00:00:10 ◼ ► From Relay, welcome to the 11th Annual Upgradies Awards. This evening's proceedings are brought to
00:00:17 ◼ ► you by our broadcast partners, ShareShot, FitBod, and Data Citizens Dialogues. Simulcasts from London,
00:00:25 ◼ ► England, and Mill Valley, California. I am one of your hosts, Mike Hurley, and joining me is my
00:00:30 ◼ ► illustrious co-host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. - Hello, Mike Hurley, how are you? - Oh, I'm so excited.
00:00:37 ◼ ► It's the Upgradies. It's the 11th Annual Upgradies, which also means it's the 10th anniversary of the
00:00:42 ◼ ► Upgradies. - It is. 10th anniversary of the Upgradies. That first Upgradies, I know I mentioned this last
00:00:46 ◼ ► year. Ten years ago, I was in my in-laws' upper, like, one of their guest bedrooms at a really
00:00:53 ◼ ► uncomfortable desk and a really uncomfortable chair, but I remember it so well because it was
00:00:58 ◼ ► like, yeah, I've got this podcast now, I've got my new job where I'm doing all this podcast, and we're
00:01:02 ◼ ► doing these things, and I got to go up there, and everybody, my whole family and Lauren's whole
00:01:20 ◼ ► remember at the time I thought this is a little bit silly because I had been coming out of, like, the
00:01:23 ◼ ► Eddie Awards and all of that, and this was, it was like, this is just you and me, and you were like,
00:01:27 ◼ ► no, no, man, this is gonna be amazing. - And that's why I called it the first annual, even though you hated that.
00:01:33 ◼ ► - I did hate that because nothing is the first annual. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, thank you for your vision.
00:01:39 ◼ ► - Anytime. I'm always happy for a lot of my vision. - It's what makes Upgrade everybody's second favorite podcast, so
00:01:48 ◼ ► congratulations to us. - Well, we'll find that out later on in the show when we get to the podcast category.
00:01:54 ◼ ► I would like to mention, for the spoiler adverse out there, something we're going to do this year
00:01:59 ◼ ► is we're going to try and get into the show notes every nominee that we mention, so if there is
00:02:06 ◼ ► something that you want to go back and find, maybe it's a podcast or a book that we talk about, we're
00:02:10 ◼ ► going to do our best to add everything to the show notes. Usually all I do is add a link to the
00:02:15 ◼ ► wonderful Upgradies.com, which has the winners and the two runners up, if there are two runners up in
00:02:22 ◼ ► each category, but I'm going to try this year to get everything in there, but the first link in the
00:02:26 ◼ ► show notes is Upgradies.com if you want to see the winners later on, but all of the nominees will be,
00:02:32 ◼ ► that we mentioned today, will be in the show notes for today's episode. Yeah. Now I would like to, as
00:02:39 ◼ ► all good awards do, as awards grow, Jason, there has to be a pre-show or something like that,
00:02:46 ◼ ► to try and get all the other awards in. We have a red carpet? Yeah. Are we on the red carpet? Oh,
00:02:51 ◼ ► I see. This is like the Technical Award Academy Award Banquet where they send the nerds to get
00:03:00 ◼ ► around this time of year, it's nice to look back and think about and appreciate the people who help
00:03:07 ◼ ► make Upgrade possible because, as time has gone on over these 10 years, it has become quite a large
00:03:12 ◼ ► team effort to put this show together every single week. So I would like to thank for Web Designer
00:03:18 ◼ ► Upgradies.com and also all of our scorecards, the wonderful Zach Knox, for the artwork and art
00:03:25 ◼ ► direction is J.D. Davis. And J.D. did an incredible job with the Upgradies artwork this year in the
00:03:32 ◼ ► obvious only way that it could have gone to, which is all the way to 11. All the way to 11. All the
00:03:39 ◼ ► way to 11. For our music, for our special theme, and for all of our themes, the wonderful Chris
00:03:43 ◼ ► Breen. Jim Mattson-Dorf for achievements in audio editing, of which they are needed sometimes of us.
00:03:51 ◼ ► Similarly, for achievements in video editing, we'd like to thank the wonderful Chips.Earth
00:03:56 ◼ ► for Chip's work and putting the video clips and video version of the show together every week.
00:04:01 ◼ ► And then for making us cool with the kids, thank you to Jamie Snell for social media assistance.
00:04:16 ◼ ► Chris Breen- That's gotta be fun to see. Like to see that in action, you know? It's just like
00:04:28 ◼ ► Jim Mattson- This is like when they do best supporting actress before the first commercial
00:04:32 ◼ ► break to keep everybody tied in. It's like, I'm sure I've said that before. Anyway, let's do it.
00:04:36 ◼ ► Chris Breen- So let's start off with the best overall iOS app for 2024. I'll mention that our
00:04:44 ◼ ► lifetime achievement award winner in this category is Overcast, in case you are new to the Upgradies.
00:04:51 ◼ ► If something wins three times in the same category, we kind of raise it up into the rafters
00:04:58 ◼ ► and it will always be mentioned in every Upgradies because this is it. They deserve that, right?
00:05:06 ◼ ► Chris Breen- Because there are some podcasts and/or apps that we may have awarded at 10 out of 11
00:05:11 ◼ ► times. We don't talk about that one year if we hadn't otherwise created this. They know what
00:05:16 ◼ ► they did. Now, we also put out a nomination form to the Upgradients, to you, our listeners. And we
00:05:23 ◼ ► got hundreds and hundreds, I think it was over a thousand submissions that came in. I would like to
00:05:28 ◼ ► give an additional technical award at this point to Jason for writing a script to help me get through
00:05:37 ◼ ► Chris Breen- This year, I think I put together the Upgradients picks. It took me the same amount of
00:05:45 ◼ ► time to do one category in the way I used to do it, as it took me to do the entire thing this time.
00:05:52 ◼ ► It used to take me so much work. And so I'm very happy that I don't have to do that anymore. So,
00:05:56 ◼ ► we're going to go in from bottom to top. I don't know if you'd say- it's ascending order, right?
00:06:04 ◼ ► Chris Breen- So that's with 6% of the Upgradients votes is ivory. Actually, for this category,
00:06:10 ◼ ► it doesn't matter because for- Jim Mattson- Yeah, I was going to say ascending from six to six.
00:06:14 ◼ ► Chris Breen- Six to six to six. All of the other ones, it goes from lowest to highest, but there
00:06:20 ◼ ► were so many, so many individual apps nominated here that no one really got a large share of the
00:06:27 ◼ ► vote. 6% is Flighty and 6% is Carrot Weather. So that's where the Upgradients are. Ivory,
00:06:35 ◼ ► Flighty, and Carrot Weather. Jason, what are you thinking? Jason Tucker- Well, I want to do a
00:06:41 ◼ ► shout out to the new version of Overcast because it can't win in this category. But after some
00:06:46 ◼ ► initial pain, I think in general, I am very happy with where it has gone. And I like that Marco has
00:06:52 ◼ ► made some changes to it that I like and added the, you know, what you've listened to over the year,
00:07:01 ◼ ► where I've gotten to see how everybody listens to Upgrade, the second or third most of all their
00:07:06 ◼ ► podcasts. Very exciting. And so I'll shout out Overcast, even though it is not eligible and
00:07:11 ◼ ► cannot win. And, you know, I just, in a span of 10 days, I took five flights. And so Flighty has been
00:07:22 ◼ ► on my mind, because there were a bunch of big additions to Flighty. Plus, I find it so useful
00:07:27 ◼ ► in general, but they added a bunch of stuff where they're looking at like delays at the incoming
00:07:32 ◼ ► airport and the outgoing airport and giving you more detail of why your plane might be delayed.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And it's just really good. And at this point, I don't think I would fly without it. I can track
00:07:45 ◼ ► my kids' flights as well. So I know when like, are their flights going to be delayed? And I knew when
00:07:50 ◼ ► Jamie landed back home last night. Like it's so, so I struggle in this category because I'm using
00:07:59 ◼ ► the same old apps most of the time. But Flighty is the one that keeps coming up. And I know that
00:08:04 ◼ ► if it wins, it's going to be a lifetime achievement winner, but I'm kind of headed in that direction.
00:08:11 ◼ ► In the same way that it has won in the last two years. Like the app has been around for quite an
00:08:19 ◼ ► amount of time now, you know, longer than those two years, but over time, it just got consistently
00:08:23 ◼ ► and consistently better. I mean, last year, they added the Apple Watch app, which I was very pleased
00:08:27 ◼ ► about. But then this year, its overall polish has continued. But then the connection assistant and
00:08:33 ◼ ► the delay predictions thing, that is just, those are features that to me, especially the delay
00:08:38 ◼ ► predictions is like a dream feature that I just didn't ever really think that they'd be able to
00:08:43 ◼ ► add because the amount of data that you would need to do that. But I guess at this point,
00:08:47 ◼ ► they have gotten to the point where they have enough people using the app that they're able to
00:08:52 ◼ ► use the information that they get, along with the information that they get historically from the
00:08:56 ◼ ► data providers to build this system to say like, hey, your plane hasn't left yet. That means you're
00:09:03 ◼ ► probably going to be delayed. Like it's a thing where I can look at it and maybe I can think
00:09:07 ◼ ► that's the case, but I don't know, you know, like how long does it take these things to turn around
00:09:12 ◼ ► over? But yeah, Flighty is just an excellent application. And I do actually really want it to
00:09:20 ◼ ► become a lifetime achievement award winner because I think the app is that good. Like I, it's one
00:09:25 ◼ ► thing I want it to be there. I agree. And I've heard, and one of the things I want to mention,
00:09:29 ◼ ► because I know it comes up when we talk about Flighty is that it's a fairly expensive subscription.
00:09:34 ◼ ► I agree. Although I think that you don't have to travel a lot for Flighty's subscription to be
00:09:41 ◼ ► worth it. Also they do, like you can buy the little passes and stuff. Yeah, this is where I was going.
00:09:46 ◼ ► What I love about it is if you are below the level where it's reasonable that it, you know,
00:09:51 ◼ ► it's worth it because you fly so much, you can just buy a pass for a trip, basically. And so
00:10:00 ◼ ► they've got a way to, you know, if you don't travel very much, but you're going to be going on a long
00:10:06 ◼ ► trip and you want it for this, you know, for this week or this month, you can do that. I love it.
00:10:11 ◼ ► That's really, it's really smart and it makes it accessible to more people. But yeah, it's a winner.
00:10:16 ◼ ► So let's put it in the Hall of Fame with a lifetime achievement or whatever it is. Let's just put it
00:10:21 ◼ ► in there. Well, that's the Hall of Fame because the lifetime achievement award was the thing we did.
00:10:25 ◼ ► I guess we do every 10 upgrade-ies because we did that last year. I thought that was the other way
00:10:29 ◼ ► around though. Isn't that, isn't that the Hall of Fame we did last year? Yeah. This is the lifetime
00:10:34 ◼ ► achievement award. They just got a lifetime achievement award. Hall of Fame's a different
00:10:37 ◼ ► thing. Flighty, you're banned. You're too good. You're banned from the category now. Indeed. Well,
00:10:41 ◼ ► this may actually now open up for either Carrot Weather or Ivory. Hilariously, it's the exact
00:10:46 ◼ ► same winners and runner up last year. Yeah, I know. And so, you know, but look, really good though.
00:10:52 ◼ ► No, but this is like Carrot Weather, for example, has won a bunch of times and I expect, yeah,
00:10:59 ◼ ► I could imagine Carrot Weather winning next year and also becoming a lifetime achievement award
00:11:04 ◼ ► winner. And to me, these are apps that have been around for long enough and are good enough that
00:11:09 ◼ ► they deserve that. They should. Right? I agree. And so it makes sense to me that Flighty would
00:11:14 ◼ ► keep winning because it is also probably the best designed iOS app that I use. And that makes a big
00:11:25 ◼ ► difference. I agree. Even down to like the way they do their kind of year in review thing,
00:11:30 ◼ ► their passport thing, which is actually a really fun feature. The fact that it looks like a
00:11:34 ◼ ► passport page. You don't need to do that, but they do. And it's all these little touches
00:11:40 ◼ ► make it overall like just really a very strong example of what it takes to have a good iOS app.
00:11:49 ◼ ► Like that's why it's there. Yeah, agreed. I agree. But it's not about just apps that have existed for
00:11:56 ◼ ► a long time. There are also new apps. So we're going to now move into the best newcomer iOS app
00:12:02 ◼ ► category of which this year, lots of really good options. So the Upgradians voted thusly.
00:12:10 ◼ ► With 6% of the vote for Quasant, 7% of the vote for Bellatro. I think that might give a hint for
00:12:17 ◼ ► later on that it made it into the app category. It broke out of games. And 10% goes to Delta,
00:12:24 ◼ ► which is the emulator app, which every time I read this, I cannot fathom that that was this year.
00:12:40 ◼ ► but this year it was available in the app store in Europe. Or everywhere. No, everywhere, right?
00:12:45 ◼ ► Because the Apple relented and was like, "Fine, have your emulator everywhere, whatever." Right.
00:12:57 ◼ ► I struggle with this category. Delta isn't really new, but I like the kind of political statement
00:13:05 ◼ ► about it. Bellatro is a game, but I have played it a lot on iPad especially. Quasant is a fun idea
00:13:11 ◼ ► for a cross-posting tool. There are others. And I think it shows that it's trying to get
00:13:16 ◼ ► off the ground. Some of the account management stuff especially is pretty finicky. And some of
00:13:22 ◼ ► the error handling is, I mean, they're working on it really hard. And I like what they're doing
00:13:26 ◼ ► with it, but it still, I feel like, has room to grow and improve. So the other one I'm gonna throw
00:13:35 ◼ ► in the ring from my side, honestly, is passwords. We asked for a long time for a passwords app
00:13:42 ◼ ► instead of having it be a setting in iOS. And it is. And it's pretty good. And I am using it.
00:13:50 ◼ ► You know, my biggest complaint about passwords is actually, I think maybe it was a bug in the beta.
00:13:56 ◼ ► But it's too late now, which is that when I imported it from 1Password, it seems to have
00:14:01 ◼ ► imported my original passwords on all of my accounts and not the most recent one that is
00:14:07 ◼ ► the current. So I have to keep 1Password open every now and then too, because it'll say, "Oh,
00:14:13 ◼ ► this is the wrong password." And I'll go into 1Password and get the right password and put it in
00:14:17 ◼ ► and then update the passwords. It's not ideal. But I think maybe that was a beta bug and I just,
00:14:24 ◼ ► I haven't gone back and wiped it out. It's too late now. I'm just gonna kind of live with it.
00:14:28 ◼ ► But I really have liked that integration. And I think they did a pretty good job with the passwords
00:14:31 ◼ ► app, even though, you know, anyway, so I'll throw that out there as a possibility. What do you think?
00:14:35 ◼ ► So I have three. One of them I'm gonna mention now, which was on my list, which is ShareShot.
