Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome back to Mac Power Users. My name is Stephen Hackett. I'm joined by my friend and yours, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, Stephen.
Hey, David, how are you? I am great. I'm feeling it, man. I'm ready to record Mac Power Users, and we got our pal Chris Lawley here today. Hey, Chris. Hey, thanks for having me on, guys. I'm super excited to be here. I kind of like pulled up the old archives of Mac Power Users because I was like, I know I've been listening to this show for a long time, and I think I kind of figured it out that, and I have a really kind of a
vague memory of sitting in between college classes listening to Mac Power users while I was like frantically trying to find apps for my first MacBook Pro. So it's awesome to be here.
Well, Chris, for folks who don't know you, you've got a YouTube channel that was mainly focused on iPad until recently. That's going to be one of our topics of discussion today. But excellent, excellent YouTube channel where you share some of your favorite apps and workflows. And you also got a podcast called The Comfort Zone.
Yep. Yep. The Comfort Zone. It's one of the Mac Stories podcasts. It's the Mac Stories family podcast. So maybe like a cousin to you guys. I don't know how that works. Yeah. Related. How do podcast family trees fall out? And then, yeah, I have a YouTube channel that I have been doing since 2016. That has all been about apps and automation and the iPad and some other stuff now.
Yeah, we're going to get into your history, but it's starting in 2016 is wild to me. It feels like yesterday. I was like, oh, who's this guy? But you've been doing it a long time and we will definitely kind of get into that today. It's going to be fun. Yeah, I'm excited. You've also got a website, right? Yes. So I
This whole thing started off with me blogging, and I started a website called The Untitled Site in 2015, and I realized I wasn't very good at blogging. So I quickly quit that, and it's mostly just a place for me to put links and easy place to host things.
Okay, fair enough. But we're teasing this gear thing a lot. Great.
Chris, tell us though, you didn't just show up as a YouTuber. You've worked in the IT industry. Tell us a little about your history with computers. Yeah. So, I mean, my history with computers goes back to when I was five years old and my dad bought a Windows PC at a garage sale. And he originally intended to melt all the gold out of it and then just sell the gold. Yeah.
But he opened it up and he realized, hey, this thing, I could fix this. This doesn't look too complicated. So he fixed it up. And ever since then, I've been in love with computers. He worked in IT as well. And I used to spend my summers at his office. And they had like this spare parts shelf thing.
Of like, just like, hey, here's a bunch of parts that work out of computers that broke. And I would just tinker and build my own thing. And that's how I got started with computers. And then fast forward to when I was 21, I got my first job in IT. And it was, you know, very basic, basic.
It was a basic, basic job. It was the job of like, hey, this person needs a new mouse. Here's the mouse. Go plug it in on their computer kind of thing. That was the job. And I just worked my way up over nine years. And my last job was the senior network admin for a fairly large insurance company here in California.
And you went from there and then the YouTube thing took off and now that's your primary gig, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I quit in December of 2020. You know, something happened in 2020. Who can remember? But basically what ended up happening was, and I hate saying this because I know it was bad for a lot of people, but COVID was kind of the best thing to happen to me when it came to my work life because I
I had to get all of these people set up to work from home. Well, once I got them set up to work from home, I didn't really have anything to do. So I spent most of my days just making a bunch of videos, grew the channel really quickly. And then, you know, I was asked to come back to the office in December of 2020. I was like, you know, I don't think I actually have to anymore. So I turned in my resignation and I've been doing the independent thing ever since. You're part of the great resignation, as they call it.
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, COVID was such an interesting time in particular for YouTube, right? Like I've heard a lot of YouTubers say like really the peak viewership on the platform. Like there were numbers in 2020 that just haven't been there since. And so your timing was fortuitous there.
Yeah. Numbers wise, my channel has never done better than 2020 and 2021. Like the numbers wise, that was the absolute best. Also, because I think that was the time that the iPad was the most interesting. That was when the magic keyboard was introduced with the trackpad and everything. So it just happened to be great timing all around for everything that I was covering and just having the time to do it. Mm hmm.
You talked about that PC your dad brought home and your network admin career. But when did Apple gear come into that timeline?
So, uh, in high school, uh, where I live in, in Fresno, there is this kind of this program called cart and you spend it for your junior and senior year. You spend half your day at your normal high school. And then you spend the other day, uh, your other half of your day at this place called cart. And they had a film school program there. And the way it was laid out is, is kind of like college level. Like you're actually doing a film school program. Um,
Uh, my senior year, I got accepted to the advanced program for that. And I had an iMac assigned to me. Actually, no, I take that back. I'm sorry. I had a Mac pro assigned to me first and then it died. And then I ended up getting an iMac, which was a bummer. Um, cause that Mac pro was awesome. Uh, so that was when I, that was the very first time I ever used a Mac. Uh,
I had iPods previously and stuff like that, but I had never used a Mac before. I was strictly a PC guy. I was like, what do you mean I can't open this up and put my own video card in it for the iMac and stuff like that? But I fell in love with the Mac. So what ended up happening was for my graduation present, I graduated high school in 2009. Yeah, 2009. Timelines. But...
My graduation present was a MacBook Pro. And that was my first Mac that I owned was 2009 MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo. And I even got it was actually a refurbed one, too. But it was like the same one that they were selling at the time. And I kind of lucked out. I bought a 256 gig model, but they ran out of those. So they sent me a 320 gig one. Yeah.
Yeah. Free upgrade right from Apple. Who gets that? Not anymore. Exactly. Now I think they would email you and be like, sorry, this isn't available anymore. But yeah, that was my first MacBook Pro or my first Mac, but that MacBook Pro was my first Mac. And yeah.
And I absolutely fell in love with it. Every IT job I ever had, I always requested that my computer would be a Mac. Most of the time, my bosses would say no, and they're not going to spend that kind of money, even though the PCs would end up being relatively the same cost. They just didn't want to, I don't know, they didn't want to put that on their network. But towards the end of my career, when I got to start making the buying decisions and stuff like that, even my work computers were like MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros and stuff like that.
Yeah, you know, it's funny, just going back to the PC era, like that was the thing. Like it was like it was our generation's version of hot rods. Like, you know, if you go back to the 60s, people would get their cars and like they'd soup up the carburetor or whatever. But with those build your own PCs, that was a hot rod for people. Like and you would always be upgrading the fan or the power supply or the video card. That was kind of fun.
Yeah, you know, that's a good analogy because like now, you know, we have MacBook Pros and stuff like that. So we can't do the tinkering. But I guess I've kind of like swapped there because now I have essentially I have a Mustang that I, you know, I make all the tweaks to and stuff, which is my car. So I have Mustang GT and now I'm doing all the tweaks to that. And my computers just are just kind of what they are. So that's that's actually a funny analogy.
This episode of Mac Power Users is made possible by 1Password. Go to 1Password.com slash MPU for a free 30-day trial.
1Password is always improving. Just this month, they added the ability to set an expiration date on items. Now you may think, well, why would I need that? Well, 1Password is great for saving a lot more than just logins and passwords. And you can set expiration dates across a bunch of different things. Yes, you can set expiration date on a password. Maybe you've got a password you have to rotate at work.
every 90 days, or maybe you have a credit card that's going to expire, or say you have your passport information saved in 1Password. Well, now you can set an expiration date, and then those alerts, when that date comes up, will show up within Watchtower, which is the centralized place in 1Password where you can see any concerns about
leaked passwords or accounts that may have one fact or two factor that you don't have enabled. And now expiration dates as well. It's really cool. You can also assign specific locations to items stored within your vault. So they appear in the one password mobile app when you're near those physical locations. It's really great. One password just continues to get better and better over time with these new features. And,
And that's the idea, right? A password manager should not slow you down. It should not get in your way. It should work with your workflow. That's why 1Password is available across basically every browser you've ever heard of, works with technologies on Apple platforms like Touch ID and Face ID, and is built from the ground up for security. So go to 1password.com slash MPU to learn more and to sign up for a free 30-day trial.
