The MacBook Neo is my Mistress

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts. As always, I am joined by Matt Berchler himself. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing swell. I'm coming to you from a low power computer today, so hopefully it all goes well. Uh-oh. If you break the recording, you edit the show. That's the rules of Comfort Zone and the Thunderdome. and we're also joined by Niléane and her glorious self how are you doing yes I don't know I was trying to bring back the adjectives

and stuff and I didn't do a great job at it it was okay present see there's a sunlight on my face I like it when it's sunny outside I'm so mad about the time change and cozy season being over anyways be tough in california it is it's very tough i mean like it's gonna get warm it's actually gonna be 90 degrees next week chris i was outside this morning it was so cold and windy mostly the wind but i also wanted to mention the cold i literally pulled someone's like patio furniture set out of

the middle of the street because it blew into the street overnight and they had no idea and there it was a whole thing so no complaining about nice weather well you are a good samaritan i i would take your weather over my weather right now i would i would hand some anyways we have we have a show to do we have some tiny topics uh first thing is well uh there is a new season of a fellow max story show first last everything this is by jonathan reed uh he interviews um interesting people on the internet uh this first episode of season two he interviews uh one of my current favorite YouTubers Becca. I'm going to mess up her

last name. Versace, right? Yeah, there you go. I'll let you say it. I don't know if that's it. I don't know either. But anyway, she's a great YouTuber. I have this queued up to listen to next. I haven't got to it just yet, but there's a new season. Go check it out. We'll put a link in the show notes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Matt, I just noticed Matt has a new colored microphone. Look at this. I did see that when we jumped on the call. I was I was curious if that was going to mean anything. It doesn't mean anything.

I needed a bigger pop filter, a more powerful one, because my plosives are intense when I really get ranting. And I got a nicer one, and I was like, why not get it in blue? Have some fun. That's actually a good idea. My plosives get pretty plosive, so I should probably do something similar. But I won't get blue. I'll look for a dark green one. I also have a tiny topic, which is just a shout-out to what I think is the best trade-in system in tech, it's worth calling out. Apple's trade-in program?

It is not. I mean, it's a good program, but Samsung's. Samsung's trade-in program is awesome, and there are two reasons, maybe three reasons. Number one, you do not pay full price. You do not get scammed. You do not pay full price. So instead of paying the full amount of the device and then getting your trade-in refunded, you pay whatever the after trade-in value is, and then when they get your device, they're like, okay, great, and transaction complete. If you never send the device, they'll charge you, but you're not floating like $1,000 on your card or whatever.

So that's nice. The second thing, they do great trade-in values. Do you know what an iPhone 16 Pro Max gets you at Apple for a trade-in right now? I'll tell you. Okay. It's $650. Wow. Do you know what? Yeah. Do you know what the S25 Ultra gets you? $900. Wow. Which is a significant chunk of the phone. So that's lovely as well. And the third thing that's nice, there's no separate box. They

basically send you your new phone and they say, package up your old phone in this box. Here's the mailing label in the box already. So you're not waiting for the second FedEx package or anything to come. It's great. I just wanted to shout it out because it is an unsung hero of the trade-in system. I wanted to give it its time in the sun. I thought, Apple is a bit an outlier. I thought that was how trade-in systems worked in general until I met Apple. When I traded in my Switch OLED to buy the Switch 2 at a random store in town, Like, I paid the difference.

I didn't have, like, but of course, because I was there. But you were in person, weren't you? Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's why. In person, I can see that being a little different. Yeah. I was already to shout out that random store in France, but, you know, shout out to that random store. They seem nice. I've never done the Apple trade-in in the store. Do you get the money right away if you do the trade-in? Oh, I did that. Yes. Okay, okay. I've never done it in the store.

I've only ever, like, sent stuff in because it's just like, I have these. Like, last time I did it, I just had a bunch of devices. Not a bunch, like, three devices. And I was just like, eh, I don't need these anymore. I did this when I got the 16 Pro, remember? I got to the store with an iPad. I don't know what else. My old iPhone and something else as well. Like, three devices. I was like, take all of this. Now I want to use the money to buy the 16 Pro. And that was nice. I literally did that as well I caused like a scene I've never seen someone do three devices but we can do it

they had to give me gift cards like a bunch of gift cards I don't know because the software wasn't accepting that much trading they can apply one trade in directly to the purchase and the other two on gift cards and so they put the most expensive trade in on the purchase and then they do the gift cards to the other two it's a whole thing but they make it work Yeah. Huh. All right. Well, this week on Cozy Zone, we taught Nelian the real rules of the road.

Nelian is in the process of getting her driver's license. And me and Matt, mostly me, I found out Matt is one of those people, mostly me, taught the real rules of the road. And now Neliana is prepared to drive, at least in America. But honestly, she can bring freedom to France now. Right. It's great timing. I had my first driving lesson this week. And you did great because you knew all the rules of the road that I had taught you.

Because I wiped off my mind everything you taught me in that Cozy Zone episode. Speed limit signs are just suggestions. Anyways, let's get into the main show. And I think we have a dual topic this week, right, Matt? We do. I was going to bring something else, and then there's nothing else to talk about. No, there's only one thing. Yeah, there's only one thing. Should we do it at the same time? Or you probably can't, can you? I can't do it. If you want the stream to end, I can do it.

I can do it. I have a device with the same chip inside. Okay, so all three of us then have MacBook Neos. They're just running different OSs. Neelion is holding up the iPhone 16 Pro. which has the same chip. I have the 256 gig Indigo MacBook Neo. Matt, which one did you get? I did the Indigo 512. I figured long-term, I would like to have the Touch ID and 256 is paltry.

I bought this thinking I was going to review it and then probably return it within the two weeks and that is not the case. If you saw the video, you saw there's stickers on this thing already. I am keeping this thing because I freaking love this computer. Like, I love, it doesn't make any sense, but I love this computer. Okay. I am so excited to talk about this because I think there is a psychosis going on around this device.

