Are You Predicting Doom?

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. As always, I am joined by the intrepid Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I'm okay. We're back to work. I was living the retirement life and I loved it. Yeah, I was like kind of slowly coming back in and yeah. We're also joined by, what's a good adjective?

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I said intrepid for Matt. Should I say the incredible Niléane? Niléane, how are you doing? Hi. I'm doing well. That's it. Okay. All right. I love it. Yeah, I'm okay. I'm okay. All right. We got some tiny topics. We're back to having a tight schedule this week, so I'm going to keep the show moving this week. We do. The feedback form.

We've been talking about it. You guys have been using it. So thank you for it. We've got a few that are just kind of general feedback, but a few things I wanted to shout out that I saw come in. Listener Bastion mentioned two fonts that they wanted to include. They listened to our font draft, which was a Cozy Zone episode. Link in the description. And, yeah, they wanted to bring two fonts. Atkinson Hyperlegible and Geist. Geist, I had not heard of before, but Atkinson Hyperlegible, great font.

Very legible, if you can imagine. And yeah, totally worth shouting out. I am ashamed they weren't included in my list of fonts. Atkinson Hyperlegible, I think I mentioned. Oh, did you? Maybe you did. Maybe. But yeah, I use it all the time. It's really good. It's very good. I like both of these. Maybe we'll do another font draft in the future. Who knows? subscribe to cozy zone to find out and then listener rafa left several items of feedback um a few recommendations um you recommended the youtuber ben valick uh who has has a has an

interesting youtube channel i've never seen this before but i've watched a few videos now uh he has gotten into ergonomic keyboards um i wanted to talk about that since we talk about keyboards a little bit on this channel uh he also brought up swap mod which is a mod you can get for your uh 3d printer which will basically after a print is done it will shove the printer plate off the printer and load a new one for you so you can just have an assembly line going without you having to uh do anything it looks crazy but was really interesting uh and then he also made a plea uh to for the general audio listener

that mentioned that sometimes we hold something up to camera and don't describe it enough and we should just be mindful that most people who consume this podcast are listening so that is just a public reminder for us myself included to just be better I don't feel like I describe things right I'm saying you are guilty more than me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's probably not true.

I don't know. As listeners can see on my shirt, I have, you know. It says not guilty on Matt's forehead. Yes. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. We'll do better. I know this is like before we started doing the show, that was something I was worried about all the time because it's something I complain about, about podcasts that start doing video. Suddenly in the audio, start talking about stuff that's on camera that you can't see and happens all the time with the

waveform podcast which i love yeah they i i i watch a ton of them of it on youtube but most of the i listen to it and yeah they are really bad at this but i think it's because most of the audience are watching instead of listening which is not the case for us yeah when you're primarily a you full of YouTubers, you're probably going to get a lot of video stuff. But I think I'll just peel back the curtain a little bit. The big reason why a lot of podcasts are doing video now is because you can grow on YouTube. I mean, that's how I had no audience when I started doing YouTube stuff. And

I've grown it past 200,000 subscribers now. And it's like, so YouTube is a place where you can grow things. That's why a lot of podcasts are doing video stuff now. And just uploading an audio feed to YouTube doesn't, that's not going to do it. You need a video version. So that's why a lot of podcasts are doing it. Yes, we have been guilty of showing things and not describing it as well. I apologize. It's probably a little bit me. Or a lot of bit me. But yeah, that's why a lot of podcasts are doing that. It's hard to grow a podcast without an algorithmic

platform. If you would like to help us grow the audio one, leave us a review on iTunes. Yeah. iTunes. or the podcast app sorry the podcast app install Windows install iTunes for Windows your millennial is showing yes iTunes was great okay there's reviews on Spotify too now but you should not be using that whatever we talked about that in Cozy Zone yes alright what's next in Tiny Topics so next I have two questions

for Matt Butchler of Butchery.me which I believe who I believe is on the show today with us. Huge of true. Yeah. First question, will you buy this? And I've included a link for you to click and tell us right now, yes or no. Will you buy this? So the link, you can click it. It's called Intricate. And it's something that's been announced at CES, I think. It's a touchscreen that you can add to any MacBook.

It snaps on the screen with magnets, and it's a touch layer for the MacBook. And you can use Mac OS with your fingers. Turn your MacBook into a touchscreen MacBook. Will you buy this, Matt, yes or no, right now? No. All right, you will buy it. He doesn't believe in the touchscreen Mac life. It's very clear. I was not allowed to elaborate on why, But no, I don't think I'll buy it. Wow. Maybe elaborate in a few words.

I will never bring it with me, and therefore I won't get much use out of it. Yeah, it doesn't look like you can close it with the touchscreen on, so it kind of really defeats the purpose because now you have a potential another 14 or even 16-inch display, very fragile thing you're carrying with you. It's got a big chin. It does have a chin. Yeah. All right. All right. Second question. Do you still use Aerospace?

I'm waiting for the YouTube content to drop on this. You should, like, and I'm wondering now, maybe you moved on. Maybe you hate it now. What's going on with Aerospace? I know everybody's expecting me to stop using Aerospace. But as a great king once said, today is not that day. And I am still using Aerospace. face who i feel better knowing this okay okay this is good and that's it you don't have to elaborate uh chris is doing a annoyed face which is perfect all i wanted it's all i wanted from this

okay you can move on okay uh the the front the tiny topics are all me because i don't have a main topic today uh just a micro first impressions i got a new portable game console this is the ROG Xbox Ally X, which has a terrible name, but is a powerful gaming console. However, it is straight up Windows. Oh, my God. I can hear the fans. Yeah, the fans really kicked in there. It looks very chunky.

Yeah, it is chunky. It's about the depth of two switches, I would say. Yeah, it's a chunky boy. Oh, no. But it is a full-on Windows computer. And I just wanted to say that is cool and useful for people who are okay with that. But it is not a Steam Deck. It made me appreciate the Steam Deck so much more because it is actually a console. This is a Windows computer. When you boot it up the first time, it has the Windows startup.