And when you're ready to purchase, you'll get 20% off for being a listener of the podcast. Once again, that's 1password.com slash MPU. And our thanks to 1Password for their continued support of the show.
All right. So, Chris, we've been teasing. Let's just get into it. You made for years an iPad, nearly iPad exclusive channel, right? Yes. Your content was about how great the iPad is and iPad software. And that's why I liked you. You came on my radar because I felt like you were one of the few folks out there really giving the iPad the coverage that it needed. But recently, you have changed platforms.
Yes. So and the funny thing is, is this is actually kind of Apple's fault. Well, it's Apple's fault on multiple levels. But back in November, is that when it came out? Well, Apple sent me an M4 Pro Mac mini review unit.
And I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to use this thing. I'm going to do like a bunch of background automation stuff. I love talking about automation. I haven't had a chance to do too much with it lately because shortcuts hasn't really changed much. I mean, other than just keep adding like, hey, here's a new action to open a different panel and settings. So I was like, I got excited for this thing because I was like, okay, there's a lot you could do with an always on Mac. Even as an iPad user, there's a lot you can do here.
But then I just started using it for everyday tasks. I loaded up email and task management and note-taking apps and all that stuff, and I just kind of fell in love with it. And for me, the Switch kind of started flipping. I guess it was multiple stages that the Switch started flipping that I was like, okay, the iPad...
Is maybe not the place for me anymore. I think like the first stage was and this is kind of the thing that almost every iPad user will point to multitasking, like multitasking on the iPad has not been great. It hasn't been great.
ever ever really ever yeah i was i was trying to be nice but i don't think it's ever been great um it's been something that's been manageable uh it might be the nicest way i can put it but with the mac i kind of just built my own multitasking system so i've been using better snap tool hyperkey and spaces and i i think we'll get into that all that but basically i've been able to like
create keyboard shortcuts to move windows around spaces. I have ADHD. It's something I talk about quite a bit. I can get very distracted very easily. And the Mac is something I've kind of complained about at the Mac for a long time is it's
It's a very distracting platform. You can have a lot open. You have the dock there. You have the menu bar there. You can have a lot open. There's stuff in the background that could be pulling your attention. And for me, spaces are a great way of kind of, well, spacing applications out. So I'm not distracting myself with ivory while I'm trying to write a script or something like that. So space is like having all of that stuff there.
has just been like a great combo of like being able to build a multitasking system that works with my brain, which you will never be able to use third-party apps to build a multitasking system on the iPad. I would be willing to bet that money with anyone.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about iPad multitasking in particular. I mean, the iPad started with the same model the iPhone had, right? One app, you hit the home button, you go home, you pick your next app, right? And then multitasking came along, and then
with a slide over and split view where you could have a full screen app and a little one on the side or two apps side by side. And then several years ago we got stage manager, which is sort of like, I mean, it's, it's sort of like Mac when doing, but it's on rails, right? You only have so many options and you have this like list of little thumbnails on the left side and things are like swinging in and out to me, like all the motion stuff is just, is just too much. Um,
But I would argue that's not even really multitasking in the way that the Mac can multitask. That's window management. That's I want to have my word, you know, word document on one side and my reference material on the other as I'm writing.
It's not multitasking in the sense of I have apps running in the background, making sure that my files are in sync or a clipboard manager always working for me in the background so I can copy multiple things and then paste them back in, you know, reverse order or something. And we're going to talk on more power users today, which is the ad free longer version of the show about some of the rumors for iPad OS 19. So we're not going to go there now, but.
It's really window management. It's not true multitasking in the sense that we have on Mac or Windows. And hearing you talk, it seems for you, it's a little bit of both, right? It's a little bit, I can't do what I want to do in terms of where things are and how can I spatially arrange things. But also, I have utilities that I want to be running all the time that I can't do on the iPad. Yeah.
Exactly. And that kind of brings me to that next switch that flipped for me was one day I was like, you know, I haven't used the full Mac version of Final Cut Pro since Final Cut Pro for the iPad came out. So I was like, let me just do one project in it. And the moment that made me go, oh, yeah, I forgot how great this is, was I went to export a went to export the video.
And I tabbed over to another app and you know what happened? The video kept exporting in the background on the iPad that would have crashed it. It would, if I would have went over to another, uh, you know, stage and stage manager or another app or something like that, it would have just stopped exporting in the background. And the fact that that just kept going and it wasn't a big deal. I was like, this is amazing. Like this is this, like why, why can't they do this on the iPad? Uh,
And, you know, people used to make arguments before like the M series iPad pros came out. Like people used to tell me, oh, well, the iPad will never be as powerful as the Mac. And I'm like, OK, well, that's kind of on Apple like that's on Apple. And well, Apple made the iPad is exactly as powerful as, you know, their baseline Macs. And I know their baseline Macs can do background export of videos. So why can't the iPad? Mm hmm.
Yeah. So that that like having that full version of Final Cut was like that other switch that I was just like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing because like there's so many weird little features in Final Cut Pro for the iPad that are missing. Like you can't stabilize clips. You can't do things like here's the one that kills me the most.
So in Final Cut Pro for the iPad, if I have a clip that has a bunch of effects applied to it, color grade, audio effects, you name it, any effects, I can click that clip, hit Command C on the keyboard, go to the next clip and hit Command Shift V. And it'll bring up a window of what effects I want to paste onto this second clip.
You can't do that on the iPad. There are no keyboard shortcuts for that. You have to go through a menu. So every time I would be dropping B-roll clips into my timeline, I would have to go through the inspector page for that first clip, go into the inspector page, go to the last tab, click the menu button, click copy all effects, then go to the next one, go to the inspector page, go to the last tab and then hit paste all effects every single time. And it was just like, why am I doing this to myself? It's
I can edit a video so much faster on the Mac just because it has, you know, simple things like keyboard shortcuts, whereas the iPad version, well, it does have some keyboard shortcuts. It doesn't have nearly the amount that the Mac version has. Yeah, you know, it's funny. Just yesterday, I was doing a thing with ChatGPT on the iPad where I built a custom GPT, and I was talking to it, you know, where it wasn't...
The ChatGPT thing where you talk interactively, but you just record your voice and then it transcribes it and uploads it. And as I was doing it, I had to go check something in my calendar. And then I came back to ChatGPT and the recording had stopped. And I was like, oh yeah, that's right. This is an iPad. It's like, it's just stuff like that. Yeah, there are friction points for certain.
Which is kind of shocking with the hardware they're shipping in them. So I made this video about how I'm changing my relationship with the iPad. And one of my points in it was I'm not giving up on the iPad. Like I'm not completely giving up on it. But I'm going to stop forcing the iPad to be something it's not. Because I've been doing that for almost a decade now. And...
You know, if you would have asked me a decade ago, do you think stuff like background tasks would be happening, you know, 10 years later? I would have said yes, but it's not. So for me, the iPad is now a focus device. I used it last night. I sat down on the couch and I busted out a bunch of emails. I just I ran through my inbox. I did, which is something that just completely.
Oh, my email. There's a lot happening there. But, you know, I was able to sit down and just do that. And it was great for that. But, you know, I'm not going to rely on it to manage these big video projects anymore because I can't do simple stuff that on the Mac is trivial. So you said the idea kind of snuck up on you. At what point?
