What the heck does Chris say? Welcome to Comfort Zone, a
podcast all about pushing your hosts well outside their comfort
zone. My name is Matt, and I am not
Christopher Lawley, but that's OK.
He's somewhere in the world getting a puppy, which is about
as nice a day as you can have, I think.
So in his stead, it is just me and Neilion.
Neilion, how are you doing? Hello, I'm doing well.
Thank you, I'm still in a semi void as we're still moving
stuff. You have a little bit of color
there though. Yeah, still, that's part of the
stuff that I'm still haven't taken apart, but yes.
Nice, that's exciting. Very exciting things all around
in the comfort zone world. Well, should we get to our tiny
topics? I see there's a tiny topic about
tiny start. Yes, I almost cannot believe it.
Link in the description once again.
Yes, just to like it. It's a bit of self promotion, I
guess, but that's what we do on this show.
I have pushed yet another update to tiny start this one like it's
been a while. It's been.
I took, I don't know about two or three weeks to do this one
because I want to take my time, don't want to rush anything.
I, I, I know, I, I with when I get really into a project, I
will rush stuff because it's just, it's the impulse to, to
just release stuff and keep iterating.
But I'm trying to force myself to take my time because hundreds
of people are using this now and I'm really don't want to push
anything that breaks stuff. So really got to make sure that
things are working. So yeah, this new update I
released yesterday as we were recording is it adds something
that a ton of people have been suggesting, and it makes a lot
of sense. I should have thought of it
sooner. Now there's a setting to
preserve the content of your search field when you quickly
dismiss and reinvoke Tiny Start. And you can configure this, it's
a setting, a new setting in the general tab in Tiny Start, you
can set it to 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, one minute,
2 minutes, 5 minutes. By default it's set to 20
seconds. So if, for example, this is very
useful if you're doing calculations while referencing
something else on screen. So you're doing just like 2 + 2.
OK, now you're looking at another number and clicking
around and now you have a new number that maybe you want to
add to that previous calculation.
You reinvoke tiny start or no, it's gone.
That was what it was before, but now it's still here.
The 2 + 2 is still here. If you're within that window
that that time window that you set up, you can quickly like
resume a previous search. And of course, if you don't want
that, you can also set it to clear immediately.
And so, yeah, so that you have the old behavior, but also you
can set it to never, never clear the search field.
So that yeah, even if it's been a few hours, if you reinvoked
any start, you will still have your old query in there with the
your last query in there with the last search results that go
with it. Perhaps this is nice for people
who don't find use in like by default.
When you look Tiny Start, it shows you like some of the
frequent apps that you launch or the recently launched apps.
If you don't find any use for that, you can set it to never
and then Tiny Start will always display the last thing you
searched for. So yeah, I would like it.
That's pretty cool. I don't know if I've ever seen
anyone implement the never option.
I know, but I guarantee you there's someone out there who's
like, finally someone. Did.
Yeah, Maybe. Maybe.
Nice. OK.
Yeah, that is one of the things I do like is like, yes, being
able to come back to a thing a few seconds later and then it's
still being there so I can keep working and calculator is 100%
the thing for me as well. There's another way to do this
like like ray cast where you can do arrow up.
I think to go back through your history of recent queries and I
thought about doing this, but I think that's like a step too
far, especially for the feature set that I have.
Like it's, it's still a very basic launcher compared to Ray
cast. I guess in Ray cast it makes
sense because you do much more complex queries.
You may be talking to extensions and filling in fields with those
extensions. There's none of that in tiny
style. I don't feel like there's a use
for just keeping a history of your hundred last search, yeah.
It would be like, would you rather type in the first few
letters of the app name or arrow up until you see it again.
Yeah. I don't know.
That doesn't seem as useful. I agree.
Keep it tight. Nice.
Yeah, that's right. OK.
And now the next one. I don't wanna play the music.
We could play the music and no one would stop us.
It's the browser podcast, baby, yes, and there's nothing Chris
can do to stop us. He's not here.
He doesn't have a say. He he's not even there in the
corner moaning. He's just not here.
But yes, the browser podcast, just because you posted
something on Mastermind that made me think you posted the
other day. What was it again you were
saying that how AI browsers or not?
The the agentic IAI browsers that were like, we will browse
the web for you. It seems like nobody cares about
those anymore at all. They were a flash in the pan.
People are paying 200 bucks a month to like get access to
these like Comet and I'm projecting here and Atlas and
all these browsers and now it's like nobody even talks about
these. Nobody wants them.
It seems like it's not a thing. Yeah, they came and went a bit
and it made me think, it made me want to check out Dia again.
It's been like, I don't know, a couple of months since I last
launched it and I've got a new Mac so I had to install it again
I guess because maybe I uninstalled it before because
that's why it was not part of my when I my transfer when I move
the Max. I could see that happening.
I feel like sometimes an app crosses into cringe territory
for you and it just has to go and I feel like.
