Upgrade - 174: The 2017 Upgradies

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

Presenting the Fourth Annual Upgradies! In this episode Myke and Jason discuss their favorites of 2017 across many categories, with important input provided by you, the Upgradians! Only the finest will walk away with the coveted title of Upgradies Award Winner.

It is that one night a year, Jason Snell. It is the time that everybody has been waiting for. It is the fourth annual Upgradees. Our Upgradee Awards for 2017. Happy New Year, everybody. There is no better way to kick off 2018 than looking back at 2017 and handing out the most prestigious awards in podcast form that exist. Jason Snell, welcome to the Upgradee Awards. Oh, it's time.

The fourth, fourth annual. That means that it's legitimate because it's been around for many years. Many years. Many years. More years than we can count. Upgradees. Oh, no. It's legitimate because it's been around for many years. Many years. Many years. More years than we can count. Upgradies. Oh, no. It's four.

It's not that high. We can count that high. So I want to just reiterate the rules of the upgradies and the slight changes that we've made this year. So in discussing when we were having our pre-upgradies kind of award meeting, right? Where all of the people, what do they call it in the Oscars, right? You've got like the body of people that make, like the judges. There you go. The judges. Yeah, sure.

The academy, the judges, the upgrade-y, yes. When we got together to have our discussion about how the upgrade-ies were going to go this year, we decided that we wanted to keep the categories the same, because that makes sense, but that there were some categories where we were struggling to come up with good answers for that were new and fresh. So we decided this year that we would open up our Upgradians voting

much wider than before. Right. Previously, we had asked the Upgradians to basically vote on things we suggested and or fill in a fill in the blank kind of other and this year we just left it wide open yep so we're integrating the upgradians even more because the fact is upgrade listeners you are the academy for the upgradies but as i've mentioned and we've mentioned many times, the Upgradee Awards is not a purely democratic process. So we will be talking. If me and Jason have nominations, we will give our nominations and explain why.

We will then go through the top three nominations from the Upgradee for every category. And then me and Jason will take all of this into account and decide our winner of each category yes and as is tradition for the upgrade is there will no doubt be some bargaining involved uh as we go through the categories because i think me and jason tend to have pet categories i know what mine is already um and we'll see how that pans out there's some horse trading and all of that now all the years i did the eddie awards at mac world and mac user um that the there were those you know meetings where things we get debated and people would make their arguments and and there would be

potentially like horse trading and things like that uh oh well okay we give this thing this award but that means we could give this other thing this award and isn't that better? And that was all done behind the scenes. And what you saw, if you were reading those magazines back in the day was just sort of like, here they are the winners. But here we are doing that meeting essentially live as a podcast.

So wipe the sleep out of your eyes. It's a new year and it's time for the upgrades. We'll begin as we always do, Jason, with the best overall iOS app this year. Now, I want to throw in a vote for an application that has seen brand new versions this year, which is why I'm going to throw it in. And that is Carrot Weather. I would say that the Carrot Weather watch app is the very best watch app that I use.

And Carrot Weather itself has seen significant enhancements over the last 12 months. And it has gone from being, I think, a weather app that had a fun personality is the reason that you would buy it to just an excellent weather app that also has this personality if you want it and i think that the the team over at carrot have really put an incredible amount of work into making carrot weather in my opinion one of the best looking, most customizable weather apps around. And I continue to find new and incredible things that it can do. And for me, it's easily my favorite iOS app of the year,

because every single time I see an update in my app store, I'm treated to just fantastic new features. They have done a great job. In fact, I've got to admit, Mike, you turned me on to this app and I almost put it on my list of possible choices for best because, and I just, I left it off. I don't know. I don't even know why I left it off, but maybe it's because

we don't have weather in California and therefore it's less relevant to me. But I second everything you're saying. I like the fact that it's a great weather app and the personality is also present and you can control it you can actually there's a slider if people haven't tried this app it can be super snarky and make jokes um but there's a slider like with like six different levels all the way from super evil and snarky to kind of snarky but not evil all the way over to just tell me the weather and don't nothing else and they actually added a politics

sub feature that lets you choose whether you want some of the jokes to be political and you can choose what side of the political spectrum you want the robot to be on. It's wacky. Personally, I turn all of that off because I don't want the jokes. I just want the weather. But it's amazing that it's there, but it's a great weather app without that.

It's got a in-app purchase that I use. That is, it solved my problem of how do I get my weather station in my backyard into my, under my Apple watch. It put it on my phone and on my Apple Watch because you can pick a weather underground station and say, this is the one I want to use here. And that was a new feature that was really good. And the Apple Watch app is excellent.

They did a great job with the Apple Watch app. It is a very good Apple Watch app. That's the one I use now. I've got that complication on my watch face. It's a good app. Really good. What's your nomination? I have two that I have been thinking of.

One is really boring, which is Overcast, which we talked about and is imperilously in Hall of Fame territory here. It is. Overcast was the 2014 winner of best ios app so the reason it's boring is because we've talked about it a bunch and a lot of our listeners use it as a podcast app yeah to listen to this podcast but i will say this there is no single thing I do on my phone more than listen to podcasts on Overcast. Like it is the number one thing I do on my phone.

Because I work at home, I, you know, I do my Twitter reading and things like that, mostly on my iPad. But on my phone, it's just like my phone, my iPhone is a really great overcast and occasionally other things device. And so it's super important to how I use iOS. So I wanted to give that careful consideration. And then the other app I want to mention is Scrivener, which we've talked about before in the context of both macOS and iOS. Scrivener with its revamped iOS version, and then the Mac version updated this year, and they're kind of, they sync together, and they've got kind of new features that go hand in hand. Unfortunately, I didn't do a lot of novel work editing my novel this year,

much less than I had hoped. But as somebody who tries to use an iPad a lot more when I'm mobile, But as somebody who tries to use an iPad a lot more when I'm mobile, Scrivener is incredibly powerful and I love it on iOS. And then it syncs back to my Mac as well. I wanted to mention writing apps. And the fact is the two writing apps I use the most on iOS, neither of them are good enough, which is why there are there are two editorial has a lot going for it in terms of customizability but it also hasn't been updated in a long time and doesn't support a lot of iOS 11 features and one writer is updated much more constantly but is not as customizable so I go back and forth with those And I think that's a sign maybe that

if I can't, if neither of them are good enough for me, then neither of them should be in this category. What did the Upgradians say? So the Upgradians, they voted, I'm going to go from the smallest to the largest. So we only took the top three, because there were lots of votes, lots of varying percentages, you can imagine. But 1Pass password came in at 10 of the upgradian vote tweetbot came in at 16 of the upgradian vote but with a huge 30 was overcast so the upgradians agree with you and so we now begin our deliberation portion so we both love carrot weather right and consider it one of the best apps this year but i cannot deny that overcast is one of my favorite ios apps and marco is what he's added some features this year that i like i really love the drag and drop and i absolutely

adore the dark theme the real like the black the black theme on uh on the iphone 10 can i stop you for a minute about about drag and drop because people, I think, don't realize that the Drag & Drop behavior changed in iOS 11. And if you use the native Drag & Drop behavior, some amazing things that were not possible before are now possible. So if you're an Overcast user especially, and you're used to reordering episodes in a playlist, which I do all the time,

I have two tips that I'm going to give out here before we decide, because I think this is a good time to do it since you mentioned drag and drop. First off is I often will add an episode to a playlist and it shows up at the bottom and I actually want it up toward the top. In iOS 11, when you tap and hold and the thing kind of like pops up, like now it's draggable, you can take another finger and swipe down and scroll really fast. You don't have to slowly drag the one episode

up to the top of the screen. Or you can do it to tap the status bar and it will go straight up for you. Yeah, right? I mean, you can move around. You can do all that stuff. So you can tap to go all the way up to the top. You can scroll around and then you let go

and it drops where you want it to go. You can also touch another item and pick it up and slide multiple items at once. This wasn't something you could do before, but in iOS 11, all that stuff is in play. And I think we forget about it. And I use that stuff in Overcast all the time now so that's a it's a really nice like by just by um supporting ios 11 you pick up a lot of these nice features that that were not there before and i know from listening to atp uh upgradey hall of famer and uh and uh under the radar that you know marco had to struggle with like you know you build your whole system yourself and then

there's a there's an os thing that does it you're like all right i guess i'm gonna rip that out and replace it but the benefit was is pretty great yeah i would say that um i really like the dragon drop in in overcast because it's useful for me but i think that there could be more done with it um i think that marco has Marco still has some work to do with tactics and stuff like that to really kind of push it to the next stage. And I know that he knows that, right? But that will be my criticism.

That release this fall was very much a, I need to be out for iOS 11, but there's more to do. But rather than wait and rethink it and then release it, it's sort of like do these basic things and then also in the background be thinking about it. But I'll tell you, Mike, I find picking an app that we already picked kind of boring.

And I am in with you on how good Carrot Weather is and how much... I mean, I know this is not the newcomer category, and it's not a newcomer, but it had a really good new version, really great watchOS support, a whole bunch of other stuff in it. It is a very impressive app that keeps getting better. So I'm going to throw my support over to CarrotWeather. Let's do it. CarrotWeather is the iOS app of the year. And I agree with you.

The overall theme of the 2017 upgrade is new. That's what we're going for. This is why we wanted to, you know, but that's why we decided we wanted to get more input from the upgradians because we were concerned about just picking the same stuff over and over again. So Carrot Weather will take the overall iOS app with our runners-up being Overcast and Scrivener for this year. So now we move into the best newcomer iOS app, with our runners-up being Overcast and Scrivener for this year. So now we move into the best newcomer iOS app.

So this is the best new app released within 2017. I'm going to go for something here. I put it on my list, too. I see what you're going to talk about. And the Upgradians did, too. I had this moment when we were preparing newcomer ios app where like oh you know what it should be this is going to be outside the box this this app it's totally uh like lateral thinking for me to pick this app and then i

looked at our document and it was like oh yeah the 10 of the upgradians suggested it and uh mike's suggesting it too i'm like okay all right fair enough it's the files app is apple's files now i need to say files is full of bugs and it is it is a an app which causes me frustration but it has also made working on ios a billion times better um the way that i'm able to use applications that use the file picker to edit and place PDFs, the fact that I'm able to just drag and drop stuff from my mail app into files or vice versa, the fact that I can throw something into iCloud Drive just as like a kind of a holding bin, and then when it's all taken care of, drag it into Dropbox all within one application. Like what it does, the base

functionality that it has is fantastic. And when it's working perfectly is just unbelievable. But even when it's being frustrating to me, I still can't get too mad at it because I appreciate so much of what it's doing for me on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, it's not, I mean, the way I was thinking of it when I was phrasing it was, it's not the app itself as much as it is what it represents. And it represents this, it's great functionality. It represents Apple finally acknowledging that files as a concept needs to be part of iOS. It doesn't need to be front and

center, right? The argument was always like,os doesn't need a finder and i agree with that like ios doesn't need a finder in fact you could argue the mac is so file centric because it was built in 1984 and has been updated since then a lot but still it's sort of like it makes it the mac to think about files that way and put it at the front and the center. And I think of Apple. Apple has tried with things like the launch, the thing I never use, Launchpad. It's tried very hard to come up with ways of like, no, no, no. It's like iOS. Just think about apps and don't worry about it.