Did it hit you? It's like, you know, I guess was it the Final Cut moment where you're just like, okay, I'm switching? The Final Cut moment was like, that was kind of coming to the breaking point. Like that was the, oh, I miss this. Like I want this. But then there's stuff like Chrome.
Nowadays, there are a lot of websites that are developed with Chrome in mind or just specifically for Chrome. So we mentioned my podcast, Comfort Zone. It's a video podcast as well. There's a video version and an audio version. We use a service called Riverside to record the video version.
You have to have Chrome in order to use Riverside or a Chromium browser. It doesn't just have to be specifically Chrome. I actually use Edge. But the fun fact is Riverside does technically have an iPad app.
But, and you guys are going to get kicked out of this. If you use an external microphone, so like an XLR microphone, like I'm using right now, the iPad app does not allow you to talk and listen at the same time. If you're talking, you have to mute everyone else. And if you're listening, it will not record your voice. And they say it's an iPad OS limitation, but I don't think that's actually true. I'm just wrapping my head around it for a minute. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's the state of like, that's what these, like a lot of these iPad apps are, is they're just like, they're, they're broken in really weird ways that I'm like, I'm not entirely sure this is Apple's fault here, but the app is still broken and it just can't work. And I'm, I've kind of got to the point where like,
I have figured out a lot of workarounds to make an iPad workflow work. Like I've done the thing where I've been able to record audio only podcasts just using, you know, my iPad and some extra hardware and stuff like that. But like it got to the point where I was like, OK, this is going to be a weekly podcast we record every single week.
I'm the one editing this. I want it to be stable. So I, you know, I was just like, I got to use a Mac for that. And then there's like other things like I'm really into mechanical keyboards. And there's a website called Via that basically every mechanical keyboard or almost every mechanical keyboard supports where you can play
build custom firmware for it so you can put things like media keys on on a keyboard or swap around like if it's a windows-based keyboard you could swap around what would the windows key be and put it in the proper command position and option and all that stuff that is also only supported by chrome
So like that was kind of like the breaking point. But then like there is also like little things about like what's going on with shortcuts. Why isn't there new actions? Why isn't there actions to support window management on the iPad? Why isn't there action like, you know, Apple said shortcuts is the future of their automation, but they really haven't done a whole lot with it since they said that statement. What was it like three or four years ago?
Uh, there really hasn't been a whole lot happening there. And then the last thing that kind of just made me switch like that, that I'm just like, okay, I, I think I'm kind of like done trying to force the iPad to be my main computer. I want to use the Mac is where are the new iPad apps? Like I, I, when I was doing that video, um, changing my relationship with the iPad, when I was writing that script, I was kind of, I was writing about, you know,
where like new specific iPad apps are. And I couldn't think of what like the last big iPad specific app was. I think it was like iFinal Cut and Logic, but even outside of Apple's apps, like I really couldn't think of like what it was, maybe Procreate Dreams, but I don't know a bunch of people that actually use that on a professional level. So I just couldn't think of anything. So all those things kind of came together and I was just like, you know what?
I think it's time for me to move on from trying to make the iPad work. I did it. I proved that I could do it. I made my whole workflow do it. But, you know, what's next? Like what what's happening next here? And I'm a nerd. I want to be playing with computers. I want to be playing with the latest and greatest thing. And right now, the latest and greatest platform is Apple's oldest platform. And that's the Mac.
Well, as Mac power users, we love that. That's true. I had, I had a similar epiphany. I talked about on the show years ago where I was like you trying to make the iPad do all this stuff. I wanted it to be that like, you know, 2001 space odyssey, everything computer. And I was at the dinner table with my kids who were in college at the time and they were just bragging about how they love their iPads for college. And when I was listening to what they were doing, they,
they were taking notes in class and like they were doing, they were doing all the stuff that's in the Apple commercials.
And I realized, wait a second, I'm trying to make it do things that are not in the Apple commercials because Apple doesn't want me to do that stuff. They just want me to take notes in class with it. You know, it's like, I don't know. It was like an epiphany and like, oh, okay. I'm only going to treat the iPad the way Apple does going forward. And suddenly me and the iPad get along great. Yeah. Federico wrote this great thing about a month ago on Mac stories. I'll have it in the show notes talking about,
the sort of the app situation on the iPad. Chris, I think you nailed it, right? It's like apps that have an iPad version and a Mac version like Final Cut, even first-party apps, the Mac versions can just do so much more. They're so much more flexible. And there's sort of this gap that I see in the app ecosystem where you've got
You talk about this in your video, which everyone should go watch this video. It's so good. Thank you. There's this gap, right? Developers will target the iPhone. Obviously, it's a massive market. And they're going to target the Mac. And the iPad sort of falls in between. And it's rough. And you said something a second ago that really caught my attention.
It's like, this is on Apple. Apple has, in my opinion, changed the way they view the iPad a couple of times over its life. I mean, if you go back and watch the original keynote, it's like, it's going to be this third thing. It's going to sit between your phone and your Mac. And think back in 2010, the iPhone was not what it is today, right? It was small and underpowered. And the iPad is going to be better at some key things, right? Like photos and reading and email and web browsing. And
A lot of that's still true, right? Like, it's great browsing the web on an iPad. Or I got back from a trip looking through my photos, right? All that's so good on the iPad. But...
it's sort of fallen down past that. And for a while, it seemed like Apple was pushing the iPad to be a Mac replacement. I don't think that's true anymore. It's just, and that leaves users kind of in this space that I think you went, that you were in, I think Federico's in, I think a lot of people are in of like,
Why do I continue to smash my head into the wall to make this thing a good general computer when it's just, at least for your purposes or Federico's purposes, it's just not anymore. And I find that turn really fascinating because Apple...
I think for a while was on that road, like the iPad is going to be a mainstream general computer. And while it certainly can be the computer for a lot of people, and I know we have a lot of listeners, like the iPad is their primary computer. There's a ceiling to that where the ceiling doesn't exist on the Mac.
Yeah. And and there's like there's another side to it, too. And I really highlighted itself when the M4 iPad Pro came out that if you want a really nice iPad, an iPad Pro and you spec it up, you know, with, you know, a decent amount of storage, we'll just say a terabyte and that could use 16 gigs of RAM and you add the magic keyboard and the Apple Pencil, that can be more than a MacBook Air.
And it's just like, why are you paying more for a platform that can do less? It's kind of frustrating that like I and I don't want to seem like I'm bashing on the iPad. I love the iPad. I made a career out of using the iPad.
And I'm still using the iPad. But like I said, I'm just tired of trying to make it something that it's not. And, you know, looking back years, there's like little nuggets throughout like the last 10 years or so that like, OK, Apple's finally going to take the iPad series. You know, the first iPad Pro iOS nine when when iOS and iPad OS kind of got forked and iPad OS 13, you know, was like the first version to be called iPad OS and
uh stage manager you know they had external monitor support there was uh i think that was the same keynote that they they announced that like uh the ipad was gonna get swapped and that was the moment i knew final cut and logic were coming to the ipad when they announced swap uh memory swap to coming to the ipad i was like okay they're doing this for something big software related and i was like it's got to be final cut and logic
And I was actually at the event in L.A. where they announced Final Cut and Logic for the iPad. And I was so excited then. Like they they had engineers there. You know, there might have been a moment where PR kind of left me alone with an engineer and an engineer got overly excited and told me some stuff. And none of that stuff's come true. So I'm just like I'm like, what what what's going on with this? Like what's happening here?