But we can talk about it. I think people are losing their minds over this budget computer. So, okay, so there's a couple of things that I really love about it. First off, the price to performance, I think, is really good. Like, there is stuff that I was doing on this computer I wasn't expecting to do as easily as I was able to do. So, I edited, I published a short-form video yesterday on my Instagram and the YouTubes and the TikToks and all that stuff. That was shot in ProRes RAW on an iPhone 17 Pro.

I edited that whole thing on the Neo, and it played back perfectly. The export took a little while, but it played back and edited perfectly. And that was with color grading because it was in log footage. So that was with color grading layers with multiple effects. That was with 120 frames per second ProRes footage. It was nuts. Like, what I was able to do with that, absolutely nuts.

I've edited raw photos that were shot on my Canon R5 on this thing. No problems. I've had a ton of apps open. No crashes, no nothing. The only time it really slowed down was when I was exporting that video and when I was doing the early setup because it was doing all the indexing stuff. That was the only time I've ever had this thing really slow down. Okay. I basically broke the computer when I tried to export a video from Final Cut.

What this has made me realize is that with my M4 MacBook Pro, I have infinite power. Insert the Palpatine, whatever. I have infinite power. And I can export a video. I can do a new screen recording while that's going. I can be building an Xcode. I can do literally everything I want, and it just keeps going, and I never worry about it. When I started that export and then tried to literally just open another app, it froze up like I've never seen a Mac freeze up in years in the Apple Silicon era.

It was literally like the mouse cursor was moving at one frame per second. The command tab thing would take literally seconds to come up. Just out of curiosity, was the footage that you shot that you were exporting, was it iPhone footage or was it from your Canon R6? It was from my Canon. So it was high-end footage. And when I reduced it down to a five-minute video, I was able to export okay. But I did have like a 15-minute video and it struggled.

It would have got there, but it would have taken a long time. So the one time I broke this computer, and I didn't really feel like it was a fair task because it's not what it's designed for. But the time I broke this computer was when I opened up a Final Cut Pro project that was using my Canon C50, my cinema camera. Absolutely just to a standstill. Like, it did not like that whatsoever. But I was also like, you're not going to have, like, the person that's buying the $600 MacBook Neo is not also going to be using, what, $7,000 camera setup or something like that.

Like, that's, like, not the same thing at all. So I was like, this is totally fair that this doesn't work. Yeah, well, but this person does not exist. I am that person. That was just a test. I was not interested in doing this. But you know what this thing was great at? Editing iPhone footage for short form stuff. So if you're a short form creator and you've been editing stuff on your iPhone, you've been shooting on your iPhone and you've been editing on your iPhone and you're like, you know what? I want a little bit more screen real estate. This thing will work perfectly. I was editing the ProRes RAW footage from the iPhone 17 Pro on this thing.

Played back fine. Yeah, the export was a little slow, but I can live with that. Yeah, this made me feel like I was using an old computer. I don't mean this in a totally bad way. I feel like there's a line. This is the thing I keep thinking about. When Apple Silicon came out, we crossed a line, the magic line, where everything felt impossibly fast. everything launched instantly you couldn't kill it but you could do that back in the day and i feel like you can kill this computer uh if you want to so i think that's fine it's a 600 computer but

what i am reacting to i think is when i when it was announced i was like oh boy i don't know if that's going to perform that well um and everyone was like getting hyped and i saw the early reviews and people were talking about it like it was it never slows down it's it feels just as fast as a high-end mac and i was getting hyped up too so when mine came in i was ready to be like blown away and from the instant i started using it everything is slower than a than a more high-end mac like everything opening apps is slower clicking things like just anything any action is slower it's fine

but it doesn't feel apple silicon magic to me if that makes sense yeah i i i agree with you like opening apps you can tell like if i was to open and like notion on my macbook pro versus notion on the neo like it's gonna bounce a little bit more in the neo before it fully opens and that's fine like it's not the end of the world i'm not i it's again it's a six six hundred dollar computer versus like, I don't even know what the MacBook Pro was, like $5,000 or something like that.

Like that's totally different. Like that's like totally different. Yeah. I know. I know. But is that different like from an M1 chip? Like is it so, the difference that we are seeing, is it because we've like since 2020, we've moved forward so much already that it already feels like it's an old computer even though that was the performance we were getting on an M1 and getting impressed with. I'm so glad you asked this question because this is my M1 MacBook Pro, which was my work computer for the past five years.

And when you say M1, you just mean base M1, not Pro Max. Base M1. This is the laptop they released the very first, like the December release when they first released it. With the old design. With the old design, touch bar. Yeah, I've been using a touch bar in 2026. Incredible. I never use it, but it's there. So I am very familiar with what it feels like using an M1 computer. I would say it feels similar, but you can kill it, like I said, in a way that I do video exporting.

I do all the things I do on that computer as well. I can't kill that. I think the thing I'm running into is the RAM, because this M1 has 16 gigs and the Neo has 8. And I think I'm just, once I saturate the RAM and it gets into swap, also the SSD is way, way, way slower than even an M1 Mac. So I think the issue I'm running into is a RAM limit when I'm feeling these, like, really big issues. Maybe thermals as well? Because your MacBook Pro, does it have fans?

It does have fans. Yeah. the neo hasn't gotten hot on me once i have not felt it get warm yet matt i don't know about you but i have not felt the neo get get hot not really um i do i'm adding to the notion doc i'll try to put links to these in the show notes but i've done a bunch of benchmarks um but one of the things that i i built into quick subtitles is a benchmark that will just transcribe over and over and over again and so i did a 15 run transcription over a file um and that really heats up the device like

on iphones you can really see the performance drop test over test and on the neo it's super consistent like there's basically no drop as you go from um anything so i haven't noticed thermal throttling unless it's always unless it's the hulk and it's always thermal throttling but i don't I think so, because then the Geekbench scores would show that it was thermal throttling when compared to the iPhone. Yeah.