Literally the Windows first launch experience. And then, shockingly, mine, for whatever reason, did not have DirectX installed. So no games would run. So I had to go open edge on my console, install DirectX with an EXE, and then my game started to play, which is crazy town. But quite powerful. Quite a bit more oomph than the Steam Deck. So looking for that Steam Deck too. And this is why my Legion Go has been sitting in the drawer for a year or so, because of those exact reasons.

I'm sick of Windows. Yeah. You can flash this with Bazite, which is basically SteamOS. Yeah. But anyway, I haven't done that yet. It's the year of Linux on portable gaming. I'm telling you, it's the year of Linux. It's happening. It's happening, people. Finally happening. Yes. All right. That's it. All right. Nice. I'm excited to hear more about this in the future. We, meaning me and Neilion. Oh, Matt, an apology, actually.

What? During our break period, Matt became a Mac Stories Select winner. His app, Quick Reviews, was one best new app. He's holding up the trophy for audio listeners. He's holding up the trophy that he got from Mac Stories. I would like to clarify, the three of us were not on the voting editorial commission for this. We didn't even know. I found out one day ahead because I was uploading Comfort Zone to the YouTube channel, and I saw John uploaded app stories.

And I went, oh, I wonder who won. And I went and looked at the description and saw Matt. So I knew one day before Matt, but I didn't say anything. Yes. And I was on the team picking the winners the year before in 2024, but not in 2025. So I was really not aware. I thought you were going to say I was on the panel and I voted against you. I voted against you. That's the ultimate comfort zone move right there.

But anyways, congratulations, Matt, on becoming an award-winning app developer. Thank you. Yeah, a wild way to wrap up my year of becoming an actual developer. So thank you, everyone, for using Quick Reviews. It's awesome. That's not a good one. I was doing the FaceTime effects. There you go. Doing the fireworks. Yeah, this happened during our break, so we kind of missed it on the main show. But yeah, congratulations, Matt. And the last thing in Tiny Topics, and we can get on to the main show, but this week on Cozy Zone, which is our members-only show,

there'll be a link in the description if you want to go check it out. It's an extra episode every single week. This week, we roasted our listeners' home screens part two, and somebody tried to mess with us. Like, we figured you out. If you're listening, we figured you out. We figured you out that you were trying to mess with us. Or we were extremely paranoid for no reason. I know. I'm still convinced that we were. I felt crazy during that episode. I still haven't figured it out. No. But, like, there's definitely a code in there.

Listeners, if you figure out the code, because just let us know. Write in. Use that feedback form. Anyways. Let's get in the main show. Yes. All right. Niléane, what do you got for us this week? I have a big sigh. That was a pretty big sigh. You know, I'd give that an 8 out of 10 as far as big sighs go. Thank you. Thank you. Last week, this week as we're recording, the last week for you people in the future.

Yeah, yeah. Time zones. Time zones of podcasts. Logitech did an oopsie. And it made me mad. And I'm mad. I just want to be mad on the show. Because apparently people say I'm not mad enough on the show. That's a joke, by the way. So I will be mad today for once, for the first time ever. I've never heard you get mad once. No. Me neither. It's new. New territory. As you know, if you use Logitech hardware, which I do, I have the MX Master 3S.

Chris, you talked about the 4 that came out recently. I use the MX Keys Mini, which is a really nice keyboard that they make. And I've used previous hardware as well for years. I really like Logitech stuff. But as you know, it's become worse every year as time moves on because they force you to use their app.

And it's fine. Their app has been fine before. It used to be fine. So it's called Logi Options Plus, I believe. And it's like two years ago, or last year, I don't know, time, at some point they added AI features. And people were wondering why can I add AI to my mouse? And Logitech was like, yeah, and maybe even one day we'll sell you a subscription mouse that you can rent from us, I guess.

The CEO gave a weird interview to The Verge at some point about this. Anyway, so on the software front, they're doing some weird stuff. And by weird, I mean things that anger me deeply. And the software itself is, it's okay. It's not great. Like, it's some, the UI is not perfect. It does the job.

It feels very clunky for what it needs to do. And it's kind of, I've still not said what Diopsy is, but I will come to that. The app, it highlights that now when you buy a Logitech hardware and you want to customize it because especially like the MX Master mice, they have a bunch of extra buttons that you can use and they advertise this.

This is the feature of the mouse. You have a bunch of buttons and the shape is nice and all of that. Extra thumb wheel and all of that. And to use all of that, to leverage all of that, you have to use the app. which is strange because why can't the mouse remember the settings that I've customized? And this is not something they want to solve, seemingly. They don't want to save anything on the hardware. Like, this mouse is dumb as soon as the app is uninstalled from my Mac.

The buttons don't work. Well, have you seen RAM prices lately? I mean, come on. Yeah, this would need a ton of RAM. Yeah, I mean, at least 32 gigs. Just to say before I tell you about the Opsie that Logitech did, this mouse becomes super dumb as soon as the app is not running on my Mac, as soon as the app is gone, as soon as I start using it on a new device, like on a new Mac, if the Logitech app is not installed, I can't use half the buttons.

And I'm saying half, but it's two-thirds of the buttons I can't use on the mouse. so now that you know this the oopsie was one morning i woke up turned on my mac and was about to join a video call as i do on weekdays and i can left click i can right click the scrolling feels weird and by weird i mean it's scrolling like it's scrolling not nice it's scrolling all all the wrong ways to scroll it's doing that i can't scroll web pages correctly my thumb wheel

doesn't work my so the mx master it has two buttons on the side that you usually assign to back and forward for web browser and apps and all that this is what i use them for anyway that doesn't work um there's a resting thumb button like on the left side of the mouse that is used by default for gestures to move spaces to go into mission control so that's very very important to the mouse actually because you need it to use your mac to navigate your windows and that's not working as well that morning and i start to look it up like what is going on so the first

thing i do obviously is i try to launch the logic options app it's not launching there's just a loading thing on the window and it's never loading. So I start looking it up and turns out the app is down or broken. People don't really know. It's not working in a nutshell. Why is it not working? I don't know. I did not update the app. So if it did update, it did without telling me in the background and maybe when my mac was all turned off during the night what or when i turned it back

on and as soon as i turned my mac back on the app immediately updated and broke itself what the heck happened and so people started to become aware of this like on mastodon and mac generation um which I've mentioned before, a French tech website, they made an article about it. And the article was just this. Yeah, Logitech stuff isn't working right now. We don't know why, but it's not working.