But the fact is the Mac is just a document-centric experience. iOS isn't, and I'm okay with that. But it doesn't change the fact that sometimes just like on the Mac, sometimes you launch an app. Sometimes you open a file and both of those ways of working are relevant in certain areas. And with files, Apple is like, all right, we're not going to try to pretend that you don't need files. If you need files, here it is. You've got it. And if you don't want to launch the files app, you will never see the files. So yes, it's a little bit more about what it means and what it means as a statement about iOS productivity, which is very important to you and me. It is like the last wall crumbling to say, yes, iOS is a legitimate platform to get things

done. And sometimes what you need to do to get things done is edit a file. So what is your pick? So I have files on the list. The other one I wanted to mention is Affinity Photo, which is new on iOS this year. Affinity Photo is basically what Photoshop should be on iOS. And I'll refer people to my previous rant.

And I wrote about it at Six Colors about Adobe completely botching their iOS strategy by deciding that iOS was a toy OS for phones and that Photoshop didn't need to come to iOS as anything except a bunch of little tiny, uh, like broken up chunks of Photoshop rather than just doing a good touch Photoshop on iOS. And I had some pushback on that from people who said, well, Photoshop on iOS is not something you'd actually want to see or that they could even do, which is totally wrong because it's got the power of a laptop. It could do it. Affinity Photo really puts the lie to that statement though, because it's Photoshop. It's a third-party app trying to be Photoshop on iOS with layers and multi-layer support, all of the features that you would expect from something like Photoshop on iOS. And Apple used it in all its demos for iOS 11 at WWDC. It is a very impressive app. It's buggy.

It's got issues. You know, there are other photo editing apps on iOS that are excellent, including Pixelmator. But what I like about Affinity Photo is it's new and out of the blue, as it was arriving, Apple said, yes, we want to use this to show off what an iPad can be. And also as a statement, like why is Photoshop not here? Because again, here,

here it is. And if affinity photo can do it, Photoshop could do it too. So very impressive bit of engineering in affinity photo. Do you know, I've never used this app. Like I see people talking very highly of it, but I very rarely edit images, you know,

with any real requirement, like for any like hard quality or whatever. Like it's not really something that I do very much. So I've never played around with it, but I've seen many, many people speak very, very highly of it. So, you know, it is great. Yeah, I'm still using Photoshop on my Mac,

but it's one of those things that if I was somewhere and needed to do something and I did not have a Mac very highly of it. So, you know, it is. I'm still using Photoshop on my Mac, but it's one of those things that if I was somewhere, I needed to do something and I did not have a Mac and I needed to do something Photoshop. This is what I would turn to for sure. So the upgradians votes at 9% things three and 10% is Apple's files app. And at 27% is an app called Apollo, which is a Reddit client. I've never used Apollo with any...

I mean, I've downloaded it, I've played around with it, but I really love Narwhal for my Reddit consumption. It's very simple, very good looking app that I enjoy. And, you know, I basically... The reason that stopped me from using it is I set up Apollo on my iPhone, and

then opened my iPad and realized that I had to set up apollo on my iphone and then opened my ipad and realized that i had to put all of the same settings in and then kind of just didn't oh wow oh because it's not syncing settings across devices so i was like no i'm okay because a lot of these apps especially at reddit clients i like to customize them quite heavily just to see what i want to see and the way that i want to see it um and even just like the swiping gestures and stuff, it was like, okay, I have to set these twice. Like I just wasn't willing to try it. But I know many, many people that absolutely love this app. And, you know, with 27% of the overall vote,

it's clearly very popular. So we come to that time again where we decide the winner. I mean... Files. Files, right? It's got to be. I mean, this isn't just me and you. 10% of the upgradians agree. to that time again where we decide the winner uh i mean files files right it's gotta be i mean this isn't just me and you 10 of the upgradians agree so all right we're going into best overall mac app now this is one of the the categories that i struggled with jason because honestly i feel like i would just be picking the exact same things that i picked last year. So in this instance, I decided that I would throw up my hands

this year and just see where you and the Upgradians took me. So the apps that I always think of here are 1Password, which also came up for best overall iOS app. I do use that and rely on it. I thought about Twitterific, you know, the apps I use on the Mac the most for professional work, you know, BB Edit, which we've covered before, Audio Hijack, which we've covered before, Logic, which we've covered before. There's so many of these. Isotope, which is, you know, I don't really want to pick an obscure high-end audio plugin. and obscure high-end audio plugin. That's ridiculous.

So I finally made a pick and it's partially to be controversial, but partially because I think it's really good. And I think that the circumstances of its release have obscured it a little bit, which is Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Pro 10 keeps getting updated. Logic and Final Cut Pro, for people who complain about Apple not updating Pro hardware, let me tell you, those Pro apps get updated. Those Pro apps have active teams who are updating them all the time. They just got updated again for the new iMac pro. Um, I love final cut pro 10. I use it to do all of my video

stuff, including all the, the total party kill videos, which are, yes, it's a D and D podcast, but it's like, I've got a source video of the people. I've got a source video. That's a capture. I've got an edited audio clip. I have to sync them all together. I have to move the pieces around on the screen as people are moving around i've done it for videos uh live action videos that i've done as well um it is as somebody who is not a professional video editor i i can get really good output from final cut pro 10 i understand how it works the learning curve was not so bad the learning curve was not nearly as bad as logic. Let me tell you for, for audio,

the learning curve for video and like anything I can think of doing in a final cut pro 10, I can do it. Like, that's the amazing thing is, you know, I took a, I took for one of these total party kill videos.

I had a, uh, the video is essentially, um, a bunch of people's video feeds in squares. And I just, you know, I made duplicates and chopped them up into little pieces and move them around on the screen and created a frame around them and moved all this stuff. And it's like, I just thought to myself, Oh, can I just duplicate this and change the crop and move it

around on the screen? And the answer is, yep, you can totally do that. It's got, you know, you can do set keyframes and fade things in and fade things out and slide things around on screen there's so many things you can do that are not that they're learnable they're understandable um and and this is these are all the reasons that i think a lot of pro video editors hated final cut pro 10 when it came out because it was not what they were familiar with and i get it. I totally get why that's a thing. And I'm not saying this is a great app for people who have been using nonlinear editors for years, although my understanding is it's gotten a lot better. But for somebody like me,

who wants to produce good output, something that iMovie is not going to let me do, produce good output in a way that's understandable. And I don't have any of that baggage of, I mean, I used to use the old version of Final Cut and I found it kind of impenetrable, sort of like Logic still is. And it's not that. I think it's really good. And again, I'm not a high-end pro user and I can't endorse it for that. But as somebody who is sort of in the middle here where I can't use iMovie, but I want to make videos and I want to do things with them that are not just cut cut cut dissolve cut it is incredibly powerful and I like that it gets updated all the time so that's my pitch for Final Cut Pro X. I agree with you completely so when you said about

if you feel like you can do it you can just do it that's the 100 the way that i feel um about final cut pro 10 it was a runner-up last year and it was me giving exalting its virtues last year because i'd just gotten into starting to make youtube videos i mean using final cut um i honestly i wished that apple would take logic and final cut pro 10 it but i think we're past that at this point because Logic Pro X exists. They changed the UI. They did make it easier to understand,

but they didn't burn it down and start over again like they did with Final Cut. But I understand why Final Cut is a more important app because it's probably more widely used. So, I mean, I plus one for Final Cut Pro X, but let's go over to the upgradings and see where they land. Safari at 7%, OmniFocus at 9%, and 1Password at 16%. So as you can tell from those lower numbers than previous,

this was all over the map. There were lots and lots and lots of varying submissions for this category. And, you know know those picks i mean it's hard to argue with them i guess i mean one password is fantastic uh you know can't really argue too much of one password it was a runner-up in 2015 for best map cap um but you know i would say for me final cut pro 10. Let's do it. I wanted to do it last year, and I think that it is an application that is worth it.

And that's what we're going to go with. So Final Cut Pro 10 will take the crown for best overall Mac app. Upgradians, I promise you're going to get one at some point. We come into the best newcomer mac app to round out our applications section portion of the upgradies for 2017 and uh jason do you want to go first uh sure i will go first and say um i think that there's a, it's rare that there's essentially a new Mac app. But Twitterific for Mac was new this year. Icon Factory did a Kickstarter.

They took the old Twitterific for Mac. John Syracuse was still using it, but even diehards like me stopped using it because it was, you know, truncating tweets. And it was not good just because it was, hadn't been updated and Twitter had changed a lot and they brought it back. They took pieces from their iOS version to make a common code base and wrote a bunch of new stuff. And I was concerned. I supported the Kickstarter. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be usable throughout the beta process i was sort of like using it sporadically um after it came out final i um i switched over to it and i am using it 100 of the time or 99 of the time i'm logged into a couple of accounts on the twitter app that um that i'm not logged into on twitter

yet but then the official twitter app on mac doesn't support 280 characters yet so um i will just i'm using twitterific on mac 100 and i love it and the fact that it's a new version of this app um from scratch basically on on the mac is a uh it's it's good they they they more than fulfilled my expectations of this when they said that they were going to crowdfund a new version. I was concerned it would be kind of weak, okay, but not fantastic, and that would they continue developing it and all of that,

and it's exceeded all my expectations. It's very, very good. So I'd say the 1.0 release was, was i found a little bit underwhelming um i think it was missing a lot of features you know even more than what was expecting to be missed um and there were some features that were working but like there wasn't any ui for them like muffles they're doing the mutes they just weren't on the mac app but the icon factory followed out very quickly and they've continued to improve the app throughout the year since its release and they've even been innovating on twitterific for the mac which i was

very excited to see they had their polls feature which now is on ios but it debuted on the mac where they would try and detect if a tweet had a poll and then give you a link to throw you out to the official twitter website so you could participate in the poll. So I was a little bit concerned when version one came out, but it looks like that they have not stopped. And if anything, they are continuing to push forward and to advance the application. So I think that it's been really interesting to watch that kind of unfold over the last few months yeah I agree it's um if if this was I would be much more hesitant with the 1.0 release but the fact that they keep updating it as you said and adding new features um that gets gives me a good

feeling too the that it's being worked on and improved and keeps going past where it was when it started. That is, yeah, they've done a good job. So my vote will be cast for the runner-up of the best newcomer Mac app last year because last year it was in an alpha and we spoke about it, but we decided that we couldn't award Forecast. Great. The upgrade-y.

Forecast is an app, uh, from Marco Arment. And it is an app that I've been using for, I think nearly two years now. Um, it is a podcast production tool is a post-production tool. It enables me to encode my files to MP3 incredibly quickly to bake in all the metadata and add chapters.

So if you enjoy the chapters in upgrade, it is because of forecast there in my opinion were no good tools and it was one of the reasons that i was kept away from adding chapters to our shows because the tools were not very good and marco has created a tool which is local to the mac i mean some of them are web tools which i wasn't interested in some of them you had to type in the time codes by hand. Again, not interested. But this enables me to add markers in Logic so I can just add the points whilst I'm in my editing app, which doesn't take very long at all.

And then it just observes those and turns them into chapters and bounces them out to the MP3, which is encoded incredibly quickly. We spoke about Forecast a few weeks ago when it debuted. And that's where my vote is cast. Now, my thinking about Forecast a few weeks ago when it debuted, and that's where my vote is cast. Now, my thinking about Forecast was like, oh, it's going to be a niche app, right? We believed that it would be a niche app.

But as we have previously discussed, I mean, as we debuted the podcast tips segment as a recurring segment on Upgrade, our belief was that there are a lot of people in our audience that make podcasts themselves so the upgradians voting for best newcomer mac app is as follows pixelmator pro with seven percent forecast with nine percent and twitterific with 12 percent so interesting we sit here at this moment now this, this is what I think about this, right?

Forecast is still a niche app. Like, overall, it is. And I think that it is a great app. And it's something that I love. But, like, for the world at large, maybe Twitterific is a better pick. So, I mean, I would be happy to give Twitterific this vote because it's yours. It's the Upgradians.