00:14:48 ◼ ► Yeah, but so I will talk about my love of ShareShot when I'm actually doing the ad for ShareShot,
00:14:58 ◼ ► Then for me, it was Croissant and Delta. So like Croissant for me is emblematic of kind of a point
00:15:08 ◼ ► in time, which is now, right, of there are many social networks now that I'm posting to. And it
00:15:14 ◼ ► is an app that has been really, really helpful for me this year. It was indispensable during the
00:15:19 ◼ ► podcast-a-thon. I was using a very early beta of it then and was able to post very quickly and
00:15:24 ◼ ► easily. And since, you know, there are things for me, which is the promotion of something,
00:15:30 ◼ ► which I do want to post everywhere. Like that's just the world that we're in. And this is an app
00:15:37 ◼ ► that I really like that is a native app, which is fairly priced that I appreciate. And I really like
00:15:46 ◼ ► it. And I think for me, it would be my, the one that I would really push on as like, this is a,
00:16:12 ◼ ► this would be no question. And that would not be a 10%. That would be significantly more. This app
00:16:20 ◼ ► took over the world, but it happened really early in the year. So I think the wave has come down.
00:16:26 ◼ ► And I think that is an app which, I mean, because it had been in development and in, you know,
00:16:32 ◼ ► forms of release for years was basically perfect at a 1.0. And when it shipped, like on the app
00:16:41 ◼ ► store and now they're doing things like they're able to add things to the app now, and they're
00:16:46 ◼ ► working on things that they're adding to the app now, which are wild, like the ability to,
00:16:57 ◼ ► in multiplayer with multiple phones, like stuff like that is really incredible. And so, you know,
00:17:03 ◼ ► it's just, this was an app that exploded and it was number one and they were just, the iPad app
00:17:09 ◼ ► was just number one again over Christmas in the US. I saw Riley posting, but it had like a big
00:17:15 ◼ ► crescendo because now for a lot of people, including me, it's an app that I have on my phone
00:17:19 ◼ ► and sometimes I can jump into a game if I want to. I feel like if we're looking at the year,
00:17:25 ◼ ► this is the app, right? Like this is why I think Mac stories gave it their app of the year. And
00:17:31 ◼ ► it's like for similar reasons, like this Delta was honestly, it's historic as an application
00:17:39 ◼ ► to have released on the app store. Like it is a game emulator. I think we never thought was
00:17:45 ◼ ► going to happen. And not only was it like, cause there were lots of them. This one was really good.
00:18:03 ◼ ► even though it's a sponsor because I love that app, runners up with the, you know, again,
00:18:09 ◼ ► asterisk. Yes, it's a sponsor, but seriously, I just forgotten about that. And I have used that
00:18:13 ◼ ► a lot on my iPad to do screenshots and then Delta should be the winner. I think you're right. I
00:18:19 ◼ ► think it says something about this year and although it's not new, why is it a newcomer?
00:18:33 ◼ ► does it mean that it can't be a newcomer? No, like it wasn't on the app store. It's now on the app.
00:18:57 ◼ ► classic game emulators, Delta is the winner. - Yep, it really is fantastic and well, well deserved.
00:19:05 ◼ ► This episode of Upgrade, The Upgradies, the 11th annual is brought to you by ShareShot.
00:19:14 ◼ ► We all take screenshots and we often use them to create content or use them to explain something
00:19:19 ◼ ► to someone. Showing a screenshot in context on the device that it was taken on looks just so much
00:19:26 ◼ ► better. And ShareShot is an app that puts your screenshots into device frames and places them
00:19:30 ◼ ► over pretty backgrounds. It adds perfect fitting device frames to screenshots for most modern Apple
00:19:36 ◼ ► devices, including the Apple watch, Macs, Apple Macs, the Apple Macs, Jason, you ever heard of
00:19:46 ◼ ► - Apple Macs, Apple watch, Macs, iPad, iPhone in many color variants, as well as devices like the
00:19:52 ◼ ► Nintendo switch, the play date and also custom frames that you can make yourself. No matter where
00:20:03 ◼ ► marketing images, social media to promote apps or your latest home screen, ShareShot gives you
00:20:08 ◼ ► beautiful results in seconds. It's designed to be fast and fun. It offers over 40 background styles
00:20:15 ◼ ► with thousands of variations, gives you control over the light direction for the shadows, which is
00:20:20 ◼ ► wild, includes several actions for shortcuts to automate batch framing, integrates system features
00:20:26 ◼ ► like keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, a control center widget and more. And it won this year's
00:20:30 ◼ ► Mac story select best design award. So I take and share screenshots of my devices often for the
00:20:38 ◼ ► shows that I do, like for example, say the apps, which is on Cortex. And I used ShareShot this year
00:20:44 ◼ ► and I was very pleased. So like it makes my screenshots look better. I think screenshots
00:20:50 ◼ ► look better when they do have a device, when they're sitting in a device, right? Federico has
00:20:54 ◼ ► had his Apple frames that he's done over the years too. What I like about ShareShot is an app that I
00:21:00 ◼ ► can go in and tweak really easily and visually. And I love that, you know, I can say I want the device
00:21:05 ◼ ► to look like this, you know, like I want it to be my specific iPhone color, you know, and then I want
00:21:11 ◼ ► the background to be this color. I want the background to be that color. But one of the ways
00:21:15 ◼ ► that I also use it is via their fantastic shortcut support. So I was able to integrate ShareShot into
00:21:22 ◼ ► some screenshots that I was using previously. So now I can take say four home screens, and I can
00:21:29 ◼ ► run a shortcut on those images that I've taken, and it will frame them all and then lay them in
00:21:35 ◼ ► one horizontal image. So I'm able to grab the screenshots, I'm able to make some customization
00:21:40 ◼ ► to how they look and frame them all together. It makes my job so much easier and it makes the
00:21:44 ◼ ► screenshots that I shared just look so much better. ShareShot is available for iPhone with a desktop
00:21:51 ◼ ► class UI available for iPad, and there is a Mac version that is currently in public beta testing
00:21:56 ◼ ► and coming soon. To take your screenshots up a notch, you can install the app for free.
00:22:07 ◼ ► of your first year of a pro subscription. That is shareshot.app/upgrade for the 50% offer link.
00:22:21 ◼ ► Upgrade Plus subscribers will have not heard your ad for ShareShot, but I as an independent observer
00:22:33 ◼ ► screenshot utility that frames your screenshots with the devices, whether it's a Mac or an iPhone
00:22:38 ◼ ► or an iPad. I find it very useful for six colors. It won a Mac Stories award. They obviously find
00:22:44 ◼ ► it useful too. And so outside of the realm of the ad, which is tricky, right? Like we had it last
00:22:50 ◼ ► week, we had a thank you to Lex.games. That was technically an ad, but it was really a thank you.
00:22:55 ◼ ► And we had a whole debate about like, do we put that in the upgrade plus are they going to be
00:22:59 ◼ ► offended because it's an ad? So I'm just saying here outside of the ad that ShareShot is neat and
00:23:06 ◼ ► congratulations for being a runner up to its developer, Mark ShareShot. Oh, is this like Neil
00:23:13 ◼ ► Mime stream and Tom Marie Jones? Yeah, this is the new convention for upgrade is its first name.
00:23:17 ◼ ► Name of app is the person who created it. They named it after themselves. This is the story and
00:23:21 ◼ ► I'm sticking with it. So Mark ShareShot, well done, sir. Congratulations. This is like, I guess this
00:23:27 ◼ ► is like, I don't know, I'm just gonna say ancient times, medieval times or whatever, where you'd be
00:23:32 ◼ ► named for the thing you did, you know, like you're a blacksmith. So your name is Smith.
00:23:38 ◼ ► Yes, for all the, I don't even know what to say. We're going to move into best overall Mac app now
00:23:46 ◼ ► and we have a lifetime achievement award winner for Audio Hijack. Yeah. So thank you to Audio
00:23:54 ◼ ► Hijack. I want to shout out Audio Hijack because they had a big milestone this year, but we can't
00:23:58 ◼ ► award them anything for it, which is they finally after and Paul Kvass has told the story on the
00:24:04 ◼ ► Rogue Amoeba blog. They finally, after years of working with Apple and explaining why Audio
00:24:12 ◼ ► Hijack and other audio utilities are important on the Mac. This year, they finally got a version of
00:24:18 ◼ ► macOS that has the entitlements and authorizations required so that you don't have to reboot like
00:24:25 ◼ ► eight times and set all of your security settings weird in order to get Audio Hijack installed. Now
00:24:29 ◼ ► you can install it without a reboot. And I believe Audio Hijack without even putting in your password,
00:24:33 ◼ ► you can install it. So big steps forward for Audio Hijack and getting out of sort of Apple getting
00:24:39 ◼ ► out of its way. But it's a lifetime achievement winner, so it can't win. Sorry, Audio Hijack,
00:24:44 ◼ ► sorry. But you know, I like what we're doing this year actually of shouting out things about those
00:24:48 ◼ ► apps, which would that would make them in the contention anyway, right? And that is it like
00:24:54 ◼ ► specifically for this year. I mean, it seems like a small thing, but I think for a lot of people that
00:25:00 ◼ ► use Audio Hijack professionally, they're changing equipment. They're installing new versions of
00:25:05 ◼ ► operating systems, right? Like they're that kind of user, i.e. me and you, right? And you know,
00:25:11 ◼ ► like we're getting review units, we're getting new hardware to test, etc, etc. And the honestly chaos
00:25:20 ◼ ► of installing the app before now, through the security restrictions, made it really difficult.
00:25:29 ◼ ► And I think it is great that they've been able to work to get that fixed. And it has actually taken
00:25:34 ◼ ► the work to get that fixed. Yes. So the Upgradients voted thusly for best overall Mac app at 3% of the
00:25:52 ◼ ► I don't know what to do with this category. I have four names that I'm going to throw out,
00:26:03 ◼ ► so I guess these are my kind of honorable mentions, and then we'll figure out what to do here.
00:26:07 ◼ ► So I love MimeStream. I still think it's great. It got some updates this year. It's my mail client.
00:26:13 ◼ ► I think it's really good. I'm looking forward to that iOS version maybe at some point here.
00:26:18 ◼ ► I want to shout out Swiftbar again. I wrote some new Swiftbar things for my like home solar power
00:26:28 ◼ ► system this year. It's just really great. I can see right now I'm looking at it. I can see the
00:26:33 ◼ ► temperature outside. I know how much power my solar panels are generating, and I know how many
00:26:37 ◼ ► people are listening live to upgrade. And that's all because of Swiftbar. Really, really great
00:26:43 ◼ ► utility app for that sort of thing, putting things in your menu bar. I want to shout out RetroBatch
00:26:48 ◼ ► from Flying Meat. This is a tool that I use. Talk about processing images like Wish Areshot.
00:27:00 ◼ ► photos have to be in formats. For that book, they need to have a border, and they need to be below
00:27:08 ◼ ► a certain file size and in a certain format, and I have this a lot. RetroBatch lets you create
00:27:14 ◼ ► basically a -- it's like shortcuts, kind of. It's like a branching logic tree for your images.
00:27:19 ◼ ► So you can literally save out a droplet onto your desktop and drag and drop images onto it,
00:27:24 ◼ ► and it processes them and outputs them in exactly where you want. Super clever app from the people
00:27:30 ◼ ► who brought you Acorn from Gus RetroBatch. Or really, he's Gus Acorn, but he also makes
00:27:37 ◼ ► RetroBatch. And -- - Better than Gus Flying Meat. - Yeah, yeah, no. Please, Gus Flying Meat's his
00:27:44 ◼ ► father. Downy is the other one I wanted to shout out. The venerable Download app. You know, I
00:27:53 ◼ ► actually subscribe to, among other things, what is it, Flop TV, which is the flophouses, like a
00:27:59 ◼ ► live show that they do live on a weekend, and then they put up an archive that you can watch for a
00:28:05 ◼ ► week or something like that. And I want to watch it in Plex at my leisure. I don't want to watch it
00:28:10 ◼ ► like on whatever their thing is that's playing on a computer and stuff like that. And so that's one
00:28:16 ◼ ► of the many great legitimate uses for Downy, because you can point it at a URL and it will
00:28:21 ◼ ► pull down the video file, get it in the right format, and then I can put it on my Plex. And
00:28:29 ◼ ► beyond the usual suspects and the Hall of Famers. What do you think, Mike? - I'm very conflicted
00:28:36 ◼ ► this year. This is always the category I struggle with the most. And honestly, the app that has been
00:28:43 ◼ ► jumping to mind recently is Pixelmator Pro. But that feels weird now. - I know, right? - That feels
00:28:49 ◼ ► weird now. But I've been using it to create some graphics for a stream that I'm going to do this
00:28:56 ◼ ► week, kind of showing off some journaling stuff. And Pixelmator Pro for me is what I want Photoshop
00:29:06 ◼ ► to be 95% of the time, which is significantly more simple and just the tools that I want.
00:29:17 ◼ ► I don't want all of the photo editing features that Photoshop has. Neither do I want the generative
00:29:26 ◼ ► AI stuff that they do, which is very impressive. And I understand why people like it, but it's not
00:29:31 ◼ ► what I'm looking for. And I feel that Pixelmator has the power that I want and the tools that I
00:29:38 ◼ ► want in a UI that I can really easily understand. Genuinely, we said it at the time, but it is
00:29:45 ◼ ► abundantly clear why Apple considers this an app that they would want in their arsenal.
00:29:50 ◼ ► Like, it is if Apple wanted to make a Photoshop competitor, they would make Pixelmator. That's
00:29:56 ◼ ► what they would do. - Yeah, and maybe why they bought it. I have two other kind of creative
00:30:03 ◼ ► tools that I will throw in, as usual. I mean, if you ask me in my heart of hearts what the best
00:30:10 ◼ ► overall Mac app is, I will say BB Edit every time. I write in it, I use it as a text utility.
00:30:20 ◼ ► I use it for all sorts of text processing, including things like our compilation of awards
00:30:30 ◼ ► and things. That's where it all started. I love it, and I could give it this award every year.
00:30:42 ◼ ► Serif, Affinity Designer 2 now, I bought it mostly because I had two things that I did in Adobe
00:30:49 ◼ ► Illustrator that I didn't want to do anymore because I had an old version of Adobe Illustrator
00:30:53 ◼ ► and didn't want to pay for the Creative Cloud version or run Illustrator in a virtual machine.
