544: The 2024 Upgradies
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From Relay, welcome to the 11th Annual Upgradies Awards. This evening's proceedings are brought to you by our broadcast partners, ShareShot, FitBod, and Data Citizens Dialogues. Simulcast from London, England, and Mill Valley, California, I am one of your hosts, Mike Hurley, and joining me is my illustrious co-host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.

Hello, my curly. How are you? Oh, I'm so excited. It's the Upgradies. It's the 11th annual Upgradies, which also means it's the 10th anniversary of the Upgradies. It is. 10th anniversary of the Upgradies. That first Upgradies, I know I mentioned this last year, 10 years ago, I was in my in-laws upper...

like one of their guest bedrooms, uh, at a really uncomfortable desk and a really uncomfortable chair. But I remember it so well because it was like, yeah, I've got this podcast now. I got my new job where I'm doing all this podcast and we're doing these things and I got to go up there and everybody, my whole family and Lauren's whole family, they're all downstairs. And I'm, I'm up, uh, up in a stuffy room doing, uh, doing what turned out to be the, uh,

uh very important milestone of the first upgrade is which at the time i thought well remember at the time i thought this is a little bit silly because i had been coming out of like the eddie awards and all of that and this was it was like this is just you and me and you were like no no man this is going to be amazing and that's why i called it the first annual uh even though you hated that i did hate that because nothing is the first annual anyway i guess what i'm saying is thank you for your vision anytime

It's what makes Upgrade everybody's second favorite podcast. So congratulations to us. Well, we'll find that out later on in the show when we get to the podcast category. I would like to mention for the spoiler adverse out there, something we're going to do this year is we're going to try and get into the show notes every nominee that we mention.

So if there is something that you want to go back and find, maybe it's a podcast or a book that we talk about, we're going to do our best to add everything to the show notes. Usually all I do is add a link to the wonderful Upgradies.com, which has the winners and the two runners up, if there are two runners up in each category. But I'm going to try this year to get everything in there. But the first link in the show notes is Upgradies.com if you want to see the winners later on. But all of the...

nominees will be that we mentioned today will be in the show notes for today's episode yeah

Now, I would like to, as all good awards do, as awards grow, Jason, there has to be like a pre-show or something like that, you know, to try and get all the other awards in. We have a red carpet? Yeah, I guess so. Are we on the red carpet? Oh, I see. This is like the Technical Award Academy award banquet where they send the nerds to get their awards. So we're going to be doing our technical awards because as we say, you know, around this time of year, it's nice to look back and think about

and appreciate the people who help make Upgrade possible because as time has gone on over these 10 years, it has become quite a large team effort to put this show together every single week. So I would like to thank for webdesignofupgraders.com and also all of our scorecards.

uh, the wonderful Zach Knox for the artwork and art direction is, uh, JD Davis and JD did an incredible job with the upgrade his artwork this year in the obvious only way, uh, that it could have gone to, which is all the way to 11, all the way to 11, all the way to 11 for our music, for our special theme and for all of our themes, the wonderful Chris Breen, uh,

Jim Metzendorf for achievements in audio editing, of which they are needed sometimes of us. Similarly, for achievements in video editing, we'd like to thank the wonderful Chip Suddath for Chip's work in putting the video clips and video version of the show together every week. And then for making us cool with the kids, thank you to Jamie Snell for social media assistance. Yep, that's right. We're doing the memes over on TikTok. She was posting things on TikTok.

on social media from my couch last week. That's got to be fun to see, like to see that in action, you know? It's just like things are happening. Mm-hmm. Should we get on to the first award category? I guess so, or we're just going right in. I mean, is there anything more? Is there anything more?

This is like when they do Best Supporting Actress before the first commercial break to keep everybody tied in. I'm sure I've said that before. Anyway, let's do it. Let's do it. So let's start off with the best overall iOS app for 2024. I'll mention that our Lifetime Achievement Award winner in this category is Overcast. Overcast.

in case you are new to the Upgradees, if something wins three times in the same category, we kind of raise it up into the rafters and it will always be mentioned in every Upgradees because this is it. They deserve that, right? But it's to stop the same things every year. Because there are some podcasts and or apps that we may have awarded 10 out of 11 times. We don't talk about that one year if we hadn't otherwise created this. They know what they did. They know what they did.

Now, we also put out a nomination form to the Upgradians, to you, our listeners. And we got hundreds and hundreds, I think it was over a thousand submissions that came in. I would like to give an additional technical award at this point to Jason for writing a script to help me get through those really quickly. It used to take... You're welcome. This year, I think I put together the Upgradians picks and...

It took me the same amount of time to do one category in the way I used to do it as it took me to do the entire thing this time. It used to take me so much work. And so I'm very happy that I don't have to do that anymore. So we're going to go in from bottom to top. I don't know if you'd say ascending order, right? Okay. So with 6% of the Upgradians votes is Ivory.

Actually, for this category, it doesn't matter. Because for... Yeah, I was going to say, ascending from six to six to six. Six to six to six. Oh, it's the mark of the beast. All of the other ones, it goes from lowest to highest. But there were so many, so many apps that... Individual apps nominated here that no one really got a large share of the vote. 6% is flighty and 6% is carrot weather. So that's where the upgradians are. Ivory, flighty, and carrot weather. Jason, what are you thinking?

Well, I want to do a shout out to the new version of Overcast because it can't win in this category. But after some initial pain, I think in general, I am very happy with where it has gone. And I like that Marco has made some progress.

uh changes to it that i like um and added the the you know what you've listened to over the year where i've gotten to see how everybody listens to upgrade the second or third most of all their podcasts very exciting and um so i'll shout out overcast even though it is not eligible and cannot win and um and you know i just i in a span of 10 days i took five flights

And so flighty has been on my mind because there, there were a bunch of big additions to flighty. Plus I find it so useful in general, but they added a bunch of stuff where they're looking at like delays at the incoming airport and the outgoing airport and giving you more detail of why your plane might be delayed. Um, and, and,

It's just really good. And at this point, I don't think I would fly without it. I can track my kids' flights as well. So I know when, like, are their flights going to be delayed? And I knew when Jamie landed back home last night. Like, it's...

So I struggle in this category because I'm using the same old apps most of the time. But Flighty is the one that keeps coming up. And I know that if it wins, it's going to be a lifetime achievement winner. But I'm kind of headed in that direction. What are you thinking, Mike? Oh, it is undoubtedly Flighty for me. In the same way that it has won in the last two years. The app has been around for a

quite an amount of time now, longer than those two years, but over time it just got consistently and consistently better. I mean, last year they added the Apple Watch app, which I was very pleased about, but then this year its overall polish has continued, but then the connection assistant and the delay predictions thing, that is just...

Those are features that to me, especially the delay predictions, is like a dream feature that I just didn't ever really think that they'd be able to add because the amount of data that you would need to do that. But I guess at this point, they have gotten to the point where they have enough people using the app that they're able to use the information that they get along with the information that they get historically from the data providers to build this system to stay like, hey, you're a plane.

hasn't left yet, that means you're probably going to be delayed. Like it's a thing where I can look at it and maybe I can think that's the case, but I don't know, you know, like how long does it take these things to turn around over? But yeah, flighty is...

Just an excellent application. And I do actually really want it to become a Lifetime Achievement Award winner because I think the app is that good. It's one thing I want it to be there. I agree. And I've heard one of the things I want to mention, because I know it comes up when we talk about Flighty, is that it's a fairly expensive subscription.

I agree. Although I think that, I think that you don't have to travel a lot for flighty subscription to be worth it. Also they do like you can buy the little passes and stuff. Yeah. This is where I was going. What I love about it is if you are below the level where it's reasonable that it, you know, it's worth it because you, you fly so much. Um, you can just buy a pass for a trip basically. And, and,

And so they've got a way to, you know, if you don't travel very much, but you're going to be going on a long trip and you want it for this week or this month, you can do that. I love it. It's really smart and it makes it accessible to more people. But yeah, it's a winner. So let's put it in the Hall of Fame.

Let's do it. Or the Lifetime Achievement or whatever it is. Let's just put it in there. Well, that's the Hall of Fame because the Lifetime Achievement Award was a thing we did. I guess we do every 10 Upgradies because we did that last year. I thought that was the other way around, though. Isn't that the Hall of Fame we did last year? Yeah, the Hall of Fame. That's our second episode. This is the Lifetime Achievement Award. They just got a Lifetime Achievement Award. Hall of Fame is a different thing. Flighty, you're banned. You're too good. You're banned from the category now. Indeed. Indeed.

Well, this may actually now open up for either Carrot Weather or Ivory. Hilariously, it's the exact same winners and runner-up last year. Yeah, I know. And so, you know, but look... Really good, though. No, but this is...

like Carrot Weather, for example, has won a bunch of times. And I expect, I could imagine Carrot Weather winning next year and also becoming a Lifetime Achievement Award winner. And to me, these are apps that have been around for long enough and are good enough that they deserve that. And so it makes sense to me that Flyteam would keep winning because it is also probably the best designed iOS app

that I use. And that makes a big difference. I agree. Even down to the way they do their year in review thing, their passable thing, which is actually a really fun feature. The fact that it looks like a passport page. You don't need to do that, but they do. All these little touches make it overall just really a very strong example of what it takes to have a good iOS app. That's why it's there.

Yeah, agreed. I agree. But it's not about just apps that have existed for a long time. There are also new apps. So we're going to now move into the best newcomer iOS app category, of which this year, lots of really good options. So the Upgradians voted thusly with 6% of the vote for Croissant.

7% of the vote for Bellatro. I think that might give a hint for later on that it made it into the app category. It broke out of games. And 10% goes to Delta, which is the emulator app, which every time I read this, I cannot fathom that that was this year.

that Delta came out. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, I believe Delta has been available by other means, but this year it was available in the app store in Europe or everywhere. No, everywhere. Right. Cause they Apple relented and was like, fine, have your emulator everywhere, whatever. Right. And so it made it in. It's true. Right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Where are you sitting? I struggle with this category. Um,

Delta isn't really new, but I like the kind of political statement about it. Bellatro is a game, but I have played it a lot on iPad, especially. Croissant is a fun idea for a cross-posting tool. There are others, and I think it shows that it's trying to get

Off the ground, some of the account management stuff especially is pretty finicky and some of the error handling is, I mean, they're working on it really hard and I like what they're doing with it, but it still, I feel like, has room to grow and improve. So the other one I'm going to throw in the ring from my side, honestly, is passwords. We asked for a long time for a passwords app instead of having it be a setting in iOS. Yeah.

And it is. And it's pretty good. And I am using it. You know, my biggest complaint about passwords is actually I think maybe it was a bug in the beta, but it's too late now, which is that when I imported it from one password, it seems to have imported my original passwords on all of my accounts and not the most recent one that is the current. Right.

So I have to keep 1Password open every now and then because it'll say, oh, this is the wrong password. And I'll go into 1Password and get the right password and put it in and then update the password. It's not ideal. It's not ideal, but I think maybe that was a beta bug. And I haven't gone back and wiped it out. It's too late now. I'm just going to kind of live with it. But I really have liked that integration. I think they did a pretty good job with the passwords app. Anyway, so I'll throw that out there as a possibility. What do you think?

So I have three. One of them I'm going to mention now, which was on my list, which is ShareShot. But they're a sponsor of today's episode now, so that would be peculiar. Oh, yeah. No, that's a good app. Good app. Good app. Yeah. So I will talk about my love of ShareShot when I'm actually doing the ad for ShareShot, which I feel like is probably the best place for that. Yeah.

Then for me, it was Croissant and Delta. So Croissant for me is emblematic of kind of a point in time, which is now, right? There are many social networks now that I'm posting to. And it is an app that has been really, really helpful for me this year. It was indispensable during the podcast-a-thon. I was using a very early beta of it then. I was able to post very quickly and easily. And since, you know, the

there are things for me, which is the promotion of something, which I do want to post everywhere. That's just the world that we're in. And this is an app that I really like that is a native app, which is fairly priced, that I appreciate. And I really like it. And I think for me, it would be my...

the one that I would really push on as like this is an example of a really good like just iOS app that solves a good need very well. But I keep coming back to Delta as a thought of if Delta had come out two months ago,

this would be no question. And that would not be a 10%. That would be significantly more. This app took over the world, but it happened really early in the year. So I think the wave has come down. And I think that is an app which...

