Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► From Relay, welcome to the 12th Annual Upgrades, simulcast from London, England and Mill Valley, California.

00:00:17 ◼   ► This broadcast is brought to you by Sentry, Ecamm and Fitpod.

00:00:22 ◼   ► My name is Mike Hurley and I am honoured to be joined by my esteemed co-host and Master of Ceremonies,

00:00:30 ◼   ► Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Hi, Mike Hurley. It is good to finally get the ceremonies in line.

00:00:36 ◼   ► They were out of line, they were causing trouble, but I have gotten them back in line.

00:00:41 ◼   ► This is my job as the Master of Ceremonies.

00:00:43 ◼   ► This is what we rely on you for.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Ceremonies lined up. We're going to fly right here. It's the Upgrades again.

00:00:48 ◼   ► 12th Annual, remember, I like to think of it as the 11th anniversary of the 1st Annual Upgrades.

00:00:56 ◼   ► I think about this often. Whenever I hear somebody say 1st Annual, because you hear it and then

00:01:01 ◼   ► someone inevitably goes, you can't say that. I think to myself, you absolutely can.

00:01:05 ◼   ► You absolutely can.

00:01:06 ◼   ► You can't. You're just wrong.

00:01:07 ◼   ► You can say it. You did say it.

00:01:08 ◼   ► 12 years later, here we are.

00:01:10 ◼   ► 12 years later, here we are.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Because I knew it. I knew this was going to be a success. I knew it was.

00:01:14 ◼   ► The Upgrades are the award show where we get to crown our favorite things of the year in a wide variety of

00:01:21 ◼   ► categories from media to hardware to stories of the year.

00:01:24 ◼   ► You can find a history of previous winners over at Upgrades.com.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And in the show notes of this episode, there are appropriate links to all of the nominees.

00:01:33 ◼   ► So I guess spoilers for the show notes. People ask for this every year.

00:01:37 ◼   ► So I've gone through and taken care of that for you.

00:01:40 ◼   ► The way that the Upgrades works is Jason and I will be sharing our personal nominations where we have

00:01:45 ◼   ► them for each category. We'll also share the top three nominations as voted for by our listeners.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And you'll get to hear us then, between the two of us, deliberate who and who we think deserves

00:01:57 ◼   ► the trophy of the year.

00:01:59 ◼   ► And also, as a reminder, for a category that can only, you can only win on app or a podcast

00:02:06 ◼   ► or whatever, can only win a category a maximum of three times.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And then that winner will be raised into the rafters, given a lifetime put up there.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Upgraded to the Hall of Fame, really?

00:02:18 ◼   ► They're up there.

00:02:19 ◼   ► When you think about it.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Lifetime achievement. Hall of Fame is a different thing.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. Upgraded to the lifetime achievement.

00:02:24 ◼   ► We do it all the time.

00:02:25 ◼   ► The Hall of Fame is something that we honor every 10 years.

00:02:31 ◼   ► That's a ridiculous. So we had our first decadal Hall of Fame a couple of years ago.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I was thinking about this today.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be five years. Maybe we'll do a round in five years.

00:02:43 ◼   ► That's actually a good idea. We'll see. But every five or 10 years, we take a look at all

00:02:50 ◼   ► of the previous winners, and then we decide who gets to be put into the Hall of Fame.

00:02:55 ◼   ► But Lifetime Achievement Award is what you get. And if you're a Lifetime Achievement Award

00:02:59 ◼   ► winner, you are forever mentioned in the category in which you've won.

00:03:03 ◼   ► So it's a little nod to you, but it's so we won't have, I don't know, ATP win forever.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Basically, this is the ATP rule. That was why it was instituted. And now everybody else benefits.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Before we get into the first categories, I would like to mention this is the absolute last call

00:03:23 ◼   ► to get 20% off an annual plan of Upgrade Plus. So you can get for just $56

00:03:29 ◼   ► a year, longer ad-free episodes. You'll be helping support the show.

00:03:32 ◼   ► If you're listening to this episode and you're enjoying it, you're an Upgradian,

00:03:36 ◼   ► and you absolutely should become an Upgrade Plus subscriber because you're in with us now.

00:03:42 ◼   ► You know, like you're in it. You get it. If you like this, you'll definitely like Upgrade Plus.

00:03:46 ◼   ► It's an additional bonus topic every week. It's always a good fun time,

00:03:51 ◼   ► and you don't have to have any interruptions in your listening.

00:03:54 ◼   ► But yes, with the code 2025HOLIDAYS at checkout at getupgradeplus.com,

00:03:58 ◼   ► this will only be available until the end of the year. So if you're listening to this and you've

00:04:03 ◼   ► yet to sign up, then please go and do that, and you'll be helping to support the show too.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody that does.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Shall we get on with the first category, Jason?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah. Before we do, I have a little disclaimer I want to make here. I just want to make this clear to people.

00:04:17 ◼   ► While other podcasts and websites in our sphere have decided that they're going to manufacture trophies

00:04:26 ◼   ► and mail them out to people, we don't.

00:04:30 ◼   ► No.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Just to be clear, if you're a winner, do not wait by the mailbox for your trophy.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Well, if you are a winner and you would like a digital trophy, I can send you artwork and assets for your heart's content

00:04:42 ◼   ► if you want to display it on your website, as many people have.

00:04:44 ◼   ► The reason that we don't do trophies is because we don't just award indie apps.

00:04:51 ◼   ► We're also awarding best movie of the year, and I don't think Warner Brothers...

00:04:55 ◼   ► Oh, and best movie. We don't send a Lucite slab to the winner of the best book that I pick every year.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I mean, we could.

00:05:02 ◼   ► We could. Especially if Dan Moran wins. I know that Dan will take the award.

00:05:06 ◼   ► He's going to be in the Hall of Fame, a runner's up Hall of Fame.

00:05:10 ◼   ► That's where he's going to end up.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Poor Dan. Did we put him in the Hall of Fame? I don't remember.

00:05:16 ◼   ► No. No, because he never wins. He's only always a runner-up.

00:05:20 ◼   ► I do want to say, I want to shout out Rogue Amoeba, because if you scroll down to the bottom of the Audio Hijack page,

00:05:26 ◼   ► and this was something that we may have actually helped instigate with Paul Kafasis at Rogue Amoeba,

00:05:35 ◼   ► but it says what people are saying about Audio Hijack, and the first one is,

00:05:38 ◼   ► three-time best Mac app winner enshrined in the lifetime achievement section with a big logo.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:44 ◼   ► We love to see it. If you want to do that, we're happy to provide.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I'm just saying, don't wait for the trophy.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I provided some of these assets, so that could be done, because the Little Reef one is on there.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Yeah, so like, and there's many people, I think Casey has put it on the Coresheet website.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's true.

00:06:05 ◼   ► That's true.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Many people have used it.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Official Keeper and Upgradey's historian, Zoe Knox, points out that Dan Morin did win for the Caledonian Gambit, his first novel.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So, way back in 2017.

00:06:16 ◼   ► I didn't have my spreadsheet open enough to see that way back in 2017.

00:06:20 ◼   ► The spreadsheet is so large now.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Spreadsheet's too big.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Because we've been doing it so long.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Spreadsheet's too big.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Spreadsheet's too big.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Spreadsheet can be helpful, but it's a big old spreadsheet.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So, we get into our first category, which is the best overall iOS app.

00:06:35 ◼   ► So, we have a newcomer iOS app that we'll talk about in a little bit.

00:06:38 ◼   ► There are two Lifetime Achievement Award winners of this category.

00:06:42 ◼   ► So, we would like to recognize both Overcast and Flighty, two apps that continue to get lots of great updates year after year.

00:06:52 ◼   ► So, they are definitely two of my favorite and most used apps.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I would still pick them if I could.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Honestly, every time.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I traveled a lot this year, as I know from my Flighty passport that I received.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Yep.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And I rely on Flighty more and more as time goes on.

00:07:11 ◼   ► This is the least I have flown since I started using Flighty this year.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:07:18 ◼   ► I flew more in 2020 than I did this year.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Wow.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Yep.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Well, at the beginning of 2020, we were going all over the place.

00:07:26 ◼   ► We had some family stuff going on.

00:07:27 ◼   ► We also went on a California vacation.

00:07:29 ◼   ► We had a great time.

00:07:30 ◼   ► So, for me, 34 flights, four days of flight time, almost 39,000 miles.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Now, I will say, you said you would recognize it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► You actually didn't put it in the document.

00:07:43 ◼   ► So, you put Flighty in there.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Well, you didn't have the lifetimes in there.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And so, I figured we would get there when we got there.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And so, Jason did want to award Flighty again.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Again?

00:07:53 ◼   ► Why not?

00:07:54 ◼   ► Why not?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Well, I'll tell you why not.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Because that's the rules.

00:07:57 ◼   ► That's why not.

00:07:58 ◼   ► So, Jason, what do you have as your personal nominations for the best iOS app this year?

00:08:03 ◼   ► You know, I struggle with this because every year we do this and I struggle with it because the fact is I find these apps that I really rely on and like Flighty and Overcast and I stick with them.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Of course.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I'm a committer, Mike.

00:08:17 ◼   ► I say that because – and people don't need to know this, but they can figure it out from the fact that, for example, this is episode 596.

00:08:25 ◼   ► That The Incomparable is it's episode 798.

00:08:28 ◼   ► I've been married for 31 years.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I've lived in the same house since 1999.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Wow.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I'm a committer.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I like commit.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And when I'm in, I'm in all the way.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And the problem with that is I'm not of a mindset – I will try things, but to integrate something into my core workflow, it's a high bar.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Because I've done a lot of optimization and, like, it's a high bar.

00:08:55 ◼   ► So it is hard for me with – I'm not somebody – you know, like, I admire the Mac Stories folks that they do, like, here's 15 different weird apps that I tried this year.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I just – I mean, I'll sign up for a test flight.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I'll try stuff.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I'm just saying it's a tough nut to crack.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And iOS has become increasingly more so because as the platform has aged, I have optimized even further.

00:09:21 ◼   ► You know, I would love to have a revelation about a different text editor for my iPad than the one I'm using now.

00:09:29 ◼   ► But it hasn't happened yet.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I've tried.

00:09:31 ◼   ► So anyway, this is me lamenting the state of my ability to give awards in app categories before we start the app category.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Hi, Mike.

00:09:39 ◼   ► You have multiple recommendations.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Overcast and Flighty are off the board.

00:09:44 ◼   ► So, okay, I've got two.

00:09:47 ◼   ► One is Final Cut Camera, which we relied on a couple of times this year.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Yep.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And it's on the iPhone.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It turns the iPhone – I mean, you can use it in a bunch of different ways, and it is like a camera app.

00:10:00 ◼   ► But it is also the remote for Apple's pretty cool Final Cut for iPad remote camera capture feature that I like a lot.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I don't know why it isn't supported on the Mac, too.

00:10:12 ◼   ► But it's not – I don't know.

00:10:14 ◼   ► There are a lot of mysteries about Final Cut.

00:10:17 ◼   ► But I'm not nominating Final Cut for iPad here.

00:10:20 ◼   ► I'm nominating Final Cut Camera, which I was just very impressed with its performance.

00:10:26 ◼   ► We used it a lot.

00:10:27 ◼   ► That's an app I hadn't really used before.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And it's not grandfathered in in this category.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So I'm going to say Final Cut Camera.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And then the other one that I wanted to mention is Call Sheet.

00:10:37 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's by our friend Casey Liss, and therefore we are – you know, we don't recuse ourselves.

00:10:44 ◼   ► We'll pick – you know, we'll give our friends awards if we want to.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah, Call Sheet won Best Newcomer in 2023.

00:10:50 ◼   ► But here's the truth of it is I just use Call Sheet all the time.

00:10:53 ◼   ► I mean, it's true.

00:10:55 ◼   ► I use it all the time.

00:10:56 ◼   ► All the time.

00:10:56 ◼   ► And Lauren uses it all the time.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And to look up, we were just doing – last night, we're literally like what – we watched Wake Up Dead Man, which was great.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And the main actor in that, we're like, where have we seen him before?

00:11:12 ◼   ► And Lauren took it further.

00:11:14 ◼   ► She's like, well, it's Prince Charles from The Crown, but where else have we seen him?

00:11:18 ◼   ► And it's like, to the call sheet.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Like, that is where you go.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Turns out where we'd seen him recently was in the trailer for the new Steven Spielberg movie.

00:11:26 ◼   ► That's where we saw him recently in the upcoming – anyway, so Call Sheet absolutely is one of the – is one of mine.

00:11:34 ◼   ► What do you have?

00:11:34 ◼   ► Well, I would just say I love and use Call Sheet all the time.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And I do just want to echo Final Cut Camera.

00:11:40 ◼   ► That is a stunningly impressive piece of software.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Like, what that is doing to do the multi-cam stuff is – feels like it would be incredibly complicated.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And that is – it's absolutely fascinating that it is able to do what it is doing and the way it is doing it.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I think that is really interesting and a really cool piece of software.

00:12:00 ◼   ► My nomination is Mango Baby.

00:12:03 ◼   ► So Mango Baby is a baby tracking application, of which there are many available.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Find my baby?

00:12:09 ◼   ► Yes, find my baby.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Where's my baby?

00:12:11 ◼   ► Where is the baby?

00:12:12 ◼   ► Track the baby now.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Track the baby, where's the baby?

00:12:14 ◼   ► It's not.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It's like tracking the behaviors of your baby, right?

00:12:17 ◼   ► You're not actually tracking your baby.

00:12:19 ◼   ► You should know where your baby is at all times.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Sleep, bottles, medication, all this kind of stuff, right?

00:12:24 ◼   ► So this is a thing that basically many new – I won't say all, but many new parents do now.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Like, they have some kind of app and they're tracking something.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And different parents track to different degrees.

00:12:37 ◼   ► There are lots of apps available and most of the apps that exist are really expensive subscriptions.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Like, that are very surprising to me.

00:12:49 ◼   ► You know, like, we've tried out some apps that are 10, 20 pounds a month, which is just – it's a lot of money for an iPhone app.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Like, I just think that's a lot of money for an iPhone app.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And I think that a lot of the times these apps are priced this way because they know parents are desperate

00:13:05 ◼   ► and they hope that the sleep tracking app will help them get their baby to sleep.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Mango Baby is simple in that it is not trying to do anything predictive or anything like that.

00:13:17 ◼   ► You are just tracking the things that have happened.

00:13:20 ◼   ► But it is a – I believe it's a subscription app, but it's a yearly subscription, and it's very fairly priced.

00:13:26 ◼   ► I love that it allows you to sync with iCloud between multiple parents, which is also great.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Jason, some of the apps that I've used, they're like, yes, you can use them with multiple parents.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Just share the login.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It's like, that's not – that's not – that's not what we're doing here.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Like, let's try and find a system to sync this information between two people.

