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Upgrade

226: The 2018 Upgradies

 

00:00:00   [Intro music]

00:00:18   From Relay FM, this is the 5th Annual Upgradies Awards.

00:00:24   The Upgradies Awards for 2018 are brought to you by Pingdom, Luna Display, Kain11, and Eero.

00:00:32   And here are your hosts, Jason Snell and Myke Hurley.

00:00:35   Thank you Myke Hurley, and hello my co-host Myke Hurley!

00:00:39   Hi Jason Snell, I am so excited. We are here for the 5th Annual Upgradies Awards.

00:00:46   The Upgradians have been voting en masse. I cannot believe this is our 5th year for the Upgradies.

00:00:55   How incredible is that?

00:00:56   When I think back to the 2014 Upgradies, the 1st Annual Upgradies, or as we said at the time,

00:01:03   the Upgradies, because there's no such thing as 1st Annual, it's hard to believe how far we've come

00:01:10   in that people submit things and we're organized and 5 years in we have a track record now,

00:01:18   we have a history of giving out awards. It's quite a thing. It is everything I think you

00:01:24   dreamed about 5 years ago and more.

00:01:26   It is now. It is a thing that is looked forward to. It is on the podcast calendar.

00:01:31   I wanted to do something special for the 5th year. So we have something new, and that is

00:01:38   Upgradies.com. I have been working with Zach Knox. Zach is responsible for the Interactive

00:01:45   Draft Scorecards. With Zach's help, we have built a website that hosts every runner up and winner

00:01:53   of all of the Upgradies in history, including the 2018. So I would maybe suggest you can go

00:02:01   to the website, but don't look at the 2018s if you don't want to see spoilers. But that's all

00:02:05   going to be there and that is going to live now. And every year we will add more and more to that

00:02:10   site. We'll add all of the information and I want to get your feedback and we can try and add some

00:02:15   different features. But I'm super excited about this. It has all of the information going back

00:02:20   from 2014 to now with every runner up and every winner in all the categories, including the

00:02:26   Lifetime Achievement Award winners. Zach has been incredible to work with on this and I am so,

00:02:31   so excited that we now have Upgradies.com and that is our way that we will celebrate our fifth

00:02:36   annual Upgrady Awards. Yeah, you know what we should do is we should make it so that the website

00:02:40   plays the Upgradies music in the background or something just to be extra fancy. I don't know.

00:02:45   And the like of this confetti falls from the top of the website. Oh yeah. Let's run over some of

00:02:52   the rules just before we get into our first categories. So we are keeping the same categories

00:02:57   as last year. Nothing's changed there. We've not added anything. We've kept the same categories.

00:03:01   As also from the 2017 Upgradies, we have brought in the votes from the listeners, from our

00:03:07   Upgradients. So we've had nominations throughout every single category and what we'll do is we're

00:03:14   going to be stating the three highest percentage Upgradient votes. So the three items or apps or

00:03:21   shows or whatever it is for each category that got the highest percentage of votes from the

00:03:26   Upgradients. We will also be adding in our own nominations and then me and Jason will discuss

00:03:32   for each category which one we think will take the win for that category. And also as a note,

00:03:40   we have Lifetime Achievement Award winners. These are for any app, for any service, for any show,

00:03:46   for any story that has won three Upgradies will become a Lifetime Achievement Award winner,

00:03:52   which means that it won't be eligible for any future voting. But we will mention it every

00:03:57   single year as a Lifetime Achievement Award winner because I think there are some categories that

00:04:02   would just win forever I think. So we decided that we would add that in.

00:04:08   All right, so Jason Snell, are you ready to get into this?

00:04:14   I'm ready, Myke. Let's make it happen.

00:04:18   The first category is for the best overall iOS app. I will start with our Upgradient votes. So

00:04:27   in third place is Apollo for Reddit, which is a Reddit client, Apollo, with 7% of the vote,

00:04:34   followed up by 1Password with 7% of the vote. And with a huge 40% of the Upgradients votes is

00:04:44   Overcast by Marco Ahman, the podcast app that I am expecting probably around the same amount

00:04:49   of percentage of our listeners are listening to this show in right now. So that's a pretty huge

00:04:56   win from the Upgradients votes there for Overcast. When I was adding all of that up and I was doing,

00:05:03   I had this very complicated spreadsheet, Jason, that I built, which does some calculations that

00:05:08   I don't remember how I made it. So I made it last year and left it for myself in Google Sheets.

00:05:13   And when I opened it this year, I was like, "I have no idea how it's doing any of this,

00:05:16   but I'm so happy that it's doing it." So that's pretty great, right? Overcast 40%.

00:05:21   That's a big percentage there for Overcast. Well, you know, 100% of Upgrade listeners listen

00:05:27   to podcasts. They most certainly do. And a lot of them listen on Overcast. Yeah, story checks out.

00:05:33   So what is yours? I want to know your vote. What is your nomination?

00:05:36   Well, I'm going to take you back to the episode we did a couple weeks ago where we talked about

00:05:43   how I'm finally using the Apple Pencil for something and how the Apple Pencil and the

00:05:50   new iPad together have kind of, I don't want to say rekindled because I use, when I travel,

00:05:56   especially, I do podcast editing on my iPad and have done that for a couple of years now.

00:06:02   But with upgrades to the software, there was a new version this year, the Apple Pencil,

00:06:07   the new iPad Pro. I am now using Ferrite Recording Studio version two to edit. I actually edited the

00:06:14   last like six episodes of The Incomparable on it, even though I haven't been traveling.

00:06:18   I just edit it out in bed, in the living room, on the couch, wherever, on my iPad,

00:06:24   even though I've got my iMac Pro here at my desk because I like doing it so much. So I think,

00:06:30   and believe it or not, although it is a newcomer winner in the past, it has never been nominated

00:06:38   for this. So I'm going to say Ferrite Recording Studio 2 is my favorite overall iOS app.

00:06:44   So for me, I was really putting some thought into this and, you know, like OnePassword, Overcast,

00:06:51   right? Some of the upgrading folks like totally get it. Like I use these apps every single day.

00:06:55   I love them. But I was thinking like if I think about an application over the last year since the

00:07:01   previous upgrade is, has continued to move forward. For me, I'm going to be putting my vote again with

00:07:08   the winner of last year in this entire category, which is Carrot Weather. I love Carrot Weather.

00:07:14   And I think for me is a shining example of an application that just continues to be progressed.

00:07:21   I think that it is wonderful. The features just keep getting added and added and added. Like,

00:07:26   I feel like every few weeks, maybe every couple of months, there's like new big features being

00:07:30   added to the app. It only continues to get better. So for me, it is my nomination for best overall

00:07:38   iOS app. But nobody wants to hear you talk about the weather, Myke. No, wait a second.

00:07:43   They do this time, Jason. Here you are advocating for a weather app.

00:07:48   I actually only started using Carrot Weather, I think last year. It may have even been after

00:07:53   you praised it so much. And yeah, it's great. I use it all the time. I use it on my Apple Watch.

00:08:00   It's got, there's that angle, which I know you don't use an Apple Watch anymore, but the...

00:08:04   It was my favorite Apple Watch app.

00:08:06   The customization you can do on complications is remarkable. I, yeah, I like it a lot. I,

00:08:13   I, you know, it's, it's a weather app. I don't use weather apps on my phone all the time,

00:08:19   but when I do... This is the one.

00:08:22   It's Carrot Weather. Yeah, absolutely. So we start with our first category with

00:08:27   no consensus. So really what we have available to us, I guess, is these five apps, right? Carrot

00:08:36   Weather, Ferrite, Apollo, 1Password, and Overcast. And now we need to come to a decision about which

00:08:42   one of these we want to make the best iOS app of 2018. So...

00:08:47   Well, what's funny is that the three apps that have been put forward, two of them have won the

00:08:52   best iOS app, and one of them has won the best newcomer iOS app. So we know they're all

00:08:59   applications. They're all previous award winners. These are already... Mm-hmm. They are. They are.

00:09:03   I don't know, Myke, this is always difficult because this is, this is the, this is the stuff

00:09:08   you never get to see in the other awards where, you know, it's the back room.

00:09:12   Behind the scenes. Right. And yet here we just do it on the podcast.

00:09:16   So you can see how arbitrary it can be. So here's the thing for me, right? I love

00:09:22   Overcast. It's easily one of my favorite iOS apps. I agree. And I think the work that Marco

00:09:27   has done this year on the redesign of the now playing screen is wonderful. I absolutely love

00:09:32   it. It's given the app like a fresh coat of paint for me. It continues to be as, for me,

00:09:37   as good as it's ever been. And I think is only getting better. So I would have no problem at all

00:09:44   putting my vote behind Overcast. I mean, I like Overcast too. I would,

00:09:49   I would choose Overcast over Carrot Weather, I think. And you're saying you would choose

00:09:53   Overcast over Fairite? Here's the thing. Fairite is a great app. I know it's a great app because

00:09:59   you use it. I just don't use it. Yeah. Yeah. And I am, I am like, I can sit, I continue to think

00:10:06   of the day that I will, but it's still not that time for me, you know, like I've tinkered around

00:10:11   with it, but you know, this, and this is the same with any, I think any pro application on any

00:10:16   platform has this problem. I open it and I don't know what to do. Right. Like I am overwhelmed by

00:10:23   it. And I've had that recently with like, I downloaded some of those affinity apps,

00:10:27   like affinity design and, and you know, like, you know, like on iOS and like, I just had to close

00:10:33   it after 10 minutes. It's like, I cannot fathom what I'm supposed to do here, even though I know

00:10:38   people do amazing things with them. Yeah. Well, it requires work to get into a pro app and to figure

00:10:44   it out. And if you're using some other tool for that task now, as you are with Logic, we were just

00:10:50   having a conversation with Stephen Hackett about this very thing. Like it's not Logic, it's

00:10:54   different and you have to adapt. And I remember, I remember why I got, I got a copy of Logic and it

00:11:02   sat in a box. That's how long ago it was for more than a year before I attempted to edit a podcast

00:11:10   in Logic, because I knew that when I took that, instead of doing an edit in two or three hours,

00:11:19   I knew that when I switched to Logic, it was going to take me two, three times as long because I was

00:11:24   going to have to figure it out as I went and not just once, but like two, three times as long for

00:11:29   months. And it's, you know, it's a big ask to go and adopt any new piece of especially complex pro

00:11:39   software, especially if you're used to thinking of it in a certain way. So that it's a real

00:11:43   challenge. And, you know, I, I decided to dive in a few years ago and I have no regrets, but it is

00:11:50   hard, especially if you've got, you know, your iMac sitting there with Logic and you know exactly what

00:11:54   to do and you can do it in, you know, the most efficient way possible. And I think, I think I

00:12:00   struggle to give this award to a professional app, honestly, like especially in such a narrow

00:12:09   category, which is podcast production on the iPad. Um, again, it's, this is nothing against

00:12:14   Ferrite. It's just, this is like, what is the best overall iOS app? Uh, that's, that's where I,

00:12:21   it becomes more complicated for me. I will say when somebody says, what, what iOS app are you

00:12:25   most excited about coming to the Mac in 2019? I, I answer Ferrite. Me too though, because

00:12:31   there being a tool on all platforms, which is the same probably, uh, that I know can produce

00:12:38   podcasts because Jason does it. That, that makes Ferrite an even more tantalizing prospect to me,

00:12:45   but it's still not where I'm gonna like start editing right now. Right? Like the, this episode

00:12:51   of upgrade is not going to be edited in Ferrite, but I mean, I'm going to do it in Logic because

00:12:55   it's what I know and trust, but... Or is it? No, it's not. It's not. I think we should give this

00:13:01   one to the listeners, Myke. Okay. So we're going to say then that the 2018 winner for the best iOS

00:13:08   app is Overcast. And what I think is so wonderful about this is Overcast was the first winner in

00:13:14   this category and it is now in the fifth. So congratulations to Marco Arment of Overcast

00:13:21   for this win. And congratulations to the Upgradians, I guess, because they, uh, they took

00:13:26   it from us. They sure did. Again, like, you know, I totally get the bias in this, right? Like you

00:13:33   listen to podcasts, you probably like podcast apps. It makes perfect sense, but that is why

00:13:37   these are the awards from a podcast. And I think it fits perfectly. I, I, I agree. It's also in my

00:13:44   dock on my iPhone. Like it is one of the four apps that I use the most on my iPhone. Absolutely.

00:13:50   So when I, we're now going to move into the best newcomer iOS app. When I was looking at the, uh,

00:13:58   the Upgradians votes for the best overall iOS app and saw that 40% swing for Overcast, I was like,

00:14:05   there's no way anything's going to beat that. Well, I was wrong. So these are the Upgradians

00:14:09   votes drafts five and at 5.1% of the vote Apollo for Reddit, which technically came out in October

00:14:17   of 2017, but it got 6.9% of the vote. So I'm kind of fine with being in there, but the winner with

00:14:25   46.5% of the Upgradians votes for the best newcomer iOS app in 2018 is Shortcuts. Shortcuts.

00:14:34   This one feels pretty cotton dry to me, Jason. You know, the, um, you know, what's funny is that,

00:14:42   um, I believe we put in our, in our entries before the results of the Upgradians were known

00:14:47   and both of us picked shortcuts too. So we agree with you listeners.

00:14:54   This is, you know, what, what better iOS app has occurred this year? And I know it comes from

00:15:02   Apple technically, but this, this app is, you know, look, workflow one in 2014 is best newcomer.

00:15:09   Yes. Again, the original winner has sort of come back around again, uh, to be the winner in the

00:15:15   newcomer category, which is weird, but, uh, it makes sense. One best iOS app workflow did in

00:15:21   2016. So it has only, you know, it has a great lineage in these awards, you know, like the

00:15:27   workflow has, because it is such an incredible application and when it becomes part of Apple,

00:15:33   when it's part of technically the operating system, how could it not win?

00:15:38   Yeah, it's, it's a huge step that such a great app got swallowed whole by Apple and then just

00:15:46   emerged as itself, but now it's on the inside and it has all the power and the marketing reach and

00:15:53   all of these things and they, they didn't mess it up. I mean, that's the, that's the bottom line is

00:15:57   that not only is it great, but Apple didn't like break it into little pieces and make it kind of

00:16:02   a muted version of itself. It is still, you know, all the stuff we loved about workflow and then

00:16:09   access to new stuff and with a huge amount of potential on the horizon. So, uh, yeah, it's, uh,

00:16:15   it's great. This one's easy. It's very easy when, you know, short shortcuts, best newcomer iOS app

00:16:22   2018. It's kind of funny. It's now won three awards, but not in the same category. It's,

00:16:28   I never would have imagined an app to win best newcomer twice. Twice. How could that be? Right.

