Upgrade - 16: The 2014 Upgradies

Episode Date: December 29, 2014

This episode of Upgrade plays host to the first ever 'Upgradies' awards! Jason and Myke talk about some of their favourite gadgets, games and podcasts of the year, amongst many other categories. Grab some popcorn, your best evening wear and settle in for a monumental podcasting event!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 16 today's very special episode of upgrade the first ever upgrade these awards is brought to you by linda where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts for a 10-day free trial. Visit lynda.com slash upgrade. Squarespace, start here, go anywhere, and mail route. A secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam. My name is Mike Curley, and I have the absolute pleasure of being joined by my co-judge for the first ever Upgraders Awards, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Mike. It's good to be here. Do you have your tuxedo on?

I sure do. Listen to this. This isnell. Hello, Mike. It's good to be here. Do you have your tuxedo on? I sure do. Listen to this. This is me tightening my bow tie. There you go. You can hear that, right? That comes through in the audio. Totally clear. Loud and clear.

Bow tightening. So we do have a very special episode today. We spoke about this a little bit. We're going to be doing our first ever of what I hope will be the annual Upgrade These Awards, where we have a selection of categories that have been thought up by myself and Jason, and also suggested by some of our as-of-yet-unnamed listener group, which we're going to get to shortly. But of course, we do have a smidge of follow-up and some hashtag AskUpgrade. That's catching on like wildfire now. I see that the Mac Power users

team are using the recipe that we have. Yeah, I had lunch with David Sparks. Little glenning, little name dropping. I had lunch with David Sparks last week when I was

here in LA where i'm back now on my way back home and uh we were talking about that and i i told him about that if this then that script and he was like oh we should do that i said yeah you should totally do it and just go ahead so yeah it's catching on the hashtag podcast hashtag thing and it's working for us too so that's great oh Follow-up, Mike. We've got to make a decision about what we're going to call our listeners. Yes, so I think I mentioned this last week, but now it's happening. Today we are going to come to a decision.

This is an episode all about decisions. Yes. And we've had lots and lots of suggestions and i think we kind of have this down to four four options now yes uh upgraders upgradians simple upgradians we have listeners listeners we refer to our listeners as listeners i think it's very common um and you know in listener mike and listener jason and various other listeners, right? So I think that that needs to be considered. And then somebody wrote in and suggested something regarding Ahoy telephones.

Yeah, I guess, you know, there's something there, you know, maybe shipmates or something. But, I mean, me personally, I would like either upgraders or upgradians. Yes, I know you would would What do you think Jason? I have to say part of me Wants to just say they're listeners There are listeners There are listeners to the show and that's simple So I'm going to reserve that

As a More understandable honorific For all listeners and to address them As listener so andand-so. I think that's something I want to keep. As long as I can keep that, I am okay with either Upgraders or Upgradians. What I like about Upgradians, although it is a super nerdy word, and maybe that's one of the reasons I like it,

I also like that it doesn't have any existing meaning. And that was what I think listener Diane wrote in about, that Upgrader is already a thing so upgradians is a little extra so i'm okay with upgradians being the official like trekkie name for the show and then listener being a an honorific that we can also bestow on on all listeners because they are listeners and upgradians and settles it jason all right right, done. Upgradian. I like Upgradians. I hope the rest of the show goes that easily. I know.

I doubt it. I like Upgradian. I like Upgradians. I like that. I think that works quite nicely. I hadn't thought of really putting too much thought into the idea that it is unique to the show, which is quite nice. I do like, obviously, listener is fun,

and I like saying like listener Bob I think that's quite funny but you know we need something special for this show Jason you know we will still refer to listener Bob but listener Bob is an upgradian until they renounce

their upgradianship if they wish and then we'll probably read those on hashtag ask upgrade and be sad. But that'll never happen. I think even more, you know, the people in the chat room are definitely the upgradians. You know, they are right there. They're involved. They're contributing.

But we do also, of course, have the remotegradians who send us email and tweets via the hashtag. Which is nice. The super crazy fans are listening live. But not everybody can listen live when we record the show. And that's fine. There are no classes of Upgradian. See, I'm working on it. There are no classes of Upgradian.

You're all Upgradian. Some of them are in the chat room and listening to the live stream. And some of them aren't. And that's fine. We love them all equally. Yes. You can be a crazy person and a crazy fan from far away. the live stream and some of them aren't and that's fine we love them all equally yes we you can you can be a crazy person and a crazy fan from far away and if you uh would like to be uh one of

our official enemies first off you need to get us an enemy uh sponsor and then you can be as wayne dixon suggested in the chat room just now a downgradian there's so many layers here i know this is getting deep we're getting deep all right um you put in another piece of follow-up which is something i i think we talked about and i wrote about on six colors which is that the wire um the wire was released the great hbo drama series was released in its hd widescreen version over the weekend. So this is something I don't remember if we actually spoke about this on the show, but I know that I first heard about this from Six Colors. When you originally posted it, I think, was it in December?

It feels like longer ago. Yeah, it was early December. It was earlier this month when when david simon wrote about it and i was surprised that it went from uh him writing about it to it being live in the same month that was kind of amazing but i know that at the time when it was being discussed and when we first heard about it everybody was kind of concerned that it would be just like what's known as like pan and scan so effectively taking the original four by three because all all we believed we had was a four by three uh version of the wire um so they would basically chop off the top and bottom and zoom in on stuff yeah yeah it's not

even pan and scan at that point it's just as it's just a zoom yeah but it turns it turns out they did shoot it in 35 millimeter film which means they shot it in 16 but the film is 16 by 9 the way they shot it they the the 16 by 9 is on the film that's the way that they crop the the the shot that's the way the cameras are made and then they would just put tape markers on the sides to box it in 4 by 3 and at the very beginning it sounds like they shot it sort of to cheat on 16 by nine in case it ended up being in 16 by nine and by the end of the first year i think they just decided hbo was never gonna um fund them to do 16 by 9 hd and they were going to embrace standard what they were already broadcasting in which was standard death four by three aspect ratio standard

tv aspect ratio and so i believe they although they shot the rest of the series on film and with the ability to capture the 16 by nine image at that point on, they were, you know, they didn't even worry about a little about what was in the sides of the frame. It was as if those frames were not the 16 by nine widescreen areas were not there. uh, were not the, the, the 16 by nine widescreen areas were not there. Um, and, uh, that became a problem when somebody said we would like the, and if we didn't talk about it, I definitely talked about it on, on some podcasts. I'm on a lot of podcasts, um, about the idea that, that black and white TV, you know, used to be, uh, they started colorizing TV shows because they couldn't sell black and white TV anymore. And I feel like four by three standard FTV is becoming unsellable in today's TV market. People have widescreen TVs and HD TVs, and they want to see things in that format. And so HBO is thinking we've got 100

episodes of The Wire, and we don't, you know, for them to continue having value, we need to upgrade them to HD and widescreen. And the problem is, like you said, the problem is they're not the same shape. And if you just put the box, a 16 by 9 box in the middle of the old 4 by 3 picture, you're cutting off the top and the bottom. And if you use the whole frame of film, you're going to have like lights and people and weird stuff on the sides of the screen because they didn't care about what was on the sides of the screen, they weren't, they didn't care about what was on the sides of the screen, which is actually what's happening apparently on some cable channel is running reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and HD widescreen. And they're like, there's a

Tumblr that collects these things. There's like stagehands in the shots. It's crazy. Like nobody had any quality control on that release. But apparently David Simon, the creator of The Wire, was shown what HBO was working on and said, well, actually, we have some problems with this. Which is really interesting that they did go to him and they delayed this release for like four or five months because of that. Yeah. So David Simon was involved in this. Yeah, so David Simon was involved in this, and they basically digitally edited out and painted, what they call digitally painted,

over some of the basically crew. Yeah, so what they did, I mean, they hired somebody who was one of the producers or cinematographers on the show to go through it. They basically said, okay, we're going to pay you to, you've got some free time right now, we're going to pay you to go through the. They basically said, okay, we're going to pay you to, you've got some free time right now. We're going to pay you to go through the HD transfer for us and, and, and come to us with the things where we, you feel like we need to make creative decisions. And, and cause we can't look at everything ourselves, you know, busy TV producer making a new show, whatever.

And so it was a combination. There were, there are shots that they, they, that they crop differently, whether they went back to the wide or they went in close. Sort of like shot by shot, there were shots that they changed to get the effect they were looking for, which is great. That's, you know, that it wasn't just put a frame in and roll the episode. They would go shot by shot. And then there were certain cases where they wanted to go wide and there was stuff that they had to paint out. And there were certain cases where they wanted to go wide and there was stuff that they had to paint out. And so they did, which I think is great that they went to that trouble, which obviously Fox didn't do with whatever Buffy episodes are running on that cable channel.

And hopefully if they ever do a Blu-ray release or a streaming HD release of those Buffy episodes, they either take them back to 4x3 or they put in some effort to fix them up. I mean, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, has said, and Buffy is my favorite TV show of all time. I'd love to see it in HD because I know they shot it on film. But he said, look, other than the one episode we shot in 16x9, we shot the show in 4x3. That's what it was meant to be. It was always in 4x3. Other shows they did, Angel, the spinoff, was shot in 16x9. It can come out in 16x9, but they didn't shoot the show in 16x9. They shot it in 4x3. So it's an interesting thing, this idea of the intention of the creators. And what Simon pointed out in actually a really great thread on his post about this is people are making a big deal about 16x9 and 4x3, about aspect ratios. But going from SD to HD is actually a creative change too.

They mastered the show for SD. And the way he put it, although I think he used lots of, I think he dropped the F-bomb several times, but the way he put it is, we got away with a lot of stuff because it was an SD. We would actually look at the monitors and say, can you see that car in the background that is totally from the wrong time? Or can you see that car in the background that is totally from the wrong time? Or can you see that sign that proves that we're in a completely different location than when we're claiming to be? Well, in SD, you couldn't.

But in HD, you can. And so that's an issue, too, is, you know, the show wasn't intended to be seen at this level of detail. And a lot of problems emerge. And that they had to deal with that, too. And I think that's kind of fascinating just from this perspective of the creator trying to do something with a show that is not what it was originally intended. And I like Simon's attitude. He's a notoriously cranky guy and I love his work. I think his books are great. Actually, go read The Corner, go read

Homicide, A Year on the Killing Street. Fantastic book. And then The Wire is one of the best dramas ever. He can be a really cranky guy. And yet his attitude toward this is really good. It's like, look, HBO owns it. They let us have some creative input in it. We're creating an alternate version of the work.

If you want to see the original intent, that's the 4x3 SD version of the show. That is what we made when we made it. And some of the stuff that's in the HD is better, and some of it is worse, but it's different, and it's not the original intent of the artist. But we also recognize that if we only had that version, nobody would see it, right? Nobody would watch it because nobody would want to stream it. It's already a problem. Nobody wants to see a 4x3 SD show. So he sort of, I feel like you could watch the HD version of The Wire and not feel like the creators are over your shoulder going, no, no, no, this isn't right, that they had some creative input to make it okay.

But it's fascinating to think about that, that technology is driving artists to hopefully make changes and in other other cases just companies to wholesale make changes to the work and uh and uh the product can suffer greatly because of it so i haven't seen any of the the wire in hd but i would like to because that was i mean i i actually watched the wire for the first time this year um i think we talked about that at least briefly. Yeah, I watched all of it but the last season because I kind of didn't enjoy it. Last season is not very good.

I mean, it's good TV. It's not good for The Wire, I guess. And he's grinding a lot of his axes about journalism since he worked at the Baltimore Sun. He gets really angry about journalism. And that's where you have your most kind of like obviously evil and obviously, you know, angelic characters is in that fifth season where, you know, he kind of, the whole point is that nobody's good or bad. And in the fifth season, he's like, no, no, that editor is really bad. And this reporter is really good. Like, come on, David Simon. But it's totally worth watching. It is not an upper, it is a downer, but it is about, it's a show about the systemic failure of governments and cities.

I mean, it's not a real happy topic. But it is brilliant and funny and tough to watch. But it's great. So we have a couple of, just a couple of Ask Upgrades today. So we have at Gen215 uh what are your hobbies interests or passions that are currently among the topics are not among the topics that you explore in your podcast so what do we love we're gentlemen with many podcasts exactly and uh and i think for both of us they span across many different indeed genres uh but for me I think some of the things that I enjoy that I don't record

about, I love building Lego sets. It's something I don't do an awful lot of because it's expensive. But maybe once a year I'll have a good Lego set that I like to build. I like music, but I don't make podcasts about music.

And I enjoy food and eating out and stuff like that. It's a passion of mine and I don't make podcasts about music, and I enjoy food and eating out and stuff like that. It's a passion of mine, and I don't make any shows about that either. Right. Not yet. Not yet. I took out a lot of my...