Oh, that's, that's what happened.
Yes. It got to cringe and yeah,
that's right. So I installed it again and
yeah, it's really good. Like in terms of UI, these
people are good, like some really good designers of the
over there. And yeah, your post made me
think about it because DIA is a very good browser and it's not
because of the AI stuff. It still has the chat sidebar.
It it can still do ChatGPT, whatever stuff when when you
press, when you go into new new tab and type it, type out a
question or a query, whatever that's still there.
But apart from that, it's just a very good browser.
It's just a very good new iteration of Ark.
The sidebar is amazing. They recently like released an
update, which is what I've LinkedIn the notes where they
kind of revamped a little bit the design of the sidebar and
the way tabs look and feel. They added a bunch of tiny
animations everywhere that look really nice.
The download animation, have you seen that?
Oh yeah, I've seen woo this. Yeah, this made me jump actually
the other day. Like I downloaded like an Excel
file for for something. Yeah, it just flies out into the
download button. This is fun, Yeah.
And they, the way they re fought the sidebar, it's kind of like
ARC where you can have, you can pin tabs at the top and they are
big squares that you can click on.
And now they also have groups that you can pin.
You can pin groups, which kind of resembles the way you could
create folders in the sidebar before.
Yeah, it's kind of the new approach on that.
It feels compared to ARC and works really well.
Yeah. You can customize the colors,
the icons. It's a very good URL browser for
power users who who are really into the sidebar.
Want something that feels really native.
It's so fluid to like when you just moving stuff around.
Very fluid compared to even Vivaldi.
Vivaldi is so awesome, but it's not native and you can feel it.
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's super rad.
It, it's continues to be my favorite browser for work stuff.
It's I think it's really nice when you have like websites that
are just always open. If you have like Google Docs
that you are just constantly going back to if you have your
Gmail, like, yeah, if you just have like apps in your browser,
I think it's really awesome for that.
So yeah, it's it's fantastic. It's it's really, really good.
They kind of just made a better version of Arc, and that's fine
for me, I guess. I'm less grumpy than I was two
years ago. And they were like, we're giving
up Ark 'cause I'm. But it looks like they've, they,
they, they, they agree with their people, like their users.
I'm, I'm supposing they most of the feedback they've got since
Ark is people who have been in love with Ark before and just
want that to continue on. And yeah, they got it.
I think they got it. Remember my prediction for the
year, our yearly prediction on the show, which was I believe my
prediction was twofold, is first arc Zia has become is Arc is
going to die. They will kill off Arc and they
will rename Zia to Arc, which is a wild prediction.
Yes. So yeah.
And the second fold is they will let you disable all the AI
features in the new arc slash the and they've started doing
that because now you can disable the fact that it routes you to a
ChatGPT kind of UI when you do search in a new tab.
Oh, I need to find that because it always annoys me when it does
it because it's not like real ChatGPT.
So like, it's not quite what I want.
And it tries to detect if you want to do web search or if you
want to talk to the AI. But no, now you can go to
advanced and set the what is it address bar and you set that to
prefer search engine and it will never route you to the chat.
OK, but if it's prefer I bet I could manually select it if I
wanted. Yes, it's still an option that
you have to arrow down to. Gotcha.
This is perfect. This is great.
Yeah, Thank you for making DIA better.
Then we have some listener feedback I wanted to share.
First, we have Max and Joe who have written in a few times
before. I think it's the only duo of
people who write in. But this is so funny.
Like people who their online personas are, we are a duo.
Yeah, some people do that. Like they even have social media
accounts in common and all really.
Suppose most of the time it's couples, but not often, not
always. Interesting.
But Max and Joe said a few things, but namely that they
bought MacBook Neos for their whole company.
They really think they're great devices for the the business
they have. And someone else wrote in
responding to me talking about maybe in the future I could buy
a more powerful desktop Mac instead of a powerful MacBook
Pro and then use a cheap laptop. And I was like, but I kind of
want the power on the go. They suggested using screen
sharing. This could theoretically work,
but it's not the same. This is, I feel like, yeah, I,
I, I feel like there's network issues.
Like there's all sorts of reasons why this would be janky
out of the house especially. But I do not like streaming
video games like from the cloud. I, I, I just I do not like it.
I think. And NVIDIA G force now is the
best. But like I tried Xboxes, I tried
Playstations. I have a PlayStation portal.
It sucks. I hate it so much.
And it's because the latency is just too much.
It's too much. And I'm just apparently very
sensitive to this. And I use high refresh rate
displays with gamer mice that, you know, are optimized around
response times. And so like, I'm very keyed into
response times on things. And just like using a remote
computer is like, it's something you do in a pinch.
It's not something you do like for any amount of time.
So it's unfortunately, I don't think a solution for me, but
maybe it could be for someone else.
Yeah. Yeah I agree screen sharing.
It also brings up so many like frustrations.