I mean, because it had been in development and in forms of release for years, was basically perfect at a 1.0. And when it shipped on the App Store, and now they're able to add things to the app now, and they're working on things that they're adding to the app now, which are wild. Like the ability to, I think this is coming very soon, the ability to be able to play, say, Nintendo DS games.

in multiplayer with multiple phones. Stuff like that is really incredible. And so this was an app that exploded and it was number one and the iPad app was just number one again over Christmas in the US. I saw Riley posting, but it had a big crescendo because now for a lot of people, including me, it's an app that I have on my phone and sometimes I can jump into a game if I want to.

I feel like if we're looking at the year, this is the app, right? Like this is why I think Mac Stories gave it their app of the year. And it's like for similar reasons, like this Delta was, yeah,

it honestly it's historic as an application to have released on the app store like it is a game emulator a thing we never thought was going to happen and not only was it like because there were lots of them this one was really good and so i think i would i think i would lean towards that as the app that we should we should give

Okay, I am going to say that we should make Croissant and ShareShot, even though it's a sponsor, because I love that app, runners up with the, you know, again, asterisk. Yes, it's a sponsor. But seriously, I just forgotten about that. And I have used that a lot on my iPad to do screenshots.

And then Delta should be the winner. I think you're right. I think it says something about this year. And although it's not new, why is it a newcomer? It's because Apple refused to let it in the App Store until now. I'm just going to head this off, right? If an app is in beta for...

two years, does it mean that it can't be a newcomer? No. It wasn't on the App Store. It's now on the App Store. We decide what a newcomer is. We've had all sorts of weird things as newcomers. We've had one app win best newcomer twice. Indeed we have. Indeed we have. So there it is. For all of that it says about Riley's persistence and Apple's policies and how fun it is to have classic game emulators, Delta is the winner.

Yeah, it really is fantastic and well, well, well deserved. This episode of Upgrade, the Upgradees, the 11th annual, is brought to you by ShareShot. We all take screenshots and we often use them to create content or use them to explain something to someone. Showing a screenshot in context on the device that it was taken on looks...

just so much better. And ShareShot is an app that puts your screenshots into device frames and places them over pretty backgrounds. It adds perfect fitting device frames to screenshots for most modern Apple devices, including the Apple Watch,

Apple Max. The Apple Max, Jason, you ever heard of those? The Apple Max? Yeah, is that the M4 Max Apple Max MacBook Max? Apple Watch, Max, iPad, iPhone in many color variants, as well as devices like the Nintendo Switch, the Playdate, and also custom frames that you can make yourself.

No matter where you're using screenshots, in blog posts or documentation, presentation slides, website marketing images, social media to promote apps or your latest home screen, ShareShot gives you beautiful results in seconds. It's designed to be fast and fun. It offers over 40 background styles with thousands of variations, gives you control over the light direction for the shadows, which is wonderful,

wild includes several actions for shortcuts to automate batch framing, integrate system features like keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop a control center widget and more. And it won this year's Mac story selects best design award. So I take and share screenshots of my devices often for the shows that I do. Like for example, say the apps, which is on cortex. And I used share shot this year and I was very pleased. So like I,

It makes my screenshots look better. I think screenshots look better when they do have a device, when they're sitting in a device. Federico has had his Apple Frames that he's done over the years too. What I like about ShareShot is an app that I can go in and tweak really easily and visually, and I love that.

I can say I want the device to look like this. I want it to be my specific iPhone color. And then I want the background to be this color. I want the background to be that color. But one of the ways that I also use it is via their fantastic shortcut support. So I was able to integrate ShareShot into some screenshots that I was using previously. So now I can take, say, four home screens.

and I can run a shortcut on those images that I've taken, and it will frame them all and then lay them in one horizontal image. So I'm able to grab the screenshots, I'm able to make some customization to how they look and frame them all together. It makes my job so much easier, and it makes the screenshots that I share just look so much better. ShareShot is available for iPhone with a desktop class UI available for iPad, and there is a Mac version that is currently in public beta testing and coming soon. To

To take your screenshots up a notch, you can install the app for free. Go to shareshot.app slash upgrade for a download link and an introductory offer for 50% off your first year of a pro subscription. That is shareshot.app slash upgrade for the 50% offer link. Our thanks to ShareShot for their support of this show and all of Relay.

Now, Mike. Yes. Upgrade Plus subscribers will have not heard your ad for ShareShot, but I, as an independent observer, will just point out that ShareShot was a runner-up because it is an excellent screenshot utility that frames your screenshots with the devices, whether it's a Mac or an iPhone or an iPad. I find it very useful for six colors.

It won a Mac Stories Award. They obviously find it useful, too. And so outside of the realm of the ad, which is tricky, right? Like we had it last week. We had a thank you to Lex.games. That was technically an ad, but it was really a thank you. And we had a whole debate about, like, do we put that in the upgrade plus? Are they going to be offended because it's an ad? So I'm just saying here outside of.

of the ad that share shot is neat and congratulations for being a runner up to its developer mark share shot oh is this like neil mime stream and this is the new convention for upgrade is its first name name of app is the person who created it they named it after themselves this is the story and i'm sticking with it so mark share shot well done sir congratulations this is like uh i guess this is like

I'm just going to say ancient times, medieval times or whatever, where you'd be named for the thing you did. You're a blacksmith, so your name is Smith. Schwarzenegger. I don't even know what to say. We're going to move into best overall Mac app now. We have a Lifetime Achievement Award winner for Audio Hijack.

Yeah. In this category, so thank you to Audio Hijack. I want to shout out Audio Hijack because they had a big milestone this year, but we can't award them anything for it, which is they finally, after, and Paul Kavassas told the story on the Rogue Amoeba blog, they finally...

after years of working with Apple and explaining why audio hijack and other audio utilities are important on the Mac, this year they finally got a version of Mac OS that has the entitlements and authorizations required so that you don't have to reboot like eight times and set all of your security settings weird in order to get audio hijack installed. Now you can install it without a reboot. And I believe audio hijack

without even putting in your password, you can install it. So big steps forward for Audio Hijack and getting out of, sort of Apple getting out of its way. But it's a lifetime achievement winner, so it can't win. Sorry, Audio Hijack, sorry. But, you know, I like what we're doing this year, actually, of shouting out things about those apps which would,

that would make them into contention anyway, right? And that is it. Like specifically for this year, I mean, it seems like a small thing, but I think for a lot of people that use Audio Hijack professionally, they're changing equipment, they're installing new versions of operating systems, right? Like they're that kind of user, i.e. me and you, right? And, you know, like we're getting review units, we're getting new hardware to test, et cetera, et cetera. And the, honestly, the,

chaos of installing the app before now through the security restrictions made it really difficult. And I think it is great that they've been able to work to get that fixed. And it has actually taken the work to get that fixed. Yes. So the Upgradians voted thusly for best overall Mac app at 3% of the vote for MimeStream.

4% for Raycast and 4% for Pixelmator Pro. Oh, an Apple product. I don't know what to do with this category. I have four names that I'm going to throw out. So I guess these are my kind of honorable mentions and then we'll figure out what to do here. So I love MimeStream. I still think it's great. It got some updates this year. It's my male client. I think it's really good.

I'm looking forward to that iOS version maybe at some point here. I want to shout out Swift Bar again. I wrote some new Swift Bar things for my home solar power system this year. It's just really great. Right now I'm looking at it. I can see the temperature outside. I know how much power my solar panels are generating, and I know how many people are listening live to Upgrade. And that's all because of Swift Bar.

really, really great utility app for that sort of thing, putting things in your menu bar. I want to shout out RetroBatch from Flying Meat. This is a tool that I use, talk about processing images like with ShareShot. Especially when I'm doing my book, Take Control of Photos,

You know, photos have to be in formats. Like for that book, they need to have a border and they need to be below a certain file size and in a certain format. And I have this a lot. And RetroBatch lets you create basically a, it's like shortcuts kind of. It's like a branching logic tree for your images. And so you can literally save out a droplet onto your desktop and drag and drop images onto it. And it processes them and outputs them in exactly where you want.

Super clever app from the people who brought you Acorn from Gus RetroBatch. Really, he's Gus Acorn, but he also makes RetroBatch. Better than Gus Flying Meat. Yeah, yeah, I know.

please Gus flying meets his father. Um, Downey is the other one I wanted to shout out the venerable, uh, download app. You know, I, I actually subscribe to, um, among other things, what is it? Uh, flop TV, which is the flop houses like, uh,

live show that they do live on a weekend and then they put up an archive that you can watch for a week or something like that. And I want to watch it in Plex at my leisure. I don't want to watch it like on whatever their thing is that's playing on a computer and stuff like that. And so that's one of the many great

legitimate uses for Downy because you can point it at a URL and it will pull down the video file, get it in the right format, and then I can put it on my Plex and watch it at leisure. Really great little app. So those are ones that came to mind beyond the usual suspects and the Hall of Famers. What do you think, Mike? I'm very conflicted this year. This is always the category I struggle with the most. And honestly, the app that has been jumping to mind recently is Pixelmator Pro.

But that feels weird now. I know, right? But I mean, I've been using it to create some graphics for a stream that I'm going to do this week, kind of showing off some journaling stuff. And Pixelmator Pro, for me, is what I want Photoshop to be like 95% of the time, which is significantly more simple and just...

the tools that I want. Like, I don't want all of the photo editing features, right, that Photoshop has. Neither do I want the generative AI stuff that they do, which is very impressive, and I understand why people like it, but it's not what I'm looking for. And I feel that Pixelmator has the power that I want and the tools that I want in a UI that I can really easily understand. Like, genuinely, like we said it at the time, but it is...

abundantly clear why Apple considers this an app that they would want in their arsenal. Like it is, if Apple wanted to make a Photoshop competitor, they would make Pixelmator. That's what they would do. Yeah. And then maybe why they bought it. I have two other kind of creative tools that I will throw in as usual. I mean, if you ask me in my heart of hearts, what the best overall Mac app is, I will say BB Edit. Okay. Every time.

I write in it. I use it as a text utility. It's, you know, I use it for all sorts of text processing, including things like our, our compilation of awards and things. That's where it all started. I love it. And I could give it this award every year. But, you know, so there it is. And I know I mentioned it once before, but affinity designer from Sarah affinity designer to now,

I bought it mostly because I had like two things that I did in Adobe Illustrator that I didn't want to do anymore because I had an old version of Adobe Illustrator and didn't want to pay for the Creative Cloud version or run Illustrator in a virtual machine. And it has since ended up being a tool I use a lot instead of things that I used to do in Photoshop that I thought this is not really appropriate for Photoshop, but I know how to use Photoshop.

And now I build that stuff in Affinity Designer instead. It's very, very good at what it does, which is building graphics. It's got vector tools. It's really good. So I'll throw that in there too. I don't know what we do now. No, this category is a problem. So I would say BBEdit has won before. Mm-hmm.

I believe. Oh, no, it's been nominated. It's been nominated. It's just been nominated. It has never won. Affinity Designer has won in the past and so have a selection of Apple apps. So, I mean, and it's not my my funny thing about Pixelmator is not like I don't want to not award it because it's an Apple app, but it is just like a funny thing that not has not actually happened yet, but is obviously going to happen.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel strongly for Pixelmator, so do the Upgradians, but this is a category like books where I'm never going to push you to

to award something of a Mac app, you know, how many mice it would have or something. I don't know how many mice it would have. I hope enough. I wouldn't want anybody to get angry if they didn't get enough mice. Like, I would say MimeStream, I understand why people love it, and I have loved it in the past, but to me...

an email app that just does Gmail is not really an email app for me. It's a Gmail app, and so it's missing a significant feature that I would need, which is

to also have support for other types of email. And it's one of these things where it's kind of like the iOS version of like, oh, it's coming. It's like, yeah, I know, but we've been saying that for years now. And I understand that it takes time, but we can't keep, for me at least, I can't keep using that as a thing for MimeStream, right? Where it's like, yeah, but it's coming. It's like, yeah, I know it is, I'm sure. It also is completely irrelevant for the Mac app category.