00:30:59 ◼ ► And it has since ended up being a tool I use a lot instead of things that I used to do in
00:31:07 ◼ ► Photoshop that I thought this is not really appropriate for Photoshop, but I know how to
00:31:11 ◼ ► use Photoshop. And now I build that stuff in Affinity Designer instead. It's very, very good
00:31:17 ◼ ► at what it does, which is building graphics. It's got vector tools. It's really good. So
00:31:24 ◼ ► I'll throw that in there too. I don't know what we do now. Now, this category is a problem. So I will
00:31:32 ◼ ► say BB Edit has won before, I believe, or no, it's been nominated. It's been nominated. It's just
00:31:48 ◼ ► selection of Apple apps. So I mean, and it's not, my funny thing about Pixelmator is not like,
00:31:54 ◼ ► I don't want to not award it because it's an Apple app, but it is just like a funny thing that
00:31:58 ◼ ► it's not has not actually happened yet, but it's obviously going to happen. Yeah, I don't know. I
00:32:10 ◼ ► books where I'm never going to push you to award something of a Mac app, you know, how many mice
00:32:18 ◼ ► it would have or something. I don't know how many mice would it have. I hope enough. I wouldn't want
00:32:23 ◼ ► anybody to get angry if they didn't get enough mice. Like I would say MimeStream, I understand
00:32:27 ◼ ► why people love it and I have loved it in the past, but to me, an email app that just does Gmail
00:32:36 ◼ ► is not really an email app for me. Like it's a Gmail app and so like it's missing a significant
00:32:43 ◼ ► feature that I would need, which is to also have support for other types of email and it's one of
00:32:49 ◼ ► these things where it's like kind of like the iOS version of like, oh, it's coming. It's like, yeah,
00:32:53 ◼ ► I know, but we've been saying that for years now and I understand that it takes time, but we can't
00:32:58 ◼ ► keep, for me at least, I can't keep using that as a like a thing for MimeStream, right? Where it's
00:33:04 ◼ ► like, yeah, but it's coming. So yeah, I know it is. I'm sure. It also is completely irrelevant for
00:33:10 ◼ ► the Mac app category. Yeah, but the email part though, I'm talking about like using other email
00:33:16 ◼ ► services in that application and also as well, like I actually, I just think the new iPhone mail
00:33:23 ◼ ► app is really good. Apple, what are you doing? Just put it on other platforms. Like I think
00:33:28 ◼ ► they've done a pretty good job with the category stuff, but yeah. On that, we disagree. Yeah,
00:33:34 ◼ ► I mean, it works for me though. Like it's simple. I'll leave it to, people can read what Joe Steele
00:33:38 ◼ ► thinks about it on sixscholars.com. I pretty much agree with him. I think it's a disaster, but okay.
00:33:45 ◼ ► Everybody uses email differently. Like for me, my email is in Gmail. So MimeStream, personally,
00:33:52 ◼ ► MimeStream supporting other email services doesn't matter, but I understand that not everybody uses
00:33:59 ◼ ► Gmail, right? So it makes sense. It makes sense. I'm going to accede to the wishes of Mike and the
00:34:04 ◼ ► Upgradients, both of whom are against me. And we're going to name Pixelmator Pro the winner.
00:34:09 ◼ ► I wouldn't say that people are, nobody is against you here. I wouldn't really classify.
00:34:15 ◼ ► It's all a conspiracy. I see what's happening here. You and the Upgradients. Did you open,
00:34:21 ◼ ► audit the lists? Maybe you cooked the books for Pixelmator. It is possible. It's actually
00:34:26 ◼ ► something else. It is possible. Pixelmator Pro, I think, as we send it off on its journey into
00:34:33 ◼ ► side Apple, who knows what will happen to it. Let's give it an award and recognize its great
00:34:48 ◼ ► Right. Like that, that is, it's surprising to me that this is an app, this is not, this is an app
00:34:53 ◼ ► that we have not awarded in this category before, which is a category you will struggle with. And
00:34:57 ◼ ► this is like a great app that's just been sitting there that we never awarded. Right. So I think.
00:35:06 ◼ ► One of these days there won't be any other apps left. It'll have to still be BB Edit because it's
00:35:11 ◼ ► not going anywhere. A grade is 20, you know. Double X. Let's say, let's put, let's say MimeStream.
00:35:23 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm good with that. As the other runner up. Maybe one day MimeStream, what I really want is
00:35:28 ◼ ► for MimeStream to somehow win best newcomer again. Get that three times, be lifetime achievement.
00:35:43 ◼ ► Lifetime newcomer. Yeah. Well, Neil MimeStream is going to just have to come up with like
00:35:51 ◼ ► So now let's do the best newcomer Mac app. Yep. Gradients voted 5% for the Apple passwords app,
00:36:10 ◼ ► I think this is, here's what I say. In previous years, this category is complicated because
00:36:18 ◼ ► there aren't a lot of new Mac apps. And so things like features find their way into it. However,
00:36:24 ◼ ► what I will say is passwords and iPhone mirroring, I think no matter how strong the year is,
00:36:30 ◼ ► these could have made its way in, especially iPhone mirroring. Like that is just a fantastic feature,
00:36:35 ◼ ► which is it is actually an app as well. It's not just a feature. For me, chat GPT for Mac is
00:36:43 ◼ ► my winner. And my reasoning for this is, isn't it great that they actually made a Mac app?
00:36:52 ◼ ► Yeah. And it's a real Mac app and it's pretty good. It's got stuff that I think needs to be
00:36:57 ◼ ► improved. They actually made an app. They made an app. And they didn't just say use the web,
00:37:03 ◼ ► right? They made it before they made their windows app. It uses some accessibility features to look
00:37:09 ◼ ► on the screen of windows and process them for you. So you don't have to paste it in. You can say,
00:37:14 ◼ ► look at my terminal and do this thing. Again, I want some basic automation. I'd really like
00:37:21 ◼ ► to be able to bundle up a query and send it to them via a shortcut or a URL scheme or something
00:37:26 ◼ ► like that. I don't think that's in there yet, but I'd love it. They've got it. Yeah, they made an
00:37:31 ◼ ► app. It's got a keyboard shortcut so you can use it like you could use Spotlight or Launch Bar or
00:37:43 ◼ ► This is not a wholesale endorsement for chat GPT because, wow, it still really gets some stuff
00:37:49 ◼ ► wrong or reluctantly right. I actually had this yesterday. We were talking, Jamie asked, how many
00:37:55 ◼ ► NFL head coaches are former NFL players? And I thought, this is a very straightforward question.
00:38:01 ◼ ► Let's see what chat GPT does with it. And the answer was, it did not give me a wrong answer
00:38:07 ◼ ► per se, but I said, how many current NFL head coaches are former NFL players? And it said,
00:38:24 ◼ ► And then it listed seven, I think it was, or eight. And I was like, okay, I think that's probably
00:38:29 ◼ ► right. Scanning my knowledge of the NFL, I think that's probably a right answer. It got there. But
00:38:33 ◼ ► again, there are issues, but there are also places where this stuff can be really useful
00:38:37 ◼ ► and interactive. And again, it's not great for everything, but it has its moments. And I also
00:38:45 ◼ ► like the fact that this tech giant that could very easily just say, look, desktop apps are the worst,
00:38:52 ◼ ► just type things in a web browser, like you said, didn't do that. And actually is building
00:38:58 ◼ ► and developing apps for platforms. I think that's a good thing. So I agree. I think we should give
00:39:06 ◼ ► it to chat GPT for Mac, runners up, let's say iPhone mirroring. And do you have any others?
00:39:16 ◼ ► I don't. So we could do passwords. Yeah. Let's just do passwords. They are good features.
00:39:23 ◼ ► Passwords I don't have so much experience with because I'm just stuck in 1Password at this point.
00:39:29 ◼ ► And I'm actually to a point happy to continue to be in it. I'm in like three different teams.
00:39:36 ◼ ► I'm just not going to move at this point. And I am mostly fine with it. But I'm happy that the
00:39:43 ◼ ► passwords app exists. Because I do also use Apple's password stuff. And so I like that it's easier to
00:39:50 ◼ ► get to than digging through settings. And you can't have shared groups, but if anybody is using
00:39:57 ◼ ► a non-Apple platform, it's no good. It's not the same. They have a feature which sounds the same.
00:40:03 ◼ ► It's not the same. But it's not. I agree. I'm happy you said that because every time I say this,
00:40:09 ◼ ► people contact me and it's like, trust me, if you think it's the same, you're just not using it the
00:40:14 ◼ ► way I am. You're not doing that. But that's why I phrase it the way I did, which is they have it,
00:40:20 ◼ ► it's not good. It's just not. It's just it's there, but it's not. It's a different thing.
00:40:25 ◼ ► It's a different thing. We now move into, this is a new category last year, best feature. And it
00:40:32 ◼ ► would rotate, right? Yes. So this year it is best feature in VisionOS, which was a funny one to
00:40:40 ◼ ► pick really. Like I'm happy we picked it because I think it's important. And I think we're going
00:40:44 ◼ ► to be talking more about it later on in the episode. Shipped version one and version two
00:40:47 ◼ ► this year. They sure did. Very, very busy with that one. But I think that it is an important
00:40:55 ◼ ► thing to exist. And I'm happy that we're talking about it. So the Upgradients voted lastly.
00:41:02 ◼ ► Environments, so immersive environments is 6.5%. Immersive video, so it's kind of spatial video,
00:41:10 ◼ ► immersive video, I guess the things that we've seen, the things that we've watched, 10%. And 36%
00:41:17 ◼ ► for Mac virtual display. I'm not surprised. When it got introduced at WWDC last year, 2023,
00:41:28 ◼ ► everybody said that that looked like it was going to be the best feature, right? I really do think
00:41:35 ◼ ► people were blown away by it from the beginning. And they've updated it so that it's gotten better
00:41:40 ◼ ► in the latest VisionOS update. So I'm not surprised that that is a top feature for VisionOS.
00:41:52 ◼ ► This might be a strange take. Because to me, I can see what you're going to suggest in the document.
00:42:06 ◼ ► I'm suggesting the same. So I'm going to spoil your pick because I need to kind of spoil your
00:42:10 ◼ ► pick to make my point, which is spatial personas is easily the best feature of VisionOS.
00:42:16 ◼ ► I would wonder if many people in our audience who have used VisionOS know other people that have a
00:42:24 ◼ ► vision pro. I know. I know. Because I think if you have used spatial personas, it is obviously
00:42:35 ◼ ► the best feature. But I think you have to have somebody in your life that you could have that
00:42:41 ◼ ► call with. And the amount of people that you probably know in your life that have a vision pro
00:42:48 ◼ ► is a big fat zero. Where we're in the position where a lot of our friends have these things,
00:42:57 ◼ ► because we're technology vision professionals, so we have had these calls. It is an absolutely
00:43:05 ◼ ► transformative. And for me, specifically, it's interesting because you can go back to, I don't
00:43:10 ◼ ► know, all the way back to our first use of this in WWDC 2023, where I thought personas, as they
00:43:19 ◼ ► were then, were the bomb feature. They were going to be the equivalent of digital touch. And this
00:43:25 ◼ ► is for two reasons. One, it wasn't very good in the initial version. And two, in my initial demo,
00:43:30 ◼ ► it failed spectacularly. Where the person's eyes were facing the wrong direction and for a moment
00:43:36 ◼ ► they had no hair. So it went real bad and I was like, no one's going to use this, it's silly.
00:43:41 ◼ ► But then they upgraded it very quickly. I think it wasn't even with a software update, it was like
00:43:47 ◼ ► an over the air update that Apple did somehow with Vision OS 1. When then the personas could break
00:43:56 ◼ ► out of their boxes and they would exist in space and you could sit and have calls with people and
00:44:09 ◼ ► spatial personas are as close as you can get to meeting someone in person without meeting
00:44:21 ◼ ► calls and we've done them a bunch of times and it just feels like we hung out together.
00:44:33 ◼ ► like it is worth remembering that because the story of Vision OS has been odd and the Vision
00:44:39 ◼ ► Pro has been odd throughout the year. But all of these things, the immersive environments are the
00:44:44 ◼ ► best 3D environments I've ever been in. The immersive video is the best 3D video I've ever
00:44:48 ◼ ► seen. And the Mac virtual display, especially in its Vision OS 2 version is honestly a triumph
00:45:02 ◼ ► That's my pitch for spatial personas. I wonder if there are things they could do to make it more
00:45:11 ◼ ► widely applicable. And my thought about this, and I wonder if this might even actually happen
00:45:25 ◼ ► to make this better. I don't know if they want to prioritize this or not, but one of the things
00:45:30 ◼ ► that Zoom can do and that other apps can do is they, and Apple can do it, right, which is detect
00:45:36 ◼ ► your background, lay out a virtual background, right? That's built into the software now.
00:45:40 ◼ ► And then Zoom also has this thing where it basically puts you in an environment. So you're
00:45:47 ◼ ► meeting instead of happening in little boxes, it's like a table with the cutout, no background
00:45:52 ◼ ► of all the people. It's a little weird, but I get what they're going for there. And I wonder
00:46:02 ◼ ► somebody and some people are in Vision Pro and some people aren't, could we do it where the
00:46:06 ◼ ► person who's not gets cut out and floats and looks like they're a spatial persona, even though they're
00:46:13 ◼ ► not? And from their perspective, could they have a view where they could choose to, instead of having
00:46:18 ◼ ► that person in a box, have an environment that all the people are in together? You could do either of
00:46:26 ◼ ► those or both of those and have them on or off separately. I think there's some stuff they could
00:46:33 ◼ ► do to make this more broadly applicable that would be nice, because I do think it's a great
00:46:41 ◼ ► feature, like you said, that nobody can use because they don't, I mean, there just aren't
00:46:49 ◼ ► enough Vision Pro users out there. But we have created a sort of, it comes off sometimes, it
00:46:54 ◼ ► doesn't sometimes, sort of standing chat with people we know who have Vision Pros and we try
00:47:03 ◼ ► to do it every couple of weeks, it doesn't always come off. But I love those conversations. And one
00:47:09 ◼ ► of the reasons I love them and treasure them is that I am talking to my friends about things that
00:47:16 ◼ ► aren't technology, about just catching up about their lives, and doing it in a way that feels like
00:47:25 ◼ ► I'm spending time with them and not being in a Zoom call with them or a phone call, but like
00:47:35 ◼ ► being in the room with them as wild an idea as that is. It feels like it. It's the closest that
00:47:40 ◼ ► I have felt to actually spending time with somebody. The quality difference compared to a
00:47:49 ◼ ► FaceTime call or a Zoom call is massive. Really is a very, very good feature. So obviously this
00:47:57 ◼ ► is the winner because we feel so strongly about it. Mac Virtual Display, good runner up. What do
00:48:04 ◼ ► you think about as a second runner up? We've got immersive video and environments there as options.
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00:50:37 ◼ ► So we now move into game of the year at the Upgradies. Gamers rise up! Rise up gamers it's
00:50:59 ◼ ► I go to my game expert now. Upgrade game expert Mike Hurley for his choice for game of the year.
00:51:19 ◼ ► Now we did a remaster episode and it was a similar thing and we decided on Astro Bot there.
00:51:29 ◼ ► And the reason that we decided on Astro Bot there is Astro Bot is a better overall game than Bellatra.