It is. When it works it works, but when
it doesn't work, you just you want to you want to kill
something. And you have no idea what to
scream, like, what to scream at. Like, where is it going wrong?
Is it my network? You know what's happening?
Oh, my God. Yeah, Yeah.
I. Suppose with tailscale it's all
right. Nope, I I believe everyone using
tailscale is lying. It's not actually useful.
Because I can't. Figure out any real use for it.
But anyway, I will say I've been using my MacBook Pro around the
house the last few days and oh man, it is so refreshing in a
way after using the Neo for so, so long.
Like it's a little bigger, it's a little chunkier, it's a little
heavier, but man, it's fast. If it's so nice to have just
like the full speed Mac again, I'm doing EXCO development and
oh it's very nice. Nice.
Speaking of which, I I need therapy because you know, I
bought a MacBook Pro M5 base M5 and already the thing that I was
fearing is happening where the M5 Pro is on sale in some French
stores right about the price that I got this base for M5 for.
So now like I need therapy. I need to, I need to be told
that it's OK, that's it's OK. I could not have known.
You need to adopt the the Marco arment theory that the pro isn't
actually worth anything. It's fine.
You don't need the pro. The bang for your buck is on the
1:00 you got. You're OK.
That's right, yes. This week on Cozy Zone, our
members only podcast which you can subscribe to.
In the description we talked about our Mac OS docs and the
only note I have in here is the left rules.
Yes. That's all I can say.
But, and I've put in in our notes the Bugs Bunny meme where
he's he's doing the pose with the socially the USSR flag in
front. Yes, because indeed the left
rules. USSR not so much, but yes.
Yeah, you know, it's a it's a con, so check it out.
It's a fun episode as always. Cozy's own great show.
We've done, like, what have we done?
That's our 35th episode. We've done 35 of those episodes.
If you subscribe now, you get access to the whole back
catalog. That's right.
You wouldn't believe. It don't go away.
Yeah. And which means on the which
means the membership gets more valuable every week.
That's true. If you amortize the value of the
membership, it's really outstanding.
It's better than getting in the crypto.
It's obviously, obviously, definitely.
So OK, well I think we should move on to the main show because
I am excited about your topic because it might help my topic.
Yes, it might very well So yes. OK, so my topic is I want to
talk about Better Touch Tool because it's been a while since
the last time I did I do yeah, probably on the show.
It was probably 80 episodes ago last time I talked about Better
Touch Tool. I when I was writing on Mac
Stories, this was my my very regular topic of choice to write
about my better Touch tool automations.
So if you don't know better touch tool is an app that you
can get for the Mac. It's a one time purchase, which
you'll always love those apps and it's extremely powerful.
The UI is not great. Clearly this person who makes
better touch tool a great guy, by the way, he's not a great
designer. He's not like, but it's OK.
This app is amazingly powerful. It does so many things and it's
been, I don't know, it's been three years since I first
installed better Touch tool, even more even longer than that
probably. And I keep discovering new
things that it can do, even though it's sometimes things
that it's been able to do since the beginning.
So it's some of the yes, just to tell you how powerful this is.
And I want to run you through maybe if you, if you'd like my
current automations in there. What what I'm using it for.
There's there's not a hundreds like there's just I regularly
prune what's in my better touch tool because sometimes I create
automations are not amazing, but I don't end up using.
So yeah, I want to walk you through the stuff that I have in
there. OK this would be very helpful.
I better touch tool is one of those apps that I do not use
because I, I, I do not understand what it will actually
do for me. And this is how I felt about
Keyboard Maestro for years and years.
I was like, keyword Maestro is magic.
It's incredible. What can it do?
Everything. And it kind of but it eventually
clicked with me and now I love keyword Maestro, but I do not
use better touch tool. So I'm interested to see what
you'd. Do with it so the way better
touch was. So you're right, it does
anything. So first question out of the
way, what does it do? It does everything, but mostly
it lets you set up automations that are triggered based on your
inputs. Mostly it also can do that also
has more advanced triggers. So for example, you can set up
things to do with your trackpad, things to do with keyboard
shortcuts, with mouse buttons, with key sequences.
Like if you, yeah, if you type a specific word, maybe in the air,
like not in any search in any field on your Mac, it will
trigger something. So the first automation that I
have, and I've had this in there for as long as I can remember
since using Better Touch Tool, it's for the trackpad.
It's an automation that lets me 3 finger tap on my trackpad to
focus a window to bring it to the front.
Because when I use the trackpad, so imat desk can no longer use
the trackpad, but when I'm on the go, I use the built in
trackpad of course. And I think it's annoying to
just to have to click on windows on the trackpad to focus them
always. It feels like I'm tripling the
number of clicks that I'm doing per minute just because I I need
to click on the windows I want to bring to the front.
And to alleviate that, I've done this.
It's your free finger tap. You move the mouse cursor of a
window flipping a tap and it just brings it to the front.
You don't have to like to press harder to click on something.
It's less tiring I find. Wait A.
