Just Break the Laws of Physics

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, but this week, this week I'm only joined by one. As always, I'm joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you? We're just the two of us. It's just the two of us again. I'm doing good. I'm doing nice. Good. I'm glad you're doing good. Yeah, we're without Niléane this week. We all had weird schedules.

So, yeah, it was just one of those things where whatever day we recorded, it just happened you were only going to get two of us this week. And this Monday happened to be the best day that two out of three of us agreed on. So Niléane will be back next week. But one of us will not. And that's a teaser. Wait, will one of us not be here next week? I think one of us is not. Is it you? It's the week after. It's the week after. Next week, we'll be back. We'll be back. Yeah. No. Yes.

Then after that, I think, is episode 100, which I hope we are all together. We will try our hardest to all be together for episode 100. We will make it happen. We'll have to delay a week. But we won't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. We're going to be together. Even if we could do episode 101 and then go back and do episode 100. Okay. I think that'll work. That won't cause any problems at all. No. No problems, especially in the CMS or any of that stuff. Yeah. No issues. I have a tiny topic for you. I did a thank.

I switched back to the iPhone 17 Pro Max because, as was told in last week's episode, I'm getting a puppy, and I need that zoom. I need the best camera. I need to be able to take adorable photos. She may or may not, but definitely already has an Instagram account that isn't ready to be launched just yet. So no link just yet. But she will be the daughter of an influencer. So, you know, that means she has to influence the dogs as well. Of course. Yeah, it's going to be a trillion photos.

I've already been spamming our MacStories Slack. I sent you and Niléane some photos. And that was, so basically the reason why we're recording on a weird day today is I spent the weekend in Mac OS 13, a.k.a. Ventura, and got to meet the puppy for the first time. And, yeah, so I was, I didn't even get to spend that much time with her. And I was taking a ton of photos. Like, I have probably a couple hundred photos already and didn't even get to spend that much time. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I needed the best camera. And look, so I switched back to the Pro Max. I really did love the Air.

I really wanted to stick with the Air. This thing feels like a brick now. The Pro Max feels like a giant brick now. It's not that the Air feels impossibly thin anymore. It feels this, the Pro Max feels like a brick. So I'm really nervous about what I'm going to do when the iPhone Fold or Duo or whatever it's going to be called comes out because supposedly that isn't going to have the best cameras either, which is wild because it'll be by far the most expensive iPhone ever.

So it's wild that that may not have the best cameras. I don't know what am I going to be. Am I going to be one of those annoying Leica people? Like, am I going to get a dedicated Leica camera and I'm just going to be like, Look at me with my fixed lens and my Leica camera. And I'm all taking German photos now. I think there's a very real chance this happens. Yeah. This is a danger. What you're going to do is you're going to have your Canon, like our, oh God, which Canon are you?

You're going to be shooting photos with the Canon. You're going to be like, these look so good. But this camera is so big. I need a smaller camera that can take really great photos that are better than my phone. And there's only one solution here. There's only one logical solution. That's already started happening. I'm going to be so annoying. I'm like one step away from owning a Porsche. Oh, boy. There's one big step in the way for me from owning a Porsche. Well, okay.

Yeah, that is the step away from me owning a Porsche as well. but, oh, God, I'm going to be so obnoxious. But, yeah, that's my dilemma is, like, I know I want the folding iPhone, but it's not going to have the best cameras. And I like the iPhone because it is the camera that is always with me, and it shoots great photos if you shoot raw and you edit them. I hate what the, I hate the preset. I could do a whole rant on this, but the default look of iPhone photos has gotten worse over years, And it started with the iPhone XS.

Oh, the XS was a... That was not it. But yeah, with the photographic styles, you get it these days. But I definitely appreciate the better photos. Because my daily phone right now is the iPhone Air. Oh! I bounce back and forth. I'll do a month or two with each one. Yeah. Champagne problems. But there's something really nice about it. But I was at a concert a couple weeks ago. I was at a wedding this weekend and I'll tell you what I regretted the camera in both cases it was

really annoying not to have zoom it was really annoying like especially the concert it had to like use night mode more often because it wasn't lighting as much light and you know it's not the end of the world and these photos are better than what I would have gotten like 10 years ago but it's tough to know what the best is and then not get those moments it's like why can't we have the best cameras on the iphone air like apple just break the laws of physics come on you can do it

ideally yes ideally you can stuff more stuff in in in a space that doesn't have any more room absolutely that's how it works you will gain so bigger on the inside if you can break the laws of physics yeah yeah but anyways i'm back on the pro max i think i will ride this out until the end of the cycle but i'm like i want the fold but man if i do if i do end up getting the fold i will probably end up getting a dedicated stills camera with a fixed lens because like you said like i have the

canon cameras but they're big they're big they don't have fixed lenses so that makes the lit that It makes the lens section even bigger because you can take them off and all that stuff. The nice thing about a dedicated stills camera with a fixed lens is it's small. It can fit in like a jacket pocket or something like that. Yeah, I got thinking about that at the concert as well because you can't bring in professional cameras to a concert venue, but you can bring a point and shoot.

And now I'm thinking, oh, do I need to look at, like, the nice point and shoots these days and figure out what's the best camera I can get that they'll let me bring into a concert? And I could use for family events that isn't so, like, enormous. Exactly. And there's a lot of steps between, like, a Canon PowerShot and a Leica. Like, there's a lot of different options out there. I just know me, and I know I'm annoying, and I know I'm just annoying enough that I could easily pull off being a Leica guy.

It's good that you know it. Yeah, I don't like it about me. For the record, I do not like it about me. Awareness is the first step. Yeah, yeah. This week on Cozy Zone, so I made a mistake last week, actually. I talked about how on last week I mentioned we ranked tier listed macOS wallpapers, but that's not actually what we did last week. And none of you caught me. Last week, what we actually did was Niléane gave us her driver's ed test or whatever the equivalent of driver's ed is in France.

