Upgrade - 122: The 2016 Upgradies

Episode Date: January 2, 2017

Once again, Myke and Jason pick their favorite products of the year! But this year, they are aided in their pursuit of excellent by the votes of you, the loyal Upgradians.

from relay fm this is upgrade and the third annual upgradies my name is mike hurley today's show today's special episode is brought to you by our fine sponsors, Encapsular, Casper, and Squarespace. Mr. Jason Snell, we did it. This is the third Upgradies. Can you believe that? It's crazy. You sound so happy. Happy New Year, by the way. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to everybody out there in Upgradian land. I'm so excited. I know. This is just one of those little things. It was a silly idea that one of us had to fill up something at the end of the year. And now it's become what I consider to be a landmark in the podcast calendar. It's when will the Upgradies happen. And the Upgradies are happening right now.

It is a great annual tradition. Yes, I agree. So here we are. We have all of our categories are returning from last year and we have some great nominees and as we mentioned on the show this is the first time that we have allowed the upgradians to have their literal say in how the upgradies will go so the way that we're going to do this we're going to go through every category list all of the nominees maybe talk about them a little bit if they're interesting some of the nominations are there are some interesting nominations in here

and then we're going to go through who the upgradians picked so what they wanted to win the upgrade and then me and you are going to then talk about what our personal votes for the winner are and then between the two of us we will decide who takes home the trophy. So we will start the proceedings today with the best overall iOS application. The nominees for this app are Tweetbot, AirMail, Narwhal, Workflow, 1Password, Overcast, Fantastical, Scrivener, Transmit, Castro, Ferrite, they are the top nominees. Now, the Upgradians, Mr. Snell, they voted with a 38% for Overcast, with 1Password coming in second place and Workflow coming in third place.

Well, did you know that one, this is a little fact you may not be aware of, 100% of podcast listeners listen to podcasts that is true but you know i will say that there we we have two podcast applications in our nomination list and only one of them went away with such a big lead um castro got uh unfortunately only two percent of the, which I feel kind of sad about. So what is your pick for the best overall iOS app of the year? I am going to pick... I'm tempted to pick something that is not on the list because there were some late-breaking changes.

So I'm going gonna give a shout out to an app that i didn't put on the list because i felt it was like a little esoteric but that i do love which is ferrite i've talked about it before audio editor for ios ferrite is in there very very low down yeah ferrite with 07 percent of the votes ah so you you did mention i didn't hear you mention ferrite i did well there was such a long list i'm not surprised but yeah ferrite had 0.4 percent of all right 0.7 percent of the uh of the upgradings vote well and that's what you're gonna pick is your ios app of the year i'm gonna pick i'm gonna i'm gonna for now i'm gonna say it's a tie okay do ties you sure we make the rules yes okay so for now i if i have to break this tie later i will but it's a tie between

ferrite audio editor that's great and scrivener oh okay the fantastic uh long form writing tool which after many many years of hope that it would come to iOS, came to iOS, and is not halfway done. It is a full, completed, fully functional writing app. And it's great. And I'm impressed. And it syncs, and it syncs with the desktop version. And all the important features are there. And it's very impressive.

So into Category 1, we're only at category one, and we're already going to have a problem. Yeah, almost certainly, but that's fine. This is how the upgradies go. Think about what I do, Mike, right? I do podcasts, and I write. And so I picked a podcast app and a writing app. It was going to happen. It's inevitable.

So what do you have? Workflow. Now, the reason that I've pickedflow as the best overall iOS application, because I think throughout this entire list of apps, Workflow is the one that has just gotten better and better over time more consistently. Like all of these applications that we've listed, they're in this list year after year

because they continue to get better. But the rate at which Workflow is improving is kind of astounding to me like their recent addition of the ability to hook into web apis you know like for people that really heavily use workflow this is such a huge advancement like yeah i think that this application is a must-have application for anybody that wants to do anything other than just consumption on their iPad. Like, just some of the basic functions that it unlocks for you, once you really kind of understand how to use it, is incredible. You know, like, I've spoken many times about my frustration

with rich text on iOS. Now, but Workflow allows me to get around some of these things by allowing me to convert. So, say, for example, when I send an email to somebody, I can use Workflow to convert Markdown to rich text and open it up in an email. There's just no other way I can do that on iOS. Or like taking a web page and turning it into a PDF. There are so many things that Workflow can do that mean that you don't have to buy other applications. There are standalone applications that you can buy in the app store to take a web page and turn it into a PDF, or you can just play around with workflow and build it yourself. And I don't think that there are many applications that are in the club that workflow is in of

just like complete top tier for iOS apps. And they just continue to make it better and better over time. I will also highly recommend the Canvas podcast series about workflow that Fraser and Federico have done. That is really great and in-depth multi-part series about how it works. And my only criticism about workflow is that I wish that they had more documentation. Like sometimes I look at some of the blocks that they've got and I wonder exactly how they work and there's kind of no way to look that up and that can be frustrating. And I end up going to Federico and Fraser and

saying, what does this do? And they tell me, but that part, I wish that they were, I wish they were better at documenting what everything does. Yeah, I agree. But luckily there are resources. You know, go to relay.fm slash canvas, and they have a whole series that they've been working on for like the last three or four months, like building up from basics all the way up to like the web API stuff that you can do with Workflow. So go check that out.

So we have now for our consideration, right at the top tier, kind of I guess the second stage, Workflow, Ferrite, Srite scrivener and overcast to pick from in grand upgradies tradition though oftentimes we will we will reach a compromise where one of us will yeah we'll we'll agree right we do our initial picks this is how this just to set it out there for people who don't remember uh we we will we will often come to a compromise agreement about what the upgradey choice is well there can be only one winner so a compromise must be found yes so i agree my my initial argument would be scrivener is very new so giving it the overall ios app pick over the newcomer pick is interesting.

However, I don't want Scrivener to be the newcomer either because I have my own thoughts there. Sometimes being mentioned, being nominated as an honor, being mentioned as a finalist as an honor, and then winning as yet another honor. And you don't have to have all the honors. You don't. I am happy to support your choice of workflow for for the Upgrady for Best iOS app, because I think you made a strong case, and I agree with you. I think it's a fantastic app.

So congratulations to Workflow. You are the best overall iOS app Upgrady winner. Which takes us to our next category, which I just teased, which is the best newcomer iOS application. So this is the iOS app released in 2016 that is considered to be the best. And on that list of nominees we have AirMail, Bear, TrueCaller,

Castro, Scrivener, Swift Playgrounds, Xfinity TV. Now, there are two applications on here that most people probably have no idea what they are, and they're both mine and Jason's potentially esoteric picks. So, I will explain true caller okay do you remember when ios 10 it brought around this new api that people can hook into the

phone like you can do things like maybe voice over ip but you also had access to the call list true caller is an application i found that i absolutely love which is a spam caller notification system. So I can get a phone call from a known spam call, like robocall, and it just shows up when someone's calling me to tell me that they're spam. Or if I go to a missed call on my phone, I can open this like via the share sheet. So you just like share contact and put it into true caller and it will tell me who it is. And if it's been reported as spam, I love it because i get so many of these robo calls and because i have my phone i do not disturb most of the time these calls never come to me so i can just check them in my missed calls and know that there's no point dealing with it because

it's like a scam caller or whatever it's fantastic so that that's my picture what is what is xfinity tv i so i am a Comcast cable subscriber. And after many months of complaining about how their app for iOS was terrible, they released this new app. And I mean, I put it on the list because, again, honor just to be mentioned in the list, right? I'm not going the house, it provides access to any TV show that I'm allowed access outside of the house. And there's some licensing restrictions there. When I'm in my house, it makes my iPhone or iPad essentially no different than a TV attached to a cable box. I can watch live TV from any channel anywhere in my house on that device. And it supports picture in picture.

That's pretty great. That's pretty good. That was like, for me, that was like the moment where I thought, yes, finally, this is working exactly as I had hoped it always would. If I want to be out in the backyard in the hammock on a summer day and have some channel on while I'm reading something or whatever it is like picture in picture, live TV, on demand stuff, whatever, it's all there. And that that's, for me, that's what the TV experience on an iOS device should be like. So full credit to Xfinity, they, they actually made it happen. And, you know, people can complain about some of the restrictions, like when you leave your home, you don't get to see all that stuff. And yeah, that's dumb. But

that that all comes down to deals with the content providers. And they're inconsistent. And as Apple has found, that's a tough thing to do. But I have to say, in the home, and from a pure technology standpoint, they did a really great job. It's a good app. So that's why I mentioned it. That sounds good. I wish I had something like that right i mean i don't have cable but like i can see that if i i would like something like that right like i've always lusted after a sling or something yeah yeah if you subscribe to a tv service it should be like this where you can see the channels and you can see what you can you can get on demand and you can start playing anything at any time and put it in picture in picture if you want on your ipad and uh and

this does that so but that's not my choice so the upgradians they voted with 34 of the vote for swift playgrounds yeah i've never used it so i can't i can't comment on it but that i mean i'm happy that it exists right like i'm happy with the idea of this application existing because of hopefully what I consider to be the groundwork of more developer tools coming to iOS in the future, which I think is an important step. But I will go with my pick first. And my pick for the best newcomer is AirMail.

I think AirMail has its faults. It is not a perfect application. And I think part of the reason that it has some weird parts, AirMail has its faults. It is not a perfect application. And I think part of the reason that it has some weird parts, some bugs and some stuff that doesn't work as reliably as you would like is because it came out of the gate

so powerful for an email application on iOS. I haven't found any app that comes close to what AirMail can do. And like Workflow workflow they have updated this application very consistently i am on the beta now and they have some amazing things coming soon like this application just gets stronger and stronger and this is an app that has a million settings. But for me, as somebody who is so reliant on email, I'm kind of okay with that because I get to make email, my email app be the way that I want it to be. Like one of my, one of the things that I really love in, in powerful email applications is one setting,

and no other email app on iOS has this except for AirMail, which is to not mark a message as unread until it is acted upon. If I read a message, but don't do anything with it, it still remains unread. And I really like that. That works for my system. And I've always wanted an iOS email app that would do this. There are a bunch of Mac apps that will do this. I think even Apple's Mail app will do this on the Mac, but nothing does it on iOS except AirMail. But this is an example of the like super niche case stuff that you can find in AirMail. But I think that that kind of thing, that kind of level of strange control you can have is kind of okay in an email application because everybody does it differently. And it has all of the features that you application because everybody does it differently.

And it has all of the features that you'd want and it has a clear business model as well. You pay for the application. And I like that because there are not a lot of email applications that people use that are built that way. So it's going to be AirMail for me, Jason. It's a good pick. I like it a lot.

My choice in this category, it's the year of Swift Playgrounds. Okay. I pick Swift Playgrounds as well. Yeah, I think we're going to have to give it Swift Playgrounds. If you pick it along with the vast majority I got from our listeners, it's got to be that.

Again, I really appreciate Swift Playgrounds, but I couldn't cast my vote for it because i haven't really spent any time with it and and i have i i really um i'm very impressed with it you know it is as a the the lessons i can't be i can't comment on it from perspective of like a an apple uh app developer uh that trying to use the Playground features of it to work on app ideas or things like that. But from the pure, it's an educational tool. They built all of these different lessons to show people how to program and how to program in Swift.