Yeah. But the email part though, I'm talking about like, like using other email, uh, services to, to in that application. Uh,

uh and also as well like i actually i just think the new iphone mail app is really good apple what are you doing just put it on other platforms like i think they've done a pretty good job with the category stuff but yeah we on that we disagree yeah i mean it works for me though like i'll leave it to people can read what joe steel thinks about it on six scholars.com i pretty much agree with him i think it's a disaster but okay um

Everybody uses email differently. Like for me, my email is in Gmail. So MimeStream, personally, MimeStream supporting other email services doesn't matter. But I understand that not everybody uses Gmail, right? So it makes sense. It makes sense. I'm going to accede to the wishes of Mike and the Upgradians, both of whom are against me. And we're going to name Pixelmator Pro the winner. I wouldn't say that nobody is against you here.

I wouldn't really classify it. It's all a conspiracy. I see what's happening here. You and the Upgradians. Did you open, audit the list? Maybe you cooked the books for Pixelmator. It is possible. It's actually something else. It is possible. Pixelmator Pro, I think, as we send it off on its journey inside Apple, who knows what will happen to it.

Let's give it an award and recognize its great service as an indie Mac app. It is actually wild that it has never won.

considering how long it's been around and how good it has been for that whole time. Right. Like that, that is, it's surprising to me that this is an app. This is not, this is an app that we have not awarded in this category before, which is a category you will struggle with. And this is like a great app that's just been sitting there that we never awarded. Right. So I think speaking of which BB edit is the runner up. Yeah. Always, always the bridesmaid. Uh, one of these days there won't be any other apps left and it'll have to still be BB edit cause it's not going anywhere. It's 20, you know? Um,

Double X. Let's say, let's put, let's say MimeStream. Yeah, I'm good with that. As the other runner up.

Maybe one day MimeStream. What I really want is for MimeStream to somehow win Best Newcomer again. Get that three times, be Lifetime Achievement Award. If they do that iOS version, they could be Best Newcomer in a different category. Yeah, but that won't give it Lifetime. I don't know what would have to happen. Lifetime Newcomer? Yeah. Well, Neil MimeStream is going to just have to come up with some way that it can be new again, and then we'll throw it in there.

So now let's do the best newcomer Mac app. Yep, Gradients voted. 5% for the Apple Passwords app. 13% for the iPhone Mirroring app. And 17% for ChatGPT. Interesting. What do you think about this category, Mike? I think this is...

here's what I say in previous years, this, this category is complicated because there aren't a lot of new Mac apps. And so things like features find their way into it. However, what I will say is passwords and iPhone mirroring. I think no matter how strong the year is, these could have made its way in, especially iPhone mirroring. Like that is just a fantastic feature, which is, it is actually an app as well. It's not just a feature. Um,

For me, ChatGPT for Mac is my winner. And my reasoning for this is, isn't it great that they actually made a Mac app?

Yeah, and it's a real Mac app, and it's pretty good. It's got stuff that I think needs to be improved. They actually made an app. They made an app. They didn't just say, use the web, right? They made it before they made their Windows app. It uses some accessibility features to look on the screen of Windows and process them for you, so you don't have to paste it in. You can say, look at my terminal.

and do this thing. Again, I want some basic automation. I'd really like to be able to bundle up a query and send it to them via a shortcut or a URL scheme or something like that. I don't think that's in there yet, but I'd love it.

They've got it. Yeah, they made an app. It's got a keyboard shortcut. So you can use it like you could use Spotlight or Launch Bar or, you know, anything else, Raycast, whatever. Really interesting direction. I agree. Actually, I don't. This is not a wholesale endorsement for ChatGPT because, wow, it still really gets some stuff wrong or reluctantly right. I actually had this yesterday. We were talking. Jamie asked how many NFL head coaches are

are former NFL players? And I thought, this is a very straightforward question. Let's see what ChatGPT does with it. And the answer was, it did not give me a wrong answer per se, but I said, how many current NFL head coaches are former NFL players? And it said, there are several, here are five. And I said, that's not what I asked. List them all.

And then it listed seven, I think it was, or eight. And I was like, okay, I think that's probably right. Scanning my knowledge of the NFL, I think that's probably a right answer. It got there. But again, there are issues, but there are also places where this stuff can be really useful and interactive. And again, it's not great for everything, but it has its moments. And I also like the fact that this tech giant that could very easily just say, look, desktop apps are the worst. Just type things in a web browser. Right.

like you said, didn't do that and actually is building and developing apps for platforms. I think that's a good thing. So I agree. I think we should give it to ChatGPT for Mac. Runners up, let's say iPhone mirroring. And do you have any others? I don't. So we could do passwords. Yeah, let's just do passwords. They are good features. Yep. Passwords, I don't have so much experience

with because I'm just stuck in one password at this point. And I'm actually, to a point, happy to continue to be in it with the amount of... I'm in three different teams. I'm just not going to move at this point. And I am mostly fine with it. But I'm happy that the Passwords app exists. Because I do also use Apple's Passwords stuff. And so I like that it's easier to get to than digging through settings. Oh, yeah. And

And you can't have shared groups, but if anybody is using a non-Apple platform, it's no good. It's not the same. They have a feature which sounds the same. It's not the same. But it's not. I'm happy you said that because every time I say this, people contact me and say,

trust me if you think it's the same you're just not using it the way I am like you're not you're not doing that but that's why I phrased it the way I did which is they have it it's not good it's just not it's just it's there but it's not it's a different thing it's a different thing yeah

We now move into, this is a new category last year, best feature. And it would rotate, right? Yes. And so this year it is best feature in Vision OS, which was a funny one to pick, really. Like, I'm happy we picked it because I think it's important. And I think we're going to be talking more about it later on in the episode. Ship version 1 and version 2 this year. They sure did. Very, very busy with that one.

But I think that it is an important thing to exist. And I'm happy that we're talking about it. So the Upgradians voted thusly. Environments, so immersive environments is 6.5%. Immersive video, so it's kind of spatial video, immersive video, I guess the things that we've seen, the things that we've watched, 10%. And 36% for Mac virtual display.

I'm not surprised. When it got introduced at WWDC last year, 2023, everybody said that that looked like it was going to be the best feature. I really do think people were blown away by it from the beginning. And they've updated it so that it's gotten better in the latest Vision OS update.

So I'm not surprised that that is a top feature for Vision OS. Yep, got significantly better with the ultrawide. Here's the thing I'm going to say. This might be a strange take. Okay. Because to me...

I can see what you're going to suggest in the document. I'm suggesting the same. So I'm going to spoil your pick because I need to spoil your pick to make my point, which is spatial personas is easily the best feature of VisionOS. I would wonder if many people in our audience who have used VisionOS know other people that have a Vision Pro. I know.

I know. Because I think if you have used spatial personas, it is obviously the best feature. But I think you have to have somebody in your life that you could have that call with. And the amount of people that you probably know in your life that have a Vision Pro is a big fat zero. Where we're in the position where a lot of our friends...

like have these things because we're technology vision professionals so we have had these calls it is an absolutely transformative and for me specifically this is interesting because you can go back to I don't know all the way back to our first use of this in WWDC 2023 where I thought personas as they were then were the bomb feature they were going to be the equivalent of digital touch

And this is for two reasons. One, it wasn't very good in the initial version. And two, in my initial demo, it failed spectacularly where the person's eyes were facing the wrong direction and for a moment they had no hair. So it went real bad and I was like, no one's going to use this. It's silly. But then they upgraded it very quickly. I think it wasn't even with a software update, which is like an over-the-air update that Apple did somehow with VisionOS 1.0.

where then the personas could break out of their boxes and they would exist in space and you could sit and have calls with people and you could look at each other and you could look at things together. And it really is, for me, and I've said this on a couple of shows, I think on this one too,

Spatial personas are as close as you can get to meeting someone in person without meeting them in person. And how close that is, is very close. That me and you can have these calls, and we've done them a bunch of times, and it just feels like we hung out together. It really is like...

There are many very, very impressive things about Vision OS. It is worth remembering that because the story of Vision OS has been odd and that Vision Pro has been odd throughout the year. But all of these things, the immersive environments are the best 3D environments I've ever been in. The immersive video is the best 3D video I've ever seen. And the Mac virtual display, especially in its Vision OS 2 version, is honestly a triumph to have this ultra-wide, massive display.

But spatial personas are unbelievably good. That's my pitch for spatial personas. I wonder if there are things they could do to make it more widely applicable. And my thought about this, and I wonder if this might even actually happen in next year's OS updates, but I wonder if there are things Apple could do in FaceTime to make this...

better. I don't know if they want to prioritize this or not, but like one of the things that zoom can do and that other apps can do is they, and Apple can do it right. Which is detect your background, lay out a virtual background, right? That's built into the software now. Um, and then zoom also has this thing where it basically puts you in a, an environment. So you're meeting instead of happening in little boxes, it's like a table with the cutout, no background of all the people.

It's a little weird, but I get what they're going for there. And I wonder if they might do something like that with FaceTime, where if I'm doing a FaceTime with somebody and some people are in Vision Pro and some people aren't,

Could we do it where like the person who's not gets kind of cut out and floats and looks kind of like they're a spatial persona, even though they're not. And from their perspective, could they have a view where they could choose to, instead of having that person in a box, have, have a kind of like a, an environment that, that all the people are in together. You could do either of those or both of those and have them on or off separately. I'm, I'm,

I think there's some stuff they could do to make this more broadly applicable. That would be nice because I do think it's, uh, I think it's a great feature. Like you said that, um, nobody can use because they don't, I mean, there just aren't enough vision pro users out there, but we have, we have created a sort of, it comes off sometimes it doesn't sometimes sort of standing, um,

with people we know who have vision pros and we try to do it every couple of weeks. It doesn't always come off, but I love those conversations. And one of the reasons I love, I love them and treasure them is that I am talking to my friends about things that aren't technology, about just catching up about their lives and doing it in a way that feels like I'm spending time with them and not, you know,

not being in a Zoom call with them or a phone call, but like being in the room with them as wild an idea as that is. It feels like it. It's the closest that I have felt to actually spending time with somebody. The quality difference compared to a FaceTime call or a Zoom call is massive. It really is a very, very good feature.

So obviously this is the winner because we feel so strongly about it. Mac virtual display, good runner up. What do you think about as a second runner up? Kind of, we've got immersive video and environments there as options. Yeah, I would say, um,

I think environments are a better kind of vision OS thing than really good 3D video, as good as it is. The environments make a huge difference. This episode is brought to you by FitBod. If you're looking to change your fitness level, and this is the time of year where a lot of people think about it, it can be hard to know where to get started. That's why I want to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is just for you.

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So we now move into game of the year at the Upgradies. Gamers, rise up! Rise up, gamers. It's gamers time. The Upgradians voted with 3% for The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, 5% for Astro Bot, and 28% for Bellatra.