And we went through the European rules of the road. And I will just say we brought freedom to France in that episode. Oh, yeah. the country has changed changed for the better and they're welcome you know they obviously some of those European cars man I don't even think I would fit in them I'm 6'2 come on I need leg room but anyways this week we tier listed macOS wallpapers like I talked about last week and nobody was happy but yes that's cozy zone.

That's our members only show a link in the description below. If you want to go check it out, we have a lot of fun episodes in there. If you like us and our personalities, you will like cozy zone. And if you don't like us and our personalities, the best way to show us up is to give us the $5 a month. That'll really show us. That will. Also, why are you listening now? Maybe there's insights that we provide that they can look past our personalities. Because they are holding on for my end of the show question.

They know it's going to be the best end of the show question we've ever had. That's why they're holding on. So I get it. I totally get it. But we should get into the main show. And I think you and I have a combined topic today. We do. Because I saw your topic in the show notes or in internal show notes and was like, yeah, that'd be a great thing to talk about because I have things to say as well again. and it's formula one so yep uh sit back ladies and gentlemen we're doing an hour on f1 baby

we're not we're not i know a lot of people just uh hit the stop button and archive the episode we're not we are not i would love to i i would love to but there's literally nothing happening in formula one right now uh because of stupid stuff stupid stuff stupid stuff But anyways, we will move on from that. So I wanted to talk about some MacBook Neo. I wanted to follow up on the MacBook Neo discussion because you and I both got one. And I think by the time you and I had had one,

we had only had a couple of days with it when we recorded. It was pretty fresh, yeah. It was pretty fresh. So I wanted to follow up on it. I'm also working on a video right now about my MacBook Neo setup. So it's very forefront of my mind right now. uh but i figured i can go into more details here plus i knew you it was going to be me and you on this episode so we could have a discussion about it and i think it would work out perfect uh the first thing i wanted to talk about and and feel free to jump in here and do whatever but i was

kind of curious have you modified your macbook neo in any way have you done any mods to it no absolutely not so what's interesting about the macbook neo is it is very repairable it's very easy to open and There's basically no glue in the MacBook Neo to hold things down. So I have been kind of looking at different mods and stuff people have done. And the one that everyone kind of is like, yes, do this, do this, do this, is add a thermal pad above the chip and the logic board.

So I went ahead and did this, and I added a link to our internal show notes, or I added a video to our internal show notes that we can put in the actual show notes for this episode. and it does a good job of walking through why you might want to add a thermal pad to the macbook neo basically what happens is there's about uh 1.5 millimeters gap between the um logic board and the casing for the macbook neo and what you do is if you put a thermal pad on it it's going to

use the metal of the bottom casing to kind of disperse heat now side effect of this is the bottom will get a lot warmer than it would previously because now it's using that metal to disperse heat but you also get performance improvements some people were seeing 20 to 30 percent in performance improvements depending on what they were doing so and it's wow it was super easy to do super cheap i think the whole thing costs less than like 10 bucks if like you get the thermal pad and you're

getting significant performance improvements. Now, keep in mind, again, the bottom is going to get a lot warmer or even hot than it would before. So if you're using this with, you know, you're wearing shorts and you're sitting out in a summer day, it might get pretty uncomfortable. I don't think you'll burn yourself, but it might get very uncomfortable. So I went ahead and did this. It took me maybe 10 minutes to open up the case, put the thermal pad on there, close up the case again, and it booted up right away no issues you don't need a you don't need to mess with any wires other than unscrewing

the bottom case you don't need to unscrew anything else it's very very straightforward and i got i and i wouldn't say i've got like ridiculous performance improvements but it does seem a little noticeable and it could be a placebo thing that's the hard thing is like i know this was done so i may be like just like oh yeah this is very noticeable performance improvements but i'm also not doing really hard stuff with this like the person in the video i think it was this video might have been another video that i watched but somebody was playing cyberpunk on the macbook neo which

is technically not supported but they were getting decent perform decent like it was actually running uh performance with this thermal pad mod and yeah it's pretty good so okay so what's the how warm has it gotten for you it hasn't okay so i'm haven't worked with it outside i've been inside with you know in a air-conditioned house so it hasn't gotten like hot at all i did feel it get

a little warm at one point but like a little bit warm not even like uncomfortable like okay like maybe i have a couple too many things open something like that and i just closed a few things but it has not got hot at all. Interesting. Yeah, I wonder, I mean, this is probably the trade-off Apple went through, is do we cool it even more but make it more uncomfortable to use, or do we keep it cooler and it just doesn't run as fast? And I think that's exactly it.

I think they decided, like, we don't want, you know, the bottom of this thing heating up. Like, it's not more uncomfortable than having my 16-inch MacBook Pro when it's under load on my lap. Like, it's that kind of warm. Like, it heats up. Or, like, actually probably better. It reminds me of my 2009 MacBook Pro. Like, that thing had a spinning fan, Intel chip, all that stuff. And that thing would get really warm in my lap. But it never burned me. It never got hot.

So I think it's fine, but it is a word of warning that the bottom will heat up more. But I don't know. It might be worth the performance improvements. And if you're comfortable with really basic electronic stuff, this is super easy to do. Yeah, I'm looking at the video now. It's not even electronic stuff. It's like if you are comfortable unscrewing something. Yeah, that's really all it is. There's no wiring up. No wiring. open it and put a sticker on or two or three stickers and then screw it back on yeah you get

the you get a thermal pad which is a square and basically what i did is i put it on top of the logic board drew a sharpie on the the thermal pad and then just cut it so that it fit that that because it's kind of an odd shape put fit it right on top the logic board and boom done take off the the, the, the sticker type peel part, take that off and stick it on. Boom. Bob's your uncle. Super easy. Um, but I have one other mod that I did. And this one has 10 X, my productivity, 10 X performance. It, it's a 10 Xer. Like,

like I'm surprised, like, you know, not all the, all the tech companies aren't coming after me because I'm a 10 Xer with this mod now. Okay. Ready? Give it, give us the knowledge. I've covered it with stickers. and that is 10x my productivity. This 10x is your productivity because it makes your computer fun, people. It's a fun computer. I have Ford stickers. I have Mustang stickers. I have Van Halen stickers. Come on, people. Put stickers on your computer. Make them fun again. It's a fun computer.