So I don't really think it is throttling. I just think, like, because it's the iPhone chip and there's just so much extra space in the chassis of this thing, that it's cooling better. Yeah, I agree. I'm noticing in my notes that I put in our shared doc last night, I wrote, quote, No thermal throttling in my tests. So I guess, yeah, I would agree. No thermal throttling. Yeah, I haven't felt any throttling or anything. Like I said, the only time that it's really felt slow outside of the initial setup when it's doing all the macOS indexing stuff

is when I exported that short video and I closed out all the other applications I had open so that way it would have access to all the RAM and as much swap as it was allowed to use, which for swap and macOS, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it only allowed to go up to double the amount of RAM you have? So if you only have 8 gigs of RAM, you can only use 8 gigs of swap. Is that true? I feel like I've heard this someplace. I've never heard this. Okay. Scratch that. Don't listen to me.

I will research this and come back next week. It was just something that I remembered off the top of my head, and maybe, okay, it doesn't matter. I remember one day my Mac, so I have 16 gigs of RAM. One day my Mac told me, so you know how the four squid pop-ups sometimes pop up to tears? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happened to me like twice in the lifetime of this Mac. And I don't know what I was doing. But anyway, that pop-up appeared and it told me, you're using 120 gigs of memory or something crazy like that.

So I think it could go pretty far. Okay. Okay. I wasn't sure exactly how that worked. I guess there is a limit. At some point, it's telling you. At some point, you got to stop. I'm out. You got to slow down. Yeah, because, I mean, maybe it does just go until it fills up the SSD. I don't know. I'll do some research on exactly how swap in macOS works. It definitely works worse the more full your hard drive is. The more storage you're using, the worse it gets because it doesn't have free memory to use. So the 256 on 8 gigs, this is part of the psychosis.

I think people are freaking out about this as being like a great computer. I heard our boss, Federico Vettici, on Connected, he was like, this is my new Mac. I prefer it over the MacBook Pro. And I am predicting within a few months he'll be back. Well, of course, that's him. That's what he does. Yeah. So I have a MacBook Pro and I have a MacBook Neo. The MacBook Pro is way a gajillion times more powerful than the MacBook Neo.

It's not even like the displays, but everything about the MacBook Pro is better. And I will, I am going to continue. This is my creative machine. This is where I do all my heavy workflow. But the MacBook Neo has become my couch computer and like my bed computer where I'm like, I don't have to worry about fan vents being covered. I don't have to worry about like a big screen or anything like that, like a big profile or anything like that. This has become the computer I've just been sitting down at night and working on when I've been working on my new website,

working on scripts, working on – I even edited that short. I edited it sitting on the couch next to Danielle yesterday because she had the day off, and I just sat down next to her, edited it while on this thing, not plugged into a monitor or power or anything like that. And that's what this thing is perfect at. And I think that's why this is going to be the iPad killer. I was going to say, that does sound a lot like what someone would do with an iPad. It's exactly what I did with the iPad. I don't want to relitigate the iPad discussion too much.

We do this every week. But can I tell you what my favorite thing about this computer is? And I'm curious what Neil Leigh on things about this. Okay. prefer the no-notch, bigger bezels display. Ooh. It's not that I didn't notice it or I don't mind it. I would prefer my next MacBook Pro not have a notch and have just a bigger bezel. Yeah, I agree. No one likes the notch.

Are you guys serious with me? I love the thin... I'm not a crazy, like, oh, I got to have the minimalist bezels, but like, I would much rather have more screen real estate than a big thick bezel. But that's, it's barely adding any screen, like, especially on the air. It's the whole menu bar. On the MacBook Air, it's ridiculous. Like, the bezel is still pretty thick on the air, and yet it has a notch, and the notch is so wide for that tiny camera sensor in the middle, it makes no sense. I'm pretty sure there's, like, ambient sensor or whatever, but I don't see it.

So, I don't know. I agree. And also, Apple needs to manage the menu bar better if they want to keep a notch. Yes, yes. This is my thing. They gave you the tools in Tahoe for that. No, that's barely tools. But I cannot tell you how often I'm on my MacBook Pro, and a menu bar item is not available because it's either behind the notch or I'm in an app that has a lot of menu bar items and they go onto the other side of the notch and are then taking precedent over the things

that I have in my menu bar that I want to use. I've been unable to get to my clean shot history at times because it's been bumped off and I'm just like, what do I do? It's not available. It's part of the Mac that I want to use. So anyway, that's my spicy take. I actually think that is something I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Can I tell you my favorite thing about this computer? It doesn't feel like a cheap MacBook or a cheap book, if you will.

It just feels like a MacBook. It doesn't feel the low-cost, like a low-cost computer. It doesn't feel like a Costco computer. It doesn't feel like a, okay, I'll get this one because I need to save a few bucks. It feels like a MacBook. 100%. like this is a $3,000 computer, I'd be like, all right. Yeah. So, I mean, there's obviously some downsides. So there's no backlight keyboard. Okay, weird thing.

So I posted that short on three different places, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and TikTok. All three places complain about something different. Like the general consensus is they're complaining about something different. TikTok seems to be very upset that it doesn't have a backlit keyboard. I'm getting by, but I also don't need to look at my keyboard. like i i do look at it but like i don't need it like i i don't it doesn't it doesn't bother me it's not that big of a deal but like i could be like this and we need to see the keys i okay i i

yeah i guess i i i will say i was initially i was like i don't use the backlight ever i don't really need that but what i didn't realize is how max subtly light the keys so i didn't even realize the backlight was necessarily on at times and i was able to see the keys in my old darkness um this is absolutely a problem when i used it in the dark i could not see the keyboard and i was like oh no i do miss this okay okay so so it is a problem okay the thing that i thought i would hate the most is the display because it's srgb not p3 uh not p3 uh wide colored gamut the display is very very glossy very reflective so much so that like i was like when i was filming it with my lights on

i was having a hard time not getting the reflection of my lights shooting on this thing and that's probably also the fact that my macbook pro has the matte screen whatever they call that i forget what they call that oh and then all my ipads have the paper like yeah this is my biggest regret with my macbook pro by the way i wish i had gotten the uh nano texture yeah nano texture nano texture is great especially like yeah yeah if you work outside or you have lights or something but if you're somebody that films your devices get nano texture and thank me later um but yeah the display