This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by Ecamm. Go to ecamm.com slash mpu for a powerful live streaming platform for the Mac and get one month for free. Ecamm Live is the leading video production and live streaming studio built just for the Mac, but it doesn't stop there because Ecamm is great at simplifying your workflow too. You can do it all with the Ecamm app. Get started quickly and have everything on hand to create whatever you need with video.
Making good-looking video is so important to so many jobs these days, and Ecamm has everything you need all tied up in a nice little Mac-shaped package because it gives you all the tools you need and you can run it right off of your Mac, and that's what I love about it. Stream, record, present, you do it all right in one application. Ecamm's great for streaming, recording, and podcasting and presenting. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need a high-end, high-quality video.
With Ecamm, you can screen share, use multiple cameras, and even direct the show in real time with their live camera switcher. Plus, you can add logos, titles, lower thirds, and graphics. And you can drop in video clips, bring on interview guests, and even use a green screen. And so much more. Ecamm Live truly does it all.
Ecamps members are entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, podcasters, educators, musicians, church leaders, bloggers, and content creators of all kinds. If you're on the pro level plan, you can also enjoy Ecamp for Zoom. This automatically sends Ecamp Live's audio and video output into a Zoom meeting, Zoom webinar, or Zoom event, and add up to eight Zoom participants as camera sources in your broadcast recording.
Plus, you can automatically create individual participant audio and video recordings and add Zoom chat messages to your broadcast or recording as text overlays. Up your video game today with one solution, Ecamm.
You can get one month for free today. Just go to ecam.com slash MPU and use the code MPU. That's a whole month for free of Ecamm Live at ecamm.com slash MPU with the code MPU. Go there now and check it out. And our thanks to Ecamm for their support of the Mac Power users and Olive Relay. So where does that leave the iPad for you now? And how does it fit in with your other Apple gear?
Yeah. So, um, right now, okay. When I made that video a couple of weeks ago about changing my relationship with the iPad and that moment I was like, okay, I had an M4 pro Mac mini review unit and that actually has to be sent back. So I was like, okay, I'm going to just go buy a Mac mini for myself. And that's going to be my main computer. I don't travel a lot. So I was like, that's fine in my head. That's what I was thinking at the time. And, uh, I,
That's since changed. I'm sitting in front of a 16-inch MacBook Pro now. M4 Max, you know, 40-core GPU, 128 gigs of RAM, 4 terabytes of storage. Like, this thing is a beast. I was like...
I tried the whole desktop lifestyle, but I like moving around the house a lot. And then I looked at like what my summer looks like. And I'm like, oh, I thought I wasn't traveling a lot. But no, actually, I have quite a bit of travel this year. So I realized I needed a laptop because what I didn't want to do was go back to the iPad version of Final Cut.
So for me, this 16 inch MacBook Pro, this is my main computer. When I sit down to work, this is what I'm grabbing. But I have a trip coming up next week. And when I get back from that, I'm going to sell my 13 inch iPad Pro and I'm going to downsize to the 11 inch one.
So that way it could be kind of more of a tablet. I am going to get the magic keyboard for it. And just I want to use that as kind of like a focus device, a place where I can sit down and write. I won't use stage manager. I'll just use the classic split view full screen modes, but just a place where I could sit down, write, tackle email. But I could also use it as a tablet. I talked in that video about how I always use focus modes.
So I have two different home screens set up on my iPad right now, and that'll just transfer over to this 11 inch one where I have like a personal non-work home screen that has like video apps and games and all that stuff. And, um, and then I have another home screen that's just like work stuff. So, uh, that way I can kind of like separate my usage, but ultimately like
I realized I needed something that I can take with me for travel. Even though I thought I didn't travel very much, I actually have quite a few trips coming up. So this 16-inch MacBook Pro is just an absolute beast for handling videos. I've worked on a couple of projects already, and the render times for them are just... It's so fast. It's so wild.
Are you using that with an external display and keyboard and mouse, or are you just sitting down just at the notebook?
Uh, sometimes I sit down with it. It has the nanotexture display. So, you know, go outside or I got the nanotexture display specifically because I have big filming lights. So if I'm filming the device, I, you know, I don't get glare on it, but, uh, I do have a studio display here in my office that I absolutely love. I have an arsenal, an army, uh, a lot of mechanical keyboards. Uh, so I kind of jumped through those between the day and then I just use a magic track pad as well. Okay. Yeah.
I know watching your videos, you've got a Vision Pro sitting on that desk. Where does that fit in? You know what? I've actually been using the Vision Pro more now than I've been using the Mac. The Vision Pro sat there for a few months and it was one of those things that I would look at and be like, man, I wish I could return you or sell you for just a few months.
a little bit of money because I was like, I just wasn't using it. But now that I've been using the Mac again, I've been using the virtual display modes with the Mac and it's nice. I like it. My only complaint is that
They have the keyboard support. So there's two things when it comes to keyboard support. There's the quick type bar that will like kind of attach to the keyboard if you're using the magic keyboard. And there's the pass through mode if you're using the environments, which I really love the environments. Like to me, that's the killer feature of the Vision Pro because I have ADHD. It can be hard for me to focus. I don't live alone. Sometimes my girlfriend's here. Sometimes my girlfriend's mom is here.
you know, during the day, like right now I'm alone because everyone's at work, but sometimes people are here when I'm trying to work. So environments are nice, but you only get the keyboard pass through with the magic keyboard and like third party mechanical keyboards, like what I like to use are not supported. And that kind of kills me a little bit. David, how's it going for you? I know, I know you've talked in the past about using, using the vision pro in conjunction with other Apple devices. Where do you stand with it right now?
I am an outlier because I use the Vision Pro at least a couple times a week. And you were talking about that focus mode, Chris. For me, sadly, it's Apple Notes. I would like it to be a better writing app, but Apple Notes syncs so well and it's so easy. But I go in there and put myself in Yosemite and I was there last night writing in there. It's just great for me. And I would like to get more out of it. I'd like to see Apple have more content for Vision Pro, but
but it's definitely a part of the mix. I mean, I don't know. Is it worth what I paid for it for what I use it for? I'm not sure about that, but, um, I am a regular user of the thing. And the other thing is I live with all women, my wife and two daughters, they have interests in television and movies and media that I don't. And I have interests that they don't like, they don't want to watch planet of the apes, but I do. So I've got a great theater sitting in a drawer over here, you know? And, um,
So I actually find I use it quite a bit. I'm into it, and I hope Apple continues to support it.
Yeah, I really do want Apple to support it. I want it to get better. I think for me, the big problem of it is a lot of the apps I use on Vision Pro are just iPad apps. And the iPad compatibility layer with Vision Pro isn't great, especially if you're using like the pinch gestures and not a trackpad. It can be really hard to get certain like targets in there.
And you talked about the iPad being a wasteland for apps. I feel like Vision Pro is even worse. Yeah. Good luck trying to find an RSS reader on Vision Pro. It's an interesting platform. I don't really understand what the big plan is for it. Usually it's more obvious than this, and that one does not fit there.
But let's go back. I mean, so you decided to go with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Did you, like, max it out? I mean, how far down the road did you go with your updates? I think everything's maxed out except the storage. So it's a 16-inch M4 Max, 40-core GPU, 128 gigs of RAM, and 4 terabytes of storage. I was kind of teetering. Like, I was, like, not really sure what to do because...
I know there's that rumor of the M6 ones having an OLED display. And I know me. I know myself well enough that the minute a computer comes out that I use has an OLED display and the version I am using currently doesn't have an OLED display. I will spend the money to get the OLED display like happened with the Nintendo Switch, iPad, every everything like it always like I always go to the OLED version. But.