Second, I don't understand. Yes.
Clicking Oh Wait, do you have tap to click enabled on your
trackpad? No, no, no, I hate.
That oh OK OK I was going to say this problem is solved by just
single clicking and I didn't understand what was going on.
I I don't like tap to click. I've never liked it because it's
too easy to accidentally click. I yes, I like having to click on
the trackpad to actually click. So yes, you're right that if you
don't have tap to click, I guess suppose it's not an issue that
you need to deal with. OK, I suppose gotcha I I do tap
to click. So this one hasn't won me over
yet, but it is it is weird because I do I I I bounce back
and forth. I sometimes like click.
I sometimes just tap and I'm just doing mental math every
single time I need to click something like how much effort
do I want to put into this one? It's a.
Weird. Maybe you need to switch to my
way. You need to disable the.
Applications because sometimes my my fingers get tired and I
just like to tap. That's great.
But maybe your figures would not get tired if you had this
automation in better. This is interesting.
OK, I'll consider it. Three finger tap, yes, think
about it. OK, so this is the only thing
set up on the automation I have set up for trackpad.
That's it. Moving over to keyboard
shortcuts here I have so many things, but it's actually one
thing. It's just hyper key stuff.
Better touch tool can be your hyper key app.
You can set up the caps lock key in there to act as the hyper
key. Chris has talked about it
before. I have talked about it before.
I think you as well one time. So yes, a hyper key is where you
can set your caps lock key to act as if control command option
shift or alt press at once. So you can trigger anything you
want to with custom shortcuts like this.
And yeah. So I have that set up and a
bunch of hyper key shortcuts beneath that.
I have one where it's hyper key left and hyper key right to move
a window to the my other display.
Like to move windows between displays.
I have hyper key E to trigger shortcut that I have which
translate the selected text on screen wherever it is on screen
in any app. Translate that to English.
That's why it's Hyper Key E and the same one for French.
Hyper Key French translate to French, so it's a shortcut.
It's a combination of the two. It's a shortcut that I've made
in the Shortcuts app, but it's also better touch tool doing
some magic here. When I actually do, when I do
Hyper Key E, what it's actually doing is it's pressing command C
to copy the text that I've selected somewhere, then run the
shortcut. The shortcut takes the keyboard
content, translates it using the Apple Translate included action,
and then the Better Touch tool does Command V to paste it so
that it replaces whatever translated instead of what was
there before. So this is really nice.
I have IP key I which launches ivory and all brings it to the
front if it's already launched and a bunch of others that I
won't mention. It's just like mostly bookmarks
to websites. I have one where it's
proofreading, same concept as the translate shortcuts.
It's just passing through the keyboard content to proofread
shortcut that I made. How does the proofread shortcut
work? I don't remember actually how
does it work, because now it just works and it feels like
magic. I don't remember what what I
did. Interesting, I'm curious about
this one. OK, let me check proofread David
is OK, so it gets gets a clipboard, yes, and normalizes
it OK for new lines and all that.
Oh, it's using a ChatGPT action. And I have a.
Prompt in there that says fix grammar and spitting output only
the updated text. Surround your corrections with
double asterisks so that it it shows what it's modified in bold
in the little pop ups. Yes, and then it copies the
response to the clipboard. So that's better touch tool.
The next step in the automation in Better Touch tool is Command
V so that it can paste it and replace with the proofread text.
That's pretty good. That's a good time.
I know. OK, well done.
I have forgotten I. Did that, but it's nice yes.
Maybe I can include a screenshot for those astronauts.
So yeah, this is my keyboard shortcut stuff.
I have one more in there which is F mapping F-17 to sound
source. So F-17 is a key that probably
doesn't exist, but it actually exists in software and on my
mechanical keyboard. The new feed one of my special
keys. Oh.
OK. This one a special key here I've
mapped to BF17 and shows sound source in the menu bar.
OK. There you go.
Oh, by the way, let me look at this.
So this is the F-17 key I'm talking about here.
Yep, Yep. In the natural it looks like a
waveform, right? Uh huh.
OK. But it's actually the divide
sign that's sideways because I'm really.
Smart. That's that's pretty.
That's pretty good. That's pretty good.
Can I show you my shame in my keyboard layout?
Oh my God, yes. So.
This is. My keyboard, I'll try to
describe it for audio listeners. I have on the right edge, I have
delete at the top and then I have negative and minus and
plus. These are volume controls when I
hold down the the function key, but this one is the plus and
this is the minus so. But it's because.
Of the key cap set that I have, they kind of go in that order
naturally, so I have them there but I I do a lot of mental
gymnastics with my computer. I guess it's not.
Oh yeah, because it's. Not a low profile.
All the keys, Yeah. So there are, there are.
Different heights, so I had to put them in that way.
It's a whole thing. It's still the best keyboard in
the world. OK, and now we're coming to the
juicy stuff, the stuff that I've just discovered, the Touch Bar.
Customization. No but but the touch tool.