is fine if you look at it from like an angle like if you look at it off to the side or something like that that's when you can really tell it's a much lesser quality display as like another macbook maybe it's like the the new samsung it's so you you have privacy yeah i mean you can still see it but yeah yeah it's a feature uh the speakers aren't oh matt's showing up the samsung thing he's showing off wow you really can't see that thing he does have the new samsung look at him

um the speakers on the macbook neo aren't great like but here's where i come in at if you're gonna watch like a video or listen to some music they're fine if you're going to be creating something like if you're using this to edit shorts or a podcast or something like that you're gonna need headphones yeah that's probably true i think that's kind of true even with the more expensive macbooks whenever I'm editing a video or a podcast and I use my desk speakers which are obviously way better than the

headphones there's still things I don't notice until I put headphones in there'll be like a little hiss or something that I just didn't notice and then people are like you didn't notice the hiss and I'm like dang it yeah it's a thing and then like one other thing I think they can improve which actually it's not even I think they can improve we know it will be improved is the next generation of this Mac Matt and I both spoke. We've maxed out the RAM pretty easily. But the next generation of this thing will have 12 gigs at least if it gets the A18 Pro.

Yeah, because it's the one above the current iPhone. 19. Or is it 16 Pro. 19 Pro. 19 Pro? The current one is the A18 Pro. Current on the iPhone 17 Pro. No, on the Neo. Oh, okay. So it's two above the iPhone. It's so easy to follow. Man, I want Apple. Sync up all the numbers. Okay. It runs iOS 26. Anyway. So that one, yes. That one will have 12 gigs of RAM.

So that'll be nice. I think just like that little bit of extra RAM will go a long way. But a couple of things that I've noticed about this computer. So it comes with a 20-watt charger in the box, but it can charge up to 30 watts. So if you have a 30-watt charger, it will charge faster. It's literally the iPhone charger, right? It's just the standard iPhone wall brick, isn't it? Yeah, the charger that comes in the box? Yeah, it's the iPhone charger that doesn't come in the box with the iPhone now.

Because the iPhone don't come with chargers anymore. But it's the one you can buy for the iPhone. But not the new fast-charging one. Fast-charging is a scam. Just plug in whatever plug. This is my opinion. Yeah. That's a discussion for another day. Chris will tell you he needs a screen on his charger. Well, how do you think I know that it charges up to 30 watts? The screen on the charger told me. How else do you think I know that?

I didn't get a briefing on this device. But his charger with a screen always knows. I plugged it into two different chargers with two different screens. I have multiple chargers with multiple screens. Yeah, that's how science works. Maybe one of your cables can run Doom or something. Probably. Oh, man. Probably could. I mean, can the MacBook Neo run Doom? Well, yes. Probably 100 instances of it. I don't know.

I don't know. Go ahead. The USB ports. I'm pretty happy, but also a little annoyed. Doesn't bother me. I have a Thunderbolt dock that has my sound thing, my microphone, a camera, my speakers, Ethernet. It's got a whole bunch of things plugged into it. And I just plug a Thunderbolt cable into my Mac and it all just connects. And I plugged it into this and it all just connects.

It's all working great. So that seems fine. If you told me it was Thunderbolt, I'd believe you. The second port being USB 2. could be annoying. Especially if you're like plugging to a display and then you need more storage so you plug an SSD into the second one. You're going to have some pretty rough speeds there but I'd rather have a slow second port than no second port but still that's definitely a thing that I hope they can fix next time.

I've been treating the second port as the charging port and the first port as the peripheral port so I've had to plug in SD card readers I had to plug in an external drive to copy over the iPhone footage from the short and stuff like that. So basically that's how I've been thinking about it. The headphone jack's in a weird spot. It's up front, sort of. The Verge should be happy it has one, right? Honestly, you guys are like the U2 people who are like, remember 20 years ago they put U2 on my album,

on my library that ruined my world? It did. I think it's in a great spot. I do too, actually. I think it makes sense. I think it makes more sense to have it up there. It's a little weird, I guess, like, symmetrically to have it, like, up there. But it's closer to where you are. And that, like, all your other plugs are likely going back somewhere. But your headphones are coming towards you. So make it closer to you so you have more range. I like it. Yeah. I have one regret about this machine. Actually, two regrets. I wish I would have got the citrus and I wish I would have got the 512 gig model.

Because I'm definitely keeping this thing. And I think the citrus looks better for thumbnails. You're always thinking in thumbnails. I love this. I'm a big YouTuber boy. You got to be thinking about the thumbnail. That's why you get the orange iPhone. That's why you get the, I don't know. Yep. But no, the blue looks good. It's just, I wish they would have pumped up the saturation slider just a little bit and the brightness slider just a little bit. But the blue looks good. Yeah. It's actually, this is my first blue MacBook or like computer that I've owned.

This is my first colored computer I've owned because I've always gone with the Pro models on iPads and Macs and stuff like that. So I've never gotten fun colors before. I've never had an iMac or anything like that. So this is my color computer. They should have been the iMac colors. That would have been cool. The back of the iMac colors. Not the front. Not that muted front stuff. The back. No, both. Like inside, it's the muted variant. outside the back.

Make Neely on the colors are. This could be your next role. As long as she gives me a dark green iPhone, as long as she can just give me my dark green line, I would approve Neely. You know, I don't care about your choices. Yeah, you really don't. Because you won't make me a dynamic wallpaper. I don't have the time. I would have to stand at a place for 24 hours and just take a photo every hour. Sounds like something you can do. I can see Neelyan now at Apple wearing a black turtleneck and looking at the six colors for the laptops

and being like, not the green one. Dark green. I need dark green. Do you know what's cool? It doesn't matter at all, but it's fun. What's that? They have color matched the inside of the USB ports to match the color of your device. So the tip of the little bit in the middle of the USB port, the actual connector, they have color-coded that to yours as well. So that's worth a few dollars, I think. Speaking of color matching, just like the iMac on the Mac, I saw that you can have the tint color match your MacBook Neo.

And really funny stuff. So, you know, in France, the citrus version is called Jaune Agrume. which means yellow something. So it has yellow in the name, the citrus, right? What are you showing, Chris? I showed the colored match theme. Oh, sure. For the video listeners, you can see the color match theme. I don't know. I'll do something in the edit. No, but I mean, the indigo is very desaturated. Yeah, that's why I wish the saturation slider would have been bumped up a little bit more.