But I kind of got a little scared with tariffs that scared me a little bit. So I was like, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't want to get a machine that's under performing because my original plan was just to get like an M4 Pro 14 inch and kind of just max that out the best I could and save a little bit of money for like the OLED versions when those come out. But.
But tariffs kind of scared me a little bit. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I didn't want to get a machine that wasn't going to be able to handle some of my bigger projects. So I was like, let's just get this and we'll see what happens in the next couple of years and go from there. The Max Markey Labs, I heard from so many listeners that bought computers because of tariff worries. I feel like
Maybe Apple was in on this. I mean, they sold a lot of computers. I think you're not alone there, Chris. Yeah, I just was like, you know what? Let's just go with this. Let's just buy this. And I don't know. We'll see what happens.
Well, they're going to come out with an old one in a few years and you're going to update. I think that'll be fun to tease you about it when you come back. I 100% expect that to happen. As long as the price doesn't... I don't know. I mean, this was already very pricey. So we'll see what ends up happening. Hopefully the resale market's really good for this in the next year or so. Do you guys think Apple's ever going to get more...
rational with their storage pricing no i mean it is crazy no how much they charge i i i have a feeling that's their probably their biggest margin on like any upgrade i mean not even have a feel like it's just math like right like that's probably where they make a ton of money all right so you got yourself all rigged up with a new mac
Let's talk about what you're doing with it now. So you're running Final Cut on it. We know that. But I also know you're a big guy in terms of automation and just, you know, making your computer work for you. Now that you're unleashed on a platform that doesn't drop apps out of memory randomly or seemingly randomly, what are you doing?
Yeah. So, um, I've been playing around with a bunch of different apps. Uh, I think the one that I've been having the most fun with is keyboard maestro. Sure. You know, sure. It's like advanced shortcuts. Uh,
especially because you can get into more scripting stuff. I guess I always forget shortcuts does support Apple script on the Mac, but I always forgot about that because iPad, it didn't have that. But, you know, you could do things like Apple script and all that stuff. So I've been having fun. One thing I just did a couple of days ago was for comfort zone. We have a section in the show called the challenge where every week one of us issues a challenge to the group and, and,
we have to do something. So one of our challenge was, was automate your startup process. And I already had a script that using keyboard maestro would open up all the apps that I kind of use, like in my day, you know, like Safari and mail and obsidian and to do this and all that stuff, like it would open it up in the specific space that I'd want. So like, it would open up certain apps, then it would send the command of like,
hit command arrow key and then go over to the next space and then open up the apps and then go to the third space and do that. But I wanted to expand on that. And one thing I did was I realized the if else then statement in Keyboard Maestro supported detecting what USB devices were plugged in. So I went a little wild and I plugged in all my mechanical keyboards, found the names that it was reporting in system information and
And I built a bunch of nested if else then statements to look to see which keyboard I had plugged in then. And then I went through my like images of wallpapers that I used and picked wallpapers that color matched those keyboards. So like I have a green keyboard. And so I had like this image of like these –
It's actually an image in Yosemite that's kind of looking on the half dome, but it's green trees and all this stuff. So if I have that keyboard plugged in, it sets that image as my wallpaper. I have like another yellow keyboard that if that one's plugged in, it'll set like this fall image that's like very yellowy, orangish leaves and trees that's looking onto this path and stuff like that. It'll set that as the wallpaper and so on and so on. And like, it's just stuff like that. Like there's no way you could do that with the iPad.
to have it detect what keyboard is plugged in, read the USB name and set the wallpaper based on that. Like that's just like whimsical and fun and absolutely pointless, but I love it.
Yeah, I mean, that is a great example of how far down the stack you can go with Keyboard Maestro. And one of the beauties of all this, you probably already realize this, is that all of the automation apps on the Mac talk to each other. So if there's a thing in shortcuts that does better than Keyboard Maestro, you can write it as a shortcut, but trigger it from Keyboard Maestro or vice versa. And then Alfred does that. And all of these automation tools on the Mac work.
like can hook into each other. So yes, you can go really far with that stuff. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it's stuff like that, that I'm like, I love that, like how everything can talk to each other. It's not siloed away. Everything's kind of a, an open space where they, things can work together and you don't feel like there's, there, there are apps that are just kind of like acting like they don't know other applications even exist. Like it's, it's,
It's just wonderful. Like, for example, I'm using keyboard maestro with Final Cut. And one of the things that I do a lot with like my B roll shots, I'll have these like slow moving shots in very typical YouTuber B roll shot where it's like the slow moving panning shot.
And what I do is with my camera, I film that at 60 frames per second, but I edit at 24 frames per second. So I bring it into the timeline. I can slow it down to 40%. So that would be real time. But with Final Cut, I can slow it down to even further to like 25 or 10%. And then there is like this feature in there that basically allows you it's called a retime video quality feature.
But there's a machine learning option in there. And what this does is it actually generates frames. So if you don't have enough frames to fit real time there, it'll generate frames. And then it'll put that in the timeline. It'll make it look really nice and smooth. And then I can click the stabilize button. Well, this was something I was doing previously.
Like those three steps I was doing quite a bit for just even one video project. So what I did is I used Keyboard Maestro and I set the first two steps up with keyboard shortcuts because you can do that in Final Cut. You can customize just about anything, just...
to be a keyboard shortcut. And then with keyboard maestro, there's also an action to look for a button on screen. So I had it look for that stabilize button and click it automatically. So with a key, with a keyboard shortcut, I can trigger all three of those steps in just an instant.
Yeah, I just used that feature last week. The Mac Sparket Labs members know I did a video on it. But there was a bug in shortcuts on the Mac where I was transferring data and there's a button that says always allow.
but it wasn't working. You'd hit it and then like the next, it would, it would require you to press it like a hundred times if you were moving a hundred pieces of data. So I wrote a keyboard maestro script to fix a bug in shortcuts to the same thing. Look, look for the always allow button, press it. Thank you. Do it again. You know? And yeah, once you start getting the, the knowledge of this stuff, and I think that's the thing for a lot of people is they just don't realize that
how much you can do with a tool like that. But once you understand what's available to you, that really opens up the floodgates. One thing I did was I took a keyboard maestro and I just took a minute to go through all the actions and kind of familiarize myself with what's there. I'd used keyboard maestro years ago. I forgot what's there. And obviously they've probably added stuff. So I just took a minute to familiarize myself with what's there and what it's capable of doing. And there's
a lot there and it's just such an impressive tool. This episode of MPU is brought to you by Indeed. You just realized that your business needs to hire someone like yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates quickly? Easy. Just use Indeed because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all that you need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Their sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast.
With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster, and that makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data worldwide, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed
have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. That is awesome. What I love about Indeed is that it is really easy to use. They make it super simple to set up a job, get it sponsored. And if you're looking for a job, Indeed is where you should go as well. I had a family member just recently make a career transition and they used Indeed to find their new job and they've been really happy with it.
With sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. So how fast does all that happen? Well, I've been talking for about a minute and a half, and in that time, over 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. So there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring with Indeed.
Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash MPU. That's Indeed, I-N-D-E-E-D, Indeed.com slash MPU. So go there now, support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash MPU. Terms and conditions apply. If
If you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the show and all of Relay. All right, Chris, so you're running this website, podcast, YouTube channel. You're probably getting a lot of email and you've got to manage a production schedule. Now that you've switched over to Mac, what are the tools that you're gravitating towards for doing that stuff?