Can do that still. If you have a touch bar, you can
customize it with Better touch Tool I guess.
No, I've discovered that Better Touch Tool can fully replace
logic options plus. Mind blowing.
I have no idea, tell me everything.
OK. So it's kind of weird because
the UI is weird, but it works once you figure it out and they
have a support page describing everything and they also have a
preset available for download. So you can just download it, add
it to your better touch tool setup and modify it so it's
easier. But yes, it can fully replace
logic options Plus for your MX master, for instance, have the
free S here. I know you have the four now.
And yeah, you can do anything. You can set up the scroll wheel,
for example. I hate when it switches to the
free flow free flying whatever mode I want it to be in ratchet
mode all the time. You can do that in better touch
tool. You can set the custom DPI
setting. You can customize the
acceleration, the cursor speed and all of that.
You can also do gestures. So I have the same ones that I
had set up in larger options plus and in better mouse when I
tried better mouse. So holding the this how do you
call this button here below the scroll wheel?
Just tiny button. I don't know the switching mode
button. So this is my gesture button.
This is the one I'm used to using as the gesture button.
I hold it down and move the mouse to perform gestures.
So what I do is holding it down and swiping left for left and
right for switching spaces. I click it once to do the smart
zoom in Mac OS because I tend to do that when I read stuff on the
web. I I really, I really like
zooming in on the column of text to read it.
That what else I've got. Oh and also better touch tool.
It does a smooth scrolling and it's very, very good, very, very
good. I really like it.
Me like it me like it. You add a trigger in there.
It's called this. The action is called scroll
modifier, smooth scrolling like trackpad.
This is the full name of the thing that you have to add.
It's weird. The UI is weird, but in there
you have so many numbers you can tweak.
If you leave it all by default, it's pretty good.
So you you can leave with that and tweak the values as you go.
The values that you can tweak are vertical speed.
So how far down and up you you go when you scroll?
One step, I guess, and multiple steps, a horizontal speed for,
for the the thumb scroll wheel on the side, one for scrolling
horizontally. You can tweak the smoothness,
the acceleration strength. There's a discrete line mode
where you can, it makes it easy to scroll line by line, for
example, in an app like Excel or whatever, if you find that
useful. And yeah, there's so many things
you can do. And of course, because it's
better touch tool and because it's better touch tool, you can
add exceptions to every single app.
You can do that as well. You can disable the smooth
scrolling in specific apps. You can change every single
value for specific apps as well. So it's very powerful like that.
For example, in the Maps app, smooth scrolling is not good.
It it is doing weird things. So in the Maps app, I've tweaked
it, I've tweaked it to be slower speed in ivory.
In Ivory, I tend to scroll way faster than I do on the web
page, so in Ivory I have 1/2 my vertical speed, way higher than
in the Vivaldi. So yeah, I think you should try
it out. I think Matt, you're suffering.
I hear that you're suffering with your Logitech mouse.
You may try this out. Logic options.
I hate it so much so I would do almost anything to get rid of
it. So I'll I'll this is this is the
most compelling thing by far if it can just make the Logitech
mouse work nicely without that cursed app, OK.
This is pretty and it's got an option to simulate the trackpad
scrolling as well. It's nice.
I don't I I like I like it without, but it's a nice one to
have. If you really like the feeling
of scrolling with a trackpad, you can add that to your Logic
Logitech scroll wheel. It feels weird but I can I can
see how you could like it OK. It also it's also.
Nice, because you you can overscroll with this, for
example. So for Safari, for example, you
get can overscroll when you're at the top of the page and
refresh the page that way it has some benefits.
Interesting. Yeah, same in ivory.
Yeah. All right, well.
That's intriguing. They have a 45 day trial that's
pretty nice. Pretty generous.
And then? What are you looking at, $15.00
for a standard license, 25 for a lifetime license?
That's pretty, pretty cheap, I thought.
The lifetime. One never regret, never
regretted it. It's awesome.
OK, well, you have won me over a little bit, all right.
Last few things that I'm doing with Better Touch tool.
I have one too. It's a weird one.
It's a weird one, but I'll it's awesome.
I have my MacBook on the side on the stand to act as my second
display. It's like a secondary display.
Most of the time. I don't use it right now there's
overcast, not overcast. Castro open with an ATP episode
on pose and it's been there for a few hours.
So this screen is not super useful, but what I use it most
for is when I'm watching a stream for example, I like to
put it on the second screen. And to do that, I have a multi
step automation beta touch tool, which for Vivaldi, for instance,
it detaches the window from like the tab.
Sorry, detaches the tab from the Vivaldi window to put it in a
new window, then move that window to the second screen and
maximizes it. So it's just a few tabs like
that and it's awesome. And I map this to command.
What is it? No, what is it?
What is it? What is it?
What is it move window to next display.
Oh, that's right, Hyper Key left, which moves window, moves
windows to the OR the display. But in the case of Vivaldi,
there's an exception there to trigger that automation instead
of just moving the window to the other display.