By making me incomparable as broad as it is, I mean, that's literally all of my pop culture interests. Yeah. And so in a different world, I would have done a show about movies or a show about TV and say, well, you know, I read comics or I read books. But I just poured those all into The Incomparable. So all of that kind of cultural consumption just kind of goes out the window because I've got the shows at The Incomparable that cover it. was a really interesting question and i i appreciate uh listener at gen 215 uh for uh for does he have a name did we look up he or she have a name i don't know i'm sure they do i'm gonna look it up just in case because that's one problem with that is it doesn't grab the ask upgrade does not grab the given name thomas listener thomas is who gen 215 is. Upgradian. Upgradian. Well, yeah, and a good friend.

Anyway, I appreciate this question. I would say, well, first off, I'm a parent of a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old. And although friends of mine have a parenting podcast, Turning This Car Around, which you can listen to, which is John Maltz and Lex Friedman and John Armstrong, who is not a friend. He's not an enemy. I don't know him. But they do a podcast. And I don't like that guy. Actually, you know, on the podcast, he seems perfectly fine.

Although, a little confession, he's a divorced dad. And listening to his stories about being a divorced dad just makes me sad. It just makes me sad. My parents were together until my dad died. So I was not a child of divorce and I've been married for 20 years. And, and I just think it's sad to think about, you know, that having to navigate those issues. And, but anyway, it's a good podcast, turning this car around, you should check it out. I don't do a podcast about parenting. I'm not sure I want to, because I certainly don't

have all the answers. All I have is a lot of questions. And I think the danger in those podcasts, which I don't think those guys have, but the danger in talking about parenting at all is you get in a very, it's very easy to get in a, here's what I do, you should do it too, which is almost always not true

because that's just not how it works. Every kid is different. Every situation is different. And then the other thing is you will get people whenever you talk about parenting who will tell you you're doing it wrong because there is a whole class of people who think they know how to take care of kids and really improve their self-esteem by telling you that you don't. And I wrote a column for Macworld once about how

on a long car trip, like the one my family and I are going to take tomorrow, I gave my kids, I think back then it was like a video iPod and they could watch a movie in the car and i had people saying you're a terrible parent because you should be playing the license plate game and uh having long meaningful conversations with your five-year-old about something uh crayons maybe and uh those people are awful so parenting i will put on the list and i think i don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole but but there it is. I'd say writing. I am a writer, and although I write about technology, and in my spare time, I sometimes write fiction and things like that, and I'm on the board of National Novel Writing Month, and I think writing and editing in general is really important in my life.

I don't talk about it a lot in specific. And Dan Warren and I actually have been talking for a little while about some time getting around to doing a podcast that's about writing. And I think that would be a lot of fun and having guests on and talking about different aspects of being a writer, fiction and non. And I think that would be a lot of fun. But right now, it's not on the list. And then the last one I put in here is beer. I like beer. I have only been drinking beer since I was about 28 or 29. I was not a beer drinker in the most, let's see, the traditional beer drinking years of college age and the like. But I discovered beer in my late 20s and I enjoy it quite a bit uh and i enjoy trying different beers and learning about different kinds of beer and different styles and uh it's a lot of fun and i

don't do a podcast about that either but i do enjoy it so that's my answer yeah i mean i i uh i like coffee but i'm not um i'm not as crazy about coffee as many people are like horror. I drink coffee with milk in it. Um, and I know, well, I, I like,

I like tea, uh, which is funny. The American, uh, has the, is the tea drinker and the English guy is the, is the coffee drinker.

I don't drink coffee at all. So I don't understand that. I do drink tea. I just don't, I mean, I have some opinions about it. Dan Warren wrote a piece in the magazine a couple of years ago, right at the beginning about making tea. And, I mean, I have some opinions about it. Dan Morin wrote a piece in the magazine a couple years ago, right at the beginning, about making tea.

And, you know, I have some opinions about how I like to make at least my tea, but I just don't have a lot to say about it other than I like black tea. I have a few different kinds. I like making, you know, loose tea in a pot when I can. And, you know, when I'm traveling like this, I have, you know, tea out of those little tea bags for a couple of weeks, and I miss my teapot. But is that a podcast?

There you go. This can be our vertical, Mike. We can do like a Lego vertical and a beer vertical and a tea vertical and a coffee vertical. That's where those things can go. The upgrade is the place for them in the verticals at the front of the show. So like for what the incomparable is for your pop culture stuff, Upgrade is for literally everything else. Yeah, it's just a place we can just dump every, I mean, treat with serious care the things we don't have any other place to talk about. Maybe, maybe so.

I mean, this podcast, unlike my other podcasts, is more about sort of like us talking about stuff. And somebody said to me when we were talking about, is this podcast about working at home or is it about technology? I think the answer is it is the one place that I have where I can just talk about stuff that interests me. And although technology is going to be a primary focus, I do feel like in some ways this is the place where I can go off topic with you and talk about stuff in my life. And you can do the same.

You've got some other places where you can do that, including analog, where you can really do that. But for me, this is sort of the place where I have more freedom to do that than on something like The Incomparable, I think. Yeah, and I like that. I do like that. I like that a lot. I think it's fun. We have Upgradian Bob sent in a uh listener bob come on listener bob i'm really going for it i'm going to listen bob and upgradian okay uh he suggested a i've seen

this product before as a way to help us out when traveling uh abroad which is the plug bug by 12 south and they make a product called the Plugbug World. So basically the Plugbug is a MacBook power adapter that also has a USB port built right into it. Right. What you do is you kind of plug it into your... You sort of pop off the socket, the plug socket from the power brick that you have. And then you can clip the plug bug on top

and it allows you to continue to charge your MacBook through the adapter that it needs, but also adds a USB cable so you can charge multiple devices at a time is what I'm trying to say, basically. It's a nice little thing and it comes with a bunch of adapters, so you can take it with you wherever you want around the whole world and charge it there.

That's nice. I have Apple's international adapter kit, and then I have a plug adapter, and that's served me well just even just having those two when i go to uk or europe that that has served me pretty well just having a couple uh that i can plug in anything and then one that i can plug in any apple anything um but that's good thank you upgrading and bob listener bob um so i think that that's good. Thank you, Upgradian Bob, Listener Bob. So I think that that's actually brought us to the end of our – Goodbye, everybody.

– vertical, and we'll be back next time. So we're going to get into the real meat of the show now. So we've mentioned this a little bit, and so what we have now is the Upgradees. Now, the Upgradees is basically – It's your idea. It's your idea. Now, the Upgradees is basically me and Jason decided we wanted to do an end-of-the-year show where we spoke about some things we like this year. So I decided that we would turn this into an awards show called the Upgradees. And these are the Upgradees for 2014.

I would like to do the Upgradees every year. Maybe if I keep suggesting things like this, there won't be an upgrade next year, but who knows? So what I would like to do at the end of every year is for me and Jason to award our favorite items with an Upgradee. I am actually going to email the winners of all of the Upgradees and give them the artwork.

Yes, because there's also artwork for the Upgradees that people haven't seen yet. You are a madman. This is what I'm saying. You not only invented the Upgradees, but then you created the logos for the Upgradees. Well, I had our fantastic designer, Mr. Frank Towers, at ForgottenTal on Twitter. He's done a lot of incredible work for us, like all of the logo and artwork and stuff. And he took

the Upgrade logo and turned it into an award, which is very beautiful. There are multiple versions. It's not his fault, Mike. It's your fault. Oh, I know. This was purely my doing. I made him do it. I've put it in the chat room

and people will see it's in the show notes which are relay.fm upgrade slash 16 and depending on the podcast client that you use it will also actually show up in the little description when you bring up the description you may see the image there's a few uh podcast clients that actually do show images that are embedded so you'll be able to see it and it's very beautiful um and you can enjoy it that way um i'm i'm very i'm very happy with with the artwork uh so i will be sending that artwork jason uh to people that probably don't want it yeah so check your spam filters everybody unless you're using mail route in which case it will protect you from mike's emails but we'll get to that. Everybody just blacklists me. So basically, this is the way it's going to go.

We have a bunch of categories. Some were suggested by me and Jason. Some were suggested by the Upgradians, and that will be listed where necessary. What we're going to do is me and Jason have both picked our personal choices, our favorites. Nominees. Nominees.

Nominees. There you go. We have two nominees. And in some cases, a few more than that, depending on the topic. And then basically, you are about to hear the judging ceremony as well as the award ceremony. So myself and Jason will be probably in some cases arguing over which should be the winner of the Upgradie. And if we cannot come to a consensus decision, we have all of the Upgradians in the chat room who are going to be there for us to provide the final judgment over who will win the Upgradie in that category.

I hope that that is clear for everybody. Jason, do you feel like you fully understand the rules? Unfortunately, I do. I'm very happy that you are indulging me in this. I can tell how happy you are. You're cackling madly. I love award ceremonies. I think that award ceremonies are fantastic.

And if I ever get to do them, trust in me that I will find a way to do them. Yep. Well, I don't get to be involved in the Eddie Awards anymore. So why not? Why not do this? Let's make it a thing. Sure. Why not?

I wish I'd put more time into it. But, you know, that's okay. Maybe next time. You know the things that you like so I think we're going to be absolutely fine this is going to be great fun so the first category

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Thank you so much, lynda.com, for supporting this show, all of RelayFM, and also for helping us out with the best iOS app of 2014. Now, I have made my suggestion. Yes. My nominee is Overcast by Marco Arment. And Jason, who is your nominee? My nominee is Editorial, which is, I believe, by Oli Zorn.

Is that right? That is correct. All right, good. What do I win? Oh no, it's not a game show. Wait a second. You win the ability to tell me why you think that Editorial

is the best app of the year. Well, Editorial, so I don't write all the time on my iPad. I mentioned as much in my episode of Mac Power Users that I think came out last week. I spend most of my writing time on a Mac keyboard, but I do sometimes write on an iPad when it's more convenient, when I don't have a Mac around. And editorial is just the, it's the writing tool that stuck with me the most. It's got a markdown mode. It's got a web preview.

That's really nice. It's got a whole bunch of macros. Even if you don't write Ruby code, you can use their, their macro language to connect to different actions together and do lots of kind of cool stuff and a customizable software keyboard. So it's very easy to enter in sort of markdown code and things like that while I'm writing. I wrote, I think my last piece,

if not the last two pieces I wrote for the magazine, for example, I wrote in editorial and I wrote a couple of my last columns for Macworld as well in editorial. And it's a, you know, it is not my preferred writing environment. That is BBEdit on the Mac, but it is a really pleasant way to do writing on iOS. And so although I'm never going to be probably at the level of Federico Vatici with his commitment to iOS, I'm impressed by how powerful editorial is. So that's why. Why did you go with Overcast, Mike? So I think

listening to podcasts is one of the key things that I do with my iPhone. I think if you were to manage out what are the main things that I do with my iPhone on a daily basis, it's use Twitter and listen to podcasts

and maybe play the occasional game, check email. But even when I'm doing a lot of these things, podcasts are playing as well. It's a key thing for me in my life is listening to podcasts. And there will be many people that have a greater statistic than me. But for example, Overcast has saved me 26 hours from speed adjustments. You get that. You can get that in the little settings screen

at the bottom. I can tell you that. And people send me this every now and then. I've seen like 47 hours and things like that. And you guys are incredible, but also kind of crazy a little bit as well, which I like. But I must say that this app,

I think what Marco has built is an app that not only is very good, like Overcast kind of is very good. It's missing some features, but the thing is like some of the features that it's missing, like streaming and stuff like that, I've actually now kind of adjusted the way that I use apps like this because Overcast is so good. So because this app is so good,

I've adjusted the way that I consume podcasts for it. And I don't think that there are many apps that I personally do that kind of thing for, where I will adjust part of my workflow for that, for something like that. And also, it has some features now that are kind of indispensable for me. Like there are other really great iOS apps for listening to podcasts that I really enjoy, like Castro and Pocket Casts. casts but now i'm so used to like the voice boost stuff and the smart speed stuff and it's such a killer feature for me that i don't want to look anywhere else for a podcast app so for me overcast is the is definitely the winner all right so now i i think in in potentially a cheating fashion, I can see ahead in this document.

Yes, I was about to mention this myself. Basically, which one of these awards would you like Overcast to win, Mike? Well, I just want Overcast to win an award because I think it's that good. So the next... Would you prefer that editorial win an award or your choice in the next category win an award

is what I'm saying. I'm actually okay with Overcast winning this category. Let me put it that way. I agree with you about Overcast. In fact, one of the reasons I chose editorial is because I was trying to not have every category have us agree and I saw that you had picked Overcast. It has changed. It is my default. I own every

podcast app too and the fact that Marco did all the extra work on and everybody's like, oh yeah, you're friends with Marco. I was like, well, you know, I send email to Marco from time to time and we have chats about things and the fact that Marco did all the extra work on and everybody's like oh yeah you're friends with Marco it's like well you know I send email to Marco from time to time and we have chats about things and all of that but I've never been to his house I've only I've only met him a handful of times it's like no you know what I like Marco but I don't use Overcast because I like Marco I and I like a lot of these other apps too what Marco did that was really intelligent and put raised the bar for podcast apps

to spend all that time on that audio engine and by doing SmartSpeed and by doing VoiceBoost it puts that app above the rest and yeah it doesn't do streaming and there are other things about it that I wish were better and that it had more features you know and everybody out there wants

chapter support Mike but anyway Um, you know, and everybody out there wants chapter support, Mike. But anyway, uh, I, I think there are things that obviously he can improve and that he, and that he's working on, but, uh, all that effort that he put before he even announced the product into the, the, uh, those special, uh, audio features. Like it's the first podcast app that I can listen to at more than 1x because the audio artifacts in other podcast apps at higher speeds

just drove me nuts. I couldn't listen. They sounded too awful and it wasn't worth it. Now I can do a gently slightly more than 1x on podcasts and it sounds fine. That's huge. For that alone, it is probably the iOS app other than maybe a Twitter app

and a web browser that I use the most. And I like it. So I think it's perfectly fine for us to give that the upgrade. And also, I know the statistics for our listenership and Overcast is hugely dominant.