00:13:47 ◼   ► But it's also – it is an indie app made by an indie developer.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So it looks great, acts great, has shortcuts, actions, has built a bunch of great shortcuts using it.

00:14:00 ◼   ► It has widgets, which are really great, nice charts.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I love Mango Baby, and I'm so happy that an app like this existed.

00:14:07 ◼   ► I think I reached – I asked on this show if people had recommendations before the baby came,

00:14:14 ◼   ► and this was the one that I got recommended to me.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Great live activities too, great live activities, although to be fair, they all have that, which is really good.

00:14:20 ◼   ► The Upgradians, this is one of the categories where we get the most votes.

00:14:25 ◼   ► The iOS, like the most singular different things, if that makes sense.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Different nominations, different apps.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So at 6% of the vote was Carrot Weather.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Ivory comes in at 5.4% of the vote, and Call Sheet at 4.3% of the vote.

00:14:43 ◼   ► So, okay, trying to work out a winner for this is complicated because there's not a lot of overlap here.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:50 ◼   ► So I would like to give Final Cut Camera a runner-up.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Okay, sounds good.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I don't think we would say it was the winner.

00:15:01 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I'm not opposed.

00:15:05 ◼   ► But I feel like that, for me and you at least, this is a good app to put in because we have used it to success this year multiple times.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Obviously, Mango Baby.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I don't think I'm going to be able to push that to win.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I mean, this is the year you had a baby.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:24 ◼   ► It is one of my favorite apps of the year, and I think it is a fantastic app that I want more people to know about.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And so I would love it to be the winner this year because I just think it's brilliant.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Call Sheet is obviously in the Upgradions votes and is in yours as well.

00:15:44 ◼   ► I will mention Carrot Weather.

00:15:49 ◼   ► Carrot Weather has won twice.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Twice, yeah.

00:15:54 ◼   ► It's right on the threshold.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:56 ◼   ► It's also a Hall of Fame.

00:15:59 ◼   ► It's a Hall of Fame winner and has won this category twice.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And Carrot Weather is an app that continues, like the ones we mentioned previously, to just get better and better and better all the time.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Brian Carrot Weather does not stop.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Brian Carrot Weather.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Brian Carrot Weather.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Brian Carrot Weather.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Carrot Weather.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Carrot Weather.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Doesn't stop.

00:16:25 ◼   ► It's true.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:16:26 ◼   ► So I like Carrot Weather a lot.

00:16:29 ◼   ► I will say that we recently had a lot of rain here.

00:16:32 ◼   ► I know, California, how is it possible?

00:16:34 ◼   ► But it rained for eight straight days.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Are you blaming Carrot Weather for the rain?

00:16:38 ◼   ► What I found is that Apple Weather did a better job of telling me when the rain was going to stop.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Like, Apple Weather seems much more aggressive of, like, the rain is stopping in 15 minutes and then resuming two hours later.

00:16:50 ◼   ► So basically, go walk your dog now.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And Carrot doesn't do that, although maybe it does do that and I just don't have it set to do that because maybe I just have it set wrong.

00:17:00 ◼   ► But I found myself turning to Apple Weather a little bit more.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I guess in that scenario, you could have the Apple Weather source in Carrot Weather.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I just don't know if it warns me the same way that the weather app does about, like, the comings and goings of rain.

00:17:14 ◼   ► It wasn't.

00:17:16 ◼   ► I will say, for me, it does.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It does.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Absolutely, it does.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:19 ◼   ► You can even have live activities pop up and stuff like that, to tell you.

00:17:24 ◼   ► All right.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I guess I need to reconfigure my Carrot Weather.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So that was the thing.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And then I also pay for another weather app, which is Mercury Weather.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And I do that primarily because it's got that trip setting that lets you have a widget that shows you the temperature where you're going to be in the future, even if it's not where you currently are.

00:17:40 ◼   ► That's a cool feature.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It's just a great feature, and it's worth it for me to pay for that.

00:17:46 ◼   ► So I like Carrot Weather a lot.

00:17:48 ◼   ► It's on my home screen.

00:17:48 ◼   ► My only hesitation there is that I use three different weather apps.

00:17:51 ◼   ► That's good.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Look, Jason, you're a weather aficionado.

00:17:56 ◼   ► You're using three different weather apps no matter what.

00:18:01 ◼   ► You're using a bunch of different weather apps.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Actually, the best thing about Carrot Weather to me is that it does actually let me plug in my ID from my weather station.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And so when it shows the temperature, it is my weather station temperature, which I like.

00:18:13 ◼   ► That's a pretty good feature.

00:18:13 ◼   ► It is.

00:18:15 ◼   ► It is.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I do love Carrot Weather.

00:18:17 ◼   ► What do we want to do here?

00:18:19 ◼   ► Well, what I want to do is give Mango Baby the win and Carrot Weather the other runner-up.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Okay, let's do that.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:18:28 ◼   ► So Mango Baby is the best iOS app of 2025.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Let's do it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► This is also a personal thing because Mike had a baby.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Sophia Hurley, let's do it.

00:18:37 ◼   ► So my baby is also the best iOS app.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Best baby.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Best baby.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Your baby is now the Mango Baby.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Best baby of 2025 is a secret category.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Boy, it would be a shame if she didn't win that one, right?

00:18:53 ◼   ► Can you imagine?

00:18:54 ◼   ► I think technically she could be the upgrade baby now.

00:18:58 ◼   ► She could just be the new upgrade baby.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Upgrade baby 2025.

00:19:01 ◼   ► It would be bad to original upgrade baby, to take that away from them.

00:19:05 ◼   ► The original upgrade baby is like 12 now.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Are you ready for the next category?

00:19:11 ◼   ► I'm not because I have no nominations in the best newcomer iOS app category.

00:19:16 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:19:17 ◼   ► That is no problem.

00:19:17 ◼   ► I apologize to all developers everywhere.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Jason books, books, books is coming, you know, so I know books is coming.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I'm going to fill in.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I'm going to, I'm going to kill it with books.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I have, uh, I have one this year.

00:19:31 ◼   ► I only have, I have multiple apps I could, could name here, but the, I, I'm making one

00:19:37 ◼   ► because I am so impressed with this app.

00:19:40 ◼   ► And so I want it to stand alone and it is called athletic.

00:19:43 ◼   ► So I had been trying out a whoop band for the best part of a year and never really got

00:19:50 ◼   ► into talking about it because I was never sure that I actually liked it.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Um, and what, what was interesting about whoop is whoop would do things that Apple health

00:20:02 ◼   ► will not do.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And it's a consistent frustration I have of Apple health, which is you have all of this

00:20:07 ◼   ► information about me.

00:20:10 ◼   ► But you never overlay this data to try and give me anything useful.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And like, they're, they're continuing to do this.

00:20:18 ◼   ► So like now they give you your sleep score, but they're not taking into account any, anything

00:20:25 ◼   ► other than how many hours you slept essentially to give you that score.

00:20:30 ◼   ► When there are vitals information that they could take and put into that, which everyone else

00:20:36 ◼   ► does everything else that tracks your sleep.

00:20:38 ◼   ► If it has access to vitals information will also take that into building like a recovery

00:20:43 ◼   ► score or a sleep score for you.

00:20:45 ◼   ► But Apple still refuses to do it.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I don't understand, but whoop, this is their whole thing.

00:20:49 ◼   ► But I felt like whoop was a little bit more focused on athletes, right?

00:20:56 ◼   ► Like people who are much more focused on that kind of fitness than me.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Yeah, you're getting imposter syndrome from your, yes, from your health.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:21:06 ◼   ► And also, I didn't like wearing a second thing.

00:21:08 ◼   ► I just over time, it became frustrating to me.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And then many people recommended this app to me, Athletic.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Athletic is essentially taking the data from your Apple watch and showing it to you in a whoop

00:21:22 ◼   ► like interface.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It has great charts.

00:21:24 ◼   ► It comes up with sleep scores, recovery scores, exertion scores.

00:21:28 ◼   ► So like taking information about you throughout the day and it shows you how this information

00:21:33 ◼   ► works together.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It uses on-device Apple intelligence, like the local models to like take a look at the data

00:21:40 ◼   ► from a workout and say like, hey, this one was a little bit lighter than your previous

00:21:44 ◼   ► workouts.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And this is how it might make you feel like little things like that.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Looks great.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Works great.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I am really impressed with this app.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I think everyone that has an Apple watch should at least download and try this app out because

00:21:56 ◼   ► I think it is doing a really, really good job of taking the information that you're giving

00:22:04 ◼   ► to the health app and doing something genuinely useful and interesting with it.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So big, big recommendation from me.

00:22:12 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted for Tapestry with 8.7%, Focus Friend with 7.6%, Athletic with 4.3% and

00:22:22 ◼   ► Cassette with 4.3%.

00:22:25 ◼   ► Cassette is a great app.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Cassette is that app that came out, had a little bit of a splash earlier in the year where it

00:22:33 ◼   ► had like a really cool interface to turn your video library into basically like a VCR kind

00:22:38 ◼   ► of thing where you could press play and it would like load videos and just start playing

00:22:43 ◼   ► video clips from your library.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It's a really nice app, that one.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that was an interesting app.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I never really got it to work the way I wanted it to work.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:52 ◼   ► But it's nice.

00:22:54 ◼   ► It was a nice app, like just like a fun thing to play around with for a little bit of time,

00:22:58 ◼   ► but it's not going to, at least for me at least, it's not going to become like the main

00:23:02 ◼   ► way that I start watching videos on my iPhone.

00:23:04 ◼   ► I wanted to mention here, by the way, I am on a test flight of two apps that are not out

00:23:09 ◼   ► of beta that perfectly fit this category, but I, they're not even public.

00:23:15 ◼   ► I mean, I think they're both known to exist, but they're not even like more broadly being

00:23:20 ◼   ► beta tested.

00:23:20 ◼   ► So I have to sit on those.

00:23:21 ◼   ► I just have to.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Well, next year, Jason's going to come in with a stormer in this category.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I'm just roaring in with newcomer iOS apps here and there.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Cool, Abe, man.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I mean, your, your case for athletic is great.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I think that, um, I think, I mean, I want to get it right now.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Try it.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Seriously.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And check it out.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Super good.

00:23:43 ◼   ► It's really, really fun.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Really great.

00:23:44 ◼   ► So I have no problem giving it the win here.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Yes.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Um, I'm, I'm going to say something.

00:23:53 ◼   ► We're so positive here on the upgradeies.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Yes.

00:23:56 ◼   ► I'm going to say something a little negative here, which is, um,

00:24:01 ◼   ► I want to be as kind as possible.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Um, tapestry.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Number one from the upgradeions.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:08 ◼   ► I haven't written about tapestry very much.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I haven't talked about it really much.

00:24:13 ◼   ► It feels like a miss to me.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And I was the biggest fan of Twitterific out there.

00:24:17 ◼   ► I feel like they decided to do this kind of, we're going to reinvent everything.

00:24:21 ◼   ► They were so burned by focusing on Twitter.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Yep.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And I understand that they were like, we're going to just have it be feeds.

00:24:29 ◼   ► But, um, I just think all of those, we're going to build an all purpose feed reader app

00:24:35 ◼   ► are a misfire.

00:24:36 ◼   ► The whole concept and the whole category reader would fit into this as well.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Yes.

00:24:40 ◼   ► I feel like I want to use social media in a different place than I want to read news.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I absolutely agree.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Or see, or see images.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And, and what, what, what they've implemented is technically impressive.

00:24:54 ◼   ► And every time I use it, I'm like, this is a very cool app.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And then I stop.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I, I, but I never keep using it because I think it's just completely misguided.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And I, again, I think coming out of the Twitter client debacle, I understand their reaction,

00:25:11 ◼   ► but as somebody who always preferred Twitterific to tweet bot, I still think it is a cry and

00:25:20 ◼   ► shame that the icon factory doesn't make a client for Mastodon and or blue sky.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Um, because I would love to see that.

00:25:29 ◼   ► And instead they've built this app that just, I mean, if you love it, that's great.

00:25:34 ◼   ► But every time I open it, I think this is just not the way, this is not an app I want to see.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I don't think it works at all.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Like I want it to work.

00:25:42 ◼   ► And it just frustrates me because I, I like the work that they've done before that, that

00:25:48 ◼   ► Sean and Craig have done, especially in the past on this kind of thing.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And I think it's technically very interesting, but yeah.

00:25:56 ◼   ► And it's not just them, but like, like I said, I think this whole idea of we're just going

00:26:00 ◼   ► to have this neutral feed reader thingy.

00:26:02 ◼   ► It's like, I don't, I don't live like that.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And, and also I don't consume that content in that way.

00:26:09 ◼   ► That's the, that's the truth of it is a news story is not the same as a social media post

00:26:16 ◼   ► or a YouTube video or a YouTube video.

00:26:19 ◼   ► It's not that look, it's not that I couldn't see a scenario where I use a single app to

00:26:26 ◼   ► browse two or three of those media types, but not in a one size fits all container, which

00:26:32 ◼   ► is what these apps provide.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I, I, I would never, I mean, you basically need to become a meta app at that point where

00:26:37 ◼   ► I can go into video mode or go into news reader mode.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And at that point, yes, you are building a news reader separate from a social media client

00:26:45 ◼   ► separate from a video player.

00:26:48 ◼   ► At which point I would say, perhaps you should just build one or more of those apps instead

00:26:53 ◼   ► of this thing.

00:26:54 ◼   ► That's kind of not good enough.

00:26:56 ◼   ► And, and, and, you know, anyway, I don't want to beat up on the icon factory here, but I will

00:27:00 ◼   ► say that they, they keep adding like bookmarking features or reply and it goes to a different

00:27:06 ◼   ► app and like, I, I just, I wish they would just say, you know what, we're going to embrace

00:27:12 ◼   ► our knowledge of social media clients and actually build a proper social media client.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Cause I think they would kill it.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Um, and it's sad to me.

00:27:20 ◼   ► So I appreciate the upgrading and zoning for tapestry, but like, I, I just think, I think that whole

00:27:24 ◼   ► category of apps is a failure.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:26 ◼   ► I, I'm very happy for them that they have a user base that love it as much as they do,

00:27:32 ◼   ► that it was the top newcomer iOS app as voted for by the upgradians.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I think that's fantastic, but I could not agree with you more.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I don't understand these types of applications.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Like it's, it's, it's mixed media for me.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Like, like maybe I'm old school, but I would like my RSS and an RSS app, YouTube and the

00:27:52 ◼   ► YouTube app and social media and social media apps.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Like that's just where they are.