Oh boy. OK, so it's the same.
Shortcut. I don't have to remember a
separate shortcut, OK? This feels very much like
Keyboard Maestro, but I suppose I've never.
Used Keyboard Maestro OK. A lot of the same like sorts of
like I just the I think maybe the things it does are slightly
different, but like this Oh, it can do literally anything.
There's more mouse stuff here, I guess than keyboard Meister has.
So it started like. That I think, yeah, yeah, it
started as a way to customize the Magic Mouse and the Magic
Trackpad, and you can do all sorts of things now, OK.
Well, so that's. It this was my better touch tool
stand account corner. Hope you like it.
I I will try to include my screenshot of my proofread
shortcut in there. Nice.
Yeah, I just need to find this config for the MX Master and
I'll be in heaven, yeah. It's on their website.
Yeah, there's a whole. Community of setup sharing, like
preset sharing with like hundreds of thousands of views.
Oh yeah. They have a full on forum where
people are extremely active and it's awesome to see honestly.
Nice, lots of people trying to fix the Touch Bar.
No one Oh my God. It can do widgets as well and I
I hear that I've seen in the latest beta release Better Touch
Tool has a spotlight spotlight alternative now as well.
Oh wow, the. Developer is working.
On yeah OK, it looks a lot like tiny start but way more complex
there's so many there's a lot more stuff I'm shocked I'm.
Yes, I don't feel. Threatened.
It's OK, That's that's good. Yes, everything.
I do not know this developer at all, but based on they also make
better snap tool, yeah. And then a.
Keyboard clean tool which is actually this is really cool.
This is 1 where it like disables your keyboard for a moment while
you. Oh yeah.
Which is very. Cool, but in their description
of it they said years ago Apple rejected the app from the Mac
App Store because it apparently it's not useful.
However, I use it all the time and I I clean my laptop keyboard
sometimes and it is so annoying because it just turns the
computer on and it just starts typing and you just have to like
be like very quick and like make sure you're in like a text
document or something. It's very annoying.
So that's a cool app, but they seem like the sort of they have
every feature like, oh, can you add this?
Yes, I've already added it like that's the sort of attitude I
feel like, which is not the tiny start.
It's definitely. The attitude because when you
search for things on the forum there's always the developer in
there saying OK, I can add this and then it it says 2 days later
OK I've added it now can you update the latest better and try
it out so it it feels like this person just wants to make people
happy whatever they want just he will add stuff I I like that
there's. People who do that, not everyone
can do that, but definitely. Some, lots of experience there.
Some people. It's a guy who knows what
they're doing. Yeah.
All right. What do you have to say to me
now? What is your topic?
Oh, boy. So.
So I mean I've already spilled the beans a little bit, but my
topic is a new mouse is the MX master for and you love it.
Right. I love it.
It is a perfect upgrade. Just for some historical
context, my mouse, my day-to-day mouse, is this pulsar mouse.
I forgot what it was called X2. X2.
Something X2 Crazy Light. Crazy Light is the official
name. It's awesome.
It's super, super light as you might imagine, it looks nice,
and it has everything that I need except for side scrolling.
So because I do sometimes need side scrolling, video editing
without that is a royal pain. I've kept an MX Master 3S around
for a while because it has nice side scroll and I also have a
windows computer, so I need a mouse for that.
So anyway, I have this and I love this mouse.
This is like such a nice mouse. The the clicks, the clicks are
you can barely hear them like they're they're wonderful feels
really good in my hand. I like the material.
It does get messy and is annoying to clean because it's
kind of tacky and a little like it's not like a hard plastic.
It's a soft plastic, but other than that feels really good.
Feels great in the hand, all the buttons are where I want them.
Looks nice, wonderful. The MX Master four I think is.
So a day after I got it, I wrote a blog post that was a little
spicy because I was really frustrated with it because I
thought everything good about this mouse was just things that
it inherited from the previous MX Master.
And every single thing they changed about it made it worse,
which is not a good update. The functionality is great, but
it had it before the old one had before the three devices.
Awesome. They've had them for years.
Yeah, the the the scroll wheel. I have it in the non ratcheted
mode. It just spins forever.
Love it. But it's been there for.
Years as well. So there are some things that
are worse. I don't know how I feel about
the design of it. It's a little different and I
think I like it less and when I go, the only thing it has going
for is it's new the the 3S is so it feels like it's one smooth
device. There's not a lot of seams in
it. The only seams are really where
the like the mouse the clicks are.
It's it's got this like. Subtle like lining like lines
across the left side and it's just it's just so nice and this
feels like it's just it's a harder plastic, which I don't
hate but it's not great. The frosted like plastic look on
the keys or on the the clicks. I don't know what these are
called. Buttons, buttons, That's the
word. It's it's fine.
It's OK, but I don't think I prefer it.
And the thing that really kills me about it is the handling.
