I Need My Turn to Pop Off

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'm joined by two incredible co-hosts. As always, I'm joined by big business boy Birchler himself, Matt Birchler. How are you in your collared shirt today, looking all fancy? It is, I think it really speaks to my casual nature that simply wearing not a t-shirt is like notable. Look, I got a collar, but it's open. Like, I'm all casual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're cool guy, Chris.

We get it. I'm self-employed. Like, I don't got anyone to impress here. Like, yeah. But don't worry too much, though. I'm currently drinking a bubbly, and I'm drinking one of the Mario Galaxy movie tie-ins. So I got little starry guys on there. So you're going uber big business boy, Birchler. You're promoting another movie that you're probably getting dollars on the back end for. I see how it is. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And we're also joined by Neil Leon. Nilian, how are you? Yes, I'm doing well. Speaking of our looks, humble brag, I went to the National Assembly recently and I was stressing all week

not about the event itself that we had to organize there, but about how I was going to dress. And on the day, I wore just a shirt, but I kept it open with a plaid pattern on it and it looked i thought it looked fancy but the people around you were all very much fancier in any in every way you went with the me plaid shirt open look i like it yeah but you know i've it felt like i was just some random person coming here and not in charge i i so i did this thing a

couple of months ago and it's not interesting what it was but i definitely should have been dressed very nice for it like suit level but i don't really have a suit that's not like a super fancy wedding or funeral suit i don't have like a casual business suit so i literally just showed up in exactly what i'm wearing now ford hat and oh boy did i get looked i didn't care i was like what I was like, what are you going to do? I don't care. But we have a show, and it's not about fashion, thank God.

We got some tiny topics. Yes. That we do. We got a few Apple Watch notes, so feedback from folks. Listener Matt, great name, wrote in saying that he's had the same feeling with the Apple Watch, the overload. And he also mentioned that back in the day, back when we were all installing crazy Android ROMs, he had some custom ROM that lets you basically rate limit how quickly it would deliver you notifications per app, which is very cool and very Android ROM energy, which I like.

And then listener Rodrigo wrote in to say that he doesn't know how it works in every app, but WhatsApp has a way to kind of limit how quickly, If you get too many notifications too quickly, you can start to quiet them for a while. I know iMessage does this as well, but I think it only works on the phone. I feel like in the phone, in the stack of notifications, you'll see a thing that'll say, you're getting a lot of these. Do you want to pause notifications for an hour? But I don't think I've seen it on the watch itself. I've never seen that on the phone. I had no idea WhatsApp had this, and I can't find it.

I don't know how you can figure that. But that would require people to use WhatsApp, and nobody uses that. And we do. I don't talk to anyone on WhatsApp, so, you know, whatever. But, you know, regarding the Android ROMs, there's a saying, you know, that Android ROMs, they invented everything. Like, everything was already invented by an Android ROM in the 2010s. Yeah, this makes sense. I don't get comments on my videos every single WWDC. Oh, Android did this two years ago.

I don't care that Android. I genuinely do not care that Android did it 10 years ago. But it did, Chris. Yeah. Every feature can be found on the XDA forums from 2010, 2011. It's there. Someone invented it. Absolutely. I've also got some tiny topics. The first one is I've uninstalled Raycast. And the reason why is it's become too cringe to keep on my Mac. I can't keep it.

I'm cringing too hard. And there's a certain level of cringe that I can bear with, but this is too hard. They released a new product called Glaze, and it makes you create apps on the fly with prompts and no coding. And sure, everybody does that. But then it's also the sugar on top that's too much. It's the AI-generated icons that look extremely AI-generated.

It's the vibe of the CEO guy who makes the videos to present all of it. I don't know. Everything feels extremely off. I'm cringing too hard. This is my official excuse for ditching Raycast. I'm done with it. I'm done. I haven't installed it. This is my statement. What are you using instead? Right now, I'm using a combination of Spotlight, an emoji peeker that maybe I will talk about that I found on GitHub and I forked.

This is a rabbit hole. And a base bot for the clipboard manager, which are basically the only things that I used Raycast for at this point. Like the third-party extensions, I did not use any of them anymore. I'm not missing any of that. So the three things is launching apps, searching for files, and clipboard manager, and emoji picker. And I found an alternative for each.

Spotlight is better than when Tahoe launched because when Tahoe launched, I tried it like everybody did because it got a bunch of new features, but it was super slow for me. Like, absurd. It was absurd how slow it was. And now it's pretty snappy. Like, it feels a lot snappier than when Taho was released. So for now, I'm using it and it's fine. But we'll see.

And Rob Knight, yes, made a blog post about this. It's a short one where he's just angry and I like it. I like when he's angry and I share the sentiment. So there you go. I've put a link for that. Another more positive thing. People, by the way, people are saying that I complain too much. Have you seen this on the interwebs? That's weird. I don't get it. I don't complain too much. I complain just enough.

But... Chris is broken. Yes. Here's something positive that I'm not complaining about. I found... No, I did not find... I did not find somebody recommended to me in our feedback form, but it was weeks, months ago now. And I put it in a sticky on my Mac desktop and never looked at it again. And then looked at it again like a week ago. It's an app called mood.camera.

And this is a camera app that you shoot pictures of your iPhone. And it's one of those camera apps that lets you add analog filters on top. Film-like. It gives a film-like appearance to your photos. And I've been loving this app. It's really well-made. It's snappy. The filters are really nice. The one I'm using, I think it's maybe the default one. It's called Prologue 400.

This is the one I'm using. I'm pretty sure it's the default one. I've tried a bunch of them, but I've come back to this one. It's awesome. And I've been using this app on and off ever since it was on the sticky on my desktop, but I only took a couple of pictures and forgot about it. But now I'm using it all the time. And you know why? The reason why is because it got updated and now it supports camera control. You can launch it with camera control, which you could not initially.

So now, because I've become so accustomed to pressing camera control to take pictures, and now it just launches. I don't have to think about launching it to take pictures. And since the photos, they look so cute and grainy and really nice and very different from the usual iPhone photos. It makes me want to take more pictures again, which I really like.

however it does not shoot videos and I shoot videos often and now I can't do it by pressing camera control so what I've done is I've added one of the two controls that you get on the lock screen one of those launches the default camera app in video mode directly it's a shortcut it's a one action shortcut there you go I'm positive about something. See, I'm not complaining. Nice. And now I can come back to complaining. RCS.

I need to talk about RCS. So RCS, now it works on the iPhone since last year. It's good. Nice. Well, well, well. And you know how supposedly the reactions that you do with RCS on RCS messages, they're supposed to work with people who at least have like Google messages on the Android side. If they use Google messages, it should work, the reactions.

By the way, no, no, no. It does not work. It does not work. No idea why. I think maybe it's because it's... I talked about this already, but I wanted to mention it again because it's been months and it's still not fixed. I think it's maybe because our devices are in French and I'm pretty sure the way they're making the reactions work is by parsing the raw text that says react it to this and transforming it into an actual reaction.