00:27:55 ◼   ► They are very different types of media for me.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Now, of course I very often will see an article on blue sky and read it, but I'm reading stuff.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I'm not already subscribed to in that scenario.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:28:09 ◼   ► Like, and so that's why I might check something else out that is new, but to put it all in

00:28:15 ◼   ► one spot.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And yes, the new reader is exactly the same.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Um, it, it, I think these apps are built on a promise of federation that has not come to

00:28:27 ◼   ► pass and will not like, I'll, I'll even, I'll go one step further, which is to say, I think

00:28:32 ◼   ► they're built on the premise that the important part is the feed.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And that is a very programmer centric view of the world.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And as a consumer of content who knows enough to know that they're all coming in from feeds,

00:28:46 ◼   ► the fact that they come in from a feed is immaterial to me because it's not how I use the content.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I use the content because that is a blog post and an RSS feed or a, or a news headline.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And that is a social stream.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And if they, if, if again, like another version of this app that could exist is one that curates

00:29:07 ◼   ► your social stream, like, um, Nuzzle used to do and still sort of does, but you got to use

00:29:12 ◼   ► like, I would love a good app that looked at all your social streams and pulled the headlines

00:29:16 ◼   ► out of them and generated a headline feed for you.

00:29:18 ◼   ► That would be a thing that would be feed based.

00:29:19 ◼   ► But again, the fact that it comes from feeds while important as an implementation detail

00:29:24 ◼   ► is immaterial for me as a consumer of content, like I, a, a, the fact that my social media

00:29:30 ◼   ► can come in a feed and my news articles can come in a feed doesn't make them the same.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And I think all of these, I get why programmers would say, this is a beautiful future where everything

00:29:39 ◼   ► is an open feed and that's all we're going to support.

00:29:41 ◼   ► I totally get why you would do that.

00:29:43 ◼   ► But as a user, I just don't want it.

00:29:46 ◼   ► So that's, sorry, sorry.

00:29:47 ◼   ► There's our, there's our, uh, our side in this category.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Athletic is the winner.

00:29:51 ◼   ► Um, runners up.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I think cassette is actually a good runner up.

00:29:58 ◼   ► I agree.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Completely.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Yes.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Cause it's, it's a fun thing that people should check out.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Um, I think focus friend is a really interesting app.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Um, this is like, it's a, like essentially like a Pomodoro timer, but it's one of these apps

00:30:11 ◼   ► that, uh, part made by Hank Green.

00:30:13 ◼   ► It is one of these apps which has taken advantage of the screen time APIs.

00:30:17 ◼   ► There's a few of these now where you can have, essentially have an app locked down your phone.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And so you can't use apps that you shouldn't be using for a period of time.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Um, I think that's really interesting.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Um, or we, we embrace it and put tapestry as a runner up, even though we've, since we slagged

00:30:36 ◼   ► it, I'd love to put tapestry as a runner up because I think it's technically very impressive.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I just, I just, I think it's unfocused and, or misfocused and I would like to see them

00:30:44 ◼   ► turn it into something different.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Um, because this isn't it, but we'll give it a, like, I appreciate that from the ashes

00:30:51 ◼   ► of their relationship with Twitter, the icon factory built this, uh, impressive piece of

00:30:56 ◼   ► technology.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I just, I just think it's a misfire and they, they should recalibrate.

00:31:02 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Sentry.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Applications break in all kinds of ways, from crashes to slowdowns to regressions, the stuff

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00:31:18 ◼   ► That's S-E-N-T-R-Y, Sentry.

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00:31:27 ◼   ► commits, releases, and the developers who broke it all in one connected view.

00:31:31 ◼   ► So you're not jumping between tools, trying to figure out what happened.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Sentry shows you how the request moved, what ran, what slowed it down, and what the user saw.

00:31:41 ◼   ► I think this stuff is really important when you're thinking about your app, right?

00:31:46 ◼   ► You want it to, to work well for the user.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Like you've spent all this time crafting this great experience.

00:31:51 ◼   ► When people are using the app, you want it to be smooth.

00:31:54 ◼   ► You want it to run well, you don't want them to be hitting errors and bugs.

00:31:58 ◼   ► But also the thing that I find really valuable about this is developers want to be making new

00:32:03 ◼   ► features.

00:32:04 ◼   ► They don't want to be fixing bugs.

00:32:05 ◼   ► If you can help them fix their bugs faster, then they're going to be able to get back to

00:32:10 ◼   ► doing the things that they want to do.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And there is SIA, Sentry's AI debugging agent.

00:32:14 ◼   ► It takes everything from there for you.

00:32:16 ◼   ► It uses all of that Sentry context to tell you the root cause and suggest the fix and can

00:32:22 ◼   ► open the pull request.

00:32:24 ◼   ► It also reviews your pull request for you and flags breaking changes with a fix already

00:32:28 ◼   ► ready.

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00:32:42 ◼   ► Sentry credits.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Our thanks to Sentry for their support of this show and Relay.

00:32:48 ◼   ► So we now move on to the best overall Mac app.

00:32:52 ◼   ► The Lifetime Achievement Award winner in this category is ROGAMIVA's Audio Hijack, an app

00:32:59 ◼   ► that we are both using right now.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Right now.

00:33:02 ◼   ► In fact, I just used it to put your voice during the ad read.

00:33:06 ◼   ► I put your voice on the speaker out in the living room.

00:33:09 ◼   ► That's also an audio hijack thing.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Upgrade plus listeners.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Upgrade plus content.

00:33:13 ◼   ► They know what that's all about.

00:33:14 ◼   ► They know what that's all about.

00:33:15 ◼   ► People know what's going on there.

00:33:16 ◼   ► I have a lot of nominees in this category.

00:33:18 ◼   ► See?

00:33:18 ◼   ► Look at him go.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Let's do it.

00:33:20 ◼   ► I am a Mac user through and through, including a surprise that I added just as we were recording.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So you're going to have to add it to the show notes after the fact, a little behind the scenes.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I'm just, I'm still riffing here.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I'm revving up my creative engine.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Numbers.

00:33:36 ◼   ► I added numbers.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I, and I probably said a version of this before, but just to say it again, I stopped paying for Microsoft 365, which I used to pay for for ages because I had so much internalized Excel knowledge.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And I realized that at some point in the last couple of years that Excel was no longer my home and that I felt more home, more at home in numbers and Google sheets.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And so why do I need to pay Microsoft anything?

00:34:04 ◼   ► And we dropped it.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And that does mean that every now and then Lauren's like, what is going on here?

00:34:09 ◼   ► I'm like, sorry, sorry.

00:34:10 ◼   ► We don't have Excel anymore.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But, um, I've used numbers.

00:34:13 ◼   ► I did a bunch of stuff with numbers to modify the way I do my charts.

00:34:16 ◼   ► I do all my charts that way.

00:34:17 ◼   ► I had, I was on a podcast with Alison Sheridan where I complained about having to move all the little bars around every month or every quarter.

00:34:24 ◼   ► And somebody said, you can use this, uh, formula to build a version of your chart that auto updates.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And I did that.

00:34:31 ◼   ► I spent a bunch of time, uh, in a bunch of different apps or a bunch of different spreadsheets in numbers, digging through numbers.

00:34:39 ◼   ► There's formulas and they're really powerful.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Um, my only complaint, and it's a funny one, like the advantage, one of the great advantages of Google docs is that it's fundamentally multi-window because it's a shared thing.

00:34:51 ◼   ► So if I have a giant spreadsheet with a couple of different tabs, I need to be in at once, I can open multiple browser windows and do that.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And numbers still doesn't let you open a second window into the same sheet.

00:35:01 ◼   ► It's also like, while you can share and collaborate in numbers, it's not as easy or as slick as sheets.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Yes.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Anything I do, anything I do with a collaborator, I do with Google sheets.

00:35:17 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Basically.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Um, but I use this, I use it a lot.

00:35:23 ◼   ► I love it.

00:35:23 ◼   ► I think I, it is my favorite by far.

00:35:26 ◼   ► And I used to use, I used to use Keynote a lot and it's also great.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I don't use pages.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Don't at me.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I just don't care.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Um, but numbers is great.

00:35:35 ◼   ► So I want to, I want to, I love numbers and use numbers all the time.

00:35:40 ◼   ► I, if I'm ever making a spreadsheet for myself, if it is never going to be shared, I will definitely always use numbers for that because I just like the way it looks.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I like the way it works.

00:35:51 ◼   ► It's very simple.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Um, I will say I also never use pages, except if you ever need to create an invoice, pages is very good.

00:36:01 ◼   ► I feel like we've had this.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I, that's, that's literally the only way I ever use pages is to make an invoice.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Good for that.

00:36:08 ◼   ► It's a great invoice.

00:36:08 ◼   ► They should call it invoice, sir.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Invoicer.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Er.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Invoicer.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Invoicer.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Um, so numbers is good.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Uh, MimeStream, which has won the best newcomer twice.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Uh, it's my Mac email client and I love it and it's really good.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I mean, what can I say?

00:36:27 ◼   ► It's really good.

00:36:28 ◼   ► It's a Gmail client.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Um, it's great.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be great if they had an iOS app?

00:36:32 ◼   ► Well, if they did, it's still in test flight and I can't give it an award.

00:36:35 ◼   ► So we'll be incredible when they win best newcomer.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Again, maybe in a different category.

00:36:43 ◼   ► In a different platform.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Three time best newcomer award.

00:36:46 ◼   ► That would be amazing.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Um, I'm going to say, and this is maybe a little controversial, but I put ChatGPT and Claude in here.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Um, and here's my reasoning.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Both of them have interesting connections that they can do to things on your Mac that I think make them intriguing.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Um, ChatGPT supports, is it ChatGPT supports M, is it ChatGPT or is it Claude that support connectors?

00:37:21 ◼   ► Um, Claude is more of the connectors on the MCP stuff.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Claude is better at this.

00:37:24 ◼   ► ChatGPT has some interesting things.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Claude is better at this.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Claude supports on-device connectors.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So, uh, it's connected to, um, Longplay, which is an app that supports the format, the MCP format.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Um, Claude supports control your Mac, which is basically like command line and OSA script, which means it can do Apple script.

00:37:46 ◼   ► I actually have a statement.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Now here, here's, here's the give and take of these apps.

00:37:51 ◼   ► Claude has no way to remember a phrase and fire it off on command.

00:38:00 ◼   ► No way to do that, nor is it scriptable in any way.

00:38:05 ◼   ► So, it is ironically uncontrollable, but good at controlling things, which just drives me mad.

00:38:12 ◼   ► But I have a, I have a paragraph block that I can, that I, I was doing over the weekend based on a, uh, Dr. Drang post about using LLMs as proofreaders.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And his was more like he, he gets the chat bot to give him a list of corrections.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And I said, well, what I would like is for the chat bot to take my file, look at it, insert the corrections in line below each paragraph where the connections, where the corrections are there with a little flag.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And then put it back in my text editor.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And I can get Claude to do that.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Claude will look at the top window in BB edit using OSA script.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It will then, uh, proofread it.

00:38:48 ◼   ► It will insert its corrections as I request, you know, not in line, but below the paragraph where the correction is, uh, is there with a big, like a bunch of greater than symbols, just as a marker.

00:39:00 ◼   ► And then we'll take that and open a new BB edit document with that as the contents.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And it just does it, which is amazing.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Except again, okay, great.

00:39:12 ◼   ► How do I wire that up to a keyboard shortcut?

00:39:14 ◼   ► I can't, I can't.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Instead you have to like script the interface.

00:39:19 ◼   ► It's so, so dumb.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So it's on, on the one hand, it's super brilliant.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And both of these apps are like this.

00:39:23 ◼   ► They have really nice aspects of them and then really stupid aspects of them.

00:39:27 ◼   ► But what I, what I like and the fact that they bought, that chat GPT bought software applications, Inc.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Um, or open AI did is I feel like we're right on the verge of something even more interesting in terms of really proper, uh, integration between these.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Now I could do this now using shortcuts and on-device models or the private cloud compute models, but we know, you know, it's Apple's models.

00:39:52 ◼   ► They're not quite as good.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Um, but anyway, so having those apps exist and be Mac apps and have some things about them that like do things on the Mac, I think is really good.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Because I'm much more interested in using these things when they're integrated into my Mac than I am when it's a web browser window.

00:40:09 ◼   ► So I want to mention both of those.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I'm glad that these companies, that Anthropic and open AI are actually doing Mac apps and that there's the potential that these Mac apps could become even more interesting over time.

00:40:19 ◼   ► I like that.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Chat GPT also does, they have an Apple music integration now, which is kind of nice.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And yeah, anyway.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Um, and then the other app I wanted to mention is ice because this is, uh, you know, bartender got, you know, there was a question about like bartender got sold and like, who are the new developers?

00:40:35 ◼   ► And then the people who have used the new version of it say it's not that impressive, but it broke Tahoe broke compatibility with it.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And so everybody went around looking for other, uh, menu bar utilities.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And ice is a good one that is, uh, free open source and works.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And I like that, that it's those things.

00:40:54 ◼   ► So I want to mention ice as well.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Gradians voted for chat GPT with 6.8%.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Mime stream with 5.3% obsidian with 3.4% and things at 3.4%.

00:41:09 ◼   ► Got a lot of organized things is in this every single year, every year things is voted for by the up gradients.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I know.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I, you know, every time I use things, I like it, I appreciate it.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And then I just go back to reminders because reminders is more than enough for me, even though things is very impressive.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Um, I'm just not, I'm not omni-focus either.

00:41:30 ◼   ► I'm just, these are not, this is not my life.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Um, I, I, I love mime stream as a nominee or winner.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Um, I like, I, I like numbers as a nominee or winner.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Um, what do you think?

00:41:55 ◼   ► I would struggle to make chat GPT the winner.

00:41:58 ◼   ► Well, this is what I was going to say is I think Claude is better than chat GPT.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Okay.

00:42:04 ◼   ► That's, that's the thing.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I, I think Claude is, is, is better than chat GPT.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Okay.

00:42:10 ◼   ► As a Mac app, because it has all that control over your system and the MCP server and can

00:42:15 ◼   ► talk to other apps like long play.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Chat GPT does interesting stuff where it can detect your window, right?

00:42:20 ◼   ► And then you can, you can.

00:42:21 ◼   ► It does.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It does.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's using accessibility frameworks so it can look at your window.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It's true.

00:42:25 ◼   ► It's true.

00:42:26 ◼   ► It's got things too.

00:42:27 ◼   ► That's why I mentioned it.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I would, um, if this is me and you, I'm putting numbers and it is me and you, I'm putting numbers

00:42:34 ◼   ► as the winner.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Cause I, I think that's fun and I also use it and I think that's hilarious.

00:42:38 ◼   ► So let's, let's make numbers the winner.

00:42:40 ◼   ► Numbers is the winner.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Numbers is the winner.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Let's put Claude as a, as a runner up and Mime stream too.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:47 ◼   ► I think so.

00:42:48 ◼   ► More to come from these AI apps, but I feel like the AI apps have the potential to do some

00:42:54 ◼   ► really interesting things.

00:42:55 ◼   ► I agree.