00:16:32   But I think it's totally legit. I feel like the counter starts again with shortcuts, you know,

00:16:37   it's, it's, it's different now. This is a new owner, new name. Uh, and, and as you said about

00:16:43   Apollo coming out in 2017, it's like also, you know, we make the rules. So yeah, we make these

00:16:51   rules. All right. Let's take a break before we get into the, uh, best overall Mac app. Uh, the best

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00:18:04   Best overall Mac apps. So the Upgradients voted thusly with 4.7% of the vote goes to

00:18:13   OmniFocus. 4.9% of the vote goes to Things. This was super interesting to me. One that they're

00:18:20   so close and then also that Things won because OmniFocus seems to really be the flag bearer

00:18:28   for this stuff. And then at 5.6% of the vote is 1Password. This category had probably the most

00:18:38   singular entries of any category because the Upgradients got to just write in what their

00:18:44   favorite Mac apps were and oh boy was there some stuff I'd never heard of. But it's super close in

00:18:48   the vote. 1Password at 5.6% takes the Upgradients votes. Jason, I'm going to be completely honest

00:18:54   with you here. I have no real dog in this race. I don't really know where to put my vote. It's just

00:19:02   going to go to stuff that I've voted for in the past. The tools that I am using. Tools like Final

00:19:07   Cut or Logic or Audio Hijack. That's where my vote is going to go. For me, I don't really know where

00:19:15   to put it. So I want to see what you have to say and then contrast that with the Upgradients.

00:19:21   - Well, here's the truth, Myke. And this goes back to our conversation about iOS. I think it

00:19:27   says a lot about where the Mac is today and where it's going. This is a category and doing my

00:19:34   favorites of the year list for six colors. And quite honestly, even back when I worked at Mac

00:19:38   World, the Eddy Awards got harder and harder to come up with Mac Awards in because the Mac as a

00:19:45   platform, there's still some stuff happening, but it is slow. It has sort of crystallized. That's

00:19:53   just the truth of it. I think that's one of the huge motivators behind Apple trying to make it

00:19:58   possible for people who use UIKit to write iOS apps to have those apps run on the Mac is that

00:20:03   it's they've got a huge developer base that knows how to make iOS apps and they can't write Mac apps

00:20:10   without learning new stuff. And this is going to be a much easier path for them. And I would

00:20:14   make a prediction that next year's Mac apps categories and the Upgradients are going to be

00:20:19   way more interesting because of it. And so, I mean, this is just the truth. I love my Mac,

00:20:25   but my Mac, the tools I use on my Mac are largely versions of the tools I used on my Mac a long time

00:20:30   ago. It doesn't really change. In fact, one might say the appeal of the Mac is that it doesn't

00:20:35   really change, that it's the tools that you... That's the kind of tool it is now is it's the

00:20:39   stuff that you rely on. Like BB Edit, I could give BB Edit an award every time because I've been using

00:20:45   it to write on my Mac for 20 years or whatever. And if you look at our winners in these categories,

00:20:52   it is often just the tools we use because the most important things we do on our Mac, you and I,

00:20:57   are our professional tools. So in this category, Final Cut, Logic, Audio Hijack, and Fantastic

00:21:05   Hal when it came out, which is a great app, but it's a utility and Fantastic Hal 2, one best

00:21:11   newcomer. So, I mean, there's not a huge flow of Mac apps where you're like, "Whoa, this blows me

00:21:17   away." The apps that I spend most of my time in, and this has been true for the last few years,

00:21:22   there's probably five of them, and they haven't changed. It's what's in my talk, right? It's like

00:21:29   Safari and Twitterrific and Slack and iTunes and Fantastic Hal and maybe something like

00:21:37   Sound Studio and it's Logic and Final Cut and BB Edit. And I mean, it's the tools... So what I'm

00:21:44   saying is it's not a very exciting category. - This was the reason we created the Upgradients

00:21:49   voting last year because the two of us couldn't really come up, especially in the newcomer Mac app

00:21:54   category as well. We just weren't sure that we had enough to say ourselves, so we brought in the

00:22:02   Upgradients and that has been great because these three applications, these three Mac apps, and

00:22:06   again, for the newcomer Mac app is maybe stuff with stuff I haven't used, some of it, and I think

00:22:11   that it adds into the conversation overall. But do you actually have a specific application that you

00:22:19   wanted to pick rather than just going to the Upgradients for this vote? - I did and I did not

00:22:24   look at our history when I picked it. Basically, I wanna put in, and again, it's because of what I

00:22:30   do, but I wanna put a word in for Rogue Amoeba in general because that is a company that makes great

00:22:38   Mac apps and they make great Mac apps that are mostly around sound, they're around audio,

00:22:43   and they are building modern, great-looking, functional, clever Mac apps. And quite honestly,

00:22:52   this is an area where iOS can't eat the max lunch because iOS can't do audio stuff. iOS apps can't

00:22:59   do, they don't have access. And Rogue Amoeba... So I wrote down Audio Hijack, which has one before.

00:23:05   They've added some stuff this year. So all of the live streams we all do now are out of Audio

00:23:11   Hijack. That actually, while I was at your bachelor party... - Yeah, we were sitting next to each other

00:23:16   on the sofa. - Paul Kaphas has pushed out the beta note. Literally, 80% of the people on the

00:23:24   Audio Hijack beta for live streaming were in the room because it was you and me and Stephen and

00:23:29   Marco. I think Dan Warren was the only one other person on the beta list who wasn't there.

00:23:35   It was... But that was huge because they had discontinued their old app, NiceCast, and then

00:23:41   they built that app's functionality essentially into just an update to Audio Hijack. And so now

00:23:48   I can record. I record my microphone, the Skype connection. I build, for the incomparable, I build

00:23:54   our Bootleg MP3. It just... I don't do anything to it. When I'm done, I stop recording and I

00:24:00   upload the resulting Bootleg file that is set. It's an MP3, it's got the show art. And now I

00:24:04   live stream in there too. I'm compressing the audio on the fly so all the volumes are matched

00:24:10   in the Bootleg. That happens in Audio Hijack. It's amazing. And it's that super simple...

00:24:16   Again, it's pro tool, but once you get used to it, the blocks and the flow chart interface,

00:24:23   it's super visual. You can see what is happening. That's Krista Murgen who designed that.

00:24:30   So they updated it this year. And then I'll throw in, they have Farrago, which is their

00:24:35   soundboard utility. And we used soundboard from... Oh, what was the name of that company that

00:24:40   basically went out of business? Ambrosia for years and years. But it was an old piece of software.

00:24:48   Well, Rokamiba wrote Farrago, which is if you want to play sounds into audio, whether you're

00:24:54   being a DJ or whatever, or a podcaster. So they brought that out and then they had a new version

00:25:00   of Loopback this year, which is a great tool for creating virtual in and out interfaces. So you can

00:25:07   move audio around on your Mac from app to app. These are all great tools. So I wrote down Audio

00:25:12   Hijack, but when I think about Mac development, one of the few places where I see really clever

00:25:19   original pushing the platform forward for what it's good for, it's the Rokamiba stuff. So that's

00:25:25   kind of my plug for Audio Hijack, new version in general and all of Rokamiba in even more general.

00:25:34   I would like to give the award to Audio Hijack, purely because of the fact that they added the

00:25:40   live streaming functionality into it, which was a real big help for me. Because it made our stream

00:25:46   sound better as well as just save us, because Nicecast was really an application that was

00:25:50   kind of just clinging onto the cliff with the edge of its fingertips. And there was always complaints

00:25:56   that the audio levels were all wrong, and I can now fix all of that and have fixed all of that,

00:26:00   because Audio Hijack is like shortcuts, but for audio, in a way that you can visually build it.

00:26:07   But I could never fix it in Nicecast because it was just too confusing for me.

00:26:11   There was a way to add a plugin to compress the audio and stuff, but that old interface,

00:26:15   which was the old Audio Hijack interface, was just so cryptic and the new one is so simple.

00:26:20   So that's great. I mean, we'll give it to Audio Hijack, but in general, I would say it's also

00:26:26   kind of an acknowledgement of the other apps that they're building, because they have this whole

00:26:31   suite of really great audio apps and you might need only one of them or you might need all of

00:26:36   them. I need all of them. But it's great. - Rokamiba are a shining example of what

00:26:42   people consider Mac apps to be. They're not just good apps on the Mac. They are good Mac apps.

00:26:49   There are a lot of good apps on the Mac, but they don't feel like Mac apps.

00:26:53   Audio Hijack and all of the other Rokamiba apps feel like good Mac apps. They are definitely like

00:27:00   they hold that. That's the thing that they're very good at. Two time winner. Two time winner,

00:27:06   if it ever wins again. Lifetime achievement. Paul, I don't know what you're gonna have to do for us

00:27:12   to win again, but you never know. Maybe kill another one of your apps and add it into Audio

00:27:16   Hijack. I don't know. That's what you gotta do. So we now move into, I think, an even more

00:27:20   complicated category, which is the best newcomer Mac app. The Upgradients voted thusly. At 5.8%

00:27:27   of the vote is Agenda, which is that note-taking/calendar app. OmniFocus 3 brings 7.1% of the

00:27:35   vote and the Drafts 5 Beta is at 8.9%. This is unprecedented, I think. Well, at least from the

00:27:45   Upgradients, we did give Forecast, which was Marco's app, actually. We put that in this very

00:27:52   category in 2016 when it was just a beta. So I correct myself. It is, in fact, a very

00:27:59   precedented thing that there would be a Mac beta app in this category. I have absolutely no, um,

00:28:05   even a hint of a nominee for this one. Do you? Yeah, I do. I think it's great that the Upgradients

00:28:13   helped us out here. The problem is that I've never used any of these apps. Me either. Absolutely

00:28:20   none of them. Doesn't mean we can't give the vote to it, but I have not used any of them.

00:28:26   Yeah, so, uh, I am going to make a nomination that is going to be unpopular. Oh dear. It is,

00:28:34   it is in fact, an app that I am on the record not liking. This is interesting. We're setting

00:28:45   this up interestingly. Okay. Here's the thing. What happened on the Mac this year that added

00:28:52   functionality that made me happy. And the fact is adding the home app in Mojave so that I could turn

00:29:01   my lights on and off and stuff from and get alerts from my lock, my smart lock when it opens and

00:29:08   stuff. That is, that is the thing that I appreciated the most, uh, that was new on my Mac this year.

00:29:15   So I'm going to nominate the home app. It's straight out of iOS and it's coming to your Mac

00:29:20   and now, oh look, there it is. It's got, it's the home app everybody. Yay. I can't, I don't know if

00:29:27   I can, I don't know if I can do this. I just, for the, like the, the, the anger that it will

00:29:34   bring about in the upgradients that the best newcomer Mac app is a must ban app.

00:29:39   It's just like a bad Mac app and an okay iOS app. You're worried that they're going to bring their,

00:29:44   their torches and their pitchforks to Castle upgrade. I'm scared. Throw it out, throw the

00:29:50   monster out. Well, like I don't have a dog in this race. I've not used any of the applications that

00:29:55   the upgradients voted. I've not even used the home app because, uh, the only app that I have

00:30:00   on Mojave is the Mac mini. And to be honest, I completely forgot that the home app even existed.

00:30:04   So I'm going to leave this one down to you. I am absolving myself of picking the winner in this,

00:30:10   in this category. Well, um, I, I don't because I didn't, so one thing that I didn't do that

00:30:19   I probably should have done. Um, but I don't think I saw the list of upgrading votes was actually try

00:30:24   out all of the upgrading nominees since I haven't like agenda looks really good. Um, I'm the focus

00:30:31   everybody loves one of Apple's awards. I think it did right. Like it won the Apple design award,

00:30:37   I think, or one of the, um, Oh, it was the max story select. That's what it got. Uh, sure.

00:30:42   Of course. I think we need in, in, instead of leaving this category vacant, I think we just

00:30:48   need to bow to the will of the, of the 8.9% of upgrade Ian's and give it to the largest

00:30:53   voted, uh, vote block, which is the drafts five beta people love drafts. It's great on iOS. Uh,

00:31:02   having it be on the Mac is also great. And the upgrade Ian's have spoken. This is a combination

00:31:07   host choice and listeners choice award. Uh, and, uh, you know, we decide who lives and who dies,

00:31:13   but in this case we say, uh, very well then upgrade Ian's well done drafts five beta.

00:31:18   Congratulations to drafts. Um, agile tortoise to Greg. Uh, I'm looking forward to playing

00:31:25   in our spreadsheet. You didn't even put home in as a runner up. No, no, the runners up are

00:31:30   only focused three and agenda. I will not, I just, I appreciate what you're trying to do with that.

00:31:36   It's like, it's an interesting pick. Oh, you're changing it. Huh? Okay. Home is a runner up. You

00:31:41   can't take that away from me. Okay. So drafts five is the winner. OmniFocus three and home

00:31:47   are the runners up for the best newcomer Mac app. So we now move into, uh, we move into some

00:31:54   categories that I know very well. Uh, we move into our video and categories and we're going to start

00:32:00   off with our game of the year. Um, the upgrade Ian's voted with 6.8% for Pokemon. Let's go.

00:32:07   16.9% voted for Spiderman on PS4 and 18.5% voted for red dead redemption too.

00:32:14   I found it very interesting here. The God of war, which picked up a lot of the game of the year and

00:32:19   many video game outlets did not make it in to the top three and had less than Pokemon 6.8% of the

00:32:26   vote. So, um, I'm going to say, I mean, I I've, I've spoken about this, uh, on remaster. We,

00:32:33   we did our game of the year. My game of the year is Pokemon. Let's go because of the nostalgia

00:32:37   that I have for the Pokemon series and Pokemon. Let's go does an incredible job of making me feel

00:32:44   like a 10 year old. Again. Um, you know, I've been playing Pokemon games for 20 years and

00:32:49   Pokemon. Let's go is a remake of probably my favorite. You know, it goes back to the

00:32:55   original roots, but is the story of Pokemon yellow. Um, I love some of the additions that

00:33:01   they've made and having a game like this with this detail on the Nintendo switch,

00:33:06   I'm so excited for the future of the Pokemon series. Um, so Pokemon let's go is my nomination

00:33:12   for game of the year. So I have, uh, an X-Box and I have a, uh, switch. Although again, my son

00:33:20   basically is the one who plays them. Um, I don't have a PS4, which is why I haven't played Spiderman,

00:33:25   which is one of those things where, and this has happened to me multiple times in the past,

00:33:29   where I think to myself, boy, I kind of just want to buy a console just so I can play one game on

00:33:34   it. And you know what happens after that? I don't play it. That's the truth of it. Cause the truth

00:33:39   of it is I've learned this about myself that I'm never going to commit a long amount of time

00:33:43   to a console game. I'm never going to have enough time to sit in front of a TV and, and play.