00:51:40 ◼ ► For what you think of as a video game. It is very joyful, it is a very engaging experience,
00:51:49 ◼ ► it is a wonderful 3D platformer. It is the best example of a 3D platformer outside of what
00:51:56 ◼ ► Nintendo makes which is quite an achievement on its own. Especially for the team that made this.
00:52:03 ◼ ► Astro Bot has existed in different games before. This is like their first real attempt at something
00:52:08 ◼ ► Right. I have great fondness for Astro Bot as a concept because I played the Astro Bot game
00:52:19 ◼ ► They had a pack-in game called Rescue Mission which is kind of like a very simple, small,
00:52:33 ◼ ► And they did just an incredible job. Bellatra though is the game I have played without a doubt
00:52:42 ◼ ► the most this year. I probably play an hour of Bellatra a day. It is just a game that I play
00:52:49 ◼ ► on my commute and it is a game that I play to kind of wind down in the evenings. I'll listen
00:52:56 ◼ ► to a podcast, play a bit as a kind of wind down. I have played thousands of rounds of Bellatra
00:53:08 ◼ ► through the difficulty levels to unlock things. Now I've kind of gotten to a point where I have
00:53:13 ◼ ► a starting deck that I like and I'm not playing for anything other than just to play the game.
00:53:18 ◼ ► I'm not trying to get better and better. I just like playing through the game and winning.
00:53:27 ◼ ► So now we go to Julian, my game consultant. I told him about Bellatro. He now has basically,
00:53:41 ◼ ► Because he is a true gamer. He has blasted through Bellatro. Very impressive. But it allows me to
00:53:47 ◼ ► talk to him about it. And I have played it a lot. I think my probably most played hours this year
00:53:55 ◼ ► is still Marvel Snap, but I've not played that in months. It's all Bellatro now. Not like you,
00:54:01 ◼ ► though. I'm just not a gamer like that. I have limited time for games. I read books instead,
00:54:15 ◼ ► First off, a good friend of the show, Lex Friedman, he did a Mastodon post four days ago that was,
00:54:24 ◼ ► "I encourage my son to play Bellatro. He loves it. Now he wants me to play it. My friends,
00:54:34 ◼ ► a lot of people responded to Lex. Yesterday, he posted, "My son begged me to try it more,
00:54:43 ◼ ► to play 10 games with him watching and advising. I did. My friends, I now unironically love Bellatro."
00:54:56 ◼ ► Ben Rice McCarthy, and they wrote, "First time playing Bellatro. I don't know what the fuss is
00:55:00 ◼ ► about. Second time, okay, I see why people like it, but I'm not sure it's for me. Third time,
00:55:05 ◼ ► I would remortgage my house to get that raised fist joker again." If you know, you know. Go
00:55:11 ◼ ► ahead, Mike. Explain. All right. I want to give kind of a quick crash course in Bellatro. Like,
00:55:20 ◼ ► I want to give some tips for how to play this game. So one, don't worry about the fact that
00:55:26 ◼ ► you don't know poker hands. The game does a decent job in teaching you them and you also can get by.
00:55:33 ◼ ► You can win games. I've won many games just only playing two pairs. Two pairs. Yep. Right? I've won
00:55:40 ◼ ► many games with just two pairs. That's it. The main thing comes down to what are the joker cards
00:55:47 ◼ ► that you get. The joker cards adapt your score. Your score is you get a count, which is like the
00:55:53 ◼ ► total number of the cards that you've played, right? So if you played, you know, two pairs of
00:55:59 ◼ ► sevens, right? So that would be what, 28 plus any modifiers that you can add in. Don't worry about
00:56:05 ◼ ► the modifiers now. It's not important. Two pairs of sevens is four of a kind, so it would be
00:56:09 ◼ ► different. But like if you had two sevens and two twos, right? Yeah. You'd get 14 for the sevens and
00:56:14 ◼ ► four for the twos. So you'd have 18 chips. And then the jokers are doing things like giving you
00:56:20 ◼ ► more chips or giving you multipliers that increase the total number of chips that you win and you
00:56:25 ◼ ► have a total you need to hit before you run out of hands to play in a round. To win a game, you're
00:56:31 ◼ ► looking to try and get more chips and you're looking to try and get a higher multiplier.
00:56:34 ◼ ► Now, as well as the multipliers, you also have jokers that can multiply your multiplier.
00:56:44 ◼ ► Exactly. So you have some that will add to your multiplier and some that will multiply your
00:56:49 ◼ ► multiplier. Those are really good. The key thing to remember is joker cards are scored left to
00:56:55 ◼ ► right in order once the hand has been played. So if you have any multipliers of a multiplier,
00:57:09 ◼ ► will be added in and then multiplied at the end. Good tips. Knowing that is quite... knowing...
00:57:21 ◼ ► conditions to the jokers are added left to right. Once you've done that and you can reorder them,
00:57:27 ◼ ► then you'll start to win. So yeah, it is. The other thing, the other resistance that I see to Bellatro
00:57:34 ◼ ► is that people describe it as a deck builder. It's not a deck builder. And a lot of people
00:57:40 ◼ ► are resistant to that and it is absolutely not a deck builder. I called it a roguelike. People
00:57:45 ◼ ► said, well, technically a roguelike is just about adventures with procedurally generated maps. I'm
00:57:49 ◼ ► like, okay, you can call it a roguelite if you want to. I think... let's not argue about the terms.
00:57:53 ◼ ► The reason I brought it up is I also get turned off with the idea that every time you go through,
00:57:59 ◼ ► you pick up items and you grind and you end up building something through grinding, which is the
00:58:04 ◼ ► thing I hate the most about games is grinding. I just want to pick it up and play. This isn't like
00:58:11 ◼ ► that. You start at zero in the beginning of every round. When you die at Bellatro, when you lose a
00:58:18 ◼ ► hand, you go back to the beginning and start again. You lose all your jokers, you lose all
00:58:23 ◼ ► the modifications you've done. Everything has changed. You're back to zero. What progresses is,
00:58:29 ◼ ► as you successfully pass certain tests on certain levels, you unlock more items to be put in the
00:58:45 ◼ ► have different functionality, but they're still sent to you randomly and you still have to start
00:58:51 ◼ ► from nothing. And as a result, it's a game you can pick up and play from zero and then put it down
00:58:58 ◼ ► when you get to your destination or whatever and not have to keep in your head the entire multitude
00:59:06 ◼ ► or spend hours grinding in order to build a deck that makes it fun. It doesn't do any of that.
00:59:26 ◼ ► changing the fundamental that you're at the start. When you start, you have to start from nothing.
00:59:58 ◼ ► Yeah. My favorites of the year were Deadpool and Wolverine and Inside Out 2 for very different
01:00:06 ◼ ► reasons. But I loved both of these movies. I am a Marvel guy through and through, and this was a
01:00:13 ◼ ► great Marvel movie. And Inside Out 2, it surprised me with how good it was, to be honest. I was quite
01:00:22 ◼ ► So, listeners of The Incomparable will know that we did an Inside Out 2 episode and I wasn't on it.
01:00:39 ◼ ► I did not like it. No, I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. But that's fine. People like it.
01:00:45 ◼ ► But I'm, no, I don't like it. I like, oh, the three movies that I like the most that I saw
01:00:51 ◼ ► this year were, that were new to me, were Godzilla minus one, which is a masterpiece. It really is.
01:00:59 ◼ ► It is an adult movie with a Godzilla in it. It's so well done. I just, I can't say enough good
01:01:07 ◼ ► things about Godzilla minus one. It is a very good movie with a Godzilla in it, with the Godzilla in
01:01:16 ◼ ► it. Past Lives, which was an Oscar nominee, which is very much like a two friends, and then they're
01:01:30 ◼ ► apart, and then they meet as adults, and they think about their lives. I mean, it's really,
01:01:34 ◼ ► that's just kind of it. But it's great. Great movie. And American Fiction, which also was an
01:01:40 ◼ ► Oscar nominee, which is really good, which is very meta about a, it's a writer who is literally,
01:01:48 ◼ ► literarily successful, but not commercially successful, who decides to create a persona,
01:01:53 ◼ ► who plays into all of the worst stereotypes, and it becomes a wild success. It's a little
01:01:59 ◼ ► producers-esque in that way, right? He's just sort of like, he's not quite selling out. He is
01:02:04 ◼ ► selling out, but he's also sort of selling out to mock the culture, but then it's a success.
01:02:12 ◼ ► And there's a real human story there, but it's also, and that's Jeffrey Wright, I think,
01:02:17 ◼ ► is the star of that. It's really great. So that's a great movie. I like Deadpool and Wolverine quite
01:02:23 ◼ ► a bit. That is the only Marvel movie of the year, but it is a good Marvel movie. I also,
01:02:29 ◼ ► this year, Mike, I watched all the Deadpool movies for the first time, because I hadn't seen any of
01:02:34 ◼ ► them. And I liked them. I like the first one a lot. I think it was really fun and worked for me.
01:02:40 ◼ ► The second one I enjoyed, but I was disappointed by, because it felt like it was more of the same
01:02:51 ◼ ► his girlfriend immediately. It's like, no, no, you're boring. Love of his life, you're boring.
01:02:58 ◼ ► We'll get rid of you and then continue with the story. And I was like, that made me mad.
01:03:02 ◼ ► It's not like Alien 3 levels of invalidating the emotional stakes of the previous movie so that
01:03:10 ◼ ► you can, so that your movie can have fun stuff happening in it. But it was there. Those vibes
01:03:15 ◼ ► were there. And then Deadpool and Wolverine did a whole incomparable about all three of these
01:03:22 ◼ ► movies, individual episodes about all three of these movies. Good movie, funny, surprisingly
01:03:29 ◼ ► heartfelt. And I think that in general, that's the thing that surprised me about the Deadpool movies
01:03:45 ◼ ► Yes, they do. They are funny and violent, but there is an emotional core in all of them. That's
01:03:52 ◼ ► very important. And Godzilla minus one. Yeah. Also true, actually. Deadpool and Wolverine
01:03:59 ◼ ► has emotional content. It's very funny and it is very violent, but violent in a silly way. It's
01:04:07 ◼ ► the kind of movie where something terrible happens that's violent and I laugh at how ludicrous the
01:04:12 ◼ ► violence is. Whereas I don't like as much movies where the violence is very realistic and
01:04:35 ◼ ► final movie about Wolverine. Again, an adult movie, but with Logan in it, just like Godzilla minus one
01:04:42 ◼ ► is an adult movie with Godzilla in it. You could argue this movie desecrates the grave of that
01:04:48 ◼ ► movie because it literally does. And yet that's not the case. It actually honors it. And I think
01:04:56 ◼ ► that was a neat trick. So that's my two minutes on Deadpool and Wolverine. It's a good movie.
01:05:00 ◼ ► I think I would push for Deadpool and Wolverine because while we make the rules ourselves,
01:05:06 ◼ ► you would pick the rule from last year. Well, I don't care about that because I saw that.
01:05:15 ◼ ► So if you would not have just spoke for two minutes about how much you enjoyed Deadpool
01:05:21 ◼ ► and Wolverine, then maybe we'd take a look at that list and see if we could... Is there something...
01:05:26 ◼ ► But I really liked Deadpool and Wolverine. You did and so did the audience, which would make
01:05:31 ◼ ► you feel like we could do that rather than... So Doom Part 2, also really great. I had a
01:05:37 ◼ ► great experience seeing that movie. Big screen, beautiful. And so I'm going to say, let's give
01:05:44 ◼ ► it to Deadpool and Wolverine, but I want Doom Part 2, which was the Upgradients choice and I also
01:05:48 ◼ ► really endorse it. And I want to put Godzilla minus one in there because it was great. Yeah,
01:05:55 ◼ ► I've been meaning to watch that movie, but I haven't gone around. Gotta see it. It's so good.
01:05:59 ◼ ► I wanted to watch it last year and then kind of couldn't get it for a long time because it was
01:06:04 ◼ ► like... It was unavailable for contractual reasons because there was an American Godzilla movie that
01:06:10 ◼ ► came out and there was some rule about how they can't release the... They couldn't release the
01:06:16 ◼ ► video version of Godzilla minus one because they were in the blackout period because of the American
01:06:20 ◼ ► movie. It's super dumb. Yeah, it was a really self-defeating for everybody involved. All right,
01:06:26 ◼ ► great. Moving now to the easiest category. This is just the slam dunk, open and closed category.
01:06:47 ◼ ► 9% for Slow Horses and 11% for Shogun. It's easy. Shogun is not just the best TV show I've seen this
01:06:57 ◼ ► year. It's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Like unbelievable television show. Easy peasy.
01:07:14 ◼ ► Among other people, it's Justin Marks who did Counterpart which is one of the criminally
01:07:25 ◼ ► missed fantastic best shows of the last decade. He was brought in by his wife when they went into
01:07:33 ◼ ► rewrites with it and I love that he was involved with this because this got all the acclaim that
01:07:37 ◼ ► Counterpart deserved and didn't get. I think it's our winner. We do need to pick some runners-up.
01:07:54 ◼ ► And I did my sort of like short list of, which wasn't that short, of my favorite shows of the
01:08:08 ◼ ► So Silo on Apple TV Plus Season 2 is excellent. A little slower than Season 1 for some good reasons
01:08:20 ◼ ► but that's a really good show. Very impressed. Did not think that would be much of anything
01:08:25 ◼ ► and it's actually very good. Bad Monkey on Apple TV Plus based on a Carl Hiaasen novel. Vince Vaughn.
01:08:32 ◼ ► It's so good. Like it's just it's so good. Funny. The perfect Vince Vaughn TV show. It is so good.
01:08:42 ◼ ► It is perfect. It's like all of his good. You know like all of his good. I know it's like Will Ferrell.
01:08:48 ◼ ► I know some people don't like Vince Vaughn. This is the, like Will Ferrell and Elf. This is the perfect
01:08:53 ◼ ► use of the skills of Vince Vaughn. He is great in it. Really good. He is the main character but he's
01:08:59 ◼ ► surrounded by it's, you know, it's a mystery and it's sort of sleazy because it's the Florida Keys
01:09:07 ◼ ► and there's intrigue but also it's laid back. It's so good. I cannot recommend Bad Monkey
01:09:14 ◼ ► highly enough. It's probably the second best show I watched other than Shogun last year.
01:09:20 ◼ ► I really love Dark Matter on Apple TV Plus. Again, I was reluctant to watch it for a while
01:09:29 ◼ ► and then we started watching it and we burned through those like an episode a night because
01:09:43 ◼ ► And as you might expect, I just praised Counterpart, parallel universes come into play here.
01:09:54 ◼ ► universes come into play here. What I love about Dark Matter is that it fully commits to the
01:09:59 ◼ ► premise instead of saying sort of like, "Well, yeah, there's science fictional parallel universes in it
01:10:06 ◼ ► but really this is about, this is a character drama." And so we're gonna not talk about the
01:10:12 ◼ ► implications of the parallel universe machine. We're gonna just focus on the characters. And look,
01:10:18 ◼ ► you should focus on the characters. That's the most important thing. But you could also not
01:10:22 ◼ ► ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine as well. And Dark Matter, and I admire it
01:10:30 ◼ ► greatly, does not ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine at all. I thought it was
01:10:37 ◼ ► really good. It's based on a novel. The showrunner of the show was the guy who wrote the novel.