They've changed the shape a little bit.
So this is this is so minor, but on the 3S, if we hold it
straight up, there isn't a curve where your thumb sits and it
starts to curve back out away from the center of the mouse
before the buttons. There's the back and forward
buttons. So when you're using it, you're
and because it's a tacky kind of service as well, at least with
the way I held it, my thumb when I just lift because you're
lifting your mouse off the surface a little all the time.
My mouse or my thumb is underneath the buttons and it
just sticks there. It's nice and easy.
I've had to retrain myself how I hold this mouse because on the
four it is not like that. If I hold it up to the camera,
it's kind of straight up. So if you don't grip hard enough
on the side, when you lift the mouse off the surface, you're
going to be catching like the bottom of the scroll wheel and
your fingers are now on the back and forward buttons.
So I kept like accidentally clicking those when I just
picked up the mouse. And because the thing below it
is a now like a haptic like clicking clicking thingy, when I
held it lower and held it like more firmly I was triggering
that action as well. So.
Again, like the radial. Menu that the stupid logic
options app brings up which looks so cheap and not like Mac
OS at all. It looks like it's running it
like non retina resolution. It's crazy.
So I don't like the feel of it. And I don't feel like I've ever
felt this with a mouse before. Like I never felt like I had to
like, train myself really to hold it.
But yeah, didn't love it. This is a very me thing, this.
I mean, I'm sure there's people out there who are like, you're
crazy. It's feels feels great, but I
don't love it. Yeah.
The one thing I do like is the side scroll is like right on the
edge. Now with the old one, it was
kind of inset a little bit in the side, which is fine.
But I can kind of like spin it more with one motion than I
could previously. So that's nice.
And I don't know, that's pretty much it.
It's OK, but I am frustrated by it because it feels like it's
just, I don't know, they just had perfection.
This was great. Maybe there's people who the
first person. That I that I saw mentioned this
shape problem. It's so.
Obvious. It's.
I mean, I feel like I feel like a lot, OK, Have I read about
this? I've been.
Thinking about writing this, I
don't know if I've written about it.
Oh, I did. I did it on my on my solo
podcast. One of my pet peeves with
reviews. This is where I get into my I
meant I'm doing a Chris thing for In his absence.
One of my pet peeves with reviews is where it seems like
it didn't matter if they had the product or not.
They just looked at the spec sheet, they looked at the
marketing materials and they're like, this is my script for this
review. I don't understand how you could
not notice this sort of thing. Like the whole point of you
doing a review of a product, especially, especially if you
had an early access to it, is to tell me things that aren't on
the spec sheet to tell me other things.
And sometimes I feel like it didn't matter.
Like this review would have been the same whether they had the
product or not. And that's kind of what I felt
with this because no one said anything about that.
But like it was immediately obvious to me that like, oh,
this has a different feel. And that's like a lot of what a
mouse does, so I had to. Talk about it especially because
the MX Master is a bit heavy so you do tend to lift it often
when you do big big big gestures.
So so yeah, it's fine if you like it, I get it.
But for me, and now I'm in the the sun cost space where I I
bought it, so I should keep using it.
But yeah, it's not my favorite. I think the three S is still the
productivity champion and I just love this little gaming mouse so
much. I can't give it up.
Look at him. There's a little plastic in
here. Just you can see the the circuit
board. It's great.
The Zebra. Pattern I don't know.
You got to have a little fun, you know.
So that's the. MX Master for it's all right if
you have a three SI would really not suggest getting that Gotcha,
so I will. Have a mouse on the way.
But this is for another time. It's on the way.
I have a mouse on the way. The Mouse Podcast.
Is beginning. Yeah, that's right.
Should move on to the challenge. We should move on to the.
Challenge and it's possible we will get a real time
contribution from Chris on this. Let me.
OK, so the challenge was imitate one of your two Co hosts with
your text setup. The idea being that me for
example, I can tweak something about my setup whether on my
phone or on my Mac or with my physical space to imitate either
you or Chris. And you did the same as well as
Chris. Chris is not here, but Matt just
texted him and he's supposed to send us something because he he
did participate. So we'll see in in the meantime,
we'll just go through ours and then we'll finish with Chris.
OK, so you can unfold mine in the notes in the spoiler tag.
I have made a Chris home screen setup.
So yes, if you look at in the show, there's a screenshot in
screenshots. I have pulled one of Chris's
Wallpapers that he sells that I bought years ago because I've
always been a fan, despite what he says.
So yes, it's one of those Yosemite whatever mountains.
The California ones cares. Yeah, no one knows one of those
mountain photos that he has very dark.
I've put in all the icons in dark mode, of course, because
Chris is a dark mode boy. And yeah, and I've I've made a
full Chris setup. Like I've downloaded the apps
that Chris uses. First off, for the home screen
setup, I've put in the camera app in the top right.
This is something that it's a pet peeve of him.
Weirdly, he just, he feels like the camera app should be in
where the actual camera is on the back of the phone.