So when I started my business, I was kind of kind of on my high horse and I was like, I'm not going to use Google email. I believe in open open web and all that stuff. And let's let's go with a standard IMAP email address. Fast forward to 2025. And that was not a good idea.
We have a running bit on our show, Comfort Zone, that Matt, my co-host, he will bring an email client to the show. And my first question is, does it support IMAP? And his answer is always no. Everything now is all Google email. Everyone loves MimeStream. There's the new Notion email app. There's Superhuman. There's all these apps. And all they do is they support Google email. So I am stuck using Apple's mail app. And
It's, uh, it, it definitely feels dated, especially when I talk to Matt and other people about like how they're using their email clients and stuff like that. And you know, there's that other one and I'm forgetting the name of it, but there's the other one that has like AI feature, like AI search features built into it. And it's like incredibly fast at like indexing your email and like finding really specific things. Uh, so I, I'm just using Apple mail there and I'm definitely feeling the, uh,
the edges of it. I wish I had probably used Google business. I could switch over. I just haven't had the time to do any of that stuff. I do believe, you know, open, open web, open standards. They're great, but it is kind of a bummer that stuff like IMAP and stuff is being held back. Chris, I am so with you. I did the same thing. I went on, I made a fast mail account before that I was using a separate, just independent IMAP service. Um,
And just yesterday I woke up because there's something I wanted to do with Notion, but Notion calendar doesn't look at my, at fast mail. It only looks at Google or Apple. And I was like, you know, I wrote my team and said that they were the people on my team, right? A couple of people that helped me out. I said, guys, I'm thinking about moving everything over to Gmail. And they shot me down like quickly, but I was thinking, okay,
I still am tempted to do it because I feel like there's stuff I want to cover and stuff I want to look at. And I'm, I'm outside looking in so long as I don't have a Gmail account. It's, it's kind of like going back to working from the iPad and seeing, Hey, what's going on over there on the Mac? Like there's all these new apps and like the, the, the, that in for max chip looks pretty cool. And like all that stuff, it's, it's exactly like that, but it's kind of weird that I map the open standard is the one that's kind of being left out. Uh,
Yeah, I don't know. In Apple Mailer, you're using the Apple intelligence features like summarization and the categories and stuff.
I am using summarization. I turn categories off because I don't like the way it was filtering some stuff. Like it was putting some really important stuff in like the newsletter category. I think I forget what the categories are. I turned them off a long time ago, but I just I didn't like the categories. The summarization feature is nice to kind of get like a general idea of what an email is about. I probably get anywhere from 100 to 200 emails a day because my email
email address is on my YouTube page. And there are people that scrape that those YouTube pages and then sell those lists to just about everyone. So I get signed up for newsletters and I get weird pitches. I the other day I got pitched for a makeup bag, like somebody wanted me to cover a makeup bag on my channel, not my cup of tea. But yeah, so it's it's one of those things like the summarization feature can kind of be nice. I just wish it was a little bit better. On
On the iPad, I did do a thing where I increased the preview of the summarization. So that way it gave it an extra line and it made the summarization just a little bit better. But yeah, the Apple intelligence features haven't been exactly stellar. Yeah, I've got it all off at this point. Summarization makes me feel like I'm reading everything twice. And I agree with you on the categories. Like I...
I've got SaneBox that does a lot of that stuff for me, and I don't need anything kind of on top of that. But it has been funny because the mail categorization has rolled out now to the Mac, and it wasn't there initially. And I've got people I work with or in my life who are like, yes, finally, I have this on my iPhone and the Mac. And then other people are like, now I've got to turn it off on another device. People really kind of fall on both sides of it.
When it rolled out on the iPhone, my girlfriend lost it. She was like, what is happening? Where's all my email? I had to talk her off the ledge and turn it off for her and stuff like that. She was not happy about it because she was like... Her email...
She's one of those people that keeps all the badges on. I love her to death. I love you, Danielle. But she keeps all the badges on and she's one of those people that has like a four digit badge on her email. Yeah. But it works for her. She knows where things are. I don't know how, but she knows where things are. But yeah. So when that rolled out, she was not happy. She thought like Apple deleted a lot of her email and stuff like that. So I had to like I had to turn it off. I had to show her like it's OK. Everything's fine. But yeah, that was not a good day.
I've had the same experience with like the normal people in my life. This feels almost like the YouTube moment, right? You know, like where everybody was mad about them playing the YouTube album. I'm getting that level of aggravation from non-power users about this new mail feature. You know, what's funny is I thought I would have got that about the Photos app redesign. And I haven't really had anyone complain to me about the Photos app redesign. It's all been about mail.
What about task management? I know in your videos, there's a lot of Apple reminders. Is that for real?
It was until like earlier this week. I like, I like reminders. I like it with an asterisk. It kind of feels like the Fisher Price version of a task manager. Like there's a lot you can do with it, especially because it's the system task manager. You can ask the assistant, I won't say its name, but you could ask the assistant to remind you about something. And that is like one of the most powerful features for reminders, right?
but I have kind of like, I'm like, I just, I feel like I need something a little more serious. So I've been playing around with Todoist lately and I've been really enjoying it. Todoist added one feature that the only task manager that I know that did this beforehand was things. And Todoist recently added a feature called deadlines.
So you're able to have a start date so that like if I say like, hey, I need to take out the trash tomorrow, it will show me that tomorrow in the today view. But I then could put a deadline on that of like Saturday. So it's not completely like I can visually see like, yes, I'm starting this project today, but it's not due until Saturday. And this is something I do with video projects a lot, because for me, like a video takes me.
typically three days in order for me to make. So what I don't want is I don't want a task that's like, okay, you need to start on this today and it needs to be completed today. I want a visual way of saying like, okay, you're starting on this today and you have like three days or four days to complete it. And that's something they recently added that I really like. I also really like their Google Calendar integration. The Kanban view is...
killer i i love that that was something that that was what made me switch from things to reminders originally and then uh to do is having kanban view made it really easy for me to go to reminders to to do us um and then the quick add feature in to do us on mac os like just the ability to hit i think by default it's control space but i've changed it um
But that just that pop up of just like hit a keyboard shortcut, type in a task, natural language input. So you can just just type whatever you need to right there. Hit enter and it adds the task to your task manager. You don't need to jump over to the app or anything like that. That is killer. Yeah, Todoist is awesome. I've been on reminders now for.
Probably nine months I switched to it and I made the mistake of getting my wife hooked on it. And we have a couple of shared lists. And so I don't know what I'm going to do. I miss a lot about Todoist. I do think the deadlines feature, while not for everybody, is really powerful. So you can have something like you said, spans.
period of time. And for a long time, it was basically OmniFocus and things, right? They treated them a little bit differently, but I think the concept was more or less the same. And so definitely cool to see Todoist getting on board with that. In general, there's just so many great apps now to manage this stuff. I mean, in the old days...
There was not much, you know, I mean, OmniFocus showed up and it was like, you know, the glass of water to the man in hell. Right. But now there's just so much in terms of web based services. And, you know, honestly, reminders, I would I would argue is not Fisher Price. Reminders is pretty darn good. And yeah, you really have an abundance of riches in terms of picking your your on your task management this day these days.
Fisher-Price might have been harsh, but it's the... So the SF rounded font with the color and reminders, every time I see that, that's what... It reminds me of Fisher-Price. And it just... To me, it just doesn't feel as professional. Like, I just... I don't know. I just...
