Hi everybody, and welcome to Comfort Zone. A show about the host getting out of their Comfort Zone. It is a 10th episode, a milestone episode today. I'm your host, Matt, and I'm joined, as always, by Niléane, Niléane. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm fine. We're missing someone. We are missing someone. Yeah, I don't exactly know what happened to Chris, but he is... he's serving a timeout.
I've just a little bit for the things he said last week on the show, which, if you can see behind me, I am representing for Draft Punk because they were slandered last week. It was unacceptable. He's recovering from the controversy online. Yes. Yes. So we hope he gets better. He's actually sick. He's under the weather. He should be back next week, but he should be thinking about what he said. And Chris, when you're listening to this episode, he should be thinking about what you said.
So he's sick. He's down and we're hidden him a little bit. I feel a little bad. When it's deserved, it's deserved. It is not the sickness. No, again. Bad people. We are bad people. Well, I am doing well as well. And we have a few things to talk about this week anyway.
So let's get it going. Neelian, what are you bringing this week? Yeah. So my thing is a two-part thing. But first, I wanted to talk about the fact that I have set up live TV on myplex server. And that was an adventure. Did you know you could do that, by the way? No, but all things are possible withplex, so I'm not really surprised.
Right. So yeah, I've had theplex pass thing for a while. That's the paying part. It's a subscription, but you can also buy it for a lifetime, which is what I've done a while ago. And this gives you access to a feature where you can plug in an antenna into a tuner. And that tuner can be connected to yourplex server, which means you can watch live TV on yourplex server. And it's a funny thing because there are the Olympics going on, right?
And I've been wanting to watch the Olympics. Sure. And it's difficult because in France, the broadcaster is the public TV, France TV, and their website is garbage. So if you want to rely on their web player to watch the Olympics live, good luck. So yeah, I've been down this rabbit hole for the past week to try and find a better way to watch live TV andplex.
Yeah, that's coming clutch. I remember that I had a USB stick somewhere in my pile of stuff. And it's a an old USB stick where you can, on one hand, you can plug in an antenna cable. So if you've got a roof antenna, you can plug in your antenna in the stick and the stick you can plug in in a USB port. I don't know these exist. I never heard of that.
Well, it's a small thing, a 10 euro thing on Amazon. Okay. I bought this thing. I checked my Amazon history. I bought the thing in 2016. And I remember that because at the time I was in a student dorm, and it was really hard. We had a really bad connection there. But we in our rooms, we did have antenna ports on the wall.
And so if you have a TV in your dorm, you can connect to the antenna port and watch live TV on your TV set. And at the time, I bought this USB stick because I did not have a TV. But I wanted to watch at the time, the euro, the football Euro 2016 live on TV. So I bought this thing back then in 2016. And it worked. I had to watch it to watch TV in VLC. Because that's another piece of software that can do everything. You can watch live TV in VLC. If you find a way not, you can, why not.
You can even record live TV with VLC. Of course. So what's your plug server? Are you using them like a Mac or something else? So that's something I've already mentioned once. I've got an old Macbook, a 2015 MacBook Pro in the living room. That's right. Yeah. And I've installed Linux on it. So it no longer runs macOS. It runs Linux. OK. A Mac, but not really. Not really. And on it, I've got a bunch of stuff. I've got my home bridge instance, which is why I've mentioned this before.
Yep. It's going back to me. Yeah. I've got other things, a bunch of small things really. I've got a time machine instance running over the air on that thing via December, December protocol. It's a whole thing. I wrote about this on on Mac stories, actually. And now there's blacks on it. But anyway, so I dug up that USB stick and works really well. Actually viaplex.
But here's the thing. In the living room, the antenna port is on the other hand of the room from my main piece of furniture, where there's my TV set, there's the set Macbook Pro and a bunch of other things. So I've had to run a cable from that port. Yes. To the MacBook Pro. And antenna cable. So I measured the bunch of stuff and I came up with the number that I needed at least a 15 meter cable. Oh my God. I'm not sure what was that in American in Eagle units.