What do you think? That's right, Upgradians. You heard Mike right. We're picking your choice. Twitterific, 12%. Upgradian plurality, majority. I don't know. The most votes from Upgradians and plus me.

So let's do it. I love forecast. I feel like we also kind of of i mean we we talked about it so much last year and then it finally came out which is great but it is still like you said uh pretty pretty niche i'm glad it's out there it's great um you know because of what it does in terms of its interface it's you know it's as generic as they come and marco admits that because that's not the point um it's very good and people should try it and it's free if you're doing a podcast but but twitterific is a very good

and getting better all the time uh mac twitter client so uh overcast becomes a runner-up for the second year uh in a row in best new color mac app which is probably probably... Forecast. Forecast, I should say, which is probably the first and only time that will happen. I can't imagine that very... We'll have an app that hits that twice. Newcomer twice. Yeah.

It seems unlikely. It's an interesting thing to do. All right. So we have completed the apps segment of the fourth annual Upgradees. So let me take a break and thank our first sponsor of this week's

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and also getting $20 towards any Linode plan. Now, $20 credit is worth four free months on the one gigabyte plan. So you have nothing to lose. They've got a seven day money back guarantee, and that is $20 credit for you. Just go to linode.com, learn more, sign up, and please use the promo code upgrade2018, upgrade2018 at checkout. upgrade2018 at checkout. Our thanks to Linode for their support of this show. So this now brings us on to some of our

beginnings of our media picks and first we'll start with games. So let's talk about our game of the year. I everywhere I have been in these types of discussions, there is only one option for me. And it is Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch

and also the Nintendo Wii U. Jason, The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is not just my game of the year. I think it might be my favorite game of all time. Wow. Nintendo surprised everybody with the quality of this game. It was delayed a little bit, and then clearly was delayed so it could be the launch title of the Switch.

And nothing, no game has ever sold a console to me the way that Zelda did. Because there was this game with what felt like an infinitely large world, which you could pick up and just take with you. I've never had a video game delight me in the way that Zelda has. There are so many moments, and everybody that plays this game has had these moments,

where you're doing something, and something happens, and you're like, oh my gosh, and you kind of feel like, surely I'm the only person in the world that this has happened to. This is not a normal thing in video games like where things happen and you cannot believe that they have happened like i've seen so many videos of like people that are able to trick two huge beasts into fighting each other like stuff like this which is like this this doesn't exist in a video game the story is is is light it's that maybe my criticism of the game is the story is pretty light but i can see why it happened that way because what nintendo decided to do was say to you well here is hyrule just go you know it is very possible to the first thing you ever do in this game is to run right

into the boss's castle you can just go you can do anything in any order and I don't think I've ever played a video game where I've wanted to explore in the way that I have with Zelda and I'm continuing to do so this is not a game that I have decided to put down

I absolutely loved Super Mario Odyssey but when I was done with the main story of Odyssey, I kind of felt done with the game. Even though there was more to see, for some reason, it wasn't drawing me in in the way that Zelda did.

You know, I spent tens of hours just climbing mountains and going around and saying, what is this over here? What is this over here? And, you know, you could see pretty much every game of the year list from all the major games publications legend of zelda sat at the top of that list and the honestly the

the reasons are endless yeah i um i have not played it but i have watched probably i've spent many hours watching my son play it. And he loves it. And the two DLC packs that have come out have both been, I think. So the second DLC for Breath of the Wild just came out like a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago, something like that. And he heard from a friend that it was coming out. And it was like an hour before his bedtime. And he turned on our, we actually have it on the Wii U. He turned on the Wii U and he sat there hitting the update button.

And after like 20 minutes, he was like, I don't think it's coming. I said, yeah, it might be midnight or something. They might've just said it's coming out. Like, yeah. Okay. So the next morning he got up like at 645 in the morning. I get up at seven to go get the tea and he's sitting in the living room with the Nintendo, the Wii U console and has already checked for the DLC and downloaded it and is playing it and is going to play it every minute until he has to get ready to go to school. minute until he has to get ready to go to school. I think that says something because he, that kid loves video games.

He loves them. And that's the one that like, it is. Yes. I, so I have witnessed it from afar. I've witnessed the power of Breath of the Wild. But what is your pick? So my pick is, um, I am picking a game that is on, I think it's on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, but not on the Mac. But it is What Remains of Edith Finch,

which we did an episode of The Incomparable about. It is, as John Syracuse would say, an artsy-fartsy game. Really well-written, quirky, a little Addams Family-ish in some ways. It's one of these games where you're walking around it is actually um my wife asked me about i was talking about games that i liked and she said oh is that the one with the uh the girl in the pacific northwest and i said yes it is the one with a girl in the pacific northwest not the one with the girl in the pacific northwest or the girl in

the pacific northwest because there's three games i've played that all could be described by that Northwest, not the one with the girl in the Pacific Northwest or the girl in the Pacific Northwest. Because there's three games I've played that all could be described by that. One of which is What Remains of Edith Finch. And she's going around in a weird Winchester mystery house-like house that is her family home. And she hasn't been there in a while. And she's uncovering family secrets. And the story takes a bunch of left turns and is really delightful and very well done and um of all the games that came out this year that i played and there weren't that many of them that was the one that i liked the best so i wanted to i wanted to put a plug in for what remains of edith finch again i've heard only good things about it i haven't played it

myself but it is a game that i've seen get a lot of applause this year. So the Upgradians votes at 6% is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which is a tour de force of a game. It has broken incredible records before it even came out in 1.0. Probably, actually very, very, very probably the most popular video game in the world right now. Super Mario Odyssey is in at 18%, and The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild at 41%.

These three make up basically the top three of every single game in the year list that has existed this year, just in varying orders. I would say, you know, I think that it is the upgrade. The upgrade is choice is very clear and it's very clear. I agree. It is. I could sit here and talk about this game forever.

So, yeah, it's just a just a wonderful, wonderful video game. iOS game of the year. Jason, what do you got? I have I have three so so first off um i wanted to the one that i was going to talk about uh until uh december happened was jackbox party pack 4 so jackbox games makes these collections of party games jackbox games is the originator of You Don't Know Jack, which started as a CD-ROM trivia game show in the 90s. And they're still around and they're still making games.

And in fact, a lot of the people who work there are involved with one of my favorite podcasts, Hello from the Magic Tavern. And they're in the Chicago improv scene and podcast scene. Jackbox Party Pack 4, like its three predecessors, is a series of games. I think they're five, four and a half, five. They're party games.

You can play them in a room or you can play them over Google Hangout or other video chat as long as somebody is sharing their screen. And I've done that numerous times with the incomparable people. The way it works is the gameplay happens on a device, and it can be an iPad or an Apple TV or a console.

And everybody brings their own device as their controller, so their phone or their iPad. And you log into the Jackbox servers, and then you play along as you sketch funny things or suggest lies to try and fool other players or be a monster dating other monsters on a monster dating app. It's one of the games, Monster Seeking Monster, or weird public art that you draw a strange drawing a piece at a time and you all vote to see what item is accepted and then and then people have to draw the next part of that item it's a whole bunch of fun party games the people who put it together have a great they're trying to do new stuff but also have a great sense of what works in a party situation like that. For streaming, they, for Twitch, or we use just Google Hangouts, but either way, if you've got streaming to an audience, there's a whole set of audience features. So we played a game with the incomparable of, of, on Party Pack 3, that involves basically

trying to guess what a survey of people said about a particular topic, like how many people like to drink soda warm or something like that. And the game is you have to pick the percentage and then the other person picks higher or lower and all of that. If you have enough people though, the audience is the survey instead of the general public survey that they're using. Oh, wow. That's amazing. And so all of a sudden it flipped over to, what do incomparable listeners on this live stream think of this topic? Which was just like, oh my God, that totally changes the game.

They're great games. Party Pack 4 is brand new. It launched within a couple of weeks. It was on every platform, including Apple TV. It's great on Apple TV. It's on the iPad. So I like that one a lot. And that is a new game that came out this year. And those games are really great. And if you haven't tried them and you have either a streaming, put it on your Mac and stream it using Skype or something to your friends, or if you've got a party and you've got people gathering around the TV, um, it is,

I highly recommend it. So I mentioned December though, in December, two of the games that I played in the last year, you know, year and a couple of months that I have liked the most were both released on iOS. And this puts a wrinkle in my selection because these are not new games, but they are new on iOS,

just out on iOS. So I'm going to mention them briefly. Inside is from the makers of Limbo. It is a game in which you are running from left to right, but oh my God, there's so much more than that going on in terms of the story, the experience, the sound, the look. So many twists and turns that the story takes. You think you're watching one thing. You're not watching that thing. You're not watching that other thing you thought it was. It just keeps going. It is amazing. It is such a great experience. It's probably the best game experience I've had in the last year and a half or so. And so it's out now on iOS. And Life is Strange, which came out in 2015, which is, yes, another one of those games

that's about a girl in the Pacific Northwest. It is really good. I love it. And that just came out for iOS, and that's a, you know, you have the ability to wind time backward and make different decisions, and the decisions you make affect what happens in the story.

And you're trying to navigate personal, personal relationships and also stop people from getting killed by supernatural events with time travel. Really great game. The voice acting on that is, is, is really solid as well. And so I don't know,

Mike, that, that was an unexpected bounty to have two of my favorite games that I played recently drop on iOS in December just in time for the holidays which is I assume why they did it and I highly recommend them

so those are the three that I have rolling around in my head for iOS game of the year my iOS game of the year is Flip Flop Solitaire Flip Flop Solitaire is the perfect iphone game uh it is very quick to play you play like rounds of solitaire uh but as is usual with zach gage's games um also the maker of really bad chess oh yeah flips on its head a little bit so in this solitaire game you can stack cards both ways high and low. It enables a completely different way of playing because you don't have

there's like a completely different strategy at hand. And I found it's way easier to complete a game because you can kind of build things where you might not be able to build things until you can end up eventually being able to stack the cards into the order that they should be to finish. I really love it.

It's made so well. It takes advantage of all the iPhone features that you would want. You know, it looks great on the iPhone 10. It has tons of great haptic stuff. So it feels like the cards are like flicking around on the screen. It is a great game. It's joined my kind of iOS Hall of Fame, along with games like Threes and stuff like that,

as games that will always remain installed because they're so, so easy to just pick up and play and they don't and i have instant replayability because of their simplicity you know that there is no there is no like i've completed this game so i'll stop right because there's no completion inside of days you keep playing more rounds our gradients at 9% Animal Crossing Pocket Camp at 10% Flip Flop Solitaire and at 21% Monument Valley 2. Monument Valley 2,

do you know I never finished it? I kind of felt like I'd played it. Yep. I love Monument Valley. Love it. But the second one, I'd already played a bunch of Monument Valley. It didn't draw me in in the same way.

So, I mean, I'm not really feeling that one. I mean, of course, Flip-Flop Solitaire has also hit the Upgradians voting, but I didn't mention that Jackbox Party Pack, I adore Jackbox. I have never played it on iOS. I play it on the Nintendo Switch. It doesn't matter where you play it.

I play it on the Apple TV too, but it's the same game on all these platforms um you know like the the greatness of the jackbox is the the fact that you don't need controllers you know everybody plays it on their own smartphone devices or their own computers or whatever and it just makes it way easier to be able to play the game with an infinitely sizing group um so it's fantastic so where do you want to go jason where are you feeling i don't know i mean i haven't tried flip-flop solitaire but i really uh like zach gage's games um i i'm a big fan of really bad chess which is such a brilliant idea um i i really have had this year i have really enjoyed the Jackbox Party Pack series in general. They're all available on iOS.