So I know it's popular. And I'm adding that into the Marco as a friend type scenario. Looking at those statistics, I know it's a popular app. I personally would like this to be the best iOS app of the year.

So Marco, check your spam filter. Mike has sent you a prize. So the next category is the best newcomer for iOS app. And you had put Overcast in this category. And I have put Workflow in here. Now, one of the things that I like about editorial is some of the incredible things that i like about editorial um is some of the incredible things that can happen with editorial and the way that it's pushed ios forward right because i know

federico vittici very well and i see the insane things that he does with that app like we were talking about this um on the last episode of Connected about what apps would have to go to... If an app switched to Android, what app would it have to be to make you follow it? So basically Federico said that if editorial went Android only, he would have to switch to Android because so much of his revenue generation with his website is dependent on that app. Because he has so many things automated in it.

So it's like if you think about that, Federico Vittici, the iPad guy, this app is so important to him that he would have to seriously make that consideration. So you can see how powerful it is. But the thing is, I don't understand how to do a lot of the stuff that federico knows how to do yeah in that app but the app that i do understand how to do this kind of stuff in is workflow and it's a very new app but i seriously i cannot think of an app this year that is that has blown my mind like workflow does and and i i actually use it every day now,

which I hope that I would. But these kind of things, there was a time where I really liked the idea of Launch Center Pro and the things that I could do with callback URLs. But where I use that app every day, I use it for basic things. I use Launch Center Pro as like a launcher

for my various Google Docs that I use because I can kind of set up URL actions so I can go in there and select I want the upgrade doc or the connected doc or something like that and it just opens them up because otherwise, you know, and then it flicks between the many, many apps

that Google makes you use on iOS. You have to use two applications to get to one document, but that's a discussion for another day. But it never really ingrained in me to use a lot of the powerful features of it. But workflow, I'm using it every single day like earlier today i wanted to put some tweets into a document and federico had um had shown me or at least created this this um action uh which allowed you to copy something and then you could go and add another item to the clipboard so you'd end up

with like three say like i copied three tweets in total but you run in this workflow so it would just append the most recently copied thing to the previous copied thing it's kind of weird to explain but then you end up with like multiple copied items on like a pretend clipboard But then you end up with multiple copied items on a pretend clipboard. Just little things like that, and it's super powerful. And I genuinely think that this app deserves recognition for the incredible things you can do with it that you simply could not do before. I agree with you.

I wish that it was... I don't know. I think the directory and the sample workflows need to be better. I think it's still a little. Yes, definitely. You have that. There's a bar that they get you over, which is how to use the app. And then there's this other bar, which is how to do anything useful.

And that one is a lot harder. And this is one of those cases where I feel like using Automator or AppleScript or something like that on the Mac, where I've got a bunch of different windows open, and I can be looking up like ways to help and suggestions. That's one of those ways where having one app open at a time in iOS is it makes it really hard, because if workflow is open, and I'm trying to figure out how to do something in workflow, it's, it's harder to do that, because I'm just in workflow. And then the other thing I've realized with workflow is I, um, I have a harder time debugging or getting an idea of what is the output in any particular step. So I feel like there needs to be some more debugging stuff put in there. Cause sometimes I start to build a

workflow and I'm like, well, what's there at this point in the workflow? And I don't know. And it's like, well, you could drag in a thing that says display the text or something like that. But it's just it's all kind of hacky. And I wish it was just a little bit. It's brand new. And they're going to they're going to do that sort of thing. But it's true.

Even one of the basic baked in workflows, which is just finding your current location and sending a text message to somebody you specify saying how long it'll be before you get home. I immediately put that on my home screen. That's great to tell my wife, you know, I'm at this address, I'll be home in 24 minutes. And it's, you know, it's querying a traffic server and figuring out the distance and figuring out the time to drive and sending that in into a text message. And that's great. And Joe Steele wrote a wonderful workflow that lets you create one of those super fave things and a tweet. And man, I'm going to use that every day in 2015. I'm going to superstar something somewhere

because it's a lot of fun. And it uses regular expressions, which I know how to write. And so text munching and things should be pretty exciting too. So I support this. This is why I said we could go with Overcast for best iOS app. I think Overcast has had the biggest impact on my life as an iOS user. But as a brand new app with a huge amount of potential, I think workflow is really exciting and bringing that power that previously only maybe

the Viticis of the world understood to a broader audience, not necessarily the broadest audience, but a broader audience. So I think we're decided on that as well. This is great. This is like a real democracy happening here. I don't want to go to the chat room unless we absolutely have to. And I think that... They scare me.

It may have to start with the next. Yeah, I think so. For what I think will be a good reason that will become apparent. So we now want to talk about the best Mac app of the year. So for me, I mean, I think for both of us, neither of these apps are new apps, but they're apps that we use a lot. So they're currently our favorite best apps. So on the Mac, for me, it's Fantastical.

Great app. Great app. Best on the Mac, I think. Yes. I still would love a more blown-out, dedicated app than just the menu bar app, like more akin to what you see on iOS, like on the iPad, for example just so i could see more um at a time but just the the power that that i have with fantastical in being able to very

quickly and easily just set my tasks in in just natural language it just works so well for me and i can fire off a keyboard shortcut it opens it up i can just start typing things in and as if by magic i have an appointment set one of my favorite things about fantastical and this isn't something that a lot of people know i don't think because every time i mention it people are surprised you can it does a great thing with time zones as well so where i set things in multiple time zones all the time, so let's say me and Jason decided we wanted to record, he will say to me, oh, can we record at my 11 a.m. next week?

I'll go, fine, and then I'll just open up Fantastic How and just write upgrade at 11 a.m. PST, and it just recognizes it and sets it in my local time. That is so powerful for me, and it makes this app an absolute lifesaver that i don't have to use multiple apps to work it out and also like when when it's coming to a time where there's a time change having fantastic how do all of that math for me as well is is super cool so that's my pick jason what is yours well i i thought long and hard. I use a lot of different Mac apps, including Fantastical. And I thought about it.

I thought about Skype Call Recorder from Ecamm Software, which I couldn't do podcasting without. It's a really great... I mean, I could use something else. It wouldn't be as good. I would not choose to do podcasting without Call Recorder. There are so many different choices. But as I said earlier, I do most of my writing in BBEdit. And the new version of BBEdit came out this year. They pulled from the Mac App Store. It's just available from bare bones for various reasons. And, you know, the fact is, starting a new website, I spent a lot of time editing files

in BBEdit and yeah using Transmit for FTP and I used Coda for a little while also from Panic but BBEdit has been the thing that I've been using to write stories in Markdown to edit CSS, to edit HTML files, it's to do lots of search and replace, it's the app

that I probably spend the most time in and spent the most time in in 2014. So it's hard for me not to say that as probably for most of the past 15 years, my Mac app of choice is BB Edit. So this is where we're going to need the help of the chat room. So I think so. Everybody in the chat room so i think so everybody in the chat room

if you can kind of just start throwing in what you think should be the winner for this the key reason being i've never used bb edit oh well you should just agree that i'm right then because you trust me so i mean i would say that i think that and i hear a lot about BBEdit, and I am familiar with the fact that it is incredibly powerful. And it seems like one of those apps that for people that use it, it is just an indispensable app. Like, you know, you kind of, for those of you that need it, it's just there, you know, and it's got everything in it, and it seems to have all these bundles and stuff like that, that I don't fully understand.

But it definitely seems like a powerful application. Oh, yeah. And it's been around forever. I think one of the nice things about it is that it has moved with the times. I mean, it was originally written. I mean, it had to come through going to Xcode. It was from classic Mac OS to OS X. It supports a lot of the Unix features in OS X that were not there when it was conceived of originally. There are lots of text editors out there. I also don't use it for

what is probably its primary purpose, which is editing code. I mean, most of what I'm doing is writing in Markdown. There's a vote in the chat room for Sublime Text, which is a very popular text editor among people who don't mind editing a text file in order to edit your preferences. Boo. You call yourself a Mac user? Come on, there needs to be a preferences pane. That's my rant about Sublime Text. So BBEdit is fantastic. Skipper L in the chat room makes the point that it's great, but there are other great text editors. Well, there are other text editors. Many of them are good.

Sublime Text is not one of them. Ha! Burn! I'm sorry. I can't get past... Text editor wars. Yeah, I know. It's going to have editors at war. Here it comes.

I just... I can't get past the fact that Sublime Text, when you choose preferences, it brings up a text file and says, edit this to change your preferences. It's like, yeah, up yours. I'm sorry. That is ridiculous. That does sound horrible. That sounds horrible. But yeah, it's not. I don't endorse it. But Fantastical has broader appeal, and I use it and love it too. So even though the chat room has also voted your way,

I'm going to graciously just agree that we'll choose Fantastical. Excellent. Thank you very much, everybody, for that. And congratulations for Fantastical for being the winner of the best Mac app upgrade. So in the style of the previous two, we now have the best newcomer Mac app, and we've actually voted unanimously on this one. Yes, all two voters voted unanimously. And we've gone from Mailbox. Jason, why is Mailbox your favorite Mac app of the year? What's really crazy about this is Mailbox is still a beta.

It's owned by Dropbox now. And a couple months ago, Chamblon of the suite setup came to me along with Stephen Hackett and said, would you like to write about alternatives to Apple Mail? And I said, okay, how many could there be? And it turns out there are an awful lot.

And I tried them all. And I actually decided I really like Mailbox. It is far from flawless. It doesn't work with anything but Gmail accounts, including Google Apps for Domains, which is what I have, or iCloud. Those are the only mail servers it works for right now. You really need to use it on the iOS side and the Mac side for it to work. But what I like about it is it doesn't have a lot of features. I don't want a lot of features. There's an app out there that has every feature imaginable. If you

want that app, you can go get it. But what Mailbox is great at is it's simple and it lets you treat your inbox like a to-do list. And not only does that mean you can reorder messages to, which I do, I use my inbox as a to-do list. So you can, you can, uh, I would leave messages in my inbox forever because I was like, I got to get back to that person and I can't file it because then I'm never going to respond to them. What a mailbox lets you do is very easily with a swipe of your trackpad on the Mac and of your, uh, of your finger on iOS is, um, delete, is delete, archive, file away in a folder, basically, or set it with a schedule, basically,

to boomerang back into your inbox, which means you can sit there and go, I'll deal with this tomorrow. I don't need to deal with that ever. I'm going to delete that one. I'm going to deal with that next week. I'll deal with that eventually, and process your mail rapidly so that what you've got in your inbox

is your inbox of stuff you should deal with now and not a whole collection of things that you should eventually deal with. And it lets you sort of prioritize. And I think it's a really nice conceit. It's not for everyone, but I think it's good. It's my primary Mac mail program, I will say I also use Mailplane, which is basically a Macified window into the Gmail web interface because Mailplane's direct access to search is the best if you use Gmail. But Mailbox as a day-to-day kind of mail processing app, it was my favorite of all the ones I tested. And I think the truest proof here is that I haven't gone back to mail.app, which every other mail alternative I've tried, I've given up. It's not for everybody. I've heard from a bunch of people since that story went up on Suite Setup.

They're like, but what about this? But what about that? It's like, well, like the story says, it's not for everybody. It doesn't work with all the services. There are some other options out there. I think there are not a lot of great options i think there's some that are um that are coming on that that have a lot of potential but right now uh mailbox has done an amazing thing just by sticking in my dock and and allowing me to take mail.app out and that's uh i think that's impressive so

there yeah i mean i i love Mailbox on the iPhone. So like Mailbox on the Mac then becomes like the de facto. You need to use the system together to get the most out of the system. Otherwise, weird things start happening to your mail, right? Because when you start setting something to pop up again tomorrow and you start reorganizing things it's not going to happen you're not going to see that's a lot of stuff reflected in other mail clients so you kind of go all in if you want to if you really want to get in on this which is why they're on the mac app

because it allows you to to really use the system to its fullest and the mac app still has some work to do like some of the it doesn't have as many configurable swipe gestures as the iPhone does. There are just some things that are missing. So for example, I have one on my iPhone that allows me to swipe to mark a message as read or unread, and that just doesn't exist as an option at the moment. But a lot of those things are, I assume, coming, because it is still in a beta. But even in a beta state it's the app that i most like to use on my mac and i feel like i'm able to process and deal with my email better than i ever have before um so the the next category is for best game now we

have an ios game uh category coming up shortly but this is for the best console game. So me and Federico Vittici, we have a show on RelayFM called Virtual, and we did our Game of the Year episode last week. And we didn't actually crown a Game of the Year because it's quite a difficult thing to do. So I had to sit and do some

real thinking about what I thought would be the best thing for me to go with in this category. So we both picked a selection of games, and I took a look at that, and I picked out from that my favorite iOS game and my favorite overall game of the year. So for me, it was what was the game that I have enjoyed playing the most this year? What's the game that has given me the most fun? It's actually a game that's on the Vita. It's now on the PS4, and it's coming next year to the Wii and 3DS, I think. It's a game called Oli Oli, which is O-double-L-I, O-double-L-I.