That's like 50 50 feet in Eagle Eagle units. Yes. As we prefer to call them freedom units. I think we say freedom units. And finding that cable was not hard. You can find them online really easily or even text or the issue is finding a good cable because when you run the cable that length for an antenna signal. Any corner can break the signal for bunch of channels. It's been really hard to find a good cable that I can run easily along the wall and not break the signal along the way.
But I did find one and networks. I had another issue, which is an interference issue there and interferences are something that I've been struggling with my whole life. And last time I mentioned this is because remember my son double talk issue. Yes. Yeah. That was a thing. It was interfering with Bluetooth and batches of things. Here the issue is that my so my MacBook Pro run a Linux is plugged into the Internet via an Ethernet cable.
And it turned out that this Ethernet cable ruined the antenna signal when they were plugged on the same dock. Of course. Of course. So I've had to plug in the antenna cable into a second port on the MacBook Pro itself. So it's got a dedicated port now. Now it's all good. If you've got blacks and if you're paying for it, I recommend checking this out because it's actually really cool. The end result is I can watch live TV anywhere in the world.
From the signal of my and the signal of my antenna roof and thinking about this now it's pretty good. It's compatible with the HD home run. Have you heard of this? I've heard of this. I know like Casey lists doors is yeah. Yeah. I think I've never gotten the courage to buy but I know people love. Yeah. The age of home run. What it does is it's a box. You plug in your antenna into it and it broadcasts your TV over your network, your local network.
And you can use apps, various apps to watch TV on your network. And there's the channels app. That's popular for that. And Casey list mentions that often. So I investigated that route but it turns out that yeah. Plex can fill in that gap and if you got a Plex server in a living room like I do. No need for either the channels app all the HD home run. All you need is a 2016 USB stick.
Yeah. I'm looking at these USB sticks online and they I mean they look as goofy as I thought they would. They're like thumb drives with a little twisty thing at the end. Yeah. The round part looks really goofy. So, okay. So yeah, because you plug it in the Plex and that video stream is basically just like any other file on your Plex server. So you could use it on an iPad or. Exactly. Anywhere, right? Yeah. And you can record live TV.
And when you record a broadcast in Plex, you can save it to a specific library in Plex. So you can save a program in your movies library or in your TV shows library. And it's just another file among your other files in your Plex server. Interesting. Okay. Can you schedule recording? You can schedule recording. I'm in the little pic nerves. So I've scheduled the closing ceremony. So that's going to be recording on mail because I like to keep our of those.
And yeah, it's pretty good. I'm really happy with the setup. Yeah, interesting. Plex is an interesting one. I feel like Plex is one of those companies that every few years we get mad at them for something. And like, I feel like nobody uses them anymore. But then so many people still use them and like like it. So. Yeah, that's cool. I haven't looked at Plex in a long time. Yeah, I had abandoned it. I used to just use the infuse app.
And then I used to use stream content from the server itself. And just connected via SSH, SFCP. And stream the content directly stream the files directly. And that worked fine. But the infuse app has been unstable, unstable to say the least.
I agree that that's been my experience as well, which was very upsetting. Ironically, one of the fixes to make infuse more reliable that I found was to actually set up Plex on whatever device as your files and then have infuse look at the Plex server like log in with Plex. And that seems to work better. Yeah, but I had this point you. Yeah, you should just use the pick stop. Although, what are we if not a community of people who like to make things more complicated than they need to be?
Okay. And so this is live TV. Did you set this up for the Olympics specifically? Yeah. Yeah, should we talk about this? Yeah, I guess it's a good transition. Yeah, let's just go into into the Olympics. So watching the Olympics. So I'm not I'm Olympic, I'm an Olympic nerd, but just in the nervous aspects of it. Explain. Nurtiest aspects of it. For example, I have a special interest in the opening closing ceremonies. I don't know if you can relate at all to that.
I always watch the opening ceremonies and then I never have ever watched the closing ceremony. No, they're not as big and like bombastic. So I guess I don't really know what they are. I've never really watched them. Yeah, they mostly they're mostly the same as the opening ceremonies. Although you're right, they often less grandiose. And for the past decade, also what they've done for the closing ceremonies is they tend to just be a big concert with the so bunch of artists perform.