It's not just you. That was just the article. No, because we had no idea. And just a few hours, we're talking hours, like two or three hours later, Logitech put up a support page on their website that says, yeah, unfortunately, our software broke but you can fix it just download this hotfix and install it manually and boom that's it this is it they broke their own app which is mandatory remind you to use two thirds of your mouse that costs

100 euros or more and they can break it overnight and you will not be aware that you have to install a hotfix because you have to do it manually. You have to go on a specific website. You have to click a link. You have to launch the installer for the hotfix. And when you launch the app just right after installing the hotfix, the app just launches. So now you're like saying, phew, oh, my God. Okay, it's working now.

And now, boom, Logitech tells you, please upgrade, please enable the AI prompt builder, by the way, on your mouse. Why is it not enabled? This is like a huge prompt that pops up on your window when you install the hotfix. Like as if I have not said no to this thing before so many times. I don't want to add an AI prompt builder to my mouse, whatever that means. This is it. This is my rant. This is some bull****.

What the heck? This is what? What is this? What is going on? This is the price that I paid for this hardware, for the keyboard, the mouse. This is not cheap hardware. And the freaking app will just stop itself randomly in the middle of the night. We don't know why. We still don't know why, by the way. We don't know what they did. What happened? There's no explanation, no stories, no nothing.

And no, install the hotfix manually by navigating to this random support page on our website. If I know nothing, but considering it just kind of like happened to everyone, I'm going to guess it was some certificate expired. Oh, that's right. That's what it was. I was going to say, that is what it was. They forgot to update a certificate. which honestly when big companies forget to update their certificates it makes me so happy because it happens to everybody i'm not i've done i've done it in my it career everyone's done it

it's happened to everyone but when you are a big company and your hardware that you sell supports it maybe make a calendar event or something that repeats every year to just remind you to re-up that thing you know i bet you they did and it was on someone's calendar who doesn't work there anymore yeah yeah this explains why it happened it happened overnight with my mac turned on yep yep because i i i didn't think it was like a software update i saw some people say oh this is why you shouldn't use like auto updates for software or something like that and i'm like i

don't think that's what the like it's happening to too many people for it to be like a software update to roll out and like they would have been like that's a pretty big bug that would have hit a beta tester and been like oh nope this breaks everything let's let's fix that first like it's definitely a certificate yeah that's it yes i i forgot yeah actually oh my god this is worse like yeah just yes okay okay so steps have been taken i have people have been removed Yes. Sorry, Editor Chris, I've uninstalled this bull crap from my Mac.

I do not want it on my Mac anymore. This has to stop. I've complained so many times about Logi Options Plus. And every time I'm like, okay, it's bad, it's bad, but it's okay. You can use it. You can set it up and forget about it. It runs in the background. Just forget about it. Just don't think about it. But they made me think about it. And I can't anymore. I can't. How dare they make you think? How dare they? Okay, so I installed one of the many alternatives, and I want to talk about just one of them that I picked and went with,

and it's great. I did not feel the need to try another one, so I will just mention the one that I installed. It's called BetterMouse. I have put a link in the show notes. This is just a simple app that lives in the menu bar. It's not a simple understatement because it does a lot of things, But it does everything that Logitech Options Plus does. You can map any of the buttons on your MX Master 3S or like whatever, MX Master or any of the Logitech mice, actually. And the MX keyboard as well.

They allow you to remap the function row keys as well, just like the Logitech app lets you. It actually goes further than that because it lets you like map gestures, like more complex gestures because you can combine them with modifier keys. So I've recreated all my mouse setup in BetterMouse, which includes exceptions for specific apps as well. Like my mouse buttons, they behave differently depending on the app I use.

It's just like a handful of them. So I've recreated all of that. It took me an hour. That was annoying, but I did that in BetterMouse. And it's great. So if you're feeling like me right now, this is one good alternative I can recommend right now. So I know one thing LogiOptions does that kind of is a requirement to install when using the Logitech mouse thing is it fixes the scrolling in macOS so that it's not just wild scrolling.

Does BetterMouse fix that? Yes. Yes, actually, BetterMouse does this, but so much better than the logic. It's in the title. Yes. It's in the name. The scrolling is great. You can configure-- there's so many sliders. You can leave it by default. By default, it scrolls smoothly, and it's just fine. But you can go wild with it. You can make it super smooth, way too smooth, way too slow, way too fast, way too rackety.

You can customize it however you want. The default is just fine. You remember that I've talked about before, Moz, MOS, a small utility app for macOS that allows this, that enables smoother scrolling with third-party mice on macOS. Yeah. I've uninstalled Moz because BetterMouse by itself does this job perfectly. It's scrolling smoothly, and it's good.

Huh, interesting. Nice. That's awesome. And that's it. I feel like the weight has been lifted off my shoulder. And I will just leave you with one last thing. The MX keyboard is out the window. Woo-hoo! Yes. But I will talk about this later. Oh, it's a good tease. What a good tease. Because I kind of want to sell the mouse and the keyboard together.

And so right now I have another keyboard. I have a new keyboard. But I want to get a new mouse as well. So I will talk about this. Can I interest you into a magic mouse today? I have one. I already have one. I will not be switching to that. Yes. All right. That's it. Yeah. So Logitech, there are no strong enough words to qualify this.

This is... Anyway. I mean, there are, but our bleep budget isn't that high. Yeah. I've already consumed two editor Chris's. Yeah. We got a cap on our bleep budget. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. I'm glad you found a better solution for your mouse. There you go. Do you want to hear another reason why I'm a sicko in terms of using computers? Only. I don't use this day-to-day, but I do have a Logitech MX Master 3S as well.