I go to my game expert now. Upgrade game expert Mike Hurley for his choice for Game of the Year. Or choices. Yeah, I have been oscillating back and forth wildly between Astro Bot and Bellatro. Now,

We did a remaster episode and it was a similar thing, and we decided on Astro Bot there. And the reason that we decided on Astro Bot there is Astro Bot is a better overall game than Bellatro for what you think of as a video game, right? Like, it is very joyful, it's

It is a very engaging experience. It is a wonderful 3D platformer. It is the best example of a 3D platformer outside of what Nintendo makes, which is quite an achievement on its own, especially for the team that made this. Astro Bot has existed in different games before. This is like their first real attempt at something like this. I have great fondness for Astro Bot as a concept because I played the Astro Bot game

On the PSVR. Yeah. So good. So good. They had like a pack-in game called Rescue Mission, which is kind of like a very simple, small, free platformer game for PlayStation 5. But this was like their first real big shot at it. And they did just an incredible job. Bellatro, though, is the game I have played recently.

without a doubt the most this year. I probably play an hour of Bellatro a day. It is just... It's a game that I play on my commute and it is a game that I play to kind of wind down in the evenings. I'll listen to a podcast, play a bit. It's kind of like a wind down. I have played thousands of

of rounds of bellatro uh i win all the time i'm really good at the game now um i i did a thing where i was like scaling through the difficulty levels to unlock things now i've kind of gotten to a point where uh i have a deck starting deck that i like and i'm not playing for anything other than just to play the game like i'm not trying to get better and better i just like playing through the game and winning um and it's just a glorious video game

so, uh, now we go to Julian, my game consultant. I, uh, I told him about Bellatro. Um, he now has basically, he says he's, he's got like, I forget what completion percentage. It's ridiculous. He is cause he is a true gamer. He has blasted through Bellatro. Very impressive. But it allows me to talk to him about it. Um, and, uh,

I played it a lot. I think my probably most played hours this year is still Marvel Snap, but I've not played that in months. It's all Bellatro now. Not like you, though. I am just not a gamer like that. I have limited time for games. I read books instead, but I do play Bellatro. It is great. I also want to share, for people who don't get it, a few things. I had some interesting Mastodon exchanges about Bellatro. First off, a good friend, friend of the show, Lex Friedman,

He did a, uh, a massed on post four days ago. That was, I encourage my son to play Bellatro. He loves it. Now he wants me to play it. My friends. I truly hate it. I hate it so much. I don't understand why anyone likes it. Now, a lot of people responded to Lex yesterday. He posted my son begged me to try it more to play 10 games with him watching and advising. I did my friends. I now unironically love Bellatro. Yes.

I have one more social media post I want to quote, which is a friend of the show, Ben Rice McCarthy. And they wrote, first time playing Palatro, I don't know what the fuss is about. Second time, okay, I see why people like it, but I'm not sure it's for me. Third time, I would remortgage my house to get that raised fist Joker again.

If you know, you know. Go ahead, Mike. Explain. I want to give kind of a quick crash course in Bellatro. Like if you've played the game and you don't understand it and you're failing out, I want to give some tips for how to play this game. So one, don't worry about the fact that you don't know poker hands. The game...

does a decent job in teaching you them, and you also can get by. You can win games. I've won many games just only playing two pairs. Two pairs, yep. I've won many games with just two pairs. That's it. The main thing comes down to what are the Joker cards that you get. The Joker cards adapt your score. Your score is you get a count, which is the total number of the cards that you've played. So if you've played

you know, two pairs of, you know, two pairs of sevens, right? So that would be, what, 28 plus any modifiers that you can add in. Don't worry about the modifiers now. It's not important. Two pairs of sevens is four of a kind, so it would be different. But like if you had two sevens and two twos, right? Yeah. You'd get 14 for the sevens and four for the twos. So you'd have 18 chips, right?

And then the jokers are doing things like giving you more chips or giving you multipliers that increase the total number of chips that you win. And you have a total you need to hit before you run out of hands to play in a round. To win a game, you're looking to try and get more chips and you're looking to try and get a higher multiplier. Yes. Now,

As well as the multipliers, you also have jokers that can multiply your multiplier. Exactly. So you have some that will add to your multiplier and some that will multiply your multiplier. Those are really good. The key thing to remember is joker cards are scored left to right in order once the hand has been played.

So if you have any multipliers of a multiplier, they go at the far right end of your joker line. So then any other consecutive score will be added in and then multiplied at the end. Good tips, good tips. Knowing that is quite... Basically, my big term of Bellatro was understanding that the jokers, the kind of conditions of the jokers are added left to right. Once you've done that and you can reorder them...

then you'll start to win. Yeah. It is... The other thing, the other resistance that I see to Bellatro is that people describe it as a deck builder. It's not a deck builder. And a lot of people are resistant to that, and it is absolutely not a deck builder. I called it a roguelike. People said, well, technically a roguelike is just about adventures with procedurally generated maps. I'm like, okay, you can call it a roguelite if you want to. They're wrong. Let's not argue about the terms. The reason I brought it up is...

I also get turned off with the idea that every time you go through, you pick up items and you grind and you end up building something through grinding, which is the thing I hate the most about games is grinding. I just want to pick it up and play. This isn't like that. You start...

at zero in the beginning of every round. When you die at Bellatra, when you lose a hand, you go back to the beginning and start again. You lose all your jokers. You lose all the modifications you've done. Everything has changed. You're back to zero. What progresses is as you successfully pass certain tests on certain levels, you

you unlock more items to be put in the random selection that you get. So there is progression because more items appear that have different functionality, but they're still sent to you randomly and you still have to start from nothing. And as a result, it's a game you can pick up and play from zero to

And then put it down when you get to your destination or whatever. And not have to keep in your head the entire multitude or spend hours grinding in order to build a deck that makes it fun. It doesn't do any of that.

you also as you watch our wins yeah also as you win games you unlock new decks that have different starting types yes so like again again it's more game game variants happen as you progress but but they're not uh changing the fundamental that you're at the uh you're at the start right when you start you have to start from nothing uh bellatro is the winner astrobot is a runner-up and uh what do you think there's another one we'll put zelda in sure fine great done

Favorite movie. Okay. The Upgradians voted to 10% for Inside Out 2, 16% for Deadpool and Wolverine, and 22% for Dune Part 2. Okay. Pretty strong. Yeah. Yeah. My favorites of the year were Deadpool and Wolverine and Inside Out 2 for very different reasons. But movies, I loved both of these movies. Hmm.

I am a Marvel guy through and through, and this was a great Marvel movie. And Inside Out 2, it surprised me with how good it was, to be honest. I was quite blown away by that, personally. So listeners of The Incomparable will know that we did an Inside Out 2 episode and I wasn't on it. I was going to be on it. And then I saw Inside Out 2 and said, you know what?

Lex, can you host this one? You love this movie, right? You didn't like it? I did not like it. No, I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. But that's fine. People like it. But I'm, no, I don't like it. I like, oh, the three movies that I like the most that I saw this year were, that were new to me, were Godzilla Minus One, which is a masterpiece.

It really is. It is an adult movie with a Godzilla in it. It's so well done. I just, I can't say enough good things about Godzilla minus one. It is a, a very good movie with a Godzilla in it with the Godzilla in it. Um, past lives, which was an Oscar nominee, uh, which is very much like a two friends, um,

and then they're apart and then they meet as adults and they think about their lives. I mean, it's really, that's just kind of it, but it's great. Great movie. Um, and American fiction, which also was an Oscar nominee, which is really good, which is very meta about, uh, it's a writer who is literally, literally successful, but not commercially successful, who decides to create a persona who plays into all of the worst stereotypes. And, uh,

It becomes a wild success. It's a little producers-esque in that way, right? He's just sort of like, he's not quite selling out. He is selling out, but he's also sort of selling out to mock audiences.

the the the culture but then it's a success and there's and there's a real human story there uh but it's also and that's jeffrey wright i think is the star of that it's really great so that's a great movie um i like deadpool and wolverine quite a bit it is a that that is a the only marvel movie of the year but it is a good marvel movie i also this year mike i watched all the deadpool movies for the first time oh okay i hadn't seen any of them uh-huh

And I liked them. I like the first one a lot. I think it was really fun and worked for me. The second one, I enjoyed, but I was disappointed by because it felt like it was more of the same instead of doing something extra. And also, I didn't like the fact that they sidelined his girlfriend immediately. It's like, no, no, you're boring. Love of his life, you're boring. We'll get rid of you and then continue with the story. And I was like, that made me mad. It's not like...

Alien 3 levels of invalidating the emotional stakes of the previous movie so that your movie can have fun stuff happening in it. But it was there. Those vibes were there. And then Deadpool and Wolverine did a whole incomparable about all three of these movies. Individual episodes about all three of these movies. Good movie. Funny. Surprisingly heartfelt. And I think that in general, that's the thing that surprised me about the Deadpool movies is...

They are not just... They're not cynical joke machines. Nope. They are funny. They like to make you believe they're going to be, which I think is the trick. Yes, they do. They are funny and violent, but there is an emotional core in all of them that's very important. And Godzilla... And Godzilla minus one, yeah. Also true, actually. Deadpool and Wolverine...

has emotional content. It's very funny and it is very violent, but violent in a silly way. It's the kind of movie where something terrible happens that's violent and I laugh at how ludicrous the violence is, whereas I don't like as much movies where the violence is very realistic and emotionally stressful. That's not this kind of movie. And yeah, surprisingly emotionally resonant and

And surprisingly, really honoring Logan, which was a wonderful final movie about Wolverine. Again, an adult movie, but with Logan in it, just like Godzilla Minus One is an adult movie with...

godzilla in it you could argue this movie desecrates the grave of that movie because it literally does and and yet that's not the case it actually honors it and uh i think that was a neat trick so that's my that's my two minutes on deadpool and wolverine it's a good movie i think i think i would push for deadpool and wolverine uh because while we make the rules ourselves your your picks a rule from last year

Well, I don't care about that because those are the movies I saw this year. And so, like, if you would not have just spoke for two minutes about how much you enjoyed Deadpool and Wolverine, then maybe we'd take a look at that list and see if we could... Is there something? But I really liked Deadpool and Wolverine. You did, and so did the audience, which would make you feel like we could do that rather than, you know... So, Doom Part II, also really great. I had a great experience seeing that movie. Big screen, big screen.

beautiful. And so I'm going to say, let's give it to Deadpool and Wolverine, but I want Dune part two, which was the upgradients choice. And I also really endorse it. And I want to put Godzilla minus one in there because it was great.

Yeah, I've been meaning to watch that movie, but I haven't gone around. Gotta see it. It's so good. I wanted to watch it last year and then kind of couldn't get it for a long time because it was like weird rules. It was unavailable for contractual reasons because there was an American Godzilla movie that came out and there was some rule about how they can't release...

the they couldn't release the video version of godzilla minus one because they were in the blackout period because of the american movie it's super dumb yeah it was a really self-defeating for everybody involved yep all right great moving now to the easiest category this is just the slam dunk yeah open and closed category other than that we have to have um we have to have runners up yeah

But other than that, yeah. Easy peasy. This is favorite TV show. The Upgradian is at 7% for Shrinking, 9% for Slow Horses, and 11% for Shogun. It's easy. Shogun is not just the best TV show I've seen this year. It's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Unbelievable television show. Easy peasy. I agree. I think Shogun is the show of the year.

It's so good. I love that it's, um, among other people, um, it's, um, Justin Marks who did counterpart, which is one of the criminally missed fantastic best shows of the last decade. He was brought in by his wife when they went into rewrites with it. And I love that he was involved with this because this, this got all the acclaim that counterpart deserved and didn't get. Um,

I think it's our winner. We do need to pick some runners up. Sure. I was, I had, um, I had Tim Goodman on downstream for Christmas special. Great. And, uh, I, I did my sort of like short list of, which wasn't that short of my favorite shows of the year. Um, so I'm going to quickly run them down here and then we'll pick some runners up. So, um, silo,

On Apple TV+, season two is excellent. A little slower than season one for some good reasons, but that's a really good show. Very impressed. Did not think that would be much of anything, and it's actually very good. Bad Monkey on Apple TV+, based on a Carl Hiaasen novel. Vince Vaughn. It's so good.

Like, it's just, it's so good. Funny Florida. The perfect Vince Vaughn TV show. It is so good. It is perfect.

perfect use of Vince Vaughn. It's like all of his good, you know? All of his good. It's like Will Ferrell. I know some people don't like Vince Vaughn. This is the, like Will Ferrell in Elf, this is the perfect use of the skills of Vince Vaughn. He is great in it. Really good. He is the main character, but he's surrounded by, it's, you know, it's a mystery and it's sort of sleazy because it's

the Florida Keys and there's intrigue, but also it's, it's laid back. It's so good. I cannot recommend bad monkey highly enough. It's probably the second best show I watched other than show gun last year. Um, I really love dark matter.