And at the end is the protocol part with the speeches and the the extinguish the Olympic flame and all that. So this year, the opening ceremony in Paris was really interesting. It was in the city itself instead of in the stadium. And so of course in France, we. It's the first time that the Olympics are in my country. So it's been different to be so aware of everything coming up to the Olympics.
So I was aware of who the director was for the Olympic ceremony, what they were planning to do, who was to perform even though there was a bunch of surprises there. And it's been really fascinating to me, especially because I always watch the Olympic ceremony and then to analyze them over analyze them. Okay, yeah, I loved that running up to the Olympic ceremony on the day itself, people were so worried because the rain was pouring down on the city. It sure was.
And everyone in the media would like this is going to ruin everything because everything's outside. It's on the river. Maybe the river level is going to be too high. The boats won't get under the bridges. Oh my god, all the catastrophic scenarios. In the end, and that's something that the director itself said. He's, let's talk about that director for a bit. He is called Tomajoli and he's a theater director. And you can tell he's an artist, like he's a core artist in his field.
And what he had to say about the pouring rain after the fact, after the ceremony, he said it was just amazing. I could not have hoped for better. You can tell he was really, really happy about the end result. Because in his mind, it empowered some of the shows, performances that were taking place. The fact that dancers kept going under the pouring rain. That everything was able to take place on the same despite the rain. And that everyone was able to perform.
And there was a moment, especially in the ceremony, that was a representation of the climate urgency. A bunch of our dancers were performing on the boat, on the platform on the sand. And I was supposed to represent the climate emergency. And he really loved apparently that the rain was pouring down on those dancers as they were performing this. So yeah, anyway.
One last thing, since I've set up a live TV on my play server, I'm able to feel gaps in my sleepless nights, because I tend to have a chaotic sleeping schedule. And at night, there are the surfing competitions. Why at night? Why late in the night? Because they take place in Tahiti. Yeah, in Polynesia. So I don't know. That's 12 hours behind us. So while it's noon there, it's deep in the night here in France. And it's been really soothing. I have a full sleep multiple times just watching.
Nice surfing competitions. Yeah, the surfing is interesting because they're not. You kind of have to wait for the waves. You can't just have a bell go off and then you do your run or whatever. You're kind of just floating out there on your board until the right wave comes. And it's an interesting thing. I didn't watch much of it, but my wife did. And she was again, really taken aback by like how much of it is just waiting for the right way. Yeah.
And for you, it's in the evening, right? It's earlier. Yeah, I think it's in the middle of the day at some point. Okay. But yeah, we haven't been watching much of the live stuff. We've been mostly watching the prime time coverage at the end of the day. So that's like 7 p.m. until 10, 10, 30 are time. And yeah, that's been good. I will say on the opening ceremonies, there were numerous times where I like my reaction was, oh, this is very French. This is very what I think it was.
It just felt very French to me. I can't explain it exactly, but like, which is great. I mean, that's what the opening ceremony is supposed to be, right? And the metal band that played in the rain. That was amazing. That was surprising. That was the first time I've seen metal played at the, at the opening ceremonies. So that was pretty cool. But yeah, like I said, I'm mostly watching the prime time coverage, which is like the consolidated like big events.
So it's mostly been swimming in gymnastics for me. But I've got to see America win a whole bunch of golds. I think I said last week, this is the, these are the two weeks, every couple of years where I'm the most patriotic. And I'm just, they're flying the flag. They're, they're all excited. And I'm like, yes, go America. They had the biggest boat on the same. I know. I love that boat. We got Lebron James at the front. Yeah. I love the flag like George Washington. I love it.
By the way, something that's been fueling the memes here is noob dog. Oh my god, yes. Yeah. So I think most people here don't realize it all. Well, always wonder why is he there? Why is he everywhere in this Olympics? And I think he's a co-host, right? Is that it on NBC? He's, he's there with NBC. He's, he's working for NBC at the Olympics. I don't know what is, nor if he, what its relationship all the time is.