00:33:51   I will tell you though, I know this is kind of pointless to say this, but, um, if you were ever

00:33:56   going to do it, Jason, this Spiderman game is the game because the story you would absolutely adore.

00:34:03   The story is so good. The problem is again, that I just don't, I just don't see myself putting in

00:34:09   that kind of time on any game ever. Yeah. You're looking at 25, 30 hours to get through the story.

00:34:15   It's just, I just don't think I would, I would ever do that. That's just, I'm trying to be,

00:34:18   uh, be realistic about it. I, there are games that I have put time in. And in fact,

00:34:24   my nominee is a game that I put a lot of time in, but it's an iOS game and I played it on the iPad.

00:34:31   And the difference there is that I don't have to turn on a console in my living room when nobody

00:34:36   else is around and play the game. I can just play it wherever when I'm on my iPad. Um, and that

00:34:44   makes a difference. That is, that is actually a big difference in having the freedom to do that

00:34:49   and move it, move where I want and still play the game on my couch, in bed, uh, at the table,

00:34:54   wherever I can play this game. And I did, I played it all the way through. Uh, it's probably the best

00:34:59   I've been at a video game in years. I got, I got really good at it and played the whole thing

00:35:06   through. It was a wonderful adventure. And I got to the end and I had that feeling of fulfillment,

00:35:10   having met all of the obstacles and, uh, and, uh, then basically stopped playing it.

00:35:17   I would actually recommend at this point that you don't say the name of this game and we wait

00:35:21   to the next category. Oh, interesting.

00:35:23   Because here's the thing, that game is incredible. I don't think it's going to win this category,

00:35:29   but it very well could win the next one. I think you're right. So given the, uh,

00:35:34   love the Upgradients had, or at least 7% of them for Pokemon and that you love it so much,

00:35:39   I think we should just acclaim Pokemon Let's Go. By the way, my dog's name is Evie, so let's go

00:35:45   Evie. Uh, Pokemon Let's Go is the winner. Uh, this was one, you know, we, we both have our pet

00:35:50   categories and this was one where I, this is mine and I kind of went into this.

00:35:55   It would be a mighty strange year if I had a very strong opinion about many video games from which

00:36:01   I could choose one as the game of the year. That would be a strange year. I would, that's the year

00:36:05   that I had no job. I will say like, just, just for this, just to put this in, just for the sake of

00:36:11   it, uh, I would put Spiderman in next, um, at before Red Dead. I have not, I have not played

00:36:17   enough of the story of Red Dead yet, but honestly, Red Dead Redemption 2 whilst being an incredible

00:36:22   game did not grab me the way that Spiderman did. Um, and I was in like for Spiderman, like I was

00:36:29   finishing that game and I played nothing else until I finished the story with Red Dead. I started

00:36:34   it and there's just, I, I've been letting a lot of other video games in whilst they've been playing

00:36:41   this. It's great. It's maybe just a little bit on the slow side for me, but cannot be happier about

00:36:47   the fact that Pokemon Let's Go has picked up the upgradey, uh, for this year. I just, I adore,

00:36:54   I adore that game. If you want to hear more about why, just go listen to our game of the year

00:36:59   episode of remaster. I go into a lot of detail about why I love it, which is more than anybody

00:37:03   needs right now, because we should talk about the best iOS games of the year. Now in at 10.4%

00:37:11   of the upgradey's votes is Stardew Valley, which is an incredible port by the way, to, to iOS that

00:37:18   they did such a great job with this port. They have added some functions into that game that

00:37:22   don't exist on any other platforms that make the gameplay so much better. So like they did a great

00:37:27   job of that. A 17.5% is Hold Down, which is a wonderful game. And I'll get to that in a minute,

00:37:35   cause it's actually my nomination as well. And 18.3% is Alto's Odyssey. So if you'll allow me

00:37:42   for a moment, Jason, to talk about Hold Down. Okay. This was a real surprise for me. This is

00:37:47   one of those games every now and then I was, I follow a lot of like video game journalists and

00:37:51   stuff on Twitter. There'll be a day where a game comes out and everyone's talking about it and I

00:37:56   download it and I'm hooked and Hold Down was that. Um, it is like this weird cross between like Peggle

00:38:03   and Downwell, which is another game that I played that I enjoyed. Like there is some,

00:38:08   like it's really hard to explain, but you have to fire balls into blocks and you have to,

00:38:13   it's kind of like that, um, brick, you know, like when you've got the little bar that moves along

00:38:18   the bottom of the screen. Breakout. Breakout, but upside down, you go from top down. Um, it is a

00:38:24   really wonderful game that I recommend everybody play on iOS. Just excellent. Um, but Jason,

00:38:31   why don't you now finish your, uh, nomination for your pick? Yeah, the, the game that I invested all

00:38:39   the time in and got really good at it and is beautiful and has great music and sound and

00:38:43   graphics and everything else is Alto's Odyssey, which the Upgradients and I agree on. So, Jason,

00:38:52   the reason that I didn't pick this is because I figured we should talk about another game.

00:38:56   Alto's Odyssey is the best iOS game that's come out this year without a shadow of a doubt.

00:39:00   Yeah. I actually kind of want to play Hold Down. There's a game that I used to play that is no

00:39:03   longer playable because it's a, uh, there's a, there's a game, I can't even remember the name now,

00:39:07   but it was a game where you shot like a laser and, and then it basically, it would bounce around and

00:39:11   it's a very similar kind of getting the angles right in a, so I'm looking forward to playing

00:39:15   Hold Down. Yeah, it's really good. Alto's Odyssey, it just, I mean, seriously, as I said earlier,

00:39:20   I don't have a lot of time to devote to games and that's the problem about like console games and

00:39:25   stuff like that. I'll play some Mario Kart. That's a lot of fun, but like to play something that's

00:39:29   going to require hours and hours of play. The nice thing about Alto's Odyssey is that though it

00:39:34   requires hours and hours of play to get to the end, it's all in very short bursts where you're

00:39:39   doing it, you can do some runs and you've got your challenges and you've got to knock off all

00:39:42   the challenges to get to the end. And for whatever reason, it captured me and I spent a lot of time

00:39:50   playing it and I played the, Alto's Adventure, but it was Alto's Odyssey that, that because of the

00:39:56   different setting, the kind of sand setting and the added complications, different stuff you could

00:40:00   get, different achievements. That's the one that really put it over the edge. And I remember

00:40:04   sitting, looking at the high score board and I saw Serenity Caldwell and she had like half a

00:40:08   million points and I had like 10,000 points. And I thought how, you know, this, this is a common

00:40:14   thing for me, right? Is that I look at my Game Center friends and they're all way ahead of me.

00:40:19   You have a lot of friends that really like video games.

00:40:21   And I just don't play them that much. Right. And like two weeks later I had like 750,000 points

00:40:28   and I was at the top of my friends list and I was like, Oh, something is happening here. And, and

00:40:33   it's true. Like when I finished the game and, and achieved the last achievement, I did one more run

00:40:40   where I was just enjoying myself. That was like, I mean, the last achievement is, is go through,

00:40:46   I think two sunsets or two sunrises or something. It's like go for an entire day. So it is an

00:40:52   extended thing. But I did one last run where I just kind of did it for fun. And I knew that run

00:40:57   was going to be my last run in the game because I was going to say goodbye. Like I did it all.

00:41:02   And that was a, that was actually an amazing kind of feeling, strange feeling of accomplishment and

00:41:07   also kind of love and familiarity. Like, Oh, this is so great. We had such a good time together.

00:41:14   And that's it. I haven't played it since. Uh, Altos Odyssey is the, uh, is the followup to Altos

00:41:21   adventure, which won in 2015 for best iOS game. I was convinced that whilst the game looked amazing,

00:41:28   it was going to suffer from the second album problem and I would never be able to live up to

00:41:33   adventure, but it surpassed Altos adventure in every way. Um, my favorite thing is the,

00:41:38   the environment changes. Uh, and I think that they really found a way to make the game more replayable

00:41:45   because it's more varied. You don't feel like you're doing the same thing all the time. Um,

00:41:49   and the music in the game is incredible. Um, Altos Odyssey has joined the very small club of games

00:41:55   for me that are infinitely replayable. Um, like I play this game all the time, like on planes.

00:42:02   While I'm listening to podcasts, it's just like a way to just pass some time and yeah.

00:42:06   And they have the Zen mode, right? Where you can just play and if you fall, you just get back up

00:42:10   and the points don't matter anymore. And you're just having a good time, which is great. Absolutely

00:42:15   wonderful game. And I'm thrilled that we get to call it our iOS game of the year for 2018.

00:42:22   They need to do a sequel, a third game just so that we can put it in the hall of fame.

00:42:26   I would be super surprised if they did. Yeah. No, this is, oh, you think so? Interesting.

00:42:32   Uh, well, I mean, I'd be, I reckon they would do another Altos game for sure because honestly

00:42:37   it was also a success, right? Like, yeah, that's true. So I think that it would be wild to me if

00:42:43   they didn't at least give it a go. Like I think figure you try again for a third time and if that

00:42:48   one doesn't work, well then you can put it to bed. But the second I think was probably even more

00:42:52   successful. And then the first, at least it seemed that way. So yeah, so good. So we are moving into

00:42:58   talking about our favorite movie or TV show of the year. But before we do that, this category

00:43:05   is brought to you by our friends over at Luna Display. Have you ever looked at your iPad and

00:43:10   wished you could use it as a second display for your Mac? Well, Luna Display lets you do

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00:43:30   Luna Display dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. It will connect over Wi-Fi and that's great,

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00:43:45   want. So you can be productive at the office, in the studio, on the go. You have more screen

00:43:49   we had to stay available to you without needing to buy a second screen. You can use the device that

00:43:55   you already own. Luna Display can also act as a complete extension to your Mac. It's going to

00:43:59   support your external keyboard as well as your Apple Pencil and touch interactions as well. I am

00:44:05   in love with my Luna Display. I have it plugged into my Mac Mini and I can just jump in. Like I

00:44:09   had something a couple of days ago, I made a mistake actually in the document for totaling

00:44:18   up all of our results for the upgradees and I needed to access the version history of the

00:44:24   Google Sheet. You can't do that on iOS. So I opened up my Luna Display while I'm sitting on my couch

00:44:29   and I went into my Mac Mini, I opened up Chrome, went to Google Sheets and I was able to fix it

00:44:35   because I have that power now that I can use my iOS device to my heart's content. But if I ever

00:44:40   need a Mac, it's also my Mac now. It's just an app that lives on my iPad. How wonderful is that?

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00:45:00   Promo code UPGRADE at checkout for 10% off. A thanks to Luna Display for their support of this

00:45:04   show and Relay FM. So, Jason, you have been doing something in the document and I think we have

00:45:13   something a little bit unprecedented about to occur. Yeah, we're going to split a category in two

00:45:18   because what was originally the favorite... So at the top of the show you said no new categories.

00:45:22   Uh, well, so what has happened is that the favorite movie category evolved into a favorite movie/TV

00:45:30   category and we had picks in both, at which point I feel like we have two categories here.

00:45:36   So we are adding a category. Ignore what Myke of the past said. We now have a favorite movie

00:45:43   category. So we have two picks here because we originally had the three picks. I apologize to

00:45:48   everyone. This is just what we're doing now. 5.7% of the vote for movies went to Black Panther

00:45:56   and 13.1% of the vote went to Avengers Infinity War. I just want to say that I love these two

00:46:04   movies. I've seen both of these movies. I prefer Black Panther to Avengers. I left the cinema on

00:46:13   the both times I've seen Infinity War and it wasn't that I felt sad because of the fact that everybody

00:46:19   died, right? Like 50% of the people died. Half of everybody dies, yeah. Because I figured that,

00:46:25   you know, they'll find a way to work out or whatever but I just kind of left that movie

00:46:28   with not an amazing feeling like I did when I saw Black Panther where I just felt incredible

00:46:35   afterwards because it was like this is a super fun movie where a lot of incredible stuff happens and

00:46:40   it's beautiful and it's colorful and it's funny where Infinity War is supposed to be challenging

00:46:46   and that gave me a not as good movie experience, I think. Yeah, I mean, as you might expect,

00:46:55   especially the incomparable people, we have these conversations a lot about these movies and I like

00:47:02   Infinity War for what it is but what it is is essentially the big climax of a shared universe.

00:47:09   It's not really a movie even. It's just a... Well, it's half of it. It's not even the full climax.

00:47:13   It's a half of the season finale of the TV show that is Marvel Cinematic Universe.

00:47:18   That's a beautiful way to put it. That's just a different kind of thing. Is it a movie

00:47:23   that stands alone? I mean, you could watch it but the relationships... The stuff I love about

00:47:27   Infinity War is seeing all these characters that we know interacting together and the relationships

00:47:31   they've got. That's the stuff that's great and that requires many other movies. And that's just...

00:47:37   I think if you've seen all the Marvel movies, which I have, there's a huge payoff in Infinity

00:47:42   War but is it like a movie as we think of it? I think not. Black Panther is a movie and it's

00:47:48   a really great movie and I think it should be nominated for Oscars. I think it is a superhero

00:47:54   movie that is in some ways a standard superhero movie and yet has some very interesting things

00:48:01   to say about... It's got a point of view, say about society and culture. It's got a point of view.

00:48:08   It is also showing representation that is not as common in movies in general and superhero

00:48:16   movies in particular. Ryan Coogler, really great director. The cast is great. The villain is the

00:48:21   best Marvel villain. Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, just the best. And going into

00:48:28   this process, I was pretty sure that that was going to be my pick for best movie.