00:42:55 ◼   ► and, and integrate with the Mac and make an elevate the Mac experience a little bit

00:42:59 ◼   ► more, but there it's early days yet, but I'm, I'm really interested in, in these kind

00:43:04 ◼   ► of, you know, my feeling about AI in general is like, if you can come up with targeted, focused

00:43:08 ◼   ► tool-based things that use them that are good and help you in your life.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Great.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Like that's the stuff that I'm interested in.

00:43:15 ◼   ► I'm not interested in having a conversation with it.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I definitely agree with you.

00:43:22 ◼   ► We move on to the best newcomer Mac app.

00:43:25 ◼   ► What have you got, Jason?

00:43:27 ◼   ► Long play came out for the Mac.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I mentioned it earlier.

00:43:30 ◼   ► It's got an MCP server.

00:43:31 ◼   ► It very much is like, it'll do shortcuts.

00:43:33 ◼   ► It'll do Apple script.

00:43:34 ◼   ► I talked to the developer and the developer is like, oh, I don't figure out how to do an

00:43:39 ◼   ► Apple script dictionary.

00:43:39 ◼   ► It may be the last new app ever to have a full Apple script dictionary, but bless it.

00:43:45 ◼   ► It does that.

00:43:45 ◼   ► It does.

00:43:46 ◼   ► So it's, it's controllable in all the ways.

00:43:48 ◼   ► What it is.

00:43:48 ◼   ► It was one of my favorite iPad and iOS apps.

00:43:51 ◼   ► I've mentioned it before.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Now it came out on the Mac.

00:43:53 ◼   ► If you want to listen to a playlist all the way through or an album all the way through

00:43:58 ◼   ► long play, it's a very nice interface.

00:44:00 ◼   ► It shows you your albums in your library.

00:44:02 ◼   ► You can, you can play them.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Uh, so the new Mac version came out.

00:44:06 ◼   ► It's very controllable.

00:44:06 ◼   ► So you can actually ask, ask Claude to say, you know, can you, you know, I won't find me

00:44:11 ◼   ► an album that fits these things and play it in long play and it will just do it, which

00:44:15 ◼   ► is awesome.

00:44:16 ◼   ► That's a very cool feature as well.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Um, that's supported by this and you can write your own automations if you want to, because

00:44:21 ◼   ► it's totally automatable, its biggest weakness is that there's a failing in the APIs of,

00:44:27 ◼   ► um, of by Apple to do airplay.

00:44:30 ◼   ► So the only way, I think this is still true, certainly in the beta process, the only way

00:44:36 ◼   ► to play, um, and I use airplay speakers to play music from long play through airplay speakers

00:44:41 ◼   ► was either to use a third party app, um, like sound source from Roga Miba or to set all

00:44:47 ◼   ► of your max audio output to an airplay speaker, which is not great because things get weird.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Uh, then you want to play a video and there's a weird delay and like, I don't, I don't like

00:44:57 ◼   ► it, but, um, but so glad to see this app on the Mac because I listened to most of my music

00:45:02 ◼   ► on the Mac and I don't, you know, I shuffle through lots and lots of playlists, but I do

00:45:05 ◼   ► have some desires, you know, where it's like, I want to listen to this album and this is a

00:45:10 ◼   ► really nice way to do that.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Plus I like the innovation.

00:45:13 ◼   ► I like the fact that, that this, uh, developer built in every kind of automation possible.

00:45:19 ◼   ► This is, this is kind of like the perfect new Mac app in that it's got one foot in the

00:45:23 ◼   ► past with Apple script.

00:45:24 ◼   ► It's got a second foot in the present with shortcuts and it's got a third, it's got its eye on the

00:45:32 ◼   ► future.

00:45:32 ◼   ► How about that?

00:45:33 ◼   ► There's no third foot.

00:45:34 ◼   ► It's got its eye on the future with MCP.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Other ones in here, super whispers, a really interesting app that uses, uh, AI stuff, not

00:45:45 ◼   ► only to do speech interpretation.

00:45:46 ◼   ► So you run it and then you talk to your Mac, but it will process your audio into text, but

00:45:52 ◼   ► it will also, then you can set it up to use it, to use a, uh, an AI API to process the text

00:45:59 ◼   ► that you're doing in interesting ways.

00:46:00 ◼   ► And it can change based on context, based on like what app you're using.

00:46:04 ◼   ► I paid for it for a little while and then sort of realized that, um, I wasn't really using

00:46:10 ◼   ► it.

00:46:10 ◼   ► I, I'm not a strong kind of like dictation person, but like, I really admire the, the expansiveness

00:46:17 ◼   ► of this idea that you can have.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Like when you trigger your microphone and you're in this app, you want a totally different prompt

00:46:22 ◼   ► and a totally different set of output than you do when you trigger it in this app.

00:46:26 ◼   ► It's just really smart.

00:46:27 ◼   ► So that's super whisperer, put ice in this category because it is, uh, I don't know if

00:46:32 ◼   ► it's new, new, but it's new to me.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Uh, Claude and chat GPT are in here.

00:46:36 ◼   ► And then Simon Sturving's, uh, Festivitas, which came out very, very late last year.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And so we, uh, didn't really cover it last year, but, uh, it's back this year with a 2.0

00:46:46 ◼   ► update.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Um, and so I, I think it is going to be under the wire as an, it's new enough, uh, since the

00:46:52 ◼   ► last upgrade ease and it, uh, puts holiday lights on your desktop and, uh, snow and it's

00:46:58 ◼   ► automatable as well.

00:46:59 ◼   ► So I have, I talked about this on a previous podcast and I just want to say it again.

00:47:02 ◼   ► Now that it's happened, like I built a shortcut that, that has a random number generator in

00:47:08 ◼   ► it to only drop snow in Festivitas.

00:47:12 ◼   ► It runs every 20 minutes, but it only drops snow one in seven times.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And I cannot tell you how delightful it has been over the last month where I'm just using

00:47:23 ◼   ► my Mac and it starts snowing.

00:47:24 ◼   ► And I always have that same thought, which is, oh, it's snowing and it's delightful every

00:47:30 ◼   ► time.

00:47:30 ◼   ► It's so delightful because it's random.

00:47:32 ◼   ► It, when it happens, it's just kind of amazing.

00:47:35 ◼   ► So, uh, I think Festivitas is a lot of fun.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Is it necessary in life?

00:47:39 ◼   ► No.

00:47:40 ◼   ► Is it, does it make my Mac a nicer place to be in the holidays?

00:47:43 ◼   ► Uh, yes.

00:47:44 ◼   ► And in fact, I may keep, I may turn the holiday lights off and keep the snowfall on for a while

00:47:48 ◼   ► longer because it's just that much fun.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Uh, my best newcomer Mac app is also Festivitas.

00:47:54 ◼   ► What I like about this app is it is, I mean, I love it on the iPhone too.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Um, but what I love about this app is it is essentially and pointless, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's usefulness is that it doesn't have it except that it is fun.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And there has always been a long history of Mac apps that exist just because they are fun

00:48:21 ◼   ► to have because the Mac allows you to do weird things like this that other platforms do not

00:48:28 ◼   ► allow.

00:48:28 ◼   ► It is firmly in the tradition of the talking moose, which lived in your menu bar and watched

00:48:35 ◼   ► your mouse move around and would say things, which was, did it do anything?

00:48:39 ◼   ► Uh, it, the, uh, the extension that turned your trash can on the desktop into, uh, Oscar,

00:48:44 ◼   ► the grouch trash can from Sesame street.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And he would come out when you empty your trash and sing a little song of after dark,

00:48:51 ◼   ► the screen saver that included, uh, of course the flying toasters.

00:48:54 ◼   ► And, uh, the one that it really reminds me of is there was an, there was an after dark kind

00:48:59 ◼   ► of like competitor called underwear.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Um, and it's whole premise was basically like, it was drawing essentially screen savers, but

00:49:09 ◼   ► it was on your desktop and it would do things like, like a guy, a window washer would come

00:49:14 ◼   ► out and like squeegee one of your finder windows in the background.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And it's just like, did this take up CPU time?

00:49:22 ◼   ► Yes.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Was it a waste of time?

00:49:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Was it delightful?

00:49:25 ◼   ► Yes.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And part of the fun is to do stuff like that.

00:49:28 ◼   ► So this is a great, uh, I, I would love to see more Mac apps like this because again, it

00:49:35 ◼   ► does, it gives me something.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Is it, is it a productivity utility?

00:49:38 ◼   ► No, but does it delight me and make me enjoy using my Mac, which is a device that I also use

00:49:43 ◼   ► to be productive.

00:49:44 ◼   ► It absolutely does.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I wish there were more apps like the Stivitas.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So congratulations to Simon, the Stivitas Stavring Simon, the Stivitas scriptable.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Stavring, uh, for his win.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Cause this one's going to win.

00:49:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's absolutely going to win.

00:50:00 ◼   ► So let's, I'm going to put that in now.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So Festivitas is, is the winner.

00:50:04 ◼   ► It's a winner.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Of the best newcomer Mac app for this year.

00:50:07 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted with, for Affinity at 5.5%.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Hyperspace at 5.5%.

00:50:15 ◼   ► John Syracuse.

00:50:16 ◼   ► ChatGPT at 4.6%.

00:50:19 ◼   ► But there's more, but wait, there's more.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Ghostie at 4.6%.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And Tapestry at 4.6%.

00:50:27 ◼   ► There are five here because there were two sets of ties.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Ghostie is a terminal app I've not heard of.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And obviously Affinity is the designer kind of Photoshop competitor, which is also now interesting

00:50:41 ◼   ► because it is completely free.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Um, it was bought by Canva, uh, and they've made it completely free now.

00:50:47 ◼   ► So I'm sure more and more people are using it.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Apparently it's very, very good.

00:50:50 ◼   ► So a lot of great new, uh, Mac apps there.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Uh, what would you like to make as a runner up?

00:50:57 ◼   ► Should we put long play in there?

00:50:58 ◼   ► I think we should.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Long play for sure.

00:51:00 ◼   ► For sure.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And I, I want to put, I think, Super Whisper in there because even though it's not quite

00:51:07 ◼   ► for me, what I like about it is it's using AI tech to do something interesting with the

00:51:12 ◼   ► Mac and not just be an empty box where you type things.

00:51:15 ◼   ► And I like, I want to see more of that.

00:51:17 ◼   ► I think as we said in our last round, I feel like the ways of taking the Mac interface and

00:51:25 ◼   ► just pumping up little bits of it with AI stuff that I find very interesting in a way that

00:51:33 ◼   ► again, here's an, here's a blank screen with an empty box.

00:51:38 ◼   ► You type in, like, I know this is very popular.

00:51:40 ◼   ► I find it so uninteresting because it is the equivalent of a command line.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And I know that it's very powerful and I use that stuff too, to do very targeted work.

00:51:49 ◼   ► But like, in the long run, a chatbot box is the wrong interface.

00:51:55 ◼   ► It just is the wrong interface.

00:51:57 ◼   ► A box you type in, in an app that's targeted or something that's, that knows what app you're

00:52:02 ◼   ► using or what tool you're using or what project you're in.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And that can help you.

00:52:06 ◼   ► Very interesting to me.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:09 ◼   ► But like.

00:52:09 ◼   ► It's already coming with a lot of the context baked in.

00:52:12 ◼   ► The developer has done that.

00:52:13 ◼   ► You don't need to do that.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:15 ◼   ► So I, you know, a, a relatively context free window, you have to type a whole command

00:52:20 ◼   ► into.

00:52:20 ◼   ► While I do find the, the act of crafting a command can be very focusing and a good intellectual

00:52:25 ◼   ► exercise.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And I think is actually work.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Um, I, I, I'm less interested by the interface list context list.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Well, we'll just, well, like to, to bring up that proofreading example again, I, I appreciate

00:52:40 ◼   ► that Dr. Drang can paste his story in a, his blog post in an LLM and say, and have a prompt

00:52:48 ◼   ► that he wrote that says, please proofread this and give me back.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And then it does that.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And it gives him back text in that window that says, here are the mistakes I found.

00:52:56 ◼   ► And then he can switch to his text editor and implement those himself.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Like, I appreciate that, but like, there's gotta be a better way, right?

00:53:05 ◼   ► Like that, those tools should be integrated into the text editors.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And if you don't want them to change your words, that's fine.

00:53:10 ◼   ► They should be able to mark your words.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Or like I did with my experiment, put them right under and say, here's the thing you should

00:53:16 ◼   ► look at just more integration because as users, we should demand more than, I mean, like as

00:53:23 ◼   ► amazing as some of the responses to a chatbot can be in an app, like it's not good enough.

00:53:27 ◼   ► It's just not good enough.

00:53:28 ◼   ► It needs to be better.

00:53:29 ◼   ► They need to be way better.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So I like to see apps that are trying that.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And Super Whisper is a good example of like, what if we could give some more context to what's

00:53:39 ◼   ► going on here?

00:53:39 ◼   ► We now move into the best feature round.

00:53:43 ◼   ► So this is a category that changes year to year.

00:53:48 ◼   ► So we will pick a feature in the Apple platforms as the thing that we would like to see highlighted.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So the first year was the best example of this so far, which was widgets.

00:54:00 ◼   ► So like the best app that had widgets.

00:54:02 ◼   ► The problem is in like in past years in 24 and 25, Apple has kind of not really had something

00:54:09 ◼   ► in the OSs that can be widely adopted.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I mean, you could have said look at glass this year, maybe.

00:54:15 ◼   ► But anyway, we came up with best implementation of a 26 year OS feature.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Now, when we came up with this, my thought was a third party app that takes one of the features

00:54:29 ◼   ► and does a good job of it.

00:54:30 ◼   ► But everybody else, including Jason, has just recommended different features from the different

00:54:36 ◼   ► 26 platforms, which is fine.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought about it, right?

00:54:42 ◼   ► I did think about it.

00:54:44 ◼   ► And I thought about my apps that I use that do a good job implementing liquid glass.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Unfortunately, apps only really have access to onboard models, AI models.

00:55:00 ◼   ► I think if they had access to private cloud compute, things would be a little more interesting.

00:55:04 ◼   ► But they don't, which means you have to bridge it with shortcuts, which makes it not really

00:55:08 ◼   ► integrated.

00:55:08 ◼   ► But in the end, I decided that my favorite 26 features deserve recognition.

00:55:17 ◼   ► So that's sort of where I went with this category.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And what are they?

00:55:20 ◼   ► iPad multitasking is number one.

00:55:25 ◼   ► They did it, Mike.

00:55:26 ◼   ► They did it.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I remember having our conversations in June about, I mean, we have been talking about

00:55:35 ◼   ► iPad multitasking for so long, and it's been so, you know, there's the potential and there's

00:55:41 ◼   ► the frustration and all of those things.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And I think they did a great job implementing it.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And then with point one and point two, they have filled in a lot of the cracks that remained.