And I don't think they've done the work for all the languages. I don't think it works if your device is in French. Yeah, that's crazy. So yeah, that sucks. That's weird. It totally works for me because I speak one very special language. This is my theory. I think they only did this for English. I think you are 100% right. Is your phone fully in French? Are you mixing?

I have no idea. I have some apps in English because you can do that on iOS now. It's really nice. And I do that for most. By the way, indie app developers have something to say. We all like you. Who's the guy you like to joke on once again? Charlie Chapman? Oh, yeah, Charlie Chapman. Yeah, including that guy. We like them all. There's one who's called Matt Birchler, but yes.

So, indie app developers, here's my statement. People may not all agree about this, but here it is. If you are going to localize your apps, do it or don't do it. Don't be in the middle and use AI or whatever to do the translations for you, to do the localization for you. It sucks. Like, we are on GPT 72.0, Gemini 70. None of those can do the translations right.

Still, in 2026, I can tell when I install one of your apps. And it's all in weird French. Like it's some middle-aged French. I don't know what kind of French it is, but it's not real French. It's not 2026 French, for sure. And I can tell. So either you hire someone who speaks real French and can do the translations for you, whose job it is to do this. Or don't do it. Leave it in English. Okay? We can speak English.

You can leave it in English. So this is my take on this. anyway so you had one bonus complaint here well thank you i was getting a little uncomfortable um what i'm hearing is the in the prompt where you ask it to translate you just have to say use 2026 french and you get it makes sense no this is not what i said or you tell it to just translate everything as if it's in les miserables oh my god i mean it might

That might work. No, it might not. For what it's worth. This is actually the reason I stopped doing translations in my apps. My apps are all English-only. Quick Reviews actually has a lot of the UI translated, but it was automatically done. I don't know with confidence how good it is, and so I didn't feel great about shipping that, so I stopped doing it after that first app. My experience as a user, at least, is I can tell 90% of the times when it's been done automatically and without review.

And if you can tell, it's not good. And if you want to be in that 10%, just make your prompt better, and it'll work. Translate this as if you were in Les Miserables. Like I said, you will suffer the same fate as Raycast and become too cringe to remain on my device. oh boy we need to do end of the year highlight reel of your of neilion's cringe apps of the year yeah a little compilation that uh this week on cozy zone we tier listed app icons not the apps

themselves but app icons uh for those that aren't aware cozy zone is our members only episode or a show where we put out an extra episode every single week so you get us twice in one week i mean like I don't know who else gets... I think that Danielle, she gets to hear me twice, more than twice every single week, but she doesn't get to hear Matt and Elion, so it's like the only opportunity to hear all three of us twice in one week. If you like my complaining, you can subscribe and hear even more of my complaining. It's great.

Including the fact that this was such a weird selection of app icons. It was definitely a range. It was a range. Weird selection. All right. Let's get to the main show. Neilion, you're first up in the document. What do you got for us? Yes. We talked about Discord two weeks ago. We had a really interesting conversation about this, about the age verification stuff and all of that. But I'm not going to resize all that.

This is kind of a sequel topic. So what do we do now? And I can answer from my side. So at my work, we are an association, like a small organization of mostly volunteers, actually all volunteers except one employee as of now. And we use Discord to organize. And we've been using Discord to organize and to do everything, to coordinate everything.

We use Discord. And we've been using Discord for the past five or six years, I'd say, like since the pandemic. Dang. Yeah. And so, and we still like all our meetings on Discord. And we combine that with Google Workspace. We have a Google Workspace plan that we use a ton for documents and file sharing and everything in Google Workspace we take advantage of. And now, of course, we've come to the point where there's this problem with this cord hanging over our heads.

And we can't just deal with it. And like, because remember, the issue is this cord will impose age verification globally sometime soon. They initially announced that it would come in March, but they've backtracked on that and they're saying they've postponed it. So now it's happening later in 2026. But it's still happening. And our association is like our members are all trans members.

Not all, but the majority are trans members. So we can't possibly keep using Discord, a tool that will ask our members to provide their IDs. This is not something that we can keep doing. So we had to start looking for alternatives. And so far, we are test driving. That is, we have not migrated yet. We are test driving it just like a small group of us.

Slack as an alternative. This was recommended to us because Slack is like, it's a bit like Discord, but not at all. But also it feels like most of the purposes that we're using Discord for. So this is what I'm doing today. I have a small comparison to make and maybe you can talk about it. Do you already use Slack in any way, both of you?

We all use Slack because the Mac Stories team moved over to Slack out of Discord and into Slack because it felt a little more business-y. Actually, I don't know if that's the reason why. I don't remember why we did it, but we did it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I use Slack all day, every day at work. It is the main app I use to get to work out. I could have guessed, yes. Literally, the Mac Stories one is the only Slack I'm in. Yeah, that was my case until this. Yes, I only had installed Slack just to join the Mac Stories Slack.

That was my only thing. so here are the main differences that we are noticing about like the differences between discord and slack but just to paint you a picture how we're using discord currently imagine like matt you're no not matt he's too businessy chris imagine chris you you have free time, which this is why Matt can't be the subject of this thought experiment.

So Chris, you have free time, you want to get involved politically, and want to fight for trans rights, so you find us, you go on our website, so you speak French, you're a French person, obviously. Oui, oui, mon ami! Yes. So you're able to read everything, you understand. So you click join on our website, you want to join the association, you want to become a member, You follow the process. Joining is free, by the way. There's a free price. You can pay, but you don't have to. So, obviously, you're rich, so you decide to donate $1,000 euros as part of your...

I just put a new roof on my house. Not rich at all. You're donating a roof? Okay, sure. We can take a roof. Okay. Yeah, sure. You can have my roof. You join the association, and here's what happens currently. You get an automatic email that tells you, hey, welcome to the fam, welcome. You chose to participate in an organization. Here's a Discord link. Discord is where we do everything. Basically, we organize and we plan stuff.

And yeah. So you click the link, you join our Discord server. And on our Discord server, you can't see anything. You're in a waiting room. There's just one channel that you can see. You're in a waiting room. And that's the reason for this is because we want to approve manually every new member just to make sure. Yeah, that makes sense. You don't know who could join. Yeah. Exactly. So basically what we do is we just double check who you are.

Maybe cross check your pseudonym with social media. But we don't dig in anything. We're just checking you don't have an Azi avatar basically online. or anything like that. And we mostly like check your email address to make sure that the email address that you're providing in Discord, because when you join the waiting room in Discord, we're asking you for your email address that nobody else can see, just us. And we'll double check that this email address is the same as the one you joined with on the website.

Okay, makes sense. And if all of that goes well, we give you a role in discord uh basically a member role and now you've got access to everything in discord so you can uh you can join um you can join working groups that's how we organize we have different working groups on different topics so like if you want if you want to only get involved like maybe you want to help on the designs like the visuals social media and you can join a specific group for that.