It's all one word. And Oli Oli is like a mix between a Tony Hawk game and Mario. a Tony Hawk game and Mario. It's a, basically, you are, it's a skateboarding game and you effectively have to get from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen, like the old Super Mario Brothers,

like the scrolling world, right? So you just, you see everything sort of side on and you go from left to right. And then at the end, you finish the level. You have goals you need to complete, like you have to score this amount,

you have to pick up these things, that kind of thing. Like the, again, like the old Tony Hawk's games, if you've the level. You have goals that you need to complete, like you have to score this amount, you have to pick up these things, that kind of thing. Again, like the old Tony Hawk's games, if you've played them. It's got fantastic music, has a really cool art style, like this 2D art style. It's really challenging.

It actually started life as an iOS game. And then the guys at Roll7, who are a UK development company, decided that it actually was a game that would benefit from physical buttons. So they brought it over to the PS Vita, and it did really well, actually. It scored really well, like lots of 8s and 9s out of 10. And I think of all of the games I've played this year, it's maybe been one of the most fun experiences that I've had from a video game.

So it's Olly Olly. Sounds good. It's not really my thing, but, uh, and, and for platforms that I don't have, but,

uh, this is gonna be a hard one. I, I, uh, I decided to go with, uh, I think the game,

not only that I probably had the most fun playing, um, not on an iOS device this year, but also the game that prompted me to buy a Wii U, which is Mario Kart 8. Mario Kart's great, and we played Mario Kart on the Wii endlessly. And now we have Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, and it's beautiful in HD and a lot of fun. And we bought the downloadable content pack, which adds more drivers and crazy, like Legend of Zelda themed tracks and all of that.

And it's a great family game we can play. You know, we've got multiple Wii controllers so we can all race against each other. It's just, it's a lot of fun. And, you know, it's Mario Kart. So if you've played Mario Kart, you know it's Mario Kart. And it's that simple.

It is just a huge amount of fun to play. I'm not a big fan of serious car racing games, but Mario Kart is not serious. And I like it and my kids like it. And so I would have to mention it as the best game on a console this year that I played. So Mario Kart 8 is what I choose. Mario Kart wins.

All right, yay! So I'm going to talk about this shortly, but I received a Wii U for Christmas, and I love Mario Kart. Like, it's so good. It only hasn't made it into my game of the year lists because I didn't have a wii u at the point where we picked them and and i wouldn't have wanted to suggest it then because

like to suggest it for this one because i haven't really had it for a long time but in the the relatively short time i've had playing the game it it's just fantastic. And I wouldn't want to not give it the award because it is that good. And I hope that Nintendo accept the upgrade graciously on the box art for the Platinum Edition. I'm sure they will. So let's move to iOS. Yes.

For me, when I was thinking about this, I took a look at the iOS game that I have played and enjoyed the most. And for me, it has to be Threes. I think I may have played Threes every single day since it came out. Wow. I play Threes constantly. Like when I mentioned earlier about you know i listen to podcasts a lot of the time i'm listening to podcasts like if i'm traveling you know like

i'm commuting uh i will be playing threes whilst listening sometimes i actually sit at home and listen to podcasts like just chilling out like and i'll be playing threes at the same time uh you know i kind of you know like what i was saying earlier like i kind of treat i treat podcasts that many people the way that many people treat tv shows and movies like it's my favorite form of entertainment so sometimes i just choose to listen to them you know i don't have to be traveling or whatever while i'm doing it um and a lot of the time my my accompaniment isrees. I'm not that good at threes. I'm like mid, you know, like middle of the road, I guess.

Most of my friends are much better than me. Like my high score is like 29,000 or something like that, which is a good score, but I mean, I know people that have ridiculous scores. 29,616 is my highest score on a 3s. But I just think it's like the perfect iPhone game. It is infinitely playable because there isn't a progression as such.

You know, there isn't like a story. So it doesn't get old in that instance. And it's perfectly playable with one hand. It's fantastic on the 6 Plus because you can move the tiles around from anywhere on the screen. You don't need to be touching a specific part of the screen. So it works perfectly in one hand, no matter where your hand fits on the screen.

So you can just do it with one thumb. I love 3s. It's easily my iOS game of the year. This one was really hard for me because there are the games that I played the most and then they're the ones that I feel like are the most kind of worthy of appreciation. So Threes is on my list. There's no doubt about it.

Crossy Road is on my list. As ridiculous as that game is, the fact is it was so compulsively, compellingly, addictively playable. You could just play it anytime and you could play it quickly. I mean, in some ways, a perfect mobile game. I have a different sort than Threes because it does demand 100% of your attention while you're playing it, whereas Threes you can pause at any point. Monument Valley is on that list because although it doesn't take a long time to complete, so it's not going to be something that lives with you,

it is a really wonderful experience that has stuck with me in terms of the imagery and the story and the sounds. And I think about it a lot. I think as a work of art, it's really great. And then of course, we got the expansion pack this year. There's a game called Rules, which I really, really love, uh, wrote about on six colors a couple of weeks ago, where you get a four by four grid of cards and you've got a succession of increasingly

complicated rules that you have to follow in order to clear the board before you can move on. And there's a ticking clock. Um, I think that's a lot, a lot of fun. I really enjoyed space age, I think that's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed Space Age, the retro scrolling adventure. And I really, I don't know, it's hard to make a final decision. If I'm being honest, the game that I probably spent the most time on this year is Flappy Golf by the developers of Super Stickman Golf. They made a Flappy Bird joke using their physics and golf course, and it's a fantastic game. It is so great. It is better, I think, than Super Stickman Golf, partially because it is not junked up by the free-to-play, like buy some coins, buy some hats, junk that they put in Super Stickman Golf 2.

junk that they put in super stickman golf too um it's got ads that you can pay to turn off but um it's just a uh it's great golf courses and i loved the fact that you really need to understand the physics of when you're flapping the the golf ball to its destination and the goal is to do it and uh get it in the hole in as few flaps as possible and uh it's just i played every level every single level and i don't do that with most ios games i don't level, every single level. And I don't do that with most iOS games. I don't go through every single level. I play it for a while and I'm like, oh, well, this is fun. And then I just kind of move on because that's what happens. So if this award goes to the game I played the most hours, it's probably Flappy Golf.

I kind of feel like I need to say Monument Valley though, because even though I didn't spend the most time on it because it doesn't last that long, I feel like it is just a wonderful piece of work and award-worthy for being beautiful and interesting. And yes, it's not a super challenging puzzle, but that's not what I was trying to get out of it. I wanted that experience, and I hate using such a squishy word as experience, but that's what it was. using such a squishy word as experience, but that's what it was. It was like a story. It was storytelling, interactive storytelling, and gently challenging and beautiful and immersive and all of those things that I think we hope more, um, more, uh, iOS games can be. So in the end, uh, Monument Valley by a nose over Flappy Golf and, and, uh, Crossy Road and not, not F not flappy bird just it's two things that were that were that were uh creative that were uh spawned by flappy bird so i kind of think that there is no game more

award worthy than monument valley yeah um maybe of all of the games that I've played this year, it's the game that deserves the most awards because it is so... I don't think people will like this, but I consider it groundbreaking in what it has achieved and what it has done for iOS and some of the paths that it has opened for people now and to prove that you can

kind of come from nowhere and have this incredible success which flies in the face of convention and I think Crossy Road has actually benefited from the fact that Monument Valley exists because where they are vastly different games

with vastly different models of uh uh of monetization i think potentially i mean i don't know this but you can imagine being developers across the road looking at monument valley seeing how it didn't do what everyone tells you you need to do and was still a success so So for me, I think if you're going to look at a game that has maybe made the biggest impact and maybe has also made a big impact on me, I think Monument Valley would have to be the winner. All right.

Well, that's it then. Yep, that is it. Monument Valley wins the upgrade-y. But there are a lot of great choices here. Oh, it's been a fantastic year. So many great choices. All of the games that you you mentioned i give a plus one to every single one of them yeah space age is a excellent game uh that i loved and crossy road is so much fun i only haven't really considered crossy road because i actually don't think for me that it's got the

same lasting power and a game like that think, needs to have lasting power. Like, Threes is on my list. Not because it is a groundbreaking video game. It's very simple. But they're very simple games. They should be endlessly playable. And Crossy Road is fun, but it's kind of dying off for me a bit now. Where Threes hasn't.

Threes came out in january and i'm still playing it the problem with crossy road and threes seems to have this less although threes you do need to get these very high scores to to win there is the um the challenge i think as you're going is greater than crossy road i think after a point in Crossy Road, you're trying to get a score so high that the whole first five minutes you're playing is prelude. And, you know, I got good enough at Crossy Road that most of the time I can get into the hundreds. And, you know, 15% of the time I can get into the high hundreds. And you know what? If the game comes down to, you know, five or ten minutes of frustration of getting your little avatar to the point where you're 15 away from your high score,

and then it's one minute of intense play to get above or fail, I don't know. I feel like the balance is off then. And I don't know if there's any solution on a game like Crossy Road, but I feel like threes, you're working the numbers and threes and looking at the colors and looking at the numbers and all that is you're kind of getting into a state of like this you know it's like a trance almost where you're you're playing the game and that's part of the appeal of the game and then you want to get a high score too um and crossy road doesn't have that i feel like i can sort of get in a trance sometimes with Crossy Road, but again, it was a lot more pleasurable

when I was trying to get to 70 than now that I'm trying to get to 250, if that makes any sense. Yeah, it does, it does. Yeah. Okay, so our next award is going to be for our favorite movie of the year. This award is brought to you by our friends at Squarespace,

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I would like you to start. I think that it will go better this way. So let me know what you think. Okay. Okay. So my favorite movie of this year is not the best movie I've seen this year, but I think it's my favorite. And I actually do – I don't know if you're one of these people, Jason,

but I do consider a huge difference between those two things, that your favorite doesn't have to be the best and the best doesn't have to be your favorite. I'm with you. And I think the best experience that I have had in a movie theater this year is seeing Guardians of the Galaxy. I've actually, I love Marvel movies, but I've missed a couple. I haven't seen Thor 2 and I haven't seen Captain America.

Don't see Thor 2. Yeah, I'm now going to skip it because I've heard from your shows that it's not worth it. But I've yet to see Captain America. And I am, it's probably the next movie that I've yet to see Captain America. And I am. It's probably the next movie that I'm going to watch. The first one or the second one? The second one, The Winter Soldier. I've seen the first one.

So I've just kind of missed some of the movies this year. But Guardians of the Galaxy was so much more than I expected it was going to be. There were so many unknown elements in this story for me going in. There were some actors that I'd never seen in a movie before, some actors that had never been in a blockbuster movie before, like Dave Bautista, who is a professional wrestler, or was a professional wrestler.

And there were just, you and there's there's elements like you have vin diesel saying like three words over and over again that seems yes pretty peculiar you have bradley cooper who is an absolute a-lister playing a raccoon yeah just the voice just the voice of a raccoon i didn't know a lot about their story which is uh for every other marvel movie that I have seen has not been the case. I've been very familiar with the stories of everybody else. So there were a bunch of things. I was like, I'm not sure about this.

And I had a smile from ear to ear for the entire two hours. It was just an absolute rip-roaring success for me. All of the unknown elements ended up being the best parts. I absolutely loved Drax, right?

Yeah, Drax. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Obviously, everybody loves Groot. Just all of these things. And just Chris Pratt is an absolute superstar. Like, he was so good in this movie. And I just, I absolutely adored it. So for me, it's been my favorite movie that I've seen this year.