00:55:53 ◼   ► I like, you know, I like the idea that, like, the platform isn't solved.

00:55:58 ◼   ► There are lots of problems on the iPad platform involving software.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Federico has talked about this a lot.

00:56:03 ◼   ► But interface-wise, I feel like it is where it needs to be.

00:56:10 ◼   ► I feel like there's this toggleable thing.

00:56:13 ◼   ► You can go into this mode, and then it can be as multitasky as you want it to be.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And, like, I think they did a good job.

00:56:18 ◼   ► It feels right.

00:56:19 ◼   ► It feels good.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I have little to no criticism of how they implemented it.

00:56:25 ◼   ► It really is a very good implementation.

00:56:27 ◼   ► What else?

00:56:30 ◼   ► Clipboard history on the Mac.

00:56:34 ◼   ► This is the year.

00:56:35 ◼   ► So the short version of the story is two or three years ago, I had a reader wrote into

00:56:41 ◼   ► Six Colors and said, you know, what utilities should I install when I first get my Mac?

00:56:47 ◼   ► Because I'm switching platforms.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Like, what utilities do you recommend?

00:56:50 ◼   ► And I thought this was actually a really good intellectual exercise for, like, where are the gaps?

00:56:54 ◼   ► But the truth is, most of the utilities that I rely on have been replaced by system features.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And I do fundamentally believe that if you can use a system feature, you probably should give it a try.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Because adding another app on top of it, not only do you have to pay for that app, which, you know, if it provides you a feature, then pay for it.

00:57:12 ◼   ► By all means, by all means, support that developer.

00:57:13 ◼   ► But, like, over time, what's happened is that Apple has improved Mac OS underneath me while I, you know, back 20 years ago, installed LaunchBar or whatever.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And because Spotlight wasn't good enough.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And this whole thought process led to me realizing the one great unimplemented feature on the Mac ever is clipboard history.

00:57:36 ◼   ► That I rely on multiple clipboards and clipboard history all the time.

00:57:40 ◼   ► There are a bunch of apps that do it.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And those apps can do things that are, like, I know people in Tahoe who still use Pacebot because it does things they like that the clipboard history doesn't.

00:57:50 ◼   ► But to provide to all users a clipboard history where even if it's just a friend who doesn't know anything about this and they're like, oh, no, that text only, I lost my text and it only exists on my clipboard.

00:58:03 ◼   ► And you can be like, has it been within the last seven hours?

00:58:06 ◼   ► Let's go and look at your clipboard history.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And you can retrieve it from the clipboard history.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Such a good feature.

00:58:13 ◼   ► And I'm using it now.

00:58:14 ◼   ► You know, this is, I stopped using LaunchBar, which I use for clipboard history.

00:58:18 ◼   ► And I just am using the system clipboard history and it works great for me.

00:58:21 ◼   ► So it's just a huge step forward for them to do this.

00:58:25 ◼   ► This is, it made me, one of my favorite things in Tahoe because it feels like Apple actually paying attention to the empty spaces in the Mac where they could potentially do some good work and doing it.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And it works well for me.

00:58:40 ◼   ► So clipboard history.

00:58:41 ◼   ► And then my last one is what I mentioned just a moment ago, private cloud compute and shortcuts.

00:58:50 ◼   ► You know, Apple's models aren't the best, but Apple's cloud model is way better than its own device model.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And I've, I've built multiple shortcuts that use Apple's cloud model.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And right now it's basically free.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like there are other, you can get API access to chat, you can get API access to chat GPT and cloud and all of that.

00:59:08 ◼   ► But like private cloud compute, you just get it because you're a Apple device user and you can write a shortcut.

00:59:15 ◼   ► And so like my best example is that I updated my shortcuts that upload images to six colors when I'm writing, especially on the iPad.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And like now it, it, it generates alt text.

00:59:28 ◼   ► It generates a file name that's relevant based on the contents of the image.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And that's because I'm uploading the image, a scaled down version of the image to private cloud compute and saying, okay, give me a description, give me a file name.

00:59:39 ◼   ► And, uh, I crafted that prompt and then I got to check it a little bit because LLMs that can do weird stuff, but like it does it.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And it's, it's a revelation.

00:59:47 ◼   ► So having access to an LLM essentially for free to use in my automation.

00:59:52 ◼   ► So you can take things that used to be impossible to automate because they were linear and turn them into these things that are, uh, you know, you never really know what you're going to get, but it, it means that instead of having like, I run the command and then I have to sit there and like go through and I have to show it.

01:00:08 ◼   ► It shows me the image and then says, what do you want to name this image?

01:00:11 ◼   ► And then what do you want to have as the alt text and all that?

01:00:14 ◼   ► And it's gone.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And I see the result and I can decide whether I like the alt text or not and like the file name or not.

01:00:19 ◼   ► But, um, I think it's a really great feature that augurs, uh, good things for the future that Apple has built it in.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Um, even though, yeah, they, they need to be able to provide app developers with access to it as well.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Uh, for me, uh, I recommend one app, which is athletic again, uh, because I think that it's done a really good job.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Of the liquid glass design aesthetic for, from a style perspective and a navigation perspective.

01:00:44 ◼   ► I think it looks and works really great.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Um, but also they are using the on-device models for giving workout insights in a way that I think is quite impressive.

01:00:52 ◼   ► Uh, but then also I recommend, I'm nominating iPad multitasking because it's fantastic and has totally changed the way I use my iPad for the better.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Um, and I'm also going to nominate liquid glass.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I think overall, uh, while it is not perfect, I think that it is a good step forward for iOS.

01:01:09 ◼   ► Personally, I think that the system is more interesting to use again.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Um, and I think...

01:01:15 ◼   ► Boo!

01:01:15 ◼   ► Boo!

01:01:16 ◼   ► What monsters, what monsters would recommend liquid glass?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Boo-uns?

01:01:20 ◼   ► Was that Boo-uns?

01:01:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but, but by the way, so Mike, what did the upgradians say?

01:01:24 ◼   ► 50, this, this to me was one of the most exciting things that could have possibly happened.

01:01:30 ◼   ► With 15.7% of the vote is liquid glass.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Look at that.

01:01:36 ◼   ► And that to me really is like that, you know, like the loud, like there is a group of people that are really loud about liquid glass.

01:01:44 ◼   ► But even in our audience, nearly 16% of the people who wrote in said that liquid glass was their favorite thing.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Over iPad multitasking, which is the next one, at 8.8% of the vote.

01:01:57 ◼   ► So twice the amount of people said that liquid glass was their favorite feature of iOS 26, of like the 26th year.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And then a third is call screening at 6.9%, which is a feature that I really like.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I think this is a great feature where essentially your, your phone starts having a conversation with the person who's calling you and it will show a little icon and then it will eventually pop up and show like a text conversation going through.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I think it's really well done and I like it and use it a lot.

01:02:27 ◼   ► I think the winner of this should be probably iPad multitasking.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Sure.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Because it's on everybody's lists and it is fantastic.

01:02:37 ◼   ► I agree.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And then I guess what, liquid glass and clipboard maybe as the runner-ups.

01:02:42 ◼   ► That works for me.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah, because I also, I'm happy, I'm really happy that the, the clipboard history is there, but I'm still using Raycast for it.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Because honestly, I know this sounds, this sounds wild, but the main reason I've continued to use Raycast is it's one keyboard shortcut, not a keyboard shortcut.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And then another keyboard shortcut to get to the clipboard.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Well, that's, that's one of the things that I think that they need to fix is that they need to make, you should be able to assign a keyboard shortcut to clipboard history.

01:03:12 ◼   ► That said, I have my old keyboard shortcut for a clipboard history on launch bar.

01:03:19 ◼   ► I have that in keyboard maestro where I press it and it does the double key entry to get me there.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And it's transparent.

01:03:27 ◼   ► So I do command backslash and immediately the clipboard history shows up, but that should be a feature.

01:03:32 ◼   ► They should, you should just be able to assign a key.

01:03:35 ◼   ► You shouldn't have to enter spotlight and then enter clipboard history.

01:03:38 ◼   ► That's real dumb.

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01:05:28 ◼   ► Time for Game of the Year.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Jason, what is your Game of the Year?

01:05:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't play a lot of games.

01:05:37 ◼   ► People know this.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Actually, the game I played maybe the most this last six months on the iPad is the Carcassonne game by the Coding Monkeys

01:05:53 ◼   ► that's no longer in the App Store, but still works.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

01:05:56 ◼   ► They lost the license.

01:05:57 ◼   ► Not only does it still work, we had a conversation on Mastodon about this.

01:06:01 ◼   ► The way they implemented the graphics means that even though it was made a long time ago,

01:06:07 ◼   ► the graphics still look like super sharp because they're high-res graphics.

01:06:09 ◼   ► It still works and it's great.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And the shame there is basically they built this amazing Carcassonne game and then they lost the license.

01:06:17 ◼   ► And the new Carcassonne game is bad because people have seen this with other things too.

01:06:24 ◼   ► I think Scrabble, this happened too, which is like at some point, one of these really bad game companies buys,

01:06:30 ◼   ► they've got money to buy a license and they've got money to buy a license and then they make a garbage app.

01:06:35 ◼   ► And you can see the difference between an iOS app built with care by like an indie game studio and then in comes this game studio that just does a crappy job with it.

01:06:46 ◼   ► It just allows the app that's full of garbage.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So I played Carcassonne a lot.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I'm not going to give it an award, but just to say that if you bought it back in the day, it still works.

01:06:54 ◼   ► You should download it because it's still in the app store as a purchased item.

01:06:58 ◼   ► It stays there forever, which is awesome because it still works.

01:07:01 ◼   ► The game that I played that came out this year that I really loved and played all the way through was on the Switch 2.

01:07:08 ◼   ► And it was Hurdling, which was published by Panic.

01:07:11 ◼   ► It is like Journey except with herding, Journey with goats.

01:07:19 ◼   ► They're not goats.

01:07:21 ◼   ► They're like weird beasts, but Journey with weird herd beasts that you go around with.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Great music, great visuals, really affecting.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And also you can do it in like three hours, which I really love in a game.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Um, it's such a good game.

01:07:39 ◼   ► So that, that was my real winner.

01:07:41 ◼   ► There are other games that I have wanted to play more.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I do have a Switch 2.

01:07:44 ◼   ► I have played it very little, but Hurdling came out and I realized this is the kind of game where I should just buy it.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And we're going to sit down one night.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I think we finished it the next night.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Lauren and I are just going to sit down and take turns playing.

01:07:55 ◼   ► It's, it's a single person player, but like I played the first few levels and then handed her the controller and then she did the next few levels.

01:08:01 ◼   ► And it's just a really delightful, uh, experience.

01:08:06 ◼   ► If you, uh, if you have the, a platform that Hurdling is on, I highly recommend it, especially if you like, uh, games like Journey.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It really reminds me of Journey.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And I think Journey is one of the all time greats.

01:08:16 ◼   ► So it's the classic artsy fartsy, uh, short, you know, narrative game with pretty visuals and pretty sound.

01:08:24 ◼   ► And I just, just a great vibe.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Loved it.

01:08:27 ◼   ► What do you have?

01:08:28 ◼   ► Donkey Kong Bonanza is my game of the year this year.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Um, this was a game that when it was first shown off when the Nintendo Switch 2 came out, I was intrigued about it, but couldn't imagine that it would be to the level of which of the quality of which it is.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And then information started coming out about this game and who was behind it.

01:08:45 ◼   ► And it was the same team who made, uh, Mario Odyssey from nearly 10 years ago.

01:08:50 ◼   ► And then things started to change.

01:08:52 ◼   ► This game is fantastic.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I've never played a video game quite like it.

01:08:57 ◼   ► Um, that there is a game that is like so destructible and interesting and it's, it's doing some like really fantastically weird stuff with the fact that you can just essentially destroy everything in the game.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► You can just tunnel down into the ground.

01:09:15 ◼   ► It sounds, it sounds like so much fun.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I just haven't, I haven't gone there, but I want to play it.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It sounds like amazing.

01:09:20 ◼   ► It's really fun.

01:09:21 ◼   ► My only knock on this game is it is a tad long.

01:09:25 ◼   ► There is, there is a part in kind of like towards the end where you're like, okay, we could skip a couple of these levels, but the, this game ends in an absolutely fantastic crescendo.

01:09:34 ◼   ► Uh, I loved this game.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Uh, I had so much fun with it.

01:09:38 ◼   ► The Upgradians give 10.1% to Donkey Kong Bonanza.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Uh, Bellatro at 8.1%.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Definitely not a 2025 video game.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I did, I did play a lot of Bellatro this year.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Me too.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Oh, I've got, I've gotten back onto Bellatro big time.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I stopped.

01:09:54 ◼   ► I saw, again, I went back on, I did, I did Bellatro and then I, so it was the progression mic was, uh, Marvel Snap to Bellatro to Suica game to Carcassonne.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Oh, see, I went from Suica game back to Bellatro.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Ah.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Um, and then Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which is a game that I have started after it won.

01:10:16 ◼   ► It's basically swept up at the Game Awards.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It is a very interesting, and I can tell a very special video game, but I'm not very far into it yet.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Um, so, Bellatro won Game of the Year last year.

01:10:27 ◼   ► So, my, my, what I would like to do for this category is Donkey Kong Bonanza as our Game of the Year.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:32 ◼   ► With Hurdling and Claire Obscure, uh, as our runner-up.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I love it.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Favorite movie time.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Jason, what are your nominations for favorite movie?

01:10:43 ◼   ► Uh, four favorite movies that I've seen this year, Thunderbolts, Marvel.

01:10:47 ◼   ► It is a great, for people who have gotten tired of Marvel movies and are like, whatever, and Thunderbolts has no real recognizable characters in it.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It's minor characters from other Marvel movies.

01:10:57 ◼   ► We did a whole incomparable episode about it.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It is great.

01:11:00 ◼   ► It is a great movie.

01:11:01 ◼   ► It is fun and funny.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It has something to say about, like, because these are kind of like, it's really easy to read it as being the Marvel version of the Suicide Squad, which is it's a bunch of terrible people who are put together and forced to be heroic.

01:11:15 ◼   ► That's not what it is.

01:11:16 ◼   ► It is more like Guardians of the Galaxy in the sense that these are people who are kind of, uh, in, in difficult places, even more than Guardians.

01:11:24 ◼   ► They're more ragtag, but they're like, they've made mistakes and are in bad places in their life.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And it's a real question of like, are you going to dig yourself out of it?

01:11:33 ◼   ► And how do you do that?

01:11:34 ◼   ► And one of the ways the answer the movie says is, uh, is making connections with other people is really important.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And that's the theme of the movie.

01:11:41 ◼   ► It's funny.

01:11:42 ◼   ► It's got David Harbour gives a great performance as the Red Guardian, who is the, who is the dad of the new Black Widow, which is Florence Pugh, who gives a great performance.