And to do that, we've been using a bot in Discord that makes custom buttons in the welcome channel. And you can click on the buttons that you're interested in. So in your case, you're interested in social media. So you click the social media working group button, the custom made button that we made. And that gives you a social media role. And now you can also see the social media working channel, the channel in Discord on the left side.

So you can now start working with us in that channel and join in future meetings and all that. So this is how we use Discord, basically. This is the model. You join, you've got access to nothing, we have to approve you, give you a special role, and then you get given additional roles depending on what working groups you want to join. And now, compared to Slack, it seems like for five years, we have hacked our way into just replicating how Slack works by default in Discord.

Because Slack, you join Slack, by default, you've got access to everything, but you're not in every channel. You have to manually join the channels that you are interested in. This is how Slack works by default. This is amazing for us. Because we had to create a special bot that creates special buttons. We had to create special roles to attribute to special people just to make sure you have access to only specific things.

Slack? No, you just you join Slack, you're a member and you choose what channel you want to join. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily surprise me that Slack is built this way because it's built for more enterprise stuff. yeah um like i did i was part i was rolling out microsoft teams at my it job and it was very it's it's essentially a slack clone shivers it's filth absolute filth uh i know i know but it's essentially a slack clone but it was really easy to set up like who has access to what like especially

from the admin role like it was really incredibly easy for me to be like okay these are our sales people this is our hr team this is our accounting team and stuff like that like it was incredibly easy for that and as far as i'm aware slack is very similar to that yeah yeah it is yeah and slack has like private channels if you want until i carry a private channel and then so they joined they can't see that channel but maybe they could be let in if you wanted um i just personally i discord just scares me and this is just me being old but like when you join a discord server you get

everything and it's horrifying and they all have unreads and if it's a popular server they have zero unreads and then they quickly all light up and it's all work to be done and they're for things i don't care about and you have to go and it's a whole thing i'm a slack guy i guess and yeah and like i don't and like with discord like they get so big and so overwhelming like trying to like keep up with that like i i just i don't i yeah i i like my experience with discord and slack is very limited but i definitely like slack way more than discord and maybe that's me being an old man but

but also i just feel like slack is more organized and easier to keep up with as opposed to discord yeah that that's true and and you're right it's because it's not the same product like it's not targeting the same kind of people but of course the reason why did we go for discord in the first place because we are a public facing like small association and we want people to join and the easiest people to get on board is to use a popular tool that people already know and are familiar with

and already have an account on and especially during the pandemic that was discord and still is for a lot of people still discord is still like in terms of a tool where you can organize and create tons of channels. This is the most popular option. But yeah, now that we're searching for an alternative, Slack really looks like it's better suited to what we need. And of course, Chris, you remember, you had to be manually approved to see all the channels in our Discord.

Slack, we've investigated over the past two weeks how that can work in Slack, and it cannot really work in Slack. Basically, you join Slack and the way it's made, you've got access to everything. And the only thing you can do is, like Matt said, you can create private channels that you reserve to some groups of people. But you can't just have, you can't have a member that's not able to access anything until you like do an action on it.

And the only option to do that is like to create a group of like, maybe you call a generic group that you call members, like just like the member role that we have in our Discord. And you put everyone in that group. But already this is too much because Slack, it doesn't let you easily add everyone, every single one person into one group. And so that would be really annoying to maintain really quickly. So, yeah, Slack doesn't have an option like that.

So what this is going to force us to do if we do go with Slack in the end, if we do migrate to Slack, is we're probably going to move the verification step off of that platform entirely. Like, do it some other way, over email probably. when you join Chris, instead of an email that tells you here's a Discord link to get involved, to start working with us, maybe instead you get an email from us that tells you, hey, here's how we work.

Maybe let us know what you're interested in. Like, maybe we can ask a couple of questions first to see who you are. And then we invite you to our Slack. So we do the verification step before you get onto the Discord. You could do the verification step in like a Google form. Like you could set up a Google form of like, hey, give us like your social media handles and like here's all this stuff. So you can verify that. Yeah, we could do that. But like, yeah, yeah, that could be a way.

I think so far, we've not made a definitive decision on that. But so far, I think maybe what we're going to do is maybe set up just a one-time email exchange. like maybe send back some info about yourself. What did you join for and what are you interested in? And that's probably a little less friction too for the person signing up because if like I was like, oh, I'm curious about this thing,

you know, maybe I want to join, like I want some more info. And if I signed up for their thing on the website and they immediately emailed me back, hey, here's this Google form, I'd be like, I don't know if I want to do that. Yeah. Yeah, and just like in a single email exchange, I could be like, okay, yeah, no, I can reply to this stuff. Like, it's just that little, it's one less barrier. I think so, yeah. Yeah. There's one other thing. Slack has way more collaboration tools, and that makes sense.

But, like, you can create, like, notepads inside of the channels in Slack. You can have files stored in the channels as well to easily reference. The way pinned messages work makes way more sense than in Discord. In Discord, if you pin something, good luck finding it. You will tell me, okay, there's a pin icon. Just click the pin icons in the top right corner in Discord, and you can see all the pinned messages.

But here's the thing. Nobody knows that it's there, this pin icon. Nobody knows. Like, if I tell you right now, you know there's a pin icon in Discord? I'm pretty sure you had no idea before I told you. But yes, in Slack, they highlight it and it's easier to reference as well. So it's a bunch of small things like that that seem really fitting for Slack. And the final thing is, obviously, I'm worried that if we do migrate to Slack, we are going to lose people.

we have like I would say right now maybe 80% of our members like people who are officially part of the association are on our discord server I but there's the thing where so they are on the discord server but only a small portion of those people are actually active so I think this small portion of people who is actually active, they will come over to Slack or whatever

else we migrate to when we do. But the rest won't come. And even though they are not active, we still need to talk to them. We still need to do internal communication, right? To do announcements organization-wide to announce like events maybe the next plenary assembly that we do a handful of times a year all of those crucial information that we gave out to members right now

we exclusively do that in discord which is not great but it works because everybody's on discord almost everybody is in discord if we do move to slack there will only be a small group of active people that are on slack and the rest will not be this is why the conclusion is i think we will have to reinvest in email and i think this is an important thing to like acknowledge i think

as time passes on and those platforms that we've come to depend on get more locked down And as legislation strengthens, especially like in terms of even if it's not just the age verification stuff, but more, maybe we need to go back to the fundamentals. A small organization like us, we need to invest back in email. And that means don't make all the announcements just in one app, in the Discord or in Slack.

do all of that in email like organization-wide emails invest more in emails and this is sad to say because emails suck but it works and everybody has email so uh you're sure to touch more people this way so yeah this is my like first uh breakdown on of the kind of uh analysis of the migration that we need to make to make this happen.