00:48:33   And then I saw Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, which is the best movie I saw all year,

00:48:42   which shocks me because it is this Sony Pictures Animation film where they're trying to take all

00:48:49   the Spider-Man intellectual property and turn it into other movies because they get that. They have

00:48:53   the license for that from Marvel. And it's a movie that made me ask why are we even bothering with

00:48:59   live action actors and superhero movies when you can create an animated film with this kind of

00:49:07   artfulness that it's fun, it's exciting, it sounds great, it looks amazing. And I will also say,

00:49:15   I feel really bad for Pixar because Incredibles 2 is a very good movie. And in another year,

00:49:22   you might look at that and say, "Well, there's the Oscar for best animated feature." And Pixar has

00:49:26   been such a leader in this, in animation for so long. But this movie outdoes that. This movie is

00:49:34   one of those that's going to set the standard for animation and new things that animation can do. It

00:49:40   is amazing. So that's my choice as Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. I have not seen this movie yet.

00:49:48   I am going to see this movie in the next couple of days purely because everybody that I know is

00:49:53   freaking out about this movie to the point that I have no problem making it the movie of the year,

00:49:59   just because everybody that I know and trust is going wild for this movie.

00:50:03   It actually came out, I think, during our Upgrading Voting category. So that it's not

00:50:08   represented in the top of the voting is not necessarily representative of the feelings of

00:50:14   Upgrading. And so yes, we will declare it. People should go see it while it's in the theater if you

00:50:18   can. It is not just a silly cash grab animation spinoff. It's the guys behind the Lego movie

00:50:25   who really kind of drove forward the animation. The animation style is so interesting and different

00:50:33   and it doesn't feel like you're... It's not a generic CGI animation movie, which is not...

00:50:38   I don't want to belittle that, but Pixar kind of set a standard for what... I mean, they made the

00:50:44   first full-on CGI feature film. And there are a lot of movies that are in that sort of style.

00:50:50   And this is trying to take kind of hand-drawn animation looks with... Obviously, it's all done

00:50:57   in 3D, but the artfulness of it, the way things are rendered, the facts... I mean, to get down to

00:51:03   some details, because I am fortunate to know some people who work in the VFX industry, the fact that

00:51:10   they're animating on what they call twos and ones and mixing them where it's like one frame

00:51:17   per frame versus sort of doubling frames, which is where you get a little more kind of herky-jerky

00:51:24   style and it changes how you view blur and stuff. And the choices they've made... There are moments

00:51:30   where you think you're watching animation overlaid over live action, but it's not. It's all animated.

00:51:35   They're just doing things to make your mind be like, "Whoa, what am I seeing now?" It pops out

00:51:39   of the frame. Their rack focus, their out-of-focus background stuff is color-smeared to make it look

00:51:48   like a badly offset printed comic book to kind of give a comic book feel to it. It's brilliant.

00:51:53   It's a brilliant technical piece of work, and it's a great story, and it's funny, and it's got

00:51:57   a great hero at the center of it, who is Miles Morales, who is another Spider-Man, for those who

00:52:03   don't read the comics, who is a great character. It's great. It's going to be, I think, a milestone

00:52:10   for animation, not just this year, but people are going to be like, "Wow, animation can do things we

00:52:17   didn't even think were possible before." -Blimey. All right. I can't wait to see this movie.

00:52:21   -I've overhyped it for you now. It's a good Spider-Man movie. It's fun. Just enjoy it.

00:52:26   -So we now move into the new TV category. There's only one upgrading vote left in that,

00:52:32   which was The Good Place at 5.2%. -Oh, so good.

00:52:36   -Yeah, I have actually started it. I watched the first half of the first season,

00:52:42   thought I'd figured it out and got bored of it, which I know is I'm not the only person who's

00:52:46   been that way, which is why everybody says it's like with all good TV shows, there's some caveat.

00:52:53   Every good TV show has a caveat, and The Good Place's caveat is you've got to stick through

00:52:57   the first season, because then everything starts to... It clicks into place and then

00:53:02   horrifically out of place. -The whole delight of it is that you think

00:53:06   they've set up every standards that come, they've set up the premise, and now they're going to riff

00:53:09   on that for the next four years, and that is not what happens in that show.

00:53:13   -So it has become my like, this is what I watch when I'm traveling TV shows,

00:53:19   because it's all on Netflix here and it's all downloadable, so it's great.

00:53:23   So Good Place at 5.2%. I'm going to vote for Patriot. That is my favorite TV show that I've

00:53:28   seen this year. I think it's wonderful. We were able to watch both seasons back to back

00:53:36   very recently, and I absolutely love that show. It's great performances throughout.

00:53:42   It's very funny. It's very affecting. I really, really love it. I don't want to say too much

00:53:47   about it, honestly, because I think it... I went into the show mostly cold, basically just knowing

00:53:52   that a bunch of friends of mine liked it, and I was not let down by that show in any way.

00:53:57   -So Patriot, for those who don't know, because it's not a very descriptive title,

00:54:00   and if those haven't heard me talk about it on other podcasts, on TV Talk Machine,

00:54:05   Tim Goodman and I rave about this show all the time. We've given it an alternate title,

00:54:08   because Amazon named it Patriot, and it's really boring, and it's on Amazon,

00:54:12   so you need to have Prime Video to see it. -That name put me off, so I'm like,

00:54:16   I don't want to rip my rah-rah American TV show. -So what we call it, Tim and I,

00:54:22   we call it Sad Spies. -That's perfect. Yeah, that's what it is.

00:54:27   -That's what it is. It's Sad Spies. There's a sad man in a suit, and they're very sad. There's a

00:54:34   dad spy and a son spy and a brother who's... -Sad dad, sad son. -Yeah, and then there's like

00:54:39   a politician brother, and there's sad people who work in the plumbing industry. -They're all sad.

00:54:44   -Everybody is very sad. There's a sad detective in Luxembourg. They're all sad.

00:54:48   -But it's also very funny, though. -It is incredibly funny.

00:54:51   -It is, you know, sad and depressing in places, but hilarious and uplifting in others. Like,

00:54:55   it's really good. -The people are sad. The show is incredibly funny.

00:55:01   So yeah, it's a weird show, and it's probably not for everybody, but it is one of my... It might be

00:55:08   one of my, you know... Actually, I would go out on a limb here and say that I think the three

00:55:12   shows that we're nominating here are my three favorite TV shows right now.

00:55:16   So we can pick, but they're all great. So The Patriot, Patriot is great. Sad Spies on Amazon.

00:55:24   Good place. It's on Netflix. If you're in certain places, the third season is on NBC in the US, but

00:55:31   first two seasons are on Netflix everywhere. And then my choice is Counterpart, which is on

00:55:38   stars in the US. It's been slowly rolling out internationally. You can get it on iTunes the

00:55:45   first season, and it's one of these frustrations where it's on this obscure service and therefore

00:55:52   hard to find. And it frustrates me because it is my favorite TV show of the year. Season two is on

00:56:00   now. Season one started late last year. This is a show with JK Simmons, who is an incredible actor,

00:56:06   giving an amazing performance. If you think about... Everybody was raving about the performance

00:56:11   in Orphan Black by Tatiana Maslany, where she's playing five different clones, basically. So it's

00:56:17   five different characters, but they're all her. That is an amazing performance. JK Simmons gives a

00:56:23   similar or perhaps even better, but certainly similar performance in its brilliance in

00:56:28   Counterpart. It is a spy show as well. This is more of a Cold War spy show with a science

00:56:37   fictional twist that it's very hard not to spoil it because I think all the descriptions talk about

00:56:44   it. If you are really good and don't get spoiled about it and just watch the show, watch the first

00:56:52   episode, you'll discover the twist and it's great. It's great even if you know the twist, but it is a

00:57:01   fun twist. And it means that it amps up the amount of work that JK Simmons has to do and that there

00:57:09   are other great characters in it too. It's set in Berlin, so it definitely has that Cold War spy

00:57:15   thriller kind of vibe to it. At the same time though, it is about these characters and it is

00:57:21   about the choices we make and don't make in our lives and where they lead us. So that part of it

00:57:30   is the part that really pushes it over the edge for me and makes it that much better. So Counterpart,

00:57:35   if you can find it, I highly recommend it. So as the guy who's seen all three of these,

00:57:40   how do you want to stack this? I am so happy that you like Patriot that we should just pick Patriot.

00:57:46   Yay! Because that is my 1B. That is such a weird,

00:57:50   great show. If people follow Merlin on Twitter, they've probably seen Merlin post nonsensical

00:57:58   things that are all from Patriot. Because it's that kind of show. Yeah, it's a great show. But

00:58:05   all three of these are great shows. People should watch all three of them. I found out about it from

00:58:08   Dubai Friday. That's where I kind of found out about it. But I've not listened to... Well,

00:58:13   I've actually gone back and listened to the episode. I think it went from TV Talk Machine

00:58:17   to Merlin to Dubai Friday to you to the Upgradies. So yeah, love that chain. Come all the way around.

00:58:23   So let's now move into our favorite mic at the movies from Upgrade. So this is...

00:58:28   The idea of this is it is the favorite segment from this. I think that a lot of the time,

00:58:34   this is difficult to see, especially with the Upgradians, how they vote for this.

00:58:39   I tend to believe that people just tend to vote for their favorite movie that we did a mic of

00:58:43   the movies about. So we have 21.1% for Aliens, 26.5% for Hamilton, which is technically mic at

00:58:50   the matinee, but it will count. And Avengers Infinity War, 39.7% of the vote, which is a

00:58:57   very large percentage. For me, it was Hamilton because I loved Hamilton so friggin much. And I

00:59:03   was so excited. One of the reasons that I was so excited to see that show was to get to talk to you

00:59:09   about it. Because all I wanted to do was talk about it anyway. But I was really, really excited

00:59:16   to get the chance to talk about Hamilton on Upgrade. And I loved talking about it, but I

00:59:21   loved seeing it. I've seen it twice now. I still listen to the album all the time. It's different

00:59:26   the second time, right? Oh, it's so different. But oh boy, do I cry in basically all the same places.

00:59:32   Yeah, yeah. I love it. Hey everybody, it's two guys who've seen Hamilton twice. People don't

00:59:37   like to hear it, but it is really different the second time. I'm hoping it's coming back to San

00:59:40   Francisco. I'm hoping to go again, but we don't have tickets. So we'll see. My pick was Totoro,

00:59:46   only because I love that movie and it was very amusing to see you. It's like to me, the prime

00:59:50   mic of the movie's experience, which is Myke has no idea what he's getting into here. And in

00:59:57   something that is very different. And so I really enjoyed that. As the other person on that episode,

01:00:05   I really enjoyed you going through that experience of a movie that I know by heart,

01:00:10   but that you had no idea what you were getting into. But I'm happy to acclaim Hamilton because

01:00:17   that was a great experience. I'm so happy. Hamilton is one of my favorite things that,

01:00:20   you know, works of art that has ever been made in the last few years. So I'm happy to have that

01:00:26   you got to experience it. It was also something long in coming, right? Because you bought those,

01:00:29   you got those tickets like a year in advance. And then we waited. It was one year and one week in

01:00:35   advance because when I bought the tickets and told Adina, she's like, oh, we're going next week. No,

01:00:39   we're going next week. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're in London, it's actually not incredibly

01:00:46   difficult to get tickets now. Um, so I would really, really recommend that you go and see it.

01:00:51   So we'll move into the favorite book category that I never have any votes for.

01:00:56   No, I just don't read books, but never learned to read the upgraded voting went thusly, uh,

01:01:03   with 3.2% of the vote is bad blood by John Carrey, Roo, Carrie Roo. Oh, that's the one about the,

01:01:09   the, um, the Theranos, uh, con job. I've heard great things about that book. Yeah. Well,

01:01:16   I've actually had the entire book described to me twice, uh, but just sounds great. Um,

01:01:20   8.7% is an absolutely remarkable thing by Hank Green, which is a book that I actually really

01:01:26   want to read. Um, it's kind of, I think at its, at its core, it's about like social media's

01:01:34   influence in the world, I think is kind of like one of the themes, which is some, I actually do

01:01:37   want to read that. I have a tab open, uh, in Chrome to get that on Audible. And at 13.8% of

01:01:44   the vote, it's not surprising to me is creative selection by Ken Kuchende, uh, which is a book

01:01:51   about Apple stuff. Yeah, of course. So, um, what happens in this category every year,

01:01:59   people who haven't listened to the Upgradies before may not know this, that what happens is

01:02:02   then I tell you what my favorite books of the year are and I pick my favorite and that's the winner.

01:02:06   Yeah. That's what happens. So I thank all the Upgradians for sending in these picks. It's great

01:02:09   to have your voice heard. Now I'm going to choose the winner. All right. I have three books that

01:02:14   were my three favorite books of the year and I'll share them with you now. One is a book that

01:02:19   listeners may love. It is called typeset in the future by Dave Addy. It is basically a coffee

01:02:24   table book. He's the guy who has been writing these long essays on the web about how type and

01:02:30   interface in science fiction movies portrays the future. You've probably read at least one of them.

01:02:35   He did one about alien. He did one about 2001. He did one about Star Trek, the motion picture.

01:02:40   He did one about Wally that he just posted it. Imagine. So with copious like screenshots and

01:02:48   details, and he turned it into a coffee table book. It is a beautiful, heavy, high quality

01:02:56   printed so many images. It is a great use of the paper book format. And I highly recommend people

01:03:04   get the beautiful paper book of typeset in the future. If you like user interface design and

01:03:11   typefaces and science fiction movies, this is your jam. I like those things. This is my jam.

01:03:17   Great book, Dave Addy typeset in the future. And I have two novels. As I've said on this show before,

01:03:23   one of the delights in doing the grind for the incomparable of reading like every

01:03:29   nominee for all the major science fiction and fantasy novel awards. And that means like,

01:03:35   here's your assignment for one podcast is read 14 books. It's a lot of investment for a very small

01:03:41   amount of time on a podcast ultimately. But what I get out of it every year is a book or two when

01:03:46   people say, Hey, you read a lot of books. What is, what was your favorite book? What should I read?

01:03:50   Do you have a book for me? I get that a lot. I get, do you have a book for me? And every year,

01:03:54   by going through that process, I find one or two books that I'm like, Oh yeah, I do have a book for

01:03:59   you because they're these delightful surprises of books that I might never have read had I not

01:04:04   been going through the short lists and I discovered them. So I have two this year. One is that

01:04:11   discovery, which is a book by Theodora Goss named The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter,

01:04:18   which is a story set in the 19th century in London. It features a bunch of characters from

01:04:27   literary history, all kind of put together. Ultimately, it's a story of a group of women

01:04:33   who are the monsters in classic literature. And they're the heroes in this book. That's

01:04:38   the short version of the premise. So it's the daughters of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.

01:04:45   It is the bride of Frankenstein. It is a character from a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story,

01:04:56   who is a woman who is poisonous to the touch. Also Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in it.