01:11:51 ◼   ► He's the Russian Captain America, essentially, which is, yeah, he is the Russian.

01:11:54 ◼   ► He's like the, the, the kind of old fat Russian America, Russian Captain America, hilarious character.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Um, and then there is like, Bucky is in it, right?

01:12:05 ◼   ► And he's, he's used in a funny way.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Um, and, uh, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is actually pretty good as the kind of villain of the piece.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Uh, but like, it's funny.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And there is a moment midway through the movie where it just takes flight and I'm not going to spoil it, but there is a scene that happens out in the middle of the desert after they've sort of been ejected from where they have been held captive.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Where everything kind of falls apart and then, um, David Harbour arrives on the scene and it just takes flight.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It is a delight.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I love it so much.

01:12:38 ◼   ► So like, if you have not seen a Marvel movie recently, please give it, give it a shot.

01:12:43 ◼   ► And I adore Julia Louis-Dreyfus in that movie.

01:12:47 ◼   ► She's fantastic in it as well.

01:12:49 ◼   ► So really great.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Really, really great.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:52 ◼   ► So that Thunderbolts, great.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Superman, the new Superman was really good.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Um, I saw that in the theater and, uh, we saw an IMAX and, and even my son, my, my 21 year old son, we walked out of it and he's like, that was too loud.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Which I thought was really funny.

01:13:07 ◼   ► It was too loud.

01:13:09 ◼   ► They had the volume up too high.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Uh, we watched it again when it came out on, on a home video because Lauren didn't go with us to see it.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Cause we saw it like during the week on a weekday when she has to work her job and I took my son and we went and saw it in IMAX.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Um, it's still really good, right?

01:13:26 ◼   ► Like I watched it again.

01:13:27 ◼   ► I was like, Oh, I really like this.

01:13:28 ◼   ► I really liked Nicholas Holt's performance as Lex Luthor.

01:13:30 ◼   ► I think he gives, I think he gives the best performance in the movie.

01:13:33 ◼   ► I was so impressed.

01:13:34 ◼   ► He apparently read for Superman and, and, uh, James Gunn was like, how about Lex Luthor instead?

01:13:39 ◼   ► But I think he does a really good job.

01:13:40 ◼   ► He's not Superman.

01:13:43 ◼   ► As with most blockbusters, I could, I could play the game where you look at any blockbuster movie and there's at least one action set piece that I would just like to delete from the movie.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Cause it makes the movie too, it slows the movie down and makes it too long.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And it's like, guys, you got a Superman movie here.

01:14:00 ◼   ► You don't need this.

01:14:01 ◼   ► You don't need the scene where there's the antimatter river and they're like, you don't need it.

01:14:06 ◼   ► It's a waste of time.

01:14:07 ◼   ► It's boring.

01:14:07 ◼   ► The rest of the movie is great.

01:14:08 ◼   ► Um, uh, what's her name?

01:14:12 ◼   ► And Mrs. Maisel, uh, is great.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Rachel Brosnahan is great as Lois Lane.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Love her.

01:14:18 ◼   ► And the two of them have such great chemistry.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:21 ◼   ► No, no, it's really good.

01:14:23 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Um, and, and he's, and he's a good, what's his name?

01:14:27 ◼   ► David Cornswett.

01:14:28 ◼   ► David Cornswett is a good Superman.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Uh, I like this take on him.

01:14:32 ◼   ► There's some funny robots at the beginning.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Uh, I like the, the idea that he's trying to live up to his parents ideals, but his parents

01:14:38 ◼   ► ideals might not be what, uh, what he's living up to.

01:14:42 ◼   ► It's his own ideals.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I thought that was a really good twist.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And, um, and the choice James Gunn makes to have other superheroes in the, in the movie and

01:14:51 ◼   ► have them be interesting and funny.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Like, um, there's, there's Mr. Terrific who is, seals the movie in many ways is so great.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Uh, and, and you've got Green Lantern and it's a jerky Green Lantern, which is great.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And then Hawkgirl and they all have their kind of like interactions together.

01:15:09 ◼   ► That part is really fun too.

01:15:10 ◼   ► So Superman, really good movie.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Uh, highly recommend.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Turns out James Gunn can make a good superhero movie.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Like if we didn't know it already, I think actually it turns out that James Gunn is a flexible

01:15:21 ◼   ► enough director to also get the material for Guardians of the Galaxy and get the material

01:15:27 ◼   ► for Superman and realize, and, and, and he did this, he did the Suicide Squad, the second

01:15:32 ◼   ► Suicide Squad, the Suicide Squad, I guess.

01:15:34 ◼   ► The good one.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Um, and then thematically, like you got, you got one that's kind of dark, one that's

01:15:40 ◼   ► really dark.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And then you've got Superman.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And the fact is he has range.

01:15:43 ◼   ► He understands the tonal range necessary for that character.

01:15:48 ◼   ► And so Superman does not go places that you might think from James Gunn.

01:15:53 ◼   ► It goes some places you'd think, but other places it, it, it knows what Superman is and

01:15:58 ◼   ► what he represents and why he's a good character and not a character who previous Superman,

01:16:05 ◼   ► directors sometimes treat him as a very boring character.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And that's the wrong take to have.

01:16:09 ◼   ► If you're going to direct a Superman movie also on this list, the winner for best animated

01:16:13 ◼   ► feature at the Oscars this year was flow.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Uh, it is a dialogue list movie about animals in a flood.

01:16:19 ◼   ► It includes the greatest lemur.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And, oh, there's another great lemur and a capybara are in it.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Amazing.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And it's about a cat.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Uh, and it goes some weird places and I love it.

01:16:31 ◼   ► It looks, does it look like a very long video game that you don't play a little bit?

01:16:36 ◼   ► They made it entirely in blender, but like, it's a really good movie.

01:16:38 ◼   ► I made the movie in blender in blender.

01:16:40 ◼   ► The entire movie is in blender.

01:16:42 ◼   ► And it won the Oscar.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Wow.

01:16:44 ◼   ► That's good for blender.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:16:47 ◼   ► It is good for blender.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Um, it's good.

01:16:49 ◼   ► It's real good.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And, uh, and this is a movie that I think people haven't seen because the title is probably

01:16:55 ◼   ► a turnoff, but there is a movie called my old ass.

01:16:59 ◼   ► The concept of the movie is that, um, that Aubrey Plaza is an adult 39 years old.

01:17:13 ◼   ► And, um, and that same, when she was 18, she's played by a different actress and she

01:17:20 ◼   ► gets high on mushrooms and, uh, sees her future self basically like this.

01:17:25 ◼   ► The premise is she gets high on mushrooms and what she ends up seeing is she has a conversation

01:17:30 ◼   ► in a series of ongoing conversations with her future self and her future self is like,

01:17:33 ◼   ► you get the sense that there are terrible things happening in the future, but the future self

01:17:38 ◼   ► is trying to insulate her past self from them.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Uh, it is a really great movie.

01:17:44 ◼   ► I highly recommend it.

01:17:45 ◼   ► People should see it.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It's kind of like the movie it's most like, and maybe this will sell some people on it is

01:17:52 ◼   ► a rival.

01:17:53 ◼   ► And I know that seems unlikely, but it is, it's like a rival.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Um, but instead of spaceships, there's a boat.

01:18:01 ◼   ► So my old ass, good movie overlooked.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Definitely worth your time.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Uh, on my list is Superman.

01:18:09 ◼   ► I loved Superman.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Uh, I was so excited that Superman and fantastic four were coming out like so close to each

01:18:16 ◼   ► other.

01:18:17 ◼   ► And to me it was like, well, Superman is, is, you know, it's going to be a good time, but

01:18:21 ◼   ► I'm going to fantastic four.

01:18:23 ◼   ► I was so hyped for fantastic four.

01:18:25 ◼   ► I liked that movie.

01:18:26 ◼   ► It's a good man.

01:18:27 ◼   ► I loved Superman.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I cried like three times watching Superman.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Like there is something about this movie that is so good.

01:18:37 ◼   ► And James Gunn understands how to like hit an emotional moment with an image and a piece

01:18:42 ◼   ► of music.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And they use the Superman theme in this movie, maybe better than any title theme I've ever

01:18:48 ◼   ► heard used in a movie.

01:18:49 ◼   ► They just, every time they use it, it is perfectly used and they use it in a perfect way.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Like this whole movie, I loved it.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I love this movie.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Makes you want to stand up and salute.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Yep.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It absolutely does make you feel like that.

01:19:04 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Thunderbolts, I had forgotten, came out this year until I saw it in your list.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And I also really liked this movie.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Again, I would probably want to rewatch this before I want to rewatch Fantastic Four.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I liked Fantastic Four.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I was just let down by Fantastic Four because I wanted to be blown away by Fantastic Four and

01:19:24 ◼   ► I wasn't.

01:19:24 ◼   ► I liked it a lot, but I think Thunderbolts is the best Marvel movie of the year by far, which

01:19:30 ◼   ► is not what I, this is the thing, it's all about anticipation.

01:19:34 ◼   ► I was very surprised going into Thunderbolts and I just thought it was great.

01:19:37 ◼   ► Fantastic Four was good though.

01:19:38 ◼   ► It was really good.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I don't think it was a bad movie.

01:19:40 ◼   ► No, it's not.

01:19:41 ◼   ► But this was an expectations not met kind of scenario for me.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:45 ◼   ► But unfortunately for Fantastic Four, my expectations were incredibly high and didn't meet that.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And then F1.

01:19:53 ◼   ► I loved F1.

01:19:54 ◼   ► I thought it was a really great action movie of the kind that they aren't really made anymore.

01:20:00 ◼   ► And I think that they did a good job of it.

01:20:03 ◼   ► I think technically it was very impressive.

01:20:05 ◼   ► And it ticked all the boxes that I wanted ticked for a movie like this.

01:20:09 ◼   ► I really enjoyed this film.

01:20:11 ◼   ► We watched F1 the same day that we watched, we re-watched Top Gun for an incomparable episode.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And then that night we watched F1.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So it was really, and I was struck by how similar they are.

01:20:27 ◼   ► They are movies that are more about, and you know, and Tom Cruise did a, did a racing movie, Days of Thunder, but like where they tried to do Top Gun but racing.

01:20:37 ◼   ► But F1 feels very much like Top Gun but racing in the same way that, you know, Brad Pitt is great and he holds it together just like Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer do in Top Gun.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But the point of the movie in Top Gun is that there are planes flying around.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And the point of the movie in F1 is that there are cars.

01:20:58 ◼   ► And there are some shots in F1 that I kept thinking this is doing to me what Top Gun did.

01:21:04 ◼   ► There are some shots in F1 where you're in kind of like behind the driver in the car and you're looking through the windshield and crazy things are happening on the track right in front of you.

01:21:13 ◼   ► It's just like, oh my God, like this is what movies were made for, right?

01:21:17 ◼   ► On one level, on the pure, not on themes and et cetera, et cetera, not on that level.

01:21:25 ◼   ► On the level of pure motion picture, what can it do to an audience to excite them with sound and visuals?

01:21:35 ◼   ► There are a few moments in F1 where I'm like, oh, look at that.

01:21:39 ◼   ► Look at they did that.

01:21:40 ◼   ► And I, you know, I think I didn't love it because I think I'm part of it was the comparison to Top Gun, which I actually think is a better movie because it's even more impressive.

01:21:48 ◼   ► But, uh, the original, um, but they're both of a kind in a way where it's like, I appreciate the filmmaking here and I didn't, you know, for it to be transcendent, that amazing visual stuff needs to be kind of like coupled with a really great story.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And I thought that the F1 story was fine.

01:22:04 ◼   ► It's not a bad movie.

01:22:05 ◼   ► It's a good movie.

01:22:06 ◼   ► But like some of those visuals are incredible.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Uh, I saw it in IMAX, like one of the huge IMAX screens, like it's one of the screens that they show 70 millimeter IMAX on, uh, it was, it was intense.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I love that movie.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Uh, the Upgradians voted with 13.1% for Sinners, 11.9% for F1 and one battle after another at 11.1%.

01:22:31 ◼   ► I've got Sinners on my list.

01:22:33 ◼   ► I guess I got one battle on my list as well, but Sinners is, is like on my list of the next couple of movies I need to see.

01:22:39 ◼   ► And I just haven't seen it.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Me too.

01:22:41 ◼   ► A part of that is I'm not sure whether Lauren wants to watch it or not.

01:22:43 ◼   ► So I gotta, I gotta really ascertain that because she may not be, uh, interested in a movie that's got some of that content in it that might turn her off.

01:22:51 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:22:52 ◼   ► But I've got, I've got Sinners on my, on my list and it sounds great.

01:22:55 ◼   ► So I, I don't, I just haven't seen it.

01:22:57 ◼   ► What do we want to make as our movie of the year?

01:23:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:23:03 ◼   ► What would you vote for here?

01:23:04 ◼   ► Superman?

01:23:06 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I'm okay with that.

01:23:10 ◼   ► I'm okay with that.

01:23:11 ◼   ► And then F1 and Thunderbolts.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I was just, I was so blown away by Superman.

01:23:16 ◼   ► I was very surprised at how good that movie was.

01:23:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:19 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Marketing campaign of the year goes to Thunderbolts though.

01:23:24 ◼   ► If we did that, that was the marketing campaign for that was very fun.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:28 ◼   ► I still think a lot of people just gave it a skip and they shouldn't.

01:23:30 ◼   ► You should go back and watch it.

01:23:31 ◼   ► It's good.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Favorite TV show.

01:23:34 ◼   ► Jason, what have you got for us?

01:23:36 ◼   ► Got a big list here.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Good year for TV.

01:23:38 ◼   ► Good year for new TV.

01:23:39 ◼   ► The pit on HBO max starring Noah Wiley brought back the ER style hospital drama.

01:23:48 ◼   ► I know there's a lawsuit, but like he's playing a different character, but, and, and it's really

01:23:51 ◼   ► kind of taken a modern take on, on this.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And I think a lot of other streamers are going to try and replicate it because it's this idea that you can get 15 episodes a year out of a show instead of eight or six every two years is a good one.

01:24:18 ◼   ► And they killed it.

01:24:19 ◼   ► It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's emotional.

01:24:21 ◼   ► It's pulse pounding.

01:24:22 ◼   ► It is like, there's so much life and death, life and death drama and human drama to be found in intense medical situations.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And the pit knows what it's doing.

01:24:32 ◼   ► There are a bunch of, you know, the premise is similar to ER in the sense that, and, and to ERs in general and emergency rooms in general, which is you've got attending physicians who are like the bosses, but then you've also got a bunch of people who are like interns and medical students who are also working.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And so you get young people who are being exposed to these things for the first time, you've got people who are a little more jaded, and then you've got kind of like the senior people who are often are really jaded, but also can be wise.

01:24:59 ◼   ► A really good combination from Noah Wiley.