Well, I liked Guardians of the Galaxy a whole lot. And I'm going to cite Incomparable number 207, where we talked about it. But I like it a lot. And I'm going to cite Incomparable number 207 where we talked about it. But I like it a lot. And I feel like it's difficult for me to talk about Guardians of the Galaxy in a way because I feel like

I just didn't like it as much as a lot of people did. I think that it got so hyped up and some people loved it so much and I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. And in fact, I've watched it a couple of times since it came out on home video and I appreciate it more every time. And I think that's a sign of me forgiving its flaws and also not

being quite as swayed by the hype that everybody else went in to, you know, everybody else was sharing before I went in to see the movie the first time, because sometimes that happens. You get a movie really hyped, and even if it's good, it's not as good as you expected, because everybody said, oh my god, it's the greatest thing ever. But I liked it. I liked it a lot. I like it more every time I watch it. It is so entertaining. It has so many good things going for it. The performances, there are a lot of really good performances, and I can kind of forgive the movie its flaws, but it definitely has them. There's about a 20-minute chunk where they're trying to download information about Thanos and Ronan and Nebula and Gamora and how

they're all related to each other. And it turns out the movie was originally Thanos was the villain, and then Marvel basically came in and said, no, no, no, Thanos is going to be the villain and then Marvel basically came in and said no no no Thanos is going to be the villain in Avengers 3 or whatever and so you can't use him now and so then they made it Ronan and Thanos sort of appears in the background and everything became honestly I think that broke a lot of parts of the movie because suddenly it wasn't Gamora rebelling against her father it was Gamora rebelling against the guy who was sent by her father, and that's not, you know, it's not as dramatic. And I think Gamora, some of her best character development happens before we meet her, which is unfortunate. I like that character, but I think

that there's sort of a mistake that happens there with how she's introduced. There's a deleted scene that adds a lot to her character, which it's a shame of all the scenes to be deleted that that scene got deleted. And there's some, there's some bits of the dialogue that I, that don't thrill me that I think is the director being a little too cute and pandering a little bit too much to a kind of 12 year old boy audience that I didn't really appreciate. But it's a, it's a really fun movie. And the fact that it was a success and the fact that I like that, and I like even more the fact that Marvel took a chance with a movie like this because this movie by all rights should not have worked. And Marvel now is printing money, right? So they should be able to just, right, just play it safe.

And instead they're doing the other thing, which is we are riding so high that we can take risks. And this is a huge risk. And it totally paid off. And there are very few movies that I put in the same level. Again, when we're talking about favorites and the feeling you get when you leave the movie theater as Guardians of the Galaxy. The Star Wars movies fall into that camp where it's just, it's fun.

I had a hugely fun time at the movie theater. The Firefly movie, Serenity, I would say is in that camp. I just came out of that movie like totally excited. Some of the early Star Trek movies, like Star Trek 2 and 4, when I came out of the theater as a teenager, I was like, wow, that was really awesome. There's not a lot of movies that make me feel like that. There are a lot of movies where you nod solemnly and go,

yes, that was a very good, important movie. Fine film for all to consume and consider. But Guardians of the Galaxy was like, wow, that was fun. And we named our cat Rocket. So there you go. So a hit with the family at least yeah yeah i know everybody well it was that a groot and we didn't think he was a groot he was more of a rocket uh we'll see if we get a dog or something maybe we'll have groot and then we'll have a nice pair um so my choice is a movie you haven't seen so this will be interesting to see how it goes. And although we talked about movies that are fun and the movies from Marvel that have surprised,

I haven't seen a lot of movies this year because we have, with my kids at the ages they are, it's become problematic for us to find time at home to watch movies on video after the kids have gone to bed because it's too late. And there are movies that the kids can't watch because they're inappropriate for their ages. And then it makes it very hard for us to see those movies. So I haven't seen as many films as I would like this year. So I'm going to go with a favorite, and I'm going to follow you in the blockbuster vein and say, I really think The Winter Soldier is perhaps the best Marvel movie. And I say that because on one level, Captain America, he's kind of boring.

And his most interesting story was the story of him in World War II. And they told that in the first movie, which I like a lot, directed by Joe Johnson. I think that's a really good movie. But the Winter Soldier has a totally different vibe. It's not really a Captain America movie. It's a Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. movie. It's paranoid a it's got a great use of robert redford in a spy 70s spy kind of vibe role which is great um it deals with a lot not to spoil it because you haven't seen it but deals with a lot of modern issues in a surprisingly i mean it's as subversive as a summer popcorn movie can be it at least airs the questions about what is your government doing in your name, and what is patriotism, and is patriotism following your orders as a government

agent, or is patriotism knowing when the government is doing something wrong and standing up against it? And all of that is in The Winter Soldier, along with a bunch of fantastic action scenes and some great Samuel L. Jackson stuff and some great Scarlett Johansson stuff and great Captain America stuff. The Winter Soldier, by the way, is not Captain America. It is a different character in the movie, but I've discovered that lots of people just thought that Captain America was the Winter Soldier. Okay. Anyway, I like it a lot. I think it's actually a... Again, I was really surprised at how good it was because I didn't know what I expected but I didn't expect it to be as great as it really is so

Incomparable number 190 by the way titled The Cloud is Run by Hydra is the episode where we talked about it and I liked it a lot. Big fan. So you can find links to both of those Incomparable episodes in our comprehensive show notes for this week which are at relay.fm

slash upgrade slash 16. We are going to need the chat chat rooms help on this one as i haven't seen one of the movies but i i am familiar with the winter soldier story i've read the comic oh good good yeah it's sort of told in shorthand in the movie because it's not really about the reveal of who the winter soldier is and when it comes it's not quite as dramatic because you haven't had months and months to, uh, ponder, uh, the storyline.

It's just all in the movie, but, uh, a lot of, a lot of good, a lot of good stuff in there. So there aren't a lot of votes coming through in the chat room for these two, which,

uh, I don't know what, what about that? Uh, however, Joe Steele is saying winter soldiers greater than guardians, uh, up guardians of the Galaxy from Dented Meat I'm going to cede to you on this one

because you have seen both movies and Joe Steele has seen both movies and there are more as we're saying there are more Winter Soldier votes as we're saying now there are more winter soldier votes coming through so my says chiyan's in the chat room saying i just got here what do i do it's like my says just say which one is better winter soldier oh there we go winter soldier uh we're gonna give it to the winter soldier but uh super footnoted uh runner-up to guardians which is a super fun great movie i think marvel you, Thor 2 I didn't like at all,

but Marvel is doing some amazing stuff. And obviously the rest of the movie industry is taking notice and is trying to replicate what they're doing. And so we're going to get franchised to death in the next five years. But you got to give it to Marvel. They have, this run has been amazing in terms of general quality when it could really have not been very good and it has been very good um man of steel it sounds like anyway it sounds like thor 2 is the only black mark on

an otherwise impactful record yeah i i so thor 2 has the same problems now we're going to be doing a movie podcast and we're running out of time we need to move on we got more categories but um thor 2 like uh the worst parts of Guardians of the Galaxy, gets mired in this weird, mystical sci-fi, complicated weirdness that I think is just not necessary. And I think it owes something to Marvel's, like they've got their little black book of continuity that they're trying to throw in there for the fans.

And Thor 2 throws away, I think, the things that were best about the original Thor, which is him on Earth, and plays up the stuff that's the worst, which is this really bizarre, mytho, alien, sci-fi, Asgard stuff that's not good. So I don't recommend it. It's loud. I'll give it that. It's very loud. All right. What's next's next its favorite book uh the issue being here is i think this may be the first year that i can remember that i have actually uh i have not read a book this year like cover to cover all right well we're gonna i'll tell you what let's

i'm gonna i'm gonna cite uh since since i added this category and you were like, okay, I don't have anything to say here. I think we're going to give some honorable mentions and to move on. I just want to plug three books I read that I really enjoyed this year, which is The Golem and the Genie by Helene Wecker, which is about a golem and a genie who meet in New York City in Manhattan amidst the great immigration of the mid to late 19th century. It's great. Ancillary Justice, which is by Anne Leckie and won all the sci-fi awards for good reason. It's a really good space opera-y kind of book with some shades of Ursula Le Guin thrown in, I think. And Station Eleven, whose author now totally escapes me, Emily St. John Mandel is her name. Really, really good

post-apocalyptic story that is not super zombie-full. There are no zombies in it, but it's not like one of those really gross, nasty, dirty apocalypses, nor is it a clean, shiny, friendly apocalypse. It's kind of in between, and it's a little like Lost in that a bunch of the stories kind of intersect, except it has a really great ending, and I liked it a lot. So those are my three book

recommendations for this year, and we can move on. And we'll just tip a hat to them. Thank you, books. What a great name Emily St. John Mandel is. I can see why you couldn't remember it, though. It doesn't necessarily roll off the tongue. on and we'll just tip a hat to them thank you books what a great name emily saint john mandel is i can see where you can remember it though it doesn't necessarily roll off the tongue yeah once you get it it's in there forever but i haven't committed it to memory just yet so this one will be fun uh favorite gadget of the year um without a shadow of a doubt for me it is the iphone 6 plus i love this phone i think it's the best iphone apple i've ever made

come at me bros uh it's got the greatest battery life it continues to to surprise me every day uh it's basically i'll tell you what the the easiest way for me to explain the iphone 6 plus is it's and this is basically Apple's marketing copy it's everything I like about an iPhone but more of it and for me that ticks all the boxes but for many it doesn't it has changed the way I use my iPhone but some of the changes that it's made for the better I love this device. It's now the only iOS device I need and use because it fits so perfectly in the spot that I need it to fill. But I totally understand why people don't like it.

Jason, over to you. I think that's a... Boy, if I pick the iPhone 6 here, it would really be a tough fight, wouldn't it? I'm going to pick the 5k iMac. I've written about it on my site. We've talked about it here. Um, I, I did not come into this year thinking I would buy an iMac at no point.

Did I consider that as one of my office setup strategies was buying an iMac and I bought a 5k iMac. And why did I do it? Not just because of the screen, although the screen is beautiful, but also because of the, the, the power of it. The fact that this is a, it scores better than the low-end Mac Pro at some tests. It is kind of Mac Pro-ish power in an iMac with a Retina display, and the only way you're going to get desktop Retina from Apple this year, or next year probably, maybe.

It's a pretty spectacular computer. I love it. It's so fast. The screen is amazing. And it's probably the most powerful computer I've ever bought when you think about it, even relative to the time, because I don't know if I've ever spent this much money on a computer before, and to get something that feels like this top of the line also is a rarity for me. I usually am sort of in the mid-range, but I kind of couldn't resist. And it is a fantastic piece of work. It's also nice to see Apple making a Mac that is so awesome. And that it isn't all just sort of like recycling all the old Mac stuff. There's still some real life in the Mac yet.

So that's my choice. I liked it so much when I reviewed it that I bought one. How about that? I think I'll give you this one, mainly because I have nothing against the iMac. And I know that you have. I can't. You don't like

the 6 Plus, but I don't neither like nor dislike the iMac. I've seen it and I think it's fantastic. And it's a computer that I would very much like to own. I just don't need one. Right, I don't dislike the 6 Plus. I chose the 6 as the phone that I wanted to get and I prefer the 6.

And I think the 6 Plus has a narrower audience and you're in it. And that's great. I think it's not a replacement for an iPad, but I think it's really cool to see Apple doing the 6 Plus and going over that ground that sort of like previous regimes that Apple said, no, no, we're never going to do a phone like that. And they did a phone like that. And it's good.

And I think that's great. But I will accept graciously your passing on the 5K iMac. So thank you. So in the same vein, as suggested by Upgradian Justin, what is your favorite non-Apple gadget of the year? Clearly he knew where the favorite gadget category was going. For me, I picked the PlayStation 4. It's just, it's the best games console that I've played this year.

I mean, I have all three. I now have a Wii U, I have a PlayStation 4, and I have an Xbox One. And I liked, I very, very much like my Wii U. I think it's fantastic. Like, it has some things about it which are brilliant you know the fact that you can kind of play it from any room you know you don't have to have the tv on you that kind of thing but if you're looking at like a pure you want a games console a next generation games console the playstation wins um because it knows what it wants to be and it's that the xbox one also wants to be everything else in your living room yes and and a lot of the experience of using the xbox one suffers from that

and microsoft made some very stupid choices that they had to go back on uh over and over and over again um and i think that there are many things about the PlayStation, which it's, you know, and Sony are very focused on making a console and an experience what they call for the players. It's the marketing strategy, but I genuinely believe in it because a lot of their decisions that I see, it's very much focused on creating the best gaming

experience that they can uh and i i think that they achieve that and and for a next gen console the playstation 4 for me is is the choice and considering that video games is kind of my other major passion uh definitely that and also looking into 2015 the playstation lineup is killer like microsoft can't hold a candle to it in my opinion so i think if you're going to get one it's the one to get yeah i i uh i have a wii u and i am very specifically not picking it here although i really do enjoy like i said mario kart um i i subscribe to the same thing that john siracusa has said on several podcasts including when he was on isometric and on ATP, that Nintendo is very good at the kind of in-game experience.

And, uh, the rest of it is kind of awful. Like the, I find, yeah, it's menu system, impenetrable and weird.

And it, you know, I, I don't know. And that the, the little console thing with the screen on it is strange and, and, and has huge potential that almost no game actually takes advantage of, which is frustrating. Like even in Mario Kart, you can't have a mode where one car is using that screen and can only see what's on that screen and everybody else doesn't see them or something.