01:10:42 ◼ ► And much to my-- it adapts the novel and much to my surprise, they renewed it for a second season.
01:10:48 ◼ ► So like Shogun, a show based on a novel that adapts the entire novel in one season and it's
01:10:55 ◼ ► so good that they're like, "Yeah, make something up for season two!" So it's gonna come back.
01:10:59 ◼ ► Love that. And some others I want to mention, Hacks on Max, very funny, just great show about
01:11:10 ◼ ► women in comedy. I love it. I couldn't love it more. So mad about this, Jason. I'm so mad about
01:11:15 ◼ ► this. So Hacks was on Amazon Prime in the UK. They have not picked up season three. And nobody has.
01:11:27 ◼ ► So season three is just completely unavailable. You can't even buy it here. So I loved Hacks season
01:11:33 ◼ ► one and two, but you can't watch the new season. Because they want to have launch a max version or
01:11:40 ◼ ► have a partner that's doing a max version in the UK. Well, they do already. Sky. But Sky
01:12:03 ◼ ► Gene Smart, Hannah Einbinder are great in that. And then that is part of the greater Mike Schur
01:12:10 ◼ ► universe, because it's some people who work with Mike Schur on The Good Place and other places that
01:12:15 ◼ ► are doing that show. It's great. Yeah, third season was awesome. Shout out to Slow Horses,
01:12:35 ◼ ► from the same producers. It was really good. It was really well done. You could see Apple's
01:12:39 ◼ ► money on the screen with that one. I was very impressed. That's a miniseries. It was really
01:12:48 ◼ ► but I like it. I really like that show. They're already shooting season three. Carrie Russell,
01:12:52 ◼ ► as an American. If you haven't seen the show, there's also season one. You can start there.
01:12:58 ◼ ► You should start there. As an unlikely choice to be the US ambassador to the UK, because she's
01:13:03 ◼ ► usually from conflict-filled regions of the world. There are reasons why she's gotten this job.
01:13:10 ◼ ► I also just delight in the fact that she feels ill-suited for it and seeing her be confronted
01:13:15 ◼ ► with the things she's supposed to wear to various formal events when she's used to being like,
01:13:19 ◼ ► running around in blue jeans in some, you know, far-off region of the world. It's delightful.
01:13:27 ◼ ► I also really liked A Man on the Inside on Netflix, which is Mike Schur. As mentioned before,
01:13:32 ◼ ► this is with Ted Danson. It's a very sweet comedy. It's about a mystery at a retirement home,
01:13:42 ◼ ► but also it's about old people and finding ways to live their lives after traumatic events. I think
01:13:51 ◼ ► it's very sweet. It's not sad as much as it is just sweet. Really good. Great use of San Francisco
01:13:56 ◼ ► locations. And finally, much to my surprise, season two of Sure-See, the Letterkenny spin-off
01:14:03 ◼ ► on Hulu in the US at least. I was kind of left cold by season one of Sure-See. Why would you
01:14:10 ◼ ► do a spin-off about a one-joke character in Letterkenny, which was, I think, finished this
01:14:16 ◼ ► year and is an all-timer. I love Letterkenny so much. Sure-See season two, I really got into it.
01:14:21 ◼ ► I kind of got what they were selling. It's a sports movie as a TV show. It's about a bunch of
01:14:29 ◼ ► adult minor league hockey players trying to win a tournament. It's just very silly and there are
01:14:37 ◼ ► many jokes and I love it. So Sure-See. And if you haven't seen Letterkenny, go watch Letterkenny.
01:14:43 ◼ ► It's great. That's my list. You mentioned about being sweet, right? Like a thing that is sweet.
01:14:49 ◼ ► You said that for what? Man on the Inside? Man on the Inside. For me, Shrinking is that. Shrinking
01:14:56 ◼ ► season two is really, really, really, really good. I was very surprised actually of how good it is.
01:15:02 ◼ ► That cast is just like so good. This may be a beautiful cast. People may disagree with me here,
01:15:15 ◼ ► I think this is him perfectly. Kind of the mixing of the actor and the man. Like it feels like he
01:15:23 ◼ ► fits so well in this role. It lets him use muscles that I think most movie people just don't aren't
01:15:29 ◼ ► gonna bother asking him for. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, what if Harrison Ford, treasure of an actor,
01:15:36 ◼ ► was a supporting character on a sitcom? And you're like, well, why would he do that? Well,
01:15:42 ◼ ► we don't know why. Apple Money just wanted, I think, for the challenge of doing something
01:15:46 ◼ ► different. And guess what? He nails it because he is actually a great actor. And it isn't just,
01:15:52 ◼ ► and it's actually him in Shrinking, which is great. I didn't like season two as much as season
01:15:57 ◼ ► one, but I do love it. It's a great show. I think it's a great example of how actors are misused
01:16:05 ◼ ► by creative people in Hollywood. How once you're an actor who's known for a certain kind of role,
01:16:13 ◼ ► you never get the opportunity, or rarely get the opportunity, to do something different.
01:16:17 ◼ ► And it can be like it's a bejeweled prison, right? Like Harrison Ford not hurting for money
01:16:24 ◼ ► and parts and all of that. And yet I'm sure the professional actor part of him always feels a
01:16:31 ◼ ► little bit disappointed when he's asked to do your Han Solo and Indiana Jones thing again and again
01:16:40 ◼ ► and again. And in Shrinking, he gets to be a little bit different. And so creatively, he must
01:16:46 ◼ ► absolutely love it. And that's great because he's great in it. My favorite thing about season two
01:16:51 ◼ ► was how much Ted McGinley is used in it. I really, really enjoyed him in, so he plays Derek. I
01:16:59 ◼ ► really enjoyed him in the first season. He's very funny. And then in this season, we got more of
01:17:03 ◼ ► his funny, but also a lot more hot. So you said about using Harrison Ford, I actually saw a thing
01:17:08 ◼ ► with Jason Segel yesterday. And he was talking about Harrison Ford being in Shrinking. He says,
01:17:14 ◼ ► you know, like whenever you work on a project, you start with, if we could cast this person,
01:17:20 ◼ ► how amazing would it be? And you always reach out to that person. And they always say no.
01:17:30 ◼ ► we asked Harrison Ford and he said no. But he said, Harrison Ford said yes. And then they had
01:17:35 ◼ ► to rewrite the show because Paul was not in the show very much. And like, well, now we have
01:17:39 ◼ ► Harrison Ford. So then it became a co-lead. It's essentially the way that he says, like, you know,
01:17:44 ◼ ► now it's the two of them, right? That they are both doing leading roles where Paul was just much
01:17:48 ◼ ► more of a mentor figure. You saw him sometimes. So I thought that was really interesting. Just
01:17:54 ◼ ► like what that was like. Yeah. So Shrinking I loved. And I also just wanted to throw out
01:18:05 ◼ ► - I will say, I've said this to a lot of people, if you like kind of mob gangster stuff,
01:18:11 ◼ ► but think I don't want superheroes, then you're fine. Because there are no superheroes in the
01:18:39 ◼ ► - Yeah, that's a good one. I enjoyed that. I think it's something new. So the winner of the favorite
01:18:44 ◼ ► TV show of the year is Shogun and Shrinking and Bad Monkey are the runners-up. - Yeah. Good stuff.
01:19:04 ◼ ► which is a book that I've been really enjoying. It's by a British doctor, Dr. Oscar Duke.
01:19:12 ◼ ► And it's just a, it's a book that I've enjoyed a lot. It is written in a way that I really enjoy,
01:19:19 ◼ ► that he is a doctor and he also became a dad for the first time. And so the book is written from
01:19:26 ◼ ► both perspectives. So you have like a chapter about a certain element of pregnancy or newborn
01:19:33 ◼ ► life, and he writes it as a dad and he writes it as a doctor. And so you kind of get both sides of
01:19:38 ◼ ► it. And it's just a very relatable, very easy book. And I enjoyed it a lot and it doesn't
01:19:53 ◼ ► I don't need that information, you know, which is like a lot of what like dad like focused stuff is.
01:20:01 ◼ ► And I actually have, I found out a lot of really helpful, interesting things from this book. And so
01:20:08 ◼ ► I recommend it to people that are in my particular set of circumstances, but this was a book
01:20:13 ◼ ► published in 2019. So, you know. Okay, that's fine. It does. You read it this year. Sure.
01:20:19 ◼ ► That's all that matters. The Upgradients. I forgot to do the Upgradients because I got so excited.
01:20:42 ◼ ► Dan Moran's annual appearance. You love some, I enjoy the ballot boxes being stuffed personally.
01:21:04 ◼ ► the best science fiction writer going right now. Science fiction, fantasy, he does a whole bunch
01:21:09 ◼ ► of stuff. I've read a lot of his stuff the last couple years. He's very prolific and he's so good.
01:21:14 ◼ ► And Service Model, I went into it not knowing what it was at all and then about a chapter in,
01:21:26 ◼ ► and why robot logic and computer logic could lead to ridiculous outcomes. It really is the idea of
01:21:34 ◼ ► like, okay, so yeah, robot apocalypse, got it, got it, but how would that happen? And he takes you
01:21:41 ◼ ► through the mind of the robot who's helping kind of with the apocalypse. And it's ludicrous. And
01:21:49 ◼ ► I thought, well, he can't keep this up for the whole book and he keeps it up for the whole book.
01:21:53 ◼ ► It's great. It's funny. It is about the end of the world. So there's a lot of like, you got to laugh
01:21:59 ◼ ► at the absurdity to keep from crying from the tragedy of everybody dying basically. But like,
01:22:05 ◼ ► takes you really deep inside the robot apocalypse. When there are almost no humans left,
01:22:09 ◼ ► what do the robots do? And the answer is, wow, they do a lot of stupid things because they're
01:22:13 ◼ ► robots. It's very funny. And it's sort of a series of adventures that this robot has where he goes
01:22:21 ◼ ► from place to place to place to seek out the source of the robot apocalypse, sort of. I don't
01:22:30 ◼ ► know. It's great. I love it. It should be the winner. I'll shout out a couple other books I
01:22:34 ◼ ► really love this year that didn't, that one of which at least was not printed this year, but I
01:22:38 ◼ ► don't care. I read it this year. I read "Titanium Noir" by Nick Harkaway, who is John le Carré's
01:22:46 ◼ ► son and actually had a new book in that universe that he wrote that came out this year that got all
01:22:51 ◼ ► the press. But he's also apparently writing a sequel to "Titanium Noir" which I really loved.
01:23:00 ◼ ► it's "Titanium Noir", a titanium noir novel. It's like, okay. Yes. Well, it's now "Titanium
01:23:05 ◼ ► Noir" number one because it's going to be a number two. It is just very funny. It's like,
01:23:15 ◼ ► inequality means that although there's a cure for death now, only the richest people can get it.
01:23:20 ◼ ► And it makes them taller every time they get a round of their treatment. So you end up with these
01:23:25 ◼ ► these like Titans that walk the earth that are like 10 feet tall and rich and immortal.
01:23:37 ◼ ► That's a really good premise. I like the sound of this book. That, that would make a good TV show.
01:23:45 ◼ ► All these stories about, about like, Oh, John look, Le Carre died, but his son is going to
01:23:51 ◼ ► write a novel. Speaking of Dune, right? Cause that's what happened with Dune is Brian Herbert
01:23:55 ◼ ► came in. Here's the thing about Nick Harkaway. He's such a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant
01:24:00 ◼ ► writer. It has nothing to do with him being related to his dad. I think it's kind of amazing
01:24:04 ◼ ► that he decided to write a book in his dad's world because he is, he's really great on his own. I
01:24:10 ◼ ► mean, he really is a, a, a treasure of a writer, great writer. Book I just finished this week that
01:24:16 ◼ ► I turns out sliding right in under the wire as one of my favorite books of the year is called the
01:24:21 ◼ ► book of love by Kelly Link. It is a dark, it's, it's an urban, it's kind of like a suburban
01:24:29 ◼ ► fantasy. It's a, it reminded me of Neil Gaiman or the, the more fantastical and less horror of
01:24:37 ◼ ► Stephen King might be a good comp as well about some teenagers in a seaside town in new England.
01:24:44 ◼ ► I know it feels like Stephen King, doesn't it? Who, who apparently, apparently died, but have
01:24:49 ◼ ► now come back to life and are trying to figure out why and how and what happens next. And I thought
01:24:56 ◼ ► it was really great. So it was my, the book of love by Kelly Link. That's a fun title. Kelly
01:25:02 ◼ ► Link Pulitzer prize winner and winner of a MacArthur genius grant. So not exactly a, an
01:25:07 ◼ ► unknown quantity, but the book, I think this might've been her first novel or her first
01:25:10 ◼ ► intentional novel. It's great. Good, good book. Good book. So a service model is obviously the
01:25:15 ◼ ► winner, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then let's put in how to be a dad. No, we don't need to do that.
01:25:21 ◼ ► We really don't need to do that. Let's put in the actual books. We'll look back later. And okay,
01:25:26 ◼ ► then let's say, um, we'll put in Armageddon protocol by Dan Moran, of course. And let's put
01:25:33 ◼ ► in one of Dan Warren's favorite authors, titanium noir by Nick Harkaway as our runners up, then I'll
01:25:38 ◼ ► get a kick out of that being alongside that book. Favorite podcast. Sometimes this is hard because
01:25:48 ◼ ► our lifetime achievement winners are ATP and the flop house, which means that, uh, two of the
01:26:00 ◼ ► vote. I'm just going to say it. The ballot boxes have been stuffed this year in this category.
01:26:04 ◼ ► 12% is this very show upgrade and at 19% is connected. I was, I was present for some of the,
01:26:11 ◼ ► the ballot box stuffing, uh, on connected, but unfortunately this is, this is another open and
01:26:18 ◼ ► closed. I'm sorry to say because, oh boy, I have been mainlining the rest of this history. Like,
01:26:25 ◼ ► love to hear it. I started listening to this show, uh, on my vacation kind of around Thanksgiving.
01:26:32 ◼ ► It is essentially the only podcast that I've listened to. So to give you, and just to let
01:26:39 ◼ ► you know, right, because I can do the overcast stats thing, right? So this has been since
01:27:01 ◼ ► So it's a little more than 10 hours a week. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's the only podcast I'm
01:27:07 ◼ ► listening to right now. My backlog right now is horrific. Uh, because I am just, I am just,
01:27:14 ◼ ► I cannot even describe how much I love this show. And this funny thing for me is I have,
01:27:18 ◼ ► this was already going to be a difficult category for me. I have five podcasts that I wanted to call
01:27:25 ◼ ► out in this list, which I would do in a minute, but the rest of this history is just perfect.