Of course, they're on other platforms too. The advantage of Flipoff Solitaire is it's an iOS game and the others are multi-platform games that I mentioned. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I'm happy to give Jackbox an award because I love those games. I could not love them more. And I'm so happy that there was a new set of them um although i recommend all of them they're all great

um but i'm also happy to go with uh with solitaire if uh if you think that's a better way to go let's go with jackbox all right i have nothing but good things to say about jackbox so jackbox party pack 4 is the winner of the ios game of the year um as is typical uh in the upgradies there is always one weird game award given uh like our game awards are never that consistent um and i figured this year i really wanted to just make sure i got breath of the wild in there which i did uh-huh so i'm all good on that one so the jackbox party pack 4 uh will be our ios cross-platform game of the year yes this year it runs on ios that's all it is all right we move on to favorite movie um for me i think my the fit my i think the most fun that i have had

in us in the cinema this year and i've not seen that many movies, this is typical for me, I think would have to be Baby Driver. I am such a huge fan of Edgar Wright. And this movie, as soon as I saw it and I saw the incredible cast attached to it, I was very, very excited about it. When I saw it was so heavily focused on music, it made me really, really excited. And I couldn't wait to see the movie.

And I was not disappointed. It is very rare that a movie will make me sweat in just sitting in the seat. But there is like the main climactic sequence of this movie really can kind of just push to push you right like it really will get you um and i i absolutely loved it for that i mean i will say since without getting into all too many details it's kind of been ruined a little bit uh by one of the cast members and the choices that they decided to make in their life which are terrible but i do love baby driver

and i can't fault the entire movie based on that personally um so i'm gonna say that it was my favorite movie of the year because it was all right so um i went back and forth on this. My initial thought was to mention Wonder Woman, which I liked a lot and have seen since on 4K on my Apple TV. That's a good movie. But you know what? I'm going to pick Spider-Man Homecoming because I think it's the first good Spider-Man movie in a long time. I've got things I can defend parts of some Spider-Man movie in a long time. I've got things I can, you know, I can defend parts of some Spider-Man movies, but basically since Spider-Man 2, way back when.

And it's a modern telling of Spider-Man, integrates him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I like the performance of Peter Parker. I like the supporting cast in his high school. I think the villain is one of the best, if not the best Marvel villains ever, which is Michael Keaton as the vulture. He's motivated.

You understand why he does what he does. Like it's really, there is a twist in this movie that I totally didn't see coming that I love it when that happens. Yep. And it's entirely set up, but it's did not see it coming.

And just, I am a fan of Brian, Michael Bendis is ultimate Spider-Man, which since 2000 is, you know, that was a comic about let's go back to basics with Peter Parker and tell a modern story about a kid in a high school who gets Spider-Man powers, which was originally what Spider-Man was about. And then they, in the comics, they took him out of high school. He graduated,

he became an adult, all of these things. It was like, let's go back to basics. And this is what this movie does. And I love it because that's, that's what I like about Spider-Man is he's a kid trying to struggle with his personal issues and also being a superhero and how they collide so that his superhero stuff ruins his personal life, basically. So, yeah, I would say Spider-Man Homecoming by a nose over Wonder Woman, but I like them both. and nose over Wonder Woman but I like them both. So our Upgradians voted at 13% for Baby Driver, 14% for Wonder Woman, and 16%

for Blade Runner 2049. I will mention at this point, the voting closed before Star Wars The Last Jedi came out. Probably would have changed the voting. Probably. Again, we've spoken about this. I really like that movie movie i wouldn't say it was my favorite movie of the year uh i

personally enjoyed baby driver more even though i really enjoyed star wars um and i'm too close i'm too close to it now um yeah to judge it maybe ask me you know unfortunately ask me again in in a couple of months is not going to do it for star wars i feel for all the movie critics and tv critics i was just talking a couple weeks ago to tim tim goodman about this because we do the tv talk machine podcast together and um he was talking about how like black mirror dropped its new season on uh it's dropping uh let's see so so it it dropped right before new year's but for tim tim got it like two weeks before as an advance copy or something for a screener but still it's like you're you're a tv critic and you're putting together your best of

the year list and something comes out in the middle of december it's like come on why are you doing this well that's how i feel about about the last jedi right now a lot of things i liked about it do i like it better than spider-man or wonder woman it's very different maybe i can't tell so i'm gonna let it i'm just gonna let it let it go i'm also because i like my brain didn't explode in the way that it did for Force Awakens. Right. I'm cool with it because I don't want Star Wars to win this category every year. Every year.

Yeah, sure. Because otherwise, it could. And so that's kind of how I feel about it. I wasn't down on that movie at all, but I got a lot of what I expected with it. I got a lot of what I didn't expect with Baby Driver. Yeah, I get it. I don't know what we do. I haven't seen Blade Runner 2049 so I don't even know.

Saw that movie, loved that movie. Wasn't my favorite movie of the year. Loved it though, really. Like way more for me personally than I enjoyed the original Blade Runner because it gave me way more of what I wanted. Now, personally, loved Spider-Man. so totally happy to go with spider-man um yeah we could do that we could do that i i mean i could also advocate for wonder woman which

i mentioned and the upgradians mentioned that's a good movie it's like dc comics okay dc comics made it you know it's a good dc comics movie it's they did finally did it you did it everybody if you want to go with wonder woman we can go with wonder woman right because i mean i said i haven't seen it yet but it's second and you were thinking about it we we both we both like spider-man let's let's go with uh let's go with spider-man i mean unless you want to override me with baby driver but i feel like uh no i don't you know i haven't seen that one either so yeah all right because i know favorite movie that we both saw favorite movie that we both saw goes to spider-man homecoming uh so that brings us to our favorite upgrade

mike at the movies segment of the year um i went with spider-man homecoming because i like the movie a lot that that was that no um i went with spider-man homecoming because i really like the movie um and of all the movies that we have watched for the show this year, it's the one that I enjoyed the most when talking about it. So that's kind of where my vote went with that. And my vote went to the final cut version of Blade Runner, where we brought John Syracuse onto the show just to have him teach us the ways of Blade Runner.

And that's partly why I voted for it, but I also voted for it because I really like, this was the most I've enjoyed Blade Runner. I've seen it like four times in three different cut versions. This is the first time that I've really gotten, like I got it. Like I understood why it is so beloved beloved and even though I don't feel that kind of attachment to it um the final cut version of it um made me really appreciate what is great

about it um so I I appreciate that and then of course John gets to explain to us why it is too and that was also fun so a fun Mike of the movies conversation experience and also a better watching the film experience than i've had with that film before so that was my rationale um the gradients went 22 spider-man homecoming 25 for terminator 2 and 29 for blade runner final cut this was way closer than i had expected it would be um i thought that the final cut blade runner would pull out way ahead just because john was a part of the episode um sure everyone loves john uh and i would say that you know i only enjoyed it because we had john on the show i think this was the the least fun that i had watching the movie because I'd seen it too soon. It was too soon for me.

I didn't enjoy watching it again. I actually enjoyed it less than the first time, but I did enjoy talking to John about it and going through that, and I enjoyed that episode that we did together. And really, that's more what this is about. It's not about how much we like the movies. It's how much we enjoyed the segment. Well, it's very clear now how much we like the movies. It's how much we enjoyed the segment. Well, it's very clear now how much we like the movie.

The winner is Spider-Man. How much we like the segment. The winner is Blade Runner. And considering that really what we are asking for is what was the better segment, then we should go with Blade Runner Final Cut. All right, let's do it. I also love that originally in the voting document, I called it Director's Cut and was corrected by john siracusa no that's not

what it's called mike of all people to be corrected by he was the person the only person that noticed it uh and then i had to go in and fix it yep favorite book which is where i leave the room yeah goodbye goodbye um my favorite book this year that I read this year is I thought about a bunch here, but I'm picking Borderline by Michelle Baker, which is was one of the Nebula nominees. It was one of the best novel of the year and one of the science fiction fantasy categories. fantasy categories it is a kind of i would say noirish in a way detective story except set in the present day um and there are fairies okay and the main character is like a great noir investigator. She is really messed up. She has borderline personality disorder. She

tried and failed to kill herself. So she's a multiple amputee. She's got to use prostheses to walk. She's amputated below the knee in one leg and above the knee in the other. So she's got to use prostheses to walk. She's amputated below the knee in one leg and above the knee in the other.

So she's got lots of issues. She's got mental health issues. She's got physical issues. And it turns out she's got supernatural issues. And yet it feels like the whole book feels, and it's set in Hollywood. So it's definitely got that, like the Hollywood, the LA noir, like it's well lit, but still everything is dark and awful. I don't read a lot of fantasy, but I think the ones I pick seem to be good ones. I only read them if everybody is acclaimed to them. And this is a part of a series now. I read the sequel this year as well, and it's very good. But Borderline, I really recommend it. It's very good. There are

other books that I read that were close. A Close and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is really good. Death's End by Qishin Liu, which is the third book in a trilogy of totally weird Chinese science fiction novels that were translated and are award winning for good reason they're so strange and good so almost like visionary in the ideas. Death's End

has more ideas in it than like 20 other science fiction novels and like every chapter there's another just wild science fiction idea that he just poured into the book instead of like saying, okay, that's a good idea. I could write a whole book about that.

Like, nope, just throw it in there, move on to the next idea in the next chapter. But I think the most pleasant surprise in the book that I really ended up liking the most and thinking about and recommending to people, which is always for me, the question is borderline all right so the upgradians voted eight percent uh artemis by andy weir of 15 i haven't read it the caledonian gambit by dan moran i have read that one many times

and relay fm and 19 turtles all the way down by john green i feel like uh with this and some of the other nominees i'm seeing that sort of like people like discovered you through cortex and then followed you to this show i feel like that youtube influence coming through here maybe i noticed that quite significantly when it came to favorite book that turtles all the way down by john green would would win that that was very interesting to me like would win the upgradians vote so jason i'm leaving this one completely down to you um well i i've said what my choice is and uh so why not just because we love him uh say the caledonian gambit by dan warren everybody should go out there and get it that's all i really wanted um i've i'm i'm waiting for the audiobook version that will hopefully come one day uh no it's out is it out now when did that happen there's a yeah the audiobook it came

out like a few months ago sure no one tells me audiobook all right well i'm gonna go get the audiobook now i didn't know that oh great so i'm gonna do that then uh so i maybe would have voted for it but we're gonna go with the caledonian gambit by dan moran as the upgradey uh book of the year which i'm very very excited about for those who would like to accuse us of nepotism and giving an award to our friend yep yeah i choose well i will but i will say though honestly the upgradians are the ones who nominated it, right? This is what I was going to say, right? Like, 15% of the vote, which, again, like, that's really close, like, to the winner of the Upgradians, right? Like, 15, 19, like, that's close. And you read the book.

You like the book. So that makes sense when it comes to deliberation. The Caledonian Gambit by Dan Moran. And it's going to be the first thing I do once we stop recording today is to go and download the audio book that I didn't know existed. So we have finished the media and pop culture category, and we are moving into technology. But before we do that, let's take a break and thank our second sponsor for this week's episode,

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Alright, Jason. Favorite Apple product. This one's a bit of a runaway and is not surprising. I'm actually going to go with the Upgradians first, just so we can provide some difference.