I don't use the Logi Options app at all. So whatever macOS auto-detects, that's what I've been doing for years. Wait, so you have the broken scrolling? I have the completely fine scrolling. I don't know what you guys are talking about. He's a strange guy. Chris, I'm not crazy, right? No. If you don't do anything to the scrolling... It's insane. It's horrible. Yes. I don't know. He's crazy. Don't listen to him.

What? Right now, it's gorgeous. What the... Some of the best scrolling I've ever seen. I don't know if he's joking or if he's... I'm not joking. Are you... Matt. Matt. You know, one day he also said that, so you know how the MX Master, the scroll wheel has two modes, the ratchety one and the linear continuous one. Yeah, the infinite scrolling. Yeah, the infinite one. The infinite one is unbearable. That's what I use. That's what he uses all the time. I don't get it.

I jump back and forth between the two. I think it's fine to alternate between the two. Yeah, that's what I do. But using the second one full time is just like. No, if you're not scrolling at 1,000 miles an hour, you're not scrolling. Matt, blink twice if somebody from Logitech is just out of frame with a gun pointed at your head. Ah, okay. Oh. He blinked a bunch there. Neil, did you see that? Yes. I tried to keep my eyes open. Did he call somebody? It backfired. Yes.

All right. Okay. He's not okay. I don't even know how to go on from there. That's a revelation. This week, I wanted to talk to you about the feeds. About the feeds, all the feeds. So I, like a lot of you, have, you know, in this post-Twitter world that we live in, have, you know, multiple social media accounts, RSS, then there's YouTube and all that stuff. And basically, I've been kind of feeling my feeds have been a little overwhelming.

I feel like I've had too many different buckets and too many different locations. And, like, one bucket falls to the side and I end up not checking it. And then, like, I miss some important stuff. And, like, I just... And I promise this isn't my topic. But just the state of the world today sucks. Yeah. Have you seen what Logitech has done? Exactly. It's all Logitech's fault. 100% Logitech's fault. I'm so going to get in trouble for this. I don't know why, but I'm going to get in trouble for this.

It's all Logitech's fault. So I have just kind of been wanting to curate my newsfeed a little bit more and bring all those little buckets, Mastodon, Blue Sky, YouTube, RSS, all those different things to kind of one place. So I have been using Reader. And not Reader Classic, the new Reader. For those that don't know, Reader has been an RSS client for, what, decades? At least over a decade.

Like, it's been around for a very long time. And with the new version, the developer really pivoted away from just being a specific RSS client to a kind of, I'd say, a feeds client. So not only can you add RSS feeds, but you can add Mastodon, Blue Sky. You can add YouTube stuff. You can add podcasts. You can add subreddits. You can add all sorts of different things in there. And for me, what I am using it for is just kind of a way to bring all of my buckets together.

So instead of having five different apps that I check, an RSS client, Ivory, Blue Sky, YouTube, and a read later app. I just have one app that I'm going to right now. And it's felt more controllable in a world that doesn't feel like there's any control. Does that make sense? I don't know.

Some of these apps have controls. Yeah, okay, fair. But, okay, so I should also peel back a little bit more of the curtain. So because everything is horrible and I just like I'm kind of in like bury my head in the sand mode right now, which I know isn't great, but that's where I'm at. I've deleted Reddit and all like the news apps off my phone and iPad and all those devices. And basically Reader is just the app that I open now. And it's got my curated list of RSS clients, Macedon Follows, Blue Sky Follows.

And then I subscribe to a bunch of YouTube channels that I watch almost all the videos for. And I'll still go to the YouTube homepage sometime to see, like, recommended stuff. But, you know, if it's a page, if it's a channel I follow, like, a better computer, for example. Anytime there's a video uploaded to a better computer, it shows up in Reader now. And I just kind of like having this chronological feed that I can just open up, scroll through. Nothing's too wild. I still get news from, like, Macedon and Blue Sky.

So like important stuff still breaks through, but I'm not getting the fire hose of news feeds just thrown at me. It's very, it's more, you know, curated towards the stuff I'm interested in. Plus there's some general world news and stuff in there. But the reader app. So there's a couple of different apps like this that brings all these little buckets or feeds together. I tried that one. I revisited Tapestry. But Reader is the one that won out for me because I really like the design of it.

And it's really well thought out for working with these different buckets. So, for example, I could be swiping through. And if I see like a Mastodon post or a Blue Sky post I want to interact with, I can swipe to the right on it. And you can go into the settings and you can set up the default apps for that behavior. So by default, I think it just opens to the web. But with Reader, I was able to, when I swipe right on, say, a Mastodon post, it opens in ivory. or if I swipe right on a BlueSky post, it'll open in the BlueSky app. And that way I can like it, I can reply to it, stuff like that.

So that's kind of nice. So it supports deep links into Ivory? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can just swipe right. So if I want to, because now Ivory supports the new proper quote post feature from Macedon that you talked about, I can swipe right on that and I can do the proper quote post. I can like it, I can reply to it, And then I can just jump right back into Reader. So that way I'm just kind of like staying in that app. But I'm still able to interact with that stuff. I wish Reader would build in those interactions natively.

But I kind of get why they don't. Reader is very much a read-only app, hence the name. And you go to these other silos to interact with them. Which I think is good because it also keeps me from replying to posts like being snarky. Like, it just calms things down a little bit. I think it's interesting that, like, the reader but also tapestry. And there was one I reviewed on MaxTourist that was called Feed.

Yes. With four E's. It's about the same. It compiles a bunch of different feeds in the same place. And it's interesting that they have to walk this fine line of allowing you to tap into those feeds quite deeply. but like not letting you interact with some of stuff or all of it or any of it. And I always think to myself that these apps maybe would become extremely successful, like more than they already are.

If they added all of that, if they became truly like a huge mega social feed app that would allow you to interact from start to finish in the same app. But at the same time, so I understand that's a big thing to tackle. But I also understand, I don't know, like you said, it's interesting that those apps want to stay read-only and at the same time appeal to people like you who want that read-only experience.