01:27:37 ◼ ► funny now I've listened to so much when I go back and think about the holiday special from last year,
01:27:41 ◼ ► which was in the style of that show, right? The Colorzars, because now I kind of, I get it.
01:27:47 ◼ ► There's like so many jokes that I didn't get, which is very funny. But yeah, I am loving this
01:27:55 ◼ ► show. There's like so many good seasons. What I have noticed though, Jason, I don't know if you've
01:27:58 ◼ ► noticed this. There was obviously a shift in the style of the show kind of late 2023, because I've
01:28:07 ◼ ► gone back kind of to early 2023 and the episodes like, hey, we're just going to talk about this.
01:28:18 ◼ ► is more, we're going to tell you the story of this thing that happened. So like, there's a,
01:28:24 ◼ ► there's, they did, they did two, even two series about the Nazis. They did like, how did it,
01:28:29 ◼ ► how did it, how did we get to the Nazis and then what happened? And they were like a year apart
01:28:33 ◼ ► from each other. And so I went back to the episodes early 2023, which were like, how did we
01:28:40 ◼ ► get to the Nazis essentially? And in those, it's like the two of them are having a kind of a
01:28:45 ◼ ► conversation about it. And like, well, what did you think? What did you think? And then the, the,
01:28:50 ◼ ► like, what happens in the Nazis takeover? It is, they're kind of taking it in turns to tell the
01:28:59 ◼ ► - They've changed their form. I think it's great. Yeah. I haven't listened to too many of those past
01:29:03 ◼ ► episodes, but it's fine. The personalities are great. I mean, it's got all the things a great
01:29:07 ◼ ► podcast has. - That's, that's what's, what I love about The Rest is History is it is the type of
01:29:13 ◼ ► show that I like, which is a couple of people who have very good chemistry talking to each other
01:29:18 ◼ ► about something that they care a lot about. And it's about a thing that I don't have too much
01:29:24 ◼ ► knowledge about a lot of the things that I've listened to. Like, you know, stuff like World War
01:29:29 ◼ ► Two, I know, and you know, like some of the Cold War stuff I know, JFK I knew about, but I knew
01:29:34 ◼ ► nothing about the Aztecs. - Yeah, let me tell you about Carthage. They're like, what? - Yeah,
01:29:40 ◼ ► there's so many things. I mean, so I will say there is stuff that I've realized that like,
01:29:44 ◼ ► oh yeah, no, like for example, that a lot of like the Roman stuff is like, I just can't attach to
01:29:49 ◼ ► that. It's too far gone. Like I started listening to an episode about like the Romans invading
01:29:56 ◼ ► Britain and it's like, they're talking about countries that don't exist. And it's like,
01:30:01 ◼ ► I can't keep this information in my head. So I kind of, I like, yeah, but anyway, this show is
01:30:07 ◼ ► just fantastic. But I had other shows that I wanted to mention. - Okay. - Similarly from
01:30:13 ◼ ► The Goal Hanger, The Rest is Politics. This was going to be my pick because I started listening
01:30:18 ◼ ► to this show at the beginning of the year when we had the election in the UK, because I wanted like
01:30:22 ◼ ► some more information, kind of what is going on. And I found the show and it's the same idea,
01:30:28 ◼ ► right? It's two people who are very knowledgeable because they have both been in British politics.
01:30:34 ◼ ► And I really liked that they come from two, they're both kind of like center, well, one,
01:30:39 ◼ ► they like center left and center right as kind of figures. And I like that because they come at it
01:30:45 ◼ ► from different points and they can actually have a debate, which is helpful, I think for politics,
01:30:50 ◼ ► but also that neither of them are too far in one direction that it becomes like a fight. So I
01:30:57 ◼ ► really appreciate that show for that. I wanted to share our NPC, Next Portable Console, which is
01:31:02 ◼ ► a Federico, John and Brendan show about portable gaming systems, which I love. My very first
01:31:09 ◼ ► podcast has come back, Dignation. Dignation is back, which is like amazing. Like just for this
01:31:16 ◼ ► show to just reappear after all this time is fantastic. That's been a lot of fun for me,
01:31:21 ◼ ► because it's incredible that it feels like the show hasn't changed, even though they've not
01:31:25 ◼ ► done it for like, I don't know, maybe 10 years or something. And then I just got a shout out
01:31:39 ◼ ► I would like to suggest the rest is politics, because that was going to be my other vote,
01:31:54 ◼ ► All right. Well, if I look at my top four podcasts of the year in Overcast, two of them are Lifetime
01:32:04 ◼ ► Achievement Award winners. One of them is the rest is history. And so congratulations to Connected
01:32:16 ◼ ► really putting this out there is I think Connected is one win away from Lifetime Achievement.
01:32:31 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by Data Citizen Dialogues, which is a podcast, which is great
01:32:45 ◼ ► If you like this show, you're probably going to like Data Citizen Dialogues. It's brought to you
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01:32:55 ◼ ► data. In every episode of Data Citizen Dialogues, industry leaders unpack data's impact on the world
01:33:01 ◼ ► from big picture questions like AI governance and data sharing to more nuanced questions like how
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01:33:26 ◼ ► and customer interactions. I listened to an episode about how data is being used to improve
01:33:31 ◼ ► healthcare at Memorial Care. And I really enjoyed how the episode was featuring the people that are
01:33:36 ◼ ► actually kind of doing the work so they could talk about the things that they have experienced of how
01:33:40 ◼ ► they have to think about data security and privacy and all of the important things that will be
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01:34:01 ◼ ► or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Our thanks to Data Citizens Dialogues for their
01:34:05 ◼ ► support of this show and all of Relay. We now move into favourite Apple product of the year.
01:34:25 ◼ ► for the M4 Mac Mini. Well, I don't know about you, Mike. I mean, a good year for Apple products.
01:34:30 ◼ ► I got an angry bit of feedback from a listener because we were listing our favourites over at
01:34:40 ◼ ► Six Colors. We were all listing sort of our favourite hardware of the year. And none of us
01:34:44 ◼ ► chose to write up the super thin all-time winner M4 iPad Pro, which is cool. You know, I love how
01:34:52 ◼ ► thin it is and I love how bright that beautiful new screen is. It's all good, but I chose to
01:34:59 ◼ ► write up the Magic Keyboard instead. And my reasoning was, if somebody told me I had to
01:35:08 ◼ ► give up my M4 iPad Pro, what would be the one thing about it that I would miss the most? And it
01:35:15 ◼ ► wasn't the iPad, it was the keyboard that goes with it, because I think that keyboard is so
01:35:21 ◼ ► much better. But look, the iPad Pro M4 is great. There are a lot of things to be said for it.
01:35:31 ◼ ► I do love how thin it is. It's really good. I use my iPad all the time. I bought an M4 MacBook Pro.
01:35:40 ◼ ► Coming to you, we'll talk about this I'm sure in future episodes, but I am docked with a MacBook
01:35:47 ◼ ► Pro at my desk now. This is my life now, Mike. So do I like that product? Yes, I do. I think the M4
01:36:01 ◼ ► is the Mac Mini. I feel like it has to be the Mac Mini. It is so remarkable. Not only do the
01:36:09 ◼ ► Upgradients say that, but to finally make a new Mac Mini and have it be so tiny and yet so powerful
01:36:14 ◼ ► with the M4 Max or M4 Pro version of it. It's way more power than anybody needs for a regular life.
01:36:29 ◼ ► So cool and so useful. And I know a lot of people who don't have any use for a Mac Mini who still
01:36:36 ◼ ► want one. So I feel like that is good. Also, my understanding is that you also have ordered a Mac
01:36:43 ◼ ► Mini. Is that true? Yes, we will talk about this in Upgrade Plus today. But yeah, I have actually
01:36:51 ◼ ► made the order that I've been threatening to make for months now and I have actually ordered the
01:36:56 ◼ ► M4 Mac Mini. Which is why I would very happily give it to that product. It's not my choice
01:37:02 ◼ ► because I've not used it, but I do really appreciate that product. So I think it's fantastic.
01:37:06 ◼ ► For me, my favorite Apple product of the year is the M4 iPad Pro. Oh, there you go. It's my first
01:37:13 ◼ ► iPad Pro with a very good screen like that. I didn't have an OLED iPad Pro. I didn't have the
01:37:21 ◼ ► Mini LED iPad Pro before now. So the 11 inch specifically, I adore that iPad. How thin it is,
01:37:29 ◼ ► how light it is, and how powerful it is, and how good it looks. But yeah, the Mac Mini is
01:37:38 ◼ ► clearly a very special product. And so I'm very happy to give that the Apple product of the year.
01:37:44 ◼ ► But I would like to put the iPad Pro in as a runner up. Absolutely. And the MacBook Pro I would like
01:37:56 ◼ ► Okay. Favorite non-Apple product of the year. This is a tricky one. This is a tricky one. This
01:38:05 ◼ ► is always a tricky one, but it's a fun one too. So the Upgradients voted with 4% for the OLED
01:38:10 ◼ ► Steam Deck, 4% for the Google Pixel 9 family, and 6% for the Meta Raybans. I was surprised to see
01:38:17 ◼ ► the Meta Raybans take the spot here, but I was pleased about that. Was there any ballot stuffing
01:38:22 ◼ ► from Connected in that? Maybe. Well, I mean, the ballot stuffing that I'm talking about is where
01:38:27 ◼ ► specifically people are asking for votes, not just that they've been influenced by listeners
01:38:32 ◼ ► of the show. I'm not shilling for Meta. Okay. What do you think here? So I could make a case
01:38:43 ◼ ► for the Meta Raybans. I think they're a very interesting product. I like mine a lot. Federico
01:38:50 ◼ ► loves his and wears them every day. I use mine just as sunglasses, so my options are limited.
01:38:56 ◼ ► But being able to take photos and listen to music and like when I was on vacation, I was listening
01:39:01 ◼ ► to the rest of history by the pool via my sunglasses, which was just a great experience
01:39:08 ◼ ► like that, that it is a very, very good product. Take the AI out of it. It's still a good product.
01:39:15 ◼ ► Add the AI in and it can do more stuff, but you know, whatever. I'm going to pick, and my favorite
01:39:21 ◼ ► product of the year though is something completely different. It's called the Oslo Sleepbuds.
01:39:30 ◼ ► And that's Oslo with a Z, of course. I mean, why would it not be? Bose used to make a product
01:39:43 ◼ ► and they essentially just played white noise. They stopped making this product. So the entire
01:39:50 ◼ ► team that made it went and made their own company called Oslo to make the new version of what that
01:39:56 ◼ ► would be. So by the way, they were called the Bose Sleepbuds. There you go. So, you know,
01:40:01 ◼ ► I'm expecting that there was an agreement made between all these. Like, I don't just think that
01:40:09 ◼ ► they just went and did it. This product feels like a startup's product. It is not by any means
01:40:19 ◼ ► a kind of very complete feeling product, but they are very comfortable to wear when sleeping.
01:40:26 ◼ ► They're like very, very thin and they've got, they're very comfortable. They don't go in your
01:40:35 ◼ ► And they have an app and the app comes with a selection of white noise that you can play or
01:40:42 ◼ ► like different sounds. Like I listen to the sound of an ocean and I find them to be really
01:40:50 ◼ ► comfortable that you can also, you can use them as Bluetooth headphones. So you could be listening
01:40:55 ◼ ► to something else. You could be watching something else. They have a feature that I've not used,
01:40:59 ◼ ► but I like that it's there and I've seen mixed results, but some people say it works and some
01:41:03 ◼ ► people say it don't. That it detects that you've fallen asleep and pauses what you're listening to
01:41:08 ◼ ► and it activates the white noise. There are things about it that are not ideal. Like for example,
01:41:14 ◼ ► you have to open the app and then like open the case and then they connect and then it will work.
01:41:20 ◼ ► And also, I set it to just to play for an hour because I don't need it doing it all night.
01:41:28 ◼ ► But then if I wake up and want to put the white noise back on again, I have to do that repairing
01:41:32 ◼ ► process. So that's what I mean. There are things about it where it's like, oh, this could be a bit
01:41:36 ◼ ► slicker, but as a product for, I want some headphones that I can wear comfortably while
01:41:43 ◼ ► sleeping on my side that don't dig into me, that don't fall out of my ears and get lost
01:41:49 ◼ ► and that provide me with a white noise experience. These are it. So I really love this product. It's
01:41:55 ◼ ► a fun little tech product that I've used this year, the Oslo Seat Buds. Wow. That's fun. Yeah.
01:42:01 ◼ ► It's nice to find something like that. Like here is a tech solution to a problem that I want solved
01:42:06 ◼ ► made by people who care so much about it that they want to start their own company to do it.
01:42:18 ◼ ► I'm sure of it, but I thought of four things. The Miu Mini Plus, which we talked about in
01:42:31 ◼ ► is like super cheap on AliExpress and was on sale. So it was super duper cheap when I bought one.
01:42:38 ◼ ► Gave that to my son for Christmas. I think he's into it. Really good. Just a good build. The
01:42:44 ◼ ► buttons are good. My son, again, the gamer was like, these buttons are really good. I'm like,
01:42:48 ◼ ► yeah, they are. It's really well built piece of hardware. And then amazing that you, you know,
01:42:53 ◼ ► what OSs are out there to run on top of it. This thing called Onion OS. And that is a third party
01:43:02 ◼ ► thing that's not even from Miu, but they know that people install it and it's really good. And then
01:43:08 ◼ ► it's got a whole bunch of different emulators on it. Just I'm very impressed with that product.
01:43:17 ◼ ► problem with all of these products is that they're like, oh, it looks just like a Game Boy, or it
01:43:21 ◼ ► looks just like a, what's the full dope and what, anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't have nostalgia
01:43:31 ◼ ► for those little handhelds. So I'm more into it for having it be a handheld that is fun, that runs
01:43:39 ◼ ► a bunch of games, especially old arcade games and old console games, less than I am running,
01:43:47 ◼ ► you know, Game Boy games, because I have no nostalgia for Game Boy games. But that hardware
01:43:52 ◼ ► is really good and I love this category. So I wanted to mention it. Very impressive. There are
01:43:56 ◼ ► other styles. There's ones that are shaped more, you know, horizontal, more like a Steam Deck that
01:44:01 ◼ ► do, you know, PSP emulation and all sorts of other emulation. But like the two things that I ended up
01:44:07 ◼ ► playing the most on the Miu Mini+ when I had it were Joust, classic arcade console game, and
01:44:13 ◼ ► NFL Blitz 2000, which was my favorite game for the PS1. So that's the kind of stuff I gravitated
01:44:21 ◼ ► toward. I tried to play Pac-Man on it and realized like Game Boy Pac-Man, you like, they pan around
01:44:26 ◼ ► the screen, you can't see the whole screen because they couldn't do that. I was like, oh yeah, a
01:44:30 ◼ ► little handhelds can't do that stuff, can they? We can do better. I mentioned my EverLights
01:44:54 ◼ ► candles there are. It's really cool. I love it. I will shout out my Christmas present, which is the
01:45:03 ◼ ► Traeger Ironwood Grill, which is a pellet grill. Smokes some meat on it. But the thing that
01:45:09 ◼ ► impresses me the most about it as a tech product is that it's basically got a little computer in
01:45:13 ◼ ► it. The hardware of this thing, other than the grill hardware, is it's got an auger that
01:45:18 ◼ ► basically feeds the pellets into the combustion chamber and it's got a fan so it can control the
01:45:25 ◼ ► combustion. It's all done by this little computer that has Wi-Fi and it'll talk to your phone and
01:45:30 ◼ ► they have an app and the app is surprisingly not terrible because most of these apps are terrible.