They did a great job. The lessons are impressive, and it's a great, you know, it's an iPad-only app app it's a great use of the ipad and we are champions of the ipad you and i and this is an example i mean this is one of the major things that apple did for the ipad in 2016 as well was really swift playgrounds but i think it's i think it's a great uh a great app a great educational resource and uh i you know this is if there was a big you know a big story especially on the ipad in terms of uh new apps this year i mean i think it's the year of swift playgrounds i think with playgrounds it's going to be like without a shadow of a doubt

there you go there you go that our best newcomer ios application of 2016 so We move on to the best overall Mac app. Unfortunately, the two Mac app categories we have have a lot less nominees than iOS. It's funny how that happens. We have 1Password, Final Cut Pro X,

Fantastical, BB Edit, Keyboard Maestro, and Audio Hijack. Up there. The Upgradians voted were 48 percent for one password yeah well final cut pro and then other coming at 11.8 percent i don't think that our listeners were happy with uh the the nominees that we put in here but well it says something that the one that that uh that got the most votes is is universal in a way going to the idea of like everybody uses their mac for these different purposes that are very specific i feel like this isn't surprising that one password cuts across it's a utility that cuts across sort of

everybody's use cases and so that makes it different what's your vote i am going to vote for audio hijack and i know again i'm a podcast person so i have i have reason to do it but audio hijack which was the new version was released version three was released last year or sorry two years ago now, I'm still writing 2016 on all my checks. The release in 2015, completely redesigned. And this year I've just come to appreciate it even more. I use it for anything involving, not even just recording,

but routing audio around my Mac. I'm running it right now. You're hearing me, everybody, through a recording done via Audio Hijack. Just the whole design of it and functionality, it can do almost anything. I use it for my transcripts for analyst calls because it's got basically like a DVR mode where it'll record the live audio and then let me pause it and back up and go forward again, which is pretty great with a system-wide keystroke. back up and go forward again, which is pretty great with a system-wide keystroke. I know it's an esoteric utility, but for me, it is my favorite, I have to say, in terms of being new and flashy

and fun. And I use all of the apps on this list, and they're all great. But I decided that I would give my extra shout out to Audio Hijack.'m going with final cut pro 10 now i have used final cut for a while for some basic stuff but having got into the vlogging stuff i have come to understand what a pro application can be final cut pro 10 i know it that a lot of people didn't like it when it came about because it was new, but everything that is new about it, I'm sure is what I love about it. It is a good looking application with clear,

understandable user interface that doesn't hide everything. And everything that I use with it, I love it. And one of the things that I find so interesting about Final Cut is if I have an idea for something that I want to do, I can find a way to do it in that app. Because as well as everything being nice and clear,

Apple's documentation is incredible for Final Cut. You Google anything, I have not found this with any other level of pro application, especially that makes no matter what i google or how i google it like how do i do x in final cut i will find an apple support document that tells me how to do it let alone the tutorials on youtube that you find um so i i have found final cut pro tend to be fantastic to work with over the last few months um and i i have no consideration to try and use anything else which isn't the same for logic right so we use logic for audio production and every now and then i think to myself shall i learn audition like adobe's i don't feel that way about final cut because final cut

is solid uh it's a great app i agree the you know a lot of the knock on final cut pro 10 was that the professionals who were used to the old method of using Final Cut didn't like it. And I totally get that, right? Yeah, because it's what you know. And I'm not a professional video editor, right? But like you, I'm somebody who, I mean, I've been editing video since I was a teenager in various forms. I was editing video back when you attach two VCRs together. And then we finally got a controller that let you control

the two VCRs. I mean, I've been editing video in different forms for a very long time, but I'm not a professional film or TV video editor or anything like that. Final Cut Pro, anything I can think of that I want to do, it basically will do. And I can put something together very quickly and get it to look more or less exactly like I want just in a staggeringly short amount of time. Like drag this in, drop it there, resize it, slide it up there, have it animate and move from here to here and all that. I can do that really fast in Final Cut Pro.

And generally I can figure out, I mean, some of it is esoteric, but I can figure out a lot of it just of it is esoteric, but I can figure out a lot of it just by kind of clicking around, just being a Mac user, I can figure out where everything is and how to use it. That's pretty amazing. So that, I mean, for that, I do the Total Party Kill videos with it, where I've often got like multiple cropped versions of different parts of the video stream and they pop on and off and stuff like that and and it's not a problem i did that uh the the cars and trucks video that i did um a couple weeks ago that that was um that was all you know final

cut and that final cut was not the problem right it was if final cut was the easy part because it made everything that i was doing easy it just i yeah i agree with you so where are we going to go for winner no i would say that that i would happily put a vote in for Audio Hijack as well. I use it every day, and I use it for some basic things, but it's a great app. There's some stuff that I wished it could do that it doesn't do. Yeah. Like, I really wish that I could just live stream directly from Audio Hijack. I know.

I've talked to Paul Kaposis at rogami about that and because they've got a separate product right nice cast i wish that they would just um you know yeah they would just sell a way to integrate that sell nice cast and let it be a plug-in or something like that i think there's a business model problem there honestly which is that that's a separate product that's got a separate price and they don't want to pay any net purchase i would give them whatever they need you know i think the challenge is i don they don't want to pay any net purchase i would give them whatever they need you know i think the challenge is i don't think they want to force people who only use nice cast to also buy audio hijack but but i know they've got they've got three amazing utilities

and i wish they all kind of worked out of the same interface instead of sort of in separate places um but i i do love that and i And I'll agree with the listeners too. 1Password, I use it every day. I can't imagine using my Mac without it. And on the new Touch Bar MacBook Pro, let me tell you, once you've unlocked your 1Password lock on a Mac with your fingerprint, well, you do that on iOS, right? Once you do that on your Mac with a fingerprint, and then you go that on iOS, right? Once you do that on your Mac with a fingerprint

and then you go back to an iMac or something like that, it feels wrong. I'm like, oh, I've got to enter my password again. You get used to it really quickly. They did a great job of integrating day one, basically, with a Touch ID sensor on the MacBook Pro. So my feeling, I mean, I could also go for 1Password, right? Because it's the same thing.

It's like it's one of my favorite applications. But it's everywhere. And I really want to give this award to a Mac app. Yeah. Right, like 1Password

does and can exist on every platform, which is why it makes it so useful. But there's just something about like, with the discourse of last year,

which is obviously going to continue, about the Mac and where is the Mac going. Like, I feel like I want to give the upgradee to a shining star of Mac development. Like, an application that can only exist on the Mac and does a great job using everything that the Mac is good for. Yeah, well, and this is my conflict here,

is that I think this is the year where you started doing lots of video, and I'm doing more video. And so on that level, this is the year where it would be perfect for us to pick Final Cut. At the same time, picking an Apple product, you know, we can do it. No, I'm happy for Audio Hijack. Seriously. But this is what i'm saying

is but audio hijack from a mac developer and it's let's not forget it's doing things that i gotta say like half of what audio hijack does at least the system should do it's fixing problems that apple have in the system of audio because Because Apple doesn't care about audio stuff in its operating systems, apparently. Because they do. It is mind-boggling to me that you can't route application audio in macOS as a basic thing. But you've never been able to do it. It's just never been a thing. And Audio Hijack does it with a few clicks.

So, all right, let's do it. Audio Hijack, you are the winner of the upgradee for best mac application in 2016 i feel good about that one i feel good about that best newcomer mac app is sponsored by our friends over at encapsular the cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. Encapsular have a worldwide network that inspects every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site whilst delivering your content to your customers faster. Every day, websites of all sizes are attacked. Criminals use botnets to scrape website content.

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So, the nominees for Best Newcomer Mac Application are Bear Notes, Siri, Loopback, so the nominees for best newcomer mac application are bare notes siri loopback air sonos and i don't even know if we can count this one but you put it in a beta a closed beta of an application called forecast now give me give me your pick and then we can go into somebody's in a bit more detail um well my pick is forecast okay figuring it probably won't win and it's totally unfair because this is not a product anybody can get yet but i checked with the developer and even though it's a private beta the developer has talked about it enough publicly that i can at least mention it so forecast is is is Marco Arment's Mac app.

Yep. That like, I'm going to learn how to be a Mac developer. And as a podcast person, again, you know, I'm not trying to represent everybody here. I'm trying to- We're biased in our picks based on our work. Totally. Totally.

And that's just, these are the upgradies, right? These are not, you know, from a staff of 20. These are the podcasters. It's not the eddies. Exactly right. Exactly right. I got my eddy award behind me. Which everybody asked me, what did I win it for? And the answer is I won it for running the eddy awards for like 15 years. That's how I won it. Best eddy award coordinator. Exactly right. So what forecast is, and I hope Marco finishes it and releases it, because I think it's very good. And I think it's releasable soon. I think he maybe just doesn't want to do the, he's working on other projects. And I think that he doesn't want to be distracted by support, honestly. And that's the challenge with a lot of apps that scratch

the developer's itch is when they get them working to their satisfaction. There is this moment of I could just keep this myself and not have to answer to other people and fix the bugs that they find that are weird, if it always works for me. But it's an app for tagging and encoding podcast files, basically. So you can either drag on an MP3 and update the tags, or you can drag on a WAV or an aif at the output that comes out in my case from logic the the edited version and you drag it in and you can set the encoding quality and it actually encodes in the background so if you've got it set to a sort of the one you always use and when you drag it in it starts encoding it in the background and then meanwhile

while it's doing that you can put in the name it tries to guess based on the name, like here's the art you want to use. And here's probably the name and here's probably the number and you fill in the title and you write in the description. And if you've got, uh, if you've got, uh, chapter markers in logic, uh, it puts those down or you can add them or edit them. So you edit chapter marks as a part of this too. And then you basically press command S and you get your podcast MP33 app and it's uh it's pretty good there's some bugs because it's a beta the chapter editing support is weird and i mentioned it to mark owen he said oh yes i should use that feature but because he's using it directly from logic and occasionally i have to add chapter markers after the fact but uh it's pretty great

it will be a great utility for any Mac podcast creator out there when it is released to the public, and I hope that is in 2017. If you noticed the shows that I produce, if you noticed the metadata get better, like episode artwork and

all of the metadata being put in the ID3 tags and all that stuff, it's because I use Forecast to encode every single show that I'm a part of. I think I am the, maybe me and you will tie for this, the biggest stress tester of Forecast. And I have broken it in many interesting ways. I have too. A three-hour podcast will kill it.

Well, it used to, but I helped Marco fix that. So will a two-hour podcast will kill it well it used to uh but i think i helped marco two minute long podcast it turns out um and you know what again whilst i will underscore that it is unfair to put this in here because people can't totally is i would cast my vote for it but i won't based on the grounds that it's not publicly available and also any chapters that you ever see put into a show because of forecast. It's the easiest way that I've found to do it because you tag the chapters in the logic project and then it reads them, which I think is fantastic.