Yeah, I will say as someone who makes a very simple Mastodon app who also, if you want to reply to a post, I kick you over to a proper Mastodon app to do it. Once you start going down that road of interacting with these other posts, it gets so much more complicated. And you're immediately compared to the experience that a dedicated app has. And you're like, oh, they have all these features. And I need to be around that good. And then, oh, and that's just for Mastodon. Then you have to do, okay, I have to do the same thing for Blue Sky.

I need to do the same thing for YouTube comments Whatever the other services are, I can totally see. I totally agree it would be cooler if it was just kind of this feed and you could just reply and interact with all of them. But I can also see why that would make someone's eyes just bulge out of their skull when they thought about how much work it would be to have a great experience for all these things. It would create some disparities too because some services have more open APIs than others.

Your Reddit feeds would be read-only whatever you do. Meanwhile, other services you could interact with. And it's interesting that Reader, the new Reader specifically, they have gone pretty hard on podcasts. Have you seen that, Chris? Yeah. I don't subscribe to any podcast. Okay. I subscribe to Comfort Zone in there because I was kind of curious how it works. And I don't like it. So I kind of ignore the podcast feature in Reader. but it's interesting that it's there so like there is in reader there's different tabs for like videos and audios and stuff like that so like if you are just like sitting down and you want to watch

some videos you can just hit the videos tab or if you're like okay it's time for a podcast you can just hit the audios tab and get to all that stuff but i think for me the way i consume youtube makes sense in this app the way i consume podcast is not yeah but yeah it's the podcast integration is it's a full-on integration yeah yeah they have chapter support they they show full fully formatted show notes uh you can and it's got the all of the reader features so you can tag episodes and all that if if the podcast feature was broken out into a separate app i would probably be all over

That would be a great podcast app. Yeah, I think it could be a really good podcast app. I just, for me, like, it just doesn't quite make sense, but I don't know. It's there. If that's something you truly want, just one app to rule all your feeds, you can. Like, that's the purpose of this. Yeah. But, yeah, so I'm really enjoying the design of this app. The ability, what made it click for me was the ability to just swipe on something like a post and quickly open it in its given app, like Ivory Blue Sky.

Or if it's an article, open it in Safari. Or if it's a YouTube video, go to YouTube or something like that. Like that really made it click for me, just the ability to quickly swipe on it. Now, if you were to swipe on the left, and this is the default behavior, I think you can change it, but I actually quite like this. If you swipe to the left on a post in Reader, it'll save it for later. So if you come across something like a YouTube video and you're like, oh, I'm not in a situation where I can watch a video because maybe I'm in public and I don't watch videos on my phone using the speaker because I'm not a monster in public because you're not a monster.

People that do that are clearly monsters because the rest of the world does not want to hear whatever video you're listening to. I just want to be able to hand over some earbuds. Like, I just want to be able to travel around with earbuds in my pocket just for this, just to be able to hand them over to people. Oh, yeah. Like, collect them from, like, when you go on an airplane, like, if they offer you headphones, just take them every time, and then those can be the ones you give out. Yes. With the adapter, it's the older two.

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so it has, so Reader has a built-in kind of, like, bookmarking, read it later, built right into it. And it's quite nice. I'm still playing around with some other stuff for saving bookmarks. I'll save it for a later episode or video or something. But I've just been using this as, like, oh, hey, here's a video I want to watch, but I can't do it right now. Or here's a longer article I want to read, but I can't do something with this. Or, oh, hey, here's this link that somebody shared, and I can't do anything with it right now.

Just swipe to the left, saves it, and then I can check it out later. There's just literally a later tab right in the app. But that all being said, I know this isn't for everyone, but I just want to kind of like encourage people if you're feeling a little overwhelmed with all the different speeds and feeds out there, maybe give something like this a try. And one thing in particular that I don't like about Reader is they don't support third-party RSS services. So I've been a big Feedbin user for years now, and I couldn't just log into Feedbin.

I had to actually go in and export the OPML file or XML file, some kind of file from Feedbin, and then import it in. And then I was using the newsletter service in Feedbin, so a bunch of newsletters weren't able to come over. I was kind of fine with that. I kind of wanted to reset my newsletter inbox anyways, because I had subscribed to way too many, and I just wasn't needing it. And a lot of the ones that I subscribed to started off free and have now become paid.

And it's just like, okay, well, I can't. I'm all about supporting people and supporting creative people, but I can't pay for everything. I don't have that kind of money. So I have to pick and choose what I do pay for. but uh yeah i i just think this was a really good this is a really good app for me right now will it still be around in a year i don't know but i could i can definitely say it'll still be around for six months like this this is this is going to be for me okay oh yeah yeah are you predicting doom for reader in the next 12 you're like i don't know if i can even say this will be

around for no but i can definitely say like for the next probably six six months or something like that this is probably how i'll be getting my news and like how i'll be dealing with feeds and stuff like that unless something new comes along um just maybe in six months it will be the end of the world and hence everyone will be gone and the reader app as well yeah i was trying not to go full doom and gloom, but... I just like... Yep. I just like doing it. Yep, yep, yep. It's the end of the world as we know it. Has it got liquid glass?

You know... I don't think so. Not really. It's got that reader look. It kind of has that reader look, but there's definitely some... It's not very transparent liquid glass, though I'm using it in dark mode. Okay, it is fully updated for... I'm scrolling it now. It is updated for iOS 26 and it is using transparency on the button so it's using just the standard liquid glass stuff but because the background is so plain it isn't offensive I'd say.

It's only kind of when you start scrolling through there's the sidebar button and this is just on the phone the sidebar button like you'll see like website logos and people's avatars and stuff like that kind of go behind the sidebar button But as far as, like, bad, like, it's, honestly, I would say this is probably one of the best implementations of liquid glass. Because you barely notice it. It's just there. It's just a hint of it. It's just the whimsical part.