It's just not used very much. We have Nintendo Land and it's used there, but otherwise not. So I can't really pick that. So I'm tempted... I don't know. I think I had the LIFX light bulbs on here for a while, which are Wi-Fi light bulbs that are kind of fun to play with, and I've enjoyed playing with them and sending them to different colors and things like that. My daughters enjoyed playing with those too. I think I'm going to go with the TiVo Mini here, only because I bought a TiVo this year. I went back to TiVo or late last year maybe. And the TiVo Mini is great

because you attach it in another room to your ethernet network. And it's like you've got another DVR. And TiVo has a great interface. And it gives you access to live tv and all your recorded programs and youtube and amazon and netflix and i don't actually need another uh tv streamer box other than for itunes stuff on any of my tvs because the tivo will cover it's my netflix and amazon instant video box and all my dvR recorded shows and live TV.

And a couple of months ago, they changed the price to $150 for the TiVo Mini, and there's no service charge because TiVo previously was $100 and you had to pay $6 a month. And I immediately bought one because I thought that was a pretty good deal. That sounds so ridiculous to charge $6 a month for it when it's effectively just like a relay box. I think really what TiVo is doing is TiVo has some problems with its business model where they have these monthly fees

and essentially what they're doing is saying you should buy lifetime service but we're going to lower... We should embed lifetime service in the cost of the box

but that will raise the price. We can't make a business on that. So we'll do a monthly fee and then give you the option of paying for lifetime. And I think...

I hope that their experiment with the TiVo Mini will lead them to embedding lifetime service in the hardware they sell and just saying, look, this is the cost, and then we're not going to charge you for anything more. You know, who knows if they'll even be around in a few years. But I really think the TiVo DVR is still the best experience out there.

I have tried some of the others. I think they're fine. I think the TiVo is better is still the best experience out there. I have tried some of the others. I think they're fine. I think the TiVo is better. TiVo's iOS apps are good. But the Mini has been really fun because suddenly all the TVs in my house have access to our DVR and streaming and everything else and live TV without having different DVRs in different places, which I did at one point. And the streaming on the Teemo Mini is pretty elegant. You can't even tell that you're not watching it on the DVR when you do it. So I'll throw it out there. I'm happy for this one to go to the PS4. I don't have one. I still have

a PS3, an Xbox 360, and the Wii U, all of which are pretty comparable on technology. Sad trombone for Nintendo. But I'm one of those kind of one generation past people but i like the way that sony made a product that um is not i think it was a misfire from microsoft to say is don't don't even play games on it just use it to watch tv i think that was a mistake and uh sony focusing on gamers is good so i will endorse your choice there. Congratulations, PlayStation. Yeah. The worst gadget that we've used this year is an interesting correlation between the two. So I've picked the LG G Watch, which is one of the first Android Wear devices. Kind of my main problems with the G Watch is that it's ugly it's just a kind of like a rectangular thing

like slab of thing there were some really nice things about it I think that there was some stuff about Android Wear which is very interesting at a time where they were kind of like the front runner in showing their hand what a graphical user interface

could look like on a wrist device that really kind of deeply ties into your phone. But the problem itself, I think, was the device. There were so many weird things about it. Like, I think that I was, I think I spoke about this on Connected. Has it ever connected to the prompt? I can't remember, but I'll find the episode where I spoke about it on Connected. Is it ever connected or the prompt? I can't remember, but I'll find the episode where I spoke about it at length and put it in the show notes. There were just weird things about it like when I had to reset it and I had to

read all these manuals and documentation to find out that I had to put this little pin into a thing in the back to turn it off. It was just this weird... It was just so many weird things about it. The charging cradle drove me crazy.

It didn't get good battery life. The screen resolution was poor. It kind of just wasn't a device that is good. Yeah. And really quickly, I only used it or handled it momentarily, but I think the Moto 360, which my good friend Andy Anako has found lots of great things about it, and that's fine. I think the Android Wear

watches are all very interesting. My problem with the Moto 360 is it makes a big deal about being round, and it's actually the flat tire where the bottom is not part of the screen, and so it's not round. It's roundish with a flat thing at the bottom and i just make me a design snob i guess if you're gonna make a round watch it should be round it should really be round it should not be round with a thing cut off on the bottom i think that's stupid so um do better boo uh yeah i mean i i don't really subscribe to the to the annoyance of the roundness um or calling it a 360 i think that for me i always thought that that kind of worked and their reasoning for why it isn't perfectly round kind of made sense to me that the display drivers went there um see that's not a good yeah oh gee we made a round watch we couldn't really make it

round because we couldn't get the hardware to do it well guess what then don't do it i think i i think i just think that is a that is a bad excuse i think if you're going to make a product that's round it should be round i can't not look at that product and see the flat tire now i just can't and around smartwatch is not a bad idea i'm actually a little disappointed that apple couldn't make it work and that their watch is going to be rectangular, but that's, them's the brakes. But I think, I feel like, yeah, I just can't take it. That round watch that's not round, just, it kills me. It kills me. Again, I totally agree that this is completely just a surface thing, but I would rather explore an Android Wear watch that was not round uh that was you know that was owning its shape i guess but it's fine we can we can move on but

there are better things to talk about in this upgrade or do we have to pick one i'll give you the lgg watch if you want that's fine i don't care i think i would say the g watch because they both suffer from some of the same problems but the 360 360 looks better. Where it doesn't look perfect, it looks better than the G Watch. I agree. I like the look, and then there's just the sad trombone when you see the flat tire. But we'll go with the G Watch. Congratulations, LG.

Check your spam filter for your Worst Gadget Award. Upgradian Oz wanted to suggest our favorite tech story of the year. And I think for me, I've been thinking about this because we're putting together a kind of a look back across the year on connected that we're doing this week. And I was thinking about what is not necessarily that was my favorite acquisition. He thinks there's lots of those, you know,

what's my favorite gadget release. But I think for me, I think my favorite story of the year that happened within our space um was in tim cook wrote his fantastic editorial for business week and where he came out as being gay i just think that it was so inspirational uh and just there's so many you know things that i would want to quote time and time again forever and ever from this piece that I just think of just so fantastic and he had and I genuinely and you know you shouldn't have to feel this way but I have such respect for him for his courage um in doing this and for his like

screw you attitude for the world that you know where there are so many people in the world there are so many people unfortunately the world there are so many people unfortunately in america that would have a problem with this and would then you know there may be people that don't ever want to buy apple products again now because of this but he decided he wanted to do it and i'm sure he had to really convince the board but he decided and i genuinely believe a lot of this came from him he decided that he wanted to do this because he thought it was important for the world. And I think that it is. And I think the kind of what this has,

the effect this will have on young people, I think is so powerful. And I think that it actually, this is more than anything Tim Cook will ever do. This is him leaving the world in a better place than when he came to it. So that's why it's my favorite story of the year. Yeah, it's, that's a really great choice. And yeah, this is, I mean, there's more here that we could, we could go on forever about

this. I feel like there was a lot of conversation, especially when I think Gawker or Valley Wag did a story about Tim Cook being gay a couple years ago. And there was a reaction of like, why are you pulling this guy out of the closet if he wants to be in the closet? Let it be his business. And although I understand that and subscribe to that at the time, I think the complexity of this issue is, well, this showed what the value is of letting somebody choose their time and place, because he was able to eloquently describe his situation, and he did that by choosing to talk about it when he wanted to talk about it. I do think that there is something to the argument that, you know, at the same time, it is,

I don't know, it's almost like an idealistic argument. It shouldn't be a big deal, but it's a big deal, you know, and no, it shouldn't be a big deal. And with each one of these kinds of stories, it becomes less of a big deal. And so the good thing is that Tim Cook is out, and it matters less than it did even a couple years ago, but it still matters. And it's chipping away and changing the way our society views these issues. And I think that's great. And it was a beautiful moment. So although there's a whole conversation to be had about this, I think one of the things that I've learned in the last few years is this is a complicated question of privacy and defending your own personal privacy versus staying in the closet. And it's a really painful, complicated issue. And it's really also not an issue that I deal with personally. And so it's very hard to talk about it from the outside. But I think what's great about this story is that by choosing his time

and his method in Business Week, Tim Cook got to say it in the way that he wanted to say it. And I think it had a powerful effect. And that is what's great about this story. So I'm happy to acclaim this. I was taking a different tack when I saw Tech Story and your story wasn't in here. I was thinking of like an individual story that I liked this year. So I will mention that and then I will acclaim your choice as the winner here. this called I liked everything I saw on Facebook for two days. Here's what it did to me, which is a wonderful, ridiculous experiment about how Facebook adjusts what you see based on you liking things. And it was funny and informative and sort of very much what Matt Honan does the best. And I enjoyed that story a lot as a single sort of bit of tech journalism for the year. But, I enjoyed that story a lot as a single sort of bit of tech journalism for the year. But, you know, Tim Cook's story, not quite journalism, but I think it's fair to say that that was the link of the year.

So good job, Mike. Thank you. I haven't read that Matt Honan piece, but I will now. It's funny. And actually, I am a Facebook friend of Matt Honan. And so I watched as this happened, horrified by what was happening to Matt liking everything he saw because literally it reinforces the like oh you liked that now we're going to show

you this yes I like that too now we're going to show you this yes I like that too and it's horrifying so anyway if you ever heard of or read the book Yes Man it was turned into a movie that Jim Carrey starred in oh yeah yeah yeah reminds me of that basically Basically, a British writer, comedian, radio presenter,

and producer called Danny Wallace, basically for an entire year, said yes to everything. It's one of my favorite books. I love it. And it was turned into an OK Jim Carrey movie. Yeah, it's a very similar kind of idea. Yeah, that's what it made me think of. All right, we're getting into my favorite part of the show now mike okay so we are uh now into uh the favorite text grew up

at the year uh oh this is gonna be good so i don't know how we're gonna choose i i i think you i think i would give you the win on this anyway because I was hovering with this topic. But for me, I thought about what is maybe the thing that the company that created this thought would get the biggest fanfare but actually failed the most catastrophically, and I think it's the Amazon Fire Phone. Amazon made such a great hoo-ha about this phone. And they had all their teaser videos, and they had like a Jobs-esque presentation.

And the presentation was quite good, and there were things that came out of it that looked very interesting. Also, any Jeff Bezos presentation is good because there are charts with no numbers on them. Just nothing. Lines going up, the Bezos charts, which are beautiful. Just random axes. Yes. It could actually be. The chart could be demonstrating how much money they lose,

and it's just like an increasing number. Look how this chart goes up. The chart goes up. It's really good. How many Kindles are returned every year? The Amazon Fire Phone, I think as we speak today, like they were selling it for like a buck, I think. With contract, but this is the brand new, top of the line, amazing, blow your mind,

Amazon Fire Phone, and they're just trying to unload them now. And just like across the board, it has been terribly reviewed. And I think Amazon have even said that it kind of like like it didn't do what they thought it was going to do i think i think bezos said in an interview well you know we do the first version and then we learn from it and we do the next version which is true because the

first kindle was terrible too and they just kept on going and maybe they'll get it right i i there's a fundamental premise here which is does amazon need to make a phone are people so tied i mean i'm an amazon customer just maybe not just as much as an Apple person, but I'm in the Amazon ecosystem too. I'm a Prime subscriber. I love Amazon. I buy a bunch of stuff from them. And I'm a Kindle user too. And I look at the Fire Phone and I'm like, why?

No, never, no. Just make good apps. Just make a range of good apps. You don't need to make a phone. You barely need to make a tablet. So you definitely don't need to make a phone like you barely need to make a tablet uh so you definitely don't need to make a phone it's stupid it's silly amazon just stop it stop that jason what do you have uh well that was that it's hard to beat that i i'm gonna go a little bit broader and say that my favorite tech screw up this year was uber screwing up everything yeah uh there there is no end to the number of things uber screwed up this year but a few

highlights um they uh at a and this is a joke at an off the record dinner which should not exist and in fact was a journalist was there and was not put off the record and therefore reported it. An Uber executive talked about how they were going to investigate the private lives of journalists who had been critical of them in order to counteract their negative coverage, which is pretty awful and scary. We also discovered several instances where Uber employees or even prospective employees in the Uber offices were able to access personal travel records for celebrities and other people and find out where they were going to and from at what various times. So that's kind of awful. So many bad things about Uber. I think my favorite Uber story, though, is also the fact that they've

gotten so criticized for surge pricing, which on one level makes sense economically, but on another level comes across to people as just sort of horrendous gouging, the highlight of which was during the hostage siege in Sydney, Australia, Uber tweeted specifically that they were helping everybody out by sending more cars to downtown Sydney so that people could flee and surge pricing was in effect. So, hey, everybody, we just tripled the price of all of your rides to get out of town where there's a hostage situation going on, but there will be lots of cars there for you to pay us. Just bet. I mean, this is one of those, I mean, just, it's just not, not that all the things they did were bad this year, but the way they did them and the way their reputation has grown, just a spectacular failure by them.