01:05:04   Renfield from Dracula is in it. It's just all of these characters together. And it is like a

01:05:10   Sherlock Holmes story in that it's kind of this mystery that's being pursued by Ms. Jekyll and her

01:05:19   ever accumulating group of friends. And I really like the way it comes out.

01:05:24   It sounds really good.

01:05:26   It's a super fun book. There is a sequel that is also fun. The sequel is very long. It's like

01:05:31   two books. I didn't like it as much as the first one because the first one is a little bit snappier.

01:05:35   But it's a lot of fun, great characters. And Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are used really

01:05:42   well in it too. It's great. So the strange case of the alchemist's daughter. And then the other

01:05:48   book that I want to recommend to people, which I imagine will be on the short list for the coming

01:05:53   year, but I have already read it, is a book called The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal.

01:06:00   It is a-- I mean, technically, it's an alt history because it's set in a slightly different

01:06:05   series of historical events than ours. It's already kind of not quite the right history.

01:06:12   And then kind of a cataclysmic event happens. But really what it's about is it's an alt history

01:06:17   look at an alternative space program in the late '50s and early '60s where they're trying to get

01:06:23   people in space. And it's the story-- the main character is-- you basically already know from

01:06:29   the beginning that she's the lady astronaut. It's actually called the Lady Astronaut series. And the

01:06:33   whole idea here is you're basically watching this character who is ultimately going to be the first

01:06:37   woman in space and how she has to struggle with her sort of fame that she has and also the politics

01:06:46   and the sexism and the racism of the era to ultimately be one of the astronauts who gets to

01:06:52   go to space. And there is a sequel that was released actually two months later. So it was

01:06:57   basically released as a pair. And the sequel is great too. And in the sequel, they go to Mars.

01:07:03   So it's awesome. It's a great book. It's the best book I read all year, The Calculating Stars. And

01:07:08   that would be my choice for the winner in this category. So The Calculating Stars is going to be

01:07:13   the winner. What do you want to be the runners up? The runners up? Let's put creative selection

01:07:20   and typeset in the future in there. Wonderful. I think that they're actually probably pretty

01:07:25   good picks just in general for listeners of this show. For our listeners. Yeah. So if you want a

01:07:29   novel, read The Calculating Stars or maybe The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. But I

01:07:34   would say for Upgradients, check out Creative Selection if you haven't. Sure, that's a good

01:07:40   book. I read it. I reviewed it. And typeset in the future. So we're going to move in now to talking

01:07:47   about some technology stuff. We're going to talk about some products and some stories and the

01:07:53   favorite Apple product of the year. This is a big one actually is our next category. And that award,

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01:09:36   of your first order. Thanks to Cane 11 for their support of this show and Relay FM. Okay, Jason,

01:09:43   so we're about to kick this thing up a notch. Let's talk about our favorite Apple product

01:09:51   of this year. Now, of every single category from the Upgradients, this one was the one I was most

01:09:59   surprised with. All right, you ready for this? I am. So these are the votes with 15.9% of the vote

01:10:06   for the favorite Apple product this year was the 11-inch iPad Pro. At 18.1% was the 12.9-inch iPad

01:10:15   Pro. At 21.6% of the vote is the Apple Watch Series 4. Well, you know, the consensus coming

01:10:23   out of the September event was that the most interesting product was the Apple Watch Series 4,

01:10:26   and it is great. Like, I know that you aren't using an Apple Watch, but like the added screen…

01:10:30   It's the very best Apple Watch by like a mile, right? Like it's…

01:10:34   It's a huge update. I love mine. I'm so happy to have the bigger screen and everything. It's great.

01:10:39   You know, the story of a lot of Apple's products right now is that the hardware is amazing and the

01:10:44   software is a little bit of a letdown, which is interesting. And I hope they're trying to address

01:10:48   it because they are clearly the best in the world at making hardware and their software is kind of

01:10:54   struggling. But the Apple Watch Series 4 is great. And it's funny that coming out of an iPhone event,

01:11:00   the thing people were buzzing about the most was the Apple Watch. That's, I mean,

01:11:03   I think the iPhones were good, right? But like the Apple Watch was a big step forward in a category

01:11:08   where Apple already had a lead in terms of the hardware. It was just super surprising to me to

01:11:13   see it stacked this way that it's both iPads and the Apple Watch. There's no iPhones in there at

01:11:18   all, right? The bigger iPad ahead of the smaller iPad too. Like that's… Yeah.

01:11:24   I do think that the size differences this year tipped to 12.9 for a lot of people, right? That

01:11:31   they're so close in size. I think for a lot of people it made the 12.9 an easier purchase.

01:11:36   A little more palatable than it was, yeah. Here's the thing. If you use a 12.9-inch iPad Pro,

01:11:41   this one is so much better than the last one that your love for that device will probably eclipse

01:11:47   most of the devices you own. Am I maybe showing my hand a little bit for my vote?

01:11:52   Uh, could be. But I am genuinely, I was like, I was really surprised to see the Apple Watch

01:11:58   up there. Like again, I think what it is, and the reason I was surprised is because

01:12:02   I would probably say that like more people own iPads than they do Apple Watches,

01:12:07   and more people definitely own iPhones than they do Apple Watches, right? So like I wasn't

01:12:12   necessarily thinking there would be enough people to put it there. But what I think it is, is the

01:12:17   people that own the Series 4 Apple Watch, they absolutely love it, right? Like so,

01:12:23   while maybe the overall numbers aren't there of people that own those products, you know,

01:12:28   I would say that most people that probably bought a new iPhone to go along with their new Apple

01:12:32   Watch or vice versa, they probably love their Apple Watch more than they love the new iPhone.

01:12:36   Because the new iPhones are great, but there kind of really isn't anything

01:12:39   amazing to them, right? Like the camera's incredible, but like the camera's always

01:12:44   incredible, you know? It's an improved 10. The 10 was the big jump, and this is, I mean,

01:12:48   the 10R is a different kind of product, but still they're all in the 10 family, and they're all sort

01:12:51   of like taking advantage of the advance that happened the year before. Where this is the

01:12:55   big jump for the Apple Watch, so that's the difference there. The Apple Watch Series 4 tops

01:13:00   the uh the upgradings vote, but uh I've gotta give it, so here's the thing, I've gotta give it to the

01:13:05   iPad Pro, but I'm gonna give it to the 12.9. I absolutely adore it. It is so good in every way.

01:13:16   I love it. I love it so much. It's the best iPad Apple's ever made, obviously.

01:13:22   Because I think for a while there, like especially in the last revision, like I think the 10.5 for

01:13:28   me beat out the 12.9 because it was, the design was cooler, you know? But with the 12.9,

01:13:35   it is smaller in the ways that it matters. It's the size, you know, it is lighter, it is a better

01:13:43   looking device. That whole, the whole package of the 12.9, unbeatable now. Like that is an incredible,

01:13:50   incredible thing. Would I still recommend the iPad Pro 11 inch to most people? Maybe. Maybe I would.

01:13:57   I think that it is more question now than it was before, um but the 12.9 is easily my favorite.

01:14:05   I'm with you there. This is going to be an acclamation from you and me,

01:14:09   that it's the iPad. When we agree, nothing can stop us. The iPad Pro 12.9. Yeah, I think I talked

01:14:17   about this on the show, maybe even right after the event, but like that, um, I've been thinking as a

01:14:22   12.9 user, so the one that I bought was the first generation. Um, and so I've been using that a lot.

01:14:27   And the second generation 12.9 had some nice updates, but I've been anticipating this one,

01:14:33   but I've been thinking going into it, like, you know, my wife uses the smaller iPad. It's nice.

01:14:39   Um, it's so much lighter. I really was thinking this new one I'm going to have to see,

01:14:44   especially with the bigger screen and all of that on the, on the smaller model, which turns out is

01:14:49   the 11. Uh, I might go to the smaller iPad. And then I held the shrunken down 12.9, where they

01:14:58   did the opposite of what they did, the 11, where they expanded the 11 screen, but the 12.9, they

01:15:02   kept the screen and just shrunk everything around it, both the right decisions. And it makes that

01:15:08   12.9, which is still big and it's still much bigger and heavier than the 11, but they're

01:15:13   closer. And, you know, it is, uh, as somebody who's been carrying the original 12.9 for a long time,

01:15:19   it is so much nicer that is thinner and lighter. And the accessories are thinner and lighter

01:15:26   because of that too, because so much like the smart keyboard on the old 12.9, so much of its

01:15:31   bulk and just kind of unpleasantness was the fact that it had to cover that whole huge surface area

01:15:37   of the whole front glass of the screen. And there's a lot less surface area on this thing. Plus it's

01:15:41   thinner. So in the end, I, you know, I was really open. This is one of the things where it's of

01:15:47   course the 12.9 guy just got another 12.9. Like I really expected to go to the 11. And then I held

01:15:53   the new 12.9. I was like, Oh, like I don't need to compromise in order to get the smaller thing now,

01:15:58   because this is going to be still the huge screen, but also that much nicer. So yeah, it's, they're

01:16:04   both great, but the 12.9 is my choice too. This is the first time that an iPad of any type has

01:16:10   won an upgrade. Well, it was, it was the right time. Let's say in this category. So one most

01:16:15   life-changing hardware in 2015, but it's never won the, uh, the, the best Apple product, the

01:16:21   favorite Apple product category. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I agree. This is the right time for it to

01:16:25   win that. So we now move into the favorite non Apple product. There's some surprising ones in

01:16:31   here from the upgrade. And so 2.6% of the vote, um, is the Amazon echo dot third generation at

01:16:37   3.1% of the vote is the Google home hub. I cannot fathom that to be honest, uh, because it came out

01:16:44   in October. I can't imagine how many people have actually bought it. And I do not like that product.

01:16:49   I think it is a cool idea, you know, like in the echo show is cool. Like I actually just spent

01:16:55   Christmas at my uncle's and he has an echo show and we're probably going to get one. It tipped me

01:17:00   over the edge. I thought we wanted one, but now I definitely know that we want one, but the Google

01:17:04   home hub, I actually find the, the hardware to be not very attractive at all. So white screen,

01:17:10   which you can't change, you can change the color of the base, but I think the screen is always white.

01:17:13   It has a huge bezel on it, which is super noticeable. I just find it very interesting

01:17:18   that, that it got the, uh, the screen's way too small. It's like a seven inch screen or something,

01:17:23   but yeah, it picks up the second and the upgradings vote. And at top is the Google pixel

01:17:27   three with 7.4% of the vote. That is not surprising to me. Um, because I figure if,

01:17:33   if you don't use an iPhone and you listen to this show, you're probably using the best

01:17:38   Android phone or the like, you know, the, all the most stock Android phone and the Google pixel

01:17:42   three is there. And there's somebody who owns one. I own the regular size. Um, as a wonderful device,

01:17:47   I think it looks great. Um, even though it isn't edge to edge, I think that the actual design

01:17:52   looks really good. Uh, I think that, and of course, you know, for me, that camera, that,

01:17:58   that camera beats the iPhone camera for me, like 95% of the time. Um, I think that the Google pixel

01:18:04   three camera and especially that night sight stuff that they did, it is an amazing device.

01:18:08   Um, but for me, uh, I am going to go with the bridge keyboard as my favorite non-Apple product,

01:18:15   uh, which echoes my vote in 2016, where I voted for the Logitech create 9.7,

01:18:21   because I love that keyboard. It was wonderful on my 9.7 inch iPad pro

01:18:24   and the bridge keyboard was just a, cause it's a real story for me, you know, like I think in 2017,

01:18:33   I really, I hated it because I bought one and I got, and I replaced it and it didn't work and

01:18:38   I hated it. But then I gave it a shot because they, they updated it and you said it was working

01:18:45   perfectly. So I gave it another go and absolutely fell in love with it. Like it changed the way that

01:18:50   I used my, uh, my iPad at home. Like it was perfect because I'd also moved to using stands,

01:18:58   right? We spoke about the stands that we used and ultimately because it was a Bluetooth keyboard and

01:19:03   not a smart keyboard, I would just use that keyboard when I put it in my stand rather than

01:19:07   needing another keyboard. Right. So cause it's just a keyboard when you take the screen off.

01:19:11   So I love the, the bridge keyboard. You had a, uh, uh, a preview of the next bridge

01:19:18   keyboard, which we're going to talk about next week because we need to get into some detail on that.

01:19:22   Um, but I am very excited for the next ones. I cannot wait for them. Um, and it was one of my

01:19:28   favorite products, bar none this year. Um, and it made my, my iPad pro, which obviously I love so

01:19:35   much, uh, the previous one, even I love that, uh, it made that product even better. So I'm,

01:19:41   I love the bridge keyboard and I can't wait for the next one. Yeah. I, I echo you the, uh, the

01:19:46   new one we'll talk about next week, but like the, the bottom line is it feels very much like the

01:19:52   old one. It's just, it fits the new design, but we'll get to that next week. Um, my choice.

01:19:58   I thought about this a lot. There's a bunch of, uh, products I could put in here. Um,

01:20:04   another thing that we should probably talk about next week is that I got a Roomba.

01:20:07   Uh, and so that was a fun tech product this year. Oh yeah. Oh boy. I got a story there,

01:20:12   but it's doing great. Um, uh, I listened to your interview members may know that there's

01:20:18   a special podcast where your Roomba is interviewed. Yep. That's wild. Yeah. The whole thing there's

01:20:25   what the thing is that the episode is called something like a, like a dirt event detected.

01:20:30   And I laughed because I get that now. Um, the, the weather, uh, everybody loves a dirt event.

01:20:36   If you're a Roomba, uh, owner. So, um, I thought about that and other smart, smart home tech. We

01:20:41   need to talk. I got a smart lock. We should talk about that sometime, but not on this episode.

01:20:46   Uh, and that's been an interesting experience, but in the end, the product that not only changed

01:20:52   my house the most, that's a tech product, uh, but that I've really enjoyed the most is this year I

01:20:59   bought a new 4k HDR TV. I bought the TCL 65 inch TV. TCL has frequently been the wire cutter pick

01:21:09   for best, uh, HDTV. And it's beautiful. Like it's beautiful. It's big 4k HDR stuff on it looks so

01:21:18   great, including Patriot, upgradey winner Patriot on Amazon. That's a 4k HDR show. It is gorgeous

01:21:26   on this TV. And it's an enormous TV. My parents, when they moved out of their motor home and into

01:21:31   their house in Arizona, um, my dad wanted the biggest TV possible essentially so that he could

01:21:37   watch football and other stuff. And they got, uh, this plasma TV that I it's still on the wall and

01:21:42   it is, it is huge. And, uh, I got this thing and it like, it doesn't seem that huge, but the

01:21:50   intervening 10 years or eight years or whatever it's been, um, what's happened is that all the

01:21:56   bezels as with all the other tech, all the bezels have gone away. So my parents bought this plasma

01:22:02   TV that I think is 62 inches, but it's got like five inches of bezel all the way around it.