Again, and I will just once, whilst we're talking about chapters, just mention, I put chapters in when I think chapters are needed. I don't think chapters are needed i don't think chapters are needed in every episode of every show ever made yeah anyhow email mike don't email mike don't email me don't email anybody because you can give me your argument but it's not going to change my opinion like it's just my opinion i understand why they're there but i just i really don't think that chapters for every topic in every tech show

is worth the time of the producer for the amount of people that use them that's my personal opinion on this anyway anyway i'm gonna pick bear notes huh because it's great on the mac and on ios it's my new markdown text editor i don't use it as a notes application. There are some things that it doesn't do very well, like conflicts, which Apple Notes does perfectly. It deals with conflicts without even shaking, but Bear will add new notes in as conflicts, which is the worst way to deal with

conflicts. But, for what I use it for, which is to write the scripts for our podcast ads, it's perfect, because I'm able to tag things really easily, so I'm able to tag things really easily. So I'm able to find them. I can tag them by sponsor. I can tag them by month and year. So it's all sorted nicely, like into these little buckets, which I can pull from. And it's just, it's really great. I'm able to, one of my favorite features,

let's say I write some content, but I need to put it into the system later. I will make a new task in OmniFocus to add it to the system and I can grab a URL of the Bear Note so I can just click the URL in OmniFocus and it takes me right to the note. Just simple things like that. It's a really nicely built app. Those are great themes.

You can use some great fonts. It's very, very nice. So, actually, did I mention that Bear was the Upgradium winner as well? No you didn't It won with 32% of the votes with Siri winning at 29% although I don't actually think Siri counts as an app but I know why they put it in there What is AirSonos?

So AirSonos is not an app sort of, it's a bunch of scripts that you install, I wrote about it at Six Colors that you install i wrote about it at six colors that you install and it allows you to airplay to sono speakers that's that's very useful actually and i wish somebody would bundle it together as like a mac app that you could run but it's one of these open source projects where there's a script running and so you basically have to run it from the terminal and it's not very friendly but it but it it totally works and it's great

and i just i have it you know what you have to do you say no bueno but what basically you do is you create a terminal command document that like and put it in your startup items i don't even know what a terminal command okay well oh bless bless your heart i know and then i'm from a different age the other app that's in here is Loopback, which I just wanted to mention, which is also Rogue Amoeba. This is another piece of their puzzle of audio apps. 10% of the votes for Loopback.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. That's all of our friends who make podcasts, I guess. But again, the system should support this, which is being able to have virtual inputs and outputs so that you can arbitrarily say, I want to put my output over there and route it in here. And Loopback adds a piece of the puzzle that is not provided by Audio Hijack that adds to the just it's yet another thing that adds to your audio flexibility. If you ever do anything involving audio on the Mac, it's another option that gives you even more power. And it was needed. There have been some other utilities that do this.

Some of them broke when we went to, I want to say Lion broke, like all the audio utilities. And it's been a long claw back to getting stuff available. And then there's some that are out there now that do this. Not very gracefully. Yeah, I've had interface. Like Soundflower.

Yeah, there's interface confusion problems that Loopback doesn't offer. Loopback's interface is much clearer. And also there's some performance issues where some of those utilities that I won't mention by name, when they're running, my whole Mac is slow. And that isn't good. And I can keep loop back on

and it is fine all the time. So it's a good one. Somehow, 7% of the vote was cast for forecast. Yeah, isn't that nice? And I'm not sure how that many people... It's just Marco voted again and again and again. Maybe he did. Casey voted again and again and again.

I think, well, I think you chose Bear and the people chose Bear. So Bear is the winner. I think so. I think it's a good winner because there is some, this is super niche. They're just, look, this is the problem. There just aren't a lot of new Mac apps. It's true. There really isn't.

It's true. I picked an unreleased beta, Mike. I picked an unreleased beta. And a pile of scripts. And a pile of scripts and a pile of scripts and loopback yeah an os feature a pile of scripts and an unreleased application made it into the into the category there yeah oh wow thank you to encapsulate for for supporting uh the newcomer mac app game of the year now, this is always an interesting one because Game of the Year on Upgrade

is not Game of the Year on Remaster or Disruption. Game of the Year here is very different because me and you play very different games. I tend to play the games that you play, but you don't always play the games that I play. Definitely not. Because I'm more of a gamer than you. However but you don't always play the games that I play. Definitely not. Because I'm more of a gamer than you. However, this is the list of game of the year.

No Man's Sky. Now, a lot of people would say, how dare you? But I love No Man's Sky. Yeah. But it's in there. Uncharted 4, Pokemon Sun and Moon, Firewatch, and Job Simulator. They were the picks. Yeah, and I added one late that didn't get added.

Job Simulator, I didn't see on my list either. I think you added that late. I added that. What did you add? Inside. Inside. Yeah, that's a good one. The Game of the Year is the highest percentage of other votes ticked,

with 21% of votes for other. But there was nothing that really came out in there, which was bigger in voting than any of the other categories. So I didn't break them out. But it doesn't surprise me because we have an esoteric list. We have a game that was widely panned, No Man's Sky, but I loved it. A Pokemon game, which is, you know, it's not even a main console game, but I think very important. Firewatch, which is a short storytelling game.

Job Simulator, which is a VR only game. And then we have Uncharted 4 as kind of our only big what would be considered in the game of the year categories of like Polygon or something. Now, I'm going to say, now, I actually added Job Simulator late, and it's actually going to be my vote for Game of the Year. 2016 was the year of virtual reality, right? It's one of the big technology themes of the year. This was the year where it first started to be a thing that people could have in their homes. And of all of the games I've played on all VR platforms, I haven't had as much fun as I've had in Job Simulator. It is a game set in 2050,

where you are going to a human museum, because the world is run by robots. And the human museum is a set of interactions, like interactive exhibits, where you get to play the part of the human in human jobs you can play in an office in a car mechanic in a store yeah i played in the convenience store oh you played job simulator on twit uh or on the screensavers we did a whole vr segment and i was uh i was like getting the hot dog out of the out of the bin and stuff and how

much fun is job simulator like it's pretty fun because my favorite thing about this game is if you think you can do something you can do it like there is an office game and if you and there's a photocopier in it and if you put your hand in the photocopier it well it doesn't make a photocopy it actually reproduces any item that goes into it which is because it's funny like because a lot of it is how would robots have interpret us and it's like they see it as a copy machine in that it will copy anything it's hilariously funny there are all these little jokes there's tons of like little quips in there and things you can find out it's hilarious to play and it's a ton of fun and

everyone that i've had try job simulator has got as much of a kick out of it as i have so i'm gonna go with with job simulator um even though i will also cast a vote for what i think will end up being our game of the year what is your pick um my pick is going to be my late my late edition as well which is inside didn't we totally blew it uh inside uh which we did an incomparable episode about um is i don't even want to say too much about it it is a side uh scrolling um side scrolling game that uh so you're just going from left to right uh you can't you know there's no depth to it it is amazing though it is it is from play dead it's got lots of surprises i don't even want to talk about what the surprises are you start out and you're running and somebody is chasing you and the story progresses from there in increasingly surprising

ways and i don't want to say that there's a plot twist because there isn't a plot twist the story just keeps changing and progressing as you go the play mechanics are fun i played it in like five hours four hours it's i think john syracuse calls these the artsy fartsy games. You know, it's not a triple A console title with, you know, with 40 hours of play time or something like that. And that's fine with me because I kind of don't like those games. These are the developers of Limbo, which is available on iOS. This was a console and Steam game. And I thought it was great so incomparable

318 is the episode where we talked about it yeah limbo 2 or is it limbo 0 but it's very good very good game the upgradians vote tube with a 34 majority for firewatch majority for firewatch with other coming in at 21 and then uncharted 4 coming in at 14 now i would happily give firewatch our game of the year yeah me too because it's a game that we have both played and both really enjoyed um i have not yet played inside um and i'm not going to play it for a long time because i had a spoiler i know the end so i want to try and forget it before i play it it's the same with journey i did the same with journey i thought i got spoiled um and then waited for many years before i played it so i would be a bit more fresh to it so firewatch it's got to be i mean there it's a fantastic game i've really

really enjoyed it it's another of these artsy fartsy games um but also we have the tie to you know the mac community and the apple community through panic who who kind of funded and i guess helped with the development of the game it's made by a game studio called campo santo which panic are heavily involved in it's like a symbiotic relationship it's i don't know the complete details. I don't really think they talk about them, but I know that there's financial backing there from Panic. Absolutely fantastic game with a really great story.

One of the games that really made me think a lot this year and actually feel something. So Firewatch has got to be our upgrade-y winner for Game of the Year. Yeah. Next up, if you were wondering, where are all the iOS games? Well, they're in their own category. We have iOS Game of the Year.

There's a list here. PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator, Mini Metro, Super Stickman Golf 3, Inks, Pokemon Go, Really Bad Chess, and Super Mario Run. Superio run added late in the category

because we've had this voting up for longer than that game has been out there's a couple of games in there that i want to just um give a shout out to in case you've not heard of them um pewdiepie's tuba simulator is just a silly free-to-play game in the usual style of waiting for timers to complete but it's made really well it's the best of these types of games i've ever played um and it's made with a lot of humor if you enjoy pewdiepie's work which i know that maybe for listeners of this show there might not be that many people i am one of the people that does um and uh i think this game is is is an example of what is good about felix who is PewDiePie.

This is where he shows his smarts rather than his stupidness. And I prefer the smart guy as opposed to the crazy guy. Inks is another game. It is an absolutely beautiful pinball game in which you have to shoot a pinball into colors. And then when the pinball hits the colors, it draws the color wherever it goes around the pinball into colors and then when the pinball hits the colors it draws the color wherever where it goes around the pinball table it's absolutely beautiful can you explain really bad chess really bad chess i wrote about this at six colors it is a chess game and you know i'm

one of those people who thinks chess is kind of boring i learned how to play it and i was really interested in it for a short period of time. And then I realized, like, I just I don't have the focus for it. I don't like I just I'm not I'm bad at it. But really bad chess is a great spin on it because it it's a chess game where you get a different sort of a random assortment of pieces. where you get a different sort of a random assortment of pieces. And the way that you level up basically is that you start with a huge power disparity between you and your opponent. And then over time, as you win, the disparity gets less and less. And there are also like daily and weekly challenges where everybody plays the same board. So you can have one where you've got like two queens and four knights or something like that.

And a bunch of pawns and, you know, and three castles and, you know, or rooks. No matter how you say it. I was simplifying there because people don't know what the rook is. It's a castle. The knight, it's a horse. Anyway. Doesn't make any sense. I learned about.