At 7%, the Apple Watch Series 3. At 18%, the iPad Pro 10.5. And at 44%, the iPhone X. There were a bunch, I will say, just to say, there were a bunch of votes for the AirPods in here. I didn't include them because technically there were a bunch of votes uh for the airpods in here um i didn't include them because technically they were a 2016 thing and and i think they won i think the airpods won the favorite product last year uh well i can tell you favorite apple product of 2016 was in fact

airpods like that was the thing we also i will note as well uh we made a decision on last year's episode to make a change to this category this category is now only apple made products previously this was um anything within the apple ecosystem including third parties and we decided to just make this apple made only um so that is why there are just apple products in this there are no accessories or anything like that so iphone 10 right i mean come on like it was incredible uh it is incredible i love my iphone 10 i thought for a minute about just being completely contrary and saying the ipad pro uh second generation 12.9 because it's great but it's not that different from the first generation 12.9 and

come on it's the iPhone X the iPad Pro 12.9 and even to a point the 10.5 are great in every way the previous ones were they got the 120Hz stuff, they got the ProMotion

which is really nice but the iphone 10 is better than previous iphones in basically every single way right like they've everything has been improved in them and it is the leap ahead that we've kind of been clamoring for for the last couple of years yep and it's just and the more and more I've used this phone, the more it becomes a part of my life, the more and more I've integrated it into my life, the more and more I love it. And months in, I still look at it and I'm like,

what are you future technology? Like I still look at it and I'm like, how, how is this thing? And I absolutely love it. And as more and more apps embrace their design and change and adapt their design, it only gets better and better. So funnily enough, this is the only upgrade-y

so far this year where there is no runner-up because the way that I'm considering runner-ups for this one going forward is like the top picks. So my pick pick your pick and the upgradians top pick well they were all the same and it's the iphone 10 and i think that that is a huge statement that there is just one for this one because everything else was great is far away and the ipad pro 10.5 is incredible but we're going to talk about that a little bit later on in the show. Favorite non-Apple product.

Jason, I want you to go first for this one, and there's a very good reason for that. Okay, sure. I struggled with this one a little bit, trying to think what came into my life this year that I wanted to single out here, and I had two that I thought of. And one is on the smart home side, which is I complain sometimes about smart light bulbs and the idea of smart light bulbs, because now you're buying every light bulb you buy has to have Wi-Fi. And then

when it dies, it dies. And then you have to get another light bulb with Wi-Fi in it. And it seems a little bit much, seems kind of complicated. You've got these bulbs that are extra hot because now they're running, you know, wifi circuitry in addition to being a light bulb. And this year I bought a bunch of Caseta smart switches from Lutron.

And I think they're really great. And I installed them myself, replaced old light switches, and they are exactly what you'd think. The Wi-Fi's in the light switch. And as a result, I don't need to buy smart bulbs. I just replaced my light switch, and now I have a light switch

that is not only a physical light switch, but it has a remote control, and it works with HomeKit. And I've got these on a couple places places in my house and I will add more. And it allows me to make my home lighting smarter without ripping out existing lighting and replacing it with new expensive smart lighting. So like my living room now, we actually don't even use HomeKit most of the time. We just use, there's a remote control in our living room that dims the lights. It's great.

So I love that. And that's really helped me kind of embrace HomeKit, I would say. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is another favorite non-Appapple product this year oh the irony is the uh intel nook mac mini that isn't that's a you know i've got a core i5 um little tiny computer with ssd only in it and it is i've written about it a couple of times it's the it's the mac mini apple should make basically it's the Mac mini Apple should make, basically. It's a really small modular. It's built around SSD. It's got a Thunderbolt 3 slash USB-C port on the back, as well as four USB-A ports and an HDMI video out. It's pretty great. I would love to see an Apple version of that. It could be a little bit different, but having used that Intel Nook for a little while now in my house, it's a great little computer. This teeny tiny fits in the palm of your hand computer. And it makes me wish that it was a favorite Apple product instead of

a non-Apple product. So my pick is the Nintendo Switch. And this was one of those categories where I'm like, oh man man this is one that I really hope I'll be able to go my way because I love my Nintendo Switch you know it's my favorite games console ever because I'm able to live the dream that I've had since I was a kid of being able to take my games with me everywhere and they're the same games I can play them at home I can play them on the sofa in my hands. I can take them on the plane with me. And the Nintendo Switch has completely changed the way that I play video games. Now it's like I want all my games to be on the Switch

or I don't want them at all. It's kind of how I feel. And there's many people that are this way, which doesn't surprise... Well, so now when I look at it, I'm unsurprised. This is how the voting has gone for favorite non-Apple product. The Amazon Echo came in at 4%.

The Google Home Mini came in at 5% from our gradients vote. The Nintendo Switch took home the largest single vote in percentage of the night with 60% of upgradients voted for the Nintendo Switch as their favorite non-Apple technology product for 2017. That's huge. Like, I think the highest we get up to other than that is a 45 vote which is coming up a little bit later on and uh well you know iphone 10 at 44 no and breath of

the wild was was way up there 41 but here's the thing um i think it's got to be this i i bought one my my problem is that i don't get to play it much because my son has taken it away from me. But it's great. It's like, and I refer you to all the podcasts in which you've talked about Nintendo, but... Basically remaster since March. Every episode of remaster since March. Yeah, the Switch is really good.

And it's also for people who have bought Nintendo hardware. I mean, look, I said earlier, I have a Wii U for Pete's sake um it's good it's good to see nintendo do good hardware um no it is not cutting edge they still make weird decisions but the fact that it is um playable as a handheld or as a portable or as a docked on your tv console um Most of the time I see my son playing it, it is actually on the TV with the controllers in the little controller holder thingy. But yeah, I'll go with that.

It's a great idea, well idea well executed again a couple of things on it right which which does make it so amazing this is one of the greatest comebacks of a company in history like nintendo looked like that they had basically completely lost it at the point with the wii u right everything that they were able to build up with the wii was just being squandered and just a couple of weeks ago, Nintendo announced that they sold 10 million Nintendo Switches, which in the games console world is a really, really big number. Like when PlayStation were able to talk about the fact that they'd sold 10 million PS4s, it was big, big news.

But what makes that even more impressive is that is with no holiday season. Nintendo sold 10 million with no holiday season nintendo sold 10 million before the holiday season from march to then like to march to the beginning of december which is incredible um so i'm very excited to see when nintendo were able to go with the switch because they seem to have turned the tide in an almost unprecedented way. It looked like people were saying, Nintendo should give it up and just make iPhone games. But they showed everybody, didn't they?

Bravo, Nintendo. So now we get into one of my favorite categories, which is the worst gadget or most disappointing technology of the year. For me, I'm going to go with the Bridge Keyboard. If you're an Upgrade listener, you will be familiar with my almost three-episode arc of trying to get one of the Bridge external keyboard case things for the iPad Pro 12.9.

I had, I think, two units, and neither of them worked reliably. I was getting missed keys and jason had his problems of his and he ended up getting one that worked but then again like um i think steven had a 10.5 and his wasn't working federico vatici had 12 like two 12.9 ones and neither of his worked jason what got the golden egg uh of one of keyboards that works. On the third try. Okay, also on the third try. I think that it is just straight disappointing.

This is the piece of technology that has annoyed me, has angered me the most this year because of all the hassle that I had to go through as well. And the killer is, if it worked, I would recommend it far and wide to people because it's it's a great piece of uh you know ergonomic design and the fact that it's got the clips on it you slide the ipad pro in you can pull it out really easily and you've got a laptop it's you know i and i love using mine and yet i can't really recommend it because i mean i've every now and then somebody says oh what's that thing that you wrote about or what's that thing that you use? And I'll say, well, it's the bridge keyboard, but, but be warned, they have quality problems and you may have to return it.

Like just bottom line, make sure it works when you get it. And it's not a reliability problem where it gets bad over time. It's a, it doesn't work out of the box. You type not even that fast and characters drop. And it's, and it's just i think they have

bad bluetooth chips or something like that and i am baffled why they have not gone through and checked all of their products and pulled the stuff out um so at this point what i what i keep saying is i would really like someone else to make a keyboard that's like the bridge keyboard, except reliable. And also I'll say the most disappointing thing is all of the conversations we've had about it, the company has never said a word, which leads me to believe honestly, and again, this is just speculation.

And if bridge would like to write in, they can correct me. It leads me to believe they're well aware that they have a quality problem and they don't care. They're just trying to unload those units to people who are not paying attention, which is kind of, you know, it's unconscionable. So it's great that I've got one that works, but super disappointing, right? I mean, I think not in the worst gadget category as much as the most disappointing tech. It's like, it's a really cool idea. And, you know, some large percentage of them don't work right. Yeah, it's just disappointing and frustrating. Yep. I like yours. I like your pick. I can see in the document here, explain it. It's a little conceptual. But when I was thinking

about most disappointing tech this year i did think about the bridge keyboard because you know everybody else i know has tried to get one that works like mine and they and failed um i'm gonna say apple's smart connector technology is the most disappointing tech of the year. I say this because when the iPad Pro was announced, we all got excited like, ooh, Apple has released a new connector type. It's magnetic. You can use the smart keyboard with it. This is really interesting.

There are some third-party devices. Where will this take us? And the answer is nowhere. I think there are fewer than 10 smart connector-capable accessories on the market, three of which are the Apple smart covers for the three different sizes. When the new iPad Pros came out, there was not a rush to the new 10.5 design, which was like, oh, this is going to be big and it's and the sales figures have actually been pretty good like this is this is a winner of a

product where the where the smart connector products for it there's almost none um the smart connector product that we did get for the 10.5 was disappointing right the third party case from logitech and it never made its way to the iphone it which i mean maybe maybe that's fine maybe it was never intended to be the iphone maybe it really was intended to be a keyboard thing i'm starting to think that the reason the smart connector was there was entirely to enable the smart cover and at some point they're like why don't we let logitech build a keyboard for it too like why not we'll we'll say that it's open but obviously almost nobody wants to make uh one of these um perhaps because the size of the iMac or the iPad pro market is so small and it's only on the iPad Pro. Whereas if you make a Bluetooth keyboard, you can make it from war devices. I don't know, but I look at the smart connector and think,

this is something that we were really excited about. And like, it's just nothing now. It's almost nowhere. And while it works great on the smart keyboard, like where are the other accessories for it? Where are the other attempts to get back to the bridge keyboard? To make other kinds of iPad Pro accessories, keyboards, whatever, cases that embrace this thing. And there's nothing. It's turned out to just be a thing for Apple to put in that one product. Yeah, it's a shame right because anything else that there has been like that logitech charging stand it's just kind of pointless really yeah well it doesn't it's not

adjustable and charging through the smart connector is really slow yeah yeah so it's not really why it's there yeah i mean federico's made this joke a bunch and he's completely right it should just be called the keyboard connector, because that's all it is, right? As far as we can tell, that is about all it can do, yeah. The Upgradians voted 5% most disappointing product is the Apple TV, at 15% is the MacBook Pro,

and at 16% is the Pixel 2 XL. Now, Pixel 2 XL, in this case case I'm almost discounting this from the discussion because I don't believe that the 16% of people that voted for this actually use this product and like really this makes more sense in the screw-up category uh you know what I mean I feel like people just throwing it in there because it was a bad product for some people um I don't know if this is like something that our listeners were personally very disappointed about um but you know all 16% of you can let me know but considering how many people voted there would have been a lot of people um but anyway the macbook pro is in there as well at 15% i understand that actually many people

jason like a significant percentage of this, actually said MacBook Pro keyboard, like specifically. That would have been a good pick. But I lumped it all in with the MacBook Pro because I figured that all worked together and it brought it up into the 15% bracket because otherwise it would have been way lower if it would have just been one or the other. But so yeah, the MacBook Pro was an upsetting one for people.

Where do you want to go with this? upsetting one for people uh where do you where do you want to go with this i don't know what do you think i don't i don't know i mean i don't want to say the macbook pro because i have a macbook pro and i'm fine with it like it doesn't it doesn't bother me i mean i know that there are problems with them but like it's in the same vein that i don't necessarily think that pixel 2xl should be here no let's let's uh let's put the smart connector to use for once yeah and give it a give it an award i don't know so the the smart connector is our most disappointing congratulations apple you're you're award-winning smart connector technology now award-winning so i'm gonna i'm to put in our history here. We're going to get Smart Connector

Bridge Keyboard and I'm going to put the MacBook Pro in as the other runner up coming from Rural Gradients because I think that might be a more actual representative use case of what's going on. So another one of my favorites, the favorite tech story of the year. So, the theme or specific story that was the most interesting to you, to me, to our listeners.