I don't really care. I do have a Charmander. I have the rainbow Apple logo. I have some from Stephen Hackett's calendars. I have a Stormtrooper one. Like, I have all sorts of different stuff. I have us. I have us on here. It's not focusing, but there we go. I have us. This one I support. I have the comfort zone. Yeah. So, anyways, that's kind of the modifications I've done. Okay. Yeah, once again, mine is pristine as though it just came out of the box.

You got to at least get the rainbow Apple logo to go on the Apple logo. I thought about that. You can get them on Etsy, people. They're like five, six bucks. It's not that bad. Yeah, but then I have the little... Yeah. I love it. I'm not a sticker guy. I love it. Make them fun. Make them fun. Keep it boring. Easy to resell. This is how you do it. Now, so I'm keeping this computer. I know, and maybe I'm just keeping this computer for a year

because the next year it'll obviously have 12 gigs of RAM, so maybe I just keep it for a year and I don't know. But I've been using the MacBook Neo every single day. I use it every day, whether it's I'm just using it to do some email or write some scripts or take care of some admin tasks. I have been using it every single day. Yeah. me too what are you using it for everything no uh it is so my whole idea of this computer is i want

to keep it lightweight i want to keep it um as kind of like a uh admin writing really specialized computer because i have my macbook pro that has everything on it i have my ipad pro that has everything on it this right here i'm keeping like so i have my my typical admin tools uh numbers notion obsidian to do list those apps those are like kind of like my core i run my business from

those apps but then i have like really specific utilities as well because like i i try to keep this as stock as possible but i just was finding things about mac os that still bothered me that like I wanted to be able to control. Like, for obvious one, Spotlight. Spotlight is slow. Even in Tahoe, Spotlight is slow. So I installed Tiny Start, Niléane's launcher app. And that's been great because she made that specifically

so that it would be lightweight and fast, perfect for the MacBook Neo. Because I didn't want apps that had a bunch of background processes and were eating up a bunch of RAM in the background. I wanted stuff that was right. If something was going to be running on this machine all the time, like Tiny Start, it needed to be using the minimum, most smallest amount of resources possible. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. So, like, I did, like, I know I needed HyperKey, like a HyperKey app, because I just have so much stuff assigned to HyperKey.

So, I just installed the basic HyperKey app. Like, I'm not using, like, on my MacBook Pro, I've been using Raycast for Hyperkey and stuff like that. But Raycast can kind of get a little heavy. So I didn't want to put Raycast on this. So I just put the Hyperkey app that barely touches anything. I found the macOS window snapping stuff to be annoying and not what I wanted it to be. So I installed better snap tool and use hyper key so that I can have not just 50, 50 split view windows, but like one third and two third views and stuff like that, just from keyboard shortcuts.

So I can quickly get those going. Supercharge, one of your favorite apps. I can't live without it. I can't live without Supercharge. Yeah, it's so good. I just, I have so many different tweaks that I use in Supercharge, and I'm going to put all of them in the video that I use with the MacBook Neo. But I just, like, Supercharge is one of those apps now, when I use a Mac without it, it feels broken. Like, I'm like, what do you mean if I hit hyperkey E, it's not ejecting all the media, like, external drives and media cards and stuff I have connected?

Or if I hit hyperkey P, it's not bringing up the passwords menu bar app or something like that. Like it just feels broken. Yeah. Yes. I actually have not installed that on the Neo yet. Whoa. And it does make the Neo feel incomplete. I have an option N creates a new file and then opens it in whatever its default app is. So I use it to make markdown files in the finder directly. It has the ability when you mount a DMG, it will automatically install it for you, move

it to the applications folder and then eject the DMG. super yes i use that too yeah that's such a nice feature apple should just do that i don't understand i don't i don't get there's so many things in supercharged i'm like how is this not just the way like apple like it doesn't make any sense um and the last app i have installed on the macbook neo that's kind of a utility app is uh text sniper uh because there is a lot of text that i need to get access to that isn't highlightable selectables and copyable and what i like about tech sniper

because i know a bunch of people are gonna be like clean shot x does this and all this other stuff does it what i like about tech sniper is it does a great job at keeping um the format so if there's line breaks or something like this i found with clean shot x's version of this it like if i'm copying the uh chapter markers out of final cut it doesn't keep them with the line breaks which causes issues for the Claude uh um project that i run those through to clean them up and stuff like

that it's it's a whole thing so and tech sniper is pretty lightweight i'm pretty happy with it so those are those are kind of the apps that i have with the macbook you know i'm curious like what what are you doing with yours well mine is as i promised my travel computer nice so all of my i've I've traveled several times over the last few weeks. I already kind of mentioned a few of them. And I just brought the MacBook Neo with me. And it's been great. It's really nice to be traveling with a smaller laptop.

Takes up a little less space in the bin at TSA. It is a little lighter in the backpack. It's just, it's very nice. It feels like a MacBook Air. My wife has a MacBook Air as well as her like main computer. And so I've like compared it to that. the air i guess is a little nicer but not by that much like i feel like there's something about the build quality of this it actually just feels super super good the the only thing that makes me jealous of the air is is the display is better like that's the thing that that i'm like

oh the air would be really nice but it's the same the macbook neo is the same weight as the air so i I don't feel like I'm like, cause I, I traveled. So this weekend we went to Ventura and we stayed in Santa Barbara and I, the MacBook Neo was what I brought with me. That was the only computer I brought with me because I was, I was kind of, I haven't had a chance to really travel with it until now. So I was like, Oh, I wonder, like, I didn't bring my iPad. I didn't bring the MacBook pro. I just brought the MacBook Neo and it was great. Like I, we had a little bit of downtime and I, you know,

I just opened it up and did a couple of small work things, and it didn't feel like I was adding any extra weight to my backpack. I mean, I was adding two and a half pounds, but it didn't feel that noticeable compared to, like, the 16-inch MacBook Pro or even the iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard. True. I have been using it as a development machine. Ooh. I'm doing Xcode on it. I'm doing web dev on it. And you know what? It's totally fine. Nice.