Right now, Slack is looking good. And it's likely that we'll move to Slack. But yeah, it's hard. One thing to mention is Slack. They have this thing where you get the pro plan for free if you are a non-profit organization. Oh, nice. So you have to apply, they have to review. And this took a lot of back and forth as well. But in the end, we got the approval.

And so we got that planned for free. So that's great. Nice. Just like Google Workspace, we also got that for free because Google Workspace, you can also get it for free if you're a non-profit and you apply. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. But also Slack is made by Salesforce and those people suck. There you go. All right. Anything else on that?

I think that's it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, so at the time of you're hearing this, reviews have probably all been out for all of the latest Apple products that were announced the week before, and the embargoes have dropped. The products actually would have already been shipping because this comes out on Thursday, and they're all coming out on Wednesday. So not exciting news, but I have had the M4 iPad Air.

Sorry, it's not the MacBook Neo. It's not the MacBook Pro. The iPad Neo. It is not the fancy new studio display. I've had the M4 iPad Air. I got it. So it was announced on Monday of that week. I got it on Tuesday. And it is a boring update. It's not exciting. In fact, my topic is not really about it, but I will run through the changes really quick. It has an M4 chip. It is the Bind M4 chip, so it only has the 9-core CPU.

It has the N1 chip, so that brings Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and thread radio to it. It also has the C1X cellular modem. So if you get the cellular version, you get the C1X chip. That is actually pretty nice. When I did the testing, when the M5 iPad Pro came out, because it also had the C1X chip, When I tested it against the M4 iPad Pro, both of them were on the cellular connection. The C1X chip actually outperformed the older cellular chip, whatever that was, by a lot.

It actually was a significant update. So that is kind of nice if you use a cellular iPad. But it still uses the old-style Magic Keyboard, which is very disappointing. The new one is just so much better in every metric. And it's a $30 price difference. That kind of feels like rubbing salt in the wound or sand in the wound? Salt in the wound. Yeah, salt in the wound. Sand wouldn't be pleasant either. So $30 compared to what? So it's on the 11-inch one.

So if we're comparing the 11-inch one, it's $270 for the old one, $300 for the new one. So it's a lot of money right there. So for the Magic Keyboard. For the Magic Keyboard. Yeah. And for the 13-inch one, it's $320 versus $350. $30 difference when you're at that price point is negligible. Because the new one, and Matt, I think you and I have talked about, the new one is just so significant. The new Magic Keyboard is so significantly better than the old Magic Keyboard in just every metric.

Build quality, viewing angles, bigger trackpad, just so many things. Yep. And if you're spending $270 on a keyboard, you're someone who can spend $300 on a keyboard. Yeah, you get $30 more. It's not going to cause you to lose your house. But why are you comparing? Because the new one doesn't work with it, right? So I'll get to this, but the new Magic Keyboard does not work with the new iPad Air. You have to use the old iPad Air.

So my point, basically what my point overall is going to be, is if you're interested in an iPad, just look at the iPad Pro. Like literally don't, the iPad Air and the base iPad are, but let me get there. Hang on. Let me get there. Let me get there. Yeah. Just let me get there. Okay. So before we get into that though, I just want to say we have not had an interesting non-pro iPad update in a long time.

I looked up all the numbers. The last really interesting iPad Air update was in 2020. Everyone since that has just been a spec bump. And by interesting, I am not meeting design change, though these happen to be design changes. I would count the M4 iPad Pro as an interesting update, but it wasn't exactly a design change. It just got thinner and lighter, which wasn't really a design change. It's a design change. Sort of. I mean, it's not a triangle, but it's a design change. It's not as dramatic as the 2018 iPad Pro was.

If you put the M4 iPad Pro next to it, Like, yeah, but it's not a dramatic design change. I think we can agree on that, right? Okay. The iPad mini hasn't had an interesting update since 2021. It's only had one other update since then. The jelly release. Yeah. Yeah. The base iPad got its redesign in 2022, and since then it has been a spec bump, and it still does not have a laminate display at all.

Nope. But this brings me to the point I think you guys both want to get to. Yeah. The other thing that was released or announced this last week and released this week was the MacBook Neo, which is a $600 MacBook. 256 gigs for the $600 one, and $100 more, you can get a 512 gig one, and that has Touch ID. And in this economy...

Let's first do like a round. What do we think of the name? I think they should have just called it MacBook. I like it. You like it? Oh, you changed your mind. I read your blog. I didn't change my mind. Yes, you said it should have been the MacBook Mini, you said. I think that MacBook Mini would be fun, but I think it was... Anyway, people always get mad when Apple tries something. Anytime they go against the grave. I'm not mad.

I just think MacBook would have been a simpler name, but it's fine. Stop yelling. You don't need to be so mad. Stop. Will the dads stop fighting, for goodness sake. I think it's cringe is my take. And she is the young one out of us. No, the children are wrong. Let's save the MacBook Neo discussion for next week. Okay. Okay, okay. one of us might have one next week there may be one of us, two who knows, some people may have some next week, I already have one, it's right here

look, it's an iPhone 16 Pro now we've entered the Macs are just big iPhones so, okay so, what I'm kind of getting at is the MacBook Neo starts at 256 gigs starts at 600 bucks. I'm just going to round up to the even numbers. I hate the whole like 599 thing. I'm just going to round up to the, the base iPad for 256 gig, the base one with the non-laminate display is $449,

$450. So $150 difference. If you add the keyboard to the base iPad, it now becomes $700. If you add the, if you add the keyboard, technically $690. So what you're saying is... Hang on. Okay. I'm getting there. Just let me get through these numbers. Let me get through these numbers and you can pop off. The iPad Air for the 11-inch iPad Air for the 256 gig model and the older Magic Keyboard is $970.

Can I make this even worse? Real quick? Yeah? If you're an education buyer, anyone with a.edu address email address so any college age kid or technically you don't you don't even need that you don't so it is the the base air or sorry the base neo is 499 500 the 11 inch air with the magic keyboard with education pricing is 900 jeez okay so i so we've established the

The MacBook Neo for 256 gigs is $600 if you just buy it regularly or $500 if you get it with the education discount. So if you were to similarly spec out an iPad Air, which is the first iPad that comes in the same screen size, a 13-inch screen size, 256 gigs, and add a keyboard, it is now $1,218. You can buy two MacBook Neos for the same price as that iPad Air. Now, obviously, there is a much better chip in the M4 iPad Air than there is in the MacBook Neon.

Obviously. Obviously? My social media feeds are full of people suggesting that the A18 Pro is actually as good as an M4. Well, I'm also seeing the A18 Pro is the same as the Intel 12-inch MacBook, so that it's going to be the same, and that Apple is going to underperform it because it doesn't have a fan. People are all over. Because all of the iPhone 16 Pros had fans in them in order to perform properly. A lot of strong opinions from people who don't have the device.