01:25:01 ◼   ► He was the fresh faced medical student in ER, and he is the grizzled veteran here.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Great performance.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Great show.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Loved it to death.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Coming back next month, coming back in a few weeks for another extended run.

01:25:15 ◼   ► So I love that too, that they can make more of this show.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Still not available.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Not available in the UK.

01:25:20 ◼   ► So HBO Max, unbelievably, is launching here in March.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And for some reason, they're holding the pit for that.

01:25:28 ◼   ► They're holding it.

01:25:28 ◼   ► Even though they're continuing their deal with Sky as well, which has some shows.

01:25:33 ◼   ► I don't know why the pit has been kept in this limbo, but it is.

01:25:38 ◼   ► So at some point, I'll watch the pit, and I'll look forward to it.

01:25:40 ◼   ► Maybe I'll have two seasons.

01:25:41 ◼   ► You'll have 30 episodes to watch by then, yeah.

01:25:42 ◼   ► That'd be good for me.

01:25:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Pluribus.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:25:46 ◼   ► On Apple TV.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Yep.

01:25:47 ◼   ► I love it.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Fantastic.

01:25:51 ◼   ► The whole thing really makes you think.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Looks great.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Interesting characters.

01:25:56 ◼   ► Another, you know, it's just Vince Gilligan doing his thing.

01:26:00 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Love it.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Great performance by Ray Seahorn.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Just good stuff.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Ludwig, which actually came out in 24 in the UK, but it hit the US in 25.

01:26:12 ◼   ► This is David Mitchell as a puzzle creator whose identical twin brother is a detective who solves

01:26:19 ◼   ► crimes.

01:26:19 ◼   ► His brother goes missing.

01:26:21 ◼   ► They make the bad decision of replacing him, pretending to be his brother.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And so he doesn't know anything about police work, but he does know how to solve puzzles.

01:26:29 ◼   ► And David Mitchell is so funny.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And it is, they're good mysteries, but also just kind of ridiculous at the same time.

01:26:38 ◼   ► It was a real find.

01:26:39 ◼   ► David Lohr recommended it on the Incomparables best of last year episode.

01:26:43 ◼   ► And a bunch of us, like, then we're like, okay, I'll watch that.

01:26:45 ◼   ► That feels something like David Lohr would like.

01:26:47 ◼   ► That feels like a David Lohr TV show.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I mean, it's a mystery kind of thing, but it's so good.

01:26:52 ◼   ► I just, it's so good.

01:26:53 ◼   ► So it's on BritBox in the US and BBC in the UK.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So you can just check it, check it out.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So good.

01:26:58 ◼   ► It's like six episodes.

01:26:59 ◼   ► It's, it goes by fast, but it's exactly my jam.

01:27:02 ◼   ► British TV.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Exactly my jam.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Severance.

01:27:04 ◼   ► They did it, Mike.

01:27:06 ◼   ► They made another season of Severance and they didn't blow it.

01:27:09 ◼   ► I know.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Seriously, a very hard task that they succeeded.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:14 ◼   ► And I mean, it sounds like they spent a lot of money to make that because it seems like

01:27:19 ◼   ► they reshot a bunch of stuff at the end.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:21 ◼   ► They had to fix a bunch of stuff.

01:27:22 ◼   ► They brought up Bo Willimon to run season three and he ended up having to run the back half

01:27:26 ◼   ► of season two in order to get it where they wanted it to be, but they did, they did get

01:27:30 ◼   ► it there.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And you know, there's one episode of the season that I didn't like, but most of them I really

01:27:34 ◼   ► liked and I feel like they carried it off and it's not, I mean, of course season one was

01:27:39 ◼   ► so great, but like, honestly, at the end of season one, I was like, this is amazing.

01:27:43 ◼   ► This was an amazing ride, but I also had part of me that was like, I'm a little worried

01:27:47 ◼   ► about whether they can carry this off going forward because they're going to have to

01:27:50 ◼   ► complexify the world and the details and the characters.

01:27:54 ◼   ► And are they going to be able to do that without losing the magic?

01:27:57 ◼   ► And the answer is that they did.

01:27:58 ◼   ► We'll see if they can do it for season three, but they did it for season two.

01:28:01 ◼   ► It really, they killed it.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And, um, I, I forgot that this was this year.

01:28:07 ◼   ► And then I was reading one of these stories that this book, this TV show is based on.

01:28:12 ◼   ► And I realized that it was this year.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And I want to give a shout out to another Apple show murder bot based on the series of novellas

01:28:19 ◼   ► by Martha Wells about a killer robot that becomes, uh, is freed from its servitude and has to figure

01:28:27 ◼   ► out how to navigate the world.

01:28:29 ◼   ► It is a sci-fi comedy.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Um, it is both a good sci-fi show and a funny show about humanity.

01:28:38 ◼   ► And yes, the, the killer robot teaches us all about humanity.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Um, it's, uh, it's, it's a human annoyed robot.

01:28:46 ◼   ► It, it wears like a mask and stuff to look like a robot, but like, then it takes off the mask

01:28:50 ◼   ► and it's just a person, uh, and that deeply disturbs the other humans.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Cause it's not a human, it's a person, but not a human.

01:28:59 ◼   ► And what does that mean?

01:29:01 ◼   ► And like, so it's got some real depth to it while also being fun and exciting.

01:29:05 ◼   ► So like, it's right up my alley.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Murder bot highly recommend.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It's great.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Uh, I will echo severance, which is brilliant.

01:29:12 ◼   ► Loved it.

01:29:13 ◼   ► Loved every second of it.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Great show expertly done incredible performances all around, like wonderful.

01:29:21 ◼   ► Uh, but my show of the year was the studio.

01:29:23 ◼   ► Uh, I think the studio was a creative tour de force.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Yes.

01:29:28 ◼   ► It was a very like, do you like Hollywood type show, right?

01:29:34 ◼   ► Like it, I think that that helps.

01:29:36 ◼   ► Like if you care about how movies and TV are made, you're going to enjoy this more, but I

01:29:40 ◼   ► don't think that is a prerequisite to enjoying the show.

01:29:43 ◼   ► But I think there's a lot of inside jokes, um, that, that you would enjoy.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Like basically if you listen to the town, which is a podcast that we

01:29:50 ◼   ► love and recommend.

01:29:51 ◼   ► And I think as a previous favorite podcast winner, uh, then you will love the studio.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Uh, but I think that it is just fantastic.

01:29:58 ◼   ► Um, every little thing you see about how the show was made only elevates it in my mind.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Uh, but irrespective of all of the technical stuff, it is just a very fun, funny, entertaining

01:30:09 ◼   ► watch, uh, with great casting the whole way through fantastic guest performances.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I adored this show.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant stuff.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Great show.

01:30:21 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted for Pluribus at 21.5%.

01:30:25 ◼   ► I should say, I haven't finished it yet, by the way.

01:30:27 ◼   ► Um, so I, it's not going to get nominated by me because I haven't seen it.

01:30:30 ◼   ► We're only a few episodes in, uh, Severance at 18.2% and The Studio at 7.4%.

01:30:37 ◼   ► Um, I think maybe you wouldn't put The Studio as the winner.

01:30:44 ◼   ► It's not in my top five.

01:30:45 ◼   ► It is in my top ten, but it's not in my top five.

01:30:47 ◼   ► But I would be very happy to put Severance as the winner.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Yeah, let's put Severance at the top.

01:30:54 ◼   ► Because we've ever once got it on everybody's list.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Um, and what do we want to do as our runner-ups?

01:30:57 ◼   ► Um.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Pluribus?

01:31:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:05 ◼   ► No?

01:31:06 ◼   ► We can do Pluribus in The Studio.

01:31:07 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:31:08 ◼   ► Studio?

01:31:08 ◼   ► All Apple.

01:31:09 ◼   ► Wow.

01:31:10 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:31:10 ◼   ► We spoke about this in the draft.

01:31:11 ◼   ► They're doing great stuff over there.

01:31:13 ◼   ► They are.

01:31:14 ◼   ► They are.

01:31:14 ◼   ► All right.

01:31:15 ◼   ► It's your time to shine, Jason Snell.

01:31:16 ◼   ► Favorite book?

01:31:17 ◼   ► All right.

01:31:18 ◼   ► Mike doesn't read.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Correct.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I did like Apple in China, a book that you should read.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I will.

01:31:25 ◼   ► I absolutely will read that book.

01:31:26 ◼   ► You know, when you're trapped under a baby and it's five in the morning, one thing you

01:31:29 ◼   ► could do is read.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I was trapped under a baby at five o'clock in the morning, but what I didn't want to do

01:31:33 ◼   ► last night was stimulate my brain in any way because I wanted to go to sleep so I could

01:31:36 ◼   ► record the upgrades today.

01:31:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:38 ◼   ► I had a moment where I realized that I was chatting with Mike and he was awake in the morning and I

01:31:43 ◼   ► had not gone to bed yet.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Yep.

01:31:45 ◼   ► It was rough, rough stuff.

01:31:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:46 ◼   ► I just watched a football game and then there's Mike texting and I'm like, Mike, what's going

01:31:50 ◼   ► on?

01:31:50 ◼   ► And I'm like, there's a baby.

01:31:52 ◼   ► What's particularly bad is if me, you, and Steven are in the group chat together talking

01:31:57 ◼   ► at the same time because I can wake most mornings I'm awake before you could conceivably have

01:32:02 ◼   ► gone to bed.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:32:04 ◼   ► But this was like, no, we're, we're middle of the night territory now.

01:32:07 ◼   ► That's, that's what it was.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Cause it was like nine 30 here.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:11 ◼   ► And Steven was still up late.

01:32:12 ◼   ► Steven was still up.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Steven was still up.

01:32:14 ◼   ► And you were, you were awake.

01:32:16 ◼   ► And I was awake.

01:32:17 ◼   ► Um, anyway, Apple in China.

01:32:19 ◼   ► It's good.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Patrick McGee.

01:32:20 ◼   ► If you're looking for nonfiction about Apple, that is the pick.

01:32:23 ◼   ► It is one of the best books written about Apple, uh, ever.

01:32:26 ◼   ► I got to read it.

01:32:27 ◼   ► I got to read it.

01:32:27 ◼   ► Great, great details.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Just amazing details.

01:32:30 ◼   ► He, what, what a good job.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I can be one of those podcasters that says it's like what they say in Apple in China.

01:32:36 ◼   ► Cause I hear that all over the place now.

01:32:37 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:32:38 ◼   ► From the Apple in China book.

01:32:39 ◼   ► They say that this happens.

01:32:40 ◼   ► I could also be one of those podcasters.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:43 ◼   ► Um, or I don't know.

01:32:45 ◼   ► Is there an audio book?

01:32:46 ◼   ► Get the audio book.

01:32:47 ◼   ► There is.

01:32:48 ◼   ► And that's how I would do it.

01:32:49 ◼   ► That is how I would do it.

01:32:50 ◼   ► But right now, Jason, I'm re-listening.

01:32:53 ◼   ► into a bunch of the rest of this history.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Cause I can't be stopped.

01:32:55 ◼   ► I'll talk about this in a minute.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Okay.

01:32:58 ◼   ► Um, two best books I read this year are Moonbound by Robin Sloan.

01:33:05 ◼   ► Moonbound.

01:33:07 ◼   ► So this is the author of, uh, Sourdough, which was kind of like a tech industry book.

01:33:13 ◼   ► That's fun and weird.

01:33:16 ◼   ► Um, and, uh, Oh, Mr. Penumbra is 24 hour bookstore, which is also a very good book that I really

01:33:22 ◼   ► enjoyed, but Moonbound, um, it's a wild book.

01:33:27 ◼   ► It is sort of sci-fi and a little bit fantasy.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Um, it's got, it's set in the far future, um, but it's got some concepts from the present or

01:33:36 ◼   ► the near future mixed in.

01:33:38 ◼   ► There are dragons on the moon.

01:33:40 ◼   ► There are sentient robots that have their bodies distributed all over earth, but they have one

01:33:46 ◼   ► consciousness.

01:33:46 ◼   ► There's a character who's on a quest, very fantasy-like.

01:33:50 ◼   ► Um, there is a, a secret spaceship that, that, uh, that is revealed at an interesting time.

01:33:58 ◼   ► There is a character who's basically like an Instagram influencer from the 21st century

01:34:02 ◼   ► who just appears on the scene.

01:34:03 ◼   ► You're like, what?

01:34:03 ◼   ► It's bananas and great.

01:34:06 ◼   ► I loved it.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Moonbound, uh, Robin Sloan, highly recommended.

01:34:09 ◼   ► And then the other book I want to recommend is Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz.

01:34:14 ◼   ► That's a great name.

01:34:15 ◼   ► I've, I've read a bunch of their stuff.

01:34:17 ◼   ► Um, this is really good.

01:34:19 ◼   ► It's short.

01:34:21 ◼   ► It's basically a novella and it is cozy.

01:34:24 ◼   ► It is a very nice story about a bunch of robots in the mid 21st century after a kind

01:34:32 ◼   ► of apocalyptic civil war in San Francisco.

01:34:35 ◼   ► Cozy.

01:34:36 ◼   ► But it is, this is what I'm saying is, but so, so the, the world around them is strange

01:34:41 ◼   ► and a little bit disturbing, but in the end, what are the robots want to do?

01:34:45 ◼   ► These sentient robots?

01:34:46 ◼   ► All they want to do is open a noodle shop and make noodles for people.

01:34:49 ◼   ► That's all they want to do.

01:34:50 ◼   ► Are there any people though?

01:34:51 ◼   ► There are people.

01:34:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:53 ◼   ► It's not, no, there's people.

01:34:55 ◼   ► There was like a, there's like a civil war.

01:34:56 ◼   ► So California is now its own country and they're like, they're, they're, some of these robots

01:35:00 ◼   ► used to be war robots, but now they just want to make noodles and like, and there, there's

01:35:04 ◼   ► some plot stuff that goes on, but like in the end, like how, um, Travis Baldry wrote

01:35:09 ◼   ► a book, uh, called, what was that called?

01:35:13 ◼   ► Legends and Lattes.

01:35:14 ◼   ► That was basically a fantasy novel about, uh, uh, a warrior, but really what she wants to

01:35:21 ◼   ► do is open a coffee shop.

01:35:22 ◼   ► This is like that, except it's a, it's more sci-fi because it's about robots, but it's the

01:35:27 ◼   ► same idea that robots just want to open a noodle shop in San Francisco.

01:35:31 ◼   ► That's all they want to do.

01:35:32 ◼   ► They have to deal with mean review bombers who give them bad reviews online.

01:35:37 ◼   ► Oh, it's great.

01:35:38 ◼   ► I love it.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Um, automatic noodle by Emily Newitz.

01:35:42 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted for Apple in China by Patrick McGee at 10%.

01:35:47 ◼   ► The Cory Doctorow book, the title that I don't want to say on the show is 2.9% of the vote.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Also, it's just a phrase that really annoys me.