But, like, everything has good contrast. Everything is readable. But, yeah, I think, and it's not a ton. Like, it's really not. Yeah, I mean, it is nice. Because I often, when I would scroll and something would go off screen, I would forget that it existed. But now that it's blurred behind a button, I remember that it's there. And so my goldfish brain is able to process it better. So I appreciate that. That's a strange argument I've never heard before.

Anyway, so that's Reader. It is a subscription app now. Reader used to always be like paid up front. Five bucks. And it's not very much. If you let me stall for just a second or if one of you wants to talk about something, I can tell you how much it is. Let me read the top 10 headlines right now. No. No. You can go on X.com, I assume. We're not trying to depress Chris further.

Okay, so it is $10 a year, which is not bad. For an app, I'm using a ton throughout every single day. 10 bucks a year is something I will gladly pay. Okay. Cool. So that's Reader. Any questions or should we move on to the challenge? I think I agree with everything you said. There's no controversy. I think it's great that you like it. Yeah. I would love to be able to use something like this, but my brain can't handle it.

I need separate apps. See, it's funny how different our flavors of ADHD are because, like, what was happening for me is, like, I could handle a couple of the buckets, but then, like, Mastodon would get ignored or my RSS feed would get. Like, what made me break was I had, like, over 1,000 unread items in my RSS client one day, and I was just like, what did I miss? And, like, I actually missed something kind of big. Yeah. And it was just like, okay, I can't do this.

So now I just have this and I just scroll it when I'm, you know, I have a few minutes to kill. And yeah. Yeah. Okay. Nice. I fully endorse the non-algorithmic, just linear feeds. Yeah. You just run out of stuff at some point. Yep. And once you're okay with that, that's helpful. My partner says something funny every once in a while. They say, I finished YouTube. When they're bored and I see that they're not doing anything, I'm looking at them and they're telling me,

yeah, I finished YouTube. Yeah. We say we've gotten to the end of the internet. We've run out of the internet. That's our version. I like it. I like it. All right. Matt, it was your challenge this week. What did you have us do? Well, I had a very simple challenge of, I would like us to find the best MagSafe accessory you can find. Yeah. And you did not have to write. I have done. Same. I'm clearly the winner already. Well, let's see. Let's see.

So I found a few. Already cheating. But I am officially bringing one. I am bringing the dock case magnetic visual. It's an M2 drive holder. What is this? So this is a bring-your-own SSD, but you can install your own M.2 SSD in this little... Why are you laughing? There's no reason to laugh. This looks ridiculous.

This is ridiculous. There's a screen on the thing. Yes. I didn't bring a thing with a screen, by the way. Matt brought a thing with a screen. I did bring a thing with a screen. So let me describe it for our audio listeners. Shout out to our audio listeners, which are most of you. This is a little puck that sits on the back of your phone or any device, but it magsafes to the back of your phone. It has a little USB-C connector that goes from your phone to it. And it is for holding an M.2 SSD so you can get whatever size you want.

Throw it in here and it will act as, like a lot of things do, it'll act as a drive you can use for offloading files, for doing high-res video, like ProRes, RAW video stuff that I don't fully understand. And yes, the quirk of it is that it has a screen on the back that shows you cool, nerdy data. And I didn't think I'd get any criticism for this, but here we are. It shows you how much space you have left on the drive, which is cool to see.

Is that easy to find on your iPhone? I don't think so. It is. No, it's not. it's very hard to find. Go to files long press on the external drive get it. Long press? What if I could instantly see it? I will agree with Matt that the files app is horrible. But it shows you transfer speeds, it shows you how much storage you have left, it shows you just the capacity of the drive in there. It's cool is it the best? Obviously yes, but for everybody maybe not, but I thought it was very cool

The screen resolution is great. Yeah. This is such a niche thing. This is not a man of the people thing. Oh, man. This is... Oh, man. Well, anyway, I brought two other things. The other two things are the Clix Power Keyboard, which is Michael Fisher's new thing, which is pretty cool. I'm not getting it, so it couldn't be my number one, but it's a cool product. So it's not even considered good. I should ask, before we move on, did you order the dock case? No. So you don't consider it the best thing because...

No. It's 100 euros, by the way, the dock case. That's 60 bucks here. Yeah. It's extremely expensive. It is a little expensive, but it's the best. You got to pay for the best. Yes. But the favorite thing I found in my travels when I was looking for something was the Magic Mount Flask, which is a water bottle with a MagSafe puck on the lid so you can mount your phone on top of your water bottle. Or maybe mount your water bottle to your phone. Oh, there you go. So, you know, I mean, you know.

And I love that they call it a flask, which has a certain implication that you ain't putting water in this thing. Why would you snap your phone on your bottle? What? This is the innovative content. They don't even demo it. It's like, yeah, you can have your phone on your bottle. Yeah, the photos are very... It's very much like, hey, you can use this as a tripod for your skateboarding videos, bro. Or you can use it as a mirror while you put on your makeup.

But hey, guess what is next to that that your phone in that image? A big old mirror. Yeah. It attaches to magnetic surfaces as well. Honestly, this should have been my pick. This is incredible. This is funny. So anyway, the dock case is a SSD holder with a screen. The clear winner. Should we wrap the episode now? Are we good? No, because I have the best MagSafe thing.

Okay. What do you have, Chris? I, as a man of the people, have something everyone can use. Everyone has to carry some cards with them, whether it's identification, credit cards, Or maybe a Costco membership. Because this is the Nomadic MagSafe wallet. This right here has become my favorite wallet. Has replaced the MagSafe Apple wallet. And what I like about this is I can get four cards in here.

You could probably get a fifth. But I wouldn't want to stretch it out that far. But what I like about it is it has two separate slots for things to go in. The first one, and there's this pull tab. So this first slot, you can put two cards in here, and then you can put two cards in the back, or you can put one card up front and three cards in the back. It kind of works out that way. But it attaches to the back of your phone with MagSafe, and it's strong. It's on there. It's sturdy. Take it off. And so this front compartment has this pull tab, so you can just quickly get to your card.