So I was saying, so the citrus version is called jaune something in French. So yellow something. But both in the UI, so the real device barely looks yellow. It's more green than yellow. But the tint color especially that matches that in the OS, it's still called yellow something, right? But it's a green dot that you select in the system settings. It's green. It's so green. So I'm mad about this.

And it's an outrage. They are not respecting the world of yellow. And yeah, that's it. That's all I have to say. Hey, at least it exists. It's just the icon off. There's no dark green computer. Give me a dark green computer. And it's weird because in French, it's called yellow something and it doesn't look yellow. Citrus, sure, because citrus, that can be green, right? A lime, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. but really i love this computer i know i i i truly love this computer as like a just a quick compact light laptop that doesn't need to be a beefy macbook pro this has me thinking like

um i really probably could just go the mac mini or mac studio life and when it comes to events and that i could just take this guy the macbook neo with me and edit short form videos on that um because don't do long form videos for events because they don't ever get views but short form videos for events does so um that's what i've been learning over the years and uh yeah i i i think this is a

great computer. I'm really happy with it. It's good that they're finally releasing something that's more affordable. So in France, it's €700 still. Okay. But compared to €1200, which is the starting price of the MacBook Air now, this is nice. I mean, you could buy two MacBook Neos for the price of a MacBook Air in the us like it's and like like we talked about last week like the ipad air configured to be the same

same thing it's like 1200 a little over 1200 for that even if you buy the base ipad which is not a very good ipad because it doesn't have a limited display if you buy that with a keyboard it's more expensive than the macbook neo so it's like such a scam this this is the best device for getting in the Apple ecosystem outside of the iPhone. Yeah. So when are you resigning or something? Resigning? What do you mean?

No, sorry. The king of the iPad. Let's just say you're going to be seeing a lot more Mac content on the channel. Because I... The Mac era. I fully... I think this thing is going to eat the low-end lunch of the I, and I, unless you really want a touch device or to do something with the Apple pencil, it makes more sense to get the MacBook Neo than an iPad or iPad air. Okay. I guess we're talking about it.

I have, I have this theory. I've been, I've been, I've written like three drafts of this and I just can't get it to publish. So let's, we can talk it out here. Maybe I feel like there have been three eras of the iPad and we're in, we're starting, we're in the third era pretty clearly at this point in the first era. in the first era, it was the middle device, right? You have a Mac, you have a phone. It's this middle device. This is what Steve Jobs pitched it as in that first very casual introduction. Really incredible introduction. Anyway, Steve Jobs was good at presenting things.

I don't know if anyone's ever thought about it. And that was when he was really sick too. I know. That's still one of my favorite keynotes. I know everyone points to the iPhone or the iMac. The iPad one is one of my favorites. So the first few years, it's this middle device. It's kind of a third device for you. Some people really love it and kind of adopt it and try to use it for more. But it was kind of this middle thing. Then in 2015, the iPad Pro comes out. And we enter the butterfly keyboard era for the Mac. And we get to the What's a Computer campaign that was scrubbed from history.

But it's still on YouTube if you look for it. And people still say that in the comment section of my videos. It drives me nuts. It really seemed like Apple was pushing this as a Mac replacement. And there were people doing it. You doing it. I did it. Yeah. And I think internally at Apple, they were seeing the iPad as the Mac replacement. Yeah. So don't need to relitigate all of that. But we were in kind of this era where it seemed like the iPad had all the juice. They're pushing it forward. That was the future of computing.

And now in the Apple Silicon era, I think it's started to transition back. And now I think with the Neo, with the price stuff we're talking about, if you're using an iPad as kind of like a computer computer, you're going to spend more for the kind of equivalent product in the lineup. And that's fine. We're Apple people. We literally have done this for decades. This is what we did. Like Windows fans would be like, well, I could buy an equivalently powerful Windows PC. And I'd be like, but you'd be using Windows. So I'm not going to do that.

I prefer Mac OS. So I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But I do feel like we're potentially getting into a more clear space where the iPad is going to be that middle device that's useful for a bunch of things, but maybe isn't going to be pushed as hard as a laptop replacement. I don't know. Maybe that's just my impression, but that's kind of the feeling now. I agree with you. I think the iPad will be a device for people that really like the iPhone and need to do normal, like, normal, non-big multitasking, non-developer, non-big creative.

Like I talked about last week, we bought a base iPad for my grandma because she likes to do the Apple Pencil coloring thing. Yeah. That's perfect for that. I think the thing we need the iPad needs to clear is when people give examples like that, it can't be their four-year-old child or their 80-year-old grandma. It's always someone at way opposite ends of the spectrum. What about just adults and teenagers? Danielle. Danielle. She technically has an old, old Intel MacBook Pro laying around, but she hasn't touched it in years.

She has my M2 iPad Pro, and that's what she uses as her computer. Yeah. Outside of her iPhone. I would say her iPhone is her main computer. But when she needs to do something with more screen real estate, she grabs that iPad. I still think for her, the iPad is probably the better computer. But if that was to break today and she needed something, I wouldn't go and spend $2,000 on an iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard for her. I would spend $600 and get her a MacBook Neo.

Thank you for a better computer shout out. You just naturally said it, so I'll take it. Yeah. Go watch Matt's new podcast. That sounds desperate. I take it back. But yeah. I think this is a great computer. And for $600, if you were to go buy a Windows computer for $600, It would be, maybe it might have the same amount of RAM, maybe it might have the same amount of storage.