Mine has a fan. Look at this. Thanks to Matt. Oh, live update, Neelian. That's right, the MagSafe fan. Yes. So now here's the thing. Okay, so the iPad Air has the M4 chip, but it also has a much more limited OS. The MacBook Neo basically makes it impossible to recommend the lower end iPads, the iPad and the iPad Air, unless you really want a tablet, a convertible, or you're doing something with the Apple Pencil, like something really specific to that.

Like it, it basically makes it impossible. Now, there's an asterisk on all of this, this whole discussion before we get into it, before I let Neleon pop off. None of us have tried the MacBook Neo yet. uh mine is coming i ordered one i'll just spoil it right now i did order one um i didn't get a review unit of it so we none of us have tried it there is a there is a chance that it's a big whiff and it sucks but i highly doubt that i'm putting that at a two or three percent chance because apple rarely misses apple rarely puts out a bad product i think i can probably name a couple of bad

products off the top of my head in my lifetime of just being an Apple fanboy and getting Apple products that were actually bad Apple products. iPad 3, Trashcan Mac Pro. By bad, you mean terrible performance? By like bad, by like just general like, this is a bad product. Let down by the hardware. Not being like, oh, I don't like this thing or something like that. but like genuinely like Apple released this and it was a bad heart, bad liquid glass.

Yeah. Not liquid glass. We're just talking hardware right now. So I really do think like if somebody comes to me now and is like, Hey, I need to get a computer for my kid or, Hey, I'm looking at a computer. Like we did just buy my grandma a base iPad because she likes to do those like coloring apps with an Apple pencil and stuff like that. That's a perfect thing for, for the base iPad. That is perfect. Cause that's what she wants to do with that thing. She wants to do those coloring things. But if somebody comes to me and is like, hey, I just need a laptop to do my tax documents and general normal stuff,

it's going to be hard to recommend an iPad now for that stuff at all. I mean, MacBook has full-blown macOS. You can do things like Cloud Code. You can do things like have un-sandbox apps, have access to the file system. like all the mac os stuff so i my conclusion at the end of this week and what will be probably in my video at some that was released is the ipad has to become cheaper and the ipad has to run mac os

okay pop off i've been saying that at all kind of you did say it i i i'm i'm fully on board i think apple's gonna kill ipad os of course they're gonna do that by making it better and making it run on the iphone and therefore be their most important platform. But anyway, listen, yeah, it is, I think, yes, the price of this is crazy. I think, I did some math this morning. If you adjust for inflation, because when the iPad came out, it was, that was the netbook era.

There was like some pressure on Apple. Apple's got to release a netbook. They can't just play at the high end anymore. And they didn't. They released the iPad, and the iPad's been very successful. I mean, the iPad killed the netbooks. Let's be honest for a minute. The iPad killed the netbooks. But if you compare the price today, the $599 price, and adjust it for inflation to 2010 prices, this is a $399 device.

The MacBook Neo. The MacBook Neo. So it is, that's like they basically released a $400, so cheaper than the iPad was, which was already cheaper than we thought it would be. Like that's, that's, it's so cheap compared to anything Apple's ever made, like by an enormous margin. And yeah, like you said, it runs macOS. And I think for a lot of people, the A18, even though it's going to be less powerful than the M4, you can do more with it. your Google Chrome tabs aren't going to force close themselves when you move it to the background and

lose your progress and everything. Like, there's just a bunch of little things like that. You can use it in business. You can use it in school to join video calls and share a portion of your screen, not the whole screen. Like, yeah, it makes, if you just need a computer, this is, this is more compelling, I think. And especially now that it's cheaper as well than the air. I fully expect to be able to edit short form videos on the macbook neo i would be shocked if i can't edit short form one to two minute vertical videos on the macbook neo i do not think i would be able to edit my next ipad

os walkthrough on the macbook neo i think that would literally cause that thing to catch on fire but i think short form videos i this is this is going to be one of the things i test and i know it's going to be the obnoxious thing the youtuber is testing video editing on on the macbook but it's a good way to see like kind of where this thing comes in like if you are a short form creator can you graduate from editing on your iphone to something with a little more real estate for 600 but i impulse bought this thing i didn't i was refreshing the page Wednesday morning and it

got to the point where it was very clear that they weren't going to drop the newsroom article before the store went live. So I went to just refreshing the store and I just impulse bought the thing. I picked blue. I picked the base one and just hit buy because I didn't need to buy a bunch of other accessories like I would with an iPad. I didn't need to buy a $300 keyboard. I didn't need to buy a $100 pencil. I just spent 600 bucks on this thing. No problem. It'll be here Wednesday. I traded in an Apple watch and I got mine for half price. Nice. Like an Apple watch. That's crazy.

Really quick, what color did you get? I got the blue. I chickened out on the neon one. Same, same. Because everyone was like, it doesn't look as good in person. And I was like, I don't know. I'm getting blue. I kind of wish I would have got the citrus one just because I think it would have looked good in thumbnails. I wish I would have. I'm disappointed that none of you got the citrus one. I thought I would be letting you down by getting citrus. Matt, was yours available for pickup at the Apple store? I don't know oh mine was not like literally there was no stores in California that was available for pickup I don't know if I was just too early

or what interesting I need to be allowed to pop off as well okay please go I think this highlights that iPadOS should die in the fire there's two things there's two ways to look at it so you highlighted the iPad and the base iPad. To me, this shows that those iPads should have the A18 Pro or whatever similar chip.

Yes. And not M anything. Why does the iPad Air as the M4 chip? No one can take advantage of it because of iPadOS. No, you can't. Your browser tab will freeze if you switch away for some reason. There's one thing that is a technical limitation that makes the M-Series chip in the iPad Air make sense. Yeah. External display support.

But even that? The A-Series chips are not designed to work with external monitors. The M-Series chips are. That's why the M-Series iPads have support for the studio displays. And the MacBook Neo can't drive anything past a 4K display at 60Hz. And I have a feeling the macOS is doing a large portion of that. But also, why? Okay, unless you're Christopher Lawley, you are not going to plug in your base iPad or iPad Air into a 5K monitor.

This does not make sense. Like, this is not a criteria to me. And also, so this highlights that maybe the chip, this is the wrong chip in those iPads. And also this highlights that, yes, iPadOS should die on a fire. And the reason why is, so you said, Chris, I will try this and that to see what can be done on the MacBook Neo with the A18 Pro. The answer to that is it can do anything.

Because it runs Mac OS. It can do, no. There is going to be a performance limitation. But that's not a limitation. That's like a condition of how it will work, but it will work. And that's how those operating systems, like classic desktop operating systems, are designed to do and be, is that they can tank stuff. Those OSs are designed to tank stuff. If you do too much on them, they will slow down to a crawl.