So boom. Normally, I would have my credit card here, but I didn't want to show off my credit card number, so I'm using my Costco card. so you can just quickly pull that out and then for your less used cards you have another section up top that you can pull those out and I'm not going to show that because it's my ID and insurance cards and all that stuff but you can quickly get to them and what I like is if for video people and you guys you can probably see there is a corner missing it's not perfectly squared unlike the MagSafe one which means you can get your fingers in there and quickly pull something out this

is well thought out this is a well thought out uh uh wallet and my whole goal in life is to get it so that when i walk out the door the only thing i need to grab is my phone and so having this on there is great yes i you there is apple pay but not every place supports apple pay and i know it's super american thing especially if you go to like a restaurant or something you still need to hand them a card so yes that's still still need cards for that and stuff like that but uh oh man i just need ford to support car keys in

the mustang and then i i could literally i would just grab this while i'm walking out like this is the goal i don't like having a separate wallet literally the only thing on my key ring is the fob for my mustang and a uh air tag so like if i could just get that one thing i just want to grab this and put it in my pocket when I run out the door. But yeah, I really love it's the Nomadic wallet, MagSafe wallet, really nice. It's the best thing. We can end the show here.

So two questions. How much does it cost? I put a link in the show notes. Yes, so the link tells me you're in Europe and I hate you and you won't see this product. So I can't see it. Oh, sorry. It's $50 in US money. And second question is, why do I need a PhD to use your MacSafe wallet? Mine? PhD? What do you mean? It's just a little pull tab. You pull it down. You lost me at the second pull tab.

There's a pull tab. And then what's cool, too, is if you really want, you can use the, there's kind of like, you can pull the loop thing out and put your finger there if you want to, like, hold on to it a little bit more. But yeah, no, you don't need a PhD for this. I don't have a PhD and I can use it. Okay, Matt. Matt, help me out. It's bad, right? Let's find a reason why. Hmm. No, this is good. It's a little fiddly. A little fiddly. Yeah? How is it fiddly?

It's literally a pull tab. This is like when you told me about how to do split screen a few months ago. And you were like, you just flick the window. What's the problem? You flick it. You literally pull. Boom. I have my card. You just pull it. Push to put it back. Pull. Push. I think that you pull from the bottom. It's like... Because that's where the pull tab is, and it comes down. And then there's the... It's like when you're at the cacher, you're like holding your phone in front of you, like pulling from the back? I just hold it to the side, pull, and then...

And then if you want the other cards in the other sleeve, you pull from the top for those. But I have cards I can't show on there. But yeah, no, it's super easy. It's not hard. I love this thing. I guess it's fine. It's great. It's the best MagSafe accessory. Do we need to bring back democracy? Why? Is it gone? Are you saying it's gone? It's teetering. We don't need to get into that. Neilion, what do you have for us this week?

If you think my thing's so bad, what do you got for us? The funny thing is I have an honorable mention and that's the Klix Power keyboard, but Matt already mentioned it. But that's not it. No, my pick is the Vest Medica, obviously. I kind of love this. I don't want to get it. I don't have it, but I want to get it. This is a new charger from Ikea.

It's called the Vest Medica. it's a wireless charging donut sort of thing yeah it definitely looks like a donut it's part of three new Qi 2 accessories that they released and I picked this one because it's the better one this is so it looks like it's a red donut except the hole is not really a hole in the middle you can pull out a USB-C cable out of it

right so as I understand it it's like it's on it's on a spring sort of you can pull out pull out the cable and put it back so and it snaps so it's it's max it's chi too so it snaps on the back of your phone and you can you can pick it up from the back when it's on your phone and like pull like I don't know how to describe it. Deform the donut to use it as kind of a pop socket so that you can hold your phone easily in your hand.

And I find it this is the quirkiest thing I have sold in ever and I kind of love it. I had to close the tab. I don't know why but the image disturbs me. No, I... Open it back up. And see what I mean. Have you looked at multiple? Oh, I looked at it. I saw the PopSocket thing. It's got a USB-C cable built into it. It's got, yeah. It's nine euros, by the way.

This is the peak of the people. You guys are bringing screens and luxury wallets or whatever. I'm bringing a charger. I would like to point out that I'm the only one of us that has the item that they brought to the show. That they put their money where their mouth is. Is me. I'm the only one. That was in the prompt. Matt said, find the best Max F accessory. It doesn't have to be something you own. But how do you know it's good? And this one, I have a good excuse. It just came out. It's barely in the stores yet.

Yeah. How do you know it's good? You guys haven't used it. See, you guys are basically like the Max Tech YouTube channel. You're just reviewing AirPods before you even have them in your hands. It's your job. You know it. i find this a little upsetting to look at as well uh it's so weird yeah i don't fully understand it i mean okay the donut little cushion donut that's kind of cute uh but they've they're they're showing this as like a mobile thing that you can like hold your phone while it's charging this way and so it's like a little bit like a pop socket but if but you have to be charged

like plugged into the wall to use this? Yeah. Because if it's coiled up, then the cable's all in there, so you can't get your fingers around it. And like, it doesn't have a battery in it, right? Like, it's not... No, it's a charger. It's a Cheeto charger. It's like, I can't keep saying this. So like, you just always have your charger attached? I mean, sometimes you use a phone while it's charging, right? That's true. Yeah, not really. And you would feel comfortable using it while it's charging using this?

Chris, aren't you using the iPhone Air? You are always charging. No, I switch back. I'm back to Pro Max now. Imagine this. I can't buy. Imagine this beautiful donut on your iPhone Air. That's a combo. No, no. That's true. It would be very comfortable on there. With your Pro Max on top of it, it would be dying. It would be absolutely smushed. I think this is a little cutie, though. I'm not opposed to this. And again, it's 10 euros. I will argue that the best MagSafe accessory is the cheapest one.