On Apple TV Plus. Again, I was reluctant to watch it for a while. And then we started watching it and we burned through those like an episode a night. Because the elevator pitch is what if your life was stolen from you by yourself? And as you might expect, I just praised counterpart. Parallel universes come into play here.

in the first episode, right? It's not really a mystery. In the first episode, parallel universes come into play here. What I love about Dark Matter is that it fully commits to the premise. Instead of saying sort of like, well...

yeah, there's science fictional parallel universes in it, but really this is about, this is a character drama. And so we're going to not talk about the implications of the parallel universe machine. We're going to just focus on the characters. And look, you should focus on the characters. That's the most important thing. But you could also not ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine as well. And Dark Matter is,

and I admire it greatly does not ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine at all. Uh, I thought it was really good. It's based on a novel. The showrunner of the show was the guy who wrote the novel, uh,

And, uh, much to my, it adapts the novel and much to my surprise, they renewed it for a second season. So like Shogun, a show based on a novel that adapts the entire novel in one season. And it's so good that they're like, yeah, make something up for season two. So it's going to come back. Um, love that.

And some others I want to mention. Hacks on Max. Very funny. Just a great show about women in comedy. I love it. Couldn't love it more. So mad about this, Jason. I'm so mad about this. So Hacks was on Amazon Prime in the UK. They have not picked up season three.

And nobody has. So season three is just completely unavailable. You can't even buy it here. So I loved Hacks season one and two, but you can't watch the new season. Because they want to launch a Max version or have a partner that's doing a Max version in the UK. Well, they do already. Sky. But Sky pick up specific things. I don't understand why they do this, but no one's got Hacks, so I just can't watch it.

Well, VPNs are available. Anyway. Yeah, but I have to have an account, right? No, that's true. That's true. I can't sign up for Macs, so VPN doesn't help me.

Jean Smart, Hannah Einbender are great in that. And then that is part of the greater Mike Schur universe because it's some people who work with Mike Schur on The Good Place and other places that are doing that show. It's great. Yeah, third season was awesome. Shout out to Slow Horses, which continues to be... So good.

Fantastic. Every season. My other Apple TV Plus thing I'll shout out. I really liked Masters of the Air. I didn't think I would. I was like, oh boy, it's a World War II drama again, just like Band of Brothers and The Pacific from the same producers. It was really good. It was really well done. You could see Apple's money on the screen with that one. I was very impressed. That's a miniseries. It was really good.

Um, I have two Netflix picks. The diplomat came back for season two, a little short, but I like it. I really liked that show. They're already shooting season three, Carrie Russell, uh, as a, an American. If you haven't seen the show, there's also season one. You can start there. You should start there, uh, as an unlikely choice to be the U S ambassador to the UK. Cause she's usually from conflict filled regions of the world. Uh,

There are reasons why she's gotten this job. I also just delight in the fact that she feels ill-suited for it and seeing her be confronted with the things she's supposed to wear to various formal events when she's used to being like running around in blue jeans in some, you know, far off region of the world. It's delightful. And I also really liked a man on the inside on Netflix, which is Mike Schur, as mentioned before, this is with Ted Danson. It's very sweet.

comedy um about it's about a mystery at a at a retirement home but also it's it's about um

about old people and finding ways to live their lives after traumatic events. And I think it's very sweet. It's not sad. It's as much as it is just sweet. Really good. Great use of San Francisco locations. And finally, much to my surprise, season two of Shoracy, the Letterkenny spinoff on Hulu in the U.S. at least, um,

I was kind of left cold by season one of Shorzy. Why would you do a spinoff about a one joke character in Letterkenny, which was, I think, finished this year and is an all-timer. I love Letterkenny so much.

Shore Z season two. I really got into it. I got I kind of got what they were what they were selling. It's a it's like a it's a sports movie as a TV show. It's about a bunch of kind of adult minor league hockey players trying to win a tournament. And there's many. It's just very silly. And there are many jokes and I love it. So Shore Z. And if you haven't seen Leonard Kenny, go watch Leonard Kenny. It's great.

You mentioned about being sweet, right? Like a thing that is sweet. You

You said that for what? Man on the Inside? Man on the Inside. For me, Shrinking is that. Shrinking. Yes. Season two is really, really, really, really good. I was very surprised actually of how good it is. That cast is just like so good. This may be... A beautiful cast. People may disagree with me here, but this is my opinion. This is my favorite thing I've ever seen Harrison Ford in. Yeah.

I think this is him perfectly, kind of the mixing of the actor and the man. It feels like he fits so well in this role. It lets him use muscles that I think most movie people just aren't going to bother asking him for. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, what if Harrison Ford...

treasure of an actor was a supporting character on a sitcom. And you're like, well, why would he do that? Well, we don't know why Apple money just wanted, I think for the challenge of doing something different. And, uh, guess what? He nails it because he is actually a great actor and it isn't just, and it's actually him in that in shrinking, which is, which is great. I didn't like season two as much as season one, but I do love it. It's a great show. Um,

I think it's a great example of how actors are misused by creative people in Hollywood. How once you're an actor who's known for a certain kind of role, you never get the opportunity or rarely get the opportunity to do something different. And it can be like, it's a, you know, bejeweled prison, right? Like Harrison Ford, not hurting for money and parts and all of that. And yet I'm sure the professional actor part of him is,

always feels a little bit disappointed when he's asked to do your Han Solo and Indiana Jones thing again and again and again. And in Shrinking, he gets to be a little bit different. And so creatively, he must absolutely love it. And that's great because he's great at it. My favorite thing about season two was how much Ted McGinley is used in it. I really, really enjoyed him in... So he plays Derek. Yeah.

I really enjoyed him in the first season. He was very funny. And then in this season, we got more of his funny, but also a lot more hot. So you said about using Harrison Ford. I actually saw a thing with Jason Segel yesterday, and he was talking about Harrison Ford being in Shrinking. He says, you know, like whenever you work on a project, you're always... You start with...

if we could cast this person, how amazing would it be? And you always reach out to that person and they always say no. And so then, which is fine because then you at least for two days get to say, you know, we asked Harrison Ford and he said no, but he said Harrison Ford said yes. And then they had to rewrite the show because Paul was not in the show very much. And like, well, now we have Harrison Ford. So then it became a co-lead.

It's essentially the way that he says, like, you know, now it's the two of them, right? That they are both doing leading roles. Where Paul was just much more of a mentor figure. You saw him sometimes. So I thought that was really interesting. Just like what that was like. Yeah. So Shrinking I loved. And I also just wanted to throw out The Penguin, too.

It's a great show. Again, I have not seen it. My son loves it. I will say, I've said this to a lot of people, if you like kind of mob gangster stuff but think I don't want superheroes, then you're fine because there are no superheroes in the show. You're fine. It's just people. Okay, let's give it to Shogun. We already tabulated that. We mentioned a bunch of other things. I think I'm going to suggest we go with... Well, let's do...

Okay, why don't we do Shrinking and Bad Monkey? Yeah, that's a good one. I enjoyed that. It's something new. So the winner of the favorite TV show of the year is Shogun and Shrinking and Bad Monkey are the runners-up. Yeah, good stuff. Time for favorite book. Your favorite category. Yeah. Did you read a book this year, Mike? Yeah. I actually have a recommendation, but it's like... Oh, yeah. It's called How to Be a Dad.

which is a book that I've been really enjoying. It's by a British doctor, Dr. Oscar Duke. And it's just a...

It's a book that I have enjoyed a lot. It is written in a way that I really enjoy that he is a doctor and he also became a dad for the first time. And so the book is written from both perspectives. So you have like a chapter about a certain element of pregnancy or newborn life, and he writes it as a dad and he writes it as a doctor. And so you kind of get both sides of it. And it's just a very relatable, very easy book.

And I enjoyed it a lot. And it doesn't,

fall into too many of the tropes that I have found this kind of stuff to be, which is just kind of like, don't call your wife fat. And it's like, this is not, I don't need that information, you know, which is like a lot of what like dad, like focused stuff is. And I actually have, I found out a lot of really helpful, interesting things from this book. And so I recommend it to people that are in my particular field.

circumstances but this was a book published in 2019 so you know okay that's fine it does you read it this year sure it's all that matters uh-huh the upgradians i forgot to do the upgradians because i got so excited no no i derailed you it's fine uh with four percent service model by adrian tchaikovsky tchaikovsky six percent wind and truth by brandon sanderson

and 8% The Armageddon Protocol by Dan Morin. Ah, Dan Morin's annual appearance. You love some... I enjoy the ballot boxes being stuffed, personally. Yes, I'm really thrilled because my favorite book that I read this year made the Upgradians list. That is rare. That usually does not happen. No, no. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. First off, Adrian Tchaikovsky is probably the best science fiction writer going right now.

science fiction, fantasy. He does a whole bunch of stuff. I've read a lot of his stuff the last couple of years. He's very prolific and he's so good. And service model, I went into it not knowing what it was at all. And then about a chapter in, I thought, well, this is funny because he's taking us from the perspective of a robot and why robot logic and computer logic could lead to ridiculous outcomes. It really is the idea of like,

Okay, so yeah, robot apocalypse. Got it. Got it. But how would that happen? And he takes you through the mind of the robot who's helping kind of with the apocalypse. And it's ludicrous. And I thought, well, he can't keep this up for the whole book. And he keeps it up for the whole book. It's great. It's funny.

It is about the end of the world. So there's a lot of like, you got to laugh at the absurdity to keep from crying from the tragedy of everybody dying basically. Um, but like takes you really deep inside the robot apocalypse when there are almost no humans left. What are the robots do? And the answer is, wow, they do a lot of stupid things cause they're robots. Um,

It's very funny, and it's sort of a series of adventures that this robot has where he goes from place to place to place to seek out the source of the robot apocalypse, sort of. I don't know. It's great. I love it. It should be the winner. I'll shout out a couple other books I really love this year, one of which at least was not printed this year, but I don't care. I read it this year. I read Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway.

who is John Le Carre's son and actually had a new book in that universe that he wrote about

that came out this year that got all the press. But he's also apparently writing a sequel to Titanium Noir, which I really loved. Great book. It's very funny. I just went to like put in the show notes and on Amazon, it's Titanium Noir, a Titanium Noir novel. It's like, okay. Yes. Well, it's now Titanium Noir number one because there's going to be a number two. It is just very funny. It's like, no, you're kidding. No way. It's great. It's like it's the future and income inequality means that although there's a cure for death now,

only the richest people can get it. And it makes them taller every time they get a round of their treatment. So you end up with these, these like Titans that walk the earth that are like 10 feet tall and rich and immortal. Uh, one of them dies and our schlubby, uh, noir detective has to figure out who and why. That's a really good premise. I like the sound of this book that, that, that would make a good TV show. It's great. It's so good. And then Harkaway is such a good writer. Uh,

All these stories about, like, oh, John Le Carre died, but his son is going to write a novel. Speaking of Dune, right? Because that's what happened with Dune, is Brian Herbert came in and...

Here's the thing about Nick Harkaway. He's such a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant writer. It has nothing to do with him being related to his dad. I think it's kind of amazing that he decided to write a book in his dad's world because he's really great on his own. I mean, he really is a treasure of a writer, great writer. A book I just finished this week that turns out sliding right in under the wire as one of my favorite books of the year is called The Book of Love by Kelly Link. It is a dark...

It's kind of like a suburban fantasy. It reminded me of Neil Gaiman or the more fantastical and less horror of Stephen King might be a good comp as well about...

Some teenagers in a seaside town in New England. I know it feels like Stephen King, doesn't it? Who apparently died, but have now come back to life and are trying to figure out why and how and what happens next. And I thought it was really great. What was that? The Book of Love by Kelly Link. That's a fun title.

Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize winner and winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant. So not exactly an unknown quantity, but the book, I think this might have been her first novel or her first intentional novel. It's great. Good book. Good book. So service model is obviously the winner, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then...

Let's put in How to Be a Dad. No, we don't need to do that. We really don't need to do that. Let's put it in the actual books. We'll look back later. Okay. Then let's say we'll put in Armageddon Protocol by Dan Morin, of course. And let's put in one of Dan Morin's favorite authors, Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway as our runners-up. Then I'll get a kick out of that. Being alongside that book. Favorite podcast?