Yeah. And the worst thing that can happen is maybe the app can't handle it and it will crash. Maybe some system service can't handle it and it will crash. But you have to go really hard to come to a crash on that system. Otherwise, it will do the tasks. Maybe it will take three hours to render a small five minute thing or whatever. I don't know, but it will do it. Unlike another OS that will not do it.

if it is too much for it yeah i i do think chris with your camera you you're at the very high end i think with your cinema camera this this computer will struggle i i think it will turn into a barbecue i i told john for he's my camera i i can guarantee you i could melt a macbook neo with my camera i i guarantee you i can do that but here here's here's the thing and the thing i really think is important is I think my 4K YouTube videos would edit fine on this machine. I think so too.

I have shot 4K. I don't shoot log. I just shoot regular video files. And I know this because I was editing on a 2012 Mac Mini 4K videos and it wasn't as good as it is today. It wasn't as fast as it is today. But this machine would just absolutely blow that 2012 Mini away. It would destroy it in every possible performance metric. And you'll be able to do that. And kids will be able to do that. And they'll be able to be creative, and they probably will just make shorts because their attention spans are destroyed. But they can make longer form content on here.

And like Neil, you said, they are completely unrestricted. There's no artificial restriction on what they can or can't do with it. If they can find a piece of software, as long as it's not... I don't know if these have Rosetta on them, But because I know that's going away. I think isn't Rosetta going? It's still here, but it's being deprecated, I think, next year. Okay. Yeah. I wasn't sure if the A18 does Rosetta or not. This was my question for the briefing if I was in the briefings. Yeah, I didn't get a briefing.

That's a good question. But anyway. I mean, sorry. The developer kit, it had an A12Z and it had Rosetta, right? oh yeah yeah so i guess i guess it could i mean to be fair the a series and the m series share a lot in common like like that it's it's more of a marketing thing than anything like it should theoretically be able to run yeah yeah this is my big question as well i am so curious because when i test like different things like between my iphone and my mac there are some things that the mac even

And theoretically, the single core performance is the same or even the iPhone's quicker. The iPhone just can't keep it up. It can't keep that performance level for as long. And so I wonder how it's going to be on this computer. So I have no idea. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll run into issues. But I'm certainly not saying until I actually have it in hand. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I legit don't know how this thing is going to perform. I bought this. Like, I bought a MacBook the day, me, the iPad guy, bought a MacBook the day, and it became available and wasn't even interested in the iPad that came out.

Because this thing is, I am fascinated by this computer. And the price point, just, like, everything about this computer, I think, is great. Yes, I've seen the people complain that it's not the 12-inch MacBook with an M4 chip in it. Like, you know what? That's what the MacBook Air is. That's what the MacBook Air is, people. Like, I don't know. I'm excited. I think we've already spoiled it. Matt and I will have one next week. So it'll probably be our just topic.

It'll probably be our shared topic for next week. And we'll just go off on it. You never know. The new Samsung phones come out next week as well. Who would buy one of those? You're both going to just walk out of frame for that. I'd just be like, we're going to put that topic second. So we can just get the talking out of the way. I can go take a nap. I want Matt to review the privacy screen thing. Yes. I have had two quick things.

Number one, I have had multiple people in my regular life who know that I am the tech guy and that I get phones. And they want to see that privacy screen. I've had multiple people ask about this. Yes. The second thing, my wife, who has an M3 MacBook Air, she's had it for a couple years, likes it a lot. She wants a Neo. Oh, why is that? Because it's colorful. This is a very real thing. When I told her I was getting one, first she was like, why are you getting another computer?

Then I explained the trading thing, and anyway, she got a little happier about it. And then she was like, you got the yellow one, right? And I was like, no. and then she was mad at me about that but yeah the colors really appealed to her and I presume lots of other people I think if I would have got the yellow one after I was done with the testing Danielle probably would have stole it from me so that's probably another reason why I got the blue one I'm actually genuinely excited about this computer and like turning it into a are you telling us you really don't want your girlfriend to have a laptop no she has my

she has my M2 2 terabyte iPad Pro or 1 terabyte whatever the max came in that thing is no we established the iPad Air and the base iPad is do not bespoke my beloved iPad Pro but I am really excited about this MacBook Neo guys like I also really want the studio display but I didn't want to spend that kind of money right now on the studio display XDR but 120 hertz mini led yes please yeah sounds lovely all right i i think i i yeah so i think i think

the point of my topic is look at the if you really want an ipad look at the ipad pro but you know really ask yourself what you're going to be doing with this because unless you're going to be doing tablet-y stuff or apple pencil stuff maybe just get a macbook neo and that's coming from the ipad guy I think so yeah this year is going to break Chris it's like a vicious cycle I'm right back where I was last year at this time pre-WWDC but like now that iPadOS has been fixed and I'm going to put air quotes on it but like the fundamentals

of like some core big core issues of iPadOS have been fixed now I'm looking at the app system and especially like what's happened this last year for Mac apps I'm just like the iPad can't ever get this it's now also you're more focused on the bigger picture since all the front facing issues are gone yeah it is exactly that it's a bigger picture issue and like I don't know if I really talked about this on here but I've had to kind of like slowly roll back editing on my iPad and start

editing more on the MacBook Pro because of my new camera because It just, it's so slow on the iPad Pro. It takes forever. And I have to put the playback quality, I have to turn the playback quality into performance mode so everything's a really low resolution. Oh, yeah, you told us. Oh, okay, I did. Okay, yeah. It's actually kind of rough to edit on. What are the chips? Anyway, so that brings us to the challenge. Is it the same chips? So it's the, I have the M5 iPad Pro.

I have the M5 2TB iPad Pro. Okay. with 16 gigs of RAM. Which one is it in the Mac? Well, to be fair, the MacBook Pro that I have is the M4 Max, non-Bin, the 401, with 128 gigs of RAM. So there is a pretty big difference between that. Oh my god. Wow. Well, I got it when I was in that phase of like, okay, I'm done with the iPad. And then WVPC. You go hard when you're in the phase, though. Look, it's...

Midlife crisis has hit us all differently. Being a fan of the iPad is like being on a roller coaster. Constantly ups and downs. Up and down. Up and down. It is a rough life. And I, look, I love the iPad, but I think I'm finally coming around to what the iPad is good for. And that is what I'm using it for as a focused productivity admin device that can do some creative tasks. And the Mac fills in the rest for that. Chris, I'm so curious because we're expecting an iPhone that folds out to 8 inches this year when there's inevitably the Max version of that that goes out to like a 10-inch or 11-inch tablet.

What are you going to do? That... Oh, he's thinking. He just crashed. He's running iPadOS. Yeah, what if your iPhone Pro Max folded out and was a 10-inch iPad? If that was the case, I think I wouldn't have a traditional iPad. I think my iPhone would be my iPad, and then I would have a Mac. And that would be it. Oh, so iPhones would run the same OS as iPad. They would just call it iOS, and they'd kill iPadOS, and my prediction would come true.