01:45:38 ◼ ► I used it over the holidays. It worked really well, but I was delighted by the fact that not
01:45:43 ◼ ► only was this little computer, you know, that the buttons on the grill itself are very clear,
01:45:49 ◼ ► but that the app is good and you can control other than the initial ignition, you can control it all
01:45:55 ◼ ► from the app and it does a pretty good job. So that was a fun gadget. And then finally,
01:45:59 ◼ ► I threw it in here because it delights me. That Belkin Vision Pro case and sure that head strap
01:46:07 ◼ ► thing too. The two products that got released that are literally "Apple says you should make this"
01:46:17 ◼ ► but instead they shipped the big puffy marshmallow case and a really kind of weird misguided set of
01:46:24 ◼ ► head straps instead of just using that knit strap with an over-the-top strap simultaneously.
01:46:30 ◼ ► I thought that was it makes me laugh that those products have to exist, but they're also pretty
01:46:34 ◼ ► good. What do you think? So from your list, I really like the Belkin products. I think they
01:46:49 ◼ ► should be in the conversation. Yeah. Well, my suggestion was going to be that we give it to the
01:46:55 ◼ ► Metaray bands. Cause that sounds like a product that actually people like and that you like and
01:47:00 ◼ ► that is doing something interesting. Yeah. And then we can make your sleep buds and the Belkin stuff
01:47:06 ◼ ► the runners up. Love it. That's fun. What a fun category. Yeah. I mean, Apple, you got to do
01:47:13 ◼ ► something and these smart glasses, like what are you doing? I know, right? No, the AirPods that you
01:47:19 ◼ ► wear as glasses that tie into Siri on your phone and Apple intelligence and all of that. And that
01:47:26 ◼ ► can they're, they're AirPods that you wear as glasses. They don't even need a display, right?
01:47:31 ◼ ► That'll come, but they don't even need a display like Apple. Yes. I don't say this that often,
01:47:37 ◼ ► but I think I said it a few weeks ago and I'll say it again here, which is if I were at Apple
01:47:50 ◼ ► by the end of 2025, we need by the holidays of 2025, we should be shipping AirPods glasses.
01:47:57 ◼ ► Yeah. Period. Make it happen. I don't care. Like take the innards of AirPods and like, and honestly,
01:48:04 ◼ ► if you're working on a new version of AirPods, stop, put it on hold and do this instead. Cause
01:48:09 ◼ ► AirPods are great. The existing shipping AirPods are fine. Stop it. You can build a product and
01:48:16 ◼ ► get it going and ship it by the end of the year. Let's use all the power within Apple to make that
01:48:22 ◼ ► product happen. Simplify and miniaturize the work that you did to get the speakers in a vision pro,
01:48:25 ◼ ► right? So you like, you know how to do that. It doesn't need to be that good, right? Like,
01:48:30 ◼ ► you know how to make a speaker that fires into the ear, right? Or use, or, or you did a bunch
01:48:35 ◼ ► of research about bone conduction and decided not to go for it. Maybe that works for these and you
01:48:39 ◼ ► could use that instead, but the guts of it are going to be AirPods. That's all. And, and ship it,
01:48:49 ◼ ► is a big company and things are complex. I get it. But one of my frustrations about Apple is that,
01:48:56 ◼ ► and it may be to their overall harm in the long run is they seem incapable of doing something
01:49:12 ◼ ► addressing them quickly. They didn't address the butterfly keyboard, for example, that's a classic
01:49:16 ◼ ► example, but I would argue the smart home stuff. Like they're talking about this display. How long
01:49:21 ◼ ► has it been since the echo show came out? Like this was an obvious place for them to go years
01:49:26 ◼ ► ago. And they, I guess decided not to, or they just decided to put their toe in it, but like
01:49:30 ◼ ► they could have made that product happen. And, and this is another case where like, look, meta figured
01:49:34 ◼ ► it out AirPods, but glasses. And, and I don't know whether it's like, well, no, we, we thought about
01:49:41 ◼ ► that and decided not to do it. And so now that net is doing it, we're really never going to do it.
01:49:44 ◼ ► Well, that's stupid. That's stupid. And it's not the vision pro it's a totally different approach
01:49:49 ◼ ► to putting something on your face, but it, you know, for people who don't want to wear the AirPods,
01:49:55 ◼ ► they could wear this instead and they get an AirPods experience. It really is. That's why
01:49:59 ◼ ► I described it as AirPods glasses. Cause think of it like that. I don't, I just went and then Mark
01:50:05 ◼ ► Gurman comes out and says, yeah, they're looking at that. It'll be out in two or three years. I'm
01:50:09 ◼ ► like, what are you doing? What are you doing too slow? Worst gadget or most disappointing
01:50:16 ◼ ► technology. The upgrade is voted of 11% for the vision pro 12% for artificial intelligence as a
01:50:25 ◼ ► whole and 15% for the humane AI pin. The humane AI pin, which was introduced in 2023, but shipped
01:50:39 ◼ ► in 2024. The humane AI pin won this category in 2023. Amazing. Yeah. Which honestly makes this
01:50:48 ◼ ► really tantalizing as a possibility to give it the award twice, but I want to make a pitch.
01:50:54 ◼ ► Okay. Image playgrounds. Oh, wow. Image playgrounds is the most disappointed that I've been in
01:51:04 ◼ ► technology this year. Like I said, this is the show of how many say it many times, so I'm not
01:51:10 ◼ ► going to go into it in a lot of detail, but I just think that I don't think Apple, a lot of people
01:51:16 ◼ ► write in Apple intelligence, but not enough to get into the thing, but like, I don't think Apple
01:51:19 ◼ ► intelligence on the whole has been bad, but I think image playgrounds is bad. I think it is not
01:51:24 ◼ ► a good, uh, um, it is not a good use of this kind of technology. It's not good enough. Um, and it
01:51:32 ◼ ► undermines in my opinion, some of the good work that Apple have done, like with genmoji, which is
01:51:37 ◼ ► a fantastic thing. I think it is really great. Uh, I think that image playgrounds is just
01:51:43 ◼ ► not worth it. And so they shouldn't have shipped it. And so I, I'm disappointed in that feature.
01:51:59 ◼ ► Um, I, I don't, I mean, I guess if you got your hopes up, the vision pro is disappointing,
01:52:10 ◼ ► That's I actually think it's kind of great, but nobody should buy it. Right. Which is how do you,
01:52:15 ◼ ► am I disappointed by that? No, is exactly what it should have been. The things that have been
01:52:19 ◼ ► disappointed is what came after that wasn't at, well, some of it's Apple, but not the hardware.
01:52:29 ◼ ► uh, do better in these areas, but like the vision pro specifically, it is exactly what was promised
01:52:39 ◼ ► and maybe a better than like, it's just like hardware software, how it works, but it is the,
01:52:43 ◼ ► the content that was the, the thing that was a failure to it. I think. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
01:52:52 ◼ ► Um, well I'm, I'm okay with image playground being the winner in this category because I agree. I,
01:53:01 ◼ ► I am, I am disappointed in Apple for it and I find it using it eternally disappointing.
01:53:09 ◼ ► I've only ever shared things to laugh at them. Yep. I've only ever used things to share them
01:53:16 ◼ ► and laugh at them because it, I am unhappy with all of the output and I'm especially unhappy that
01:53:23 ◼ ► they centered caricatures of people in your photos library instead of centering generic people,
01:53:30 ◼ ► which are in there, which I totally even missed that it was in there. I mentioned this a couple
01:53:36 ◼ ► of weeks ago that it had to be pointed out to me by friend of me of the show Griffin, that, um,
01:53:42 ◼ ► that there is this appearance thing, but like, think about that. Apple wants you to make
01:53:49 ◼ ► caricatures of your friends using its ML models like, and they're not good. Yeah. I just don't
01:53:56 ◼ ► like it. I don't like anything about it. No. When again, Genmoji is really good, works good,
01:54:04 ◼ ► and I laugh with it, not at it because I can make funny things with it. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah.
01:54:10 ◼ ► Yeah. Have you seen the ad? There's a great Genmoji ad. I haven't seen it. No. It's great.
01:54:15 ◼ ► There's a great ad. You have this great technology. Why even bother with image playgrounds? Like why?
01:54:22 ◼ ► It's very strange to me because they're trying to look, look, I think in the end, in a couple
01:54:27 ◼ ► of years, what we're going to look at Apple intelligence and say, Apple panicked because
01:54:32 ◼ ► they were behind. They threw out everything that everybody else was doing, but we're behind on it.
01:54:37 ◼ ► And then if they're lucky, what we'll say is, and then we realize the stuff that actually mattered
01:54:42 ◼ ► and the stuff that didn't matter. And they kind of like faded away the stuff that didn't matter
01:55:20 ◼ ► I don't agree with the vision pro and I kind of gang. I love you all so much, but like,
01:55:29 ◼ ► we can't keep calling AI as a whole, the most disappointed. We're going to do this forever.
01:55:34 ◼ ► Like we get this, like at a certain point, like I think finding specific things to be mad about or
01:55:40 ◼ ► upset about, I think is better than just like all of artificial intelligence. I think I was,
01:55:45 ◼ ► I was trying to figure out a way to say like using like using AI for search, but even then it's too
01:55:59 ◼ ► complex. I keep thinking about how I do Google searches now and they put up these AI things.
01:56:05 ◼ ► I would be happy to say that the Google AI summary like Google AI summary is, is the worst.
01:56:12 ◼ ► I will say a few words about it. They sit, they send their stupid AI summary at the top.
01:56:22 ◼ ► top of a Google page before you get to real results. And this would be different if the
01:56:28 ◼ ► search was the solution, but it isn't because some percentage of the time what you get back is
01:56:35 ◼ ► completely wrong or useless. And again, I'm a, I think that AI in certain contexts is great,
01:56:46 ◼ ► but boy, it is getting applied to contexts where it does not belong. Where it actually serves to
01:56:54 ◼ ► make the product worse. Well, like I think search and chat GPT, like web search abilities in chat
01:57:00 ◼ ► GPT has made chat GPT better, right? Like it, cause it's still wrong. You know, it's going to
01:57:06 ◼ ► be wrong, but like putting AI in Google made Google worse, right? Like where you can still
01:57:16 ◼ ► but chat GPT was getting things wrong before, like giving it search functionality made it better,
01:57:29 ◼ ► Right? Like the answer that Google gives me is an unreliable thing. I don't know if you saw this,
01:57:35 ◼ ► but Jason Schreier at Bloomberg is a game reporter. He kind of went viral a little bit on
01:57:46 ◼ ► And he wanted to find out if there was a sequel. So he typed in Encanto 2 and it gave a full plot
01:57:51 ◼ ► breakdown and a release date of 2024, which all came from a fandom Wiki where people kind of
01:57:59 ◼ ► fan fiction movie development, like even down to the fact of saying that Gloria Estefan was
01:58:06 ◼ ► actually the lead in this movie. Like they did like a whole thing who wrote the music when they
01:58:10 ◼ ► did it and Google just used that. Now, like that's not a good source to be training your AI on
01:58:16 ◼ ► because it's not real in the first place. And of course, once that breaks, they turn that off and
01:58:21 ◼ ► they're like, oh no, no, that's not there anymore. But you can't, this is not how we can live our
01:58:24 ◼ ► lives. And that, that, yes, I saw that example. It is a great example. How, and this is my
01:58:30 ◼ ► overarching thought. Cause I think this, this goes for a lot of that, the stuff that Apple has done
01:58:34 ◼ ► too this year, which is maybe we need to be a little less generous about AI results because
01:58:46 ◼ ► that Google result, like being so wrong, I feel like it's very easy to say, well, it's,
01:58:52 ◼ ► it's an AI result. What do you expect? Sometimes they're wrong. And in fact, I think what we should
01:58:58 ◼ ► say is Google released a defective product that misinforms its users, even though they're in the
01:59:08 ◼ ► business of information and they've done it because they feel they have some sort of external business
01:59:15 ◼ ► pressure to do it, but clearly they've released it before they can stand by its results because
01:59:23 ◼ ► they've just decided to inflict it on the world, even though it's not very good because they feel
01:59:32 ◼ ► Yeah. Cause it's like, again, like, you know, cause I do, I am, I've, I do like using chat
01:59:40 ◼ ► GPT for some element of searching, but it's always like, get me to somewhere, get me to somewhere.
01:59:46 ◼ ► And I like the way that it gets me to places. AI is great when it is assisting people who know it
01:59:52 ◼ ► is assisting them and providing information to, as a tool, as a part of a bigger nutritious breakfast.
02:00:16 ◼ ► is that it's being presented by companies as the answer. Yeah. When in fact it's best used
02:00:23 ◼ ► as an assistant. Yes. Who is going to bring you things that you scrutinize, but that's,
02:00:29 ◼ ► that's a complex message. And a lot of people don't want to scrutinize anything. They just want
02:00:33 ◼ ► the answer. Okay. Fair enough. But if you're giving them the wrong answer, you're not solving
02:00:38 ◼ ► their problem. You're making their problems worse. And that's where we are with a lot of AI stuff
02:00:43 ◼ ► right now. So, so that's why I think, I think there are specific, very good complaints,
02:00:47 ◼ ► but I just think like all of AI, I don't believe is like a, just like a good, like it's just an
02:00:53 ◼ ► easy thing to say, but we all have our different opinions on this and that's great that we have
02:00:56 ◼ ► our different opinions. Okay. So image playground is the winner. Winner. Uh, we'll put the humane
02:01:03 ◼ ► AI pin as a runner up. And how did you describe the Google? You had the right of Google AI summaries.
02:01:09 ◼ ► Summaries. Yeah. Let's do that as a runner up. So we go to most life-changing hardware. The
02:01:16 ◼ ► upgradients voted 3% for the AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid features. Pretty strong. 4% for the
02:01:23 ◼ ► Apple vision pro and 12% for the Apple watch. The Apple watch is always up the top of the lists here,
02:01:36 ◼ ► Uh, I'll throw the M4 MacBook pro onto the pot because it changed my life because I'm working
02:01:46 ◼ ► in a completely different way now with one computer instead of having two. I'm going to
02:01:50 ◼ ► make a case for the vision pro. Okay. Because this is where it should have been, right? This is where
02:01:57 ◼ ► this, when you know, before this year began, if you think about what product, what category could
02:02:04 ◼ ► the vision pro sit in most life-changing hardware could have been it. So for me, the vision pro has
02:02:10 ◼ ► been a huge part of my year, right? Like it's been a dominant thing that has occurred throughout the
02:02:16 ◼ ► year. Uh, I traveled to America and had a great trip. I got to meet Tim Cook and Greg Joswiak.