So if you know how to play chess, but you find chess kind of boring really bad chess is actually really good so I it's a lot of fun really fun game Jason cast your vote for iOS game of the year I think the iOS game of the year came late to iOS it was on other platforms before but you know what it's mini metro I really love mini metro that is, that is my game of the year. I, I still go back to it. It is a, it is a, you know, transit simulator sort of,

but you, it's got this pleasing kind of background sound that changes as you play. And the iOS interface is perfect for it because you're drawing connections between the different Metro stations. As your city grows, it brings back the, all the things that I loved about something like SimCity, but it's simple and it never gets too complicated beyond what the basics are. The city gets bigger

and there's more traffic, but it never gets to the point where you realize that you've got to learn all these other things that are a whole extra level of complication. They keep it simple, which means it's kind of Zen-like. And I really like that that about it my only complaint about it is that they have not yet done what they've said that they would do on ios which they've done on other platforms which is provide an endless mode which is basically after you die in the game that you just get to keep playing and building your city because as we found with alto's adventure actually which got an update to do this this year sometimes you don't actually want to play the game from the beginning you just want to keep playing it and the point is not to rack up the high score

the the point is to sort of reach that kind of enjoyable state where you're playing it's what the sim city developers used to call a software toy where it's like you're not really playing a game anymore it's just like a toy you're playing with and having a good time and feeling good and and yeah software toys yeah that was maxis always said that sim city was more of a software toy than a game and i think that's accurate right there's there's kind of no way to win really um and i think mini metro would do well to have that on ios like it has on other platforms where you just keep you know when it's done you built the city and it's sort of like it's sad because it's over and it's like no no I want to see what happens next. I don't care if it doesn't count for my total points or whatever.

I just want to keep building the city. And I would like to see that. But it's a great game. I made a video about it on Six Colors. It's great. I love it. And that is by far my favorite iOS game this year. I'm not picking my favorite game.

I'm picking a game that I think should win. And it shouldn't win because it's a good game pokemon go um pokemon go is not a good ios game no it's not it's not even it's not even really a good game neither is mario run oh mario runs may be a good game it's not a good ios game it's oh it's a good nintendo game on ios that's what it is yeah that's what a good game. It's not a good iOS game. Well, it's a good Nintendo game on iOS. That's what it is. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah.

That's what it is, right? For the values of good Nintendo game, which include that the part that's good is the game part and everything around it is junk, just like on Nintendo, yes. That's actually, it is a perfect simulation. It's everything I like and dislike about Nintendo on iOS. But that's all they could ever do. They could never do it differently. I know. Pokemon Go is a phenomenon, was a phenomenon.

Maybe isn't so much now, but there has never been an iOS game that was able to do what Pokemon Go did. And I don't think there will ever be another one. I think it's a shame that they squandered it, right? Because they had some aspects of it that they got exactly right to make it become a success, but they couldn't do whatever was required to keep it. Yeah, I would say squandering is not the right word.

I would maybe say that they just couldn't capitalize on it. Okay, that works too. Yeah, that there should have been more the world should have opened up after a month or so so people would keep playing it and they they seem to not have any capability it took them by surprise to the point where they they were just trying to keep their heads above water rather than doing what they needed to do i don't think they were able to do anything more yeah the things that would have been needed and the things that will still come to that game could never have been done in the time frame that was required whilst also trying to put out the fires in their service infrastructure well that's that's

that's that's exactly it its success sort of killed it before they could do things like add you know player versus player and a little better leveling so that you know if you weren't in if you weren't the hardcore grinder at pokemon go but were more of a casual player you couldn't you know you couldn't battle because you were too low level. And it was very apparent from the beginning that it was going to hit a wall if they didn't make changes. And I think the server demand meant that they didn't have the ability to make changes fast enough. It's too bad. But I do think it's the future of gaming. I think that there will be more games that do Pokemon Go and do it better

and that will change mobile gaming by doing stuff like this. I do think we'll see more of this. Yeah, the idea of the streets in big cities all around the world being flooded with people catching Pokemon, that was always going to be a flash-in-the-pan thing. Just maybe the flash was a little bit shorter than it could have been if the game was actually designed better to begin with. It was never going to be that in a year's time everyone was still doing this.

To people that always would be, people will continue to play this game for a long time. I have friends that still play it. I just got bored of it as I do many, many games, really. I'm somebody who will play a game for a long time and then just stop. And they may not have ever finished it. I just get bored of it and move on. But like the thing in Pokemon Go is there's just never been anything like it. And it cannot be ignored.

I feel like it had to be spoken about because, you know, I would go to a park and everyone was playing. Everybody. You know, it really, really was an absolute phenomenon. Now, I really love Mini Metro now i really love mini metro i really love mini metro i'm i'm very set on pokemon though well that's fine because um the listeners are with me yep we're gonna go with it i mean i don't want to bend so i'm happy that the listeners are with you because i don't want to bend on this one here's here's what i would say um is best you know i i view this as a best of the year category and i can't endorse pokemon go as a best i can agree with that i can agree with that which is why i'm not gonna try and convince you to go with pokemon because i i think mini metro is

probably the highest quality or one of the highest quality games released this year so i am very happy for it to win the upgrade but i i just think you you know and as we haven't you just can't overlook the the phenomenon that i agree pokemon go so mini metro is the winner of the 2016 Upgradie Award for the iOS Game of the Year. Now we move into one of the two categories that I have very little to say in, and that is the favorite movie category. The nominees for favorite movie this year are Star Wars Rogue One, Arrival, Marvel Civil War. Is it Captain America Civil War? Captain America Civil War? Yeah, I think so. Doctor Strange, and for some Yeah, I think so. Doctor Strange.

And for some reason, Batman versus Superman. Ha ha ha. LOL in brackets. Yeah, just kidding. JK. Now, the reason that I can't help with this is I've only seen one movie on this list. Because I don't know what happened to me. But in the last couple of years, I just don't really see movies anymore.

I don't know why that is, but that's just something that changed. So I will pick Star Wars Rogue One. I really liked this movie, but it's the only one that I've seen. I'm disappointed in myself for having not seen Civil War and Doctor Strange, because I love the Marvel superhero movies. Maybe I have to make that a New Year's resolution to try and see more movies this year. Yeah, that's a good one. That's the easy kind of New Year's resolution. See more movies.

Enjoy something. Yeah. Entertainment. The listeners, the upgradians, they also went with 44% for Star Wars Rogue One. However, Star Wars Rogue One was winning this category in the week before the movie came out it was suspicious wasn't it so i i think i mean i don't know how this is going to make the upgradians feel that their vote should not count in this because i feel like there were people that were voting for that movie out of just love for the franchise.

And frankly, I think I like the movie, but I think it underdelivered on what I expected it was going to be, which was like, this is going to be as great as Force Awakens, which it wasn't. It was a really good movie, but it wasn't a really good Star Wars movie in my opinion i really liked the movie a lot i really did but it didn't live up to the expectations that i had for it based on how good force awakens was yep so my my pick is not going to help here either because i picked arrival i think arrival was my favorite movie of the year i'm happy happy for Arrival to win because I know that people really really like it. Plus it was the second place winner for the Upgradians and I wonder

if people were voting 100% honestly how it would have gone. But I've seen a lot of buzz about Arrival from people that I know that really like movies and whose opinion I trust on it. So I'm happy for Arrival to win the Upgrade. That's it. So I'm happy for Arrival to win the upgrade. That's fine.

I would be happy for Force Awakens. Yeah, Force Awakens again. For Rogue One to get it. Because I did like that movie. But it wasn't my favorite movie of the year. So I'm curious about the Star Wars votes. I'm analyzing the the Star Wars votes. I'm analyzing the spreadsheet right now and finding out who voted. Oh, yeah.

Wow. Well, no. There was quite a lot. So when did it come out? It came out on the 16th. I would say, Mike, there are a lot of votes in here from after then. I'm sure that's the case, but I'm not sure how many there were before, but we put the voting up, I think, about four or five days before,

and it was winning by a landslide at that point. Yeah, that's true. There are definitely some votes in there that would have to be thrown out. But again, I'm happy for Star Wars Rogue One to win it, because I really did like the movie you know like say it may if i saw all these movies i may think it was the best movie i saw this year but like it wasn't the best star wars movie that i've seen in the last two years you know right um but yeah if you want to go with rogue one we can go with it well it it was the listener choice. Mm-hmm. And it was the... It's my choice.

The mic choice by default, which is the least exciting way to win anything. Let's... Okay, I'm doing some key data analysis here. So Rogue One came out on the 16th of December. Yep. We're discounting all the votes prior. Yeah.

So that's 103 votes that we received before it was released. That's a lot. It's like a quarter of all votes cast. So if I remove those votes, it only has 105 votes, which is still more than the second place number. Okay. But do you see what I mean? That's like half of the votes that it received were cast before was released before it was released and not all of them were at the

red carpet premiere not everybody some i'm sure a large pour from todd vizieri at ilm who has seen the movie a few times so upgradians we gave you a big opportunity this year don't make us take it away from you next year you disappointed dad star wars rogue one yeah sure wins the upgradey told you did a great job if you're out there yeah now we move on to uh our favorite mike at the movies of the year from upgrade we only took the year from Upgrade. I only took the voting from Upgrade. Now, my intention for this category was for people to vote for their favorite segment, not the favorite movie.

And I don't think I made this clear enough. So we had three votes here, because we only did three Mike at the Movies this year. We're going to have to change that for next year. Gremlins, alone wrath of khan i chose gremlins because it was the most fun that i had out of the three of these because the two of us just got to be up on the movie together which is very different to the way the mike at the movies

tends to go so i enjoy gremlins or not now i believe my inclination here because the upgradians voted 46 home alone 36 wrath of khan and 14 of gremlins my belief here is that people voted for their favorite movie out of that selection oh that's my feeling just because like the home alone one was fun but i feel like the Gremlins segment, the Gremlins episode, was better than the Wrath of Khan episode because we had a lot of laughs. I liked the Wrath of Khan episode a lot

because I was really under the gun with that one because that is one of my very favorite movies of all time. You were flying close to the sun there. Yeah you went into it like star trek movies what and uh with no with nothing to we've read is how i went into that movie yeah and you and and you ended up liking it which was like that was that gets like i get extra multiplier points for having survived that i agree grays of the sun and so that for me i felt such great relief and also seeing that movie through the eyes of someone who has never seen it before was fascinating i you know i yeah i don't know gremlins it's hard to mix the feeling about that we had a fun time sharing our dislike for it by

the fact that i had to watch it that's true i mean i would happily go with wrath of khan because i agree with everything that you said because uh for me it was a great thing because i was really dreading a movie and then i actually went in and enjoyed it on its merits of being a good movie yeah this was a good star wars star trek story oh yeah in the early 80s yeah you've just turned off the entire audience but yeah john syracuse has thrown down his iphone right there just no everybody's it's so many broken devices uh because i i don't really have a lot of star trek knowledge and i know i get the mixed up so yeah i've got should got, should we go Rafa Khan? Yeah.

Rafa Khan segment in Mike at the Movies is the upgrade of the year. We now go into the category where I have literally no vote. Yeah, that's fine. As every year. The favorite book. Every year. Yep. Favorite book category is brought to you by Squarespace

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We can go quickly through this. The Upgradians votes were kind of, uh, all over the place. Um, no clear other, uh, left led the category.