And you'd all be wrong for doubting me. Yep, yep. Look, what was it that you got called on Upgrade, a rascal? Yeah, somebody's got to be a rascal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So look, you're in your rascal phase, and I love it. I'm in my rascal era. I'm in my like, oh, I don't know what to do phase. I think I'm at the part where I'm just like, you know what? Each device has their needs, and I'm just going to cover them the way that seems best.

Yeah, the way God intended. I love the iPad, but it's just, yeah. Meanwhile, my face is just uninstalled Raycast because it's too cringe. Which you can do with a keyboard shortcut in Raycast. Wait, what? Although, can you uninstall Raycast from Raycast? You can uninstall other apps. I don't know. Put it in the trash. Inside the building. Put it in the trash. The classic way of uninstalling something.

Okay. All right. We should get to our challenge. And it was Matt's challenge. It was my challenge. A challenge that made, I feel like you two were very upset about this for some reason. But it was find one nice thing to say about a password manager that you don't use every day. So for me, that was say something nice about something other than one password. I think the same for you, Neilian. Is that correct? And Chris, some besides double passwords.

So I can start, and this won't be a super long one because it wasn't switched to it for a week, deliver a full review. Just find a nice thing. Thank God. And the nice thing I have to say is about Apple passwords. And it is also a mean thing to say. So the nice thing to say is I use one password. I keep my passwords in there, my two-factor codes, and my passkey's in there. It's great. Works wonderfully. There's one website on earth that restricts what apps you can use to create a passkey.

And that website is apple.com. Apple does not let you create a passkey in any other app besides Apple passwords. Of course they don't. This is insanity. And Apple should feel bad about this. It's insane. So all of my passkeys live in one password, except for my Apple passkey, which was in Apple passwords. It's crazy that that's still the case. I can't believe it. I know. It's nuts. And you can't create multiple. But anyway, it's a whole thing. But in non-Safari browsers, I don't know if this is a Tahoe thing or if this came last year, but in non-Safari browsers and Safari, you don't even need to have the Apple Passwords

extension installed. If you have a passkey for that website, it can present itself in the browser, which is great. So I use one password for everything, and I go to Apple, I click sign in with passkey, and I get this little system modal that just says, hey, do you want to sign in with your passkey from Apple passwords? And I'm like, yeah. And it works. And so I think that's really nice. Because I don't want to install their god-awful Chrome extension. Yeah. And that's, yeah. So that's nice. It's great.

Nice. It's stupid I have to do this, but it's nice that there's an easy workaround. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I was struggling with this one, but then I was thinking back to the old days. You know, the good old days, but not really good because I hated this part. But I was thinking back to my IT career, and I was thinking about what we used there, and there is an application. I'm going to doubt either one of you have heard of this. Actually, maybe Neelion has.

Go for it. Okay. For the meme, I will say stickies, but it's not that. No, no, no, no, no. But my real guess is KeePass. Yes. Okay. I was like, I started saying neither one of you would know this. I'm like, no, neither one's going to know about it. KeePass. Okay. KeePass is where you go when you are either a tinfoil hat person and you're worried about security or you work in a place that you have to have really good security. KeePass is, the idea of KeePass is it is an open source password manager and it just creates a database file.

And KeePass itself is basically the viewer of this database file. Matt looks puzzled. Matt looks so confused. I've gone to the website. It is shocking. Yes. Everyone should go to the website. Again, this is a perfect slam on your brakes in the middle of traffic and look at the website. So KeePass is kind of the viewer for this database file. The database file is the thing. In KeePass, there is no cloud syncing. You do not sync to anything. Where you store that file, however you store that file, that's what can access it.

So in my IT career, we had a file server. We had a special folder that only the IT group could access. You had to have the correct permissions to access that. That's where we put the KeePass database. But then when you get into that, it's an encrypted database. So it's crazy encrypted. This is where the KeePass application comes in. That unlocks it, and you can view everything in it. And you can do all like passwords, SSH, all that stuff in there. I have no idea if it does pass keys or anything like that. In fact, I would doubt it does. I don't think so. Yeah. It's all off.

I don't think this is certified for Y2K. Like, this is. Oh, yeah, it is. Oh, baby, it is. It's still maintained. This thing, whenever I would get audited in my IT career, they'd be like, okay, how do you guys store your passwords? Key pass, okay, you're good. Like, yeah. This thing, we had like a 50-character password to get into the database. It was a sentence. last IT job, so that was four years ago, three years ago? Four years ago. We were using KeePass. Nice.

And so KeePass is technically the Windows application, but I put a link in there that there's iOS versions and macOS versions and stuff like that that can access it. These are all open source and stuff like that. So you can access it. There's web. There's all sorts of different things. And you just access that database file. So you put it in your file server. You could put it in a cloud file thing, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using it. I have a recommendation. Yes.

It's called... Oh, boy. I pasted the link. It's called Strongbox. Okay. Strongbox. So it's password manager. It supports pass keys I'm just seeing now. But my understanding of it is it supports key pass database. Oh, nice. Okay. So it looks like maybe you can have pass keys in key pass after all. See, I'm not sure. Okay, I wouldn't recommend using, if you're somebody that needs like a shared key pass vault and stuff like that,

don't do pass keys because it's based on bio. Like that's going to make things hard. But that's a whole separate deal. Yeah, no. KeyPass is if you want to go full tinfoil hat, you go KeyPass. Yeah. And Strongbox is like, I've seen people recommend it a lot. This actually looks like a couple of weeks. It's a native Mac app as well as iPad and iOS. So it integrates with the built-in password management stuff in those OSs.

And it looks pretty decent. I've tried it. It looks pretty good. I'm just looking at the screenshots. Yeah, like you, I haven't tried it, but it definitely gives me those KeePass feels. It's giving me the flashbacks to KeePass. But native to my Quest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's got OTP and all that. And it's also on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. So it's not just on the Mac. And Apple Watch. Yeah, and Apple Watch. Well, probably, I'm guessing the 2FA stuff is on the Apple Watch.

Yeah. Yeah, in fact, that's exactly what it is. Oh, and passwords, too. Wow, that's wild. And fast keys and everything. Yeah, yeah, no. But yeah, that's what I got for you this week. What was the nice thing you had to say about it? It's crazy encrypted and will pass any IT audit you get put through. Crazy encrypted, all right. Crazy encrypted. That thing, you ain't hacking that. As long as you have a strong password into your vault, you ain't hacking into that thing. Like I said, we had a 50-character sentence that couldn't be used.

If you tried a dictionary attack against it, it wouldn't work against it. It was a very particular sentence that had curse words in it and other things. It was fun to type. Very quick tangent. My wife's a teacher. Her school recently, their IT policy switched to they need passphrases for their laptops. It went over so poorly, the IT just gave up. They're like, now you can go back to passwords. So they disabled biometrics. So no login with your fingerprint. What? You must key in.