I'm going to start with the upgradings on this one, Jason. Net neutrality and all of the hubbub and the repeal and everything that has happened over net neutrality comes in at 4%. The Mac roundtable, where a bunch of Apple executives apologized

for their lack of focus on the Mac, also came in at 4%. With 30% was the HomePod firmware leak. And this is also my favorite tech story of the year. This was wonderful because it was a rare and strange thing to occur for this firmware to come out. But then it sparked maybe three, four weeks of stories as people were digging further and further into the SDK. What was it? It was firmware. Firmware, actually. Sorry, SDK.

Into the firmware. sdk or the what was it was firmware firmware actually sorry sdk into the firmware taking a look inside of the operating system that was going on the home pod and finding uh hints to things for so many so many products and as somebody who comments on this at a time where it should have been you know historic history would say really quiet like leading up to some product launches we had a ton of really interesting things to talk about. So the HomePod leak was one of my favorite, if not my favorite tech story of the year. It's a good one.

I don't know how I feel about it as a favorite. I think there may be another category that we have coming up. Oh, there is. We're going to talk about it in just a minute. That might be a better fit for it because did I enjoy that? It was fascinating though. Here's, I try to be conceptual with this one too.

And my favorite tech story of the year is announcements of overreaching smartphones. And I have two examples, which is Andy Rub rubin's essential phone which was was brought out with a huge amount of hype and with all the arrogance of someone with the power of google and android behind them to back up their statements without actually having that behind them a phone that they you know it's a seems like a nice phone it shipped late it's a high-end phone that they were going to ship a very small number of certainly didn't match the hype like the they admitted at

one point that the volume that they were possibly able to sell of it was extremely low um i don't really like the hype i don't really like andy rubin um and i i think in hindsight there are a lot of tech journalists who look at the coverage of that and would say why why did we do that other than to fill space on the internet? And even more than that is the Red Hydrogen One phone, which is the guy who runs the company that makes the red cameras, declaring that he's going to reinvent the smartphone business by creating a very expensive phone with a holographic screen and all sorts of special materials. And it's going to do things no other device has ever done. And it's going to cost a fortune. And you'll pre-order it now because you love my company. And it'll ship eventually. And we don't even have anything other than kind of a shaky pre-production unit for people to see right now. And I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, that's going to be a flop too. That's going to be a disaster too. and smartphone too. And it's just going to roll on out and a couple thousand people will buy it.

And then you can't really run a company like that. So I thought that was an interesting trend. So that is what I nominate for my favorite tech story of the year. Yeah, this is interesting. So my kind of take on that, that the Essential phone was really hyped and it was a lot of people really liked it,

but that there were still problems with it. And yeah, you're right. Like they were never going to sell a lot of them and now andy rubin's gone from the company uh and now they're probably going to disappear because all they had was andy rubin and now he's taken a leave of absence because of uh everything that he had been up to like so many people that have been caught out now which is great but he's gone so i can't imagine them sticking around for much longer the red hydrogen i agree there's a lot a lot of noise and a lot of smoke we haven't actually seen the phone yet so who knows right like we can't say oil to me

feels like snake oil yeah i mean and that's that's why i would say as a favorite story i mean maybe it'll be brilliant and groundbreaking and totally change how phones work but to me it, it looks like, again, somebody who's had a success in another product category who's just decided that he's going to do this product and it's going to take the world by storm and is going to discover it's hard to make a phone and hard to ship it and hard to ship it in any volume at all. And it'll be a flop. But right now, it's not a flop. It's snake oil.

Yeah. I've seen people that have seen a pre-production unit and have been impressed by it, right? But that doesn't mean it's going to be that good when it ships. They might not be able to do it at volume. We'll have to wait and see. And then another interesting add to this is Razer, the gaming periphery and computer maker.

They made a phone, like the razor phone which is apparently very good they put a 120 hertz display in their phone and that's nice apparently it's incredible so like they're one that like they did it but they're not probably not going to sell a lot of them either right but like they actually did have made a phone that's really good but they probably won't sell a lot so that's a game gaming phone for gamers that's not a bad idea and it's also you know it's also not uh you know a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars so no they're not trying to change everything but they're focusing like in a way that smartphones tend to be like this is the smartphone for everyone right that's what

everyone's trying to build but they're like no we're making a smartphone for gamers and it's gonna it's gonna have these huge speakers on the front of it because that's what everyone's trying to build. But they're like, no, no, we're making a smartphone for gamers. And it's going to have these huge speakers on the front of it because that's what you would want. And it's going to have a headphone jack because that's what you want. And it's going to have a 120 hertz display. And they're working with a bunch of game developers to get 120 frames per second going on. And yeah, it's like a whole big deal.

But I do like this category. And I kind of want to reserve the home pod uh for our next because i think that that's an easy win for the next category so why don't we go with overreaching smartphones as uh as a favorite tech story of the year because it has been very interesting to watch this trend this year which has been different to previous years in that like for whatever reason in 2017 a bunch of companies believed that they could make a phone and it would be the best phone ever. And that has yet to happen because the funny thing is Samsung and I mean, you know what? Even maybe Google could fall into this category with the Pixel 2.

They overreached a little bit, right? And they extended themselves past maybe what they could have done, and they settled on lower quality hardware parts for the 2 XL, and they didn't get the good screens that they maybe should have gotten. So it's been interesting this year to watch companies that are clearly trying to compete with Apple and Samsung and falling short in some way. Yep. Favorite techs grew up. for every single reason that i

mentioned the homepod leak uh it was almost hilarious how much of a mistake this one and it was you know like wild to think like all of your product releases will come out because somebody uploaded someone something somewhere accidentally and left it there for a weekend. A public update to firmware for a product that is not even going to ship for until the next year, as it turns out. Because that's the other funny thing about it. It's like that product ended up getting delayed anyway, right? But it was nowhere near shipping. So why is there a public

channel where the firmware for the home pod is sitting and then it's all the information that it ended up having in it which it probably just shouldn't have had at that point anyway you know like outlines for the iphone 10 like my gosh so a wonderful wild story um and i'll i'll just read the other two that the upgradians voted because that's right at the top so Juicero at 7% Uber at 8% and the HomePod firmware leak at 45% it was really interesting to me

to see that the root bugs and stuff like that whilst voted for did not make the top three and Uber by the way is just Uber because it's impossible to pick just one thing

that they did wrong no no I think that's the way to do it it right because it's impossible to pick just one thing that they did wrong this no no i think that's the way to do it it's just general free floating uber yeah badness yep and yeah that is there in there uh they've been in here they've been in before 2014 uber screw-ups was a runner-up so they haven't really changed uh in the last few years. So what is your pick? I had to say Juicero or Juicero, however you want to pronounce it. I always think of Canyon Aero. I know Canyon Aero is exactly what I think of. This is the startup that created a high-end juicer where you would buy packages with barcodes on them and it would check the barcodes over the internet and make sure that they were still fresh and then they would dispense juice

into a cup and you would drink the juice and some reporters uh and and the hardware was amazingly over-engineered it's this incredibly expensive over-engineered piece of hardware and there was a wonderful blog post by a hardware engineer saying, this is not how you design first-generation hardware. Keep it simple. Start simple and then iterate. And some enterprising reporters found that you could just buy

the Juicero packs and squeeze them out and not use the incredibly engineered, expensive piece of hardware to dispense the juice. You could just squeeze them out and uh yeah that company died there's a pretty good business model ruined by over expensive hardware like

the business model of shipping people the fresh juice packs that they could use was fine but having this like multiple hundred dollar machine that did it ridiculous right like just send some something to people that they can just push and it squeezes out, right? Like a press of some description. But they want it to be super fancy and it be connected to the internet and then that ruined the company.

So what do you want to do? HomePod leak is number one and Juicero was the runner-up? Yeah, that's fine. So, this is a fun one where one thing gets in in the same year, a runner-up in one category and the winner in another. So bravo, Apple, I guess, down Podlake. When we created these categories, like the favorite tech screw-up category,

I don't know if I ever expected Apple to be winning. It was such a wide margin. But that was a big old screw up. And our last technology slash hardware related thing this year is the most life-changing hardware. Their upgradians voted as such. Nintendo Switch at 11%, the Apple Watch at 21%, which is the highest the Apple Watch ranks in any of the awards so far of the night,

and AirPods at 43%. For me, this totally works. I think for the life-changing hardware thing, it doesn't necessarily have to be released in a year, but there has to be something significant. And for me, the reason that I consider AirPods in here as being totally fine is most of our listeners probably didn't get them until 2017. So for me, i think that that is totally valid to have airpods in this category um jason where are you um i put i thought about this too because life-changing it's like that's a big that's a high bar and i feel like it's a different set of rules it's like how what am i using day in and day out so i thought about like the cellular

apple watch because i really like how that um once or twice a week I'm going running. Um, and the, a, something people may not know. One of the challenges of working at home here is, uh, the dog needs to get walked and I need to exercise and the dog doesn't want to run with me on a leash. Like she won't do it. So I have to choose. And it becomes this thing where I either have to go out twice, which is not great. Cause that's a lot of time where I have to choose like walk the dog or exercise.

And I found a path, a fire road that I can run on. That's not too far away from here. It's like a five minute drive. And I can, I can take her out there and she will she will stay with me when i'm running ish like enough and she doesn't have to be on a leash on the fire road um and i took so i've gone up there a bunch of times with just my apple

watch and my airpods it's amazing like i'm still in touch. I can listen to music. I can track my workout. I walk the dog. It's great. It's so great. I thought about it. It's like, well, that's life changing in a limited way, but it is life changing. I came back to having, honestly, having Amazon Echoes in the house. And I think that's my nomination is having Amazon Echoes around.

We've got an Echo show in the kitchen um the kids use it all the time i use it all the time it's integrated with our smart home stuff um it is we use it we use it for cooking all the time and actually the nice one of the nice things about having a screen on the echo show is that it's displaying our timers and you can of course call out you know set a timer set a carrot timer for eight minutes set a pasta timer for 12 minutes and they stack up and then i love that when they added that right and they say oh well oh your your pasta timer is done and all of that it's not a perfect product but i feel like it's integrated itself in our lives this year more than any other so that's

the one that i'm going to nominate and And this is exactly why in 2016, the Amazon Echo won this category. Of course. But the thing is, for me, I completely agree with you because we're only adding more stuff to our house, right? Like this is a growing ecosystem in our home. And like, so for this year, for our Christmas tree, we didn't have a Christmas tree last year. This year, our Christmas tree,

I've got it hooked up to a Wemo switch so I can turn the lights on and off, right? Like that's not something I had last year, but I do it now and it's fantastic. I've had a Wemo switch sitting in my house for a year and I've not used it of anything because I didn't have anything that it really worked very well with.

But it's perfect for Christmas tree lights. I'm going to go with the 10.5 inch iPad Pro. I absolutely love this iPad. I consider it the perfect iPad. I think it is the best iPad ever made because I think it hits most people. It has become the iPad, if I'm not at home, it's the iPad I'm using. It's the iPad I travel with. It's the iPad I take out to work with. Because 10.5 inch screen, that is basically enough, right, for me to be able to have multiple apps on screen and do what I need to do when I have a keyboard attached.