And time will tell whether it affects them. My gut feeling is that it will open the door for some competition where there are going to be enough people who are like, let's try something that isn't Uber and see how that goes. They're pretty well entrenched, and their attitude has served them well up to now. But I do wonder if perhaps this will lead to something that looks like Lyft, their competition with the silly pink mustaches, has gotten much more serious and is dropping the mustaches and some of the fist bumping and other weird things they're doing and trying to actually take it to Uber. And I hope they succeed because uber has been very very bad the fact that i just googled and found a tech crunch listicle about uber's worst screw-ups

there's 11 there's 11 11 it was that kind of year i will give this to uber just because at the start of the year they are a darling at the end of the year they are like the most revered company on the internet uh people hate them yes you mean reviled i think that's what i meant well i can say but it's wrong i meant reviled uh is that is that a britishism revered means reviled yeah it's like it's spelled differently it's spelled r-e-v-i-l-e-d revered uh with a u in there somewhere okay got it got it we have uh three awards now uh which i've been excited about looking forward to about about podcasts so podcasts first off um from this is suggested to us by our gradient, Dan.

Our favorite non-tech podcast of the year could not be Serial. Right. I actually probably wouldn't have given it to Serial in the end anyway. I very much enjoyed Serial. I did too. I think it fizzled out a little bit for me. And I started to feel a bit bad about it just in general. for me and I started to feel a bit bad about it just in general um a show that I came to this year uh and I adore adore adore is Hello Internet um by C.G.P. Gray and Brady Haran so much so that

I have kind of listened to every episode I came in about maybe about halfway through at the point where I started listening uh and I kind of went back and listened to every episode that I'd missed. And I've actually then gone back and listened halfway through again all in the same year. It's just pure entertainment for me. I love it so much. It's, I think, the closest thing to hypocritical. It's hypocritical.

And that was how the show was actually described to me by a friend of the show, underscore David Smith. He said CGP Grey is maybe the closest to John Syracuse in his meticulousness and the comedy that ensues because of it. I really just suggest that people go to hellointernet.fm and kind of just look through the descriptions of the episodes, find the one that you think might appeal to you most and listen to it. Because the show kind of, it doesn't really follow news that much.

Any news that does follow the discussions that come from it are not tied to the news. And it's also, it's a really interesting look into a different world um gray and brady are both youtube stars um so they talk about a lot of things that happen in the youtube world which we don't really hear about in our little tech bubble um and i loved i absolutely adore this podcast and i think everybody should listen to it. And it's just an absolute favorite. And it's actually just my favorite podcast, period. And it's my favorite non-tech podcast.

So they talk about the YouTube world, but it's not a tech podcast. Well, no, it's not. I mean, they talk about the things that happen in their lives. That's what it's about. But a lot of it is framed around the fact that they do things for YouTube. So they talk about creating their videos, but they don't talk about the technical stuff about them. A lot of it is just like what happens in their lives.

And sometimes they talk about iPhones, but then sometimes they talk about plane crashes. It is like the epitome of two dudes talking because they just talk about anything like it's a great episode where they talk about the flags of the united states of america which was what i think might the first episode that i listened to uh and it's hilarious and and really really excellent um so i you know i would maybe suggest that one i'm gonna find it and put it in the show notes um but yeah that that that was i think my first episode and i loved it i loved it a lot

i've got one on my overcast i just haven't listened yet so i will listen you should so my choice is not going to come as a surprise i've said repeatedly that this is my favorite podcast period favorite podcast is the flop, which is a comedy podcast about three fellows who watch a bad movie before they record the episode. And then immediately they then turn on the microphones and talk about what they've just seen. And the rule is that the movie should, with some rare exceptions, it should be a movie that's recently available on video, and that was a

flop, either critically or financially, or both, hence the name The Flophouse. And the Flophouse people are very funny. Two of them are writers for The Daily Show. One of them is the head writer for The Daily Show. They are also getting into comic book writing the head writer for the Daily Show, Elliot Kalin he is also writing the new comic Spider-Man and the X-Men which is pretty funny because if there's anybody who can nail Spider-Man's really annoying humor, it's

Elliot Kalin because he's that guy, he would be, if he was Spider-Man, he would be making those same stupid jokes that Spider-Man should make anyway, it's great, it's funny it comes from, recommended by John Syracuse, I think it went from John to me those same stupid jokes that Spider-Man should make. Anyway, it's great. It's funny. It comes from, recommended by John Syracuse. I think it went from John to me, and then from both of us to Merlin Mann. And everybody speaks the good word about The Flophouse, but it is legitimately

my favorite podcast. I think before The Flophouse, my favorite podcast was probably Hypercritical, but it's The Flophouse now. It's just hilarious, and you don't need to have seen the movie. In fact, I recommend you don't see the movies because they're really awful. And listening to funny people go on tangents and also just demolish the terrible things about this movie that they just saw. There's nothing better. It's every other week, and on Saturdays it gets posted, and it's a must listen as soon as it comes out.

I love it. So The Flophouse. The Flophouse is one of those shows that I have tried to get into a bunch of times, but just haven't yet. Don't start from the beginning, no matter what John Syracuse says. You gotta start in the middle somewhere.

Merlin has a list of episodes that are worth starting with, but I love it. I got to say, I love it. So I think we're a real problem here. Yeah, I think so. Because I won't allow, I'm not going to give this one to you. Yeah, and I'm not going to give this one to you. Yeah, and I'm not going to give this one to you. So we're kind of at a point where we have to have the chat room vote on this. So this is between Hello Internet and the Flophouse. I think the problem that I have here is Merlin. I think Merlin is my problem

because I think people listen to what Merlin says. You should listen to what Merlin says. For the Flophouse. That's fine for Merlin and it's fine for you. I think that's how that saying goes. Do you know where I can find Merlin's list of episode? Joe Steele in the chat room is pointing out Bullet to the Head is probably the episode to start with. Mirrors another great one to start with with a flop house okay so it is the

flop house the flop house is one um and and a dented meat is asking in the in the chat room um why don't start at the beginning even though syracuse says they they had so many technical problems at the beginning and actually elliot doesn't even become a host until about 10 episodes in that early Flophouses are as somebody in the chat room said it's just literally just buzzing sounds they sound terrible so I would start

I don't know where I would sample those episodes Bullet to the Head, Mirrors those are two good examples and then go from there and maybe you dip back to like number 20 or 25 but i i think um i think the early episodes are really rough sledding i would not recommend them and you can start a little bit later and get most of the jokes and it's fine i'm adding uh the flop house

and those episodes to my overcast because if you guys are gonna are gonna me lose this. If you're going to not like it you need to do the full on commit to trying it and then you can not like it. It's okay to not like it but yeah. Episode 34 and episode 133. There you go. Try those.

A big yap there. I'm going to go with it and I'm sad but congratulations to The Flophouse for taking the award there. Yay. And they can also check their spam filters. Yes. Dan McCoy, check your spam filter. Talking about checking spam filters, Jason, our next award,

which is going to be for our favorite tech podcast of the year, is brought to us by our friends at MailRoute. Jason, take it away. I love talking about MailRoute because I do use MailRoute, and Mike doesn't, so he can't talk about it, and I can. What an opportunity. MailRoute is a service that lets you live life without spam or viruses or bounced email in your inbox. It sits between your mail server and the internet, takes in all the mail, and then uses its really intelligent filtering to filter out the junk. And it really does a very good job. You only see legitimate mail that comes through. You don't have to use client-side spam software. I use it even

though I've also got Gmail's filter because I think it does a really good job. And then Gmail's filter ends up catching like a mailing list that I didn't realize that I subscribed to, which is also good, I guess. But I like the mail route is out there. It's really easily configurable for me as a regular person. If you're an email administrator or IT professional, it's great for you too. They've got all the tools that you might want. There's an API for account management, supports the whole checklist of things you love, like LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, Outbound Relay, and Mike's favorite, mailbagging. Mailbagging.

Everything you want from people who are handling your mail. No hardware or software to maintain. Like I said, it lives in the cloud. It's a server up there in the cloud. And then it delivers clean mail to your inbox. Easy to set up, reliable, trusted by large universities and corporations.

I love the fact that I get a little email every day that says, here's the mail we filtered out and I can look at it very quickly and click on a link if I want it to whitelist and deliver a message from somebody who shouldn't be on it. So if I see Mike Hurley is in there and it's something about the upgradies

and I didn't even know that was an award, but maybe I actually won it. And maybe this isn't somebody claiming to be a Nigerian prince giving me an award. If I transfer a million dollars into his bank account, I can click that link in my email. The message will be delivered and all future messages from Mike will also be delivered because he'll be added to the whitelist. I don't advise that you add Mike to your whitelist. That could be dangerous because he may send you things. Anyway, if you want to remove spam for your life, if this sounds good, try it out. Go to mailroute.net slash upgrade. You get a free trial.

And if you decide to buy 10% off of MailRoute for the lifetime of your account. So mailroute.net slash upgrade. And thank you so much to MailRoute for being a good friend and sponsoring Upgrade. So we are now onto our favorite tech podcast of the year. This was suggested to us by Gary. He wanted us to talk specifically about our favorite tech shows. I just think you can't beat the Accidental Tech Podcast. I think that it's as good as a tech podcast in 2014 could be

um i i agree with you it has the mix of hosts that everybody wants um they have what i consider to be three uh great archetypes now where you have like the person who's more the user um you have the extreme power user and then you kind of have the power user you know and i think that that that really works as a as a because what you're doing is you're meeting all people in that scenario sometimes it's a little too heavy on the tech for me and developer stuff because I don't understand any of it. Like this week's episode, a huge portion of it is about things that I literally have no idea what anybody's saying.

But the great thing about ATP is I still love to listen to it. And that is what – that's why I know this show is good because they can literally be talking gobbledygook to me, but I still want to listen. And then you have incredible moments like the windows of Syracuse County. The after show of episode 96 is potentially the best that the show has ever been.

And you should listen to it because it is hilarious and fantastic and ATP they are approaching 100 episodes and it's as good as it's ever been if not better I think that they put a great amount of work and care into the show

and it shines every week and it's an absolute joy I agree with you. I decided that I'm going to nominate somebody and then switch my vote to you because that's what's going to happen because I think ATB is the best. But I want to throw in, we can't nominate anything that we are ourselves podcasting about.

So I am going to nominate Analog featuring Mike Hurley and Casey Liss of Accidental Tech Podcast. Who would have thought that Casey would be considered the greatest tech podcaster by default now? Well, so follow me here. Who the hell is Casey? It is a tech podcast that's also not a tech podcast. And what I like is the premise,

which is that you're talking about feelings and being a human being, dealing with things that come up and emerge from technology issues in various ways. And I love that as a premise. And I think you guys handled those issues incredibly well. And there have been many good episodes. I encourage people to look back on and check out some of the episodes in the catalog for

Analog because it's not just a session of therapy. Podcasting is therapy, although it can be that. But it's more than that. And I think we, as tech podcasters give short shrift sometimes to the human element, the emotional element of how this thing impacts our, our broader lives, how these different, different aspects do. And I think, I think analog helps give you a little window into that. I also put out a shout out to The Rebound, which is a new podcast featuring Lex Friedman and Dan Morin and John Moltz,

which is short and fun and funny and not on any podcasting networks. You have to go find it, but it's good and you should listen to it because those guys are really funny. Whilst we're doing this, I will also make a shout for Clockwise as well because it's so different, more than anything else, more than the content or how great you guys are

because it's unlike any other tech show that you listen to because of its restrictions, and that makes it quite interesting. Plus, you're going to get 30 minutes, which, I mean, as we're into two hours now, there aren't a lot of tech podcasts that have that respect for your time. We would only go over 30 minutes if it was an end-of-year episode

that was completely off-format. But otherwise, you'll find that every episode is 30 minutes long that's a that's a hint about this week's episode anyway there is one one quick thing i want to say about about upgrade about not about upgrade yes tell me more oh upgrade we forgot about that podcast of the winner uh about about analog uh we spoke about on on this week's episode uh episode 20 and it's the after show right at the end. And me and Casey had this conversation sometimes

that do we worry that we're too honest on the show? Because one of the main things that I'm concerned about, and I know that Casey is as well, that people come away from that show thinking that we're not very nice people. That's a concern that I have. And it's because of the honesty that we have. And some people I know have stopped listening

to the show because they think that we're too self-involved but like that's kind of what the show is about we are being honest about ourselves um and it kind of has to be that way and and i mean one of the things i say is we talk about the things that many people who have a platform of any kind consider to be taboo uh you don't talk about the things that we talk about. And that's why I love making the show and why I actually think that it's a very important show. And some of the episodes that I do of that show are some of the best stuff that I do, I think,

because I kind of just lay it all bare. But thank you. Well, the episode with Stephen Hackett where he was talking about dealing with his son's cancer. Just amazing, right? I mean, it was a great episode. And Casey talking about fears that he has for his child.

And, you know, if every podcast were that, yes, it would be a problem. Because it would be like, oh, my God, every podcast is therapy now. But having a podcast like that with room to talk about those issues, I'm really glad that podcast exists. And again, if it were every podcast, I would not say that, but it's not, it's an outlier.