Sometimes this is hard because our Lifetime Achievement winners are ATP and The Flophouse, which means that two of the podcasts I listen to regularly are out of contention. The Rebound came in at 8% of the vote. I'm just going to say it. The ballot boxes have been stuffed this year in this category. You think so? 12% is this very show, Upgrade, and 19% is Connected. I was present for some of the ballot box stuffing on Connected.

But unfortunately, this is another open and close. I'm sorry to say because, oh boy, I have been mainlining the rest of this story. Love to hear it. I started listening to this show on my vacation, kind of around Thanksgiving, and

It is essentially the only podcast that I've listened to. So to give you, just to let you know, right? Because I can do the overcast stats thing, right? So this has been since, like this has been what? Five weeks, right? In five weeks, I have listened to 57 hours of The Restless History.

It's a little more than 10 hours a week. I love it. Yeah. It's the only podcast I'm listening to right now. My backlog right now is horrific because I am just... I am just... I cannot even describe how much I love this show. And this funny thing for me is I have... This was already going to be a difficult category for me. I have five podcasts that I wanted to call out in this list, which I will do in a minute. But the rest of this history is just perfect. I love that show.

so much thank you for introducing into me you're welcome uh it is now particularly funny now i've listened to so much when i go back and think about the holiday special from last year which was in the style of that show right the the colors are because now i i kind of i get it there's like so many jokes that i didn't get um which is which is very funny

But yeah, I am loving this show. There's like so many good seasons. What I have noticed though, Jason, I don't know if you've noticed this. There was obviously a shift in the style of the show, kind of late 2023. Because I've gone back kind of to early 2023 and the episodes are like, hey, we're just going to talk about this.

Like the two of them are just having a conversation about something where now the show is more, we're going to tell you the story of this thing that happened.

hmm so like i there's a there's they did they did two even two series about the nazis they did like how did it how did it how do we get to the nazis and then what happened and they were like a year apart from each other and so i went back to the episodes early 2023 which were like um how did we get to the nazis essentially and in those it's like the two of them are having a kind of a conversation about it

And like, well, what did you think? What did you think? And then the, the, the like what happens in the nicest takeover? It is, they're kind of taking it in turns to tell the other one, the history of the thing that happened. Yeah. And I much prefer that style. They've changed their form. I think it's great. Yeah. I haven't listened to too many of those past episodes, but it's fine. The personalities are great. I mean, it's got all the things a great podcast has. That's, that's what's, what I love about the rest of this history is it is the,

The type of show that I like, which is a couple of people who have very good chemistry talking to each other about something that they care a lot about. And it's about a thing that I don't have...

too much knowledge about a lot of the things that i've listened to like you know stuff like uh world war ii i know and you know like some of the cold war stuff i know jfk i knew about but i knew nothing about the aztecs and now let me tell you about carthage yeah like what yeah there's so many things i mean so i will say there is stuff that i've realized oh yeah no like for example that a lot of like the roman stuff is like i just can't attach to that

It's too far gone. Like I started listening to an episode about like the Romans invading Britain. And it's like, they're talking about countries that don't exist. Yeah. And it's like, I can't, I can't keep this information in my head. So I kind of, I like, yeah. But anyway, this show is just fantastic. But I had other shows that I wanted to mention. Okay. Similarly from Goldhanger, the rest is politics. This was going to be my pick because it's,

I started listening to this show at the beginning of the year when we had the election in the UK because I wanted some more information, kind of what is going on. And I found this show. And it's the same idea, right? It's two people who are very knowledgeable because they have both been in British politics. And I really like that they come from two – they're both kind of like center – well, one, they're like center left and center right as individuals.

kind of figures and i like that because they come at it from different points and they can actually have a debate which is helpful i think for politics but also that neither of them are too far in one direction that it becomes like a fight so i i really appreciate that show for that i wanted to shout out npc next portable console which is a federico john and brendan show about portable gaming systems which i love and

My very first podcast has come back, Dignation. Dignation is back, which is like amazing. Like just for this show to just reappear after all this time is fantastic. That's been a lot of fun for me because it's incredible. It feels like the show hasn't changed, even though they've not done it for like, I don't know, maybe 10 years or something. And then I just got a shout out to Town as well, which is always there, always there. Great year for podcasts for me. So what are our,

Yeah, so what are our runners up here? I would like to suggest the rest is politics because that was going to be my other vote and then the other one could be whatever you want it to be. All right. Well, if I look at my top four podcasts of the year in Overcast, two of them are Lifetime Achievement Award winners. One of them is The Rest is History.

And so congratulations to Connected for being a runner up. So the funny thing about this and why Stephen has been like really putting this out there is I think Connected is one win away from Lifetime Achievement. I think that's the situation. But yeah, it ain't happening this time, I'm afraid. This episode is brought to you by Data Citizen Dialogues, which is a podcast, which is great for stuff we've spoken about a bunch of podcasts.

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16% for the M4 iPad Pro, and 33% for the M4 Mac Mini. Well, I don't know about you, Mike. I mean, good year for Apple products. I got an angry bit of feedback from a listener because we were listing our favorites over at Six Colors. We were all listing sort of our favorite hardware of the year, and none of us chose to write up the super thin all-time winner M4 iPad Pro, which is cool,

You know, I love how thin it is and I love how bright that beautiful new screen is. It's all good, but I chose to write up the Magic Keyboard instead. And my reasoning was, if somebody told me I had to give up my M4 iPad Pro, what would be the one thing about it that I would miss the most? And it wasn't...

the iPad, it was the keyboard that goes with it because I think that keyboard is so much better. But look, the iPad Pro M4 is great. There are a lot of things to be said for it. I do love how thin it is. It's really good. I use my iPad all the time. I bought an M4 MacBook Pro. Coming to you, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, in future episodes, but

I am docked with a MacBook Pro at my desk now. This is my life now, Mike. So do I like that product? Yes, I do. The M4 Max is really good. But who are we kidding? I feel like the Apple product of the year is the Mac Mini. I feel like it has to be the Mac Mini. It is so remarkable.

Not only do the upgradients say that, but like to finally make a new Mac mini and have it be so tiny and yet so powerful with the M4 Max or M4 Pro version of it, like is way more power than anybody, you know, than anybody needs for regular life. Like you can max out that Mac mini and it's this incredibly powerful little tiny thing. So cool and so useful. And I know a lot of people who don't have any use for a Mac mini who still want one.

So I feel like that is good. Also, my understanding is that you also have ordered a Mac Mini. Is that true? Yes. We will talk about this in Upgrade Plus today. But yeah, I have actually made the order that I've been threatening to make for months now, and I have actually ordered the M4 Mac Mini. Which is why I would very happily give it to that product. It's not my choice because I've not used it, but I do really appreciate that product, so I think it's

For me, my favorite Apple product of the year is the M4 iPad Pro. Oh, there you go. It's my first, like, you know,

It's my first iPad Pro with a very good screen like that. You know, like I didn't have an OLED iPad Pro. I didn't have the mini LED iPad Pro before now. So like the 11 inch specifically, I adore that iPad. How thin it is, how light it is and how powerful it is and how good it looks. But yeah, the Mac mini is clearly a very special product.

And so I'm very happy to give that the Apple product of the year. But I would like to put the iPad Pro in as a runner-up. Absolutely. And the MacBook Pro I would like to put in as a runner-up. I'll talk about my Mac mini purchase on Upgrade Plus today. Okay.

Favorite non-Apple product of the year. This is a tricky one. This is a tricky one. This is always a tricky one, but it's a fun one too. So the Upgradians voted with 4% for the OLED Steam Deck, 4% for the Google Pixel 9 family, and 6% for the Meta Ray Bans. I was surprised to see the Meta Ray Bans take the top spot here, but I was pleased about that.

Was there any ballot stuffing from Connected in that? Maybe. Well, I mean, the ballot stuffing that I'm talking about is where specifically people are asking for votes. Not just that they've been influenced by listeners of the show. I'm not shilling for Meta. Okay. What do you think here? So I could make a case for the Meta Ray Bans. I think they're a very interesting product.

I like mine a lot. Federico loves his and wears them every day. I use mine just as sunglasses, so my options are limited. But being able to take photos and listen to music, like when I was on vacation, I was listening to music.

the rest is history, by the pool via my sunglasses, which was just a great experience. It is a very, very good product. Take the AI out of it. It's still a good product. Add the AI in, and it can do more stuff. But, you know, whatever. I'm going to pick... My favorite product of the year, though, is something completely different. It's called the Oslo Sleep Buds. So...

And that's Oslo with a Z, of course. I mean, why would it not be? Bose used to make a product that I've forgotten what it was called, but they were sleeping headphones. And they essentially just played white noise. They stopped making this product. So the entire team that made it went and made their own company called Oslo.

to make the new version of what that would be. By the way, they were called the Bose Sleep Buds. There you go. I'm expecting that there was an agreement made between all these. I don't just think that they just went and did it. This product feels like a startup's product. It is not by any means a very complete feeling product. But

They are very comfortable to wear when sleeping. They're like very, very thin and they've got, they're very comfortable. They don't go in your ears. They sit on your ear and they have those kinds of wing tips to hold them in. And the, they have an app and the app comes with a selection of white noise that you can play or like different sounds. Like I listened to the sound of an ocean. Um, and, um,

I find them to be really comfortable. You can also use them as Bluetooth headphones, so you could be listening to something else, you could be watching something else. They have a feature that I've not used, but I like that it's there. I've seen mixed results, but some people say it works and some people say it don't. It detects that you've fallen asleep and pauses what you're listening to and it activates the white noise. There are things about it that are not ideal. For example, you have to open the app and then open the case.

And then they connect and then it will work. Like,

And also, I set it to just to play for an hour because I don't need it doing it all night. But then if I wake up and want to put the white noise back on again, I have to do that repairing process. So that's what I mean. There are things about it where it's like, oh, this could be a bit slicker. But as a product for I want some headphones that I can wear comfortably while sleeping on my side that don't dig into me, that don't fall out of my ears and get lost and

and that provide me with a white noise experience, these are it. So I really love this product. It's a fun little tech product that I've used this year, the Oslo Seatbuds. Wow. That's fun. Yeah. It's nice to find something like that. Like here is a tech solution to a problem that I want solved, made by people who care so much about it that they want to start their own company to do it. All right. I thought of four things. Great. I'm sure there's something that I've forgotten. I'm sure of it. But I thought of four things.

The Miu Mini Plus, which we talked about in Upgrade Plus last week. This is a little tiny handheld game emulating thing that is super cheap on AliExpress and was on sale, so it was super duper cheap when I bought one.

Gave that to my son for Christmas. I think he's into it. Really good. Just a good build. The buttons are good. My son, again, the gamer was like, these buttons are really good. I'm like, yeah, they are. It's a really well-built piece of hardware. And then amazing that you, you know, what OSs are out there to run on top of it. This thing called Onion OS and that is a third-party thing that's not even from Miu, but they know that people install it and

And it's really good, and then it's got a whole bunch of different emulators on it. I'm very impressed with that product. There are a lot of... I don't have a lot of nostalgia for handhelds, which is part of my problem with all of these products, is that they're like, oh, it looks just like a Game Boy, or it looks just like a... What's the full dope? Anyway, it doesn't matter. Game Boy Advance is cool. Yeah, I don't have...

for those little handhelds. So I'm more into it for having it be a handheld that is fun, that runs a bunch of games, especially old arcade games and old console games, less than I am running, you know, Game Boy games, because I have no nostalgia for Game Boy games. Um,

but that hardware is really good and I love this category. So I wanted to mention it. Very impressive. And there are other styles. There's ones that are shaped more, you know, horizontal, more like a Steam Deck that do, you know, PSP emulation and all sorts of other emulation. But like the two things that I ended up playing the most on the Miu Mini Plus when I had it were Joust, classic arcade console game, and NFL Blitz 2000, which was my favorite game for the PS1. So...

Um, that's the kind of stuff I gravitated toward. I tried to play Pac-Man on it and realized like Game Boy Pac-Man, you like, they pan around the screen. You can't see the whole screen because they couldn't do it. I was like, oh yeah, little handhelds can't do that stuff, can they? Um, we can do better.