But yeah, he's there for NBC to film a bunch of segments and just be a personality and just be the delightful Snoop Dogg that we all know in the past. Yeah. That also would have it. Yes. Yes. Snoop Dogg is really, it's really interesting because like I was a kid when Snoop Dogg was more known as a musician who was making controversial music. And now he's just like this delightful guy that everyone loves for being adorable most of the time.
So it's really, yeah, it's quite the transition that he's made successfully apparently too. Yeah. You said the Olympics of Ramonni failed very French to you and that's really interesting because I think I speak for many French people that we were very worried about.
That this was going to be the case because when the French tend to be something that they want to look very French, they tend to just take out all of these stereotypical things, cringy things, like people wearing the res and sporting a baguette under the, and then the arm. And dancing the conco, which they did, by the way, but fortunately that was sweet and short. Okay. Did not last to know.
But in the end, we were, I think most people here were pleasantly surprised that this was very, very original show. Yes. Oh yeah, because he's expected. Yeah, it's usually like the boats were interesting in a whole different way than like normally see with people walking out into stadium. And I also kind of like that the show, because the show is usually like 30 minutes or an hour or something at the start and then it's hours of people marching in with their country.
And then this time it was like there was some ceremony, then we watched people coming in, but they were coming in constantly and then there'd be like different segments of the show, a new musician would perform or there'd be a new dance or a new short film in the middle. So it kind of made it more interesting throughout for me. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. But yeah, it was cool that they used the city more even though it rained and although apparently they love that so, but it didn't ruin it by any means I didn't think. I don't think so. Yeah, I think it looked really sick in some places. Yeah. But apparently they did cancel at the last minute a bunch of small performances that were supposed to take place on the roofs.
Okay. Because apparently like they were planning to especially early in the ceremony to flood the roofs around the same with dancers. And there were still some shots that were left in where there's one ballet dancer performing on one roof. And it's a beautiful shot with berries behind him. Apparently it was planned that behind him on other roofs it was to be filled supposed to be filled with dancers, but they had to cancel that because of the plan because I suppose roofs be slippery.
That's a little bit of a bummer, but sure. And they were mostly planning on the golden hour light early in the ceremony, but instead we had gray skies. Well, that was ever still pretty good. Cool. Yeah, and we're filming this at the end or recording this at the end of the first week of the Olympics. I think next week is more of the track and field stuff. So we have no idea how that went out or that that went. So don't hold it against us.
But yeah, last night I got to see the US women's gymnastics all around finals. So Simone Biles winning another gold medal. GG. GG everybody. Well, I have brought an app this week. And it's another new app. Very traditional pick for comfort zone and app. You're shocked, I know. And this is a new app that came out a couple of weeks ago and I probably could have talked about it then.
But I wanted to let it sit for a little bit longer because I have more complicated feelings about it than I felt I could share like right away when it came out. And that app is overcast, which just went through a major rewrite and a new update that released on the 10th anniversary of the app. And I think there's some good and some bad stuff with it. And I think that's what a lot of people are feeling with it, including Marco the developer, Mark Armand.
So I kind of wanted to talk about after maybe a month using it at this point, I think. Like what's going well and what's I think was maybe rushed out too early or I hope that is fixed soon. So this is normally where I would say, nearly on do you listen to podcasts, but I think you do. So what do you use for your podcast app? Are you an overcast fan or do you bounce around? So I am another cast fan, but something happened this year. Apple released transcripts in Apple podcasts.
And that has changed everything for me. I can say change it everything. Because I've been using overcast for years. And I don't even remember since when. So I'm mostly using Apple podcasts currently, but I've been checking out overcast since the redesign the rewrite for the past month. So yeah, yeah. And I think did you do the review on Mac stories? I did. Of course, you beat me again to the punch. This is just what happened. I just I just go through Nilean's like drafts on Mac stories.
