Comfort Zone will return

We did 113 episodes of Comfort Zone, and it's been incredibly rewarding to work on and a joy to record with Chris and Niléane. It must also be said, I greatly appreciate Federico and John investing in our show, giving us a platform, and handling some of the back-end bits that we didn't particularly want to do ourselves. From a content perspective, MacStories was wonderfully hands-off. There were no directives on what to talk about and no rules on what we could or couldn't say. We got to make the show we wanted, and that was great.

I don't know if you've heard…but MacStories is posting on X again, as a Federico and John with their personal accounts. This has led to a bit of unrest, to say the least, amongst their audience and the MacStories contributors. Over the weekend, I wrote up a member's post explaining some of my thoughts on the matter, and I'm opening it up to everybody today who's curious. The TLDR is that I understand and respect the outrage some felt, but I think it's complicated and I don't have nearly as strong feelings about the move as others in our community.

One of the things I love about Comfort Zone is that while Chris, Niléane, and I agree on a lot of things, we don't agree on everything. While there were varied responses to this in the community, there were also among the three of us. An unwritten but rigorously followed rule of Comfort Zone is that if all three of us aren't into doing something, we don't do it. This meant that as a team, we did not think that MacStories was the right home for Comfort Zone anymore.

This basically meant we had two options: we could end the show or we could keep doing it, but on our own. And friends, let me let you in on a little secret…a clever hack to keep up with your friends all the time is to have a podcast with them. The show had to go on!

We appreciate Federico and John for both encouraging us to keep the show going as well as helping with the transition to this new era. Comfort Zone is a MacStories podcast, and they didn't strictly have to help here, so we very much appreciate their support.

We're taking a short break as we sort out the details, but we plan on being back in your earbuds soon! I'll of course talk about it here when we've got more, but you can follow the new Comfort Zone Mastodon account if you'd like to keep up with us.

Also don't tell anyone, but we are looking to shake up the format a little bit to keep it fresh. 🤫