The 12.9, for me, like when I'm traveling, it's a bit too big. When I'm at home, it's perfect. And this is the model, you know, when I talk about, you know, it's used as a joke, but it's like a true thing, the multi-iPad lifestyle, having two iPads and how you work with them. having two iPads and how you work with them. And since I got the 10.5, the idea has never become more clear of having an iMac at home and a laptop that you take with you. I have the 12.9 that stays at home

and the 10.5 that comes with me. And previously, I would take the 9.7 and I would kind of wish for the 12.9, but I don't feel that way with the 10.5. I'm totally fine with it when I have it. It works great for me. I absolutely love this iPad. It looks 10.5 I'm totally fine with it when I have it it works great for me I absolutely love this iPad it looks great, it's got so many fantastic features

it is a great addition so we haven't had this for a while in our voting the last couple of categories have kind of stacked up we have three completely different answers here and I want to know where you're feeling at this point Jason

well I what won this category last year amazon the amazon echo i think this is the category to give to the airpods i think even though they came out last year because i think that this was the year that they really set in for our listeners and for us let's be honest i love the airpods way more than i thought i would um it's why we thought that that was the best apple hardware last year um and i i agree with how life changing that is that has changed like i use wired headphones in very specific environments now airplanes mowing the lawn noisy environments where i need to really shut out noise um and doing a podcast but like if i'm just cooking dinner or

whatever plus the running scenario i mentioned earlier it's all airpods they're great yep i uh i just lost my sennheiser headphones that i used for planes i left them on a plane and i was really annoyed because i now needed to buy new headphones for the plane um in a way that like previously i would have been excited about the fact that i now had an excuse to buy new headphones i was actually just kind of frustrated about it because it's like oh now i have to buy new headphones because i use them so infrequently right because even sometimes when i'm on the plane i already have my airpods in so i just never get the other ones out if i'm just listening to podcasts because plus if i'm planning on listening

to podcasts i don't want to use the over-ear headphones anyway because I have to then get the adapter and it's a whole big mess. Right? So it's... I love my AirPods. And they really are excellent. And genuinely are. Like, when it comes to how technology can change the way that you do things in your life,

this is one of them. And it makes a big difference. So, yeah. Completely on board with this the AirPods are fantastic and they definitely deserve this award alright Jason so we have come to the end of our technology section

and our hardware section of the night and we are going into our final section of categories which is podcast related awards and I know that this is what people listen to so intensely is for the podcast related awards and i know that this is what people listen to so in so intensely is for the podcast related awards and i think there's going to be some real contention as we get in to our final round but before we do let me take a moment to thank our third and final sponsor for the upgradies this year and that is casper they are the company focused on sleep

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and you're ready to sleep on comfort. Let me tell you, that is amazing. And if for any reason you don't love your Casper mattress, and I would be very surprised if you do love your Casper mattress, they have a hassle-free return policy as well. You can start sleeping ahead of the curve with Casper. You can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com slash upgrade and using upgrade at checkout.

Terms and conditions apply. Trust me on this one. Go and get yourself a nicer night's sleep. You won't believe how comfortable these things are. casper.com slash upgrade. Offer code upgrade for $50 towards any mattress purchase. We thank Casper for their support of this show. Okay, so this is the category

that changed everything for this year. Favorite tech podcast. So two things are happening with our two main podcast awards, but this was the one that made a big change for us. So the favorite technology podcast, we have our first lifetime achievement Hall of Fame award winner, and that is the Accidental Tech Podcast. Since we have started the upgradies,

ATP has taken home the award every year. They are three-time award winners. Yeah, time to retire it. So when it came to doing the Upgradies this year, my feeling was it is my favorite tech podcast, so I will probably just keep voting for it. So I figured, and we figured in talking about it, that maybe we needed to look at how we had the upgradients help out. So that's why your voting is so much more important than

ever before. And also this year, I actually don't have a pick because I want to pick ATP. It is, as well, like we're going to talk about this in a moment, a lot of my podcasting habits have changed. I don't listen to as many tech podcasts as i used to the only tech podcast that i listen to every single episode of is atp so yep same that's where my vote would be so lifetime achievement award hall of fame put it in there and we have to we have to move on i had two uh two that i wanted to mention one on relay fmc there were here, and I think this... I'm going to complain about something in a second. I feel like there are unstated rules here

that some people are following and some people are not. Okay. One of the unstated rules is... And I think this one is a good one, is nothing that we're on. Yeah. Or that we do. Well, we haven't completely abided by that in the past we've just been awkward about

it so like the runner-up for 2014 was analog 2015 was cortex and 2016 was the six colors secret subscriber podcast okay try and not vote for ourselves but i would say driven by the person who is not on those things but it's true i'm not saying it's an actual hard and fast rule but it's sort of a guideline and the other guideline which is a little bit weaker is steering away from relay a little bit because otherwise it becomes again it's sort of in that same ballpark of it's all just sort of self-congratulatory and all that which is going to happen to a certain degree um anyway i have two picks one is on relay which is canvas with uh fraser and federico talking about ios stuff i don't listen to every episode but um i pick based on topic and i'm very interested to hear those guys because i i always learn something new i learn about a new app i

learn about a new technique um i i really enjoyed they did an episode where they interviewed the developer of Ferrite. And that was kind of fun to listen to that. That was their membership episode. I really liked that. But I like that one as a person who also tries to use iOS for a lot of work stuff to hear those guys talk about it. And then the other one I wanted to mention is Mark Bramhill's welcome to macintosh which is in its second season now and had a the emoji series that they that they did that was really good um and has a few episodes have dropped since then too i love that somebody is who who kind of gets us is taking the time to build a show

that is at the quality of one of these storytelling, former NPR slash NPR or public radio kind of storytelling podcasts about Apple and related technology stuff. And Mark does a really good job with that. He did a Kickstarter. I backed the Kickstarter. I got some stickers. And I think Mark does a really good job with that. He did a Kickstarter. I backed the Kickstarter.

I got some stickers. And I think that's a really good show. So I wanted to mention those two. I will say in the upgrading info, Welcome to Macintosh missed out by like half a percent to making it in. So, I mean, okay, so here's the thing. Welcome to Macintosh got 12% of the vote.

This very show, Upgrade,osh got 12 of the vote um this very show upgrade got 13 of the vote okay i want to stop you right there well i know that there's a reason i'm saying this right like allow me to finish it right i don't think that it's worth leaving upgrade in at 13 is what i was going to say because two things one why this is the show and two i think that people so this is my thing and i'm just saying this right i think people think that they shouldn't vote for this show so they don't because i think it would be higher if upgrade was in the running because this is the show right this is what i mentioned earlier is is i'm going to assume for my own benefit that a lot of people didn't bother nominating upgrade because why would upgrade ever get an upgradey it's silly because it's never going to win we're never going to win upgrades never going to win the upgradey if that's not true then among people who care

enough about upgrade to vote in the upgrade Upgrade is their fourth favorite tech podcast. Which is a heck of a slogan. We might want to put that on a t-shirt. My fourth favorite tech podcast. As voted for by me in the Upgradees. So we're going to remove Upgrade. So Welcome to Macintosh now sits in at 12% of the vote. The talk show sits in at 17%. And I will say this is a big surprise for me.

Connected at 27%. I wouldn't have expected that to occur. Thank you to everybody that voted. So here we are. We are at a big impasse. I have no nomination in this. And I think that's going to remain. I'm not going to bring in a late nomination

because, you know, I really like Upgrading Connected. I like listening to those shows all the time. I would love to win an Upgradey, but I don't need to. Honestly, I really like Welcome to Macintosh. Let's give it to Mark Bramhill. I think we should.

The reasons for this for me is like look I'm never gonna fight to win an award for myself it's that just seems ridiculous honestly I will say like the fact that the nearly a third of you voted for connected is all I really need that's as much as I need to win an award I just appreciate that you enjoy the shows, right? The talk show is a fantastic show. One of the things for me here is basically every single one of you gave it a different name. So it was very difficult for me to collect the vote on that one. So I'm a little bit frustrated there. I think it was like 17 different versions of the way people wrote the name of the show for me to make up the 17%. But the thing is, like Jason said, obviously I'm not being, that's just funny, whatever.

But like Jason said, Welcome to Macintosh is an incredible production. Mark is a great guy. The show is very good. If you're not listening to it, you should. And I think a great way to maybe make more people listen to that show is to give it the Upgradey. So the Upgradey award winner for 2017 is Welcome to Macintosh, which is really the third place because, come on, guys. I love that you voted for Upgrade, but we're never giving ourselves an award. But thank you for voting.

We appreciate that. And we're going to go with uh we're going to go with canvas we are going to go with canvas and connected as our runners-up um for for this year so thank you very much to that but the winner is welcome to macintosh so we get into favorite non-tech podcast now this is my category this is the one that I'm really going to push on but before we do

a second lifetime achievement hall of fame award winner is the Flophouse the Flophouse has won for the last three years like ATP so the Flophouse can no longer be in the running, can no longer be in the vote. So congratulations to the Flophouse

for their Hall of Fame award that they will win. I'm going to go with the upgradings first. Again, with this, 7% is Reconcilable Differences, which I believe Rektifs is a... They are a runner-up. They were a runner-up in 2015 for Favorite Non-Tech Podcast.

I was tempted to... My challenge with Rektifs is that it's... Is it a tech podcast or not a tech podcast? I'm not sure what it is. Rektifs did win Podcast Newcomer in 2015 as well, so they are a previous Upgradee Award winner. Another previous award winner, the Podcast Newcomer Award winner of last year

was Dubai Friday, which is sitting in at 29% of the vote for favorite non-tech podcast. And another previous runner-up for favorite podcast for two years, it's been a runner-up in 2014 and 2016 is hello internet with 32 percent of the vote jason can you give me your nomination my nomination is uh i i thought about this a lot because there are so many in here i i think i mentioned buffering the vampire slayer year, which was really good.

That was mentioned a bunch at PodCon, by the way. I kept hearing people talking about that show. That's a good show. It helps. I mean, it helps that the hosts are so great. And they're doing music about every... There's a song about every episode. It's amazing.

I decided this year to throw my support behind a show that my friend Tony Sindelar recommended to me. It's a Dungeons and Dragons podcast by a bunch of, uh, this may sound familiar to you. It's a Dungeons and Dragons podcast by a bunch of very funny people. And then they record it and it's, and it makes you laugh. And, and yet there's also storytelling and character building and all of that. Now I've described a lot of podcasts right there.'ll specify it a little bit further it is recorded live in front of a studio audience in sydney australia by a bunch of comedians from australia it's called dragon friends it is hilarious i've never heard of this

show i feel like i should have heard of it it's it's really good um the the people are funny they do a lot of like pre-rolling of dice and things so that there's a there's not a lot of like let's look it up in the rule book stuff that slows things down it's really more about the storytelling and the role playing um very very funny uh first season's uh audio is a little dodgy but the second season is spectacularly funny so i i um and i just um a few months ago i was at a wedding with a bunch of people uh who are friends of tony's and um somebody made a dragon friends reference and like five people all countered it with another line from dragon friends and we had that moment of like oh my god we've all uh discovered this podcast through i think tony wasn't even the originator i think he heard about it from one of them and then they all spread

around and it was hilarious to be in that moment when i'm suddenly surrounded by five people who know all the details of this obscure podcast that i listen to that nobody i know listens to you know other than tony uh it's great so i recommend it it is a very fun uh very good uh dnd comedy podcast i need to talk about the adventure zone yeah do it the adventure zone is my pick and i want to preface this with a very big statement so hypercritical the show by john syrac, I consider to be one of the greatest podcasts of all time. It was my favorite podcast of all time. Was.

