only one person links to it but like the rest of the world is talking about it it could bump up on the list as

well so yeah i just really want fever back uh it was really cool and i miss it i like it so can i help you out here matt in the app leer there if you add your rss feed to leer uh there is an option in there called hot links that basically does exactly this. Oh. It pulls all the big, like, hey, everyone's linking to this thing. I would like to acquire the company Lear.

What a great pitch. Oh, it exists somewhere. Huh. Yeah. Well, I already have that app installed, so I'm going to see how it works, and if it does, this is what I'm bringing next week. I think it's your challenge next week so you don't get a topic next week I'm just kidding if you wanted to talk about it no no we're not that rigid this does exactly what I just pitched yes yep yeah the whole time you're talking

about this and I'm like I know Lear does this and I'm just going to wait for him to finish hmm okay it's not exactly it but it's pretty darn close oh yeah it's right it's filtered by today yeah it everyone's linking and then they also have uh in leer as well they have another filter that i use uh linked list which is like hey these are the blogs you follow that are linking to other stuff all right and then they have a calm feed too this is actually one of my favorite features of leer is where like if you have like a bunch of blogs and stuff added that don't post a ton they aren't like the verge or something like that they're more like um 5 12 pixels or like something a little

lighter kind of thing like even mac stories and stuff like that like they just post like once or twice a day kind of thing that's like this calm feed section that's pretty nice um i get a lot of like youtube videos because i subscribe to youtube via rss uh a bunch of youtube channels via rss and stuff. So anyways, yeah. Okay. Well, it's already available. So enjoy. There you go. Nice. This was a fun challenge. Please make hush for the iPad, though, developers. Please make Beatmaker.

But hush for the iPad. I will spend lots of money. So will I. I will spend money as well on Beatmaker. Alright. It will help you crowdfund the project. I mean, I have a YouTube channel that I can promote your app on. Just saying. Just saying. Just putting it out there. I have a master's account. I really want Hush for the iPad. I can promote BitMaker on, yeah. There are two things that are preventing me completely from just like, okay, I don't need another Mac in the house at all.

And it's an app like Hush and Chrome on the iPad. Those are the two things. And BitMaker. Okay. I don't need that. Anyways, Matt, it's your challenge for next week. What do you got for us? I have something very simple. By some measures, it's the simplest thing in the world. The most eternal thing in computing. Oh, no. He's going to have us write binary. It is the second most eternal thing in the computing world.

They're text files. Ooh, text files. So, I would like us to use a single text file. Let me rephrase. I would like us to use text files only to manage our to-dos. Oh. Okay. That's it? That's it. But I don't have to-dos.

You know, find an interesting use for that text file. Okay. But, Nelia, I mean, you do have to-dos, like post about comfort zone and cozy zone and stuff like that. So, you know, you have to-dos. But they're not written anywhere. You could write them. I could. I guess I could. I would clarify a sticky note is not a text file. It's a proprietary application. Obsidian has text files. Obsidian has text files. Markdown files would count.

Okay, okay. Okay, cool, because I was about ready to change the extension of Obsidian to go from.md to.txt because it really doesn't actually make a difference in the Obsidian part. But I was like, okay, that's how I'm going to get around that. Plain text or markdown would be fine. No RTF, no rich text files, no PDFs. So no text. Oh, text edit can do plain text, right? It can, yeah.

But if I see bold text anywhere that doesn't have asterisks around it, God help me. Immediate disqualification. You're going to lose it. So many ASCII art in our text files. You could, sure. Ooh, okay, okay. Interesting. Okay. So we'll see. It's not a winning thing, but if you can make it unexpectedly aesthetic, that would be cool. oh okay i like it could be an empty task list like you could just design a nice little this is where the tasks would go if i had a template i can do a template okay okay interesting

okay so it's wide open you don't have to do a ton with it but uh yeah sounds good i like this interesting okay cool uh that seems like a good place to wrap up the show but i have an end of the show a question for the two of you and i'm very excited about this one i want to know what is your favorite breakfast i love breakfast i can eat breakfast every meal same i have a controversial response i don't do breakfast i don't think that's controversial but like if you were to go out for a

breakfast like you're going out for a breakfast a brunch it's on your list what are you gonna do why would you go out for breakfast what does that mean you go out for breakfast yeah go out to a restaurant for breakfast to a restaurant for breakfast like in the morning yeah some french people do restaurants are not like you can go to a cafe in the morning yeah they got food there yeah you get like a pastry right I mean it could be like if you want a light breakfast I guess a typical Parisian goes out in the morning.

He goes to the cafe, croissant, and that's it. Wow. That's a stereotype. Okay. That's a stereotype, but it's true. Any cafe in Paris, they have bundles, like cafe plus croissant on the side, or pain au chocolat. So there you go. Okay. I like it. I like good croissant. Sure. but I don't do breakfast once again. It's not my thing. Interesting. I've had two breakfasts today.

I've had first breakfast and second breakfast. You're such a hobbit. I haven't had breakfast, and that's why I came up with this question, because I'm really hungry. Oh, you're just looking for ideas. I like a scramble. I like an egg scramble, so scrambled eggs, or like over easy or easy over, whichever one it is. Over easy. Over easy, thank you. And then a little bit of bacon, potatoes, peppers, maybe a little meat.

Delicious. Nice. I like a good French toast, like a good stack of French toast, and then some side of bacon. And then being diabetic, the one thing I miss the most, because it will absolutely destroy my blood sugar, is orange juice. I miss some good orange juice. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, I love a good breakfast. In fact, I'm going to go see if Daniel wants to go to breakfast right now.

So weird. Because it's 9 o'clock in the morning here still, so. Yeah, that would be. Like, for me, it's the evening. That would be weird. Yeah. There's a thing, like, is there something you do, brunch? Like, brunching? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Brunch is a thing. Yeah, brunch is absolutely a thing. I always find that so weird, like people brunching. It's kind of like, oh, we had a lazy morning, we slept in, we're going to go get some food, and it's kind of like a little late for breakfast, a little early for lunch.

Yeah, that's it. There are like restaurants that do only that. Oh, yeah. They only serve brunches. A lot of places, what they'll do is they're just like a breakfast and lunch place. They're not open for dinner. It's just like, oh, we're we do breakfast and lunch and essentially it's a brunch place because you can order lunch at 7am or you can order breakfast at 11am and they usually close like around 2 or something

but you know like what people do in the morning that's not my business I don't deal with mornings you just don't do mornings I don't do mornings well that's a good place to wrap up Thank you all so much for listening. Big thank you to MacStories. We're a MacStories podcast. Go check out all the writings and other podcasts and shows and everything that's going on there. Matt, Nelian, you have anything you want to promote? Yes. Remember last week we linked to FrontRaiser?

Feel free to go back and click that link again and share. Yeah. We might even put it in this episode too. Who knows? Yeah. We have the technology. At least again. We can rebuild it. Oh, wait, that's a different thing. Nice. Matt, you got anything you want to promote? You should check out my latest app, Quick Notes. You dictate notes into your phone. It gives you text back. It's better than the dictation that's built into the iOS keyboard. And it's totally free. Enjoy. Nice.

One more app. One more app. Make hush for the iPad. Make hush for the iPad. Make hush for the iPad. Oh, Matt, you could totally make Bitmaker. Don't make it, Matt. Don't do it. Don't do it. You have the technology. It's a trap. I have to pick which one is more viable. Clack is right up there at the top of the store. I don't see Hush on the App Store list. Yes. I don't think Hush is on the App Store. Guess it doesn't sell. I don't think I don't. All right. Thank you all so much for listening, watching.

Have a great day. Bye.

Bye.