01:22:09   And my TCL TV is larger screen than the enormous biggest possible screen in my family.

01:22:16   Um, but it doesn't look it because it has almost no bezel. So, uh, that's a funny thing where I

01:22:21   realized, Oh my God, this TV is larger than the impossibly large TV, uh, in terms of screen size.

01:22:27   And I love it. So it's great. Um, 4k HDR TV is beautiful. And, uh, and I did buy an Xbox, um,

01:22:35   one X so that I could play 4k Blu-rays on it too, but it's a great, it's a great TV. I love it.

01:22:41   I don't know how I feel about your TV being the winner because I've not seen all you.

01:22:45   And the winner is Jason's TV.

01:22:47   Yeah. It is weird. Isn't it?

01:22:50   What would you like to go with? I mean, you're a bridge keyboard fan too.

01:22:53   Yeah. I think, I think I'll sign on for the bridge keyboards. They're, they're great.

01:22:57   I love them. If you've got an iPad, uh, of basically any size, they've got a keyboard for you

01:23:03   or pixel slate or a surface. Like they have a bunch of different ones.

01:23:06   That's true. They, they do. Uh, in fact, I'm hopeful. In fact, what was really funny,

01:23:10   we'll talk about this next week again, but a bunch of people were like, well, what if iOS 13

01:23:14   enables, uh, trackpad support on the iPad? And it was like, you know what, if that happens,

01:23:21   I'll be so happy that I'll, that I'll, I'll wait for bridge to make a keyboard with a trackpad,

01:23:25   like they do for the surface and I'll buy that one too, uh, because they do for the surface.

01:23:28   And they've got one coming from the pixel book as well. Um, it's, you know, ideally the vendor

01:23:34   would like in an ideal world, Apple would really commit to the idea that some people want a

01:23:41   convertible laptop and they would build something. They would design the iPad to work with a keyboard

01:23:47   shell in a really intuitive way where they could go beyond what a third party can do.

01:23:54   But Apple seems at this point to be very committed to the smart keyboard and not a more rigid

01:23:59   keyboard with a, with a hinge. And so, you know, Apple could make a better one, I'm sure,

01:24:05   but they won't. And with the bridge keyboard, you can turn your iPad into a laptop when you want it

01:24:11   to be a laptop. And then in a second, turn it back into a tablet, which is the, the appeal of it.

01:24:16   So the winner of our favourite non-Apple made product for 2018 is the bridge keyboard.

01:24:25   Congratulations bridge. So now we move into the worst gadget slash most disappointing technology

01:24:31   of the year. Uh, in third place from the upgrade, and so 6.4% is the Facebook portal. Facebook portal

01:24:39   is the, uh, video calling screen thing that you can buy, um, from Facebook, which just seems like a

01:24:47   Adam really? No. I mean, my feeling on this is 6.4% of upgrade ends have not bought and

01:24:53   use this product and don't like it. They just think that it is a mad thing to buy.

01:24:57   You know, so Lauren doesn't watch, uh, tech closely, but we're sitting watching the world

01:25:03   series or something. And that Facebook portal ad comes on and, and, and it gets to the end where

01:25:08   the punchline is like, it's a camera that's in your home and it's sending things back to Facebook

01:25:14   all the time. And she looks at me and she says, Oh, hell no. Like, like as a non tech person,

01:25:19   she's like, Facebook in my house is not going to happen. And, uh, yeah, I wish Facebook all the

01:25:26   luck in the world. That could be, that could be the best by far product in that category.

01:25:31   And it wouldn't matter given Facebook's track record. I mean, it wasn't the,

01:25:35   wasn't the marketing team's fault, right? But like they chose the exact worst time to make a product

01:25:42   like this. There is not a worst time for Facebook them right now to try and sell a product like

01:25:48   this. I can only imagine that thing will sell in the thousands of units at the most. No one's

01:25:53   buying this right now. I just cannot fathom it. I can't, I can't envision it. At 6.9% is the home

01:25:59   pod. I was super surprised to see that here with this amount of representation. I would not have

01:26:04   been surprised at all six months ago, but I feel like the narrative has turned a little bit on the

01:26:09   home pod as it's gotten its software updates. And as there've been, uh, some people have bought

01:26:14   stereo pairs or there've been sales, which I think show that it's just overpriced. And if they bring

01:26:20   down the price, uh, more people will be inclined to get it. It is so much better with a pair,

01:26:24   but you really need to discount it. If you're going to buy two of those things, it is not

01:26:28   without its faults, right? Like me and you even like, as we record this yesterday, we're complaining

01:26:34   on Twitter about some faults that we're having with our home pod, but I would nowhere near put it

01:26:38   at this category of like my worst gadget. I love my home pods, but it just suffers from the same

01:26:43   Siri problems that all Apple devices do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm frustrated by,

01:26:48   I feel like Apple has some very specific Siri problems that are exacerbated by the home pod.

01:26:52   And one of them is like, I think personalization and prioritization are something that's broken.

01:26:59   We can probably talk about this on another show too, but when you ask for a playlist

01:27:02   and it's the exact name of a playlist in that you made, and it instead gives you a random playlist

01:27:08   that you've never seen that has a similar name, but you said the exact name. So it's like, it got

01:27:13   the name and then it didn't pick the playlist. That's like, and that's like a waiting problem.

01:27:18   And it just seems like it's not waiting properly. It's not, uh, you know, prioritizing personal

01:27:22   stuff over stuff that's out there. I heard from a lot of people who say things like, uh, you know,

01:27:27   you name an album in your library and it gets something similar. That's from Apple music. It's

01:27:31   like, why would you not wait the stuff in my library dramatically more? It's like,

01:27:35   it's just stuff that they have to work on. But even with all those complaints, like I listen to

01:27:40   all my music in the house with the home pods. Now I don't use, I almost never turn on the receiver

01:27:47   and have it go through the Sonos, even though that's a nice experience and sounds better,

01:27:52   but it doesn't sound better enough. Um, and the, you know, the Amazon echo that we've got,

01:27:57   doesn't sound good at all. So even though it has Apple music, now I don't listen to music on that

01:28:02   either. I listened to it on the home pods. So, uh, it's, it's gone from being a, an iffy product

01:28:07   pricey, but, and with missing features to being still pricey, although at least you can get some

01:28:12   deals and, um, and good. So I, I'm, I wish it were better, but it's not a flop, which like it might've

01:28:20   been, but it's not. And then at 8.7% is air power. Now this is interesting, right? The product has

01:28:27   an exist, but I think it's one of the biggest disappointments in technology product wise this,

01:28:32   this year, because I mean, we should have had it last year probably. Uh, and it didn't come this

01:28:38   year and there's nothing on it. Apple seems to be almost acknowledging and not acknowledging its

01:28:46   existence at different rates and speeds and different teams and different products and

01:28:50   different manuals and different web pages. This is an absolute abject failure. Like I am, yeah,

01:28:57   I'm flabbergasted at how poorly this thing has failed because it doesn't exist.

01:29:02   You know, um, I left this blank because I wasn't sure, cause this is one of those things where you've

01:29:07   got to kind of rifle through, like there's a lot of bad gadgets and disappointing tech out there.

01:29:11   And I wasn't sure where I was going to go. And cause I filled out my, my nominees a week ago.

01:29:17   Um, and like two days ago I was cooking and I had this moment where I thought,

01:29:24   Oh, it's air power. Like I just had this flash where I started laughing and I was like,

01:29:28   well, of course that's the answer. It's air power or at least the ghost of where air power might be.

01:29:35   Um, because you know, it might exist someday and it might actually be good. I liked, I always liked

01:29:42   the narrative that Apple was kind of reinventing wireless charging that, you know, but there was,

01:29:46   there was that kind of, uh, Apple arrogance behind it. Right. Which is like every,

01:29:50   this group, the standards body has been working on Qi charging for years, but Apple's going to

01:29:55   just walk right in and say, ha ha, we're going to fix it for you suckers and propose new extensions

01:30:00   to the standard and all of that. And then silence, because, um, what it says is that Apple had great

01:30:08   confidence and ability to engineer a product the likes of which they had never made before,

01:30:14   so confident that they announced it and then they couldn't ship it and leaving this product aside.

01:30:21   I hope there's a lesson there that will be taught at Apple university, which is, uh,

01:30:27   restraining your enthusiasm about what your engineering capabilities are because classic

01:30:32   Apple culture does not announce this product until it's working until they're, they announce it. And

01:30:37   then when they're able to ship it. And, and a few times we've seen Apple announced products that

01:30:42   were not close to ready the home pod being one of them. And, uh, it seems a little desperate,

01:30:48   like they're running scared in terms of the home pod because of the competition air power

01:30:54   just seems arrogant. That is an own goal. They had no reason other than maybe some pride,

01:31:00   like that they were announcing Qi chargers, but, uh, weren't making one themselves, but also just

01:31:06   the arrogance behind it. Like they could have made a Qi charging puck and sold it for $40 more than

01:31:10   all the others and, uh, made a, made a fortune on them, but they decided, no, no, no, that's not

01:31:15   enough for them. They want to do something even more and they failed at it. And the arrogance that

01:31:20   they announced it before they, uh, actually had it in hand. It's just like, I hope that's a hope.

01:31:27   That's a lesson they're learning. Cause this is why Apple doesn't pre-announce stuff way in advance,

01:31:32   wait until it's in the hand and it's working and then announce it. You're Apple. You don't need to

01:31:36   do that. So, um, I think by acclimation, air power is the most disappointing tech of the year.

01:31:43   You know, I've been thinking about this. They are so lucky. They adopted an open standard for

01:31:48   wireless charging, right? Right. Imagine if they had shipped wireless charging on those devices

01:31:53   and it only worked or it only worked sort of especially well, we don't know. It's possible

01:31:57   that those iPhones have special charging tech in them that was designed to work with air power

01:32:03   that never shipped. It's entirely possible. Um, and we wouldn't know an extension to Qi

01:32:08   that just has never been enabled because they didn't, they didn't do it. So it is, I mean,

01:32:13   seriously, monetarily imagine if they had done an Apple charger, they would have sold a bunch

01:32:17   of those instead of just working with the partners, but they didn't because they had this other thing

01:32:21   that never, never came. What a disaster. So congratulations, Apple, you win the most

01:32:26   disappointing technology of the year. So we're going to move into our favorite tech story for 2018.

01:32:33   The upgradians voted at 4.1% of the vote was the Tesla Roadster that was launched into space with

01:32:40   space X. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. At 4.5%, I grouped together the various

01:32:47   privacy scandals of Facebook. Um, and I understand when people say this is a favorite story,

01:32:52   it's not necessarily something they're super happy about, but like the Facebook's year has been

01:32:56   fascinating to watch unfold. Um, so, you know, like they have had just disaster after disaster

01:33:04   for the entire year, but 13.1% is Bloomberg's big hack story, which was their thing and saying that

01:33:12   all of the technology companies that you know and love were using chips from a company called

01:33:16   Supermicro, which were being hacked and spied on by the Chinese government. A story that

01:33:22   for all intents and purposes seems to be completely wrong, but Bloomberg is standing

01:33:27   behind. And then I guess all of the resulting drama that came from that story. I think this is a,

01:33:33   this is a very good pick, uh, for one of, if not the most interesting technology story of the year.

01:33:39   But of course we have our own picks. Um, I am going to pick, this is probably at the surprise

01:33:44   of nobody, a theme of the continued convergence of technology companies and streaming media.

01:33:51   It's one of my very favorite things of the year. It's why we created the Upstream segment,

01:33:55   because even as somebody that does not consume as much media as you do, I just like watching the

01:34:01   business moves of it all. Like, I think that we're going into like a new age of media at this point.

01:34:07   And, and it is the technology companies that we were already talking about that are going to own

01:34:12   it, except for Disney. And it's obviously going to keep growing because, um, in the next five years,

01:34:19   a ghost has said that Upstream will be its own podcast. Exactly. Everybody knows that.

01:34:23   And I ended up saying about this, I picked like a theme, you picked a theme last year,

01:34:28   and I wanted to mention this. So in 2017 you picked, and it was the winner, we gave it to the

01:34:31   winners, the overreaching smartphone, and you specifically called out the red hydrogen one,

01:34:36   which was, seemed like vaporware at the time, and the essential phone. Funny thing is that both of

01:34:41   those phones came out, right? They were, they were out now. The red hydrogen phone, the red hydrogen

01:34:45   one was panned even by people like MKBHD who should have loved it, right? Because he loves red.

01:34:51   He didn't like the phone. And as of like the last couple of days, the essential phone is no longer

01:34:56   being sold. So you were 100% right about those phones overreaching. Yeah, that was a good one.

01:35:02   It was a good one. And it's funny because there have been, there have been like other phones,

01:35:06   like in this kind of ilk this year that have worked, but they've been like the gaming

01:35:10   smartphones. I have no idea if you're even familiar with these, but they weren't overreaching,

01:35:14   but they were different and they were focused. So like Razer and Asus both released gaming

01:35:19   smartphones and they seem to have been reviewed really highly and people liked them, but it's

01:35:25   because they're focused. You know, the red hydrogen one and the essential phone, they were

01:35:29   overreaching as you rightly put. So that's, so mine is the continued convergence of tech and

01:35:35   streaming media. Well, for a second, I thought your favorite tech story was one I picked,

01:35:39   overreaching smartphone. And that would create a recursive award. We're not doing that. Not here,

01:35:45   no more, none of that here. Thank you. My choice. And I really struggled with this. I think I've

01:35:51   decided to go with the fact that Apple put all of its marketing images of its iPhones on its website

01:35:59   publicly available in advance so that Guillermo Rambo and Steve Stratton Smith could spelunk

01:36:07   and find all of the iPhone images and spoil all of the iPhone stuff a couple of days before the

01:36:13   event. This came very close in the upgradience voting. It was in number four. So it is a story

01:36:20   about being completely baffled about Apple's inability to stage their content. Because like,

01:36:27   why, why should that content ever be on a publicly available server until the moment the event ends?