Xcode is certainly slower, and I don't use the simulator that often. I usually will load builds onto my physical devices. So I did notice that the simulator runs very slowly compared to what you get on a higher-end Mac. But Xcode itself is, you know, it's a little slower, I guess. but just the way that I work, it doesn't really cause any issues. So build times are a little longer. They're definitely longer to build. But we're talking instead of five seconds, it's taking 10 seconds,

which is half as fast, but it's also still 10 seconds. It's like that thing where if you're like Final Cut exports take 20 minutes on one device and 18 minutes on the other device. Yes, the other device is technically 10% quicker, but is that two minutes going to make a difference to you? I don't know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You can never have too quick a render in Final Cut, I would say. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it depends. If you're doing a ton of builds in Xcode every single day, those two minutes will add up, especially over the span of a day, a week, a month, a year. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's marginal.

It's not a huge deal, but there is a difference there. I am adamant. I continue to be adamant not to be one of those people who's like, I can't tell the difference between my high-end computer and this low-end computer. Yeah. But like it is also okay. Like I am super happy whenever I sit down, I'm using the 14-inch MacBook Pro right now, the M4 Pro version. And it's really awesome. It's super nice to have the extra performance. Everything is smoother. On my external display, it runs at 144 hertz rather than 60 hertz with the Neo. Just the screen on the Neo, 60 hertz.

And then I go to the 120 on the Pro and I'm like, oh, this is nice. But then I also have the trade-off of the extra bulk and I'm like, oh, I don't like that so much. And then I see the backlit keyboard and I'm like, oh, this is nice. Anyway, it's a whole bunch of like back and forth. It's very, very complex feelings. But I do think it's notable that like several people I mentioned, I made the cardinal sin of reviewing computer hardware, which is I mentioned video editing and coding. And as soon as you mentioned that, no one sees anything else.

They're like, oh, any complaint you have is irrelevant because you are doing work that no one is going to do on this computer. And first off, that's not the case. Especially in 2026 with tools like Claude Code, which I do have running on the MacBook Neo and runs fine because that's all web. And guess what? There's a lot of people doing YouTube and stuff like that. And you know what this MacBook Neo is for? Sorry, I interrupted you. But you know what this MacBook Neo is perfect for? Those creators that have been doing short form stuff and editing their short form stuff on their iPhone.

This is a step up for them. And it is perfect for editing short form content. I would say if you're going to do this, get the 512 gig version. Like spend the extra $100. It's worth it to get that extra storage if you're going to do any kind of video stuff on it. But it works fine, especially with Final Cut. Final Cut is so good performance-wise that if you're doing just short-form stuff, like, I would never edit one of my long-form videos on the MacBook Neo. I don't even think it could handle it. I think it would melt. Actually, I know it would because I tried it when I was reviewing it, and it didn't work.

It was bad. But short-form stuff, especially iPhone footage or, like, any of that kind of, like, not heavy codec footage, it's going to work great. if you're doing iPhone footage even for hour long documentaries it's going to be fine the only thing there I worry about is storage yeah storage will be more of an issue than will it actually edit yeah I mean oh no

I was going to say something so intelligent and then I lost it oh no I interrupted you no no you inspired me to say it Oh, this is another one of my pet peeves where I feel like with the iPhone SE, remember the iPhone SE, people made like these weird reasons why it existed. At first, it was because it's for people who wanted a small phone because the iPhones are getting bigger. And the only way to get the older phone was to get an iPhone SE. And then the SE got bigger and they're like, oh, it's because Apple wants to have a phone with a home button.

They need a phone with a home button and they need to keep this around for that. And then when the 16E came out and didn't have MagSafe, people were like, this was actually the crazy one. I had people telling me like, oh, it's actually because people with certain medical devices can't have MagSafe in their phone or corporate buyers actively don't want it. So they need to have a phone that doesn't have MagSafe. And I'm just like, and then the 17E has MagSafe. And it's just like people struggle sometimes to understand that the reason these products exist is to hit a price point.

They are for the people who cannot afford a $2,000 laptop, a $1,000 phone. They exist to hit a price point, and Apple will make them as good as they can to hit that price point. But, like, yeah, the MacBook Neo is not for, if you want to do video editing, if you want to do coding, you can get a better experience by spending a lot more money on a better MacBook. But if you do not have that money, you can still do all those things on a MacBook Neo. Yep. The MacBook, I think the thing that people need to really remember is the MacBook Neo, whether you're doing the education discount or not, is literally half the cost of the MacBook Air.

So what was previously the entry-level MacBook, you literally cut the price in half. And that is a big deal for a lot of people. Like, for me, that price cut just meant, like, I ordered this thing before I even read the press release. Like the six, cause it was the six 15 pre-order that came up at the same time, the press release dropped. And I just ordered this thing because of that price point. Now I'm not saying that, that like, I, I, I'm not saying like 600 bucks isn't a lot of money. It is for a lot of people.

And in fact, not too far, you know, 10 years ago for me, that would have been unfathomable to just drop 600 bucks on a laptop willy nilly like that. But $600 for a computer that you can do so much on. And I'm going to say it. I can do more on the MacBook Neo than I can do on my iPad. My iPad Pro. Now, my iPad Pro, it has much nicer hardware. I can edit a long-form video on my iPad Pro because I have the storage and more RAM and things like that.