And I see what I can talk about. I've got access to the GitHub. Yeah. So yeah, so I've been using. I think you're totally right. I think that transcripts in Apple podcasts is like the best new feature in any podcast app in like years. For me, I think it's the best thing since overcast added clip sharing like four or five years ago, which I think I may be the only person in the world who uses on a regular basis, but I think is really awesome. Yeah, they really good. Yeah. So.
So yeah, I use overcast. I kind of bounce around. I'm. I can't stick with anything forever. So like sometimes I'll be like, I like Castro is queuing and in boxes to my really like that. But then I realized that Castro kind of was let. It withered on the vine for a few years. And the new owners are hopefully going to fix that. But yeah, it has other issues that don't love about it. And then I go to Apple podcasts, but then I find that UI to be a little busy for me. It's not exactly what I want.
Just a couple more taps to get everything that I need. And then I get tired of that. So I go back to overcast or pocket cast or something. And like on the one hand, I'm happy that the Apple ecosystem has so many good podcasts apps. But overcast is the one that I always come back to. So I'm an overcast user right now. I may switch for like a month sometime in the next year, but I'll come back to overcast. I'm sure.
And I was excited for this update because overcast is, I guess I should explain why I use overcast. I use overcast because it just lets me do the very simple thing of subscribing to my podcasts, have new episodes show up like right after they release. And just be reliable, always work. And that was super useful to me. I didn't need a ton of new features. It just worked great for me. And the one piece of feedback I would have for it is it kind of felt like an older iOS app.
Not like a legacy piece of software or anything, but like it worked kind of like how iOS apps worked at five, six, seven years ago. And there's like ever since Swift UI, there's been like kind of these new paradigms and new UI elements that overcast it's used wasn't a huge deal, but it did feel a little old. And it turns out direct people to put a link in the show notes.
But there's a recent episode of the accidental tech podcast where Marco are meant to the developer of overcast talks for like an hour on what the state of overcast was what he felt like he needed to do to like get it up to date and make it a thing he could actually maintain and add new features to going forward because he was apparently just in a mountain of technical debt.
And it was just a pain to do anything. And so really great episode he talks about like how like it got so bad that like he felt like like I should even be a developer anymore because I don't know if I can do this anymore really great episode highly recommend listening to it.
Yeah, so he basically rewrote the entire UI of the iPhone app using Swift UI and it's got a new design that's very similar to the old one but with a couple tweaks and I think the new design is pretty good, but definitely coming in hot is what I would say.
I like the now plain screen. I like that you can like tap the artwork to see the show notes and they just kind of like fade in and cover the whole screen. I like that he's improved the download indicator. I like that he's moved away from the kind of like five pains thing on the now plain screen where you would like swipe left and right to get to different things like I was always like multiple pages away from the thing I needed to do.
And now it's kind of all the small yeah and they were very small. You're right and show notes were weird. Yeah, the new design there, I think, is a step forward overall. I don't think it's perfect. We'll get into that. But yeah, so I do like this new design again, it's built in Swift UI, so it feels a little fresher things just look a little nicer, not like remarkable or anything, but it is definitely nicer than it was before, but there have been a few issues for me and issues are.
Well, there's one big one and one of the things I liked about overcast is that the sink was super fast and super reliable. So like I would listen on my iPhone and then I'd want to switch to my iPad and I could just open the app on my iPad and it was exactly where I was in the same episode. And I could just pick up lock listening there. That doesn't work for me anymore on the new app.
And that's because sink just doesn't work at like literally at all for me. So all of my devices are on different sink profiles because none of them can see the other devices and see that there are sink profiles. They can even use so like it's very strange. I have no idea what's going on there. It's very weird. I take it you have not had that issue. But Marco did release a fix for that. Didn't he? He did. It was in the release notes and it did not fix my issue. Okay. So it.
Yeah, so I've uninstalled the app. I've reinstalled the app. I've tried all the things. Right. Like I'm not new to troubleshooting. I know the basics. So I've done all those things. And then like the tricky thing is I was like, okay, well, maybe I should just like delete the sink profile and like maybe like delete it on all the devices. But there's no OMPL in port or export right now. So I can't save my shows. I'd have to like resubscribed everything again, which I'm.