The Adventure Zone is my favorite podcast of all time. Jason, when I finished, so The Adventure Zone has been going for multiple years. The McElroy brothers and their dad, Clint, they played together. The first campaign was uh dm'd by griffin and uh the other three played they played together they have completed one large campaign and now they're running through a bunch of mini campaigns before they decide on

the route for their second campaign i mean the first campaign ran for like three years in total I think it was I found it all as it was coming to an end and binged the entire thing and basically caught up the final episode had me sitting on my sofa crying my eyes out I have never been affected by a podcast in the way that I have this one. The story that they tell over the 69 episodes that it takes to finish the first campaign, it's like nothing I've ever heard in basically any medium. It's one of the greatest stories I've ever consumed. I love the Adventure Zone. There are so many moments where I'm laughing. I have tears in my eyes. I am rooting for them. There was a moment where a big thing happened and I fist pumped at the moment

that I was doing some washing up and drowned my kitchen in soapy, sudy water because I was so taken by that moment. This podcast is just wonderful like and more than anything this evening this is one that i want to win and i beg of you that you allow me to call the adventure zone our favorite non-tech podcast of the year did we not have this discussion a couple years ago about the flop house in the adventure zone no it was always the flop house in hello internet and oh it's hello internet that's right if you remember jason i'll let you win that first one you let me i know well that's why i'm casting my mind back to you so i

have a couple comments about the adventure zone first is you are not the only friend of mine who has had this who's said this about the finale of the adventure zone um i've heard from other people who have had the exact same reaction which is incredibly emotionally affecting uh finale resolution of the storyline and the other thing i wanted to say is yes mike and i just picked dungeons and dragons podcast which may seem totally like weird to you dear, if you have not ever done this. What I'll say, because having done my own Total Party Kill, we have our own on the Incomparable D&D podcast as well. And not really knowing why anyone would listen, but finding out that lots of people listen and really love it. What I've learned in thinking about this is what's great about these podcasts is you get a bunch of people.

You get to know them. And you get to know their characters yep you get to you get to watch an unfolding story that goes in unexpected directions because the characters and the people involved drive it there's no script that's been nobody there's nobody knows what's going to happen right right even the dungeon master who knows all the details of the world has and the best ones are the ones i and this happens to us all the time by the way where after wherever it's over the dungeon master says well you didn't do a single thing that i thought you would right and i feel like listeners really like that they make a personal connection they're listening to characters and a story but they don't know where it's going. And I think that a lot of us who are used to watching TV and movies and reading books and all of that, I feel like we start to get trained to look for

what would the writer do next? How would this story get told in the shape of a normal kind of a story? And you start second guessing the story, or you're thinking, well, this is's a marvel movie or a star wars movie we know what's going to happen like there's a limited possibility whereas in these things characters can die and nobody knows the death is coming until it happens because it's all about rolling dice and things like that the weird funny things emerge um i have sung improvised parody song lyrics out loud in public with a recording knowing people will listen to it while playing a dungeons and dragons podcast right why would i do why would i ever do that and yet i have so what i'm saying is i understand why people like these and if you have never played dungeons and dragons and you're like why would i ever listen to one you might want to give the adventure zone a try and i would say just super quick about the adventure zone when you begin that show you will not understand why i cried at the

end of it the adventure zone began as the mackler brothers needing to fill a space where one of them was going on paternity leave from their other show my brother my brother and me so they were just messing around and they came up with a dumb idea for a show and they just did it but people loved it so much they turned it into a story i would say really like i know there are so many pieces of media where you get this advice but try and get through the first campaign maybe it's under 10 episodes i think because it's at the end of that first campaign is when griffin is started to write his own story they play with a standard dungeons of dragons story like a campaign or arc or whatever you'd call it yeah it's it's actually

if people who have tried it the fifth edition starter kit comes with that adventure i played that one with my family and so like i mean i'm maybe not using the the terminology correct i think i should say arc and there are like six campaigns within the art yeah give it 10 episodes maybe i mean i i've listened to about 10 episodes and it is uh getting great yeah so once once that they get to the the campaign called murder on the rockport limited that's where it kicks off like which is the second part and that's where this is an original story um because that's when they are taking it very seriously at that point right and then later on uh griffin writes all the

music for the show except the theme song he writes the music and that becomes more and more incredible as the show comes on and the use of music in the show to the point where I've now bought all of the music and just listen to it. I'm obsessed by the show. It took over my life in a very interesting way. And that's why it's the winner of the upgrade. You have to stop me because I'll just keep going. Please listen to the Adventure Zone. I have convinced a bunch of people, a bunch listeners of analog to listen to the show and i get tweets every single day from people telling me wow i thought that you

were wild but it turns out you weren't and i'll just say this genre is good so like try the adventure zone um if if that doesn't work for you try dragon friends do you recommend that i go to the start on dragon because the adventure zone you must go to the beginning i i i mean you'll miss i i started with season two of dragon friends because i got i download season one and there's a disclaimer at the beginning it says sorry this sounds really bad and i was like i'll just skip ahead and i didn't miss much i mean you have to you you're in the middle of the story give it a try and start at the beginning and if it doesn't work just skip to season two i imagine we are similarly sensitive to bad audio though me and you yeah so yeah there was a claim that they were going to fix it but i'm not sure

that ever happened um and then yes and and for those who want to hear me play dungeons and dragons you can listen to total party kill because it's also available but i think this is a fun genre i think there's a reason that there are a billion dnd playthrough podcasts now there were not when we got started i think but no um we didn't know what we were doing but but now it's a thing where like everybody realizes oh this is a this is actually a really great way to entertain people is by getting um getting interesting people in a room and having them play um this game because then they're inhabiting characters and stories play out and it's a lot of fun so our final award of the evening goes to favorite podcast newcomer the upgradians voted

as such 10 of the vote went to download congratulations jason yay um 11 you see well that's great because there were so many in this that like 11 goes to to Unmade, which is Brady Haran's new podcast. And 12% of the votes, it's very close in at the top, is What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law, which I think is a show, it's hosted by Roman Mars, I believe. Again, I'm not very familiar with the top two Upgradians shows. I just know that they exist. They're not shows that I've listened to very much. But Download I have, and Download's great. So congratulations on being up there. My Vote is another McElroy joint.

It's called The McElroy Brothers Will Be in Trolls 2. It's a very hard podcast to explain. There have only been three episodes, and it is not a regular show. It'll only be updated when it's necessary. The show begins, again, this is another thing that happened on My Brother, My Brother and Me. It was a joke on the Bim Bam Bam, which is another incredible show that I love so much, by the way.

But the Adventure Zone should be out for me. There was a joke in which Justin McElroy said, oh, we're going to be in Trolls 2. And the joke was he was so sure of it, like it wasn't even a question. So the sequel to the Trolls movie. So they will be in Trolls 2. And the joke was he was so sure of it, like it wasn't even a question. So the sequel to the Trolls movie. So they will be in Trolls 2. Ah, yes. And then... Not to be confused with the legendary bad movie Troll 2.

Yeah, this is a whole big joke as well in the episode. But Trolls 2, so a movie that doesn't yet exist, right? Uh-huh. This show, the kind of standalone show that they created, the McElroy Brothers will be in Trolls 2, is told from the perspective of standalone show that they created the mackerel robots will be in trolls 2 is told from the perspective of justin from the future telling the story of how they were in the movie but they how they're not in the movie and it is incredible so there are three episodes the first one um they've just done a live show in Portland and some edible delicacies found their way

to them and that's how the story begins because they're like planning this out a little bit more the second episode, do you know what? I don't actually remember the second episode very much because the third episode is one I've listened to multiple times where they have a call

with their agent and it's a real call that they call with their agent and it's a real call that they have with their agent and it is incredible and hilarious so it there's only three episodes to it but if all the shows that i've listened to that i knew this year i think this might be my favorite wow it's a very low time investment because it is just a silly wonderful thing yeah so mine is more serious but i have to say it was really brilliant and it is the spin-off from serial called s town i still haven't listened to it yet it's been in my queue forever but i haven't yet gotten to it well i think there's a question so they dropped it as uh the entire series dropped at once and there there was a lot of discussion of why that was and doing the netflix model where

you could binge it or not i think it did make it in some ways less essential for people like you where it's like well it's all there for whenever it's not rolling out over time i'm not really missing anything um i know why they did it which is that there's actually a twist that happens fairly early on that everybody would be talking about. Well, how should I put this? There's a twist that happens in like episode two or three that after episode one, if you had to wait a week or two, everybody would go to the Internet to search about it and have the twist ruined for them. Does that make sense? Yeah, completely. Like you don't want it to be spoiled like that.

Yeah, because it's a real story that really happened. And there's people introduced in episode one. And something happens to one of the people in episode two or three that if they had released it weekly, everybody would have been spoiled about an episode after episode one. Because they would have written about episode one and they would have looked up this person and they would have said, oh, did you know this about this person? And the whole thing is spoiled. And it really really is a twist and that's why they did it that's why they dropped them all i think i'm i'm convinced because you could probably just do some googling and get the answer right right so that led them to say why don't we do this netflix style and binge it anyway it's really good it's a you know it's a story of it is a story of the reporter

it becomes part of the story he gets these calls from this kind of weird guy down in Alabama and he and it leads to like well maybe maybe the there was like a murder that wasn't enforced by like because it was by a rich person in this

town and he goes to investigate and what ends up happening is it's not about that at all it's about it's about the town and he goes to investigate. And what ends up happening is it's not about that at all. It's about the town and the people and the people who know this guy who made the call. And it just keeps going in a way that, talking about the D&D podcast before before in a way that a really rigorously structured story by a writer would not go but it's life and it's messy and weird and goes in unexpected direct directions and it was really masterfully put together um so i i liked s town a whole. I thought it was really good. And so that's my nominee. I have no idea

where to go with this one. I don't know what we do with this because it's just like a whole batch of different things. Of stuff. And me and you have only listened to our own shows. You don't want to vote for Download.

I mean, download's great download is great go listen to download i mean because you know i could say s town but s town has been the top of so many lists but that's probably for a really good reason should we just go should we just go mainstream just go mainstream like and just go with s town let's do it i feel like we should i again, I haven't listened to it yet, but it has been the top of so many lists. I know it must be good. It's really good. All right, so we're going to go with S-Town.

I really liked Serial, but this is like a whole other level of weirdness, and it's very well. And it's personal. I mean, that's one of the things is that the reporter gets personally affected by the story as it goes, which I think is, you know, that doesn't always happen. And sometimes it happens and it feels contrived and it does not feel contrived.

Like it is, yeah, it's really well done. So I'm comfortable with that if you are. Sure am. And that's it. S-Town is the winner and our final winner of the night. Jason, we have done it for another year. We have gone through our upgradies i want to thank all of our upgradians for their help um in helping us uh with the with the wins this year you've really helped us i think a lot and there've been some great

picks suggested by our upgradians and i'm really happy with how the awards have gone uh this year and very excited for next year i mean just taking a very quick tally, we don't have any Hall of Famers that have occurred as of this year. That's good. So everything's still up to play for next year. A bunch of new winners. There are a selection of returning winners,

but no new Hall of Famers. The Hall of Fame is three. You win three times. You win three times, you go in the Hall of Fame. And so congratulations to ATP and the Flophouse for first achieving the Hall of Fame status. So there we go. Until next year.

Jason Snell, thank you so much, as always. You should do that again because it is next year. Okay. Or you mean the Upgradees? Yeah. All right. That was confusing to me. Okay. I'll say that again then. All right. okay well but it'll be next or you mean the upgradies yeah all right that was just i that was confusing to me okay let me i'll say that again then all right so jason snow until we

reconvene on the upgradey awards next next year in yeah i guess 2018 awards say goodbye jason snell bye everybody thanks for Happy new year. We'll see you in a week.