Let's put RAM and storage again aside for a second. Maybe it might have that, but Windows doesn't handle that stuff the same. Windows eats up RAM. I know, I've done the thing. You couldn't use a Windows laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and do the same stuff I was doing on this MacBook Neo. And it would feel cheap. It would be made of plastic. It would not feel premium like the MacBook Neo does. and it would probably have a fan too this is a fan anyways anything else on this iPadOS should die wow why are you hurting me

I still look I'm in a very complicated I didn't say your name I said iPadOS this is like my mistress right now the MacBook Neo is like my mistress right now I'm having a lot of fun with her but the iPad still my main bay i can't believe that is a sentence i said oh my god this is the title macbook neo is my mistress the ipad is my main bay yeah i mean it's it's definitely a cool computer i'm glad apple has a cheaper computer i feel like

for years we've been like here's the new version of the thing and yes it's more expensive but the default specs are a little higher and so it kind of justifies it but like over time the price just goes up and up and up and eventually you're paying insane amounts for things so it's very cool to have a price that's like this low um which i think is their cheapest laptop ever before you're going to count for inflation which is i think the i think the only mac that's ever been cheaper is there was a mac mini that was 499 but as a mac mini you don't get a keyboard mouse or monitor so you got to buy all that separate so it's still going to end up being more but um yeah i think i think

theoretically this is the cheapest complete Mac you can buy meaning it has mouse keyboard display and the real OS Chris don't worry they're going to turn it they're going to change it to iOS the iPhone's going to run it all the multitasking is going to exist on the iPhone and suddenly you're going to get updates every year because every iPad problem is now an iPhone problem and they're going to fix them the folding iPhone is going to cause some real issues in my my yep yep it's going to cause some issues for me uh

things are going to be changing this year i i is who knows what's what's going to look like i'm trying not to make absolute things like i did last year because then wwdc comes and it's like oh yeah wait okay here here it is you know wwdc is going to come around this year we're going to be able to run full-blown mac apps on the ipad that was my prediction no someone's that happens i don't i don't know i'll buy you a beer my prediction was we could run mac os on the ipad somehow no no no i'm thinking full-blown mac apps i i'm thinking they'll be i don't know anyways we

can't get into that we can't you guys want to move on to the challenge oh i don't want to call off one thing first um uh sam henry gold wrote an awesome blog post about what is cool about this sort of computer, especially for young people, and like discovering like the wonders of computers. Like I spent like hours and hours using Shapeshifter and like these sorts of like crazy apps on my Mac to like do things. And I ruined computers. I deleted the operating system folder, which is a thing that you used to be able to do and then it would not boot.

And my dad was very upset. It's very hard to come back when you delete the OS. Why did they let you do that? It's crazy. But you figure out the thing he basically said, there's just a little quote, if you'll indulge me. He's comparing it to someone using a Chromebook, but I think it applies to a lot of modern OSs. A Chromebook doesn't teach you anything. A Chromebook ceiling is made by the web browser, and the things you can run are not the edges of computing,

but the edges of a product category designed to save you from yourself. The kid who tries to run on a Chromebook doesn't learn that his machine can't handle it. He learns Google decided he's not allowed to. That's a completely different lesson from learning the limits of a Mac. And that is absolutely it. Like you can screw up this computer. I ground it to a halt doing too many things at once, but like I could do those things and I'll figure out those things. And I know what I'm doing. And like, you know, I'm an adult and I can have the MacBook Pro and everything, but like as a kid you're not gonna be able to have that and i think it's really cool that there is a device

that they can learn all the computer things on and mess around with and have total freedom to do whatever they want and so i think that's nice yeah that was a really good piece yeah i yeah yeah i i miss those days of screwing up computers i i really do i deleted the operating system i don't yeah That's wild. Save space on the hard drive. That's a good idea. I mean, even my first... I still think about it. It's crazy. If you really dislike your OS, you should be able to do that, I think.

Yeah. Are you talking about iPadOS? No, I was not. I was not, Chris. But it reminds me of when I got my first MacBook Pro back. It was a 2009 MacBook Pro. I was able to open that thing up. I got the base RAM and the base storage. No, no, I got the base RAM, but I got a 320-gig hard drive. And when I first got it, I opened up and I put more RAM in it because I bought aftermarket RAM, and I was able to put cheaper third-party RAM in it.

And then a few years after that, I put an SSD in that thing, and it made that thing screaming. But, yeah, I miss those days of breaking computers. Anyways, anything else on this or should we move on to the challenge? Yes. Okay. Nelian, it was your challenge. What did you force upon us? The challenge was pretty simple. Use Vivaldi. Asterisk. Pitch it on Mastodon as well.

Just to make sure, like, you're spreading the good word on the internets and the Fediverses. Yeah. Simple. Yeah, that's it. Simple. So I will decide that we should go with Chris first because Chris committed something that I don't like. Okay. All right. Well, I used Vivaldi. Yeah. I did not enjoy it at all. Why?

As per my statement here, I will read my statement on Mastodon. Let me open the statement. Regarding this week's comfort zone challenge. So something I like about Vivaldi. Well, it sure helped me spend a lot of time this week tweaking settings. Who knows what I would have done with all of that time without it. I do really like the sidebar for tabs. All browsers should have this looking at you, Safari. One favorite. Really? Yes.

That's hilarious. One symbolic like. Oh, that was you. No, no, wait, hang on, hang on. You didn't have the passion. Yeah. No, I refuse to put the passion in this. I did not like this. There's too much happening in this. I was like, I get it for people that are, okay, this is the Chromebook browser. This is the all my apps are web apps browser. That is not me. That's not true. What do you mean? My apps are not web apps.

That's not how I use Vivaldi. I used tabs, regular tabs. I was using tabs too, but then it was also like, hey, here's links to all the stuff in a sidebar so you can see your Mastodon feed. I was like, I don't need all this. And I spent the week turning things off. I don't really feel like I turned much on. I spent the week turning things off. And I was like, I don't feel like I have to turn anything off in Safari. I set up the MacBook Neo as new. The only thing I did to Safari was I installed my extensions.

Like that's it. There's nothing you can do in Safari anyway. Yeah, but that's fine. I don't need to. Look, I wish it had like a sidebar for tabs. I wish it did, but I can live with it not. Yeah. So the thing that I disapprove of is that in your pitch on Mastodon, you started it with regarding this week's comfort zone challenge. So immediately you're signifying to the public that this is against your will or something. There's hostage vibes here, yes.

