Let’s Get Vertical

·59 min·5 clips

Florence Ion reveals she started a new job at PCMag and requested a Mac to deeply cover smartphones and Android.

The Material Podcast identifies itself as episode 562. Florence Ion introduces herself as host, with Andy joining her for the episode. Their opening exchange turns a compliment into a comic detour through immediate family, blood and tissue compatibility, and how far away someone might be when help is actually needed. Kidney donation becomes part of the bit, along with a possible 3,000-mile flight, a stopover, and TSA. The conversation keeps circling practical survivability, using New England and a home county as rough measures of distance. Florence notes that the show has already taken a quick edit break. She then turns the detour into the segue for what she wanted to discuss with Andy. The browser becomes the main event. Chrome is described as having been in a holding pattern before speeding up. Over the previous six to nine months, the hosts say it has picked up modern touches that change how it feels day to day. Split view gets the most direct practical praise. The layout is treated as a productivity feature that makes web work easier. Vertical tabs come next as another idea linked to Arc. Arc appears as the upstart browser that pushed comparisons with older browser habits. Safari then gets its turn. One speaker explains using it as a test bed for web projects, where no one is logged in and the site appears as it would to a random visitor. That habit has led to more Safari time over the past couple of months. The discussion asks whether Safari's speed and power-efficiency advantages still make the case for sticking with it. Chrome is said to have surpassed Safari four, five, or six years ago, while its power efficiency is described as close enough for the speaker's needs. The episode closes by folding a playful reference to living, laughing, and loving into a warm sign-off for the next seven days.

As heard by us

A conversational browser discussion makes Chrome's split view and vertical tabs feel newly practical.

This Material episode frames the web browser as a work tool that had started to feel stalled before a recent run of practical changes. The conversation focuses on Chrome's split view and vertical tabs, with vertical tabs linked to an idea Andy associates with Arc, then moves…

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Why you'd press play

You want Chrome to feel less stuck in old browser habits, with split view already useful and vertical tabs entering the conversation.

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