But you know what? My iPad Pro doesn't have it. It doesn't have macOS. And macOS, you know what? I'm finally there, Matt. I'm finally there. mac os is more capable i'll just say i'll admit it mac os is more capable um but yeah i i've just like the and look as somebody that was formerly a corporate buyer let me tell you something like the macbook neo is nice but i would still be ordering all my people macbook airs i would still i would still be ordering macbook airs the macbook neo is for the college people

the iphone se or the iphone 16e that's not corporate corporate buyers aren't buying those they're buying iphone 17s like that's what corporate buyers are buying because they're buying a phone and they're saying okay you have to hold on to this for two or three years uh and they're buying the base iphone 17 and also those corporate buyers when they buy bulk they get a huge discount so these products this the 16e the 17e whatever it is now um it's all about that entry

level price point uh and and getting that cost down for the people that that that is the core thing it's not about corporate buyers uh this is this thing's about schools and and all yeah uh yeah i think the repairability factor is also a big thing for schools too oh yeah um a hundred percent my wife is a high school teacher and she at their school they have like um i'm not sure what class it is but there's like some class that like does tech things um and one of the things that that group

has done is when a laptop needs to be repaired it's sent to that class and they work on it and that has been harder and harder to do in recent years as computers became less repairable. That class just wasn't able to do the repairs anymore, and to say nothing of what would have happened if they had iPads, like literally nothing would be repairable. Yeah. And yeah, so this would actually be great for them. You know, different school districts have different budgets, so who can afford it, who can't is going to vary.

But like, this is great. If you could swap out the motherboard, swap out the batteries, like it is, apply thermal thing, stickers if you want. All of this is very doable. Like, I just, I am so in love with this machine. I'm, I think this is one of the best devices Apple has made. Probably like the best, like probably one of the best, I don't want to say best devices because that makes it seem like the other stuff isn't great. But this has been one of the most innovative devices Apple has done probably since the original M1 MacBooks came out,

Mac Mini, all that stuff. Like, this is probably, it's up there with that. I just, I think it's such a huge thing. Danielle and I went into Target the other day. There was a big old sign right when you walked into Target that said, Meet the Neo or something like that. It was MacBook Neo advertisement. I don't think Target has ever sold MacBooks before. They have never sold Macs. I used to work at Target. We never sold Macs. We sold iPads. We never sold Macs. Yeah. Also, it is sold out at a lot of places.

Walmart doesn't have many in stock. I mean, there's the news story that Apple's now worried that they don't have enough binned A18 Pro chips to fill the orders through next year when they would have expected to release the new one. So I guess they're going to... We'll see if it lasts, but they are figuring out, I guess, do we really need to do that? release a new one much earlier because surely the a19 pro binned chips are are there already um so in theory they could do that but yeah it is a good problem to have i guess yeah i'm so curious if they

would release a new one early because i mean i guess it depends on how early it would be it depends how early yeah yeah because if you release it in september you're gonna make a lot of people mad because these things are going to sell like gangbusters in the next couple of months when graduation happens and kids start going off to school or to college. These things are going to sell like crazy, especially when Apple's back-to-school program starts up, which used to be much better. I mean, you used to get an iPod.

Oh, I wonder if this will be in the back-to-school program because of how cheap it is. Oh, I have no idea. Interesting. That's just a thought. I literally a thought I just had. But I also wonder if they do have a bunch of A18 Pro chips that aren't binned that they could just put in these and then turn off a GPU core. Yeah. Or not and make it a new SKU. Maybe. Maybe make a price. Yeah, I don't know.

See, I was thinking, I was listening to a podcast and they were like, oh, maybe they just do that for the high end, like the higher storage tier one. But the storage is on the chip, right? Because it's all unified. Because it's all unified. So if you had a non-binned 512, like if you had a bunch of non-binned 256 gig ones, you couldn't put those in the 512 gig ones. You can't add double the storage that way because it's all on the chip.

That's why the storage is so fast on these things, is that was on the chip. That was like the big deal with the M, like Apple doing the M series chips is why it was so much faster, because it had the storage and the memory all on the same chip. So it wasn't going over like PCIe or anything like that. Yeah, I don't know what they're going to do with that. That's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how. I'm not smart enough to know how that works. It's also not our problem. Not our problem. Yes, another good reminder.

Apple's problems are not our problems. Apple's problems are to solve our problems. Yep. My problem is to complain about Apple's problems. Yes. What can I use, Studio Display XDR? Oh. Well, that's just mean. Wow. I do think that on the price point, there is something appealing about it. It's a cutie. And I don't think the price, the price is great, but it's also, people just seem to like this computer. I posted on Mastodon after I got on my flight this weekend. I was walking past first class, as I always do.

Not sitting in class. Yeah, I thought you're a big business boy, Birch. So your company is paying to put you in first class? I get it. In first class, there were two MacBook Neos out on people's laps. These are people who spent like $3,000 on a ticket to fly, and they're using MacBook Neos. And it's like, another thing I wonder is how much of Apple's ownership of the premium laptop

market is them making products that people are happy to pay for. Like they're happy to pay for the extra money for a really nice Mac. When now that there's a cheap Mac, a lot of those people are like, oh, I didn't need all those fancy features. I'll just get the cheap one. And I wonder if that's another risk that Apple has with this product is like we learn how many people didn't actually care about the super fast SSDs, the super fast RAM, the super fast performance, the higher res screens.

And they just liked macOS because it had iMessage and the apps they like and isn't chock full of ads like Windows and seems to hate you like Windows hates you. Like, I don't know. Well, we also know Apple products are kind of a status symbol for a lot of people. I mean, you and I were around for the heyday of the iPod. And how many MP3 players started shipping with white headphones? Because that's what the iPods had. Like, that was the status symbol. You knew when somebody had the white headphones, that was plugged into an iPod.

Yeah, that was... At first, at least. Honestly, brilliant marketing. Because, yeah, the iPod was always in your pocket. No one saw the iPod, but they saw the earbuds. And they knew. I'm convinced that's why they never did black ones or any color ones or anything like that they were always white for the whole life of the iPod they were always white and it was I think it was because it was a status symbol maybe I don't know I'm not a fashionable person I don't know I wear the same thing every single day like I'm not but I do know like the iPod especially in those early 2000s

that was a status symbol like you like the kid with the Zune got made fun of. Oh. Poor Zune kid. Eh. Dipped to themselves. Oh, boy. Quick tangent. You know how with large language models, there's a big concern about them being built. It's a technology built on stealing from people, but particularly artists. And that makes them,

for a lot of people, that makes them fundamentally like they can never support i saw someone post on threads a few weeks ago i can't get out of my head they're like uh it was effective they effectively said something like apple sold millions and millions of ipods to play mp3s and nobody really talked about where the mp3s came from and obviously the itunes store existed at some point and they sold lots of music through there but i would love to know what percentage of the music on people's iPods. Something that are looked back on so fondly today

with such nostalgia from a lot of the people who hate LLMs. They were kind of a product built fundamentally on stealing from artists, weren't they? Yeah. It's a weird, I'm trying to turn this into like a coherent blog post, but like it's a really interesting thing that like we were stealing music in mass. The metric I've been able to find is that one in five adults at the peak of piracy were stealing music. One in 20% of humans were stealing music, which is enormous. And it was so easy.