Look, as a big-time influencer, I'm a huge influencer on the web, you have to disclose this stuff properly. The FCC will come down on you if you don't disclose this stuff properly. And also, don't get out of bed for free. Vivaldi needs to pay me if they want some good stuff. Right. Okay. I'm joking, sort of. Sure. I mostly was like, I don't want people downloading Vivaldi because of something I said.

Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. Wow. I was like, I don't like it. You know, it's not malware. You know, people can install it. It's fine. You only have room for so many checkboxes on that 256 gigabyte hard drive, you know. Exactly. I did, for the record, I did put Vivaldi on the MacBook Neo, but I have since deleted it. I was using it on the MacBook Pro. My goodness. Okay. It's fine. It's fine in both cases. Yeah. But I'm trying not to put too much crap on the MacBook Neo because I only have a 250.

Again, not crap. Wow, man. Every single sentence, he insults it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, you come from my iPad. I go for your browser. That's true. This is only fair. Okay, Matt. I saw your statement. Yes. So my statement was, you've used a web browser, but have you ever used a web browser that's also an email app, a calendar, and an RSS reader?

Well, sounds like you haven't properly explored the madness of that is Vivaldi. And it's true. A good madness. A good madness. Vivaldi has a built-in mail app, a built-in calendar, and a built-in RSS reader. Now, I don't use them, but I tried to use them, and they are not good. I would not have done it. But the browser is very cool. So happy with the browser. Coming to you live from Vivaldi as I do literally every single week on Comfort Zone, actually.

And to be fair, like, they are disabled by default. They are. So it's not in your face. Okay, something I will say nice about Vivaldi is I do think it's a better Chrome browser than Edge and Chrome. so I will probably start using that for our Riverside calls. Ah, there you go. But that's pretty much the only thing I'm using Chrome for these days. Did you guys try Splitio? Splitio with tabs? I think it's really well made in Vivaldi.

Really? It's like the iPad. Is it like the iPad? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, a little bit. So what you can do with... What I like with Aldi is that you can split vertically, for example, and then you can start dragging a third tab onto the right side pane, for example, and I will split the right side of the screen as well between those two tabs.

So now you have three tile tabs and you can keep doing that and keep tiling down tabs in the same view. It's amazing. So if you have one of those like insane ultra wide monitors that takes up your whole peripheral vision, you can just like be surrounded by YouTube and Christopher Lawley videos. That's how you should be using Vivaldi. There's a guy at my work who has like a 32 by 9 display, like as wide as you can get. And he shares his screen all the time. And my friends, I need to tell you this.

Do you know how he uses, how windowing works? Every app full screen. oh my god so his window when he shares the screen is just a very narrow strip across the entire so i had one of i i unfortunately had two of those really big ultra wide monitors at my last it job because i inherited it from the person that was in that position before me and i hated it i hated them so bad and in fact i hated it so badly that i took one of them off and gave it to the

that worked under me because I was just like, why do I need 64 inches of screen real estate wrapped around my head? I have Terminal and Outlook open, or PowerShell and Outlook open on Windows, and then Terminal and Mail open in macOS. I'm like, I don't need this. It probably didn't anticipate getting burned right now, but that's the Vision Pro experience, baby. Windows all around you. Right. Guys, I tried revisiting the Vision Pro the other day, and I literally couldn't open Todoist.

Todoist crashed on opening. And I was like, the only thing I was going to do in Vision Pro was write scripts, but I couldn't even get to my list of what scripts I needed to write. So you didn't know what to do. Exactly. I was like, I had to take it off. I was like, God. Sorry, Vision Pro. You almost made it. Nelian, what did you write? Okay, so I wrote something nice. I think so. I wrote, let me split my tab right there. Boom. So I can see everything all at once.

I wrote, Vivaldi is a very good browser and you should use it because it lets you have a double decker tab bar and also because it's magnificently lacking in the slopware department. And I wrote this because I know my audience. My audience is good people of Mastodon who don't like AI like I do. and don't want AI in their web browser. And I know they would like this. So in terms of pure like count, I win.

I am seeing this. This is true. Yes. Wait, what do you mean? You guys got more likes than I did? Yes. I got more comments than you, though. Oh, you did get comments. Although you two are in those comments, so I guess I don't know if it counts. yeah all right yes yes you upset Alex Cox well I yes I did Alex is welcome to come on the show anytime to um upset me uh they're they are

always welcome on the show uh but yeah but anyway so what I chose to pitch was uh once again the tab stacks in Vivaldi. I think they are amazing. I discovered something thanks to Matt Fentinel on Mastodon. There is a toggle in Vivaldi settings that lets you automatically open new tabs in a stack. By that I mean, if you're on a website that opens links in new tabs, you know, you can have those tabs,

like those links, open in a new tab still, but inside a new stack that gets created when you click on it. And that means, and this is the way Matt put it, and I find it really well worded, that means you can keep your rabbit holes contained. Like if you're navigating on Wikipedia and you keep middle-clicking stuff to open new articles, for example, because you're digging down a rabbit hole in Wikipedia, for example, all of those tabs, they are still cluttering your tab bar, right?

There's a full-size tab bar full of tabs, or Wikipedia tabs. But once you click away to something else that's unrelated, they're all gone because they're all compacted into a single tab stack, and you didn't have to think about it. So I enabled that, and it's really good. I really like it. Where's that setting at? So if you go into the Vivaldi settings, it's my tutorial for you. Vivaldi settings, and then you go into tabs on the left side, right?

Where's tabs? Tabs on the left side. Oh, there it is. I see. Okay. And so you see the tab bar position options? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just under that, you have a row, a column, sorry, of toggles for new tab position. You can choose as tab stack with related tab. Okay. That is killer and might get me to actually, like, use this as a bank account. And also you need to make sure, because I'm talking about double-decker tabs, which is, so, Vivaldi has three ways of displaying your tab stacks.

I believe the default way is the compact one, where basically when multiple tabs are stacked together, you have to hover over it to see the previews and navigate inside the stack like this. The second option is two-level, And this is the one I'm talking about. This is the good one. This is where if you click on the tab stack, a second row of tabs appears underneath the tab bar. A second tab bar appears that displays all your tabs inside that tab stack.