I, okay. Confession. I hate that SF rounded font. I don't know why I, and, and, uh, Neely on my cohost on comfort zone literally made our, uh, thumbnails for the YouTube videos using SF rounded just to kind of, kind of troll me. Um, that's so good. Yeah. Yeah. She, she did that on purpose, but, um, it's, it's,
And it's fine, but something just about it just doesn't feel right in a professional app. It just doesn't feel like, I don't know. That's my own hang up. Yeah. But I mean, my point is, look, just pick one that works for you and you're good. It's not like the old days where there was only one or two to choose from. I think Steven made that point as well.
Yeah. What about when it comes to video production? I mean, you're writing these scripts, you're shooting, you're editing. What are some of the software that makes all that possible? So probably for the last two years, maybe more. And I haven't even been tempted to look at something else. I have been using Obsidian for all
all of my writing. I absolutely love obsidian and even, and on the Mac, it's even better because you get access to all of the plugins, uh, the iPad and iPhone version, uh, sometimes mobile, uh, isn't supportive for certain plugins, but obsidian is just a powerful utility. I've written my own custom theme for it. Uh, plugin support is killer. Uh, you know, it's, it,
Markdown, obviously, and it's just plain text. It's just folders and files. If I ever wanted to take my stuff anywhere else, I could.
Um, but something I've been doing probably the last couple of months, uh, is I took all of my old scripts or last few years. I took it the last few years of my scripts and the last few years of all my research notes and I upload them to notebook, uh, LM. And I've actually been using that as kind of like my own personal research tool to like, Hey, when was the last time I talked about things or, uh,
what are all the features of the Apple Pencil Pro or something like that? And it's just been a really nice utility to kind of like remind myself about stuff that just like, I'm not going to be able to remember all these weird little details. And I've written all this stuff before. So why not use a utility to kind of remind myself about it? It's been really, really helpful.
I know Federico's been playing with that with the Mac Stories iOS reviews. And, you know, there's some token issues and some other things there. How has that been for you getting your content into it?
So I kind of, I had to limit it to like the last two years. I haven't been able to upload everything. Even with a paid subscription, I just haven't been able to put everything up there. Luckily, none of my stuff are 80,000 word masterpieces. I think the biggest scripts I tend to write are like my iPadOS walkthroughs in the fall. And those tend to be like around 20,000 words. I have the benefit over Federico that when I make something, I...
I have a visual component. I have a video component, so I don't have to go into as much detail as he has to go to into his writing. So a lot of my stuff is a lot smaller. So it's been okay. I would love to be able to upload my full archive, but right now I'm kind of having to pick and choose like what is the most important pieces. All right. So here's a tip because you don't need the videos up there. You just need text files and you can with the paid account. Cause I I'm doing the same thing. I'm,
notebook LM is so useful for me because I have like you, a lot of published thoughts and I don't always remember them all. But with notebook LM with a paid account, you can get up to 300 resources uploaded. And so what you do is you, you run like Mac whisper on your videos, just get transcripts out of your videos. So you've got a bunch of texts. So you've got low, very low data dense information, but it still gives you everything you need.
And then there's a terminal command I use, and I have to look it up every time I use it. But basically, you take a folder, you point the terminal in it, and you're shiny new Mac, and you say, combine all this into one text file. So then you just collect them into buckets of text files, and then you upload those under your 300 upload, and you actually end up with a lot of data in there. I bet you could probably get everything in there doing that.
Yeah, that's a good... I should try that. Yeah. Because right now what I'm doing is I'm literally just taking the Markdown files that are in the Obsidian folders and uploading those. But like you said, there's a 300 file limit. So I was starting to brush up against that because it's all my scripts, all my research notes, and a few other things. And I keep research notes for everything. I have notes on how Stage Manager works, all the details to Stage Manager and stuff like that. So
it filled up really quickly. Yeah, you should. Actually, you don't even need to run the terminal then because if you've got them already simple text, markdown text, just run a script out of Obsidian to combine them into one document. In fact, there's views in Obsidian where you can put it all in one document, then just Command-A and then paste that in and just combine them because it doesn't care, honestly. Just make sure they're titled well and notebook.lm will point you at the right one.
Yeah, that's that's one thing I'm really good at is organizing all my my stuff. So everything is labeled really well. So when I did upload all that stuff, it did a great job at like being able to find all the information that I needed to and I've really been enjoying that tool.
It's great. I mean, like I did the same thing that when I did the update to the productivity field guy this year, I put all the videos from the webinar meetups and all the videos I recorded, all the book I wrote, my research notes, and then like asked it questions like what was the biggest problem people had with this material last year? And then I just made new videos to answer all those questions and for the new edition. And it's just like, it's so easy to,
When you've got like that little assistant for you, this is one of my favorite implementations of AI is notebook LM. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the big reason why I'm still paying for Gemini and not just all in on chat GPT.
Steven is silent. But I do think, Steven, when this gets to a level where you can throw all of your Apple PR stuff at it, I think it would be worth trying. Yeah. And I don't think we've talked about Devon Think 4 yet on the show, but they've got some of this stuff, but not all of it. But I, to date, just basically throw everything in Devon Think and then rely on their search, which is really good. That's probably good enough. Yeah. I'm keeping my eye on it. I don't have...
Like what I sort of lack is what you're talking about, Chris, really both of you, like a database of like what I have published over the years. Right. And so I do find myself sometimes like searching in WordPress of like, I know I've written about the Quadra whatever before, you know, like, or have I? And that's a bit of a gap that I have that I need to solve. But yeah.
It is really cool that these tools can make like the past versions of ourselves more useful to the current version of ourselves. Like that's, that's really pretty interesting. Yeah, it is. It is. Okay, Chris. So we've talked a lot about a bunch of different, different tools, but what are some, some favorite services or apps that we haven't gotten to touch on yet?
I think my absolute favorite one that I've been playing around with lately on the Mac is Raycast. I have been having so much fun. There's so much you can do with Raycast. When I originally saw it, I was like, okay, it's just another spotlight utility replacement. Like, that's cool. But the power of Raycast really comes into, like, its extensions. There's first and third party extensions. And
So when you install Raycast, there's first-party ones that come with it. And, you know, it can obviously do stuff like file search, search for applications and open it. It can even run shortcuts and stuff just right out of the box. But it has a really powerful clipboard history that I absolutely love. Like, that is the clipboard history utility I'm using. It has a snippet manager, which is something...
Again, I love like I so I get a lot of like proposal emails like, hey, we would like to sponsor your video or hey, we have this thing that you might want to review or something like that. And, you know, a lot of those times they don't, you know, send a response and they don't come back or, you know, it just fizzles out or whatever. So I don't bother like making like really highly personalized emails for like those first times talking to somebody unless like I know the company and I know who
like I really, really want to work with them, then I'll do it. But yeah,
Uh, so I have a bunch of like canned responses and snippets of like, yes, I would love to work with you guys. Here are my ad rates or yes, I would love to review this product. Here's the address you can send this to or something like that. And, you know, just having that snippet tool there to be able to like fill that stuff in is really handy. You know, I also have stuff like my address and emails and a few other like things for like comfort zone and, and, uh, my video work and stuff like that in there. And it's just, it's just nice to have those utilities. Um,
I played around like I set up different shortcuts for it. So I have option space to bring up my snippet manager. I have another utility that well, actually, it's a feature in Raycast. And I know David's talked about it a bunch, but you can enable a hyper key in Raycast. If you go to the advanced tab and settings and scroll down a bit, there's a hyper key option in there.