Uh, I mentioned my, uh, Everlights experience where I put lights on my house. That was a fun tech product this year that, um, that I used that, that put lights on my house, which permanent lights, holiday lights. I program them. It's currently Hanukkah. I have, I have built my own Hanukkah pattern that shows like how many candles there are. Um, it's, it's really cool. I love it. Um,

I will shout out my Christmas present, which is the Traeger Ironwood grill, which is a pellet grill. He smokes some meat on it. But the thing that impresses me the most about it as a tech product is that it's basically got a little computer in it, right? The, the, the hardware of this thing, other than the grill hardware is it's got an auger that basically feeds the pellets into the, the, the combustion chamber and it's got a fan. So it can, it can control the combustion.

And it's all done by this little computer that has Wi-Fi. And I'll talk to your phone and they have an app. And the app is surprisingly not terrible because most of these apps are terrible.

Um, and, uh, I used it over the holidays. It worked really well, but I like, I was delighted by the fact that not only was the, this little computer, you know, that the buttons on the, on the grill itself are very clear, but that the app is good and you can control other than the initial ignition, you can control it all from the app and it does a pretty good job. So that was a fun gadget. And then finally I threw it in here. Um,

Because it delights me that Belkin Vision Pro case and sure that head strap thing too. The two products that got released that are literally Apple says you should make this and that clearly should have been what Apple shipped when they shipped the Vision Pro. But instead they shipped the big puffy marshmallow case and a really kind of weird misguided set of head straps instead of just using that knit strap with an over-the-top strap simultaneously. Yep.

I thought that was, it makes me laugh that those products have to exist, but they're also pretty good. Okay. What do you think? So from your list, I really like the Belkin products. Yeah. Like I think they should be in the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my suggestion was going to be that we give it to the MetaRay bands. Yep. Because that sounds like a product that actually people like and that you like. And it's good. And that is doing something interesting. Yes. Yeah.

And then we can make your sleep buds and the Belkin stuff, the runners up. Love it.

That's fun. What a fun category. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, oh, Apple, you've got to do something in these smart glasses. Like, what are you doing? I know, right? No, the AirPods that you wear as glasses that tie into Siri on your phone and Apple Intelligence and all of that, and they're AirPods that you wear as glasses. They don't even need a display, right? That'll come, but they don't even need a display. Like, Apple...

Yes. I don't say this that often, but I think I said it a few weeks ago and I'll say it again here, which is if I were at Apple in a position of authority, I would say we'll draw on the inspiration of the iPod. By the end of 2025, we need by the holidays of 2025, we should be shipping iPods.

AirPods glasses. Yeah. Period. Make it happen. I don't care. Like take the innards of AirPods and like, and honestly, if you're working on a new version of AirPods, stop, put it on hold and do this instead. Cause AirPods are great. The existing shipping AirPods are fine. Stop it.

You can build a product and get it going and ship it by the end of the year. Let's use all the power within Apple to make that product happen. Simplify and miniaturize the work that you did to get the speakers in a Vision Pro. So you know how to do that. It doesn't need to be that good. You know how to make a speaker that fires into the ear. Or you did a bunch of research about bone conduction and decided not to go for it. Maybe that works for these and you can use that instead. But the guts of it are going to be AirPods. That's all.

And ship it. Like do it now. I don't understand. This is one of my frustrations. I know that Apple is a big company and things are complex. I get it. But one of my frustrations about Apple is, and it may be to their overall harm in the long run, is they seem incapable of doing something with speed. They seem incapable of making things happen that are obviously weaknesses.

addressing them quickly. They didn't address the butterfly keyboard, for example. That's a classic example. But I would argue the smart home stuff, like they're talking about this display. How long has it been since the Echo Show came out? Like this was an obvious place for them to go years ago. And they, I guess, decided not to, or they just decided to put their toe in it. But like they could have made that product happen. And this is another case where like, look, Meta figured it out. AirPods, but glasses. And, and,

And I don't know whether it's like, well, no, we thought about that and decided not to do it. And so now that Ned is doing it, we're really never going to do it. That's stupid. That's stupid. And it's not the Vision Pro. It's a totally different approach to putting something on your face. But for people who don't want to wear the AirPods, they could wear this instead and they get an AirPods experience. It really is. That's why I described it as AirPods glasses. Because think of it like that. I don't... I just...

And then Mark Gurman comes out and says, yeah, they're looking at that. It'll be out in two or three years. I'm like, what are you doing? Yep. Too slow. What are you doing? Too slow. Worst gadget or most disappointing technology. The Upgradians voted of 11% for the Vision Pro, 12% for artificial intelligence as a whole, and 15% for the humane AI pin. Yeah.

The Humane AI pin, which was introduced in 2023, but shipped in 2024. The Humane AI pin won this category in 2023. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Which honestly makes this really tantalizing as a possibility to give it the award twice. But I want to make a pitch. Okay. Image Playgrounds.

Oh, wow. Image Playgrounds is the most disappointed that I have been in technology this year. Like I said, this is the show I've heard me say it many times, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I just think that I don't think Apple, a lot of people write in Apple Intelligence, but not enough to get into the thing. But like, I don't think Apple Intelligence on the whole has been bad, but I think Image Playgrounds is bad. I think it is not a good platform

It is not a good use of this kind of technology. It's not good enough. And it undermines, in my opinion, some of the good work that Apple have done. Like with Genmoji, which is a fantastic thing, I think. It is really great. I think that Image Playgrounds is just not worth it. And so they shouldn't have shipped it. And so I'm disappointed in that feature. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's very good either. It's absolutely true.

I don't... I mean, I guess if you got your hopes up, the Vision Pro is disappointing, but I think it is exactly what we thought it was initially, which is a developer kit that's... I actually think it's kind of great, but nobody should buy it, right? Am I disappointed by that? No. The Vision Pro is exactly what it should have been. The things that have been disappointing is what came after that wasn't... Well, some of it's Apple, but not the hardware. There wasn't enough content. There wasn't enough apps. They can, to a point...

uh do better in these areas but like the vision pro specifically it is exactly what was promised and maybe better than like it's just like hardware software how it works but it is the the content that was the the thing that was yeah a failure to it i think yeah yeah i agree um well i'm i'm okay with image playground being the winner in this category because i agree i i am i

I am disappointed in Apple for it, and I find using it eternally disappointing.

I've only ever shared things to laugh at them. Yeah. I've only ever used things to share them and laugh at them because it, I am unhappy with all of the output and I'm especially unhappy that they centered caricatures of people in your photos library instead of centering generic people, which are in there, which I totally even missed that it was in there. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago that it had to be pointed out to me by

frenemy of the show, Griffin, that there is this appearance thing. But think about that. Apple wants you to make caricatures of your friends using its ML models. And they're not good. I just don't like it. I don't like anything about it. When...

Again, Genmoji is really good, works good, and I laugh with it, not at it. Because I can make funny things with it. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Have you seen the ad? There's a great Genmoji ad. I haven't seen it, no. It's great. There's a great ad, and it's just like a whole... You have this great technology. Why even bother with image playgrounds? Like, why? It's very strange to me. Because they're trying to... Look, look, I think...

in the end, in a couple of years, what we're going to look at Apple intelligence and say, Apple panicked because they were behind. They threw out everything that everybody else was doing, but we're behind on it. And then if they're lucky, what we'll say is, and then we realized the stuff that actually mattered and the stuff that didn't matter. And they kind of like faded away the stuff that didn't matter and focused on the stuff that mattered. But right now they don't have that.

Yeah, I'm happy with that because I thought Humane AI pin would be fun. Great runner-up. But the thing is... Runner-up. Was the Humane AI pin... It wasn't a disappointment. We knew it was going to be like that. No, it was a worse gadget, though. It was a worse gadget. It shipped and it wasn't any good and all the reviews were brutal. That's a good point, yeah. And so I think it's literally worst gadget is the Humane AI pin. And then do you have another runner-up? I don't know. I don't agree with the Vision Pro and I kind of...

gang, I love you all so much, but like, we can't keep calling AI as a whole the most disappointing. We're going to do this forever. Like we can, it's like at a certain point, like I think finding specific things to be mad about or upset about, I think is better than just like all of artificial intelligence. I think. Well, I was, I was trying to figure out a way to say like using, like using AI for search purposes.

But even then it's too complex. I keep thinking about how I do Google searches now and they put up these AI things that are... I would be happy to say the Google AI summary. Google AI summary is the worst. I will say a few words about it. They send their stupid AI summary at the top. It's

it must be disregarded or checked. So essentially, it's just more garbage at the top of a Google page before you get to real results. And this would be different if the search was the solution. But it isn't because some percentage of the time, what you get back is completely wrong or useless. And again, I think that AI in certain contexts is great.

But boy, it is getting applied to contexts where it does not belong. Where it actually serves to make the product worse. I think search and chat GPT, like web search abilities and chat GPT has made chat GPT better. Because it's still wrong. You know it's going to be wrong. But putting AI in Google made Google worse.

Right? Like, you can still say, and I get it, like how you were saying earlier, ChatGPT was getting things wrong. But ChatGPT was getting things wrong before. Like, giving it search functionality made it better, but it's still unreliable. I expect Google to be reliable, and now it isn't.

The answer that Google gives me is an unreliable thing. I don't know if you saw this, but Jason Schreier at Bloomberg is a game reporter. He kind of went viral a bit on Blue Sky over the weekend because he said his children watched Encanto and loved it, and he wanted to find out if there was a sequel. So he typed in Encanto 2, and it gave a full plot breakdown and a release date of 2024, which all came from a fandom wiki where people...

kind of fan fiction movie development. Like, even down to the fact of saying that Gloria Estefan was actually the lead in this movie. Like, they did, like, a whole thing. Who wrote the music when they did it? And Google just used that. Now, like, that's not a good...

source to be training your AI on because it's not real in the first place. And of course, once that breaks, they turn that off and they're like, oh no, no, that's not there anymore. But you can't, this is not how we can live our lives. And that, yes, I saw that example. It is a great example. How, this is my overarching thought because I think this goes for a lot of the stuff that Apple has done too this year, which is maybe we need to be a little less generous about AI results because

That Google result, like being so wrong, I feel like it's very easy to say, well, it's an AI result. What do you expect? Sometimes they're wrong.

And in fact, I think what we should say is Google released a defective product that misinforms its users, even though they're in the business of information. And they've done it because they feel they have some sort of external business pressure to do it.

But clearly they've released it before they can stand by its results. Yeah. Because they've just decided to inflict it on the world, even though it's not very good because they feel they need to. And everything I said also applies to Apple intelligence. Yeah.

Because it's like, again, I do like using ChatGPT for some element of searching, but it's always like, get me to somewhere, get me to somewhere. And I like the way that it gets me to places. AI is great when it is assisting people who know it is assisting them and providing information as a tool, as a part of a bigger nutritious breakfast. We go to Google for answers.

And the people who are using it don't know that it's an assistive tool and it's being presented to them as a fait accompli, as a this is your answer. And that is, I think, the worst thing about AI right now is that it's being presented by companies as the answer when, in fact, it's best used as an assistant tool.

who is going to bring you things that you scrutinize. But that's a complex message, and a lot of people don't want to scrutinize anything. They just want the answer. Okay, fair enough. But if you're giving them the wrong answer, you're not solving their problem. You're making their problems worse. And that's where we are with a lot of AI stuff. Yep.

right now. So let's do that. I think there are specific, very good complaints, but I just think all of AI, I don't believe is just an easy thing to say. But we all have our different opinions on this, and that's great that we have our different opinions. Okay. So Image Playground is the winner. We'll put the Humane AI pin as a runner-up. And how did you describe the Google? You had the right official word. Google AI summaries. Summaries. Yeah, let's do that as a runner-up.

So we go to most life-changing hardware. The Upgradians voted 3% for the AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid features. Pretty strong. 4% for the Apple Vision Pro and 12% for the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch is always up the top of the list here, which makes sense because if you've just gotten an Apple Watch for the first time, your life just got changed, right? And it'll save your life. Yeah. Yes.