Loathed to do. I don't particularly want to do that. But maybe I maybe I need to to fix this and get it into a good state. But yeah, that was that's the biggest bummer for me is like. Maybe maybe this literally does me. But it was super reliable for many many years and then this new update came out and like it just didn't work for me anymore, which is a bummer. Yeah, I was about to say you can export your OPMO file on the web. But I know you can import.
You're right. Yeah, you can export. I can see it. Okay. I don't export import. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe I'll just be an iPhone only listener until the import features brought back. But yeah, the other thing that I would love to see improved is the now plain screen, which I said I do like on the whole. I think there are too many buttons too far apart. On that page, though. And what I mean by that is the chapters are kind of up and to the left of the progress bar.
And they're far away from the like audio settings and far away from the info button. And if I want to share an episode. So like I again, I said I do a lot of clip sharing. So I like to share links to podcasts. That's two taps away now. I have to hit the info and then all the way at the top of the screen, I hit the share button. And so there's just a couple things like that that. Oh, and the touch targets. The touch targets are pretty small. Yeah, compared to what they were.
And is yeah, I was talking with someone who uses overcast in their car. And they don't have car player anything. So their phones just kind of mounted up on the dashboard. And they said their biggest challenge with this one is they can't like while they're driving, they can't tap that button because they can't hit it accurately while they were able to swipe more easily with the old UI.
So I don't know what the solution is here. Maybe I should do a mock up and see what makes sense. Maybe I'll decide that, oh, actually he's done it as good as you can do it. But yeah, I'm not quite sure what to do here. But yeah, the touch targets are a little small. And they're all kind of spread out in a way that I don't love personally.
Yeah, maybe I mean, I get the idea of having the chapters button around progress bar, but maybe this should be at the bottom of the screen, like along the sound features and airplay and stuff. Yeah, I kind of think so as well. And like, especially like I'm using an iPhone, like a max phone. There's just so much space down there. I'm not the best phone. Sure. Bigger phones are better.
Yeah, so that's that's a thing. It's not the biggest thing in the world. The sync issues definitely been more of a thing for me. So maybe I should try to fix that through whatever I need, whatever I can do. But yeah, so I know you reviewed it already. But if you could summarize maybe how do you like the new app, the new update, are there anything that stood out to you? I mean, I agree with everything you said, basically, but I do think it's a good.
It's a welcome rewrite. The app feels a lot better overall. And as a longtime fan of the app, I'm excited to... This is how I concluded my review. I'm excited that he has a new foundation to move the app forward. And that's a really good thing because as you said, the app has been stagnating for a while. And I'm excited to see how well it can be updated from now on and how regularly it can be updated from now on.
One thing that I've seen a bunch of people be upset about is the removal of the ability to stream episodes. So now in the new of a cast you have to download episodes and you can't just stream them. But I think that's mitigated with the fact that the app is really fast. Like the server stuff is really fast. I mean, I don't even have to think about it. You just tap on an episode and start playing because the download only took about a few seconds at most.
Yeah. Yeah, maybe more of an issue if you just have slow internet. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. I should say before we get any further, I should say I did... I was a little negative there on the thing that I didn't like. I am super happy that the app was rewritten and is a more maintainable code base that can get updates more easily.
And I hope that it actually pans out and he's able to do a bunch of updates and make the app better and add all these features that he's wanted and users have wanted for a long time. I guess I was coming from a few minutes ago, more of a normal user's perspective of I was using this app that worked a certain way and I was used to it and it changed in ways where the benefits aren't necessarily there yet.
Yeah, right. Some of the things are nicer, but it did lose some features. It lost some functionality and there have been some stability issues which just come with a new software update. But yeah, I think it would have been nice if this update could have been less tied to a milestone.
It seemed very important to him to get the update out on the exact 10th anniversary of the app coming out. And you know, you have to ship eventually. If you wait till it's perfect, you're never going to ship anything. I work in software design. I know how this works. But yeah, I do think it was maybe a little... it came in a little hot.