And so I've set up like HyperKey V to bring up my clipboard history so I can just see like what's going on or I can pull up, you know, anything from that clipboard history and put it in whatever document or copy it or whatever. And there's just so much you can do with Raycast, even just right out of the box. It's actually hard to explain. Like I actually have a video coming out on how I'm using Raycast. But then like the flip side,
of Raycast. Like once you configure it and start using the first party stuff, you can go into their own store and install a bunch of third party utilities. So there's, you know, utilities for Todoist, Obsidian, Drafts, Parcel. There's a Formula One one. So you can check to see when the next race is or driver standings and stuff like that. Like,
it's so like there's so many weird utilities in there that like you can do a lot just from this command bar just from raycast and never have to like take your hands off the keyboard you can just if you set it up with command space you know that's what i did i just replaced spotlight completely i removed spotlight from the menu bar if i hit command space it brings up raycast and i could just type in um oh
One of my absolute favorite ones, it's a first party one that's built right into it. They have this feature called focus sessions. And what this does is you set up these different focus categories. Yeah, focus categories is what they call them. And what this is, is you set up you can label it like, for example, I have a writing one and this enables Safari, Obsidian, Raindrop.io, basically my writing and research tools.
So when you start a focus session, what you do is you say it asks you what your goal is, whatever. You could put that there. You don't have to if you don't want to. It asks you how long it wants to run. Yeah, you can say indefinitely if you want to or 5, 10, 15 minutes, whatever.
And then you basically pick an allow or block list. So I can set that writing group up as the allowed list. So that way, if I try and open any other app, it actually blocks it. And if I have any other app open, when I start that, it closes those apps. So basically this way, I am just focused on writing like the apps that I need for writing. And you could go in, like I mentioned, I have Safari in that list. You can go in and block websites specifically. So yes, I have Safari open, but
If there's a pretty distracting website, we'll just say YouTube. Perfect example. I can block YouTube in there. So that way, yes, I can use Safari, but I can't go to YouTube. It's such a for somebody that has ADHD. I can easily distract myself. It's it's incredibly easy for me to just play with it.
pull myself into a million different directions and completely forget what I was working on. This is a great way to kind of keep that silo. And it was something that I really originally really loved about the iPad was that you can only have one or two apps open and you were really focused on what was happening. And this is kind of my way of bringing that to the Mac and
and just focusing on, you know, the task at hand. I have a video editing session that just allows me to use Final Cut Pro, an app called Hush, which is a really great utility if you do a lot with audio that cuts out background noise. It's very, very good. Mac Whisper, and I think there's a couple other things. But like,
I just have these different sessions set up for the different kinds of work that I do. So when I really just need to sit down and focus on those things, I start that and it just runs in the background until I'm done with it. You're a Mac power user, man. That's why you're on the show. Thank you. Yeah. I've been having so much fun playing with utilities that...
We'll never come to the iPad because that's not what Apple wants the iPad to be. But because of the nature of the Mac, you can't tell the Mac what it can. Apple can't tell the Mac or Mac users what it can and can't be because of the nature of it. We can go and install these utilities to make our own custom multitasking systems or, you know, focus sessions or all this stuff. And it's just it feels freeing.
Steven, have you gone down the hyper key rabbit hole? I don't think I've ever heard you mentioned. Yeah, not really. I mean, I know you can do it in Raycast. I know there's also like several standalone ways. I mean, really what you're doing is you're remapping caps lock to be shift.
plus control, plus option, plus command. So basic, because nobody ever uses CapLock key, at least most people don't. And then, so you can just hold down that and that gives you a whole new series of global shortcuts that aren't used by any app. Because, you know, apps will hijack control plus S or command plus S or whatever. Whereas CapLock plus S has never been used. Like in addition to remapping it with Raycast, you can also use an app called Carabiner Elements. That's a very popular app.
Because that does it at the root level. You can even remap it on an Apple keyboard on your laptop with carabiner elements. And BetterTouchTool has an option for it as well. So there's a bunch of ways to do it. But if you find yourself wishing you had more shortcut keys, if you're doing a lot of keyboard maestro automation, stuff like that, you definitely should check out the HyperKey. And
Something I really like it for is just setting up custom keyboard shortcuts and not stepping on other keyboard shortcuts and other apps or even system level stuff. Like, for example, I'm using like HyperKeyT to bring up that what I was talking about, the quick entry feature in Todoist.
I've also been using BusyCal. So I use HyperKC to bring up the menu bar app. And one thing I'm really loving about BusyCal is you can sign into Todoist. So you can see your Google calendar along with your tasks for that day. So it's kind of just like a nice way of like, hey, hit HyperKC and I can see what event is next or what task I need to do next on my list. And, you know, you can hit HyperKC again and it goes away like that.
There's just like a nice, like I like to think of it as kind of like, like this is my custom layer almost. Well, Chris, you know, I, I, for whatever reason, the day you dropped that video, it showed up and I just opened up YouTube that morning. I wanted to, to, you know, goof off. I saw that you had,
release this video and i kind of felt it coming because i'd watch a couple of your prior videos where you're talking about yeah apple loaned me this mac and it's kind of amazing i can render something in final cut and it doesn't shut down on me and you know it's like i kind of saw it coming i'm like ah we got to get chris in the mac power users now that he's joined the club
Yeah, I kind of intentionally, in the background, I was already more of a Mac user than I was kind of leading on in those early videos. But I didn't want to...
Shock people. I actually had had to buy a Mac once before I had owned an M1 Max MacBook Pro. And the reason why is this was before Final Cut Pro came to the iPad. And there was only one video editing app on the iPad. And I won't say what it was, but I'm sure you all know what it is. And it got so buggy that I couldn't use it. Like I actually lost my iPhone 13 Pro Max review to this app and its bugs.
And you can ask any tech YouTuber or any, any tech journalist person. You don't want to lose your iPhone review. Like that is something you don't want to lose. So I lost that to this app. And, uh,
uh, that was when the M one pro and the M one max MacBook pros were announced and, uh, or right around that time. And I just immediately ordered one and, and I made a video about like, Oh, I bought this thing. And it was like the YouTuber shocky thing. And I, I got some backlash for that. And,
rightly so, but also it was like I needed something to actually be able to edit videos. So I did that. But then once Final Cut Pro for the iPad was announced, I actually sold that. Like I went down to L.A., went to the announcement, saw it, and I was like, great. And then Apple's like, we're going to send you a test flight for it today. I was like, great, fantastic. The very next day I sold that MacBook Pro to my brother because I was like, it's here. I'm happy. Great. And I convinced myself I was happy for a while. And yeah,
Uh, yeah, we know how that went. All right. Well, Chris, where should people go if they want to check you out? Yeah. So, uh, I am, uh, primarily on YouTube. Uh, I do some stuff other places too, but primarily on YouTube, you can search Christopher Lawley, L-A-W-L-E-Y. Uh, I'm obviously covering a lot of Mac stuff now. I'm still going to do some iPad stuff when there is iPad news and there is iPad stuff to cover.
uh i also cover automations new apps i have videos uh coming out on raycast and uh hyperkey uh i i'm really into those right now like i'm having so much fun with those so i have videos coming out on my setups on those uh and then also uh the comfort zone podcast over on max stories i host it with matt birchler and neely on and we have a ton of fun every single week uh the whole concept of that show is like we each bring something new to talk about and then we have a
a challenge to kind of push us outside of our comfort zones. So, uh, yeah. Oh, and you can go to the untitled.site. That's kind of my website. It's kind of the host. Like it has links to all my stuff are there.
Well, excellent. And congratulations on all your success. We are the Mac Power Users. You can find us over at relay.fm. Thank you to our sponsors today, 1Password, Ecamm, and Indeed. For more power users, stick around. We're going to be talking about these new iPad OS rumors, which is kind of fun in light of today's conversation. If you haven't checked it out, More Power Users is the ad-free extended version of the show. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.