Other includes blank by the way, I think that's how that works. So yeah, it's, uh, so I'm just going to mention some books. We'll put a link in the show notes. I wrote at the end of December,

a piece on six colors about, uh, my favorite books. And Dan Morin wrote for his favorite books of the year. All of these are listed in there so you can check them out. I will very quickly say my three favorite novels of the year were Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which is a fantasy novel. It's very good. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, which is a really great sort of told in three different uh perspectives uh story about this kind of apocalyptic world with these um uh they're kind of like mutants they have the power

to like stop or cause earthquakes um and they're treated badly by the people who don't have powers and it's it's way more complicated than that but it's so good it's the first part of a trilogy the third book is coming out in august The second book is very good too. So that's the fifth season. And well, I have a lot to choose from for my third favorite of the year. So let's just leave it at those two. There are three other books that I'd tie for third. And then on the nonfiction side, I will mention three books that I really liked at nonfiction this year. A book called The Etymologicon, which is about weird words and where they came from. A book, thank you to Dan Warren for that recommendation. A book called History of the World in Six Glasses, which is from an editor

at The Economist, which is a kind of story that I really enjoy, which is find a frame in which to tell sort of the story of human civilization or scientific development or things like that. Going back to like James Burke's Connection TV series, which I really loved, Connections. History of the World in Six Glasses, the idea is you can tell the history of human society and development through six different drinks, starting with beer and moving, starting with beer and moving, you know, beer and wine and spirits and tea and coffee and Coca-Cola. And it's very good. And for baseball fans out there, Ahead of the Curve by Brian Kenney, which is a great, I think, clear description of what modern views of baseball and statistics and what they tell us that you could you could uh

give that to a friend who who likes baseball but doesn't understand about like fancy saber metrics kind of stuff and i think you would find it engaging and um and uh a good explanation of it so those are my those are my choices my favorite book of the year was the fifth season by nk jemisin so the fifth season by nk jemisin wins yes the upgrading upgrading book of the year was The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. So The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin wins. Yes. The Upgrading Book of the Year. Which is just basically my book of the year. Yep.

That's how it works. That's fine. That's how it works. That's how it works. Aloha. Best Apple-related gadgets. So this includes Apple's products and products that were created just to work with Apple products. products and products that were created just to work with Apple products.

And we have in our list here the iPad Pro 9.7-inch, which was released in March, the Logitech Create keyboard case for the iPad Pro 9.7-inch, the iPhone 7, the MacBook, known as the MacBook One or the MacBook Adorable, the Apple Watch Series 2, the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and a late entry, the AirPods. i want to know what you think what is your best apple related gadget of the year first off i want to dispute this category a little bit because it's all apple products except for the logitech create and i think maybe that's not fair for logitech the way that this was done when we have a non-apple gadget category next.

Maybe it should be in that category instead of this one. Maybe we need to change the parameters of this category. In years past, this category has had more non-Apple accessories in it. Yeah, but that didn't happen this year. So that seems tough because I really like that keyboard. My choice is the AirPods. They were a late entry. I think it's the best Apple product of the year.

I think it's a great gadget. I think it's everything that is good about when Apple builds, designs products, envisions how they're going to be used, uses technology that's not quite possible, takes a category that existed before, but outdoes it with the details. And yeah, I've only had them for about two weeks now,

but I think it was the best product that Apple released this year. In a year where Apple products have been disappointing, the AirPods show that they still had the ability to make magic. Yeah. Like the stuff that we love them for, you know, like doing all those little things.

This is the stuff they call magic and everybody makes fun of them for saying or magic but they do feel like magic when you nail it this is what it feels like yep and they did it and i agree with you completely however you say about logitech create it's my pick because i mean i we're probably going to give airpods the upgrade um but i haven't you know i've had like nearly a year with the logitech create now and i love this thing because i really love my 9.7 inch ipad pro it is probably my favorite thing that apple released in the year because i really didn't have enough time with the airpods in 2016 like a week right but i think that the 9.7 inch ipad pro is a fantastic device i agree the logitech create

elevates it because it is a real keyboard it's not like the thing that apple makes and it's not like this huge mechanical thing right It is a case which, yes, adds bulk and weight, but not too much. It's not crazy, right? Like it's not what the Logitech Create does to the 12.9. It doesn't make it heavier than a regular laptop. But I have amazing real keys, you know, keys that feel like real keyboard keys

with a media function row, like a home button on the keyboard and backlighting with no battery, no Bluetooth. And it also has an integrated pencil holder. It's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Yep, I agree.

So that's my vote. The listeners, they voted for the iPad Pro 9.7 inch. A very tight race over the iPhone 7 with the iPhone 7 at 24% I have a proposal for you this is shenanigans are happening now I

if the Logitech Create was in the next category I would vote for it I agree. I understand where you're going with this. Right? Because I feel like it doesn't belong in this category this year because these are all Apple products except for it.

And the other category is all other tech products. I don't think it's going to win the next category. So we could do it, but it still wouldn't be my vote in that category. What is wrong with you? I know where you're going with this however it does appear in a later category all right well it appears in most life-changing hardware i think it's the airpods i think it's got to be the airpods as much as i agree with you about that logitech create keyboard one of the things about being a user of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is, as much as I love that product, its surface area makes it a bad match, and its weight makes it a bad match for keyboards. And it's been very hard to find a single keyboard. Federico and

I talk about this a lot. A single keyboard that can solve all of the use cases for the big iPad Pro. And I feel like the Logitech Create for the 9.7 nails it. That is the keyboard for that product. So again, whilst this is my personal winner, I also think AirPods should win this. All right. Because AirPods are more general. They're for everyone. This isn't for everyone.

This is like a small slice of a niche product. Well, yeah, but so is Audio Hijack. It is our awards. We can do whatever we want. And I know where you're going. We'll talk about the next category. We'll see if we'll maybe shift it in

and do something unprecedented in the upgradies but i i do want the airpods to win this category right like i i want that to happen it's just not what i put at the top just because of the length of time i've had them um but i'm more than happy for airpods to win it because they're brilliant yeah so the upgrade for best Apple-related gadget, which will probably be renamed next year to best Apple gadget of the year, is AirPods. Now, we come to best non-Apple gadget,

so this is just technology at large. And the nominees are Canary, the PlayStation VR, the Amazon Echo, which is eligible for this list because it was not released outside of the US until 2016. Okay. The Kindle Oasis,

the Ananova sous vide cooker, the Amazon Echo Dot, which was a 2016 product, the Sonos Play 1, and the Google Pixel. The Upgradians voted for the Amazon Echo with 31%, with the Google Pixel. The Upgradians voted for the Amazon Echo with 31%, with the Google Pixel coming in at 16%,

and the PlayStation VR at 14%. Where does your vote go? No, you go first this time. I've been going first too much. You go first. PlayStation VR. The PlayStation VR is great hardware, with some weirdness.

I think version 2 is going to be even better but the reason that I go for this is again I mentioned it again like I did with Job Simulator one of the big trends this year 2016 is virtual reality and PlayStation VR brings a great VR experience with convenience

at a price which is not unobtainable because I mean yes you need a PlayStation which is not unobtainable. Because, I mean, yes, you need a PlayStation, which, you know, it takes the price of the PlayStation VR and doubles it, right? So you're probably about $1,000 in for the whole thing. But if you want to get your hands on an Oculus or a Vive, they're about $700 to $800 for the hardware.

Then you need a PC capable of powering it which will run you probably around $1500 and then you have to have a PC in your house which you might not necessarily want a Playstation is a lot smaller, can fit in the living room and also

unlocks Playstation games and the thing is if you don't have a gaming PC you probably don't have a gaming PC, you probably don't want to play PC games. You're probably good with console games. That's kind of my feeling on this. If I wanted to play PC games, I would already have a PC capable of playing them.

I want to play console, and now I have my PlayStation 4, which I play lots of regular games on, and I also have a great VR experience for it as well. I think that PlayStation VR is the most comfortable. I've tried all the headsets. I think it's the most comfortable. I think, you know, if you're going to say what is the best one, the Oculus is the best one, especially with the touch controllers. But the PSVR is unlocked virtual reality in homes where I think there's something like 50, 60, maybe million PlayStation 4s in people's homes already,

and the current PlayStation 4 will run the PSVR. So it's an investment which people will be willing to make in the holiday season, for example. It's expensive, but it's not unheard of because it's the cost of a console. It costs how much a games console costs. It doesn't cost four games consoles which is what you'd need for pcvr so that's where i'm gonna go oh mike mike mike mike well this is

you you heard my enthusiasm for this category i'm i i've been lobbying to get the logitech create keyboard in this category because i would vote for it here you want to move it honestly well it's not gonna if you're not gonna go if you're not gonna go for it then i'm vote for it here you want to move it honestly well it's not gonna if you're not gonna go if you're not gonna go for it then i'm not sure it's worth it there are some other fine products in this category my experience with the playstation vr i've tried that in the oculus um my experience is brief like i said i did i used it at twit i don't have a playstation 4 so um i for me i have to buy the console and the vr stuff to do it so it's you know if if we weren't bringing the logitech create keyboard in this category where would your vote go

uh i would probably you know i would consider the ananova sous vide cooker because that is probably my favorite gadget of the year it is it is so so like an apple product the box is like an apple product it's this you know metal and black plastic and it's got a it's got bluetooth and my favorite gadget of the year. It is so like an Apple product. The box is like an Apple product. It's this metal and black plastic, and it's got Bluetooth, and the new one has Wi-Fi as well. And then you cook things with it. But I would probably agitate for the Echo and Echo Dot together because the Echo was new in the UK, and the Echo Dot, which lets you attach it to any sort of speaker, was new this year, I believe. And those are both – I'm a fan of the Echo ecosystem. And I think Amazon's done some very clever work there that has left Google and Apple and others catching up to them.

And I like those products a lot. So that would probably, because it's more techie than the sous vide cooker i would probably be my my choice would be to lump those together i think lumped together those uh two products end up with like 42 of the upgradians votes too so there is no addition of the upgradies without bargaining that's true no that's part of the process here. Most award shows, the bargaining happens behind the scenes. The Eddie Awards, we had meetings.

There was bargaining happening. You're trying to get a majority to come to one thing or another, right? The proverbial smoke-filled room, right? Well, this is it. We do it for you right on the show. So here's the bargaining. Okay. I really like my Echo, but I don't have as much affinity for my echo

as i do my logitech create keyboard case i like that more than the echo because i still have ways to go with the echo because i've not yet currently got it set up for any home automation stuff i think if i had all my home automation stuff set up, I would probably go with the Echo. Should we bring the Create case in? It's fine with me. I think it's a great product. The Logitech Create keyboard case has its Kanye moment. It's burst into this category

and has won in a category it was never even nominated in. Congratulations to the Logitech Create keyboard case for the iPad Pro Pro 9.7. You have just won Best Non-Apple Gadget. And upgradians around the world shriek in horror at what we have just done. But the Echo is in another category later on.

So it can still come away with a win. Now we have a category here which is really interesting, and I want to go into it, which is the worst gadget or most disappointing technology. These are our nominees. The Galaxy Note 7, which you can imagine would be in here, but also the MacBook Pro with touch bar, the iPhone 7, the iPad Pro 9.7, and the Apple apple watch series 2 let's talk about this why are all those products in this category well

they came out this year and uh people the apple products they came out this year and people complain about stuff so i put those i mean you can make an argument about the macbook pro people were clearly disappointed with that. Everybody's always disappointed with the iPhone. I don't even know why. I don't know why people would be disappointed with the iPad Pro 9.7. That's a pretty great product. But again, it was an Apple product that was released this year.