And more than ideally it would have been. But yeah, again, it is a better foundation and hopefully this will just mean that a month from now, two months from now, all of these complaints are no longer issues. And then we can just keep going forward from there. Yeah, for me, I have an issue right now at Delema because this redesign has made me want to use the app again. But where are the transcripts? I just... I need them now. I didn't know I needed them.
Oh, I know they're so nice. It's really nice. And I know that's really hard to... because of course, Marco isn't going to be able to add transcripts to everything. And be just as nice because the amount of computing power that this requires, unless he's got some third party provider. That's a whole game. Which is going to cost a ton. Yeah. That's not something you can expect in a third-party app like Overcast. So, yeah, I'm struggling. I want to use Overcast. But I can't. I want to read.
I want to read podcasts. I like to read my podcast. I like to read my podcast. Episode title. True. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how he would do that. It is interesting. The one thing that keeps me on Overcast is the clip sharing. And again, I might be one of five people in the world who use it, but it really is so useful to me. I like sharing those on social media. And hopefully it drives at least one or two people to listen to podcasts that they didn't listen to otherwise.
But I love that. The one thing I wish he could add, and he might be able to do this, again, if more than five people used the feature. But what I did for a year, I had a free year of captions, the app, which lets you put a lot of social people with social media accounts use this word lets you put just things. Yeah, yeah. So it's really nice for social media stuff. And I liked basically I would save a clip in overcast.
And then I would open that clip in captions to add visual captions to it as well. So that people would be able to just read along as the clip goes. And I would love it if he could build that into the app somehow. Like I think that would be really, really awesome to not have to use this like hundred dollar a year. Other service to add those. And I'm wondering if like Apple intelligence will let him do that in some way. Like can you do?
Transcribe the audio somehow. I don't really know, but I wonder if that's the way he could do transcripts in a smaller way. That's not like the Apple podcast best in class sort of thing that they have. Something that's working live on the device. Yeah, because you wouldn't want to because you can use like there's a beta of Mac whisper out right now. And there's like transcriptionist. There's a couple transcription apps that let you transcribe audio and video files on the iPhone right now.
But it takes forever and it takes like so much processing power. And it would kill your battery and you'd have to like leave overcast open and screen on for them to work. So yeah. There's really no good way to do that. But if it's only a clip, it's only like 30 seconds, you could probably do that if you really wanted to. What I you say that you're the only one using the clip sharing feature.
But what I see every so often since the addition of transcripts in Apple podcast is people screen recording. I've done this. Yes. It's really recording the transcripts in in Apple podcast to share. Yes. And it's it's honestly kind of better in a way. Like there's there's some complications with it. I have been used to it's kind of hard because the text scrolls and it scrolls out of you. Maybe we don't want it to.
But it's so great to like I think that's more engaging than kind of the videos that overcast does now where it's just like a static image with a progress bar that's going across. Like seeing the words is definitely better. Yeah. So I have a question. Yes. Apple podcasts went away and you couldn't use it anymore. What would you switch to? And if it's overcast, what if that went away, what would you switch to? Oh, okay. I was about to spend. Well, okay. It was just a fast. Yeah.
I realized halfway through the question. It wasn't going to work. That's a tough question. Maybe Castro. I really like the UI in Castro. But Castro is not available on the market and I listen to podcasts on my mic. But I know that can be mitigated because I mean, now that I mostly use my app as. Automatic switching works in good enough to have something playing on a second device while working on the Mac. So I think Castro. Castro, okay. Yeah, it's a Castro. Okay. I'm I think I agree.
I mean, the other option is pocket cast. Which I'm not a fan. I know there's I don't know what it is like pocket casts. Like on paper is so good. And it's everything. It's on every platform. It does like it does act actually really cool sync. It does like Spotify style syncing where like if you're like in the middle of an episode, not only does it sync your position on the other device, but like if you open it on another device. Like the now playing screen is that podcast.
So you can just like immediately pick up where you left off. But like I just don't like using it as much as I like using these other apps. It's weird. I don't quite know what it is. I can put my finger on it. But it's one of those apps that I recommend a ton. And don't like to use my yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's. Oh, man. That might be an interesting thing to write about or do a video about.