01:36:35   Right? Like there is something wrong with Apple servers if they have to get everything in place

01:36:40   two days in advance. That's really bad. Or it's a huge mistake and somebody released it to

01:36:44   production when they shouldn't have. It's also a great story of detective work or reporting work

01:36:50   where there were some file name consistencies across events that allowed them to intuit what

01:36:59   the file names would be for these items. And that goes back to Apple. Apple needs to be much more,

01:37:06   this is like a company hardening themselves against hacker attacks. Basically, Apple needs to

01:37:11   have security in things like their file names and stuff. They need to randomize all that stuff.

01:37:18   They need to build, and perhaps in the last few months they've done that because people are going

01:37:23   to do this. People want to know what Apple is doing. This didn't happen for the October event.

01:37:26   You double down on secrecy and then you don't bother to change your standard file names for

01:37:33   all of your new product photography. It's baffling. So it's a great story in a bunch of different

01:37:39   ways. It did completely spoil that event because we knew everything about those devices, about the

01:37:44   Apple Watch and about the new iPhones, even their names, which was kind of a bummer because they had

01:37:50   done a pretty good job with at least parts of this to be mysterious. And then it was all just

01:37:54   kind of blown. But I'm also fascinated as a tech story by just what a bad job Apple did.

01:37:59   I mean, I will say as somebody who needs to come up with topics for shows about these products in

01:38:03   the weeks leading up to the events, I was happy that it happened because it gave us something to

01:38:09   talk about. I really love this story because again, it's like the enterprising individual.

01:38:14   Because Guillemme, he knew this. He knew this before. He knew to look for it.

01:38:20   Yeah, he held onto that fact that he had noticed the file names were consistent and that if you

01:38:25   could guess or notice this particular blob of text, you could use that as the key to unlock

01:38:30   all of these other file names. And then he sat on it and the iPhone event, he deployed it and he got

01:38:36   it all. Amazing. I want to give this as the story. I want to give the tech story of the year.

01:38:41   All right. It's really bad. Bad pearls.

01:38:44   The more I really, really like about it. Apple spoils the iPhone with bad URLs.

01:38:51   It's amazing.

01:38:52   It's a great story. It is a great story. And we're going to come back to the Bloomberg thing

01:39:00   actually right now as we talk about our favorite tech screw up of the year.

01:39:05   Yeah. So shout out to, I guess we should shout out to 9to5Mac because that's where that stuff

01:39:08   got posted and good job. Yeah, excellent.

01:39:11   Like that was... You spoiled all of us, but good job.

01:39:15   Yeah, but this is what we expect from that. We've always expected from 9to5 that it's going to be

01:39:19   some kind of spoiling. It is one of the interesting changes because they kind of went from what Mark

01:39:25   Gorman has, which is the best sources, right? To now they make their own news. And I kind of like

01:39:31   that because now they dig through stuff and they find stuff. And that's kind of been because you

01:39:35   look at the HomePod leak the year before, which came as a runner up in that category for every

01:39:41   tech story. That was 9to5 as well. And they published a lot of that sort of stuff. So

01:39:46   they're really great with that. So favorite tech screw up. We have from the Upgradients at 13.7%

01:39:54   Bloomberg's big hack story. AirPower at 16.5%. And at 27.7% of the vote is Facebook and its

01:40:06   various privacy scandals. I wanted to kind of throw in here, because it's like the Facebook

01:40:13   stuff, it's so bad and it's so big that I don't even know how to talk about it. But I will mention

01:40:21   kind of, I think my pick here would be Bloomberg and the Supermicro stuff, because I don't even

01:40:27   understand what led to that. They had sources which they seem to trust, but spoke to the

01:40:33   companies and the companies denied it, but they published anyway and continue to double down on

01:40:39   it even after more and more people are kind of debunking the story in various ways, but they

01:40:44   have stuck by it. It is fascinating to me to see Business Week destroy its credibility with at

01:40:53   least these companies that they report on. And I think the ramifications for this will probably be

01:40:59   like the ramifications that Gizmodo had when it published the iPhone story. No one from Business

01:41:05   Week is getting invited to the next Apple events. And I hope for Bloomberg's sake that they don't

01:41:10   feel a rub from that. - Yeah, it's a weird story. I felt strongly it wasn't my favorite tech story,

01:41:20   even the story around the story, but is it a screw up? That's the one question is it seems like

01:41:26   there's something screwy is going on here, right? But whose screw up is it is still a little bit of

01:41:32   an open question. It feels to me like it probably is a game of telephone as I've detailed before

01:41:37   that led to people being confident in stuff that they said was true and told Business Week was true

01:41:44   that turned out that they didn't actually know the truth. It is because it seems unlikely that

01:41:51   all these companies and the US government would say this didn't happen and that they would just

01:41:57   be so blatant to completely deny everything. Is it possible that it's all a conspiracy and they're

01:42:01   lying about it? I guess, but that would be like, it would seem that this government that we have

01:42:08   right now in the US would be really happy to talk about another way that China is infiltrating our

01:42:13   society and how we need to fight against them, right? If they could and they didn't. So yeah,

01:42:19   it's baffling. My nomination here is Amazon's HQ2 process in which cities all over North America

01:42:26   bend over backwards to give to offer free stuff to Amazon in exchange for them building a second

01:42:33   headquarters outside of Seattle in their city and Amazon for orchestrating the whole thing as a

01:42:38   reality show to get everybody to give them free stuff in contrast to like Apple which just

01:42:43   announced that they were building a big facility in Austin, Texas and did not do a reality show

01:42:48   to get there. That, I already didn't like this story, but the thing that pushes it over into

01:42:54   screw up is that in the end what happened? Amazon picked two cities. They were essentially New York

01:43:06   and Washington DC, so not small cities that could have gotten a boost from a second headquarters at

01:43:12   all, but just added people in two large cities. They also threw in a thing in Nashville, I want

01:43:20   to say, where they're going to build a hub for logistics and stuff and distribution. And so what

01:43:27   we ended up getting was Amazon played a bunch of cities, got a bunch of offers of free stuff from

01:43:33   city governments, and then didn't even do what it said it was going to do and didn't really build a

01:43:38   second headquarters. They built... Richard: And New York really doesn't want it. The residents of New

01:43:42   York are very, very unhappy. Chris: New York's not thrilled. This is a place where places that

01:43:47   already have high... that are high cost of living and high paying jobs are there are going to get

01:43:51   some more of them, which, you know, as opposed to going to a city that could really use Amazon as a

01:43:58   hub and would roll out the red carpet and would give them stuff because they want to have that

01:44:02   extra shot in the arm. So this thing that was hyped kind of unpleasantly and led to all of these

01:44:08   cities having their plans of what they were going to give to Amazon, in the end, Amazon didn't even

01:44:13   do it. They just... they chickened out and they ended up just kind of putting some people in New

01:44:19   York and DC. Like, what a story. What a screw up on all fronts, on the fronts of the governments and

01:44:26   on Amazon. Like, how stupid was this whole thing? What a waste of everybody's time.

01:44:30   Chris This should be the favorite... our favorite text grow up of the year,

01:44:34   but it's got to be Facebook, right? Like, who's had a worst year on Facebook?

01:44:39   Chris I think... yeah, I mean, really, the Bloomberg thing is pretty good. But yeah,

01:44:46   I think it's got to be Facebook. I think... I think having done with Steven done both subnet

01:44:52   and download this year where we're looking at all the headlines, like, the key here is that there is

01:44:58   not one Facebook issue. The key is that there are endless Facebook issues and some of them are more

01:45:05   serious than others. And we've reached the point now where small things that Facebook does are

01:45:09   blown up because everybody is ready for the next thing that Facebook does.

01:45:13   Chris I mean, but also, like, huge stuff is not really getting covered because it's like,

01:45:16   you know, like, at least widely, like the Cambridge Analytica thing was huge. But then there's been

01:45:22   massive breaches after that, but they're just not getting the attention anymore because it's like,

01:45:26   well, we've already been through this. Like, yeah, the...

01:45:28   Chris And the response that Facebook has is amazing. They always have a, you know,

01:45:33   facts about this blog post that they do, where they try to spin it their way. Mark Zuckerberg

01:45:39   basically has, you know, he can't be removed because he made the company and he set it up

01:45:46   in a certain way. There, the people who are in positions of authority over this are incredibly

01:45:53   arrogant. You know, they just aren't not convinced that they're wrong.

01:45:59   Chris They're ignoring requests for God from governments.

01:46:02   Mark Like, their business model is built on this. And

01:46:06   it's, and that's just how it is. And they built this whole company based on these core ideas.

01:46:13   But their lack of, you know, good security and practices and their ability to

01:46:18   shade the truth when they can bend the truth to mislead people. We also know that they hired all

01:46:24   sorts of like opposition research groups. So there's just like Facebook is a garbage fire.

01:46:30   Chris It is. It's impossible to keep up with. And it's

01:46:33   yes, they are the biggest screw up in technology this year without a shadow of a doubt.

01:46:39   Let's talk about something a bit happier. Our most life changing hardware of the year.

01:46:44   The upgrade is voted with the 2018 iPad Pro at 8.8%. This is both models. The 10.7% goes to the

01:46:54   AirPods. People still love those AirPods. And it's back again 20% Apple Watch.

01:46:59   Mark Wow, there's a lot of lives being

01:47:01   changed out there, Myke. Chris

01:47:02   And most definitely, especially by Apple Watchers. People love their Apple Watchers.

01:47:06   Mark Yeah, about that.

01:47:08   Chris Now, I want you to tell me yours because I'm

01:47:11   astounded by it. Mark

01:47:13   I'll just go back again to a couple of weeks ago where I talked about it. I feel like the Apple

01:47:17   Pencil 2 is the most life changing hardware for me because it has changed how I edit podcasts.

01:47:22   Chris I can't believe this.

01:47:23   Mark I'm using because I'm using

01:47:25   ferrite and the Apple Pencil and editing my podcast in the warmth of my house instead of the

01:47:30   cooler climate of my garage, which means that I'm around like my pets and my family. And I'm more

01:47:36   visible and I'm not behind a closed door on Saturday mornings editing me and comparable.

01:47:40   And that's a life change that is enabled by that. Now, yeah, could I use a laptop out there? Well,

01:47:46   I could, but I didn't. Like if I was going to use logic on my MacBook Air, I just would use logic on

01:47:52   my iMac Pro. But I don't do that now. So I'm going to throw that out there. I think the Apple Pencil,

01:47:58   good product, good update. And I have started to use it and it's changed my workflows. So

01:48:03   that's why I mentioned it. Chris

01:48:05   I wanted to pick something completely different. We got an espresso machine this year that I love.

01:48:10   It is hardware. It's kind of technological in some ways, I guess. It is the Barista Express,

01:48:16   which is made by Breville, but in the UK is branded as Sage. They did like a deal with a big

01:48:22   chef here who anyway, but it's branded as Sage here. And I really like the I really, really like

01:48:29   this product. It's changed my life because I use it multiple times a day and it makes the best

01:48:33   coffee that I've ever had at home. I absolutely love it. So I'm going to go with the Barista

01:48:39   Chris The Sage, uh, Barista Express. But obviously the Apple Pencil 2 is going to win this category

01:48:46   because I love the Apple Pencil. Chris Or is the Apple Watch going to win?

01:48:49   Chris No, I don't want to vote the Apple Watch because, you know, I would prefer to vote the

01:48:54   Apple Pencil 2 and have the Apple Watch as a runner up because for me personally, I don't

01:49:00   this was the year I stopped wearing it. So yeah, I'm super excited to see how happy you have been

01:49:06   about the Apple Pencil this year. That's great. You like so much. Yeah. Well,

01:49:09   it's much better product and I've adopted it. So.

01:49:12   Chris All right, Jason. So should we move into our final set of categories? The, uh,

01:49:18   the podcast awards section? Well, it's all that's left. I don't know what else we would do. So sure.

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01:50:57   I would love to know something about how much you do love them. Yeah, well, I do have, as I

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01:51:31   My house isn't that large, but still there were dead spots and weird spots. And since I went to

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01:52:15   And that awesome one year of Eero plus. So you get all those awesome features that I think is really,

01:52:19   really cool. Our thanks to Eero for their support of this show and Relay FM. So we're rounding out

01:52:25   the 2018 upgrade days by talking about some of the best podcasts in our industry and the industry at

01:52:31   large. And we start with our favorite tech podcast, which includes the lifetime achievement award

01:52:37   winner of the Accidental Tech Podcast. ATP won three years in a row for the first three years.

01:52:43   So we decided to create the lifetime achievement award just to get them out of the category. Get

01:52:47   out, get out. ATP is my favorite technology podcast. It's the one that I always listen

01:52:52   to every week. I love it. And so I would just keep voting it for it forever, even to the point that I

01:52:56   actually don't have a nomination in this category because ATP is the one that I would always want

01:53:03   to vote for. So I haven't voted. Myke, I feel that the upgradients have done it again with their

01:53:08   selections. So in at kind of third place is Cortex with 7.9%. Thank you very much upgradients. The

01:53:17   talk show is at 13.7%. Now here's the thing. Upgrade got 14.5%. But I have a thing about this.

01:53:25   I think most people know that we're never going to award upgrade as the show, which is why

01:53:29   obviously every upgradient doesn't vote for upgrade. But thank you to the 14.5% of you that

01:53:36   voted for upgrade anyway. I am genuinely flattered that 21.4% of the upgradients voted for connected

01:53:42   as their favorite tech podcast. Thank you upgradients for doing that. Yeah.

01:53:47   I love how upgrade never wins the poll for a free-for-d podcast.

01:53:52   They know we're never going to give it to ourselves, right?

01:53:54   There's a reason, but I really like that we come in second. That makes me laugh every time. It's

01:54:00   like, yeah, it's so close. We just didn't make it. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I'm with the

01:54:06   upgradients. I really love connected. I listened to the prompt back in the day.

01:54:10   Am I about to win my first upgrade? Yeah, I think you are. I think connected,

01:54:17   I'm going to highlight. So connected, the thing about it is it's the relationship between you

01:54:20   three guys, but also as the show artwork shows, right? It's also your different perspectives.

01:54:24   You got Steven in Tennessee, you're in London, Federico's in Rome. And so you have very different

01:54:28   perspectives, um, that come out in hilarious ways. I mean, we, you and I got a flavor of that in the

01:54:34   Christmas special where we explained the premise of the Christmas Carol and Federico was like,

01:54:40   I don't know what that is. And they're like, what? Federico being young and Italian, uh,

01:54:46   those two traits, I think more than anything else, he has just these voids where we assume there's

01:54:55   like this historical knowledge. That's just, he doesn't have that. Instead, he's got this whole

01:55:00   other catalog of things that he knows that are, are surprising to us. And it's delightful. Um,

01:55:07   plus he is, you know, he, yeah, he's a, he's a quirky, funny guy and that comes through.