Well, there is a review on the French store that does call out that it would be nice if they had a standard USB size as well, not just this newfangled USB-C. What? Shout out to those who want to do MagSafe but also want to do USB-A. They want C2 but USB-A, yes. this is what makes product people lose their minds they put in 5 stars though they did yeah I think I win

because I'm the only one that owns the thing that they brought well okay so I'm saying I okay we may have to bring back democracy for this yeah there might be some voting this is the first time in a while that we we were pretty well behaved for a while yeah new year new us right new year old us new something we get rousty comfort zone 2026 back in our comfort zone

yeah oh no comfort zone comfort zone harder comfort zone harder alright there may be a poll since I'm in charge of democracy, I will assess the situation when the episode comes out. Okay. All right. Well done, everybody. Okay. Well, Neil Leon, it's time to exact your revenge on us. It's your challenge. Yes. So, don't unfold the spoiler tag because I will do it dramatically and theatrically. As is

your ways. So, the first part is build a house. Okay. I've got to fix my current one. Build a house. A new house. Okay. The second part of this is in Minecraft. So build a house in Minecraft. Oh, no. Are you ready for the third part of the prompt? Oh, no. In survival mode. So the full prompt is build a house in Minecraft in survival mode.

And some details you can take as long as you want. You can do it as quickly as you want. It's easy. A toddler can build a house in Minecraft, Chris. I've literally played five minutes of Minecraft in my whole life. I don't even know. I didn't even know there was a survival mode. You right-click to place blocks. I think survival mode is like the base mode. Yeah, it's the normal mode. Normal mode, okay. Yeah, I just wanted to specify. But there's going to be enemies. Because there's also creative mode.

Okay. So the normal mode, the regular mode, the survival mode. Take as long as you want. You can, like, if you want to spend six hours on this, you can. If you want to spend 10 minutes on this, you can. As long as it qualifies as a house. And if there's any debate, we'll look up the definition of a house if needed. Okay. Okay. Pretty sure it needs to have at least four walls and a roof. And that's a house. Oh, that's, hey. That will cut me deep here. I got three holes in my roof right now.

And it's been all the time. Yeah, and watertight. Yes, it needs to be watertight. So it needs to be better than my current house. All right. So this is the problem. And next week, we will just bring a screenshot of the house. And that's it. All right. Well, I think this is a good place to wrap up. Chris, Minecraft runs on the iPad. Yes. Oh, yeah, that's a good question. What is the best place for me to play Minecraft? There's no best place.

It's on everything. You can play it on the console, on your Mac. But isn't there, like, two different versions? Does it matter what version I play? So on consoles and smartphones and iPadOS, it's the Bedrock edition. And on the Mac and PC and Linux, it's the Java edition. These days, both editions of the game are on parity. Okay. So it doesn't matter. You're not missing out on stuff. You're just having to deal with different controls, obviously.

All right. Okay. Wow. Interesting. I did not see a Minecraft challenge coming. Yes. Yeah. I've wanted this for so long. And this is the new year. Let's start this with a house. Okay. And again, I will repeat this for the audience who think this is too hard. a toddler can build a house in Minecraft. Remember this next week. Yeah, this isn't too hard. This is doable. Yes. Minecraft is the number two game, paid game on the App Store, on the iPhone.

How expensive? It's not too expensive, right? It's $7. Oh, okay. That's not bad. It's also on Game Pass. Oh, is it really? Which I happened to get a free trial of with this guy, so. There you go. I canceled Game Pass a while ago. When they raised the price, I was like yeah I'm out. Like I'm I don't use it enough. But same. All right. So this is a good place to wrap up and I'm realizing right now I forgot to come up with an end of the show question. So I'm curious do either of you have an end of the show question? And maybe that's my end of the show question.

Do you have an end of the show question. Oh that's a cheap last end of the show question. There you go. In fact my question is also do you two have an end of the show question. My question is do you two have an end of the show question? Oh my god. I have one this may be unrelated to what I talked about earlier what are your favorite keycaps that you've ever tried ooh you're a keyboard nerd right you know keycaps I will say the ones that are on my mode keyboard that are made by mode

as well they're like the tomorrow aeroplane, aerospace, something. So they look pretty normal, right? They're very normal. They're very normal, but they feel very, very good. Okay. I haven't found a set of keycaps that feel better on this keyboard. I'm forgetting the name of them. Maybe Matt knows and he can help me out. But they're the binary keycaps that I have. so they have all the letters, but then they have the binary for them underneath them, which is kind of fun.

I think those are probably my favorite keycaps. I actually don't have them on a keyboard right now because I was trying something else, but I do really like those. I also have a set that are Boba Fett-themed. That's kind of cool. And are 2D2-themed. But those keyboards are in storage now because I got tired of having 20 keyboards on my wall. What's your opinion on, what are your opinions on ceramic keycaps? Ooh, I have one keyboard with ceramic keycaps.

I think I brought it to the show a long time ago. Oh. They sound good. They sound really interesting. They can get loud, but I think if you're okay with that, like, they sound really good. And they feel pretty good, too. Interesting. All right. That's it. Okay. All right. That was a good initial question. I liked it. All right. Thank you all so much for listening or watching, however you consume the show. If you like the video, or if you like, I got my things mixed up. Man, we almost were good to the audio people.

Hit the thumbs up button. Subscribe if you haven't already. Now, if you do like the podcast, go rate us in the podcast app, Apple's podcast app. It helps out the show. We don't ask much. If you're watching the YouTube video, hit the like button. Or you can hit the little hype button too. That supposedly does stuff now. I don't know. I'm just an YouTuber. On YouTube? Yeah, there's like this whole hype thing now. If you're under a million subscribers or something like that, like you can hype a video and it's like a trending page, but like it's for like smaller videos because like the trending page was useless because it was just like big YouTubers on there all the time.

And sometimes somebody small would break through. But this like hype thing is supposed to be just for small creators, but I wouldn't consider myself a small creator, but I qualify for it. Whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Anyways, thank you all so much for listening. Do either of you have something you want to promote right now? Yeah, I will unpromote Logitech, uninstall everything Logitech. You don't even need to use it. Their accessories are great without it.

Matt, you're a monster. You are a monster. He's not using half his mouse buttons. This is insane. You're a monster. All right. Matt, you got anything you want to promote? No. Avoid me generally. Okay. That's nice. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Huge thank you to MacStories. We are a MacStories podcast after all. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.