I'll throw the M4 MacBook Pro onto the pot because it changed my life because I'm working in a completely different way now with one computer instead of having two. I'm going to make a case for the Vision Pro.

Okay. Because this is where it should have been, right? This is where this, when, you know, before this year began, if you think about what product, what category could the Vision Pro sit in? Most life-changing hardware could have been it. So for me, the Vision Pro has been a huge part of my year, right? Like it's been a dominant thing that has occurred throughout the year. Uh,

I traveled to America and had a great trip. I got to meet Tim Cook and Greg Joswiak. That was pretty fun. And I would say then the product has helped me stay better connected with friends and colleagues, right? Like we spoke about earlier. It's been something which has been very interesting to track. It's been a good story that has been like worth tracking the whole way through the year. Yeah.

It didn't change everything the way that I thought it would, but I think has made a big impact. I'm not really pushing for this, but this is my kind of like how I could say that it has been a life-changing piece of hardware this year. Okay, I can go with that. I don't think that the Vision Pro has changed my life in any way. I think it's got a lot of interesting potential. I like it. I think it is a...

great cutting edge piece of Apple hardware that just is basically an experimental piece of hardware now. And fine. That is what it is. I'm happy to have it in the mix. I'd like to put the MacBook Pro in the mix. And I think the AirPods Pro 2 with hearing aid is actually...

really resonates with me. Like that is kind of what this category is about. Yeah. I'd say these three, I think we could give it to the AirPods Pro 2. Yeah. I agree. And then have the MacBook Pro and the Vision Pro in the mix. As the runners up. Yeah. I agree.

Because that is, again, it's not a thing that I need, but I did the hearing test and was really impressed by that. And I hear about how it could be used for people. And I think that is an amazing thing. And if I ever get to that point, I feel confident and comfortable in knowing that there is already a solution that I have in my pocket that can help me.

And it's just similar to how I feel about a lot of the health stuff that Apple does. It's like, I'm just very happy that the products that I already choose to wear and use have these features in them. And so this is just another great example of that. I agree. Favorite tech story. Yeah. Upgradians. 5% of leaving Twitter for Mastodon or Blue Sky. 7% Apple-lended DMA. And 9% Apple Vision Pro.

So I would just say copy and paste what I said about the Vision Pro into this one too, because that is my favorite tech story of the year. All right. My favorite tech story of the year is actually the surprise reveal of the M4 in iPads when we thought that the M4s would go in computers, you know, like Macintosh computers.

And instead they did this M4 reveal with the, yeah, the thin iPad with the great screen. But the fact that they had the M4 in there, I think that that was, it's, I know Mark Gurman kind of, kind of broke it slightly early, but like it was still in doubt. Like it seemed so unlikely. We were saying we didn't think that it was going, even though that Mark was saying it was like, is this one of the places where he's misunderstood? Right. Cause it didn't seem likely that that would happen. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was, I think that was my favorite story of the year. Although, yeah, for some, for some definitions of favorite Apple adapting to the DMA this year was interesting. We talked about that when we talked about Delta.

It's not just the DMA, but reacting to it by doing things like making emulators allowed and all the changes that they've had to make. Alternative backup at marketplaces and all of that stuff has been interesting to track and continues. Sure. I don't know if I'd call it favorite, though. I'm not sure I would either, to be honest.

What do you think? For me, I think the Vision Pro would take it here for me. This is the year where... I mean, the Vision Pro was just an announcement last year, and this year it was real, and we've got the good and the bad about that. So I'm fine with Vision Pro being the winner. I would like to put the M4 reveal as a runner-up. And what should our other runner-up be? We could put the DMA one in.

uh as a runner-up because it has been a big story that's gone throughout the year and i can understand that some of the things that have come out of it have been either interesting or good but also there's just like a lot of uh press releases from institutions that are just upset at each other which can get which can drag you down a bit but yeah favorite is is an interesting word here because i the one other one i was going to nominate was uh the fall of intel

But I don't consider that a favorite, right? I think it was a really interesting story. Yeah. I mean, that could go in the next category. Oh, boy. I mean, tech screw up over the course of a decade, I guess. Let's put in Apple adapting to the DMA as the runner up. All right. And so we come to our final category in the 11th annual Upgradees. Favorite tech screw up, the Upgradians.

at 5%, which is... Sure. I'm just going to say on that, like, I know what you're saying, but also, he got what he wanted. Like... Turns out. I don't think he screwed up. Like, people left, but I don't think he cares. Uh...

I think he's going to lose a lot of money, and I'm not sure he cares about that either, because it's doing exactly what he wanted it to do, which is feed his ego. For me, the screw-up... I mean, if you wanted to say the name of it, yeah, I would agree with that, but all of the screw-ups had already happened before this year, and this year we saw he got something out of it. 13% CrowdStrike update failure that took out the entire world for at least a day.

And then at 15% is the humane AI pin. Hey, it's the AI pin. It's back again. It's back again. Okay. Let me contribute to this because I also think the CrowdStrike situation is my favorite screw up of the year. I was on a plane when CrowdStrike happened. Wow.

landed and got all these texts about, oh no, are people going to have trouble getting where they need to go for the relay event in the UK? Oh my gosh, yeah, it's happening then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was thinking, yeah, no, I was flying to the UK and I got to Heathrow and they're like, oh, you know, will you even be able to get your continuing flight? Which we did. We had literally no impact on us. But here's the thing. One of my favorite things in the world is how...

Basic computer technology can completely fail us in ways we don't expect and in ways that we see in the real world. And I'll give you a concrete example, which was we were in, I think it was when we were in Denver, visiting my brother-in-law this summer because they have a new baby. We're driving down the highway. I'm driving and Lauren's looking out the window and

And she laughs and says, check it out. And I look and it's a giant digital billboard with a DOS boot up error. And first off, she made the absolutely dead right comment, which is if this was the Bay Area, I would think this was an ad, right? And by the way, if you're somebody who makes digital billboard ads, you're

For a tech company, you're an agency, a fake crash of the billboard that's actually about your company. Brilliant. Do that. Okay. Do that. But this wasn't, this was literally like, I can't read this external device. Press F1. I was like, oh man. And then I was just in an airport, five flights in 10 days. I don't know which airport. And when we were walking, there was a big, I think it was an ad terminal and it was all, it was the DOS startup. I love it when,

Just a cheap, crappy PC thing happens and you see it in the world where you shouldn't. I don't love it necessarily when a dumb software update breaks the entire world in a way that causes havoc among especially travelers and that requires IT people to individually update.

manually update their PCs to get them to work right? Yeah. Plus, just the fact that it's a problem with Windows PCs. I mean, okay, am I...

As a Mac, a longtime Mac user, do I still have enough feeling in my heart that I can delight at the utter failure of a Windows PC that's being used in a vital situation because somebody was asleep at the switch when they pulled the software update out there and now nothing can be done?

I'm not too small or I'm not too big for that. I am that small. It actually kind of delights me. It's why those DOS prompts delight me when I see them. It's the same thing. It's like, oh, your PC broke. Oh, that's too bad. So yeah, I love the CrowdStrike story. That is 100% my favorite tech screw up of the year. Yeah, it was pretty monumental as a thing. Just like you said, one of those things like, oh, this is what Y2K would have been like.

Like, yeah, this is what people will worry about. This sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I saw there was a story over the weekend that NPR did that made a lot of people on Mastodon very angry for good reasons, which was like, you know, basically it's just overheat or reheated content for the end of the year where everybody's got time off. And it was like, Hey, remember Y2K? Uh, that obviously written by somebody who does not remember Y2K. Oh, well that amounted to nothing. Yeah.

And everybody was like, it amounted to nothing because we spent tens of thousands of hours fixing all the software in the world so that it would get dates right outside of the 20th century. That's why it amounted to nothing. And yet in people use it as a punchline, like, ah, Y2K, that turned out to be nothing. It's like it only turned out to be nothing because everybody fixed all the stupid stuff and CrowdStrike. It would have been like 10 CrowdStrikes.

If it had actually been left to happen. Yep. So, you know, like it would have been, it would have been much worse than this, but yeah. Do you have any other nominees here? Apple and the DMA. Apple and the DMA. They screwed up. They're going to keep screwing up and it's going to keep getting worse and it's going to get worse and worse and worse because they screwed up and then they could have taken that time to try and,

meet these people where they wanted to be met and they've decided not to and instead decided to dig their heels in. And so it's just going to keep getting worse. We've been doing our special episodes, so we haven't had a chance to talk about it yet. But I would fold into this favorite again, not a strong word, but I do appreciate that Apple has tended to have a very aggressive reaction to the DMA and then has had to come and actually do the things that they want anyway. And that I do kind of really enjoy. But

What I will say is one thing that seems to have happened in the last few weeks that's very interesting is Apple has once again used the supposedly neutral notarization system for iOS in the EU to issue a blanket rejection of an app submission.

which is not supposed to happen. They talked about it a lot on ATP a couple of weeks ago. It's the idea that they say on, I think it's mini V Mac, a Mac emulator on trademark grounds, because they own the trademark. They are going to refuse to notarize the app. And I think this is one of those things that first off, like legally, I don't think they can do it. I think that the DMA or that the European commission is going to say, you can't use it this way, but it makes me so angry that,

that they're using their neutral approval system that's supposed to be neutral. All they have to do is sue the mini VMAC developer and say, you're using our trademarks incorrectly. They send an immediate cease and desist. A cease and desist. That's the way you do this. But the fact that they pulled that lever that should never be pulled, that turns the entire supposedly innocent, unbiased system

for user safety notarization system and turns it into a de facto approval system. It's the worst. And I would be more angry about it if I didn't think that Apple is going to get smacked down for it, that this is going to be one of those cases where somebody said, let's just use this mechanism to disapprove of this app. And that hopefully somebody at the European commission is going to go, no, that is not what that mechanism is for.

use another mechanism and stop it because really the jig is up. If Apple can use notarization to ban apps in the EU and elsewhere, then what are we even doing here? We're back to square one again. It's totally counter to the point of it where now notarization is the App Store approval process and that's not allowed. So anyway, I'm going to file that under Apple's reaction to the DMA here because I think it's an example of Apple behaving incredibly stupidly

And badly.

when there were better and ruining a thing that they built because they didn't want to do the more logical recourse. And I'm baffled by it, but there it is. Which is my, this is like emblematic of why this is my kind of like favorite text grew up at the year or like is what I consider to be the biggest because it is not just one story. It has been an entire year's worth of things that they have over and over and over again. And,

made it worse and like continue to make it worse and something's going to happen. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Like I don't know. I have no idea. I have no idea anymore. Either they you know get fined into oblivion and will go to court and I don't know what will happen there or it's

Apple is basically going to strong arm the EU enough that this all falls apart. At this point, I don't know what the result is, but it's not going to be pretty. No. Actually, I'm going to go with you. I think that that should be our winner.

Because we are specifically saying that Apple's reaction to what's happening in Europe is a screw up. They're not doing it right. They're not doing it well. And I know there's an argument of like, there's a legal argument. I'm like, well, yeah, but if there's a legal issue, they need to fight it out. Right. And I get that. But this goes way beyond that. Some of this behavior goes way beyond that. And we'll put the AI pin as number three. And CrowdStrike, of course. CrowdStrike is a given. Yeah.

Loses by a hair. So that's it. That is the 11th annual Upgradies. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening to us for yet another year. Happy New Year to you all as we get ready to go into 2025. Very excited about what the year will bring for

personal reasons and professional reasons. Yes, sure. Happy New Year to all Upgradians. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to send us in any questions or follow up to talk about next week's show, please go to upgradefeedback.com and you can do that. You can check out Jason at sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com and here on Relay where you hear me too. And you can find my work at cortexbrand.com.

You can follow us online. We are on Mastodon, Threads, and Blue Sky. And you can find video clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. This week, we're going to talk about my Mac Mini, and I think maybe we'll talk about the holidays a little bit. You can go to getupgradeplus.com.

and sign up. Thank you to Fitbod, ShareShot, and Data Citizens Dialogues for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.