So for me, the iPod was like, I ripped CDs. I did the thing where I put in my CDs and I had two CD drives in my PC. So I was like, I was also the guy that would make copies of CDs. So I was probably contributing to the problem. I was going to say, this is again. Yeah, I was literally. That was like the official way to do it. That's like the rip, nicks, burn thing that like Apple had. But like ripping CDs was not approved by like the rights holders. Like they fought that too. Like the entire product category is like, we do not respect the rights that you have put on this material.

All I can think, I'm just having like flashbacks to like video clips of Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica, sitting in front of Congress ratting out everybody that used Napster. It's tough. I was just like, it is kind of weird because like I get it. Like I have like this whole thing, like I get why people want to use ad blockers on the web and block ads like on YouTube videos and stuff like that, block the Google ads. And then I found out there's another extension that basically is like crowdsourcing, blocking creator ads.

So like the ads that I do in my videos that I'm making in my videos, like people crowdsource the timestamps for those and like put them in this extension and then it blocks them for other people. It just like skips over that time. And I'm like, well, that's how I pay my bills and how I can keep making videos and stuff like that. And it's so complicated. It's compelling. Yeah. Suing your fan is a tough look, though. Yeah, see, I wouldn't ever go that far. I get it. The internet is annoying without an ad blocker.

When I switched back to the iPhone 17 Pro, I loaded up Safari, and I was like, holy crap, what is going on? It's almost unusable. But also, like, when you have individual creators trying to make something and, like, they purposefully make a handcrafted ad put into their thing, like, I don't know. That might be the line for me. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to put my foot in my mouth if I keep talking. Yeah. Let's go back to the Neo. The Neo is great. I love the Neo.

I basically don't take my MacBook Pro out from the desk anymore. If I'm around the house, it's my couch computer. If I'm traveling, I already said, it's my travel computer. And it's great. I can literally do all the things. It's just a little slower. And I really, I think the thing that's changed the most for me since the initial impressions that we did right after we got them is the lack of a backlit keyboard is more annoying the more I go without it.

It is so annoying not to be able to see the keys when I'm in like a dark hotel room when like I've woken up and my wife is still sleeping. Like it is very hard to type in those situations. Yeah. So I do like the thing where you like angle the screen down more towards the keys and then boost the brightness a little bit. Just like see a little better. I've done that as well. Yeah, the backlit keyboard, I have a feeling the next time they do an update,

and it may not be the next one because I have a feeling the next one's already being worked on, but maybe the one after that, so two generations from now, I can see the backlit keyboard being added. If Apple can find a cheap way of doing it, it may not be as nice as the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro, but they got to do something because that I think is... It's just you don't even notice it on MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, how subtle the backlit keyboard is like i'm looking at the macbook pro right now and it just looks like it's just the white text on the key like you don't even realize that oh yeah that's being backlit

like it just looks like it's white text on the key but no it's being backlit and that just makes it a little bit easier to use yep it's very subtly backlights it i think another problem with the blue one is even in good lighting the contrast with the keys is less than the black keys with white letters on the other keyboards this is like a dark grayish blue on light grayish blue and so there's just less contrast to begin with so you're losing some of that so apparently you can

order a new top case like a new keyboard through the repair program from apple and you can order different colors to match yours i'm seriously debating seriously considering ordering the silver MacBook Neo's keyboard because then it's just white with black text. I'm seriously considering ordering that and replacing mine because of that exact reason. Just to get a little more contrast there. Okay. I haven't looked at the... I'm not going to do that. There's a 0% chance I do this, but... I'm considering it.

Because the MacBook Neo for me is my experiment computer. Like I said, $600 isn't nothing, but it's not the price of a MacBook Pro. So if this thing was to break, I'd be a lot less upset that the MacBook Neo broke as opposed to the MacBook Pro. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. I mean, you'd still be pretty sad if it broke. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy. I wouldn't be like throwing a parade or something, but I would be a lot less upset. And that's why, like you were kind of saying, the MacBook Pro for me doesn't really leave my office.

It comes to this desk when we do Cozy Zone, but it pretty much stays at my main desk throughout the rest of the week. And then when I go and work on the couch, I'm using the MacBook Neo. Like I fully expect when it's time for me to buy the next Mac, I get either a Mac mini or a Mac studio. I don't think I will get a MacBook Pro again, unless that touchscreen MacBook Pro is really, really nice. Yeah. I've thought about this as well, because I was like, ooh, for the price I pay for a MacBook Pro, I could get a Mac studio that has a Mac chip, not a Pro chip.

yeah yeah thing i want but i do think i would miss the uh the option to go portable yeah that that's the thing is there's just enough times where like i i might need the macbook pro like wwdc or something like that like or any apple event really like needing to be able to edit a video quick like that is not something you're going to be able to do on the macbook neo so i i don't know i mean I'm just kind of in a weird spot with that, but I wanted to run through a few settings I've changed to kind of optimize the MacBook Neo. And I'm curious if you have anything as well.