01:35:55 ◼   ► It just really annoys me.

01:35:56 ◼   ► People have really, have really, uh, they've taken that one.

01:36:00 ◼   ► Oh, and it's just not a good phrase and like, I just don't like it.

01:36:04 ◼   ► And sometimes you can make your point without using that language.

01:36:08 ◼   ► And people misuse it too.

01:36:10 ◼   ► It's just, yeah, it's too clever by half.

01:36:11 ◼   ► I never liked it.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:13 ◼   ► Anyway, so that one's not winning.

01:36:14 ◼   ► And everything is tuberculosis by John Green, also at 2.9%.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Uh, what, what would you like to be the winner of the category, Jason?

01:36:23 ◼   ► Uh, I think it is going to be Moonbound.

01:36:27 ◼   ► Love it.

01:36:28 ◼   ► Moonbound.

01:36:29 ◼   ► Congratulations to Robin Sloan.

01:36:30 ◼   ► Uh, great book.

01:36:31 ◼   ► And then Automatic Noodle and Apple in China are our runners up.

01:36:35 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:36:36 ◼   ► This is your list.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Cause I can, you know, I, I get to choose and I'm not gonna, I know there's a tech nonfiction

01:36:44 ◼   ► book about Apple that we could make the winner, but I'm just not gonna, it's a good book though.

01:36:47 ◼   ► People should read it.

01:36:50 ◼   ► Favorite Podcast.

01:36:50 ◼   ► There are two Lifetime Achievement Award winners in the Favorite Podcast category.

01:36:55 ◼   ► That is ATP, the Accidental Tech Podcast, from when we had a Favorite Tech Podcast category,

01:37:01 ◼   ► but we folded those together over time.

01:37:02 ◼   ► And The Flophouse, which was also a Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Jason, what are your nominations for Favorite Podcast of 2025?

01:37:12 ◼   ► Well, my overcast tells me that the podcast I listened to the most this year is The Rest is History.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Yes.

01:37:18 ◼   ► And that's accurate because I love The Rest is History.

01:37:21 ◼   ► It is the best.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Um, and then my other nominees are Connected, which I still listen to as well.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It's a very nice podcast.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:37:31 ◼   ► And I want to, uh, do a shout out to the Crash Course Podcast, The Universe, which is, uh,

01:37:42 ◼   ► it's a limited, like, nine-episode series.

01:37:45 ◼   ► It came out last year, but I found it this year, so it counts.

01:37:48 ◼   ► It's Katie Mack, the astrophysicist, who has been on, she was, she was on the Top Gun episode

01:37:55 ◼   ► of the Incomparable, which was great because there's somebody who has a PhD in astrophysics

01:37:59 ◼   ► in that, in that movie, and so, and there are people who fly planes, and Katie does both.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Oh, that's great.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Um, anyway, Katie, uh, theoretical astrophysicist, wrote a book about the end of the universe,

01:38:10 ◼   ► and she walks John Green through how the universe came to be and all the, all the way it works

01:38:18 ◼   ► and all the way into the far future and how it will end over the course of nine episodes,

01:38:22 ◼   ► and John Green comes from a place that I think listeners will appreciate because he comes not

01:38:27 ◼   ► understanding a lot of this stuff and having Katie explain it to him and asking a bunch

01:38:32 ◼   ► of questions and being upset by some of the facts that come out and then being encouraged

01:38:36 ◼   ► by some of the facts that come out, so, um, so we're getting the Green Brothers in the

01:38:41 ◼   ► Upgrade East this year, um, but, but, uh, Crash Course Pods, the universe, really great podcast

01:38:48 ◼   ► that I enjoyed this year as well, so those are my three that I picked.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Uh, my nomination is The Rest is History, uh, is number one.

01:38:55 ◼   ► The Rest is History is one of my favorite podcasts of all time at this point.

01:39:00 ◼   ► Um, I have actually started re-listening to episodes I listened to a year ago.

01:39:06 ◼   ► I don't think I have ever done that to a podcast.

01:39:09 ◼   ► Um, basically, one of my other favorite podcasts that I listen to every day is a way for holiday

01:39:15 ◼   ► break, so I have less stuff to listen to, and I was looking for some comfort podcasting,

01:39:20 ◼   ► like, just things that, like, I didn't want news, I wanted, you know, it's the holidays,

01:39:24 ◼   ► just, you know, so what I decided I'd listen to was Assassination of JFK.

01:39:27 ◼   ► I was like, it was a comfort, I guess.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Easy listening.

01:39:31 ◼   ► But it's incredible.

01:39:33 ◼   ► So I listened to that, then I listened to America in 68 again, then I listened to Britain

01:39:39 ◼   ► in 76, I think, is the series, and then I just listened to the, um, the assassination of

01:39:49 ◼   ► Franz Ferdinand, and the lead-in to, uh, the First World War.

01:39:54 ◼   ► And basically, I'm, I essentially ended up reminiscing on me of a year ago.

01:39:59 ◼   ► I listened to all of these a year ago when I first discovered the show.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Um, and I have, I've never done this before, like, re-listened to, but, like, it's so re-listenable

01:40:08 ◼   ► still, because now I'm listening to those shows, understanding a lot of the references I didn't

01:40:14 ◼   ► get, because I've now listened to a lot more of the history of the show.

01:40:18 ◼   ► It's just perfect.

01:40:19 ◼   ► I still have things in their archive that I want to listen to.

01:40:21 ◼   ► Me too.

01:40:22 ◼   ► Me too.

01:40:22 ◼   ► That I would pick out before, although I, I'm running out, but there are still ones that

01:40:26 ◼   ► are in there.

01:40:26 ◼   ► Oh, I do too.

01:40:27 ◼   ► This was purely a...

01:40:28 ◼   ► You just wanted to have the re-listen experience.

01:40:30 ◼   ► I wanted an easy thing to listen to.

01:40:32 ◼   ► That you'd already heard.

01:40:33 ◼   ► A lot of those.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a great podcast.

01:40:35 ◼   ► I mean, I've recommended it to so many people, and, you know, everybody seems to go, oh, oh,

01:40:40 ◼   ► yeah, actually.

01:40:41 ◼   ► I get so many people who come back to me and say, I can't, I can't believe it.

01:40:44 ◼   ► And yes, it was Apple's, it was Apple's podcast of the year, but it was our podcast of the

01:40:47 ◼   ► year last year too.

01:40:48 ◼   ► So we were there first, and it is great, and I highly recommend it.

01:40:53 ◼   ► And I recommend, it's actually a little like the Flophouse, where I'll say, go in the archive

01:40:59 ◼   ► and find a subject you're interested in.

01:41:00 ◼   ► The one that hooked me was the American Revolution, because it was British historians talking about

01:41:04 ◼   ► the American Revolution, and they had a totally different viewpoint than any American school

01:41:08 ◼   ► child has ever heard.

01:41:09 ◼   ► And I've been thinking about those episodes a lot while watching Ken Burns' The American

01:41:14 ◼   ► Revolution documentary, and noting the way that it's framed, and that there are things in it

01:41:19 ◼   ► that I'm like, aha, that is, the rest is history, he's made that same point, that, you know,

01:41:26 ◼   ► sometimes it's Parliament and not the King.

01:41:28 ◼   ► The King was an easy punching bag for Americans who wanted political support, but Parliament

01:41:33 ◼   ► had a lot to say about it too.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah, really interesting podcast, totally worth your time.

01:41:40 ◼   ► Find a subject that interests you, and then dive deep, because those guys, Dominic and

01:41:45 ◼   ► Tom, the hosts, are historians.

01:41:47 ◼   ► They're great storytellers.

01:41:50 ◼   ► Yes.

01:41:50 ◼   ► And they do their...

01:41:52 ◼   ► They have a great relationship.

01:41:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a very funny relationship, and they do a great job of, like, one of them takes

01:41:59 ◼   ► the lead in doing the research for the episode, and then the other one kind of, like, chimes

01:42:02 ◼   ► in, and it works.

01:42:04 ◼   ► It's just very effective to get their perspective on this stuff.

01:42:07 ◼   ► That's why the show works so well.

01:42:09 ◼   ► They just did a Jack the Ripper series, which was brilliant.

01:42:11 ◼   ► It's great.

01:42:12 ◼   ► It really is great.

01:42:13 ◼   ► It's just a brilliant, brilliant show.

01:42:14 ◼   ► I also want to recommend...

01:42:16 ◼   ► So, I mentioned one of my favorite shows is off right now, it's the Kind of Funny Games

01:42:20 ◼   ► Cast.

01:42:20 ◼   ► This is a show, it's about video games, but I ostensibly just listen to this show every

01:42:25 ◼   ► day.

01:42:25 ◼   ► It's a daily show, because I just love the relationship between the people.

01:42:30 ◼   ► Like, there's, like, it's like a group of 11 guys, and it's like a rotating panel, and

01:42:35 ◼   ► I just enjoy so much the ways in which they interact with each other.

01:42:39 ◼   ► And so, I love it.

01:42:41 ◼   ► It's up there as well.

01:42:44 ◼   ► Like, these two are, like, my favorite podcasts, but the rest is history.

01:42:46 ◼   ► It's just, like, a different level of the kind of show and what it is.

01:42:49 ◼   ► I also want to recommend Waveform, which is MKBHD's podcast.

01:42:53 ◼   ► What I like about Waveform, it is a, you know, ostensibly, quote-unquote, new.

01:42:57 ◼   ► It's been around for many years, but, like, a new-ish tech podcast, which is, like, the

01:43:01 ◼   ► types of shows that we make.

01:43:02 ◼   ► It's, like, people that enjoy each other's company talking about tech.

01:43:05 ◼   ► And, like, that is just becoming a rarer and rarer thing in technology podcasting.

01:43:09 ◼   ► And so, I love that they do that, and they do a good job with it.

01:43:12 ◼   ► And, of course, MKS has access to everything.

01:43:14 ◼   ► So, that really helps from a topic-based perspective.

01:43:17 ◼   ► And then, old favorite, The Town.

01:43:19 ◼   ► I still love The Town.

01:43:20 ◼   ► I listen all the time.

01:43:22 ◼   ► I think it's a brilliant show and has been really good the last few months of all of

01:43:26 ◼   ► the wild stuff going on in the entertainment industry.

01:43:28 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted for The Rest is History at 12.7% of the votes, Connected at 11.3% of

01:43:37 ◼   ► the votes, and The Little Podcast That Could Upgrade at 10.6%.

01:43:42 ◼   ► Someone put it in brackets, like, come on, you've got to do it.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And the answer is no, we will never do it.

01:43:50 ◼   ► So, obviously, The Rest is History is the winner for the second time in a row.

01:43:54 ◼   ► It is going to rocket itself into the Lifetime Achievement category, I'm sure.

01:44:00 ◼   ► So, look out for that next year.

01:44:02 ◼   ► What are our runners-up?

01:44:04 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

01:44:06 ◼   ► I want to put Crash Course Pods of the Universe in there.

01:44:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:44:11 ◼   ► Katie and another green in there.

01:44:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:44:17 ◼   ► And then you want to pick one from your list?

01:44:19 ◼   ► Yes, I do.

01:44:21 ◼   ► And I'm going to pick the Kind of Funny Games cast, because that's just a thing that I...

01:44:26 ◼   ► That's for me.

01:44:26 ◼   ► That one's for me.

01:44:27 ◼   ► Love it.

01:44:29 ◼   ► Paul Stephen Hackett.

01:44:30 ◼   ► He had a writing campaign and everything.

01:44:32 ◼   ► It was successful.

01:44:34 ◼   ► Not even nominated.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Connected got up to 11.3.

01:44:36 ◼   ► No, Connected's up there, 11.3%.

01:44:38 ◼   ► That's what we're talking about.

01:44:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, but it's not one of the finalists.

01:44:40 ◼   ► Ah, yes.

01:44:41 ◼   ► It's not one of ours.

01:44:42 ◼   ► Because you asked me what I want to put in there, and you know my rule.

01:44:44 ◼   ► I'm not going to award anything that I do.

01:44:48 ◼   ► I know.

01:44:49 ◼   ► And I wasn't going to push it, because I wanted to put Crash Course Pods of the Universe in there instead.

01:44:54 ◼   ► So there we are.

01:44:55 ◼   ► And there it is.

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01:47:22 ◼   ► Jason, what is your, or what are your favorite Apple products of this year?

01:47:28 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:47:29 ◼   ► That's a tough one.

01:47:30 ◼   ► I think Apple had a kind of low-key good year.

01:47:32 ◼   ► Yep.

01:47:33 ◼   ► Not super dramatic year, but a low-key good year.

01:47:39 ◼   ► And a good example of that is the iPhone 17 Pro,

01:47:42 ◼   ► which they redesigned.

01:47:45 ◼   ► It has a color.

01:47:47 ◼   ► And it just, it's a really nice phone.

01:47:53 ◼   ► A really good design.

01:47:55 ◼   ► They fixed the biggest issue, I think, with the 16 Pro,

01:47:58 ◼   ► which was the heat issues.

01:48:00 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:48:01 ◼   ► I have none of them.

01:48:03 ◼   ► And again, I just want to emphasize they made a Pro phone in orange,

01:48:06 ◼   ► which is incredible.

01:48:09 ◼   ► And they did a great job.

01:48:10 ◼   ► So from a distance, you'd be like,

01:48:14 ◼   ► yeah, it's just another iPhone.

01:48:15 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, but they really killed it.

01:48:17 ◼   ► Also, the iPhone Air, which is a,

01:48:21 ◼   ► I think, an amazing product.

01:48:24 ◼   ► I feel like it feels like the future.

01:48:27 ◼   ► I know there are issues.

01:48:28 ◼   ► People don't like the battery life.

01:48:30 ◼   ► I think the screen, it makes it harder for me to hold it,

01:48:34 ◼   ► but I really do appreciate that larger screen

01:48:36 ◼   ► in this thin and light device.

01:48:39 ◼   ► And using it makes it feel like I'm using future tech,

01:48:45 ◼   ► which is one of the things I really love about technology.

01:48:47 ◼   ► And it makes me excited for what is to come

01:48:49 ◼   ► because they're flexing their muscles here

01:48:51 ◼   ► in a way that they haven't before.

01:48:52 ◼   ► And I think it's going to lead to interesting things next year as well.

01:48:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:57 ◼   ► The iPad Pro M5.

01:48:59 ◼   ► I know it's just an update.

01:49:00 ◼   ► I bought one this year.

01:49:02 ◼   ► I hadn't bought an iPad Pro in a while.

01:49:05 ◼   ► And so I bought the M5 iPad Pro.

01:49:07 ◼   ► And it's like that M4, M5 iPad Pro generation is just so good.

01:49:10 ◼   ► I have the larger one.

01:49:12 ◼   ► So it's the super thin one as well.