And the Apple Watch Series 2, maybe they wanted something different, shape different, different features, cellular connections, things like that that it didn't offer. Or they just don't like the apple watch because everybody who doesn't like the apple watch feels they need to write a column saying yep i still don't like the apple watch so i thought i would put those in there personally i think that there is only one selection here there's only because of what happened this year yeah there's only one winner right the galaxy note 7 is without a shadow of a doubt the worst gadget released this

year because because and i actually watched a great mkbhd video today where he did his smartphone review of the year he said this was probably the best phone released this year yeah but it blew up yeah and this is this is why it's so this is why like i consider it both the worst gadget and the most disappointing because it went from being the worst gadget and the most disappointing. Because it went from being the best phone in the year to being a phone you could be put in prison for owning. If you happen to have it with you on an airplane. There has never been a peak and valley like that before. What a story. Yeah, what a story.

And it's got some classic elements too of like the reason it was so cutting edge in so many different ways is because apparently they pushed it faster and further than they should have. So it's not like it was, oh, an act of nature caused it to fail. What a bad luck for Samsung. act of nature caused it to fail what a what a bad luck for samsung it's like the the stuff that they did to author this great success were in fact the seeds of its failure but there are a lot of apple products in here and there's only one of these that i have used that i can see disappointment in and i want to talk about it just a little bit. I've said it in a few places recently but just while we're on this subject, I just want to touch on the iPhone 7.

I really like my 7 Plus. A lot. I like it as much as I like any S-revision phone. This wasn't one of those. This is a full-on number change revision. Yeah, except it's really like a double S, it turns out.

It's like a double S. Which is, I think, from a disappointing perspective, I can understand that. And the reason that I expected more is because Apple set the precedent. They set the precedent, right? The TikTok model. And they set the precedent of every full-numbered phone you know, and, you know, they set the precedent of

every full-numbered phone gets a new design. I was expecting a new design and we didn't get that. And to be honest, we got some stuff, right? We got a better camera. If you're using a Plus, you got an even better camera, right? And we got, it's faster. What else did we get? I don't know.

There aren't really any other tentpole features. And what happened... Jet Black. That doesn't count for me. What happened is we had things taken away, which has never happened before. The headphone jack is gone. Headphone jack, sure.

And people say, oh, but we got AirPods. But we could have had those anyway. We didn't need the headphone jack to go. Headphone jack, sure. And people say, oh, but we got AirPods. But we could have had those anyway. We didn't need the headphone jack to go away to get AirPods. And my home button, do you know what? I will say now, I prefer the feel of the Force Touch home button to the other home buttons that I have in my life. I do too. As I've gotten used to it, I prefer the feeling.

But do you know what I lost? I lost a button that was 100% reliable because this one isn't. Sometimes it just doesn't work. And this isn't, you know, I have two things with this. I have one where if you don't make a full contact with it, the capacitive ring doesn't activate.

The other is sometimes you press it and the phone just locks up. And that didn't happen before. And I don't know if this is an iOS 10 thing, but I'm going to blame it on the Home button. And also, saying how great the camera is, it didn't ship with Portrait Mode. I think the iPhone 7 was disappointing this year.

It is a really good S revision. It is not a really good 4 revision. So I think it was worth mentioning because, I mean, I don't, personally, you know, and this obviously is my opinion, so I think it's, I don't know how you could argue with that.

Like, I don't really know what it gave us. Well, it's Apple's biggest product and they took it from a two-year cycle to a three-year cycle. And rather than just never holding an iPhone event in the fall, leaving us all to wonder what was happening, like they did with many Mac products this year,

they had an event and announced a new phone and even called it the new number when in fact what they were really doing was the third year of an existing product cycle rather than doing a new phone design on you know every other year it doesn't make sense to me why they call it a seven they should have given it a different name if they wanted to move to the three-year cycle which i understand i think they should have also broken the naming but i know why they didn't do that because they probably thought

that it would harm sales but i don't know that's why i wanted to say you know i i really like it i really i really like it as much as i love an s phone but the you know the thing is about it the thing that makes it weird for me is that no iphone has taken things away from me before but this one really liked doing that this year and i will only it got waterproofing that's the one other thing it got i will say that it got waterproofing it's's the other feature. I will cite the 20% of our voters who voted for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I don't think we need to revisit it here, but it was very interesting

that everybody was really unhappy about Apple not talking about the Mac at all. And finally, Apple did a Mac-focused event and released new Mac hardware. And the result was controversy and frustration. And I think that we've covered it in depth. There are many roots to the frustration that people have felt in certain parts of the Mac using community about what Apple has done and not done with the Mac before and after releasing this product. There are lots of reasons.

It's a complicated situation, but I think you don't have to go very far to say that a lot of people were disappointed in the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. We can argue about rightly or wrongly and who those people are and lots of other things, but you can't argue that it was to some people clearly a big disappointment. And we saw it in our voting results. Yep. But as far as I'm concerned, the rags to riches to rags, whatever, the legendary story of the product with so much name recognition, people are saying it several times on every flight that goes anywhere in the world now.

Yep. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, both disappointing, as you pointed out, and the worst gadget of 2016. There's never been anything like this before. No, let's hope there never is again. I hope so too. And I hope so for Samsung's sake, that they're able to pull back from this, because Apple needs that competition, I think.

Oh, yeah. Favorite tech story of the year. These are our rundown for nominees of our favourite tech stories. Snapchat Spectacles, The Exploding Galaxy Note 7, Apple vs. the FBI, Twitter's tumultuous 2016, the rise of VR,

the Pokemon Go craze, and the elections slash WikiLeaks slash Russian spy ops debacle. I don't even know how to group those things together in a phrase, but that's what we have. Listeners voted for Apple versus the FBI as their favorite tech story. And I'm assuming, you know, in the way that I do, this is the thing that you found the most compelling throughout the year. I went first last time, so i'll go first again uh snapchat spectacles is my the thing that that really wrapped me up this year um i think it's one of the most interesting introductions of a product that there's been in modern times in like

recent times you know the way that they dealt with their limited supply problems by putting them in vending machines that appear in random locations has been really interesting to watch unfold. And Snap have created a scarcity thing, which I haven't seen in this way since the Wii was introduced. The idea of people just wanting to buy it because there isn't a lot of them. and everything that they've done around it, all of the, the, the graphic

design, all of the videos that they've made, the way that they're dealing with social media, you know, the way that, the way that they announced the, the positions of the vending machines is random, like, you know, they'll show like a zoomed out map to show you kind of what city it's going to be in and then just tweet a picture of it in its location and then people have to go find it. Technology products don't do this, but this is a technology product. I think it's been really, really interesting

to watch unfold. And it's just been something that I've been kind of fascinated in. So that's kind of my vote, just because this has been a topic that's interested in me enough i wanted to bring it up here um but i i think that i will probably end up siding with you and the the upgradians because i expect you're going to go the upgradians route which would have which is my second in all honesty i i uh all right i i i will i will say without getting into it

maybe we can get into this some other time I think the Snapchat spectacles is one of my least favorite stories I think it represents in some ways all that is wrong and bad and stupid about the technology industry I think it's a dumb stunt that we've seen the likes of before I think the product's not that interesting so good for them on getting PR out I think the product's not that interesting, so good for them on getting PR

out of a product that's not that interesting. I think the company is problematic in a bunch of ways, but maybe I'm just a cranky old man, but I hated that story. So here's the thing. People on my side that hear that say that you're a cranky old man, and people on your side that hear my story

just think that I'm a silly millennial. And this is why i think it's a good story because it's so polarizing anyhow apple versus the fbi yeah what a story right like as far as technology stories go this had it all you know and and it's not over yet that well Well, that's I think what makes it even more important is that this is maybe not the first shot, but this is a very notable interaction between technology companies and governments about what information is private to people and what information can be accessed because the government has decided it wants to read through your stuff, essentially. And in the olden days, there were laws against unlawful search and seizure. And then on top of that, you had this idea that you couldn't be compelled to give information that was in your own mind, basically. that was in your own mind, basically. And in the modern context, it's difficult to parse out where we are with those things now. When is access to our cloud data okay? Is that an extension of ourselves? Is that an extension of our homes? It threatens the tech industry because so much tech is based on cloud stuff. And if cloud stuff is eventually considered to essentially be entirely public and viewable by governments and potentially bad actors as well, or governments can be bad actors too, but like bad independent actors, criminals and the like,

as well, or governments can be bad actors too, but like bad independent actors, criminals and the like, then you've eroded the confidence in the machine that drives so much of technology. So that's in the mix here. Apple's commitment, Apple has a lot of money and a lot of prestige. And unlike some of its competitors has a commitment to keeping its customer data private. That's interesting because they end up as a proxy, as a really good proxy for the entire concept of technology being used to ensure people's privacy and how that pushes against the desire of governments and other organizations and actors to want to get access to information, no matter, you know, basically break any lock.

And if you create a lock that's impenetrable, what happens next? Do they make the locks illegal? Do they create lock picking equipment that they don't make the public aware of? There's so much here. And, you know, I got to say, it's not, this is just the beginning of these issues. It will continue and it will continue to be ugly. And it could potentially have severe harm for our society and severe harm for our technology. Let me be clear. I consider this the most interesting tech story of the year. just really wanted to mention the snapchat i did well you know what i didn't say there is and you mike you with your vending machine of sunglasses and i get it we're representing both sides here and that's what i was looking for is we have absolutely the fun stuff about technology product releases and then we have

the how it affects all of our lives so deeply now, which I think when both me and you, and we're starting from different times, right? But when both me and you became interested in technology, it didn't matter so much. Like even me,

15 years ago or whatever was when I really started to get into this stuff, it didn't matter as much. It wasn't so intrinsic to our lives. And now the Apple versus FBI thing is a, is a, is a clear example of how getting access to the technology that I own tells somebody everything about me.

Yes. Things that I couldn't even tell you. Right. Because of how how algorithms work the data on my phone can tell you more about me than I could possibly tell you and that's super interesting that's what I'm going to say on that one

I think that's exactly right i was thinking the other day that you know there was a time um where we would be on the internet and we would be like yeah you know trolls on the internet commenters on the internet people say dumb stuff on the internet whatever it's just something you deal with but once everybody has the internet um that stuff that you used to be like yeah you know it happens people what you're gonna do things i learned like on usenet in the like late 80s and early 90s suddenly are enough to affect like the direction of countries because now it's magnified because it's everybody when before it was just a few people in the basement of a college campus somewhere and uh yeah that's what a world

we live in so we're now on to favorite texts grew up of the year which is a great category name i know and these are our these are our nominees uh apple tweets all of the iphone 7 announcements early yeah samsung galaxy note 7 just that's it. I mean... What do you want? Twitter releases experimental features early to iOS clients. Facebook fake news. And Apple disbands the AppleScript airport teams and gets out of the display business. So let's talk about these. If you remember, for the September event, you didn't see this because you were in the room. Apple had kind of clearly done a deal with Twitter.