I've set up the dock to be on the proper side, so the left side. I think this is actually something you and I agree on, right? The dock should be on the left. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. You're a monster if you put it anywhere else, but the left side. It's just like how vertical tabs are the proper way to do tabbing. and browsers yes i agree on that i just need safari to add it properly it's kind of there but not really i just kind of but kind of but not really is it's is how i put it i also have the doc set to

auto hide uh i've actually been doing this on the macbook pro for a little while now even when it's plugged into the external monitor just as a way to help me focus with my adhd so it's like other apps aren't pulling my attention like i don't see a badge on messages or i want to see what's happening a reader or something like that it's kind of a way to help me focus but it just gives me a little bit more screen real estate on the macbook neo do you do do you do auto hide doc no i i don't like it i like to see i like to see what's going on i also find i launch most stuff with raycast

or or tank on the macbook and the backbook neo's case so um i have despite what i said when we originally talked about it i am now using the more space option and display options because you can just get more stuff on the screen but it requires me to wear my reading glasses because i'm an old man now i'm so sorry yeah uh i'm also using the documents in iCloud feature so this is the feature that um basically takes your documents folder puts it in iCloud and keeps it off your device so

when you access a file it'll download it it'll dynamically download and remove files as you need them and don't need them and stuff like that i have a 256 gig macbook neo i have like a terabyte of stuff in iCloud drive i kind of just have to do this and it's actually not that bad it's actually it's pretty fast and it's pretty reliable for me uh but i'm not doing like big video projects this way it's just like one-off documents yeah i use this on all my computers it's great i like it I don't use it on my MacBook Pro. My MacBook Pro, I have that set to always keep all that stuff downloaded,

but I have a four terabyte drives here. So, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. And then the greatest feature in Tahoe, the menu bar cleanup. I basically have removed so much stuff from the MacBook Neo's menu bar because I don't need that much stuff there. And I've put a lot of stuff in Control Center that I don't really need in the menu bar. Control Center is actually kind of nice for putting stuff that you might occasionally need, but you don't want it taking up all that space on the menu bar.

Yeah. That's great. I use that. I do use Thaw as well to temporarily hide some things, but it's really nice to just pull Creative Cloud out of there and never see it. Yeah, exactly. Actually, I'm not even paying for Creative Cloud right now, so that's pretty nice. So that's kind of it. Do you have anything else you want to add about the MacBook Neo? No. My use is much more boring. I just install. I am trying to keep it as, like, trim as possible. So once I decided I was going to do development on it, I installed Xcode. I obviously have using Ghosty for my terminal.

I installed only one browser on it. I only have Helium on there. So I don't have my usual array of a half dozen to a dozen browsers. But yeah, I'm just installing things as I go. Tried to get by without using CleanShot for a while. I tried using the system screenshot feature, and I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I still haven't bought my CleanShot license. I think we talked about that originally. I still haven't bought it. I need to do it, but I just, I'm like, it's just like, I don't just use it that much,

and I've kind of been okay, but I should just do it. You should. Yeah. All right. We should get to our challenge. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Clean shot. Sponsor us. We should get to our challenge. We should. It was my challenge. And as it's becoming a theme, I was unexpectedly called a monster for creating this challenge. Yes, you are a monster for this challenge. You have destroyed my week. So I simply said, only have three apps in your iPhone dock. That's it. You probably have four.

A lot of people love three. Give it a try. They're wrong. They're wrong. Okay. Tell me. Why are they wrong? Tell me your pain. Because I have had four apps in my dock. Because you can put four apps in your dock. You can do it. Take up that space. Maximize your space. Your iPhone is a utility. It is a tool. Use that tool. And this destroyed my muscle memory. First off, it took me. I probably stared at my phone for a good 20 minutes trying to figure out which app I was going to remove from the dock.

And I ended up going with Obsidian because I was like, okay, I don't do a lot of writing on my iPhone. I usually will quickly write something down. Okay, I have a shortcut that's a part of my action cut shortcut that's assigned to the action button for adding stuff to Obsidian quickly. So I'm like, okay, we'll take Obsidian out. So I was left with Safari, Todoist, and Messages. And man, all week I was tapping on the wrong thing because it just broke my muscle memory.

Like all week I've been like tapping in the wrong spot to open things. And it just destroyed my muscle memory. And I can't wait to put it back. In fact, I'm doing it right now. Okay. Well, and you had no space on the rest of your home screen, right? So something else had to go? Yes, something else had to go. And it actually worked out kind of perfectly because this was the week I switched my iPhone. So I used to have Halide where, and if you look in the screenshot, I put Obsidian in the first row of app icons. I have a large Fantastical widget. That's a whole other thing that I've done.

And then underneath that, I have a row of apps. And the last one was Halide because I was using that with the iPhone to take raw photos. But now that I'm back on the Pro Max, I can take raw photos with the built-in camera app. So I've just been using that. so I removed highlight from the home screen and I put obsidian there okay what about you what did you do well I

so my four apps in the doc were messages reader classic mime stream and claude and I took out mime stream so took out my email from the doc as you can see from the screenshot which should hopefully be the chapter art at this point i have quite a few emails to go through at the moment so you know that's a project but uh let's see what is notable about this is that and the real

surprise here maybe is you will notice in the screenshot that my iphone is still perfectly I still have two rows of app icons. And I initially had it just sitting up above to the top left of those lines. And I was just like, I'll deal with the imbalance for a week. Well, I didn't love it. And also the app that used to be in the bottom left corner was Things. And so I swapped things out for Mimestream.

And you know what? I think it's okay. I'm not using things that much these days. How are you task managing? I am mostly not. Don't tell Niléane. Well, Niléane doesn't task manage either. She just... Well, don't tell her she's right. I'm currently... It ebbs and flows. It ebbs and flows what my needs are with task management. So right now I'm not doing a ton of it. And when I do need to remember things, it's usually like really important things at really specific times.

And I'm using reminders for that. Most notably because it has the urgent tag that you can put on them. And then they show up as like alarms on your phone. So they take up like the full screen. You have to dismiss them, which I like for those sorts of things. So yeah, I wasn't using things a ton anyway. So I just popped Mimestream in there and we'll see how it goes. I'm also realizing that the screenshot has an app icon for an app that I have not announced yet. And so we were part of this out. I was going to say something after we finish recording, but you got it. Yeah.