That's insane. So I did implement a 20 character minimum password thing at my last IT job. And people were so mad at me. And I was like, I don't care. I really don't care. I'm tired of having to deal with weird security things. This is it. This is what the auditors want. I don't care. You can be mad at me all you want. 50% of my last IT job was resetting people's passwords. Yeah. Yeah. I was the network admin, and that was still 50% of my job.

Yeah. All of us. All of us in our team, we just kept spending our time resetting passwords. Yep. Okay. So, my turn. So, my pick is Bitwarden. Oh. It's an often recommended alternative to one password. It looks... So, okay. I will get out of my system all the bad things so I can come to the one nice thing. So, it looks bad.

Oh, yeah. I hate it. The UI is not great. The icon is not good. This is the most terrible shade of blue they could have picked. But they picked a shade of blue and that's what's important. There's that, I guess. It's kind of a Facebook blue, but weird. I don't know. Yeah. But besides from that, it's got all of the things. All of the features that you would expect, including OTP, so 2FA stuff, passkey support.

It's cross-platform, so just like one password. You got all the browser extensions. You got a Mac app. You got the mobile apps. It integrates on iOS with autofill features. So all of that is covered. It's just that the UI sucks if you go into the app. But you can bear with that, I guess. It's cheaper than one password. It's got even a free plan. The free plan is pretty bare bones, which means you can store your password.

and all of that but you can't have otp i think you you do have passkeys but you can't have otp in the free plan i'm pretty sure um okay so see i'm coming to the nice stuff uh but the one nice thing that i picked uh is that you can self-host it um so the server component so you can just be a newbie user you can sign up and pay for a plan and start using it just like one password and

the others but if you are a techie and you want to own your data or whatever and you have a server you can install the server part on your own server and when you're signing into the app you put in your own domain name, and that's it. Your account points to your own server. And that means that it's basically like it's free for the people that can manage this because you get all the full breadth of features.

I'm pretty sure you access everything, but you have to self-host it. And I think that's pretty cool. that you can self-host a password manager like this, which means you can still benefit from... It's a bit like KeePass, I guess, but KeePass, you manage the database itself, and Bitwarden is still like a proprietary thing. You can still import and export stuff, but it's not really the database that's portable.

But still, you can self-host it, and yeah, I think that's pretty nice. in this day and age, that you can self-host your password manager. Yeah, that is nice. Is it wrong for me to think that, like, KeePass is kind of like Obsidian, where it's this, like, standard set of files, but it's a database, and then you can have, like, different apps that access it? I would say that's a fair way of putting it. I think, yeah, that's fair.

Okay. And Bitwarden is more, it is open because you can run it yourself, but it's more of a package. It's more of a package, yes. It's more like you install Plex. Okay. Maybe not. I don't know, but you install the whole thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Bitwarden is always the one that comes up whenever people hint the slightest distaste with whatever password manager they're using.

You can only guess that I've received hundreds of recommendations to switch to Vidwarden over the past two weeks because I've complained about 1Password. So, yeah. That makes sense. For now, I'm still on 1Password. Yes. So, Matt, who wins? I mean, I think I win. obviously.

I think I win. We do monarchy now. We don't do democracy. Okay. Yeah, that's your thing over there. I want to do dictatorships. Yeah. All right. So that brings us to the new challenge. And the new challenge is Niléane's. What do you got for us this week? Yes. Easy and simple. Straightforward. Oh, God. No. Use Vivaldi and pitch it on Mastodon. Pitch it on Mastodon. Like I said, straightforward, easy and simple.

You are working for Vivaldi this week. Am I getting a paycheck from them? I am getting one. I don't know about you too. You do realize as an influencer, I don't do anything for free. Oh, wow. Maybe you will have to for this challenge. That was the most obnoxious sentence I've ever said in my life. That is hands down the most obnoxious thing I've ever said. I hope everyone knows I was joking and not being serious. It's good you clarified.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. It's good that you clarified. So yeah, use Evaldian, pitch it on Mastodon. That's it. You can pitch it as a whole or just one thing that you want to pitch about it. I don't know. What are you writing? I'm just clarifying. In our show notes, I'm clarifying the text of the chat. I already wrote this. Yes, you're having sync issues. I think you're syncing. Oh, no. Okay, well.

Thank you, Nogin. Maybe Vivaldi can help you with that. Yeah, maybe. There's a setting for that. There's a setting for everything. Oh, God. I would honestly not be surprised if they have, like, in the Guinness Book of World Records, there's some record for most settings in a single app, and Vivaldi has been holding it for years. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. We've had this end of the show question for a while, but I'm going to put a time limit on it because I know this could have easily been a whole topic on its own. But Alex sent in this question. If you have any end of the show questions you'd like to ask, we have a feedback form. Please send them in there.

But Alex asked, if you're starting from scratch, what is some smart home items you'd add to your life that you don't have today? We recently bought a house and needed to install blinds, so I chose to buy the SwitchBot roller shades. I absolutely love them, but would never have added them to my setup or never have otherwise added them to my setup. I can't read today for some reason. Alex, it really depends on who you live with. When I lived by myself in my condo, everything was smart-homed.

I smart-homed the heck out of that house. Now that I live with Danielle and her mom stays with us sometimes, the only thing that's really smart-homed is my studio. Everything else is dumb. Yeah. My answer is blinds as well. I would have... So we're moving into our own house soon. maybe this will come up but yes the blinds have them come up at night and come down at night and like my dream would be able to wake up with the daylight just because the smart blinds come up on

the schedule i would really love that because i hate waking up to sounds uh so to an alarm clock or whatever. I hate wearing a watch as well. Waking up to the daylight, I would love that. And this is only for this I would get smart blinds, at least in my room. Okay. I have two answers because my first answer is super boring. The thing I don't have now that I want is smart blinds for my front room in the house. It would be really

nice if those could go down when the sun goes down. Because we have to go around the couch. It's a whole thing. But then buying them would be expensive, so I don't want to do it. And then what I would recommend everyone who is moving into their own home, you should get smart lights for whatever outdoor lights you have. Like your front door, your garage, if you have it, like those sorts of lights. Get smart lights. Set them on a routine to turn on at sunset and off at sunrise. And you'll never have to think about turning those on or off ever again.

It's wonderful. So like in the garden, what kind of outside lights? In the US, if you have a house, you typically have a light right outside your front door and then lights on both sides of your garage. You might have a spotlight outside your garage or something for when you pull up. Some people have motion sensor lights and stuff. Because there's criminals in our country everywhere.

I don't know. But also, you don't have fences in the front. We do not have, almost never do we have fences in the front. There's some places where we do. If you have a fence in the front of your house, you're hiding something. Like, that's what we're judging you. We all have fences. Yeah. Okay, the one thing I will say, smart garage door opener. And don't get a Mikey one. those guys get a home kit one but anyways that brings us to the end of the show thank you all so much for listening

thank you to Backstories for having us we are a Backstories podcast after all and have a great day bye