This is the one I'm talking. This is the good one. Where's that? So still in tabs, you scroll a bit to the... Oh, wow. It's in the tab features section and there's tab stacking. And you have three options there. The third option is Accordion, which resembles the way tab groups work in Chrome. Okay. Yeah. I like this. Okay. I might give Vivaldi another week. Ah, there you go. Okay.

I might, yeah, I might give Vivaldi another week here because that's... It's a DHD-friendly thing. Well, and especially come, like, WWDC OS research season for me, that would be killer because I end up with so many tabs during that time to, like, posts and links and Apple documentation, so much stuff.

That could be killer. Yeah. So I'm going to give it, and because I'm using the Mac a little bit more, it works. Hmm. Okay. Thank you for that. you're welcome and so i win just like this you know what i will give it to you on the asterisk that i still use vivaldi in a week oh okay i like i will give you the challenge win undisputed which is rare because normally it's always disputed undisputed if i'm still using vivaldi in a week let's do it okay okay all right cool you may also want to consider the horse browser

which is a similar concept. I'm not spending 80 bucks a year or whatever that was. Yes. There is a horse. So that's something. Yeah. And actually on their website right now it is literally the tagline is the browser for ADHD. Yeah, that's the whole spiel. But I was also like did it not have a trial or something? There was something about it that I was just like, eh, no. Yeah, it's a pay-per-house. When I reviewed it, it did not have a free trial but now it does, I think. Oh, now it does.

Okay. All right. Cool. Okay. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of this challenge. Are you guys ready for a new challenge? Always. I'm ready to bring back. I'm going to bring back an oldie, but a goodie. Like, I want to bring back an oldie. Like, we've been, we're almost at episode 100. Like, we need to come up with some of the specials to do for episode 100. But we're not there yet. So I want to bring back an oldie, but a goodie. Find a new Mac app, and it must be new to you. meaning if it's on the Mac App Store, it must have Git next to it. Or if you're, you know, we're all honorable, sort of.

If you download it from the web, it must be new to you. So I don't know. I'm just having fun playing with the Mac. Find some new Mac apps for us to play. I'm worried about something. Matt may make a new app once again. Look, if he wants to make a brand new app for this challenge, I'll give it to him because then it's a new app. I will do what it takes to win. I think that, look, Matt, if you make Hush, but it's a universal app, and also the app Hush has not been updated in two years or over two years now.

We know. Oh, my God. The developer seems like he's kind of moved on to more plug-in stuff. So, like, if you wanted to make a universal Hush app, I would probably vote for you. Even if I have a min amazing app. Oh. I'm desperate. Oh, Matt, you have seven days to create a web browser for me. Didn't you want an emoji app? I thought you wanted an emoji app. Yeah, but I found a list of requests. I have a backlog with Neil Young.

Chris, get on the dynamic wallpaper, and Matt, you get on the web browser. Yes, Matt. But that one requires me to stand in the same spot for 24 hours. Well, grab some food beforehand. What can I tell you? I don't know. I have ADHD. I can't sit still for that long. You have a MacBook Neo now? You can do stuff? Battery life of the... Last thing. Battery life of the MacBook Neo? Insane. As somebody that's been working from the iPad that's supposed to get quote-unquote all-day, 10-hour battery life,

this thing kicks the iPad's ass when it comes to battery life. Sorry. Okay. One more thing about the Neo as well. Doing Xcode simulation, I was running an iPhone 17 Pro on the iPhone 16 Pro processor. It was very weird. It made me feel very weird. That's awesome. I love it. It was so slow. The glitch in the metrics. All right. So that brings us to the end of the show, and I realize I forgot to write down an end of the show question. So I'm going to come up with one right now.

Stalling, stalling, stalling. Got it. Okay. You're in charge of Apple for one day. You get to bring back a piece of Apple. Like anything Apple's ever made, but modernize it. What are you bringing back? I can already guess. We already had this question. Did we? Not exactly this question. I'm pretty sure I responded the router. I would have guessed you would have said iPod. Oh, my God. Yes.

iPod with like Bluetooth and like Apple Music support or something like that. I don't care. No. iPod with amazing DAC. All the audio file settings you want in the software. EQ, whatever, balanced EQ as well so you can have differentiated EQ because I'm deep in that trouble right now with my hearing. So let me equalize differently depending on the left and right. Yeah, all of that. And inbuilt store, let me put like, let me have, no, let it have a web browser.

Let it have Ivaldi. Let it have Ivaldi. With a still click wheel. Third party store, you could get like Bandcamp on there. Exactly. So I can get on any music store and download it directly to the library. Yeah. Okay. And emoji peeker as well. No, sorry. Part of me wants to be snarky and from my response, say the iPad. Oh my god. But no, I'm not going to be like... Is it dead? No, it's not.

Let's not kick it. it's down but um i i also want an ipod but my ipod would be uh it would be a classic ipod so it'd be that size but like just give me like a terabyte of storage bluetooth and apple music support okay we're all going music i would i would make an ipod hi-fi but it's going to be totally different it's going to be like a pillow so it'll be high quality but it'll be like a pillow and the use cases to pair with it you kind of have to toss your iphone onto it so it catches it and it's nice and smooth maybe there's like a little arm that reaches to grab it if it's going to miss but I think that'd be a cool way to

instead of just like holding it next to the HomePod like you should be able to toss it on like a pillow this is my idea we'd sell dozens yep exactly you probably sell just as many as they've sold HomePods oh dang yeah shots fired I told you guys I ripped my HomePod's out anyways actually. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you all so much for listening.

Big thank you to Max Stories for having us. We're our Max Stories podcast after all. Go check out the other shows. First Last Everything is back with season two. So, so definitely go check that out. I'm excited to listen to that. Either of you have something you want to promote? No. All right. No. Thanks for listening to Kempito. I'm promoting the fact that I'm trying to drive cars now. I taught you how to do that. You should be good. You should be good. I have something I want to promote. If you want, please go check out and follow me on the Instagrams and the TikToks.

Because I'm doing more short form stuff now. Because I got to be like the kids these days. Your Instagram stories are funny. Thank you. They make me chuckle. I try and make them funny. I try and make them entertaining. But thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.