Clearly done a deal with them because they set up this account which had these ads and then it had that thing which will remind you when the event was coming but none of the tweets were showing and then what some of the tweets that that were clearly meant to be ads for the iphone 7 just started being tweeted from the at apple account as the event was beginning before anything was announced. So if you were watching at home, you knew every single feature of the iPhone 7 before Apple showed up. Yep. Categorical disaster for both companies, which if we see, I mean, as you can see, didn't

happen in October. I don't think that's ever going to happen again because Twitter totally ruined this. I assume that it was on Twitter's side that somebody was scheduling this and doing it for them and just absolutely destroyed it or their tools weren't good enough or whatever. Galaxy Note 7 is obvious. I mean, and again,

like 59% of the Upgradian vote if you put this in any of these types of categories it's going to walk with it. But going back to Twitter again, they've done this a few times this year where they class... of categories, it's going to walk with it. But going back to Twitter again, they've done this a few times this year where they class... This is why I think it's so terrible. Things come out to the Twitter app.

People think that it's an abomination and it shouldn't be done this way, like removing the names from at mentions so it just looks like a random tweet when it's actually to somebody. And then Twitter say, oh, it was an experimental feature but we weren't supposed to release.

So it's terrible on both sides. Either they did do that, which is ridiculous, or they're using such a terrible excuse to try and cover up a product decision that everybody hated, which shows that they have a fundamental misunderstanding

of how their product should be working. Facebook fake news. There are a lot of political stuff I don't want to get into, but Facebook seems to have a fake news problem, which they are struggling to get under control, either from a policy perspective or from a technology perspective. And then Apple got out of a lot of businesses this year, or looks like they're going to. Right. This is my pointed way of putting this in the screw-up category, right?

Apple getting rid of the AppleScript team and airport teams and saying they're not going to make any more displays on their own. I think people could argue that those are bad moves for Apple. I don't know if I would necessarily across the board, but I think it's worth being a nominee here. Whether you think that's a bad move or a good move, there isn't anything to say that good has come out of this. That could be the screw up, right? In a year where we've been upset, there isn't anything

to say like, oh, it was a good reason to get those people in other teams. Maybe next year we'll see the fruits of that, but this year we haven't. It's like, okay, you got out of all these businesses, but what have you given us in return? You know, nothing. Galaxy Note 7, right?

I think it has to be, although I was going to throw in a late addition here, a late nominee. I was thinking about this and I thought, you could argue that potentially the biggest tech screw up of the year was the bad email practices and clicking on phishing links

that led to all of the hacks of the Democratic National Committee that got leaked by WikiLeaks. And that the screw up was all of the bad security practices that led to it. I was thinking about that. I'm not sure I want to vote for that one either but that was a huge tech screw-up that had a that in there a major effect on the election yeah yeah i just i mean talking about your tech screw-ups that's like literally you know it people everywhere just face palming right the whole when they when the whole story came out about how this all happened it was like a lot of this was not super high tech no just just real

super simple phishing stuff yeah yeah some social engineering some really dumb things that people weren't supposed to click on and this is a case where again you have i mean this so much of the intersection with tech and politics what you realize is the people involved in politics don't understand tech also the people who understand tech don't understand politics a lot of the time and and you see it here where they're not speaking the same language and you've got people who are tech knowledgeable people who look at this and go i can't believe that these people did this but they didn't you know they did they didn't have the support to do it i think it's got to be a galaxy note right i mean it just across the board what a year what a story it's yeah it's just cleaning up a Galaxy Note, right? I mean, just across the board. What a year. What a story.

Yeah, it's just cleaning up this year, the Galaxy Note 7. This was where my 100% vote was going. I wanted to throw the iPhone in there and see where the votes went. But for me, the Galaxy Note was always getting this. Yeah, and it got 60% of our upgrading in votes. Yeah, because look at it. Yeah. upgrading and vote. Because, look at it.

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and using the code upgrade at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Thank you so much to Casper for their support of the third annual Upgradee Awards. The nominations for favorite tech podcast are The Talk Show, The Accidental Tech Podcast, Cortex, Connected, Control Walt Delete, Clockwise, Your Show, Rocket, Six Colors Secret Subscriber Podcast, Your Show. in here because obviously upgrade would win right that's why upgrade's not in the list because if

upgrade was in the list it would always win always win and that feels unfair a little bit yeah a little bit tiny bit so i'm gonna throw mine in now now okay the accidental tech podcast has won the Upgradee two years in a row. I love ATP. I love all of the hosts of ATP. But I wanted to throw a spanner in the works this year. Okay. It received 48% of the Upgradee vote. Yep. It's probably going to win again.

Probably. But I wanted to take a moment to talk about what is probably my favorite tech podcast at the moment, which is the Six Colors Secret Subscriber Podcast. I am being truly honest here. It is the only tech podcast that I subscribe to that when I see the push notification from Overcast, I go, ooh, and bump it to the top of my queue. Obviously, I like listening toason snell talk about technology because i wanted to do a show with you right and you and dan moran together obviously have a really great chemistry and the thing about the secret subscriber podcast which by the way you have to

be a six colors member to be a part of and And in the show notes, when you click the link for Six Colors Secret Subscriber Podcast, it will take you to the member page for Six Colors, where if you sign up, which you should, you will get a link for the RSS feed so you can listen to the Six Colors show. It's the relaxed nature that I like. A lot of technology podcasts that I listen to, including the ones that I am on, a lot of technology podcasts that i listen to including the ones that i am on they tend to be very high in i'm trying to think of a way to say it but it's like it's just not as relaxed yeah they're just not they know they're doing a show and they're formatted and they've got a

schedule and they've got they've got segments and a theme song and it's all different because it's like it's not i mean you know you can tell me if i'm wrong but it doesn't feel tightly edited it feels a little like the shows that i used to listen to and just as the industry has matured the things that come out on top tend to be the stuff that is really thought out really considered really edited for good reason right because it tends to be stuff of a higher quality but now the secret subscriber podcast is like a breath of fresh air from what i'm used to and so whilst i will say that atp is probably the best technology focused podcast around other than upgrade and yes connected and cortex and clockwise of course and rocket uh you know but whatever i i can't cast my votes for any show that that i'm a part of and or is on my

network i feel like i can't do that because that's clear bias uh but i love the secret colors secret subscriber podcast the secret colors as. It's a long name. It's a very long name. There's an extra color. Yeah. I can't tell you what it is. It's secret. What's your vote? Well, you just made it impossible for me to vote for myself, which is too bad because

I could totally just pick the Six Colors Secret Subscriber Podcast and it would be the winner, right? Good. And it would win. I mean, you can still do that, but I can't vote for... I feel like I can't vote for myself. But you just recused yourself. So that makes me look bad if I do that.

So I thought about this, and I am going to go with ATP. There are only a couple of podcasts that I listen to every episode of, and I listen to them when they come out, and ATP is one of them. That is my go-to technology podcast even now. It is a great bit of chemistry between those guys.

I will admit that this fall has been a little bit rough because Marco is unhappy with things. And it comes across. And John's unhappy with things, too. And they have every right to be unhappy. And what I don't want to say is that I only want shiny, happy podcasts, right? Because it's like, no, I, I am listening for all of that. But I also will admit that every now and then they get stuck on something and I love it. Cause usually you can hear Casey song in the background. Um, it's hilarious. Um,

every now and then they get stuck on something that they can't let go that, that bugs them. they can't let go that bugs them. And for me as a listener, I'm like, okay, I get it. Okay, I get it. And you know what? Chapter markers, Marker wrote a tool with chapter markers in it. I can just move past those things. But I didn't used to do that. And this fall, there have been occasions where I'm like, yeah, okay,

I've heard enough about this and I will go ahead. But still, it doesn't change the fact that that's the one i listen to every episode of and uh and and it's always a high priority of all of them and i pick and choose through all of the other tech podcasts uh here and there as a non-commuter i don't have the luxury of having a lot of podcast time and atp is the one i make time for so yeah so i agree right i subscribe to mostly technology podcasts atp is the only show make time for. So, yeah. So I agree, right? I subscribe to mostly technology podcasts. ATP is the only show that I will listen to, except for the Secret Subscriber podcast as well, actually. But ATP is the only show that I will listen to always,

even when it's like two and a half hours, right? Like I'll push everything else aside. Absolutely. ATP is the show that I want to listen to the most. The reason I chose The Secret Podcast this year is I didn't want every vote for the last three years for me and you to be for ATP.

It's a little Soviet, isn't it? Yeah, and it's going to win again. And so for the third year in a row, ATP takes the upgrade for the best technology podcast. So I will just say to the hosts of that show, it's about darn

time that the upgradee appeared on your website. That's all I'm going to say. I have great artwork files. You're a three-time winner now. It's time to recognize the award is all I'm going to say. Just a little follow-up in the next episode.

I will give you the artwork. You can put it in as a chapter. It's got to appear somewhere now. You've won it three years in a row. That's what I'm going to say. All right, well done. Favorite non-tech podcast. This is the category with the most nominees.

It's as follows. The Flophouse. The Incomparable. Reconcilable Differences. Hello Internet. Presidents Are People Too. Hello from the Magic Tavern, The Pawscast, Audio Guide to Babylon 5, and Serial Season 2. Where is your vote? Well, I put in a lot of ones that I wanted to show some love to, especially The Pawscast, which is a podcast where they draft things, which you know me in drafting things.

Hello from the Magic Tavern has really risen up this year. It's not quite at the top level. I'm sort of digging through the back catalog, but I really do love that podcast a whole lot. Definitely recommend it to people. But I have to say I'm boring. The Flophouse, like ATP, those are the two podcasts that i listen to immediately upon receipt and every episode all the way through the flop house for sure is still my favorite podcast of all time hello internet

took the popular vote at 14.6 unsurprising did. Did Hello Internet win one year? I think it didn't because in the first year, I think you and I were at odds over the Flophouse. And I think I gave it to you, didn't I? And I think you gave it to me. And then in year two, I then started listening. I converted you. Right, so Hello Internet takes the popular vote. That's how it works.

With Aloha, Flophouse coming in at second, Reconcilable Differences coming in at third third it's going to be a three time yeah you're going with a flop house i'm going i'm going with the flop house the flop house is my pick no podcast makes me happier i know it just makes me laugh and smile i love those guys i listen to old episodes of the flop house every time i get on the airplane for some reason it's only it's the only podcast i can listen to old episodes of The Flophouse every time I get on the airplane. For some reason, it's the only podcast I can listen to on an airplane. I don't know why, but I just, again, so there are The Secret Subscriber Podcast and The Flophouse are the only two shows that I will stop whatever show I'm listening to and listen to that one. Interesting. So they will cut

in over anything the flop house is just a delight and i would say to our listeners if you haven't yet tried it try it just try it just my advice to you is go through and find some movies that you've seen and listen to those ones that's how i started interesting and it worked i mean because there are people that tell you to listen to specific episodes because they're funny to the head but they're funniest if you already know the flop house i think no that's how i started i i started with like cowboys and aliens and um oh limitless they are the two that i started with as well, actually. Oh, yeah.

Boys and Aliens and Limitless. Like, go through, find some movies. We've got a big catalog. Find some that you've seen. Because then you already come to the show knowing something, which is the movie. And I think that helps a lot. Yeah.

Favorite podcast newcomer. This is a new show in 2016. we have dubai friday mixed feelings emoji rap ungenius presentable six colors secret subscriber podcast buffering the vampire slayer and jonah carey the jonah carey podcast so dubai friday um is a great show with uh merlin man max temkin and Alex Cox, which kind of grew out of their show, which was not about Top Chef, but was supposed to be about Top Chef.