I mean, we talked about on the podcast one day of like apps that I love, but I recommend other people use something else. Yeah. That's. That's. Is it in there for me? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think obsidian is in there for me. Like I use obsidian for very specific things that I could not do anywhere else. But if you want to take notes, I recommend Apple notes or something like that. Yeah. Could be a segment for another episode. All right. Chris is writing this down. Oh, yes.
Chris, I hope you're taking notes. I hope you're working, Chris. You're not slacking, right? Supposedly you're in bed. Listening to good music, I hope. Which could be anything. Could be. I'm not applying anything at all. Should we check on Chris? Because so he's not here, but I know someone. Have to do this on real time. But I know someone who can sub in for him. So yeah, Chris, why are you up to this week during COVID and stuff? Hey, thanks for checking in.
While I'm recovering, I'm diving deep into some iPad OS projects. I've been meaning to tackle. You wouldn't believe the new shortcuts I've been able to automate. Oh, also, it's a good time to catch up on some reading. Oh, you read. Draft punk actually claim their helmets improve their music. Can you believe that? It's just another reason I can't stand them. Oh, my God. Oh, he's the first. He's not ready to come back. No, he needs to change his mind. Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris.
Oh, yeah, they're the same person. Man, sound did the same too. Really iconic. Wow, that was anyway. So yeah, that's overcast. Some good stuff, some bad stuff. But hopefully it's just like incredible update after incredible update from that one. Yeah. And this is when we would normally go into our challenge. But we thought that it was not fair since this is a podcast about points and winning now. For and fairness and fairness things I have not experienced.
I haven't experienced winning or fairness in any of these. I've had a bunch of fairness. Lots of winning as well. An entire episode was just about you winning. It's tough, tough for us. So we're going to hold off. We're going to hold off. As a reminder, we're looking for games daily games that we think are excellent. We're going to try to find what we think is the best for us personally. And then we're going to each bring one that we are going to fight to the death.
And we'll have one game that we think is the best for everybody. So another week to prep and get something really, really good. Just knew that I have a good pick. I have a better pick. I'm going to win so good. This is my week. I'm finally going to get a W on the board. Oh, sure. I feel so good about it every week and then I lose. So this is a good episode because I can't lose. There's no contest. I mean, okay. Yeah. I was about to bring in something. I know. I know you. I should not. I should.
I'll never win. I'll never win. So challenge next week. Same thing as before. Yeah. I don't think we have anything else this week. It's going to be a slightly shorter episode than normal, but I enjoyed doing this. It was cool. We hope Chris is back. Despite all the the gruff, we do hope he's back next week and feeling great. He's also going to listen to this episode and have a lot of things to say. So I expect our follow up is going to be significant next week.
But yeah, you can find the rest of my work on birch tree dot me. It's very right. Everything also on social media links in the description. Neil, you have anything going on this week or anything you want to plug? I'm not just fine. You're on master on on max stories that net. And and and on my couch watching TV. Excellent. Yeah, Lex. Yeah. Oh, and I don't have the fancy app that app that Chris has for picking questions. What's your favorite color, though? Oh, it's a good one. Classic.
Obviously this this changes throughout the years. But currently I would say orange, but not orange orange. Like not orange like this headset that I'm wearing. Although that's pink according to Apple, but there we it. I would say like kind of mustard yellow. Almost orange. Yeah, that shade. Okay. Excellent. What about you? So for me, I think it has to be purple and any purple. I just like purple. Okay. I agree. Yes. You're allowed. Okay, it is allowed. It's not illegal like some other things.
It's allowed. Yeah. I mean Chris is going to pick black, which. Oh, brown. I mean, have you seen his setup? YouTube. Oh, a deep blue. He would be with deep blue maybe. Okay, Chris, another follow up item for tomorrow for the next week. I can ask robot Chris, but that's going to take. Oh, yeah, that the lag is insane with these robots. Okay. Well, thank you everybody for listening. We look forward to seeing you next time. And we'll see. We'll see you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.