02:02:23 ◼ ► Uh, that was pretty fun. Um, and I would say then the product has helped me stay better connected
02:02:30 ◼ ► with friends and colleagues, right? Like we spoke about earlier. Um, it's been something which has
02:02:36 ◼ ► been very interesting to track. It's been a good story that has been like worth tracking the whole
02:02:53 ◼ ► but this is my kind of like, how I could say that it has been a life-changing piece of hardware this
02:02:59 ◼ ► year. Okay. I can go with that. I don't think that the vision pro has changed my life in any way.
02:03:07 ◼ ► I think it's got a lot of interesting potential. I like it. I am, I, I, I think it is a great
02:03:14 ◼ ► cutting edge piece of Apple hardware that just is basically an experimental piece of hardware now.
02:03:31 ◼ ► And I think the AirPods pro two with hearing aid is actually really resonates with me. Like that is
02:03:38 ◼ ► kind of what this category is about. Yeah. I'd say these three, I think we could give it to the
02:03:43 ◼ ► AirPods pro two. Yeah. Um, I agree. And then have the, the MacBook pro and the vision pro in the
02:03:49 ◼ ► mix as the runners up. Yeah. I agree. Because that is, again, it's like, it's not a thing that I need,
02:03:55 ◼ ► but I did the hearing test and was really impressed by that. And I hear about how it could
02:04:01 ◼ ► be used for people. And I think that is an amazing thing. And, uh, if I ever get to that point, I feel
02:04:08 ◼ ► confident and comfortable in knowing that there is, there is already a solution that I have in
02:04:11 ◼ ► my pocket that can help me. And she's similar to how I feel about a lot of that health stuff
02:04:16 ◼ ► that Apple does is like, I'm just very happy that the products that I already choose to wear and use
02:04:21 ◼ ► have these features in them. And so this is just another great example of that. I agree.
02:04:27 ◼ ► Uh, favorite tech story. Yeah. Upgradients, uh, 5% of leaving Twitter for Mastodon or blue sky,
02:04:37 ◼ ► 7% Apple ended DMA and 9% Apple vision pro. So I would just say copy and paste what I said
02:04:45 ◼ ► about the vision pro into this one too. Cause that is my favorite text story of the year.
02:04:49 ◼ ► All right. My favorite tech story of the year is actually the surprise reveal of the M four.
02:04:57 ◼ ► Okay. In iPads. When we thought that the M fours would go in computers, you know, like Mac,
02:05:05 ◼ ► Macintosh computers. And instead they did this M four reveal with the, yeah, the thin iPad with
02:05:12 ◼ ► the great screen, but the fact that they had the M four in there, I think that that was it. It's,
02:05:17 ◼ ► I know Mark Gurman kinda kinda broke it slightly early, but like it was still in doubt. Like it
02:05:23 ◼ ► seems so unlikely. We didn't think that it was going, even though that Mark was saying,
02:05:27 ◼ ► it was like, is this one of the places where he's misunderstood? Right. Cause it didn't seem
02:05:33 ◼ ► likely that that was happening. So that was, I think that was my favorite story of the year,
02:05:41 ◼ ► although yeah, for some, for some definitions of favorite Apple adapting to the DMA this year was
02:05:50 ◼ ► interesting. We talked about that when we talked about Delta. Um, it's not just the DMA, but,
02:05:55 ◼ ► you know, reacting to it by doing things like making it emulators allowed and, and all the
02:06:00 ◼ ► changes that they've had to make at marketplaces and all of that stuff has been interesting to
02:06:06 ◼ ► track and continues. Sure. I don't know if I'd call it favorite though. I know. I'm not sure I
02:06:12 ◼ ► would either, to be honest. I think, what do you think? Well, I mean, for me, I think the vision
02:06:20 ◼ ► pro it would, would take it here for me. This is the year. This is the year where, I mean,
02:06:24 ◼ ► the vision pro was just an announcement last year and this year it was real and we've got the good
02:06:28 ◼ ► and the bad about that. So I'm fine with vision pro being the winner. I would like to put the M4
02:06:33 ◼ ► reveal as a runner up and what should our other runner up be? We can put the DMA one in, uh, as a
02:06:40 ◼ ► runner up because it has been a big story that's gone throughout the year. And I can understand
02:06:45 ◼ ► some of the things that have come out of it have been either interesting or good, but also there's
02:06:50 ◼ ► just like a lot of, uh, press releases from, uh, institutions that are just upset at each other,
02:06:58 ◼ ► which can get, which can drag you down a bit. Yeah. Favorite is, is an interesting word here
02:07:03 ◼ ► because the one other one I was going to nominate was, uh, the fall of Intel, but I, I don't
02:07:09 ◼ ► consider that a favorite. Right. I think it was a really interesting story. Yeah. Well, I mean,
02:07:14 ◼ ► that could go in the next category. Oh boy. I mean, tech screw up over the course of a decade,
02:07:20 ◼ ► I guess. Uh, let's, let's put in Apple adapting to the DMA as the runner up. All right. And so we
02:07:30 ◼ ► come to our final category in the 11th annual upgrade ease. Favorite tech screw up the upgrade
02:07:38 ◼ ► Ian's X at 5%, which is sure. I'm just going to say on that, like, I know what you're saying,
02:07:45 ◼ ► but also he got what he wanted. Like, I don't, I don't think he screwed up. Like people left,
02:07:56 ◼ ► I'm not sure he cares about that either because it's doing exactly what he wanted to do, which is
02:08:00 ◼ ► feed his ego. Like for me, the, the screw up, I mean, if you want to just say the name of it,
02:08:05 ◼ ► yeah, I would agree with that. But like that all of the screw ups had already happened before this
02:08:09 ◼ ► year. And this year we saw like he got something out of it. Uh, 13% CrowdStrike update failure that
02:08:17 ◼ ► took out the entire world for at least a day. And then at 15% is the humane AI pin. It's back again.
02:08:26 ◼ ► It's back again. Okay. Let me, let me contribute to this because I also think the CrowdStrike
02:08:33 ◼ ► situation is my favorite screw up of the year. I was on a plane when CrowdStrike happened,
02:08:48 ◼ ► where they need to go for the relay event in the UK? Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's happening then. Yeah.
02:08:53 ◼ ► And I was thinking, yeah, no, I was flying to the UK and, and I got to Heathrow and they're like,
02:08:59 ◼ ► Oh, you know, w will you even be able to get your continuing flight? Which we did. We had
02:09:03 ◼ ► literally no impact on us. But here's the, here's the thing. One of my favorite things in the world
02:09:08 ◼ ► is how basic computer technology can completely fail us in ways we don't expect and in ways that
02:09:19 ◼ ► we see in the real world. And I'll give you a concrete example, which was, was we were in,
02:09:32 ◼ ► cause they have a new baby. We're driving down the highway. I'm driving and Lauren's looking out the
02:09:39 ◼ ► window and she laughs and says, check it out. And I look and it's a giant digital billboard
02:09:45 ◼ ► with a DOS boot up error. And first off, she made the absolutely dead right comment, which is
02:09:54 ◼ ► if this was the Bay area, I would think this was an ad. Right. Like it's, it's it's and, and,
02:10:06 ◼ ► you're an agency, a fake crash of the billboard, that's actually about your company. Brilliant.
02:10:13 ◼ ► Do that. Okay. Do that. But this wasn't, this was literally like, I can't read this external device,
02:10:18 ◼ ► press F1. I was like, Oh man. And then I was just in an airport, five flights in 10 days. I don't
02:10:22 ◼ ► know which airport. And when we were walking, there was a big, I think it was an ad terminal
02:10:27 ◼ ► and it was all, um, it was the DOS startup pro. I love it when just a cheap crappy PC thing happens
02:10:35 ◼ ► and you see it in the world where you shouldn't, I don't love it necessarily when a dumb software
02:10:41 ◼ ► update breaks the entire like world in a way that causes havoc among, especially travelers.
02:10:52 ◼ ► And that requires it people to individually manually update their PCs to get them to work.
02:11:07 ◼ ► I mean, okay. Am I as a Mac, a long time Mac user, do I still have enough feeling in my heart that I
02:11:16 ◼ ► can delight at the utter failure of a windows PC that's being used in a vital situation because
02:11:23 ◼ ► somebody was asleep at the switch when they pulled the software update out there and now nothing can
02:11:26 ◼ ► be done. I'm not too small or I'm not too big for that. I am that small. It, it, it actually kind of
02:11:33 ◼ ► delights me. It's why, why those DOS prompts delight me when I see them. It's the same thing.
02:11:36 ◼ ► It's like, Oh, your PC broke. Oh, that's too bad. Uh, so yeah, I love the CrowdStrike story. That
02:11:42 ◼ ► is my, that is a hundred percent my favorite tech screw up of the year. Yeah. It was pretty
02:11:49 ◼ ► monumental as a thing. Just like you said, one of those things of like, Oh, this is what Y2K would
02:11:55 ◼ ► have been like, like, yeah, this is what people will worry about. This sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
02:12:01 ◼ ► I saw, there was a story over the weekend that NPR did that made a lot of people on Mastodon very
02:12:05 ◼ ► angry for good reasons, which was like, you know, basically it's just overheat or re reheated content
02:12:14 ◼ ► for the end of the year where everybody's got time off. And it was like, Hey, remember Y2K?
02:12:19 ◼ ► Uh, that obviously written by somebody who does not remember Y2K. Oh, well that amounted to nothing.
02:12:25 ◼ ► And everybody was like, it amounted to nothing because we spent tens of thousands of hours
02:12:31 ◼ ► fixing all the software in the world so that it would get dates right outside of the 20th century.
02:12:37 ◼ ► That's why it amounted to nothing. And yet in people use it as a punchline, like, Oh, Y2K,
02:12:42 ◼ ► that turned out to be nothing. It's like, it only turned out to be nothing because everybody fixed
02:12:46 ◼ ► all the stupid stuff and CrowdStrike. It would have been like 10 CrowdStrikes if it had actually
02:12:53 ◼ ► been left to happen. Yep. So, you know, like it would have been, it would have been much worse
02:13:00 ◼ ► than this, but, uh, yeah. Do you have any other nominees here? Apple and the DMA. Apple and the
02:13:06 ◼ ► DMA. They screwed up. They're going to keep screwing up and it's going to keep getting worse
02:13:14 ◼ ► and it's going to get worse and worse and worse because they screwed up and then they could have
02:13:19 ◼ ► taken that time to try and meet these people where they wanted to be met and they've decided not to
02:13:24 ◼ ► and instead decided to dig their heels in. And so it's just going to keep getting worse.
02:13:30 ◼ ► We've been doing our special episodes, so we haven't had a chance to talk about it yet,
02:13:34 ◼ ► but I would fold into this favorite again, not a, not a strong word, but I do appreciate that
02:13:40 ◼ ► Apple has tended to have a very aggressive reaction to the DMA and then has had to come and
02:13:55 ◼ ► that's very interesting, is Apple has once again used the supposedly neutral notarization system
02:14:03 ◼ ► for iOS in the EU to issue a blanket rejection of an app submission, which is not supposed to
02:14:13 ◼ ► happen. They talked about it a lot on ATP a couple of weeks ago. It's the idea that they say on,
02:14:18 ◼ ► I think it's Mini VMac, Mac emulator, on trademark grounds because they own the trademark, they're
02:14:24 ◼ ► going to refuse to notarize the app. And I think this is one of those things that first off, like
02:14:30 ◼ ► legally, I don't think they can do it. I think that the DMA or that the European commission is
02:14:34 ◼ ► going to say, you can't use it this way, but it makes me so angry that they're using their neutral
02:14:41 ◼ ► approval system that's supposed to be neutral. All they have to do is sue the Mini VMac developer and
02:14:53 ◼ ► like cease and desist. That's the way you do this. But the fact that they pulled that lever that
02:14:58 ◼ ► should never be pulled, that turns the entire supposedly innocent, unbiased, for user safety
02:15:09 ◼ ► notarization system and turns it into a de facto approval system, it's the worst. And I would be
02:15:16 ◼ ► more angry about it if I didn't think that Apple is going to get smacked down for it, that this is
02:15:22 ◼ ► going to be one of those cases where somebody said, let's just use this mechanism to disapprove
02:15:28 ◼ ► of this app. And that hopefully somebody at the European commission is going to go, no, that is
02:15:33 ◼ ► not what that mechanism is for. Use another mechanism and stop it because really the jig is
02:15:40 ◼ ► up. If Apple can use notarization to ban apps in the EU and elsewhere, then what are we even doing
02:15:49 ◼ ► here? It's totally counter to the point of it where notarization is the app store approval
02:15:54 ◼ ► process and that's not allowed. So anyway, I'm going to file that under Apple's reaction to the
02:15:59 ◼ ► DMA here, because I think it's an example of Apple behaving incredibly stupidly and badly
02:16:06 ◼ ► when they were better and ruining a thing that they built because they didn't want to do the
02:16:13 ◼ ► more logical recourse. And I'm baffled by it, but there it is. Which is my, this is like emblematic.
02:16:20 ◼ ► My kind of like favorite text grew up at the year or like it is what I consider to be the biggest,
02:16:26 ◼ ► because it is not just one story. It has been an entire year's worth of things that they have
02:16:42 ◼ ► something's going to happen. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Like I have no idea. I have no idea
02:16:50 ◼ ► anymore. Either they, you know, get fined into oblivion and will go to court and I don't know
02:16:58 ◼ ► what will happen there. Or it's Apple is basically going to strong arm the EU enough that this all
02:17:06 ◼ ► falls apart. Like at this point, like I don't know what the result is, but it's not going to be pretty.
02:17:26 ◼ ► is a screw up. They're not doing it right. They're not doing it well. And I know there's an argument
02:17:52 ◼ ► So that's it. That is the 11th annual upgrade. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
02:18:07 ◼ ► Very excited about what the year will bring for personal reasons and professional reasons.
02:18:19 ◼ ► If you would like to send us in any questions or follow up to talk about next week's show,
02:18:23 ◼ ► please go to upgradefeedback.com and you can do that. You can check out Jason at sixcolors.com,
02:18:28 ◼ ► the incomparable.com and here on Relay, where you hear me too. And you can find my work at
02:18:38 ◼ ► and you can find video clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are at Upgrade
02:18:43 ◼ ► Relay. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus. This week, we're going to talk about
02:18:47 ◼ ► my Mac mini. And I think maybe we'll talk about the holidays a little bit. You can go to getupgradeplus.com