And I like it because it's an outlier. Are we going to decide an ATP? Yeah. So congratulations to, to, to those Marco check your spam filter again. Yeah. Wow. Marco is the, is your spam filter again. Yeah, wow. Marco is the runaway success here.

That guy. Favorite podcast newcomer. This is an interesting category that I wanted to add. Jason, would you like to lead off with that? Sure. I checked the dates and, in fact, Isometric on 5x5 debuted this year. And so I'm going to nominate it as a favorite podcast newcomer it is a gaming podcast and I'm

not really a gamer but it because partially because of what's happened this year with Brianna Wu and being attacked by Gamergate it's become more than just a gaming podcast but the fact is you know a lot of these shows it's true of anything it's true of a movie or certainly

like a sitcom and a lot of podcasts it's true too it It's about the cast. It's about the people and how they interact with each other. And you get a certain combination of people together and it's just magic. And Isometric is magical. It is, when it's on, it is so funny. And the characters, I almost said the people who are kind of characters, right? They, the way they interact and their inside jokes and their, their dumb jokes and their laughs and all of that. It is delightful to listen to even when I don't care so much about the subject matter. And then they have a guest on like John Syracuse was on the other week and he's a listener. And so he's kind of in with, in with what they're talking about. Plus he's a gamer, and that ends up being really amusing.

And having had Brianna on a few incomparable episodes, I also love she's an agent of chaos. She will like things that other people don't like. She's not afraid to make statements that are not what the consensus is, and that leads to a lot of hilarity too. So I think that's been a real gem of a podcast this year, and it really is owed more than anything else to the chemistry between the hosts. It is a really enjoyable

show from start to finish. I love Isometric. It does a bunch of things that can be terrible in podcasts, but they do them so well. Like whenever they start the show, there's just so much noise, but they do them so well. Like whenever they start the show, there's just so much noise, you know, like everyone's screaming and laughing, but that's kind of,

with those four, it works so well. You're just tuning into a party that a bunch of friends are having. And I get that sometimes as feedback from the incomparable. It's like, I like listening because it sounds like

it's a bunch of friends having a good time. And I think, well, we are, and so that's good. But then when I hear it on isometric, I'm like, oh yeah,

it's like a bunch of friends having a good time together that totally you know that carries a lot of weight even when I don't care about the games they're talking about or even understand what they're talking about which happens frequently because it's one of those things with that type of style you can either go really really wrong or really really right and they nail it

and I love that it's so diverse and they actually talk about a lot of the games that I like to play as opposed to just like what's the biggest AAA title available right now. And they just have great fun doing it. But I think for me, my favorite new show of this year, and one of the reasons I give it to the show is because it's very rare that a new podcast from people that have never

been a podcaster before from episode one uh can create can create a show that is instantly interesting fun and engaging and it's defocused and i speak about this show constantly because it's one that i think people should listen to uh defocus kind of is a mix between two things it is two guys uh dan and joe and people will know the name joe steel uh it is joe steel name. Fake name. He's one of the hosts. And basically this show is like the two of them kind of like having fun and kind of like goofing off and poking fun at each other, crossed with movie reviews. And some of the Christmas episodes, I think, have been my recent favorites. And one of the great things about defocus quite frequently

i listen to this show and i don't i've never seen the film that they're talking about but i listen to it anyway because this is very much the same sort of thing as you were with isometric because they're so entertaining to listen to oh yeah and some of the stuff i'm thinking of cats per mango which is episode 21 they talk about a bunch of trailers including the age of ultron trailer that episode i think i was nearly crying by the end of it they're talking about podcast cpms and joe comes up with the fact that cpm stands for cats per mango which doesn't make any sense but it just doesn't make any any less sense than what cpm actually stands for so that's exactly just fine and they they create really great uh show art there's like a lot of

fun art the and also these guys they come from a different movie background so like they both work in visual effects uh and so it adds a really really different look to like a different uh viewpoint on the movies and a bunch of stuff they say i have no idea what they're talking about uh like they talk about like the something something on the something something and that's kind of what it hears but it's the same thing of atp for me even though i don't know what these guys are talking about i really really enjoy it so i don't know where to go with this one jason because i i'm a big fan of both shows but for me i think defocused is the biggest surprise as well as being a great show because it kind of came from nowhere for me uh defocused is is really good

um i met i got to meet uh dan of defocus dan uh the other day we had a little meetup in phoenix and he was there that was uh that was a lot of fun and joe steel felt really bad really bad to be there uh he couldn't he couldn't be there he's in the chat room today instead is it the same joe is it the same no i don't think so who knows um i i don't know i joe votes for isometric uh and i'm gonna go i'm gonna go with the host of defocus co-host of defocused and say i i feel like if we split this into two where it was like podcast newcomer and and podcast surprise or something one of the things before we choose that I wanted to say about Defocused is Defocused, because it's by two guys who listen to all the same podcasts that so many of us listen to, I find it kind of delightful in the sense that it's almost like the footnote inside all the other podcasts because they assume knowledge of what Merlin said or what ATP was about or whatever. They just kind of assume that that is happening. And I'm very amused by that because I feel like it's a podcast about movies. It's a podcast about two guys. And it's also a podcast that's floating in this world that

we're inhabiting with all these other tech podcasts. And it's a lot of fun. But I would probably pick Isometric. They've been on longer. And I'm more surprised that I'm... I'm interested in listening about movies that I like and defocused. And Isometric, I don't care about the games almost ever. And I still enjoy listening to them. So I'd probably lean in that direction. But this is a tough one. I admit it.

Let's go with Isometric because I am a fan of it. And it's a great show. And I think that it should be awarded so we're considering as well uh joe is being incredibly humble we will take his humbleness as an excuse so uh we're gonna go isometric joe did suggest a moment ago jason i think this is quite a good idea for us both to listen to an episode so i will listen to episode 133 of the flop house and you will listen to episode 133 of the Flophouse and you will listen to episode 16 of Hello Internet. And we will visit that in our

podcast follow-up vertical in either next week or a future episode. Best holiday gift. We're in the last leg now of the up-raising. We're almost done, guys. Hang on, guys. We're nearly there.

These are going to be quick ones all right people here we go best holiday gift suggested uh by upgradian uh dan uh for me it was my wii u uh big fan love the wii u jason and i recommend uh as a great holiday gift i did on the site marvel unlimited subscription you can get it as we speak i think it maybe is like two months for $9 or something like that. But if you've got a friend who's a Marvel Comics fan, just buy them a year. For any gift, it's like $70, I think, and it's a great deal. It totally pays for itself. And if not, at least buy them a month or two.

It's a great service for somebody who loves Marvel Comics or loved in their childhood and would like to relive that. So I think my document has misled you. I actually think this was the favorite holiday gift that you received. I can't speak to that because I got very little for the holidays. We bought a bed. We bought a bed because our old bed needed to go, and we bought a bed, and as a result of buying go and we got we bought a bed and as a result

of buying that bed we didn't really buy a whole lot a whole lot else i got a cheese cutter so some manchego is gonna get chopped on that baby oh yeah yeah so is this a thing let's just say the wii u is the winner how about that hooray for wii u um upgrade in. Todd, what hardware has changed your life the most this year? For me, the Pebble, I think. But just because if I think like the Pebble is not the most life-changing product I've used this year, but it is all the products that I've had. It's the one that's made the biggest impact on my – It's made the biggest change to my life. And basically what I'm trying to say is,

now when I get a notification, when I feel that vibration in my pocket, I instinctively look at my wrist. That is a big change in my life, whether I have the Pebble on or not. So all of the other devices that I own have filled a place that was previously filled, like previously had by the device that it replaced.

So my iPhone 6 Plus is fantastic, and it has so many more great things, but it's just the previous iPhone. But the change from my previous watch to this one is way bigger, and this is so much more than a watch. It has made an actual tangible change to me as a person in a habit that i now have that i didn't have before so i would say the interesting uh my i put down the retina imac because that has uh you know having a fast computer and it's in my office that i now work in every day uh that that i can't just say it's totally changed my life in the same way that

it's added an entirely new ecological niche like it has for you, Mike, but it's certainly a very different experience and I love it a lot. The other answer I could give here is that my daughter having an iPhone for the first time has changed my life a lot this year, that I can do, find my friends with her and see where she's at. You know, are you, you back here yet? Uh, where are you, you know, where are you now? I don't spy on her so much, but there's a lot of like, she should be home by now. Is she okay? Oh, she stopped by the store on the way home kind of stuff and sending her, uh, I messages and things like that too. Um, that's been a big change this

year positively to have her be a little more connected because she's connected to her, you know, Instagram and to her friends, but she's also connected to us. And, uh, and honestly today's a new generation of kids.

Um, if you want to interact with them, one of the ways you need to interact with them is online. That's one of the ways they communicate. So you don't want to close out that as a communication vector because sometimes that's the best way to reach them. So I would throw that out there as well. But I don't know how to pick these because these are so personal. I like your story. I like young Snell receiving an iPhone. I like that. That is a huge change to two lives.

That's true. Okay, my daughter's iPhone wins. Oh, by the way, my daughter dropped her iPhone when we were in Phoenix and shattered it. So she no longer has it. Huge change again. I think she's going to use money she received as presents for the holidays and go to the Apple store and get one of those nice replacements. The non-warranty replacement fee that they do if you shatter your screen. So I think she's going to learn an important lesson about what it costs when you drop your iPhone. Ironically, she dropped it within about a foot of where I dropped my iPad

mini last spring and shattered its screen. My mother's kitchen is a graveyard the tile on that floor is a graveyard for ios devices and my wife and i vowed we will never put tile anywhere in our home there must be so much uh crushed sapphire in in that tile oh she's she's my daughter is so sad about it she was really i mean it was really sad i you know i think if it's ever going to teach you a lesson about taking care of your hardware that'll that'll do it. I could see the lesson being taken as I watched through the tears, each tear a little bit of the lesson. But I think it'll all be okay in the end. But it has meant a lot to her, and it's been great for us.

So, great. Winner. Did you cry when you dropped your iPad? No, I was just really mad. I was really mad. But it came out differently for my daughter. The tears were definitely there. So RIP, my daughter's iPhone, but also you won an upgrade.

I'm sure that will take all of the pain away. So our final upgrade of 2014, as suggested by listener Freddie, is for the best vertical of 2014. I have gone for brain balls. I don't know how anything could beat the brain ball vertical. Well, but Mike, I have gone for Ahoy Telephone. And I will point out that the climax, if you will, of our Ahoy Telephone vertical was when a listener wrote in to point out that when he and his wife or partner, I forget, were involved in some private time in the boudoir there.

That was my French pronunciation, Champlain. They accidentally triggered Ahoy Telephone. And I think that was a really special moment, not just for them, but for us this year. But I think we should throw this out to the chat room. Chat room, vote now on whether you prefer brainball or ahoy telephone as the vertical of the year you were making a terrible pun there right i just wanted to the climax yeah oh yeah okay just checking that was intentional that's why i said so to speak or whatever i said that was yeah yeah that was intentional oh the brainball votes are coming in uh oh wait okay so it's

leveling out already so what we have is the chat room uh we're waiting on basically one vote to swing this okay steel votes for ahoy telephone i think the ahoy telephone saga is an interesting one because it was born from such anger at me. Oh, yeah. Well, we were frustrated and then we made everybody else frustrated too. Wow, this is really tough. I think Ahoy Telephone has just about won it. The scales have been tipped in the favor of the Ahoy Telephone, so congratulations to us, maybe?

Yes, vertical of the year. Vertical of the year. To Siri. Congratulations, Siri. You win. Ahoy Telephone. You did it. Jason, we've done it.

We've come to the end. This is your fault, Mike. Of the Upgradies. I would like to award you with the best Jason on this podcast. Thank you. Congratulations to that. I've really enjoyed this. I hope other people have enjoyed it. If anybody's

listened this far, they must have enjoyed it. I guess so. Mike, I would like to award the award for best Mike on this podcast. Unfortunately, it went to Marco Arment. I don't know how that happened. And then the Blue yeti came in close second yes oh there were no winners except for marco um yep on on this show so thank you so much to listening uh thanks to thank you upgradians thank you upgradians you have now been been named whether you like it or not. Thank you to lynda.com, Squarespace, and MailRoute

for helping make the Upgradies possible. Thank you to Frank Towers for helping us out with the fantastic artwork for the Upgradies, the first annual Upgradies Awards. Don't call it that. It's not annual until you do another one. Well, I'm going for it it's the first annual mike uh it's every year and this will be the first one um

thank you jason uh for indulging uh my my my love of award ceremonies uh you're welcome and thank you all for listening uh the show notes are at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 16 if you'd like to find us on twitter I am imike I-M-Y-K-E and Jason is at jsnell J-S-N-E-L-L of course Jason writes to fantastic6colors.com which you should definitely be reading

until next time say goodbye Mr. Jason Snell goodbye everybody happy new year oh happy new year oh happy new year