It doesn't make sense. But how all he cares about, It's
weird, Yes. So yes, I have a camera app,
camera app all the way up there. And of course, what does Chris
use? Chris is all in on to do apps.
So I've got all the to do apps. It's all the to do apps on this
home screen, just like Chris, just like the real Chris set up.
So we've got a reminder, good tasks to do is remember the milk
structure. This is like an agenda planner
that he obviously uses as well. Tik Tik.
Obviously he's a YouTube. So we've got final camera here.
He's a final cut boy. So obviously he's filming with
final cut camera all the time on his phone in the dark.
Fantastic hour because yes, one more place for the to do's.
Which one is that? I think that's Microsoft to do
as well. Got to use Microsoft to do as
well as Google Tasks. So all the to do's, the YouTube
app is there because he's got to look at his subscribers numbers,
very important daily tasks and of of course, a massive
fantastical widget with all of his to do's as well.
In this fantastical widget, you can see with some priority tasks
as well that are very important. Become Chris is the task that I
had put in there for myself to become Chris and to impersonate
him for this challenge. And obviously he's adopting a
dog as well. So I've put in that as A to do
for today. So there you go.
This is like Chris's setup. He he's only in the to do's as
he has always been and will always be.
This is this is inspired. This is this is very good.
It's it is enough task managers. I think you could shrink that
that fantastic. I'll wish a little bit and you
could get things in there. You could.
I'm sure there's 100 in there. Yeah, that's.
True, but man. OK, OK all the to dos this is
perfect. I love it.
Even the lock. Screen has all the to dos under
the widgets. Yes.
OK. All right.
Well, I have also imitated Chris.
Oh yes. But it is more of an.
Attack than a. Compliment SO.
I have provided the photo and I would like you to guess what
about this makes it Chris. Is this so I'm looking at a
photo of your desk. There's a full screen web
browser with quick crease on there.
Oh, I got it. Now you've got your iPhone on a
Mac safe stand that's. Covering.
Like, I don't know, not exaggerating 90% of the screen.
Because. It's in front of of the monitor,
Yes, absolutely. This is a Chris move 100%.
And yes, if Chris was there right now, he would argue that
it's not covering anything on the screen.
It's just so indeed well done. I think this this works well.
This is Chris. Nice.
Yes, I had to specifically 3D print that to make this work.
Oh, you did. OK, I did.
Oh yeah, I didn't just. Have that around.
That would be crazy. The green.
Stuff that's a that's a 3D print.
With little Magsafe puck in the back.
All right, we do have a heart out today in a few minutes.
So we're going to do Chris's next and Chris's is an attack as
well. Oh wow.
OK, Chris has sent us a photo of his desk with cables lying
around all over the place. With cables.
Coming out of the monitor cables, going over the keyboard.
I don't care for I don't. Know who he's.
It could be either of us. I mean, I don't know who, no.
No, it could not be. AI think it's I think it's one
of us, but it's not me. Yeah.
So yeah. Well.
Well done Chris, I guess it works.
Well, that we, we, we, we both did him.
Yes, we allied against him. So it would have been more work.
For us to do 1 of you because we'd have to make it very
aesthetic and very nice. And we are.
But simple, boys. Who don't know how to do that.
So yeah. I was guessing maybe if you one
of you did me, you would have like an EQ app or something.
Yeah, something. I'm just.
Always on the lookout for a way to use my 3D printer.
All right, so. It's my turn to do the challenge
for next week and it is actually very related to what you talked
about today and it is to use a web browser that supports mouse
gestures and find a really nice gesture that revolutionizes the
browser. So inspects.
I'm keeping perfect. Love it.
This is awesome. This is something that I'm
already doing, so this is great. OK, perfect.
We'll bring your best one next week.
By the way, better touch. Tool lets you do mouse gestures
in browsers that don't have that.
Oh my God. It it does everything.
Yes, all. Right.
That brings us to the end of the show.
I do not have an end of the show question.
Me neither. OK.
Well, we will just carry on and look forward to seeing Chris
next week, puppy in hand, hopefully puppy on camera.
But yeah, that's that's it. I don't remember what Chris does
for the ending. Something about the Hard Mac
Stories podcast. There is a cozy zone you can
subscribe to. Let's book.
Is episode 100 and we're doing Q&A, so send us questions.
All of the questions. Yes, link.
We will. We will post on Macedon asking
for questions probably and we will have a link and you can use
the feedback form to ask questions.
We will answer any question that you give us within reason, but
it can be about anything. Yes, it could mostly be about
Chris. Like the weird thing with Chris.
OK, it's funny things that Chris.
Does. Yeah.
Don't make it too much about. Chris, he's going to, he's going
to get a big head. All right, well.
That's that's it for this week. Can you learn anything you
wanted to plug besides tiny? Start tiny.
Start. Yes, it's great, incredible all.
Right. I'll see you next week.
Bye. Bye.