Dubai Friday is, they call it a weekly challenge podcast. They have a thing they have to do every week. And then they talk about the way that they deal with that. Mixed Feelings is a new show to RelayFM that I really love and we're really proud of. And it's kind of our biggest topic diversion that we've been on. It is a show mostly to RelayFM that I really love and we're really proud of, and it's kind of our biggest topic diversion that we've been on. It is a show mostly about news and politics,

and it is hosted by two new podcast hosts as well, which we're really happy about, that we got to bring a couple of maybe unheard voices in, and they are Quinn Rose and Gillian Parker. And they are a great team, and the show is really entertaining, and it is the way that i learn about the outside world um emoji rap friend of the show jeremy burge started a podcast about

emoji and it is surprisingly good right because a podcast about emoji is like can that can that be good but yes jeremy is talented, and he makes it good. Ungenious, which is a show that I am on, which got the popular vote with 32%. Now, I will say, Upgradians, thank you for that. I honestly didn't expect that. And that means a lot to me, and I'm sure it will mean a lot to Stephen,

because that is a big chunk of the vote. And Ungenious is what I call a podcast snack. The episodes are typically never longer than 15 minutes. And the one that we put out for Festiverse, which was a lot of fun, you should go and listen to that. Jason makes a cameo. It is a show that me and Stephen are trying to push outside of our regular boundaries with, which is why we do fun things with it.

It's a good show. Presentable is Jeff Veen's show. to push outside of our regular boundaries with, which is why we do fun things with it. It's a good show. Presentable is Jeff Veen's show. I sometimes can't get my head around the fact that Jeff Veen is a host on RelayFM. It kind of makes my mind melt a little bit. It's a great show about design. We've been over the Secret Subscriber podcast. I don't know the next two.

Buffering the Vampire Slayer is a new podcast where two women, one who is really deep down into it a podcast i don't know the next two uh buffering the vampire slayer is a new podcast where um two women one who is really deep down into it and one of whom is sort of coming at it fairly fresh re-watch buffy the vampire slayer from the beginning and it is my favorite it may be one of the best podcast titles i've seen in a long time it's they got a great title they got great art um it's buffy the vampire slayer is my favorite TV show of all time. And one of the two hosts is a music artist and she composes a song about the contents of every episode at the end. And in fact, if you search on iTunes or Apple Music, you can find they finished the first season and released an album of all the songs from the first season. But they're also at the end of the podcast episodes.

I kind of wish now that I'd watched Buffy just so I can listen to this show. Well, if you ever want to give it a try, the beauty of it is you can watch and listen to a podcast about the episode you just saw. That's a big commitment though, man. Yeah, it's true. What's Jonah Carey? Jonah Carey is a sports writer. He used to be a business writer. He actually worked with my friend, Philip Michaels, and I think maybe with Lisa Schmeiser too at Investors Business Daily. But he's a baseball writer. He's from Montreal. He wrote a great book about the Montreal Expos and a really good book about the Tampa Bay Rays and sort of like almost a sequel to Moneyball in some ways. And he has a

podcast now on the Bill Simmons podcast network. So that's his new home. And it's good. He interviews a lot of people, a lot of sports people. There's some entertainment stuff in there too. And Joan is just a really smart, good guy. And I like everything he does. And that's a, that's a good podcast for like a sampling of, of, uh, uh, baseball stuff, which I like and some other stuff too. And, uh, he did a great podcast with one of the announcers for the giants where they, uh, they, they basically after a game was over, they just sat down in the booth for like an hour and talked about sports stuff. And it was great because Jonah knows people and has great access and is a smart guy. So I wanted to nominate that. That's a new one that I really have loved this year. And what's your vote? Favorite podcast? I got to say my vote goes to Buffering the Vampire

Slayer. I really love that. That is a fun entertainment. That's a good TV watch podcast. And there are ways to do that well and ways to do that badly, and they do it well. Then we're back in this realm. I'm going with Dubai Friday. I love Dubai Friday. I love the premise, and I love that most of the show tends to not be about the premise. Yeah. Because I was a Top Scallops listener.

I'd never seen an episode of Top Chef. Yeah. And I think it's great that they've got this premise now because I didn't listen to Top Scallops. Because even though I wanted a podcast with Marlon Mann and Max Timken, that sounds great. But it was about Top Chef. And I aggressively do not care about Top Chef. So I just blew past it. Even when people said, oh, it's not really about that. It's like, yeah, whatever.

And I never got to it. So when they changed it to Dubai Friday, oh, it's not really about that. It's like, yeah, whatever. And I never got to it. So when they changed it to Dubai Friday, basically, that's a great idea. And Alex Cox is great. She's fantastic. I met her briefly at XOXO, but I got to spend a little more time with her at UL.

And then we had her on Clockwise and she is fantastic. And so that is an extra little bonus. And I like the idea of you have to do something you have to perform a task it's a great it's a great thing it's a great name premise um so i don't know where we go with this well let's give it to dubai friday that's a great one awesome i was kind of hoping you'd say would go with the audience vote so i would win an upgrade but

nevertheless sorry dubai friday is where we will go So at least I get my pick as the winner. So Dubai Friday is our favorite podcast newcomer. I'm really happy about this because it's a show that if you haven't listened to, you should. And start from the start because there aren't that many episodes. It's really, really brilliant.

And I love it a lot because I have great respect for the three people that host that show. And as a trio, they work really, really well together. So you should go and check it out. I'm not bitter at all. Most life-changing hardware is our final category for the upgrades of this year.

And the nominees are as follows. The Canary Home Security System. The Logitech Create Keyboard Case for the iPad Pro. The PlayStation VR. The Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, and the SoundBot Bluetooth shower speaker. The SoundBot Bluetooth shower speaker, Jason knew was so obscure that when he put it in our original nominations document, he included a link to Amazon so I could go and see. Yes. I want to know about this because I want a Bluetooth shower speaker. So I'm hoping you can tell me this thing's so amazing.

I'll just go buy it. Well, we mentioned him several times. I'm going to mention him again. And we've said on past shows that, you know, you talk to Marco and you buy things. This is a Marco Arment recommendation. Oh, if it's a Marco recommendation and you're're recommending it then i'm buying it right now yeah so it's this dumb cheap bluetooth speaker that's waterproof or water resistant it's got a suction cup on it you charge it via this dumb

uh you know it's like a mini jack thing but then it's got a little gasket over it and it but the battery lasts quite a while and and the best part about it is, you know, when you take a shower, you just stick it to the inside of the glass or on tile or wherever in the shower. And instead of, I used to listen to podcasts in the shower and I had a speaker, actually a Play One, on the outside. And I would crank it up so that I could hear the voices clearly on the inside. And my house isn't that big. The walls are kind of thin. You basically could hear the podcast in the entire house while I was taking a shower. And now I have this little speaker and the way it works is actually it fires

downward. So you stick it on the glass or the tile or whatever, and it plays and it bounces it off the, that surface because it bounces it down and then it comes back out and it's got little waterproof buttons on the front so you can make it louder, you can skip, you can pause, you can do all those things and it's great

it really is, it is a life changing bit of hardware because now I can listen to my podcast at a more reasonable volume and they're clearer because the speaker is right by my ear instead of through a pane of glass in an echoing through uh you know sitting above the toilet echoing through the bathroom so it's uh i know it's silly but i think it counts as life-changing hardware

so my vote in this is the canary home security system because it's the piece of technology that's made the biggest impact to my life this year because it gives me peace of mind about the state of my home. And it really does. You know, I kind of, I don't know why, but I just gotten into a little bit of a phase where I,

whenever I was leaving the house, I was concerned about the house. Maybe this is part of adulthood. I don't know. Just as I started to own more things in the world I started to get more thoughts about those things something happening to them

and the Canary will not only alert me when it finds something weird going on I can also just check in on the house whenever I want for a live video feed honestly it's basically a flawless technology product for what I needed to do.

I've never had a problem with it. Not once. I've just moved home and it was fine and it just understood everything. All I needed to do was just change the address so the canary knew where it was and it was like nothing had ever happened. It's just fantastic.

I like a lot of things about it. I used a drop cam for a long time and the advantage of the canary is I think actually that it has this sort of cylinder. You can plop it somewhere. Its field of view isn't as good as some of the other products are, but it's not bad. It's got some other sensors in it. I wish it was more integrated with other like third-party smart home stuff. And they seem to be opening that up now.

But for a while, it was kind of only kind of on its own um but it's a good product i i use that now that's my instead of the drop cam that's the one that i use like when we go on vacation i turn it on i leave it plugged in but in privacy mode and then when when we go on vacation i flip the switch and i've got their you know i've got their video of events when there's movement in the house and stuff like that. Big, big fan of it. So the Upgradians went with the Echo at 45% of the vote. I know, right? And I'm happy to go that way.

I am too. I think that that's a great choice. We talked about it earlier when we were talking about the Amazon Echo and the Echo Dot, which adds some more flexibility. And the good job that Amazon has done with that ecosystem. You know, there are things I wish it did that it doesn't do yet, data source somewhere that you want to point at the Echo so that you can ask it a question and it'll read the data, you kind of can't do that. You have to build a whole web app using Amazon's app platform and all of that. And that needs to change. They need to provide some sort of easier system than that. But it's early days yet, and I'm sure that they'll get there.

Yeah, I like my echo for the things that i use it for but i know that i've not unlocked its full potential yet and it's something that i'm planning on doing so i know it's only going to make a bigger impact on my life as things go forward like i have ttt just launched in the uk for for echo ah so i've already done something now where i can give an audible cue to arm my canary oh yeah i have that for um my you know the the lights outside the house and for the lights in the garage and i've got that for a for my dehumidifier like merlin i now have a uh alexa controlled dehumidifier and what i also really like about the ifttt stuff is you can you don't have to say like

it doesn't have to be on the canary you can give it a name so like it interacts the name technology so we call our canary buster because he bust any crimes um so i just say like i say hey cylinder um trigger so you have to say trigger arm buster and it will do it I love it, I really like it that is the end of the upgradeys for this year it has been a blockbuster year the third annual upgradeys are over I'm hoping this year

somebody will display the artwork we did get it last year I think Ferrite put the upgradeys artwork on their site. If you are the winner of an Upgradee, we have artwork for you. We've got many treatments of the artwork. Yeah, it's available.

Call us. Contact us. Call us and we'll help you out. Yeah. But I have got to say that allowing the upgradians in as the voting i think it's been a big success actually i agree i think they did a good job i will i will overlook the rogue one thing because we we we stuck something in there by changing a category i feel like everyone's at level now we all did something wrong today and we can all think about it again for next time.

We can think about the things we might want to change. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Upgrade, the third annual Upgrade Awards. If you want to find all of the links that we've spoken about, all of every single thing today has been put in the show notes for you. Every nominee. So you can go and check them all out for yourself and you can go and find that at relay.fm slash upgrade slash one two two that is where you will find the links for the upgrades oh and by the way happy new year to you yeah happy new year everyone we'll be back next time until then then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Jason Snell. It felt special enough, right?

The Upgradies? It did. Yeah, it did. I did hope this was going to be the one.