That's a little teaser for something coming in the future. Yep. He has another app coming. So you have 165 unread emails. Yes. And I'm kind of curious, do you feel if I have more unread emails than you, do I get the big business boy title? I don't know if you do. When is it from, though? Because some people have like 500,000 unread emails, but it's from their entire life. And I don't know how those people live. This is from like the last weekend, I'd say. Okay, so the last one sitting unread would have been from Thursday.

oh okay if you have more than this i do feel sorry 911 yeah that's too many yeah it is it is and most of them aren't even important most of them aren't even things most of them are junk that absolutely people just send me crap and i have to deal with it yeah if you want your email inbox to fill up create an even remotely notable youtube channel you will get so many emails i get emails about makeup stuff i get emails about pools i get like like i get emails about like pool cleaning

tech i get emails about lawnmowers i get it sucks like i do not ask for this stuff i do not ask to be signed up on these lists but people what go what happens is there is like companies and people that go through and scrape all these emails for any sort of notable youtube channel like anything at all and you just get put on these lists and you just get mass emailed yeah it sucks it sucks um but i am so glad this challenge is over my muscle memory has been destroyed but you know what's

going to happen now is i'm probably just now adjusted to it enough that my muscle memory is now going to be destroyed for another week perfect well i'm glad you said it that way because it is my challenge well technically it would have been Niléane's challenge but she wasn't here to issue a challenge so i just went ahead and took the challenge um and the challenge this week is to use your laptop in laptop mode no external monitor for a day and i'm curious if this changes our setups or any settings that we use okay okay because because we all have external monitors

that we work at all three of us do yeah and i think we spend probably a majority of our day at those. You and I have a very similar external monitor setup. Niléane has her crazy 4x3 I don't even know what's happening with that thing. But for a whole day, any day this week, you can pick any day, whatever. You gotta work from your laptop. No external monitor can be plugged into it. Okay. This should be doable. This should be doable. I think it's doable. I think it's pretty fair. And I'm mostly coming at it from a

place of like, does this change how use these computers? Do we install something? Do we change a setting? That's what I'm kind of coming from. Not as a punishment way, but more as a I'm kind of curious if this changes the way we use them. Okay. Yeah. Well, we will see how this goes. I am optimistic. It will not change my life at all. But we'll see. I'm kind of curious, and I will say I think I have a loophole for this. oh no I don't like that you have a loophole for your own challenge

listen to the way I phrased just listen to the way I phrased the challenge in the audio not in the text of the thing but in the audio so you gotta go back and listen to what I said alright so that brings us to the end of the show and I have an end of the show question for you Matt and we promised we were done with the Formula 1 discussion so it won't be about Formula 1 but I'm kind of curious how have you been doing without Formula 1 this month

because stupid stupid people are in charge of stupid stupid things and that means there has been no Formula 1 this month and yeah it is an exceptionally long spring break I guess now for Formula 1 we had what two three races yeah we lost two races so every year my wife gets me this the Formula Fanatics 2026 calendar it's really nice i think i'm guessing chris has it by the haste of which he has run off camera to probably get it i don't remember where it's at okay uh Danielle's mom got

me that for christmas okay nice so this is what it shows in march uh again we'll try to put a screenshot for audio listeners uh but it shows the races it shows the calendars um it shows uh It just shows the days the races are going to be on. It's European style, so it starts on Monday. This is actually the thing a couple years ago that made me switch all my calendars to start on Monday, and I now like it. Yep, same, same. It's the only thing Europeans do right. I'll just say it. Monday should be the start of the week. Only thing they do right. And this is the April one. Womp womp.

We lost the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prixs. Those were supposed to be the last two weekends. And the next one is Miami. But it's May 1st. So the very first day of May, we get Formula One back. Yeah. And I think that's a sprint race weekend, too. It is a sprint race, yes. So what happened to my... I don't have my Formula One calendar anymore. I don't know what happened to this. Everything's all messed up because I switched back to Fantastical because I got really frustrated with Busy Cal because I was trying to input something and their natural language thing messed up

and I ended up missing something kind of important and that was not good. And I was like, you know what? I don't care. I'm going back to what's tried and true and I know what works and I'm just going to do it. And I did it and it's a thing. Yeah. But my Formula One calendar is now gone for some reason so I'll have to figure that out. Okay, you can find it. How are you doing about Formula One? I am itching for it to get back. I believe Friday. So Friday it comes back.

I will probably miss whatever the Friday stuff is because May 1st is when we get the puppy. Oh, yeah. But that means the first weekend we have her, I can introduce her to Formula One. Okay. So I'll have her sitting next to me during the Miami Grand Prix. I'm glad. You're optimistic she'll just be sitting there. She's going to be running around, bouncing off the walls. Well, she's a puppy. So what we've been, we actually already hired a trainer and have had a meeting with a trainer.

And basically she was like, yeah, for the first few weeks, expect her to sleep like 20 to 22 hours a day. Like, because she's young and she's just exhausted. So I'm like, okay, cool. And then they're like, after that, good luck. But that's okay. All right. Well, I'm itching for Formula 1 to get back, though I'm not the biggest fan of these new regulations. I think they're kind of... Yeah, they're not perfect. Yeah, they're not. By any means. They're kind of boring.

I wish they would just throw some V8s or V10s into them, get rid of the battery stuff, and just go fast. You can still do it with batteries. Settled up. Batteries are boring. They're so boring. They have no soul. I drove an electric car a few months ago, and I was like, this thing has no soul whatsoever. Like, there's nothing. You have a Toyota Corolla, but you gas guzzlers, you just hate. You hate the environment. You hate progress.

You hate everything good. We were coming back from Santa Barbara this weekend. So we stayed in Santa Barbara, and we took the 101 back home. And if you take the 101 back home, there's a tunnel. And you know what you can do with a gas-guzzling car in a tunnel? You can slow down, you downshift, and you gun it through the tunnel, and it makes this fun echo. Oh, it was so great. It was such a good drive. Such a good drive. Anyways, that brings us to the end of the episode.

Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to MacStories for having us. Matt, you got anything you want to plug, promote? uh no nothing to promote in fact as we said earlier something to mask something to hide okay cool uh i have i should have a bunch of videos out this week so go check out the youtube channel thank you all so much for listening have a great day bye