01:55:13   And then you guys all have your, like, uh, it's a, it's a good relationship. The highlight of

01:55:17   this year, by the way, was, uh, the weird fish episode where Federico had to name a bunch of new

01:55:22   emoji and try to guess what they were. That was our best episode. Uh, that was a pretty incredible

01:55:27   episode. So, and also I will say this is the year that Connected's show art got shown on stage at

01:55:32   an Apple keynote. So for these reasons, I bestow upon you, Myke Hurley and Steven Hackett and

01:55:38   Federico Vittucci, the favorite tech podcast. It's not from you to yourself. It's from us,

01:55:43   the Upgradians and me to you guys. Congratulations. I genuinely am honored. Like this is a

01:55:50   great honor to me. I've always wanted to win an award for one of my shows and now I've done it.

01:55:56   And I consider obviously the upgrade is to be the most prestigious, most prestigious of all

01:56:01   podcasting awards. Yes, absolutely. I am absolutely honored. It's a little like wearing a t-shirt that

01:56:06   says my mom says I'm awesome. You can now put on your, uh, on your site that you, you, your own

01:56:12   podcast gave you an award. I'm genuinely like, thank you. I genuinely think that means so much

01:56:18   to me that you would nominate the show. And I didn't know what the listener results were

01:56:23   going to be. I just, I just thought about it. I can't pick ATP, right? It's barred. And I thought,

01:56:28   you know, I've really enjoyed listening to Connected this year. My heart was warmed when I,

01:56:31   when I got to the, to the voting and saw that like that, that just, that just felt really,

01:56:35   really good. So, and I know that, um, Federico and Steven are going to be, they're going to be really

01:56:40   excited to, to find this out. So thank you so much for that. That means an awful lot. But Apple

01:56:46   next year upgrade. Yeah, come on show art. Let's put upgrade up there next time. Use it. You can,

01:56:52   you can, you can help us out. We'll let you use it. Don't worry. You can take this as our, as our

01:56:56   acceptance view to do it. So we now move into our favorite non-tech podcast with our second lifetime

01:57:00   achievement award winner, which is the flophouse, which also won the first three years in this

01:57:06   category. It's still my favorite. So cannot be voted for anymore. Now I would like to go

01:57:10   straight to the upgradience votes with 3.2% is last year's winner. The adventure zone

01:57:16   9.2% is frequent runner up. Hello internet. And 23.2% of the vote goes to Dubai Friday,

01:57:26   which was 2016, uh, winner of the podcast newcomer. Yeah. And so Dubai Friday is the,

01:57:33   that's a, is a good, good range at 23.2% from the upgradience. I absolutely love Dubai Friday,

01:57:39   like Dubai Friday gets a big thumbs up for me. Uh, but I wanted to talk about a show that I

01:57:44   absolutely love, which I would have wanted to put in. It was a newcomer to me this year,

01:57:48   but it started in kind of, I think it was October, November, 2017 circle. Wonderful.

01:57:53   Wonderful is hosted by, uh, Griffin and, uh, Rachel McElroy, um, their husband and wife.

01:58:00   And they used to do a show about the bachelor and then they ended up hating the bachelor.

01:58:05   So they turned their show, uh, Rose Buddies into a show called Wonderful. And the premise is very

01:58:10   simple. Uh, they both bring to the show two things that they think are wonderful. I love,

01:58:17   I am very much into shows now that bring joy to me. That is a thing that like in 2018, uh,

01:58:25   I find just to be a nice thing to have things that bring joy to me and wonderful is just pure joy.

01:58:33   Um, and, and I absolutely love this show. It is, you know, for the reasons that I also love top

01:58:37   four, um, it is really nice to, to hear a couple who clearly enjoy each other very much and hear

01:58:45   their chemistry wrapped around something that's also super fun and wonderful is that like,

01:58:50   it is just bliss. I love that show so much. Couples podcasting is a thing for sure. Um,

01:58:56   my choice is a, uh, Podcast about one of our nominees for the TV award, which is the good

01:59:04   place, the good place. The podcast is hosted by Mark Evan Jackson, who plays Sean on the show,

01:59:11   a recurring character. He does a great job hosting it. Um, he gets access to, uh, you know,

01:59:18   actors, but also crew and, you know, writers, producers, directors, uh, casting people. Uh,

01:59:25   there's so many different things, uh, art direction. Um, and, and so one, as a, as a

01:59:32   person who makes independent media themed podcasts, um, one of the things I like about

01:59:37   what we do is we are not in the PR business for them. Like we, you know, the, after the walking

01:59:44   dead show is going to say, wasn't that a great episode. Every time the, after the star Trek,

01:59:48   all those after shows are official and they're going to be like, wasn't it great. Let's talk

01:59:53   to the cast. Whereas on an independent podcast, you can be like, yeah, this didn't work. It was

01:59:58   bad. Um, and you just, that's not allowed. That's I don't like this performance. I didn't think this

02:00:03   was well-written don't you can't, you can't say it. So I like, I like those kinds of podcasts.

02:00:08   I don't really like the official podcast, except for the access that they, that they grant. The

02:00:12   great thing about the good place, the podcast is yes, they're not going to slag off the show,

02:00:16   but it's not really what the show's about. It, first off, I love the show, so they don't need

02:00:20   to slag it off. It's great. What I, what I love about the podcast though, is that they let you

02:00:26   go in detail about how they make the show and that Mark Evan Jackson is actually very interested in

02:00:31   how they make the show. Where'd this, you know, where'd this story idea come from? What was the

02:00:35   plan to take the story in this direction? Um, you know, what was the direction for the actor?

02:00:40   Where did they shoot this? How did they make this work with the special effects? You know,

02:00:44   how did these props get created? It really does kind of pick apart episode by episode with

02:00:49   different guests, how they make the show. And that's what makes it a great podcast is it's

02:00:53   a good host. It's got access, but it's much more interested in how a TV show is made than it is

02:01:00   being interested in just kind of like fluffy interviews with actors, which I think is a snooze.

02:01:06   So it's a great show. That sounds very interesting. You should listen after you've seen. Yeah,

02:01:12   of course. I imagine it's rife with spoilers. The first two seasons are covered as a rewatch,

02:01:18   basically. So you have to have seen the first two seasons, season three, they're doing episode by

02:01:23   episode without spoilers for the future because they're releasing them on the episode. But

02:01:26   this came out this year and they went through the first, you know, whatever, 25 episodes or

02:01:31   something. Um, it w in the mind to you have seen the first two seasons. And so, uh, I,

02:01:37   when you get there, I recommend trying this podcast out because it's really good.

02:01:41   This is, is this going to be a tricky one? What are we going to go with? Yeah.

02:01:44   You know, people don't know, but you, you have Dubai Friday with a slash with wonderful. Yeah.

02:01:49   And I feel like the upgradians also spoke pretty clearly here. We know the people who do by Friday,

02:01:54   but that is a, and we've been on it, you and I and Federico and Steven. Um, it's a really

02:02:01   a wacky podcast, but, uh, you know, it is a good people, um, using this medium to do some very,

02:02:10   um, yeah, they're, they're exploiting the medium of podcasting in lots of interesting ways.

02:02:15   And, uh, and since you had it as your kind of runner up and it was the clear choice of

02:02:20   the upgradians and it's a previous winner for newcomer, I say Dubai Friday. Congratulations

02:02:26   Dubai Friday. Well deserved. Uh, love that show. It's it's again, it's like a show I will,

02:02:31   I will never miss every week. Uh, I really, really do love it. It's fantastic. So very happy for it

02:02:36   to be our favorite non tech podcast for 2018. So move into our final award of the evening,

02:02:43   favorite podcast newcomer. So the upgradians voted with 6.6% newcomer to relay FM automators,

02:02:52   a show all about automating your, uh, devices, your, your computing devices. And it's hosted

02:02:58   by Rosemary Orchard and David Sparks. Um, at 7.8% is supercomputer hosted by, uh,

02:03:05   upgrade award winning, uh, hosted Dubai Friday, Alex Cox and, uh, Matt Casanelli. He used to work

02:03:11   at workflow and shortcuts, uh, team, I think in the shortcuts team at Apple. Um, and they talk

02:03:17   about make basically all the stuff that you would assume again, stuff about automation, but just

02:03:21   about using technology devices, uh, to do the things that you want them to do and tied at 7.8%,

02:03:28   which was baffling to me, they got the exact same amount of votes, uh, is the show that I do called

02:03:33   playing for fun relay FM, which I, again, um, apps, I was really surprised to see playing for

02:03:39   fun here. And, um, I thank everybody for that. Uh, talking about like the joy, like wanting to,

02:03:46   that I love wonderful because it just brings me joy. Uh, that is what I, and what me and

02:03:52   TIFF tried to do with playing for fun. Like we just talk about good stuff. Our streams are fun.

02:03:56   We do like Twitch streaming. We just want to put nice stuff into the world. And so I genuinely

02:04:02   really appreciate, um, that the vote for playing for fun there from, from the upgrade. And so thank

02:04:06   you for that. Um, Jason, what is your, uh, newcomer show? Uh, it's, I'm just going to say, see above,

02:04:14   uh, the good place. The podcast was new this year. I loved it. It was my number one new podcast this

02:04:20   year. There are some other ones out there that are good, but this is the one that was the best for me.

02:04:25   Um, my vote is for a show that my co-host TIFF on playing for fun, uh, does on the incomparable

02:04:32   with, uh, Clockwise host, uh, Michael Sargent, which is somehow I managed, which is a rewatch

02:04:38   show of the office. Um, I love the office. This show has got me to rewatch the office again.

02:04:44   And I really like hearing two absolute office nerds. Like they are super fans talk about this

02:04:52   show. Um, again, it is a show that brings me joy because it is talking about the fun stuff in my,

02:04:58   one of my favorite TV shows of all time. And I think that they've done some really fun things.

02:05:03   Like they have super hilarious intros a lot of the time where they like recreate something from

02:05:08   the show, which with their amazing acting, which I really enjoy. Um, and I love that they give

02:05:15   Dundee awards out at the end of every episode. And something that I value greatly in this,

02:05:20   in this podcast is that they, they do not spoil anything in for the future. Like I can tell that,

02:05:29   I mean, they spoke about this, but I can tell the great, the great lengths that they go to.

02:05:34   So that if you are watching the office for the first time, they don't spoil

02:05:37   stuff that happens in later seasons, which I think is super valuable for a show like this. So

02:05:43   my, uh, my vote for my favorite podcast newcomer, uh, is somehow I manage.

02:05:48   Well, that's very nice as somebody who's, uh, who does the incomparable network. That's, uh,

02:05:53   that's good. So my, my, um, if my daughter were voting, she would vote for somehow I manage cause

02:05:58   Jamie doesn't, um, the office is her favorite TV show. She really wants to be on somehow I manage.

02:06:03   I think she's angling for a guest slot at some point. Um, and, uh, and that's amazing

02:06:08   cause she does not want to be on podcasts. Uh, we have to drag her on and, uh, and she listens

02:06:14   to somehow I manage. She listens to it regularly and loves it because they, they love that show

02:06:18   as much as she does, which is pretty cool. I, by the way, Jamie this year for Christmas,

02:06:23   one of the things I got her was a Dundee award. Oh, very good. Actual Dundee award statue for fine,

02:06:30   fine work. She loved it. So where are we going to put our vote for this one? Um, I, I look,

02:06:37   I listened to it twice. I want the good place, the podcast to win. Hmm. I mean, you gave me an award,

02:06:47   so yeah, sure. All right. That's how it works. I feel bad for Tiff though. She, she's got two

02:06:54   nominations in the same time, right on the doorstep, but not quite there yet. So that's it.

02:07:01   That is our upgrade ease. So don't forget you can go to upgrade ease.com where you will find all of

02:07:08   these, uh, all of the lists of all of the winners and the runners up, um, for this year and all

02:07:14   previous years, uh, from 2014 through to 2018, this was the fifth annual upgrade awards. You

02:07:22   can find more, uh, you can find links to every. Nomination. So not just the runners up. If you

02:07:28   want to find out more, maybe about the books that Jason listed or some of the video games,

02:07:32   all of the nominations will be in our show notes, which you can find in your podcast app of choice

02:07:37   or relay.fm/upgrades/226. You can go there, or if you use a great podcast app, you will see

02:07:45   the artwork for the upgrade ease for our fifth annual upgrade is, which was created by the

02:07:50   wonderful Simon Buckmaster who does incredible work for all of our stuff here at relay FM and

02:07:54   really knocked it out of the park with this one, uh, as we very cleverly use the Roman numerals,

02:08:00   uh, to, for the fifth one. So that looks amazing. So you can see that on the page or in the app of

02:08:05   choice that you use, uh, thanks to Pingdom, Luna display, Cain, 11 and Eero for their support of

02:08:10   this show. Um, a huge thank you to the. What over a thousand of you that voted. Um, so thank you so

02:08:19   much to the upgrade ians for their votes. Um, I will not even be upset about how long it took me,

02:08:25   Jason. It was two hours. It took me to put the nominations together. Sure. It was a big job.

02:08:31   I'm surprised, but I loved it only two hours. Um, I loved it. This was, it would have taken me way

02:08:36   longer if I hadn't come up with the very complicated spreadsheet system that, uh, that I created last

02:08:41   year. So thank you to past Myke for creating that sheet to make this work easier. Oh, and, uh, thank

02:08:46   you to Chris Breen for, uh, this week and last coming up with special alternative versions of

02:08:52   the upgrade theme song that he created originally. And this was our classy award version. Yep. So

02:08:58   thank you so much for another couple of wonderful brain themes. Uh, they are, we, I enjoy them

02:09:04   greatly. Uh, we have, we have really put at Chris Breen to work this year. Um, I think this is the

02:09:09   third version of the song that we've had commissioned this year, but you can expect

02:09:14   four, uh, upgrade ease Christmas draft and summer of fun. Summer of fun too. That was one I was

02:09:22   forgetting. Yes. So that's four. And so you can expect to hear those songs played for, for the

02:09:26   many, many more years. Um, we'll be back next year for the sixth annual upgrades, but we'll be back

02:09:32   next week for the first upgrade ease of 2019 until then say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye Jason Snell.

02:09:48   [Inaudible]